Monday, April 2, 2012

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Has Dating Site Badoo Found A Love Match In The Form Of Hotornot? Top
badoo logoMaybe even dating sites deserve to find a special someone at one point in their lives... it looks like Badoo, the UK-based dating site, has joined forces with rival Hotornot. The two have yet to issue a formal release of any kind, but Hotornot now boasts the same amount of registered users as Badoo (146 million+), and Hotornot now directly refers users to Badoo's terms and conditions (pictured below). There have been a few observed signs from users, too...
 
Facebook's Mobile Viral Channels Are Working For Wooga, Europe's Biggest Social Gaming Company Top
diamond-dashViral channels are slowly and inevitably starting to matter for mobile game developers. For ages, many top developers would try and climb up the charts through a combination of mobile advertising, offer walls, free app promotions or more nefariously, download bots. But as the charts have been become crowded with north of a half-million apps and as Apple has clamped down on less savory means of acquiring users like bots, other ways of getting users are becoming more important. Wooga, which is Europe's biggest social game developer, is an example. Today, the Berlin-based company is saying that it has crossed 11 million downloads, which is respectable considering that the company only really entered the mobile space three months ago when it brought Diamond Dash to iOS.
 
Tandem: Mobile Accelerator Unveils Inaugural Batch, Gives Sneak Peek At Round Two Top
tandem_logo_largeTandem Entrepreneurs, for those unfamiliar, is a Silicon Valley-based mobile startup accelerator. It's somewhat unusual, in that there's no demo day, or set graduation date, and it encourages its founders to stick around past the end of its six-month program. Tandem began as a capital fund in 2007, funding and working closely with startups like Play In The City, Playhaven, and Zumodrive -- until it launched its mobile-focused accelerator in July of last year. Today, with the hard work beginning to pay off, Tandem is officially unveiling its first batch of companies -- and, in a bonus -- is giving us a sneak peek at the two startups chosen to participate in its winter program.
 
SoFi Reinvents College Loans With Alumni Funding Top
sofiAs the cost of a college education continues to rise, a startup called SoFi is offering a way for alumni to offer students financial assistance and more. Co-founder and CEO Mike Cagney describes the current student loan system as a "classic market failure," resulting in students who are stuck with high interest rates and heavy debt that they struggle to pay off. He says that if you can remove government from the equation (specifically government loans) and replace it with alumni, then "you create a very virtuous cycle."
 
Up To 1.5M Credit Card Numbers May Have Been Stolen In Visa, MasterCard Security Breach Top
globalOn Friday, we heard the news that payments processor Global Payments was hit with a massive security breach involving MasterCard and Visa cardholders. At the time it was unclear the reach of the security issue, which was being investigated by the U.S. Secret Service. Tonight, Global Payments reports that those cards affected in the breach processing system were confined to North America and up to 1.5 million card numbers may have been exported. Visa had originally pegged that number at around 50,000 cards stolen. So far, the investigation has revealed that card numbers may have been stolen, but that cardholder names, addresses and social security numbers were not obtained by the criminals. As stated in the release: Based on the forensic analysis to date, network monitoring and additional security measures, the company believes that this incident is contained.
 
The Internet Has Killed April Fools' Top
photoIt's hard to tell if the Wikipedia article on April Fools' Day is itself an April Fools' prank. Tidbits of the ubiquitous holiday's history seem like jokes in and of themselves;
""In France and Italy, children and adults traditionally tack paper fish on each other's back as a trick and shout "april fish!" in their local language ("poisson d'avril!" and "pesce d'aprile!" in French and Italian respectively)."
And this brings me to my point; The Internet has killed April Fools. Back in the day you used to be able to tell your friends you were engaged, pregnant or had Cancer without them gushing all over your Facebook page or Twitter and immediately freaking out people who you didn't want to prank, like your family.
 
Dirty Pillows: The Unsolved Problems Of Sharing Services Top
ApU7PuJCEAISoHYWhen my wife and I travel, we rarely stay in hotels. We usually either stay in hostels or apartments. The apartments are usually found and booked on Airbnb. We're big fans of the service, and think it's one of the best ways to experience a foreign city. However, some recent events have made me think a bit deeper about this maturing marketplace and the whole spectrum of collaborative consumption services. We are currently on a trip to Tokyo for an speaking engagement and some mentoring of the teams at Open Network Lab, a Tokyo-based incubator I wrote about last fall during our last Tokyo visit. Last night, we arrived to our apartment. The amenities and space was almost exactly as described. But there was something about our place that didn't appear in the Airbnb description, which almost made us walk out immediately: the cleanliness of the bedding.
 
Why Designers Should Join Software Startups Top
3408905170_37d3c0094fEditor's Note: This guest post is written by Uzi Shmilovici, CEO and founder of Future Simple, the company behind Base CRM. In 1919, Walter Gropius founded in Germany the Bauhaus, a school for engineering and design, and gave birth to one of the most important and influential design movements in history: Modernism. Gropius' big idea was that designers and engineers should collaborate closely in order to build phenomenal products. Later, in the mid-1950s, Braun adopted this approach and had phenomenal success in building signature products, many of which were commercial hits, made huge impact on people's lives and are now museum exhibits.
 
Greylock-Backed Citrus Lane Helps Parents Discover 'Best Of' Products For Little Ones Top
Citrus Lane_ Example BoxesThe dawn of subscription commerce has spawned a number of startups in technology including BirchBox, Kiwi Crate, Babbaco and many others. Citrus Lane is one of the latest startups to tackle the model, which sends a box of kiddie goodies to members each month. The startup is focused on parents as the client, and aims to help moms and dads discover interesting and 'Best Of' products for those expecting babies, as well as for newborns to three-year-olds. Each month, Citrus Lane will send parents a box filled with user-tested and vetted toys and products for babies and toddlers. Each month has a theme. So for example, March's theme for the baby box was "Dining Out With Baby," and included snack cases, a sippy cup, apple crisps and baby food. The startup prides itself on delivering organic and natural products.
 
Bootstrapped Startup Saves Over $100K By Dropping IE Top
Screen shot 2012-04-01 at 12.13.44 PMEditor's Note: This is a guest post by Tyler Rooney, a co-founder of online portfolio startup, 4ormat. It's not every day that you start a business and quickly decide to say "no" to 70 percent of your potential customers. In retrospect, this turned out to be 4ormat's secret weapon. At 4ormat, our goal is to provide an easy way for creative professionals to create and manage an online portfolio website. Although the portfolio itself looks great in all browsers, to this day, the portfolio building interface does not support Internet Explorer. And we don't just mean IE6 or even IE7. We mean every version of Internet Explorer. This might seem drastic, but consider this: when we started 4ormat in 2008, IE had almost 70% market share and IE6 was still used by one-in-four desktops. Chrome, for example, had only been out for 2 months. To call it drastic would be an understatement.
 
TechCrunch Primer: A Crash Course In Cool Camera Apps Top
cam-apps3aLet's face it — there are too many camera and photo sharing apps out there, and not enough time in the day to give each one of them a try. If you've been mulling over which camera app deserves your love and affection, or just have no earthly idea where to start, take a gander below at some of your best options for shooting and sharing your life on the go.
 
The Market Curve: The Life Cycle Of New Technology Markets Top
healthy_marketEditor's Note: This guest post is written by Doug Pepper, who is a General Partner at InterWest Partners where he invests in SaaS, mobile, consumer Internet and digital media companies. He blogs at dougpepper.blogspot.com. Everyone expects startups, even successful ones, to undergo a cycle of hype, disappointment and ultimately growth on the way to a sustainable business. But what about new technology markets themselves? Does the growth of a new market follow a similar pattern? Fred Wilson recently wrote about the twists and turns that startups face (expanding on Paul Graham's astute "Startup Curve"). I'd like to take those ideas further and describe the "Market Curve" -- a similar path that new markets take on the path to sustainability.
 
Facebook Considers Adding The Hate Button Top
hateIn 2010, TechCrunch broke the news that Facebook was going to release a "Like" button for the whole darn Internet. Now, TechCrunch has learned Facebook is considering a "Hate" button as well. According to Facebook's S-1 filing, users are now generating 2.7 billion Likes and Comments per day. With the Hate button, Facebook expects to at least double that. The S-1 noted "popular Pages on Facebook include Lady Gaga, Disney, and Manchester United, each of which has more than 20 million Likes." Many inside the company think the Hates could easily top that.
 
April Fools 2012: We Ruin Every (Tech-Related) Joke On The Internets Top
WarbyBarker_dogocleHappy April 1st, Everybody! It's that very special time of year -- the day when tech companies break out their clown shoes to make their annual attempt at being funny. As a public service, we've rounded up every tech-related April Fools joke that we could find, and we've even separated the wheat from the chaff -- highlighting the stuff that's actually funny. The LOLs, the FAILs, the ROFLs, the WTFs. Just for you. We'll update this throughout the day, and if we missed any, feel free to link to them in the comments. (By the way, if you're one of those folks who finds April Fools super-stressful because you're constantly being punked, rest assured that TechCrunch would never do that to you.)
 
Internet Freedom: Diplomats Join The Dissidents, Geeks And Censors Top
granny holding internet freedom torchIn its new "Enemies of the Internet" report, the international watchdog group Reporters Without Borders depicts an Internet under unprecedented pressure from the world's autocratic regimes. The study lists twelve such "enemies," including Iran, North Korea, China and Saudi Arabia, and observes that an increasing number of governments are not content merely to take domestic steps to control online space. "Freedom of expression on the Internet," the study notes, "is no longer the sole preserve of dissidents, geeks and censors. Diplomats have followed in their wake." Internet freedom has become a foreign policy issue.
 
What Smart Techies Are Stealing From Finance Top
Technology-and-Finance1"Portfolio" is a word that Silicon Valley loves. Venture firms have portfolios of startups, web designers have portfolios of their work and even public relations agencies have a portfolio of clients. Now chief information officers and IT architects have portfolios of computing power made up of physical servers, virtual machines and public cloud instances at multiple providers. For most people, a portfolio is little more than an accumulation of individual decisions over time. Look in a typical VC's portfolio, and you'll see a storage locker stuffed with buzzword bingo startups slouching toward an orderly shutdown. A web designer's portfolio? A collection of unrelated commissions.
 
Abolish The Reference Check Top
rsz_5185268326_45cf24babe_zIt's time to abolish the reference check. The unpleasant process of calling up a job applicant's former boss to gab about the candidate's pluses and "deltas" is just silly. Maybe if we all just agree to stop doing it the practice will go away, like pay phones and fanny packs. Instead, I've learned a better way to hire that leverages a universal human attribute—namely, the fact that we're all lazy. What's my beef with reference checks? They don't accomplish the job we intend them to do. In a startup, you can't afford to hire B-players. But reference checks, which are intended to do the screening, fail to eliminate these candidates who are just so-so. This happens because the person giving the reference has no incentive to say anything but good things about the candidate. Telling the whole truth, warts and all, could expose the former boss to a defamation lawsuit. And legal action aside, no one likes to speak poorly about an ex-colleague. It's bad karma and just feels icky.
 
Foxconn Plans New Iowa Plant, Will Hire 10% Of State's Population Top
iowa-foxconnAfter a highly visible meeting with Apple CEO Tim Cook, Foxconn's founder Terry Gou announced plans to open a sprawling Foxconn factory in Guthrie Center, Iowa, essentially replacing the approximately 2,000 residents of that small town with workers from in and around Iowa. The company will hire 300,000 employees for the new factory, about 10% of Iowa's population. The plant will include dormitories for workers, multiple swimming pools and Internet cafes, and meal seating for 100,000 employees.
 
Fragmentation? Open Source? Buzzwords For Android, And Also Google's Latest Effort, Google Campus Top
Eze VidraLondon's claim to being the hub for tech startups in Europe got a boost last week, when Google opened the doors of its latest effort, Google Campus, a seven-story centre for startups, which it has launched in partnership with several existing organizations, and big ambitions to galvanize some of the tech activity that has already marked out London to take it to the next level. The company is keeping much of its corporate profile at arms length from the project, but ironically, in describing Google's aims, Campus' head, Eze Vidra (pictured here), falls back on some of the terminology that has marked out one of Google's other, massive efforts, Android: the building, he says, is "open source." And the aim is to do away with some of the "fragmentation" in the London tech scene. Does that, in effect, lay out both the challenges and opportunities that Campus faces going forward?
 
Google's Sergey Brin To Retire: "I'm Really Into Blues Guitar" Top
Brin-bluesGoogle Co-Founder Sergey Brin has expressed interest in retiring "in a year or so" to take up the intense study of blues guitar, sources inside Google say. The decision places the company at a crossroads in terms of management succession and a replacement is already being groomed. Brin has been learning blues guitar from a number of major players including Eric Clapton (who was given $40,000 for a series of three lessons in a Palo Alto park), Keith Richards, and Ralph Macchio.
 

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