Online consignment shop thredUP is launching a timely new feature called Groups, which allows consumers to use the service in order to generate cash donations for charitable causes. As you may have guessed, the company is kicking off the launch with a group dedicated to Hurricane Sandy relief. → Read More
Three mobile operating systems dominate the market: iOS, Android, and now Windows Phone 7/8. Each has their interface strengths — iOS is clean where Android is customizable where WP8 is dynamic.
But what if you could have the best of all three?
Designer and Wrapp cofounder Max Rudberg has attempted to portray this hybrid OS, putting live tiles and widgets on the iOS home screen. → Read More
While I’m loath to point to certified Apple nerds like Marco Arment and Gruber in regards to Windows Surface (in this case the RT edition) I think it’s important that we all take a step back and assess what really happened: Microsoft rushed to market with a product that was, at best, shoddy. → Read More
Monogram just launched a beautiful app that feels like you’re shopping from a traditional catalog. The only difference, of course, is that all items are immediately purchasable. The app includes apparel and accessories from stores such as Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue, Bloomingdales, Bergdorf Goodman, Nordstrom, Shopbop, Gilt, MyHabit, and Reebok, among others. → Read More
Cloud gaming may have taken a hit with the floundering of OnLive, but Agawi is still going strong and today, the Menlo Park company is officially launching its GameZen app for Windows 8. We previewed that partnership back in September, before Windows 8 had even launched, when executive chairman Peter Relan talked about how his service differs from the competition. Now, the app is live, and Relan… → Read More
Another Internet of Things-related development today: Neul has cemented some high profile industry support for Weightless, its would-be global, open, royalty-free standard for M2M comms which utilizes TV white space frequencies to allow machines to talk to each other — with the formation today of a special interest group (SIG) that aims to accelerate the adoption of Weightless. → Read More
Lucky Sort, the Portland-based visualization engine for making sense out of live data streams, is announcing its first partner: StockTwits, a social network for traders that lets users share stock-related information in real-time. Additionally, Howard Lindzon, StockTwits CEO and co-founder, has now also invested in Lucky Sort alongside a couple of other angels, who, combined, have added an extra… → Read More
“Movember is absolutely uniquely placed to smash up the rules,” said Adam Garone, whose breakout nonprofit is on a mission to bankroll a global shift in cancer research — from isolated silos of occasional academic publishing to a realtime virtual community of experimental labs. Movember began as a silly beer-induced bet to grow a mustache for charity, and has ballooned into a worldwide social… → Read More
One of the underlying features launched originally with the Google+ project was its video conferencing platform, Hangouts. It’s been a success from the perspective of user adoption and also grabbed a partnership for Google with the NFL. Video is an extremely tough space to tackle, just ask companies like Skype, Airtime and countless others. Nailing an intimate experience that supports two or more… → Read More
The California Attorney General is threatening scores of app developers with massive fines for non-compliance with privacy notification laws. → Read More
CloudFlare, the San Francisco-based service that makes websites faster and helps to keep them secure, just announced a very interesting new partnership with trust service provider GlobalSign. While more companies than ever use SSL to keep their sites secure, there is typically a significant performance penalty involved as most of these services don’t pay as much attention to performance as they… → Read More
Path, the iPhone-based social network from Facebook alum Dave Morin, comes to the iPad today with a brand new app designed to take special advantage of Apple’s tablet. The new Path offers iPad-specific features, like a landscape mode which provides a mosaic view of daily activity, and more detailed info about individual updates, and a map tool providing a bird’s eye view of comings and goings. → Read More
This is clever. Instead of joining the fray with just another small, wireless speaker, JBL made the Soundfly, which is a small, wireless speaker that supports itself from an electrical plug. Talk about plug and play, amirite. → Read More
Uber has just sent out an update via email regarding the pricing options in New York after Hurricane Sandy. Surge Pricing is back.
Yesterday, the company implemented Surge Pricing — a higher rate during times of high demand — and then abruptly turned it off after a poor reaction by the internet. Instead, the company charged regular pricing, yet paid the drivers at Surge Price rates… → Read More
First Round Capital is making a key hire today. The firm has brought on former LiveOps CEO and CallCast co-founder and CEO Bill Trenchard as a partner in First Round’s San Francisco office. This is the first time since 2006, that First Round has hired someone from outside the firm as partner; First Round has always promoted partners from within. The firm is also announcing that it has raised $20… → Read More
eeGeo the startup behind Recce — a rich, interactive searchable 3D mapping platform which aggregates data feeds from other services to create an animated bird’s eye view of a city and what is going on in it — has launched its first game using the same technology: a GPS-based iOS app called Go Deliver – London, in partnership with games studio Midoki. → Read More
A UK Court of Appeal has ordered Apple to remove a statement on its website following a court ruling in which Apple lost an appeal against a ruling that Samsung’s Galaxy Tab tablets do not infringe the design of the iPad. The judges have now criticized Apple for posting “incorrect” and “untrue” information, and ordered Cupertino to replace the statement within 24 hours. → Read More
Amazon announced this morning the launch of a new photo-management application for Android phones, which takes advantage of its consumer-facing service known as Cloud Drive, a competitor to Google Drive and Dropbox. The new app, Cloud Drive Photos for Android, allows users to upload photos, store them in Amazon’s online storage, and view and share the photos from both their Android smartphones and… → Read More
In February 2011, Jason Goldberg and Bradford Shane Shellhammer were faced with one of the most painful experiences an entrepreneur must deal with: to decide whether to shut down their business, Fabulis, which was a social network for the gay community, and return the money back to investors. So to deal with this predicament, what did the two friends and founders do? They got drunk. Goldberg and… → Read More
Apple’s iPad mini got the teardown treatment this morning, one day ahead of its official launch in stores. The diminutive tablet gave up its secrets to iFixit’s expert disassembly staff, revealing its complex inner workings to the camera. A lot of the parts are familiar, coming from either the iPhone 5 or MacBook Air, and Samsung makes a somewhat surprising appearance as an LCD panel supplier. → Read More
A user milestone for social media management tool Hootsuite: the company has passed five million signups. It says expansion into Europe and Asia is driving its growth, and notes that while its first million users took it nearly two years, it clocked its fourth million in eight months and its fifth million in just two months. (It’s not clear how many of the five million users are paying customers.) → Read More
In a move that coincidentally sees two App Store rebels join forces, music streaming service, Grooveshark, has added support for Flattr, the social micro-payments offering. The new integration means that users of both Grooveshark and Flattr (which we’ve previously likened to a ‘Like button but with cash‘) can easily reward their favourite artists, tip jar-style, providing another way for those… → Read More
If you have a notebook Mac and you use it both in an office and on the road, you probably know by now that having it at a comfortable viewing angle when in the office is key to the long-term health of your spine and posture. There are many stands out there to help you get those MacBooks up off the desk, but a new one from Twelve South seems to offer a much more flexible solution compared to most… → Read More
Facepalm.
Rovio just released a new gameplay trailer of the upcoming Angry Birds Star Wars mashup. As shown in the first trailer, the playable characters each feature unique abilities. R2-D2 has a tractor beam and C-3PO falls apart — just like the Star Wars brand is falling apart! → Read More
An Apple patent application spotted Thursday by AppleInsider shows a system for detecting unusual motion via a portable gadget’s accelerometer which would sound an alarm, making said device harder to steal. The system is a simple one, without the kind of sophisticated face detection we saw in a previous application, but it could be much more effective for curbing thefts at the moment they occur. → Read More
Dollar Shave Club, the startup offering a subscription razor service that costs as little as $1 per month (plus shipping), has raised $9.8 million in Series A funding.
Co-founder and CEO Michael Dubin said the new round, which was led by Venrock, will allow the company to develop “the next iteration of Dollar Shave Club” and “to really grow into the lifestyle service” that he wants it to be. He… → Read More
On the heels of launching social commerce startup TopFloor, LA-based incubator Science is debuting a new retail technology, TripleThread. Additionally, this technology is powering personalization and styling for a new personalized, mens’ e-commerce startup that was incubated by Science, Fourth And Grand. → Read More
Freshplum, an analytics startup for online retailers that was founded by a former Facebook product manager, is going after small to medium businesses with an easy way for anyone to add a shopping cart to their site. Helium is based off a product that another company in the Y Combinator network, payments startup Stripe, launched a few weeks ago. Stripe recently launched a product called Connect… → Read More
Move over, software: the London and Cambridge, U.K.-based accelerator, Springboard, is launching a dedicated program for hardware startups, focusing on the Internet of Things. The new three-month accelerator bootcamp — called Springboard Internet of Things — is backed by program partners ARM, Unilever, Neul and Raspberry Pi. → Read More
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