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What Apple Should Do With Its $100 Billion In Cash: Buy Hollywood
Jan 27, 6:47AM
"Kill Hollywood," is the latest battle cry from Silicon Valley. If you are Paul Graham, that's not a bad way to motivate young would-be founders to create new startups. But what if you are Apple, trading spots with Exxon on any given day for the most valuable company in the world, with nearly $100 billion of cash in the bank, looking for the next industry to overturn to keep fueling your growth? There aren't that many new markets out there that can make a difference to Apple at this point. Hollywood is one of them. If you are Apple, however, you don't want to kill Hollywood. You want to buy it.Knewton Prepares To Take Education by Storm [TCTV]
Jan 27, 2:47AM
Here at the World Economic Forum in Davos, among the banking, shipping, steel and transport magnates of the global economy, there are a number of technology entrepreneurs floating around. As they rub shoulders with the likes of Eric Schmidt, Sean Parker, Loic Le Meur and Robert Scoble, it's possible to peel them off from the crowd. I managed to catch Jose Ferreira, CEO and Founder of Knewton a startup which is aiming a silver bullet at the education problem with something that one might even call an audacious platform. Ferreira has raised $54M to achieve this, which is quite a sum. Despite that, he is openly critical of VCs who do not think in such word changing arenas as education.Pirate Parties Organizing Lawsuit Against FBI Over Megaupload Takedown
Jan 27, 2:00AM
The Megaupload troubles make for interesting discussion because there is much to be said on both sides. Whether the illegal aspects of the network "outweigh" the legal aspects is a question that will be discussed for months and perhaps years. But one thing can't be disputed: after the two-year investigation by the FBI, the site's takedown was swift and perhaps over-thorough. Thousands and thousands of users who had legitimate and often critical files hosted on the site have been left behind, their legal files hosted on a simple file-hosting service. A coalition of Pirate Party organizations, led by Pirates of Catalonia, are planning to sue the FBI over what they say are "huge personal, economic and image damages to a vast number of people."Twitter Changes The "Contours" Of Censorship With Country-By-Country Blocking
Jan 26, 11:47PM
Twitter has announced in a blog post a glorious new ability: "the ability to reactively withhold content from users in a specific country — while keeping it available in the rest of the world." At last! There are two ways of looking at this new "ability," one optimistic and one pessimistic. One is that Twitter is now more able to effectively tailor itself to the needs of certain countries. The other is that Twitter is now more able to effectively tailor itself to the needs of certain countries.Too Busy To Actually Call Your Mom? Hashtagmom Does It When You Check-In
Jan 26, 11:29PM
Sure, your mom carried you for nine months. And yeah, she wiped your bum for years, put clothes on your back, and made sure you got a decent education so you could move to California and rock a hoodie and work somewhere where there's always beer in the fridge and go-karts to be ridden. But can you really be expected to call her from time to time to let her know where you are? Time is money, Mom. Get on Foursquare or something. Looking to ease the anxiety for the mothers of the world whose Bringing A Startup Together: FounderDating Launches Matching Site, Expands To NY, Boston, LA
Jan 26, 11:19PM
Finding the right cofounder is often the hardest part of doing a startup, as most anyone with experience will tell you. As a personal example: the cofounder of my first company, Phil Kast, was an old high school buddy employed as a whitewater rafting guide in Colorado when we started talking about working together. He happened to be hitting the off-season right when I was trying to get started -- and everything went from there. FounderDating has been working to solve the cofounder connection problem by running regular meetups in San Francisco and Seattle. Today, it's expanding on the effort by launching a web site that screens then connects those looking for colleagues, and by announcing meetups in new cities including New York, then Boston and Los Angeles.Android Dominates Moolah Media's Mobile Ads
Jan 26, 11:03PM
It looks like publishers and advertisers are warming to mobile ad startup Moolah Media. The company says that in 2011, it generated 7 million leads for its advertisers — and 1.9 million of those leads (27 percent of the year's total) came in December. Also in December, Moolah says its ads reached 45 million Americans. And interest in the company is growing — Moolah projects that traffic to its website will triple this month, as pictured in the chart above.Motorola Mobility Closes Out Q4 2011 With An $80 Million Net Loss
Jan 26, 10:48PM
Motorola Mobility released their fourth quarter and year-end financials today, and now we can see why they made it a point earlier this month to downplay analyst expectations. The company's new figures reveal that while Motorola raked in $3.4 billion in Q4 2011, they also incurred a net loss of $80 million.Dirty Money
Jan 26, 9:45PM
The New York Times has published a long article on Foxconn which, while it doesn't provide much in the way of new information, does act as a sobering reminder of just how companies like Apple can make so very much money. When our own John Biggs visited Foxconn, he focused on the company itself, its scale, its intentions. When I wrote about Apple's suppliers failing to meet environmental standards, it was more about the laxity of regulators within China. Today's NYT piece depicts Apple as prime mover and potential catalyst of change — but its actions and information from insiders suggest that it is simply unwilling. There is a certain genius to negotiating down the price of every screw and wire, and never paying a yuan more than is absolutely necessary. As in design and build quality, other companies aspire to Apple's accomplishment in this area.Apple, Google, 5 Others To Be Denied Dismissal Of "No Poach" Conspiracy Case
Jan 26, 9:19PM
7 of the world's most powerful tech companies have been accused of forming an antitrust conspiracy to suppress the compensation of their employees by entering into "no poach" agreements. Today, a San Jose judge will heard a motion to dismiss a class action civil lawsuit in which former employees seek damages from defendants Apple, Google, Adobe, Intel, Intuit, Pixar, and Lucasfilm. The damning evidence against the defendants from a 2010 Department of Justice investigation and the plaintiffs' statement indicate there is more than sufficient evidence for the case to proceed towards trial. If the defendants lose to or settle, tens of thousands of full-time employees of these companies could be compensated. [Update 4:30pm PST : The judge says "This case is going to survive the motion to dismiss", meaning she'll almost surely deny the defendants' motion to dismiss the case when she soon files her official ruling.The New Techmeme Design: Plus Your World, Minus Underlined Links
Jan 26, 8:57PM
In a world of personalized, distributed information sharing, Techmeme and its sister sites have successfully gone the opposite direction. They're machine-powered, human-controlled technology news aggregator that have readers -- especially media types -- following like drug addicts jonesing for another hit. And the flagship site, Techmeme.com, has just gotten a big redesign that modernizes the look and feel of the interface, and emphasizes new social features. Here's one junkie's reaction.Steam Takes First Steps Into Mobile With iOS And Android Apps
Jan 26, 8:43PM
As a gamer with admittedly poor impulse control, the newly-released Steam app for iOS and Android has me very worried. On the one hand, it seems like an ideal way to to keep tabs on the popular gaming service on the go. On the other though, I could easily see myself going overboard on buying games I don't need when I should be pretending to be a productive member of society.Verbling Raises $1M To Link Up Language Learners Through Video Chat
Jan 26, 8:05PM
Y Combinator-backed Verbling, a site that aims to connect language leaners with native speakers via live video chat, has raised $1 million from DFJ, Learn Capital, Start Fund, Inspovation Ventures, SV Angel, Meck Investments, Ace & Company and others. The new funding will be used towards hiring. Here's how Verbling works. The site allows you to sign up and choose the language you want to learn. Once you join the site, you are automatically paired with a language speaker who is fluent in the language you wish to learn. The site encourages users to talk to a number of different speakers within each session.TCTV: In the Studio with Danny Trinh, Path's 21-Year Old Product Designer
Jan 26, 8:00PM
"In the Studio" at TechCrunch TV kicks off today with a guest who deferred college, and eventually dropped out, and moved out west to pursue his dream of building products in San Francisco. Danny Trinh, a product designer at Path, is perhaps one of the most talented, up-and-coming product designers in the social and mobile space today. At all of 21 years old, Trinh has already built quite an impressive resume of experience designing web products. A few years ago, Trinh graduated high school and took an internship with Digg, supposedly for the summer, but he loved it so much he ended up deferring college to work full-time at Digg for a year. He then went back to UNC for his freshman year (while still working on Digg remotely), but the pull of San Francisco was too strong -- Trinh left after his freshman year to rejoined Digg.Keen On… Caleb Melby: The Zen of Steve Jobs (TCTV)
Jan 26, 6:19PM
Walter Isaacson has unleashed a torrent of new books about Steve Jobs and Apple. But nobody has written anything quite like Caleb Melby's The Zen of Steve Jobs, a graphic novel that charts Jobs' relationship with a Buddhist priest called Koby Chino Otogawa. The book is a both a visual and textual delight and I couldn't resist inviting Melby, who also writes for Forbes, into our New York City studio to talk about Zen and the art of Steve Jobs.Jeff Clavier's SoftTech VC Raises $55 Million For Fund III
Jan 26, 6:04PM
The micro-VCs are growing up. Case in point: Jeff Clavier, who started out as an angel investor backing Web 2.0 companies and then transitioned his portfolio into a more formal venture firm, SoftTech VC. Clavier just finished raising a total of $55 million for SoftTech's third fund. SoftTech's main focus is on three areas: mobile, next-generation e-commerce, and cloud-based services.Zynga Brings Social Gaming To The Bingo Hall With Newest Title
Jan 26, 6:00PM
There's been one trend we've been noticing over the past few years when it comes to Zynga's game development strategy. The social gaming giant likes to re-create classic games like Hangman or hidden puzzles and add social elements for gameplay. We saw this with the release of Hanging With Friends, Scramble With Friends, Hidden Chronicles. And As Zynga revealed in October, next up is Bingo. Today, the company is revealing its social take on Bingo via a Facebook game, which will be joining Zynga Poker in Zynga's newest franchise, Zynga Casino. Currently, the game is in private beta but will be launching to the public soon. In terms of actual gameplay, Zynga Bingo works similarly to the way an ordinary bingo game works. And if you've played Zynga Poker before, the game mechanics and nuances will feel familiar to you as well. As numbers are called out in the game, you cross off those that match on your card, with the winner being the first person who reaches a consecutive pattern on the card from the drawn numbers.It's About Time: HTC To Refocus Smartphone Efforts Around "Hero" Devices
Jan 26, 5:48PM
HTC has gotten to be remarkably good at churning out phone after phone these days, but it's gotten to feel like each new release is too little too soon. Thankfully, the godfather of Android hardware has come to its senses, as revealed by Mobile Today. According to HTC UK head Phil Roberson, 2012 is going to be all about giving their customers "something special." To that end, HTC plans to focus on a smaller number of "hero" smartphones and dial back their presence in the tablet market.Google+ Now Open To Teens 13 And Up
Jan 26, 5:40PM
Google is opening up its social networking service Google+ to teens as of today, according to a post from Google's VP, Product Management, Bradley Horowitz. The move puts the network in closer competition with Facebook, which also requires that individuals be at least 13 year old before creating an account. Says Horowitz, everyone who's old enough for a Google account (13+ in most countries), can now create a Google+ account too.(Founder Stories) SoftTech VC's Clavier: An Investor's Role Isn't To Give Orders
Jan 26, 5:09PM
SoftTech VC's, Jeff Clavier has edged his way from a true Silicon Valley outsider (born and raised in France) to the ultimate insider. Since moving to the valley a decade ago, Clavier has launched three funds and invested in more than 100 companies, the likes of which include Mint, FitBit, and Fab. Not bad for a guy who claims to have jumped "into venture by accident." Having just raised $55 million for his third fund, which will invest on average "$400,000" per startup, Clavier sat down with Founder Stories host, Chris Dixon to discuss how he built his business.If at any time you'd like to stop receiving these messages, just send an email to feeds_feedburner_com_techcrunch+unsubscribe-hmdtechnology=gmail.com@mail.feed2email.net.
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