Sequoia-backed Inkling, a startup that develops an innovative digital textbook platform, is is releasing version 2.0 of its technology, which comes with increased collaboration and sharing features.
As we’ve written in the past, Inkling’s technology delivers interactive textbooks that include the ability to collaborate, add multimedia and communicate within content. The startup adds another layer to online textbooks by adding 3-D objects, video, quizzes, and even social interaction within the content. Inkling’s sync technology lets students collaborate in real time by sharing their notes and highlights with one another. And students can see comments from their friends and professors right alongside their own notes. → Read More
Evernote rival Springpad is releasing a nifty new feature today, allowing users to discover the likes, check-ins and recommendations of all of your Facebook friends. So you’ll be able to see the movies, television shows, books, music and places your friends recommend in one place.
For background, Springpad’s multi-platform digital notebook allows you to jot down notes, save websites, images and more. Springpad will then categorize your saved content, and allows you to share your notes, set reminders and more. The app goes a step further to analyze your content and then serve you alerts to relevant news, offers and deals. Springpad’s semantic data technology allows you to save products, books, movies, recipes and more, and automatically get enhanced information, including price drops, local availability and coupons. → Read More
Druva, the creator of data protection solutions for SMEs, announced this morning that it has raised $12 million in series B funding. The round was led by Nexus Venture Partners, with participation from existing investor, Sequoia Capital. Jishnu Bhattacharjee of Nexus Venture Partners will be joining Druva’s board of directors as a result of this investment, joining Sequoia Capital Managing Director Shailendra Singh, Ramani Kothandaraman, Co-founder and COO of Druva, and and Yoram Novick, CEO and founder of Topio. → Read More
Online video platform company Brightcove this morning announced that it has filed a registration statement on Form S-1 with the SEC in connection with a proposed IPO of its common stock. The company is looking to raise up to $50 million through the offering.
Brightcove offers cloud-based solutions for publishing and distributing video and other digital media. → Read More
Twitter co-founders Biz Stone, Evan Williams, and longtime sidekick Jason Goldman, recently shifted their focus away from the micro-sharing service provider to reboot Obvious, the company that originally incubated Twitter.
Yesterday, Stone announced Obvious’ first project: incubating an app development company called Lift, created by Tony Stubblebine and Jon Crosby. Obvious says it will assist Lift with “strategy, design, funding and recruiting”. → Read More
I was impressed by Facebook’s updated privacy announcements today. Finally, after years of menus – and menus filled with menus – and menus filled with menus filled with drop-downs — we’re getting simple, direct privacy options right on the page. I’m sure some people will still bitch and moan because well, it’s Facebook. But at least on the surface, these changes look good.
The changes also tie into something I’ve been thinking about for a long time — it’s a subject that has become red-hot again thanks to Google+ and its Circles concept: simple social sharing. With today’s changes, Facebook has whittled six sharing options down to three. And really, there are only now two that actually matter: “Public” and “Friends”. → Read More
The Roomba just got new competition from Japan: Toshiba has announced [JP] a new cleaning robot today, the so-called Smarbo (which is probably short for “Smart Robot”). Just like its US counterpart, the Toshiba robot is primarily intended for use in households.
Toshiba built quite a few features into the robot, for example two CPUs (details unknown), a camera, and a set of 38 sensors (gyro, acceleration, range detection etc.). The company says that the Smarbo cleans an area of 100sqm in about 90 minutes and that electricity costs stand at just 2 yen ($0.03) for a room of that size. → Read More
It’s no secret that Android is growing at a fast clip, especially over the past year. As Millennial Media, one of the largest mobile ad networks in the U.S., reported recently Android’s mobile ad impression share went up from 6 percent in March to 2010 to 54 percent of ad impression share in June 2011, eclipsing iOS. July’s report shows similar growth patterns, with In July, Android showed particularly strong growth, with its mobile ad impression share by OS increasing by 15 percent in the month, taking 61 percent of the impressions on Millennial’s network. This is the eighth straight month Android has topped iOS.
iOS share actually dropped on Millennial’s network in July, taking 21 percent of mobile ad impressions, down from 26 percent in June. RIM trailed with 14 percent of share in July, down one percentage point from June. Globally, iOS and RIM impressions were relatively flat month-over-month, but Android impressions grew 31 percent month-over-month. Symbian impressions grew 11 percent in July, but Windows Phone 7 impressions grew a whopping 71 percent month-over-month.
→ Read More
Japan-based tech startup ITK has brought us one step closer to the Robocalypse. Roboticists around the world are working on manufacturing “sensitive” hands for robots suitable for touching humans or handling breakable objects, a problem that’s notoriously difficult to solve.
ITK is now throwing their hat into the ring with Handroid a new model that seems to be one of the most advanced robot hands out there. Sporting five fully movable fingers, the Handroid looks a lot like the hand show Arnold Schwarzenegger uses in Terminator 2. → Read More
I’ve never really been a fan of all the special add-ons and accessories sold alongside electronics. In my opinion, a nice solid case is as far as phone/tablet accessories should go. But at a meeting with Logitech recently, a couple of iPad accessories definitely caught my eye.
Both are very different in nature — one’s for gaming while the other is more of a utility device — but the reason they caught my eye is because of the added value they will bring to the tablet itself. There are plenty of funky attachable speaker bars and camera lenses you can slap onto your iPad, but in all seriousness, how often will you actually use those things? Maybe you’ll bust out a speaker bar for a party, or put the lens in your pocket before heading off on vacation, but that’s really the extent of it.
The new offerings from Logitech are for every day use, and will likely make a difference in the length of each iPad session, as well as the activities performed on the slate. So without further ado, let me introduce you to the latest iPad accessories from Logitech. → Read More
Here are some of yesterday’s stories on TechCrunch Gadgets: → Read More
It’s been a camera-ish day today. Canon released its new Powershot cameras early this morning, Sony just updated its Alpha and NEX lines, and now here we have a bundle of Nikons just coming out. Do they plan it like this, to make things difficult for us bloggers just trying to relax on a warm Tuesday night?
Well, let’s get on with it. I’ll make it quick for you. Some of these are actually quite decent. → Read More
This afternoon Y Combinator kicked off the summer session of Demo Day, the twice-a-year event where the prestigious startup incubator showcases its latest batch of companies in front of a throng of investors.
And wow, was this one a doozy. 63 companies — easily besting Y Combinator’s previous record of 43 — took the stage today for rapid-fire, 2 minute presentations that lasted three and a half hours, including some brief breaks. As usual, dozens of top investors from around Silicon Valley filled the hall (with a lengthy wait list for those who didn’t sign up in time), and they didn’t come away disappointed.
Though there were more companies than ever, the quality was still very high — I suspect this batch will have more home runs than any previous batch. Y Combinator cofounder and partner Paul Graham said that the acceptance rate was still a low 3%, but that the incubator is now receiving a huge number of applications, many of which are promising — hence the increased class size. In light of the growth of the program, Y Combinator decided to knock down a wall in their building and boost the size of their event room. It is a welcome upgrade. → Read More
It’s been difficult to avoid news about Sony’s new line of digital cameras these past few months. Leak after leak has exposed body designs, lenses, sensor sizes, and other specs. They’re all official now, though, and while I won’t subject you to a case-by-case analysis of which rumors were on and off, I will say they were mostly on the money. The new gear looks very promising, as well.
Let’s take a look at the new camera line. → Read More
The latest version of Yahoo Mail opened up to users a few months ago and the company is announcing a new milestone today—100 million monthly active users.
Additional features in the new version of Yahoo Mail include integrated notifications and messages from Facebook, Twitter, Zynga and other email providers within the interface. Yahoo has also made the client more customizable with 50 themes, improved search and made the client is speedier. Within Yahoo Mail, users can also use IM clients from Yahoo, Facebook, and Windows Live. → Read More
The threat of corruption is ever-present in areas like government spending, where miles of red tape, billions in assets, and a legitimate need for secrecy at times presents a potential trifecta for would-be defrauders. Slovenia, only a few notches lower than the of course upstanding USA on 2010′s corruption perceptions index, is no nest of vipers, but as a country in transition from communism, their risk is perhaps greater.
But the set of data is smaller, more manageable — which makes unified and transparent for monitoring of government spending more feasible. The country’s Commission for the Prevention of Corruption has just launched such a tool, called Supervizor, and it’s live right now if you don’t mind operating it in Slovenian. → Read More
An anonymous blogger known only as S.H. has been posting detailed daily descriptions of the robot-based disaster response effort at Fukushima. The blog included technical details and personal anecdotes, but nothing sensitive to national security. In early July, however, the blog was discontinued and later deleted altogether. The videos S.H. had uploaded to YouTube were made private. The origin of this purge is unknown, though it’s certainly conceivable that higher-ups felt the blog was too revealing and asked that S.H. take it down.
You can’t delete something from the internet without anyone noticing, however, especially a blog like this, full of interesting and timely information related to the ongoing reactor containment efforts. So when it disappeared, IEEE Spectrum took it upon themselves not only to save a cached version of the blog, but to translate it and republish it. It’s a powerful demonstration of the durability of internet-based media — and an interesting read in its own right. → Read More
Curious to find out the possible thinking behind HP’s recent actions, we began to look at the parallels in past behavior by tech giant HP. The most interesting example comes from VoodooPC, one of the first high-end gaming PCs for the mass market. Led by Rahul Sood, HP bought VoodooPC in 2006 and the last product to come out of that branch was launched in 2009.
In short, we wanted to know if HP really was where good ideas go to die.
Mr. Sood was kind enough to answer a few questions.
TC: We at TC have been talking about how great VoodooPC was. We all loved the hardware and I remember unpacking the boxes and hearing the drums. It was consumer done right. I also think there are a lot of parallels between Voodoo and Palm in this case. Do you agree?
Rahul Sood: I appreciate the kind words, and I know my friends at HP will also appreciate them as well. Let’s just say if you’re going to make a strategic acquisition, no matter how large, you need to have patience to blend cultures and allow the companies to mutually flourish. → Read More
Personal profile startup About.me, which is owned by our parent company AOL, is looking for the ‘face of About.me’ and is kicking off a contest to feature profiles housed on the site in a new ad campaign.
For background, About.me offers people free profile pages. On your dedicated profile page, can include your name, bio and links to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other sites that have information about you. Users can also upload high-resolution photos to the site, making profiles look fairly sleek and professional with minimal effort. You can check out co-founder Tony Conrad’s profile here. → Read More
Earlier today, for reasons too egotistical to go in to, I found myself looking back at the columns I wrote for the Guardian back in 2003.
Inevitably, with industries as fast moving as media and technology, my 23-year-old self made a whole load of terrible predictions. I dismissed the fad of “cameraphones”, for example, but was bullish on red-button Interactive TV.
One prediction I’m happy to stand by, though, is that the way to solve media piracy would not be through legislation but through making it easier and cheaper for customers to buy legitimate versions of movies, music and books. Yeah, I know, today that sounds obvious. But back then it remained a “theory” in the way that evolution still does to Ron Paul. → Read More
