Wednesday, November 2, 2011

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Quora As A Marketplace: Evisors Raises Seed Round To Let Startups Find And Connect With Experts Top
evisors-logo-2Let's say you're a first-time entrepreneur. You've got a great idea for a product or business, but you don't know where to start. You don't know any VCs or angels, maybe your company isn't right for an incubator, but you want firsthand advice from experts on how to proceed. While there are tons of amazing online resources for entrepreneurs and there's some terrific expert advice on Quora on an array of entrepreneurial subjects, little of this information is personalized. This is one example of the value proposition of Evisors, a startup that is building a marketplace of expert advice. Founded in May 2010 by Harvard Business School grads Fredrik Marø, Marc Weiner, Dan Levy, and Wharton grad Christine Apold, Evisors offers on-demand advice, allowing consumers to go beyond their own personal and professional networks to search its database of experienced experts to directly schedule consultations.
 
Google, Why Don't You Hang On To That Gmail App For A While? Top
gmail-fail2By now you're probably well aware that Google released their long-awaited Gmail iOS app today, only to unceremoniously yank it from the App Store when people pointed out that it didn't really work. Google offered a mea culpa by stating that they have removed the app while they correct the problem, and that they're working on a new version to be released soon. Here's a thought: just keep it. At least for a little while.
 
BeachMint's BeautyMint Gets 500,000 Visitors In First 24 Hours (Thanks To Jessica Simpson) Top
beautysimpsonIn October 2010, a Los Angeles-based startup called BeachMint launched JewelMint — a service that sends you a new piece of jewelry every month, at a price that's much less than you'd typically pay for a similar item in a department store. They followed the celebrity-endorsement model popularized by ShoeDazzle, teaming with Kate Bosworth and her stylist Cher Coulter to choose the jewelry — and they soon found they had a hit on their hands. Things went so well, in fact, that the company raised $23.5 million at a rumored $150 million valuation this past June. They followed that up by launching with their second vertical, StyleMint, in July — this time backed by the Olsen Twins. And now they're ready for round three. Their latest vertical: Skincare. On Monday the company launched BeautyMint, a service that'll ship you a fresh supply of cleansers, toners, moisturizer, and creams every month. Rather than sending a random smattering, though, each user receives a personalized kit, depending on factors including their skin type, where they live, and the time of year. So far, the site is off to a very good start, with over 500,000 visitors in its first 24 hours. And that huge first day traffic was no doubt spurred by the fact that Jessica Simpson is onboard as the face of BeautyMint.
 
Negroponte On OLPC Future: Air Drops And Hands-Off Education Top
-OLPC's Nicholas Negroponte at the Open Mobile summit
 
Social Game Developer RockYou Succumbs To Layoffs To Achieve Profitability Top
rockyouRockYou, a social game developer, will be laying off a number of employees, we've confirmed with the company. The total number of employees being cut, explains CEO Lisa Marino, is 100, but there are two parts to the cuts. First, around forty employees from Playdemic, a social game development studio that RockYou acquired in January, will be rejoining Playdemic as a spinoff as the studio has been sold back to the original founders. The social game Gourmet Ranch will become part of Playdemic. Marino says that around 56 employees will be let go from RockYou's headquarters in Redwood city, including some staff from the game organization, media, and general and administrative services. After the Playdemic spinoff and the layoffs, RockYou will be left with half of its staff, with 90-ish employees, says Marino.
 
Apple Promises iOS 5 Update In A Few Weeks To Suck Less Battery Life Top
imgresFor the past couple of weeks, I've heard the same thing over and over again. "The iPhone 4S is awesome, but..." And it's a big "but". The battery life. It sucks. Well, to be clear, it sucks for some users, but not all. For example, I'm not noticing anything out of the ordinary on my device. It's essentially the same battery life I got with the iPhone 4 running iOS 4, as far as I can tell. But today Apple has acknowledged that some bugs are causing some issues with the battery life. But they say it's not an iPhone 4S issue, but rather an iOS 5 issue. In other words, it's software, not hardware. More importantly, a fix is coming.
 
Remember NetZero? Now They Want To Sell You Mobile Broadband Top
netzeroBack in the heady days of the late 1990s, it seemed like everyone and their cousin was trying to break into the ISP business. NetZero once made a name for themselves thanks to their claims of free internet access, and now the company has struck a deal with Clearwire to start selling mobile broadband service under the NetZero name.
 
Amazon's Flow iPhone App Brings Augmented Reality To Barcode Scanning And Product Search Top
A9.comAmazon subsidiary A9.com has just launched a new augmented reality iPhone app—Flow Powered by Amazon. Flow uses augmented reality to help users explore and discover tens of millions of products in a real world setting, including books, DVDs, packaged electronics and toys, to give shoppers interactive product information about these items in the real world. Here's how it works. Once downloaded, you can point the app toward a book, video game, CD, DVD or other product with a UPC barcode. When the app recognized the product, it will display the Amazon.com product information, including the option to play multimedia content and read customer reviews.
 
Infographic: The Mobile World In 60 Seconds Top
mobile60smallTo say that things move quickly in the mobile space is putting it rather mildly, but an infographic from mobile ad exchange Mobclix aims to highlight what goes down every 60 seconds. In case you were curious, in the time it took me to write out that first sentence, over 23,000 iOS apps were downloaded from Apple's App Store.
 
Twitter Tests "Top News" And "Top People" At Top Of Search Results Top
Twitter _ Search - twitterIn what appears to be a test among some users, Twitter is adding "Top News" and "Top People" results at the top of its realtime search results. When you search for a hot story like "gmail" (which came out with a buggy iPhone app today) or even "Humanoid" (a new startup I just wrote about), you will see a highlighted boxed result with a link to a top news story along with a thumbnail image from that article or blog post. Similarly, a search for anyone who is Twitter-famous will turn up a "Top People" result with their Twitter profile picture and a link to their stream. I first noticed this earlier today, and I thought it was a paid search ad. But it is actually a way to help users discover the most popular content and people. Presumably, the Top News items are based on retweets and some sort of whitelist Twitter keeps for news sources. Although it seems like the Top News story sometimes rotates to another source if you repeat your search.
 
Siri, Why Are You So Underwhelming? Top
underwhelmingWhen Apple first unveiled the iPhone 4S, there was one feature that left every jaw in the room on the floor. Her name is Siri. Scott Forstall demoed the personal assistant at Apple's media event, and the entire presentation went off without a hitch. Then, as expected, Apple released their commercials, which were equally impressive. In short, everyone and their brother was amped for Siri. Then the iPhone 4S was released. Save for some battery life issues and my own mini-rant on Siri's gender and humility, there really weren't many complaints. Now, however, I find myself more bothered by my own expectations than anything else. Why? Because Siri isn't perfect, and perfect is what I expected.
 
Venuelabs Is Launching VenueRank, A "Klout For Storefronts" Top
venuerank-by-venuelabsVenuelabs, a company which got its start as Valuevine before a pivot in early 2011, is launching a new service called VenueRank this week at the Geo-Loco conference in San Francisco. VenueRank, simply put, operates somewhat like a "Klout for storefronts," as it allows brands with multiple stores to compare those against each other or against their competitors using a single, at-a-glance score.
 
Flurry: China's App Usage Has Gone Through The Roof Top
AppSessionGrowth_Top10Countries-resized-600China has the most cell phone users in the world, and according to mobile app analytics firm Flurry, they're using apps more than they ever have before. For their latest report, Flurry tracked mobile app sessions (essentially, instances of use) across 120,000 apps from January to October 2011. Among other things, they were able to single out the ten countries where apps sessions have increased the most.
 
With Backing From Google Ventures, Humanoid Brings Robot Supervision To Crowdsourced Tasks Top
HumanoidWorkers of the world, get ready to meet your robot supervisors. A new service called Humanoid wants to turn you into a "robot-supervised army" that it will rent out for $5 an hour. It already has 20,000 workers lined up for today's launch. Humanoid comes out of a startup called Speakertext, which uses a mixture of automated techniques and crowdsourced labor to transcribe online videos (we use Speakertext for TCTV). Speakertext will continue as a product of Humanoid, which is shifting focus to helping companies with their software development. Google Ventures is putting in a few hundred thousand dollars in another seed round (the company raised $600,000 in February from Mitch Kapor and others).
 
Yahoo Brings Intelligent Social TV App IntoNow To The iPad; Adds Content Feeds And More Top
intoSocial TV app IntoNow, which Yahoo acquired earlier this year for $20 to $30 million, is heading to the iPad today with the launch of a native app. In case you aren't familiar with IntoNow, the service IntoNow, a new service that allows you to tell your friends what television shows and movies you're watching in realtime. But unlike other media "check-in" services, you do this simply by hitting a button and letting your phone listen to what you're watching. It's that audio tracing technology that made it an appealing purchase for Yahoo, compared to the plethora of other social check-in apps.
 
New Gmail App For iPhone Is Unusable, Shows Errors Upon Launch Top
gmail-iconWell, that was a big disappointment. Google just unveiled its first native application for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch this morning, and the app is a mess. It's unusable. It doesn't even launch properly, displaying an error message upon startup.
 
Angie's List Sets Price Range For IPO At $11 To $13 Per Share; Valued At Over $600M Top
angies-listAngie's List, which offers consumers a way to review and rate doctors, contractors and service companies on the Web, has just set the terms for its IPO. In a new filing, the company revealed that it aims to raise as much as $131.4 million in the offering and has priced its IPO in the range of $11 to $13 per share. The company will list on the Nasdaq under the symbol "ANGI." At the high end of the range, Angie's List would be valued at nearly $700 million. Angie's List launched in 1995 with a focus on local home, yard and car services, sits at the intersection of local search, user-generated content and subscription-based services. To date, Angie's List has raised nearly $100 million from Battery Ventures, T. Rowe Price, City Investment Group, Cardinal Ventures and others.
 
Google Launches Native Gmail App For iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch, Faces Instant Backlash Top
ios2Google is launching a new native Gmail application for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch today, which is now available in the iTunes App Store. As recently revealed by TechCrunch writer MG Siegler on his personal blog, one of the app's most important features is its ability to do push notifications. The app will also include search, autocomplete, support for attachments, priority inbox access, labels and other standard email features like archiving, deleting and reporting spam.
 
Maybe BBM Music Isn't So Silly After All Top
BBM-Music-1With BBM Music, RIM has thrown their hat into the already crowded mobile music ring. The new service's focus on leveraging your social connections to score some new tunes is a novel twist, but it begs a significant question. Why would RIM release an ostensibly limited music service when you can shell out a few extra dollars a month for unlimited access?
 
Ex-Google Reader Product Manager Posts Scathing Review Of Reader Redesign Top
screen_500 (1)Former Google Reader Product Manager Brian Shih has posted a scathing, but fairly accurate, review of the update to Google Reader. The update, which removed Reader's own social sharing features in favor of Google+, was unpopular among Google Reader's most active users because it destroyed their niche community built up over the years. But in Shih's opinion, that's only one of its problems. Just as bad is the new visual style, he says, referring to the stark, black-and-white user interface Google has been rolling out to all its products in recent weeks. Says Shih: "it's as if whoever made the update did so without ever actually using the product to, you know, read something,"
 

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