What if we could combine top-notch hackers with leaders from across different companies? What if we could bring talented developers from all over Europe to create innovative solutions for organizations or sectors that desperately need them? Could this format potentially form great new startups that address untapped needs?
Those are the three rhetorical questions asked by Seedcamp, the well-known European early-stage seed investment fund and mentoring programme. In its quest to get answers to those questions, the company is organizing a new, totally free event called seedhack, which will be sort of like a hackathon – like the one we organize during TechCrunch Disrupt – but not just for programmers and designers but also for business people (with or without ideas). → 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
Google’s push into voice search is no secret: it’s baked into most builds of Android, and Chrome users have been enjoying the search-by-voice feature since July. It wasn’t so much a question of if Google would keep running with it, but where and when would it pop up next. Google’s Lat Long Blog has that answer for us today, as voice search is now available in Google Maps.
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If you have been, in any way, involved in the Internet in the past decade or so you’ll know the name CmdrTaco. His real name is Rob Malda and he started Slashdot, a news aggregation site and proto-blog in 1997 after building his own CMS in perl.
Malda and his crew defined the early geekosphere and, back before behemoths like Gawker, Weblogs Inc, and, well us, roamed the Earth, the worst and best thing a server could be is Slashdotted: worst because the sheer deluge of traffic tore down your site and best because, well, the creme of the Internet was knocking on your door.
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Time and expense tracking is tedious, even on a personal level. Dealing with it in an office environment is clearly much worse. But OfficeTime is looking to make that a bit easier, today announcing its expansion from just a PC/Mac desktop app to iOS.
For something as annoying as expense tracking, OfficeTime took a smart approach for mobile. The theme here is “the fewer taps, the better.” → Read More
Accel Partners has made a major investment in Dealer.com, a company that provides SaaS marketing solutions to auto dealers. Accel partner Todd MacLean will join company’s Board of Directors as part of the transaction, which is estimated to be north of $30 million.
Based in Burlington, VT, Dealer.com sells a SaaS application that manages auto dealers’ web presence from start to finish. Features include SEO management, tools for online advertising, online video, social media, lead management, inventory marketing and performance analytics. The company works with independent dealers, franchises, ad agencies and more. → Read More
Yipit, the site that aggregates and recommends daily deals based on users’ locations and interests (and raised $6 million back in June from a host of VCs), released some interesting trend data today on the daily deals space. Overall, July was not a memorable month for the daily deals industry, though there were a few clear winners, including everyone’s favorite deals site, the big kahuna, Groupon.
Based on data collected from over 650 daily deals services, Yipit found that the industry’s total revenue declined in July by 7 percent in North America’s largest markets — in spite of a slight increase in the number of total offers. The data also shows that the number of daily deals sites declined slightly in July, with 38 deals sites closing their doors compared to 36 new sites being launched. → Read More
Nextpeer is a newly launched mobile developer toolkit that lets game developers quickly and easily add multi-player gaming to their single-player games. With Nextpeer’s tournament and social SDK (software development kit), developers can add customizable features that enable their game’s users join real-time, social tournaments where they compete against other users for top scores or achievements.
The idea is so simple, it’s surprising it hasn’t been done before. People like mobile games and they like playing games together, but until now, the only way developers can build a multi-player gaming experience is by building a multi-player game from scratch. With Nextpeer, however, any game can become a multi-player game.
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Samsung’s pre-IFA Unpacked app is usually pretty dry as far as contents are concerned: there are event schedules and press releases aplenty, but some curious Android fans have discovered some juicy new tidbits deep within the app’s innards. → Read More
Quite a while ago, Verizon promised that its Motorola Xoom tablet would get an update allowing the slate to run on the carrier’s 4G LTE network by the Spring. If you’re somehow surviving under a rock and don’t know what that means, it’s a big deal. The increase in speed adds incalculable value to the tablet since, ya’ know, time is money. The only thing is that Spring came and went, and then Summer did the same. Still no update.
But alas, a letter has been sent out to… business and government Xoom owners? Um. Ok. So apparently employees of the government and other business types will be “piloting” the LTE Xoom before everyone else, according to Droid-Life → Read More
Steve Jobs has resigned as CEO of Apple. This, of course, means that the company has had its spirit broken, its intellect blunted, its worth gutted. Except it doesn’t, quite. The Steve didn’t nurture this company from near-collapse to global powerhouse with snap decisions and daily briefings. No, he and his immensely capable team did it with design, forethought, and consistently staying a step or two ahead of the other guy. That’s not something that changes overnight.
He may be leaving the office, but he’s not leaving the company. Apple still belongs to Jobs — and we’ll know it when that’s no longer the case. And while he may be turning over the operational reins to his protégé, I have the feeling he’ll be making it clear who the Don is. → Read More
Facebook has just started sending out invitations to f8, its semi-regular developer conference during which it typically rolls out its most important features.
This year’s event will take place on September 22 in San Francisco and will take place at the San Francisco Design Center. The event’s official (and very nifty) splash page is right here.
A post on Facebook’s developer blog says that we can expect there to be “some exciting product announcements that enable a new class of social apps”, as well as Q&A and sessions on building social apps. → Read More
The OpenID Foundation will open the doors to the third OpenID Summit on Monday, September 12, 2011 around noon. Of course, you won’t be there, because you’ll be attending or livestreaming the TechCrunch Disrupt conference, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be interesting.
The event, which is co-sponsored by Microsoft and will be held at its Research Campus in Mountain View, will be used as the launch platform for Account Chooser, which is billed on the accompanying website as an “open standard and user interface guidelines for the next generation of web sign in”. The Account Chooser website, which went live rather quietly, was first spotted by Fusible. → Read More
Diffbot is a geeky and incredibly interesting technology that uses bots, algorithms, computer vision and artificial intelligence to process the content on the Web the way a human being can. “The entire Internet can be broken down into 30 different page types” explains Co-founder Mike Tung, also known as “Diffbot Mike,” and “Diffbot can identify them all.” Diffbot knows the difference between a social network profile, a blog post, a site’s front page, a product page, an event page and dozens more.
Today, Diffbot is releasing its first set of APIs, now open to all developers for free. The launch has the potential to dramatically impact the types of applications developers can build, and for consumers, it means a whole host of intelligent applications are about to emerge. → Read More
Jumio, the new technology that turns webcams into credit card readers, is now offering a plugin for WordPress websites. The new Jumio Netswipe add-on allows website visitors to pay for products or make donations quickly and easily, just by holding up their credit card to their computer’s webcam.
For WordPress publishers, adding Netswipe to their site is simple – just download, install and activate like any other WordPress plugin. → Read More
Steve Jobs is a man who lives in the minutiae of details. He, with his loyal staff, perfects what others would pass off as perfect. He has 313 patents to his name, which range from the Apple III to the iPod’s acrylic packaging. Almost all of them are notable but only a few are iconic. → Read More
Android-toting Qik fans will have reason to smile today: the Skype-owned company has announced that their Premium service for Android devices has finally been fleshed out with new functionality and services for the discerning mobile videophile. → Read More
Tim Cook, new Apple CEO, has sent out the following memo to Apple staff, according to a source at Ars Technica. Cook says he shares “Steve’s optimism for Apple’s bright future,” and that Apple will continue to be “the magical place that it is.”
Whew!
Full text of the letter is below. → Read More
Uber appears to be continuing its national expansion today, with the soft-launch of the disruptive car service in Chicago. Pandora’s CTO Tom Conrad just Tweeted about using the new service in the Windy City.
In case you aren’t familiar with Uber, the service allows you to order a black car to come to your location on the mobile app, You can actually track your car as it comes to your location as the app tracks the car via GPS. Payments are handled automatically by charging the card you have on file (no swiping necessary), and it costs at least 50% more than a taxi. → Read More
Earlier this month, Monetate, the platform that provides marketers with testing and targeting services for their websites, announced that it had closed a $15 million series B funding round, led by OpenView Venture Partners, which added to the $5.1 million series A round the company raised back in December from First Round Capital and FLOODGATE. With over $20 million in the bank, Monetate has been developing a new platform that gives marketers greater control over messaging and promotions on their websites as well as testing, targeting, and personalization tools.
As we reported a few weeks ago, the coolest part about Monetate’s platform is that it can be installed using a single line of code. The startup’s newest version of its cloud-based platform enables marketers to integrate customized content and features between the eCommerce server and the site visitor’s browser. → Read More
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