Valleywag
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Posts Tagged “
Dodgeball
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wifiarmy
Googlephone app makers set to take $5 million in funding
Venture capital has found its way onto Google's open mobile platform, Android. W2Pi Studios, the company behind WiFiArmy, a videogram written for Android, is set to take $5 million in funding, a company source tells Valleywag. Company president Peter Whatanitch explains the game's premise in the video above. "This game allows you to play a first-person shooter anytime, anywhere." Charming! Anyway, it sounds a lot like Dodgeball to us. And we know how that worked out in Google's hands.
startups
Don't let Google get you, acquired founder says
In private moments, Dodgeball cofounder Dennis Crowley will tell any startup entrepreneur in New York asking: Avoid getting acquired by Google. "Sure, he's not upset about the $40 million and he's glad to be dating models," a source close to Crowley told me. "But he's not happy with Google." Not all Google-acquired founders are so bitter. Word is the FeedBurner guys love it at Google. But FeedBurner's best innovations are in advertising, not engineering. Some say the same goes for Google these days. (Photo by rosswerks)
An addendum to last week's story about the robbery at Dodgeball founder Dennis Crowley's new workplace. Turns out there were actually two transvestite prostitutes who broke into the office, and he has the security camera footage to prove it. [Teen Drama]
Someone broke into the offices of Area/Code, the startup where Dodgeball.com founder Dennis Crowley currently works (after bitterly leaving Google just three months ago). Taken were Crowley's laptop, a flatscreen monitor, and a digital camera. Left behind was the transvestite hooker still asleep on the office couch. [Teen Drama]
yahoo
MyBlogLog to be upgraded and assimilated
MyBlogLog, the well-received web "widget" that displays images of recent visitors to your site, has re-emerged after being purchased by Yahoo back in January. David Dalka reports that Robyn Tippins, the community manager for MyBlogLog, promises a redesign and several new features. More »
dodgeball
Aaaaand it's dead.
NICK DOUGLAS — [UPDATE: It's alive! Dodgeball is the Terry Schiavo of Web 2.0!] Sometimes a product just dies, horribly and suddenly, as if it were unlucky enough to be under a falling piano, stepping into an empty elevator shaft, getting smacked upside the head with a very large rock. It seems that's the fate of Dodgeball, the text-based find-your-friends-at-the-bar service that Google bought in 2005 and promptly abandoned. As of today, the front page is just a "502 server error" (a friend tells me that means the backend server, which actually handles page requests, is dead). More »
google
Dodgeball founder quits Google; will Google kill the service?
NICK DOUGLAS — Dennis Crowley announced Sunday night that he's left Google. (His friend Andrew Krucoff scooped him.) The Dodgeball founder said that the company had never given his team the resources they needed to maintain and expand the location-texting service. "The whole experience was incredibly frustrating," he wrote on a group blog. Crowley posted the same story on Flickr, where he also commented that he and co-Dodgeballer Alex Rainert left "regardless" of their Google stock (or options) vesting schedule. "Regardless"? Ha! Google bought Dodgeball 23 months ago. One would assume his contract made him stay two years to collect a stock or options bonus, and Crowley can't be dumb enough to walk away one month before payday. Assume he and Rainert got their money's worth out of these dreary two years — and they sure deserved it, having to sit back and watch startups Twitter and Jaiku take over the group-messaging field. The next question is, will Google shutter Dodgeball? (Photo: Dennis Crowley)
re-org
Dodgeball darkening?
Not since Biggie vs. Tupac have the East and West coasts been embroiled in as bloody a feud as Dodgeball versus Twitter. Since the former was acquired by Google, it's been the subject of occasionally surfacing rumors that it may be culled or consolidated inside a broader Google mobile offering. Twitter user cee-dub plants a rumor that Dodgeball.com may be about to "go dark"; no clue whether he means just the website or the service entire. Concur or dispute?
dodgeball
Dodgeball finally adopted; Google knows where you drank last night
Getting bought by Google is one thing (or, more accurately, up to 1.65 billion things), but a company doesn't really belong to the family until it's been properly adopted. That's why Dodgeball, the three-man startup that lets users mass-text each other from bars or restaurants, seemed like a foster child after Google bought it and seemingly abandoned it. But this week that changed. More »
nyc
Remainders: It doesn't help that the ads sell something called "iLoad"
- New York-based e-mail startup Daily Candy gets a sweet deal: an investment valuing the company at $130 mil, which lets the company take down its "For Sale" sign and get back to the important business of making urban women feel inadequately shoed. [Gawker, link being fixed]
- So some big-city bloggers had a party for Six Apart's new Vox blogging service, right? And some guys sat in a hot tub on the roof? And probably someone called this the bubble? Hon, it's not a bubble until what's in the hot tub can get you drunk. Anyway, click through for topless shots of Gawker Media managing editor Lockhart Steele. [Teen Drama]
- Damn it, Gawker's stealing all the tech news today. As our catty sister notes, the New York Times is proud to name-drop Dodgeball.com founder Dennis Crowley, the man responsible for every New Yorker and San Franciscan constantly updating their friends on how drunk they're about to get. [Gawker]
- Pictured: The Times also uses a photo illustration to remind everyone of those wild days of free drink coasters for all. [NYT]
- Mooching off the "Get a Mac" commercials: You can make a clever parody or a creepy knock-off ad. (Please make the parody.) [iLoad]
valleyspeak
Valleyspeak: And by "evil" I mean "unprofitable"
Re-educate yourself with this morning's Valleyspeak lesson. Ten points every time you use one in a sentence! More »
om malik
Remainders: Filthy-mouthed satirists
Surprise, surprise. Om Malik says that Google Calendar will follow the new company strategy: take something old, mock it up in Ajax, and shove it out the door. [GigaOM]Doucheball: the Dodgeball for people who suck. [Brother Lawrence on Flickr]
BlowTheDotOutYourAss (pictured): more dot-coms you don't want. [BTDOYA via supr.c.ilio.us]
Tip beg: Anyone have insider info on Yahoo suing wireless content startup MForma? The MGM of Silicon Valley accused the former Yahooers at MForma of stealing trade secrets. There a legitimate case here, or is Yahoo's new policy "If we can't keep 'em, sue 'em"? [CNET]
And a remaindered video: a UFO-like sighting of what definitely isn't Google's secret OS. [YouTube] More »
