Just a few days after the BlackBerry PlayBook’s one-month birthday, the nation’s top two carriers are still pretty ambiguous in their adoption of the device. AT&T has yet to approve the BlackBerry Bridge app, which turns the tablet into a portal to any BlackBerry smartphone and allows users to access email, contacts, and calendar apps, three things missing (in native form) on the PlayBook. Meanwhile, Verizon still isn’t convinced it should carry the RIM tablet, at all. → Read More
Symantec, the computer software security giant, has announced that it will be acquiring enterprise-class eDiscovery management platform maker, Clearwell Systems for $390 million.
Symantec is probably best known for its widely proliferated (perhaps even ubiquitous) Norton security products, but of late it has been making a play at eDiscovery platforms, a strategic move, considering Gartner values the market at around $1.7 billion, and is expected to grow at an annual rate of 14 percent. What’s more, Symantec spent $2 billion last year in acquisitions, $1.25+ billion of that coming in its acquisition of VeriSign, Inc. → Read More
Our first batch of Startup Battlefield presentations is available for you to watch. Click on through for the “Disrupting Search and Discovery” range of companies and let them shock you with their brash disregard for search paradigms. The companies in this group are Do@, Rexly, Weotta, Skylines, and Deja.
Check out all the videos inside, with handy executive summaries and links to the original posts with more info and the judge panel’s Q&A. → Read More
The TechCrunch Disrupt Startup Alley audience choice winner today is Happy Toy Machine, which allows you to design and create plush toys online.
The site allows adults and children to customize their plush toys by colors, size, body parts, shape, type, build and more. When you are satisfied with your design, you can actually have your creation built and sent you. It’s sort of like the Build-A-Bear on steroids. → Read More
My Mom meticulously scans every credit card, cable or cell phone bill to ensure that no errors have been made or hidden fees have been issued. I, on the other hand, don’t have the time or the patience to do this. And I’m sure along the line, I’ve been overcharged or scammed in some way. BillGuard, a startup launching to the public today at TechCrunch Disrupt, aims to alert users of unwanted charges such as hidden fees, billing errors, scams and fraud on credit card bills.
The essentially crowdsources scams by alerting you when a charge on your bill is flagged by anyone else using BillGuard or posting scams on online forums. The startup will also take into account its own analysis (which the company has been working on for the past year) and monitor the web for any complaints about credit card scams. → Read More
Wandering around here at TechCrunch Disrupt New York, we came across a particularly interesting iPhone 4 add-on from Kogeto, in collaboration with Kickstarter. It’s called Dot, and it will totally change your perspective on mobile video, literally. The Kogeto Dot is a panoramic lens that captures 360-degree video, without sacrificing style or portability. This add-on from Kogeto comes in a number of pastel colors and is small enough to tuck away in a purse, or even keep in a pocket. → Read More
Sticking to a budget can be a challenge no matter how big or small your income is. While Mint.com gives you access into where your money is going, it doesn’t incentivize or motivate you to stick to a budget. Enter Spenz, a startup launching at TechCrunch Disrupt today, is launching a proactive way for a younger generation to track where they spend all of their money and provides incentives and rewards for users to budget.
People can input their expenses via mobile and web apps. The idea behind a mobile app is to allow users to input something they’ve spent money on quickly and on the fly. It aims to track both your big purchases and spending (i.e. car payments and rent) and discretionary spending (i.e. coffee at Starbucks, lunch). Spenz will categorize spending into categories like activities, entertainment, food etc. → Read More
Finding a new hair stylist in a city is a challenging and very important task. For me, I happen to be very particular about how I like my hair cut, styled and highlighted. While Yelp provides a database of reviews for some hair salons and spas, Yelp’s salon pages don’t allow me to book an appointment, see pricing, or access more information about the stylists themselves. Enter StyleSeat, a startup launching today at TechCrunch Disrupt. Essentially the site aims to be a destination where the beauty and wellness industry can build consumer-facing sites that include all the information and functionality I mentioned above. It’s sort of like an OpenTable for hair salons and spas.
For salon and spa owners, StyleSeat offers a platform where they can create a site that includes location of the salon, stylists and their bios, pictures of haircuts and hair styles from stylists, recommendations from customers, and more. The site also allows consumers to book appointments, and StyleSeat will provide salons with daily schedules of customers appointments. → Read More
When it rains, it pours. Sony, in the midst of repeated hacks and still staggering from the earthquake in Japan, has subtracted some deferred tax assets from the bottom line, leading to a massive ~$4 billion downward revision of its yearly income through March.
It’s important to note that this isn’t all, or even mostly, attributed to the highly publicized PSN hacks. The great majority of the loss comes from a Japanese tax-related re-valuation that has ended up landing some new tax liabilities on their laps. But it couldn’t have come at a worse time, as this normal cost (having to do with other losses and obscure tax code things) is hitting Sony at a low water mark for income. → Read More
Twitter just sent out a Tweet notifying users that starting today, the startup is “rolling out an email notification that lets you know if someone you follow retweets or favorites one of your Tweets.”
Users currently receive email notifications when they receive a new followers and when they are sent direct messages. Emails notifying you of retweets and favorites, while convenient, seems like it could cause an email overload for some power users. → Read More
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 a gnome into the picture. The app marks the location of each picture and you can follow where the gnome has been. “Wouldn’t it be cool to have a gnome in your pocket,” asks engineer Haider Sabri, “all the while you are getting updates on who your gnome is, where he is and what he is doing? → 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 of shopping for items in a retail store. So similar to the way you flip over a price tag to look at the cost of at item at a store, SneakPeeq doesn’t tell you the price instantly when you visit a product’s landing page. You click a “Peeq” button to find the price, and every time you “Peeq” at the price it goes down, but once somebody buys the item, the offer goes away. → 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 fascia, it appears to be one from the Bush era. Click through for the fun video. → 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 twitter, and the cute girl by the bar also likes the Arcade Fire and Hemingway.” → 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 launch last year, the startup was only focusing on laptops. → 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 all about video. Meet Deja, a very nice looking application launching today at TechCrunch Disrupt. The app will go live later today on the iTunes App Store (link). → Read More
