While Baitr didn’t win the TC Disrupt Hackathon, it did win the minds and hearts of those in attendance who had a tendency towards black humor. Baitr, a Launchrock-type viral launch page that does nothing but visualize your email falling into the abyss, isn’t at all useful. But it is funny.
Says creator Peter Watts, “Launchrock is good for entrepreneurialism but it’s also bad [for users] because you sign up for these services, and then you never hear back from them.” Watts hopes that his hack will encourage startups to do something more productive with their beta sign up page. → Read More
Facebook shares on private secondary markets like SecondMarket and SharesPost spiked briefly in March to $34 – an $85 billion valuation. But they settled down to around $31.50 after that and have mostly stayed around that level since then. But something caused the shares to surge past that old record to a solid $35 per share in this week’s auction. Our guess is that newly public LinkedIn’s somewhat impressive P/E ratio of 2,500 may have something to do with it.
$35 per share values Facebook at roughly $87.5 billion. Which is a steal compared to the way the public markets are valuing LinkedIn. → Read More
The latest Disrupt has wrapped, but given the volume of news it created and the rate at which posts were pushing each other off the front page, you could be forgiven for missing a few items or videos here and there. Don’t worry, though: we’ve got the highlights of the show collected right here.
Actually, that’s not entirely true. We still have a ton of backstage talks and other footage we’re editing and processing, so expect more Disrupt content over the next week as we post these candid interviews with CEOs and Battlefield competitors. In the meantime, enjoy this central repository of all things Disrupt NYC 2011. → Read More
For as long as I can remember, there has been one app that has constantly held the top paid app spot in Apple’s App Store: Angry Birds. Sure, other apps surge to the top briefly. But Angry Birds always comes flying right back. But a new app appears to be bucking that trend. Today is day 3 of The Heist‘s reign, and sales are quickening.
As The Loop noted after a partial day 1, The Heist saw download numbers just over 25,000. This was already enough to overtake Angry Birds. But what’s really remarkable are the day two numbers. There were 89,798 downloads of The Heist on day two. Again, that’s for a paid app ($0.99). → Read More
As we found out a few months back, all of the old T-Mobile/Danger Sidekicks out there are headed for greener pastures early next week. Come May 31st, the ol’ Danger data servers will given a belly rub, one last defrag, then will be unceremoniously taken out back and shot.
Here’s something we didn’t know, though: if you’ve still got any important photos, contacts, calendars, or notes on that Sidekick floating around in your sock drawer, you’ll want to get them off your device soon. → Read More
I was just rewatching the 1995 classic Johnny Mnemonic and, nestled amid the overwrought actors and odd storyline, I heard something that stuck out: mention of a Thomson Eyephone… or iPhone. If that doesn’t mean that William Gibson isn’t on the cutting edge of future-tech, I don’t know who is and I find it charming that he once thought that Thomson would survive past the new millenium.
I also suggest that you grab the “I need a computer” audio for your ringtone. It’s a gem. → Read More
This 6-inch screen displays black and white e-ink text and images at 800×600 pixels and can roll around a tube the circumference of a dime. If this isn’t the future of print, I don’t know what is.
Designed and manufactured by Polymer Vision, the screen can be rolled and unrolled 25,000 times. The question, obviously, is why would you need a rollable display? Well, as ereaders become ubiquitous the need for them to be almost indestructible. I could see a day when kids get their own ereaders for the nursery a la the Diamond Age. Interestingly, Polymer Vision isn’t the company of note when you think of e-ink displays so either they will license this technology or they could start taking more and more market shares from leaders like Eink. → Read More
With WWDC quickly approaching, the rumor mills are heating up with what we should expect at Apple’s annual conference known for big announcements. We’ve learned a little bit more that speaks to what to expect — including a couple of big, widely-requested things.
First of all, a lot of sites seem to be working themselves into a tizzy about the so-called “iPhone 4S”. While it has already been widely reported that there will not be any major hardware announcements at WWDC this year, people seem to be letting their imaginations get the best of them anyway. This site, for example, notes that Apple is pushing for British journalists to fly out for WWDC. And today, there’s a report about Australian journalists getting the same message. Both conclude this must be for the “iPhone 4S”. → Read More
It’s hard out there for a ninja these days. It’s difficult to find commissions and getting the right gear and training is becoming increasingly expensive. Where do you buy your katana? Your tabi shoes? And, most important, your collapsable shuriken?
Well, you’re in luck. A young man named Zach wanted to make a collapsable ninja star for his 7 year old brother. With a little plastic and some elbow grease he was able to make a unique, lucite ninja star that can flip out like a switchblade and then fly like the wind into the bushes, where it will eventually be lost, like all ninja stars of our youth. → Read More
Despite the fact the number of PCs in China and the U.S. are pretty similar, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer claimed on Wednesday that the company sees 95 percent less revenue coming from China than the States. Why, you ask? Piracy, of course. Other tech companies have had the same problem in China, which could indicate that the Chinese government hasn’t done enough to stop the acquisition of costly products for free. → Read More
Depending on how you’re counting (whether or not you’re including slightly varied models or not, for example), Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 partners have released either slightly over or slightly under 10 different handsets since the platform’s debut. In that same time, how many Android phones has Microsoft released? Zero. Of course, no one would really expect Microsoft to release an Android phone, of course — but get this: Microsoft has likely made around 5x more money from Android than they have from Windows Phone 7. → Read More
Shares in Solazyme, the makers of algae biofuels and algae-based oils and chemicals used in health and beauty products, began trading on Nasdaq under the symbol SZYM.O on Friday. The business set an initial public offering price at $18, but its stock opened at $20 and traded between $19.60 and $22.00 throughout the day, with 10.98 million shares sold, raising about $197.6 million for the company.
Solazyme’s S-1 filing on March 11, 2011 confirmed its intention to go public, officially. Speculation about an IPO for the company preceded that by many months in the cleantech industry, however.
Algae-derived marine and jet fuels made by Solazyme have been used and tested by the U.S. Navy. Prior to going public the company… → Read More
Munchonme is a daily deals site for food. But wait, before you click away to a slideshow about hot coders, Munchonme has got some features that might just reroute you from relying on the big G and coming back to its sweet sweet embrace.
First of all Munchonme focuses on giving discounts on specific dishes, instead of onanything in the entire restaurant. Any business who’s been a victim of the Groupon effect knows why this is important, namely because restaurants can prepare for the onslaught in advance, overloading on the inventory they expect will sell out. → Read More
Memorial Day isn’t usually a gift-giving holiday, but Amazon’s Memorial Day sale may put you in the mood to treat yourself. Almost 20 4G phones will be listed for free (with a contract, of course) on Amazon’s site on Monday, including some pretty top-of-the-line devices like the HTC Thunderbolt, Samsung Droid Charge, LG Revolution, and Google Nexus S 4G.
Update: See update behind the jump → Read More
The battle between Texas Instruments and calculator hobbyists rages on, as TI seeks to keep its OS locked away from third-party developers. After the calculator hacking community discovered the independent tool Ndless (which allows for third-party development on TI’s platform), TI has spent the last year updating its OS to prevent downgrading to version 1.1, which is necessary to run Ndless. Version 2.1’s anti-downgrade protection was hacked last summer, and just a month ago, calculator hobbyists broke into OS 3.0.1. → Read More
Stepan Pachikov, founder of Evernote, is a fascinating individual and very much the model of the Russian intellectual who was driven by sheer curiosity to create the concepts behind Evernote and thus one of today’s most successful startups. A founder of ParaGraph, ParaScript, he studied at the Academy of Sciences of the old USSR where his dissertation was the use of fuzzy logic. And in some sense his work has pre-figured what Evernote eventually became.
In the mid-1980s he doubtless helped foster the growth of the Russian tech scene by founding the Moscow Children Computer club. ParaGraph, in 1988 was one of the first Soviet-American Joint Ventures which eventually signed a multimillion contract with Apple to develop digital ink software. → Read More
While at the Lint Conference in Moscow this week I stumbled across something quite special. Two of the authors behind a new how-to-guide for Russians all about Twitter.
This is significant – after all, no-one would even bother with writing an entire book, unless there was a growing curiosity about the platform both amongst consumers and business people wanting to learn more about using it as a marketing and communications channel.
The book’s title is suitably direct (as Russians are want to be): “140 symbols of self-expression in social media.” I managed to catch up with two of the three Julia Fedotchenko (@Moscowholic), Elena Sorokina (@esorokina), Ksenia Chabanenko (@pr_a_tak) authors of the book , and chatted to about the step-by-step guide. → Read More
Most options for wood used in decks, outdoor furniture and siding are rarely entirely earth friendly, since they are often treated with heavy metals or toxic chemicals, or logged from unsustainable forests. One company is innovating in the space by altering the chemistry of the wood itself to make it weather and decay resistant. → Read More
If you were a fan of the Asus Eee Pad Transformer, get excited, because the company seems almost as excited to tease its upcoming products as we are to get a peak at them, which will happen next week during Computex in Taipei. Asus has already slated a June launch for its Eee Pad MeMo, and pencilled in a reminder for us on its Facebook page. But one picture promises “A Tablet That Jumps Out At You,” which leads us to believe that Asus has a 3D-capable device headed our way, as well. → Read More
When it comes to building a web startup, the devil’s often in the details. And keeping track of those details — be it how far users get in your signup process, or how often they’re clicking a certain button — can be a real pain.
Mixpanel is a startup that’s looking to solve that problem by giving sites an easy-to-integrate analytics solution. And today it’s announcing that it’s raised another $1.25 million from an all star roster of investors, with new investors including Sequoia Capital (Jim Goetz and Roelof Botha) and Keith Rabois. That’s in addition to existing investors Max Levchin and Michael Birch, who are themselves experts at tracking viral data. The company previously participated in Y Combinator and raised $500k from Birch and Levchin in Feburary 2010.
Unlike traditional analytics services that focus on page views and uniques, Mixpanel is all about on-page actions: how many times users are activating a feature, how far in a flow they’re getting, and so on. All of this is tracked in real-time. → Read More
