Freshly-founded startup GroupMe raises $850k to bring group chat to mobile

Mobile application GroupMe thinks there’s money to be made in enabling group chats via SMS and voice calls from any phone in the world. And investors seem to agree. The New York based company has just raised $850k from premier investors including Betaworks, First Round Capital, Ron Conway’s SV Angel, and Lerer Ventures.

GroupMe lets you sign up for a group chat via a mobile web interface. Each GroupMe chat is given a unique number … Continue Reading

Why Are Luxury and Sports Brands Going Green? To Survive

It was so much easier just a few short years ago. Luxury cars wafted and sports machines roared, with nary a thought to gasoline consumed. Hybrids were for weenies, and everyone knew their place.

But now? A hybrid Ferrari, a hybrid Porsche race car, an electric BMW … what is the world coming to? And, more seriously, why are the world’s luxury and sports car brands running as fast as they can to slather green … Continue Reading

New Digg design gets more personal

Social news aggregator Digg unveiled the fourth version of its website today, designed to let users select where they receive their news and create a more personalized experience.

The new version makes it easier to find new sources to follow and connect to friends via Facebook, Google and Twitter accounts. It also offers a custom “My News” page that shows you friends’ story submissions, comments, and Diggs, as well as selected feeds. Users can still … Continue Reading

Six Apart, social media's neglected star, gets deal buzz

For once, people are talking about Six Apart, a blogging pioneer that hasn’t otherwise generated much chatter recently. Rumors are flying that the company’s in the midst of some kind of a deal — though we hear executives at Six Apart are denying anything’s afoot.

The most specific rumor we’ve heard is that Six Apart is looking at deals in Japan, a market it entered in 2003 and where it remains the dominant blogging platform. … Continue Reading

Playboy unwraps its online game plans with Bigpoint

Apparently, running pictures of naked women on its web site isn’t a big enough draw for Playboy Enterprises. Now the company is going to post video games on its site as well.

Playboy Enterprises said today it is diving into a video games alliance with German online game publisher Bigpoint. Bigpoint will help Playboy create games for distribution on Playboy.com. The first game that will be posted on the Playboy site is Bigpoint’s urban crime … Continue Reading

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba.com gathers army of American sellers to take on eBay

Chinese powerhouse auction site Alibaba.com is gathering an army of small-time online sellers as it prepares to march into the United States.

Alibaba.com acquired its second small-scale e-commerce tool in six weeks on Wednesday — Auctiva, a popular service for smaller eBay sellers that helps manage sales and marketing on an individual scale. Alibaba.com acquired a similar service, Vendio, in June.

Alibaba.com offers a wholesale platform on the global site that is geared toward small … Continue Reading

Wannabe angels: Watch the video of every speech from AngelConf

Incubator Y Combinator held its second AngelConf last month, where well-known investors spoke to an audience of prospective angels. If you weren’t able to make it in-person, and you didn’t want to watch the giant chunk of unedited video on Justin.tv, you can now view videos of each of the 16 talks at the new AngelConf 2010 website.

Together, the talks (which are only a few minutes long) give a pretty broad overview of where … Continue Reading

Microsoft accidentally releases new Internet Explorer 9 screenshot and details

Even though we’ve seen a few developer previews of Microsoft’s upcoming Internet Explorer 9 browser, the company has managed to keep news of IE9′s new visual interface under wraps — until now. It appears that Microsoft Russia accidentally released a screenshot and further information related to IE9 on its press site, ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley reports.

The screenshot (above) shows some distinct differences from Internet Explorer 8. The location bar and search bar have been … Continue Reading

Could MySpace's new facelift win over Facebook users?

Popular social network MySpace today announced it has decided to give its profiles a face lift with a more simplistic format. The change comes as a result of user feedback that cited troubles navigating profiles and finding content, said a company spokesperson.

The main difference appears to be a universal format across all content tabs, including photos, playlists, stream, friends and comments. These tabs are nicely lined up vertically on the left side of profiles, … Continue Reading

Google loses its games evangelist after just four months

Google has been acting like it’s going to move into the social gaming space for months now. But it’s not clear how serious we should take this effort by the search giant to move into new territory.

Today, Google’s games evangelist Mark DeLoura said that he has left the company after just four months on the job. In a blog post, DeLoura said, “This past Monday, I left Google. There are a lot of very … Continue Reading

Google's latest (promotional) product: Phone booths

It looks like Google is getting a little old-fashioned to promote its Google Voice service. It is installing telephone booths with the classic red look in airports and universities.

Which airports and libraries? Google said it’s still finalizing the deals, with the goal of installing the booths over the next few months. It sounds like the plan isn’t to make these booths ubiquitous, but rather to pick a few key locations. Passersby should be able … Continue Reading

Virtual desktop developer Atlantis Computing gets $10M

Cisco Systems-backed Atlantis Computing, a maker of software to remotely access computer desktops, raised an additional $10 million in its third round of funding.

Interest in cloud-computing startups has exploded, leaving Atlantis Computing in a good position to grow as it provides server-side infrastructure to remotely access computer desktops.

Atlantis said the funding will help flex its marketing arm and expand internationally.

Users can remotely access their home, work or other computers through “virtual” desktops … Continue Reading

Google brings free US calls to Gmail

Google announced today that it will allow users to make phone calls directly from Gmail — because, apparently, I don’t spend enough time in Gmail already.

Cnet first broke the news yesterday that Google was working on this feature. It was demonstrated this morning at a press event in Google’s San Francisco office. The interface seems pretty straightforward. After you’ve bought credits to pay for calls, you just hit the “call phone” button and Gmail … Continue Reading

Andreessen Horowitz hitting up investors for a cool $650 million: report

It’s unseasonably warm in San Francisco. But is top Valley investor Marc Andreessen planning for winter? PEHub’s Dan Primack reports that Andreessen’s venture-capital firm, Andreessen Horowitz, is raising a $650 million fund, little more than a year after it raised its first $300 million fund.

Andreessen’s timing is excellent. His firm beat fierce rivals and would-be acquirers to back Foursquare, the fast-growing location-based service, in a $20 million round. Another portfolio company, Skype, just filed … Continue Reading

Food-guide site Foodspotting gets backing from super angels

Foodspotting, a site that helps users find the best place to eat the food they’re craving, has just raised $750,000 in seed funding.

There are plenty of restaurant guides and review sites on the Web, but I’m often less interested in finding the best-reviewed restaurant nearby, or even (say) the best-reviewed Italian restaurant. Instead, I want to find the place with the best hamburger, or if I’m at a restaurant I want to know the … Continue Reading

Big surprise: Amazon's new Kindles are the best selling ever

Amazon announced today that its new Kindle e-book readers are the best-selling Kindles ever — which doesn’t come as a huge surprise, since the new Wi-Fi-only version of the device is also the cheapest ever, retailing for $139.

The company also reported that more users ordered the new Kindles on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk than any other product combined. That too isn’t surprising — it’s been the best-selling product on Amazon for the past two years. … Continue Reading

RIM acquires Cellmania in bid to revive its app store

Research in Motion has acquired app store infrastructure developer Cellmania, a sign that RIM is getting ready to resuscitate its app store platform.

Cellmania sells something called mFinder, which is a content delivery and app store ecosystem infrastructure product. The company lists Sprint among the content providers using its infrastructure.

This isn’t the first signal RIM has sent that it is ready to overhaul its app store, called the App World: The Wall Street Journal … Continue Reading

Digital Chocolate claims in Zynga lawsuit it owns Mafia Wars name

Casual gaming company Digital Chocolate has sued social gaming market leader Zynga, alleging that Digital Chocolate has the exclusive rights to the name Mafia Wars.

Mafia Wars is one of Zynga’s biggest hits on Facebook, with more than 27.8 million monthly active users on the social network. You get to create your own family crime operation using your real-world friends on Facebook. Digital Chocolate says Zynga is falsely claiming that it owns the Mafia Wars … Continue Reading

Flurry's AppCircle Rewards lets developers pay you for app downloads

Flurry is announcing today the launch of AppCircle Rewards, an iPhone marketing program that rewards users who agree to download recommended apps.

The program is an expansion of Flurry’s AppCircle cross-selling program, which recommends apps to users based on their own personal tastes. AppCircle analyzes the apps that a user has on his or her iOS device and then recommends apps that the user will most likely enjoy.

With AppCircle Rewards, Flurry will give developers … Continue Reading