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- New Deal With MGM Brings ‘Robocop’ and ‘Terminator’ To YouTube And Google Play
- TheComplete.me Launches Social Dating Site, Matches With $1.22M From Industry Leaders
- Openwave, ‘Inventors Of The Mobile Internet’, Sells Software Biz To Focus On Patents
- Microsoft Job Postings Reveal “Skype For Browsers” Project
- Bingo Bash-Maker BitRhymes Raises $1M For Casino-Style Games on Facebook, Mobile
- Dashlane Speeds Up The Web With Instant Logins, Automatic Checkout And More
- Sprint’s $199 Galaxy Nexus Launches On April 22 With $40 Google Wallet Credit In Tow
- Manila-Based Social Music Service Twitmusic Makes It Into 500 Startups
- Chartbeat Raises $9.5M, Launches Engagement-Focused Redesign
- Estimize Takes Stock Gamification One Step Further With Challenges
- Roku Launches In Canada With Over 100 Streaming Channels
- Aeir Talk Gives A Father’s Autistic Kids A Voice
- Samsung To Reveal The ‘Next Galaxy’ Phone On May 3 At London Event
- Motorola Employee Takes A Picture Of His Desk, Possibly Confirms Existence Of Droid Razr HD
- The New iPad To Launch In South Korea And 11 Other Countries This Week
- Europe’s Zynga? Social Games Co. Zattikka Raises $20M On AIM, Buys Hattrick, Concept Art House And Sneaky Games
- Video Conferencing Platform Blue Jeans Lands Major Reseller Deal With InterCall
- 1M Users Strong, Schoology Grabs $6M To Take On Blackboard, Moodle
- Style For Hire Wants To Bring Personal Stylists To The Masses
- Txtr Fights Amazon/Apple With iPhone/Android eBooks For The Rest Of Us
| New Deal With MGM Brings ‘Robocop’ and ‘Terminator’ To YouTube And Google Play Posted: 16 Apr 2012 09:36 AM PDT  Google is slowly but surely building out its movie rental service on YouTube. Less than two weeks ago, the company struck a deal with Paramount to bring about 500 of the studio’s movies to YouTube and Google Play. Last night, Google announced that is also bringing about 600 movies from MGM to its movie rental service in the U.S. and Canada. This new deal with MGM brings movies like The Terminator, Robocop, Rain Man and Rocky to YouTube’s and Google Play’s rental library. Google promises to add more MGM titles to its catalog “in the weeks ahead.” It’s not clear if this deal just focuses on older movies, though, or if more recent MGM titles like Hot Tub Time Machine will also be included in the YouTube rental catalog. Google now has deals with five of the six major U.S. studios, as well as deals with more than ten independent studios. The only major holdout at this point is Fox. MGM currently also has streaming deals with most of the major players in the market, including Netflix, Apple and Amazon. Overall, this looks like a good addition to YouTube’s and Google Play’s catalog. Viewers, after all, rate streaming services based on the availability of the movies they want to see. As a newcomer in this market, Google still has some catching up to do, but its slowly becoming competitive.
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| TheComplete.me Launches Social Dating Site, Matches With $1.22M From Industry Leaders Posted: 16 Apr 2012 09:19 AM PDT  If Facebook itself isn’t a covert dating site, then at least its social graph could be — a big group of startups have been going for this honeypot of user data and connections ever since the company launched its platform back in 2007. Few have really taken off, and incumbent dating sites like the not-so-social Match.com have continued to hold mindshare with date-seekers. This is where theComplete.me sees the opportunity. The company quietly launched a Facebook app in March that pulls in and analyzes data from Facebook and other social sites to figure out who you might be a good fit with — and goes way beyond most rivals in its effort to undermine the incumbents. Led by Brian Bowman, the former vice president of product at Match.com, it’s also announcing a large $1.22 million seed round from Intel Capital, psuedo-rival dating site PlentyofFish (a strategic investor in this case), the CrunchFund, and a list of prominent angels. Here’s a closer look at what’s getting all these online dating pros so interested. The app first has you sign on with your Facebook identity, then it shows you a list of people who may have interests in common in a Pinterest-style interface. Your own profile data is organized into a feature called “fraMEs,” — pinned framed that shows categories such as Liked Facebook pages, that can be easily edited beyond the pre-populated Facebook data. A top row of thumbnails shows other Facebook users in the app that theComplete.me has determined are potential matches for you. Clicking on them reveals the things you have in common, also Pinterest style — including the ability to comment on Page-based interests like Neil Young or the Outside Lands music festival. But there’s a lot going on under the surface. Matches are based on a wide range of factors including people you view, who people like you view and correspond with, the number of messages you send and receive from people, and other behavorial data. The product also figures out generally shared interests, like if you and another person both like action movies, because you each have Liked the page for the movie The Matrix, for example. The app goes further than Facebook, too. Once you’re logged in, you can also connect with LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, Photobucket, Flickr, Foursquare, GoodReads, and Instagram. It then pulls in unique data about you from each service (who follows you on Twitter, the types of places you check in on Foursquare) to figure out even richer matches. In private beta testing so far, it has amassed some 1.5 million profiles of users and their friends, which is already helping to shape recommendations. It also pulls off a very clever move to disrupt the utility dating sites, that I haven’t seen done by any of its rivals. Users can provide the IDs to their profiles on other sites, including Match.com, eHarmony, Zoosk and other big ones. You can see the results in aggregate if you click on the “Dating Sites” link of the top “Search People” tab in the app. You get direct, free access to other users of these dating sites because you can just message them through the app/Facebook. No need to pay the one-time or monthly fees that Match.com and others charge. Beyond undercutting the business model, Bowman points out that most of these other sites provide basically no social context beyond what users manually share. At the same time, theComplete.me preserves anonymity. Users only see each others first names initially, and nothing gets posted to Facebook for others to see (unless you manually enable it to do that). Going forward, the business model is going to include microtransactions around things like “buying” an ad next to interests. If you really want to find all the ladies on the app going to Outside Lands, you could advertise yourself next to that fraME, for example. But the core app, Bowman says, will remain free. TheComplete.me does have a few challenges. The interface hides some of the cooler features, like the social network syncing and dating site finder. And the Pinterest interface felt a bit clunky at some points. There’s work to be done in this area. And other new dating apps are also doing a good job of creating matches using social data (like Yoke, which Josh has fallen for pretty hard) and Circl.es. But the experiences of the founding team and its supporters could help them navigate the many nuances of getting the app right for the dating use case. Beyond the previously-listed investors, angels include Russ Siegleman, Ben T. Smith IV, Social Starts, LLC, Spark Unlimited, Inc., Parker Coddington, Kevin Henrikson, Ali Jahangiri, William Lohse and Konstantin Othmer. Disclosure for my girlfriend: I was only testing this app out for work. No dates were had during the production of this article.
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| Openwave, ‘Inventors Of The Mobile Internet’, Sells Software Biz To Focus On Patents Posted: 16 Apr 2012 08:42 AM PDT  Mobile messaging, in its traditional sense, is on the decline, and the patent world is hot, hot, hot, and today one company that plays in both areas showed where it sees its stronger ties at the moment. Openwave, which calls itself the “inventor of the mobile internet” for the early role it played in developing mobile data technology, today announced it was selling its core software business — messaging and mediation operations — and will instead concentrate on its patent holdings in smart devices, cloud technology and unified messaging. Marlin Equity Partners is buying the two businesses for an undisclosed sum, and says it will continue to operate and invest in the businesses, which will be called Openwave Messaging and Openwave Mobility. That transaction is expected to close this month. Openwave, meanwhile, will rebrand as Unwired Planet, “a name that recalls the company's rich heritage of innovation,” it said. It will focus on intellectual property — specifically in the form of 200 issued U.S. and foreign patents and 75 further patent applications, “many of which are considered foundational to mobile communications.” For now, the company has said it intends to remain a publicly-traded company. It will give more details on what, exactly, it plans to do with that business during its fiscal 2012 results conference call — dates for that haven’t been set yet. I am also due to speak with Mike Mulica, CEO of Openwave, a little bit later today — and will hopefully get some more insight then — but for now a little run-down on some of Openwave’s patent activity to-date: The company last year took Apple and RIM to court over patent infringements. Those cases are still pending, and as part of the process Openwave has asked for injunctions on the devices.
Although there is all possibility that Openwave will set itself up as an ongoing concern licensing its patent portfolio, in the last set of earnings it looks like the company at this point is not yet recording any revenue from those patent holdings. (And it should be noted messaging revenues have been steadily declining.) Reuters, meanwhile, hints at a possible sale, when it describes the transfer of the messaging/mediation business to Marlin as “part of [Openwave's] plan to sell its portfolio of about 200 patents.” Could it really be that Openwave is setting itself up for a potential sale of those assets? There are some definite candidates as possible buyers: its licensing partner Microsoft (which just forked out $1 billion for AOL’s patents)? Or perhaps Facebook (another company sizing up the mobile opportunity and also investing in expanding its patent portfolio)? Or even that indirect Purple Labs connection, Google.
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| Microsoft Job Postings Reveal “Skype For Browsers” Project Posted: 16 Apr 2012 08:41 AM PDT  A series of job postings from Microsoft hint at – well, actually they come out and state that – Microsoft intends to bring Skype to the web browser. The posts, which describe positions for software development engineers, mention that the Skype web app would be built (thankfully) using HTML5 and JavaScript, not Microsoft’s own Silverlight or Adobe Flash, for example. The addition of a web-based version of Skype that works without plug-ins could provide a better user experience than today’s Skype Facebook app currently offers, but it could also extend the browser to anyone with a modern web browser who wanted an alternative to running desktop software. There are four job listings which have been spotted so far, describing a “Skype for Browsers” project. One describes the project like so:
So far, the postings refer to jobs in Prague and London only. In addition to possibly providing an improved experience for Facebook users, the Skype for Browsers experience would also serve to bring Skype to the Metro version of IE10 on Windows 8, which won’t support plugins. Microsoft acquired Skype for $8.5 billion last spring, finally bringing it to Windows Phone just this February. Skype is also available on Windows, Mac, and Linux, iOS, Android and Symbian, some smart TVs, and more. h/t: LiveSide
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| Bingo Bash-Maker BitRhymes Raises $1M For Casino-Style Games on Facebook, Mobile Posted: 16 Apr 2012 08:10 AM PDT  BitRhymes, the San Francisco-gaming startup behind a bingo game that has attracted about 400,000 daily active users on Facebook, has raised $1 million in angel funding. BitRhymes’ rise comes at an interesting cross-roads for casino-style games on the Facebook platform. Not only are they becoming more popular, considering last month’s release of Zynga Slingo, a combination of slots and bingo, there’s also a chance they could become much more lucrative if the regulatory environment changes. Back in December, the Justice Department also issued a legal opinion that may open the door to certain kinds of legal online gambling in the U.S., a new market opportunity that social gaming companies including Zynga are exploring. Aiming squarely at female gamers, BitRhymes is behind Bingo Bash. It was a game that was quietly launched last June and then picked up momentum in the fall by adding more than 2 million monthly active users (see the chart below with usage data from tracking service AppData). The company took funding from IGN founder Mark Jung, World Golf Tour chief executive Yu Chiang, former general counsel of Apple and Oracle Dan Cooperman and Doug Bergeron, the chief executive of VeriFone. The company came out of mobile accelerator Tandem Capital, which has also been behind other gaming-related startups like Gimmie. With the funding, BitRhymes is planning to localize the game for different markets by making it available in 10 languages. It’s also putting more fuel behind mobile versions of the game after the release of Bingo Bash HD for the iPad. BitRhymes says that players who use the game on both iOS and Facebook generate three times the revenue of users on a single platform.
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| Dashlane Speeds Up The Web With Instant Logins, Automatic Checkout And More Posted: 16 Apr 2012 07:57 AM PDT  The stealthy consumer Internet startup Dashlane, which had raised a $5 million Series A back in September, is today coming out of hiding with the launch of its public release. The company is offering a personal data assistant that aims to speed up access to websites through password-saving and online form-filling features, but, as hinted earlier, there’s more to it than that. There are two key features Dashlane offers which put it above the everyday password manager: instant logins and support for automatic checkout on e-commerce sites. To better explain what those mean, lets start with what Dashlane actually is: it’s downloadable client software for the Mac and PC which enables you to store your online credentials (logins and passwords to websites), personal information (name, address, phone, etc.) and financial information (credit cards, debit cards, etc.) for fast and easy form-filling and auto-logins and more. But its best feature is its ability to speed up the online checkout process. Dashlane founder, Bernard Liautaud, who was previously the founder of Business Objects (sold to SAP in 2007 for $6.8 billion), says that the problem with online shopping today is how long and complex the process tends to be. ”Checkout is one area where people feel very frustrated because they have to enter lots of data in six or seven or eight different stages,” he says. “What we have done is we have created an express checkout system…when you say ‘go,’ it does all the steps for you automatically.” Checkout is still a huge pain point for both consumers and merchants alike, explains Liautaud, as at least half of buyers abandon their carts during checkout. “People get annoyed, they get distracted, or they stop because they have something else to do,” he says. Of course, in order to automate checkout, Dashlane needs to store your personal data. And that data, secured by your Master Password, for obvious reasons, is encrypted (via AES-256). But here’s a key point: that data stored in its encrypted format on your own hard drive. It’s also encrypted on Dashlane servers. But the encryption key for decoding the data – the Master Password – isn’t stored anywhere. It’s not saved on your computer or by Dashlane. In other words, fair warning: when you create the Master Password, you had better remember it, or you’ll have to start the process of setting up Dashlane from scratch. When you first go to install the software, it walks you through several steps, one of which imports all your saved username/password combos from your other web browsers. When complete, Dashlane’s security dashboard will provide you with a complete report on how secure those passwords are using visual indicators of their relative strengths or weakness (red, yellow, green). It also shows you how many times you’ve used those same passwords across the web, and lets you change them, if need be. It can even auto-generate new strong passwords for you. After you’re set up, when you visit a website where Dashlane has your stored credentials, you can use the software’s automatic login option to save you the extra step of entering in data or even having to click the “login” button – it does it all for you. However, one of the most impressive features of the new software is the auto-checkout option mentioned above. There are two levels to this service. The first, Dashlane Checkout, simply helps automate the form-filling necessary during checkout using the saved personal and financial information already on file. The second level, Dashlane Express Checkout, lets you pre-select all the information necessary at the start of the checkout process, allowing Dashlane to automate filling in information and moving from one screen to the next. (It pauses at the end so you can verify everything is correct, lest it seem too magical.) This feature is live now on 500+ popular online shopping destinations. Dashlane also keeps a history of your purchases – including screenshots of each step at checkout – within the software so you can refer to them if there’s ever a problem with a merchant. The company is the second to be founded by Bernard Liautaud, and he serves at Dashlane the visionary leader. However, the day-to-day is handled by Dashlane CEO Emmanuel Schalit. Other co-founders include Alexis Fogel, Guillaume Maron, and Jean Guillou. The team of 25 is based both in Paris and New York, where they’re now working on the mobile applications for iOS and Android. The company raised its $5 million Series A from Rho Ventures and FirstMark Capital in September.
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| Sprint’s $199 Galaxy Nexus Launches On April 22 With $40 Google Wallet Credit In Tow Posted: 16 Apr 2012 07:40 AM PDT  If they haven't already done it, Sprint customers in need of an upgrade should make it a point to circle April 22 on their calendars. Not only has Sprint chosen that day to launch their eco-friendly LG Viper, the nation's third largest wireless carrier has just confirmed on Twitter that the Galaxy Nexus will be available for $199 (with contract) that same day. As far as the device's hardware goes, hardly anything has changed since it launched on Verizon late last year. Rumors of a slightly snappier processor have been shot down — the Sprint Galaxy Nexus retains the 1.2GHz dual-core chipset seen in its cousin, as well as the 32GB of internal storage and super-fast 5-megapixel rear camera. Going for the Galaxy on Sprint does have a few advantages though, especially if you've chosen to dive headlong into Google’s ecosystem of services. Google has arguably had a closer relationship with Sprint than most other wireless carriers here in the States — Sprint is still the only carrier to provide considerable integration with Google Voice, and Sprint's Nexus S 4G was the first device to officially get Google Wallet support. Sprint’s Galaxy Nexus seems to keep that tradition going strong, as anyone who activates Google Wallet on their GalNex within seven days of purchase will get a $40 Google Wallet credit on top of the standard $10 that comes pre-loaded. Between these two devices and HTC's Evo 4G LTE, Sprint has got a hell of an LTE portfolio in place. Sadly, there's still no sign of that much-anticipated LTE network (outside of Kankakee, Illinois anyway), so those of you looking to take the plunge will have to putter along on 3G for a little while yet.
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| Manila-Based Social Music Service Twitmusic Makes It Into 500 Startups Posted: 16 Apr 2012 07:15 AM PDT  A big domestic market of 92 million people, English as an official language, a large IT talent pool, and a strategic location in South East Asia: the Philippines surely has the potential to become the next web powerhouse coming out of Asia. I traveled to the country last month (on a private trip) to realize that the startup scene is still in its infancy – but that’s poised to change very soon. One pioneering startup from the Philippines is Twitmusic, a Twitter-based social music service aimed at artists and their fans. As an artist, having an account on Twitter is one thing, but Twitmusic allows them to upload and share songs (and other content) through Twitter in a matter of minutes. Existing Twitter users can log in to leave comment on tracks, “love” them, re-tweet them, or share links with followers using the #nowplaying hashtag with one click. Users can also embed individual songs elsewhere, download them (here‘s a pretty popular, downloadable one), or buy tracks on Twitmusic via iTunes. The obvious idea here is to provide artists with a more efficient viral promotion and distribution channel to reach, engage with and sell music to fans – seamlessly integrated with Twitter. Users can listen to songs for free on Twitmusic, discover new tracks or artists, and share content with followers without having to register for a new site. And Twitmusic’s concept seems to work: MC Hammer is actively using the service (here is his Twitmusic profile page), as are Bryan Adams, Bow Wow, Jon Secada, Jason Mraz, and over 4,000 other artists currently. Adams even chose to release his latest single exclusively on Twitmusic. Here’s how a dedicated page for a song (in this case Jason Mraz’s “I won’t give up”) looks: With the initial traction, the eponymous Manila-based startup behind the service has seen interest from investors around Asia, but co-founder Stefano Fazzini told TechCrunch exclusively that the core team has moved to the US a few days ago. As the first company from the Philippines, Twitmusic was accepted into 500 Startups, the Silicon Valley-based accelerator and capital fund (which just raised another US$50 million). Twitmusic has become part of 500 Startups’ 4th batch just ten days before the program started (on April 2), with Fazzini saying the demo day will be held around the end of July. This should be encouraging news for many startups in Asia with a global focus, especially seeing how young the service is: Twitmusic was launched in October 2011 (AngelList entry). For more information about Twitmusic, hit this link for a recent, in-depth interview with Fazzini and Twitmusic marketing director Sandra Seifert. The Huffington Post UK covered Twitmusic in February.
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| Chartbeat Raises $9.5M, Launches Engagement-Focused Redesign Posted: 16 Apr 2012 07:00 AM PDT  Real-time analytics startup Chartbeat is making two big announcements today. The first should be pretty obvious to anyone who uses the service — it’s unveiling a big redesign. And it’s not stopping there, since the second announcement is a $9.5 million Series B round of funding. The redesign is pretty similar to the preview that I saw about a month ago. The big goal is to start providing numbers that go beyond how many people are looking at a website or article at a given moment. So at the top of the new dashboard, in addition to the familiar meter showing the number of concurrent visitors to a site, there’s a new widget telling you how much time visitors have spent engaged on the site in aggregate — for example, I learned that by the middle of the Sunday afternoon, TechCrunch readers that day had collectively spent two years and six months engaged with our content (which is kind of scary). It also shows the average engagement time per user and per page. The new dashboard also highlights content that’s getting unusual attention in some way — not just by pure pageview count, but say if a page is seeing a lot of traffic from search, or from social networks. Traffic to the whole site is also broken down based on type (specifically direct traffic, links, social, search, and internal) and compared to the traffic seen by similar sites. Chartbeat is also launching a new dashboard focused specifically on social network engagement, and it’s beta testing a feature to track visitor data for your iPhone app. Overall, it’s a real improvement. While I don’t think news-oriented sites like TechCrunch will stop focusing on our pageview counts anytime soon, this allows us to take a fresh look at our content, and to measure our success in different ways. (Plus, Chartbeat doesn’t just serve news sites — other customers including e-commerce services like Gilt Groupe and Fab.com.) CEO Tony Haile says that all of these new features are the result of three months of intense work, following a team decision that it was time to rethink the product. As for the funding, Haile says he actually decided to raise a Series B about nine months ago, but took his time finding the right investor. Eventually, he settled on Draper Fisher Jurvetson, which led the round with previous investor Index Ventures. DFJ partner Josh Stein will be joining the board — Haile says he was particularly excited by Stein’s role in building other successful enterprise companies, including Box and SugarCRM. Chartbeat has now raised a total of $12.5 million. Thanks to the new funding, Haile plans to expand the team pretty aggressively. With a larger workforce and more funding, he says the company will be able to tackle a lot of things that it has wanted to do but previously lacked the resources for — he isn’t ready to get too specific, but he says the big vision is to “blow people’s minds” with data visualization. Oh, and in addition to all the news, this is also Chartbeat’s third anniversary. To celebrate, it created an infographic charting its growth. Now I’m not thrilled with the current flood of infographics, but as you’d expect from a company that’s built around data visualization, this one’s pretty good, sharing data points that are serious (5 million concurrent visitors to Chartbeat websites!) and less so (61,600 in-office pushups!).
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| Estimize Takes Stock Gamification One Step Further With Challenges Posted: 16 Apr 2012 07:00 AM PDT  Estimize is a startup trying to discover the true “whisper number” of public stocks — not just the official analyst consensus, but what Wall Street really believes. To make that happen, it’s encouraging investors to post their own estimates — and they’re getting a little more incentive starting today, thanks to the new Estimize Challenges. CEO and co-founder Leigh Drogen previously worked at social finance startup StockTwits, where his roles included product manager and media director. Drogen says he first had the idea for Estimize there — he sees it as the quantitative flip side to the conversations that you find on StockTwits. So each quarter, Estimize members can post their guesses for a company’s earnings per share and revenue. Then you can see the aggregate prediction of the Estimize community, as well as current and past predictions for individual users. One of the first things that you see on the Estimize website is a jar full of marbles, and that hints at Drogen’s big thesis — that as a group, investors can be smarter than any analyst. It’s the same principle behind the carnival game where you have to guess how many marbles in a jar. Usually, if you average the guesses out, you’ll get an answer that’s more accurate than all or most of the individual guesses. Of course, to tap into the wisdom of the crowd, you need a crowd, and in the case of Estimize, Drogen says he originally thought he’d need to reach around 10,000 estimates per quarter before the data was interesting to financial companies. Estimize got 2,500 estimates in its first quarter, but Drogen says he’s already starting to get interests from major hedge funds. After all, he says the 3,600-member Estimize community is already more accurate than the analysts 63 percent of the time. Since you can see each user’s track record, there’s already some social pressure to do well. The Challenges take that a step further with a gamification layer and prizes. Drogen says The Challenges cover five investment categories: Internet, software, hardware, consumer, and retail. (There’s a sixth prize that’s not category-specific, and is sponsored by Investors Business Daily.) Each category includes 30 stocks, and competitors have to make estimates in at least 15. The best estimators will get cash (there’s a total of $10,000 at stake) and badges for their profile page, which Drogen says is being transformed into a “Fitbit-like dashboard” for tracking your progress. NASDAQ is sponsoring the five sector-focused contests. Drogen says the contest is the first step in his goal of “providing tangible benefits and a way to really promote yourself as a great analyst.”
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| Roku Launches In Canada With Over 100 Streaming Channels Posted: 16 Apr 2012 06:54 AM PDT  Roku just landed in the great white north. The tiny little streaming box launched in the UK a few weeks back and now it’s hitting Canada along with over 100 channels of streaming goodness. The Roku 2 XD and Roku 2 XS should hit retailers in the coming days for $89 and $109 CAD, respectively but are available for pre-ordering now. This launch is the last part of Roku’s announced international expansion. The company is no doubt looking for other potential markets but Roku is notoriously methodical in its launch schedule. Roku is a mainstay in the US set-top box streaming market. With all the models costing under $100, they’re a great bet for those that want an easy way to put Netflix on their HDTV. However, along with Netflix, Roku has a very large selection of additional streaming stations including Amazon Video On Demand, Hulu Plus, HBO Go and a bunch of other smaller, more niche stations. There are over 450 stations in the US market although likely due to regional restrictions, only around 100 available in Canada at launch. This includes Netflix, Crackle, NHL, MLB.TV, Flickr, and Rdio and 94 more, which is still a very good selection.
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| Aeir Talk Gives A Father’s Autistic Kids A Voice Posted: 16 Apr 2012 06:35 AM PDT  We met Joe Hill in Norfolk, Virginia last week. He had a story to tell us. He has two autistic sons who have had trouble communicating and he noticed that the world of tools for autism often overlooked a few things – aesthetics, usability, and customization, to name three. Instead of relying on ready-made utilities, Joe wanted to make something fun and cool. He created Aeir Talk. It’s an app that allows parents to create and record their own content for use in a very simple but effective method for communications. The parents record a set of verbs and nouns and add pictures of themselves or of familiar objects. When the kids need to communicate, they select a noun and a verb and press a button. The app creates a simple sentence. “I want to go outside, please” or “I want a carrot, please.” The app costs $1.99 and it’s already helped Joe’s two kids be a bit more responsive. It has plenty of graphical flourishes and the real value is in the customization and malleability of the vocabulary set. You can add anything you like – verbs, nouns, images, voice recordings – and its all personalized so junior feels a bit more comfortable.
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| Samsung To Reveal The ‘Next Galaxy’ Phone On May 3 At London Event Posted: 16 Apr 2012 06:17 AM PDT  After months of waiting (not to mention plenty of conflicting reports), Samsung may have finally revealed when they plan to unveil their long-awaited Galaxy S III. According to a press invitation that has been making the rounds since early this morning, the Korean company will be pulling back the curtains on a new Galaxy handset in London on May 3. Samsung is as vague as usual here — they make it a point not to name the device specifically, referring to it simply as the "next Galaxy." That hasn’t stopped we members of the tech press from attempting to dissect the invitation anyway (my goodness, there are three paint slotches on the invitation!). As such, it's technically possible that Samsung could unveil some random new addition to the Galaxy line, though I'm pretty sure at least a few mobile geeks would snap after having their chains yanked for so long. If this does end up being the Galaxy S III — that seems to be what we're all thinking, anyway — we’ll soon find out what exactly Samsung has deigned to include in it. So far the rumor mill has pointed to ceramic cases, 1080p displays, and quad-core CPUs as likely inclusions, though I’m really looking forward to seeing which of the recently “leaked” images ends up looking most like the real deal. And hey, if you're not exactly comfortable planning a last minute trip to London so see the announcement in person, Samsung has you covered — they'll be livestreaming the event from facebook.com/samsungmobile starting at 2PM Eastern.. In the meantime though, expect a flurry of specious leaks to keep your Galaxy S III appetite whetted over the next 17 days.
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| Motorola Employee Takes A Picture Of His Desk, Possibly Confirms Existence Of Droid Razr HD Posted: 16 Apr 2012 06:11 AM PDT  It would appear that Motorola is putting even more of an effort into its resurrected Razr line. Just a few months after the hotly anticipated Droid Razr stepped onto the scene, Motorola offered the same unit with an upgraded battery, making the Droid Razr Maxx my new favorite Android phone with an 8+ hour battery life (and that’s under extreme duress). Today, just a few months after the Razr Maxx, we’re seeings signs of yet another Razr line upgrade: The Droid Razr HD. You see, both the Droid Razr and the Razr Maxx are excellent handsets, but with both sporting a qHD display resolution it was somewhat inevitable that Motorola would have to go spec-to-spec with competitors at some point and put out a 720p display. After seeing the EXIF data left by a Motorola Mobility employee on a picture of his desk he posted to his Picasa account, we’re thinking the Droid Razr HD (codenamed Vanquish) may be the real deal. EXIF data can, of course, be altered. But we’ve seen instances in which leaked EXIF becomes solid evidence for or against the existence of a phone. Remember that 8MP sushi picture the Internet freaked out over back in September? Lending further to its credibility, we saw a leak a few weeks back on a 4.6-inch 720p Motorola handset called the Droid Fighter (pictured below) that looked a helluva lot like the Droid Razr. Methinks these are the same handset. There’s only so much information we can get from leaked EXIF data, but the document does point to a f/2.4 aperture size and a 5mm focal length. And if that weren’t enough, we’re seeing Android version 4.0.3 ICS as well. The Razr line has thus far really kicked ass for Motorola, and hooking up this design with a gorgeous display should only propel Motorola further forward. Here’s that EXIF info: [via Blog of Mobile]
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| The New iPad To Launch In South Korea And 11 Other Countries This Week Posted: 16 Apr 2012 06:06 AM PDT  Apple took to the wires this morning to announce that the new iPad will hit 12 countries later this week. Along with South Korea, this coming Friday the new iPad launches in Brunei, Croatia, Cyprus, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Malaysia, Panama, St. Maarten, Uruguay and Venezuela. Then, the following Friday, it hits Colombia, Estonia, India, Israel, Latvia, Lithuania, Montenegro, South Africa and Thailand. For better or worse, the new iPad will carry the suggested retail price of $499 USD and up. The iPad 2 will also be available at its new $399 price and might be the best bet in the majority of the markets just now getting the new iPad; only the North American markets have LTE data capabilities anyway. These new markets will help the iPad extend its global dominance in the tablet wars. The iPad is far and away the most popular tablet on Earth but generic Android tablets have no doubt found a home in developing countries thanks to their generally lower price and wider availability. But that won’t stop the Apple machine. Cook & Co. will systematically roll out new products worldwide on Apple’s quest to be a trillion-dollar company.
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| Posted: 16 Apr 2012 05:49 AM PDT  More activity in the social and casual gaming space, following on from the $200 million acquisition of OMGPOP by Zynga. The UK-based games company Zattikka has started trading on the public markets and says it has raised £12.6 million ($20 million) after its placing with institutional and other investors on London’s AIM exchange. Zattikka — which develops freemium games for PC web browsers, social networks, mobile devices (including smartphones and tablets), connected consoles, and other emerging platforms including IP TVs and set top boxes — says that it will be using the funds to make acquisitions, starting with three smaller social games developers: Hattrick Holdings, Sneaky Games, Inc. and Concept Art House, Inc. That is a sign not just of more transactions in social/casual games but also of increasing consolidation of smaller, independent studios as the market continues to mature. The listing today gives Zattikka a market capitalization of £22 million ($35m), it says. That’s has a long way to go before it competes in size against Zynga, or two other European social games companies that also compete in this space — Wooga, which has raised $32 million in funding, and King.com, which today announced that it had overtaken Electronic Arts in popularity on Facebook, with 10 million people playing its games daily on the social networking site. Zynga currently has 65 million daily active users of its games. The activity at Zattikka follows on from a $5.5 million round raised by the company back in 2010 from a group of investors led by Notion Capital. The company also counted Atomico, the VC firm started by Skype founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, as an early investor. Up to now, Zattikka has focused on developing browser and mobile-based casual and social games largely based around licensing deals with other brands. These have included Monty Python and Mr. Bean. But like many other games developers, it also has its SNAP analytics platform, which it offers both for its own games and could be used to distribute games for third-party developers. It plans to use that platform now to bring more games to market, as part of its “buy and build strategy… seeking to acquire existing profitable, but under-exploited, IP game assets and businesses with proven skill sets in monetising social and mobile games which the directors believe are complementary to the company.” That will involve further acquisitions, too, it says. It focuses its attention on three main regions: Europe, the U.S. and China. The three new companies that Zattikka has now bought will greatly expand the inventory of content that it delivers through that SNAP platform. Hattrick, a company with its development origins in Sweden, had its start with a popular online football manager game; it also has a similar game aimed at wannabe Simon Cowells called Popmundo. Both focus on real-time, multiplayer game formats and currently have a combined player audience of 860,000 — a number Zattikka says it wants to increase ‘significantly.’ Concept Art House, meanwhile, is a buy that gives Zattikka some assets focused on China and Facebook. FB games in their portfolio include Nightclub City and Kingdoms of Camelot, and the company is headquartered in both San Francisco and Shanghai and bills itself as much as an “art and design company” as it does a games studio. It has been profitable since 2010. Sneaky Games, meanwhile, is a bit of an outlier buy. The company, based in Austin, Texas, has only between 4,000 and 20,000 daily active users of its fantasy role-playing games with names like Vampire Legacy and Syfy Monster Island (commissioned by NBC Universal’s Syfy channel). Again Zattikka is confident it can take those numbers much higher. Zattikka says that its shares were priced at 100 pence each, with Canaccord Genuity Limited acting as the its adviser, broker and sole book-runner on the placing. "We are delighted to list on AIM to provide the capital base and incentivise the entrepreneurs joining our group. We begin with a strong group of companies with operations in key gaming centres in the USA, China and Europe, a mix of revenues across subscriptions, virtual goods and work for hire with an exceptional team of talent. We have a great opportunity before us to accelerate the growth of this initial group across multi-platforms to create a world class games entertainment group,” co-founder and CEO Mark Opzoomer said in a statement. Other co-founders are Harald Ludwig (now its chairman) and Tim Chaney (now president). Chaney and Opzoomer both came from Virgin Games prior to founding the company in 2010.
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| Video Conferencing Platform Blue Jeans Lands Major Reseller Deal With InterCall Posted: 16 Apr 2012 05:40 AM PDT  Blue Jeans Network, an enterprise video conferencing solution to integrate across many platforms, is announcing a major reseller partnership with Intercall, one of the largest audio conferencing and collaboration services vendors. Dubbed "any(ware) video conferencing," Blue Jeans Network bridges together conferencing technology from Cisco/Tandberg, Polycom, Lifesize with consumers platforms such as Skype and Google Talk. Remote workers, travelers and telecommuters with access to Skype and a video-enabled desktop or mobile device, can participate in video meetings with their colleagues on traditional enterprise video conferencing equipment. Blue Jeans Network users each get a private “meeting room” in the Blue Jeans cloud that they can use to schedule, host, and manage meetings. Participants join meetings by simply dialing a number or clicking on a link from their systems, whether that be Skype or Tandberg. Through this partnership with Blue Jeans Network, InterCall will resell Blue Jeans’ product to its customers. While Blue Jeans has reseller agreements with other providers such as Deutsche Telecom, this is the largest partnership to date, says the company. Currently, Blue Jeans Network, which has raised $23.5 million in funding, says that InterCall did 20 billion audio minutes in 2011 from customers, which is 25 percent of the total of 80 billion audio minutes worldwide.
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| 1M Users Strong, Schoology Grabs $6M To Take On Blackboard, Moodle Posted: 16 Apr 2012 05:30 AM PDT  Schoology, the makers of a one-stop, cloud-based learning management system for primary and secondary schools, is announcing today that it has closed a $6 million Series B round of venture funding. The round was led by FirstMark Capital and includes a contribution from existing investor Meakem Becker Venture Capital, bringing the New York-based startup’s total funding to $9.3 million. For those unfamiliar, Schoology is building on the concept behind services like BlackBoard, Moodle, and Edmodo by way of a collaborative learning platform that allows schools to integrate online education, classroom management, and social networking through a good-looking, Facebook-esque interface. The cloud-based solution is available both for free, as a stand-alone product, and as a fee-based, enterprise-grade solution for schools and districts. The appeal of Schoology for teachers is that they’re able to sign up for the service in a few minutes and can easily invite their students into the system using a unique access code. Therein, teachers can build a curriculum, create lesson plans, assign tests and quizzes, while students can submit their homework and join groups to participate in collaborative study projects, etc. Teachers can then grade assignments and also have the ability to take advantage of collaboration and content sharing with other educators within their school or school district, as well as adding apps into their workflow. Schoology believes that its value proposition is in the way that its platform can be used across schools and spaces, allowing a diversity of organizations to participate in shared classes, groups, and discussions. In this sense, as FirstMark Managing Director Amish Jani says, Schoology doesn’t need to spend months and years convincing heads of a school system that the technology suits their needs, instead, “users simply adopt it, and Schoology then has the privilege of notifying districts or universities about additional capabilities available to them with a few clicks of a button.” The goal is to push schools towards the adoption of Open Educational Resources. As education adopts digital textbooks, adaptive learning, and the flipped classroom, there will increasingly be a need for platforms that bring these next-gen technologies together. Schoology wants to be that platform, much in the same way that Boundless Learning is approaching the problem through creating open, expanded digital textbooks as the framework for the future of educational platforms. Schoology hopes that the fact that its system integrates with existing platforms (the startup offers teachers the ability to quickly export their Moodle courses directly into Schoology) and offers social networking functionality, will result in a network effect. And there’s reason to believe that it’s beginning to work, as Schoology today has nearly one million users on the platform, across 18,000 schools. Next, as content can be built, shared, and purchased from directly within its platform, Schoology wants to encourage developers to get in on the action and begin building a wider set of smart, educational apps for use by teachers and their students. Jani also pointed out that teachers can “be given micro-credits to personalize the system for their needs, and parents can be invited to participate in the educational process,” which can, in the long run, significantly contribute to this network effect, as well as offering that much-needed customization layer that adds to the appeal of enterprise-grade services. Schoology’s vision for its technology also extends beyond the classroom, as any organization that wants to offer continued learning or on-the-job training can use the platform as an educational tool for its workers. Groupon, for example, has been using Schoology for sales field training, offering sales managers the opportunity to quickly educate new employees by sharing its own proprietary materials that need to be learned. They can then offer quick quizzes and tests on the material, upload new guidelines, and offer a general resource for revisiting sales, best practices, etc. It’s no easy feat to offer an interface that remains intuitive both during basic, say, homework sharing, and in its more complex user management functions. Keeping the barriers low enough so that it can be used effectively in classrooms or at a corporate level to train and educate employees, while offering enough customization for both use cases is a difficult line to walk. But Schoology seems to be finding the balance as a full-service, cloud-based learning management system that looks good and is actually easy to use. For more, check out Schoology at home here.
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| Style For Hire Wants To Bring Personal Stylists To The Masses Posted: 16 Apr 2012 05:01 AM PDT  Hiring a personal stylist, who will handpick and curate your wardrobe, used to be a fashion luxury that only the wealthy or celebrities could afford. Today, Style For Hire, a fashion startup co-founded by celebrity stylist Stacy London and Cindy McLaughlin, is launching as a way to help the masses master the art of their own personal style. The startup allows users to find a vetted stylist in their city to help them choose clothing for a special event, or more. With 135 stylists in 24 cities in the U.S., including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco and Boston; Style For Hire allows you to search for stylists by type of style and more. As London and McLaughlin explain, the stylists goal is to help clients think about how to invest more strategically in their wardrobes, considering cost-per-wear, saving and spending habits and ultimately, to develop a wardrobe that is workable and wearable for any age, body type, lifestyle or budget. Services offered include: closet audits, closet "shopping," and personal shopping for all types of lifestyle needs: re-entering the workforce, weight loss/gain styling, eco-styling, plus size and petites styling, bridal shopping, prom shopping, vacation shopping and seasonal dressing. The rate per hour currently ranges from $65 to $300 and the average length of an appointment is 2.6 hours. Soft launched a year ago, Style For Hire has seen an impressive return rate from early clients—46% re-booked two or more times and 22% came back 3 or more times within the year. McLaughlin explains that Style For Hire is an offline business enabled by an online platform and will eventually add more tools that will give users more online access to personal stylists. The startup has raised $1.5 million in funding from Golden Seeds.
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| Txtr Fights Amazon/Apple With iPhone/Android eBooks For The Rest Of Us Posted: 16 Apr 2012 04:01 AM PDT  While Apple, Amazon and competition authorities globally tussle over book pricing, a fleet-of foot startup is quietly building an alternative platform others would do well to check out. txtr is one of the largest independent eBook platforms in Europe. The Berlin based startup began back in 2008, deciding, as one did back then, to bring out an eReading device called the “txtr reader”. I actually saw some of the early units. However, as colleague John Biggs noted in 2009, there wasn’t much point in doing devices without a store. And so they’ve since switched pretty successfully to a BtoB business model, backed by large investor 3M. Now they are cleverly expanding around into the nooks and crannies so far unpopulated by the 800 pound gorillas, and have their own iPhone and Android apps to prove it. Today it’s expanding its relationships with publishing companies across Europe, Asia and North America. Its txtr eBook store is now pre-installed or prominently featured on mobile devices from brands such as ASUS, Acer, Samsung or Toshiba. It’s also on iPhone/iPad. Similar to Amazon's multi-device approach, with various Kindle apps complementing its own dedicated e-Reader, txtr employs what it calls its "buy once – read anywhere" strategy (up to 6 different devices per eBook purchase) and targets Apple iOS, Android, PCs running Windows, as well as web and dedicated e-Ink based eReaders. They do deals with publishers and sell the whole platform (or parts of the technological infrastructure) plus content to hardware manufacturers, telecom companies and ebook distributors. Txtr is also now entering direct relationships with publishers including Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Hachette UK, the Cloudary Corporation from China, Immatériel, the sole independent distributor of digital books in France representing 250 publishers, Diogenes Verlag from Switzerland and WPG Uitgevers from the Netherlands. More international deals are on the cards. The idea is to cover not just books from large publishers, but small independent presses, specialty publishers and self-published authors. It’s also signed an agreement with Next up is a launch in Denmark with two of the leading Danish publishers, Gyldendal, Rosinante&Co and Lindhard go Ringhof. This will bring the total number of countries in which txtr operates local language eBook
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