Barnes & Noble took to the wires this morning to announced its 2012 first quarter sales and earnings. It’s mostly good news with sales in the first quarter hitting $1.4 billion, an increase of 2% over last year. Online sales increased 37% to $198 million while brick and mortar sales decreased 3% to $1 billion. The big news, however, is B&N’s Nook business increased a whooping 140% to reach… → Read More
InsideView, a service that mashes up social data for enterprises to increase sales productivity, is launching a new product today—CRM+.
InsideView, which has raised $37 million in funding, crawls through more than 20,000 web sites, social networks and databases including Twitter, Facebook, Reuters, and SEC filings, to give businesses sales intelligence and information that will aid sales… → Read More
So long, Twezr, it’s been fun. The mobile social contacts application Twezr is being shut down after having a fairly well-received launch back in November 2010. The app, for those unaware, was based on a great idea: it was a social address book. It aggregated all the activity from your phone’s contacts (e.g., phone calls, SMS’s, voicemails) alongside their social networking activity (e.g. → Read More
Hold on to something tight, webOS geeks. Your favorite tablet, which I can only assume is the TouchPad, might not be the last webOS tablet incarnation from HP. An HP excutive and former webOS VP recently stated that the company could resurrect the TouchPad stating to Reuters, “tablet computing is a segment of the market that’s relevant, absolutely.” But let’s hope that HP’s Personal Systems Group… → Read More
Nitobi, creators of the HTML5-based mobile app framework PhoneGap, have today launched the PhoneGap Facebook Connect plugin. The addition of the plugin means that developers building apps using Web technologies like HTML and JavaScript can now simplify the log in process for their apps by allowing users to login with their Facebook credentials. → Read More
Motorola’s super-sturdy DEFY+ handset was officially revealed in a press release only a few weeks ago, but a recent announcement confirms that the device will make its UK debut early this fall.
Forgot what the DEFY+ was capable of? Here’s a quick recap: the rugged Android handset packs a 1 GHz processor (a 20% improvement in speed over the proc found in the original DEFY), a 3.7-inch… → Read More
Today is a big day for Samsung. If you haven’t heard, the phone maker is unveiling the U.S. variants of its flagship handset, the Galaxy S II, tonight in New York (and you can bet we’ll be in attendance).
But if that weren’t enough, Samsung also announced three new Bada-powered smartphones today, and each brings something special to the table. → Read More
One of Android’s biggest success stories so far has been the Dolphin Browser, a third-party browser that includes plenty of niceties that Android’s stock browser doesn’t: things like gestures, handy sidebars to access menus, user agent spoofing, and add-ons (which are basically extensions). Dolphin’s recently raised $10 million from top-tier VC Sequoia, and the app just passed 9 million total… → Read More
Exclusive – Woozworld, a developer of a social game / virtual world for tweens (kids aged 9-14, more specifically), has raised $6 million in new funding from Telesystem and iNovia Capital along with unnamed angel investors. In addition, Bernard Gershon, former general manager and senior vice president of Disney, has joined the startup’s board.
The capital will be used to expand Woozworld’s… → Read More
E la Carte, a company that develops a tableside tablet for the restaurant and related hospitality industries, has raised $4 million in funding from Lightbank, the venture fund created by Groupon co-founders Eric Lefkofsky and Brad Keywell. The Y Combinator-backed startup previously raised more than $1 million from angel investors including SV Angel, Dave McClure, Joshua Schachter, Roy Rodenstein… → Read More
Publicly-listed DG, which provides digital media solutions and tech to the advertising and entertainment industries, has agreed to take over Limelight Networks’ video and rich media advertising unit, EyeWonder, for roughly $66 million in cash.
For the record: Limelight had acquired EyeWonder in 2009 for up to $110 million (in cash and stock). → Read More
PayNearMe, an alternative payments product from the company formerly known as Kwedit, provides a compelling way for the ‘unbanked’ to use cash payments for online goods. The “unbanked” refers to consumers who don’t have traditional bank accounts or cannot qualify for credit cards. PayNearMe allows people who don’t have or don’t want to use credit or debit cards to purchase products, pay for… → Read More
Innovid, a video advertising startup, has raised $9.5 million round led by Sequoia Capital with Genesis Partners and T-Ventures (Deutsche Telecom) participating in the round. As part of the funding round, Sequoia partner Gili Raanan will join Innovid’s Board of Directors. This investment brings Innovid’s total funding to $17 million.
Innovid develops an interactive pre-roll advertising… → Read More
Quite big news from Sony, Hitachi, and Toshiba today: according to Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun [JP], the three companies today decided to merge their LCD businesses, at least for smaller and mid-sized screens used in smartphones, handheld gaming devices and tablets.
If the report is to be believed, a joint venture will be set up by the end of the year. What’s interesting is that the… → Read More
Exclusive – Talk about a halo effect. Kik, a developer of cross-platform mobile communication apps, says something really strange happened when they launched their Windows Phone 7 application last June: user growth across the iOS and Android platform both accelerated significantly.
Turns out every registered user of the Windows Phone 7 Kik Messenger app is ‘worth’ 2.53 users (see explanation on… → Read More
As the summer winds down and we near the fall, we know two things are for sure about to enter existence in the world of Apple: iOS 5 and iCloud. Given that both offer third-party developers various opportunities, both are in the process of being tested by that community. And that means things are starting to leak out. Tonight brought perhaps the biggest surprise revelation yet: iTunes in the… → Read More
Wacom has announced a pretty amazing product today, the Inkling. This so-called Digital Sketch Pen allows you to capture whatever you draw or write on a sketchbook or any kind of paper in digital form, “stroke by stroke”. Just insert a sheet of paper or a notebook into the receiver, use the Inkling Digital Pen and transfer your works to your computer to refine them digitally anytime… → Read More
Here are some of yesterday’s posts on TechCrunch Gadgets: → Read More
Assumptions are rarely safe. But I’m sure most of you will come with me when I go out on a limb to say that, by and large, kids love toys. Yep. And they also love cartoons. This has been true as long as either have been around, however, a more recent taste to trend among the world’s wee ones: Love for the iPad. Some even said it was the toy of the year in 2010.
A new startup from Y… → Read More
“You can get a mask and join the fight, too! But I heard the costume store is sold out until Friday.” – ‘Anonymous’ member (New York Times)
As supporters of ‘Anonymous’ once again take to the streets — and platforms — around San Francisco’s BART rail system, frustrated commuters might find some amusing reading in the pages of today’s New York Times.
Confirming what most of us with half a… → Read More
After a steady stream of information in June, all has been quiet on the Facebook Project Spartan front in recent weeks. Originally, at least some thought the plan was to unveil Spartan in July — but that obviously came and went. It’s certainly possible we won’t hear anything until f8 in late September now. But one new bit of information has come to our attention that could be related. Say hello… → Read More
The Building Windows 8 development blog has been an interesting read for a while. Hearing straight from developers and then seeing unfiltered responses from users and secondary devs is refreshing, even if the topic isn’t particularly compelling or I don’t agree with their design choices. Today is perhaps the most extreme example of this so far. The discussion of their new Windows 8 file manager is… → Read More
Ready for this week’s almost-too-ambitious Kickstarter project?
Meet iEmu, a new project from one of the iPhone’s earliest hackers. The goal? To get iOS up and running in an emulated state on Linux, Windows, Mac, and Android. → Read More
It may not be receiving quite as much media coverage as the VMAs at the moment, but we’re all acutely aware of the fact that the economy remains in the toilet. Unemployment is still over 9 percent, and articles like this one detail just how long it takes for the average American to find a job — and that job seekers are giving up on the search after as little as 5 months.
Of course, part of the… → Read More
Even before I worked at TechCrunch, Disrupt was one of the few industry conferences I looked forward to every year. There were two big reasons why: The enthusiasm and excitement of the startups who launch there, and the unparalleled lineup of the most exciting people in tech engaging in frank, honest conversations.
When we expanded the franchise to New York, it was natural to bring the most… → Read More
Beyonce helped push Twitter to a new record in terms of Tweets per second yesterday evening when the pop singer announced her pregnancy at the MTV Video Music Awards. According to Twitter, Beyonce’s big MTV #VMA moment gave Twitter a record bump: 8,868 Tweets per second.
Beyonce revealed her pregnancy at the awards show last night, and the announcement culminated in the singer rubbing her baby… → Read More
If you’re a developer, there’s a good chance you have a handful — or more — of side projects. Things you tinker with on evenings and weekends and may upload to GitHub, but that you’ve never seriously considered releasing to the wild as a standalone service. Not because you think they’re bad, but because they’d be a lot of work to maintain — and you still have that day job to worry… → Read More
For ticket-selling businesses, nothing beats “sold out”. But whether or not a flight sells all of its tickets, or a sports team fills their stadium, the show must go on. Businesses with perishable inventory stand to gain the most from the daily deals model, and those that can make money on complementary goods (creating purchases that make up for revenues lost in offering the discount) can often… → Read More
A unique and powerful camera hampered by uneven attention to detail and an inadequate menu system. For a camera so strongly and effectively focused on going back to basics, the legacy of ugly menus, slow focus, and chintzy dials seems especially out of place. In this case, beauty truly only is skin deep. Except for the fabulous lens and sensor, I should say.
Read on for our somewhat anecdotal… → Read More
Earlier today, I was checking out some new questions in the TechCrunch topic area on Quora. One in particular caught my eye: How was TechCrunch traffic affected by their major redesign in July 2011?
This has been something I’ve seen asked here and there given the radical changes we implemented — and, I assume, given the audience issues Gawker faced after their recent redesign. Mostly, people… → Read More
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