Monday, April 16, 2012

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Dashlane Speeds Up The Web With Instant Logins, Automatic Checkout And More Top
dashlane-logoThe stealthy consumer Internet startup Dashlane, which had raised a $5 million Series A back in September, is today coming out of hiding with the launch of its public release. The company is offering a personal data assistant that aims to speed up access to websites through password-saving and online form-filling features, but, as hinted earlier, there's more to it than that. There are two key features Dashlane offers which put it above the everyday password manager: instant logins and support for automatic checkout on e-commerce sites.
 
Sprint's $199 Galaxy Nexus Launches On April 22 With $40 Google Wallet Credit In Tow Top
sprintgalnexIf they haven't already done it, Sprint customers in need of an upgrade should make it a point to circle April 22 on their calendars. Not only has Sprint chosen that day to launch their eco-friendly LG Viper, the nation's third largest wireless carrier has just confirmed on Twitter that the Galaxy Nexus will be available for $199 (with contract) that same day.
 
Manila-Based Social Music Service Twitmusic Makes It Into 500 Startups Top
twitmusic logoA big domestic market of 92 million people, English as an official language, a large IT talent pool, and a strategic location in South East Asia: the Philippines surely has the potential to become the next web powerhouse coming out of Asia. I traveled to the country last month (on a private trip) to realize that the startup scene is still in its infancy - but that's poised to change very soon. One pioneering startup from the Philippines is Twitmusic, a Twitter-based social music service aimed at artists and their fans. As an artist, having an account on Twitter is one thing, but Twitmusic allows them to upload and share songs (and other content) through Twitter in a matter of minutes.
 
Chartbeat Raises $9.5M, Launches Engagement-Focused Redesign Top
ContentReal-time analytics startup Chartbeat is making two big announcements today. The first should be pretty obvious to anyone who uses the service — it's unveiling a big redesign. And it's not stopping there, since the second announcement is a $9.5 million Series B round of funding. The redesign is pretty similar to the preview that I saw about a month ago. The big goal is to start providing numbers that go beyond how many people are looking at a website or article at a given moment. So at the top of the new dashboard, in addition to the familiar meter showing the number of concurrent visitors to a site, there's a new widget telling you how much time visitors have spent engaged on the site in aggregate — for example, I learned that by the middle of the Sunday afternoon, TechCrunch readers that day had collectively spent two years and six months engaged with our content (which is kind of scary). It also shows the average engagement time per user and per page.
 
Estimize Takes Stock Gamification One Step Further With Challenges Top
estimizeEstimize is a startup trying to discover the true "whisper number" of public stocks — not just the official analyst consensus, but what Wall Street really believes. To make that happen, it's encouraging investors to post their own estimates — and they're getting a little more incentive starting today, thanks to the new Estimize Challenges. CEO and co-founder Leigh Drogen previously worked at social finance startup StockTwits, where his roles included product manager and media director. Drogen says he first had the idea for Estimize there — he sees it as the quantitative flip side to the conversations that you find on StockTwits. So each quarter, Estimize members can post their guesses for a company's earnings per share and revenue. Then you can see the aggregate prediction of the Estimize community, as well as current and past predictions for individual users.
 
Roku Launches In Canada With Over 100 Streaming Channels Top
41rE7imwXpL._SL500_AA300_Roku just landed in the great white north. The tiny little streaming box launched in the UK a few weeks back and now it's hitting Canada along with over 100 channels of streaming goodness. The Roku 2 XD and Roku 2 XS should hit retailers in the coming days for $89 and $109 CAD, respectively but are available for pre-ordering now. This launch is the last part of Roku's announced international expansion. The company is no doubt looking for other potential markets but Roku is notoriously methodical in its launch schedule.
 
Aeir Talk Gives A Father's Autistic Kids A Voice Top
Me and the boysWe met Joe Hill in Norfolk, Virginia last week. He had a story to tell us. He has two autistic sons who have had trouble communicating and he noticed that the world of tools for autism often overlooked a few things - aesthetics, usability, and customization, to name three. Instead of relying on ready-made utilities, Joe wanted to make something fun and cool. He created Aeir Talk. It's an app that allows parents to create and record their own content for use in a very simple but effective method for communications. The parents record a set of verbs and nouns and add pictures of themselves or of familiar objects. When the kids need to communicate, they select a noun and a verb and press a button. The app creates a simple sentence. "I want to go outside, please" or "I want a carrot, please."
 
Samsung To Reveal The 'Next Galaxy' Phone On May 3 At London Event Top
nextgalaxyAfter months of waiting (not to mention plenty of conflicting reports), Samsung may have finally revealed when they plan to unveil their long-awaited Galaxy S III. According to a press invitation that has been making the rounds since early this morning, the Korean company will be pulling back the curtains on a new Galaxy handset in London on May 3. Samsung is as vague as usual here — they make it a point not to name the device specifically, referring to it simply as the "next Galaxy." That hasn't stopped we members of the tech press from attempting to dissect the invitation anyway (my goodness, there are three paint slotches on the invitation!).
 
Motorola Employee Takes A Picture Of His Desk, Possibly Confirms Existence Of Droid Razr HD Top
exiffighterIt would appear that Motorola is putting even more of an effort into its resurrected Razr line. Just a few months after the hotly anticipated Droid Razr stepped onto the scene, Motorola offered the same unit with an upgraded battery, making the Droid Razr Maxx my new favorite Android phone with an 8+ hour battery life (and that's under extreme duress). Today, just a few months after the Razr Maxx, we're seeings signs of yet another Razr line upgrade: The Droid Razr HD. You see, both the Droid Razr and the Razr Maxx are excellent handsets, but with both sporting a qHD display resolution it was somewhat inevitable that Motorola would have to go spec-to-spec with competitors at some point and put out a 720p display. After seeing the EXIF data left by a Motorola Mobility employee on a picture of his desk he posted to his Picasa account, we're thinking the Droid Razr HD (codenamed Vanquish) may be the real deal.
 
The New iPad To Launch In South Korea And 11 Other Countries This Week Top
New-iPad-logoApple took to the wires this morning to announce that the new iPad will hit 12 countries later this week. Along with South Korea, this coming Friday the new iPad launches in Brunei, Croatia, Cyprus, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Malaysia, Panama, St Maarten, Uruguay and Venezuela. Then, the following Friday, it hits Colombia, Estonia, India, Israel, Latvia, Lithuania, Montenegro, South Africa and Thailand. For better or worse, the new iPad will carry the suggested retail price of $499 USD and up. The iPad 2 will also be available at its new $399 price and might be the best bet in the majority of the markets just now getting the new iPad; only the North American markets have LTE data capabilities anyway.
 
Europe's Zynga? Social Games Co. Zattikka Raises $20M On AIM, Buys Hattrick, Concept Art House And Sneaky Games Top
popmundoMore activity in the social and casual gaming space, following on from the $200 million acquisition of OMGPOP by Zynga. The UK-based games company Zattikka has started trading on the public markets and says it has raised £12.6 million ($20 million) after its placing with institutional and other investors on London's AIM exchange. Zattikka -- which develops freemium games for PC web browsers, social networks, mobile devices (including smartphones and tablets), connected consoles, and other emerging platforms including IP TVs and set top boxes -- says that it will be using the funds to buy three smaller social games developers: Hattrick Holdings, Sneaky Games, Inc. and Concept Art House, Inc. -- a sign not just of more transactions in social/casual games but also of increasing consolidation of smaller, independent studios as the market continues to mature. The listing today gives the company a market capitalization of £22 million ($35m), it says.
 
Video Conferencing Platform Blue Jeans Lands Major Reseller Deal With InterCall Top
blue-jeans-networkBlue Jeans Network, an enterprise video conferencing solution to integrate across many platforms, is announcing a major reseller partnership with Intercall, one of the largest audio conferencing and collaboration services vendors. Dubbed "any(ware) video conferencing," Blue Jeans Network bridges together conferencing technology from Cisco/Tandberg, Polycom, Lifesize with consumers platforms such as Skype and Google Talk. Remote workers, travelers and telecommuters with access to Skype and a video-enabled desktop or mobile device, can participate in video meetings with their colleagues on traditional enterprise video conferencing equipment.
 
1M Users Strong, Schoology Grabs $6M To Take On Blackboard, Moodle Top
Screen shot 2012-04-16 at 1.55.28 AMSchoology, the makers of a one-stop, cloud-based learning management system for primary and secondary schools, is announcing today that it has closed a $6 million Series B round of venture funding. The round was led by FirstMark Capital and includes a contribution from existing investor Meakem Becker Venture Capital, bringing the New York-based startup's total funding to $9.3 million.
 
Style For Hire Wants To Bring Personal Stylists To The Masses Top
styleHiring a personal stylist, who will handpick and curate your wardrobe, used to be a fashion luxury that only the wealthy or celebrities could afford. Today, Style For Hire, a fashion startup co-founded by celebrity stylist Stacy London and Cindy McLaughlin, is launching as a way to help the masses master the art of their own personal style. The startup allows users to find a vetted stylist in their city to help them choose clothing for a special event, or more. With 135 stylists in 24 cities in the U.S., including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco and Boston; Style For Hire allows you to search for stylists by type of style and more.
 
Txtr Fights Amazon/Apple With iPhone/Android eBooks For The Rest Of Us Top
txtrWhile Apple, Amazon and competition authorities globally tussle over book pricing, a fleet-of foot startup is quietly building an alternative platform others would do well to check out. txtr is one of the largest independent eBook platforms in Europe. The Berlin based startup began back in 2008, deciding, as one did back then, to bring out an eReading device called the "txtr reader". I actually saw some of the early units. However, as colleague John Biggs noted in 2009, there wasn't much point in doing devices without a store. And so they've since switched pretty successfully to a BtoB business model, backed by large investor 3M. Now they are cleverly expanding around into the nooks and crannies so far unpopulated by the 800 pound gorillas, and have their own iPhone and Android apps to prove it.
 
Mobile Messaging Consolidates: Myriad Group Buys Synchronica For $38M Top
text messagingSome consolidation afoot in the evolving world of mobile messaging: one messaging provider, Switzerland's Myriad Group, is buying a UK-based rival, Synchronica, for £23.9 million (around $38 million), in what looks like an all-share deal. Myriad says the deal will make it one of the biggest providers of messaging services in the world. Together they provide messaging services to a huge range of tier-one carriers including ATT, Verizon, Vodafone, Telefónica, Orange, T-Mobile, América Móvil, NTT Docomo, MTS, Softbank, Megafon, Telcel, TIM, Airtel and Claro -- altogether covering some 2.5 billion subscribers and 100 carriers and 25 OEMs worldwide. The two companies have been in negotiations since last November, and in February 2012, Myriad argued to Synchronica shareholders that they needed to sell in part because Synchronica could not meet its repayment obligations to Nokia. Synchronica last year picked up Nokia's messaging business for $25 million as the struggling handset maker was offloading less profitable assets.
 
What's In A Name? Australia Wants Apple To 'Change The Name' Of The iPad Over 4G Incompatibility Top
ipad australia 4gLooks like we may see another development today in Apple's ongoing iPad/4G controversy in Australia. The country's Competition and Consumer Commission is meeting with Apple in court again today to try to get Apple to officially change the name of the device when it is sold in Australia. Although many people know it as "the new iPad" since launching the product in March, Apple has also been marketing the product as the new iPad with 'Wi-Fi +4G' in the country. But Apple quickly ran into trouble when the ACCC said Apple was misleading consumers: in fact, the tablet is not actually compatible with Australia's 4G network. Since then, Apple has agreed to refund consumers who bought the device thinking they were getting 4G; and the company has also been putting up notices wherever the iPad is sold warning them that it didn't work with Australia's 4G. But the ACCC, it seems, does not think that this goes far enough.
 
Netflix's Reed Hastings Chastises Comcast Over Net Neutrality And Its Shady Xfinity App Top
netflix-reed-hastingsIn the latest battle in the war for living room domination, Netflix's CEO Reed Hastings took to his public Facebook account and called out Comcast's latest attack on Net Neutrality. As he explains, Comcast's just-launched Xbox 360 Xfinity app does not count against the provider's ISP data caps. However, if the same exact program is viewed through Hulu, HBO GO and, yes, Netflix, it deducts the data used against the subscribers' monthly allotment. Yeah, as Hastings points out, the policy is not very neutral.
 
The Best iOS Apps To Watch On Apple TV Top
hero_appletv_2ndgenDevelopers don't have to wait for a fully baked version of Apple TV to come out to get a feel for how their apps will play on the big screen. Although an eco-system for Apple TV apps does not yet exist, there are dozens of quality iOS applications that are best consumed on an HDTV via AirPlay Mirroring. Creating apps specific to the leaned-back setting of the living room requires more than just supersizing titles originally conceived for smartphones or tablets. Successful Apple TV apps need to source and showcase entertainment, news and social activity in ways not currently possible via cable, satellite or video streaming providers. Inside are the 10 best iOS apps available on Apple TV today.
 
Blinksteady: The Bike Light Apple Would Make If Apple Made Bike Lights Top
lean_postWhen's the last time you really splurged on something for your bike? The old girl gets you around town, puts up with your ridiculous maintenance regimens, and shifts and rattles in just the right way to get you up and down the hills of your hometown. Why not show her you love her and, thanks to Blinksteady, put a ring on it. The Blinksteady is the world's smartest bike light (citation needed). It turns on when it's dark and turns itself off when your bike is stopped. You no longer have to reach back to turn on your light when dusk turns to night and, better still, you never have to risk being hit by a nightblind SUV driver in some deserted late-night cul-de-sac.
 

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