Apparently, “there are only three areas in ecommerce to build billion dollar business: amazon, zappos and furniture”. That’s at least according to Oliver Samwer of clone factory Rocket Internet in Berlin.
Perhaps he right. Because now Made.com, a London based start-up that offers consumers designer furniture online at factory prices, has raised a £6 million series B funding to expand its brand in the UK and fuel international expansion. New York-based growth equity investor, Level Equity, led the funding round with additional investment from founding investors, PROfounders Capital.
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Pin Drop is a new iPhone app and website which helps people mark locations that matter to them. One or two other startups are trying out this arena, most notable Everplaces, still in private beta, however it feels like the market is wide open for this kind of application which you could also describe as a sort of Evernote for location I think.
Users can drop their own pins or they can take inspiration from the curated lists feature. Each pin can then be assigned to multiple categories allowing users to build up a library of their favourite locations.
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What most alarms me about today’s “Google Search Plus Your World” announcement is how it will distort name searches. When I Google someone’s name, I’m typically looking for a Wikipedia entry, their Twitter account, a personal website, or an author page on their blog. Today, Google Search handles this well, often returning these as the top results. But *thanks* to Search Plus Your World, soon I’ll see Google+ profiles more prominently even though they’re rarely what I’m looking for. → Read More
After a day of roaming the show floor in search of all things shiny and new, we thought it’d be a good idea to gather up the crew and do one big ol’ recap of everything we’ve seen so far. We’ve got gadgets, we’ve got guests — and, because we know how much you guys love free stuff, we’ve got a bunch of (really, really great) giveaways.
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The web, as we all know, was built for humans. A nice graphical interface to the internet, which has been around much longer. But as the web has grown from a nice way to display information to the largest computing infrastructure on the planet, we need to make the web friendlier for computers once again. Computers don’t want to look at pretty web pages. They want data.
Of course, there are a whole mish-mash of APIs and other ways computers speak to one another across the internet. But it is not standardized, and it is a mess. Computer scientist and Wolphram Alpha founder Stephen Wolfram thinks there is a better way for computers to speak to each other. He suggests that it is time for a new .data top-level domain. → Read More
This morning, Google began rolling out a major change to its core search engine that intertwines results from Google+ (and Picasa) with the ‘normal’ algorithmically-generated results we’ve come to expect. There have been plenty of critiques of the news, including John Battelle’s discussion on how this isn’t actually integrating ‘Your World’, as Google calls it, but rather just its own social network.
And now there’s another critic that’s coming out swinging: Twitter.
Earlier today the company’s General Counsel Alex Macgillivray, who was a top attorney at Google prior to making the jump to Twitter, called it “A bad day for the Internet”, and stated that some of his former colleagues were likely upset by the decision to “warp” Google’s results. And now Twitter itself has followed up with a statement denouncing the feature — and rather relying on the wishy-washy PR speak big companies are fond of, it’s very direct.
Here’s the full statement: → Read More
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The hottest and coolest thermostat on the market this year was clearly the Nest. This intelligent hunk of steel looks great on a wall and, more important, helps save energy in the home. The Nest learns as you use it, ensuring your home is comfortable year-round.
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As Semil showed back in November, social travel sites are all the rage these days among the entrepreneurs, offering plenty of interesting approaches to offering recommendations on where and how to travel. You may not have heard of HipGeo, but if you’re a traveler, this is something that will likely pique your curiosity. HipGeo has developed a location-aware platform that records and displays the places users go and how they get there, and today they’ve released a new app that is essentially a travel diary for the modern Web. → Read More
After the onslaught of media that is CES, who wouldn’t want more CES? We definitely do, which is why we’re running the TC Gadgets Webcast live at 4pm Pacific/7pm Eastern straight out of our posh studio on the CES show floor. Our goal? To recap the day’s news, interview cool people, and give away amazing prizes.
Today we’re giving away a real, live Sony Vita to one lucky winner – details during the broadcast – but watch this space for some great content and be sure to watch our daily live streams from the show floor. We’ll be running these webcasts every day at 4pm Pacific, giving away great prizes in the process.
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While we’ve been running around Vegas like mad to cover all of the pre-CES happenings, the main event starts… now.
We’re streaming live from the Las Vegas Convention Center, where the biggest companies in the world have gathered to show off their best and brightest new toys. All of the chaos of the show floor, beamed right to your house. Live! Oh, how wonderful the future is. Join us! → Read More
Flashpoint, a startup accelerator program based at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, Georgia, just had its first Demo Day at the Georgia Tech Research Institute. The newly launched incubator follows the typical format for programs like this, offering seed funding, mentorship, support, shared workspace and more, in return for a 6% share of the startup.
This accelerator is especially interested in investing in early stage startups in the technology, medical device and biotech industries. With its $1 million fund, the organization typically provides between $15,000 and $25,000 in funding to the companies accepted into the program. The first Demo Day saw over a dozen in the graduating class, including one which already received funding from Andreessen Horowitz pre-launch. → Read More
Zomm’s latest creation is called Lifestyle Connect, a small Bluetooth device that acts, in short, as an emergency alert system for folks who might have some health issues and live alone. If you fall or injure yourself in the home, the Lifestyle Connect will signal your phone to call the proper authorities as well as your friends and family. The system locates you – whether you’re at home or outside – and handles everything with voice control.
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Every business seems to want its own mobile software, and now Pyxis Mobile is transforming to help companies build apps for themselves. Previously, Pyxis created apps for enterprise financial services companies, but today pivots to offer its app development platform directly to clients. The company has rebranded itself as Verivo Software, and taken a $17 million funding round from Commonwealth Capital Ventures, as well as existing investors Ascent Venture Partners and Egan-Managed Capital. → Read More
I’ve been meaning to write about this for awhile now, but I’ve been a bit under the weather and, well, email is not a subject I always enjoy — in discussion or in practice. Yes, as many have written before, we have a love-hate relationship with email, which has been shown in even starker relief with the redesign of Gmail.
We first wrote about ToutApp back in June of last year and again in November, because they are a young startup (backed by some smart people) trying to give us a shot at greater email productivity. → Read More
Gary Shapiro, President of the Consumer Electronics Association
Every year we try our best to talk to Gary Shapiro, the man behind Consumer Electronic Show. He’s a guy who at least appears to genuinely wants to see big and small companies succeed. Last year we spoke about his book, The Comeback: How Innovation Will Restore the American Dream, that calls America to action. But this year, with Microsoft leaving CES and the show seemingly shrinking, we had a bit more to talk about. → Read More
Following its November launch, OnSwipe competitor (and TechCrunch Disrupt finalist) Pressly is bringing another major media outlet’s content to the tablet interface. The company is today announcing the launch of a new publication called Electionism. The app was built for the Media Lab, an internal product innovation team inside The Economist Group, which includes The Economist, CQ Roll Call and other businesses.
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Google announced the next iteration of its social search initiative this morning. Google Fellow Amit Singhal introduced this as “search, plus your world.” In reality, of course, this is pure hyperbole. The only source of social data Google uses to personalize its search results is Google+, which despite its success, likely doesn’t represent “your world” very well yet at this point. Indeed, unless you and your friends are very active on Google+, there’s a good chance you won’t see too many of the new personal results for the time being. → Read More
Hands On With The Parrot AR Drone 2
It’s CES time again and we’re out in full force with the live video and the streaming and the interviews. Here are some highlights from the past weekend when we interviewed a number of CES notables as well as attending some of the major press conferences of the week including Samsung, Sony, Nokia, and Intel.
We were also live last night at Digital Experience where we saw a pet tracker and a glass-backed laptop. → Read More
Exclusive: We’ve received more details on how PayPal will be scaling its in-store payments technology at major retailers. As we reported last week, PayPal is currently testing the mobile payments and point-of-sale integrations at Home Depot on a friends and family basis, in five stores. Today, we’ve learned that PayPal is partnering with AJB Software, a company that provides point-of-sale software to large brick and mortar retailers, to integrate the online payments giant’s technology into their offerings.
AJB basically provides a communications gateway that connects a retailer’s point-of-sale system with financial institutions. Over 140 large-scale retailers including Kohl’s and BestBuy use AJB’s software to manage payments. In a nutshell, the partnership allows an easy way for big box retailers to offer consumers a way to pay via PayPal in their stores. → Read More
The Daily, News Corp’s tablet news reader app, will no longer be iPad-only. A deal has been struck with Verizon to pre-install an Android version of the app on the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 this month, with more Verizon Android devices to receive The Daily in the future. Verizon customers will get week’s free trial of the app before the $4 a week / $40 a year subscription cost kicks in. This distribution deal could significantly increase The Daily’s readership and sales by relieving Android users from having to go out and download it. → Read More
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