The beautiful and potentially functional X100 has had its US release delayed for some time, first because of enormous popularity and limited inventory, and then because of the natural disasters striking Japan. Other tech industries were hit hard as well, but they seem to be gradually picking up the pieces as relief and reconstruction begin. Fujifilm says that cameras should reach stores at the beginning of April. [via DPReview] → Read More
Protesters holding hash-tagged decorated signs like “Shame On Twitter” and “Respect Our Communities” gathered outside of Twitter headquarters this morning at 10am to protest what they see as an unfair tax cut and requests for other concessions made by Twitter to the city of San Francisco. The protests have since dissipated.
The demonstrations were called by an organization called the South of Market Community Action Network (SOMCAN) that aims to represent poor and underserved communities. SOMCAN also asked protestors to tweet “SHAME on YOU!” for being “socially irresponsible” at Twitter in addition to picketing in real life. Even though about 50 people showed up in person, thus far no tweets have been sent. → Read More
One of the great things about working for Aol is the company’s dedication to making its 5,860 5000 remaining employees happy and motivated.
Only this morning, for example, a package arrived at TCHQ packed full of materials promoting Aol’s “4th Canvas Collection Unveiling” — an initiative where upcoming artists are commissioned to produce art to promote the Aol “brand”. Sounds awesome, right? Right.
But it gets better: also included in the package were scratch cards, allowing we loyal Aol foot-soldiers the chance to (quote) “WIN A LIMITED EDITION SIGNED ARTIST PRINT FROM THE NEW COLLECTION!” Surely even a cynic like me could get on board with that, right?
RIGHT! I grabbed my Aol hat, raced to a browser window and… well… video below… → Read More
Sometimes things get complicated and your old 32-bit machine can no longer handle the new array of 3 TB hard drives. You see, 32-bit systems cannot easily run more than 2.19 TB of hard drive capacity. If this problem presents itself, you have two options: upgrade to a 64-bit system or unlock your Gigabyte motherboard with Gigabyte’s new unlock utility. This only works if you have a Gigabyte mobo, but doesn’t everyone? The utility is free and available here. [via xbitlabs] → Read More
In a recent post about Groupon’s multi-billion dollar valuation and revenue estimates, colleague Erick Schonfeld talked about how creating repeat, loyal customers (and not just deal-happy coupon clippers) is essential to the daily deal site’s long-term valuation — and success.
When Groupon offers 50 to 70 percent off a meal at a local pizza place, for example, the restaurant (and Groupon’s site) tend to get flooded with eager pizza lovers, but that traffic really just translates to lead-generation and marketing marketing for the business. Which is great, yes, but Groupon hasn’t yet figured out the key piece to the puzzle: creating a reliable way to measure how many of those customers end up returning to the pizzeria to pay full-price and offering the local business ways to keep ‘em coming back.
Florida-based mobile loyalty solution Sundrop Mobile is hoping to address this very problem. Sundrop’s mobile service enables daily deal merchants like Groupon to capture data about their deal-redeeming customers and provides them with a way to create repeat, loyal customers. → Read More
I’ve thrown big props towards the Boxee Box lately calling it the best media streamer for cutting the cord. It’s a solid device that provides a memorable user experience. That’s rare these days but the Boxee Box nails it, which is why I give it so much credit. But it’s not perfect. I seriously believe that the pros greatly outweigh the cons. Still, there’s room for improvement and I pray that Boxee addresses these four issues in the next update. → Read More
We are still hiring. You could be our next Sales Marketing Manager, or our new Conference Program Chair. We have a beautiful office in San Francisco, we are dog friendly, and are currently looking for qualified applicants. The positions we have open are:
Product and Engineering:
CrunchBase Manager
– San Francisco, CA
Sales & Operations:
Ad Operations Manager
– San Francisco, CA
Sales Marketing Manager
– San Francisco, CA → Read More
One day after McAfee warned about the dangers of corporations becoming vulnerable to hackers, we now learn that Nasa has similar concerns. Its inspector general, Paul Martin, has written a report entitled “Security Practices Expose Key Nasa Network To Cyber Attack,” and you can guess what that means. Actually, don’t bother guessing. The report warns that six of Nasa’s servers that just so happen to contain critical data are vulnerable to remote attack. And if a hacker were so inclined, he could exploit those vulnerabilities to get further inside Nasa, wreaking all sorts of havoc (say, “cripple Nasa’s operations”) in the process. Again, panic. → Read More
“Our nanogenerators are poised to change lives in the future. Their potential is only limited by one’s imagination.” Strong, powerful words from Dr. Zhong Lin Wang, of the Georgia Institute of Technology, whose nanogenerators could one day power a whole host of gadgets, from your iPod to your favorite tablet. The idea rests upon zinc oxide nanowires, wires that generate electricity when flexed. → Read More
I penned a blog post earlier today covering the potential impact that Amazon’s new digital music locker will have on startups that have been letting people upload their music to the cloud for years (but charge more for it than Amazon does unless they need to store literally tens of thousands of songs).
I got a response from the founders and head honchos of two of those startups in the line of fire, MP3Tunes CEO Michael Robertson, who already has a long and fascinating career (and legal history) in the world of digital music behind him, and Daren Tsui, CEO and co-founder of mSpot. → Read More
Drinking game: Take a drink for every screw removed. I guess this is less of a game and more of a way to get drunk. I’ll let you know how it goes. [via Destructoid] → Read More
Cheapflights Media has made a strategic investment in travel meta-search site Momondo.com and its parent company Skygate International, the company announced this morning.
Both Skygate and Momondo will continue to operate from Copenhagen as independent brands, led by their existing founding management. Terms of the investment were not disclosed. → Read More
After working at Disney, Proctor and Gamble, being CEO of eBay, running for Governor of California and losing, Fortune is reporting that Meg Whitman will now be joining Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers as a part-time strategic advisor.
Whitman joins other politicos Al Gore and Colin Powell in the role, where she will “scope investments and coach startups” at what is prehaps Silicon Valley’s most famous Venture Capital firm. Kleiner recently invested in Twitter, Spotify and Groupon, to throw out a few winners. → Read More
On Friday, we’ve shown you Twimal, a super-cute USB toy for Twitter users that can read specific tweets out loud (so you don’t have to look at the computer screen to follow your time line). But before Takara Tomy, a smaller Japanese toy company called WiZ has brought the so-called Charatter [JP] to the Japanese market, a teddy bear that’s able to do the same. → Read More
This, multiplied by a million minus 1 million Digitimes “sources” are stating that 3 million Nooks Color have rolled off the assembly line and into stores over the past year, giving the Nook Color firmly at 50% of the “iPad-like” tablet market. They estimated 600,000-700,000 sales per month in January and February during the post-holiday gift card redemption season. → Read More
This is pretty big. Rockstar’s upcoming LA Noire will be an official selection at the Tribeca Film Festival. It’s the first time a game has been accepted into the festival. → Read More
Irish startup Plendi, which helps people track their business expenses using their mobiles, has secured a €50,000 seed investment from Enterprise Ireland’s Internet and Games Competitive Start Fund.
The Dublin-based company, whose launch we covered 4 months ago, is a sort of Mechanical Turk for transcribing paper receipts. Available for iPhone and Android, the app works as follows: You take a photo of a receipt and Plendi’s data entry staff put the data into a personal online receipt manager, where both the image and transaction details – vendor, date, currency, net, VAT and total – are permanently stored. → Read More
If you haven’t noticed by the amount of follower notifications you’re suddenly receiving, music snippet sharing app SoundTracking has a had an impressive 14 full days since its SXSW launch, clocking in 100K downloads from the iTunes store on March 26th.
While we’ve seen this level of app store growth with photo-sharing app Instagram (which hit similar numbers in a week), I’m going to drag out the Foursquare growth reference point (it took Foursquare seven months to get to 60K users) again to emphasize how impressive this is, especially for a music sharing service. → Read More
As we heard last week, Google is finally rolling out its much awaited in-app payment and billing system. Papaya Mobile, the developer of a plug and play technology that incorporates social gaming elements into iOS and Android games, is announcing that it is integrating Android’s in-app billing on its social gaming network.
The company says that the new billing platform will enable 10 million Papaya users to engage in microtransactions. PapayaMobile will also integrate Android’s In-App billing into its Social SDK and Game Engine products. → Read More
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