The latest from TechCrunch
- Brightkite Expands Product Line-up With Mobile Apps For Nokia, Palm Phones
- Smackdaddy Lets You Heckle Your Buddies and Bet on Sports on your iPhone
- Video Ringtone Company Vringo Files For $13.8 Million IPO (Corrected)
| Brightkite Expands Product Line-up With Mobile Apps For Nokia, Palm Phones | Top |
| Popular location-based social network Brightkite has simultaneously released mobile apps for some Nokia as well as Palm smartphones. The release of the apps follows earlier launches of Android , BlackBerry and iPhone applications. The Nokia app can be downloaded from the Ovi Store already and should run fine on all Symbian S60 5th Edition phones, including the Nokia N97 and the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. Brightkite curiously doesn’t use its own brand name for the Palm app, which was baptized Parafoil instead. The application was custom-developed for Palm’s WebOS platform and is compatible with the Palm Pre and Palm Pixi devices. I’m told the reason that it isn’t named Brightkite, is because the program was actually developed by two Brightkite users, John Barker and Kyle Johnson, based on the startup’s open API . As you can tell from the third screenshot embedded below, Brighkite has adopted the ‘check-in’ moniker to let people update their friends on their current locations and what they’re up to. Brightkite says the United States remains its biggest market, but that international markets are growing in importance, which prompts the company to expand its range of handset support. The company adds that it currently sees about 2 million people using Brightkite on a monthly basis, across all platforms (though the vast majority uses it on a phone). Alternatives to Brightkite include Foursquare , Loopt , Gowalla , aka-aki networks and Rummble . | |
| Smackdaddy Lets You Heckle Your Buddies and Bet on Sports on your iPhone | Top |
| Like bad beer, cracker jacks, and drunken fans getting hammered in the parking lot, smack-talking and sports-betting are staples of American sports. And that’s why Bema Studios created Smackdaddy, a free iPhone app [ iTunes link ] that allows you to both bet on games (currently just NFL, NHL and NBA) and tell your friends they smell. I got a chance to play with Smackdaddy this Sunday and loved it – it is easy to use, intuitive, and addictive Read the rest at MobileCrunch >> | |
| Video Ringtone Company Vringo Files For $13.8 Million IPO (Corrected) | Top |
| An SEC filing has revealed that video ringtone sharing community Vringo has filed to raise an estimated $64.3 million $13.8 million via an initial public offering of stock and warrants. The company plans to trade on NASDAQ, with Maxim Group serving as lead underwriter. Vringo shareholders include Warburg Pincus , who invested $12 million for a 31.9% ownership stake in 2007, and undisclosed private investors. Update: the initial $64.3 million IPO figure was inaccurate. Dow-Jones News Service has filed a correction to its story on Vringo's filing of a Form S-1 with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The correction makes clear that the funding target for Vringo's proposed IPO is $12.0 million, with the potential to reach $13.8 million if an over-allotment of shares is exercised. Vringo operates an online video ring tone sharing community, providing a hosted and client-server-based solution, which allows users to find, choose, create, and share video ringtones. The company provides mobile phone video sharing, and video ringtones and video download solutions. Its content includes licensed material from televisions, movies, and music videos, as well as user generated clips. Vringo says its application, which is available for Android in beta, is compatible with more than 300 handsets. According to the filing, Vringo’s product will soon no longer be offered for free to consumers. The company says it will move to a paid service model together with mobile carriers and other partners around the world. The initial revenue model for the service offered through the carriers will generally be a subscription-based model where users pay a monthly fee for access to the service and additional fees for premium content. The company lacks any revenue to speak of—it only booked $36,000 in first nine months of 2009 and $0 in 2008. The company has only a history of losses, reporting an operating loss of $3.5 million and a net loss of $4 million the first nine months of 2009. The company says it expects to generate more net losses and negative cash flow ‘for the foreseeable future’. Future income will depend greatly on Vringo’s capability of signing up more carriers, handset makers and mobile services providers, historically deals that take a lot of time and resources to get sealed and implemented. Vringo was founded in January 2006 and is based in New York. We’ve tracked about $17.3 million worth of investments in the company in CrunchBase. Vringo’s chief executive is Jonathan Medved , one of Israel's leading serial entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. Medved founded Israel Seed Partners in 1995 in his garage and co-managed the fund until January 2006. Israel Seed has $262M under management in four funds and has been an investor in some 60 Israeli companies. Exits include: Shopping.com (acquired by Ebay), Compugen (Nasdaq: CGEN), Answers.com (Nasdaq: ANSW) and Business Layers (acquired by CA). You can watch a MarketWatch interview with Medved here . (Via Wall Street Journal ) | |
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