Wednesday, January 25, 2012

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Skyfire Raises $8 Million In A Round Lead By Verizon Top
SkyfireAfter raising just shy of $23 million over the past 5 years, Skyfire today announced that they've raised their second biggest round of funding to date. Coming in at $8 million dollars, this Series C round is lead by Verizon Investments (as in Verizon Communications' venture arm) and backed with new investments from previous investors Matrix Partners, Trinity Ventures, and Lightspeed Venture Partners.
 
EU's Proposed Data Laws Can Only Produce One Thing: Outsourcing User Data Top
OnesAndZerosIn 2011, Sony had several major security breaches: Sony Online Entertainment, Sony Pictures, and Playstation Network all were attacked and private data was successfully stolen. Their handling of the attacks, particularly the larger PSN one, was widely criticized. Many users are either unaware or acutely aware of how many sites and services have financially or personally sensitive information on record. Events like the Sony hacks do not reassure them, and actions like Google's yesterday (though arguably innocuous) may alarm them. Users want more control and more security. And the EU is looking to give it to them. But with the threat of enormous fines, many companies will find that the most logical thing to do is move away from the entire business of storing and serving user identities.
 
Netflix Streaming Margins Are 11 Percent, DVD Margins Are 52 Percent Top
netflix2If you look closely at Netflix's fourth quarter earnings, it will become clear why the company wanted to split its DVD and streaming businesses. This is the first quarter that the company is splitting out each business and reporting revenues, profits, and margins separately. While the streaming business is growing (adding 220 subscribers domestically in the quarter), and the DVD business sis shrinking (it lost 2.76 million subscribers domestically), it's margins are much worse than the legacy DVD business. The streaming business has an 11 percent profit margin, compared to a very healthy 52 percent margin for the DVD business.
 
Someone Finally Makes "Shit Silicon Valley Says" Top
Screen Shot 2012-01-25 at 3.21.43 PMAfter an onslaught of "Shit [blank] Says" videos in my Facebook Newsfeed, I appealed to Twitter yesterday, surprised that the industry that invented YouTube hadn't weighed in on the phenomenon. Little did I know that husband and wife team Tom Conrad and Kate Imbach were already on it, coming up with the idea on Monday morning and shooting yesterday, with no script (Imbach just said random techy things and Conrad spliced them together into this in edit).
 
Biz Stone, 500 Startups And Others Put $1M In CRM For Web Businesses Intercom Top
interCRM and 500 Startups incubated company Intercom has raised a seed round of $1 million from angel investors including twitter co-founder Biz Stone, Huddle founder Andy McLoughlin, Dan Martell, 500 Startups and Digital Garage. Intercom's customer relationship management tool (CRM) is designed specifically for web businesses. The web-based SaaS features Google Analytics-like integration so that its database of customers is always automatically up-to-date, tracking every interaction. With its flexible filtering function, users can be segmented into groups for whom the business has different goals (i.e. converting free users into paying customers).
 
Netflix Q4 Earnings Beat The Street, But Next Quarter May Be A Different Story Top
Netflix-LogoSaying 2011 was a rocky road for Netflix would be an understatement, as it split its DVD and streaming offerings into two businesses, then reneged. They also hiked their prices, only to experience a veritable customer revolt, and CEO Reed Hastings was forced to publicly say that they'd made a huge mistake. Today, Netflix has released its fourth quarter earnings from 2011, and it looks like there's at least a sliver of good news, as the company beat Wall Street's forecasts of $0.54 a share and $857 million in revenues, rising instead to $0.73 per share and $876 million in revenues.
 
Show Your Love With These New iPad/Kindle Fire Cases From DODOcase Top
LoveMe_Both_DODOHQ_smJust in time for Valentine's Day, DODOcase released new special edition iPad and Kindle Fire cases. They cost slightly more than the standard versions with the Kindle Fire models costing $69 and then $79 for the iPad 2 versions. But nothing says love quite like a unique case.
 
HP Announces Open webOS 1.0, Outlines Release Schedule Top
hp-web-osIt seems like ages ago that HP announced that webOS would continue to live on as an open source project, probably because they've been awfully quiet on the subject since the big reveal in December. Well, consider that silence officially broken. HP took to their webOS developer relations blog to tell what faithful users still remain all about how their open-source rollout is going to work, and the whole process has begun with the release of their Enyo application framework.
 
Nokia Announces 1.5 Billion S40 Phones Sold Top
Screen shot 2012-01-25 at 4.07.17 PMDoes the term S40 mean anything to you? It's a mobile operating system built by Nokia for its feature phones back in 1999, and first appeared on the 7110. Well, apparently a lady over in São Paulo, Brazil has today purchased the 1.5 billionth phone running the operating system in the form of the Nokia Asha 303. Nokia is calling it "one of the most significant milestones" in company history.
 
Game Your Video Aims To Make Mobile Video Editing As Simple As Possible Top
Photo Jan 25, 11 56 34 AMModern day video editors can be daunting. While it's better than the literal cut-and-paste practices of yesteryear, opening a new video editor can feel like stepping into the cockpit of a spaceship. Unless you're trained to fly spaceships, in which case this analogy is broken (and also, you're awesome.) Looking to distill video editing down to its simplest form — a game like experience, they say — is Game Your Video, a new iOS app from Global Delight.
 
Guidewire Hits The Public Market Running; Shares Jump 30% In Early Trading Top
Guidewire_logo_smallWhile there were some big IPOs in 2011, Zynga and Groupon among them, overall it was a disappointing year for IPOs. Will 2012 be any different? As the first tech IPO of the new year, Guidewire Software certainly hopes so. Back in September, the insurance software company joined MobiTV, Angie's List, Brightcove, and Jive, filing its S-1, announcing plans to raise up to $100 million and to sell approximately 7.5 million shares at $10 to $12 per share, in advance of its IPO on the New York Stock Exchange.
 
Bunchball Says Games Turn Twentysomethings Into Better Workers Top
office dwightBunchball has been touting the benefits of its gamification tools for years, and many of its recent efforts are focused on enterprise customers. Now the company has published a white paper arguing that that gamification is a key way to motivate "Generation Y." As evidence, the paper points to a recent study by MTV saying that millennials (the Bunchball report uses both terms interchangeably) understand their lives through a "game-like metaphor" — in fact, half of the survey respondents said "people my age see real life as a video game." How does that apply in the workplace?
 
1000s Of Journalists Now Use Facebook Subscribe, And That's Bad For Twitter Top
Facebook Subscribe Bad For Twitter4 months after it launched its Twitter-style asymmetrical Subscribe feature, Facebook and its Journalist Program Manager Vadim Lavrusik's efforts to weaken Twitter's stranglehold on breaking news are paying off. The company just announced that thousands of journalists now use Subscribe, including 50 reporters from The New York Times and 90 from the Washington Post. If Facebook can get your favorite journalists publishing through Subscribe, you'll have less need for Twitter. Next I hear it's setting its sights on getting celebrities and entertainment tastemakers onboard. Additionally, Facebook released some best practices for how journalists can maximize the engagement (Likes, comments, and shares) on their posts.
 
Kickstarter: Cassette, A Documentary About, You Guessed It, Cassettes Top
cassetteThose of our readers old enough to remember the 90s will almost certainly recall cassette tapes fondly. The clacky little tapes and their creaky cases have more or less disappeared from the world, and no surprise: they were fragile, limited, and sounded pretty bad. But they were also hugely empowering, and helped produce in an age of comparative consumer powerlessness the same feeling we take for granted today: that we should be able to copy, lend, and duplicate the content we've bought. Cassette is a documentary looking for a few bucks on Kickstarter that hopes to highlight cassette culture then and now.
 
President Clinton's Former Chief Of Staff Says: "Yes We Scan" (TCTV) Top
Podesta-tc_upload.mp4While the topic didn't make its way into President Obama's Sate of the Union speech last night, Mr. Obama's former transition team co-chair, John Podesta, thinks creating a "Digital Library of Congress" comprised of "the vast holdings of the federal government" deserves executive level attention. He's calling the initiative, "Yes We Scan" My suggestion to him: get Google to do it for free in return for a reprieve from the government's never-ending antitrust investigations. I am only half-joking.
 
BeachMint Raises Another Big Round: $35 Million For Celebrity-Backed Shopping Experiences Top
beachmintlogoBeachMint — an ecommerce startup that lets customers subscribe to receive products hand-picked by celebrities each month  — has quickly become one of the hottest companies in Los Angeles. Today the company is announcing that it's raised a $35 million funding round with some big-name investors: the round is being led by Accel Partners, with participation from Goldman Sachs, New World Ventures, NYC-based and Millennium Technology Value Partners, with existing investors participating as well. Accel's Greg Waldorf will be joining BeachMint's board. This brings BeachMint's total funding to a whopping $75 million. This is obviously a big raise, and it comes only seven months after the company raised $23.5 million at a rumored $150 million valuation. Why are they raising so much? The short answer: they're growing like crazy and are planning to go international — and they'll be fending off plenty of competition.
 
Apple Overtakes Exxon As Most Valuable Traded Company In The World… Again Top
Apple-MoneyIt happened once before, in August, but that was due to a stock market collapse that left both Exxon and Apple well below their usual share price. This time, however, it would seem that Apple's Q1 earnings call yesterday has led to a fresh spike on the stock market and what do you know? Apple is once again the most valuable publicly traded company in the world, with a market cap of $414.83 billion.
 
Top European Blogging Platform OverBlog Acquires Timeline Creator Timekiwi Top
timekiwiNormally, Palo Alto companies buy European ones, but sometimes there are exceptions. Case in point: today OverBlog, a leading blog platform in Europe with over 32 million uniques according to comScore, is announcing it has acquired Timekiwi, a tool that helps you make a timeline using your social media postings. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, but OverBlog says Timekiwi will be integrated into its platform by summer 2012.
 
$99 Nokia Lumia 900 To Hit AT&T On March 18? Top
nokia-lumia-900-official-109Nokia CEO Stephen Elop was all to eager to show off the Lumia 900 at this year's CES, but he unforunately kept to himself when it came to its price or release date. Now, thanks to a timely leak, it looks as though Nokia's flagship Windows Phone could hit AT&T's shelves on March 18. That's apparently the plan, anyway. The date, given to BGR by their anonymous sources, seemingly confirms earlier rumors about the device's launch window, though they're quick to note that the date isn't set in stone since the 900 hasn't yet completed the technical acceptance process.
 
LG Nitro HD Surpasses 1 Million Units Sold Top
nitrohdcomScore recently ranked LG second in the world in terms of mobile OEM market share, and it would seem the good news keeps on coming for the smiley-face company. The Nitro HD, or Optimus LTE if you're from outside of the States, has reportedly hit 1 million units sold. It was first available in South Korea last year in October, and LG sold 600,000 units on its home turf. After venturing into new lands, including Japan, Canada, and the US of A, another 400,000 units were sold. According to my calculator, 600,000 plus 400,000 does indeed total 1 million units.
 

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