Straight from the heart of the Mozilla’s developer newsgroup comes news of an ambitious new project: a standalone, web-based operating system. If that concept sounds familiar, I’ve also just described the core of Google’s Chrome OS which we’re beginning to see pop up on netbooks. The big twist?
It’s currently being developed for mobile devices. And it’s partially Android-based. → Read More
Blippy and FuckedCompany.com founder Philip Kaplan is at it again with his whimsical and sometimes useful ADHD Labs experiments, this time launching FaqMe, a FAQing free service that helps webmasters build snazzier FAQ and Contact Us pages. “Many websites have sucky (or non-existent) help pages and customer service,” says Kaplan, who aim to make the whole FAQing experience more FAQing frictionless. → Read More
While Twitter was busy last week making some quick, but big cuts in an attempt by Jack Dorsey to streamline the product side of things, this week they’re doing the opposite — at least on the sales and marketing side of things.
Twitter has just announced that they’ve made two additions to their senior management team. Joel Lunenfeld is joining Twitter as director of Global Brand Strategy. And Pam Kramer will be the company’s first vice president of Consumer Marketing. In the quote sent by Twitter PR, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo says he’s “thrilled” by the new hires, and the effort to bolster Twitter’s senior management team. → Read More
Zong, a company originally from Switzerland specializing in mobile payments. For the London-based VC fund Advent Venture Partners, this constitutes the third successful exit of the year. Frederic Court, who has been a General Partner at Advent Ventures for the last ten years, shares his opinion regarding the exit environment in Europe. Are M&A opportunities increasing for local startups? → Read More
Apple’s none too fond of nasty security flaws lurking about in iOS, and they’re not above cracking out rapid-fire updates to prove it. Just 10 days after the release of iOS 4.3.4 (which existed almost solely to kill off a potentially nasty PDF exploit), they’re back with another one: iOS 4.3.5. → Read More
Man, this place looks different.
Before I get too lost poking around the new digs, I’d like to introduce myself — my name is Chris Velazco, and I’m joining the TechCrunch staff as your new mobile writer. Longtime readers may remember me as a hapless MobileCrunch intern from the days of yore, a position I only really landed because Greg happened to see me on television right after he read my application. Alas, though I learned tons and met some truly great people, I had scholastic obligations to deal with and stepped away last year. → Read More
Well, it was fun while it lasted.
Just last night, our own MG Siegler unveiled that Facebook’s top secret iPad app was hiding in plain sight right within the publicly available iPhone app. All it took was a quick, mostly-pain-free modification or two, and you were knee deep in unexplored Beta territory.
Alas, it looks like Facebook has found a way to close things back up. → Read More
It’s Monday morning. You groggily open your email inbox and come across a set of photos from a cousin you haven’t spoken to in years. ‘Summer Trip!!!’, it’s called. You double-click, shrug as nothing happens, and watch a minute later as your taskbar slowly fills up with icons you’ve never seen before. This seems bad. You open IE to find that your homepage has been claimed by a free credit report agency with a passion for popups. Panic sets in as you cross your fingers, reboot your computer, and learn that your startup sound has been set to a clip of Rebecca Black’s Friday.
This sounds like a call for… GEEK SQUAD!
Err, wait. Maybe not. Best Buy’s computer repair service can be quite pricey (and it’s difficult to tell exactly how much it costs from their website), and a lot of repairs involve shipping your computer to a warehouse as opposed to fixing them on the spot. Which is frustrating when many cities are teeming with hardened technophiles who have been fixing computers for their friends, families, and college dormmates for years.
→ Read More
Los Angeles-based deals site Bevvy launches its permanent deals reservation system today, providing discounts for hardcore club types and casual happy hour attendees alike. With the new system Bevvy basically gives users 50% off their tabs at selected bars and clubs, taking a $10 reservation fee for a $100 tab and a $50 reservation fee for a $500 bottle service. → Read More
PhotoBox, which competes with Zazzle and Spreadshirt in the online digital photo service sector, has merged with Moonpig, the unlikely named online greetings card retailer in the UK. It’s clearly a sign of the heat in the market that M&A like this is starting to happen. PhotoBox is paying £120 million, mostly in shares, with existing shareholders in Moonpig rolling over a portion of their respective shareholdings in to the share capital of the merged entity. It’s also raising new equity from xisting shareholders – Highland Capital Partners, Index Ventures and Harbourvest – and a group of new private equity investors led by Insight Ventures alongside Quilvest Ventures and Greenspring Associates.
Senior management on both sides is staying on with Stan Laurent serving as Group President & Chief Executive Officer and Iain Martin serving as Moonpig.com Managing Director. Moonpig.com Founder and Executive Chairman, Nick Jenkins stays as an advisor. Insight Venture’s Lawrence Handen will also join the Group Board of Directors, as will Lionel Bergeron (Quilvest Ventures) and Ashton Newhall (Greenspring Associates) as Board observers. → Read More
I descended upon Nashville’s Summer NAMM conference/trade show with high hopes of finding a plethora of musically oriented gadgets to ease and augment the playing experience for ostensible and pro musicians alike. How did it turn out?
Well, let me first say for the record that we do cover music gadgets here; gizmos, tools and instruments with technology at their heart or portability in their design fit in with the mission of TechCrunch Gadgets. To be sure, there is a lot of innovation in the space of music gadgetry…I guess I just didn’t see a large focus on it at the smaller, summer gathering of this giant trade show organization. There was more of a concentration on standard musical instrument retailer offerings. We’ll see if I can get to the extravaganza that is Winter NAMM early next year to search some more because I have heard rumors there will be an entire mobile app/software section to explore. → Read More
For Sprint, maintaining their aging iDEN network is proving to be more of a headache than it’s worth. Even though their Nextel Direct Connect service still has footholds in certain markets (construction immediately comes to mind), their financial statements report a loss of 367,000 iDEN subscribers this past quarter. In spite of otherwise strong figures, it seems clear that iDEN is becoming more and more of a liability. That would certainly explain their move to a new Sprint Direct Connect service running on CDMA that is poised to launch in Q4 of this year. → Read More
Two years ago, Tim Armstrong replaced the ad chief he inherited, Greg Coleman, with one of his former Google lieutenants, Jeff Levick. The musical chairs still has not stopped. In a memo sent out to employees today (see below), Armstrong announced that Levick wil be stepping down, to be replaced by another trusted lieutenant, Ned Brody, who will take the new position of Chief Revenue Officer and President of AOL Advertising. He was previously COO of the media, advertising, and commerce group, as well as the president of AOL’s Paid Services group before taking over the Advertising.com group.
Most of the shakeup is happening in the sales organization, which is getting five new SVPs under Brody, who is charged with delivering consistent growth in advertising revenues and pushing AOL’s premium ad products such as Project Devil. Last quarter, total advertising revenues were still declining by 11 percent, although there was a ray of hope in that display advertising saw a 4 percent jump. Brody needs to keep growing the advertising business before older revenue streams dry up. → Read More
Send the Trend, a recently launched e-commerce site that brings personalization to the world of fashion accessories, is launching a new way for shoppers to curate their favorite items and make money at the same time, MyStyle. → Read More
Marcia Marcia Marcia! As it was in the Brady Bunch, so it is in real life. Like Marcia, the iPad is getting all the attention. Honeycomb tabs are living a life of obscurity, unable to get a footing in the general consumer mindset, and are genrally as unlikable as an unloved middle sister. Why? Marketing. Apple is good at it and Honeycomb tab makers are bad at it. It’s that simple.
Everyone knows about the iPad. Even my 87 year old grandfather told me about an article in his local newspaper about the device. He’s extremely interested in the tablet despite never using a computer before. This is the man that gifted me his beloved slide rule when I entered high school trigonometry. He knows and wants an iPad; he’s never heard of the Samsung Galaxy Tab or Motorola Xoom. → Read More
In April, LinkedIn launched new customizable plug-ins, which are features from the professional social network that can be customized and embedded on websites with minimal effort. LinkedIn plug-ins launched with the ability to add Member Profiles, Company Info, and the LinkedIn share button to websites. And today, LinkedIn is rolling out a major plug-in to companies—Apply With LinkedIn.
The new plug-in (initial details on the feature were originally revealed by GigaOm in early June), puts an “Apply with LinkedIn” button to any company website. Companies can customize the look and feel of the “Apply with LinkedIn” module to feel like part of a specific branding. And companies can manage submissions by routing applications to email address or a web app for applying for a job. The plug-in can also integrate with Applicant Tracking Systems, and only involves a small snippet of code to embed on a site. → Read More
Details about the Amazon tablet are slowly emerging as its supposed release draws closer. The latest news out of the Chinese manufacturing scene is that Amazon, like others, are opting for a low-cost touchscreen panel only capable of two-finger multitouch. The iPad and Honeycomb tabs currently use a 10-finger solution. The alternative keeps the cost down while still providing most general functions. → Read More
The HTC Status might be a sort-of-weird, kind-of-gimmicky (with its dedicated Facebook button and all) little piece of kit, but it’s got at least one thing going for it: it’s the only phone on AT&T running on the latest (phone-friendly) version of Android: v2.3, or “Gingerbread”. Not for long, though.
AT&T has just confirmed that all of the Android phones they released in 2011 will be getting the upgrade treatment.
→ Read More
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