Thursday, June 7, 2012

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500 Startups-Backed Cloud Productivity Tool 300.mg To Close Its Doors Next Week Top
Screen shot 2012-06-07 at 9.01.27 PMunching its public beta in the fall of last year, 300milligrams (also known as "300.mg,") set out to build a "priority inbox for team conversations." The startup was one of the 34 teams in 500 Startups' Fall 2011 batch, and, after graduating in January, spent the first half of this year iterating, trying to find its stride, some follow-on funding, and a workable business model. Alas, it seems that 300.mg was unable to find the cash it needed to press on, as TechCrunch learned today that the startup will be closing its doors next Friday, June 15th. According to an email sent to its users, the service will be officially shuttering its service on June 15th, and "all data will be deleted."
 
TaskRabbit Founder Leah Busque Takes Back The Reins, Stepping Back Into CEO Role Top
Leah_Headshot_New-1Leah Busque, the founder of TaskRabbit, the web and mobile marketplace for outsourcing small jobs and errands, has reassumed the role of CEO at the San Francisco-based startup. It was just this past fall that Busque handed over the chief executive title to Eric Grosse, an experienced web executive best known for co-founding Hotwire and leading it through its 2003 sale to digital conglomerate InterActiveCorp. Grosse is staying on with TaskRabbit on the company's board of directors, where he will continue to advise on strategy and operations.
 
Pinterest Ponders A San Francisco Home Top
photo3The tech boom is causing some sort of startup musical chairs: As Twitter moves out of its office today on 795 Folsom to move into a new space at 1355 Market St in San Francisco, our neighbor Yammer joins them, eventually moving out of its abode on the third floor of our 410 Townsend building, leaving the 30,000 square foot area open for the taking ... Rumors have being flying around the building that Pinterest is interested in the space, and those rumors got a little bit more backup when I personally saw Pinterest CEO Ben Silbermann hanging out outside our building with a bunch of suits yesterday as I walked in to work, suits who I'm now assuming are somehow related to PMI Management, the owners of 410 Townsend.
 
Creative Market Nabs $1.3M From SV Angel, CrunchFund To Become An Etsy For Digital Design Top
Screen shot 2012-06-07 at 5.27.29 PMEarlier this year, ColourLovers founders Aaron Epstein, Chris Williams and Darius A Monsef IV (a.k.a. Bubs) launched Creative Market in private beta to give its community of color and template-creating designers a place to sell their digital content. And, today, they're announcing that they've closed a second round of funding to support the impending launch of Creative Market. (Which Monsef says is slated for the next few weeks.) The $1.3 million in new funding comes from new investors, which include SV Angel, CrunchFund, Longworth, Ludlow Ventures, and a number of YC alums, and brings the startup's total funding to $2.3 million. Existing investors, like Atlas Ventures, Morado Ventures, 500 Startups, Seraph Group, and Zelkova Ventures also contributed to the round.
 
T-Mobile Coincidentally Testing "iPhone-Compatible" 4G Network Near WWDC Top
tmobile_logoNetwork testing is hard work. You need to ensure coverage, regular data rates, and spread. That's probably why T-Mobile happens to be testing their 1900 MHz HSPA+ signal around the Moscone Center in San Francisco just in time for WWDC.
 
Facebook's Mobile Power: 83M People And 134M Clicks To iOS Apps In May, Plus Top Leaderboard Spots Top
photo-31It's been anecdotally clear for months now, but Facebook has indeed found a place within mobile developer ecosystems. Today at its App Center launch, the company said it had sent 83 million unique users and a total of 134 million clicks to iOS apps over the course of the last month. Meanwhile, seven of the top ten iOS apps and six of the top ten Android apps have some form of Facebook integration.
 
Facebook's Dilemma With Native iOS Apps: Relevance or Revenues Top
facebook-app-centerFacebook revealed some healthy new stats about how it drives traffic to Apple's iOS ecosystem at an event today in San Francisco. The platform drove people to Apple's App Store 83 million times last month. On top of that, it sent people back to iOS apps they had already downloaded 134 million times. Facebook was also integrated into seven of the top 10 grossing iOS apps and six of the top 10 Android apps. The company's emerging power on mobile platforms has been very visible in the surprising rise of apps like SocialCam and Viddy. But the thing to keep in mind is how huge a strategic turnaround this is for the company. Last year, Facebook was all about HTML5. The company spent months unifying how they build and ship their mobile apps with HTML5 so that they didn't have to build seven different versions of Facebook for the desktop web and multiple mobile platforms. Then they spent months trying to lure top developers into building with HTML5.
 
Facebook's New App Center Is Here: The Details Top
attachmentOkay folks, we're live at Facebook's press event for... sure enough, its new mobile App Center, the one that started leaking out earlier today. The company shared most of the details about how the store will work during a May press announcement, but to review: it'll be one central store for finding any app across web, iOS, Android, mobile web, etc. You'll get app suggestions based on ratings and what your friends play, similar to previous recommendation features that Facebook has provided over the years. And, paid apps are also part of the deal.
 
These Are The Guys That Will Take You To Space… In 2014… For $95K [TCTV] Top
Screen shot 2012-06-07 at 7.59.40 PMIt's in every science fiction book and movie since forever. Humans — the ordinary non-astronaut kind, like you and I — going up into space like it's no big deal. And it's generally believed that one day, eventually, space flight will become mainstream. But alas, the day draws nigh. XCOR Aerospace and Space Expedition Corporation (SXC) have introduced the first aircraft that can endure frequent repeat trips to sub-orbital levels before tuckering out: the Lynx. Since the Lynx, a small fighter-esque plane that only holds two people, can make multiple trips a day back and forth to space, space flight becomes affordable enough for anyone to take the trip. Well, not necessarily anyone. By "affordable," I mean $95,000 for a ticket.
 
Google Gets Better At Detecting Hacked Pages, Adds Golf Search Feature & More Top
largeNewGoogleLogoFinalFlat-aInstead of announcing every one of its many search tweaks individually, Google has lately taken to announcing all the changes it has made to its search engine once per month. Today, the company released a list of the 39 previously unannounced changes it made in May. Among these changes are basic tweaks to its search algorithm, including changes to its so-called Penguin algorithm, a change that should improve the relevancy of news content in Google's main search results, and some tweaks that will help the company detect link schemes that are meant to spam its search results pages.
 
Fly Or Die: Parrot AR.Drone 2.0 Top
Screen shot 2012-06-07 at 6.38.02 PMLet's just cut to the chase. The Parrot AR.Drone 2.0 is awesome. Pricey? Sure — it's $300. It's a toy that costs as much as the smartphone you'd be controlling it with, but it's a grown-up's toy, and one that makes a jaded John Biggs very happy. This is far more than I can say for most of the gadgetry on the market today. But John's opinion aside, this thing just rocks. The quadcopter has a 720p camera that streams the feed directly to your smartphone, along with a QVGA camera measuring the terrain below. Plus, it comes with a built in GPS and allows you to store to a USB key on the device and upload the footage later. Oh, and it can do a flip.
 
LinkedIn Working With Law Enforcement On Password Leak, Says User Email Logins Haven't Been Published Top
linklockIt's been over 24 hours since LinkedIn revealed that "some" of their users' passwords were indeed compromised in that massive leak, and while the investigation is still on going LinkedIn director Vicente Silveira once again took to the company's blog to update their users on the situation. First things first, though there's still no word on how many users were affected, Silveira points out that as far as the team can tell none of the email addresses that correspond to those dumped passwords have been published.
 
An Incubator Just For Media Startups: Turner's Media Camp Accelerator Gets Underway Top
mediacampEarlier this spring, Turner Broadcasting announced that it would be launching an incubator, called Media Camp, specifically for startups in the media space. In March, it put out a call for applications, looking to find some startups to join its 12-week program. Now, after an extensive search, it's ready to announce the lucky six companies that will gain access to a bit of funding and some legal and administrative support -- but more importantly, they'll also get help from mentors in navigating the tricky media world. In most cases, Media Camp is no different from most other incubators: Companies accepted into the program get an investment of about $20,000 in exchange for a maximum 6 percent of equity. In exchange, they get 12 weeks of administrative and legal help, participate in weekly dinners, and get one-on-one mentorship from executives in the media industry.
 
Dennis Crowley On Reinventing Foursquare: De-Emphasizing Check-ins, Digging Into Data, Moving Toward Revenue Top
Screen shot 2012-06-07 at 2.48.33 PMIt has been a big day for Foursquare: The New York-based company finally unveiled the newest version of its popular location-based mobile app, Foursquare 5.0 -- the iOS version of the app launched at midnight Eastern Time, and the Android version was pushed out several hours later. It's a big overhaul for the now three-year-old Foursquare: The app was totally rebuilt from the top to bottom in a way that makes it both more simple and more fully-featured. Foursquare 5.0 is the company's biggest and boldest step yet toward becoming a complete recommendation engine and standalone social network, a bid to move well beyond its reputation as a fun "check-in" app. So TechCrunch TV was very happy to have the opportunity to snag the first post-launch interview with Foursquare co-founder and CEO Dennis Crowley to get the full scoop on how Foursquare 5.0 has been received by users so far and what's up next for the company...
 
Bing Gets Smarter, Partners With Encyclopedia Britannica (But It's No Challenge For Google's Knowledge Graph) Top
bing_logoMicrosoft today announced that it has partnered with Encyclopedia Britannica and will start to prominently feature answers from Britannica Online on the search results pages of Bing. As Franco Salvetti, the principal development lead for Bing, notes in today's announcement, Bing is "about delivering relevant information in a more organized way to help you find what you need more quickly and get stuff done." The search engine's answer feature tries to provide users with a snippet of useful information related to their questions and keywords without having to visit a webpage.
 
Amazon Latest To Start Selling The Nest Learning Thermostat Top
nestNever minding the legal wranglings with Honeywell, Nest Labs is on a roll lately and just announced Amazon as the latest retailer to sell the Nest Learning Thermostat. This follows similar announcements concerning Lowes and the Apple Store. Amazon is currently selling the product at its full $249 MSRP, but it is available through Prime, making it a little better deal than from other retailers.
 
Songza, The Music Streaming Service That Does All Work For You, Launches An iPad App Top
Screen shot 2012-06-07 at 4.47.44 PMMusic is as annoying as it is wonderful. I mean, the listening part is great. But taking the time to curate playlists on Spotify or conjure up the right artist to feed Pandora in exchange for a fresh playlist is tedious, at the very least. But Songza brings the expertly curated playlist straight to your smartphone with little to no work on your part, and today that magic extends to iPad land. That's right. Songza has just launched an iPad app, and let me tell you, it's beautiful.
 
Thanks to YouTube, Netflix and Facebook, IPv6 Traffic Hits New Heights On IPv6 Launch Day Top
World_IPv6_launch_badge_512You probably didn't notice, but yesterday was IPv6 Launch Day and thanks to support from major sites like YouTube, Netflix and others, it was quite a success. In 2011, a number of leading websites, ISPs and home router equipment manufacturers came together to test the successor of IPv4. This time around, the organizers were not just trying to get participants to test their systems but to fully deploy IPv6 on their services. Given the ever-shrinking numbers of available IPv4 addresses, moving to IPv6 is a necessity, but the move to the new protocol has been rather slow.
 
Brands Start Automating Social Media Responses On Facebook And Twitter Top
human-vs-robot-09 (1)Bots in Facebook?  Robots in Twitter?  Pinterest Run by HAL 9000?  It's all very possible. That's right, surprisingly. in the next phase of the social web, brands are applying analysis and digital intelligence to better reach us.  Here's how it's gonna go down.... Companies are struggling to keep up with social media conversations, the growth in this channel has exploded, and will soon automate their responses, for better or for worse.  Expect industries that have intense customer support woes like airlines like United Airlines and telecommunications like Comcast to be overwhelmed with angry customers spilling to social media sites to complain and demand fixes, and consumer companies like Coke, Pepsi, hospitality like Hyatt and Retailers like Best Buy to want to reach out and entice potential customers.
 
Hark Strikes A Deal With Universal To Bring Your Favorite Movie Sound Bites Online Top
hark-logoHark, the online repository for audio clips, is getting more studio content Thursday, with a deal that will bring sound bites from Universal's film library online. Hark will get access to about 100 Universal films, which it will cut up into bite-sized audio clips and add to its sound bite library. That will include memorable one-liners from movies like Animal House, The Blues Brothers, and The Breakfast Club -- satisfying the desires of all of us who still like to quote stuff from the 70's. So why would a studio agree to let Hark distribute its sound clips? For one thing, those clips are usually out there already in some way, shape, or form. But they're usually not accessible in a clean, well-lit place. And they're usually not being monetized. Hark allows studios to control some of the presentation for how those clips appear, and also to sell ads against them.
 

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