Pioneer has been working on “Floating Vision” displays for quite a while, and now the company has shown the technology used in embedded systems. The naked-eye 3D display Pioneer recently showed at an exhibition in Tokyo lets users view images or videos “floating” in space – embedded in a prototype car navigation system. → Read More
Exclusively.In, a members-only niche flash sales site for fashion, jewelry and home decor from Indian artisans and designers, has raised $16 million in new funding led by Tiger Global Management, with participation from Accel Partners India and Helion Venture Partners. This brings the company’s total funding to $18.6 million.
As we’ve written in the past, the site features high-end traditional Indian apparel as well as scarves, jewelry, handbags, crafts, paintings, photography and other home goods made by Indian designers. And Exclusively.in also recently launched travel and wedding verticals. → Read More
Candence, watches made famous for their unique “4-bit” numerals, has just announced a chrono version of their well-known 4-bit watch. The 42mm watch has a Miyota quartz movement, UTC display (basically a second time-zone), and a chronograph movement. → Read More
Today, during their Google Wallet/Offers unveiling at the NYC headquarters, Google touted the openness of their new system. Naturally, someone asked a question about what this meant for other, non-Android phone?
“In terms of iPhone, RIM, Microsoft — we will partner with everyone,” Google VP of Commerce Stephanie Tilenius said. Of course, that depends on two things: 1) the inclusion of NFC chips in their phones. 2) the willingness to work with Google on this system. → Read More
The G2x is a mighty fine phone, and one we’d almost always whole heartedly recommend to our friends looking to jump into the Android world. Alas, there’s a fairly decent chance that recommendation might result in some of our friends hating us. Here’s the problem: while it’s generally a mighty fine phone, there seems to be a batch or two out there floating around with some rather nasty issues — namely, it reboots itself just about whenever the heck it sees fit. Said issues have lead to talks of a recall — something which, according to a statement from T-Mobile to PC Mag, just isn’t in the cards right now. → Read More
Nokia has been positioning itself for a rapid-fire release strategy after the launch of the world’s first Windows Phone-powered Nokia handset, according to Jo Harlow, Nokia’s executive vice president of smart devices. Despite the fact that Nokia and Microsoft finalized their partnership back in March, we consumers will continue waiting for a Mango-flavored Nokia phone until Fall rolls around. → Read More
Exclusive - Fotomoto, which offers a fairly innovative way for photographers, artists and content publishers to sell images and other products meant to print simply by adding a line of javascript code to any site, has raised a Series A round of funding to the tune of $1.2 million from Adams Capital.
Over 12,000 sellers use the company’s on-demand ecommerce system today, which makes for a catalog 2.5 million photos big. Customers range from high-end art photogs to illustrators, Fotomoto CEO Ahmad Kiarostami tells me. → Read More
We’re here at Google’s massive HQ in New York City (they own an entire block) for what Google was calling a “partner event” but everyone knew was really an “NFC event”. Sure enough, Stephanie Tilenius, Google’s VP of Commerce, has taken the stage to announce Google Wallet and Google Offers. → Read More
We’re here at Google’s massive New York City HQ (they own an entire block) for what Google was calling a “partner event” but everyone knew was really an “NFC event”. Sure enough, Stephanie Tilenius, Google’s VP of Commerce, has taken the stage to announce Google Wallet and Google Offers.
Right off the bat, Tilenius wanted to make it clear that this would be an open platform. She invited “payment networks, carriers, and banks to join us in creating tomorrow’s shopping experience”. And some of those partners are already on board. Citi, Mastercard, FirstData, and Sprint are the initial partners. → Read More
Earlier this week we gave you a little sneak peek at the new Livescribe Connect service but we also looked a bit more closely at the T-Mobile G-Slate, Big Fuchsia’s wild 3D tablet. Erick was generally nonplussed with both products but this is the year of the Android tablet and this is one of the most unique devices we’ve seen this year.
We ran a review of the G-Slate a few weeks ago and talked about the Connect announcement on Monday. → Read More
Say you really like Angry Birds. Like really. And you want to play it at home on a big screen. How would you go about doing that? Putting your phone in a projector? Dropping your phone in a fish tank to refract the screen? Or getting one of these decidedly odd consoles that run Android natively and include full joysticks and A/V out? The Evo 2 console has a Samsung processor, “Nvidia graphics,” Wi-Fi, and a joystick remote. Plans are in the works for motion controllers and the device supports optical audio and HDMI. It costs $149 for the dev-kit or you can pre-order this bit of vaporware for $15. Like many famous consoles of yore, however, I think this thing will end up being more a Phantom than an Android-Style XBox. Product Page → Read More
Ad network Reply has acquired online marketing network for small business owners MerchantCircle for $60 million in cash and stock. The transaction is expected to be completed in Q3 2011.
Merchant Circle provides a business directory for merchants in smaller towns and currently lists over a million small businesses. MerchantCircle has long targeted merchants in small locales versus catering towards the consumers, as sites like Yelp and CitySearch do. MerchantCircle has local business members in 95% of the 24,600 U.S. cities and towns with populations over 200. The company also acquired Bloglines from IAC late last year. → Read More
There are a lot of companies out there trying to leverage the social graph to make discovering new products, services, or tools — whatever the case may be — easier and more personalized. But, when it comes to games, few do it better than Raptr.
For those unfamiliar with the company, Raptr is a social network that revolves around gaming, which allows users to keep tabs on what their friends are doing throughout the gaming world, offering recommendations for games to play, accomplishment updates, and a host of other features. One of Raptr’s coolest features is its multi-protocol chat client that allows gamers to see what games their friends are playing in realtime, whether they’re on PS3, Xbox 360, or PC (including casual Flash games, Steam and Xfire) — even if they don’t have Raptr accounts. If one of your friends is online and playing a game, for example, you can send messages to them from the Raptr client regardless of which platform they’re on. → Read More
WePay, a Y Combinator backed startup that aims to take the hassle out of group paying, is unveiling a new ticketing feature that allows users to sell tickets online for events. As we’ve written in our previous coverage of WePay, the service is a dead simple way to collect, manage and spend money for groups.
On WePay, you can create a unique, FDIC insured account for each group. While the account is still associated with your name, but you can keep each group account totally separate from your personal transactions. Group money can essentially be kept separate from any individual accounts you may have. You can also designate specific individuals to have control over accounts. → Read More
There’s an argument that says that more enterprises would adopt cloud-based alternatives to legacy desktop software if it wasn’t for those pesky users. That’s presuming that you can get buy in from the IT department first.
But presuming that is the case, Huddle has an interesting offer: the company is introducing the ‘Huddle Adoption Guarantee’ for its cloud-based collaboration platform in which enterprises adopting the service who don’t see 100% user adoption across the organisation can expect to get their money back, with a few caveats, of course. The idea, says Huddle, is to enable IT buyers to “make the leap to cloud computing without the investment risk or concerns about low user adoption.”
On the surface at least, it’s a bold offer and likely coded talk for saying we’ll give you more help in weaning users off of Microsoft SharePoint, the company’s closest legacy competitor. → Read More
Yesterday at TechCrunch Disrupt NYC, Marissa Mayer, Google’s location boss, projected that Google Maps would be accessed more by mobile than PC by 2012, so it’s no surprise that the search giant has enhanced its Maps app for Android, with an update to version 5.5. → Read More
Panasonic Japan announced [JP] a special Lumix camera yesterday, the LUMIX DMC-FP7D (where the “D” stands for Disney). Unlike many other cute special edition cameras from Japan, the design on this model is rather subtle. → Read More
Exclusive - Zozi has landed $7 million in Series B financing from existing investors, TechCrunch has learned. The startup, which offers deals on unique local things to do, raised capital from LaunchCapital, the Pritzker/Vlock Family Office, 500Startups, ZIG Capital, Thomas & Peter Lehrman, David Tisch and others.
The round brings the total of funding raised by the San Francisco startup to $10 million – the $3 million Series A round was secured back in August 2010. → Read More
Mobile entertainment startup mSpot is launching a new feature for its cloud music service today—Radio Spotter. mSpot lets you upload your music to the cloud, after which it can be streamed from a multitude of devices, ranging from PCs, Macs, to the iPhone, iPad and Android.
Radio Spotter matches the songs you’re playing from your personal online music collections to music playing on hundreds of radio stations across the web. You can also select Internet radio stations you’ll like, based on music genres or your own artist searches. Radio Spotter puts the metadata in your music collection to work by matching whatever you’re listening to, and offers new recommendations based on your changing preferences. → Read More
Stealthy startup Project Slice is launching to the public today and announcing a $9.4 million Series A funding round led by DCM and Lightspeed Venture Partners with Michael Birch, FLOODGATE, Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors and Rick Thompson participating.
ProjectSlice aims to help you organize your online shopping by analyzing your inbox. It’s sort of like what TripIt does for your itineraries, except ProjectSlice tracks receipts, notices and purchases. The startup is launching a free app called “All My Purchases” for Yahoo Mail that will help keep your shopping information organized and accessible. → Read More
Barcelona, Spain
New York City
San Francisco, CA
