Wednesday, January 18, 2012

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@WalmartLabs Crowdsources Walmart's Product Selection With New "Get On The Shelf" Contest Top
Get on the Shelf@WalmartLabs, the digital technology division of the world's largest retailer, is launching a contest today which uses crowdsourcing techniques to determine which items the company should stock in its stores and on its website. The contest, called Get on the Shelf, will be heavily promoted by all of Walmart's social media presences, including Facebook, Google+ and, most importantly, Twitter.
 
Veterans Need Employment, Jobvite's Apps For Heroes Helps Them Find It Top
Veterans Job BankWhen military veterans complete their service, they shouldn't have to struggle to find jobs. That's why Jobvite and The White House's Joining Forces initiative are teaming up to release "Apps For Heroes". The feature set allows Jobvite's recruiting platform clients to check a box and flag the job openings they post to be automatically included in Veterans Job Bank. Clients can also easily add a Veterans Affairs Blue Button to their job application submission forms to allow vets to upload their military service history.
 
Playstation Vita Sales In Nosedive After Strong Japan Debut Top
vitaThe Playstation Vita handheld system, unveiled at E3 last year, went on sale just before the holidays in Japan. It saw serious sales: around 325,000 units (500,000 by Sony's reckoning) were sold in its opening week. Naturally numbers tend to drop after the initial rush, and the next week saw healthy sales of around 72,000. But The numbers kept decreasing, and it is now reported that for the week ending January 15, the new device sold only 18,361 units, not including online sales. That's less than the PSP.
 
eBay Beats The Street; Q4 Revenue Up 35 Percent To $3.4B, Net Income Up 15 Percent To $789M Top
ebayeBay just reported fourth quarter and fiscal year 2011 earnings today, which were above analysts expectations. eBay posted revenue of $3.4 billion, up 35 percent from the same quarter in 2010. The company reported fourth quarter net income on a GAAP basis of $2.0 billion, or $1.51 per diluted share, and non-GAAP net income of $788.6 million, or $0.60 per diluted share. Net income was up 15 percent to $789 million. Analysts expected earnings per share of $0.57 on revenue of $3.32 billion. eBay says the year-over-year increase in the fourth quarter GAAP earnings per diluted share was driven primarily by a gain on the sale of the company's remaining investment in Skype. The year-over-year increase in the fourth quarter non-GAAP earnings per diluted share was driven primarily by strong top-line growth and improved productivity partially offset by a higher tax rate.
 
Turntable.fm's Anti-SOPA Message Is Subtle, But Wonderfully Symbolic Top
Screen Shot 2012-01-18 at 11.47.23 AMRegardless of where you stand on the SOPA battle, you've got to agree: seeing what seems to be the entire Internet come together to stand against something is incredible. Each company has a different approach, but their goal is the same: make sure everyone goes to sleep knowing what SOPA is. While I don't want to turn today's protests into a who-did-it-best battle (that's not at all the point), I've got to highlight Turntable.fm's approach. It's about as simple as could be, but it just oozes with symbolism.
 
Boxee Brings The SOPA Protests To Living Rooms Top
IMG_4787SOPA protests are everywhere today. The Internet is collectively up in arms about the proposed legislation. Major sites are shut down, banners are everywhere, but that's online. Boxee is taking the fight to living rooms. Turn on a Boxee Box today and you'll be greeted with three large black boxes that clearly state STOP SOPA. There's no way to miss them. Featured videos generally occupy the prime real estate on the home screen. But not today. Today they direct viewers to a Vimeo video (embedded below) explaining the downfalls of Protect-IP.
 
No, We Have Not Been Hacked Top
Screen Shot 2012-01-18 at 12.24.46 PMThis is a public service announcement to all four of you that visited http://technews.techcrunch.com today and were confused by the jazzy Black Oak Asset Management splash page above; No we have not been hacked. And, no, this is not some kind of elaborate and arcane SOPA/PIPA protest. And while it would be amazing if we did offer complimentary services from the top attorneys & CPA's [sic] in the area, we don't. I barely know what a 401K is. 
 
iPad Is The Least Problematic Tablet Says FixYa, The Tech Q&A Site Top
Screen Shot 2012-01-18 at 3.24.05 PMFixYa, a product Q&A site, took a look at its own holiday stats to collect some facts about many major cell phones and tablets including iOS and Android devices. The conclusion? iPhone owners tend to be most interested in fixing battery and call quality problems on Android users found a number of screen issues including freezing and problematic interfaces. They also found that the iPad had far fewer support questions than the aggregate number of Android tablets. Obviously the cohort they surveyed isn't very statistically useful, but they were able to grab quite a few percentages based on page views of various support questions.
 
Whited00r Aims To Breathe New Life Into Old iOS Hardware Top
whitedoorIt's a story that's all too common these days -- once you purchase and activate a shiny new iPhone (and it seems more people are doing this lately), the old one is unceremoniously shoved in a drawer never to be heard from again. Most of the time though the device is still good, and with a little help from Team Whited00r, it could be even better.
 
Improvement On Age-Old Mathematical Principle Could Yield Improved Images, Video Top
fouIt's not often that you improve on a bit of math that has been around for 200 years. The Fourier transform was first proposed in 1811 by a Frenchman named Joseph Fourier, though it wasn't until the middle of the 20th century that he was given the credit he deserved. His technique broke down a complex signal into a number of component signals, which could be transmitted or processed separately and then recombined to produce the original in a fairly nondestructive way. In 1965 the Fourier transform got a boost as James Cooley and John Tukey discovered a way to apply the transform on the fly using a computer. And now, in 2012, another major improvement has been proposed.
 
Mark Zuckerberg Posts Against SOPA, Suddenly Remembers Twitter Account Top
mark zuckerbergFacebook may not be opposing the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act as prominently as some other websites — it's not blacking out the site today, or even posting an anti-SOPA/PIPA message on its homepage — but CEO Mark Zuckerberg spoke out against the legislation in a post on his Facebook account.
 
ION Audio's iPad Guitar Concept In Legal Trouble Top
GuitarApprentice_Angle_LGNewWow. Talk about not doing your homework. ION Audio has apparently infringed on the patents, trademarks and designs of three companies by debuting a new iOS peripheral at CES. The Guitar Apprentice (which is honestly a pretty cool idea) appears to use concepts that Behringer sent to the US Patent and Trademark office over a year and a half ago. But it's not just the product concept. The trademark on the name "Guitar Apprentice" is actually owned by another company called Legacy Learning Systems and if that were not enough, the headstock design on their guitar shaped controller could be in dispute by Schecter Guitars.
 
Want More Stickiness? Users Logging In Through Social Networks Spend 50% More Time On Site Top
Screen shot 2012-01-18 at 10.17.23 AMSite owners, administrators, web business owners, content producers, and everyone in between are always trying to find the best ways to encourage visitors to spend more time on their sites. It's hard enough getting people there in the first place, but keeping visitors and customers on the site (and engaged) once there? No walk in the park. But doing so is critical -- Just ask Groupon. As one might expect, there are a thousand ways to increase engagement, and there's obviously been a lot of noise around social as a great facilitator of a stickier (and more enjoyable) user experiences for websites, apps, and businesses. Thanks to some research (and a nifty infographic) from Gigya, the makers of SaaS technology (or a social CRM platform, if you will) that helps businesses make their websites social, we now have further proof that one of the best ways to encourage repeat visitors is through social logins.
 
Tagged: Four Years Profitable, Big Plans for hi5 Top
taggedSocial network Tagged seems to have found a model that works — the company says that 2011 was its fourth consecutive profitable year, and that its revenue grew 35 percent to more than $43 million.
 
Verizon To Light Up Five New LTE Markets Tomorrow Top
verizon-4g-lteWhile AT&T may be hitting a roadblock on their path to 4G LTE expansion, Verizon LTE seems to be spreading like wildfire. It feels like just yesterday that Verizon rolled out 4G LTE service to its first batch of U.S. markets, and now over a year later 200 million Americans are enjoying higher speeds. In fact, tomorrow Verizon will expand its high-speed network into five new markets, and expand coverage in three existing markets.
 
Remote DJ'ing App PlayMySong Raises $350K Seed Round Top
playmysonglogo_highres_2012Finnish startup PlayMySong, the crowdsourced music DJ'ing service that lets a store's customers remotely program the stereo, has just closed a round of seed funding totaling $350,000. The round was led by Lifeline Ventures, a Helsinki-based accelerator focused on funding web and gaming startups and includes participation from Tekes, the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation. Though relatively small, the company says it's enough funding to open an office in New York and head out to San Francisco for meetings and other fund-raising efforts. PlayMySong, which is live in Heleski and a handful of U.S. locations, has also just launched its service in New York as of today.
 
Should RIM Abandon Ship? Top
shutterstock_69173443Peter Rojas published a thought-provoking piece about RIM and BlackBerry 10. He said, in short, that the Canadian company should wipe out Blackberry OS and run Android or Windows or, barring that, sell out completely and offer a software package running on another OS. While both of those are logical positions, I think RIM will end up in far worse shape than those options allow. RIM is popular for three reasons: the keyboard, BBM, and the back-end software. For most of this decade, IT shops have been able to send out fleets of BlackBerry products without concern simply because there was nothing better for email and messaging. Over the past three years, however, that claim has gone completely out the window. I would reckon that a nice IMAP server install is far easier and cheaper than any BB Enterprise Server ever was and, given this screenshot from the actual BBES "purchase" page, there is a lot of sales pressure involved.
 
"At Apple Everything Is A Secret" Top
Inside AppleLast year, the Steve Jobs biography was the best-selling book on Amazon. But there is another book about Apple coming out which isn't authorized that delves into the culture of secrecy at Apple. Inside Apple: How America's Most Admired—and Secretive—Company Really Works was written by Fortune senior editor at large Adam Lashinsky, based on a Fortune story he wrote last summer. (Lashinsky spoke with Andrew Keen on TCTV—Part 1 of that interview is up). The book details how Apple keeps its secrets by policing both internal and external leaks. Employees are kept in the dark about what their colleagues are doing and restricted where they can go on campus.
 
Keen On…. Adam Lashinsky: How Apple Really Works (TCTV) Top
Keen On…. Adam Lashinsky_ How Apple Really Works (TCTV) | TechCrunchAfter Walter Isaacson's magnum opus, do we really need yet another book about Apple? Yes, I think we do. Whereas Isaacson wrote the authorized biography of Jobs, the journalist and author Adam Lashinsky has written a most unauthorized and, in some ways, unpalatable book about Jobs' company which gets Inside Apple and explains How America's Most Admired - and Secretive - Company Really works.
 
Direct Deals Mobile Ad Marketplace Chartboost Expands To Asia Top
cb_logo_onwhiteA month after its expansion to Android, Chartboost, the newly launched (already profitable) direct deals mobile ad marketplace for game developers is expanding to Asia. Starting today, the company is rolling out localized versions in Chinese, Japanese and Korean.
 

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