Friday, December 28, 2012

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I Can Has Funding: Cheezburger Raises $5M From Foundry, Madrona , Softbank For LOLcats, FAIL Blog And Other Memes Top
pet-holdings-incCheezburger, the internet publisher responsible for LOLcats, FAIL Blog, and other memes, has raised $5 million in funding, according to an SEC filing. A spokesperson for the company confirmed the funding, in which existing incestors Foundry Group with Madrona Venture Group, Avalon Ventures, and SoftBank Capital all participated. No new board members were added.
 
Study Claims Online Voter Registration Contributed 'Significantly' To Higher Youth Registration Top
3003337804_c01d490152 (1)California's experiment in fully online voter registration appears to have been a success. "Online registration contributed significantly to an increase in 2012 youth registrants and modestly to overall increases in general registration rates," claims a University of California, Davis, study of the 2012 election, which finds that online voting boosted youth registration an entire percent (10.1 percent to 11.1 percent) in its short one-month existence prior to the election [PDF].
 
Lyft Staffing Up In Seattle And Los Angeles As It Looks To Expand Its Ride-Sharing Service Beyond SF Top
Lyft carLyft, the local on-demand ride-sharing service operated by the startup Zimride, is apparently not letting recent regulatory hurdles cramp its style too much. Lyft, which launched its service allowing individual car-owners to provide local transportation services to their peers in exchange for a suggested donation in San Francisco this past summer, is now actively recruiting staff in new cities including Seattle and Los Angeles as part of a planned geographic expansion in the new year.
 
Touch Publishing Platform Onswipe Now Reaching 10M Monthly Active Users On iOS Top
onswipe logoOnswipe, a startup that helps publishers build websites optimized for iPads and other touchscreen devices, is closing out what sounds like a big year. Content published through the Onswipe platform reached 44 million unique visitors over the course of the year, the company says, and it's now reaching 10 million active users per month on iOS. (Onswipe is also available on Android and Kindle Fire, but they make a very small contribution to the total.) To put that into perspective, CEO and co-founder Jason Baptiste calculates that Onswipe's traffic now exceeds the iPad traffic for WordPress and Tumblr combined. (He based that on Quantcast's mobile traffic data for WordPress.com and Tumblr — for example, WordPress has a reported 12.5 million mobile uniques in the US, then when you take into account that only 31 percent of that traffic comes from iOS, and only 37 percent of that comes from the iPad, you get 1.4 million uniques from the iPad.) It's a bit of an apples-to-oranges comparison, since we're looking at onSwipe's global iOS traffic, not just iPad traffic in one country, but it does suggest that Onswipe has a mobile audience that's comparable to the major web publishing platforms.
 
A Few Actual Harms To Be Concerned About From Today's Government Spying Law Top
flicker-user-aussiegall"Other than the vague threat of an Orwellian dystopia, as a society we don't really know why surveillance is bad," writes Washington University Law Professor, Neil Richards [PDF]. Today, the United State Senate reauthorized a controversial Obama-supported surveillance law, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 Amendments Act of 2008 (FISA), which permits intelligence agencies to monitor international communications, sometimes without a warrant and little court oversight. Civil libertarians are up in arms, but in the face of deadly terrorist threats, does government monitoring actually harm people? Richards' attempts to argue that brazen government spying does, indeed, have real-world harms, including mass self-censorship and blackmail, and supplies moderately compelling evidence for those naturally scared of the government.
 
Amazon Makes It Easier To Host Static Web Pages On S3 Top
aws-logo-640S3 is Amazon's cloud storage service for developers, but you can also use it to host static web pages on the cheap. Amazon introduced this feature about a year ago and today, it is making it even easier to run basic sites on S3 with the addition of root domain hosting (using Amazon's Route 53 DNS service) so users can access your site without specifying the "www" in the address and enhanced redirection functionality.
 
Rethinking The Mobile App "Walkthrough" Top
Pulse1-320x480Lately, it seems that many mobile apps, upon first launch, are stepping users through multi-screen "walkthroughs" where all the features of the app are demonstrated, painstakingly, one-by-one. Worse still, are those overlays of help screens that appear at start up, with the scrawled handwriting, circles and arrows best left on whiteboards - not in user education material.
 
When Kickstarter Delivers: Thanks To Simple, Effective Design, Supr's Slim Wallet Exceeds Expectations Top
slim-walletI've backed an embarrassing number of Kickstarter projects, almost all of them in the hardware/gadget categories, and I've been disappointed more than I've been delighted. The Slim wallet by Supr however bucks the trend, delivering a front-pocket wallet that finally and truly deserves the honor of actually being carried in that place.
 
Instagram Denies 25% Holiday User Drop Top
instayellowSure, it's not unlike the New York Post to be sensationalist. But in this case it misinterpreted data to suggest Instagram was hit harder by backlash to its terms of service changes than it actually was. Combined with it being a quiet-ish holiday news week, I am taking a story it published today on a 25 percent drop in Instagram users with a little more than a grain of salt.
 
Roamz Prepares A "Street View For Social" Using New Google Maps iOS SDK Top
Roamz_iPad_MapRoamz, a local search startup for web and mobile, is today showing off one of the first implementations of the new Google Maps iOS SDK in its new iPad app, due out after the holidays. The Maps iOS SDK, which was released at the time of the Google Maps iOS app launch earlier this month, allows mobile developers who use maps inside their apps to use Google Maps instead of Apple's implementation.
 
Raspberry Pi Hack Turns The Ultra-Affordable Computer Into An AirPlay Receiver Top
airpiWhat can't the Raspberry Pi do? Well, it definitely can operate as an AirPlay receiver for Apple's Wi-Fi audio streaming protocol, it turns out. Cambridge engineering student Jordan Burgess managed to convert one of the $25 open computers into an AirPlay receiver along the lines of Apple's AirPort Express, using open source software, a USB Wi-Fi adapter, an SD card, a micro USB cable and the Pi itself.
 
Stuck For New Year's Eve In London? YPlan Takes Last-Minute Booking Mobile Top
screen1(1)With over 5 million Twitter followers, UK actor/author Stephen Fry is the closest thing we get to an "Ashton Kutcher", given that he has a big following and occasionally takes an interest in tech startups (sometimes a financial interest). But his choices are hit and miss. One was a startup which allowed you to put virtual post-it notes on websites... But his picks have improved and recently Yplan, a VC-backed startup with real execution credentials, benefitted from his largesse. Like HotelTonight, YPlan [iTunes link] is a way to book events (like plays, shows and concerts) via iOS mobile with literally a couple of clicks. And it's going to come in handy for New Year's Eve and other holiday events in the UK capital.
 
Kim Dotcom To Host Mega's Launch Event At His New Mega Zealand Mansion Next Month Top
ff_kimdotcom3_largeKim Dotcom doesn't do things small. The man behind the Megaupload empire is about to launch his next service dubbed simply Mega. But don't expect a simple press event in a hotel conference room. Nope, on January 20, 2013, exactly one year after his over-the-top takedown, Dotcom is hosting the Mega launch event at his sprawling New Zealand estate -- effectively giving the finger to the RIAA, MPAA, and the shady US Justice Department.
 
Early Apple Computer And Tablet Designs Reveal The iMac And iPad That Might Have Been Top
apple01Apple worked closely with Frogdesign during the eighties, creating Apple's early design language and charting the visual path of Apple computers from the Apple IIc to the Macintosh. Frogdesign founder Hartmut Esslinger's fingerprints are all over those early, iconic designs, and in a new book, he reveals some concepts for Apple computers and tablets that never made it to market.
 
RIM's Upfront Payment To Nokia In Patent Dispute Settlement Totals $65M Top
rim_logo_blackRIM responded to Nokia's request to have its devices removed from sale following a patent decision in the Finnish company's favor by working out a settlement, and now we're beginning to get a sense of the specific terms of said arrangement. AllThingsD has uncovered an SEC filing that details RIM's first lump-sum payments, which amounts to €50 million (or around $65 million). Following that initial exchange, RIM will have to make royalty payments on the sale of each device.
 
Costs For Marketing Mobile Apps Spiked Last Month Even As Downloads Temporarily Dropped Top
fiksu-costsAs app developers geared up for the super-competitive Christmas season, marketing costs rose by 30 percent in November from the month before, according to Fiksu, a Boston-based company that helps publishers find the most efficient marketing channels. The company said that the cost of getting a “loyal” user, or one that opens an app more than three times, rose to $1.38 from $1.06 in October. That reversed a four-month trend that saw marketing costs decline going into October’s launch of the iPhone 5. Fiksu said the average number of downloads for the top 200 free iPhone apps in the U.S. declined to 4.57 million per day in November, down from 5.4 million in October. This is a temporary decline following the annual bump that comes with the launch of a new iPhone. When consumers get new phones around the annual iPhone launch or Christmas, downloads spike temporarily as people try out new apps or download old favorites. "We can expect costs and download volumes to climb through December, much like last year, as marketers spend heavily in preparation for the flood of new devices and rush of user activity and app discovery around Christmas,” said Fiksu’s CEO Micah Adler in a statement. Indeed, mobile analytics startup Flurry reported yesterday that app downloads spiked at 328 million on Christmas Day, a record high for a single day since Flurry started measuring app downloads. Downloads per hour peaked early at around 11 a.m. on the 25th, and remained high throughout the day until around 8:30 or 9 p.m. While Christmas represents a single-day peak, Flurry is projecting that app downloads will remain high throughout the next week and into New Year's Day, ending the holiday period with over 1.5 billion downloads, and possibly reaching as high as 2 billion total. Meanwhile, Fiksu is backed by Charles River Ventures. They’ve accumulated more than 63 billion app actions, including launches, registrations and in-app purchases, as well as real-time bidding requests in helping developers find the most optimized ways of getting new users.
 
OUYA Ships 1,200 Development Consoles, Shows Off Its Pre-Release Android Gaming Hardware On Video Top
ouyaOUYA, the Android-based affordable gaming console that inspired a wide range of reaction from tech watchers and gamers alike when it debuted on Kickstarter back in July 2012, today reached an important milestone: shipping product. Admittedly, it's just the developer-specific consoles for now, but 1,200 units are now winging their way to actual people, and the company put the pre-release gaming console on video to prove it.
 
The Social Gift-Giving Wars — Which One Looked Best For The Holiday Season? Top
giftWith the holiday season upon us, let's take a look at some of the gift-giving services and how well they work, writes contributor Natasha Starkell. Facebook's acquisition of Karma earlier this year must have caused quite a few sighs and fading hopes of the gift-giving websites, and Giftiki was even acquired by LaunchRock a couple of months ago. Yet Facebook Gifts differs from other gift services in how much freedom both the giver and recipient of the present have to select the from the gift options.
 
Apple's $160K Copyright Fine In China Is A Pittance, But Could It Open The Door For Further Claims? Top
murong xuecun essays china appChina is not exactly known for having a watertight regime when it comes to piracy and copyright violations, but it’s trying to change that perception, and here’s a case in point: a group of eight authors, calling themselves the China Written Works Copyright Society, has won a case against Apple in Beijing for hosting apps that were in themselves violating the copyright on their works. Apple has in turn been ordered to pay 1 million yuan ($160,000) in compensation – pennies to the iPhone giant and only about 10 percent of how much the authors were trying to get out of Apple when they originally brought the case against it earlier in the year. The news comes at an interesting time for Apple in China. The region — the world’s biggest smartphone market at the moment — is a significant one for Apple, accounting for 15 percent of all of its revenues. But it’s also facing huge competition, primarily from low-priced Android device makers. In Q4, Apple reported sales of $5.7 billion in Greater China, which was flat compared to Q3, but up 26 percent compared to a year ago. Apple has had also to grapple with contrasting (and not always positive) perceptions on how well its newest handset, the iPhone 5, has been selling in China since launching this month. It also comes as China is making ever more moves to improve the connection between Internet users and real-world identities. However, it’s very much a double-edged sword. A law passed today requiring real-name identities for online users is one more way for China to track illicit content posters, but it could also be seen as a way for the country to further control how people use the Internet to express themselves, sometimes in acts of dissent against the country’s official lines of thought. For their part, the China Written Works Copyright Society is unhappy with the amount of compensation ordered by the court. “We are disappointed at the judgment. Some of our best-selling authors only got 7,000 yuan. The judgment is a signal of encouraging piracy,” a representative of the group told Reuters. Still, the sum could be seen as significant winnings in a country where the average monthly wage for a working class person is $190. And it opens the door further for Apple to face yet more such claims from other rights holders in the country. To date, this is the second time that Apple has lost a
 
Sina's 2013 Strategy Is "Mobile First," CEO Charles Chao Says In Company-Wide Email Top
Sina WeiboChina-based tech blog 36kr has published a company-wide email (link via Google Translate) from Sina CEO Charles Chao that previews the China-based Internet giant's 2013 strategy. Chao wrote that Sina will reboot its strategy next year by splitting its business structure into two parts, with one focusing on its Web portal and the other on Sina Weibo, its massively popular microblogging service which boasts more than 400 million members. Sina's COO Hong Du will focus on running the Web portal and report directly to Chao, who will take responsibility for its microblogging and mobile operations. Each side will take responsibility for their own products, technology and operations.
 

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