Thursday, January 12, 2012

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Vodio Brings Personalized Video Recommendations To The iPad Top
vodio-homeVodio is a new iPad app that's somewhat along the same lines as iOS app Shelby.tv. Like Shelby, it also brings you videos being shared by your friends on social networks. But where Shelby.tv only focuses on those "socially shared" videos, Vodio instead uses its social features to bring "a dash" of personalization to its video recommendations.
 
Following LG Patent Deal, Microsoft Execs Taunt Google On Twitter Top
Boxing gloves pair redMicrosoft this morning announced that it has signed a patent licensing agreement with Android device manufacturer LG, its eleventh deal of the kind. Microsoft says effectively 70 percent of all Android smartphones sold in the United States today are covered under its patent portfolio, not mentioning the fact that they're also suing Motorola Mobility and NOOK maker Barnes & Noble over their Android devices. Continuing a tradition that we hope will stand the test of time, Microsoft's head of communications, Frank Shaw, took to Twitter to taunt Google.
 
Fly Or Die: Does CES Have A Future? Top
Fly or Die CESThe Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is packed this year, yet its relevance seems increasingly in decline. Microsoft is bailing, no iconic products launched this year, and Apple's presence can be felt everywhere even though they don't exhibit at the show. In this episode of Fly or Die, TechCrunch Gadgets editor John Biggs (who is running our CES coverage) joins me remotely from Las Vegas to discuss the big question: Does CES have a future?
 
Amazon Kindle Owners Are "Borrowing" Nearly 300,000 Electronic Books A Month Top
kdpselectAmazon is releasing new data on its Kindle Lending Library, which the e-commerce site says now has over 75,000 books. The Kindle Owners' Lending Library is a collection of books that Amazon Prime members who own a kindle can borrow once a month, with no due dates. Amazon recently launched KDP Select, a fund that lets indie authors and publishers make money off of lending. Basically, if a KDP author or publisher chooses to make any of their books exclusive to the Kindle Store for at least 90 days, those books are eligible to be included in the Kindle Owners' Lending Library and can earn a share of the KDP Select fund.
 
Microsoft Strikes Another Patent Deal With An Android, Chrome OS Device Maker: LG Top
lgMicrosoft has signed a patent licensing agreement with LG, maker of tablets, phones and other consumer electronics devices running Android or Chrome OS. This marks the 11th deal with a device manufacturer leveraging Google's operating system software; other major agreements were struck with the likes of HTC, Samsung and Acer, among others.
 
Conversation Sharing App Bnter Rebrands As Banters; Adds Voice Recognition, Privacy Settings Top
BantersBnter, an app that allows you to share your conversations with others publicly, is rebranding today as Banters and adding a number of new features to both its iPhone and web apps. In the same way you share photos via the web or your mobile phone, Banters allows you to share snippets of conversations you have with friends on the web. While the startup initially focused on SMS, Banters broadened its scope to allow users to share any sort of conversation, including GChat, in-person chat, email and more.
 
EV Mini Sport: Mini Electric Sports Car From Japan (Video) Top
ev mini featIt's not a Tesla, but Japan-based Tajima Motor Corporation has developed a zero-emission (and pretty cool-looking) mini sports car. The so-called EV Mini Sport [JP] has been publicly showcased first in 2010, and will go on sale in Japan and abroad "soon" (according to the company's website). The car weighs just 280kg and is 2.49 m long, 1.29 m wide, and 1.09 m high. It runs on a 40Ah lithium-ion polymer battery, which provides enough juice for about 30km on a single charge (Tajima will also offer a 80Ah and a 120Ah version).
 
StrikeAd Strikes £2 Million Second Round From DFJ Esprit To Expand Top
strikeadStrikeAd, a London and New York based mobile advertising startup, has secured a £2m second round investment from VCs DFJ Esprit expand further internationally. The investment follows a first round finance from Germany-based venture capital firm eValue announced in February 2011. Read more at TechCrunch Europe.
 
Seedcamp Graduate Kwaga Raises $1.55M For 'Email Assistant' WriteThat.Name Top
kwagaKwaga, a Paris, France-based startup that specializes in tools to make email 'smarter' by leveraging semantic technology, has raised $1.55 million in Series A funding. The company, which received seed funding from Seedcamp and Kima Ventures after its founding in 2008, raised the money from unnamed private investors. Read more at TechCrunch Europe.
 
eBay Forecasts $8B In Mobile Commerce Volume In 2012; PayPal Will Reach $7B Top
ebayAt his CES keynote yesterday evening, eBay CEO (and new interim PayPal CEO) John Donahoe revealed a number of new mobile payments forecasts for both eBay and PayPal. As we heard from PayPal VP David Marcus a few days ago, PayPal surpassed its expectation of $3.5 billion in mobile payments in 2011, reaching $4 billion for the year. Donahoe said in his keynote that eBay reached $5 billion in mobile GMV (gross merchandise volume) in 2011, doubling 2010's GMV. He also projected yesterday that eBay would reach $8 billion in mobile GMV in 2012, and PayPal will reach $7 billion in transactions in 2012. eBay Mobile currently has more than 65 million downloads of eBay's mobile applications across platforms. And more than 890,000 new eBay shoppers made their first eBay purchase through the company's mobile apps in 2011, a 113% increase year over year.
 
Mobile App Search And Recommendations Startup AppTap Raises $4 Million Top
apptapAppTap, which powers personalized and contextual app recommendations, app search, and more has raised $4 million in funding led by Syncom Venture Partners, with New Atlantic Ventures participating. AppTap is an app recommendations and advertising network for for mobile app developers. The startup's app recommendation platform for publishers can be added to any web site and will analyze the content of any page, and deliver app recommendations to users based on what they are reading and searching for.
 
HealthRally Launches To Help You Get Paid For Getting In Shape Top
137025v2-max-250x250In December, HealthRally, a social healthtech startup building a crowdfunding platform for personal health motivation, raised $400,000 in seed funding from prominent angel investors like Esther Dyson, Isy Goldwasser, Dick Sass, Ty Danco, and Jeff Thiel. The startup, then in private beta, ventured to bring behavioral economics combined with social networking analysis to bear on the age-old problem of how to best motivate people to get in shape and stay healthy. Today, HealthRally is officially launching its service in public beta -- one that bets dangling financial rewards in front of us like carrots can hold the key to unlocking that motivation and spur us to meet our individual health goals.
 
Digital Payments Innovator Jumio Raises $25.5 Million Top
jumioKicking off the new year with a fresh wad of cash: according to an SEC filing, mobile and online payments startup Jumio has raised $25.5 million in funding on top of the $6.5 million it raised from Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin - and others - back in March 2011. Jumio confirmed the financing round but declined to provide more details (which investors participated and what they plan to use the additional capital for) at this time.
 
DeskStream Acquires Irish Cloud And Virtualization Software Startup WorldDesk Top
worlddeskUS-based desktop virtualization software maker DeskStream has acquired Northern Irish cloud start-up WorldDesk, the companies are set to announce today at CES in Las Vegas. Terms of the acquisition, which is expected to close this quarter, were not disclosed. Interestingly, the acquisition will see DeskStream adopt the WorldDesk name and branding. Read more at TechCrunch Europe.
 
Daily Crunch: Vision Top
1519Here are some of yesterday’s highlights at CES on TechCrunch Gadgets: Hands On: The Nintendo Wii U TC/Gadgets Interview: Up Close With The Lytro 50 Cent Weighs In: Waterproof Phones And Fighting Poverty Vuzix: SMART Glasses Explained Why Samsung Is The Next Apple
 
Google And The Monopoly Paradox Top
Screen Shot 2012-01-12 at 12.29.26 AMWith the deep inclusion of Google+ into Search, Google is tempting fate. We've been over this. A lot. And this story is going to continue for some time to come. It sure looks like Google is almost asking for an inquiry into potentially anti-competitive practices (and it's coming). Which is insane. So the next logical question is why? Why is Google risking so much to do this? My colleague Eric had a very interesting theory earlier. Maybe Google's real motive is to get the government to also look into Facebook's often-unfair practices with regard to their network ahead of their IPO. If social and not search is indeed the future, call this pre-subversion. And if there's any shred of truth to this theory, more power to Google — it's rather genius (though still extremely risky). But the more likely answer as to why Google is doing Search+ is much simpler. At a high level, they believe social elements are going to be an extremely important part of search going forward. Given that the two biggest players in social, Facebook and Twitter, don't give them full access to their data (Twitter used to but the relationship ended, Facebook never did), Google is doing the only thing they can in their minds to still get the data they need: bolster Google+.
 
Facebook Page Performance Art Glitchr Purposefully Tries To Activate Code Glitches Top
383039_338758146142397_217492798268933_1288388_364802936_nMaking the link rounds among designers in Silicon Valley this holiday season is Facebook fan page Glitchr, which tries to mess up Facebook code on purpose. While I had previously postulated that the page might be run by the venerable Evan Priestley, instead it is run by some Greek dude, Laimona Zakas. Click on any of the links in Glitchr's posts and they will do anything from bring up random characters to load a second Facebook navigation bar multiple times.
 
Science Sets Up Shop Top
IMG_4211The LA-based Science moved into its cozy permanent space above a yoga studio in Santa Monica this week, finally giving its variety of LA-based tech talents a place to call office. Past the smell of Patchouli and the sign designating Crispin Porter Bogusky in the lobby are the second floor offices of the Science partners -- former Myspace CEO Mike Jones, designer Mike Macadaan, Ryan Sit, Tom Dare and Color co-founder Peter Pham -- which currently host about seven startups.
 
The Parable Of The Wheel Top
wheelsThere's a war brewing against the Internet, and it's not just SOPA (the bill in Congress that threatens to break the Internet in the name of fighting overseas content piracy). It is, in the words of Cory Doctorow, a "war on general-purpose computing." (read his post, "Lockdown," on BoingBoing if you haven't already). What he means is that in trying to clamp down on a very specific problem on the Internet (the wide availability of pirated movies, music, and other content on foreign servers beyond the reach of U.S. laws such as the DMCA), laws like SOPA start messing around with the inner workings of the Internet such as blocking DNS servers. Applying special-purpose rules to a general purpose technology messes it up for everyone. Doctorow explains the difference between general-purpose and special-purpose technologies with a parable of the wheel:
 
Apple, Amazon Dominate In Mobile Commerce Customer Satisfaction Top
Amazon MobileCustomer experience analytics company ForeSee recently released data on which e-commerce companies had the most customer satisfaction in 2011. Amazon and Amazon proved to be among the winners, with Netflix falling last year in terms of sentiment. Foresee has done a similar study on satisfaction for retailer mobile commerce sites, and it looks like once again Apple and Amazon are head and shoulders above the competition in terms of customer satisfaction for mobile commerce, via both apps and the mobile web. As we've noticed over the past year, mobile commerce has taken off and continues to grow exponentially as more and more consumers use their smartphones for research, shopping decisions and purchases. Because of this trend, ForeSee compiled data from consumers to produce statistically reliable mobile satisfaction scores for 16 of the largest e-retailers in the United States. Apple and Amazon, which scored 85 and 84, respectively, on the study's 100-point scale, topped the list by a wide margin.
 

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