Thursday, December 29, 2011

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Amazon: We Sold Over 4 Million Kindle Devices This Month; Gifting Of E-Books Up 175 Percent Top
Kindle FireAmazon has just released new data regarding its Kindle sales for the holiday season. According to the e-commerce giant, Amazon customers purchased millions of Kindle Fires and millions of Kindle e-readers. And 2011 was the best holiday ever for the Kindle family, as customers purchased over 1 million Kindle devices each week. Amazon CEO and founder Jeff Bezos said in a statement: "We are grateful to our customers worldwide for making this the best holiday ever for Kindle." Bezos also highlighted the fact that the #1 and #4 best-selling Kindle books released in 2011 were both published independently by their authors using Kindle Direct Publishing.
 
Rumor: Apple Will Debut *Two* iPads Next Month, Retina Displays In Tow Top
Screen shot 2011-12-29 at 9.04.42 AMThe Apple rumor mill never takes a break, even during the holidays. In the past months we've heard two very specific allegations concerning the iPad — both out of Digitimes — focused on a smaller sized Apple tab at 8.75 inches and a release date of early 2012. As Devin explained so well, the notion of a smaller iPad out of Cupertino is a bit hard to believe. It would mean that Apple is going back on its word that the iPad is the right size. Today Digitimes somewhat confirms this with a new rumor: Instead of the 7.85-inch iPad, Apple will supposedly be bringing two new Retina-style iPads to the market to fill in the mid- and high-end market segments, while the current iPad 2 hangs around to take on the Kindle Fire.
 
Video: Electric Car From Japan Reaches Over 300KM Travel Range Top
Picture 2We spent two posts on SIM-LEI, an electric car developed by a a spin-off startup at Keio University in Tokyo in collaboration with a total of 34 domestic and foreign companies, in the past months. And it seems that the startup, SIM Drive Corporation, is on track to start mass-producing the vehicle in about 2 years. The company was set up in August 2009. The main selling point of the newest version is that it can drive over 300km at a constant speed of 100km/h. In spring, SIM Drive said the SIM-LEI ("Leading Efficiency In-Wheel motor") can reach 333km under "general urban traffic conditions in Japan".
 
7moments Is A Beautiful New Way To Share Private Photos In A Group Top
Screen-Shot-2011-12-28-at-19.06.04We're all familiar with the pain of having to share photos with people. I'm not talking about the staff party album on Facebook, I'm talking about moments that matter - the family holidays, the weddings, big days like those. And this remains an ongoing issue. We can share Dropbox folders all we like. Everything still has to be downloaded and the interface does not suit viewing, especially on tablets. We can ask friends and family to sign up to a private Flickr group, but that's still another hurdle. Lots of photo and file sharing services are rubbish and many people remain afraid of Facebook's now quite public nature. Now, a new startup out of Berlin has come up with something it calls the 'Dropbox for photos' where you can privately exchange photos in a group: 7moments.
 
Fund.me: Mobile Social Network Startup Just.me Raises $2.7 Million Top
justmeJust.me, a stealth startup incubated by Palo Alto, California-based Archimedes Labs has raised $2.7 million in Series A funding according to an SEC filing. The company earlier secured $600,000 in seed financing from SV Angel, Google Ventures, True Ventures, Betaworks and a couple of other high-profile angel investors such as Don Dodge, Michael Parekh and TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington. I reached out to Keith Teare, CEO and sole founder of just.me (and also technically also a co-founder of TechCrunch), who declined to comment on the financing round.
 
LG To Showcase 84-Inch 3D TV With 4K Resolution At CES 2012 Top
LG_84INCH_UDTV01_500It seems that 55-Inch OLED TV wasn't enough for LG: the Korean company today announced it's ready to showcase another monster TV at the CES 2012 in Las Vegas (which kicks off on January 10). This model comes with a 84-inch 3D LCD display with 4K resolution (3,840×2,160 pixels). To put things into perspective: 4K resolution, which LG calls "Ultra Definition", is four times the resolution of full HD. Other details are scarce at this point, but LG promises "slim and narrow bezel design", controllable 3D picture effects, and 3D sound zooming capability.
 
Daily Crunch: Ambient Thing Top
1508Here are some of yesterday’s stories on TechCrunch Gadgets: CrunchDeals: Get Yourself A Thing-O-Matic For $999 Japan Gets Wi-Fi Dispensing Vending Machines LG Prada 3.0 Makes Official Debut In Korea, Europe To Follow Ambient Field Conditioner Will Condition Your Ambient Field 3DS Sees Record Sales In Japan, Fueled By Mario Kart 7 And Super Mario 3D Land
 
12 Things That Won't Happen In Online Video in 2012 Top
online videoThere are no shortages of "predictions" articles, here I look at a dozen things that won't happen in the world of online video in 2012, even though they should. 1)    We Will Have Standards and Definitions (No, we won't) By the end of 2011, the online video industry didn't yet have a common definition and standard for a video view.  It also wasn't sure if the click-through-rate or completion rate would become the ultimate yardstick for success.  A lot of experts are coming out and saying that 2012 will mark the year where we define these standards and agree on one.  Personally, I think that is wishful thinking, 2012 is the year where we admit that we have this problem, but it won't matter, as online video advertising continues to grow despite a sea of confusion, smoke and mirrors
 
Gillmor Gang 12.28.11 (TCTV) Top
Gillmore Gang test patternThe Gillmor Gang goes enterprise in a conversation with Paul Greenberg, the eminence grise of the CRM, now Social CRM world. Gangsters John Taschek and Steve Gillmor decrypt Paul's latest report from the front.
 
Why We Should All Give Google+ The Finger Top
Screen Shot 2011-12-28 at 12.39.23 PM
"Google+ is about sharing the right updates with the right people - making sharing online just like sharing in real life. Just like in real life, sometimes you just want to hang out with friends. Hanging out on Google+, with your family, your friends, or new friends you don't yet know, is more than just multi-user video chat. It's about eliminating borders and bringing people together around the world. It's about people."
 
Blip.tv Just Raised $6 Million, But Where Is The Audience? Top
Blip.tv TrafficBlip Networks, which operates Blip.tv, is raising more money. According to an SEC filing, the New York City company sold $6 million worth of stock beginning on December 22, 2011 in an offering that could expand to as much as $11.1 million. Presumably, this is part of a Series D offering, since Blip raised a $10 million Series C in May, 2010, almost 18 months ago. Blip is trying to become a destination for indie online videos. But it is becoming increasingly hard for any video site that is not Youtube to carve out a niche for itself.
 
Bank Shuts Down Local Online Advertising Company WebVisible For Not Paying Debts Top
WebVisibleLocal interactive advertising firm WebVisible has shut its doors. According to a note sent from the company's CEO to employees, WebVisible ran out of cash, and Silicon Valley Bank is shutting the company down. WebVisible's software allowed advertisers to manage local online campaigns on Google, Yahoo, Bing and others. The company's services were offered directly affiliate partners to local businesses, franchisors, and national advertisers Previous WebVisible partners include AT&T, British Telecom, Yellow Pages Group of Canada, EarthLink, and The McClatchy Company, among others.
 
Find Out Which Brands Are Winning On Google+ With ZoomSphere (Hint: Android is #1) Top
ZoomSphere Launches Google Plus ChartsFacebook has AppData, Twitter has Twitaholic, and now Google+ has its own independent brand page rankings site: ZoomSphere. It shows which brands have the most followers, activity, +1s, shares, and comments, and slice the data by time, page category, and country. Oddly, the site doesn't rank user profiles like SocialStatistics does -- just brand pages. Still, by augmenting its existing charts for Facebook and Twitter, ZoomSphere could become a comprehensive resource for brands charting their own performance, assessing competitors, or scoping for potential partners.
 
Fab's Fabulous Year—Now Doing Over 100,000 Orders A Month Top
Fab 2011 timelineIn many ways, 2011 was the year of the pivot. One startup that successfully switched gears was Fab, which started the year as a gay social network and ended it a design-oriented e-commerce site. Founder Jason Goldberg created the Fab Timeline slideshow below to illustrate all the changes the company has gone through, from its pivot in February to raising $8 million in July, another $40 million in early December, and growing all along the way. But one slide in particular caught my eye. It shows Fab's order growth shooting up from just above 20,000 orders in July to about 40,000 in September and then jumping to nearly 100,000 in November. Orders in december continues to climb, Goldberg tells me, and the company is on an annualized revenue-run-rate of almost $70 million.
 
CrunchDeals: Get Yourself A Thing-O-Matic For $999 Top
Screen Shot 2011-12-28 at 5.04.42 PM Makerbot's Thing-O-Matic is pretty pricey - $1,299 for the kit and $2,500 for the assembled kit - but (and this is my professional opinion) it is amazing and everyone in the world should own one. That said, Fab.com has a special deal on Thing-O-Matics this week - $999 for the kit and $2,000 for the assembled device - one of the first and biggest discounts ever on the entire system.
 
Taleo's Recruiting Solution Processed 15% of Last Year's US Hires Top
TaleoOther than Salesforce, no cloud SaaS provider handles more transactions than Taleo. The stats the company revealed to me about its 2011 are staggering. The Taleo talent and recruitment solution helped enterprises hire 3.1 million people, roughly 15% of the year's US hires. It had 50 to 60 million visitors to the job listing sites and other services it powers. Bootstrapped but now publicly traded, Taleo serves 5,000 customers including half of the Fortune 100. When companies need to hire huge numbers of employees, they come to Taleo.
 
Subpug RSS Reader Looks To Pull You Away From Google Reader Top
LayoutAs far as web sites go, there's only one site I look at more than Google Reader. You're on it right now. There's nothing technically "wrong" with Google Reader, but when you look at it every five minutes, every day of your life, another RSS reader option is super exciting. Enter Subpug. It's a new RSS reader that just launched on Christmas and it's pretty slick if I do say so myself. It's aimed toward more of the light news reader, rather than someone like myself with thousands of subscriptions. Still, it gets the job done. You can choose from certain pre-subscribed options like Gadgets, Music, Fashion, and even Geek Humor, or you can build your own/import your Google Reader OPML. The set up process takes all of three seconds and you're ready to read, mainly because there's no sign up or log in of any kind.
 
Exclusive: Groupon Acquires Stealth Silicon Valley Startup Campfire Labs Top
grouponGroupon has continued its (talent) acquisition spree with the recent purchase of a hot Silicon Valley startup before they even launched - and with extremely little fanfare. We've learned that Campfire Labs, which was founded by ex-Googler Sakina Arsiwala (previously Head of International at YouTube) and her husband, social search technology expert Naveen Koorakula (previously at search companies like Inktomi, Yahoo and Picch), was quietly bought by Groupon.
 
Khan Academy Jumps To 4M Uniques Per Month (Up 4X From Last Year) Top
khan logoOh, how I love Reddit AMA (Ask-Me-Anything) posts. In almost all cases, the inherent down-to-earth nature of a community-driven interview leads the most interesting of people to open up in genuine, honest ways that they otherwise might not in a one-on-one interview. Plus, they're almost always jammed with all sorts of interesting facts and stats. Take this AMA with Khan Academy's founder, Salman Khan, for example. Currently the top post on Reddit, Khan has spent the last two hours detailing everything from their recent growth and his workflow to the team's plans for the future.
 
Does Microsoft Really Need A Windows Superphone? Top
WindowsPhoneRoadmapA leaked Windows Phone roadmap made the rounds earlier today, and if its contents hold true, then Microsoft will be going big on hardware when it comes time for Windows Phone Apollo to take the stage. Even though the budget-friendly Tango update will hit devices first, Microsoft has apparently made the development of "superphones" a priority for next year.
 

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