While Moleskine has been known for some time for their notebooks, they’ve been getting into other markets, from Kindle and iPad cases to special editions (Star Wars, Pac-Man) and apps. Now they’re going even further from their base and putting out a line of bags modeled after the Moleskine notebook aesthetic. → Read More
I get to give away lots of cool stuff on MobileCrunch… but this might be the coolest thing we’ve given away yet. This morning, Qualcomm began selling an Android device called the Snapdragon MDP MSM8660. This thing is, in a sense, a glimpse of the future. Built on top of a dual-core, 1.5 Ghz Snapdragon CPU, the crazy fast Adreno 220 graphics chip, and sporting a 13 megapixel camera, the MDP is primarily meant for developers to get a head start on the tech that’ll be hitting handsets later this year. As you might expect, this thing doesn’t come cheap. If you were to buy it direct from Qualcomm, it’d set you back $1,350. Win it from us, however, and it won’t cost you a dime. → Read More
The TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon is back May 21st and 22nd in NYC. Signup now!
Our goal is to create and expose opportunities for great developers and startups in New York. We want to help grow the burgeoning NYC tech scene by creating the premier hacking event in the Big Apple. The 24 hour Hackathon will happen the weekend before Disrupt at the gigantic Pier 94.
The Hackathon is free. There will be great food, fast wifi and each presenting team will get tickets to the full conference. Teams will be judged by an audience of tech luminaries. Winners will present on Wednesday, May 25th on the Disrupt main stage. The TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon promises to be one of the best attended hacking events of the year—if you’re a developer/hacker/maker this is a do-not-miss opportunity. Last year, GroupMe was born at the Disrupt Hackathon. Will another great startup will emerge from this year’s pack? Will it be yours? → Read More
Hear me out, friends. Novel super hero shirts are hard to find, amirite? The retro ones are played out and the modern ones are mostly done up in nonsense MMA designs. But not these from Stussy. This set of nine shirts just went on sale with each one costing $36 on Stussy.com and comes packaged with a set of Marvel trading cards. I’m in for the Punsher tee and I’m seriously thinking about ordering the Captain America one, too. [Stussy via FreshnessMag] → Read More
SMS GupShup, a Twitter-like service in India that is primarily accessed via SMS, is announcing a number of new milestones today, including that the service is processing over 2 billion messages per month (up from 480 million messages a month a year ago) and is adding over 1 million members per month.
Launched in April 2007, SMS GupShup (spawned from Webaroo) serves 45 million users (which is up from 26 million users last year) across India. The startup has seen rapid growth in users primarily due to the immense popularity of mobile devices in India. → Read More
Before TechCrunch I was an occasional angel investor, going back to the mid 1990s. I’ve also made investments since TechCrunch, in companies like Dogster, DanceJam, Seesmic and Daylife. Some people have seen this as a conflict of interest, which it of course is. To counter that I’ve always disclosed investments, and try not to cover these startups myself. Occasionally when news is breaking quickly or for other reasons, I will write about the company, but with the appropriate disclosure.
In 2009 the accusations of conflicts of interest by our competitors became somewhat distracting, and for a couple of years I discontinued investing in startups completely.
That policy has now changed. Over the last several months I have begun investing actively again. We’ve noted these investments in Shawn Fanning’s new startup and in Kevin Rose’s new startup. → Read More
eBay just reported first quarter earnings today posting revenue of $2.5 billion, an increase of 16% from the same period of 2010. eBay’s net income on a GAAP basis of $475.9 million, or $0.36 per diluted share, and non-GAAP net income of $619.0 million, or $0.47 per diluted share, representing a 12% increase compared to the same period of 2010. The retail giant narrowly beat analyst expectations, which were 46 cents per share on revenues of $2.48 billion. eBay says that the first quarter increase in earnings was due primarily to sales growth and a lower effective tax rate.
PayPal continued to help buoy eBay’s results, net total payment volume growing 28% to $27.4 billion in the first quarter of 2011 compared to the same period of last year, driven primarily by strong 38% year-over-year growth in its Merchant Services business across global markets, increased merchant adoption and greater usage by customers. PayPal now represents 39 percent of eBay’s total revenue. → Read More
Seedcamp, the pan-European micro seed fund and startup accelerator, has announced the winners of its recent startup showcase in Berlin. The two companies beat off competition from 20 finalists, while Seedcamp Berlin had the most applications to-date. Both will join its existing 38 portfolio companies.
So, without further ado, the winners are: → Read More
Okay, Nokia/Windows Phone 7 fans: cross your fingers. If you wish really, really hard — and, you know, if all goes well in Nokia’s R&D labs — you just might see a Nokia-branded Windows Phone 7 handset in 2011. In an interview with Finnish broadcasting company YLE, Nokia CEO Stephen Elop dropped the following little nugget: “Our pattern now is to announce launch dates of products very close to availability. In the past, there have been longer lead times and that hasn’t always worked out. It is possible [that we'll] see the first new phone in the last quarter of this year.” With Elop touching on everything from Nokia’s plans to transfer Symbian to Accenture (an outsourcing firm) to the recent layoffs, the interview is definitely worth watching if you’ve got 20 minutes to kill (Plus, it’s in English!) → Read More
The Big. That’s really what it’s called. The Colossus, the Behemoth, the Monster — these I can see, but the Big? Well, whatever, if it makes its way to the US, this 4.3″ beast will probably have a different name anyway. It’s being announced in Korea at the moment, but if LG is smart, they’ll cash in on the bigphone trend going on right now and bring it stateside toot sweet. (Or “toute de suite,” if you’re… you know. French.) → Read More
Like a Charity Water plus Kickstarter for everything, collaborative gifting startup Giftiki has raised just under one million in Series A financing today, led by investor Tim Draper and including VC firms Crosslink Capital, GoldHill Capital and Transmedia Capital.
Elaborating on payment platforms like Venmo and Wepay, Giftiki lets users send small amounts of money as gifts, allowing recipients join a pool in order to gift their friends the more substantial things that they actually want, like the perfect Lanvin ballet slippers or a Frieda and Nellie bracelet, instead of individually buying less expensive (and less treasured) items from Forever 21, for example. I think this is an amazing idea. → Read More
Now that companies offering digital coupons for essentially any consumer product or service you can possibly think of are starting to make up an online industry of their own, it’s apparently time for SMB-targeting local deal sites to emerge. The first startup I’ve come across that will try its hand on a ‘Groupon for local business-to-business offers’ is NYC-based MarketSharing.
The company may be brand new, but its management team certainly bursts with experience, and the startup has just secured over $1 million from K2 Media and App Fund. → Read More
Peecho, the Cloud-printing startup based in Amsterdam, has launched a new service that it’s calling the ‘Print Button’.
The idea is that with just a few lines of code, any website or web app can embed Peecho’s Cloud-based printing service, making it easy to send and print content to the company’s network of professional printers. Best of all they can add a markup to the cost, turning that content into a revenue stream.
And in a clever bit of marketing, Peecho is pitching its ‘Print Button’ as a Facebook ‘Like’ for Cloud-printing. That’s a neat analogy, though for now it falls a little short. → Read More
Bigpoint, the German online gaming outfit, has taken a $350m majority share investment from Summit Partners and TA Associates in what’s described as a recapitalization of the company. Representatives from both firms will join Bigpoint’s Board of Directors.
The new capital is said to position the company for “continued strong global growth” and will support Bigpoint’s international expansion, which has already seen it open new offices in the US and Brazil.
The deal also sees original investor Comcast Interactive Capital’s Peacock Equity Fund sell their stake, while founder and co-CEO Heiko Hubertz (yes, the company has two people in the top job) will retain his 30% share in Bigpoint. → Read More
The Human Interface Guidelines for Android I posted about earlier this month generated considerable interest. The folks behind it, Mutual Mobile, received a lot of feedback. The most common request was for more information and guidance about designing for Android 3.0, aka Honeycomb. Mutual Mobile has wasted no time in responding to these requests, and are today releasing version 1.1 of their Android Design Guidelines. The update “introduces some of the OS’s unique new features such as the Action Bar and Notification/Status bar along with how to utilize new UI elements like Fragments. As always, these guidelines are a living document and will continue to evolve as the platform evolves. We hope designers will use this tool to continue to innovate in Android design and help Honeycomb evolve into the enterprise tool it could be.” → Read More
Be Your Own Souvenir! from blablabLAB on Vimeo. This odd system uses a Kinect head and some homebrew software to 3D scan you in real time and then print out a micro-figurine. It seems to take a little bit of time – that’s not clear from the video – and the whole system isn’t quite ready for prime-time yet. → Read More
Reports are hitting everywhere that Xbox 360s previously banned for mods are now able to connect to Xbox Live. This started sometime earlier today and is either a genuinely brilliant move or simple oversight by Microsoft. Now these systems are apparently only able to sign on to the service and not participate in online play. But still, it’s something notable and gives a glimmer of hope for the millions of banned 360s cut off from the wonders of the Internet. You may have heard that Sony is in a bit of a pickle with their online PS3 service. Something about user data being stolen and generally nastiness. Could Microsoft be looking to recapture some of the Live defectors who previously jumped ship after their modded system was hit with a ban hammer? It’s unclear right now, but this mass reprieve would instantly breath new (old) life into Live. Update: Even before this post went live, it seems Microsoft corrected the error and rebanned all the systems. Bummer. → Read More
Facebook has just made a talent acquisition out of Daytum, a two-person New York-based data collection and organization startup. Founders Ryan Case and Nicholas Felton will be joining the product design team at Facebook.
Facebook has a particularly aggressive talent acquisition strategy, snapping up small companies for engineering talent over technology. Daytum marks its fifth purchase this year after Snaptu, Rel8tion, Pursuit and Beluga. Of the latter four, Snaptu was probably the largest buy at an estimated $60 – $70 million. → Read More
The 3DS isn’t selling well and it’s your fault – at least that’s what Nintendo is suggesting. According to Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata, most people don’t know what the heck to do with the thing. Jeez! CVG points to this quote:
The value of 3D images without the need for special glasses is hard to be understood through the existing media. However, we have found that people cannot feel it just by trying out a device, rather, some might even misestimate it when experiencing the images in an improper fashion.
Unless you’re raiding with your WoW clan or something, I’d wager that most folks would be a bit hard-pressed to find 3 other people with the time and reason to do a 4-way mobile video chat. With that said: when it all comes together, it’s pretty damn cool. Fring first rolled out 4-way group chatting a few weeks back, albeit in a super-tight limited beta. This morning, anyone and everyone can get in on the fun; they’ve just opened up the feature to anyone with an iOS 4+ or Android 1.5+ device. What do you think: is 4-way video chatting going to be a part of your daily life in the future? → Read More
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