Friday, April 27, 2012

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Eventbrite Launches First Industry-Specific Ticketing Platform For Races And Walks, Endurance Top
event-1Online ticketing platform Eventbrite is debuting a new vertical today, called Endurance, which focuses specifically on selling tickets for races and walks, including marathons, triathlons, races, fundraising walks, and more. As you may know, Eventbrite, which has sold 57 million tickets and hosted over 500,000 events in the past year, has been used as a registration and ticketing platform for a broad range of events, from large fundraisers, festivals, tech conferences, and concerts to cooking classes and HTML workshops. But this first time the company has launched a dedicated, industry-specific ticketing manager for a vertical. The company says they realized there are a couple of key markets that have more advanced feature requirements, and in take advantage of more opportunities in these markets, the company is building an expertise in select verticals.
 
TicketLeap Introduces Seating Chart Design Tools For Ambitious Event Planners Top
objectsSure you there are services to sell tickets to arenas and event spaces (not to mention parties and the like) but thus far there hasn't been a good way to allow customers to pick their seats. TicketLeap, a ticketing website, has solved that problem. Wedding plannes don't get too excited yet: the system is mostly for folks who run bigger event spaces like halls and arenas. You can lay out your space using TicketWebs browser-based tools and add various features like bathrooms, Wi-Fi points, and handicapped access spots.
 
Skype Launches Ridiculous New Facebook App, "Humoticons" Top
skype-humoticonSkype introduced a new Facebook app this morning, and before you get your hopes up, it's not some amazing new way to Skype from the browser plug-in free, or kick off multi-person video chat sessions right from the News Feed. Nope. The app is this goofy, ridiculous creation called "Skype Humoticons" which lets you use your webcam to post pictures of you mimicking Skype emoticons to Facebook. Uh-huh.
 
Intuit Acquires Marketing SaaS Company Demandforce For $423.5M In Cash Top
demandforceIntuit has just acquired marketing SaaS company Demandforce for $423.5 million in cash. Demandforce's SaaS application automates internet marketing and communications, so customers can focus on running their day-to-day operations. The startup, which is profitable, has thousands of customers across service verticals that include dental care, automotive repair, spas, salons, chiropractors, and others.
 
The Open Source CEO: Jim Whitehurst Top
JimWhitehurst-01If you read the Red Hat website, you'll find pages describing their attitude toward open source, collaboration, and more. It reads pretty much like every other marketing spiel from every company online today. There's something different about Red Hat, though: they actually believe this stuff. Not only do they believe it, they live it every day. I spoke to Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst recently about the open source culture at Red Hat and he told me it is a journey, not a destination. According to Whitehurst, the tenets of open source permeate all aspects of the culture at Red Hat.
 
Twilio's European March Continues With Its First Full-Time Hire Outside The U.S. [And Telefonica Loses One] Top
Twilio LogoTwilio, developer of a VoIP API that is used by companies like eBay, Airbnb and Hulu to add voice services into their consumer apps, has been adding support for European countries as part of its expansion strategy, first the UK and then Austria, Denmark, France, Ireland and Poland. Now Twilio is giving that effort a bit more muscle with the appointment of its first full-time, permanent employee outside the U.S. James Parton is joining the company as its new European marketing director. His hiring is also effectively a jab at the carrier market that Twilio very much has the chance to really disrupt: Parton has been poached from Telefonica, the Spanish mobile powerhouse, where he has most recently been running developer marketing for Telefonica's multi-regional API effort BlueVia, and before that for BlueVia's more local precursor, Litmus at O2 UK.
 
Q&A Site ChaCha Cancels UK Expansion After Poor User Take-Up Top
ChaCha PictureCan a reasonably successful, U.S.-based mobile content brand find equal success for its English-language service in the UK? It's a question that could have been asked on the Q&A service ChaCha, and unfortunately it looks like the company has figured out the answer the hard way. ChaCha, which launched in the UK in September 2011, has now quietly shut down operations in the country after failing to find enough people to use the service to make it cost-effective.
 
Torbit's Insight Measures The Effect Of Site Speed On Your Bounce, Conversion & Revenue Top
torbit_black_largeAnyone who runs a website, especially those who those who do the majority of their business through a web portal, know how important speedy load times are to keeping their customers engaged, on site, and happy.While there are a number of sources one can turn to for website optimization, few offer both optimization along with the ability to track incoming pageviews and cross-reference their page load times with bounce rates -- and most importantly -- conversion rates. That's why Torbit, a website optimization company based in Sunnyvale, has launched a new product called Insight, which gives any online business the ability to track the correlation between the speed of their website and their core business metrics. Users can view site speed using real user measurement, and drill down to see precisely where pages are hitting snags -- and what's causing those hang-ups.
 
Viddy Is Raising $30M At A $370M Valuation Top
Screen Shot 2012-04-26 at 9.08.27 PMSomeone wise once said "If Instagram for video were to happen it would look nothing like Instagram" but, because it was on Twitter, I briefly saw that tweet before it got lost in the ether and now I can't find it, dammit. But whoever said this is right (please reach out if it was you, I want to give you credit) and also didn't tell Viddy, which for the most part looks exactly like Instagram for video. Fine. Anyways, people have been reporting all over the place about Viddy's current insane Series B so I guess I (and you) should care. And quite honestly, I (and you) totally should really care because it's more money than I've ever seen. Seriously, ever seen. Which means co-founders JJ Aguhob and Brett O'Brien might just be onto something, so ...
 
A MicroReview Of The Fantastic $9.99 MicroStylus Top
microstylus-3This just might be the best stylus ever made. I'm completely serious. The problem with most styli is that there is never one around when needed. Besides that, the pen form factor is often not conducive for use on a small screen. But the MicroStylus, well, it's so tiny yet functional that it's perfect for the task. Plus it's only $9.99 and stores neatly in a 3.5mm headphone jack.
 
SketchUp Is Google's First Divestment Ever, And It Made A Profit Top
SketchUp - Google's First DivestmentGoogle's sale of a previously purchased arm of the company this morning, 3D modeling software SketchUp, to Trimble, isn't just something it does "every now and again". It's actually Google's first divestment ever, according to two sources, and we're hearing the search giant made a profit, as it sold SketchUp for more than it bought it for back in 2006. This could signal a sea change in how Larry Page executes his vision for a leaner, more focused Google. The company frequently shuts down extraneous products, but that requires redistribution of their team members internally. If it's now willing to sell them instead, Google could streamline around the theme of making user's lives more convenient, while making some money at the same time.
 
Google's Project Glass: An Exercise In Mediocrity? Top
rose4.26.12So Google X founder Sebastian Thrun was on Charlie Rose last night showing off his latest creation, Project Glass. Which, if you haven't seen by now, is quite possibly one of the most ambitious consumer products to come out of the Googleplex in recent memory. But until Thrun's appearance on Rose, we didn't actually know how the glasses would work other than the sizzle reel that was put together earlier this month. A couple of things struck me as odd, though. Thrun never actually gave any voice commands during his demo of the glasses, while in the video everything was driven by voice. But that's not what has me worried about Project Glass. During the interview, Thrun snapped a photo of Rose and uploaded it to his Google+ account. So far, it appears to work as advertised but take a look at the image quality and tell me whether or not it's acceptable in this day and age. It's not, it's terrible.
 
U.S. House Passes Controversial CISPA Cybersecurity Bill 248 To 168 Top
The United States House of Representatives · House.govThis afternoon, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the controversial Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) by a vote of 248 to 168. Unlike SOPA, which focused on copyright violations, CISPA wants to give Internet companies and the U.S. government the tools to protect and defend themselves against cyber attacks by sharing information with each other. Critics, however, argued that this information sharing would be happening with very little oversight and would put Americans' privacy rights at risk.
 
Trained By The Best: Facebook And J.C. Penney Hire Apple Design Execs Top
apple-logoSo, in case you haven't heard, Apple is doing pretty well. Things are different now without Steve at the helm, but change isn't always bad. Although George Colony, taking the contrarian approach, would like to disagree. Today, we've gotten word that Apple Senior Art Director Sharon Hwang, who headed the graphics design team, has left Apple to join Facebook's product design team. Though it looks like Hwang joined Facebook last month, the Facebook Design Team officially announced her hiring today -- fittingly, on their Facebook page.
 
London Olympics To Visitors: Don't Share What You See Top
London-2012Don't copy that pole vault! According to the London 2012 Olympic "conditions for ticket holders," you are not allowed to take pictures or video of the events nor are you allowed to "exploit" any video on social networks.
Images, video and sound recordings of the Games taken by a Ticket Holder cannot be used for any purpose other than for private and domestic purposes and a Ticket Holder may not license, broadcast or publish video and/or sound recordings, including on social networking websites and the internet more generally, and may not exploit images, video and/or sound recordings for commercial purposes under any circumstances, whether on the internet or otherwise, or make them available to third parties for commercial purposes.
 
Tech Investors Dive Into Adrian Grenier's New Beer Startup, Churchkey Top
Adrian-Grenier-flat-top-beer (2)Old movie buffs (and older readers) may remember a time when beer was sold in steel cans that were opened with a "church key." Entourage star Adrian Grenier is tapping into that nostalgia, we hear, with a new beer startup he's cofounding, Churchkey Can Co. The cans are the old-timey variety that you probably haven't seen since the 60s. They're made of fully-recyclable steel, and require a churchkey opener to get into. You puncture one corner of the top, then make a deeper puncture on the other side to drink out of. Ever noticed a triangle-shaped piece of metal on the other end of some bottle openers? It's for these types of cans.
 
Hacker Jailed For Stealing Facebook's Source Code Tells All, Claims Innocence Top
White Hat Vs Black Hat DoneHe stole Facebook's source code, but never copied, published, or sold it. Then he was arrested and imprisoned. Now released after four months in jail, Glenn Steven Mangham claims in a blog post that he's an innocent white hat hacker who was trying to help Facebook patch security vulnerabilities. However, Facebook responded to my request for a statement about the 26-year old's claims with "Mr. Mangham's excuses have already been evaluated and rejected by a court of law, resulting in his conviction and jail time." Mangham says he planned to inform Facebook of the vulnerabilities, and could have entered Facebook's White Hat program that offers security researchers protection against legal repercussions. However, Mangham was arrest after possessing the source code for three weeks without informing Facebook.  Is he telling the truth, or lying through his teeth?
 
Amazon CFO Dodges Questions On Antitrust, Patents, Kindle Plans Top
amazon logoAmazon just wrapped up its earnings call for the first quarter fo the year, and the most common phrase may have been, "I probably can't help you." To be fair, earnings calls are always a dance, where analysts try to pry more financial details and future plans out of executives, while executives don't want to give anything away. But today's call felt like a particularly egregious example — anytime anything interesting was asked, CFO Tom Szkutak would say he couldn't help, then maybe offer an extremely vague answer.
 
Zynga CEO Mark Pincus: $180M OMGPOP Acquisition Was A "Rare Instance" Top
mark-pincusStepping back from remarks a few weeks ago that suggested that Zynga was about to go on a shopping spree, Zynga chief executive Mark Pincus said the $180 million acquisition of Draw Something-maker OMGPOP was a "rare instance." Although OMGPOP was certainly a step up from anything Zynga has ever done before, Pincus said it didn't represent a change in strategy from last year. He said Zynga will continue to be "prudent and bottom line-oriented" in its decisions today during the first-quarter earnings call. That's a change in tone from an interview with Bloomberg a few weeks ago when he said that he expected to do "a few" OMGPOP-sized deals in the next three to five years. His remarks helped send shares tumbling 13.9 percent from the day the story appeared.
 
Onion Browser: A Mobile Browser For The Truly Paranoid Top
onion_browserIf, for whatever reason, you need to cover your tracks while you are browsing the web on your desktop, you have plenty of options to keep anonymous. Thanks to Orbot, Android users, too, have the option to use the Tor network to anonymize their web browsing sessions and avoid being monitored. Now, thanks to Onion Browser ($0.99), iPhone and iPad users also finally get an easy option to encrypt and tunnel their web traffic through the Tor Onion router network.
 

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