Friday, August 3, 2012

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Fol.io Is An Online Market For Digital Products Top
Screen Shot 2012-08-03 at 9.16.13 AMProducers of digital goods have a few problems. The first is finding good clients (preferably not these clients) and the second is building a popular portfolio of work. But with out the former, you can't create the latter and vice versa. That's where fol.io comes in. A Manhattan-based company, fol.io aims to make it easier to sell digital assets. Founded by Cillian Kieran and Simon Keane, the site is designed to make it easier for web creators to grab handsome, usable graphics for their projects. Rather then futzing with Photoshop all day, they can grab a "share this" button for a dollar or a funny little graphic for $3.
 
Procured Health Nabs $1.1M From Bessemer, Athena Health Founder To Help Reduce Health Costs Top
Screen shot 2012-08-03 at 10.42.59 AMProcured Health, a startup that aims to help hospitals better discover, evaluate and adopt quality medical devices, is today announcing that it has raised $1.1 million in seed funding from a flock of angels and VCs. Investors in the startup's first round included Zimmerman Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, Fidelity Biosciences, NaviMed Capital's Bijan Salehizadeh, CEO of Bloom Health Abir Sen, Kal Vepuri of Trisiras Group, former Athena Health CFO Carl Byers as well as Athena Health co-founder and CEO Jonathan Bush -- to name a few.
 
Zimride Brings Ride Sharing To New York And Washington D.C. Top
Screen Shot 2012-08-02 at 12.16.53 PMZimride, a San Francisco-based startup that helps commuters share rides, is bringing itself to the East Coast with a new route between New York and Washington D.C. With an already popular route between San Francisco and Los Angeles, this will add another one on the other side of the country. The average passenger from New York to Washington D.C. should pay about $25 for a seat, and the average Zimride driver should make $150 if they sell three seats. The geographic expansion caps off a pretty hectic spring for the company. The company just added a third leg of its business in on-demand, mobile ride-sharing. Called Lyft, the product resembles Uber's model except that it uses regular people who bring their own cars. Zimride, of course, vets drivers for their driving history, criminal records, auto safety and so on. They add some personal touches too with a fist-bump for every passenger and pink moustaches on the cars.
 
Electronic Arts Sues Zynga, Says The Ville Is An "Unmistakable Copy" Of The Sims. Zynga: EA Doesn't Understand Copyright (Updated) Top
(1) The Ville on FacebookZynga has a bit of a reputation for cloning other game developers' ideas. Now, the company is being sued by gaming giant Electronic Arts on behalf of its Maxis label for "infringing EA's copyrights to its Facebook game, The Sims Social." Lucy Bradshaw, General Manager of EA's Maxis Label, says Zynga's The Ville "copied the original and distinctive expressive elements of The Sims Social in a clear violation of U.S. copyright laws." The degree to which Zynga copied The Sims, says Electronic Arts, "was so comprehensive that the two games are, to an uninitiated observer, largely indistinguishable."
 
Beyond Partisanship: Congress Unanimously Opposes UN Internet Takeover Top
220px-Vladimir_Putin_12015Democrats and Republicans in Congress can't agree on a budget, cybersecurity, immigration, tax reform, or even whether to sanction their corrupt colleagues. But, the House of Representatives unanimously opposed more United Nations control over the Internet.
 
If Dell Is Focusing On Enterprise, Why Is It Sponsoring A YouTube Lollapalooza Live Stream? Top
Screen Shot 2012-08-03 at 9.39.10 AMLollapalooza starts today and if you can't make it, YouTube has got your back--they're streaming it live from Chicago. The YouTube streaming is sponsored by Dell, an odd choice for a music festival, but a good way for Dell to reach a younger, wider audience than most of its current users. But wait--for the past six months, Dell has been telling us "we're no longer a PC company" and that they are focusing on enterprise.
 
Burning Question: Is Outlook.com Just A Reskinned Version Of Hotmail? Not Exactly. Top
outlook-hotmailPeople want to know: is the new Outlook.com just a reskinned and rebranded version of Microsoft's Hotmail, aka Windows Live Mail? Answer: Um, sort of. Maybe? OK, the truth is, it's a little hard to prove. But there are a few things worth pointing out. Microsoft stated that Outlook.com is "a break from the past," and that it built "a brand new service from the ground up." But if it's an all-new, re-imagined, reinvented email service, then why does Oultook.com redirect you to a Live.com URL when you login? Microsoft could have at least switched the DNS around, right? There's also the fact that part of the brand-new experience takes you to older live.com webpages, still lacking the Outlook.com makeover. You can see this in action if you hit up the mobile site, for example, or try to import email from another service, like Gmail. But there's other evidence, too, which indicates that Outlook.com still involves a good bit of re-used Hotmail/Live Mail code.
 
Say Hello To CrunchBase Weekly Top
Screen shot 2012-08-03 at 12.04.19 AMAll of us at TechCrunch recognize that CrunchBase is a hidden gem. As a resource for finding data about startups, funding activity, acquisitions and exits, it is invaluable, as this recent study supports. To keep you up-to-date on the huge stream of data in Crunchbase, we are launching a weekly email digest of the latest startup news and activity called CrunchBase Weekly. Out first edition goes out today at 10am PDT. In this first phase, each weekly email will contain a summary of the top funding rounds, acquisitions, and executive moves in the week past. Over time, we plan on adding more interesting data and analysis.
 
TechCrunch Giveaway: 3 Vizio Co-Stars #TechCrunch Top
VIZIO Co-StarVizio pulled off something amazing when they introduced the Co-Star, the first Google TV box that features OnLive gaming as well as Netflix, Amazon and YouTube. It's a set-top box that can literally fit in the palm of your hand and ships with a clever, dual-sided QWERTY remote. Plus, it sold out pre-orders in the first 12 hours it was available.
 
Eventbrite Now Recommends Events To 20 Million Users, Boosting Ticket Sales Along The Way Top
Eventbrite LogoOnline ticket sales startup Eventbrite is always looking for new ways that it can boost attendance at various events that are run on its platform. In December, it launched a recommendation system that would offer up events its users might want to attend, and now, about seven months later, it's sharing some data about how that system is performing. Today, Eventbrite is providing recommendations for about 20 million of its users, Director of Data Engineering Vipul Sharma told me. For each of those users, it can provide an average of 60 events to recommend, depending on how much data Eventbrite has on their interests and other events they've attended.
 
Google Updates PageSpeed Service, Promises To "Turbocharge Your Website" Top
pagespeed_service_logoGoogle just launched an update to PageSpeed Service, its hosted website optimization and caching service, that promises to get your site's content onto your users' screens even faster. PageSpeed Service is Google's effort to optimize websites on the fly. The service, which launched in beta almost exactly a year ago, basically re-writes parts of your site to optimize its loading time. The only caveat: PageSpeed Service is still officially in beta and you need to request an invite before you can get started.
 
E Ink Holdings To Buy Shares From SiPix Technology In A Bid To Expand Role In E-Paper Market Top
E Ink Logo¨-Mar2011If the folks at E Ink holdings have their way, there may be plenty more e-paper displays sprouting up in your future than you may have expected. The company just recently announced that it plans to purchase a majority stake in fellow display manufacturer SiPix Technology and its Imaging subsidiary in a bid to expand its presence in the e-paper market.
 
As Windows 8 Nears Public Debut, Microsoft Ditches "Metro" Brand (P.S. It Doesn't Matter) Top
windows-8-metroMicrosoft is abandoning its "Metro" branding - the branding that refers to the clean, modern, tiled layout that defines many of its consumer-facing products including Windows 8, Windows Phone, Xbox 360, Office 2013 and more. For over a year, Microsoft has talked about "Metro" in press conferences, blog posts, tutorials, and guides. The reason for the change has to do with a dispute between Microsoft and a European partner, German retailer Metro AG, who has threatened legal action for infringing on its "Metro" trademark. Oops. Microsoft, of course, is positioning this news as no big deal, saying that "Metro" was always intended to be an internally used code name, not something related to the company's commercial branding efforts. (Right. Which is why Microsoft is transitioning to new branding without, you know, actually having a new name picked out yet.) But Microsoft may be right on one thing: it's not really a big deal. Remember what happened with the iPad?
 
Samsung's Next Galaxy Note To Make Its Grand Debut In Berlin On August 29 Top
unpackednoteThese past few weeks have been quite the ride for Samsung's Galaxy Note devotees -- a variant of the original model is finally (and officially) on its way to T-Mobile's airwaves, and a report out of South Korea pointed to some nifty upgrades in place for the phablet's successor. Now there's a new, even juicier tidbit for those phablet fans to mull over. A Samsung spokesperson confirmed to Reuters last night that the company would indeed show off "the next Galaxy Note" at an event in Berlin on August 29 -- just two days before the city's massive IFA trade show is slated to kick off.
 
One Jackson Crowdsources Kids' Apparel With Contests That Lead To Clothes You Can Buy Top
One JacksonOne Jackson, the latest e-commerce startup to target the popular kids' clothing market, is preparing to make a big splash with its public debut next week. The company plays in the same space as other online clothing startups experimenting with Silicon Valley-inspired business models, including the subscription-based offerings from Wittlebee and FabKids, for example, as well as the web-based consignment shop ThredUp. But One Jackson has a completely different idea. Instead of designing clothes in-house or aggregating collections from elsewhere, the site will serve as a platform for connecting consumers with indie designers through contests where shoppers vote on which clothes they would like to see get produced and sold.
 
Competition Weighs Down HTC In Q2: Sales Drop 27% To $3B; Operating Profit, EPS Down By 57%; Lowers Q3 Outlook Top
htc-logoHTC has posted its Q2 numbers and they're not pretty. While numbers were up on Q1, the Taiwanese Android/Windows Phone smartphone maker saw declines in nearly every line of earnings compared to the same quarter a year ago. Revenues were 91.04 billion Taiwan dollars ($3 billion), down nearly 27% on Q2 2011 (and missing consensus analyst expectations); gross profit was down by more than 30% to NT24.59 billion ($819 million); operating profit down by over 57% to NT8.2 billion ($273 million). Earnings per share were also down by nearly 57% to NT8.9 ($0.30) per share. HTC also provided a sober look at the quarter ahead. It expects that in Q3 revenues will drop even further to NT$70-80 billion ($2.3-2.7 billion), with the gross margin also dropping down to 25%, and the operating margin also coming down to 7%.
 
Dear Facebook, It Could Really Be This Simple Top
fb-karma-1
"The one positive thing that this week has so far thrown light on is that there is a widespread recognition that things cannot stay the same." -- Keith Teare
Oh ye of little faith: For the many of us who BELIEVE in Consumer Internet, it's so painful to watch the Facebook/Groupon/Zynga stock trainwreck continue, with Facebook shares slipping to below $20 today, the lowest they've ever been.
 
The Platform Ecosystem Wars: Rome Is Burning Top
romeburningEditor's note: Guest author Keith Teare is General Partner at his incubator Archimedes Labs and CEO of recently funded just.me. He was a co-founder of TechCrunch. It is either a good week to be having a CrunchUp focusing on the faltering Facebook ecosystem or it is a terrible week. Either way it is a compelling and interesting week, and whether it is good or bad depends on who you are and what your role is in the ecosystem.
 
Task Manager Todoist Receives a Major HTML5 Update Top
Todoist - Screenshot

Todoist is one of the oldest web-based task managers still available today. Yet, they unveiled a major update that takes advantage of some bleeding edge HTML5 features. In addition to demonstrating the latest technology improvements that can be implemented in a web app, it is still today a relevant task manager for individuals.

 
LevelUp Now Has $21M To Take On The Squares Of The Mobile Payment World Top
screen-shot-2012-06-07-at-10-26-55-amMobile payment service LevelUp, an off-shoot of Boston-based SCVNGR, announced this morning that it has raised $9 million from T-Venture, the venture capital arm of Deutsche Telekom. The investment is the second tranche of a larger funding round and brings the total raised to just over $21 million. SCVNGR itself has raised over $31 million. As a result of the investment, T-Venture Senior Manager Randeep Wilkhu will join the startup's board as an observer. As for some context: Every day there's a new headline about mobile payments solutions. It seems that every carrier and credit card company has its own system, while all the big mobile players are working on one or have one already on the market (Google Wallet). The rumors indicate that the iPhone 5 will have NFC functionality to enable Apple's entry into the mobile payments game. The point is: It's easy to be skeptical of new solutions, especially when it comes to long-term viability.
 

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