Monday, July 2, 2012

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Commerce Sciences Nabs $1.8M From Eric Schmidt, Joe Lonsdale To Make Online Shopping More Personal Top
Screen shot 2012-07-02 at 1.05.24 PMCommerce Sciences, an Israeli eCommerce startup currently shrouded in the infamous "stealth mode," wants to help personalize your online shopping experience. To do so, the Palo Alto and Israeli-based company is announcing today that it has raised $1.8 million in seed funding from a number of familiar names. The investors include Eric Schmidt's Innovation Endeavors, veteran Israeli VC firm Genesis Partners, T5 Capital, and a number of angel investors, including Backplane board chairman and Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale.
 
Fiksu Raises $10M From Qualcomm Ventures, Charles River To Help Mobile App Makers Get Users Top
fiksuFiksu, a Boston-based company that helps mobile developers efficiently find new users, just picked up $10 million in a new round led by Qualcomm Ventures. Previous investors including Charles River Ventures also participated. "Qualcomm is wonderfully strategic for us in the mobile space," said Craig Palli, who is the company's vice president of business development. "They're so well tied to a variety of mobile handset manufacturers and that's the one area where Fiksu can really benefit from new relationships." The funding is going to go toward international expansion with more offices in the U.K. and Asia. The company currently has more than 100 people and plans to double its headcount in the next year.
 
Nice Move: The Weather Channel Buys Weather Underground To Sharpen Focus On Digital Top
Screen Shot 2012-07-02 at 2.18.06 PMSmart move, this: The Weather Channel has acquired pioneering online weather service Weather Underground for an undisclosed sum, the companies announced today. The deal is expected to close in several weeks. The Atlanta, Georgia-based The Weather Channel has long had a strong brand name, wide reach, and big revenues, but...
 
Auto-Sunk. Check Your Hidden Facebook "Other" Inbox For Your Missing Emails Top
Facebook Other MessagesClick 'Messages' on Facebook and then "Other" in the right sidebar and you might find emails missing from your Gmail or other personal and work accounts. Without giving you any warning or notification, Facebook last week changed your profile to hide any email addresses you've previously listed and instead show only your little-known "@facebook.com" address. Any messages sent to you or your @facebook.com address that weren't sent from friends, friends of friends, or email addresses registered to their Facebook accounts ends up there, easily missed. Now Facebook's unauthorized change to your preferred contact info is auto-syncing with address books for some mobile devices, so people don't even realize they're not pinging your Gmail, they're sending messages to your Other black hole. But rather than apologize, Facebook has implied to ReadWriteWeb that users are merely confused. Yes, users are confused...because Facebook changed their contact info without consent!
 
Secure Your Retina MacBook With The MacLocks Lock Cable Top
MacBook Pro Case NG12If you're the average Joe, you don't let your Retina MacBook out of your sight. But what if you're an IT guy with a fleet of these things to secure on a client site? What to do? MacLocks has just launched a locking case for the Retina MacBook, allowing folks to snap down their laptops almost anywhere. The case actually envelops the MacBook and the looped cable then fits over a table leg or pillar.
 
Mixpanel Is Tracking More Than Actions Now, Introduces User Analytics Top
mixpanel-logoEvery time I talk to Mixpanel co-founder Suhail Doshi, he likes to update me on how many actions his analytics startup is tracking for its customers every month. (In case you're wondering: The latest number is more than 6 billion.) But Mixpanel isn't just tracking actions anymore — starting today, it's tracking people, too and providing a more "user-centric" view of its data. Specifically, when customers open up their Mixpanel dashboard, they'll see a new menu under the "actions" section called "people", where they can get data about all of their visitors, such as gender, age, and country, and then correlate that data with user activity, so that, for example, you can tell whether men or women are spending more time in your app. Doshi says these are the kinds of "really hard but very specific" questions that most companies have to build their own in-house analytics systems to answer.
 
Hands-On With California Headphones: A Little Bit Country, A Little Bit Rock 'n' Roll Top
headphones-3Stop pretending to be a rap star. That's the note on the front California Headphones website and the driving philosophy behind the company's Laredo and Silverado headphones. You see, these headphones, much like Beats By Dr. Dre, are targeting a specific demographic with clear marketing and unique styling. But these headphones are more than just looking the part. They're tuned to better match the musical style of rock and country, with less pounding bass and a heaver investment in mids and highs. California Headphones is onto something here and has turned to Kickstarter to help advance the cause. The lifestyle headphone market has long focused on the urban culture. Since these headphones are tuned to match rap and R&B's style, they often do not reproduce rock or country accurately. Sure, there are always the great standby options of Sennheiser, Shure and other traditional audio companies, but more often than not, the styling is anything but inspiring. There's nothing wrong with wanting good looking headphones.
 
I Was A Postmates Courier For A Day Top
postmates featuredI've been a big fan of the PostMates Get It Now delivery service ever since it was launched more than a month ago, and use it every couple of weeks to order lunch whenever I'm feeling particularly lazy, when I'm jonesing for some food that's not within walking distance, or when I have a limited amount of time in between meetings. I've got much love for the PostMates couriers who bring me things that I wouldn't have gone out and gotten for myself. And so, when they asked if I wanted to spend an afternoon as a courier myself, of course I jumped at the opportunity. Which is how it came to pass that one Friday, I spent about 3.5 hours biking around, picking up mostly lunch orders and chocolates and delivering to various startups and tech-savvy customers in downtown San Francisco. So what was it like? Well let me tell you.
 
Leaked Windows Phone Keyboard: Curved For Your Typing Pleasure Top
curvedy-keyboardMicrosoft is on a hot streak. The company has never been cooler, pushing out hot new start screens (both desktop and mobile), excluding early-adopters from major upgrades (pulling a Google), and snagging the up-and-coming Yammer enterprise social network for a cool $1.2 billion. But sometimes people can get carried away. So is the case with this image of an alleged future Windows Phone keyboard, which curves out of the bottom right-side of the phone into an arc for one-thumb typing. As you can see, the image doesn't look very well put-together. But WMPowerUser claims that this image was leaked from an internal presentation, so it's entirely possible that it's a render.
 
comScore: In U.S. Mobile Market, Samsung, Android Top The Charts; Apps Overtake Web Browsing Top
comScore_InccomScore just released its latest monthly mobile numbers, which chart mobile phone usage for a three-month average period ending in May 2012. During this time, 234 million Americans age 13 and older used mobile devices, which is consistent with the company's previous report from February. Samsung ranked as the top handset manufacturer overall with a 25.7% market share, and Android came out on top, too, with a 50.9% share versus Apple's 31.9%.
 
Acunote: YC Alum Takes On Project Management With A Real-Time, Gmail-Like Interface Top
Acunote logo"On time and under budget" is manna from heaven for project managers the world over, but unfortunately for most of them, those working on the projects and those commissioning them, it's not often the case. Now, a Y Combinator alum (Winter 2011 class) called Acunote is launching a new project management system that wants to change that -- by offering a platform to help people manage their tasks better. With real time updates and a simple interface that bears a loose resemblance to Google's Gmail, Acunote is making it a lot easier and quicker for people to update what is going on (and what is not) in a project. And it is setting its sights on taking that to the next level with features to make it much more collaborative.
 
Dark Clouds Be Gone: Apica Raises $5M From SEB, Others To Keep SaaS Services Running Without A Hitch Top
ApicaLogo_org_GreyHere's a timely funding announcement: Apica, a company that offers a solution enterprises can use to keep their cloud-based apps running smoothly -- even when there are problems in the clouds -- has just raised $5 million to continue expanding its services. The news coms after a weekend that saw several popular services like Instagram and  Netflix collapse after a major storm knocked out one of Amazon's major data centers in North Virginia. The $5 million announced today will be used for product development, marketing and expanding particular services in the U.S. around server testing capacity for the company's cloud and mobile testing and monitoring services. It is a Series C round and was led by SEB Venture Capital, with existing investors Industrifonden, ALMI Invest, and KTH Chalmers Capital all participating.
 
Youappi Secures $1 Million To Address App Discovery And Distribution In A Chaotic Market Top
youappiYouappi, the cross-platform app distribution startup which competes with Fiksu, has secured $1 million in seed funding from undisclosed Angel investors. It's now launching its solution on Tappible, a monetization and engagement platform for mobile applications. Youappi, which is based between Israel and New York, was founded by CEO Moshe Vaknin who left to do Youappi from Todacell last month. Youappi is trying to address the challenge of app discovery. You know the score - it's tough to find great apps. Appsfire and others are working well on this issue, but there's plenty more work to be done.
 
80% Of Americans Work "After Hours," Equaling An Extra Day Of Work Per Week Top
hell-1Have you ever read news that sort of makes you want to cry? I have to warn you, that's what this new study from enterprise mobility company Good Technology might inspire. The company polled 1,000 U.S. workers to get a better understanding of their mobile work habits. The results are not surprising: the line between work and free time has become so blurred it's practically non-existent. 80% of people continue working after leaving the office (a figure which actually sounds low, if you ask me). Half of them do so because they feel they have "no choice." Connectedness means customers demand fast replies. There's no off switch. Half of respondents check their email in bed, starting at around 7:09 AM. 68% check email before 8 AM. And you wonder why people hate email so much? God forbid we get a cup of coffee in us before dealing with the latest work emergency.
 
TechCrunch Makers Episode One: Inside Brooklyn's Makerbot With Bre Pettis Top
replicatorIt's been months in the making, but here it is: the first episode of TechCrunch Makers, featuring Bre Pettis of Makerbot. We visited Bre's downtown Brooklyn factory where he and the rest of team design, build, and ship hundreds of Makerbots a week.
 
Japanese Retailer Rakuten To Launch The Kobo eReader, Localized Content Top
koboThe Kobo eReader is about to invade Japan. Following Rakuten's purchase of the Canadian eReader company, the Japanese online retail giant announced the eReader's launch plans this morning. The Kobo eReader hits the retailer's interwebs on July 17th for ¥7,980 including tax (or $100 USD). The device is completely retooled for the Japanese populace and launches with a large assortment of ePub 3.0 Japanese titles, including novels and comic books.
 
Some Dissatisfied Wireless Customers Leave A Complaint, Others Do This… Top
Screen shot 2012-07-02 at 11.09.45 AMWe've all had our moments of rage when dealing with wireless providers. It's a difficult relationship. We need our phones in a way that makes us far more dependent than any human should be on a large corporation, and because of this, carriers are able to take advantage of our desperation. Now, I'm not saying that's the case with this poor gentleman at a T-Mobile store in Manchester, England. But for whatever reason, he's displaying more rage than I've ever seen out of a dissatisfied customer. Obviously, it doesn't work out too well for him in the end as police officers (Bobbys?) whisk him away in cuffs after his short-lived performance.
 
Amazon's Flow App Brings Barcode Scanning & Augmented Reality To Android Users Top
amazon-flowAmazon Flow, the barcode scanning/augmented reality app from Amazon subsidiary A9.com, has arrived on Android today, following its November 2011 iOS debut. To refresh your memory, the app lets shoppers scan things like CDs, DVDs, books, toys, video games, and more using their smartphone's camera in order to display product details and pricing info. Barcode scanning, however, is not unique to Amazon Flow - the feature is also available in Amazon's flagship application, which is the more popular of the two. But Flow does something special - it supports an augmented reality view of some products, which uses image recognition techniques to show movie trailers and other media previews.
 
Fly Or Die: Retina MacBook Pro Top
Screen shot 2012-07-02 at 10.39.08 AMThe new MacBook Pro with Retina Display. Sure, it stands to fudge up the Internet, but boy is it pretty! The display boasts 5.1 million pixels, with a bump from 1440x900 (on the 15-incher) to a full 2880x1800 resolution. It brings Apple's laptops into the display big leagues with the iPhone and iPad, and gets a bit thinner to boot. Plus, you'll get an HDMI port instead of that optical drive. But is the lofty price tag enough to replace your current MBP? The question can be answered in two parts: first, do you have the cash, and second, how much do you love the Internet?
 
Ogone Launches In-App Payment Library For iOS And Android Top
87407v3-max-250x250It seems that there's no shortage of companies queuing up to help developers integrate payments into their mobile apps and today that space just got a little more crowded: Ogone, a long time player in online payments, has launched an in-app payment library for iOS and Android. The new library complements the company's existing mobile web-based payment system meaning that app developers who rely on Ogone to process payments no longer need to redirect users to the browser in order to take a payment -- presuming that they don't fall foul of Apple's tight grip on in-app purchases for digital goods.
 

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