tech now

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• Bill Gates, Benchmark And More Pour $35M Into ResearchGate, The Professional Network For Scientists
• Zynga Shuts Down OMGPOP One Year After Acquiring It For $200M
• Backed by NEA, Andreessen Horowitz; Mattermark (Formerly Referly) Wants To Be The Data Signaling Platform For VCs
• Google Launches Cloud SQL API To Allow Developers To Manage Their Databases Programmatically
• Google TV Adds Redbox Instant By Verizon App, Pitting It Against Netflix On The Platform
• Augmented Reality Startup Daqri Raises $15M More, Troy Carter Joins Advisory Board
• Sunrise Raises $2.2 Million Because “It Is The Only Calendar App With A Design-Oriented Approach”
• Dollar Shave Club Goes Beyond Shaving (And Declares Goal To ‘Own The Bathroom') With One Wipe Charlies
• Microsoft Debuts Crowdfunding Program For Student Laptops, Offers Office 365 Free To First 10K Participants
• Wikipad's $249 Android Gaming Tablet Will (Finally) Make Its U.S. Debut On June 11
• Huge Labs Launches Honey, A Reddit-Like Message Board For Sharing News In Your Company
• Bitfash Converts Your Bitcoins Into Fashion From Top Brands
• Dora Streams Again – Amazon Signs Deal With Viacom, Wins Popular Kids' Shows Netflix Lost
• Hukkster Is Prepping Next Generation Of Price-Watching Mobile App For September Launch
• Fitness Tracking App Moves Introduces API, Allows Devs To Build Apps Using Its Activity Data
• Now 34M Users Strong, DIY Web Publishing Platform Wix Takes First Step Toward IPO
• Haiku Deck Update Brings Getty Images To Slides, Adds Image History, Public And Private Notes
• Delivery.com Acquires Online Laundry Services Startup Brinkmat To Expand Beyond Food Deliveries
• Apple Reportedly Refocuses iAd On New Streaming Music Radio Service
• HTC Loses Another Senior Exec As COO Steps Down - But May's Phone Sales Are One Bright Spot Amid The Gloom

Bill Gates, Benchmark And More Pour $35M Into ResearchGate, The Professional Network For Scientists Posted: 04 Jun 2013 09:00 AM PDT Ijad Madisch started ResearchGate in 2008 to change the scientific method, and depending on where you sit, that either is or isn’t as ambitious as it sounds. Madisch isn’t on a crusade to overturn the techniques scientists use to investigate and systematically observe phenomena, so much as the tools. Today, there’s an incredible amount of scientific research taking place, whether it’s in chemistry, physics, biology or any of the umpteen disciplines in between. However, typically, scientists, especially those who work in or around academia, live mostly in an offline world. Today, as a result, one of the biggest problems to plague scientific research, innovation and breakthroughs is redundancy. A team of scientists hard at work on protein data analysis publish their results only to learn that a group on the opposite side of the world has just done the same. As both a physician and a researcher, Madisch decided that the best way to reduce research redundancy would be to create an online professional network in which scientists could easily share data, information and results. Research would become more effective, and science would be better for it. Monetizing a professional network of scientists (something that could potentially be tricky) has proved far easier than changing the stolid mindset of scientists and academia, the founder and CEO tells me. Bringing entire communities and communication methods online is a slow process, whether dealing with microbiology researchers or not, and luckily for Madisch, ResearchGate hasn’t been short-changed when it comes to investors willing to its vision of the future. And that backing got significantly deeper. Today, ResearchGate announced that it has closed a $35 million round of series C financing from Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Tenaya Capital, with participation from Dragoneer Investment Group and Thrive Capital. This hefty third-round of financing follows its series A and B rounds raised in 2010 and 2012, respectively, which saw it add names like Accel Partners, Simon Levene, Bebo co-founder Michael Birch, Founders Fund, Benchmark Capital, and Yammer CEO David Sacks as investors. Short-term returns may not be part of the equation for ResearchGate’s investors, but Bill Gates, for one, hasn’t been shy about placing big bets on potentially high-impact education, energy and health-related technologies, even if those are long-term — or long shot — investments. Benchmark Partner (and ResearchGate boardmember) Matt Cohler, too, has been quick to talk about why he invested in an enterprise “that certainly had no short-term plans to become a billion-dollar company.” The reason is evident in the way Madisch describes his startup’s mission today, telling us that ResearchGate aims to help “free knowledge from the Ivory Tower, to digitize it and make it accessible for everyone in order to accelerate scientific progress.” Cohler recognizes a similar ambition at ResearchGate to what he saw in his early days at LinkedIn and Facebook, and that, like those two businesses, the startup could be on its way to becoming a “true network effect business.” Granted, ResearchGate isn’t quite on the same growth curve as the two early social networks, but it’s begun to find some traction in the scientific community, having grown to more than 2.8 million members spread across 131 countries since launch, with 30 percent now logging in once per month.

Zynga Shuts Down OMGPOP One Year After Acquiring It For $200M Posted: 04 Jun 2013 09:00 AM PDT As the dust begins to settle following yesterday’s massive, sweeping layoffs at Zynga, the extent of the damage is becoming more clear. Remember when Zynga acquired OMGPOP last year for roughly $200M dollars? Yeah, OMGPOP essentially no longer exists. According to tweets from company employees and the company’s Twitter account itself, most of the OMGPOP staff was let go, with their New York City office shuttered. From OMGPOP’s Former “VP of People”: I learned via Facebook I was laid off today and @OMGPOP office is closed. Thanks @zynga for again reminding me how not to operate a business— Ali Nicolas (@ali_nicolas) June 03, 2013 From Former Senior Community Manager: Thanks for the concern everyone. Yep, I've been laid off (along with most of the studio). I'll share more details soon after I do my exit…— Joseph Alminawi (@swiftor) June 03, 2013 From the company itself: While this is the last day at @zynga for many @omgpop staff, we want to thank you for all love and awesomeness over the years!—   (@omgpop) June 03, 2013 Zynga acquired OMGPOP at the height of its success, just as Draw Something — OMGPOP’s first real smash hit — was exploding onto handsets everywhere. By the time Zynga pushed an update to add their logo to the game, its popularity had already tapered. Alas, it seems like the two companies never managed to find a comfortable way to sit together. We’ve heard previously that there was some pretty serious culture clash from day one — and just two months ago, OMGPOP CEO Dan Porter left the company after a statement he made during a panel was “taken out of context” to suggest that Zynga openly copies their competitor’s games. I didn’t realize that was still up for debate. I had drinks with a few now ex-Zynga’ers last night, most of whom were surprisingly upbeat about the whole thing. “The severance is enough to hold me over for a while,” said one “but most of my team had new jobs lined up by the time they left the building anyway.”

Backed by NEA, Andreessen Horowitz; Mattermark (Formerly Referly) Wants To Be The Data Signaling Platform For VCs Posted: 04 Jun 2013 09:00 AM PDT It’s no secret these days that VCs are getting into data in a meaningful way. Firms can no longer afford to wait for companies, people and trends to come to Sand Hill Road. To start competing for deals, VCs have to be prospecting people, companies and trends well before events like Y Combinator’s Demo Day. Many VCs have built their own data parsing platforms internally but one startup launching today, Mattermark, is hoping to be the go-to software for firms to use when quantifying signals of growing and potentially lucrative startups. Matterbox is the brainchild of Danielle Morrill, who previously founded Referly, a way for people who like to curate products earn extra cash off recommendations through affiliate revenue. Referly was shut down in March (and most of its staff let go); and Morrill, her husband, Kevin Morrill, and Andy Sparks (who joined Morrill via Referly’s LaunchGram acquisition in Feburary) are now focusing on Matterbox. Morill, who is a graduate of Y Combinator via Referly, became increasingly intrigued by how VCs could mine data to identify companies. She was previously the Editor of Seattle 2.0, and helped produce Seattle 2.0 Index, which was a monthly ranked list of all the local startups. Based on her experiences, she realized there was a opportunity to use some of this data in the VC world. As she explains, “If VCs don’t see a company until YC’s Demo Day, they have less of a chance of winning the deal. So investors need to get smart and identify these opportunities beforehand,” she says. The software allows VCs to access data from Twitter, news sites, SEC filings, LinkedIn AngelList, Crunchbase, and the company’s own propriety Startup Index; to spot potential opportunities as well as track existing startups. Here an interesting example of some of the data dives Morill and her team are experimenting with. For seed investors it's like an early warning system, detecting businesses that are gaining mindshare with customers long before they're a hot deal (for example, the app will identify a startup that suddenly starts to get a lot of organic Twitter mentions). For later stage investors it's a way to research a startup and get a lot of information about them in one place, and even compare them to other companies in their space (for example we've found an increase in LinkedIn followers correlates well with later stage success). You can query, track and organize companies by stage, vertical and geography (and download this data to Excel or PDF). And Mattermark makes all this data more digestible with powerful filters. For example, you can query which startups are building developer tools who haven’t raised a Series A yet, and rank these companies by engagement on Twitter. The site also provides real-time alerts and weekly email digests. Beyond just for sourcing deals, the software, says Morrill, can also be used to background a potential investment, or generate sales leads for clients. Referly-backers Andreessen Horowitz, Ignition and NEA did a follow-on round in Mattermark, and are actually using the application internally. Morrill adds that the startup is also looking to build custom-applications for certain firms. There is a free subscription product available that provides a weekly newsletter and access to all company leaderboards. The paid pro account is a subscription and provides full database access, custom reports and alerts There’s no doubt that there is a significant opportunity in being the Bloomberg terminal for VCs and investors. Until recently, most of investments were sourced via word of mouth or introduction. It’s a different world for VCs these days and knowledge and data is now power. As Morrill explains, “We don't believe we can replace investors' ability to build relationships with entrepreneurs, but we do think we can help them source opportunities more efficiently and reduce the chances of missing a whale.” And certainly the success of Mattermark will be hinged upon whether it does allow a VC firm help find the next Instagram.

Google Launches Cloud SQL API To Allow Developers To Manage Their Databases Programmatically Posted: 04 Jun 2013 08:57 AM PDT Google’s Cloud Platform has long featured Cloud SQL, a zero maintenance MySQL database that’s hosted on Google’s cloud platform. What it didn’t offer, however, was an API to easily manage these databases without having to use Google’s admin interface. Today, however, Google is launching the Cloud SQL API. This new REST API will allow developers to programmatically manage their database instances and open up a number of new use cases for Cloud SQL. The API, which Google still deems to be experimental, will allow developers to create their own workflows to easily create and delete instances, restart them and restore them from backup. They will also be able to use it to important and export their databases to and from Google Cloud Storage. For developers, this means using Google’s cloud database is now quite a bit easier, especially if they need to regularly manage multiple databases for their customers. Google’s launch partner for this API is OrangeScape, which uses it to power parts of KiSSFLOW, its Google Apps workflow SaaS service. With KiSSFLOW, OrangeScape’s CTO Mani Doraisamy said in a statement today, “we manage Cloud SQL instances and App Engine instances individually for each of our customers. [..] We could not provision the database every time a new customer came in. With the Cloud SQL API, we were able to provision it and not have costs or manual intervention associated with it from offsite.” With its Cloud Datastore, by the way, Google also recently launched a new database option for developers who need a powerful NoSQL solution. Cloud Datastore also currently offers a basic API for managing some aspects of the service, though it’s not quite as comprehensive as the API Google launched for Cloud SQL today.

Google TV Adds Redbox Instant By Verizon App, Pitting It Against Netflix On The Platform Posted: 04 Jun 2013 08:33 AM PDT Google has just announced via its official Google TV blog that Redbox Instant by Verizon is arriving on the platform today. The newly launched app provides Redbox subscribers access to streaming movie and TV content, depending on their subscription package, as well as purchase and rentals from the Instant store and the ability to reserve physical discs for pick-up at the closest Redbox kiosk. Supported Google TV devices include select LG smart TVs, the NETGEAR NeoTV Prime, the Sony Internet Player NSZ-GS7 and the Vizio Co-Star. It’s a limited pool to begin with, and eschews first-generation Google TV devices altogether, but expect it to be compatible with future hardware boasting Google TV as well. The launch on Google TV marks the next stage in the continued expansion of Redbox Instant, the would-be Netflix competitor that first debuted in beta at the end of 2012. Redbox Instant has become available for some device-specific smart TVs, after first arriving only on mobile devices including iOS and Android-powered smartphones and tablets. Back when he first trialled the service, Ryan Lawler noted that it isn’t really a Netflix competitor, and is rather a way to get more revenue out of heavy users of its existing services, rather than something that puts streaming first. He said at the time that the real value in the service is for DVD renters who would get a bit more value out of streaming, but probably wouldn’t get many to switch. Redbox Instant arriving on Google TV is a bit of a case of two platforms struggling to find audiences joining forces, to the delight of… well that’s the problem. Google TV, despite continued commitment and investment by Google, has not caught fire in the way some imagined it would. And Redbox Instant seems like a reactionary move designed to curtail Netflix’s success, but Netflix already appears on Google TV, and is arguably one of the main reasons to use it; it’s unclear how much this arrangement will help either party with their ongoing struggles, if at all.

Augmented Reality Startup Daqri Raises $15M More, Troy Carter Joins Advisory Board Posted: 04 Jun 2013 08:07 AM PDT Daqri, a company that says it’s creating the “Photoshop of augmented reality,” just announced that it has raised a $15 million Series A led by Tarsadia Investments. As with other augmented reality companies, Daqri enables customers to enrich physical objects with additional media when those objects are viewed through a smartphone or tablet camera (and eventually other devices, too — the company says it will support Google Glass at launch). The technology has already powered more than 1,000 campaigns with companies like Twentieth Century Fox, Matchbox 20, and Sony, Daqri says. At the same time, it isn’t just trying to make ads — the company also sees potential in fields like manufacturing, medicine, and education. For example, when founder and CEO Brian Mullins stopped by the TechCrunch office last month, he unrolled a large diagram — which, when viewed through his iPad, turned into a 3D anatomical body. There were other materials, like a Maxim cover that turned into a behind-the-scenes video. Daqri has some more news coming up, so I don’t think I’m supposed to talk about the most impressive demo that I saw, at least not yet — but, well, it was impressive. There are other companies doing interesting things with augmented reality, including some from competitors like Autonomy-owned Aurasma, but it still feels like the technology is in its very early stages — when I look at many AR campaigns and products, I think, “Cool!” for a few seconds but find little to hold my interest beyond that. The key to moving AR to the next level, Mullins said, is taking it beyond novelties and gimmicks. He compared it to the early days of movies (where, famously, one of the early hits showed a train pulling into the station). He added that one of the advantages that Daqri has over the competition is the fact that you don’t need a team of developers to build a campaign. Designers should be able to create beautiful, interactive media without writing a line of code — that’s where the Photoshop comparison comes in. Daqri has now raised $17 million in total funding. The company also announced that Troy Carter, Lady Gaga’s manager and chairman and CEO of Atom Factory, has joined its advisory board.

Sunrise Raises $2.2 Million Because “It Is The Only Calendar App With A Design-Oriented Approach” Posted: 04 Jun 2013 07:59 AM PDT When Sunrise introduced its calendar app to iOS users, it was already a crowded space. Yet, the company just raised a $2.2 million seed round led by Resolute.vc and NextView Ventures. It fosters a different approach focused on design and the user experience and will continue to experiment in the calendar space. “For now, our first product is the iPhone app — more broadly, we actually build products that make your calendar simpler, more useful and that are able to give you the right information at the right time,” co-founder Pierre Valade said in an interview. Founded by two ex-Foursquare designers (Pierre Valade and Jeremy Le Van), the company launched its iPhone app less than three months after focusing full time on Sunrise. While Sunrise had to fix a few things after its launch, the app was already very polished. In addition to having a great design, its server infrastructure scaled well without having to use a queue system like Mailbox. Many people praised it. The ability to iterate so quickly appealed to potential investors. That’s why the team could line up some well-known angels and VC companies. When talking about competitors such as Cue or Tempo, Valade said that “Sunrise is the only calendar app with a design-oriented approach.” Fantastical is not technically a competitor because it doesn’t have a server component. It is just a beautiful layer on top of iOS’s calendar APIs. Mike Hirshland from Resolute.vc and Rob Go from NextView Ventures are co-leading the round with participation from Lerer Ventures, SV Angel, BoxGroup, 500 Startups and John Maloney from Terrapinbale. In addition to those investors, the following angels participated as well: Dave Morin (Path), David King (Blippy), Andrew Kortina (Venmo), Adam Nash (LinkedIn), Elliot Shmukler (LinkedIn), Hunter Walk (Youtube), Gustaf Alströmer (Airbnb), Loic Le Meur (Le Web), Bill Lee (Twist), Adam Mosseri (Facebook) and others. In an interview (see below), Valade hinted at upcoming features and products. Widely anticipated iCloud and Exchange integrations should come soon, as well as new third-party integrations, with services such as Songkick or Eventbrite. The New York-based company will remain a small team for the time being. “We are three right now and we are going to recruit three more people,” Valade said. “Our objective is to stay small but we need two or three more talented persons,” he continued. I did an interview with Valade about Sunrise, calendar apps and design. This interview gives better perspective over what makes this startup different in the eyes of investors only a few months after the company’s inception. TechCrunch: What doesn’t work with current calendars? Pierre Valade: One of the most important issue with current calendars is that they are bad implementations of the paper version. All that you get is what you have written down in your calendar, and it is very hard to get more information from external sources. From a design standpoint, it’s a product that is very hard to approach. Users aren’t usually happy with their current calendar. TC: What did iPhone users like about Sunrise? “We want to bring Sunrise to new platforms and we want Sunrise to connect to more services.” PV: Design — for the first time, an app changes the way calendar is done on a mobile phone. It’s way easier to use Sunrise than to use any other calendar app. The second point is the integration between Google Calendar and Facebook — suddenly, multiple parts of your life on different services are in the same app. You can RSVP to a Facebook event and a Google Calendar event without having to switch from app to app. TC: Sunrise syncs with multiple services. How do people react to that and what do they use? PV: We made a bet — people won’t switch their backend calendar, like Google Calendar, iCloud or Exchange. But that’s only one source of information on your life. There are many others: your cinema tickets, your restaurant reservations, your hotels, your Songkick Eventbrite and Facebook profiles. Soon, we will support iCloud, Exchange and more services that will allow you to gather more information at the same time. TC: After raising this seed round, what will be the next product improvements? PV: We want to bring Sunrise to new platforms and we want Sunrise to connect to more services. We are perfectionist and there are some things that we need to polish. Solving core problems is our top priority before thinking about new features. We have a design-oriented approach. TC: What is the point of making your calendar sexier. Isn’t it like making Excel sexier? PV: We aren’t making it sexier from a visual perspective, but making it work better. It means that we provide information without requiring any manual input from the user. You get some context about the person you are going to meet without having to look up information on the web — this is design as well. The interface makes all of this work hand in hand. But there is a broader question. Why, as designers, do we have this need to redesign everyone’s experience and make it better? “It’s frustrating for designers to see people using tools that are painful to use.” I think it’s an interesting trend. People like us are tackling pre-defined experiences like calendars or hotel reservations or plane tickets and change them using a design-oriented approach. Hipmunk did it for plane tickets, Airbnb did it with room reservations. But they radically change the experience — when you travel to another city, you want to meet new people. They wondered how they could integrate that into Airbnb. Designers just need to pick an idea and tackle the issue. It’s frustrating for designers to see people using tools that are painful to use. There is no reason for it to stay that way. You need to recreate those tools from the ground up and ask yourself whether a calendar needs to be that way, whether Excel needs all of its features. You can always discover how users actually want to use an application. In the end, you won’t build features that are too complicated and that nobody will use.

Dollar Shave Club Goes Beyond Shaving (And Declares Goal To ‘Own The Bathroom') With One Wipe Charlies Posted: 04 Jun 2013 07:19 AM PDT Dollar Shave Club, the subscription razor service incubated by Los Angeles-based Science, Inc. and backed by firms like Venrock, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and Andreessen Horowitz, is launching its second line of products today — butt wipes. The idea may seem like something designed to provoke embarrassed laughter, but CEO Michael Dubin told me, “Nothing we do is an accident. It’s funny to talk about, but it was derived from research. We wanted to understand the products that guys use in the bathroom and where they want to see improvement.” Dubin went on to suggest that the new product, called One Wipe Charlies, is addressing a similar need to its razor service. It’s “replenishing an often-used, always-overpriced staple,” he said. Indeed, although I recently became a Dollar Shave Club subscriber and do enjoy the convenience of the regular deliveries, the appeal of the razors wasn’t immediately obvious — when the company first launched, I didn’t think buying new razors was that big an inconvenience or expensive. On the other hand, I could immediately remember grumbling trips down the street when I discovered that my apartment was low on toilet paper. As for why it’s selling wipes instead of toilet paper, Dollar Shave Club says that 51 percent of men have already used wipes, although only 16 percent use them in place of toilet paper. The company will charge $4 for a 40-pack, and it argues that wipes are cleaner, feel better, are faster, and although “we can’t actually prove this one,” may even make your butt smell better. That last point gets at one of the startup’s main assets — its humor. And not just the “well, that’s cute” humor that you find with many startups, but actual laugh-out-loud wit. The company is probably best-known for the video that Dubin made promoting its razors, “Our Blades Are F***ing Great” (currently at more than 10 million views on YouTube), and Dubin made a sequel (embedded below) promoting One Wipe Charlies. It also brings that approach to its packaging and customer emails. “We certainly think the Dollar Shave Club experience is more fun than going to the store,” Dubin said. The broader goal, he added, is “own the bathroom for guys,” so we can probably expect more product launches in this vein. Dollar Shave Club currently has about 200,000 active members, he said.

Microsoft Debuts Crowdfunding Program For Student Laptops, Offers Office 365 Free To First 10K Participants Posted: 04 Jun 2013 07:16 AM PDT Microsoft is introducing a new pilot project today called ”Chip In,” which sees the Windows-maker offering to help students crowdsource laptop purchases ahead of next school year. Students with a .edu email address can crowdfund laptop purchases of qualifying devices through the official Microsoft online store, and Microsoft will subsidize 10 percent of the purchase price itself, plus offer free copies of Office 365 University edition to the first 10,000 students to sign up for the program. The Chip In promotion begins today and goes through September 1, so essentially spanning the entire summer for higher education students. The full list of eligible laptops includes 15 Windows PCs from Acer, ASUS, Dell, HP, Lenovo, Samsung, Sony, Toshiba and Microsoft. The Surface Pro and Surface RT are both included in the list, as are some marquee Windows 8 devices from third-party partners like the Lenovo Yoga and Asus Taichi. Microsoft’s 10 percent discount is automatically applied to the pricing of all those on the list, which you can see here. While it’s intended for students, U.S.-based faculty and staff are also eligible to participate so long as they have a valid .edu address. To participate, choose a computer, create a profile page using your FB account and request that friends and family chip-in to help meet your funding goal. If you fulfill your goal, Microsoft sends out a promo code you can redeem to complete the purchase. There’s even a provision that allows you to put any amount earned above your goal (should a device go on sale or get a price cut) toward other devices and items in the Microsoft Store. If you fall short of your goal, but raise at least $499, you can still use those funds toward a device as well. If you don’t meet that amount, your contributors won’t be charged. This goes above and beyond the usual back-to-school promotions and is actually a pretty good idea in terms of letting students leverage the good will of relatives and friends who might want to give them a graduation/off-to-college gift but can’t fork up enough for a new laptop all on their own. It might be slightly annoying seeing a lot of inbound requests from students begging for notebooks, but on balance it seems like a good idea, and a smart way for Microsoft to get more people on Windows 8.

Wikipad's $249 Android Gaming Tablet Will (Finally) Make Its U.S. Debut On June 11 Posted: 04 Jun 2013 07:10 AM PDT Remember the Wikipad, the Android-powered gaming tablet/hefty controller rig combo that was supposed to launch in 2012 before suffering delay after delay? Well, the wait is just about over — the company announced earlier today that the $249 gaming tablet will be available on U.S. store shelves starting on June 11, and that a global launch is being prepped for the summer. The road to an official release has been nothing if not eventful for the Wikipad team. The Android gaming device was originally touted as a 10-inch tablet that was shown off at CES last year and a media tour ahead of a launch slated for the end of October… a deadline that was ultimately pushed back a few times. For a while there it seemed as though the Wikipad might have met its demise, but the tablet re-emerged earlier this year with a 7-inch display running at 1,200 x 800 and the same quad-core Tegra 3 chipset under the hood. Make no mistake: that 10-inch version is still in the works, but the company hasn’t yet said when it hopes to push the thing out the door save for a vague “Christmas 2013″ window. For better or worse, this more portable 7-inch model will be the vanguard of the Wikipad product line, and some early impressions haven’t exactly been bullish on the tablet’s prospects. To make things worse, the Android gaming scene just isn’t what it was when Wikipad first decided to take a stab at a game-centric tablet. Sure, the quality of these games has only gotten better as time has passed, but the prospect of churning out dedicated Android gaming hardware has been embraced by some prominent hardware players. Take NVIDIA for instance: it recently joined the fray with the ambitious (if pricey) SHIELD handheld, which will feature (among other things) the ability to stream select PC games, as well as play the usual slew of Android titles. If anything, the Wikipad’s big advantage is the relatively small price tag attached to it, but we’ll soon see if it’s enough to enthrall the masses.

Huge Labs Launches Honey, A Reddit-Like Message Board For Sharing News In Your Company Posted: 04 Jun 2013 07:00 AM PDT Want a way to communicate with your team and are tired of doing so over email? Honey is a new communications platform that allows employees to have an internal message board for sharing interesting news stories or conversations and access them any time. Honey provides a SaaS-based tool for internal communications between employees within companies. The platform looks kind of like Reddit, in that users are shown a list of topics or links, which they can comment on or upvote to raise the profile of a discussion. But while Reddit is, of course, designed to allow anyone to communicate with other members of the Internet, Honey is positioned as an application for internal teams. In part, the idea is to move communication outside of email and make it available for all to view. Employees can create, join and invite others to participate in conversations with one another. Teams can congregate around particular topics, so a team can create a topic for their own communications, which won’t be viewed by the company as a whole. Users can set up notifications, so they receive emails when new comments are posted on their stories or when they get upvoted. While it was being developed, Honey was tested by members of Huge, who used it for internal communications. Users can share links, upload files and post updates about the company on the platform. It’s designed to be collaborative, but also to enable users to search the archive of information shared — which is a way to keep every one up to speed, or refer new hires to the happenings within an organization. Honey is the second startup to come out of Huge Labs, which is an internal incubator within digital agency Huge Inc. The first Huge Labs startup to launch was Togather, a platform for the book-publishing industry that is designed to help authors connect with their fans and help them arrange various speaking opportunities.

Bitfash Converts Your Bitcoins Into Fashion From Top Brands Posted: 04 Jun 2013 06:42 AM PDT Is your Bitcoin stash burning a hole in your digital wallet? Bitfash is a new startup that wants to help you spend your bitcoins on clothing from top fashion brands. Based in Australia and China, Bitfash serves as an intermediary between retailers and shoppers, allowing them to browse online stores through its web platform. Purchases are completed by paying bitcoins to Bitfash, which then procures the items and arranges for them to be shipped directly from the sellers to buyers. Bitfash’s brand roster currently includes Zara, Forever 21 and men’s clothing retailer Mr. Porter. The startup will add a fourth brand in the next two weeks. The site was launched in April by founders Chris Woods and Keyur Kelkar, who figured that Bitcoin traders might want to splurge their bitcoins on something. “We started learning more about the space from an entrepreneurial perspective and saw that most businesses taking bitcoins are electronics-based,” says Woods. “So we tried to look ahead into the future and see where there is potential for mainstream adoption. [Kelkar] and I both have an interest in fashion, so it was a no brainer and that’s why we really went for it.” Bitfash joins a crop of other startups that offer services or merchandise for bitcoins, including food delivery service Foodler, BTCShop and mobile gift card app Gyft. Bitcoins received a burst of publicity due to price volatility in April, but Woods is not worried about its long-term prospects. “What you will see going forward is stronger exchanges and more businesses, more regulation, bringing in new users and the currency will become quite steady,” he says. Forever 21 and Zara were first added to the site because of their low prices and global brand recognition. Upscale men’s retailer Mr. Porter was chosen as Bitfash’s third retailer to add a luxury brand to the site and because the majority of Bitcoin users are male. Though the retail sites can be accessed through Bitfash’s platform, Woods emphasizes that Bitfash has not struck any commercial agreements with the companies featured on their site. He says, however, that Bitfash does not alter prices and shipping fees, and the store’s terms are strictly adhered to. For example, Bitfash does not ship merchandise to countries that the brands don’t. Currently self-funded, Bitfash makes money through transaction fees, and Woods says the startup has been approached by online fashion retailers who want to be featured on the site. The company isn’t currently disclosing the number or monetary amount of the transactions it has completed since the site’s launch, but Woods says that most of them are male, tech-savvy and between the ages of 18 to 40. Most buyers are located in the U.S., followed by Asia and Europe. Woods says Bitfash has received hits from more than 100 countries.

Dora Streams Again – Amazon Signs Deal With Viacom, Wins Popular Kids' Shows Netflix Lost Posted: 04 Jun 2013 06:39 AM PDT In a major win for Amazon (at least in parents’ eyes), the company announced today that it has signed a multi-year licensing agreement with Viacom, which brings to its Prime Instant Video service the popular kids programs Netflix recently lost, after allowing its Viacom deal to expire. Amazon’s deal, a multi-year, multi-national licensing agreement, includes Nickelodeon and Nick Jr. fare like Dora the Explorer, SpongeBob SquarePants, Bubble Guppies, The Backyardigans, Fairly Odd Parents, Fresh Beat Band, Team Umizoomi, Blue's Clues, iCarly, Victorious, and more. For older viewers, the deal also includes MTV and Comedy Central programming like Awkward, Tosh.0, Key & Peele, Teen Mom 2 and Workaholics. In total, over 250 TV seasons and more than 3,900 episodes have been added. Outside the U.S., LOVEFiLM customers in the U.K. and Germany will get some of the same shows later this summer. “Kids' shows are one of the most watched TV genres on Prime Instant Video," said Bill Carr, VP of Digital Video and Music for Amazon in a release. “And this expanded deal will now bring customers the largest subscription selection of Nickelodeon and Nick Jr. TV shows online, anywhere.” The news of the deal comes at a time when a number of upset parents stormed Netflix’s Get Satisfication consumer support site to complain about the Nick titles going missing. In fact, Amazon has already been benefitting from Netflix’s loss ahead of this new agreement — several of the shows Netflix had lost were available on Amazon, and were trending in the top 10 most popular shows list on Prime shortly after their removal from Netflix. Netflix certainly wants to bring those programs back, but only if it can do so on its own terms. As CEO Reed Hastings has explained before, the goal is to have relationships with content owners on both sides where both sides benefit. In Netflix’s case, it would rather pay highly for individual top-rated series, rather than buying bundles of shows. In addition, though Netflix lost Viacom kids’ shows, it added other programming like Jake and the Never Land Pirates from Disney and Cartoon Network's Adventure Time. But while young children are generally placated by any cartoon you put in front of them, Netflix may have underestimated the draw that particular well-known and well-loved character brands have for children and their parents alike. (There’s a reason entire toy empires are built on top of these things.) Plus, parents know you can get Jake for free in the Disney Jr. iPad app, so it’s not as big a win. Amazon says that some of the newly added Viacom shows will be available in Kindle Free Time Unlimited, the kid-friendly service that lets children safely explore books, games, apps, movies and TV, while parents can control access and time limits. The company is now promoting its Viacom shows directly on the homepage of Amazon.com, which says something about the size and importance of this deal. Amazon’s Prime Instant Vidoe service now includes more than 41,000 movies and TV shows for members, which stream to video consoles, smart TVs, mobile devices, and Kindle Fire/Fire HD tablets. Unlike Netflix, which charges a monthly subscription service to access its video content, Prime Instant Video is a perk of Amazon’s larger Prime membership program, which also includes free two-day shipping and access to the Kindle Lending Library.

Hukkster Is Prepping Next Generation Of Price-Watching Mobile App For September Launch Posted: 04 Jun 2013 06:39 AM PDT Launched just last year, Hukkster is a platform that lets you tag items online, and then alerts you when those items go on sale or get attached to a coupon code. Hukkster makes money on a commission basis from retailers each time a transaction is facilitated by the platform and has received a total of $5.5 million in funding. The company, founded by two ladies named Erica Bell and Katie Finnegan, was recently recognized as one of Time Inc.’s 10 NYC Startups to Watch, but the company has no intention of resting on its laurels. Hukkster got into mobile back in March, and found that users wanted to tag products on mobile almost as much as they do on the web. That said, the company is currently developing the second version of the app with more functionality that will be released in September. Obviously, a fashion-focused startup belongs here in N.Y., which is why Hukkster chose to launch here. But it’s not just the fashion-friendly environment. Co-founder Katie Finnegan explained that the NYC Startup community is actually quite compassionate, and if you’re brave enough to ask for help from the community, you’ll probably get what you asked for.

Fitness Tracking App Moves Introduces API, Allows Devs To Build Apps Using Its Activity Data Posted: 04 Jun 2013 06:35 AM PDT Activity-tracking smartphone app Moves today is launching its API, which will allow other app builders to integrate Moves data into their own offerings. The app does away with wearables and uses just software and your existing iPhone to track activity, telling you how much you’ve walked, cycled, run or driven during the course of any given day. The product of Finnish startup ProtoGeo Oy, the app hopes to capture the attention of a broader market segment than the somewhat niche crowd that currently goes in for wearable fitness trackers like the Jawbone UP and Nike+ FuelBand. Moves promised an API would arrive in the coming months, and with its arrival developers can extract information gathered by the app including bike, run and drive data, as well as places visited and entire routes tracked. These can then be used to either supplement data gathered by other apps (you could easily see a partnership working between Moves and something like Withings’ home health monitoring app, for example), for making games to incentivize activity and more. More and more, quantified-self and personal health-monitoring tools are reaching out to partners via APIs and SDKs, mostly in an effort to expand their appeal to a broader cross-section of users. When I recently spoke to RunKeeper CEO Jason Jacobs, he said that his company (another software-based activity tracker) is extremely interested in what it can accomplish with partners like Pebble, and plans to identify other similar opportunities. Moves looks to be inviting the same kind of synergy by throwing the gates wide open, with an API designed for use with mobile, web and desktop applications. To get started with the Moves API, devs need to register the app using their Google accounts. The startup has provided an API demo that shows how simply API data can be used to create a basic mobile web app that displays Moves data in a unique visual style. But the real possibilities lie in much more creative integrations of Moves data; it is likely that this space can do more still once partnerships evolve and apps start to cluster around a core set of devices and services.

Now 34M Users Strong, DIY Web Publishing Platform Wix Takes First Step Toward IPO Posted: 04 Jun 2013 06:15 AM PDT Back before Tumblr and its billion-dollar exit were even a twinkle in David Karp’s eye, there were few places for non-techies to go to create professional-looking websites. While Tumblr, WordPress and others would soon make it easy for anyone and their mother to start their own blogs, Wix.com launched in 2006 to do the same for websites — to allow anyone to build their own Flash-enabled homepage or widget overnight. Riding the growing demand for DIY website tools, Wix has grown into a sizable company and now employs nearly 400 people in its offices in Tel Aviv, New York and San Francisco. The Israeli-American startup is backed by just under $60 million from investors like Bessemer Venture Partners, Benchmark, DAG Ventures and IVP and has a user base of more than 34 million who have created over 23 million websites (as of December). Behind its continuing growth, it appears the company is ready to take the next step in its development, as it today submitted a “draft registration statement” to the SEC, which officially puts it on a collision course with the public markets. In a statement today, the company said that this proposed offering is “expected to commence after” the SEC “completes its review process.” Naturally, this announcement from Wix does not in and of itself constitute a definitive declaration that it will go public, or even set a date to do so, nor does it act as an offer to sell or solicit securities. But it is very definitely the first step in the process of pursuing an IPO. The announcement today follows several months of relative quiet for Wix, after the company made one of its biggest product announcements in the last 12 months, when it launched a new app market and SDK in October, enabling third-party developers to integrate their apps into its platform. The company had been steadily chugging along, adding functionality piece-by-piece until it launched its HTML5 builder in March of 2012, which allowed users to build sites that would “display across both PC and mobile browsers in a drag and drop format that co-founder Avishai Abrahami compared to ‘HTML5 for Dummies.’” The push has been part of Wix’s efforts to stay with the increasingly mobile times, which seems to have been working, as Abrahami claimed in December that its new mobile functionality made it the “largest mobile site builder in existence,” with users now creating mobile sites at a rate of 50K sites/month. While the 34 million-user milestone makes it clear that Wix has found steady adoption, Abrahami also said in December that the company has seen corresponding growth in revenue, “doubling or more” every year. It’s also good to see that there’s been increasing competition in the DIY website-building space of late, as Y Combinator grad, Weebly, which launched in 2007, has begun to nip at Wix’s heels. In May, Weebly launched a complete overhaul of its existing product, including a new planner, mobile editor and Android app, along with sharing the news that it has now seen over 15 million websites built using its products. For Wix, it is not yet clear how the roadmap will unfold from here, or exactly how much the company plans to raise ahead of its IPO — or when it intends to go public for that matter — though Globes is reporting that it plans to raise $75 million at a $400 million valuation. Wix did not disclose any financial information and would not confirm these reports, because the filing was confidential. However, both Wix’s announcement today and Weebly’s announcement last month are clear indicators that this space is maturing fast and has already minted a few sizable players. Wix’s announcement is copied below: Wixpress, Ltd., a leading web development and design platform, commercially known as Wix.com, announced today that it has confidentially submitted a draft registration statement to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for a possible initial public offering of its ordinary shares. The proposed offering is expected to commence after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission completes its review process, subject to market conditions and other conditions. This announcement is being made pursuant to and in accordance with Rule 135 under the Securities Act of 1933. As required by Rule 135, this press release does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy securities, and shall not constitute an offer, solicitation or sale in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of that jurisdiction.

Haiku Deck Update Brings Getty Images To Slides, Adds Image History, Public And Private Notes Posted: 04 Jun 2013 06:00 AM PDT Haiku Deck, the iPad-based presentation tool that aims to be both simpler and more effective than Microsoft’s cumbersome desktop PowerPoint software, today unveiled version 2.1, which adds a number of top-requested features, and which also brings Getty Images to the app. The Getty deal means that users will be able to select from a selection of Getty’s stock imagery, at a special price that covers one-off licensing for use exclusively within the Haiku Deck app. The Getty deal brings a subset of its massive library into the app, searchable by keyword and concept, which both Haiku Deck founder Adam Tratt and Getty Images Director of Creative Content Andrew Delaney said is a key benefit it can provide users of the app above and beyond the free Creative Commons content that is already offered within the app for finding photos. Delaney explained in an interview that Getty’s curation of its library means big benefits for business users over using the largely uncategorized or inconsistent tagging of Creative Commons pics. “We’ve known for years that our shop window is an image being reviewed as a thumbnail, and they live or die on that basis,” he said. “When you’re putting a presentation together with Haiku Deck, you want to be able to have real impact. So having access to images that have been carefully curated, and carefully created, and are legally safe to use, is going to make a very big impact.” Delaney notes that Getty has years of experience tagging images according to how their users search for content – so vague concepts that are hard to embody like “beauty” and “motivation” will actually bring in interesting results, both of the kind a user might be expecting, and adding in some surprising stuff that might not be what a user was looking for, but might actually be better overall for their purposes anyway. The licensing arrangement with Haiku Deck involves a one-time fee of $1.99 for each photo purchased from Getty (and uses its API), which the buyer can then use in Haiku Deck presentations exclusively. It’s a new licensing model for Getty, and one that Delaney says represents the company’s new approach to the changing nature of online media; in an app-based, mobile-centric world, this kind of licensing, which is more affordable but tied to a specific piece of software, in many ways makes a lot more sense than the older, more expensive model that licenses for broader use. As for the rest of the updates to Haiku Deck, they make small but key changes to the slide creation process. Other new image features include an image history and image favoriting, to help make it easier for users to come back to what they’ve used in the past. Also new are both public and private notes. The former helps with adding more context to presentations when sharing them with others via the web, and the latter is useful for presenters, since it offers you a glimpse at both the slide being presented and the private presenter notes when you’re outputting your Haiku Deck shows to an external screen and holding your iPad in portrait mode. The HaikuDeck update is free, but it adds two new premium and one new free theme. And Haiku Deck gains a new source of revenue as it splits the proceeds of the Getty images licensed through the app, though that’s a three-way deal since Apple also takes its standard 30 percent cut on in-app purchases. Still, it’s good to see a solid tool like Haiku Deck expand its revenue options, which should help with continued viability, at the same time as it expands its feature set in useful ways that don’t compromise the simplicity of the app.

Delivery.com Acquires Online Laundry Services Startup Brinkmat To Expand Beyond Food Deliveries Posted: 04 Jun 2013 06:00 AM PDT Delivery.com, the New York City-based company whose technology platform lets local merchants easily provide e-commerce and delivery services, has acquired Brinkmat, a startup also based in New York that’s built an online scheduling and ordering platform for local laundry and dry cleaning businesses. In a phone call this week, Delivery.com CEO Jed Kleckner declined to discuss financial details of the deal, but said that Brinkmat’s service, which currently has more than 2500 cleaners registered in the New York metro area alone, will continue to function and grow as part of Delivery.com going forward (for context, Brinkmat’s most notable competitor is SpotlessCity, the NYC based startup that launched at Disrupt New York last year.) As part of the sale, Brinkmat’s co-founders, fellow Goldman Sachs alums Tim O'Malley and Jay Winters, have both taken new leadership roles on Delivery.com’s technology team. This marks a clear step forward for Delivery.com, which was founded in 2004 but has thus far focused mostly on the local restaurant and grocery verticals. “Brinkmat is a platform that we’ll be able to extend into other verticals,” Kleckner said. “Delivery.com should be something that goes well beyond food.” It’s a smart time for Delivery.com to focus on going bigger, since big competitors have emerged on the local delivery market in recent months — players in the space include giants such as Google Shopping Express, eBay same day deliveries, and of course Amazon, as well as startups such as Postmates, TaskRabbit, and Exec. But Klecker maintains that all this competition isn’t bad news for his business. Some 10,000 merchants and one million users are active on the Delivery.com site today, and last year the company grew its revenue by 25 percent year over year. “[The competition] is as validating as it comes. We’re clearly in a marketplace that’s large in size and of increasing demand in the consumer set,” he said. And, of course, there is that very valuable domain name real estate it’s got. “When people go to Google to find out what is available for delivery, by nature of our name we have the benefit of being able to reach those people.” This is not the only bit of consolidation news in the local delivery space: As TechCrunch was the first to report, two of the web’s most well-known restaurant delivery services, Seamless and Grubhub, recently came to an agreementto merge as one. And we’ve almost surely not the end of the M&A action here. When asked if more acquisitions could be in Delivery.com’s future as it looks to continue to expand either its vertical reach or tech offerings, Kleckner answered without hesitation: “Definitely.” Delivery.com, which has a full-time staff of 50, is backed with an undisclosed amount of venture capital from its lead investor Cantor Ventures, the VC arm of Cantor Fitzgerald.

Apple Reportedly Refocuses iAd On New Streaming Music Radio Service Posted: 04 Jun 2013 05:00 AM PDT Apple is said to be directing engineering and sales talent from its iAd business, which currently supports mobile display advertising run by Apple on iOS, to help further its new music service offering, which is rumored to be free and ad-supported. Businessweek claims that Apple will unveil the service next week, backing up what we heard yesterday, and that apple is changing its in-house ad strategy to help businesses build campaigns that address customers as they listen to songs on the new service. The new report also establishes a timeline for launch for the “iRadio” service, as the press have dubbed Apple’s streaming plans. It reportedly won’t become available for use by the general public until later this year when iOS 7 is released, Businessweek reports. That’s likely to happen around fall, to coincide with the introduction of a new iPhone expected around that time. That timeline makes sense, as it doesn’t look like Apple has worked out all the licensing rights for the streaming service just yet, so a release next week would be premature. The company has also pretty generally kept its release of other new media features like iTunes in the Cloud timed to the launch of a new OS, since they likely require more than just a simple app update to integrate deeply with iOS and become a system-wide tool. Apple is said to be essentially adapting Pandora’s business model for use with its own streaming music service in the new report, and to de-emphasize its current iAd aim of in-app display advertising. The iAd business, which is helmed by Apple SVP Eddy Cue, hasn’t exactly been a break-out hit; Apple has had to cut pricing and change its strategy with the service in the past. Cue is said to be heading up the new change in direction, and the ads on the mobile music service will enable users to stream an unlimited library of content for free. The streaming selection will be based on a user’s tastes, Businessweek says, with users able to create a station based on a specific song or an artist, and it can pull from a user’s iTunes library to generate suggestions and also offer easy purchase of songs users like. Apple will select a few specific launch advertising partners for the streaming service, and will also continue to use iAd to sell in-app advertising, too, according to the report. Apple launching a streaming service makes sense, given that Google has just launched its own. Google’s All Access offering is paid, however, not free, and it seems like Apple’s will be based around a model much closer to Pandora, which is likely why Pandora’s stock fell 11 percent by market close yesterday, as rumors of an imminent iRadio launch took root.

HTC Loses Another Senior Exec As COO Steps Down - But May's Phone Sales Are One Bright Spot Amid The Gloom Posted: 04 Jun 2013 04:37 AM PDT Troubled Taiwanese mobile maker HTC, which has seen its profits plummet as it struggles to compete in an Android mobile space dominated by its Galaxy-spewing rival Samsung, is losing (yet) another senior executive. Bloomberg reports that Chief Operating Officer Matthew Costello will step down after less than three years at the company. Costello joined HTC in December 2010, according to his LinkedIn profile. Bloomberg reports that Fred Liu, currently HTC’s president of engineering and operations, will “take on Costello's responsibilities in an expanded role covering operations, quality, sales operations and services”. The details were in an email to employees obtained by the news agency, which also notes that despite stepping down as COO Costello will stay on as an executive adviser after moving to Europe. We’ve reached out to HTC for comment and will update this story with any response. Costello’s departure is the latest in a string of senior exec loses at HTC, including its Senior Vice President of Global Marketing Greg Fisher, Chief Product Office Kouji Kodera, Global Communications VP Jason Gordon, Global Retail Marketing Manager Rebecca Rowland, digital marketing chief John Starkweather and Eric Lin, manager of product strategy — all within the past three months. Last November the company also announced the appointment of a new Chief Marketing Officer, Benjamin Ho, to replace John Wang from January, with the aim of turning the marketing noise up on HTC’s innovations. The company’s prior ‘quietly brilliant’ marketing messaging has fizzled against the onslaught of Samsung’s well-oiled and funded marketing machinery — which is pretty much the opposite of quiet. So it barely seemed to matter that HTC made a cracking Android flagship in the HTC One, arguably the best Android flagship on the market, because selling smartphones has become a game of who can shout the loudest for the longest. A game of brash tones, if you will. But there’s one bright spot amid all this gloom for HTC. The company has just posted monthly revenues for May showing a 48.03% surge in sales — its best uplift all year (it has, however, been a terrible year for HTC). It’s still 3.35% down year-on-year but considering April’s revenues were down 36.87% that’s a substantial improvement. May’s revenues were NT$29 billion ($970 million). Whether HTC can claw back from the brink with one star phone in its portfolio is, however, debatable. Its Facebook Home gamble, with the HTC First, looks to have backfired, as that device has been withdrawn pre-sale in Europe and its position in the U.S. looks perilous. Meanwhile Samsung keeps on firing forth iterations of its Galaxy flagships aimed at saturating the market with differed sized and priced versions of its hardware, leaving even less wiggle room for HTC. Still, another quietly positive note for HTC is that Google looks to be stepping in to try to help out a little, by offering a Google Edition of the HTC One for sale on its Play Store. After all, an Android ecosystem dominated by Samsung is not without problems for Mountain View — for Android ecosystem health/biodiversity reasons — but also because of the risk that Samsung starts to hold too many of its cards. Whatever Google’s motives, HTC could certainly do with a few friends in high places right now.

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