Amazon funds online cooking encyclopedia Foodista

Foodista, an online encyclopedia about food, has raised a first round of undisclosed size led by Amazon.com. Not only has the Seattle company created a Wikipedia for cooking (launched in December 2008), it also organizes the International Food Blogging Conference. TechCrunch previously reported that the… Continue Reading

BookTour gets $350K for author event directory

BookTour gets $350K for author event directory

BookTour, a web site that aggregates author events like readings, book signings and the like, making them easily searchable, has landed $350,000 in a first round of funding from Amazon.com, among undisclosed others, according to PE Hub. Equally notable is that its chairman is Christopher… Continue Reading

Black Friday not terrible; Christmas not doomed?

Black Friday not terrible; Christmas not doomed?

The big post-Thanksgiving shopping day known as Black Friday wasn’t as awful for retailers — at least for online retailers — as some had feared, according to new data from comScore. That’s a good sign for the online economy, since Black Friday is usually seen… Continue Reading

Engine Yard gets $15M for Rails hosting, and a new platform

Engine Yard gets $15M for Rails hosting, and a new platform

Engine Yard, a hosting and support company for the popular Ruby on Rails programming framework, has raised $15 million in a second round of financing. Chief Technology Officer and co-founder Tom Mornini says the San Francisco startup will soon expand its offerings with the release… Continue Reading

Updated: Amazon.com suffers outage

Updated: Amazon.com suffers outage

Amazon.com’s web site is down. A message left at Amazon’s PR hotline hasn’t yet been answered. The company’s stock price is also down this morning. It’s not clear why the outage is happening. Readers have noticed it since about 10:30 am Pacific time on Friday…. Continue Reading

Photo-music video creator Animoto raises round from Amazon

Photo-music video creator Animoto raises round from Amazon

Animoto, a company that lets you create music videos out of your photos albums, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Amazon.com.

New York-based Animoto offers a way to create a more advanced version of the sorts slideshow widgets you see on MySpace, made by… Continue Reading

Roundup: The arrived recession, Jaman’s deal with TiVo, Chinese growth, and more

Roundup: The arrived recession, Jaman’s deal with TiVo, Chinese growth, and more

Here’s a pre-weekend roundup of the latest action:

1) Is the recession coming, or already here?
2) Jaman signs distribution deal with TiVo
3) Amazon buys indie film distributor Without a Box
4) Google probably intends to lose in 700mhz auctions
5) The “UltraBattery” has promise for electric cars
6) China… Continue Reading

Amazon backs Amie Street, music site

Amazon backs Amie Street, music site

Amazon.com, continuing its spurt of initiatives to keep up with new technology, has invested an undisclosed amount to music site AmieStreet.com.

This is the first round of financing for New York City’s AmieStreet.com, a year-old online digital music store. The company is different for its radical… Continue Reading

Buzzillions, offering “power reviews”

Buzzillions, offering “power reviews”

Have you ever searched for product reviews online at and come away unsatisfied?

We have. Sometimes we can’t find reviews for a niche product. At Amazon for books, or at Yelp for restaurants, we often get that sneaky feeling a reviewer is biased (written by a… Continue Reading

The dirt on Amazon, Steve Jobs, Topix, Fatdoor, MySpace, VC tax and more

The dirt on Amazon, Steve Jobs, Topix, Fatdoor, MySpace, VC tax and more

Here’s the latest action:

Amazon’s odd and scary patent — First, Amazon rolled out a product called Mechancial Turk (image left), where people do tasks for you that a machine couldn’t perform. Strange name, we thought, but nicely couched in history, and the people still ruled. But… Continue Reading

Imagekind, the Web site for artists, raises cash

Imagekind, the Web site for artists, raises cash

Imagekind is a Web site that lets artists upload their artwork for sale, and gives them the freedom to sell it at whatever price they want.

The six-month-old Seattle start-up has just raised $2.6 million in venture capital, which gives it ammunition to go after the… Continue Reading

Roundup: Amazon-TiVo video punch, Metacafe’s woes, Google’s tracking & more

Roundup: Amazon-TiVo video punch, Metacafe’s woes, Google’s tracking & more

(Updated) roundup of latest tech stuff:

Amazon.com answers Wal-Mart on video downloads — There are so many video download services, it’s easy to get jaded. Wal-Mart just announced its own download service, but the test site looks awful (it still badly garbled as of this writing). A… Continue Reading

Amazon takes major stake in Wikia

Amazon takes major stake in Wikia

Wikia, a San Mateo company that allows groups to share information about their interests with wiki technology, has raised a second round of funding — all of it coming from Amazon.com.

It is not clear how much traction Wikia company has gained. The company says more… Continue Reading

Roundup: LinkedIn’s German nemesis, more on Google, Web 3.0?, and Zuckerberg’s flip-flops

The latest in tech-land:

German competitor rains on LinkedIn’s parade — LinkedIn co-founder Konstantin Guericke flew to Germany to manage the opening of a new German Web site there. Upon his arrival, however, LinkedIn’s German competitor, OpenBC announced it plans to go public within the next six… Continue Reading