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Kickstarter, the site that lets budding entrepreneurs throw their ideas into the ring and raise money via crowdsourcing, is now available in the U.K.

Kickstarter co-founder Yancey Strickler announced the launch yesterday to the BBC, saying that the U.S.-based service had raised over $340 million for projects. So far, there are about 200 projects specifically designed for U.K. audiences on the site. If the U.S. success is the guide, that number will increase quickly.

Kickstarter launched in 2009 and has grown rapidly in popularity. Over 70,000 projects have been pitched on Kickstarter. One of … Read more

A mobile company that wants to change how you access data just raised a boatload of cash.

ItsOn announced today that it has closed a $15.5 million Series B round of financing. Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz led the round. The firm was joined by investment company SV Angel.

ItsOn takes a unique stance on data usage by allowing customers to choose how much data they need and for what purpose. The company's Web site is shy about details on its service, but in a statement, ItsOn founder and CEO Greg Raleigh says that his firm's focus … Read more

Yahoo has acquired its first startup: Stamped, a recommendations engine built by former Google colleagues of Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer -- a team Mayer wanted to bring into the fold at Yahoo.

Stamped, which launched as a smartphone app last November, lets users recommend books, movies, restaurants, and other things to friends by giving them a virtual stamp of approval. It uses a Twitter-like social graph that lets users follow recommendations from both friends and celebrities, like chef Mario Batali.

The company had raised about $3 million from a range of investors including Bain Capital Ventures, Google Ventures, and singer … Read more

Few industries are under greater assault by technology than higher education -- and few companies are doing more to upend the way people learn the world over than Udacity, the young Palo Alto, Calif.-based startup that's brought computer science classes online and watched hundreds of thousands of students enroll. For single classes.

The startup is led by Sebastian Thrun, a former Google VP and fellow who led the development of Google's self-driving car and Google Glasses. And those are just some of his accomplishments. It was while he was a professor at Stanford University that he stumbled … Read more

Facebook's stock is on a tear today, poised to post its biggest one day gain since it went public in May. This comes a day after the company's strong third-quarter earnings report and, perhaps more importantly, its upbeat call with analysts in which CEO Mark Zuckerberg said flat out, "I want to dispel this myth that Facebook can't make money on mobile."

While Zuckerberg and his top execs stressed that Facebook is in the early days on this front -- it only started trying to make money from mobile in March -- they did share … Read more

PALO ALTO, Calif. -- Ben Horowitz, co-founder of Silicon Valley venture firm Andreessen Horowitz, told a crowd at today's Y Combinator startup school that running a company is a nerve-racking experience; that you shouldn't be fooled into thinking everything's been done; and that "every breakthrough idea looks like a stupid idea" at first.

"Sure we look for big markets and blah, blah, blah," Horowitz told some 1,700 entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs packed into Stanford University's Memorial Hall auditorium. "But we're all looking for a breakthrough idea. And by definition, … Read more

PALO ALTO, Calif. -- Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg addressed an adoring crowd at Y Combinator's startup school today, speaking confidently about Facebook and describing a world in which people will share a whole lot more than they do now -- via Facebook and other social companies.

"It's sort of a social-networking version of Moore's Law," said Zuckerberg, who was interviewed by Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham. "We expect this rate [of sharing] will double every 10 years. So in 10 years from now, people will be sharing about 1,000 times as … Read more

Yelp is taking aim at business owners that try to artificially inflate their reviews on the site.

The user-reviews site today announced today that it has launched a new initiative to root out companies that have made "significant attempts to pay for reviews." In the event it finds such attempts, Yelp will post a "consumer alert" on a company posting alerting users to the violation.

"We caught someone red-handed trying to buy reviews for this business," the alert reads. "We weren't fooled, but wanted you to know because buying reviews not only … Read more

Color Labs, according to a representative authorized to speak on the company's behalf, is not closing down.

But for now, that's about all that's clear at the chaotic startup that is Color. Even the representative who issued that statement said he's dealing with the press only because the person who held that job just left the company.

His statement comes after Venture Beat this morning reported that a Color vice president had sent an e-mail to employees saying that Color was winding down. "Last week, the Board and major shareholders voted to wind down the … Read more