Tuesday, December 13, 2011

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Apple Reportedly Buying Flash Memory Company Anobit For $400 Million – $500 Million Top
anobitApple is reportedly going to use part of its enormous pile of cash to buy an Israeli fabless semiconductor company that specializes in flash storage solutions. Calcalist reports - in Hebrew - that the world's most valuable company is in talks to buy Herzliya Pituach, Israel-based Anobit for $400 million to $500 million. If the report checks out, this would mark Apple's first acquisition in Israel (and the first with Tim Cook at the helm as CEO), and also a rare occasion because the consumer electronics giant doesn't usually buy non-software companies. The only hardware companies Apple is known to have acquired in the past two decades were Steve Jobs-founded NeXT, Raycer Graphics, Intrinsity and P.A. Semi.
 
Backed By Angels, Antengo Takes On Craigslist With Realtime Mobile Classifieds Top
Antengo_logo_document size_11.22.2011You may not have heard of it, but San Diego has its very own tech incubator, called EvoNexus, a product of the non-profit industry association, CommNexus, which provides startups with access to capital, talent and business development. One of the companies we wrote about recently, Fashioning Change, has just been accepted into the incubator. And, today, another one of EvoNexus' startups is officially announcing itself to the world with a platform relaunch, new iOS apps, and a bit of funding to boot. Joining Taap.it (formerly Social Listing) and a host of others, Antengo is launching a redesigned mobile marketplace for posting and discovering realtime, local classifieds. (Check out the free iPhone app here.)
 
The Real Reason Twitter Employees Are Leaving—So They Can Sell Their Stock Top
Image (1) dollars.jpg for post 352641People are leaving Twitter—executives, engineers—this happens at large companies with more than 700 employees. We notice, as does every other tech blog. Nicholas Carlson at Business Insider put forth a some theories based on a single interview with a former employee that range from the engineers not being rockstar enough to jealousy over a party in Las Vegas to which only some employees were invited. But there is a much simpler explanation. Twitter is very restrictive about when employees can sell shares. It just completed an $800 million financing round in September, half of which went to employees selling up to 20 percent of their shares. While that did serve as a release valve, the offering is over. If you are a longtime Twitter employee sitting on a bunch of fully-vested shares that you want to unload, your best bet might be to quit and try to sell them on private secondary markets. Twitter has less control over what former employees can do with their shares.
 
WellnessFX Grabs $4 Million From Javelin, Floodgate To Give You A Personal Health Team Top
wellnessfx-logo-webBack in September, WellnessFX launched a platform that is designed to help people take charge of their health. And today, the startup is adding to its own financial health, announcing that it has raised $4 million in series B funding. The round was led by a new investor, Javelin Venture Partners, with participation from the startup's existing investors, Floodgate and Voyager Capital. Alex Gurevich a Principal at Javelin Venture Partners will join the startup as a board observer, while Javelin Managing Director Jed Katz will join the board directly. The investors join a board which already includes Mike Maples of Floodgate and Voyager Capital Managing Director Curtis Feeney. 4-Hour Workweek author Tim Ferriss is also a strategic advisor.
 
PsychicsLive.com Sees Video Chat As The Future Of The $2 Billion Psychic Market Top
Screen shot 2011-12-12 at 6.44.19 PMWhether you believe in psychic consultation or not, the industry pulls in $2 billion a year and is primed for disruption. Pay-per-minute phone calling still dominates the market despite being around for decades. Launching today, PsychicsLive.com is a new psychic consultation video chat site designed to give people a face-to-face connection with spiritual advisors. By taking a cut of the $2 to $6 a minute users pay to learn the future or just receive on-demand therapy, PsychicsLive.com could quickly turn profitable. Miss Cleo's slogan "Call me now!" could soon give way to a generation of psychics asking you to Skype them.
 
Kiersten Hollars Moves From Aol Comm VP To Andreessen Partner Top
Screen Shot 2011-12-12 at 6.23.41 PMPR guru Kiersten Hollars is moving from AOL VP to Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, we've confirmed with Andreessen. From her former boss Brad Garlinghouse; "Kiersten is a rock star... ran all of PR and marketing for the entire mobile, apps & commerce team. [She was] a loved manager of the team and cultural ambassador of what the AOL culture *should* be!!" Come January, Hollars will be reporting to Andreessen Head of Marketing Margit Wennmachers, who has been recruiting her for an entire year.  Her formal title will be "PR Partner" at A16z.
 
Fast Society Deadpools Its Messaging App, Preps Cameo For Launch Top
Fast Company Cameo DoneFast Society today announced it will shut down its group messaging app and instead devote resources to its new app Cameo that will launch next month. Group messaging seemed like such a big opportunity a few years ago. But that was before Apple launched iMessage, Skype bought GroupMe, and Facebook converted Beluga into Messenger. Suddenly, there wasn't much to add by being a mobile group texting app without OS or other platform integration. Fast Society will apply its existing team and investors towards offering unique value by helping people share moments rather than just messages.
 
Enterprise Software Company Jive Prices IPO At $12 Per Share, Valued At Over $600M Top
jive-softwareSocial enterprise giant Jive has just priced its IPO, which is set to debut on the public markets tomorrow morning. Jive priced at $12 per share this evening, above the expected range. The company originally set the range between $8 and $10 per share. At $12 per share, Jive is valued at over $600 million. Jive, which will list on the Nasdaq under the symbol 'JIVE,' filed its original S-1 in August. Jive had previously raised $57 million in funding, but in October existing investors Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins invested $40 million more in the company.
 
Review: Fujifilm X10 Top
fujibody (3)Short version: A stylish and fun alternative to the likes of the Canon G12 and Nikon P7000. It's not the quickest on the draw, and the build quality is obviously a step down from its elder brother, the X100, but image quality is good and operation is straightforward. It's got a great lens and after a little familiarization could be quite versatile. While it compares decently with the competition, it's far from a knockout, and if you're looking for a compact enthusiast camera you would do well to look closely at the other options before pulling the trigger. Check inside for the full review, with sample pictures and all that.
 
How Zynga Won The Facebook Platform In 2009 Top
zyngaZynga is about to go public at a valuation that could make it worth around $9 billion, so the press is busy looking back at how the social gaming leader came to be this successful. There's lots of discussion around its intense company culture, its contentious relationship with Facebook, its virtual goods business, its currently flattish traffic -- or basically everything if you read this giant article today by my former colleague Dean Takahashi at VentureBeat. But here's a closer look at how the company came to dominate social gaming on Facebook in 2009, based on conversations I've had with Zynga employees and rival developers over the years. It's a case study in how startups win markets by hitting them at the right time and place. On January 1 of 2009, a year and a half after its founding, Zynga had grown its user base to a respectable 23.9 million monthly active users. That was good for the Facebook platform at the time, but nothing mind-blowing. By the same time next year, it had grown by ten times that number to 240 million, according to AppData, and was larger than all of its social gaming competitors combined. How?
 
WordPress 3.3 Released To The Masses; Includes iPad Optimization, Tumblr Importer And More Top
WordPress › About » Logos and GraphicsAfter 14 million downloads of WordPress 3.2, WordPress 3.3 is being released to the wild today. Codenamed "Sonny" in honor of the jazz saxophonist Sonny Stitt, WordPress 3.3 is available for download or update inside your WordPress dashboard. WordPress, which had over 65 million downloads since version 3.0 was released, has a number of new features and bells and whistles, including UI improvements. The new version includes a revamped welcome screen and improved contextual help UI.
 
Gillmor Gang 12.12.11 (TCTV) Top
Gillmore Gang test patternThe Gillmor Gang — Robert Scoble, Laura Fitton, Kevin Marks, John Taschek, and Steve Gillmor — questioned the sanity of several industry players in a lively @scobleizer-shortened appearance. Robert had just enough time to reiterate his distate for the new Twitter UI and Eric Schmidt's predictions of Android and Google TV success. But it was George Colony's LeWeb prognostications on the state of the Web, Social, and Enterprise that got the juices flowing at the dawn of the new week. Laura, or @pistachio as she favors, sees most of Colony's pitch as Theatre of the Obvious, while @jtaschek and @kevinmarks sneered at the idea that the Web was going anywhere any time soon. @stevegillmor thought what he usually thinks, and enjoyed it.
 
Kickstarter: Meet Eyeboard, A Low-Cost Open Source Eye Tracker Top
eyeboardI'm a little ashamed to admit that I spent the tail end of my high school career goofing off and trying desperately to appear cooler than I actually was. Fortunately for our future, people like Luis Cruz exist: this recent high school graduate designed the Eyeboard, a low-cost, open source eye tracking solution meant to make communication easier for disabled users.
 
"I Work For The Internet" — Show Congress How You Really Feel About SOPA Top
iworkfortheinternettcCongress is moving ahead with trying to pass SOPA -- the so-called "Stop Online Piracy Act" that includes all sorts of draconian measures that would stifle free expression as we know it. Here's a simple action you can take to tell everyone how you feel about that. A site called "I Work For The Internet" lets you upload a photo and brief description of yourself, and what you do. It showcases photos of other people who have done the same. It's simple, and heartwarming, and a nice reminder for politicians about whose side they should really be on. The site, apparently launched earlier today, was created by Fight For The Future, a new advocacy group that was behind the hit "Free Bieber" site.
 
Archimedes Labs Launches As An Incubator For Mobile Startups Top
_archArchimedes Labs, a new incubator and investment vehicle focused on mobile, is launching today. The incubator is co-founded by Keith Teare, a serial entrepreneur and a co-founder of TechCrunch. Teare previously co-founded RealNames Corporation, and The EasyNet Group. Teare explains that the thesis for the incubator is based on the premise that the future architecture of software and application is moving to an app and cloud-centric world where mobile is central and the web becomes less and less important. Archimedes Labs will be focused on investing, incubating and accelerating startups that are trying to exploit the shift in gravity from web to mobile, he says.
 
NSFW: When Good Search Engine Placement Goes Bad Top
trollIt's been nearly two decades since the launch of the Internet's first search engines, and search engine placement is still king. Own the relevant terms for your industry, and you'll pretty much drown in traffic. Great search engine placement isn't always a good thing, though... especially when your user created content comes into play. Today's example: Amazon's user-created lists.
 
One More Day To Nominate Startups For The Crunchies! Top
CrunchiesThe Crunchies are just around the corner (January 31, to be exact). Nominations for Silicon Valley's annual technology awards co-hosted by GigaOm, VentureBeat and TechCrunch end tomorrow at midnight PT. So this is your last chance to tell us who is worthy of a Crunchie for Best Startup, Best Mobile App, Best Design, Best Technology Achievement, or any of the other categories. There are 20 categories in all. More than 280,000 nominations are already in, but the more votes the better.  And if you think a startup or product really deserves recognition, you can campaign on its behalf by sharing your nominations on Twitter or Facebook. Vote more than once.. Nominate your own startup (everyone else does). We'll tally all the votes, put it through our patented anti-gaming filters, and announce the finalists in early January when you can vote again for the final winners. (Yup, it's a two-stage process, folks. Stay with me). Nominate now.
 
News Aggregator Thoora Shuts Down After Taking 2 Years To Launch Top
Thoora Shuts DownJust 3 months after its public launch following 2 years of private beta, content discovery engine Thoora today announced that it will shut down. Thoora's website, Android tablet app, Wordpress plugin, and all user data will be blinked out of existence on December 15th. Its failure to get a working smartphone app out the door allowed services like Flipboard and sites like Techmeme to swoop in and solve the information overload problem more beautifully and efficiently. The shuttering should serve as a lesson to entrepreneurs: you can't spend forever perfecting your product.
 
Survey: Consumers Increasingly Concerned With Products' Origins And Rate Of Release Top
navA large survey of consumers and manufacturers from around the world has found a number of interesting statistics, though some are interesting not in and of themselves, but in what they imply about those surveyed. For instance, 57% of consumers say they're "always or usually" aware of a product's country of origin. This seems rather generous, considering how incredibly complex the supply chain is, and how a given high-tech product might include pieces from 10 or 20 different countries, depending on how deep you want to dig. And while 67% of people said that product quality is better today than it was 5 years ago, 75% think manufacturers don't use the best-quality materials and don't follow environmentally friendly procedures. Perhaps most entertainingly, 97% of manufacturers consider themselves "ahead of the curve" in safety and reliability, and nearly that many think the same regarding sustainability and innovation. They can't all be above average.
 
Mark Cuban Wants To Get You Laid, Invests In Men's Advice Site Brotips Top
Brotip Mark Cuban DOne 2 3Being a man in the modern world is no easy task. Should I friend her on Facebook? When is it alright to ignore a text message? Men's advice site Brotips can help, and  Mark Cuban wants to make sure you've heard of it. He's invested an undisclosed sum in the website, though it's not $1 billion like Fast Company jokingly reports. Brotips makes it easy to share tweet-length knowledge like "someone telling you that you don't need to wear a condom is the first sign that you should" and "always log out". Built by Toronto-based Push Pull Labs, the site now has 1.5 million uniques a month and 2.5 million visits, and is monetizing through a sponsored "Brands Bros Luv" section and a soon to launch clothing line.
 

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