Monday, July 2, 2012

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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 for people to 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
apica_logo_A_rgb-300x176 Here's a timely funding announcement: Apica, a company that offers a solution that 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 comes 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 clould 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 1280x800 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.
 
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.
 
CreativeWorx Launches TimeTracker, A Hands-Free Time Tracking Software For Creatives Top
CreativeWorx_TimeTracker_ipadWe've seen a growing need for time tracking enterprise software. 1DayLater has aimed to solve the problem in the UK, and Harvest has built up quite the user-base here in the States, but a new service built by former Adobe executives at CreativeWorx looks to streamline the process in a way that makes time-tracking almost entirely hands-free. Whether you work at an agency as a creative, or do your own freelance work, TimeTracker has no start or stop button, and no tagging requirements. You simply do your work, and see your productivity in an easy-to-read table. The results page looks a bit like a Google Calendar, with various projects having certain colors assigned to them and showing as blocks of time in a weekly schedule. You can also drag and drop various projects to different places if for some reason you see a mistake.
 
HTC's $149 Droid Incredible 4G LTE Coming To Verizon On July 5 Top
droid-incredible-4g-lteHTC's Droid Incredible 4G LTE hasn't been a very well-kept secret (then again, what HTC phone is?), but Verizon has just confirmed what many of us suspected -- their latest HTC handset will hit store shelves on July 5. If you've been itching for an upgrade and just can't wait for a Galaxy S III, expect to shell out $149 (after a mail-in rebate, sadly) for the new Sense-powered slab.
 
Dell Acquires Quest Software For $2.4 Billion Top
dellAnother major acquisition for Dell this morning. The company announced it's buying enterprise management software maker Quest Software for $2.4 billion. Under the terms of the agreement, Dell will pay $28.00 per share, which beat out Insight Venture Partners' bid of $25.75 per share. Quest's assets, including its access management software, performance monitoring solutions, Windows Server management solutions, database management, and more, will now serve to strengthen Dell's recently formed Software Group.
 
Mobile Ad Network Jumptap Preps For IPO, Picks Up Another $27.5M From Keating, WPP And More While Waiting Top
jumptap-logoJumptap -- one of the last big, independent and privately-held mobile ad networks around reaching 263 million people worldwide -- has today announced that it has picked up another $27.5 million in funding to keep up the pace with other players while it prepares for an IPO itself. This round was led by two new backers, Keating Capital and "a large institutional investor" that Jumptap tells me it cannot name. The round also saw participation from existing investors General Catalyst Partners, Redpoint Ventures, Summerhill Ventures, Valhalla Partners, and WPP (the last one of these perhaps one to watch the closest). In total, Jumptap has now raised $121.5 million.
 
Mozilla's Boot To Gecko Becomes Firefox OS, Scores Support From Sprint, Deutsche Telekom, ZTE, And More Top
firefoxosMozilla's Boot to Gecko project has come a long way in just under a year -- what began with the idea of building a mobile operating system based on open web standards like HTML5 has led to a full-fledged product being prepared for a commercial launch in the coming months. What's more, Mozilla has just confirmed that their HTML5-friendly mobile ecosystem now has the support of a handful of new carrier and hardware partners, not to mention a new name. The project has been referred to as Boot to Gecko since it was first revealed last July, but Mozilla has officially rechristened the product Firefox OS.
 
'Mint For Investments' Startup SigFig Goes Mobile With New iPhone And Android Apps Top
64280_sigfig_logoMost banks have begun to provide native apps -- or at the very least, mobile-friendly websites -- to give users access to their funds and information about their accounts. But when it comes to their investment accounts, few have very much transparency into where their money has been invested, how much they are paying in fees, how their investments are performing and the like. San Francisco-based startup SigFig wants to change that, not just on the web, but now also on mobile devices. SigFig lets users connect all their various investment accounts -- including bank accounts, 401k plans, IRAs, etc. -- onto a single dashboard. That gives them the ability to see how their investments are performing in one beautiful visual platform. SigFig originally launched as a web app, but it's now releasing iPhone and Android apps that will give users on the go all the same information on their mobile devices.
 
MasterCard Ties Up With T-Mobile For NFC Mobile Payments In Europe Top
tmmcAnother strong step ahead of mobile payments today: MasterCard and Deutsche Telekom have announced that they will work together to roll out services across DT's footprint in Europe, starting with an NFC wallet solution in Poland in Q3 and Germany following soon after. For now, the U.S. is not being factored in as part of the deal. In all, Deutsche Telekom has 93 million mobile subscribers in Europe, and 129 million world-wide. The move is a sign not only of how bigger companies are now stepping up to cooperate better in mobile payments, but the way that carriers are wedging themselves into the equation to make it happen. The deal follows on from news on Friday that France Telecom is also anteing up big time in the area of NFC, and will start rolling out NFC-enabled SIM cards all new subscribers in France, with further markets getting added on throughout the year.
 
Network Testing Consolidation: Ixia Pays $160M Cash For Security-Focused BreakingPoint Systems Top
ixia breakingpointSome M&A activity among those companies that work behind the scenes so that carriers can continue to deliver your apps, streamed music, phone calls and texts without a hitch: the network testing company Ixia has announced that it will be paying $160 million in cash to buy BreakingPoint Systems. BreakingPoint is a specialist in security testing for wireless and wireline networks, as well as attack analytics, with more than 34,000 examples of attacks, malware and exploits parsed in its library. The move means that Ixia will be able to offer its carrier and large enterprise customers a fuller portfolio of services for network testing -- but perhaps more importantly it is a sign of how the growth in mobile and fixed data networks -- on the back of the smartphone and tablet boom -- has led to a bigger focus on security threats, data breaches and privacy protection. The deal comes on the heels of Ixia's purchase of another network performance company, Anue Systems, in May for $145 million. Vic Alston, president and CEO of Ixia, would not comment on whether the company is continuing on its acquisitions sprees. "We will never say never, but our main priority at this point is to integrate Anue and BreakingPoint and focus on growth," he told TechCrunch.
 
Sony Puffs Up Its Gaming Cloud, Buys Gaikai For $380M. OnLive Next In Line For A Buyer? Top
Gaikai PictureSome more consolidation in cloud-based gaming services: Sony Computer Entertainment announced today that it will pay $380 million to acquire Gaikai, the California-based provider of a platform that currently delivers some 40 games, including Mass Effect, the Sims, and FIFA Soccer, as cloud-based services to a variety of devices, without the need of a games console. We'd first heard murmurs about a tie-up between Gaikai and Sony in May, and the deal raises questions of what might happen next with rival streaming platform OnLive. The move is a sign of how console-based companies are feeling the pressure to offer other, cheaper routes to accessing games content via other devices, as revenues from hardware-based services decline. Sony, makers of the PlayStation, says that as a result of the deal, it will establish a new cloud gaming service, as yet unnamed.
 
Stealthy Shape Security Hires Google's Former Click-Fraud Czar Top
186407v1-max-250x250Super stealthy security startup, Shape Security, has recruited Google's ex-"click-fraud czar" Shuman Ghosemajumder to its executive team where he'll be charged with leading the company's marketing, strategy and partnerships efforts. Mountain View-based Shape is said to be developing a new category of web defense products that take a different approach to security that shifts costs from defenders to hackers. It hopes to achieve this via its "military-grade technology" that doesn't rely on past attack signatures, and instead forces hackers to "spend more and more to achieve less and less."
 

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