Intelius provides background check and public records services to companies and individuals using the internet to sniff out personal data that sometimes people would rather forget. This is serious stuff that can make or break a job applicant.
Now however the company has turned its technology spotlight onto another area where reputation really matters: Dating.
DemoFall 09 kicked off in San Diego today and the first session included some interesting new applications and technologies. Here are a couple of my favourites – one software, one hardware:
Sunnyvale-based Micello launched an indoor mapping service for the iPhone that provides users with a clickable layout of indoor facilities like shopping malls, college campuses and so forth and potentially fills a hole in Google’s otherwise excellent mapping service.
Continue reading "Top picks from DemoFall 09"
Is Brett Brewer, president of Adknowledge and co-founder of Intermix Media, MySpace’s parent before it was sold for $673m to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp in October 2005, onto something else big?
Adknowledge, which claims to be the largest independent advertising network, has acquired KITN Media, owner of Super Rewards which provides the virtual currency platform for casual games on social networks such as Facebook and yes, MySpace. Continue reading "Brewer’s Midas touch?"
The pace of announcements surrounding next generation e-book readers and competition for Amazon’s Kindle family of devices is quickening.
Earlier this week Barnes & Noble announced that it was opening an online e-book store with 700,000 titles and had struck a strategic partnership with Britain’s Plastic Logic which is planning to launch a new reader aimed at the business market next year. (The Financial Times has also announced a partnership with Plastic Logic.) Continue reading "AT&T signs up with Kindle rival"
One of the features that made Palm’s recently launched Palm Pre smartphone stand out in an increasingly crowded market was the ability to sync non-copy protected songs with Apple’s iTunes software.
Much to the chagrin of Apple, Palm’s engineers had figured out a way to build iTunes synchronisation into the Pre – something no other smartphone maker (other than Apple) had managed to do. This achievement was perhaps not so surprising since many had been recruited by Jon Rubinstein, who helped develop the iPod at Apple before joining Palm in 2007. Continue reading "Apple blocks Palm Pre iTunes synchronisation"
Adapting video (and audio) content to meet the requirements of hundreds, if not thousands, of types of mobile devices is a technology challenge that most content providers would rather avoid but nevertheless need to overcome if they are to be successful in an increasingly competitive market.
Enter QuickPlay Media, a five-year-old Toronto based company which built its OpenVideo Platform for just this purpose. On Monday QuickPlay Media will announce that it has completed a $12m fourth round of funding led by GMP Securities bringing the total it has raised from VCs to date to $40m. Continue reading "QuickPlay raises $12m"
Blink twice it seems and another new smartphone is launched. Just weeks after Palm and Sprint Nextel debuted the Palm Pre and Apple rolled out the go-faster iPhone T-Mobile USA took the wrappers off the T-Mobile myTouch 3G – the second Google Android-powered smartphone launched by the US-based mobile unit of Germany’s Deutsche Telekom group.
Indeed new handsets are appearing so fast that Denny Marie Post, T-Mobile USA’s chief marketing officer, anointed this year as ‘the summer of smartphones.’ Continue reading "Smartphone summer"
Research In Motion, the Canadian manufactuer of the BlackBerry family of smartphones, has quietly acquired Dash Navigation, the US-based startup which was forced to change its business plans in November after its internet-connected GPS unit failed to attract a large enough user base. The deal was first reported by GPS Business News.
Dash, which was backed by Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia, pioneered the idea of a network connected personal navigation device that logged the position and speed of users and then fed users back real time traffic reports based on the data. While the concept, built into Dash’s first and only windscreen-mounted GPS unit, attracted considerable interest, its success was inevitably dependent on building a large enough user base. Continue reading "BlackBerry maker buys Dash"
Bundling wireless data service with personal tech hardware finally seems to be catching on in the US, spurred on perhaps by slowing subscription growth as the wireless voice telephony market nears saturation.
First Amazon signed a trend-setting deal with Sprint to wireless-enable the original Kindle e-book reader - a deal which immediately set the Kindle apart from the competition including Sony’s rival e-book reader. Continue reading "Bundled data services grow"
Software engineers and device manufacturers continue to push up against the limits of human physiology in the search for the ultimate interface for mobile phones and other handheld mobile devices.
Thumb-operated mini-Qwerty keyboards, virtual keypads and  touch interfaces may all have their place, but perhaps the most logical interface for the mobile phone is voice? Continue reading "Tellme more"
David Gelles, Joseph Menn, Chris Nuttall and Richard Waters in the FT's San Francisco bureau upload their views - plus tech insights from writers in New York, London and Tokyo
FT Techblog's comments
Richard Waters has headed the FT's San Francisco bureau since 2002 and covers Google and Microsoft, among other things. A former New York bureau chief for the FT, he is intrigued by Silicon Valley's unique financial and business culture, and is looking forward to covering his second Tech Bust.
Chris Nuttall has been online and messing around with computers for more than 20 years and since 2004 has reported from the FT's San Francisco bureau on semiconductors, video games, consumer electronics and all things interwebby.
David Gelles, a California native, has been hanging around and reporting on Silicon Valley for several years. He joined the FT's San Francisco bureau in 2008 and writes about social networking, clean tech and artificial intelligence.
Maija Palmer has been writing about technology for the FT since 1999 and is facinated by cybercrime, privacy and all the other issues of the information society. Based in London, she covers European tech companies and hopes that they won't all get acquired by American rivals.
Joseph Menn writes about tech security and privacy, digital media, and the computer industry from the San Francisco bureau. He spent a decade covering tech for the Los Angeles Times and therefore remembers the days when pre-revenue dot-coms handed out free bottles of champagne at their launch parties.
Robin Harding is the FT's technology correspondent in Tokyo, following the fortunes of Japan's videogame, semiconductor and consumer electronics companies. Before that, he was an FT editorial writer in London, having previously worked for various banks and asset managers.
Robin Kwong is the FT's Taipei correspondent and writes about the companies that manufacture the vast majority of the world's computers and gadgets. He is interested in the intricacies of the technology supply chain and how China is increasingly changing the tech landscape.
Tim Bradshaw is the FT's digital media correspondent. Based in London, he has covered start-ups such as Twitter and Spotify, as well as the online ambitions of more established media companies, such as the BBC iPlayer. He also covers the advertising, marketing and video-game industries. Tim has been writing about technology, business and finance since 2003.
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