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Sequoia Leads $15 Million Round In Wireless Networking Company Meraki
Feb 08, 7:59AM
Meraki, the cloud-based wireless networking company has raised $15 million in Series C funding led by Sequoia Capital. This brings Meraki's total funding to $40 million. Previous investors include Google, DAG Ventures and Northgate Capital. Meraki provides hardware and software for building large scale wireless networks that are used by businesses, schools, and other organizations. Meraki has provided free WiFi that covers about 4 square miles in San Francisco. And Meraki also powers WiFi for businesses and organizations, including Burger King, Albany State University, Stanford, Telmex, Epic Management and THQ. 
Brilliant, Crazy, Cocky: Sarah Lacy's New Book Is All That. But…
Feb 08, 7:46AM
TechCrunch Editor Sarah Lacy's new book Brilliant Crazy, Cocky: How The Top 1% of Entrepreneurs Profit From Global Chaos has been out for a couple of weeks now. I had an early copy and read it, but held off on a review until a independent ones came in. In the meantime, I read it again. Because I realized that Sarah kind of has it all wrong. Or at least didn't draw the final conclusion that I did based on all her work. Not to knock the book. It's an excellent piece of journalism, taken from nearly a year of traveling around the world to meet with entrepreneurs in Asia, Africa, Israel and South America. To try to understand how entrepreneurs are reshaping their worlds in those places, and how America is sometimes being left behind.
Groundcrew Offers a Platform to Help You Mobilize Your Team of Do-Gooders
Feb 08, 6:10AM
Last week, we covered the launch of the Collaborative Fund, angel investor Craig Shapiro's new seed fund aimed at supporting for-profit startups with a social mission. Specifically, Collaborative Fund is investing in companies that apply emerging technologies to peer-to-peer collaboration—like sharing, bartering, trading, and organizing—in order to benefit the greater good. Joining Shapiro in his quest is a formidable group of talent, including YouTube founder Chad Hurley, Kiva co-founder Jessica Jackley, and founder and chairman of Media Labs Nicholas Negroponte. One of the Collaborative Fund's recent investments is Groundcrew, a company that utilizes geo-location and messaging to help people and businesses coordinate mobile teams. Unlike the hyper-focus of Wheretheladies.at, Groundcrew has broader, more community-conscious goals in mind than helping a dude get laid. Reflecting Collaborative Fund's effort to promote social enterprises responding to broken or outdated models, Groundcrew CEO Joe Edelman told me that the inspiration for the company grew out of his experience as a relief worker in post-Katrina New Orleans. The appallingly slow coordination and mobilization of relief in the wake of Katrina was a well-documented nightmare and made the public's (and government's) need for a better model for geo-coordination frighteningly clear.
NoSQL Companies CouchOne And Membase Merge To Form Couchbase
Feb 08, 4:45AM
NoSQL companies unite! Membase (formerly NorthScale) and CouchOne have decided to merge to form Couchbase, which will provide a comprehensive family of NoSQL (which focuses on adding horizontal scalability to databases) database products for enterprise companies. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. CouchOne, which has raised $2 million in venture funding, provides database products powered by CouchDB, a free open source indexable document database server which uses Javascript as a query language. CouchDB is designed for the reporting and storage of large amounts of semi-structured, document oriented data.
Drobo Takes Aim At Small Businesses With New 12-Bay Version
Feb 08, 4:16AM
Over the years we've seen Drobo expand its portfolio of devices from a strictly consumer-oriented lineup to a broader and more business-friendly one. October's DroboPro FS made a beeline for small businesses by mashing up its networking-centric FS series with the 8-drive Pro series. And now they're taking that a step further with the 12-bay version of the same. There's a naming convention change, too, with numbers and everything, something I never thought I'd see Drobo do. The new B1200i denotes the 12 bays it has and the iSCSI interface. What was wrong with "DroboDozen"?
Malcolm Gladwell Book Generator, Because Really, How Hard Could It Be?
Feb 08, 3:34AM
Looks like the Malcolm Gladwell backlash has reached its tipping point. (YOU SEE WHAT I DID THERE?). Inspired by such weighty titles as The Tipping Point, Blink and Outliers, Cory Bortnicker and Brett Molé have built a "generator" of 25 Gladwellian book covers like the above Blank, Yoga: How Hot Trends Make People Buy Books, Vague: The Power of Generalizations To Impress The Bored and (my personal favorite) Monster Cocks: The Last Book You'd Think I'd Write. What did Gladwell do to warrant such opprobrium? He questioned the power of the Internet.
After Failing To Get Hacked Last Year, Google Paying For Chrome To Be In Pwn2Own 2011
Feb 08, 3:12AM
Last year, after two full days of hacking, only one web browser emerged from Pwn2Own unscathed: Google Chrome. IE8, Safari 4, Firefox 3, and even Safari on iOS actually all fell after just one day, but no one could seem to penetrate Chrome. In fact, despite a $10,000 bounty to crack their "sandbox", no one even tried, likely figuring it was futile. And so this year, Pwn2Own wasn't even going to invite Chrome back. Then Google stepped in with wads of cash. While the lineup for Pwn2Own 2011 was announced a few days ago, Google took the time today to give a bit more details about their role in the event. Of note, they write: "Chrome wasn't originally going to be included as a target browser in the competition, but Google volunteered to sponsor Chrome's participation by contributing monetary rewards for Chrome exploits." In other words: bring it, hackers.
Paul Carr, Naked In A Hotel Corridor, Embarrasses TechCrunch Yet Again
Feb 08, 2:52AM
Paul Carr, our on again, off again, sometimes full time employee, often irregular contributor, reminds me of a certain ex girlfriend. It's a dramatic relationship, always interesting, but you just know it's going to end up a mess. Still, I love his writing. And don't get me wrong, We encourage our writers and editors to build their personal brand. Erick Schonfeld's been on Charlie Rose, which pleased his mother to no end. Most of our writers are occasionally talking heads on various cable news shows. Sarah Lacy has published two books on entrepreneurship. CrunchGear Editor John Biggs has been threatening to publish a book about Marie Antoinette's watch, the "iPhone of its day," for as long as I've known him. Paul Carr, though.
By The Time US Gaming Giants Figure Out Tencent's Playbook It May Be Too Late
Feb 08, 1:32AM
If you blinked you might have missed last Friday's news that Chinese Web giant Tencent is buying LA-based Riot Games. And that's just fine by Tencent. Tencent and its founder Pony Ma (seen in a sea of winking penguins to your left) are incredibly press-shy, as everything about the way the deal "leaked" demonstrates. It came late on a Friday before the Superbowl, it was positioned as Tencent buying an undisclosed "majority share" and not an acquisition - even the subsequent analysis was that it was just more proof of how hot the US gaming market is. Even Chinese companies were buying into it! In fact, this deal represents way more than that - and anyone in the game industry should be paying attention. 
iPhone App Fragmentation FUD Is Looming
Feb 08, 1:20AM
ZDNet ran a story this afternoon with a very provocative headline: Not all iPhone apps work on the Verizon iPhone — fragmentation looming? Oh no! Android was supposed to be the platform with the fragmentation problem, not the iPhone! The end must be near, right? Nah. Author James Kendrick notes that Telenav has just unveiled a version of their turn-by-turn navigation app that will work on the Verizon iPhone. More to the point, Kendrick says that Telenav told him that the app had to be reworked to work on the new device. Leaving aside that the original app was called the "AT&T Navigator", so clearly they had to rework the name, Kendrick notes, "The Verizon iPhone required modifications to the Telenav app to make it work with the new hardware in the handset."
ComScore Says You Don't Got Mail: Web Email Usage Declines, 59% Among Teens!
Feb 08, 12:44AM
In introducing his messaging platform last November Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said one of the primary motivations behind product strategy was that teenagers have given up on email, "High school kids don't use email, they use SMS a lot. People want lighter weight things like SMS and IM to message each other." A comScore study on 2010 digital trends reinforces Zuckerberg's claim. It's inevitable: As innovative social messaging platforms like Facebook and Twitter continue to dominate our online time, email begins its steady decline. Total web email usage was down 8% in the past year (YOY), with a whopping 59% decline in use among people between the ages of 12-17. Cue Matt Drudge -style alarm.
As Non-Proliferation Treaty Takes Effect, Should Nukes Be Seen As Clean Energy Source?
Feb 08, 12:39AM
This weekend, a ratified nuclear arms control treaty between Russia and the United States went into effect, reducing and limiting each nation's allowable arsenal of nuclear weapons. The new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START 2) also allows U.S. inspectors access to monitor Russian nuclear weapons technology, facilities and forces, which they were prevented from doing since the original START treaty expired in December 2009. As the nations attempt to mitigate a global nuclear arms race, questions remain: what can be done with extant, surplus and aging nukes? Can they be used as a source of clean energy? Do we have the technology? 
comScore: Facebook Keeps Gobbling People's Time
Feb 08, 12:30AM
With 600 million users, it's no secret Facebook is dominating social networking. And recent comScore data only reinforces the social network's staggering growth. For example, Facebook accounted for 10 percent of U.S. page views in 2010, while three out of every ten Internet sessions included a visit to the site. In December, Facebook's U.S. audience grew to 153.9 million in December, an increase of 38 percent from the same month in 2009, and the social network became the 4th most visited web property month. The total time spent on Facebook in December 2010 vs December 2009 surged 79 percent to 49.4 billion minutes. Total page views grew 71 percent to 76.8 billion.
Mark Your Calendars: Our Mobile Event Coverage For February Is Jam-Packed
Feb 08, 12:25AM
February is a strange month. It's a month wherein college-trained weathermen around the country are temporarily supplanted by a rodent. It's a month wherein we show our love for one another by giving each other crap like this. It's also the month wherein the mobile industry opens its floodgates, releasing a mega-blast of new hardware at a rate that goes unmatched for the rest of the year. Just about every major player in the mobile industry announces something this month (except for Apple, though shaky rumors indicate even they might do something), and most of'em tend to announce at least two or three somethings. Don't want to miss a thing? Have your calendar at the ready and take a peek behind the jump for an overview of all the Mobile events we'll be covering/live blogging this month over at MobileCrunch.
ComScore: Hulu Is Watched Twice As Much As The 5 Major TV Networks Online Combined
Feb 07, 11:50PM
In a new report on digital trends in 2010 When it comes to premium video on the Web, Hulu still rules. In the fourth quarter, the U.S. online audience watched 19.4 billin minutes of video on Hulu, which was twice as much as the how much viewers watched on the websites of the five major TV networks combined. Viewers watched another 9.7 billion minutes of online video on the websites of ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox and the CW. The chart above comes from a new Digital Year in Review report from comScore. While Hulu still dominates, the individual network sites are growing faster. They grew 82 percent in terms of time spent watching video online, compared to 17 percent growth for Hulu. Taken together, Hulu and the five top networks, saw 33 percent growth in minutes viewed. 
Appbistro Announces Appstores.com White-label App Store Platform
Feb 07, 11:24PM
App marketplace for Facebook pages, Appbistro has expanded its scope today and launched Appstores.com. Like a non-enterprise Appia, Appstores will offer publishers the ability to create their own app stores like a (hypothetical) http://apps.techcrunch.com or http://apps.simplegeo.com. Says Appbistro founder Ryan Merket, "Every single company we talked to wanted their own app store." So they made the decision to solve that problem. The Facebook-centric Appbistro platform will continue with business as usual and be one branch of the many pronged Appstores.com network. Merket says that he no plans of charging publishers for the service and one idea for a potential revenue stream is sponsored placement across the network of app stores, for example if a developer wants to highlight his app on TechCrunch's appstore.
PicPlz Beats Instagram To An API
Feb 07, 10:54PM
In the battle among the new crop of social photo apps, winning over the hearts if consumers is only one part of the equation. Winning over the minds of developers is the other part. While Instagram is far and away the early leader in terms of users, rival PicPlz was able to come out first with an API today. PicPlz's API will allow developers to pull photo feeds from its service, and create things like slideshows and other widgets from its growing library of shared photos. It will also allow developers to upload images and take advantage of PicPlz's photo filters. Meaning any photo app can now add a one of PicPlz's filters as a feature. Instagram is also working on an API, which is supposed to be coming out any day now. Already, it had to block one service called Followgram that couldn't wait and was scrubbing the service for interesting photos. CEO Kevin Systrom tells me that beta signups will open up later today (check out this Founder Stories video where he talks about how he views the competition). They will still have to wait for the actual API to become available. Meanwhile, developers can start playing with PicPlz's API.
Live From Sprint's Mystery Product Unveiling In New York City
Feb 07, 10:54PM
We're live at Sprint's Mystery Product announcement in New York City, where we're promised the carrier will be unveiling "yet another industry first". What exactly might that be? A Sprint iPhone 4? Probably not (that'd be tough to call an "industry first", you know?) A dual-screen Android handset called the Kyocera Echo? Probably. Join us after the jump for all the up-to-the-second details, brought to you by our own John Biggs.
Wael Ghonim's First Interview After Jail Release [Video]
Feb 07, 10:52PM
Google MENA Marketing Executive Wael Ghonim gave a brief interview to Egypt's On TV after his release from jail earlier today. Ghonim had been detained blindfolded for 12 days for organizing protests against the Mubarak government. Here's the loosely translated transcript. "Firstly, I'd like to give me condolences to the families of the Egyptians who died, I give my condolences to them. I can't say that I apologize because no protester broke anything, all protests were peaceful and our motto was "Do Not Break." Second of all I want to say please don't make a hero out of me, on the contrary I'm a person who was sleeping for 12 days. The real heros are the people on the ground, please direct the camera and give the attention to those people. And God willing we will change this country. Also I am alright thank God."
Keen On… Seth Godin: While We Weren't Paying Attention, The Industrial Age Just Ended (TCTV)
Feb 07, 10:27PM
As the author of twelve best-selling books including his latest 2010 hit Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? and the iconic Purple Cow: Transform Your Business By Being Remarkable, Seth Godin is amongst the most sought-after business visionaries in the world. "So why are you so popular?" I asked Godin when we met in New York late last month. "I notice things," he replied. Oddly enough, though, the things that Seth Godin notices are often so big and obvious that everybody else misses them. For example, Godin has noticed that the industrial age has just ended – and it's this fact that drives much of his thinking about our indispensability in the post industrial age. Video ahead.
Nokia Heading To Silicon Valley? And The 'Standing On A Burning Platform' Memo
Feb 07, 10:12PM
With Nokia expected to unveil a shift in its long term strategy at the company's annual Capital Markets Day this Friday, it should be no surprise that rumor and conjecture are rife. Much of that has focused on whether or not the Finnish mobile giant will be adopting a third-party platform with talk of Windows Phone 7 given new CEO Stephen Elop's previous connection with Redmond. A rumor that our well-placed sources would appear to confirm - see below. But we're also hearing that Nokia is planning to lay down stronger roots in Silicon Valley too - like so many a European tech outfit - something that The Register's Andrew Orlowski is also reporting. And in what looks like preparing the troops for a major change of direction, an internal Nokia memo titled 'Standing on a burning platform' has been doing the rounds. The widely distributed circular penned by Elop himself is a description of Nokia's somewhat precarious position - and I say that as someone who has been fairly bullish on the handset maker's recent products.
comScore: Android Passes iOS For Overall U.S. Smartphone Subscribers
Feb 07, 10:10PM
comScore's monthly smartphone data is in and it looks like for the first time Android OS has surpassed Apple's iOS in terms of U.S. smartphone subscriber share. The data, which measured smartphone usage from September until December of 2010, showed that 63.2 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones during period, up 7.3 percent from the preceding three month period. RIM once again led with 31.6 percent market share of smartphones, and Google's Android OS maintained the #2 position with 28.7 percent, which is up 7.3 percentage points versus September. Apple accounted for 25 percent of smartphone subscribers (up 0.7 percentage points), followed by Microsoft with 8.4 percent and Palm with 3.7 percent.
BuyGoldWithCash Goes After The Unbanked With A Dubious Investment Scheme
Feb 07, 9:53PM
All that glitters is not gold. You may have heard of PayNearMe, an alternative payments product for the 'unbanked' (consumers who don't have traditional bank accounts or cannot qualify for credit cards.) PayNearMe allows people who don't have credit cards to purchase goods online via a cash payments service at more than 6,000 7-Eleven stores in the continental U.S. A new company called BuyGoldWithCash is launching as a way to allow people to buy gold bars online using PayNearMe's service. Of course, BuyGoldWithCash could be trying to piggy-back on the success of Cash4Gold, which seems to be raking in money. Unfortunately, the gold exchange site has been criticized for offering customers too little money for their gold compared to the spot price at any given time. 
Path Finally Finds Its Way To Comments
Feb 07, 9:44PM
In announcing their funding last week, Path co-founder Dave Morin noted that they were listening to all the feedback on the product and would be rolling out features that users have made clear they wanted. The biggest of those has to be comments. And today, Path has added them. Dubbed "Path Chat", this new feature is a comment section that will reside below each Path moment (pictures and videos). Pretty standard stuff, really. It joins the emoticons feature that Path rolled out last month to allow friends to give each other direct feedback on their moments. Those are now clearly more of a "like" functionality, with comments being the key interaction point within the app.
The Great Valentine's Day Kindle Case Gift Guide
Feb 07, 7:35PM
Valentine's Day is next week. Surprised? Probably. Good thing there's still time to get a great gift and nothing says "Be Mine" like a high quality Kindle case. We rounded up a bunch of him and her Kindle cases and they would all make fantastic gifts. There's something here for everyone and with not one costing more than $50, you're not tapping too much into the coffee can for the silly holiday. Of course we couldn't feature cases from every manufacturer, so if we missed your fav, sound off in the comments. Got a Nook Color? Your case round-up is coming tomorrow.
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