Father Federico Lombardi, the Vatican’s spokesman, said today that an unknown party had purchased Vatican.xxx. This mystery person has not stepped forward, and the site itself is a placeholder stating simply that it has been “reserved from registration.”
It’s a warning to all those companies and institutions that may have opted not to purchase this domain variation, and although it’s not the only time this will happen, it might be the funniest. → Read More
RNKD, the customer rewards app and brainchild of Zappo’s founder Nick Swinmurn, is today arriving on Android. With the new mobile application, users can snap photos of the clothes and accessories they own, upload them to the RNKD website and receive rewards directly from brands.
The idea with RNKD is that customers should get rewards for the things they actually bought, not just the things they “like” on Facebook, tweet about, or add to online wishlists. It’s a “put your money where your mouth is” kind of thing.
→ Read More
As we heard in August, SimpleGeo founder Matt Galligan left the company to pursue other interests. SimpleGeo was then bought by UrbanAirship in November, and fellow co-founder Joe Stump left the newly acquired startup to launch new projects like Sprintly and (just today) Lens.ly. Galligan recently announced that he teamed up with Shervin Pishevar to launch their new organization 1% of Nothing, which is aimed at inspiring early-stage companies and entrepreneurs to donate 1% of their equity to a cause of their choice. And now it looks like Galligan also may have another startup up his sleeve—Circa.
According to this AngelList posting, Galligan is teaming up with Cheezburger founder and CEO, Ben Huh, to launch Circa. Huh will take a non-operational role, but will be an advisor and on the board of directors. Details on what Circa is are unclear but it appears that the startup will be focusing on disrupting the news and content space. From the posting, We want to create the best news experience by optimizing for truths, encouraging diversity, and empowering the readers. → Read More
The photo-sharing market is saturated, and, by and large, we don’t need more players. The players that are there, if they’re not leading, are trying to differentiate themselves from the rest in a host of different ways. In the case of Tracks, while it is, by makeup, a photo-sharing app, CEO Vic Singh says that the startup really isn’t trying to solve a photo-sharing problem so much as its building a service where people can create small networks around shared experiences in the real world.
In October, we covered the startup’s launch of its iOS app, which seeks to do just that by leveraging “the experience graph” to allow users to create on-the-go group photo albums, and merge online and offline worlds by allowing users to turn those photos into printable physical photo books, and so on. → Read More
If you’re a BlackBerry user and you’ve been waiting for a music service that’s just a bit more compelling than BBM Music, then you may be in luck — emphasis on the “may.” Spotify for BlackBerry was officially released today, but you’ll only be able to use it under some specific circumstances.
The newly released app will only work for users with the following BlackBerrys: the Bold 9780, Bold 9700, Curve 9300, Bold 9000, and the Curve 8520. → Read More
I know that all of you have been waiting on pins and needles… refreshing the TechCrunch web page multiple times each day to see when the next batch of Crunchies tickets will be on sale. Well, today is the day! The second batch of tickets for the 5th Annual Crunchies Awards are available now. 200 tickets have been released for the annual event honoring the best achievements in tech brought to you by GIgaOm, VentureBeat and Techcrunch for general admission purchase. The first batch sold out in less than two hours, so purchase your tickets now, lest you have to wait for the next release in January. → Read More
Open Home Pro has been quietly building a business that uses the iPad to solve a serious problem for a real-world industry. “My girlfriend would come back upset after showing people houses,” founder Andrew Machado tells me, “because people wouldn’t fill out their information. It’s like the people standing outside of Whole Foods — you instinctively don’t want to give them your information.”
The app offers a polished interface to help realtors collect prospective buyer’s information, and it’s been building on top of that with a set of other features that are designed to make the home-sales process easier. These include a photo slideshow to help a realtor show off all of their prospective listings to clients, a filter showing which client leads are the most interested in buying, custom landing pages for each listing, email lead management, and a way to share listing times to Facebook and Twitter. It’s shipping a new version today, with a new user interface, that also includes features like a way to let people sign up who aren’t at an open house. → Read More
Is foursquare becoming a noun? Judging from the cover of Carmine Gallo’s new book, The Power of foursquare: 7 Innovative Ways to Get Your Customers To Check In Wherever They Are, it is certainly on the way to becoming a word synonymous with location services. And indeed with the “sale” of Gowalla to Facebook, it does seem as if foursquare is now becoming the fairly undisputed mayor of the location space. → Read More
Textaholics, this one’s for you.
Swype — the Android-flavored keyboard that lets you type (or swype, rather) faster than you ever thought possible — has a present for you this holiday season. With Siri on the iPhone 4S, voice control apps are sprouting up faster than you can ask Siri about the meaning of life. Voice is where we’re headed and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop it, so if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em right?
That said, Swype is launching a new beta with Nuance’s Dragon dictation built right in. → Read More
Disrupt 2010 winner Qwiki has had quite an interesting year — after they launched in January 2011, they pulled in $9 million in funding and lost co-founder/Google alum Louis Monier.
Now they’re hoping that a change of scenery will do the company well. Founder Doug Imbruce announced on the company’s blog earlier today that they have relocated Qwiki HQ to New York City.
→ Read More
Evernote’s new browser extension called Clearly has arrived on Firefox. The add-on, which offers a better reading experience on the web by removing ads, links, navigational elements and other clutter from websites, was first released for Chrome users back in November.
Now the extension comes to its second platform, along with three built-in themes, and, of course, the ability to clip articles to Evernote for later reading. → Read More
This year will be Microsoft’s last year at CES where the company usually runs the keynote and takes up a huge portion of the show floor. “In looking at all the ways that Microsoft is now reaching its’ customers today (its’ owned events, marketing campaigns, retail stores, etc.) this felt like a natural time to make this transition,” wrote an MS PR rep.
This will also be the last time CEO Steve Ballmer keynotes the show.
Omada Health, a graduate of Rock Health’s first batch of startups, is announcing today that it has raised $800K in seed funding from a number of angel and venture investors, including Esther Dyson, NEA, Aberdare, Kapor Capital, and TriplePoint Ventures to name a few.
Omada Health, simply put, has turned its focus to one of the most pervasive diseases in the country: Diabetes. Well, really, prediabetes. The CDC estimates that 79 million people in the U.S. currently have prediabetes — said another way, that’s approximately 1 in 3 adults. And the majority of those people are not aware of their condition, which essentially means that they are suffering from blood glucose levels that are not irregular enough to be considered diabetes, yet still indicate an extremely high risk of progressing to full-blown diabetes. → Read More
While memorials of all kinds and sizes have been presented since his death, the world’s first statue of the late Steve Jobs has today been unveiled in Budapest, Hungary. It’s made completely of bronze and stands nearby the entrance of architectural software maker Graphisoft’s headquarters.
Jobs seems to be presenting a new product on stage, or possibly waving as he was known to do upon exiting the stage. → Read More
Toronto-based deal provider Dealfind is on the move, having recently gone mobile, and, as of today, is launching something called “Everyday Deals.” The feature is somewhat similar to GrouponNow in that it allows you to find deals you can buy and use right now. But really, the site is more of a deals database, where deals are searchable by location, category and redeemable time.
→ Read More
Sincerely, the company behind photo-printing iOS app Postagram, is launching a new app today. It’s designed to capture all the nostalgia that you and your family feel about those disposable camera photo sets you all shot during the holidays over the last couple decades.
Called Dotti (maybe your effusive aunt’s name, too?), you download it from the App Store or Android Market, get 12 photos to shoot, and then get the option to send them off to be made into high-quality 4×6 prints for $4.99. You’ll get back the photos by mail in less than a week. → Read More
Cyber-Ark Software, which provides identity management solutions to financial institutions and other enterprise customers worldwide, has raised a healthy $40 million in venture capital funding in a round led by Goldman Sachs and Jerusalem Venture Partners (JVP).
Founded in 1999, Cyber-Ark had previously raised $25 million from angel investors and VCs. → Read More
The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is delayed in Congress, but it is definitely not dead. The media company lobbyists and their Congressmen (hello, Lamar Smith!) are simply regrouping. Some of the more controversial aspects of the bill include transferring liability for copyright infringement to sites that host user-generated content and blocking that content via DNS servers.
To highlight the chilling effect this legislation could have on free speech on te Internet, today document-sharing site Scribd is protesting SOPA by making every document disappear word-by-word when you vist the site. All in all, there are a billion pages of documents on the Scribd. “With this legislation in place, entire domains like Scribd could simply vanish from the web,” warns Jared Friedman, CTO and co-founder, Scribd. → Read More
StartupBus, the hackathon/road trip combo started by Elias Bizannes nearly three years ago, is doubling the number of events it runs in 2012. There will be a maximum of twelve buses that run in the new year, up from six previously. But here’s the fun part: the organization will determine which regions get their own Startup bus through an online competition requiring hopefuls to “vote up” their region through social media.
→ Read More
In April, Expedia announced its intentions to spin off trip reviews site TripAdvisor as a public company. And this morning, TripAdvisor debuted on the NASDAQ under the symbol ‘TRIP’ trading at. This morning, TripAdvisor is trading at $29. Expedia is trading at $27.72, down 50 percent.
TripAdvisor, which was founded in 2000, was originally bought by IAC in for $212 million in 2004. IAC spun off Expedia, which included TripAdvisor, in 2005. With 50 million unique monthly visitors and 20 million members, TripAdvisor is the giant in the travel reviews space. The site publishes 25 new contributions every minute and also features over eight million candid traveler photos. The reviews site operates in 30 different countries, including in China under the site Daodao. IAC chairman Barry Diller will serve as the TripAdvisor’s chairman. → Read More
