Maluuba, the Waterloo, Canada-based Siri competitor and TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2012 Battlefield finalist, today announced that it has added two new features to its voice-powered personal assistant app for Android and Windows Phone: sports and TV schedules. With this, Maluuba users in the U.S. and Canada can now ask it for near real-time sports results and query the service for TV listings in their… → Read More
Mac app Minbox launches to the public today, attempting to differentiate itself from competitors through speed and ease of use. The app allows Mac users to send files directly from their desktops — either through attaching the files or through a very simple drag-and-drop feature through the Minbox icon in the top-right corner.
As you can probably tell from the demo video above, Minbox hopes to… → Read More
Microsoft PowerPoint facilitates presentation design with zero constraints. And startups like Prezi provide well-designed templates and other features to help you communicate what matters. Now an Israeli startup called Emaze is trying a different take by offering a much simpler templating system for presentations that are intended to make you be concise. → Read More
After announcing its deal to acquire Tumblr for $1.1 billion, mostly in cash, Yahoo today started to lay out some of the details for how it intends to make use of the property while trying to stick to its promise “not to screw it up.” Expect more advertising by next year as well as more Tumblr content on Yahoo properties, but more of a cautious step as to how Yahoo will deal with some of Tumblr’s… → Read More
There is no sadder moment than the one where you realize it’s time to upgrade your computer. The load times are too slow, the battery no longer holds a charge, and it’s just too damn heavy. Now, imagine a school with dozens of outdated computers, and think just how bad that moment of realization can really be.
Neverware, a company based out of NY, is aiming to change all that with a turnkey… → Read More
Jolla has finally taken the wraps off the smartphone hardware that will be paired with its “unlike” Sailfish UI. Being a startup is challenging enough in any business sector but Jolla is seeking to compete in the fiercely competitive smartphone space against Samsung and Apple. So it’s hard not to dismiss their efforts as too late. But it’s a lot harder to accuse them of doing too little. → Read More
Today is turning out to be quite a memorable Monday — hot on the heels of Yahoo’s Tumblr acquisition announcement, online food ordering services GrubHub and Seamless have officially confirmed that the two companies will merge into one as we previously reported. → Read More
Sprint has decided to get deeper into the social and mobile space, announcing today that it has acquired Handmark and its subsidiary OneLouder. The acquisition is meant to beef up its Pinsight Media+ advertising group, specifically. Through Handmark, OneLouder has built social apps like Twitter clients Tweetcaster and Slices, and Friendcaster, a Facebook client. The acquisition price hasn’t… → Read More
In what can only be called an exodus, WordPress’ co-founder Matt Mullenweg posted on his blog Sunday night that over 72,000 new blog posts were imported within a single hour. This is a massive spike considering that WordPress usually just sees 400 to 600 imported posts on most Sundays. It’s a tiny percentage of Tumblr’s 50.9B posts but it’s an important consideration that Tumblr – and now Yahoo… → Read More
Sensopia, a company which actually uncovered a practical application for augmented reality, has raised a $1.2 million Series A round for its floor plan capturing application called “MagicPlan.” The app allows users to hold up their phone and then scan the dimensions of the room around them in order to create an instant floor plan that can be exported to various formats, including DXF… → Read More
Yahoo has now officially confirmed that it is buying blogging platform Tumblr for $1.1 billion mostly in cash, after reports on an impending deal first surfaced last week. It says it will keep it as an independent company, with founder David Karp at the helm as CEO. “The product, service and brand will continue to be defined and developed separately with the same Tumblr irreverence, wit, and… → Read More
Some more consolidation afoot in the worlds of mobile marketing and mobile payments: Payvia, one of the many startups working in the area of carrier-based mobile billing, is buying Mogreet, a mobile marketing company that delivers campaigns via text, video and picture messaging services. Terms of the deal were not disclosed — although we have contacted the company to ask. Payvia says that the… → Read More
A new report commissioned from research giant GfK claims that the growth of the high density cluster of technology companies in East London (dubbed Tech City by the UK government) is being “stunted” by a talent shortage and lack of access to capital. The ‘Tech Futures Report’ – commissioned by publishing company TechCityInsider and sponsored by accountant Grant Thornton, recruitment firm Vitamin… → Read More
Alteryx has raised $12 million for its business intelligence service designed for data analysts to build tools out of their own internal data and that from third parties.
The investment comes from SAP Ventures and Toba Capital, a new firm founded by former Quest Founder and CEO Vinny Smith. → Read More
Adelphic is announcing that Michael Collins (pictured), previously global CEO at WPP-owned mobile marketing agency Joule, has joined the mobile ad startup as its new chief executive. The current CEO Changfeng Wang will remain on-board as CTO.
Wang and his co-founder Jennifer Lum both worked at Apple-acquired mobile ad network Quattro, and they announced last year that they had launched a new… → Read More
There’s no shortage of channels for brands and celebrities to stay in touch with their customers, followers and fans in these socially connected times. Today’s addition to the mix is the launch of broadcasting and animation platform Headcast, which lets brands and celebrities record and push out short voice messages to their audience — accompanied by an animated, virtual avatar. → Read More
It’s nice to see a startup trying something different and garnering some promising traction along the way. The UK’s Bloom.fm is a mobile-first music streaming service — it currently exists as an iOS app only — that launched four months ago out of the ashes of the deadpooled music social network mflow. → Read More
Jolla, the Finnish MeeGo startup composed of ex-Nokians building their own mobile hardware and Sailfish OS, has finally taken the wraps off its first handset, revealing what the hardware will look like on its website. The design is a clean-looking, elegant slab, with the most stand-out feature being the coloured shell on the back that wraps around half the sides of the phone to create a… → Read More
YouLike describes itself as an interest-based social network and dating site that takes into account a user’s dislikes, as much as what they do like, when helping to find like-minded people to friend or date.
YouLike, a startup backed by the founders of Turkish eBay clone GittiGidiyor (which in 2011 was acquired by the online auction giant for $217 million), describes itself as an… → Read More
Ringadoc is one of a handful of young HealthTech startups that are on a mission to become “the frontline of primary care.” What does that mean? As we wrote in January, Ringadoc wants to let anyone with an Internet connection talk to a real, live doctor at any hour of the day — at an affordable flat rate. → Read More
MediaCorp, one of Singapore’s two largest media companies, has poured $40 million into Reebonz in a deal that values the designer brand flash-sales site at about $200 million. This is the first time that MediaCorp has invested in an online retailer, according to a story on Channel News Asia (a site that is also owned by MediaCorp). → Read More
Pinterest announced two new features today that will help make the site more attractive to potential advertisers. The first is pins embedded with additional information about products, recipes and movies. The second is a Pin It button that is now available on nine mobile apps. → Read More
Amid grumblings of a “general fatigue” when it comes to software-based startups, a potentially transformative technology called 3D printing is poised to reach critical mass and mainstream awareness. Today’s news headlines about the technology tend to focus on the extreme possibilities in being able to print objects on demand – from the terrors of things like a homemade 3D-printed gun to… → Read More
BrandYourself is expanding its efforts to take on the big names in the online reputation market (particularly Reputation.com) with the launch of a new version of its service.
The company started out as a fairly simple self-service tool for trying to improve your presence online, for example by creating a website and other content to push down undesirable results when someone Googles your name. → Read More
There is a misperception about the new Google Cloud Platform that the company put into general availability last week at Google I/O. It’s not a brand new platform. It’s what Google has used for years. It is Google’s foundation. It is what makes Google, Google. And now it’s open for the first time to developers and businesses.
Google Platform is new in the sense that anyone can now use it. But… → Read More
It’s been a little over a year since Google started teasing something it called “Project Glass.” The futuristic, wearable computer that would change the way that you interact with the world was nothing more than a series of rumors for months before it was “formally introduced” in April 2012. Not known for hardware and not having a current bonafide physical device that… → Read More
Digital media company and ad sales platform Ziff Davis is expanding its network of properties even further with the purchase of NetShelter’s display advertising business, a well-placed source has informed us. The source couldn’t share exact terms of the deal, but did reveal that InPowered, the product which NetShelter focused on and eventually essentially rebranded to last November, will be split… → Read More
Lets say you’ve come up with a brilliant idea for some shiny new piece of hardware. You brush up your coding chops, scratch out a design, and set out to build a prototype.
First, you’ll need a programmable chip to act as the brain. Because of the relatively gentle learning curve and friendly community, you go with the Arduino. The problem: your hardware idea requires WiFi.
Until now, that’s… → Read More
While it was missing the skydiving antics of last year’s event, Google’s I/O keynote last week wasn’t short on product launches. In between the splashy updates to Google Maps, Search, Android and everything else Google announced, the company also briefly talked about Web Components for a few minutes. While Google’s Sundar Pichai noted that it’s still early days for… → Read More
Joshua Pearce, PhD, is a researcher at Michigan Tech who rearches open source and low-impact solutions to engineering problems. He is also the founder of the Printers For Peace contest, an effort to bring together clever 3D-printed ideas that have loftier aims. You can win one of two 3D printers if you submit the winning project. → Read More
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