ClearSpring is one of the latest victims of the economic crisis and it has now come to light that the widget startup has let go almost 20% of its workforce back in December last year. COO and President Jay Rappaport, who was an ex-President of Vonage and former COO of AOL has also left the company as a result of this move.
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Apple has slowly entered and conquered gadget domains from portable music devices ala iPod to smart mobile phones ala iPhone. However there are areas where Apple still doesn’t have much of a presence, in fact no product offering at all. Two of these categories include Netbooks and Tablet PCs. Given the fact that Netbooks have recently become really popular and Asus and Dell has managed to rack in significant profits from their offerings, its only reasonable to imagine that Apple would one day – and that would be soon – enter the Netbooks and even the Tablet PC category with sublime offerings of its own. And there wont be a better time to launch such PCs than the current bad times, that have made everyone much more frugal than they used to be. To top it all, people have already started demanding Apple Netbooks.
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TechCrunch has a revealing article about the future of online advertising for Content based sites and blogs. And from what Arrington has discussed it seems that 2008 was not even the tip of the iceberg of what is expected to hit the Media Titantic in 2009.
According to TechCrunch:
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A recent government ruling in France has made it legal for outlets to sell iPhones without a commitment with any mobile operator. The ruling was passed in the embattled case of Apple’s exclusive deal with Orange. A French store Fnac has now taken advantage of the ruling by started selling iPhones without contracts. The stringless iPhones are being sold for €799 ($1,122) for the 8GB version and €899 ($1,262) for the 16GB version.
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Cisco is planning to make a major push into the living rooms by introducing an entire line up of gadgets and devices. Amongst these is a digital stereo system that would wirelessly move music around the house so that your music follows you to the rooms in which you are. Cisco wont just contend on the music, but is also planning for an Internet Video offering. In addition to this Cisco is betting big time on its corporate videoconferencing system – Telepresence that allows people to chat with family and friends over HD TV.
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Nintendo has partnered with Dentsu, a Japanese advertising company, to distribute streaming video programming via Nintendo Wii. The Wii based video streaming is scheduled to be launched in Japan in 2009, with offerings in the Western worlds to follow shortly.
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The State of Florida wants a much larger chunk of the venture capital money. Although venture activity has started to slowly out-pour into other areas, but Florida hasn’t been much successful in attracting much of this money. But the state now wants to change this and has established a $29.5 million Florida Opportunity Fund, that would funnel money into regional and national venture funds – which in turn would than dedicate this money to Florida based startups. Although the amount dedicated isn’t much, but is definitely a good gesture.
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iPhone Nano rumors are not going away no matter what. This time the rumor mill is steaming due to the fact that a well known iPhone casing manufacturer VAJA has added an iPhone Nano casing to its listings. The newly added link on their site is currently re-directing to a page that asks users to signup for information about the upcoming release of the Nano casing. Only time will tell if Vaja’s offering is based on some real intel. or if it is just trying to cash in on the hype.
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Metranome, the company behind Poptiq – a mobile video application for the iPhone and iPod touch, has closed a round of venture funding led by Tech Capital Partners. The current round of funding brings the total capital raised till now $2 million. The company plans to use the funding to expand its app development efforts and bring the app to other mobile platforms as well.
The Poptiq iPhone app delivers short form entertaining and informative videos to mobile users, learning their likes and dislikes to ensure videos are relevant. Users could also share the videos with their friends across social networks.
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Boxee, a startup that is developing a social media center platform for HDTVs, would soon be exiting alpha status to become more widely available to users – starting from Jan 8, 2009. In addition to this the startup would soon be releasing a Windows version of the service that will enter alpha testing in early 2009.
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