Open data platform Factual.com is launching a new API for developers of location-based services called Resolve. The API is an entity resolution API that makes partial records complete, matches entities against one other and assists in the process of de-duping and normalizing datasets.
What this means is that developers can simply tell Factual what they know about an entity (i.e., a venue in a place database) and it will fill in the missing pieces (e.g., the category, the latitude/longitude info and venue’s address). At launch, Resolve will be available only for Factual’s list of U.S. Places, but the company hopes to expand Resolve globally in the future. → Read More
On October 10th, one of the longest running tech rumors in recent memory finally came to fruition: Facebook released its own, official iPad application. The app had been in high demand since the day the iPad first launched (Facebook’s iPhone app is, after all, among the platform’s most popular of all time). But there was no iPad app available on launch day. Nor was there one the day the iPad 2 came out. But that didn’t stop people from heading to the app store and typing ‘Facebook’.
In the mean time, some enterprising entrepreneurs took the opportunity to launch their own, unofficial Facebook iPad apps — which millions of people wound up downloading. One of these is MyPad (formerly called FacePad), which has seen strong growth since it first launched in January, offering access to Facebook features like Photos, News Feed, and Chat — with an interface that’s slicker than the web version of the site. The app has steadily improved since then, and recently introduced its iPhone application.
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Yes, we know that technology entrepreneurs are revolutionizing media, healthcare, education, energy, even government. But what about the ancient art of diplomacy? Can entrepreneurs – and, in particular, Internet entrepreneurs – help us run the world more effectively?
According to Parag Khanna, the author of How To Run The World: Charting A Course For The Next Renaissance, we live in a world of perfect storms and crises which requires management by what he calls “creative capitalism.” I caught up with Khanna last month at the excellent “Whose Crazy Idea Is It Anyway” conference in Amsterdam about the future of the university, and he explained to me how an entrepreneurial approach to diplomacy can make the world a better place. → Read More
One of the annoying things about the movie industry is that if you blink while the promotion for a new release is on – about 48 hours in marketing terms – you effectively miss the launch. It’s a bizarre scenario that much of this marketing dollars are spent in inly a few days before a new film hits the screens are are aimed at the ‘first weekender’ fans. But many people – myself included – follow actors and their IMDB profiles to see what is ‘to be released’. So there’s a behaviour there industry is just not capitalising one.
Stepforward today MoviePilot. This new recommendation and discovery platform brings upcoming films to fans based on their taste. That twists the old marketing model on its head and makes the whole process much more efficient. → Read More
Time was when a GPS device was the must-have item in any self-respecting gadget-lover’s gear bag. But as years wore on and smartphones began to usurp the location functions, they’ve grown increasingly irrelevant. Sure, they still serve a purpose, but we’ve been advising companies like Garmin and TomTom for years to do some serious self-evaluation if they expect to be around much longer. TomTom appears to have truly taken this to heart, and are taking the appropriate actions. → Read More
Vistaprint this morning announced that it is buying European photobook software solutions provider Albumprinter for €60 million (~$83.3 million) in cash, with up to €5 million (~$9 million) in earn-out, if certain performance-based requirements are met in 2012.
Albumprinter, based in Amsterdam, with a manufacturing presence in the Hague, has generated roughly €37 million (~$51.5 million) in revenue in the trailing twelve months ended September 30, 2011, according to a statement. Net income margin for the same period was about 8%, and EBITDA was approximately 16% (approximately €6 million). → Read More
Netflix announced disappointing earnings today, and its expectations to go slide into unprofitability next year. The stock is trading at around $87 in after-hours, down from a close of $120. Following the blowback from his price change, CEO Reed Hastings says, “The focus for us is in rebuilding our reputation.”
Asked a question about the attempt to separate the DVD business from the streaming business and create a new in a new Qwikster brand (a plan now abandoned), Hastings admits now: “In hindsight, it is hard to justify. Having separate brands can in theory make sense. However after the price increase, Qwikster became the symbol of Netflix not listening.”
Below are my notes. You can listen to the entire Q&A in the audio embed below. → Read More
TechCrunch recently featured post by TechCrunch TV featuring Jeremy Rifkin, author of The Third Industrial Revolution, who argues that Europe will be the next cradle of innovation. To that end, we’re increasingly finding VCs in Europe looking for the best hubs for those innovators. And we recently argued that the axis of power was swinging behind both London and Berlin. But EarlyBird Capital was the first VC to open an office in Berlin this year and others like Accel and Index have become regular visitors. Below, Roberto Bonanzinga, partner at Balderton Capital, argues why he thinks Berlin could produce the next Facebook.
Whilst we don’t know when or where the next Facebook will be created, we do know where to start looking: Berlin. It’s a city which defines ingenuity and creativity. Walking between Prenzlauer Berg and Mitte, you could easily believe you were in South of Market (SOMA) in San Francisco during the nineties. There’s the same energy, the same passion and the same creative atmosphere which is transforming Germany’s ‘capital of cool’ into Germany’s ‘capital of start ups’. → Read More
The creator of Lisp and arguably the father of modern artificial intelligence, John McCarthy, died last night. He studied mathematics with the famous John Nash at Princeton and, notably, held the first “computer-chess” match between scientists in the US and the USSR. He transmitted the moves by telegraph.
McCarthy believed AI should be interactive, allowing for a give and take similar to AI simulators like Eliza and, more recently, Siri. His own labs were run in an open, free-wheeling fashion, encouraging exploration and argument. He won the Turing Award from the Association for Computing Machinery in 1972 and the National Medal of Science in 1991.
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You may agree with Wikileaks’ mission. Or you may think they’re a menace. Or perhaps something in between. But here’s one thing you can’t deny: they’re an organization, with a leader, a name, and (however well hidden) servers, bank accounts, and so on. They also have principles — which, again, may not be to your liking, but they at least exist: removing certain identifying information, distributing to press by certain means only, etc.
The world’s dominant payment institutions are preventing people from donating to Wikileaks. I suppose that’s their prerogative, and of course their senators and MPs would have a fit otherwise. But I’m not sure they realize exactly what they’re getting into. They must not be familiar with the Hydra. → Read More
According to a tipster, social product review site gdgt will be expanding its embeddable widget offerings, which have previously included Time’s Techland blog, to a more massive scale on our sister AOL site, Engadget. A screencap of how the integration will work, above.
Like TechCrunch’s Crunchbase, gdgt will be syndicating its crowdsourced product data, user review data, Q&A and discussions across related Engadget content. In return gdgt will benefit from the exposure to Engadget’s formidable readership.
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So far Twitter users have gotten by with Direct Messaging when they want to be more intimate with their friends. But what if they could do Facebook-chat style instant messaging? That’s the offering today from Bonfire.im, a brand new disruptive startup which promises to change the Twitter experience in quite a fundamental way, by adding IM-syle Presence. Suddenly you could now know if your friends were online or ont. However, they hope Twitter will like this new plugin since it keeps users stuck to the web site. That means ad dollars for Twitter. → Read More
President Obama has added a new web service to his repertoire: Tumblr, the hot blogging service that just raised another $85 million in funding. You can find the new blog right here.
The site was set up by the 2012 Obama/Biden campaign, which also runs his Facebook page and Twitter account (The White House also recently launched an account on Foursquare).
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Netflix third quarter earnings are out, and along with it the quarterly shareholder letter from CEO Reed Hastings and CFO David Wells. In the letter (embedded below), Netflix talks about the impact of recent pricing changes and its now-retracted strategy to divide the streaming and DVD services into two businesses. The price changes in particular “hurt our hard‐earned reputation, and stalled our domestic growth.”
Netflix expects the impact to lower both revenues and profits in the fourth quarter. And in the first quarter of next year, the company expects to lose money as it invests heavily to launch in the UK and Ireland. It expects to continue to be in the red “for a few quarters.” Below is an excerpt of the the beginning of the letter, followed by the entire embedded document. → Read More
The reclusive horologist George Daniels, famous for his work on Breguet and his important co-axial escapement, died last Friday at his home in the Isle of Man. Daniels was 85.
The horologist was one of the first to catalog some of the best known watches in the world, traveling through Europe to examine rare and odd pieces from his favorite manufacturer, Abraham-Louis Breguet, and great watches from manufacturers like Patek Philippe. He was also an avid motorist and noted trickster, pretending to misuse some rare watches while he was photographing, nearly driving their curator to apoplexy.
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Streaming movie and TV show platform Netflix reported third quarter earnings today. Revenue came in at 822 million up 49 percent from 2010. Earnings per share for the quarter was $1.16, which is up 66 percent from the same quarter 2010. Analysts expected earnings of $0.96 cents per share.
Net Income was $62 million for the quarter, up 63 percent from 2010. Netflix now has 23.8 million subscribers. Of those subscribers, 21.5 million are using the streaming service and 13.9 million are using the DVD service. Netflix actually lost around 800,000 subscribers from last quarter. → Read More
Amiga, Amiga… why does that name sound familiar?
Ah yes, that Amiga. A strong early competitor in the PC wars, Commodore’s influential and graphics-heavy OS was unfortunately more or less made extinct by Windows by the early 90s. Yet a core group of enthusiasts has kept a candle burning, and here and there you can still find a functioning machine, zealously maintained by someone who insists that the file system or multitasking kernel are still worth admiring. But would you expect a brand new PC with modern accoutrements and a price tag over $2000? → Read More
What a week Sencha is having. Just minutes ago, they announced their new HTML 5 cloud services suite, Sencha.io. Tomorrow morning, the company will announce they’ve raised a $15 million Series B. → Read More
It isn’t everyday that we’re afforded a look at what goes into making our favorite phones, but a new video from Nokia shows us how exactly their gorgeous unibody N9 handsets are made. → Read More
On the heels of inking a major partnership agreement with Adobe, OptiMine Software has secured $3.6 million in a Series B round of funding led by Hummer Winblad Venture Partners. Perhaps the investor is looking to pull off another Omniture (the VC firm invested early in the web analytics and search marketing software company, which was sold to Adobe for around $1.8 billion two years ago). → Read More
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