We've visited thousands of sites, sites you wouldn't believe, sites on fire off the shoulder of Orion. But we never found a site like this. It surprised us all, and we want to talk about that today. It's called Karmacracy (from democracy of karma). Karmacracy is a place to know your relevance. According to their creators, Alex Dolara (@aledoo) & Jordi Martí (@itortv), Karmacracy is a place where you can get something in turn if you share relevant content. Until now, you didn't get anything back, and it's time to change that. "We believe that there are three types of users when we refer to sharing", starts Alex. "One are the consumers who read content. Others are writers, who write them. And others are 'pushers', people who bring traffic to webs, because they want to; and because they are relevant, people with influence, others end up in your site because of them. Our goal is to reward these pushers".→ Read More
I would normally rather have a root canal instead of write about the issue of women in technology. I just find most essays on this really tedious and obvious. (Sorry Alexia.)
But I do want to point one thing out. When I went to my first Y Combinator Demo Day three years ago, there was one woman. At this week’s Demo Day, there were six companies with one or all female founders among the 66 startups in the class.
I’m going to keep this post simple. No complaining. Less navel gazing. Just more role models. So here are the women of Y Combinator and they are awesome: → Read More
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Photos and video can be even more personal than a handwritten card. That’s why Hallmark has just acquired SpiritClips, an online video production and streaming service that also makes personalized digital e-cards. It looks like Hallmark customers will soon be able to create and send e-cards by uploading their own photos or choosing from video content created by SpiritClips.
Hallmark already has its own line of animated video e-cards, but they’re not very personalized. As more of our intimate connections happen online, the SpiritClips acquisition will let Hallmark stay relevant rather than living off its dead-tree printing business. → Read More
Cult of Mac has a great write-up of an app for iOS called Girls Around Me, which essentially displays check-ins and public profiles of girls around you. With a little shift in context it could easily be confused for a hot new startup (discoverability meets speed dating!), but no, it really is just a way for guys to creep on nearby girls who have failed to lock down their info.
It’s sad, but maybe something like this is what people need to shock them into understanding just how much information they put online. → Read More
Daily deals site Groupon today issued a pretty significant revision of the financial results it previously reported for the fourth quarter and the full year of 2011.
According to the company, it actually made $14.3 million less in revenue during the fourth quarter of 2011 than it previously reported — $492.2 million, compared to the previously stated $506.5 million. It also spent more in operating expenses than it previously said it did — resulting in its Q4 operating income and net income being $30 million and $22.6 million less, respectively, than the company initially said it was. → Read More
With Evinar, you can’t bring audience members onto a live streaming stage with you, but you can broadcast anything else. Evinar is a new Facebook Page app launching today via TechCrunch that lets you stream to a live audience nearly nearly any type of content, including YouTube, Ustream, Hulu, Facebook photos, Flickr, SlideShare, tweets, or uploaded text and images.
Evinar definitely lacks interactivity. You can’t collaborate or video chat with the first 10 viewers like on Hangouts, or pipe in the webcam streams of any audience member like promising startup OnTheAir. Plus you can’t stream your own webcam directly. Still, web celebs and thought leaders could use Evinar to connect with their fans in more ways than a standard video stream. → Read More
Twitter has taken its Tweetdeck app offline after an apparent bug has possibly given some Tweetdeck users access to others’ accounts.
A Tweetdeck user in Sydney, Australia, Geoff Evanson, says he discovered today he was somehow able to access hundreds of other accounts through Tweetdeck. Twitter quickly responded to the situation by shutting off access to Tweetdeck entirely, claiming the need to “look into an issue.” → Read More
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From the outside, we early adopters see Best Buy as a dinosaur in a dying world. The company recently announced the closing of 50 stores in the U.S. and 400 layoffs, mostly in corporate. It would be easy to say “Good riddance” and ignore the slow decline of bricks and mortar, but I wanted to speak to someone inside the company.
I got a hold of a manager who wished to remain anonymous and was considered a solid and dedicated employee. I asked him what it’s like inside his store right now.
“Basically what’s going on is that we got to work and heard about the 50 store closings and we started wondering about job security. Immediately my reaction was ‘Oh, crap, what am I going to do?’” he said.
→ Read More
According to new data released today by mobile analytics firm Flurry, Amazon’s Appstore for Android is generating more revenue per daily user than the Google Android Market, which was recently rebranded as the Google Play store. That shouldn’t be surprising, given that Amazon vets apps for quality, runs promotions to entice users to return daily, and perhaps most importantly, is able to leverage its established user base of Amazon account holders who already have credit card information on file – perfect for one-click checkouts. → Read More
Back in 2009, Chad Mureta was an 18-hour a day real estate salesman living from one paycheck to the next. Driving home after a basketball game one evening, he hit a deer, flipped his truck over four times, mangled his arm and almost killed himself. Then, recovering in his hospital bed, Mureta – who knew nothing about technology or the Internet – was introduced to the app economy by a friend who gave him a newspaper article about how apps can generate significant revenue. When he got out of the hospital, Mureta borrowed $1,800 from his stepfather, built an app called Fingerprint Security Pro which eventually generated $800,000 in revenue. Mureta is now an app entrepreneur and, in good Tim Ferris style, travels around the world as a member of what he calls “the new rich”. → Read More
So you’re in town to follow up on some weak leads and your boss says you’ve got to stay put for a few more days because there’s an old lady out near Patton Road who is looking to buy and you call back and say you got to get back to HQ for some paperwork and your boss says “Make the most of it.” The only thing that counts in this world, friend, is getting them to sign on the line which is dotted. Am I right?
So you need some new leads, or at least some new people in your Rolodex. That’s where marGenius comes in. You import your Google or Microsoft address book and calendar (don’t worry, nobody else can see it) and it figures out if there are people you need to see and talk to near you, right in town there. Doesn’t matter if the lady near Patton Road’s crumb cake is from the store. You got four more new leads out of marGenius and you can give them a call or even schedule a meeting right from the app and ring a ding ding you’re up on the big board again, at least for a while. → Read More
There’s no shortage of apps that help people find cheap gas these days, but apps that let you pay for it? And ones that give you a discount for doing it? Sign me up. Regional gas station/convenience store chain Cumberland Farms has done just that with their new SmartPay app, which in addition to letting users pay without leaving their seats, offers them a $.05 cent/gallon discount.
Here’s how it all goes down: once a driver signs in with a PayPal account, they can pull into a supported Cumberland Farms location and fire up the iOS/Android app or the mobile website. From there, the app uses the device’s GPS to hone in on the gas station they’re parked at, users punch in their pump number and voila — their gas charges are sent to PayPal, and users get an email receipt. → Read More
Netflix has been making a few moves to separate its DVD business more from its streaming operation, and today brings news of the latest move in that direction: the company has bought the domain name DVD.com, the company has confirmed to us.
The news raises questions of Netflix possibly getting ready to pull a Qwikster on us after all and separate its streaming and DVD businesses — something others have suggested it might do — but TechCrunch understands that there are no plans to spin off its DVD business into a separate company, à la the Qwikster strategy of last year that so qwikly spiraled into a PR disaster for the company, and was then abandoned. → Read More
I don’t know if Highlight, Glancee, Banjo, or any one of those other startups you’re now officially sick to death of hearing about are going to make it, but I know that for the first time in a long time, we’re starting to move in the right direction in terms of mobile innovation. And no, I don’t mean we need more people-stalking apps, I mean we need more passive use of our mobile phones.
Less life lived looking down means more life actually lived.
The trend that strikes me here as being important is not necessarily “ambient location” or even “people finders” – that’s just all we’re capable of today. The real end game is engineering serendipity. → Read More
DoubleTwist, the maker of the popular suite of applications for syncing music and media between devices, has just surprised its users with the release of a new application today. And this time, the app branches out from the company’s prior focus on media management – it’s an alarm clock app for Android phones.
But on closer inspection, DoubleTwist Alarm actually does makes sense as an extension of the DoubleTwist brand, as the app is designed to wake you with music. In fact, it even connects with the company’s mobile Player app, allowing you to configure songs or entire playlists as the music you wake to. → Read More
In the debate over whether there can ever exist “another Silicon Valley” and where, exactly, it would be, add in another contender: Skolkovo, an ambitious high-tech sprawl being built outside of Moscow, which this week announced the latest two companies to invest in its big idea: Cisco and Bessemer Venture Partners.
Bessemer has promised investments worth $20 million over the next two years into startups that are resident at Skolkovo, while Cisco has dedicated an unspecified part of a $1 billion injection it is making into Russia over a number of years to build an R&D lab in the area — part of big push from the government to take some of the technology know-how that Russia has been producing for decades and give it a significantly more commercial spin. → Read More
Klip, a mobile app that allows users to capture, share, discover and view videos, is debuting a new version of its iOS app that allows users to shoot videos with visual effects and filters in real-time. The company has also added seven new video effects to the app.
Klip, which launched in September, is focused on mobile video discovery and providing the highest quality video streaming around for iOS. You simply shoot a new ‘Klip’ or grab one from your Camera Roll and share it with the community, your friends on Facebook, Twitter, on your YouTube channel, or by email. Within the app, you can watch Klips from around the world, follow other Klippers, re-klip the Klips you think are worth sharing again, or stay on top of hot topics by following hashtags. → Read More
Disney and Japanese mobile gaming giant DeNA announced a new partnership this morning that will see their first jointly developed mobile social games launched on DeNA’s Mobage social gaming platform, beginning later this month.
The first title to arrive, “Disney Party,” was released on March 28th to the Mobage network in Japan, which serves a mobile gaming audience of over 35 million. On April 2nd, a second title will arrive in Japan called “Disney Fantasy Quest.” These two games will involve Disney’s own characters, but will be followed by a third, (yet to be named) card game battle that’s based on Marvel Comics characters. → Read More
Evidence of Google Drive’s existence has been sporadically surfacing for months now, and MG reported last September that Google employees have been using the reborn service in-house for a while now.
Now, as the service’s supposed launch draws ever closer, we’re starting to get our first clear glimpses at what Google’s had under lock and key for so long. According to a leaked screenshot obtained by TalkAndroid, Google Drive could offer even more functionality than earlier reports suggested — if legitimate, then Google Drive users could have access to 5GB of free storage right out of the gate. Their mysterious source also confirmed to them that the service is on track for an official launch in just over two weeks on April 16. → Read More
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