The news never sleeps, which is why news sites like TechCrunch are addicted to realtime information. That addiction extends to the analytical tools news sites use to determine which articles are resonating with people and which ones aren’t. Today, news sites are getting a special flavor of a tool many already use. It’s called Newsbeat. It’s Chartbeat on steroids for news publishers, and it launches in public beta.
Chartbeat is like a realtime Google Analytics for sites that shows you exactly what is happening on your site at any given second. (We swear by it here at TechCrunch, and it even powers the popular posts widget in the sidebar at right). Newsbeat will be familiar to any Chartbeat user, but it is redesigned to break out social traffic from other types and provides an early warning system for stories that are gaining traction or losing steam. → Read More
In recent years, Verizon and T-Mobile have been neck and neck when it comes to customer care performance, a race that I (and surely many other customers) have seen the benefits of firsthand. T-Mobile held on to the top spot a few months back in the first installment of J.D. Power and Associates’ Wireless Customer Care Performance Study, but Verizon has managed to take the lead for volume 2.
→ Read More
The best part of the BlackBerry OS just got a bit better, as RIM today announced the release of BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) version 6. What’s more, the company plans to offer certain apps featuring BBM integration, so users can feed their texting addiction without having to close an app. → Read More
Nielsen comes bearing good news today for devotees of the little green robot: as of this past June, Android has claimed the top spot in the U.S. smartphone OS market. Figures have it as comprising a full 39% of the market, with its closest competitor Apple a distant second at 28%. Oh, and let’s not forget the BlackBerry OS, which is currently dragging its feet at 20%. Bringing up the rear are Windows Phone 7 at 9%, which is a bit of an accomplishment considering the major head start its competitors enjoyed, and WebOS and Symbian (both at 2%). → Read More
Asus’s next-gen netbook, the MeeGo-running Eee PC X101, is nearing launch and just earned its very own product page on the company’s website. This notebook, and its slightly more bloated brother, the Windows-ifed X101H, are nearing launch and ready to usher netbooks into a new age of prosperity.
Netbooks aren’t dead. As much as some feel that they hurt the personal computer cause, consumers seemingly have no issue trading computing power for portability. The little notebooks hit the big time several years back and would probably still be a hot ticket if it weren’t for the iPad.
→ Read More
Following the e-commerce giant’s recent deal with CBS, Amazon has just announced its licensing agreement with NBCUniversal to allow U.S. Amazon Prime customers to stream movies from Universal Pictures’ library of content. Financial terms of the non-exclusive deal were not disclosed.
→ Read More
So, this is cool: The Georgia Robotics and Intelligent Systems lab has built these things called Khepera swarm robots. Though they look like little Roombas, they haven’t quite learned how to pick up crumbs yet.
They’re actually a part of grad student Edward Macdonald’s Masters thesis and just recently learned a couple new tricks. → Read More
As we’ve written in the past, Drchrono, a startup thatsimplifies the professional lives of doctors by bringing electronic health records and much more to the iPad, has received official government certification. This is will result in doctors receiving $44,000 in incentives when they use drchrono as an electronic medical records platform.
→ Read More
And we’re off: the first photos of a “cheap” iPhone – not specifically of the iPhone 5 but of a light version of the iPhone 4 – are beginning to appear, the latest leak coming from a Vietnamese forum, Tinhte.
We wouldn’t usually fall for this sort of thing but Tinhte has been correct in the past and so it’s at least worth a quick look.
→ Read More
As Groupon’s business in India continues to hit snags, a homegrown daily deal company is quickly snatching up market share in the local deal space. New Delhi-based Snapdeal.com, which, like Groupon features daily deal coupons at discounted rates, announced today that it has raised $40 million in series B funding from Bessemer Venture Partners, along with contributions with existing investors Nexus Venture Partners and IndoUS Venture Partners. According to Snapdeal Founder and CEO Kunal Bahl, this is the largest single round of private investment in an internet company in India to date. → Read More
Taskrabbit, the collaborative consumption service that allows you to post tasks in order to have other (vetted, background checked) people complete them within in a short amount of time has finally come to iOS (or any mobile app) this morning. In case you missed it, TaskRabbit is a service ideal for urban dwellers who are too busy to pick up party platters or fold laundry for example — a perfect market fit for iPhone users, hence. → Read More
The idea of discovering items, products and locations around you is a challenge that a number of startups and companies are trying to solve, including Foursquare, Gowalla, Yelp and many others. Today, Trover, a start-up that is the brainchild of Expedia and Zillow co-founder Rich Barton, Jason Karas and Andrew Coldham; is launching today as a mobile discovery network where people can share location-specific discoveries of places and things in a visual way. You can download Trover’s iOS app here.
→ Read More
Nokia’s developer relations team would like you to remind you that Symbian has an App Store, called Ovi, and they’ve just surpassed 7.62 million downloads per day, thank you very much.
Their short announcement states that thanks to a recent change in the registration process – namely the removal of account requirements for the downloading of free apps – has sparked interest in the Ovi store. Most downloads are coming from India, making that country “the top country by downloads from the mobile web channel.” → Read More
Hearsay Social, a SaaS dashboard for national businesses and their local branches to manage Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter pages, has raised $18 million in new funding led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA) with existing investor Sequoia Capital participating. In conjunction with the funding, NEA partner Jon Sakoda is joining the Hearsay Social Board of Directors. To date, Hearsay Social has raised $21 million in funding.
Hearsay Social, which launched to the public in February, aims to help big brands who have local branches (i.e. Starbucks, BestBuy), manage Facebook, Twitter and other social media pages. Because of the highly distributed nature of some companies that have local branches, managing social media pages for stores or offices that are still in compliance with a company’s regulation is a challenging process. → Read More
If you’re running Chrome and you like Prince-inflected super-pop with a knob-twister aesthetic, then you’re in luck. The band OK Go teamed up with dance company Pilobolus to create a very unique video for their song “All Is Not Lost.”
The video itself is pretty simple – you’ve got a bunch of people running around in spandex on a clear floor so you can pretty much tell everyone’s religion when they lie down. However, the way the video interacts with chrome – creating dependent windows, kaleidoscopes, and other wild effects – and then placing your own message into the video using a pre-set alphabet of dancing feet – is pretty darn cool. → Read More
Google has long been obsessed with speed. It’s paramount in pretty much everything they do. Which is why the launch of Google+ with some — gasp — attention paid to design is even more surprising. But a new service Google is launching this evening very much puts the focus back on speed — an obsessive amount of focus, one might say.
Page Speed Service is the latest tool in Google’s arsenal to help speed up the web. This service is also their most ambitious yet. When you sign up and point your site’s DNS entry to Google, they’ll enable the tool which will fetch your content from your servers, rewrite your webpages, and serve them up from Google’s own servers around the world. Yes, you read all of that correctly.
→ Read More
The Nintendo 3DS is dropping $80 – from $249 to $169 – on August 12 in preparation for the launch of the console’s E3 A-List titles including Kid Icarus. This cut is also, presumably, in reaction to slow initial sales of the 3D console.
Current owners of the console will receive ten free NES games along with ten free Game Boy Advance titles on September 1st (provided they’ve logged into the Nintendo eShop before August 12.
→ Read More
Totango, a realtime platform that allows software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies to better understand their customers, announced today that it has closed a $3.8 million round of Series A funding, led by Pitango Venture Capital and Gemini Ventures. The Israeli startup will use its latest infusion of capital to ramp up hiring and marketing efforts.
The company is also officially announcing the launch of its public beta, which aims to enable sales teams to better understand how current customers or prospective customers are using their service in realtime in order to more effectively manage customer conversations and engagement. For now, the service is completely free. Down the road, Totango plans to scale its platform to address the entire customer lifecycle, and will add pricing tiers, but at this point is primarily focused on optimizing the way sales teams, specifically, are interacting with their customers. → Read More
