Thursday, January 12, 2012

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Georgia Tech's Flashpoint Accelerator Graduates Its First Class Of Startups Top
FlashpointFlashpoint, a startup accelerator program based at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, Georgia, just had its first Demo Day at the Georgia Tech Research Institute. The newly launched incubator follows the typical format for programs like this, offering seed funding, mentorship, support, shared workspace and more, in return for a 6% share of the startup. This accelerator is especially interested in investing in early stage startups in the technology, medical device and biotech industries. With its $1 million fund, the organization typically provides between $15,000 and $25,000 in funding to the companies accepted into the program. The first Demo Day saw over a dozen in the graduating class, including one which already received funding from Andreessen Horowitz pre-launch.
 
Hands On With Zomm's Lifestyle Connect: For If You've Fallen And You Can't Get Up Top
Zomm's latest creation is called Lifestyle Connect, a small Bluetooth device that acts, in short, as an emergency alert system for folks who might have some health issues and live alone. If you fall or injure yourself in the home, the Lifestyle Connect will signal your phone to call the proper authorities as well as your friends and family. The system locates you - whether you're at home or outside - and handles everything with voice control.
 
Pyxis Mobile Raises $17M, Rebrands As Verivo, Pivots To Licensable App Platform Top
Verivo Build Deploy ManageEvery business seems to want its own mobile software, and now Pyxis Mobile is transforming to help companies build apps for themselves. Previously, Pyxis created apps for enterprise financial services companies, but today pivots to offer its app development platform directly to clients. The company has rebranded itself as Verivo Software, and taken a $17 million funding round from Commonwealth Capital Ventures, as well as existing investors Ascent Venture Partners and Egan-Managed Capital.
 
Watch The Pioneer CES 2012 Press Conference: AppRadio 2 For All Top
Pioneer's AppRadio was pretty darn cool when it first launched and now there's another version with improved apps, improved UI, and improved hardware. We hung out with Pioneer at CES yesterday and here is the raw feed featuring Pioneer's products including car stereos, AppRadio, iPhone interfaces for your whip.
 
Want A Complete Year-End Report On Your Email (For Free)? ToutApp Has You Covered. Top
Screen shot 2012-01-10 at 1.34.39 AMI've been meaning to write about this for awhile now, but I've been a bit under the weather and, well, email is not a subject I always enjoy -- in discussion or in practice. Yes, as many have written before, we have a love-hate relationship with email, which has been shown in even starker relief with the redesign of Gmail. We first wrote about ToutApp back in June of last year and again in November, because they are a young startup (backed by some smart people) trying to give us a shot at greater email productivity.
 
CES 2012: An Interview With Gary Shapiro, President of The CEA And A Really Nice Guy Top
Gary Shapiro, President of the Consumer Electronics Association Every year we try our best to talk to Gary Shapiro, the man behind Consumer Electronic Show. He's a guy who at least appears to genuinely wants to see big and small companies succeed. Last year we spoke about his book, The Comeback: How Innovation Will Restore the American Dream, that calls America to action. But this year, with Microsoft leaving CES and the show seemingly shrinking, we had a bit more to talk about.
 
Pressly Launches Electionism, A Tablet-Only HTML5 News Publication Top
Electionism_H2Following its November launch, OnSwipe competitor (and TechCrunch Disrupt finalist) Pressly is bringing another major media outlet's content to the tablet interface. The company is today announcing the launch of a new publication called Electionism. The app was built for the Media Lab, an internal product innovation team inside The Economist Group, which includes The Economist, CQ Roll Call and other businesses.
 
"Search Plus Your World" Is Just About Google+, Not Your World Top
google_search_my_world_arrowsGoogle announced the next iteration of its social search initiative this morning. Google Fellow Amit Singhal introduced this as "search, plus your world." In reality, of course, this is pure hyperbole. The only source of social data Google uses to personalize its search results is Google+, which despite its success, likely doesn't represent "your world" very well yet at this point. Indeed, unless you and your friends are very active on Google+, there's a good chance you won't see too many of the new personal results for the time being.
 
CES Day 1 Pre-Cap: Every Child Needs A Tablet And Flipping The Parrot Top
Hands On With The Parrot AR Drone 2 It's CES time again and we're out in full force with the live video and the streaming and the interviews. Here are some highlights from the past weekend when we interviewed a number of CES notables as well as attending some of the major press conferences of the week including Samsung, Sony, Nokia, and Intel. We were also live last night at Digital Experience where we saw a pet tracker and a glass-backed laptop.
 
We're Live From The CES Show Floor! Top
While we've been running around Vegas like mad to cover all of the pre-CES happenings, the main event starts... now. We're streaming live from the Las Vegas Convention Center, where the biggest companies in the world have gathered to show off their best and brightest new toys. All of the chaos of the show floor, beamed right to your house. Live! Oh, how wonderful the future is. Join us!
 
PayPal Partners With Point-Of-Sale Software Company AJB To Scale In-Store Payments Option To Big Box Retailers Top
CajbExclusive: We've received more details on how PayPal will be scaling its in-store payments technology at major retailers. As we reported last week, PayPal is currently testing the mobile payments and point-of-sale integrations at Home Depot on a friends and family basis, in five stores. Today, we've learned that PayPal is partnering with AJB Software, a company that provides point-of-sale software to large brick and mortar retailers, to integrate the online payments giant's technology into their offerings. AJB basically provides a communications gateway that connects a retailer's point-of-sale system with financial institutions. Over 140 large-scale retailers including Kohl's and BestBuy use AJB's software to manage payments. In a nutshell, the partnership allows an easy way for big box retailers to offer consumers a way to pay via PayPal in their stores.
 
The Daily To Come Pre-Installed On Verizon Android Devices Starting With Samsung Galaxy Top
The Verizon DailyThe Daily, News Corp's tablet news reader app, will no longer be iPad-only. A deal has been struck with Verizon to pre-install an Android version of the app on the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 this month, with more Verizon Android devices to receive The Daily in the future. Verizon customers will get week's free trial of the app before the $4 a week / $40 a year subscription cost kicks in. This distribution deal could significantly increase The Daily's readership and sales by relieving Android users from having to go out and download it.
 
Popular Like Voxer Top
Screen Shot 2012-01-10 at 9.22.58 AMBack in late November I wrote about a walkie-talkie mobile app called Voxer that had looked like it was starting to break into the big leagues of mobile communication. Since then, it has, at various points passing a few competing walkie-talkie app startups... and also Facebook, Skype, and most other mobiles apps for that matter, on both iOS and Android. It's been among the top three top apps in the social networking category on both iOS and Android over the past month and a half or so here in the US. That's included the #1 spot on iOS for 25 of those days and #1 on Android for 22 of them. It's also regularly been in the top 25 overall in the app stores, only getting temporarily displaced by a rash of heavily marketed games for a few days here and there over the holidays. Beyond app store rankings, I've also been hearing that downloads have been averaging around 200,000 per day. Company vice president of growth Gustaf Alstromer confirms this range, saying that the "number changes every day but that's in the ballpark."
 
New "Showtime Anytime" App Brings Showtime's Movies And Shows To The iPad Top
showtime-anytimeShowtime is today joining HBO GO as another premium cable channel that's bringing its content to mobile devices. Through the new iPad app Showtime Anytime, customers can now watch Showtime's original programming, including its TV series, movies, sports and documentaries anywhere there's an Internet connection.
 
After Netflix, Roku's Streaming Players Hit The UK, Ireland (Starting At £49.99) Top
rokuOne day after Netflix made its debut in the UK and Ireland, Roku has announced that two of its streaming players, the Roku LT and the Roku 2 XS, are heading to Britain too and are already available for pre-order on Amazon. The Roku LT, which is billed as the lowest-cost option for streaming video and music directly to a TV, over Wi-Fi and without a PC, retails at £49.99. The Roku 2 XS, which adds casual games like Angry Birds to the offering and also sports an Ethernet, a MicroSD and a USB port, costs £99.99. Read more at TechCrunch Europe.
 
Why Cool Startups Are Losers In China Top
Chinese demographicsHere's Hongyi Zhou's advice to Chinese entrepreneurs: "Don't try to be cool." Zhou is CEO of Qihoo 360 (NYSE: QIHU), whose company's core is the definition of uncool: anti-virus software. Yet Qihoo has 370 million monthly active users and a very cool $1.9 billion dollar valuation. If you want to build a big company in China, don't build for your iPhone-toting friends, the Chinese tech blogs, or copy the latest fad on TechCrunch. Chinese entrepreneurs must appreciate the vast chasm between white-collar elites and the rest of the country. The Silicon Valley has an echo chamber of its own, but China's is an order of magnitude louder.
 
Tech CEOs Invest $1.1 Million In 'Enterprise Tag Management' Company Tealium Top
tealiumTealium, which specializes in enterprise tag management solutions (more on that below), has raised $1.1 million in Series A funding from a bunch of digital marketing CEOs - and former CEOs - including Limelight Networks' Jeff Lunsford, Collective's JoeApprendi, eValue Group's Thomas Falks and EyeWonder's John Vincent. Jim MacIntyre, founder of Visual Sciences (acquired by WebSideStory) and former chief of e-commerce technology for GSI Commerce, participated as well, and also joined Tealium's board of directors.
 
Twitter Now Distributes Tweets From Artists' Verified Accounts To Music Data Services Top
Lady GagaTwitter has just announced a new partnership with three music data services, The Echo Nest, Gracenote, and Rovi are, to help scale the distribution of Twitter account data for musicians for integration in consumer-facing apps. Via the pilot program, Twitter developers can now work with partners to integrate Verified Account @handles from thousands of musicians and Tweets into their music and entertainment services. For example, the Echo Nest will connect Twitter Verified Accounts to its Rosetta Stone service to allow developers to integrate Tweets from musicians directly into their apps. The Rosetta Stone service helps music services "speak the same language" on a data level by translating unique identifiers across various services. The Echo Nest's music intelligence platform offers over 5 billion data points on over 30 million songs and over 2 million artists. Over 220 music applications have been built on its platform to date. The startup actually powers Spotify Radio.
 
iHeartRadio Launches Developer API Top
iHeartRadio-APIClear Channel's streaming radio service, iHeartRadio, is launching its developer program today, which includes an API that allows third parties to integrate iHeartRadio's content and services into their own products, websites and applications.
 
Do We Need Doctors Or Algorithms? Top
HealthTechI was asked about a year ago at a talk about energy what I was doing about the other large social problems, namely health care and education. Surprised, I flippantly responded that the best solution was to get rid of doctors and teachers and let your computers do the work, 24/7 and with consistent quality. Later, I got to cogitating about what I had said and why, and how embarrassingly wrong that might be. But the more I think about it the more I feel my gut reaction was probably right. The beginnings of "Doctor Algorithm" or Dr. A for short, most likely (and that does not mean "certainly" or "maybe") will be much criticized. We'll see all sorts of press wisdom decrying "they don't work" or "look at all the silly things they come up with." But Dr A. will get better and better and will go from providing "bionic assistance" to second opinions to assisting doctors to providing first opinions and as referral computers (with complete and accurate synopses and all possible hypotheses of the hardest cases) to the best 20% of the human breed doctors. And who knows what will happen beyond that?
 

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