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 he’s learned a lot of lessons from Blah Girls during an interview with Charlie Rose at TechCrunch Disrupt, namely to listen people smarter than himself, specifically Ron Conway, Paul Graham, and Marc Andressen, “The failures that we have are sometimes expensive educations.” → 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 era of constant upgrades and in-app purchases is that this text will be continually updated with top-notch content from Nature’s editing team at no additional cost to anyone who has purchased a copy. “Our interactive textbooks, since they are “born digital”, are designed to capitalize to the maximum degree on the progressive possibilities which digital media opens up for the education space: new distribution models, new learning models, new pricing models. Our textbooks are designed to make students active rather than passive learners throughout the learning process,” says Vikram Savkar, SVP & Publishing Director at Nature Publishing Group. → Read More
After pricing its IPO at $25 per share a few hours before the market opened, the Russian search giant’s share price jumped close to 40% immediately after its flotation.
The price per share opened this morning at $35, giving Yandex a market cap of roughly $11.2 billion at its debut. That means its value currently far surpasses that of LinkedIn, which went public last week (successfully, too). → Read More
Today, TechCrunch editor Erick Schonfeld sat down with Moat’s Mike Walrath, Facebook’s ad chief Carolyn Everson, Medialets’ Eric Litman and RadiumOne’s Gurbaksh Chahal to address the disruptions in display advertising on social and mobile platforms. On the panel, Everson revealed some interesting information about where advertising on Facebook is heading, particularly with brands.
Everson, who joined Facebook from Microsoft in February, says that advertising can be brought to life digitally through peer to peer recommendations and friend to friend experiences on Facebook. The social network is trying to work with top brands to help capitalize on this experiences. As she tells the audience, the “holy grail for branding are recommendations.” → Read More
Exclusive - Mobile communications startup fring, fresh off the heels of launching group video calls for smartphones, has raised a Series C round of financing from existing investors, TechCrunch has learned.
The amount that was raised is actually not being disclosed, but sources close to the company tell us that fring secured another $10 million in venture capital, bringing its total of funding raised to well north of $30 million. → Read More
The second day of TechCrunch Disrupt NYC just kicked off with a bang as Y Combinator cofounder Paul Graham sat down with world-renowned interviewer and journalist Charlie Rose. The topic of conversation: what is Paul Graham looking for when it comes to identifying the people who are most likely to succeed?
Graham says that when people come to him and say they’ve got a great idea, his first response is, “Tell me about your cofounders”. In general the idea is less important, though he says that if it’s a really terrible idea that might reflect poorly on the founders, and a really great idea might lift them up.
“There are some people who just get what they want in the world. If you want to start a startup you have to be one of those people. You can’t be passive and wishy-washy,” Graham says. → Read More
Brightcove is no longer just for videos. Starting today, it is launching an entire new product line for making mobile and web apps called Brightcove App Cloud. Developers will be able to use App Cloud to create their apps once and then deploy them to the iPhone, iPad, Android phones and tablets, and beyond. It creates HTML5 apps as well as mobile touch websites, and it is not limited to video apps.
In the video above, Brightcove CEO Jeremy Allaire explains what App cloud is and answers some questions about what appears to be a departure from the company’s primary focus of providing an online video platform. The App cloud apps don’t need to be video apps, but they are geared towards media apps. Just as Adobe spits out iPhone apps from its Creative Suite, so too will Brightcove App Cloud—except, as Allaire points out, Brightcove App Cloud isn’t based on any proprietary technology. It is all open technologies such as HTML5, CSS and Javascript. → Read More
Israeli startup Siano Mobile Silicon, a developer of mobile digital TV receiver chips, has just raised a $20 million in funding led by Jerusalem Venture Partners. This brings the startup’s total funding to $95.5 million.
Founded in late 2004, Siano develops and markets silicon semiconductor chips for reception of digital TV on mobile, portable and hand-held devices. The company’s chips are mainly used for the implementation of mobile TV in emerging markets such as China, Brazil and Europe. In fact, Siano says it has a 50 percent market share in China and Latin America for its chipsets that allow the reception of TV on mobile devices. The company supplies its chips to Samsung, Motorola, ZTE, Huawei, Mio, Garmin, Dell and others. → Read More
Yesterday, Mike broke the news on stage at Disrupt that SV Angel is doubling down with Yuri Milner once again to invest in all willing Y Combinator grads. Today, SV Angel is announcing another partnership, this time Ron Conway & crew are looking east. SV Angel and Lerer Ventures– which also announced a new fund yesterday– will announce today that the two are entering a formal partnership to invest in one another’s deals.
There are limits to how cozy they are getting. The funds are still distinct, with no direct financial stake in one another. And there’s no requirement or quid pro quo. Indeed, SV Angel’s fund is much larger, so there will likely be more West Coast deals being closed between the two. Like the Y Combinator deal, this is just an offer on the table for all new SV Angel and Lerer Venture portfolio companies. “It will always be at the discretion of the entrepreneur,” said SV Angel’s Ron Conway backstage at Disrupt. → Read More
Opera Software makes some damn fine browsers, as tens of millions of people around the world can attest. Apple products like the iPhone 4 and the iPad, of course, come with a decent mobile version of Safari, so users only get to enjoy Opera’s products when they actually visit the App Store and look for a replacement browser.
Nevertheless, when the Opera Mini iPhone app hit the marketplace back in April 2010, it proceeded to get downloaded 1 million times in its first day.
The company is today releasing Opera Mini 6 for iOS (iTunes link), and I had the chance to test it on a second-generation iPad. My guess it will get downloaded by masses of people once again – or at least it should IMHO. → Read More
If you’re not at TechCrunch Disrupt, you’re missing out. I mean even MG flew in all the way from Iceland to finally get here. But incase you are stuck at ugh, work we’ve embedded the livestream above.
You can also follow along by tracking the #TCDisrupt hashtag on Twitter or you know, reading TechCrunch. So what are you waiting for, Disrupt! → Read More
If you’re a Sonos fan you’ll be happy to know that MOG, the music streaming service that competes with sites like Spotify, Rdio, and Pandora, has just hit the list of Sonos sources. It is, in short, a double rainbow of music goodness. They’re offering all Sonos users 14-day free trial and new users can get 20% off Sonos bundles with MOG access. You can check it out here.
The service is available now and costs $9.99 for the “primo” streaming subscription. → Read More
Yandex, one of the leading Internet companies in Russia, this morning announced the pricing of its initial public offering of a little under 52.2 million Class A ordinary shares at $25.00 per share.
The shares will begin trading later today on NASDAQ under the symbol “YNDX”.
The company is thus raising a little over $1.3 billion, and has granted its underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 5.2 million shares to cover over-allotments. → Read More
Japan-based Ubiquitous has developed [JP] a power strip with a built-in Wi-Fi module. Dubbed iRemoTap, the strip allows you to do two things: you can track which of the connected devices consumes how much energy on a PC or cell phone in real-time, and you can turn on or off each of these devices remotely. → Read More
This Tape Dispenser Is Likely Not TSA Approved Livescribe Releases Connect, Puts Ink In The Cloud Government-Mandated Black Boxes In Your Cars? Why Not? Fan + Umbrella = Fanbrella (Video) The TechCrunch Disrupt NY Drinking Game: Day One → Read More
Word has been circulating for weeks now that Twitter was soon to be swooping up the popular third-party app, TweetDeck. In early May, Mike Arrington reported that the deal was as good as done, but the two companies were not yet willing to publicly release the numbers. Today, CNN and CNET broke the news that TweetDeck has been acquired by Twitter for $40 million. Twitter has yet to officially confirm, but judging by what we’re hearing from sources close to the deal, it’s done and done.. → Read More
Jeff Jarvis is the creator of Entertainment Weekly, a San Francisco Examiner columnist, the Associate Publisher of The Daily News, and a consultant to new media companies — in other words, a veteran of the old school and a proponent of the new. Jarvis took to the stage today at Disrupt NYC for some banter with TechCrunch Big Kahuna Mike Arrington. The two writers talked about their past, including Jarvis’ history of calling out Arrington publicly for saying the New York Times was in the pocket of a startup, among other things. As such, their conversation was candid and casual, and focused on the fluctuating definition of what a journalist is (and what it should be) in the age of new media. → Read More
Never get into a fight with people who have more expensive lawyers. Lodsys, the patent trolls trying to make people license a dubious feature based on in-app sales, received a letter from Apple’s wolverine-like lawyers asking them to cease and desist asking for developers for money. They write:
Because I believe that your letters are based on a fundamental misapprehension regarding Apple’s license and the way Apple’s products work, I expect that the additional information set out below will be sufficient for you to withdraw your outstanding threats to the App Makers and cease and desist from any further threats to Apple’s customers and partners.
…Therefore, Apple requests that Lodsys immediately withdraw all notice letters sent to Apple App Makers and cease its false assertions that the App Makers’ use of licensed Apple products and services in any way constitute infringement of any Lodsys patent.
I suspect this won’t be the end of the story. However, it is a strong and forceful letter by a traditionally strong and forceful legal team and we can assume that this will convince most developers not to cave when/if they receive a Lodsys letter. → Read More
At first, the idea of a federal-level requirement for electronic “black boxes” for your cars sounds a bit Big Brother-ish. But in fact, many cars already include such devices, and there is confusion resulting from different data recording methods, law enforcement needs, and so on. Some may see a slippery slope ending in dash cameras and GPS logging, but others see the potential for vastly increased safety and standardized legal limits for that kind of data. Wired considers the question in depth here – but whatever the benefits, this is guaranteed to be a controversial subject. → Read More
