The Robocalypse, it’s coming nearer and nearer. Case in point: POLYRO (short for “oPen sOurce friendLY RObot”), a mini humanoid that apparently costs less than $2,000 to produce, all parts included. Developed by American robot researcher Timothy Payne, the little guy is meant to be used to explore human-robot interaction and can be built following these instructions. → Read More
Groupon rival BuyWithMe has acquired a daily deal site in the former’s home turf, Chicago, in order to expand its regional offering. With the acquisition of the group buying site, DealADayOnline (DADO), BuyWithMe will offer daily deals in 13 major cities across the United States. → Read More
I like to think of Gogobot as a Yelp for travel, or a TripAdvisor that puts users first. If you travel a lot and want to write about the things you did, or if you want good tips on travel, it’s an excellent resource (see our launch post from last year for a detailed review).
You can navigate Gogobot by searching for places or things. Or, you can see where a particular user has gone by navigating… → Read More
First it was Astro Boy last month, now its popular Dutch cartoon bunny miffy that gets a special edition Casio Exilim camera [JP]. Technically, the so-called miffy2011xEXILIM is based on the EXILIM EX-Z800 Casio introduced last summer, but it’s way cuter of course. → Read More
When we first covered Stipple in September of last year, it seemed like a really cool idea: tag people in images no matter where they reside on the web — not just on Flickr or Facebook. It was quickly clear that investors like Kleiner Perkins, Mike Maples, and even Justin Timberlake agreed, as they poured $2 million into the company just three months post-launch. And now that Stipple is ready to… → Read More
TrueCar, which helps people research new and used car prices and find local dealer savings, has acquired automotive social media company Honk.com, dubbed the ‘Facebook for car buyers’ in the news release.
Interestingly, Honk.com was co-founded by Tom Taira, who is also the co-founder and former president of … TrueCar.
News Corporation, an early investor in Honk.com, will retain an equity stake… → Read More
If you’re the proud owner of a new Skype-enabled 2011 Panasonic Viera television, there’s probably one question that’s been plaguing you: “Where the deuce do I find a decent TV-mountable webcam for this thing?” Well, Logitech makes one — same one they’ve had for six or seven months now — and now it’s specifically compatible with your TVs. Just… → Read More
Friendfund, the group payments startup that lets friends club together to make a purchase, has announced an undisclosed round of funding from a group on Angel investors described as, well, friends. The investment was led by Bjoern von Siemens in partnership with Linden VC.
However, cheesy PR aside, Friendfund is operating in an increasingly crowded and hot space right now. The Berlin-based… → Read More
Recently, Paris-based Tigerlily seemed like it was slipping under the radar. It’d been a while since we’d heard anything from the company that we suggested Nestlé take a look at when the brand came under fire on social media platforms last year. Tigerlily had also caught a bit of attention before, as it was a finalist for LeWeb in 2009 and the Europas last year. But the startup that specializes… → Read More
Video: Online Kiss Transmission Device IODATA 3TB Drive Looks Like It’s Mad At You Carry Your iPad 2 In The Pockets Of These Tactical Pants NOUS System Allows Disabled Users To Perform Simple Tasks… With Their Brains! Nintendo DS AR Card Tattoo (Possibly Sharpie) Indicates Extreme Fanboy Levels → Read More
The Financial Times yesterday reported on the upcoming IPO of Chinese social network Renren.com:
The strong interest [in Renren's IPO] stems from the fact that there is no major social media or social networking company open to public investment. With a Facebook IPO at least a year off, many investors are keen for a slice of “the Facebook of China”.
The offering is set to price on Tuesday… → Read More
A Cambridge, England cleantech company, Enecsys, closed a £25 million ($41 million) series B round which the company plans to use to take its solar microinverter technology to more international markets including Canada and the U.S.
Solar microinverters convert the DC power that’s produced by solar panels into AC power, that can be either be used on-site, or sent back to the electrical grid. The… → Read More
Getty Images has acquired competitor The Photolibrary Group, which provides access to over 10 million images, footage and music files. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
Founded in 1967 and headquartered in Sydney, Australia, Photolibrary brings to Getty Images a broad range of content, some with regional appeal, including renowned collections such as Peter Arnold and Oxford Scientific. → Read More
We wrote about Dapsem when they showed off their to-be-launched iPhone app at Techonomy3 in Tel Aviv a few weeks ago. I was impressed by the simplicity of the app, which simply allows you to give a maximum of three ‘daps’ (like a Facebook Like) a day to something or someone you want to praise or just acknowledge.
It is a stupidly simple concept but one which has lots of potential to scale and… → Read More
Reading the headlines a month ago, you would have thought Apple’s insane run in the stock market was over. “Apple Crunched in Nasdaq Rebalance,” read the key Wall Street Journal headline. But the reality of the situation was much calmer. And actually, Apple ended up a little ahead of where they were when the news first hit.
Here was the situation: because Apple’s stock had risen so quickly over… → Read More
Earlier tonight, Yahoo announced that they grabbed one from our side to be the new Editor in Chief of their Yahoo Media Network: Jai Singh. Singh had been the Executive Editor at Huffington Post (and more recently, AOL HuffPo) for the past two years, where he helped shaped the company into the news and information juggernaut that it has become. Now we know who his replacement will be: Nico Pitney… → Read More
Sweet baby Grylls. This “Crovel” tool is absolutely monstrous. Its patent-pending hardened steel shape is alternately sharp, grippy, heavy, and jagged. The rope grip even detaches to form… you know, rope. $85? I’ll take ten, please. [via Uncrate and Gizmodo] → Read More
Hitmaker and Apptitude creator NoiseToys has raised $1.2 million in seed funding this week, to continue to focus on apps that bring together social sharing and game mechanics. Noise Toys launched at TechCrunch Disrupt NYC last year.
Investors in the round included DCM, former Playdom Chairman Rick Thompson, Guitar Hero founder Charles Huang, Coveroo CEO Karl Jacob, NEA general partner Kittu… → Read More
While the world concentrates on Sohaib Athar (@ReallyVirtual on Twitter), the lone Twitter user in Abbottabad when US forces landed to take out Osama Bin Laden, there was one other Twitterer not far away trying to work out what was going on in his home town and fearing for his relatives’ safety.
Mohcin Shah, 26, lives in Rawalpindi in Pakistan, 110 km from Abbottabad. Tweeting as @m0hcin, he was… → Read More
It looks like the same hack that resulted in millions of PSN users’ personal details being stolen extended to Sony Online Entertainment, as early reports today indicated. Sony has posted the details here. The gist? Your name, address, email, phone number, among other things are indeed at risk. On the bright side, credit card information was not accessed, and passwords were hashed. Still… → Read More
The guys on Camera Technica’s Vimeo channel stuck a laser pointer on the top of a Canon 7D and took this video, showing just how much the camera moves when you’re holding it or taking a picture. Not exactly scientific, but it’s worth watching. → Read More
One of the main features of the latest version of the Kindle was its new “Pearl” E Ink screen. It offered better contrast, faster response, and so on. And since we’ve gotten so used to new stuff being given to us every year, I guess we all just kind of expected there would be another new E Ink screen this year, along with a new wave of e-readers using it. Unfortunately, that doesn’t appear to be… → Read More
This morning, we noted that Google was getting ready to release an OS X version of the Chrome Canary build. Sure enough, just hours later, here it is.
Canary is the pre-Dev build of Chrome meant for users who enjoy testing new things early and often and don’t mind some bugs and hiccups along the way. It’s meant to be run alongside the more stable builds of Chrome, so you can have the best of both… → Read More
Japanese newspaper the Nikkei is reporting (subscription required) that Sony has suffered a second major cyberattack, this time to the Sony Online Entertainment servers in Japan. Up to 12,700 credit cards have supposedly been taken. Sony has offered a limited statement (pictured above) and promises more information today. [via BGR and Kotaku] → Read More
Videolicious for the iPhone and iPad is a free app designed for those of us who aren’t professional video editors but still want to have our important moments preserved in quality video. By walking people through the step by step combining of video footage, photos and music, Videolicious lets users create their own documentary style clips and share them to Twitter, Facebook and email. → Read More
Researchers at the University of Washington have found that, while useful, Kindles (specifically that larger Kindles DX) aren’t all that popular with students – yet. Their issues, arguably, are UI problems including the need for a “skimmable” abstract of content and better note-taking systems. However, to be fair, Amazon and B&N could fix those problems in a heartbeat.
“Most e-readers… → Read More
Although the powerful new Galaxy S II is just one among Samsung’s scores of handsets, it’s an important one, and the company is happy to report that it’s blowing up. It’s just hit 200,000 pre-orders in Korea, Samsung’s home market, and will likely pile up a couple million sales there before its day in the sun is over. And although US release information isn’t… → Read More
So this is what those zombies need our brains for: to turn on the lights! This prototype system allows the severely disabled to perform simple tasks like making a phone call and turn on the lights simply by thinking about commands. This is a proof of concept and uses the Emotiv EPOC headset to control a set of telekinetic applications that can perform various tasks. → Read More
Personalized radio service Pandora has reached a major milestone: last week it recorded its 10 billionth thumb (and it was a thumbs up).
Avid fans of the popular service already know what that means — for the rest of you, Pandora lets users mark the song that’s currently playing with a Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down. The effect is pretty straightforward: hit a thumbs up and Pandora will try to play… → Read More
A couple of years ago RockYou couldn’t seem to send an email to partners without screwing up and cc’ing everyone. We pointed each screwup out, with catchy headlines. I knew that someday, somehow, we’d probably do the same thing. And I knew we’d have to take extra criticism for it because we’ve called out others.
Today’s payback day. We sent a mass email and we failed to use BCC. It’s Amateur Hour… → Read More
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