You may recall that back in the summer of 2009, there was a lot of hubbub over a Google 20 percent project with a near impossible name: Pubsubhubbub. Creators Brad Fitzpatrick and Brett Slatkin actually unveiled it at our Realtime Stream CrunchUp back then. And it garnered a lot of buzz for a good reason: it aimed to speed up traditionally slow feeds of information to realtime. Well, now the two are back at it again (with a few other contributors) with a new project: Camlistore.
First of all, aside from the fact that I keep typing “Camilstore”, this name is a significant improvement over the last project. It’s an acronym for “Content-Addressable Multi-Layer Indexed Storage”. But more importantly, the project once again looks to be a very interesting one. Though the team is quick to note on its homepage that it’s “not ready for users”, the site has quite a bit of information about the general hopes for the project and how they imagine it working. → Read More
Kevin Rose and Tim Ferriss have made a co-investment in Facebook on the secondary market. In this video clip posted this week, Rose announces that he and Ferris recently invested in Facebook “before the craziness.” We’ve embedded the video below; Rose talks about the investment just after the 34 minute mark.
We confirmed with Rose that he and Ferriss actually bought shares on secondary market SecondMarket at a $45 billion valuation. We’re told the deal was in the seven figures. The ‘craziness’ Rose is referring to is Facebook’s recent $1.5 billion funding round from Goldman Sachs and DST at a $50 billion valuation, and the possibility of an IPO for the network by April 2012. → Read More
Next time someone gives you the “You talking to me?” speech, you might be able to respond with a confident, “yeah.” This massive shell shooter, dubbed “The Raging Judge,” offers a very pragmatic approach to settling disputes — even .57 Magnum dualers will shake in their boots. The Judge creator, the Brazilian armsmaker Taurus, recently revealed the 28 gauge firearm. → Read More
Editor’s note: Guest author Chris Yeh is an independent angel investor and VP of Marketing for PBworks, one of his investments. He has been involved with Internet startups since 1995. His Twitter handle is @chrisyeh.
The big news this morning is Yuri Milner’s announcement that he and Ron Conway will be investing $150,000 in *every* Y Combinator startup on a no-discount, no-cap convertible loan. → Read More
Here we see Bryant Gumbel and Katie Couric trying to explain the Internet in 1994. Did we ever really dress like that? → Read More
Can’t stand superficial detail? Overwhelmed by samsara? Why not strip out false detail and turn your world into the wall of Plato’s cave, flickering shadows portraying the world as it really is: a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. → Read More
With the eyes of the world on Egypt, the Gillmor Gang convened to discuss the impact of social media on what appears to a revolution without borders. Doc Searls, Seth Goldstein, John Taschek, and Kevin Marks put aside vendor sports and Silicon Valley to focus on a brave new world and its apparent off switch. What we came up with was the strong feeling that, whatever the tumult of the day, the genie is out of the bottle and will soon return.
What started as what we were having for lunch has emerged as a worldwide message bus, whether by tweet or friend to friend, search, or gesture. And as the media tries to capture the speed of realtime, the incredible scope and power of the global network has never seemed more fragile and yet sturdy in its robust elastcity. The cloud has found its moment to change and augment history. → Read More
Audi-Designed Carbon Skis: Want So Bad Have Five Fingers Gone Too Far? Check Out This Year’s Casual Lineup Star Trek Potato Heads To Boldly Go Where No Potato Head Has Gone Before (sorry, had to) Smile-Scan: Omron Updates Its Smile-O-Meter Ferrari F150: The First Formula One Car Of The Season Inches Toward Green → Read More
Earlier tonight, Mike posted a bombshell that must have made super angels shudder. Not content with the grenade he threw into the late-stage investing world with aggressive investments in Facebook, Groupon and Zynga, tonight Yuri Milner announced a new partnership with Ron Conway that offers similar you’d-be-crazy-not-to-take-this-deal terms for every Y Combinator company.
But you know who might be even more bummed by the news than the super angels? Sequoia Capital. The top Valley firm led Y Combinator’s last funding, less than one year ago. At $8.5 million, this was a big step up for Y Combinator, dramatically allowing it to expand how many startups it could let into its incubator. And it should have been a big advantage for Sequoia too: A way to see a crop of new deals early in an increasingly competitive investing landscape, where most VCs are being shut out of early rounds by super angels. It seems Milner stole the opportunity right out from under Sequoia. → Read More
College students, how would you like to work at Apple part time? Get full benefits and something more than $10 an hour? Beats working in the cafeteria right? Well, Apple is beginning to hire college students to answer AppleCare phone calls. And it might end up changing the customer service game entirely.
Find out how after the break. → Read More
Everything just changed in the angel investing world.
Two years ago Yuri Milner, through his investment firm DST, disrupted the traditional Silicon Valley venture capital model when he began investing in the hottest startups – companies like Facebook, Zynga and Groupon – at very high valuations and extremely easy deal terms. He looks brilliant in hindsight, with all of his U.S. investments at significantly higher valuations since he invested.
Most top VC firms have begun emulating DST’s deal structure.
Now he’s partnering (as an individual, not as part of DST) with Ron Conway’s angel fund, SV Angel. And they’re making a bold investment move. This evening they’ve just made a blanket investment offer to every Y Combinator startup in the most recent batch. They’re going to invest in all of them. Every single one. And this is the biggest Y Combinator class to date – some 40 new startups. → Read More
Nothing much to see here folks. Just a bunch of people drooling at the mouth over, to them, the most anticipated phone (ever) moving to a similar, but different network, their network. With tensions so tight, someone had to let people know down to the hour just when they should keep hitting their browser’s refresh button. 3AM. 3AM. Eastern time zone Friday Thursday February 3rd, that is. That is when everyone and their mother will crash Verizon’s website. → Read More
Looking good while skiing isn’t easy, and occasionally ends up in a yard sale on the slope. Function comes first when you’re hurtling down a double diamond with 15 feet of visibility. That said, these Audi-designed skis are so sexy they may cause other skiers to forget where they’re going. → Read More
Blekko, the search engine that is fighting the good fight against web spam with human editors, is joining biggies Google and Bing in the mobile search arena today with an Android and iPhone application double whammy. Says Blekko CEO Rich Skrenta, “In a world where people want the most relevant answers on the go, mobile search is becoming increasingly more significant.” → Read More
Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) just recently got its first SDK release, and it looks like the enterprising hackers in the Android community have already ported it to the Nook Color hardware. Well, partially. It’s a “zombie” made by mixing the SDK with the Nook’s kernel, and it runs like a dog. Getting hardware acceleration (a major part of the UI snappiness in Honeycomb) working is the next step, and hacker dhoshman over at XDA says he’ll be working on that over the weekend. We’ll keep you updated. → Read More
The heat may be surrounding the Android 3.0 tablets coming in the next few months, but if you’re too impatient to wait for those, or just need a few budget tablets for around the office, the Enspert E201U could be the iPad-lookalike Froyo unit for you. → Read More
Ever wish Angry Birds had more poop in it? Well look no further than the App Store today, as Apps Genius has launched Angry Turds. As a monkey in Angry Turds, you get to battle evil island explorers who have stolen your monkey babies with various projectile weapons.
The concept is similar to Angry Birds as your objective is to throw stuff but the stuff here goes beyond rocks to coconuts, turds, banana bombs and grand poop-bas (I am so glad I never spent any money getting a journalism degree). → Read More
There’s a new religion brewing in the athletic milieu that requisites fitting foot condoms around the phalanges. You know what I’m talking about: the Five Fingers phenomenon. Not dissimilar to the once popular Crocs, Vibram banks on being different as a means of selling shoes. What’s different about Five Fingers is nothing entirely new, in fact, it dates back to thousands of years ago: perambulating barefoot. While it makes sense to use your natural foot articulation to cushion the blow from today’s hard surfaces, Vibram may have taken it a bit too far with this year’s Five Fingers, with what they are calling “Casual Shoes”. → Read More
