Thursday, May 31, 2012

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Now At 17M+ Users, Rebtel Brings Cheap VoIP Calls, Texts To The iPad Top
Screen shot 2012-05-31 at 5.39.08 PMWith Skype under Microsoft ownership, Rebtel now claims to be the largest independent mobile VoIP provider, with 17 million users in over 200 countries accessing its service over WiFi and 3G on iPhone, Android, and PCs. Rebtel has added two million users since February, and is seeing an average of 650K new users a month -- many of whom have been attracted by its low-cost calling to landlines and mobile, along with the ability to switch between data and voice connections to avoid dropped calls and busy networks. Previously, Rebtel users have been able to download its iPhone app and use it on their iPads, but today the company is launching its first iPad app, with new navigation, graphics, and phonebook integration all optimized for Apple's tablet.
 
Fred Wilson Talks NYC's Tech Scene, The Effect Of Angel Investors, And More [TCTV] Top
517374801_3_oIf you want to learn about the booming tech startup scene in New York City, it doesn't get much better than talking to Fred Wilson. Wilson has emerged as perhaps the most recognizable figure of the now-booming New York tech scene, through his 25-year career as a venture capitalist (currently he's a partner at venture capital firm Union Square Ventures) and also through his very popular "A VC" blog.
 
Is Facebook Down? Yes For Some. Outages Have Lasted Two Hours and Counting Top
screen-shot-2010-09-23-at-2-02-36-pm"Let me tell you the difference between Facebook and everyone else, we don't crash EVER!" - 'Mark Zuckerberg', The Social Network. Not quite. Facebook has been offline or slow to load for some users around the world for over two hours. Reports started flooding in to Twitter at roughly 4:26pm PST today with many users quipping that "Facebook is down. Just like its stock price." Despite some who lost service regaining it temporarily, two hours in DownForEveryoneOrJustMe confirms the outage continues for portions of Facebook's 900 million users, though others have had no trouble logging on. We're awaiting a response from Facebook on the cause.
 
BlackBerry PlayBook Update Adds Improved Android Compatibility Top
playbook2_toronto_1384c09fThe RIM PlayBook by just received a developers update that adds some interesting new Android functionality to RIM's tablet. This new version now supports Android apps running in their own windows, improving compatibility with the general Android app universe.
 
Goodbye Photoshop, Hello Cloudinary Top
cloudinary logo - transparent (500px)Manipulating images for your website is such a tedious chore. You need to open Photoshop, click your mouse about ten thousand times, then save the file and upload it. Then next month you redesign your site and suddenly need to re-size all your image elements again! Startup Cloudinary has a good alternative for you: use custom URLs to transform your images in the cloud! I was a bit skeptical when I first read about Cloudinary, but after five minutes of goofing around with it I'm sold.
 
Kickstarter Responds To Hidden "Failed Project" Claims Top
Screen Shot 2012-05-31 at 5.59.40 PMYancey Strickler, co-founder of Kickstarter, dropped us a line about the systems in place to "hide" failed projects. He told us that Kickstarter does indeed hide many projects from search robots, but it's for a good cause. "The original poster was correct in noting that we don't have a browse area for projects whose funding was unsuccessful," he wrote. "This isn't to 'hide failure,' as the original post said, it's because it would be a poor user experience (there's no action that anyone could take) and it would expose the creators of unsuccessfully funded projects to unnecessary criticism from the web (those projects would be prime for trolling)."
 
Solar Mosaic Raises $2.5 Million Series A To Be The "Kickstarter For Solar" Top
Screen shot 2012-05-31 at 2.51.03 PMSolar Mosaic, an Oakland, California-based startup that is creating a crowdfunding platform specifically for solar energy projects, has taken on $2.5 million in Series A funding. The round was led by Spring Ventures with the participation of Serious Change, Jim Sandler, Steve Wolf, Tom Chi, and a group of angels from the "Toniic" investor network.
 
The Rumored iPhone 5′s Four Inch Front Panel Can Nearly Swallow An Old iPhone Whole Top
1380486611 Another day, another iPhone 5 leak. This time we're looking at a four-inch long front panel of what appears to be a new iPhone. This panel suggests a longer, 16:9 style body and screen and lines up with previous news of a longer iPhone casing with a Micro USB port on the bottom. I'm very skeptical in regards to these videos simply because rapid prototyping and sourcing is getting so simple these days anyone can carve out a convincing iPhone shell and take some good footage of it. Am I skeptical enough to dismiss this outright, however? No.
 
Timing Is Everything: Indie Movie Discovery Platform Prescreen To Close Its Doors Top
Screen shot 2012-05-31 at 1.14.39 PMIt was just last September that we covered the launch of Prescreen, the startup founded by former Groupon and Zoosk execs that aimed to help independent films find the publicity they nearly always lack. To do so, they built a curated, on-demand video platform that would give filmmakers and distributors an alternative to traditional ad and distribution channels, while giving users an easy way to discover low-budget films they wouldn't otherwise. But, as it goes in Startup Land, sometimes even veteran advisors, seed capital, and a good idea aren't enough to keep a business afloat. Yesterday, Prescreen notified its users that it will be suspending its beta until further notice. While this doesn't exactly mean that the startup has hit the deadpool, for all intents and purposes for its users, Prescreen is no longer operational.
 
Fly Or Die: HTC Evo 4G LTE [TCTV] Top
Screen shot 2012-05-31 at 4.25.25 PMI'm smack dab in the middle of my HTC Evo 4G LTE review (the full review will be up tomorrow), but as I judge, I felt the need to bring John Biggs into the mix for a little Fly or Die. Now, John is notoriously hard on Android phones, namely because they're all incredibly similar. The Evo 4G LTE is no different. I, on the other hand, think it brings some pretty strong design language to the table, which could be great for someone looking to stand out.
 
First Impressions On Fluent, The Startup Promising "The Future Of Email" Top
Fluent-logoY Combinator's Paul Graham recently begged entrepreneurs to consider "frightening ambitious startup ideas," like building a better search engine or replacing universities. "Any one of them could make you a billionaire," said Graham. "That might sound like an attractive prospect, and yet when I describe these ideas you may notice you find yourself shrinking away from them," he said. "Don't worry, it's not a sign of weakness. Arguably it's a sign of sanity. The biggest startup ideas are terrifying." Among those terrifying ideas was rethinking the inbox, and in particular, the Gmail inbox. Although there has been much complaining about the sorry state of email, very few companies are addressing the situation. It's just too hard. But there is an interesting startup to watch in this space, which happens to be thinking about the bigger picture. The somewhat stealthy Fluent is not shy about its vision either, offering a tagline that boldly proclaims it's offering "the future of email." But can it deliver?
 
Google Calls Its Smart Ad Relevance System "Smart Ass" (Yes, Seriously) Top
Screen Shot 2012-05-31 at 12.44.28 PMWhat's the best thing that I (and others) learned at D10 this year? (Other than the fact that Steve Jobs used to own a peacock, of course.) Onstage at D10, Google SVP of Advertising Susan Wojcicki revealed, in answering Walt Mossberg's question about the sad state of ad relevancy, that Google calls its machine learning smart ad targeting technology "Smart Ass" internally. Aside from those self-driving cars, this is probably the coolest thing happening at Google at the moment.
 
Chrome SVP Sundar Pichai Confirms Chrome Is (Mostly) Beating IE Top
Chrome-logo-2011-03-16Remember this report about Google Chrome passing Microsoft's Internet Explorer in browser market share? Well, at today's D10 conference, Chrome SVP Sundar Pichai basically confirmed this is true, saying that Chrome is "#1 in most countries" and even noting that Chrome's market share is over 50% in some regions. One-third of people are using Chrome, said Pichai.
 
Microsoft Launches Windows 8 Release Preview Top
Windows 8 Consumer PreviewMicrosoft just announced that the Windows 8 Release Preview, the company's final pre-release version of Windows 8, is now available for download. With this release, Microsoft is also making new versions of its Windows 8 apps for Hotmail, SkyDrive an Messenger available, as well as hundreds of new and updated apps from third-party developers in the Windows Store.
 
SEO Was Yesterday. 500 Startups' PostRocket Fires Up $610K For Facebook News Feed Optimization Top
PostRocket LogoBusinesses struggle to come up with what to post to their Facebook Page each day, and making those posts actually get seen is a difficult as the dark arts. That's why PostRocket has raised $610,000 to help businesses blow up on Facebook thanks to news feed optimization. PostRocket analyzes your Facebook Page, and provides recommendations for when and what to post. The 500 Startups Fall 2011/Winter 2012 company pulled in the syndicate seed round from Polaris Ventures, 500 Startups, and several angels. PostRocket's CEO Tim Chae is actually the youngest founder ever funded by Dave McClure's accelerator.
 
OnSwipe Heads To The iPhone, Launches Layout Personalization With OnSwipe Draft Top
onswipe_phone_swipeOnSwipe's been around for a little over a year, and since raised a total of $6 million in funding and launched content recommendations within its HTML5 tablet publishing network. But just as tablets are entering into mainstream territory, people are now entirely comfortable consuming long-form content on their even-smaller iPhone. That said, publishers who don't want to build out an app will now have a new tool to display iPhone-optimized content to folks on-the-go.
 
"In the Studio," PublikDemand's Courtney Powell is Building a Better Business Bureau for the Social Age Top
Screen shot 2012-05-31 at 2.07.27 AM"In the Studio" begins the summer by welcoming an entrepreneur from Austin who worked in various roles at different startups before she tried to return a cable box to TimeWarner, an experience which motivated her to assemble a new squad, form a new company, and move west to Silicon Valley where she now leads a small team based out of 500 Startups that may be sitting on the next big idea. Courtney Powell is the CEO and co-founder of PublikDemand, a social crowd-based platform where individuals can initiate and/or join campaigns (or "demands") against Fortune 1000 companies. (Currently, they support demands against nine larger companies and plan to expand as demands increase.) Their platform is different from other "social good" or corporate social responsibility programs -- on PublikDemand, customers of companies can use the power of the crowd to lodge complaints against those large entities and pressure them into changing policy. Within the last six months, PublikDemand has served as the catalyst for a California man who became so fed up with his service from AT&T that he initiated his campaign against the company on the site itself, has created targeted leads for AT&T competitors, and has even caught the eye of Netflix's Reed Hastings in his fight to preserve Net Neutrality.
 
FTC Chairman Leibowitz: More Privacy Could Actually Bring Bigger Revenues For Web Giants Top
Screen Shot 2012-05-31 at 9.38.32 AMPrivacy guidelines such as the "Do Not Track" option proposed by the Federal Trade Commission does not necessarily mean the end of the kind of targeted online ads that have brought such riches to web companies over the past decade. In fact, FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz says, more privacy on the Internet could actually bring the industry much more money that it attracts now.
 
TC/Gadgets Webcast: WWDC Expectations, E3 Excitement, And The Death Of The Spec Top
Screen shot 2012-05-31 at 2.52.27 PMQuite a bit hangs on the horizon in the world of gadgets. E3 is right around the corner, as is WWDC (Apple's Developer conference), and while hardware gets cooler and cooler, the spec does not. John, Matt and I discuss this and more in this week's TC/Gadgets webcast.
 
Google Applies for .Google, .Docs, .YouTube and .LOL Top-Level Domains Top
dot-google-logoToday, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) closed its window for new generic top-level domain name applications. ICANN will publish a list of all the applied-for strings in two weeks, but Google today already announced some of the names it applied for. Among these are, as expected, .google and .youtube. According to Google's chief Internet evangelist and "father of the Internet" Vint Cerf, however, the company also applied for domains it thinks " have interesting and creative potential," including .lol.
 

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