Chances are you’ve never heard of Netbiscuits – I sure hadn’t. But the company operates one of the world’s largest B2B web software platforms enabling thousands of publishers to create, manage and generate revenue from mobile websites.
Netbiscuits serves the mobile Internet programs for brands like Yahoo, MTV, and eBay, and well known digital agencies such as Razorfish, Isobar, and ad networks like Google-owned AdMob. To give you an idea of its size: globally, Netbiscuits claims to deliver more than 1.5 billion mobile page impressions on a monthly basis.
This morning, the decade-old company announced that it has partnered with Universal Music Group to help the music company expand its line-up of direct-to-consumer mobile content and services, after a successful test run centered around a mobile website for Bon Jovi in November 2009.
The terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
Netbiscuits will essentially be aiding UMG in setting up and operating artist-branded mobile websites, which will give fans the ability to interact with other fans and to make purchases directly from their handsets. Based on the mobile websites, Netbiscuits also enables UMG to set up hybrid apps for several major platforms, including the iPhone, Android, and Windows Mobile devices.
UMG also plans to utilize the text messaging service that comes integrated within the Netbiscuits platform, providing music fans with SMS alerts whenever their favorite artists are in town.
Hot on the heels of us thinking maybe the Dell Streak / Mini 5 was possibly due for a name change to the "M01M," a roving heckler from TechCrunch managed to catch the man himself, Michael Dell, on the street and get a quick demonstration of the thing -- which he with no uncertain terms referred to as the "Mini 5." He swiped through a number of home screens and quickly showed the five megapixel camera on the back, mentioned 3G wireless, and then tucked it away again. No price was given, but the biggest news is confirmation that it's coming out in "a couple of months," which is something of a surprise given the company was still calling it a concept just a few weeks ago. Video of this choice encounter is after the break.
Continue reading Michael Dell pulls Mini 5 Android tablet from his parka, offers to put one in yours in 'a couple of months' (video)
Michael Dell pulls Mini 5 Android tablet from his parka, offers to put one in yours in 'a couple of months' (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 29 Jan 2010 07:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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If you're gonna dedicate your life and livelihood to projectors, you'd better be able to deliver something beyond the same old, same old. That said, Projectiondesign -- who's offered up devices for "
harsh environments" and
3D in the past -- has clearly outdone itself with the FR12 Remote Light Source (RLS) projector. This bad boy places the lamp and cooling fan in a rack-mounted enclosure, which you can then put someplace safely out of the way (and easily accessible). The light source is then free to be mounted on the ceiling somewhere, where it's fed images via 30mm liquid light guide (similar to a fiber optic cable, but, you know, with liquid). No longer will you have to grab a ladder when it comes time to change a bulb! No word yet on price or availability, but you can expect to get all that at the big reveal during ISE 2010 this February.
Projectiondesign's Remote Light Source projector puts the lamp in a cool, faraway place originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 28 Jan 2010 13:27:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Beyond the Rack, a private sample sale site, has raised $2 million in funding from Oleg Tscheltzoff and Oliver Jung, and Montreal Start Up. This brings the startup’s total funding to $4.5 million.
Similar to Gilt, HauteLook and Ideeli, Beyond the Rack is a members-only shopping site that offers steeply discounted (from 50 to 70 percent) on designer brand clothes, accessories and other goods. The site says that it is seeing 4 million monthly unique visitors, with revenue has growing over 50 percent per month. And Beyond the Rack has 600,000 members after only 9 months of operation.
The site launches up to eight new sales events every day, with each event only lasting a few days. The model has done fairly well in the space, with similar sites seeing rapid growth. There’s the rumored acquisition of European sample sale site Vente-Privee by Amazon for an estimated $3.01 billion. And sample sale site Ideeli recently raised $20 million in funding.
Gilt Groupe also raised an estimated $40 million in funding in July, which valued the company at $400 million. VC firm Kleiner Perkins recently invested in One Kings Lane, an online sample sale site for home decor and accessories, which we wrote about here. The concept has even attracted retail giants like Saks and Neiman Marcus, which are now jumping on the bandwagon to offer their own private sales.
