Friday, January 20, 2012

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Home Depot Acquires Home Services Marketplace Redbeacon Top
red-beaconBig-box retailer Home Depot has acquired home services marketplace and TechCrunch50 winner Redbeacon. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Redbeacon lets users search, browse and book local home service providers, including plumbers, roofers, painters, and house cleaners, on its website. Service providers pay a fee to Redbeacon for new paying customers for a lead. The company has expanded from San Francisco to New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington DC, Atlanta, Seattle, and Houston.
 
Radio App TuneIn Tunes In To Mega Funding Round Top
Screen Shot 2012-01-20 at 1.38.06 PMWith a reported 30 million monthly unique users, the bragging rights of being the top iOS music app last October and a slew of newly released auto integrations at CES, the under-the-radar TuneIn is sitting pretty. The service, which like iheartradio takes terrestrial radio stations and streams them online, differentiates itself from other contenders in the music space by offering up traditional radio mainstays like DJs and contests, etc. And as of this week the company is sitting a little prettier, on some freshly signed terms sheets for a new round of funding from existing investor Sequoia Capital and new investor General Catalyst Partners.
 
Bing Brings Postagram To Sundance, Sponsors Postcards For The Movie Stars Top
Screen Shot 2012-01-20 at 1.24.10 PMPostagram, the mobile app from Sincerely that lets you create and mail real-life postcards from your phone photos, has worked out a clever real-world integration with Bing for the Sundance film festival this weekend. A street team is wandering the snowy roads of Park City, Utah, taking photos of attendees, collecting their addresses, and mailing them Bing-sponsored postcards. "Your mailbox has a few bills in it, and other boring stuff like that. The thing that's going to stick out is when you get a card with pictures of you or your friends," founder Matt Brezina explains. Especially if it's a photo of you with your favorite actor. The Sundance Postagrams show the Bing sponsorship logo on the backing board for the photo, and include a link to get a free postcard courtesy of Microsoft's search engine.
 
Heyzap Announces Mobile Gaming Partners: PocketGems And More Top
Heyzap partners logo Jan 2012Gaming startup Heyzap first launched its social discovery service for mobile games nearly a year ago. Now it's unveiling the first list of partners who are using the service. Some of these partnerships weren't exactly a secret before — you could just open up the Heyzap app and see which games were available. But now the startup is really trumpeting those partnerships, in part to show off some of the big names who are buying into its vision.
 
New Google Accounts Require Gmail And G+ Account Creation Top
formGoogle appears to have made some changes to its account creation process. Whereas before, all it took was an email address of any kind and some basic demographic data, now you are required to create both a Gmail account and a presence on Google+. This doesn't strike me as a user-friendly change.
 
Do Great Things Top
dogreatthings (1) FixedWe have a greater capacity to change the world today than the kings and presidents of just 50 years ago. Whether you're a programming prodigy or the office manager holding it all together, technology empowers small groups of passionate people with an astonishing degree of leverage to make the world a better place. Yet I fear that our industry is squandering its opportunity and its talent. In companies large and small, great minds are devoting their lives to endeavors that, even if wildly successful, fail to do great things.
 
iPhone 4S and iPad 2 Finally Get Proper, Untethered Jailbreaks Top
4SWhile the once long list of legitimate reasons to jailbreak your iPhone has taken a hit with each new iOS release, that burning desire to "Free your device" and/or "Fight the power" and/or "Just do crazy stuff that other people can't do" never really goes away. 3 months after the release of the iPhone 4S and 10 months after the release of the iPad 2, the ridiculously talented iOS hacking community has finally cracked the ultimate challenge for both devices: the untethered jailbreak.
 
First Look: Backplane, The Lady Gaga-Backed Community Platform With All-Star Investors (Invites) Top
Screen Shot 2012-01-20 at 11.00.54 AMEarly last summer we wrote about Backplane, a mysterious startup with impressive backers and some major star power behind it: one of its cofounders, Troy Carter, is Lady Gaga's manager. And Lady Gaga herself has a significant stake in the company, as well as hands-on involvement with its development. Details on the company's product have been scant until now. But we've got some exclusive details — and beta codes for TechCrunch readers who will be among the first to try out the product.
 
HumanBirdWings Guy Survives First Test Flight Top
Screen shot 2012-01-20 at 2.03.55 PMWe first reported on Jarnos Smeets when his HumanBirdWings project was still a baby. He had successfully paired the accelerometers of a WiiMote and an HTC Wildfire S to control the outrunners on his wings, but hadn't yet taken to the air. Today, that all changes.
 
Retroficiency Identifies Building Energy Inefficiencies Without Ever Stepping Inside Top
Analysis Details of Energy ConsumptionBuildings are blamed for as much as 40% of U.S. energy consumption, and while green construction is on the rise, identifying the best ways to make and older building more efficient can be a tedious manual endeavor. Retroficiency, whose aim is to disrupt the energy efficiency market, eases the process with the help of extensive data sets and predictive analytics.
 
Marketing Genius: Two Twins Giggling As They Sell You Designer 3D Glasses Top
If you thought Apple's marketing squad was genius, just wait until you watch this Kickstarter video from Ingri:Dahl. If you aren't already familiar with the "company," which you shouldn't be, it's basically two sisters named Kine and Einy, and they want to sell you a 3D clip-on for your glasses. It's actually rather clever. The girls market fashionable 3D eyewear, and this 3D clip-on is just the latest in their collection. But that isn't really the point. I'm more interested in how this set of twins is pitching their product. A glance at their website would lead you to believe that they've got a legit business (and I believe that's the case), but the way they market themselves and their products on Kickstarter begs to differ.
 
TechStars Grad Promoboxx Signs Deal With Chevy On Super Bowl Campaign Top
chevy-promoboxxPromoboxx, a TechStars Boston 2011 company focused on brand-to-retailer marketing, is going to the Super Bowl! (Well, kind of.) The startup has signed a deal with Chevy (via its client Big Fuel), which will allow 6,000 of its dealers to share Chevy's Super Bowl ads prior to the big game via social media, email and on their own websites.
 
Time Warner Cable's New iPhone App Brings Live TV To The Small Screen Top
twcTime Warner Cable is today launching a new iPhone application that allows customers to watch live television from their iPhone or iPod Touch device as well as control, manage and program their DVR. With the new app, users can browse the TV guide, favorite channels and search for programs by title or episode name. There is a small catch to all this live TV-viewing, of course: it only works within the home.
 
With MegaUpload Down, Who's Next? RapidShare? SoundCloud? DropBox? Top
careEvery digital locker service and file linking website is on notice now that MegaUpload and TVShack are down. The Feds have their banhammer out and aren't afraid to use it. Sites better check their zettabytes of data. A single 50 Cent song can cause the Feds to swarm the founder's house and seize their Predator statues. Forget SOPA and PIPA, apparently the US Federal Government doesn't need new legislation in place to shut down major file storage sites and lock millions of users out of their file lockers. The bigger question, then, is who's next? It's clear that the US Federal Government is ramping up its fight against illegal file sharing and hosting. It's the new war on drugs. The plan is to have taxpayers foot the bill and then attack websites rather than regulating or encouraging innovation. The only thing missing is a C.A.R.E. (Computer Abuse Reinforcement Education) presentation at your kids' grade school. Just say no to perfectly legal data sinks, everyone.
 
Love With Food Launches As A Monthly Subscription Service For Gourmet Bites Top
Love With FoodThe subscription commerce market is heating up with Birch Box, Kiwi Crate, and others all offering various takes on the monthly box model. Today, 500startups company Love With Food is launching its subscription model, which offers a monthly box to users with tasty, gourmet samples of food. Here's how it works. Through monthly sample boxes, which are $14 per month with free shipping, Love With Food includes 5 or more gourmet tasty bites. The model gives people a way to find and taste samples of new foods before they buy full-size orders. Along with each box, users will get deep discounts on the gourmet food, new recipes that include one or more of the samples, and the opportunity to earn points which can be used for free products.
 
Cool Trick: AntiCrop "Un-Crops" Your iPhone Photos Top
anticropA newly released iPhone app called AntiCrop proclaims to the be the first application that allows you to "un-crop" your photos. What that means is that the app is able to extend the edges of your photos by using an intelligent content filling tool that duplicates the background, making your picture bigger than it was before. You're not cropping the photo - you're "un-cropping" it. And it's a pretty amazing trick.
 
UpNext Releases Amazingly Fluid 3D Mapping App On iPad And Android Top
Screen Shot 2012-01-20 at 11.29.44 AMThe future was supposed to be all about swooping through pixellated cities, the crepuscular computer ghost-light arcing through the Aurignacian canyons of Neo Tokyo as we trailed our enemies into the dark. Instead we get some of the coolest map visualizations I've ever seen with a few social media tricks thrown in to make a very cool mapping platform called UpNext. You win some, you lose some.
 
Developer Is Building An App Store For Banned Android Apps Top
cyanogenmodAn Android developer by the name of Kousik Dutta is building an alternative Android app store which will house the apps that have been banned from Google's official Android Market. These will include the custom ROMs (customized versions of the Android OS), classic gaming emulators pulled due to copyright complaints, unofficial tethering apps removed at the behest of mobile operators, Visual Voicemail apps, one-click rooting apps, and more.
 
After Laying Off 60 People, RueLaLa Raises $22 Million Top
rueMembers-only shopping site RueLaLa, a former subsidiary of GSI Commerce (before the eBay acquisition) just cut roughly 60 positions from its workforce of 550 employees, but an SEC filing published yesterday afternoon reveals that the flash sales company also recently completed a $22 million financing round. UPDATE: The company has informed us that the funding is not new. The SEC filing shows the valuation of stock options already granted to parties. RueLaLa was previously part of Retail Convergence, Inc, a company that was acquired by GSI Commerce back in 2009. The Gilt Groupe rival, which is still 30 percent owned by eBay, is based in Boston, Massachusetts.
 
Senator Harry Reid Caves: PIPA Postponed Top
After a day of widespread online protests against a pair of bills in Congress, both bills have now been tabled. Hearings on the Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA) had already been cancelled, but the Senate's Protect IP Act (PIPA) was still scheduled for a vote. This morning the sponsor of teh bill, Senator Harry Reid tweeted: "In light of recent events, I have decided to postpone Tuesday's vote on the PROTECT IP Act"
 

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