Some months ago, before the company was worth a billion dollars, I shared some thoughts on Airbnb.
Specifically, in what some mischaracterized as an attack on the company, I criticized those whose worship at the altar of Disruption is so unconditional that they don’t think Disruptive companies should be hidebound by the law. If Disruptive entrepreneurs are so clever, I argued, they’ll find a way to either work within the law, or to lobby to have it changed, rather than simply flouting it. → Read More
Although we recently heard tell of a touchscreen-based test platform called Seaboard running Chrome OS, Google isn’t in a hurry to acknowledge that its browser OS is coming to tablets. I can’t blame them, either — with Android numbers increasing and Chrome OS unproven, it’d be foolish to dilute the market with a second tablet ecosystem. So they’re officially limiting it to Chromebooks for now. → Read More
Apple did something really odd today. Something they almost never do. They pre-announced the agenda for the keynote of one of their events, WWDC, taking place next week. Yes, they probably did this in an attempt to set expectations — read: no new iPhone coming — but in doing so, they also managed to do something even stranger: they outed a completely unreleased product. iCloud.
So what is iCloud? Apple only states that it’s their “upcoming cloud services offering.” Of course, a number of other details have been rumored for months now. I figured it was a good time to break down what we know — or what we think we know about what’s coming. Erick did a bit earlier. I’ll do a bit more. → Read More
More details have emerged since we originally reported on Twitter’s photo-sharing service, namely that Apple’s new iOS 5 will probably come with a baked in Twitter image sharing feature.
A tipster informs us that one trigger happy Apple iOS designer has already released a test link into the wild (which we’ve seen but are not replicating here). The tipster clued us into a http://a0.twimg.com/status_photos/ URL that appeared in his timeline, and then quickly disappeared. → Read More
Every technology era has its four horsemen driving growth and innovation. In the 1990s it was Microsoft, Intel, Cisco, and Dell. Today, there is anew “gang of four,” as Google chairman Eric Schmidt puts it. They are Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Google (of course), and they are behind the consumer revolution on the Internet today. Not only are all four companies “growing at incredible rates.”
Schmidt notes that all four are together worth about half a trillion dollars, they are all platforms in their own right, and they are all basically spreading their power where before there was only one company who had such influence: namely, Microsoft. But “Microsoft is not driving the consumer revolution,” Schmidt notes (although they still do well in the enterprise). → Read More
Today during a keynote interview at AllThingsD’s D9, Google Executive Chairman (and former longtime CEO) made a key announcement: Google has recently renewed its partnership with Apple over mapping and search. In other words, don’t look for a new version of Maps on iOS at next month’s WWDC.
So, why is this important? Apple has long shipped every iPod Touch, iPhone, and iPad with a Maps application powered by Google. It’s great (though arguably not as good as its Android counterpart). But Apple and Google are competing fiercely in the mobile market, and every time someone runs a search using Maps from an iOS device, Apple is handing Google a little more data that could be used to further improve their local products. → Read More
PunchTab, a startup that offers a social loyalty platform for consumers and publishers, has raised $850,000 in seed funding from Mohr Davidow Ventures, Embarcadero Ventures, and angels Venky Harinarayan, Anand Rajaraman, and Nick Sturiale. PunchTab is the brainchild of YouSendIt founder Ranjith Kumaran.
PunchTab allows publishers to give reward points to users who check in to a site or blog every day. Visitors, which authenticate via Facebook Connect, can earn points for Facebook comments, Wordpress comments and Facebook likes. Once a publisher rewards a user, the visitor can redeem the reward through the PunchTab rewards catalog. The startup says the integration is simple, only requiring a publisher to add a few lines of code. → Read More
Although I can picture a battalion of shield-faced riot police wielding these against a terrified populace, the concept really is too “life imitates sci-fi” to pass up. The BodyGuard is an armored gauntlet with a 500,000-volt stunner protruding from the back of the hand, with room for any number of other weapons of self defense. → Read More
You may know Vudu as the startup bringing high definition movie rentals and rent-to-own services to set-top boxes like PlayStation 3 and the Boxee Box. And most TVs and Blu-ray players. Vudu recently became the second streaming service to receive its own dedicated button on Vizio’s remote controls, following Netflix.
You may also know Peter Gabriel, the British rocker who was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a part of Genesis. The man responsible for Sledgehammer. What you may not know is that Gabriel is the front man and lead investor in a rapidly growing recommendation service called The Filter. Or that today The Filter is officially announcing that it has been tapped by Vudu to power its recommendation engine. → Read More
The transparent display wars are yet to begin, since everyone is still prepping their devices, but that doesn’t stop the big guys like TDK and Samsung from throwing a little PR party every once in a while to let you know they’re still on the task. Today TDK released info on a new display, the UEL476, that’s a bit different from the rest. → Read More
If you were among the first wave of people to buy an iPad last spring, there’s a good chance you spent a lot of time playing one game in particular: Plants vs Zombies. PopCap’s smash hit was one of the first games on the iPad and it did extremely well, and it’s also seen a lot of success on the smaller iPhone/iPod Touch form factor. Now, some 16 months after its release, the game still ranks #27 on the App Store’s list of top paid apps. It’s not Angry Birds, but it’s easily one of iOS’s most popular games ever.
And today, finally, Android fans are getting a chance to smack down some cartoonish undead. The application just launched on Amazon’s Android Appstore, and you can download it right here (it’s free today, and will be $2.99 starting tomorrow). Oh, and you won’t find it on the official Android Market for another two weeks. Unfortunately it isn’t currently optimized for tablets, but it should still work fine.
The launch is a big deal for two reasons. → Read More
Social gaming giant Zynga is launching its latest game tomorrow—Empires & Allies, the company’s first strategy combat game. Zynga is going big with this launch, debuting the game on Facebook in 12 languages (CityVille only launched in 5 languages). Zynga says this is the gaming company’s most social title to date.
Empires & Allies, which is the company’s first title to be launched out of Zynga’s Los Angeles studio, is set on a sprawling multi-island game board. The game itself is a cross between FarmVille and CityVille in terms of the layout and overall feel. There are two main parts to the game. First, players aim to build a island-nation by arming themselves against enemy forces and preparing for battle. Second, throughout the game, players build army units, recruit friends, and encounter allies and villains as fight their way across enemy-held territories on the quest to defeat the final villain. It’s sort of like Risk meets CityVille meets Settlers of Catan. → Read More
The popular virtual magazine marketplace Zinio has arrived on Android 3.0, bringing its stable of titles (including Rolling Stone, Popular Mechanics, and Us Weekly) to the likes of the Xoom and Galaxy Tab 10.1. The Android tablet market may not be anywhere near the size of the iPad’s, but they’re getting in there early and putting their foot in the door. As a tablet-warming gift, you get two dozen free/sample magazines from their most popular lines if you download the app before June 15. What do you have to lose? → Read More
Despite Samsung’s ongoing patent tiff with Apple, the South Korea-based manufacturer had good reason to celebrate this Memorial Day weekend, as its long-awaited 5.5-Gen OLED display factory is starting production. Many thought that factory production would be delayed after the devastating earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan in March, but Samsung managed to get its new factory up and running two months ahead of schedule. → Read More
There were a lot of stellar startups at TechCrunch Disrupt NYC last week, and unfortunately, there could only be one set of finalists and one winner. Of course, that doesn’t mean that those companies that didn’t make the final heat aren’t worthy of some love.
The Daily followed the entrepreneurs behind three Disrupt NYC battlefield competitors, SpotOn, Spenz, and Madbrook Publishing through their unique experiences at Disrupt. They came by plane, train, and automobile, fought some nerves, endured some ups and downs, but in the end were exposed to a host of eyeballs and launched successfully. → Read More
Along with an aluminum roll pad laptop protector, a USB-ported alien doll IM notifier, and of course, Intel’s new Ultrabook notebooks, the Computex trade show in Taipei also gave us our first look at ViewSonic’s new ViewPad 7x tablet. As with any unannounced device, we’ve heard a few rumors surrounding the ViewPad specs earlier this month, but now we have a full run-down on ViewSonic’s upcoming slate. → Read More
It’s something that Dave Morin isn’t too quick to talk about, but it’s impossible to ignore: his new startup, Path, is becoming quite the gathering ground for ex-Facebook employees. Of course, Morin’s reluctance to establish the connection probably has to do with the fact that he used to be the head of Platform there, and still has close ties to the company. But the small startup just hired its fourth ex-Facebooker today. And the latest is a pretty big one, considering he had been at Facebook over four years.
Matthew Welty will be Path’s new Head of Operations, Morin tells us. Welty had been an operations engineer at Facebook for the past four-plus years. For some perspective on how long he had been there, when he joined in April 2007, Facebook had 20 million active users. Today, they’re about to hit 700 million active users. → Read More
The World Health Organization has just released the findings of a major literature review by leading scientists in the fields of cancer and radiation. Their conclusion? We need more data, but it’s looking as if wireless communications are, at the very least, not not carcinogenic.
The only positive data were too “limited” or “inadequate” to permit the group to say there’s a definite link, though they saw fit to give it a 2B rating, “possibly carcinogenic to humans.” → Read More
Yesterday, we first reported that Twitter was on the verge of launching their own photo-sharing service. That report has since been confirmed by Liz Gannes, who happens to work for All Things D, which is hosting a conference where Twitter CEO Dick Costolo was planning to announce this news. So, yeah. “Sources familiar with the matter.” Confirmed.
And now we know a bit more.
First of all, this move is a direct assault on services like TwitPic and yFrog. With Twitter Pictures, you’ll be able to upload from Twitter.com and the clients and you’ll get a nice, tidy URL that links to your picture (and a small thumbnail may now appear in your stream). We’ve heard that this might use the twimg.com URL that Twitter has used internally for a long time, but that’s not certain yet. → Read More
San Francisco, CA
