The name Clearspring Technologies may not be terribly familiar to you, but chances are you’ve often clicked on or at least come across its AddThis buttons, which are plastered on publisher sites Web-wide.
The U.S.-based social sharing platform company this morning announced that it has raised a whopping $20 million in a Series D round of funding led by Institutional Venture Partners, with… → Read More
Just over a year ago, Salesforce acquired Jigsaw, which provides crowd-sourced data services in the cloud. The startup crowdsources information on professionals and companies and currently has a database of information on more than 24 million professionals at nearly 4 million companies. Now Salesforce is integrating Jigsaw’s data into its CRM product, giving sales representatives greater, realtime… → Read More
Unlike most, SendGrid, the TechStars-incubated email management and delivery system, loves dealing with overloaded inboxes. In fact, it loves email so much that it has delivered over 9 billion emails for more than 23K companies. This is probably why, since graduating from TechStars, the email enthusiast has raised over $5 million in funding, and brought on former Oracle executive Jim Franklin as… → Read More
Proformative, which operates an online resource and community website for corporate finance, accounting and treasury professionals, has raised $1.1 million in funding in a Series A round led by Bullpen Capital and Mike Maples. → Read More
An anonymous robot otaku from Japan has created a video that shows a mini desk robot battling it out against a human. The human wants to switch it on, but the robot just won’t let him. → Read More
How To Survive The Coming Appization Of Just About Everything Double-Barrelled Pneumatic Water Cannon Makes The Greatest Noise Ever World Record Set For Most Flashes Used In One Picture: 300 Shoefitr: You Know, For Shoes From The Makers Of “Machete Crossbow” – “The Avalaunche” → Read More
We’re just a few hours away from the kick off of Google I/O — the search giant’s huge annual conference for all things Google. Well, most things. The social stuff isn’t being talked about. Google TV probably won’t be getting much love either. But everything else appears to be on the table. And naturally, that includes Chrome OS.
Chrome OS has always been an interesting project for Google. For… → Read More
There are dozens of reasons why Airbnb is awesome. Take its truly disruptive model, for instance. Or if that doesn’t do it for you, how about the fact that you can use it to rent entire countries? But if there’s one weakness with the service, it’s that using it for the first time can be a bit unnerving. Who am I staying with? How do I know that their apartment isn’t really a dump? Reviews and… → Read More
Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) are not sexy. Most people have no idea they exist; those that do know that they make the web snappier by replicating content on multiple servers, typically in different locations. Big names in the space include Akamai and Limelight. Some CDNs offer APIs that make common tasks like video streaming easier. Not exactly the sort of thing people talk about around the… → Read More
Olympus’s XZ-1 competes with models like the Canon S95 and Panasonic LX-5 in the “primo point and shoot” market, and looks good doing it. But having a manual lens cap can sometimes be a pain: it’s either dangling from a lanyard, taking up space in your pocket, or getting lost somewhere. This excellent retracting lens cap fits over the lens and splits apart to get out of the… → Read More
Flashback: Moscone Center, San Francisco. Google’s Vic Gundotra is pacing the stage, rolling off one new awesome Android feature after another. There’s Fro Yo, the new version of Android that does laps (literally) around iOS. And then for a real a-ha moment: a sneak peek at Google Music, a service that would let you purchase songs from your desktop and ‘push’ them to your phone wirelessly, among… → Read More
While gamers around the world are pining for their online play and PSN store access, the companies that rely on the service to sell games are really feeling it. Capcom is one of many PSN-reliant companies that’s losing a ton of money in lost sales. VP Christian Svensson posts on their forums: “as an executive responsible for running a business, the resulting outage obviously costing us… → Read More
The deal buzzards are swirling around Skype, and Microsoft may end up with the prize. Om first reported the rumor, which is now getting major play by the WSJ. Microsoft is in final negotiations to buy Skype for $7 billion, according to the WSJ report. The final price might go closer to $8 billion.
Google and Facebook were also sniffing around Skype, which put off its IPO earlier this year to… → Read More
If you’re a fan of reading long-form content online, you probably already know what Longreads is. If not, you should. It’s the best way to find content between 1,500 and 30,000 words on the web. And today they’ve upped the discovery element a bit by making it more social.
“Community Picks” is a new area of the Longreads website which scans Twitter for the most tweeted (and retweeted) Longreads… → Read More
This world record, confirmed by Guinness (they know of such things), is even more impressive to me, seeing as I can’t even get single flash unit to work properly. These guys synced up three hundred flashes to light a picture at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center. The picture above shows the setup, but I believe that’s just the portrait for the record page. If they set the… → Read More
To be honest, the performance of this pneumatic cannon isn’t really blowing me away — but the noise it makes is cracking me up. Can you spare fifteen seconds to watch the video? I knew you could. → Read More
The store downstairs from your apartment specialized in junk. Its owner was a small man, his face sagging and acne scarred, his front shirt pocket bulging with a pack of Marlboros and his hands always, always fiddling. He died a week ago and his shop has been locked since. At night you hear a baby crying through the floor. A mewling, a squeal, silence for an hour, maybe two. You stare in the near… → Read More
Shutl, an on-demand delivery platform that aggregates transportation carriers to enable them to deliver in short time windows, has taken a £650,000 ($1m) investment round from Hummingbird Ventures and a European Postal Group of some description, but they are not saying which.
Shutl has recently been piloting its service with Argos, a leading multi-channel and high street retailer in the UK. … → Read More
“It’s probably something that Don Draper would come up with if Larry and Sergey were his clients.”
– Steven Levy “Google’s Sophie’s Choice”
By now you’ve probably seen or read about Google’s warm and fuzzy ‘Dear Sophie’ commercial, which debuted last week and aired during a coveted spot on Saturday Night Live this weekend. In the commercial, which was inspired by a true story, Sophie’s dad… → Read More
As online video advertising continues to grow, and expands to mobile, brands are looking for ways to get more bang for their advertising buck, and viewers continue to yearn for and expect video advertising that is more personalized, targeted, and relevant. And obviously the same is true for brands and advertisers — they, too, want to be able to customize their ad experience to reach consumers… → Read More
Studies like this may seem slightly… well, obvious to you (informed reader) and me (lonely blogger), but the fact is that no matter how clear things like “yeah the kids these days love Facebook” seem to us, they do need to be studied and quantified in experimental fashion, or else they’re just intuitions.
In this case, the common knowledge (to us) that teenagers value their Facebook pictures… → Read More
One of my favorite things to do on long flights is play through old games on an emulator. Got five or six spare hours? You can beat Mega Man 2, Super Mario Bros. 3, and tackle a few dungeons in Chrono Trigger between naps and salisbury steaks. But the best gamepads (Xbox 360, Logitech) are often bulky. Here’s a foldable one for your consideration. → Read More
As the competition looks set to turn up the heat, StylistPick, the fashion buying site backed by Accel Partners and Index Ventures, has appointed ex-UK editor of Marie Claire, Juliet Warkentin, as Chief Creative Officer and Co-Founder.
Most recently, Warkentin was Content Director at style trend analysis firm WGSN, while prior to this she has also held the role of Internet director at Arcadia… → Read More
Evernote rival Springpad is announcing support for Android Honeycomb tablets and is also debuting offline access via its popular chrome web app.
Similar to Evernote, Springpad serves as a multi-platform digital notebook. The service allows you to jot down notes, save websites, images and more. Springpad will then categorizes your saved content, and allows you to share your notes, set reminders… → Read More
The Gillmor Gang — John Borthwick, Robert Scoble, John Taschek, and Steve Gillmor — inaugurated a new kind of Gillmor Gang. To the undisclosed, it looks the same: silly chat, mangled technology disruptions, and dead air. To the more clueful, who recognize we’re entering a new age of social media, the intersection of social monitoring and proactive brand creation tools spells big trouble for… → Read More
Shoefitr allows you to find a shoe that is similar in size and shape to a pair of shoes you already own. For example, say you’re into Nike Free Runs but they discontinued the model you like. You tell Shoefittr and using the site’s 3D scanning system it finds a pair that matches the size and shape of the shoe you like. The 3D scanning system is based on the same systems used to scan feet for… → Read More
The Looxcie LX1 hit with the scene to a skeptical crowd — Wha, you put a camera in a Bluetooth headset? Why? But it seems things must have went well for the company as what appears to be the next generation camera just hit the FCC. → Read More
Remember a couple weeks back, we saw that sweet crossbow that shot machetes instead of bolts? Well, the creator of that engine of destruction has put together a new contraption: a slingshot that fires six 20mm steel balls at once. It powers through that watermelon like there’s nothing there. → Read More
Back in March location-based game SCVNGR launched a spinoff venture called LevelUp — a direct competitor to Groupon, Living Social, and other daily deal sites. LevelUp’s key twist is that it has a heavy focus on generating repeat visitors, as opposed to customers who only stop by a venue once to redeem their deal. And today it has some significant news: it’s partnered with American Express to… → Read More
The cool cats at A Dangerous Business recently visited a seemingly forgotten Russian arcade museum in Moscow featuring some of the greatest old video games you could ever imagine coming out of a totalitarian worker’s state circa 1983. For example we’re introduced to a game…
called “Репка Силомер” (Repka Silomer) or “Turnip Strength Tester.” Later that night, we showed the photos to… → Read More
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