Wednesday, April 11, 2012

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Uh-Oh: Nokia Lowers Its Q1 Forecast On Pressures In Emerging Markets, Margins On Smartphones Top
white-nokia-lumia-900Not great news for Nokia this morning in its ongoing attempt to reverse declines in its sales and market share in the world of mobile phones that it once easily dominated. The company has announced that it is lowering its outlook for the first quarter and second quarters of this year, citing lower-than-expected sales in its devices and services segment. In a market statement today, Nokia did not specifically give any numbers on overall revenues but it said that operating margins in the first quarter are expected to be at negative three percent -- down from earlier estimates of being either breakeven or within two percentage points of that; it also said that Q2 margins will be similar or below Q1 levels. As for the the silver lining, Nokia also noted that it has sold more than 2 million Windows Phone Lumia smartphones and now has over 80,000 apps in the Windows Phone Marketplace app storefront.
 
Jon Stewart Tackles Google Project Glass And Facebook Buying Instagram [Video] Top
thisBubble or not, the tech world is operating at a level of craziness right now. Google announced they're working on connected augmented reality glasses that might just everything. Then, just a few days later, Mark Zuckerberg actually did change everything for the employees of a tiny but very important photo sharing app. Of course Jon Stewart had to weigh in including making what might be the best Google Glasses parody video yet.
 
Citrix Acquires Cloud-Based Social Business Collaboration Platform Podio Top
podioCitrix has just announced the acquisition of social business collaboration platform, Podio. Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Podio is a social network for businesses that lets those who use it create apps to enhance the functionality of the service. We've compared it to a "Yammer with apps." Founded by Anders Pollas, Jon Froda and Kasper Hultin, the Danish startup has raised $4.5 million in funding.
 
OneID Grabs $7M From Khosla & North Bridge To Replace Usernames And Passwords Top
screen-shot-2012-03-13-at-6-40-03-amFragmentation isn't just a problem reserved for mobile operating systems, it's inherent to our online identities as well. Our digital identities exist in a loose and fragmented consortium of usernames, email addresses, scree names, social media accounts, passwords, and sitekeys. Many have tried to capture the single sign-on holy grail, and most have failed, because as much as we are inconvenienced by fragmentation, no one wants to hand over their personal information to one entity. OneID, a San Jose-based startup founded by a Silicon Valley veteran, believes it can pick up where others have left off. Although it already has some serious tech working in its favor, to help get it over the hump and get the traction it needs, the startup is today announcing that it has closed a $7 million series A round led by Khosla Ventures and North Bridge Venture Partners. Plus, they're adding a new CEO.
 
AppCentral: Enterprise App Store Nabs Top McAfee Execs, BlueRun Ventures Co-founder Top
139754v2-max-250x250In today's world of fragmentation in mobile OSes, businesses are hard pressed to manage and support the diverse array of mobile apps their employees use on a daily basis. AppCentral, a startup best known for its enterprise app storefront and management console, and as the new face of Ondeego (one of the first enterprise app stores), is looking to help solve that problem by giving businesses a cross-platform, secure storefront for enterprise-level app distribution. To help push its solution forward in the changing world of enterprise mobility, the company is today announcing a bunch of key hires, which show that the company has nabbed three top executives from McAfee, including new President and CEO Richard Greene. The new leadership team also includes Pete Buhl, who will be taking over as COO, and is a 13-year veteran of BlueRun Ventures, where he was a co-founding partner.
 
Cloud Server Security Software Startup CloudPassage Raises $14M From Benchmark And Others Top
cloudpassage-pictureCloudPassage, the developer of cloud server security software, has raised $14 million in series B financing led by Tenaya Capital with Benchmark Capital and Musea Ventures participating in the round. This brings CloudPassage's total funding to $20.5 million. CloudPassage offers a server security and compliance product specifically built for elastic, dynamic cloud environments. While companies are able to deploy security firewalls around content stored in data centers, as companies move to the cloud for servers, they face a security challenge of securing a dynamic, scalable environment.
 
Spotify's New Embeddable Play Button Lets Any Site Turn You On To Legal Tunes Top
Screen Shot 2012-04-10 at 10.39.14 PMSpotify wants to make it easier for anyone to legally soundtrack their websites, oh, and get links to its own download page plastered all over the Internet. So today it launches the embeddable Spotify Play Button for news sites that when clicked starts playing a designated song, album, or playlist in your Spotify desktop app. Rolling Stone, The Huffington Post, and the Guardian are amongst the marquee launch partners that will start featuring the button today, and Tumblr bloggers can instantly add Spotify music to their posts straight from the audio dashboard. While Spotify tells me this is all about improving music discovery and the listening experience, the real benefit for it comes when someone without its desktop app clicks the button -- they're prompted to download Spotify (shown below). The company's user acquisition costs are supposedly sky high, so free promotion through the Play Button could be key to making its business model hum.
 
Nokia Launches Its First Windows-Based NFC Phone, the 610, With Orange Top
Screen shot 2012-04-11 at 09.53.01Nokia has been weathering a series of glitches around the launch of its Lumia range of Windows Phone devices -- the most recent of which saw the company issue credits to users affected by data connection issues around the new Lumia 900. It is pressing ahead with new devices, though, and we have confirmed with sources close to the company that it will be launching its first NFC-enabled Windows Phone in Europe, at 1pm UK time today, along with a partnership with a European operator, France Telecom's Orange.
 
Wavii Launches In Public Beta, Aiming To Be Your Big Data News Aggregator Of Choice Top
waviiAfter years, yes years, in various states of stealth mode, Seattle-based personalized news aggregation startup Wavii is finally launching to wide scale public consumption. Backed with a list of angel investors that reads like a who's who of today's tech industry -- Ron Conway, Aydin Senkut, Mitch Kapor, Dave Morin, Shawn Fanning, Keith Rabois, Max Levchin, Paul Bucheit, Rick Marini, Joshua Schachter, and Mike Arrington's CrunchFund to name just a few -- Wavii is built upon some big ideas, and naturally is going to be greeted with some high expectations. Will it possibly be able to live up to them? In short: Maybe yes, maybe no. But first let's talk about what exactly it is.
 
Silicon Valley, London, NYC: Startup Genome Data Reveals How The World's Top Tech Hubs Stack Up Top
Screen shot 2012-04-10 at 7.24.28 PMLast year, we covered an ambitious collaborative R&D project called "Startup Genome," created by three young entrepreneurs, Bjoern Herrmann, Max Marmer, and Ertan Dogrultan. The goal of the ongoing project was (and is) to take a comprehensive, data-driven dive into what makes tech startups successful -- and not so successful. While part of the team has since split off to focus on Blackbox, an educational program and startup accelerator, Herrmann and Marmer have continued toiling away at Startup Genome, collecting data from the 13K+ startups that signed up for Startup Compass -- and more. Today, a year removed from launch, the entrepreneurs now believe that Startup Genome is finally crossing the threshold, reaching a critical mass of data on the world's top entrepreneurial ecosystems. Herein they compare the top startup ecosystems in an effort to give startups a glimpse into how (and at what rate) the world's top entrepreneurial hubs are evolving -- and which are leading the way.
 
Nokia To Offer Software Fix, $100 Credit In Wake Of Lumia 900 Data Woes Top
lumia-900Microsoft and Nokia have a lot riding on the success of their flagship Lumia 900 Windows Phone, but the usual new gadget honeymoon period has been cut short for more than a few unsatisfied customers. Shortly after devices started going home with their new owners, reports of dead data connections began appearing on Nokia's support forums. Well, Nokia knows about the issue and they're not taking things laying down. AllThingsD spoke to Nokia U.S. chief Chris Weber, who stated that the company was hard at work on a fix and that Nokia would be issuing $100 credits to the bills of all Lumia 900 owners as a gesture of goodwill.
 
WWE Pushes The Social TV Envelope At WrestleMania XXVIII Top
fisheye wwe stadiumWrestleMania has transformed itself from a small wrestling event to an international media spectacle. In its 28th incarnation, held at the beginning of this month, there were no signs of it stopping. World Wrestling Entertainment did something unique last year - it announced the main event for WrestleMania over a year in advance. The big match featured Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, a huge cross-over star, and John Cena, the current flag bearer for the company. Recognizing the challenges of trying to keep interest for the match a year in advance, the WWE turned to social media. I wanted to talk to some of the people driving this initiative, both on- and off-screen. Jason Hoch, SVP of Digital Operations for the WWE, discussed his social media strategies for fan engagement and social TV.
 
Yahoo Entertainment Properties Hit Hard In Big Layoff-Reorganization? Top
Screen Shot 2012-04-10 at 8.11.25 PMOne would guess that the big Yahoo layoff-reorganization includes a culling of some the company's weaker properties -- and yes, we're hearing today that this includes Music and possibly Movies, popular sites that don't monetize well. Word has been leaking out since last week, when Digital Music News wrote a well-sourced article that didn't make the situation sound good. "Will there be a music-dot-yahoo-dot-com?," it quoted one person as saying. "Yes. But will it be integral to the future success to Yahoo? No. Has the traffic been good? No. Has this content been consistently interesting to advertisers? No."
 
Study: Hispanic Smartphone Owners Want Mobile Shopping Apps To Be Social Top
hispanicmobilereportUsing a smartphone while shopping to find better deals or to look up product reviews is now pretty mainstream. There are some interesting differences between how Hispanics use their phones while shopping compared to the average U.S. consumer, though. While observing 15 Hispanic smartphone owners in Los Angeles and conducting a nationwide survey of 500 Hispanic smartphone users in late 2011, White Horse and digital advertising agency Sensis noticed that Hispanic users often prefer to shop with friends and family members - a use case that most mobile shopping apps currently ignore.
 
Nifty: Smart Car Uses Hundreds Of ASCII Tweets To Turn Twitter Page Into A Stop-Action Movie Top
smartargtweetsNow this is a pretty nifty use of a corporate Twitter account. Smart Car's Argentinian division has filled practically its entire Twitter stream -- which is currently 456 tweets long -- with ASCII art images that turn into a stop-action movie when you scroll through them. Check it out for yourself: While on the @SmartArg Twitter page, hit the letter "J", which is the hot key for scrolling to the next tweet. You'll see a simple motion picture depicting a car driving down a street. You can also play it in reverse by pressing the "K" button. Most of the tweets were written in late March, but the account just seems to be catching some viral popularity right now.
 
HugeFan.com Wants To Connect You With Your Idols Top
Screen shot 2012-04-10 at 7.19.38 PMMaybe you love Tim Tebow. Or maybe it's Lady Gaga that tickles your fancy. Whoever the celebrity may be, we're all huge fans at one point or another, which is why a new startup out of The Fort in D.C. is ready to connect you to your idols in new and interesting ways. It's pretty simple: You hop on over to Hugefan.com, and you'll instantly see a few featured experiences. One that certainly grabbed my eye while writing up this post was an opportunity to "Pillage Startup Treasures" with Paul Singh of 500 Startups. Celebrities range from famous Polish celebrities to sports stars to actors to really anyone that makes you go: "Holy Shit! That was (insert celebrity name here)! Take a pic! Quick!"
 
Notion Ink Scraps High-Resolution Screen For Next Tablet Top
adamWe've always been interested in the Notion Ink project, which has always striven to be a true alternative to both the iPad and Android masses. Last time, it was through both a Pixel Qi screen and an interesting custom interface, but delays and yield problems more or less buried it and competitors piled up. The sequel to Notion Ink's Adam was originally going to have a 10" screen running at 1920x1200. A post on the company's development blog has admitted that this is not likely to happen.
 
Live At The Norfolk Mini-Meet Up Top
scaled.IMG_8381The three pillars of Norfolk's economy, according to local startup legend Marty Kaszubowski, have always been the military, shipping, and tourism. These three industries, fickle to begin with, are murder in a downturn. That's why Norfolk is on the start-up map. "We're giving people permission to try new things," he said. We're live at our second mini-meetup, this time in Norfolk, Virginia. We've been given some excellent office space right on Granby Street thanks to We Are Titans and they've supplied the small but growing crowd with pizza, beer, and a bit of verve.
 
Security Hole Spotted In Facebook Android SDK, Long Tail Apps May Still Be Unpatched Top
facebook-securityMobile app platform provider Parse is reporting having discovered a major security hole in the Facebook Android SDK. The problem was quickly patched after being reported to Facebook, but that alone may not be enough to secure affected mobile applications, the company says. The security vulnerability affected all apps using the Facebook Android SDK, including major apps like Foursquare, and there's no way for end users to know which app developers, outside the big ones, have implemented the fixes needed to secure users' data. (Except for Foursquare, which we know to be patched - whew!)
 
YouTube Live Turns One: Adds Pay-Per-View And Real-Time Analytics Top
youtube_live_avengersYouTube Live, Google's live streaming platform, celebrated its first birthday over the weekend. To mark this event, YouTube is adding a number of new features to Live today. Most of these (new production software, improved publishing flows and real-time analytics) are mostly of interest to video producers. The most important new feature, though, is the addition of pay-per-view as a monetization option for all publishers. Until now, pay-per-view was only an option for select publishers who worked directly with Google.
 

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