The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- Box.net Upgrades Personal And Business Data Plans To Include More Storage In The Cloud
- Is There Any Morality In Sitting On Your Couch And Playing Virtual Soldier?
- LinkedIn Beefs Up Its Board Of Directors Some More
- FTC Ends Street View Feud With Google After Winning Privacy Concessions
- ReadyForZero Raises $260K To Help Cleanse Consumers Of Credit Card Debt
- Mint Data Delivers A View Into The Spending Habits Of Its 4 Million Users
- Milo Takes Local Product Inventory Search Mobile With Android App
- Google TV Project Moved To YouTube Management
- Endgame Systems Raises $29M, Debuts Web-Based Malware Detection Service
- 23Video Takes The Fight To Brightcove And Ooyala, With A WordPress-For-Video
- Looks Like BoingBoing Got Hacked (NSFW)
- 19 Year Old Kiip Founder Closes 300K Angel Round For Mobile In-Game Ad Startup
- These Man-Sized Angry Birds Just Might Be The Geekiest Halloween Costumes Of 2010
- After 3 Years In Stealth And $20 Million Raised, Aro Mobile Shows Some Skin — Some Android Skin. And We Have Invites.
- What’s The Street Price Of Twitter? Nearly $1.6 Billion
- Sencha Takes On Flash With HTML5 Animator
- Myspace Accused Of Ripping Off Stealth Startup Pinterest
- Apple Massively Ramped Up Ad Spending In 2010, But Sales Grew Even Faster
- Video: The 2011 Ford Edge Sport Brings Vehicles Into The Computer Age — Lag And All
- Yahoo Hires Ross Levinsohn To Run Americas Business
- With Their Carrier-Crippling SIM, Can Apple Do What Google Chickened Out Of?
- Salesforce Shells Out $170 Million To Acquire Japanese Subsidiary From VC Firm
- SF Giants Fans Spread Fear And Beards On Facebook
- SolFocus Selling Solar To Saudi Arabia
- Kabbage Gives eBay Sellers Working Capital Through PayPal To Grow Their Businesses
| Box.net Upgrades Personal And Business Data Plans To Include More Storage In The Cloud Posted: 28 Oct 2010 08:57 AM PDT
Box’s personal subscription plans now come with 5GB of free web storage. Box’s business plan is being adjusted slightly so that companies don’t pay by the individual user (businesses were given 15GB per users previously). Now businesses will automatically receive 500GB of data storage, tripling the amount of storage the average business subscriber has access to. Enterprise customers will have access to an unlimited amount of data storage,, says Box.net’s CEO Aaron Levie, allowing companies to manage terabytes of data in the cloud (Box charges enterprise customers $35 per user per month). To accommodate these changes, Box has built two enterprise-grade data centers, and received SAS 70 Type II certification. According to the company more than 60,000 businesses including Hawaiian Airlines, T-Mobile and ABC News use Box as a data repository. Levie’s vision in the future is that businesses and individuals will never have to worry about data storage, and Box will be the go-to platform to access what he calls the “Infinite Cloud.” Box, which raised $15 million in new funding earlier this year, has seen steady growth for a startup that is competing with the likes of Microsoft Sharepoint. Since its launch in 2005, Box.net has accumulated more than 4 million users, with hundreds of thousands of businesses using the application. Last year, the startup increased revenue by 500% and is seeing an increase in sales this year as well thanks to deals with the Oprah Winfrey Network, Volvo, and Nokia Siemens. The startup has also spent the past year consistently launching new features and products, including a file syncing feature, an Android app, HTML5 functionality and more.        
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| Is There Any Morality In Sitting On Your Couch And Playing Virtual Soldier? Posted: 28 Oct 2010 08:18 AM PDT
       
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| LinkedIn Beefs Up Its Board Of Directors Some More Posted: 28 Oct 2010 07:16 AM PDT
If I were a betting man, I’d bet on LinkedIn going public some time in 2011. But I’m not, so I’ll just share with you that the social networking service provider has been significantly beefing up its board of directors this year. Case in point: this morning, LinkedIn announced the appointment of its seventh board member, Stan Meresman. We’ll forgive you if that name doesn’t ring any bells with you immediately, but suffice to say this is a man with heaps of experience serving on boards of and advising public tech companies under his belt. In addition to LinkedIn, Meresman is a board member at Riverbed Technology, Meru Networks and HyTrust. Previously, Meresman served on the boards of directors at Polycom, VMware, Starfish Software and Lightsurf, as well as an advisor to Silicon Image, Inktomi and Real Networks. Meresman also has management experience, having served as SVP and CFO of Silicon Graphics from 1989 to 1997, before shifting his attention to investing. LinkedIn in a statement says it decided to expand its board for the third time this year as its membership and operations continue to scale globally – it now boasts 80 million members around the world – and as a way to “position itself for long-term growth”. And readying a public offering in the next 12 months, I’d wager. Last May, LinkedIn added Netflix CMO Leslie Kilgore to its board, and a month later expanded it again with the appointment of former Ask.com CEO George “Skip” Battle. Meresman marks the third outsider to join the IPO candidate’s board of directors in a matter of months. The four others are founder and former CEO Reid Hoffman, current CEO Jeff Weiner, Greylock’s David Sze and Sequoia’s Marc Kvamme.        
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| FTC Ends Street View Feud With Google After Winning Privacy Concessions Posted: 28 Oct 2010 07:11 AM PDT
       
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| ReadyForZero Raises $260K To Help Cleanse Consumers Of Credit Card Debt Posted: 28 Oct 2010 06:55 AM PDT
Launched in private beta in September, ReadyForZero is an easy to use web-based platform to help guide consumers out of credit card debt. ReadyForZero is trying to help those consumers who are having trouble paying their debt off, as opposed to those who are already in collections or bankruptcy. Essentially the site is trying to help people be able to eventually not carry any balances month to month. The company says that in the US alone there are 100 million people with revolving balances, meaning they carry credit card debt from month to month. Combined they owe $900 billion to banks and credit card companies. You import your credit card information, including what types of cards you have, the amount owed, and the startup will then walk you through the same steps a trusted financial advisor would give you. Based on your minimum payments, salary and balance, ReadyForZero will figures out an optimal strategy for what to pay and when. The site will also send you reminders and you can track your progress online. While you cannot actually pay your bills directly from ReadyForZero, the startup will eventually allow users to do this directly from the site. Currently in private beta, the startup will use the funds to help launch to the public early next year. The idea behind ReadyForZero is no doubt a noble cause that wants to add legitimacy to a notoriously shady industry. And credit card debt is certainly an issue that’s relevant to the current economic conditions. As a side note, the startup’s co-founder and ex-Googler, Ignacio Thayer is behind the parody video on fundraising, “Stupid Questions VCs Ask.”        
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| Mint Data Delivers A View Into The Spending Habits Of Its 4 Million Users Posted: 28 Oct 2010 06:39 AM PDT
Mint Data aggregates anonymous spending data from Mint’s users to give you realtime insight on what people are spending on across the country. For example, the platform lists the most popular restaurants in San Francisco (by visits), the top shopping spots in New York City (by highest average spend), and the highest spending cities in the U.S. Mint Data will also show spending data both by average purchase price and by popularity, which is defined by number of transactions per month. The rankings can be viewed by category, such as "food and dining," by specific business, and broken down to the city level. For example, Mint Data shows that the average spend at a Starbucks in New York City is $5.38. The site also compares this to the average spend at coffee shops overall, which is slightly higher. In terms of actual regional data, you can choose from 300 cities in the U.S. to compare spending. And Mint.com users can compare their own personal finance and spending habits by category or merchant against averages in their area, or against the national average. As a consumer product, this data is pretty fascinating, and a great way to get a little more insight as to how your spending stacks up against the rest of the consumers in your city or at a particular store. I can imagine that that some of this data could be mined even deeper to compare demographics and spending.        
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| Milo Takes Local Product Inventory Search Mobile With Android App Posted: 28 Oct 2010 05:55 AM PDT
Using the Android’s phone geolocation, the app will identify a user’s location and return realtime results for a product’s availability at stores in the area. Users will also be able to access where stores are located and how the price compares to other stores in a given area. So if I searched for a juicer in Palo Alto, Milo would return availability of the device at the stores nearby, including Target, Macy’s and Crate & Barrel. The app will also give me driving directions to local stores. While Milo does have a HTML5 optimized site for smartphones, this is the first native app launched by he startup. In all honestly, I think that Milo’s service could even become more popular on mobile phones than on the web. The idea that I can simply look up a product’s local availability on the go or even while I’m at a competitor’s store is incredibly appealing. And it’s no coincidence that Milo is launching as the holiday shopping season ramps up for the year. Milo co-founder Jack Abraham tells me that he expects the app to immensely popular amongst users, especially as consumers use the app for price comparisons on the go. Abraham says that a similar app for the iPhone will also be released shortly. As to why he launched on Android first, he said that the process of developing an app for the Android platform was simply easier. Of course, there’s also another factor to consider for Milo’s move to publish on Android first. Google recently launched a similar feature, called Blue Dot, on the mobile version of Google Product Search, Similar to Milo, Blue Dot allows users within search to see if a product is in-stock at nearby stores. But as Milo countered, Google doesn’t have the inventory reach that Milo has. Milo also recently launched a deal with comparison shopping site Pricegrabber to show local inventory in search results. Earlier this year, Forrester reported that the "online research, offline buying" consumer market represents $917 billion in consumer spending, which was 30 percent of all U.S. retail sales at that time. This market is significant and if Milo can develop a loyal userbase on its mobile apps, it can grab a piece of a pretty big pie.        
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| Google TV Project Moved To YouTube Management Posted: 28 Oct 2010 05:54 AM PDT
Google TV, more an internal project than a real business unit, has been moved under YouTube manager Salar Kamangar. This means little in terms of real change to the platform but it will give Google TV, thus far plagued with refusals by many content providers to allow streaming over the device, a bit more leverage with stations and studios.        
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| Endgame Systems Raises $29M, Debuts Web-Based Malware Detection Service Posted: 28 Oct 2010 05:41 AM PDT  Cybersecurity solutions provider Endgame Systems has raised a whopping $29 million in first-round funding from Bessemer Venture Partners, Columbia Capital, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and TechOperators. Coinciding with the financing announcement, the company is today releasing ipTrust, a cloud-based botnet and malware detection service. 
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| 23Video Takes The Fight To Brightcove And Ooyala, With A WordPress-For-Video Posted: 28 Oct 2010 03:38 AM PDT
The 23Video startup has come up with it’s own technology platform to allow companies to create a full, out-of-the-box video site, mapped to your own domain, with a branded videoplayer for $675 a month, which includes 1 Terabyte of traffic (equivalent to an average of 160,000 videos a month). Extra traffic is $250 per TB. While Ooyala offers a $500/month package, you need to contact their sales people. And the same sales process happens over at Brightcove, where your $99 / mo will get you just 50 Videos and 40 GB of bandwidth. With 23Video you can get up and running with a credit card.        
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| Looks Like BoingBoing Got Hacked (NSFW) Posted: 27 Oct 2010 09:36 PM PDT
Diehard fans have found a workaround URL for now. And the official BoingBoing Twitter account seems to have a sense of humor about it, tweeting stuff like “So much for the 100,000 Hours Without a Hack T-shirts,” “Someone’s gonna get a subpoenis… I mean a subpoena” and “Look, at least it’s not the new Gap logo.” Update: The hack has been taken down and the site is back up. TechCrunch reader Machika Kuro informs us that this was most likely a SQL injection attack.
       
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| 19 Year Old Kiip Founder Closes 300K Angel Round For Mobile In-Game Ad Startup Posted: 27 Oct 2010 07:33 PM PDT
Now Wong has racked up a laundry list of investors from big brands including True Ventures, SimpleGeo CTO Joe Stump (in his first angel investment), CMO Rohan Oza of Vitamin Water, PopChips CEO Keith Belling, Doug Chertok and Paige Craig in a round of funding conspicuously bereft of the usual Super Angel suspects. Along with the financing, Wong is announcing that Kiip is bringing on former Digger Courtney Guertin as co-founder and CTO and Amadeus Demarzi as co-founder and design director. Wong plans on using the newfound cash for further hiring and distribution partnerships and Kiip will be rolling out in alpha in the coming months, with a public launch date in January. Wong says that Kiip (prounounced “Keep” as in “Keep me”) will attempt to move “beyond the banner ad” and leverage in game elements without compromising game play; “We’re doing the first catered ad product for the mobile games space, beyond the virtual goods and virtual currency folks [who are] potentially our main competitors.” It looks like Kiip might be stiff competition. The startup, still in stealth, has already wrangled five game publisher partnerships (Wong would not disclose which ones) and currently boasts an audience of over 2 million active users monthly.        
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| These Man-Sized Angry Birds Just Might Be The Geekiest Halloween Costumes Of 2010 Posted: 27 Oct 2010 06:50 PM PDT
When can you really declare your game a smash hit? When it cracks through 10 million downloads? Eh. When you’ve got a full line of plush toys coming based on its characters? Sure, I guess that’s alright. But here’s the real challenge: dig your game deep enough into the hearts and minds of your fans that you’ve got people dressing up like the characters for Halloween. With that in mind: Congratulations, Angry Birds. You’ve (sling)shot your way into a VIP area generally reserved for the likes of Master Chief, Mario, Samus, and other gaming legends. That’s right: you’ve got cosplayers. Read the rest at MobileCrunch >>        
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| Posted: 27 Oct 2010 05:18 PM PDT
So what is Aro? Currently, it’s a piece of software that runs on top of Google’s mobile Android OS. But it’s not just another layer like some of those awful skins that OEMs design for Android. Instead, it weaves itself into the OS and uses AI and machine intelligence to make sense of what you’re doing with your phone. It natively ties into your email, phone, calendar, address book, and browser to make them potentially much more useful to you when you’re on the go. Maybe someone sent you an email mentioning an address, the Aro system can recognize that and with the click of a button give you all kinds of actions you can do with it. The same is true with names — of both people and companies. And dozens of other things. But it really is one of those things that’s better when you see it in action. So watch the videos below. And if you’re interested in signing up to test it out, use this link. The first 1,000 people who do will get priority access to the beta program (though it is still rolling out in waves as they ramp up).
       
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| What’s The Street Price Of Twitter? Nearly $1.6 Billion Posted: 27 Oct 2010 04:53 PM PDT
There aren’t nearly as many early Twitter employees with sizable amounts of stock to sell compared to Facebook, but the demand is there for those that are in the market. There are even a few funds that have been created with the sole purpose of buying stock from Twitter employees and investors, and the Twitter board of directors generally doesn’t interfere by exercising its right of first refusal. The $7/share valuation is generally considered the “fair” price for larger transactions of at least $1 million. Smaller transactions, which can attract a more robust number of potential buyers, are sometimes closing at higher valuations, we’ve heard. Twitter was last officially valued at $1.1 billion post money when it raised $100 million late last year. The company is still effectively revenue-free.        
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| Sencha Takes On Flash With HTML5 Animator Posted: 27 Oct 2010 04:38 PM PDT
Sencha is making a big bet on HTML5. The company, which was formerly known as Ext JS, raised a hefty $14 million round led by Sequoia Capital in June. Since then it has been perfecting its HTML5 framework Sencha Touch — a framework that lets you build mobile web apps for iOS and Android that feel almost native and are also cross-platform. And today, the company is adding another big addition to its product suite: Sencha Animator. If you’ve used Flash before, Animator should be fairly easy to pick up. It’s a tool for creating CSS3-based animations that will work on WebKit browsers — drag a few objects and images onto the screen, set up some keyframes, and you should be off and running. And, unlike Flash, these animations will work on iOS devices (and Android, BlackBerry, and anything else that supports WebKit). Here’s how the company is describing the product:
The application is available for Mac, Windows, and Linux. It’s still rough around the edges — this is a beta release, and additional features, like a gradient maker, are still in the works. It also doesn’t support some major browsers like Firefox yet (Sencha says that Firefox hasn’t implemented support for CSS3 keyframes). You can see some demos of HTML/CSS-based animations at the bottom of this page. Sencha will be selling a standard version of Animator for a price in the “low hundreds of dollars” for each user. This also obviously has a big appeal to advertisers — Sencha will be offering a version with additional functionality specifically for them. Sencha isn’t the only company building HTML5/CSS3 based tools. Adobe is also hard at work on its own products, including a HTML5-editing tool called Edge (which hasn’t been released yet). In the advertising space, Sprout offers Advine, a tool for authoring ad creative that supports both HTML5 and Flash.        
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| Myspace Accused Of Ripping Off Stealth Startup Pinterest Posted: 27 Oct 2010 03:48 PM PDT
This morning Pinterest co-founders Ben Silberman, Paul Sciarra and Yashwanth Nelapati woke up to a barrage of tweets, “So @myspace has completely ripped off @pinterest. It really pisses me off when an old, tired hack tries to undermine hardworking inovators. [sic]“ Myspace revealed its new redesign last night and Pinterest users quickly picked up on the similarities between the two site aesthetics, leading to an intense Twitter debate. The offsite grid layout used by both Myspace and Pinterest is nothing new; Lazyfeed, http://enjoysthin.gs and countless other sites have a similar design (there’s even a Tumblr theme). But the fact that former Myspace Director of Technology Dave Peck emailed Pinterest back in March asking for an advance invite is interesting, especially when you read the email.
Founder Silberman told TechCrunch, “The Myspace product team joined our site really early and so I’m sure they took inspiration from it. Our impression was that they took some information and we were touched that our users were vocal about it.” However, Silberman who retweeted the accusations from the official Pinterest account this morning, emphasized, “I wouldn’t go as far as saying they ripped it off. They’re probably in tune with organizing friends around interests after they missed the boat on friends,” referring to how you can now use Myspace to follow Topics pages. Pinterest is still invite only and is currently seeking funding. Despite being in stealth mode, the social cataloguing startup has 17,000 users and is about to experience its one millionth “pin.” Silberman plans on launching in a couple of months, encouraged by all the user support today, “It’s cool when you’re a small company and your users stick up for you.” Myspace had 90 million users this September according to comScore, marking a 18% drop from last year. This recent design and concept overhaul was an attempt to win back some of the traffic lost to competitors like Facebook. Myspace screencap via The Guardian        
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| Apple Massively Ramped Up Ad Spending In 2010, But Sales Grew Even Faster Posted: 27 Oct 2010 02:56 PM PDT
Earlier today, Apple’s 10-K form was released for their 2010 fiscal year. The long document is full of tidbits about the state of Apple’s business. One thing of note is just how much Apple ramped up their advertising spending in 2010. For 2010, the company’s advertising costs were $691 million. That’s up from $501 million last year. And it’s the first huge jump for Apple in recent years. In 2008, for example, they spent $486 million. And in 2007, they spent $467 million. In other words, in previous years, the ramp up in ad spending has been about $15 to $20 million. This past year? A $190 million jump. But what’s pretty incredible is that even despite this huge ramp up, Apple continues their trend of lowering the percentage of revenues they spend on advertising. While the spend was $691 million this year, total revenues were over $65 billion, so Apple only spent about 1 percent of their revenue on this. Last year, that percentage was 1.37. In 2001, it was 5 percent. So even though Apple is ramping up ad spending, they’re bringing in money much quicker so the overall percentage of money they’re spending keeps getting less and less. And while $691 million may seem like a massive amount of money, it’s still less than half of what Microsoft spent on advertising last year. And it’s less than what Dell spent last year. So what did Apple spend that extra $200 million on? They don’t break it down, but you can bet a bunch was their new category: iPad. And those great Don Draper-like iPhone 4 ads. [image: AMC]        
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| Video: The 2011 Ford Edge Sport Brings Vehicles Into The Computer Age — Lag And All Posted: 27 Oct 2010 02:07 PM PDT
Inside is the latest generation of Ford’s in-vehicle system. Dubbed MyFord Touch, it’s reach and capabilities are unlike nearly anything else in the same price range. But this system isn’t just stuck in the center stack, tasked with the job of controlling the climate and radio. The MyFord Touch is also in the dash cluster in the form of two LCD screens. This is where it gets interesting and validates its place in Ford’s future.        
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| Yahoo Hires Ross Levinsohn To Run Americas Business Posted: 27 Oct 2010 02:04 PM PDT
Levinsohn will replace Hillary Schneider. Yahoo announced Schneider’s departure last month. Levinsohn will take control of Yahoo’s Americas business, including content, advertising and partnerships. Some 2,000 employees will report into his organization. This is also the first high profile executive hire at Yahoo since bringing in Chief Product Officer Blake Irving earlier this year. Levinsohn is currently a partner at Fuse Capital, a venture firm with ties to Best Buy. Levinsohn’s former partner at Fuse Capital, Jonathan Miller, now runs News Corp.’s digital business, effectively the same position Levinsohn held. While at Fox Interactive Media Levinsohn oversaw the $580 million acquisition of MySpace as well as the nearly $1 billion advertising deal with Google. Many of his previous employees have gone on to do interesting things. Adam Bain is now President, Revenue at Twitter. And Heather Harde, our CEO, ran M&A for Levinsohn. And for once, we have nothing negative to report about Yahoo. You can watch an interview with Levinsohn by Sarah Lacy at TechCrunch50 last year here, and we’ve embedded it below.
       
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| With Their Carrier-Crippling SIM, Can Apple Do What Google Chickened Out Of? Posted: 27 Oct 2010 01:33 PM PDT
To be clear, the report today from GigaOM’s Stacey Higginbotham isn’t about the U.S. She notes that Apple is working alongside SIM-card manufacturer Gemalto to make a built-in hardware SIM card that could work with many carriers across Europe. Essentially, this would allow customers to jump from carrier to carrier as a better deal came along or as they were traveling without having to swap SIM cards. The thing is, in many European countries, this already isn’t nearly the problem that it is in the U.S. because the market is much more competitive. But here’s the key to all of this from Higginbotham:
Sound familiar? That’s almost exactly what Google’s plan was to sell the Nexus One originally. They created a web store where customers could pick their phone, their carrier, and a plan. Of course, at launch, Google only had the Nexus One with T-Mobile on board. But they noted that soon other carriers like Sprint and Verizon would be on board as well. That never happened. It’s true that the Nexus One wasn’t selling well that way. But the reality is because it was the carriers’ fault. Google’s original plan was to sell the Nexus One for $99, unlocked, on their website, we’ve heard. Let me repeat that: $99. Unlocked. But when they ran this idea by the carriers (which they had to work with because they control the networks they need, remember) they were told to go to hell. And so what we got was a Nexus One that you could either buy unlocked for several hundreds of dollars — which basically no one did. Or a carrier-subsidized one. Just like the good-old days. When the Nexus One didn’t sell well on their site, the other carrier partners bailed on the Nexus One altogether (undoubtedly patting themselves on the back as they did). And Google stopped selling it to consumers. In other words, the entire idea blew up in Google’s face. They should have stuck to their guns, sold the Nexus One as they wanted to. And told the carriers to screw themselves. Of course, had they done that, Google wouldn’t have had the buddy-buddy relationship with carriers that they now enjoy. That gamble could have risked the success of Android. And Google wasn’t willing to go there. It was a smart business maneuver, but it sucks for us, the consumers. Enter Apple. The company has proven time and time again that they don’t care who they piss off in order to push their own agenda forward. That agenda includes creating the best consumer experience possible. A big part of that in the cellphone business would be allowing customers to buy a phone and pick carriers based on who has the best deals/options. Obviously, that hasn’t been the case with Apple in the U.S. as they’ve been tied exclusively to one carrier, AT&T. But that’s about to change. And that time spent with AT&T wasn’t a total waste. They’ve been able to build themselves from literally nothing into a force to be reckoned with in the mobile space. The iPhone is now by far Apple’s largest source of revenue. And customers from all of the other carriers are demanding the phone come to their network. Now Apple is in position to make a move. But the main problem in the U.S. is that the carriers run on networks powered by different technologies. That’s not the case in Europe, so it makes sense to start there with this carrier-killing SIM, while the U.S. transitions to the much more universal LTE technologies that are forthcoming. And let’s not forget a huge part of this equation. Apple, unlike Google, runs their own retail stores. Hundreds of them. Around the world. Does anyone doubt that the iPhone would still be a massive success if it was only sold through their stores and website? If they do, they’re foolish. So Apple can absolutely do what Google couldn’t/wouldn’t. The question is, would they really be willing to possibly alienate their carrier partners by screwing them over? Again, the iPhone is Apple’s biggest business, but that’s largely thanks to the subsidies the carriers pay them. Could Apple risk that? It looks like we may find out shortly. [photo: flickr/protohiro]        
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| Salesforce Shells Out $170 Million To Acquire Japanese Subsidiary From VC Firm Posted: 27 Oct 2010 01:31 PM PDT
It appears that the reasoning behind the move is financial. Salesforce says that Jaapan is the largest revenue contributor in Asia Pacific for Salesforce, and “acquiring full ownership in Salesforce Japan allows Salesforce.com to further benefit from the growth in the Japanese cloud computing market and integrate and align its financial and operational functions.” In the first half of 2010, Asia Pacific sales accounted for 14 percent of Salesforce.com's revenue, which is an 11 percent increase from the same period in 2009. A few weeks ago, Salesforce announced that it would be adding a new data center in Tokyo to support a growing customer base in Japan. Clearly the company sees the country as a valuable revenue stream and counts Japan-based Canon and Fujitsu as customers.        
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| SF Giants Fans Spread Fear And Beards On Facebook Posted: 27 Oct 2010 01:29 PM PDT
Since the Yankees are not in the World Series this year, my allegiance shifts to the San Francisco Giants. And, yes, while I may be a fair-weather baseball friend, I am willing to go to bat for my new favorite team, at least through this series. What better way to show my support than to “beardify” my Facebook photo with the Brian Wilson Beardifier app? (You can become a fan of his beard on Facebook too). Brian Wilson is the Giants relief pitcher with the 95 mph fastball and pitch-black beard. He intimidates his opponents, who have learned to “fear the beard.” And now you can intimidate all your friends by spreading the fear and Brian Wilson’s beard on Facebook. Unfortunately, it doesn’t take over your profile pic for every status update, unless you upload it as your new pic. It’s not quite the same as turning your Twitter avatar green last year to support democracy in Iran, but it is probably just as effective.        
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| SolFocus Selling Solar To Saudi Arabia Posted: 27 Oct 2010 01:12 PM PDT
A Mountainview, Calif. company, SolFocus, announced a deal with a major construction company in Saudi Arabia— Advanced Vision Electro Mechanical Company (a.k.a. Vision) — that is building a new, commercial solar power plant in Bahra. The plant will be the first in Saudi Arabia to use concentrator photovoltaic solar power systems, or CPVs according to a joint press release from SolFocus and Vision. In general, CPV systems consist of solar cells and optics that concentrate sunlight onto the cells increasing their power output and, in the end, decreasing the cost of solar-generated electricity in sunny, dry environments. SolFocus sells warranty-backed, concentrator photovoltaic solar systems that it manufactures primarily in Mesa, Arizona. To date, SolFocus has raised $143 million in venture funding. The new solar power plant in Bahra employing SolFocus technology will deliver around 300 megawatt hours of solar energy per year, representing a 132 kilowatt nameplate capacity. Saudi Arabia is the world's largest producer and exporter of total petroleum liquids according to theU.S. Energy Information Administration. At the 2009 United Nations’ Summit on Climate Change, Saudi Arabia’s negotiator Mohammed Al-Sabban expressed disbelief that global warming is caused or accelerated by humans, and was concerned about the likely economic impact to the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) if others reduce their use of oil. Still viewed as an obstructionist by global sustainability advocates, Saudi Arabia began investing in renewable energy recently. Why would the OPEC leader warm up to solar? First, the region gets a lot of sun. Co-founder and chief of technology at SolFocus, Steve Horne, also explained on Wednesday:
Mark Crowley, chief executive officer of SolFocus said in a press statement:
The project developers, Vision, will also build and install additional solar power plants within the research centers at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) and throughout Saudi Arabia. Hassan Chahine, general manager at Vision said in a press statement: "This is a breakthrough in Saudi Arabia's thrust for energy diversification. We believe the Bahra plant will serve as a model for the further research and study of clean water and power solutions that diversify the region's energy mix."        
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| Kabbage Gives eBay Sellers Working Capital Through PayPal To Grow Their Businesses Posted: 27 Oct 2010 12:10 PM PDT
Kabbage uses technology to analyze online merchants’ sales and credit history; customer traffic and reviews; and prices and inventory compared to competitors. Via PayPal’s Adaptive Payments API, Kabbage will make cash advances available to eBay and other online marketplace sellers fairly quickly (Kabbage says that many transactions take as little has ten minutes). Kabbage makes money off of fees charged to merchants for the working capital. Fees depend on how long the online merchant keeps the capital (6 month maximum) and the customer’s repayment risk. Rates range from 6 percent to 16 percent of the original advance amount. While the startup only supports eBay for now, Kabbage, which has raised $2 million in funding, plans to extend its services to Amazon and Etsy sellers in the near future. It actually seems like a pretty good idea, that is, as long as sellers continue to pay Kabbage back.        
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CRM and cloud giant Salesforce.com is shelling out 
Americans exporting renewable energy resources to the Middle East? It’s not opposite day. 
Many sellers on sites like eBay, Etsy, and Amazon have created profitable small businesses out of opening up online storefronts on these e-commerce platforms. But these storefronts aren’t conventionally considered small businesses by the financial community and it can be difficult for them to raise working capital from banks. | You are subscribed to email updates from TechCrunch To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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