Monday, March 28, 2011

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Upstream Commerce Helps E-Retailers Price Their Products, Raises $1.25 Million Top
Exclusive - Upstream Commerce , a provider of a cloud-based, automated competitive pricing and product analytics solution for online retailers not to be confused with mobile marketing solutions company Upstream Systems , has raised $1.25 million in funding from YL Ventures , TechCrunch has learned. The company basically helps online retailers proactively adjust product pricing to the most appropriate levels based on market conditions. To help them do that, Upstream Commerce searches through competitors' sites 24/7 and analyzes relevant data such as their latest promotions, product assortment and recent pricing changes, all in order to provide their customers with actionable insights. Upstream Commerce was founded by Amos Peleg and Shai Geva. Both previously held executives roles at Mercado Software (acquired by Omniture, now Adobe). YL Ventures managing partner Yoav Leitersdorf has joined the startup’s board of directors as part of the investment deal. CrunchBase Information Upstream Commerce Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Cloud-Based Networking Company Aerohive Networks Raises $25 Million Top
Wireless LAN company Aerohive Networks has raised $25 million in Series D financing led by New Enterprise Associates with Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Northern Light Venture Capital participating in the round. This brings Aerohive’s total funding to $70 million. Founded in 2006, Aerohive Networks offers cloud-enabled, distributed Wi-Fi and routing products for enterprises and medium sized companies. Aerohive says that its controller-less Wi-Fi and cloud-based networking saves money for companies and provides better application performance. The new funding will be used to expand the company’s sales and marketing capabilities and for future acquisitions. Aerohive recently acquired fellow competitor, cloud-based networking company Pareto Networks. CrunchBase Information Aerohive Networks Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Apple Announces WWDC 2011 And It's All About The Software Top
As Brave Sir Robin noted before, Apple just announced the availability of tickets to WWDC 2011 on June 6-10 at San Francisco’s Moscone West. Nothing new here – this has been happening this way since time immemorial. However, what’s interesting is the focus on software in the announcement text. Read more…
 
GroupMe Brings Brands Into The Conversation Top
As group texting apps like GroupMe gain popularity, people are using them to create ad hoc, private social networks among a handful of friends. But wherever people congregate online or through their mobile phones, brands will want to talk to them. Today, GroupMe is opening up its mobile group chat to brands in what is the first hint at it business model: Featured Groups. Brands can create their own featured groups, which will show up as suggested conversation topics. When you and your friends create a group around those topics, they work like regular GroupMe chats, except you’ve also opted in to receive messages from the brand. These may include news, offers, marketing messages, or even VIP appearances by celebrities in your GroupMe chat. The first partners to take advantage of the new feature are Oxygen Media, MTV, Bon Jovi, Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival and Coachella. Oxygen will be creating suggested topics around its TV shows “Bad Girls Club” and the upcoming Paris Hilton show “The World According To Paris.” MTV is using it for “America's Best Dance Crew.” “Basically, we’re working with brands where there are intuitive use cases,” says GroupMe CEO Jared Hecht. “Live events (people going to a music festival together), television shows (people who watch a series with a group of friends), and artists/musicians (me and my friends love a band).” GroupMe first experimented with suggested group topics at SXSW , where people who created a SXSW group got a map and special info about goings on about Austin during the conference. Just before SXSW, GroupMe pushed out a major new version of its app for users. Now we are seeing the business side of that. If you and your friends go to a concert or really like “America’s Best Dance Crew” (you know who you are) and you are creating groups around these topics anyway, now you might get rewarded with “insider” info, contests, signed merchandise giveaways, or maybe even a pop-in from a band or cast member. The only way these branded topics will work, however, is if they don’t feel like marketing. And that’s always been the case with social media. Brands need to try to have real conversations with their consumers. But as we’ve seen with Twitter, Facebook, and other forms of social media, that is easier said than done. CrunchBase Information GroupMe Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Nokia Ditches Old Familiar Font For Shiny New One Top
Before reading the following post, I suggest you make peace with your Maker because it's so intense you may just explode in ecstasy. Are you ready? I mean, really, ask yourself: are you ready? I don't think you're ready because you couldn't possibly be ready. Well, OK, maybe you are ready. Let's hope so. Ready? Here we go: Nokia is using a new font. Read more…
 
CertiVox Raises $1.5 Million For Cloud-Based Content Security Technology Top
CertiVox , a startup that develops information security infrastructure-as-a-service, has raised $1,460,000 in Series A funding led by Pentech Ventures with Octopus Investments participating. CertiVox is an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) company that provides on-demand encryption key generation, management and content distribution for the cloud. Companies can use CertiVox to secure email and transferred files, prevent data leaks, implement digital rights management, and launch comprehensive audit controls over secure information exchanges. Users can control the use of their content with a number of post-delivery control features, even allowing users to restrict access to content. Customers can also track who accessed which content, when, and for how long, as well as track by groups, individuals, or channels. CertiVox faces competition from Adobe, Oracle and others. CrunchBase Information CertiVox Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Apple Sets Dates For WWDC: June 6 Through June 10 At Moscone, SF Top
Apple this morning announced that it will hold its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) June 6 through June 10 at San Francisco's Moscone West . The company promises to “unveil the future of iOS and Mac OS”, demo a bunch of applications and host more than 100 technical sessions (presented by Apple engineers). The site for the event is not up yet – the link is “apple.com/xx” which we suspect is an error on the company’s part. ( Update: fixed – tickets here for $1,599 each ). Interesting, the supporting quote in the press release announcing the dates for the event was not provided by CEO Steve Jobs but by Philip Schiller , SVP of Worldwide Product Marketing: "At this year's conference we are going to unveil the future of iOS and Mac OS. If you are an iOS or Mac OS X software developer, this is the event that you do not want to miss.” Further reading: iOS 5 Likely Pushed To The Fall After A Cloud Unveiling At WWDC CrunchBase Information Apple Information provided by CrunchBase
 
An App By Any Other Name … Top
“One of the deep mysteries to me is our logo, the symbol of lust and knowledge, bitten into, all crossed with the colors of the rainbow in the wrong order. You couldn’t dream of a more appropriate logo: lust, knowledge, hope, and anarchy.” – Apple exec Jean Louis Gassée on the naming of Apple Why is Color named “Color”? “A tribute to Apple’s color logo from the Apple II. This computer changed my life when I was seven (also a reference to another company name I’ve used.) My dad bought one from ComputerCraft run by Billy Ladin in Houston. He was one of the first computer resellers back in 1977. In an odd twist, I meet him in an elevator 15 years later and worked for him. He introduced me to the Web. Working at Apple was a dream. Color’s name is a tribute to Apple.” – Bill Nguyen, Color founder on why he chose the name Color Reading Semil Shah’s post on group messaging this morning, I was struck by the sheer numbers and diversity of the startup names scattered throughout: Yobongo, Disco, SocialCam, SoundCloud, Beluga, GroupMe, Fast Society, Rabbly, Whatsapp, Kik, textPlus, Convore, SMSGupShup, MessageParty, TextSlide, Bump Technologies, Color Labs and so on, all contenders in the saturated mobile social space. Some like MessageParty or textPlus had names that were actually related to their product, but many like Yobongo, Beluga and Disco had only a tenuous connection. It’s now pretty clear the app ecosystem has gone mainstream: People talk about apps the way they used to talk about music or drugs ( “Omg have you guys tried COLOR. Omg you have to try it. Omg we’re on it right now” ). And naming your startup has become like naming your band — An intricate dance between a multitude of contributing metaphoric and literal factors. So which approach, picking something random or actually related to what you do, makes more sense? @chrysb Chrys Bader You can tell it's a bubble because startups are raising so much money they can actually afford vowels in their domain names. about 13 hours ago via Twitter for iPhone Retweet Reply Two notable app launches this week highlighted how exactly an app’s name plays into public perception. The most visible instance of this was the launch of Color , an ubiquitous noun/verb name picked by Bill Nguyen and Peter Pham for their photosharing app with a hefty $41 million in funding. While initial complaints held that the app was unsearchable in both the Android and iPhone App Store and on Google because of its common name, that problem now seems to have been solved on Google. Perhaps all the inbound links from news and other sites are responsible for the fact that the service is now the eighth result for the word “color”? Color also somehow went from being invisible to being the first app to appear in the Apple App Store under the “color” search term (I’m hearing Android is still having issues ). Color’s name, while initially striking some people as slightly off if only for all its other connotations, is valid in that it accurately describes a core function of the Color Labs product, namely the fact that people are sharing images (a collection of colored pixels) through the app. The Color guys tell me (and Quora above) that they first came up with the name Color in a tribute to Apple’s original reverse-color logo and then bought the domain name for $350K .  In order to appeal to English speakers in other regions, they also bought the domain name Colour.com and redirected it to Color.com. And yes, this did not stave off complaints. @alisontan Alison Tan The 'Color' app isn't spelt the way I like it… #COLOUR about 14 hours ago via Twitter for iPhone Retweet Reply Contrast Color’s name with that of the other hot five-letter app of the moment, Disco . Currently it’s unclear whether Google made the $255K purchase of the domain Disco.com for a Slide-related purpose, or just to have on hand (Google has not given me a straight answer in any of my emails). If the latter is the case then it wouldn’t be the first time Google stockpiled domains ( bayareaburritos.com anyone?) for future use. Whether purposefully acquired or not, the name Disco seems to have a less of a direct relation to its core product than Color. While a disco (nightclub) does bring people together in a sense, the noun has absolutely nothing to do with group messaging, and I think users have already picked up on this distinction. All in all the choice to use Disco as a name for a group messaging app is incongruous, especially when you consider that Google also owns Hello.com. “This one fits to the product  #color , This one doesn’t fit at all  #disco ,” tweeted Berrehili Réda. “I don’t know, when I first heard about google’s product #disco, I thought they had finally released their music streaming service…” @mm Morgan Missen Google has owned Hello.com forever. I'm surprised they didn't use that name for Disco and wonder why they're saving it. http://t.co/lYApre9 about 10 hours ago via web Retweet Reply While it’s possible that the name Disco was already on the drawing board at Slide pre-Google acquisition, if Disco’s makers first chose a vague name and then built out a product for release, then they wouldn’t be alone. Private photo-sharing service Path still called itself Path (at Path.io) back when it was a list-making tool. Guess they thought the Path designation still held after the photo-sharing pivot. In a seminal post on the subject, VC Rich Barton holds in that making up a new word (like Kleenex or Yobongo) is much more powerful than trying to appropriate a already existing literal word like Color or Disco. But if you’d have to go with an existing word, I’d go with the one that has a strong tie-in to the actual product. Then again there’s always exceptions. No matter which apocryphal  origin story you believe, the word Apple has nothing to do with computers.  “If somebody had told me in 1970 that Apple would be the name of the top tech company, I would have laughed to death,” said VC Dani Nofal. Yes, and if someone had told me in 1990 that someone would name their company Color in homage to that top computer company Apple, I too would have chuckled. Color probably hopes it’ll be laughing all the way to an extended featured position in the App Store. @alexia Alexia Tsotsis Are you there Steve? It's me, Color. about 12 hours ago via Seesmic Desktop Retweet Reply CrunchBase Information Color Apple
 

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