Wednesday, January 4, 2012

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It's Official: Yahoo Announces Scott Thompson As Its New CEO Top
The search is over. Yahoo just named Scott Thompson as its new Chief Executive Officer, effective January 9, 2012. It's been three long months for Yahoo after ousting Carol Bartz. With this move, interim CEO Tim Morse, will return to his role as Yahoo's CFO. Thompson comes from PayPal where he severed as president at ebay's payment company. As Yahoo points out in the announcement press release, Thompson help grow PayPal into a massive force in the online payment scene. Under his leadership, PayPal grew its user base from 50 million to 104 million active users across 190 countries. It's an impressive feat, no doubt, but Yahoo will certainly present new challenges for Thompson. He's in for a ride.
 
The Samsung DA-E750 Is A Speaker Dock For Wannabe Audiophiles Top
image001 (2)There is a surefire way to improve the look and feel of any audio device: add vacuum tubes. These ancient electronic valves drip with nostalgia. Traditionally only high-end analog audio devices employ vacuum tubes as audio nerds proclaim they produce a richer, warmer sound. But Samsung is smart. They know that simply adding several trivial vacuum tubes to an otherwise mundane wireless speaker will increase its appeal (and justify a higher price tag). It's working on this wannabe audiophile. I want this speaker.
 
Velocity Micro Shows Its New Tablet And Pico Projector Before CES Top
veloWhile many big companies are putting on big press conferences next week at CES, many smaller ones are getting their new gadgets out there early so people will want to drop by their booth. Velocity Micro just dropped a few new things, and we'll be sure to swing by their corner of the show if we're in the area. They've got a pair of budget tablets that won't really blow anyone away, but their new Shine pico projector looks really nice.
 
Cubelets Promise Robotic Good Times Top
Do you like nature? Do you have a beard? Then you'll love these things. Cubelets are essentially robotic building blocks. By connecting sensors, motors, and feedback devices, you can create clever little automatons that can interact with the world around them (within reason). Most important, however, is that Cubelets has decided to feature a bearded, Dutch spokes-mountain-man to sell their product, an excellent choice for almost any kit-based robotics project.
 
The iPhone 4S Hits China (And 21 Other Countries) Next Friday Top
iphoneApple this morning announced that its massively popular smartphone, the iPhone 4S, will be available in China and 21 additional countries on Friday, January 13. According to Apple CEO Tim Cook, that means the iPhone 4S will shortly be available in a total of 90 countries. It also means the phone will indeed launch in China before the Chinese New Year (January 23), which is sort of the equivalent of Black Friday in the United States. Put differently: ka-ching.
 
Netflix: Our 20 Million Members Streamed 2 Billion+ Hours Of Content In Q4 2011 Top
ntflixNetflix experienced a very rough year, but ended 2011 on a high when it comes to its streaming business. The company this morning announced that, in the fourth quarter of 2011, its 20 million members (from across 45 countries) instantly watched more than two billion hours of TV shows and movies. That breaks down to roughly 666 million hours of on-demand streaming on Netflix per month, or about 22 million hours per day, on average.
 
Spool Raises $1 Million To Let You Cache Content To Mobile And Push It To Friends Top
Spool LogoWhen Spool debuted at TechCrunch Disrupt in September, the app and browser extension was focused on caching videos, articles, and other web content to your mobile device. It was like Instapaper on steroids. Today, Spool will announce $1 million in new funding and an expanded vision -- allowing people to push that cached content directly to the devices of their friends. Investors include, SVAngel, Felicis Ventures, Yuri Milner's Start Fund and YouTube founder Steve Chen. The funding will go towards scaling the complex back-end caching technology that makes Spool defensible.
 
Mechanical Engineering Community GrabCAD Grabs $4 Million Top
grabcadGrabCAD, which operates a community for (and founded by) mechanical engineers, where they can share knowledge and collaborate on CAD models, projects and whatnot, has raised $4 million in Series A to add to its its $1.1 million seed round from back in June 2011. The Series A round was led by previous investor Matrix Partners; the firm's David Skok will be taking a board seat. Other existing backers such as Atlas Venture also participated.
 
Square Co-Founder Jim McKelvey Backs The LinkedIn For Athletes LockerDome Top
lockerdome-1LockerDome, a social sports community, has raised $750,000 in funding. Jim McKelvey, co-founder of Square invested in the startup and is joining LockerDome's Board of Directors. LockerDome is a social networking site for sports and aims to help athletes create a sports persona and profile. LockerDome works with youth sports programs across the U.S. to launch private team and league networks and serves as a private social network where their athletes, coaches, and parents can create profiles, upload media, and gain national exposure.
 
Seismic Games Launches Social Gaming Studio, Raises $2M From DFJ Frontier Top
seismicExclusive - Seismic Games, a Los Angeles-based social games studio, is coming out of the woodwork today, announcing that it is set to debut its first game in the first quarter of 2012. The startup has secured $2 million in Series A funding led by DFJ Frontier and former VC and entrepreneur turned writer Tom Matlack. About a dozen other angel investors, with "deep ties" to the entertainment industry, also chipped in.
 
Daily Crunch: Compartment Top
1512Here are some of yesterday’s Gadgets posts: Miss Your Cat? Now Fluffy Can Send You Tweets All Day Long Nokia Ace (Lumia 900) Specs Trickle Out The Swift Rise And Sad Fall Of The Asus Transformer Prime Android Tablet India's Low-Cost Aakash Tablet Pre-Orders Hit 1.4 Million The Cord-On-Board iPhone Case Hides A Charging Cable Inside
 
Details Matter Top
watch detailThe Lean Startup mantra tells entrepreneurs to get a basic version of your product out there to test the waters, and then build the real product afterwards with the knowledge you gain from this early customer feedback. You iterate with live customers instead of on your design board because this is how you learn to build a better product faster. Lean Startup author Eric Ries recommends failing quietly with as few customers as possible on your way to creating a great product. But is that even possible anymore? As it becomes easier and easier to create products and launch startups, one way to stand out is to craft something really extraordinary—whether that is a mobile app, a website, or a digital device. Founders who sweat the details before their product launches are gaining a leg up on those who just push code out the door onto the unsuspecting masses.
 
Marine Solar Cells Make The Most Of Sun And Waves Top
MSC medium shot from aboveIn an unusual hybrid, British industrial designer Phil Pauley created Marine Solar Cells that harness energy from both the sun and water. The web of energy generators capture energy off-shore, using a combination of floating photovoltaics and natural buoyancy displacement. Thanks to the reflective nature of water, the solar component's efficiency is up to 20% greater than it would be land-locked.
 
HP Unveils Two New Desktop PCs: The Omni All-In-One And The HPE h9 Phoenix Top
Omni 27_Ultrabooks are all the rage for 2012, and we'll probably see quite a few of them at CES next week. But there are still some of us who prefer a more robust computing experience, which is why HP has today announced the Omni 27-inch all-in-one and the Pavilion HPE h9 Phoenix, the most powerful Pavilion model to date.
 
'Menu And Hours,' For When You're Too Hungry To Scroll Through A Million Yelp Reviews Top
Screen Shot 2012-01-03 at 8.47.36 PMI've heard like a billion people complain about this recently so here goes: When you're starving you don't want to read through thousands of Yelp reviews on your phone or download a random PDF from a terrible restaurant website that's so slow-load it's indecipherable. You just want to know where a restaurant is, what it has to eat, and whether or not it's open. 'Menu and Hours' is a Kickstarter project designed just to give you just the menu, hours, contact info and location of local eateries -- the antidote to unnavigable mobile restaurant websites and TMI foodie services like Urbanspoon. Brilliant, right?
 
CallidusCloud Acquires Marketing Automation SaaS LeadFormix For $9 Million Cash Top
CallidusCloud Acquires LeadFormixSales effectiveness cloud SaaS company Callidus Software Inc today announced its acquisition of LeadFormix, a B2B cloud-based lead intelligence SaaS. LeadFormix lets B2B vendors turn anonymous visits to their websites into qualified leads by identifying potential customers and reporting their intent. This solution will join the Callidus multi-tenant SaaS sales performance and effectiveness solutions that help companies hire better sales people, close deals, and incentivize sales performance.
 
CrunchBase Reveals: The Average Successful Startup Raises $25.3 Million, Sells For $196.8 Million Top
Screen Shot 2012-01-03 at 7.08.34 PMMost investments fail but the few successful ones more than make all the money back -- or so startup investors hope. But what sort of returns do these profitable exits bring in? According to a new analysis of all the exits listed in CrunchBase, the average successful company has raised $25.3 million, and sold for $196.8 million, for investor profits of 676% (if you assume the investors own 100% of the company, which they normally don't). Meanwhile, IPO-bound companies generated lower percentage returns, but made a lot more money per exit. The average one raised $580.3 million while private, then went public with a market cap of $2.3 billion on its first day of public trading for 303% profit on investment. Mouse over the dots below for more details.
 
Virtual Currency and Pay Per View 2.0: World Series Of Beer Pong To Stream On Facebook Top
World Series Of Beer Pong Stream By MilyoniIn Facebook's early days the company planned a national beer pong tournament, but then cancelled it out of fear it would promote underage drinking. Tomorrow, that dream will be revived in a new way when social video and ecommerce company Milyoni streams The World Series of Beer Pong through its Facebook app. For 50 Facebook Credits/$5 PayPal pre-sale or 70/$7 once the games begin, viewers can tune in to all the boozy action from doubles to rebuttals. The stream could demonstrate whether live sports could work as Facebook pay-per-view programming.
 
Holo Promise: Google Moves To Ensure UI Integrity On All Android 4.0 Devices Top
icsheaderGoogle has posted a bit of new info to the Android Developers blog that is probably less of a big deal than people are making it into, but still worth looking at. The post details a requirement that all manufacturers include in their Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) devices the default Holo theme. They don't have to use the theme, they just have to have the data composing it on the phone. This is less a blow aimed at third-party UIs and more a general integrity check that ensures apps and services will have the choice to provide a consistent face to the user across many devices.
 
On The Day Of The Iowa Caucus, Barack Obama Joins Instagram Top
Screen Shot 2012-01-03 at 5.21.01 PMThe game is on. The Iowa Caucus (important because it kicks off voting and is viewed as an indicator of which Presidential candidates have a chance at winning the Republican nomination) results started pouring in around 7pm CST tonight. So far it looks like it will be a three-way race between Ron Paul, Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney, according to analysts and preliminary polls.
 

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