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RIM Sold 45,000 Playbooks Opening Day
Apr 21, 1:07PM
With launch reviews that rivaled Spiderman: Into The Dark, the Playbook didn't seem to get any breaks. However, depending on if you're a "glass half full" kind of person, the company did sell about 50,000 Playbooks on opening day, arguably a fairly strong showing for a device that was not initially well-received.
Human-Curated Search Engine Blekko Adds Facebook Comments To Its Search Results
Apr 21, 1:00PM
Ever since its launch in November 2010, Blekko has been on a mission to eliminate spam and content farms from search results. The human-curated search engine, which is also known both for using actual mammals to edit search results and for its employ of slashtags for easy categorization, announced in March that it had banned over 1 million spammy domain names from its results. Using a new algorithm it calls "AdSpam", Blekko investigates the quality of a doman's content, as well as the type of ads it includes, to identify those of the lowest quality. Those that don't pass muster get the boot -- which should be music to any searcher's ears.
NYT's Q1 Earnings: Digital Advertising Grows 4.5%, 100,000+ Paid Digital Subscribers
Apr 21, 12:59PM
The New York Times Company this morning reported Q1 2011 earnings per share of $.04, compared with $.08 in the same period of 2010. Total revenues decreased 3.6 percent to $566.5 million from $587.9 million. The publisher's operating profit came in at $31.1 million for the quarter, compared with $52.7 million in the same period of 2010. Approximately three weeks after the global launch of its digital subscription packages, NYT reports paid digital subscribers have surpassed 100,000, although it cautions that it does not yet have visibility into conversion and retention rates for these paying customers after the initial promotional period.
Intuit's GoPayment iPad App Goes Live, Aims To Rival Square
Apr 21, 12:44PM
Erick recently got a sneak peek at Intuit's GoPayment app for the iPad, a mobile payment app that lets anyone who sells a product or service get paid on the spot by processing credit cards. This morning, the company announced that the iPad app is now available. The GoPayment apps brings a new layout that takes advantage of iPad's large, high-resolution display and multi-touch interface.
Funding Circle, The Zopa-For-SMEs, Raises £2.5M Led By Index Ventures
Apr 21, 11:48AM
Funding Circle, the peer-to-peer lending site for small businesses in the UK, has raised £2.5m in a Series A round led by Index Ventures. Unnamed co-investors as well as existing shareholders have also participated, while Neil Rimer, co-founder and Partner of Index, will take a seat on the Board. Before today's round, the London-based company was Angel funded to the tune of $1.1m from private investors.
Amazon EC2 Goes Down, Taking With It Reddit, Foursquare And Quora
Apr 21, 11:33AM
Cloud computing is all very well until someone trips over a wire and the whole thing goes dark. Reddit, Foursquare and Quora were among the sites affected by Amazon Web Services suffering network latency and connectivity errors this morning, according to the company's own status dashboard. Amazon says performance issues affected instances of its Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) service and its Relational Database Service, and it's "continuing to work towards full resolution". These are hosted in its North Virginia data centre. 
Nokia's Q1 2011: Profit Declines, Sales Increase
Apr 21, 10:58AM
Aside from announcing that the deal with Microsoft has now been signed, Nokia this morning also released quarterly results. Nokia, until further notice still the world's largest maker of mobile phones, reported a (predicted) 1.4 percent decline in profit, albeit beating analyst estimates. 
Nokia, Microsoft Deal Gets Signed, Volume Shipments "On Schedule"
Apr 21, 10:32AM
Roughly 10 weeks after Nokia and Microsoft announced an alliance to build a series of Nokia Windows phones, the two companies today signed the definitive agreement for their strategic partnership. We don't learn much new from the blog post and video announcing the inking of the deal, except maybe that hundreds of people are already working together toward a multi-year product roadmap and are 'on-schedule' to deliver volume shipments in 2012, and possibly make first delivery in 2011.
Busuu Raises Angel Round From Fon-Founder Martin Varsavsky
Apr 21, 10:26AM
Busuu.com, the language learning community, has raised an Angel round from FON-founder and serial entrepreneur Martin Varsavsky. The Madrid-based startup is remaining mum about the size of the investment, however, but says that to-date Busuu has received less than €1m in funding. That's a figure dwarfed by its main competitors. US-based Livemocha has raised $14m, while European rival Babbel has raised over €1m. On that note, Busuu claims to have recently overtaken market leader Livemocha in terms of traffic, citing data from Compete.
Power.com Shuts Down, Domain Name Up For Sale
Apr 21, 9:29AM
A tipster informs us that Power.com is no more and that the domain name will be sold through an auction that ends on August 17, 2011. Interested parties can pre-register on the hideous, superlative-laden website in order to receive detailed instructions for the auction in May 2011. Power.com originally made its debut in November 2008 as a site that aggregated data from a variety of social networking sites in a single, Web-based interface. 
RockMelt Mobile, The Demo Video
Apr 21, 6:50AM
RockMelt, the social browser, came out with an iPhone app today. If you are familiar with RockMelt, which opened up publicly last month after much of its initial fanfare died down, it adds feeds and streams along the righthand rail. RockMelt Mobile is essentially this right-hand rail repackaged as a mobile app. Co-founder and CTO Tim Howes showed it to me recently (watch the video). RockMelt Mobile expands that rail into all of your favorite feeds, both news and social. In one place you can read your Twitter and Facebook streams, as well as RSS feeds from your favorite sites. Web pages can be saved for later, or shared via Facebook. The app also gives you access to your bookmarks. And like Mobile Firefox, it syncs with the desktop browser.
LDC Snatches Up Web Hosting Provider UK2Group For $77 Million Big Ones
Apr 21, 6:38AM
Lloyd's Development Capital (LDC), the private equity arm of Lloyd's Trustee Savings Bank, the third largest bank in the U.K. (and state-backed) announced today that it has acquired a majority stake in leading web hosting provider UK2Group. The equity group paid a total of $77 million for its majority stake in partnership with the current management team.
After A Full Afternoon At Facebook, Obama Collects Largesse From Tech Elite
Apr 21, 6:23AM
My mother flew from San Francisco to Seattle today, and was annoyed to be kept sitting on the runway for two hours while President Obama flew into town. "How rude," she said. Obama probably shouldn't count on her vote when he's up for reelection. But I'm guessing the trip was worth it anyway. Besides pissing off my mother, he entertained the rapturous digerati at a Facebook town hall meeting today. Afterwards, though, it was back to the business of raising money. And the tech elite did not disappoint. Seventy or so CEO and finance types congregated at the San Francisco home of Salesforce founder and CEO Marc Benioff, paying $35,000 each for a steak dinner with the president, plus a photo opp. Yes, I did the math, too. That's $2.5 million. Not bad for a day's work, even when you factor in disappointing my mom. It probably almost made a dent in the government's security and other expenses in sending him out here.
Yahoo Pointing Finger At Microsoft For Search Revenue Shortfall
Apr 21, 5:59AM
Yahoo had another lousy quarter. Revenues were down 6 percent, profits were down 28 percent. What's more, it's search partnership with Microsoft isn't going so great. And the finger pointing is starting. In a very detailed analysis, Danny Sullivan of SearchEngine Land charts the decline of Yahoo's search revenues over the past two years. What he calls "net search revenues" (the money Yahoo gets to keep after paying off partners) is down 35 percent from a peak of $551 million two years ago to $357 million. 
Review: T-Mobile G2x (Optimus 2X)
Apr 20, 11:57PM
Perhaps the most powerful phone on the market, the G2x is certainly impressive technically, but physically it's uninspiring, and a lack of compelling HD and gaming content compatible with Android makes its greatest assets (large screen and powerful processor) underwhelming. And where's my Gingerbread? Read on for our full review.
Venuetastic Makes Booking An Event Space A Breeze
Apr 20, 11:20PM
Finding the right venue space within budget, location and size constraints can be the toughest part of planning an event. And the most time-intensive part of the process is doing the due-diligence around booking a space, from finding contacts to calling event managers to find info about size, price, to signing contracts and more. While hiring an event planner can save some of the strain caused by this responsibility, this can be an expensive undertaking. Today, Y Combinator-backed Venuetastic is launching as an easy to use event venue marketplace. It's essentially a comparison shopping site for booking event venues. Venuetastic lists features of event space, ranging from those catered towards corporate events, to wedding spaces. People can search for venues and compare them (based on capacity, location, price, type of space, and type of event), and bookmark venues that are promising. 
Obama: I Want People To Feel The Same About The Next Internet Breakthrough As They Did About The Moonwalk
Apr 20, 10:50PM
Obama spent a considerable amount of time preaching to the choir at today's Facebook townhall event, first bringing up Intel founder and Hungarian immigrant Andy Grove as an example of the kind of immigrant the US should be focused on retaining, in a response to a question about Immigration Reform and the Dream Act Education. "We've got ambitious people from all around the world, that come here because they have a new idea ... If we got smart people who want to come here and start businesses, who've got PhD's in math and science and computer science. Why wouldn't we want them to stay? ... These are job generators," the President said. 
Behind Apple's Blowout Quarter: iPhones, MacBooks And China
Apr 20, 10:28PM
It is difficult to understate what a run Apple is on right now. Look no further than the blowout earnings Apple reported today for its second fiscal quarter ended in March. Revenues were up 83 percent to $24.7 billion, and profits grew even faster, up 95 percent to $6 billion. Growth was strong across the board (with the exception of iPad sales which suffered from supply constraints and built up "the mother of all backlogs," according to CFO Peter Oppenheimer). But if you dive into the numbers, you will see that three areas drove the overall growth more than any others: iPhones, MacBooks and China. The iPhone now makes up half of Apple's revenues, or $12.3 billion in the quarter. Sales grew 126 percent in dollar terms, with unit sales up 113 percent. In the U.S. alone, iPhone sales were up 155 percent. Bringing Verizon on board helped goose the numbers, but AT&T wasn't exactly complaining either. 
Charlie Rose Comes Back To Disrupt NYC With Ron Conway, Roelof Botha, And Arianna Huffington
Apr 20, 10:10PM
At last year's NYC Disrupt, we had a star-studded lineup. Ron Conway, Tim Armstrong, Carol Bartz, Jack Dorsey, Dennis Crowley, Yuri Milner, and Sean Parker, just to name a few. This year promises another awesome cast of speakers, and we can't wait to tell you who will be there. Beginning today, we will announce new guests each week until we name them all. For starters, Charlie Rose, who interviewed legendary VC John Doerr last year, will be back. Nobody gets big-name subjects to open up like Rose. Disrupt in New York City wouldn't be the same without him. We are also ecstatic to welcome back super angel investor Ron Conway of SV Angel and super VC Roelof Botha of Sequoia Capital. Both are in the business of finding and funding the most disruptive startups out there, which is what the conference is all about. And joining us this year for the first time will be our own Arianna Huffington, who knows a thing or two about shaking up staid industries. That's not all we are excited to announce today. Disrupt NYC is so big this year, we have taken over a whole Pier in New York City. 
50% Of Apple's Revenue Now Comes From The iPhone
Apr 20, 9:54PM
Over the last 3 months (December 26th, 2010 - March 26th, 2011), Apple pulled in a grand total of 24.6 billion dollars. Now, what percentage of that do you think is from the iPhone? 10%? 25%? Get this: 50%. Yep. According to Apple's latest earning report, an entire half of Apple's quarterly revenue is coming in from the iPhone and iPhone-related products.
ScoreBig Scores $14 Million To Be The Priceline For Event Tickets
Apr 20, 9:25PM
ScoreBig, a new members-only site offering deep discounts on tickets for sports, concert and theater events nationwide, has raised $14 million in Series B financing led by U.S. Venture Partners with Bain Capital Ventures participating in the round. With this latest financing, ScoreBig has raised a total of $22.5 million. Founded by CEO Adam Kanner, former National Basketball Association executive and COO and CTO Joel Milne (formerly founder of SeasonTicket.com), ScoreBig is designed to help owners of unsold event ticket inventory fill seats and make money off the sales. 
>From Check-Ins To Recommendations: A Glimpse Into The Future of Foursquare
Apr 20, 9:14PM
Today, at the Where 2.0 Conference in Santa Clara, man-about-town Robert Scoble spoke with Foursquare Co-founder Dennis Crowley about future plans for the hot location-based service. According to Crowley, the future of Foursquare is going to focus squarely on what its users are going to do, not what they are doing. See what I did there? It's all well and good to track the realtime movements of its more than 8 million users, but the startup wants to make use of the loads of data it's collected on these realtime movements (600 million check-ins) to help users plan what they should do next. 
Apple Earnings Q2 '11: $24.67B Revenue; 3.76M Macs, 18.65M iPhones, 4.69M iPads Sold
Apr 20, 8:40PM
It's that special time of the season, when Apple fans and investors alike get to gloat over just how much money the tech giant in Cupertino is raking in: Quarterly Earnings. The company had a blockbuster Q1 — will it be able to continue its winning streak? Apple just pushed its press release detailing the stats for this quarter. It reports $24.67B in revenue and $6.40 EPS, beating the street consensus of an Earnings Per Share of $5.36 on $23.34 billion in sales. Apple's (typically conservative) guidance was $22.00 billion in sales and a $4.90 EPS.
Obama, Zuckerberg Hold Town Hall At Facebook HQ Today: Watch The Livestream Here
Apr 20, 8:10PM
President Barack Obama, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, House Leader Nancy Pelosi, myself and a crew of over 700 Facebook employees, press and guests of The White House have gathered at Facebook HQ today, in a Town Hall Meeting organized by The White House. The Livestream of the event will be available above and on Facebook Live at 1:45pm Over 41,406 users have pledged to attend the event via its Facebook page (through Livestream) where the three will take the stage to answer vetted questions about innovation and the economy, submitted via the Facebook Event Wall. The President will also be outlining the new Startup America commitments on a panel after the talk, to be followed by a panel focused on Women in Technology.
AT&T Added 1.6M Non-Phone Wireless Device Connections In Q1 2011, Passes 12M Devices Total
Apr 20, 6:50PM
We saw that the iPhone-Verizon deal didn't hit AT&T's earnings so hard this morning and now the telecommunications giant is reporting the number of mobile broadband connections AT&T has facilitated in the last quarter. The company says that in terms of emerging devices (this includes non-phone wireless connections), 1.6 million connected devices were added to the network in the quarter. Included in this category are what AT&T refers to as embedded computing devices, which are tablets, netbooks and laptops. AT&T says that more than 7 million connected devices have been added to the network over the past six quarters. The total number of emerging devices, including postpaid and prepaid embedded computing devices, connected to the AT&T network – both for consumers and businesses is exceeds 12 million, says the company.
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