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That Was Fast: Amazon's Kindle Ebook Sales Surpass Print (It Only Took Four Years)
May 19, 3:14PM
Five years ago, if you'd told a fellow book lover that eBooks were poised to surge in popularity and overtake traditional books, you probably would have been met with a scoff and a dismissal about reading too much sci-fi. And yet here we are: Amazon has just announced that it is now selling more eBooks than it is selling print editions, a mere four years after launching the Kindle. Obviously Amazon doesn't account for all print or eBook sales, but it's a very impressive milestone. Then again, the news doesn't come as a huge surprise if you've been following the Kindle's growth. Kindle eBook sales surpassed Amazon's hardcover sales back in July 2010, and they surpassed paperback sales in January of this year. But now it's bested both of them combined. Note that this does not include the free books that many Kindle users take advantage of — these are all paid books. 
Voice Sentiment Analysis Startup Saygent Raises $1 Million
May 19, 3:02PM
Saygent, a SaaS startup that helps companies figure out the sentiment behind customer voice responses, has raised $1 million in seed funding from 500 Startups, Innovation Endeavors, Juvo Capital, Kapor Capital, Kima Ventures, Orefa Investment, Ty Danco and Matthew Grodin. With clients from Fortune 500 companies including Comcast, Saygent uses crowd-sourcing to automate the processing and analysis of natural language at high-volume, helping brands figure out audience sentiment, intent and other characteristics valuable to marketers.
DFJ Leads $6 Million Round For Social Job Board Jibe
May 19, 3:01PM
TechCrunch 50 company Jibe (formerly LocalBacon), has raised $6 million in Series A funding led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson and DFJ Gotham with existing investors, Polaris Venture Partners, Zelkova Ventures, Lerer Ventures, Thrive Capital and Stanford University Endowment participating in the round. This brings the company's total funding to $7 million. Jibe is a next-generation job board that leverages Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter to help job seekers find the best positions in the job market. 
Paper.li Upgrades Social News Curation Platform, Adds Eric Hippeau As An Advisor
May 19, 2:58PM
Paper.li this morning announced new curation and management capabilities for its publishing platform, which basically allows individuals and publishers like HBO create personalized online newspapers by incorporating Twitter and Facebook streams into a familiar newspaper layout. Paper.li earlier this year raised $2.1 million for its social news curation platform, and is today also announcing a welcome addition to its advisory board: former Huffington Post CEO and venture capitalist Eric Hippeau is joining Guy Kawasaki as an advisor to the company.
You Can Now Get Every Playboy Issue Ever Published On Your iPad For $9 Per Month
May 19, 2:45PM
Ever wanted to be able to access every issue of Playboy magazine published since December 1953 on your iPad? Even if just for the articles? You're in luck: Playboy Enterprises, the media company behind the magazine, this morning announced a web-based subscription service that gives users the opportunity to read, search and explore every single Playboy issue.
LinkedIn IPO Shares Pop 84 Percent On First Trade, Opens With $7.8B Market Cap
May 19, 2:07PM
This is a big day for professional social network LinkedIn, which was founded in 2003. After filing its S-1 with the SEC in January, the company has begin trading its shares, under the symbol LNKD, on the New York Stock Exchange this morning. As we learned yesterday, LinkedIn priced its IPO at $45 per share, giving the company a valuation of $4.5 billion. Today, the company began trading at $83.00 per share, a 84 percent increase from $45 per share. That's a $7.8 billion market cap. It's now up to $90 per share, but is fluctuating. LinkedIn is offering a total of 7,840,000 shares and is looking to raise as much as $406 million in the offering. Currently there are 94.5 million shares outstanding plus 1,176,000 shares to cover over-allotments. If the company sold the over allotment, LinkedIn's valuation could be as high as $8 billion. 
Website Building Tool Jimdo Is Taking Off, Adding Cool Features, Making Money
May 19, 2:04PM
Jimdo, a service that lets anyone create a good-looking website without too much effort, is on a roll. The tool has now been used to build over 4 million websites, and 200,000 more Jimdo-powered sites get published every month. Last year, the German startup behind the service rolled out a feature that let anyone create an online store, quickly and easily. Fast forward 15 months and 40,000 online stores have been built using the service, generating more than 7.5 million euros in sales.
iOS Game Publisher Fuse Powered Raises $2m Seed Round From BlackBerry Partners Fund And NFQ
May 19, 2:02PM
When you hear a name like BlackBerry Partners Fund, your first thought probably isn't "Hey! They should invest in an iOS games publisher!" As it turns out, while the investment firm shares a name and myriad ties to the finest gadget line to come out of Waterloo, the fund isn't bound to products built for any one platform in particular. They're celebrating that fact today by investing in -- you guessed it -- an iOS game publisher. This morning, iOS publisher/analytics provider Fuse Powered is announcing a two million dollar seed round lead by BlackBerry Partners Fund and NFQ Ventures.
Need Help With Class? Motuto For iOS Puts A Live Tutor In Your Pocket
May 19, 2:00PM
As easy as it is to forget that the iPad isn't just a little Angry-Birds-and-Netflix machine, it's always nice to see someone building something meant to teach kids a thing or two. Exhibit A: Motuto. Launched this morning, Motuto takes live tutors from around the world and shoves 'em into the iPhone, iPad, and, before too long, Android devices.
Students: Buy A Win7 PC, Get An XBox 360 Free
May 19, 1:32PM
If this doesn't point to a coming refresh of Xbox 360 hardware I don't know what does. Starting May 22, Microsoft is offering a free XBox 360 (with 4GB of storage) to folks who pay $699 or more for a Windows 7 PC - note they do not say "laptop," which suggests that makers like HP and Dell are trying to boost their waning, post-PC sales. Obviously this is a great deal for students but it definitely points to a bit of a fire sale when it comes to the smaller, less memory-studded Xboxen along with the PCs that are currently mouldering on shelves thanks to the relative success of tablets. While I believe that the belief that tablets are eating into PC sales is correlation without causation, I do think that the race to the bottom in PC prices and netbook sales has negatively effected PC makers who are now facing a customer - of their own making - who expects more for considerably less. As a result, sales and profits are down catastrophically. 
DreamIt And Comcast Partner For New Program For Minority Entrepreneurs
May 19, 1:01PM
Comcast Interactive Capital, the venture capital arm of the media giant, has partnered with Philadelphia based venture fund and startup accelerator Dreamit Ventures to provide seed funding, training, mentoring and other benefits to minority-led startups through DreamIt's accelerator program. The new $350,000 fund will give five minority-led startups for its Fall Philadelphia 2011 program a extra infusion of capital on top of the funding DreamIt provides for its class of startups. For Comcast Interactive Capital, this is the first investment initiative from the $20 million fund that was created as part of the acquisition of NBC Universal. The $20 million fund will be used to invest in other minority led startups and initiatives (outside of DreamIt), mainly in the technology sector. 
Sophia Does The Math, Buys Guaranteach To Boost Its Social Education Platform
May 19, 12:35PM
Sophia, which operates a free online social teaching and learning platform, this morning announced that it has acquired Guaranteach, a Web-based service that provides tens of thousands of short-form tutorials along with assessment tools to students, teachers and schools. Guaranteach offers nearly 23,000 short-form videos on math topics ranging from counting to calculus, developed by nearly 200 teachers and math experts. Guaranteach also offers more than 60,000 quiz questions, as well as assessment tools that match tutorials to the learning style of the learner and provide student progress reports.
Smart Lending: On Deck Gives Your Startup A Credit Score So You Can Secure A Loan
May 19, 12:00PM
We talk a lot about the startups and companies that receive venture capital and angel funding, but what about the other subset of small businesses that are fundamental to the success of the economy, but may not be on the radar of VCs and angels? These companies, from restaurants and small retailers to salons and florists, may not be high-potential startups like a Google or a Facebook, but they provide services we use on a daily basis and are, therefore, equally as deserving of the necessary capital that would help them get off the ground. Of course, traditionally it's been very difficult for them to secure bank loans.
Khosla Ventures Is Raising, Like, A Billion Dollars
May 19, 10:55AM
Venture capital firm Khosla Ventures is raising $1 billion for its new fund, Khosla Ventures IV, an SEC filing reveals. From the looks of it, the new fund will be roughly the same size as the previous one (raised in September 2009). The news comes a few weeks after former YouTube and Facebook CFO Gideon Yu left the firm after joining them less than two years earlier, to go work for the San Francisco 49ers.
Plizy iPad App Could Be A Flipboard-meets-Pandora For Video
May 19, 9:55AM
Plizy is an interesting new startup which wants to bring personalized video content to the iPad [iTunes link] the company has also announced a $1.2m angel funding round from undisclosed investors. Plizy wants users to discover, share and watching online video based on your social graph, history, and interests. It sounds like a few other startups we could mention, and competitors might best be described as ShowYou or Pandora. In fact, there is an element here of "Flipboard meets Pandora" for video. 
Octopart, The Little Startup That Hung In There
May 19, 4:58AM
Looking for a transistor or a relay? Or possibly an oscilloscope? More than likely you'll end up at Octopart, a vintage Y Combinator startup that launched in 2007. The company is a search engine for electronic parts, allowing users to navigate through a taxonomy of structured stuff, or just do a plain old parts name/number search. Once you find what you're looking for, Octopart will show you a variety of distributors who sell the part and their prices, along with a link to go buy it. Here's the most searched item on the site. The company is small, but growing and profitable. While the company won't disclose revenues, about $10 million a year in commerce flows through their site, they estimate (meaning end purchases at distributors via referrals from them). Octopart generates revenue from those referrals, and through display ads on their site. And it has a great story of how it got here.
Flickr Designer Publicly Criticizes Flickr's Design
May 19, 4:33AM
The photo-sharing space continues to heat up, and continues to leave dominant player in the space Flickr in the dust innovation wise. If one thing's becoming clear, it's that it must be really painful to work at Yahoo and have any sort of passion for good product design. The latest example of this comes from Flickr designer Timoni West, who has publicly criticized the service on her personal blog, in a post called "The Most Important Page On Flickr." In the post Timoni links to the Flickr contacts page and breaks down what's wrong with it, namely that on a micro-level that there is no chronological way to sort photos, the thumbnail size is too small and there's no way to see all of a user's recent photos without visiting their profile.
Google And Amazon May Have Just Handed Apple The Keys To The Cloud Music Kingdom
May 19, 3:27AM
With regard to their cloud music offering, it looks like Apple is now just about ready to rock and roll. It would seem that this is now coming together even faster than they anticipated. And that may be thanks to two unlikely sources: Google and Amazon. CNet's Greg Sandoval is reporting tonight that Apple has signed an agreement with music label EMI to offer its music through Apple's upcoming new cloud music service. This means that Apple now has agreements in place with two of the four major labels (Warner signed last month). And Sandoval believes that deals with the remaining two, Sony and Universal, could be wrapped up as early as next week. Again, rock and roll. With those deals in place, it means that Apple will be free to launch their cloud service anytime they please. And while we had heard the initial plan was to do so at their annual music event in the early fall, Apple could indeed move the launch up to WWDC in early June (just a few weeks from now). We haven't heard anything definitive about this either way, but you can bet that Apple is thinking about it.
Security Breach: Here's How Expired Domains Expose You To Embarrassment (And Theft)
May 19, 2:37AM
As if you're not scared enough of the Internet (and its potential to ravage your personal information), something comes along to make you even more paranoid. Just ask PlayStation users, or those that were on the receiving end of Firesheep's eavesdropping. Today's vulnerability du jour? Expired domains. The technical veterans among us are likely already familiar with this, but it seems that letting a domain name expire, especially those tied to other online accounts, exposes your personal information and makes you vulnerable to potential identity theft. Today, British developer and hacker Ben Reyes wrote a post describing how he was able to use an expired domain to access to another person's Gmail, Google calendar, contacts, and more, which then, in turn, allowed him to access further web accounts, like Amazon.
Cool! Google Places Now Allows You To Import Foursquare Data …Via RSS, So No One Will
May 19, 1:59AM
When I first saw the ReadWriteWeb headline: Google Places Now Imports Your Foursquare Check-Ins, I was surprised. Wow, that's interesting, and could be huge, I thought. Then I wondered why neither Foursquare nor Google was touting this? Again, could be big for both! Then I read the not-so-fine print. Oh. RSS. Meh. Turns out, Google is touting this, quietly. On their Google Places blog (one of Google's 100 or so blogs), they have a post today entitled: Better access to your content is, well, better. Buried in this post, towards the bottom, you'll see the note that you can now import other feeds of location information into Places. Writes Google:
Exclusive: Gilt Taste Is Cooking Up An iPad App That Will Let You Swipe Without Touching
May 19, 12:19AM
Earlier today, Gilt launched the latest addition to its group-buying sites with Gilt Taste—a very pricey online purveyor of produce, meats, fish, cheese, and other "artisinal" foods. While it's easy to get distracted by the jaw-dropping prices ($50 steaks anyone?), the part I find interesting is that Gilt Taste is also an online magazine. Mouth-watering food photography helps to move the merchandise. The entire design of the site started with what it should look like first on a tablet and then worked backwards to the tiled view on the Web. In fact, a companion iPad app is in the works. When you are cooking in the kitchen, a propped-up iPad would be perfect for reading recipes, except that you wouldn't want to touch it with wet or greasy hands. So instead of swiping, Gilt is prototyping a way to use the camera to create "motion-activated recipes." You would swipe your hands through the air in front of the screen instead of touching it to go through step-by-step recipes, which could include video and more photography.
#TwitterAllowsYouTo. discuss.
May 18, 11:10PM
For someone so disdainful of the Internet, New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller sure fits the textbook definition of a troll. His anti-aggregation screed "All the Aggregation That's Fit to Aggregate" and today's Twitter-bait "The Twitter Trap" have taken up a good chunk of my New York Times paywall quota. If that was his objective, then well done Bill Keller. The part of me that wants people to be more clever than they actually are hopes Keller's "First" column is an attempt to stir the blog fight waters. After all, attacking the entire Internet is definitely punching up. But sadly, instinct (and the fact that his reference to Twitter users as Twits is supposed to be funny but isn't) tells me that this is not the case.
Attn Entrepreneurs: Mark Zuckerberg Isn't the Role Model. Reid Hoffman Is.
May 18, 10:44PM
Forty-plus weeks traveling the emerging world has taught me many things. Chief among them is that most entrepreneurs outside Silicon Valley learn the wrong lessons looking in. A lot of that is the fault of publications like TechCrunch: We get excited about new things. If it's exploding like Groupon, all the better. But we even go nuts over things like Foursquare or Quora that have pretty muted user-bases. That's what being evangelists and early adopters is all about. We tend not to write about all the apps that launch and go nowhere, with good reason: If we're doing our job well, we probably thought they sucked to begin with. But the bigger disservice we do is not writing enough about the boring companies who work every day to build something that becomes huge, giving the impression that starting a business is easy in the Valley. That somehow people wake up with an idea, and roll out of bed onto a pile of venture capital, press and adoration. A lot of times the companies we should be writing about more than we do are admittedly boring infrastructure or enterprise software names. But there's a category of consumer names that should be sexy, but for whatever reason don't get the hype.
Carrier: Legacy — Can Apple, Google, Or Microsoft Really Change Anything?
May 18, 9:34PM
The backstory of last year's film Tron: Legacy picks up where the first film left off. Kevin Flynn teams up with Tron to create a new Grid, one meant for programs and users. But Flynn realizes that he can't be in the system working on this constructed world all the time, so he creates another program, CLU, to help with the effort. Together, the three of them work on creating this new perfect system. Then something happens. I'm reminded of this story when reading Kevin Fox's post last night entitled: Is Microsoft trying to end the reign of mobile carriers? (MSFT+Skype+Nokia). In it, he lays out a scenario in which Microsoft uses their acquisition of Skype alongside Windows Phone 7 and their new deep partnership with Nokia to disrupt the system that we've all been familiar with for far too long: carrier dominance. Their aim is to create a new Grid, if you will. And they're not alone. Google and Apple are also working on this goal. Flynn. Tron. CLU.
Professional Social Network LinkedIn Prices IPO At $45 Per Share, High End Of Range
May 18, 9:11PM
Professional social network LinkedIn has priced its IPO at $45 per share, according to a release issued on the company's site. This is at the high end of the range, which was estimated at $42 to $45 per share yesterday. This puts the company's valuation at $4.5 billion. As we wrote yesterday, the company originally stated the price per share range as $32 and $35 but increased this by 30 percent to $42 to $45 per share yesterday. The company is offering a total of 7,840,000 shares and is looking to raise as much as $406 million in the offering. In addition, LinkedIn Corporation has granted the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 1,176,000 shares to cover over-allotments, if any. 
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