The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- 80% Of Americans Work “After Hours,” Equaling An Extra Day Of Work Per Week
- TechCrunch Makers Episode One: Inside Brooklyn’s Makerbot With Bre Pettis
- Japanese Retailer Rakuten To Launch The Kobo eReader, Localized Content
- Some Dissatisfied Wireless Customers Leave A Complaint, Others Do This…
- Amazon’s Flow App Brings Barcode Scanning & Augmented Reality To Android Users
- Fly Or Die: Retina MacBook Pro
- Ogone Launches In-App Payment Library For iOS And Android
- CreativeWorx Launches TimeTracker, A Hands-Free Time Tracking Software For Creatives
- HTC’s $149 Droid Incredible 4G LTE Coming To Verizon On July 5
- Dell Acquires Quest Software For $2.4 Billion
- Mobile Ad Network Jumptap Preps For IPO, Picks Up Another $27.5M From Keating, WPP And More While Waiting
- Mozilla’s Boot To Gecko Becomes Firefox OS, Scores Support From Sprint, Deutsche Telekom, ZTE, And More
- ‘Mint For Investments’ Startup SigFig Goes Mobile With New iPhone And Android Apps
- MasterCard Ties Up With T-Mobile For NFC Mobile Payments In Europe
- Network Testing Consolidation: Ixia Pays $160M Cash For Security-Focused BreakingPoint Systems
- Sony Puffs Up Its Gaming Cloud, Buys Gaikai For $380M. OnLive Next In Line For A Buyer?
- Stealthy Shape Security Hires Google’s Former Click-Fraud Czar
- Mobile Startup Gymdeck Is Acquired By OptimisCorp, A Network Of U.S. Sports Centres
- Chinese Servant Gets 10 Years In Jail For Stealing Overpriced Nokia Vertu Handset
- Fashion For Home Scores New Funding As Samwer Brothers’ Rocket Internet Exits
| 80% Of Americans Work “After Hours,” Equaling An Extra Day Of Work Per Week Posted: 02 Jul 2012 08:40 AM PDT  Have you ever read news that sort of makes you want to cry? I have to warn you, that’s what this new study from enterprise mobility company Good Technology might inspire. The company polled 1,000 U.S. workers to get a better understanding of their mobile work habits. The results are not surprising: the line between work and free time has become so blurred it’s practically non-existent. 80% of people continue working after leaving the office (a figure which actually sounds low, if you ask me). Half of them do so because they feel they have “no choice.” Connectedness means customers demand fast replies. There’s no off switch. Half of respondents check their email in bed, starting at around 7:09 AM. 68% check email before 8 AM. And you wonder why people hate email so much? God forbid we get a cup of coffee in us before dealing with the latest work emergency. The average amount of “extra work” occurring outside normal working hours is seven extra hours per week – nearly another full day, says Good. That’s nearly 30 hours per month or 365 extra hours per year. THANKS INTERNET. Good also found email was seeping into other parts of our daily lives, too. 57% checked email on family outings. 38% at the dinner table. 69% can’t go to sleep without checking email. 40% do so after 10 PM. A quarter of respondents said overtime caused occasional disagreements with their partner. Worse, over half said it did not- apparently, work outside of work is so par for the course, we don’t even care anymore. That’s truly frightening. It’s amazing that no one has seen this level of uber-connectivity as an opportunity to blow up email and start over. For example, why is a “vacation message” the only system we have to support auto-responses for those moments where we need to be offline? By its name alone, the current system tells us that the only way we’re allowed to ignore email is when we are “officially” on vacation. Meanwhile, our societal conventions tell us that ignoring a question is the height of rudeness. At the very least, we need to respond with an “I’m looking into it.” Why can’t email in a team environment smartly route inquires based on who’s clocked in as “on duty?” Why can’t email support a status message field the way IM does? Why isn’t there a button you can click to respond to simple yes/no queries to head off the inevitable (and bothersome follow-ups)? At the very least, if you could send a “maybe” the sender would at least know the email had been read. Why can’t email systems alert senders when you’re behind in your reading, aka “this inbox is overloaded, your email may not be read immediately?” These ideas are off the top of my head – if someone actually began working on a such a system, the possibilities for radical improvements are un-ending. Sad, sad, sad. Image credit: mikeduran.com
|
| TechCrunch Makers Episode One: Inside Brooklyn’s Makerbot With Bre Pettis Posted: 02 Jul 2012 08:12 AM PDT  It’s been months in the making, but here it is: the first episode of TechCrunch Makers, featuring Bre Pettis of Makerbot. We visited Bre’s downtown Brooklyn factory where he and the rest of team design, build, and ship hundreds of Makerbots a week. Our goal for this series is to highlight hardware entrepreneurs – folks who are building something cool and making the world a cooler place while doing it. Look for upcoming episodes on distilling in the city, reanimated farms, and Arduino. If you are making something great, drop me a line at john @techcrunch.com with the subject line “MAKERS WANTED.” I can’t respond to every email but rest assured I have a queue and you’ll be notified if we’re headed your way.
|
| Japanese Retailer Rakuten To Launch The Kobo eReader, Localized Content Posted: 02 Jul 2012 08:00 AM PDT  The Kobo eReader is about to invade Japan. Following Rakuten’s purchase of the Canadian eReader company, the Japanese online retail giant announced the eReader’s launch plans this morning. The Kobo eReader hits the retailer’s interwebs on July 17th for ¥7,980 including tax (or $100 USD). The device is completely retooled for the Japanese populace and launches with a large assortment of ePub 3.0 Japanese titles, including novels and comic books. Rakuten hopes to start an eReading revolution in Japan. As CEO Hiroshi Mikitani pointed out today, reading in Japan is declining and he hopes the Kobo will in part slow this trend. But Amazon is said to be eyeing the largely untapped market of Nippon, too. Rakuten purchased the Canadian-based Kobo late last year for $315 million, likely with the hope to corner the market before Amazon. Rakuten clearly watched the Kindle’s growth and is following its proven strategy. Content purchased for the device will soon be available on iOS and Android apps. Kobo eReader demo units will be set up in retail locations, giving potential owners a chance to try it out before buying. The device is available for pre-ordering starting today for ¥7,980. Rakuten also just launched Kobo’s localized Japanese experience at http://kobo.rakuten.co.jp.
|
| Some Dissatisfied Wireless Customers Leave A Complaint, Others Do This… Posted: 02 Jul 2012 07:50 AM PDT  We’ve all had our moments of rage when dealing with wireless providers. It’s a difficult relationship. We need our phones in a way that makes us far more dependent than any human should be on a large corporation, and because of this, carriers are able to take advantage of our desperation. Now, I’m not saying that’s the case with this poor gentleman at a T-Mobile store in Manchester, England. But for whatever reason, he’s displaying more rage than I’ve ever seen out of a dissatisfied customer. Obviously, it doesn’t work out too well for him in the end as police officers (Bobbys?) whisk him away in cuffs after his short-lived performance. The man spares nothing in his quest to tear apart the T-Mobile UK store. He rips displays off the wall, tears down posters, and uses a fire extinguisher to trash whatever’s left. It’s quite the temper tantrum, so if you’ve been feeling negatively toward your wireless carrier this is the video that will let you vicariously live out your desires. Enjoy! [via PhoneArena]
|
| Amazon’s Flow App Brings Barcode Scanning & Augmented Reality To Android Users Posted: 02 Jul 2012 07:33 AM PDT  Amazon Flow, the barcode scanning/augmented reality app from Amazon subsidiary A9.com, has arrived on Android today, following its November 2011 iOS debut. To refresh your memory, the app lets shoppers scan things like CDs, DVDs, books, toys, video games, and more using their smartphone’s camera in order to display product details and pricing info. Barcode scanning, however, is not unique to Amazon Flow – the feature is also available in Amazon’s flagship application, which is the more popular of the two. But Flow does something special – it supports an augmented reality view of some products, which uses image recognition techniques to show movie trailers and other media previews. While not available for all products supported in Flow, the AR view integrates a live camera display with graphical overlays. The idea is that while considering your purchase of a DVD, for example, you could pull out your phone and “scan” the cover to start the trailer. In practice, the process for doing so is not really any easier or more complicated than scanning the barcode, so it’s more of showy option than a true convenience, to be honest. Although not first to get the application, Android users are getting a feature the iOS version lacks – support for QR codes. (The current version of the app only supports UPC barcodes.) With this option, the app becomes far more practical. QR codes, found in advertisements, in magazines, movie posters, and more allow mobile users to not just price check, but also perform actions like launching websites, connecting to Wi-Fi networks, or adding contacts to their address book. Likely, the QR code feature will make its way over to iOS in a later release, which then positions it against incumbents like eBay’s RedLaser and comparison shopping app ShopSavvy. The app is available now in Amazon’s Appstore and the
|
| Fly Or Die: Retina MacBook Pro Posted: 02 Jul 2012 07:25 AM PDT  The new MacBook Pro with Retina Display. Sure, it stands to fudge up the Internet, but boy is it pretty! The display boasts 5.1 million pixels, with a bump from 1280×800 to a full 2880×1800 resolution. It brings Apple’s laptops into the display big leagues with the iPhone and iPad, and gets a bit thinner to boot. Plus, you’ll get an HDMI port instead of that optical drive. But is the lofty price tag enough to replace your current MBP? The question can be answered in two parts: first, do you have the cash, and second, how much do you love the Internet? If your laptop is mostly for creating projects, etc. using Apple’s software, then the Retina display will change your whole perspective on pixels. If, however, you’re mostly a web surfer, you may find yourself sourly disappointed by the resolution bump. The Internet, according to Biggs, looks fuzzy and will need to undergo a bit of a revamp to be where it should be on the new MacBook Pro. Then, of course, there’s the price to contend with. With the 15-inch model starting at $2,200, this is, by far, one of the most expensive laptops on the market.
|
| Ogone Launches In-App Payment Library For iOS And Android Posted: 02 Jul 2012 07:16 AM PDT  It seems that there’s no shortage of companies queuing up to help developers integrate payments into their mobile apps and today that space just got a little more crowded: Ogone, a long time player in online payments, has launched an in-app payment library for iOS and Android. The new library complements the company’s existing mobile web-based payment system meaning that app developers who rely on Ogone to process payments no longer need to redirect users to the browser in order to take a payment — presuming that they don’t fall foul of Apple’s tight grip on in-app purchases for digital goods. Ogone's new in-app library is said to offer a “highly secure and user-friendly” plug-in payment solution for both iOS and Android operating systems making it easy to bring e-commerce functionality — the payment processing part, at least — to a mobile app. Specifically, the library uses secure aliases (instead of storing the credit card details on the mobile device) which offer e-merchants the advantage of easy compliance with industry standards in security. The look and feel can also be customised. Ogone, which competes with a host of other payment providers, such as Realex, SagePay and WorldPay — or ZooZ who offer their own library — claims more than 35,000 businesses worldwide use its service. The company is headquartered in Belgium, and has operations in India (via its acquisition of EBS in 2011), with a sales presence the Netherlands, France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, UK, UAE and the US. Those customers include Friends Provident, Tui, Thomas Cook, Halfords, Just Eat, Bose, Opodo, Club Med, DHL International, Viking Direct/Office Depot, Thalys International, Misco and Center Parcs. The company is privately held and is backed by majority stakeholder Summit Partners.
|
| CreativeWorx Launches TimeTracker, A Hands-Free Time Tracking Software For Creatives Posted: 02 Jul 2012 07:01 AM PDT  We’ve seen a growing need for time tracking enterprise software. 1DayLater has aimed to solve the problem in the UK, and Harvest has built up quite the user-base here in the States, but a new service built by former Adobe executives at CreativeWorx looks to streamline the process in a way that makes time-tracking almost entirely hands-free. Whether you work at an agency as a creative, or do your own freelance work, TimeTracker has no start or stop button, and no tagging requirements. You simply do your work, and see your productivity in an easy-to-read table. The results page looks a bit like a Google Calendar, with various projects having certain colors assigned to them and showing as blocks of time in a weekly schedule. You can also drag and drop various projects to different places if for some reason you see a mistake. The program integrates with various programs, including Adobe Photoshop, InDesign, & Illustrator; Microsoft Word & PowerPoint; Google Calendar, so that the user never has to press start or stop. The program simply knows what you’re working on and tracks it. The results interface is available across all devices, as it’s an HTML5 site. Most importantly, founder Mark Hirsch has realized that the software will only be attractive to employees if it doesn’t feed real-time data back to their supervisors. Everyone should be allowed to spend at least a few minutes a day on Facebook. That said, users have the option to publish their week after rearranging the data and making sure it’s accurate, letting supervisors see it if desired. The service is said to reclaim one hour of a week for each employee using it, and has today launched into public beta. Check out the <a href=”“>CreativeWorx website if you’re interested.
|
| HTC’s $149 Droid Incredible 4G LTE Coming To Verizon On July 5 Posted: 02 Jul 2012 06:50 AM PDT  HTC’s Droid Incredible 4G LTE hasn’t been a very well-kept secret (then again, what HTC phone is?), but Verizon has just confirmed what many of us suspected — their latest HTC handset will hit store shelves on July 5. If you’ve been itching for an upgrade and just can’t wait for a Galaxy S III, expect to shell out $149 (after a mail-in rebate, sadly) for the new Sense-powered slab. But is it worth the price? The device’s name isn’t very inspired, but at least the Ice Cream Sandwich-powered DI4GLTE has a solid spec sheet to back things up. In case you’ve forgotten already, it sports a 1.2GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 chipset, 1GB of RAM, a 4-inch qHD Super LCD display, and Beats Audio support. Flipping the thing over reveals the same 8-megapixel rear shooter as seen in its distant cousins the One S and One X, though Verizon’s release makes no mention of HTC’s wonderful ImageSense functionality. Sadly, instead of embracing the wonderful design language of the One series, Verizon and HTC have the device in their usual black and red trim. The end result is a device that doesn’t look terribly different from the handsets that came before it, though it’s certainly not a bad thing unless you’re a petulant design snob like me. Thankfully, the strangely high price ($299) Verizon quoted when the device appeared on a DROID teaser page was just a mistake, but any would-be upgraders would be smart to wait for a bit and weigh their options more thoroughly.
|
| Dell Acquires Quest Software For $2.4 Billion Posted: 02 Jul 2012 06:49 AM PDT  Another major acquisition for Dell this morning. The company announced it’s buying enterprise management software maker Quest Software for $2.4 billion. Under the terms of the agreement, Dell will pay $28.00 per share, which beat out Insight Venture Partners’ bid of $25.75 per share. Quest’s assets, including its access management software, performance monitoring solutions, Windows Server management solutions, database management, and more, will now serve to strengthen Dell’s recently formed Software Group. The group, announced in February, is designed to enhance Dell's solutions capabilities and help provide a new source of revenue as hardware sales decline. Dell hired John Swainson, formerly of IBM and CEO of CA, to serve as President of the Group. Since then, Dell has also acquired Wyse and SonicWALL. With Quest, the focus is on the data center side of the business. Dell stated that the Quest acquisition will help it expand its software capabilities in “systems management, security, data protection and workspace management.” The company also cites a few key components from Quest Software’s family of solutions which held particular interest:
Quest’s software portfolio has generated $857 million in global revenue based on fiscal year 2011 results at gross margins of 86% and operating margins of 11%, Dell reported. It also has a 1,500-person strong software sales force and 1,300 software developers who will join Dell’s software group following the deal. Quest is based in Aliso Viejo, CA and has over 100,000 customers worldwide, including 87% of the Fortune 500. The company has a total of 3,850 employees in 60 offices in 23 countries. The purchase served to end a bidding war that had lasted for several months, according to reports from sources at Bloomberg and others.
|
| Posted: 02 Jul 2012 06:28 AM PDT  Jumptap — one of the last big, independent and privately-held mobile ad networks around reaching 263 million people worldwide — has today announced that it has picked up another $27.5 million in funding to keep up the pace with other players while it prepares for an IPO itself. This round was led by two new backers, Keating Capital and “a large institutional investor” that Jumptap tells me it cannot name. The round also saw participation from existing investors General Catalyst Partners, Redpoint Ventures, Summerhill Ventures, Valhalla Partners, and WPP (the last one of these perhaps one to watch the closest). In total, Jumptap has now raised $121.5 million. The funding will also be used to meet the rapid expansion we’re seeing in the mobile advertising space — currently growing at 50 percent annually and still very much still in its infancy. eMarketer notes that last year was the first to see mobile ads break the $1 billion mark in the U.S., and believes that this year those numbers will top $2.6 billion. But compared to the trillions raked in through advertising worldwide, there is still a long way for mobile ads to go, fuelled by the increasingly ubiquitous presence of smartphones and mobile data usage. Jumptap says that currently its ad network reaches 107 million mobile users in the U.S., with another 156 million worldwide, with 20 billion mobile impressions each month. It also notes that it owns 29 patents with another 200 pending — in itself a potentially valuable area for the company. (As a point of comparison, Millennial Media, another of the large independents, says it has a worldwide reach of 300 million users on its ad network.) What do those patents cover? Over the last few years, Jumptap has developed an ad targeting service that involves the company working with a number of “offline” third-party data providers — 20 in all — that include Polk, Acxiom, Datalogix, TARGUSinfo, Catalyst, and i360. Jumptap claims to have been the first to do this — although others work with offline data providers as well. The company also works with others to feed data into its service to better hone how ads get delivered. These include PlaceIQ for location and 140 Proof for social media analysis. Jumptap has made some good forays into researching the behaviour of different vertical markets as well — all part of its effort to get more information out to ad buyers in a still-nascent market short on quantifiable data. "Jumptap tackled the challenge of honing mobile ad targeting and understanding mobile audience, and it is flourishing on this path," John Simon, chairman of the board at Jumptap, and MD and Co-founder of General Catalyst Partners, said in a statement. "Under the direction of its innovative leadership team, Jumptap has emerged as a leader in the market.”
|
| Posted: 02 Jul 2012 06:00 AM PDT  Mozilla’s Boot to Gecko project has come a long way in just under a year — what began with the idea of building a mobile operating system based on open web standards like HTML5 has led to a full-fledged product being prepared for a commercial launch in the coming months. What’s more, Mozilla has just confirmed that their HTML5-friendly mobile ecosystem now has the support of a handful of new carrier and hardware partners, not to mention a new name. The project has been referred to as Boot to Gecko since it was first revealed last July, but Mozilla has officially rechristened the product Firefox OS. Spain-based Telefonica was the first network operator to link up with Mozilla earlier this year, and today it's joined by Sprint, Deutsche Telekom, Smart, Telecom Italia, and Telenor. Meanwhile, the project has also caught the attention of Chinese hardware manufacturers ZTE and TCL (which is perhaps best known for their Alcatel-branded phones) who have committed to creating the first Firefox OS handsets. Considering the device portfolios that these two companies bring to the table, it shouldn't come as much of a surprise to hear that Firefox OS has been optimized for entry-level smartphones. Sadly, neither company has offered up specifics about the devices they’ll be producing, though Mozilla notes that they will be powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processors. Still, it’ll be interesting to see how the entrance of another open-source operating system geared toward the low end will affect more entrenched players like Google’s Android, especially since a considerable chunk of Android’s growth can be attributed to their prominence in that segment. Mozilla CEO Gary Kovacs confirmed this past April that the first Firefox OS devices would make their official debut in Brazil, though at the time he stated that the hardware would be on store shelves either by the end of the year or in early 2013. The issue seems to have been ironed out over the past few months though, as Mozilla and Telefonica's Brazilian subsidiary Vivo are indeed looking to launch their first handsets come next year. Despite buy-in from carriers in the United States, Germany, Italy, and the Philippines, there’s still no word on when Firefox OS will make its way to other locales.
|
| ‘Mint For Investments’ Startup SigFig Goes Mobile With New iPhone And Android Apps Posted: 02 Jul 2012 06:00 AM PDT  Most banks have begun to provide native apps — or at the very least, mobile-friendly websites — to give users access to their funds and information about their accounts. But when it comes to their investment accounts, few have very much transparency into where their money has been invested, how much they are paying in fees, how their investments are performing and the like. San Francisco-based startup SigFig wants to change that, not just on the web, but now also on mobile devices. SigFig lets users connect all their various investment accounts — including bank accounts, 401k plans, IRAs, etc. — onto a single dashboard. That gives them the ability to see how their investments are performing in one beautiful visual platform. SigFig originally launched as a web app, but it’s now releasing iPhone and Android apps that will give users on the go all the same information on their mobile devices. The new SigFig mobile apps have all the same features as the company’s web experience: They provide a view across multiple investment accounts, analysis of the those investments in a dashboard. That includes a portfolio tracker that provides real-time stock, bond, and mutual fund information, as well as detailed charts and analytics to dig down and review performance and allocation of investments. It has push notifications to let users know when stocks are trading significantly up or down, and provides daily and weekly summaries of winners and losers in the broader market. Having a detailed view of your investment holdings and moving stocks is nice, but it’s kind of useless without getting advice on what to do about them. That’s where SigFig hopes to set itself apart, by providing actionable information designed to help users make informed decisions about how they invest their money. That includes finding funds with lower fees, pointing out under-performing stocks and bonds, and identifying brokers who might do a better job at lower cost than the folks that are currently managing a user’s money. For SigFig, being on mobile devices was an important step in part because so few users can actually use their smartphones to access information about their accounts. It points out that of the top 100 brokerages, two-thirds don’t have an iPhone app and more than three-quarters lack an app for Android. And even if apps are available for some of their investment accounts, most users have multiple accounts, so getting a full view of their financial health can be tricky. SigFig hopes to solve that problem, by aggregating user information from multiple accounts in a single app. For now, all app are read-only, meaning that users can log in and view their info, but can’t actually use SigFig for more advanced usage. That means no trading, withdrawing funds, or transferring money within the app. Even so, SigFig believes that with the info it provides, users will be able to better take advantage of their investments, and make smarter choices.
|
| MasterCard Ties Up With T-Mobile For NFC Mobile Payments In Europe Posted: 02 Jul 2012 05:59 AM PDT  Another strong step ahead of mobile payments today: MasterCard and Deutsche Telekom have announced that they will work together to roll out services across DT’s footprint in Europe, starting with an NFC wallet solution in Poland in Q3 and Germany following soon after. For now, the U.S. is not being factored in as part of the deal. In all, Deutsche Telekom has 93 million mobile subscribers in Europe, and 129 million world-wide. The move is a sign not only of how bigger companies are now stepping up to cooperate better in mobile payments, but the way that carriers are wedging themselves into the equation to make it happen. The deal follows on from news on Friday that France Telecom is also anteing up big time in the area of NFC, and will start rolling out NFC-enabled SIM cards to all new subscribers in France, with further markets getting added on throughout the year. This service will also be SIM-based, the two companies say. Under the terms of the deal, DT will be working with MasterCard’s payment subsidiary ClickandBuy, which has the e-money license that is necessary to operate mobile payment services. While Poland looks like it will be a comprehensive roll-out, the German launch later this year will be more gradual: first a trial with mobile phone tags and cards — which will help the service roll out to devices that do not have NFC capabilities built into them; then a mobile wallet service in the first half of next year that will include other banks and partners, before expanding to other markets in the region. MasterCard emphasized how the latter is bringing payments expertise, while DT, and its mobile brand T-Mobile are bringing the customers. “This is a huge step on our way to increase mobile payments,” commented Thomas Kiessling, chief product and innovation officer for Deutsche Telekom, at a press event earlier today. “With MasterCard we have a well-known and experienced partner generating growth in this important market segment. We want to build a comprehensive ecosystem around mobile payment, helping Telekom to realize its strategy of being the first choice for customers regarding connected life and work.” It’s also a sign of how credit card companies realize they have to team up with carriers to put through these innovations, and set a beachhead against mobile payment insurgencies from smaller startups like Square and iZettle. The tie-up between MasterCard and T-Mobile is one of the bigger partnerships, but it’s not the first to see a carrier looking to do more in mobile payments. Vodafone has tied up with Visa; T-Mobile USA has a deal with Square; AT&T and Verizon both work with Intuit, and in Sweden Telia and iZettle are tied up, with “many more to come,” predicts Thomas Husson, an analyst with Forrester Research. Angel Dobardziev and Eden Zoller, analysts at Ovum, also note these tie-ups address the problems of huge fragmentation that will need to be resolved before mobile payments have any hope of growing: "The drive behind Deutsche Telekom’s (DT) mobile payments strategy is to create a comprehensive framework that will address many of the challenges in what is currently an incomplete ecosystem,” they write in a research note. “This is a commendable goal. DT is working to ready the market and strengthen its brand association with financial services by becoming a credit card issuer for MasterCard. DT is looking to improve the retail infrastructure for mobile payments by acting as a sales partner for NFC enabled Point of Sale (POS) terminals. It is providing NFC tags for consumers that do not have NFC enabled devices. DT is also taking a considered, phased approach to service roll out, which is no bad thing, starting in Poland this year and Germany in 2013.” However, they also note that the real power lies in the execution: It may be “challenging to execute well in so many different areas and across the different geographies that DT operates in,” they write. And that’s before considering competition from the above-named players and others like Apple and Google. Or if anyone even wants these services in the first place.
|
| Network Testing Consolidation: Ixia Pays $160M Cash For Security-Focused BreakingPoint Systems Posted: 02 Jul 2012 05:18 AM PDT  Some M&A activity among those companies that work behind the scenes so that carriers can continue to deliver your apps, streamed music, phone calls and texts without a hitch: the network testing company Ixia has announced that it will be paying $160 million in cash to buy BreakingPoint Systems. BreakingPoint is a specialist in security testing for wireless and wireline networks, as well as attack analytics, with more than 34,000 examples of attacks, malware and exploits parsed in its library. The move means that Ixia will be able to offer its carrier and large enterprise customers a fuller portfolio of services for network testing — but perhaps more importantly it is a sign of how the growth in mobile and fixed data networks — on the back of the smartphone and tablet boom — has led to a bigger focus on security threats, data breaches and privacy protection. The deal comes on the heels of Ixia’s purchase of another network performance company, Anue Systems, in May for $145 million. Vic Alston, president and CEO of Ixia, would not comment on whether the company is continuing on its acquisitions sprees. “We will never say never, but our main priority at this point is to integrate Anue and BreakingPoint and focus on growth,” he told TechCrunch. Ixia says the deal is expected to close this quarter (Q3) 2012, subject to customary closing conditions and approvals. BreakingPoint has built a business that provides not only security monitoring services and hardware products, but also comprehensive analytics. Customers include government agencies and large enterprises as well as carriers. The company has been growing its business consistently over the last four quarters, with sales growing by over 40 percent in 2011 to $33.5 million, on a gross margin of 87 percent. Ixia expects 2012 to show another 40-percent in growth. This should come as no surprise given the double whammy of strong data network growth, combined with what Verizon called in its Data Breach Investigations Report, the rise of the “megabreach” from hackers. In a study carried out with a number of government agencies, it found that 2011 was the worst-ever year for data breaches, and the frequency of them appears to be on the rise. It’s a trend that has clearly motivated Ixia into action, too: no matter how well a network performs, it’s useless if it gets taken down by hackers: “The current threat landscape is changing everything – from the way we conduct business, to how we protect data and secure infrastructures, to the ways we train cyber warriors," said Vic Alston, Ixia's president and chief executive officer, in a statement. "This dynamic IT landscape is creating a growing demand for solutions that provide definitive and current insight into the resiliency of critical IT infrastructures and defences…By leveraging BreakingPoint with Ixia's integrated portfolio of proven network test products, customers will have available to them an end-to-end solution to help ensure business continuity for enterprises and government organisations.” For its part, Ixia is also seeing a small increase in its own business. The company’s estimated up revenues for Q2 to $87-89 million from $86-89 million previously. The company has been on a buying spree of sorts: it recently also bought another network performance player, Anue Systems, which is already adding $3-4 million to its quarterly sales.
|
| Sony Puffs Up Its Gaming Cloud, Buys Gaikai For $380M. OnLive Next In Line For A Buyer? Posted: 02 Jul 2012 04:27 AM PDT  Some more consolidation in cloud-based gaming services: Sony Computer Entertainment announced today that it will pay $380 million to acquire Gaikai, the California-based provider of a platform that currently delivers some 40 games, including Mass Effect, the Sims, and FIFA Soccer, as cloud-based services to a variety of devices, without the need of a games console. We’d first heard murmurs about a tie-up between Gaikai and Sony in May, and the deal raises questions of what might happen next with rival streaming platform OnLive. The move is a sign of how console-based companies are feeling the pressure to offer other, cheaper routes to accessing games content via other devices, as revenues from hardware-based services decline. Sony, makers of the PlayStation, says that as a result of the deal, it will establish a new cloud gaming service, as yet unnamed. Today’s deal closed on June 30, Sony says. Gaikai had raised $45 million in venture funding since 2010, with investors including Benchmark Capital, NEA and Intel Capital. In Sony’s last quarter, it noted that amid record losses for the company, it saw declines in sales of its PlayStation 3, PlayStation 2 and PSP devices. That is down to a number of factors: pressure from competitors like Microsoft and Nintendo, yes, but also the rise of mobile gaming and other services that do not require consoles for consumers to get their shooting/jumping/virtual world building fixes. If Gaikai’s existing deals remain in place, the move will also see Sony develop another line of business, as a service provider to a number of competing consumer electronics companies: these include LG and Samsung, both of which signed deals with Gaikai to deliver games to their connected TVs this year. You can see a full list of its partnerships since 2010 here. The rumor also raises the prospect of what might happen next with OnLive, another games streaming company. In June, a leaked Microsoft strategy memo, originally posted on Scribd but now taken down by lawyers, noted streaming companies like OnLive as a threat to the gaming console business, and mentioned the company by name as an acquisition target. Like Gaikai, OnLive works across different platforms, including Android, Google TV, the iPad — and Windows. As VentureBeat also points out, the prospects for where Sony could use Gaikai are big indeed: effectively, it could mean a “PlayStation anywhere” type approach not just to consoles but to TVs, kiosks, mobile devices and more. Potentially it gives Sony the ability to do that for hardware beyond its own. “SCE will deliver a world-class cloud-streaming service that allows users to instantly enjoy a broad array of content ranging from immersive core games with rich graphics to casual content anytime, anywhere on a variety of internet-connected devices,” said Andrew House, president and group CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc, said in a statement.
|
| Stealthy Shape Security Hires Google’s Former Click-Fraud Czar Posted: 02 Jul 2012 04:26 AM PDT  Super stealthy security startup, Shape Security, has recruited Google’s ex-”click-fraud czar” Shuman Ghosemajumder to its executive team where he’ll be charged with leading the company’s marketing, strategy and partnerships efforts. Mountain View-based Shape is said to be developing a new category of web defense products that take a different approach to security that shifts costs from defenders to hackers. It hopes to achieve this via its “military-grade technology” that doesn't rely on past attack signatures, and instead forces hackers to “spend more and more to achieve less and less.” The startup’s founders come from Google, the Department of Defense and major defense contractors, while the Google connection doesn’t end there. Shape’s backers include Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt's TomorrowVentures, as part of a $6 million Series A round, co-led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Accel Partner Peter Wagner, Sequoia Limited Partner Guarav Garg, Vodafone CTO Chris Burke, Baseline Ventures, and unnamed executives at LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook also participated. But back to Ghosemajumder, who brings some serious clout to Shape. During his time at Google, he won two ‘Google Founders Awards’ for his entrepreneurial and technical achievements. Known affectionately as the “click-fraud czar”, Ghosemajumder was an early product manager on Google’s AdSense offering and part of the team that launched Gmail and co-founded Google’s Privacy Council.
|
| Mobile Startup Gymdeck Is Acquired By OptimisCorp, A Network Of U.S. Sports Centres Posted: 02 Jul 2012 04:26 AM PDT  Gymdeck, a startup we wrote about over a year ago which was aimed at disorganised personal trainers is something of a typical startup story. After aiming at that market it soon realised the app was being used by all sorts of people in the fitness industry. Thus, after a while of gathering that data, Gymdeck has been acquired by a OptimisCorp, a company in healthcare technology and services which has 200 sports therapy, training and performance centers across the United States. Terms of the deal were undisclosed. Privately-owned OptimisCorp says Gymdeck shares their goal of "empowering fitness professionals" such as personal trainers and physical therapists. Basically Gymdeck helps them stay on top of things, deliver a service to clients and ultimately make more money by gaining and retaining clients. The British startup will remain completely intact, with founder Alena Dundas retained as Head of Mobile and running the company’s UK operations in London. With the acquisition, Los Angeles-based OptimisCorp says its expanding into mobile apps and opening up to international markets like London.
|
| Chinese Servant Gets 10 Years In Jail For Stealing Overpriced Nokia Vertu Handset Posted: 02 Jul 2012 02:51 AM PDT  Here’s a sad, and slightly ridiculous, coda to the story of Vertu, Nokia’s wrong turn into making bling-tastic handsets encrusted with diamonds and gold: a servant in China convicted of stealing one from her boss has been sentenced to 10 years in prison and fined 20,000 yuan (over $3,000). The story, as published in the English edition of the Chinese People’s Daily Online, notes that Ms Zhang Yun’s defense was that she had not realized the value of the phone when she took it, and did so in the first place because she had not been paid. The incident happened in Henan Province. “I didn’t know the cell phone was so expensive,” she had told the court, according to the article. “I don’t know anything about the law and I thought the cell phone was only worth one or two thousand yuan to make up for my salary.” In fact, the phone was a silver edition and was worth 68,000 yuan ($10,000) — an absurd sum of money for a mobile handset anywhere, and even more so in a country with a per capita income of $7,600 (compare that to the U.S. where the per capita GDP is over $47,000). Crazy prices, in essence, was one of the So when push came to shove and Nokia began to think of ways it could quickly restructure in the face of growing losses in its main handset business, Vertu was an obvious candidate for the chop. A 90 percent stake in the company is now being sold to private equity firm EQT for around €200 million; Nokia for now is holding on to the remaining 10 percent. Back in China, a lot of people are up in arms over the severity of the sentence and fine — and they are taking to sites like Sina Weibo to discuss it. It’s hit a nerve perhaps because it plays up on the long-standing, still-central idea of class struggle in the country: “catering to the rich while turning its back on the poor” is a typical comment. The People’s Daily notes that the court has defended its action, saying that the fine is proportionate to the value of the device. People are now rallying around Ms Zhang to offer free legal support for an appeal. Ms Zhang said that she had intended to give the phone back to her boss when he had paid up what he owed her. In the meantime she’d buried it in a turnip pit (yes, the silver Vertu went into a turnip pit) and had intended to use it herself — a fact that was discovered on the surveillance cameras that the household had installed on its property (sounds like a great boss, huh?). Ms Zhang had only been working for the household for just over 40 days when this happened back in December 2011. Update: Another reader in the comments below notes that the sentence has been overturned by the higher court. I’m looking for a source for that development.
|
| Fashion For Home Scores New Funding As Samwer Brothers’ Rocket Internet Exits Posted: 02 Jul 2012 12:56 AM PDT  Fashion For Home, the online designer furniture store, has scored a new funding round led by the Munich-based VC Acton Capital Partners, while Holtzbrinck Ventures has also participated. And with it we have an exit of sorts. That’s because, as part of the round, the Samwer brothers' incubator, Rocket Internet, has sold its shares, although terms of the transaction aren’t being disclosed — unsurprising given the Samwers’ notorious reputation for secrecy. It’s also especially curious when you factor in last year’s leaked memo where Oliver Samwer described ambitions to become “number one" in the e-commerce sector for furniture with a strategy he controversially likened to “blitzkrieg”. Fashion For Home’s new funding round as a whole is said to be in the “lower double-digit millions”, so also make of that what you will. Operating out of Berlin, but targeting Germany, the UK, U.S., Austria and the Netherlands, Fashion For Home sells designer furniture online through an innovative vertically integrated “made-to-order” production process and business model and it’s this that enables it to be competitive as costs are kept low and savings passed on to customers. It’s a model that is strikingly similar to the UK’s Made.com. Fashion For Home was founded in 2009 by Marc Appelhoff and Christoph Cordes.
|
| You are subscribed to email updates from TechCrunch To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
No comments:
Post a Comment