Blue Coat Systems, the provider of web security and speed optimization solutions, released a mid-year web security report earlier this month, which, among other things, examined the current state of malware ecosystems, and detailed the growing size and reach of malware delivery networks.
Malware and malicious software have been around for years, but malware networks are becoming increasingly dynamic and continue to wreak havoc on search engines, email, and everything in between. No, my computer has not been infected by visiting this site, and, no, I will not download your antivirus software, Malware bot.
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Is the world ready for the mobile social gaming revolution? Tokyo-based DeNA, the company that makes $1.3 billion a year just by offering mobile games to Japanese cell phone users and acquired ngmoco for $400 million in December, seems to think so. DeNA/ngmoco released an English (and Chinese) version of Mobage, its super-successful Japanese mobile social gaming platform on Android yesterday. → Read More
Brian Chesky is the CEO of Airbnb. In this guest article he discusses the recent Airbnb user safety incident we reported on earlier today.
On June 22nd, we learned that the home of one of our San Francisco hosts was vandalized by an Airbnb guest. We were devastated when we received this news. With a single booking, one person’s malicious actions victimized our host and undermined what had been – for 2 million nights – a case study demonstrating that people are fundamentally good. → Read More
wireWAX, a startup which lets users add clickable tags to faces and objects web videos (the tags also move with the object), has secured investment from Passion Capital, the early-stage investment fund managed by leafing european angel investors, Stefan Glaenzer, Eileen Burbidge and Robert Dighero. No figure was released but our sources say it was in the $500,000 realm. ex-COO of Last.fm and CEO of ArtFinder Spencer Hyman joins as a strategic advisor and earlier investor.
wireWAX’s technology is a cross-platform SaaS tool but its not limited to Flash web sites. It’s also available in a native touchable video version for use on the iPad or other Flash-restricted devices. Developed by co-founders Steve Callanan and Dan Garraway based on the former’s 10 years of experience at his TV production company. → Read More
Socialbakers, a social media analytics website focused primarily on Facebook, launched their own Twitter statistics today. In essence, its a list of Twitter’s most popular users, including @ladygaga, @justinbieber, @barackobama and @britneyspears, sorted by their number of followers.
Socialbakers, previously known as Facebakers, is a product of the Czech company Candytech, and is well known in the social media space for providing data on the popularity of Facebook fan pages. The fan pages are sorted by country, a feature that Facebook doesn’t offer which lets companies compare their Facebook presences to competitors. → Read More
We’re planning an event in Vienna on October 6, 2011 – TechCrunch Vienna. This will be the climax of a full week full of investors, startups and interested individuals, organized by local entrepreneur group STARTEurope.
The Startup week features speakers and panelists that are both well known and have a tremendous background in technology. People that have significantly contributed to Europe’s startup and investment culture. Facebook will be doing a dedicated “Facebook Hack” side event, that will be overseen by Facebook’s Head of Business Development Christian Hernandez.
Early bird tickets are available until July 31, so be quick. Also if you are interested in partnering with us then please contact Lukas Zinnagl (NOT Mike Butcher) at lukas.zinnagl (at) gmail.com. → Read More
The merging of our smartphone and car interfaces is progressing, but at a rather slow pace. Various crossover apps and accessories have come out but few are really capturing the imaginations of drivers, and slow updates mean the systems are outdated a year after they launch. Well, I expect that will also be the case with Lexus’s latest system, but at least it’s an improvement. → Read More
Here’s a mystery for you: Images of a Motorola Android handset have surfaced on Chinese blogs, and it looks incredibly similar to the Atrix 4G. In fact, it looks identical save for a few miniscule changes.
The pictures come courtesy of IT168 and were published by ePrice.tw, which seems to think that the display will have a contoured design.
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Tomorrow, it will be exactly a month since Google+ was first unveiled. In that short amount of time, they’ve managed to sign up well north of 10 million users, which is amazing. Of course, the easiest path to tens of million of users is to start with hundreds of millions of users. Just ask Buzz or Wave. Still, kudos to Google — phase one of G+ was clearly a success.
Now comes the hard part. Keeping those users around and engaged. → Read More
Quora has just launched a bundle of interesting initiatives over the past day or so, all signs that the Q&A site is trying to figure itself out.
First of all, the company has begun testing something called “Ask to Answer Suggestions” where users start out with a budget of 500 Quora credits (Quoins?) and can offer to pay other users in credits to answer questions. The price for questions will eventually increase or decrease based on answerer’s zeal for answering questions and level of topic expertise. → Read More
Here’s a classic case of a missed opportunity if there ever was one: the Vodafone 555 Blue is, if you’ll pardon the term, a dumbphone with a Facebook button. It’s simple (no fancypants OS here), has a decent-looking keyboard, and it’s got just enough connectivity to keep your average FB junkie from getting the shakes.
But is such a phone practical in today’s market? → Read More
A 19-year old man has been arrested in the Shetland Islands, accused of being Lulzsec spokesperson, “Topiary”. If found guilty, one of two things will happen next…
The Internet Ending:
“Topiary” — who is revealed to be a dark, brooding, leather-clad circa 1995 Jonny Lee Miller — avoids jail by making a side-deal with the CIA to help them take down a rogue hacker who is threatening to sell Pentagon secrets to the Iranians. All goes well until we learn that “Topiary”‘s CIA contact is in fact a double agent, working for the North Koreans. Now chased by three governments, “Topiary” has to recover the Pentagon secrets, take down both rogue agents and prevent world war three. The movie ends with “Topiary”‘s record wiped, and our hero — who it turns out was the only honest man in a world of liars — sails into the sunset with Olivia Wilde, a lifetime of highly paid corporate consultancy gigs ahead of him. (Moral: We are Anonymous. We are Legion. We do not forgive. We get to have sex with the chick from Tron: Legacy.) → Read More
There’s been a lot of debate about the role of VC backing for startups in Europe recently, not least because we’ve been pushing the issue to try and provoke a response from European VCs who – with notable exceptions of course – tend not to come out fighting quite as much as their US peers. The majority of European VCs tend to blog less, tweet less and, as a result much of the debate about VC comes from disgruntled European entrepreneurs. But now one really has come out fighting.
German VC firm Earlybird has produced a long slide presentation – written by Hendrik Brandis and Jason Whitmire – that argues that although the European venture industry is a quarter of the size of the U.S. market, proportionally speaking it is outperforming the US VC industry in returns. As a result, Limited Partners (LIPs) – the funds that invest in VCs – should start sitting up and taking notice. It has to be said of course that as VCs across the globe battle for funding, it is in their interests to come out swinging from their corner to fight for these funds. But let’s hear them out.
Earlybird argues that European VCs are achieving some of the best multiple exits in the world, and that it’s not just the old tired example Skype which is driving this. It also argues that because there are less VCs in Europe, it’s more of a buyers market, capable of better returns as a result (we’ll leaving the fuming entrepreneurs aside for a moment).
Here are the slides: → Read More
Crowdtap, a service that allows marketers to easily collaborate with and mobilize targeted crowds of influential consumers, announced today that it has raised $7 million in series A funding. The round was led by Foundry Group, with participation from GSA Venture Partners and social media agency Mr. Youth.
Mr. Youth invested $3 million of seed funding in Crowdtap back in 2009 (and served as an incubator for the company during its early stages), which brings the startup’s total current investment to $10 million. Crowdtap said that it will use its infusion of capital to ramp up hiring in both its sales and engineering teams. → Read More
Tickets to our Mobile First CrunchUp sold out in one day and we just released our last set of tickets to our annual summer party at August Capital. If you were not able to get a ticket to the CrunchUp (which also gets you into the after party), here is one more chance.
Camber Tech Inc has offered to give away their two tickets to the CrunchUp to two lucky TechCrunch readers. Camber Tech Inc are the guys behind Adlibrium, the first local advertising and commerce platform that runs on mobile devices. They are also doing a non-profit mobile advertising initiative. You can check out their CGI commitment here. → Read More
Less than two weeks ago, Sprint cut the price of its Google Nexus S 4G by half to just $99 on-contract. That had me pink in the cheek with barely controlled glee, so you can only imagine my reaction when I saw that both Best Buy and Amazon were offering the device for free (and nearly free).
Best Buy promises all the Google phone you can handle for free as long as you sign on for a two-year contract, while Amazon lists the handset for $.01 (still on-contract). → Read More
Researchers at Stanford University have put together an interesting new battery technology that combines two theoretically coveted attributes: transparency and flexibility. The method of making the battery transparent is rather clever, and while the resulting product is far less energy-dense than its opaque relatives, it’s still an interesting development.
The secret is organizing the components in a certain way on a microscopic scale. The electrode material isn’t see-through, but there’s no reason it has to be a solid block instead of something less substantial. Materials Science professor Yi Cui figured out a way to organize the active materials in a way that’s nearly invisible to the naked eye. → Read More
Newly public home rental service HomeAway is reporting second quarter earnings today, posting a 40.9 percent revenue growth, to $58.7 million in the second quarter, compared to $41.6 million in the second quarter of 2010. The company said growth was buoyed by renewal rates, coupled with increases in new listings and revenue per listing.
Net income for the quarter was $2.2 million compared to net income of $14.9 million for the second quarter of 2010 (the company said that income for Q2 2010 was positively impacted by the release of a deferred tax asset valuation allowance, resulting in a one-time benefit of $13.4 million). → Read More
Until now everything has been just great for Airbnb, a service that lets people rent out their homes and become a sort of mini-hotel. The company launched in 2008 and has grown rapidly. They’ve been cloned by the Germans, which is always a mark of success. And they’re now a part of the billion dollar valuation club. Even the clone raised $90 million.
Which is all super great. But now the story of a trusting Airbnb user who’s had her home sacked (it’s the only way to describe it) is starting to spread. Airbnb’s response so far has been tepid at best. It turns out that when something like this happens, Airbnb isn’t financially responsible.
The facts: Last month “EJ” wrote a long blog post about how a renter spent an entire week carefully robbing and trashing her home. Walls were cut through to get to locked valuables, including her grandmother’s jewelry. → Read More
