Category: Tech news

Continuing its quest to be on every major computing platform, Kindle is now available as an app in the new Mac App Store. As the first ebook app in teh Mac App Store, it is already the fifth most downloaded free app.

Amazon is pursuing a “buy Once, Read Anywhere” strategy with the Kindle, with the idea that once you download a Kindle book, you should be able to continue reading it on any device. You can read a Kindle book on a Kindle, an iPhone, iPad, Android, Blackberry, Windows PC, Windows Phone 7, and Mac. Kindle already launched Kindle for Mac last March, but this version is distributed through the Mac App Store which is part of the latest update to OS X.

The Kindle apps on the iPhone and iPad are also getting an update which gives users access to millions of free books, better image zoom, and the ability to download books in the background while you are doing something else.

If you’re a developer you’re probably familiar with Heroku, the startup that was just acquired by Salesforce for $212 million in cash. Heroku helps developers deploy and scale their Ruby applications, effectively allowing them to outsource maintenance and administrative tasks so they can get to coding. Now there’s a new startup called PHP Fog that has a similar mission, except it’s hoping to make lives easier for PHP developers.

The company has just raised $1.8 million in funding in a round led by Madrona Venture Group, with participation from First Round Capital, Founders Co-Op, and a number of angel investors. The service is still in private beta, but 100 TechCrunch readers can sign up right here.

Founder Lucas Carlson says that while PHP Fog has some similarities with Heroku, it has a few key differences (aside from the language). One is that PHP Fog gives each user their own virtual machine so that developers aren’t impacted by each other’s applications (Heroku has shared resources).

He also says that you can actually start building and scaling your website without having to write a line of code by taking advantage of the service’s ‘PHP App Store’, which offers one-click installs of apps like WordPress and Drupal. But most developers will probably be taking advantage of the service’s full git integration.

Finally, he points out that the base of PHP developers is sixty times larger than Ruby’s, and that there’s more diversity, with many developers using apps like WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, and others.

PHP Fog isn’t the only service looking to offer developers a Heroku-like platform for languages other than Ruby. We recently wrote about DotCloud, which aims to offer similar services for a wide variety of languages. Carlson is skeptical about this goal, explaining that he doesn’t think it will be possible for them to offer the specialized service that some developers need. Another competitor is CloudControl, which also offers a PHP solution.

Earlier this morning reporter Rich DeMuro caught our attention with a notable Verizon tweet that appeared to have been sent from Twitter for iPhone.

While we weren’t the first to see it, or even the first tech blog to publish a post about it, we wrote about it anyways, namely because it was “interesting” that whoever is behind the Verizon account may have been tweeting from an iPhone (Verizon or otherwise) in the days prior to a rumored Verizon iPhone launch.

Well things just got more interesting. Shortly after our post went up the tweet disappeared mysteriously.

Meanwhile over at Cult of Mac, pro bono TechCrunch fact-checker Lonnie Lazar decided to scan the Verizon Twitter account looking for the tweet we referenced, to no avail. And when he found a similar tweet from January 7th sent from CoTweet, decided to write a blog implying that we had Photoshopped the above image.

“But could it also be an opportunity for one of the most widely followed tech blogs on the net to indulge in a bit of traffic-ramping scammery?”

Um no. Aside from the fact that we weren’t the only ones to see it, the original tweet had a status URL of http://twitter.com/Verizon/status/23790300849766400 and unique Tweet ID which has since been deleted. But not from Google search. Go ahead, try it yourself.

Lo and behold, there’s our disappearing tweet, sent 9:17 AM Jan 8th via, that’s right, Twitter for iPhone. Heh.

When we spoke to him on the phone, Verizon representative Jeffrey Nelson told TechCrunch he had had heard rumors of the tweet but couldn’t verify it since it no longer existed on the @Verizon account. Request for further explanation as to why it no longer existed was met with “No comment.” Twitter has also yet to return our request for comment.

And again, there are plenty of explanations for why some Verizon employee would be tweeting from an iPhone, but there are significantly less for deleting a tweet. Somebody, somewhere panicked.

Apparently, right wing pundit Glenn Beck likes to stand against violence with a gun in his hands. At least that’s the impression you might get if you visit his website. One of the top three featured articles right now is his response to the Arizona shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords with the reasonable quote: “We must stand together against all violence.” But if you look to the side, you might also catch a photo of Beck peeking around the corner a gun in his hands (see screenshot above). It’s as though he wants to shoot the crap out of violence. Or maybe he wants to stand together and sing Kumbaya. Will the real Glenn Beck please stand up?

If you don’t see the image right away, keep reloading the page (go ahead, don’t be scared). Different photos of Beck appear as whimsical design elements along the side of the page. There’s Beck as a teacher, a Founding Father, and gun-toting lunatic or some sort of Secret Service agent (I’m not really sure what he’s supposed to be, actually). There’s also one of him holding a boulder over his head (see below). I guess that is what he means by “stand together against all violence.”

I am assuming these juxtapositions are unintentional in the same way that contextual online ads are sometimes inappropriate. But they certainly do send a mixed message. Below are some more potential captions we came up with for this post. Please add your own headline or caption in comments:

Glenn Beck Will Teach You To Stand Together Against Violence… With His Gun
Let’s Shoot The Crap Out Of Violence.
Glenn Beck Aims To Kill Violence

(Hat tip to Anna Holmes via Dan Primack )

Last month we wrote an extensive overview of Facebook’s new profile design, which reshuffles some of the most popular features to make sure they’re front and center. At the time, Facebook wisely decided to make the feature opt-in, in much the same way that Twitter did when it launched ‘New Twitter’. Apparently the reception has been generally positive, because today Facebook has announced on a blog post that it’s going to begin rolling everyone over to the new profile.

The biggest changes to the profile, for those that haven’t seen it yet, include a handful of photos that are now presented at the top of the page. Most navigation options have been moved to beneath the user’s profile photo (so that the UI is similar to Facebook’s Place Pages). And users now have the ability to share lists of their friends (you could make a list of your coworkers, or teammates for example.

In its blog post, Facebook says that “hundreds of millions” of its users have already made the switch manually.

I’m on a plane right now flying out to New York City. Why? Look at the chart above. That’s pretty perfect visualization of what the entire world now expects tomorrow: the Verizon iPhone.

Apple’s stock has surged over 5 points today. And it’s up nearly 10 points since the whispers for began on Friday that Tuesday would be the big unveiling. This surge shouldn’t be surprising since at the minimum, the Verizon iPhone is expected to add a few more billion dollars to Apple’s bottom line.

It was only a week ago when Apple’s market cap passed $300 billion for the first time. Now it’s already over $313 billion. Since Friday alone (again, when the talk of the device really began), Apple has added just about $10 billion to their market cap. That’s one powerful device.

The results for the other players involved in the ordeal are less clear though. Verizon’s stock (below) had skyrocketed late on Friday, but it has since settled back down.

AT&T (below), which will lose exclusivity of the device but will still be selling the iPhone, has dropped quite a bit (percentage wise) since Friday. And today was especially bleak for the company, though they’re rallying a bit right now.

Meanwhile, Google (below), the company behind the rival Android smartphone software, has been plunging and rallying since Friday. It too now is just about at where it began Friday.

So the results are in: the big winner of the Verizon iPhone just pre-launch is Apple. Surprise, surprise.

Update: When I first published I had the other AT&T chart. I swapped it with the correct one.

Groupon has closed what remained of that huge $950 million financing round which we first reported on in late December. They closed on roughly half of it then, from DST, Fidelity and Morgan Stanley. We then learned that Kleiner Perkins was also in the round.

Now we have the rest of the details, and the company will issue a press release today on the round. True to their never be totally serious attitude, the press release will be titled Groupon Raises, Like, A Billion Dollars.

A whole slew of new and existing investors are participating in the round, which values Groupon at a whopping $4.75 billion. Investors in this round include Andreessen Horowitz, Battery Ventures, Greylock Partners, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Digital Sky Technologies, Maverick Capital, Silver Lake Partners, and Technology Crossover Ventures. As we previously reported, Allen & Company LLC acted as financial advisor.

There are no additions to the board of directors in this round. And multiple sources have confirmed to us that Fidelity is in fact a new investor in this round, they just aren’t listed in the press release.

Here’s the full full press release. My favorite line, other than the title, is “Groupon has been called…“America’s best website” by one of Groupon’s television commercials.”

Groupon Raises, Like, A Billion Dollars

Investment to Continue Rapid Growth of Global Social Commerce Platform

CHICAGO – Today Groupon announced that it has completed a $950
million round of financing. Groupon will use the funds to fuel global
expansion, invest in technology, and provide liquidity for employees and
early investors.

The financing consists of several venture capital firms and late-stage
investors, including Andreessen Horowitz, Battery Ventures, Greylock
Partners, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Mail.ru Group, Maverick
Capital, Silver Lake, and Technology Crossover Ventures. Allen &
Company LLC acted as financial advisor. Previous funding rounds were
led by New Enterprise Associates, Accel Partners, and Mail.ru Group
(formerly DST.)

In the last year, Groupon has been called “the fastest growing company
ever” by Forbes Magazine and “America’s best website” by one of
Groupon’s television commercials. In 2010, Groupon:
• Expanded from 1 to 35 countries
• Launched in almost 500 new markets (from 30 markets in 2009)
• Grew subscribers by 2,500% from 2 million to over 50 million
• Saved consumers over $1.5 billion
• Worked with 58,000 local businesses, serving over 100,000 deals
worldwide

“We’re thrilled that Groupon has earned the confidence of some of the
world’s most respected investment firms,” said Andrew Mason, founder
and CEO of Groupon. “With their support, we will continue on our mission
to change the way people shop locally and serve the world’s local
businesses.”

About Groupon
Groupon, launched in November 2008 in Chicago, features a daily deal on
the best stuff to do, eat, see and buy in more than 500 markets around the
world. Groupon uses collective buying power to offer unbeatable prices
and provide a win-win for businesses and consumers, delivering more than
650 daily deals globally. For more information, visit

If you want to crowdsource the funding for a project—whether it is a product, album, or a film—one of the best places to find both patrons and early customers is Kickstarter. In this week’s episode of Startup Sherpa, host Chris Dixon dives deep into the crowdsourced-funding phenomenon with Kickstarter founder Perry Chen.

The majority of projects on Kickstarter are creative ones involving film, art, or music. But product design and startups can be just as creative. Chen describes the funding model on Kickstarter as “somewhere between commerce and patronage.” And some of the most notable projects are technology products, including open social network Diaspora and the TikTok iPod Nano watch that raised almost $1 million.

In the videos below, Dixon and Chen discuss what made those two projects take off. Chen also offers advice for how to kickstart your own project on his site.

Rule No.1: Think what you can give your audience that is of value, whether that is early access to your project or a discount. “This is not about extracting value,” he advises. It’s a two-way street.

Rule No. 2: Promote the hell out of your project. “You have to be willing to market it to your audience,” says Chen. “You have to get the ball going. The Internet is not just going to find you.”

Startup Sherpa is a new series on TCTV where founder and angel investor Chris Dixon talks about startups with other founders and investors. Please let us know in comments who else you’d like to see Chris talk to in future episodes.

Startup Sherpa (Kickstarter): How To Get Successful Projects Going

Startup Sherpa (Kickstarter): “You Really Gotta Want It.”

Location-based food discovery tool, Foodspotting has just picked up 3 million in series A funding from BlueRun Ventures, days shy of its one year anniversary on January 15th. Angels from the previous $750k seed round will also be following on and BlueRun’s Jay Jamison will be joining Foodspotting’s board. Foodspotting CEO Alexa Andrzejewski tells TechCrunch that the company chose BlueRun specifically because of their focus on growth in the mobile space.

Foodspotting lets you snap up pictures of dishes at restaurants and also has a simple food recommendation algorithm which Andrzejewski says will be bolstered with the most recent financing.

The company will also be expanding the team, from 7 people to 14 in order to handle further product developments that move away from food photo sharing and into “a smart way to get food recommendation, wherever.”

Says Andrzejewski, “We’re really exciting about expanding Foodspotting’s audience beyond foodies, to continue investing in our business development efforts, and being the place where people go on their mobile phones for food content.”

Foodspotting is in the same space as Forkly as well as recommendation biggies like Yelp. Andrzejewski likens it to a “Pandora for food” and says that unlike other recommendation services, the advantages of Foodspotting to restaurant owners is that the community is encouraged to be positive, “Foodspotting is about people voting up things, sharing things that they love, and creating a culture of positivity.”

Continuing its mobile push, Foodspotting released an Android app right around Christmas-time. iPhone downloads on the popular app hit 500K downloads over the holidays, and have just passed the 550K mark. In addition, unique visits to the Foodspotting website are now over 300K and over 275K foods have been foodspotted thus far.

Right now the service monetizes through advertising, through sponsored content and sponsored competitions. Andrzejewski wants to further this and become a distribution channel, not just for already existing brand partnerships like Zagat, The Travel Channel, Thrillist and Tasting Table but for small businesses weary of the influx of daily deals.

We recently reported that Jack Dorsey’s mobile payments startup Square was in the process of raising a new round of funding at a $200 million valuation. Today, Square’s general manager Keith Rabois tells us that the company has officially closed its largest round of funding to date, raising $27.5 million in new funding led by Sequoia Capital with exiting investor Khosla Ventures participating in the round. Sequoia partner Roelof Botha has joined Square’s board of directors. We’ve heard from sources familiar with the matter that Square’s valuation in the round was around $240 million (that’s up from a $45 million valuation in the startup’s Series A round in 2009)

Square has steadily gained traction as a simple payments option for small businesses and is processing millions of dollars a week in transactions.

By way of history, The brainchild of Dorsey and Jim McKelvey, Square was unveiled last December as a small credit card reader that could turn any iPhone into a mobile cash register. The startup unveiled apps for the iPad, Android and iPhone.

Square initially launched as a private pilot limited to only 50,000 users and launched to the public last Fall. Dorsey also brought on PayPal and Slide veteran Rabois as General Manager in August.

Botha’s addition as a board member makes sense considering his experience as CFO of payments giant PayPal. Rabois says that the new funding will be used to go on a hiring spree for the company particularly for engineers and designers. The investment will also be used for sales and marketing purposes. He predicts that Square will process over $40 million in payments in the first quarter of 2010.

“It’s about empowering people to grow their businesses,” Rabois explains. “And you are going to see more and more instances of larger businesses accepting Square as they want to bring the Apple-store like experience to consumers.”

Of all the mobile applications that Google has come out with in the past couple of years, Google Goggles is definitely one of the coolest. You point your smartphone at any object, and Google attempts to figure out what it is — and it’s actually pretty good at it. And now it’s gaining two pretty interesting features. Well, one interesting and one awesome.

The first is the ability to recognize print ads. Yes, you can now point your smartphone at an ad in a magazize or newspaper and Google will recognize the brand or product and return results for it. Google says that this will work for major U.S. newspaper and magazine ads from August 2010 onward.

The seems to suggest that they’ve been hard at work scanning all those ads since then. Interesting. I’m not sure who actually wants to take a picture of an ad, but hey, cool!

The second new feature is the ability to read Sudoku puzzles. This is just plain awesome. Writes Google:

Our favorite weekend distraction is a quiet 15 minutes spent solving a Sudoku puzzle. But even that can be an frustrating experience if (like us) you make a mistake and are unable to solve the puzzle. Now, Goggles on Android and iPhone can recognize puzzles and provide answers to help make you faster than a Sudoku champ. So if you ever get stuck, take a clear picture of the entire puzzle with Goggles and we’ll tell you the correct solution. Check out this video to see how it works.

Wow. Be sure to check out the video below.

Google also notes that this new version of Goggles includes faster barcode reading — at least the Android version right now.

We’ve just learned that German VC Holtzbrinck Ventures will announce that it’s closed a whopping €177 million early stage fund tomorrow. The Holtzbrinck Ventures Fund IV is backed by both Georg von Holtzbrinck publishing group and funds managed by HarbourVest Partners, a global private equity investment firm.

This is a significant new fund for European standards and will fundamentally help prosper and establish consumer web startups from all walks. Current investments and holdings include highly successful ventures, such as Zalando, Groupon or the freshly exited brands4friends.

So we’ve got Siegler up in the air travelling to New York in order to watch some Verizon honchos and possibly Steve Jobs unveil a CDMA phone tomorrow morning. As Verizon iPhone anticipation (wow, I will actually be able to make calls! unlimited data!) nears fever pitch, people are grasping at any signs of their iPhone dreams coming true.

For example, along with pointed hints from the @Verizonwireless, it appears that the @Verizon Twitter account has been tweeting from an iPhone in the days leading up to the event, giving the tech media at least one more post about the mythical phone that launched a million page views.

And while it’s totally possible that some Verizon employee owns an AT&T phone, I’m just going to point out that this tweeting thing is interesting, you know, considering …

@VerizonWireless
Verizon Wireless

Getting ready to make news on Tuesday.

about 12 hours ago via webRetweetReply

Via: Rich De Muro/iPhoneSpot

Everybody, it seems, is getting in on the local offers game. Now, so is Meetup, one of the most local sites out there, with Meetup Perks. Meetup Perks just launched today, with the aim to make it easier for local businesses to find groups to sponsor by offering discounts and other deals.

There are about 80,000 groups on Meetup, including everything from tech meetups and car enthusiasts to hiking and cooking groups. About 30,000 businesses already offer some of these groups deals, discounts, and other perks from local businesses. For instance, the Houston JeepPeople Meetup sometimes meets at one of its sponsors, a truck parts supplier, which also offers members a 5 percent discount. Members of the Las Vegas Hiking and Outdoor Meetup get a 30 percent discount at a local sporting goods store. But up until now these sponsorships have all been informal and done directly between the groups and local merchants.

With Meetup Perks, Meetup is creating a self-serve platform that makes it easier for merchants to find groups to sponsor and for group organizers to opt into receiving deal offers. Local businesses can search groups by location and topic, and then enter the type of sponsorship they are willing to provide—which can range from a group discount to a place to meet. Instead of taking a cut of each deal, Meetup will charge an ongoing fee of $5 per group that decides to take advantage of each offer. Although to kickstart the effort, fees will be waived through March 15 to the first 5,000 businesses that sign up.

Meetup Perks is modeled on the age-old practice of the hardware store sponsoring the Little League team. It is more about creating customer loyalty and goodwill targeted to people by group affinity. The rewards are supposed to be ongoing, rather than one-off promotions.

One of Microsoft’s core strengths is their Server and Tools Business (STB). In fact, it’s a $15 billion a year business for the giant. CEO Steve Ballmer cited that number today in an email to employees announcing the departure of the head of that division, Bob Muglia.

So why is Muglia leaving such a successful endeavor he built? Because Ballmer decided it was time for a change.

“The best time to think about change is when you are in a position of strength, and that’s where we are today with STB – leading the server business, successful with our developer tools, and poised to lead the rapidly emerging cloud future,” Ballmer writes. “Bob Muglia and I have been talking about the overall business and what is needed to accelerate our growth. In this context, I have decided that now is the time to put new leadership in place for STB,” he continues.

Translation: it’s time to get serious about the cloud before it’s too late.

Not surprisingly, rather than accept a demotion, Muglia will leave Microsoft. That will happen this summer, Ballmer says.

Actually, it is a little surprising because Muglia had been demoted before within the company — but worked his way back in 2009. As we noted two years ago:

Capping a comeback from a demotion in the wake of Hailstorm’s failure to survive a privacy challenge led by bloggers, Server and Tools senior VP Bob Muglia was promoted to President of the Microsoft group. Muglia now commands a Microsoft unit with some 22% of the company’s $60 billion in revenue.

That promotion put Muglia in a “Gang of Four,” as we wrote at the time. That include a power combination of Entertainment chief Robbie Bach, Office Business czar Stephen Elop, and Online Services Group head Qi Lu. All but one of those men (Lu, who had just joined) is now gone from Microsoft just two years later. (Also gone, of course, is Ray Ozzie.)

You may recall that Muglia got himself in a bit of hot water in the press once again a few months ago when comments he made suggested that one technology he was in charge of, Silverlight, was being pushed out in favor of technologies like HTML5. The backlash was fast and furious and Microsoft had to respond, and backtrack.

“[Muglia] will continue to actively run STB as I conduct an internal and external search for the new leader.  Bob will onboard the new leader and will also complete additional projects for me,” Ballmer writes.

Below, find Ballmer’s full email to the troops:

From: Steve Ballmer
Sent: Monday, January 10, 2011
To: Microsoft – All Employees
Subject: STB – Building on Success, Moving Forward

There are very few $15B businesses in the software industry, and Microsoft is the only company that has built three of them.  While Windows and Office are household words, our Server and Tools Business has quietly and steadily grown to be the unquestioned leader in server computing.  We have driven the industry forward and established the foundation for an entire generation of business applications.  We have overcome significant competitive challenges.  Over the past twenty years, the outstanding leadership from everyone involved in STB has made it a $15B business today.

We are now ready to build on our success and move forward into the era of cloud computing.  Once again, Microsoft and our STB team are defining the future of business computing.  In October, we completed an incredibly successful PDC where we detailed the future of the cloud, outlining Platform as a Service and demonstrating the rapid advancement of Windows Azure.

The best time to think about change is when you are in a position of strength, and that’s where we are today with STB – leading the server business, successful with our developer tools, and poised to lead the rapidly emerging cloud future.  Bob Muglia and I have been talking about the overall business and what is needed to accelerate our growth. In this context, I have decided that now is the time to put new leadership in place for STB. This is simply recognition that all businesses go through cycles and need new and different talent to manage through those cycles. Bob has been a phenomenal partner throughout this process, and he and his leadership team have the right strategy in place.

In conjunction with this leadership change, Bob has decided to leave Microsoft this summer. He will continue to actively run STB as I conduct an internal and external search for the new leader.  Bob will onboard the new leader and will also complete additional projects for me.

Bob has been a founder and leader of our server business from its earliest inception.  He has led our Developer, Office, and Mobile Devices Divisions, and key parts of Windows NT and our Online Services business.  I’ve worked with him in many capacities over the years and I’ve always appreciated his customer focus, technical depth, people leadership skills, and his positive energy. I want to thank Bob for his hard work, many accomplishments, and his focus on putting Microsoft first for 23 years.

We enter this new decade with STB providing the platform for today’s business solutions, and uniquely well-positioned to drive the future of cloud computing.   I believe STB will continue to lead the industry with outstanding products and services for our customers and exceptional results for our business.

Thanks,
Steve