Thursday, January 12, 2012

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Riding The Bull At CES 2012 Top
Jordan was wrong. Oh how she was wrong. She though that being a native Texan she could beat me, a manly man on a mechanical bull. Neither of had ever rode one of these fictitious creatures so we hoped on one while browsing the wares at Pepcom's Digital Experience. These mini tradeshows are popular at CES. They bring together just venders and press where CES mixes in salesmen, marketing types and general weirdoes. But you have to entertain the press. We tend to have short attention spans hence gimmicks like the cowboy them and mechanical bulls. I like it. And I won.
 
Apple Announces Education Event On January 19 In NYC Top
apple-educationApple has always been bullish when it came to supporting education, and that trend continues with the announcement of an education event on January 19 at New York's famous Guggenheim Museum.
 
Eric Schmidt: Android Is Differentiated, Not Fragmented Top
eric-schmidtWe've spent the better part of yesterday cruising around the Central Hall on a quest to highlight the coolest tech at CES, but Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt was on hand to talk about the "next big thing in consumer electronics." While doing so, he (perhaps unsurprisingly) made it clear that he isn't a fan of the word "fragmentation" when it comes to Google's Android OS.
 
Google+ Search = A Way To Call The Feds In On IPO-Bound Facebook (?) Top
justice2Like everyone else, I've been trying to get my head around why Google has force-integrated its Google+ social network into its main search feed at the expense of leading social services like Facebook and Twitter. The situation seems like an antitrust case waiting to happen, because Google could easily choose to feature the publicly available, searchable content from its social rivals in the same way it is showing its own product within its market-dominating search engine. It just hasn't. You'd think that Google has an intimate awareness of what it can and can't get away with, given how often it has been scrutinized for antitrust issues already. So, actually, yeah, let's assume it does... that it has predicted this criticism, and even an investigation by the US Department of Justice. What's the plan? I suspect that there's a master strategy for provoking the US government to investigate the market shares of search and social products as a single issue, in a way that puts Facebook on the defensive, especially as it looks to go public.
 
Watch Us Live From The CES 2012 Floor! Top
Yesterday was awesome. We hit up LG, Samsung, and Sony to name a few and had a helluva good time doing it. But today is a different day, a different hall and a bevy of new companies and booths. So grab some popcorn — seriously, go now because you only have a few minutes before we're on — and get ready to come on a crazy journey with us. Oh, and if you want to ask us some questions or participate in any way, just tweet to @TechCrunch using the #CEScrunch hash tag. We'll try to answer any questions you have in real-time, and if you want to see more of a certain thing or booth we're totally open to suggestions.
 
TC/Gadgets Interview: Up Close With The Lytro Top
Screen Shot 2012-01-11 at 9.12.13 AMYesterday we had the opportunity to play with the world's first mass-market light-field camera, the Lytro. VP of Marketing Kira Wampler ran us through its paces as we learned how the camera grabs not only the color and intensity but the direction of light coming in from a scene.
 
Shazam Launches New App Focused On Lyric Play: Shazam Player Top
Shazam Player_The Track TrayiTunes is great and everything, but it's still just a standard music player. The most exciting feature of the whole program is Genius, at least in my opinion, and even that can be off from time to time. But Shazam wants you to ingest your music a bit differently from here on out, and has launched the Shazam Player app to give users a better chance to leverage its new feature, Lyric Play. Lyric Play is already available in the premium version of Shazam, Shazam Encore, and allows users to see lyrics playing in time with the music, as the song is being discovered. This technology is clearly nothing short of impressive, but the 20 seconds spent tagging a song isn't really the ideal platform for this feature to be shown off. That said, the Shazam Player app lets you get your Lyric Play on throughout the entirety of songs. However, there will be a small fee.
 
Microsoft Bing Search Queries Overtake Yahoo For The First Time In December Top
bing-1comScore has released its search data for December 2011, and Google continues to dominate in terms of share, with 65.9%, compared with 65.4% in November 2011 and 66.6% in December 2010. Year-over-year, queries increased 9.7% in December. Yahoo queries came in with 14.5% share, compared with 15.1% in November 2011 and 16.0% in December 2010. Microsoft's Bing's share of searches in December was 15.1%, compared with 15% in November 2011 and 12.0% in December 2010. Since Bing powers Yahoo search, combined the two search engine's share of searches was 29.6%, compared with 30.1% in November 2011. AOL queries declined 8% in December with 1.6% share.
 
Social Entertainment Network GetGlue Raises $12 Million In New Financing Top
getglue_logo_Social entertainment network GetGlue has just raised a significant round of $12 million in new financing, led by new investor Rho Ventures. The company's existing investors, TimeWarner, RRE Ventures and Union Square Ventures, also participated in this round. The company had previously raised $6 million in November 2010.
 
Why Apple Bought Anobit Top
anobitApple finally confirmed earlier reports that it bought Israeli semiconductor startup Anobit Technologies. Apple did not confirm the price, which is believed to be between $400 million and $500 million. Apple bought Anobit for two reasons: its flash memory controllers are a key component of all Apple's leading products (from iPads and iPhones to MacBook Airs), and in one fell swoop it just added a large team of chip engineers to payroll. Do not underestimate how important those chip engineers are. Apple had at least 1,000 chip engineers. Roughly 160 of Anobit's 200 employees are also engineers, thus they instantly represent more than 10 percent of the total number of chip engineers at Apple.
 
Personal Search Service CloudMagic Arrives On Mobile For Fast Gmail, Docs & Twitter Search Top
CloudMagic_iphoneCloudMagic, the personal search service that indexes your Gmail, documents, contacts, calendar and Twitter updates, is now available as a mobile app. The release follows a major update for the service this past fall, which added the ability to search Twitter and a move to host your personal index in the cloud. This switch is what enables CloudMagic to work across multiple devices, including now, iPhone and Android smartphones. Using the new mobile app, CloudMagic is surprisingly fast - and far more useful than the phones' built-in search functions alone.
 
Panasonic Shows Cloud-Based "Smart Vegetable Garden" Device For Home Use Top
panasonic cloud vegetablePanasonic isn't just making TVs, phones, or cameras, they are also producing household appliances. One such appliance has recently been introduced by Japanese business daily The Nikkei, and it's probably the first cloud-based device for growing fruit and vegetables at home out there. Four leaf vegetables can be grown in one so-called "Smart Vegetable Garden" (which is sized at 100x50x30cm) at the same time, with Panasonic claiming that owners can expect to harvest them in about 40 days - 30% less than using conventional methods. Apart from saving time, the device also integrates a cloud-based management system to track growth, for example by automatically screening the level of water and nutrients, or the temperature.
 
Ngmoco Partners With Glu Mobile To Bring Gun Bros To Mobage Top
glu-mobileFollowing its November partnership with TinyCo, social games outfit ngmoco (now a DeNA-owned company) is partnering with game publisher Glu Mobile, Inc. The deal will brings Glu's popular Gun Bros game to ngmoco's Mobage gaming platform for Android. No word yet on whether the rest of Glu's titles - many of which are more well-known than Gun Bros - will port over as well.
 
TiVo Research Claims Only 38 Percent Of Users Watch Live TV Top
tivoTiVo this morning said that internal research shows only 38 percent of their users watch live television, with nearly two thirds watching on-demand video or 'delayed' TV. Among TiVo viewers who use broadband connected service such as Netflix, YouTube and Hulu Plus, live TV viewership has even dropped to 27 percent, the company asserts.
 
Mobile Media Platform Cinemacraft Extends Series A Round With Investment From 500 Startups Top
cinemacraft logoTokyo- and Singapore-based mobile media platform Cinemacraft announced it has extended its Series A round by securing an investment from Dave McClure's 500 Startups. The fresh money from the US brings the total amount raised by the company so far to US$900,000. Previous investors include Singapore-based Jungle Ventures (background), Jayesh Pareikh (founder of Sony Entertainment TV), Jai Maroo (Shemaroo Entertinament), Takuro Wakayabashi (Xseed Partners), and Devesh Chetty (RGM Media). Cinemecraft founder and CEO Sandeep Casi says the investment will be used to create an interactive video ad network in Japan, US, India, and Indonesia, along with ad-supported consumer video apps.
 
Booking Site For Health Professionals ZocDoc Adds Former U.S. Senators Tom Daschle And Bill Frist To Advisory Board Top
zocdocBooking platform for healthcare professionals ZocDoc has named former U.S. Senators Tom Daschle and Dr. Bill Frist to its advisory board. ZocDoc, which launched at TechCrunch in 2007,automates a task that can be incredibly frustrating and time-consuming for consumers. ZocDoc allows users to book their doctor appointments online, even for same-day appointments.
 
Six Hotel Giants Team Up To Launch Hotel Search Engine Roomkey.com, Buy Hotelicopter Top
roomkeyIn an unexpected move, six of the largest hotel companies in the world have partnered to launch a hotel search engine of their own, dubbed Roomkey.com. The hotel companies hope that offering a 'personalized experience' and 'accurate information' will make travelers choose for them when they search for accommodation. Choice Hotels International, Hilton Worldwide, Hyatt Hotels Corporation, InterContinental Hotels Group, Marriott International and Wyndham Hotel Group teamed up to start Roomkey.com to, in their own words, "provide travelers a search and book experience tailored for ease of hotel shopping through an uncluttered and trustworthy site".
 
Payoff.com Raises $2M, 'Gamifies' Personal Finance Management Top
payoffExclusive - It's challenging to make personal financial management sound like something that's fun to do, but that's exactly what Payoff.com is shooting for. The company, started in 2009, wants to help people achieve certain goals (like saving for a trip, or paying off credit card debt) using a platform that blends 'serious' personal finance management tools with 'fun and rewarding' game dynamics. Payoff.com will announce later today that they've raised $2 million in funding in a round led by Anthemis Group, Firstmark Capital, Great Oaks Venture Capital, with several unnamed "individual investors from Wall Street" participating. The startup has now raised $5.8 million in total.
 
Private Investing Network CapLinked Raises $500K Top
caplinked-1CapLinked, the LinkedIn-meets-Salesforce for private investing, has raised $500,000 in new funding from Chris Yeh, Jason Portnoy (the former CFO of Palantir Technologies), Stephan Paternot, Alexsis de Raadt-St. James, Lok Lee and Clark Landry. This brings the startup's total funding to $1.4 million. Previous investors include Peter Thiel, Dave McClure, David Sacks, Joe Lonsdale, Aman Verjee and David Anderson. As we've written in the past, CapLinked launched to allow entrepreneurs to raise capital and sell or buy assets, manage and contact investor prospects, centralize document flow on a secure platform and connect with new investors, advisors and companies. Investors can use CapLinked to manage deals, build public profiles, leverage LinkedIn contacts and connect with promising startups.
 
Just-Eat Moves To Conquer French Food Delivery Market, Acquires Alloresto Top
allorestoJust-Eat, the online food ordering giant of Europe, is continuing its rapid expansion, working out a partnership / acquisition deal with Alloresto.fr, the online food delivery leader in France. Just-Eat CEO Klaus Nyengaard, who blogged about the deal here, tells me it took over a year to work out the arrangement. In an initial phase, Alloresto will be run as a joint-venture between the two companies, and after 'a few years' Just-Eat will acquire the remaining shares. Sebastien Forrest, founder and CEO of Alloresto, will continue to head the company as part of the deal terms. Read more at TechCrunch Europe.
 

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