I’ve always considered eBay a haven for flim-flam artists, con-men, and fools but this takes the cake. The old scam – basically a fine-print ruse where you’re actually selling a link or a box or something while making it look like you’re selling the real thing – is still alive and well on eBay but now it’s taken a decidedly more commercial turn. These new… → Read More
If you’re a robot otaku who happens to be a Star Wars otaku, too, then this video is for you. Japanese robot maker Yaskawa recently showcased its Motoman 7-axis robo arms at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation in Shanghai (which ends this Friday). → Read More
Mobile payments are coming, and there are many paths being beaten to get them to our phones. Google-backed mobile payments startup Corduro launches this week with a combined mobile wallet/payments processor for Android and the iPhone (which will be available in the respective app stores later this week).
Like Square, Corduro is primarily a way for merchants to take payments on mobile devices. … → Read More
Slowly but surely we’re moving to an era immortalized by Blade Runner where robots become our boon companions and electronic friends with benefits, a helpmate and, in the cold reaches of deep space, a tender lover. Take Luna, for example. She is a robot made by Schultze Works for a company called RoboDynamics. → Read More
Expensify, the startup helps take the endless headaches out of expense reports, has added a innovative new feature today—total receipt automation.
Expensify’s platform allows you to pull in your transaction records and automatically categorize them. All you need to do is register your credit cards with the platform, and the site will automatically import E-receipts. You can also take a photo of… → Read More
E-learning software developer Trivantis has acquired Flypaper Studios, a startup that allows users to create flash-based web presentations without any programming experience. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Flypaper, which raised $6.5 million, allows users to create, edit, share, track and reuse Flash and video content. Users can leverage the startup’s existing templates and… → Read More
Apart from being uber-cute, Julie Watai from Japan has many talents: she is known as a model, singer, photographer, “multimedia artist” – and a genuine otaku. As such, she recently recorded and uploaded a video on YouTube that shows her modifying a Furby. → Read More
Gobble, an online marketplace for home-cooked food, has raised $1.2 million in funding from an all-star roster of investors including Reid Hoffman (via the Greylock DIscovery Fund), Felicis Ventures, Founder Collective, SV Angel, Morado Venture Partners, Thrive Capital, Keith Rabois, Jack Abraham, Lorenzo Thione, Benjamin Ling, Noah Goodhart, Craig Shapiro, and Doug Chertok.
Gobble is a way for… → Read More
Incubated within big data company Greenplum (acquired by EMC in 2010) and following 15 months of product development, Silicon Valley-based Alpine Data Labs launches its solution for “Big Data Predictive Insight” in the United States today.
The company is also announcing that it has landed $7.5 million in Series A funding from Sierra Ventures, Mission Ventures and Sumitomo Corporation Equity Asia. → Read More
Do you like your wallet? Too bad. Pageonce, the one-stop shop for managing your financial accounts, wants to turn your smartphone into the wallet of the future. Though, the last time I checked, Apple wasn’t planning to offer the iPhone in leather. Or snakeskin. We’re still getting excited over the fact that it comes in white. But that’s not slowing down Pageonce, which allows you to track your… → Read More
Today sees the launch of the “first-of-its-kind” national gift network FreeMonee, founded by an impressive team of veterans from some of the largest companies in banking, retail and e-commerce, with experience at organizations like eBay, Oracle, Best Buy, Cisco, Visa and ClairMail under their collective belts.
The company has secured $11 million in Series A funding from Opus Capital, Redpoint… → Read More
America’s first pipeline-fed, retail hydrogen fueling station opened in Torrance, California, within Los Angeles county on Tuesday. The station will provide hydrogen for fuel cell and hybrid vehicles in the area. It was built through a joint effort by Toyota, Air Products and Shell alternative energies, with funding from the South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD) and the U.S. → Read More
Tencent, a major provider of Internet and mobile services in China, this morning revealed earnings for the first quarter of 2011, reporting a better-than-expected 61 percent jump in net income.
The company’s profit rose to 2.87 billion yuan (roughly $442 million), up from 1.78 billion yuan (roughly $274 million) a year earlier. Total revenues were 6,33 billion yuan (approximately $975 million)… → Read More
Hey, remember back in the old days when you could post a picture on Twitter and not have it ransacked by news organisations and picture agencies? Yeah, those days are gone. All these picture sharing apps are looking lovingly at the feed of images coming in and licking their lips. Whether you like it or not, one day these apps will have to monetize and there is gold in them there photos…
So… → Read More
Yes, smartphone apps are still in vogue, and most mobile app stores continue to grow by leaps and bounds. Yet consumers spend more time engaging with the mobile Web on their smartphones than through ad-supported apps, mobile advertising startup Jumptap says in its STAT (Simple Targeting & Audience Trends) report. The company claims more than 58 percent of mobile internet users in the U.S. are… → Read More
It’s not the first 3D smartphone from Sharp, but the AQUOS PHONE SH-12C big S unveiled [JP] is much cooler (if you think 3D in a phone is really necessary, that is). The company simply seems to have squeezed in everything they have into the Android device. → Read More
Live From Google I/O 2011 Video: Pomplamoose Covers The Angry Birds Theme (And Records It With A Samsung Infuse 4G!) Free EV Charging Stations Coming To San Francisco, Freeloading Allowed Through 2013 Viral video: Robot 1 – Human 0 35-Year-Old Apple I Resuscitated At Italian University → Read More
Exclusive: BranchOut, a professional social network for Facebook, has raised $18 million in Series B funding led by Redpoint Ventures with Accel Partners, Norwest Venture Partners, and Floodgate also participating the the round. This investment brings BranchOut’s total funding to $24 million. Geoff Yang, founding partner of Redpoint Ventures, will join Accel Partner Kevin Efrusy on BranchOut’s… → Read More
Add another stealth eCommerce startup attracting pre-launch funding from eager investors to your list. That is, of course, if you have one. Last month, we covered Decide, a Seattle-based company looking to bring transparency to the online consumer shopping experience that has raised $8.5 million pre-launch. And now Inporia, a new startup that’s also currently in stealth mode, is looking to add a… → Read More
Google is approaching a watershed moment in its internal platform wars. The time is nearly at hand when they will have to decide once and for all what Android is, what Chrome OS is, and where they are both going. This is not to say it has not been internally decided and even worked out to the decimal for some years ahead — but they’re going to have to break it to the world sooner or later… → Read More
Here’s a cheerful little item to help advance your week towards Friday. Technicians at the Politecnico de Torino (a university in Turin, Italy) have managed to bring an original Apple I back to life. These extremely early examples of home computing are nearly impossible to find, and indeed this one was purchased by a wealthy collector for over $200,000. They cleaned the contacts, tested the… → Read More
Toshiba’s second venture into the tablet arena is off to a rough start, as reports have come in saying that the Toshiba slate will be delayed in the UK. Originally, Toshiba had promised that the 10.1-inch Android 3.0 Honeycomb tablet would arrive in the UK sometime during Q2. Sounds like that was a bit optimistic. → Read More
A few months ago the Internet was aflame with suicides at Foxconn and then there were rumors that the massive manufacturing company was forcing its employees to sign “anti-suicide” pledges. Now, at least according to a Canadian news organization, Foxconn has confirmed that this is not true. “Foxconn does not ask its employees to sign any such documents, any reports to the… → Read More
Google announced Android 3.1 earlier today at I/O. More surprising than the OS itself (which was expected, really) was that it was rolling out to Verizon Xooms today. Google failed to announce when it was hitting other devices beside Google TV, which will get it this summer, and the Galaxy Tab 10.1, which will get it in the next few weeks.
As announced, the UI is much the same. You can’t tell 3.0… → Read More
It’s looking like the HP TouchPad and HP Pre 3 aren’t too far away from release. Back at the Think Beyond event in February, the devices were promised to appear this “summer,” and since then, a more specific time frame has been laid out. According to multiple statements made by HP CEO Leo Apotheker, the HP TouchPad should show up in June. But what about the Pre 3? → Read More
We’ve seen some cool applications of pico projectors in the last few years: the Game Gun comes to mind, and… that other game gun as well.
Disney (who, I guess unsurprisingly, maintains a whole research organization) is interested in the possible games and interactive experiences these cool little devices make possible. They’ve put together some prototypes – check out the video. → Read More
Like a Heroku for PHP, PHP Fog is launching to the public today in order to help PHP developers deploy and scale their applications in the cloud. Raising $1.8 million in a round lead by Madrona and followed on by First Round, Founders Co-Op and others. PHP Fog launched in private beta in December and is now available for all members of the public.
Aside from focusing solely on PHP, what PHP Fog… → Read More
Today at Google I/O in San Francisco, Google developers Amit Joshi and Alex Russell took the stage at a breakout session to announce an important milestone: a version of Chrome Frame that doesn’t require admin rights to install.
While this might not jump out at you as a huge thing, it’s big news for millions of users stuck working at offices or schools with older machines where admins won’t allow… → Read More
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