The latest from TechCrunch
- Verizon To Light Up Five New LTE Markets Tomorrow
- Remote DJ'ing App PlayMySong Raises $350K Seed Round
- Should RIM Abandon Ship?
- "At Apple Everything Is A Secret"
- Keen On…. Adam Lashinsky: How Apple Really Works (TCTV)
- Direct Deals Mobile Ad Marketplace Chartboost Expands To Asia
- Flickr Joins SOPA Protest, Lets Users Black Out Photos
- In Face Of Protests, Congressmen Begin To Abandon SOPA Ship
- Citi Backs Gift Card Exchange Plastic Jungle
- Adzuna Raises New Funding To Make Job Ads Fully Social
- AT&T Eyeing Up Dish Network For Potential Acquisition?
- Pro Tip: Do Not Buy An iPad Made Of Clay
- Among New Smartphone Adopters, iOS Share Rises While Android Declines
- Ignition Leads $20M Round In Cloud Security And Identity Company Symplified
- Mobile Payments Company BilltoMobile Launches One-Click Checkout For The Mobile Web
- Comcast Leads $5M Round In Subscription Service For Kids Activities Kiwi Crate
- South African VC Firm Debuts $200M US Fund, Invests $30M In 'The Jetstream'
- LabGuru Offers Project Management For Science People
- API Management Service Apigee Acquires Mobile Data Platform Usergrid
- Amazon Web Services Introduces Web-Scale Database, DynamoDB
| Verizon To Light Up Five New LTE Markets Tomorrow | Top |
 While AT&T may be hitting a few roadblocks 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 |
 Finnish 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 |
 Peter 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 |
 Last 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 |
 After 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 |
 A 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. | |
| Flickr Joins SOPA Protest, Lets Users Black Out Photos | Top |
 This morning, online photo sharing site Flickr joined the growing number of web companies protesting the SOPA and PIPA legislation, which now include Google, Wikipedia, Reddit, Mozilla, and others. For a 24-hour period, starting today, Flickr is letting its members darken their own photos in an effort to raise awareness about the proposed, highly damaging legislation. But that's not all - Flickr is going a step further, and will allow users to darken other members' photos, too. Now that's what censorship really feels like. | |
| In Face Of Protests, Congressmen Begin To Abandon SOPA Ship | Top |
 The online uproar against the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in Congress is already causing some in Washington to abandon the SOPA ship. A couple of co-sponsors of the bill are pulling their support. Representative Ben Quayle (R-Ariz.) is no longer a co-sponsor, and Representative Lee Terry (R-Neb.) is also planning to remove his name from the co-sponsor list, according to Politico. One Congressman, Representative Justin Amash (R-Mich.) is even joining the protest movement. He changed his Facebook profile picture and added the added the note below to his Facebook page. | |
| Citi Backs Gift Card Exchange Plastic Jungle | Top |
 Plastic Jungle, which operates an online gift card marketplace, has received a strategic investment from Citi Ventures, Citigroup's investment arm. The size of the capital injection was not disclosed. The startup has previously raised over $23 million in financing from Jafco Ventures, Shasta Ventures, Redpoint Ventures and First Round Capital, among others. | |
| Adzuna Raises New Funding To Make Job Ads Fully Social | Top |
 Adzuna, a startup with something it calls the next-generation job search engine, has raised a round of funding from Index Ventures, The Accelerator Group and existing investors including Passion Capital. The latest funding follows a seed round last year. It's landed £500,000, taking its total funding to £800,000 (£300,000 from Passion Capital in July). Launched in July 2011, Adzuna is aiming to be a global search engine for classified job ads, effectively aggregating ads, then putting a social layer over them. Yes, I know similar things have been tried before but here's how they'll do it. | |
| AT&T Eyeing Up Dish Network For Potential Acquisition? | Top |
 Shortly before the AT&T/T-Mobile merger came to its ignominious end, Dish Network CEO Joseph Clayton casually expressed his interest in a partnership with T-Mobile as a means of bringing wireless voice service to Dish customers. Those plans may not pan out if AT&T has anything to do with it. A new report from Bloomberg indicates that AT&T is apparently so hard up for additional spectrum that they're considering shelling out "the highest premium in more than a decade" to acquire the satellite TV provider and their spectrum holdings. | |
| Pro Tip: Do Not Buy An iPad Made Of Clay | Top |
 The 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 |
 Nielsen 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 |
 Symplified, 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 |
 Mobile 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 |
 Kiwi 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 |
 A 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 |
 Science 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, 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 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. | |
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