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 large Series A Joining the round is Klaas Kersting, founder of German browser-game giant Gameforge and currently CEO of flaregames. London Venture Partners, one of Supercell’s previous investors, also participated. Previous investors include Initial Capital, Cerval Investments and Lifeline Ventures.
Supercell’s has so far created 165 games across 12 platforms, aiming at a sweet spot in social games which are also easier to deal with than massively-multiplayer games like World of Warcraft. → 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 apparently, people like me won’t have to be jealous for long, as a new device has surfaced in FCC filings that gives users the ability to watch live broadcast digital television straight from the iPhone. → 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 secrets, and “breach of fiduciary duty.” It revolves around Osama Bedier, who was the VP of Platform, Mobile, and New Ventures at PayPal before he was recruited to work at Google by Android chief Andy Rubin, Google co-founder Larry Page, and Bedier’s former PayPal colleague Stephanie Tilenius (who now heads up Commerce and Payments at Google, and I interviewed yesterday onstage at Disrupt NYC).
The lawsuit reveals that Google was negotiatiating with PayPal for two years to power payments on mobile devices. But just as the deal was about to be signed, Google backed off and instead hired the PayPal executive negotiating the deal—Bedier. The lawsuit lays out the sequence of events: → 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. Today, almost a month after the phone launched, Apple sued a teenager from Queens, NY who had been selling white iPhone conversion kits. → 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 what we can do about getting it reviewed before then. → 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? If the movie looks bad, ask them to fix it or get your money back. Only the customers can keep theaters honest. → 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 efficient combustion engines.
EcoMotors’ CEO Don Runkle roundly criticized clean tech advocates who say all-electric vehicles (EVs) are “zero emissions.” Causing a bit of a stir in the conference hall, Runkle, the former VP of engineering at GM, went on to claim that EcoMotors’ engine technology enables car companies to produce diesel-powered vehicles that have a lower, overall carbon footprint than any electric automobile available today.
Given that electric vehicles don’t produce diesel exhaust, and don’t use fossil fuels, how can this be…? → 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 water on the idea. The reasons are thus: Even through Spotify is doing very well on its home turf of Sweden… and has launched in Finland, France, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain and the UK – it has yet to launch in the US. And a launch in the next two weeks looks highly optimistic.
Our sources say the reason is that Spotify has in fact secured two big unnamed record labels – but needs two more labels to come on board before it can launch in the US. → 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 screenshots provided, but it looks like the widget includes each person’s job title, recent email exchanges you’ve had with them, photo, calendar availability, and shared Google Docs. It also includes Buzz updates (hopefully Twitter integration is coming as well).
If you only exchange a handful of messages a day then this probably isn’t a game changer for you, but if you’re constantly having to deal with a flurry of projects and hundreds of contacts, then it could be a godsend. Of course, Google actually isn’t the first company to offer contextually relevant information within Gmail (strange as that may sound). Startups like Rapportive and Xobni have created browser widgets that offer similar functionality. → 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 follows a bunch of good people, you can now quickly scan the tweets those people send out and see which ones you want to follow. It’s sort of like what News.me is doing for news stories shared via Twitter links. → 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 “payment networks, carriers, banks, join us in creating tomorrow’s shopping experience”. And some of those partners are already on board. Citi, Mastercard, FirstData, and Sprint are the initial partners. → 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 about the Connect announcement on Monday. → 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 good? The trick is that the surface isn’t flat. Each numeral is rounded, just a bit. Trust me, they look better in person than in pictures. It also helps that they are designed in that typical, beautiful, Breguet Transatlantique style. I love this font. → 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 Sunday May 22th. There were also 34.3 million posts on that Sunday, also a Tumblr record. → 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 instinct says somebody isn’t working out.
Only half of this adage is accurate for startups. Here’s why … → 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? Well, for one thing, it’s being started by a pretty well-known entrepreneur. Dmitry Shapiro, the founder of Veoh, is also the one behind Altly. While Veoh didn’t end so well (a firesale acquisition after raising nearly $70 million), they were once a very hot property in the online video space. → 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 in a single tap.
Of course, the vast majority of phones out there do not support NFC (the Nexus S is currently the only Android phone on the market that has the technology). Google and its partners reiterated that NFC will be surging in popularity over the next couple of years, and for the time being this is really a first step. But Google also has a plan to enable older devices to use a more limited version of the app: stickers that you can put on the back of your phone. → Read More
