Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Y! Alert: TechCrunch

Yahoo! Alerts
My Alerts

The latest from TechCrunch

Former Facebook VP Chamath Palihapitiya Leads $17M Round In Enterprise Social Networking Platform Yammer Top
yammerYammer, an enterprise social network and communications platform, has raised $17 million in new funding led by The Social+Capital Partnership, a new fund established by former Facebook Vice President Chamath Palihapitiya. Previous investors Charles River Ventures, Emergence Capital and U.S. Venture Partners also participated in the round. Palihapitiya will have an observer's seat on Yammer's board of directors. This brings Yammer's total financing to $57 million. For background, Yammer launched as the "Twitter for businesses" at TechCrunch 50 in 2008. But over the past year, the startup has expanded to become a more comprehensive platform for social networking within the enterprise.
 
"Toilettenpapier Drucker" Is What You Think It Is Top
toiletpaper_printerIf you told me two-and-a-half decades ago that this tow-headed youngster from Columbus, Ohio who spent his evenings looking up at the stars, engrossed in endless wonder at the boundless horizon of the invisible universe, would one day be able to print on toilet paper in his lifetime, he would have spit at you and then kicked your dog. He was a pretty crappy kid. But it has happened: we can now use off-the-shelf components to print on toilet paper. This is the end of history.
 
CloudFlare Turns One; Launches IPv6 Gateway To Let Websites 'Join The Modern Internet' For Free Top
cloudflare-logoPut one big, fat candle on the cake. One year ago today, a startup named CloudFlare launched on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco, where the startup placed second to Qwiki. (You can read our initial coverage here.) For those unfamiliar with CloudFlare, the startup offers a free service designed to not only boost the speed of your company's website but also protect it from those nefarious web-born threats that hamper load times and just generally make IT guys grumble. Not a sexy product, but one that's necessary and integral to the success of web businesses. To give a quick snapshot of how appealing this service is to eBusinesses: 365 days after launch, CloudFlare is now powering over 100,000 websites, with more than 5 percent of those seeing over 1.5 million monthly page views. From zero traffic to today powering a host of websites that see a collective 15 billion page views per month and more than 350 million unique visitors, CloudFlare apparently has a fairly significant silver lining.
 
Tiny Speck's Glitch Goes Live For Everyone At 10AM PST Today Top
Uralia - Ilmenskie copyGlitch, the storied massively multi-player online game we've been chronicling for 23 months now, opens to the public today at 10 am PST. In case you were wondering, Glitch has been garnering so much attention and press time because the company behind it, Tiny Speck,  is the brainchild of some core members of the original Flickr team including co-founder Stewart Butterfield, Cal Henderson, Eric Costello and Serguei Mourachov.
 
Social Q&A Site Sharecare And Healthline Announce Partnership On Health Search Services Top
sharecareExclusive - Social Q&A site Sharecare.com, created by WebMD founder Jeff Arnold and TV's Dr. Mehmet Oz, is partnering with Healthline Networks, a provider of intelligent health information services. Healthline currently powers the health platforms at Yahoo Health, AARP, Aetna, United Health Group and others. Going forward, it will power Sharecare's search services too.
 
MOG Is Now Streaming On Samsung Smart TVs And Blu-ray Players Top
mog-logo-big-275x97MOG is following the tried and true method of expanding its appeal by expanding onto new hardware and just announced that the music streaming service is now streaming on select Samsung Smart TVs and Blu-ray players. This gives owners of 2010 and 2011 Sammy TVs and Blu-ray players access to MOG's impressive 12 million song library streamed at 320kbps. This latest move follows other streaming service's quick adoption of multiple hardware platforms. MOG is now accessible on iOS devices, Android phones, LG TVs and streamers such as Boxee, Roku, and Sonos. And they're not done.
 
Toshiba Shows TransferJet-Compatible LSI For Stable Wireless Data Exchange Top
TC35420Close proximity technology TransferJet is evolving. Toshiba has developed an LSI (pictured) that supports TransferJet and is designed specifically for mobile devices. The LSI is sized at just 4.0×4.0× 0.5mm and the smallest of its kind, according to Toshiba. The company says the LSI achieves a receiving sensitivity of -78dBm, outperforming the value of the TransferJet standard itself (-71dBm) and making data transfer between two TransferJet-equipped devices more stable (it actually boasts the industry's highest sensitivity).
 
Cloud Software Company Joyent Raises $5 Million Top
joyentJoyent, a San Francisco-based cloud computing software and service provider, has secured $5 million in debt funding according to an SEC filing. The company, which was founded back in 2004, offers an integrated technology suite and related services geared towards service providers, medium-sized and large enterprises, and developers.
 
Foxconn Is Burning: Fire In Yantai Shuts Down Plant Top
6187903203_a63714a07eIt's happened again: a Foxconn plant explosion has caused a large fire in Yantai. According to MICGadget the fire stemmed from "improper operation of workmanship on color spraying" which suggests a aerosol paint may be involved. The last fire happened in May in Chengdu. This fire was at a plant that made PCs, laptops, and printers. It employs and, in some cases, houses 80,000 workers, many of whom were evacuated. The blaze lasted 30 minutes and there are no reports of casualties.
 
Oh, Hey Google: Chomp Launches Its Own AdWords For App Search; Brings Realtime Search To iPhone Top
chomp-logo-600x200Two weeks ago, we covered Chomp's news that it will be powering app search on Verizon's app store for all Android phones. Today, the app search early player is announcing some more big news, and this time advertisers and developers are the ones who stand to benefit. Launching in private beta today is "Chomp Search Ads", a new program that will allow developers to bid on the keywords or phrases that will deliver their ads to users who search for those terms within an app search engine. The ad engine then matches app ads to the most relevant potential customer based on what apps they're currently searching, making ads less annoying and more relevant for the consumer and ideally more lucrative for developers.
 
HOSPI-Rimo: Meet Panasonic's Cute Assistance Robot Top
HOSPI-RimoPanasonic Japan announced [press release in English] the development of the so-called HOSPI-Rimo yesterday, a cute "Communication Assistance Robot" specifically designed for medical use. HOSPI-Rimo (Remote Intelligence and Mobility) is supposed to make it easier for bedridden patients to get in touch with doctors or family members living far away ("virtual visits"). Technically, the mobile robot is based on the HOSPI, which Panasonic introduced last year. That robot is equipped with four laser range finders, 27 ultrasonic sensors and the ability to change floors in buildings autonomously.
 
Home Decor Flash Sales Site HomeSav.com Raises $1.2 Million Top
homesavLuxury home decor flash sale site HomeSav.com this morning announced that it has raised $1.2 million in seed financing from multiple retail angel investors and entrepreneurs including the Koffler family and the Metrick family (founders and owners of Canada's largest high-end home furniture retailer). In addition, HomeSav.com says it has grown its membership by over 1,400 percent in the first year to over 100,000 registered users in the United States and Canada. Its members are said to place over 100 orders per day.
 
Nokia's Only MeeGo Smartphone, The N9, Starts Shipping (Pricing Starts At €480) Top
n9Nokia this morning announced that its sleek new smartphone, the N9 - which will almost certainly be the first and only MeeGo handset to ever see the light of day - has begun shipping to customers who've pre-ordered the device, and retail stores. The N9 features an interesting UI that's controlled with a simple swipe. The buttonless smartphone features three home views (Applications, Events and Live Applications) that are designed to enable people to easily and swiftly navigate the interface.
 
Wikets Raises $1.5 Million From Andreessen Horowitz, Battery For A Rewarding Social Commerce App Top
Screen shot 2011-09-27 at 1.23.52 AMWikets, Inc., a young social commerce startup, announced today that it has raised $1.5 million in seed funding from venture firms Andreessen Horowitz and Battery Ventures, as well as from six angel investors, including Robert Davoli of Sigma Partners. The startup will use its seed capital, says Wikets co-founder and CEO Andy Park, to ramp up hiring and prepare for the release of its eponymous iPhone app, which will reward users for providing and sharing recommendations on products and places to their friends -- while on the go. From this brief description, Wikets may sound a little bit like a game-ified rewards system overlaid on, say, Yelp. While the Wikets team is not yet sharing all the details of the app's UX -- as the team is busy putting the finishing touches on the app ahead of its expected release date in early October -- nut, to be sure, Wikets is more than a Yelp with badges, designed instead around social commerce, around helping users discover and connect with like-minded people based on shared favorite places and products.
 
Human Translation Platform myGengo Raises $5.25 Million From Atomico, 500 Startups Top
mygengoTokyo-based human translation service myGengo ("Mechanical Turk for translations") has raised a Series A Round of funding. The US$5.25 million round was led by Atomico, the London-based VC firm headed by Skype co-founder Niklas Zennström, and existing investor 500 Startups. Atomico partner Hiro Tamura will join myGengo's board of directors. This capital injection follows the US$1.75 million in seed funding the company raised from a group of investors so far (myGengo's other backers include Mitch Kapor, Team Europe Ventures, Point Nine, and more). myGengo says the fresh money will serve to bolster sales/marketing/engineering, to expand its API business, and to grow its global native translator network.
 
You Can Now Get A Taste Of The New Delicious (Screenshots + Video) Top
delifDelicious is back. Million dollar question is not: will you use the revamped social bookmarking service? But rather, will your mom, sister, and that dorky teenage kid from across the street use it? As you may have heard, Delicious was saved from Yahoo's incompetent hands by AVOS, the new startup created by YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, in April 2011. Today, AVOS is relaunching Delicious, which they say was "rebuilt from the ground up".
 
Daily Crunch: Believe Top
1432Here are some of yesterday’s Gadgets stories: Japan Gets 8 New Cell Phones: KDDI's Entire Winter Line-Up Amazon, Fox Streaming Deal Brings 11k Movies And TV Shows To Prime Instant Video Bose Announces Two Soundbar Systems Handheld Console Compresses Super Mario Brothers Down To 64 Pixels TC Gadgets Webcast Episode 3: Phones, TVs, and Muscles
 
With Moneyball In Theaters And October Closing In, Baseball Geeks Get A Mobile App Top
LogoFor baseball fans, that magical month is almost afoot. October: The time in which we look on, annoyed, as our favorite team heads to Florida to play golf, or stumbles, gets injured, and whimpers quietly out of the playoffs. It's a testy time for most, but still one most of us would never miss. Another thing baseball fans have likely noticed: Moneyball -- a book written about the Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane and his use of sabermetrics and other newfangled ways of keeping tabs on which players are undervalued, etc. -- has been made into a film and is being shown in theaters nationwide. For those unfamiliar with any of the above, the reason this is of interest to baseball fans? Moneyball highlighted a then ongoing re-conception of what metrics and methods teams and organizations use to evaluate players. Thanks to Moneyball and the ascendancy of Bill James and his sabermetrics, geeks were finally able to secure a place in the clubhouse. I haven't yet seen Moneyball, but it's on my towering list of things to do this week, to be sure. So, in the spirit of a close wild card race, the encroaching playoffs, and the release of Moneyball, here's a cool new app for iOS called Baseball Mobile that is, simply put, a fast and easy way to get baseball stats on your iOS devices. Not stats geeks can go mobile. With authority.
 
Google Taps Kleiner-Backed Inrix To Provide Real Time Traffic Data For Maps And Navigation Apps Top
inrixGoogle recently removed its realtime traffic data from its Maps product, informing users that they are "currently working to come up with a better, more accurate solution." It looks like that solution will be provided by realtime car traffic data company Inrix. Google has selected Inrix's technology to help power its navigation and mapping applications. Inrix, which just raised $37 million from Kleiner Perkins and August Capital, aggregates and crowdsources real-time traffic information from more than 30 million sources including cars, taxis, delivery vehicles, trucks and other channels, Inrix's data software aggregates and enhances traffic-related information from hundreds of public and private sources and then sells this data to mobile app developers and websites.
 
A List Of Things Paul Carr's New Startup Isn't Top
Screen Shot 2011-09-26 at 10.59.49 PMApparently my former colleague and fellow Diet Coke fiend Paul Carr is founding a startup post-TechCrunch, instead of heading back to professional blog jockeying like the rest of us pixel-stained wretches. Yay Paul. So what on earth is it already? Well Carr himself told me that the startup is a media-play, traversing the intersection between old media and new media -- "the third way," as he puts it. Okay.
 

CREATE MORE ALERTS:

Auctions - Find out when new auctions are posted

Horoscopes - Receive your daily horoscope

Music - Get the newest Album Releases, Playlists and more

News - Only the news you want, delivered!

Stocks - Stay connected to the market with price quotes and more

Weather - Get today's weather conditions




You received this email because you subscribed to Yahoo! Alerts. Use this link to unsubscribe from this alert. To change your communications preferences for other Yahoo! business lines, please visit your Marketing Preferences. To learn more about Yahoo!'s use of personal information, including the use of web beacons in HTML-based email, please read our Privacy Policy. Yahoo! is located at 701 First Avenue, Sunnyvale, CA 94089.
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)