On the rare occasions that I’m not sitting in a chat room and writing about phones, I usually play the role of “hang-out coordinator” among my friends. You probably have too: messaging people to see who’s available, finding out who wants to eat what, getting ETAs from prospective partiers, the works. It’s a bit draining to say the least, but if you’re usually stuck with that responsibility and you… → Read More
As college students around the country start heading back to the dorms and purchasing their books for the semester, textbook rental giant Chegg is making major waves in the space with a number of new announcements. First off, Chegg is finally going digital, and is going to be steadily rolling e-textbooks on its platform with goal of offering millions of both print books and e-textbooks to students… → Read More
iFixIt, known for their Apple upgrade guides and supplies, is branching out into cloud services for hardware, appliance, and chemical manufacturers. The new project, called Dozuki, is currently in beta and it aims to streamline the process of technical documentation by creating a Wiki-like environment for documentation and how-tos.
The company has been testing their software with Make Magazine… → Read More
Notable Silicon Valley tech blogger and startup consultant Louis Gray is finally turning his passion for Google’s products and services into a career. Gray has just accepted the position of Product Marketing Manager on the Google+ team, an evangelist role involving the promotion of Google’s new Facebook competitor, Google+.
The role is loosely defined, but will involve working with Google+… → Read More
Western Europe is a tough place to be for PC manufacturers right now. According to a report from technology research firm Gartner, sales are down nearly across the board, with just a single exception: Apple. → Read More
According to a Bloomberg report, HP is set to buy European infrastructure software company Autonomy for as much as $10 billion. That price would make the acquisition one of HP’s largest deals to date.
Autonomy’s enterprise software powers pan-enterprise search, customer interaction solutions, information governance, end-to-end eDiscovery, records management, archiving, business process… → Read More
Today at the Evernote Trunk Conference, Evernote CEO Phil Libin announced that the company has acquired Skitch, one of the best-selling apps on the Mac App Store. The app used to cost $20 currently in the app store, but Evernote will offer it for free. “We really expect this to become a fundamental part of Evernote going forward.”
Also announced at the conference was the launch of Skitch for… → Read More
Location and weather go together like peanut butter and jelly. So it only makes sense that our favorite map tool, Google Maps, starts to bring weather into the picture. According to the official Google Blog, that’s exactly what’s happening. The weather layer will not only show you temperatures and conditions in your area, but display weather info for the entire globe, which should make planning… → Read More
Ever since Google announced its $12.5 billion deal to acquire Motorola on Monday, its stock has been taking a hit. Today, with the entire market in a tailspin over global economic concerns, Google’s market cap is down $17.4 billion (in midday trading) since Friday’s close. In other words, Google has lost more market value than the entire amount it is going to pay for Motorola.
And the… → Read More
Appia, a startup that powers a white-label content and commerce platform for everyone and anyone who needs a mobile app store, has passed an important milestone—the company is now seeing 1 million downloads per day (that’s up from 500,000 a few months ago) across all of its app stores.
For background, the company powers mobile app storefronts for more than 40 partners, including four of the… → Read More
This is one of the cooler things I’ve seen in a while. Think Microsoft Surface meets Minority Report, minus the bald lady that predicts the future. It’s a multi-touch conference table from an Orlando-based company called Crunchy Logistics, and comes in five different sizes. → Read More
The world’s largest mobile carrier, China Mobile, does not currently support or sell the iPhone. That might be changing, though. Reuters is reporting that the carrier has held meetings with Steve Jobs himself in regards to launching the iPhone on China Mobile, the world’s largest wireless carrier.
There’s clearly a demand. Apparently China Mobile, despite not selling the phone itself, already… → Read More
Steven Sinofsky, President of the Windows Division at Microsoft, has officially confirmed (somewhat subtly) that the upcoming Windows 8 operating system will indeed have an app store. The news was mentioned via a new blog post over on MSDN, where Sinofsky listed the numerous teams which will be contributing to Windows 8′s development.
At the top of the list? A team called “App Store.” → Read More
Startup GoodData, which provides companies with a cloud-based business intelligence (BI) platform, has raised $15 million in funding led by Andreessen Horowitz with existing investors General Catalyst Partners, Fidelity Growth Partners and Windcrest Partners also contributing to the round. This investment brings GoodData’s total funding to $28.5 million. The company has also added two new members… → Read More
Despite the fact that the company has a newly adopted OS in the works with Windows Phone 7, Nokia has always promised to continue supporting Symbian, its first born OS. That said, owners of the Nokia N8, C7, C6-01 and E7 will get to download the Symbian Anna software update starting today. The update includes improvements to the browser and maps, along with new icons. → Read More
Everyone’s favorite alternative DNS service, OpenDNS, is now serving up DNS to 30 million customers world-wide. The company announced this milestone in a short release and notes that they are now sending out more DNS goodness than any other major ISP.
The company says they are now used in one of three US schools, hundreds of thousands of households, and a plethora of major corporations… → Read More
While they have typically gone with proprietary tech, Delta has begun testing some off-the-shelf tablets for use as “electronic flight bags” for their pilots. The test program has 22 iPads flying the friendly skies, giving pilots access to flight charts, equipment manuals, and in-flight WiFi in a 1.6lb package.
Delta thinks that having iPads onboard will make for stronger communications between… → Read More
Citi and Best Buy have teamed up to launch a mobile rewards application for iPhone and Android devices. The “Citi ThankYou Rewards” app ties together Best Buy’s inventory systems with Citi’s “ThankYou” Rewards program, a service which allows Citi customers to earn points by using their Citi credit card or performing other banking-related activities.
Now, Citi customers can use the new mobile… → Read More
Kleiner Perkins China (KPCB China) and private equity firm Warburg Pincus have put $100 million in Chinese online retailer Xiu.com. The company just raised $20 million from Kleiner earlier this year.
Xiu.com was founded in March 2008, and offers middle-to-luxury brand name fashion products – clothing, shoes, bags, accessories, cosmetics and home decor – to China’s middle class. The company… → Read More
Amazon is constantly growing and expanding its catalog of videos available for on-demand streaming. The service just reached the 100k mark with 9,000 of those available under the Prime streaming plan. The bulk of the library is set aside for à la carte renting and buying with TV titles starting at $.99 cent and movies for $3.99. With deep living room penetration, all Amazon needs to do is flip… → Read More
When it comes to gaming, the better the mouse, the better the gamer. Logitech today announced its next-gen G-series gaming mouse, the G300, and if this thing doesn’t give you a competitive edge, you need to spend more time practicing. With nine customizable controls, you may not have to use the keyboard at all, meaning all the control you could want rests nicely under the palm of your hand. → Read More
Drchrono, a startup that simplifies the professional lives of doctors by bringing electronic health records and much more to the iPad, has raised another $650,000 in seed funding from DST founder Yuri Milner and General Catalyst. In July, the company raised $675,000 in seed funding from General Catalyst, Charles River Ventures, 500 Startups, Gmail creator and FriendFeed cofounder Paul Buchheit… → Read More
Lenovo reported results for the first quarter of the fiscal year today, and in a nutshell, things are looking pretty good for the Chinese powerhouse. Quarterly sales soared 15% year-on-year to US$5.9 billion, while net income even ballooned from $54.9 to $108.8 million in the same time frame. → Read More
Japan gets an Android-based “Yahoo Phone” [JP]: what may sound weird at first is actually not that surprising a news item, given that Yahoo is the country’s biggest website. Add to the fact that the country’s third biggest mobile carrier SoftBank, the provider of the phone, is Yahoo Japan’s biggest shareholder, and the emergence of such a handset makes even more sense. → Read More
Streaming music service Spotify is amping up its hiring efforts in the US, wanting to hire another 100 employees according to a source. The total team is currently around 380 people.
One month after its US launch, Spotify has hired Zynga executive Teymour Farman-Farmaian as “Chief Acquisition & [Ad Business] Retention Officer.” From what I’m hearing Farman-Farmain will be in a business… → Read More
Developer and HackerNews contributor Jeremy Keeshin has stumbled across the scariest thing I’ve seen all day (I live in San Francisco, okay). In searching for ways to make his own site search auto-complete superfast, like Facebook’s, Keeshin came across a file titled first_degree.php, which revealed that Facebook has a ranking for the people that you’re probably searching for on Facebook. Keeshin… → Read More
Birchbox, a startup that serves as a makeup discovery retail platform, has raised $10.5 million in Series A round of funding, led by Accel Partners with First Round Capital, Harrison Metal, Forerunner Ventures, Lerer Ventures, Sam Lessin, Consigliere, Gary Vaynerchuck, Dave Morin, Stanford University Endowment and Andy Dunn participating in the round.
Similar to Foodzie, Blissmobox, BeachMint… → Read More
The basics: Google is buying Motorola, pending government approval. Everyone and their editor-at-large has written about it. Now I’ll take my shot at the soapbox.
I don’t know why Google acquired Motorola as opposed to simply licensing its trove of patents. My hunch is that it had more to do with fending off a threat from Microsoft than it had to do with Google’s hitherto unforeseen… → Read More
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