Monday, December 3, 2012

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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 a no charges to the individual or the merchant. The idea behind droplet is utterly simple, but very powerful. In Africa, M-Pesa processes more than a quarter of the country's GDP via mobile phone because there's virtually no banking system. Droplet could well do the same, if it plays its cards right, and create a viral adoption loop. All it would take would be for retailers - especially small ones - to start promoting it themselves.
 
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.
 
Google Ventures Leads $1.2M Round For TrueLens, Which Uses Social Data To Improve Customer Targeting Top
truelens logoMarketing startup TrueLens is announcing that it has raised a $1.2 million round of funding. The company is also unveiling its core customer intelligence product, which is calls Socialgraphics. Co-founder and CEO Roy Rodenstein admitted that social marketing and advertising is "a noisy space," but he argued that TrueLens fits into a different bucket than most of the bigger names in the industry. First, there's the social marketing market, where brands can collect data from social networks and run social marketing campaigns, but whose products "aren't really actionable from the core marketing function." Then there's the display advertising world, where banner ads are targeted based on a wide range of data points. And lastly, there's the market that TrueLens is aiming for.
 
Cloud-Based Project Management And Collaboration Tool For The Enterprise, Smartsheet Raises $26M Top
smartsheetSmartsheet, a company that develops a cloud-based collaboration tool for the enterprise, has raised $26 million from Insight Venture Partners and Madrona Venture Group. This brings the company's total funding to over $30 million.
 
The New iMac: Designed By Apple In California, Assembled In USA Top
osxYour next Mac could be assembled in America. Apple is assembling at least some of the new, ultra-thin iMacs within the USA. The backside stamp containing the serial code and FCC logo generally says "Designed by Apple in California. Assembled in China." But several owners of the new model quickly discovered their machine was made in the good ol' US of A.
 
iTunes Event Taking Place In Moscow On Dec 4: Is Russia Finally Getting Apple's Music Service? Top
Saint Basil's Cathedral, MoscowAt long last, Apple appears to finally be approaching a launch date for iTunes in Russia -- and it could come as soon as tomorrow. A tipster has forwarded us an email, in Russian, inviting a small group of people to an iTunes event in Moscow on the evening of December 4. The email does not give much away, simply noting that team iTunes will be holding a musical evening, and that it's a small, invitation-only affair, at one of the city's swanky shopping centers, GUM, located on Moscow's Red Square.
 
European Commission Wants Single Set Of Website Accessibility Rules To Apply To Government Sites By 2015 Top
European CommissionThe EC has proposed new rules to improve public sector website accessibility for disabled people, describing the current situation as "dire" -- with only one third of Europe's 761,000 public sector and government websites described as fully accessible. The proposed Directive would introduce "mandatory EU standardised accessibility features" from the end of 2015.
 
Crazy-Stupid Or The Future? SoPost Wants To Turn Your Twitter Handle Into A Physical Address Top
SoPost logoChalk this one up as crazy-stupid or the future: SoPost, a new UK startup launching today, is on a mission to reinvent the postal address by mapping things like Twitter handles, Facebook names, email addresses and other social IDs to a physical location to make it easier and more convenient for customers to receive deliveries or for users to send stuff to friends. The problem that it's setting out to solve -- if it is a problem - is that a postal address should no longer be a fixed place, but something much more dynamic, because it frequently changes depending on where you are, at different times. In contrast, a social ID has the potential to remain fixed forever.
 
My-Apps Secures $1.5M From Russia's Life Group To Build A WordPress For Apps Top
Screen Shot 2012-12-03 at 10.09.45There are any number of 'apps builders' out there, from Appbreeder, Buzztouch, Apps-builder, Appsbar and Mobileappwizard (you get the drift), and even Apple has patented a tool for simple apple building. However, few have received VC backing, which is why it's notable that My-Apps.com has secured $1.5 million investment from Russia's Financial Group Life, which earlier this year created a $10m tech venture fund. Prior to this My-apps attracted a $300,000 investment from Farminers seed fund and Igor Matsanyuk, one of the Mail.ru Group founders, taking funds raised to dote to $1.8 million.
 
Taxibeat Launches Its Taxi Driver Marketplace And Smartphone App In Paris Just In Time For LeWeb Top
04_DriversListViewWhat is it about taxi startups launching in time for LeWeb? Then again, you can't beat a captive audience. And so it is that Taxibeat, the hail-a-cab smartphone app and taxi driver marketplace, has launched in Paris this week, just in time to help ferry a bunch of geeks to the LeWeb conference and countless after parties. For Taxibeat it represents a fairly aggressive international roll-out strategy over the last four months, having first launched in the startup's native Athens, Greece, in May 2011, it's recently expanded to Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo (Brazil), Oslo (Norway) and Bucharest (Romania). As of today, the company can add the City of Light to that list.
 
Dropbox Follows The Tech Crowd, Opens Dublin Office — Says First European Office Will Be Hub For International Ops Top
dropboxDropbox has become the latest tech company to open an office in Dublin -- land of Guinness and low corporate tax rates. Dropbox said the new office, its first in Europe, will serve as the center of the its international operations -- enabling it "to better provide technical support and product acumen" to Dropbox's millions of European users, plus other international customers.
 
Happy Birthday, SMS! Top
shutterstock_89087437On December 3rd, 1992 in the little town of Newbury, Berkshire, a UK programmer sent his best mate a few lines of greeting using a unique new technique called Short Messaging Service. The programmer, Neil Papworth, was a test engineer for the Sema Group, and sent the message via PC to the phone of Richard Jarvis, a Vodafone employee. The message was "Merry Christmas." Vodafone intended the service as a fun and easy way to communicate internally.
 
What's Up With Whatsapp? Facebook Might Want To Buy It, That's What Top
whatsapp screen shot androidWhatsapp, the multiplatform mobile messaging app that has been one of the runaway success stories for ad-free, paid services, has been in talks to be acquired by Facebook, according to sources close to the matter. We're still digging around on potential price and other details about how advanced the deal is. But as mobile becomes the latest battleground in the Internet's game of thrones, you can see how such a deal could make sense.
 
Golden Gate Ventures And JFDI.Asia Announce Strategic Alliance For Asian Startups Top
Singapore skylineTop Southeast Asia VCs Golden Gate Ventures and JFDI.Asia have announced a new strategic alliance that will focus on supporting early-stage digital start-up companies as they transition from concept to substantial pre-series A funding.
 
Native Ads In 2013: Scale, Headlines As Banners, Mobile, Samsung, And Yahoo Top
GreenbergEditor's note: Dan Greenberg is the founder & CEO of Sharethrough, the native video advertising company. Five months ago, I published an article on TechCrunch that provided the first framework for the emerging Native Advertising market. At the time, "native advertising" (a term coined by Fred Wilson) was a new name for an old concept — monetization models that emerge from the underlying user experience of the site or app, integrated into the visual design and driven by content-based ads.
 
Tim Berners-Lee's Open Data Institute Gets Its First Outside Investment, $750K From The Omidyar Network To Top Up UK's $16M Top
ODI logoThe Open Data Institute, a UK-based incubator and promoter of open-data businesses that was first conceived by Tim Berners-Lee and artificial intelligence pioneer Nigel Shadbolt, is today announcing its first international investment. The Omidyar Network, the investment firm co-founded by eBay's Pierre Omidyar and his wife Pam, is putting $750,000 towards the ODI. The money comes on top of the £10 million ($16 million) that the UK government, via the Technology Strategy Board, has already committed over the next five years for the project.
 
As Retail E-Commerce Sees Three Billion Dollar-Plus Days In The Past Week, Online Holiday Sales Jump 15 Percent To $20.4B Top
comscore_-u-s-online-holiday-shopping-already-up-14-percent-to-9-7-billion-techcrunchWe've been wowed by the record breaking Black Friday and Cyber Monday spending data, but it looks like consumers are continuing to spend online for holiday shopping. comScore says that retail e-commerce spending for the first 30 days of the November–December 2012 holiday season amounts to $20.4 billion, which is a 15 percent increase versus the corresponding days last year.
 
The Death Of Paper Top
newspaperWhat does it say about us as a culture that is slowly killing off its primary method of information transferral. In 20 years, if there are no physical books, what will future cultures know about is in 220 years, when digital memories are likely wiped away?
 
Gift Guide: Philips Hue Top
Hue Gift Guide FeaturePhilips Hue are wireless LED lightbulbs that are controlled via an iOS app -- allowing you to change the shade and intensity of light they beam out, turn the bulbs on and off remotely, and set them to come on at scheduled times. Let there be micro-managed light!
 

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