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Opera Teams Up With Telling To Develop A Mobile Browser For The Chinese Market
Mar 10, 11:27AM
Browser developer Opera Software has established a joint venture with Telling Telecom, a major mobile phone distributor in China. The goal is to develop a customized mobile browser for the Chinese market. The joint venture will enable the partners to combine Opera's core browser technology with local content, operations and Telling's distribution network within China. The registered capital of the joint venture will be 135 million RMB (roughly $20.5 million). 
Before It Even Begins, Apple Wins SXSW
Mar 10, 10:22AM
Over the past week, there's been a major dilemma in Geekland: what do we do on March 11? You see, we've known for months that it's the first day of the SXSW conference in Austin, Texas. But last Wednesday, Apple announced it would also be the day that the iPad 2 officially goes on sale. The questions immediately began: do we keep our plans intact and head to Austin? Or do we hang back and wait in line for the iPad 2 at 5 PM? Luckily, Apple thought ahead.
Instagram Now Adding 130,000 Users Per Week: An Analysis
Mar 10, 10:00AM
Since launching just six months ago, Instagram has quickly become one of the web's top photo sharing services. The company recently passed the two million user mark and announced the launch of their API. RJMetrics sampled data from that API and loaded it into its Dashboard for analysis. This yielded detailed new insights into Instagram's growth and user adoption. I provide a full breakdown below, but here are some highlights: - Instagram is currently adding 130,000 registered users per week
- Instagram's 2.2 million users upload 3.6 million new photos per week (or 6 photos per second)
- 37.5 percent of registered users have never uploaded a photo
- 5 percent of users have uploaded over 50 photos
- 65 percent follow nobody, and only 12 percent of users follow more than 10 people
- For users who upload at least one photo, there is a 45 percent chance they will upload a photo the following week
- Those same users have a 25 percent chance they will upload a photo 12 weeks later, representing a significantly stronger retention rate than Twitter.
LinkedIn Is About To Make Headlines
Mar 10, 7:04AM
A lot has been written about social news and how Twitter and Facebook are in the running for defining and dominating it. There's also a lot of hand-wringing about how journalism will be disrupted by social. I might be a bit biased as a former employee, but when it comes to social news, I think LinkedIn could become the Wall Street Journal of social news—not Twitter or Facebook. In fact, LinkedIn is expected to announce a new social news product this week. In what may or may not be a precursor to that anticipated product, a few days ago I received a curious email from "LinkedIn Headlines" (the actual email address news@linkedin.com). It was an email digest of the most shared news in my network about the Internet industry (see screenshot below). There has been no official launch of a product by that name nor have I seen anyone else write about it. But that email made me think a little more about the different types of news I consume.
Square's Jack Dorsey: VeriFone's Security Hole Allegation "Is Not A Fair Or Accurate Claim"
Mar 10, 6:21AM
As we heard this morning, VeriFone CEO Doug Bergeron wrote an open letter to consumers and the industry, warning users of a "gaping security hole" in mobile payments startup (and competitor) Square's hardware. Bergeron actually went so far as to ask Square to recall all of its card readers and even contacted all of the major credit card companies, including Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover and JP Morgan Chase to alert them about the potential issue. Tonight, Square's CEO Jack Dorsey has responded to VeriFone's claims with a letter of his own (we've embedded the note below). Dorsey says that VeriFone's accusation is not an accurate or fair claim, as any encrypted card reader, phone camera, pen and paper can be used to copy or catch numbers from a credit card. He adds that Square is "designed to be used without worry" for consumers. 
YC-Funded Earbits Brings A Twist To Music Startups: Online Radio That Lets Bands Pay For Playtime
Mar 10, 2:35AM
It's no secret that online music startups are incredibly challenging. It's tough to build an audience, and even when you do, the licensing fees associated with streaming premium content are often deadly. It's so difficult that Y Combinator founder Paul Graham asked imeem (and picplz) founder Dalton Caldwell to give a talk on the subject at last year's Startup School. Which is why today's news is interesting: YC has invested in Earbits, an online radio startup with a twist. >From the consumer's perspective, Earbits is an online radio service similar in some ways to Pandora. After arriving at the site, you'll be asked to choose from one of over 40 radio stations (though unlike Pandora you don't seed your playlist with a band or song title ). Click on a genre and the music will start playing — a small, attractive player will be nested at the top of the page, and the rest of the screen will fill up with a large photo of the artist, with their bio and other relevant information below. In general, the design is very well done.
TechCrunch Review — The iPad 2: Yeah, You're Gonna Want One.
Mar 10, 2:06AM
In January 2010, shortly after its unveiling, I first got my hands on an iPad. My initial reaction? "The iPad is like holding the future." And that's funny because here we are, just a little over a year into that future, and something new has come along that makes holding the iPad 1 feel like holding the past: the iPad 2. A week ago, after its unveiling, I got some hands on time with the new hardware and my initial assessment was that it pushed a device that already had no true competition even farther ahead. But now I've had the chance to actually use the thing non-stop for a week. Is my feeling the same? Actually, it's even stronger.
Blekko Bans 1.1 Million Spammy Domains Via New Algorithm
Mar 10, 1:58AM
Search engine Blekko says they've banned some 1.1 million spammy domain names from their search results. The banned domains are the result of a new algorithm the company has developed that looks at both poor quality content as well as the types of ads that the domains include along with the content. It's part of their ongoing war, they say, against content farm and other very low quality content. It follows an action earlier this year where they banned twenty content farms from their results. They're calling the new algorithm "AdSpam." "One of the strongest signals that a page is spam is aggressive participation in self-service online advertising networks," says the company. When they compare low quality sites (based on existing signals) and see lots of keyword based ads alongside that content, it's very likely to be blocked. "Domains with low quality content plus keyword ads are "machines that print money," says Blekko CEO Rich Skrenta. "Machines that print money will be exploited."
Pawsley Aims to Become the Facebook, And Groupon, For Dogs
Mar 10, 1:33AM
Dog lovers, this one's for you. According to the Humane Society, there are 77.5 million owned dogs in the United States, and nearly 40 percent of households own at least one dog. And all of them are TechCrunch readers. Obviously, this is a fairly sizable demographic -- just imagine if they could vote. Though these high numbers may not be surprising to the canine-inclined, what may be surprising is how digital dog fans have become. Take this infographic from Lab42, for example, which estimates that 14 percent of Facebook users have created a profile for their dog. Although the survey sample was fairly small, if we scale that percentage to include the 600 million people on Facebook, well, that means there are potentially millions of pet profiles. What's more, not only are dog owners social networking, they're blogging, too. The DogTime Blog Network, for instance, has 320 pet bloggers and attracts more than 1.2 million unique visitors a month. 
China Switches To Homegrown CPUs For Supercomputers, Cites "Dependence On Foreign Technology"
Mar 10, 12:35AM
We've had a few editorials here lately regarding China. I wrote about our moral hypocrisy in disapproving of factory conditions there, and John wrote how the lowest-price-possible culture still extant in much Chinese manufacturing is harmful in a number of ways. Throughout, I think there has always been a sort of grudging admiration for the way that country is capable of single-mindedly pursuing certain difficult goals via public-private alignment, investing billions in infrastructure in order to be a market leader ten or twenty years down the line. One development I wasn't aware of was their effort to separate themselves from western companies in the computing field. While many of the chip manufacturers and specialized factories used by Intel, AMD, Nvidia, and ARM are located in China, the design work is largely done internally, and in this respect Intel et al. are literally decades ahead of the "competition," which really is nothing of the sort. This is something China wants to fix — and they're taking concrete steps towards doing so.
RockMelt Browser Opens Up To All, More Quietly This Time
Mar 10, 12:18AM
When RockMelt launched its new browser in private beta last November, it was greeted with an avalanche of press. RockMelt is a new social browser built around Facebook, realtime feeds, and faster search. The fact that Netscape founder Marc Andreessen is a major backer probably had something to do with the intense interest also. Reviews were mixed and then interest sort of died down. The only way you could try it is if a beta user sent you an invite. Until now. After more than 15 updates and months of testing with "a few hundred thousand active users," says CEO Eric Vishria, he is ready to open up the browser to anyone who wants to try it. You can download it here at RockMelt's site.
Want Someone To Bring You A Beer? Get That And Anything Else From Zaarly
Mar 10, 12:02AM
Zaarly was little more than an idea when it won a LA Startup Weekend competition three weeks ago. But there's been so much buzz about the startup that they've now gathered thousands of beta requests. And they've closed a $1 million funding round from top tier investors. Those investors include Ashton Kutcher, Felicis Ventures, Paul Buchheit, Bill Lee, Naval Ravikant and Lightbank (the venture fund created by Groupon's founders). Not bad for a startup that's still fiddling around with an internal prototype. Why all the excitement? Because people want stuff and they want it right now.
SolidPunch Allows You To Reward Your Facebook Friends For Favors
Mar 09, 11:50PM
Startup PunchTab is debuting a an iPhone app, SolidPunch, today as a rewards platform for your Facebook friends. SolidPunch by PunchTab lets you reward your Facebook friends for all the favors they do for you. You sign into the app via Facebook Connect and the app will automatically populate your friends. You can then punch your friends when they do you a favor. Did a friend buy you lunch? You can give them a punch. Similar to the way your Subway Club Card works, your friends earn punches. When they accumulate, 6 punches you can send them a reward or coupon from the PunchTab catalog for free (PunchTab makes money when a friend uses the coupon to buy an item). And like every startup launching this week, PunchTab will be offering Austin-specific rewards for SolidPunch users. 
Digital Ad Buying Platform MediaMath Adds Another $14M
Mar 09, 11:24PM
Ad tech company MediaMath is announcing a Series B round of financing today, in addition to its $12.5 million round in debt plus VC last August. The "Bloomberg terminal for marketing," MediaMath manages web advertising for clients, its platform giving ad agencies robust analytics in order to make more targeted ad buys. The three year old New York based company is in the same space as Turn, Invite Media (which was acquired by Google), Plus One and Trigit. 
NYC SeedStart Is On The Hunt For Digital Media Startups
Mar 09, 11:22PM
If you have an idea for a startup in New York City, this might just be the summer for you to get that idea off the ground. There is no shortage of startup accelerators, incubators, and other venture programs to help get you started—from TechStars NYC and HackNY to DreamIt and FinTech for financial startups. And there is also NYC SeedStart, which is now taking applications for digital media startups. NYC SeedStart is a 12-week summer program "focusing on advertising infrastructure, e-commerce, digital content, and mobile technology." Ten startups will be selected to join the program, which includes $20,000, office space, and mentoring from corporate partners including Time Warner, News Corp, Google, Hearst, The New York Times, MTV Networks, GiltCity, and AOL Ventures. 
As Apple Ponders Their Subscription Ruling, Readability Goes Full HTML5
Mar 09, 10:55PM
A few weeks ago, Readability got word that their iPhone app was rejected by Apple. While obviously, that's never good news, this was especially hard to take because the reason for the rejection was that they were offering a subscription service without offering Apple's new in-app subscription layer. They were dumbfounded and pissed off by this rejection because they didn't see it coming and it didn't seem to make sense. But rather than dwell on it, they went right back to the drawing board. The result of that and two weeks of fast-paced work is a full-on HTML5 version of their app, which Readability is releasing today. The web app is specifically designed for both mobile and tablets, using some of the more advanced aspects of HTML5, including offline storage support.
On Apple TV Special Apps, Sports, And The Slow Bleeding Of Cable
Mar 09, 10:11PM
Buried today in the iOS 4.3 release is an unmentioned, but very interesting update for the Apple TV: access to both MLB.tv and NBA League Pass. Yes, the live sports are coming to the Apple TV! That's great news for Apple TV owners, but such functionality has actually been available for some time on the rival boxes by Roku. Still, the ramifications of this are potentially huge because the lack of sports content has been the one point used over and over again in arguments against these new wave of Internet-powered set-top boxes killing cable. Between this, Roku, and Xbox Live getting ESPN content, we're definitely getting closer to a full-on cable revolt.
Don't Believe The FUD: Square Is Only As Insecure As You Let It Be
Mar 09, 9:46PM
Early this morning, VeriFone CEO Doug Bergeron wrote an "open letter" to the financial industry. In it, he decries Square and their little smartphone-credit-card-reader-that-could, calling for its recall. His reasoning? The Square dongle is easily available and it handles data passed between the dongle and whatever device it's plugged into without encryption (though everything transmitted over the network is heavily encrypted), making it too easy for criminals to "skim" (read: steal) credit card information. They even built a phony Square app to prove it. Of course, the letter barely (and even then, indirectly) touches on the fact that VeriFone has their own, competing smartphone credit card reading system, giving them a bit more skin in the game than the whole white-knight approach might let on. Toss in the fact that these "flaws" are by no means exclusive to Square, and the whole thing reeks of mudslinging and desperation. 
'The Daily' Finds The Richest Dog In South Dakota
Mar 09, 9:15PM
After The Daily editor Jesse Angelo's colorful memo about what constitutes compelling 
(Founder Stories) Stack Exchange CEO Joel Spolsky On When To Take VC Cash
Mar 09, 9:11PM
Today, Stack Overflow founder Joel Spolsky announced that he raised another $12 million in venture capital and that he is changing the name of his company to Stack Exchange. He also happens to be our next guest on Founder Stories, the TCTV show where angel investor and Hunch co-founder Chris Dixon talks shop with other founders. (Disclosure: Dixon is also an investor in Stack Exchange). The interview was taped before this announcement, but in the clip above Spolsky talks about when it's right to bootstrap a startup versus taking venture cash. In his mind, there are Ben & Jerry's types of businesses and Amazon types of businesses. The first one is a slog, builds slowly, and is better done as a bootstrapped startup. But if there is a land grab going on—as there is right now in Q&A and expert sites—then the venture route can help a startup get big as fast as possible. 
Recommendation Engine StumbleUpon Stumbles Onto $17M From Accel, August Capital And Others
Mar 09, 7:14PM
Recommendation engine StumbleUpon has just announced a $17 million Series B round of funding, from Accel Partners, August Capital, DAG Ventures, First Round Capital and Sherpalo Ventures. StumbleUpon has had an interesting history, being snatched up by eBay in 2007 and then bought back by its founders for a rumored $29 million plus in 2009. Currently the service has 14 million users and now serves up over 800 million "Stumbles," or recommendations, a month.
MindSnacks Raises $1.2 Million For Mobile Educational Games
Mar 09, 7:00PM
Game developer MindSnacks has raised $1.2 million in funding from Felicis Ventures, 500 Startups, Mitch Kapor, Geoff Ralston, David Jesk, Oleg Tscheltzoff, Collaborative Fund, StartupAngel, ENIAC Ventures, Maneesh Arora, DreamIt Ventures, Startl, Theoria Capital and David Kim. MindSnacks, which was incubated in Philadelphia incubator DreamIt Ventures, develops mobile learning games for foreign languages, test prep and other subjects.
StartupDigest Takes $200,000 To Curate Information For Entrepreneurs
Mar 09, 6:05PM
Let's say you're an entrepreneur who wants to keep up with the latest startup news and events. You could scan places like Twitter, Facebook, and Quora, but the picture would likely be incomplete. You could use RSS, but if you fully tried to keep up your day would quickly become a nightmare (trust me from experience). Assuming you're already busy beyond your wildest dreams, the best option may be a curated one. That's essentially StartupDigest's pitch to would-be subscribers. And today they get to expand their scope, with $200,000 in funding from The Kauffman Foundation. When Chris McCann co-founded the email newsletter service in late 2009, they had just 22 subscribers. Today, they have over 120,000. And they have a team of curators working all over the world to deliver information in a timely manner. They have subscribers in the over 50 cities that they currently serve. But the aim is to get bigger. 
Gmail Unveils Another Weapon Against Email Overload: Smart Labels
Mar 09, 6:01PM
Back in August, Gmail launched a new feature that's proven to be one of its most effective tools in the fight against email overload: the Priority Inbox. The feature attempts to automatically sort your incoming email based on importance, and while it's far from perfect, it has led to a 15% reduction in the amount of time people spend staring at their inboxes. It's a solid feature, but the Gmail team knows that the battle against email overload is still far from over. So today it's launching its next weapon: Smart Labels. Activate it, and Gmail will begin to automatically tag certain inbound messages as 'Bulk', 'Notifications', or 'Forums' and handle them accordingly.
Report: PayPal's Express Checkout Helps Bump Merchant Sales By 18 Percent
Mar 09, 5:05PM
Payments giant PayPal has been offering online merchants the ability to use its Express Checkout service, which is a one-stop payment option streamlines the checkout process for consumers. A buyer does not have to reenter shipping, billing, or payment information for a PayPal payment, expediting the checkout process. All they need to do is enter their PayPal account login. It's similar in theory to Amazon's one click ordering option. And PayPal recently incorporated this for mobile payments as well. Today, PayPal is releasing an Ipsos Public Affairs reports that shows that incorporating the seamless payment offering has helped online merchants increase sales. According to the report, eight in ten (83 percent) of PayPal merchants surveyed say Sales have increased since offering Express Checkout. Among online merchants who are able to track their revenue, sales have increased an average of 18 percent since adding the Express Checkout service. Eight in ten (84 percent) of those who noticed an increase in sales say it happened within the first 3 months after offering PayPal. Others say it took four to six months (8 percent) or longer (8 percent) before they noticed an increase in sales.
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