Monday, December 3, 2012

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ThisLife Launches Beautiful Online Photo Storage And Sharing Service, Uses Amazon Glacier To Keep Prices Very Low Top
thislifeThisLife announced the launch of its online photo storage, management, and sharing service at Amazon re: Invent last week. The service, which raised $2.75 million from an impressive group of investors in June, is obviously not the first company to try to solve online photo storage, organization, and sharing, but it's definitely one of the slickest ones I've seen in a long time. It's also one of the first startups to use Amazon's new Glacier data-archiving service in production, something that helps the company keep its prices down.
 
Capital One Debuts New Apps To Accept Check Deposits By Phone Top
capone-checksBetter late than never. Today, Capital One Bank added itself to the growing number of banks offering the ability to make check deposits using their smartphones. Like the initiatives that have preceded it, the mobile check deposit is made possible by snapping a photo of both the front and back of an endorsed check using an app installed on customers' smartphones.
 
Dear Santa: Please Buy Me This $26,000 Transforming Robot Top
brave roboticsI've seen a few transforming robots in my day but few are as fluid and fast as this odd creation from Brave Robotics, a Toyko-based company that is selling its creation for a mere 1.98 million Yen. The little robot starts out as a car and then quickly transforms into a standing humanoid complete with FREAKING ARM MISSILES. Sadly, that many Yen translates to about $26,000, which could fund the purchase of a few dozen Transformers toys and the salary of a dedicated butler to transform the toys for you by hand.
 
"Dearest Tumblr User" Worm Spreading Spam on Tumblr, Seen It? Then Log Out Of Your Browser Top
6013940675_4d647d5011_zAccording to a report by The Next Web, there's a hack making its way through some prominent Tumblr blogs, including The Verge and CNet. Along with the spam on the pages itself, users are getting a popup message that would scare anyone's mom. Trust me, we get these calls all of the time: "Should I click this?" In a word...NO.
 
How Dev Bootcamp Is Transforming Education To Focus On "Extreme Employability" Top
michael-statonSix months ago, Jessie Young, 26, was working as a marketing manager at Get Satisfaction - a hip, well-known startup. She loved her job. She loved the company. It's just that the developers seemed to be at the heart of company's progress. To her, nothing seemed quite as exciting as working on the actual product. Jessie, like many others these days, was overcome with the desire to learn to code. But she didn't want to dabble. She had already tried, unsuccessfully, to teach herself a little Rails and Javascript, and wanted to get off the sidelines. But less than three months later, she was working as an apprentice at the also hip company thoughtbot -- this time as a software developer. What happened in those three months?
 
Microsoft Invests $75 Million To Expand Digital Education In Africa Top
digitalFutureDetailLast week, Microsoft announced a new investment of $250 million in its Partners In Learning Project to equip teachers with the skills to teach I.T. and other technology-related subjects worldwide. Now the company has announced another investment, this time of up to $75 million, aimed at increasing digital access to educational materials throughout Africa.
 
The Daily's Final Day: About 100 Employees In The Newsroom, Little Inkling Of Layoffs Top
The Daily GalaxyI spoke to a person inside The Daily who held a $40,000 reporter position for the now shuttered "daily iPad newspaper." While not completely blindsided, they had little inkling of what was going on inside the paper but there was always an undercurrent of doubt. "When the layoffs happened in the summer," the said. "You saw it coming. People were dropping off."
 
Behind Valkee: The Finnish Startup That Shines Lights Into Your Ears To Cure The Winter Blues Top
valkeeFinland has produced Angry Birds and red-hot gaming company Supercell, but there's another profitable startup that's got a far unlikelier background and product. One of the more outlandish-sounding startups I met in Helsinki last week was Valkee, a company that makes a device that shines lights onto your brain cells through your ear canals. 
 
DocPlanner, 'The ZocDoc Of E. Europe', Raises $1M Series A, Backed By Point Nine Capital, Piton Capital, To Expand To 5 More Markets Top
docplanner logoDocPlanner, an online medical and dental appointment scheduling startup based in Poland, has raised $1 million in Series A funding to expand its geographical footprint beyond the five European markets it currently operates in to five more. Investors in the round include Point Nine Capital, Piton Capital, local health tech fund RTA Ventures and local business angels.
 
An Interview With Dan Gilbert, Self-Made Hometown Billionaire And The Leader Of The Detroit Renaissance Top
Quciken LoansAfter mastering the mortgage pitch, Dan Gilbert is now attempting to sell an even bigger product: Detroit. There's something in the air in downtown Detroit. Depending on who you ask, it's a resurgence, a revival, or perhaps a white-washing. Ancient skyscrapers have new life. People are milling in the streets on lunch breaks. Startups are moving to the city at a surprising rate. Downtown Detroit feels alive - if only between 9 to 5. There's one man primarily responsible for much of the urban renewal: Dan Gilbert, founder and chairman of Quicken Loans.
 
Part Burning Man, Part TED, A New Mountain Village Opens For Grand Pursuits Top
summit-series-powder-mountain-editedInvestors and innovators have a new social playground in America's newest mountain village. Summit Series, host of a popular annual conference known for mixing revelry and social good, such as flying in Richard Branson to deliver a keynote on a Caribbean cruise ship, is creating a permanent settlement for the mission-driven organization on Powder Mountain in Eden, Utah.
 
Make Way For Another Mobile Payment POSsibility: Shuttle By Adyen Launches Across All Of Europe Top
adyen shuttle in actionCompetition in the nascent market for point-of-sale mobile payments gets a little more crowded today. Adyen, a Holland-based e-commerce specialist, is today launching Shuttle (pun intended). As the backend payments provider for companies like SoundCloud, Getty Images, Benetton, KLM, PopCap Games, Greenpeace, and Vodafone for the last six years and extending that to mobile for the past two, Adyen already processes billions of dollars in online and mobile transactions through its e-commerce platform, according to chief commercial officer Roelant Prins. This is the company's first big attempt stab at taking its platfrom into the mobile point-of-sale environment.
 
Carrier-Led Mobile Payments Venture Isis Partners With USAT To NFC-Enable 7,500 Vending Machines In Select Test Markets Top
isis-phones-1Isis, the carrier-led mobile payments venture backed by AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile, is today announcing a partnership with USA Technologies, to introduce up to 7,500 NFC-enabled vending machines in Isis' two test markets of Austin and Salt Lake City. The machines will allow for payment acceptance using USAT's ePort hardware and ePort Connect service. That means consumers can soon purchase items in the machines by simply tapping their phones to pay.
 
Mobile Drives Adoption Of Social Media In 2012: Apps & Mobile Web Account For Majority Of Growth; Nearly Half Of Social Media Users Access Sites On Smartphones Top
nielsen-logoResearch firm Nielsen and NM Incite, a joint venture between Nielsen and McKinsey, today published a comprehensive look at the state of the social media ecosystem in 2012. Consumers now spend around 20 percent of their total time online using social networks via their personal computers, and 30 percent of their time online visiting social networks on mobile, the report found. In addition, time spent on social media in the U.S. across both platforms grew 37 percent to reach 121 billion minutes in July 2012, up from 88 billion minutes in July 2011.
 
The Little Black Dress Reinvented By You: Bow & Drape Reworks A Fashion Cliché Top
Screen Shot 2012-12-03 at 8.56.57 AMTechnology is quickly disrupting one of the oldest industries in the country, fashion. And customization is at the heart of that, whether it's personalized web fittings or Indie boutique pieces via Etsy or completely customized clothing. Bow & Drape, a company we met in Boston, is ready to rethink the way you shop for dresses. In essence, Bow & Drape lets you start with a silhouette — A line, drop-waist, or whatever — and continue customizing from there. You can select the hemline, color, sleeve-length, and add special accoutrements like beads. The site asks for a quick set of body measurements before you get too in-depth to make sure that whatever you choose will fit like a glove.
 
Pocket's First Publisher Partner Is Kickstarter-Funded Long-Form Journalism Project Matter Top
309417_402637913126104_1148101953_nPocket, the save-for-later service that recently upgraded its API in order to make it easier for devs to integrate its services, today announced a new effort on the content partnership side, with new long-form storytelling publication Matter. Matter was a Kickstarter-backed initiative, which raised $140,000 ($90,000 more than it was originally looking for) to bring extended, well-researched science and tech reporting to the web a single story at a time.
 
Blog Advertising Service Skyscraper Raises $500K Seed Round Led By Howard Lindzon And Tom Peterson Of Social Leverage Top
Skyscraper LogoSkyscraper, the recently launched service that aims to make direct ad sales easier for bloggers, just announced that it has raised a $500,000 seed round led by Stocktwits founder and CEO Howard Lindzon and Tom Peterson of Social Leverage. The service launched out of Vancouver's GrowLabs accelerator program earlier this year (it was still called Skyscrpr back then) and its focus is squarely on making direct ad sales as easy as possible for small to medium publishers.
 
News Corp's iPad-Only Newspaper, The Daily, Shutting Down, Brand And Some Staff Folded Into New York Post Top
the_daily_icon-642x622News Corp today announced that The Daily, it's iPad-only digital newspaper publication, would be stopping its standalone publication effective December 15, 2012. The Daily will continue as a brand as part of "other channels," according to a News Corp press release, including The New York Post, which will adopt its technology section and other components, as well as take on some of its staff.
 
Droplet Plans To Disrupt Mobile Cash With No-Charges Payment App For iPhone Top
purpleIt's so simple and disruptive I wonder why others haven't really tried it. Droplet is a mobile money app on iOS that lets you load cash onto your phone and send payments to anyone - including participating retailers - for free, via email. Unlike mobile payment companies like Square, iZettle and apps from the banks who own Visa and Mastercard, Droplet is about digitising cash, not putting credit cards on your phone or carrying around a plastic card reader. But crucially there are no charges to the individual or the merchant. The idea behind droplet is utterly simple, but very powerful.
 
Gift Guide: Pelican ProGear U145 Urban Tablet Backpack Top
0U1450-0003-110_zoomimage_alt2_U145_3q_front_ipadBag week is long over, but one of the sport packs we had left over kept grabbing my attention with its hardshell tablet pocket and comfy, ventilated mesh back support. So I decided to carry around the Pelican ProGear U145 backpack for a few days and have been left mostly satisfied, and a little worn out.
 

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