The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- iPhone App Downloads Dropped Again In April, As Apple’s Bot Crackdown Continues
- More FB IPO Fallout? Russia’s Leading Social Network Vkontakte’s IPO ‘Postponed Indefinitely’
- Bitly Launches New Bookmarking Features, Profiles, Search & iPhone App
- Think Of The Docks! Could The New iPhone Have A Micro USB Connector?
- Lockerz Acquires Fashion Community Chick Approved
- Peer To Peer Lending Crosses $1 Billion In Loans Issued
- Face.com Is Definitely Being Acquired By Facebook Say Sources
- New iOS 6 Maps App Reportedly Caught On Film Ahead Of WWDC
- Dell Finally Does An All-In-One PC Right (By Cloning The iMac)
- Thrillist’s JackThreads Hits 2 Million Members, Plans To Move Beyond Flash Sales
- Inventory Management Startup Stitch Labs Now Offers Shipping Through ShipStation
- Kicksend Releases An Android App For Sharing All Your Photos, Videos, and More
- Plum Perfect Uses A Picture Of Your Face For Makeup, Clothes Recommendations
- BabyPing Is A Wireless Baby Monitor You Control With Your iPhone
- Junar Nabs $1.2M To Help Small Government, Business Unlock Big Data
- Mobile Ads: Hipcricket Owner Augme Buys 5 Patents, 25 Pending Patents For Its Mobile VoIP Strategy
- Crowdsourced Flight Finder FlightFox Grabs $800K In Angel Funding, Joins YC’s Latest Batch
- Trivia Party, The Draw Something Of Little Known Facts, Hits 10,000 Questions Answered
- 1M Students Strong, Echo360 Secures $31M From Steve Case, Ted Leonsis To Flip Higher Ed
- What’s In A Name? Nintendo Seems To Be Sticking With Calling Its Next-Gen System Wii U
| iPhone App Downloads Dropped Again In April, As Apple’s Bot Crackdown Continues Posted: 29 May 2012 09:21 AM PDT  Mobile app downloads continued to decline in April and the cost to acquire loyal users picked up, reports mobile marketing firm Fiksu in its latest report out today. This downward trend was expected, as no major events sparked app discovery during the month, explains Fiksu CEO Micah Adler. However, mobile app marketers were particularly aggressive in the social networking and games categories during April, both of which experienced volatility throughout the month. With the former (social networking), the reason had to do with the $1 billion acquisition of Instagram, which drew increased attention to the category. There were also a number of new game releases in April, which led to increased interest and competition among the developer community in that category, as well. This data comes from the measurements known as the Fiksu App Store Competitive Index, which tracks the average aggregate daily download volume of the top 200 free U.S. iPhone apps, and the Cost per Loyal User Index, which tracks the ever-changing cost to attract loyal users to an app. Fiksu defines “loyal” as people who open and app three times or more. The data is sourced from over 24.9 billion mobile app actions – which includes things like app launches, registrations, and in-app purchases – and more than 357.6 million downloads recorded by apps marketed via the Fiksu for Mobile Apps user acquisition platform. In April, the App Store Competitive Index, dropped by 4.9% to 4.23 million downloads, which is down from 4.45 million in March, 6.35 million in February and 6.79 million in the first month of 2012. “App marketers continued to scale back their use of robotic install tactics in response to Apple's policy on third-party marketing services,” said Adler of the drop in downloads. March saw the biggest decline in terms of the impact of the download bot ban, with a huge 30% drop that month. The drop was in part due to exiting the busy holiday season when app installs spike, but was also due to Apple’s new policy on the use of these automated tactics designed to boost app’s rankings. In February, Apple warned developers to not use services like this to manipulate the chart, saying:
Clearly, the impact of the bot ban is still being felt, if perhaps on a smaller scale. Meanwhile in April, the Cost per Loyal User Index rose by 12.3% to $1.46, up from $1.30 in March. February was practically the same as March at $1.31, a bump up from January’s $1.14. Typically the first quarter is a quieter period for marketers, says Fiksu, so April’s aggressive spending by marketers is not that unusual, especially when combined with the dynamics in the top categories of games and social networking in the month.
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| More FB IPO Fallout? Russia’s Leading Social Network Vkontakte’s IPO ‘Postponed Indefinitely’ Posted: 29 May 2012 09:05 AM PDT  In the aftermath-analysis about what exactly happened in the Facebook IPO, and what it might mean for the future, here’s one side-effect to the east of Nasdaq: Vkontake, the top social network in Russia, which shares a shareholder with Facebook, Mail.ru, has decided to delay its own IPO. The news was confirmed by the company’s CEO Pavel Durov on Twitter. In Russian, he tweeted, in answer to a Russian journalist’s question about the planned IPO date, “It’s not planned. The IPO of Facebook has destroyed the faith of a lot of private investors in social networks and the IPO of VK has now been postponed indefinitely.” The news appears to be the first big decision taken by Durov after, according to Reuters, 40 percent of Mail.ru shareholders voted in favor of Durov making key decisions about Vkontakte. Now, although Durov will be in the driving seat, he will collaborate with Mail.ru on “a range of issues facing Russian internet companies amid increasing global competition.” Together the two own 52 percent of Vkontakte. The original plan had been for Vkontakte to list sometime this year or next. That was before the Facebook listing — which failed to achieve a “pop” after being listed at $38. It is currently trading at just above $30. Vkontakte currently has 110 million users, with about 70 percent of those in Russia. While it might look like Mail.ru’s stepping back from control at Vkontakte may also be linked somehow to the performance of Facebook on the public market, that may not be the case. The Reuters story notes that in fact Mail.ru has been trying to get full control for ages and offered to pick up a majority share that would have valued the company at $3.75 billion, but it was rebuffed by Durov and other founders. “Mail.Ru has made no secret historically that it would like to take control of VKontakte,” Renaissance Capital media and IT analyst David Ferguson told the news service. “This has not happened, as the price expectations are a million miles apart.” Dmitry Grishin, the CEO of Mail.ru, last month told TechCrunch that the company was focused on three key content areas: gaming, mail and social, with monetizing coming primarily from advertising and virtual goods. One-third of the company’s revenues come from gaming, Grishin said. The company has been working on exporting its games outside of its existing footprint, but this is still a new strategy: right now revenue outside of Russian-speaking markets, Grishin said, is “close to zero.” In Russia, sites like Yandex and Vkontakte have respectively come to dominate search and social networking, leaving world-wide leaders Google and Facebook in challenger positions. “The competition is too strong,” explains Grishin.
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| Bitly Launches New Bookmarking Features, Profiles, Search & iPhone App Posted: 29 May 2012 08:55 AM PDT  Link shortener Bitly today launched a major redesign and number of new features that all add up to what the company itself calls “a new Bitly.” Among these new features are ‘bitmarks,’ Bitly’s name for its new bookmarking features, the ability to search and find these bookmarks, a fast search functionality, as well as enhanced public profiles that give users more privacy control. Bitly is also rolling out new bookmarklets, a Chrome extension and its first iPhone app. Ever since its launch in 2008, Bitly has been a major part of the social sharing ecosystem on social networks like Twitter and Facebook. Bitly’s users currently save about 100 million links per day and the company tells us that over 25 billion Bitly links have been created thus far. The company registers about 300 million clicks on its links every day – that’s about 1% of all clicks on the Internet. The focus of today’s launch is clearly on giving its users more curation features. The new “bitmarks” allow you to easily go back and look at the links you’ve shared on Facebook and Twitter. You can also, of course, still organize these links into bundles – a feature the company introduced in 2010. With this release, Bitly also made organizing these bundles more collaborative and now makes it more obvious “that you can invite people to collaborate and edit a bundle with you.” Bitly now also features a network view that lets you see the links your friends are sharing publicly on Twitter and Facebook. Bitly stresses that this update is meant to make the services” the single best place for you to save and share your links and to discover interesting things from your friends and the entire web.” Starting today, developers will be able to use Bitly’s open API to add these “bitmarking functionality” to their apps as well. Here is the full list of Bitly’s updates:
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| Think Of The Docks! Could The New iPhone Have A Micro USB Connector? Posted: 29 May 2012 08:46 AM PDT  Now look: these are probably fake as all get-out, but bear with me. These handsomely watermarked photos are purported to represent a brand new iPhone design with a sort of two-tone brushed and chromed casing. Whether they are real or not (they’re definitely going to get UBreakIFix plenty of SEO juice), there is still a bit more to this story than just some blurry-cam shots (and these nice shots on 9to5mac). The most important thing to note is the size of the dock connecter. That’s right: it’s a micro USB port (or, less likely, a Thunderbolt port). Arguably most major manufacturers have settled on micro USB as the standard. This is, in short, one of the best things to happen to the industry in the past decade. That Apple still clings to their jolly 30-pin slot is quite odd, especially considering how much real estate these things take up in the casing. A lot of those pinouts may have seemed like a good idea a few years ago, things like a dedicated S-video connection are probably outmoded these days. Sure they’re great for backwards compatibility, but why not offer a teeny adapter and call it a day? Whatever happens in the next few weeks before WWDC, rest assured we’ll see plenty more iPhone 5 mockups. The glut of cases we’ve seen in the past hour is pointing to something brewing in Cupertino. Here’s hoping there is a solution for the constellation of iPhone-compatible devices already set up for 30-pin connectivity.
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| Lockerz Acquires Fashion Community Chick Approved Posted: 29 May 2012 08:31 AM PDT  Social commerce startup Lockerz just announced that it has acquired online fashion community Chick Approved. Lockerz allows its members to earn “PTZ” by sharing content and other activity on the site, which are then redeemed for discounts in the Lockerz store. Fashion, style, and beauty are the company’s fastest growing categories, says founder and CEO Kathy Savitt, and she describes this acquisition as a way to “really double down” in that area. It sounds like Savitt is excited about getting access not just to Chick Approved’s audience (which she describes as “a really significant concentration of curatorial young women”), but also continuing its relationship to YouTube star Megan Parken, whose channel MeganHeartsMakeup currently has more than 450,000 subscribers and 84 million views. Parken will be joining the Lockerz Style Council and participate in its new Tastemakers program, where Khloe Kardashian and other big names share recommendations via Pinterest-style image collections. Parken will also be able to curate her own boutique store on the site. The financial terms of the deal are not being disclosed. Savitt says Chick Approved members will now become Lockerz members. She also says Jeff Turnbull, one of Chick Approved’s founders, will be joining the company. Lockerz investors include Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, DAG Ventures, Liberty Media, and Live Nation.
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| Peer To Peer Lending Crosses $1 Billion In Loans Issued Posted: 29 May 2012 08:30 AM PDT  Editor’s note: Peter Renton is the editor and publisher of the Social Lending Network, a blog dedicated to peer to peer lending. You can follow him on Twitter @socialloans. Peer to peer (p2p) lending was always an idea with great potential. It is a simple concept. Match people who want to borrow money with people who want to invest money. Cut the banks out of the equation and everybody wins. Of course, it hasn't been that simple. When the industry was just getting established the two leading players, Lending Club and Prosper, found themselves coming under the scrutiny of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). In 2008, while still in their infancy, both companies had to go through the expensive and time-consuming SEC registration process. Even though many people were writing the industry obituary at this point both Lending Club and Prosper survived. Today, both companies are thriving as the industry is gaining widespread support from borrowers and investors alike. With greater than 100% year over year growth p2p lending is one of the fastest growing investments. Industry volume is now over $50 million in new loans a month and over the Memorial Day long weekend total loan volume passed the $1 billion mark since the industry began back in 2006. Why Peer-to-Peer Lending is Becoming so PopularBoth Lending Club and Prosper continue to see impressive growth as shown in this chart. What is behind this rapid growth? 1. Investors can earn double-digit returns After several years of low interest rates investors are actively seeking alternatives. Peer to peer lending offers returns in the 6-10% range and the possibility of even earning more than 10%. While there are risks most investors are earning far more at Lending Club and Prosper than they are in traditional fixed income investments. 2. Institutional investors are moving in Last year institutional investors started moving serious money into both Lending Club and Prosper. There is now over $100 million in institutional money invested at Lending Club and that number is growing all the time. Prosper has several large institutional investors including one who has invested close to $30 million and pledged another $120 million in coming years. 3. Consumers want to get out of credit card debt By far the most common type of loan on both Lending Club and Prosper is debt consolidation. People are trying to dig themselves out of credit card debt where rates can routinely climb north of 25% if a borrower misses a payment. Someone with decent credit can get a 36-month peer-to-peer loan at 12%, pay off their high interest credit cards and become free of credit card debt in three years. It is a win-win for the borrower and the investors who loan the money. 4. Banks are still not lending freely It is not news that bank credit remains tight. Personal loans are very difficult to obtain and the popular form of borrowing last decade – the home equity loan – was killed by the financial crisis. Small businesses are also feeling the pinch so business owners continue to look for alternative means of financing. 5. The industry is gaining credibility When one of the titans of Wall Street joins the board of a p2p lender, as John Mack (former CEO of Morgan Stanley) did recently at Lending Club, it provides a level of credibility that wasn't there before. Prosper also announced this year that long time Goldman Sachs executive Eric Schwartz has joined their board. No longer could people write off p2p lending as a passing trend. Peer to peer lending is an idea whose time has come. Its rapid growth as it moves past $1 billion in originations reflects that. It provides advantages for both borrowers and lenders, more so now than ever before. Peer to peer lending is only just getting started so don't be surprised if the $2 billion mark is crossed very quickly, probably within the next 12 months.
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| Face.com Is Definitely Being Acquired By Facebook Say Sources Posted: 29 May 2012 08:27 AM PDT  The purchase of Face.com by Facebook is happening and is a done deal, say multiple TechCrunch sources. Those familiar with the matter have confirmed the price will be $100m, as per the media speculation in the last few days. So far Face.com itself has declined to comment. CEO Gil Hirsch told us via email today “I have nothing to announce.” However, among our sources, one told us “Yes, the wheels are in motion on the deal”. We understand lawyers are huddling over the details of the deal right now but the acquisition is agreed. Now, whether Moscow-based search engine Yandex is selling its stake in the Israeli company to Facebook instead of this being an outright acquisition remains only one outstanding detail that has not yet been confirmed. Yandex, together with Israeli investment fund Rhodium, put $4.3 million into Face.com in return for 18.4 percent of the company. Yandex CEO, Arkady Volozh, joined Face.com's board of directors, according to Vedomosti, as picked up by GigaOm. Vedomosti has sources that say Yandex wants cash and stock in Facebook in return for the deal. We’ve already outlined how much sense this deal makes. But CEO Gil Hirsch is a canny player and would have waited for the IPO before calling for his price. It looks like he got it. To review: the facts on the ground to date are: • Israeli business publication Calcalist first reported (in Hebrew) that Facebook was looking to purchase Face.com. • The deal size has been put at $80 million and $100 million. We’re calling it at $100m. • Face.com’s technology is a natural acquisition target for Facebook. Photos are core to Facebook’s lock-in strategy and facial recognition allows tags to better reflect the social graph, which then feeds into making its advertising platform more efficient. • There is evidence the two companies have been talking for some time (after all, Face.com appeared in 2007) but a price was never agreed until now. A post-IPO Facebook can now afford it. • Face.com’s popular Facebook application Photo Tagger allows people to scan their (or their friends') photo albums for known faces. It also has the iOS facial recognition app KLIK and a public API that could benefit Facebook. • Facebook’s own camera app could integrate the Face.com API. • Face.com has so far raised $5.3 million from Yandex and Rhodium
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| New iOS 6 Maps App Reportedly Caught On Film Ahead Of WWDC Posted: 29 May 2012 08:18 AM PDT  Rumblings of a new, Google-free iOS Maps app have been winging their way around the web for a few weeks now, and just in time to whet our appetites before WWDC, an early version of the revamped app has apparently been caught on film. The folks at BGR managed to score a handful of (extremely blurry) photos depicting the new in-house Maps application that Apple will reportedly unveil alongside iOS 6 next month. Putting Apple’s shift away from using Google map data aside for a moment, one of the bigger changes being forecasted is the addition of a new 3D map view. It certainly jibes well with Apple’s purchase of 3D mapping company C3 Technologies in 2011, and BGR’s source claims that the feature is currently being tested on iOS 6 beta builds. Enabling the new 3D view is a simple enough process — after tapping the button on the screen to bring up the map display settings, selecting the 3D option will cause a new toggle to appear in the bottom left corner of the main map. From there, users will be able to locate themselves and toggle between 2D and 3D views as desired. Sadly, though the folks at BGR have cobbled together a mockup of what the updated app will look like (above), there’s still no clear shot of what the 3D map view will actually look like running within the application. For now though, we’ll have to make do with some early demos of the company’s impressive maps running on iOS hardware as we wait for WWDC to kick off.
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| Dell Finally Does An All-In-One PC Right (By Cloning The iMac) Posted: 29 May 2012 08:11 AM PDT  Dell has sold various all-in-one computers for years. These systems were mostly insipid, humdrum computers not fit for anything other than being a family’s portal to Facebook. Even with touchscreens, Dell’s all-in-one systems failed to be serious contenders in the space. Enter the XPS One 27. Announced today and detailed by Engadget, this all-in-one-system is a clone of the iMac. Even the 2560 x 1440 screen resolution is the same. To Dell’s credit, the XPS One 27 ships with Intel’s latest generation of processors while the Apple iMac is still stuck with the older chips — something Apple will no doubt address in the next revision. But it’s hard to ignore the similarities. Hell, even the computer’s support tower has a large hole for cable management a la iMac. The XPS One 27 is powered by an Ivy Bridge Core i5 or i7 CPU with either an integrated Intel GPU or a 2GB NVIDIA GeForce GT640M dedicated graphics card. With prices starting at $1,399, systems can be configured with up to 16GB of memory and with a 1TB, 2TB or 32GB SSD hard drive. The backside houses four USB 3.0 and two USB 2.0 ports along with HDMI, VGA, and a gigabit Ethernet connection. There’s a slot-loading Blu-ray drive and an optional TV tuner. In all, the XPS One 27 is a fine all-in-one computer with enough power to justify a spot on even an engineer’s desk — too bad Dell didn’t have the design know-how to make an original casing though. Dell has seemingly given up. At this point in Dell’s anemic life they are just keeping up with Joneses. There was a time when Dell was one of the trusted consumer brands. The firm has never been a design leader with systems more utilitarian than beautiful, but that formula doesn’t work in today’s marketplace. But over the years Dell has managed to release systems like the Adamo XPS and to a less extent, the Dell Streak, that showed the computer company had a bit of life left in its corporate tubes. The XPS One 27 shows the opposite. Dell might be dead. Lenovo gets it right time and time again. The Chinese PC company consistently releases computers with new designs in novel form factors. Look at the Lenovo all-in-one lineup: Not a single model looks like an iMac while still offering serious computing power. This design-first strategy seems to be working as Lenovo as profits are soaring — something Dell cannot brag about. There have long been whispers that Dell is looking to exit the consumer business. That division is leading Dell’s losses anyway. And consumers will not miss Dell if the company turns to simply releasing clones of iconic products.
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| Thrillist’s JackThreads Hits 2 Million Members, Plans To Move Beyond Flash Sales Posted: 29 May 2012 08:05 AM PDT  JackThreads, the members-only shopping club bought by men’s lifestyle brand Thrillist two years ago, just hit a major milestone this morning: 2 million members. At the time of the original acquisition, JackThreads was really small, says Thrillist co-founder and CEO Ben Lerer. It only had around 100,000-150,000 members in total. But it soon grew. JackThreads hit the 1 million member mark in July 2011, and since then, the average number of orders placed per month has more than doubled, average daily sales have more than doubled, unique site visitors per month grew 143%, and mobile visits grew 163%. The company hosts flash sales with top apparel brands, but is now starting to try new things. It recently launched its own private label line collection called Goodale, which Lerer says led to the best-selling sale the site has ever hosted. It’s also planning to expand beyond flash sales, and will soon allow members to search the site’s inventory for specific items. What’s interesting about JackThreads’ growth is that it’s mostly been organic. “Frankly, we would like to do more marketing,” says Lerer. But for now, the top source of referrals to the site comes from JackThreads’ “invite a friend feature” and 80% of its traffic comes from free traffic sources. The company has yet to take full advantage of Facebook integration, either, Lerer admits. You can’t log in with your Facebook credentials, and the site hasn’t exactly made it easy for people to share. But these things are changing. Lerer says that JackThreads’ slowness to integrate more deeply with Facebook will prove to be an advantage. “There’s a lot of data that shows what’s moving the needle for commerce sites,” he says, adding that JackThreads is “building a ton of stuff as we speak,” and have recently hired a new front-end lead to help with that. Mobile is another big focus for the company, which plans to launch new iPhone and Android apps (pictured) in a week to ten days, and has a native iPad app in the works. Currently, around 20% of the company’s daily sales come from mobile and the iPad app will help to grow that number. The new apps will also start to collect data from JT customers around personalization by allowing shoppers to star favorite categories and track their favorite brands and products. However, the typical JackThreads customer isn’t coming to the site to buy from a specific brand. It’s more of a lifestyle experience, something which is reflected in the site’s editorial, which presents a more magazine-like images of the clothing as opposed to a headless torso or “lookbook” type of shot. This association with the JackThreads’ brand, instead of the brands it sells on the site, is why it was able to successfully launch its private label collection Goodale, which joined the 1,000+ brands JT currently offers. “JackThreads is the curator. That’s why we can release a brand that no one’s heard of before and sell it at the same or greater volume than a well-established top brand,” says Lerer, “the trust is not with the brand, it’s with JackThreads.” The site’s average shopper is also not exactly an exact match with Thrillist.com. They’re a little bit younger (early 20′s) and they live in the top 20 U.S. cities. Surprisingly, L.A., not N.Y. (#2), is the biggest market served. They’re also…well…not embarrassed about shopping and sharing, as the (stereotypical) male may be. Lerer has a theory on why this is true. “In a generation of people growing up with social media, they’re more prone to share in general…they’re different. The JackThreads guy who’s 22 years old, grew up differently than I did – and I’m 30. They have a different mentality and different comfort level with sharing. We’re really speaking to directly that guy, and playing into that culture and psyche,” he explains. “That being said,” Lerer adds, “one of the things we are working on is creating a shopping experience where when someone does say ‘you know, I just need a f***ing pair of shoes,’ we will soon be a place people come to.” There won’t only be flash sales going forward, he says, but customers will be able to come to the site and search the available inventory. If that sounds a lot like Fab’s current path, it is. Fab is also moving away from associating itself with the “flash sales” moniker, to focus on a new social shopping experience. Part of that experience is a real-time, Pinterest-like design for browsing. Will JackThreads do the same? No. “You’ll never go to JackThreads and say ‘ooh, it’s the Pinterest design,” says Lerer. He says that he thinks the “jury’s out” on the feminine Pinterest look-and-feel, but admits there’s something to be said for “super-visual, graphic-driven shopping.” The company is now over 100 employees, up from 33 in July 2011. Combined, the Thrillist Media Group (JackThreads, Thrillist and Thrillist Rewards) reaches between 4 and 5 million daily subscribers. JackThreads did north of $20 million in revenue last year, and this year, it will more than double that. From a company-wide perspective, Thrillist Media Group did over $30 million in revenue last year and is on track to more than double this year as well.
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| Inventory Management Startup Stitch Labs Now Offers Shipping Through ShipStation Posted: 29 May 2012 08:00 AM PDT  Founded on the premise of making it easier for independent creators to interact with their customers, Stitch Labs launched to offer a cloud-based solution for small businesses that wish to manage CRM, product orders, and inventory management. Now it’s taking that a step further by helping SMBs complete the full cycle of sales transactions through an integration with Austin-based startup ShipStation to handle shipping and order fulfillment for customers. Stitch wants to be the connective tissue between multiple sales sites and platforms, giving independent designers, makers, and manufacturers the ability to reach customers and manage supply and demand regardless of where they sold their goods. Since most of those businesses sell across multiple channels, Stitch allows them to manage inventory across all of them. To do that, it has integrated with major sales platforms such as Etsy, Shopify, and BigCommerce, allowing customers to sell across multiple sites. Now through its partnership with ShipStation, Stitch Labs will help SMBs close the loop with customers, taking them all the way through shipping and order fulfillment. While Stitch handles all the inventory management for its customers, ShipStation will ensure that products get to SMBs’ end-customers. Shipping options through ShipStation include FedEx, UPS, and USPS, depending on how soon products are needed and how much customers want to pay for shipping. ShipStation will also handle stuff like order import and batch label creation, as well as customer communication around tracking numbers and the like. Stitch Labs just raised a $1 million seed investment from True Ventures in February. It’s been using that money to grow headcount, which has increased (see below) from the four cofounders to six full-time employees, with another two interns. It also plans to add even more shopping cart and marketplace integrations as time goes on. From L to R: Robert Navarro (Lead Back-End Developer), Brandon Levey (CEO/Developer), Michelle Laham (Designer), Willo O’Brien (VP Marketing), Jared Fleitman (Data Analyst), Jake Gasaway (Director of Business Development), Camille Brenkwitz (Marketing/Community)
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| Kicksend Releases An Android App For Sharing All Your Photos, Videos, and More Posted: 29 May 2012 08:00 AM PDT  Last December, file-sharing startup Kicksend went mobile, with an iPhone app designed to enable easy sharing of photos and videos that are captured from your mobile device. Now, six months later, the startup is taking that same functionality and making it available to Android users as well. Kicksend, which was incubated as part of the Y Combinator Summer 2011 class, aims to make file-sharing easy, with a way to share and access photos, videos, and other large files across multiple platforms. The startup has a web application at kicksend.com that lets users connect to all their files online. It also has access through a desktop app for Mac users, and an app for iPhone users as well. And now it’ll be available on Android as well. Frankly, there’s a ton of file-sharing companies out there, whether you’re talking about Dropbox, Box, WeTransfer, or YouSendIt. So why go with Kicksend? For one thing, it allows users to privately share with friends and family. There’s also no real limits for file size or the number of files or amount of data users can share. That’s how Kicksend it trying to differentiate itself — by being all about large files and groups of files. It also has in-app commenting so that users can chat with each other about the files that they’re sharing. Kicksend raised $1.8 million in a seed round led by True Ventures in November. Also in the round were Digital Garage, SV Angel, Start Fund, and Milo Founder and CEO Jack Abraham.
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| Plum Perfect Uses A Picture Of Your Face For Makeup, Clothes Recommendations Posted: 29 May 2012 07:51 AM PDT  Listen up, ladies! (And upwardly fashionable gents!) A new service has hit the web that you’ve likely been waiting for for a long time. Gone are the days of trotting over to a store sales associate and getting help with matching makeup or clothing colors. Now all it takes is a trip to Plum Perfect and a camera to get your style on. Here’s how it works: Upload a picture of yourself to Plum Perfect, and wait a second while the technology scans the photo to detect your coloring. It should generate three conclusions: lip, eye, and skin color. You’ll instantly be given recommendations based on your coloring for the best eye shadows, lip sticks and glosses, and foundations/bronzers. Plum Perfect offers 16 different makeup brands, including Lancome, Laura Mercier and Shiseido. The system is simple enough for a total tomboy to find the right colors, and the idea is to add different verticals. See, founder Asmau Ahmed used to be a chemical engineer, with experience in color quality assurance, so the science of color is kind of her thing. Makeup is just a logical category in which to use the technology she’d envisioned for so long. Eventually, you’ll be able to upload a picture of a shirt and get hat, belt, and pant recommendations. The same will be true for home furnishings (imagine taking a picture of a couch and being given three colors to decorate the room with). Of course, thanks to Pinterest, you’ll need an invite. Click to view slideshow.
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| BabyPing Is A Wireless Baby Monitor You Control With Your iPhone Posted: 29 May 2012 07:23 AM PDT  If you’ve been in the baby monitor racket as long as I have, you’ve seen it all: the good, the bad, and the unusable. Well here’s a monitor that just might win my heart. It’s called the BabyPing (there’s an N in there) and it allows you to view your child’s every squiggle and giggle on your iPhone or iPad. The app and monitor costs about $230 and is currently available in Europe only, although it’s expected to hit our shores shortly. Arguably video monitors are mostly for first-time parents who are total freakouts about watching the baby at all times. The system notifies you if the baby is stirring and an infrared system ensures you can peep in on him or her at night. As I noted before, video systems like this one usually used special hardware and/or wonky software so it’s nice to see something that just works.
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| Junar Nabs $1.2M To Help Small Government, Business Unlock Big Data Posted: 29 May 2012 07:15 AM PDT  Last month, San Francisco unveiled a new cloud-based open data site as part of its move to adopt cloud services and, in turn, to encourage open government, transparency and accountability by improving access to data and information. San Francisco is hardly alone — both public and private sectors in the U.S. and around the world are pulling back the curtain on their data. Of course, opening the doors is one thing, but unlocking and making sense of that data? Not quite as easy. That’s why Santiago and Palo Alto-based Junar has developed a platform that allows businesses, governments, and NGOs not only to unleash their data in order to drive collaboration and enhance transparency, but to remove the headache of having to develop their own proprietary software. And to fuel its initiative, the startup announced today that it has raised $1.2 million in seed funding from Aurus, Austral Capital, and a host of national and Latin American angel investors. Many governments and businesses want to open their data so that others can help build, innovate, and interpret it, often it’s not so easy to access or organize into, say, simple reporting. Instead, often only a subset of that data is accessible and most of it isn’t formatted in a way that can be programmatically used. So Junar developed a web-based data publishing system to make it easy for organizations to open and maintain, which is today launching as Junar Open Data Platform, a SaaS data management system, that promises to do just that. Using the platform, organizations can collect, enhance, publish, enable commenting and annotation, and report on their open data no matter in what format it’s formatted. It does this through a simple workflow that enables organizations to streamline projects, whether it be in extracting datasets, building graphical views, or just managing data publishing, all while being able to keep tabs on which pieces of the dataset are getting the most use. Of course, some data is best left unshared, so Junar allows users to control which datasets are made public and which are assigned for internal-use only. Meanwhile, the Open Data Platform Junar, CEO Diego May says, only takes a few minutes to deploy without having to install software or pay for new servers, along with the ability to customize the platform for their particular brand — integrating data into their websites or letting Junar host it. While competitors are most certainly out there, May says that services like Socrata and Tableau (and others) are more concentrated on data visualization and presentation, rather than providing a broader cloud-based publishing and management solution that offers end-to-end support — discovery, analytics, reporting, and visualization. For the past few months, Junar has had more than 200 organizations testing its new platform, and today it’s opening its doors officially, offering a free trial account for a limited time to those who sign up on its website here. From there, a “Pro” Junar account runs $290/month, increasing to $830/month based on the number of datasets, publishers and features.
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| Mobile Ads: Hipcricket Owner Augme Buys 5 Patents, 25 Pending Patents For Its Mobile VoIP Strategy Posted: 29 May 2012 07:01 AM PDT  More developments in the world of mobile patents, and mobile advertising, as it happens: mobile marketing company Augme Technologies has purchased five patents covering mobile VoIP and other technologies, and a further 25 related patent applications, which it says it will use to spearhead its move into new services — and the legal defense of existing ones. The move comes as mobile VoIP services continue to grow in prominence thanks to companies like Skype, Twilio and the profusion of smartphone apps that offer internet-based calling services. Separately, Augme is currently in the middle of a patent lawsuit against Millennial Media. Augme is buying the IP from content distribution company Geos Communications, with the financial terms of the deal undisclosed. The acquisition brings Augme’s IP portfolio up to 14 issued patents and more than 60 pending patents in the U.S. and internationally. For now, it does not appear that these patents are not the subject of any legal heat — we have contacted Geos to confirm that — but we’ll have to wait and see what happens next. Augme says that it has over 2,000 claims in the telecom, media and Internet space already, and that its IP strategy is to focus on licensing. (It recently inked its first licensing deal, with LucidMedia.) The newly acquired patents will enhance Augme’s IP business model and expand its domestic and international applications. Augme “remains committed to the vigorous defense of its intellectual property rights,” according to Augme’s CTO Nathaniel Bradley. On the other side, it looks like the patents will be put to use directly in products. That’s because Augme — like its competitors — is trying to create more enhanced (and therefore potentially more monetizable) mobile marketing services. Specficially, Augme says the IP can help it offer more services within its AD LIFE and AD SERVE mobile marketing/advertising platforms, which already include features like SMS, MMS, 2D/QR codes, mobile websites, advertising networks, social media and branded apps as offerings. Augme retails these services under the brand Hipcricket, which it bought in August 2011 for $44.5 million. It has run some 175,000 campaigns for a client base that includes Macy’s, MillerCoors, Nestle and Clear Channel. The patents bought today have suitably general-sounding descriptions. Patent 7,606,217 is for a ”System and method for routing telephone calls over a voice and data network”. Patent 7,460,480 is for “Dynamically adapting the transmission rate of packets in real-time VoIP communications to the available bandwidth”. Patent 7,676,599 is for a “System and method of binding a client to a server”. Number 7,782,878 covers a “System and method for sharing an IP address”. Finally, 7,957,401 is for a “System and method for using multiple communication protocols in memory limited processors.” The additional applications for patents — seven in the U.S. and 18 international applications — all related to mobile VoIP, the company says.
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| Crowdsourced Flight Finder FlightFox Grabs $800K In Angel Funding, Joins YC’s Latest Batch Posted: 29 May 2012 06:57 AM PDT  Australian travel search FlightFox has a new take on how to surface the best airline deals, and now it has a round of angel funding and entry into top startup incubator Y Combinator, to go along with it. The company has just closed an $800,000 round of funding from YC, 500 Startups, Kevin Laws (board member at AngelList), Matt Dickinson (early investor in Ark), Mick Liubinskas (from Pollenizer), and others. As for what makes FlightFox unique? Instead of developing algorithms to return a list of flights to choose from, the company taps into the power of crowdsourcing instead. On FlightFox, users begin by creating a contest for the trip they want to take, sharing details pertaining to destinations, duration, and price to beat (coming soon), for example. But travelers can also add more specific details and requests in the “additional information” section of the contest creation screen to narrow their requirements further. Users then assign a “finder’s fee” to the contest which is awarded to whichever FlightFox expert finds them the best deal on the best flight. These experts, or flight hackers as they’re called, are a mixed group, consisting primarily of frequent flyers, but also including around 5%-10% travel agents. They’re folks that know all the ins and outs of airline travel, from details like seat size and entertainment selections, in addition to how to carve out the best deals and maximize your frequent flyer miles. Explains FlightFox co-founder Lauren McLeod, expert frequent flyers are already sharing their knowledge for free on online forums like FlyerTalk, for example – a site that boasts some 400,000 members. FlightFox simply allows them to earn a little extra money on the side. The finder’s fee is set by the traveller, and is still something of a work in progress. The site is testing several different fees, ranging from $19-$39, currently. The contest format is like a reverse of the eBay model, McLeod explains, as whichever expert gets in first with the best flight and best advice wins the fee. For another to win, they’d have to find a better flight. (Note that better doesn’t always mean cheaper. Sometimes it could be about reducing travel time, or getting more frequent flyer points, e.g.) FlightFox’s service works best for long, international or multi-city flights where piecing together the different legs of a journey, even with Kayak or Hipmunk’s help for example, is still somewhat arduous for less regular flyers. While FlightFox users will still have to go off and book the trips themselves, they at least have the ability to communicate with each expert one-on-one, asking them questions about the trips, and receiving help with booking instructions. Currently, McLeod says that 500 experts have signed up with FlightFox, but around 50 are really active on the site. Aussie co-founders of FlightFox, McLeod and Todd Sullivan, who previously ran and sold another travel site known as Globetrooper, have now relocated to San Francisco to participate in the current YC program. They plan to remain indefinitely. FlightFox is already live, and you can check it out here.
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| Trivia Party, The Draw Something Of Little Known Facts, Hits 10,000 Questions Answered Posted: 29 May 2012 06:55 AM PDT  We first met the folks from Lamp Lighter at an NYC office hours session, and just as we expected, their app Trivia Party is doing swimmingly in the App Store. After a week of availability, the app has already made its way into the Top 100 zone within the trivia category, and tallied more than 10,000 questions answered. It shouldn’t be too surprising, either. Trivia Party is a comfortable mix between a standard trivia night out at a bar, and the social gaming format of Draw Something. You simply choose a Facebook friend or random opponent, and select a category like Entertainment, Sports, or General Knowledge. From there, you choose your difficulty level, just like in Draw Something. There are helpful tools like 50/50 (which eliminates two of the four possible answers), hint (self-explanatory), and pass-back (which shoots that question back to your opponent). You’re awarded more points for answering difficult questions, and the person with the most points by the time that someone misses five questions wins. The app is still brand new, but some helpful functionality like playing against phone book contacts, sharing questions on Facebook, and a leaderboard for both friends and all players, is currently in the works and should debut soon. If you want to get in on the Trivia Party, head on over to the App Store or Google Play for a free download. Click to view slideshow.
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| 1M Students Strong, Echo360 Secures $31M From Steve Case, Ted Leonsis To Flip Higher Ed Posted: 29 May 2012 06:15 AM PDT  As the old school gives way to the new, technology has begun to play an increasingly active role in the learning process — from primary to higher education. This has given rise to “blended learning,” or the strategic blending of face-to-face instruction with learning environments mediated by technology — be that by way of digital textbooks, video, learning management systems, social networking, and more. Another enabler of this shift to blended learning comes in the shape of “lecture capture” solutions, which allow educational institutions to convert their professors’ lectures into digital media so that students can later have access to that content, on desktops and mobile devices. Last week, The Washington Post reported that one of the leaders in this area of blended learning, the Washington D.C.-based Echo360, had taken on a big chunk of capital to fuel an ambitious mission to “reach 50 percent of U.S. college students in the next five years,” said CEO Fred Singer. Today, the four-year-old company already has 1 million students using its blended learning solutions in over 6,000 classrooms and 500 institutions, owns 54 percent of its market, and is seeing annual revenue of $15 million. Of course, all told Echo360 is only currently serving about 10 percent of the colleges and universities in the U.S., and, on top of that, its leadership sees big opportunities abroad. Now, thanks to a big investment from some familiar names, Echo360 is looking to step on the accelerator. The investment comes from the $450 million Revolution Growth fund, founded by Steve Case, Ted Leonsis, and Donn Davis — all well-known entrepreneurs and executives in their own right and each a veteran of Aol leadership. (Case being a co-founder.) The fund, which typically makes $25 to $50 million investments in companies that it can help take “from niche to mass and scale to capitalize on huge market opportunities,” (i.e. disrupt big industries) sank $25 million into Vienna-based online auction company, FedBid, in January. Yet, considering both the fund and Echo360 are located in Washington, and the startup’s CEO Fred Singer worked under Case and Leonsis at Aol as a lieutenant, the fund’s third investment was a bit closer to home. Although the Washington Post initially reported the funding, it wasn’t clear just how much Revolution Growth had invested. But, with a little digging into the SEC’s filings, we’ve learned that the fund put up just under $31 million to become the startup’s largest shareholder, adding to the some $33 million Echo360 has raised since 2010. As a result of the investment, Donn Davis will be joining the startup’s board of directors. So, beyond a familiar leader in Singer, what is it about Echo360 that attracted this sizable investment? Well, the company started out as a type of TiVo for the classroom, meaning that its core lecture capture product records classroom video and audio, converting them into digital modules that can be accessed anywhere, on desktops, tablets, and mobile devices. The idea being to make any and all educational material more accessible to students, so that they can, for example, view missed classes, take advantage of special, personalized instruction, or use videos as study guides. But the team also realized that its solution can be of great use to teachers, and it has since added features that allow educators to create their own learning modules, screencasts, and tutorials, or can edit and publish their own rich media objects to their students — while working offline. Plus, they can take advantage of video viewing stats, analytics, and courses in one hub, which translates not only into asynchronous feedback for the professor, but starts to give Echo360 a tighter grip on the entire blended learning environment. While Khan Academy has done wonders for the so-called “flipped classroom,” Echo360 wants to use these supplementary features to expand the role of blended learning in the classroom, and engage students on their own terms by encouraging educators to design their approach to teaching based on what aspects of the learning process can be improved with video, what should be learned during class time and what should be learned outside of it. The cost to the institution? Echo360 licenses its software to schools in annual contracts that range from $20K to $200K, depending on the size of the school, which works out to an average cost for students of about $15 per year. It’s an affordable price for higher ed institutions, the low hanging fruit for flipped classroom and blended learning solutions, but one that becomes a much higher barrier to entry for primary schools and high schools — one that Echo360 may want to enter eventually. In the meantime, there is plenty of room for blended learning platforms that can play nicely with learning management systems to grow into goliaths and help push education forward. The other lecture capture players like Panopto, MediaSite, Tegrity certainly won’t be sitting back on their heels, and hopefully the competition means a better learning experience for all. And, hey, Steve Case is excited about it: “Technology has had a transformative impact on many facets of our lives – but the one major area where we have failed to leverage technology to its potential is in education,” Case said via Echo’s blog. “Echo360 empowers universities and colleges to enhance and extend the classroom experience to bring a much needed revolution to higher-education. Blended learning really is about marrying the best of online with the best of in-person, and that is what Echo enables.” For more on Revolution Growth, check ‘em out here, and find more on Echo360 here.
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| What’s In A Name? Nintendo Seems To Be Sticking With Calling Its Next-Gen System Wii U Posted: 29 May 2012 05:58 AM PDT  Nintendo unveiled the tablet-centric Wii U at last year’s E3. At the time the company was clear that it was a working name. A report earlier this year stated that Nintendo was exploring other options. E3 kicks off next week and it seems increasingly likely that Nintendo is sticking with the unusual moniker. First off, Nintendo just launched a Wii U Facebook campaign complete with an intro video with Reggie Fils-Aime welcoming guests to the Wii U page. Second, and perhaps more importantly, the Wii U logo is now on Nintendo’s press site.
Even with a better name, and with that, a better brand, the Wii U will still have an uphill battle to fight. Microsoft and Sony are clearly racing to a future where a home entertainment system is defined by its media streaming capability more so than its games. Nintendo on the other hand seems to be building just a gaming system. With E3 kicking off next Monday Nintendo better bring the goods. They need a good showing to kick off the Wii U — or whatever it’s called.
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