Ustream has just launched a version of its Ustream Viewer for Android Market, giving users the ability to access any Ustream footage while they're on the go, free of charge. You'll be able to use the app for streaming video both over Wi-Fi and 3G. This is actually Ustream's second application for Android. The first is its
The evolution of Twitter clients have been speeding along. While Twitter is the fundamental platform that formed a base for many applications, such as TweetDeck, Seesmic, PeopleBrowsr and Sobees, these platforms soon looked to other social networks such as Facebook, MySpace and FriendFeed for additional integration. And many have conquered all mediums, with desktop, web and mobile apps. In fact, the Twitter client race has gradually become a competition to be the first to launch useful and powerful apps that are chock full of features. Sobees, which has flown relatively under the radar, is one of the first clients to launch LinkedIn integration after the professional social network just released its API.Sobees, which has a Windows native desktop app built in .NET and a web application built off of Microsoft Silverlight, integrates Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, FriendFeed and now LinkedIn. Sobees will pull in a full feed from LinkedIn including connections updates, status updates, applications updates, jobs posted, groups joined, recommendations and profiles changes. You can also post status updates from the client, maintain connections, search your LinkedIn stream, and view profiles of connections.
Business social network LinkedIn has hit a milestone in the UK, surpassing 3 million registered users in these parts. Kevin Eyres, Managing Director Europe at LinkedIn, announced the feat at a London event last night and on the company's blog this morning.LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman attended the event as well, and told Reuters afterwards that the company plans to pursue an IPO at some point, but not any time soon.
Is an iPhone price war about to break out in the UK? After Vodafone and Orange bagged the iPhone - when O2's two year monopoly expired in September - we learn today that Tesco, the UK supermarket leviathan, is to sell the iPhone on Tesco Mobile, its MVNO joint venture partnership with O2. This news just sent the iPhone directly into the mainstream. UK iPhone app developers are looking at an even bigger gold rush than before.Both iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS handsets will be sold in Tesco Phone Shops and online through Tesco Direct in the UK, possibly before the Christmas holidays.Tesco Mobile normally focuses on the low end of the market with voice and text, and we're told the prices will be "competitive". As an MVNO, Tesco has a fairly free hand regarding the the markets it goes after. O2 says it has sold over one million iPhones since September 2007, clearly to early adopters.
KIDO'Z, the Israeli company behind the eponymous media browser for kids, has released a new version of its program and insists that we now refer to it as a Web OS for kids instead. It's certainly not an invalid point, since the new KIDO'Z incorporates communication features besides content consumption elements only, and the company is making strides in signing up computer manufacturers to have the platform pre-installed on machines.
You would think that, almost exactly 4 years after opening up to the public, WordPress.com would have a way for people to subscribe to blogs by e-mail, right? You'd be wrong, at least until today.While there has always been the possibility to subscribe to blogs by e-mail using FeedBurner or other RSS facilitators, WordPress.com's parent company Automattic has now added an email subscription feature to the popular free blogging service.
I'm not sure any lasting change will come from our series of Scamville posts. For now the most egregious of the social gaming offers are gone, which is a good thing. But none of the big players seem to have felt much pain. And, importantly, Facebook's rules still allow most of the really bad stuff (as long as users are being told in the fine print exactly how they're being screwed). It's only a matter of time before business as usual kicks in.Four companies have felt the wrath of Facebook in the wake of Scamville: Tattoo, Gambit, Social Hour and Social Reach. Facebook doesn't openly talk about the fact that these companies have been "banned," but they've let the app developers know - work with these guys and there will be trouble.Zynga also got a slap on the wrist with the suspension of Fishville for a few days, but their cash cows, like Farmville, were never touched. And that's despite the fact that we showed clear violations of Facebook's rules on Zynga games via DoubleDing, an offer provider that Zynga has some control over.Ultimately only those four companies took a permanent hit. And we're still scratching our heads over Gambit.
We all know the Mobile web is exploding in popularity. Opera Mini, Opera's mobile browser, grew its monthly users by 11 percent to nearly 40 million users in October from 32 million users in August. In terms of page views, Opera Mini delivered 17.2 billion last month, a 238 percent annual increase, indicating that mobile web usage is growing fast. Since September's report, page-views have gone up by nearly 15 percent.
Only a year ago, the conventional wisdom was that blogs were dead and microblogging would soon replace them. Twitter was supposed to kill blogs because it's so much simpler to publish one sentence fragment at a time rather than whole thoughts bunched together into what is known in the trade as "paragraphs." Today, blogs are doing fine, while Twitter is struggling with flattening growth, at least to its Website Twitter.com (clients like Seesmic and TweetDeck have seen no slowdown). The weakness Twitter has been experiencing in the U.S.
Earlier today GigaOm reported that Dropbox raised a new $7.25 million funding round over the summer (a number they derived from a SEC filing but that CEO Drew Houston wouldn't confirm). We just spoke to Houston, who says that figure is wrong, and it's off by nearly a year: Dropbox did close a Series A funding round, but it was for $6 million, and it was back in October 2008. And it was led by Sequoia, not Accel (though Accel did participate inthe round).Previously, Dropbox raised a seed round from Sequoia that was $1.2 million in convertible debt (they also raised money through the Y Combinator program).
There's a ton of buzz around location right now. Our discussion on it at the RealTime CrunchUp this past Friday easily could have gone on twice as long as it did. There are just so many interesting facets: Business models, privacy, real-life social implications, and so on. Not surprisingly, we're seeing an explosion of services that are built around it. One such service was a TechCrunch50 demo pit company this year, OnTheRoad.Started in 2004 in the Czech Republic to connect travelers, newer devices like smartphones with GPS are poised to take the service to the next level. While a lot of location services such Foursquare, Gowalla, and now Loopt are built around the idea of "checking-in" to venues, OnTheRoad takes a different approach. It's more about creating a geotagged travel diary when you specifically go on a trip somewhere.
Google's acquisition of display advertising startup Teracent yesterday had significant meaning for rival Tumri; the San Mateo-based advertising platform now counts tech giant Google as a competitor. Tumri, which launched in 2004, provides a similar advertising technology to Teracent. The startup's product, the AdPod, creates display ads that are customized in realtime to the specific consumer and site. Tumri's dynamic ad platform is optimized at the creative level to enable advertisers to change the animation, background template, featured product, headline, image, and more dynamically based on who is viewing the ad and where the individual is viewing the ad from geographically.
This morning we broke the news that Canopy Financial, no. 12 on this year's Inc. 500 list of fastest growing companies, is a complete sham. And it's no surprise that today, everyone is trying to point the finger at everyone else. The company's investment bank, Financial Technology Partners, which has represented Canopy Financial through at least two separate rounds of fraudulent fundraising, emailed to say:
As fashion magazines, like Vogue, are trying to establish viable digital strategies, Lucky Magazine is making their first venture into the e-commerce world with the launch of a online retail site. Partnered with loyalty shopping technology startup Mall Networks, Lucky is rolling out a retail site that makes editorial picks "shoppable."The site will feature daily editorial picks on clothing, accessories, and beauty products. Users can then click to purchase the picks on various retail sites. You can filter results by category, designer, price range and store. Users can share products to Facebook, Twitter and save any items to an Amazon Wish List. The site also serves as a comparison shopping site between merchants, and features nearly 100,000 various fashion items from more than 450 brands.