Tuesday, August 28, 2012

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Barnes & Noble Moves Away From Bookstores For UK Nook Launch: John Lewis Dept Store Named First Partner Top
nookMore developments on Barnes & Noble's plans to launch its Nook devices in the UK, the first market outside of the U.S. to see the e-readers and tablets: today the company has announced that it will sell the devices via John Lewis, a retail heaven for the UK's middle class, but not a bookstore. The 37-store chain, which markets itself with the tagline "never knowingly undersold," will be selling devices starting with the Nook e-readers, the NOOK Simple Touch and NOOK Simple Touch with GlowLight, beginning in October, as well as online. B&N says that more retail locations will follow in the autumn. B&N first announced its plans to finally launch in the UK earlier this month. It will also sell the devices directly through its own retail site.
 
Enterprise App Testing Platform Sauce Labs Raises $3M From Salesforce And Triage Ventures Top
sauce-labsSauce Labs, a a company that develops a web application testing platform for enterprise developers, has raised $3 million Series B funding round led by Triage Ventures with Salesforce joining as an investor. The company is also releasing a mobile web application testing cloud for Mac OS X, iOS and Android environments. Sauce Labs offers automated and manual testing services for web applications in the enterprise. The Sauce testing cloud uses Selenium, an open source testing project and browser automation framework, to automate web browsers for testing purposes. With Sauce's extended Selenium-based software, agile developers can test web applications across all major browsers, including Internet Explorer (IE), Firefox, Safari, Chrome and Opera on Windows and Linux, while recording screenshots and videos of bugs.
 
Patent Case Aftermath: Samsung Down By $12B (And Still Slumping) While Apple, Nokia, RIM All Gain Top
Image (1) Samsung-galaxy-s.jpg for post 335827We still have to wait and see how the jury's ruling against Samsung over Apple patents will play out for the company in terms of actual fines, injunctions -- and crucially -- future device design for the handset giant. But for now the markets have spoken. Share prices for Samsung Electronics fell by 7.5% yesterday, equating to a $12 billion loss in market value. However, it looks like this was a single big hit rather than the start of a series of sustained blows for the Android handset maker: today, shares are still trading down, but not by nearly as much: 3.65%, giving it a market cap of $159.38 billion. Samsung's loss was really Apple's gain, although others like Nokia and RIM got a bump, too.
 
Tripbirds Pivots From Social Travel Omnibus To Social Hotel Booking Site Top
tripbirds-03-instagramWhen I interviewed Tripbirds co-founder Ted Valentin before the social travel recommendation site's launch in March, he told me that hotel bookings formed the core of Tripbirds' revenue-generation model. "If we can nail hotel recommendations, you don't have to do more to have a valuable business," he said. Now, Tripbirds is taking this idea to heart: the social travel network is from today paring down and relaunching as a social hotel bookings site, using friend recommendations and Instagram photos, supplemented by traditional hotel listings, to help you figure out the best place to stay wherever you are going. The reason for Tripbirds' pivot? The company -- backed by Index Ventures, Passion Capital and Creandum, angel investors Peter Read, Wrapp's Andreas Ehn, Soundcloud's Eric Wahlforss and Alexander Ljung, and Path's Dave Morin -- decided that its service needed to be pared down and "easier to understand," according to Martina Elm, communications manager for the site. Before the relaunch, the social travel site was more open-ended -- the recommendations could be for places to stay, but they could also be about sites, bars and whatever else people wanted to post.
 
Motorola's Droid RAZR M 4G LTE Gets Detailed Ahead Of Official Unveiling Top
razrmIn case you hadn't heard yet, next week is going to be a busy one for gadget fiends — Amazon's got something brewing on the 6th, while Nokia and Motorola will be duking it for eyeballs since both have launch events scheduled for the 5th. Rumor has it that both of them will also be unveiling a pair of new smartphones — Nokia has the Phi and the Arrow, and Motorola is expected to pull back the curtains on the RAZR HD and the newly-leaked Droid RAZR M 4G LTE.
 
After Removal By Apple, Privacy App Clueful Returns Via The Web Top
clueful home pageBack in May, security company Bitdefender launched Clueful, an iPhone app that looked at the other apps on your phone and identified what they were doing with your data. However, according to Bitdefender, Apple removed the app from the App Store in late June without an explanation. Today, Clueful has relaunched ... but not on iOS. Instead, it's now a website where users can search for different apps and get basic facts like which ones are accessing your location, tracking your in-app usage, and reading your address book. For example, one of the apps that I use the most on my iPhone is Routesy, so I can look it up on the Clueful sit and see that it can display ads and track my location, while also encrypting my data. (Basically, nothing to worry about — which is good to know.)
 
Jack Dorsey To Keynote At TechCrunch Disrupt SF Top
disrupt-sf12-eventPeople don't give technology enough credit as an art form -- the specifics of infrastructure and hard science behind it ultimately overshadow its more inchoate creativity. But the cliched trope of a socially awkward engineer coding in a hole somewhere is on its way out. Instagram is a mass product used to cover news events, Twitter is a celebrity playground and you can use Square to pay at Starbucks: The people who build technology companies now have as much influence as Oprah. In fact, Oprah is hanging out on their platform.
 
MasterCard Inks 5-Year NFC/Mobile Payments Deal With UK's Everything Everywhere, Covers 27M Users Top
ee-mcMasterCard is once more extending its reach into mobile money services in Europe in partnership with a carrier -- this time in the mobile-savvy UK market. The payment processing giant has cut a five-year deal with Everything Everywhere, the JV between France Telecom's Orange and T-Mobile, to develop mobile payment solutions, with a "co-branded, prepaid solution for mobile devices" enabling contactless NFC payments one of the first planned out of the gate. Later, the two want to include money transfers, loyalty rewards and more.  Everything Everywhere is the UK's largest carrier and the deal will cover 27 million subscribers. It comes on the heels of MasterCard inking a mobile payments partnership with Deutsche Telekom covering Germany and other T-Mobile operations in Europe, as well as a deal with Turkcell in Turkey. MasterCard has also worked for the past three years with Orange on QuickTap, the first commercial NFC payment service in the UK, as well as the Orange Cash prepaid card.
 
Twitter API Changes Are Already Posing Challenges To Tweetbot Developers Top
Tweetbot for Mac Alpha warningTapbots has announced on their blog that the alpha version of Tweetbot for Mac will no longer be available. Now that Twitter limits an app's user base to only 100,000 users, Tweetbot is one of the victims of Twitter's new API rules. The third-party app currently offers a better user experience than Twitter's own official app. It is therefore a controversial outcome. Tapbots contacted Twitter to see if they could implement a workaround to prevent wasting user tokens during the free alpha test, but Twitter was intransigent.
 
Marissa Mayer Appoints Former Lockerz CEO & Amazon VP Kathy Savitt As Yahoo's New CMO Top
kathy_headshot-1While the search continues for a new top executive for Flickr, Yahoo and its new CEO have found a new chief marketing officer -- and one with former operations experience. This afternoon Yahoo announced that Kathy Savitt will be joining the company as CMO on September 14th and will report directly to Marissa Mayer. Yahoo gains significant experience at the top of its marketing arm, as Savitt has held a number of consumer, retail and tech executive positions during her career. Most recently, she was the founder and CEO of social commerce company, Lockerz, a site that now counts 45 million users.
 
Samsung V. Apple And The Obviousness Standard Top
apple-samsunggraphicEditor's Note: Leonid ("Lenny") Kravets is a patent attorney at Panitch, Schwarze, Belisario and Nadel, LLP in Philadelphia, PA. Lenny focuses his practice on patent prosecution and intellectual property transactions in computer-related technology areas. He specializes in developing IP strategy for young technology companies and blogs on this topic at StartupsIP. Follow Lenny on Twitter: @lkravets and@startupsIP. In the wake of Apple's billion plus dollar win in their patent suit against Samsung last week, much of the focus appears to be on the flaws in the patent system. Many argue that the suit involved patents that are "obvious," and that Apple is a bully in enforcing them. These arguments show blatant disregard for the job of Patent Examiners in reviewing patent applications and prior art, and the jury in hearing and deciding the case, which listened to both sides of the arguments and decided that the patents are valid.
 
Sequoia's Alfred Lin, Kleiner's Aileen Lee, SV Angel's David Lee, Greylock's James Slavet And Google Ventures' Bill Maris Will Be Disrupting SF Top
Screen Shot 2012-08-27 at 2.34.21 PMAfter a decade bereft of IPOs, venture-backed tech companies have come roaring back into the public markets over the last couple of years. But in case you think this means we're in a bubble, some of these companies -- including Zynga, Groupon and Facebook -- have struggled in their market debuts. So how are top investors handling the opportunities and pitfalls of taking top companies public in the current era? How are they changing their strategies to prepare the next generation of startups for big exits? You'll be hearing all the details at Disrupt SF during our panel with leading VCs on Wednesday, September 12. Here are some of the things we'll touch on... (and get your tickets here!)
 
FAA Reviewing Use Of Gadgets In The Air, But Forget About In-Flight Cell Phone Calls Top
united-plane-1Don't expect to make mid-flight phone calls from your smartphone anytime soon. While the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is putting together a group to re-examine current testing procedures and policies airlines have in place for gadgets, they will not be considering airborne use of cell phones for voice communication. But that is a small price to pay for safety, especially considering that these policies and procedures are way behind the speed at which we adopt new technology. The government-industry group will look at how these devices are tested for use in the air, as well as the current standards for use of portable electronic devices on board an airplane.
 
Apple Promotes VPs Craig Federighi And Dan Riccio, Announces Bob Mansfield Will Stay On Top
mansfield_hero20110204Apple announced today that Craig Federighi, vice president of Mac Software Engineering, and Dan Riccio, vice president of Hardware Engineering, have been promoted to senior vice presidents, where they will report to Apple CEO Tim Cook and serve on Apple's executive management team.  The company also announced that senior vice president of Hardware Engineering Bob Mansfield will stay on at Apple to "work on future products."
 
Founder Steve Perlman Is Leaving OnLive, Investor Gary Lauder Takes Over As Chairman Top
onlive logoCloud gaming company OnLive has announced that the company's founder and CEO Steve Perlman is "departing to work on his myriad of other projects." Lead investor Gary Lauder is taking over as the company's new chairman, while Charlie Jablonski, the VP of operations, has become Onlive's COO and acting CEO. The news follows a fairly convoluted piece of corporate maneuvering, presumably brought on by financial pressure, that saw the company sell its assets to a new entity that will also do business under the name OnLive. The new OnLive said "almost half of OnLive's staff were offered employment at their current salaries," with the rest offered consulting positions in the new company in exchange for stock options. (None of the previous options transferred over.)
 
Sony's Shape-Shifting, Windows 8-Powered VAIO Duo 11 Caught In Leaked Images Top
vaioduo11smallMicrosoft's Windows 8-powered surface tablet may be nabbing all the headlines (at least partially because some of Microsoft's myriad hardware partners were miffed by the company's decision to make it in the first place), but a newly-revealed convertible device from Sony seems like it may be able to give the Surface a run for its money. PocketNow managed to score some images of the forthcoming Sony VAIO Duo 11, a Windows 8 tablet with an awfully familiar-looking gimmick — the (reportedly 11-inch) touchscreen slides up and latches into place, revealing a full-size, back-lit keyboard.
 
Reddit Gets Two New Donation Options Powered By Crowdtilt And Dwolla Top
reddit-clusterDwolla, the web-based payments platform, and Crowdtilt, the web-based crowdfunding platform, are formalizing Reddit's capacity to tap into the power of the Internet as a force for good with today's introduction of reddit Donate and reddit.Crowdtilt.com. To be clear, neither of these are official reddit products, but were built in conjunction with reddit for use by its community leaders - or in reddit lingo, "subreddit moderators." Dwolla's service makes it easy for them to embed buttons on their page's (their subreddit's) sidebar to raise money for a given charity, while CrowdTilt offers both official and more informal fundraising opportunities.
 
Dude, Take A Vacation — What VMware CEO Paul Maritz Says He Is Excited About Now That He Is Moving On To EMC Top
ceopaulmaritzCEO Paul Maritz has kept pretty quiet about what he wants to do now that he plans to take his new job reporting to EMC CEO Joe Tucci. But in a press conference today at VMworld with his replacement Pat Gelsinger, Maritz gave a bit of insight into what he is thinking about and what he is excited to be doing over the next few months. The backdrop here is a shifting focus to the cloud but very much in a VMware centric view of the world, which you can get a glimpse of from my last  post.
 
Twitter Appeals Court Decision Against Occupy Wall Street Protester Malcolm Harris Top
twitter logoTwitter just filed its appeal against a New York court decision requiring the company to turn over tweets and account information for Occupy Wall Street protester Malcolm Harris, who is being prosecuted for allegations of disorderly conduct. According to Twitter's brief, the New York County District Attorney's office subpoenaed Twitter earlier this year for information related to two of Harris' accounts, @destructuremal and @getsworse. The requests came at different times for the two accounts, and cover slightly different information, but in the case of @getsworse, they include all public tweets, as well as "[t]he following subscriber information: name; address; records of session times and durations; length of service (including creation date); types of service utilized; telephone or instrument number or any other subscriber number or identity, including any temporarily assigned network address."
 
Go West Young Men: Winklevoss Twins Buy $18M L.A. Mansion To Dive Into SoCal Tech Scene Top
winklevoss1Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss are heading west. The Winklevoss twins, the 31-year-old Harvard grads who are probably best known for their years-long legal fight with Mark Zuckerberg over the founding of Facebook, have put $18 million of their Facebook settlement cash toward buying a brand new bachelor pad in the Hollywood Hills, according to a report today out of TMZ.
 

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