My friends over at the WSJ have been knocking it out of the park lately, reporting last night that social gaming phenomenon Zynga is raising a new $250 million round of funding that values the company at between $7 – $9 billion according to, eh hem, sources.
Then today Bloomberg piggybacked on the news, naming names in terms of players in the talks, including Fidelity investments and T.Rowe Price (who coincidentally also has signifigant shares in gaming company Electronic Arts).
Bloomberg also reiterated the same price for the round at $250 million and bumped the valuation range up to “close to ten million,” continuing down the well worn path of hinting at market exuberance by running down the checkpoints signifying a tech industry investment bubble, er frenzy. → Read More
A few days ago, we foretold of the Boeing event where they would release the new 747-8: Boeing’s largest airliner ever built. Well it happened, and Wired got some good pics at the event. The fly-by-wire plane still has to undergo further testing and log more flight hours. The fly-by-wire system is relatively new — earlier planes required mechanical linkage — and so a new law needed to pass in order for the system to be used. → Read More
We love us some MakerBot at CG and clearly this young man loves his as well. Watch has he describes the magic of actually making stuff with his MakerBot at Ignite Phoenix this year. → Read More
I’ve never understood why people on diets exclusively drink “diet” sodas — does advertising work that well? For starters, diet soda tastes like crap, offers absolutely no dietary benefits, and are full of aspartame. Whether or not aspartame converts to formaldehyde, there’s nothing natural about the stuff. So it comes as no surprise that a recent study found a link between drinking diet soda and strokes. → Read More
Millennial Media has released its monthly mobile report this evening, and it looks like Android has continued its reign at the top of the network in terms of mobile ad impression share, after overtaking iOS for the top spot in December 2010. Millennial, whose ads reach 63 million of a total of 77 million mobile web users in the U.S., or 81 percent of the U.S. mobile web; is reporting that Android ad impression share increased by 8 percent month-over-month to capture 54 percent of the network’s ad impressions in the U.S. in January. iOS trailed behind with 28 percent of mobile ad impression share, which is decrease of 4 percent. RIM followed with a 14 percent impression share, down 2 percent from last month.
Apple iOS ad requests increased 47% month-over-month, with Android requests growing by 32% month-over-month. RIM requests remained relatively flat month-over-month, Symbian requests increased 24% and iPad requests increasing by 43% from December. → Read More
If you’re a big VFF fan, you may have been thinking about moving toward a more closed shoe for trail running but didn’t want to sacrifice the delicious toe splay offered by “real” foot gloves. Merrell just came out with a new set of trail shoes designed to mimic the benefits of VFFs and they were quite well-reviewed at our favorite site dedicated to shoes, BirthdayShoes. The ultimate decision? I’m really liking my Merrell Barefoot Trail Gloves and recommend them as a solid contender amongst the emerging options in the minimalist footwear category — they are certainly top of mind in the non-five toed shoes category! That said, it’s important to keep in mind that every foot is different just as every person is different — there’s a good reason for the cliche “if the shoe fits, wear it!” → Read More
Our good buddies at Xetum are offering a post-Valentine’s treat: a new, limited-edition Tyndall with carbon-fiber dial and automatic movement. Xetum makes some of the best and most handsome American-designed watches I’ve seen in a while so pop over and visit them early and often. → Read More
So I learned two things today: companies in Wisconsin make cheese in cans and, more important, once you empty those cans you can make a Canjo. These things, built buy Wisconsin-native John Elwood, have a charming look and great resonance. → Read More
With more references to Justin Bieber than a Valentine’s day party at an all-girls Canadian middle school, Music Hackday rolled into New York City this past weekend. Event organizers John Britton and Dave Haynes noted this had been the biggest Music Hack Day yet, with 72 demos. Hundreds of hackers showed up and a waiting list of hopefuls swelled to 300. Hacks included invisible iPhone instruments, Kinect hacks, web-based sequencers and SMS valentines day tributes. → Read More
Did you all just see that? The IBM Jeopardy Challenge kicked off tonight, and Watson, the IBM-developed artificial intelligence absolutely more than held his own against his human competition. Mechanical men! → Read More
Last October Amazon launched a feature that’s exciting for developers: a free usage tier that provides a limited amount of access to EC2, S3, and Amazon’s other cloud products free of charge. It’s a big deal because it lets developers roll out new projects without any upfront cost (they only have to start paying when their project takes off). But it hasn’t been particularly useful for average consumers, who don’t know how to set up projects on Amazon’s Cloud.
Now JumpBox, a startup that offers ‘Open Source as a Service’, has launched a feature that makes this free usage tier accessible to just about anyone. The feature supports one-click installs for WordPress, Drupal, MediaWiki, and Joomla — you enter your Amazon secret key, create some JumpBox credentials, and you’re off and running. JumpBox benefits from getting exposed to new customers (who may also opt to install other apps at a premium) and Amazon benefits because these users may eventually hit the limits on the free usage tier and switch to paid plans. → Read More
It’s rare that we get access to insider information as AOL employees here at TechCrunch HQ, so we have to rely on our mad reporting skills and the strength of our inboxes in order to figure out the goings on over in Dulles and at 770 Broadway. We’ve received this “Winter Luge and HuffPost Quick Update” email multiple times today, but none through any legitimate AOL channels. So I guess this means we can take off our AOL hats and just repost it (yay pageviews!).
In the email, AOL head honcho Tim Armstrong welcomes content maven Arianna Huffington to the AOL family with colorful exaggerated reference to the over 4000 articles written about the AOL/Huffington Post acquisition last week, apparently signifying an AOL comeback. The email goes on to explore how close we are to our very ambitious Winter Luge Q1 goals which are indeed very very ambitious. → Read More
It’s hard to believe that it wasn’t even a year ago when I wrote the following post: What Happens When Apple Passes Microsoft In Value? Yes, When. It’s even harder to believe just how many people thought I was crazy for saying that — it happened just two months later! And while plenty seemed to think that the passing of the torch to Apple as the most valuable tech company would be short-lived, let’s look at where we are today. As of market close this afternoon, Apple is now a full $100 billion past Microsoft.
Yes, Apple is the most valuable tech company in the world by $100 billion dollars. To put that in some perspective: the market cap of HP is $105 billion. Apple is now worth an HP more than every other tech company. → Read More
Dick Costolo started off his speech at Mobile World Congress mentioning the fact that Twitter is very multi-platform, and how that’s a huge advantage. He siad the goals going forward were that Twitter should be instantly useful and highly mainstream. Right now the experiences are dis-similar between devices, but the “experience should be the same. I shouldn’t think how to use Twitter.” In addition he said Twitter wanted to be always present – such as not having to switch applications just to tweet.
“We used to create experiences for our users but now users are creating experiences for each-other.” He cited special initiatives Twitter did with Haiti not because there was commercial benefit, but because it created value for the users. DigitaCell Haiti had proved to be the most effective promoter of Twitter during the earthquakes because it helped the aid initiative.
A Tweet which embodied a mission for the company talked about ChoppedOnion who had done their shopping and commented on the sunset. It’s that kind of simplicity and personal connection which is effectively the life-blood of Twitter.
He also revealed that 40% of all tweets are created on mobile devices. 50% of active users are active on more than one platform. → Read More
Tonight, I will begin the road to better sleep — or so Zeo claims. Zeo is a personal sleep coach (alarm clock) that watches how you sleep and helps “coach” you to better sleep patterns. Zeo has been doing very well lately and even raised another $12.3 million back in January. You may have heard of similar devices, though some haven’t had as good of luck. → Read More
There’s no better way to spend your Valentine’s Day than a new episode OMG/JK (I’ve been practicing my rhyming). So grab some chocolates, pull up a chair, and hold your laptop close as you sit back for this week’s show.
This episode is all about tablets. From rumors about the iPad 2 (and 3!) to HP’s upcoming WebOS tablets, it’s been a big week. We also touch on the new relationship between Microsoft and Nokia, and how it might affect the smartphone market.
Here are some posts relevant to this week’s show: → Read More
Bad news for those of you in the audience who love energy drinks, particularly those of you with children or younger siblings. Well, and if you make a habit of giving energy drinks to said youngsters. A University of Miami study suggests that—and this will shock you—that energy drinks may not be safe for young children, primarily because we have no idea how the combination of ingredients usually found in energy drinks, including caffeine, taurine, and guarana, affect young children’s physiology. Reminds me of how people used to use put radium in toothpaste and other household products because of its “curative” powers. Makes sense. → Read More
I’ve been wandering around Mobile World Congress and I managed to bump into a startup which – although unable to can’t afford the expensive stands here – actually has an app that stands out from the crowd by quite some way. You see, it’s obvious to people that getting a decent signal on your mobile is crucial. You’ll no doubt recall how the launch of the iPhone suddenly created a massive interest in the quality and reach of mobile phone networks across the planet. Imagine being able to work out which mobile carrier was best for you based on where you are, in real time? OpenSignalMaps does just that.
They are addressing a common problem. Carrier coverage maps are often outdated, exaggerated by marketing and it’s rare that you can mash up maps to fairly compare the signal strength of each network’s base stations. All the while people make actual life decisions based on whether they can get a good signal strength or not, like travel plans, working out where they should locate their new apartment or office, or just picking a mobile provider. → Read More
Where will you be tomorrow morning at 0437 GMT? If you’re a Nasa engineer odds are you’ll be glued to your many monitors, keeping a watchful on your Stardust spaceshipas it approaches the Tempel 1 comet. The Nasa spaceship will be approaching the comet in part in order to take a look at the impact crater created by a previous spaceship’s probe back in 2005. → Read More
San Francisco, CA
