Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple with Steve Jobs, said today that Apple’s share price, which hit a 16-month low two days ago, is “disappointing” but that he was confident the tech giant would come out with products which would “surprise and shock us all.”

In a wide-ranging speech at the Login technology conference in Vilnius, Lithuania, Woz – as he is known – said: “[Apple's]stock price is a little low right now. Over time I’ve seen Apple go up or down 2x over a few months. It’s very disappointing because if you look at the amount of cash that Apples holds that cash translates to one to two hundred dollars per share of stock just in cash form. So the expectations are a little lower even than they expect.

“But where are the profits of the whole industry though? They are still with Apple and profits are all that really matter in the long run. Apple’s business model tends to be new products, even products that didn’t exist before and doing well out of them and not re-making the same thing, as eventually that just gets a little bit stale. So I would guess that Apple is very well prepared, and working on new things that are going to surprise and shock us all. And I honestly don’t know [what].”

In a wide-ranging speech to the conference, he envisioned a future where computers eventually become so powerful that they will deliver us “to a place of perfect happiness”. He said computers have already saved us from having to do a lot of manual work, but he also said it was a “good thing” that they would eventually take over a lot of our need to think. “Computers should save us from a lot of thinking, like calculating numbers. When electronic calculators came about they freed our minds to think of other things and enabled us to get to where we are today.”

He spoke about his hopes for voice recognition on smartphones becoming more powerful: “It’s almost there already. I use it all the time. I would expect voice [recognition interfaces] to become more common.”

He said the main obstacle faced by computing today was the sheer complexity of hardware devices due to miniaturization and in order to break out and create a new kind of computer “someone would have to start from the ground up.”

He also reminisced about his time with Steve Jobs and hacking together hardware projects for friends.

“The iPhone 5 is one of the hottest products today. Back then, the HP35 hand-held calculator was the iPhone 5 of its day.”

Woz is also hoping for a robot which could “clean my car at night in the garage” – although he didn’t imply Apple might be building such a thing.

“I gave up trying to guess [what Apple would do next] a long time ago. There can be rumors which are false, or something gets cancelled. I never ask key insiders at Apple what they are about to come out with.”

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

The land grab for online music streaming services continues. On the heels of reports that Spotify is planning to take its web-based music player global to complement its desktop and mobile apps, competitor Rdio is extending its own browser-based music-streaming service to seven more markets. Today, the company — founded and backed in 2010 by Skype/Kazaa/Joost co-founder Janus Friis — announced availability in Mexico, Ireland, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, and Austria, taking the total number of countries served by Rdio to 24.

Now, users in these seven markets will have access to Rdio’s catalog of 18 million tracks free of charge for six-month trials — no card payment details needed. Other features include many of the same ones that Spotify has been introducing more recently, including the ability to follow friends and “tastemakers,” collaborate on playlists and share tracks on social networks — in this case Facebook and Twitter.

Rdio also today announced that it has extended the six-month trial to Brazil, which was not included with other Rdio markets in the original rollout of the free offer in January. Germany, the other market excluded in January, is still left out.

Users can also test the mobile service on a 14-day trial. That mobile service has also been updated, by way of a new iOS app release today with more social features and a few other features, and an Android update last week.

Rdio uses the free trial as a way to introduce users to the service without asking them to pay fees up front. There is some logic behind this. While Spotify, with an ad-based freemium model, has announced some 20 million users overall, with 5 million of them paying, it’s questionable whether Rdio has seen that same scale of growth for its service, which charges the local equivalents of £4.99 per month for unlimited web streaming and £9.99 a month to include other devices like mobile.

Up to now, Rdio has been able to differentiate itself from Skype in part because of its ubiquity on the web. But competitive pressure on Rdio could get a little heavier in the future. Spotify is currently testing out a web-based player in the U.K. “We’ve been letting a small number of users try out a beta version of our new web player. We’re now letting more U.K. users try out the player as we gear up for a wider rollout,” a spokesperson told TechCrunch via email. But we’ve also heard that this is just the test market ahead of a wider, global push.

With Rdio already serving key markets like the U.S., much of Western Europe, and Brazil, the expansion to countries like Ireland and Lithuania is clearly a secondary-market expansion. But what it shows is that the company continues to build out its service in the overall streaming music land grab — a strategy that it plans to complement with new discovery tools in the months ahead.

“Rdio is the best product on the market for discovering music, and we will continue to improve that discovery experience by developing smarter tools to surface artists and songs our users love,” said Drew Larner, CEO of Rdio, in a statement. “By opening the social circle to seven new international markets, we’re making Rdio an increasingly global way to play, discover, and share music.”

Beyond discovery and geography, Rdio’s growth will also come in the form of new media, with Rdio’s employees currently working on a new video venture, called Vdio.

This is not a pivot, but rather an expansion: Vdio will sit alongside the existing Rdio music service. Todd Berman, the VP of engineering at Rdio, describes it as a “sister offering,” created by Rdio’s people and existing on shared infrastructure.

“We’re not moving away from music in any way, shape, or form,” Berman said in an interview, noting that the reason for the expansion is not as a statement of how well the Rdio offering has done against music streaming competitors like Spotify or Pandora, but because “people are interested in consuming content, not just music.” Berman himself is actually stepping down from his role this week.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Europe has gone accelerator crazy. If putting burgeoning startups through a 13 week mentor-led bootcamp and throwing a few euros their way is the key to economic growth, then the Euro crisis is all but solved. I jest, of course, and you arguably can’t have too much idea-stage money and support. But, seriously, I can barely keep up with these things.

To that end, two European accelerators opened to applications this month: Dotforge, a brand new accelerator based in Sheffield, UK, and Lithuania’s StartupHighway, which runs for its second year.

(Interestingly, both programmes have the hand of Jon Bradford, co-founder of Springboard and who has helped start no less than 12 accelerators, apparently.)

Dotforge

Based in the city of Sheffield in the UK, but open to applications world-wide, Dotforge is a 13 week accelerator/bootcamp that follows the formula of something like Y Combinator or TechStars in the U.S. and is backed by a mixture of private and public money, the latter in the form of Creative England via the UK government’s Regional Growth Fund.

It’s targeting startups with a B2B proposition, name-checking BIG Data as a plus-point, along with ideas that will benefit from industry ties with the region’s existing bedrock of companies operating in the e-learning and e-health space.

Startups accepted into the Dotforge programme receive up to £25,000 per founder and access to “over” £150,000 follow-on funding. Additional benefits cited include nearly $300k of “perks and deals”, along with free office accommodation and “exposure to world-class mentors, investors and specialists to help accelerate business” — a claim that every accelerator makes. Startups give up 6% equity to investors in return who may also choose to co-invest additional sums at a later date.

In addition to the programme itself, it sounds like there’s potentially access to more private and public money sloshing around. Along with the £150,000 of follow-on funding that’s up for grabs (via partnerships with Finance Yorkshire and Sheffield City Region LEP), qualifying startups will be supported by F6S to apply for the Young Entrepreneur Loan scheme for up to £20,000 per founder, designed as a bridge before they raise seed funding. Companies will also be supported to develop applications for £50,000 or more to the Sheffield City Region Local Enterprise Partnership’s Unlocking Business Investment programme.

The closing date for applications to Dotforge is 12pm Monday 25th February.

StartupHighway

Running for a second year and now on its third programme, StartupHighway follows a similar format with a 13 week accelerator/bootcamp, based in Vilnius in Lithuania and targeting the CEE region but open to startups worldwide. It’s looking for ten early-stage teams working in the area of IT or mobile technology, who receive seed funding of up to €14k per team, along with mentoring and a number of “perks”. In return, the accelerator takes a 10% stage in each startup, which is slightly higher than average for these types of programmes.

The accelerator claims a number of high-profile mentors, such as Jon Bradford (co-founder of Springboard), Lauri Antalainen (co-founder of GameFounders), Lopo Champalimaud (CEO and co-founder of Wahana), and Toivo Annus (co-founder of Skype).

StartupHighway says that in its 16 months of existence, it’s accelerated 10 startups over two classes. Within 12 months after graduation three out of four startups from the first batch raised follow on funding.

Startup teams wanting to get a place on the StartupHighway program have until March 31st to apply.

(See our Baltics coverage for more context.)

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

The startup talent in Estonia, particularly on the technical side, has taken on near-mythical status in Europe thanks to its association with the heady days of Skype. But as TechCrunch European editor Mike Butcher recently discovered, the tiny neighbouring Baltic nations of Lithuania and Latvia also have the potential to punch above their weight.

To that end, news comes today that Latvian startup Sellfy, the one-click e-commerce platform for self-publishers, has scored an angel investment from two Skype alumni; Toivo Annus, who was co-founder and technical lead of the VoIP behemoth, and long-serving head of Skype’s Estonia office, Sten Tamkivi. A number of telco executives from a “leading Spanish cable operator” have also participated.

As is more often the case in Europe, however, Sellfy is keeping schtum on the numbers, no doubt weary of its heavily funded U.S. competitor Gumroad, which last month closed a hefty $7M series A round.

Sellfy lets creators of digital content – ebooks, music, video, photos, or basically any type of file – to sell their wares via a simple short URL that can be shared through a brand’s existing community or fan base via the likes of Twitter and Facebook or their own website. Thus the startup is targeting the Long Tail of ‘self-publishers’ of which it already claims 3,000 globally, with take-up most prevalent in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Spain and Brazil.

In terms of monetization, Sellfy takes a highly competitive 5% commission fee from each purchase as well as offering an affiliate scheme designed to incentivize “influencers” across various social media, turning fans into marketeers.

“Why pay 30%, 50%, or even 75% to publishers or marketplaces if you already have your own community to speak to?”, says co-founder and CEO Maris Dagis.

Or to sell to, more to the point.

Furthermore, Dagis says that the company has been doubling its monthly revenue for the last few months (although he wouldn’t reveal specifics, so make of that what you will) and its this traction, along with the quality of the product, that helped make it an attractive investment.

Interestingly, it’s through Annus’ association with accelerator StartupHighway in Vilnius, Lithuania, that brought Sellfy to the Skype co-founder’s attention. The startup graduated through the TechStars-styled program in late 2011, seeing it bag €8k in the process in return for 10% equity.

As a footnote, Sellfy’s Dagis appears to be another blogger-turned-entrepreneur. In March 2010, he sold his blog Rotorblog.com to WebMediaBrands for an undisclosed amount.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

While in the US the visibility of women in technology startups is pretty well established, in Europe it’s suffered a little from the more general problem of the fragmented nature of the European tech scene. Things have improved slightly in recent years (at least that’s my impression, although who knows about the stats on the ground?), but it remains the case that there are far more men than women. So lifting the visibility of women in technology is no bad thing, especially if it encourages other women to pursue careers in tech startups, which are typically more about meritocratic, flat management that the traditional “IT” roles.

So it’s a welcome moment that the newly established Girls in Tech London group (@girlsintech_uk) has announced their pick of the Top 100 women in tech in Europe.

The group elected women from 19 different European countries (including the UK, Ireland, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Latvia, Poland, Russia, Lithuania, Spain, Greece, Israel and Turkey) based on their leadership either locally or internationally as well as their contribution to tech and innovation.

The final list is unranked, so we’ve put it in alphabetical order (we’ll try to update with Twitter handles etc in due course):

Agata Mazur, Applicake/FutureSimple
Alisa Chumachenko, Game Insight
Amelie Faure, entrepreuer and startup mentor
Amit Knaani, ooVoo
Ann Marisa Freese, Pure Equity
Anne Sophie Pastel, Aufeminin.com
Avid Larizadeh, Boticca
Baiba Kaskina, CERT/SigmaNet
Barbara Labate, Risparmiosuper
Bindi Karia, Microsoft
Caitlin Winner, Amen
Catherine Barba, Cashstore.fr
Celine Lazorthes, Leetchi
Charlotta Falvin, TAT
Christine Karman, Stratix
Claire Houry, Ventech
Clare Reddington, iShed
Claudia Helming, DaWanda
Colette Ballou, Ballou PR
Constanze Buchheim, i-Potentials
Crsitina Galan, BitCarrier
Deborah Rippol, Startup Weekend
Demet Mutlu, Trendyol
Diana Saraceni, 360 Capital Partners
Eileen Burbidge, Passion Capital
Ela Medej, Applicake/FutureSimple/Credictive
Elaine Coughlan, Atlantic Bridge
Elena Masolova, Pixonic
Elizabeth Varley, TechHub
Erin Noordeloos, NBC Universal
Gali Ross, Razoss
Georgina Atwell, Apple
Helen Ryan, Creganna Tactx Medical
Helena Chari, TSN ICAP
Ingrid Lunden, TechCrunch
Irina Anghel, South East European Private Equity and Venture Capital
Jamillah Knowles, The Next Web
Jennifer Hicks, Forbes
Jessica Powell, Badoo
Joanna Shields, Facebook
Jude Ower, Playmob
Judith Clegg, Classhouse
Julana Chondrasch, Fashionism
Julie Sinnamon, Enterprise Ireland
Juliette Bellavita, tipsandtrip.com
Kathryn Parsons, Decoded
Kresse Wesling, Elvis & Kresse
Kristin Skogen Lund, Telenor
Lara Rouyes, Dealissime
Linda Summers, Skype
Liz Fleming, Venture Lab
Lydia Benko, Corporate Finance Partners
Marie Ekeland, Elaia Partners
Marina Tognetti, Myngle
Martha Lane Fox, Lastminute
Martina Kolesnik, Oktogo
Mel Exon, BHH Labs
Monika Garbaciauskaite, Delfi
Moran Bar, VentureGeeks
Natasha Friis-Saxberg, Gignal
Nathalie Gaveau, Shopcade
Nathalie Massenet, Net-a-porter
Ola Sitarska, MyGuidie
Olivia Solon, Wired
Orit Hashay, Brayola
Paula Marttila, Startup guru and mentor
Rachel Bremer, Twitter
Raquel Iglesias, Totfan
Rebecca Barr, LivingSocial
Reshma Sohoni, Seedcamp
Robin Chase, Zipcar/BuzzCar
Sabine Fillias, Chasson Finance
Sandra Mesonero, Uniccos
Sara Ohlsson, DinnerHu
Sarah McVittie, Dressipi
Sherry Coutu, entrepreneur and investor
Simone Brummelhuis, Astia/TheNextWomen
Sofia Barattieri, Motilo
Sonali De Rycker, Accel Partners
Sophie Cornish, Notonthehighstreet
Stephanie Kaiser, Wooga
Sylvia Diaz-Montenegro, Leelo
Tiina Zilliacus, Gajarti Studios
Tine Thygesen, Everplaces
Tracy Doree, Llustre
Veerle Pieters, Duoh !
Verena Delius, Goodbeans/Panfu
Verena Delius, Young Internet
Viktorija Trimbel, Quantas Capital
Wendy Tan White, Moonfruit

The Judges included: Max Niederhofer (Accel Partners), Alex Farcet (Startupbootcamp), Patrick De Zeeuw (Startupbootcamp), Audrey Soussan (Ventech), Christian Thaler-Wolski (Wellington Partners), Paul Papadimitriou (Constellation Research), Marco Magnocavalo (Principia), Martin Kelly (IBM), Carl Sibersky (Poprigo), Cristobal Alonso (Bite Group), Oana Calugar (Neogen), Thibaud Elzière (Fotolia), Ciara Byrne (VentureBeat).

Part of the international Girls in Tech network, the new London chapter is backed by Google, Criteo and Eventbrite. An event in London today featured various speakers including those from Microsoft, NBC, Wired, Eventbrite, Uber, Just-Eat, StylistPick, Decoded, Shopcade, Seedcamp and more.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

This is kind of handy – and just in time for TechCrunch Disrupt. The team at Lemon Labs just launched a new app called “Hashtag App,” which lets you follow Twitter hashtags on your iPhone or iPad. But there are a bunch of apps for that, including Twitter itself, you say? Very true. That’s why Hashtag App kicks things up a notch and supports Instagram hashtags as well. Fun!

The app was designed for events and conferences (like #tcdisrupt, of course). However, you can use it to follow any hashtag of interest – not just those related to an event. Another nice thing about the app is that you don’t have to login to either Twitter or Instagram to use it. You just launch the app, enter a hashtag and go. The app uses the conventional “pull-to-refresh” feature, allowing you to update your hashtag-filled stream whenever you choose. It would be nice if there was a real-time option, like Streamboard, though. (Maybe in a later version?) When you want to change hashtags, you just click the “X” to head back to the homescreen. Nice. I’m going to give it a go today from Disrupt and see how it holds up.

The app creators are Lemon Labs, a self-described “funky app production house” working in startup mode from Vilnius, Lithuania, of all places. They presented the prototype last month at a tech startups conference for the most promising entrepreneurs of the Baltics and Scandinavia. The app’s creators include Monika Katkute, Mindaugas Kuprionis, Marius Kazemekaitis, and Jonas Lekevicius.

Katkute says they have not received outside funding, as the company has generated revenue from commercial projects they’ve done before. However, they’re currently talking to potential investors in the Nordics.

You can grab the app from iTunes here.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Apple took to the wires this morning to announce that the new iPad will hit 12 countries later this week. Along with South Korea, this coming Friday the new iPad launches in Brunei, Croatia, Cyprus, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Malaysia, Panama, St. Maarten, Uruguay and Venezuela. Then, the following Friday, it hits Colombia, Estonia, India, Israel, Latvia, Lithuania, Montenegro, South Africa and Thailand.

For better or worse, the new iPad will carry the suggested retail price of $499 USD and up. The iPad 2 will also be available at its new $399 price and might be the best bet in the majority of the markets just now getting the new iPad; only the North American markets have LTE data capabilities anyway.

These new markets will help the iPad extend its global dominance in the tablet wars. The iPad is far and away the most popular tablet on Earth but generic Android tablets have no doubt found a home in developing countries thanks to their generally lower price and wider availability. But that won’t stop the Apple machine. Cook & Co. will systematically roll out new products worldwide on Apple’s quest to be a trillion-dollar company.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

We’re running the first ever TechCrunch Baltics meetup today with a mini-conference and pitch contest in the lovely city of Riga, Latvia. The Baltic nations of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia are tiny countries, but punch above their weight in terms of their technical prowess. Estonia in particular was made famous as being the base from which Skype was developed, and now the rest of the region is coming alive with startups and accelerators. You can find the agenda here. Up to 8 selected Baltic startups will pitch to a jury and audience that includes many key investors in the region and beyond. We also have a dedicated twitter account @TCBaltics and the hashtag is #TCBaltics. Check out the live stream on this post:

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

We’ll we’ve run a lot of TechCrunch meetups all over Europe since 2007, getting to most of the major European cities. But there’s one place we haven’t got a chance to hit and that’s the tiger economies of the Baltic states: Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. The latter is of course where, famously, Skype was largely developed. So we’re putting that right with an event in January, TechCrunch Baltics. It will be on February 9th, 2012, in the lovely city of Riga, Latvia. Tickets will be available soon but please sign up on the site and follow @TCBaltics for information.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

If you’re one of the many Apple fanbois outside of the original seven countries in which Apple initially launched the iPhone 4S, I feel your pain. Though I placed my pre-order early, “complications” at AT&T have forced me to endure another 18-21 days and suffice it to say, I’ve turned a nice pukey shade of green with envy. But it’s possible you may get your new iPhone 4S before I do.

Apple has today opened up pre-orders in 22 new countries, including Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. The 4S will be available in-store next Friday, October 28, reports MacRumors.

However, a good number of those new countries don’t have an online Apple store, meaning that the option to pre-order an unlocked version of the handset direct from Apple only extends to the following countries: Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Singapore, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. Still, if you’re from Estonia, Latvia, Leichtenstein, Lithuania, or Slovakia, you may still be able to place a pre-order on a subsidized on-contract iPhone 4S through your local carrier of choice.

Though the iPhone 4S is scheduled to be available October 28, Apple doesn’t seem to be standing behind that so firmly at this point. The 4S sold 1 million units in its first 24 hours of pre-order availability, and a record-breaking 4 million units over its first weekend of in-store availability. With demand like that, it’s no surprise that Apple is merely giving a “1-2 week” estimate for shipments.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch