Tradeshift, the social invoicing startup we broke in 2009, has secured $17 million in funding, a move which values it at $137 million in a round led by Moscow based funds ru-Net and Kite Ventures. Existing investor, Notion Capital, also participated.
CEO Christian Lanng says the fact the money was raised outside the Valley show’s the power balance is shifting towards Europe. We have a different view: this is a deal struck where the wheels were probably greased by existing investor Morten Lund and close associate Edwrad Shenderovich of Kite Ventures. It’s highly significant that Russian investors are starting to flesh their muscles outside Russia, and not just DST for a change. → Read More
Last week, Google announced an impending update to its neglected online RSS reader, Google Reader. The service is soon getting a cosmetic overhaul and will see its current social features removed in favor of deeper integration with Google+. Although many TechCrunch commenters lamented alongside me about the forthcoming disappearance of our favorite “human curators,” when I asked the same question on Google+, the outcome was decidedly different: no one really cares.
Except, it appears, Iranians. According to a blog post now making its way around the Web, Google Reader served the Iranian community as a way to get uncensored, unfiltered news outside of government control. And now, that may be over. → Read More
Created by a young man named Jonathan Bouman, Scrolldit is a thing that scrolls Reddit for you, thereby allowing you to avoid the hard, hard job of scrolling Reddit. Why, you ask, is this news? Because we like Reddit and it’s really cool.
The site essentially takes Reddit feeds (including NSFW ones, hurr hurr hurr) and places them in little boxes that march across the screen. Because most people don’t read too good, there are lots of pictures and the occasional video, available for easy and quick consumption. Most of the rendering happens in the browser and it even feeds in Reddit’s own ads.
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From Russia with love: two Moscow-based investment firms have led a $17 million funding round for B2B social networking and e-invoicing company Tradeshift, valuing the company at $137 million according to a press statement distributed earlier this morning.
The investors are ru-Net and Kite Ventures, with earlier backer Notion Capital also participating. → Read More
Good morning everybody. In case you needed a reason to stare at your computer screen dumbfounded for a few minutes, here is an amazing video, financed by tech titans Ron Conway and Sean Parker, endorsing San Francisco Mayoral Candidate Ed Lee.
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Leonardo DiCaprio is the latest celebrity to get in on the celebrity tech investing trend, joining Lady Gaga, Ashton Kutcher and others. Leo is leading a $4 million round in photo sharing app and Israeli startup Mobli.
For background, Mobli is a photo-sharing app where users can share moments and see the world through other people’s eyes. Unlike other photosharing apps, Mobli is made up of subject-based channels and filters such as people, places and topics. The platform has seen significant celebrity adoption and is used by Leo himself, David Arquette and Paris Hilton. → Read More
I was at the CES press conference where head Monster, Noel Lee, unveiled the Miles Davis Trumpet Headphones with much fanfare. He said something to the effect that these headphones are for those that listen for nuances within music. These are for professionals, he said. That was code to me that they probably sound like garbage to the average listener. But after several weeks of testing, I’m pleased to report that I was mostly wrong.
Monster markets the Trumpets as “musicians’ headphones.” They praise the detail and clarity and I agree for the most part — if you can get can them in your ear correctly and don’t care about lossless audio. → Read More
Wikinvest’s realtime portfolio tracker makes tracking a number of brokerage accounts and your investment portfolio easy. The Wikinvest portfolio tracker lets anyone link up their real brokerage accounts to so they can keep tabs on their actual holdings, which are updated automatically every time you make a trade. Today, the startup is launching its free investment portfolio tracking iPad app, Wikinvest Portfolio HD, to enable users to track, analyze and manage all their investments in one place.
The app has been built from the ground up for iPad to give investors a high-level view of their investments. Through Wikinvest’s proprietary brokerage import technology, users can import their account information from over 60 of the largest brokerage firms in the U.S. → Read More
BBM Music has been keeping a low profile since it was announced last August, but a recently leaked image indicates that it may soon see the light of day. Crackberry got their hands on what appears to be a Best Buy Canada circular that touts both the BlackBerry Bold 9900 and RIM’s strangely social music service. → Read More
Music search and discovery startup SoundHound is today announcing its usage numbers for the first time, and it looks like they’re worth touting. SoundHound says that it now sees over 4 million music searches per day and user engagement tops 1,000 hits per second. In addition, the company now has over 50 million mobile users on iOS and Android combined.
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If your device is Bluetooth Smart Ready then it’s compatible with Bluetooth Smart and Bluetooth but if it’s Smart then it’s not compatible with regular Bluetooth. Got that?
The Bluetooth SIG, never content to leave well enough alone, as introduced three new “icons” for their new 4.0 standard. “Best” Bluetooth devices will support both “old” Bluetooth and 4.0 while Smart devices will only support 4.0. In short, Smart Ready devices will support dual modes and work the way with which we are currently familiar in devices like laptops, phones, and PCs, while Smart devices will support ultra low power devices like heart rate monitors and pedometers, allowing Bluetooth to come up against wireless standards like ANT.
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Scrappy outsider startup Unthink.com, which bills itself as the “anti-Facebook,” is opening up its doors today, allowing in its first round of beta testers. The Tampa-based company with $2.5 million in funding from DouglasBay Capital sees itself as a more open, more honest form of social networking – one where its users are the owners of their data, and not the product being sold to advertisers.
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We wrote about receipt tracking service Slice a few months ago when the startup announced its $9.4 million Series A funding round from DCM, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Michael Birch, FLOODGATE, Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors and Rick Thompson.
In May, Slice launched its Yahoo Mail app to help you organize your online shopping by analyzing your inbox. It’s sort of like what TripIt does for your itineraries, except Slice tracks receipts, notices and purchases. Today, Slice is bringing its receipt organizer to Gmail users. → Read More
If you’ve had your eye on the Galaxy Tab 10.1 or Huawei’s new Springboard tablet, the sign-up pages for both devices have just popped up on T-Mobile’s site.
On November 7, you’ll be able to pick up a new Springboard tab for no more than $200. We’re still unclear on exact pricing, but TmoNews seems to think it’ll go for $179.99 with a two-year contract. The Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, on the other hand, will be available on November 2 along with a number of other handsets.
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Last night, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings faced Wall Street with third quarter earnings which weren’t terrible in and of themselves. But he spooked investors with projected losses going into next year. The growth investors who remained in the stock started fleeing in after-hours trading, and this morning shares opened at $74.90, down 37 percent from a close of $119 yesterday.
That $44 drop translates into $2.3 billion worth of Netflix market cap getting wiped out in a single night. Netflix’s current market cap is just shy of $4 billion, down from more than $16 billion at its peak last July. LinkedIn, with a market cap of $8,6 billion, is now worth twice as much as Netflix. → Read More
In a poll of 5,077 US youngsters ages 8-24, Apple came out on top over all over computer, phone, and tablet makers as the number one electronics brand. Apple joins the ranks of Nintendo, Oreo, and Sprite as some of the most popular brands in America today.
Pollsters Harris Interactive asked questions about brand preference and loyalty. They note that “Apple has built a powerful equity base among their customers of today and their customers of tomorrow,” which ensures that the brand will have resonance over the next decade.
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Now that Ice Cream Sandwich is real, manufacturers can start talking about the roll out. The good news is that ICS looks Tegra 2 friendly so it should run on most of the first generation Honeycomb tablets. Asus and Acer have both confirmed that their respective tabs will get the update but haven’t detailed the launch schedule. That’s the bad news, which really isn’t all that bad in and of itself. → Read More
Japan’s National Institute of Information and Communications (NICT) and JVC Kenwood have developed what they say is the world’s biggest 3D display. The device boasts a screen size of 200 inches, offers 57 different viewing angles, and best of all, it doesn’t require you to use glasses to view pictures in 3D.
The auto-stereoscopic display is based on 57 projectors in an array, produces 3D pictures in full HD and weighs 500kg. It was first announced by the NICT in January this year but appears to have been altered since (the earlier version used 64 projectors, for example). → Read More
Local search site Loku launches in public beta today, with the aim of helping people quickly find out more about the environs around them — using the vast repository of location-based information available.
Instead of making the user pour through crowdsourced information, Loku uses natural language search to serve up the most relevant articles in a given area through its “Know Local” function, allowing people to look for relevant media around the topics of “Good Eats,”"Culture,” etc. It’s “Go Local” function lets people use a slider to sift through a sentiment rank of the places around them.
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If you’re looking to get preemptive with holiday weight watching, Garmin’s got an app for that.
The company today released the Garmin Fit app, which tracks speed, pace, distance, time, calories, and with the addition of Garmin’s ANT+ accessories, heart rate, and cadence. The app also maps out the user’s workout and uploads it directly to Garmin Connect, all for $.99. → Read More
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