Launching in public beta today at Disrupt is ccLoop, a previously stealth startup founded by serial entrepreneur Michael Wolfe that aims to tackle one of the biggest problems with modern communication: the disaster that is email.
We heard the company had raised $3.5 million from Benchmark Capital, SV Angel and other investors earlier this year, but not how they were planning to solve that… → Read More
Round three from day one focused on “Disrupting Commerce.” These are companies that hope to displace giants like Amazon, eBay, and so on. Not exactly easy prey, but these guys think they’ve got a unique take on shopping and money management. The companies in this batch are SneakPeeq, StyleSeat, Spenz, and BillGuard. Plus, a wild startup alley company appears! Happy Toy Machine is our wildcard for… → Read More
Launching today at the Disrupt conference, Thinkfuse is all about TPS status reports, more specifically making it easier to share and manage weekly status reports in order to assist organizations in achieving their goals.
Thinkfuse is armed with $500,000 in seed funding from Founders Coop, Ali & Hadi Partovi, Scott Banister, SV Angel, Todd Warren, Emil Michael, Travis Bogard and other angel… → Read More
A couple of days ago, we got a tip pointing us to a YouTube page with a bit of interesting information. On Google’s official account there was a placeholder page for a “Google Press Conference”. We we reached out to Google about this, they said they were checking into it, and the page immediately was taken down (but not before we snagged a screenshot, naturally). Weird.
Well, weird until the… → Read More
Bloomberg reports that Google plans to dip its far-reaching toes into the mobile payment space starting May 26 on phones from Sprint, according to statements made by three unnamed people close to the situation. The service will give owners of select Android phones (like the Nexus S), the ability to perform transactions and redeem coupons with their smartphone, said the sources. → Read More
In the collaborative consumption space with startups like AirBnb and TaskRabbit, Getaround is a car rental market place where you can rent a car by the day, hour or week through a smartphone app. Getaround’s all inclusive package, which includes insurance, 24 hour roadside assistance, a Getaround car-kit, iPhone app and a web app makes it easy for people to conveniently car share any where. → Read More
The second round of presentations from our Startup Battlefield is here for you to enjoy, in case you missed them yesterday. This round focused on “Disrupting Location, Location, Location.” To be honest, we expected more Foursquare clones, but were disappointed, if that’s the right word. The companies in this round were SpotOn, Karizma, Sonar, Arrived, and Churn Labs’ Gnonstop Gnome.
Check out the… → Read More
Today at TechCrunch Disrupt, Sequoia Capital partner Roelof Botha took the stage for an interview with Michael Arrington, where they discussed everything from startup valuations to Sequoia’s biggest misses.
Early on in the conversation, Arrington asked Botha if Sequoia partners have a lot of internal pressure to perform, or if the firm is patient with investments. Botha says that the firm is… → Read More
Parents worry about their kids. It’s what they do. Sometimes with reason, sometimes not. But now, thanks to MotherKnows, parents will be able to verify whether there is medical justification for their worrying. The California-based startup has created a full-service platform, available on mobile and the Web, that is designed specifically to allow parents to have 24-hour access their children’s… → Read More
Given the bevy of issues that the first builds of iOS 4 brought to the iPhone 3GS (poor performance, decreased battery life, random mid-call reboots), it was pretty clear that the 3GS was reaching the end of its update life cycle. According to the partially-notorious Eldar Murtazin (who, while not always right, regularly nails some massive scoops), the iPhone 3GS won’t be seeing iOS 5 come… → Read More
Healthcare is expensive, and it’s increasingly suffering from overinflation. It seems that, while what we pay for consumer goods has tended to increase at a normal rate, healthcare costs have sky-rocketed in comparison. Quite a few startups have popped up of late that are attempting to bring disruptive vision to healthcare costs in the U.S., like the National Surgery Network, a sort of Hotwire for… → Read More
Evernote, once described to me as “my remote brain”, is releasing a new Google Chrome extension today to make clipping and saving webpages easier than ever. It’s optimized to grab the body of any blog post on any site. It automatically recognizes the structure of any post, and “captures it beautifully without any need for the user to select anything.” → Read More
Lark, a silent waking system that wakes you silently and naturally, is announcing big news today. After launching at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco last Fall, the company is announcing the public availability of its product and a retail deal with Apple stores in North America.
Lark’s system involves an iPhone app and a small band that you wear across your wrist while sleeping. You set the… → Read More
According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States. As this is the case, there are many of us in the U.S. — and across the globe — who have had heart disease or cardiac illnesses affect our lives in many unpleasant ways. Today, thanks to advances in modern technology, we are beginning to see services, devices, and… → Read More
One of Seiko’s new “nicer” mainstream watches for 2011 is this really attractive Sportura Alarm Chronograph watches. The Sportura range has always captured my attention pleasantly – for offering attractive designs, logical functions, easy to read dials, as well as competitive pricing. This model is really a treat, coming in a few versions that borrow design cues from the higher-end Ananta… → Read More
From kindergarten through college, today classrooms are more wired than ever before. Touchscreen devices and next generation projectors are becoming the norm, WiFi proliferates, and seemingly every other student has more facility with a laptop than I do. Next, it will be tablets. Of course, while technology continues to press forward in opening educational doors, each piece of hardware comes… → Read More
Conversocial is a real-time social media management system which lets companies run marketing and customer support through Facebook Pages and Twitter. While competitors like coTweet, Hootsuite, Tweetdeck, Context Optional and Socialite also let you manage Facebook fan pages, Conversocial’s emphasis on enterprise tools somewhat mark it out from the pack.
Today it announces a series A funs raise to… → Read More
Aside from being a partner at Kaulfield Perkins and Byers, Bing Gordon writes poetry. When our very own Mike Arrington asked him to write one up on the fly about 45 minutes before he went on stage. This is what he came up with (disclosure: it’s pretty good).
“Chris Dixon apparently has a hunch
That it’s only Internet news if it’s in TechCrunch –
And you can verify this on Wikipedia:
Ashton… → Read More
We’re coming at you live from the Barnes & Noble superstore/cafe/public bathroom on Union Square where we hope to see an update to the Nook line. It’s my understanding that we’ll be seeing a new Nook Color Device with priced at about $140. Update this page as we live blog the event with bated breath. → Read More
There’s a lot of excitement (and hype) at the moment around smart payment solutions, not least in relation to the potential of NFC now that mobile operating systems and handsets are finally supporting the technology. As a result, VC money for startups in the space has been coming thick and fast, while the likes of Silicon Valley-based Jumio and Boku have been getting plenty of attention.
It’s in… → Read More
PCH International is one of those quirky, successful mid-size companies you’ve probably never heard of. For starters, PCH is a Chinese manufacturing company named after a California highway that has headquarters located in Ireland. If you have a lot of gadgets lying around, you’ve probably used one and you may not even know it. PCH designs and produces electronics and gadgets in partnership with… → Read More
In a world where second-gen devices launch mere months after their predecessors, I guess it’s not too much of a surprise that large-scale upgrades are already being implemented to 4G networks. T-Mobile, specifically, has announced that it will double the speed of its 4G LTE network in 55 different markets. → Read More
Harvest Power, a company that makes energy and fertilizer products from organic waste, added $6 million to its series B, $51.7 million round, with Rabobank’s SAM Private Equity group, which focuses on sustainability investing and is based in Zurich, Switzerland, joined the company’s other backers: Generation Investment Management, DAG Ventures, Keating Capital, Kleiner Perkins, Waste Management… → Read More
Here at TechCrunch Disrupt Kevin Systrom has just announced a new milestone for photo service instagram, at 10 photos per second, up 6 photos per second a couple of months ago. “That growth we saw last month was really large, until we saw today,” said Systrom. When asked whether David Karp had any advice for Kevin, “Kevin seems to be a few steps ahead of me.” → Read More
Today at TechCrunch Disrupt, gaming industry vet and KPCB partner Bing Gordon took the stage with our own Michael Arrington for a special fireside chat that covered a broad range of topics, including Gordon’s investment strategy and ngmoco, which was his first exit as a Partner. And the conversation got particularly interesting when it steered toward a company that’s very near to Gordon’s heart… → Read More
Lark, a silent waking system that wakes you silently and naturally, is announcing big news today. After launching at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco last Fall, the company is announcing the public availability of its product and a retail deal with Apple stores in North America.
Lark’s system involves an iPhone app and a small band that you wear across your wrist while sleeping. You set the… → Read More
Today at Microsoft’s Windows Phone VIP Reception, president of mobile communications Andy Lees and senior Windows Phone product manager Derek Snyder gave us a quick rundown of what to expect out of the newest version of the Windows Phone platform, WP7.1 or “Mango.”
Though he didn’t have time to cover all 500 new features, the focus will certainly center around communication, applications… → Read More
What many people do not know about actor and angel investor Ashton Kutcher is that he’s been interested in science and technology from a young age, starting out at the University of Iowa as a biomedical engineer. That obviously didn’t work out and he went the “Dude Where’s My Car” route until years later he launched Blah Girls at TechCrunch 50, which did not work out so well.
Kutcher said that… → Read More
Nature, the folks who brought you the free life sciences learning community Scitable, are today announcing “Principles of Biology”, a college level electronic textbook. Building upon the cross-platform success of Scitable, the new textbook offers a variety of fully interactive features, including quizzes and assessments, an online gradebook for instructors, and more. Perhaps most notable in this… → Read More
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