DoughMain, a startup that combines family coordination and financial education into a simple, realtime, and gamified platform, has announced that it has raised $5 million in seed funding from a series of private angel investors. The round of financing has been used to support the launch and rollout of DoughMain.com, as well as to contribute to the development of DoughMain’s mobile applications.
But what exactly is DoughMain all about? DoughMain President and CEO Kenneth Damato said that the startup’s goal is simple: It wants to give families across the country a simple solution that allows them to coordinate household activities and, in doing so, expose their children to important financial management skills. → Read More
The arguably crazy (and inarguably crazy fast) animators at Taiwan’s Next Media Animation are at it again. After blasting out over-the-top animated summaries for everything from the Ceglia Vs. Facebook story to Antennagate, they’ve done what they do best with a tale that’s on just about all of our minds right now: the life and career of Steve Jobs. → Read More
Earlier this summer, at the e-G8 Conference in Paris, Jeff Jarvis implored French President Nicholas Sarkozy to “do no harm” to the Internet. But Jarvis isn’t alone in wanting government to stay out of Internet affairs. Take, for example, the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) Commissioner Robert McDowell who believes that the “Internet is the greatest deregulatory success story of all time” and thus, like Jarvis, uses the directive of “doing no harm” in determining government legislation. → Read More
Where do you get your news (besides TechCrunch, of course)? Some of you may like that familiar tactile experience of newsprint, ink on the fingers, but chances are that your news consumption takes place mostly online — or on a mobile device. But thanks to the content fire hose that is the Internet, there’s a lot of irrelevant junk floating around out there, and, thus, the focus of digital readers and content distributors has turned to improving the filters, aggregators, and readers that channel the noise into signal.
Whether your go-to resources for realtime news happen to be Twitter, Facebook, RSS feeds, or the TechMemes of the world, we’re all looking for an easy, curated, and social, way to consume content from the sites we trust — as well as those we like but don’t visit as often.
XYDO, a startup that launched in May and raised $1.25 from EPIC Ventures and a host of angels in June, has hopped into the social news space by offering a user experience that combines the best parts of sites like Digg and Hacker News in an effort to serve you with relevant, curated, and social news from top content houses. → Read More
This is different from those other electric shoes that were making the rounds yesterday. Piezoelectrics are interesting, but simply don’t produce a lot of power for their size. Enough to make a low-power transmitter squirt a few bytes, or light an LED. They’re great for collecting ambient forces like sound and vibration, if you know the direction and type of force you want to harvest, there are better ways to go about it.
In the case of harvesting energy from footsteps, you have a pretty good idea of how the forces will work. And some researchers from the University of Wisconsin Madison are working on a system that might be able to pull as much as 20W from your strut. Why are you strutting, anyway? You think you’re so cool. → Read More
Some of the most interesting and relevant content on Quora are related to places. But up until now, Quora hasn’t done much to focus that data using location. Today, they’re starting to.
A new feature going live shortly will allow users to set location information for topics. For example, if there’s a topic about the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, you can now drop a pin to indicate where that is on a map. This location will then show up to everyone browsing that topic. And the map can be set to show the satellite or terrain view as well (they’re using Google Maps). Specific addresses can also be entered.
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If you’re a fan of cloud-based music lockers, it’s a good time to be alive. Back in March, Amazon somewhat surprisingly beat Apple and Google to the music streaming and storage punch with their “Cloud Drive” and “Cloud Player”. Both Google and Apple have since launched cloud music offerings (or betas thereof), and all three continue to improve and evolve as time marches on.
As a music fan, it’s great to see cloud music storage and streaming services moving forward in tandem, even if we all have to admit to having our own personal favorite. Because, frankly, the more competition in this space, the better. Which is why you should be paying attention to a new startup that’s entering stage left: Mecanto. Yes, today, a new cloudy music service enters the arena, promising unlimited music streaming and storage to listeners all over the world — that won’t put a dent in your wallet. (Mecanto is offering TC readers 1,000 free 6-month subscriptions. Huzzah! See below for more info.) → Read More
Are you the kind of person who would love to have an animatronic Gary Coleman on your shelf, his little pudgy face cursing like a sailor at your guests while you roller skate around your basement wearing a skin-tight rubber suit and sing reggae-infused Coldplay covers? If you said “Absolutely!” then read on.
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After Jive’s $100 million IPO filing yesterday, local business reviews site Angie’s List is throwing its hat into the ring, filing an S-1 this afternoon. The company will raises as much as $75 million, according to the filing.
As we’ve written in the past, Angie’s List offers consumers a way to review and rate doctors, contractors and service companies on the Web. The company launched in 1995 with a focus on local home, yard and car services, sits at the intersection of local search, user-generated content and subscription-based services. To date, Angie’s List has raised nearly $100 million from Battery Ventures, T. Rowe Price, City Investment Group, Cardinal Ventures and others.
In the wake of the London riots, there has been intense debate about whether the Internet – and particularly social media networks like Twitter and Facebook – needs more regulation. But according to Chris Painter, the US State Department’s recently appointed Coordinator for Cyber Issues, the riots early this month do not represent an excuse for governments around the world to regulate the Internet.
I caught up with Painter earlier this week at the Technology Policy Institute’s Aspen Forum where he spoke on a star studded panel about the post Wikileaks and post Egypt world. Painter’s message to the world is unambiguous. The Internet not only enables freedom but also prosperity, the Hilary Clinton appointee told me. And America, he promised me, is firmly committed to making the Internet a “very large” part of its foreign policy as it actively supports free speech and democracy around the world. → Read More
Last night I went out to dinner. But I didn’t pick where I was going, Ness did. The place was good. Score one for Ness.
We previously covered Ness Computing in July, talking about the technology that would power their eventual apps (as well as their funding). Today, the first such app has gone live in the App Store, called simply, Ness. It’s a personal search engine catering to restaurants. And it’s good.
Whereas most food and restaurant recommendation apps focus on ratings from the general population, Ness is tailored around social as well as your own tastes. Others have tried this before as well, but Ness seems to have it nailed thanks to a ton of data they’ve already been pulling in before the app even launched. → Read More
In its first quarter as a public company, music streaming service Pandora posted record revenue in Q2 2012. For the second quarter fiscal year 2012, total revenue was $67 million, a 117% year over year increase. For the second quarter fiscal 2012, on a GAAP basis, the net loss per per share was $(0.04). The non-GAAP net income per fully diluted common share was $0.02.
In terms of net income, Pandora took a loss of $1.8 million for the quarter. But Pandora’s Q2 advertising revenue was $58.3 million, a 118% year over year increase. Subscription and other revenue was $8.7 million, a 112% year over year increase. → Read More
Quick! Asus Transformer owners! Check your system updates. The Internet is awash with claims that build 8.6.5.9 enables sideloading of the Netflix app. Right now, only the Lenovo IdeaPad K1 and ThinkPad Tablet are Netflix certified, forcing owners of other Honeycomb tablets to side load the app, something that previously wasn’t possible on the Transformer. → Read More
We’ve seen some interesting developments lately in the fields of robotics and computer vision. They’re not as academic as you’d expect: enormous tech successes like the Roomba and Kinect have relied as much on clever algorithms and software development as they have on marketing and retail placement. So what’s next for our increasingly intelligent cameras, webcams, TVs, and phones?
I spoke with Dr. Anthony Hoogs, head of computer vision research at Kitware, a company that’s a frequent partner of DARPA, NIH, and other acronyms you’d probably recognize.We discussed what one might reasonably expect from the next few years of advances in this growing field. → Read More
Taboola, a service that powers many of the video recommendation widgets you find across the web, has raised a $9 million Series B funding round. The round is being led by Crescent Point, which is based in New York and Asia, as well as Evergreen VC, which has participated in previous rounds.
This round brings Taboola’s total funding to $15 million (it previously raised a $4.5 million round in November 2008, and a $1.5 million round in November 2007).
Taboola gives publishers a turn-key product for offering recommendations on whatever video platform they’re using (it’s integrated with Brightcove, Ooyala, and other services). → Read More
The BlackBerry PlayBook is impressive upon first look. You pick it up, quickly scroll through the apps, and jump online. It all works like it’s supposed to. But then you find out it can’t hook up to your email; a BlackBerry needs to be connected through the BlackBerry Bridge. This connection also enables BBM, calendar and an address book, but an update due next month will finally bake several key features into the PlayBook. → Read More
I love printed materials. Not just because they’re great in their own right, but because sometimes, due to the restrictions of printing and mailing delays, they break news a little early. In this case, Fujifilm’s rumored X10/X50, little brother to the much-loved X100, has shown up in the Promaster catalog, complete with specs and pic. → Read More
After what has felt like forever for many an Android fan, the Samsung Galaxy S II is finally set to touch down stateside. Come next Monday, Samsung will be spilling the details surrounding the Galaxy S II’s US launch.
Between the launch timeframe and its positioning as a flagship Android handset, it’s pretty much unavoidable that the Galaxy S II will be spun as the iPhone 5′s greatest rival — and in that battle, Samsung will need as much carrier support as it can get. Alas, it looks like they’ll have to go on without the support of the biggest carrier of all: Verizon.
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Brokers are not all the same. Some can pull a little extra cash out of a house and some are good at the fast sell. Some will try to force you to rent a room in a basement with barely enough room to stand up. That’s why StreetEasy, a real estate site popular with the New York apartmentatti, has added broker ratings to their paid property search platform.
This service allows you to see who is active in your own neighborhood and who tends to retain value vs. the initial asking price. This also helps you find out broker’s past sales and it shows all of their current apartment and house sales and rentals available, a fairly unique value-add for house-hunters. → Read More
Borderlands 2, you know, the follow up to Borderlands, is on its way. Like most games the Internet will be blessed with leaks, teasers and full trailers prior to its official release. Well, here’s the first one. It’s a tad hard to watch — is it shot under some dude’s arm pit? — but if you can suffer through it, you’ll get an early glimpse at Borderlands 2.
The game itself looks familiar. Clearly the cell shader-styling was carried over from the original as was the user interaction with guns. What’s clearly new, however, is this exploding, auto-reloading gun. Kotaku has more on that. Click through for the video. This is a must watch for Borderland fans. → Read More
