Twitter to natively support Retweets, launch API
A quirky habit in the Twitter community is finally finding acceptance from the mothership.
Retweets, a way of sharing ideas or content already posted by another user on the microblogging site, will become natively supported by Twitter. The company’s also launching several application programming interfaces that will create retweets, display them in a distinctive way, and track them in a user’s account.
“Retweeting has become one of the cultural conventions of the Twitter experience,” wrote … Continue Reading
GM announces $43M battery plant for its Chevy Volt
General Motors became the first major automaker to announce plans for a battery manufacturing facility today, unveiling a roadmap that will jump start production of up to 70,000 lithium-ion battery packs a year by the end of 2010.
The batteries produced will be used primarily in the car company’s long-anticipated electric Chevy Volt. The plant will be located near GM’s headquarters in Michigan, which is quickly becoming a mecca for the battery industry, with A123Systems, … Continue Reading
Benchmark took "almost all equity" with FriendFeed sale to Facebook
Benchmark Capital, FriendFeed’s sole venture capital backer, took “almost all equity” in proceeds from the startup’s sale to Facebook on Monday, according to the firm’s lead partner on the deal.
Facebook bought social sharing startup FriendFeed on Monday for $47.5 million, with $15 million in cash and $32.5 million in stock, according to The Wall Street Journal. That means FriendFeed’s two other primary investors, co-founders Paul Buchheit and Sanjeev Singh, along with their employees probably … Continue Reading
Shocking Technologies raises $10 million in second round
San Jose-based Shocking Technologies Inc., which builds materials for preventing electrostatic discharge from cellphones and electronics, raised $10 million in a second round of funding today.
The round was led by Vista Ventures and had participation from ARCH Venture Partners, ATA Ventures, Balch Hill Partners and other private investors. The company raised $4 million in January last year and $7 million in August 2007.
Simon Michael joins the board from Balch Hill Partners.… Continue Reading
Pacific Biosciences takes $68M as genome sequencing becomes more competitive
Pacific Biosciences, one of the companies working to advance DNA sequencing technology, just brought in $68 million in new financing — bringing its total raised over the last year to a staggering $188 million. The Menlo Park, Calif., firm says it plans to use the money to prepare its new real-time sequencing system for commercial launch in 2010.
Its ability to raise such a substantial amount of money is significant for several reasons. Not only … Continue Reading
reMail brings better email search to the iPhone
Apple’s Mail application for the iPhone has been getting better, but it’s still less than fantastic. Downloading or searching emails that are on the server (rather than on your phone) can be a pretty painful experience, especially given the continuing spottiness of AT&T’s mobile network. Now an iPhone application called reMail wants to end your suffering by downloading all your emails onto your phone.
A beta test version of reMail was released earlier this year, … Continue Reading
Google Reader lets you snoop on friends' feeds, more easily share content
Google Reader, a Google service that pulls content from all your favorite news sites and blog into one place, has announced two new features for receiving and sharing information that’ll make it far more social.
The first lets you add friends’ feeds to Google Reader, provided those friends are using a Google Profile.
Of course, you can already subscribe to people’s updates on FriendFeed and Twitter, among other services, but Google Reader’s latest update makes … Continue Reading
Parature's customer service revenue grows 40 percent
A year ago, Parature chief executive Duke Chung told me that the customer service market was ready for a shake-up. At the time, it was possible to see his words as typical startup bluster, but now the company is sharing numbers that show strong growth.
Vienna, Va.-based Parature says that by by delivering its software online, via a multi-tenant architecture, it can deliver its services much more quickly and cheaply than traditional competitors. Because of … Continue Reading
Microsoft is packing real muscle into its Zune HD . . . but for what?
CNet is talking up the processing muscle in Microsoft’s Zune HD, saying it’ll use “one of the most powerful chips to go into a portable media player yet.”
That’s in reference to the Nvidia Tegra, a processor that combines the basic ARM 11 core running the operating system with a GeForce graphics chip. It’s light on power consumption too, burning less than 0.5 watts.
Now, the question remains: What’ll Microsoft do with that added muscle? … Continue Reading
Microsoft kills Entourage, brings Outlook to Macs
Mac users who want to manage their email, contacts, and calendar with Microsoft software are moving closer to even footing with their PC counterparts. Microsoft said today that in the next version of Office for Mac, its Mac-only email application Entourage will be replaced with a new piece of software, Outlook for Mac.
Entourage has always been a bit unusual — where most of the Office for Mac line-up consists of PC standbys like Word, … Continue Reading
Live event ticket search engine FanSnap lands $5M
FanSnap, one of the more visible startups competing with Ticketmaster as a live event ticket destination (even though it doesn’t sell tickets itself, it just aggregates them), has raised $5 million in a new round of funding from Highland Capital Partners. The site says it currently has more than 12 million tickets to upwards of 30,000 sports, theater and concert events on offer. It plans to use the new financing to fuel further product development.… Continue Reading
Sequoia Capital investing in . . . Chinese vegetables and dairy?
Huh, well Silicon Valley’s most respected venture capital firm, Sequoia Capital, has taken an agrarian turn.
It has just invested $63 million into a publicly traded Chinese dairy company, American Dairy Inc., which distributes infant formula, milk powder and soybean, rice and walnut products in China.
Sequoia Capital has steadily been diversifying its geographical focus, increasing its investments in places like China and India. And because technology startups are not as attractive in those regions, … Continue Reading
Touching the hot stove
I’m a slow learner. It took me 8 startups and 21 years to get it right, (and one can argue success was due to the Internet bubble rather then any brilliance.)
In 1978 when I joined my first company, information about how to start companies simply didn’t exist. No internet, no blogs, no books on startups, no entrepreneurship departments in universities, etc. It took lots of trial and error, learning by experience and resilience through … Continue Reading
Multiplayer mobile games take off: Z2Live gets $3M to target iPhone
Gamers love to play together. So finding a way to allow players to play against each other on increasingly popular mobile phones is a no-brainer.
Multiplayer games have been launching left and right on the iPhone, but until now the multiplayer features have usually been built internally by the game developer.
Today, Seattle company Z2Live is launching specifically to offer multiplayer gaming technology to game developers who are targeting the iPhone and iPod touch at … Continue Reading
The desktop isn't dead yet: AMD refreshes its high-end chips
Desktop sales are dropping rapidly as the world becomes enamored with laptops, netbooks and smart phones. But they still constitute about half of overall computer sales. So there’s still reason to take notice when top-of-the-line chips hit the market.
Today, Advanced Micro Devices is launching its latest Dragon family microprocessors, the AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition. The chip is a screamer, with four cores, or computing brains, running at 3.4 gigahertz. AMD says … Continue Reading
Kid-friendly MMO MyMiniPeeps gets $300,000 (in real-world currency)
Aficionados of popular video game World of Warcraft will tell you that, despite the game’s reputation for being more addictive than drugs, it has redeeming value in team building and the pursuit of goals. But it’s hard to justify that when everyone’s killing each other.
Enter MyMiniPeeps, a Massive Multiplayer Online game intended specifically for children ages 6 through 13. Masher Media, the game’s developer, just received $300,000 in angel funding from Tech Coast Angels … Continue Reading
Worldwide phone sales drop 6 percent — but smartphones shoot up 27 percent
Low-cost Nokias will probably ensure Nokia’s dominance of the non-smartphone market for another year. But the low end is no longer the place to be. A new report from Gartner says worldwide sales in the second quarter of 2009 dropped six percent from Q2 2008. But phones classified by Gartner as smartphones shot up 27 percent.
Many people buying new phones, says the report, want either a QWERTY keyboard or a touchscreen. Still more, though, … Continue Reading
Mint.com rakes in $14 Million in third round of funding
Personal finance site Mint.com raked in another $14 million in funding, bringing its total to $31 million. The round was led by DAG Ventures, with new financing from Founders Fund and a top-up from existing investors Benchmark Capital, Shasta Ventures, First Round Capital and Sherpalo.
Although the valuation wasn’t released, “it is a decidedly up-round” and it was “pre-emptive,” meaning Mint.com didn’t raise the funding because it was running out of cash. The company now … Continue Reading
Put your finger on it: The future of interactive technology
[This is the first in a series of posts about cutting-edge areas of innovation. The series is sponsored by Microsoft. Microsoft authors will participate, as will other outside experts.]
Imagine I walk into a bar, and see three women. A camera on my chest captures their faces, and sends the information to a phone in my pocket. That phone can recognize who they are instantly by using software to check the web for … Continue Reading
Expensify raises $1M for online expense reporting
Expensify, a startup that offers tools for expense reports that “don’t suck,” announced today that it’s now possible for companies to add a customized, branded version of Expensify to their own websites.
For example, Expensify used their new application programming interface (API) to build an Expensify application for Salesforce, so you can track your expenses through a CRM tool that you already use. That application is a finalist in the Salesforce Cloud Computing Challenge; the … Continue Reading
