Friday, April 13, 2012

Y! Alert: TechCrunch

Yahoo! Alerts
My Alerts

The latest from TechCrunch

Instagram's User Count Now At 40 Million, Saw 10 Million New Users In Last 10 Days Top
instagram logoInstagram received a fair amount of press over the last week. First, 10 days ago, the app launched on Android for the first time. Then news of Facebook buying the tiny startup for $1 billion was everywhere from the Drudge Report to The Daily Show. The attention resulted in explosive growth. Since the launch of its Android app, Instagram's user base grew from 30 to 40 million. That's over 1,000,000 new users a day. Rakshith, the creator of gramfeed, pinged us this morning after noticing the milestone from Instagram's API. The 40 millionth user is valentinoelbuti. It seems at the time of this post's writing, Instagram has exactly 40,026,379 users -- or rather, roughly 5% of Facebook's active user base.
 
Push Comes To Shove: Apple Appealing Another iCloud, MobileMe Push Email Ruling To Motorola In Germany Top
pushingAnother development in the ongoing fight between Apple and Motorola over patent infringements in Germany: a court has decided against Apple Inc. in a case involving push email service on iCloud and MobileMe services in the country. This is effectively an extension of the same ruling that was originally handed down in February against Apple International, a case that Apple is appealing. A judge in a regional court in Mannheim, where the case was heard, has ordered Apple Inc. to pay damages, according to the Wall Street Journal. The exact value has not been specified. Apple tells us it is appealing this case, based on the same points as the earlier one. In that case, Apple is appealing because it believes the patent in question -- a patent (the '654) that Motorola originally received in the 1990s around pager technology -- is invalid. A spokesperson at the time of that earlier ruling dismissed it to me as an "old pager patent." Since this case concerns the exact same patent, it is likely that Apple will also appeal in this newest case.
 
IBM Acquires Sales Data And Analytics Software Company Varicent Top
varicent-softwareBig Blue has made a purchase today—IBM has acquired Varicent Software, a company that creates a sales analytics software. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Varicent, which has raised $35 million in funding, analyzes sales data from businesses to help organizations to streamline compensation processes for employees, improve sales performance, and more. Varicent's software automates and analyzes sales data across a number of sectors of an organization including the finance, sales, human resources and IT departments and can uncover trends that could lead to better sales and revenue for a company.
 
Braintree Wants To Make It Easier For Developers To Integrate Online Payments Top
brainBraintree, an online payments gateway provider, is hoping to make it easier for developers to start integrating payments immediately. For background, Braintree powers and automates online and mobile payments for merchants and companies online. The company provides a merchant account, payment gateway, recurring billing, credit card storage, support for mobile and international payments, and PCI Compliance solutions. Previously, developers couldn't access Braintree's full suite of tools until they were approved by the company. Now, Braintree has opened slightly to allow developers to create test transactions and explore the provider's features and client libraries prior to being approved as a payments operator.
 
Despite $889M In Revenue This Year, No IPO In Spotify's Cards, But Ek Wouldn't Say No To More Funding Top
daniel_ek_closeupSpotify's storming of the U.S. market last year has seen the company rack up a total of 10 million active users of its music streaming services. It is projected to have revenues of $889 million this year, up 160 percent on 2011. But with that growth also comes increasing net losses, which in 2011 doubled to the tune of around $60 million. Daniel Ek, CEO of the music streaming company, says in a candid interview with the Swedish financial paper Dagens Industri (translation here) that the question of when Spotify will show a profit is currently irrelevant. "Our focus is entirely on growth," he told the publication. "That is priority one, two, three, four and five."
 
'Stock Market For Music Hipsters' TastemakerX Hits Beta In Time For Coachella Top
Screen Shot 2012-04-13 at 3.43.29 AMAlmost all currency is virtual -- In that it relies on the people who are trading it to define its value. Thus we are an economy of taste by default, so it's about time some startup owned the taste graph. TastemakerX has the potential to be that startup, with its "stock market for bands" app allowing music snobs to build cred based on their early on talent-spotting. Like an Empire Avenue for the rock star-obsessed, TastemakerX lets you buy and sell shares in bourgeoning musicians, earning "Notes," or virtual currency from that trading profit which in turn lets you buy more shares.
 
Facebook One-Ups Google With A Kind Of 'Facebook+': Your FB Email, Timeline Names Are Now Linked Up Top
Screen shot 2012-04-13 at 09.24.21Facebook today announced a change for how people can find you on its network -- a move for more consistency, but also another route to getting people to use more email in Facebook, and secure its place as the center of your web life. Facebook is now rolling out a service where the name you use in your Facebook timeline will be the same as the name on your Facebook email account. Updated addresses, Facebook wrote in its announcement, will be taking place over the next few weeks. "Anyone who already selected an email address will not be affected," Facebook noted.
 
Recently Departed Magento CTO And Co-Founder: eBay Doesn't Understand The Meaning Of Open Top
MagentoLast year,eBay acquired Magento, developer of an open-source e-commerce platform for around $180 million. Magento became part of X.commerce, a combined open platform business from eBay and PayPal. A year after the acquisition was announced, Magento co-founder and CTO Yoav Kutner has left eBay. While fellow Magento co-founder Roy Rubin sent Kutner off with a warm farewell, Kutner doesn't have such nice things to say about eBay and X.commerce, according to this post on Quora. In response to the question of why he left eBay, Kutner responded (Kutner confirmed to us that he posted this response): I will answer and give much more information over the next few weeks as to the reasons I had to leave Magento. As for now I can say that (very) short term I would not be worried about the 'open' part of Magento, but as I have learned eBay and the folks at X.commerce don't really understand the meaning of open and have a hard time explaining and defining it to them selves and to others. As such, long term, it would be very interesting to see if Magento will continue to stay open in the manor the people behind Magento and I meant it to be.
 
TechCrunch Giveaway: Nokia Lumia 900 #TechCrunch Top
(JPEG Image, 705x503 pixels)We've written endless amounts of posts about it, Jordan is obviously obsessed with it, it became Amazon's best selling phone and is simply a great smartphone. With special thanks to Nokia, we have a brand new Lumia 900 to give away. This giveaway will last for one week, starting today, April 13th, and ending April 20th at 7:30pm PT. If you want to enter for a chance at winning this awesome new phone, all you have to do is follow the steps below. Follow them carefully, this giveaway may be a little different than you're used to.
 
Fetchnotes Launches A Simple, Cloud-Based Note-Taking Service (That Twitter Users Will Love) Top
fetchnotesFetchnotes is a promising, lightweight note-taking app for list makers and idea-havers which looks deceptively simple. But that simplicity is actually one of Fetchnotes' key selling points. It's meant to be fast and easy to use. And although there are a ton of apps for taking notes, from robust offerings like Evernote to more limited mobile apps like the Notes app that ships on the iPhone, Fetchnotes has an interesting idea about how note-taking apps should work  - that is, they should work more like our own minds do. Thoughts come to us unbidden and we jot them down. That's it.
 
New Daily Show App Gets High-Res Video, Still Doesn't Let You Watch Full Episodes Top
Screen shot 2012-04-12 at 4.45.51 PMYesterday, the Daily Show featured a stellar parody yesterday of both Google's connected, augmented reality eyeglasses (a.k.a Project Glass or, as I like to call it, "Project Sup Now, Warby Parker?") as well as Instagram's billion-dollar sale to Facebook. Fittingly, the show is today officially replacing its old app and is going all 2.0 with a new, upgraded and redesigned mobile app -- with high-res video. Yes, as The Daily Show tweeted this afternoon, its tech and general news-related hilarity is now available on iPhone, iPad, and Android devices in an app called "The Daily Show Headlines" that -- get ready for it -- plays the Daily Show!
 
Google Biz Chief: Over 10M Websites Now Using Google Analytics Top
Screen shot 2012-04-12 at 3.34.52 PMIt's Google Q1 earnings day, and because we all know that you have better things to do than listen to executives dryly read prepared statements, we're taking one for the team and keeping you in the know about the important stuff. Google beat Q1 expectations, reporting revenues of $10.65B and a net income of $2.9B. During the company's earnings call, Chief Business Officer Nikesh Arora touched on the progress of the company's top products, in particular sharing one interesting stat about Google Analytics -- that more than 10 million websites are now using Google's cross-platform website stats service.
 
Google Play Now Accepts Paid Android App Submissions From New Seller Countries Top
google-playWhile Google's top brass were busy dissecting the company's Q1 earnings on their scheduled conference call, it was business as usual for the rest of the company. Over on the official Android Developers blog, for example, Google announced that developers in the Czech Republic, Mexico, Israel, and Poland can now sell Android apps and in-app additions in the Google Play store (and in their native currencies to boot). "But wait," you may say. "Developers from Israel and Mexico have been able to sell their apps for years now!" You'd be absolutely right -- the Czech Republic and Poland are the only really new additions, but there was a bit of a catch for the other two.
 
Screw University, Course Hero Curates YouTube Into Free Business and Coding Classes Top
Course HeroYou can learn just about anything from YouTube...if you're willing to dig through millions of videos. Luckily, Course Hero has done the work for you, offering coherent classes by hosting collections of the best educational YouTube videos and other content. The newly launched courses section of the eduTech startup's site now has classes in entrepreneurship, business plan development, and programming in a variety of languages. Meanwhile, Course Hero offers crowdsourced study guides, tutoring, and flashcards. Khan Academy is great, but isn't as scalable since it create the content itself. By drawing from YouTube and other openly available education, Course Hero plans to set up courses for anything it, or you, can think of. And if the pursuit of knowledge wasn't enough, students who complete its Entrepreneurship path can enter a business plan competition whose winner will get to pitch to Course Hero investor Ron Conway / SV Angel.
 
Google's Page: 2-for-1 Stock Split An Investment For The Long Term, Not Big Acquisitions Top
larry pageLarry Page kicked off Google's earnings call today with a run-down of his statements in the Founders' Letter and some broad brushstrokes around the company's new stock structure, which will see Google create a new class of shares, effectively a two-for-one stock split for existing shareholders. As with the company's original two-class voting structure, Page today reiterated that this new structure is a sign of the company's long-term investment in its future, but not a signal that it is planning "any big acquisitions." It is also something of a bold statement on the part of Google -- possibly to show the company's confidence in its business in the run-up to Facebook's IPO, and to give its founders more control over how Google develops in the future.
 
Larry Page: Google+ Is "Social Spine" With 170M Users, "Healthy Growth" and "Impressive Engagement" Top
Google real life sharingDuring its Q1 earnings call today, Google's CEO Larry Page called Google+ the company's "social spine." With about 120 Google+ integrations across Google's portfolio, Page said, Google+ is now what connects all of Google's products. He also stressed that there are two aspects to Google+: the social spine (which, as Google had already announced earlier this week, currently has about 170 million users) and the social destination site. Google, for a while now, has refused to release any numbers about the actual number of people who regularly visit the Google+ homepage and how engaged they are. While quite a few pundits hoped that this would change with this call, Page did not announce any new numbers today.
 
FarFaria Brings A Hulu For Kids' Stories To The iPad Top
farfaria-main"Grumpy Cat! Grumpy Cat! More Grumpy Cat, please!" - That's basically my two-year-old's review of FarFaria, a new subscription-based children's storybook app for the iPad. (To translate: she loves it, and especially that story about the grumpy cat.) The app, to be clear, doesn't just offer the one story - not that my kid seems to care right now - it's a collection of nearly one hundred stories with more added all the time. And despite being independently sourced and illustrated (or perhaps because of it), the stories are actually really good.
 
The B&N Nook Simple Touch With GlowLight: Pre-Order Today For $139, Hits Stores In May Top
nook-simple-touch-glowBarnes & Noble just announced its latest ereader: The Nook Simple Touch with GlowLight. It doesn't look any different from the previous model until you turn it on. That's when the magic happens. Powered by a front-lit screen dubbed GlowLight, the new Nook emits a pleasant glow that's sort of different from traditional backlighting. It's easier on the eyes but the light cuts the battery life in half -- which honestly is not that big of a deal.
 
Google Beats In Q1 2012: Revenue Up 24 Percent To $10.65B, $2.9B In Net Income Top
googleGoogle just released earnings this afternoon, reporting revenues of $10.65 billion for the first quarter which ended March 31, 2012, an increase of 24% compared to the first quarter of 2011 ($8.58 billion). But minus traffic acquisition costs, Google pulled in $8.14 billion in revenue. Non-GAAP EPS in the first quarter of 2012 was $10.08. GAAP Net income came in at $2.9 billion, compared to $1.80 billion in the first quarter of 2011. The company was expected to report a profit of $9.64 a share, on revenue of $8.1 billion (minus traffic acquisition costs). "Google had another great quarter with revenues up 24% year on year," said Larry Page, CEO of Google. "We also saw tremendous momentum from the big bets we've made in products like Android, Chrome and YouTube. We are still at the very early stages of what technology can do to improve people's lives and we have enormous opportunities ahead. It is a very exciting time to be at Google."
 
There Are Now 200,000 People In Everyme Circles Top
everymeOn Tuesday, Everyme launched its iPhone app for people to share with limited circles of friends, family members, and coworkers. Today, CEO Oliver Cameron says the response has been "crazy." Specifically, he says that 24,000 people have created Everyme accounts in the first 48 hours. Because of the way Everyme is designed, that's only a small part of its social footprint. The app lets you organize anyone in your address book into circles, and they can still participate in the conversation through email or text messaging, even if they don't have an Everyme account. There are already 200,000 people in Everyme circles, which Cameron says is a measure of the app's "total audience."
 

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)