Rocket Internet, the Berlin-based incubator best known for German-language clones of US startups like Zappos and Groupon, now has big ambitions in the online furniture space according to information passed to TechCrunch Europe.
In a confidential email sent by Oliver Samwer which we have confirmed is genuine, the head (with his brothers Marc and Alexander) of European Founders Fund and the driving force behind Rocket, says their strategy is to become “number one” in the ecommerce sector for furniture over the next year. But the language he uses – including the world “blitzkrieg” – indicates an aggressive and potentially insensitive management style which appears to be a ‘modus operandi’ of Rocket Internet culture. Samwer has since apologised for using the term. → Read More
Interview Street has been busy building out new ways for developers to prove their skills to potential employers, and now it’s introducing a 48-hour contest to help them show off their skills. Think of it as part of a next-generation way of finding the right employer
The site already offers a web-based integrated development environment, where developers can choose from dozens of challenges, lets them input answers, then get immediate results. If they’re successful, recruiters from a variety of leading technology companies can then contact them about getting hired. → Read More
This winter is looking to be a mild one (it’s something like 60 degrees here in New Jersey), but no worries: YouTube is bringing the snow to you, even if Mother Nature won’t.
All of YouTube’s videos are now outfitted with a special snow button, which as you may expect, turns the video into a winter wonderland. → Read More
Skitch, the popular photo editing Mac app acquired by Evernote in August, is now available on the iPad. The release follows the launch of the Skitch for Android app earlier this year, and is the first iOS-compatible version available. Using the new app, you can annotate just about anything – a new photo, one from your camera roll, a screenshot, a map or you can just draw on a blank canvas.
And, of course, when you’re finished with your creation, you can save the photo to Evernote for safekeeping. → Read More
Android just keeps ramping up higher and higher. Andy Rubin tweeted yesterday that there are now more than 700,000 Android phones activated every single day, which is up from 500,000 activations per day last June. You can see how steep the ramp has been over the past three years by looking at the chart up top, which comes from Horace Dediu at Asymco.
Dediu estimates that the total cumulative number of Android devices activated so far is between 224 million and 253 million. To put this in perspective, last October, Apple announced a cumulative total of 250 million iOS devices sold. But that number includes iPods and iPads. → Read More
SpotMe, a handy little tool for sharing expenses in groups, is now a top 10 mobile app in the finance category and a featured app in Apple’s App Store Rewind 2011. Zornitza Stefanova, the CEO of SpotMe’s maker Boomerang Digital, describes the app as “a social messenger for payments.” What that means is that the app takes over the often uncomfortable job of having to ask your friends for the money they owe – it does that for you.
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The Nest Thermostat is a gorgeous piece of eco-friendly electronics. But like your mom always said, it’s what’s inside that counts. Well then, she’ll be pleasantly pleased to find out that the inside of the Nest is as equally beautiful as the sleek exterior. The $249 thermostat might be costly, but a teardown posted on SparkFun shows the innards of a device worthy of such a price. Not only is it well-built, but the Nest is rocking serious processing power and connectivity options. Silly hyperbole alert: The Nest is a game changer. → Read More
Amazon is making it easier for its users to discover recommended content today with the launch of a new ‘best of’ digital store, where consumers can find recommendations from Amazon’s team of editors on the year’s best of movies & TV shows, music, video games, software, mobile apps, magazines and Kindle books and more. Basically, Amazon will recommend the best of any type of digital content that the company sells.
Of course, the timing of the launch is meant to coincide with holiday shopping season, which has historically brought record sales of digital content for Amazon. Last year, from Christmas Eve through December 30, Amazon customers purchased over three times more digital content, including Kindle books, magazines, movies, TV shows, music, and digital games as compared to the weekly average for the year.
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Ready for some more SNES-flavored nostalgia on your iPhone or iPod Touch? Capcom has recently released Mega Man X for iOS, which should brighten the day of just about anyone who spent ehir formative years slaying robotic octopi. → Read More
Experian Hitwise, which has analyzed the top 1,000 search terms for 2011, is reporting that Facebook was the top-searched term overall in the U.S. for the third year in a row. Facebook accounted for 3.1 percent of all searches, a 46 percent increase from 2010. Four variations of the term “facebook” were among the top 10 terms and accounted for 4.4 percent of searches overall, a 24 percent increase from 2010.
Searches for “youtube” actually moved up from the third spot in 2010 to the second spot in 2011. “Facebook login” was the third most-searched term in 2011, followed by “craigslist” and “facebook.com.” Facebook.com moved up one spot in 2011 to be among the top five search terms. When combined, common search terms for Facebook, such as facebook and facebook.com, accounted for 3.5 percent of all searches in the United States among the top 50 terms, up 33 percent compared with 2010.
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Online retail giant Amazon this morning announced that it will open four new distribution centers, two in Virginia and two in Tennessee, and that it will invest a total of $270 million to get the new facilities completed by next fall – just in time for next year’s holiday season.
In Virginia, Amazon says it will create about 1,350 jobs, while the new distribution centers in Tennessee will create 1,300 jobs. Amazon operates such facilities, which it calls fulfillment centers, to warehouse and ship items customers have ordered on Amazon.com. → Read More
Amazon has stopped pretending that a group of e-reading apps it allowed onto its Android Appstore weren’t available on the Kindle Fire. For whatever reason, the company was effectively hiding e-reading apps from companies like Wattpad, Kobo and Bluefire, even though they worked perfectly fine on the low-cost tablet computer.
Confused about why its app didn’t appear for users on the Kindle Fire, which is proving to be quite a sought-after device, Wattpad engaged in conversations with some folks over at Amazon, which apparently led to a necessary change in policy for all makers of mobile e-reading apps.
It’s unclear when Amazon started showing e-reading apps from rivals (including Wattpad’s) on Kindle Fire, exactly, but it seems they started appearing in listings sometime yesterday afternoon. Possibly, this was part of the Kindle Fire update that was delivered earlier this week. → Read More
Cloudability, a platform to manage and monitor all of your cloud costs in one place, has raised $1.1 million in seed funding, led by Trinity Ventures and Walden Venture Capital.
Cloudability, which launched in early November, helps businesses be more efficient on the cloud by analyzing a company’s entire cloud spend for cost savings opportunities and make recommendations. Cloudability supports more than 80 cloud and application providers, including AWS, Rackspace, Heroku, Airbrake and Google Apps, to give companies the ability to monitor and analyze complete cloud spend across multiple vendors.
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Japan, one of the most advanced mobile nations in the world, doesn’t want to be a “cell phone Galapagos” anymore, at least when it comes to payments over NFC. Paying with cell phones is already ubiquitous in Japan, but now the country’s top three telcos (NTT Docomo, KDDI au, and SoftBank Mobile) are trying to switch from the Nippon-only Osaifu Keitai system to the Type A and Type B NFC standards used globally.
The problem for the carriers is that Osaifu Keitai (“Portable Wallet”), which is based on Sony’s FeliCa RFID smart card technology, isn’t compatible to the Type A and B NFC standards. Docomo, KDDI, and SoftBank have set up the so-called Japan Mobile NFC Consortium to coordinate the domestic adoption of those standards with “service suppliers and handset manufacturers”. → Read More
Akamai has indeed acquired Cotendo, one of its largest competitors, in a deal valuing the CDN and site acceleration services company at approximately $268 million.
The confirmation comes nearly a month after Israeli business press reported that Akamai was mulling an acquisition of the website and mobile acceleration technology vendor for up to $350 million. → Read More
It’s a common platitude in the gaming industry: it’s the killer titles that make or break a video game system. One case in point is Nintendo whose 3DS sales in Japan, one of the biggest video game markets in the world, are expected to cross the four million mark two months earlier than expected.
Just two weeks ago, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata said this will happen “in February next year”, but Japanese business daily The Nikkei is now reporting that cumulative domestic sales of the 3DS will reach four million before year-end. The newspaper is referring to stats from Tokyo-based market research company Enterbrain, which says Nintendo managed to sell a weekly record of 390,000 systems between December 12-18 (and 380,000 units between December 5 and 11). → Read More
Here are some recent posts on TechCrunch Gadgets: → Read More
Both Netflix’s brand and shares have been battered this year after price hikes last summer and the botched attempt to spin off the DVD rental business. Netflix was roundly criticized for its miscommunication with customers, but what’s been the actual effect? Citi analysts Mark Mahaney surveyed almost 10,000 former and current Netflix customers to find out.
While overall satisfaction levels did decline, 57 percent of consumers surveyed are still either “very satisfied” or “extremely satisfied.” That number is down from 83 percent in May, with a big drop in the number of people who are “extremely satisfied” coming down from 50 percent to 18 percent. (The “very satisfied” category actually grew 6 percent). Netflix is essentially holding its own. What’s more, it actually increased its lead over Hulu among respondents. Asked which websites they use to watch movies or TV shows online, 27 percent said Netflix, versus 15 percent for Hulu. → Read More
From tech titans like Zynga, Facebook, Microsoft, Google and Apple, to startups just launching, the battle lines of 2012 will be drawn across the landscape of HTML5. Below are 14 bold predictions for how HTML5 will evolve in 2012.
Welcome to a more interconnected web:
In 2012, HTML5 will be adding support for some really useful and cool APIs that allow one
website to connect to another.
For example, Zynga games on Facebook run inside of iframes. Using the new postMessage API these games will be able to communicate within the containing Facebook frame directly. Before HTML5, inter-window communication had to rely on a remote server – or use unreliable hacks. → Read More
