Details are sparse and we have calls in, but the two execs at Klarna, Jens Saltin and Niklas Adalberth, were arrested at the W Hotel in New York for alleged molestation. The victim was a 19-year-old tourist from Texas.
Saltin and Adalberth are currently out on $10,000 bail. According to the NY Post, “Adalberth allegedly straddled her body while he and Saltin ripped off her clothes and fondled her.” → Read More
Hot off the press release presses: tech blog GigaOm has acquired paidContent (and parent company ContentNext) from The Guardian. Rumors of the acquisition were first reported by Peter Kafka at AllThingsD.
Wrote GigaOm founder Om Malik in a blog post: → Read More
Call it a sort of a bear hug: Sprint, the also-ranniest of the also-rans in the carrier world, lost money selling phones that, on the aggregate gained them subscribers. It’s also Catch-22, a blindside, and a mess.
According to Sprint, the company reported a net loss last quarter while still selling 1.8 million iPhones and increasing their subscriber base by 1.6 million. How? The costs associated with provisioning and supporting these new phones drove operating losses to $438 million, up from $139 million in Q4 last year. → Read More
We first covered Finnish startup Ovelin back in June, when it was preparing for the release of its interactive, gamified app for the iPad that helps teach youngsters how to play the guitar, and having some fun while doing it. Like others before it, Ovelin’s mission is based on the fact that learning to play an instrument is challenging. The process is slow, and the exercises one has to go through — they don’t tell you about this in Rolling Stone — are boring and tedious. It’s for this reason that instrumental education is fraught with dropout, as many novice musicians end up retiring before they become shredders. → Read More
During the lackluster moments of this year’s Super Bowl, we turned to our second screens. A study released by Flurry today shows that during great ads and the half-time show we kept our devices stowed, but returns from commercial breaks, boring ads, and waning interest in the 3rd quarter caused spikes in mobile app usage.
This means advertisers and TV producers need to get flashier, because every viewer has a wildly engaging device in their pocket. Subtle, conservative, slow-building ads just don’t cut it any more. → Read More
Texas-based data storage company Pivot3 has raised $23 million in new funding led by Samsung Ventures, with all existing Pivot3 investors participating including Focus Ventures, InterWest Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Mesirow Financial, Northleaf Capital Partners and Silver Creek Ventures. This brings Pivot3′s total funding to nearly $100 million.
Pivot3′s storage hardware appliances offer integrated server virtualization for data to enterprise customers. Its RAID-based solutions are generally used to store video surveillance data. The company has over 140 customers including Port of Seattle, the Mall of America, and the City of Trenton. → Read More
While Samsung’s new low-key approach to MWC may have some gadget fans feeling blue, Microsoft’s plans for MWC just made things much more interesting. The company has begun to send out press invitations to an event at this year’s Mobile World Congress where they will officially launch the Windows 8 Consumer Preview. → Read More
Following yesterday’s release of the new mobile version of the Chrome browser, Google is today launching an improved version of its desktop counterpart. The updated release of Chrome (Stable version) brings several features beta users have had since January, most notably omnibox pre-rendering and increased security protections.
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The TechFellow Awards is the Oscars of high-tech entrepreneurship. As selection committee member Sean Parker puts it “We’re shining a spotlight on individuals who are on the cusp of bringing us something revolutionary.” On February 22nd at the SFMOMA, 20 innovators will be presented with $100,000 grants to invest in startups of their choice. Nominations are open through February 17th at the TechFellows website.
Today, the TechFellow Awards announced that Emmy-winning nerd hero Jim Parsons, star of hit tv show The Bing Bang Theory, will host the awards ceremony. Marissa Mayer, Dave McClure, and Terry Semel will also join the all-star selection committee, which includes Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman, Ron Conway. → Read More
In case you haven’t noticed, the Internet has become a content fire hose. There’s a lot of junk floating around out there (my posts not included, of course), and, as a result, a spate of digital readers and aggregators have popped up to offer our blood-shot eyes improved filtering mechanisms that channel the noise into signal. Some of them even get snatched up by Twitter, a la Summify.
One of these startups, the Summify competitor and Utah-based XYDO, launched in May of last year, followed shortly thereafter by closing a $1.25 million round of series A financing from EPIC Ventures and a host of angels. → Read More
Before big data was a hot investing theme, Roger Ehrenberg was one of the first seed investors to focus almost exclusively on startups using data as a competitive edge. His NYC-based fund, IA Ventures, has backed companies such as Billguard, Coursekit, DataSift, Next Big Sound, Simple, ThinkNear, and Yipit. His first fund, raised in 2010, was a $50 million seed fund. Now, IA Ventures just raised $105 million to double down on data plays in Fund II. → Read More
Live Matrix, the TechCrunch Disrupt ’10 finalist that proclaimed to be the “TV Guide for the web,” has been acquired by online video guide OVGuide.com in an all stock deal. As a part of the deal Live Matrix co-founder and CEO Sanjay Reddy will become OVGuide’s new CEO.
Although Live Matrix will continue on as a standalone website, both companies will integrate their databases, allowing OVGuide to deliver a unified service covering all upcoming, live and on-demand content. → Read More
PowerInbox, the email platform that lets you run apps for Facebook, Twitter, Groupon and Google+ inside your inbox, is today announcing the launching of its API. With this addition, companies that want to make their own emails interactive can now do so. Kicking off the launch, PowerInbox signed up ten partners who used the API to build email apps across several verticals including video, shopping, games and more.
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A new legal startup is launching to the public soon, hoping to shake up the legal documents space. LA-based DocRun is announcing that it has raised $1.1 million in seed funding from VC Michael Hirshland’s new fund, Resolute.vc, Google’s Don Dodge, and Kima Ventures.
While some details of what DocRun is doing are still unclear, but we know the startup is trying to disrupt the online legal documents and advice space, but by adding quality, personalized documents to the mix as opposed to simply offering form contracts like LLC agreements, rental agreements and more. DocRun wants to provide highly customized, attorney-level, state-specific legal documents at a fraction of what they would cost from a lawyer. → Read More
Lance Tokuda was one of the masterminds behind viral apps on Facebook back at the end of last decade. He cofounded and led RockYou as its chief executive through the evolution of the Facebook platform, all the while inundating users with hugs, horoscopes, birthday cards and other lightweight social app communications (which some may refer to as “spam”).
RockYou ended up finding its business in social advertising and social gaming, and in late 2010 Tokuda stepped down from his CEO role. Now he’s back with a new company on Facebook today, called schoolFeed, that’s trying to connect older users with long-lost high school classmates. → Read More
Proving the rumors right, Amazon today announced a video deal with Viacom, Inc. which will allow Amazon Prime members to instantly stream TV shows from MTV, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, TV Land, Spike, VH1, BET, CMT and Logo. The deal increases the total number of Prime Instant Videos to more than 15,000, the company reports. In December, there were 13,000 movies and TV shows available, so it’s a moderate increase in terms of quantity, but a big step in terms of Amazon becoming a more viable Netflix competitor.
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Here’s a puzzler. Back in September 2011, less than 6 months ago, Jesta Digital loudly committed $15 million to establish Jesta Labs, a New York-based mobile services startup incubator. Fast forward to today, and the incubator has vanished from the face of the planet. Their website has been taken down, and we hear pretty much everyone who had anything to do with Jesta Labs has moved on. → Read More
Nettle, a startup that has raised funding from Google Ventures, 500 Startups and others, is looking to make the act of going to the movies a more social experience. With the company’s free iOS app, MovieGoer, the startup wants to make the moviegoing experience more interactive.
The Moviegoer app allows you to view trailers, descriptions of the latest movies out in theaters and critics’ reviews. You can also see what movies are showing nearby your locations. Via the app, you can follow specific movies, sign in with Facebook and Twitter to see which movies your friends are going to, and comment on movies after viewing.
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After scooping up rival Cotendo for $268 million recently, content delivery and web services giant Akamai is making another acquisition today—Blaze Software. Blaze’s technology helps accelerate speed of Websites, and optimizes load times while cutting bandwidth costs. Financial details of the dealn were not disclosed except that it was an all-cash transaction.
As Akamai explains, there are more performance bottlenecks for website load and speed times, as richer web applications and mobile web sites become more popular. Blaze’s cloud-based service automatically optimizes the code on a web page during the delivery process to ensure faster transmission of content and a faster rendering of the page, whether served to a PC, tablet or smartphone. → Read More
Anti-consumer legislation SOPA and PIPA might be all but dead, but there isn’t time to rest. There is a seemingly never-ending flow of proposed legislation, statutes and bills queued up, ready to bust down doors and storm living rooms. One of the latest involves the forced transition from analog to digital cable — something I wrote about back in 2008. If the FCC caves to massive lobbying from the cable companies, the days of unencrypted cable stations in the US will be numbered. Cable subscribers would be required to have a cable box (which will likely cost money) or CableCard-compatible box to receive even local network stations.
Boxee just recently started taking an active role in this fight. The Boxee Box has always been uniquely positioned as a legitimate cable alternative, but it wasn’t until Boxee Live TV launched last month that the company has gone against cable companies face-to-face. But if this proposal passes, it will stifle products not only from Boxee, but also products from El Gato, Silicon Dust and others — and let’s not forget about the likely millions of cable TVs currently enjoying living a box-less life. → Read More
