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- Nintendo Announces The Wii U At E3
- Google Acquires Mobile Productivity Company Quickoffice
- Audi Is Testing Out 4G LTE Connectivity In Its Cars, Courtesy Of Sierra Wireless
- Startup Launch As Celebrity Bonanza: Airtime’s Ritzy, Glitzy, Glitchy Debut
- Cloud Gaming Company OnLive Adds LG Smart TVs And In-Browser Gameplay For Publishers
- Live From Nintendo’s 2012 E3 Keynote
- Airtime Launches A Video Chat Network That’s The New Place To Hangout Online
- Any.DO’s To-Do List App Hits 100,000 iOS Downloads In 24 Hours
- Oracle Buys Another: First Vitrue, Now Market Intelligence Firm Collective Intellect
- Face To Face: How Airtime Will Re-Humanize The Internet
- The Samsung Galaxy Exhilarate Is Cheap, Fast, And Eco-Friendly: Launches June 10 At AT&T
- .Choice: With $100M+ Raised, Donuts Launches A Registry For New Top-Level Domain Names
- Nuance’s Dragon ID Lets You Unlock Your Smartphone Or Tablet By Talking To It
- Wibbitz Raises $2.3M Series A For Technology That Turns Text Into Videos
- Toshiba’s New 21:9 Widescreen Ultrabook Is All About Entertainment
- Twilio Passes A Milestone: 100,000 Developers For Its VoIP, SMS Platform
- Accel-Backed Payments Gateway Provider Braintree Goes International With Expansion Into 30 New Countries
- MapMyFitness Works Out $9M From Austin, Milestone Ventures For Better Fitness Tracking
- New Social eBooks Retailer Zola Books Launches Private Beta, Raises $1M From Prominent Authors
- Traducto Pro Wants To Be Your One Stop Shop For iOS And Mac App Localization
| Nintendo Announces The Wii U At E3 Posted: 05 Jun 2012 09:16 AM PDT  It was just yesterday that Nintendo unveiled the Wii U Gamepad, but today is the big announcement. Everybody welcome the Wii U. The new console, coupled with the Gamepad, will change gaming entirely, according to Nintendo: “at its core, Wii U changes gaming, how you interact with your gaming friends, and it changes the way you enjoy your TV.” That means Netflix and Hulu and Amazon Video and YouTube, along with the brand new form of gaming brought about by the marriage of the Wii U and the Gamepad. The Gamepad sports a pressure-sensitive touchscreen along with traditional buttons and directional pad. Nintendo also packed an NFC reader/writer and a gyroscope/accelerometer. The Wii U will support two different Gamepads. The new controller will allow for viewing multiple screens (one on the TV of course, and one on your Wii U Gamepad), which the company showed off at their keynote this morning at E3. For example, in PikMin3, the Gamepad will display a three-dimensional map, allowing for a little added perspective. The company is also introducing MiiVerse, which Nintendo refers to as a Main Street for gamers. Each of your friends will be displayed there in avatar form, and you’ll be able to share screen images, send text messages, and display your recent scores within the bubble hovering above your Mii. Eventually, you’ll be able to join MiiVerse from any web-enabled device including the 3DS. Nintendo promises that an ecosystem like MiiVerse will actually make you better at gaming. Especially in Super Mario Bros. U, MiiVerse will allow in-game communication with your friends to unlock hidden areas or beat an especially difficult level. Nintendo has said its developing deeper games like PikMin3 to bring back the deeper game play to consumers, in a time when light gaming has picked up steam.
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| Google Acquires Mobile Productivity Company Quickoffice Posted: 05 Jun 2012 09:09 AM PDT  Google just announced that it has acquired Quickoffice, a company best known for its mobile productivity suite for Android and iOS. Google plans to bring Quickoffice’s “powerful technology” to its own Apps product suite. Quickoffice allows its users to create and edit Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents on their mobile devices. The company says its software is currently installed on over 300 million devices in more than 180 countries. The financial details of the acquisition were not disclosed by either Google or Quickoffice. Quickoffice CEO and co-founder Alan Masarek notes that he hopes that “ by combining the magic of Google's intuitive solutions with Quickoffice's powerful products, our shared vision for anytime, anywhere productivity can only grow.” Given Quickoffice’s focus on building native apps for mobile devices, chances are that Google will use this acquisition to launch more of its own native mobile productivity apps as well. It’s not clear what Google plans to do with Quickoffice’s existing applications. The company has a high number of volume customers in the enterprise world, so chances are that Google will at least continue to offer some of Quickoffice’s services for the foreseeable future. Quickoffice, however, also offers a number of paid apps for consumers. Google often makes these available for free after an acquisition like this, but so far, there has been no indication that plans to do this with Quickoffice’s apps. Developing… Here is the full announcement from Google:
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| Audi Is Testing Out 4G LTE Connectivity In Its Cars, Courtesy Of Sierra Wireless Posted: 05 Jun 2012 09:05 AM PDT  3G connectivity has been baked into cars for years now. Audi and Ford pioneered the technology, but times are a-changin’. The end-all be-all in wireless is no longer 3G as 4G LTE has taken the main stage. That said, Audi is once again positioning itself as a front-runner, bringing an LTE-capable infotainment system to its newest models with the help of Sierra Wireless. According to the release, “Audi is using Sierra Wireless AirPrime embedded wireless modules to help develop and test the system.” But the real thing won’t be available for quite a while — we’re still in the development and testing phases. Drive tests began toward the end of 2011 and are ongoing. As I said, wireless connectivity in automobiles isn’t novel, but it would seem that many wireless providers and auto manufacturers are in a race to bring the fastest connection available to their customers. Just a couple months ago we saw a collaborative effort between Porsche and AT&T to bring 4G LTE to a QNX-powered infotainment system. The results were only semi-impressive, but perhaps Audi and Sierra have made more progress. Only time will tell, and of course, a glimpse at the integration once it’s ready to go to market.
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| Startup Launch As Celebrity Bonanza: Airtime’s Ritzy, Glitzy, Glitchy Debut Posted: 05 Jun 2012 09:03 AM PDT  Once upon a time, a humble click of a button could send a web service live. A couple of e-mails out or a post on a message board might be sufficient to draw the interest of a few early adopters. No longer. Somehow, somewhere along the line, certain startup launches and demo days have become more like celebrity-studded movie premieres or gallery openings. We all go and gawk. We might stay. We might leave. But we’re all there for a show. And nowhere is the shift of technology industry from mainstream culture’s periphery to its center more evident than in the story of Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning — who are debuting their much-anticipated (and more family-friendly!) version of ChatRoulette today. More than 15 years ago, Fanning and Parker were just teenagers trolling chat rooms. “We were both hackers,” Parker said in New York today. “We were interested in computer security. The goal was some sort of miscreant behavior…. We were basically cyber criminals.” Today, their lives are a world apart. Parker is a multi-billionaire, even factoring in Facebook’s recent declines. Their launch in a Chelsea warehouse right now has Martha Stewart in the front row and Jimmy Fallon as the MC.
“They’re the Jean Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren of the Internet,” Fallon said, bringing them on-stage. Parker’s first call on Airtime during the demo was to television host and model Olivia Munn. The second was Snoop Dogg. But the celebs didn’t save Airtime from an embarrassing five-minute stretch where the product didn’t work in demo mode. A call to Snoop Dogg took a few tries. When Joel McHale, a TV host came on, the product failed to work for several minutes. “Whose ass are you going to fire?” he asked Parker on-stage. “This is not how it really operates, I swear to fucking God,” Munn said. “You have to go onto it, use it and then write your blog posts.” It eventually started working again and McHale got on a call with Seinfeld’s Julia Louis Dreyfus, who then got on a call with The Hangover’s Ed Helms, who then got on a call with Alicia Keys. In a later call, Helms tried to dial Airtime’s headquarters in San Francisco. But they didn’t pick up. “Your own office isn’t answering?!” McHale joked to Parker. They didn’t show off the real, live mode where you’re paired with strangers. Even though the packaging their work comes in today is far more extravagant, Airtime is still weirdly true to Parker’s and Fanning’s teenage selves. “We felt like the only people in this world who had an interest in screwing with other people’s lives,” Parker said of originally meeting Fanning. He later said that with the loss of anonymity and the rise of Facebook’s social graph, the web has changed in a few ways for the worst. “Nothing spontaneous ever seems to happen on the Internet,” he said. “There’s no room for randomness. The social graph is actually somewhat stifling. Your ability for self-expression is actually limited when all of your friends are watching what you do.” Airtime feels like Parker’s grown-up attempt to reach back into his miscreant past. The big question though is whether a celeb-packed launch will help Airtime have as huge a cultural impact as the humble premiere Napster had. Time will tell.
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| Cloud Gaming Company OnLive Adds LG Smart TVs And In-Browser Gameplay For Publishers Posted: 05 Jun 2012 09:00 AM PDT  Two years ago, OnLive launched with a dramatic plan to upend the gaming industry: By putting game processing in the cloud and streaming over the Internet, it could enable a whole new realm of devices to access games that were previously only playable on high-powered PCs and gaming consoles. Now it’s expanding availability beyond its own desktop applications and streaming console to make games available on more devices and web destinations. At this year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), OnLive is announcing a couple of new platforms that its cloud-based gaming system can run on. That includes the ability to play its games directly from next-generation LG Smart TVs with Google TV installed, as well as the ability to access them on nearly any browser on any device. First, the LG news: At E3, OnLive will be showing off an integration with the LG Google TV sets that will make more than 60 games instantly playable from the TV, without having to hook up a console or PC. The LG Smart TVs will be able to connect directly to the OnLive Wireless game controller, so that users can jump right in to purchasing games or playing demos, with all the same social spectating, BragClip video recording and Facebook sharing available on other devices and platforms. Oh, and since the LG Smart TVs are also 3-D capable, a future update will make select games available to play using that feature as well. OnLive is based in the cloud, so the processing and video rendering doesn’t happen on the device, which opens up availability on low-power devices. And since the next-gen Google TV platform will support OnLive, we can probably expect other upcoming devices with the TV OS could also be able to run the gaming service. In addition to LG, OnLive is also working with Vizio to bring its games to that CE manufacturer’s devices as well. In the meantime, OnLive is also enabling one-click gaming on Mac and PC web browsers. That means that publishers and retailers who offer games through the service will be able to take advantage of browser-based gameplay on their own websites. The white-label service will enable its partners to create their own online gaming service, without users having to log in to OnLive to access those games. Partners will be able to customize the player to match their own websites, but gaming features will be the same as on the OnLive service: Users will have access to multiplayer, voice chat, touch support, and live spectating of other players’ gaming sessions. In-browser gameplay is live in North America and Europe today, and will soon be available worldwide. The company is also working to support in-browser gaming not just on PCs, but on other devices with a web browser — including connected TVs, mobile phones, and tablets. A lot of OnLive’s E3 announcements have to do with distribution, but it is also adding new gameplay features. That includes the introduction of OnLive MultiView, which will let users watch others’ sessions while participating in their own. Players can view up to three other player’s games, which will be perfect for multiplayer and cooperative games where they coordinate with teammates. Currently in beta, the feature will be released later this summer.
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| Live From Nintendo’s 2012 E3 Keynote Posted: 05 Jun 2012 08:55 AM PDT  The geeks have gathered, the music is loud, and paired with the graphics on the big screens, this place is basically a stoner’s wet dream. The doors of the Nokia Theater have opened, and as more nerds filter in, we’ve set up shop to bring you the event live. It’s safe to expect Wii U news, plenty of video game trailers, and maybe, just maybe, a hint of renewed strength in the once-iconic gaming brand. We miss you Nintendo; come back to us. Join us after the jump!
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| Airtime Launches A Video Chat Network That’s The New Place To Hangout Online Posted: 05 Jun 2012 08:39 AM PDT  Ready your arsenal of funny viral videos, Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning have just launched their video chat and sharing network Airtime. Built on Facebook with a stunning $33.5 million in funding, Airtime puts you onstage with a friend or matches you with an interesting stranger. There’s no application to install, it works straight from your browser. [Update: And Parker tell me that iOS and Android apps are "coming very soon".] You could call it a more fun version of Skype, a one-on-one Google+ Hangouts with your Facebook graph, or the evolution of Chat Roulette. But what you’re going to call it is fun. Pull in a favorite YouTube video or select one you’ve already shared to Facebook and instantly you’re watching together. It feels simple, intimate, and casual — like you’re actually interacting in person. As I wrote this morning, Airtime will re-humanize the Internet. Give Airtime some Facebook permissions and you’ll see all your friends who are online fill up a buddy list on the right side. Click one your friends and they’ll get an invite to meetup on Airtime delivered via Facebook Chat. When they click through, your webcams activate and you each appear on half of the screen, video chatting in real-time. But Airtime doesn’t just reinforce your social network, it expands it. You can choose to be matched with someone new but who has similar interests, mutual friends, or lives nearby. Once you’re connected, you’ll see the Likes from your Facebook profiles below the video feeds with your mutual interests highlighted in green. Click the Airtime button between you and you’re shown a feed of shared characteristics and friends that serve as conversation starters. You can geek out about a band you both love, or teach each other about something you’ve never heard of. Airtime goes beyond small talk. It lets you forge deeper relationships with both strangers and those you thought you already knew. Where Airtime really shines, though, is in video sharing. All the videos you’ve posted to Facebook are displayed as thumbnails beneath your interests. Click one and your webcam feed goes picture-in-picture, and you and your conversation partner watch the video clip together as well as each other’s reactions in real-time. Show off the funniest videos you know, share home movies you’ve uploaded, or get smarter watching something educational together. At anytime you can hit “next” to get paired with a new partner. But if you’re really having fun, you can reward your conversation partner by wailing on a litte “star” whammy button. Your partner will earn achievements and badges that appear in their profile, but more importantly, it will improve their credibility rating on Airtime. That means they’ll get matched with more desired partners, like celebrities or other people proven to be fun to chat with. For now Airtime is just one-on-one chat, but group chat and the option to carry on multiple tabbed conversations at once are on the way. Live music listening and photo viewing integration may emerge too. Parker even tells me that Airtime is building an app platform so developers can create their own games, utilities, and more. You see before Draw Something, there was the offline game called Pictionary. You could actually build Pictionary on Airtime. What makes Airtime actually usable, unlike Chat Roulette, is authenticated identity and a one-strike abuse policy. While your interests are shown, your name and biographical details other than your current city are kept private unless you share them. And since it’s built on your Facebook identity, if you show your naughty bits and get flagged by your partner or discovered by the site’s human moderators, you’ll get banned.As Parker said in his presentation at the launch this morning in New York City, one of Airtime’s core principles is “no penises” before switching it to “safety”. When you think of hanging out online, right now you think of scrolling endless feeds of updates or aimlessly surfing the web solo. That means amongst a sea of connections, you can actually feel like you’re alone. But it doesn’t have to be that way, and that’s why people could end up spending a lot of time on Airtime.
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| Any.DO’s To-Do List App Hits 100,000 iOS Downloads In 24 Hours Posted: 05 Jun 2012 08:01 AM PDT  How hot are to-do lists? Quite hot, apparently. After Sunday’s launch of the popular Android to-do list app Any.DO on iOS and web, co-founder and CEO Omer Perchik tells us that download numbers are exploding. Try this number on for size: Any.DO saw 100,000 downloads of its iOS application in just 24 hours. And this is without the app being featured by Apple, he says. In addition to the download numbers, Perchik says that iPhone users created over 500,000 tasks using the free app just yesterday. (Wow, you guys are busy! I only have one thing on my to-do list:”blog.”) For background, the company behind Any.DO is the same that built another popular Android to-do list app called Taskos, which reached a million downloads, despite having been created “for research purposes” only. While Perchik won’t reveal Any.DO’s Android download numbers specifically, the company reports it’s in the “millions.” However, the Android version reached half a million downloads in its first 30 days, the company had previously reported. Any.DO is backed by Eric Schmidt's Innovation Endeavors, Blumberg Capital, Genesis Partners, Palantir's Joe Lonsdale, Felicis Ventures (Aydin Senkut) and Brian Koo (and is the process of raising right now). The investor line up hints that the team might have bigger plans than simple to-do list management. In fact, the company previously stated that they’re working towards a more intelligent system for helping people “actually get things done.” Hmm. Perchik says that the next version of the app will begin to reveal what some of those new tricks may be, teasing that it will include “more intelligent and more interesting things.” Stay tuned. Any.DO’s free app is now available for iOS, Android and Chrome, the latter as either and extension or Chrome Web App. (One note – just be careful to grab the right one in iOS – someone else is also using the “AnyDo” name. The correct iOS app is here).
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| Oracle Buys Another: First Vitrue, Now Market Intelligence Firm Collective Intellect Posted: 05 Jun 2012 07:40 AM PDT  Following its acquisition of marketing giant Vitrue two weeks ago for $300 million, today Oracle struck again. The company has just announced that it has agreed to acquire cloud-based social intelligence solutions provider, Collective Intellect. The terms of the deal were not disclosed. The seven-year-old company has developed tools that allow businesses to optimize the way they monitor, make sense of, and respond to their customers’ conversations on social media platforms, like Facebook and Twitter. The company’s cloud-based solutions turn social conversations (and Chatter, eh?) into actionable intelligence, boosting customer experience and the generation of targeted leads. In a statement today, Oracle said that the acquisition was part of an effort to boost the social intelligence tools it offers to its customers:
Collective Intellect counts CBS, Advertising Age, Dole, Hasbro, NBC, Verizon, Walmart, Yahoo, and Pepsi among its current customers and has raised $14 million in venture funding to date. After buying Vitrue on May 23rd, Salesforce countered Oracle’s social push by buying its own social media behemoth, Buddy Media yesterday for $689 million. Today, Oracle has countered yet again. Clearly, both companies are serious about beefing up their social offerings, drilling down into social media analytics, customer insight, and social CRM, but it remains to be seen whether Salesforce has the fuel in the tank to counter yet again. Popcorn anyone? For more, see Oracle’s announcement here, and find Collective Intellect at home here.
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| Face To Face: How Airtime Will Re-Humanize The Internet Posted: 05 Jun 2012 07:23 AM PDT  One minute into using Airtime I was laughing with someone I’d never met. That’s something special when despite all the asynchronous connection, the Internet threatens to make us feel lonely. On Airtime, you experience together thanks to real-time video chat and video sharing. You’re both the performer and the audience. When you look at your friend or a stranger you’ve been paired with, you get their body language, gestures, and attitude. Co-founders Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning tell me that on Airtime “there’s a depth of communication that doesn’t come through on something like Facebook. It’s much higher bandwidth.” The Internet doesn’t have to isolate us. In fact, it’s a party, and Parker and Fanning aim to be the hosts. “Airtime relates people to each other, makes the connections as comfortable as possible. But without a facilitator [like Airtime], the fear of rejection is so powerful” Fanning adds. “People are way more entertaining than we give them credit for” Parker adds. Long ago when Airtime’s founders met over IRC, real-time chat was the medium of choice, and interactions seemed more genuine. But as content feeds took over we began shouting into the darkness, and going through the motions of checking for Likes and retweets, the simplified symbols of human connection. But oer the years the groundwork was laid for a more realistic interaction medium. Parker tells me there’s four reasons Airtime wasn’t possible until now:
Combined with Airtime’s design where both conversation partners share the screen equally, these permit for some of the most vivid human interactions the web has seen. Today you can video chat with one person on Airtime, or pull in videos from sites like YouTube to watch together, but Parker tells me Airtime is considering group chat and synchronous music listening. It also has firm plans to become an app platform, so third-party developers can build new ways for us to share. And finally, Parker says mobile apps are “coming very soon. The most important experience that’s missing right now is just this seamless web experience but we’ll follow up soon with apps for iOS, Android…” There are other ways to communicate with video, but they’re tethered into desktop apps like Skype without good content sharing options, or lesser-used social networks like Google+ Hangouts that could require you to sign up for a new account. Parker tells me creating Airtime seemed obvious considering the friction involved in watching a video together with his fiance when they were apart. “I’d call her on the phone, [tell her which video to watch], and sit and listen to her reaction. It’s sort of weird. We should be able to experience content together in a shared space.” Airtime hopes to trump competitors with convenience, the same philosophy that led Parker to see Spotify as the solution to music piracy. If one of your friends is online on Facebook, they’re on Airtime, and you can instantly send them an invitation to talk that’s delivered via Facebook Chat. If you want someone new to share with, Airtime pairs you with people who are nearby, share interests, or have mutual friends. Moments later you’re expressing yourselves, giggling as you show off your favorite viral videos, and learning more about each other. It’s that last part that makes Airtime so unique. Whether you’re chatting with a friend or someone new, Airtime lets you leapfrog forward in the intimacy of your relationship. A New Kind Of IntimacyYou might be sheepish about immediately bringing up your love for World Of Warcraft that’s quietly listed in your Facebook profile. But Airtime highlights you and your partner’s shared interests, even scrolling them down the center of the screen if you need something to talk about. Discussions turn to what makes you two similar, but different from the rest of the world. Your esoteric bond over a book, band, brand, or film can quickly bring you closer than a dozen small talk conversations. Suddenly strangers don’t seem so strange, you realize how much you have in common with your co-workers, and friendships are accelerated. Airtime makes it seem like you’ve known someone longer than you have. “If you connect millions of people to each other [in an environment] that’s well-lit, safe, and controlled enough to prevent bad actors, people will do all sorts of [interesting things]” says Parker. He explains that ”When everything you do is seen by everyone, you end up self-censoring and choosing lowest common denominator. It’s noisy, boring, and impersonal. Rarely do you have a meaningful one-on-one connection.” In private Airtime chats, though, people become their real selves. Honestly, with every service importing our same Facebook friends it felt like our formative years were over and we were locked into our social graphs. The Internet was starting to get a bit repetitive. Airtime lets you strengthen the ties of your graph, but also break out of it. Of his time as President of Facebook, Parker exclaims “I spent 10 years with identity trying to create the one true social graph, but no one is asking how do you rewire it to more ideally connect people. We’re taking everything I’ve spent 10 years working on and turning it on its head, doing the opposite.” Fanning concludes “There’s no reason not to continue meeting new people.”
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| The Samsung Galaxy Exhilarate Is Cheap, Fast, And Eco-Friendly: Launches June 10 At AT&T Posted: 05 Jun 2012 07:22 AM PDT  LTE is a wonderful thing. It’s like seeing the ocean for the very first time, or taking off in a plane. The speed is brand new, and it’s beautiful. But unfortunately, most LTE smartphones tend to hang out on the expensive end of the shelf, and not everyone has $200-$300 to slap down for a phone, especially considering that none of it goes toward data and airtime. But Samsung is known for building the greatest variety of phones, from feature to low-end to super smart, and the latest member of the Samsung mobile family is sure to offer high-speeds at a low price. Meet the Samsung Galaxy Exhilarate. The phone will run on AT&T’s 4G LTE network with availability beginning June 10. And it’s just $49.99 on-contract. But before you try to start placing pre-orders get a load of the specs and make sure this thing can keep up with you. It’s a mid-range device, but for the price I’m somewhat impressed with what’s being offered here, which includes a 4-inch Super AMOLED display at an unspecified resolution. The phone is powered by a 1.2GHz dual-core Scorpion processor running Android 2.3 Gingerbread, and sports a 5-megapixel (720p) rear camera and a 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera for video chat. The case is also made from 80 percent recycled post-consumer materials making it AT&T’s first LTE smartphone to get UL Platinum certification. Go Earth!
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| .Choice: With $100M+ Raised, Donuts Launches A Registry For New Top-Level Domain Names Posted: 05 Jun 2012 07:11 AM PDT  Last year, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) approved a new initiative that is set to significantly expand the number of generic top-level domains (gTLDs), allowing companies, organizations, and anyone in between to buy their own domain name extensions — like .google, .rip, .ROFL, etc. ICANN recently closed its window for domain name applications, and last week, for example, Frederic covered Google’s announcement of the domains it has applied for (.google, .docs, .youtube, and .lol to name a few), which was yet another indication that it won’t be long before gTLDs of this ilk will be common on the Web. ICANN expects to create between 300 and 1,000 new gTLDs each year, joining the 28 ubiquitous Top-Level Domains in play today, like .com, .org., .net, and so on. Of course, as Frederic noted, there’s been plenty of resistance against the new domain order, with companies complaining that the new process (which requires applications to pay a $185K evaluation fee, with more added on once apps are accepted) will require them to cough up too much dinero in an effort to secure trademarks. However, Google is far from being alone in its application for new TLDs — there are plenty more that see this is an opportunity. Today, the appealingly-named Donuts, Inc. is launching to the world, simultaneously announcing a move to expand the Internet namespace with a not-so-bite-sized set of 307 applications for new gTLDs. Donuts, a registry for new top-level domain names, believes that this expansion will help bring new industry competition and a fresh set of choices to the world’s Internet users looking for better, more specific domains for their products and services. To do so, Donuts is announcing that it has raised over $100 million in capital from private equity and venture funds to help it secure and operate each applied-for domain name, with contributing investors including Austin Ventures, Adams Street Partners, Emergence Capital Partners, TL Ventures, Generation Partners, and co-founder and chief exec Paul Stahura’s investment fund, Stahurricane, to name a few. The company also said that it’s ready to raise additional funding if necessary, and has obtained a revolving credit facility with Comerica Bank. Donuts co-founder and EVP Dan Schindler tells us that Donuts leadership believes that the current namespace, which is the “very fulcrum of commercial online navigation,” is extremely constrained today and that both consumers and businesses are in dire need of more choice when it comes to their Internet identities. With more than 125 million total names in the top five TLDs (with 75 percent of those being .com domains), finding a solid, brand-able web address has become a serious problem. The co-founder believes that opening the doors to a variety of new domain names will bring some much-needed competition to the long-enthroned .coms of the world, although just how much competition (and how much disruption) remains to be seen. But, Donuts does have a point that competition implicitly means lower prices, with names in new TLDS are going to be far, far less expensive than .com names at auction or in the aftermarket. As Schindler suggests, buying theater.tickets at $500 is better than theatertickets.com at $125,000. And this is where the name “Donuts” comes in — although the title seem a bit random, the co-founders say that the reasoning is simple in that donuts are universally beloved and connote a variety of choice. Can’t argue with them there. So, of the 307 applications that Donuts has filed with ICANN, none of them, the founder say, are for branded domain names — or those that are trademarked. Which means that, when ICANN shares its list of applied-for strings next week, you won’t see it vying for .google or .oracle. However, Donuts leadership also made it clear that, though its name might make it seem otherwise, the company will not be selling domains to consumers, or the end-user, instead selling to popular, widely-used registries like GoDaddy or Hover. It will also be striking a partnership with Demand Media, which will become its registry services provider. Donuts also expects that the leadership team that it has assembled will be an asset and a leg up over the competition that is sure to arise, as it’s founded and managed by executives who are veterans in registry operations and industry regulations, the majority of whom have in some way advised or worked with ICANN. Donuts’ newly appointed CFO Kevin Wilson, for example, is the former CFO of ICANN. With its new funding in tow, the Washington-based startup will be looking to grow its team as it positions itself to become a big player in what it expects to be a billion-dollar-plus market, says co-founder Stahura:
For more on Donuts, Inc., check them out at home here.
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| Nuance’s Dragon ID Lets You Unlock Your Smartphone Or Tablet By Talking To It Posted: 05 Jun 2012 07:04 AM PDT  Speech recognition giant Nuance has made their share of plays in the mobile space before — they acquired Vlingo last year and pushed out their Dragon Go! voice command app to both iOS and Android. Their latest mobile endeavor, Dragon ID, is a little different — its main draw is that it’s capable of recognizing distinct voices and using them to authenticate users and unlock devices. It turns out that Dragon ID is quite the polyglot too, as the service is capable of recognizing voice input in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese and Korean. Simply saying “Hello Dragon” in any of those languages unlocks the phone and allows users to dive into their content. Their demo video (seen below) is where things start to get a little confusing. Instead of just a voice print authentification service, the video paints a portrait of Dragon ID as (yet another) intelligent assistant capable of reminding users about meetings and making snarky quips about playing Angry Birds. It could be a puzzling show of how Dragon ID could integrate with something like Nuance’s Dragon Go! voice command app, though many of the commands issued in the video don’t work (yet?) with the app. Dragon ID also appears capable of managing different user accounts and homescreens, functionality that doesn’t yet exist on most consumer smartphones and tablets. Features like that would explain why we the people won’t be able to download Dragon ID any time soon. Voiceprint identification is an interesting concept to say the least, but Nuance points out that they’re making Dragon ID available only to “consumer device OEMs” for the time being — no word on who they’ve reached out to so far. Interestingly enough, Nuance also notes that Dragon ID will be available for “Android and other platforms,” which of course raises the question of who else has the option of running with the service. Apple is likely off the table for obvious reasons, but Nuance hints that the voice recognition could soon find its way to PCs so Microsoft and their ilk could be potential users of this service going forward.
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| Wibbitz Raises $2.3M Series A For Technology That Turns Text Into Videos Posted: 05 Jun 2012 06:51 AM PDT  Wibbitz, a company whose tagline once called it the “play button for the web” (it’s now just “text-to-video”) has closed a $2.3 million Series A round headed up by Horizons Ventures, the internet and technology investment fund belonging to Li Ka-shing. Also participating in the round were previous investors, Initial Capital and lool Ventures. The service is somewhat similar to former TechCrunch Disrupt winner Qwiki, as it also automatically generates videos based on the content found on websites, but the twist is that it’s designed for use by publishers who want to offer quick, digestible video summaries of their articles’ content. (Disclosure: regular TechCrunch contributor Roi Carthy is a Managing Partner at Initial Capital). The company raised a seed round of approximately half a million back in September 2011, which included Initial Capital, lool Ventures, and Kima Ventures. At the time, Wibbitz reported having 1,600 sites which had been testing a more basic form of the service during a private beta period. Today, the company says that more than 20,000 sites have now generated videos using the version of Wibbitz that was launched that fall. To implement Wibbitz on their websites, publishers only need to add a single line of JavaScript code. Once implemented, Wibbitz takes the article’s text and creates a video summary using images from its own library or a public image bank on the web where images licensed under Creative Commons (i.e., OK for re-use) are available. Unlike many automated solutions, the end product does not sound all that robotic. The video can be shared by viewers to Facebook and Twitter or it can embedded elsewhere on the web. Because the videos are created with HTML5, they work in any modern browser on PCs, Macs, smartphones or tablets. Since the launch of its new player, Wibbitz has improved upon its video creation methods and algorithms, and has introduced a one-click solution for creating videos. The company is now working on a premium publisher solution which will allow any publisher to create video content in a scalable manner. “Several brand name players” are on board, says Dayan. But Wibbitz isn’t just about content summaries, it’s about monetizing text content in new ways. The service allows publishers monetize their videos through pre-roll advertising. When asked how that was going, Wibbitz co-founder and CEO Zohar Dayan said “traction is very high and is growing at a very impressive rate on a daily basis.” He declined to offer specific numbers on advertising metrics on the split between the free and premium (paying) users on Wibbitz, however. But given the new funding, there must be something there to pique investors’ interest. With the infusion of new capital, Dayan says that the team will further the commercialization of the technology, will expand its R&D in Israel and will open offices in NYC.
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| Toshiba’s New 21:9 Widescreen Ultrabook Is All About Entertainment Posted: 05 Jun 2012 06:51 AM PDT  Most laptops are all the same these days, with very few exceptions. But when those exceptions creep up, we can’t help but take a closer look. So is the case with Toshiba’s Satellite U845W, which oddly sports a display aspect ratio of 21:9 on a 14.4-inch display. Now, this means that movie buffs will be able to watch 2.35:1 movies on this puppy without any black bars. So it’s clear right off the bat: this thing is built for entertainment. But is it comfortable when you’re doing everything else? We went hands-on with the laptop earlier this month and found a few features that make such a fat, stodgy screen a little more usable. For example, there’s a split-screen type feature built in that allows you to arrange windows based on pre-determined tiles, or custom tiles if you have the time to personalize a bit. So you drag and drop a Firefox window into one tile, and it automatically sizes it to cover the right-hand third of your screen, while maybe a movie plays in the left-hand two-thirds of your screen. The issue is that you basically need to buy these new movies, download them (in whatever way you see fit) or watch YouTube. Most of our other streaming services like Netflix and Hulu don’t yet support the ratio. However, you can still watch a movie on Netflix in the standard 16:9 ratio with enough room for a little light browsing on the remaining real estate of the display. And certain programs like TweetDeck give you the most comprehensive view you’ve ever experienced, displaying 7 columns at once. The notebook is powered by Intel’s 3rd gen Ivy Bridge processor, and promises at least 7.5 hours of battery life, complete with backlit keyboards and either 32GB SSD or 256GB SSD. It sports a display resolution of 1792×768 and comes equipped with Ethernet, HDMI, and 3 USB 3.0 ports, plus a sleep and charge port, meaning you can power up your smartphone or whatever else while the laptop is closed and asleep. It’s a tad heavier than most everything on the market right now, at 3.5 lbs, but with that texturized rubber finish it is certainly comfortable in the hand. This is clearly a niche notebook but an interesting approach for Toshiba to take in a land of monotony. The Satellite U845W will be available for purchase on July 15, 2012 starting at $999.99
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| Twilio Passes A Milestone: 100,000 Developers For Its VoIP, SMS Platform Posted: 05 Jun 2012 06:04 AM PDT  Twilio, the San Francisco-based startup that powers all kinds of phone-like applications on the web and mobile, just passed 100,000 developers on its platform. That’s up from about 30,000 a year ago. “In six months, we’ve doubled our base,” said chief executive Jeff Lawson. “It’s been really exciting for us to see what others have built.” Bigger companies like Airbnb have used Twilio to let guests and hosts confirm bookings through text messaging, while there are others that use it to power their call centers. Twilio is marking this with a project called Milestones. The company will randomly select three Twilio developers who post a two minute video of themselves talking about how the platform helped them reach their goals. Those developers will get free travel, hotel and tickets to the company’s developer conference this year in mid-October. So I realize it’s hard to pay attention to such-and-such-company passes arbitrary milestone when there are sometimes so many of these announcements on TechCrunch. But for Twilio, it’s a big deal since they’re a developer-centric company. The company earns revenue when developers process phone calls or text messages or award phone numbers through their service. The standard rates are 1 cent per inbound call, 2 cents per outbound call, 1 cent per message sent or received and a $1 per new phone number. Then there’s also Twilio Client, which you can use to build Skype-like applications anywhere and that’s 1/4 cent per minute. Heavy users can negotiate better bulk rates. The more developers Twilio has actively using the platform, the more revenue the company can earn. They declined to comment on their financials for this story. Twilio has raised nearly $34 million in venture capital including a recent December round led by Bessemer Venture Partners and Union Square Ventures. Other investors include Manu Kumar, Dave McClure, Chris Sacca’s Lowercase Capital, Founders Fund and Mitch Kapor.
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| Posted: 05 Jun 2012 06:00 AM PDT  E-commerce and m-commerce payments platform Braintree has major news today: it’s expanding operations outside of the U.S. and will now become available to thirty additional countries worldwide. The new international offering will operate in a private beta period over the next few months and will then launch publicly in the third quarter of 2012. Braintree powers and automates online and mobile payments for merchants and companies, including several familiar names in the startup space like LivingSocial, 37Signals, OpenTable, Fab.com, GitHub, Airbnb, Heroku, Engine Yard, Animoto, Shopify, and HotelTonight. Among the new regions to receive access to Braintree’s full stack are the U.K., the European Union, Australia and Canada. (A complete list is available here.) Initially, participating merchants will be able to use Braintree’s developer sandbox, vault credit card storage system and its customer service offerings, as well as the merchant account and payment gateway that come standard with the service. Next year, Braintree will add support for local, non-credit payment methods, the company says. It’s also planning to expand into even more countries in the near future. The move comes on the heels of another expansion of the service, but one of a different nature. In April, Braintree opened up slightly to allow developers to test transactions and explore its features and libraries before becoming an approved merchant. Previously, this had not been possible until the company had approved and accepted the merchant into its program. Braintree, which raised $34 million in funding last year from Accel, currently processes over $4 billion in credit card transactions annually, including around $1 billion in mobile payments. It also supports transactions in over 130 different currencies. At the time of the startup’s Series A, Accel partner Brian Sweeney (now Braintree board member) said the company was “growing, profitable and bootstrapped,” as it had not raised any funding beforehand and had been growing mostly through word-of-mouth. Today, there are over 2,000 merchants on Braintree’s system – a number bound to explode with the international availability arriving now.
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| MapMyFitness Works Out $9M From Austin, Milestone Ventures For Better Fitness Tracking Posted: 05 Jun 2012 05:50 AM PDT  MapMyFitness, the health and fitness startup that powers a community of fitness-oriented websites like MapMyRUN.com, MapMyRIDE.com, MapMyWALK.com, has today announced that it has closed $9 million in Series B financing, which brings its total investment to $15.5 million. The round was led by Austin Ventures and Milestone Venture Partners, with new, strategic partners joining the round, including Competitor Group, The Running Company, and its parent company, The Finish Line. CEO Richard Jalichandra (who joined the startup from Technorati last year) tells us that the company’s initial plan had been to raise a smaller round with participation solely from financial investors in an effort to minimize dilution, but the company has ambitions to capitalize on the online-to-offline movement and its strategic investors offered an opportunity to help move it in that direction (without impeding eventual liquidity options down the road). Competitor Group, for those unfamiliar, is one of the largest race event companies (owning and operating the Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon Series and Muddy Buddy) and endurance sports publisher, owning publications like Competitor, Velo News, Triathlete and Triathalon magazines, for example, which collectively have circulations over 800K. In turn, The Running Company, which is owned by retailer and eCommerce company The Finish Line, is among the biggest sport footwear retailers in the U.S., operating over 700 stores nationwide. These offline business partnerships could be a useful leg up for MapMyFitness, which is primarily an online and mobile platform, giving the startup further inroads with established retailers and publishers. This comes on top of some strong recent growth for MapMyFitness, which recently passed 9 million registered users and has over 30 million downloads across its fitness apps. MapMyFitness, for a little background, allows users to track and store their running, cycling, walking, and hiking activity, as well as accessing a sizable database of international routes, fitness calculators, nutrition tracking, events, listings, etc. Since its founding back in 2005, MapMyFitness has grown into one of the biggest players in the fitness tracking space. But, rather than rest on its laurels, MapMyFitness has been eager to continue pressing forward to expand offline and into international markets. Along with its new round, the startup last month completely rebuilt its portfolio of websites, updating its routes, personal challenges, and courses, with the latter making its the only fitness service to integrate with Google Maps API v3.9. This meant that, on top of being able to plan, track, and share their running, hiking, and walking routes, users can take advantage of realtime info on traffic, weather, safer routes, directions, realtime elevation, custom markers, etc — across its apps for iPhone, BlackBerry, Android, Windows Mobile and iPad. It also boosted the platform’s integration with game dynamics, providing athletes with the ability to view leaderboards and to check-in during their work outs, in order to better track speed, distance, and intensity of workouts, while comparing themselves to specific groups, whether it be local clubs, friends, or running rivals. For more on MapMyFitness, see our recent coverage here, or check them out at home here.
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| New Social eBooks Retailer Zola Books Launches Private Beta, Raises $1M From Prominent Authors Posted: 05 Jun 2012 05:30 AM PDT  Zola Books, a new social eBooks site to discover, buy and discuss books, just announced that it is launching its private beta today. The company also announced that it has raised $1 million in seed funding from prominent authors, including Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler’s Wife), Josh Bazell, (Beat the Reaper) and Chandler Burr (The Emperor of Scent). Former Time, Inc. executive Bill Shapiro, the former top editor of Life, is cutting back his time at Time to join Zola Books as the company’s head of innovation and strategy. The company’s Zola Social Reader will work on the Kindle Fire, Nook and iPad. Zola Books will make both native apps as well as HTML5 apps available for its readers. Given the controversy surrounding eBook pricing right now, the company has decided to hold off from selling books until the publishers and the U.S. Department of Justice have settled their current issues. Zola Books plans to use an agency model for selling books, meaning it will give authors and/or publishers full control over the pricing of content their are publishing exclusively on the site. By the time it launches publicly, the company expects to have every publisher on board. Exclusive content on the site will be offered DRM free. From Disintermediation To RemediationAs the company’s founders CEO Joe Regal (a former literary agent) and COO Michael Strong (former head of digital for Sotheby’s) told me last week, the eBook space has been all about disintermediation between authors, publishers and retailers. Zola Books, however, wants to remediate this space. While Amazon and Apple, Regal told me, are interested in owning the publishing industry from beginning to end, there is little evidence that they are interested in other voices. As Regal put it, “the best ecosystem for any eBooks retailer would be to give a platform to all of these players,” and that’s what Zola Books is trying to achieve. On Zola Books, recommendations play a central role. The site features standard, Amazon-like algorithmic recommendations, but the focus here is more on having publishers, authors and readers (be they individuals, book clubs or literary magazines) curate lists of interesting books. You can also see what your friends are currently reading. Users can highlight and comment on passages in any book and their friends will see these markups when they read the same book. Zola Books plans to give publishers better insight into their sales, especially with regards to geographic and demographic data than any other retailer, including Amazon and Barnes & Noble. This, for example, would allow publishers and authors to quickly figure out where their most fervent readers live and schedule their book tours and other marketing efforts accordingly. For independent bookstores, which often have a hard time selling eBooks, Zola Books will offer branded storefronts. Authors who decide to sign up will also get access to this data, as well as a free email-marketing platform and the ability to import their existing social media posts to engage with their readers on the site. This, says Zola Books, means authors can now – for the first time – directly engage with their readers in an eBooks e-commerce environment.
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| Traducto Pro Wants To Be Your One Stop Shop For iOS And Mac App Localization Posted: 05 Jun 2012 04:32 AM PDT  There’s plenty of money to be made if you’re an app developer pushing out quality content, but making a name for yourself in your home market is only part of the equation. Developers that have neither the time nor the expertise to fully translate an app into another language could be missing out on plenty of international revenue, and a new OS X app called Traducto Pro aims to make sure that’s no longer the case. Created by Brooklyn-based Visual Frames, Traducto Pro simplifies the localization process for developers looking to bring their iOS and Mac apps to new markets by providing a one-stop shop for requesting and purchasing translations for their projects. “Developers have a hard time translating apps,” Visual Frames founder Jules Ngambo said. “Most developers don’t know how to localize, and the process could easily take between 10 and 20 hours.” Once the app is installed, users can create an account with Traducto and either punch in text to be translated or directly import Xcode files. Translating pure text — think app store descriptions, press releases, blog posts and the like — is straightforward enough, as users can just copy and paste into the corresponding field and select one of 16 target languages for the text to be translated into. What’s perhaps more appealing is how Traducto deals with those Xcode projects. When they’re imported into the app, Traducto picks out all of the appropriate text strings from the project’s code and resource files and sets them aside for translation. Once a target language has been selected, users are given their choice of three translation quality tiers — Standard, Professional, and the super-accurate Enterprise — along with the price quotes to go with them. Ngambo was quick to point out that the lion’s share of the company’s revenue will come from selling those translations, but he wouldn’t budge when it came to disclosing how the translation fees charged to users would break down between his company and the multiple translation services Traducto leans on. Rather than have users bounce all over the place to request their translations and pay for them, Traducto folds the payment process directly into the app. When the translation of those strings are complete, Traducto also re-inserts them back into the Xcode project from whence they came, a move meant to save developers the hassle of doing it manually. The turnaround time for each part of a project obviously depends a little on how complex they are, but Ngambo tells me that projects are usually completed within 12 to 24 hours, and many are done much sooner than that. To help developers keep tabs on the progress of those translations, popping back into the projects view yields a percentage view of how far along each translation is. After spending some time mucking about with the app, I came away very impressed by all the thoughtful tweaks that Ngambo and his team have fleshed it out with. Want to make sure that your (nameless) translator understands the nuances of your writing? Leave them a comment prior to submission, and they’ll contact you to confirm things. Don’t want to pay for translations? Provided you’ve got the know-how, you can plug string translations directly into Traducto and have them pushed back into your project from there. For developers who would rather shell out a bit of cash instead of handle the process of sourcing translators themselves (or worse: grabbing a dictionary and having a go at it), Traducto Pro seems like a thoughtful, well-executed tool to have in their arsenal. The app is now available to developers here for $49 (and that price gets cut in half with the coupon code “PRO50“).
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