Austrian blogger and developer Florian Rohrweck recently discovered a lot of Google+’s upcoming features just by digging around in the source code for the new social networking service. He was one of the first (but not the only one), to reveal Google+ Games before its launch, for example, as well as still unreleased features like “Shared Circles” and social search, among other things.
Now, it seems, Google has had enough of Rohrweck’s snooping. It’s hiring Rohrweck to help secure the code instead.
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Social application developer Seesmic is making a big move into the social enterprise and is debuting a dedicated Android app and iPad app for Salesforce’s CRM product (Windows Phone 7 will also be added soon), called Seesmic CRM. The Android app will be launched tomorrow morning at Salesforce’s annual conference, Dreamforce, and Seesmic will launch the iPad app in a few weeks.
For background, Seesmic, which was founded by French entrepreneur Loic Le Meur, helps you monitor and track the social web. Seesmic’s desktop, web, and mobile clients integrate with Twitter, Facebook and other social networks. The bonus of using an app like Seesmic is the ability to aggregate your streams from a number of social web services, like YouTube, Foursquare, Techmeme, LinkedIn and others.
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It’s not easy being green — or an entrepreneur. The inherent risk in becoming an entrepreneur or founding a startup is high. Sleepless nights, sweat equity, bribing new users to come to your product — it’s all part of the nerve-racking, code-spinning, and teeth grinding process. That’s why most of these swashbucklers are pirates by nature. But the truth of the matter is that few startups ever make it far enough to find the buried treasure or piggyback on Facebook all the way to glory; in fact, the cold, hard reality is that more than 90 percent of all startups fail.
That’s why four young international entrepreneurs (Bjoern Herrmann and Aleksandra Markova) created the so-called Startup Genome Report, because they wanted to a deep dive into what makes a startup successful — and what causes so many to drink from the cup of FAIL. → Read More
When I first saw The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword at E3 2010, I have to admit I wasn’t impressed. The demo was obviously rushed out, the Wiimote was being unresponsive, and it took him like a dozen slingshot rocks to knock down one spider. But it has definitely shaped up nicely over the last year or so, and was looking better than ever at PAX. Now that the doubters had been satisfied to some extent, it only remained to set a date for availability. And we just got that. → Read More
It’s time for your weekly dose of next-gen iPhone rumors. This edition is a doozy, friends. Purported iPhone components are leaking everywhere with every site claiming to have the real deal. It’s hard to say which components are lifted straight from Foxconn’s lines, but when they’re viewed as a whole, these components paint an interesting picture that Apple is about to dramatically shift course and fully disrupt the cell phone market. → Read More
You may recall the Raspberry Pi, a barebones PC for emerging markets that they hope to sell for $25. When we wrote it up earlier this year, there wasn’t much in the way of demonstration: a few stills of the PCB and a video with founder David Braben describing his plan for the device. But today we have a demo that both captures the geek imagination and proves the device has legs: they’ve got it running Quake III.
Not that it’s some big accomplishment to run a game released in the last millennium, but it actually does pretty well. The device uses a 700MHz ARM processor and has 128MB of RAM enabled here, and lacking any on-device storage, it’s running the OS (Debian CLI) and the game off an SD card. → Read More
Streaming music service Rdio from Skype founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, is today launching two new music gifting options – physical gift cards and online credits. Consumers will be able to purchase the virtual gift card options in $10, $25, $50 and $100 values or in user-selected amounts. Meanwhile, physical cards in the $10 and $25 values will be sold in over 600 Target retail stores here in the U.S.
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Eagle-eyed readers may have spotted the “With HTC Sense” badge on the newly-leaked HTC Vigor’s rear-end, and yet another leak may have disclosed what to expect when the thing turns on. A five minute video tour of HTC’s updated Sense 3.5 UI has just surfaced, and allows us a peek at what the next big HTC devices have in store for us. → Read More
ModoPayments’ simple and comprehensive solution for providing mobile payments is interesting and what’s more, its offer-based approach may have finally cracked the code for monetizing check-ins. This is something that mobile location-based service providers (LBSs) like Foursquare, Loopt, Gowalla and ShopKick have, no doubt, been laboring over since their inceptions. And while ModoPayments is, at present, a non-NFC mobile payments platform, they plan to integrate with NFC too, when NFC reaches retail maturity.
Based in Dallas, Texas and led by CEO Bruce Parker, ModoPayments is a startup with a goal to do exactly what their tagline says – “convert redemptions to payments and make payments mobile”. What exactly does that mean? First, know that ModoPayments definitely has a payments piece and I’ll come to that in a moment, but a supremely important part of their business plan is creating and tying value offers to the purchases they enable in order to enhance and promote their mobile payments solution. → Read More
If you pay even a small bit of attention to the iPhone jailbreaking scene, you’ve probably heard by now: one of its golden boys is heading for greener pastures. Nicholas Allegra — perhaps known better as comex (the brain behind the one-click, web-based jailbreaking tool, JailbreakMe) — is hangin’ up his hacker hat and heading for Cupertino, having been offered an internship at Apple.
Before settling down in his new seat, though, comex took a bit of time to answer some questions from the community on his future, his thoughts on the jailbreak scene, and regrets. → Read More
When HP decided to kill off webOS, most people were more concerned with who would snatch up the PC business that went tumbling down the trash chute alongside it. A few options were thrown out, but most bets were placed on Samsung, who’s reportedly been looking to outsource some notebook orders.
Little did we know, Samsung may be interested in grabbing webOS, too. → Read More
There have been a flurry of efforts in recent days aimed at getting a workable version of Android up-and-running on the webOS-based HP TouchPad. The mission has been funded in part by modding community called HackNMod, which is hoping to give the tablet’s early adopters an operating system with a more certain future: Android.
It appears that the CyanogenMod team has finally made that happen. According to a public statement and accompanying video, the developers say they now have an alpha version of the CyanogenMod 7 firmware running on the TouchPad. → Read More
Last spring, just in time for SXSW, Justin.tv launched a new standalone video app that has a simple purpose: it lets you share short videos with your friends with just a few taps. The app adopted a model that’s very similar to Instagram’s, with a ‘follow’ system and quick sharing to services like Twitter and Facebook. And it got off to a strong start, with 250,000 downloads in its first month alone.
It’s done so well, in fact, that six months after the app first launched, Justin.tv is spinning Socialcam off as its own independent company.
Justin.tv cofounder and long-time CEO Michael Seibel will become CEO of Socialcam, bringing a small team of Socialcam’s orignal engineers with him. → Read More
Nintendo cut the price of the 3DS from $250 to $169 just a few weeks back. Now you can get it for even less. MacMall is currently selling the blue and black systems via ebay for $150 with free shipping. The new red model is notable missing and somewhat seems to say that the blue and black flavors are just sitting in warehouses, waiting to be cleared out. → Read More
Compelling content is the key to ensuring that 3D smartphones are more than a just a flash in the pan, and right now, there just isn’t much of it floating around. LG, makers of the Optimus 3D handset, aims to address that content issue with the recent announcement of their new 3D Game Converter software. → Read More
The day of the Ultrabook is nearly upon us and per Asustek chairman, Jonney Shih, the PC maker has five to six models on the bill for an October release. Prices are said to start out $899 but also reach $1,999. That’s notable higher than Intel’s target price of $999 and under. Still, if Intel has its way, ultrabooks will be the next big thing in PC notebooks. The ultra-thin, ultra-sexy notebooks are designed around Intel’s next-gen Ivy Bridge CPU platform that offers high but efficient performance at affordable price points and Asus is set to flood the market with a bunch of models. → Read More
Tapit is a new mobile advertising startup, founded in March 2011, that enables content sharing and offer delivery simply by tapping an NFC-enabled phone anywhere the Tapit logo can be found.
The company has now raised a seed funding round from Sydney Angels in record time – just 22 days from the pitch until the round was subscribed for. This is the fastest investment to date for Sydney Angels, the not-for-profit membership organization for angels which typically invests in Sydney-based startups. → Read More
Junaio, the mobile Augmented Reality browser created by German AR firm Metaio, has been updated this morning: Version 3.0 now supports scanning barcodes. Some of you are probably thinking “Whoop-dee-doo, every app can scan barcodes nowadays.” And you’re right; it’s not really a big deal in that sense. When you consider Junaio’s capability at advanced image recognition, using it to scan 1D and 2D QR codes is kind of like using a bazooka to shoot an arrow. → Read More
The Apple-Samsung drama has been rather quiet in Australia compared to the clamor it’s created in Europe until today when Apple alleged that the Australian version of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 is also infringing Apple patents.
Samsung had originally tried to circumvent the Australian GalTab injunction on the basis that it was the version intended for the U.S., and that the Australian variant was different. → Read More
Maveron, a VC firm with offices in Seattle and San Francisco, this morning announced that it has named Andrew Trader (who is often referred to simply as A.T.) as a partner. Trader actually joined Maveron back in 2010 as Entrepreneur-in-Residence, but is now taking on a more expanded role at the firm.
According to its website, Maveron’s portfolio includes companies like Groupon, eBay, Shutterfly, Drugstore.com and SAY Media. → Read More
