Verizon expands Smart Grid play, launches consulting
Verizon is already eying opportunities to provide wireless networks for Smart Grid communication systems, but today it’s expanding its presence in the space even more with the launch of a security consulting service for utilities rolling out smart meters and other advanced grid infrastructure.
Security is one of the foremost concerns as utilities and other companies work on building a cleaner, more efficient grid. With so much energy consumption data flying by on wireless networks, it… Continue Reading
Twitter adds description to new lists feature
Twitter just added a bit more description to lists, a recently launched feature that lets you create and share groups of accounts to follow. I’ve put an example up above with Venturebeat’s list. You can take an existing list, click ‘Edit’ if you’ve created it and just add a description.
How is the new feature doing? Well anecdotally, judging by the lists created around our VentureBeat account, it seems like plenty of people have experimented with creating… Continue Reading
LinkedIn lands in your Microsoft Outlook inbox
LinkedIn became the second of Silicon Valley’s biggest social networks to make a compelling distribution move this week. It’s landed in your inbox — quite literally if you have Microsoft Outlook.
They’ve partnered with Microsoft to launch the Outlook Social Connector, which will deliver LinkedIn updates directly to your inbox and give you better social context when you reach out to business contacts. When you write an e-mail, you’ll be able to tell what the other… Continue Reading
Profitable Paltalk acquires Vumber for phone number privacy services
Paltalk, the profitable chat startup that bought back its own stock earlier this year, acquired Vumber to offer phone number privacy services today. They didn’t disclose the acquisition price — but Vumber had 3,000 paying subscribers and a monthly rate of $9.95 per month.
Vumber gives you an extra number for your phone in case you want to keep your real one private. It’s a service you could use for dating or if you’re a salesperson… Continue Reading
5 O’Clock Roundup: Moving into a networked era, Tumblr envy, Open Web
Watch out Lexis-Nexis and WestLaw! Google’s coming: You can now read full text legal opinions from U.S. federal and state district, appellate and supreme courts with Google Scholar. Expect an oligopoly (as in the legal research industry) to feel some pressure as Google rolls out another free and disruptive service. You can search by cases, topics or specific phrases. You can also explore how different rulings are cited by other judges and later opinions.
Google also experiments… Continue Reading
Twitter/Facebook app Seesmic may ditch Adobe for Microsoft
Loic Le Meur, founder and chief executive of Seesmic, demonstrated a new Windows version of Seesmic’s desktop console for managing your alerts and accounts in Twitter and Facebook today at Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles. After the presentation, Le Meur told me this is part of a big bet that Seesmic is making on Microsoft and Windows.
The current version of Seesmic Desktop is built on Adobe’s AIR technology, which allows applications to run… Continue Reading
Updated: RockYou raises $50 million for in-game advertising, growth in Asia
RockYou , one of the largest developers and ad networks built around Facebook’s platform, just raised $50 million in venture funding from Softbank. That brings RockYou’s total funding to $119 million from investors including Sequoia Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Partech International and DCM. Softbank was the only participant in this round, the company says.
Venture capital firms have got to be a bit emboldened about companies built around Facebook’s platform given last week’s sale of Playfish… Continue Reading
Multimedia messaging comes to Twitter in the U.K. thanks to Orange
Is this the beginning of the end for photo-sharing services TwitPic and YFrog?
U.K. Twitter users can now send multimedia messages and photos directly to Twitter with help from mobile operator Orange. If you’re a Orange U.K. user, just text the shortcode number ‘86444′ with the phrase ‘START’ to initiate the service.
Then you can take a picture with your phone, send it to that shortcode, and it will be posted on an Orange-hosted site called Snapshot…. Continue Reading
Motorola probably sold 250,000 Droids in first week, Flurry says
Motorola probably sold 250,000 Droids in the first week, making it the Android platform’s first legitimate challenger to the iPhone, according to analytics firm Flurry. Those figures are more than four times what HTC and T-Mobile were able to do with the MyTouch phone and about one-sixth of what Apple pulled off with the iPhone 3GS in their first weeks. (Keep in mind that Apple launched that model in eight countries, not one like the… Continue Reading
Former Microsoft evangelist Don Dodge joins Google, discovers Gmail
Don Dodge, the Microsoft startup evangelist whose layoff earlier this month was much-bemoaned in the tech community, has landed on his feet, and then some. He has accepted a new job at Google, where it sounds like he’ll be occupying a role similar to his job at Microsoft — convincing startups and other developers to build using Google’s technology and platforms.
In his blog post announcing the move, Dodge sounds pretty mixed in his feelings about… Continue Reading
How about that new Twoffice? (Photo slideshow of Twitter’s new headquarters)
Twitter just relocated across San Francisco’s SoMa District to new digs at 795 Folsom St. from its old headquarters on Bryant St. Co-founder Ev Williams‘ wife Sara Morishige Williams helped put together the new decor — complete with hundreds of bird decals and a DJ booth. Here’s a slideshow (from Twitter’s official set and Ryan King’s)
How much has Facebook’s valuation grown this year? Not much, says Sharespost report
Has a bull market help lift Facebook’s value in the eyes of investors?
Not really, says a report by NeXt Up Research, a firm founded by Michael Moe, a former director of global growth research at Merrill Lynch. Expectations of $1.5 billion or more in annual revenue by 2014 have already been priced in, plus much of Facebook’s growth is now taking place in the developing world, where it’s less profitable per user.
NeXt Up pegs Facebook’s… Continue Reading
Google Earth adds custom map-viewing to iPhone app
Google Earth is adding custom map-sharing to its iPhone app — so you can share anything from your favorite places in Barcelona to a preferred hiking trail with friends. (They’ve given a few examples, including Lonely Planet co-founder Tony Wheeler’s favorite destinations and Ferran Adria’s recommendations for places to eat.)
While logged into Google Maps on a computer, you can save maps you’re interested in so they’ll appear when you log in to your iPhone app… Continue Reading
Evernote, the startup that boosts your memory, raises $10 million
Evernote, which lets you record almost any type of data and recall it when you need it, just raised $10 million in a second round of venture-backed financing. It was led by Morgenthaler Ventures, with more funding from earlier investors including Troika Dialog. (The startup said it raised $2 million from NTT DoCoMo in October on top of $4.5 million in a venture-backed round in January. They also raised $6 million in angel funding back… Continue Reading
Slowpokes to get penalized in Google search rankings?
WebProNews dug up a pretty interesting nugget in an interview with Google’s Matt Cutts over the weekend at PubCon — there’s a faction of Googlers who are lobbying for site speed to be a factor in search rankings.
That’s not taken into account at the moment, although Google tries to boost the speed of its own services with a religious ferocity. (Consider that even a 100 to 400 millisecond delay can reduce daily searches per user… Continue Reading
Renewable energy policy to result in 1.9M jobs, study says
The Obama administration’s progressive support for renewable energy will result in about 1.9 million green collar jobs, according to a new report published by three U.S. universities. It will also elevate the average household income by more than $1,000 and America’s GDP by $111 billion by 2020.
This sets Obama on track to create 5 million green (not just renewable energy) jobs over the next decade. Granted, he made this promise early in his campaign, all… Continue Reading
Speak truth to power: Facebook’s Joe Hewitt on abandoning iPhone development
Joe Hewitt, the one-man powerhouse behind Facebook’s iPhone app, explained more of the reasoning behind his decision to leave the project earlier this week. He stopped developing Facebook’s popular app out of frustration with Apple’s review process.
The issue (as it has been for a long time) is Apple’s draconian selection process and the resulting bottleneck for new apps on the platform. He argued that the last decade on the web has been about weakening… Continue Reading
Where did she get that coat? Utvee turns tagging TV shows into revenue
As TV viewers have become more adept at ducking away from advertisements, product placement has become more of a standard in a traditional ad buy. But just because a coat or logo appears onscreen, it doesn’t always mean the viewer knows what it is or where to follow through if they see something they’re interested in.
A San Francisco-based startup called Utvee is trying solve that problem by marrying product placement with user tagging in TV… Continue Reading
‘When will Jesus bring the pork chops?’ and other burning questions
Pet Holdings Inc., spreader of such popular memes as LOLcats, is expanding its empire with its latest destination — Autocomplete Me, which makes fun of those sometimes off-color search suggestions from Google when you type in part of a query.
From Autocomplete Me’s description:
“Remember that time you were innocently searching for “how to avoid swine flu” but Google assumed you were searching for “how to avenge your brother’s death”? Yeah, that totally wasn’t what you were… Continue Reading
WordPress will not be left out of geo-tagging frenzy
Are tweets replacing blog posts? Who cares! Now that Twitter’s turned on its location feature, WordPress doesn’t want to be left out.
So today, the blogging platform is launching a feature that will let you identify where you’re writing from. Commenters can do the same as well. And it’s opt-in — so people can choose whether or not they want to reveal where they are. The new features will pave the way for location search, among… Continue Reading