Though they have demonstrated that they have the capability, tech companies have shied away from deployments of mobile facial recognition, mostly out of privacy concerns. Now Apple may be willing to be first to cross that line with its purchase of Swedish startup Polar Rose. Read More »
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Liz Gannes
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Facebook is reportedly working on its own phone. Though the company quickly denied the report, the idea clearly has staying power, and why not? It’s a good one. Facebook should very soon start working outside its core competency and do things like make phones. Read More »
In a Q&A conducted with users today from his personal Twitter account, CEO Evan Williams shared his company’s product roadmap details in the wake of the relaunch of Twitter.com. Perhaps most interestingly, he said that Twitter does not plan to release official desktop clients. Read More »
Facebook today is rolling out its fourth instant personalization parter and the only one since the initial controversial launch in April. New partner Rotten Tomatoes will automatically show users which movies their friends have “liked” across the web using Facebook tools. Read More »
Turning big, opaque datasets into online databases you can query is a worthy pursuit. Two new startups I met recently, Semantifi and FindTheBest, promise to reveal the hidden secrets of the web by understanding them semantically. They’re both using human power to format topic-specific web applications. Read More »
Yahoo today tried to reestablish itself as a technology company with a press event at its Sunnyvale, Calif. headquarters. While that’s an uphill battle in perception as well as execution, the company does indeed have new technology leadership. Read More »
Of 39 startups who have participated in TechStars through this spring, six have been acquired, five have failed, and 28 are still active. If nothing else, you have to love that level of transparency. In an interview, founder David Cohen shared more. Read More »
More Must Reads
Groupon CEO Andrew Mason — who’s created what’s now being called “the fastest growing company ever” out of the ashes of an unsuccessful collective giving platform — today at the DEMO Conference attributed part of his tech startup’s success to being located in Chicago. Read More »
Twitter today updated its web site to be faster and more modern. After the presentation was over, I had a chance to talk to Twitter product managers, executives and engineers about the new site. Here are some of the tidbits I learned. Read More »
Twitter today announced a new version of Twitter.com at the company’s first-ever major press conference at its San Francisco headquarters. The new app will embed media in the right pane through deals with 16 photo and video hosts including TwitPic, YouTube, Vimeo and Ustream. Read More »
Twitter today announced a new version of Twitter.com at the company’s first-ever major press conference at its San Francisco headquarters. It is launching to some users today and will roll out to all users worldwide soon. Read More »
Zillow CEO Rich Barton — who is working on “four or five” startups, is a venture partner at Benchmark Capital, and is on the board of Netflix — is stepping down to allow his more focused lieutenant, COO Spencer Rascoff, the top spot. Read More »
Mobile payments introduce many opportunities for innovation: better accessibility for customers, better integration with web services, flexibility and social features. One new mobile payments startup is trying to do all that without phones or phone numbers. Dynamics is coming out of stealth at DEMO this week Read More »
While adult Internet users are increasingly “search dominant,” kids navigate the web using bookmarks, remembering their favorite sites, and accessing paid subscription content and games. That’s a finding from a new qualitative usability study on how children use the web by human-computer interaction researcher Jakob Nielsen, Read More »
Interest in who the real Mark Zuckerberg is has reached an all-time high, given the approaching release of the semi-fictional “The Social Network” in October, a movie about the origins of Facebook made without his consent. Today the New Yorker gives him a lengthy profile. Read More »
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg spoke freely about the company’s user numbers, revenue and product vision in a October 2005 conversation, shortly after its 5 million user party and just after Facebook Photos had launched. He said Facebook was already making $1 million per month on advertising. Read More »
In a surprisingly watchable music video parody, Urlesque uses Google Instant to dramatize Billy Joel’s parody-friendly “We Didn’t Start the Fire.” It’s less than two minutes long; it’s cheeky; it’s tech-related; and it’s Friday, so go watch. Read More »
I had a chance today to catch up with Metricly, a San Francisco-based company that just launched in public beta with the simple premise of making its customers an aggregated dashboard of all their web analytics systems, using both external and internal databases. Read More »
Two stories attempt to deepen the public images of the early days of Facebook and Zynga, but to different effects, with Zynga employees condemning the company for its anti-innovation ethos, and a former Harvard student cleaning up perceptions of the early days of Facebook. Read More »
Google launched today a revision of its core search technology called Google Instant. Instant acts and feels like a mobile app, and in my opinion would make more sense if it was one. But instead, it was launched as an tweak to Google’s web site. Read More »
Today Google announced a “fundamental shift” in search, where results are displayed before a user finishes typing a query. We’re covering the launch event at San Francisco’s MOMA, and will be updating this post as it proceeds. Read More »
ResearchGATE, a social network for scientists aimed to facilitate their collaboration on research, has raised an unspecified amount of money in its first institutional round of funding. The site has amassed 500,000 members in the last two years, with strong contingents from biology and medicine. Read More »
By Mathew Ingram
Sep. 7, 2010, 1:19pm PT
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Hewlett-Packard is suing its former chairman and CEO, Mark Hurd, alleging breach of contract and potential misappropriation of trade secrets. Hurd left the company last month, after allegations that he was involved in a number of improprieties related to a human resources consultant the company hired. Read More »
We are now entering the “age of augmented humanity,” Google CEO Eric Schmidt today in Berlin. Schmidt tied together Google’s efforts in artificial intelligence, on smartphones and on connected devices like the coming Google TV platform to draft a master vision for the future of technology. Read More »
As we in the tech world gear up for the busy fall season, I’m struck by the fact that there really didn’t seem to be a summer slowdown this year. The funding rounds, product releases, acquisitions and corporate scandals didn’t calm down one bit. Read More »
The online personal finance assistant Mint often mines user data for trends and interesting charts to feature on its popular corporate blog. Now the Intuit-owned company is preparing to release the data it’s collected on behalf of its 3 million users. Read More »
The online personal finance assistant Mint often mines user data for trends and interesting charts to feature on its popular corporate blog. Now the Intuit-owned company is preparing to release the data it’s collected on behalf of its 3 million users. Read More »
Given the opportunity, Twitter CEO Evan Williams will happily extemporize at a high level about the ideas that drive his company (which is now up to 145 million users). Williams contended tonight that the medium of Twitter is (gasp!) actually well-suited to handle information overload. Read More »
Digg VP of Product Management Keval Desai finally got a chance to breathe today. He put a positive spin on recent events, telling us that Digg is not proud of recent problems, but it’s excited that its new platform allows the company to iterate quickly. Read More »
Twitter is launching the first native app it’s built from scratch tonight, Twitter for iPad. Aimed at fostering content consumption, the app is designed for new users and power users alike. The iPad app indicates the direction all Twitter-designed apps will be heading Read More »
Twitter is launching the first native app it’s built from scratch tonight, Twitter for iPad. Aimed at fostering content consumption, the app is designed for new users and power users alike. The iPad app indicates the direction all Twitter-designed apps will be heading Read More »
Twitter is launching the first native app it’s built from scratch tonight: Twitter for iPad. Aimed at fostering content consumption, the app is designed for new users and power users alike. The iPad app indicates the direction all Twitter-designed apps will be heading Read More »
As expected, Apple today came through with a few major device updates it will be shipping this fall. It revised its entire iPod line, and gave the iPod Touch many features previously only available on the latest iPhone, such as FaceTime video chat. Read More »
Apple has queued up Akamai to power today’s highly anticipated live stream of of product announcements by CEO Steve Jobs in San Francisco. Contrary to reports the company would use its new data center, the stream will be outsourced to Apple’s long-time CDN partner. Read More »
Apple has queued up Akamai to power today’s highly anticipated live stream of of product announcements by CEO Steve Jobs in San Francisco. Contrary to reports the company would use its new data center, the stream will be outsourced to Apple’s long-time CDN partner. Read More »
Apple has queued up Akamai to power today’s highly anticipated live stream of of product announcements by CEO Steve Jobs in San Francisco. Contrary to reports the company would use its new data center, the stream will be outsourced to Apple’s long-time CDN partner. Read More »
For the first time, an Apple press event will be live-streamed to the public. Starting at 10 a.m. PT tomorrow, Apple.com will host a stream of the rumored and expected announcements of a new iPod Touch, iTunes rentals, and an overhaul of the Apple TV. Read More »
Digg, which is in the midst of a hot-button redesign, has hired a new CEO, long-time Amazon executive Matt Williams, as TechCrunch first reported today and Digg has confirmed to us. Williams was most recently general manager of Amazon’s payments initiative. Read More »
AngelList, a matchmaking newsletter for early startups and seed investors, has aided funding rounds for some 40 startups since launching earlier this year. Now the service is recruiting a volunteer workforce so it can scale to meet growing demand. Read More »
There’s a lot of talk these days about data-driven product development. But at least one startup, Lolapps, is finding that data isn’t everything. Now it is switching its strategy, hiring experienced game designers and conducting user tests where the goal is maximizing fun. Read More »
Many Y Combinator startups from this summer’s class already have money in the bank, and many hit up the same angel investors. I conducted an informal survey of investors at YC’s Demo Day to ask how many of the companies they had already invested in. Read More »
Google has acquired the assets of Angstro and added co-founder Rohit Khare to its yet-to-be-launched Google Me social team, led by Vic Gundotra and Max Levchin. Angstro built tools for users to receive integrated and disambiguated feeds of news and up-to-date contact information from social sites. Read More »
My favorite web video show, “Jake and Amir,” takes on the topic of Twitter users’ ego and insecurity in its latest episode. Good for a giggle on this slow summer Friday (slightly NSFW). Read More »
Though every street corner in San Francisco seems to house a startup incubator these days, Y Combinator is at the top of the heap. Tonight, Silicon Valley prince Facebook bestowed its endorsement on YC, announcing a relationship with the program to mentor its startups. Read More »
Experts from the tech, business and creative sides of the publishing industry gathered today for a broad discussion of disintermediation as part of our GigaOM Pro Bunker Series. Two key conflicts between attendees were apparent to me, one on the platform side and one on marketing. Read More »
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