Thursday, June 28, 2012

The Latest from TechCrunch

The Latest from TechCrunch

Link to TechCrunch

Live Blog: Google I/O Keynote Day Two

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 09:18 AM PDT

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We’re in the second day of the Google I/O developer conference in San Francisco, and we’ll have live coverage right here from today’s keynote. Yesterday we saw an amazing (if mostly for non-technical reasons) demo of Google Glass, the unveiling of Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, the new Nexus 7 tablet, and more. What’s up today? Maybe more news around Google TV, maybe more cloud products, maybe something completely unexpected.

The keynote is scheduled to begin at 10am Pacific time, and I’ll start liveblogging shortly before then.

North Korea Is Allegedly Building Its Own Tablet, The Samjiyeon

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 09:15 AM PDT

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We’ve heard previous reports that North Korea was building their own PCs, but a more recent report out of the South Korean Dong-a Ilbo newspaper suggests that a tablet may also be in the works.

It’s unclear whether or not the tablet was made in North Korea or in China, though previous reports of a North Korean tablet demoed at the Pyongyang International Trade Fair were said to be developed at the Korea Computer Center. Then again, the national media has also said their computers were “designed and developed purely using [their] own expertise,” though a little digging proved otherwise.

There is said to be no camera on the device, and it has no access to the Internet. There is, however, an encyclopedia, games, eBooks and a map service.

They call it the Samjiyeon, which is a district in the Ryanggang province of North Korea that has its own airport, named after a group of three lakes. So essentially, it’s a tablet named after a location named after a lake trio. Very meta.

The translation gets difficult regarding price (any Korean speakers out there, a little help would be very appreciated), but we expect that this tablet, if real, will only get in the hands of an elite few.

Founder Matchup Service CoFoundersLab Expands Via Acquisition Of Two Competitors

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 09:12 AM PDT

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CoFoundersLab, a matching-making service for startup founders along the same lines as FounderDating, but which previously served different markets, is expanding through the acquisition of two competitors. The company is announcing today that it has acquired the West Coast-based TechCofounder.com as well as the East Coast-based FounderMatchup.com.

Originally, CoFoundersLab’s key differentiator between it and much of the competition was the markets it served. While FounderDating got its start on the West Coast, for example, running regular meetups in Seattle and San Francisco before its expansion efforts, CoFoundersLab came from the other direction – the East Coast. The West Coast is also home to other organizations that try to connect local founders with each other, including SVForum, First Tuesday and Hackers and Founders, to name a few.

The acquisition of Boston-based FounderMatchup came back in May, when CoFoundersLab announced at a local event that it had merged with/acquired the site and had hired a full-time employee to help grow its presence in the area. FounderMatchup.com has since gone offline. TechCofounder, a Craigslist-style site for software engineers, is still online at the time of writing, however. Terms of the deal involving either property were not disclosed.

Maryland-based CoFoundersLab was founded in January 2011, and recently emerged out of the new Washington D.C. tech accelerator known as The Fort, which debuted its inaugural class back in March. Like its competition, CoFoundersLab aims to bring a Match.com or eHarmony-like dynamic to help entrepreneurs find partners. This serves a big need in the industry, because investors generally prefer funding teams over individuals.

Users who sign up can create a profile page, browse the profiles of others on the site and attend local meetups to network in person. The company charges a $50 fee per successful match, but the fee is waived for those who join the meetups. (For comparison purposes, FounderDating doesn’t charge a fee to apply, but does now charge a fee to join once invited).

Currently, CoFoundersLab holds meetups in Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia, Boston, Boulder, Los Angeles, New York City and Vancouver, and says more geographies are on the horizon. According to the website, the next target markets include Silicon Valley, Seattle, Portland, Austin, Atlanta, Boulder, Chicago, N.C., and N.Y.

We’re reaching out to Shahab Kaviani of CoFoundersLab now to get more info on the deals and will update shortly. 

At Last: HTC’s One V Is Now Available At Virgin Mobile For $199

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 09:03 AM PDT

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Its bigger brothers have long since made their debut in the U.S., and now the smallest member of HTC’s One series is joining them. HTC’s pint-sized (relatively speaking) One V is now available for all you no-contract types on Virgin Mobile’s website, where it’ll set you back a cool $199.

In case you’ve forgotten about the ICS-powered One V (I don’t know that I can blame you), it sports a 3.7-inch display running at 800 x 480, a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S3 processor, 512 MB of RAM, and a 5-megapixel camera around the back. What’s more, the stock Ice Cream Sandwich UI is still covered up by HTC’s Sense 4.0 overlay, though I expect Virgin to have tweaked it a bit before letting the One V out into the wild.

Oh, and unlike the rest of its brethren, it retains the handsome, Leno-esque chin as seen in its forbearers. Thanks, HTC.

Alright, fine, the One V’s spec sheet may not be the most thrilling — even compared to some of the other devices in Virgin’s lineup — but it’s still a damn sight cheaper than the pair of iPhones that will soon hit the carrier’s virtual shelves. And hey, it’s always nice when a family manages to reunite in a different country, right?

SendHub Expands Beyond Messaging, Now Rivals Google Voices With Support For Calls & Voicemail

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 09:00 AM PDT

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SendHub, the messaging startup that allows businesses to communicate with customers through SMS, is expanding its service today to now include support for voice calls and voicemail. These new features put SendHub in more direct competition with Google Voice, as users will now be able to use their SendHub phone number to both make and receive phones calls, while keeping their personal cell number private. Although the company only has an iPhone application and online service currently, these voice calls can be initiated and received on any device that supports messaging – even on feature phones.

This is an improvement on the previous setup, which only allowed users the ability to accept voice calls, not make them. Voice calls were previously routed to personal cell phone numbers, as Google Voice does today. But now, users of any device, whether a “dumb” phone, Android, BlackBerry, or anything else, can place a call, even if they don’t have a native app installed. They can also text, sending messages to both groups and individuals, using their phone’s SMS.

Here’s how it works:

“Let’s say I have a SendHub number and I want to use it as my work number. SendHub will forward all the messages that come to my SendHub number to my Android phone,” explains co-founder Ash Rust, of how non-native app users can take advantage of the new features. “And then I can reply, and it will reply back to the user just like I was sending it from the SendHub iPhone app or website. And it doesn’t just work on Android phones, it works on any phone that’s text-enabled,” he says.

For phone calls, SendHub users just enter the keyword “call” in the message to kick off the call. “When you initiate a call from the SendHub app, we call your real cell phone number,” says Rust, “and when you pick up, we call the person that you’re actually calling from your SendHub number so it’s private.” This, too, is like Google Voice.

The update still doesn’t bring SendHub completely up to par with all of Google Voice’s features, however. For example, SendHub users can’t route certain people or groups to voicemail automatically, nor does it provide voicemail transcription. But some of these are in the works (transcription is coming soon, we’re told). However, Google Voice is 100% free, while SendHub is freemium.

What SendHub does do that’s interesting, though, is that it places all the communications between you and another user in the same stream, including calls, missed calls, voicemails and text messages. “You don’t always check voicemail, because it’s not in your workflow,” explains Rust.

The company also released some new metrics today. SendHub is now sending over 300,000 messages per month, has over 5,000 users (free and paid), and is seeing subscriber growth of 15% week-over-week. When we spoke with SendHub in April, that number was at 12%, for comparison purposes. They’re also seeing high engagement among active users: 25% return daily. And, to date, SendHub’s self-serve revenue (subscriber growth, not counting the businesses getting the “white glove” treatment), is now over $10,000. Says Rust, “20% of our highly engaged users pay us. Once people get engaged, they pay us without us having to get involved.”

Other features in the pipeline include a UI redesign and a much in-demand feature: collaborative sharing between users. This would allow, say, a school administrator to take a partial list of pupils – like the basketball team and their parents – and share it with the coach for use in his or her own SendHub account. The administrator could also specify whether or not that list was read-only or editable.

SendHub is backed by $2 million in seed funding from Y Combinator, Kapor Capital, Menlo Ventures, 500 Startups, Howard Lindzon's Social Leverage fund, Bronze Investments, as well as angels Eric Ries, Jawed Karim, Paul Buchheit and a handful of private investors.

Blip Gets Into The Original Content Game, With A New Studio And Three Exclusive Series

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 09:00 AM PDT

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Video startup Blip has spent the last several years helping independent creators to distribute and monetize their videos across the web. But like YouTube, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, and others, it sees a great opportunity to produce some original content of its own. With that in mind, it’s introducing Blip Studios, a production banner that will launch with three exclusive distribution deals.

Blip Studios will work directly with web video producers to help create high-quality original series, which it will then distribute through various partners and channels. The new studio venture will be focused specifically on helping its content partners increase the production value of their shows, and also provide them with assistance around audience development and distribution. In addition, the company is looking to increase monetization of these shows by interfacing with brands around sponsorships and branded content.

Steve Woolf, who joined Blip a few years ago as its VP of Content, has been named President of Blip Studios and SVP of Content. His primary role in the former position was content acquisition and bringing more original producers on board, as well as striking strategic deals with companies like The Collective to distribute their shows through Blip. In the new role, he’ll be leading all content development, production, and strategic relationships with media partners.

According to Woolf, Blip Studios is being very selective about whom it will work with at launch. While it will start with those three, Woolf said he’s looking to sign up another five or six producers over the next few weeks, with plans to have 10 or 12 exclusive deals by the end of the year. The production team will likely look to focus on genres where it’s already pretty strong, such as comedy, sci-fi, and scripted dramas.

The first partners Blip Studios has struck deals with already represent hundreds of millions of views through the Blip platform. They include Nostalgia Critic, a long-running series that features Doug Walker critiquing stuff like television and video games from the 80s and 90s; Nostalgia Chick, a spin-off of that show focused on nostalgic television and movies targeted for women; and Todd in the Shadows, which provides “A Guide to Terrible Pop Songs of the Present and Past.”

Blip has gone through a number of different iterations since being founded in 2005. For a while, it mainly positioned itself as a distribution platform for independent web producers to manage their videos online. It offered up a platform for syndication, and importantly, a sales force to help monetize content that used it to reach audiences online. Then last year, it launched a new destination site aimed at aggregating all the best web originals in one place.

But adding an original production studio doesn’t mean that Blip is pivoting, according to new CEO Kelly Day. She joined from Discovery, where she worked on the digital team, and recently took over the spot vacated by former CEO and founder Mike Hudack. (As a side note, four of the five founding members have left the company: Hudack, Dina Kaplan, and Charles Hope all left last year, and I confirmed that former CTO Justin Day is also out of day-to-day operations, but still remains on the board.)

Anyway, Day believes that successful web video distributors of the future will also need to be content aggregators and content creators as well. That’s certainly a trend we’re seeing with firms like Netflix and Hulu, which recently began making their own programming.

But if anything, Blip’s plans seem to be more along the lines of Next New Networks, which may have begun by producing its own content but eventually ended up recruiting independent producers, which it then provided with production, post-production, audience development, and business development services in exchange for a cut of the ad revenues. Next New was eventually bought by YouTube and has been the foundation for its YouTube Next program for recruiting and training content creators in the fine arts of improving video production and increasing audience.

Blip has raised a total of $24 million over the past several years. That includes $6 million raised in December, from existing investors Bain Capital and Canaan Partners. Revenues in 2011 were about $10 million, which the company plans to double this year.

Dolphin’s New ‘Garage’ Opens Up 150 APIs To Mobile Browser Add-On Developers

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 08:46 AM PDT

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It's been a surprisingly busy week for Android browser makers — a redesigned version of Firefox for Android graduated from beta, as did Google's mobile version of Chrome, and now the folks behind Dolphin have just announced their new Dolphin Garage program to spur third-party development for the platform.

And how are they actually doing this? By opening up access to nearly 150 APIs that allow developers greater access to the browser's UI as well as the URLs, browsing histories, and data from the website currently being viewed.

To help celebrate the launch of their Garage program, Dolphin also pulled back the curtains on a handful of new add-ons from Evernote, Dropbox, Pocket that they've helped develop in response to user requests.

Though they’ve made much ado about fleshing out their browser with native add-ons, that's not all that the team at MoboTap aimed for with Garage. They also wanted to put more of a focus on their efforts with HTML5, especially after they claimed their Engine Beta was the “highest performing HTML5 mobile browser” last week.

"We've done a lot of tuning in Dolphin for HTML5, and we want to show developers that it's a strong foundation to build on," said MoboTap marketing head Edith Yeung. To that end, they've also released a PhoneGap add-on for the mobile browser that enables it to play nice with thin-client web apps created using Adobe's Phonegap framework. With PhoneGap support on board, Dolphin hopes that developers will create richer browsing experiences using HTML5 that can translate into the mobile space as well.

As Yeung told TechCrunch, with Garage they want to "promote this sort of ecosystem" to other browser developers in hopes that they'll follow suit. On some level though they're already preaching to the crowd — Firefox for Mobile has had support for 3rd-party add-ons since last year, and it wouldn't surprise me at all if Chrome for Android would get that sort of functionality down the line.

Amazon Will Reportedly Launch A 10-Inch Quad-Core Tablet Alongside New Metal-Clad 7-Inch Fire

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 08:41 AM PDT

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Amazon is said to be working on the next version of the Kindle Fire with more premium materials, including some type of metal casing. But perhaps even better (depending on your size preferences), the long-standing rumor that Amazon is allegedly working on a 10-inch tablet have resurfaced.

BGR reports that “Amazon is finally ready to move forward with the [10-inch] tablet.” General rumors include a quad-core processor and a higher quality screen than the original fire, along with the obvious size bump. But the original 7-inch Fire is also due for a revamp, and the same source reports a “chrome-look rib” in the brand new metal casing on the device’s back (which will replace the plastic soft-touch shell on first-gen models), and a thinner profile.

There is also talk of a front-facing camera, microUSB and HDMIout port on the 10-inch model, with no buttons to be seen on either device. BGR’s report claims that the tablets are “thinner versions of the iPad”, and if true, this could eventually ignite a patent war on a new front for both companies.

We’ve also recently heard that the new Fire will cost the same as the original, despite the spec bump, at $199, while the original Fire will get cut to $150. This is good news to both consumers and Amazon, as the ecommerce giant can afford to take a loss on hardware as long as it’s outweighed by digital content sales.

Rumors suggest that Amazon will announce the new tablets in late July, but that’s still unconfirmed.

Catch All Of TC’s Google I/O Coverage Here!

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 07:59 AM PDT

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Google I/O 2012 is in full swing. Google Glass is huge, the Nexus 7 is real, and with the Nexus Q, Google is betting big on the ecosystem. And that was just from the first day! There are two more days to Google developer’s conference. There is another keynote today (which we will liveblog) and dozens more break-out sessions. Hang on, things could get crazy.

Click through for all of our Google I/O coverage.



Google Now Comes Online (Well, Its Homepage Does)

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 07:49 AM PDT

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Google Now, the smart personal search assistant announced yesterday at Google I/O, has now come online. Well, the landing page for the service has come online, that is. The new site introduces the key aspects to Google Now, which arrives in Google’s next mobile operating system, Android 4.1 (aka Jelly Bean), including its ability to track flights, keep an eye on traffic and your calendar, check sports scores and weather, see suggested places nearby, and more.

The feature, accessed by swiping up from the bottom of the homescreen has already been referred to as a “Siri killer” by some Android fans because of its ability to not just assist you, but to proactively alert you to new information based on your needs. One example which Google showed off in its demo yesterday was a flight search, which would later pop up a card that appeared with flight alerts and delays as they occurred in real-time. In another example, Google learned what sports teams you liked based on your search history and could then alert you to upcoming games and scores. In another, you could see suggested places to eat or shop as you walked down the street.

However, the biggest piece to Google Now is that the information comes and finds you – not the other way around. This is a key difference between how Siri operates today and what Google is promising. Of course, you as the user are in control of the experience and can enable or disable which cards and alerts you would see. It’s opt-in, which goes a long way to dispel the potential “creepy” factor here. It’s not as if Skynet has just come online. (I think).

The idea for this type of search-without-the-search technology, if you will, has been in development for some time. In 2010, then CEO, now Chairman Eric Schmidt spoke of a “serendipity engine” as the future of Google search. “We want to give you your time back,” Schmidt said at the time. Google Instant was the first step towards that goal, but Google Now takes a giant leap. At the IFA conference in Berlin, Schmidt described the experience that is today’s Google Now, talking about how phones could spout off random facts as you walked around town, or how they could inform you of the weather, understanding the natural language of human speech. He called this idea a new age of “augmented reality,” where computers work for us.

Unfortunately, for the time being, that new age will only be available to a precious few – those who buy or can upgrade their Android-based devices to Jelly Bean. But much of what Google Now offers could be bundled into an Android or even iOS (!) app using the platforms’ push notifications feature. Hopefully that is in the works, too.

Crossrider’s Cross-Browser Extension Development Platform Comes Out Of Beta

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 07:49 AM PDT

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The reinvigorated competition in the browser market over the last few years has definitely been a boon for users, but having a number of browsers with very high user numbers makes life a bit harder for developers who want to write extensions. Crossrider, which is coming out of beta today, aims to make things a bit easier for developers. The service offers a cross-platform development platform for Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari.

Developers who want to use the service, which is available for free, only have to write their code once and can then deploy their extensions across the supported browsers. Crossrider uses JavaScript and the popular JQuery framework, so jumping in should be pretty straightforward for developers who are already familiar with JQuery. Using Crossrider, the company says, developers also don’t have to worry about updating their extensions when a new version of a browser is released.

In addition to its core service, the company also offers a cloud-based IDE that allows developers to create their extensions without the need to download and install an SDK. Crossrider also helps developers publish their extensions, as well as an update service and analytics.

The company was founded in 2010 and has raised about $2 million so far and its investors including from Oren Zeev, a Founding Partner at Orens Capital and a former General Partner at Apax Partners. The service managed to attract about 7,000 developers during its beta phase and its extensions now power about 90 million users.

The service got a bit of negative press earlier this year, by the way, after a few hackers used the service to develop a plugin that replaced Facebook ads with links to the hacker’s own ads.

Alicia Navarro Of Skimlinks [TCTV]

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 07:35 AM PDT

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Skimlinks provides content magnetisation for publishers that turns product references into affiliate links – and famously was a recent partner with Pinterest. We spoke to founder Alicia Navarro during the F.ounders conference at the Nasdaq in New York.

Extole Revamps Its Marketing Tools With Open Graph ‘Social Expressions’

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 07:28 AM PDT

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Extole is announcing a new version of its marketing platform today. The big new feature: “Social expressions” that integrate with the Facebook Open Graph.

Founder and CEO Brad Klaus says that the new stuff, in particular, taps into a larger marketing trend, where brands are finding new ways to communicate with consumers: “The landscape is shifting from brand-to-consumer to consumer-to-consumer.” That means that the most effective form of promotion isn’t traditional advertising or its online equivalent, but instead turning fans into advocates for the company.

Extole already helps businesses manage social promotions and referrals, such as offering a discount to anyone who refers a certain number of friends to their website. Now those businesses can create special actions that tap into the Facebook Open Graph.

TastingRoom.com has already been using the new feature. When oenophiles visit one of TastingRoom’s wine listings, they’ll see they now have more options than simply “liking” the wine — they can say they “want it”, “tried it”, or “recommend” it. Klaus says it’s not simply a matter of giving fans more verbs to use, because when someone clicks one of those options, they’re also asked to install TastingRoom’s Open Graph app, giving the company more data about potential advocates. And TastingRoom could further promote itself by paying to turn that fan activity into Sponsored Stories.

We’ve already covered tons of Open Graph apps, but now Extole is giving that power to brands and businesses. Any Extole customer an create its own Social Expressions, though the company needs to get Facebook approval before implementing new ones. In addition to TastingRoom, launch partners include T-Mobile, Vogue, Zazzle, Seamless, and Folica.

Extole has raised $22 million from Norwest Venture Partners, Redpoint Ventures, Trident Capital, and Shasta Ventures.

Intuit Founder Scott Cook: Mint Is Roughly 4X Bigger Than It Was Pre-Acquisition

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 06:50 AM PDT

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Scott Cook started Intuit in 1983, and since then he and the company have overcome quite a few obstacles. He watched as mobile became a dominant channel in people’s lives, found ways to penetrate emerging markets, and leveraged Intuit’s excellent reputation to pick up the hot new kid on the block, Mint.com.

The acquisition went down in 2009, two years after Mint launched on the TechCrunch 40 stage. Cook says that by taking its rival and nurturing it under Intuit’s (much larger) wing, Mint has grown to be four times larger than it was at the time of acquisition. This is a classic case of two competitors coming together in a mutually beneficial way. Intuit provides an excellent distribution platform for Mint, and in turn, Mint pushes users into Intuit’s portfolio of various financial tools, including TurboTax.

We also took the opportunity to ask Cook about mobile payments, and where he sees the space going. Intuit recently launched a QuickBooks point-of-sale card reader and an app to help SMBs track their books and perform transactions all in one place. “I think the space will shake out,” said Cook. “Square is a great company, but they’re not direct competition. Each company will find their own separate ecosystem.”

He explained that, as with anything, the solution has to fit the problem rather than being a one-size-fits-all type fix. That said, he sees Intuit as a company that offers a wide range of products for however you may conduct business, whereas Square is doing something a bit more uniform with its single card reader and various accompanying apps.

Cook also recalled the transition to mobile in 2008. The company went from four mobile apps to over 30 now, with user ratings jumping from an average of three stars to four and a half stars. “It wasn’t that dramatic, it was just natural,” he says of the push into mobile. “We’re all users, and it is the best thing we’ve ever done.”

AOL Starts $400M Stock Buyback At $27-$30 Per Share

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 06:48 AM PDT

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AOL (also known as the company that signs TechCrunch’s paychecks) has announced this morning it has started a “Dutch auction” tender offer to buy back shares of its common stock, up to $400 million. The Dutch auction format means that shareholders will say how many shares they want to sell at what price. AOL will then determine the lowest price per share in that range and buy the amount it wants. Shareholders will be able to tender some or all of their shares at price within a $27 to $30 per share, the company says.

The $400 million aggregate purchase price of shares includes the approximately $40 million remaining from the initial $250 million stock repurchase authorized in August of 2011 and brings the total amount AOL intends to return to shareholders in 2012 to approximately $1.1 billion.

News of this repurchase program was reported earlier this week, when sources speaking with All Things D claimed that AOL had decided a stock buyback was a better way for the company to realize its gains from the $1.1 billion sale of 800 patents. AOL sold 800 patents to Microsoft in April, following pressure from shareholders, led by Starboard Value, to realize some of the value from those patents.

AOL CEO Tim Armstrong confirmed the earlier reports that the move to initiate a stock buyback was directly related to the patent deal, saying “today's announcement is an important first step in returning 100% of the proceeds from our patent transaction as expediently and tax efficiently as possible. AOL is focused on continued execution and operational improvement. Concurrently reducing our shares outstanding at attractive prices underscores both financial prudence and our significant belief in the opportunity in front of AOL.”

The tender offer starts today, and will expire at 5:00 PM (NYC time), on August 2, 2012. AOL shares are currently up 3.26% to $28.20, currently.

Facebook Adds BBC As Latest Partner For Summer Sports Push With A New Streaming App

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 06:41 AM PDT

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Last week, Facebook staked out its claim as a prime destination for people looking for this summer’s Olympics coverage online. Today, the BBC threw its hat into the social media ring, too — it’s putting its sports coverage into a new Timeline app. The app, which is only accessible by UK users, is in beta form (pictured here) and live already: people can currently access streams of Wimbledon. That will get ramped up in coming weeks for Olympics coverage, when it will offer some of the most comprehensive coverage yet seen on the social network — 24 streams in all — and marks the first time that the BBC will stream live events using Facebook.

The move comes at a time when the BBC is ramping up its digital activities in long-view bid that this will need to become a much stronger part of its business as more traditional revenue streams continue to decline.

The move to offer more BBC content on Facebook is significant for two reasons: it underscores how powerful Facebook is as an audience generator for traditional media companies.

"It's a core part of the BBC's mission to bring our quality content to audiences wherever they are, so I'm very excited to be able to offer sport fans on Facebook a really distinctive live streaming experience,” said Phil Fearnley, General Manager BBC News & Knowledge, in a statement.

On the other hand, getting someone like the BBC to stream live for the first time on the site also shows how much headway Facebook has made in terms of getting big media on board, a key route to increasing stickiness on the platform. Although NBC has a substantial Facebook integration, it’s not clear if that will extend to streaming on Facebook site, too.

The Timeline app will let users watch events — and of course comment on them in real time in live chats with other friends who are also watching. Users will also be able to see what other non-friend users are saying about the event. Pressing “like” on the feeds will let you share them with others in your network.

The app will be running alongside coverage on the BBC’s own site, as well as a connected TV application and red-button interactive services in the UK. It will be interesting to see what kind of an impact the BBC Facebook app will have on its own site’s traffic. Currently BBC Sport gets 20 million requests for streaming every month. In contrast, Facebook has 30 million monthly active users in the UK. [And yes, currently there are sponsored stories along one side of the coverage -- although that is likely to change with the Olympics, per IOC rules that we pointed out last week.]

This summer’s Olympics, due to start in a month, have been referred to by Facebook as the “social olympics”. It will also be the mobile Olympics. In a report on mobile traffic during sporting events, Bytemobile estimated that sites like Facebook see traffic spikes of up to 136 percent. It believes that overall traffic on mobile networks will double during the Olympics this year as users take to their phones to read news, watch streams, snap pictures and communicate with others about the event.

L.A.-Based Accelerator MuckerLab Teams Up With Mozilla’s WebFWD

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 06:30 AM PDT

About | MuckerLab

MuckerLab, the up and coming L.A.-based startup accelerator program, today announced that it is partnering with Mozilla’s WebFWD accelerator to create a joint acceleration program for open source entrepreneurs. The new six-month program will include three months at MuckerLab and access to Mozilla’s global network, infrastructure and other resources. The program is especially looking for L.A.-based entrepreneurs and hopes to give a boost to L.A.’s tech ecosystem. The joint MuckerLab-WebFWD program is especially looking for projects and companies which extend the Web and its “openness.” Given Mozilla’s involvement, there will also be a focus on web-based apps and services.

The idea here, says MuckerLab, is to “offer open source entrepreneurs a chance to create new a venture in-residence at the MuckerLab offices in Los Angeles.” According to Pascal Finette, the director of Mozilla's WebFWD acceleration program, "the new MuckerLab-Mozilla partnership will allow open source entrepreneurs, especially those based in Los Angeles, to receive a great jump start to their venture via resources and expertise.”

It’s worth noting that in addition to the joint program with Mozilla, MuckerLab is also now taking applications for its regular fall semester. The standard MuckerLab program is somewhat similar to Y Combinator, as it provides teams with $21,000 in funding, office space and access to mentors and marketing and legal support. The program runs for 12 weeks and ends with a demo day where the new startups get to pitch potential investors.

Recent MuckerLab graduates include Instacanvas, Wallaby Financial, Laffster and SurfAir.

Galaxy Nexus Owners Can Taste Jelly Bean Early With Leaked (And Tweaked) ROMs

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 06:26 AM PDT

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In a move that shocked absolutely no one, Google’s Hugo Barra announced at the end of the first I/O keynote that attendees would receive a little prize pack as thanks for their support. Goodies included both of the company’s new Nexus gadgets, along with a Galaxy Nexus that would receive its Jelly Bean update that same day.

In another move that should shock absolutely no one, that OTA update has been wrenched from a developer device, and is now available to install for anyone with a Galaxy Nexus of their own.

Well, almost anyone — those without experience rooting and flashing their devices may want to steer clear. Initial reports suggested that the ROM would play well on both the unlocked GSM and the Verizon versions of the handset, though those who fell into the latter camp would have to struggle without their 4G LTE connections. That no longer seems to be case though, as another version of the ROM (as cooked by Team Liquid) has full support for the Verizon model’s LTE radio.

If you’re considering taking the plunge (and I know you are), be warned that this is still just a developer preview — while most of the new features we saw yesterday are present, don’t be surprised if you encounter a hiccup or two. That said, feedback from people who have done the deed is generally very positive, with quite a few people commenting on how much quicker and more responsive Jelly Bean is than its predecessor. You do need to be rooted before you can partake in the glory that is Jelly Bean, and you’re on your own there.

Atari Is 40 Years Old And I Still Can’t Beat The Dragon In Adventure

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 06:26 AM PDT

Atari_Pong

It was 40 years ago yesterday that Atari’s Nolan Bushnell taught the world to play. Bushnell, an engineer and game programmer, built and sold Atari in the late 1970s, ushering in the era of the video game and changing the way kids spent nice summer days. Atari is 40 years old this month and there have been a number of interviews and encomiums with Bushnell.

Bushnell installed his first game, Pong, at Andy Capp's bar in Silicon Valley where drinkers lined up to drop quarters into the first bit of video entertainment. The company roared through the 1970s and then petered out in the early 80s as competitors created more interesting and visually complex systems and games.

The coolest thing? As Harry McCracken writes, Atari almost invented Internet gaming:

"Warner made a whole series of blunders which were not good for Atari," he said. One example: "We were going to do this game network over telephone lines, but Warner couldn't figure out why people would want to play games with people they couldn't see.""If we had gone ahead and done it, it could have essentially been the Internet, in private hands. It's kind of fun to think about owning the Internet."

Atari is little more than a nostalgic note played by some games makers these days but Bushnell’s company essentially defined an era between high-powered home computing and low-end home entertainment. We owe Bushnell a debt of gratitude and, more important, you can play Adventure in browsers now so you can finally find the secret room.

There’s a bit more on Bushnell on Salon.

You’re Funded! Zao Raises $1.3M For Its Social Recruitment Platform

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 06:16 AM PDT

Screen Shot 2012-06-28 at 12.23.37

Finding potential job candidates through existing employees and their networks is probably as old as the labor market itself, but in the age of social networking, the process can be made much more efficient. Add in a little gamification and other incentives, and things get really interesting.

To that end, social recruiting startup, Zao, has raised its first funding round: $1.3 million led by Oren Zeev, Founding Partner at Orens Capital and former General Partner at Apax Partners. Zeev, who will take a seat on Zao’s Board, was also one of the original investors in Audible, which exited to Amazon for $300m. Other notable investments include Infolinks, Duda Mobile, and Houzz.

Also joining the round is Oren Dobronsky (Founding Partner at Orens Capital), Zohar Gilon, Gary Ginsberg (EVP, Corporate Marketing and Communications at Time Warner), and Donald Katz (CEO of Audible). We’ve also learned that Robin Klein and Saul Klein participated too.

Founded by Ziv Eliraz in September last year, Zao aims to solve the problem in which the main source for company hires – referrals – is still largely managed in a very manual way whereby someone from the HR department sends an email to all staff describing a job opening, and those staff are left to figure out how to leverage their networks to find and attract suitable candidates to apply. Instead, Zao’s platform provides a step by step process that exploits social networking and gamification to make it easier for and to motivate employees (and ex-employees) to become recruiters, along with other trusted partners.

An employer simply signs up, uploads a job, sets a cash reward and sends it to their employees and broader network, a process that’s said to take about 10 minutes. Zao then provides employees with tools to forward the job on a personal basis to the people that are most likely to be or help find the right candidate, with any reward split across those in the chain as a further motivation for friends of friends to refer the right candidate.

The majority of the service is free to use but Zao adds a 30% mark up to any reward included in return for automating the whole process.

Of course there are a ton of competitors — broadly any company in the online recruiting space. But specifically, in terms of social recruiting, companies such as BranchOut, the professional network that runs on top of Facebook, springs to mind, although lots of other services don’t have the same focus on referral tracking that Zao does. In that regard, its closest rival is probably Jobvite.
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