Tuesday, March 6, 2012

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Education Elements Raises $6M To Help Schools Accelerate Learning With Technology Top
8224_800There are few people who doubt the ability of technology to help improve education, whether that be at the primary or secondary level. Of course, there are a hundred differing views on the best ways to manage (or moderate) the integration of technology into the educational process -- and the classroom. Many parents, teachers, and schools are not exactly thrilled with the idea of technology, or mobile devices playing a leading role in the classroom at the expense of teachers, etc. And thus, as with so many things, striking a balance (or finding moderation) is key, which is why we've seen a rise in so-called blended learning, or the strategic integration of technology into the classroom -- with the goal of increasing the productivity of both teachers and students. Founded in 2010, Education Elements is one of many startups helping schools, school networks, and districts adopt blended learning by offering a suite of design services and a SaaS-based learning management system to enable school to personalize student education and focus on small-group instruction. In February of last year, the startup raised $2.1 million in seed funding from Tugboat Ventures, NewSchools Venture Fund, Wally Hawley, and Imagine K12 to help get it software and services off the ground.
 
Google Play? What The Hell Was Wrong With Android Market? Top
play_logoGoogle often confuses me. The company, with its thousands of genius employees, often makes the most brain-dead decisions. Just earlier today Google rolled out their latest twist on the Android Market -- but it's not called Android Market anymore. Instead of simply redesigning the e-store, Google also re-branded the whole thing to Google Play. The reasoning is sound: the company wanted to better describe their offerings since it's not just apps. The Play name is multifaceted, evoking thoughts of playing a game or pressing play on a media file. Cool. But most markets also sell more than one sort of good. The old name worked just as well.
 
Glancee To Release Big SXSW Update With Past Encounters, More Location And More Android Top
glancee2.6.12Let's say you want to use your phone to find interesting new people or reconnect with nearby friends -- without revealing your exact location. Glancee is the app for you, particularly if you're an Android user. And the polished competitor to Highlight is getting a big update today, ahead of South By Southwest. The changes should please the people who want what it already offers. The most obvious alteration since I covered the app last month is a nod to location precision. The Radar feature now shows you how many "steps away" somebody is, as measured in number of feet. Before, you'd see people as either "nearby" or as X number of miles away. While subtle, the difference could make it easier for connections to happen. If you only have to walk a few feet to meet someone, you're more likely to do it than walk half a mile, particularly if you're in the middle of a giant party in Austin, Texas.
 
A Picture's Worth 12 Million Downloads: Draw Something Is #1 on iOS and Android Top
Draw Something Logo Funny DrawingDraw Something proves that if you provide an outlet for imagination, the whole world will play. One month after launch, OMGPOP's CEO tells me its Pictionary-style mobile game now has 12 million downloads, around 7.1 million daily active users, and is the #1 free and paid game on both the U.S. App Store and Android Market (Google Play). If Draw Something can hold our attention now that it's got it, the game could become the most popular thing on mobile since those disgruntled birds. To get just how ridiculously popular Draw Something as become, here's how it stacks up against the growth of Temple Run, Words With Friends, Instagram, and Pinterest:
 
New Skype For Mac Update Finally Includes Full Screen Mode, Automatic Updates Top
skypemacI lean on Skype (and Macs) pretty heavily, so when a fairly substantial update for the VOIP/messaging service goes live, my ears tend to perk up. The new Skype 5.6 update has me especially tickled -- it's now available for folks of the Mac persuasion, and it thankfully packs a handful of bugfixes as well as a slew of new (and arguably overdue) features.
 
Health Startup Help Remedies Takes On Blood Cancer With… A Bandage Kit Top
Screen shot 2012-03-06 at 12.27.14 PMDebuting last week at the TED Conference was a new product by a pharma startup, which has largely flown under the radar. The company's name may not be familiar, but you may have noticed its smartly designed products in drug stores around the country. Founded in 2008, Help Remedies is a pharma startup trying to make waves in an industry dominated by Goliaths by re-imagining the over-the-counter (OTC) medication experience. The startup is doing so with a line of OTC products, or medicine kits, distinguished by minimalist, eco-friendly packaging and smart design in an effort to help reduce the overwhelming amount of product choices most consumers experience when perusing the medications aisles at their local pharmacies.
 
Pandora Misses; Revenue Up 71 Percent To $81.3M But Swings To A Loss Top
Pandora RadioInternet radio giant Pandora Media just reported fourth quarter results. The company posted revenue of $81.3 million, which was up 71 percent year-over-year. Non-GAAP net loss per share was $0.03. Analysts expected a loss of $0.02 a share, with revenue coming in at $83 million. Advertising revenue was $72.1 million, a 74 percent year-over-year increase. Subscription and other revenue was $9.2 million, a 51 percent year-over-year increase. For the fiscal year 2012, total revenue was $274.3 million, a 99 percent year-over-year increase. Total advertising revenue was $240 million, a 101 percent year-over-year increase. Total subscription and other revenue was $34.3 million, an 87 percent year-over-year increase.
 
Khan Academy Inspires Flip of Doctor-Patient Relationship Model Top
Salman KhanEducation and healthcare are typically held up as the industries least affected by the technology revolution, however this has begun to change. From Bill Gates to millions of students and parents, the Khan Academy has impressed many of us and inspired teachers to flip the classroom lecture/homework model on its head as described in the video below. Similarly, doctors are now recognizing similar value in videos for their patients.
 
Samsung VP Eric Anderson On The Future Of Smart TVs [TCTV] Top
SamsungToday at Samsung's media event in NYC, I got the chance to chat with VP of Content and Product Solutions Eric Anderson on the future of Smart TVs. The company just recently released a number of new Smart TV offerings equipped with what Samsung is calling Smart Interaction — the ability to control the TV through voice and gestures.
 
Keen On… Amit Shafrir: How Badoo Is Eliminating Loneliness [TCTV] Top
Screen Shot 2012-03-06 at 9.45.56 AMWith over 137 million worldwide registered users, Badoo is one of the hottest social networks on the planet. But, with its reputation as a massive hook-up network, Badoo is also one of the most controversial. So my first question to Badoo president Amit Shafrir, when we met recently in San Francisco, was about sex. Are all those 137 million users using Badoo, I asked Shafrir, simply to hook up with each other?
 
Roccat Connects Your PC To Your Smartphone For Power-Gaming Top
key2One of the more interesting PC accessories of the last few years was the now-infamous Optimus keyboard, which replaced every key with a tiny display that could be customized for games and software. At $1500, it was kind of a stretch. More recently, Razer's Blade laptop and an unreleased keyboard have integrated a touchscreen and LCD keys, though also at a premium. But why haven't we employed the high-resolution touchscreens we all carry around with us - our smartphones? Roccat, a PC gaming brand that has been expanding into the states, has put together a free app that acts as a sort of window into your PC, letting you monitor your components, create custom key layouts for games, and more. It's a geek dream.
 
Too Big To Fail: Why Anonymous And Hacktivism Will Go On After Sabu Top
octopusEarlier today, authorities descended on a hacker called Sabu and five of his cohorts, who are now in custody, with little love lost between him and the bigger Anonymous group with which they were associated. The reports claim that Sabu (real name, Hector Xavier Monsegur) had been an informant for months over the group's hacking, distributed denial of service, and other attacks used to bring down websites against which they were protesting. That's an explosive betrayal that seems almost too dramatic to be true. But while the news today has surely rocked a lot of people, for those closely involved with this movement, experts in the field of online security believe it is unlikely to make much of a difference longer term.
 
Verizon Releases List Of Devices Getting Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich Top
icecreamsandwichDespite the fact that they rarely ever get to use the newest version of the OS when it's launched, Android fans are still patiently and enthusiastically waiting for their Ice Cream Sandwich updates. The latest version of the OS was released alongside the Samsung Galaxy Nexus back in December, and is probably in the hands of about 2 percent of users as we speak. But after seeing Verizon's updated ICS update device list, I'm thinking that figure will change dramatically in the coming months.
 
comScore: More Than 100M U.S. Mobile Subscribers Now Use Smartphones; Android And iOS Market Share Up Top
comScore -2Online and mobile data research company comScore has just released monthly mobile usage data from its MobiLens service, which reports mobile usage stats for the three month average period ending January 2012. One of the notable data points from the report is that over 100 million U.S. mobile subscribers (101.3 million to be exact) are using smartphones, which is up from 97.9 million in the previous period. That's up 13 percent since October 2011. During the period ending January 2012, 234 million Americans age 13 and older used mobile devices in general. Similar to last month's findings, Google's Android OS continued to grow its share in the smartphone market, accounting for 48.6 percent of smartphone subscribers (up 2.3 percentage points) followed by Apple with 29.5 percent market share (up 1.4 percentage points). RIM ranked third with 15.2 percent share, followed by Microsoft (4.4 percent) and Symbian (1.5 percent).
 
Commerce Guys Secures $5m To Make Drupal More Ecommerce Friendly Top
83642v2-max-250x250Commerce Guys, which develops the Drupal Commerce product, has secured $5 million in a Series A round led by Paris-based Alven Capital. Finland-based Open Ocean Capital (which backed MySQL) and Paris-based ISAI, the French entrepreneur's fund, also joined the round. With this Series A round, Commerce Guys has received a total of $6 million in funding (ISAI provided an initial seed round in 2010).
 
Goodbye Android Market, Hello Google Play Top
google-play-logoGoogle's Android Market has undergone some tremendous changes over the last year or so. What started as just a standalone app store has quickly grown to encompass e-books, music, videos, and now Google feels like the "Android Market" moniker is getting to be too restrictive, too constraining for what they're really trying to deliver to their users. That's why Google is officially putting the Android Market name to rest. Starting today, all of Google's digital media services have been rebranded to fly under a brand new banner: Google Play. That's right gadget buffs, despite some delectable new rumors, Google Play isn't a new tablet from the folks at Mountain View, but rather a unified brand that seeks to tie the company's digital media services together.
 
Azullo Secures Second Round Funding For Product To Fix Banner Blindness Top
113493v3-max-250x250Azullo, a UK-based startup who's flagship product, "Respond", offers publishers extra ad revenue and advertisers a customer acquisition model, has secured a second round of financing in the "six figure" ballpark, although terms were undisclosed. The round was led by North West Fund 4 Digital & Creative, managed by AXM Venture Capital Limited, with participation from Angels John Lyon, Joel Rosenblatt and Chris Frost. This round follows a seed round in mid-2011.
 
Khosla Ventures Leads $2M Round In Mobile E-Signature Service SignNow Top
signnowSignNow, a startup that develops an e-signing service, has raised $2 million in funding from Khosla Ventures. SignNow raised $500,000 in a previous round. SignNow's goal is to revolutionize consumer use of e-signatures and eliminate the need for fax machines, scanners and printers. Today, the company is also announcing a free iPad app (joining iPhone and Android apps), which allows people to sign any document from their iPad and get other people's signatures.
 
First Major Acquisition Gets Big Fish Games Into Mobile, Social, Location — And The Bay Area Top
Screen Shot 2012-03-06 at 9.35.21 AMBig Fish Games is having some significant firsts this year, a decade after Paul Thelen founded the casual game developer and publisher. One is its largest acquisition to date: Oakland-based Social Concepts, the parent company of mobile social casino game developer Self Aware Games. Another is strong revenue growth -- up 30 percent over 2011, to above $180 million, he tells me today. Now, with Social Concepts, Big Fish will also be able to crack some areas that it has mostly stayed out of so far.
 
INTRO Wants To Be The LinkedIn Of The Ambient Location Apps Top
intro-mainJust when you thought this space couldn't get any more saturated, yet another ambient location app throws its hat into the ring as SXSW prepares to kick off. Introducing INTRO. But wait, before you groan "enough already!", you should know that INTRO at least has a unique take on the location-based social introductions market. Unlike the majority of this year's crop of location-based networking apps, INTRO's angle is business introductions. Built on top of LinkedIn, the app lets you specify who you're looking to meet by both industry and profession, then enables you to make that connection.
 

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