Tuesday, July 26, 2011

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Nodeable, The Twitter For Machines, Raises $2 Million From True Ventures Top
Nodeable , a startup building a cloud-based social platform for systems data, announced today that it has raised $2 million in series A financing, led by True Ventures . The startup will use this infusion of capital to ramp up hiring efforts and continue building its platform, as it moves into private beta. But what is it about this young startup that has True Ventures excited? Cloud computing and various sources of big data are becoming more and more popular as on-demand resources for businesses, but at the same time, the management of clouds on the back-end is becoming increasingly challenging and messy. And though no one is asking the cloud to disappear, developers, IT staff, and admins are still largely compelled to interact with these systems on a case-per-case basis. Essentially, each problem requires an ad hoc solution, and really the way these cloud and data systems are managed, and interacted with, has not added the modern look, feel, or approach of newer communication media, like social networks, for example. Thus, Nodeable is attempting to apply social mechanics to systems data in such a way as to enable developers, IT staffs, and more to interact with cloud infrastructure and data just as they would on social networks. Put another way, Nodeable is Like a Twitter for machines, in that it aggregates systems data from a broad array of sources — co-founder and CEO Dave Rosenberg cites Amazon AMI as an example at the infrastructural level and Github at the data source level — then processes that data, adds metadata or defined messages, before presenting the data in a UI or via an API. Users, he says, can interact with the platform itself by employing social networking mechanics, like tagging, both in messages sent to systems (like @webserver1 restart, for example) or to other users. Much in the same way communication tools like Yammer or Twitter function. Though this does not mean Nodeable is a “scripted automation tool like Rightscale or Opscode’s Chef “, he says, instead the approach is meant to provide a simple way for users to communicate with cloud services — to allow IT staffs to make better decisions, faster. “Ultimately, we are building a platform that sits in the middle of data streams and allows the data to be manipulated” , the CEO told me. “We are trying to apply what Okta does for authentication to system data streams”. Nodeable wants to combine big data analytics, systems management and social communications in such a way that a social layer is added to an analytics platform to give users an interface that feels like a social networking site, but still allows businesses to manage the complexities of data management.
 
Greplin Wants You To Redesign Wikipedia Search Top
Personal search engine Greplin is announcing the launch of its Wikipedia Search Design Contest today, with the ultimate objective of conceptualizing a better way to search Wikipedia. Greplin founder Daniel Gross tells me that Wikipedia search is “broken” in the sense that most people use Google to search Wikipedia, typing in something like “Beatles White Album Wiki” to get to this page of results. He re-imagines a world were people could use Wikipedia search for that functionality and in addition get beautifully visualized layout of links and images, essentially a more visually appealing way to learn from searches. He says, “I don't think there is something specific about Wikipedia search that is specifically bad, that doesn't mean it couldn't be infinitely better. If a good designer sunk deep thought into a search interface specifically for Wikipedia they would be able to build something that would make people shocked.” Entrants can send in statif comps as .jpeg .png or .pdf files or actually build out a product, by the deadline of August 18th. While the winning entry won’t necessarily be built out by Wikipedia (which isn’t affiliated with the contest), the winner will receive some pretty amazing prizes including the placement of their Twitter handle — in Helvetica Neue Bold of course – on a billboard in SOMA and a trip along with the runner-up to see a talk by data visualization pioneer Edward Tufte. Winners will own their own work and can give Wikipedia the option to use it under the Creative Commons licence. What’s most impressive is the coterie of judges Greplin has brought on to moderate the entries, design luminaries like Google lead search designer Jon Wiley , Milk design lead Daniel Burka , Dribbble founder Dan Cederholm , Apple Senior UI designer Johnnie Manzari , Milk founder Kevin Rose , former Twitter Designer Kevin Cheng , Sidebar director of user experience Dan Rubin and Khan Academy design lead Jason Rosoff . On a base level, if you’re interested in getting any of those people to see your work you should enter this (I would if I were a designer), but the grander idea is that why shouldn’t designers contribute to the design of Wikipedia the way laymen contribute to its over 3.5 million articles? “There’s a ton of unrealized potential,” Gross says.
 
Taulia Raises $8.5 Million To Help Companies Pay Their Invoices Early Top
Invoicing company Taulia has raised $8.5 million in Series B funding led by DAG Ventures with Matrix Partners and Trinity Ventures participating. This brings Taulia’s total funding to over $12 million. Taulia essentially enables corporations to pay their invoices early through its SaaS Dynamic Discounting solution , which often results in cost-cutting thanks to the early payment discounts they stand to receive from their suppliers. For suppliers, the Taulia Vendor Portal offers the ability to accelerate invoice payment on-demand. The company’s on-demand platform promises to let companies connect to any proprietary portal or third-party e-invoicing network. A number of Fortune 500 companies are using Taulia’s platform including Pfizer and Coca-Cola. Taulia will use the additional funding for sales and marketing efforts as well as to acquire new engineering talent for product development. Crunchbase TAULIA Company: TAULIA Website: http://www.taulia.com We build simple solutions that help SAP customers uncover hidden savings opportunities in their supply chains Our first product, the Taulia Invoicement Suite, includes a dynamic discounting module and self-service... Learn more
 
PC Victory: Battlefield 3 To Be Scaled Down For Consoles Top
Battlefield 3 is perhaps one of the most anticipated games of 2011. It arrives in October and will likely see hundreds of thousands of sales on day one. As a AAA title, it behooves BF3 to debut on the 360, PS3, and Windows at the same time. But the last several years have seen troubling compromises in PC versions, obviously being made because of console restraints. Just recently I panned Dungeon Siege 3 , a major production if I’ve ever seen one, for this exact problem. But it looks like the shoe is on the other foot with BF3 : maps are going to be more “compact” and player counts reduced to from 64 on the PC version to 24 on console. As a PC gamer myself, I believe I have a valid right to be smug here. The shoddy console ports we’ve seen have been so blatant that for years we’ve wondered why they bother at all. And here we have (as they promised) a game actually made for the PC and then scaled down for the consoles. The consoles are years old and, although developers are managing to squeeze every last drop of performance out of them, it’s not an exaggeration to say they’re totally out of date with current graphics technology. Graphics doesn’t just mean things are shinier – it means making the graphical component of the game easier to implement, the art easier to apply, the levels easier to sculpt. More time can be spent designing the game and less coming up with a way to fit environmental reflection calculations into spare cycles. And now is the crunch time. If we’re to believe industry sources, new consoles from Microsoft and Sony will likely come in 2013, perhaps with a 2012 announcement, but still some ways out. And until then the discrepancy in power between the consoles and PCs will only grow. If developers are planning a PC release, it makes much more sense at this point to design for the PC and then scale down, rather than vice versa. Because if they try to scale up, the results are so laughable that it should come as no surprise when port sales are low. With the increase in downloadable and streaming game services, the PC is pulling ahead of the console once more, and it’s going to take time before they can catch up. The golden age of Half-Life and Everquest is over, but PC gaming get a second spring — if developers know what’s good for them.
 
Read It Later Raises $2.5 Million, Wants To Become The Dropbox Of Content Top
Read It Later , the popular service that lets you bookmark a webpage and access it later from any smartphone, computer, or tablet, has raised a $2.5 million funding round. The round marks the company’s first external funding, and includes investments from Foundation Capital (which led the round), Baseline Ventures, Google Ventures, Founder Collective, and several angel investors. RIL founder Nathan Weiner originally started the company back in August 2007, and he was the only person working on it up until early this year — during which time he built out the web product, multiple mobile applications, and a userbase of millions. As the service took off Weiner moved out to Silicon Valley where he received multiple acquisition offers, but decided to keep the company independent. He’s also started growing the team, which is up to five. Weiner wants RIL to “do for web content what Tivo did for TV content”, in the sense that it lets them consume what they want, when they want it. He says Read It Later also has a mission that similar to Drobox’s: it wants to give you access to that content on any of your devices, be it a phone, tablet, television, or computer, without having to think about where you saved what. At this point Read It Later obviously has a focus on written content, but people have already started using it to bookmark other things — in fact, the number one most saved URL on Read It Later is YouTube. Weiner says that the service currently has a total of 3.5 million registered users (though that includes users who aren’t active). And it’s showing strong growth, with 10,000 downloads per day and over 250 applications (including Twitter’s official app) that have integrated the RIL API. You can see a directory of these apps here . Of course, Read It Later isn’t the only service that lets you sync bookmarks between devices.   Instapaper gets a lot of attention from the tech press (in part because it’s run by Tumblr’s former lead developer Marco Arment, and in part because it’s very well done). But Weiner says that Read It Later actually started before Instapaper and that its install base is around twice as large. He also points out that Instapaper caters primarily to users on iOS, whereas Read It Later offers official apps on more platforms (though Instapaper it does have an API, so there are non-official apps available for other platforms). And then there’s Apple, which launched a feature called ‘Reading List’ in the latest version of Safari that includes a lot of the same functionality. Weiner isn’t concerned about this — he says that Apple users are siloed and that the number of RIL users who use both iOS and Safari make up less than 1% of RIL users. Crunchbase READ IT LATER Company: READ IT LATER Website: http://readitlater.com Launch Date: 6/8/2007 Read It Later is a service that lets you save what you find on the web to watch and read on any device, anytime. Founded in August 2007 by Nate... Learn more
 
How Appropriate, Pampers Mobile Ad Promoted On Sex App Top
There is a lot of mobile ad inventory out there and sometimes brands can’t be sure where their ads will appear. Just like on the Web, automated ad placements can sometimes turn up in the darndest places. Take a look at the Pampers ad at the bottom of this screenshot for a popular app called 300+ Sex Positions . It is an ad cross-promoting Pamper’s own Hello Baby app . The copy reads: “Discover the wonders of babys development with Pamper’s Hello Baby app.” Hello Baby, indeed. The Pampers app appropriately enough is a pregnancy calendar that might come in handy if you try some of the sex positions in the first app. But I really wonder whether Pampers and its parent company Proctor & Gamble want their ads appearing in this context. It just isn’t P&G enough. This isn’t just any add either. It is one of Apple’s own iAds. If you squint your eyes, you can see a watermark in the lower righthand corner. What do you think, was this ad placement intentional or a big mistake? Anyone from Pampers out there who can enlighten us on the marketing strategy here? Crunchbase IAD Product: IAD Website: Company Apple A mobile advertising platform released with iPhone OS 4 that allows brands to advertise without taking users out of an application. This will allow iPhone developers and corporate marketers... Learn more
 
Sprint To Finally Retire The Evo 4G? Top
It's looking like Sprint has signed off on death warrants for a few of its handsets, including our nation's first-ever 4G smartphone, the Evo 4G. According to a leaked screenshot of this internal Sprint document (discovered by SprintFeed ), at least 10 phones are getting the ax. First up on the chopping block are the pink Samsung Seek and the blue Sanyo Innuendo, which will both get their EOL (end of life) branding in the next two weeks. Then, the Motorola i1 will see its end along with the grey BlackBerry Style 9670 around the end of July/early August. Following those funerals, September will hit and bring with it a world of pain. The white Evo 4G will be no more, along with the BlackBerry Bold 9650 (rear-camera model) and the grey BlackBerry Curve. A month later, we'll have to say goodbye to the Samsung Epic 4G, the Samsung Transform, and the black Evo 4G. Many of these models have successors that are either in the works or on shelves now. But if you've had your heart set on an Evo 4G, Samsung Epic 4G, or any of these other doomed phones, get your rear in gear because they won't be around much longer. [via Phone Arena ]
 
Five Things I Learned At MySpace That Could Help Google+ Top
Editor's note : This guest post is written by  Tom Anderson , the former President, founder and first friend on MySpace. You can now find Tom on  Facebook ,  Twitter , and  Google+ This is just a guess, but I’d bet money that Vic Gundotra and Bradley Horowitz probably feel like their heads are going to explode. Anyone on the Google+ team who really cares about G+ is probably getting very little sleep, and are annoying their friends and family with their one-track G+ minds. There’s been such an amazing amount of feedback , the Google+ team can’t help but be overwhelmed—and what we see is just on the site and in the press. Imagine what’s coming into that “send feedback” inbox that’s at the bottom of every G+ page? At MySpace I tried to digest that “inbox” and “community” by myself, and that worked pretty well for a few years. It was a little easier back then, but today’s G+ users are an entirely different breed. There are a ton of early adopters, technologists on G+, and they’ve all been through the social networking ringer before. G+ users are offering powerpoint slideshows, illustrated screen mockups and long-winded essays on what needs to happen. There is genuine, high-quality thinking going on in the “free advice” that G+ is receiving from the global community. How can the G+ team cut through the noise and decide what’s important? (Especially when there’s some really high quality noise being directed Google’s way.) Here’s a few things I’d do right now, if I were Google. 1) Start seriously courting the journalists, tastemakers, and celebrities that are using and/or pontificating about G+. This doesn’t mean Google should ignore “regular” user feedback, or even that Google should do what the triumvirate says they should do. It just means they should have a real, personal relationship with those people. During MySpace’s run-up, journalists continually got their facts wrong about MySpace. They wrote story after story about how Facebook was bigger than MySpace when in truth Facebook wasn’t even 1/10th the size of MySpace. Why? Because the journalists’ Ivy League educated children were using Facebook, and journalists have deadlines and other things to think about. If you get to know people, they think of a real human being when they write those stories, and they care a little more. I don’t want to say people are “sheep,” but if the general Internet population believes G+ is happening and here to stay, then they’ll commit the time to try it out. Popular opinion is the biggest “filter” for most people—they don’t have to try something if they’ve already been told it’s not cool. Popular opinion is the ultimate “social search” if you will. This doesn’t just apply to user counts (G+ hits 20 million!), of course. Popular opinion will shape every aspect of people’s G+ perception. 2) Exhaustively think through the privacy issues and tie up any loose/ends that G+ has on this front. I’ve seen multiple people share their phone number with me without knowing it. They may not be wanting to share other things as well, though those things have been less obviously private. I’d make sure that people understand how their posts can be shared/reshared, and how their other Google accounts (profile, Gmail, docs) and content (Youtube, Picasa) are connected to G+. I don’t believe Privacy is a real issue to most people, but most people think it is a real issue to them. As thus, it plays a big role in the psychological justification for defecting from competitors. “Safety” hysteria destroyed MySpace in the press. It got MySpace banned from schools, Apple stores, and by well-meaning parents who had been terrorized by what they were reading. Privacy advocates have tried to destroy Facebook and Google in the past. You need the best PR person in the world on your team, Google, but even more so, you need to make sure the software doesn’t give the privacy hounds something to be rightfully angry about. 3) Move Google’s top analysts (probably focused on monetization right now) onto the Google+ project to form a skunk works team. Mine the data about G+ usage like it’s Gold, because it truly is the future of Google’s long-term revenue and profit growth. (And I actually don’t think there’ll ever be advertising on Google+, theme for another article.) Facebook was really good at understanding their onboarding process, knowing what key activities led to later usage (adding x number of friends, putting up a picture and getting a response, etc.).  Google needs to closely track users who are not adopting the service, those that are, and try to understand what type of user is the one that is ahead of the curve—identify the user who is illustrating the future “common” use case through their pioneering activity. G+ needs to understand all three types of users and develop a plan for each of them. 4) Hire the best product executors & visionaries in the world, something that clearly has not been Google’s forte in the past. (In fact, it seems that some good ones have left , because they felt they weren’t valued at Google).  I’m not referring to run of the mill product managers and UI developers or “social media experts,” but rather that rare breed of people who have demonstrable experience leading users down the path to internet nirvana. Google has the engineering talent and ability to scale the G+ service (more valuable than people understand, right now, I think). But does Google have the product people? Google’s technical infrastructure will allow them to do things that other social sites could not do—in fact, they’re already doing that. They need product visionaries who can understand that. Though I love G+, some parts of G+ are really a mess right now, and two that are incredibly important at this stage are in need of much work: onboarding & photos. 5) There must be one ring to rule them all. One leader making decisions. Maybe that person is already in place at Google; I don’t know the internal hierarchies within the company. But the leader himself, and every employee must understand who this is. Making a website is similar to making a movie—hundreds of people work on it, one person makes the final decision, and they make them every minute of the day. I use the LOTR analogy because there may be 12 extremely important product people (point #4). But someone needs to make the decisions. And to further that analogy, if the ring goes bad, the Hobbits need to throw the ring in Mt. Doom and find a new leader. OK maybe this analogy doesn’t work, but you get the point. All the opinions and analysis will paralyze anyone who is not up to the task. That person has got to bring it all together and make decisions based on his gut and understanding of the overall company’s mission. No that leader won’t always get it right, but the clarity achieved and time saved is crucial. The Internet moves at lightning speed. If you mess up, a resolute leader can iterate and fix. This is worthy of its own dissertation (read Randall Stross on this point about Steve Jobs/Apple vs. Google right here ). You learn a lot when you mess up. I messed up a lot, so these are just a few of the things I learned. By the way, these lessons aren’t just for Google.  They also can be applied to any startup, so good luck everyone. I’m hoping to see you all make your mark on this world. Crunchbase GOOGLE+ Product: GOOGLE+ Website: http://plus.google.com Company Google A Google project headed by Vic Gundotra and Bradley Horowitz, Google+ is designed to be the social extension of Google. Its features focus on making online sharing easy for... Learn more
 
Navigation App Waze Drives Past 5 Million Users; Adds Text-To-Speech Voice Guidance Top
Social mapping and navigation company Waze has hit a big milestone today. The company has accumulated 3 million users in the past 7 months, with 5 million users in over 45 countries. It took just two months for Waze to rack up its last million users. Founded in 2009, Waze offers free apps for the iPhone, Android, Windows Phone 7, BlackBerry and other mobile platforms, that include turn-by-turn navigation for drivers, and at the same time, uses that user data to build out its own maps. If there are issues on the road, such as major traffic jams, all of that information comes in through the apps and can be sent to other drivers. The company is announcing a new iteration of its iPhone and Android app that includes text-to-speech voice guidance (using technology from Nuance), to allows drivers to receive voice alerts upon approaching potentially dangerous events on the road, as well as voice-based street, exit and highway names. Waze is also adding a commuting widget to its Android app will tell users whether it’s a good time to leave or not, with red indicating heavy traffic, and green indicating that traffic is clear. As we’ve written in the past, Waze faces competition from Google with respect to Android device navigation functionality, but the startup brings this technology to a number of mobile platforms and has landed impressive partnerships . And clearly Waze, which just raised $25 million in funding , is growing fast in terms of usage. Crunchbase WAZE Company: WAZE Website: http://waze.com Waze is a mobile application that offers users a free way to get turn-by-turn navigation, while at the same time using that user data to build out its own... Learn more
 
Patent Troll Sues Amazon Over Electronic Checkout Service Top
After slapping Google and PayPal with patent lawsuits, patent troll Purple Leaf is going after Amazon, accusing the e-commerce giant of infringing on its “311 patent” via Amazon’s Payments product. We’ve embedded the complaint below. According to the complaint, Purple Leaf’s 311 Patent generally relates to methods and system for an electronic transaction based on a receipt having payment remittance information. Purple Leaf maintains that Amazon Payments, the company’s payments platform used by online merchants, infringes upon this patent. Specifically, the Purple Leaf patent # 7,603,311 B1 covers a business method for conducting electronic transactions and claims to provide a more effective and efficient way to make a payment over the Internet. Oddly, the examples cited in the patent have more to do with paying government fines and utility bills (“traffic ticket, a citation, a utility bill, a court ticket, a court warrant, hospital receipt”) than traditional e-commerce applications like PayPal, Google and Amazon. As a side note, Amazon holds a number of other patents related to online payment, including its famous one-click payments patent in the U.S. (the company has been denied the intellectual property in Europe). A few weeks ago, the same company also sued Google over the company’s Google Checkout service and PayPal. And Purple Leaf has filed similar patent lawsuits againts Fiserv, JP Morgan Chase, CitiGroup, American Express Company, PNC Bank and SAP America. While its unclear if Purple Leaf’s complaint will hold up in court, patent trolls can actually make a business out of suing companies and extracting licensing agreements over the intellectual property. Look at Intellectual Ventures, which has made $2 billion by licensing its patents. View this document on Scribd Crunchbase AMAZON Company: AMAZON Website: http://amazon.com/ Launch Date: 1994 Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) is a leading global Internet company and one of the most trafficked Internet retail destinations worldwide. Amazon is one of the first companies to sell products deep... Learn more
 
Does a Cop Have a Right to Your Smartphone? Top
Let’s say I’m driving along and texting even though I know I shouldn’t be. That’s me everyday right there. Now, let’s say I get pulled over, and for some reason the cop asks to see the phone to see what was so important. Do I have to hand it over? If my phone has a password, am I obligated to type it in? If he starts getting pushy with me should I just start videoing the whole encounter as YouTube-revenge-backup-protection? As smartphones have allowed us to have our computers, emails, social media feeds, and a full surveillance system in our pockets at all times, stories of the law enforcements unease with that have been popping up in the press. And of course, the ones that become viral videos aren’t exactly flattering for law enforcement. I returned as a panelist on last week’s episode of NBC’s Press:Here where we get into what your legal rights are with the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Hanni Fakouri. For the whole episode, including background and examples of cases proving smart phone precedents right now, go here . Below is a clip where we asked Fakouri, EFF’s views on what is legal aside, what you should do if you’re caught in one of these dicey situations.
 
Design Sales Site Fab.com Hits 350,000 Members, Raises $8M To Celebrate Top
Fab.com , which started out as Fabulis , a social networking site for gay men , has not only recently changed its name but also started from scratch with an entirely new business centered around online flash sales of design items. The startup recently completed a $1 million early-stage round of funding from investor/actor Ashton Kutcher, SV Angel, SoftTech VC and previous backers First Round Capital, Baroda Ventures and The Washington Post. The company has now raised another $8 million in Series A funding, we’ve learned. Menlo Ventures led the round, and several existing investors participated, including First Round, Baroda Ventures, The Washington Post, Fab.com founder and CEO Jason Goldberg, SoftTech VC, SV Angel, Ashton Kutcher, Guy Oseary and A-Grade Investments, and Zelkova Ventures. A number of angel investors also took part, including Kevin Rose, Jon Anderson, Don Baer, Josh Kushner, Dave Morgan, Ben Ling, and David Tisch. Quite an impressive list of backers, I daresay. Fab.com features daily design inspirations and flash sales at up to 70% off retail. Fab.com membership is free but numbers are restricted in order to maintain low prices. Since launching on June 9, 2011, Fab.com claims more than 350,000 people have signed up for the service, with members placing more than 1,000 orders per day. Earlier this month, Fab.com CEO Jason Goldberg told me the startup was already profitable on $1.3 million in revenue after only 30 days after its debut, with a workforce of around 45 employees. The company says it will use the proceeds of the fresh round of financing to grow its base of designers, expand sales categories and develop more community features. The round brings its total capital raised to about $11.6 million. Crunchbase FAB.COM Company: FAB.COM Website: http://www.fab.com/ Fab.com features daily design inspirations and sales at up to 70% off retail. Fab.com was started by Jason Goldberg, who founded SocialMedian and Jobster, with design industry veteran Bradford Shellhammer,... Learn more
 
Jumio Turns Webcams Into Credit Card Readers – And Why Merchants Will Welcome 'Netswipers' Top
If it were up to Jumio , we’re all going to be ‘netswiping’ to purchase books, clothes, travel, FarmVille crops and whatnot online in a couple of years. The startup has been extensively testing its digital payments service in private beta mode since last year, when Jajah founder Daniel Mattes started teasing whatever they were building. The startup has since assembled an impressive advisory board, including former Google exec Zain Khan, former Amazon exec Mark Britto and Maarten Linthorst, CEO of CSI Communication Systems. And we recently learned that Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin and other investors pumped $6.5 million into the startup. Today, Jumio is finally unveiling Netswipe , a technology solution that enables e-commerce site owners and Internet retailers to process online and mobile payments by having customers ‘swipe’ their credit cards using virtually any webcam. Think of it as Square for the Web, without the need to purchase and install additional hardware. Watch the video below to see how it works, in a nutshell. Jumio is introducing three products for online merchants: Netswipe Start, Netswipe Scanning and Netswipe Processing. Additional products, including a mobile solution, will be released later this year. The idea of processing digital payments by scanning credit card information isn’t entirely new, we should note. Last month, for example, saw the launch of Card.io , a startup that is developing mobile applications also capable of scanning credit cards using smartphone cameras, and some other applications like AisleBuyer include similar features. Netswipe will, howevever, allow merchants to securely process payments both on the Web and mobile – and like Card.io, Jumio intends to enable third-party developers to integrate the technology into their own apps and services. It’s also worth noting that Jumio claims its technology is patented. Jumio says credit cards that are used to pay for goods and services via Netswipe are not ‘photographed’ – rather, the scans are made using videostreaming technology, which enables the company to recognize and verify the card details without storing any data on the client side. The main benefits for merchants to implement such a solution are: reducing the time between a customer’s decision to purchase something online and effectively making a transaction, minimize the friction (entering credit card information by typing can be tedious and distracting) and reducing fraud. Jumio CEO Daniel Mattes says that, during the pilot phase, a survey with a focus group showed a decrease in churn rate from 52% to 21%. This may well have been more of an exception than the rule, but for most businesses even a 5 percent decrease would have a big impact on the bottom line. Mattes posits that online retailers and e-commerce site owners can quickly and easily implement Netswipe on their websites, and that the solution doesn’t rival but instead complements existing payment solutions that have usually already been deployed (PayPal etc.). If all this is true, the Netswipe technology solution is one hell of a unique selling proposition for everyone involved – little or no downside and a lot of upsides for sellers and an additional, convenient method of payment for buyers. The proof of the pudding is of course in the eating, as they say, so I’d be very interested to learn from online merchants and e-commerce business owners what their thoughts on the new service are. Crunchbase JUMIO Company: JUMIO Website: http://www.jumio.com/ Launch Date: 5/1/2010 Jumio is Daniel Mattes’ latest startup and is currently preparing the closed beta launch of the site. Jumio simplifies payment. Everyday transactions in a quick, one-click solution for individuals... Learn more
 

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