Lady Gaga and Eric Schmidt Team Up
There’s a new dynamic duo in cyberspace, and it’s not who you’d expect. The New York Times is reporting that a new start-up called Backplane has raised over $1 million in venture funding. The company’s investment is led by Tomorrow Ventures, the venture firm that Google Executive Chairman (and former CEO) Eric Schmidt founded. By investing in Backplane, Schmidt has a new partner: Lady Gaga. The pop artist owns 20 percent of Backplane.
Backplane, which has yet to launch, is designed to build and expand online communities around musicians and sports teams. According to the Times, the service also integrates updates from Facebook and Twitter, among other sites. Backplane is co-founded by Lady Gaga’s manager, Troy Carter.
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Ever Want a Joystick for your iPad?
Think you could use another accessory for your smartphone? Check out the Fling joysticks for the iPad – awesome little contraptions consisting of two suction cups, a conductive joystick, and a cleverly designed plastic spiral to bring Fling’s screen-cluttering gaming action to the iPhone, iPod touch, and Android devices. The Fling Mini is currently available starting today for preorder. A pair will run you $24.95 and they should start shipping in mid to late July.
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Sina to Launch Twitter Competitor
Weibo, the Chinese Twitter hybrid launched by SINA in August 2009, is reportedly planning to release an English language version of the platform in the United States in the next 2-3 months, that will compete head-to-head with Twitter. This is according to PaidContent, citing the the Chinese technology site TechWeb.
Weibo dominates the microblogging landscape in China with 140 million users and millions of updates each day, and is rumored to offer a more feature-rich experience than Twitter, with extras such as message threading, groups and polling functionality. The question is, will everyone currently on Twitter be lured away or has Twitter reached such a critical mass that it’s unstoppable?
