Thursday, January 12, 2012

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Facebook Rolling Out News Feed Ads Ambiguously Marked "Featured" Top
Featured Story in News Feed Example 2Facebook today began the slow rollout of Sponsored Story ads within its home page's main news feed. Instead of clearly marking them as "Sponsored" ads though, they're labeled "Featured". This could initially mislead users into thinking these ads are simply important stories about their friends or Pages they Like. Users might only learn they are paid ads after hovering over the marking. Facebook is trying to distinguish them from sidebar ads that are marked "Sponsored" but that can be bought by any advertisers. However, most people don't associate the word "featured" with "paid ad".
 
T-Mobile Debuts The Samsung Galaxy S Blaze 4G Top
BlazeJust two years ago, everyone at CES was asking one question: Where are all the Android phones? If anybody asked that same question this year, they'd be met with blank stares and guffaws. This show has been jammed with Android phone after Android phone since before it even officially started. The latest one off the line is T-Mobile's Galaxy S Blaze 4G (bit of a mouthful, eh?), which is the third device to play friendly with T-mobiles 42Mbps HSPA+ network — which, by the way, just saw a bunch of expansion.
 
MADE.com Raises £6m In Series B Financing Top
ning-li-made-dot-comApparently, "there are only three areas in ecommerce to build billion dollar business: amazon, zappos and furniture". That's at least according to Oliver Samwer of clone factory Rocket Internet in Berlin. Perhaps he right. Because now Made.com, a London based start-up that offers consumers designer furniture online at factory prices, has raised a £6 million series B funding to expand its brand in the UK and fuel international expansion. New York-based growth equity investor, Level Equity, led the funding round with additional investment from founding investors, PROfounders Capital.
 
Pin Drop iPhone App Is Like An Evernote For Location Top
pindropPin Drop is a new iPhone app and website which helps people mark locations that matter to them. One or two other startups are trying out this arena, most notable Everplaces, still in private beta, however it feels like the market is wide open for this kind of application which you could also describe as a sort of Evernote for location I think. Users can drop their own pins or they can take inspiration from the curated lists feature. Each pin can then be assigned to multiple categories allowing users to build up a library of their favourite locations.
 
When I Search Your Name, I'm Not Looking For Your Google+ Profile Top
Google Search Plus Your World Twitter Wikipedia LogoWhat most alarms me about today's "Google Search Plus Your World" announcement is how it will distort name searches. When I Google someone's name, I'm typically looking for a Wikipedia entry, their Twitter account, a personal website, or an author page on their blog. Today, Google Search handles this well, often returning these as the top results. But *thanks* to Search Plus Your World, soon I'll see Google+ profiles more prominently even though they're rarely what I'm looking for.
 
Watch The TechCrunch Gadgets Webcast Live Now! (Bonus: Awesome Giveaways!) Top
After a day of roaming the show floor in search of all things shiny and new, we thought it'd be a good idea to gather up the crew and do one big ol' recap of everything we've seen so far. We've got gadgets, we've got guests — and, because we know how much you guys love free stuff, we've got a bunch of (really, really great) giveaways.
 
Is It Time For Computers To Have Their Own .Data Domains? Top
dataThe web, as we all know, was built for humans. A nice graphical interface to the internet, which has been around much longer. But as the web has grown from a nice way to display information to the largest computing infrastructure on the planet, we need to make the web friendlier for computers once again. Computers don't want to look at pretty web pages. They want data. Of course, there are a whole mish-mash of APIs and other ways computers speak to one another across the internet. But it is not standardized, and it is a mess. Computer scientist and Wolphram Alpha founder Stephen Wolfram thinks there is a better way for computers to speak to each other. He suggests that it is time for a new .data top-level domain.
 
Twitter Really, Really Hates Google's New Google+ Integration Top
twitterblackThis morning, Google began rolling out a major change to its core search engine that intertwines results from Google+ (and Picasa) with the 'normal' algorithmically-generated results we've come to expect. There have been plenty of critiques of the news, including John Battelle's discussion on how this isn't actually integrating 'Your World', as Google calls it, but rather just its own social network. And now there's another critic that's coming out swinging: Twitter. Earlier today the company's General Counsel Alex Macgillivray, who was a top attorney at Google prior to making the jump to Twitter, called it "A bad day for the Internet", and stated that some of his former colleagues were likely upset by the decision to "warp" Google's results. And now Twitter itself has followed up with a statement denouncing the feature — and rather relying on the wishy-washy PR speak big companies are fond of, it's very direct. Here's the full statement:
 
TC/Gadgets: An Interview With Nest Co-Founder Matt Rogers Top
Screen Shot 2012-01-10 at 1.33.42 PMThe hottest and coolest thermostat on the market this year was clearly the Nest. This intelligent hunk of steel looks great on a wall and, more important, helps save energy in the home. The Nest learns as you use it, ensuring your home is comfortable year-round.
 
Social Travel In Realtime: HipGeo Offers A Glimpse Into The Future Of Location-Aware Apps Top
Screen shot 2012-01-10 at 12.00.10 PMAs Semil showed back in November, social travel sites are all the rage these days among the entrepreneurs, offering plenty of interesting approaches to offering recommendations on where and how to travel. You may not have heard of HipGeo, but if you're a traveler, this is something that will likely pique your curiosity. HipGeo has developed a location-aware platform that records and displays the places users go and how they get there, and today they've released a new app that is essentially a travel diary for the modern Web.
 
Tune In At 4pm Pacific/7pm Eastern For Our TC Gadgets CES Recap (Plus Prizes!) #CESCrunch Top
ps-vita-004-19441After the onslaught of media that is CES, who wouldn't want more CES? We definitely do, which is why we're running the TC Gadgets Webcast live at 4pm Pacific/7pm Eastern straight out of our posh studio on the CES show floor. Our goal? To recap the day's news, interview cool people, and give away amazing prizes. Today we're giving away a real, live Sony Vita to one lucky winner - details during the broadcast - but watch this space for some great content and be sure to watch our daily live streams from the show floor. We'll be running these webcasts every day at 4pm Pacific, giving away great prizes in the process.
 
IK Multimedia Adds MIC Cast, STOMP and MIX to their iRig Line Top
image-1IK Multimedia unleashes a plethora of new hardware this week at CES 2012 within their iRig line. This triumvirate of products look to make it easier than ever to use iOS devices, live and inline, with analog musical instruments like guitars, bases, vocals and regular DJ consoles.
 
Corel Launches AfterShot Pro, A $99 Aperture Competitor Top
26420Corel's new AfterShot Pro software runs on Windows, Mac, Linux(!) and offers a $99 package for managing photos including RAW handling, image editing, and quick library management. AfterShot is a digital photography workflow app like Aperture and Lightroom. It's chock full of goodies like a complete RAW workflow, flexible management, advanced non-destructive editing, robust metadata tools, batch processing, and integration with the image editor of your choice.
 
We're Live From The CES Show Floor! #cescrunch Top
While we've been running around Vegas like mad to cover all of the pre-CES happenings, the main event starts... now. We're streaming live from the Las Vegas Convention Center, where the biggest companies in the world have gathered to show off their best and brightest new toys. All of the chaos of the show floor, beamed right to your house. Live! Oh, how wonderful the future is. Join us!
 
Georgia Tech's Flashpoint Accelerator Graduates Its First Class Of Startups Top
FlashpointFlashpoint, a startup accelerator program based at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, Georgia, just had its first Demo Day at the Georgia Tech Research Institute. The newly launched incubator follows the typical format for programs like this, offering seed funding, mentorship, support, shared workspace and more, in return for a 6% share of the startup. This accelerator is especially interested in investing in early stage startups in the technology, medical device and biotech industries. With its $1 million fund, the organization typically provides between $15,000 and $25,000 in funding to the companies accepted into the program. The first Demo Day saw over a dozen in the graduating class, including one which already received funding from Andreessen Horowitz pre-launch.
 
Hands On With Zomm's Lifestyle Connect: For If You've Fallen And You Can't Get Up Top
Zomm's latest creation is called Lifestyle Connect, a small Bluetooth device that acts, in short, as an emergency alert system for folks who might have some health issues and live alone. If you fall or injure yourself in the home, the Lifestyle Connect will signal your phone to call the proper authorities as well as your friends and family. The system locates you - whether you're at home or outside - and handles everything with voice control.
 
Pyxis Mobile Raises $17M, Rebrands As Verivo, Pivots To Licensable App Platform Top
Verivo Build Deploy ManageEvery business seems to want its own mobile software, and now Pyxis Mobile is transforming to help companies build apps for themselves. Previously, Pyxis created apps for enterprise financial services companies, but today pivots to offer its app development platform directly to clients. The company has rebranded itself as Verivo Software, and taken a $17 million funding round from Commonwealth Capital Ventures, as well as existing investors Ascent Venture Partners and Egan-Managed Capital.
 
Watch The Pioneer CES 2012 Press Conference: AppRadio 2 For All Top
Pioneer's AppRadio was pretty darn cool when it first launched and now there's another version with improved apps, improved UI, and improved hardware. We hung out with Pioneer at CES yesterday and here is the raw feed featuring Pioneer's products including car stereos, AppRadio, iPhone interfaces for your whip.
 
Want A Complete Year-End Report On Your Email (For Free)? ToutApp Has You Covered. Top
Screen shot 2012-01-10 at 1.34.39 AMI've been meaning to write about this for awhile now, but I've been a bit under the weather and, well, email is not a subject I always enjoy -- in discussion or in practice. Yes, as many have written before, we have a love-hate relationship with email, which has been shown in even starker relief with the redesign of Gmail. We first wrote about ToutApp back in June of last year and again in November, because they are a young startup (backed by some smart people) trying to give us a shot at greater email productivity.
 
CES 2012: An Interview With Gary Shapiro, President of The CEA And A Really Nice Guy Top
Gary Shapiro, President of the Consumer Electronics Association Every year we try our best to talk to Gary Shapiro, the man behind Consumer Electronic Show. He's a guy who at least appears to genuinely wants to see big and small companies succeed. Last year we spoke about his book, The Comeback: How Innovation Will Restore the American Dream, that calls America to action. But this year, with Microsoft leaving CES and the show seemingly shrinking, we had a bit more to talk about.
 

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