Wednesday, May 2, 2012

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Mobile Security Provider Appthority Raises $6.25 Million From Venrock and US Venture Partners Top
appthority_logoEarlier this morning, San Francisco-based mobile app security provider Appthority announced  that it has raised $6.25 million in a Series A financing round led by Venrock and US Venture Partners. Gunderson Dettmer also participated in this round. Venrock's Ray Rothrock and US Venture Partners' Steve Krausz will join the Appthority board. The company's product helps businesses manage the risks involved in having their employees bring their own mobile devices to work. Appthority specifically focuses on the apps installed on these devices and screens them for malware and other security threats.
 
Who Believes In Facebook? Investors Who've Plopped $915 Million Into Its Preferred Marketing Devs Top
PMDWhile greedy advertisers claim they're skeptical about Facebook because it won't give them obtrusive ad units, investors seem quite confident in its business, considering they've publicly poured $915 million into Facebook Preferred Marketing Developers according to a study by AlphaBoost.  The future of Facebook ads is a particularly popular bet, as Ads API providers who help brands and agencies buy huge campaigns have pulled in $450 million in public investments. Those backing companies that make Facebook apps, analytics dashboard, ad managers, and publishing tools include six of InvestorRank's Top 10 Overall VC funds such as First Round Capital and Battery Ventures. Who are you going to trust as to the potential of Facebook's business? Advertisers who want big flashy ads all over your news feed but are sore they can't get them. Or today's top VCs?
 
Amazon Studios Now Funding Original Content Series For Amazon Instant Video Service Top
gettingStarted_Series._V149466329_Amazon Studios, the offshoot of online retailer Amazon.com that aims to source scripts and test movies, has major news this morning. The company says that, in addition to its film development plans, it's now heading into original content production, with the launch of original comedy and children's series for Amazon Instant Video. According to the company, series creators are being invited to upload their proposals for comedy and children's programming to Amazon Studios here. The best ones will then be distributed through Amazon Instant Video, which is Amazon's digital video streaming service, and a competitor to services like Netflix and Hulu.
 
Look Out Pair, Cupple Is Out To Break Up This Cosy Private Sharing Party Top
cuppleWhile Pair are popping champagne corks at their funding round today, they better not swig too much bubbly because tomorrow they may have to check out their rear-view mirrors. Co-founder Oleg Kostour seems to think the company's closest competitor in the 'private sharing' space is Path. He's basically wrong, but then he lives in the Valley echo chamber, so he's excused... Cupple is, frankly, at least as excellent a private sharing app for couples app which actually launched before Pair (and has an equally good name). Its had steady growth since November after being featured on the Apple in the Date Night section of the US store iTunes store (iTunes link).
 
ChowNow Launches As A Food Ordering Platform For Restaurants On Facebook And iOS Top
chownowThere are plenty of companies and startups that want to disrupt the food ordering space including Seamless, GrubHub and others. A new competitor is entering the space today. ChowNow is an online ordering platform built for mobile and Facebook, and aims to provide restaurants with an easy way to offer online ordering to customers via either their Facebook page, branded mobile apps for iPhone and iPad or their existing web site. Unlike the two giants in the food ordering space, Seamless and GrubHub, which offer one site where you can find local restaurants and order; ChowNow isn't a centralized platform for all restaurants. With ChowNow's offering, restaurants can individually customize and brand their ordering apps.
 
Talk Radio Startup Stitcher Adds An Election Center Top
ec_homeAs the Republican primaries wrap up and we head into the Obama vs. Romney stage of the presidential campaign, Stitcher has updated its talk radio app with an Election Center where anyone can track the latest political news. It seems pretty natural for any news-focused app to add an election center, but CEO Noah Shanok says it's a particularly good fit for Stitcher's audience, of which 70 percent has engaged with news and political content. In the Election Center, you follow updates from different news sources like Slate, CBS News, and Marketplace. You can also follow official channels from each of the presidential candidates. Shanok says the campaigns see Stitcher as a big opportunity: "They understand that this is the year of mobile." Will that translate into exclusive content for Stitcher? Shanok says it's too early to know.
 
Foursquare Biz Dev VP Tristan Walker Leaves Company, Heads To Andreessen Horowitz As EIR Top
walkerOne of Foursquare's earliest and best-known employees, Tristan Walker, Foursquare's Business Development VP, is leaving the company and is headed over to Andreessen Horowitz where he will take a position as "Entrepreneur in Residence." The update was posted to his personal blog just moments ago. Walker has led partnerships between Foursquare and several high-profile brands, including MTV, Bravo, CNN, the New York Times, the NBA, Starbucks and others, all of which helped to establish the service as a notable contender in the social networking space as well as a household name.
 
ShareBuds: One Headphone Jack, Four Ear Buds, Music For Everyone Top
sharebuds_1We've all been there. You're listening to a song on your iPod (or iPhone or whatever) as you walk up to meet your friend and you want them to hear it, too. You pop your right earbud into their ear and bop along awkwardly together. But is your friend really enjoying the music? Are you? The song is only half as good as it should be, which is exactly why ShareBuds exist. They are a a pair of headphone sets that connect under one 3.5mm headphone jack. So the idea is that you can plug into your mp3 player, or really anything with a 3.5mm audio-output jack and listen along with a friend. The sound quality on them isn't amazing or anything, but they solve a problem.
 
Harvard, MIT Will Bring Classes To The Masses With Their 'edX' Online Learning Initiative Top
edxDistance learners rejoice! Harvard University and MIT jointly announced their new non-profit edX online learning initiative in Cambridge earlier today, which aims to both enhance on-campus teaching and make courses from both schools available to people around the world for free. "This is the single biggest change in education since the printing press," said Anant Agarwal, newly-installed president of edX. Despite both schools chipping in $30 million a piece (not to mention a chunk of their respective staffs), edX is an independent entity with Agarwal reporting to the organization's own board.
 
LTE BlackBerry PlayBook Coming This Year, Says RIM CEO Top
baconRIM is keeping the PlayBook party going. While speaking at a BlackBerry World breakfast with RIM CEO Thorsten Heins stated the company plans to launch an LTE-enabled PlayBook by the end of the year. However, the CEO didn't detail the projected release date, price or available wireless carrier. This is a smart move for RIM. Rather than spending the time and resources producing another tablet, RIM is instead concentrating efforts on making sure upcoming software works on existing hardware. During a recent trip Rim's Waterloo campus, the company made it clear to TechCrunch that it is very much committed to bringing BlackBerry 10 to the PlayBook.
 
DIY Mobile Website Creator bMobilized Raises $1.5M Series A, Prepares To Take On DudaMobile Top
bmobilizedNY-based mobile web startup bMobilized, which bills itself as a competitor to the well-heeled new Google partner DudaMobile, has just closed its Series A round of funding to the tune of $1.5 million. The funding was raised from two early stage European VC firms, Alliance Venture and Investinor. Like DudaMobile, bMobilized is focused on enabling SMBs to convert their existing websites into HTML5-enabled mobile sites that work on any device, OS, or web browser.
 
Vungle Hustles Its Way Into $2M All-Star Seed Round For Mobile App Video Trailers Network Top
vungle-hi-whiteVungle, a new company that wants to help mobile developers market their apps through video "trailers," has just raised an enormous $2 million seed round from the who's who of Silicon Valley. The round includes Google Ventures, AOL Ventures [Disclosure: TechCrunch is owned by AOL], Crosslink Capital, as well as several notable angels like SV Angel's Ron Conway, 500 Startups' Dave McClure, SoftTech VC's Charles Hudson, Maynard Webb, Scott McNealy and Tim Draper.
 
Next-Generation Publishing Platform Hyperink Wants To Transform Blogs Into Books Top
hyperYC company Hyperink, a next-generation digital book publishing platform, is debuting a new service which helps bloggers create short books from their existing content. As we've reported in the past, Hyperink wants to disrupt the book publishing world. The startup's digital book publishing platform and full-service agency will help any aspiring author write, design, publish, market, and sell a book without any up-front fees. Hyperink wants to represent the long-tail of book demand. Hyperink's books production costs are under $1,000 on average, and are published in under a month. And also offers higher royalty rates, and give authors up to 50 percent of their earnings (many publishers give authors around 25 percent).
 
Weebly Adds Slick iOS App To Its Quietly Huge Web Site Creation Business Top
postI keep hearing rumors about the ridiculous amounts of money that Weebly is making. But the San Francisco company, which provides a set of tools for small businesses and other organizations to easily create their own web sites, has only scoffed at the nine-figure amounts I've thrown at them. Instead, they've shared something else -- a new mobile app that lets new users quickly create their own sites, or existing folks manage what they have going. In a series of quick swipes, it lets you get through naming a site, upload images, choosing a theme, and publishing your first post. If you want to get fancier, you can also take photos and alter them with a set of filters, or shoot videos to publish.
 
TalentSplash Is A Social Network For Finding Or Becoming The Next Lady Gaga Top
talentsplashI live in New York City, and feel lucky for it. Every day I meet a waitress, bartender, receptionist, or Occupy Wall Street protestor who dreams of greatness. They aren't really waitresses or receptionists; they're creatives just waiting to see their name in lights. But the ladder to the top is a creaky, weak old thing that few survive. And so was born TalentSplash. It's a social network for talent, at its core, with three main purposes.
 
New iPad Ship Time Improves To 3-5 Days At Apple.com Top
ipad-3The new iPad is nearly two months old and it's still not available for immediate shipping from Apple. However, the wait time just improved to less than a week. Apple.com now lists all the new iPad variations with just a 3-5 day wait time. Happy days. "[We're] selling as fast as we can make them," said Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer said on last week's earnings call. The iPad is clearly a hit and up until now, buyers had to wait one or two weeks when purchasing from Apple's online store. Unfortunately buyers in overseas markets will still have to wait more than a week.
 
Down, Not Out: Nokia Goes On The Offensive With 11 Lawsuits Against HTC, RIM And ViewSonic Covering 45 Patents Top
Nokia-Logo (1)As Nokia continues to try to turn itself around as a mobile phone business, it is also playing on the offense in the legal game: today it announced that it has filed fresh patent suits against HTC, RIM and Viewsonic in the a selection of courts in the U.S. and Germany. The suits go to show that a company like Nokia has a lot more arsenal in its stores to fight against competitors as it struggles win business with consumers. The fact that it has so many patents among its assets also means that there is significantly more value to this company than just its handset business.
 
Thanks To A 'Conflict Of Interest,' Target Said To Stop Selling Amazon's Kindle Top
targetthumbIf you were planning to swing by your local Target to buy a Kindle some time soon, you may want to add a little pep to your step. An inside source told The Verge that Amazon's line of Kindle e-readers and tablets would soon disappear from Target's store shelves, due to an unspecified "conflict of interest." Sales of Amazon's hardware hasn't dried up just yet though -- that same source sent along an internal memo that points to May 13 (i.e. Mothers Day) as the point after which store stock would no longer be replenished.
 
Twilio Rising: Microsoft Inks Deal To Offer Voice, Messaging APIs To 'Tens Of Thousands' Of Azure Developers Top
sunriseA potentially big move forward for cloud-based telephony API startup Twilio -- and an intriguing development for Microsoft, given its would-be ownership of Skype: Twilio and Microsoft have formed a strategic alliance to offer Twilio's APIs to developers on the Windows Azure platform. The offering will cover both Twilio's voice and messaging services, and Twilio is sweetening the deal by giving developers a credit of 1,000 free text messages or inbound voice minutes when they sign up.
 
Yahoo Launches Online Marketing Dashboard For Small Businesses Top
Yahoo! Small BusinesYou may not know this but Yahoo still operates a product called Yahoo Small Business, which provides SMBs and sites with web hosting, domain name registration, web site design templates, e-commerce solutions and more. In fact, Yahoo says that it has helped millions of businesses get online and grow their presence on the web. Today, the company is debuting a new marketing dashboard to give users additional insight into online reputation, web metrics and more. As the company explains, the new tool allows small businesses to analyze website metrics and maintain accurate and comprehensive business listings across the Web. For example, the dashboard enables social media monitoring and provides recommendations on new listing opportunities, including on Yelp, Yahoo and others.
 

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