Way back in October 2008, we reported about a cell phone that featured a built-in mini projector. The cell phone was showcased by Japan’s biggest mobile carrier, NTT Docomo, as a prototype. But today, the same carrier announced [JP] that such a spectacular handset will finally go on sale in Japan this Friday. → Read More
ShareThis, which you may be familiar with thanks to all the buttons online publishers worldwide have been plastering on their sites to lure you into spreading their content, is now live at roughly 1 million websites, aggregately reaching more than 400 million users.
The company has now tapped Kristen Fergason, formerly a marketer at Yahoo, as its new CMO to grow even more. In addition to her hiring, ShareThis has named Julie Greenhouse SVP Ad Sales & Business Development and Ben Slutter VP of Revenue and Ad Operations. Both were with the company previously. → Read More
“The problem was that no one wanted to type in the bar they were at,” Adam Cahan told us when we met with him last week to see his latest venture, IntoNow. He wasn’t talking about his startup. Instead, he was talking about Dodgeball, the location-based service that came well before Foursquare. That is, he was describing why Foursquare took off while Dodgeball didn’t, even though they had the same basic concept. GPS being built-in to smartphones changed everything, he said. “Now our industry is in the same place. We’re the GPS layer.”
What industry is that? So so-called media check-in space. (Though don’t use the word “check-in” around Cahan, he hates it.) More specifically, IntoNow is trying to own the tv engagement app space. And while competitors like GetGlue, Miso, TunerFish and others all beat IntoNow to market, they have a secret weapon: it’s called SoundPrint.
Just like GPS with location services, SoundPrint, a new technology created by IntoNow, allows you to automatically “check-in” to watching a show simply by hitting a button in the IntoNow app. How? It reads the sound waves and patterns of each television show (and a growing collection of movies as well) and matches it with a database they keep. Yep, it’s a lot like Soundhound or Shazam, but for video content. → Read More
As part of a White House effort to promote job creation, entrepreneurship and private-sector investment in startups, President Obama is announcing a new initiative today, called Startup America Partnership, to foster growth in the startup world and jumpstart job creation. The Partnership will be chaired by AOL co-founder Steve Case and will be partly funded by the Kauffman Foundation and the Case Foundation.
Startup America’s core goals are “to increase the number of new, high-growth firms that are creating economic growth, innovation, and quality jobs; celebrate and honor entrepreneurship as a core American value and source of competitive advantage; and inspire and empower an ever-greater diversity of communities and individuals to build great American companies.” And the campaign will work with both the White House and a number of technology companies, universities, and entrepreneurs to help achieve these goals. → Read More
Jewelry and watch designer Philippe Tournaire has created some really interesting things. For me, he will be most famous for being the guy who turns architecture into rings. Really. Image a ring with a gold building on it – yup. Tournaire’s newest creation combines this concept with a watch, but in a way that is just sort of weird. In fact, as hard as it may have been someone finally make the beautiful city of Paris kinda unattractive. → Read More
Unirac — a company that makes racks that are used to install and hold solar panels in place within power generating systems of any size — today revealed a new partnership with solar tech manufacturers, Canadian Solar Inc. (nasdaq: CSIQ).
Through the partnership, the companies will install 30 MW of solar projects in Canada, starting with a 10.9 MW solar park in Napanee, Ontario. According to a Unirac press statement, Canadian Solar will serve as the engineering, procurement and construction entity on these projects, and Unirac will provide the racking infrastructure.
In May 2010, Albuquerque, N.M.-based Unirac sold to Hilti Group, a massive construction sector business. Before it became a wholly owned subsidiary of Hilti, Unirac’s sales increased 100% from 2009 to 2010 said the chief executive of Unirac, Doug May… → Read More
TechCrunch exclusive – If you’d never heard about KIT digital before, you will after today. The provider of cloud-based video asset management solutions has acquired not one, not two but three social software and video companies.
The company has acquired New York City-based KickApps, Paris-based Kewego, and San Francisco-based Kyte, for aggregate consideration of approximately $77.2 million.
In conjunction with the acquisitions, KickApps CEO Alex Blum has been appointed to the new position of Global COO of KIT digital, while KickApps CFO David Lapter will assume the role of SVP Finance and Administration within KIT digital. → Read More
I loathe press releases like this one from Ooyala, who I must say is our trusted video platform provider in the interest of full disclosure. I’m singling the company out today, because I’m quite fed up, but this is an honest plea for every company that loves to tout growth without saying anything substantial to, please, stop doing that.
So apparently Ooyala “grew revenue by nearly 200%, its customer base by over 50%, and delivered a record number of video technology innovations”.
Sounds impressive, except the statement says absolutely nothing about its revenues, the size of its customer base or what the company has done to innovate video technology. → Read More
AOL Europe has lead an acquision of video distribution network Goviral today, to the tune of $96.7 million. Goviral distributes branded video content for mainstream brands, as well as content producers and advertising agencies. Originally out of Copenhagen, the company now has offices across Europe. The initial purchase is for $74.1 million and $22.6 million in a two year earn out. It joins others AOL acquisitions in the last year including, StudioNow, 5min Media, Thing Labs, Pictela, about.me and, er, TechCrunch.
We’re hearing this deal was lead directly by Kate Burns, head of Europe for AOL. → Read More
Here’s a selection of stories from the past week on CrunchGear: Cloud-Based Storage Coming To PS3 (But For A Premium)? Audi-Designed Carbon Skis: Want So Bad Just In Time For Trenta: Send Your Facebook Friends Starbucks Card eGifts So Why Should You Care About NFC? How The Glif Got Made: From Design To Sales In Five Months → Read More
The title of strangest WTF story of my morning is Plentyoffish CEO Markus Frind recounting how his online dating site got hacked, he and his wife were harassed and someone clumsily attempted to extort his company in the aftermath of the events. If that is in fact what happened …
First up, Frind points out that the site has indeed been hacked last week in a “well planned and sophisticated attack”.
Apparently, email addresses, usernames and passwords were downloaded, although Frind does not say how many. Plentyoffish has already reset the passwords for all users and claims to have plugged the security hole that allowed the hackers to enter. → Read More
Back in November, Reuters published an article titled “Twitter co-founder hopes to create news network” where Biz Stone mulled over the idea that Twitter could create a social news firehose based on verticals. While the erroneous headline ended up being debunked by Twitter, some hypothesized that this could work if news organizations were given access to all tweets on a given topic as well as the power to curate the stream.
Back then my colleague MG Siegler said there was clearly something to this idea. MG is right (sigh) namely because it is already happening. Humans are functioning as defacto news aggregators using the publication tools already available. This, while not a novel idea, really hit home in the past two weeks with the two subsequent revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt. → Read More
Facebook is today launching ‘Places Deals’ in the UK and Europe. Facebook users will be able to get discounts and special deals in shops, cafes and restaurants by checking in on Facebook Places on their smartphone.
We’re live broadcasting the press conference above.
The Telegraph broke an early story on this this morning.
‘Places Deals’ launched in the US last November with Macys, Gap and Starbucks.
European partners will be: Starbucks, Yo Sushi, Mazda (Mazda 20% off an MX5), O2, Argos, Debenhams, Alton Towers and Benetton.
Live now in Germany, France, Italy, Spain. → Read More
Japanese telecommunications company Nakayo is preparing an IP home phone [JP, PDF] that features an integrated 7-inch Android tablet. When receiving a call, users can pick up the handset to speak, push a button on the display (the tablet) to make a hands-free call or take the tablet out, walk around and speak into its mic. → Read More
Guy Grimland of Israeli business newspaper TheMarker published two articles (both are in Hebrew) this morning about a rumored relationship between Facebook and Face.com.
The first article claims that Face.com rebuffed an acquisition offer worth ‘tens of millions of dollars’. The second article claims that Face.com is powering Facebook Photos’ facial recognition functionality, which was clearly upgraded in the past few months, albeit, with no indication there was a third party involved. → Read More
You know how I know Quora is going to be big? No one can shut up about it.
That includes both people who love it and people who hate it. And that dichotomy is important, because it will keep people talking about it. And that will keep people signing up. And it will keep those that already signed up going back. And that’s important because Quora is a service that takes a bit longer than others to get into.
Anyway, the past couple of weekends have brought some truly great bitchmemes about Quora. Last weekend, it was Vivek Wadhwa who kicked things off on this very blog with his post, Why I Don’t Buy The Quora Hype. That post led to a firestorm of reactions (both positive and negative) in both the comments section and on Twitter. In fact, at one point after the post went up last weekend, I swear my entire tweet feed was devoted to it. → Read More
What you’re looking at above is a screenshot from a Best Buy inventory. Pretty amazing, eh? But why am I showing it to you? There seems to be nothing juicy about it. Y’see, it’s not all that it appears to be, my friend…
Pulling off some serous sleuthing, Android Central forum member, paulmike3, noticed that the number seen up the top left of the image (highlighted as number 3) is actually the very same barcode number that appeared on a (since pulled) YouTube video showing an HTC Thunderbolt unboxing.
So, like a double rainbow, I hear you asking “What does this mean!?” → Read More
Robert Scobleized Quora today.
It was only a couple of weeks ago that I mentioned super-blogger Robert Scoble’s penchant for taking very strong positions on technology and startups and then reversing those decisions completely on a whim.
I love him for his quick retreats.
And I certainly admire a man who’s willing to rethink his opinion after weighing new evidence. → Read More
I’m loathe to write again about Wikileaks, or about its pig-to-man founder, Julian Assange. Not because I’ve run out of things to say, but because the response is so predictable when I do.
Within minutes, the Assange fanboys – the Wikiliebers, if you like – will swarm into the comments, accusing me of unfairly slandering their hero. “He’s sticking it to The Man!” they’ll cry, “he’s disrupting the mainstream media!” they’ll holler, “it was a honeytrap!” they’ll protest, until inevitably someone will accuse me of being in the pay of the US government and the whole thing will descend into farce.
No forest of Vanity Fair and New Yorker profiles or unrelated criminal allegations or hubristic statements about having “two wars I have to end” will convince the Wikiliebers of the truth: that Assange is an arrogant computer genius who began Wikileaks with the best of intentions but has since lost sight of his principles in the relentless pursuit of personal celebrity. (I say that like it’s a bad thing)
But if I take some flak for my relatively inconsequential badgering of Assange, I can only imagine how much Bill Keller must be getting right now. After all, Bill Keller is the man who is about to put Wikileaks out of business once and for all. → Read More
In an interview with 60 Minutes, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange compares his values to those of the Founding Fathers of the United States and argues that he is actually playing “inside the rules.” He defends his actions by leaning heavily on the First Amendment, stating that “our founding values are those of the U.S. revolution.”
On the possibility of facing prosecution in the U.S. for leaking sensitive diplomatic cables and military documents, he argues: “there’s been no precedent that I’m aware of in the past 50 years of prosecuting a publisher for espionage. It is just not done. Those are the rules. You do not do it.”
Both the U.S. Justice Department and the Pentagon are conducting a criminal investigation against Assange and WikiLeaks, but if WikiLEaks is charged with a crime for publishing classified documents, it begs the question of whether other publishers such as the New York Times (which also published part of the documents) could also be prosecuted. Of course, the U.S. government is not currently going after the New York Times. It is going after WikiLeaks. But Assange makes the case that should not be tolerated. (Video after the break). → Read More
