Monday, September 3, 2012

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Watch Out, Big Dog: Swiss University Builds An Improved Quadrupedal Robot Top
017d8052772410e5834a48a34a8f2077.media.800x529Big Dog is the huge quadrupedal robot that stomped its way into our hearts a few years ago with its wild gait and hydraulic whine. Now, however, there's a new Dog in the mix, the StarlETH, a smaller robot made at ETH Zurich. This guy may be tiny but he's uniquely suited to running through and over obstacles and in environments that Big Dog may not be able to tackle.
 
Twitter Bets On Girls Who Code Top
momIn 1967, 25-year-old Damyanti Gupta immigrated to Detroit with one goal—to be an Engineer at Ford Motor Company. Only there was one problem: there were no female engineers at the company. When a hiring executive flatly told her that "we don't have any women on staff", she mustered her confidence and replied "if you don't hire me, then you won't have that benefit." A few weeks later, Damyanti was hired as Ford's first-ever female engineer. Gupta (pictured) and her story are just one of many that inspired Reshma Saujani to found Girls Who Code, a new, New York-based initiative designed to help teach girls how to code so that they can pursue careers in technology and engineering. And what's especially awesome about Saujani's organization is that it has the steadfast support of a number of companies, including Google, GE eBay and Twitter.
 
Mexico Is Happening At TechCrunch Disrupt Top
Mex1With the focus of many in the startup community shifting towards emerging markets, Mexico is a prime target for VCs looking to support a new group of entrepreneurs. Ideally situated a quick flight away from Silicon Valley lies a growing community of entrepreneurs eager to get involved. With the Mexican Pavilion set to storm TechCrunch Disrupt, here's what you need to know about the Mexican startup ecosystem. Mexico's economy is growing 40% faster than Brazil's, over twice as fast as the United States, and is already the world's 14th largest economy (on a GDP based scale). With an ever growing professional middle class, the market is well poised for innovative companies...
 
Bruce Willis Isn't Suing Apple Over iTunes Music Ownership Rights Top
BruceWillisLFDHpremiere07Earlier today, there was a rumor that Bruce Willis was considering to sue Apple to clarify who owns content downloaded from iTunes. The U.K.'s Daily Mail reported - and as with all things involving British tabloids, you should take this with a grain of salt - that Willis "is said to be considering legal action against technology giant Apple over his desire to leave his digital music collection to his daughters." While contemplating his death, Willis apparently noticed something most iTunes users also conveniently ignore: even though Apple now provides you with DRM-free files, all you own is a license to play your music on up to five devices under your control and you can't legally pass them on to others.
 
The Touchfire Chronicles, Continued: Born In The USA Top
scaled-steve-and-brad-smallLast winter we ran a series of articles called the Touchfire Chronicles about a cool little on-screen keyboard add-on for the iPad called the Touchfire. The creators, Steve Isaac and Brad Melmon, sent us an update on their project and offer a bit of advice from the other side. December, 2011. Our Kickstarter project ended with a bang. Touchfire raised more money than any tablet-related Kickstarter project ever had. We now had to make lots of Touchfires! We wanted to make Touchfire in the U.S., but every domestic manufacturer we asked turned us down due to technical challenges and the price point we wanted to hit. Brad had lots of experience working with Chinese manufacturers, and we had two of the best in hot competition.
 
Runa Capital Puts $5 million Into Education Platform With Expansion Plans Top
Screen Shot 2012-09-03 at 18.05.58Russia's Runa Capital has announced a $5 million investment into Dnevnik.ru, an educational platform in Russia. Dnevnik wants to expand the platform into the EU, China, Israel, the US and develop a system of cataloging and distributing educational content under its more recognisable brand of ClassedIn. Aimed at teachers, school students and their parents, Dnevnik.ru was launched in 2009 and after three years has become one of the more widely used educational platform in Russia and the Ukraine. It's now used by over 21,000 schools and four million users have joined the site, with almost 10 thousand schools and one million users in the Ukraine.
 
From Disrupt Runner-Up To $22 Million In Funding, CloudFlare Tells All Top
cloudflareAccording to Matthew Prince, CEO of CloudFlare, the service that makes websites faster and more secure, he and co-founder Michelle Zatlyn, had their heart set on launching at TechCrunch Disrupt ever since it was called TechCrunch50. They eventually got their chance - though not at TC50. Instead, CloudFlare ended up as runner-up to Qwiki at TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2010. But their story is a good one to tell, because it demonstrates that you don't have to take home the trophy to win.
 
Boxee, Anobit, DudaMobile Backer Pitango Closes $150M In Newest $250M Fund Top
pitango logoIsrael's Pitango -- backers of Boxee, Anobit (now part of Apple), fring, mySupermarket, and many other startups --  is gearing up for a new round of investment activity: the venture capital firm has announced a $150 million first closing on its latest fund. The firm is aiming for Pitango VI, as the fund is called, to eventually total $250 million. As with previous investments, Pitango says that it will be using this fund for seed, pre-seed and growth-stage investments in older companies. All investments from now will come out of this fund, it says.
 
Europe Lays Out Proposals For Wireless Spectrum Sharing Amongst Fiercely Competitive Carriers Top
European CommissionCarriers are fiercely competitive, but swallowing their territorial tendencies, several around Europe have started teaming up to share mobile spectrum and other resources in the ongoing race to serve hungry mobile consumers with data for their apps, video chats and film streams -- expected soon to top 1 trillion megabytes of data per month. Today the EU took a step towards formalizing that, with the introduction of a proposal for spectrum sharing. Announced by Neelie Kroes, VP for the European Commission, the proposal "is an essential part of the solution to dealing with the wireless crunch... by using new technical possibilities to create a secondary market for spectrum rights."
 
How Obama Stole Romney's RNC Thunder With Clever Social Media Top
A1mY4mRCAAM_qwXPresident Barack Obama managed to steal an impressive amount of Gov. Mitt Romney's press coverage with a few, cheap social media tricks, including the most retweeted post of the convention. In comparison to the Republican National Convention's all-out multi-million dollar conservative carnival, Obama made front page Google News with dramatically less effort and at no cost with three clever social media projects: answering questions from Reddit users for 30 minutes, tweeting "This seat's taken" in response to Clint Eastwoods silly stand-up routine (51K retweets), and releasing the White House beer recipe. Sure, Obama has the spotlight advantage because he's the President, but it goes to show that all the money and staging in the world can't compete with cleverness.
 
T-Mobile Launches CleverConnect, A Bobsled-Style VoIP Service For Europe Top
cleverconnectT-Mobile today becomes the latest operator to leverage the popularity of free internet phone calls and texts in hopes of luring in more users around its brand. CleverConnect borrows from services like Skype and Rebtel with an offer of free VoIP calls and text to those who download and use the app, which is now live in the App Store and in the Google Play Android store. Similar to Bobsled in the UK and services like TuMe from Telefonica, CleverConnect is aimed at bringing in users that are not necessarily already part of T-Mobile's service. Unlike Bobsled, the service is available in multiple regions. Although the app is already in the App Store you need an invite code to use it for now, and it looks like you need to be a T-Mobile subscriber to set off that chain. TechCrunch understands, however, that those who get invited can bring in another three users to trial the service, regardless of country or carrier.
 
Android Smartphone Sales, Led By Big Screens, Are Growing Everywhere Except In The U.S. Top
LG SpectrumWe've seen a lot of images of an (alleged) iPhone coming soon with a bigger screen, and some numbers out from Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, the WPP-owned market analysts, underscore how a bigger iPhone may not be coming a moment too soon. In the last 12 weeks, it found that Android-based smartphones have continued to extend their lead over the rest of the pack, and the charge is being led by the big boys -- literally. Of all the Android devices that have been sold in the last three months, nearly one-third (29%) of them had a screen size of over 4.5 inches, with large-screened devices from Samsung, HTC, LG (pictured), Huawei and more. Apple's current iPhone has a screen of 3.5 inches.
 
MyVoucherCodes Adds Restaurant Booking Functionality To Its Mobile App, Powered By Toptable Top
Screen Shot 2012-09-03 at 12.32.46In a move that seems like a bit of a no-brainer, but for which the company is claiming a UK first: MyVoucherCodes has added the ability to make a restaurant booking from within its location-based 'money saving' smartphone app. That's right, cashing in on those local discounts and promotions just got a lot easier, as has the ability for the 500 or so participating restaurants to generate additional bookings. MyVoucherCodes isn't saying officially who is powering the app's new table booking functionality, although TechCrunch has learned that it comes via a partnership with OpenTable-owned Toptable.
 
Swarmly Debuts Its 'Waze For People' On iOS — Know Where Is Hot Or Not, Right Now Top
cropped.transparentSwarmly, a newly-released app for iPhone, thinks it's seen a gap in the location sharing market. Unlike check-in apps like Foursquare or indeed Facebook's own location sharing feature, it places far less emphasis on the social graph to focus on anonymous, aggregate location data -- powered by each Swarmly user's whereabouts -- so that the app can tell you where is hot (or not) right now. Think of it as similar to Waze's crowdsourced traffic data but for people. That's the ambition, anyway. But first it needs a ton of users to be anything close to useful -- a challenge that far too many, otherwise, good ideas face.
 
Rocket Internet's 'Blitzkrieg': JP Morgan Invests In Russian Fashion Site Lamoda; $40-80M Reported Top
lamoda.ruLess than a month after JP Morgan put investments into two Rocket Internet-baked fashion sites modelled on Zappos -- an undisclosed investment into Zalando and $45 million in Brazil's Dafiti, the bank is taking an equity stake in a third Rocket Internet fashion business. Lamoda.ru in Russia, a site with 5 million unique users and 500,000 "loyal customers," is apparently raising between $40 million and $80 million from the bank. The news was announced by Lamoda itself, although the terms of the investment are only being reported by third parties. Lamoda, you might recall, played an infamous part in an embarrassing email last year from Oliver Samwer, one of the founders of Rocket Internet: in a letter to employees, he made detailed references to the mistakes Lamoda had made, as a cautionary tale for those not to be repeated in other markets. Calling the new, aggressive strategy a "blitzkrieg", it was a revealing and damaging email for a company that likes to play its cards close to its chest.
 
Do Women Love Ann Romney? Only Facebook Knows Top
election-insight-capture-squareFor all the millions spent on the Republican National Convention, the entire operation could only speculate whether their keynote speeches had any meaningful impact. Until Facebook achieved near universal adoption among the voting class, brands had no reliable way to gage public opinion. Large surveys are subject to respondents' notoriously bad memories, focus groups are too tiny to be nationally representative, and the Twitterverse is too liberal and young. However, Facebook's recent experiment with topical chatter during the RNC may have just revealed the social network as the best known barometer of national buzz.
 
Social Gaming, Dating Account For The Biggest Growth In Carrier Billing Top
Screen shot 2012-09-03 at 02.04.07Over the last year, we have seen some notable advances in mobile carrier billing -- which lets people pay for services and content on their phones by charging it to their carrier bills: Google expanded its carrier billing services to music and more; Facebook joined the ranks of those offering it, and Amazon has a deal with a company that could help it potentially roll out such services, too. (Noticeably absent is Apple; more on that below.) Now, data shared with TechCrunch by U.S./German carrier billing company mopay provides a look at just how much money these kinds of services are making.
 
On Lack Of IT Readiness – And Innovators Dilemma. VMware Delivers A Sad Reality Top
headshot smlEditor's note: Ben Kepes is a technology evangelist, an investor, a commentator and a business adviser. More about Ben here. He hangs out 24*7 on Twitter.    At VMware's annual extravaganza in San Francisco this past week, VMware's application to join OpenStack was announced. The keynote in which it was announced held somewhere around 20000 people, arguably the cream of the IT world and, when the OpenStack announcement was made, the silence was deafening. I suspect that this had nothing to do with a reaction to the news in particular, and lots to do with the fact that VMware's traditional customer – IT departments within large organization – are, generally speaking, paying little more than lip-service to the growing calls of a new generation of technology companies led by the likes of Box and Salesforce and heralding agility, mobility and social enterprise as key demands.
 
7-Weeks In, Dalton Caldwell's App.net Gets First Dedicated iOS App, Passes 17,500 Users Top
mzl.rvtbbxxb.320x480-75Back in July, Dalton Caldwell (of imeem and picplz fame) announced an "audacious" goal: To create a better, developer-and-user-supported (and ad-free) alternative to Twitter. And so App.net was born. About a month later, the subscription-based, third party app-supporting Twitter clone reached its fund-raising goal of $500K -- all of which came from a community of 7,500+ enthusiastic supporters. Though the service has a long way to go before it can compete with the big boys, today, the App.net founder announced some milestones that show it's making some solid progress. Over 250K posts have been created in the 7-weeks since App.net's debut, with some 50 percent of posts coming from third-party clients. As of August 28th, the service has over 17,500 (paying) users, which works out to about 14 posts per user. Not only that, but as reported by The Next Web, today the service's first dedicated iOS client officially hit the App Store.
 
Purported Redesigned Apple Earbuds Leaked In Vietnam Top
newheadphones2While rumors of the new iPhone have been rampant for most of the summer, not much has been leaked about accessories other than a purported new cable. That is until now. Vietnamese tech blog Tinhte.vn, which has a fairly decent track record, has posted a video and hands-on images of what appear to be newly redesigned earbuds.
 

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