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Social Media Marketing Platform MarketMeSuite Raises $1.25M From Talus Holdings
Sep 11, 6:17AM
Social media management and marketing platform MarketMeSuite has landed a new strategic investment of $1.25 million from Talus Holdings, a media technology holding company. The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based startup says the new funding is earmarked for adding new functionality to its platform, marketing, and customer service and support as MarketMeSuite seeks to speed up its growth and increase its paid customer base.The Final 6 Disrupt SF Startups: Cota, Dryft, Fates Forever, Layer, Regalii And Soil IQ
Sep 11, 5:48AM
This year's TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco has hit attendance records and been one of the most exciting we've ever had. Over the past few days, 3200 people have walked through the concourse to watch Valley titans and newcomers hash it out with the TechCrunch team -- including Marc Benioff's moving story about Steve Jobs' role in the founding of Salesforce.TaDaweb Lets You Create 'Small Data' Mashups Without Writing A Single Line Of Code
Sep 11, 5:17AM
There is much talk about "Big Data" and the power it can provide. But with Big Data can come Big Prices associated with the cost and complexity of wrangling all that information. According to TaDaweb — a company displaying this week at TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2013 — the data many businesses are trying to analyze is simple and the results being searched for are known. It's Small Data.Inbox Is An Elegant, Unified Mobile Messaging App That Wants To Be Mailbox For SMS
Sep 11, 3:20AM
Is there room for another mobile messaging app? It's undoubtedly a very crowded space, packed with veteran behemoths and fast growing upstarts duking it out for users attention. But New Jersey-based startup, Inbox, which dropped by the Office Hours booth at TechCrunch Disrupt to demo its iOS app ahead of launch, reckons there's room for a little more disruption.You Had Me At Vello
Sep 11, 2:27AM
With short-form internet video reaching more and more consumers (Vine, Instagram), Vello's timing for bringing their video greeting card app to market is excellent. In short, Vello is an app that creates these video greeting cards by allowing one or more people to capture six second videos of themselves celebrating or communicating to the greeting card recipient. The app then strings each contributor's video together into one long video and delivers it to the recipient as email link that can be clicked and watched.Forget "Cheap", The iPhone 5c Is Clearly The iPhone Jony Ive Wanted For iOS 7
Sep 11, 2:03AM
The "c" in the iPhone 5c title doesn't stand for "cheap". It stands for "clueless". As in, we were all clueless in our speculation on Apple's motivations for creating this device.eGood Is A Mobile Payment And Loyalty System That Helps Users Give Back
Sep 11, 1:30AM
eGood, a new startup from Glendora, California, was chosen as one of the top startups to emerge out of Startup Alley at TechCrunch Disrupt SF today for its charitable spin on mobile payments and loyalty. In other words, eGood is building an in-store check-in and loyalty platform that enables those patronizing their favorite local businesses to not only buy a coffee, but give back to a local charity while doing it.Soil IQ Makes A Smart Probe For Your Garden
Sep 11, 1:29AM
Soil IQ is a company that’s bringing the “Internet of things” trend to urban and rural farming. They’re building a probe that streams soil fertility and weather data back to a paired app. Founded by a Princeton grad and soil scientist who has worked with hundreds of Kenyan farmers to increase crop yields, Soil IQ’s mission is to help people to grow food more sustainably. “The reality in this country is that most of our food is produced on factory farms,” said CEO Jason Aramburu. “They’re great for producing corn, soybeans and grains, but not so good for producing healthy food.” In response, Soil IQ has built a wireless soil sensor for small gardens and farms to help regular people grow a healthier supply of fruits and vegetables. Their probe is powered by a solar panel so it can run indefinitely. They’re planning on retailing it for about $49 to both consumers and larger partners. Then, not only are they targeting U.S. consumers, the company has a dual mission. They’re also working with one of their investors, Orange Telecom, to help deploy these probes to farmers in East Africa. Aramburu previously started an organization called re:char where he worked with more than 1,300 Kenyan farmers to increase their yields. But now he says he’s trying to focus on food production for the 100 million households in the U.S. So he shifted into building Soil IQ. The probe can track and stream soil nutrient content, pH, temperature, moisture and light data. They’ve built an analytics platform that makes recommendations to home gardeners about how to optimize seed selection, fertilization and watering. It can work with either soil-based or hydroponics gardens and either food or medicinal crops. They’ve even rigged it to send SMS or Twitter alerts when plants need attention. They also have a big ace in the pocket through a partnership with Yves Behar, the famed industrial designer behind FuseProject and chief creative officer behind Jawbone. He’ll help with fashioning Soil IQ’s app and product. The business model has a number of different angles. Not only is there the hardware revenue, Soil IQ could also license out their dataset, assuming enough people use it to produce interesting data on which crops grow well in different environments. If they also build up enough of a consumer base, they could also earn affiliate revenue from promoting other products like organic fertilizer orYoyo Raises $1.2M To Launch New Kind Of Mobile Payment And Loyalty Platform
Sep 11, 1:24AM
Roaming the noisy byways of TechCrunch Startup Alley I found a startup today which plans to create a new kind of mobile payment and loyalty platform. Yoyo has today - at Disrupt in SF - announced it's raised $1.2 million in a seed round to launch platform, designed to create - they say - a faster, simpler way to buy goods, via a mobile app, which also combines with am automatic loyalty point collection system. They plan to target high volume, low value transaction retailers. Think of the Starbucks mobile app and apply it to all retailers - this is Yoyo's pitch.InsideMaps Uses 3D Home Models Captured In Minutes To Build The Future Of Furniture Buying
Sep 11, 1:16AM
The InsideMaps team, which is launching its app today on the Disrupt SF 2013 stage, is applying 3D mapping and capture technology to an interesting problem: How do you visualize furniture purchases in your home before you buy them? According to InsideMaps, you do it by using your smartphone to scan the inside of your home, allowing them to create a 3D model in the cloud that you can then place virtual bits of furniture inside to see how it fits. This may not seem like an earth shaker, and let’s be honest it is not. But as the son of an interior designer and fine finishes guy who worked in the trade every summer, I can appreciate it as a deceptively useful tool for some folks. Specifically, says CEO George Bolanos, there are a few segments that InsideMaps is aiming at: end-user customers, interior decorators and real estate agents. Balanos is the founder of Wanadu, a web conferencing company that was acquired by Cisco's Latitude. He went on to a role as Director of Technology at Sony Mobile. InsideMaps' co-founder and CTO Jörgen Birkler comes from Sony Ericsson Silicon Valley where he served as Head of Applications & Services Development for the Xperia line. The app launching today is a fairly simple affair. You fire it up, give it a few bits of information about your home and then begin scanning each room. You’re given the option to do a single or to zap the whole house at once and you’re turned loose to shoot what is essentially a series of panoramic shots of a room from the inside, culminating with a spin in the center. Those shots are then uploaded to the InsideMaps cloud for some special sauce application. That consists of utilizing data captured by the gyroscope and magnetometer inside your device (which is why they have to be fairly new smartphones) to craft a model. That model is then checked against a series of visual touchstones in the images. The heights of doorknobs, window sills, etc. While they do this, they’re also gathering data about the average sizes of openings like doors and more, so they can apply machine learning to improve the quality of the models down the road. Currently, the processing takes around 20 minutes for a room or 4 hours for a whole house. InsideMaps is using Amazon Compute Cloud to perform theThe Russians Have Come… Skolkovo Startups Hit TechCrunch Disrupt
Sep 11, 1:02AM
Russia is a booming market for startups as the county's internet access and 4G networks ramp up. It's now the biggest single market in Europe, passing Germany a year ago. At the same time the government realises it need to ween the economy off its historical addiction to oil, gas and heavy industry. Thus it's helped set up the Skolkovo Foundation to incubate tech companies. Skokolvo brought a selection of its startup to Disrupt, so we went trawling the booths for a few Russian gems. Here's what we found.Tidepool Optimizes Your Workday For Cognitive Highs And Lows
Sep 11, 12:53AM
Everyone has cognitive highs and lows. Some of us are night owls, while others are early birds. Tidepool is a mobile app that learns when you’re at your cognitive peak and makes recommendations for how to structure your daily workflow. “For example, the Snoozer game assesses cognitive processing speed, a cognitive ability influenced by circadian rhythms, sleep, emotions and diet, among other factors,” explains Tidepool Co-Founder, Vamsee Nalamothu. Snoozer is a simple reaction game where users tap enlarged clocks as quickly as they can. As users play the game at different times throughout the day, Tidepool learns when you’re at your cognitive peak (or low). “We are collecting information on processing speed over time along with these other variables,” says Nalamothu. “When we collect the information needed, including a game of emotions to be released by the end of September, we will provide users with novel information on how they can improve their productivity.” In the future, Tidepool wants to incorporate all types of data, such as sleep and exercise data, which may be pulled in from health trackers. Personally, I know that if I do a quick Crossfit workout of seven minutes of burpees in the morning, I get a surge of mental energy. Tidepool, if successful, would recognize this and other more subtle changes to my mental state, and make suggestions accordingly. Tidepool also attempts to help users understand their personalities. Before users can play any of the games, they have to go through a series of psychological diagnostics. The diagnostics ask users to rate themselves on outgoingness, anxiety, friendliness and several other intuitive descriptions. I’m a “cool cat,” which means I “excel at envisioning big ideas and then influencing and persuading others to come along with you.” Thanks, for the warm fuzzy, Tidepool! Brain training/personality assessment is a growing industry. Brain trainer, Lumosity, for instance raised a cool $31.5 million in 2012. Tidepool, itself, has raised $1.5 million. Research on brain games is mixed, at best, but the field is relatively new and there is much to be learned, especially from a large body of users. You can download a beta of the Tidepool app here.Beestar Launches With Ultra-Precise Quantified Self Device Aimed At Pro Sports
Sep 11, 12:36AM
In a world where the "quantified self" is now mainstream, Beestar is launching to offer one of the most precise location and activity trackers in the world. And not only that, the technology provided by Beestar is embeddable in almost any type of sports equipment, from tennis rackets to ski equipment and everything in between. As it stands now, most professional sports teams and clubs have proprietary systems that cost exorbitant amounts to track the progress of each player's speed, agility and strength, and most only work during the games or matches themselves. Beestar implements this same service, with more accuracy, in a single, multifunctional device called the Quasp.Crowdtilt Goes Mobile With First App, Will Soon Let Anyone Launch A Crowdfunding Campaign On The Go
Sep 11, 12:23AM
As we've discussed before, thanks to a handful of names, including Kickstarter and Indiegogo and the gaggle of startups that have emerged in their wake, crowdfunding is on the "Big screen." Yet, the team behind Crowdtilt -- also known as the Y Combinator-backed startup building a "group fundraising" platform for projects that don't work on Kickstarter -- believe that this is just the beginning.Trail's Platform For Teaching Digital Literacy Skills To U.S. Job Seekers Exits Beta & Launches In Spanish At TC Disrupt
Sep 11, 12:02AM
Trail is a rare thing indeed: a startup not aiming to appeal to elite geeks. Quite the opposite in fact: Trail targets the circa 60 million Americas who aren't digitally literate and could benefit from help to learn how to use the Internet. Its core service, JobScout, launched earlier this year as an iOS app, offers free lessons to job seekers on using the Internet to find work.Curiator Is A Pinterest-Style Marketplace To Help You Discover, And One Day Buy, The Art You Like
Sep 10, 11:55PM
Curiator, a new app launching today at TechCrunch Disrupt SF, is not the first website that aims for people to discover and buy art, but it hopes its beautiful design, interactivity, and intelligent algorithms will mean that it will be the first to actually work.Kickstarter Is Adding Australia And New Zealand To Expand Its International Crowdfunding Network
Sep 10, 11:43PM
Crowdfunding platform Kickstarter is expanding its platform to two markets Down Under. It is opening up its network to Australia and New Zealand-based projects "in the very near future," the company says, drumming up interest two days after the site opened its doors to Canada, and comes some months after it went to its first market outside the U.S., the United Kingdom.With Its New Licensing Service, Feed.fm Aims To Spread Music Across The Web
Sep 10, 11:36PM
Feed.fm just launched at Disrupt SF as part of the Startup Battlefield — and if the service takes off, you may soon be hearing a lot more music on your favorite websites and apps. Co-founder and CEO Jeff Yasuda is already familiar with the music business. He launched music services Fuzz.com and Blip.fm (which both had some struggles), and he continues to operate both sites under the umbrella of a new company, Feed Media. But as the name suggests, Yasuda expects Feed.fm to become the main business.Bitcovery Brings A Desperately Needed Social Discovery Layer To The iTunes Store
Sep 10, 11:22PM
We are seekers. We always want something new to experience, but the iTunes Store is sorely missing social ways to discover music, movies, TV, and books. Bitcovery fills the gap. Add friends whose taste your respect, see what media they're sharing or saving, check out what's trending, preview the content, and buy it in Bitcovery for iOS, which just launched in the TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield.Your Board Game Is In My Video Game: Tangible Play Mixes The Real And Virtual
Sep 10, 11:08PM
What do you get when you put a pair of board gaming geeks who have worked at NVIDIA, Google, LucasArts, and Ubisoft together in the same room? It probably looks like Tangible Play, debuting at Disrupt SF. Founded by Pramod Sharma and Jerome Scholler this lean startup aims to mix augmented reality, animated graphics, and audio with traditional board game elements. While this idea isn’t new, Sharma believes his team has created something special. “In terms of social mission – we really think that we are connecting people through games,” he said. “Every time we demo our product to anyone, we hear that its super-cool. I think part of this is uniqueness and simplicity of the product.” Sharma worked at Google in the book scanning project and spent eight years managing search and infrastructure. Scholler shipped Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter and Force Unleashed 1 and 2 for the 360 and PS3. He also built front-ends for Android. They’ve raised $350,000 this far from a team of angels. The company was part of the recent Stanford’s StartX accelerator group. They launched their product today at TechCrunch Disrupt. “About a year ago, the idea started when Pramod realized that his daughter has a lot of physical games / toys with very limited play lifecycle, while the iPad has unlimited entertainment power. We asked ‘How can we bring the long lasting engagement of iPad games to physical games?’" said Scholler. “Something magical happens when you can grab things in your hand and can have a shared play experience,” he said. After a bit of experimentation, Sharma used his computer vision experience to build a working prototype that could use the iPad camera to recognize objects and help play games. Scholler designed the game using his experience at Google. The game requires a very simple stand with a little cap that sits on the top of the iPad. The cap contains a mirror which allows the camera to see the playing surface and interact with the physical world. The games are fairly simple. The box contains a set of parts – blocks, letters, and the like – and the app scans the playing surface for the objects. Each game can recognize certain shapes and, in the case of the word game, you spell words with tiles that you place in front of the iPad. The game app instantly recognizes the letters and displays themIf 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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