iSpeech, the developers behind speech recognition app for text messages DriveSafe.ly, is bringing its text to speech technology to iOS, Android and BlackBerry Apps with the launch of a new SDK.
The new self-service platform allows developers to integrate text to speech and speech recognition into their own apps. And the service is free to all mobile developers with support for iOS, Android and… → Read More
Community support site Get Satisfaction announces today a $10 million Series B funding led by InterWest partners and followed on by Azure, OATV and First Round Capital — InterWest partner Bruce Cleveland will be joining the board.This new influx of funds will be bringing Get Satisfaction’s total funding to $21 million to date.
In the same space as Lithium or Telligent, Get Satisifaction… → Read More
In October, eBay rolled out its Instant Sale program, which allows you to sell old gadgets to the e-commerce giant. You simply identify the type of device you are looking to sell and its condition, and eBay will offer you a price for your gadget. After eBay receives the package, you’ll receive a payment deposited into your PayPal account. Today, eBay is launching a iOS app for Instant Sale, which… → Read More
Last we heard it was Google who was eyeing out InterDigital’s 8,800-strong patent trove.
Now, Google is still in the mix along with Apple, but according to people familiar with the matter, Samsung has also entered into talks with InterDigital. The South Korea based company has expressed interest in possibly placing a bid on this gem of a patent portfolio, reports Bloomberg. → Read More
Peer-to-peer lending sites are hot again among investors of all stripes. Lending Club today announced a new $25 million Series D financing, led by Union Square Ventures (with existing investors participating). The funding comes on the heels of a $17 million round Eric Schmidt and DFJ put into competitor Prosper in June.
In July, Lending Club generated $20.6 million in new loans, compared to… → Read More
The drama continues: Samsung has officially postponed the Australian media launch event for the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. The media launch event was originally scheduled for next week on August 11, 2011. That’s not going to happen and also means the GalTab 10.1 probably won’t launch on that day either.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that the tablet itself is canceled, though. Samsung issued a… → Read More
Time Inc. this morning announced that every one of its 21 U.S. titles, including Entertainment Weekly and Instyle, will be available as tablet editions by the end of this year.
Time Inc. says this will make it the first major U.S. magazine publisher to make its entire portfolio available on all leading tablet platforms, with products designed specifically for this particular category of… → Read More
After backing Babbaco, Lightbank is making another investment today. The investment firm has funded myRete, the developers of WhosHere,a location-based mobile social network. This is the first outside investment for myRete.
WhosHere is a location-based social networking application (an iOS app for now) that allows you to see who’s in your near location and message people. The app introduces a… → Read More
If you’ve got any smartphone made in the last year or so that isn’t made by Apple or Samsung, chances are preeeetty good that it’s powered by one of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chipsets. Now, as for the chances that you could actually name which Snapdragon chipset it has… yeah, pretty much zilch.
The problem: outside of the overarching “Snapdragon” brand, Qualcomm hasn’t done the best job in… → Read More
I mean, come on. These videos show the upcoming Sony S1 and S2 tablets for about 4 seconds total. It’s just more of the Rube Goldberg foolishness shown in previous teaser videos. I want to see the tablets. But if you don’t; if you want to see a silly, but still fun, Rube Goldberg machine, click through for the embedded video. → Read More
Since its inception, Weebly has been focused on making it as easy as possible to build your own custom website using a WYSIWYG, drag-and-drop interface. And it’s done a good job doing that — CEO David Rusenko says that based on a recent Netcraft‘s survey, Weebly powers around 2% of sites on the web.
But even though Weebly is relatively easy to use, there are still plenty of people who… → Read More
Would you even consider buying a car online? FinanceAcar thinks a lot of people actually will, in time, and has built an online car marketplace and price comparison website to cater to their needs.
The company today announced that it has raised a round of financing, the size of which was not disclosed, from Anthemis Group and angel investors like Dominic Collins (former Group Director of… → Read More
Huawei has taken a note from the big boys like Samsung and HTC and decided to build a UI of its own. Unlike TouchWiz or Sense, Huawei’s UI has something different to bring to the table: 3D. Now don’t get too excited, or too peeved either (if you’re an anti-3D kinda fella), because this 3D isn’t all that legit. It’s more the appearance of 3D than it is true flying-at-your-face… → Read More
Livescribe took to the press wires today to announce two big additions to its Livescribe Connect service. Users of the Livescribe Connect for Echo and Pulse smartpens may now share content with Microsoft OneNote and Google Sites. Using one of the company’s smartpens, anything wrote in ink on their special paper can by shared online through various social and productivity services.
Livescribe… → Read More
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Borderlands 2, the appropriately named sequel to Borderlands, is really coming. 2K Games and Gearbox took to the wires this morning to announce that yes, just like the recent rumors stated, Borderlands 2 is in the works. Praise the gaming gods. Borderlands is one of the best PC shooters ever. Let’s just hope it’s not locked down by some nasty DRM scheme.
The release doesn’t lay-out the plot… → Read More
Airy Labs, a startup building mobile, tablet and browser games with an educational twist for young children, has landed $1.5 million in seed funding from Google Ventures, Foundation Capital and Playdom founder Rick Thompson.
Airy Labs says it wants its social games to come with genuine learning value that parents will approve of. → Read More
Matthew Epstein wants to work at Google, bad. In his quest for a gig on the company’s product marketing team, he’s set up this cool website, and more interestingly, made the video below.
(Via Hacker News, where he’s evidently being criticized by people who appear to be extremely passionate about criticizing other people relentlessly).
Googlepleasehire.me (get it, me? Matthew Epstein? Ha!)… → Read More
6Scan, a company building a website protection suite that comes with automatic detection and fixing of security vulnerabilities, today announced that it has raised an undisclosed amount of capital from YL Ventures, a venture capital firm that invests primarly in Israel and Europe.
I’m told that the round was your ‘typical Series A’ size, and that the company graduated from Venturegeeks, an… → Read More
Facebook may have droves of publishers, brands, celebrities, and other major entities using Facebook Pages, but its internal analytics product — Insights — still leaves a lot to be desired. Now Y Combinator-funded startup PageLever wants to give Pages with a large number of fans (over 10,000) tools that can help them better figure out exactly what they should be sharing with their… → Read More
Nothing says “We’re really excited about these new products!” like announcing them at two in the morning.
With fanfare that only insomniacs and folks getting ready for bed in Australia will hear, AT&T has just announced the next three BlackBerry devices set to hit their shelves: the Torch 4G 9810 (a follow-up to last summer’s Torch), Bold 4G 9900, and Torch 4G 9680 (an AT&T-branded… → Read More
Profit.
No point in burying the lede.
For the past two years, it seems as if every other story in the mobile space has been about the war between the iPhone and Android. Hell, though it wasn’t technically the theme of our Mobile First CrunchUp last week, that’s all anyone wanted to talk about there as well.
It’s a sexy story because it features two companies, Apple and Google, that could… → Read More
Here are some of yesterday’s Gadgets stories: → Read More
Last month, we wrote about Vibedeck, which had just raised $2 million in funding for its eCommerce platform for musicians. As we wrote then, though VibeDeck is still in early development (having launched in beta 2 months ago), it’s value proposition is that it’s slick and easy to use. And the startup’s goal is simple, too: To be a low-cost eCommerce resource for small to medium size bands — or… → Read More
Sometime in the past week, Facebook flipped the switch on allowing you to add your unborn baby to your list of family members via the “Expected: Child” option on Facebook profiles. Apparently too many parents were creating “illegal” fake profiles for their yet unhatched offspring — setting their fake babies’ ages to 13 instead of negative whatever, the minimum Facebook allows. Also, you can’t… → Read More
Lookout, a company that offers security services for a number of smartphones, is releasing the results of its Mobile Threat Report. The report is based on threat and security data from Lookout’s Mobile Threat Network, which includes data collected from more than 700 thousand apps and 10 million devices worldwide. You can access the full report here.
Lookout’s main finding is that mobile… → Read More
Yes, you read the headline correctly. The Zune HD, which was recently rolled up and borged into the Windows Phone 7 brand, has received no less than nine new apps. We heard that the existing Zune games and apps would be ported to WP7, but perhaps during that process they decided to brush off a few that were still sitting in the box. → Read More
The patient-lifting RIBA II isn’t the only new healthcare robot from Japan we can show you today. Researchers at the Okayama University have developed a model that goes in a different direction: their robot [JP] helps people with spinal cord injuries or those recovering from strokes. → Read More
Even almost 5 months after the earthquake and tsunami disaster that hit Japan on March 11, there is still fear over radiation in food in the country. Now Tokyo-based Fuji Electric has developed a device [JP] that detects radiation in food like fish, meat, fruit and vegetables in just 12 seconds. → Read More
We now live in a world of robust communication tools. Facebook, Twitter, IM, Skype, FaceTime, etc. But the one that still connects nearly everyone, the phone, remains rudimentary. Sure, phone communication has gone completely wireless, but a call is still a call. It requires dialing a number and connecting. Mr. Number’s goal is to add new layers of usefulness.
As a mobile app available for… → Read More
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