Wishpond Launches Mall360 To Bring Your Local Shopping Mall Online
Like Milo before it, Wishpond launched in late 2010 to build a local search engine that aggregates realtime inventory and product listings from brick and mortar retail stores -- from big chains to mom and pop shops. The startup has since focused its efforts on developing social commerce solutions for retailers, launching tools like Social Store, which allows any... Read more...
TechCrunch, May 21, 9:34pm
Machinima Gets $35M In Funding, Led By Google
After weeks of speculation, online video distributor Machinima announced Monday that it has closed a $35 million funding round led by Google, which also included existing investors Redpoint Ventures and MK Capital. The new financing comes as Google's YouTube has been investing heavily in bringing in all sorts of new original programming.
The Machinima network is the largest single page view generator for YouTube, with more than 1.6 billion video views in the month of April. And YouTube is an invaluable partner for Machinima, as it is the company's primary distribution and monetization platform. With the funding, Machinima says it will invest in content and global sales, as... Read more...
TechCrunch, May 21, 7:16pm
Disrupt NYC Day 1: Your Startup Battlefield Companies
Our very first day of Disrupt NYC is over and the conference started off with a bang. We had memorable chats, dove into fashion for a bit, hung out with the Startup Alley companies and witnessed 15 startups launch their products in our first day of the Startup Battlefield.
Even though we will have brand-new companies launching tomorrow while fighting for the ultimate prize of $50,000 and the Disrupt Cup, we wanted to take a moment to highlight all that we saw today. There were some brilliant companies, so be sure to check all of them out below. The Internet was buzzing with positive words about each. This is going to be a tough battle. Which... Read more...
TechCrunch, May 21, 7:12pm
Babelverse Is Out To Democratize Translation
Babelverse won the opportunity to appear at TechCrunch Disrupt from the Startup Alley and with little notice ended up giving a slick pitch. Essentially this is a solution for universal speech translation, powered by a global community of human interpreters: it means anyone can be an interpreter. We covered its launch back in January but here's a quick rundown.
Machine translation, as we know, is not reliable. So what we're looking here is a marketplace for translation.
People practice to interpret and... Read more...
TechCrunch, May 21, 6:21pm
Sprint’s EVO 4G LTE Has Cleared U.S. Customs, Pre-Orders To Be Filled As Early As May 24
Sprint's launch plans for the HTC EVO 4G LTE were ruined last week when shipments of their shiny new Android handset were held up by United States Customs, but we're hearing that they may been hitting doorsteps and store shelves sooner than expected.
According to Sprint, the devices are now currently sitting safely in Sprint's warehouses and are expected to start trickling out into the world "on or around May 24." Read more...
TechCrunch, May 21, 6:19pm
Tagbrand Gives Fashionistas An App To Check-In Their Brands
"All people wear clothes!" declared one of Tagbrand's founders on stage at Disrupt today. That's true, but let's review.
DailyBooth was (is still perhaps?) a phenomenon for a time as people became accustomed to sharing their daily lives in a more quirky manner than mere video can afford. (Ok, OK, it's a bunch of teenagers sharing their zits, but work with me here, people). Now Tagbrand wants to apply that model to fashion, but with a tagging twist.
The model is simple enough. Take and upload photos of what branded clothes you are wearing and tag them. Effectively, it's a photo check-in for brands, or 'Foursquare for fashion', if you... Read more...
TechCrunch, May 21, 6:00pm
Stevie Turns Your Social Feeds Into TV Shows
We spend more and more time on social networks, but sometimes it can feel like work. I mean, scrolling through your news feed isn't work work, but it's not quite as easy as vegging out on your couch and watching TV.
That's where a new startup called Stevie comes in, with a website launching today at Disrupt, along with mobile apps that function as remote controls. Stevie looks at content shared in your social network feeds and elsewhere on the Web, and it assembles that content into TV shows that you can watch, shows with names like The Comedy Strip, Music Non-Stop, and Celeb TV. Naturally, the shows incorporate video content that your... Read more...
TechCrunch, May 21, 5:47pm
StyleSaint Wants To Turn Virtual Fashion Tear Sheets Into Custom Apparel
As we covered earlier today, the fashion vertical in tech has exploded, with myriad unique companies clamoring to take a bite out of Amazon's lunch, and a chunk out of the trillion dollar apparel industry. One of the most unique premises I've seen thus far is StyleSaint, a startup which at first glance seems like a Pinterest for fashion, but with a unique real-life twist.
To use StyleSaint in its current form, log in with Facebook or Twitter and create an account, once logged on, you can chose from... Read more...
TechCrunch, May 21, 5:35pm
Led By Former Microsofties, GitHub Brings The Party To Enterprise With New Windows Client
GitHub, the source code hosting and collaboration service, has been growing like gangbusters. The site now has over 1.6 million registered developers, hosting over 2.8 million repositories on everything from jQuery and Ruby on Rails to node.js and Redis. At the outset, Github was just a side project, a tool to make developers' lives easier (its first slogan: "Git hosting: No longer a pain in the ass.") Github is still a boot-strapped operation, but as both its user base and its own hacker collective (now at 73 strong) have grown, there has been an increasing demand for tools that fall outside... Read more...
TechCrunch, May 21, 5:33pm
Punch! Launches A Platform For Building Interactive iPad Apps, Sans Developers
It's a familiar story in the tech world: A company wants to build a consumer product, finds that the necessary tools aren't available, creates its own tools, then realizes it has created a broader platform.
David Bennahum offers some examples: Zip2. Vignette. TypePad. And yes, his startup Punch!, where Bennahum is co-founder and CEO, and which is launching its publishing platform at Disrupt. Read more...
TechCrunch, May 21, 5:24pm
The Power Of Disrupt: gTar Raises $30,000 On Kickstarter In Two Hours
Incident took the stage this afternoon at TechCrunch Disrupt NYC and debuted the gTar. It's safe to say that they are already a major contender for the Disrupt Cup.
The startup wowed the crowd with their iPhone-powered teaching guitar. The judges loved it. The crowd loved. And most importantly, fans turned to the startup's Kickstarter campaign where funding took off like a rocket. Prior to hitting the stage, the gTar had raised just a touch above $10,000. Now, almost exactly two hours after their Disrupt debut, their Kickstarter funding (a.k.a. pre-orders) is north of $42,000 and rising fast. Read more...
TechCrunch, May 21, 5:20pm
Digital Video Consolidation: Avail-TVN Picks Up $100M From Carlyle, Buys UK’s On Demand Group For $27M
A double-whammy in the digital video space today: Avail-TVN, a video services provider that works with companies like NBC, Univision, and brands like Mattel, has announced that it has picked up $100 million in financing led by the Carlyle Group, and it is using those funds to make an acquisition outside of the U.S., buying rival video service provider On Demand Group in the UK from its existing owner, SeaChange International, for $27 million. Avail-TVN says that the deal will make it the largest provider of... Read more...
TechCrunch, May 21, 5:14pm
KurbKarma: A Social Network, And App, To Find Parking Where And When You Need It
We have all been there: you are in your car, you need to park, and you cannot, no matter how much you try, find a space. You see cars pulling away, but it's too far for you to get there before another car swoops in. You see people walking and you trail them, hoping they're heading to a vehicle. It's a frustrating state of affairs, but a new startup, KurbKarma, is launching today at TC Disrupt New York to try to solve it.
“Parking where and when you need it” is the basic idea here: you have people who have spaces they are about to leave; and you have people who need spaces. The app ( Read more...
TechCrunch, May 21, 4:46pm
Open Garden Lets You Crowdsource Your Mobile Connectivity
What if you couldn't just share your Internet connection with the few WiFi devices tethered to your phone or hotspot, but with pretty much everybody around you? Open Garden, which is launching at Disrupt today, lets you create a mesh network that ties together all the Open Garden-enabled devices around you into one large network that then automatically shares Internet access and bandwidth between all of these devices. Basically, Open Garden wants to become a crowd-sourcing platform for mobile bandwidth. Read more...
TechCrunch, May 21, 4:35pm
CallApp Uses Social Data To Build A Smarter Smartphone Contact Book
One of my least favorite moments of the day comes when my iPhone rings and the number isn't in my contact book. Is it an important call from an entrepreneur? A random PR person pitching me? Or just a telemarketer? I won't know until I pick up.
CallApp, a startup launching today at Disrupt, wants to eliminate those awkward moments, for starters. It's creating what CEO and co-founder Oded Volovitz calls a "universal social contact book." It's drawing data from social networks and other data sources to give users more context about phone calls and other communication. The data also comes from CallApp users — users can edit CallApp listings, and if they can... Read more...
TechCrunch, May 21, 4:23pm
Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cablevision, And Others Will Share Wi-Fi Hot Spots
Imagine for a moment that you are sitting in your front yard in a lawn chair, sipping lemonade while attempting to read the latest news on your WiFi-only iPad. You're just out of range of your WiFi signal. Your neighbor's signal is super strong, but that selfish hooligan didn't leave it wide open for you to leach onto. Wouldn't you love to be able to use a portion of his spectrum anyway while away from your own?
Well, you still can't, however... Read more...
TechCrunch, May 21, 4:19pm
K3 Server Is Making Enterprise Application Integrations More Efficient, Reduces Work By Half
How is data moved between systems? In the enterprise environment, point-to-point application interfaces are either handled with expensive and cumbersome utilities or, more likely, with custom code...and frankly, a lot of manual labor. BroadPeak Partners has a better idea. The company is today introducing its application known as K3 Server, a system that aims to disrupt the traditional enterprise interface market by making it easier for I.T. to build, and for end users to tweak, the way code is handled, transformed, reconciled, mapped and enriched as it moves in between systems. Read more...
TechCrunch, May 21, 4:09pm
Major Steal: King.com Poaches Talent Behind EA’s Sims Social To Lead New London Studio
King.com, the European-casual-gaming-company-that-could, is cementing its ascendance on the Facebook platform by poaching one of the key producers responsible for EA's Sims Social and opening a new game development studio in London. The company just hired Catharina Mallet away from EA to lead the new studio, which should have 40 people by year-end (with her departure first being noted by Business Insider last week).
King.com, which started in Sweden and Read more...
TechCrunch, May 21, 4:00pm
UberConference Aims To Fix Crappy Conference Calls
We all hate conference calls -- having to dial in, manually enter a room code and sometimes having to enter a passcode on top of that. Once you've actually logged in, there's a whole lot of talking on top of one another, and a lot of re-introducing yourself so that everyone knows who's talking at any given time. UberConference, which was created by Firespotter Labs and is being launched as part of the Startup Battlefield at TechCrunch Disrupt, hopes to fix all that by providing a visual interface to all others on the call.
Audio conferencing is not just a pain in the ass, but it's also a huge business -- a $3 billion business -- that's mostly controlled by big... Read more...
TechCrunch, May 21, 3:57pm
At TechCrunch Disrupt, Startup Alley Is Where the Shootouts Happen
Well folks, while you may think all the action is on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt, the flip side of the coin is the enormous amount of buzz, energy and networking that happens in Startup Alley. Today there are 44 companies exhibiting in the Alley itself, not to mention the 20+ companies in the Israeli pavilion which makes its second appearance at Disrupt. We'll have another brand new 47 companies in Startup Alley tomorrow. You can check out all the companies today... Read more...
TechCrunch, May 21, 3:45pm
Imgur Partners With Brisk And “Scumbag Steve” For Meme-ified Ads
Imgur has built a massive audience for the sometimes amusing, sometimes adorable images and memes that it hosts. Now it faces another challenge: Making money.
With 2 billion monthly page views, advertising seems like an obvious business plan. The problem, says CEO Alan Schaaf, is that "the Imgur audience has always hated ads." So yes, the company runs a banner ad on each page, but the audience probably sees it as a necessary evil. They probably won't be happy with a second ad, Schaaf says, so a different approach was needed. Read more...
TechCrunch, May 21, 12:04pm
Fab.com Has 4.5M Members, CEO Wants To Work With Pinterest (But Doesn’t Actually Use It)
Fab.com CEO Jason Goldberg took the stage today at Disrupt, he laid out a grand vision for the site. He noted that it has been just under a year since the site launched, and it already has 4.5 million members.
"That's not an e-commerce site, that's a movement," he said. Read more...
TechCrunch, May 21, 11:18am
Venture Capitalist Michael Moritz Says He’s Stepping Back From Sequoia Because Of Illness
In very sad news, Mike Moritz, who has led top-tier venture firm Sequoia Capital through the very beginnings of the web until now, is stepping back because of an incurable disease. His firm has backed many of the home runs of the last two decades including Google, PayPal and Yahoo.
In a letter to limited partners this morning, he wrote, "We have always tried to be straightforward with you and, in that spirit, I need to share something. Unfortunately, I have been diagnosed with a rare medical condition which can be managed but is incurable." Read more...
TechCrunch, May 21, 11:14am
About.me Releases Public API, SDK At Disrupt, Now Integrates With Reputation, Smarterer, Forkly, Kred And Showyou
About.Me is set to get a bit more social. The AOL-owned property just released a public API and SDK into the wild in partnership with Reputation.com, Smarterer, Forkly, Kred and Showyou. While the online profile site already worked with most popular social platforms, today's announcement is huge for both about.me and their legions of users. Plus, for attendees of Disrupt NYC this week, the company is celebrating the news by having a professional photographer on hand to help create free killer profile pics.
Sometimes the simplest ideas are the best. About.me collects a user's various online identifies and puts them in a single (and beautiful) location. Think of it a splash page for your identity online. Instead... Read more...
TechCrunch, May 21, 11:00am
Google Missed The Boat On Buying Twitter. “Hasn’t Been Interested Since They Committed To Google+” -Fred Wilson
Google got the chance to buy Twitter, but the search giant passed, says Michael Arrington. "Google hasn’t been interested in buying Twitter since they committed themselves to Google+” says Fred Wilson, Union Square Ventures founder and former Twitter board member, in his fireside chat this morning with Arrington at the TechCrunch Disrupt New York conference. Now Google+ is widely seen as a ghost town, and not buying Twitter could be a mistake that haunts Mountain View for years to come.
Wilson has one of the most Read more...
TechCrunch, May 21, 10:45am
EU Gives Google A Last Chance To Avoid Antitrust Charges
In late 2010, the European Commission launched an investigation into allegations that Google was abusing its dominant position in the search engine market. Today, Joaquín Almunia, the vice president of the European Commission responsible for competition policy, sent a letter to Google chairman Eric Schmidt with an update about its finding. The Commission, writes Almunia, identified four specific concerns that Google needs to address quickly to avoid a lengthy (and potentially very costly) antitrust process. In the letter to Schmidt,... Read more...
TechCrunch, May 21, 10:30am
TechCrunch Disrupt NYC LIVE: Day One! #TCDisrupt
After months of prepping, countless run-throughs and all nighters, it's time to get this party started. Welcome to TechCrunch Disrupt New York City 2012. I have a feeling this is going to be the best one to date.
Follow the team's coverage here. If you're unable to attend don't worry, you can join the conversation on Twitter by following #TCDisrupt.
So here's how the day breaks down: Read more...
TechCrunch, May 21, 10:30am
StatCounter: Google Chrome Pushes Past Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (Again)
Well, it's official. Or at least it's official if you believe in StatCounter's data. Google's Chrome web browser has overtaken Microsoft's Internet Explorer. For real this time. Maybe. The stat-counting firm compiled data for the week of May 14th through May 20th, showing that Chrome had a market share of 32.76%, compared with IE's 31.94%. This isn't the first time that Chrome has gotten ahead, however. And the race itself is close - perhaps too close... Read more...
TechCrunch, May 21, 10:09am
Disruptive Retail Trend Continues As Urbanara Secures €3.5m From TA Venture
Lately we've seen the rise of e-commerce and online retailer stertups disrupting the relationship between distributors and the consumer. Etsy comes to mind of course. Meanwhile, Made.com in the UK is leading the charge, and lately Llustre (also UK) has hit on a model of re-connecting designers with consumers.
That trend continues today as Urbanara, an online retailer for "high quality home textiles and home wares" supplied direct from the people who make them, secures a significant funding round. TA Venture, together with a group of international investors, including... Read more...
TechCrunch, May 21, 10:03am
Motorola Mobility Says $12.5B Google Deal To Close Tuesday Or Wednesday. Layoffs Coming?
Google has reached the final regulatory hurdle to its $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility, with China approving the transaction over the weekend, and today Motorola Mobility filed an 8-K form that notes that it will close in the next two business days.
So what happens next? A “listening tour,” a source tells us, with new management visiting the whole of the operation, “seeing what everyone does, then making decisions.” One decision that may be close at hand has to do with headcount: we have heard that there will be layoffs coming imminently. Read more...
TechCrunch, May 21, 9:59am
Comcast Is Finally Rolling Out The X1, Its Set-top Box In The Cloud
Comcast announced Monday that it will make its newest set-top box available in Boston over the coming weeks, with a rollout planned across the entire country later this year. It's also introducing a mobile app to control the set-top box from the iPhone or iPad.
The new set-top box comes after several years of development. Comcast has been working hard to develop a new set-top box that would take all of the smarts out of the box and put it in the network, essentially allowing the cable... Read more...
TechCrunch, May 21, 9:58am
With Its Hotspot Shield Hitting 60M Downloads, AnchorFree Lands A Whopping $52M From Goldman Sachs
This morning AnchorFree, the makers of the popular virtual private network Hotspot Shield, is announcing that it has raised $52 million in series C financing from Goldman Sachs. All in all, this brings the Mountain View-based startup to over $63 million, following the $11 million the company raised in series A and B rounds, dating back to 2006.
As part of its whopping series C round, Goldman is joined by existing investors former chairman and CEO of MCI Bert... Read more...
TechCrunch, May 21, 9:34am
Xfire Raises $3M To Expand Gamer Social Networking In Asia
Xfire, which offers social networking tools for gamers, just announced that it has raised $3 million in new funding.
The round was led by Singapore-based IDM Venture Capital. It's apparently targeted specifically at expanding Xfire's presence in Asia — the company recently announced that it's partnering with China Youth Goyor Technology company to bring its services into the Chinese market. Read more...
TechCrunch, May 21, 9:25am
“Hashtag App” Lets You Follow Twitter & Instagram Hashtags In One Interface
This is kind of handy - and just in time for TechCrunch Disrupt. The team at Lemon Labs just launched a new app called "Hashtag App," which lets you follow Twitter hashtags on your iPhone or iPad. But there are a bunch of apps for that, including Twitter itself, you say? Very true. That's why Hashtag App kicks things up a notch and supports Instagram hashtags as well. Fun! Read more...
TechCrunch, May 21, 9:22am
As The End Of Google Docs Draws Near, Google Asks Stragglers To Transition To Google Drive
Google always pitched Google Drive, which launched in April after a considerable period of hype, as a replacement for Google Docs. What many users didn't realize, it seems, is that Google will indeed completely replace Google Docs with Drive later this year. While Drive is still opt-in at this time, it looks like the forced transition is coming soon, as Google has started to alert users that their Google Docs account will soon be "upgraded to Google Drive." Read more...
TechCrunch, May 21, 9:20am
Facebook Shares Slide Nearly 12% To $33.76 On Second Trading Day After IPO
Facebook shares dropped more than 13 percent to $33.14 -- below the company's final $38 price in the company's highly anticipated initial public offering last week. Today is an interesting test for Facebook's worth because the company's shares will no longer be supported by the IPO's lead underwriter Morgan Stanley.
Facebook's performance today may further stoke the debate over whether its IPO was priced well. To save face on Friday, Morgan Stanley had to step in to make sure that Facebook shares didn't close below their opening price. There were also Read more...
TechCrunch, May 21, 9:18am
B-Ball, Travel, And Spoilers, Oh My! Hulu’s New Slate Of Exclusives and Originals
Hulu announced a new slate of original and exclusive programming Monday morning, as the video site ventures further into creating its own content. For Hulu, it's a way to begin controlling its own destiny and distinguishing itself from all the content produced by parents and part-owners Fox, NBC and Disney.
For its originals, Hulu is teaming up with Hollywood big shots like Kevin Smith and Richard Linklater. Smith will work on a show called Spoilers, which will invite movie fans to discuss all the biggest movies being released. Linklater's Up To Speed is a... Read more...
TechCrunch, May 21, 8:44am
Saygent Launches In-App Voice Feedback System: Lets Customers Vent To Apps, Not On Twitter
Apple's Siri has been transforming how people interact with their phones. It taught us that it's not just OK to talk to our phones, but that, in many cases, it's actually a more useful way to get things done. Along those same lines, a company called Saygent is launching a mobile feedback solution which developers can insert into their application to collect feedback from the app's users. Available as an SDK for easy integration, the toolkit can be used within any type of application. But Saygent is specifically targeting the emerging mobile wallet space to start.
The idea with mSay, as it's being called, is that mobile wallet providers (think, companies like... Read more...
TechCrunch, May 21, 8:20am
Tremor Video Launches Platform For Building Ads That Work On Any Mobile Phone
Until recently, mobile video ads have mostly been pretty boring. That's because, frankly, they're difficult to make and scale across all the different devices that brands, agencies and marketers want to serve them in. So instead, they serve up boring old display ads, or maybe pre-rolls, against mobile video.
Ad network Tremor Video is hoping to change all that, with the release of a new platform that will make it easier for agencies to create and serve up more interactive mobile video ads. With Tremor's Mobile Creative Platform, agencies can avoid the problem of device fragmentation. Read more...
TechCrunch, May 21, 7:05am
Married Mr. Zuckerberg, Business Man?
With a wedding ring on his finger and his company public, is Mark Zuckerberg ready to make Facebook produce more profits, not just more social connections?
His fanfare-less marriage to long-time girlfriend Priscilla Chan this weekend would seem to indicate he won't be getting too distracted by family life. But just before Facebook IPO'd on Friday, he announced on stage that "Our mission isn't to be a public company."
As the young CEO enters this next phase of his life, he faces perhaps... Read more...
TechCrunch, May 21, 1:47am
Backstage With The Disrupt NYC Hackathon Winners: Thingscription, PoachBase, & PractiKhan
The speaker schedule for TechCrunch's Disrupt NYC conference has been set for a while now, but three brand new presenters were just added to the lineup: The winners announced earlier today at the finale of this past weekend's 24 hour Disrupt 2012 Hackathon, Thingscription, PoachBase, and PractiKhan.
Since the winning apps were so seriously awesome -- and we... Read more...
TechCrunch, May 20, 11:40pm
$150,000 Is Up For Grabs At Stanford’s BASES Finale This Week
Stanford has been a hotbed of startup activity for what seems like forever, and one reason for that is its Business Association of Stanford Entrepreneurial Students (BASES) program. The group, which has been instrumental in promoting startup activity at the university for the last 15 years, will be awarding $150,000 in prizes to participants from four different funding competitions this Tuesday.
The BASES Finale brings together four different funding competitions for one full-day event. From 10:00 am to 7:00 pm at the Arrillaga Alumni Center, groups will present as part of the Read more...
TechCrunch, May 20, 11:09pm
The Story Behind Payment Disruptor Stripe.com And Its Founder Patrick Collison
Paypal created a cost effective way to safely accept payments 10 years ago, but the web has changed dramatically and accepting payments has not. Enter Stripe, a company that in my opinion is going to get very influential over the next few years. At a recent Startup Grind event I interviewed 24-year old Irish co-founder Patrick Collison who has raised $18MM from Sequoia Capital and others. Patrick is leading a company poised to completely disrupt the online payment industry starting with your website. Read more...
TechCrunch, May 20, 8:00pm
TC/Gadgets Webcast: Live From Disrupt NYC
This week we recorded live from the show floor at Disrupt NYC. We sat through 24 hours straight of hot-rod hacking at the Hackathon and now we're preparing for the main show and, most important, the brand new Hardware Alley where we'll have loads of great hardware start-ups for you guys to check out. Read more...
TechCrunch, May 20, 6:14pm
From A Disrupt Win To $18M In Funding And 4M+ Downloads, Soluto Tells All
Disrupt NYC 2012 begins in approximately 12 hours (tickets here).
But it's been two years since Soluto, the software that will make your computer simply run better, took home the Disrupt Cup at the TC Disrupt NYC Battlefield in 2010. The company entered the competition with a total of $7.8 million, and after walking away with the $50,000 round, secured another $10.2 million in... Read more...
TechCrunch, May 20, 6:01pm
How Android Developers Can Thrive With Google Play
Apple’s planned phase-out of the UDID has introduced considerable angst in the app marketing community. The UDID provides a standard, widely supported method for attributing performance of advertising campaigns. Unfortunately, there’s no single solution to replace the UDID and it appears the iOS market is fragmenting, with multiple technologies vying for developer attention. This is making it difficult for app developers to allocate their resources.
With all this uncertainty, some marketers are looking more closely at Google Play to fuel their continued growth in mobile. Unfortunately, many marketers are... Read more...
TechCrunch, May 20, 5:39pm
Silicon Valley Can Do Better Than Facebook
Congratulations to Facebook for going public. Congratulations to the employees that are now millionaires. Congratulations to the founders who are now billionaires. Congratulations to the bankers, lawyers and investors who have added to their already considerable wealth. You’ve grasped the brass ring we’re all reaching for.
Yet the company that’s been created isn’t what I want from Silicon Valley. Read more...
TechCrunch, May 20, 5:00pm
Introducing Our 2012 Disrupt NYC Hackathon Winners: Thingscription, PoachBase, And Practikhan!
After nearly 24 hours of fighting fatigue and crafting code, our Disrupt NY 2012 Hackathon is finally drawing to a close. Not a moment too soon -- I think some of our hackers are about ready to keel over at this point.
Nevertheless, we just got an eyeful of 92 projects that our wonderful hackers have been slaving away on through the night, but only three teams will be able to show off their work on the main Disrupt stage this Wednesday. Read more...
TechCrunch, May 20, 2:26pm
Twitter Back Up In Pakistan After An Order From The Prime Minister
A temporary solution to the drama that unfolded this morning when Twitter was blocked in Pakistan -- some believe over representations of the Prophet Mohammed and Twitter's refusal to block these images; and some believe while it was testing an image filtering service. Whatever it was, the site is now back up --after an order from Prime Minister.
Pakistan's Express Tribune is reporting that Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani made the decision after the site was down... Read more...
TechCrunch, May 20, 1:56pm
New Project, Roominate, Offers A Fully-Wired Dollhouse For Kids
Teaching kids - especially little girls - about electronics is a hard job. First, there's the electricity. Then there's the sense that soldering, wiring, and lining up LEDs is considerably less fun than watching Tangled. This project, called Roominate, aims to change the way girls think about electricity.
The kit consists of a set of tiny furniture with built-in wires and switches. You can wire up your dollhouse however you like, adding lamps and switches. $49 gets you one regular room and $95 gets you a "duplex." Read more...
TechCrunch, May 20, 1:29pm