Sony is performing the old salt-in-the-wound trick by informing Bloomberg that the PSN/Quoricity outage should last another 22 days with an expected return date of May 31. This came from an interview with a Sony spokesman in a Bloomberg interview. Security is the key here. Sony is adopting new techniques and practices to beef up its online services and apparently that takes some time. → Read More
Row Sham Bow, a new game development studio founded by gaming industry veterans and focused on creating games for social networks and direct-to-consumer platforms, has raised $3 million in funding from early-stage VC firm Intersouth Partners.
Founded earlier this year by president & CEO Philip Holt (former VP and GM of EA Tiburon) and CTO Nick Gonzalez (former Chief Software Architect at EA… → Read More
Six years ago when Twitter was just a side project by a podcasting startup called Odeo, there was one member of the early team that wasn’t American. In fact, he wasn’t even based in the U.S., and for two years worked remotely and unknown to the world from an apartment block in Hamburg, Germany.
This is the story of the almost forgotten founding member of Twitter’s earliest crew, a typically… → Read More
NASDAQ-listed Limelight Networks this morning announced the acquisition of AcceloWeb, a Tel Aviv-based provider of technology that helps speed the presentation of websites and applications. We wrote about the company back in July 2009 when it was still called FasterWeb.
Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, but we’ve learned that the transaction was completed with a combination of… → Read More
Why is this man smiling? HP’s new Datapass service works with HP’s latest crop of WLAN compatible laptops and includes wireless coverage throughout most parts of the US (essentially anywhere you get Sprint access.) Download prices are pretty steep: $5 for 75MB and $30 for 1GB but they are offering 100MB free to new trial customers. → Read More
NVIDIA this morning announced its acquisition of Icera, which provides baseband processors for 3G and 4G cellular phones and tablets.
The acquisition, for $367 million in cash, has been approved by both companies’ boards of directors and is expected to be completed, subject to customary closing conditions, in approximately 30 days. → Read More
As we heard in the company’s most recent earnings call, e-commerce giant Amazon is planning to open at least nine fulfillment centers to meet growing demand in sales across the globe. Today, the company is announcing an expanded center in Phoenix, Arizona and brand new center in Indianapolis, Indiana.
Amazon’s fulfillment centers enables the company and third-party merchants to store inventory… → Read More
Luxury group buying service Gilt Groupe is joining the mega-round bandwagon today with a new $138 million funding, led by Softbank, which took nearly half the round. Goldman Sachs, New Enterprise Associates, Draper Fisher Jurvetson Growth, Pinnacle Ventures, TriplePoint Capital and Eastward Capital also participated, as did existing investors General Atlantic and Matrix Partners.
Gilt Groupe… → Read More
A Greek gadget blog got a note from Nokia describing an event that is happening on May 17 in Athens. No further information is available, but here’s hoping we’ll see some nice WinPho phones on the streets of Greece this month. → Read More
AVOS, the new company formed by YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, has acquired Tap11, a real-time business intelligence platform. The company’s platform integrates social publishing and analytics into a single dashboard to allow marketers to monitor, engage, and measure the impact of their campaigns. According to the press release, Tap11 works with over 500 major brands, media… → Read More
No doubt the Galaxy S II is a great smartphone, and it’s apparently set to sell really well, too. Samsung says [KOR] that global pre-orders for their flagship handset have reached 3 million as of the end of April (which means they should have received even more by now). → Read More
European music startup musiXmatch will be announcing today at the MusicTech Summit in San Francisco that it has closed a $3.7 million series A funding round for its digital lyrics platform. The round was led by Italian investor Francesco Micheli Associates. musiXmatch adds to the prior $700K it has raised in seed funding from both Francesco Micheli and a former Dada executive.
Lyrics are one of… → Read More
eBay last month announced that it has agreed to buy GSI Commerce, a provider of ecommerce and interactive marketing services, for $29.25 a share, or total consideration of approximately $2.4 billion.
Under the terms of the merger agreement, GSI Commerce reserved the right to solicit acquisition proposals from alternative parties for a period of 40 calendar days.
That “go shop” period has now… → Read More
After disclosing its intention to list its IPO on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol LNKD, LinkedIn has released a new filing with the SEC that shows that it is pricing its IPO between $32.00 and $35.00 per share. LinkedIn filed its initial S-1 in January, with the total offering amount of $175 million.
LinkedIn is offering 7,840,000 shares in its IPO, offering 4,827,804 shares of its… → Read More
Samsung officially announced [KOR] the D9500 today, a 75-inch LCD 3D TV with LED backlight, the biggest of its kind. That is pretty cool, but the downside is that users will need to wear active shutter 3D glasses to view pictures in 3D. → Read More
Between PayPal, Square and NFC technologies, mobile payments are heating up. There’s no doubt that your mobile phone will soon serve as your wallet. Today, startup Tabbedout, a platform that allows you to pay your restaurant or bar tab with a smartphone, has raised $3.7 million in additional funding from New Enterprise Associates to complete the company’s Series A round of venture funding… → Read More
Local deals juggernaut Groupon and Live Nation have a formed a joint venture to develop a new online ticketing deals channel dubbed GrouponLive. The site will serve as a local resource for Live Nation events, ranging from concerts, sports, theater, arts and other live events, as well as clients of its ticketing business Ticketmaster, the companies said in a joint statement.
Visitors of the new… → Read More
Consumer device chip maker Broadcom has acquired SC Square, a security software maker based in Tel Aviv, Israel, the company announced over the weekend.
Broadcom will pay $41.9 million, net of cash, to purchase all of the outstanding shares of capital stock and other equity rights of SC Square, which provides a number of chip security and communication products and solutions. → Read More
Anybody who has had to sift through hundreds of resumes at a time or placed a job advert that’s gone unfilled for months will know that the recruitment process isn’t always as efficient as it could be. It’s not surprising then that many startups have tried to bring recruitment kicking and screaming into the Internet age – from various job sites to the professional social networking giant… → Read More
Here are some of the stories that appeared in the past week on CrunchGear: Be A Sky Pirate At Last With This Sweet Kite Airship! This Bulbous Craft Could Launch In 2013 Nintendo DS AR Card Tattoo (Possibly Sharpie) Indicates Extreme Fanboy Levels Games Are Now Officially Recognized As Art By The US Government Weekend Giveaway: A 16GB BlackBerry Playbook → Read More
Whoa, so Alven Capital has been a pretty busy bee this year – especially for a French fund. This is something like the 5th investment that the fund has announced since January, totalling over €8.5 million ($12.25 million) invested in companies like Entropysoft, HappyView, MobPartner and QuelleEnergie. Today’s investment of €1 million ($1.4 million) goes to custom travel site, Planetveo. → Read More
Cloud Sherpas, a Google Apps reseller that also helps enterprises migrate to and manage the productivity suite, is announcing a milestone today and is upgrading its offering with a number of new features.
Cloud Sherpas not only helps companies migrate and transition over to Google Apps but also provides additional tools, called Sherpa Tools, to make the productivity suite more useful. For… → Read More
Back in August of last year, with a small amount of media fanfare, I quit Twitter and every other social network. At the time, I was in the midst of making final edits to The Upgrade as well as writing three columns a week. For someone who makes a living writing about himself, I explained, Twitter is a huge distraction from paid work. It is also, as I discovered while researching the book, fatal… → Read More
Finally there’s a reason for young people to use LinkedIn! If you’re having trouble keeping track of where your friends work in this current startupgasm, WhoWorks.At was made for you.
Just download the Chrome extension and it will let you know who in your LinkedIn network works at whatever site you’re currently browsing in Chrome, whether it be Facebook, Google, TechCrunch or some stealth… → Read More
About a week and a half ago, I wrote a post defending Apple against the location FUD being spread. Due to some real, but minor issues (which have already been resolved) Apple was at the center of this. Then the focus immediately seemed to shift towards Google. If Apple is “watching you” with the iPhone, Google must be as well with Android devices, right? Sure — if you’re a paranoid looney who… → Read More
Back in August of last year, with a small amount of media fanfare, I quit Twitter and every other social network.
At the time, I was in the midst of making final edits to The Upgrade as well as writing three columns a week. For someone who makes a living writing about himself, I explained, Twitter is a huge distraction from paid work. It is also, as I discovered while researching the book, fatal… → Read More
Digging out from under a mountain of stuff this weekend, I’m hopelessly behind. Disclosure: I work at salesforce.com, doing amazing things I can’t say anything about.
Apparently, the tech press is abuzz with controversy about Mike Arrington’s continuing success at actually saying what he thinks. Disclosure: I am a big fan of everything Mike does, and particularly his skill at reinventing the… → Read More
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