Looks like the economy, and with it the urge to splurge, is back — especially in Silicon Valley. After a long chill, the M&A market seems to be thawing — welcome news for entrepreneurs and their backers, who have been stymied by the lack of exits and a moribund IPO market. And the recently announced deals are surfacing some interesting trends. But before we examine them, let’s just review some of the tie-ups that have been announced: Continue »
The real-time web helps us keep abreast of breaking news, but as we’ve written before, companies have struggled with how to present real-time news with older information in a balanced way. Three startups that presented this afternoon at TechCrunch 50 touched on solving that problem.
It’s hard to keep track of the flood of news on the web, but Thoora, a web-based news service platform, aims to solve that problem by clustering links to blog posts and news articles about top stories based on the quality of the article and whether it’s attracting interest on the web. Thoora also provides stats as to how many tweets a news topic on the web (e.g. Kanye West’s outburst at MTV’s Video Music Awards) receives and has a widget affixed on the site that shows examples of related tweets. But the judges warned that Thoora is entering a crowded space of competitors, one of which is Google News, and should focus on highlighting how the features on its site are richer than its peers. Continue »
Adobe said today it’s agreed to buy analytics and metrics firm Omniture for $1.8 billion in cash, or $21.50 a share. Customers want to integrate Adobe’s online products like Flash with services like those offered by Omniture, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen said during the conference call announcing the deal. With the purchase, Adobe diversifies its product offerings and takes advantage of the fast-growing SaaS market, on which Omniture focuses. Continue »
Better Place connects with Microsoft, Intel for electric vehicle software (Earth2Tech)
Rumor has it: Apple tablet still in the pipeline, headed to AT&T (TheAppleBlog)
Viral campaign fail: Mother’s paternity quest sells Denmark as one-night stand hot spot (NewTeeVee)
Value add for multitouch notebooks is…what, exactly? (jkOnTheRun)
Could India save billions with FOSS? (OStatic)
Unorthodox secondary revenue sources (WebWorkerDaily)
AOL said at the TechCrunch50 conference this morning that it plans to release a host of AIM Lifestream products, including Mac and Windows desktop apps and mobile clients, on Sept. 22. AIM Lifestream marries the classic instant messenger system with support for social networks, such as Twitter, Flickr, Digg and Facebook, so users can check their friends’ updates on those sites directly on AIM. This is yet another example of a company revamping its product by tapping into the power of social networks. The paid AIM Lifestream iPhone app is already available for download, and the beta versions of the upcoming products can be found here.
Meanwhile, Facebook, in addition to announcing that it’s cash-flow positive, released a section for experimental features and applications on its site today that’s similar to Google Labs, called Facebook Prototypes. Instead of waiting for a feature or app to be fully baked before releasing it to the social network’s 300 million users, Facebook engineers can post their ideas for future features to Prototypes. Since the ideas in Prototypes aren’t officially incorporated into the Facebook platform, some may have bugs and not work properly. Continue »
The U.S. government should deregulate the mobile telecommunications industry and open mobile networks to more applications and foreign players, according to a new study from The Brookings Institution. Such policy changes would fuel growth and drive business for players along the wireless value chain, despite the fact that Americans appear indifferent to innovation in the wireless industry.
The 18-page study, which was released today, examines consumers’ thoughts about mobile phones in the U.S., UK, Spain and Japan in an effort to determine how government policies affect consumer behavior. They are, author Darrell M. West concludes, heavily impacted by public policy. Japan, for instance, has a low rate of smartphone usage level due to a telecom infrastructure that’s largely closed to foreign manufacturers, while Spain enjoys a high rate of mobile app consumption thanks, in part, to a relatively open architecture in its telecom policies.
Among the more interesting findings from the study: Continue »
Facebook said today that its global audience has grown to 300 million users and that it’s cash-flow positive. The social network’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a blog post today that:
Earlier this year, we said we expected to be cash flow positive sometime in 2010, and I’m pleased to share that we achieved this milestone last quarter. This is important to us because it sets Facebook up to be a strong independent service for the long term.
Microsoft, after months of anticipation, today launched its latest digital audio player, the Zune HD. It’s a complete revamp of the device’s previous versions — it utilizes a bright OLED touchscreen, adds a web browser and HD radio tuner, and runs on a new Tegra processor from Nvidia. But while Microsoft hopes to “out-iPod” the Apple line of audio players with some extra features, the question isn’t “Which device has more features?” Rather, it’s “Which device has the features that consumers want most?” More importantly — will Microsoft eventually fold its Zune platform into Windows phones? Continue »
The U.S. government today unveiled a site that ushers the White House into the cloud computing era, called Apps.gov. The site allows federal agencies to peruse through a menu of software offerings from Google, Salesforce.com, Scribd, SlideShare and others, then select the application or services they’d like to buy. So far the true cloud computing services such as storage, virtual machines and web hosting are listed as coming soon.
Today Google also announced that it intends to build a government cloud in 2010 that will meet the standards set by the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA), the law defining security requirements that must be met by all U.S. federal government information systems. Google has begun the process of certifying its Google Apps product under the law, but will now also seek to extend that certification to a separate yet-to-be-built government cloud within the Google facilities. Continue »
Aardvark, a San Francisco-based startup that touts a web-based answer service, today released a similar application for the iPhone that will let you ask friends in your social graph questions on topics, such as recommended restaurants or books, and receive answers directly from your Apple handset.
The philosophy behind the service is that your friends have a wealth of knowledge you can tap into, and Aardvark helps you conduct a search of these peers to find answers to your questions. This makes it stand apart from web services like Yelp and Yahoo Answers, where you rely on the advice and opinions of people you don’t know. Continue »
