We’re quite big fans of Airbnb, the “community marketplace for space” here at TechCrunch, and we’re far from the only ones.
This morning, the young company announced that it has hit a fairly big milestone: one million nights have been booked through the service since its launch (including a couple by TechCrunch staff, I might add). Airbnb also says it has registered month-over-month growth of 65% in January 2011. → Read More
Syncapse, which bills itself as a social media technology company, has landed $25 million in financing from growth equity investor ABS Capital Partners, $20 million of which has already been closed.
This is Syncapse’s first institutional investment – the company earlier raised a $3.3 million round and $2 million in financing from the Business Development Bank of Canada. → Read More
Mediabistro.com, a division of online media and conferences company WebMediaBrands, this morning announced that it has acquired the assets of the Twittercism.com blog from founder Shéa Bennett.
As you can tell from the name, the blog focused exclusively on micro-sharing service Twitter, providing tips, tricks, tweaks, tools and tutorials, as well as news, articles, opinion and rumors. The site has been around for about two years. → Read More
How To Watch The Space Shuttle’s Last Flight Tomorrow Review: Motorola Xoom – The Android Tablet Redefined Automower 305 Is Latest Mower From Husqvarna, Will Help Win Neighborhood Contest For Best Lawn Joystickers: For When You Wish Your iPhone (Temporarily) Had More Buttons Little Magic Stories: Interactive Art With The Kinect → Read More
You could see this one coming from a couple of miles away: ChaCha, the questions and answers service provider, is suing smartphone maker HTC over trademark infringement. The lawsuit is obviously the result of HTC’s decision to name its recently unveiled ‘Facebook phone’ the ChaCha.
Sure enough, ChaCha Search, Inc., as the company is officially named, owns the ‘ChaCha’ trademark in the United States (and Europe for that matter). → Read More
On Monday, we’ve just shown you some leaked pictures, but we can now confirm the world’s thinnest smartphone, NEC Casio Mobile’s MEDIAS N-04C, is real. And provider NTT Docomo, Japan’s biggest mobile carrier, doesn’t want to lose time in bringing it to market: it will hit stores over here as early as March 15. → Read More
As you’re undoubtedly aware by now, tomorrow (in just a few hours, really), Apple is expected to unveil their latest line of laptops. News has already started to trickle out about what’s getting upgraded and what’s changing. Noticeably absent in this talk is the MacBook itself. And that begs the question: is it the end of the line for the product?
Simply put: it should be. → Read More
Microsoft has decided it’s time to show us their future vision for smart display technologies. Steven Bathiche, director of Microsoft’s applied sciences group (the guy responsible for Surface), shows us some new prototype tech in this demo video. He talkes about a few different technologies “after touch” and just how close Microsoft is to getting this stuff to the market. → Read More
A freight brokerage is a service that brings together someone who wants to to transport goods (like oranges, or iPods) with the trucking company that wants to transport them. Open Mile, which is today announcing a $6 million round of Series B funding, is the first such service that attempts to bring these relatively unglamorous transactions online, tapping into a $60 billion industry which is heavily phone and fax based. Read: It’s disruptive.
The financing was led by Globespan Capital Parters and rounded out by existing investor Charles River Ventures. → Read More
After the 3DS debuted, we saw that the UK pricing was a little… off. Even considering VAT, the £229 prices we were seeing seemed rather high. They’ve been dropping, though, and now many retailers are going below £200 — still quite a bit more than the $250 we’re going to get it for here in the states, but getting on towards reasonable. → Read More
Short Version Few tablets have met with such widespread anticipation as the recently-announced Xoom. It is the closest anyone has come to an iPad equivalent for the Android set. I was impressed with the speed, design, and quality of the device, and although there are a few caveats, I came away optimistic for the new crop of Honeycomb devices that will follow this one. → Read More
A trusted tipster has informed 4/3 Rumors that Olympus is planning on dropping a few new cameras come March 2nd. There’s no more information than that, but what’s this? Forum Olympus France has discovered some recent Oly patents for a couple big-zoom compacts. They’re not interchangeable lens models, more in the luxury point-and-shoot zone, but still could be worth your consideration. We’ll keep our eyes open come March and give you the news as soon as we hear it. → Read More
I’ve only seen bad reviews of this MindJack game, and Zero Punctuation’s take on it is even more savage than usual. It blows my mind that two or three guys can get together and put out something amazing like Braid or World of Goo, yet a couple dozen people manage to take far more money and time and barf out something like this. → Read More
Did anyone else see this coming so soon? We were under the impression that Apple and The Daily were in some sort of partnership, especially since The Daily was excluded from Apple’s new subscription service. Ostensibly, someone at AllThingDhas been tipped off that The Daily will be coming to Android this spring → Read More
It’s amazing what some people can cook up in their spare time. For some, it’s the great American novel. For others, it’s meth. For yet others it’s a full-size sit-in force feedback machine that’s designed around playing your trippy indie racing/shooter/puzzle game. → Read More
The Japanese Arcade Experience from Strata Studios on Vimeo.
Here’s a success story of the crowdsourced variety. 100 Yen, a documentary project looking at arcade culture in Japan, has garnered all the cash it needs (via IndieGogo) to finish shooting, edit, and distribute their film, and it should get a release this fall. I don’t think you’ll be seeing it at your local multiplex, but I bet your local indie flick joint would host a showing if you can sell a few tickets.
Head inside to take a look at the trailer. → Read More
Excuses have been made, and delays explained away, but it seems that AT&T’s variant of the Galaxy S will be getting Froyo tomorrow. AT&T updated their Facebook page, saying that instructions will be posted tomorrow to Facebook. There are final builds floating around right now, but I think after waiting all these months, you poor guys can wait one more day. [via TalkAndroid and Ubergizmo] → Read More
Disney has just acquired Togetherville, a social network for kids 10 years of age or younger, we’ve confirmed with the company. Terms of the acquisition are not being disclosed at the moment.
Togetherville, which exited beta last year, mimics the experience of adult social networking sites, i.e. Facebook but in an age-appropriate and parent-monitored environment. Togetherville promises a safer, more secure environment, where parents can moderate who their children are connecting with. Parents approve each of their child’s friends, and can also connect with other parents using Facebook’s social graph. → Read More
Twelve South makes cool, if simple, laptop gear. We’ve covered their BookArc before and this is an improved permutation of the version for the latest MacBook Air. It costs $39.99 and allows you to stand your laptop up next to a monitor and control the cabling so everything is in its right place. → Read More
We’re now just over two weeks away from this year’s SXSW event in Austin, Texas. And just as is the case every year, there will be several startups jockeying to be the one that is the breakout hit. But one of those previous breakout hits, Foursquare, isn’t standing still either.
In a ridiculously awesome blog post on the matter today, Foursquare hints at their plan for the event this year. Here’s the entire post entitled “OMFG!”: → Read More
