Mar 13 - New 'TechCrunch' feed email from feed2email.net ~ HmD Technology

Hi there!
Here's the latest feed from TechCrunch.

Add feeds@feed2email.net to your contact list to make sure you receive all your emails
Make sure to visit feed2email.net to get more feeds sent to your inbox.
To find out which feeds you are subscribed to, or to get further help, just reply to this email.

Lightbox Photos Wants To Be Your New Android Camera App (SXSW)

Mar 12, 11:21PM

Although Android adoption is growing at a huge clip compared to the iPhone (not hard, since there are so many more devices and plans), iPhone apps still remain the benchmark for the smartphone app experience. In part this is down to the fact that many companies build an iPhone app first and an Android version some time later, which is often inferior in user experience. Part of the reason is that little things like the pull-down-to-refresh features that are often in Phone apps come default with the iOS platform. But to make that kind of feature work in an Android app you have to build it from the ground up. That means there is a space for a creator of ridiculously good Android apps. Step forward Thai Tran and Nilesh Patel with Lightbox, their new startup which has taken a $1.1 million seed round from some of the top VCs and Angels in the UK and US. A private beta launches this week at SXSW, with the founders in attendance handing out invitation codes to the private beta. The app will be presented at the Team Android Choice Awards. You can sign up here to get on the invite list for the app here.

>From "Businesses" To "Tools": The Twitter API ToS Changes

Mar 12, 11:12PM

Yesterday, Twitter made a swift and sweeping move to alter their ecosystem. In an email to developers, Twitter laid out the new rules. Essentially, third-party developers should no longer try to compete with Twitter on clients; instead they should focus on things like data and specific verticals for tweets. Not surprisingly, there's quite a bit of backlash against this maneuver. In making these changes, Twitter also had to chance their API Terms of Service. And we thought it would be interesting to compare the old ToS to the new one. We can do that thanks to the magic of Google, which has a cached copy of the ToS dated January 3, 2011.

SCVNGR CEO Seth Priebatsch: The Game Layer Is Coming (SXSW)

Mar 12, 10:17PM

Today's SXSW keynote speaker is Seth Priebatsch, founder and CEO of location-based gaming startup SCVNGR. SCVNGR has had a big week — on Thursday the site launched a spinoff service called LevelUp that combines some of the retention mechanics seen in location-based games with the steep deals offered by sites like Groupon. Priebatsch, who maintained an apparently super-human energy level throughout his talk, discussed how many of the gaming mechanics seen in the virtual world will be applied in the physical world to create a so-called "Game Layer". "It's brand new and has not been built," Priebatsch says. "The last decade was the decade of social — it took connections between friends, family, and coworkers and put them online. It's called Facebook. The social layer traffics in connections." Conversely, Priebatsch says that the Game layer traffics in influence — "It will influence where we go, what we do, and how we do it."

Ask a VC: Mike Maples Defends Digg's Honor and the Kno (TCTV)

Mar 12, 9:38PM

Mike Maples, my guest on Ask a VC this week, is known for backing some of the best Web 2.0 entrepreneurs early on and hunting down "Thunder Lizards" or the 15 truly disruptive companies that hatch each year. But some of his most celebrated investments have turned controversial. In this video he defends Digg's honor against some tough reader questions and defends Chegg's co-founder and chairman Osman Rashid's decision to get into hardware. For non-haters, he answers some general questions on why he doesn't back more middle-aged entrepreneurs and how much of a stake he needs to do a deal. Enjoy! And check out our earlier interview with Maples and his three companies that got away here.

Jake Gyllenhaal Movie 'The Source Code' Markets Itself To Techies

Mar 12, 9:34PM

Between movies being funded on Kickstarter, a critically acclaimed movie about Facebook, and Twitter basically serving as a backchannel for the Oscars, Hollywood increasingly has to reconcile itself with the Internet's influence on storytelling as well it's power as a distribution mechanism. Directed by Duncan Jones, The Source Code is a movie about a soldier who finds himself as part of a strange military project. The source code is literally a computer program which allows him to take over another man's identity during the last few minutes of his life, in order to um, not blow up a train.

There Is No SXSW. The Perfect Extension For Those Not Here.

Mar 12, 9:11PM

By now, even if you're not at SXSW, you're likely sick of SXSW. Why? Because every other damn tweet is about SXSW. I'm here, and tweeting about it, and I'm sick of it. But luckily Lanyrd has created the perfect extension. Not at SXSW is an extension for both Chrome and Firefox that alters Twitter.com to remove all tweets that reference the conference. But that's not good enough. So the extension also blocks tweets from all those Twitter users known to be attending SXSW!

How To "Win" SXSW: Hint – It's The Same Answer Every Year

Mar 12, 7:36PM

Speculation as to which app will be the most used at SXSW this year is already well under way. No doubt, this is a question that is dominating any number of conversations among reporters, investors and start-ups, and is certainly a subject of increasing speculation here in Austin. Let's be clear: we do this every year before SXSW. But, this time the question would seem to hold an even greater level of importance. The difference this year is not which app or technology SXSW will help surface above the start-up noise, but rather which app will help SXSW take back control of the chaos it has unleashed.

This Post Has Nothing to do with #SXSW

Mar 12, 6:38PM

For the next four days if you're in the tech industry you're going to hear a non-stop stream of information about SXSW. It's the time of year when many new startups are struggling to rise above all the noise and be heard. And when everybody is shouting it becomes overwhelming. I'm actually in Austin at the moment. It turns out this is "the year of group messaging" and since I'm a shareholder in the largest player in the space, TextPlus (7.7m monthly actives), I thought I should come here to represent. With all these companies vying for attention and others just here to soak up the vibe I thought I'd write a much broader piece on how startups with a 10-point plan on how startups can make the most of their attendance at conferences and events. Read on ...

The Walled Garden Has Won

Mar 12, 5:40PM

Ten days ago Google discovered that apparently innocuous Android apps were in fact infested with "DroidDream" malware that included an Android rootkit, with the apparent intent of creating a smartphone botnet. It infected more than a quarter of a million devices before Google intervened. The thriller writer in me immediately began to wonder what would happen if black hats built a wildly popular game that doubled as a botnet beachhead. Imagine if Angry Birds was secretly the world's biggest botnet: even without root access to its install base, those hypothetical black hats could grab private data from tens millions of people, and/or probably DDoS every wireless network in the developed world, especially if it ran as a background service with location access. That will never happen, of course: it's what security guru Bruce Schneier calls a "movie-plot threat." But it does illustrate that you couldn't stop a Trojan app like that in advance. Android Market security is based on permission requests when an app is installed: such requests are routinely ignored, since nowadays almost every app asks for full Internet and SD card access. Ah, you might say, if only Android apps were vetted in advance, like Apple's! In which case you should really stop kidding yourself. Most apps seem to be reviewed in an hour or less (after days in the queue.) Apple appears to check the libraries they link against, and maybe they can decompile to the original source code, too - though I doubt it - but iOS apps are written in Objective-C, which includes support for C itself, a language for which labyrinthine obfuscation has become an art form. Any developer worth his/her salt could write an iOS app that includes code whose use only becomes apparent when the app receives a secret signal.

(Founder Stories) Stack Exchange CEO: "Nobody Wants To Find Yahoo Answers In Their Search Results"

Mar 12, 3:10PM

There sure are a lot of Q&A sites on the Internet, but not all Q&A sites are the same. In the Founder Stories video above, Stack Exchange CEO Joel Spolsky talks about the origins of Q&A sites and his competition. Stack Exchange operates Stack Overflow and other peer-reviewed knowledge sites. Spolsky minces no words in his contempt for the Big Daddy of Q&A sites, Yahoo Answers. "Yahoo Answers is Teenage chat," says Spolsky. "Nobody wants to find Yahoo Answers in their search results. It is one-sentence gibberish." Stack Overflow, in contrast, goes deep. Stack Overflow users gain reputation by giving the best answers, and answers are peer-reviewed. It doesn't cover every topic under the sun, either, just programming.

DIY Music Management Platform Nimbit Raises $1.25 million

Mar 12, 4:47AM

Nimbit, a direct-to-fan marketing, sales and distribution platform for musicians, announced today that it has closed a $1.25 million series A investment round. The round was led by Common Angels and Hub Angels and, according to VP of Marketing Carl Jacobson, will be used to ramp up the company's hiring efforts. Nimbit adds to the cumulative $3.5 million of seed funding it raised during three prior seed rounds beginning in May of 2006. The seed rounds were also led by Common Angels and Hub Angels, with LaunchCapital and Rose Tech Ventures contributing. Founded in 2002, the Massachusetts-based Nimbit is a one-stop shop for musicians looking to manage their own direct-to-fan marketing and commercial music efforts. And though Jacobson said that Nimbit may have been "a little early to the party", there has been quite a bit of buzz in the last few years concerning shifts in music marketing and distribution -- like the success of Radiohead's releasing "In Rainbows" direct to fans via their website, for example -- and it now seems that the market may be ready to adopt the direct-to-fan model.

Zynga Enables Donations To Tsunami Relief Through In-Game Purchases

Mar 12, 4:41AM

Social gaming giant Zynga has joined the Internet's efforts at donating to Japanese Tsunami relief tonight, by enabling in-game donations through virtual good buying in Zynga games like FrontierVille, FarmVille and CityVille as of 7pm PST. 100% of the virtual goods purchase prices will be donated to Tsunami relief.

Meet The Guy Who Bought The First iPad 2 At The SXSW Apple Pop-Up Store

Mar 12, 4:34AM

Because the iPad 2 launch had the fortitude to coincide with SXSW, Apple did well by the thousands of fanboys and fanladies that have descended upon the city and built a pop up shop at 6th and Congress. We braved the line today and got the chance to speak to the lucky man who bought the very first iPad 2 sold in Austin, Texas. Austin native and conference attendee "Sweet" John Muehlbauer (an event planner at Revolving Events) got to the store at 5:30 am and endured a 10 1/2 wait to get his hands on the sweet sweet tablet.

Flickr Confirms Taking Down Egyptian Blogger's Photos, Cites Community Guidelines Violation

Mar 12, 3:32AM

Last weekend Egyptian protestors broke into Amn al Dowla, the Cairo headquarters for the Egyptian security agency, and removed a "treasure trove" of video disks, hard disks and CDs with government documents from the Mubarak era. Egyptian blogger Hossam Arabway came into possession of a CD from the raid and has been uploading a set of Secret Service officer pics to Flickr for the past week. Arabway posted on his on blog that Flickr removed the photos yesterday, citing copyright infringement. Arabway's post led to NPR's Andy Carvin asking Flickr for a response to the accusations of censorship.

A Group Messaging Roundup To Help You Stay In Touch At SXSW

Mar 12, 2:18AM

By now you've doubtless heard of the many group messaging startups looking to help multiple people keep in touch with each other — there's been endless buzz about how these will likely be some of the breakout stars of SXSW. However, most of these companies do far more than just send texts to multiple people: some of them offer location sharing, conference calls, and other features. Here is a roundup of some of the major services and their feature sets to help you choose which one is best for you, just in time for SXSW. Groupme Groupme is a group texting and conference calling service that originated at the 2010 TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon, and has already received $11.5M in funding. Users can chat with or call multiple people at a time, by setting up a unique phone number that is shared with the members of the group. By texting or calling the number, groups of up to 25 people can share conversations. Users can also share photos with the group online, or through Android or iPhone Apps. Currently, Groupme users send about 1,000,000 text messages and make a few thousand conference calls each day.

LinkedIn Posts $243M In 2010 Revenue, $15.4 Million In Net Income

Mar 12, 2:06AM

Professional social network LinkedIn, which originally submitted its S-1 filing with the SEC in January, has just posted an amendment to its filing that includes 2010 revenue numbers (previously the filing only included 2010 revenue until September). As we wrote earlier, the maximum proposed total offering price is $175 million but this is just a placeholder amount. >From 2009 to 2010, net revenue increased $123.0 million, or 102%, to $243 million. Net income increased $19.4 million, or 487%, to $15.4 million. The company took a $3.9 million loss in 2009 terms of net income, with 2010 as the first profitable year for the network.

CrunchBoard Jobs: TechCrunch Is Hiring!

Mar 12, 1:34AM

Would you like to come work with us at TechCrunch? We have positions open and are currently looking for qualified applicants. Maybe you could be our next Executive Assistant, our new CrunchBase Manager, or our new Conference Program Chair who would help us out with our events. The positions available right now are: Product and Engineering: Web Developer - Ruby on Rails - San Francisco, CA CrunchBase Manager - San Francisco, CA

New Facebook Valuation Record As Shares Surge 5% To $31.50

Mar 11, 11:59PM

A little over $8 million changed hands in this week's SecondMarket Facebook shares auction. And the price surged $1.50 per share, or about 5%, over last week's record price of $30/share. 257,422 shares were bought and sold. That values Facebook, with roughly 2.5 billion shares outstanding, at $78.75 billion. Or, 17 Twitters and change. The confidential (lol) email and part of the attached report is below, and we'll soon be updating our Facebook valuation chart.

Vacation Home Rental Service HomeAway Files For $230 Million IPO

Mar 11, 11:42PM

Vacation home rental service HomeAway has just submitted its S-1 filing with the SEC, indicating that it will file for a public offering in the next few months. The maximum proposed total offering price is $230 million but this could be just a placeholder amount. HomeAway has raised close to a half a billion dollars in venture funding, and in its most recent investment round was valued at $1.4 billion. HomeAway, which has been eying an IPO, currently offers home rentals through 31 websites in 11 languages and provided listings for vacation rentals located in over 145 countries. In 2010, its sites averaged over 9.5 million unique monthly visitors.

Marissa Mayer: 40% Of Google Maps Usage Is Mobile (And There Are 150 Million Mobile Users)

Mar 11, 10:09PM

Today at a SXSW talk, Google VP Marissa Mayer took the stage to talk about location — mobile location, in particular. The theme isn't a surprise since Mayer recently shifted her role from leading Google's search team to heading their local efforts. Her talk was mostly an overview/demo of Google's recent product launches, but it did include some new stats.

Mayer revealed that 40% of Google Maps usage is mobile. And Christmas and New Years day had mobile usage of Maps surpass the desktop — which is a first for Google products. Google Maps now has 150 million mobile users. To put that in context, Maps for mobile had 100 million users in August of last year.