Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Y! Alert: TechCrunch

Yahoo! Alerts
My Alerts

The latest from TechCrunch

Apple Is Totally Serious About That Stuff They Put At The End Of Their Emails Top
SpinquisitionWelcome, kids, to TIL - Today I Learned. Today's TIL is "Don't post your correspondence with AppleCare representatives or Apple will totally tell the government on you." David Boles had a nice Apple monitor that died on him. He had a little trouble transferring AppleCare coverage to his new monitor after it pooped out and posted some advice on his blog. Nothing major, just "don't forget to connect your AppleCare accounts." Very innocuous.
 
Reuters: Facebook IPO To Raise $5B, Filing Wednesday, Morgan Stanley In Lead Top
174597_20531316728_2866555_n (1)The drip-drop of financial news about Facebook's impending initial public offering is starting to turn into a downpour. The company is planning to file its initial prospectus on Wednesday morning, Reuters is reporting, with the intention of raising a conservative $5 billion. The report, through Reuters subsidiary International Financing Review, also answers the question of which bank will lead -- Morgan Stanley. The others will include Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Barclays Capital, JP Morgan, and Goldman Sachs, which had appeared to be in the lead position last year after it helped Facebook raise a $1.5 billion late-stage round. However, issues around that funding may have contributed to Morgan Stanley getting the top spot.
 
Steam Mobile Apps Graduate From Beta, Now Open To All Gamers Top
steam-mobileI know I say this a lot, but man that was fast. Valve's new pair of Steam mobile apps have been in their respective marketplaces for less than a week, and already they have graduated from beta status. That means that you, Mr. or Mrs. Game Enthusiast, will be able to sign into your Steam account on your iOS or Android device right now and begin chatting your far-flung friends or ogling new deals.
 
Peavey Builds An Auto-Tuning Guitar Top
504_15914Guitar-maker Peavey has teamed up with audio electronics experts Anteres to create an auto-tuning guitar. While these things aren't new - Gibson has had robotic tuners for a while - this system is unique in that it senses and corrects the pitch of the strings regardless of tuning, which means you can do all sorts of interesting tricks with vibrato even in what would amount to be an untuned guitar.
 
Amazon Misses; Q4 Net Income Down 58 Percent To $177M; Sales Up 35 Percent Top
amazonAmazon has just released fourth quarter 2011 earnings, missing sales expectations but beating earnings estimates. Net income decreased 58% to $177 million in the fourth quarter, or $0.38 per diluted share, compared with net income of $416 million, or $0.91 per diluted share, in fourth quarter 2010. Net sales increased 35% to $17.43 billion in the fourth quarter, compared with $12.95 billion in fourth quarter 2010. Analysts are expecting earnings of $0.17 cents a share on revenue of about $18.3 billion. "We are grateful to the millions of customers who purchased the Kindle Fire and Kindle e-reader devices this holiday season, making Kindle our bestselling product across both the U.S. and Europe," said Amazon CEO and founder Jeff Bezos. "Our millions of third-party sellers had a tremendous holiday season with 65% unit growth and now represent 36% of total units sold."
 
FlatFrog Offers Up A New Multitouch Table Top
3200-1We saw a few touch-tables at CES, and while the Surface remains the gold standard, not everyone loves the price, form factor, or size. There's room for competition, and FlatFrog, based in Sweden, is hoping to break into the market with a new 32" device. When it comes to touch, there are a few different methods of detecting fingers and objects. Most common now is capacitive, which is on most smartphones. Then there's resistive, which isn't quite as responsive. Samsung created one for the new Surface that embeds tiny photosensors between image pixels. And FlatFrog uses yet another method.
 
Facebook News Feed Bug Announces "This Group Is Scheduled To Be Archived" Top
Facebook News Feed Groups BugWait, what group? A bug has caused a significant percentage of Facebook users to see a message atop their news feed announcing "This group is scheduled to be archived". But don't worry, your news feed is safe. The alert shouldn't have appeared there, and only belongs on old groups set up prior to October 2010 which Facebook is migrating to the new format used today.
 
London Implements "Smart Bins" Before 2012 Olympics Top
smartbinsI'm not sure how I feel about this. The object you're looking at right now is what the city of London calls a "smart bin." Built by Renew, the smart bins are being installed on the streets of London and have two massive LCD screens slapped on the sides. According to the Daily Mail, the screens will display news from the Economist and stock quotes.
 
Jaja: A Pressure Sensitive iPad Stylus With A Clever Twist Top
jaja
"Who Wants A Stylus?"
- Steve Jobs, MacWorld 2007 As it turns out, plenty of people do. Not for navigating around the user interface, mind you — Steve (et al.) was absolutely right about that. But for the artists of the world looking to use the iPhone or iPad as their newfangled portable glass canvas, the stylus wins over the finger any day. And yet, the myriad iPad styluses floating about generally lack something that artists have come to expect of their digital pens: pressure sensitivity. Dubbing itself "the world's first pressure sensitive stylus for iPad", a successfully Kickstarted project called "Jaja" looks to change that.
 
For Those About To Rock, WooThemes Launches A WordPress Theme For Bands Top
unsignedWoothemes has just announced a new theme for musicians called Unsigned. To build the theme, the company worked with band managers and promoters as well as real, actual musicians in order to make a "rockin'" theme that is both "classical" and "jazzy" with a little but of "afro-beat" thrown in. The theme includes modules for events, discographies, and SoundCloud comparability for uploading music. You can also use a sales widget to sell music and merch instantly. The theme supports "tours" and events separately, so you can plan your cross-country van trip and your tour of the Baltic states using the same system.
 
Introducing The iPnoho 6 Top
ipnoho6Meet the future, everyone: The iPnoho6. Steve Jobs would be proud. This Shanzhai special isn't even an iPhone clone. It doesn't deserve that honored distinction. This is an IPDA as it's labeled on the front under the small screen and next to the large Apple logo. Around back are two large speakers and yet another Apple logo -- because, you know, two Apple logos equates to twice as much fun. The only thing that's missing from this IPDA is an iStylis.
 
Better Business Bureau Calls Out LG For False Advertising Top
LG3dadYou can't believe everything you read, nor can you trust everything you hear on TV. Especially if it sounds something like "four out of five people choose LG Cinema 3D over Sony and Samsung for overall 3D experience." Apparently the Better Business Bureau (more specifically the National Advertising Division) "has recommended that LG Electronics USA discontinue advertising claims made for the company's Cinema 3D Television and 3D glasses." Back in June of 2011, LG sent out a press release claiming that four out of five customers prefer LG Cinema 3D television over Sony and Samsung in a number of different categories including brightness, color, picture quality, glasses, and overall 3D experience. The research was done by a company called Morpace Inc., which tested the TVs at their default settings without any branding shown.
 
Good DRM Makes Bad Neighbors: This Is The Content Protection Tipping Point Top
fencesFor people who have been doing just one thing for a long, long time, it's amazing how many content distributors get things so catastrophically wrong. These last few weeks brought us quite a few unique situations, including the launch of Apple's iBook Author software as well as a number of announcements from the studios to withhold streaming rights for Netflix viewers. Cory Doctorow points to a particularly delightful bit of DRM making the rounds in publishing right now, something that will be familiar iTunes users who found their real names embedded in music files a while back.
 
Dining Out? Mogl Grabs $10 Million For Its Gamified, Charitable Loyalty Program Top
unnamedWould you like some gamification with your french fries? Well, one San Diego-based startup is willing to bet you just might. Mogl, which describes itself as not only "a party in your wallet" but also a "four letter word you can say in front of your grandma," wants to turn you into a loyal customer at your local restaurants. Said another way, Mogl is using gamification and a bit of charity to increase engagement and the enjoyability of customer loyalty program for restaurants -- all while on the go.
 
Ben Horowitz: "It Took About 3 Weeks" To Raise Our $1.5 Billion Fund Top
ben horowitzAndreessen Horowitz is definitely killing it these days. The unconventional VC firm founded by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz is less than three years old, but just raised its third fund. The amount raised: $1.5 billion. That puts Andreessen Horowitz in the rarified realm of only a handful of VC firms with funds of that size. And how long did it take to raise all that money? "It took about 3 weeks of actual fundraisng activity," Horowitz tells me. It took longer to do the actual paperwork—another 6 weeks.
 
Keen On… Susan Cain: The Power Of Introverts (TCTV) Top
Screen Shot 2012-01-30 at 7.42.33 PMIt was, of course, inevitable. After book after book explaining the importance of being forward, of aggressively networking and noisily self-promoting ourselves, the correction has finally arrived. And it comes in the shape of a stimulating new book by Susan Cain entitled Quiet: The Power of Introverts. So enough with the extroverted ideologues of self-promotion like Gary V, Chris Brogan and Seth Godin. It's Susan Cain time now. Quiet. The hour of the introvert has finally arrived.
 
Extreme Startups Launches Accelerator With $7 Million In Funding From Top Canadian VCs Top
Screen shot 2012-01-31 at 9.04.17 AMNot to be outdone by its southern neighbor, Canada has been hard at work on its own fleet of tech startup accelerators. Back in June, Montreal became the home to FounderFuel, Vancouver has GrowLab, and Toronto had Extreme University. Well, let's clarify that: Back in November, Extreme Venture Partners announced the launch of a new-and-improved version of its accelerator program, ExtremeU. Today, ExtremeU has officially gotten a makeover, as it has been rebranded and expanded under the name Extreme Startups. The accelerator program (re)launches today with $7 million in committed funding, backed by a group of Canada's leading venture capital firms.
 
RIM Bolsters Marketing Efforts With Some Silly Cartoon Characters Top
boldteamUpdate: RIM updated their blog to state that the images and characters in question are were meant to be a bit of fun, and not the vanguard of the company's new marketing plan. Way back in December, before a management shakeup saw him and his partner leaving RIM's top posts, co-CEO Jim Balsillie lamented the state of the company's marketing efforts. They hadn't "achieved the desired results" as he put it during RIM's Q4 earnings call, and promised big things to come on the marketing front come 2012. Things seemed to start off well -- you couldn't watch Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve without getting an eye-full of BlackBerry logos imploring you to "be bold" in in the new year.
 
Jason Kilar: Hulu's 2011 Revenues Of $420 Million Was Actually Above The "Board Plan" Top
Jason KilarLast year, Hulu brought in $420 million in revenues, with was 60 percent above the year before. The news, however, was seen as a miss because Hulu earlier in the year suggested that it would make $500 million. Today at the D: Dive Into Media conference, CEO Jason Kilar defended his record, revealing that "our board plan was $408 million." So Hulu came in above the internal goal it had set for its board.
 
CardSpring Raises $10 Million To Connect Payments To The Web Top
cardspring_logoWe measure every last click when it comes to the Web, but there remains a gulf between online and the real world. Yet the online world increasingly drives behavior offline, especially when it comes to purchasing habits. How many times have you researched something online or on your mobile phone before buying it? Yet when you go to a store to buy it, everything you did online might as well disappear as far as the merchant is concerned. It doesn't have to be that way. The last mile in local commerce is really only the last few inches between the credit card in your outstretched hand and the card swipe at the register.
 

CREATE MORE ALERTS:

Auctions - Find out when new auctions are posted

Horoscopes - Receive your daily horoscope

Music - Get the newest Album Releases, Playlists and more

News - Only the news you want, delivered!

Stocks - Stay connected to the market with price quotes and more

Weather - Get today's weather conditions




You received this email because you subscribed to Yahoo! Alerts. Use this link to unsubscribe from this alert. To change your communications preferences for other Yahoo! business lines, please visit your Marketing Preferences. To learn more about Yahoo!'s use of personal information, including the use of web beacons in HTML-based email, please read our Privacy Policy. Yahoo! is located at 701 First Avenue, Sunnyvale, CA 94089.
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)