TechCrunch
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Educational App Maker Mindshapes Picks Up $4M Round Led By Index; Adds Big 5 Publishers To Magic Town
Another funding announcement that underscores what big business kids’ and educational apps can be. Mindshapes, a UK-based developer of interactive learning apps, has picked up a $4 million round of funding led by Index Ventures, wi...
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An $800M Buddy Media Acquisition Would Be Worth 8X Its Current Revenue
Salesforce.com is acquiring Buddy Media, in the largest social marketing acquisition to date, according to sources close to the company are confirming. AllThingsD reported earlier today that Salesforce is getting close to a deal for more...
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Groupon Picks Up Breadcrumb For A Little POS Magic
Groupon just announced via its blog that it has acquired Breadcrumb, the creators of an affordable point of sale system and iPad app that targets local restaurants. While the terms of the acquisition have not yet been disclosed, Groupon...
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Google Brings ChromeOS To The Desktop, Launches Its First Chromebox
Google, together with its partner Samsung, launched a new Chromebook and its first desktop Chromebox today. The most important change to the new Samsung Series 5 Chromebook is that it is significantly faster. While earlier versions featu...
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Why Facebook Is Still The Perfect Startup (Slides)
Facebook had another tough day today in the public markets, with shares now trading at around $28 after debuting less than two weeks ago at $42.05. Good timing, then, for a new slideshow report out today from the boutique French consulti...
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For Your Programmer’s Arsenal: A Working Clippy For Any Web Page
You’re hitting deadline and you want to add that special something that will totally know your web app out of the park. Do you add rounded corners? A Tweet This button? No, motherlover, you add Clippy JS. Clippy JS, made by Smore, ...
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Keen On… Andrew Keen: On The Social Web’s ‘Creepiness’ And How To Stop It [TCTV]
In this very unique edition of the “Keen On” web video series series typically hosted by Andrew Keen, we had the chance to turn the tables on the self-professed “antichrist of Silicon Valley.” Keen was intervie...
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Akismet Just Filtered Its 50 Billionth Piece Of Spam, Now Seeing 700 Spam Comments Per Second
WordPress just hit an impressive milestone today: it has now filtered its 50 billionth piece of spam. Akismet, the homegrown comment filtering system from WordPress maker Automattic is the tool responsible for all the spam fighting. And ...
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RIM Halts Trading To Issue Business Update, Hires RBC And J.P. Morgan For “Strategic Review”
Canadian smartphone manufacturer RIM has briefly ceased trading of their stock today in order to issue a “business update” from CEO Thorsten Heins to their stockholders. Though the release takes the time to outline some of t...
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Bitly Goes Beyond Link Shortening, But Its Users Are Not Amused
Bitly launched a major update and redesign of its link shortening service today that, in the eyes of many of its users, de-emphasizes some of its core feature. Instead of being able to just copy and paste a link, users now have to go thr...
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Facebook Has Lost About $35 Billion In Value Since IPO As Shares Dip Below $29
Pain, pain, and more pain for Facebook’s stock. Facebook sunk into the $20s for the first time today, declining about 9 percent as options trading started. The decline also came a day after a third wave of reports came out about a...
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Game Closure Poaches Zynga’s CTO Of Mobile To Lead HTML5 Game Development
Last we heard from Game Closure, the young startup had just turned down offers from Zynga and Facebook on its way to a $12 million raise from Highland Capital, Greylock, Benchmark, General Catalyst, and more. Even in spite of $100 millio...
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Amazon Instant Video Comes to Xbox 360
Amazon just announced that its Instant Video service is now available on Microsoft’s Xbox 360. With the Amazon Instant Video app for Xbox Live Gold subscribers, Xbox users can now access the roughly 120,000 movies and TV episodes a...
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Doing It Wrong: Irish Newspaper Licensing Organization Asks Women’s Charity To Pay For Links
An Irish women’s charity, Women’s Aid, linked to some articles on the Irish Examiner (like this, this, and this) and thought that all was right with the world. Heck, that’s how the Internet works, right? It turns out th...
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HTC Evo 4G LTE Review: Initial Impressions (Hands-On Photos)
Evo. It’s one of the few HTC/Sprint product lines to make a splash in the mobile ocean, and after a brief stay at U.S. customs, the latest iteration should do the same. The Evo 4G LTE is the most powerful Evo to date, with a 4.7-in...
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Viddy Updates iOS App To Add Custom Cover Art, Faster Uploads, And Local Language Support
Mobile video sharing service Viddy has been busy adding new features to its iOS app, which will now provide more customization options for content that users upload. Along with the latest app update, Viddy has also rolled out a new web e...
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This Sassy Little Robot Lets Your Friends Follow You Around With Telepresence
Although one could argue that Facetime and Skype are already nearly perfect telepresence systems, there’s definitely some value in having a jolly little robot sit on your shoulder and transmit, in real time, everything you see and...
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iPhone App Downloads Dropped Again In April, As Apple’s Bot Crackdown Continues
Mobile app downloads continued to decline in April and the cost to acquire loyal users picked up, reports mobile marketing firm Fiksu in its latest report out today. This downward trend was expected, as no major events sparked app discov...
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More FB IPO Fallout? Russia’s Leading Social Network Vkontakte’s IPO ‘Postponed Indefinitely’
In the aftermath-analysis about what exactly happened in the Facebook IPO, and what it might mean for the future, here’s one side-effect to the east of Nasdaq: Vkontake, the top social network in Russia, which shares a shareholder ...
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Bitly Launches New Bookmarking Features, Profiles, Search & iPhone App
Link shortener Bitly today launched a major redesign and number of new features that all add up to what the company itself calls “a new Bitly.” Among these new features are ‘bitmarks,’ Bitly’s name for its n...
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Think Of The Docks! Could The New iPhone Have A Micro USB Connector?
Now look: these are probably fake as all get-out, but bear with me. These handsomely watermarked photos are purported to represent a brand new iPhone design with a sort of two-tone brushed and chromed casing. Whether they are real or not...
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Lockerz Acquires Fashion Community Chick Approved
Social commerce startup Lockerz just announced that it has acquired online fashion community Chick Approved. Lockerz allows its members to earn “PTZ” by sharing content and other activity on the site, which are then redeemed ...
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Peer To Peer Lending Crosses $1 Billion In Loans Issued
Editor’s note: Peter Renton is the editor and publisher of the Social Lending Network, a blog dedicated to peer to peer lending. You can follow him on Twitter @socialloans. Peer to peer (p2p) lending was always an idea with great p...
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Face.com Is Definitely Being Acquired By Facebook Say Sources
The purchase of Face.com by Facebook is happening and is a done deal, say multiple TechCrunch sources. Those familiar with the matter have confirmed the price will be $100m, as per the media speculation in the last few days. So far Face....
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New iOS 6 Maps App Reportedly Caught On Film Ahead Of WWDC
Rumblings of a new, Google-free iOS Maps app have been winging their way around the web for a few weeks now, and just in time to whet our appetites before WWDC, an early version of the revamped app has apparently been caught on film. Th...
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Dell Finally Does An All-In-One PC Right (By Cloning The iMac)
Dell has sold various all-in-one computers for years. These systems were mostly insipid, humdrum computers not fit for anything other than being a family’s portal to Facebook. Even with touchscreens, Dell’s all-in-one systems...
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Thrillist’s JackThreads Hits 2 Million Members, Plans To Move Beyond Flash Sales
JackThreads, the members-only shopping club bought by men’s lifestyle brand Thrillist two years ago, just hit a major milestone this morning: 2 million members. At the time of the original acquisition, JackThreads was really small,...
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Inventory Management Startup Stitch Labs Now Offers Shipping Through ShipStation
Founded on the premise of making it easier for independent creators to interact with their customers, Stitch Labs launched to offer a cloud-based solution for small businesses that wish to manage CRM, product orders, and inventory manage...
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Kicksend Releases An Android App For Sharing All Your Photos, Videos, and More
Last December, file-sharing startup Kicksend went mobile, with an iPhone app designed to enable easy sharing of photos and videos that are captured from your mobile device. Now, six months later, the startup is taking that same functiona...
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Plum Perfect Uses A Picture Of Your Face For Makeup, Clothes Recommendations
Listen up, ladies! (And upwardly fashionable gents!) A new service has hit the web that you’ve likely been waiting for for a long time. Gone are the days of trotting over to a store sales associate and getting help with matching ...
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BabyPing Is A Wireless Baby Monitor You Control With Your iPhone
If you’ve been in the baby monitor racket as long as I have, you’ve seen it all: the good, the bad, and the unusable. Well here’s a monitor that just might win my heart. It’s called the BabyPing (there’s an ...
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Junar Nabs $1.2M To Help Small Government, Business Unlock Big Data
Last month, San Francisco unveiled a new cloud-based open data site as part of its move to adopt cloud services and, in turn, to encourage open government, transparency and accountability by improving access to data and information. San ...
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Mobile Ads: Hipcricket Owner Augme Buys 5 Patents, 25 Pending Patents For Its Mobile VoIP Strategy
More developments in the world of mobile patents, and mobile advertising, as it happens: mobile marketing company Augme Technologies has purchased five patents covering mobile VoIP and other technologies, and a further 25 related patent ...
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Crowdsourced Flight Finder FlightFox Grabs $800K In Angel Funding, Joins YC’s Latest Batch
Australian travel search FlightFox has a new take on how to surface the best airline deals, and now it has a round of angel funding and entry into top startup incubator Y Combinator, to go along with it. The company has just closed an $8...
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Trivia Party, The Draw Something Of Little Known Facts, Hits 10,000 Questions Answered
We first met the folks from Lamp Lighter at an NYC office hours session, and just as we expected, their app Trivia Party is doing swimmingly in the App Store. After a week of availability, the app has already made its way into the Top 10...
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1M Students Strong, Echo360 Secures $31M From Steve Case, Ted Leonsis To Flip Higher Ed
As the old school gives way to the new, technology has begun to play an increasingly active role in the learning process — from primary to higher education. This has given rise to “blended learning,” or the strategic bl...
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What’s In A Name? Nintendo Seems To Be Sticking With Calling Its Next-Gen System Wii U
Nintendo unveiled the tablet-centric Wii U at last year’s E3. At the time the company was clear that it was a working name. A report earlier this year stated that Nintendo was exploring other options. E3 kicks off next week and it ...
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Ace Metrix Raises $8M For Smarter TV Ad Testing
Ace Metrix, a company promising brands and agencies a smarter, faster approach to testing their TV ads, has raised $8 million in new funding. CEO Peter Daboll, whose resume includes time as Chief of Insights at Yahoo and CEO of comScore ...
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E3 Rumor: Sony Partnering With Cloud Gaming Provider
According to a very short, very rumor-filled VG24/7 piece, Sony is looking at adding cloud-enabled gaming to the PlayStation line, presumably in the form of an Onlive or Gaikai partnership. Given that we won’t see much new this yea...
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MongoDB Developer 10gen Raises $42 Million Round Led By New Enterprise Associates
10gen, the company behind the increasingly popular NoSQL database MongoDB today announced that it has secured a new $42 million financing round let by New Enterprise Associates. This round also includes participation from existing invest...
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YC Alum/Construction Disruptor PlanGrid Nails $1.1M Seed Funding From Box, 500 Startups, And More
One more Y Combinator startup from the March 2012 class has bagged a seed round of funding. PlanGrid, which has created a groundbreaking app for the construction industry, has raised $1.1 million from a notable list of backers. They incl...
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Gartner: Over $172B In Mobile Payments In 2012; SMS, Web Most Popular Routes
No, NFC still hasn’t come to the iPhone — or many other devices, for that matter. But this does not appear to be stopping the momentum in the world of mobile payments. Research out today from Gartner says that this year will ...
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What Will Facebook’s Perfect Storm Of An IPO Leave Behind?
The Facebook IPO was supposed to be Silicon Valley’s shining moment. It’s the book-end for the decade of recovery that followed the first wave of consumer Internet companies. It was the debutante ball for the next great Silic...
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F50: A Different Kind Of Tech Conference
Faster than you can say “Can I borrow your copy of ‘How To Win Friends And Influence People,’” it’s tech conference season again. There hasn’t been a week during the month of May where I haven’t ...
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Work At A Startup: Weebly, Codecademy, And Stripe On Startup Recruiting [TCTV]
Earlier this month, Y Combinator held its Work At A Startup Event, where many of its alumni took the stage — not to pitch investors (as is the case at the incubator’s enormous demo day), but instead engineers who might be lured t...
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The Art of Raising Seed: You’re Either Hot, Or You Make Your Own Heat
Editor’s note: This post is written by guest author Darius “Bubs” Monsef, who is founder & CEO of the new design marketplace CreativeMarket. He is also the founder of the popular creative community COLOURlovers and is a mentor ...
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As Layoffs Loom, RIM’s Chief Legal Officer Steps Down
There goes another one — RIM announced today that Chief Legal Officer Karima Bawa will soon be leaving the company. This is RIM’s second major departure in as many weeks, with RIM sales head Patrick Spence leaving the ailing ...
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Death To Powerpoint! Piccsy Rethinks The Pitchdeck, Gets Tons Of Pageviews
Your Powerpoint pitchdeck is so boring. So. Freaking. Boring. Although tech bloggers aren’t sent startup’s actual pitchdecks as often as investors are (thankfully), we’re still walked through them on dreadful, “le...
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Yahoo! Licenses Platform To Reach Out To The Arab Web
We’re currently used to more drama-oriented stories coming out of Yahoo!, but that doesn’t mean business hasn’t entirely halted there. Yamli is a service which offers a smart Arabic keyboard that allows users who type i...
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How Face(.com) Recognition Could Fit Into Facebook Mobile
Face.com’s CEO has shrugged off rumors that it is being acquired by Facebook for up to $100 million when we asked. But the addition of its facial recognition tech to Facebook’s mobile apps could make sure friend tagging conti...
