Wednesday, August 1, 2012

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CEOs Of BranchOut and Top Ad Agency AKQA Will Drop Knowledge On You At Friday's Facebook Ecosystem CrunchUp Top
CrunchUp Moves FastFacebook moves pretty fast. If you don't attend the Facebook Ecosystem CrunchUp, you could misunderstand it. To give us the lowdown on how well Facebook's ad business is doing and what's its like to ride the Facebook traffic roller coaster, we've got two big new additions to the day's panels. Rick Marini- founder and CEO of BranchOut, the most popular Facebook-based professional networking tool. Tom Bedecarré - CEO of AKQA one of the world's leading ad agencies that helps brands spend million on Facebook. Get your tickets to see them and Facebook's heads of product, platform, and engineering  outline the company's philosophy of the answer the tough questions about Facebook's future.
 
Yelp Q2 Beats The Street With Top-Line Growth, Narrowing Losses: $32.7M Revenue, $2M Net Loss Top
yelp logoYelp today reported its earnings for the second quarter of 2012, its second ever financial report as a publicly-traded company. Overall, the reviews site showed continued top-line revenue growth and a smaller net loss than it has posted in the past -- a performance that bested the estimates of Wall Street analysts.
 
TwelveSouth Reworks The BackPack, Now Adds A Handy Shelf To Either Side Of An iMac Or Cinema Display Top
backpack-3The original TwelveSouth BackPack was fantastically ingenious. And now it's even better. Designed exclusively for iMacs and Apple Displays, the BackPack adds a simple shelve to the display without the use of screws or adhesive. Using adjustable brackets, the BackPack can mount on the front or back of the unit, added a nice shelf to hold an iPhone, external hard drive, or your Troll Doll collection.
 
Can A YC, Mobile-Rookie Founder Crack The Image Sharing Space With Imgfave? Top
app_iconPopular image-sharing service imgfave launched an iOS app last week, causing most of their engagement metrics to at least double, and signups to quadruple. Underscoring the power of both mobile and social right now, imgfave's app reached the same level of activity as the main website, which gets 30 million monthly page views and 3.3 million monthly unique visitors, just two days after it launched, according to the founder, Gabe Ragland.
 
Y Combinator-Backed Instacart Wants To Be Amazon With One-Hour Delivery Top
instacart-screenshot-in-phone3When it comes to being the Mall of the Internet, no one really does it better than Amazon. Yet, to truly best its offline competitors and put the icing on the cake in terms of user experience, Amazon has been pushing hard to offer same-day delivery for all items purchased within its virtual walls. However, Amazon CFO Tom Szkutak said last week during the company's second quarter earnings call that it "doesn't see a way to do same-day delivery on a broad scale, economically." In the meantime, one startup wants to pick up Amazon's slack and offer not just same-day delivery, but one-hour delivery. And naturally, it's a product of one of their own. Founded in early June, Instacart is the brainchild of Apoorva Mehta, an ex-Amazon Supply Chain engineer, who is leveraging his experience building Amazon's own complex backend logistical systems in the hopes of creating a more efficient back and front-end grocery delivery experience at Instacart.
 
Flipboard Founder Mike McCue Steps Down From Twitter Board Of Directors Top
47024v4-max-250x250Mike McCue, the longtime tech entrepreneur perhaps best known at the moment as the founder and CEO of Flipboard, is no longer serving on the board of directors at Twitter. McCue, who has been on Twitter's board since late 2010, announced his departure via a Tweet, naturally...
 
Rumor: Google Puts A Hold On New Google+ Acquisitions Top
plus_logoAccording to a source close to Google, the company has put a stop to all acquisitions related to Google+ until at least the end of the year. This source also tells us that Google is not growing the Google+ right now and not providing the team with any additional resources until the end of the year. The Google+ project itself is not on hold, but if this rumor is indeed correct and Google is cutting back on expanding the team's resources, this could be an indication that Google+ isn't doing quite as well as the company's public comments would indicate.
 
This Is Medium, Obvious Corp's Secret New Product Top
This Is MediumWhen Evan Williams and a bunch of other Obvious Corp teammates suddenly follow a snazzy, un-launched product called Medium, you know something big's about to happen. For now, Medium.com is a website that lets you easily drag in or upload a photo and annotate it with overlaid text, but we hear there are bigger ambitions for the product. Medium's Twitter account describes it as "The new thing", and its only tweet is "Getting antsy", which was posted last night and seems to foreshadow an imminent launch. We couldn't find other details, but Medium's placeholder product lets anyone combine an image and quote to quickly get a point across. That doesn't seem world-changing enough for Obvious, though, so expect it to reveal something much grander.
 
T-Shirt Company Picks A Fight With Anonymous Top
normal_unfair_fight2A French t-shirt company has brazenly picked a fight with one of the world's fiercest hacker groups. Anonymous, known for crippling the world's most secure websites (including the FBI's), has vowed revenge against apparel company, Early Flicker, who registered the hacker group's logo as their own intellectual property.
 
Google Wallet's Huge Upgrade Adds Support For All Credit/Debit Cards, Remote Disable Feature Top
Google WalletOf all the limitations that Google's NFC-based Wallet payment system had, perhaps the biggest was that of card compatibility -- once you blew through that free $10 credit, it only ever worked well if you owned a CitiBank MasterCard. Note the use of the past tense in that sentence. Google recently revealed a substantial update to the Wallet service that allows it to (finally) play nice with Visa, Discover, and American Express credit or debit cards.
 
AppAide Helps You Find The Apps That People Are Actually Using Top
AppAideHere's an interesting approach to the seemingly eternal problem of mobile app discovery: A new app called AppAide recommends apps based on actual usage. The App comes from BetaBait, a company that connects startups with early users. Back in May, BetaBait acquired BetaNoodle, a company doing something similar for Android apps, and BetaBait co-founder Cody Barbierri (a former co-worker from my VentureBeat days) says AppAide takes advantage of BetaNoodle technology.
 
Study: Texting Iz Destroying Student Grammar Top
no-cell-phone-sign1Texting-addled young minds are losing their grip on the English language, according to a new study from Wake Forest. The research, which reveals a correlation between the use of SMS-abbreviations and poor grammar proficiency, comes as bitter sweet vindication for modern teachers who have to waste time decrypting the odd new language of teenagers.
 
VEVO Inks Deal To Bring Music Videos To Upcoming OUYA Android Game Console Top
ouyaThe folks behind the stylish, Android-based OUYA game console have been on a hot streak lately. Not only has the project raked in over $6 million in Kickstarter pledges, but cloud gaming service OnLive and legendary game developer Square-Enix have thrown their collective weight behind the $99 gadget. Now there's another hefty name to add to that list. Music video provider VEVO has announced that it has entered into a partnership with OUYA that will allow gamers access to its sizable catalog of music videos between long stretches of random encounters in Final Fantasy III.
 
Quora Launches 'Views' To Show You Exactly Who Is Reading Your Posts Top
quoraYou may have noticed recently that Quora has increasingly required you to log in to see the full breadth of the site's question-and-answer content. Today, it's rolling out a new feature that shares some of the data it collects from those signed-in users: Quora 'Views,' site analytics that show you just how many people have read your Quora questions, answers, or posts.
 
Getting Married? Wedding Party Collects Photos From Guests' Phones To Create Beautiful Online Albums Top
cover photoMany of the startups targeting the weddings space today are focused on offering better services for the bride and/or the couple, but with a new mobile application called Wedding Party, that model has been flipped on its head. Wedding Party wants to offer a better wedding experience for the guests first, which then, in turn, will benefit the couple being married. The app offers a simple way to allow wedding guests participate in the creation of a digital wedding album by sharing photos, notes, and later on, videos. It's the modern-day equivalent of the guy running around with the video camera, bugging you to "say something nice about the couple."
 
Yammer Is Launching A Chat Feature Called Online Now 'In A Couple Of Weeks' Top
online_now_screenshotYammer, the enterprise social networking company that was recently bought by Microsoft for $1.2 billion, is getting ready to add a new instant messaging feature called Online Now to its main service, enabling users to chat to each other in real time. Online Now will sit alongside existing services that let users post status updates and media as well as send private messages. The feature was spotted earlier today by TNW, and we have now confirmed exactly what is happening with Yammer itself, including the name: "We will be announcing the chat feature through a press release in a couple of weeks as part of our summer release," a spokesperson told TechCrunch.
 
Twitter Launches Its Own Political Barometer To Track U.S. Presidential Elections Top
The Twitter Political IndexTwitter just announced the launch of its Twitter Political Index. This index, says Twitter, is "a daily measurement of Twitter users' feelings towards the candidates as expressed in nearly two million Tweets each week." Every day, twitter will evaluate and weigh the sentiment of tweets mentioning both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney relative to every other message that passes through Twitter's systems. The system then calculates a score for both candidates. Currently Obama's score is 34 (and trending down) and Romney is at 25 (and trending up a bit). The Twitter Political Index will be updated every day at 8pm ET.
 
Content Recommendation Startup Thirst Brings Its Twitter App To The iPhone Top
5. Main Navigation - iPhoneThirst, an app that helps users get caught up with important news as it's shared on Twitter, is expanding beyond the iPad today with the launch of a "universal" app that works on the iPhone and iPod Touch, too. Thirst launched in May, and as co-founder and CEO Anuj Verma tells me, its goal for the current app is to bring people up-to-speed on the most important Twitter updates. So when you open Thirst, you get a personalized "newspaper" with the hottest news stories since the last time you opened the app — which could be an hour or a week ago.
 
Microsoft Officially Signs Off On Windows 8, Releases It To Manufacturers Top
win8Right on schedule, Microsoft has just announced on its Windows Team blog that Windows 8 has emerged from its long development and testing phase, and will soon be in the hands of manufacturers and OEMs for installation on new PCs and devices. Among those on the list to receive the final build (build 9200, if you were curious) are Lenovo, Acer, ASUS and Toshiba, though that's clearly just the tip of a very large iceberg.
 
YC-Backed Zapier, The IFTTT For Business Users, Launches Developer Platform Top
zapier-logo-whiteZapier, the Y Combinator-backed service that allows you to automate common tasks on the web and sync data between web apps, just announced the launch of its developer platform. With Zapier, even non-technical users can easily create connections between the more than 60 apps the service currently supports. This means, for example, that you can push a notice to your Basecamp account whenever you sell a ticket on Eventbrite or get an SMS alert every time somebody signs up for your Campaign Monitor or AWeber email marketing campaigns. With its new development platform, Zapier says, developers will be able to easily add their own apps to the service instead of having to wait for the Zapier team itself to support them.
 

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