We don’t get to blog too often about robots made in Europe around here, which means the appearance of REETI, a new desktop robot developed by France-based robot venture Robopec, is quite a nice surprise. The REETI is designed to be a combination of a communication robot and a “multi-media tool”, according to Robopec. → Read More
After talking to Conan a few weeks ago, and CNN’s Piers Morgan last night, Biz Stone made an appearance on another mainstream media show today: Howard Stern. You can access the interview here.
Unlike many of Stern’s interviews, this one was mostly PG-rated. One of the most interesting tales revealed in the interview was the backstory behind Facebook’s offer to acquire Twitter back in 2008 (the story is at the 16 minute mark in the interview). As we know, Facebook reportedly offered Twitter $500 million to acquire the company in the fall of 2008. Biz tells Stern that he showed up at work one day and Twitter employee Jason Goldman (who is no longer with the company) told him that fellow co-founder Evan Williams was waiting for him downstairs in a car. → Read More
In this week’s episode of Fly or Die, we cover two big launches—Amazon Cloud Drive and Color—and a Quirky DIY pocketKnife called the Switch. Just yesterday, Amazon launched its Cloud Drive, which is a general storage service in the cloud which is being pushed as a media locker, starting with music
Color is the $41 million photo app nobody can figure out. Is it the future or is it a dud on arrival? CEO Bill Nguyen joins us as our special guest and explains how his team is going to “solve the loneliness problem.” (Video after the jump). → Read More
Back in February 2010, Google announced its plans to build out a fiber-optic network for a city in the United States, promising connection speeds around 1Gb/s — 100 times faster than the broadband most people are used to. The announcement led 1,100 cities to apply, and today Google has just announced the winning city: Kansas City, Kansas.
For you lucky Kansas City residents, Google has launched an informational page outlining what their plans are (it also provides some background about Google itself). The site’s FAQ says that Google hopes to begin building the network by the end of the year and that service should begin in the first quarter of 2012, with plans to roll out to all communities in Kansas City. → Read More
Google’s about to step up its use of “interest-based advertising.” The company has announced that it will change the way it uses the information that it gathers from your scanned Gmail messages. (Or did you forget that Gmail scans every single one of your messages in order to show relevant advertising?) The big change is this: rather than scanning your email on a per-message basis, Google will now begin building a profile about you based on all of your emails. It’s this profile that will then be used to deliver advertising to you. → Read More
Super Mega Worm, the best game about worms that eat people and jewels and dirt, is now free on the Mac App store. It’s only available for a limited time and it’s not quite appropriate for the littlest members of the gaming community but if you like to destroy cows, birds, airplanes, and trucks painted like the General Lee, this is the game for you.
Yet another example of why even the savviest of Internet users need to keep their anti-malware software current and fully working. Spotify, the popular European streaming service, discovered that it was inadvertently serving ads that were laced with malware. → Read More
Last night I caught up with Intuit founder Scott Cook and Aaron Patzer, the founder of Mint who know runs Intuit’s personal finance group. I whipped out my iPhone and did an impromptu interview. Cook and Patzer talk about where growth is coming from at Intuit, how it tries to encourage entrepreneurism, and the “payment graph.”
Cook is really excited about SnapTax, the TurboTax iPhone app that lets people do their taxes by snapping a picture of their W-2 forms. The same OCR technology will soon be baked into the company’s upcoming GoPayment apps for accepting checks via photo. Patzer came into Intuit through the $170 million acquisition of Mint. Cook knows the value of injecting entrepreneurial DNA into the larger organization, and he tries to foster that spirit throughout Intuit.
Since Intuit bought Mint, it’s kept on growing from 1.7 million to 5.6 million users, and gradually it is being connected with hooks into Intuit’s more established products like TurboTax and Quicken. Off camera I asked why doesn’t QuickBooks offer a similar service to help businesses visualize and organize their expenses like Profitably does with QuickBook’s APIs, and Patzer agreed, “That is something that should be in QuickBooks.” (That is just his opinion, he doesn’t run QuickBooks). → Read More
FuzeBox, the developer of an online meeting software, is launching its multi-party HD video conferencing technology for the iPad 2 and Android devices. Previously released in private beta, the software had been updated with support for more devices, an improved user interface, and more multimedia sharing and annotation options.
As I’ve written in the past, Fuze’s video technology provides a WebEx-like conferencing service that allows users to share screens and run meetings online. As opposed to its competitors, Fuze promises a sleeker more lightweight interface that incorporates HD video. I’ve tested the technology out multiple times, and not only is Fuze easy to use, but there is little to no latency and features high video quality. → Read More
Microsoft has had its share of executive departures lately. The latest one to exit the software giant is Mich Mathews, senior vice president for Microsoft’s Central Marketing Group and one out of only two women on the company’s senior leadership team, reports AdAge.
Here’s why this is rather big news: Mathews has been with Microsoft for 22 years and currently oversees more than $1 billion in ad spending and marketing efforts for consumer brands such as Windows, Bing and Xbox. → Read More
Friend: So I’m thinking about cutting the cord.
Me: Oh yeah? You should buy a Roku then.
Friend: I don’t know what that is. I only buy my gadgets from big box stores.
Me: Well good news. Best Buy, BJ’s Wholesale Club, Fry’s Electronics and RadioShack now carry it.
Friend: How much?
Me: About $80 for the XD.
Friend: Oh great, glad to hear Best Buy is going to carry it. I wouldn’t have known what a Roku was if not.
Me: Yeah, I don’t shop at Best Buy. Make sure you turn down their $99 Geek Squad in-home setup.
Press Release after the break. → Read More
Not a fan of infographics? Be gone!
For I felt compelled to share with you this infographic made by the folks over at Webhostingbuzz, visually showing how fast the Internet has made its way to the people of this world in the past 15 years – and how fast the Internet has become in some parts of it.
Here’s what stood out for me: the United States leads the world in broadband penetration, with Americans consuming way more gigabytes per month than Europeans or people in Japan and South Korea. → Read More
Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Mark Suster (@msuster), a 2x entrepreneur, now VC at GRP Partners. Read more about Suster at Bothsidesofthetable
I’m a very big proponent of the “lean startup movement” as espoused by Steve Blank & Eric Ries. The part of the movement that resonates the most with me is that entrepreneurs should keep their capital expenditures really low while they’re experimenting with their product and determining whether there is a large market for what they do.
In the late 90′s I saw a dangerous trend creeping into the startup world, which was that companies were suddenly raising huge amounts of money too early in their existence. It seemed to be purely speculative. It’s not clear that there was big customer demand for some of these products yet entrepreneurs were egged on by VCs to “take the money” and try and push the market.
Here’s what those VCs (and us entrepreneurs, myself included) didn’t understand: 9 women can’t make a baby in a month. Here’s why … → Read More
A research team at Osaka University has developed a new control interface for touchscreens that flexes the content that’s displayed when you move your finger over the screen. In the process, the content is “distorted” to make it possible to view (and zoom in on) a wider space on-screen, while at the same time keeping an eye on the original position you marked with your finger. → Read More
Japan’s telecommunications juggernaut SoftBank, the third largest mobile carrier of the country, had to register quite a lot of damage after the big earthquake that hit Japan on March 11. 3,800 of SoftBank’s base stations were knocked out, meaning no customer in the affected areas could make or receive calls via cell phones (the situation was similar with other carriers).
But it turned out that this damage wasn’t the main concern of SoftBank’s president and founder Masayoshi Son (pictured above). After visiting Fukushima Governor Yuhei Sato in his prefecture on March 22 and seeing the real damage done, Son promised his company will offer free cell phones to all children who became orphans due to the earthquake. → Read More
It really makes a lot of sense for there to be a real diver’s watch in the Titanic DNA collection from Romain Jerome. I mean the whole idea of the collection is to commemorate something that is deep underwater. Well the Titanic DNA diver is here with the RJ Octopus. The Octopus name is actually part of the “octo” theme which involves the number 8. There are special 8 sided screws in parts of the case, it is water resistant to 888 feet, and it will be part of a limited edition of 888 pieces in a few varieties. → Read More
As a person who consumes dozens, if not hundreds, of articles on the web each and every day, it’s easy to remember that I’m an extreme outlier. Most people would prefer to read only a few articles a day — only the ones that they know are worth their time. That’s what Summify does in a nutshell. They survey the content on the web and condense it into the articles that will interest you the most.
Today marks the formal launch of Summify. After a few months in beta testing, they believe their social algorithms are ready for the world to try. And they also have a fresh round of funding to further spread the service. → Read More
Google just settled with FTC over agency’s accusations of “deceptive privacy practices” in the rollout of its social communications tool Buzz. The FTC issued a release here (we’ve pasted it below) and you can also access Google’s Blog post on the subject here. Updating.
Buzz, which launched last February, has been plagued with privacy issues. And the communications tool, which lives inside Gmail, has not exactly taken off. → Read More
Here’s the live stream from the GeeknRolla conference for European startups, organised in association with TechCrunch Europe HERE.
And follow the action on twitter on the hashtag #GKNR
We’ll be updating this shortly with the startups that launched today. Here’s the programme. → Read More
