Tuesday, April 17, 2012

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European Carriers Aren't Digging Nokia's Lumia Line Top
Screen shot 2012-04-17 at 9.18.31 AMNokia hasn't had the best year. Of course, the launch of the Lumia line has been refreshing, as Nokia's much-anticipated Windows Powered offerings are finally out in the world, trying to woo owners like neon-colored puppies in a pet shop window. The only problem is that four of the major wireless operators in Europe have deemed Nokia's WP phones "not good enough to compete with Apple's iPhone or Samsung's Galaxy phones," according to Reuters.
 
12Society Adds Michael Strahan As Co-founder, Nets Funding From Lightbank, BeachMint Founders Top
Screen shot 2012-04-17 at 2.42.41 AMWhen we last heard from 12Society -- the stealth startup described as a "guy-focused lifestyle platform built on the intersection of culture, technology and commerce" -- San Francisco Giants' starting pitcher and World Series Champ, Tim Lincecum, had just joined as a co-founder. At the time, the team said more "big name" co-founders were on the way, and, today, the startup made good, announcing the addition of long-time New York Giant, Super Bowl winner, and current media analyst on Fox NFL Sunday and others, Michael Strahan to its founding roster. While few celebrity-founded startups have stood the test of time, 12Society is taking steps that it believes will ensure its longevity. Last month, it added a number of veteran entrepreneurs to its advisory board, and, today, as it prepares for launch, the startup revealed that it has closed a round of seed financing from Chicago-based seed/venture firm Lightbank as well as from Josh Berman and Diego Berdakin, the co-founders of venture-backed commerce startup BeachMint.
 
Threadflip Gets $1.6 Million From FRC, Baseline, A16Z, Dave Morin And Others To Virtualize The Clothing Swap Top
Screen Shot 2012-04-17 at 5.58.48 AMThere has to be something in the air: Just when I thought that I had enough distraction in my life, one more sweet clothing swap site launches, allowing me to focus on my hobby (fashion, and specifically upcycled fashion) while I'm supposed to be focusing on my work. In the same space as Poshmarks, 99Dresses and Copius, Threadflip allows you to upload and sell items of clothing as well as buy others' beloved but for whatever reason unwanted items of clothing. Unlike 99Dresses (which I am addicted to) Threadflip focuses on higher end clothing and expands beyond dresses to shoes, bags, accessories and jewelry.
 
It's Just A Flesh Wound: Apple Stocks Down For Fifth Consecutive Day Top
fleshwoundApple stock fell 4.1% on Monday, continuing a five day skid and a trend that has drained $50 billion in market capital from the company and dropped share price from a high of $643 on April 10 to its current price of $580. Apple has been flying high lately, weathering dual storms of Jobs-Cook succession and, most recently, Mike Daisey's Foxconn fabrications. The stock is up in early trading and many analysts are holding firm to an expected 700 target, calling this a "softening" and not a correction.
 
Survey: MP4 Is Top Format For Web and Mobile Videos Top
mp4When you watch a video on the web or your mobile phone, the odds are pretty good you are using the MP4 video format and the H.264 codec. There are a lot of choices when it comes to video formats. But, MP4 is the top pick for both web and mobile viewing, according to a new survey released this morning by Sorenson Media. 69% of video professionals use MP4 regularly for the web, and 58% use it for mobile. Nearly four out of every 5 pros say they use the H.264 codec for file compression. The report has some bad news for WebM, Google's sponsored royalty-free open video compression format. WebM came out on the button with just 5% usage on the web and 35 on mobile.
 
SAY Media Has A New Way To Measure Online Ads: "Cost Per Exposure" Top
SAY Media Content Ads[2]Back in February, comScore released a statistic that was probably pretty discouraging if you're an online advertiser: In a study, it found that 31 percent of ads delivered were never actually seen by consumers. If you're paying by the ad impression, that's a lot of wasted money. Now online publishing and advertising company SAY Media has come up with one way to solve the problem, through a measurement called "cost per exposure." CEO and co-founder Matt Sanchez says that since "we have a proprietary technology stack," SAY can communicate with the browser and determine whether an ad was actually seen. That doesn't mean it's literally tracking where you're looking, but it can tell whether the ad actually loaded within your browser window. So when SAY says it's charging "per exposure," advertisers don't have to pay for ads that viewers never scrolled down to see, or that they scrolled past before the ad loaded. Sanchez says he's hoping other publishers start adopting a similar system.
 
Peter Thiel's Breakout Labs Awards $350K Each To 6 Ambitious Biotech Startups Top
Screen Shot 2012-04-17 at 4.54.11 AMWhile most of us are still reeling in shock after last week's one billion Instagram buy, Peter Thiel -- through both Founders Fund and the Thiel Foundation -- is almost single-handedly leading the charge into a future where humans don't age or suffer from cancer, among other things. Call it crazy or whatever you'd like, but there's no doubt that people who are trying to drastically change the world for the better often do. If a hologram can give a concert, it's not that far-fetched to imagine a future where humans don't die. As part of its commitment to improving the quality of human life in general, Thiel's latest project, Breakout Labs, is awarding $5 million to companies who push the envelope with regards to "revolutionary" scientific innovation.
 
Shared Online Paywall Service Piano Media Secures 2 Million Euros From 3TS Top
Screen Shot 2012-04-17 at 11.11.18Slovak startup Piano Media, which has challenged the online media industry with an aggregated paywall concept, has raised €2 million from 3TS, one of the leading private equity funds in Central and Eastern Europe. Piano Media, launched in May 2011, enables online publications to offer their readers premium content on a subscription basis. In July 2011 it raised €300,000 from MONOGRAM Ventures, Etarget and NextBig.
 
Menswear Startup American Giant Gets Into The T-Shirt Business Top
american giant tshirtAmerican Giant, a startup offering affordable, American-made apparel for men, is expanding into T-shirt sales today. The company launched at the beginning of February. CEO Bayard Winthrop has decades of experience in the apparel industry, including a stint as the CEO of Chrome, the preferred laptop bag-maker for hipsters. Winthrop says he started to realize that even though manufacturing has largely moved overseas, ostensibly to save money, the real cost is in distribution. So by selling direct to the consumer through its website, American Giant can manufacture its clothing in the United States (specifically in a facility just a few miles south of San Francisco) and still compete with other brands on price.
 
Pebble Smart Watch Raises Over $3M On Kickstarter After Asking For Only $100K Top
Screen Shot 2012-04-17 at 09.10.23A 'smart watch' that connects to an iPhone or Android to display information that appears on your phone seems somewhat of a no-brainer, but until now few convincing efforts have appeared. Now, a team has developed the "Pebble" project to do just that, and they have clearly untapped a latent need for such a watch amongst smartphone users. After asking for $100,000 on Kickstarter to create a few thousand devices they've raised well over $3 million over a month before their stated goal. Indeed, Pebble raised $1 million in its first 28 hours.
 
Gogobot Opens For Business In Europe (Smart Move: 44% Of Its Customers Are Here Already, Says CEO Travis Katz) Top
gogobotnewSocial travel site Gogobot is doing a little traveling of its own. Today, it's announcing the opening of its first European headquarters, in London. The move, says Travis Katz, the CEO and founder of the company, is being done to capitalize on the fact that the site already has nearly as many users in Europe as it does in the rest of the world: some 44 percent of people who have linked into the site to discuss travel itineraries with friends and others are based in Europe.
 
Blur Group Raises $2M To Disrupt How Marketers Pick Creatives For Campaigns Top
Screen shot 2012-04-17 at 07.54.32A B2B company trying to change the way that marketers procure services for ad campaigns says it has just closed one of Europe's largest-ever angel financing rounds. blur Group, which runs a platform called the Creative Services Exchange, says that it has raised $2 million. Bypassing the VC route, the company instead opted for a group of about 20 business names and angel investors including Archie Norman, currently chairman of UK broadcaster ITV; Kevin Lomax, the founder and former chairman and CEO of Misys Plc and director at M&S; and Tim Schoonmaker, chairman of Grapeshot Limited and ex-chairman of Emap Advertising and ex-CEO of Odeon Cinemas Ltd.
 
Euro SaaS Startups Rejoice – Notion Capital Closes $100M For Its Second Fund Top
71535v1-max-250x250We've seen the rise of new kinds of VC funds in Europe recently, mostly notably Passion Capital's $60M last year and the new fund just raised by Earlybird in Berlin, among others. These new kinds of funds are more fleet of foot, reaching into the hot early stage sector right now, largely in the consumer space. What has not appeared as often are brand new funds aimed at disrupting the enterprise. That changes today with the announcement today that London-based Notion Capital has closed the first $100M of its 'Fund 2'. This fund will focus on emerging cloud computing and Software-as-a-Service companies in the UK and across Europe. The total fund size will end up being $150m at its final close, expected in the next few months. But already, this is one of the largest closes for an early stage VC in Europe to date. With this fund closed, Notion plans to look at 4 or 5 deals closely and will do one or two deals in the next couple of months.
 
Win A Meeting With Sean Parker, SV Angel & More In An Auction To Benefit Cancer Research Top
LLS_logoThe Motion To Dismiss Cancer, a team formed to raise money for the The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS), recently kicked off its annual "Venture Capital Master's Lunch Series," an ongoing auction that offers anyone and everyone an opportunity to win private meetings with an array of top venture capitalists and startup founders -- with all proceeds going to benefit LLS and cancer research. Over the next two months, in six rounds of auctions set to take place on eBay, investors from New Enterprise Associates, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Menlo Ventures, Greylock Partners, along with founders of companies like Lytro, 23andMe, Rock Health, BandPage, Spotify, Pulse, Loopt, Votizen, and more will prepare to subject themselves to your pitches and pleas for funding -- all in the name of a worthy cause.
 
Sacrificing Web Standards for Short-Term Gain? Top
4ormat internet explorerWhen I saw 4ormat's TechCrunch post, "Bootstrapped Startup Saves Over $100K by Dropping IE," I first called shenanigans, but then congratulated them on their brilliant marketing ploy. They might as well have titled the article, "Startup Saves Over $100k in Marketing Costs by Pretending not to Work in IE". I tested 4ormat's admin site in IE10 and used the IE developer tools to bypass the page block in IE9, and it works just fine. They probably saved another $100k by not testing in Opera (try loading the signup page in Opera). Reading the numerous kudos and criticisms in the comments, it did get me thinking about what browsers you should target for your site. I've grown up on a diet of Zeldman's Web Standards First and that the belief that the web is for everyone. That's what makes the web great. For someone to advise otherwise is bad for business and short changes the community of the web.
 
Groupon Acquires Social Recommendation App Ditto.me Top
Screen shot 2012-04-16 at 6.24.10 PMIt's a big day for M&A. The latest of today's deal announcements is the news that Groupon has acquired Ditto.me, the mobile app for discovering and planning new places to go with friends. Ditto announced its sale in an entry on its company blog. Ditto's service will eventually be shut down as part of the integration into Groupon, the company said. Financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed. Ditto was founded by Jyri Engestrom, who was previously known as the co-founder of Jaiku, the microblogging site that was Europe's early answer to Twitter and was acquired by Google in 2007. Engestrom left the big G in 2009 to re-enter the entrepreneurial space, and the official launch of Ditto followed in March 2011.
 
Amazon Android Developers Can Now Charge More Than $20 For In-App Purchases Top
images-screenshots-captures-amazon-appstore-logo-21032011_00B4000000001978Amazon is now letting developers charge higher prices for in-app purchases thanks to new parental controls it just overhauled. The company sent out an e-mail to developers today that said: "With our parental controls functionality now updated, in-app items over $20 may now be submitted via the developer portal." Developers depend on these pricier items to make their businesses work since only a small percentage (usually in the single digits) of their users pay in their games. These so-called "whales" are responsible for the bulk of a developer's revenues. In a study earlier this year, mobile analytics company Flurry found that transactions that were more than $20 make up the majority of revenue for top-grossing games on iOS and Android.
 
Inside Founders Den, The Invite-Only Clubhouse For Tech Entrepreneurs [TCTV] Top
foundersdenFounders Den, the "private clubhouse for entrepreneurs" based in downtown San Francisco, celebrated its first anniversary back in January. Now that the invite-only tech startup coworking space is starting to see its third generation of inhabitants (Founders Den houses each company for six months at a time), TechCrunch TV headed over to the Den to get an updated first-hand look at how things are humming along these days. In the video embedded above, you can get a look at the Founders Den space and watch our interview with Zack Bogue and Jason Johnson, two of the Den's four managing partners. Bogue and Johnson are both entrepreneurs in their own rights, so it was interesting to get their insights on the vibe they're cultivating at the Den, the current "fervor" around Internet startups, why experienced entrepreneurs who could easily afford their own office space are still drawn to coworking environments, and general industry news such as the new crowdfunding bill.
 
Windows 8 Will Come In Three Different Flavors (Two For x86, One For ARM) Top
Windows 8 Consumer PreviewMicrosoft just announced that Windows 8 will come in three different flavors: Windows 8, Windows 8 Pro and Windows RT. Windows 8 will be the mainstream consumer edition. The Pro version will bring a number of features that most mainstream consumers don't necessarily need to Microsoft's next operating system, including encryption, virtualization, PC management and domain connectivity. Both Windows 8 Pro and the mainstream consumer edition will be available in 32 bit and 64 bit versions. In addition, Microsoft will also offer an enterprise version of Windows 8. Microsoft has not shared any details about the pricing of these editions yet.
 
Google Creative Lab Gets 'Old Spice' Creative Director Iain Tait From Wieden + Kennedy Top
ian taitA big hire for Google announced today, and perhaps a sign of some sharper viral marketing coming out of the company going forward: the company is adding Iain Tait to the team at Google Creative Lab, the company's in-house team that creates marketing campaigns for all things Google, covering products like Android, Chrome, Google+ and more. Tait comes from London agency Wieden + Kennedy, where he had most recently been executive creative director, overseeing such iconic campaigns as the hugely popular and award-winning Old Spice Response series of viral videos, as well as work for Levi's, Coke and Nike.
 

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