There’s a big difference between jumping ship and being forced to walk the plank. Yet every time a high-ranking employee leaves a tech company, people assume the boat is sinking. In fact, it can mean quite the opposite.
No respectable company is going to throw a team member under the bus by saying they were fired. But sometimes that’s the truth, and the company is better off, not worse. → Read More
Uber is starting to look like it’s participating in a nationwide game of whack-a-mole — and it’s really fun to watch.
Uber just announced in a blog post that today it is launching the lower-priced “Taxi” version of its car service in San Francsico. → Read More
SigFig, a startup that tracks your investments and provides Mint-style graphics and recommendations, has reached an agreement to provide the technology for the “My Portfolios” section of Yahoo Finance, according to a source with knowledge of the partnership.
SigFig declined to comment for this post. I also reached out to Yahoo and will update if I hear back. → Read More
Google just sent out invites for an October 29th Android event in NYC. The festivities start at 10:00 and the event will also be live streamed on YouTube, seemingly indicating this is a big announcement. The invite sheds little light on the subject matter, but that’s the date long-rumored for the launch of LG Nexus smartphone. → Read More
Last Wednesday, eBay unveiled “The New eBay”, a completely redesigned website that is slowly being rolled out to all users, and released same day delivery service eBay Now in San Francisco. We got the chance to talk about product vision with President Devin Wenig and CTO Mark Carges. → Read More
Until now, a Facebook Page showed up only in the language it was created in, alienating foreign fans. Now Pages appear translated into a visitor’s local language, which could inspire global brands to buy more Facebook ads promoting them. Global Pages could help a billion language-fragmented users commune around what they like, and connect Facebook to the pesos, pounds, and yen Wall Street wants. → Read More
Last Thursday Shutterstock went public under the ticker SSTK, becoming the first NY-based tech company to IPO since 2010. → Read More
Nuance-owned Swype, which makes virtual keyboards for mobile devices, has released a new version of its software which adds the ability to backup and sync your personal dictionary across multiple mobiles devices — so you can take your slang with you. It also now offers dictionary updates for relevant trending ‘hot words’ — so you can take other people’s slang with you too. → Read More
A new startup called Clarity launched five months ago with a straightforward but lofty goal: It wanted to give people all over the world access to the kind of expert advice that could help them attain success in their careers and running their own businesses.
To do this, Clarity built a platform to arrange one-on-one phone calls between budding entrepreneurs and mentors such as successful… → Read More
Windows 8 is almost here, but despite Microsoft’s best efforts, there just aren’t that many Windows 8-style apps available yet. To kick-start the Windows 8 development community, Microsoft today announced that it is hosting a global hackathon in over 60 cities from November 9 to 11. Registration for the event is now open. → Read More
It’s been a few months since App.net launched its new social platform, and the company has gotten some good feedback from developers. While not nearly the size of Facebook or Twitter, the company has has a couple dozen apps already. Today, App.net announced a new way for users* to discover and download apps to use on its platform. The App.net Directory
App.net clearly wants to differentiate… → Read More
eBay just released Q3 earnings this afternoon, reporting earnings per share of $0.55 on revenue of $3.4 billion. Analysts expected EPS of $0.54 and revenue of $3.4 billion for Q3 2012. → Read More
Amiigo is a fitness app, bracelet and shoe-clip that uses gesture-recognition algorithms to identify the type of exercise you’re doing and a variety of sensors tell you how well you’re doing it as you’re doing it — monitoring your heart rate, blood oxygen level and skin temperature. It’s also waterproof — making it the only fitness gadget capable of keeping up with triathletes. → Read More
Pinterest is generally known as a place where a mostly female user base gathers to share images and videos of shiny happy things such as cute animals, pretty clothing, and tasty recipes. But in any community that consists of millions of people, some bad apples are going to turn up.
So today, Pinterest announced new features to let people block other users and report bad activity on the site. → Read More
The next frontier of computer hacking could be lifesaving medical devices: at a recent developer conference, a pacemaker was wirelessly hacked to send deadly 830 volt shocks. → Read More
This week comes the news about Media Temple and its plans with Dell and Morphlabs to give customers their own “private cloud,” consisting of a souped up Flash-filled server, complete with all the fixings for automating the mind bending complexity when adopting a new infrastructure. → Read More
Updated.Color Labs, the photo sharing startup which became well-known for securing a whopping $41 million in venture capital but has since had a bumpy road with lagging user numbers and turmoil at the executive levels, is not shutting down operations, contrary to a report first published by VentureBeat that is circulating today. → Read More
Depending on how you look at it, this is either the first floating four-wheeler, or the first jet ski with wheels. Either way, it’s awesome from just about any perspective. → Read More
HBO GO’s Latin American expansion continues today, with the service’s launch in Columbia. The debut there follows the launch of HBO GO in Brazil earlier this year, where it saw 177,000 visits in its first week. In Columbia, the service is being made available to HBO/MAX subscribers on MiDIRECTV, but HBO says that it’s working with other pay TV operators in the region for future roll-outs.
The… → Read More
Microsoft will finally launch a preview of Internet Explorer 10 for Windows 7 in mid-November, the company announced today. With the Windows 8 launch less than two weeks away, Microsoft has obviously been focusing on the release of Internet Explorer 10 for its new operating system lately. Internet Explorer 10, after all, will be an integral part of Windows 8, both on the Metro/Windows 8 UI side… → Read More
Apple’s web traffic share among mobile devices is huge, according to new numbers from Chitika. The online ad network is seeing 43 percent of smartphone web usage coming through iPhones up to the 4S, plus another 3 percent from the iPhone 5 alone. By contrast, the Samsung Galaxy S III is driving 2 percent of mobile web traffic on its network, combined with 15 percent across all other Samsung mobile… → Read More
Deluxis is trying to build an a la carte TV service online that where consumers will be able to pick and choose the channels they want to watch online. Rather than paying upwards of $100 a month for a bundle of hundreds of channels that users never watch, they’ll be able to purchase the five or six channels they actually want, paying for each individually. → Read More
A new study today from NPD DisplaySearch shows the progress of smart and connected TVs in recent years and during Q2 2012. Connected TVs did well are doing well around the world, with shares growing rapidly in key emerging markets. Growth is at a relative standstill in North America, however, as access to free, premium content via the web and through open standards remains a roadblock. → Read More
More established companies are turning to skunkworks projects — relatively independent teams within large companies — to compete with nimble startups or just generate fresh ideas. One example is Dell’s most recent foray into Linux laptops. Another is Deltek‘s new web service/mobile app Kona, a social task management app that’s taking on Asana and Do.com. → Read More
Twilio’s CEO Jeff Lawson gave a passionate keynote today at his cloud telephony startup’s conference today peppered with big stats and quotes like “Communications is now in the domain of software. We focus on the user, and we will win.”
Twilio now powers big names in tech like Uber, eBay and Hulu, has 150,000 developers and is expanding internationally to disrupt ye old telecom industry. → Read More
When you think of BuzzFeed, a few things come to mind. For me, it’s animated GIFs, hilarious posts and a killer community. The company, founded by CEO Jonah Peretti, is on a mission to create its own vertical as a publication, and has taken a step today to grow even more. BuzzFeed has hired former FINS Director of Product Management, Dao Nguyen, as its “Director of Growth.”
What does that title… → Read More
Rumors of an impending ISIS launch have been swirling around for a while now, but the company has just finally put an end to all that speculation. In keeping with previously leaked documents, ISIS has confirmed that its carrier-led mobile payments system will indeed officially go live in Austin, TX, and Salt Lake City, UT on October 22. → Read More
App developers pay huge sums for ads that gets them installs, and Facebook wants to gobble up that spend. So today Facebook begins allowing all developers to buy its recently announced app install ads that appear in the mobile News Feed. Until now, just a few partners had access.
Facebook is making a big bet on the app economy, and wants to be the top source of discovery outside of app stores. → Read More
Commerce Sciences, the Palo Alto-based e-commerce startup backed by $1.8 million in seed funding from Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors, Genesis Partners, and others, is rolling out a feature called one-click personalization which allows online retailers to customize the shopping experience to individual website visitors. → Read More
Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers. Twiliocon is going on this week in San Francisco, it’s the second annual conference for the company that makes telephony easy for developers to integrate into their products. Today, the company running it, Twilio, announced that it is releasing beta support for the WebRTC standard for its client product. This means that Twilio stays on the cutting… → Read More
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