After Blackboard was acquired by Providence Equity Partners for $1.6 billion in cash, fellow educational software company Renaissance Learning (Nasdaq: RLRN) has been bought by private equity firm Permira Funds for $14.85 per share in cash, or approximately $440 million.
Renaissance Learning creates school improvement and student assessment technology programs for K through 12 schools. The… → Read More
Last year, Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, told a crowd gathered at the Techonomy Conference in Lake Tahoe, CA that we now create as much information in two days as we did from the dawn of civilization through 2003. While Roger J. Moore would disagree and amend that estimation slightly, the fact of the matter is that today we’re seeing a ridiculous (and exponential) telescoping in data… → Read More
Webroot, which provides Internet security services for consumers and businesses, has released its third annual report on cybercrime and user behavior on social networking sites. Between June 3 and 8, 2011, Webroot sponsored an online survey of Internet users in the US, UK and Australia.
The report is based on a total of 3,949 respondents, all of which spend at least one hour per day online … → Read More
Nintendo caused a major splash in the video game world when it announced to slash the price of the 3DS in Japan, the US and elsewhere by 30-40% (depending on the country) – just a few months after the system went on sale. → Read More
Online video technology and footage licensing services provider Thought Equity Motion has raised $25 million from Shamrock Capital Advisors, the company announced this morning.
The company delivers video archive management and “smart content” metadata tools as a cloud service, as well as rights development expertise. Through its Web platform and global sales force, the company licenses a wide… → Read More
Exclusive – Zoove has raised $15 million in Series D funding, led by new investor Panorama Capital, TechCrunch has learned. Existing investors also participating in the round, including Cardinal Venture Capital, Highland Capital Partners and Worldview Technology Partners. Zoove is the company behind StarStar Numbers, an exclusive registry of memorably phone numbers (e.g. **WEATHER or **SUZUKI)… → Read More
The UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) this morning said Google has taken “reasonable steps to improve its privacy policies”, following a consensual audit of the company’s privacy processes held at its London office last July.
The ICO’s audit was agreed upon as part of the terms of an undertaking that Google signed (PDF) in November 2010 after the company reported that its Street… → Read More
Here are some of yesterday’s stories on TechCrunch Gadgets: → Read More
Tax the rich. Those bastards.
I get why people who aren’t rich hate those that are. No one really cares what they have, they only care what they have relative to others. When there is inequality, and there always is, even the hyper intelligent call for a redistribution of wealth. It’s an enduring longing for us as a species, and no evidence to the contrary will convince people it just doesn’t… → Read More
Bravo Google, well played.
There’s no denying that Google’s maneuver this morning to acquire Motorola for $12.5 billion in cash is remarkable. Everyone is talking about every possible angle of the deal, as they should. The summertime is usually the doldrums when it comes to tech news. Not this year. Google is pulling off an acquisition that is larger than any that Microsoft, Apple, or any… → Read More
Since shutting down cell service on Thursday to try to quell rumored protests which never came to fruition, the Bay Area Transit Authority (BART) has had an interesting weekend and Monday.
Aside from getting investigated by the FCC as to whether it exceeded its authority in shutting off cellphones, the myBART website has been hacked by collective Anonymous on Sunday, with Anonymous claiming… → Read More
Analysts and pundits have been predicting an iPad 3 with a late 2011 launch for some time now, but if accounts from suppliers in Asia are to be believed, there just is no way that’s going to happen — if the rumors of the high-DPI screen are correct in the first place (and we think they are).
A 9.7″ display sporting 2048×1536 pixels, four times more than the current iPad and three times… → Read More
Researchers at UCLA have created a twist on traditional LCDs that would allow displays to reclaim wasted photons from the backlight, or even act as a normal solar cell. Normal LCDs rely on an always-on backlight, but because of the way LCDs work, most of that light never escapes. This inherent inefficiency hasn’t stopped us from getting bright displays, but the power necessary to make them so is… → Read More
First Facebook, then Twitter and now Foursquare; Obama sure gets around (social platforms). As announced today on the White House blog, Obama will be checking in to the location-based service as he hits stops on his economic bus tour in the Midwest. Of course.
Users who want to follow Barack can check out the White House Foursquare page here, where they can now suscribe to White House Tips as… → Read More
If you’ve ever tried to trudge through an SEC filing (or most financial filings, for that matter), you know that it can be a tedious and sometimes confusing process hampered by excessive legalize and unnecessarily small font sizes. Now MarketBrief, a Y Combinator-backed company that’s relaunching today, has a solution: it looks through these SEC filings for you, then culls the key data to… → Read More
WhaleShark Media, which just announced an investment by Google Ventures, continues to acquire coupon sites around the world. Tomorrow they’ll announce the aquisition of eConversions, Ltd., operator of the web sites VoucherCodes.co.uk in the UK and Gutschein-Codes.de in Germany. Vouchercodes is the UK’s largest coupon site, says Whaleshark.
The size of the acquisition isn’t being disclosed… → Read More
Michael Arrington decided to test the limits of what his new Executive Assistant, Greg Barto, can actually do by asking the TechCrunch readers to suggest tasks he should complete for one day. Using Zaarly, Greg was sent on a day long adventure fulfilling tasks (risking his life and dignity?) offered up by the community and doing it all for charity. Luckily, it is all captured in the video below. → Read More
Social gaming contender Digital Chocolate has just announced the acquisition of Sandlot Games, a games publisher responsible for titles such as Cake Mania and Super Granny. → Read More
It’s been two and a half months since Twitter first unveiled their own photo sharing service, in partnership with Photobucket. Just last week, they finished rolling it out to all users. Today, they’re taking the next step: opening it up to third-party developers.
As they’ve just announced on the Twitter Developers blog, there’s a new Photo Upload API that’s ready for developers outside the… → Read More
A bit of non-Motorola news comes in the form of a change in the B&N listing for the Steve Jobs biography (Steve Jobs). Originally slated for March 2012, the book will be available on November 21, 2011, just in time for Thanksgiving. → Read More
The great smartening of the idiot box continues. It was several years ago that we started seeing the first internet-connected TVs, and since then TV makers have been adding more and more slightly useful features, generally one or two per generation — it wouldn’t do to put them all out at once, of course. And while much functionality is still left to the set-top box, media player, or console… → Read More
Namaste, a games startup which is poised for launch, is building a platform called StoryBricks to enable casual users to create their own games and share them on social networks. The twist is that it’s not for professional game designers but users who want to create their own games. The company is understood to be be in discussions with several top VCs.
Why is Namaste in a sweet spot? Companies… → Read More
China is infected with fake Apple Stores. Some have been shut down where some have just changed their names. This gorgeous rip-off is located in Zhongshan China and, as MICGadget notes, it’s probably the best looking one yet complete with a massive glowing Apple logo and wall of glass windows spanning the two-story outlet.
This retailer seems to fall under the second category and doesn’t go by… → Read More
peerTransfer, a simple payment solution designed for international students, today announced that it has closed a $7.5 million series A financing round. The investment was led by Spark Capital, with participation from Accel Partners, Maveron, and Boston Seed Capital.
The new infusion of capital adds to the $1.1 million in seed funding the startup raised back in October of last year, bringing… → Read More
Back in June last year Lars Hinrichs, the founder of LinkedIn competitor XING who exited for €48.3 million created a new startup investment vehicle dubbed HackFwd.
At the time it was announced that HackFwd would tale a 27% stake of a company (US-based YCombinator takes around 6%) and a run a year-long programme for selected startups. Funding amounts to up to €191,000 (depending on the size… → Read More
Ever wonder what’s the real difference between Android and iPhone users? According to Hunch, Android users are 10 percent more likely to be men, skew younger, and 20 percent more likely to be politically conservative. As you can see from the infographic below, they have good incomes, but iPhone users tend to have higher household incomes. Android users are also “slightly more likely to be… → Read More
BlackBerry’s Enterprise Server has long been a mainstay of the corporate world, but considering the costs involved, many small businesses haven’t been able to justify the cost. Enter the BlackBerry Management Center, a cloud service meant for exactly those small businesses who want some of the power of BES without the corresponding price tag. → Read More
From today we’ll be taking a vacation break for the next two weeks. Posting will be ‘light’. If urgent please send to colleague Robin Wauters or tips@techrunch.com. Normal service will be resumed around August 30. Thanks to all our readers and partners so far this year. → Read More
One of the more pleasant surprises at E3 this year was our hands-on with the Xperia Play. I was really expecting to dislike the device, but after playing a few games on it, I found it to be totally legit, even if the games selection isn’t so hot right now. And what’s more, they had Minecraft on it.
As one of the headline games of the new platform, it’s no surprise that Minecraft is getting a… → Read More
With the announcement of their planned $12.5B Motorola Mobility acquisition this morning, Google is buying a lot of stuff. They’re buying 20,000 employees (almost doubling their headcount.) They’re buying an absurdly daunting armory of over 24,000 patents (I mean, come on: Motorola has the patent on the cell phone.) But there’s one more thing that Google’s buying, and it’s one that shifts up the… → Read More
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