Realtime semantic startup Evri is debuting its brand-new iPad application today, where it joins the crowded “iPad news magazine” space filled with the likes of Flipboard, The Daily, Zite, Pulse, NewsMix, AOL Editions, News360 and others. To differentiate itself from the pack, Evri’s app employs a combination of social news and topical streams, allowing readers to follow their interests as opposed to just following sources. → Read More
TechMediaNetwork (TMN), a publisher of technology and science media, this morning announced that it has raised $33 million in funding in a Series B round led by ABS Capital Partners, with earlier backers Village Ventures and Highway 12 Ventures also participating.
TechMediaNetwork publishes news and reviews across a website network that it says reaches more than 24 million visitors on a monthly basis. Its network includes websites like Space.com, LAPTOP, Newsarama, TechNewsDaily, TopTenREVIEWS, iPadNewsDaily, SecurityNewsDaily and many more. → Read More
Japan’s second biggest carrier KDDI took the wraps off [JP] a total of eight new cell phones for the domestic market today. To be more concrete, the telco (which is likely to become the second in Japan to provide the iPhone 5) showed six Android handsets (the Arrows Z is the most impressive) and two feature phones.
Here are all models that KDDI showed today: → Read More
Microsoft has filed for a trademark on “Put People First”, the tagline it has recently attached to the imminent Windows Phone 7.5 update (often referred to as ‘Mango’), which is expected to roll out this or next week.
The tagline has thus far appeared on Microsoft’s Windows Phone Facebook page and in promotional YouTube videos (see below). By filing for a trademark on the slogan, Microsoft aims to demonstrate its commitment to making the next version of the Windows Phone operating system people-centric. → Read More
We’re not exactly surprised. As we predicted in May, Twitter is setting up its European HQ in Dublin (in fact this is its third international office outside the Valley). The reasons are simple: money.
Following the long- tradition of US companies in Europe (joining Google, Yahoo, AOL, Facebook, PayPal, LinkedIn, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Intel, Apple, HP and Zynga) Ireland’s 12% corporation tax, and 45 minute flight from London (where corporation tax is 28%) is just too tempting not to take advantage of. One annual board meeting later and you can be back at you Mayfair pad in one day.
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Back in May, a sort of revolution started in the London tech scene. You see, London is a special place. It has massive industries in the shape of the financial sector and the media industry (like the BBC) right on its doorstep, so any fresh new talent is often attracted to these established industries and their nice cozy salaries. But in May a leading startup of the area Songkick brought together 45 startups the first “Silicon Milkroundabout”, a job fair organized by the startup community in East London. The event was a great success. And now it’s back.
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It will probably take a few more months until Japan’s five major cell phone makers really start shipping smartphones to the US and other regions, but in their home market, all signs point to an Android future.
Japan’s second biggest carrier KDDI au, for example, unveiled [JP] a total of six new Android phones for its winter line-up today, and Fujitsu-Toshiba Mobile’s ARROWS Z ISW11F is probably the most interesting model. → Read More
“What’s happening?” The text entry box on the Twitter homepage innocently asks us constantly, compelling us to type in a <140 character window into what we’re doing RIGHT NOW. For the most part, if you’re an active Twitter user, you partake voluntarily, contributing to a real-time hum of over 200 million updates daily.
On the receiving end of these updates are people who’ve chosen to subscribe to your one way broadcasting of your constant status. Like it or not, they’ve opted in to what you ate for breakfast, read this morning, or think about the financial crisis in Europe. → Read More
Last week, an Australian company called Pixel Capital acquired the domain name creditcard.net for $138,000 in a bid to more adequately market its financial comparison website network in the United States.
Said network includes sites like CreditCard.com.au and Creditworld.com.au. → Read More
Here are some stories from the past week on TechCrunch Gadgets: → Read More
Netflix has taken a few hits lately with the reaction to its plans to split its streaming and DVD business, but now it is punching back. The company signed a deal with DreamWorks which will give it access to its movies and Tv shows for streaming over the Internet during the pay-TV window. Netflix won the deal over HBO, which currently is first in line among TV networks to show DreamWorks movies.
That’s right, Netflix outbid HBO. Estimates put the Netflix deal at $30 million per DreamWorks movie, versus the $20 million per movie that HBO is currently paying. This is exactly the kind move Netflix needs to be doing right now to bring streaming up to par with cable TV. Netflix will have to cut many more deals like this with other studios to make that happen, but this suggests it will be more aggressive in the future. Normally, Netflix purchases streaming rights for later time windows, usually after premium cable channels get to show the movies. → Read More
“‘What?.’ ‘We made it to Disrupt,’ Sarah said calmly. ‘We screamed so hard we woke up the building.’”
After the screaming ended, the Israel-based Shaker team ditched Burning Man plans for TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2011 rehearsals in San Francisco, devising a plan that would buy them some time (asking if they could have all 13 founders on stage) and having that plan backfire (we said “Yes.”).
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It’s been over 72 hours since Facebook first debuted a series of groundbreaking new features at f8, which is all the time I need to predict the company’s long-term outlook, the way it will reinvent the web, and the pricing of its inevitable IPO.
Okay, maybe not. But it’s given me some time to try the features out, as opposed to basing my impressions off of Facebook’s well-crafted keynote presentations. And while many of these obviously have a lot of potential, in practice I’m finding them to be a mixed (or, in some cases, a downright irritating) bag.
Social Overlubrication
One of the big announcements at f8 was something called frictionless sharing. Here’s the gist: Facebook will let third-party sites and apps integrate what’s effectively a sharing firehose. Turn it on, and everything you do in the app gets shared with your Facebook friends.
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This is a joint guest post from security camera tech entrepreneur / startup finance blogger Nick Pelling and “sweat equity” investor/consultant Andrew Lockley. They report on The UK government’s ongoing consultation on to the Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS), which could well reshape the UK startup investment landscape during 2012.
The UK government has spent most of 2011 whacking the same pro-enterprise rhetorical stake into the ground. It wants to turn the UK into ‘Venture Central’, “the best place in Europe to start, finance and grow a business”; and it claims that it will do pretty much whatever it takes to achieve this.
10/10 for ambition, but… what’s the plan? Aside from Tech City grandstanding (a bit shallow, but decent enough PR) and the whole Enterprise Zone fiasco-to-be (more offices? Why?), what the government wants to happen now is for business angels and VCs to start funding lots of high growth startups – fast.
Wow. PayPal released some new public numbers recently that show the payments platform is processing a massive number of payments per day. PayPal says that it saw $3,650 in Total Payment Volume every second in Q2 2011. By our calculations, that means PayPal is processing around $315.3 million in payments per day. On average, the payments platform is seeing upwards of over 5 million transactions a day.
PayPal has unequivocally been the crown jewel in parent eBay’s family of businesses. This past quarter, PayPal delivered its first-ever billion dollar revenue quarter. Total net total payment volume (TPV) grew 34% compared to the same period of last year. And PayPal is actually closing in on eBay’s marketplaces segment in terms of revenue (which posted $1.6 billion in revenue in Q2). → Read More
As I watched the Google antitrust hearings last Wednesday, with its gotcha moments and Senators pontificating about the dangers Google poses to society, it struck me that what I was watching was theater. And not just any theater, but monopoly theater. I am borrowing from the concept of security theater: “a term that describes security countermeasures intended to provide the feeling of improved security while doing little or nothing to actually improve security.” In the same way, talking about Google’s monopoly power and what the government should do about it provides the feeling of improving competition while doing little or nothing to actually improve it.
The hearing touched upon many serious concerns about Google’s market power, but in the end it was just monopoly theater. Nothing antitrust regulators do to Google will actually improve competition. → Read More
Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Brenden Mulligan, entrepreneur and creator of Onesheet, who is currently traveling around the world meeting startups with his wife and IDEO designer Elle Luna. You can follow him on Twitter here: @bmull.
Before coming to Japan, we asked everyone we knew for advice on how to connect with the startup community in Tokyo. Every recommendation pointed at the exact same place: Open Network Lab.
Open Network Lab (“Onlab”) is a Japanese startup incubator in the same vein as Y Combinator or TechStars. The incubator provides startups with mentorship, office space, and a small amount of cash in exchange for a piece of equity. This model is popular in the United States, and leading Japanese internet company Digital Garage (investors in Twitter, Path, and more) wanted to try it in Japan. Onlab is currently in its second year of operation has incubated three batches of startups. Even though it’s a young program, they are already making an noticeable impact on the Japanese startup community. → Read More
What can I say, I just dig Kutiman. I first covered the work of the Israeli-born artist back in 2009 with the release of ‘Thru You,’ a seven-track music project created by splicing and dicing YouTube clips.
It was back in March when I covered the release of a new, jazzier sounding tune of his called, ‘My Favorite Color‘.
Well, he’s back with another one of those block rockin’ beats… This time Kutiman unleashes his splice-and-dice style upon democracy. Clip after the jump. → Read More
So apparently there’s a new Xoom in the works. Big surprise, right? The old one is nearing its eight month birthday and thanks to the rapid Android aging process, it’s about as a relevant as a Handspring Visor at this point. But in all seriousness, does anyone care any more? I ask that with void of snark or sarcasm. I’m serious: Does anyone care about Honeycomb tablets anymore?
Honeycomb was supposed to be the iOS killer. It was supposed to stand-up, challenge the mighty iOS and ultimately slay the champion through a power combo of multitasking and openness. But it didn’t happen mainly because consumers don’t care about that nonsense. They want apps, which Honeycomb has very few. So here’s Android tablets now, sitting on retailers’ end-caps and shelves, huddled together, sharing the warmth of a single power brick just hoping someone will figure out how to unlock their screens. → Read More
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