Friday, June 29, 2012

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Unmetric Scores The Virality Of Brands' YouTube Campaigns Top
unmetric logoSocial benchmarking startup Unmetric just expanded its tools to include YouTube, giving brands a new way to measure the effectiveness of their video campaigns. Of course, companies can already see plenty of stats about their videos — views, likes, and more. But Unmetric tries to synthesize all that data into a single score, and then shows how that score stacks up against competitors.
 
Alexia's Headphones: How We Used CrowdTilt's Group-Funding Platform To Replace Stolen Property Top
Screen shot 2012-06-29 at 9.51.53 AMOn the 25th of June, our dearest Alexia Tsotsis had an incredibly rough day. First, her car was looted by very bad people in San Francisco, who stole her laptop and a pair of excellent Bose headphones that were near and dear to her heart. And as if that wasn't enough, her car then got smashed by someone running a red light, totaling her vehicle and leaving her in quite a bit of pain. When fellow TechCrunch sharks heard the news, we knew we had to do something to help out one of our fearless leaders, and so our very own Ryan Lawler stepped up to the plate with a suggestion to buy some new headphones for Alexia. "Knowing that we can't replace the sentimental value, I was thinking we could maybe (at least) help replace the item that was taken." After a little back and forth, the team settled on an app to help us accomplish the task at hand (we at TC need an app for everything), and that's where CrowdTilt enters the mix.
 
Paul Oakenfold On The Intersection Of Technology And Music [TCTV] Top
Screen Shot 2012-06-29 at 3.37.14 PMPaul Oakenfold, the world-renowned electronic music producer and DJ, has seen a lot of change in the industry since his career began more than 25 years ago. And perhaps the biggest shifts have come from technology -- from the way music is made, to how it's distributed, to where and how people listen to it, to how artists become known and signed to labels, to the tools DJs use in clubs to spin records. So it was really amazing to have Oakenfold swing by the TechCrunch TV studios while he was in San Francisco this week...
 
TechCrunch Giveaway: Another Free Ticket To Disrupt SF! #TCDisrupt Top
disrupt_sf_2012_logoTechCrunch Disrupt SF is back and everything is shaping up nicely behind the scenes. Actually, I was in a Disrupt meeting all day and that's why this post is going out so late. So, you will have an extra day to enter. Congratulations to last week's winner, Samer Karam. We asked everyone who entered to tell us who they would like to see at Disrupt, and Samer's choice was Instagram's Kevin Systrom. We've reached out and will let you know. Also, remember to keep your eyes out for announcement posts; we have some exciting news about Disrupt SF coming up.
 
Fashion-Focused Blog Aggregator Bloglovin Raises $1M From Betaworks And Others Top
bloglovin_printscreenBloglovin, a startup that has been compared to Tumblr and RSS, has just raised a $1 million Series A. The company bills itself as a fun, simple way to follow all the fashion blogs that interest you. Like RSS, you can sign up to read updates from any blog (not just the ones on a single platform or content management system), and like Tumblr, there's an emphasis on high-quality visuals and community. Bloglovin even held a fashion awards ceremony in New York earlier this year.
 
Facebook's First Public Earnings, Q2 2012, Scheduled For July 26th Top
Screen shot 2012-06-29 at 2.05.53 PMFacebook will give investors and the world their first official look at its post-IPO earning for Q2 2012 at 2pm PST on July 26th, according to a brief note posted to its investor relations page just now. There's been no indication of whether CEO Mark Zuckerberg will participate in an earnings call or if more business focused execs COO Sheryl Sandberg and CFO David Ebersman will be the ones fielding questions. The company pulled in $1.058 billion in Q1 2012 revenue with a net income of $205 million. Critics will want to see both of those increase and will likely focus on its mobile revenue. Facebook only began showing ads on mobile at the end of February, but monetizing the medium is believed to be the linchpin of Facebook's future success.
 
AgLocal Raises $1 Million From Andreessen Horowitz & Others To Enable Sustainable Meat Production Top
aglocalAgLocal, a startup that's using the power of the Internet to disrupt how animal farmers connect with meat buyers and distributors, has just scored $1 million in funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Midwest VC firm OpenAir Equity Partners and other angels including John Fohr (Partner at Lux Capital), Thad Langford (former CEO of Zave Networks), Dan Carroll (founder of Leap2 and AdPredictive), Andy O'Hara (Partner at Tradebot Ventures), and Matt Watson (Founder of Vin Solutions and Stackify). The additional funding will help the company build out its technology platform, hire additional engineers, and establish relationships with potential partners in advance of its late summer/fall launch planned for later this year.
 
Social Travel Site Gogobot Redesigns: Less Text, More Photos Top
gogobotGogobot, the social travel site that recently passed the 1 million registered user mark, just launched an interesting redesign this week that turn the site's homepage into more of an interactive magazine experience with a focus on photos instead of the site's previous text-heavy design. As Gogobot's founder Travis Katz told me earlier this week, the Gogobot team noticed that its users didn't just use the service to plan their trips and update their friends, but that many of them also used the service just to browse photos. This, said Katz, became especially clear after Gogobot launched its mobile app earlier this year and allowed users to share and create virtual postcards from their trips.
 
Allied Electronics Is Now Accepting Orders For The Bite-Sized Raspberry Pi Top
6a00d83451b2c969e20168e83761ef970c-500wiThe Raspberry Pi is a tasty little Linux computing device but it's so far been rather hard to buy. I've wanted to order one since it officially started to ship in April. However, due to the limited quantities, retailers sold out nearly immediately. Enter Allied Electronics. The Texas-based electronic distributor is now taking orders for the Raspberry Pi at the list price of $35 each with the only caveat being shipping is not for 10-12 weeks. But I'll take it!
 
ZURB Launches Foundation 3 To Take On Twitter's Bootstrap Framework Top
zurb_foundation_3Twitter's Bootstrap gives developers an easy to use, grid-based and responsive framework for quickly designing prototypes and basic web pages, as well as production-ready interactive sites. With Foundation, product design company ZURB offers a direct competitor to Twitter's product and the company is launching version 3 of its framework. This new version, which the company just announced at Groupon's Schmonference, is significantly easier to customize and, as ZURB tells us, almost all of the CSS code has been rewritten to make it more polished and easier to restyle and modify as well. The Foundation team also rewrote some of the grid system - which is really the heart of the framework.
 
Grou.ps Launches LoveBucks, A New Subscription-Based Monetization Platform For Online Publishers Top
Love BucksMaking money in the online content business isn't always easy, especially for publishers and bloggers who don't have a huge audience. Besides advertising, there aren't too many options for online publishers and even though it looked like micropayments would offer a solution a few years ago, they never caught on with the public. Today, Grou.ps is taking a stab at solving this problem. It's launching a new program called LoveBucks that allows users to buy a monthly subscription (starting at $2.95/month) and then users can spend this money by clicking on the LoveBucks widgets on sites that sign up for the program.
 
Ren Ng Steps Down As Lytro CEO, Will Take Over As Executive Chairman; Charles Chi Named Interim CEO Top
lytro (2)Lytro Founder Ren Ng has announced that he's stepping down as CEO and will be transitioning into the company's Executive Chairman effective immediately. Charles Chi, the current Executive Chairman, has been named interim CEO until a more permanent CEO has been found.
 
Tagstand Hits 1M Actions, Launches New Tag Writer To Bring NFC To The Mainstream Top
Screen shot 2012-06-29 at 12.57.39 PMGoogle is making a serious push with NFC on Android. As we detailed last night, Android product management director Hugo Barra revealed yesterday that Google is now shipping 1 million NFC-equipped devices every week. Beyond Google Wallet, the company announced some cool new features to Android Beam at I/O on Wednesday, including giving users the option to share video through NFC or pair their phones to other NFC-enabled devices just by tapping it. Last night, Google showcased Beam's new functionality with two apps, Paper Camera and Tagstand's Task Launcher. Y Combinator-backed Tagstand, in particular, has been on a mission to make NFC more of a mainstream technology and is starting to pick up steam as a result.
 
YouTube And Google+ Grow Closer: All Users Can Now Switch Their Usernames To Their Google+ Profiles Top
youtube-full-nameYouTube's comment section isn't exactly known for being a hotbed of in-depth intellectual conversations. One of the reasons for this, some would argue, is the fact that YouTube still lets people post comments using handles like 'cutepuppies99' without having to reveal your real identity. Starting today, however, you will have the option to use your Google-wide Google+-based identity that will show your real name (or at least the name you are using on Google+) to all YouTube users.
 
AdMob Founder Omar Hamoui Has A New Polling Startup, Calls It 'Maybe' Top
maybe screenshot 1Can't decide what shoes to buy? Or what book to read next? AdMob founder and former CEO Omar Hamoui is launching a new startup called Maybe to help with your decision. Last month, Hamoui told me that he was leaving (and shutting down) Churn Labs, the startup generator that he founded with AdMob engineer Mike Rowehl, because he'd been lured away by one of the Churn startups. At the time, he wasn't ready to say anything about the startup in question, but now he is, because a preview version of the Maybe site just went live.
 
Google Pumps Up Jelly Bean's Face Unlock Feature With A New 'Liveness Check' Top
livenesscheckBack when Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich was first introduced in Hong Kong last year plenty of us jaded tech folk took a shine to its new Face Unlock feature, which allows users to unlock their devices with their front-facing cameras. Of course, we now know that it isn't terribly secure — a picture of your face was apparently good enough to fool it — but Google seems to have made Face Unlock just a bit more secure in their early Jelly Bean release.
 
Salon Booking Service StyleSeat Launches Offers Platform To Pull Stylists Away From Daily Deal Sites Top
Welcome to StyleSeatStyleSeat, the "OpenTable for hair stylists" backed by Founders Fund, 500 Startups, Ashton Kutcher, and others (including a who's who of angel investors), is today launching a service called "New Client Offers." The platform allows salons to reach out to potential new clients by offering discounts or extra services redeemable upon their first visit. The offers will be available in the company's online marketplace where customers can also browse area salons, search for professionals based on location, speciality or price, read reviews, view photos of the stylist's work, and then book their appointments directly.
 
Whisk And Foodity Both Raise Funds To Link Recipes To Grocery Stores Top
ikea-cookbook-recipe-ingredientsIt's been an interesting day for a developing market which seems so utterly niche as to be untrue. There really are startups out there linking recipes to supermarket so you can just buy the food you need to make the dishes. Niche, but potentially quite powerful. Two start-ups announced funding today in the UK. Whisk, a startup produced by a minor UK TV celebrity, has raised £170,000 for a product that has yet to launch, while Foodity has secured over £300,000 seed funding for a platform that's already being traded on and has customers after bootstrapping for two years.
 
YouTube's Next New Creator Program Is Meant To Bring In The LOLs Top
youtubeOver the past year, YouTube has been busy with outreach to its community of independent creators through its YouTube Next program. The idea is to identify the next big YouTube stars and to provide them with the resources they need to improve the quality of their content, as well as help build their audiences. So far, the YouTube Next Creator program has focused on a couple of different verticals. Most recently it sought to help out vloggers, and before that worked to find talented producers of cooking and fitness videos. With that in mind, the next vertical it's focusing on is comedy.
 
Google Analytics Goes Mobile With App Analytics And An Android App Top
google analytics mobileGoogle is announcing a big addition to Google Analytics today — Mobile App Analytics. As with the social media-focused reports launched earlier this year, the interest in mobile analytics is obvious — if anything, it may seem that Google is a little late in chasing these trends. In this case, Product Manager JiaJing Wang says the goal was to create a "holistic app analytics." While there are other mobile analytics services out there, Wang says none of them really tracks all of the data that's relevant to an app developer, so they end up stitching different services together into a "disparate and taxing experience."
 

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