I love how a design like that of the RSW (Rama Swiss Watch) Nazca is bound to be so polarizing. I think that RSW themselves gets a kick out of that. I mean, from a purely business-oriented motive you’d want to make timepieces that appealed to more people, not less people right? Yet despite this RSW continues to tread forth in the design of timepieces that appeal to just some people, but certainly not all people. So what about you? What are you feelings on the Nazca collection? → Read More
BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIM) is not having the best year so far. The April launch of RIM’s BlackBerry PlayBook received mixed reviews, to put it nicely, of what many called a “half-baked” product. And just a few days earlier, co-CEO Mike Lazaridis shut down an interview half-way through after a BBC reporter pushed questions on Indian security. Today, the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York dropped a cherry on top of that unlucky sundae, in the form of a class-action suit. → Read More
Quora co-founder Charlie Cheever not only doesn’t want to sell his hot start-up but – as he told me backstage earlier this week at Disrupt – he even has an explicit non-goal of not selling the company.
Non-goals or not, Cheever has a lot to smile about. Traffic is up to record levels at Quora and the site continues to be a paragon of innovation in the social space. In this interview he explains the difference between Quora and Wikipedia, and we get into many other orthogonal discussions as well. But I wonder if Cheever is tempting fate by having such an explicit non-goal. After all, he’ll look ‘a right Charlie’ if Quora gets snapped up in the frenzy of acquisitions that will probably mark the post LinkedIn-IPO social marketplace. → 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
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 towards transforming digital music, as BusinessWeek proclaims. Apple’s iCloud will be iTunes online, with a few features that make it slightly better than Google’s Music Beta—namely, I won’t have to spend hours uploading my music collection and I will get better quality audio files for some songs. That’s all great, but I am not sure it is enough for me to pay a monthly subscription. If it’s bundled with MobileMe, it certainly would make that service more appealing, but I wouldn’t pay for iCloud as a standalone service if that is all there is to it. And certainly, this could turn out to be only one part of a revamped MobileMe service. Depending on what else will be added, iCloud could help push more MobileMe subscriptions overall. → Read More
While I can’t imagine anyone would want to perform the feats demonstrated in this video, what you’re seeing is basically a hack that allows users to control PC programs – including Powerpoint – using the Kinect. Why? Because it’s there.
At IIT Delhi, a technologist named Ramaprasanna showed off his proof-of-concept demo using an unreleased Kinect SDK. Obviously you’re not going to get this on your Dell any time soon, but it’s interesting to see the direction Kinect on the PC could take. → Read More
Google made a couple bold statements about its upcoming Chromebook tablet, many of which have certainly excited consumers, particularly the promise of an end to security hassles. In the Chromebook launch announcement, Google claimed that “Chromebooks have many layers of security built in so there is no anti-virus software to buy and maintain. Even more importantly, you won’t spend hours fighting your computer to set it up and keep it up to date.” Sounds nice, right? Well, Trend Micro’s security consultant Rik Ferguson vigorously disagrees, claiming that the search giant risks repeating the same security mistakes Apple made. → Read More
Respected European venture capital associate Katy Turner is leaving Eden Ventures to join video advertising startup Videoplaza, working as their head of marketing out of London. Turner told us on email:
“Working with the fantastic team at Eden has been a great experience – the early stage startup space in Europe is hugely dynamic right now and I have had the luck to work with some really exciting entrepreneurs and investors. I will continue to be involved in supporting the startup community but I’m hugely looking forward to joining the brilliant team at Videoplaza.”
The startups is making a name for itself delivering video advertising across the the web and into other devices like TV. → Read More
http://www.collegehumor.com/moogaloop/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=6507690&use_node_id=true&fullscreen=1 While I think a lot of start-up folk have moved away from this sort of buzzword garbage, it seems that this pair still exists in the world of web-enabled iPad-centric hashtag coding for early adopting morphologies with high topological connection value. via Dvorak → Read More
Late last year, travel search engine Kayak filed for an IPO, aiming to raise $50 million. The company just released a new version of its S-1 today, with updated financials. The company will list its stock on the NASDAQ under the symbol “KYAK.”
For the three months ending March 31 of this year, Kayak generated $53 million in revenue, which is up 43 percent from the same period in 2010. Net income for the quarter came in at $8.2 million representing 266 percent growth from the same period last year. → Read More
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 inclusion of PayPal as a payment mechanism in Android phones. The deal fell through and Google hired away Bedier instead, who then helped build Google’s own mobile wallet product.
At least that is PayPal’s side of the story. Last night, I asked Google for a comment. It took them a while, but a spokesperson just emailed me the following statement: → 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, tagging information, comments, and birthdays to make albums, slideshows, calendars and nor artwork. Pixable’s browser-based simplifies the creation of albums, making it easy to use for anyone. One of Pixable’s early applications was a nifty tool that allows you to make mosaics of your Facebook photos. → 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 and when they fly. For example, if you search for flights from ‘New York to Chicago,’ you’ll see schedules of all the non-stop flights that serve that route, which airlines fly, and times. You can access the full timetable by clicking on “Schedule of non-stop flights.” → 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 the three days. That spike on Day three was related to an iPad giveaway linked to people Tweeting out the hashtag, which was Tweeted out 18,177 times (and that doesn’t include tweets that used other hashtags such as #disrupt or simply mentioned Disrupt without a hashtag).
But I particularly like the chart below, which shows the distribution of Tweets with the #TCDisrupt hashtag which also mentioned the names of the six Battlefield finalists. → 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 have a background in creating pop hits and have earned a reputation for specializing in music for the tech industry. Other clients have included Nintendo and Sony-Ericsson.
The composers say living in New Zealand gives them exposure to a broader range of artists from around the world. In the US and other countries, the music charts are dominated by local artists. Not so for New Zealand, where they claim only the best of the best makes it to their shores. → 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 towards transforming digital music, as BusinessWeek proclaims. Apple’s iCloud will be iTunes online, with a few features that make it slightly better than Google’s Music Beta—namely, I won’t have to spend hours uploading my music collection and I will get better quality audio files for some songs. That’s all great, but I am not sure it is enough for me to pay a monthly subscription. If it’s bundled with MobileMe, it certainly would make that service more appealing, but I wouldn’t pay for iCloud as a standalone service if that is all there is to it. And certainly, this could turn out to be only one part of a revamped MobileMe service. Depending on what else will be added, iCloud could help push more MobileMe subscriptions overall. → 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 advertising to publishers until now, will be integrating YuMe’s ACE technology platform, which serves more than 1 billion ad impressions per month. → 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 reflects a 23 percent increase since the first quarter of 2010. → Read More
