Back in the day, the worst part of losing a phone was re-inputting contact information and coughing up the dough for another handset. With today’s smartphones, losing your phone is like losing everything. Not only is your very expensive piece of hardware gone, but your banking and credit card info, contacts, passwords, and social networking accounts are all up for grabs out in the world. It’s horrifying.
Samsung feels our pain, and has thus introduced SamsungDive, which lets you track and remotely control your handset when lost or stolen. → Read More
An IBM patent points to an on-screen keyboard that matches the user’s anatomy, changing to reflect each users “unique typing motion.”
The keyboard requires calibration in the form of various exercises. The system then senses various variables like “finger skin touch area, finger size data and finger position.” It then creates a unique keyboard based on a “set of averages.” → Read More
Quantitative analysis startup Quid is getting a major vote of confidence and $10 million in a seed round from a raft of serious investors. Niklas Zennstrom’s Atomico Ventures, Ron Conway’s SV Angel, Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, Endeavour Vision, Infocomm Investments, and Korean investor Charles Lho all invested in the series C financing. (Founders Fund and Lho were already investors. Max Levchin has joined the board.
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Amateur stargazers and peeping toms, this one is for you. The AstroClip promises to mount an iPhone 4 to any telescope with a 1.25-inch eyepiece for easy astrophotography. An iPhone 4 simply snaps into the injection molded case and then three set screws secures the case to most telescope eyepieces. This opens up all sorts of fun photography projects: shooting the moon and stars, the lady in the next building and so much more!
The project launched on Kickstarter last week and seems to be having a bit of trouble getting off the ground. This is the designer’s, Matthew Geyster, third Kickstarter project. His first project, Rustic Case for iPad and Kindle 3, was eventually funded, but his second, a dual-tipped capacitive stylus, didn’t raise enough funds. This time around Geyster is asking for a reasonable $15,000, which will cover all the costs while keeping the manufacturing in the US. → Read More
Intuit, the same company that brought you QuickBooks accounting software, has today announced the QuickBooks Mobile app for Android. Now, small businesses that use QuickBooks Pro, QuickBooks Premier and QuickBooks Online will have access to their data from their Android phone.
The app has already been made available to iOS users, but Android fans will now be able to get in on the amateur accounting action. Features include access to customer and sales info, as well as customer balances, the ability to create estimates on the fly and on-site invoicing. Information added to QuickBooks Mobile is automatically synced with QuickBooks. → Read More
I had a friend who once amazed me by writing a basketball game for the TI-81 graphing calculator. This, however, is an order of magnitude more impressive. Gossamer is a web browser for the TI-83+ through TI-84+SE calculators and, through the use of a number of fairly interesting network protocol APIs, it lets you see the text of almost any website right on the calculators tiny, pixelated screen. → Read More
Motif Investing, a new vehicle that allows you to invest in ideas, has raised $20 million in Series B financing led by Ignition Partners with participation from Norwest Venture Partners and Foundation Capital. This brings the company’s total funding to $26 million.
Motif, which is in private beta, was founded by former Microsoft executive Hardeep Walia and hedge fund analyst Tariq Hilaly to give individuals a new way to invest based on themes. Instead of choosing to buy stock in specific companies, Motif allows investors to invest in different portfolios of stocks, each called a “motif,” that are centered around everyday ideas. For example, motifs can be built around themes and ideas ranging from cloud computing to democracy in the Middle East. In addition, each motif can be customized to meet an individual’s ideas or needs. → Read More
tl;dr version:
If you’re an entrepreneur or VC or will be working in this industry - buy this. read it. live it.
It’s written by Brad Feld & Jason Mendelson. They know what they’re talking about. It’s important information that you need to avoid “information asymmetry” with VCs
Some big lessons I’ve learned over the years about term sheets:
1) the language never says anything remotely like “blocking rights” or “participating preferred liquidation preferences” in the term sheets. It’s hidden in legal language. You need to understand them.
2) lawyers seldom walk you through the “how can this term be used against you” scenarios. If you don’t know the right questions to ask you may be left unawares.
3) VCs are anal about things like voting thresholds, seniority of their stock, protective provisions, etc. Entrepreneurs never seem to focus on anything other than ownership percentage.
Brad & Jason’s book, Venture Deals, will arm you. Read on for more details … → Read More
Facebook is the largest social networking site in, well, the world. But not in China. Facebook and Twitter are blocked by China’s Great Firewall. The micro-blogging service Sina Weibo is the whip in China. HTC knows its market and therefore slightly retooled the Status/Salsa for the China market. Gone is the Facebook logo and a Weibo burning eye logo is on the dedicated button instead. → Read More
Goshi, a marketplace that aims to disrupt Craigslist by adding a local and mobile component to buying and selling items in your community, is debuting its service in Chicago today.
Basically, Goshi’s iPhone app allows you to take a photo of an item you want to sell, describe the item, put a price on it and then post it to the marketplace. Instead of picking up items at people’s homes or workplace, Goshi has created “hubs” at local coffee shops where transactions take place. → Read More
We’ve been saying for a while now that Samsung is primed and ready to dethrone Nokia from its nearly 15 year reign as the top smartphone maker in the world, and it would seem the moment is upon us.
We can’t say for sure, as Samsung hasn’t released official numbers, but research firm Strategy Analytics told Bloomberg that Samsung’s official sales numbers should fall between 18 million and 21 million units sold worldwide. → Read More
Qualcomm has bought certain technology assets from GestureTek, a well-known developer of gesture recognition technology. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
According to a release, Qualcomm is buying IP assets related specifically to gesture recognition technology, as well as “engineering resources.” GestureTek is retaining other assets in that relate to its gesture-controlled public display and digital signage business. → Read More
TIM is a new $60 camera kit from Holga that – get this – shoots in 3D and half-frame without digital technology! Groovy, right? It includes a detachable flash with color filters and uses something called 35mm “film,” which seems to chemically recreate patterns of light and dark on something called “photo paper” when used with the proper “agents.” It was very popular at the turn of the century.
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In line with RIM’s planned “cost optimization program,” the company is moving a number of executives into positions of greater power and will lay off 2,000 of its estimated 19,000 person workforce.
In an effort to consolidate product efforts, the company is also moving former COO of Product Engineering, Thorsten Heins, into a position that makes him also COO of Product and Sales. Current COO, Dan Morrison, is retiring after a period of medical leave. → Read More
Canvas, which allows business to customize and publish data on mobile devices, has raised $1.2 million in Series B funding led by an investment from Motorola Solutions Venture Capital. This brings the company’s total funding to $2.3 million.
Canvas’ platform allows businesses to find, create, deploy and share mobile business applications. Businesses can allow employees to collect information using their mobile devices, analyze that data and share the analysis and data. Canvas subscribers can use their mobile devices to collect data in a simple form or via a survey. → Read More
What does MSI’s new WindPad want you to do? Enjoy (but only a little) that’s what! That’s why their latest 10-inch Android device, the Enjoy, looks so underpowered.
The device has just appeared on the FCC website and is running a 1GHZ ARM Cortex-A8 processer and, get this, Android 2.3. Feh. → Read More
I’ve been Warsaw for a few weeks now (we come here every year, long story) and I thought it might be nice to explore the Polish/Central European start-up scene. To that end, we’ll be holding an ad hoc meet-up in Warsaw on Friday the 29th at 6pm. Space is limited so reply early.
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Bloomberg is reporting that the recently popularized Kunming-area fake Apple store is being investigated by Chinese authorities and it, along with another store, has been ordered to shut down.
The owners of said stores, including one Yu Cheng (who claims he’s doing Apple a favor), have been trying to become official, authorized retailers for years and they say they’re not violating any laws. → Read More
CloudBees, a company that helps companies manage the lifecycle of Java application development and deployment in the cloud, has raised $10.5 million in Series B funding. The round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and joined by Matrix Partners, following up the latter’s initial lead investment in the company’s $4 million Series A, which also included JBoss alums Robert Bickel and Marc Fleury. → Read More
So, we just exposed the awesome secret that Facebook’s iPad app is actually already out there, hidden inside of the iPhone app. Now it’s time to show it to you.
I’ve been playing with the app for much of the night, and it seems solid. Of course, there’s no guarantee that this is what Facebook will launch when the iPad app does officially hit, but this looks and feels about right.
After months of downplaying the importance of having an iPad app, and instead playing up HTML5, Facebook has clearly spent some time working on this. At the same time, it is an HTML5-rich experience, with things like the News Feed being populated that way. But other things, like image uploads simply cannot be done without native code at this time. → Read More
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