From Shervin Pishevar at Menlo Ventures:

I’m thrilled to announce today that Menlo Ventures is leading a $39m Series B investment in Uber, an on-demand car services company that is truly revolutionizing personal transportation. […] Uber is my largest investment since joining Menlo in June and I am honored to join the company’s board as a board observer.

Uber is an awesome company that is disrupting a territorial industry (and fighting archaic laws meant to keep the status quo). I’m rooting for them. I am curious, though, why they felt the need to raise $39mm. Advertising? A huge sales team? Are they planning on building a custom hardware device?

Ken Murray in Zócalo Public Square:

Several years ago, my older cousin Torch (born at home by the light of a flashlight—or torch) had a seizure that turned out to be the result of lung cancer that had gone to his brain. I arranged for him to see various specialists, and we learned that with aggressive treatment of his condition, including three to five hospital visits a week for chemotherapy, he would live perhaps four months. Ultimately, Torch decided against any treatment and simply took pills for brain swelling. He moved in with me. We spent the next eight months doing a bunch of things that he enjoyed, having fun together like we hadn’t had in decades. We went to Disneyland, his first time. We’d hang out at home. Torch was a sports nut, and he was very happy to watch sports and eat my cooking. He even gained a bit of weight, eating his favorite foods rather than hospital foods. He

From CNN Money:

Facebook has acquired location sharing service Gowalla for an undisclosed sum, according to a source close to Gowalla.

What the hell is Facebook going to do with all of the design talent they’ve hired over the past year? They now employ a huge number of the greatest designers in the world.

This is Research In Motion’s 10-year daily chart. It tells the chilling story of a company that was innovating its way to the top for years, became complacent, and then, when the market conditions were disrupted by a new player, completely failed to adapt. Investors continued to have some confidence throughout 2009-2010 as the company attempted to downplay its shortcomings in flamboyant statements about the future. It also attempted to obfuscate the leading indicators of its demise by pulling financial tricks to keep its sales charts stable (e.g. by offering discounts near the ends of quarters to increase raw unit numbers).

By early 2011, the company had distracted the industry with the PlayBook, which was apparently meant to take on the iPad. RIM’s core business, BlackBerry phones, continued to stagnate and all attempts to create a touchscreen device had failed; the software was...

Research In Motion […] today announced that it would record a pre-tax provision in the third quarter of fiscal 2012 of approximately $485 million, $360 million after tax, related to its inventory valuation of BlackBerry PlayBook tablets. The charge is expected to be predominantly non-cash As previously disclosed, RIM has a high level of BlackBerry PlayBook inventory.  The Company now believes that an increase in promotional activity is required to drive sell-through to end customers.  This is due to several factors, including recent shifts in the competitive dynamics of the tablet market and a delay in the release of the PlayBook OS 2.0 software.

In this very obtuse and dishonest press release, RIM suggests that, due to “recent shifts in the competitive dynamics of the tablet market” and “a delay in the release of the PlayBook OS 2.0 software,” the company is being forced to sell its...

Nuance CEO Paul Ricci, in their Q4 earnings conference call:

I think you put your finger on what we consider to be the next big horizon and that is other areas of consumer electronics, particularly entertainment. We definitely sense that in the last six months or so, awareness of voice as part of the mobile experience has accelerated. There is a lot of interest right now among consumer electronics manufacturers in extending some aspects of the mobile experience into the living room.

During Nuance’s earnings conference call last week, CEO Paul Ricci had a few interesting things to say about the future of their voice recognition technology, which powers Siri on the iPhone 4S. He specifically mentioned TVs twice, and then talked about things more broadly as bringing “the mobile experience into the living room.”

My doubts about a voice-powered TV made by Apple are becoming harder and...

The social networking service Facebook has agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it deceived consumers by telling them they could keep their information on Facebook private, and then repeatedly allowing it to be shared and made public. The proposed settlement requires Facebook to take several steps to make sure it lives up to its promises in the future, including giving consumers clear and prominent notice and obtaining consumers’ express consent before their information is shared beyond the privacy settings they have established.

The best part of this press release is the last sentence: “Like the FTC on Facebook…”

Farhad Manjoo at Slate:

Can I let you in on a secret? Typing two spaces after a period is totally, completely, utterly, and inarguably wrong.

The AMR Corporation, the parent company of American Airlines, said on Tuesday that it had filed for bankruptcy protection in an effort to reduce labor costs and shed a heavy debt burden.

Shocking, just shocking.