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GeoSurf Is A Must-Have For Every Media Buyer's Tool Belt
Feb 02, 9:46AM
I have a thing for money-making, simple solutions to obvious problems, and GeoSurf sure is one of those. This may come as a surprise to some, but even though it's 2011, if you're a media buyer, you pretty much work in the dark. I mean this in the sense of media buyers' ability to actually see their ads on the properties they bought digital real estate on, as well as the ability to see which advertisers are bidding against them. To tackle this issue—a paradox caused by IP and geo-targeting employed by media professionals themselves—proxies have to be used. These, however, tend to be tricky to use and are often plain unreliable. GeoSurf's solution fills this void.
Connected Adds A Comprehensive Personal Relationship Manager To Gmail
Feb 02, 7:58AM
When Salesforce bought personal relationship manager Etacts last year, it subsequently shut it down, which angered many of its loyal users. Today, Connected is launching to fill the gap that Etacts left. Connected is similar in a lot of ways to Gist, except that it hyper-focuses on your relationships within Gmail. Via a web app, Connected integrates with Gmail, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google Contacts, Google Calendar, and Google Voice to become a personal relationship manager.
Finland's Applifier Grabs $2 Million In Funding
Feb 02, 7:38AM
If you're an independent game developer on Facebook it's hard to compete with Zynga, particularly because Zynga does such a good job of cross promoting its various games. A lot of game developers are simply hoping they get bought by Zynga at this point. But a brave few are trying to compete. Applifier, a Finnish startup, helps those developers compete by creating a network of independent games, and then cross promoting them. It works a little bit like LinkExchange did back in the 90s. You allow other apps to be promoted around your game, and you get the favor returned. See this article from last year for a good overview of the service.
GraphEffect Raises $2 Million To Increase Brand "Likes" On Facebook
Feb 02, 7:20AM
Facebook marketing platform GraphEffect has raised $2 million in financing from LowerMyBills founder Matt Coffin and x+1 president Stephano Kim as well as VC firms Thrive Capital, CrossCut Ventures, Rincon Venture Partners, Founder Collective, Lerer Ventures and Baroda Ventures. GraphEffect helps brands and agencies leverage Facebook for advertising and lead generation purposes. The company, formerly Focused Labs, relies on social performance algorithms to target Facebook ad campaigns, increase user engagement with Facebook fan pages and increase downstream conversions through the Facebook feed. 
Japanese Social Mobile Games Company DeNA To Hit $1.3 Billion In Revenue
Feb 02, 6:39AM
Japan's leading social games company, DeNA (listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange with a $5.4 billion market cap), is running from one record to the other. The company, whose mobile social gaming platform Mobage-town boasts over 22 million users in Japan, issued its operating results reported [PDF] for the third financial quarter today.
Foodily Brings Social Goodness And Menu Sharing To Recipe Search Engine
Feb 02, 5:44AM
There a plethora of recipe search sites on the web available to cooks, including AllRecipes, Epicurious, FoodTV and many others. Foodily is attempting to make recipe search more social today with an in-depth Facebook integration, menu planning, and more. Foodily aggregates recipes from big name chefs on sites like FoodTV to up and coming bloggers. Results are actually presented side-by-side, which makes comparing recipes and ingredients side by side. It also makes searching for a recipe more like browsing through your latest Food&Wine magazine.
Bluefin Labs Reveals How It Is Tying Social Media To TV
Feb 02, 5:01AM
On the Web, we have links, which makes all media trackable. But on TV there are no links. So how do you track the audience response to a TV show or an ad? It's all guesswork, panels, and surveys pretty much. But Deb Roy thinks he has a better answer: treat social media as a realtime "focus group in the wild" and tie that commentary back to TV. He wants to infer links from what people are talking about. In the video above, he explains his approach with Bluefin Labs. "Think about a switchboard that links realtime TV with social media," he says. Roy is the founder and CEO of Bluefin Labs, a video and language analytics startup in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Bluefin is creating a console for advertisers and TV programmers to measure the social resonance of their content. Using sophisticated semantic analysis, Bluefin can determine what peopel are saying about a particular TV show or commercial across various social media, including Twitter, Facebook, and blogs.
Valentine's Giveaway: NYC Readers, Win An Electric Car Love Date From Hertz
Feb 02, 4:27AM
Not to be outdone by Zipcar, Hertz recently launched Connect by Hertz, a car sharing service. In order to stay hip, they've started renting out electric cars like the wee Smart fourtwo and they want to send you and your SO on a wild ride through the streets of New York. First, and this is the bad part, you have to be an NYC resident and you have to have a driver's license. Here's what you can win: · Year-long membership to Connect by Hertz ($50 value) · $100 drive-time credit · $100 gift card to either Graffiti or Caracas Arepa Bar here in NY
Wow, Microsoft And Google Are Punching Each Other In The Face Right In Front Of Us!
Feb 02, 1:16AM
By now, you've undoubtedly heard the news. Google set up a sting operation (how cool is that?) in an attempt to catch Microsoft red-handed stealing their search results. And according to them, they did just that — and made it known. Microsoft has seemingly both sidestepped and denied the claim — and then has sent accusations back Google's way. The whole thing is amazing, and to be honest, I'm still trying to parse it all. But you can get the whole gist by reading what's on Techmeme, starting with Danny Sullivan's original post on the topic. But what's most interesting right now is that Google and Microsoft are engaged in a full-on war. Yes, they've more or less been at war for many years. But it's mainly been a quiet war, that takes place behind the scenes and only occasionally includes quick jabs at the other one in public. But now they're straight-up calling each other liars on Twitter, and their own very popular blogs!
Need To Find The Ladies ASAP? Wheretheladies.at Finally Hits The App Store
Feb 02, 12:45AM
Geo-location has come to this: After three weeks in review, Wheretheladies.at, a web app that aggregates Foursquare checkins by the female gender, is now available on the iPhone. The concept OF A BIG COMPASS POINTING YOU IN THE DIRECTION OF LADIES is so unprecedented that Apple actually called co-founder Jeff Hodsdon on his cellphone to ask about the app during the review process. Co-founded by Path's Danny Trinh and Hodsdon, Wheretheladies.at the iPhone app ranks locations by the amount of females who have checked in as well as helpfully points you in the direction of the critical mass of ladies in your vicinity. We previously called this evolutionary advantage, but it really boils down to nerds using technology to circumvent Darwinism. The fittest now includes those who have smarts, or at least smartphones.
AT&T's Last-Minute iPhone Blitz: "Feel free to make a call while reading this email."
Feb 02, 12:34AM
Well, you have to give AT&T some credit. They are trying really hard to make sure they don't succumb to a massive hemorrhage of users when the Verizon iPhone hits in a couple of days. Today, they've been sending out emails to current customers with the following subject line: Feel free to make a call while reading this email. Very clever. This, of course, plays up the fact that while the AT&T iPhone can support both data and voice at the same time, the Verizon iPhone can't (due to current CDMA limitations).
Our Great Sin
Feb 02, 12:15AM
I recently watched, like many of our readers, the interview (1, 2) with Mike Daisey regarding the conditions under which Apple products are made in China. And at the risk of fomenting conflict with Mr. Daisey, I would like to editorialize on the topic in slightly broader and harsher terms. Actually, it's not that I disagree with the man, exactly. It's that he doesn't go far enough, and in doing so conveniently avoids requiring himself or anyone else from doing anything but being concerned. If you're going to take on ideas like globalism, corporate responsibility, and cross-cultural morality, you don't get off that easy. You can't establish a predicate like "the way our lifestyle is made possible is immoral" and somehow avoid unpleasant conclusions. The "great sin" isn't Apple's, or any one of the other major international corporations that use Foxconn or similar megafactories. And it isn't Foxconn's either. It's clearly, inescapably, ours.
Exclusive: An Early Look At News.me, The New York Times' Answer To The Daily
Feb 01, 11:53PM
Tomorrow, all eyes will be on the launch of News Corp's iPad newspaper The Daily, but huddled away in a downtown loft in New York City's meatpacking district a team from betaworks and the New York Times are busy putting together their answer to what an iPad news app should be. The collaboration will be called News.me, and it won't look anything like The Daily. I know because I've been playing with an early version of the app, which I will describe in detail below along with the first-ever published screenshots of the app. News.me is a social news reading app that presents the news that the people you follow on Twitter are reading, and filters it based on how many times those stories are shared and clicked on overall. It pulls in data from not only Twitter but also bit.ly, the betaworks company that shortens billions of shared links every month. In contrast, The Daily will produce its own articles and videos with a staff of 100 journalists. It is not clear how many social features will be included in The Daily, but the emphasis seems to be more on the original content. We'll find out more tomorrow (I'll be covering the launch). 
Kleiner Perkins, Index Ventures Lead $8.5 Million Round For Path
Feb 01, 11:18PM
San Francisco-based Path, a mobile social network, has raised a Series A Round of funding. The $8.5 million round was led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Index Ventures. New investor Digital Garage Japan also joined the round, as did previous investor First Round Capital. Chi-Hua Chien and Mike Volpi from Kleiner and Index, respectively, joined the board of directors. Co-founder Dustin Mierau also joined the board as part of the round. The company has now raised a total of $11.2 million.
LaunchRock, The Most Meta Startup Ever, Builds Viral Launch Pages
Feb 01, 11:00PM
In case you needed another "you know there's a bubble when ..." tech post, LaunchRock, a startup that builds viral launch pages for other startups, is launching today via its own product. Inspired by the viral launch pages of Fork.ly and Hipster, the guys behind LaunchRock thought that they could streamline the process of getting users to sign up for startup betas, and built an entire launch page building platform. Co-founder Jameson Detweiler explains that the advantages to system that gives you earlier access to a product as you more friends you invite is that they show you the level of demand and that they build you a list of the most eager candidates. Using this type of page, local Q&A site Hipster brought in over 10K sign ups without mention of what it does.
Try To Imagine Times Square With No Ads. Can't? Then Use This App.
Feb 01, 10:48PM
Close your eyes and picture Times Square in New York City. What do you see? Probably an insane amount of ads. Sadly, that's the defining characteristic. But what would it look like without ads? A few groups have teamed up to create a web app to find out. No Ad - NY is a collaboration between Aviary, The Barbarian Group, and Morgan Spurlock's Warrior Poets. The idea is simple: take a 360-degree picture of Time Square, and use an online picture editor to remove all the ads, the re-upload the edited picture to show the world what a Times Square without ads would look like.
Watch Out SF Minibars: We Testdrive Hotel Tonight (TCTV)
Feb 01, 10:46PM
Hotel Tonight-- an app that allows you to book last-minute hotels easily and quickly via the iPhone which expanded to Chicago, Boston and Washington DC yesterday-- is almost identical to the dream company Paul outlined here. It sounded too good to be true, so we decided to give it a test drive, along with Hotel Tonight CEO Sam Shank. And just to stack the odds against him, we picked a Friday night in San Francisco just before MacWorld. Video below.
Time Warner Cable Buys Enterprise Hosting And Cloud Services Company NaviSite For $230M
Feb 01, 10:15PM
Time Warner Cable has just announced that it has acquired NaviSite, a provider of enterprise-class hosting, managed application, messaging and cloud services, for $5.50 per share in cash, or $230 million. The transaction is expected to close in the second quarter of 2011. NaviSite provides companies with enterprise hosting capabilities, application management and cloud services. These include email and collaboration hosting for IBM Lotus and Domino; Microsoft Exchange and SharePoint; software QA and testing, server and storage management, data protection and more. The company brought in $126 million in revenue for its fiscal year 2010 and had approximately 1,400 customers using its services. 
Machinima: The Most Impressive LA Tech Company since MySpace
Feb 01, 9:56PM
Long California's digital also-ran, Los Angeles may have its first bona fide new media hit brewing. It's called Machinima, it did 2.3 billion video views last year, 350 million in December alone, has 45 million uniques, and is still growing. These numbers slaughter more well known video companies, but if you haven't heard of Machinima-- don't feel bad. I hadn't either before a week ago, when I found myself camped out in Redpoint Ventures office and told partner Geoff Yang I wouldn't leave without a good story tip. Finally he whispered, "Machinima's December numbers" and I had to ask him to pronounce Machinima a few times, and spell it before I even knew what he was saying. I was impressed we even had a CrunchBase widget for it.
Boulder's eSpace Center Wants To Make Aerospace A Startup-Friendly Industry
Feb 01, 9:15PM
Private sector space tech companies — from Virgin Galactic to Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) — have been doing what only government agencies were empowered to do in earlier generations, launch vehicles into space, improve the fuel efficiency of aircraft, and more. A Boulder-based incubator called The eSpace Center for Space Entrepreneurship still thinks the industry could be friendlier to startups and innovators, though. Founded in partnership with the University of Colorado, and with SNC as its lead sponsor, the eSpace incubator is currently seeking its third class of aerospace entrepreneurs, and reviewing applications on a rolling basis. Diane Dimeff, executive director at the eSpace Center, says the incubator will: give financial grants of up to $20,000 in seed funding to selected startups, and match them with mentors who are chief executives of companies relevant to each new venture...
Usage-Based Billing Hits Canada: Say Goodbye To Internet Innovation
Feb 01, 7:35PM
O, Canada, what have you done? The country's Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, the CRTC, has passed sweeping new regulations that will force Internet Service Providers to switch to so-called usage-based billing—metered pricing, in less flowery language. That means ISPs there will charge customers by the gigabyte for Internet access, and that's on top of a flat service fee. There's nothing particularly new about metered pricing, but the fact that it's being implemented on a country-wide basis surely merits a quick discussion. t should be obvious that the only "winners" here are the ISPs (and even then, only the big ISPs who have established, old methods of content delivery to protect) who now stand to make a cool mint as a result of the new fees. Data caps have been drastically lowered—one small, independent ISP was forced to slash its cap from 200GB per month to 25GB per month—and the CRTC has set overage rates at CAD$1.90 per gigabyte over the cap. (Heaven forbid you live in the French-speaking region of the country, as you'll be expected to cough up CAD$2.35 per gigabyte.) All that means is that you're free to browse the Internet to the tune of 25GB per month, but the second you break through that barrier you'll have to pay through the nose. Not fun.
Portland Bookstore Will Trade Your Soulless Kindle For Real Books
Feb 01, 7:35PM
Hey, man, what's your problem? You drink kombucha and ride a fixie, but what the heck are you doing with that capitalist corporate DRM-laden Kindle? Head down to Microcosm Publishing in Portland, man, and they'll give you like a hundred books for your Kindle. I mean dude Noam Chomsky is like $6 at the store, so for your Kindle you can get like 37 Noam Chomskys. Same goes for fix it, make it, grow it, bake it: The D.I.Y. Guide to the Good Life which is like $15 so you can get 12 for you and your bar quiz friends.
Microsoft Calls Google's Cheating Examples "Extreme Outliers"
Feb 01, 7:14PM
At the "Who Will Win the Spam Wars" roundtable at the BigThink conference this morning Google's Matt Cutts, Bing's Harry Shum and Blekko's Rich Skrenta got together to discuss recent dramatic turns of events in the search market, most notably Google's accusations today that Bing is using Google user data gleaned from Internet Explorer and the Bing toolbar to improve its own results. Cutts took issue with Microsoft's statement that they did not copy Google's results, "Microsoft said they don't copy the results and we have screenshots that prove that happened." Indeed it does seem from Danny Sullivan's post that the Google honey pot nonsense queries are showing up on Bing weeks later.
Alphabet Energy's Waste-Heat Recovery Tech Is Out Of The Lab, Pilot Projects Underway
Feb 01, 6:54PM
A company that makes systems to turn waste-heat into electricity Alphabet Energy has officially moved its technology out of the lab and into pilot production, the company announced today. The company recently hired manufacturing technology veteran, Sylvain Muckenhirn, as their vice president of manufacturing. He will lead Alphabet Energy's effort to begin fabless, volume manufacturing of its technology in time to deliver it to early customers in 2012 and 2013. The company also moved into San Francisco offices, and out of their early stage UC Berkeley space. Founder and chief executive, Matt Scullin, confirmed that Alphabet Energy plans to sell its patented waste-heat recovery technology to businesses that generate lots of heat, but want to recapture it to create energy that they can use, in the following fields: automotive, military, heavy industry and power generation. 
Why Journalists Aren't Reporting the Real Story about Apple and Foxconn (TCTV)
Feb 01, 6:51PM
Why haven't American technology journalists reported the truth about the working conditions at the Foxconn factory in Shenzhen, China – a 430,000 person factory that manufactures around 50% of all the personal communications devices used in America? Why aren't they doing their job? According to the monologist Mike Daisey, it's not only journalists who have missed the real story about the inhumane working conditions at Foxconn. Daisey says that we – Apple employers, investors and users like myself – have all committed the "terrible sin" of evading our "responsibilities." We all – journalists and Apple fanboys alike - need to "wake up" and "open our eyes", Daisey says, to the "dehumanizing" consequences of an economy in which all our manufacturing is outsourced to companies like Foxconn. Video ahead.
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