The latest from TechCrunch
- Jon Rubinstein Leaves HP After "Fulfilling Commitment"
- (Founder Stories) Jeff Clavier On How Big VCs Can Hurt Seed Rounds
- Q. When Will Wisdio Add Authority Scores? A. Right Now.
- A Really Nice Flying Ornithopter Video For Your Friday Enjoyment
- Face.com Launches KLIK, A Real-Time, Facial Recognition Camera App For iPhone
- Mujjo Conductive Gloves Let You Slide To Unlock With Your Begloved Knuckle
- LivingSocial Now At 5,000 Employees, Half The Size Of Groupon
- Drew Houston, A Rocket Man In The Making Should DropBox Not Work Out
- AT&T Tripled Wi-Fi Connections In Q4; Mobile Data Uploads Up 550 Percent In 2011
- Hotel Reputation Management Software Maker Olery Raises $1 Million
- Startup Weekend & Tech Cocktail Compete To Recruit Startups For Startup America
- Report: Nintendo Considering Changing The Wii U's Name
- RIM's New CEO Backtracks: "There Is A Lot Of Change"
- Apple Overtakes Samsung As World's Largest Smartphone Vendor In Q4
- The HP TouchPad Rides Back Into Town On Woot's Back
- Google Spent Nearly $2 Billion On 79 Acquisitions In 2011
- NEC Forecasts $1.3 Billion Loss, Ready To Cut 10,000 Jobs Worldwide
- Shoply Aims To Socialize Ecommerce, Raises Seed Funding From Top Notch Investors
- Disney, Q-pot Choco, Honey Bee: Japan Gets 3 Extra-Cute Android Phones
- European Startup Accelerators Gradually Revealing Data – But We Need Much More
| Jon Rubinstein Leaves HP After "Fulfilling Commitment" | Top |
 HP's had quite a 2011 and Jon Rubinstein, former Palm CEO and a top-level executive at HP after the giant acquired Palm in 2010, was along for the ride. But according to a report out of AllThingsD, Rubinstein has officially left the company. | |
| (Founder Stories) Jeff Clavier On How Big VCs Can Hurt Seed Rounds | Top |
 Jeff Clavier just finished raising $55 million for his third SoftTech VC fund and after closing it out, stopped by TechCrunch to tape Founder Stories with host Chris Dixon. The two discuss signaling risk, which is basically when a major VC invests in a startup during a seed round and doesn't follow up with more funding. | |
| Q. When Will Wisdio Add Authority Scores? A. Right Now. | Top |
 Wisdio, a social QA site like Quora, has decided to up the social QA ante by adding something they're calling WAR - Wisdio Authority Ratings. These ratings allow folks to recieve answers from authorities on their subject of choice, thereby reducing the number of incorrect answers and, one would hope, increasing the utility of the site. Founded by Sebastian Zontek, Wisdio aims to help "find the right people to answer questions quickly and reliably," not unlike many of its competitors. However, the WAR score offers a one-stop shop for folks trying to figure out who to trust and, one would assume, listen to. For example, I can say I'm an expert in Social Media (which I am. I have LOTS of followers on Orkut) but in order to increase my score I need to answer questions about social media. This prevents gadflies from answering questions willy nilly and reduces useless responses. | |
| A Really Nice Flying Ornithopter Video For Your Friday Enjoyment | Top |
| These things are pretty old but sometimes it's nice to see two dudes really happy about a piece of technology that really works. This ornithopter is made by the guys at FlappingFlight and comes in multiple models including the Park Hawk with "instant glide" feature that allows you to stop flapping and swoop around like a bird of prey at the touch of a button. | |
| Face.com Launches KLIK, A Real-Time, Facial Recognition Camera App For iPhone | Top |
 Facial recognition company Face.com has just released a new mobile application that takes advantage of its technology to identify the faces of your friends in photos. Called "KLIK," the app is a real-time, facial recognition mobile camera app for iPhone that automatically identifies your friends by name before or after you take their their photo. | |
| Mujjo Conductive Gloves Let You Slide To Unlock With Your Begloved Knuckle | Top |
 We get a lot of PR pitches ("Write about our social media network for fish lovers! If you don't, we'll take our exclusive to TetraLover.blogspot.com," "We'll give you a private jet if you write good things about Apple - Sincerely, Tim Cook," "Take a look at these iPhone gloves!") and there are few I've dreaded more than writing about the aforementioned iPhone gloves mostly because the founders kept emailing me about these damned gloves. These things come from a Dutch company called Mujjo and they purport to allow you to interact with your iPhone with any part of your hand, including your wrist, knuckle, and palm. The founders must have used them to punch out emails on the icy Hague metro every day of the past month because they were pretty darn persistent. The question when dealing with these sorts of pitches, really, is two-fold: a) does the product advertised work? and b) will I write about the product after being literally hounded for three weeks by these guys? In answer to both, I would respond with a resounding (literally) "Yes." They work and yeah, what the heck, Mujjo, people like gloves, right? Also a post will get Mujjo to stop emailing me. | |
| LivingSocial Now At 5,000 Employees, Half The Size Of Groupon | Top |
 A few days ago, at the DLD conference, Groupon CEO Andrew Mason revealed that his three-year-old daily deal company now has 10,000 employees, with about 70 percent overseas. What about LivingSocial, the No. 2 daily deal company? Tim O'Shaughnessy told me yesterday the company is now at 5,000 employees worldwide, with "just under half" in the U.S. | |
| Drew Houston, A Rocket Man In The Making Should DropBox Not Work Out | Top |
 Clearly controversy is swirling around web lockers and online storage companies in the wake of the Federal swoop on Megaupload, but if it all goes wrong rest assured that DropBox founder and CEO Drew Houston has a second career to fall back on. The World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland (or just "Davos" to those in the know) is a great place for the world's millionaires and billionaires to loosely affiliate with each-other (as Paul Simon might have put it) and part of that looseness extends to the Piano Bar of the Hotel Europe in the tiny - but 5-star-hotel-packed - village. | |
| AT&T Tripled Wi-Fi Connections In Q4; Mobile Data Uploads Up 550 Percent In 2011 | Top |
 On 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 |
 Olery, 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 |
 Startup 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 |
 The 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 |
 On 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 |
 According 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 |
 Somewhere, 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 |
 Yesterday, 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 |
 Bad 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 |
 Exclusive - 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 |
 Android 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 |
 With 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. | |
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