eBay gets hyperlocal with acquisition of Where

eBay has acquired location-based advertising company Where. The deal follows eBay’s previous purchase of Milo. The acquisitions are a part of eBay’s efforts to build a mobile marketplace for local businesses.

Where operates a hyper-local ad network and a mobile app. It recently started to offer Groupon-style local deals. The app allows you to search for restaurants, entertainment, news, and more based on your location.
According to eBay, Where has 120 000 business customers and … Continue Reading

More rockstars at VB Summit: Twitter’s Michael Abbott, Verizon’s Nicola Palmer

Our VentureBeat Mobile Summit kicks off next week, and we’ve got a tremendous program lined up. We’ve invited the 180 Who’s Who in mobile. Here are the latest two execs to join the roster:

Michael Abbott (left), VP of Engineering at Twitter, will be joining us for an opening fireside chat on Monday. Michael helps lead Twitter’s mobile efforts, working closely with co-founder Jack Dorsey. As such, he can speak to mobile product development. Yes, … Continue Reading

By the numbers: Apple's staggering results

Apple released its most staggering quarterly results in history today, with all parts of the business showing dramatic growth. Here’s a look at some of the most impressive numbers just released by the company on its fiscal second quarter earnings call.

Revenue:$24.67 billion, up 82 percent from a year ago.

Net income: $5.99 billion, up 95 percent from a year ago.

Mac sales: 3.76 million units, up 28 percent from a year ago.

iPhone sales: … Continue Reading

Apple says supply chain safe despite Japanese quake

Apple’s supply chain has held steady despite the devastating earthquake in Japan, the company’s chief operating officer Tim Cook said in today’s earnings conference call.

There had been earlier speculation that the quake would pose supply risks to the iPad 2 in particular, and Cook acknowledged that Apple sources “literally hundreds of items from Japan,” ranging from LCDs to foil. However, after the quake, Apple employees and partners showed “outstanding teamwork and unprecedented resilience,” and … Continue Reading

Apple explains slow second quarter iPad sales

The biggest loser in Apple’s powerhouse second quarter was by far the iPad, which managed to ship just 4.69 million units when analysts expected somewhere between 6 and 8 million.

During its earnings call today, Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer made it clear that the company simply couldn’t make enough iPads: “We sold every iPad 2 we could make,” he said.

COO Tim Cook also dispelled assumptions that the Japanese earthquake had anything to do with … Continue Reading

Apple earnings beat estimates, but iPad disappoints

Apple just released its earnings report for the second quarter of fiscal year 2011, and it topped analyst estimates once again.

However, it did fall short in one area: iPad sales. Analysts had predicted that the company would sell between 6 and 6.5 million iPads, and instead Apple reported sales of 4.69 million. This confirms earlier reports of disappointing sales, which were based on the filings in Apple’s lawsuit against Samsung. It’s hard to offer … Continue Reading

DOE to grant up to $130M for renewable energy projects

The U.S. Department of Energy said today it will grant up to $130 million to renewable energy projects that can’t find funding from private investors.

The projects the DOE plans to fund are riskier than their solar and wind power counterparts, focusing on the research and development of technologies that are not yet commercially viable.

The funding will come from the Advanced Research Programs Agency — Energy (ARPA-E). President Barack Obama created the agency in … Continue Reading

Nissan says it will deliver 20,000 electric cars by September

Nissan announced today at the New York Auto Show that it is on track to deliver 20,000 back-ordered Leaf electric cars despite numerous delays and production concerns.

The company stopped taking pre-orders for the Leaf once it reached 20,000 reservations for the plug-in electric car. The company hit that target in September last year, and has only delivered about 500 Leaf cars to the U.S. to date. That would mean that the company needs to … Continue Reading

Isocket launches its marketplace for premium ads

When ad startup Isocket launched two years ago, it brought a more efficient self-service model to premium online ads. Now it’s expanding that model with a new ad marketplace called Buyads.com.

As described by founder and chief executive John Ramey via email, Isocket allows publishers to have the same control over advertising that they do in the direct ad sales process, while letting Isocket’s technology “handle all the crappy parts like invoices, payments, serving, metrics, … Continue Reading

Loopt introduces location-based Q&A feature

Loopt, an early leader in location-based services, today announced at Where 2.0 the launch of Qs, a new feature that allows users to answer questions and see other user’s responses in any physical business location.

Loopt is similar to other location-based check-in services in that it enables users to search and visit locations, check-in, and connect with others in a network. However, with the introduction of Qs, the company is taking an unique angle on … Continue Reading

Why is Apple recording iPhone and iPad users' locations?

Apple’s iPhone and iPad devices have long been storing positions and timestamps in a hidden file on the user’s computer. That’s according to developers Alasdair Allan and Pete Warden, who plan to report their finding at the Where 2.0 conference today in Santa Clara, Calif.

Allan stumbled on the discovery while looking through iTunes’ backup files on his computer. Author of the book “Learning iPhone Programming” for O’Reilly Media, Allan came across “consolidated.db”, a backup … Continue Reading

AT&T unfazed by Verizon iPhone, sees best first-quarter ever for smartphones

AT&T announced its first quarter earnings for 2011 this morning and swiftly dispelled the notion that the Verizon iPhone spelled doom for its iPhone sales.

The carrier sold 3.6 million iPhones this past quarter — a cool million over the same time last year. Overall, the iPhone accounted for 60 percent of the more than 5.5 million smartphones sold in Q1 (the rest were Android, BlackBerry and Windows Phone devices). The company didn’t break down … Continue Reading

Weebly’s website builder adds group editing

Popular website-building service Weebly is adding a new feature today, one that users supposedly requested most — the ability to create and edit websites as a team.

On one level, this feature seems particularly well-suited for businesses, which can now assign their employees different responsibilities on a website. After all, co-founder and chief executive David Rusenko said businesses actually make up the majority of Weebly’s user base. But he said the team-editing feature also supports … Continue Reading

Amazon teams up with Overdrive for Kindle library lending

Amazon’s Kindle e-reader will finally play nice with libraries. The company announced today that it will debut a Kindle library lending feature later this year with participation from more than 11,000 US public libraries.

The move has been a long time coming for Amazon, which doesn’t support the open ePub format on the Kindle — something that has made it difficult for libraries to take advantage of the device so far. It’s also a shrewd … Continue Reading

Hi5 becomes a top ten online game site

Perhaps it was the sumo wrestling. Alex St. John, president of social network Hi5 and a man who took on a real sumo wrestler as a marketing stunt, has something to crow about. His company is announcing today that market analyst comScore Media Metrix has classified Hi5 as a top ten online gaming site in a worldwide ranking.

St. John has been trying to shake Hi5′s legacy as an international social network since he joined … Continue Reading

Broadcastr brings location-based storytelling to Android

Following on the heels of its iPhone application, location-based storytelling startup Broadcastr is invading Android devices with a free application today.

Broadcastr, which opened up to public beta testing in February, allows anyone to create This American Life-esque stories. The Android app shares all of the key features from the service’s website and iPhone app, including the ability to listen to stories from around the world, as well as easily record your own story and … Continue Reading