The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- Mobile Shopping App CheckPoints Rebrands As InMarket To Broaden Focus
- Zynga Accused Of Ripping Off Another Competitor’s Game
- Clio Grabs $6 Million To Help Bring Small Legal Practices To The Cloud
- In Partnership With Microsoft, RIM Launches BlackBerry Business Cloud Services
- $300 Samsung Galaxy Note Will Hit AT&T On February 19
- Pew: More Than Half Of Adults Used Cell Phones In Stores For Purchasing Decisions During The Holidays
- Yahoo Shuts Down 10 Mobile Apps, Says Its Going “Mobile First” (?)
- Flying People Spotted Over New York City…Film At Nine
- Tablet Shipments To Reach 383.3 Million By 2017, 46% In Emerging Markets
- With Funds Frozen & Bills Due, Megaupload’s Servers May Be Wiped As Soon As Thursday
- WiGig: Panasonic Tablet Wirelessly Transmits A Full DVD Video In 60 Seconds (Video)
- nanox: High-Quality iPod nano Watch Conversion Kit
- Future Simple Releases First Full-blown CRM Android App For Small Businesses
- Glooko Raises $3.5M To Connect Glucose Meters To iPhones For Tracking Diabetes
- Kayak Redesigns Travel Search Portal ; Now Consistent With Mobile UI
- Podio Adds New Languages As It Scales Internationally
- GetHired Nabs $1.75 Million To Launch Its Video-Centric Recruiting Platform & Job Board
- DMARC Promises A World Of Less Phishing
- Gadgets Week in Review: Take Flight
- After Leo DiCaprio Invests, Lance Armstrong Races To Promote, Advise Mobli
| Mobile Shopping App CheckPoints Rebrands As InMarket To Broaden Focus Posted: 30 Jan 2012 09:00 AM PST  CheckPoints, a mobile shopping app that launched at TechCrunch Disrupt in 2010, is rebranding today as InMarket. CheckPoints takes a more product centric approach to its shopping app. When you walk into a store, the app will show you featured products that you can scan with the built-in barcode reader. After scanning, you’ll receive an interactive game that a marketer has made for that brand, allowing marketers to actually directly connect with consumers at the point of sale. As opposed to partnering with stores, CheckPoints focused on brands. Consumers are incentivized to scan products because it earns them "checkpoints" which can be redeemed for discounts and products once you have enough. For example, Frito-Lay has used CheckPoints to advertise a promo for their Tostitos Artisan Recipes. When consumers scan a Frito-Lay product, they will earn points and receive holiday recipe ideas and exclusive music content from Frito-Lay. Today, CheckPoints has expanded to become inMarket, a mobile network focused on reaching shoppers as they make retail purchasing decisions. The CheckPoints rewards app will be one of the shopping apps included in the InMarket network, and inMarket's new SDK developer platform, which is set for release in coming weeks. As founder and president Todd Dipaola explains, InMarket’s goal is to become the go-to platform for developers and advertisers to reach mobile-enabled shoppers. A number of app developers are using InMarket already to gain reach, including ShopSavvy. Dipaola says the inMarket Shopper Network currently has the capability to reach over 20 million consumers across multiple channels and says that purchase intent has increased by up to 400% by engaging with a shopper via mobile technologies while holding a product. “Mobile is the most powerful in the commerce cycle when consumers are making purchasing decision,” says Dipaola. Basically, InMarket provides brands with “pay-per-click” advertising in the physical retail setting. Advertisers can target a particular chain, a region, or even an individual store. And the platform gives developers the ability to integrate an SDK to integrate product incentives into shopping apps. “The loyalty app itself is not whole enchilada of mobile shopping,” says Dipaola,”Expanding beyond to additional apps that help shoppers do what they want to do in stores and at home will help advertisers expand brands beyond a single app.” Currently, InMarket is cash flow positive, and not looking to raise any additional funds at the moment. Dipaola says that in the coming year, the startup will be looking at a number of acquisitions.
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| Zynga Accused Of Ripping Off Another Competitor’s Game Posted: 30 Jan 2012 08:48 AM PST  Last week, the developers at NimbleBit (makers of iOS Game of the Year, Tiny Tower) accused Zynga of copying them with its new game, Dream Heights. Now, it’s happening again. This time, the accusation comes from Buffalo Studios, which says that the gaming giant copied its flagship title Bingo Blitz with its launch of Zynga Bingo. The news, reported first by VentureBeat, involves accusations from Buffalo Studios that Zynga’s newest title involves “striking similarities” in terms of its graphics, layout and game play with its own Bingo Blitz. The company also released an infographic which (sarcastically) began: ”Hello Zynga. We are moved that your new game was so inspired by our innovative product, BINGO Blitz…,” before continuing on with a serious of screenshots showing examples of the similarities in question. However, unlike the situation with NimbleBit, it doesn’t appear that Zynga first attempted to acquire Buffalo Studios prior to the launch of the new title. Bingo Blitz claims to have over one million daily active users, according to the infographic, and has been “liked” nearly 2.5 million times. While it’s notable that the high-profile Zynga is the company being targeted here in terms of stealing its “inspiration,” (especially since Zynga itself once targeted its own copycats via lawsuits), game developers ripping off each others’ work seems to be the new normal for the industry. Lawyers, start your engines. If a company as large as Zynga is playing dirty, there’s bound to be lawsuits aplenty ahead. Image credit: Buffalo Studios, via VentureBeat
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| Clio Grabs $6 Million To Help Bring Small Legal Practices To The Cloud Posted: 30 Jan 2012 08:00 AM PST  Lawyers have long been the punchline for jokes, whether it be for their ambulance chasing ways, or for having a penchant for greed and chaos, or charging an armload for their services. However, there are a number of services out there that are trying to make the legal profession’s web presences less of a laughing matter. While there’s a perception that most lawyers work in big law firms, 80 percent of the legal market is comprised of solo practitioners or small firms. With meager support staffs and no IT departments to speak of, these solo practitioners and small firms quickly become over-burdened with the administrative side of their business. That’s where services like Clio come in. Clio is a web-based management tool for the legal industry, providing lawyers with collaborative and secure ways to manage their practice and interact with clients. Today, the cloud-based management service is announcing that it has raised $6 million in series B financing from Acton Capital Partners, a Munich-based growth equity fund and Point Nine Capital, an early-stage VC firm based in Berlin. This brings Clio’s total funding to $7 million. The company will use this new infusion of capital to push product and feature development around its technology, add support for its growing customer base, and expand internationally. Currently, the U.S. represents 95 percent of Clio’s customer base, and Founder and CEO Jack Newton says that he wants to change that and is eyeing Europe, Canada, and Australia. While the legal industry has been largely perceived as being slow to adopt modern technologies, Clio’s opportunity lies in helping transition the many small practices out there to the cloud. Like MyCase and Rocket Matter, Clio wants to make it easy for lawyers to manage their practices from a cloud-backed web management system. The service enables lawyers to keep lawyerin’ by tracking notes, time, and client information for all of their cases. Maintaining a diary of all one’s cases is essential for most litigators, and Clio helps small practices keep tabs on upcoming court dates and deadlines all in one place, enabling them to add a slew of individual cases into one task list, all without having to hire a support staff. Integrating with Google Apps, too, helps lawyers sync their schedules with Google Calendar as well as sync contacts and take advantage of a single sign-on. Beyond case and billing management, Clio also enables small practices to take advantage of trust accounting and detailed reporting, and offers a secure portal for exchanging information and collaborating with clients, in addition to an offline time-capture application. As with so many other industries, legal practices are moving to the cloud, and Clio has been one of the pioneers in helping the industry move forward. With $6 million in new funding, expect that legal train to keep on rolling. For more, check out Clio at home here.
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| In Partnership With Microsoft, RIM Launches BlackBerry Business Cloud Services Posted: 30 Jan 2012 07:54 AM PST  Microsoft and BlackBerry maker Research in Motion (RIM) are teaming up today on the public release of BlackBerry Business Cloud Services for Microsoft Office 365, a name which surely Microsoft itself had a hand in creating. The new service will allow corporate customers to manage their deployed BlackBerry devices using Exchange Online, the hosted version of Microsoft’s messaging platform. The addition comes at no extra cost to current subscribers of the Office 365 suite or the standalone Exchange Online offering, and supports any BlackBerry devices, whether on a business or consumer data plan. Once enabled, the managed BlackBerry smartphones will be able to sync with Microsoft Exchange Online email, calendar and organizer data. BlackBerry Balance, a new technology that helps admins manage the corporate data on the device, while leaving personal data untouched, will also be available with this new offering. I.T. will be able to manage the phones using a web-based console, but employees will have access to self-service tools for password and device resets, remote lock and remote wipe functions. BlackBerry Business Cloud Services is live now in 50 countries. More info is here. Partnerships like this are one of the reasons why some mobile industry insiders believe that RIM could be a viable acquisition target for Microsoft. The companies are already working so closely together to integrate their technologies, and both share a similar end user customer base: the enterprise market. Reports that RIM has even engaged in takeover talks with Microsoft emerged in December, but nothing has yet to come of that. Instead, the company’s recent moves like the co-CEO step-down and (misguided) statements from new CEO Thorsten Heins ("I don't think any drastic change is needed") imply that company is attempting a turnaround, not putting itself on the auction block. At least for now.
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| $300 Samsung Galaxy Note Will Hit AT&T On February 19 Posted: 30 Jan 2012 07:46 AM PST  Samsung isn’t the first company to break into the phablet space, but those of you waiting for a (more than) worthy successor to devices like the Dell Streak 5 won’t have much longer to wait. AT&T has just announced that their pocket-busting Galaxy Note will be hitting their sales channels on February 19, complete with a $300 price tag. Most of the device’s details — 5.3-inch HD Super AMOLED display, LTE radio, and handwriting support thanks to the included S-Pen — were revealed or reiterated at this year’s CES, but now the question is whether or not people will take the plunge on a device that’s not quite a phone and not quite a tablet. AT&T hasn’t exactly priced the Galaxy Note to move, but they’re not alone on that front. We’ve seen Verizon adopt the $300 price tag for most of their recent high-end smartphone releases, though AT&T has typically shied away from pricing their smartphones so steeply. They’re probably hoping that the novelty of a device that hovers somewhere between being phone and a tablet will be enticing enough to justify the price, but we’ll soon see how the public at large takes to Samsung’s fabulous phablet. If you’re the type who likes getting things before everyone else (and really, who isn’t?), you may want to wake up bright and early on the February 5th. AT&T is pushing their pre-order process with the promise of a Galaxy Note in your hands a full two days before it makes its way to store shelves, and I can imagine more than few phablet fans using that 48-hour window to rub their new purchase in other people’s faces.
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| Posted: 30 Jan 2012 07:14 AM PST  The Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project is releasing a new study today that provides further evidence of the growing trend of consumers using mobile phones in stores for purchasing decisions. Pew says that more than half of adult cell phone owners used their cell phones while they were in a store to seek help with purchasing decisions this past holiday shopping season. According to the report, 38% of cell owners used their phone to call a friend while they were in a store for advice about a purchase they were considering making And 24% of cell owners used their phone to look up reviews of a product online while they were in a store, with 25% of adult cell owners using their phones to look up the price of a product online while they were in a store, to see if they could get a better price somewhere else. One third (33%) used their phone specifically for online information while inside a physical store—either product reviews or pricing information. In fact, one in five "mobile price matchers" ultimately made their most recent purchase from an online store, rather than a physical location. This is interesting considering Amazon’s move over the holidays to offer discounts to consumers on any product purchased via its price comparison mobile app. This was a huge blow to physical retailers, who called the move unfair. Pew reports that cell owners ages 18-49 are significantly more likely to use their phones for online product reviews than are cell owners ages 50 and older. Cell owners ages 65 and older are especially unlikely to use their phones to look up information in stores—just 4% did so this holiday season. In terms of other demographics, urban and suburban cell owners are roughly twice as likely as rural cell owners to have recently used their phone to look up online reviews of a product they found in a physical store. Unsurprisingly, online price matching and looking up online reviews frequently go hand in hand. Overall, of the 33% of cell owners who used their phone recently in a store to look up either product reviews or prices online, roughly half (representing 17% of all cell owners) used their phones to engage in both of these activities. When asked what happened on the most recent occasion where they used their phone to look up the price online of a product they found in a store, mobile price matchers point to a range of outcomes: 37% decided to not purchase the product at all, 35% purchased the product at that store, 19% purchased the product online and 8% purchased the product at another store. While we’ve been witnessing the fact that mobile is becoming a significant part of the in-store and online shopping experience, the Pew report’s data only emphasizes this trend. And although consumers tend to shop at increased levels during the holiday season, there’s no doubt that mobile is going to be an important engagement platform for both online and brick and mortar retailers throughout the year.
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| Yahoo Shuts Down 10 Mobile Apps, Says Its Going “Mobile First” (?) Posted: 30 Jan 2012 07:12 AM PST  Yahoo is moving forward with a “mobile first” mindset, the company stated via blog post late last week, then incongruously announced it would be shuttering 10 of its mobile applications. The list, which contains a mix of iPhone, Android and BlackBerry apps, includes an odd, and somewhat surprising group of underperforming properties. Yahoo Deals, News, Shopping, Finance and Movies, were included among the shutdowns, for example. Yahoo isn’t cutting all of its News and Finance apps, however – only those on platforms it hasn’t found to be worth the effort to support, it appears. Also, Yahoo’s bread-and-butter apps like Mail and Messenger are safe, as well as newer apps like its TV companion IntoNow and its iPad mag Livestand. As for Sketch-a-Search and AppSpot, the apps’ technologies won’t be abandoned, but will rather be incorporated into Yahoo’s main search app. The full list of apps being shut down includes:
I’ll be honest – I don’t remember hearing of Meme or Mim, so those won’t be missed, I’ll wager. However, it’s a little surprising to see Finance dumped from BlackBerry – after all, who still rocks a ‘berry, but those busy banker/corporate types who constantly check headlines and stock quotes? And neither Yahoo Shopping nor Deals apps could survive on the phones preferred by those with disposable incomes (that is, the iPhone)? Crazy. Given the news, it was kind of funny to read Yahoo’s declaration of its “mobile first” ambitions, but what the company means is that it’s going to spend time on its more innovative and popular apps, and less on these general purpose (read: boring) creations.
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| Flying People Spotted Over New York City…Film At Nine Posted: 30 Jan 2012 06:46 AM PST  In a recent publicity venture for their new movie “Chronicle”, 20th Century Fox enlisted the help of viral marketing agency Thinkmodo to design and execute a rather unique campaign element that surely caused several doubletakes over the New York City skyline. If you thought you saw some flying humans in the sky over parts of New York City and New Jersey in the last couple of weeks you are, in fact, not crazy. You were merely exposed to a new kind of avant garde marketing technique brought to you by the same folks that unleashed the iPad Head Girl a few months back. Michael Krivicka from Thinkmodo explains:
Here’s a quick video documenting the concept and the flights. I personally think it’s a ballsy, creative and unique advertising tactic, yet I struggle with wondering how a person would tie the two things together — the movie and the freaky sightings. In my mind, I guess the optimal scenario would be that a person who had already seen the movie trailer, would later see flying people and then make the connection. Or a person might connect the dots after a sighting, when seeing an additional advertisement for the film. If you never see the trailer at all, you might just end up calling the police or your local Area 51 support group for advice. Whatever the effect, I am still a proponent of these kinds of marketing exercises and I don’t think this is money spent in vain. This was only a single component of a larger campaign so it’s not like the whole movie is riding on it. Plus, the word of mouth generated by events like this can be powerful. Even if it’s only realized after the fact, an event like this can bring a smile to the face of a consumer and bring some cool cred to 20th Century Fox for being gutsy and reaching a local area with a unique message. That ephemeral “oh, now I get it” moment can be extremely valuable even if the number of people experiencing it measures only in the hundreds. Bravo!
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| Tablet Shipments To Reach 383.3 Million By 2017, 46% In Emerging Markets Posted: 30 Jan 2012 06:36 AM PST  Post-PC era? Here we come: According to new data from NPD, tablet PC shipments are expected to grow from 72.7 million units in 2011 to 383.3 million units by 2017. For comparison purposes, worldwide PC shipments for 2011 were 352.8 million, after seeing a 6% decline in Q4. While those numbers are remarkable enough on their own, what’s really interesting is where much of the growth will come from: the emerging market. Emerging markets are expected to account for up to 46% of worldwide shipments by 2017, up from the 36% share in 2011. “The emerging market opportunity for tablets has been flying under the radar mainly because the device brands aren't household names and there are concerns regarding the sustainability of the market,” says NPD Senior Analyst Richard Shim. But the firm believes that won’t always be the case. “We are beginning to see investments by some of the better known brands in developing regions, and we expect this to not only continue, but to flourish as competition improves,” he notes. The tablet surge won’t be courtesy of the iPad alone, especially in these emerging markets. Specifically, the report cited the introduction of new brands like Aakash in India, for example, as well as older brands like Dell, as contributing the overall tablet growth. China and the Asia Pacific regions are leading in terms of tablet penetration rates in emerging markets at present, but Brazil, India, Russia and other countries are also becoming bigger forces, says NPD. And the key to unlocking this growth comes low-power processors and tablets with price points under $100. In addition to the growth in emerging markets, NPD also believes that other growth will come as the tablet platform itself evolves through technological advances. That evolution comes first from higher pixel densities, then later from higher performance. The changes will segment the market into “premium” and “value” category tablets. (Any guess where iPad will be?) Believe it or not, it even sounds like Microsoft might still be in the running as a tablet competitor, if NPD’s related survey data is to be believed. According to a survey of U.S. commercial tablet owners, 39% indicated that having a Windows OS option as a part of their next tablet purchase was “very important” to them. But let’s wait to see which tablet they end up buying – saying and doing are often very different things.
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| With Funds Frozen & Bills Due, Megaupload’s Servers May Be Wiped As Soon As Thursday Posted: 30 Jan 2012 06:33 AM PST  First the US Justice Department raided Kim Dotcom’s sprawling New Zealand estate and seized random items from cars to Predator statues. Then they shut down the massive website, froze their assets and threw seven men into a New Zealand jail pending an extradition trial. Dotcom and his cronies weren’t the only ones felling the pinch, though. Megaupload’s 180 million reported users were left locked out, unable to access their files. Now those files might be deleted forever as soon as Thursday. The word comes from a letter to Megaupload from the US Attorney indicating that since the Justice Dept. already executed their search warrants, they were done with the servers. Because of past due bills, the management was delegated to the storage hosting companies, Carpathia Hosting Inc. and Cogent Communications Group Inc, who can start wiping the servers as soon as this Thursday, February 2, 2012. Megaupload’s legal team is actively seeking the help of the prosecutors to prevent the data genocide. Upon filing the charges against Megaupload, the company’s funds were frozen. Without cash Megaupload cannot pay the past-due bills to turn the servers back on. However, Megaupload’s lawyers are arguing that the company needs its servers and the files they contain for the company’s legal defense. Hopefully, if the this tactic is successful, users will once again gain at least read-only access to their files. "Megaupload's assets were frozen by the United States. Mega needs funds unfrozen to pay for bandwidth, hosting, and systems administration in order to allow consumers to get access to their data stored in the Mega cloud and to back up the same for safekeeping." MegaUpload lawyer Ira Rothken told TorrentFreak. Megaupload might be gone forever. Many of its users probably learned their lesson to entrust critic data to the cloud. But won’t someone please think of the innocent files? Someone?!
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| WiGig: Panasonic Tablet Wirelessly Transmits A Full DVD Video In 60 Seconds (Video) Posted: 30 Jan 2012 06:06 AM PST  WiGig, a multi-gigabit speed wireless communications technology, was first announced back in 2009, but it’s taking companies like Panasonic quite a while to come up with applications that make use of it. Via WiGig, devices can communicate with each other at multi-gigabit speeds using the 60 GHz frequency band. Panasonic has developed a prototype system, in which WiGig is embedded in a tablet that can wirelessly transmit data like photos or videos to displays mounted in the passenger seats of a car. That car has to be nearby: while Wi-Fi typically has a transmission range of about 30m, WiGig’s range is just 1-3m (Bluetooth: around 10m). The tablet you can see in the video embedded below transmits a “full DVD video” in 60 seconds, according to Diginfo TV (which shot the video). WiGig, in the 1.1 specification, boasts a data transmission rate of up to 7 Gbit/s. Panasonic is currently in the process of developing WiGig SD cards that are supposed to be commercialized in summer next year. WiGig-compatible phones are apparently on their way, too. Here’s the video (in English):
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| nanox: High-Quality iPod nano Watch Conversion Kit Posted: 30 Jan 2012 05:37 AM PST  Do you own the latest version of the iPod nano (sixth generation)? Do you look for a way to turn it into a watch? If yes, then this watch conversion kit might be the right solution for you. Dubbed nanox, the kit just went on sale in a total of 39 countries via Amazon (US, UK, Japan), and it’s probably the one with the highest quality out there (Facebook page). Made from aircraft-grade anodized aluminum, the nanox is available in the seven colors Apple offers the iPod nano itself in. The kit, which doesn’t require using tools or screws, comes with 2mm thin straps made of 100% silicone and an anti-glare sheet for the nano display.
Maker emonster says the nanox is produced at the same factory as other Apple devices (it’s made of the same aluminum 6061 alloy Apple uses for its products). The kit was designed by acclaimed Japanese designer Noriaki Miyata. And quality has its price: the nanox costs US$125.99 in the US Amazon store (£79.99 in the UK, Yen 9,800 in Japan).
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| Future Simple Releases First Full-blown CRM Android App For Small Businesses Posted: 30 Jan 2012 05:35 AM PST  Chicago-based but Israeli-founded Future Simple, a startup that creates products aimed at small businesses, has released an Android app which hooks into their small business CRM. It’s the first Small Business CRM with a true full native Android app and appears to be the first CRM in the Android Market. They already had an iPhone app.
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| Glooko Raises $3.5M To Connect Glucose Meters To iPhones For Tracking Diabetes Posted: 30 Jan 2012 05:00 AM PST  Glooko, the developer of a unique hardware device and mobile app solution for people with diabetes, has raised $3.5 million in Series A funding led by The Social+Capital Partnership, with participation from existing investors, including Bill Campbell, Vint Cerf, Judy Estrin and Andy Hertzfeld, Venky Harinarayan, Russell Hirsch and Xtreme Labs. Chamath Palihapitiya, Founder and Managing Partner of The Social+Capital Partnership will be joining Glooko’s board. Launched last year, Glooko is a digital logbook for people with diabetes who have to check their blood sugar every day. There are dozens of glucose logbooks in iTunes, but almost all of them require manual entry. What makes Glooko different is that the company designed a $40 cable (sold separately) that works with seven of the top glucose meters. You just plug it into both devices and it downloads your daily readings. The app itself is free. The digital log book allows users to review daily blood sugar levels, annotate them and share the results with their physician. It lets you mark whether the reading was done before or after a meal, add notes, and email or fax a 14-day summary to your doctor. The company charges for the cable. Glooko today released a new version of the Glooko Logbook app that supports the Bayer’s Breeze 2 meter, including a real-time food database, a 30-day logbook, and provides availability in Canada. There are currently 25 million people living with diabetes in the U.S. today, and Yogen Dalal, Glooko co-founder and chairman, said that people with blood sugar meters couldn’t do anything but read results on the meter itself, making logging results a visualizing this data cumbersome. While there have been a number of digital readers that have emerged on the market over the past year which plug into smartphones, the beauty of Glooko is that it works with the top seven devices on the market. So users don’t need to purchase and learn how to use a whole new measurement device. "Proactive and ongoing self-management of one's health can now be a reality using mobile devices and well-designed software," said Palihapitiya. "Glooko has made important progress in helping individuals better manage one of the most pervasive diseases of our generation." There is also future potential in actually analyzing the data collected from users. Parsing and plotting these data points on a graph requires FDA clearance, explains Dalal. Dalal says Glooko currently has 1,000 plus users, and the response has been overwhlemingly positive. He adds that Android integration is on the horizon. The new funding will be used to expand to other platforms and for user acquisition.
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| Kayak Redesigns Travel Search Portal ; Now Consistent With Mobile UI Posted: 30 Jan 2012 05:00 AM PST  After redesigning its iPad app and consolidating the app with its iPhone cousin, travel search company Kayak is updating the UI for its web search portal today. The aim with the redesign is to create a more universal and comprehensive consumer experience across all Kayak platforms: web, mobile web and apps. One of the biggest changes users will see is that there is considerable more white space on the search results page. Kayak is also using bold fonts less often. As co-founder and CTO, Paul English explains to us, the company studies what users are clicking on and realized that putting less information on the page would provide a better user experience for consumers. Kayak will now be showing people fewer results by default, says English. For example, with flight search, Kayak will show a smaller set of results that give the greatest set of options for users. And there are fewer filters that are shown by default as well. For example, with hotels the filters that will be shown in results by default include star rating, price, brand and location. By clicking on a link, users can add more filters such as amenities, type of property and more. English says that Kayak will also be more strict about which display ads will be shown to users. The aim is for ads to be more aesthetically consistent with the site to improve the user experience. We know that Kayak has been eyeing a public offering for over a year now, filing its S-1 in 2010. As AllThingsD reported in September, the company put its IPO on hold until market conditions improved. In a recent S-1 filing, the company revealed that revenue and profits are up. One obstacle that could stunt Kayak’s growth is Google’s entry in the space with it its flight bookings and search portal. Updating mobile offerings as well as cleaning up the web product and search to create a better user experience could be one factor in helping Kayak remain competitive in the long term. Here are before and after pictures of the redesign: BEFORE AFTER
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| Podio Adds New Languages As It Scales Internationally Posted: 30 Jan 2012 04:56 AM PST  We first reviewed online workspace startup Podio on its launch in March last year, and it looked pretty promising. A little like Box.net or 37Signals, Podio is closer to a more sophisticated Yammer, with lots of customising possible via its own internal ‘app’ store. Today it launches in two new language, Brazilian Portuguese and Italian, adding to its existing English, German, French, Danish and Spanish translations. Spilt between San Francisco and Copenhagen offices, Podio is now in use in 170 countries so, as CEO Tommy Ahlers says, the translations now make a lot of sense. Though you would think Chinese might also be a good addition?
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| GetHired Nabs $1.75 Million To Launch Its Video-Centric Recruiting Platform & Job Board Posted: 30 Jan 2012 01:46 AM PST  Paper resumes are — or should be — going out of style. They rarely give employers a complete profile of a potential hire, they’re filled with abbreviated bunches of value-less buzzwords (or in my case, action verbs), and the thought of them makes trees cry. You don’t want to make trees cry, do you? No, you don’t. So many companies are turning to alternative, technological means to find the right candidates for job openings, some using algorithms, ranking systems, SaaS solutions like Taleo’s, and more. In fact, one in six are now finding jobs on social networks. What kind of user generated content is often found posted to social networks? Video. Facebook was, for a time, the number three video site in the U.S. Furthermore, we’re telecommuting more and more frequently, using Skype, Google Hangouts, Facebook video — you name it. Videos are helping startups to explain their products and goals. So, when applied to the hiring process, it would make sense, then, that job videos can enhance the process, for both sides, right? This is the bet being made by a young startup, founded this year and based in Palo Alto, called GetHired. The startup is today launching a video-based, social recruiting platform and job board that is looking to empower job seekers — allowing them to set themselves apart from the competition — by creating video and audio profiles to accompany their resumes. On the flip side of the boardroom table, GetHired believes that its platform will help employers more effectively discover and manage their applicant pools. To help it along in its mission, accompanying the launch of the platform, GetHired is today announcing that it has raised $1.75 million in seed funding from a host of angel investors, including CEO of the Global Environment Fund, Jeffrey Leonard, former CEO of Discovery Communications and the former Under Secretary of State For Public Diplomacy And Affairs, Judith McHale, CEO of LegalZoom.com, John Suh, and Mack Capital CEO, Ralph Mack. With its seed round in tow, GetHired is looking to be the first job board to really focus seriously on video by enabling users to embed video and audio capabilities directly into the platform so that users can replace stale cover letters with more personal, dynamic responses to employers’ pre-screening questions that kick off every hiring process. GetHired thus allows employers to, at no cost, post open positions online in conjunction with existing job boards, ask pre-screening questions for specific postions, and hopefully search for and pre-screen candidates more efficiently, while starting and finishing the interview process online, in realtime. With video, employers can turn a static pile of resumes into real, human candidates. And addressing the same issue StartWire is looking to disrupt, GetHired allows job seekers to access realtime updates on the status of their applications, alerting them when an employer shows interest, all the way through until the opening is filled. Applicants hate when they spend hours filling out job applications, only to never hear back — and because this is a notorious problem — many don’t waste time going overboard on their applications. With video and a more multimedia-focused approach to applications, applicants may just be encouraged to spend that extra time. As for job seekers, GetHired enables them to create a personal video introduction to accompany their resume, or create a public video to use as a form-intro when applying to multiple positions, follow their favorite companies so that they can get updates on any new jobs posted, or upload their interview availability in realtime, so that employers can hop on the early birds — and schedule meetings and interviews in realtime with GetHired’s scheduling features. From video resumes to video interviews, it takes the paper resume and phone interview to the next logical step. GetHired has a clear and universal value proposition for both job seekers and employers, and it will be interesting to see if white labels its platform, or turns it into SaaS, though it looks like it’s going to be more of a public-facing Indeed.com with video, at least at the start. Either way, the resume is dead, or at least dying a lengthy, prolonged death, and it’s being replaced by more dynamic approaches to hiring and putting your best foot forward. Employers want to connect with people who are talented, yes, but also who they know they can work with day in and day out. Video is just one piece of the puzzle. It also helps that, at least initially, GetHired is free both for job seekers and employers. However, the company plans to charge employers to post jobs in the future, starting at around $25 a job. The startup’s sizable round of seed funding enables it to launch as a free service, giving it latitude and some time to scale and attract employers and job seekers. Once it does so, no doubt we’ll see the company’s revenue streams come into play, starting with charging for job postings. As with so many other startups grabbing early funding, GetHired will use its seed round to ramp up hiring (it currently has 14 employees), specifically of engineers, and going after that essential customer acquisition. Also, worth asking this rhetorical question: Why do so many startups emulate Facebook’s UI? Is that really necessary? For more, check out GetHired at home here.
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| DMARC Promises A World Of Less Phishing Posted: 30 Jan 2012 01:31 AM PST  Some 15 companies, including Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo, PayPal plan to jointly work on a standard for blocking phishing e-mails by verifying that they come from legitimate companies. It seems obvious that trusted, legitimate companies could come together to do this, but it’s only started happening in the last 18 months. DMARC.org – or the Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance – is a new white-list system will be available for use across the Internet. The other companies in the DMARC working group are AOL, Bank of America, Fidelity Investments, American Greetings, LinkedIn, and e-mail security providers Agari, Cloudmark, eCert, Return Path, and Trusted Domain Project. The move follows an announcement in November that Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL, and Agari were authenticating emails from Facebook, YouSendIt, and other e-commerce companies and social networks. DMARC said the anti-phishing initiative has actually been going on for the last 18 months. According to Google, about 15 percent of all e-mail comes from members of DMARC, but by published their DMARC records, these records can not be domain spoofed. This makes the anti-phising group much more effective at stopping criminal gangs from using phasing to dupe unsuspecting users. DMARC.org plans to submit the DMARC specification to the Internet Engineering Task Force for standardisation. So perhaps we’ll start to see the ending of phishing once and for all.
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| Gadgets Week in Review: Take Flight Posted: 30 Jan 2012 01:00 AM PST  Here’s a selection of stories from the past week on TechCrunch Gadgets: Kickstarter: eye3, An Affordable Aerial Photography Drone Secret Windows 8 Weapon: Kinect Built Into Your Laptop Twitter Changes The "Contours" Of Censorship With Country-By-Country Blocking A Really Nice Flying Ornithopter Video For Your Friday Enjoyment
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| After Leo DiCaprio Invests, Lance Armstrong Races To Promote, Advise Mobli Posted: 30 Jan 2012 12:59 AM PST  Mobli, the startup behind the eponymous, much-hyped realtime photo and video sharing service, has struck a partnership with road racing cyclist and cancer survivor Lance Armstrong. Armstrong, a seven-time Tour de France champion, will be making use of a private Mobli channel to keep his fans and followers up-to-date on his life through videos, photos and whatnot. The man is also joining the startup’s boards of advisors, not too long after another major celebrity, actor Leonardo DiDCaprio, participated in a $4 million funding round for the company. Said Armstrong:
The former pro cycler says he will use Mobli to share moments from his training sessions as well as his work with the Lance Armstrong Foundation, a nonprofit organization focused on cancer research and support. Armstrong is no stranger to social media. At the time of writing, he had about 3.2 million followers on Twitter, while his Facebook page has garnered over 2 million ‘likes’. Bill Stapleton, founder of Capital Sports & Entertainment and Lance Armstrong’s long-time agent, will also work together with Mobli and has also joined the startup’s advisory board along with Armstrong and Andrew Razeghi, an author and professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. History teaches us that celebrity backers and endorsers can only contribute so much to the chances of success for a startup, but this kind of exposure can certainly help this type of service get some early traction more rapidly than usually. If you’re an early user, tell us what you think.
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