At a press event in New York City, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer rolled out the general availability of Microsoft 365, an online suite of productivity apps which includes Microsoft Office, Microsoft SharePoint Online, Microsoft Exchange Online and Microsoft Lync. It is “where Microsoft Office meets the cloud,” he says. Microsoft first announced Office 365 last October, and has signed up 200,000 business customers since then.
Office 365 is all of Microsoft’s cloud productivity apps rolled into one service. It includes Web-based email, shared documents, shared calendars, instant messaging, video conferencing and Web meetings, and websites. Customers can pick and choose which apps they want and pay a monthly subscription from $2 to $27 per month. → Read More
TravelShark (the startup formerly known as Swiftrank), which operates an online travel network, this morning announced that it has closed a $5 million round of financing from DLA Holdings, a Singapore-based private equity firm. TravelShark has raised a total of $8 million to date. → Read More
MartinJAY Digital this morning announced that it has acquired the assets of Social Blaze, a Los Angeles, California-based developer of social media management and analytics service. The digital agency purchased all of the company’s intellectual assets, including patent rights, source code and domain names, for an undisclosed sum.
MartinJAY says it acquired the social media management application developer, which was founded in 2009, to expand its ability to provide social web strategies and ROI to its clients. → Read More
Right around the beginning of May at the I/O event, Google revealed its daily Android activation data, which turned out to be 400,000 Android activations daily. It’s been two months, and now Google’s Android boss Andy Rubin has an adjustment he’d like to make to the numbers. “There are now 500,000 Android devices activated every day, and it’s growing at 4.4% w/w,” tweeted Rubin this morning. → Read More
I am aware we have covered the Sense-Roid, a robotic device that lets you hug yourself (don’t ask), last week already. But now our friends over at Diginfonews in Tokyo went out and shot a professional video that shows the tactile communications apparatus in action and explains it in more detail (and in English). → Read More
It’s tough to beat my colleague Alexia Tsotsis’ witty ‘What Mobile Photo Sharing App Should I Use’ infographic. Today Pixable, a startup that develops sleek social photo creation and categorization tools for Facebook and other photo sharing sites, is releasing its own photo sharing infographic focused on photo-sharing and the ‘hard knock’ life of a photo on Facebook.
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
The types of technology that a Congressional office can use is severely restricted by the government (as a former Congressional staffer, I am acutely familiar with the strict procurement policy). Today, the U.S. House of Representatives is announcing that members of Congress will be able to use Skype’s videoconferencing technology on government computer systems.
Skype says that its engineers worked closely with the Congressional network security team to ensure that Skype is used safely for official business (and not for Weiner-like conduct). As part of the security precautions, each Congressional office will have access to their own Skype Manager account, so one central person in each office can administer the Skype accounts. → Read More
In a couple of days, Facebook will require game developers to implement its Facebook Credits currency, as announced in January 2011 (much to the dismay of some developers, although we should also note juggernauts such as Zynga, EA and RockYou were already on board).
This morning, Ifeelgoods is announcing that it raised $6.5m to strengthen its offering ahead of the July 1 Facebook Credits implementation deadline. Ifeelgoods offers a platform that allows retailers to provide Facebook Credits as marketing incentives in their online stores. → Read More
AOL CEO Tim Armstrong likes to streamline things. And he is about to streamline AOL even more. Somewhat reversing the anti-portal strategy he inherited, he will start to consolidate 53 different content brands into 20 “power brands.” (Don’t worry, TechCrunch is still one of them).
“More and more stuff is moving towards well-known brands,” says Armstrong. “Unless human nature is going to totally change, the Internet is going to end up in a branded environment.” → Read More
Research firm IDC forecasts the number of annual mobile app downloads to increase from 10.7 billion in 2010 to nearly 183 billion by 2015, notably more than the 44 billion mobile app downloads by 2016 forecasted by its competitor ABI Research.
IDC says the bigger story behind the numbers is an impending shift away from the current reliance upon mobile app download purchases as the primary focus of app monetization. → Read More
Israeli enterprise software company Harmon.ie has released a new version of its email plugin that adds social and collaborative features to Outlook, Google Docs and Lotus Notes. Harmon.ie for SharePoint 3.0 allows users to collaborate with colleagues and external contacts on Outlook without leaving the email interface.
Within Outlook, business users can share documents and track document updates; post and check colleagues’ real-time status; initiate phone/chat/video/email communications; and more. → Read More
The PS Vita is coming relatively soon, but Sony Japan today announced [JP] something nice for all users still in need of a PSP: a total of three new PSP value packs. The bundles will include a PSP in Piano Black, Vibrant Blue, or Blossom Pink – and they might be the last ones you can get, at least before the Vita goes on sale. → Read More
Nikon Displays Mysterious Prototypes At French Exhibition Sweet-Looking Bike Tool Roll Made From My Favorite Material, Waxed Canvas Dodocase Puts Out Some J. Crew Exclusive iPad 2 Cases SocialBicycles Bike Sharing Is Now A Kickstarter Project Thanko Starts Selling The USB Butt Cooler Cushion (Ver. 2) → Read More
Viralheat, the social media measurement tool that allows content producers to monitor consumer-generated content on the Web in realtime, announced today that it has closed a $4.25 million series A round of funding. The round was led by the venture firm Mayfield Fund and adds to the $75K of seed capital Viralheat raised back in December 2009. The startup plans to use this new infusion of capital to expand its engineering team, create new products and services for consumer analytics and engagement, and accelerate customer acquisition and revenue growth. → Read More
“The future is the web.” So goes the mantra that seems to be echoing throughout Google, Facebook, and plenty of smaller tech companies that view the web as the solution to sidestep the fragmentation created by native app platforms. And they’re almost certainly right.
But the web still has a long way to go — it’s quite rare to come across web applications that feel anything like their desktop counterparts. Now San Diego-based startup OpenCandy thinks it has a solution: a new product called Pokki that bridges the gap between the browser and native applications. In other words, they’re offering web apps that are a lot more convenient than web apps. → Read More
Poggled, the daily deals service that boasts Groupon investors Eric Lefkosky, Brad Keywell and NEA as backers, is expanding to other cities today, first on the list being New York and Denver.
Poggled is an interesting take on the daily deals model, with 50-70% off “evergreen” services at nightclubs, bars and music venues available every day without daily expiration. Users can search for deals on its iPhone and Android apps by filtering by Nearby, Happening Now or by Day of The Week, Event Type or Neighborhood. Users can also share their deal (and likely alcohol) consumption habits on Facebook and Twitter. → Read More
When you’re in fifth place in the browser races, there’s room to be a little goofy. That’s why it can be a pleasure to read the releases coming from Opera Software, the quirky Oslo-based company responsible for the eponymous Opera browser — the underdog currently enjoying a 2.4 percent share of the browser market behind IE, Firefox, Chrome, and Safari. → Read More
HP’s webOS tablet, the TouchPad, doesn’t officially hit until July 1st, but that hasn’t stopped some of the big retailers from putting their demo units out for the public to fondle. Sure, you could just watch the official demo videos, but nothing beats actually seeing something in action. Or seeing someone else see it in action, as in this YouTube video taken at a Kansas Wal-Mart. No sign of that 7-inch version we heard about, though. Anyway, keep your eyes open come July: we’ll have a full review up as soon as we’re reasonably sure we know what to think of the thing. [via Engadget] → Read More
Last winter, Singapore-based Bitsmedia launched a new app into the marketplace called Frenzapp that enables users to share their favorite iPhone apps with friends, joining a cluster of services taking on Apple’s Genius in the attempt to make app recommendations even better.
Yet, with a competition from other app-recommendation startups, like Chomp, Appsfire, Discovr, Zwapp, Explor, and more, Bitsmedia made a smart strategic decision and decided to diversify by bringing Frenzapp to music with a new app called, you guessed it, Frenzapp Music. The music app, which recently went live on iTunes, attacks the social aspect of music discovery by enabling its users to share their favorite music on Facebook and Twitter, allowing users to post status updates to social networks or scroll through a realtime feed of the music their friends are liking, listening to, and listing as “favorites” — and more. → Read More
This morning, we got tipped to check out wdyl.com. The tipster noted that it was apparently a new Google site attempting to “create a unified UI to search in multiple channels”. Sure enough, visiting the URL brought up a Google page — but it was a 404 page. Turns out it needs the “www” in order to work. Yes, wdyl.com is not quite ready for prime-time. But it is out there, live!
The new service, which Google apparently did launch this morning, is called What do you love? (hence, wdyl.com). While it seems to be more of a cute gimmick at this time, the idea is to return users a single page of relevant results across many of Google’s products for whatever query is typed into the wdyl search box. The “search” button is even a heart. Cute. → Read More
