Just four days after Yahoo-owned Flickr unveiled a brand-new upgrade, the site is experiencing major downtime for some—but not all—users.
Flickr tweeted its acknowledgement of the site going down, about two hours ago.
Experiencing slowness or having trouble accessing the site? We’re on it, and are working to fix the issue as quickly as possible. #badpanda
We’re all familiar with the bill shock associated with roaming abroad with our cellphones. There are plenty of players that allow you to swap out your SIM card and use cheaper traffic, including Cubic Telecom. However, that process is tedious. So Cubic has secured new funding to enable a range of tablets and notebooks to have their technology built into partner devices. To do this they’ve raised a further $5.2 million in funding from Enterprise Ireland, Qualcomm Incorporated, ACT Venture Capital and TPS Investments.
The money will be used to expand globally, and invest in the technology which essentially allows Cubic to operate like its own global mobile phone carrier, not an MVNO. As a licensed mobile network operator (MNO), Cubic Telecom partners with Tier 1 mobile operators to provide coverage in 230 countries. Its Software Defined Network (SDN) works across multiple technologies (3G, 4G-LTE, CDMA and WiFi).
The Dublin based company has also secured contracts with a number of leading Fortune 100 tablet and notebook manufacturers to be in-built into their devices, though these partners have yet to be announced.
Video ad network Tremor Video has filed for its long-awaited public offering. The company’s shares will trade on the NYSE at TRMR and it wants to raise at least $86 million.
Tremor Video, which runs ads on more than 500 Web sites and mobile apps, disclosed in its S-1 filing that from 2011 to 2012 its revenue increased from $90.3 million to $105.2 million. During that period, its gross margin improved from 35.2% to 41.7%, due in part to the adoption of its performance-based pricing models, while its net loss decreased from $21 million to $16.6 million.
Since its founding in 2005, Tremor Video has received a total of $116 million in funding from Canaan Partners, Masthead Venture Partners, W Capital Partners, Meritech Capital, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, General Catalyst Partners, as well as investors Jason Glickman, Mark Pinney and James Rossman. Its IPO will be underwritten by Credit Suisse and Jefferies.
Adly, a startup that connects advertisers with celebrities willing to post promoted messages on social networks, recently raised $2 million in additional funding.
The new funding came from previous backer GRP Partners and new investor Siemer Ventures. Adly has now raised a total of $7.5 million.
The company also launched a new product this week. It’s the first thing you’ll see if you go to the Adly website — a button that says “Match Me Up!” which allows Adly to analyze a business’ existing content and followers, then find publishers who are a good match to “amplify” their content.
It’s almost impossible for the average computer to mine Bitcoins in any efficient way, hence the rise of Bitcoin mining machines so tuned to their specific purpose that they barely resemble PCs. To wit: the Cryonic Bitcoin FrostBit machine is a PC in name only and contains a liquid nitrogen generator, special ASIC chips, and a price tag that would make the Winklevii twins think twice.
“It’s the first time a ‘PC’ has been built for consumers with built-in liquid nitrogen generators. We use helium compression technology to super-cool condensers that in turn condense nitrogen air into its liquid form. There’s nothing even remotely similar available to the consumers,” said CEO of Cryoniks, Inc. Fahad Koumaiha. “By sustaining cryonic temperatures we were able to achieve superconductivity with our custom designed ASIC processors. Not only do we get a huge boost in speed, but we cut down power consumption to around 2800W per unit; significantly less than anything on the market today.”
The PC hits a peak of 2800W – the average PC hits 200W on a bad day – but the device can perform 1000 Gigahashes a second. To put that in perspective a strong PC with good graphics card can hit about 100 GH/S and in my experience I haven’t been able to get any my machines to hit higher than 50 GH/S.
As great as the web is, I still haven’t been able to kick my habit for buying fashion and lifestyle magazines off the newsstand. One of the things I love the most about monthly glossies are features like Vanity Fair’s My Stuff and Us Weekly’s What’s In My Bag, in which notable people reveal the exact products that they actually buy and use (celebrity chef David Chang uses Sensodyne toothpaste and wears Levi’s jeans, FYI.) It’s just compelling to find out more about people through their stuff.
The folks at New York-based startup Vaunte think so too, and in fact, they think this kind of voyeuristic editorial approach could be the next generation of luxury e-commerce. Vaunte has created a web platform where notable people (think starlets, fashionable executives, designers, and socialites) show off the stuff in their closets — and put things up for sale. Vaunte started off as purely a consignment market that takes 30 percent commission for photographing and shipping seller’s items, but it has since expanded to also sell new versions of the items people show off.
Though Vaunte has made a splash in the fashion news space since its November 2012 launch, it has flown under the radar in the tech and business press. But now for the first time, the company is revealing a bit more on the corporate side. TechCrunch sat down this week with Gilt Groupe veteran Leah Park and engineer/entrepreneur Andy Shin, two of Vaunte’s three co-founders — the third, ex Gilt Grouper Christian Leone, was in Los Angeles working on a Vaunte photoshoot — to talk a bit more about what Vaunte is and what’s in its future (video embedded below.)
Bloomberg today reports that Google could face a new U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) antitrust probe into its display advertising business. As Bloomberg’s Brian Womack and Sara Forden note, the FCC is looking into whether Google used its strong position in this market to “illegally curb competition.” The investigators, the report also notes, want to see if Google used its display ads business to “push companies to use more of its other services.”
We reached out to Google for a statement about this new investigation but Google did not have a comment on the report.
As Bloomberg notes, the FCC investigation – assuming it will go forward – will likely focus on whether Google used its dominance in the display ad business to “squeeze out competitors in the display advertising market.”
Features:
Ships with Windows 8 64-bit 13.3-inch display running at 2560 x 1440 (221ppi) 256GB SSD 2GHz Intel Core i7-3537U Processor 8GB of RAM MSRP: Starts at $1,599, model reviewed costs $1,999Pros:
An incredibly high-res display for a Windows laptop 2 years of free premium support Respectable battery lifeCons:
Features:
Convertible laptop 13-inch touchscreen Up To 128 GB SSD Intel Core i5 Processor MSRP: $999Pros:
Slim form factor works as a tablet and a laptop Nice design 10-finger multi-touchCons:
Salesforce.com met analyst expectations for its first quarter with non-GAAP earnings per share of 10 cents. Total first quarter revenues were $893 million, an increase of 28 percent on a year-over-year basis.
Subscription and support revenues were $842 million, an increase of 29% on a year-over-year basis. Professional services and other revenues were $50 million, an increase of 25%.
