Mike Moritz, arguably one of the few super VCs has been diagnosed with a rare, incurable medical condition and has decided to take a step back from active daily duties at Sequoia Capital. He still intends to continue making investments and work with younger partners. Read more »
Last week, Virgin Atlantic said that you could use your phone to make calls and get/send text messages if you fly using its Upper Class service between New York and London. What I really want is the ability to connect to the Internet. Read more »
Has Facebook fatigue set in? Are you sick and tired of seeing Mark Zuckerberg’s face all the time on blogs, in newspapers and on television? Relax, I have some good reading material for you and it doesn’t have anything to do with Facebook. Read more »
Newly public Facebook says it is buying Karma, a mobile social gifting app. The news was released via Karma’s blog. The deal terms were not announced. Facebook plans to keep the service alive. A Facebook spokesperson says it is an acquisition & not an acquhire. Read more »
Feeling overwhelmed with all the Facebook chatter? Is all this talk of the IPO making you yearn for the weekend already? Well, we are going to make life a little easier for you and find you best stuff for you to read. Keep checking often. Read more »
With the rise of social platforms and emergence of new mobile and connected devices, we have entered the post-search world and companies are finding ways to organize information around “knowledge” and “interests.” Today, Twitter is introducing a way to follow others based on interests. Read more »
BetterWorks, one of the most known startups to emerge from LA seems to have hit an air pocket. The company which was started by super angel, Paige Craig is said to have laid off close to thirty people and is looking at making some dire choices. Read more »
Comcast says it is planning to make sweeping changes to its data usage plans and will start by boosting the data cap from 250 GB/month to 300 GB/month. The change is in response to changing consumer usage behavior and shift to more cloud-oriented computing. Read more »
Following the jaw-dropping $50 million funding of Quora, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based knowledge community, folks from New York-based research firm, CB Insights crunched some data and came up with these following stats about the Facebook mafia – aka people who left Facebook to start their own companies. Read more »
When Facebook made it easy to share what videos you were watching, many apps rocketed up the app-charts and saw a sharp increase in the usage and downloads of these apps. Well, it seems the party has come to an end — quickly. Read more »
Facebook is about to go public, making Mark Zuckerberg a mega-billionaire at the age of 28. He won’t be the first social-oriented engineer to hit the jackpot. Which leads to the question – what is the future of classic engineering and what should kids be embracing. Debate Read more »
Quora, a Q&A service has raised a whopping $50 million in funding from co-founder Adam D’Angelo along with Facebook funder Peter Thiel, Northbridge Ventures and Matrix Ventures. One of the most over-hyped startups, the question is why is it valued so highly despite mediocre progress. Read more »
More than nine million apps and services use Facebook Connect, the Open Graph developer platform, which gives company powers to predict the future. It can turn on the traffic spigot for some apps such as Socialcam. But it can turn off the spigot, equally fast. Read more »
Yahoo chief executive officer Scott Thompson who has been caught in a resume gate is leaving the company, reports AllThingsD. He is going to be replaced by Ross Levinsohn. A settlement with activist investor Dan Loeb of ThirdPoint Capital is also in the works. Read more »
This is second edition of our weekly What we are listening to series.This week, I asked Matt Brezina, co-founder and CEO of online-to-offline photo service, Sincerely. In his past life he was co-founder of Xobni, and is an avid music listening. Read more »
It is going to be a beautiful weekend in San Francisco and I plan to spend most of it outdoors. And during that time, I don’t plan to bother with working. And you shouldn’t either. However, you should read these seven pieces whenever you get sometime. Read more »
I had no idea that Mark Zuckerberg’s hoodie would be such a big deal. I bet you even he didn’t think it would be such a big deal. The hoodie, by now is as much part of Zuckerberg’s persona as black turtleneck was for Steve Jobs. Read more »
The Facebook IPO is coming, and it is one major spectacle. Just look at the wall-to-wall coverage on CNBC and Bloomberg, who haven’t met an IPO they didn’t beat to death. So instead to adding to cacophony, I’ve aggregated the best blog posts for you Read more »
The real opportunity is when we are able to marry the physical and online worlds seamlessly. Slowly and surely we are seeing signs of that marriage happen around us. New Zealand clothing maker Icebreaker and Brazilian retailer C&A are taking the lead in building the bridge. Read more »
Who wears a watch anymore? With smartphones taking over the world, several companies are trying to make time-telling apps as elegant as the most fashionable Swiss watch. Here are three apps for the iPhone and Android phones that are worth checking out. Read more »
Facebook says it is launching an app store that will allow people to get access to social apps on the network, without much heavy lifting. The company made the announcement in a blog post today. The company is hoping that the new app store will make […] Read more »
Amazon.com is making a move into high fashion business, the New York Times reports. And in order to get profits from this high margin business, the company is willing to lose a ton of money. And that is bad news for the traditional retailers. Read more »
Alex Payne, formerly of Twitter and more recently of Simple, a banking service, asks the all-important question: What is and is not a technology company? He is right in asking this question, but shouldn’t we also be rethinking how to value some of these companies? Read more »
When it comes to NYC’s tech scene, digital media and commerce companies get all the attention, but city’s big opportunity could very well be as the hub for the “data centric” economy. From startups to web giants, many are making a beeline for the Big Apple. Read more »
In a recent conversation, an art historian pointed out that the “art world” these days is less about art and more about “the spectacle of art.” I couldn’t help but notice the parallels between art and our world of technology. Read more »
In this occasional weekend column, if we asked people in the tech industry to share the apps they use, their favorite gadgets and most importantly, the songs that inspire them? Of course, we will get them to share their Spotify and Rdio playlists as well. Read more »
I have to admit, being in New York, there is little or no chance I am opening my computer this weekend. However, for you I have put together this list of stories to read over the weekend. Hope you enjoy them. Read more »
Neville Spiteri and Scott Yara have come up with a good reason to think about screen savers again: theBlu, a collaborative digital ocean that connects people with ecology and each other. But it is more than just a screensaver – it is a new entertainment & learning platform. Read more »
Last thirty days have been nothing but full of twists and turns in tech-land. Maybe it is the “bubble” or maybe it is just an upcycle, but it sure is exciting. Here some events from today, that have one common theme: good guys do finish first. Read more »
The new Forbes Midas List is out and it ranks the top 100 venture capitalists. The list ranks uber-VC Fred Wilson below those whose performance is average at best. I find the list confusing, thanks to an ambiguous and somewhat faulty methodology. Read more »
Comcast, the largest broadband provider in the US is getting bigger and bigger. During the first quarter of 2012, the company added 439,000 net new high-speed Internet customers to bring the final tally to 18.58 million and had broadband revenues of $2.32 billion. Read more »
When Instagram launched its Android app in early April, we said that it would only be a couple of weeks before the company crossed the 50 million mark. Well, it took three weeks (interrupted by its $1 billion dollar acquisition by Facebook) to cross that milestone. Read more »
Four guys from MIT have come up with a super easy way to see PDF and other document files on the mobile browsers without needing any kind of plugins and special add-ons. Their company, Crocodoc has already snagged customers like Dropbox, SAP and LinkedIn. Read more »
Jambox, the San Francisco-based that got its start making headsets for mobile phones is launching a new wireless speaker, simply called the Big Jambox. It is a much larger (and louder) version of its portable Jambox speaker. Think of it as boom-box for the iPhone age. Read more »
Back in the day when iPod was king, it was the auto-industry that helped accelerate its adoption in the mainstream (and vice versa.) Now car makers are experimenting with iPad integration. I wonder if the history will repeat itself and propel iPad miles ahead of rivals. Read more »
The tablets and smartphones are continuing to disrupt many old businesses and at the same time creating new opportunities. Retail outlets and hospitality industry are next frontiers for these devices, as research from Motorola finds out. And that’s good news for Apple and Square amongst many. Read more »
By analyzing data from a live 3G network in a major city, the mobile network analytics firm Actix has found that only 5% of iPads are used outdoors. iPads account for just 1% of data sessions, they use 4X more data than an average 3G device. Read more »
Microsoft and Barnes & Noble are teaming up to take on Amazon and Apple. The $300 million investment in the Nook subsidiary of Barnes & Noble gives Microsoft about 17.6% ownership of this business unit and values it at about about $1.7 billion, more than Barnes & Noble itself. Read more »
The rise of smartphones is bringing about massive changes in the mobile industry, according to data collected by researchers. Data revenues are moving on up and data usage is zooming at a time when voice and messaging sales have stalled for carriers. Read more »
South Korea, Japan and some European countries dominate the top lists when it comes to broadband, a report from Akamai finds. The quarterly State of the Internet report puts the South Korean city of Taegu at the top of the 100 fastest cities. Read more »
