Back at CES, we spent a long time waiting for Lady Gaga to show up (again) and introduce her new product line, a collaboration with Polaroid called Grey Label. The camera sunglasses and Bluetooth printer didn’t exactly blow our socks off, but the GL30 camera prototype sure did. It was beautiful. Of course, no matter how much I bugged Polaroid, I never got word one about availability or what have you. And then this thing turns up!
Now, I’m not convinced this is the same product we saw at CES. A relative of that product, perhaps, but not the real thing. I refuse to believe that they’d throw away a perfectly good design like that, one associated with Gaga herself. So what is this? → Read More
With the recent success of StockTwits, the market seems to be showing that there’s ample demand for a social micro-blogging service that targets stocks, trading, and financial information. Or at least that’s what Stocial is hoping. The Seattle-based startup, which is launching today in public beta, wants to be, in conception, the love child of StockTwits and Yahoo! Finance — or, said another way, Bloomberg for the people, by the people.
Essentially, Stocial wants to give its users access to realtime market data and trending stock sentiment in a virtual and “game-ified” venue. Of course, most tickers are capable of the those first two, and StockTwits has certainly shown that Twitter can be a great resource for realtime financial information. But Stocial Founder and CEO Fahad Kamr says that, with its 140-character limit, Twitter doesn’t embody the full potential for sharing stock information. → Read More
Twitter has just announced to developers that it has added a field for “possibly_sensitive” content in its streaming API, in a test that will eventually result in more granular end-user media settings.
Twitter representative Carolyn Penner tells me that this API change means that eventually when users flag their own or other users’ content as NSFW, a warning will show up before in the media details pane of the tweet informing other users of potentially sensitive content before they click-through. While the ability to flag content as sensitive has existed since Twitter launched Photos, the “sensitive content” flag on the details pane is new, Penner says. → Read More
Today, Softbank Capital is announcing a series of updates, including the launch of its redesigned website. Some of these changes have been brewing for some time now, but, hey, the redesign of its website is as good a time as any to spread the word. Over the past year and a half, Softbank has been in the process of shifting its investment strategy to one that focuses more heavily on early stage businesses. Rather than investing larger chunks in series B rounds, Softbank will be seeking to invest in seed and early series A rounds, in smaller doses, giving the firm the opportunity to invest in a greater number of companies. → Read More
We’re back with a new episode of TC Cribs, and this one is sure is sure to be a crowd pleaser: red-hot blogging platform Tumblr. The NYC-based startup has been growing like crazy (they’re now up to 11.6 billion page views per month), and they’ve given us a chance to take a peek inside their headquarters.
For a company with over $40 million in funding the Tumblr team is still surprisingly small, and the office is relatively humble. But there’s plenty of charm: handcrafted furniture, board games abound, and robots that look suspiciously like my favorite wizard.
Be sure to watch til the end, when I get to walk Tumblr founder David Karp’s dog.
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President Obama announced back in February his support for a Wireless Innovation and Infrastructure Initiative, which he believed would (among other things) “benefit all Americans, bolster public safety, and spur innovation in wireless services, equipment, and applications.” Under his plan, 500 MHz of spectrum would be freed up over the course of the next ten years in order spur on mobile broadband expansion and the development of 4G networks. → Read More
Tearing through a mountain of mobile phone data isn’t much fun, but someone has to do it — and it looks like it pays well enough. Just 5 years after its founding, mobile research firm Zokem has been snatched up for $11.7 million up front, with a potential payout of an additional $12 million through 2014.
Their buyer? Arbitron Inc., a company focused on — hey, whatd’ya know? — consumer research.
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After six… Wait, let’s make that seven months of uncertainty, we might finally have something solid to work with. Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha said in an interview with CNET that the Droid Bionic will land in September.
Just so we’re clear, that’s nine months after the phone was announced at CES, five months after rumors circulated of its cancellation, and four months after Motorola promised it would arrive this summer via tweet. → Read More
Motorola Mobility just released its Q2 earnings and it’s loaded with fun stats. First off, the company posted $3.3 billion in net revenue with non-GAAP earnings of nine cents a share. That’s up 28% over last year’s second quarter and beats the Wall Street’s estimate of just six cents a share. The company also realized a GAAP net loss of $56 million compared to a net earnings of $80 million in 2010.
Over that time period Motorola Mobility managed to ship 11 million devices including 4.4 million smartphones and 440,000 Xoom Android tablets. That’s up from 8.3 total devices last year . Part of this growth came from the Latin America and China markets where revenue grew 40% and sales more than doubled from the previous year. Note, the company reported shipments rather than sales to consumers. → Read More
The issues of censorship, net neutrality, and file sharing will be kicking for years to come, and the necessity of making the relevant laws agree internationally will be by no means a small part of the conflict. But those laws have to be reasonable and scalable to begin with. Today brings a development from the UK, where a judge has determined that BT must use its Cleanfeed censorship technology, intended for blocking child pornography, to prevent its subscribers from accessing the file sharing website Newzbin2.
It seems that even the Pirate Bay defense (moving your servers to a secret cave) will be ineffective in this case. As I wrote before regarding the need for an alternative DNS: when lobbyists and short-sighted legislators start cutting off certain sources at whatever choke point seems convenient, that’s nothing short of a slippery slope. → Read More
iPhone fans, start drooling. Skeptics, have your grains of salt at the ready. An iPhone 5 — or at least something closely fitting the rumored description of the iPhone 5 — has just been spotted… on a train, of all places. → Read More
Good news for Google users outside of the United States: the internet giant has announced that Two-Step Verification is now available in 150 countries worldwide and 40 languages. You should use it. Really.
No, the feature, which is more generally referred to as two-factor authentication, doesn’t sound cool. In fact, it’s sort of a pain to set up. But it helps protect your Google account against phishing and some other security attacks — which is vitally important given how much data many people are storing on Google servers, and will only become more so.
Here’s how it works: after activating two-step authentication, whenever you attempt to log into your Google account you’ll be prompted for both your ‘regular’ password and a second password that’s only available via your phone. → Read More
Managing local listings across the Web is a nightmare for small businesses, and a huge opportunity for local advertising startup Yext. The New York City company just closed a $10 million series D round, led by Michael Walrath through his WGI Group investment vehicle. Other existing investors IVP, Ron Conway’s SV Angel, and Sutter Hill Ventures also participated. Walrath is the founder of Right Media (which was sold to Yahoo for $850 million) and became chairman of Yext last March.
This was very much an internal round, but at a higher valuation than the $25 million C round two years ago (which it called a B at the time, but was technically a C). Yext’s main business is pay-per-call ads for local businesses. And that is a decent sized business that brings in revenues in the double-digit millions, and the company even entertained some acquisition offers. “We thought about whether or not to sell or do something that could be 100 times as big,” says CEO Howard Lerman, “and we chose the latter.”
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We expected it would happen eventually because here in the U.S. it happens to everyone… but two weeks? Can’t we just give them a little time to settle in, rearrange their accents and lose a bit of sophistication before we jump on Spotify’s back? Within fourteen days of arriving stateside, PacketVideo has filed a patent infringement suit against Europe’s prized music service. For what, you ask? Streaming music. → Read More
Earlier today, Twitter formally announced that you may start to see Promoted Tweets in your main Twitter timeline. In other words, ads will enter the stream in a truly significant way for the first time. As this news began to trickle out over the past few weeks, there was some concern that this may cause user backlash. But Twitter’s head of global revenue, Adam Bain, doesn’t see it this way at all. In fact, he believes it will be a win-win for both brands and users. Shortly after the announcement, we had the chance to talk with Bain.
“It’s no secret that as Twitter has grown, companies have flocked to it,” Bain says, noting that marketers and brands have been there since practically day one. “We’ve found that 20 to 40 percent of users follow one or more brands on Twitter,” he continues, noting that this is extremely important (the stat is based on third-party research and is so wide because the definition of “brand” varies). “Users want to be updated when brands have updates or exclusive content. The one problem we’ve heard from users is that when there is exclusive content or deals, there’s a chance they might miss them,” he says. “If the brand tweets at 9 AM, and the person comes in at 9:15 AM, they’ll miss them.”
Hence, Promoted Tweets in timelines. → Read More
Hired in 1999, Doug Edwards was employee #59 at Google. Edward’s six year stint in Mountain View has been recorded in his highly readable new book I’m Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee #59 where he reveals what life was really like at the plex in those early years.
Earlier this week, TechcrunchTV got lucky when Edwards came into our San Francisco studio to tell me what he really thinks about Google. He didn’t disappoint – confessing why Eric Schmidt is the “Joe Biden of tech”, why the “Don’t Be Evil” slogan could only hurt Google and why Larry Page can be a grown-up CEO. → Read More
Until Adobe and Apple work out their differences (Yeah, right) or the entire Internet miraculously switches to using HTML5 for all video content, the Skyfire browser will always have one steadfast selling point: through some on-the-fly conversion magic, it can play back Flash video content on iOS devices.
The problem: outside of its Flash shortcomings, Safari is great. Most people probably don’t want to replace it entirely. So Skyfire gets pushed to the background, waiting for its moment in the sun when the user comes across a video that Safari just refuses to play.
Realizing this, Skyfire has started to think outside of the browser. This morning they’ve released VideoQ, a standalone player for video content that Safari won’t touch. It’s like the Skyfire browser, minus the browser — or, in some sense, like a ReadItLater for mobile video. → Read More
I’ll just say it: Google TV is sinking and taking its crew down with her. The service promised to bring new life to HDTVs when it launched last October. But it didn’t. Big media made sure of it by blocking access to their online streaming, seemingly taking away Google TV’s most novel feature. Without online streaming, Google TV’s awesome search tool is crippled and the system is just an overpriced DLNA client and Netflix streamer.
Logitech somewhat signaled the end of the platform’s life today but slashing the price of the Revue unit down to $100. This comes just months after the CEO stated with its 2010 Q4 earnings that they are enthusiastic about Google TV even with just 5 million in sales during last the last holiday season. Today’s price cut states loud and clear that Google TV is on its last leg and one of its launch partners are trying everything to get rid of back inventory. → Read More
The Motorola Triumph is off to a rough start. A flickering screen issue, while annoying, isn’t all that bad when compared with what new Triumph owners are complaining about now: Apparently the handset’s 5-megapixel autofocus camera forgot how to autofocus.
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About a month ago, talk began to surface that Twitter would soon begin to roll out ads (that is, their Promoted Tweets) in user timelines. The truth is that they’ve been talking about this possibility for a while. And they’ve even tested it with third party partners like Hootsuite. But today comes the true test. Twitter will start placing them on Twitter.com.
To be clear, the sponsored Tweets will only appear in your timeline if you already follow the account that has paid for the spot. If that’s the case, a single Promoted Tweet will appear at (or near) the top of your main timeline when you log in to twitter.com for the first time in any given day. As you get new Tweets, these Promoted Tweets will be pushed down just like regular Tweets. But if you refresh the page, the ad will appear at the top of the timeline again, is our understanding. → Read More
