Thursday, November 10, 2011

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Brandstack Heads For The Deadpool, Blames Credit Card Fraud Top
brandstackBrandstack. Pitched as some sort of haven for designers, it was a marketplace in which creative types could sell off their logo concepts as they came to mind, rather than on "spec work" conjured up by a client. The goal? Less unpaid work (and fewer "amateur submissions") than contest-based crowdsourcing sites like 99designs. Alas, Brandstack is now officially destined for the deadpool — and, according to the founder, it's all because of credit card fraud.
 
Airbnb's Brian Chesky On Expansion Efforts: We Use Our Community To Figure Out What's Next Top
We spoke to Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky after his talk onstage at the GigaOM Roadmap conference -- during the talk Chesky spoke about many possible avenues for the company's expansion but didn't commit himself to any one path. Instead Chesky held that what users want is one of the most important factors in deciding where the company focused their efforts. For example, two months ago a critical mass people wanted to stay in Airbnbs for longer than a week, according to Chesky, so the company launched 'Sublets.' Right now the company has about 300 boats, and Chesky says he's looking into that as a space. "We look to our community and try to figure out what's already popular there for cues as to where to go next," he said.
 
Google Acquires Katango, The Automatic Friend Sorter Top
katango2Back in September we broke the news that Google was in talks to acquire Katango, a small Kleiner Perkins-backed startup that launched this past summer. Today, they've made it official: Katango just announced that it's been acquired by Google, and that it'll be joining the Google+ team. We're also hearing that Google isn't only acquiring Katango for their talent — it's interested in their technology as well. Katango is a logical fit for Google, though their initial product was focused primarily on Facebook. The startup first debuted an iPhone app in July, setting out to made it easier to selectively share with various groups of friends on Facebook. Facebook's List feature has long allowed users to share certain pieces of content with different friends, but it did little to automate the process of actually breaking your friends out into different groups.
 
Facebook Settles With FTC To Make New Privacy Changes Opt-In Top
set-4Facebook has reached an agreement with the FTC to make all future changes to privacy settings opt-in, presumably including new features with their own privacy controls. The Wall Street Journal wrote that the social network was nearing a settlement on the issue and now its Marketplace editor Dennis K. Berman says that settlement is for new privacy controls to be opt in. The agreement could limit Facebook's ability to drive adoption of new features, as they won't be able to immediately go viral. Users rarely visit their privacy settings, so Facebook will need to devise a way to get them to do so.
 
Movable Ink Launches Service To Stream Live Content In Emails Top
movReal-time email marketing company Movable Ink recently launched a service that could dynamically change emails after they have been sent out. The technology can change emails based on time of open, recipient's current location, social cues, fast-moving inventory, and and more, and works across all email clients (Gmail, Outlook, iPhone, Yahoo, etc.) Today, the startup is taking this technology a step further with the launch of the Movable Ink Streaming Server, a service that allows businesses to stream live content into emails while they are open.
 
Pandora CTO Reveals Half of The U.S. Pays $0 For Music Top
Pandora-Link1-1024x547Today at GigaOm's RoadMap conference in San Francisco, Pandora CTO Tom Conrad revealed that his company aims to monetize the vast majority of listeners who pay little or nothing per year for music. Conrad explained that "Over half of the U.S. doesn't pay anything for music each year". He continued that another 40% of the population only pay about $15 a year, the cost of an album or two. While there are opportunities to build businesses on the 10% who are willing to pay more, Pandora's plans to focus on monetizing the majority via advertisements.
 
Visually Beautiful Recipe Curation Site Gojee Adds Drinks To The Mix Top
gojFoodie favorite Gojee, which curates recipes from food bloggers around the web in a visually beautiful way, is branching out today to beverages, and will offer drink recipes (including both alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks). As we wrote in our earlier review of the site, Gojee lets you search for recipes by ingredient, either via 'cravings' or by one ingredient you have in your pantry. You can also input your dislikes or allergies and Gojee will make sure to surface recipes without these ingredients. If you has leftover beets in your pantry, you that query and Gojee will show youa ll the recipes that include that ingredient from the many food blogs it curates data from.
 
Apple Releases iOS 5.0.1 To Fix iOS 5 Battery Issues Top
iPhone 4SRemember those frustrating iOS 5 battery issues? It looks like they're about to be a thing of the past, as Apple has just released an update to its iOS mobile operating system, iOS 5.0.1, designed to fix the problem. The software update includes a few of other tweaks, too, including bug fixes for document syncing via iCloud, the addition of multi-tasking gestures for iPad 1 and improved voice recognition for Australian users.
 
Nokia's Crazy Bendy Kinetic Concept Blew Your Mind? Watch This! Top
Nokia HumanFormNokia is totally ready for the future. They've already debuted a totally insane flexible kinetic interface concept, and now they've even drawn up an implementation for it: HumanForm. No, the phone doesn't look like a you-themed action figure, but rather has a tear drop shape (probably my biggest gripe about the concept). I'm not going to go into too much detail about what's included in the video, as you can easily see for yourself. I will, however, say that this takes the cake compared to Nokia's earlier flexi-screen concept.
 
Verizon's New LTE Promotion Meant To Benefit iPhone Users Too Top
dd_marqueeVerizon's new 4G data plan promotion sounds awfully generous, but CFO Fran Shammo said at an investors' conference yesterday that it's more than just a way to push 4G hardware during the holidays. The deal is also meant to reduce congestion on the company's 3G EV-DO network, so iPhone users will be able to enjoy a more consistent network experience.
 
Google Signs Two-Year, Global Partnership Agreement With Startup Weekend Top
Startup WeekendGoogle has agreed to support the folks behind Startup Weekend to jumpstart and foster startup communities from around the world. Through a global sponsorship, the search and online advertising juggernaut will enable the expansion of Startup Weekend's current operations, but there's a bit more to the story than just that.
 
Google Buys Contextual Rich News Browsing Startup Apture To Beef Up Chrome Top
apture-1Google has acquired Apture, a startup that brings instantaneous search to content on the web, we've confirmed with both companies. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Launched in 2008, Apture has raised $4.6 million from Beau Vrolyk, Paul Maritz, Steve Taylor, Clearstone Venture Partners Co-founded by Tristan Harris and Can Sar, Apture developes 'Apture Highlights,' a browser extension that aims to plug the "search leak" that the company says is taking place with content on the web. Apture highlights a search leak as when a users is reading content, wants more information about a keyword or phrase and then opens another browser tab to search for the information on Google, Bing or Yahoo. The downside for the content publisher is that the user disengages with the actual content by leaving the page.
 
Drumo Is Quora For Cities Top
It's hard when you're new to a city and have no friends. When I visit a new city I tend to hide in trees and behind garbage bins and watch people from afar, seeing where they go to eat and socialize. Then I go to those places at night, when they're closed, and sniff the air for their scent. However, Drumo offers an improved method for finding out specific things about a city using Quora-style discussion connected to geodata of major metropolitan areas.
 
Ngmoco And TinyCo Partner To Bring TinyCo Games To Mobage Top
tinycoSocial games outfit ngmoco, now a DeNA-owned company, is partnering with indie mobile game developer TinyCo in order to bring TinyCo's games to Android and the Mobage social gaming platform. The first two titles to be ported over are Tiny Chef and Tiny Nightclub.
 
Any.DO Launches A Social To Do List App With $1 Million In Funding Top
Any.DO Logo + NameIt's not often that an iPhone user gets jealous of an Android application, but that's definitely the case here with Any.DO, the gorgeous new social To Do list app for Android launching today. The app comes from the team behind Taskos, one of the most popular To Do list applications on the Android Market. More notably, Any.DO is backed by $1 million in angel funding from Eric Schmidt's Innovation Endeavors, Blumberg Capital, Genesis Partners, Palantir (Joe Lonsdale), Felicis Ventures (Aydin Senkut) and Brian Koo and includes Erick Tseng, head of mobile products at Facebook, and Elad Gil, Director of Corporate Strategy at Twitter, as advisors.
 
(Founder Stories) Livestream's Max Haot: Gannett Gave Us $10 Million (And Possibly Saved The Company) Top
Clip 3 (Founder Stories) Livestream Commodity.movIn part II of Chris Dixon's Founder Stories interview with Livestream co-founder Max Haot, Hoat offers his analysis of what he encountered while attempting to secure funding between roughly 2007 and early 2008. At the time, Haot feels VC's were hovering over technology that allowed people to digitally record events and watch the action on their own time. However, as presidential candidates crisscrossed the country during the '08 election, Livestream caught a break thanks to an invite from Gannett who started using Livestream (then known as Mogulus) to broadcast the activity. Pleased with the results, Haot says Gannett invested $10-million and delivered a bundle of cash that arrived just in time.
 
Class-Action Lawsuit Forces Apple To Replace Frayed MagSafe Power Cords Top
magsafechargerAny Apple devotee has struggled through the charger situation. Those Mag-Safe T-shaped chargers fray pretty easily, at which point you have to twist and turn the cord to pull in a charge. It's a huge pain, to say the least. But it appears those struggles are coming to a close, as Apple has lost a lawsuit which will now require the company to either replace MagSafe power cords or hand over a chunk of change.
 
Will An LTE-Friendly Lumia 800 Hit U.S. Shores Next Year? Top
lumia4gThe Lumia 800 may not have a gargantuan screen or a front-facing camera, but according to The Verge, the U.S.-bound version of Nokia's flagship Windows Phone may play nice with some of our LTE networks. It's a welcome surprise for domestic Nokia fans -- when the Lumia series was first announced last month, Nokia slyly omitted any release details for the United States. Nokia U.S. boss Chris Weber also mentioned not long after the big event that the company is preparing to bring a "full portfolio" of Windows Phones to the States starting in early 2012, but wouldn't shed any light on the Lumia situation.
 
Appitalism: A Clean, Well-Lighted Place For Apps Top
Screen Shot 2011-11-10 at 9.22.05 AMWe're lucky here in the old U.S. of A. App stores are pretty much monolithic and aside from a few odd stragglers, there's really only one place to find apps for each of the platforms. However, what if your country does't support a certain app store or what if you want to send your friends to a certain app, knowing that they each have different phones? That's where Appitalism comes in. Created by Simon Buckingham, the founder of ringtones.com, Appitalism is a one-stop shop for apps. The system allows you to buy apps for every major platform in one place. For example, you can buy Angry Birds for almost any phone, including Symbian, WebOS, and Android. The system seamlessly submits your order to the official app store in question and, when applicable, supplies a file for side-loading.
 
Hotspot Shield VPN Has Your Back For Mobile Browsing Top
mzl.qljgrbuu.320x480-75Hotspot Shield has long offered VPN services to Windows and Mac users alike, but the company has set their sights on a more secure mobile space with the release of their eponymous iOS app. As Ron Popeil would say, Hotspot Shield for iOS is a "set-it-and-forget-it" solution. Once the app is launched, the secure connection in create persists unless you specifically turn it off. Until then, Hotspot Shield encrypts all the data moving between your iDevice of choice and the internet, including data coming from apps running in the background.
 

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