HP hits targets but warns of tough quarters ahead
Hurt just a little by the downturn, Hewlett Packard hit its expected financial targets as its reported net income fell 17 percent to $1.7 billion for the second fiscal quarter ended April 30.
Revenues for the world’s largest tech company were $27.4 billion, down 3 percent from $28.1 billion a year ago. (Adjusted for currency fluctuations, revenues were up 3 percent).
Since HP’s sales didn’t crater, it’s likely that it gained market share in the … Continue Reading
Yahoo's new mobile search bundles info, guesses intent
Yahoo search gurus gave a presentation at the offices of OutCast PR today titled, “End of the 10 Blue Links.” You can read TechCrunch’s liveblog of the event, but here’s the shorter takeaway.
Yahoo, like Google, is moving away from returning Web pages that match keywords. Instead, it’s trying to automatically determine what it calls the “intent” of the user. What is the user trying to find, or find out? And instead of returning a … Continue Reading
Tesla gets much-needed infusion from Daimler
Daimler, the German auto maker known for its ownership of Mercedes-Benz, has acquired a nearly 10 percent stake in Tesla Motors, the anointed electric car company to watch. And the deal — worth an unspecified tens of millions of dollars — couldn’t come at a better time, with the latter running on less capital than it would like as it develops its hyped Model S sedan.
Tesla’s financial woes are well documented. Late last year, … Continue Reading
Palm's day of reckoning coming on June 6, with the Pre's release
After much public speculation about the release date and pricing of the Pre (Palm’s answer to the iPhone), Sprint announced today that it will start selling the device on June 6, with a price of $199.99 (basically equivalent to the cheapest iPhone), if you make a two-year service commitment and after you receive the rebate.
Both smartphone maker Palm and mobile carrier Sprint have been struggling recently — with Palm’s sales falling below expectations and … Continue Reading
OpenTable ups share price for IPO as Silicon Valley watches closely
Online reservation service OpenTable is predicted to go public this week — much to the excitement of the Silicon Valley community — and it just lifted its estimated price range from $12 to $14 per share to $16 to $18 in response to investor demand. The filing would mark the fifth and smallest technology offering this year, boding well for other young companies finding their legs after the fourth-quarter market freeze.
Last year, we predicted … Continue Reading
Greylock Partners joins the Sand Hill neighborhood
Greylock Partners is uprooting its headquarters after 44 years in Boston to move to venture capital’s west coast mecca on Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park, Calif. While the firm has been actively involved in Silicon Valley and the tech startup scene for years, leadership decided it was time to make a bigger commitment.
As part of the shift, Greylock is adding several new positions, including partners. It’s currently cooling its heels in an office … Continue Reading
Clarient closes $40M for cancer diagnostics
Clarient, an Aliso Viejo, Calif.-based provider of cancer diagnostic and identification tests, has brought in $40 million from Oak Investment Partners. The first $30 million chunk of financing came in March, and the company could score $10 million more from the firm depending on terms of the deal.
So far, Clarient has used the money to pay back shareholder Safeguard Scientifics. Things seem to be looking up, with the public company reporting $22.4 million in … Continue Reading
Satiety secures $7.5M bridge for tummy tuck shortcut
Satiety, maker of a minimally-invasive device that shrinks stomach capacity via the mouth, has landed a $7.5 million bridge loan from its existing investors — a group that includes Skyline Ventures, HLM Venture Partners, Pinnacle Ventures, Morgenthaler Ventures, Three Arch Partners, Venrock and medical inventor Thomas Fogarty, reports VentureWire.
Based in Palo Alto, Calif., the company is still developing its lead product, called the TOGA System, which makes users feel sufficiently full after eating very … Continue Reading
VoxPop.TV unites forces of casual gaming, pop culture trivia
VoxPop.TV, a site where users can build their own games, make money on them through advertising or sponsorship, and syndicate them to other sites, has brought in $1.5 million in a second round of funding. Based in San Francisco, the platform is tailored to quiz, trivia and prediction games based on happenings in pop culture. It will use the new money to continue developing its offerings and to build up its audience.
When you first … Continue Reading
IntalioCloud takes on Salesforce.com
Intalio, a private company that until now has been focused on providing open source systems for business process management (BPM), is launching a more ambitious product called IntalioCloud. With a combination of BPM and customer relationship management (CRM) tools for salespeople, Intalio is challenging Salesforce.com, the company that built its reputation on selling CRM services via online subscription (and which has more than 50,000 customers).
Palo Alto, Calif.-based Intalio isn’t ducking from the comparison, either. … Continue Reading
Twitter is retaining more users than Nielsen thinks
Market research firm Nielsen recently published a report, Twitter Quitters Post Roadblock to Long-Term Growth, which stated that Twitter’s first-month retention rate was 40 percent. That is, only 40 percent of Twitter users tweeted the month after they joined. Is Nielsen right? Should Twitter be worried that it nobody is sticking around?
Comparing Twitter’s retention to Facebook and MySpace, the report’s conclusion is pretty grim:
Twitter has enjoyed a nice ride over the last few … Continue Reading
Roundup: Google calls out quitters, Craigslist's feelings are hurt and more
Here’s the latest action:
Google knows you’re quitting before you do — In the wake of recent brain drain, the search giant has devised an algorithm that combines employee reviews, promotion histories, pay and other factors to predict which employees are most likely to leave. The WSJ has more.
Unity Semiconductor finds chip alternative – After seven years of research, the company will provide flash memory said to have four times the storage capacity and … Continue Reading
Intel readies second-generation Atom processor for next-generation, laptop-like netbooks
Intel announced today it has designed a faster and more power-efficient version of its Atom microprocessor, which in the past year has revolutionized computing in the netbook market.
The netbook market has exploded in the past year as consumers opt for the convenient size (smaller than laptop), simple features of surfing the web and reading email, and costs of $500 or less. Intel has sold tens of millions of Atom processors in the past year. … Continue Reading
Dell launches "touch-screen" netbooks for students
Netbook computers for web browsing and emailing are taking off like wildfire, and now Dell has thrown its hat in the ring with a netbook for students.
The new Dell Latitude 2100 has a 10.1-inch screen and a touch-screen surface designed for student-teacher interaction. The netbook is rugged and come in five colors. It has wireless Internet and a built-in webcam. It even has an anti-microbial keyboard to account for the fact that many students … Continue Reading
Virtual event companies report boom amid downturn
A host of companies offering virtual events are doing well, now that the sluggish economy has people wanting to save air or car expenses for in-person meetings.
Unisfair, which offers virtual job fairs, is the just the latest. It lets people go online to a faux exhibit hall, create a virtual character and then interact with people attending the same event, says signed up 25 new customers for the business in the first quarter.
Separately, … Continue Reading
Obama turns to California for new emissions standards
President Barack Obama is getting ready to announce new, stringent vehicle-emission standards for the whole U.S. Combining California’s tough policies with Transportation Department recommendations, he will call for a 30 percent increase in car and truck fuel efficiency by 2016 — an announcement that will probably go out tomorrow.
If properly implemented, this measure would establish the standard that all cars and light trucks need to get 35 miles per gallon mileage within the next … Continue Reading
Cisco joins the race for a leaner, cheaper smart grid
Cisco Systems threw its hat into the increasingly crowded smart grid ring today, laying out a more defined strategy and projecting that this market could soon be worth up to $20 billion a year. The core of its plan is twofold: to partner with utilities to lower costs at every stage of the energy distribution process and to upgrade grid infrastructure to reduce outages and improve security.
To accomplish these goals, the networking giant will … Continue Reading
Is the video game exercise trend getting overloaded or just starting?
In video games, Nintendo starts the trends and then the copycats pile in. At some point, gamers get jaded and the trend collapses.
Nintendo made the exercise-gaming trend into a phenomenon with Wii Fit, which has sold more than 10 million copies since its launch a year ago. That’s more copies than the original Halo. Now other companies are piling into the exercise game craze as couch potatoes get off the couch. Sega announced Daisy … Continue Reading
StockTwits raises $800K more for Twitter stockpicking
StockTwits, a startup that helps you see people’s stock-related comments on microblogging service Twitter, has raised a first round of venture funding. It’s a relatively small round — $800,000, the same size as the company’s angel funding, according to MediaMemo’s Peter Kafka — but it’s still respectable for a service that might initially seem rather limited.
The concept behind StockTwits is simple — basically, if you tweet using a “$” symbol to indicate a stock, … Continue Reading
Ambient's Q1 earnings bode well for smart grid
Ambient Corporation (OTCBB: ABTG), provider of equipment that communicates energy consumption data to utilities, reported today that it brought in $826,593 in revenue during the first quarter this year, up from $63,642 last year.
Based in Newton, Mass. the company also released that its cost of goods sold totaled $731,236 for the quarter compared to $342,870 for last year’s period. Considering how much production has increased, those numbers reflect a spike in efficiency. It says … Continue Reading
