Wednesday, July 25, 2012

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Screw Objectivity: Study Finds Opinionated Journalism Boosts Civic Engagement Top
success kid little boy fist on beachVeteran journalists who sing the praises of objective reporting have steadily lost ground to the media's new guard of proudly opinionated voices, from broadcasters such as MSNBC and Fox News, to the growing menu of online news blogs. There's been endless theorizing over whether objectivity should dominate reporting in the 21st century, but what does the evidence say? A new experimental study [pdf] finds that opinionated reporting is better at motivating the politically unengaged than objective reporting.
 
Botiful Is The Telepresence Robot We've All Been Waiting For Top
56bade87c9e20b5475b661533d635946_largeWe've seen a few telepresence in our day, including the incredible AnyBot, but this little guy looks like it may make life at the office a little less weird and a little more bearable. It's essentially a little telepresence platform for your Android phone (if the creator, Claire Delaunay, nets $100,000 she'll make an iPhone version) that roams around and lets you chat with people in the vicinity. Think of it as a little robotic dog wearing your face.
 
Stealthy Online Shopping Startup Commerce Sciences Launches A Meebo Bar For E-Commerce Top
Commerce Sciences - LogoCommerce Sciences, the stealthy Israeli and Palo Alto-based e-commerce startup, is launching into open beta today, and is finally revealing what it has built. It's a Meebo Bar for e-commerce! The company made waves earlier this month when it announced $1.8 million in seed funding from Eric Schmidt's Innovation Endeavors, Israeli VC firm Genesis Partners, T5 Capital, and a number of angel investors, including Backplane board chairman and Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale.
 
Did Apple Just Quietly End Development Of Safari For Windows? Top
safari_windows_logoSafari 6 brings improved performance and many new features to OS X, including offline reading lists, a unified search field and support for Do Not Track. What seems to be completely gone from Apple's site now, though, is any mention of the Windows version of Safari. Indeed, it looks like Apple has removed all download links for Safari from its site for the time being. This could be due to the fact that Apple is currently highlighting Safari's new features in Mountain Lion (which pre-installs Safari 6), or because Apple has indeed ended development of Safari for Windows. Windows users can still download the old version from Apple, but the link is hidden on the company's support page.
 
HTC One X+ Rumored To Launch On T-Mobile Come September Top
one-xEarly last week, a screenshot of an internal T-Mobile document revealed the existence of a device perplexingly called the "HTC Era 42," which promptly caused some T-Mobile fans to drool uncontrollably. Some speculated that it would be the latest in T-Mobile's G-series of Android devices and would sport a physical keyboard because of HTC's track record with the carrier, but now TmoNews is calling it slightly differently. Instead of a brand new, keyboard-toting handset, editor David Beren has managed to confirm "with a small level of certainty" that the device is actually a tweaked version of the HTC One X called the One X+.
 
JIBE Goes SaaS To Make All Job Applications Mobile-Friendly Top
logoNew York City-based startup JIBE first appeared on the scene in late 2009 as LocalBacon, a job board that required job-seekers to pay 99 cents to apply for positions, weeding out less serious candidates. Several months later in March 2010, the company smartly re-positioned itself as JIBE -- a recruiting platform to help people find jobs through their social networks. The pivot was a smart one that led to funding and customer wins. But despite the traction, JIBE recently tweaked its mission once again -- and this could be its savviest move yet.
 
GiveForward Raises $2 Million For Crowd-sourced Donation Service Top
givefGiveForward, a crowdfunding site for people to raise money for loved ones during difficult times, announced a $2 million Series A round led by Founder Collective and First Round Capital, with Naval Ravikant and Firestarter Fund participating. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Today's announcement follows a previous $500,000 angel round in 2011 by New World Ventures, David Cohen, Howard Lindzon, Tim Krauskopf and others. Unlike Kickstarter and other crowdfunding sites, GiveForward is designed for users to raise money for a friend or family member in need. 
 
Collaborative Learning Startup Skillshare Introduces New Tools For Sharing Notes And Asking Questions Top
SkillshareSkillshare is devoted to the idea that people should be able to teach each other things, and has created a marketplace whereby anyone can create or attend a class of their choosing. Like an Eventbrite for peer-to-peer learning. But until today, it lacked a lot of the collaborative learning tools that teachers and students need to facilitate that process. So it's rolling out The Classroom, a new place where teachers and students can exchange notes, ask questions, and share resources. The idea for the Classroom came about after Skillshare saw how its students and teachers were interacting with each ever since launching last year, according to founder and CEO Mike Karnjanaprakorn. While it launched purely as a ticketing system for classes, it saw users interacting with each other on social networks, emailing course materials and sharing links on Facebook. So it decided to bring all of those features onto its site, as a way to aggregate the discussion in a single place and also to increase engagement and the usefulness of its site.
 
Microsoft's BUILD Developer Conference Set For Oct. 30 In Redmond, Week After Windows 8 Launch Top
build_microsoft-2012-redmondMicrosoft hosts a number of events for developers, including TechEd, MIX and PDC. The other major event Microsoft has hosted since it announced that it was working on Windows 8 is BUILD. This year, the company just announced, BUILD will take place on its Redmond campus from October 30 to November 2. Just like PDC, BUILD doesn't run on a set annual schedule, but when the company feels it has something important to communicate to its developers. This year, the conference is obviously scheduled to coincide with the launch of Windows 8 on October 26 and the launch of Windows Phone 8, which should also fall around this time.
 
You've Got Facebook Fans, Now What? Booshaka Raises $1M To Ensure Your Posts Earn You Money Top
Booshaka Logo FeatureIt doesn't matter if you have one million Facebook fans if they never see your news feed posts. That's why SV Angel, Founders Fund Angel, and more have backed a $1 million Series A for news feed optimization service Booshaka, which is also launching a big product update today. The startup helps businesses identify their most active fans -- especially the 10% generating 90% of the engagement -- and incentivize them to leave even more wall posts, Likes, and comments. This feedback signals to Facebook's news feed sorting algorithm EdgeRank that a business is high-quality and that its posts should be shown to a higher percentage of its fans. More impressions -> more clicks and awareness -> higher return on investment for businesses on their social media spend. This is social SEO, and it's worth paying Booshaka for.
 
Keen On… Jeremiah Owyang: Why The Internet Is No Longer A Conversation [TCTV] Top
Screen Shot 2012-07-24 at 11.33.27 AMOnce upon a time, we were told that markets are "conversations". But that's all changed. At least if you listen to Jeremiah Owyang, a much respected "Internet Analyst" at the Altimeter Group. As Owyang explained to me when he came into our San Francisco studio, today's Internet is now in what he calls its third "optimization" phase in which the online conversation has been replaced by hyper-targeted ads from companies like Google and Facebook. Indeed, Owyang told me, the big online battle today is between Facebook and Google over how our data will be controlled and leveraged.
 
Maily For iPad Is Your Kids' First Email Application Top
maily1Maily is a new iPad app launching today that aims to be your kids' first email application. Because, you know, kids these days and their busy schedules. Ha! In all seriousness, Maily is a communications tool that lets kids easily share messages and drawings with family and friends through a simplified interface that even a small child as young as three can manage, at least according to early tests.
 
LG's Q2 2012 Earnings: $138M In Net Profits, Up 46% YOY, Phone Sales Still Lagging Top
LG headquartersLG has been turning a corner of late, getting its mobile division out of a six-quarter-long rut. Today's Q2 report outlines a 46 percent increase in net profits year-over-year at $138 million, though phone sales continue to be an obstacle. Overall revenues went up from last quarter, but are still down from a year ago. The handset division in particular had an operating loss of $49.5 million, which has a lot to do with the decline in feature phone sales. Smartphone sales, on the other hand, rose to 44 percent of all units sold, which is up from Q1's 36 percent.
 
24.9M Tablets Sold In Q2, With Apple's Share Of That Now Over 68%, Says Strategy Analytics Top
new-ipad-black-640x480-jpeg-1One of the strong points in Apple's quarterly earnings report yesterday was sales of the iPad. Globally, they were up 52% by revenue and 84% by unit sales, respectively to $9 billion and 17 million. In some new figures out today, Strategy Analytics notes that this translates to an increase in overall tablet market share for the company: Apple now controls 68.3% of the market, compared to 62% in Q2 a year ago, in an overall tablet market that saw shipments of 24.9 million units. So much for analyst predictions: here's one (of several) that had forecast a decline in Apple's market share. So why the reversal? It looks like the competition that many had been expecting to give Apple a run for its money has failed to materialize. But while Apple's market share is the best it's been in years, Strategy Analytics also cautions that overall the market has also witnessed its slowest growth rate since the first iPad launched in Q2 2010, a result of a slowdown in the global economy, it says.
 
Task Management Startup Exec Now Lets Users Give Back By Donating Someone Else's Time To Charity Top
Exec LogoTask management startup Exec launched with a pretty simple premise -- let users rent someone else's spare time for a small fee of $25 an hour. That has enabled San Francisco-based users to outsource any number of tasks through its easy-to-use mobile interface, from having Ikea furniture put together to delivering various office supplies to cleaning someone's apartment to dropping off dry cleaning. But now Exec is trying to use its system for good, by enabling users to outsource volunteer work to one of three local charities. Instead of just sending money to various charities, the startup is proposing a novel way for its users to give back, by letting them pay for its Execs to stand in and volunteer their time. In other words, for those who want to volunteer but might not be able to find the time, Exec has got your back. They need only pick a charity, determine how much time they'd like to "volunteer," and an Exec will stand in for them. They'll do whatever needs to be done -- whether it be updating donor records, to helping to plan fundraising events, or mentoring kids.
 
TeamGantt Is A Streamlined, Online Project Management Tool Top
TeamGantt_LogoFans of Microsoft Project, rejoice! There's now a way to recreate the fun and pleasure of creating Gantt charts in your browser, bringing that age-old managerial trick of "making another chart" to the Internet. It's called TeamGantt and if you're a project manager, it behooves you to make a Gantt chart about checking it out in the near future, setting milestones that include "launch browser," "type teamgantt.com into browser," and "nod sagely." Then add "go golfing" and you're set. In all seriousness, though, TeamGantt is project management for the post Office set. Built by Nathan Gilmore (29) and John Correlli (22), the system is entirely web-based and hand-coded.
 
Y Combinator-Backed Sponsorfied Launches Tech That Matches Brands With Events Seeking Swag Top
Screen shot 2012-07-25 at 8.13.46 AMToday, Y Combinator Summer 2012 startup Sponsorfied launches its tool that connects and manages the relationship between brands and the events or influencers they want to sponsor. See, we're all trained to ignore ads, but get your product in our hands or enhance a real life experience for us and we won't forget you. Top brands like Red Bull, Task Rabbit, and popchips are the first clients in the Sponsorfied private beta now that it's out of stealth. By sorting out the mess of sponsorship management and installing feedback loops, Sponsorfied could make sure the next event you attend has a lot more free clothes, liquor, and food. You know, more fun.
 
Despite Android Nearly Doubling Activations, iOS Still Leads The Enterprise Top
fig2-activationsThis morning, enterprise solutions provider Good Technology released the results of its latest activation report which offers a snapshot of mobile device trends in the enterprise. The company found that, despite the fact that Android smartphone usage in the enterprise nearly doubled quarter-over-quarter, iOS continues to be dominant platform there, currently led by the iPhone 4S. The results further back up a report arriving earlier this week from mobile platform development company Appcelerator. It released data from a large survey of its developer community, finding that iOS has been surging ahead of Android, at least in terms of developer interest (53% said Apple was better positioned to win the enterprise, compared with 38% for Android).
 
Ticketfly Gets Ready To Rock Sporting Events, International, IPO With New $22M Series C Top
Ticketfly LogoTicketfly is not content playing second fiddle to Ticketmaster, so it just raised a $22 million Series C with each investor chosen for a strength they bring to the stage: Northgate - sports, SAP Ventures (the round's leader) - international, Cross Creek - IPO, and Mohr Davidow - connections in Silicon Valley. The round brings Ticketfly up to $37 million in funding to disrupt event ticketing. CEO and co-founder Andrew Dreskin has lofty aspirations and tells me "A changing of the guard is at foot, the fundamentals of the ticketing space are experiencing great change." But considering Ticketmaster has signed long contracts with clients, and is just half of the LiveNation juggernaut that owns venues and and artist management deals, Ticketfly will need to play its heart out to win the crowd.
 
The Droid X360 Is The Standard-Bearer For Counterfeit Chinese Products Top
7633900340_bc098ba75cFollow me here. The Droid X360 has the mind of Android, a body of a Vita, and branding of Verizon's Android phones and Microsoft's gaming system. Plus, the thing ships with 9 different emulators, allowing the owner to play games from Nintendo 64, Sony PlayStation, Game Boy Advance, Game boy Color, NES/FC, SNES, SEGA Mega Drive and SEGA Game Gear. The only way it could infringe on more trademarks would be if there was a Mercedes-Benz logo on the backside.
 

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