You know, I’m really no fan of the SIM card’s pint-sized baby brother, the microSIM. It’s not that I have a thing against small objects, mind you — those itty-bitty bottles of Cholula they sell at Cost Plus? I hoard those like diamonds. The microSIM just gives me trouble on a daily basis. I switch phones with some regularity, and the microSIM — or, more accurately, the fact… → Read More
Vienna, Austria-based semantic web technology company uma has raised $1.1 million in funding from TheMerger.com and multiple private European investors.
The company has also appointed new board members, including Heinrich Schuster, former founder and now retired chairman of EPAMEDIA, and Oliver Holle, CEO of TheMerger.com and occasional TechCrunch guest blogger. → Read More
In celebration of their 10th retail anniversary, Apple stores are expected to hold “something big” on Thursday, at least according to BGR. Employees are expected to work overtime and sign NDAs as well as surrender their cellphones. They will also be getting secret hardware to install this week. → Read More
9flats, the peer to peer apartment rentals site (or Airbnb-clone), has secured a “major investment round” led by Silicon Valley VC firm Redpoint Ventures. European-based eVenture Capital Partners also participated.
Terms of the deal aren’t being disclosed although 9flats says this brings its total funding to $10m just six months after the startup was founded. The new round will be used to expand… → Read More
Square, the startup that put the sexy back into payments, has a major product announcement coming up next Monday, May 23. That happens to be the first day of TechCrunch Disrupt in New York as well.
What’s the announcement? I don’t know, but founder Jack Dorsey says it’s a big one. So we’ve added the announcement to our agenda. During the lunch break on Monday the Square event will be streamed… → Read More
I present to you Acer’s latest salvo against the coming of the post-PC era – the Acer Aspire One Happy 2. These things have a 10.1-inch display and run an Atom N570 processor with an Intel 3150 GPU and come in delicious candy colors (Banana Cream, Blueberry Shake, Papaya Milk, and Strawberry Yogurt) with mice to match. The will cost 299 euro in Europe and probably $300 when they hit… → Read More
Like many of you, I have loved playing games on my phone ever since I got my first Nokia handset that came pre-loaded with Snake. Since then, mobile gaming has reached an entirely new level, and then when the smartphone appeared, a few more levels after that one. Still, no matter which handset you choose, your device is a phone first, and a portable gaming device second, or third, or fourth. → Read More
Well, after several leaks, an SEC filing, and random speculation from random bloggers, Barnes & Noble just sent out an invite for a Special Announcement. Ready for more random speculation from a random blogger? Here! We! Go! → Read More
Who’s going to Threadless’s Camp Wannatee? I am! $12 tees for everyone! But don’t buy the shirt above. That one is mine and I would be oh-so-embarrassed if you and I attended the same dive bar with the same ironic tee on. So yes, let’s just agree right here and now that I’m the only one buy the shirt above. Let me suggest either this one or this one instead. → Read More
I normally don’t post gadget concepts because mainly they never leave the design’s portfolio and enter production. Also, most are dumb. But not this one. I can get on this concept train and ride it all the way to dreamland. → Read More
HTC’s EVO 3D has been one of the most highly anticipated smartphones of the season. I’m sure many of you have been patiently awaiting some word on a launch date, and although I’m sorry to report that I don’t have an exact date, pre-orders have begun for the glasses-free 3D smartphone over at RadioShack. → Read More
Electronic paper as a technology somehow evolves relatively slowly, but it evolves. Today Epson and E Ink announced they have co-developed a new ePaper display that’s sized at 9.68 inches and boasts 2,400 x 1,650/300 dpi quality. By way of comparison: the Kindle DX (9.7 inches) comes with 1,200 x 824 pixel resolution at 150 ppi. → Read More
In today’s post The Inside Job world the poor get poorer and the rich get 85-inch Panasonic plasmas flush mounted on a reinforced wall. CEPro has the entire run down of equipment and installation fun facts, but all you really need to know is that this one TV is the size of four 42-inchers and sound comes from a B&W surround sound setup that’s powered by a 100-watt per channel Rotel… → Read More
A new site incubated by our own Roi Carthy is offering 40% off the 500GB ioSafe hard drive. The drive is crush, dust, shock, and water resistant and they even got Fake Grimlock to write the description. You can learn more about the drive here and pick it up for .35 cents per gigabyte. → Read More
TiVo is about to unveil a new pricing scheme that will lower the upfront cost of the hardware by raising the monthly fee. Actually, what they’re doing, is going to a single pricing model rather than running two separate. The lower hardware, higher monthly fee scheme was unveiled a while ago and still lives on with the old-as-TiVo high up front cost, low monthly fee pricing. That’s apparently set… → Read More
I put this question before you now: Can a man wear a pink watch and retain his masculinity? I made fun of the first guy I saw wearing a “salmon” colored shirt. But, today, it isn’t that uncommon. Worn properly, and in the right style, pink isn’t always out-of-place. So I wonder, has the time come when a man can get away with wearing a pink watch? → Read More
It was only a few shorts weeks ago that we reviewed Onavo, the must-have iOS app that significantly shrinks data consumption. We were so impressed with the app’s ability to save users money on their data usage plans, that we went so far as to say that every iOS user should download it.
Today the company is announcing a $3M Round A led by Sequoia Capital, with participation of Magma Venture… → Read More
You’re not a real celebrity until you have your own video game or, these days, your own section of FarmVille. Lady Gaga teamed up with Zynga to promote GagaVille, which is now live inside the game. It’s a place where you can grow jewels and get her new album when you purchase $25 in Zynga game cards. Yeah, that must be costing Zynga or one of its partners (Best Buy, Clear Channel) a pretty… → Read More
Patent trolling is often a lucrative hobby for many companies that have fallen into hard times. Like the junkies they are, the trolls will spin all sorts of delightful stories exonerating themselves of their actions in order to grab another infusion of cash. That’s why it’s not surprising to read this discussion from the trolls at Lodsys, a company that is now charging small mobile developers for… → Read More
Netflix video streaming is now the single largest source of peak downstream Interent traffic i the U.S., according to a new report by Sandvine. The streaming video service now accounts for 29.7 percent of peak downstream traffic, up from 21 percent last fall.
That puts Netflix above HTTP websites (18 percent), BitTorrent (11 percent), and YouTube (10 percent) as a source of downstream traffic… → Read More
Loyalize, an audience participation company, has acquired game studio Savage Entertainment. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Savage has worked with numerous publishers, including Electronic Arts, Activision, THQ, Midway, and LucasArts. The studio has created games for a number of well-known movies, including Transformers, James Bond, and Star Wars. Savage has also created… → Read More
Researchers at Germany’s University of Ulm have made some unsettling discoveries about the security of the Android platform. According to an article from The Register, the research group located a vulnerability that allows hackers to collect and use the digital tokens saved on a phone after a user inputs credentials for a password-protected service. → Read More
Eldar Murtazin isn’t often wrong, but his latest rumor concerning negotiations between Nokia and Microsoft on the acquisition of the former’s handset business by the latter have been squashed by the world’s biggest handset maker. For those who missed it, Mobile Review editor and leak wizard Eldar Murtazin wrote on his blog that Microsoft was in talks to buy Nokia’s handset division and… → Read More
Before companies can do anything about reducing their impact on the environment, they need to measure the damage they are doing. Energy management startup Hara helps them track their efforts to reduce their carbon footprint.
The company announced a new $25 million C round of funding today. Investors included Energy Technology Ventures, Focus Ventures and Navitas Capital, with existing investors… → Read More
In our little tech blog world, leaks are the enemy of big brands like Motorola and Verizon. OEMs and carriers try desperately to keep new products under wraps until the day of announcement, just to make the big moment that much sweeter. Maybe today is opposite day, but in any case, you tipsters may be out of a job, as Motorola AND Verizon have posted the unannounced Droid X2 to their sites. → Read More
BlackArrow, a provider of advertising solutions for ‘New Television platforms’, this morning announced a strategic investment by Time Warner Cable. Joan Gillman, president of media sales for TWC, has been named to the BlackArrow board of directors.
The cable system operator joins BlackArrow’s impressive list of backers, which includes Cisco, Comcast, Intel Capital, Mayfield Fund, Motorola… → Read More
Are sales of private company shares taking a breather? Demand for private company shares resulted in $115.4 million worth of transactions on SecondMarket during the first quarter of 2011, down from $120 million last year. The value of shares trading hands was also down from $158 million in the fourth quarter of 2010, according to its first quarter report.
The biggest buyers were high… → Read More
Jive Software, the maker of an all-in-one social enterprise software, has launched a deeper integration with Facebook today with the release of the Jive Facebook Connector. The connector allows companies to integrate Facebook communities, fan pages and content into the Jive external customer support communities.
Modeled to offer Facebook-like features to enterprises, Jive’s software combines… → Read More
Research firm Harris Interactive asked 2,124 American adults if they agree or disagree that some online companies, singling out such companies as Google or Facebook, control too much of our personal information and know too much about our browsing habits, and found that more than three quarters of respondents agreed (76%) with those statements.
Only one in six disagreed that these companies know… → Read More
As of right now, AT&T is on pretty equal ground with its rivals when it comes to HTC handsets. While AT&T has the HTC Inspire 4G, its competitors have the HTC Sensation (T-Mobile), the HTC ThunderBolt (Verizon), and the HTC EVO 3D (Sprint). Though, it would seem that equal ground isn’t quite satisfactory for AT&T, as the number 2 carrier has scooped up another high-end HTC device. → Read More
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