Wednesday, April 11, 2012

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After Years Of Holding Out, Verizon Wireless Will Start Charging $30 Upgrade Fee On April 22 Top
Image (1) Verizon.jpg for post 47829All good things, as they say, must come to an end. For years now, Verizon has been the only one of the Big Four wireless carriers not to charge their customers an upgrade fee when they re-signed a two year contract, but that's all about to change. Starting on April 22, Verizon will start charging a $30 upgrade fee whenever an existing customer extends their contract in order to snag some new hardware.
 
U.S. Files Antitrust Charges Against Apple, Book Publishers (UPDATE) Top
ipaddojThe U.S. Justice Department just formally charged Apple, along with book publishers, Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan and Penguin in regards to e-book pricing. The DOJ alleges that the companies colluded in anticompetitive practices involving pricing and sales. This comes after a year-long investigation into the matter after Apple switched to an "agency" model where they retained a portion of the sale of ebooks sold through its platforms. This is said to have resulted in higher prices industry-wide since only a few sellers set the prices. Bloomberg reports that several publishers are seeking to settle with the DoJ. Simon & Schuster, Lagardère SCA's Hachette Book Group and HarperCollins could settle as soon as today. (Update: They just settled) However, Apple and Macmillian reportedly refused to engage in settlement talks, so far denying the claims. This might get ugly.
 
Amazon Now Lets You Trade In Your Old CDs In Exchange For Gift Cards Top
cds-miskan-flickrOnline retailer Amazon is extending its Trade-In Program today to also cover CDs - you know, those round, shiny things collecting dust in the back of your closet? Starting now, customers can send in their old CDs to Amazon in exchange for Amazon.com Gift Cards, which can then used to purchase anything on Amazon.com, including, of course, any of Amazon's 19 million MP3's.
 
Amazon, eBay Among Latest To Add Pinterest Buttons Top
amazonThe pinteresting of the web continues at Amazon and eBay. Ryan Spoon pointed out that the massive online retailers recently added tiny Pinterest buttons to their deck of social media sharing options on product pages. And why not? With Pinterest being the fast-growing social network, these buttons give users easy ways to share while at the same time allowing the retailers to cash-in on the pinning craze.
 
With 350 Investors On Hand, TechStars Debuts New Cloud Accelerator's Inaugural Batch Top
techstars-logoIn September, national startup accelerator and seed fund, TechStars, launched its first program focused on providing mentorship and capital to companies working in a particular space. With cloud computing growing like gangbusters, the company saw fit to focus on the cloud, launching TechStars Cloud, a sub-accelerator that focuses exclusively on backing cloud computing and infrastructure startups. Today, the inaugural batch of 11 TechStars cloud-focused startups will be demoing in front of a throng of what TechStars Co-founder and CEO David Cohen tells us is expected to be 350+ investors. The startups are finishing up a program that began in January and is based in San Antonio, Texas.
 
Attn. Evernote & Pinterest: Springpad's New Social Experience Turns Interests Into Action Top
family_exploreSpringpad was founded back in 2008 with a simple mission: Help people "remember stuff today so that they can make better decisions tomorrow." For those unfamiliar with the digital organizer, the startup is the maker of free web, Android, and iOS productivity apps that constitute a multi-platform, cloud-based digital notebook, designed to help you discover, save, and share the things you care about. Today, the startup is unveiling a completely redesigned Springpad 3.0, which boasts a new social experience that makes it easy for users to collaborate and share notebooks, discover ideas and information from trusted sources, i.e. your friends. The goal of the new app is to free users from the fleeting nature of social media streams by giving them anytime, anywhere access to their notebook's content.
 
Google+ Gets A Big Refresh With New Navigation, A Redesigned Stream, A Dedicated Hangouts Page & More Top
google-plus-newGoogle this morning is announcing a new look for its social network, Google+, which introduces a revamped navigation, with drag-and-drop elements and actions that appear when you hover over each item, as well as the introduction of new features aimed at making it easier to discover conversations to join, new profile pages, a dedicated page for Google+ Hangouts (Google+'s multi-person video chat offering), and more. It's interesting that Google+ has now changed its design, after its first efforts received such praise. But, after using the service for some time, it became clear that Google+'s navigational elements became a little cluttered. That "share a YouTube video" feature, for example, which popped out a box on the right side of the screen, felt tacked on.
 
RIM's Updating Spree Adds BBM Support To Their Facebook, Twitter, Travel And Music Apps Top
bbmThe folks at RIM are no doubt devoting plenty of time and effort to their long-awaited BlackBerry 10 operating system, but they've found the time to whip up a few app updates to please the nearly 55 million BBM users out there. First up on the list are a pair of newly-updated Facebook and Twitter apps — users will be able to share their sparkling wit with their BBM buddies from within each of the apps, ensuring none of their friends will be able to escape their ironic jabs and repartee. While RIM is smart to tie engagement with these two major social platforms into their own, they haven't stopped there.
 
Want A Google Hangout But Without Google? YC-Alum Meetings.io Have A Solution For You Top
meetings.io hangouts smallA startup launched this week is vying to be the next great leap forward for the world of videoconferencing, the promising-but-still-relatively-niche service that lets groups of people in different locations hold Internet-based conversations with each other: Meetings.io, a Y-Combinator alum, has hit the market with just under $1 million in seed funding from (among others) Yuri Milner and SV Angel, and the promise of making a free group video call as easy as clicking on a link, with nothing else required. Meetings.io is the latest step in the evolution of videoconferencing services, a classic example of enterprise-focused social networking, which have always held much potential but have yet to really become mass-market.
 
How French Presidential Candidates Can Learn To Spell 'Entrepreneur' Top
112059v2-max-250x250This is a guest post by serial entrepreneur Nathalie Gaveau. As we get closer to the first round of Presidential elections in France on April 22nd and everyone is focusing on the French economy, it seems like a perfect time to talk about supporting and promoting entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship in France. Yes, we invented the word. But sometimes in the past it's felt a little like we didn't have it in our vocabulary, as President Bush, in a rare moment of clarity, once pointed out. Despite the criticisms, the government has clearly been more entrepreneur-friendly in recent years. The set-up of the Agence pour la création d'entreprises (APCE) in the late 1990s and the special fiscal treatment of independent or "auto-entrepreneurs" has led to a dramatic increase in the number of startups. Moreover, France offers generous tax incentives to young SMEs, companies pursuing R&D even wealthy individuals investing in a startup (known as ISF).
 
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 it is lowering its outlook for the first 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 to 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 just might change 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.
 

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