Friend-Watch is a new Facebook application that stalks your friends list, watching for changes you might not otherwise notice. This includes things like people who change their name, add you as a friend, deactivate their account, restore their account, delete you, block you or unblock you. It also tracks general trends, like friend counts and gender breakdowns. In short, it’s like analytics program for your personal Facebook profile.
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Touchanote is a new Android application that ties together NFC technology with the popular note-taking and organizing software Evernote. Created by the Montreal-based startup Wiseleap, the app took home the $50,000 grand prize at Evernote’s recent developer conference in San Francisco. → Read More
Most power airfare searchers know that buying two one-way tickets on separate airlines can sometimes be cheaper than buying a roundtrip ticket on the same airline. But on most travel search portals you have to do a little digging to find these one way fares, and sites like Kayak wouldn’t pair two one-way fares from different airlines. Today, Kayak is integrating these fares, which the company has dubbed ‘Hacker Fares’ into flight search.
So if you are looking weekend roundtrip flight from New York to San Francisco, and the best price is $600 for an economy ticket on Airline A, you’ll also see the price options for two one-way fares on Airline A and Airline B, which may be cheaper. Kayak calls these Hacker Fares because searching and matching separate airline and travel sites for these cheaper one-way fares requires a bit of hacking. → Read More
Last year, popular live video platform Ustream launched a mobile app development platform called Ustream Live Mobilizer that offered brands, celebrities, and bands a customizable iPhone application that featured Ustream’s live steaming capabilities. But today, Ustream is shutting down Live Mobilizer and announcing a partnership with Mobile Roadie, which allows anyone develop and create sleek, rich media iPhone and Android apps.
Mobile Roadie will work with Ustream broadcasters to create mobile apps that showcase their Ustream live channels as well as a number of of other complimentary features. For example, Mobile Roadie’s Ustream apps will send push messages automatically when a broadcaster goes live, will allow visitors to “Check in” to a stream and share to Facebook and Twitter, will collect real-time analytics and location data on broadcaster live streams, and will allow users to chat with each other as they view a live stream.
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Don’t listen to the masses. Buy the TouchPad (if you can find one) and enjoy webOS. It’s an amazing OS killed off by natural selection, like a beautiful peacock with a rare and debilitating reproductive problem. It has the swankiness of iOS, the multitasking of Android all built by the folks that started it all, Palm. The Internet is being overran by Android nerds. Don’t listen to them. → Read More
Exhausted from a couple weeks in the European litigation ring, Apple has tagged in Microsoft to pick up the fight against Android. And it would seem that the divide-and-conquer strategy is panning out quite nicely for the duo we never thought would be.
Microsoft today filed a suit accusing Google’s betrothed, Motorola Mobility, of infringing on seven of Microsoft’s patents that just so happen to cover Android. Before the U.S. International Trade Commission in Washington, Microsoft requested an import ban on a number of Motorola smartphones. → Read More
Nintendo’s recent 3DS price drop seems to have accomplished the goal of moving more units, but rumor has it that Nintendo’s higher-ups aren’t too pleased with the floundering portable as a whole. Among other things, Nintendo is supposedly considering a new hardware revision for the 3DS that downplays its 3D capabilities
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Japanese accessory maker Elecom announced [JP] the kandenchi today, a wireless mouse that’s designed like a battery. The 2.4GHz device, developed in cooperation with Tokyo-based design company nendo, can be connected to your computer via USB. → Read More
The smart money is pouring into Moat, the ad tech startup founded by former Right Media CEO Mike Walrath and brothers Jonah and Noah Goodhart. Ron Conway’s SV Angel led a $1.5 million round, along with Founders Fund, Vast Ventures, Lerer Ventures, Founder Collective, and First Round Capital. Walrath and the Goodhart brothers previously seeded the company with $3 million from their funding vehicle, WGI Group.
Moat is attempting to create new ways to measure the effectiveness of online display ads. Its first product is a display ad search engine that just searches display ads so that people in the industry can easily see what campaigns are running online for different brands. Today, Moat is also launching a new brand analytics product that measures attention based on mouse hovers and heatmaps. → Read More
Electric bike maker FlyKly is bringing its stylish, powerful and eco-friendly bikes to San Francisco after having a blowout launch in New York earlier this summer. The company, which opened up shop on June 20th, sold out its entire stock of bikes in July at a pop-up store in Soho. Now, the bikes are being made available in San Francisco.
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Our parent company AOL is having a rough time making money from Patch, its rapidly expanding network of local news sites, and that’s not its only problem. Today, group buying website BuyWithMe announced that it has recruited Charlie Gray, formerly Executive Vice President at Patch, as its new ‘Chief People Officer’.
BuyWithMe, which rivals the likes of Groupon and LivingSocial in the United States, says Gray will help manage the company’s growth plans, and to hire, train and retain talent throughout the country. → Read More
If you look carefully at why HP bailed on consumer electronics and PCs, there are a few clear and simple reasons. The primary one? HP was number one in sales but – at least by Amplicate’s arguably loose methodology – number seven in mindshare. In the end, it looks like it was better to let someone else flog the hardware while HP did what it always did best: tell businesses how to spend money in tech.
So who is taking over for HP? Well, according to a Digitimes report, it looks like HP will be handing the keys to their brand over to Samsung, much as IBM did when it partnered with Lenovo to sell laptops and PCs. → Read More
Engine Yard, a provider of Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) solutions, this morning announced it has acquired Orchestra, developer of a platform for deploying, scaling and managing PHP applications.
Engine Yard, which is backed by investors like Benchmark Capital, New Enterprise Associates, and Amazon.com, opted not to disclose the financial terms of the acquisition. → Read More
Déjà vu, much? Like Apple’s original strategy for the aging iPhone 3GS, a new report states that Apple is working on an 8GB iPhone 4 to be sold at a discount while the iPhone 5 will sell at a higher price with contract.
According to Reuters’s sources, Apple has contracted a Korean firm to manufacture the discount iPhone’s flash drive. Samsung was previously one of Apple’s vendors of choice for flash memory (the other being Toshiba) but it’s possible that recent patent unpleasantness may have soured that relationship. → Read More
Lenovo’s ThinkPad Tablet is meant for business types, but it just might be the best Honeycomb tablet available right now. It was announced late last month alongside the consumer-oriented IdeaPad K1 and the Windows version, the P1. Well, Lenovo is finally ready to take your credit card in exchange for a place in the shipping line. The tablet starts out at $499 for the 16GB, WiFi-only model and climbs to $669 for a 64GB flavor — 3G mobile broadband will not be available until October. → Read More
AliveCor, developer of a low-budget electrocardiogram (ECG) recorder that works in conjunction with a variety of mobile platforms (including iPhone, iPad, and Android devices), has raised $3 million in Series A funding, the company announced this morning.
The financing round was led by Burrill & Company along with Qualcomm, acting through its venture investment arm, Qualcomm Ventures, and the Oklahoma Life Science Fund. → Read More
After adding online payments exec Bill Ready as an Executive-In-Residence, Accel Partners is shoring up another area of expertise with the addition of former Salesforce.com executive Chuck Ganapathi as the firm’s newest Entrepreneur-in-Residence. At Accel, Ganapathi, who was the creator of Salesforce’s “Facebook for the Enterprise” Chatter, will focus on developing a company in the social enterprise space.
Prior to joining Accel, Ganapathi served as Senior Vice President of Products for Chatter and Mobile at Salesforce.com, leading the company’s product development efforts in enterprise social networking. Not only was Chatter Salesforce’s first real foray into social, but the platform has been lauded as the company’s most successful product release ever. → Read More
Tawkon, an Israeli startup that offers mobile apps capable of measuring cellular radiation, has secured seed funding to the tune of $1.5 million.
The capital injection comes from thetime, an investment company owned by Ilan Shiloah, chairman of McCann Erickson Israel and Nir Tarlovsky, and from Tzvika Barinboim. Other backers include management consulting company TASC, Don Perrin (one of Zipcar’s earliest investors) and Yossi Sandler, an early investor in Yedda (which was acquired by AOL). → Read More
Here are some of yesterday’s stories on TechCrunch Gadgets: → Read More
Nothing goes better with back-to-school clothes than a nice little point-and-shoot. Thus, Canon’s timing couldn’t be any better. Today the new PowerShot digital cameras are making their debut, and from the looks of it, Canon has its bases covered.
We have three new models: the PowerShot SX150 IS, PowerShot Elph 510 HS, and the PowerShot Elph 310 HS. Most impressive by a mile is the Elph 510 HS, which Canon is describing as “the thinnest digital camera in the world.” Quite a bold statement, but the 510 HS seems to be bringing it. → Read More
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