The Canadian angel investor, previously the COO behind AbeBooks.com before it was acquired by Amazon in 2008, has invested his personal funds in over 30 startups as well as launched the Vancouver-based Growlabs accelerator. The recent launch of his Version One Ventures will invest from $250K to $500K and has already made five investments. [Source TechCrunch]
Alternative search engines seem to be on the rise. Today, search engine DuckDuckGo tweeted that it received more than three million direct searches in a single day. [Source: Search Engine Land]
Cloudera has announced that its current CEO Mike Olson will become chief strategy officer and chairman of the board. In his place will be former Arcsight CEO Tom Reilly. [Source: GigaOm]
Toshiba has announced that it plans to cut about 10 billion yen ($104 million) in TV business costs by the end of this fiscal year. This comes after the company lost almost 50 billion yen in the last business year. [Source: Reuters]
FiftyThree, the company behind the iPad app Paper, has just closed a $15 million round of funding. This round was led by Chris Dixon at Andreessen Horowitz. [Source: VentureBeat]
Blekko has released a new iOS and Android version of its Izik search app. The Izik app makes use of Blekko’s “Dynamic Inference Graph.” [Source: TheNextWeb]
“I feel we’re moving into a world that was described pretty accurately by one of the founders of Google… Some reporter asked Eric Schmidt if this was an invasion of privacy … and he said ‘If you’re doing anything that you don’t want to be on the internet, you shouldn’t be doing it.’”
Dish today issued a response to Sprint’s lawsuit against Dish claiming its bid to buyout Clearwire is illegal. According to Dish, the lawsuit is a “transparent attempt to divert attention from its failure to deal fairly with Clearwire’s shareholders.” [Source: GigaOm]
It looks like Amazon will not be taking a cue from Netflix in terms of episode release. According to the Verge, when it released its new program “Alpha House,” it will not release every episode all at once. [Source: The Verge]
Last night the BBC announced six London-based digital media startups that will join its BBC Labs accelerator program. This is the BBC Labs’ second class. [Source: GigaOm]
GE, in a presentation today, announced it will be building new Hadoop-based appliances and software. This is to go towards GE’s new goal of connecting devices to the “industrial internet.” [Source: GigaOm]
A few months back Google added a new visualization for its Local Searches on tablets: a top results carousel bar. Today, Google introduced this feature to the desktop Local Search as well. [Source: TechCrunch]
Today Carl Icahn published a letter to Dell shareholders stating that a bank has agreed to help fund his buyout offer of the computer company. According to the letter, a major investment bank is willing to make $1.6 billion available. [Source: Reuters]
Today marks the release of 25 solar-powered charging stations at various outdoor spaces in New York City. The initiative is a joint venture between the city and AT&T. [Source: BetaBeat]
Parakweet, which offers Bookvibe, a service that recommends books based on natural language processing and social-media analytics, has raised $2 million in funding. [Source: VentureBeat]
Today web browser Torch announced it surpassed 10 million monthly active users after over 10 years on the market. It also launched its new version with a new download accelerator and music service. [Source: TechCrunch]
Simple, an online banking startup with apps available for iOS and Android, has today announced an update to its iPhone app meant to make it easier to save money. The feature, dubbed “Goals,” allows users to input certain items they would like to purchase and have Simple automatically work the cost of the item into their budget.
[Source: Simple]
Do you want to send your friends a gift? Would you prefer to do it with minimal effort, or without doing so much as finding a gift card and throwing it into a small bag in between Walmart and Taco Bell? Amazon, like a dozen other startups over the last few years, has today announced Amazon Birthday Gifts to help you, then! It’s exactly what it sounds like.
[Source: Amazon Birthday Gifts]
GeekWire has reported on the debut of BookVibe, a book recommendations service that pores through your Twitter feed to help you find the next thing worth reading. (Or: It’s a totally Twitter-based company that tears through tweets to find tomes.)
[Source: GeekWire]
Microsoft has updated Socl, its oft-forgotten take-a-wild-guess network for creatives, with animated GIFs and a new meme generator. Users will be able to create animated GIFs via Blink, a standalone application for Windows devices.
[Source: PCWorld]
European social payments company iZettle has entered the Mexico market through a partnership with Banco Santander. The company tapped former Visa exec Luis Arceo as the country managing director and will introduce a mini card reader for iOS and Android phones and tablets. [Source: iZettle]
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