Thursday, November 1, 2012

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The JBL Soundfly Is A Little Wireless Speaker That Hangs From An Electrical Outlet Top
jbl_soundflyThis is clever. Instead of joining the fray with just another small, wireless speaker, JBL made the Soundfly, which is a small, wireless speaker that supports itself from an electrical plug. Talk about plug and play, amirite.
 
Uber Reinstates Surge Pricing In NYC: Drivers Will Take Home The Entire Fare, No Fee To Uber Top
UberUber has just sent out an update via email regarding the pricing options in New York after Hurricane Sandy. Surge Pricing is back. Yesterday, the company implemented Surge Pricing — a higher rate during times of high demand — and then abruptly turned it off after a poor reaction by the internet. Instead, the company charged regular pricing, yet paid the drivers at Surge Price rates, likely slashing margins into losses.
 
First Round Capital Adds Former LiveOps CEO Bill Trenchard As Partner; Raises Over $20M More Top
billFirst Round Capital is making a key hire today. The firm has brought on former LiveOps CEO and CallCast co-founder and CEO Bill Trenchard as a partner in First Round's San Francisco office. This is the first time since 2006, that First Round has hired someone from outside the firm as partner; First Round has always promoted partners from within. The firm is also announcing that it has raised $20 million more to its most recently launched fund, bringing the total to nearly $160 million.
 
Recce 3D Interactive Mapping Tech Gets Its Game On: Go Deliver iOS App Is GPS-Powered Real-World Scavenger Hunt Meets Groupon Top
Screen Shot 2012-11-01 at 12.23.33eeGeo the startup behind Recce -- a rich, interactive searchable 3D mapping platform which aggregates data feeds from other services to create an animated bird's eye view of a city and what is going on in it -- has launched its first game using the same technology: a GPS-based iOS app called Go Deliver - London, in partnership with games studio Midoki.
 
UK Court Judge Gives Apple 24 Hours To Remove/Replace "Incorrect" Web Notice On Samsung Galaxy Tab Ruling Top
silver-apple-logoA UK Court of Appeal has ordered Apple to remove a statement on its website following a court ruling in which Apple lost an appeal against a ruling that Samsung's Galaxy Tab tablets do not infringe the design of the iPad. The judges have now criticized Apple for posting "incorrect" and "untrue" information, and ordered Cupertino to replace the statement within 24 hours.
 
Amazon Launches Cloud Drive Photos For Android, A Photo-Sharing App For Android Phones & Tablets Top
android-cloud-driveAmazon announced this morning the launch of a new photo-management application for Android phones, which takes advantage of its consumer-facing service known as Cloud Drive, a competitor to Google Drive and Dropbox. The new app, Cloud Drive Photos for Android, allows users to upload photos, store them in Amazon's online storage, and view and share the photos from both their Android smartphones and tablets.
 
At 9 Million Users Strong, Fab Raises More Money And Is Just Getting Warmed Up Top
fab3In February 2011, Jason Goldberg and Bradford Shane Shellhammer were faced with one of the most painful experiences an entrepreneur must deal with: to decide whether to shut down their business, Fabulis, which was a social network for the gay community, and return the money back to investors. So to deal with this predicament, what did the two friends and founders do? They got drunk. Goldberg and Shellhammer took a break from the grind and went for a boozy dinner in Manhattan to figure out what to do next. Goldberg asked his friend over drinks, "If we could take this money in the bank ($2 million at the time) and do something else with it, what would you do?"
 
iPad Mini Teardown Reveals Samsung Display And Yes, Stereo Speakers Top
ipad-mini-teardownApple's iPad mini got the teardown treatment this morning, one day ahead of its official launch in stores. The diminutive tablet gave up its secrets to iFixit's expert disassembly staff, revealing its complex inner workings to the camera. A lot of the parts are familiar, coming from either the iPhone 5 or MacBook Air, and Samsung makes a somewhat surprising appearance as an LCD panel supplier.
 
Post-Seesmic Buy, Hootsuite Passes Five Million Dashboard Signups; Says Expansion Into Europe, Asia Powering Its Growth Top
hootsuite logoA user milestone for social media management tool Hootsuite: the company has passed five million signups. It says expansion into Europe and Asia is driving its growth, and notes that while its first million users took it nearly two years, it clocked its fourth million in eight months and its fifth million in just two months. (It's not clear how many of the five million users are paying customers.)
 
Two App Store Rebels Join Forces — Grooveshark Adds Tip Jar-Style Payments Via Flattr Top
FlattrIn a move that coincidentally sees two App Store rebels join forces, music streaming service, Grooveshark, has added support for Flattr, the social micro-payments offering. The new integration means that users of both Grooveshark and Flattr (which we've previously likened to a 'Like button but with cash') can easily reward their favourite artists, tip jar-style, providing another way for those artists to get paid for their music uploaded to Grooveshark. Both services have at one time or another fallen foul of Apple's App Store policies (see below).
 
Twelve South's HiRise Stand For MacBook Provides Height-Adjustable Notebook Elevation Top
twelve-south-hirise-macbookIf you have a notebook Mac and you use it both in an office and on the road, you probably know by now that having it at a comfortable viewing angle when in the office is key to the long-term health of your spine and posture. There are many stands out there to help you get those MacBooks up off the desk, but a new one from Twelve South seems to offer a much more flexible solution compared to most, thanks to fully adjustable height.
 
Latest Rovio Angry Birds Star Wars Trailers Show Playable R2-D2 and C-3PO "Birds" Top
angry-birds-star-wars-splash_wide-4_3_r560Facepalm. Rovio just released a new gameplay trailer of the upcoming Angry Birds Star Wars mashup. As shown in the first trailer, the playable characters each feature unique abilities. R2-D2 has a tractor beam and C-3PO falls apart -- just like the Star Wars brand is falling apart!
 
Stop, Thief: Apple Patents Movement-Based Theft Detection System For iOS Devices Top
iphone5-theftAn Apple patent application spotted Thursday by AppleInsider shows a system for detecting unusual motion via a portable gadget's accelerometer which would sound an alarm, making said device harder to steal. The system is a simple one, without the kind of sophisticated face detection we saw in a previous application, but it could be much more effective for curbing thefts at the moment they occur.
 
Big Money For Cheap Razors: Dollar Shave Club Raises $9.8M, Launches In Canada Top
dollar shave club logoDollar Shave Club, the startup offering a subscription razor service that costs as little as $1 per month (plus shipping), has raised $9.8 million in Series A funding. Co-founder and CEO Michael Dubin said the new round, which was led by Venrock, will allow the company to develop "the next iteration of Dollar Shave Club" and "to really grow into the lifestyle service" that he wants it to be. He declined to offer too many details on that front — it sounds like Dollar Shave Club has some big product news coming in the near future, and he didn't want to give too much away ahead of time. However, he did say the funding has already helped the company build some important backend tech tools, like "really basic metrics."
 
Science's TripleThread Brings Personalized Commerce To Retailers; Powers Mens Clothing Site Fourth And Grand Top
scienceOn the heels of launching social commerce startup TopFloor, LA-based incubator Science is debuting a new retail technology, TripleThread. Additionally, this technology is powering personalization and styling for a new personalized, mens' e-commerce startup that was incubated by Science, Fourth And Grand.
 
Freshplum Goes After Small Businesses With A Dead Simple, Stripe-Enabled Shopping Cart Top
helium-1Freshplum, an analytics startup for online retailers that was founded by a former Facebook product manager, is going after small to medium businesses with an easy way for anyone to add a shopping cart to their site. Helium is based off a product that another company in the Y Combinator network, payments startup Stripe, launched a few weeks ago. Stripe recently launched a product called Connect that makes it easy for any business to enable its customers to perform direct transactions without having to wait weeks for approval by a payments processor. Freshplum’s founder Sam Odio says that while the developer community appreciates Stripe for its simple API, it’s not really that easy to use for non-technical business owners. “Stripe is a great product. We’re big fans of the company. The only problem is that for a small business, it’s actually pretty difficult to integrate,” he said. “You need to have programming experience. You need to set up a back-end to store the order data, and you need to set up a shopping cart front-end and pass that order information to Stripe. So Helium is essentially a front-end for Stripe.” With Helium, you add a line of JavaScript and then another line of code wherever you want a “Buy Now” button. You’ll get a dashboard that shows you recent orders and lets you easily add items. While Stripe could go ahead and build a comparable product for small- to medium-sized businesses, Odio says that hopefully Freshplum will be moving fast enough that by the time they do, his offering will have sophisticated retail analytics to offer customers. Freshplum’s core business is in analytics that help retailers optimize on pricing, so that they don’t charge too much or too little for their products. They already have a product in beta for the very biggest online retailers that’s generating revenue. Helium is for the lower-end of the market. Odio says this group might include a blogger looking to sell content, or musicians that are selling unreleased tracks. Freshplum will take a 2 percent share of revenue on top of Stripe’s 2.9 percent and 30 cents per transaction. He says that makes it roughly equal to Gumroad’s 5 percent plus 25 cents per transaction. The company has raised $1.4 million in funding from investors including Google Ventures, Charles River Ventures, NEA, Y Combinator, former Gmail product manager Gabor Cselle, CRV’s George Zachary, Reddit
 
The DIY Renaissance: U.K. Accelerator Springboard Launches Dedicated Bootcamp For Hardware Startups Top
Screen Shot 2012-11-01 at 09.54.11Move over, software: the London and Cambridge, U.K.-based accelerator, Springboard, is launching a dedicated program for hardware startups, focusing on the Internet of Things. The new three-month accelerator bootcamp -- called Springboard Internet of Things -- is backed by program partners ARM, Unilever, Neul and Raspberry Pi.
 
Hey Google, Your Nexus 7 Marketing Images Look Like Crap Top
nexus1No one understands why President Obama didn't hammer Governor Romney on his 47% secret video comments during the first presidential debate. In hindsight, a mistake. Like President Obama, Google is throwing away its best ammunition against the iPad mini - pixel density - by publishing marketing materials that make the Nexus 7 look like a turd.
 
With 4.5M Users, Instructure Takes On The Courseras & Udacities Of The World With Its Own Open Course Network Top
PrintInstructure launched Canvas in 2011 to give educational institutions an alternative to the ubiquitous (but much criticized) software of educational giants like Blackboard. Today, the company is adding another piece to its learning management system with the launch of its own MOOC hybrid, which allows schools to define the structure of their online courses and customize the learning experience.
 
FastMail Escapes The 1990s With Sleek New Interface Top
fastmailFastMail is a popular e-mail provider among power users who want to be customers instead of products. But its interface has been stuck in the 90s -- until this week when it rolled out a brand new AJAXy UI. And it's really, well, fast.
 

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