Tuesday, May 1, 2012

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JP Selects Acquires The Gilt For Eco-Friendly Fashion, LovingEco Top
lovingJP Selects, an online marketplace for selling sustainable and ethical brands has acquired LovingEco, a flash sales site for eco-friendly fashion and natural beauty products. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. LovingEco, which was founded by Justine Lassoff and Melinda Moore, features daily sales on discounted eco-friendly, natural items. Similar to OneKingsLane and Gilt, LovingEco features 'tastemaker pics,' where celebrities and environmental experts curate their favorite products from the sales. The site also features a V-Wall for the community to share their donations and eco-friendly content.
 
Mobile Roadie Adds iPad And Mobile Web To App Development Platform Top
mrMobile Roadie, which allows anyone to develop and create sleek, rich media iPhone and Android apps, is launching a native iPad app creation platform and self-service mobile website product. Mobile Roadie offers a self-serve app development platform that integrates with YouTube, Brightcove, Flickr, Twitpic, Ustream, Topspin, Google News, RSS, Twitter, and Facebook. Users can build both iOS and Android apps and the company already has a presence in the UK, France, Spain, Australia, Italy, Germany, Brazil, Turkey and Japan.
 
Pindrop Security Raises $1M From Andreessen Horowitz To Detect And Block Phone Fraud Top
Pindrop SecurityPindrop Security, a startup that aims to prevent and protect against phone-based fraud, has raised $1 million in funding from Andreessen Horowitz, GRA Venture Fund, New World Ventures, Sigma Partners, and Webb Investment Network led by former eBay COO Maynard Webb. Angel investors Paul Bricault, Kevin Donahue, and Ben Ling also participated in the round. Pindrop says that phone fraud is a serious security problem for both enterprises and individuals. For example, credit card users activate their card using their phone and on the banks end, Caller-ID or Automatic Number Identification (ANI) is used to determine if it is the right customer. However, Pindrop says this information is limited and can be easily manipulated, leaving such services completely broken.
 
Loopc.am Stops Being A Gimmick And Starts Getting Funding Top
loopcam screengrab 2 libraryLoopc.am has lately become a little bit of a craze amongst some iPhone users I know. Frankly, at first it seemed like something of a gimmick. Recording and sharing short gif-based videoclips called loops seemed like a temporary blip. I mean, why not just do a video and upload it somewhere? But word on the street is that users have taken to the app in droves and that is leading to significant traction in, perhaps, the same way that people took to sharing filter-altered images on Instagram. Loopc.am is also continuing an interesting startup tradition out of Berlin right now, joining EyeEm on the 'photography' front, and the 'Berlin Swedish Mafia' of Soundcloud and Readmill. But Loopc.am Founder Tor Rauden Källstigen feels animated loops are a brand new category of shareable content, and so do his investors, Passion Capital, who today doing an undisclosed seed financing round. Alongside them are angel investors including Zoe Adamovicz (Xyologic, Concise Software), Alexander Ljung (Soundcloud), Heilemann Ventures (Dailydeal), Christophe Maire (Txtr), Felix Petersen (Amen), Peter Read and Eric Wahlforss (Soundcloud). The new funds will be used for growing the team and accelerating product development, including expanding the Loopc.am app client to support other platforms.
 
Nip That Social Media Crisis In The Bud With uberVU Signals Top
uberVU Signals 1uberVU already offers a dashboard for monitoring social media conversations about your company, but CEO  Mark Pascarella and founder/Chief Product Officer Vladimir Oane says it's time to help brands find the crucial signals in the social media noise. So they're launching a new feature today called, predictably, uberVU Signals. Nowadays, whenever I meet with a social media monitoring company, they want to talk about the need to move the technology beyond the flood of data. Pascarella says that for uberVU, that means taking "a really sophisticated set of algorithms at the intersection of big data and artificial intelligence" and using those algorithms to find the social media updates that could become important to you, based on things like influence, sentiment, volume, and demographics.
 
PlaySay: Social Language Learning App Launches With $820k And A HarperCollins Deal In Its Pocket Top
1The education market -- as Apple and others have noticed -- represents a huge mobile opportunity, and today sees the launch of an app that plays on that potential, with added gamification and social twists. PlaySay, a "social language learning" startup, today debuts a free, new Spanish/English iPhone app -- along with a licensing deal with HarperCollins and an additional $250,000 in funding, taking total backing in the company up to $820,000. We first heard about PlaySay last year, when it launched at the TC Disrupt conference as a Facebook app that let users learn languages through Facebook's own content translated into your foreign language of choice: "Your Facebook friends are your new classmates. Check ins, status updates and pictures are your course materials," founder Ryan Meinzer said at the time. The new iPhone app plays on a similar idea, except that it uses PlaySay's own platform as the basis of the language learning.
 
"AdSense For Local Commerce" Signpost Raises $3.75M From Spark Capital Top
signpost logoLocal advertising startup, and recent Google Offers partner, Signpost is announcing its Series A funding round this morning to the tune of $3.75 million, led by Spark Capital. Other angels also participated in the round, but the company isn't disclosing names. This new round is in addition to previous funding of $1.25 million, which included an investment from Google Ventures. The company is also announcing a new hire today: Christopher DePatria, who most recently led AOL's Patch sales force.
 
Facebook Now Lets Users Identify Themselves As Organ Donors Top
Screen Shot 2012-05-01 at 11.57.16Facebook has been credited with helping to power the 'Arab Spring' movement of democracy, and in further 'we plan to save the world' news, it is now unveiling a new feature: tell the world you're an organ donor. Starting today, you can add that you're an organ donor to your timeline, and share your story about when, where or why you decided to become a donor, says Facebook.
 
Juniper Research: Samsung Shipped More Smartphones, But Apple's Making More Money Top
Image (1) apple_samsung.jpg for post 48054In mobile world, bigger is not always better. That can be the case for specs, and it can also be the case for market share: and a report out today from Juniper Research highlights a case in point for the latter: Samsung was the biggest smartphone maker in terms of shipments in Q1 2012, but when it came to making money, Apple was still on top. In Q1, Samsung is estimated to have shipped 46.9 million smartphones, compared to Apple's 35.1 million iPhone devices. When considering revenues, however, the tables turn: Apple's mobile revenues (which include the iPad) were $29.3 billion, while Samsung's (which include all its mobile products, including feature phones) were just over half of that amount: $17 billion.
 
Smarter TV: CrestaTech Grabs $13M To Bring Region-Free TV Reception To Any Device Top
0_crestatechBroadcast TV, set top boxes, IPTVs, DVRs and PVRs are going the way of the Dodo, and today's connected TVs have to be able to take advantage of the same smart processors and dynamic OS tech that powers smart consumer mobile devices today. This is the thinking being employed by a Silicon Valley-based startup called CrestaTech, which has been quietly designing a portfolio of programmable hardware and software technologies that enable universal TV reception for all manners of smart devices, TVs, tablets, and PCs. The vision is a big one, and today CrestaTech received further financial validation for its endeavor, announcing that it has closed a $13 million series B round of investment.
 
GrubHub Debuts OrderHub; A Food Delivery And Order Management Android Tablet App For Restaurants Top
OrderHubChicago-based startup GrubHub, a service that lets you order food for delivery or take out from local restaurants online or by mobile phone, is debuting a new tablet technology for restaurants called OrderHub. As you may know, GrubHub gives its users access to food delivery service from more than 13,000 restaurants in U.S. cities including: New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Oakland, Boston, Los Angeles, and more. GrubHub is free for diners who order and pay for their meals while restaurants pay commissions on each order processed. Restaurants that do not currently partner with GrubHub can still list their telephone numbers and menus for free. And of the 13,000 restaurant menus currently available on GrubHub, 5,000 establishments are paying GrubHub to manage and market a white-label online order and food delivery service.
 
Apple Tries To Halt Release Of Steve Jobs Deposition In Lawsuit … What's It Hiding? Top
steve_jobs_drinking_teaTwo closely watched cases in the music industry are about to go to trial involving a motley crew of characters: Eminem's producers, Rob Zombie, Rick James (his estate at least) and Steve Jobs. Apple is claiming that a deposition of Steve Jobs from a 2010 trial involving F.B.T. Productions, producers of several hit Eminem tracks, could, if released, bring competitive harm to the company over "highly confidential and proprietary trade secrets."
 
Recruiting Is Broken, And Video-Driven Readyforce Wants To Fix It Top
readyforce logoDozens of startups have launched in the past few years claiming to fix the broken recruiting and hiring process. One of them, Readyforce, has already signed up some well-known startups with a relatively straightforward and compelling idea, and it's opening up its beta test today. When it comes to finding the right job applicant, CEO Alex Mooradian says that "it's all about data." And when Mooradian says "data," he also means videos, which are a big part of a Readyforce profile. Unlike other sites that just ask people to record videos on their own (often resulting in stilted, awkward videos), Readyforce has actually hired interviewers to do 20-minute webcam conversations with the applicants, which can be edited down into a 3-minute highlight reel. (If you're not happy with the interview you can do it again.) Users can also fill out something called the "infinite quiz" (in reality, Mooradian says there are more than 100 questions) which tests their interests and skills.
 
Sarah Tavel, Who Led Bessemer's Investment In Pinterest, Gets Down To 'Business' At Pinterest Top
sarah tavel on twitterPinterest is starting to fill up its own Pinboard... with money people. Sarah Tavel, a former VP at Bessemer Venture Partners (the same BVP that led a Series A round in Pinterest in 2011), has now joined the social startup in a business development role. The move comes about a month after Pinterest hired Tim Kendall -- Kendall had once been a key figure building out monetization strategy at Facebook, which he left in 2010.
 
Hands-On With the Jawbone Big Jambox: 2.7 Pounds of Audio Fury, Available May 15 for $299 Top
photo 1Bigger isn't necessarily better but in the case of Jawbone's Jambox, it might actually work out. Typically known for their Bluetooth headsets and the ill-fated-but-not-quite-dead UP band, Jawbone has figured out what their "cool kids" product is and it happens to be a tiny portable speaker. But for the second generation version, simply called Big Jambox, the company is cranking up the volume from 10 to 11. While it retains some portability, the Big Jambox is really meant for those instances where you have 20 people posted up near the bonfire or you're looking for a no-fuss micro system for your home entertainment center. At less than three pounds -- 2.7 pounds to be specific -- it's still portable but everything else is on steroids. Jawbone says the built-in battery will last up to 15 hours for continuous playback and 500 hours of standby.
 
Online Video Content Pioneer Revision3 In Acquisition Talks With The Discovery Channel Top
Screen Shot 2012-04-30 at 10.10.25 PMSeven years in, Revision3 and its stable of web stars have more than survived the tough early days of building a video content business on the web. The San Francisco company is now bringing in a respectable 100 million video views per month, following a big 2011 -- and it may be about to cash in.
 
Thinkfuse Exits Beta: Get Your Team Out of Progress Review Hell With Simple, Searchable Status Reports Top
TPSreportsIt's the problem every manager or CEO faces: how do you stay aware of what everyone is doing? Thinkfuse, which debuted at last year's TechCrunch Disrupt in New York, is out of beta with a product that makes it easy to get a single status report on what everyone is working on across a company or team. The Seattle-based company, which was formed by former Googlers and ex-Microsofties, was inspired by Snippets -- an internal tool that Google uses. Every week, Googlers would post a simple status update explaining what they had worked on and what they planned to finish by the next week. All of those updates would go into a report for managers and they would also be searchable for everyone else. Thinkfuse is trying to make this available for everyone.
 
As It Graduates From Network To Platform, Edmodo Now Serving 7M Users, 80K Schools Top
edmodo_logo_colorEdmodo is one of the startups whose name pops up a lot when you talk about "edtech." Founded in 2007, the company is almost old school, yet, in spite of the influx of new education-focused startups, Edmodo continues to press forward. Today, Edmodo is announcing that it has officially crossed 7 million users and its service is now being used in over 80,000 schools. Districts across the U.S. are beginning to do wide-scale implementations, as 80 of the top 100 largest school districts in the U.S. are on board, including Chicago Public Schools, Denver Public Schools, Delaware, Palm Beach, Florida, Clark County, Nevada, and Wake County, North Carolina. In fact, the Edmodo founders tell us that the service is now being used not only in every state in the U.S., but every country in the world.
 
The Digg Team Is Going To WaPo, But The Assets Aren't Top
diggHas The Washington Post acquired Digg, as reported in The Next Web? Sort of. We're hearing from multiple sources that the Post has hired the Digg team, but is not acquiring the site or the technology. In other words, this is a talent acquisition, and in fact Digg properties, patents, and assets are still for sale.
 
Hack Your Housing: Check Out This Berkeley Freshman's 'Ridiculously Automated' Dorm Room Top
Screen shot 2012-04-30 at 5.35.24 PMSo this is pretty fun. A University of California at Berkeley freshman named Derek Low uploaded a video to YouTube today of what he's calling the "BRAD", or the Berkeley Ridiculously Automated Dorm. Apparently, Low set out three months ago to make "the most ridiculously automated dorm room in the school ever." That's a hard claim to verify, but by the looks of the results -- which apparently only set Low back a few hundred dollars -- I'd venture to say he has probably taken the crown.
 

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