Tuesday, April 10, 2012

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Survey: Trust In Online Ads Grows, While Trust in Print and TV Ads Drops Top
nielsen_logo_350It's no secret that most of us put more stock in the recommendations we get from friends than traditional forms of advertising. What's interesting, though, is that while most consumers also increasingly trust online reviews and ads, trust in paid advertising on television, magazines and newspapers has been declining pretty rapidly. The latest data from Nielsen's Global Trust in Advertising Survey shows just how dramatic this decline is: while 92% of consumers say they trust word-of-mouth recommendations, less than half trust paid ads in traditional media outlets. The trust in these ads has declined by more than 20% since 2009.
 
Jetpac For iPad Lets You Explore The World Through Your Friends' Eyes Top
IMG_0052-1It's funny how the news hits, sometimes. Just this morning, one social travel service (Gtrot) made the decision to shift away from the travel vertical to focus on local discovery, while another, Jetpac, is going all in. Jetpac's newly launched iPad application, already sitting at #1 in the "New Travel App" section of the iPad App Store, aims to do what Gtrot once tried to: inspire you to take a vacation. Using the app, you can discover and share places you like and want to go, as well as mark the places you've been.
 
MS Office App CloudOn Ramps Up Productivity On The iPad With Box And Adobe Reader Support Top
apptouCloudOn, a mobile productivity app for the iPad that allows users to access Microsoft Office documents in the cloud, is debuting a new version of its service by integrating with Adobe Reader, Box and Dropbox. CloudOn's goal is to allow users to easily create, edit, share and save their work using only their iPad. The app connects to Microsoft Office (the company has licensed the technology from Microsoft), giving users access to their Office documents and features, including tracking changes in Word, manipulating pivot tables in Excel and viewing PowerPoint slideshows in full presentation mode. Users can also display, edit or create charts, insert formulas, change formatting, spell check, or insert comments into any Microsoft Word, Excel, or PowerPoint document.
 
Google: Mobile And Video Research Drive In-Store Cell Phone Purchases Top
googleCurious how consumers are making decisions regarding which cell phone to buy? Google teamed up with Compete on a study examining how the online consumer shops for a wireless device and we have the results of the survey and study exclusively. Google and Compete tracked consumers online and searching patterns, analyzed the behavior of those purchasing cell phones by tracking their behavior backward from the point of purchase, and surveyed buyers as well. Some of the results aren't necessarily groundbreaking, it is interesting to see what factors drive in-store purchases. For example, Google says that 72% of mobile researchers purchased their phone in store (vs. 55% of non-mobile researchers).
 
Get A Drink and A Job At NYC Uncubed, The New Silicon Alley Talent Fair Top
NYC UncubedWhat if you could down drinks at a Tumblr open bar, rock out to live music from Spotify, and battle it out at ping pong and foosball, all while finding a sweet new job? Then you'd be at NYC Uncubed, a recruiting event for those sick of awkward, traditional recruiting events. Formerly the Silicon Alley Talent Fair, Uncubed has over 70 New York City startups that are on fire and ready to hire programmers, designers, marketers, and more. It's all going down on April 26th from 1pm-7pm at The Altman Building, 135 W 18th St New York, 10011. Attendees and startups can both sign up on the Uncubed website.
 
Everyme Launches Mobile App That Aims To Get Social Circles Right Top
2Everyme, a Y Combinator-incubated startup with a long list of impressive investors, is launching its iPhone app today. Its goal? To create an environment where you feel comfortable sharing whatever you want with specific groups of people. Co-founder and CEO Oliver Cameron demonstrated the app for me over the weekend. At the core of the Everyme experience are Circles — private news feeds that you create with specific groups of people. The problem, Cameron says, is that as you get more and more friends on Facebook, people who you have wildly differently relationships, the less comfortable you feel sharing updates and content.
 
Please Welcome Peter Ha, Frederic Lardinois And New Co-Editor Alexia Tsotsis Top
joe-dimaggio-mickey-mantle-and-ted-williams-1951Sure, legends like Babe Ruth and Mickey Mantle don't play for the Yankees now, but the team hasn't just survived the ups and downs over the years. Hate it or love it, the franchise attracts many of the best players in baseball today, and wins championships. That's TechCrunch, too. Peter Ha is returning to us after a few very solid years of editing successes under his belt. He started out as a CrunchGear writer under John Biggs, back in 2006. He went on to found the Techland blog for Time and turned it into a growth story. Then he became the tech editor at The Daily, News Corp's ambitious tablet project.
 
Now At 4M Users, Video Startup Animoto Adds Former Aol/Yahoo Exec Brad Garlinghouse To Board Top
114811v1-max-250x250Back in July of last year, Animoto, the startup that lets people easily create good-looking videos from user-uploaded audio, video and images, raised $25 million in venture funding, led by Spectrum Equity Investors, bringing its total outside investment to $30 million. As Mike pointed out at the time, were Animoto interested in a quick sale, they would likely have taken an exit in 2009 or 2010. However, the big series C round seemed to be an indicator that Animoto had other plans, like the goal of turning the company into a giant. To help in its quest to do just that -- to build on a user base that's now 4 million-strong, Animoto is today announcing the addition of former President of Mobile and Consumer product teams at Aol, Brad Garlinghouse, to its board of directors.
 
Gigwalk Adds Company Work Groups, Messaging And Field Tools To Paid Task Mobile App Top
gigGigwalk, a mobile app that allows users to get assigned basic "gigs" or jobs from companies via their location, is unveiling a new suite of tools to allow companies to manage local work via the phone. Gigwalk, which launched last year, basically allows companies to tap into a mobile workforce for simple tasks. Users simply download the app, enter PayPal information and get assigned entry-level "gigs" or jobs that may take just a few minutes at a time in a particular location. For example, TomTom uses Gigwalk's workforce to snap pictures to verify certain navigation points, such as one-way streets, etc. These workers simply snap a picture, email them in and receive a few dollars for the easy task.
 
Apple Of Our Eye: Gartner Predicts 665 Million Tablets In Use By 2016, Over 45% Of Them iPad Devices Top
ipad consumerThe age of the tablet is definitely upon us: figures out today from Gartner forecast that by the end of 2016 there will 665 million media tablets in use worldwide -- a counterpoint to the sluggish sales we have seen in PCs in the last couple of years. This year, there will be sales of 118.9 million tablets, growth of nearly 100 percent on a year ago. But while the tablet market is picking up some momentum from competitors like Amazon and its Kindle Fire, and Samsung and its many sizes of Galaxy Tab, it looks like the day will continue to belong to Apple and its iPad. Apple will continue to be the single-biggest vendor of tablets for the next four years, holding on to more than 45 percent of the sales in that time -- although that represents a significant decline from the 83 percent market share that Apple had in 2010 and the 61.4 percent that Gartner estimates it will have this year.
 
Lightbank-Backed Social Travel Planning Service Gtrot Shifts To Local Discovery Top
gtrot-logoSocial travel planning service Gtrot is changing its focus and is now officially relaunching its website with a new emphasis on local discovery. Somewhat reminiscent of Foursquare's "Explore" feature, Gtrot is working to build a platform where you can discover, save and share the best restaurants, bars, clubs, arts, events and even the best local deals from services like Groupon and Gilt City. These changes have been underway for some time, as Gtrot has been moving away from the travel vertical since as far back as last fall. But the current version of the website you see now, was soft-launched just last week.
 
Best Buy CEO Brian Dunn Just Resigned Top
6a0133f3a4072c970b0162ff3e21ba970d-550wiBest Buy's Brian Dunn just stepped down as the retailer's CEO and director effective immediately. This comes just days after Best Buy missed Wall Street's estimates last quarter and the retailer announced plans to shutter 50 large stores and open smaller, likely more lucrative Best Buy Mobile locations. Director G. Mike Mikan will replace Dunn as interim CEO while the company searches for a new skipper. Wall Street reacted positively to the news. Best Buy's stock price jumped over 3% with heavy trading after the announcement but seems to be dropping back towards its opening price as of this post's writing. Update: The stock price now crashing. The company's full press release follows below.
 
Amazon Takes In-App Purchases Out Of Beta: Here's How They Compromised On Revenue Share Top
amazon-appsAmazon is taking the wraps off a new in-app purchasing service today in an effort to make its app store competitive with what Apple and Google offer developers. That should let developers for Amazon's appstore tap into what has emerged as the most lucrative way of monetizing apps over the past year: staying free but offering virtual currency or other items for purchase inside the app. After undergoing testing for several months, the new in-app purchasing service is now available for everyone. It's based off Amazon's one-click buying experience and applies to digital content like in-game currency, expansion packs, upgrades and subscriptions from inside apps and games. But as I pointed out last week, the interesting part of this story is not whether Amazon is doing in-app purchases. It's obvious that the company would do this. The question is how is it setting up the pricing?
 
Android On Your PC: Qualcomm Invests In BlueStacks After Beta Sees 1M Downloads In 10 Days Top
New BlueStacks LogoIf you're an Android and a PC, you should check out BlueStacks --- before hackers catch on or Chrome sneaks in this functionality, take advantage. The startup's software has been going like hotcakes over the last few months, as it's offering a much-needed service for Android and PC users, having developed software that allows Android users to run their apps on all Windows PCs, tablets, and laptops — without any modifications. Thanks to this appealing concept, BlueStacks lured $7.6 million in venture funding pre-launch, $6.4 million more a few months later, and now it seems the yet another investor is on board. The startup finally released its public beta on March 27th, and so far users have been eating it up. In the first 10 days after its release, BlueStacks' App Player racked up more than 1 million downloads, with over 12 million apps collectively being run by its users. It's on the heels of this early traction that the company is today announcing that global telecom giant Qualcomm has joined as an investor.
 
The Nokia Lumia 900 Is Now Available In Canada, Hits The UK On April 27th Top
nokia-lumia-900The Nokia Lumia 900 train is rocking. After its first stop in the US on Easter Sunday, the party moved north of the border where Rogers is now selling the supersized Windows Phone. However, in a few short weeks, the phone will hit the UK on April 27th through Phones4U and Carphone Warehouse. It can be pre-ordered today.
 
Symbian Gets Productivity Power-Up With New Microsoft Office Mobile Apps Top
Office-edit-11The most notable fruit of Microsoft and Nokia's close working relationship is certainly the handsome line of Lumia Windows Phones, but the deal has had its share of fringe benefits as well. Take its impact on Symbian for instance — Microsoft announced last September that they would be giving the platform a shot in the arm with the initially Windows Phone-only Office productivity suite, and now they've made good on their word with the release of their Microsoft Office Mobile apps.
 
Photobucket Inks Editing Partnership With Pixlr, Dumps FotoFlexer, Looking For More Twitter-Like Deals Top
Picture 7The world of digital photography had a shot in the arm yesterday when Facebook picked up Instagram for $1 billion, and it's perhaps a sign of how all players in that space now need to up their game. Today brings news of a development from Photobucket, the online photo site that scored a huge deal last year when Twitter announced that it would power its image service. Photobucket has signed a deal with Pixlr, the cloud-based photo editing service from Autodesk, in which Pixlr's tools will be integrated on to Photobucket's site. The deal will see Pixlr replace Photobucket's current editing service, FotoFlexer, which had been working with the site since 2008.
 
Time Out New York Launches New iPad And iPhone Apps, Embraces E-Commerce Top
Time Out New York iPadTime Out New York is making a big leap into the digital world today, says Aksel van der Wal, who's president of Time Out North America and chief operating officer of the Time Out Group. Specifically, it's launching its first iPad app, an updated iPhone app, and a new e-commerce model for all of its properties. As a product, the new iPad app sounds the most interesting. (I wasn't able to try it, and also I don't live in New York, so I'm going off the company's description.) Time Out specializes in reviews and listings for arts, food, entertainment, and more, and now the iPad app personalizes the experience. Apparently, every time you select content in a specific category, that increases the likelihood that the app will present you with similar content in the future. In six weeks or so, Time Out plans to improve these personalization features, so that content that's been viewed or liked by similar users is also recommended.
 
Triple Threat: Toshiba Unveils Three New Quad-Core Excite Android Tablets Top
photo (9)Spring has come, and like new buds springing forth from the loamy earth, so too are new gadgets constantly being released into the real world. Today's first helping of new gear comes from Toshiba, who has just fleshed out their Excite line of Android tablets with three new entrants: the Excite 7.7, Excite 10, and the plus-sized Excite 13. These three new Ice Cream Sandwich-powered tabs share most of the same fundamentals — they all sport NVIDIA's quad-core Tegra 3 processor for example, as well as 1GB of RAM, a pair of rear and front-facing camera (5 and 2MP, if you're interested). Also appearing throughout the line are the usual complement of WiFi and Bluetooth radios, which are nestled within tidy aluminum frames. As their names imply though, each tab sports a distinctly-sized (and Gorilla Glass swathed) display that Toshiba presumably hopes will help them squeeze into a handful of niches.
 
Jumptap: Early Days For The New iPad Show A 'Heavy' But Still Marginal Impact On Traffic Top
new-ipad-black-640x480.jpegThe new iPad from Apple has so far smashed all of its own sales records for previous tablet models, selling 3 million units in its opening weekend, with total sales projections for 2012 at up to 66 million. But according to some early (possibly too early?) figures from the mobile ad network Jumptap, that is not yet translating into a surge of traffic from the devices. On the opening day, the iPad represented 0.52 percent of total iPad network traffic. That figure peaked at 2.28 percent on day three, and then declined to 1.92 percent of traffic by day six. In contrast, the iPad and iPad 2 each had 45 percent or more of total iPad traffic, Jumptap says in its latest MobileSTAT Report.
 

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