Crowdsourced design site 99designs raises $35M

99designs, the popular site where startups and other small businesses can crowdsource their graphic design needs, has raised $35 million in a first round of funding from Accel Partners.

A first round of this size may seem like another sign of a venture capital bubble, but 99designs isn’t your typical early-stage investment. It was founded in February 2008 and has been bootstrapped and profitable until now. Customers can buy customizable logo designs off-the-shelf (metaphorically speaking) … Continue Reading

Alabama nuclear plant outlasts natural disaster

An Alabama-based nuclear power plant with similar specifications to the Fukushima Daiichi plant that was ravaged by an earthquake in Japan outlasted catastrophic weather in the southeast and has shut down without incident.

Diesel engines, the second line of defense in a long line of safety precautions at the Brown’s Ferry plant, were not disabled by the severe weather. The reactors kicked in and provided emergency power to the plant after its main power lines … Continue Reading

Hacker Geohot denies involvement in PlayStation Network attack, blames Sony’s hubris

One potential suspect behind Sony’s massive PlayStation Network security breach was 21-year old George Hotz, AKA Geohot, who recently settled a lawsuit with the company over hacking into the PlayStation 3’s hardware. But in a blog post today, Hotz denies that he had anything to do with the PSN attack.

Assuming he’s telling the truth (“I’m not crazy, and would prefer to not have the FBI knocking on my door,” he said), that leaves plenty … Continue Reading

Why Indian and Chinese entrepreneurs are leaving America

As I explained in my last piece, skilled immigrants are leaving the U.S. in droves. This is because of economic opportunities in countries like India and China, a desire to be closer to family and friends, and a deeply flawed U.S immigration system. It doesn’t matter whether we call this “brain drain” or “brain circulation”– it is a loss for America. Innovation that would otherwise be happening here is going abroad.

With all the stories … Continue Reading

eBay Find: 1982 Lucas-Reliant Hybrid British Concept Car

The history of the auto industry is littered with the carcasses of the cars and companies that didn’t make it. Modern hybrid-electric vehicles, for example, were first commercialized by Toyota, with its 1997 Prius (sold in the U.S. starting in 2000). But many concepts, development vehicles, one-offs, and other technology experiments preceded that first Prius.

Hybrid history on eBay

Now an arcane piece of hybrid history has turned up on eBay UK, representing major names … Continue Reading

NPD: iPhone 4 sales stay on top, Android dips for first time in two years

Here’s some news that will surely make hardcore Android fans squirm: The Verizon iPhone has helped the iPhone 4 maintain its lead as the single best-selling smartphone in the US in the first quarter of 2011. Meanwhile, Android saw a dip in sales for first time in two years, according to the NPD Group.

Android’s steady lead couldn’t last forever, and clearly the iPhone is a greater threat now that it’s on Verizon. It’ll be … Continue Reading

SoundCloud wants to unmute the web

SoundCloud may be the biggest music startup you’ve never heard of.

It’s a large-scale platform for people to share the sounds they create and has quietly conquered the professional music community, amassed 4 million users and expanded into all kinds of sound, from podcasts and public earnings calls to cat impersonations. We covered the Berlin-based startup back in 2009 when it pulled in over $3M in funding, but it’s been mostly under the radar since … Continue Reading

Qubulus: Indoor positioning is here whether you like it or not

Like many people I have an addiction to Google Maps on my phone, so a world where GPS capabilities can follow me indoors has me curious. Qubulus makes accurate indoor positioning possible with its Qubulus Positioning System (QPS).

The young startup, based in Malmö, Sweden, got some exposure this week at the Global Mobile Internet Conference’s G-Start Up competition in Beijing, where it was picked as one of 20 startups to pitch an audience of … Continue Reading

Forget business travel: Survey says marketers prefer virtual events

Virtual events company Unisfair has released its annual marketing survey, and it shows that even more advertisers will be advancing their brands through virtual happenings this year, with 62 percent saying they would be increasing spending on that medium in 2011, and 42 percent saying they will cut down on how much they budget for physical events.

The survey from the Menlo Park, Calif.-based outfit polled more than 550 marketers about how they are using … Continue Reading

Sony says hacked PlayStation Network credit card data was encrypted

Sony said yesterday that all credit card information on its hacked PlayStation Network was protected with encryption. As the outage for the online game service for the PlayStation 3 entered its eighth day, the company sought to reassure angry users.

Users were angry that Sony took six days to inform them that their personal data had been stolen, but the exact nature of the credit card theft isn’t precisely known. I was among those 77 … Continue Reading

America is bleeding competitiveness

With anti-immigrant sentiment building across the nation, and clouds of nativism swirling around Washington, D.C., skilled immigrants are voting with their feet. They are returning home to countries like India and China. It’s not just the people we are denying visas to who are leaving; even U.S. permanent residents and naturalized citizens are going to where they think the grass is greener. As a result, India and China are experiencing an entrepreneurship boom. And they … Continue Reading

40 percent of Apple game downloads are free titles with in-app purchases

Free-to-play games have become huge on Apple’s App Store in the past 19 months. Almost 40 percent of game downloads are now free titles with in-app purchases, according to a study by Xyologic, a startup that indexes and searches through App Store data.

In March, there were more than 99.9 million downloads of free iPhone games from the App Store. About 80.8 percent of all app downloads in the month of March were free. In … Continue Reading

King.com launches its first cross-platform mobile game (exclusive)

King.com grew up in the age of web portals, offering skill-based games for players who liked to play casual tournament games. But this is the age of disruption for games, so the company expanded into Facebook games in February and is launching its first cross-platform mobile game, Miner Speed, today on the iOS (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch).

With this launch, it will become a truly modern game company, with games across the web, Facebook, and … Continue Reading

Kixeye re-brands and pivots into hardcore social games with Battle Pirates

Kixeye, once known as Casual Collective, has pivoted in a big way into social games on Facebook for hardcore gamers. That’s a market that has been ignored by dominant social game firm Zynga, and it may prove to be a lucrative niche as more hardcore gamers discover that Facebook isn’t all about playing cutesy games.

The San Francisco company is announcing its new name today and is launching a new game called Battle Pirates to … Continue Reading

Did Apple spend $4.5 million to name its cloud storage service iCloud?

Apple may have purchased the domain iCloud.com from Sweden-based company Xcerion for a reported $4.5 million, according to GigaOM.

If the news is true, iCloud could be the name Apple has given to its yet-to-be-launched cloud-based media storage service, which will allow iTunes customers to access songs and videos remotely via the internet.

Apple is rushing to launch its service before rivals Google and Amazon with licensing agreements from the four major music record labels. … Continue Reading

Native Google Docs Android app could be a game changer

Google has released a slick new Android application for Google Docs that makes managing documents easy and adds the ability to convert words in images into editable text.

Editing documents is still done exclusively on the web, but the added functionality provided by the native Android app greatly improves the user experience of Google Docs on mobile devices.

Google also acknowledges that documents are meant to be shared and thus has added support for widgets … Continue Reading

Deals & More: Digitalsmiths brings in $12.5M for video discovery

Today’s funding announcements include companies that help users discover videos, find babysitters and manage networks:

Video search company Digitalsmiths grabs $12.5M: The developer of video search and discovery products has raised a third round of funding led by Technicolor with participation from existing investors including .406 Ventures, Aurora Funds, Chrysalis Ventures, Capitol Broadcasting and Cisco. Based in Durham, North Carolina, the company helps content owners and consumers easily find relevant videos. During this year’s NCAA … Continue Reading

China's tech gurus pick hottest early-stage startups

The Great Wall Club is an exclusive club made up of Chinese internet and technology CEOs. At its annual Global Mobile Internet Conference in Beijing, China today, the club named the winners of its G-Start Up competition, in which some 20 seed and early-stage startups delivered 5 t0 6-minute pitches in the hopes of snagging a spot in an incubator program.

Up for grabs were four months of incubation and funding at Chinaccelerator in Liaoning, … Continue Reading