Back in March we reported on Diagnosia, a startup that is aiming to become “a search engine for drugs” by providing a safe place for people looking up medicine information.
Today it’s a secured an undisclosed “6-figure” seed round (though we know they were looking for €200,000) into the Vienna-based startup. The round was led by Johann Hansmann, a former pharma entrepreneur and now active angel investor whose recent investments include the leading language learning tool busuu and weight-loss startup iJoule. He was joined by Christoph Sauermann, a former pharma executive and tech entrepreneur. → Read More
Over the past few years, Facebook has partnered with a variety of handset makers to release smartphones and feature phones that deeply integrate the social network into software and hardware. These phones have sold poorly, though. Meanwhile iOS and Android are claiming more and more of the market such that they endanger Facebook’s future, cramping its mobile platform and relegating it to just being an app. Last year we wrote that Facebook was likely building a custom-version of Android, and now AllThingsD says Facebook is, and it that it will run on an HTC-made Facebook phone.
A custom operating system could attract users with even deeper software integrations, and let Facebook monetize in-app payments. The company hopes that despite a lack of proof that users want such a thing, its phone will sell well, and allow it more determination over the future of its mobile apps and platform. → Read More
Turns out you don’t have to charge an arm and a leg for SMS messages to make money off of texting.
One startup that’s proven this is Pinger, the company behind the massively popular free texting app Textfree. Today, the company is announcing that it’s reached a major milestone: since launching in March 2009, Textfree users have sent and received a total of 20 billion text messages. For free. And they’re sending and receiving another 1.5 billion messages every month (they were growing at 1 billion per month in March of this year).
Textfree is so popular because it gives users free texting to and from — here’s the important bit — their own, unique phone numbers. Fire up the app for the first time and you’ll be given a new phone number that people can text the same way they would any other mobile number. Textfree is available for both iOS and Android, and it’s particularly popular on devices like the iPod Touch, which wouldn’t otherwise have full texting functionality (the iOS version also offers free and low-cost phone calls, which will be released on the Android version down the line). Pinger makes money via advertising.
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We knew that HP’s gamble on webOS was an expensive one, but thanks to the company’s Q4 and full-year financials, we’re finally getting a feel for just how dearly the webOS experiment cost them. This past year, the company lost a staggering $3.3 billion thanks to their most recent foray into the mobile space.
I know I’m not the first to say this, nor will I be the last, but one word comes to mind: Ouch. → Read More
If you’ve been paying attention this morning, you’re perhaps somewhat aware of a program Microsoft has in place called Mobile Acceleration Week (part of its BizSpark program), where 12 hand-picked startups can access hands-on support and training to build compelling apps for the Windows Phone platform. MAWs happen all over the world all year long, but I was lucky enough to catch up with some of the participants of New York’s Mobile Acceleration Week, and was pretty pleased with the apps I saw.
Microsoft gives each startup 60 days to push the app to market, so don’t get too excited and start hunting through the Marketplace. You won’t find what you’re looking for just yet. But considering that today’s theme (at least in my world) seems to be the state of Redmond’s mobile app platform, I thought it’d be worthwhile to give you a look at where the Marketplace is headed, and what you might find there in the coming weeks. → Read More
You know that scene in Minority Report where Tom Cruise is walking through a mall and all the digital signs are talking to him and showing him highly targeted ads? Yeah, well, we are not there yet. But we are moving that direction. A New York City company called Inwindow Outdoor is testing several prototype digital “Experience Stations” in malls and hotel lobbies like the one I demo in the video above. They combine several interactive technologies—including motion capture, large touch screens, and NFC readers—to create immersive experiences in physical locations.
The unit I got a chance to play with above was loaded with a few typical apps designed to showcase its capabilities. These apps included everything from an interactive ad with a photobooth feature to a way to watch movie trailers and buy tickets with an NFC-enabled phone or unlock local deals from stores at that specific mall. The prototypes were built in partnership with Intel. → Read More
Facebook today began allowing a limited test group of users to download a new Facebook Messenger for Windows 7 desktop client. It provides access to Chat, the Ticker feed, and notifications. Facebook is looking to gauge interest in desktop access to these real-time features that could keep users engaged with the service all day without having to keep a browser window open. The client could become popular, considering that the Facebook-integrated Windows Live Messenger desktop client that lets you Chat with friends as well as third-party instant messaging contacts is the top app on the Facebook Platform with 18.2 million daily active users. → Read More
We first talked about the Wimm One in August, noting that no wearable device has ever made sense to me, at least in watch format. I believe I may need to eat my words. The Wimm is a clever little module – the watch band is removable – that runs simple applets. It runs a stripped down version of Android and includes a fairly complete SDK for programming little widgets. In this incarnation, it includes a stopwatch, worldtime clock, and a few other treats. The watch drops into transflexive LCD mode when it needs to conserve power.
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HP has just reported fourth quarter and fiscal year 2011 earnings today, with fourth quarter non-GAAP net revenue of $32.3 billion, down 3 percent from the same quarter in 2010. The company posted non-GAAP diluted earnings per share of $1.17. Analysts expected HP to post earnings of $1.13 a share on revenue of $32.05 billion.
Full year fiscal 2011 GAAP net revenue for the fiscal year 2011 was $127.2 billion, up 1% compared with the prior year. Non-GAAP net revenue for the full fiscal year 2011 was $127.4 billion, up 1% compared with the prior year. → Read More
Here’s something I’m sure no one expected to see today: the CTIA Wireless Trade Association has just issued a release stating that they have struck a partnership with the Entertainment Software Rating Board in order to start rating mobile applications. Yes, really.
The ESRB, if you’ve managed to avoid picking up a video game in the last decade or so, are the folks that decide how appropriate a game is for certain age groups. This isn’t their first foray into the mobile space (that would be their game ratings app), but this new rating system is certainly going to make a splash when it debuts in Washington D.C. on November 29. → Read More
Israeli company MyHeritage, which operates a huge family-based social network has acquired FamilyLink, the developer behind family history
content sites FamilyLink.com and WorldVitalRecords.com.
While financial terms of the deal are not being disclosed, this is MyHeritage’s seventh and largest acquisition since 2007. Past acquisitions include Germany’s OSN, Poland’s Bliscy.pl, Dutch Family Network ZOOOF and most recently BackupMyTree. → Read More
Facebook has classically been very reluctant to adulterate its social content streams with advertisements. But today, Facebook begins showing its Sponsored Stories ad units in the site-wide Ticker of real-time social activity stories. This will open lucrative new ad inventory, including placements on the home page. While they are are paid ads, Sponsored Stories display the activity of friends or Pages users Like so they’re typically less annoying than standard ads. Still, the commingling of these commercials with content could offend users not expecting ads to escape their cage in the lower right sidebar. → Read More
There is a lot to be said about TechCrunch founder and my former boss Michael Arrington, but nothing more true than this; The technology community owes him immensely for the value he created in the six years he built and led the editorial voice of TechCrunch. I can’t wait to see what he creates next.
Arrington has weathered a lot in the time he went from Edgeio co-founder to Crunchfund founder and partner and has undoubtedly learned a few hard-won lessons. Speaking at the Founder’s Institute’s Eighth Annual Founder’s Showcase last week, Arrington imparted the best of those lessons to the entrepreneurs and wannabe entrepreneurs in the crowd. → Read More
I wore my yellow t-shirt to honor the return of Mike Daisey to TechcrunchTV. Daisey, the great monologist whose acclaimed show, “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs”, is currently running in New York City, believes that technology journalists are cowards who are failing to report on the real stories about the impact of technology on labor and the environment. Daisey’s special issue is the working conditions inside the gigantic Foxconn factory in Shenzhen which, he says, are grossly exploitative and inhuman. → Read More
Having successfully created and launched a business where robots dart through distribution centers securing e-commerce products for delivery, Kiva Systems founder, Mick Mountz reflects on growing his company to 250 employees in just under a decade – and the company culture that organically formed alongside it.
Mountz tells Founder Stories host Chris Dixon that Kiva Systems didn’t define its culture until “about five years” into operations. “We took this kind of latent approach, which is go fast, have fun, build, be competitive, be successful, and then people would come in and say jeez you got a great culture here and we said oh, that is interesting, what is it?” → Read More
By the end of the year, there will be an estimated 34 million tablet computer users in the U.S., according to new numbers out today from eMarketer. Of those, 28 million (or 83 percent) will be using an iPad.
The iPad still rules the tablet world, jumping nearly 160 percent from an estimated 13 million users last year. By 2014, there will be an estimated 61 million iPad users in the U.S. But the iPad’s share of total tablet users will drop to 68 percent. The total number of tablet users in 2014 is estimated to be 90 million. → Read More
Zynga’s newest Facebook game, CastleVille, has crossed five million daily active users. To put this in perspective, the social gaming giant’s fastest growing (and most popular) game CityVille, only reached 3.2 million daily active users six days after its launch.
The newest title from the social gaming giant allows players to build mini-empires from castles, craft art and armour and trade, and defend your kingdom in a medieval world. The game was created by the Zynga Dallas team, which was part of the social gaming giant’s acquisition of Bonfire Studios. → Read More
eBay and PayPal are both pushing the term ‘couch commerce,’ in which consumers will be using their tablets and mobile phones from the comfort of their couches to shop this holiday shopping season. eBay is launching a new feature of its iPad app, which should help take couch commerce to another level.
A new “Watch with eBay” tab has been added to the e-commerce giant’s iPad app that allows users to shop a selection of items on the marketplace related to
what they are currently watching on TV. → Read More
At first I thought the birds in the trees at the Foxconn’s largest plant in Shenzhen, China were fake. They sang so sweetly that I was sure my hosts had planted speakers for my benefit – a sort of Potemkin aviary high in the branches.
The plant, called Foxconn City, is one of Foxconn’s 26 major and minor factories around the world. Built by founder Terry Guo in 1974, the City was the first of the many sprawling Foxconn complexes and covers three square kilometers. It is home to over 400,000 workers, many of whom live in university-style dorms on the Foxconn campus. It is reported to be China’s largest private employer and holds a place in the Western mind as the home to a new form of economic slavery, an eternal bogeyman that haunts the fever dreams of anti-techophiles. It’s also a place where thousands of young employees – some completing their degrees while they work through school, others simply trying to escape the grinding poverty of their home districts, and still others hoping for a leg up in China’s wild economy – come to assemble the items that surround us. Here they make our PCs, our MP3 players, our routers. Here they make our laptops, our cellphones, and our cameras.
In the past year, only one other journalist has been allowed past Foxconn’s gates to see the factory, which is why I thought they had brought the birds (or at least fake Bose birds) out for my benefit. What better allegory for the doings of a secretive, destructive force for evil than fake birds in fake trees? → Read More
Hear that noise? That deafening, arrhythmic clomping that seems to be coming from every direction? That’s the sound of a million geeks, all doing their happy dance.
Square Enix has just announced that the SNES classic RPG Chrono Trigger is, at long last, coming to iOS. → Read More
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