Three years after founding bitly as a home-grown startup inside betaworks, John Borthwick is passing the reigns to a new CEO, Peter Stern. Borthwick will remain CEO of betaworks and concentrate on new products and investments.
Stern comes most recently from Zenbe, a webmail platform and mobile that went through a Facebook talent acquisition last November. Stern, who was a co-founder, didn’t go… → Read More
Flash memory storage solutions provider SanDisk has acquired Pliant Technology, a developer of enterprise solid state drives, the company announced this morning.
Under the terms of the agreement, SanDisk will pay approximately $327 million in cash plus earn-out. → Read More
Mobile payments startup Billing Revolution has raised $6.6 million in Series B funding, led by DCM and SK Telecom Ventures. This latest funding round will be used to hire marketing, business development and product staff.
Launched in 2008, the startup that offers a single-click billing and payment service for transactions on mobile phones, including Android and iPhone devices. Once consumers are… → Read More
Virtualization software giant VMware this morning announced that it has agreed to acquire Shavlik Technologies, a provider of cloud-based IT management solutions for small and medium businesses.
Financial terms of the acquisition, which is expected to be completed later this year, were not disclosed. → Read More
We covered NTT Docomo‘s smartphone line-up for this summer here, but Japan’s leading mobile carrier also revealed 11 new feature phones today. And here are all of them listed up. → Read More
StackMob, a cloud-based system designed to ease the development and deployment of mobile applications, has raised $7.5 million led by Trinity Ventures with StackMob’s existing investors, Harrison Metal and Baseline Ventures, participating in the round.
StackMob, which is currently in private beta, is a fully hosted and managed platform that allows developers to build, deploy and manage feature… → Read More
Japan’s biggest mobile carrier NTT Docomo has announced its summer line-up of cell phones today, and we have squeezed all their nine new smartphones (plus Fujitsu’s Windows 7/Symbian hybrid) into this article for your reading pleasure (click here for a list of all new feature phones). → Read More
The first name that comes to mind when we talk about social games in Europe is probably Wooga. But the German-based social games publisher has a number of local competitors dispersed throughout the continent. In France, one of the names that has gotten a lot of attention is Kobojo, who is behind PyramidVille and Goobox.
Well, now there is a new kid on the block: Pretty Simple. And the company has… → Read More
First To File, a patent document management service, has raised $2 million in Series B funding led by Foundation Capital. This brings the startup’s total funding to $4 million.
First To File is a SaaS, patent document management service for organizations and companies that deal with IP portfolios. The startup’s software provides a way to manage all patent related documents and knowledge; and… → Read More
This is a guest post by Monty Munford, blogger at Monty’s Outlook and freelance Mobile/social consultant is (also a Bollywood actor, next movie out April 2011). He tweets @montymunford.
Eighteen entrepreneurs from around the UK recently spent a week on the West Coast of the US as part of Webmisson. As part of the visit, the group attended the TechCrunch offices in San Francisco and were part of… → Read More
Primedia, which helps people find apartments, houses for rent or new homes for sale through websites, mobile and print publications, this morning said it has entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by affiliates of private investment firm TPG Capital.
Under the terms of the agreement, holders of the outstanding common shares of Primedia will receive $7.10 per share in cash… → Read More
Satellite TV and video-on-demand company DISH Network this morning announced today that Joseph P. Clayton has been named the company’s president and chief executive officer and has been appointed to its board of directors, effective June 20, 2011. The company’s iconic co-founder, Charles Ergen, will step down from his operational role at the helm of the company but remain as chairman of DISH… → Read More
Ask.fm, a European Formspring competitor, has added video answers to its conversational Q&A service.
Rather than answering questions in text, the browser-based feature lets anybody with a webcam record and upload an answer in video to questions sent to their Ask.fm profile, which can be from other Ask.fm members or submitted anonymously. It’s pretty straightforward, with the ‘Record video… → Read More
It turns out the leak we blogged last month is true: Japan’s biggest mobile carrier NTT Docomo today officially introduced the Fujitsu LOOX F-07C as part of its summer line-up, and the device actually does dual-boot to Symbian and Windows 7 OS (not Windows Phone). Hardware-wise, the LOOX is pretty interesting, too. → Read More
Cambridge, UK-based infrastructure software company Autonomy this morning announced that it is acquiring a number of assets of Iron Mountain‘s digital division – including the latter’s archiving, e-discovery and online backup business units – for $380 million in cash.
Dr. Mike Lynch, CEO of Autonomy, said in a statement that they’ve been wanting to close such a deal for a while now. → Read More
Treintafel Is Dutch For Train Table, And That’s Exactly What This Is Weekend Giveaway: Something Called An iPad Two (??) Samsung’s New High-Resolution Screens: Too Good To Be True? World Record Set For Most Flashes Used In One Picture: 300 Viral video: Robot 1 – Human 0 → Read More
“a friend in the US just told me that #DSK was arrested by the police in a NYC hotel one hour ago.”
It was the middle of the night in Paris when the news broke that Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the Chief of the IMF, had been pulled off an Air France flight and arrested for sexual assault. Coincidentally, he was also set to announce his candidacy for the 2012 French presidential elections next month … → Read More
I have no idea if Lady Gaga, Jessica Alba or Cameron Diaz have good taste. But whoever is designing their fashion accessories is also selling pieces on Boticca.com. The London-based startup that launched it’s high-end designer marketplace in October 2010 has been getting quite a bit of attention from investors over the last few months. Finally, the team is announcing that it has closed a £1.5… → Read More
Facebook may have over 600 million users but there’s still one problem: all the info is online! How on earth are you supposed to know if that cutie you just met is single or married without access to his or her profile?! Ok, yes, you could just ask – but that’s not very tactful now, is it? So, rather than having to muster up any courage and attack the subject head on, we could all just wear our… → Read More
Paris-based IJENKO provides a number of eco-friendly, smart energy solutions for the home – including its personal smart grid. The company founded in 2008 raised €2 million in January 2010 from Direct Energie, ISource and Bouygues Telecom Initiatives and has just scored another €3.5 million from the same investors.
Often compared to US-based OPower (who recently closed a $50 million round)… → Read More
This weekend finds me in London, whirling around in the eye of the book launch storm and with very little opportunity to keep track of what’s making news in the world of technology. Fortunately here in the UK there’s one tech story that’s impossible to miss: an anonymous Twitter user has been posting details of legal injunctions, taken out by celebrities to keep their alleged… → Read More
At 35 thousand feet you can see the future of push notification more clearly. The in-flight WiFi won’t sustain FaceTime or Skype video, but it handles IM just fine. GTalk is buried in the Gmail menus; it has no iPhone or iPad version. Neither Skype nor Facebook Chat have iPad versions, but they do support push notifications through iPhone. Facebook Chat sends push notifications but goes offline… → Read More
Google has finally made good on their promise to deliver Chrome OS to the world this summer. Or they will, on June 15 when the first Chromebooks are available. Considering that I’m potentially the perfect type of user for such a machine — that is, nearly everything I do these days is in the browser — I’ve been very interested in the OS/product development. Last week, I got my hands on one of… → Read More
If you’d asked me a week ago what I thought about Honeycomb, the tablet version of Android, I would have said that it was in very bad shape and that it would be several months before it could even hold a candle to the iPad 2. Because despite my excitement to see Android take on Apple’s ridiculously successful iPad, my experience with the Motorola Xoom — the first Honeycomb tablet — has been … → Read More
“a friend in the US just told me that #DSK was arrested by the police in a NYC hotel one hour ago.”
It was the middle of the night in Paris when the news broke that Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the Chief of the IMF, had been pulled off an Air France flight and arrested for sexual assault. Coincidentally, he was also set to announce his candidacy for the 2012 French presidential elections next month … → Read More
Facebook may have over 600 million users but there’s still one problem: all the info is online! How on earth are you supposed to know if that cutie you just met is single or married without access to his or her profile?! Ok, yes, you could just ask – but that’s not very tactful now, is it? So, rather than having to muster up any courage and attack the subject head on, we could all just wear our… → Read More
Ever since he could remember, Ibrahim Boakye had a knack for understanding how things worked. There were things he could just do that no other kids– let alone adults– could understand. By the time he was five-years-old everyone had stopped questioning it, and neighbors were calling on him to fix their broken toasters, irons, or anything that was the least bit mechanical.
By his early teens, he… → Read More
If you’d asked me a week ago what I thought about Honeycomb, the tablet version of Android, I would have said that it was in very bad shape and that it would be several months before it could even hold a candle to the iPad 2. Because despite my excitement to see Android take on Apple’s ridiculously successful iPad, my experience with the Motorola Xoom — the first Honeycomb tablet — has been … → Read More
This weekend finds me in London, whirling around in the eye of the book launch storm and with very little opportunity to keep track of what’s making news in the world of technology.
Fortunately here in the UK there’s one tech story that’s impossible to miss: an anonymous Twitter user has been posting details of legal injunctions, taken out by celebrities to keep their alleged misdeeds out of the… → Read More
According to Sony, the Playstation Network is back online in North America and the US. You will need to upgrade your firmware to 3.6.1 and change your password to play. Our long national nightmare is over. → Read More
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