Friday, December 28, 2012

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OneWed Brings Its Inspirational Wedding Imagery To iPad Top
OneWed ipadIt's been days, possibly even weeks, since we've covered a wedding-focused startup. Let's change that, shall we? OneWed, the company formerly known as Nearlyweds, is now on iPad. The new app quietly arrived just before the holidays, offering a new way for brides-to-be to browse, be inspired by, save and share wedding imagery and ideas.
 
Nook Media Takes $89.5M From Pearson, Says Holiday Sales Fell Below Expectations Top
nookNook Media, the Barnes & Noble subsidiary that handles Nook e-readers and digital content, announced today that education publisher Pearson has invested $89.5 million, giving it a 5 percent stake in the company. Nook Media spun out from Barnes & Noble earlier this. B&N owns 78.2 percent , while Microsoft (which made a big investment aimed at  bringing Nook content to Windows 8 devices) owns 16.8 percent, according to the press release. The deal gives the company a post-money valuation of $1.789 billion.
 
"Bug" Lets People Save Snapchat And Poke Videos, But Why Would Anyone Want To Do That? Top
Screen Shot 2012-12-28 at 11.07.11 AMBuzzfeed has found a "security hole" in an app that is totally not used for sexting, Snapchat, and an app that is also totally not used for sexting, Poke. The two apps totally not used for sexting were found to have been caching videos that have nothing to do with sex as temporary files on the iPhone and other iOS devices.
 
Data Shows Online Buzz About Snapchat Is Skyrocketing After The Launch Of Facebook Poke Top
snapchat facebook topsyImitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, which is nice and all -- but for businesses, flattery doesn't exactly pay the bills. However, when said flattery comes along with massive amounts of new attention from millions of potential new users, a high-profile copycat could actually help more than it hurts. Such may well be the case with ephemeral photo sharing app Snapchat and its newly-launched doppelgänger Facebook Poke.
 
Flying Home? Airport Chatter Brings Airport Info To iPhone, Socializes Travel Top
overview-profile-phonesAirport Chatter, which debuted just in time to take advantage of the busy holiday travel season, is a new mobile application aiming to be the one-stop shop for everything related to air travel, from the time of departure to the time of arrival. The app includes venue profiles for the shops and services inside airports, allowing users to not only discover the hours of operations and other business info, but also post check-ins and reviews. That makes it something like a miniature version of Yelp, specifically designed for airports.
 
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 From TOS Backlash, And Here Are Real Explanations For A Usage Dip 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.
 

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