Thursday, January 12, 2012

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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, Newscorp'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?
 
Peel Launches New Social TV App For iOS Top
peel-20You may remember Peel as the maker of the pear-shaped hardware device which sits in between your smartphone an TV, turning your phone into a universal remote control. Today, as promised, the company has updated its companion mobile application with more social features that allow you to share the shows you're viewing, see what your friends and family are watching, post recommendations and comment on others' posts.
 
With The Clicky Value-Wheel, Groupon Puts The "No" In Innovation Top
clickyYou can say a lot of things about Groupon, but not that they lack a great sense of humor over there. This morning, the company distributed a press release touting a new invention called Clicky, the Clickable Value-Wheel (make sure you watch the behind-the-scenes video below too). The company invites players to sign in with their Facebook account and then spin the wheel to potentially score a discount on select Groupons ($5, $10, $50 or $100).
 
Meet Your New Reality TV Stars: Start Engine Announces Its First Class Of Startups Top
start-engine-production-3Today, Start Engine, the L.A.-based accelerator that's the focus of a new reality TV show, is announcing its first round of startups. The show, which comes from Cameron Casey, producer of the TechStars reality program on Bloomberg TV, will again film entrepreneurs in a documentary-style format as they make their way through a tech accelerator program.
 
Eyeview Raises $5.2 Million For Personalized Video Ads (And They're Pretty Nifty) Top
holosharkPersonalized video ads sound like one of those visions of that future — like holographic sharks — that are always a ways off. But a company called Eyeview is already making them. Their technology is impressive, and they've worked with brands including AT&T, T-Mobile, and McDonalds. Today, the company is announcing that it's raised $5.2 million in Series B funding, in a round led by Nauta Capital (Nauta general partner Dominic Endicott will be joining the company's board). Also participating in the round are existing investors Gemini Israel Funds, Lightspeed Ventures, and Innovation Endeavors — which is best known for being longtime former Google CEO Eric Schmidt's firm. Eyeview's technology is best demonstrated by looking at one of their actual ads — which you can see in the video embedded below.
 
Return Path Expands To Austin, Acquires TC50 Finalist OtherInbox Top
otherinboxEmail certification and reputation monitoring company Return Path this morning announced that it has acquired OtherInbox, which helps users regain control over their email inbox. OtherInbox is and will remain based in Austin, Texas, as a wholly-owned Return Path subsidiary with CEO Joshua Baer still at the helm. We're very familiar with OtherInbox around here - the company was a finalist in the TechCrunch 50 conference we organized back in 2008.
 
Ampush Media Acquires One Of Bill Gates' Favorite Education Startups, Academic Earth Top
Academic EarthAmpush Media, an online marketing startup, has acquired Academic Earth, an online education video site that's sort of like a "Hulu for Education" and a Bill Gates-favorite. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. As we've written in the past, Academic Earth is a user-friendly, curated platform for educational videos that allows anyone to freely access instruction from the scholars and guest lecturers at the leading academic universities. The site offers 350 full courses and over 5,000 total lectures from Yale, MIT, Harvard, Stanford, UC Berkeley, and Princeton that can be browsed by subject, university, or instructor through a user-friendly interface.
 
Google Fuses Google+ Into Search — And There Are Bigger Changes Afoot Top
Personal Results 2-1Since the launch of Google+, Google has been putting a lot of muscle behind promoting and integrating the service into its core products. Fire up a new Android 4.0 device, and you'll be prompted to create a Google+ account if you haven't already. They've given it TV ads, not to mention a priceless promotion on its homepage. And today, Google is launching an update to its core search engine at Google.com that continues this trend — and then some. They're calling it 'Search plus Your World'. The short version is that Google search results are going to be automatically personalized (to a greater degree than they were already) for each user, with signals drawn from your Google+ Circles being used to highlight things your friends — or you, yourself — have shared.
 
Mo' Money, Mo' Marketing: Zmags Raises $7M, ThinkVine Lands $8M Top
zmagsZmags, a provider of rich media mobile and social merchandising solutions, has secured $7 million in financing from Square 1 Bank and from existing backers OpenView Venture Partners and Northcap Partners. Marketing optimization software company ThinkVine this morning announced that it has raised $8 million in Series C funding from Northwater Capital Management and existing investors, including Draper Triangle, DFJ Portage, CincyTech and Ft. Washington Capital Partners.
 
BetterWorks Adds Catering To Office Perks Platform Top
betterBetterWorks, a company that gives small companies an easy way to reward and incentivize employees, is adding a new feature to the mix—catering. As we've reported previously, BetterWorks, which was co-founded by Paige Craig, George Ishii and co-creator of Farmville Sizhao Yang, launched to help small businesses manage company perks and rewards. The startup gives small businesses, startups and companies access to corporate rates on things like gyms and salons, which those businesses can then offer to their employees as perks.
 

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