Friday, March 2, 2012

Y! Alert: TechCrunch

Yahoo! Alerts
My Alerts

The latest from TechCrunch

Video: Dennis Crowley Says Half Of Foursquare's Users Are Outside The U.S. [TCTV] Top
DennisWhen I was in Barcelona this week, I met up with Dennis Crowley, the CEO of Foursquare, just after he had gotten off stage from a keynote presentation with the CEOs of Nokia and HTC at the Mobile World Congress event. The check-in app that was once little known outside of the world of tech early-adopters may only have around 15 million users, but that number has actually made it a leader in its field, and that has amplified the company (and Crowley).
 
MySpace Co-Founder Chris DeWolfe Explains SGN's New Name, Multi-Platform Plans Top
chris dewolfeMindJolt, the gaming company led by MySpace co-founder Chris DeWolfe, recently announced that it's changing its name to the Social Gaming Network. DeWolfe spoke to me earlier this week about the name change, and about his plans for the coming year. The new company name may sound familiar, because MindJolt actually acquired SGN last year. (SGN founder Shervin Pishevar is now a managing director at Menlo Ventures.) DeWolfe says the SGN name is a better reflection of what the company is doing.
 
How BranchOut Hit The Tipping Point and Grew From 1M to 5.5M Actives In 2 Months Top
BranchOut GrowthAt the start of 2012 BranchOut had just 1 million monthly active users. Then the professional networking app hired a dedicated growth team, launched a mobile web app, and hit the network effect tipping point. According to AppData, by February it had 2.7 million MAU. Now the Facebook-based BranchOut is blowing up, riding the employment needs of blue-collar workers past the 10 million registration mark to reach 5.5 million MAU, half from overseas. Take heed entrepreneurs, this is how you concoct a startup growth formula...
 
Yelp Closes 5-Star IPO Day With $1.47 Billion Valuation Top
yelplogoFor Yelp, this has been a very good day. The restaurant review site was received exceptionally well by Wall Street during its first day as a publicly traded company, closing at a price of $24.58 per share, up a full 63 percent from its $15 IPO price.
 
Why You Should Treat Your iPhone Like a Toddler: The State of Mobile App Security [TCTV] Top
TCTVAshkanSoltaniPrivacy and security issues have been at the forefront of tech news this week, with recently exposed loopholes in Apple's iOS and Google's Android indicating that apps can access much more content on our smartphones than most users realize. Superstar security researcher Ashkan Soltani (his Ashkan Soltani came by the TCTV studio to dig a bit deeper into how safe smartphones are today and whether things are getting better.
 
DealBoard For iPhone Finds Offers You Like, So You Can Kill The Daily Deal Emails Top
IMG_2976DealBoard, a recently launched iPhone app from Seattle and London-based nFluence Media, has just emerged as a new player in the crowded "daily deals" space. But this app isn't yet another Groupon clone, it's a daily deal aggregator. However, what makes dealBoard unique - and why the company has $3 million in funding - is how the app goes about aggregating those deals for you. Instead of just rounding up a list of all the deals in the area, dealBoard personalizes the experience based on your interests.
 
NASA: We've Been Hacked Thousands Of Times Because Of Inadequate IT Infrastructure Top
newsyPaul Martin, NASA's Inspector General, gave written testimony in a House committee earlier this week detailing the security threats faced by their IT infrastructure. The thrust of the document is that NASA needs to double down on cybersecurity but, naturally, needs more money to do so. Their IT budget is $1.5 billion, but of that only $58 million was spent on security. Considering the enormous network of datacenters, laptops, operations centers, and research labs scattered around the world, this may not be nearly enough. As it is, in the last two years NASA has been hacked thousands of times. In one instance, the hackers gained full access to some NASA systems and credentials for 150 employees.
 
Keen On… Richard Bronson: Why America Should Legalize Online Poker [TCTV] Top
Screen shot 2012-03-02 at 1.09.39 PMI'm not a big fan of online gambling, particularly poker. I think it preys on weak, addictive personalities and all too often can destroy innocent lives. And my feelings are shared by the U.S. government which has made online poker illegal. But not everyone agrees with either me or the U.S. government about banning Internet gambling. Richard "Skip" Bronson, for example, the co-founder and chairman of U.S. Digital Gaming (USDG), a company that provides a suite of products for legal online gambling, is - not surprisingly - a leading advocate of legalizing online poker. Bronson wants to change the law and transform online poker from what he says is a murky offshore business into a highly regulated industry.
 
Gillmor Gang Live 03.02.12 (TCTV) Top
Gillmor Gang test patternGillmor Gang - John Borthwick, Robert Scoble, John Taschek, Doc Searls, and Steve Gillmor . Recording has concluded.
 
A Year Later, Asus Is Still Waiting For The "Right Time" To Launch Windows Phones Top
winsus2As Microsoft's Windows Phone platform continues to pick up steam and hardware partners, one company has managed to stay out of the Windows Phone game despite their long relationship with Microsoft. Taiwan-based Asus has created developer units for the platform in 2010, and leaks indicate that they haven't managed to get Microsoft's mobile platform off their minds. So with all that said, what on earth is taking the Taiwanese company so long to officially throw their hats into the Windows Phone arena? According to a brief interview with Pocket-Lint, Asus GM of Mobile Devices Benson Lin says it's only a matter of time. The thing is, it's been a matter of time for over a year now.
 
Philadelphia Vigilante Doesn't Want To Hear Your Public Phone Calls Top
Screen shot 2012-03-02 at 1.06.56 PMA man named Eric who (uselessly) refuses to give up his last name (which I swear isn't Eldon) has taken it upon himself to rid the world of annoying public cell phone conversations. But how, you might ask, is Eric X doing this? Just through the illegal purchase and use of a wireless jammer, of course. "I guess I'm taking the law into my own hands and quite frankly, I'm proud of it." Ah, the glorious naïveté of vigilantism.
 
Giant Bing Search Box Appears On Facebook's Logout Page Top
Facebook Bing Search Logout PageSoon when you logout of Facebook, you could be greeted with a full recreation of the Bing home page, complete with pretty photo and an active search box. Facebook has wasted no time launching the new logout page ad unit it unveiled on Wednesday. This morning TechCrunch reader and MyJobLinx co-founder Raj Singh's Facebook logout page featured a Bing search box that when used opened a Bing search results page in a separate tab. [Update: Facebook has confirmed that Bing is the first advertiser to use its new logout page ad unit.] The new featured placement for Bing is likely an extension of Facebook's partnership Microsoft, where Bing powers the social network's internal search engine.
 
Female-Focused Accelerator "Women Innovate Mobile" Announces Its First Participants Top
WIM-2306-3Women Innovate Mobile (WIM), the new accelerator aimed to help promote companies started by female entrepreneurs, is ready to debut its first class. Like other incubators, WIM provides mentoring, support, free office space, and seed funding. Participants in the program receive $18,000 to help get their companies get off the ground. Except unlike the majority of other programs, WIM requires not only that the companies focus on mobile, but also that one of the co-founders must be a woman.
 
Etsy iPhone App Hits 1 Million Downloads in Under 4 Months Top
Screen shot 2012-03-02 at 2.30.59 PMEtsy, online seller of various hand-made hipster goodness, has reached a major milestone today. After less than four months on the App Store, the Etsy for iPhone app has surpassed 1 million downloads. The app launched in mid-November 2011. But that's not all Etsy has to celebrate. Since the release of the app, it's seen 25-60 percent growth in visits month-over-month, and is seeing an average of 30 pageviews per visit.
 
Disrupt NYC Is Back! Battlefield Applications Open And Tickets Now On Sale Top
PreviewThanksgiving is over, Christmas has come and gone, a New Year has arrived, and spring flowers are starting to bloom. Hopefully you know what that means. That means it's almost time to disrupt the technology industry yet again. Disrupt NYC is back and bigger than ever. We will be taking over New York City this May for our incredibly popular Hackathon, and our world-renowned Disrupt conference. We will have more guests and speakers than last year, more hackers from all around the world, more topics to dive into about the technology industry, and more twists, turns, and surprises than we have ever had before.
 
(Founder Stories) RunKeeper: Striving To Becoming The Facebook For Health Top
Runkeeper Video #2.movHaving launched Runkeeper in 2008 with the help of "moonlighting engineers" before closing a $10 million Series B round in late 2011, RunKeeper's co-founder, Jason Jacobs speaks from experience when describing the whiplash entrepreneurs face when stepping out on their own. In episode II of his Founder Stories conversation with host Chris Dixon, Jacobs characterizes the adventure this way. "The day you leave your job and the hourglass starts turning upside down in your savings that is a really scary, awful, stressful, exhilarating, tremendously exciting feeling. And then that basically doesn't stop."
 
iCracked Takes On The Geek Squad With Worldwide Local iPhone Repair Top
logoSometimes the genesis of a startup happens just like this: Guy buys iPhone. Guy breaks iPhone. Guy then pays Apple way too much to fix said phone, grumbling ensues. Guy breaks phone again. Roommate breaks phone. Then, a lightbulb goes off. This is what happened to A.J. Forsythe when he was a student at California Polytechnic State University. He and his friends broke their iPhones more than a few times, so he decided to teach himself how to fix it. Then, like any good entrepreneur, he turned that solution into a business. Forsythe started charging people at school $75 per fix, set up a few social media accounts to hawk his services, remodeled his room into a repair shop, and iCracked was born.
 
Please Welcome Kim-Mai Cutler, TechCrunch's Newest Star Writer Top
IMG_0786 (1)TechCrunch has been staffing up with writers who have worked at top publications in Silicon Valley and around the world -- we're not new to this, we're true to this. And, Kim-Mai Cutler, our newest hire, is particularly true. Like Josh and I, she was brought to TechCrunch from Inside Network by Erick Schonfeld. In her last job, she directed coverage of the mobile app ecosystem and became an expert on mobile gaming. You've probably read her stories over the years. But in case you somehow missed them, here are a few of her greatest hits.
 
Facebook Plans Major Overhaul To Preferred Developer Consultant Program Top
Facebook Developer Consultant RibbonAt a private meeting last night in New York City, Facebook revealed to trusted partners a plan to restructure the 3-year-old Preferred Developer Consultant program around 4 areas: Page management, Ads API, Insights, and custom app development. My sources tell me Facebook will be granting approval badges in the 4 verticals, the latter two of which have never had their own distinctions. This new unified API partner program will launch soon to replace the PDC and Ads API partner programs, and make it easier for brands to discover Facebook marketing services vendors. The overhaul is designed to encourage more companies to formally offer Facebook marketing services, and get brands spending more on Facebook faster.
 
Social Retargeting Ad Network RadiumOne Raising A $50M Round At A $500M Valuation Top
RadiumOne - Results Powered by ConnectionsWe're hearing that RadiumOne, an online ad network that aims to combine social and intent data to serve ads, is finalizing a monster $50 million round from investors. While the funding isn't closed yet, we've heard from industry sources that the valuation is hovering around $500 million pre-money. RadiumOne, which has raised $33.5 million to date, mines social data and uses this information to identify relevant consumers for brands. The startup analyzes how users interact with one another on social networks to find the consumers that identify with a brand's current customer base, and then serves advertisements to this audience across the company's network of publishers.
 

CREATE MORE ALERTS:

Auctions - Find out when new auctions are posted

Horoscopes - Receive your daily horoscope

Music - Get the newest Album Releases, Playlists and more

News - Only the news you want, delivered!

Stocks - Stay connected to the market with price quotes and more

Weather - Get today's weather conditions




You received this email because you subscribed to Yahoo! Alerts. Use this link to unsubscribe from this alert. To change your communications preferences for other Yahoo! business lines, please visit your Marketing Preferences. To learn more about Yahoo!'s use of personal information, including the use of web beacons in HTML-based email, please read our Privacy Policy. Yahoo! is located at 701 First Avenue, Sunnyvale, CA 94089.
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)