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The Basis B1 Fitness Band Is Amazing But Still Needs Polish
Mar 18, 9:09PM
Being as chiseled as I am is tough. You have to eat right (brownies only every other day), exercise (take the stairs to the attic), and keep tabs on things like your heart rate and body temperature while playing Sim City. That's why the Basis is one of the best "general purpose" body monitors I've seen. The band, which senses your blood flow, body temperature, and perspiration along with steps and motion, is a small, discreet watch-like system that works surprisingly well as a standard pedometer but offers a way to break bad habits and make new ones.Security Expert Brian Krebs Faced A Real-Life SWATing After Posting About Russian Cybercrime Site
Mar 18, 8:43PM
Security writer Brian Krebs' phone was spoofed and a SWAT team called to his home last week by hackers who apparently took offense at his investigations into various online hacking organizations. His website also suffered a denial of service attack for a short period.iPhone Still Ranks Far Above Samsung Galaxy Line In Mobile Ads, Says Velti
Mar 18, 8:42PM
A lot of headlines have focused on the new Galaxy S4 as a potential iPhone challenger in terms of hype and mindshare, but mobile ad firm Velti offers a different perspective in its February summary of global exchange data from its network. The company still sees iOS and iPhone dominating among mobile advertisers, despite the rising tide of Android devices.Philadelphia Startup SnipSnap Finally Brings Its Mobile Coupon Clipping App To Android
Mar 18, 8:32PM
The team at SnipSnap has been quietly plugging away on an Android version of its popular mobile coupon app for what seems like ages now, but the wait for all you cost-conscious Android devotees is over. After some seven months in development, the Philly-based startup has finally pushed its eponymous app into the Google Play Store.Top Hat Monocle Takes Its Classroom Response System International, Signs Up 25K Students In Asia-Pacific Region
Mar 18, 8:20PM
Top Hat Monocle, the Toronto, Canada-based service that provides a web-based clicker and online homework tool that aims to make large lecture-based classes more engaging just announced that it is expanding its reach to the Asia-Pacific region, with a focus on Australia and New Zealand. The company also announced that more than 25,000 students are currently signed up to use the services in the next semester. These students, the company notes, come from 27 of Australia’s 39 universities and New Zealand. "Top Hat Monocle is the first cloud-based classroom response tool brought to Australia, and we look forward to capturing a significant share of the APAC higher education market," said Rok Kopp, Director of International Sales at Top Hat Monocle in a prepared statement today. Australia currently has about 1 million students who are enrolled in its universities. So far, all of the companies that used Top Hat Monocle were in North America, with the exception of one school in Namibia. "A traveling professor from Canada brought it over, and they’ve adopted it for their whole school now," Top Hat Monocle COO Andrew D'Souza told me earlier today. Today’s announcement marks the company’s first official international expansion. Top Hat’s web-based tool allows students to use their laptops, phone and tablets to provide instant feedback to teachers through polls, quizzes and open-ended questions. Teachers can also use it to show students interactive demos. Beyond these feature, the service also offers a homework tool, gradebook and a file-sharing tool. The company currently has an office in Sydney and seven sales representatives who will support its operations in the region. Top Hat Monocle recently announced that it raised $1.1 million in follow-on funding, on top of the $8 million it announced last July. The company currently has over 70 employees and its technology is currently being used at over 250 universities worldwide.Windows Azure Adds Support For PhoneGap, Dropbox and Hadoop
Mar 18, 8:18PM
Windows Azure has added new support for a number of services including PhoneGap, Dropbox and Hadoop. According to a blog post by Scott Guthrie, a corporate vice president in the Microsoft Tools and Servers group, developers can connect both HTML5 web-client apps, Apache Cordova/PhoneGap and Windows Phone 7.5 clients to use Windows Azure Mobile Services as a backend.Twitter Now Lets Its Self-Service Advertisers Access Advanced Campaign Tools, Target Based On Interests, Device Or Sex
Mar 18, 8:15PM
Twitter wants brands to be able to target their ads effectively, otherwise why would you spend money to spray and pray your message to every single person on the network? Since the micro networking site can trap a lot of information about you based on who you follow and what types of posts you interact with, it only makes sense that these would become targeting options for advertising purposes. Today, the company announced a few new ways that its self-serve advertisers can target users to advertise to, two new ways based off of interests and by device. For example, if you are promoting a new iOS app, you’ll be able to target iOS users only, rather than hitting up Android users who won’t care or click. Up until now, only big brands could do things like this. In addition to the targeting options, Twitter has opened up its advanced campaign tools to all US advertisers: For interests, Twitter now lets advertisers choose any account to base its targeting on. The example that Twitter gives is if you’re a golf shop, you might want to target users with the same interests as those who follow say, Tiger Woods. This gives brands a whole new “social graph” to scrape for potential clickers and buyers. It makes a lot of sense, actually. The only flaw with this approach is that you have no idea why someone followed Tiger Woods in the first place, as it may have nothing to do with golf. Having said that, this is a logical starting point. In addition to starting with the interest graph of followers of any account, you can choose from 350 interest categories that will line up with a subset of users. Again, this isn’t perfect, but it’s a good starting place. All of this targeting allows better-tailored messages so that there’s a better shot of actual success. The device targeting is quite brilliant, since this is data which Twitter can easily collect. Where this will be really handy is when advertisers are setting up landing pages and will now have an easy way to make sure that the right devices are seeing the right pages, without having to worry about sniffing out what user agent people’s devices are throwing back. Want to show off more colors to an iOS user? Go a bit more boring with BlackBerry users? Now you can: Tie this toEA CEO John Riccitiello Steps Down, Larry Probst Becomes Executive Chairman
Mar 18, 8:08PM
EA’s CEO John Riccitiello has just submitted his letter of resignation to the company’s board. He’s stepping down on March 30 and Larry Probst is stepping in as Executive Chairman. Probst will lead the hunt for a permanent CEO. Riccitiello has led EA since 2007 and through a dramatic transformation in the industry as the gaming world has moved from selling expensive console games on the shelves of big-box retailers to one in which mobile phones and tablets are fast-becoming a platform of choice for many developers. He was president and chief operating officer from 1997 to 2004, then left EA to co-found and lead Elevation Partners until he was later rehired by the company. EA said in the release announcing his resignation that its revenues and earnings per share for the current quarter will be at the “low end” of the guidance in its last release from January 30. A few other mid and senior-level executives sounded surprised at the changes in just asking around so far. But EA suffered a big black-eye in the last few weeks with the botched launch of Sim City. We’re still figuring out details. Updating…. Electronic Arts Announces Change in Executive Leadership Larry Probst Appointed Executive Chairman, Effective Immediately Company Updates 2013 Fiscal Outlook REDWOOD CITY, Calif. – March 18, 2013 – Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: EA) today announced that John Riccitiello will step down as Chief Executive Officer and as a member of the Board of Directors, effective March 30. The Board has appointed Larry Probst as Executive Chairman to ensure a smooth transition and to lead EA's executive team while the Board conducts a search for a permanent CEO. The Board will consider internal and external candidates with the assistance of a leading executive search firm. Mr. Probst has played a leadership role at EA since 1991. In addition to serving as Chairman of the Board since 1994, he previously served as the Company's CEO from 1991 to 2007. As CEO, Probst successfully grew the Company's annual revenues from $175 million to approximately $3 billion, led EA into new platforms such as mobile, online and other emerging markets and expanded its international presence to more than 75 countries. "We thank John for his contributions to EA since he was appointed CEO in 2007, especially the passion, dedication and energy he brought to the Company every single day," said Mr. Probst. "JohnZynga Looks To Revive Draw Something With A Sequel That's Much More Of A Social Network
Mar 18, 8:04PM
Zynga’s biggest acquisition to date — the $180 million deal to buy Draw Something-maker OMGPOP last year — was the one it ended up being the most pilloried for. At its peak, Draw Something was beating Zynga’s longstanding Words With Friends franchise, a sore point for a company that positioned itself as the dominant social gaming company in the world. After it was acquired, the hit game plateaued then declined — as titles often do in the hits-driven world of the business. But just because the company took a writedown on the game, it doesn’t mean it is writing it off. (Seriously, sorry for the terrible pun.) In fact, Zynga is re-investing in the franchise with a sequel that is designed to have a lot more longevity. OMGPOP head Dan Porter and Ryan Seacrest just tweeted a small preview. From what we hear, it sounds like it will be much more of a social platform where players get to keep and show off their drawings instead of having them disappear into the game. This way the very best artists can accumulate followings inside the game and the content will become a lot more long-lasting for the players. It’s a smart move for the company because it may make the game a lot stickier. Plus, it gets Zynga into game genres that are much more creative than its casual sim, Farmville history would suggest. On top of that, it looks like Zynga’s also involving a lot more celebrities. That’s in keeping with what Porter originally wanted to do with the game when he started exploring TV game show and transmedia opportunities. He has a long and unusual career in the music business and ties to the media world out of New York. Zynga has a mixed track record with sequels. Farmville 2 has done well, but Cityville 2 and Mafia Wars 2 both flopped. This is the first time they’ll be doing a major sequel purely on mobile platforms. The original still apparently has between 10 and 20 million players every month, so there’s a base that they can cross-market the title to. Presumably, they’ve gotten a lot savvier about doing early beta testing to make sure users don’t fall out of the game.Cheezburger's Ben Huh On Why Founders And Companies Should Be More Funny [TCTV]
Mar 18, 7:57PM
A lot of founders and companies will say that their big focus is on being taken seriously -- especially at the earlier stages. But Ben Huh, the CEO of the super popular Cheezburger Network of websites, says that people should also focus on being taken not-so-seriously. Humor can help provide an important edge in the business world, he says, and it's a tool that's not used nearly often enough.The Washington Post To Add Paywall For Frequent Readers
Mar 18, 7:33PM
Political junkies may have a bit less change in their pockets after this summer: The Washington Post is setting up a metered paywall for its online content. The staple of D.C. news will begin charging users who view more than 20 articles per month, "although the company has not yet decided how much it will charge," wrote Washington Post writer, Steven Mufson, in the Washington Post about the Washington Post (meta).DrawChat Creator Launches His Mobile Ad Startup Namo Media, Raises $1.9M Round Led By Google Ventures
Mar 18, 7:01PM
Late last year, former Googler Gabor Cselle had a problem. He'd launched a fun app called DrawChat, and it was starting to see some real usage — which would be great, except Cselle told me that DrawChat was always meant to be "a palate cleanser" and that he wanted to pursue a "billion-dollar thing." So he auctioned off DrawChat (it was purchased by OneLouder, a division of Handmark) and got to work on his big idea, which he's announcing today. Cselle said that the goal of his new startup Namo Media is to fix some of the big problems in mobile advertising. That's a pretty common refrain among mobile ad startups, but Cselle has something specific in mind — creating native ads that are part of the stream of content in mobile apps. In other words, ads that are both less annoying and more lucrative. He isn't ready to get specific about the product yet, only to talk about the general idea and the team (more on that in a second). He did compare his approach to Facebook's, except for a wide range of "content heavy apps," such as news apps or photo-sharing apps.TechCrunch Giveaway: Kindle Fire HD, Kindle Paperwhite And A Ticket To Disrupt NY
Mar 18, 6:49PM
Want a chance to win a free ticket to Disrupt NY, as well as a free Kindle Fire HD and a Kindle Paperwhite? Yes? Who wouldn't? If so, keep reading.CumuLogic Pivots, Launches AWS-Style Service For Customers To Put Behind The Firewall
Mar 18, 6:37PM
CumuLogic is launching a new a modular service that provides customers with a way to choose what services to use on either a cloud or on-premise architecture. Executives say it gives customers a way to have AWS-style services behind the firewall.YC-Backed CircuitLab Has 70K Monthly Users For Its Browser-Based Electronics Design And Simulation Tool
Mar 18, 6:34PM
CircuitLab is coming up on its one year anniversary, and the startup (now part of Y Combinator's winter 2013 cohort) now boasts 70,000 monthly active users, who run an average of one circuit simulation every six seconds. The phenomenal traction for the electrical-engineering-focused startup has a lot to do with the team offering up a tool that's both free and particularly well-suited to educational use, and it bodes well for CircuitLab's chances of helping early stage hardware startups get off the ground.Enterprise-Focused Emergence Capital Takes On Alison Berkley Wagonfeld As Operating Partner
Mar 18, 6:12PM
Emergence Capital Partners, an enterprise-focused venture firm that has backed Salesforce.com, Yammer and Box, just took on a new operating partner with the hiring of Alison Berkley Wagonfeld. She comes from Harvard Business School's California Research Center down in Menlo Park. Before that, she co-created QuickenLoans at Intuit, which eventually became one of the biggest online home loan lenders in the U.S. She was also an early employee and VP of marketing and business development at Greenlight.com, a Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers-backed company that was acquired by CarsDirect. At Emergence, she’ll help the firm’s portfolio companies with their recruiting. She’ll also work on marketing Emergence’s brand and ideas around how cloud-based software services will evolve. The decade-old firm has $575 million under management. The firm does both early and growth-stage investments at the Series A and B levels, but Wagonfeld said the firms feels it can help the most at the very earliest stages. They look at companies that deliver software-as-a-service and are now looking at mobile business applications and social applications for the enterprise. “We believe that we will see a new wave of companies in these sectors that can take advantage of the increasingly low cost of technology to create service businesses that scale in a capital-efficient way,” she said in an e-mail. She pointed to the firm’s recent deal to invest in Top Hat Monocle, a mobile-based education platform that helps students engage with their instructors. While the venture community is swinging away from consumer to enterprise after B2B IPOs outperformed much-hyped consumer IPOs from Groupon and Zynga over the past two years, she says the firm isn’t feeling that much competition because of its focus. “Emergence focuses exclusively on SaaS companies,” she said. “This focus has enabled the firm to gain domain expertise in what it takes to be successful, and entrepreneurs seem to appreciate the firm’s deep knowledge about SaaS best practices and key metrics.”Mozilla Plans To Improve Firefox Developer Tools With In-Browser Editing, Better Firebug Integration, Network Panel & More
Mar 18, 6:10PM
Last week, Mozilla technology evangelist Paul Rouget asked web developers what improvements they wanted to see in Firefox’s developer tools. Based on the feedback the team got on HackerNews and Twitter, the Firefox DevTools team spent the last week hacking and prototyping a number of new and improved developer features that will likely find their way into a stable version of Firefox in the future. The number one request, Rouget writes, was to make it easier for developers to code in the browser and control the browser from editors and integrated development environments (IDEs). The team is exploring two approaches for this right now. The DevTools team built a proof of concept that shows live editing using the popular Sublime Text editor and Firefox’s built-in remote capabilities. In addition, though, Mozilla is also looking at adding an editor right into Firefox. This wouldn’t be the first time for Mozilla to look into a browser-based editor. Back in 2009, Mozilla started working on Bespin, which later became Skywriter, but this project is now inactive. With the CSS and HTML editor Thimble, however, Mozilla recently picked up this idea again and while Rouget writes that the organization is still trying to figure out what a new editor in the DevTools could look like, there is clearly some expertise for how to build browser-based text editors at Mozilla. Another feature developers asked for is a Chrome- and Firebug-like network panel and timeline; the team already developed a prototype that makes it easier to see how a web app uses the network. The Firefox team is also working to improve the browser’s compatibility. Currently, Rouget writes, “if you’re a Firebug user, the Firefox DevTools might get in your way.” To ensure that doesn’t happen, Mozilla will add an option to disable the “inspect” menu from the context menu and the team is also looking for ways to integrate Firebug in the DevTools box. Other improvements the team is working on include the ability to dock tools on the right side of the browser (already working in Firefox Nightly), support for CoffeeScript and debugging minimized CSS and JavaScript files, as well as the ability to see what gets repainted on a page (also currently available in Firefox Nightly). Rouget notes that the team is also working on a number of other features (visualizing event bindings, offline storage tools and pseudo elements inspection). Most of theseUstwo's Rando Is A Random Photo-Sharing App That Deliberately Snubs Social Features
Mar 18, 5:56PM
UK mobile games and app developer studio ustwo, creator of games and apps like Whale Trail and MouthOff to name a couple, has launched a new photo-sharing app called Rando. The kicker is it's entirely random photo sharing. In other words, each of your photos ('randos') is randomly sent to another user (you never know who gets it). In return you receive a random rando -- also from a random user.Karl Rove Will Find That Republicans Can't Buy Talent In Silicon Valley
Mar 18, 5:45PM
One of the Republican Party's top campaign masterminds, Karl Rove, is reportedly looking to build the epicenter of conservative digital campaign tools right in the heart of Silicon Valley. "We are working within the party to create a big toolbox that can compete in the midterms and be used by all," private-equity investor Richard Boyce told the Wall Street Journal about the still-forming entity. However, when Rove and company start looking for talent, they might find the most well-regarded hackers want nothing to do with the Republican party--no matter how much money is offered.Keen On… Privacy: Why Giving Us Control Of Our Online Data Is The Next Multi-Billion Dollar Opportunity [TCTV]
Mar 18, 5:21PM
It's often been said that we, as users, are "the product" of networks like Google or Facebook. But there is now a new wave of privacy centric start-ups seeking to give us back control of our personal data. One of these is Abine which boasts a suite of products that protect our online privacy. Data protection is the "new frontier", Abine's CEO Bill Kerrigan, who describes his startup as "the online privacy company", told me.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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