When Omar Hamoui left Google a few months after selling AdMob to the search giant for $750 million, he set up shop with mobile engineer Mike Rowehl as Churn Labs. Today at Disrupt NYC, we get to see the first product churned out by the labs: Gnonstop Gnomes.
Gnonstop Gnomes is part social game, part mobile photo app. You take pictures with your iPhone or Android camera and insert an image of … → Read More
Masterbranch, which helps employers find good developers by putting open-source code contributions at the centre of a job seeker’s résumé, has raised €470k in a second round of funding, adding to the €110k secured in 2010.
The new funding comes from a group of recognized business angels out of Spain, including Marek Fodor, Carlos Domingo, Iñaki Arrola, Iñaki Ecenarro, Jesús Monleón, … → Read More
It’s no secret that e-commerce is growing like gangbusters. Last year alone, consumers spent a $142 billion on online retail spending. SneakPeeq, a startup launching today at TechCrunch Disrupt, aims to capitalize on this booming market, but adds a social twist.
SneakPeeq gets high end fashion brands to sell in season or upcoming items on the site, and somewhat aims to replicate the experience… → Read More
Where ever Obama goes, so goes a fleet of vehicles including several identical armored limos. One of those recently breached itself on a parking ramp during the President’s trip to Dublin proving that while it can withstand most every attack save a nuclear bomb, it’s not unstoppable. Point of interest, this limo isn’t the new super limo creatively named The Beast. Judging by the Cadillac’s front… → Read More
Using your publicly available profiles on Facebook, Foursquare and Twitter, etc, mobile app Sonar, shows you who, how many, and why particular people are relevant to you in a room.
Says founder Brett Martin, “It’s simple- you open up sonar and we tell you that the guy sitting across from you is facebook friends with your college roommate, the dude by the jukebox is a VC that you follow on… → Read More
Like a combination Tango, Skype and Facebook and Chatroulette (or a Chatroulette for Facetime), Karizma is a location based video chat messenger that banks on the theory that people want to video chat with people who are geographically close to them. Karizma allows you to call people who are in your proximity, not just your current contacts. → Read More
Google has made an acquisition today—Sparkbuy, a ‘kayak for electronics.’
Sparkbuy, which has raised $1 million in funding, is a high-powered product search engine and comparison shopping site. You enter which criteria are important to you, and the site will give a listing of laptops that it thinks you’ll like best. You could also use in-depth filtering options to break down results. At… → Read More
Need to find an amazing Hatha Yoga class in the West Village? Want a press friendly restaurant in Soma. New app SpotOn takes into account existing data like Foursquare checkins, Facebook Likes and more in order to provide choices that are tailored to you and your friends (whether they download the SpotOn app or not). → Read More
There’s little question that the iPad is one of the best media consumption devices ever. It’s also been a hotbed for innovation around content recommendation, with apps like Flipboard giving you a visual way to browse an array of articles you might be interested in, using Facebook and Twitter as data sources.
Today, the iPad is getting another great way to consume content, and this time it’s… → Read More
While there is still some back-and-forth over when the HTC EVO 3D will finally grace us with its presence, an ad from RadioShack has clarified to what scale this highly-anticipated smartphone will lighten your wallet. On a new or upgraded two-year contract, the 3D-capable handset will cost $199.99, as opposed to $499.99 off-contract. → Read More
Remember lonelygirl15? But of course you do (and if not, Wikipedia and YouTube search are your friends).
Either way, it looks like some of the creators behind the interactive Web-based video series, which attracted worldwide attention, are raising $3.5 million in funding for their production and software company EQAL – at least according to this SEC filing. → Read More
It’s been over 3.5 years since Seedcamp was launched to help establish Europe as a great place for startups, and how things have changed since then.
From where I’m standing, the European startup scene appears to be alive and kicking, and although we’re still very, very far from Europe being a perfect place to launch a business in many regards, I remain hopeful about the chances of major… → Read More
There has been a flurry of photo sharing apps released over the last year, with notables including Instagram, Picplz, and Path. These apps tend to focus on the photos that have been shared by your friends and people you know online — which aren’t always snapshots of things you’re actually interested in.
But what would happen if you had a service that took the opposite approach, allowing… → Read More
We had high hopes for the Edge dual-screen ebook reader last year but it looks like said ereader is now dead. We were actually quite excited. After all, our own Scott Merrill wrote:
The enTourage eDGe is a functional, easy-to-use device that currently defies formal classification. It’s primarily going to be useful to academics and people who spend a lot of time in books, but need more… → Read More
Looking for something to do this weekend without having to sift through your newspaper or scour the web for a fun event? Weotta, a new startup launching today at TechCrunch Disrupt, is looking to help (say the name out loud).
The service offers a very easy 3-step process for making a plan: first, tell it what kind of outing you’re embarking on (Business, Dating, Family, Friends, or Solo). Next… → Read More
Ah, the power of choice. Browse through your Facebook News Feed or Twitter stream and you’re going to be assaulted with an endless array of links, shared songs, videos, and products. Add a few more topic-specific services, like iTunes Ping to the mix, and you have even more recommended pieces of content to choose from. And then you get a headache.
The latest startup to take the stage at TC… → Read More
Livescribe smartpens allow you to record and send the ink you draw or write on paper. They also record the surrounding audio so you can sync the audio with the drawings, something that’s great for students, reporters, and anyone who goes to meetings regularly. For a while, they had little apps that could run on the pen including a very cool piano app that allowed you to draw a piano and then… → Read More
A couple years ago, Steve Jobs drew a line in the sand between mobile apps and search. “On a mobile device,” he declared, “search hasn’t happened. Search is not where it’s at. People aren’t searching on a mobile device like they do on the desktop. What is happening is they are spending all of their time in apps.” Up until now, the divide has remained. You can either search the mobile web or… → Read More
TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington took the stage today to interview AOL CEO Tim Armstrong. It was actually at TechCrunch Disrupt New York last year where Armstrong first approached Arrington about buying TechCrunch. We all know how that worked out.
Armstrong and Arrington touched on a variety of subjects, including AOL’s agressive content strategy. While AOL’s content has remained free… → Read More
The Transformer runs the modest 1GHz Tegra 2 platform, but that clearly isn’t enough. More power, right, Clarkson? Some clever folks over at XDA recently outed a custom kernel that bumps the clockspeed to 1.4GHz. It’s just too bad that this particular kernel with its super-speed chip leaves the Transformer unstable and therefore a bit useless for most. However, for those out there that… → Read More
It’s about damn time. TiVo Premiere already has an impressive list of proper streaming apps: Netflix, Blockbuster, Amazon and several other smaller services. Now Hulu Plus is on the list, which will serve up all the 16 and Pregnant you can stand for $7.99 a month after TiVo’s 6-month complementary trial ends. → Read More
Social gaming company CrowdStar has had an impressive run of competing with giants like Zynga, EA and Disney with only $100,000 in funding. The company is the fifth largest social gaming app developer on Facebook with 29 million monthly active users. But today, CrowdStar is gathering more financial resources to take on its competitors, raising a whopping $23 million in strategic funding led by … → Read More
Social enterprise giant Jive is continuing its shopping spree today, picking up OffiSync, an Israeli startup that adds a collaboration layer to Microsoft Office applications, we’ve confirmed. The deal was first reported in Israeli publication The Marker, which estimates the acquisition size to be around $25 to $30 million.
OffiSync offers a a plugin for Microsoft Office that serves as a bridge… → Read More
LoveYourLarder, which soft-launched late last year, is pitching itself as an “Etsy-for-foodies”. It’s an apt reference since the site offers users a way to discover and buy hard-to-find ingredients or “artisan” food and drink from independent producers in the UK.
Like Etsy, it’s also a classic long tail play in that it aggregates the products of those who might not otherwise sell online. A web… → Read More
Kobo launched as a Borders-based alternative to the Kindle hegemony, and while their e-reader was perfectly decent, I wouldn’t say it was feature-competitive with Amazon’s latest. They’ve announced today a new device that may not match the Kindle (or its rumored tablet successor) on all fronts, but it’s at least distinct and definitely worth looking at. Yes, a touchscreen e-reader for a reasonable… → Read More
HP’s upcoming tablet, the Touchpad and not the PalmPad in case you missed the memo, will be better than number one. You could call it number one plus. That’s exactly what HP’s European head recently stated at a conference in Cannes and this silly quote is now spreading around the gadget blogosphere.
The Touchpad will likely be a great; HP doesn’t make bad hardware. It will likely be solid… → Read More
Mobile payments startup Square is announcing big numbers today—500,000 Square card readers shipped, 1 million Square transactions in May, and the startup is now processing $3 million in mobile payments per day. Clearly the company is on a roll in terms of traction and usage. And CEO Jack Dorsey is also revealing the next generation of Square. And Square is about to get a whole lot more… → Read More
It’s no secret that disruptive mobile payments startup Square is growing fast. And today, CEO Jack Dorsey revealed a few more milestones for the company—500,000 Square card readers shipped, 1 million Square transactions in May, and as we reported over the weekend the startup is now processing $3 million in mobile payments per day.
Fresh off $27.5 million in new funding, and a strategic… → Read More
Here at TechCrunch Disrupt Investor Chris Dixon interviewed Quora founder Charlie Cheever about the future of Quora and sundry other things namely how to avoiding becoming Yahoo answers.
Said Cheever, “One of the goals we have for Quora is to have all types of people sharing all types of knowledge. I would image a world where I where I could come up with all the things I want to know and find… → Read More
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