Personal Capital came out of stealth mode today to “create a new model for financial services” and announced that it has raised a total of $25 million in venture financing. The financing includes a Series A round led by Institutional Venture Partners and a Series B round led by Venrock with IVP also investing again. → Read More
Yandex, one of the leading Internet companies in Russia, has acquired startup venture The Tweeted Times, which enables people to create custom online ‘newspapers’ generated from their Twitter accounts. Financial terms of the purchase were not disclosed, but Yandex says it aims to continue offering the social news service and that the entire The Tweeted Times team will be joining the search engine… → Read More
One key element for the success of electric vehicles going forward is charging technology, but we’re getting there. Kyoto-based Nichicon has now developed what they say are the world’s smallest and chargers for these vehicles, the NQC-A202 and the NQC-A302. → Read More
Y Combinator had its semiannual demo day earlier this week, where many of the 63 startups in this batch showed their stuff to investors and press for the first time. It was the largest demo day so far. And they did the same show two days in a row so more people could come.
What struck me about the day wasn’t that so many companies were launching, or how awesome more than a few of them were. → Read More
I sat down last night to write about Steve Jobs’ resignation as Apple CEO and something funny happened: I had nothing to say. This is not normal for me. I don’t get writer’s block. I often write thousands of words about what many would consider the minutia of tech. And yet, when it came to writing about one of the biggest stories we’re ever likely to see in this space, a story that far… → Read More
Here are some of yesterday’s Gadgets stories: → Read More
Turntable.fm is so hot right now. In fact, when it comes to tweets, the synchronous social music platform may even have more Klout than Pandora or Spotify. With the rise in popularity of Turntable, it’s only natural that video curation platforms would be eager to take a cue from the music dance party site and bring that disco to videos.
Two weeks ago, we covered the launch of Chill, which in… → Read More
Because we needed more big tech news this week. Yes, it’s true that Google has just brought the hammer down on Slide, as Liz Gannes of AllThingsD first reported earlier this evening. Yes, it’s also true that Max Levchin is leaving. Now we also know the fate of all of the Slide products. And it’s not pretty.
All of them are being discontinued — except one, we’ve learned. This means both the… → Read More
Mitchell Feinberg is a photographer who specializes in taking beautiful photographs of very expensive things. Cars, luxury goods, wristwatches, that sort of thing. He shoots on 8×10 film, which is expensive enough that you generally want to get it right the first time. So he shoots test shots on instant 8×10 Polaroid film to make sure the exposure and focus are right. At $15 a pop, 7 or 8 test… → Read More
One of the most common complaints critics (and competitors) have against Google is that the company — despite its numerous open products and initiatives — is very secretive about the countless algorithms that power its crown jewels, Google Search. In other words, search is a black box. Google’s argument has generally been that it needs to be this way — if it told everyone exactly how the… → Read More
Back in February of 2010, Microsoft applied for a number of patents related to touchscreen gestures on a tablet. Many of them concern a dual-screen device, conjuring images of the once highly-anticipated Courier slate. The others focus mainly on bezel gestures. Those patents have gone public now, though they have not in fact been granted yet.
With IP wars raging across the globe, it’s certainly… → Read More
DoughMain, a startup that combines family coordination and financial education into a simple, realtime, and gamified platform, has announced that it has raised $5 million in seed funding from a series of private angel investors. The round of financing has been used to support the launch and rollout of DoughMain.com, as well as to contribute to the development of DoughMain’s mobile… → Read More
The arguably crazy (and inarguably crazy fast) animators at Taiwan’s Next Media Animation are at it again. After blasting out over-the-top animated summaries for everything from the Ceglia Vs. Facebook story to Antennagate, they’ve done what they do best with a tale that’s on just about all of our minds right now: the life and career of Steve Jobs. → Read More
Earlier this summer, at the e-G8 Conference in Paris, Jeff Jarvis implored French President Nicholas Sarkozy to “do no harm” to the Internet. But Jarvis isn’t alone in wanting government to stay out of Internet affairs. Take, for example, the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) Commissioner Robert McDowell who believes that the “Internet is the greatest deregulatory success story… → Read More
Where do you get your news (besides TechCrunch, of course)? Some of you may like that familiar tactile experience of newsprint, ink on the fingers, but chances are that your news consumption takes place mostly online — or on a mobile device. But thanks to the content fire hose that is the Internet, there’s a lot of irrelevant junk floating around out there, and, thus, the focus of digital readers… → Read More
This is different from those other electric shoes that were making the rounds yesterday. Piezoelectrics are interesting, but simply don’t produce a lot of power for their size. Enough to make a low-power transmitter squirt a few bytes, or light an LED. They’re great for collecting ambient forces like sound and vibration, if you know the direction and type of force you want to harvest, there are… → Read More
Some of the most interesting and relevant content on Quora are related to places. But up until now, Quora hasn’t done much to focus that data using location. Today, they’re starting to.
A new feature going live shortly will allow users to set location information for topics. For example, if there’s a topic about the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, you can now drop a pin to indicate where… → Read More
If you’re a fan of cloud-based music lockers, it’s a good time to be alive. Back in March, Amazon somewhat surprisingly beat Apple and Google to the music streaming and storage punch with their “Cloud Drive” and “Cloud Player”. Both Google and Apple have since launched cloud music offerings (or betas thereof), and all three continue to improve and evolve as time marches on.
As a music fan… → Read More
Are you the kind of person who would love to have an animatronic Gary Coleman on your shelf, his little pudgy face cursing like a sailor at your guests while you roller skate around your basement wearing a skin-tight rubber suit and sing reggae-infused Coldplay covers? If you said “Absolutely!” then read on. → Read More
After Jive’s $100 million IPO filing yesterday, local business reviews site Angie’s List is throwing its hat into the ring, filing an S-1 this afternoon. The company will raises as much as $75 million, according to the filing.
As we’ve written in the past, Angie’s List offers consumers a way to review and rate doctors, contractors and service companies on the Web. The company launched in 1995… → Read More
In the wake of the London riots, there has been intense debate about whether the Internet – and particularly social media networks like Twitter and Facebook – needs more regulation. But according to Chris Painter, the US State Department’s recently appointed Coordinator for Cyber Issues, the riots early this month do not represent an excuse for governments around the world to regulate the… → Read More
Last night I went out to dinner. But I didn’t pick where I was going, Ness did. The place was good. Score one for Ness.
We previously covered Ness Computing in July, talking about the technology that would power their eventual apps (as well as their funding). Today, the first such app has gone live in the App Store, called simply, Ness. It’s a personal search engine catering to restaurants. And… → Read More
In its first quarter as a public company, music streaming service Pandora posted record revenue in Q2 2012. For the second quarter fiscal year 2012, total revenue was $67 million, a 117% year over year increase. For the second quarter fiscal 2012, on a GAAP basis, the net loss per per share was $(0.04). The non-GAAP net income per fully diluted common share was $0.02.
In terms of net income… → Read More
Quick! Asus Transformer owners! Check your system updates. The Internet is awash with claims that build 8.6.5.9 enables sideloading of the Netflix app. Right now, only the Lenovo IdeaPad K1 and ThinkPad Tablet are Netflix certified, forcing owners of other Honeycomb tablets to side load the app, something that previously wasn’t possible on the Transformer. → Read More
We’ve seen some interesting developments lately in the fields of robotics and computer vision. They’re not as academic as you’d expect: enormous tech successes like the Roomba and Kinect have relied as much on clever algorithms and software development as they have on marketing and retail placement. So what’s next for our increasingly intelligent cameras, webcams, TVs, and phones?
I spoke with… → Read More
Taboola, a service that powers many of the video recommendation widgets you find across the web, has raised a $9 million Series B funding round. The round is being led by Crescent Point, which is based in New York and Asia, as well as Evergreen VC, which has participated in previous rounds.
This round brings Taboola’s total funding to $15 million (it previously raised a $4.5 million round in… → Read More
The BlackBerry PlayBook is impressive upon first look. You pick it up, quickly scroll through the apps, and jump online. It all works like it’s supposed to. But then you find out it can’t hook up to your email; a BlackBerry needs to be connected through the BlackBerry Bridge. This connection also enables BBM, calendar and an address book, but an update due next month will finally bake several key… → Read More
I love printed materials. Not just because they’re great in their own right, but because sometimes, due to the restrictions of printing and mailing delays, they break news a little early. In this case, Fujifilm’s rumored X10/X50, little brother to the much-loved X100, has shown up in the Promaster catalog, complete with specs and pic. → Read More
After what has felt like forever for many an Android fan, the Samsung Galaxy S II is finally set to touch down stateside. Come next Monday, Samsung will be spilling the details surrounding the Galaxy S II’s US launch.
Between the launch timeframe and its positioning as a flagship Android handset, it’s pretty much unavoidable that the Galaxy S II will be spun as the iPhone 5′s greatest rival —… → Read More
Brokers are not all the same. Some can pull a little extra cash out of a house and some are good at the fast sell. Some will try to force you to rent a room in a basement with barely enough room to stand up. That’s why StreetEasy, a real estate site popular with the New York apartmentatti, has added broker ratings to their paid property search platform.
This service allows you to see who is… → Read More
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