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Security Software Maker AVG Announces $235 Million Financing Deal
Mar 21, 12:11PM
Consumer security software company AVG Technologies this morning announced it has entered into a new credit agreement with a syndicate arranged by J.P Morgan and Morgan Stanley. The company has secured a five-year term lean for $235 million in its first-ever capital markets transaction. AVG says the financing deal provides the company with "the resources to realize strategic growth opportunities". The company will also pay a dividend to its shareholders.
Complete Integration Of Google Voice And 50 Million Sprint Customers, Plus 4G Nexus S
Mar 21, 11:59AM
This is the biggest news about Google Voice since the company behind it, previously called Grand Central, was acquired by Google in 2007. They've integrated with Sprint. What that means is you are one of Sprint's 50 million U.S. customers, your Sprint phone number is now also a Google Voice number. And If you're already a Google Voice subscriber, you can use that number on your Sprint phone without the need for any software. Details are at google.com/voice/sprint. Here's how it works. If you are currently a Sprint customer, you can opt in to make that Sprint phone number your Google Voice phone number. This isn't number porting, Sprint retains control of your number. They simply tell Google when you make or receive calls, and forward that call to other phones if you've chosen those options. Google also takes over the voicemail for the phone, and long distance calls are completed by Google at Google's very low international rates. In other words, if you have a Sprint phone you can choose to make that a Google Voice phone as well. And get all the benefits of Google Voice, like having it ring to any phone you control, initiating and receiving calls from Gmail, hilarious voicemail transcriptions, etc.
OwnZones Media Raises $500,000 – Is No Stranger To Hyperbole
Mar 21, 11:49AM
OwnZones Media Network this morning announced that they've landed an initial round of funding to the tune of $500,000. Described as a 'pay-for-content ecosystem', OwnZones raised the capital to step up development of its digital paid content delivery and subscription platform. Here's the boilerplate description found at the bottom of the company's press release, which sets the bar rather high - even for, well, a company's boilerplate description.
New uTest Lets Professional Testers Kick Your Startup's Tyres
Mar 21, 10:52AM
uTest has a community of over 35,000 professional testers in 170 countries to help tech companies test out their web and mobile apps. But until now it's the likes of Microsoft and Intuit who have mainly been able to afford these services rather than startups. But today it's launching a more affordable version aimed at early stage startups and individual app developers. uTest Express offers different plans and the ability to create a simple test case which testers will follow. Once the project scope is outlined, uTest then handpicks members of its tester community who best match the testing requirements and have the right mobile devices and operating systems. The customer's mobile app is tested by these paid professionals on real devices in a real life setting. 
A Critical Analysis Of The Literal Web Crowd: The Tools You Need To Survive In A Humorous World
Mar 21, 10:16AM
We've been whining about the "literal web" problem for years now. Someone says something funny, albeit in an ironic or sarcastic way. A percentage of the masses think the joke is great. Another percentage get it but don't think it's funny. The rest take the statements absolutely literally and go nuts. Hilarity ensues. If you come across a statement or a conversation that seems odd at first, like really dumb things are being talked about like they're brilliant ideas, your first reaction will be to write something like "I can't believe you would actually think that,..." with the "..." usually containing a derogatory term like douche, douchebag, asshole, etc. Now if you do that and check back on your comment later you may see subsequent commenters saying something like "woosh." Often that commenter is me. The message is that whatever you were commenting on went way over your head, wooshing your hair back as it did so, leaving you with no idea what's going on. Sarcasm, irony and other lovely verbal gymnastical tools and trick are what make our language beautiful. You are not stating what you think directly. But you are stating it directly because most people understand you. What you mean is just usually the opposite of what you've said. Or perhaps it has an even more nuanced meaning. 
STELLAService Raises $2M, Tests Online Customer Services So You Don't Have To
Mar 21, 10:00AM
Exclusive - STELLAService, a startup that measures, rates and highlights the quality of customer care of online businesses, has raised $2 million in early stage funding. STELLAService was founded in 2009 with the dual goal of helping online shoppers make more informed purchasing decisions, while also helping online retailers grow their businesses through customer service data and marketing services. 
Bu.tt Gets Kicked Off The Internet
Mar 21, 9:25AM
Weep, my fellow internauts. Bu.tt, the amusingly named URL shortener that launched to 'kick it' a mere five months ago, is no more. In a brief message posted on the service's homepage, the venture capital backed startup behind the URL shortener (just kidding) poetically explains the reason for the abrupt ending of this beautiful, heartwarming story:
CrunchGear Interview: "Gadget-Talk" With Cody Votolato From The Band TELEKINESIS
Mar 21, 2:10AM
While the SXSW Interactive Conference concluded days ago and is likely only a faint, buzzed memory in the minds of its tech-savvy attendees, the Music side of SXSW just closed shop today. I made it almost all the way through the epic music showcase, leaving within a few hours of the brutal, bitter end but not before speaking with several musicians about the ways that mobile devices have affected them. I spoke first with Cody Votolato, the guitarist for the indie rockband TELEKINESIS. A super nice guy, Cody lent some insight into passing the time in a tour bus playing Angry Birds and staying connected to contacts, family and friends. Video below.
PapayaMobile Relaunches FarmVille-Like Game For iOS
Mar 21, 2:00AM
Platforms like OpenFeint are becoming popular for game developers to easily implement a plug and play technology to incorporate social gaming elements into iOS and Android games. PapayaMobile also offers a similar platform, as well as dedicated social games. Tonight, PapayaMobile is launching its FarmVille-like game, aptly called Papaya Farm, on the iPhone and iPad. While Papaya Farm was on iPhone shortly after the company launched in September 2009, the app was shortly removed and has been available on Android only. Papaya Farm allows players to manage a virtual farm by plowing land and planting and harvesting virtual crops, trees and bushes (sound familiar?) A player begins with an empty farm and a fixed starting amount of "Papayas," the virtual currency used in the game. Papayas can also be used in PapayaMobile's other social games, including PapayaFish.
Rebecca Black Means The (Internet) Fame Game Has Changed
Mar 21, 1:30AM
The video for Rebecca Black's "Friday" now has more YouTube views than Lady Gaga's "Born This Way" at around 26 million versus 22 million for Gaga. For those of you that haven't been playing along with the meme, Rebecca Black is a thirteen year old singer whose parents paid $2,000 to have a "professional" music video made by a YouTube popstar factory called, appropriately enough, ARK Factory. The video then went viral after gaining traction for all the wrong reasons on music blogs, tech blogs (yeah we'll cover anything these days), Reddit and 4Chan, turning its star into both a meme and into fodder for mainstream media outlets like ABC.
Fast Break: As Of Last Week, Many At Sprint Thought They Were Merging With T-Mobile
Mar 20, 9:51PM
This morning's bombshell news that AT&T would be buying T-Mobile USA from Deutsche Telekom for $39 billion has left a lot of questions. T-Mobile customers want to know what it means for them? AT&T customers want to know what it means for them? Would-be iPhone buyers want to know what it means for them? T-Mobile and AT&T have started addressing those already. One thing not addressed yet: what does this mean for Sprint, the nation's third-largest carrier? And it's an especially poignant question for Sprint because as of last week, many at that company believed they would be merging with T-Mobile, we've heard.
Push notification
Mar 20, 7:11PM
When technology and media intersect with the emotional underpinnings of our lives, the result is the kind of tsunami we're experiencing with the iPad. It may seem petty to many to cheerlead a company and a technology so geared toward the pursuit of the next shiny object, the next Tweet, or whatever. But learning the language of this next generation of empowerment certainly is on our minds for reasons other than immediate gratification. The messages of social media and mobility are not lost on the people of the world, as they try and forge freedoms they can see beaming around the world over the lingua Franca of WiFi. The tools of this new trade are AirPlay, Personal Hotspot, direct messages, @mentions, automated number porting, GarageBand, iMovie, push notification. These tools give us the context of history, the connection of family, the aspiration of mobility, of seeing the change and fighting for it. It's not about technology, it's with it. The revolution is in our understanding that we are the experts and the agents of change we're looking for.
Adult Websites Will Soon Get Their Own .XXX Brothels, But Not All Are Excited
Mar 20, 7:00PM
This is a guest post from Andrew Allemann, author of Domain Name Wire, a blog covering the business and policy of domain names. He has been active in the domain name industry as a buyer, seller, and consultant for over ten years. A new .xxx top level domain name is coming soon, and a lot of people aren't happy about it. On Friday, the Board of Directors of Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) approved entering into a contract with ICM Registry to operate a .xxx top level domain name (TLD). The first domain names bearing the new TLD are expected to hit the web later this year and will sell around $75-$100 each
In The Race For More Spectrum, AT&T Is Acquiring T-Mobile For $39 Billion
Mar 20, 6:34PM
As anyone who has read a tech blog in the past few years will know, AT&T has been under attack for not being able to match the network capacity of larger rival Verizon. And when they won the majority of the bids for the open spectrum in 2008, Verizon also had a clear path to the future. Now AT&T is taking another path: buying T-Mobile. Here's the release with the details of the deal. AT&T will pay roughly $39 billion to Deutsche Telekom for T-Mobile USA. Deutsche Telekom will also get a roughly 8 percent ownership stake in AT&T as a result of the deal. And a Deutsche Telekom executive will join AT&T's Board.
Beetailer Helps Online Retailers Set Up Shop On Facebook
Mar 20, 5:30PM
With Facebook's massive userbase of over 600 million consumers across the globe, retailers are actively flocking to the network. Especially considering the rise of the social e-commerce, the idea of a virtual shopping mall on Facebook makes sense. Today, Y Combinator-backed Beetailer is launching its software application that allows online retailers to import their web store onto Facebook. Not only does Beetailer import products onto a designated Facebook page, but the startup also allows retailers to promote their store and access detailed analytics about how well the social storefront is performing.
Big Data Needs To Think Bigger
Mar 20, 4:30PM
Spend enough time in Silicon Valley, and of all the buzz words you'll hear neatly tucked in with "graph," "serendipity," and "personalization" is one often uttered though, on the whole, not yet fully understood: "Big Data." On the surface, everyone realizes the opportunity. Data is being generated at lightning speed, the cost of storing is tiny, and new technologies are available to help manage, organize, and secure the data. Earlier this month, LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock partner Reid Hoffman delivered a presentation on this topic at SxSW, and starting next week, GigaOM's annual big data conference "Structure'" kicks off in NYC. At the consumer level, while we are wowed by pretty visualizations, the real advancements in big data technologies cover (1) how data is structured and stored, (2) how it is organized and retrieved, and, most interesting to me, (3) how underlying mathematics can be written into algorithms to leverage the data and help discover entirely new things. I'll paraphrase from one data scientist, LinkedIn's Peter Skomoroch, who notes on Quora that cheap data storage allows users to leverage asymmetric information, larger data sets increase the likelihood that n
Is Late Stage the New Early? Behind the Staggering Return of the $1B Venture Fund
Mar 20, 4:10PM
In Silicon Valley it's not just who you invest in that matters-- it's also when you invest in them. The earlier the investment, the riskier the bet. But the more jawdropping the returns if the company hits it big. It's so lopsided, that typically just 5% of those unsure early bets create some 95% of the entire venture industry's returns. Miss one of them, and it haunts you for years. Snag it, and you can brag for even longer. This simple reality is precisely what makes the venture business hard, and the justification for why partners make such huge fees. So what's up with the surge of the strongest early stage firms jumping so heavily into late stage mega-deal fray? Have the Valley's superstars lost sight of these rules or are the rules changing? Earlier this year, we wrote a lot about the shift in power at the early stages with the rise of super angels, but you could argue there are far greater ripple effects to this new late stage frenzy. That's not only true for the Valley, it's true for the stock market. And you could argue, those ripple effects are less well-understood.
Why Women Rule The Internet
Mar 20, 2:26PM
Editor's note: This guest post is written by Aileen Lee, Partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Aileen focuses on investing in early stage consumer internet ventures and previously worked at Gap, Odwalla, The Northface and Morgan Stanley. She was also founding CEO of KP-backed RMG Networks. Full disclosure: some of the companies mentioned below are KP-backed companies. You can read more about Aileen at KPCB.com and follow her on twitter at @aileenlee. It feels like we're in a Golden Age of the web, led by consumer internet services and e-commerce. Just consider these stats: Facebook—over 600 million users. Twitter—25 billion tweets last year. Tumblr—1 billion page views a week. Zynga—100 million users on Cityville in just 6 weeks. We're witnessing a generation of consumer web companies growing at an unprecedented rate in terms of both user adoption and revenue. But here's a little secret that's gone unnoticed by most. It's women. Female users are the unsung heroines behind the most engaging, fastest growing, and most valuable consumer internet and e-commerce companies. Especially when it comes to social and shopping, women rule the Internet.
Confirmed: Facebook Acquires Snaptu (For An Estimated $60 – $70 Million)
Mar 20, 10:44AM
According to several Israeli business newspapers (TheMarker, Calcalist) Facebook has acquired Snaptu for an estimated $60 - $70 million, although some reports peg the price lower, at around $40 million. Update: a Snaptu executive has confirmed the acquisition to our friend Orli Yakuel, but declined to discuss the purchase price or other terms of the deal. Update 2: and the confirmation is up on Snaptu's blog. The acquisition is apparently expected to close within a few weeks.
Gillmor Gang 3.19.11 (TCTV)
Mar 20, 1:38AM
The Gillmor Gang — John Taschek, Danny Sullivan, Robert Scoble, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor — or at lest 4/5ths of them were decked out with iPad 2s. That didn't prevent the usual argument from breaking out about the New York Times' pay wall. The Grey Lady announced a social plus subscription model, and @dannysullivan was having none of it. It's 2011 but the battle lines continue to be drawn over publishing v. the Web. Many believe the subscription wall will destroy what's left of the print business model without replacing it with an iPad alternative. Others (me) think the Times has got it just about right, leaving a gaping hole through social media (Facebook and Twitter) to consume the newspaper as before while creating a pool of found money around the iPad version. As social @mentioners create an authoritative stream of Times citations that do not trigger a sub request, the resulting high-value audience will migrate to a reasonable iPad based environment where those social signals can be harnessed through realtime chat, video, and other engaged value adds and attendant revenue opportunities. Whether it will take 15 years or is already a formidable tipping point will be left to the viewer to decide.
Wanita Power: What Women in the US Could Learn from Indonesians
Mar 20, 1:00AM
JAKARTA-- I'm mid-way through a trip to Indonesia at the request of the State Department, and I'm finding a hard time putting the experience into words. You'd think after two years of writing about other countries it'd be easy. I can't remember if it was always this hard, or there's just something different about this trip. Maybe it's the added surreal layer that this time, I'm flying around between seven far-flung cities in the world's largest Muslim country talking about the importance of more Indonesian women starting companies. 
OMG/JK: Storming The Paywall
Mar 19, 10:54PM
It's time for a new episode of OMG/JK, the weekly show where my colleague MG Siegler and I talk about the latest news in tech. We both just got back from South By Southwest, and we have plenty to say about the promotions, product launches, and other news (or lack thereof) that came out of one of year's biggest tech events. We also take a look at the new paywall that will soon be implemented by The New York Times — a move that many other publishers are watching closely as they look for new revenue streams. Finally, we talk about Twitter's move to discourage the development of more third-party Twitter clients, which has led to significant backlash from the developer community. Here are some recent stories relevant to this week's episode:
Another Netflix Content Idea: Saving Cancelled Cult Hits
Mar 19, 9:48PM
Yesterday, I laid out why the new Netflix original content plan could be a game-changer in terms of television content and the ultimate disruption of cable. But it still all depends on if the show(s) they pick end up being hits. It appears that Netflix's first bet, House of Cards, is just about as good of a bet as you could make — but it's still no guarantee. Here's an idea that could be much more of a guarantee: saving cult hits. Each year, dozens of shows on network and cable television get cancelled. Most of these cancellations are for good reason. But every once in a while the hammer comes down on a show that's considered to be a cult hit — or one that could turn out to be a real hit, if given more time. The problem, of course, is that these shows often don't have the massive viewership numbers to sell a large amount of advertising against. But that model doesn't apply to Netflix. 
Fly or Die: The Nintendo 3DS, Rockmelt, And Mobile Wallets
Mar 19, 7:30PM
s the new Nintendo 3DS all that? Does Rockmelt have a chance? Will mobile wallets ever be adopted by real people in real stores? CrunchGear editor John Biggs and I tackle these questions in this week's edition of Fly or Die. Watch the video to find out who our surprise guest is this time after we give our verdicts on his company's product. The Nintendo 3DS uses simple stereoscopic 3D graphics that really pop out and combined with a gyroscope effect creates an incredibly immersive experience. You might look like an idiot playing it because you move your whole body around unnecessarily, but it is very addictive. Biggs wrote up his initial impressions here. Remember Rockmelt, the Chromium-based browser startup backed by Marc Andreessen? 
Yearly Leaf: "It's A Coffee Table Book Meets A Moleskine For The Facebook Set!"
Mar 19, 6:20PM
I swear I'm not just being a lazy blogger because it's Saturday and it's a beautiful, sunny day here in Belgium (okay, maybe a little). I mostly just dig the way Mark here explained his new project in a recent email to me. Here it is, in all its unedited glory (with added links): Hi Robin My name is Mark Michael and I am the co-founder of YearlyLeaf.com. Here is my story pitch ...
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