Kobojo, a social games developer based in Paris, France, has landed 5.3 million euros (roughly $7.7 million) in its first round of funding. The financing round was led by Endeavour Vision with IDinvest Partners participating.
Kobojo is one of Europe’s leaders in publishing and distributing games for mobile phones and the Facebook platform. The company was founded in 2008 and counts games like GooBox and PyramidVille among its most popular applications. → Read More
Mobile video startup Qik, which was acquired by Skype earlier this year, has previously only offered a fully functional live streaming and chat app on Android via pre-loaded devices. Qik offered a simpler version of its mobile video service in the Android Market which allowed users to record video but this app lacked any chatting capabilities.
Now, Qik is bringing the full featured Qik app to the Android Marketplace, the company tells us exclusively. The app, which you can download here, allows you to live stream video and now conduct live video chats with contacts over 3G, 4G or WiFi. And you can chat between Android 2.1-2.33 phones and any iOS4 devices, including the iPad 2 and iPhone 4. → Read More
Cost-cutting search engine BillShrink has landed a new deal today—integration with Consumer Reports reviews. ConsumerReports.org subscribers and site visitors will have access to BillShrink’s savings recommendations through links on ConsumerReports.org article pages, buying advice pages, and ratings chart pages. Consumers will be linked to a co-branded and customized version of BillShrink’s unbiased recommendations on wireless plans, credit cards and TV services.
The financial terms appear to be via affiliate fees. Every time a user switches service through the BillShrink tool, Consumer Reports will collect a fee from BillShrink. Of course, Consumer Reports, being unbiased, does not endorse any of the services displayed by BillShrink, and it has no direct financial relationship with these services. → Read More
Nielsen ran monthly surveys of mobile consumers in the United States from July to September 2010, and said back then that 33 percent expressed interest for an Apple iPhone, while slightly more than a quarter (26 percent) said they desired a device with Android and 13 percent said they wanted a Blackberry device.
This morning, Nielsen posited that those same surveys for January 2011 to March 2011 now show that 31 percent of consumers who plan to get a new smartphone indicated that Android was now their preferred OS. Apple’s iOS has slipped slightly in popularity, to 30 percent. → Read More
Mobile advertising company Medialets is launching a new product today—Medialets Muse. Muse is a comprehensive creative dashboard for rich
media advertising, allowing both advertisers and publishers to create and manage ads.
Medialets helps publishers sell rich media ads directly to brands. On the publisher side, Medialets provides all the tools to go and sell ad inventory for mobile rich media ads independently and trains publishers’ salesforce as well. For brands, Medialets evangelizes their ad formats and the mobile ad opportunities provided by big-name publishers, serving as a middle man between publishers like CNN and advertisers like Coca-Cola. → Read More
Mobile application developer Outfit7, maker of the hugely popular Talking Friends series of apps, has announced that its iOS and Android apps have hit the 100 million downloads milestone, roughly 3 months after hitting the 60 million downloads milestone.
Notably, Outfit7 launched its first Talking Friend app less than ten months ago (July 2010). → Read More
Lawson Software, a global provider of enterprise software, this morning announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to be acquired by GGC Software Holdings, an affiliate of private equity investment firm Golden Gate Capital and Infor. The transaction has a total value of approximately $2 billion.
Under the terms of the merger agreement, stockholders of Lawson will receive $11.25 per share in cash, a premium of about 14 percent to Lawson’s closing share price on March 7, 2011, the last trading day prior to news reports speculating about a potential deal brewing. → Read More
Netflix Now As Big As Comcast Cable Printed Clock Doesn’t Quite Work But Is Amazing Anyway Ned Strongin, Co-Inventor Of Connect 4, Dead At 92 The Bluechip BC5i Big Button Phone For Grampy Videos: Japanese Spider-Bot Hexapod Up And Close → Read More
Before MySpace and Facebook, there was Friendster, a pioneering social networking website for consumers. First launched in 2002, Friendster attracted tens of millions of users over the years, but it never quite grew into the online juggernaut it could have been.
Having raised close to $50 million in venture capital, Friendster was acquired by Malaysian payments company MOL Global at the end of 2009 for a reported $40 million.
Fast forward to today, and it looks like Friendster won’t be so much about sharing with friends anymore. In a message to registered members (hat tip to @Mazi), the company is asking all users to install a custom application to export all their profile data, as most of it will be unequivocally deleted on May 31, 2011. → Read More
Tweetdeck has release a new version 2.0 of its app for the iPhone. They are calling it a Hollywood-esque “re-imagining” where the essence of the original remains but is brought up to date. It’s taken “several months of feverish work”.
Improved features include swiping between columns, navigation through user profiles and the ability to add columns as well as ‘Pull to Update’ and Follow/Unfollow sliders tweaks.
A pinch gesture on a column accesses options to add any combination of feeds into a column so that Twitter timelines, Mentions, DMs Favourites, Lists, Searches, Facebook feeds can be blended into a personalised column. → Read More
Nextag, a comparison shopping site for products and services, has acquired Germany’s Guenstiger.de GmbH, one of the largest comparison shopping services in Europe. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed but the company says acquisition marks the most significant strategic transaction for Nextag to date. The deal was a mixture of cash and stock.
Guenstiger provides shoppers in six countries with a comprehensive comparison shopping site that includes reviews, recommendations, and local product availability, to help users make easy and informed purchases. Guenstiger will maintain its brands and will continue to be led by its current management team. → Read More
Yes I know that Flickr offers a dinky Facebook Newsfeed sync and there are plenty of other services that offer pretty complex Flickr photo-syncing tools, but this post is for the three of you that want to prevent this from happening to you and don’t have 20 minutes to spend figuring something else out. → Read More
Sports Illustrated and others are reporting on an Android app that lets people “feed, water, train and fight their virtual dogs against others.” The app is created by Kage Games. The outrage is reminiscent of the early days of Grand Theft Auto and other violent video games.
Retired dog fighting enthusiast and occasional quarterback Michael Vick is taking a firm stand against the app: → Read More
Here is a nice new piece from Bremont that you can’t get – at least not now. That isn’t to say the watch isn’t ready (because it is), but rather that you need to be among a select group of “pre-selected” military personnel to get one. The pieces will be highly limited as well. Each Bremont C17 Globemaster will be limited to just 50 pieces, and it comes in a few versions. → Read More
With no real statement from Apple regarding the present consolidated.db tracking file furor, the obvious next step is to take it to the courts. Actually, the next step should be a rigorous federal investigation into whether or not Apple has broken any laws. Then, if it has, sue away. And if it hasn’t, sue anyway just in case. Vikram Ajjampur and William Devito are a little impatient, however, and have filed a lawsuit against Apple already. Now, I’m all in favor of suing Apple — as soon as the facts are known. Apple gets a chance to defend itself against the allegations (time is running out, by the way), and if it doesn’t do so to our satisfaction, then that’s that. This nearly instantaneous lawsuit (filed April 22), however, seems slightly opportunistic. → Read More
CampusLive, a college-focused startup that’s part Groupon, part free ‘Offers’ provider (more on that later), has closed a $3.1 million funding round led by Highland Capital Partners and Charles River Ventures.
CampusLive is all about showcasing special offers to students to help brands increase awareness and engagement. But the site differs from Groupon and other deal sites because no money actually changes hands — instead, students are given special deals (or are entered into a contest) in return for clicking a brand’s ‘Like’ button, completing a branded game, or signing up for a news letter.
After signing up for the service and picking your school, CampusLive will present you with a main Challenge for the day, along with several additional challenges if you’d like to complete more. Challenges sometimes will offer a guaranteed, small incentive alongside a sweepstakes. → Read More
Sharon Waxman over at The Wrap has a story about a Video On Demand service about to be launched by YouTube that would be a “full-bore challenge to Apple’s iTunes service.” What the article fails to mention is that YouTube already has a Video On Demand service, YouTube Movies. Those interested can rent movies like Zombie Diaries, Ronald Reagan: An American Journey and The Dogfather right now on YouTube for around $2.99 each. → Read More
Whoops.
Looks like The New York Times has a little embargo breaking situation on their hands. (Which we love — chaos!) They’ve just put up a story with the URL: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/25/latest-rival-to-groupon-livingsocial-facebook-embargo-till-midnight/ (bolding mine). That page is obviously no longer found, but it was live for a bit. And it is a big one: Facebook’s Groupon/LivingSocial “killer”.
Okay, it’s hardly a secret that the service called Facebook Deals was close to launching. In fact, the landing page has been up since March. But the NYT early story has some details. → Read More
Our love affair with Yammer is pretty hot and cold. On one hand, they launched at and won TechCrunch50a few years back. And they seem to be kicking ass on the business distribution front. On the other, the apps they put out there (which we use for TechCrunch day-to-day business) are often very buggy and more or less infuriating day in and day out. iPhone, Android, Web, AIR — they all have issues.
But issues are one thing. For the past year or so, I simply have not been able to get Yammer to work on the iPad — at all. It would launch and then crash. I tried this on four different iPads (both the first and second generation). Same result.
Today. Finally. They have released a native iPad app. And it works! → Read More
