There is no shortage of Nokia news this morning. The struggling Nordic giant is trying to stage a comeback with a bevy of new products—everything from Windows phones to lower-end models. But maybe it is trying to do too much.
Twitter and Square founder Jack Dorsey has some advice for the company, which he delivers via a Tweet: “you make too many products. Focus on 3.” → Read More
Maybe somewhere out there, a diehard Motorola and Android fan has patiently been waiting for the LTE edition of the Xoom. He’s stuck it out, not wanting to buy the 3G Xoom and eventually having to send it back to Motorola for its LTE transplant. He’s been waiting for the complete package. Well, nearly eight months to the day after the Xoom first hit the market, Motorola finally introduced the Xoom 4G LTE and it’s available from Verizon. → Read More
Despite a couple big-name companies like Groupon and Zynga lining up for IPOs, the demand for private company stock on alternative exchanges keeps rising. Private stock transactions on SecondMarket in the first three quarters of 2011 totaled $435 million, a 73 percent increase over the same period last year. In the third quarter alone, there were $167 million worth of transactions on SecondMarket, up 49 percent from the second quarter.
Who is buying all of these shares? SecondMarket breaks it out in its third quarter report. Wealthy “accredited individuals” made up the largest share of buyers (63 percent by dollar amount), followed by asset managers (22.3 percent of transactions), hedge funds (7.8 percent), and venture capital funds (5.1 percent). VC funds became much more active on SecondMarket in the quarter, accounting for 17.5 percent of the transactions by number. Last quarter, VCs made up less than 1 percent of transactions (and only 0.2 percent by dollar amount). → Read More
Microsoft-owned Skype is releasing a new version of its SkypeKit, which allows Skype calls, instant messaging, video chat and other features to be integrated by developers into consumer electronics. As Skype writes in its announcement today, the company opened up SkypeKit to the public in June to ‘accelerate Skype’s presence in the consumer electronics industry.’ Today, Skype is releasingthe Developer Preview of SkypeKit 4.02, which extends funcionaluty include desktop applications.
Developers can integrate Skype into their Windows, Mac and Linux desktop applications via SkypeKit for Desktop, which adds native Skype functionality directly into partner applications or via the Skype Desktop API, which allows developers to extend the functionality of Skype for Windows, Skype for Mac and Skype for Linux.
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Social travel sharing/planning website Gtrot.com (short for ‘globetrotting’) is debuting a personalized city discovery service that aggregates travel recommendations from friends’ social network updates into an interactive grid.
Founded by Brittany Laughlin and Zachary Smith, Gtrot helps users source travel plans, deals, tips, and recommendations from other friends via their social graph. For example, if you are visiting Paris and need travel advice, you can use Gtrot’s Facebook app or site to see which of your friends have been or live there, so you can reach out to them to get personalized advice and recommendations. → Read More
We’re all ready to get a hefty helping of Ice Cream Sandwich, but some may wait longer than others. HTC is still firmly on the fence about details, while Motorola has promised Android 4.0 to the Droid RAZR in the first half of 2012.
Meanwhile, Nexus handset owners will be on a shorter waiting list, with the exception of the Nexus One. Unfortunately for owners of the original Google phone, Google has confirmed that the Nexus One is just “too old” for the new software. Google’s Product Management Director of Android Hugo Barra has confirmed that the Nexus S, on the other hand, will get a taste of Ice Cream Sandwich “within weeks.” → Read More
There is always an element of the confessional about interviewing people, but I really felt like a priest when I interviewed MySpace co-founder and CEO Chris DeWolfe earlier this week. DeWolfe was keynoting San Francisco’s FailCon conference and our conversation naturally focused on failure – and particularly, of course, the meteoric failure of MySpace.
This the second in a weeklong series of interviews about failure. Yesterday, Vinod Khosla confessed to me that he had experienced many more failures than successes in his seemingly illustrious career. → Read More
It’s been a long time coming but after a decade of slowly losing its way, I think Nokia is headed back from the land of the lost.
This is not to say that I think the two new Lumia phones will pull Nokia out of its doldrums. However, I think the company has finally made some bold, intelligent decisions and, like it or not, Windows Phone will save them over the next few years. → Read More
CrowdOptic, a maker of an augmented reality app and mobile analytics solutions for the enterprise, has raised $500,000 in new funding today in a round led by Bowman Capital. According to CEO Jon Fisher, CrowdOptic will use the new capital to accelerate development of products in the area of mobile-powered technology for live events as well as expand the security features of its platform.
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In what I think is an interesting experiment, CBS this morning debuted a “60 Minutes” application that you can find in and launch from the Chrome Web Store (which just got a major facelift).
Granted, “adding it to Chrome” doesn’t really do anything but take you to this page, which you can just open in Chrome just like you would any page, but the Web app does look pretty nice. → Read More
TechCrunch readers may remember Brammo as the Oregon-based designer and manufacturer of all-electric motorcycles (and the battery technology and software that powers them), or as the makers of the bike one Mike Arrington was driving around the conference center at Disrupt NYC this year, whereupon he was almost removed from Disrupt by security. Later, in conjunction with Brammo CEO (And Disrupt Speaker) Craig Bramscher, Arrington gave the motorcycle away to one lucky mother of a marine.
Back in 2008, Brammo raised its first chunk of outside investment, an $11 million round led by Chrysalix Energy Venture Capital and Best Buy Venture Capital. Today, the electric vehicle technology company has added another significant piece of change to its vault, announcing the close of the final tranche of a $28 million series B round of financing. → Read More
Marketing technology company Fiksu’s data for the month of September shows the year’s biggest drop in application downloads, a trend it claims was impacted by mobile consumers holding out for the next Apple iPhone. Last month, the company speculated that a hiatus in sales of older iPhone models was impacting app downloads, and Apple’s recent admission of a drop of 3 million device sales last quarter appears to validate that claim. → Read More
Apparently “innocent until proven guilty” isn’t going to hold up well on the interwebs. At least not according to a group called Demand Progress, who claims that the upcoming House version of the PROTECT IP Act could offer even more power to the accuser. And even worse, sites like Twitter and YouTube may be under fire in no time at all.
The bill, which is a rewrite of the unpopular COICA bill, was passed by the Senate Judiciary Committee in May. Even in its original state, the bill seemingly contradicts this country’s assumption of innocence in many ways, allowing not only the Department of Justice, but private rightsholders to accuse a site of infringement and have it yanked with court approval. If the Department of Justice levels the charge (rather than a private rightsholder), the scope of the order extends past payment processors and ad networks to ISPs and search engines, thus requiring search engines to censor allegedly infringing sites out of their index. → Read More
EasyWeb Innovations, hereafter referred to as ‘EasyWeb’ or, alternatively, ‘some obscure patent troll looking to score coin by suing companies that actually innovate, rather than building and selling something’, has recently filed patent infringement lawsuits against social networking giants Facebook and Twitter. The suits claim EasyWeb holds five patents, with titles such as “Message Publishing System for Publishing Messages from Identified, Authorized Senders”.
Of note is the plaintiff’s lawyer, John Demarais, who is quite famous in patent litigation circles (he went from defending some of the biggest tech firms from patent trolls to working exclusively with and for patent trolls to attack them). → Read More
Casual games publisher King.com is today announcing it has passed one billion gameplays per month and is now one of the top 10 largest developers on Facebook’s social network. The company, which offers nearly 200 multi-platform games in 14 languages, is also expanding its reach in North America with the opening of new offices in San Francisco.
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RIBA II is the name of a cute caretaker robot from Japan, which we covered before but now have a professionally made video of. The two-armed robot was developed by Tokai Rubber Industries and RIKEN (a private research institute based out of Tokyo) and is supposed to make life easier for care facility personnel.
RIBA II is able to “gently” lift people (weighing up to 80kg) off the floor and onto a bed, freeing human caretakers of this hard task. His makers say they designed the material that patients get in touch with, especially the arms and hands, to be as soft as possible – thanks to the world’s first capacitance touch sensors made of rubber (see below). → Read More
Clever Sense’s local recommendations app Alfred was already doing a great job suggesting restaurants, coffee shops, bars and nightclubs using its artificial intelligence-based system. But today, it’s going to do something even more extraordinary - it will make suggestions based on who you’re with. This new feature, rolling out today through an app update in iTunes, will combine your personal likes and interests with those of your friends in order to suggest places you will all agree on. → Read More
Mint.com has been available on a variety of mobile platforms, including iPhone and Android, but has not developed an iPad app. Considering the popularity of other finance apps on the iPad and the tablet for factor, the device is ideal for Mint’s service. Today, Intuit-owned Mint.com is finally launching an iPad app. You can download the app here.
The iPad app lets you organize all accounts in one place within the app, and includes a streaming delivery of account alerts, bill reminders and personalized advice. The app takes advantage of the touch interface to allow users to pinch, tap and flick through graphs to drill into spending by category, merchant or budget. Similar to the iPhone app, you can add transactions from the app and it uses Google places to identify local merchants to input.
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As you probably know, Disrupt Beijing is happening next week and I’ll be heading south from Beijing after the event. I would love to hang out with folks in Shenzhen and Hong Kong. As it stands, I think we can put together a meet-up in Hong Kong on Wednesday Night (November 2nd) and another meet-up in Shenzhen on Friday night (November 4). I welcome recommendations for spots and I’d love to talk to start-ups and gadget folks in those cities.
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The BlackBerry Bold 9900 and Curve 9360 have something to brag about: They are the first SIM-based smartphone to earn the MasterCard PayPass Certification. This states MasterCard feels the phones have the proper functionality and security to handle MasterCard’s NFC-based PayPass payment system.
MasterCard’s contactless payment system rolled out years ago but the company announced earlier this year the system would hit SIM-based systems. Gemalto kickstarted the effort with its SIM cards, which also earned a nod from MasterCard. But now that the Bold 9900 and Curve 9360 are PayPass certified, any MasterCard PayPass-issuing bank can assign a PayPass account to the SIM card within the phones. → Read More
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