June 2011

Aaaaand U.S. Cellular picks up another pair of slightly obscure phones — or, at least, it looks like they’re about to. After picking up the LG Genesis (after Verizon quietly…

When we first previewed Instagram nine months ago, most of the initial comments predicted it would be dead on arrival. To say those people were wrong is a vast understatement. And Instagram…

Blinklearning, the e-tutoring platform, has raised €350k of public money from the Spanish CDTI NEOTEC program for further R&D into how Artificial Intelligence can be leveraged to offer a more…

If you’re one of U.S. Cellular’s 6.1 million customers and you’ve been just aching for a Windows Phone handset, your only option so far has been… erm… deal with it.…

It looks as though Nokia’s 15-year reign is coming to a close, as Samsung is expected to usurp the world’s largest phone maker this quarter, according to Nomura Research Institute.…

So you need a laptop? Why not wait a few weeks and fly to Europe because Acer is about to dump 3 million cheap laptops on the European market in…

Zibaba, the Tel Aviv-based social commerce company, has been chosen to power retailer Marks & Spencer’s Facebook storefront. Leveraging M&S’ over 300,000 Facebook fans, the Father’s Day-themed so-called ‘f-Commerce’ store…

According to a Reuters report an employee at a San Francisco Apple store, Cory Moll, is working on forming an Apple retail employees’ union, thereby giving the geniuses a few…

Y Combinator has just announced its “Part Time Partner” program, which will bring in former YC alumni to mentor the most recent cohort of startups, like regular partners, but only…

Golden, Colorado-based Proterra, Inc.— the makers of electric commercial vehicles, systems and charging stations for them— raised $30 million, the company announced today. The investment was led by Kleiner Perkins…

It’s the Circle of Life, friends. Apple releases a new build of iOS. Jailbreakers find a way in, and add something really cool that makes jailbreaking worthwhile. Sooner or later,…

Attention, world! The Kindle, the top selling ebook reader of all time, is now sold by Radio Shack. That means you can head down to your local strip mall, pick…

AisleBuyer, a startup that’s looking to help do away with the tedious checkout lines seen in most retailers, has raised a $7.5 million round of Series E funding. Leading the…

We have shown you quite a few obscure Kinect videos in the last few months, but this one is a bit special: it shows a robot geek from the Nara…

Exclusive: 4chan founder Christopher Poole (a.k.a. moot) is announcing a round of funding today for his new startup, Canvas. Union Square Ventures’ Fred Wilson has led a $3 million series A…

A couple of years ago, if someone had told me that the Windows Phone platform would become more popular than iOS, I would have laughed in their face. Now, however,…

SugarSync, a close competitor to file sharing services like Crate and Dropbox, just added a mobile device management feature to their web interface. The new service takes advantage of SugarSync’s…

Imagine you’re a small business owner. You have to choose between two propositions: You can pay $62,500 for marketing. You’ll get a whole lot of customers coming through your door.…

Roku is slowly entering the wide world of retail. The middle tier XD model hit Best Buy retail stores a few months back and now the same model is available…

What do you get when you cross a chair with a skateboard? The Isukebo [JP] of course, as manufactured by Japan-based RollingFoot. It’s essentially more of a chair with wheels…

Last week, we reported that Google had acquired Admeld, an advertising optimization platform for publishers, for around $400 million. A couple of days after we broke the story, Google has…

There’s a new Nook in town and it’s great. But that doesn’t mean the old one is now suddenly any less great than it once was, which makes this daily…

HP has done what any company looking to drum up a bit of buzz tends to do: release demo videos on YouTube. Not that you can blame them. The HP…

Maybe it’s just a biofuels thing this year, but it seems like the feds are giving cleantech grant money to companies and institutions that are based anywhere but in the…

A Sega marketing exec, speaking to Gamespot, blurted out that the Wii U will probably launch spring/summer of 2012, a proposition that sounds a bit fishy. We could see Nintendo…

There have been quite a few rumors flying around that U.S. Apple Stores have something big in store for this week. Originally, we assumed it had something to do with…

North Carolina State University has apparently become our goalie for Android malware, as Xuxian Jiang and his team have found their third batch of Android malware, dubbed “Plankton,” in the…

TellApart, a startup that enables eCommerce companies to use customer data to offer more personalized display advertising to both their loyal and potential customers alike, today announced that it has…

If you look at how Apple fares on the public markets today, compared to other tech powerhouses, you’ll notice that the Cupertino computer giant is currently valued at roughly $301…

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 Any company who develops products reliant on…