Friday, April 20, 2012

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HTC Is Done With QWERTY Keyboard Phones Top
htc-touch-proTouchscreens killed the keypad star. HTC is reportedly done with physical keypads and will instead focus on better on-screen keypad technology. The word comes from HTC creative director Claude Zellweger speaking at a Seattle press event. "As a company the QWERTY keyboard we're moving away from in general." This likely doesn't mean HTC won't release another QWERTY phone in the near future but rather the company is shifting development focus away from physical keys.
 
Applications About To Close For Wayra London Incubator Top
screen-shot-2012-03-07-at-14-27-18Back in March giant telco Telefonica opened the latest addition to its growing global network of startup incubators dubbed "Wayra Academy". Wayra is the latest incubator/accelerator in London, joining Springboard, Seedcamp and Innovation Warehouse. Now this is fair warning that the deadline for Wayra applications is about to close. So you better hurry. You can apply here. If you're wondering what the deal is with this latest in a long line of new European incubators, then here's how it's set up:
 
VCs Invested $5.8B In 758 Deals In Q1 2012, Total Dollars And Deals Both Down From Last Quarter Top
usVenture capitalists invested $5.8 billion in 758 deals in the first quarter of 2012, according to a MoneyTree Report from PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP and the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA). The report shows that after a strong fourth quarter 2011, VC investment activity for the quarter fell 19 percent in terms of dollars and 15 percent in the number of deals compared to the fourth quarter of 2011 when $7.1 billion was invested in 889 deals. While the Life Sciences (biotechnology and medical device industries combined) and Clean Technology sectors saw decreases in both dollars and number of deals in the first quarter, there were double-digit percentage increases in dollars invested in the Consumer Products and Services, and Telecommunications industries. Additionally, investments into companies in the Later stage of development experienced an increase, rising 11 percent and accounting for 40 percent of total dollars invested during the first quarter of 2012.
 
Moms We'd Like To Fund Top
christine tsaiAre you an entrepreneur looking to build something truly awesome that will positively impact millions of people's lives? (and by the way, make a LOT of money?) If so, then I have a suggestion... Stop building yet another daily deal site or mindless social game or yellow filter so-lo-mo photo-sharing service. Instead, build something awesome for moms, dads, families, or kids. Believe it or not, there are a lot of them so make their lives easier and happier. Because, the best part is that they'll probably pay you for it.
 
Rewinery Now Shipping To San Francisco, Potentially My Liver Top
Screen Shot 2012-04-19 at 6.47.34 PMWe first heard about Rewinery through a stray tweet from Instagram co-founder (and fellow Brazilian) Mike Krieger. Because it was late at the office, and we were working on culling TechCrunch Disrupt finalists, we thought that having three bottles of wine delivered to TechCrunch headquarters sounded like just about the best thing in the world .... Except we (Okay, who the fuck am I kidding here with this "we" shit? I ...) didn't quite fully understand the magnitude of disruption in the "getting alcohol delivered to you quickly" space. Rewinery was sold out! Okay I guess that's a good sign for them and probably a good thing for me too because I made Disrupt decisions sober (we're still looking at applications, so apply here if you get inspired by this, BTW).
 
Latest Rumors Peg An LTE iPhone For An October Release, LiquidMetal To Be Used For The Casing Top
iphoneAfter a period of unnerving quietness, the Apple rumor mill is back up and running at full capacity producing two somewhat credible rumors over the last 24 hours. The next iPhone will not be announced until October if the latest rumors are believed. A separate rumor is just so wild that it might be true: The iPhone 5, or whatever it's to be called, will be made of LiquidMetal, which will allow for a unique unibody construction. But again, these are just unfounded rumors. Please proceed with caution.
 
Travel Data Startup Duetto Raises $2.1M From Trinity, Marc Benioff, Many More Top
duetto logoDuetto, a startup bringing a "big data" approach to the travel industry, has just raised $2.1 million in seed funding. The company hasn't launched yet, but co-founder and CEO Patrick Bosworth says the goal is to build applications around customer demand data from large travel companies. It's starting out by serving small- and medium-sized lodging businesses (who could, for example, use the data to help with pricing and distribution strategies), and Bosworth plans to go live for Duetto's first customers this summer. Eventually, he says he wants to help "companies in all travel verticals respond to changing market conditions and market demand."
 
Smoopa, The Price-Scanning App That Pays Shoppers To Find Bargains, Lands On iOS Top
Screen Shot 2012-04-19 at 1.17.07 PMSmoopa, a mobile commerce startup co-founded by a longtime ex-Googler, a defense scientist and a former Massachusetts state trooper (yes!), is landing on iOS today with a price-scanning app that pays shoppers to find bargains. The app capitalizes on a trend that has started to roil brick-and-mortar stores over the last year. Armed with smartphones, consumers are comparing prices in physical stores to ones online in a hunt for the best deals. While there are already apps like this out on the market (most notably from Amazon and eBay with the Red Laser app they acquired), Smoopa's spin on this is that they reward shoppers for sharing price information back from real-world stores. Every time a consumer scans an item and enters in price data from a physical store, there's a random chance they'll be rewarded with credits that can either be put towards gift cards, rebate checks or charitable donations.
 
Apple-Google Antitrust Case Is Going To Trial, And It's Steve Jobs' Fault Top
Google Apple Intel Antitrust"We must do whatever we can to stop cold calling each other's employees and other competitive recruiting efforts between the companies." This quote from Steve Jobs to Palm's CEO was central to a San Jose court ruling today for why a class-action antitrust lawsuit against Apple, Google, Intel, Adobe, Intuit, Pixar, and Lucasfilm won't be dismissed and will move on towards a June 2013 trial. Now lawyers representing five former employees of the tech companies will begin document discovery in hopes of surfacing more damning evidence. While we mean no disrespect to Steve Jobs, his actions could force Apple and these other companies to pay out hundreds of millions of dollars to Silicon Valley employees in a settlement or damages ruling. Check out the full court ruling and our analysis within.
 
Mayfield Fund's Tim Chang: The Future Is In Making Data Fun [TCTV] Top
timchangMayfield Fund managing partner Tim Chang is going long on the idea of the "quantified self," which is about using the latest in both hardware and software technology to keep detailed tabs of people's daily habits in the hopes of gradually improving their lives. Chang has written a three-part series of really interesting articles about the quantified self for TechCrunch in recent weeks, so we were pleased to have the chance to interview him on TechCrunch TV to hear him explain in a bit more detail about the space and where it's going. You can watch our full discussion in the video above, but here are a few interesting points he made...
 
New Funding In Tow, Playsino Places Its Bet On Social Casino Gaming Top
PlaysinoLogoTitan Gaming, the makers of a gaming platform that enables content sites and social networks to offer cash and prize-based game tournaments, is today announcing that it is embarking on a complete makeover that includes its rebranding as Playsino, along with a new focus, CEO, and some new funding. Under its new moniker, Playsino will look to leverage its traction in the tournaments and virtual rewards space and double down on another emerging vertical: social casino games.
 
Wander Wins $1.2M From Rob Go, SV Angel, Google Ventures, SoftTech And Others Top
Wander_Funding_041712_2The NYC-based Wander is today announcing a raise of $1.2 million from Rob Go's NextView Ventures, Jeff Clavier and Stephanie Pameri's SoftTech VC, SV Angel, Rich Miner's Google Ventures, Collaborative Fund, Red Swan and TechStars. Wander, which co-founder Jeremy Fisher describes as a "a way to the see the world through other people eyes" is still under wraps but Fisher reveals that the final product will be "adjacent" to both the curation and location space, a combination of Tumblr and Pinterest, Yelp, Tripadvisor and Foursquare.
 
Microsoft Beats Estimates With $17.4B In Revenue, $0.60 EPS Top
microsoft logoMicrosoft just released its earnings report for the third quarter of its fiscal year. It came out slightly ahead of analyst estimates, with $17.41 billion in revenue (compared to the predicted $17.16 billion) and earnings of 60 cents per share (compared to 58 cents). Microsoft says this is a record for third-quarter revenue, up 6 percent from the same period last year. Operating income was $6.37 billion, up 12 percent.
 
Chocomize Now Shipping To The UK, Potentially My Belly Top
Screen Shot 2012-04-19 at 3.27.21 PMWe first wrote about Chocomize not realizing the importance of disruption in the bespoke chocolate space. After trying a sample of their produce today at the New York Tech Day, however, I've decided that this is probably the best start up in the whole world, barring that one that lets you connect with friends and family and share photos and stuff. And also that other one with the birds. That one is pretty good.
 
Amazon Appstore's Revenue Per User Beats Out iOS, Google Play, Says Game Developer TinyCo Top
Screen Shot 2012-04-19 at 12.18.22 PMTinyCo, a mobile gaming startup backed by Andreessen Horowitz, is yet another major game developer that has come forward to show that revenue per user on Amazon's appstore is tracking much higher than it is on Google Play. The company, which has top #25 grossing games on both iOS and Android, looked at its title Tiny Village, a prehistoric-themed simulation game that's available on all three stores from Google, Apple and Amazon, and found that when you break it out by platform, Amazon's store monetizes 80 percent better per user than iTunes. If you break out the tablet market, Amazon Kindles monetize 43 percent better per user than iPads do. So Amazon is doing even better than Apple is, according to their numbers. This is not to rag on Google Play though. TinyCo's numbers are actually not that bad when looking at Google's store. When you look at just Android phones (which would exclude any Amazon devices since they don't offer a phone), these devices generate 82 percent of the revenue-per-user that iPhones do.
 
Mozilla CEO: First Boot To Gecko Devices Will Be Sold In Brazil Top
kovacsbrazilMozilla and Spain-based Telefonica officially announced their intentions to work together on an open web device at this year's Mobile World Congress, but I'm not sure anyone expected the launch market Mozilla CEO Gary Kovacs just announced. According to the Brazilian blog ZTop (Google Translated here), Kovacs just recently revealed the the world's first consumer-ready Boot to Gecko devices are expected to launch in Brazil either at the end of the year or in early 2013.
 
Evernote Raising $50 Million To $100 Million At A $1 Billion+ Valuation Top
evernote-iconCloud note and storage app Evernote is raising a massive fifth round of funding of between $50 to $100 million at a valuation that tops $1 billion, according to our sources. Contrary to what Business Insider is reporting, the final details of which investors will participate are still being finalized but there's strong interest in the Valley and beyond. Investor Meritech is believed to be in the lead, the round is expected to go through, and it could all close in the next couple of weeks. There's a small chance the round could be scrapped or that the numbers could be different, though.
 
"In the Studio," Why Zimride's John Zimmer Left Wall Street to Start a Company Top
Screen shot 2012-04-18 at 7.50.56 PM 1"In the Studio" has a special segment this week, hosting a Valley entrepreneur who grew up on the East Coast, studied at an Ivy League school, was lured to Wall Street, and eventually decided to leave the pinstriped suits behind to start building his own startup, eventually finding his cofounder via Facebook, moonlighting as an entrepreneur after the markets closed in NYC, and is now helping run a venture-backed startup that's making a real difference in the world. John Zimmer grew up in a Connecticut suburb outside of New York City, worked hard and made his way to Cornell in upstate New York. In college, he was part of the University's storied "Hotel Management School," taking a specific interest in real estate finance which eventually led him to the real estate finance group of a major New York investment bank. Zimmer felt that the culture around his high school and in parts of college put the lure of investment banking in his sights, but after some time, he developed an itch to try something new despite the chorus around him.
 
An Interview With Linus Torvalds Top
156px-Linus_TorvaldsThe Millenium Technology Prize is a Finnish award designed "to improve the quality of life and to promote sustainable development-oriented research, development and innovation." It's awarded every two years. Sir Tim Berners-Lee won the prize in 2004. The 2012 Grand Prize winner will be announced on June 13 in Helsinki, Finland. The finalists this year are Dr. Shinya Yamanaka, who has been contributing to the area of stem cell research, and Linux creator Linus Torvalds.
 
New Crowdsourcing Launch: AskYourUsers.com Uses LinkedIn To Help You Find People For Microconsulting Projects Top
askyourusers.comCrowdsourcing and crowdfunding have been two of the biggest trends to affect how businesses -- especially small businesses and sole traders -- raise money, with sites like Kickstarter.com and in the UK Funding Circle attracting a attention for being a great way of getting backing for projects or business ideas bypassing the traditional and expensive world of bank loans in the process. Now a site is launching that gives this model an additional twist: AskYourUsers.com is a simple service that helps you find people for microconsulting projects lasting no more than 15 minutes -- and it uses your LinkedIn network to help you find them. From the demo that I have seen, the service is basically that simple, but it works very smoothly, and definitely solves a need -- one that Dunne and her co-founder, Chris Bumgarder, essentially stumbled on unintentionally...
 

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