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YC-Backed Semantics3 Is A Massive Consumer Products Database To Rule Them All
Feb 25, 8:00PM
As more merchants flock to the web to sell their products, there has been a deluge of data to be indexed by retailers who are looking to see where certain products are being sold and for how much. Parsing and extracting the value from all of this data is a huge challenge. YC-backed Semantics3 has created a database that aims to track every product sold online, and every price it has ever been sold at, providing retailers with an API to this database.MakeXYZ Helps You Find An Idle 3D Printer Near You
Feb 25, 7:58PM
Idle 3D printers are the bane of the creative class. That's why MakeXYZ.com is so important. It is a service that helps you find 3D printers near you and request print jobs. Like the remote batch jobs of yore, you can simply contact a MakeXYZ maker and they'll print off your item.TokBox's WebRTC-Based Video Chat Platform Now Supports Firefox Nightly And Aurora
Feb 25, 7:33PM
TokBox, the live video-chat platform that was acquired by Spain’s Telefónica in 2012, was one of the first companies to fully bet on WebRTC (the Web Real-Time Communication API), the quickly developing standard for plugin-free, in-browser video, audio and text chat. After launching its Chrome integration earlier this year, TokBox today debuted its support for Mozilla’s Firefox, starting with the bleeding-edge Aurora and Nightly editions of the popular browser. Now that TokBox supports Firefox, developers using its WebRTC-based OpenTok platform can write video-enabled apps that allow for chats between users on iOS, Chrome and Firefox. With WebRTC now being part of Firefox’s early-release versions, users can expect to see it in the stable version of Firefox somewhere around version 21 or 22 (the stable channel is currently on version 19). As TokBox CEO Ian Small told me last week, his company started working with Mozilla around last November. His team received early access to Mozilla’s WebRTC implementations and worked closely with the team there as Mozilla stabilized its own implementations of the standard. TokBox’s OpenTok platform ensures that developers don’t have to worry about the different WebRTC implementations on different browsers. The platform will also provide numerous additional services that a native WebRTC app doesn’t provide, including, for example, broadcasting to a large group of viewers and video recording. OpenTok, the company says, is currently being used by more than 70,000 organizations, including the likes of Major League Baseball, Ford, Bridgestone and the remote presence startup Double Robotics. “Between Firefox 21 and Chrome 25,” Small told me, “we now have what appears to be a reasonably stable interop situation.” WebRTC, he argued, is still “in its infancy.” The native version in the browser can be used to connect two people, but the standard doesn’t offer features like letting developers connect more than two people at a time or even record sessions. Based on TokBox’s experience with WebRTC, Small also believes that the spec should accommodate alternative video codecs besides the Google-backed VP8 format. In addition, he argues that bandwidth allocation, which would allow apps to devote more bandwidth to the speaker, for example, should be part of the standard. Despite these issues, however, Small believes that WebRTC will see “serious pickup” in the second half of this year, especially now that most of the key mobile and desktop platforms support it.ZTE Launches 5.7″ 720p Grand Memo Smartphone With Quad-Core CPU And Android 4.1
Feb 25, 6:31PM
ZTE has just introduced the Grand Memo flagship smartphone at MWC in Barcelona. The Grand Memo has top-shelf specs including a 5.7-inch 720x1280 TFT display, a quad-core Qualcomm 800 processor, a 13-megapixel rear-facing camera and a front-facing camera for video chat. ZTE is marketing this as its phablet experience, as competitors like Huawei, Samsung, and most recently Asus bet big on extra-large screens. Considering how much data and texting overpower our smartphone usage, it seems to be paying off.Ad-free Social Platform App.net Goes Freemium With Free, Invite-Only Plan
Feb 25, 6:03PM
App.net, the project that emerged from founder Dalton Caldwell's desire to build a social platform that wasn't driven by advertising, is adding its first free option today. Given Caldwell's emphasis on creating a product that people are actually willing to pay for, this might seem like a step backwards, or one of those infamous startup "pivots." However, Caldwell told me that this actually isn't a change of plans, and to back that up he pointed to his initial blog post announcing the project back in July. The post didn't explicitly say that that there are going to be both paid and free tiers, but the two positive examples of non-advertising companies that Caldwell cited are Dropbox and particularly Github, which both offer free services and then charge for additional features.Microsoft Says Windows Phone Store Now Features More Than 130K Apps, 40K New Developers Registered Since WP8 Launch
Feb 25, 5:59PM
Microsoft only provides sporadic updates to how the Windows Phone Store is doing, but today, it used the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona to offer a few new numbers. According to Microsoft, there are now over 130,000 apps in the Windows Phone Store and the average Windows Phone user has now downloaded 55 apps. App downloads, the company says, have increased by 75% since the Windows Phone 8 launch late last year and paid app revenue has increased 91%. The Windows Phone developer ecosystem, too, is growing quickly according to Microsoft. More than 40,000 new developers registered with the company in the first 90 days since the launch of Windows Phone 8 and there are now over 15,000 apps in the store that leverage features only available in Windows Phone 8. SDK downloads, too, are up and have now topped 500,000 since October 30, 2012. One thing that’s worth noting when looking at the number of new developers is that Microsoft reduced the price of registering as a developer from $99 per year to $8 for the first year during the eight days after the Windows Phone 8 launch, so the numbers may be a good bit higher because of this. New Dev Center App Microsoft also launched a mobile version of its Dev Center dashboard today. The Dev Center app provides developers with easy access to all the key metrics about their app, including download data, crash trends and reviews. The app, of course, also features a live tile and lets developers share a link to their app with others without having to go into the store first. To make Windows Phone even more attractive to developers, the company also teamed up with services like Box, mobile backend provider Buddy and Photon Cloud, a service for game developers, to offer Windows Phone developer a number of special offers like free API calls and free service for a limited time.One In Four Mobile Users Keep Dirty Pics Or Vids On Their Smartphone, And We All Know It's You
Feb 25, 5:50PM
A new survey from software security company AVG announced today reveals that a full 25 percent of mobile users keep "intimate photos or videos" on their smartphones or tablet devices, a surprisingly high number given that only 36 percent said they would be comfortable checking their bank balances from a smartphone screen. AVG surveyed 5,107 smartphone users in the U.K., U.S., France, Germany and Brazil to get a broad look at how pervy we all are.Zynga Closes Baltimore Office, Consolidates in Texas, New York
Feb 25, 5:25PM
Zynga is cutting costs further by closing its Baltimore studio and consolidating its presence in New York City and Texas. The moves follow a series of cost-cutting efforts that saw the closure of the Boston and Tokyo offices along with layoffs for about 5 percent of the company’s workforce. Those moves allowed the company to save $25 million last quarter. In today’s changes, Zynga is consolidating the McKinney, Texas, office, which came out of the very successful Newtoy acquisition back in 2010. The company is moving the 30 or so employees there to Dallas, which is an hour away. The studio’s leaders and Newtoy’s founders Paul and David Bettner left in the last year as their “With Friends” line of games had a strong run under Zynga. Zynga is also closing the Baltimore studio, which was behind CityVille 2. Zynga recently shut that game down after it didn’t live up to expectations as a follow-up to the original CityVille. The company is also closing down one of its Austin offices and moving those employees to North Austin. Zynga’s New York City offices will also get moved to the company’s mobile studio in the city. Fewer than 1 percent of the company’s employees will be affected, Zynga said. Zynga chief operations officer David Ko said in a statement: "In an effort to leverage resources as we focus on creating franchises and driving profitability, Zynga has made changes to four of our US offices. We are closing the McKinney, Texas and downtown Austin offices and relocating those teams near-by to our existing Dallas and North Austin offices. And, we will be consolidating our NYC offices to move staff to our NYC mobile studio. Also, as a part of today's changes, the Baltimore studio will be closed. While these decisions are always difficult, these steps will affect approximately 1% of our workforce and enable us to focus our resources on the most significant growth opportunities."Google.org Provides $4.4M In Grants To The Internet Society And NSRC To Improve Internet Access In Sub-Saharan Africa
Feb 25, 5:15PM
Internet access in many regions in Sub-Saharan Africa is still far from perfect, and a number of non-profits are working to improve this situation by providing technical assistance and working with local organizations to provide services to ISPs. Today, Google.org, Google’s philanthropic arm, announced that it is providing a total of $4.4 million to the Network Startup Resource Center (NSRC) and the Internet Society (ISOC) to help improve Internet access in this region. A majority of the $4.4 million ($3.1 million) will go to the Network Startup Resource Center, an organization based at the University of Oregon that trains network engineers and operators who “develop and maintain the Internet infrastructure in their respective countries and regions by providing technical information, engineering assistance, training, donations of networking books, equipment and other resources.” The grant is specifically meant to help the NSRC bring Internet access to students and staff at about 50 schools in Sub-Saharan Africa. The remaining $1.3 million will go to the Washington D.C.-based Internet Society, which will use it to improve and create Internet Exchange Points (IXP) in emerging markets. Internet service providers use IXPs to exchange traffic between their networks. Because the traffic is directly routed between ISPs, these providers then don’t have to pay a third-party provider to move the data between the two ISPs’ networks. This grant, the Internet Society writes today, will allow it to bring more of these IXPs to providers in emerging markets. This should help local ISPs to work more effectively, which in turn should also drive down end-user cost and increase Internet performance. “The Internet Society has proved to be one of the most effective institutions in the Internet community," said Vint Cerf, vice president and Chief Internet Evangelist at Google in a statement today. "I am confident that they will apply their grant wisely to extend their work to increase Internet access for everyone, including those in emerging markets.” Today’s grant marks Google.org’s second major grant so far this year. In January, Google also provided the Energy Foundation with a $2.56 million grant to support smart grid policy reform.YC-Backed Microryza Is A "Kickstarter" For Scientific Research
Feb 25, 5:00PM
Do you want to know whether cannibalism existed amongst Tyrannosaurus Rexes or whether specific viruses contribute to lung cancer risk? Better yet, do you want to be part of making this research happen faster? A Y Combinator-backed startup called Microryza is positioning itself as a “Kickstarter” for science research. The idea for Microryza sprouted when Cindy Wu, then an undergraduate at University of Washington, found that she had little hope of getting funding for studying a potential anthrax therapeutic. She had discovered it after helping to create a video game that let regular people fold and create virtual enzymes. They came up with 87 different mutants that summer through the video game, and found that one could potentially treat anthrax infections after winning an MIT-based synthetic biology competition. But her professor at the time was skeptical that she could get funding to study it further. “He told me it was a small, early-stage idea and that because I was an undergraduate, I couldn’t get an NIH (National Institutes of Health) or NSF (National Science Foundation) grant,” she said. But he then let her pitch at a lab meeting and funneled money from another existing lab grant into her work. “I was so lucky. But I realized there are so many other undergraduates, graduate students and faculty members that would never be able to get funding,” she said. “I talked to 100 different scientists and found that all of them had high-risk ideas, but they never wrote proposals because they didn’t think it would go through.” So last year, she and co-founder Denny Luan launched Microryza. They work with five or six universities including the University of Washington, USC and UC Santa Cruz. They vet every single researcher on the platform. Luan said Microryza looks for three things: 1) Is the researcher who they say they are? 2) Is the proposal fundamentally new research? 3) Is the researcher capable of carrying out the project? They also work with the researchers to make sure there’s a lasting connection with their backers long after they receive funding. This is the hard part with science-focused Kickstarter concepts (and Microryza isn’t the only one), because research can take years before backers see conclusive results. There have been a few attempts with sites like Petridish, which launched last year and appears to have more than 30 completed projects. Luan and Wu worked on building an informationEyeing An IPO, Box Doubles Down On Device, Content And Login Security For Cloud Storage Platform
Feb 25, 5:00PM
It's no secret that cloud storage company Box is preparing for a public offering in the next year. Part of the company's growth strategy for the year is being able to go after large, enterprise clients. And in order to land these account and solve cloud storage problems for companies with 100,000 or more users, Box has to ramp up its security offerings. Today, Box is debuting a number of new enterprise-grade security features and product integrations that aim to protect the entire content lifecycle, across users, devices and apps.HowAboutWe Launches New Ad, Landing Page To Promote Couples Rewards Product
Feb 25, 4:58PM
HowAboutWe launched its Couples product all the way back in September, but as an online dating site catering to both singles and couples, the startup is toying with the best way to market both products simultaneously. That said, HowAboutWe has launched a new commercial alongside a new site landing page with options for both singles and couples. The company has been testing the landing page, which expands and offers more information on either product, for the past three weeks. The new unified experience will now spread more rapidly throughout the New York area as HowAboutWe begins its transition from a traditional dating site to a lifestyle brand for relationships in all stages.Barnes & Noble Mulling A Break From Hardware Sales In A Move That May Split Company
Feb 25, 4:57PM
According to a number of reports, beleaguered bookseller Barnes & Noble could be shuttering its Nook hardware division and focusing primarily on connecting its digital content to other tablets and readers. In a related report, B&N founder Leonard Riggio is considering a buy-out of the company's consumer division and spinning out the Nook and collegiate sales divisions while maintaining the bookstores.Survey Anecdote Suggests We Have No Idea What's Going On At Google+
Feb 25, 4:52PM
By Google's count, Google+ has over 500 million "upgraded" members and some 135 million people active "in just the stream." By researchers' best estimates, however, the answer is a bit more complicated.Warby Parker Grabs New Investment From American Express & J. Crew CEO, Closing $41.5M Round
Feb 25, 4:30PM
New York-based eyewear startup Warby Parker is off to a good start in 2013, having recently been fingered as a possible partner for Google Glass. Now the company is reported to have gained an additional investment from American Express and J. Crew chief executive Millard S. Drexler. The new investors went in alongside General Catalyst, Spark Capital, Tiger Global Management, Thrive Capital, Lerer Ventures and Menlo Ventures, in a round totaling $41.5 million in financing, which officially closed in January.First Round Expands $500K Student-Run Investment Arm, Dorm Room Fund, To New York City Universities
Feb 25, 4:00PM
Last fall, First Round Capital debuted The Dorm Room Fund in Philadelphia, which was a $500,000 fund run by an all-student investment team to invest purely in student-run startups in the area. Last year's venture paired 11 undergraduate and graduate students from University of Pennsylvania and Drexel University. Today, First Round is announcing the expansion of this initiative to New York City. Students can apply here.ABC's Handling Of Oscars' Online & Mobile Streaming May Set Precedent For Future "Event TV" Airings
Feb 25, 3:57PM
If you listened to the online chatter about last night's Oscars telecast, you might come away with the impression that the show tanked. Well, maybe it hit a lot of sour notes in terms of its questionably comedic, and in some cases downright offensive, bits, but in terms of advertising, it has nothing to be ashamed of. ABC sold out its ad inventory at $1.7 million-$1.8 million for a 30-second spot - the highest prices in the last five years. The network is also maximizing the ad spend associated with the Oscars, too, by putting the show online immediately after it aired.Intel's Dual-Core CloverTrail+ Atom Z2580 Impresses, But Likely Won't Be Intel's Smartphone Savior
Feb 25, 3:53PM
Intel officially launched its new dual-core "CloverTrail+" Atom system-on-a-chip today at MWC in Barcelona. The CloverTrail+ is a direct successor to Intel's first smartphone SoC, Medfield, but gets its name from the company's tablet-focused CloverTrail platform. The Atom Z2580 dual-core processor is the top-of-the-line SKU in the new lineup, which you can see powering a mobile graphics rendering demo featuring Epic Citadel in the video above.Visa, Samsung Ink NFC Deal, Galaxy S IV First In Line For Deep Integration; ROAM Is Visa's First 'Ready' Mobile Payment Partner
Feb 25, 3:28PM
Visa is swiftly moving ahead announcing its first partners for its new NFC initiative and push into the wider world of mobile payments -- two programs it announced a few days ago that come with a set of APIs to let third parties integrate the credit card giant's payment services more seamlessly into their own. Visa has named Samsung as its first global NFC partner, and dongle maker Ingenico-owned ROAM as its first mobile payment partner for its Visa Ready program.Last Call: Disrupt NY Startup Battlefield Apps Are Due Tonight
Feb 25, 3:12PM
This is it! Today, Monday, February 25, is the very last day to submit applications to Disrupt NY's Startup Battlefield. They have to be submitted and completed by 11:59 PST tonight. Stop procrastinating and get those apps in.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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