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Nielsen Acquires Vizu To Measure Online Ad Effectiveness
Jul 03, 2:42AM
Nielsen announced today that it's acquiring ad tech company Vizu. This isn't the kind of deal where you have to wait months for something to happen. Executive Vice President for Ad Effectiveness Scott McKinley says it's a "plug and play acquisition," and in fact, Vizu's Ad Catalyst will be available immediately as part of Nielsen's online ad measurement tools.Gojee Raises $2.8M From InterWest For Beautiful Recipe Aggregation
Jul 03, 1:30AM
Gojee, an aesthetically pleasing recipe-sharing site, has raised a first venture round of $2.8 million from InterWest Partners. The New York startup has pivoted its way into a growing site with more than 500,000 registered users -- and it's also been getting attention for its simple and beautiful design. It was nominated for the Crunchies' Best Design Award this past year. Keval Desai, a partner at Interwest, recently wrote a guest post for AllThingsD on the future of the Internet, citing Gojee's relationship with food enthusiasts as an example of how the medium is becoming more like television.No More Call Centers: Needle Grabs $10.5M To Turn Your Fans Into Customer Service Reps
Jul 03, 1:19AM
Thanks to increasingly powerful mobile and web technologies, people can work from practically anywhere. One eCommerce startup, the Utah-based Needle, sees a big opportunity for this mobile, remote, and telecommuting workforce to change the way businesses connect with their customers and influence the way consumers make purchasing decisions. Rather than relying on customer service reps stuffed into rows of cubicles in call centers to offer canned answers to customer questions, Needle offers a social eCommerce platform that connects online shoppers to experts and brand evangelists -- people that actually use the product. In April, as a way of demonstrating the "work anywhere" model -- and that Needle practices what they preach -- the team swapped out its traditional office for a decked-out Airstream motorhome. While this alternative approach may sound gimmicky, it seems that investors are intrigued, as the company announced today that it has closed a $10.5 million round of series B financing.Google Nexus 7 Review: When Hardware And Software (Mostly) Become One
Jul 03, 12:04AM
Little by little, Google is slowly piecing together a more cohesive and complete mobile OS. Having the right hardware to drive Android doesn't hurt either. While the Nexus 7 isn't quite what I expected Google to roll out last week at I/O given the Motorola Mobility acquisition, it's arguably the first real Android tablet to date. With a $200 starting price, Android users and those looking for a smaller tablet now have a legitimate alternative to the Kindle Fire.The Apple / Google / Facebook Message War Starts Now
Jul 02, 10:57PM
We're on the cusp of a global conflict that will see the three most powerful consumer Internet companies fighting to win control of interpersonal communication. The war will pit Facebook's unified Chat / Messages / Email vs Apple's cross-device iMessage system vs. Google's Gmail / GChat / Hangouts. If one emerges as the definitive victor, it could sway the future of digital human interaction. Read on as we survey the battlefield, review the weaponry of each company, and assess who could win the epic message war and the fortune that comes with it.Commerce Sciences Nabs $1.8M From Eric Schmidt, Joe Lonsdale To Make Online Shopping More Personal
Jul 02, 10:07PM
Commerce Sciences, an Israeli eCommerce startup currently shrouded in the infamous "stealth mode," wants to help personalize your online shopping experience. To do so, the Palo Alto and Israeli-based company is announcing today that it has raised $1.8 million in seed funding from a number of familiar names. The investors include Eric Schmidt's Innovation Endeavors, veteran Israeli VC firm Genesis Partners, T5 Capital, and a number of angel investors, including Backplane board chairman and Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale.Fiksu Raises $10M From Qualcomm Ventures, Charles River To Help Mobile App Makers Get Users
Jul 02, 9:35PM
Fiksu, a Boston-based company that helps mobile developers efficiently find new users, just picked up $10 million in a new round led by Qualcomm Ventures. Previous investors including Charles River Ventures also participated. "Qualcomm is wonderfully strategic for us in the mobile space," said Craig Palli, who is the company's vice president of business development. "They're so well tied to a variety of mobile handset manufacturers and that's the one area where Fiksu can really benefit from new relationships." The funding is going to go toward international expansion with more offices in the U.K. and Asia. The company currently has more than 100 people and plans to double its headcount in the next year.Nice Move: The Weather Channel Buys Weather Underground To Sharpen Focus On Digital
Jul 02, 9:22PM
Smart move, this: The Weather Channel has acquired pioneering online weather service Weather Underground for an undisclosed sum, the companies announced today. The deal is expected to close in several weeks. The Atlanta, Georgia-based The Weather Channel has long had a strong brand name, wide reach, and big revenues, but...Auto-Sunk. Check Your Hidden Facebook "Other" Inbox For Your Missing Emails
Jul 02, 7:52PM
Click 'Messages' on Facebook and then "Other" in the right sidebar and you might find emails missing from your Gmail or other personal and work accounts. Without giving you any warning or notification, Facebook last week changed your profile to hide any email addresses you've previously listed and instead show only your little-known "@facebook.com" address. Any messages sent to you or your @facebook.com address that weren't sent from friends, friends of friends, or email addresses registered to their Facebook accounts ends up there, easily missed. Now Facebook's unauthorized change to your preferred contact info is auto-syncing with address books for some mobile devices, so people don't even realize they're not pinging your Gmail, they're sending messages to your Other black hole. But rather than apologize, Facebook has implied to ReadWriteWeb that users are merely confused. Yes, users are confused...because Facebook changed their contact info without consent!Secure Your Retina MacBook With The MacLocks Lock Cable
Jul 02, 6:46PM
If you're the average Joe, you don't let your Retina MacBook out of your sight. But what if you're an IT guy with a fleet of these things to secure on a client site? What to do? MacLocks has just launched a locking case for the Retina MacBook, allowing folks to snap down their laptops almost anywhere. The case actually envelops the MacBook and the looped cable then fits over a table leg or pillar.Mixpanel Is Tracking More Than Actions Now, Introduces User Analytics
Jul 02, 6:43PM
Every time I talk to Mixpanel co-founder Suhail Doshi, he likes to update me on how many actions his analytics startup is tracking for its customers every month. (In case you're wondering: The latest number is more than 6 billion.) But Mixpanel isn't just tracking actions anymore — starting today, it's tracking people, too and providing a more "user-centric" view of its data. Specifically, when customers open up their Mixpanel dashboard, they'll see a new menu under the "actions" section called "people", where they can get data about all of their visitors, such as gender, age, and country, and then correlate that data with user activity, so that, for example, you can tell whether men or women are spending more time in your app. Doshi says these are the kinds of "really hard but very specific" questions that most companies have to build their own in-house analytics systems to answer.Hands-On With California Headphones: A Little Bit Country, A Little Bit Rock 'n' Roll
Jul 02, 6:21PM
Stop pretending to be a rap star. That's the note on the front California Headphones website and the driving philosophy behind the company's Laredo and Silverado headphones. You see, these headphones, much like Beats By Dr. Dre, are targeting a specific demographic with clear marketing and unique styling. But these headphones are more than just looking the part. They're tuned to better match the musical style of rock and country, with less pounding bass and a heaver investment in mids and highs. California Headphones is onto something here and has turned to Kickstarter to help advance the cause. The lifestyle headphone market has long focused on the urban culture. Since these headphones are tuned to match rap and R&B's style, they often do not reproduce rock or country accurately. Sure, there are always the great standby options of Sennheiser, Shure and other traditional audio companies, but more often than not, the styling is anything but inspiring. There's nothing wrong with wanting good looking headphones.I Was A Postmates Courier For A Day
Jul 02, 6:00PM
I've been a big fan of the PostMates Get It Now delivery service ever since it was launched more than a month ago, and use it every couple of weeks to order lunch whenever I'm feeling particularly lazy, when I'm jonesing for some food that's not within walking distance, or when I have a limited amount of time in between meetings. I've got much love for the PostMates couriers who bring me things that I wouldn't have gone out and gotten for myself. And so, when they asked if I wanted to spend an afternoon as a courier myself, of course I jumped at the opportunity. Which is how it came to pass that one Friday, I spent about 3.5 hours biking around, picking up mostly lunch orders and chocolates and delivering to various startups and tech-savvy customers in downtown San Francisco. So what was it like? Well let me tell you.Leaked Windows Phone Keyboard: Curved For Your Typing Pleasure
Jul 02, 5:10PM
Microsoft is on a hot streak. The company has never been cooler, pushing out hot new start screens (both desktop and mobile), excluding early-adopters from major upgrades (pulling a Google), and snagging the up-and-coming Yammer enterprise social network for a cool $1.2 billion. But sometimes people can get carried away. So is the case with this image of an alleged future Windows Phone keyboard, which curves out of the bottom right-side of the phone into an arc for one-thumb typing. As you can see, the image doesn't look very well put-together. But WMPowerUser claims that this image was leaked from an internal presentation, so it's entirely possible that it's a render.comScore: In U.S. Mobile Market, Samsung, Android Top The Charts; Apps Overtake Web Browsing
Jul 02, 5:08PM
comScore just released its latest monthly mobile numbers, which chart mobile phone usage for a three-month average period ending in May 2012. During this time, 234 million Americans age 13 and older used mobile devices, which is consistent with the company's previous report from February. Samsung ranked as the top handset manufacturer overall with a 25.7% market share, and Android came out on top, too, with a 50.9% share versus Apple's 31.9%.Acunote: YC Alum Takes On Project Management With A Real-Time, Gmail-Like Interface
Jul 02, 5:00PM
"On time and under budget" is manna from heaven for project managers the world over, but unfortunately for most of them, those working on the projects and those commissioning them, it's not often the case. Now, a Y Combinator alum (Winter 2011 class) called Acunote is launching a new project management system that wants to change that -- by offering a platform to help people manage their tasks better. With real time updates and a simple interface that bears a loose resemblance to Google's Gmail, Acunote is making it a lot easier and quicker for people to update what is going on (and what is not) in a project. And it is setting its sights on taking that to the next level with features to make it much more collaborative.Dark Clouds Be Gone: Apica Raises $5M From SEB, Others To Keep SaaS Services Running Without A Hitch
Jul 02, 4:58PM
Here's a timely funding announcement: Apica, a company that offers a solution enterprises can use to keep their cloud-based apps running smoothly -- even when there are problems in the clouds -- has just raised $5 million to continue expanding its services. The news coms after a weekend that saw several popular services like Instagram and Netflix collapse after a major storm knocked out one of Amazon's major data centers in North Virginia. The $5 million announced today will be used for product development, marketing and expanding particular services in the U.S. around server testing capacity for the company's cloud and mobile testing and monitoring services. It is a Series C round and was led by SEB Venture Capital, with existing investors Industrifonden, ALMI Invest, and KTH Chalmers Capital all participating.Youappi Secures $1 Million To Address App Discovery And Distribution In A Chaotic Market
Jul 02, 4:46PM
Youappi, the cross-platform app distribution startup which competes with Fiksu, has secured $1 million in seed funding from undisclosed Angel investors. It's now launching its solution on Tappible, a monetization and engagement platform for mobile applications. Youappi, which is based between Israel and New York, was founded by CEO Moshe Vaknin who left to do Youappi from Todacell last month. Youappi is trying to address the challenge of app discovery. You know the score - it's tough to find great apps. Appsfire and others are working well on this issue, but there's plenty more work to be done.80% Of Americans Work "After Hours," Equaling An Extra Day Of Work Per Week
Jul 02, 3:40PM
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.TechCrunch Makers Episode One: Inside Brooklyn's Makerbot With Bre Pettis
Jul 02, 3:12PM
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.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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