It’s been exactly one year since mobile ad network AdMob was officially acquired by Google for $750 million, after intense scrutiny of the deal by the FTC. Over the past year, Google has been working to integrate AdMob into the company, and clearly there have been some highs and lows. Today, As AdMob-Google turns one the search giant is announcing a number of new features and milestones for the ad… → Read More
We’ve written previously about NearVerse’s mobile app LoKast, a proximity based mobile social network. Today, the company is debuting a new version of its iOS app, which combines group messaging with location proximity and media sharing.
On the app you can create spaces, which are visible by others within the app in the same physical place. These spaces essentially serve as min-social networks of… → Read More
There isn’t a better way to catch my attention than using a Star Trek analogy. Well, done UPS. It’s kinda like how in Star Trek III, Scotty sees a lot of unexplored potential in the ol’ Enterprise, but the brass are telling him she’s scrap because the new Excelsior’s “transwarp” engine is the only future worth having. Then we learn the Enterprise is still the only hope… → Read More
Exclusive – Open Ocean, a recently established venture capital firm co-founded by the investors who closed the $1 billion sale of MySQL to Sun Microsystems, has just finalized its Fund Three with approximately $60 million (40 million euros) in capital in the first closing, TechCrunch has learned.
The fund kicks off the first widespread outreach from the former MySQL and Nokia team members to… → Read More
In four months simple Mac mail client Sparrow has been downloaded over 300K times, has raised $250K in funding from luminaries like Dave Morin and from Tweetie creator Loren Brichter.
“We’re not adding social layers mail for the sake of it,” says CEO Dom Leca. The basic idea is pulling contextual information from your social network that is relevant to the users, and Leca is working on pulling in… → Read More
Square COO and angel investor Keith Rabois took the stage today with Michael Arrington at TechCrunch Disrupt to discuss the mobile payments product, his investment strategy and more. As you may know, Square just launched a new version of its disruptive mobile payments platform this week. The company also reached some important milestones—500,000 card readers shipped, one million Square… → Read More
Viral indie hit Minecraft has landed a mobile partner in Sony-Ericsson, whose Xperia Play (AKA the Playstation Phone) will the first device to have the game customized to a handset. Mojang, who makes the game, confirmed that they were working with S-E to fit the game to the screen and hardware. There’s no information on pricing or other platforms, but an E3 event points to a June 7 release. → Read More
AT&T has gotten off to an incredibly late start rolling out its LTE network coverage, planning to compete with Verizon’s 55 markets by deploying its own LTE coverage in five markets starting this summer. The Texas-based company isn’t making any effort to hide its homestate favoritism, with three of its first five LTE-supported markets located in the Lone Star state. → Read More
Sony has always been in the business of making sleek and powerful notebooks and the S Series just got a little more awesome. The 13.3-inch Windows 7 notebook line now starts out at a modest $999 with a Core i5-2410M CPU, 512MB AMD graphics, 500GB HDD, 4GB of RAM and a CD/DVD burner. But the sky is the limit here. You can spec this little guy out with a mobile Core i7, 1GB AMD mobile GPU, 1TB SSD… → Read More
We are live in New York for the last day of TechCrunch Disrupt NYC. We have heard from amazing speakers, seen some unbelievable startups, and have given away many prizes. Since we know many of you were not able to attend, we wanted to do something nice for our readers and viewers at home. Thanks to DailySteals.com, we have one white iPad 2 and one Nook Color to give away. The lucky winner of this… → Read More
Boom. After about a thousand blog posts, Twitter has officially announced that it has bought TweetDeck.
We first reported that the total price of the sale was around $40 million, CNN later confirmed this.
Twitter emphasized in their blog post that the acquisition was about the segment of Twitter users who were heavily active: → Read More
At the “Disrupting Publishing from Tablets to Links” panel at TechCrunch Disrupt, ‘The Daily’ Publisher Greg Clayman revealed an interesting milestone about Rupert Murdoch’s foray into tablet publishing. When asked by editor Erick Schonfeld whether or not the iPad app was doing well, Clayman revealed that it has been downloaded close to a million times, in the sixty days since its launch on… → Read More
Speed and security are essential for the success of any website, so a free service that supercharges your site and pr Speed and security are essential for the success of any website, so a free service that supercharges your site and protects it from those many web-born threats? Priceless. This is why CloudFlare was a runner-up at Disrupt SF last year, because it is attempting to bring speedy load… → Read More
Today at our TechCrunch Disrupt conference in New York, Airbnb co-founder Brian Chesky had some news to share on stage when talking to our own Erick Schonfeld. Apparently, Airbnb will be launching a new option, sublets, in the next few days.
Chesky didn’t dive into many details, but people will now be able to lease out their apartments for longer periods of time on the site (around 30 days). → Read More
Today at our TechCrunch Disrupt conference in New York, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick and Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky took the stage with our own Erick Schonfeld to talk about the disruption they’re offering up in their markets. Notably, both have products that are so disruptive that they have legal challenges from not just other companies, but governments (on the city and state level).
“I think I’ve got… → Read More
An early morning press release confirmed our previous suspicions: the LG Revolution will launch tomorrow, May 26, for Verizon. And even better, the Android 2.2 Froyo-powered smartphone will cost just $250 with a new, two-year contract. That’s a pretty sizable difference from the $700 off-contract price tag you’ll find on the Revolution at Best Buy. Nationwide Talk plans begin at $39.99, and… → Read More
Mobile ad network Millennial Media is making a purchase today— mobile data startup Condaptive. Condaptive’s technology focuses on audience formation and development through the innovative analysis of location and data. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Condaptive takes a deep data dive on location-based, mobile data. It’s focus is not just on where their customers are, but also… → Read More
On the heels of its recent acquisition of DealADayOnline in Chicago, BuyWithMe today announced that it has acquired Groop Swoop, a social commerce company focused on San Francisco.
BuyWithMe rivals Groupon and LivingSocial in the United States, and currently offers daily deals in 13 cities nationwide. → Read More
Today, at TechCrunch Disrupt, editor Erick Schonfeld took the stage to interview Alex Rampell, TrialPay; Stephanie Tilenius, VP of Google Commerce and Payments, and Lewis Gersh, Metamorphic Partners; addressing online to offline mobile commerce. The panel was particularly interesting considering Google’s reported announcement regarding its near field communications and mobile payments service… → Read More
Any seasoned investor knows that past performance is not indicative of future returns. That is as true with public stocks as it is with venture capital firms. But if someone were to ask you to rank the top VC firms today based on their probability of success, how would you do it? Remember, looking at past returns won’t help you.
Chris Farmer, a VC at General Catalyst Partners, has come up with a… → Read More
Hey, we’d love to hit 3 billion views today, too.
It’s the third day of TechCrunch Disrupt, and it just keeps getting better and better.
Tune into the event live after the proverbial jump – you can check the agenda for the day right here.
You can also follow along by tracking the #TCDisrupt hashtag on Twitter. → Read More
YouTube is celebrating its sixth birthday this month, and the Google subsidiary is doing it partly by sharing some big numbers that underscore its overwhelming dominance in the online video streaming space.
YouTube says global daily views have gone up 50 percent in the past 12 months, which means they currently handle a whopping 3 billion views per day. Also worth noting: YouTube says it has… → Read More
Panasonic announced [JP, PDF] a new electric bike for the Japanese market yesterday, the so-called Lithium Bibi F BE-ENSF63. And while the bicycle looks rather bland, it has own distinct selling point: at just 19.9kg, it’s the lightest e-bike out there, according to Panasonic (among those that come with a shopping basket, at least). → Read More
They have dropped the Xacti brand name, but the three new camcorders Panasonic (which bought Xacti maker Sanyo in 2009) announced [JP] today are essentially Xactis. All models feature full HD resolution and will be released in Japan on June 25. → Read More
Tech blog and research startup Giga Omni Media (GigaOm) has raised another $6 million in venture capital, on top of the $8.33 million previously raised. New investor Reed Elsevier Ventures led the round, with participation from previous investors True Ventures and Alloy Ventures.
The rumored valuation of the company, we’ve heard from sources, was over $40 million. They aren’t commenting on… → Read More
Andreessen Horowitz-backed mobile gaming company TinyCo is launching a new $5 million investment fund, called the TinyFund, to help support mobile game developers.
TinyCo, which just raised $18 million in new funding, has created a number of popular, casual iOS games including hits Tiny Chef, Tiny Zoo and Tap Resort, which have all appeared on the Top 10 free games charts in the App Store. In… → Read More
BuzzLogic says it is no longer an online monitoring company, and that it has pivoted to an “online media company that improves brand metrics and ROI through its media index and analytics platform”. I’m not quite sure what that means, but investors seem to believe in it.
BuzzLogic this morning announced that it has secured $7.8 million in a Series C round of funding led by Bridgescale Partners and… → Read More
You may remember TechCrunch Disrupt winner Soluto, which helps bring an end to PC user frustration from printing problems, annoying add-ons, apps that crash, resource hogs, and those frustrating applications that randomly cause your mouse to become useless for a few seconds at a time. As we’ve written in the past, the advantage to using Soluto (which is focused purely for the PC) is that the SaaS… → Read More
Well-known tech executive turned high-profile investor Peter Thiel, former PayPal CEO and an early backer of Facebook, this morning announced the appointment of the first 24 Thiel Fellows.
These are remarkable young entrepreneurs and creative minds that, as inaugural members of the 20 Under 20 Thiel Fellowship, will pursue “innovative scientific and technical projects, learn entrepreneurship, and… → Read More
A Watch Created In 1969 Could Sense Heart Attacks… But Wait, There’s More Amazon, Please Do Not Make The Kindle Touchscreen B&N Unleashes A New Nook: Touchscreen E-Ink, 2 Month Battery, $139 Kobo Touch Vs. New Nook In Specs iRemoTap: Power Strip with Built-In Wi-Fi (Video) → Read More
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