Friday, January 27, 2012

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AT&T Tripled Wi-Fi Connections In Q4; Mobile Data Uploads Up 550 Percent In 2011 Top
attOn the heels of the news that AT&T delivered its best quarter ever in terms of smartphone sales, the communications company and carrier is releasing its quarterly data on the number of AT&T wi-fi connections made in Q4 and in 2011 as a whole. AT&T sais that it tripled Wi-Fi network traffic in 2011 versus network traffic for 2010. And the network saw a 550 percent increase in monthly Wi-Fi data uploads from mobile devices on the AT&T Wi-Fi network in 2011, driven by increasing use of cloud services.
 
Hotel Reputation Management Software Maker Olery Raises $1 Million Top
oleryOlery, an Amsterdam-based startup that offers reputation management and media monitoring tools for the leisure industry, has raised 750,000 euros ($1 million) to boost its international expansion and develop new products. Founded in 2010, Olery offers simple online brand, reputation management and performance benchmarking tools for hotels that help turn online reviews and social media feedback into actionable business intelligence. Read more at TechCrunch Europe.
 
Startup Weekend & Tech Cocktail Compete To Recruit Startups For Startup America Top
MasterChallenge-TCvsSWStartup America's Master Challenge showdown is now underway. This fun, friendly competition pits influential tech groups against each other, to see which one can encourage more startups to join the Startup America Partnership. The winning group gets bragging rights, of course, and will be recognized at upcoming events, like Startup America's Anniversary and at SXSW. Past challenges included East vs. West and Feld vs. TechStars, for example. This week's competition, which kicked off just this morning, is between Tech Cocktail and Startup Weekend.
 
Report: Nintendo Considering Changing The Wii U's Name Top
tetrisfailThe Wii U brand is a bit underwhelming. At best it builds upon a very successive product. But at worst the name suggests its simply an add-on rather than a completely revamped system. A new report just surfaced that sources a Nintendo insider stating the company is considering renaming the next-gen Wii. Nintendo is quickly spiraling down. The Wii U -- or whatever it's to be called -- needs to be a hit. Nintendo cannot misplace another piece in Tetris.
 
RIM's New CEO Backtracks: "There Is A Lot Of Change" Top
ThorstenHeinsOn Monday of this week, RIM's new CEO made a statement that set off a bomb on the blogosphere, and I'm not sure he understood its repercussions at the time. "I don't think any drastic change is needed." If you've been paying attention to RIM and its numbers, you know that what the company desperately needs is change. Sales are declining, platform market share is dwindling, and the BlackBerry brand, to a large extent, has lost the power it once had behind it. So in a recent interview with CrackBerry, Heins made sure to clarify exactly what he meant by "no drastic change is needed."
 
Apple Overtakes Samsung As World's Largest Smartphone Vendor In Q4 Top
Apple-Further-Explores-Possibility-of-Telephonic-MacBooks-2According to the latest report from Strategy Analytics, Apple has now overtaken Samsung to become the world's largest smartphone vendor by volume. Apple achieved 23.9% market share during Q4 2011, narrowly beating out Samsung's 23.5% share. In addition, Apple shipped 37 million units in Q4, again going neck-and-neck with Samsung and its 36.5 million units shipped during the same time.
 
The HP TouchPad Rides Back Into Town On Woot's Back Top
touchpadSomewhere, someone out there is curled in a corner, sobbing because they missed out on the last HP TouchPad sale. Ebay messed up, he says. It wasn't his fault. He clicked the button but Ebay's servers crashed. So now he's alone. Left to sulk in his missed opportunities. But fear not, friend! I bring you great news from the land of the Internet! Woot finagled another batch of TouchPad tablets! They're refurbs and priced higher than before, but they're TouchPads! But you better act quick! Don't let another chance to own a failed tablet slip between your fingers!
 
Google Spent Nearly $2 Billion On 79 Acquisitions In 2011 Top
googleYesterday, Google filed its 10-K with the SEC, revealing the number of acquisitions and money spent on these purchases in the year. As of Q3, Google had spent over $1.4 billion on 55 acquisitions for the year. Google ended 2011 spending $1.9 billion (including cash and stock) on completing 79 acquisitions during the entirety of the year. Some of the bigger purchases included ITA Software, which was purchased for $676 million in cash. As we know Google is spending $12.5 billion on Motorola (which isn't included in 2011's calculations), with a termination fee of $2.5 billion if the deal fails to get regulatory approval. The transaction is currently expected to close in early 2012.
 
NEC Forecasts $1.3 Billion Loss, Ready To Cut 10,000 Jobs Worldwide Top
Image (1) nec_logo_blue_large.jpg for post 218717Bad news from Japanese tech powerhouse NEC: the company yesterday announced [PDF] a net loss of $1.13 billion in the three months through December 2011, compared with a net loss of "just" US$350 million in the same time frame last fiscal. NEC said it wrote down its deferred tax assets. For the three-month period, revenue dropped from $9.3 billion to $8.7 billion year-on-year. For the full fiscal (which ends in March this year), NEC now expects a net loss of $1.3 billion. The company says restructuring costs alone will cause a US$520 million net loss.
 
Shoply Aims To Socialize Ecommerce, Raises Seed Funding From Top Notch Investors Top
shoplyExclusive - On a mission to democratize e-commerce and help take the concept of social shopping from fad to reality, Shoply is making its formal debut today after a year of bootstrapping. The bootstrapping days are over now, as Shoply has raised an undisclosed amount of seed financing from former Facebook VP Chamath Palihapitiya and serial entrepreneur / prolific angel investor Fabrice Grinda for its "Fab.com and Pinterest love child".
 
Disney, Q-pot Choco, Honey Bee: Japan Gets 3 Extra-Cute Android Phones Top
qpot sharp 2Android adoption is growing rapidly in Japan, with local handset manufacturers doing everything they can in order to meet the demands of customers in all segments of the population. One particularly attractive target group seems to be women, given how many Japanese companies say they design Android phones specifically for female users. Here are three recent examples.
 
European Startup Accelerators Gradually Revealing Data – But We Need Much More Top
Startup-SaunaWith the rise of numerous accelerator programs in Europe one cannot help but wonder whether jumping through the application process hoops, sweating through the mentoring sessions and flirting with investors at demo days are all worth a founders' time. When I attended the recent Startup Sauna demo day in Helsinki in December 2011, I met teams not only from Finland but also from Russia, Poland and the Baltic Rim. I was amazed how young many of the participating entrepreneurs were. So when the performance stats from Startup Sauna hit my mailbox I was curious to learn what actually happens to all those startups after they complete the seven-weeks-long coaching program in the startup co-working space Aalto Venture Garage.
 
Attn Student Entrepreneurs: Highland Capital Wants To Help Kickstart Your Business Top
Screen shot 2012-01-27 at 1.45.45 AMVC firm Highland Capital Partners is sounding the horn for their fifth annual "Summer@Highland" entrepreneurship program. The 10-week program aims to provide young, talented entrepreneurs with the environment and resources they need to kickstart their early-stage technology companies.
 
Not A Bad Bundle Idea: 'The Sound Supply' Offers 10 Digital Music Albums For $15 Top
soundsupplyForgive me if you've seen this on Boing Boing yesterday already, but I'm always looking for interesting startups in the digital music space, and I think The Sound Supply's idea is, well, sound. Basically, The Sound Supply bundles 10 DRM-free digital music albums and lets you buy the lot online for a mere $15. According to the website, all participating bands and artists - including the wonderful Sophie Madeleine and Colour Revolt - agreed to collectively share their music this way.
 
What Apple Should Do With Its $100 Billion In Cash: Buy Hollywood Top
apple-cash"Kill Hollywood," is the latest battle cry from Silicon Valley. If you are Paul Graham, that's not a bad way to motivate young would-be founders to create new startups. But what if you are Apple, trading spots with Exxon on any given day for the most valuable company in the world, with nearly $100 billion of cash in the bank, looking for the next industry to overturn to keep fueling your growth? There aren't that many new markets out there that can make a difference to Apple at this point. Hollywood is one of them. If you are Apple, however, you don't want to kill Hollywood. You want to buy it.
 
Knewton Prepares To Take Education by Storm [TCTV] Top
19086v8-max-250x250Here at the World Economic Forum in Davos, among the banking, shipping, steel and transport magnates of the global economy, there are a number of technology entrepreneurs floating around. As they rub shoulders with the likes of Eric Schmidt, Sean Parker, Loic Le Meur and Robert Scoble, it's possible to peel them off from the crowd. I managed to catch Jose Ferreira, CEO and Founder of Knewton a startup which is aiming a silver bullet at the education problem with something that one might even call an audacious platform. Ferreira has raised $54M to achieve this, which is quite a sum. Despite that, he is openly critical of VCs who do not think in such word changing arenas as education.
 
Pirate Parties Organizing Lawsuit Against FBI Over Megaupload Takedown Top
pcatThe Megaupload troubles make for interesting discussion because there is much to be said on both sides. Whether the illegal aspects of the network "outweigh" the legal aspects is a question that will be discussed for months and perhaps years. But one thing can't be disputed: after the two-year investigation by the FBI, the site's takedown was swift and perhaps over-thorough. Thousands and thousands of users who had legitimate and often critical files hosted on the site have been left behind, their legal files hosted on a simple file-hosting service. A coalition of Pirate Party organizations, led by Pirates of Catalonia, are planning to sue the FBI over what they say are "huge personal, economic and image damages to a vast number of people."
 
Twitter Changes The "Contours" Of Censorship With Country-By-Country Blocking Top
twixTwitter has announced in a blog post a glorious new ability: "the ability to reactively withhold content from users in a specific country — while keeping it available in the rest of the world." At last! There are two ways of looking at this new "ability," one optimistic and one pessimistic. One is that Twitter is now more able to effectively tailor itself to the needs of certain countries. The other is that Twitter is now more able to effectively tailor itself to the needs of certain countries.
 
Too Busy To Actually Call Your Mom? Hashtagmom Does It When You Check-In Top
momSure, your mom carried you for nine months. And yeah, she wiped your bum for years, put clothes on your back, and made sure you got a decent education so you could move to California and rock a hoodie and work somewhere where there's always beer in the fridge and go-karts to be ridden. But can you really be expected to call her from time to time to let her know where you are? Time is money, Mom. Get on Foursquare or something. Looking to ease the anxiety for the mothers of the world whose brats kids are too busy to call is #hashtagmom. You check-in somewhere on Foursquare with the titular #mom hashtag, and it'll do all the talking (or texting) for you.
 
Bringing A Startup Together: FounderDating Launches Matching Site, Expands To NY, Boston, LA Top
Screen Shot 2012-01-26 at 3.16.08 PMFinding the right cofounder is often the hardest part of doing a startup, as most anyone with experience will tell you. As a personal example: the cofounder of my first company, Phil Kast, was an old high school buddy employed as a whitewater rafting guide in Colorado when we started talking about working together. He happened to be hitting the off-season right when I was trying to get started -- and everything went from there. FounderDating has been working to solve the cofounder connection problem by running regular meetups in San Francisco and Seattle. Today, it's expanding on the effort by launching a web site that screens then connects those looking for colleagues, and by announcing meetups in new cities including New York, then Boston and Los Angeles.
 

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