Sequoia backs Sencha's technology for better mobile websites

Sencha, the maker of a couple of application development platforms, including the recently launched Sencha Touch, said today that it has raised $14 million in a first round of funding.

The Palo Alto, Calif. company launched in 2007 with a tool for building business apps. Sencha Touch marks the company’s move into the mobile world — the new platform should allow companies to create websites that have most of the power of native applications built … Continue Reading

Facebook's new global policy VP brings White House, online payments experience

Facebook has hired away a White House staffer to be the fifth full-time member of its Washington D.C.-based office. Marne Levine, who is the chief of staff at the White House National Economic Council, is joining the social network as its vice president of global public policy.

She’ll oversee and coordinate Facebook’s interactions with governments and NGOs and build out the company’s policy teams in Asia, the Americas and Europe, according to spokesperson Andrew Noyes. … Continue Reading

MobileBeat 2010: Facebook's Erick Tseng defines where "mobile" meets "social"

We’re delighted to announce Facebook’s new head of mobile products, Erick Tseng, as a speaker for our fireside chat at VentureBeat’s MobileBeat 2010 conference in San Francisco next month.

MobileBeat 2010 will focus on the superphone revolution and who is profiting from it. Facebook lies at the heart of this debate, because the social network has produced one of the most popular applications on next-generation smartphones.

The company’s recent f8 conference for developers created a … Continue Reading

Netactica booking in Latin American online-travel market

Latin America’s online-travel infrastructure is sorely lacking. But Netactica, an American-Argentinean startup, is tackling the problem.

According to online travel research firm PhoCusWright, the Latin American online travel market was highlighted in a recent study as one of the key growth regions, even as the U.S. online-travel market dipped 7 percent last year.

Netactica has spent the last two years investing in a new technology platform and has seen accelerated growth of transactions within its … Continue Reading

iPhone 4 selling out around the world

Early reports from around the world suggest that the in-store launch of the iPhone 4 is drawing crowds internationally, with long lines and device sell-outs.

For example, the Associated Press said that the Softbank store in Tokyo, where the iPhone first went on-sale, was sold out by early afternoon. Stores in the United Kingdom, France, and Germany are already sold out, according to ComputerWorld. The demand isn’t a surprise, since Apple sold out of the … Continue Reading

Pearltrees lands $1.6M more for social discovery on the Web

Pearltrees, a social tool for discovering and organizing Web content, has announced it secured a second round of funding for €1.3 million (US$1.6 million). The funding will be used to expand globally, especially in the US.

Pearltrees is a free online social network that allows users to tag (or “pearl,” in the site’s parlance) content on the Web and share it with others who have similar interests. Users create pearltrees which house the individual pearls, … Continue Reading

Activision Blizzard's Thomas Tippl defends dealings with game developers

Thomas Tippl is chief operating officer and acting chief financial officer at Activision Blizzard. As such, he helps run the largest independent publisher of video games. The company published Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2, the best-selling video game of all time last November. But it also so a huge blow-up at the Infinity Ward game studio that created the game, resulting in the firing of Infinity Ward’s founders and litigation. The company also has … Continue Reading

eBay founder Omidyar leads $5.5M for D.light's solar lanterns

D.light Design, the startup making solar-powered LED lanterns to improve lighting in the developing world, landed $5.5 million earlier this week. But it’s made news again, revealing the identity of its lead investor: the Omidyar Network, the do-good investment firm founded by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and his wife Pam.

Now six years old, the Omidyar Network has invested more than $300 million in tools that can presumably be used to empower individuals while also … Continue Reading

Ticketfly buys music event site Gigbot to gain ground on Ticketmaster

Ticketmaster is considered by many to be the Death Star of the online ticketing industry. It’s huge, the default for most ticket buyers, and seemingly impervious to competition. But that hasn’t stopped newer entrants from providing and improving alternatives in the market.

One such 2008 entrant, Ticketfly, announced today that it has bought Gigbot, a site that aggregates music event listings in your local area and sends alerts so that you never miss one of … Continue Reading

The iPhone 4 hits the stores – Part 3 (photo gallery)

Inside the Apple store in downtown San Francisco, the feeling wasn’t as hectic as in some of the previous launches. Still, the iPhone 4 made its way into the hands of customers at a steady pace.

Real-life facetime: Apple staff giving details of the iPhone 4 features to customers.

A woman tries out a display model of the iPhone 4.

The shelves at the Apple store were stacked with boxes of iPhone 4′s.

After standing … Continue Reading

The iPhone 4 hits the stores – Part 2 (photo gallery)

There has always been a carnivalesque nature to the lines for various Apple products, as people spend hours and hours waiting. Folding chairs are the norm, and while Apple lines don’t make for full-blown street parties like San Francisco’s Bay To Breakers running event, there is always something going on.

Not sure how successful this effort was.

Then there were people buying old iPhones, apparently.

The developer crowd didn’t seem too pronounced today, compared to … Continue Reading

iPhone 4 launch draws hordes of Apple fans

The excitement among iPhone fans hasn’t died down, judging from the crowd at the iPhone 4 store launch in downtown San Francisco.

The line in front of the Apple store extended for three long city blocks — that’s more people than we recall seeing at the iPad launch in April, as well as at past iPhone launches. There weren’t any big hangups with the phone activation, as happened with the 3G two years ago, but … Continue Reading

Founder replaces CEO of Second Life maker Linden Lab

Linden Lab, creator of the 3D virtual world Second Life, said today that Mark Kingdon (right) has resigned as chief executive and is being replaced by company founder Philip Rosedale, who will serve as interim CEO.

Chief financial officer Bob Komin has assumed the additional role of chief operating officer. In a statement, Rosedale thanked Kingdon for his contributions, including growing the user base and revenue, increasing the stability of the platform and building a … Continue Reading

The iPhone 4 hits the stores – Part 1 (photo gallery)

The tagline for Apple’s latest version of its wildly popular smartphone, iPhone 4, read “This changes everything. Again.” As far as the line outside the Stockton street store in downtown San Francisco goes, things don’t really change from one Apple product launch to another.
This time seemed like a replay of the iPad launch in April, as people lined up for the moment the doors opened, at 7am.

Press and TV showed up, as usual.… Continue Reading

FTC settles with Twitter for letting Britney Spears get hacked

Twitter settled charges with the Federal Trade Commission that it “deceived consumers” and didn’t protect their privacy, according to the agency today. The violated users included singer Britney Spears, President Barack Obama, and the account of the Fox News channel. It’s the FTC’s first data security case against a social network, suggesting that the agency may be looking to get tougher on consumer Web companies.

The charges stem from a case early last year, when … Continue Reading

Facebook: Feds should police our 700,000 apps, not us

Facebook is hoping that the Federal Trade Commission and U.S. Attorney General will bear ultimate responsibility for cracking down on rogue apps, according to comments yesterday from the company’s D.C.-based head of public policy Tim Sparapani.

He also said the platform is now hosting 700,000 apps (or 150,000 more than previously reported).

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Five Q’s with Timothy Sparapani, Facebook from Rob Haralson on Vimeo.

Sparapani said:

“Who’s in charge of making sure these applications do … Continue Reading

Clearleap brings cable TV to Roku set-top boxes

While you can access Netflix movies and Major League Baseball video from your Roku box, you can’t get the expansive content catalogs of a cable-TV provider. Today, Roku and video-delivery startup Clearleap announced a partnership to bring cable video-on-demand content to Roku boxes by the end of this year.

Roku is a set-top box that allows you to play Web video content on your television, so anything you can stream on a PC, you can … Continue Reading

Zoodles creates Firefox add-on to make web browsing safe for three-year-olds

Inquisitive Minds launched its Zoodles safe-for-kids custom browser in May. Now it has launched an add-on for Firefox to let kids ages three to eight surf the web without the need for help or monitoring by parents.

The new Zoodles add-on converts the look and feel of Firefox so that even a kid who can’t read can understand how to browse through images of web sites and click on whatever they want to see, from … Continue Reading