Tuesday, June 18, 2013

tech now

tech now

Developers Can Now Ship Hard Drives To Google To Import Large Amounts Of Data To Cloud Storage

Posted: 18 Jun 2013 09:07 AM PDT

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Google just added a new service to Google Cloud Storage that will allow developers to send their hard drives to Google to import very large data sets that would otherwise be too expensive and time-consuming to import. For a flat fee of $80 per hard drive, Google will take the drive and upload the data into a Cloud Storage bucket. This, Google says, can be “faster or less expensive than transferring data over the Internet.” The service is now in limited preview for users with a U.S.-based return address.

Platforms like AWS and Google’s Cloud Platform are obviously great for analyzing large data sets. As Google software engineer Lamia Youseff notes in today’s announcement, however, “transferring large data sets (in the hundreds of terabytes and beyond) can be expensive and time-consuming over the public network.” Uploading 5 terabytes of data over a 100Mbps line could easily take a day or two and most developers may not even have these kinds of connections.

Amazon, it’s worth noting, already offers a very similar service. It, too, charges $80 per hard drive, but in typical Amazon fashion, the company also charges a per-hour fee for importing the data. Importing a 5 terabyte hard drive to S3, Amazon calculates, will cost an additional $45 for an eSATA drive, which makes Google’s flat-fee service significantly cheaper. While Amazon also allows you to export your data, though, Google doesn’t currently offer this service.

GetGlue Hires Digital Media Veteran Evan Krauss As President To Boost Monetization Of Its Second-Screen Apps

Posted: 18 Jun 2013 08:45 AM PDT

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Second-screen TV app startup GetGlue just keeps on trucking. Originally launched as an app for checking in to your favorite TV shows and collecting stickers, the company has been steadily expanding its business to include content discovery for shows on the iPad or on your TV. Now it’s hoping to better monetize its mobile and tablet apps, and has hired longtime digital media exec Evan Krauss as President to help with that.

Krauss has spent the last 18 years at a variety of entertainment companies over the years, including stints at Yahoo!, AOL, Excite, JumpTap, Looksmart, and Agency.com. His last big position was as EVP of ad sales for Shazam, where he helped build out that company’s second screen ad business.

In addition to Krauss, GetGlue also recently hired Shelby Houston Haro as its EVP of sales, coming from Fandango and Flixster. In an email, GetGlue CEO Alex Iskold wrote, “Evan is joining us a President to lead all the aspects of the business, particularly focusing on revenue… With these two hires, we are now serious about building out and scaling our business.”

The hiring of its new sales leaders follows an attempted — and failed — merger between GetGlue and rewards-based TV companion app Viggle. The deal was first announced last November but called off earlier this spring.

Since then, GetGlue has continued to operate independently, trying to boost monetization along the way. No doubt the startup hopes that its new president Krauss will be able to expand its own business with advertisers. The company has been making a bigger push on that front with recent updates to its mobile apps.

That incudes the introduction of a new advertising product for brands, networks, and studios called Promoted Entries. That enables networks and advertisers to highlight their products and shows in users’ Guides. Launched with Pepsi during the Super Bowl, the Promoted Entries offering is designed to boost engagement with viewers who are using the app while watching TV. It allows users to share promoted products with friends who also use the app, as well as on social networks like Facebook and Twitter.

GetGlue not says it has 4 million registered users, and has accrued more than 800 million data points about what they’re tuning into. The company has worked with more than 75 TV networks and 10 movie studios to promote their content. It’s raised about $24 million since being founded in 2007, with investors including Union Square Ventures, RRE Ventures, Time Warner Investments, and Rho Ventures, among others.

YC-Backed Filepicker.io Rebrands As Ink, Raises $1.8M From Andreessen Horowitz, Highland Capital & Others

Posted: 18 Jun 2013 08:37 AM PDT

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Filepicker.io, the Y Combinator-backed “filesystem as a service,” is today rebranding itself as “Ink File Picker,” a name which, explains CEO Brett van Zuiden, stands for something much larger than the former, more product-focused title. In addition, the company is announcing a $1.8 million seed round of funding, led by Andreessen Horowitz and Highland Capital Partners.

Others in the round included SV Angel, Google board member Ram Shriram, Geoff Ralston (La La Media), Aaron Iba (Y Combinator), Pejman Nozad (Amidzad), Facebook VP of Business Development and Monetization Dan Rose, Ullas Naik (Streamlined Ventures), Hamid Barkhordar, Bobby Yazdani (Saba Software), Niall Browne (Workday), and Data Collective.

Founded just last year, Ink File Picker was created by four MIT grads, Anand Dass, Brett Van Zuiden, Liyan David Chang, and Thomas Georgiou, as a way to make cloud services interoperable. With tools for both web and, as of last summer, mobile developers, the company enables applications to connect to over a dozen of the most popular online services, including Google Drive, Dropbox, Evernote, Facebook, Flickr, Picasa, Box, Github, SkyDrive, Gmail, Instagram and more, as well as to the end user’s computer or device, and elsewhere.

Over the past year, Ink has seen increasing demand for its service, having hit 1 million files in November. Today, it sees just under 400 million files per month (over 10 million files per day). There are also 20,000 applications using the service from around 17,000 developers, including many well-known names like SurveyMonkey, Scribd, Livefyre, Fitocracy, Udacity, Haiku Deck, Crowdtilt, Urbanspoon, PlanGrid, RapGenius, Vidcaster, WeVideo, Funny or Die, TED, and others.

Van Zuiden says that the move to rebrand as “Ink” has to do with the company’s now larger vision, which is no longer just about a product that allows for uploading of files, but is instead more of a file management platform for developers. ”It does everything from connecting to all the 19 sources we work with, doing the image processing, and the further operations people want to do on this content, storing this content, and serving as this whole layer that deals with all the different types of content work that you want to do,” he says.

For example, in the new cloud-based word processor called Draft, Ink lets the app’s users import their files from elsewhere on the web (like Dropbox, e.g.), then as they’re writing and editing those files, the updated versions are saved back to the service where those files originated.

“It’s sort of this notion of ‘what does a file system for the web look like?,” explains van Zuiden. “What are those APIs, what is that capability?” Originally, the answer to that was a file picker toolset (as the earlier name implied). Today, it’s about “helping applications and services work together,” he says.

With the seed investment, which actually closed back in September, the company has grown its team from four to eight and plans to reach fifteen by next year. It will also continue its product development, with a specific focus on investing more resources on mobile, which has its own set of challenges.

On mobile, release cycles are different from the web, screen sizes are smaller impacting the user interface design, plus versioning is an important area to address. Longer-term, the startup plans to focus on the international market as well, in terms of not only localization, but also the services popular in other regions worldwide, as determined by customer demand.

Today, Ink File Picker offers a freemium platform where pricing is based on the number of files handled per month. Under 5,000 files is free, and a Pro plan for $99/month offers up to 50,000 files per month. Enterprise customers have custom pricing available. Around 5 to 10 percent of Ink’s customer base is on a paid plan, van Zuiden estimates.

The newly rebranded Ink website, and Ink File Picker are now live for interested developers.

iZettle Takes Its Mobile Payment Service To Mexico, Its First Market Outside Of Europe, And One Step Closer To Square

Posted: 18 Jun 2013 08:28 AM PDT

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iZettle, the mobile payments company that has been described as a European version of Square, is today making a move that puts it one national boundary away from the U.S. mobile payment company’s own backyard: iZettle is launching its iOS and Android service in Mexico. This is the Swedish company’s first move outside of Europe, and comes in the wake of a $6.6 million funding round from the Spanish financial services behemoth Banco Santander, announced just last week and made specifically to build out the solution into more markets globally.

Yes, the mobile payments market — like those chilies being sold by the small merchant pictured here, who probably only accepts cash payments today — is heating up.

To coincide with the launch, iZettle is also appointing a new MD for Mexico, Luis Arceo, who had been with Visa.

Jacob de Geer, the founder and CEO of iZettle, tells me that of the many markets where Banco Santander is active — the bank has operations across Latin America, the U.S., Portugal, Germany and Poland, in addition to the UK and Spain, with $1.86 trillion in managed funds, 102 million customers and 14,392 branches — it chose Mexico first for three reasons.

For starters, he notes that nearly all (99.8%) of the businesses in Mexico are small and medium enterprises, iZettle’s target market because, compared to bigger chains, they may be more likely to lack enough turnover to justify the investment needed for more tradition card payment processing services.

Similar to Square’s dongle and those of Here and many other competitors, iZettle’s smartphone accessory lets merchants and other businesses process credit cards using an app on a smartphone or tablet. iZettle’s particular service works on iOS and Android devices, and the company today is launching a new device that is all-in-one for all platforms and payment methods, be they chip or mag stripe. Interestingly, though, it looks like iZettle will be hiking up fees in the country. In Europe, the company charges a flat 2.75% fee, while in Mexico the fee for chip-based transactions will be 3.75% and for mag-stripe 4.75%. On top of that, merchants need to pay $499 (MXN) — about 40 U.S. dollars — for the reader, but Banco Santander customers will get a discount.

De Geer notes that 95% of cards in Mexico are chip-based. That, in fact, may be one reason why Square, whose dongle reads the magnetic stripe for transactions, may have yet to make a move here. (It’s thought that this is one reason why it has yet to launch in Europe as well.)

There is also the Santander angle: the bank is the third largest in the country and “growing rapidly,” deGeer notes.

And the third is perhaps the most contentious of all from a competitive standpoint: “Mexico is an interesting bridgehead given its geographical location,” deGeer notes. “With our new Chip & Mag reader that we’re launching, we could theoretically continue expanding north or south with the current infrastructure.”

Them’s fightin’ words, I think. iZettle, prior to today’s news, had operations in the UK, Spain, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland. More specifically, in the past, de Geer has made a point of saying that it would not be looking to tussle with Square in any of the markets where it currently operates, which include the U.S., Canada and most recently Japan.

When iZettle picked up $31.4 million in June 2012 (it’s now raised $66 million in total), the intention was to be the biggest player of its kind in Europe.

“Our priority is to get the UK fully launched, and then look at other major markets like Spain, Italy, France and Germany,” de Geer told TechCrunch at the time. “We're not interested in the U.S. They're doing really well with Square and others.”

That tune has changed quite a lot in the last year. Rather than ruling out the U.S., now de Geer notes, “Time will tell” when and if that move gets made.

Given that iZettle already has services in Spanish because of its operations in Spain, this will make one of the challenges of entering a new market a little less complicated. The backing of Santander will also help with connecting with and marketing to local small businesses. “The biggest challenge for us in any market we want to enter is always to localize the service in terms of language, currency, sign up process as well as finding the right distribution channels,” de Geer notes. “We live in a globalized world but to be successful you still need to act local. For those reasons, we believe our strategic partnership with Santander will be very valuable.”

For Santander, it will be one more way of picking up and locking in customers at a time of disruption across the financial services industry, as behemoths like Visa find themselves disrupted by much smaller startups, with everything else in between. “This partnership extends our offering of payment methods available on Banco Santander's platform globally, and strengthens our position as the leading bank for SMEs,” noted Jorge Alfaro Lara, deputy general director of payment systems at Banco Santander Mexico, in a statement. “We are pushing the boundaries of banking with relevant technological innovation that helps small and medium businesses.”

Image: Flickr

Minuum, The Super Simple Software Keyboard, Launches Android Beta Today

Posted: 18 Jun 2013 08:11 AM PDT

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Toronto-based Whirlscape attracted plenty of attention when it first debuted its innovative Minuum software keyboard, and sought funding for the project on Indiegogo. Now, the project is moving forward with the launch of the Minuum keyboard beta app for Android, which will give Indiegogo supporters their first chance to actually play with the tech and see what it is they’ve helped pay for.

In the video above, you can see the demo of how the software operates designed to help orient new users. The keyboard layout, as you can see, is squeezed down, but still retains a basic QWERTY layout. It then suggests words, based on typing that’s designed to do as much as it can with incredibly imprecise input. You only have to tap on the basic area, and then you can cycle through suggestions if the first one isn’t correct. There isn’t even a space bar by default; it’s designed to be as minimal as possible. Gestures control cycling between different keyboards, too, including all-caps and numeric input.

Whirlscape raised $87,000 from its Indiegogo campaign, and the beta will go out to its nearly 10,000 supporters today. But those who missed out can also request access to the next phase of testing, by signing up at Minuum.com. The startup is also going to be issuing a “wearable development kit” by the end of the year since it smashed through its funding goal, which will allow people to build versions of Minuum which can theoretically work with devices like Thalmic’s MYO, the Leap Motion Controller and more.

There’s a lot going on with software keyboards recently, which seems to suggest people are looking around for what comes next in mobile input methods. Minuum’s take is unique, so it’ll be interesting to see how its first users respond.

Obvious-Incubated Lift Brings Its Smart Goal-Tracking And Self-Improvement App To The Browser And Mobile Web

Posted: 18 Jun 2013 07:00 AM PDT

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Back in August, Lift launched the first rendition of its snappy-looking iPhone app that aims to help people build healthy habits and achieve their goals. Initially incubated and seed funded by Obvious Corp., the hybrid accelerator and seed vehicle created by Twitter co-founders Ev Williams and Biz Stone and early Twitter VP Jason Goldman, the startup added $2.5 million from Spark Capital, SV Angel and Adam Ludwin from RRE, among others, in November.

Today, Tony Stubblebine, Jon Crosby and team are making their goal-tracking app available to everyone by bringing it to the browser. Up until now, Lift has been iPhone-only, but beginning today, users will be able to sign up for an account and use the app across Windows and Android phones.

The browser version of Lift includes many of the same features that have been available on mobile, including tracking, streaks, graphs, progress and community support, as Stubblebine explained in a blog post this morning.

As we’ve written previously, Lift is among a new set of startups experimenting with the best ways to present behavioral design on mobile — to “find the right incentivization and motivation structures” that can help people better achieve their goals.

Many companies have opted to take a health-centric approach to activity tracking, offering monetary rewards or social graph-leveraged peer pressure to help people unlock healthier lifestyles. Using methods inspired by the Quantified Self Movement’s penchant for data tracking, psychology and behavioral research — along with cheerleading and positive support from its community — Lift is taking a more general approach.

It’s not intended to just be a health-tracking app, although it works in many health-related contexts by helping users keep track of say, the number of push ups they managed in any given week. The team doesn’t want Lift just to be a “tracker” in the same way that many Quantified Self enthusiasts have come to see health trackers as a system bereft of intelligence where users can simply keep tabs and notes about what people do on a daily basis.

And, rather than simply being a habit tracker, which sounds like another chore that people have to suffer through, and because it’s not automatic or daily — the focus of many habit trackers. Instead, users can create or join existing “habits,” using the app to record those habits when and if they meet them. All activity on the app is public, and users can offer support to others (and receive it in kind) when goals are reached.

The idea is to make it simple to record your progress for any and all of your regular habits or activities and get pushed along by the positive reinforcement of community applause. As Lift sucks in more data on your aspirations and progress, it populates groups of charts and graphs with that data, giving users a visual sense of just how well (or not) they’ve been doing when it comes to sticking to their goals.

I like to think of it this way: You know when you make all those brave New Years Resolutions about how you’re going to get in shape and be a better son/daughter/husband/wife/sister/brother/mother/father, stay in touch with friends, be kinder to animals and re-tweet Rip’s articles more regularly? Well, usually, those resolutions are attacked with gusto for about a week before life gets in the way and one month later, you’ve driven by the gym once.

Lift is the app that helps you keep track of all those life goals and remind yourself how close you are to getting there. As Stubblebine writes: “You can't change what you don't measure and tracking your progress is the first step toward achievement.” And the second step, going beyond goal tracking, is to make the community foundation deep enough that it becomes a legitimate source of answers, accountability and positive support.

In terms of what Lift is launching today, beyond progress and quick tracking, Lift for the Web includes a “Me” tab that allows users to view trend charts in bar form among others. [See below.]

Lift for the Web is also a product of responsive design, meaning that it’s optimized for mobile use as well, adjusting in size to work with the format and screen type of any mobile device, phone or tablet.

In terms of what’s up next: Lift says that a native Android version of the app isn’t quite ready yet, but it’s on the way. In terms of features, Lift is also testing “expert guidance and accountability in the form of groups,” which Stubblebine says one can think of like “training plans.”

Skeptical? For more about the “Science of Lift,” find it here. But, with its responsive design, Lift (at the very least) keeps the bar high in terms of the clean look and appeal of its simplicity. The team is taking great care not to just create another blunt instrument for health tracking, as seen by the “intelligent” push notification system it launched late last year (care of Matthew Panzarino of TNW), and its user experience is all the better for it.

Maveron-Backed DarbySmart Launches DIY Crafting Marketplace For Fashion Accessories And More

Posted: 18 Jun 2013 07:00 AM PDT

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While Pinterest has become a go-to destination for crafting ideas for accessories, parties, home design and more; the pinning giant (and Pinners) doesn’t provide the instructions on how to actually make these creations. Enter DarbySmart, a do-it-yourself crafting startup working with top Pinterest designers of DIY accessories, fashion and home items to Kit, market and sell their projects to consumers, complete with all materials and instructions needed to complete the project.

DarbySmart, which was co-founded by Nicole Shariat Farb, former Head of Emerging Private Companies in investment banking at Goldman Sachs and Karl Mendes, a Senior Software Engineer from Eventbrite; wants to take advantage of growing trend of people looking for inspiration and DIY crafts on Pinterest, while also tapping into the $29 billion crafting industry. The challenges many users face, however, is that once they are inspired by crafts on Pinterest, it’s tough to fund the materials and execute.

The startup offers pre-packaged Kits that have been compiled by popular designers on Pinterest. The DarbySmart team works closely with the project designers to test and identify the best possible materials for DIYers to create lasting products. Then, Darby Smart handles sourcing and purchasing the materials, to packaging the Kits and more. These Kits, which range from $25 to $45 each, include all the materials and instructions necessary to successfully complete the project at hand. Designers in turn receive a share of revenue from the kits sold.

For example, one of the kits offered on the site allows you to create a magazine clutch, a small purse with a Vogue magazine cover shellacked on the purse. The startup’s kit includes the Vogue magazine, the purse, glue, and shellack (Mod Podge).

The company is also announcing $1 million in seed funding from a number of strategic angel investors and advisors, including Forerunner Ventures, Novel TMT, Vivi Nevo, Warby Parker co-founder Dave Gilboa, and Maveron, among others.

Crafting is a huge business, and DarbySmart could be an interesting way to harness some of the virality on Pinterest and add an ecommerce component to the mix. Soleil Moon Frye just announced her crafting startup, Moonfrye, which is aimed at families.

Reminder: TechCrunch Is Hitting The Balkans In Less Than A Month

Posted: 18 Jun 2013 06:50 AM PDT

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Dobro utro, zdravo, and pozdravi, friends! In an effort to spread the good word about TC to the rest of Europe, I will be rolling through Sofia, Belgrade, Zagreb, and Ljubljana at the beginning of July for a series of informal meet-ups. If you’re in those cities, I want you to attend!

Additionally, we want you guys to submit your startups to the TechCrunch Europe Battlefield or, if you’re feeling saucy, to Disrupt SF in September. While I had initially planned to make these meetups scouting trips for the event, it looks like the deadlines for both are fast approaching. Instead, we can chat about your application when I come through your town.

Assisting in the planning is Netokracija / Netocratic, the “TechCrunch of Southeast Europe.” They will provide us with locations and more specific timing but as it stands we expect to have some free beer, lots of sunshine, and a great chance to talk about your startup in an informal setting. We’ll also be scouting for Disrupt entrants for Disrupt Berlin in October.

These will be informal meetups where I’ll talk a little bit about TechCrunch and getting the attention of media outside your own country and we can talk startups, entrepreneurship, and funding all night long.

To RSVP for Sofia on July 1 click here. Co-hosted by  Netokracija / Netocratic & Eleven
To RSVP for Belgrade on July 2 click here. Hosted by Netokracija / Netocratic.
To RSVP for Zagreb on July 3 click here. Hosted by Netokracija / Netocratic.
To RSVP for Ljubljana on July 5 click here. Hosted by Netokracija / Netocratic.

Interested in sponsoring the event? Please contact organizer Ivan Brezak Brkan, head of MemeMedia, directly. We’ll have much more information soon, but until then RSVP and get your product ready for our Southeast Euro Trip!

Special thanks to our main sponsor, the .me domain.

Battle For Family's Streaming Dollars Heats Up Between Netflix & Amazon, With Netflix Families Debut & Kindle FreeTime Expansion

Posted: 18 Jun 2013 06:48 AM PDT

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Following a bit of backlash arising from the loss of popular Viacom-owned children’s TV shows, Netflix today launched Netflix Families, which is essentially just a destination website designed to tout Netflix’s family fare. The site includes rows of Netflix recommendations for parents and kids, as well as tips on how to stream and other promotional content.

Amazon, not to be left unmentioned in today’s news, countered with an announcement of its own.

These moves come at a time when the war for streaming is heating up between Netflix and up-and-coming rival Amazon Prime Instant Video. Earlier this month, Amazon picked up the Viacom shows Netflix lost, including big-name kids’ TV brands like Dora the Explorer, Go Diego Go!, SpongeBob SquarePants, Blue’s Clues and several others.

Parents had earlier stormed Netflix's consumer support site to complain about the losses, having already been burned by other ill-fated moves from the company in the past (like that Qwikster fiasco which became the symbol of Netflix “not listening,” CEO Reed Hastings once said.)

In addition to the new Families site, just yesterday Netflix also announced its largest original content deal to date with DreamWorks Animation, home to brands like Shrek and Kung Fu Panda. The deal involves some of DreamWorks Animation's characters moving into TV (Shrek, most likely), in a branded collection of shows that will comprise more than 300 hours of new programming. The company also recently scored a content deal for other kids’ TV like “Jake and the Neverland Pirates” from Disney and Cartoon Network's “Adventure Time”.

These titles, and more, will now be promoted on the Netflix Families website.

Not to be outdone, Amazon is also heading off this morning’s launch of the Netflix Families website with news of its own: the company released a progress report on Kindle FreeTime Unlimited, its optional service designed for parents with kids ages 3-8 which offers a variety of books, games, educational apps, movies and TV shows that play on Amazon Kindle Fire devices.

While FreeTime offers parental controls, Kindle FreeTime Unlimited is a paid add-on ($2.99 per child or $6.99 per family) which Amazon today says now combines over a thousand books, games, educational apps, movies and TV shows, including Disney's “Where's My Mickey?”, Warner Brother's “LEGO Harry Potter Years 1-4″, “Dr. Seuss's The Cat in the Hat Comes Back” from Oceanhouse Media, “Plants vs. Zombies” by EA, and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt's “Curious George at the Zoo”.

Also added to FreeTime Unlimited? Yes, several Nick Jr. favorites – the recently acquired Viacom shows Netflix lost.

Other new arrivals include “Scribblenauts Remix” from Warner Bros., Disney’s “Puffle Launch” and “Toy Story Smash It! Classic”, EA titles like “Tetris”, “Bejeweled 2″, “Monopoly Millionaire” and “The Game of Life”, apps like “Curious George at the Zoo”, “The Berenstain Bears and the Big Spelling Bee”, “Mercer Mayer's Little Critter and Triceratops Gets Lost from the Smithsonian Institution”, and more. (It’s a decent B-list of kids’ titles, for those without rugrats around to inform you).

Neither Amazon nor Netflix’s announcement today is the equivalent of what one would call major news, of course. One is a destination site to educate and promote Netflix’s children’s programming, while the other is an update on what’s available with Kindle FreeTime Unlimited.

What is interesting about the news is that both companies seemed to have decided that where the children go, so go the parents. The war for streaming is resting on families’ youngest members – a generation of viewers who have born into a world where tablets already exist, and who can navigate their way around the devices better than their parents in many cases. It’s these little ones the streaming giants will now be catering to.

Paying for a streaming video service on top of other in-home entertainment bills like cable TV and high-speed internet is still a luxury add-on for most families in a down economy like ours, and that means either Netflix or Amazon will win customers family by family, instead of counting on families to sign up for both. It’s also the same reason why other streaming video services, like Redbox Instant for example, have trouble getting off the ground.

Expect this battle to continue to heat up later this summer as well, when Netflix finally reveals its long-awaited user profiles, which will give kids and parents their own window into Netflix content, personalized recommendations, and more. And if Netflix is smart about things, hopefully it will also introduce parental controls and other Kindle FreeTime-like features, too.

The Mini HTC One Will Be Called The HTC One Mini

Posted: 18 Jun 2013 06:38 AM PDT

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There’s plenty of information swirling about the HTC One Mini thus far, especially considering it’s not an officially announced handset by any means. Still, we’ve seen pictures, learned about rumored specs, and today it would appear that we’re one step closer to confirmation.

The folks at TNW spotted a User Agent Profile that was published to a website owned by HTC, the Taiwanese htcmms.com.tw.

According to the User Profile, the new phone will be called the HTC One Mini. Not much else is glaringly obvious from the profile, save for the fact that the phone will have a 720p display and run Android 4.2.

Past that, there isn’t much else to be plucked from the page full of code. However, there have been numerous leaks and rumors that have surfaced over the past few weeks.

Just last week, we got to see a picture of the alleged device in all its glory next to an HTC One. The HTC One is the Taiwanese handset maker’s latest flagship, following on the successes of the HTC One X that came before it. The One Mini is expected to pack lesser power into a similar design, for those looking for a smaller or more affordable handset with the same style.

That leak also surfaced some rumored specs, including a dual-core Snapdragon processor and dual front-facing speakers.

Before that, early in June, we stumbled upon a whole bevy of photos of the HTC One Mini, or at least a phone that looks incredibly similar to the HTC One Mini.

Phone makers are clearly aiming to spread out the love in terms of phone sizes, with a number of “mini” handsets making their way into stores recently. The HTC One Mini, though unconfirmed, is expected to be the latest to join that category of smartphone.

Sometimes, small size matters in a big way.

Goji Is A Smart Lock For Your Home That Has Nothing To Do With Berries

Posted: 18 Jun 2013 06:37 AM PDT

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Welcome to the era of the round, shiny in-home automation system. While Nest led the charge early on, a new device, called Goji, is taking up the mantle. The Goji is an automatic deadbolt that looks like HAL 2000′s eye and can take pictures of folks who come to your door and allows you to lock – and unlock – your door anywhere in the world.

The system logs all entries and exits and can notify you when someone opens the bolt. It has a small, round readout on the outside facing part of the door and a larger, more traditional-looking interface on the inside. The system allows you to give one-time keys to visitors and even unlock the door remotely over Wi-Fi.

Wireless deadbolts are nothing new but few are as handsomely appointed as the Goji. Clad in a metal case with blue LED readout, the bolt attaches to any standard door and simply retracts when unlocked. It has a keyed backup system and also supports low power Bluetooth “dongles” that allow you to unlock the Goji without a smartphone.

Founded by branding expert Gabriel Bestard Ribas, the Goji offers little that the incumbents like Schlage don’t already have. However, the Goji looks far sexier than any of the keypad and remote locks I’ve seen thus far. While I don’t know how many more round, shiny things my old, ratty home can take without looking like a gussied up sow’s ear, it’s nice to know these things exist.

The lock will retail for $278 but is available for a $235 pledge. They are looking to raise $120,000 and have already hit $97,000 with 47 days to go. I just hope these things don’t become sentient and lock us out of our homes.

SunnyBot Is A Solar-Powered Robot That Tracks The Sun To Reflect Sunlight Wherever You Want It

Posted: 18 Jun 2013 06:34 AM PDT

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Here’s a neat greentech idea currently seeking crowdfunding on Kickstarter. SunnyBot is a microcomputer-powered robot that continually tracks the position of the sun, angling its on-board mirror so that it keeps reflecting the sun’s rays onto a fixed point of your choice. The basic idea being to harness solar energy for use as an indoor light-source when rooms might otherwise be in shade, or to target the sun’s heat where it’s needed — for warming a room or heating a swimming pool or nurturing indoor plants, and so on.

SunnyBot’s creators — an Italian startup called Solenica — say the bot can also be used to improve solar charging performance by concentrating the sun’s energy. A single SunnyBot redirects 7,000 lumens to the location of your choice (equivalent to a single 500W halogen lamp). The reflective range of the device is up to 200 metres away, with an accuracy error margin of as little as 0.1 meter over 30 meters.

Obviously, the SunnyBot needs to be able to see sun in the sky to work — so residents of Iceland in December are going to find it brings them very little light relief. But amplifying the effects of sunlight in countries when sunshine is not so plentiful is one application its creators envisage for the device. In countries where sunshine is plentiful, the bot’s use-case is better targeting of the sun’s natural energy to improve the human environment.

Inside the sun-tracking mirror-wielding bot, itself powered by a row of solar cells, is a dual-axis, integrated microcomputer with an optical feedback system. The current SunnyBot design is a prototype, so its technical specifications will be tweaked as the startup moves to industrial production, with additional elements intended to be added to the design to improve durability, such as a custom enclosure for the mirror to support and contain it, and also the use of injection moulding for high quality body and mechanical parts.

Solenica is also planning to offer an open source version of the SunnyBot — called SunnyDuino – that, for a small price premium, will come with an additional Arduino-compatible controller and SDK so bot owners can hack in to the device to develop their own functionalities for its targeted beam of light and heat.

Solenica is aiming to raise £200,000 ($312,000) via Kickstarter to step up to industrial manufacturing so it can bring the device market. It also plans to spend some of the money on marketing SunnyBot, as it ramps up to license it to global manufacturers. It says it believes it can ship the first production run of the bot in time for the 2013 holiday season.

SunnyBot will be assembled in Italy, with macro components produced in different locations, including the electronic boards in Cambridge, U.K.; microcontrollers in Arizona, U.S.; and mechanical parts in Modena, Italy. The consumer cost per bot looks likely to be several hundred pounds. There are a limited number of Kickstarter pledges costing £199 ($310) which include one device. Solenica’s Diva Tommei adds: “We are hoping, after the project is over, to decrease costs of production and therefore the price of the robot. We want SunnyBot to be a household object that anyone can afford.”

Zuckerberg And Samsung Meet, Raising Questions About Facebook's Future Mobile Plans

Posted: 18 Jun 2013 06:26 AM PDT

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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg met with Samsung President Shin Jong Kyun this week to discuss how the two companies might work together to help Facebook reap more revenue from advertising sales targeted at mobile devices, according to Bloomberg. Kyun and Zuckerberg talked about possible partnerships between the two companies at a meeting at Samsung’s Seoul headquarters, which is especially noteworthy given that FB had a recent, very public joint product launch misfire with another handset manufacturer, HTC.

Neither Facebook nor Zuckerberg provided any comment on the purpose of the meetings, according to Bloomberg, but Samsung is already a limited partner of Facebook, presumably, given that Facebook Home supported some Samsung devices at launch, while ignoring handsets like the Nexus 4, which arguably provides the most generic, and most easily modified Android experience. Facebook Home is a launcher that sits on top of Android, and takes over the experience, essentially turning your phone into a Facebook-first device.

Facebook Home is still struggling in the downloads department, with total installs dropping off pretty steadily over the past 30 days. And the HTC First, the first and only smartphone to ship with Home pre-installed, can’t be doing well. Rumors that it would be discontinued by exclusive carrier partner AT&T so far haven’t come true, but European launches have been cancelled, indicating the First isn’t long for this world.

When the First and Home were announced, it seemed likely other OEMs would introduce handsets with Home pre-installed, but now that doesn’t seem nearly as realistic a possibility. Samsung are the big guns, however, so if Facebook is looking for one more kick at the can with Home, Zuckerberg meeting with Samsung to make the ask makes perfect sense. Of course, it’s equally possible that the social network wants to throw Home on the scrap heap and go back to the drawing board with a new partner, which is the far more interesting possibility here. Could we finally see a true Facebook Phone, for instance, with Samsung as a mostly behind the scenes partner? Possible, but hard to know where Zuck’s head at is given previous reversals stemming from flirtations with hardware.

FiftyThree, Maker Of Drawing App Paper, Raises $15 Million From Andreessen Horowitz And Others

Posted: 18 Jun 2013 06:00 AM PDT

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FiftyThree, the startup behind the wildly popular drawing app Paper, has closed a Series A round of financing led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from Highline Ventures, Thrive Capital, SV Angels, and Jack Dorsey. The investment was led by Chris Dixon, and could help the company to expand its suite of creative tools for mobile and tablet users.

With the funding, FiftyThree is hoping to expand its current product, launch more apps, and look into hardware, all of which is the continuation of a journey it embarked on a few years ago. After working on projects such as Office, Kinect, Sonos, and the Xbox, as well Microsoft’s own early tablet prototype, Courier, the team came together to create Paper. In doing so, it set out to build a set of tools that would change the way people used the iPad.

The app provided a new outlet for creativity on the tablet. While most initial iPad users thought about it as a tool for content consumption, Paper gave users the ability to be more creative. Since then, the app has been downloaded more than 8 million times and has had more than 80 million projects built on it.

FiftyThree has also received a massive amount of critical acclaim for Paper, winning a number of awards since being launched. Among other things, it’s been honored with Apple’s App Of The Year Award and the Apple Design Award, and even won a Crunchie. It’s also been featured on iPads in Apple Stores as just one of the many apps that are available to prospective owners.

With the latest update to the Paper app, FiftyThree added a “Made With Paper” stream to provide new users and creators with inspiration for the types of projects they can embark upon. But there’s more to do, the team believes. Paper is just the first in what is likely a series of applications and tools that the startup plans to make available.

In a blog post announcing the funding, the team said it wanted to enable more social collaboration for creators which could enable them to work on projects together. It also hopes to build tools that go beyond just expressing oneself on the iPad or other tablets. That includes building hardware to create more physical tools for creation.

“With their partnership we’ll be able to expand our software, service, and hardware teams to take on bigger questions around collaboration and physical creation,” the team wrote.

In a conversation with TechCrunch TV earlier this year (embedded below), the company discussed other creative tools that it could come to market with in the future. One idea is a stylus, which could provide a new type of hardware input for its creators.

While FiftyThree doesn’t need to raise money, according to a blog post by investor Chris Dixon, the company plans to use the funding to accelerate its growth and to go after new opportunities. With the investment from Andreessen Horowitz and others, the company will be expanding its engineering team in New York and Seattle.


Nic Brisbourne Leaves DFJ Esprit To Help Forward Investment Partners “Double-Down” On VC Activity

Posted: 18 Jun 2013 05:58 AM PDT

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There’s some interesting news coming out of London today in the form of VC musical chairs. DFJ Esprit, the European VC firm that is also part of Silicon Valley’s DFJ Global Network, has announced that Associate Scott Sage has been promoted to full VC Partner. However, that isn’t the big story. In events that seem somewhat related, TechCrunch has learned that long-standing DFJ Esprit Partner Nic Brisbourne, who has been at the London-based VC firm since 2006, is moving on to pastures new.

According to my sources, he’s joining Forward Investment Partners, the venture capital arm of Forward Internet Group, where I understand he’ll be helping Forward “double-down” in terms of the number of investments it plans to make, and in how it supports the startups in its portfolio and the ‘founders in residence’ coming through its startup foundry Forward Labs.

Confirming Brisbourne’s appointment, Paul Fisher, Director at Forward Internet Group, said in a statement issued to TechCrunch: “We’re humbled to have been able to recruit a high-calibre Partner like Nic and he is the ideal person to help build our portfolio while retaining the entrepreneurial essence of the Forward Group.”

It’s certainly true that the recruitment of Brisbourne by Forward does seem to be quite a coup. One of the higher profile VCs on the European tech scene (and regular blogger via The Equity Kicker), he’s been in the venture capital business since 2000, spending time based in both Silicon Valley and Europe. He’s also said to be personally responsible for over 25 investments including Buy.AT (acquired by AOL for $125m), Zeus Technology (acquired by Riverbed for $140m), WAYN, Tribold, Conversocial, StrikeAd and Lyst. A decent track record by any measure, not least in European VC.

Undoubtedly he’ll bring a wealth of experience to Forward’s venture arm, as well as his personal brand, network and deal-flow. As I was reminded in a conversation with a VC yesterday, investors have to court entrepreneurs too. It’s also worth noting that Forward Investment Partners invests its own money in the companies it backs — it doesn’t have shareholders or limited partners — so one might infer that Brisbourne has the opportunity to be even more nimble in terms of turning deal-flow into investments at speed when the opportunity strikes. The companies that Forward Investment Partners has backed to date include Hailo, Zopa, Appear Here, Hubbub and BlikBook.

A spokesperson for DFJ Esprit wouldn’t confirm Brisbourne’s departure — we appear to have blindsided any official announcement — although I understand that technically he is still a DFJ employee until the end of today and will start his new post as early as next Monday.

Meanwhile, Brisbourne himself is currently “off grid” traveling in India where, according to his blog, he’s staying at the Swami Rama Sadhaka Grama ashram in the foothills of the Himalayas near Rishikesh “to study meditation and yoga, and to unwind.” It’s well-acknowledged how stressful startup life can be, but spare a thought for the VCs!

Finally, it would be remiss not to say congratulations to DFJ Esprit’s new Partner Scott Sage. It’s often said that when raising venture capital you don’t want to pitch an Associate, you want to pitch a full Partner at a VC firm, the person with the decision-making power. So this is a significant promotion for Sage, and in a call last night I could tell how excited he is. It’s something he says he’s been working really hard to achieve since he joined DFJ as an Associate in 2010. However, when he was offered the promotion it still came as a surprise. At the age of 30, he’s also likely one of the youngest to make full Partner at a major VC firm in Europe.

Yandex Takes Another Swipe At Google In Russia, Launches Yandex.Browser On iOS And Android

Posted: 18 Jun 2013 05:02 AM PDT

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Yandex, referred to as the “Google of Russia” for its dominance in search and subsequent extension into cloud-based services like maps, online storage and apps, today is unveiling another service that will give it a stronger foothold in the fast-growing mobile market: it is debuting a dedicated mobile browser, which will feature a single box for URLs and searches, voice recognition features and more. But Yandex is still stopping short of launching a full-blown, Android-style mobile platform to complete the picture.

There are “no plans” to develop a mobile operating system, a spokesperson tells me. “It doesn’t make sense for us. It is a totally different business. Anyway, we [now] have everything for our own mobile ecosystem on Android: search, apps like Mail and Maps, 3D UI (Yandex.Shell), app store and now the browser.”

Yandex.Browser for mobile comes on the back of Yandex last year launching a dedicated desktop browser of the same name in October 2012. That browser now has around 8 million users in Russia, or a 5%-6% market share.

The mobile version will launch, the company says, “later this year.”

The move comes at a time when Yandex is already a strong player in mobile. Not only are its maps and other apps already popular among iOS and Android users (and it has a deal with Apple to help power its native mapping product on iOS devices in Russian-speaking countries, as part of the latter company’s gradual distancing from Google), but Yandex already holds about half of all searches on Android devices. This is a significant metric and perhaps more significant than where Yandex is positioned right now on iOS: Android is the platform where it concentrates a lot of its energy because it is the fastest-growing in Russia, across a range of low-cost and high-end handsets.

“According to our stats Yandex have about 49% of searches on Android, but for sure we want more,” the spokesperson notes. It has around a 60% stake in online search in Russia, with other big players including Google.

While Yandex has focused, and continues to focus, a lot of its efforts to date on Russian-language markets and to a lesser extent Turkey, new mobile services, where the playing field remains open has been an opportunity for Yandex to test out and export more services in English. In that vein, it’s launching Yandex.Browser for mobile in both Russian and English-language users.


(The ill-fated, but full-of-potential Wonder app in the U.S. is one example of how that hasn’t always worked, though.)

Like the online browser, the mobile browser is built WebKit (Blink on Android). And like Chrome, it lets users incorporate both URLs and searches into a single box that Yandex calls “Smartbox.” This will tie a user into using Yandex search first on the browser.

Interestingly, although Yandex competes fairly fiercely with Google in Russia and other markets where Yandex is established, outside of it the search giant becomes a major partner. The English version of the mobile browser, Yandex notes, will have Google as its default search (except in China, where Baidu is the default. “This is because we want to make the browser really convinient for people outside of Russia, CIS and Turkey,” the spokesperson says. Users can also set the default search to either Bing or Yahoo in the English version.

These are not commercial deals, but if and when Yandex gets more users on the browser, “we will think about some alternative ways to monetize it, like revenue-sharing models for search engines and websites preset on browser’s launch page.” In home markets, the browser’s main revenue stream will come from search ads.

Other features to come will also include “integration with social networks, synchronization between mobile and desktop versions of the browser and improved user experience,” the company says. And as you can see in some of the screenshots in this post, it looks like there will also be some integration of voice-based search and potentially other features, too.

Tesla Battery Swapping Tech For Long Trips Without Charging Stops To Be Demoed June 20

Posted: 18 Jun 2013 04:33 AM PDT

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Elon Musk took to Twitter early this morning (via Verge) to promote an event coming this Thursday that promises to show off new tech that allows quick swapping of Tesla battery packs for extended trips, without requiring a Supercharger stop. The move would make a Tesla Model S roadster as easy to fuel up as a gas-powered car, if not easier, getting rid of the need for extended period charging stopovers.

As GigaOM points out, Tesla previously acknowledged that it has built the Tesla S with a swappable battery, so the tech demoed on Thursday shouldn’t apply only to new models going forward or anything quite so cruel. Instead, existing Tesla drivers will likely learn exactly how the system works, which will probably involve adding battery swap stations to existing Tesla charger locations, allowing car owners to essentially trade their expended battery pack module for a fresh one on the spot.

The demonstration of the swapping tech will be shown at the event and then made available via video posted to Tesla’s website later in the evening on Thursday. If it’s easy enough and smartly implemented, it should make it possible for Tesla owners to manage much longer distance trips without requiring a proper recharge, extending well beyond the roughly 265 mile range of the Model S Performance model. So long as swapping units are available, there should be no reason why even a non-stop cross-country trip wouldn’t be possible.

Filipino Gift-remittance Startup Ayannah Gets $1M Angel Round

Posted: 18 Jun 2013 03:00 AM PDT

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Ayannah, a gift-remittance startup in the Philippines, just received $1 million in its first angel round.

The company’s service is called Sendah, and allows Filipinos working overseas to pay for products and services back home for their families through Sendah’s site.

Sendah has a number of benefits over plain cash remittance. The company has worked out a number of discount deals with vendors on its site, so some of the products are cheaper online than off-the-shelf. Also, being able to pay for services directly allows the migrant workers to ensure the cash is used for the intended purpose.

The company launched in 2010, and has about 50,000 users. It’s targeting an estimated 200 million migrant workers living abroad.

Ayannah has another service called Sendah Direct, which is targeted at the large unbanked portion of the domestic market. It provides prepaid credits for companies it works with, allowing users to buy prepaid airtime or gaming credits, or gift certificates, for example. It also processes bill payments and money transfers between some larger retail chains such as drugstores.

It has about 7,000 retail partners, and has a million repeat customers in the Philippines, it said. One of its enterprise customers is Smart Communications, one of the two main telcos in the country.

Ayannah’s founder and CEO, Mikko Perez, said the company plans to enter South Asia and Latin America, and license its platform to partners in EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) before year-end. Ayannah is already in “advanced talks” with partners in Central America, South Eastern Europe and Central Asia, he said. The company is focusing particularly on the unbanked demographic in these countries, so it’s likely that Sendah Direct’s model will be the platform getting licensed in these countries.

A third service, Sendah Connect, was just launched. Sendah Connect is a mobile app that allows free SIP calls and delivers live and archived video content on mobile phones, said Perez. The product will accept payments through a prepaid online wallet service. The app is available for Android phones now, and the company plans to market it to the US, Japan and Singapore soon, he said.

Ayannah employs a staff of 45, based in the Philippines.

This round of $1 million was led by LA-based Siemer Ventures and Golden Gate Ventures, which has operations in Singapore and in San Francisco. Including this round, Ayannah has received $2.5 million to date.

Worried Who's Watching Your Web Browsing? Adafruit's Onion Pi Tor Proxy Project Creates A Private, Portable Wi-Fi Access Point

Posted: 18 Jun 2013 02:40 AM PDT

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Adafruit Industries has put together a weekend project for people worried the NSA is monitoring how many reruns of Seinfeld they watch on their tablet. The Onion Pi Tor Proxy is a weekend project that uses the Raspberry Pi microcomputer, along with a USB WiFi adapter and Ethernet cable to create “a small, low-power and portable privacy Pi” for using with portable or other computing devices (e.g. your work laptop) that can’t otherwise run the anonymising Tor network.

In the Onion Pi configuration, the Pi creates a secure access point which automatically routes any web browsing through Tor’s distributed network of relays. The Tor network is designed to disrupt web surveillance by preventing web snoopers from learning which sites you visit, and also the sites you visit from learning your physical location. It does this by ensuring every Internet packet goes through three layers of relays before going on to its intended destination. Hence Tor’s many layered onion motif.

Adafruit says the Onion Pi is good for those who…

…want to browse anonymously on a netbook, tablet, phone, or other mobile or console device that cannot run Tor and does not have an Ethernet connection. If you do not want to or cannot install Tor on your work laptop or loan computer. If you have a guest or friend who wants to use Tor but doesn’t have the ability or time to run Tor on their computer, this gift will make the first step much easier.

Getting the Onion Pi access point up and running means plugging the Ethernet cable into any Internet access point and powering up the Pi via its micro USB cable plugged into your laptop/the wall adapter. The Pi will then create the Onion Pi access point. Connect to that for a less NSA-friendly browsing session.

That said, Adafruit’s Onion Pi page does contain caveats regarding exactly how anonymous this set-up is — noting: “We can’t guarantee that it is 100% anonymous and secure! Be smart & paranoid about your TOR usage.”

Other Adafruit tips for keeping your web browsing on the down-low include:

  • deleting and blocking your browser cache, history & cookies — and/or using a browser that offers anonymous sessions
  • avoiding logging into existing accounts with personally identifying information
  • using SSL to end-to-end encrypt communications —  NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has also said encryption works

Ad Giant WPP Leads $4.4M Round In Muzy, A Mobile Microblogging Startup With 20M Users

Posted: 18 Jun 2013 02:21 AM PDT

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Advertising giant WPP is taking another step into the world of startup investments, this time specifically in mobile and social media. WPP Ventures, a new investment arm of WPP Digital, today announced a stake in Muzy, a social media platform that presents its content arranged in a Pinterest-style grid layout. The site, in some regards, has flown under the radar, but it has some 20 million users and is adding 1 million each month. Terms of the investment were not disclosed but we are trying to find out. It is angel-backed by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, and we’ve found out that the total size of this latest round is $4.4 million.

That growth, made so far without any marketing, promotion or distribution partners — and the facts that Muzy is social and mobile — are three possible reasons for why WPP took an interest in the site. Another is how WPP Ventures was first introduced to the company. “I met the Muzy founders through a friend at Andreessen Horowitz,” Tom Bedecarré of WPP Ventures told TechCrunch in an interview while he was in Cannes for WPP’s Stream event. Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz were early angel investors in Muzy.

Founded in 2011 and based in San Francisco, Muzy is led by co-founders Andrew Chen (CEO) and Matt Rubens (CTO). Chen had also held positions at Mohr Davidow Ventures and Revenue Science, while Rubens, an engineer, has worked at Amazon.com, among other places.

According to a release, the company will be using the funding to staff up — it currently employs less than 10 people — and “build out the suite of creative publishing tools for the Muzy platform.”

At the moment, when you go to the site, you can choose from some 50 widgets to publish content into your page, with a particularly strong emphasis on photos but also incorporating text, games and other content. It the app-within-app facility that sets Muzy apart from other platforms focused on content creation and self-expression, and could be one way for the company to differentiate longer term.

It could also be a way for WPP to look at ways of monetizing. You can imagine, for example, widgets or channels getting sponsored by brands, not to mention pages themselves. In an age where users are getting increasingly desensitized to display advertising online, you can see how new formats like these will continue to be tested out as ways of getting users to engage with marketing and as a way to create business models around sites like Muzy.

WPP has developed something of a track record in making strategic investments into digital, specifically mobile and other emerging areas, as a way of shoring up against larger trends in the industry away from more traditional forms of media like print.

Following where the consumer masses (and their eyeballs) are going, WPP has taken stakes in e-commerce sites like MySupermarket ($10 million in April 2012); and more straight media plays, such as yesterday’s news involving a stake in Fullscreen (undisclosed amount), stakes in Buddy Media (sold to Salesforce), Omniture (sold to Adobe) and more. One the biggest of the biggest investments made by WPP in digital was the company’s own acquisition of digital agency AKQA (June 2012, reportedly at a $550 million valuation).

It’s the AKQA deal that has provided the engine to today’s news around Muzy. The investment is being led by WPP Ventures, a Silicon Valley-based operation for WPP’s bigger investment efforts. Bedecarré, WPP Ventures’ president, is also chairman of AKQA (and, apparently, “Silicon Valley’s favorite ad man.” This is WPP Ventures’ first investment.

The timeline of when WPP may start to leverage Muzy is not laid out but it looks like it will be happening fast.

“WPP clients are looking for access to the next new social platform, the next big mobile app,” Bedecarré told TechCrunch. “I can’t wait to introduce Muzy to our clients and experiment with using their content publishing tools to create brand engagement. As an avid entrepreneur, I also want to help advise the Muzy founders on marketing and promoting their business, which has been operating in stealth mode to this date. I think we can significantly help them boost their growth and global distribution.”

WPP, one of the world’s very biggest ad agencies, says that in 2012 its digital revenues were over $5 billion, some 33% of its total revenues of $16.5 billion. It’s long been pursuing a target of getting 40% of its revenues coming from digital by 2018.

(Updated with comments from Tom Bedecarré.)
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