Wednesday, September 19, 2012

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With iPhone 5, Apple Has Chiseled The Smartphone To Near Perfection

Sep 19, 3:14AM

IMG_1653You pick it up and it almost feels fake. That's not to say it feels cheap; because it doesn't — quite the opposite, actually. It just doesn't seem real. Certainly not to someone who has been holding the iPhone 4/4S for the past two years. It feels like someone took one of those devices and hollowed it out. The iPhone 5 is here. I've had the opportunity to play around with the latest iPhone for the past several days. I won't beat around the bush: it's fantastic.


Salesforce.com To Announce Cross-Company Instant Messaging For Chatter

Sep 19, 3:05AM

salesforcecom-chatterSalesforce.com will announce new features for its "Facebook for enterprise" service Chatter this week at its annual Dreamforce conference. CEO Marc Benioff already revealed during his TechCrunch Disrupt fireside chat that the company is adding Box/Dropbox style file sharing system called ChatterBox. Now I'm hearing from multiple sources that Chatter will also be getting secure cross-company instant messaging.


Blackstone Throws Down Just Over $2 Billion To Acquire Home Automation Giant Vivint

Sep 19, 2:02AM

ForIan1News broke tonight that The Blackstone Group, which operates the second largest equity fund businesses in the world, has agreed to acquire home automation giant Vivint in a deal that's worth just over $2 billion. Blackstone will be purchasing Vivint from Goldman Sachs, Jupiter Partners, and Peterson Partners, the company's current sponsors. The deal, which includes debt, will give the private equity firm more than a 50 percent stake in Vivint.


Twitter Is Baking Little Favors For Its Advertisers Into Every Change

Sep 19, 1:13AM

New Twitter profilesTwitter has released numerous "user experience enhancements" this summer — including today's update. But subtly embedded in each are the building blocks of a better business plan. Twitter is slowly and incrementally improving advertiser reach on the service, one change at a time. Twitter now shares two different perspectives on new feature announcements with the official blog and the advertising blog — marking a shift towards advertiser opportunities versus user experience.


Hands-On With GoldieBlox, The Toy That Wants To Make Girls Fall In Love With Engineering

Sep 19, 12:24AM

Screen shot 2012-09-18 at 5.22.38 PMAsk engineers about their favorite toys growing up, and chances are, LEGOs will be mentioned. Often, they'll be discussed with great intensity and detail, as in, "The best Christmas ever was in 1988, when I turned my entire bedroom into a LEGO City." There is something about LEGOs that really takes a hold of kids and sparks their interest in building things -- giving them the bug for engineering that can often carry on into their adult lives. The fact is, though, that toys like Legos have traditionally been marketed to boys more than girls. And as it turns out, some 90 percent of people who are employed as engineers today are men. Whether those two facts are related is hard to know, but either way, the dearth of women in engineering is seen by many as a real problem. And it's a problem that GoldieBlox founder Debra Sterling has set out to help solve.


Here Are The 10 Startups Taking The Spotlight Today At Founders Den: Screenleap, AnyPerk, And More

Sep 18, 11:47PM

founders den logoFounders Den, the "clubhouse for entrepreneurs" (it's like a co-working space, but classier) based in San Francisco's startup-heavy SoMa neighborhood, just kicked off its third demo day.


After Nixing M&A Offers, Android Panorama Developer TeliportMe Nabs Funding From Bill Gross, 500 Startups

Sep 18, 11:35PM

SC20120520-093931Last July, TeliportMe launched an Android app that allows users to capture and share panoramic images. The app, appropriately called 360, gives users the ability to not only capture high-res 360 panoramic views, but share their images on Facebook and Twitter, as well as view, comment on, and "fav" images captured by their friends. Essentially, it's Instagram in 360-degree mode.


Google+ Hangouts Now Let You Know Exactly Who Is Coming And Going

Sep 18, 11:04PM

18th Annual National Capital Barbecue BattleToday, the Google+ team shared some insight into a few tweaks that it's made to the Hangouts experience over the last couple of months, as well as some new initiatives. In a post on Google+, Chee Chew of Google discussed these improvements, which include the ability to block people, set a Hangout to 18+, and change a Hangout to public while it's in progress.


Source: Twitpic Has Been In Talks To Sell, And Getting Kicked Out Of Twitter's Apps Won't Help

Sep 18, 10:28PM

Twitpic for sale.03 PM copyCorrectly anticipating that Twitter's API crackdown would reach photo sharing services, Twitpic is actively talking to at least two potential acquirers and has received offers over the past few weeks, said one source familiar with the discussions. Founder Noah Everett is said to have wanted to sell and move on to new projects. Twitpic may have hoped to get a sale brokered before the hammer dropped, but today The Next Web noticed that Twitter removed the option from its apps to select a third-party image sharing service, killing off  Twitpic's main distribution channel.


Study: Want More Female Leadership? Use Consensus, Not Majority Rule

Sep 18, 10:04PM

screen-shot-2012-07-18-at-6-03-58-pmAs startups, mega-corporations, and governments strain to promote women leaders in technology, new evidence suggests that the relative timidity of women may simply be a function of voting procedure. When men outnumber women, groups who strive towards consensus decisions, rather than majority rule, see greater female participation. "Unanimous rule protects minority women, and under this decision rule they take up their equal share of the conversation," explains a new study in Political Science's preeminent, journal, The American Political Science Review. For those organizations that have bought into the premise that females add valuable perspectives, this new research is a simple way to solve a perennial issue.


Google Finally Starts Highlighting Its Indoor Imagery On Google Maps

Sep 18, 9:41PM

Google_maps_logoGoogle officially launched its Google Business Photos (a.k.a. Indoor Streetview) initiative in April 2010, but this indoor imagery was often hard to find and only appeared on Google+ Local and in the Google Search sidebar. On Google Maps, however, it was virtually impossible to find these panoramic indoor images. Starting today, Google will highlight indoor imagery with a yellow circle whenever you drag the orange pegman onto a map.


Reminder: Apple's iOS 6 Arrives Tomorrow, Here's What You Need To Know

Sep 18, 9:24PM

ios6Apple's latest mobile operating system gets released tomorrow, a few days ahead of the iPhone 5's launch on Friday. iOS 6 brings a lot of new stuff, and we've covered that in detail in previous posts. Here's the skinny on what's important to remember ahead of the iOS 6 launch tomorrow beyond the added features, which we'll let you know about as soon as it's live and ready for download.


Square's Atlantic Station Office In Atlanta Is Focusing On Infrastructure

Sep 18, 9:16PM

5272322925_9b2d20774b_zI spoke to Square today about some of their latest moving and shaking in recruiting, and learned that the company has nabbed a 5,000 square foot office space in the Atlantic Station section in Atlanta. This was first reported by the Atlanta Business Chronicle earlier this month, but we've learned what Square is up to.


Blue Apron Delivers All The Ingredients You Need To Cook Fresh Meals Every Week

Sep 18, 8:23PM

Blue ApronDo we need another subscription service to deliver things to the doorstep? Blue Apron surprises with a new take on the market: every week, all the fresh ingredients you need to cook three meals are delivered to your home.


Facebook Beta Launches New Mobile Ad Network Using Your Data To Target You With Banner Ads In Other Apps

Sep 18, 7:59PM

Facebook Mobile Ad NetworkFacebook today begins testing its own mobile ad network. Advertisers can pay to target you with ads for app stores or websites based on your Facebook data that appears while you're on other apps and mobile sites. Facebook tells me that, similar to its first off-site ad placements on Zynga.com, the goal is to show Facebook users more relevant ads wherever they go, even outside the social network's own properties. If you were looking for a big new way Facebook could make money but avoid hurting its user experience, here it is.


A Day In The Life Of A Hackathon Hacker: Meet David Kay [TCTV]

Sep 18, 7:18PM

Screen shot 2012-09-18 at 3.43.23 PMWe've written a lot about our Hackathon hackers: their shirts, their hats, their ability to code all night sustained by only junk food, beer, and Red Bull. But this year we decided to do something a little different. We followed one hacker, David Kay, through all 24 hours of the event. Through the ups, through the downs, and through the delirious moments.


Microsoft Updates SkyDrive With A Recycle Bin, Google Forms-Like Survey Tool Coming Soon

Sep 18, 6:56PM

2021.Omars-recycle-bin_7CDB5F3CMicrosoft just announced a few small but interesting updates to its cloud storage service SkyDrive. Just like your desktop, SkyDrive will now offer a recycle bin that allows you to recover files you may have accidentally deleted. In previous versions of SkyDrive, users had to acknowledge and dismiss a warning dialog before they deleted files. This dialog is now gone and has been replaced with an "undo" option.


Analyst Estimates On iPhone 5 Launch Weekend Sales Range From 3M-10M

Sep 18, 6:44PM

2012-iphone5-gallery1Analysts have begun making their predictions about the iPhone 5's odds of success for launch weekend sales, and in fact there's quite a range when it comes to how the experts see things shaking out. After Apple unveiled iPhone 5 pre-order totals of 2 million over 24 hours, double the 1 million the iPhone 4S managed, it would seem like multiplying out the 4S launch weekend total of 4 million total sales is a safe bet. But that's not necessarily the tack all industry analysts are taking.


Enterprise Flash Storage Company Virident Systems Raises $26M From Sequoia, Mitsui And Others

Sep 18, 6:38PM

610948_viridentlogofinal-newjpgVirident Systems, a company that develops flash-based storage class memory solutions for the enterprise, has raised $26 million in Series D funding led by Mitsui Global Investments with Globespan Capital Partners, Sequoia Capital and Artiman Ventures participating. To date, Virident has raised $76 million.


Google Teams Up With Harris Interactive To Launch New Self-Service Consumer Research Tool

Sep 18, 6:04PM

google-surveys-harrisMarket research firm Harris Interactive today announced that it is partnering with Google's recently launched Google Consumer Surveys "to develop and bring to market a new product that allows businesses, both large and small, to compare themselves to industry benchmarks at a fraction of the cost of traditional market research." Using Google's Consumer Surveys platform, Harris Interactive will now collect and distribute industry benchmarks. Businesses will be able to run their own surveys (for a price) and benchmark themselves against their competitors.



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