33needs helps do-gooder startups crowdsource their funding

Updated

The crowdfunding concept really seems to be taking off, especially with what Kickstarter has done to help fans fund creative projects. Now a startup called 33needs is bringing a similar approach to funding for-profit startups that want to tackle big, global issues.

Founder and chief executive Josh Tetrick said that the company comes from his experience working for “a venture capital-like initiative” for the United Nations in Kenya while he was a law student. … Continue Reading

LG will launch a smartphone with glasses-free stereoscopic 3D

Stereoscopic 3D is the rage in TVs now, with more than half of the new TV models using the technology this year. And now it’s spreading to smartphones as well. South Korean electronics giant LG announced today it will unveil its LG Optimus 3D smartphone on Feb. 14 at the Mobile World Congress event in Europe.

Hollywood is pinning its hopes on 3D as a technology that will revive interest in watching studio fare in … Continue Reading

StackMob duct tapes typical add-ons onto mobile apps until Apple and Google do it

[Updated to reflect co-founder Ty Amell's wording to indicate he was speaking with a number of large enterprise companies but had not signed any yet.]

StackMob has a pretty novel idea: make a launchpad for developers looking to add all the usual bell and whistles to their mobile applications. Its founders just have to make sure they beat Apple and Google to the punch — which they hope to do by launching an open beta … Continue Reading

Shopkick: Our users are checking into deals

Shopkick, a check-in application which lets retailers market offers to consumers, is showing some impressive growth numbers, according to Business Insider. Since its launch in August 2010, the company has attracted 750,000 users and is doing 1 million check ins a day in just 6 months.

Shopkick has been described as the “Foursquare for shoppers.” The comparison to the most popular general-purpose check-in service, used by friends to announce their locations to each other, isn’t … Continue Reading

Samsung comes clean on “quite small” Galaxy Tab sales

Last week we reported that Samsung had sold 2 million units of its Galaxy Tab Android tablet, but now it looks like that may not be the case, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The 2 million figure apparently refers to Galaxy Tab units that the company has shipped to retailers and wireless companies, not units to actual customers, Samsung’s head of mobile marketing Young-hee Lee revealed in its earnings call on Friday.

It’s not unusual … Continue Reading

Can we really trust the cloud?

Software architects like to shorthand the spaghetti of interconnected networks that make up the Internet as “the cloud” — an amorphous entity, somewhere distant, that you don’t need to fuss over.

But events around the world have brought cloud advocates back to Earth. From Egypt and Canada to Capitol Hill and beyond, we’ve been reminded that what we call the cloud is just a bunch of computers, in buildings, tied together by fiber-optic cables, and … Continue Reading

Affectiva wins government backing to measure your emotions online

A startup called Affectiva said that it wants to change the way advertisers and researchers judge the effectiveness of an ad. With its upcoming Affdex service, companies should be able to use consumers’ webcams to record their faces as they watch a video. Then the company can measure the response — both the emotions consumers’ felt and how strongly they felt them.

Waltham, Massachusetts-based Affectiva spun out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab. … Continue Reading

Intel's billion-dollar mistake: Why chip flaws are so hard to fix

Chips are the brains of everything electronic. And like anything generated by software programs and high-tech factories, they can have flaws. Intel learned this the hard way today as it announced that it had a bug in a companion chip for its popular Sandy Bridge graphics-processor chips for PCs. The mistake will cost the company $300 million in lost sales and $700 million in repairs — making it the biggest such problem the company has … Continue Reading

On the GreenBeat: Think's electric car gets recalled, Khosla bets against lithium-ion car batteries

Here’s the latest action we’re following today on the GreenBeat:

Think City electric car recalled — The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has recalled 39 of the 2011 Think City two-seater electric cars (pictured), Green Car Reports writes. Sixteen of the models have an issue with a seatbelt missing the component to properly hold a child’s seat, while 23 may have inadequate defroster systems. The recall calls for the removal and replacement of … Continue Reading

IBM, Intel, TechStars and the White House start up America

No, America didn’t suffer a breakdown. But according to a “Startup America” campaign launched by the White House to encourage high-growth entrepreneurship in the U.S., it could use a jump-start of entrepreneurial energy. Multiple tech companies will contribute to the campaign but some of the biggest announcements come from IBM, Intel and Techstars, a startup-incubation program.

IBM has announced that it will invest 150$ million in 2011 to fund programs that promote entrepreneurs and new … Continue Reading

Users give mobile apps one shot 26% of the time

Mobile app users are a fickle bunch: while they’re willing to give new apps a try, 26 percent of the time the apps never get a second shot, according to a study by the analytics firm Localytics.

The big takeaway from the news for mobile app developers is that first impressions of your app matter greatly, and you should also pay more attention to the number of people who keep using your apps, instead of … Continue Reading

Cisco jumps into electric cars via Ecotality partnership

Electric car charging company Ecotality has integrated its Blink car charger with Cisco’s home energy management systems. The Cisco-Ecotality parntership will allow electric car charging status and electricity rates gathered by the Blink charger (pictured, above) to be viewable on a Cisco home energy controller (pictured, below).

Given that a charging station is already something of an in-home energy metering and display device, integrating it with a home energy manager is a a logical next … Continue Reading

Mixtent launches social network that tracks your reputation

Professional reputation tracker Mixtent launched its site today. The year-old startup hopes to muscle in on the crowded job finding sector by letting users rank the talent of other people in their social networks.

The Redwood City, Calif. company says it is aiming squarely at people trying to hire, get hired, or find talent internally in their organizations.

It says it has found a a unique way for users to understand what their professional reputation … Continue Reading

Android steals tablet market share from Apple’s iPad

Update: Now it appears that Samsung’s Galaxy Tab sales are lower than the company previously let on, which means that Android tablets likely didn’t take as much market share away from the iPad as we reported below.
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Android isn’t just gaining on its competition when it comes to phones. The mobile operating system is also beginning to make waves in the tablet market, Bloomberg reports.

In the fourth quarter of 2010, Android tablets snagged … Continue Reading

A billion-dollar mistake: Intel recalls a supporting chip for popular Sandy Bridge platform

Intel made a big deal at the recent Consumer Electronics Show about how its Sandy Bridge combination graphics-microprocessor chip has been one of its most successful in history. But it spoke too soon. Now the world’s biggest chip maker said it has discovered a design flaw in the chip’s companion chip set, forcing a production delay that will cost it $1 billion in lost revenues and replacement costs.

The delay could derail the shipment schedules … Continue Reading

Android topples Nokia as world's leading smartphone platform in Q4 2010

For the first time ever, shipments of Android smartphones outpaced all of the competition worldwide in the fourth quarter of 2010, including longtime champion Nokia, according to the research company Canalys.

The last quarter marks a milestone for Google’s mobile OS. Android was bound to become king eventually — it’s free, scalable across all sorts of devices, and its growth has been tremendous — but it’s certainly a surprise to see it gain the top … Continue Reading

With IntoNow, is social TV ready for the masses?

There’s been a real explosion in TV check-in startups in the last year or so, but today, a company called IntoNow is launching what may be the most impressive social TV app yet.

IntoNow spun out of online video ad company Auditude, and the most attention-grabbing part of the app involves technology that was developed at Auditude. Think of it as the TV equivalent of music app Shazam — you can turn on the app … Continue Reading

Rambus invents extremely fast memory system for the gadgets of the future

Hoping to advance the speed of everything from computers to game consoles, Rambus is announcing today it has invented an extremely fast way to transfer data through a computer’s memory system.

The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company can transfer data via differential signaling in a memory system at speeds of 20 gigabits per second, or about three times faster than is typical today. If it commercializes the technology, we could see much faster computers, game consoles and … Continue Reading