VentureBeat

Conduit, an Israel-based startup that lets anyone customize a browser toolbar that they can offer to their friends or others, reports rapid user growth.
Rapid enough, at least, to draw $8 million in a second round of financing from aggressive venture capital firm Benchmark Capital. This follows an initial $2 million investment by Israeli venture [...]

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A week ago, Africa tech blogger Erik Hersman read a post by Kenyan tech and human rights blogger Ory Okolloh calling for a web application to track incidents of violence and areas of need during the post-election turmoil in Kenya.
Within a few days, Hersman had organized Okolloh and a couple of like-minded developers in the [...]

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A 23-year old programmer in Thailand has launched a Twitter-like service that lets users add location-based information to their Facebook profile, website, or blog.
The Thailand-based service is called LetsProveWhere, and Peerapong Pulpitpatnan (aka “Pete”) developed it almost single-handedly in just three months. After a few days, he’s reporting about 100 registered users.
Pete says he got [...]

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Last week we covered Jawbone’s noise-cancelling bluetooth headset, but this week STEP Labs debuted a headset technology that STEP chief executive Robert Mitro says will blow the competition out of the water.
Mitro says STEP’s technology creates a virtual acoustic bubble six inches from your mouth, so that all the other noises are blocked away. He [...]

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Outspark, a rapidly growing community games publisher with one million users in just five months, is out to change the online game market.
Based in both San Fransisco and Seoul, Korea, Outspark wants to challenge the subscription-based model of Massive Multiplayer Online (MMO) games that’s predominant in the U.S. by offering games for free and getting [...]

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5pm, a product of QG Software, is some pretty slick project management software, and it’s brought to you by two guys from Cincinatti, Ohio and two programmers in Eastern Europe–all with out any funding.
5pm offers the same project management tools as most others, including grouping, time reports, security levels, email notifications and attachment support. An interactive timeline gives you [...]

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The popular press in the U.S. has given a high volume of coverage to the recent political and ethnic unrest in Kenya (Over 300 dead, 100,000 misplaced, with conflict mostly along ethnic divides)–more coverage than other African conflicts have garnered. And if you consider the level of technology uptake in Kenya, it leads to an interesting [...]

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I recently did an article comparing 14 web and mobile applications that offer live TV, and want to make two updates.
First, little did I know, I left one out: Nowlive, a company that has an alternative business model to the usual ad-base fare — the company is already generating revenue. More in a sec.
Second, Mogulus, [...]

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With the Crunchies just a couple of weeks away, we’ve covered most the contenders on this site, with a few exceptions. One is Earthmine, a nominee in the Best Technology Innovation/Achievement category.The company is building a geospatial platform that will integrate with web applications to give them access to a database of in-depth 3D data on [...]

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UK’s Balderton Capital, the venture capital firm that backed companies like social network Bebo and video game developer Codemasters, is hedging its bets again: literally.
This morning, mobile betting company, betNOW, headed up by a team of former Vodafone employees, said it has raised $5 million round in capital from the VC firm formerly known as [...]

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Thanks to the meteoric rise of YouTube, anyone with a video camera and an internet connection can be a star. More recently, they can live stream themselves to you 24/7, even from a mobile phone. Here we take a look at 14 companies competing in this sector.
Justin.TV, featuring a live cam of a guy named [...]

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