It looks like the wait for the elusive Nexus Prime may soon be over. Samsung has just started sending out invites for a special Samsung/Google event that’s being held on October 11 at 11:30 AM in San Diego. The topic isn’t listed, but the invitation says we’ll see “what’s new from Android”.
The Prime, which has been rumored for months but is still unconfirmed, is expected to be the first device running Ice Cream Sandwich — the next major Android update, which will unify for ‘mobile’ Gingerbread OS with ‘Tablet’ Honeycomb.
It’s also expected to be a beast specs-wise, with a dual-core processor, 4.5″ or 4.65″ screen, and 4G. Oh, and my favorite rumor: it’s supposed to be running on Verizon’s top-notch 4G network. → Read More
Being an Android user as well as a Flickr user has been dangerous territory for quite a long time now. There’s been no official app, and the third-party ones haven’t been too hot. Luckily for us, Yahoo has finally dropped a Flickr app that not only has their official blessing, but doesn’t suck at all. → Read More
Why is it that random eBay shoppers always seem to have the best luck? In what has to be one of the most fortuitous purchases I’ve seen in a while, someone picked up a Nexus S off of the auction site that just happened to be running a build of Google’s latest Android update: Ice Cream Sandwich.
Well, that’s the story, anyway. Thankfully, our lucky buyer was able to contain his or her excitement long enough to take some pictures and video and send them to Engadget. → Read More
Boston-based BetterLesson launched in 2009 with a simple mission: Provide an easy way for educators to connect with each other and share their lessons. As Co-founder and VP of Operations Erin Osborn and Founder and CEO Alex Grodd are both former teachers themselves (and Jonathan Hendler, the third co-founder and CTO has a mom who was a career teacher), they were tired of watching as their colleagues’ cool, original lesson plans would disappear into the folders and hard drives of obsolescence. So the founders set out to design an open, social platform to aggregate the best K thru 12 teacher-generated content.
To help it grow, the startup has announced that it has officially closed a $1.6 million series A round of venture funding from a host of venture firms, including Highland Capital Partners, General Catalyst, New Markets Ventures, and NewSchools Venture Fund — as well as angel investors like Steve Kaufer of Trip Advisor, Matt Greenfield (Stonework Capital), and Shawn and Jennifer Carolan of Menlo Ventures, NewSchools Venture Fund, and more. → Read More
The highlight of today’s Amazon event was when CEO Jeff Bezos finally announced the Kindle Fire about midway through. We captured it on video, and you can see for yourself how Bezos introduced the device.
He demos the unique interface, which highlights the media you’ve interacted with most recently. There is also Whispersync for movies, which lets you pick up watching a movie where you left off when you move between devices. And he even plays Fruit Ninja to show off the dual-core processor’s speed. → Read More
Xoom users, rejoice! Despite having to stick it out for a few extra months, the 3G version of Motorola’s ambitious 10-incher is finally getting a piece of the LTE action starting tomorrow.
Frustrated users may remember that the Xoom was originally slated to get its LTE upgrade some time in Q2 2011, but months have come and gone without a firm release date.
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As Twitter CEO Dick Costolo told the media a few weeks ago, advertising is a key strategy for the company. “Our advertising method is the only one we need to be a big business,” he said at the time. And Twitter has rolled out a number of new products including Promoted Tweets. But according to a new eMarketer report, Twitter’s ad revenue is expected to be lower this year, and will grow significantly over the next few years once the platform’s self-serve ad product rolls out. eMarketer estimates global ad revenues at Twitter will grow 210% to $139.5 million in 2011, up from just $45 million in 2010, in the company’s first full year of selling advertising.
For background, eMarketer forms its estimates for advertising spending on Twitter through an analysis of estimates of consumer usage, marketer usage, ad pricing, and impressions on Twitter, as well as revenue estimates from research firms and other sources.
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While giveaways and “follow us and win!” contests aren’t always worth calling out, this promotion from @NASA is too great to pass up. They’re planning on inviting 150 of their followers to watch the Curiosity Mars Rover launch. Yes, the actual launch, from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. → Read More
isocket, a startup that makes it easy to buy and sell online advertising, is making a few big announcements today, including the closing of a multi-million dollar series A round of funding from their existing seed investors (the startup raised $1.8 million back in 2009), which includes some big name angels/VCs like Tim Draper of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, David Blumberg of Blumberg Capital, Jeff Clavier of SoftTech VC, and David Cohen of TechStars. (Disclosure: TechCrunch uses isocket to power its direct advertising.)
In addition to its new infusion of capital, isocket is announcing that it has poached Ben Trenda from the Rubicon Project. Ben is joining isocket as VP of Sales. TechCrunch covered his exit from Aol (where he was the VP of Agency Relationships) to join Rubicon in April of last year. At Rubicon, Trenda was responsible for launching the company’s realtime bidding business and helped the Project grow to the second largest ad exchange behind Google. → Read More
Mango has already begun to trickle out into the wild, and Microsoft is still trying to figure out exactly what their Windows Phone users want. Case in point: they’ve just unveiled their new Suggestion Box, where users can submit and vote for ideas that they would like to see implemented in Windows Phone 7. → Read More
If you’ve watched the gaming world at all over the last year or so, you’re probably aware of the Humble Bundle, a charity-orientated promotion where you pay what you want for a few standout indie titles. The few so far have had a great reception, raising millions for charity (EFF and Child’s Play). A new one has just launched with acclaimed strategy shooter Frozen Synapse as the main draw, but there’s a new wrinkle in the pricing scheme.
Instead of just having the whole bundle available for any price you want to pay, you receive either just Frozen Synapse or the game plus the whole previous bundle depending on how much you give. Give under the average and get the game, give over the average and get the bundle. It’s a little bit brilliant. → Read More
The Kindle Fire is the device we were all waiting for and when it arrived it did not disappoint. The Fire is a 7-inch media device that plays well with all of Amazon’s media services including the book store, the video store, and the music store. It includes a web browser and supports Amazon’s own Amazon App Store, a branch of the Android App Store that focuses on apps optimized for this device.
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Your cell phone knows all sorts of stuff about you. It knows where you’ve been, which websites you’ve visited, who you call most, and, depending on how many times you’ve found yourselves drunk with your cell phone handy, what you look like without pants on. But still, you can be comforted in knowing that all of that information can be destroyed with little more than a brick and a bit of unchecked rage.
But what about the stuff that doesn’t live on your phone? The other half of the wireless formula, the carriers, know a hell of a lot about you too. Who holds onto that data the longest? → Read More
We’re hearing that Google is in talks to acquire Katango, the Kleiner-backed startup that uses algorithms to automatically sort your friends into different groups, with very little effort required on the user’s part (see our full post on their launch here).
Katango would be a very obvious fit for Google (in fact, we hear that Google has been interested in the company since they launched in July). Why? Because Google+ revolves around grouping your friends into different Circles, be it acquaintances, family members, and so on. But at this point, while Google+ is great at telling you who you might know, it doesn’t suggest to you which of these Circles to put them in. → Read More
The first device Jeff Bezos showed off at today’s Amazon event was the diminutive Kindle Touch, a $99 e-ink device that should be on everyone’s Christmas lists this year. The Touch has an 6-inch, IR-based touchscreen and includes all of the features found in the ne Kindle models including the new X-Ray feature that adds research and information to any book downloaded from the Kindle store.
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New York-based startup Hyperpublic has some big news today that should catch the eye of developers looking to do anything with local: they’re opening access to a new Point of Interest (POI) database called Places+, and they’re also giving developers a straightforward and easy way to start monetizing. All free of charge.
Founder Jordan Cooper, who is also a Venture Partner at Lerer Ventures, walked me through each of the releases. He says that Hyperpublic has offered some location APIs before, but that they were small potatoes compared to what they’re bringing to the table now.
The Places+ product will be competing with the likes of Factual and Foursquare’s location database (each database allows mobile apps to display which restaurants and other venues are near a given location). But Cooper says that Places+ contains a superset of its competitors’ data — and he thinks that it has fresher data to boot.
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Earlier today, Microsoft and Samsung disclosed that they reached a cross-licensing agreement over patents. The key point: it’s a bad blow to the notion that Android is free. Instead, it’s more like “free” with huge Android OEM partners like HTC and now Samsung agreeing to pay Microsoft to use Android. Google must be pissed off.
And they are. Here’s their statement:
“This is the same tactic we’ve seen time and again from Microsoft. Failing to succeed in the smartphone market, they are resorting to legal measures to extort profit from others’ achievements and hinder the pace of innovation. We remain focused on building new technology and supporting Android partners.”
mDialog, a video-advertising-as-a-service company, has closed a $5 million Series A round of funding led by the BlackBerry Partners Fund.
The company says the investment will be used to expand its offerings across all mobile and connected devices such as the iPad and iPhone, as well as Android, Roku and other platforms. → Read More
Earlier this month, Foursquare held its second hackathon, with 500 developers from around the world contributing. Today, the company is announcing the winners. The grand prize goes to Plan Your Next Trip, which uses the Foursquare API to help you plan out your upcoming 2-day trip to any city in the world using the recommendations from Foursquare’s “Explore” feature.
Several grand prize finalists were also named, including Sqavenger, Intersquares and sponsor-chosen winners Near.co and VenueMachine. → Read More
