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Freemium Game Dev Addmired Rebrands As Machine Zone, Lands $8M From Menlo Ventures
Mar 27, 12:01PM
Oh, how times have changed for Addmired team. The Y Combinator startup first debuted in 2008 with an Hot or Not-esque social network plugin, but eventually found their footing after pivoting to become a developer of freemium multiplayer mobile games like iMob and its recently released sequel. Now they're looking to do a bit of rebranding by renaming themselves Machine Zone, and to celebrate, they've also announced that they have raised a cool $8 million Series B round led by Menlo Ventures. Their board of directors is being bolstered to boot -- Machine Zone's Menlo Ventures managing director Shervin Pishevar will be joining the board, as will Anthos Capital managing director Bryan Kelly.CloudLock Raises $8.7M To Help Secure Enterprise Data In The Public Cloud
Mar 27, 12:00PM
CloudLock, the software company that aims to secure enterprise cloud data, has raised $8.7 million in a Series B funding from Ascent Venture Partners and Cedar Fund. This brings the startup's total funding to $12 million. CloudLock says that many companies lose sight and control of exactly what data is being shared in public clouds. CloudLock's software helps enterprises secure data in these public cloud platforms. The company's suite of security applications give businesses additional security, control and visibility into public cloud offerings. For example, a number of Google Apps customers use CloudLock to secure their data in Google.Open PaaS DotCloud Adds Support For WebSockets, Vertical Scaling And More
Mar 27, 11:59AM
Second generation platform as a service DotCloud has added support for WebSockets, MongoDB 2.0 and vertical scaling in an effort to provide full stack development resources for users. For background, DotCloud's platform lets developers to build and deploy their applications rapidly by allowing them to customize components and supporting multiple languages and tools. The PaaS supports developers using any combination of language and database without the need for additional hardware or software.Google Pushes Play Front And Center: Is Selling Content Now King?
Mar 27, 11:49AM
Google is marching steadily towards Larry Page's reported goal of a "single, unified, 'beautiful' product, across everything." It started last year, as redesigns came to all of Google's big products, Search, Maps, Translate, Reader, Gmail, YouTube, etc, etc. A black navbar appeared, which Google later announced it was removing, only to then reverse course and keep the navbar. And then, earlier this month, it announced Google Play.ThreatMetrix Picks Up $18 Million To Expand Its Fight Against Cybercrime
Mar 27, 11:23AM
The world of data breaches and other malicious online acts are on the rise -- with some $2 trillion lost to IT thefts and other cybercrimes annually, according to research from Goldman Sachs -- so we will continue to see a focus on companies that try to combat these threats. One case in point: today, ThreatMetrix, a provider of cybercrime prevention solutions, says that it has raised $18 million to continue to expand its business. The Series D round was led by August Capital, with existing investors Tenaya Capital, US Venture Partners and CM Capital also participating.New iPad Runs 4G? Not In Australia, Says Consumer Watchdog
Mar 27, 10:55AM
One of the selling points for the new iPad has been the fact that it supports 4G, but at least in one market, that 4G promise is facing a challenge. In what might be a case of a storm in a teapot, the Competition and Consumer Commission in Australia has said that Apple cannot advertise its newest tablet as 4G-capable because it doesn't actually work on the 4G network that exists in the country. The regulator plans to take its argument to federal court this Wednesday, where it will try to order Apple to change its marketing of the product. It also wants Apple to offer refunds to any buyers that feel they have been mislead by the advertising.Angry Birds' Maker Rovio Ups Its Game, Buys Futuremark's Games Studio
Mar 27, 8:49AM
Rovio has made a killing out of its Angry Birds franchise, and today it announced a deal that points to how the mobile games maker is hard at work developing what could well be the follow up to that: it has bought Futuremark Games Studio, the gaming arm of software developer Futuremark. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. The team behind Futuremark Games Studio, based in Finland like Rovio, are all coming over in the deal. Games the developer has made include Unstoppable Gorg and Hungribles, as well as Shattered Horizon -- which, like Angry Birds Space, plays with the zero gravity concept.Vigilent Raises $6.7M From Accel For Intelligent Data Center Energy Management System
Mar 27, 4:00AM
Vigilent, a company that provides intelligent energy management systems for data centers, telecommunications facilities and large buildings, has raised $6.7 million in investments led by Accel Partners. This investment is part of Accel's new $100 million Big Data fund. Angel investors including Gaurav Garg and Peter Wagner also participated in this round. The startup's services help data centers with energy efficiency. As Vigilent's CEO Mark Housley explains, one of the biggest challenges companies face when managing data centers is cooling. In fact, he says cooling accounts for 50 percent of data center energy costs, and downtime (caused by cooling disruptions) can cost as much as $5,600 per minute for a company.Loyalty Service Swipely Adds Analytics And Targeted Campaigns
Mar 27, 4:00AM
Swipely, the startup led by TellMe Founder Angus Davis, is doubling down on its credit card-based loyalty strategy. The company first launched as a way to share your credit card purchases with your friends, but when that idea (as deployed by Swipely and others) failed to take off, Swipely shifted its focus to helping merchants with their loyalty programs. Today, it's launching the Main Street Marketing Manager, which includes the existing loyalty tools as well as more detailed analytics and a way to launch campaigns that target lapsed customers.Former Googlers Launch YC-Backed Dealupa: A PageRank For Daily Deals
Mar 27, 2:20AM
If you were to stop for a moment and consider what your perfect deals site would be, chances are it doesn't look a whole lot like any of the big names currently operating in the space. When it comes down to it, we all have our own individual preferences when it comes to products, activities, and experiences. So, the lowest common denominator would be a platform that routinely serves us great deals on the things we actually enjoy. As simple as that may sound, there are few deals players that do it well. Dealupa, a startup that's part of Y Combinator's current winter batch, is launching today with what it hopes is a solution to deal disappointment, aka deal fatigue.A Peek Inside Dropbox's Company-Wide Hack Week At Its Big New SF Offices
Mar 26, 11:53PM
From the outside, Dropbox looks occupied with launches these days. It came out with a big redesign this month, then followed up quickly with a new way to share files with Facebook friends. But the company is busy with a lot of internal growth, too. It recently moved into big new offices down the street from us in the tech-heavy SOMA district of San Francisco, and has been busy hiring elite engineers (or buying them, like it did with the recent acquisition of Cove). It also has the added challenge of bonding the team together in the middle of the action, trying to maintain its startup culture. So it took the idea of a hackathon -- usually a 24-hour event where developers compete to build small projects -- and turned it into a full week in early March.What's The Best iPad Streaming Music App? MOG's New iPad App vs Rdio vs Spotify
Mar 26, 10:47PM
Don't stop the music. It seems obvious, but MOG is the first of the big on-demand music streaming services to get this right on a tablet. Today MOG officially releases its iPad app, and it includes MOG Radio which when enabled will continue to play songs after your currently queued tracks finish. No more hours of accidental silence. It's also retina-ready to crisply display artwork, bios, editor's picks, and reviews. Compared to Rdio's iPad app and Spotify for iPhone (no iPad app available), MOG has the best experience for simply playing music, it streams in higher fidelity on Wi-Fi, and provides the most accurate recommendations. Here's a full breakdown of how the three compare on music playback, discovery, price, and sound quality.Flutter: The YC Startup That Wants To Put The World's Webcams To Good Use
Mar 26, 10:45PM
Say you're sitting at your laptop, listening to music while responding to emails, writing code, or reading blogs. Then your phone rings, and the typical scramble ensues: You minimize your browser, maximize your music app, and search frantically for the pause button or volume control -- all, hopefully, before you miss the call. Sound familiar? That's a problem that Flutter, a startup in Y Combinator's latest batch of companies, has solved. Flutter is an app for Mac that lets you control the play and stop functions on Spotify or iTunes by simply waving at your computer. You can watch it in action in the video embedded above. That in itself is pretty nifty, but the really interesting thing is the company's long-term vision, which goes well beyond the ability to start and stop a Rihanna song with a wave of your hand. Ultimately, Flutter co-founders Navneet Delal and Mehul Nariyawala tell me, Flutter wants to power the eyes of our devices -- in the same way that Siri functions as the iPhone's ears.99dresses Wants To Give Women An Infinite Closet
Mar 26, 9:53PM
The model for how women purchase clothing is essentially broken. Because it is an ever-changing status symbol and subject to trends, fashion is not exactly like any other goods. For example, with furniture you buy a new couch or a bed and then you have one, you don't need another one or a different one two weeks later. Not so with dresses or shoes. In fact if many women, myself included, had their way, we'd never wear the same thing twice.Blackboard Acquires Moodlerooms, NetSpot To Offer Open Source Learning Technology
Mar 26, 9:50PM
Blackboard, the maker of learning and education software for enterprises and schools, has acquired Moodlerooms and NetSpot, two providers of open source online learning technology. Financial terms were not disclosed. Both companies provide learning management hosting, support, and consulting services and products to clients using open source systems. NetSpot is also a reseller and service provider for Blackboard Collaborate. Moodlerooms primarily serves clients in North America, while NetSpot serves a client base in Australia, New Zealand and the Asia Pacific region.ThinkUp App Goes For-Profit In Bid To Decentralize The Social Web
Mar 26, 9:49PM
ThinkUp App, the open source web application born from the non-profit Expert Labs that lets you capture, store and analyze your activity across various social networking sites, has rebooted as a commercial entity. ThinkUp the company is headed up by Lifehacker founding editor Gina Trapani and famed early blogger and entrepreneur Anil Dash, who have been working together on Expert Labs since 2009. Expert Labs, meanwhile, will be shutting down. As a company, ThinkUp says it aims to utilize the content it collects on existing corporate social sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Foursquare to essentially subvert the closed ecosystem they've come to embody -- "using those connections to enable the creation of a new decentralized network behind the scenes." In effect, ThinkUp wants to use the weight of the existing closed social web against it. It's like using Judo against the powers that be to make the social web more open, and it sounds pretty awesome.Google+: The Charge Of The Like Brigade
Mar 26, 8:45PM
A recent post by a defecting Googler (at his new and previous home, Microsoft) suggests that a fundamental reordering of Google's priorities has made it far less than the company it once was. A sudden comprehension of the danger posed by Facebook's ever-expanding platform caused the company to enter a sort of berserker state, focusing solely on reinventing social while neglecting or amputating anything that didn't fit into its new mission. Or so the tale goes. There have been times recently when I've felt the need to deflect a few of the slings and arrows trained on Google. This time, however, they are well-deserved. Google's big bet was based on bad instincts, jealousy, and hubris — not the curiosity, experimentation, and agility that have characterized them theretofore. Could Google+ ever have been anything but a failure?Study: Enterprises Want More Marketing Data, But They Don't Know What To Do With It
Mar 26, 8:35PM
Online marketers and advertising are getting access to more and more data, but that's not enough, according to the 2012 Digital Marketing 2.0 Study commissioned by ad company DataXu. More than 350 "enterprise decision makers" in management, marketing, communications, digital, IT and social media were surveyed, and 75 percent of them said that data will help them improve their businesses. However, 58 percent said they didn't have the skills and technology needed to analyze marketing data, while more than 70 percent said the same about customer data.FamilyLeaf Brings Your Kin Together In Its Own Private Social Network
Mar 26, 8:04PM
Facebook is on its way to having a billion members, but it's not always making friends everywhere it goes. Two young men, both aged 19 and in the most recent crop of Y Combinator startups, think they've found a gap in the market that has yet to be served that well by the social network: families. FamilyLeaf was created by childhood friends Wesley Zhao and Ajay Mehta (last seen here spinning out a Y U NO yarn to gain entry into YC; it worked). And it was borne out of a desire to have an easy-to-use online space for you and your relations that address some key "misuse" of sites like Facebook -- something they say became especially apparent to the two of them after they left for college (respectively Wharton and NYU Stern, where they are now on a leave of absence).Condom Or Android Handset Name?
Mar 26, 7:59PM
Android phone makers are flooding the market with handsets. If you can't beat the iPhone in quality, beat it in quantity. But with that comes a problem: They have run out of marketable names. "What phone did you just buy, friend?" "Oh, you know, the new Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket HD LTE 32GB Special Edition." What's in a Name blog just posted this fun graph comparing condom names and Android phones. As you can see, most swing both ways and where there isn't crossover, like in the condom called Tingle, it's not that much of a stretch to imagine the name used -- the Samsung Galaxy Tingle. The graph also points out some huge opportunities for condom makers; the Trojan Hero would probably be a bigger success than the HTC Hero.If at any time you'd like to stop receiving these messages, just send an email to feeds_feedburner_com_techcrunch+unsubscribe-hmdtechnology=gmail.com@mail.feed2email.net.
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