Tuesday, May 1, 2012

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Twitter Improves Discover Tab To Surface More Interesting Content, Promises To Make It "Magical" Top
twitter_newbird_boxed_whiteonblueOne of the core features of Twitter's redesign last year was the addition of the Discover tab in the web and mobile interface. Today, the company is launching the first major update to this feature. The new and improved Discover tab, says Twitter, will now begin to surface more personalized content. Starting today, the algorithm that populates this feature with stories will now also look at which tweets are popular among the people you follow and their friends. This should make for a more personalized experience and highlight content that is more relevant to the individual user.
 
Help! The TechCrunch Not-So-Mini NYC Meet-Up Needs Some Volunteers! Top
Help-WantedWhen John and I first chatted out the idea of an NYC-based TC meet-up, we expected around 500 attendees. Last week we hit the 700 mark, and today we've surpassed 1,000 RSVPs. Luckily, our fine sponsors have made sure that there'll be enough beer and pizza for everyone. But, we're still going to need a little help.
 
CareZone, A Service For Caregivers, Raises $13M From NEA, Catamount And Jonathan Schwartz Top
CareZone-Logo_Symbol

CareZone has been busy discovering a few key markets since launching in February, chief executive Jonathan Schwartz tells me. And the results are good enough to warrant a big round of funding: nearly $13 million from New Enterprise Associates, Catamount Ventures, and Schwartz himself.

Founded as an intranet for people who are taking care of aging parents, children, or anyone else in need of special attention, it has connected with communities around autism, Parkinson's disease, and other illnesses.

 
Fly Or Die: HTC Titan II Top
Screen shot 2012-05-01 at 10.57.26 AMThe HTC Titan II is a symbol for an excellent partnership. I love HTC hardware and I love Windows Phone. It should be a match made in heaven, but unfortunately it's not. John and I sat down in the studio yesterday with the giant 4.7-inch hunk of glass and plastic, and we came away with pretty negative sentiments toward the device.
 
Following Strategic Investment, Enterprise Software Maker Socialtext Joins Up With Peoplefluent Top
Socialtext PictureSocial enterprise software maker Socialtext is today announcing having received strategic investment from Bedford Funding that will now see the service joining the Peoplefluent family of products. Bedford Funding, for those unaware, is a $1.4 billion tech investment fund and owner of Peoplefluent, the maker of Talent Management software for business customers. Following the investment, Socialtext will be integrated into Peoplefluent's own Human Capital Management (HCM) Suite, which focuses on offering tools to help companies recruit better. With the Socialtext integration, employees on the suite will be able to collaborate with each other and their greater enterprise, the company says.
 
Tired Of Talk? Here's What BlackBerry 10 Might Look Like Top
bb10conceptEven though we still don't know when RIM will get around to launching it, CEO Thorsten Heins gave us a few brief glimpses at what BlackBerry 10 would be able to do during his keynote address at the BlackBerry World conference. But what's that? You missed the keynote? Well, just for you, here's the video that Heins played during his time on stage that shows off what the company's forthcoming mobile operating system could look like when it officially launches later this year.
 
Cod Liver Oil: Like It Or Not, Apple's Gatekeeper Makes Sense Top
Screen Shot 2012-05-01 at 11.21.11 AMElectronic Freedom Fighters and knee-jerk reactionaries: prepare your big drums because here comes the cause of the week. We learned about Gatekeeper, Apple's app signing solution that ensures "rogue" apps can't infect your computer, a few months ago when the company announced the coming of a new OS, Mountain Lion. Developers recently received a note reminding them to begin implementing Gatekeeper features or, well, nothing bad will happen:
"The Mac App Store is the safest place for users to get software for their Mac, but we also want to protect users when they get applications from other places. Gatekeeper is a new feature in OS X Mountain Lion that helps protect users from downloading and installing malicious software. Signing your applications, plug-ins, and installer packages with a Developer ID certificate lets Gatekeeper verify that they are not known malware and have not been tampered with. Mac Developer Program members can sign applications with their Developer ID now to get ready for Gatekeeper. If you're not already a member, join the Mac Developer Program today."
 
SigFig Launches To Be The Data-Driven Financial Planner Of Your Dreams Top
Screen Shot 2012-05-01 at 8.23.02 AMWhether you have $10,000 or $10 million dollars, trying to find help to manage your investments can be a minefield. Enter SigFig. Launching in public beta mode today, SigFig is a web application that tracks all of your various investments -- bank accounts, 401k plans, IRAs, stock holdings, and the like -- and gives tailored recommendations about your portfolio's performance and changes that you could make. It's a very visual product, so SigFig's co-founders Mike Sha and Parker Conrad came to TechCrunch TV to give a detailed walk-through, which you can watch in full in the video embedded above. Here's how it works:
 
Newvem Raises $4M From Greylock, Eric Schmidt To Help AWS Customers Spend Less Money Top
newEXCLUSIVE-Startup Newvem, which offers a SaaS based service for Amazon/AWS customers that aims to help businesses spend less money and gain more value from Amazon's cloud infrastructure, has raised $4 million in funding from Greylock Partners with participation from Index Ventures and Eric Schmidt's Innovation Endeavors, as well as angel investors, including David Strohm, George Kadifa, and Maurice Werdegar. As part of this financing round, Greylock's Erez Ofer is joining the Newvem board of directors. Basically, Newvem's KnowYourCloud Analytics is a free SaaS solution for Amazon AWS customers, that provides a 360-degree view of AWS cloud usage, revealing issues and anomalies in their cloud, and recommending actionable insights that help solve not just cost efficiency, but security, availability, and utilization issues.
 
Get Satisfaction Wants To Spread Community (Widgets) Everywhere With Engage Top
GetSat_Engage1Get Satisfaction was built around the importance of community to businesses. Now, with the launch of a new product called Get Satisfaction Engage, it wants to make those communities embeddable anywhere. Basically, Engage is a new architecture for Get Satisfaction widgets, turning them into customizable versions of a company's Get Satisfaction community. People can browse the new widgets without leaving whatever web page they're on. That means all the discussion among a company's customers, users, and fans will become more useful to people who aren't a part of that community — including in a several contexts outside beyond the customer support arena where Get Satisfaction first made its name.
 
Crocodoc Debuts HTML5 Document Embedding Technology; Partners With Dropbox, Yammer, SAP Top
crocodocY Combinator alum Crocodoc is debuting a new technology today that aims to bring an enterprise-grade HTML5 document embedding service for Microsoft Office and PDF files to web-based products. Crocodoc launched in 2010 to kill off Acrobat. The startup's initial Flash-based technology allowed you to upload a PDF, and receive a version of the same document in your browser, which you could then share with coworkers and annotate with notes, highlighting, text, and a pen tool, with changes that show up to other users in real-time. Last year, Crocodoc launched this technology in HTML5 for mobile embedding.
 
Hardware Startups: Join Us In Hardware Alley At TechCrunch Disrupt NY Top
tcdisrupt_web-001-5TechCrunch Disrupt is all about shining the spotlight on exciting start-ups. But starting at this year's New York show, we're including hardware startup in the mix. After an initial call over the weekend, spots are filling up quickly, but there is still room for several more. Hardware Alley will run alongside Start-Up Alley on the last day of Disrupt, May 23rd. We're looking for promising hardware startups. Got a disruptive Kickstarter project? An innovative take on beer kegs? Perhaps a modern-day ornithopter. Whatever it is, we want to give you a chance to show it off to the best and brightest in the tech world.
 
Jitterbug.tv Launches First Subscription Music & Video Service For Kids Top
ipad5Parents looking for a curated selection of music and videos that's a little more kid-friendly than YouTube have another option now, thanks to the launch of Jitterbug.tv. The new iPad app is the first subscription-based music service for kids, and is targeting the 2-7 age range. Included in the app are videos and music from top kids artists like 23 Skidoo, The Jimmies, Laura Veirs, Milkshake Music, The Verve Pipe (yes, they're a kids' band now), Recess Monkey, and Gustafar Yellowgold. I know, I know. If you don't have kids, you're like who the heck...wait, Verve Pipe? What? But if you are a parent of a young one, you'll recognize at least a few of those names. (Sadly).
 
Confirmed: Etsy Buys Artisanal Goods Seller Trunkt, Moves Into Wholesale Top
Big_The_Etsy_LogoEtsy has become the go-to site for people looking for home-made crafts and vintage items from independent artisans -- and for artisans wanting to sell them, and it now counts some 39 million monthly unique visitors, 13 million items and 800,000 storefronts within its virtual walls. Now it looks like Etsy wants to expand into serving a new class of buyers and sellers: the company has apparently bought Trunkt, which specializes in selling artisanal goods wholesale.
 
Verbatim Outs A New Line Of Colorful, Speedy And Affordable USB 3.0 Flash Drives Top
V3_USB_Group_2-2USB 3.0 is still slowly rolling out but Verbatim has charged forward with a line of flash drives. The new line of Store 'n' Go V3 USB 3.0 flash drives utilize the latest USB spec for speedy transfers. Verbatim boasts that they're twice as fast as USB 2.0 drives. Like other USB 3.0 devices, these models are backwards compatible with USB 2.0 and 1.1 ports although the speeds will be slower. Plus, with the price starting at $19.99 for the 8GB model, they're relatively affordable as well.
 
ecoATM Raises $17M From Coinstar And Others For Electronics Recycling And Resale Kiosk System Top
ecoatmEcoATM, a company that creates kiosks that automate the buy-back of used mobile phones and other used portable electronics directly from consumers, has raised $17 million in funding from Claremont Creek Ventures, Coinstar, TAO Ventures, PI Holdings, Moore Venture Partners, AKS Capital and Koh Boon Hwee. As you may know, Coinstar operates the change conversion kiosks and owns DVD kiosk service Redbox. The company previously raised $14.4 million from Coinstar, Claremont Creek Ventures, and others Here's how EcoATM works. The seller places their phone into the kiosk (the company says it will not damage the phone nor read/copy any personal data from the device). The kiosk then visually identifies the phone as best it can from a database of around 4,000 devices and uses visual recognition technology to determine if the device has been damaged, and also offers up a device-compatible cable connection which allows it to analyze whether or not the device boots.
 
The BlackBerry 10 Camera App Can Turn Back Time Top
back-future-6A camera is highly important in any smartphone. Even since before the iPhone, the ability to snap a picture on your cell phone and essentially leave your camera at home not only changed the digital camera industry for good, but it has changed the way we look at smartphones and ultimately affects our purchasing decisions. At RIM's BlackBerry Jam conference this morning, the company hit us with a really interesting take on smartphone camera software. We still know very little about the hardware specs coming out of RIM later this year, but a demo of the BlackBerry camera app shows that the company is thinking about ways to wow current and potential BlackBerry users.
 
The Future Of RIM: "BlackBerry Isn't For Everyone" Top
rim-not4every1Today is BlackBerry Jam, RIM's developer conference or WWDC equivalent. It's RIM's moment to redefine, rejuvenate, and re-establish itself in the world. Whether or not the company can pull it off, however, is an entirely different matter. BlackBerry 10, RIM's brand new platform, has been delayed, run into naming issues, and seen the transfer of power go from the company's co-founders, Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis, to long-time employee Thorsten Heins. The conference will prove whether or not RIM is now adaptable — something for which the company has been publicly flogged for the past year. We took a trip up to Waterloo to speak with some of the employees ahead of the event, namely Vivek Bhardwaj, Head of Software Portfolio EMEA for RIM, and as I walked away I felt less sure of who RIM is and what the company is about than I ever have before.
 
Early Look: BlackBerry 10′s Smart New Take On Touchscreen Typing Top
bb10keyboardAs it stands, most of BlackBerry 10 is still shrouded in mystery. Not even the Dev Alpha devices that will be made available to developers offer a glimpse of RIM's new software -- they're running a modified version of the PlayBook OS instead. All that said, RIM hopes to whet our appetites with glimpses at some of the nifty little touches that BlackBerry 10 will sport when it sees a widespread launch later this year. TechCrunch went to Waterloo and met with Vivek Bhardwaj, RIM's Head of Software Portfolio, who took a few moments to give us one such sneak peek -- an early look at BlackBerry 10's keyboard, still a work in progress.
 
RIM Officially Opens BlackBerry 10 To Developers, Greets Them With Dev Alpha Devices Top
devalphaRIM has caught plenty of flack these past few months, thanks to (among other things) a multi-day global outage, disappointing PlayBook sales, and a dramatic management shake-up. Beyond all of this, the news that their next-generation BlackBerry 10 operating system wouldn't see the light of day until the latter parts of 2012 seemed like yet another nail in RIM's coffin. But the beleaguered company is trying to move past all of that at BlackBerry World. While we regular folk still have months to wait until the first BB10 products make it to store shelves, RIM has just officially opened up the BlackBerry 10 platform to developers at BlackBerry World, starting with the release of their BB10 beta development toolkits and the BlackBerry 10 Developer Alpha device.
 

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