Wednesday, October 31, 2012

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isocket Nabs $8M From Foundry, Tim Draper & More To Bring Modern Tech, APIs To Premium Online Advertising Top
logo-full-jpgisocket, a direct sales platform for premium online advertising, announced this morning that it has closed an $8 million series A financing round, led by Foundry Group. New investor (and newly-launched firm) Costanoa joined existing investors Tim Draper of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Jeff Clavier of SoftTech VC, Accelerator Ventures, Quest Venture Partners, Blumberg Capital and a number of angel investors in contributing to the series A raise. The round brings isocket's total investment to $11 million.
 
Putting All Of This "Fanboy/Fangirl" Nonsense To Rest Once And For All Top
2410453571_7b5cbd444b_zThere's an interesting thing that happens in the technology press world, and probably throughout all of journalism land. It's weird, and it's become quite annoying to me. Basically, whenever someone writes something positive about a company, be it a product release or software update, the general public tend to jump to a conclusion quickly -- that the person writing the story is either a fanboy/fangirl of the company, or is in the "pocket" of the PR team at said company. It's obnoxious. The sad part about it is that this behavior of simple-mindedness is starting cross over into the journalism ecosystem itself. Other journalists at other publications are starting to call out people for "drinking Kool-aid" or being an "apologist."
 
Why My Colleagues In Congress Shouldn't Wait On Immigration Reform Top
My Approved PortraitsEditor's note: Sen. Jerry Moran represents the state of Kansas. Follow him on Twitter. During the second Presidential Debate at Hofstra University, Gov. Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama found common ground – agreeing that highly skilled, entrepreneurial immigrants create jobs for Americans.
 
LocBox Raises $5.1M From InterWest, Google Ventures, Others To Help Local Businesses Master Online Deals And Marketing Top
Locbox_logoIt seems like there are an infinite number of marketing tools competing for local businesses' attention nowadays. A startup called LocBox helps those businesses manage their efforts in a way that's focused on acquiring customers and driving revenue — and it just raised $5.1 million in Series A funding. The round was led by InterWest Partners, with participation from Google Ventures, Accel Partners, and 500 Startups. Individual investors included Anand Rajaraman and Venky Harinarayan of Kosmix (now WalMartLabs) and Deep Nishar, senior vice president of products and user experience at LinkedIn. (LocBox CEO Saumil Mehta was formerly director of product at Kosmix, and his co-founder/CTO Sailesh Ramakrishnan was director of engineering.) InterWest's Keval Desai is joining the company's board of directors.
 
Uber Kills Surge Pricing In NYC For Customers, Drivers Paid 2X Rate To Meet Post-Sandy Demand Top
UberWith the subway system down for the count in the wake of mega-storm Sandy, it's very, very tough to get around New York City today. And this morning, people who opened up their Uber apps to hail a car in Manhattan were met with another obstacle: "Surge pricing," which is when Uber hikes up fare prices during especially busy times.
 
Better Than Gmail Tasks: To-Do List App Any.DO Now Syncs With Gmail, Turns Emails Into Action Items On iOS, Android & Chrome Top
Gmail-AddonAny.DO, the mobile to do list app backed by $1 million in funding from Eric Schmidt's Innovation Endeavors, Blumberg Capital, Genesis Partners and others, is today making good on its promise that it will become something more than your average task list. With the new Gmail integration feature debuting today, you can now turn email threads into actionable items which are automatically synced to Any.DO's cross-platform apps.
 
Zapier Raises $1.2M Seed Round From Bessemer Venture Partners, Draper Fisher Jurvetson & Others Top
zapier-logo-whiteZapier, the Y Combinator-backed IFTTT for business users, just announced that it has raised a $1.2 million seed round from Bessemer Venture Partners, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Wufoo co-founder Kevin Hale and a number of other angel investors. The company plans to use this additional investment to continue the development of its core platform and to expand its developer platform. In addition, Zapier also wants to use this funding to enhance its customer service offerings.
 
Dave McClure's 500 Startups Chooses 33 Companies For Its Fifth Accelerator Batch, Bets Big On International Top
Dave McClure (image courtesy of Flickr user Technotheory)Dave McClure's 500 Startups has just announced the newest batch of companies to be accepted for its fifth accelerator class. This group is the first through which 500 Startups used an open application process, rather than rely solely on referrals when evaluating participants.
 
LeBron James Makes The Galaxy Note II Look Normal-Sized In This Samsung Ad Top
Screen Shot 2012-10-31 at 11.38.04 AMKing James (or LeBron, as he's known in more familiar circles) is the hottest thing to happen to professional basketball since a pre-rape-trial Kobe Bryant. But perhaps more central to his role in this Samsung Galaxy Note II commercial are his over-sized hands. Lately, most Samsung commercials have focused on silly Apple consumers waiting in line while "the next big thing is already here." This video is a bit less aggressive.
 
Mac User Rolls His Own Fusion Drive And Details How You Can, Too Top
fusion-driveApple announced Fusion Drive along with its new Macs and iPads last week, and while it may have seemed like a hardware option only available from Apple itself, it's actually more about how OS X handles storage, startup and other software operations. Which means, as Mac developer Patrick Stein has proven, you can create your own Fusion drive at home with Terminal and existing hardware.
 
Haxlr8r Is Looking For A Few Good Hardware Start-Ups To Be Close To The Action Top
Screen Shot 2012-10-31 at 11.47.46 AMCyril Ebersweiler has launched one of the coolest incubators I've seen in a while. Based in Dalian, China, the incubator has already run one group through the ringer and now they're looking for hardware hackers to join them in their second round. This time, however, they're doing it up nice.
 
SplashPost Lets Businesses Sell, Promote & Collect Emails From Their Facebook Page Timeline Top
SplashPost-logoThomas Kjeldgaard, better known as the co-founder of Facebook Page builder Pagemodo (acquired by Webs.com in 2011), is today launching another startup aimed at helping Facebook Page owners. The new company is called SplashPost, and it's a software-as-a-service offering that allows Page owners to create multimedia Facebook Timeline posts in order to sell to fans, collect email addresses, distribute coupons, and more.
 
I, For One, Welcome Our Salad-Making Robot Overlords Top
picturesResearchers from the Korean Institute of Science and Technology's Center for Intelligent Robotics (CIR) have been working on a robot named CIROS to help around the house. Earlier versions were fairly life-like but this third-generation model, able to cut cucumbers and pour salad dressing, is positively Julia-Child-like.
 
Google's New Voting Tool Finds Your Personalized Ballot And Nearest Polling Place Top
images (23)Election Day is creeping up. Fortunately, Google has made it easy to find your nearest polling place and the candidates representing your registered address. The newly launched Voter Info tool pinpoints Election Day essentials and elegantly displays them on top of Google maps. For those voters who still need to figure out how they’re voting on local candidates and ballot propositions. Here are a few resources: ElectNext and Project Vote Smart have a helpful wizard for matching political preferences to candidates. Many local newspapers endorse candidates and provide in-depth summaries on each position. Check out more than one to get multiple perspectives. State election guides are a handy non-partisan information source, especially if you live in a state like California with many ballot propositions. Update your Facebook profile with the voter registration status and encourage your friends to be good citizens, too.
 
After iOS Success, Simple Task Manager Clear Headed To Mac With iCloud Syncing Next Week Top
Screen Shot 2012-10-31 at 11.07.04 AMClear, a simple task manager from Realmac software and Impending, has just announced that it will be delivering a Mac version of its client for OS X launching next Thursday for $14.99. The app looks an awful lot like it does on iOS, but offers additional features like the ability to break out different lists in new windows, as well as iCloud syncing with the iOS client.
 
Zappos Co-Founder Launches Threadlife, A New Social Mobile Video App Top
threadlifeThreadlife is a new app from Zappos co-founder Nick Swinmurn and BLITZ agency co-founder Ken Martin. Threadlife works like pretty much any other social mobile video app, except for a few things: For one, users are limited to capturing three-second clips -- which it calls "stitches" -- which are "threaded" together based on topics.
 
Pulse Users Now Read 10 Million Stories Per Day, Over 4 Billion Stories Read Since Launch Top
3.%20Pulse_logoPulse, the popular news-reading app for Android and iOS, just announced that its users have now read more than 4 billion stories since it launched in 2010. While it took the company 100 days to reach 10 million read stories, its users now read just as many posts every day.
 
To Court Startups, Payments Company Braintree Waives Fees On The First $50,000 in Transactions Top
BraintreeYou never know when you might have the next Uber, Fab or Airbnb on your hands. Even though those three startups grew up relying on Braintree to power their payments, the Accel-backed company wants make sure it has the next generation of breakout e-commerce companies on its hands.
 
Pearltrees Goes 1.0, Launches Premium Accounts With Private Collections And Sharing Top
PearltreesCuration and discovery service Pearltrees just announced the launch of its premium accounts. For $4.99/month or $49.99 per year, Pearltrees users will be able to create private pearls for their bookmarks, notes and pictures. This is also Pearltrees' 1.0 release and marks the first time that all of the company's apps offer a fully coherent feature set across the web and mobile.
 
TechCrunch France Integrates With TechCrunch.com Top
techcrunchfrance2Today, TechCrunch has some big news to share with you: TechCrunch France will finally become part of TechCrunch.com. Launched in 2006 by Michael Arrington and Ouriel Ohayon, TechCrunch France was one of the first tech blogs to take off in France and its launch marked one of the first steps towards internationalization for the TechCrunch network. After just two years, TechCrunch France had already reached 1 million readers by 2008.
 

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