Wednesday, January 18, 2012

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Pro Tip: Do Not Buy An iPad Made Of Clay Top
iClayThe story goes that at least ten customers were sold clay iPads over the holidays from Canadian electronic stores. These customers were sold what appeared to be sealed iPad 2s, but turned out to contain slabs of clay rather than, you know, iPad 2s. Best Buy and Future Shop of Canada opened investigations, but since the stores already compensated the customers, we're in the clear to laugh at the situation a bit.
 
Among New Smartphone Adopters, iOS Share Rises While Android Declines Top
androidvsiosnewNielsen just released its latest numbers with regard to new smartphone owners, and it would seem that the iPhone (particularly the 4S) is quite popular among those migrating over to the smartphone segment. In fact, since the iPhone 4S launched in October, the number of recent smartphone buyers who chose the iPhone has reached 44.5 percent, up from just 25 percent in October.
 
Ignition Leads $20M Round In Cloud Security And Identity Company Symplified Top
33078v2-max-250x250Symplified, which provides identity and access management tools for cloud applications, has raised $20 million in Series C funding led by Ignition Partners. Existing investor Allegis Capital, Granite Ventures, and Quest Software also participated in the financing, which brings the company's total funding to $38.8 million.
 
Mobile Payments Company BilltoMobile Launches One-Click Checkout For The Mobile Web Top
danalMobile payments company BilltoMobile, which now has relationships with all four major carriers in the U.S. (Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile), is today launching one-click processing for mobile web transactions. Previously, users had to enter in their mobile number manually, sometimes a zip code, then wait for a verification code that was sent to their phone through an SMS text. Now, the company says it's able to identify a user's mobile number automatically thanks to deeper integration with the carriers' networks.
 
Comcast Leads $5M Round In Subscription Service For Kids Activities Kiwi Crate Top
kiwiKiwi Crate, a subscription service for kids activities, has raised $5 million in new funding led by Comcast Ventures with existing investors First Round Capital, Mayfield Fund, Felicis Ventures, Forerunner Ventures, Consigliere Brand Capital, Uj Ventures and 500 Startups participating in the round. The company offers a subscription-based service that produces and delivers hands-on activities boxes for kids. The products are science activities, and arts and crafts projects that are designed to be educational but also entertaining for kids. And Kiwi Crate provides all the necessary materials, ideas and instructions for themed activities.
 
South African VC Firm Debuts $200M US Fund, Invests $30M In 'The Jetstream' Top
jetstreamA South African venture capital firm by the name Quantum Capital Fund (QCF) this morning officially launched a $200 million fund in the United States. QCF's first investment in a US technology venture is a $30 million capital injection into The Jetstream, a mysterious company that is working on a "social media network targeted to a wide variety of people who are on a journey to self-discovery".
 
LabGuru Offers Project Management For Science People Top
Screen Shot 2012-01-18 at 9.37.29 AMScience People AKA Scientists need project management, too. At least that's what Macmillan, a major science publisher, thinks so they've created a new business unit, Digital Science to push their Basecamp-like lab products. Take, for example, their new site, LabGuru. This site offers collaborative project planning and document storage for labs, allowing science people to work together on major projects like "going to Mars" and "giving diarrhea to mice" (true story! My friend does this for real in her lab!).
 
API Management Service Apigee Acquires Mobile Data Platform Usergrid Top
apigee-logoApigee, a provider of API management products and services, which we've referred to in the past as a "Google Analytics for APIs" has acquired the mobile cloud platform Usergrid. For those unfamiliar, Usergrid helps to make mobile app development easier by providing the APIs needed to manage data, users and events. The company provides these kind of core APIs for the backend so mobile developers can speed their time to market.
 
Amazon Web Services Introduces Web-Scale Database, DynamoDB Top
Amazon DynamoDBAmazon just added a new cloud computing service to its suite of Amazon Web Services, a distributed database called DynamoDB. Web applications can spike suddenly in demand or grow so big that they tax traditional databases, or even clusters of traditional databases, which are hard to maintain, especially for smaller companies. With DynamoDB, Amazon offers and on-demand web-scale distrubted database to the tens of thousands of customers who already use other cloud computing services from Amazon.
 
Data Storage Company Nexenta Scores $21 Million In Series C Funding Top
nexentaData storage solutions provider Nexenta this morning announced that it has secured $21 million in Series C funding in a round led by new investor Menlo Ventures and joined by Sierra Ventures and Razor's Edge Ventures, Javelin Venture Partners and TransLink Capital. Nexenta claims its open source storage software solutions help enterprises avoid vendor lock-in and enjoy unified storage management at a fraction of the cost of legacy systems.
 
Essay Due? Here's How To Access Wikipedia During The SOPA Blackout Top
wikipediagirlAs you can tell from the homepage, it's a sad, trying day for the internet. Many of our favorite sites like Reddit and Wikipedia have gone dark, leaving only an argument against SOPA on their homepages in lieu of cat gifs and knowledge. All in all, it will shape up to be an incredibly boring day in the name of justice. Because to be honest, SOPA is unconstitutional in the way it'll be enforced, and means rarely if ever justify the ends.
 
Motorola Is Now Serving Up Ice Cream Sandwichs To The Xoom Top
xoom-icsGood news, Xoom owners. No, you're not getting a refund but rather the official Ice Cream Sandwich update should now be available for OTA downloading. This update replaces the Xoom's stock Honeycomb operating system with ICS, Google's latest Android build. This comes just a week after Asus started rolling the update out to its new Transformer Prime tab.
 
NetLED: Japan Gets Cloud-Based, Smartphone-Compatible LED Lighting System Top
netledFirst, Japan got the world's first connected home garden device, and now it's time for Nippon to get the world's first cloud-based LED lighting system. Developed by Tokyo-based lighting tech startup Net LED Technology Corp., the so-called NetLED system will go on sale in Japan on February 20 (here's the company's English website). The 40W lights, which have a 40,000-hour lifespan, come with built-in Wi-Fi: users can control each tube over the web after installing the NetLed app on a smartphone, tablet, or computer (the iPhone app is already out, while iPad and Android apps will be released this summer). It's possible to dim the lights (each tube has 10 different dimming levels) and to turn them on or off.
 
Cloud Enterprise Performance Analytics Startup Tidemark Raises $24M From Redpoint, Andreessen Horowitz Top
tidemarkEnterprise-focused cloud performance analytics company Tidemark, formerly known as Proferi, has raised $24 million in new funding led by Redpoint Ventures with existing investors Greylock Partners, Andreessen Horowitz and Dave Duffield, co-founder and co-CEO of Workday participating. This brings the total amount raised to more than $35 million. Redpoint partner Geoff Yang will join Tidemark's Board of Directors.
 
Calling The World: Vox.io Just Might Be The Next Euro Startup Sensation Top
voxA European company by the name of Skype taught the world that enabling people to make free voice and video calls over the Internet would be an enticing offer to hundreds of millions of users, and make for a great business at the same time. Now, a Euro startup called Vox.io plans to challenge them by envisioning how digital telephony should work in 2012 and beyond. They provide a simple tool that lets people make free calls to other vox.io users from their desktop browser, or their iPhone (app link). But vox.io is not your traditional VoIP service, and on the Web requires no downloads or installations of any kind.
 
A Step Forward? Bertelsmann & Others Back $100 Million Venture Fund For Innovative Education Top
graduation_cap-2090Just as (mobile) technology is bringing some exciting changes to the health industry, it's simultaneously over in the classroom trying to save education before it's too late. I'm not sure we're even close to "too late", but it's hard to ignore the fact that, like the health industry, the educational system (and I don't limit that to the U.S.) is broken. Millions of young people are entering a system that just isn't built to handle the diversity of learning styles -- or the speed of innovation. Peter Thiel is right: Higher education is in a bubble. I'm not sure dropping/stopping out is the always the best answer, but the point remains.
 
AmEx Puts $125M In And Partners With Chinese Mobile Payments Company Lianlian To License Serve Top
Serve |American Express is making a significant move in the expansion of its digital wallet, Serve to international markets today. The credit card company is announcing the first global partnership for Serve with Lianlian Group, of of China's leading mobile payments providers. Additionally, AmEx has also made an equity investment of $125 million in LianLian Pay.
 
Alienware Releases The X51, A $699 Small Form Factor PC That Looks Like A Gaming Console Top
x51The Alienware line just got a little brother, its Mac Mini if you will. The X51 is the gaming company's smallest form factor desktop to date. But, since it's an Alienware, it still packs plenty of gaming horsepower and customizable options.
 
6waves Lolapps Buys Mobile Games Developer Escalation Studios Top
escaSocial gaming company 6waves Lolapps (6L) this morning announced its acquisition of Dallas-based Escalation Studios, a mobile games development firm. Three months ago, 6L already moved to buy Beijing-based social gaming company Smartron5, but apparently they felt there was still some mobile gaming expertise missing.
 
Chegg Launches Mobile Reader For Online Textbooks Top
Screen Shot 2012-01-17 at 9.35.03 PMHaving built, bought and partnered its way into the textbook distribution business, Chegg is launching a long-promised mobile web version today that lets readers easily read and mark up their textbooks. Of course the move is timed with Apple's forthcoming announcement event, which based on everything everyone is hearing, has something to do with offering and/or creating digital textbooks. But regardless of Apple's or anyone else's plans, Chegg's eTextbook Reader has been in the works since August, back when Rip wrote a preview of it. Built in HTML5 by the team from acquiree 3D3R, it provides all sorts of features that I wish I had available when I was in college last decade (at least as I saw them over a screencast).
 

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