Tuesday, January 10, 2012

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BetterWorks Adds Catering To Office Perks Platform Top
betterBetterWorks, a company that gives small companies an easy way to reward and incentivize employees, is adding a new feature to the mix—catering. As we've reported previously, BetterWorks, which was co-founded by Paige Craig and co-creator of Farmville Sizhao Yang, launched to help small businesses manage company perks and rewards. The startup gives small businesses, startups and companies access to corporate rates on things like gyms and salons, which those businesses can then offer to their employees as perks.
 
Medialets Turns On Private Marketplace For Mobile Ads Top
Medialets Private MarketplaceBuying mobile ads across different apps and mobile sites is a highly inefficient process today. There are dozens of ad formats, about 85 percent of mobile ad inventory goes unsold, and it is difficult for advertisers to reach the scale they require. Mobile ads are ripe for a marketplace to make it more efficient, but publishers are wary of ad marketplaces, having seen how they pushed down average prices per impression on the desktop web. Today, Medialets is launching a private marketplace for mobile ads which attempts to address the problems of both mobile publishers and advertisers in a unique way.
 
Oracle Taps Cloudera For Hadoop Distribution Of Big Data Appliance Top
cloudOracle has tapped Cloudera, the startup that commercially distributes and services Apache Hadoop based data management software and services, to provide an Apache Hadoop distribution and tools for Oracle's newly announced Big Data Appliance. Hadoop is a Java software framework born out of an open-source implementation of Google's published computing infrastructure which is fostered within the Apache Software Foundation. Hadoop supports distributed applications running on large clusters of commodity computers processing enormous amounts of data. Cloudera helps distribute Hadoop, and provides practical services around the technology, similar to what Red Hat does for the Linux framework.
 
Badgeville Proves Gamification Is Here To Stay, As Recyclebank & Others Buy In Top
95585v5-max-250x250Badgeville is convinced that 2012 is going to be a big year for gamification and that the startup can help your company take advantage of all the elements of gaming that make us tick (and click), whether they be leaderboards, badges, leveling up, experience points, or any of that good stuff. That was the motivation behind the company's launch at Disrupt San Francisco in 2010, where Badgeville won the Audience Choice Award. And there are plenty who agree that gamification (and Badgeville's vision of what it means to web business and enterprise) will continue to play: Among them, Norwest Venture Partners, El Dorado Ventures, Trinity Ventures and Webb Investment Network, who collectively poured $12 million into the startup in July of last year. (Following a $2.5 million round of seed post-Disrupt in November 2010.)
 
SohoOS's Small Business Management Suite Gets An $8M Vote Of Confidence Top
SohoOSA year ago, Mangrove Capital Partners invested $1.75 million in SohoOS and its small-business management service. Today the company is announcing that Morgenthaler Ventures is leading a second round of financing to the tune of $8 million (it's also the firm's first investment in an Israeli-based startup). All existing investors, including Mangrove Capital Partners, Kima Ventures and The Time are participating in the round as well. Joining Mangrove's Michael Jackson on the company's board will be Morgenthaler Ventures' Mark Goines, whose previous experience of running TurboTax, GM'ing Inuit's consumer division, as well as backing the likes of of Mint.com as an angel investor, should come in handy for SohoOS as it begins to double down on user acquisition.
 
Sony Shares Holiday Sales Numbers For The PlayStation Top
playstation-default-554x341Sony Computer Entertainment reported some solid sales numbers for its various PlayStation systems for the past holiday season today. Sony says that they moved a total of 6.5 million PlayStation 2/3/PSP/Vita units worldwide (Sony defines "holiday season" as between November 21 and January 5 in Asia, November 21 through December 31 in America, and November 18 through December 31 in Europe).
 
Daily Crunch: Showtime Top
1517Here are some highlights from yesterday’s post on TechCrunch Gadgets: Live Coverage of CES 2012 Eyes On: The Delightfully Retro Samsung DA-E75 Speaker Dock New Pocket Projectors From 3M Pump Up The Lumens MakerBot Announces Their Latest 3D Printer, The Replicator Vizio Breaks Into PC Market With Five New Models Monster Wins CES With Feathers And Spikes
 
Former Facebook Engineer Impressively Logs A Bunch Of Facebook Bugs Top
Screen Shot 2012-01-09 at 11.35.25 PMAbout two weeks ago, I couldn't update my status on Facebook, like it just wouldn't let me, showing me "Invalid Request" error messages even though my requests are totally valid DAMMIT. And then just like that the fail stopped and I could update, inexplicably.  In my humble experience, I've come across so many Facebook bugs I've given up on getting frustrated and now just hope they'll eventually go away. I regularly just straight up don't receive Messages and can we just talk about how the Like button just doesn't work. Can we?
 
Takeaway.com Picks Up €13 Million In Funding Top
takeSome interesting news from The Netherlands: online food ordering and delivery service Takeaway.com has been delivered 13 million euros - roughly $16.6 million - by Dutch VC Prime Ventures. With the additional capital, the Dutch company behind the food ordering service aims to continue its international expansion, after starting local websites in a number of European countries (including Belgium, Austria, the UK and Germany).
 
Formspring Hits 4 Billion Answers; Transforms Into Content Curator With "Smile Sort" Top
formspring-logoAs Sarah wrote in November, social Q&A service Formspring has been making an effort to slowly build out the connections between its users by offering "who made you smile" and "who you responded to" categories to user profiles, but it is also going up against Facebook by becoming a "network built around users' interests." Of course, the site has to contend with the billions of "Likes" accumulated on Facebook, which compose its own interest graph, and it has done so with "Smiles," Formspring's equivalent of "Likes." Today, the service is adding another feature to its functionality, a tool called "Smile Sort" that aims to transform the service into a content curator.
 
Basis Unveils Web Interface For Sensor-Laden Fitness Band Top
jeffsdashboardmedThe makers of the Basis fitness band were at Pepcom's Digital Experience event showing off their namesake accessory, but that's not all that they wanted to reveal. They also demoed their new web interface, which is meant to take all of data the Basis can collect and it turn into a meaningful way for users to track their activity levels.
 
Ready For More On-The-Fly Fun? We're Live At The Pre-CES Press Event, Pepcom Top
After a day full of press conferences and jamming around Vegas like we were running for our lives, we're streaming live from the last pre-CES press gathering of the year: Pepcom. I'm not sure how much longer we'll be on the air (we've already been roaming for quite a while), but tune in for a quick sneak peek of everything new and noteworthy that all of the big guns brought out to the show.
 
The $60 Ooma HD2 Uses Facebook, Google And Yahoo For Picture Caller-ID Top
Ooma-HD2-handset-front-flat-noreflHome phones are dumb phones defined. At best they feature a backlit four-line display. At worst they suck. Well, Ooma just introduced the HD2, which not only pairs pefectly with the company's VoIP service but offers a bunch of functions standard to feature phones. A 2-inch color LCD features picture caller-ID with the images garnered from the owner's Facebook, Google and Yahoo friends. This can be managed either from on the handset or through the My Ooma web portal. But wait! There is more.
 
Eyes On: The Tagg Pet Tracker Top
dogQualcomm subsidiary Snaptracs was on hand at Pepcom's Digital Experience event to demo their Tagg pet tracker, and really -- what better way to do it than with a large stuffed dog?
 
TaskRabbit Acquires Service Provider Directory SkillSlate Top
Screen Shot 2012-01-09 at 8.06.17 PMCollaborative consumption startup TaskRabbit has acquired SkillSlate, according to this press release I just received. This will be TaskRabbit's, which has a total of $24.7 million in financing, first acquisition. Even a cursory glance will tell you that the services are a good fit. TaskRabbit is a platform that allows people to pay other people to complete tasks. SkillSlate allows people to search for local businesses that provide the services they want.
 
Eyes On: The Delightfully Retro Samsung DA-E75 Speaker Dock Top
da-e750There's just something about the Samsung DA-E750 that makes me want to own one immediately. Maybe it's the fact that it plays just as well with Apple products as it does with Samsung's own Galaxy devices, or it could have to do with the old-school wood design and its use of a vacuum tube amplifier.
 
Kinect Comes To Windows On February 1st Top
kinectWe knew that Microsoft's hit motion-control accessory for the Xbox 360, Kinect, was coming to Windows eventually. They've been hinting at it, people have been hacking it, and they even released an SDK a little while back. But one of the last things Ballmer said tonight at his keynote was a definite date for when Kinect would be coming to Windows: February 1st. That's really all there is to it. If you're interested in contributing, check out the SDK, or if you just want to see what people have put together (there has really been some mind-blowing stuff over the last year), scroll through our Kinect tag.
 
Microsoft Brings In The Tweet Choir To Soulify Its Last Keynote Top
tweetchoirMicrosoft must have feared that the annual "airing of the modest success" they bring to CES every year might not be exciting enough to satisfy the many CES attendees who were expecting something major for what may very well be their last keynote (at least for a while). So they brought out the Tweet Chorus. What is the Tweet Chorus? It's exactly what you think. Unless you think it's a bunch of birds.
 
Microsoft's "Picture Password": A Breath Of Fresh Air On The Lock Screen, Of All Places Top
picpassRemember that feeling you got back when Steve Jobs was unveiling the iPhone, and he did the "slide to unlock" gesture for the first time? I remember the way he said it - "You like that? Want to see it again?" Since then I haven't seen a lock screen interface that has made me feel that same "how obvious, how elegant!" feeling - until today at the NVIDIA press conference, and later at the Microsoft keynote here at CES. It sounds a little silly, sure, making such a big deal of such a small feature, but it's just nice to see a genuinely natural and new way of doing something we've all done thousands upon thousands of times over the last few years.
 
Intuit GoPayment Goes International With Canada Launch; Redesigns Mobile Credit Card Reader Top
intuitIntuit is announcing major news this evening around its mobile credit card swiping device and Square-competitor GoPayment reader. Intuit is one of the first major U.S. mobile payments readers to go international, with a launch in Canada. And Intuit is debuting a newly, redesigned sleek version of its reader. Launched two years ago, GoPayment offers a complimentary app and credit card reader to allow small businesses to conduct charges via their smartphones. GoPayment is available for iOS, Android and Blackberry phones and similar to Square's device, the card reader simply plugs into the audio jack of a phone or tablet. The credit card data is also encrypted, (and never stored on the phone).
 

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