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Carvoyant Is Ready To Put Your Car In The Cloud
Jan 12, 11:04AM
Carvoyant, a startup that's been busy developing a platform that will tell you exactly what's going on with your vehicle's general health (and what that blasted "check engine" light means), is today ready to start shipping its devices to early adopters and developer testers. It has also signed a couple of agreements with auto dealer partners, who will be the first to distribute the system more broadly to potential customers.Parku Looks To Make Parking Spot Rentals Mobile-Friendly In Europe
Jan 12, 7:50AM
Now that Airbnb and Uber have dramatically changed the markets for providing rides and temporary space, it’s natural that we’re seeing variants of their models being applied in other spaces. Parking seems like a natural place, since there is plenty of unused inventory in urban cities. There have been a few attempts at the space in the U.S. through companies like Parking Panda. A Swiss startup called Parku is also attacking the concept. Because their local market is so expensive and supply-constrained, they believe they have a good chance at making this idea work. Co-founder Christian Oldendorff says there are as many as 250,000 privately registered cars that roll around Zurich every day. Even though there are 220,000 private parking spaces available, only 50,000 or so are freely available. On-street parking is almost fully occupied while the cost of renting a parking space per month can range from 250 to 1,000 Swiss francs every month ($273 to 1095). It’s a lot more than what you would find in a city like San Francisco, where parking spots in coveted neighborhoods range from $200 to $300 a month. Like with U.S.-based rivals, you can book spaces on the website or through a mobile app for certain days and hours. They’re hoping to scale up to 400-800 parking spaces soon within Zurich, and then expand more broadly within Europe. Because parking is so expensive locally in Switzerland, even as few as 350 parking spaces could produce a revenue run-rate of more than 1.3 million Swiss francs ($1.4 million) a year, the company says. In the U.S., Parking Panda has worked with garages in 73 U.S. cities to offer up to 10,000 parking spaces. Another earlier company, Hello Parking, shut down in 2011 after running into issues with scaling up inventory. That company ran into issues signing up huge garages, which had owners that were reluctant to dramatically increase local supply and drive down prices. Oldendorff says it’s too early to see if his company will run into the same dynamic in Europe.Open Government Initiatives Helped New Yorkers Stay Connected During Hurricane Sandy
Jan 12, 5:00AM
Editor's note: Rachel Haot is the first Chief Digital Officer for the City of New York, where she leads NYC Digital and is focused on the city's digital media strategy. >From hackathons to social media, open government is transforming the way that Mayor Bloomberg's administration and New York City government serve the public. And there has been no greater testament to open government's potential than the strategy and innovation in action during Hurricane Sandy.Pairasight Is An Embeddable, Open Source 3D Camera
Jan 12, 4:47AM
This morning we sat down with the creators of Pairasight, a unique system for adding stereo vision to almost anything including glasses. While the company is still nascent, they do have a very compelling technology that could help EMTs, police, and military record their world wirelessly when on duty.
iRig HD Surfaces At CES
Jan 12, 3:52AM
I spent a lot of time at CES 2013 searching for new audio goodness and one of the cool things I found was IK Multimedia's latest product called the iRig HD. Not "officially" announced yet and missing a release date, there were still a few demo units at their booth in the South Hall.PayPal Apologizes For Freezing Science Fiction Writer Jay Lake's Cancer Fundraiser, Promises Greater Transparency
Jan 12, 3:16AM
Earlier this afternoon, I started seeing a bunch of tweets from science fiction writers and fans about what looked a big screw up at PayPal. Author Jay Lake has been fighting cancer since 2008, and to raise money for a new treatment (whole genome sequencing), he pulled together a number of big-name writers to perform "acts of whimsy" when different funding levels are reached. (For example, fantasy author Neil Gaiman offered to cover a Magnetic Fields song on the ukulele if fans donated $20,000.) Within 24 hours, the campaign seemed like a big success, shooting way past the $20,000 goal. And then PayPal froze the account associated with the campaign, blocking Lake's access to the funds.The Weekly Good: Groupon Isn't Just About Selling, It's About Doing
Jan 12, 2:56AM
When you think of Groupon, you immediately think of instant deals for restaurants and nail salons. That's not all the company is about though, it's about connecting people to businesses and helping you find interesting things to do in your area. Sure, it's a business like any other company, but as we've come to learn, a lot of companies these days do non-profit work, mostly in the background. You know, when they're not acquiring companies.White House Responds To Death Star Petition: Obama "Does Not Support Blowing Up Planets"
Jan 12, 2:42AM
I love the Internet so much. America's netizens have demanded that President Obama consider building the legendary Star Wars Death Star and the White House has responded. Not surprising, they have thoughtfully rejected the request, claiming it would cost an estimated $850,000,000,000,000,000 and that "the Administration does not support blowing up planets." The White House was forced to offer an official response to arguably the silliest question in American history since the petition garnered the requisite 25K signatures on the WeThePeople petitioning system.Pontiflex Raises $7.7M For Its 'Mobile Signup' Ads
Jan 12, 2:27AM
Mobile ad company Pontiflex has raised $7.7 million in new funding. The news was revealed in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission and confirmed by Geoff Grauer, Pontiflex's CIO, COO, and co-founder. In an email statement, Grauer said the round was led by Blackstone, and is intended to grow AdLeads, a self-serve mobile ad platform where advertisers only pay after someone viewing the ad completes a sign-up platform. Ten thousand local businesses have signed up since AdLeads launched last March."Now" App Scans Instagram To Find You Something Fun To Do Nearby
Jan 12, 1:41AM
You're bored at home asking "What should I do?" Meanwhile people nearby are shooting Instagrams of the fun events they're at. Now is a free iOS app that uses Instagram's API to sort through photos in real-time, organize those from the same time and place into events, and show you the events as a feed. Now harnesses the powerful Instagram API to help you discover parties, concerts, bar nights, and share them tooAngry Birds-Maker Rovio Crossed 263M Monthly Active Users Last Month
Jan 12, 1:17AM
Rovio, the Finnish makers of Angry Birds, said they crossed 263 million monthly active users in December, with 30 million downloads in Christmas week alone and 8 million downloads on Christmas Day. The figure is about 30 percent higher than the 200 million monthly active users the company had at the end of 2011. For perspective, 263 million monthly actives is nearly as many as Zynga has. Zynga reported 311 million monthly active users in the third quarter of last year, and tracking site AppData says that the company currently has 264 million monthly active users on Facebook. Rovio, which found its landmark hit on the iOS platform on its 52nd attempt at launching a game, has set increasingly lofty (and some say, crazy) goals year after year. At an interview I did with the company in November, the company’s chief marketing officer Peter Vesterbacka said he wanted Rovio to be the first entertainment brand with 1 billion a users a day (or as many as Coca-Cola interacts with). The path to that involves not just smartphone games, but loads of licensed merchandise, animated shorts, a feature length film, and potentially hundreds of activity and amusement parks in China and throughout the world. China recently became Rovio’s biggest market by daily active users. The company expects that around half or more of its revenue will eventually come from real-world goods (not virtual ones).In A Sea Of iPad Cases, Lazy-Hands Stands Out With Little More Than Velcro, Cloth, and Ingenuity
Jan 12, 1:15AM
Lazy-Hands is the epitome of one of those self-made, little-guy CES gems that we love so much. Armed with little more than velcro, a humble booth, and a dash of ingenuity, they managed to catch our eye amongst thousands of competitors who were twice their size and nth as loud.Almond+ Expands The Router's Domain, Adds Zigbee And Z-Wave Smart Home Control
Jan 12, 1:02AM
The Almond, a router with a small touch screen that achieved significant success on Amazon thanks to a decent price point and excellent reviews, has a successor from parent company Securifi hitting Kickstarter soon. The Almond+ comes with 802.11ac support, boasts a 2.8-inch touchscreen, and can be set up without even connecting to a PC. It's the perfect router for a mobile-first generation, and the new version also builds in a smart home hub that's compatible with both Zigbee and Z-Wave standards.CES Is The Wild Wild West, Which Explains This Massive 1600lb Mechanical Spider
Jan 12, 12:30AM
CES covers over 1.9 million square feet of the Las Vegas desert, and walking up and down the various lanes of gadget goodness can be hard on the old dogs. Luckily, we discovered this massive mechanical spider walking machine that does all the work for you. After all, it does have eight legs to my two.Groupon Acquires Realtime Location-Aware Service Glassmap To Help You Find Deals
Jan 12, 12:13AM
Y Combinator company Glassmap, a location-aware app that was big back in the day (last year), has just announced that is has been acquired by Groupon. A representative from Groupon has confirmed to TechCrunch that the company has indeed acquired Glassmap and is ”excited to bring the team aboard.” This makes total sense, because Groupon needs to know where you are, who you’re with, and what you’re doing and like to do so that it can push more relevant deals to you. This is something that companies such as Google are also working on. Here’s what the company had to say: Today, we're happy to announce that Glassmap has been acquired by Groupon! Our goal when we started building Glassmap was to help people find what was interesting and relevant around them. But in plainer terms, we just really wanted to mold all these fancy ideas and innovations of Silicon Valley into a simple and useful tool for the real world. Groupon has revolutionized how people today use technology to interact with the real world, and that's why we're so excited to join them. Together, we'll be able to create even more amazing products. Most importantly, we want to thank all our loyal users for riding with us for these past two years. It's been really fun for us, and we hope to continue delighting you with our efforts with Groupon. The Glassmap application will wind down and close on February 15, 2013. As the team mentions, it now has an opportunity to take what it has built and put it in front of a more mainstream audience – like outside of San Francisco. When the service launched, I spoke with its team, and they told me about some pretty interesting location technology it was building, which doesn’t tax your phone’s battery like other apps. The team, Geoffrey Woo, Jon Zhang and Jonathan Chang, are all engineers who dropped out of Stanford’s MS program. Their focus in school? Distributed systems, circuits, web and mobile development, and industrial design. Quite a grab for Groupon. No word on what the purchase price was, but this sounds like one of those fancy acquisition/hires that we talk about all of the time, mostly surrounding Facebook and Google. Is Groupon about to get more hip? We’ll find out. [Photo credit: Flickr]Polaris Closing Dogpatch Labs Locations In New York And Palo Alto, Says No Change In Investment Strategy
Jan 12, 12:01AM
Polaris Venture Partners plans to close two of its Dogpatch Labs incubator spaces — specifically the ones in Palo Alto and New York — while refining the approach in its two remaining locations. The news was first reported in a story on Xconomy. I called John Lacey, the firm's director of communications, and he confirmed the news: "We are ramping down in Palo Alto and New York while increasing our efforts in Cambridge and Dublin."Swivl Introduces Their Updated Camera With DSLR, Tablet Support
Jan 11, 11:54PM
The Swivl is an odd duck. When you first look at it you wonder what it's for. But anyone who has given a speech or performed onstage will immediately appreciate this clever little device. The Swivl essentially follows you around the room as you speak, allowing you to record your video without a separate camera operator.
Just Give The Dish DVR Its Nomination Back, CNET
Jan 11, 11:13PM
Here we go again. There is a CONFLICT OF INTEREST in the tech news media. Well I just can't believe how this could happen in an industry that pays bloggers to review products from companies that then get advertised on those bloggers' websites which pay those bloggers' salaries ... OH. This time the victim of the business we've chosen is CNET.* CNET's parent company CBS is in a lawsuit with Dish DVR, because it allows you to skip the commercials when you DVR content. Because this function is actually awesome, CNET, which purports itself to be a vehicle for outstanding technology, nominated the Dish Hopper DVR with Slingbox for its "Best Of CES" awards.It Looks Like SV Angel Just Raised Another $30 Million
Jan 11, 10:50PM
According to an SEC filing, Silicon Valley investor SV Angel has raised a new round of funding for a fund titled, SV Angel-III Growth P. As we reported in August, SV Angel filed another document with the SEC that indicated the firm was raising another $40 million for a new fund. SV Angel, which was co-founded by angel investors David Lee and Ron Conway, has invested in companies such as Twitter, Zynga, Square, Hipmunk, Fab.com, Path, and Airbnb. The firm most recently raised $20 million in the spring of 2011. This specific fund from the form filed today appears to be a growth fund for the III fund. SV Angel could have raised this extra fund to participate in follow-on investments for seed companies. Last year, Conway announced that Lee is solely running SV Angel, with Conway still maintaining a large vested interest. Lee had said in May of 2012 that he was possibly raising additional money for the firm. As Conway told TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington (who is a limited partner in SV Angel) last year, SV Angel typically invests in two to three startups per month, but five qualified deals a day are referred to them through their network.Sony May Kiss Low-End Smartphones Goodbye To Better Compete With Samsung And Apple
Jan 11, 10:34PM
Sony Mobile's top-tier Xperia Z may have been one of CES's most pleasant non-surprises (seriously, is there anyone Sony didn't brief about that thing?), and it turns out that the company's future efforts may be more of the same. According to a recent CNET interview with Xperia Product Manager Stephen Sneeden, Sony is contemplating leaving the entry-level smartphone market to other companies.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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