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 this context that today’s news is particularly interesting: Two UK startups, sQuid and ACT, which have largely been flying under the radar, are merging and with it not only will they supply 85% of the UK’s smart cards and payments, but look pretty well poised to exploit the growing opportunity around NFC. → 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 major PC manufacturers and consumer electronics brands. The company was raking in $400 million in revenue last year, on top of $41 million in funding raised to date (about half of which was closed in February).
Today, PCH Founder Liam Casey took to the Disrupt NYC stage following Lark Founder Julia Hu to announce that PCH is launching its own business accelerator called, appropriately, “PCH Accelerator” — and that Lark (a Disrupt SF alumni) will be the accelerator’s inaugural startup. → 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 (NYSE: WM), Munich Venture Partners, and TriplePoint Capital.
As Harvest Power CEO Paul Sellew told TechCrunch in March, the company will put the capital into building two, large biomass renewable energy projects… → 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: Zynga.
Gordon, who aside from leading KPCB investments in Zynga is also a major fan (he’s reached the top level in CityVille), recounted some of the drama that went on last spring, when the gaming company came very close to breaking away from Facebook entirely over a dispute involving Facebook’s Credits system. In fact, when Arrington suggested that it was a sort of Cuban Missile Crisis of tech, Gordon agreed. → 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 iPhone app to the time you need to wake up and the app will transform your phone into a night time alarm clock. The band includes a small device and sensor with bluetooth technology that will vibrate at the time you are supposed to wake up. Plus there’s no more jarring, loud alarms; so your boyfriend, girlfriend, wife, or husband won’t be woken up by your alarm. → 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, and the way we use mobile internet. Along with the current service offerings in People Hub such as Facebook, Hotmail, and Gmail, Microsoft has gone ahead and added LinkedIn and Twitter. → 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 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
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