Apparently, Sprint’s network was down for the count last night, as people from different regions of the country experienced difficulty sending MMS and SMS messages. Some even had trouble getting voice calls to go through. According to Sprint, the Washington, DC area also had a voice disruption last night, which was unrelated to the SMS issues. → Read More
Resistive random-access memory (RRAM) is something various electronics companies have been working on for years, but now Panasonic seems to be ready to be the first to start mass-producing the next-generation memory chips, according to a report in Japan’s biggest business daily The Nikkei. → Read More
MongoLab, a cloud-based database provider created by San Francisco-based ObjectLabs, announced today that it has closed a $3 million series A funding round led by Foundry Group, Baseline Ventures, GRP Partners, Freestyle Capital, David Cohen, and more.
The list of investors is notable, considering that it includes several names involved in the backing of other well-known cloud infrastructure… → Read More
TurningArt, a startup that aims bring a Netflix-like model to the art world, has secured $750,000 in seed funding led by NextView Ventures with participation from Niraj Shah, Steve Conine, Thomas Lehrman, and Will Herman.
Launched in August 2010, TurningArt allows customers to rotate prints of contemporary artists in their home or office for as little as $9.99 per month. Similar to the way you… → Read More
Amazon is launching its fifth publishing imprint today—a mystery and thriller focused vertical called Thomas & Mercer. This joins Amazon’s other imprints, including Amazon Encore, AmazonCrossing, The Domino Project, Montlake Romance.
Thomas & Mercer launches with four books that will be released in the fall via Kindle, print and audio formats: “Resuscitation” by D.M. Annechino… → Read More
It’s not the first flexible screen we have covered in recent years, but it’s the first one from Toshiba. The company has developed a 3-inch OLED panel that’s 0.1mm thin and weighs just 1g (pictured). Apart from the size and weight, the main selling point of the OLED is that it can retain picture quality over a long period of time, according to a recent report in The Nikkei (Japan’s biggest… → Read More
Last quarter, we collectively purchased 18.6 million iPhone 4s. As of right now, there are an estimated 1.5 million to 2 million iPhone 4s left out there, sitting on retailer and carrier shelves, waiting for a new owner like a puppy in a window. Maybe the rather hefty chunk of iPhone 4 inventory pushed Apple to lower its Q2 shipment volume from 20 million units to 17.5 to 18 million units, but… → Read More
For all Apple’s success across the globe, South Korea is one corner of the world that the tech giant hasn’t quite locked down. Two of Apple’s biggest mobile competitors, LG and Samsung, are both based in the peninsular nation, and each has brought to market an iPhone lookalike (if not competitor) in the form of the LG Optimus Black and the Samsung Galaxy S II. → Read More
Cognitive Match has raised $6 million from new investor Antrak Capital and previous backer Dawn Capital. The round brings total funding raised by the company to over $10 million.
The funding announcement coincides with recent moves for Cognitive Match CEO Alex Kelleher and the company’s SVP of Global Sales, Mike Harris, who both relocated from London to New York. → Read More
Today, flash sales giant Gilt Groupe is launching its newest vertical—Gilt Taste, a marketplace for artisanal foods. By definition, artisanal foods are ingredients and foods that are hand-crafted, created in small quantities, and tend to be high-quality products. Basically, these are not the type of ingredients you’ll find at your local Safeway.
Led by former Gourmet Magazine Editor and New… → Read More
The world’s most advanced mobile nation, Japan, sees more than 100 different cell phones each year. Market research firm Gfk Japan [JP] has analyzed which the best-selling models in the first quarter of this year were and recently published its findings in the form of a top 10 chart. → Read More
The Droid X2 launch saga is finally over. Verizon just made it known that the Droid X2, you know, the successor to the Droid X, will hit its online stores on May 19 for the $199 with a two-year blood oath; VZW stores will get it May 26th.
The device hits with same specs that previously leaked: 4.3-inch qHD screen, dual-core 1GHz, 8MP cam, HDMI-out, and Android 2.3. Interestingly enough, battery… → Read More
ou may be tired of hearing about task managers, but Producteev is a task management service worth writing home about. Few people enjoy using complicated product, task or CRM managers, so Producteev has built a solution with a user-friendly interface that is channel agnostic, and even adds a bit of gaming mechanics. Producteev is a workable alternative to solutions like Basecamp, though the space… → Read More
Backed by an impressive list of investors, Zaarly, a web and mobile service that connects buyers and sellers in a localized market place, is launching to the public today.
As we’ve written in the past, Zaarly is a mobile-centric reverse Craigslist service. Here’s how Zarrly works. On the site or via the startup’s mobile apps, you post what you’re looking for (i.e. cupcakes), how much you’re… → Read More
E-commerce platform company Rearden Commerce has appointed former Nokia CFO Rick Simonson as its new chief financial officer and president of business operations. Simonson is known for serving as Nokia’s CFO for six years before taking over leadership of the company’s Mobile Phones business in November 2009 – and for quitting less than six months after his appointment.
Simonson is also the man… → Read More
Exclusive – Amsterdam-based startup Silk, which offers a platform that allows content creators to distribute their work on the Web in a more structured manner, has raised €320,000 (approximately $475,000) in early-stage funding from Atomico and a number of individual angel investors, TechCrunch has learned.
Silk, which was originally founded back in 2009, will use the proceeds to finally bring… → Read More
Casio “Diver-Inspired” Baby-G Watch Is A Jam For The Ladies Samsung Brings Its LED Lighting Line To The US The Day Maker Concept Turns Your iPhone Into A Proper Alarm Clock/Toaster Acer: If You Can’t Beat ‘Em, Make Your Laptops Look Like Candy A Little Augmented Reality Check From Metaio → Read More
Many have talked about the explosion of tech startups in the East of London, which has come to be known colloquially as “Silicon Roundabout“. But who are they? We’ve been writing about the emerging tech cluster there since it’s first stirrings in 2008, so we’ve decided to start documenting them for TechCrunch TV. And with the help of our video crew in the shape of producer (and startup founder… → Read More
If you’ve been reading TechCrunch regularly for the last week, you’ve learned the good, the bad and the utterly unique about Nigeria’s tech and media scenes.
But is Africa’s largest market prime for foreign venture capital investment, and how does it stack up to other frontier emerging markets Sarah has been visiting? Just after she got home, we shot a Why Is This News on her takeaways: Was she… → Read More
Morgenthaler Ventures is one of those Valley firms who did incredibly well during the Valley’s telecom/networking/enterprise software glory years. For all the dot com headlines in the late 1990s, enterprise software has long been the core of the industry’s returns, and the telecom networking build out was an order or magnitude bigger than the cash funding the more written about dot com fetes.
But… → Read More
Back in October of last year, PayPal tucked a fancy new trick into their iPhone app: Photo-based Check Depositing (or, as they call it, “Mobile Check Capture”.) You know the idea: snap a picture of a check’s front and back, the money automagically appears in your account, and you’ve saved yourself a trip to the ATM (and, more importantly, avoided going out into that nasty… → Read More
TechCrunch Disrupt: San Francisco 2011 winner Qwiki has a hot iPad app (250,000 downloads in 11 days) and plenty of cash. But one thing they no longer have is cofounder Louis Monier. He’s left the company, he tells me, to join Proximic as Chief Scientist.
And that means Monier won’t be attending Disrupt next week in New York to help hand over the Disrupt Cup to the next winner. → Read More
Over the past couple of years covering Google, there’s one seemingly simple question that comes up again and again, that Google just can’t seem to answer. Why isn’t Chrome a part of Android?
Read the wrong way, that could seem like a deep question. But it almost never means “why isn’t Chrome OS simply merged with Android?” or the like. Most of the time, it’s simply a question wondering why… → Read More
With Google’s Open Accessory Toolkit rolling up Android and Arduino together, there’s a lot of attention being given to to the popular hacking engine. But unsurprisingly, such a powerful tool isn’t really able to be just picked up and played with. Teagueduino is a modification of the Arduino system that makes the platform a bit more accessible to newbies. → Read More
Casio is perfectly content to rest on their laurels. Their G-Shock line is inexplicably popular, the ladies love them some Baby-G, and every year a new cohort of customers graduates into some of their nicer models. That’s why I’m pleased to see this cleverly designed and relatively cheap Baby-G. It costs $160 and will be available this June in time for “water sports” season, according to Shigenori… → Read More
Your next light bulb may come from Samsung, according to this breathless press release, which announces that Samsung is fully committed to bringing LEDs to the common consumer. Samsung will apply its “deep marketing knowledge” to make their LED line popular here in the US. With luck that means they’re targeting a lower price point. We all know how great LEDs are for saving power… → Read More
One of the problems of in-ear headphones, though they often have excellent sound, is that they block all movement of air inside the ear canal, the better to control the sound environment — but potentially fatiguing or damaging to your eardrum. Audio researcher Stephen Ambrose has a solution that may improve the sound and protect your ears. → Read More
When Thunderbolt made its big debut back in February, we weren’t too surprised to find it take the shape of a DisplayPort connector. As Apple has been a big partner with Intel on the new interface and has always been a big promoter of DisplayPort, it made sense. But it was no guarantee that the rest of the industry would follow suit. And it seems Sony might be the first to change things up. → Read More
What you see here is the first full-color photograph ever taken, though the process back then was slightly different from the methods to follow. It was presented at the Royal Institution on May 17th, 1861 by Clerk Maxwell, who worked with Thomas Sutton to produce this image of a ribbon. It was actually three black and white pictures, each taken through a different color filter, then recombined by… → Read More
Howard Stringer, Sony’s CEO and the most visible target for criticism regarding the recent PSN data breach, has gone on an interview rampage, speaking with major news outlets to get word out that no network is fully secure and Sony went above and beyond the call of duty in its response. I don’t think users will agree, and though it may not be fair… well, tough. → Read More
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