The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- Apple’s New Tablet To Be Baptized iSlate? Let’s Dig A Little Deeper
- CrunchBase Funding Digest: Center’d, Lexy, Accelerate Mobile Apps, Brickfish
- Flixup Brings Its Movie Tweet Aggregator To The Web For The Holiday Movie Season
- Polyvore’s Virtual Styling Tool Aims To Be More Social With Facebook Connect
- SCVNGR Raises $4 Million From Google Ventures
- Google Voice Is Coming Back To The iPhone Via The Browser, Thanks To VoiceCentral
- The Top Ten IPO Candidates For 2010
| Apple’s New Tablet To Be Baptized iSlate? Let’s Dig A Little Deeper Posted: 25 Dec 2009 03:20 AM PST
If correct, that means we can add a rumor to a rumor: that the unconfirmed, unannounced but most definitely coming (maybe) Apple tablet device will be named iSlate. That would be in line with earlier connections of the ’slate’ term to the elusive tablet computer, based on New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller calling it something to that effect in a speech. Let’s dig a little deeper. Other iSlate Domain Names There’s a lot of islate-related domain names with different TLDs that Apple most definitely does not own (islate.org, islate.net, islate.be, islate.nl, islate.es, and so on) but I did find a couple of interesting things trolling whois servers. A search for islate.co.uk lists Mark Monitor as the owner, just like islate.com. This could be meaningless, but we know for sure Apple works with Mark Monitor for other domain names and the United Kingdom is a key market for the company. Registration date: 17 November 2006. Unfortunately, the whois server for German TLDs (whois.denic.de) is currently down, so I can’t look up who secured islate.de at this point. Update: owned by Innovative Dynamics GmbH since December 2007. But look up who the owner of islate.fr (country TLD for France, a third key country for Apple in Europe) is: a Paris-based IP property attorney firm called Wilson & Berthelot. Guess who the technical contact for the domain name registration is? Mark Monitor. And doesn’t Apple work with law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati in the States? Coincidence, or not? Other related domain names that were secured through Mark Monitor: islate.info and islate.biz, both of which were registered on the same date as islate.co.uk: 17 November 2006. Update: islate.jp (Japan) was registered by Mark Monitor on 29 November 2006, while islate.cn (China) was registered through the company on 18 November 2009. The plot thickens. The ISLATE Trademark (United States) On November 21, 2006 a company called Slate Computing (registered in Delaware) filed for a US word mark for ‘ISLATE’. Notably, that was right around the time at least three islate-related domain names were registered. You won’t find any information about any company called Slate Computing online, although according to the filing these are the goods and services they offer:
That’s quite a list for a company that doesn’t even have its own website, but it matches exactly what Apple’s business is all about. Is Slate Computing just a shell company created by Apple, or is someone trying to play a number on them? More on that later. Either way, the USPTO record shows that an opposition was filed on June 10, 2008. In case you’re interested, the domain name slatecomputing.com is owned by a company called “Cayman Ninety Business” – with an office address on the Cayman Islands – which according to Domain Tools owns over 11,000 other domain names (all the marks of a savvy domainer and/or cybersquatter at play). The ISLATE Trademark (Europe) I did a search for ‘islate’ on OHIM, and founded out that same Slate Computing has filed for a trademark for the term in the European Union as well. It was filed in 21 November 2006, on the same day the filing for the ISLATE word mark was registered in the US. Listed as legal representative on the form: UK-based Edwards Angell Palmer & Dodge, the same law firm Apple worked with for securing the EU-wide trademark for the term ‘Macbook’, for one. Then I noticed something else on the record for the European ISLATE trademark: the priority country that was registered is Trinidad & Tobago. Why that matters? Because Apple has a history of listing Trinidad & Tobago as the priority country for European trademarks – just look up ‘iphone’ on OHIM and you’ll see I’m right. Conclusion Here’s what I think happened, based on the evidence presented above: Apple decided on the name iSlate for a new product it was working on, whether it will ultimately turn out to be for their new tablet computer or not, in November 2006. That same month, they moved to file for a trademark for the name in the United States and Europe under disguise, setting up and using Slate Computing LLC as a shell company, and securing a couple of available domain names through Mark Monitor (islate.co.uk, islate.biz and islate.info). Then, they acquired the domain name islate.com from whoever owned it at that point. MacRumors reports that the domain name was under ownership of a company called Data Docket, Inc back in 2006, and a search for that company turns up this interesting article on that company. Either way, Apple reportedly got a hold of the domain name early 2007, right about the time they also secured islate.fr, supposedly. The evidence is overwhelming: if there’s going to be a new tablet from Apple coming out next month, chances are that it’ll be christened iSlate. Feel free to start lauding or ranting on the chosen name. (Original image: MacRumors) Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
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| CrunchBase Funding Digest: Center’d, Lexy, Accelerate Mobile Apps, Brickfish Posted: 24 Dec 2009 07:07 PM PST  Every day I troll SEC Form D Filings to discover new startups, fundings and investments. I put everything I find into CrunchBase. For everyone else I give you the daily digest, a quick hit of the latest and greatest SEC Form D filings in the TechCrunch sphere: Center'd - Local Search and Discovery Lexy - Audio Content Distribution Accelerate Mobile Apps - Mobile Apps for Business Brickfish - Social Media Marketing
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| Flixup Brings Its Movie Tweet Aggregator To The Web For The Holiday Movie Season Posted: 24 Dec 2009 02:58 PM PST
The website works just like the app. The main page shows the “Top Movies” based on the amount of talk on Twitter. For example, right now Avatar leads the pack by far. Flixup’s Buzz meter also shows if the talk about the movie is positive (green), neutral (yellow), or negative (red). Avatar is not only being talked about the most, but it’s also very clearly green, which is impressive (it’s definitely worth seeing if you missed our screening of last week). And just like the iPhone app, Flixup works better if you sign in with your Twitter account (via OAuth). If you’re signed in, when you click on a movie title, you can see the conversations about the movie on Twitter that your contacts are having. You can also click to see all the conversations on Twitter about the movie. And you can rate the movie (on a 1 to 5 scale) or say if you’re interested in seeing it or not and tweet all that out with the click of a button. On the individual movie pages you can also get additional details about the film and see its trailer. And Flixup features its Rotten Tomatoes score as well. This is appropriate since when the iPhone app was previewed, we called it the “Rotten Tomatoes for Twitter movie talk.” You can find Flixup’s free iPhone application in the App Store here.
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| Polyvore’s Virtual Styling Tool Aims To Be More Social With Facebook Connect Posted: 24 Dec 2009 12:31 PM PST  As “Fashion 2.0″ sites continue to innovate, the social component of these style-focused sites becomes an important tool for viral growth. Weardrobe, a site focused on capturing and sharing the street style of web users, was recently acquired by Like.com And we’ve written about Polyvore, the startup lets web shoppers pull their favorite items any online store and mix and match to create personalized outfits online. Users can then share their creations on the site and can then buy the items shown. The site is seeing rapid growth, with over 6 million unique visitors per month thanks to new branding efforts and the launch of Facebook Connect. Polyvore’s virtual styling tool allows people to mix and match products from any online store to create fashion collages, called “sets,” and collections that can then be embedded in other sites. Armed with $7 million in funding, Polyvore has recently forged partnerships with brands like Calvin Klein, Barney’s, Lancome, Zappos Marc Jacobs, and the Gap to create branded collages that the Polyvore community of users can then share and buy from. Many of these brands use Polyvore’s technology to create contests for users.The startup collects revenue in these partnerships and also sees returns from affiliate fees when users buy And users can now share their branded “sets” via Facebook and Twitter, serving as social advertisements for designers and fashion companies. Polyvore says 30,000 sets are created daily on the site. Launched in 2007, the startup just raised $5.6 million in funding. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
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| SCVNGR Raises $4 Million From Google Ventures Posted: 24 Dec 2009 12:29 PM PST
While mobile location based games like Foursquare and Gowalla are getting a lot of attention right now, SCVNGR has quietly managed to establish a very nice niche market for itself. SCVNGR, which started in the DreamIt Ventures program back in 2008, makes a platform that allows companies, schools, and other organizations to build their own location-based scavenger hunts. Dozens of major universities have used the service at campus orientations, while major companies have used it for team building exercises. The platform has been used by over 400 clients including Princeton, Yale, MetLife, and HSBC, and has a whopping 91% client repeat rate. SCVNGR is also expanding very quickly. In the eleven days since we last wrote about them, they hired six new people. They are currently doubling the company’s size from 20 to 40 employees, filling roles in everything from mobile application development to sales. Oh, and there’s one other impressive thing about the startup: SCVNGR closed its funding round on CEO Seth Priebatsch’s twenty-first birthday. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
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| Google Voice Is Coming Back To The iPhone Via The Browser, Thanks To VoiceCentral Posted: 24 Dec 2009 11:16 AM PST
Last summer, when Apple pulled third-party Google Voice applications from the App Store, one of them was VoiceCentral. Apple’s subsequent rejection of the official Google Voice app spurred an FCC investigation, but Google Voice never made it to the app store and none of the other apps ever made it back in. Well, that’s not stopping the developers Riverturn, the company behind VoiceCentral. They are bringing back their app to the iPhone via the browser. They call it the Black Swan edition. You can get on a waiting list to be on the private beta here. The app is completely browser-based but has the look and feel of a regular app, complete with a dialer, list of transcribed voicemails, and SMS messages. When you dial a number, Google Voice simply makes a call to your iPhone while simultaneously calling the number of the person you are trying to reach, so you still pay for the voice minutes. But the appeal of having Google Voice on your iPhone is the ability to read transcribed voicemails, or play them, and avoid SMS charges by texting through Google Voice. (You cannot yet do all of these things when you access Google Voice via the iPhone’s browser directly). The downside is that it cannot access your contact list on your iPhone through the browser. Although, VoiceCentral mimics the look and feel of the iPhone contact manager, you have to export your contacts to Google Voice first and access them that way. Another limitation is that the audio plays through the speaker instead of through the earpiece, but if you are using a pair of earphones that is not a problem. VoiceCentral will probably be a paid app, but Apple won’t get any of the revenues since it is simply a mobile Website. It even offers offline caching and takes advantage of the HTML5 features of mobile Safari. This could very well be the future of mobile apps. As mobile browsers become more capable, more and more developers are going to ask themselves why bother with the limitations of the App Store and be at the mercy of Apple’s whims? And it won’t just be developers like VoiceCentral who have no other choice. Below is a promotional video which shows some of the features of VoiceCentral’s Black Swan app. Remember, this is all happening in the browser: Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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| The Top Ten IPO Candidates For 2010 Posted: 24 Dec 2009 09:27 AM PST
It’s been a long drought for IPOs, but venture capitalists and tech entrepreneurs are hopeful that 2010 will be the year they rain down on the Valley once gain. Earlier this year, a handful of IPOs trickled out, such as OpenTable, Rackspace, and A123Systems. But what people are really waiting for is another Netscape moment—an iconic IPO which will whet investor’s appetites and open the floodgates for others to follow. Below is our list of the top ten IPO candidates for 2010 in the technology industry (and, no, it doesn’t include Twitter). I conducted an informal survey of some top VCs and angel investors. These are the names whispered about the most in the Valley and other tech circles. The hope is that the economy will swing back and the public markets will become receptive to IPOs, especially towards the second half of the year. The stock market in general is finding its legs already. The S&P 500 is up 24 percent this year. If the bull market continues, that will be good for the prospects of seeing these potential IPOs. And if it doesn’t, there’s always M&A. 1. Facebook. Total raised: $716 million. If there is one company which everyone is looking towards for a new Netscape moment, it is Facebook. The company can pretty much go public any time it wants. It is already the fourth largest site in the U.S. and the world. Its last private common stock sale valued the company at $11 billion, which may or may not be rational. The key to a large public valuation will be whether Facebook can figure out how to turn all of that attention into advertising dollars. So far it is said to be on track to beat its $550 million revenue projections from earlier this year. A Facebook IPO would certainly create a halo effect for other tech offerings. Even if it doesn’t go out in 2010, the prospect that it might could still help other companies go public as hungry investors grab what they can get. 2. Zynga. Total raised: $219 million. Social game developer Zynga is on a tear, with more than 230 million people a month actively playing its games such as FarmVille, PetVille, and Texas HoldeEm Poker. The company just raised a whopping $180 million round. It is believed to be Facebook’s largest advertiser and pulling in at least $250 million in revenues on its own. But it is also at the center of the Scamville controversy over how it makes some of its money from scammy offers. If it can convince investors it has cleaned up its act, they will gobble up an IPO. 3. LinkedIn. Total raised: $103 million. The other social network, LinkedIn is like the enterprise version of Facebook. It is where business gets done and people find jobs. LAst year alone it raised about $75 million at a $1 billion valuation. Founder Reid Hoffman has spoken repeatedly about LinkedIn’s ability to IPO. Earlier this year, he recruited former Yahoo exec Jeff Weiner to be CEO and is spending more time himself as a venture capitalist, which has always been his sideline. 4. Glam Media. Total raised: $125 million. Glam Media is one of the fastest growing ad networks and collection of fashion- and women-oriented sites. At a time when traditional media and women’s magazines are suffering, Glam is saw display advertising revenues across its network up more than 50 percent in 2009. CEO Samir Arora expects the company to be profitable in the fourth quarter, and is recruiting executives with big-company experience. Ad networks which dominate their niche are an easy lay-up for investors. 5. Demand Media. Total raised: $355 million. Demand Media is another LA-based company, started by former MySpace chairman Richard Rosenblatt. Demand Media owns a collection of sites such as eHow, Livestrong, and countless niche sites. It also owns domain name registrar eNom, which generates a lot of its cash. Demand Media is a content mill, churning out articles and videos for its niche sites like Golflink.com and Trails.com cheaply and quickly in response to what people are searching for. It may not be sexy, but it is lucrative enough that potential acquirers are sniffing around and AOL’s Tim Armstrong is looking to copy and improve on the niche content model. 6. Gilt Groupe. Total raised: $48 million. Gilt is a private online shopping club for luxury goods. Its revenues are reportedly around $200 million this year, and expected to more than double next year. IPO talk is already in the air. Gilt’s counterpart in Europe, Ventee-Privée, is rumored to be in acquisition talks with Amazon for around $3 billion. And Kleiner Perkins just invested in One Kings Lane, another private shopping club based in England. 7. Etsy. Total raised: $31.6 million. Another niche e-commerce play could be Etsy, the Brooklyn-based marketplace for handcrafted goods. Sellers on Etsy are on track to trade $200 million worth of goods on the maretplace this year, double from last year. Founder Rob Kalin recently took over again as CEO and says the company is now profitable. Etsy will never be as big as eBay, but its focus means that can become a the alternative eBay for buyers and sellers of high-quality, custom-designed apparel, furniture, and other goods. 8. Yelp. Total raised: $31 million. Yelp was nearly acquired by Google for around $500 million before the deal broke down last week. The fast-rising local reviews site now might try the public markets instead. The company already has 300 employees and is becoming a powerhouse in the online advertising for local businesses, which is an area of growth every major Web company wants to participate in. Already the IPO filings are starting to come in, with ReachLocal filing to raise $100 million for its local ad network. 9. Tesla Motors Total raised: $783 million. Why would you invest in GM IPO if you could invest in Tesla instead? Silicon Valley’s electric car company is expected to hit the public markets. Building a car company takes massive amounts of capital, and Tesla has raised nearly $800 million so far. Most of that comes in the form of government loans, such as the $465 million it received as part of the government’s $25 billion bailout of the U.S. auto industry. A lot of the capital also comes from partner Daimler, and billionaire founder Elon Musk. But, hey, at least Tesla is profitable, which is saying a lot for a car maker. 10. Skype Total raised: $69 million Despite all the drama surrounding eBay’s recent sale of Skype to a group of private investors including Silver Lake Partners and Andreessen Horowitz for $2.75 billion, the deal got done. Skype is already a major Internet brand, with more than 500 million users of its Internet calling, IM, and video communications service, and $185 million in quarterly revenues. Before eBay found its buyers, it was very publicly pursuing the IPO route. And given that eBay retains a 30 percent stake in Skype, that is still an option if its growth continues apace. Runner’s Up: The ten names above are the most likely to go public if the markets open up. Other companies which might tap the public markets include Associated Content, Brightcove, Digg, StumbleUpon, LiveOps, Workday, MerchantCircle, ExactTarget, Chegg, and Rearden Commerce. Most informed observers do not expect a Twitter IPO next year. It is too early. The company just raised $100 million, and still needs to figures out its business model. Maybe in 2011. Which of these companies do you think is most likely to IPO? Which ones would you invest in? Photo credit: Flickr/David Paul Ohmer Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
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Nice scoop by 
At our Realtime CrunchUp in November, Bazaar Labs 
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