LucidChart, a web-based diagramming application, announced today that it has raised $1 million in seed funding from 500 Startups, 2M Companies, K9 Ventures, as well as several angel investors. The startup will use its new capital to ramp up hiring efforts and to begin positioning its app as a viable alternative to desktop software. → Read More
Social mapping and navigation company Waze has hit a big milestone today. The company has accumulated 3 million users in the past 7 months, with 5 million users in over 45 countries. It took just two months for Waze to rack up its last million users.
Founded in 2009, Waze offers free apps for the iPhone, Android, Windows Phone 7, BlackBerry and other mobile platforms that include turn-by-turn navigation for drivers, and at the same time, uses that user data to build out its own maps. If there are issues on the road, such as major traffic jams, all of that information comes in through the apps and can be sent to other drivers. → Read More
After slapping Google and PayPal with patent lawsuits, patent troll Purple Leaf is going after Amazon, accusing the e-commerce giant of infringing on its “311 patent” via Amazon’s Payments product. We’ve embedded the complaint below.
According to the complaint, Purple Leaf’s 311 Patent generally relates to methods and system for an electronic transaction based on a receipt having payment remittance information. Purple Leaf maintains that Amazon Payments, the company’s payments platform used by online merchants, infringes upon this patent. → Read More
Tired of feeling like people are judging you for gawking at your iPhone all day? Feel like you’re always 10 seconds from some big dude punching you in the face and making your iPhone his iPhone?
Enter the BookBook. It’s a case that makes your iPhone look like.. a book. More specifically, it makes your iPhone look like a little itty-bitty Bible. Which is great, because (almost) no one can judge you for reading a Bible. And who would steal someone’s Bible? There’s just no need; you can get a free Bible just by walking into a church and saying “Sup guys, can I have a Bible?” → Read More
Let’s say I’m driving along and texting even though I know I shouldn’t be. That’s me everyday right there. Now, let’s say I get pulled over, and for some reason the cop asks to see the phone to see what was so important.
Do I have to hand it over? If my phone has a password, am I obligated to type it in? If he starts getting pushy with me should I just start videoing the whole encounter as YouTube-revenge-backup-protection? → Read More
Demand for private company shares declined in the second quarter versus the first quarter but was up sharply year-over-year, according to a new report released today by SecondMarket. The market for private company stock saw $112 million in transactions last quarter, versus $156 million in the first quarter, or down 39 percent sequentially. On an annual basis, however, it was up 120 percent over the second quarter of 2010, which saw $51 million in transactions. And the $268 million worth of transactions in the first half of 2011, was up 75 percent from the first half of 2010 .
For the first time, SecondMarket also ranked the top VC firms based on which ones have the most portfolio companies on its 100 most-watched list. → Read More
Great news for anyone who fell for the Toshiba Thrive’s chunky, full-featured charms! A team from TabletRoms.com (who created the hack) and ThriveForums.org (who tested it) has managed to gain root access on the Thrive’s stock ROM, which is the jumping-off point for countless ambitious development projects to come.
Well, more or less anyway. Understandably Toshiba didn’t want to make things too easy for them. → Read More
The old, white Xbox media remote was often a godsend. Instead of pressing odd buttons on the controller, the media remote let you control Netflix and DVD videos with ease and it was big and unique enough not to get lost. This new media remote, however, looks less like a bar of Dove soap and more like a traditional remote control.
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Fab.com, which started out as Fabulis, a social networking site for gay men, has not only recently changed its name but also started from scratch with an entirely new business centered around online flash sales of design items.
The startup recently completed a $1 million early-stage round of funding from investor/actor Ashton Kutcher, SV Angel, SoftTech VC and previous backers First Round Capital, Baroda Ventures and The Washington Post. The company has now raised another $8 million in Series A funding, we’ve learned. → Read More
If it were up to Jumio, we’re all going to be ‘netswiping’ to purchase books, clothes, travel, FarmVille crops and whatnot online in a couple of years. The startup has been extensively testing its digital payments service in private beta mode since last year, when Jajah founder Daniel Mattes started teasing whatever they were building.
The startup has since assembled an impressive advisory board, including former Google exec Zain Khan, former Amazon exec Mark Britto and Maarten Linthorst, CEO of CSI Communication Systems. And we recently learned that Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin and other investors pumped $6.5 million into the startup. → Read More
This $99, for switch stomp box by Griffin turns your iPad into a shredding machine. It connects to Frontier Design’s iShred LIVE app and allows you to add multiple sounds to your git-fiddle or keyboard.
The kit includes a special cable for simultaneous guitar, PA, or amp connectivity along with a cable that jacks right into your iPad. We would not recommend slamming your guitar straight trough the iPad’s glass, but we’re assured it has been tried already and looks totally badass.
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If you know me, you know I love me some watches. This watch, the Irreantum Magellan, caught my eye because it mixes some of the best of 70s diver style with a modern sensibility and an acceptably strong case and movement. The Magellan, priced at $545, comes in multiple colors and has an ETA 2824-2 movement. It is 45mm wide and comes with a grains of rice band.
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Ustream has landed on the iPad.
Today, the streaming video service has launched its first iPad-optimized app, allowing users to view live and recorded content streaming through the service — and to stream their own footage direct from their iPad 2. You can grab the app right here.
iPads are obviously well-suited for lounging — and Ustream is expecting that plenty of people will take advantage of the app to stream their thoughts direct from their couches (in other words, don’t be surprised if you see a bunch of new talking head streams pop up as people react to what they just watched on the news or after a sporting event).
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The T-Mobile/Radio Shack affair isn’t exactly new news at this point — Radio Shack alleged that T-Mobile “materially breached” the terms of their agreement way back in February. No one short of legal counsel knows exactly what grievances Radio Shack has with their magenta-hued carrier partner beyond lackluster sales performance, but it looks as though things are finally coming to a head anyway.
As of September 14, Radio Shack will discontinue their T-Mobile offerings in over 4,300 US locations and on their website. Then, on the very next day, they intend to roll out the red carpet for Verizon. → Read More
Perhaps it’s a product of Schmidt’s carefree attitude or maybe it’s a little tinge of fear after their latest lost, but HTC now appears to be ready to negotiate with Apple. With a win on each side, settlement talks may be the only detour before this patent battle turns into a full-fledged war.
In early July, the ITC found Apple in violation of two S3 Graphics patents, which were then taken over by HTC when it acquired the graphics company for $300 million. On July 15, Apple got an ITC win against HTC over two of its own patents. → Read More
It’s a simple law of e-commerce: the more consumer reviews there are on a product, the more sales will result. ”As review numbers go up, conversions go up, and SEO traffic goes up,” says Cathy Halligan, SVP of sales and marketing for PowerReviews (and former CMO of Walmart.com). PowerReviews powers 23 million reviews across 5,500 sites including Staples.com, Gap.com, ToysRUs.com, and eFaucets, and is adding about 1 million reviews a month. But all of these reviews are siloed on each individual site. Today, PowerReviews is making it possible for brand sites to syndicate their reviews to e-commerce sites for the same products through a new product called BrandShare.
Consumers often go to brand sites to do research and leave reviews there, but most brand sites don’t actually sell their own products. PowerReviews already has a product catalog across its network of 35 million products. It will now take any reviews, whether they were written on its software, a competitor’s, or a home-grown review system and allow brands to syndicate them to existing PowerReviews customers. → Read More
Mistakes happen. Sometimes they spur a round of seriously unwanted consequences, but every once in a while, a mistake pays off. Maybe not for the person who screwed up, which in this case would be someone in charge of Verizon’s website, but definitely for us.
If you have yet to pick up what I’m putting down, this morning brought with it another leak — the BlackBerry Bold 9930. → Read More
Netflix just got some more competition. Walmart launched its video streaming service today and don’t just write it off as a “me too” service. This is a serious offering.
Walmart bought Vudu 18 months ago and has slowly evolved the business. Vudu, like Netflix, is available on a number of set-top boxes, gaming systems, and media streamers. Users have access to 20,000 titles, including titles the same day they hit DVD, when used on one of these devices. The just-launched service puts Vudu streaming directly on Walmart.com for instant viewing. The Walmart.com service doesn’t seem to have access to the entire library, but there’s still a good chunk available and that might be good enough to make Netflix slow its roll. → Read More
All-in-one. That’s my golden word. If you want to sell me something, make sure it can do ten completely random never-would-have-expected-it-to tasks, and I’m in. Three-in-one is only slightly less enticing, but still worth a good inspection.
Canon. today introduced its X Mark I Mouse Lite — a three-in-one calculator, keypad and laser mouse designed by the Canon camera team. → Read More
Twilio, the company that’s on a mission to help developers bake telephony into their applications, is launching a new feature this morning that could well give rise to a slew of startups (or, at the very least, a bunch of new features in existing web and mobile applications).
In short, it’s letting developers integrate the flexible and cost-efficient power of VoIP — the sort of technology used by services like Skype and Google Voice — into their own applications. And it saves developers the hassles involved with building out the infrastructure typically required to handle a VoIP service. Meet Twilio Client.
At a high level, Twilio Client is probably best described as a platform that facilitates embedded VoIP communications, but that’s confusing and doesn’t really demonstrate what exactly it does. So let’s try a few examples. → Read More
