Wednesday, August 29, 2012

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HotelTonight Books Up 10 New Markets For Its Last-Minute Service, Reaches 3M App Downloads Top
hoteltonightThe summer travel rush has been good to HotelTonight, the last-minute hotel booking service: the site today announced that it has now had 3 million downloads of is mobile app, and it is marking the occasion by continuing its scaling efforts in the U.S. and UK -- where it spearheaded its international push in June, fuelled by its latest $23 million investment. The company is now covering hotel bookings in Birmingham, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Liverpool, as well as St. Louis, Charlotte, Pittsburgh and Nashville. Manchester and Salt Lake City/Park City are coming in September, taking the total number of cities covered by Hotel Tonight up to over 50, with more "aggressive" expansion planned in the months ahead.
 
Huffington Post Now Has Its Own "Labs" Site For Online News Experiments Top
huffpost-labs-logoNews publishers are becoming tech companies, right down to the Google Labs style experimental sites: The New York Times Company Research & Development Lab, The Globe Lab, WapPo Labs... And now there's HuffPost Labs, which will unveil its first project today: Highlights, a collection of the most popular sentences from articles and blog posts across the Huffington Post empire.
 
Dropbox Teams With Vimeo For Direct Video Uploads Top
dropbox-vimeoToday Dropbox and Vimeo have put their heads together to let Dropbox users upload content directly to Vimeo. Both companies have done a lot in the past few months to improve their user experiences. Dropbox now lets you share with links, and it was only a few months ago that Vimeo revamped the interface entirely, followed closely by the addition of customizable music options and a cloud-based enhancer tool.
 
"Hundreds" Of Websites Go Dark In Jordan In SOPA-Style #BlackoutJo Protest Over Internet Freedom Top
jordan black outJordan, one of the more moderate of Middle Eastern countries and seen by some as the would-be "Silicon Valley of the Middle East", is today exercising its freedom of expression in a SOPA-inspired media blackout to protest a piece of legislation that could threaten that freedom in the future. Apparently hundreds of sites have gone dark in support of #BlackoutJo -- a protest against a draft bill to amend the Press and Publications Law. If approved, critics believe it could restrict Internet freedom in the country by blocking international sites, and allowing the government to moderate and potentially restrict online commenting and social media in the country. The protest was brought to our attention by Jordan-based TC reader Rami Arafat. Several high-profile figures, including Queen Noor Al Hussein, have also gotten behind the effort.
 
WePay Launches Buttons To Allow Any Site To Accept In-Line Payments With Just A Line Of Code Top
wepay_logoOnline payments startup WePay has been on a roll lately. The company is processing hundreds of millions of dollars in payments annually, and adding more than 1,000 active merchants per week. But it wants to accelerate that growth even further, by rolling out payment buttons that will allow anyone to add in-line payments to their sites with just a single line of code. WePay is a Y Combinator-backed startup originally formed mostly to make it easier for groups to collect money and make payments together. But it's recently gone beyond just helping out groups, providing an ultra-simple platform for anyone to collect and manage payments online. It's added support for event registration and ticketing, custom invoicing, donations, and e-commerce. A few weeks ago, it even rolled out a white-label payments API and lowered its prices to court third-party developers and better compete against PayPal and others
 
WhatRunsWhere Acquires Mobile Ad Spy To Help Advertisers Tame The Wild West Of Mobile Top
Screen Shot 2012-08-29 at 11.52.43Here's an example of a North American company buying up some European tech: WhatRunsWhere, the service that enables ad agencies and advertisers to track competitors' online ad campaigns, has acquired UK-based Mobile Ad Spy to expand its offering to mobile. Terms of the deal remain undisclosed. WhatRunsWhere offers a "competitive intelligence" service for online media buying which lets users look up what advertisers are doing online in terms of where they are running ads, who they are buying inventory from, down to exactly what ads they are running. This also extends to the ability to scrutinise individual online publishers, looking at things like who is advertising there, who is selling the inventory, and what ads are on display. The premise is that if you can better understand what is working for your competitors then you have a greater chance of trumping them -- and boosting the all important ROI.
 
Another Sign Of A New iPhone? Apple Will Pay You To Recycle Your 4S Top
iphone 4s recycling from appleApple is, as usual, remaining tight-lipped about whether it will be releasing any new devices this autumn -- and even if there will be an event scheduled for September 12, as many have been reporting. Meanwhile, here is a sign that the company could be preparing for a new phone launch: Apple is offering users an option to recycle their iPhone 4S devices for up to $345 back in the form of an Apple Gift Card. Apple is among a number of other companies that have already been offering 4S device rebates (here's a top 10 list from 9to5mac), with the highest offer being $500 on Amazon. The addition of the 4S to the list was pointed out earlier by TNW, although it's not clear whether the 4S models were added today or some time previously. Apple's store had been down for several hours earlier today and this could have been the reason why. We have contacted Apple to ask and will update as we learn more.
 
Tradeo Introduces New Follow-Feature To Socialise Its Forex Trading Platfom Top
Screen Shot 2012-08-29 at 09.58.47Back in March eToro, the investment network that uses real-time features to let users follow and trade based on other users' activities, raised another $15 million in funding taking its war chest to $33.9 million. The online investment network now claims to have more than 2 million users across 140 countries. The investment proved that so-called 'social trading' is a hot area right now. Taking the investment model and adding Twitter/Klout-like features is proving a powerful combination, allowing investors to look to friends, acquaintances, and colleagues for trading advice. But the company has yet to properly launch in the U.S. That delay means there's opportunities for other startups to get in on the act. Tradeo, which already operates its Forex trading platform in the U.S., has now launched the new Twitter-like follow method of managing your contacts. You can now find interesting traders, follow them, and copy their trades.
 
One Year On, Photo App Startup EyeEm Reckons It Can Keep On Snapping Top
Florian MeissnerIt's been a year since upstart photo app EyeEm launched. A year in which Instagram rocketed in usage and was bought for a billion bucks by Facebook. A year in which other startups like Color, Lightbox and Picplz dropped from view, though it also has local Berlin competition in the form of Tadaa. So in that context, what's it like still plugging away at the photo app game? What can EyeEm still offer in the face of such competition that's so different? We caught up with co-founder EyeEm Florian Meissner at his Berlin base to pose a few questions. EyeEm says its key differentiator is the 'discovery element' of the platform. The problem is, plenty of others do this. PopSet, for instance, has appeared offering location based photo grouping for instance. Is 'discovery' enough of a feature to keep people interested and coming back? To be honest, no one else does it. The way we discover content through our friends is broken and we need to find novel ways to help people find things they will be interested in. We believe our discovery model is unique, both from a technical and a community perspective and our ambition has always been to be the first to perfectly organise and structure all photos taken with EyeEm (and eventually all photos from the social web) and leverage the data cube behind it to build the most personalised experience out there.
 
Looxcie's Lifecasting Mobile Apps Graduate From Beta With Nifty Facebook Integration In Tow Top
LooxcieLive_ImageRemember Looxcie? The folks behind those tiny, ear-mounted video cameras that first popped up a few years ago? The company has been keeping to itself these past few months, mostly because the team has been slaving away some new and updated apps that they're finally willing to talk about. The LooxcieLive mobile app has been around for a little while now — anyone willing to brave the beta could access it as far back as last November — but this new, non-beta version is (thankfully) leaps and bounds ahead of previous iterations. For one, it doesn't require people to shell out extra money for a miniature camera that hangs next to their face (though the app naturally plays nice with them), so users can broadcast the process of whipping up breakfast using the camera(s) mounted on their iOS or Android devices.
 
AppFog Acquires Nodester As Platform As A Service Market Shows Signs Of Consolidation Top
nodesterbw_transparentAppFog has acquired Nodester, the most recognized platform as a service (PaaS) for the fast growing Node.js community. The move is one of the first signs of consolidation and proof that multi-language platforms are increasingly becoming the standard for this emerging cloud market. AppFog, also a PaaS, is based out of Portland and considered one of the up-and-coming players in the PaaS space that has made its mark by offering developers the means to build and deploy apps without tbe burden of building their own infrastructure. AppFofg offers multi-language support for app developers.
 
The Talented Ms. Hornstein: How @Shirls Fooled The Valley Top
247901_737474188720_7940810_n (1)Silicon Valley is full of hustlers, and that's often a good thing. But there's a difference between hustling and flat-out lying, and when people deceive company after company, it's time to call them out. So: If you look up Shirley Hornstein online, you might get the idea that she's one of the most well-connected people in tech. Here she is at the THRIVEGulu party last month, where Silicon Valley types got a chance to meet Hollywood geek heroes Joss Whedon and Eliza Dushku. Here she is at the Crunchies. And here she is on a list of the top women in venture capital and angel investing (which was republished in Forbes).
 
Grim And Gritty Startup Reboot: NoSQL Company Citrusleaf Changes Name And Acquires AlchemyDB Top
aerospike-logoYesterday NoSQL company Citrusleaf announced an undisclosed new round of funding led by New Enterprise Associates. Apparently the someone thought "Citrusleaf" was too soft and friendly a name for today's more mature NoSQL audience, so the company also got a grimmer, grittier name: Aerospike. But it didn't stop there. The company needed even more new, so it today Aerospike announced its acquisition of the "NewSQL" database AlchemyDB.
 
Your Disrupt SF Startup Battlefield Final Judges: Marissa Mayer, Roelof Botha, Michael Arrington, Chris Dixon, David Lee And David Sacks Top
tc-disrupt-sfChoosing this year's Startup Battlefield winners is a tough job. We've had a record number of applications for our startup competition happening in two weeks at Disrupt SF, and the 30 companies we've picked out of the inbound are exceptionally strong. Thankfully, we have an experienced team of entrepreneurs and investors on board to help. Marissa Mayer has graciously agreed to continue her traditional role as a Disrupt finals judge, even though she's just taken over as CEO of Yahoo (and is about to have a child!). Two other long-time finals judges are also back.  Accomplished Sequoia Capital partner Roelof Botha will be offering his incisive wit and seasoned insights to the presenting entrepreneurs. And the man himself, TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington, will be on board dishing out startup advice in addition to conducting his iconic interviews.
 
RAWR: Samsung Canada Wins The Internet With This Custom Galaxy S III Top
rawr-9It all started with a simple Facebook message from a loyal Samsung fan to the company's Canadian Facebook page. "I was just wondering if I could get a free Galaxy S3?" asked Shane. And for good measure the Samsung fanboy included a picture of a dinosaur going rawr. It wasn't a very good drawing but it was cute. And cute counts. Shane himself, age 26, told TechCrunch today he is far from an artist. Artist or not, he's now the proud owner of a Samsung Galaxy S III with his artwork adorning the backside -- and he got the customized phone for free.
 
Stky Aims To Save You From Yourself With Sticky Note-Inspired To-Do List Top
photo (2)You know that long to-do list that you never get to? The emails that have been starred for months, but still haven't been replied to? Stky can help save you from your insurmountable to-do list. The app, built by CrunchFund EIR Dave Feldman, gives you a blank sticky note every morning, which you can fill from a "drawer" full of tasks and use to structure your day. The next morning, the sticky is wiped clean, and tasks that weren't marked complete go back in the drawer.
 
No More Project Octopus — A Corporate Dropbox Gets A Corporate Name Top
octopusLast year at VMworld, there was this news story from VMware that was so refreshing. It concerned a new effort called Project Octopus. It had all the markings of a modern service -- the kind so rare in enterprise circles. Even the name sounded cool. Today Project Octopus is now Horizon Data - a service that is being called a corporate Dropbox. And fittingly, it has a corporate name.
 
Chief Creative Officer Mike Verdu Leaves Zynga To Found New, Zynga-Backed Startup Top
41623_1489225494_4554_nZynga announced today that Chief Creative Officer Mike Verdu will leave the company after three years to lead his own startup. This might raise questions for some investors, as Verdu has been a driving force behind Zynga's success over the years. But, it's not a complete separation. Zynga will "be on the ground floor" and be an investor in Verdu's new startup. Verdu's new company has not yet been announced.
 
Facebook Brings Notifications, Album-Specific Uploads To Standalone Camera App Top
Camera 1.1Facebook updated its standalone camera app today, showing users notifications when someone comments, tags or likes a photo and allowing users to upload photos to specific albums. This is the latest in a series of mobile app releases for the social giant. Last week, it rolled out a new mobile app that is twice as fast and update its mobile messenger app, adding emoticons and showing when a friend was last active.
 
New Update Appears To Bring ISIS Mobile Payments Support To T-Mobile's Galaxy S II (Update) Top
isis-nfcIt appears that a brand new update for the T-Mobile Galaxy S II subtly includes an "ISIS/NFC update." If this update enables the ISIS service on the phone, it would make the Galaxy S II the first phone to utilize the Google-Wallet mobile payments competitor. ISIS, if you happen to have forgotten, (no one would blame you, it was announced all the way back in 2010) is an NFC-based mobile wallet system backed by AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon.
 

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