And so it begins. Groupon this morning published the expected price range of its shares, to be sold in an upcoming initial public offering, in an SEC filing.
The daily deals company plans to sell 30 million shares at $16 to $18 a pop, which would see Groupon raise between $480 million and $540 million. This would give Groupon a valuation as high as $11.4 billion. → Read More
Remember Google engineer Steve Yegge’s long rant about his past experiences at Amazon and his current employer’s own issues with creating platforms on Google+ (which he dubbed a “knee-jerk reaction” and a “pathetic afterthought”? If you haven’t read it yet, it’s well worth your time.
Yegge has now followed up on his it-was-meant-to-be-an-internal-memo diatribe, saying nothing bad happened to him at Google after his rant went viral. He did get laughed at a lot, he adds, by everyone all the way up to the top (Google co-founder Sergey Brin publicly said he didn’t read all of it because it was too long but sometimes used it as a “night-time aid”).
Then he goes on to sing Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ praises. And then some. → Read More
GroSocial, a startup that makes social media marketing software, announced today that it has closed a $450,000 round of seed funding, led by the Kickstart Seed Fund, with additional contributions from Monarch Ventures, Rock & Hammer Ventures as well as several angel investors. With its new funding, the startup adds three members to its board of directors, including angel investor Curt Roberts, Monarch Ventures founder and managing director JD Gardner, and Chris Russell, managing director of Rock & Hammer Ventures. → Read More
To add to the ever growing list of social networks out there, a “Twitter for video” mobile application called Shoutz is just making its way into the App Store and Android Market. The app allows users to connect with friends (or followers), along with their favorite sports stars or celebrities by both sending and receiving 15-second video clips, aka Shoutz.
Much like Google+ and now Facebook, Shoutz lets you choose who you’d like to share certain Shoutz with, whether it be a one-on-one convo, a message to your family, your weekend softball team, gambling buddies, or your entire community of followers. The app has also partnered with different groups like the Nascar Members Club and NFL Alumni to let users join fan clubs, through which they can see Shoutz from their favorite drivers, players, artists etc. → Read More
Well, developers, it looks like Google will soon be releasing the code for Ice Cream Sandwich to the Android Open-Source Project. Thanks to a Google+ post penned by Jean-Baptiste Queru, the Technical Lead of the Android Open Source Project, and his link to an email written by Google engineer Dan Morrill, we do indeed have confirmation that Android 4.0 source code will see the light of day.
“We plan to release the source for the recently-announced Ice Cream Sandwich soon, once it’s available on devices”, Morrill said in his Google Groups post. → Read More
Amazon has announced an update to the Kindle file format integrating many HTML5 tags and CSS attributes. Many expected a concession by Amazon in the form of an EPUB-compatible upgrade, and this comes as a slight surprise — but it’s a natural evolution of the format, really, and of course everyone is already familiar with the toolset.
In a way this makes Kindle formatted books nothing more than extremely long webpages, but that’s really a matter of perspective. Flexible layouts and well-known rules for handling text, fonts, images, and so on mean that the file format is adaptable to many devices, zoom levels, resolutions, and so on. → Read More
ViKi, an international video site for world TV series and movies translated in 100+ languages by its community, has raised $20 million in new funding from SK Planet, BBC Worldwide, Greylock Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, Charles River Ventures, Neoteny Labs and others. This brings ViKi’s total funding to $25 million.
For background, ViKi is an open-source-like solution for video, and acquires the rights to TV shows and movies. The site then puts it on one of its channels and within the first 24 hours an organized, volunteer community subtitles the content using ViKi’s software.
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Most people right now think of Windows 8 as Microsoft’s big tablet effort. But I wonder whether it will ever actually be installed on more tablets than traditional laptops and desktops. After all, it’s not just Windows 7 Tablet Edition — it’s the next version of Windows, period.
But there’s an wrinkle on tablet systems that has to be addressed that rarely, if ever, comes up on laptops: orientation. While very few people use their display in portrait mode, it’s extremely common to do so on tablets. Many apps and webpages work better when displayed vertically. So far, so normal for a tablet interface, but it must be just a little demoralizing to be working on something that a majority of users will never once encounter. Still, it must be done and they seem to be doing it well. → Read More
HP has just announced that its executive vice president and chief strategy and technology officer Shane Robison will be retiring, effective Nov. 1.
Robison, an 11-year HP veteran, also served as a member of the company’s Executive Council. In his role, he was responsible for shaping HP’s corporate strategy and technology agenda. He helped lead HP’s research and development and has led many of the company’s largest merger and acquisition activities. HP also announced that it will not be replacing the role of chief strategy and technology officer. → Read More
Poor RIM. They just can’t catch a break. Just two days after the official unveiling of their new BBX platform (the company’s last bullet, so to speak), they’re already having legal papers thrown in their face.
As it turns out, the BBX name (while rather fitting, given that it’s a merger of BlackBerryOS and QNX) wasn’t free for the taking. BASIS International, a software development company out of New Mexico, claims the trademark is theirs and that they’re willing to fight for it.
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Microsoft just reported its first quarter 2012 earnings today with revenues of $17.37 billion, an 7% increase from the same period of the prior year. Microsoft’s operating income was $7.20 billion, its net income was $5.74 billion and its diluted earnings per share were at $0.68, a 10% increase from last year.
Updating. → Read More
Earlier this week, UberMedia (and Idealab) CEO Bill Gross launched a new product at the Web 2.0 Summit called Chime.in. It is an interest stream for following people and things you care about. You can even follow part of a person (only what they share about tech, and not what they share about cats). Gross gave me a demo of the iPhone app, which you can see above. → Read More
Today Google announced its long-ignored RSS app Google Reader is getting an update. Most notably, it’s getting a fresh new design along the same lines as Google’s other products, like Docs, Maps, Search and Gmail. While I’m not entirely thrilled about this change (I prefer the utilitarian look for the service), I understand Google’s need to maintain user interface consistency across its online products.
What really bothers me, however, is Google’s casual decision to remove all of Google Reader’s “social” features, including friending, following and shared link blogs. → Read More
Startup Opinionaided is bringing its mobile Q&A app to Android phones with the launch of a new native app. Opinionaided previously offered an iOS app and web platform to allow users to get advice and opinions on the fly.
Within the app, users can input a question, determine a category (i.e. relationships, politics) and submit it for other Opinionaided users to answer. You can also publish your questions to Facebook and Twitter. After a question is posted, fellow Opinionaided users can comment on the question, thumps up or thumbs down qursions, and the app will calculate the percentage of users that responded positively or negatively. From there, consumers can reply back to the comments or create a new question for peers to vote on.
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A video inadvertently posted to Google’s YouTube account has given a sneak peek at some of the changes that will be coming to Gmail in the very near future. It was quickly taken down, but not before a few screenshots were snagged by Google Operating System.
The new UI is obviously based on the Gmail ‘preview’ theme that it began offering back in June, which has more whitespace and options for tweaking how densely you want your conversations listed. The biggest change seen in the video is the conversation/reply view, which looks a lot more like Facebook Messages — each person in the conversation has their photo shown, and it’s easier to read previous messages in the thread. → Read More
Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) is a pretty great event for developers — but, contrary to the implications of the “Worldwide” name, it’s not quite as great for folks who can’t make their way to San Francisco.
Looking to sing the word of iOS 5 to developers who just can’t justify the trip, Apple is once again setting out on what they call the “Tech Talk World Tour”. They held similar events in 2008 and 2009, with an unexplained hiatus in 2010. → Read More
In Part II of my TCTV interview with Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley, we get down to brass tacks: How will Foursquare make money? (In Part I, we talked about Radar, Siri, and how mobile interfaces are changing). Foursquare is already experimenting by partnering with various daily deal companies, including Groupon, to show nearby local deals to Foursquare users. But Foursquare is ultimately taking a different approach. “”The daily deal companies are version 1.0 of great things you can build with the Internet that help local merchants drive foot traffic into the door. What we are doing with Foursquare is version 2.” → Read More
Changers is today launching its new solar powered gadget-charging system designed to power up your USB devices, including iPhones, iPods, Android phones and Kindles, using a simple, one-button device. The Changers Starter Kit, which includes the company’s “Kalhuohfummi” (TM) solar battery and Changers “Maroshi” (TM) solar module, can generate up to four Watts per hour.
The system has a social element, too. It uploads how much power it has generated to an online energy marketplace at Changers.com where you can compare and share your energy savings with friends. → Read More
As a fan of barefoot shoes I jumped (not very high, because you don’t get a lot of air with bare feet) at the chance to try out Fila’s new Skele-Toes EZ Slide barefoot shoes AKA the crazy monkey shoes not made by Vibram.
These shoes are marketed as “casual” monkey shoes and are not designed for running. They are, luckily, fairly attractive in a “weird dude who wears barefoot shoes” kind of way but the first thing you’ll notice is that they have four toes instead of five. This is the EZ part of the name and they make them considerably easier to put on and take off. They also make you feel like Fred Flintstone. → Read More
Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by (@msuster) Mark Suster, a 2x entrepreneur, now VC at GRP Partners. Read more about Suster at Bothsidesofthetable
Later today I’ll be giving a keynote at the VCJ Venture Alpha conference here in San Francisco. I was asked to speak about the topic of “what is going on in the venture capital world and what is the next big thing after social networking?”
Tough topic but I have some views. I thought you might enjoy reading the presentation before even others see it! It is pretty self explanatory. Presentation is after the jump. → Read More
