Wednesday, December 28, 2011

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GoodReads' Recommendation Engine Acquisition Gooses The Publishing Game Top
Screen Shot 2011-12-28 at 10.57.35 AMWhile bookstores are reporting increased sales this month, I foresee a time when "Staff Picks" at the local booke shoppe will soon be replaced by recommendation engines that tell you what ebook to pick up next. Services like Amazon's own recommendation engine and smaller guys like Booklamp all promise to let you know what tome to crack after you finish the Stephen King epic but GoodReads adds a bit of value-add to the burgeoning self-publishing movement.
 
Genius: New App Wakes You Up Earlier If It Snowed Last Night Top
winter-wake-upThis is smart: a new alarm clock application for the iPhone and Android wakes you earlier if it snowed last night. Called simply, "Winter Wake-Up," the app lets you configure its settings to wake you up earlier than your scheduled alarm depending on weather conditions, with separate settings for both "Frost" and "Snow."
 
Gillmor Gang Live 12.28.11 (TCTV) Top
Gillmore Gang test pattern[tc_ustream_iframe id="142336"] The Gillmor Gang – Paul Greenberg, John Taschek, and Steve Gillmor – are recording live at 8am PT.
 
comScore: U.S. Online Holiday Spending Up 15% To Record $35.3 Billion Top
comscore-xmas 2011comScore just released new numbers on U.S. online holiday spending for the season-to-date, and found that consumers continued to shop online in record numbers. For the first 56 days of the November-December 2011 holiday season, $35.3 billion was spent online - an increase of 15% over the corresponding days last year, and a new record.
 
LG Prada 3.0 Makes Official Debut In Korea, Europe To Follow Top
LGpradaphone3.0Tech-savvy fashionistas finally have a reason to rejoice with the official release of LG's Prada 3.0 handset. Namely, it's the first time a in a long while that the company's fashion phones aren't completely outclassed by the competition. When I say outclassed, I'm referring strictly to performance. With it's 4.3-inch WVGA NOVA display, 1 GHz dual-core processor, and 8-megapixel camera, the Prada 3.0 is a solid little package, but one that's a bit lacking considering its premium price tag.
 
iPhone App Downloads In November Up 83% Over Last Year Top
index-competitive-lrg-201111Marketing technology company Fiksu tracked the impact of the iPhone 4S on iPhone app downloads and found that download volume of the top 200 free apps increased 15% from October's previous record high of 4.91 million daily downloads. In November, the firm's "App Store Competitive Index," which measures this trend, peaked at 5.65 million downloads per day - the first time it has topped the 5 million mark. That's an increase of 83% over November of last year.
 
Trademark Watch: What Is "Yahoo Axis"? Top
yahooLast Friday, troubled Internet giant Yahoo filed a new trademark application with the USPTO. I can't find any record of an existing Yahoo product or service by the name, so I figured I should just throw it out here for all of you to speculate what the company has up its sleeves. The name, before I forget to mention it, is Yahoo Axis. That will make you none the wiser, but perhaps the classes and descriptions might.
 
WeedMaps Buys Medical Marijuana Inventory And Patient Management Software MMJMenu Top
weedmaps logoIn the small but budding legal medical marijuana industry, WeedMaps has the munchies for acquisitions (sorry, I couldn't resist). Fresh off its $4.2 million Marijuana.com bong hit in November, WeedMaps' parent company, Canada's General Cannabis, announced today its acquisition MMJMenu. MMJMenu provides back-end enterprise software for medical marijuana dispensaries. The software handles everything from patient management to inventory control to checkout at point of sale. Medical marijuana dispensaries re highly regulated.
 
Call Genie Acquires Mobile Advertising, Analytics Startup VoodooVox Top
voodoovoxIn what looks like a firesale, Call Genie has acquired US-based mobile analytics and advertising network company VoodooVox, which has raised a ton of venture capital from investors like Apax Partners, Softbank Capital, Steamboat Ventures (Disney), Berkshire Capital Investors and Village Ventures. VoodooVox provides demographic information on phone calls and mobile ad traffic in real-time, enabling companies to gain insights into their call volume and mobile application activity.
 
Japan Gets Wi-Fi Dispensing Vending Machines Top
1227-2_bIt's no secret that Japan is the country of vending machines (they even have models like this one now), but this is new: Tokyo-based beverage company Asahi Soft Drinks took the wraps off a vending machine [JP] that not only offers drinks but also sends out Wi-Fi signals within a 50m radius. The Wi-Fi will be available for free, is accessible with multiple devices, without registration, and for anyone to use (meaning users won't have to buy any drinks to go online through the machine). It's possible to use the web for about 30 minutes before the machine cuts you off (re-connecting is possible, however).
 
DIY Health Reform: Employers Solving Healthcare Crisis One Onsite Clinic At A Time Top
DIYIn several of my past pieces, I have written about the importance of a disruptive model of care and payment called Direct Primary Care (DPC) such as The Most Important Organization In Silicon Valley That No One Has Heard About. As the DPC models scale, they become a great option for individuals and small business. However, larger organizations have another option at their disposal that I'm as excited about as the DPC models. Employers fed up with the annual "get less for more" health story when they get annual health plan updates have taken matters into their own hands. This has created one of the hottest sectors of the economy -- onsite clinic providers. These are companies providing corporations with primary care onsite at employer workplaces. Each of the onsite clinic provider CEOs (e.g., Concentra, CareHere) I have spoken with have shared that their business is growing 100% annually. Reportedly 20% of employers with over 500 employees are implementing onsite clinic programs.
 
'Big Data' Giant Mu Sigma Raises $108 Million From General Atlantic, Sequoia Top
musigmaMu Sigma, a provider of analytics and data-driven decision support services for enterprise customers, has raised $108 million in funding in a round led by growth equity firm General Atlantic. The financing comes about half a year after Mu Sigma raised $25 million from Sequoia Capital, which also participated in this round.
 
Will UK Prime Minister Get An iPad App For Work? Unlikely. Here's Why. Top
5071697639_8a2368b573According to some press reports today the British Prime Minister, David Cameron is to get "his own personalised iPad app" to stay on top of Government business. Cameron is known to use an iPad to read newspapers and catch up on media generally, as evidenced by this photo taken at a party conference last year. But this report sounds just a little like a slow news week combined with some idle chatter over the Christmas party season amongst the Whitehall press gang and the 'spads' - insider shorthand for Special Advisers.
 
3DS Sees Record Sales In Japan, Fueled By Mario Kart 7 And Super Mario 3D Land Top
01Nintendo is really lucky to own the Super Mario brand: after the bumpy, Mario-less launch of the 3DS in Japan back in February, big N is seeing record sales for its portable console. As predicted, sales in Japan for the 3DS crossed the four million unit mark before the end of the year, namely sometime between December 19 and 25. That's the week Nintendo sold 510,629 units 3DS systems, according to Japan's biggest video game magazine Famitsu [JP]. In total, the company has shifted 4,135,739 units in the country since the launch on February 26. Nintendo president Satoru Iwata earlier predicted the 3DS will find 4 million Japanese buyers sometimes in February next year.
 
Daily Crunch: Parapet Top
1507Here are some recent stories on TechCrunch Gadgets: Giving Windows Phone A Chance Fire Emblem: Nintendo Announces First 3DS Game With Paid Download Content Airtight Is Airplay For Your Google TV Li Ka-shing Invests In HzO, Which Protects Your Gadgets From Water Damage 5 Japanese Tech Companies (And Samsung) Set Up LTE Mobile Chip Venture
 
Andy Rubin: Android Had A Jolly Good Christmas With 3.7M Activations Top
andy_rubinGoogle SVP Andy Rubin took to Twitter again today, not to delete one of his tweets but to publish a brand new one, saying Android saw 3.7 million activations in two days (Christmas day and the day before). He also posted it on his Google+ account, just in case you were wondering.
 
Amazon, Apple Soar In Customer Satisfaction In 2011; Netflix Plummets Top
amazonAccording to customer experience analytics company ForeSee, e-commerce giant Amazon once again topped consumer satisfaction in online retail after taking the top spot in 2010. However, Netflix, which had a dismal year, plummeted in customer satisfaction. For the past seven years, Netflix and Amazon have been competing for first place in Foresee's Index, but this is the first year where one of the e-retailers saw a massive dip in sentiment. Amazon climbed two points to score 88 on the study's 100-point scale, which is the highest score from any retailer in 14 consecutive studies. Netflix's well-publicized blunders, including price hikes last summer and the unsuccessful attempt to spin off the DVD rental business, caused its customer satisfaction to plummet by seven points and 8% to 79.
 
For Google+, User Count Is A Journey Not A Race Top
Google User Count JourneyThat's a good thing because Google+ missed the starting gun. And its "invite only" launch strategy saw all its disconnect users flailing independently. But in the long run that might not matter much, because Google+ doesn't need a critical mass or tons of engagement. It needs signups so it can get its identity layer under users of its other products. That way it can turn everyone's searches, mapping, email, and more into fuel for its ad targeting engine.
 
Another Report Shows Google+ With 60M+ Users And Growing… But Active User Count Still Unknown Top
Screen Shot 2011-12-27 at 5.13.15 PMGoogle+ now has more than 62 million users, according to Paul Allen, Ancestry.com founder and unofficial traffic analyst for Google's social network. That's not 62 million active users, though -- a point that everyone covering these numbers seems to have missed. It's just the number of total users. And specifically, it's the number of new surnames that Allen's team has tracked being created on the service. Because Google has aggressively integrated G+ into many other properties, including its top navigation bar and the OneBox, one would expect a certain baseline amount of sign-ups from among the hundreds of millions of people using other Google products. The real question is how many people are returning after creating their accounts, which Allen doesn't try to answer.
 
Find Your Stolen Camera or Protect It First With GadgetTrak's CameraTrace Top
GadgetTrak CameraTraceIf you got a digital camera for the holidays, or already own one, take a moment and write down the serial number. That way GadgetTrak's new CameraTrace service can help you recover it if it's ever stolen. Launching today, for a one-time fee of $10 CameraTrace lets you register your camera's serial number. If you later report it lost or stolen, you'll be notified by email if anyone else tries to upload photos from it. You can also search CameraTrace's serial number database of 5 billion photos for free. Both tools could help you track down unauthorized uploaders and get your gear back. Camera thieves beware, there's a new sheriff in town.
 

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