Thursday, October 27, 2011

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Mobile Advertising Company 4INFO Raises $14M From Paul Allen's Vulcan Capital And Others Top
4INFOExclusive: Mobile advertising company 4INFO has raised an additional $14 million in funding led by Paul G. Allen's Vulcan Capital, with Mitsui Global Investment and existing investors Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Gannett, Mezzanine Capital and U.S. Venture Partners participating. This brings 4INFO's total funding to $52 million. Founded in 2005, 4INFO has dominated the SMS ad space, with roughly 3,000 publishers on its msgHaven platform. For those unfamiliar with their B2B product, 4INFO's publishing platform helps publishers manage their SMS content and delivery. MsgHaven delivers around 400 million text messages each month (which has doubled in the past year).
 
Redfin Raises Another $14.8 Million To Reinvent The Real Estate Market Top
redfinshotReal estate is a market that's full of inefficiencies, headaches, and price gouging. Thankfully, there are a handful of startups looking to fix it, one of which is Seattle-based Redfin. Today the company — which has proven to be so disruptive that angry real estate professionals were harassing the startup in its earlier days — has just raised another $14.8 million for its quest to turn the industry on its head, saving both buyers and sellers money in the process. The round was led by Globespan Capital Partners, with participation from previous investors Madrona Venture Group, Vulcan Capital, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, and Greylock Partners. This round brings Refin's total funding to nearly $46 million (its last round was a $10 million Series D in November 2009).
 
MoPub Launches New Marketplace For Real-Time Mobile Ad Bidding Top
mopub-logoMoPub, the mobile advertising startup founded by former AdMob and Google employees, has been known as kind of a "Doubleclick for mobile" until now. Today, the company is expanding its offerings with the launch of the MoPub Marketplace, which will serve as a virtual trading floor for mobile ads, allowing app publishers to connect with ad buyers in real-time.
 
Creepy/Awesome Banjo App Now Pings You When Your Friends Are Nearby Top
banjoSocial discovery service Banjo, which launched its cross-platform mobile application for iPhone and Android earlier this summer, has just introduced a new way to keep track of where your friends are and what they're doing: automatic friend alerts. Unlike the alerts you see on Foursquare, which ping you every time a friend checks in somewhere, this friend alerting feature works across social networks. And more importantly, it only bothers you when your friends are actually nearby.
 
Microsoft's Vision Of The Future Includes Touch-Sensitive Everything (And Beautiful People Only) Top
Microsoft VisionNo one knows what the future will look like, but it's always fun to guess, right? Microsoft has an entire position dedicated to the task, titled "Director of Envisioning," which is held by David Jones. In an interview with GeekWire, he claimed that the future holds "an expanded definition of productivity where it's not just about getting things done. It's also about doing the right things, and doing them well and enjoying the process with other people in a very natural way." And that's just what the sequel to Microsoft's "Office 2019" video shows.
 
Keen On … The Greatest Entrepreneurs Are Born To Deal With Failure (TCTV) Top
Ooyala Backlot Web-5Few people know failure better than venture capitalists. Even the most successful fail much more than they succeed and the best are those, like Vinod Khosla, who acknowledge that their successes are much rarer than their failures. Another venture capitalist well acquainted with failure is Peter Gardner, Managing Director of Wavepoint Ventures, a Menlo Park shop that primarily invests in software, medical technology and clean tech start-ups. I caught up with Peter earlier this week at the engaging FailCon conference where he spoke on the Failure of Business Models panel. "We've had our fair share of failures," Gardner confessed to me, stressing that one of the greatest assets of Silicon Valley was its tolerance of failure. Sharing Ron Conway's view on failure, Gardner explained that rather than being born to succeed, great entrepreneurs are born to be able to deal with failure.
 
Video: This Electric Vehicle "Wears" Airbags For Ultimate Protection Top
EVdrive_mA Japanese company called Humanix [JP], in cooperation with Hiroshima University, has developed a small electric car that "wears" airbags on the body. I am not really sure if the result can be called pretty, but Humanix is claiming that (perhaps rightfully) their ''iSAVE-SC1'' is the "safest electric vehicle in the world". The three-wheeled car offers enough room for three people and comes with inflated airbags on the front and rear, while the body is covered with tent cloth. Upon collision, the idea is that the air released from the bags will soften the impact.
 
Gnip Adds Google+ To Social Media Monitoring Data Stream Top
GoogleExclusive: Gnip, a provider of social media data to enterprise applications, is announcing today that it will be incorporating data from Google+ into its streams. Gnip will offer a keyword search stream for Google+ that is built on the social platform's new API. For background, Gnip serves as an API hub for social streams, collecting data from services like Twitter, Facebook and other social sources, and pushing it out to other data-consuming applications and Websites. Applications using Gnip's platform can get public data streams for over 100 feeds and sites, including Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, WordPress, Flickr, and others without ever visiting those sites or accessing their individual APIs. And Gnip also has premium access to the Twitter firehose of data.
 
Majority Of Top 100 Brands Now Have Mobile Apps, Up From Just Half 18 Months Ago Top
DistimoCorporate300pxA report being released today from mobile analytics firm Distimo finds that the majority of the top 100 brands (91%) now have a presence in at least one of the major mobile application stores, usually Apple's iTunes. This finding is notable because just 18 months ago, only half (51%) of the top brands even had any mobile applications published.
 
Jobs Biography Sells Out In China As Fans Clamor For Copies Top
China is serious about Jobs-mania. All 250,000 copies of the book are sold out in the country and folks lined up before bookstores opened just to get copy. Considering publishers already faked the bio, it's clear that their love of Steve is still strong. MICGadget has a full photo gallery of the launch including a number of delightful sculptures made entirely of copies of the bio.
 
Nintendo Reports US$923 Million Loss In The First Half Of This Fiscal Year Top
link__s_crying_by_kaynilNot too long ago, Nintendo was printing money every month after landing two hardware smash hits in a row, the Wii and the DS. But these times are now over, it seems. The company posted their financial report [PDF] for the first six months of their fiscal year (which ends in March 2012) today, and it has registered a loss of US$923 million. To put things into perspective, the minus for the same time frame in last fiscal was just US$26 million, but the number is at least better than the US$1.3 billion The Nikkei yesterday predicted for Nintendo's earnings call. Revenue dropped by 41% to US$2.83 billion.
 
BlackBerry Porsche P'9981 Unveiled In Dubai Top
bbporscheLadies and gentlemen, I'd like to introduce you to the BlackBerry Porsche P'9981 -- the ugliest BlackBerry I've seen in years. Unveiled at RIM and Porsche Design's Dubai event, the new BlackBerry Porsche is clad in equal parts stainless steel and leather. While the device's shell has gotten quite the facelift, the internals aren't a far cry from the standard: it sports a 1GHz processor, a 5-megapixel camera with 720p HD video, and an NFC chip.
 
Schmap's In-Depth Analytics Platform Lets You Take A Deep Data Dive On Your Twitter Followers Top
SchmapWhether it be for advertising, targeting messages, or just for general knowledge, knowing who your Twitter followers are is information that is useful to any company, or brand. Today, Schmap is launching its automated freemium service that gives any individual, company or brand immediate access to aggregate in-depth demographic analysis of their Twitter followers. Schmap will breakdown Twitter followers at a basic level, segmenting followers by gender, marital status, profession, likes and interests, plus location by country and US state. The paid version of the service breaks down followers by same categories, plus location by city, breakdowns of technology usage, Twitter influence/activity and more.
 
The 1% Will Love This Ostentatious Double iPad Case Top
Can't get your Angry Birds done on just one iPad? Are you what would be commonly termed "a Bluetooth-toting dbag?" Do you think you're more important than most people? Do your co-workers (or employees) hate you? Here's the double iPad case of your dreams.
 
Voting in #TheEuropas Awards For European Tech Startups Goes Live Top
europaslogo2_white-2Voting in The Europas Awards has gone live. Held annually, The Europas are the main European Awards for early stage Internet and Mobile technology startups. The are selected by a combination of an expert Advisory Board (which changes every year) and voting by the industry itself. The whole thing comes together on a special awards night in London, on November 17. Of course, out of the sheer need to filter the thousands of people in tech startups across Europe, the Awards can't cover every single startup and entrepreneur. But what you see below are the ones this year's Board - chaired by myself - picked out as representing the best new early stage startups in Europe, and the people making it all happen.
 
Garmin FR70 Fitness Watch Wants To Track Your Body, Doesn't Care If You Train Inside Or Out Top
FR70_HR_200.1It's all about the data. The just-announced Garmin FR70 Fitness Watch doesn't care where you've been or where you're going. It only cares about your body while you're wearing it. Despite coming from Garmin, the FR70 doesn't have GPS. It only tracks and monitors the body's vitals and then presents this info in a coherent fashion through Garmin's online service making this a fine watch for indoor or outdoor training.
 
Like Mint For People In Debt: ReadyForZero Now Supports Mortgages & Loans Top
rfz_logoY Combinator alum ReadyForZero is rolling out an upgrade to its debt management service today, with new features that will now allow its users to centralize and manage more of their debt using its online application. Previously, the company was focused only on reducing consumers' credit card debt. Now it's adding support for mortgages, auto loans and student loans, too.
 
Motorola Droid RAZR Goes Up For Pre-Order At Verizon Top
Screen shot 2011-10-27 at 8.13.40 AMThis morning the Droid RAZR — the world's thinnest smartphone according to Motorola — is now available for pre-order from Verizon. The phone is still listed as available on Verizon's website, but it'll surely go fast. So if this is what you've been waiting for then we recommend moving fast.
 
MicroVentures Raises $300,000 Fund To Invest In Facebook On Secondary Markets Top
microventuresMicroVentures, an online p2p investment service that aims to give accredited investors access to funding deals they might otherwise never see, has raised a $300,000 fund to invest in Facebook through the purchase of private company shares on secondary markets. Bill Clark, founder and CEO of MicroVentures, says it took about 10 minutes for investors to commit $40,000 to the fund in the first ten minutes after the investment was made available on the crowdfunding site, which speaks volumes about how eager people still are for grabbing hold of a (albeit super tiny) slice of the Facebook pie prior to its IPO.
 
Yandex Booms: Revenues Up 65%, Net Income Up 93% Year-Over-Year Top
yandexRussian online search and advertising juggernaut Yandex this morning reported solid quarterly earnings, showing off increases in both revenues and net income, compared to 2010. The company, which raised over $1.4 billion in a NASDAQ IPO earlier this year, reported revenues of RUR 5.2 billion ($161.9 million), up 65 percent compared with Q3 2010.
 

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