Earlier today, new TechStars Network member, the Tampa Bay-based Gazelle Lab, announced its first full round of program participants. This 3-month, mentor-driven program based on the TechStars model is one of the first of its kind to emerge in the Tampa Bay region – a region that’s been pushing to become a new home to technological and entrepreneurial innovation.
This first group includes… → Read More
Last November, location startup SimpleGeo brought in former Digg CEO Jay Adelson to replace co-founder Matt Galligan as CEO. At the time, Galligan slid into the role of Chief Strategy Officer and became more of a public face for the company. Now he’s leaving the company entirely.
You can read the news on SimpleGeo’s blog here, as well as Galligan’s own thoughts here. But essentially this is… → Read More
Over the last few months, Twitter has been rolling out some key new enhancements to their user experience, adding improved search functionality and the ability to upload images right from a user’s Twitter stream. The photo upgrade came thanks to Photobucket hosting and appeared as a pic.twitter link and image for a user’s followers, as we reported in June and again two weeks ago, when the feature… → Read More
In the sleepy Columbus, Ohio suburb of Canal Winchester there is a shop that makes cupcakes. These are not ordinary cupcakes; these are fantastic cupcakes. In fact the name of this establishment—Fantasy Cupcake—is no boast and can readily back up the hype (trust me, I ate one and it was killer). A relatively new business owned and operated by Leah Dotson, Fantasy Cupcake chose Square as its… → Read More
Here’s a new Y Combinator-backed startup that’s sure to catch they eye of plenty of web developers: Proxino, a new service that promises to let developers detect errors on all of their client-side JavaScript, without having to manually wrap their code with repetitive error handling commands.
First, a little high-level background. Unlike languages like Python, which are executed on the servers… → Read More
Thrive Capital’s first venture fund was just $10 million, but the fund made 27 investments and more than a couple look like home runs. That fund, closed in 2009, holds stock in GroupeMe (acquired by Skype), Greplin, Art.sy, Warby Parker, Zaarly, Fab, Bank Simple, HotPotato (acquired by Facebook), KickStarter and OnSwipe, among others. Not bad for the sole partner, 26 year old Joshua Kushner, who’s… → Read More
On the heels of the HP’s first and likely last webOS fire sale, word has come from across the pond thatthey’re also deeply discounting the cost of the newly-launched Pre 3 smartphone in most European markets.
While it was originally available for the princely sum of £299 in the U.K. and €349 in France (both around $500), HP’s price evisceration brings the cost down to a remarkably… → Read More
Antennas are a bit like like underwear. Everybody needs them, but you generally want to conceal them, and when you have troubles with them, it gets embarrassing. Ever since we lost the pull-out and nub antennas of yesteryear on our phones and radios, the antenna has been more and more integrated with the designs of devices, but sometimes it isn’t practical to do so.
Take our clothing, for… → Read More
Microsoft’s been touting Windows Phone 7′s Xbox Live functionality since day one, but it’s always felt just a little lacking. You can look at your cute little avatar and play games that bump up your gamerscore, but where’s the connectivity with the Xbox experience we saw in demos like this one?
It would appear the folks in Redmond aren’t quite there yet, but a demo at their GamesFest in Seattle… → Read More
iSwifter, an iPad app that allows developers to stream flash games to the tablet device, is announcing that revenue for 2011 will past $10 million. That’s impressive considering the company is only a year old.
As we’ve written in the past, iSwifter allows users to browse, play and rate Flash games from gaming portals (like Facebook) on the web, with each game optimized for iPad. The startup… → Read More
Following the lead of Warner Bros, Paramount, and Universal, Miramax has jumped on the Facebook app bandwagon offering movie rentals in exchange for Facebook credits.
Along with watching movie clips and playing games, users will get access to full-length feature films from the Miramax library, including Clerks, Kill Bill, Good Will Hunting, and No Country For Old Men. → Read More
A study performed at the National University of Singapore has confirmed what many of us seem to know intuitively: taking a little time off of coding or writing to check your favorite blogs or webcomics is actually a productive behavior.
Just as taking a short break to get a snack or a coffee can reinvigorate you, taking a very short break to do something other than type or mouse around improves… → Read More
Sharp just did the unthinkable. The RW-T107 Gingerbread tablet is actually useful and gives businesses a new way to interact with consumers with a built-in NFC and RFID reader. This is the future, kids.
The tablet itself is of the 7-inch Gingerbread variety. It’s of a standard build and includes microUSB, a HDMI port, SIM card slot, and a headphone jack. Sharp expects to release 5,000 a month… → Read More
Placecast’s ShopAlerts service, which delivers retailer and merchant offers and discounts to consumers via their mobile phones, is announcing new functionality today—integration with mobile smartphone apps.
As we’ve written in the past, ShopAlerts is a white-label geofencing platform for businesses that want to deliver geo-triggered offers to their customers on their mobile phones. Consumers… → Read More
As we mentioned a few weeks ago, Rdio family plans are now available for, as Bob Dylan would say, “the wife and family” and “the whole kids.”
The plan costs $17.99 for two accounts and three accounts costs $22.99 a month. Unlimited web and mobile plans still cost $9.99 a month (as do additional accounts added to the family plan. → Read More
I’m here in St. Petersburg, Florida this morning to learn more about the newest TechStars Network member, Gazelle Lab. This 3-month, mentor-driven program is Tampa Bay’s attempt to establish itself as a home to entrepreneurial innovation and a place where early stage startups are fostered. Today, the Lab launched its first full round of startups, after having previously launched a “beta” group… → Read More
If you’re one of those folks who doesn’t need the latest and greatest, it may tickle your fancy to know that Best Buy is giving away the iPhone 3GS.
The sale will only last through today, and is only available to customers signing a new two-year contract with AT&T or renewing their contract. → Read More
Many businesses embed YouTube videos on their sites, but one of the pain points of using YouTube as a platform is that visitors can click through the video to YouTube and off the brand’s site — and those videos also include YouTube’s ads and branding. Ooyala and Brightcove both offer professional, enterprise-hosted video platforms but these can be expensive. Enter Y Combinator-backed Vidyard… → Read More
Facebook is already the largest photo site in the U.S., and now it is climbing up the charts for online video. Facebook now ranks as the third largest video site on the Web in terms of unique viewers according to comScore, with an estimated 51.5 million people on Facebook watching a video during the month of July. The month before it was No. 6. It passed Microsoft, Yahoo, and Viacom. Only Vevo… → Read More
This weekend’s TouchPad fire sale has more or less petered out, and thousands of HP’s little tablets that couldn’t have found new homes. Not everyone seems to love WebOS though, as a growing number of people who bought bargain-bin TouchPads are clamoring for a tablet experience that’s a bit more… shall we say, relevant.
Thanks to its open nature, Android is the OS of choice for a TouchPad… → Read More
Teasers are tricky. Companies have to find a way to get you excited about something without telling you what that something is, which can be difficult. It’s especially difficult to keep the secret product under wraps when the teaser file is named after the product.
That said, Nokia’s Symbian Belle teaser is now more of an announcement than anything else, and we now know the update will be… → Read More
Lenovo is the fastest growing PC maker in the world. The Chinese computer company outgrew every other PC maker for the past seven quarters and is now the third largest PC maker by volume. There’s no questioning Lenovo is a major player in the desktop and notebook fields — and soon tablets, or so says the CEO, Yang Yuanquing.
Lenovo recently announced three tablets, the Honeycomb ThinkTab and… → Read More
Researchers at a Czech company, Neovision, have invented a duct-cleaning robot called Jetty. This machine is joystick controlled and has a 1024×768 pixel camera. It receives power and signal over a Ethernet-over-Cat5 cable, limiting its movement to about 35 meters right now, but it can clean and inspect kitchen, industrial, and office ducts with relative ease.
The robot uses dry ice to clean… → Read More
Yesterday, I wrote a post after I noticed that Groupon had registered groupongoods.com, groupongoods.info and other related domain names, hypothesizing that the fast-growing daily deals startup might be plotting a dedicated website (section) for selling tangible products such as household items, consumer electronics or even groceries at a discount.
I speculated that ‘Groupon Goods’ would be a… → Read More
Disruptive mobile payments company Square has pushed a number of new updates to its iPhone and iPad apps today and rolled out a redesigned and updated website. First, the apps are speedier and transaction speed has improved, says the company. The company actually eliminated a number of screens for the transaction process and payments can be completed in as little as four seconds.
Additionally… → Read More
Verizon has updated its already awesome V CAST video app, which will henceforth be called Verizon Video. The updated app will work with select 4G LTE and 3G handsets on Verizon’s network, and offer access to a number of major broadcast and cable channels. → Read More
NextDocs, a company that sells Microsoft SharePoint based software for the life sciences industry, has raised $10.3 million in a Series A financing from OpenView Venture Partners.
NextDocs helps life sciences companies of leverage SharePoint-based document and management software.The company actually customizes SharePoint for companies in the pharmaceuticals, medical device and biotech… → Read More
In the aftermath of HP’s decision to axe all WebOS products, the question for many a developer is “what’s next?” While I’m sure a few WebOS diehards will continue to work on the platform (and hopefully create some great new apps for all of the bargain bin TouchPads out there), Microsoft has opened their arms to these disenfranchised developers.
Brandon Watson, Microsoft’s Senior Director of… → Read More
I just had the unique pleasure geocaching for the first time. I’d always been interested in the concept: someone hides something tiny in the wilderness and you use a GPS tracker to find it. However, the thought of traipsing around in the woods to look for someone hippie’s Tupperware did not compute. Then we got the GeoMate Jr., a small GPS tracker designed for kids and discovered that it wasn’t… → Read More
Sony Ericsson knows how to do Facebook. A social network can’t be the only selling point of the phone, like on the HTC Status — there has to be something else. For gamers, SE brought Facebook into the mix with the Xperia Play.
Now, music fans are getting the same love. This morning, SE unveiled the Live With Walkman smartphone featuring a button for instant music access and deep Facebook… → Read More
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