Ajax Girl

Seattle-based real estate site Zillow has raised another big round of capital. Tonight they’re announcing a $30 million financing, bringing their total capital raised to a whopping $87 million. The round was led by asset management firm Legg Mason Capital Management, with participation from existing investors enchmark Capital, Technology Crossover Ventures and PAR Capital. Their last round, $25 million, was announced in July 2006.

Zillow continues to make big traffic gains, too. The company, which now has 155 employees, had 4.4 million unique visitors in August 2007.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/158842240/

New consumer VOIP service Ooma officially launched yesterday and began selling units on their website. See additional coverage from Dean Takahashi and Adweek.

They also released their first (drug induced?) viral video to promote the service, which I have embedded above. The video was conceptualized by Ashton Kutcher, the companies creative director (hear our interview with Kutcher and CEO Andrew Frame here). Kutcher’s production company, Katalyst Films, produced it.

The company says the video is loaded with symbolism, and the meaning will become clearer over time as more videos are released in the series. Whatever it is, it’s entertaining.

Get one of the last ten free Oomas

The company gave TechCrunch readers fifty free Ooma systems in July. Today they say they’ll give us ten more to distribute to readers now. To win, leave a comment below and tell me WTF you think the video means, because I have no idea. The most creative answers win.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/158806393/

NBC will start offering its top television shows as ad-supported downloads this fall (autumn) from the NBC Direct website.

The announcement is a major setback for the NBC/ News Corp joint venture Hulu, which was originally set up to offer this very content. The announcement also follows on from NBC’s decision to discontinue offering its TV shows via iTunes by the end of the year.

NewTeeVee reported that shows to be offered by the service include Heroes, The Office, Life, Bionic Woman, 30 Rock, Friday Night Lights, Late Night with Conan O’Brien, and The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Initially the service will only include Windows Downloads; support for over devices, and Apple computers will be added lately.

We can’t deadpool Hulu just yet, but thing just keeps going from bad to worse for a company initially dubbed ClownCo.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/158793998/

Virtual world goods seller PlaySpan has received $6.5 million Series A in a round led by Easton Capital, Menlo Ventures, STIC and Novel TMT Ventures.

PlaySpan hasn’t launched yet, but is promising a product that will attempt to be an official commerce provider for multiple MMOGs. According to PlaySpan, the company has already signed up seven MMOG partners

The interesting side of PlaySpan is with the background story: PlaySpan was founded by Arjun Mehta (pictured) , a 6th grader from Silicon Valley who founded the company from money earned selling online game items won from quests he fought while attending 5th grade at Challenger School in San Jose.

No word on when PlaySpan will be launching.

(via Metaversed)

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/158783311/

Yaaarrrrr! It’s International Talk Like a Pirate Day and what better way to celebrate than with a nautically themed post. The new Netscape is now the old Netscape (but called Propeller) and is now live at Propeller.com.

The new old Netscape/ Propeller looks just like the old new Netscape, but with a new logo and URL. The old Netscape is now the new Netscape with the formerly new Netscape becoming the old new Netscape.

If that’s confusing try doing it whilst sounding like a pirate.

There be icebergs ahoy! and see our previous coverage here.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/158762152/

The YUI team pushed out another release of the Yahoo! UI library. This release contains a number of enhancements to existing controls:

• DataTable: CSS updates for better support of resizable columns and resolution of selection model issues as a result of eliminating ambiguous ID and index usage
• Rich Text Editor: Additional methods, CSS updates for easier customization, performance enhancements, and bug fixes
• Container: Updates to Z-index handling, ordering of containers rendered to the document’s Body element, and bug fixes
• Grids: Improved precision and consistency of margins in nested grids
• Slider: Updates to event handling

Catch the full details of this release at the YUI blog and download this new release at the YUI download page.

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ajaxian/~3/158733717/yui-231-released-eases-customization-rte-performance-increase-and-bug-fixes

OnForce has closed a $6.75 million series A1 financing round led by Accel Partners. OnForce is a “marketplace for on site IT services”. Companies use the site to post contract gigs for registered IT professionals in your area. Postings can be made to the site for $11 with 10% of the parts and labor taken after completion of the job and final payment transferred. OnForce plans on putting the financing toward expanding their operations into new markets outside of their current U.S. operations.

Marketplaces for technical services, especially coding, have been around for some time now, but the emergence of startups like Odesk and OnForce have shown there’s room for improvement. OnForce’s marketplace currently has more than 10,000 service professionals and has completed over 500,000 service events in its IT services marketplace. Their site also says they have an 18 minute median time till acceptance for work orders.

A key element for marketplaces is building trust between buyers and sellers. To that end OnForce has implemented training sessions, a ratings system, verified certifications, and optional background checks from ChoicePoint.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/158698772/

OK, a Google flavored billboard might not seem that exciting, but for a company with products have always promoted themself, it’s an interesting change from Google.

This shot was taken in upstate New York, far, far away from the early adopter crowd or the inner-city types whom Google might normally pitch to. Is it a sign that Google is looking to better promote it’s more obscure services to middle America? Perhaps, or as Search Engine Land suggests it might just be a trial as well.

(image credit: Blumenthals via SEL)

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/158677518/

Apple has formally announced the release date for the iPhone in Germany.

Germany will get the iPhone November 9th. The 8GB iPhone will retail for €399 ($557) including tax, and like in the United States is tied to a 2 year contract. German iPhone users will have access to iPhone features such as visual voicemail, Google Maps, WiFi iTunes Store, etc. Plans have not been announced yet.

No confirmation on the iPhone launching in France yet, despite TechCrunch France’s hot tip of a November 29 release date.

More at CrunchGear.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/158658607/

Digg is to offer new features today that will provide social networking functionality akin to Facebook and MySpace.

Digg users will now have full profile pages that allow them to connect to friends and share stories that may other wise not hit the main page of Digg.

Digg users will also be able to chat with one and other, and leave messages on user profiles; a similar feature to the Facebook wall.

The news has met with mixed reactions by Digg users, with some suggesting a name change to “Diggspace” may be coming. The group story sharing feature was noted with this comment:

The best part is that if you decide to use any of these new features and spread stories you’re into around to all your friends, you’ll get banned for gaming the system. Great idea!

Notably, the new link sharing features put Digg into competition with Kevin Rose’s other startup: Pownce. It will be interesting to see how Digg builds the features out given the obvious conflict building between the two.

(via BW)

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/158651841/