Yesterday, PayPal filed a lawsuit against Google and two of its executives for stealing trade secrets. The lawsuit came on the same day that Google announced its mobile wallet plans involving Android phones with NFC chips. The two executives, Osama Bedier and Stephanie Tilenius, previously worked at PayPal. In fact, Bedier was in charge of negotiating a deal with Google on behalf of PayPal for… → Read More
Pixable, a startup that develops sleek social photo creation and categorization tools for Facebook and other photo sharing sites, has released an infographic today that includes a number of impressive stats regarding profile pictures on the social network.
Pixable’s service, which has 800,000 users, allows people to use of all their Facebook and image sharing site photo content like captions… → Read More
We know that Google has big ambitions for flight search, as the search giant dropped $700 million on travel search software developer ITA Software. Today, the company just announced a few new flight search features that have been integrated into search (but do not use ITA’s technology….yet).
Now, when you search for a destination on Google, you can see which airlines serve that specific route… → Read More
I am still recovering from Disrupt NYC. It was our biggest event ever, and we’ll be posting more videos and highlights throughout the next few days. But here are a couple of charts that give a snapshot of the activity around the event as measured by Tweets with the event hashtag #TCDisrupt (thanks for the charts, Simply Measured).
In the chart above you can see the distribution of Tweets across… → Read More
We’ve gotten a lot of requests for our Disrupt conference theme music. Some conference attendees and webcast viewers apparently can’t get the music out of their heads and want to hear it some more. Instead of picking music from a music production library, this year we created custom tracks.
The music came to us all the way from New Zealand from a company called Smith & Keats Music. They… → Read More
Our obsession with our smartphones has grown into a full-blown addiction, according to a new survey in the iPass Global Mobile Workforce Report. According to iPass, one of every three mobile workers get up regularly throughout the night to check email on their phone, and nearly half of those surveyed admitted that they couldn’t sleep without a smartphone within reach. → Read More
As we’ve suspected for a long time, Apple is very close to launching an online music service which may go by the name iCloud. The basic idea is that it will mirror your iTunes collection online so that it is available on any device without clunky cable syncing.
While getting rid of those cables will be a big step forward, if iCloud is nothing more than a music locker service it won’t go far… → Read More
Streaming video player developer Roku has partnered with video advertising company YuMe to allow content owners to provide video advertising for media. DreamTV and Blastro Networks are among the first Roku content providers to start using YuMe’s video advertising platform.
Roku has sold more than 1 million of its streaming entertainment devices for the TV. The company, who has not offered video… → Read More
Video: Pioneer’s Amazing 3D Floating Vision Display Fly Or Die: LiveScribe Connect And The T-Mobile G-Slate Google Unveils Wallet And Offers: An Open Platform For Mobile Payments Ebert Takes On The “Dim Movie Projection” Issue Polaroid’s New GL10 Instant Printer Is Available For Pre-Order, Ships In June → Read More
Best. first. quarter. evar. Some good news in today from the online advertising industry: The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has announced that online advertising revenues hit $7.3 billion in the U.S. in the first quarter. While this does not represent the best quarterly performance in history (Q4 2010 takes the cake at $7.45 billion), it does mark the best first quarter on record, and… → Read More
The trend towards online browser-based games continues to attract the attention of VCs who recognise that this will be the platform of choice going forward. Thus it is that Finnish game developer Supercell has secured a large series A investment of $12 million from Accel Partners which has already invested in Rovio (maker of Angry Birds), Playfish, Gameforge and Mind Candy (Moshi Monsters). Such a… → Read More
I happen to be a huge fan of television on demand. Without cable, I guess I’d have to be. In fact, If I was better at keeping up with Foursquare check-ins, I’d probably be the Mayor of Netflix, and I’ve had Hulu bookmarked since its launch. But every so often, I get jealous of those who can watch “real” TV, with their commercial references and obscure made-for-television movies. But… → Read More
Google is making a bold play to enter mobile payments, and PayPal doesn’t like it one bit. Shortly after Google announced its new mobile wallet for Android phones today, Paypal filed a lawsuit against Google and two former PayPal executives who now are in charge of mobile payments at Google (Osama Bedier and Stephanie Tilenius).
The complaint (embedded below) alleges “misappropriation of trade… → Read More
The level of controversy surrounding the beautiful, yet mystical, white iPhone may have reached critical mass today. First, the launch was delayed by ten months, which peeved quite a few Apple fans, to say the least. Then, once the white iPhone finally reared its said-to-be fat head, reviewers had a field day claiming the smartphone was thicker than its black counterpart, which proved false. → Read More
While there’s no sign yet of the GL30 Polaroid camera introduced by Lady Gaga at CES, the GL10 printer is actually nearing a shipping date. This little printer connects to your computer or smartphone and produces 3×4″ prints in about 45 seconds. The paper is probably going to be super expensive, but hey. It costs $169 and the website says it should ship in June. We’ll see… → Read More
Rumors have been flying around the web lately about when we’ll get a chance to check out Microsoft’s forthcoming tablet software, and according to Bloomberg sources and Business Insider, Windows chief Steve Sinofsky will unveil the latest Windows tablet OS at the AllThingsDigital D:9 conference next week. → Read More
You’ve probably read about how some theaters are neglecting to take off the lenses made for 3D films when showing other movies, and the result is a dim, muddy movie. There are a number of reasons for this, but the end is always the same, and Roger Ebert is fed up with it. He breaks down the issue and laments the state of theaters and projectors in this interesting blog post. The take-away? → Read More
It seems that Alcatel, budget-friendly feature phone and smartphone maker, has decided to enter the tablet race under its OneTouch brand name. We spotted the (approximately) 7-inch slate as it received approval from the FCC earlier today, and as far as we can tell, the Alcatel OneTouch T60 is shaping up to be a smart-looking product for the first-time tablet maker. → Read More
Do you need some freaking cable? Yeah you do, you know it! Where do you get it? Duh? Like the cable store! Like the cable store called CableSupply. So these dudes, in order to form a more perfect cable experience, are offering free shipping on orders of $99 or more. Bang. You’re like “Cables? Where do I go for cables?” and they’re like “Durrrrr… Here!” → Read More
The chief executive officers of two very different clean tech startups, Brammo and EcoMotors, discussed the relative merits and limitations of clean vehicle technology, at TechCrunch Disrupt in New York on Wednesday. Oregon-based Brammo designs and manufactures all-electric motorcycles and the battery technology and software that powers them, while Michigan-based EcoMotors designs and makes more… → Read More
There has been some interesting speculation regarding the relationship between hot (at least in Europe) music streaming service Spotify and gargantuan social platform Facebook. Now Forbes is reporting that Facebook has partnered with Spotify on a streaming service that “could be launched in as little as two weeks” via a Spotify icon in a user’s newsfeed.
However, our sources are pouring ice cold… → Read More
It’s probably not a good sign that I’m this excited about an email widget, but there you go.
Google has just announced that it’s rolling out a new feature over the next week called the People Widget — a small sidebar to the right of email messages that features contextual information about the people you’re interacting with in Gmail. I don’t have the feature active yet so I’m going by the… → Read More
Twitter has just rolled out a nifty little feature. Now on anyone’s profile, when click on the “Following” link, you’ll be able to see exactly how they see Twitter. In other words, you can see the same timeline of tweets that they see when they’re looking at their main feed.
It’s a cool feature that makes sense from a discovery standpoint. If you know I’m a power Twitter user that probably… → Read More
We’re here at Google’s massive HQ in New York City (they own an entire block) for what Google was calling a “partner event” but everyone knew was really an “NFC event”. Sure enough, Stephanie Tilenius, Google’s VP of Commerce, has taken the stage to announce Google Wallet and Google Offers.
Right off the bat, Tilenius wanted to make it clear that this would be an open platform. She invited… → Read More
Earlier this week we gave you a little sneak peek at the new Livescribe Connect service but we also looked a bit more closely at the T-Mobile G-Slate, Big Fuchsia’s wild 3D tablet. Erick was generally nonplussed with both products but this is the year of the Android tablet and this is one of the most unique devices we’ve seen this year.
We ran a review of the G-Slate a few weeks ago and talked… → Read More
Among many other things I like about this Breguet watch are the applied hour indicators. These are most certainly ranked among the best hour markers I have ever seen. They are done in a brushed metal (likely titanium to match the case) and are applied to the dial. The finish on them is very smooth and they appear luxurious as well as being very clear to the eye. What exactly makes them look so… → Read More
Tumblr founder David Karp and Instagram founder Kevin Systrom took the stage at TechCrunch Disrupt to talk about the hockey stick growth of their respective companies. Tumblr in particular is showing insane growth numbers; On May 16th, 2011 Tumblr did 250 million pageviews, more pageviews than they had in all of July 2009. That record was then surpassed six days later, at 275 million pageviews on… → Read More
Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by (@msuster) Mark Suster, a 2x entrepreneur, now VC at GRP Partners. Read more about Suster at Bothsidesofthetable
There is an old management adage that says, “Hire slowly, fire fast.” The idea has become conventional wisdom. It says that you need to take due care in selecting team members. It also says that you need to act quickly when your… → Read More
It was almost exactly a year ago that Diaspora started raising money on Kickstarter. A few weeks later, they had raised $200,000 from nearly 6,500 backers. Why so much excitement? Because Diaspora was aiming to be a Facebook alternative. That hasn’t exactly worked out. At least not yet. But now another startup is about to give it a go, Altly.
So why will this one be any different than Diasopra? → Read More
We’re here at Google’s NFC payments announcement, where the search giant has announced a new, important product called Google Wallet (see our comprehensive post on the announcement here). Google Wallet will be launching this summer — it’s currently in field testing — allowing users to tap their phones against NFC-enabled terminals to pay for goods, redeem offers, and use their loyalty cards… → Read More
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