Thursday, April 19, 2012

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"In the Studio," Why Zimride's John Zimmer Left Wall Street to Start a Company Top
Screen shot 2012-04-18 at 7.50.56 PM 1"In the Studio" has a special segment this week, hosting a Valley entrepreneur who grew up on the East Coast, studied at an Ivy League school, was lured to Wall Street, and eventually decided to leave the pinstriped suits behind to start building his own startup, eventually finding his cofounder via Facebook, moonlighting as an entrepreneur after the markets closed in NYC, and is now helping run a venture-backed startup that's making a real difference in the world. John Zimmer grew up in a Connecticut suburb outside of New York City, worked hard and made his way to Cornell in upstate New York. In college, he was part of the University's storied "Hotel Management School," taking a specific interest in real estate finance which eventually led him to the real estate finance group of a major New York investment bank. Zimmer felt that the culture around his high school and in parts of college put the lure of investment banking in his sights, but after some time, he developed an itch to try something new despite the chorus around him.
 
An Interview with Millenium Technology Prize Finalist Linus Torvalds Top
156px-Linus_TorvaldsThe Millenium Technology Prize is a Finnish award designed "to improve the quality of life and to promote sustainable development-oriented research, development and innovation." It's awarded every two years. Sir Tim Berners-Lee won the prize in 2004. The 2012 Grand Prize winner will be announced on June 13 in Helsinki, Finland. The finalists this year are Dr. Shinya Yamanaka, who has been contributing to the area of stem cell research, and Linux creator Linus Torvalds.
 
New Crowdsourcing Launch: AskYourUsers.com Uses LinkedIn To Help You Find People For Microconsulting Projects Top
askyourusers.comCrowdsourcing and crowdfunding have been two of the biggest trends to affect how businesses -- especially small businesses and sole traders -- raise money, with sites like Kickstarter.com and in the UK Funding Circle attracting a attention for being a great way of getting backing for projects or business ideas bypassing the traditional and expensive world of bank loans in the process. Now a site is launching that gives this model an additional twist: AskYourUsers.com is a simple service that helps you find people for microconsulting projects lasting no more than 15 minutes -- and it uses your LinkedIn network to help you find them. From the demo that I have seen, the service is basically that simple, but it works very smoothly, and definitely solves a need -- one that Dunne and her co-founder, Chris Bumgarder, essentially stumbled on unintentionally...
 
Google's New "Gmail Meter" Crunches Data About Your Email Use Top
image00-1Similar to Google's new Account Activity dashboard, the company is now expanding its data-crunching ways to another popular Google service: Gmail. With a new tool called "Gmail Meter," you can now know everything there is to know (well, almost) about your Gmail usage. Using the Meter, you can learn about things like how many emails you've sent, received, starred, replied to, and you can see your daily traffic charted out, which can help identify spurts and drops.
 
Googler Phil Mui Joins Acxiom As Chief Product And Engineering Officer Top
phil muiPhil Mui, currently the group product manager for Google Analytics, will be joining marketing services and technology company Acxiom as chief product and engineering officer. According to Acxiom, Mui will report to CEO Scott Howe, lead a team of more than 750 people, and play "a decisive role" in the company's plans to increase research and development. In the the hiring press release, Howe calls Mui "the capstone of our strategic initiatives." Earlier this year, Warren Jenson joined as the company's chief financial officer (he was formerly CFO at Electronic Arts and Amazon.com), and Nada Stirratt joined as the first chief revenue officer (a role she served at MySpace).
 
7 Months In, Here's The Big Data Download From Massive Health's 'Eatery' App Top
Screen Shot 2012-04-19 at 10.36.24 AMMassive Health, the San Francisco startup that aims to tackle major health care problems with tools such as mobile apps and big data technology, launched its first iPhone app "Eatery" back in November 2011. For users, the Eatery app is almost deceptively simple: You use it take a photo of what you're eating, grade it on a scale of "fit to fat," and give your rating to others' meals as well. But for Massive Health, it's been a veritable firehose of data about the whats, whens, and hows of nutrition from all over the world. Eatery has amassed more than 7.68 million food ratings from over 50 countries during its first five months alone. And for the first time the company is publicly pulling back the curtain on what it's learned so far.
 
Firebase Aims To Reinvent Real-Time App Infrastructure, And It Already Has 4,000 Sign-Ups Top
firebase logoFirebase is one of those startups with an almost crazily big vision — it wants to simplify the development of powerful, real-time apps, to the point where (as co-founder James Tamplin put it) it's "jettisoning the whole notion of a server even existing." The company, which was part of the summer 2011 class at Y Combinator, unveiled its service last week. In the first 24 hours, it saw a big wave of interest from developers. Tamplin says 35,000 unique visitors came to the site, and 16,000 of them tried out the Firebase tutorial. There are now 4,000 developers who have signed up for early access and are waiting for beta invites.
 
Meet The XOLO X900, Intel's First Atom-Powered Android Smartphone And It's Bound To Just India Top
lava xolo x900With Lava's XOLO X900 Intel is entering uncharted territory. It's the chip maker's first major push into mobile phones. Intel revealed its new mobile strategy and upcoming hardware a few months back at Barcelona's Mobile World Congress. Since then Lava's XOLO X900 has not changed. It's still destined for just India. It's still a mid-tier Android 2.3 phone (ICS is coming) with a 4.03-inch, HSPA+ 3G phone. But Intel's inside and that's a big deal.
 
Hulu Announces Four More Original Series, Bringing Total Lineup To Seven Top
huluHulu has been having a busy week. On Tuesday, the company announced a new deal for advertisers, which now charges them only for ad completions, and today at Hulu's upfronts, the company announced the arrival of even more original shows. We already knew of several of the programs Hulu discussed this morning, including "Battleground," "Up to Speed," and "A Day in the Life," for example. But this morning, the company revealed several more additions, including "We Got Next," "The Awesomes," "Don't Quit Your Daydream," and "Flow."
 
YC-Backed Siasto Draws Nearer To The Holy Grail Of Project Management Software Top
7012312829_8cff6cddd9_zIn the quest for the Holy Grail of project management software -- a product that just feels natural and easy to use -- Siasto has made it further than most. If this were The Last Crusade, it'd be somewhere inside the temple, crossing the bridge of faith to reach the chalice. Siasto might seem a little too familiar at first, as it uses the same concepts as you've seen in competing products like Basecamp. You create projects, you add tasks to them, you upload documents, you invite other users, and so on. What's special is the how the Y Combinator-backed company has organized the interface, and how it's busy tying in with Google. Here's a quick walk-through of what it's doing.
 
New York Hits Sprint With $300 Million Lawsuit Over 7 Years Of Tax Dodging [Update: Sprint Responds] Top
sprint-logoSprint's had its fair share of problems to deal with as of late, but who knew one of them would be taxes? According to a new flurry of new reports, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has filed a $300 million lawsuit against Sprint for (among other things) non-payment of taxes, and falsifying official tax documents. According to Reuters, Sprint failed to collect (and subsequently pass along) over $100 million of taxes from their customers over the past seven years. Schneiderman, who is picking up where a whistle-blower lawsuit filed against the carrier early last year, is seeking three times the amount of Sprint's underpayment plus additional penalties for good measure.
 
Decide.com Launches Daily Deals; Offers Price Guarantees On Select CE, Home Appliance Purchases Top
decideLogoDecide.com, the shopping search site for consumer electronics and home appliances founded by former Farecast engineers, is now putting its money where its mouth is, so to speak. The service, which helps consumers know whether to "buy" or "wait" when researching items like laptops, phones, TVs, washers and dryers, wants to make it easier to trust its recommendations with the launch of a price guarantee. With Decide's new "Got Your Back" program, if you click to buy an item the service recommends and the price drops within two weeks, the company will automatically send you a payment for the difference.
 
Le Web London Goes Faster Than Realtime – Grab Your TC Discount Here Top
loic-005'Allo my Breeteesh chums! If you have not been to Le Web before, zen zis is pour vous! Le Web is possibly Europe's oldest, and certainly its biggest tech startup conference, running for many years in December in Paris. Because of organiser Loic Le Meur's connections in Silicon Valley it regularly brings the creme de la creme of the Valley to Europe every year. It's now adding a London conference (19-20 June) to its schedule and even attracting the likes of Michael Arrington, TechCrunch Founder and Crunchfund partner, to London. If I recall correctly, the last time he was here was 2006 - I know because I was there, in the same pub. So, now consider yourself educated about Le Web! Here's how you can get a discount and enter the startup competition.
 
Fab.de Hits Half A Million Users, Revenue Reaches 1.5M Euro Per Month Top
tumblr_m2qcfm7eMa1qzjfbqFab has just released new figures on its growth in Germany and Austria, following February's acquisition of Casacanda, a top flash sales site previously serving Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. And the news is good, it seems. As of today, the German vertical Fab.de has 500,000 users, having added 300,000 over the past month. And revenue per month is up by over half a million euro.
 
AT&T Opening Watson Speech Recognition To Developers With New APIs In June Top
watsonapiHot off of a AT&T Labs event held in New York City, AT&T has just announced they will be opening up their Watson speech recognition technology to developers this June. Though Watson has been open to licensing for years now (Vlingo inked their licensing deal with AT&T in 2009, for instance), the release of the APIs means that developers of every stripe will soon be able to access AT&T's voice transcription engine.
 
Struq Secures $8.5 million From Reed Elsevier, Pentech, Allen & Co Top
52258v2-max-250x250The problem with internet advertising - and there are many - is that while there are plenty of users who interact with ads, the hard part is working out which users are actually the most valuable to advertisers. While the advertising industry normally sends one brand message and blasts it out across all channels, Struq, an advertising platform startup, works out which users show behavioral patterns that make them statistically more likely to purchase. But instead of showing them the one brand message it shows video or display ads most likely to chime with that user. To that end it's attracted the attention of major backers today, with a significant $8.5 million funding round from Reed Elsevier Ventures, Pentech Ventures and Allen & Company LLC.
 
Badoo Hires Google Exec Ben Ling As New COO To Push Its Platforms And US Growth Top
23661v1-max-250x250Dating/meeting-people site Badoo has been putting together a 147 million registered user base over the last six years, with a huge run on Facebook helping it to reach around the world last year. And today, it follows up on the momentum with a key hire. It has appointed long-time Google executive Benjamin Ling as chief operating office to help push it out across mobile and Web platforms. He'll oversee product, engineering, business operations, partnerships and corporate development. Badoo has been best known for expanding into emerging markets like Russia and Brazil but it's now growing in the US where it already has eight million users.
 
Screenfeeder Is A Gorgeous Way To Display Social Feeds On Your iPhone, iPad Or TV Top
iPad TwitterScreenfeeder is a gorgeous new app for the iPhone, iPad or TV (via Apple TV's AirPlay), which displays your social feeds on the screen from services like Twitter, Foursquare, Instagram and Dribble. But the interface doesn't use columns like TweetDeck - it just flashes the updates as they arrive against an ever-changing background of images and colors. The idea may not be as practical for serious news watchers who follow thousands of accounts, sorted into multiple lists, but for the everyday user whose tweets flow a bit slower, Screenfeeder offers an attractive interface to view them in.
 
Nokia May Be Down, But They're Not Out Top
super_macho_man_2As bad as Nokia's financials look right now - a $4 billion drop in sales won't make anyone's day - don't consider the Windows Phone move a failure just yet. They've done what many phone companies have thus far failed to do - namely change swiftly with the times - and, more important, they've done it quite admirably. If you'll recall, the first real Android phone was HTC's G1. Considered a clunker by all but the most die-hard of users, the device sold fairly well (1 million in 2008). But it did something more important than make T-Mobile the first Android carrier - it grabbed a certain contingent of user who understood Android, understood the framework, and would follow Android to the grave. The popularity of the G1 was a direct reaction to the burgeoning iOS platform. The same thing happened in the WebOS space, but WebOS was exactly the wrong thing at exactly the wrong time and is a disaster distinct from the Android launch.
 
Enterprise Data Software Company Splunk Prices IPO At $17 Per Share; Valued At $1.6B Top
splunkSplunk, an enterprise data company, will be making its debut on the public markets this morning after pricing its IPO at $17.00 per share (this is up from the range of $11 to $13 per share). At this price, Splunk is valued at a whopping $1.57 billion. Splunk, whose stock will begin trading on the Nasdaq today under the symbol "SPLK," raised $230 million in the offering. Splunk is a provider of intelligence software used to monitor, report and analyze real-time machine data as well as terabytes of historical data–located on-premise or in the cloud. For example, Splunk indexes and makes searchable data from any app, server or network device in real-time including logs, config files, messages, and alerts. Clients can also monitor distributed deployment across thousands of servers in multiple data centers; manage the infrastructure of a cloud platform-as-a-service (PaaS); monitor performance of cloud- delivered SaaS solutions and monitor hybrid SaaS/hosted models.
 

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