The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- Weebly Launches Support For Multiple Editor Accounts
- Remember Qwitter? They Were Just Acquired By TwitterCounter For $11,111
- Report: The New Apple TV Is Selling Well, Analyst Puts Total Sales Just Under 2 Million In 7 Months
- Digital Signal Raises $15M For ‘Minority Report’-Type Facial Recognition Tech
- Review: The T-Mobile G-Slate
- Qwiki’s Mapolicious iPad App Hits iTunes
- Amazon Partnering With OverDrive To Bring Kindle Library Lending To 11,000 Libraries Across The US
- Mobile Barcode Company Scanbuy Secures $5 Million In Funding
- AT&T’s Best First Quarter Ever Saw 3.6 Million iPhones Sold
- eBay Acquires Location-Based Media And Advertising Company WHERE
- Skydeck Quietly Becomes Mr. Number, Hits 2 Million Users, Brings Status Alerts And More To Mobile
- Online Search, Advertising Company Lijit Networks Lands $10 Million
- No ‘Coupon-Chasers’ Here – Whatser Aims To Help Local Businesses Reward Loyalty
- “Buttonless iPod” Faker Writes In About Fakery
- The Washington Post Launches Trove, A Personalized Social News Site
- Former Google, Digg Product Chief Keval Desai Lands At VC Firm InterWest
- Processing $500 Million A Year, Payoneer Launches Local Money Transfers
- Killer Startups In Europe Beckon – If We Tighten Our Synapse To The World
- Google, Microsoft, LinkedIn, AmEx And Others Offer Over $400M In Value To Startup America
- Facebook, Android Increasingly Under Attack: AVG Q1 Security Threat Report
- Toshiba Announces 10.1-Inch Regza Tablet With Android 3.0 And LED Backlight
- Social Jukebox exfm Raises $750,000 For Its Music Discovery And Sharing Extension
- Music Gaming Startup JamLegend Acqhired By Zynga
- Libellous URLs Are Hilarious. Except That One Time I Nearly Went To Jail
- Byliner Launches With A Splash, Aims To Disrupt Long-Form Journalism
| Weebly Launches Support For Multiple Editor Accounts Posted: 20 Apr 2011 09:00 AM PDT
After logging into your Weebly account as usual, you’ll notice that there’s a new button that says ‘Add editors’. Hit it, and you’ll see a dialog box prompting you to enter the email addresses of the people you’d like to associate with your account, and three different roles they can be blessed with: Administrator (full access to edit your site), Author (grant access on a per-page basis), and Dashboard-only, which lets them view your site statistics and moderate comments. You can also choose to let authors edit pages in a draft mode that requires an admin to later push their changes live. Cofounders David Rusenko and Dan Veltri say that this has been the service’s top-requested feature for a long time, and it’s not hard to guess why. With the new system you’ll be able to delegate tasks to coworkers, and, if you have a blog on Weebly, you can have multiple authors. Rusenko says that, between all of the pages it hosts, the Weebly network is now the 95th top-ranked site according to Quantcast with 40M unique visitors per month. In conjunction with today’s launch, Weebly is also introducing a revamped homepage and a tweaked tagline. CEO David Rusenko explains that when the site launched, it was all about offering a super-easy way to build relatively straightforward webpages. But over the years, as it’s added photo editing, form building, and other features, the platform has gotten pretty robust. So now they’re adopting the tagline “Free. Powerful. Professional.” with a new layout to match.         
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| Remember Qwitter? They Were Just Acquired By TwitterCounter For $11,111 Posted: 20 Apr 2011 08:59 AM PDT
Remember Qwitter, the service that sends you an email whenever someone unfollows you on Twitter? Well, the app was just purchased in a public auction by Amsterdam-based TwitterCounter for $11,111. It’s obviously a very low amount, but it’s not just a random, silly purchase: Qwitter has over 180,000 active users and still signs up about 2,000 new users every week. The acquisition of Qwitter, from a company called Velocis Enterprises, also includes an app called TweetSaver.com, a freemium service for Twitter users to archive and scour their tweets well beyond what Twitter itself offers. For TwitterCounter, it’s the second micro-acquisition in a row, after picking up Twitter stats site Twitaholic earlier this year. Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, cofounder of TwitterCounter, says Qwitter will remain a separate brand, but will look for ways to integrate both services. TwitterCounter currently tracks detailed statistics for 14 million users. The startup is profitable – it makes money from selling featured spots and premium memberships to clients like Microsoft, Durex, eBay, Coca-Cola and Facebook.        
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| Report: The New Apple TV Is Selling Well, Analyst Puts Total Sales Just Under 2 Million In 7 Months Posted: 20 Apr 2011 08:14 AM PDT
Apple famously called the Apple TV a hobby but it seems to be turning into a profitable hobby. If true, this cements the latest generation Apple TV as more than just a side project. It’s an important piece in Apple’s ecosytem.        
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| Digital Signal Raises $15M For ‘Minority Report’-Type Facial Recognition Tech Posted: 20 Apr 2011 07:34 AM PDT
I trust you’ve seen Minority Report, starring Tom Cruise. Now check out the website of Digital Signal Corporation (shots below of the homepage and a scene from the movie). The company looks like it could have delivered the biometric facial recognition technology showcased in the film, doesn’t it? Haven’t seen the movie? Then try and imagine visiting the Digital Signal website and reading its lofty mission statement (“we make the world safer by delivering the only precision long range three dimensional identity solution capable of recognizing people on the move”) in the year 2002, when Minority Report was released. You would consider it to be some sort of prank, I wager – I know I’d at least have considered the possibility of it being a joke back then. Before I digress too much: Digital Signal Corporation is real – and it was founded in 2001. They’ve just raised $15 million in Series C financing in a round from Columbia Capital, City Light Capital, SilverHaze Partners, Novak Biddle Venture Partners and Paladin Capital Group. The company’s 3D facial recognition technology helps commercial and government customers identify and monitor moving “non cooperative subjects” at long range. Digital Signal’s biometric system is primarily used to detect criminal and or terrorist activity, the company posits, although its solutions can also be used to identify important customers, friendly soldiers, or frequent travelers. Says David Guttadauro, CEO of Digital Signal:
Amazing, if slightly unnerving indeed.
       
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| Posted: 20 Apr 2011 07:27 AM PDT
Like Power Rangers or Reservoir Dogs, Honeycomb tablet manufacturers must depend on one or two defining characteristics to convince a restless consumer base to pick up their devices. Samsung has the thin one, Motorola has the first one, and LG, with its unique and clever G-Slate, has the 3D one. All we need now is the slate for stoners and the pretty one and you’ve got an episode of Scooby Doo. Add in a waterproof one for Gilligan’s Island.        
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| Qwiki’s Mapolicious iPad App Hits iTunes Posted: 20 Apr 2011 06:58 AM PDT
A couple weeks ago, Qwiki CEO Doug Imbruce came by my office to talk about his new iPad app (watch video below), but he wasn’t quite ready to show it. This morning it finally hit iTunes, where you can download it for free. In many ways, Qwiki was made for the iPad because it is like a visual Wikipedia. Even when the startup won TechCrunch Disrupt last September, it was already working on an iPad version of its multimedia search/information consumption service. It is so much better on the iPad, where the narrated animations come to life and become swipeable. But the best part of the new app are the maps. You can see any entries pinned on a map for any location, or find places near you that have Qwikis. When you are done watching, you can share the Qwiki via email, Twitter, or Facebook. It also suggests related Qwikis, and links to more information and images on Wikipedia, Google, Fotopedia, and YouTube. As Qwiki expands the data sources it pulls from to create its automated info-animations, it is not too hard to imagine how Qwiki can move well beyond the Wikipedia-based entries which dominat eteh service today.        
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| Amazon Partnering With OverDrive To Bring Kindle Library Lending To 11,000 Libraries Across The US Posted: 20 Apr 2011 06:37 AM PDT
Exact usage details weren’t released, but patrons will be able to check out ebooks from their local libraries on all Kindle models and platform apps. The Whispersync technology will then preserve digital notes and bookmarks in case the book is checked out again or purchased through Amazon.        
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| Mobile Barcode Company Scanbuy Secures $5 Million In Funding Posted: 20 Apr 2011 06:24 AM PDT
Scanbuy, a New York-based provider of mobile barcode solutions, has raised an additional $5 million to complete its latest round of funding, bringing the total raised to $26.6 million. Investors for the round, which Scanbuy claims was oversubscribed, include Motorola Solutions Venture Capital, Hudson Ventures and a number of existing private investors. The company recently struck partnerships with brands such as Home Depot, Miller/Coors and Bloomingdale’s, which it says helped fuel the adoption of its technology in the past few months. The company has also expanded geographically, setting up operations in countries like France, Mexico and the United Kingdom. Scanbuy’s ScanLife platform provides a way for advertisers to provide digital information to consumers through the use of 2D barcodes and camera phones. That way, advertisers are able to provide consumers with access to information like product reviews, price comparisons and coupon offers simply by having them scan two-dimensional codes placed on product packaging, a magazine ad or other media. Scanlife can scan traditional UPC barcodes as well as popular 2D barcode formats like Datamatrix and QR Codes. The company says its ScanLife mobile apps have been downloaded on over 35 million devices. It is currently seeing millions of scans from over 30 countries, of both 2D and 1D barcodes, through its system on a monthly basis.        
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| AT&T’s Best First Quarter Ever Saw 3.6 Million iPhones Sold Posted: 20 Apr 2011 06:11 AM PDT
The majority of AT&Ts phones were iPhones although Android, WinPho7, and Blackberry made up 40% of their sales. Total revenue was up from 1Q10.        
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| eBay Acquires Location-Based Media And Advertising Company WHERE Posted: 20 Apr 2011 06:00 AM PDT
Where, which has raised nearly $20 million in funding, builds location-based mobile apps across every major mobile device platform—including Android, iPhone, and Blackberry—and boasts about 4 million active users a month. The apps show local listings for restaurants, bars, merchants, and events, and also suggests places and deals for you based on your location and past behavior. Last year, Where acquired daily deals site Local Ginger, which is now WhereBuys. Where also offers a location-based ad network, which allow advertisers to show their mobile ads only to people near their store, or perhaps near a competitor's store (after the user opts in to see these types of ads). Currently, more than 120,000 retailers, brands and small merchants use Where’s network daily to reach new audiences and deliver real-time foot traffic to their doorstep. The company will report to the PayPal business unit. PayPal spokesperson Anuj Nayar tells us that the reasoning behind acquiring Where focused on the Boston-based company’s talent, IP and technology. “Ebay and PayPal are both investing in multi-channel commerce and the online to offline experience,” he explains, “this acquisition represents that.” WHere will continue to operate independently but eBay and PayPal are both looking for ways to sync the technologies. PayPal will be integrated into Where’s mobile app as a payments mechanism for its local deals, says Nayar. It’s not a surprising buy for eBay considering its massive push into local commerce and online to offline shopping. The company bought Milo and quickly added its local product results to its mobile apps and search. And eBay bought barcode scanning app RedLaser to add the ability to scan products at a store via its mobile apps and look up results on eBay properties. What’s interesting about the deal with Where is that the company reports into PayPal, which signifies the payments unit’s push into local and location-based payments as well. Where was also granted an important patent late last year relating to geofencing, which covers 31 claims ranging from sending an alert to offering a coupon when somebody crosses a geofence with a mobile device. Where had a number of ways it was planning to incorporate geofencing, but it’s interesting to see eBay and PayPal invest so heavily in a location-based service. Clearly, eBay is moving into the direction of serving geotargeted ads and offers. With Paypal, they will have the ability to close the loop and purchase items as well. Theoretically, eBay can now track mobile ads from impressions to purchase. That’s pretty powerful considering the massive market size of both mobile advertising and mobile e-commerce.        
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| Skydeck Quietly Becomes Mr. Number, Hits 2 Million Users, Brings Status Alerts And More To Mobile Posted: 20 Apr 2011 06:00 AM PDT
Then, in October of 2009, Skydeck released what it thought would be a small new feature, mobile caller ID. Within 6 months, the feature had drawn 250K registered users and had become the most popular of the startup’s features. So, in June of last year, Skydeck refocused its efforts around caller ID services, and renamed itself Mr. Number after its successful application. Its initial app offered caller ID and call-blocking features, as well as reverse lookup for mobile phone users. This means that you could use Mr. Number to identify unknown landline numbers, cellphone numbers, and report telemarketers and spam calls to Mr. Number’s crowdsourced database. Today, Mr. Number is announcing that it has grown its base to more than 2 million registered users, and that it is releasing a whole new application that builds on its prior caller ID and productivity services. The new version of Mr. Number brings the concept of “status alerts” from the world of instant messaging to mobile voice and text. It enables you to let your friends know when you're free for a call, when you prefer text, and when you're incommunicado. If you’re in an important pitch meeting, or belting out some karaoke, you can even instruct Mr. Number to send all your calls to voicemail — and let your friends know when you're free again. For anybody that remains confused, think of your status alerts on Gmail or Skype. You can turn your status to “present and ready for chatting”, away, invisible, and so on. Apply that to your mobile phone, add enhanced caller ID, call-blocking, and lookup, and presto! you have Mr. Number. Unfortunately, the app can’t identify callers using “blocked” numbers, but if you receive a call from an unidentified number, Mr. Number can reveal 95 percent of those callers if they’re using landlines and over 60 percent of cell numbers — all by using its crowdsourced database. Within this database, Mr. Numbers allows you to report spam calls, telemarketers, and over the course of the last few years, the company has built a sizable chunk of data consisting of caller records, identities, and, specifically, offenders. So, if you’re someone who is bogged down with a ton of voicemails, Mr. Numbers is a great tool for slimming your inbox and cutting down on excessive voice and text messages. Turn on the app, and tell your friends not to call you after 9pm; I know I will. For more, check out the app here or watch the video below:         
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| Online Search, Advertising Company Lijit Networks Lands $10 Million Posted: 20 Apr 2011 04:54 AM PDT
Lijit Networks, a provider of custom site search and advertising solutions for online publishers, has secured $10 million in financing in a round led by new investor Highway 12 Ventures. Existing backers like Foundry Group, Boulder Ventures and Colorado Fund I, managed by High Country Venture, also participated. Lijit says transactions on its advertising services platform have grown 74 percent since Q4 2010 and that its online publisher network has grown to include more than 17,000 websites, 1.5 billion pageviews a month, and over 106 million unique visitors per month. Lijit Networks was founded in June 2006 and has raised $28.3 million to date.        
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| No ‘Coupon-Chasers’ Here – Whatser Aims To Help Local Businesses Reward Loyalty Posted: 20 Apr 2011 04:41 AM PDT  Whatser, the location-based service that lets users share their favorite locations with friends and discover new ones along the way, is flicking the monetization switch today. It's launching a 'marketing platform' in which local merchants and brands can 'claim' a location that they operate and then communicate with Whatser users who've already added that location to their collection. Special offers can then be pushed to these "fans", thus building and rewarding customer loyalty. In a very thinly veiled swipe at Groupon, Whatser says its approach avoids the problem of "coupon-chasers" in which merchants are forced to slash prices for customers who may never return. Classy.
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| “Buttonless iPod” Faker Writes In About Fakery Posted: 20 Apr 2011 04:34 AM PDT
I suspected it was the same person behind both photos, and indeed, in our tip line today comes an email from the faker himself (or herself) talking about how easy it was to make a fake and get it on all the biggest gadget sites of the net.        
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| The Washington Post Launches Trove, A Personalized Social News Site Posted: 20 Apr 2011 04:20 AM PDT
The Washington Post Company this morning debuted its free, personalized, social news site and aggregator Trove in public beta. First reported to be in the works and nearing launch by The Wall Street Journal in February 2011, Trove aggregates news across subjects of interest and important headlines of the day, from more than 10,000 sources. The news site factors in a reader's likes and dislikes, combining algorithms with ‘expertise from the newsroom’ (news of the day selected by an editorial team). Trove takes advantage of Facebook Connect to pull in a user's interests as outlined by his or her Facebook profile to help jump start the personalization part of the equation. The Washington Post promises to add more social media features and site capabilities to the mix in the coming months.
Trove is available on the desktop, Android and Blackberry phones. In a welcome letter by WashPo chairman and CEO (and Facebook board member) Don Graham, we learn that iPhone and iPad apps are also ‘coming soon’. According to the WSJ report, the company is investing between $5 million and $10 million in the site. Note: The Washington Post acquired personal news aggregation service iCurrent back in July 2010, so we wouldn’t be surprised if a large part of the machinery behind Trove stems from that particular deal, terms of which were not disclosed. (Update: yup). Trove, which has been in private beta since February, was created by WaPo Labs, a technology team of The Washington Post Company tasked with developing and incubating new media opportunities that is led by the company’s Chief Digital Officer Vijay Ravindran. Ford Motor Company signed on as Trove’s exclusive launch sponsor. For your further reading pleasure: Exclusive: An Early Look At News.me, The New York Times' Answer To The Daily         
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| Former Google, Digg Product Chief Keval Desai Lands At VC Firm InterWest Posted: 20 Apr 2011 04:00 AM PDT
VC firm InterWest Partners this morning announced that Keval Desai, an entrepreneur turned VC turned high-profile product manager turned angel investor (*breathe*) has signed on as a partner. It’s a notable hire. Once an investor at ONSET Ventures and Morgan Stanley Venture Partners, Desai joined Google back in 2003 and worked his way up to the position of Director of Product Management (LinkedIn profile). At Google, Desai led development of several initiatives with regards to Google's advertising business, including AdWords, Syndication & TV Ads. At the end of 2009, Digg poached Desai away from Google and appointed him as their new Vice President of Product and Engineering. He didn’t stick around for long; word got out last month that he was leaving Digg. Desai has been an active angel investor for the past two years. He backs, advises or sits on the board of several startups, including Backblaze, MyLikes, Optimizely, Rixty and SpotMixer. On a sidenote, TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington worked together with Desai at Achex, a digital payments startup Mike cofounded back in 1999 that was acquired two years later. “There are approximately seven billion people in the world and less than one third have Internet access,” said Desai. “Only five percent of the world’s population has smart phones that can access the web. Even Facebook counts only ten percent of the world’s population among its customers. When it comes to innovation on fixed and mobile Internet, we are still in the early innings. The best is yet to come!” In addition to the recruitment of Desai, Bruce Cleveland, who joined InterWest as a partner in 2006, has been promoted to general partner. InterWest focuses on investments in digital media, cloud computing, consumer Internet and mobile startups. Some of its investments include Epocrates (went public), CubeTree (acquired by SuccessFactors), Tapjoy, Flurry, Marketo, CarWoo, Doximity and Brand.net. The firm is currently investing InterWest X, a $650 million fund.        
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| Processing $500 Million A Year, Payoneer Launches Local Money Transfers Posted: 20 Apr 2011 03:34 AM PDT
It’s this particular problem that Payoneer, whose Master Card debit card solution we’ve covered in the past, has made into its house specialty and why it’s become a popular choice for international affiliates. Need proof? How about $500M in yearly payments going through its systems, and a year-over-year growth rate in the past four years of 100%? No question that Payoneer’s offering has jumped the shark. Affiliates typically receive their payments by way of wire transfer or check, directly into their local bank accounts, in their own countries. When they buy traffic, however, they usually need to make an international payment. This moving of money back and forth is costly (fees can be upwards of $30 for wire transfers), and also time consuming (wire transfers take several days to make it to their destination). With Payoneer, all users are Master Card debit card cardholders. This means that once funds are deposited into their accounts, users can immediately make standard credit card payments, or withdraw cash from ATMs. For affiliates, the real upside is that they can use their cards to pay for traffic they buy **without** the back and forth local-to-international money transfers. Also, using Payoneer doesn’t require users to have bank accounts, and the cards can be reloaded within hours of funds being deposited in user accounts. And now with the newly launch local bank transfer service, Payoneer can transfer funds in the local currency of the user, as opposed to the currency they were paid in (typically USD). Local currency transfers are both cheaper ($6.95-9.95) and faster than a standard wire transfer. For international users residing in countries where banking systems are still lagging decades behind those of Western countries these are big deals. The local bank transfer service is going to be gradually released to different countries and partners, so it will take a while to become available all over the globe (although that is decidedly the goal). Payoneer’s value proposition hasn’t gone unnoticed. The company already has over a thousand partners making payments to hundreds of thousands of users. And with the signing of Direct Track, ~100,000 additional affiliates will be exposed to Payoneer’s solution. Payonner is backed by Carmel Ventures and Greylock Partners.        
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| Killer Startups In Europe Beckon – If We Tighten Our Synapse To The World Posted: 20 Apr 2011 03:09 AM PDT
I was in the Bay Area for the weekend and aside from standard harassment from Valley Bubble dwellers – “What are you still doing in London, that macro-challenged market – at least go to Brazil or somethin'?!” – I met a proto-example of the power of execution and came to two similar-but-different conclusions.        
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| Google, Microsoft, LinkedIn, AmEx And Others Offer Over $400M In Value To Startup America Posted: 20 Apr 2011 03:05 AM PDT
For those uninitiated, Startup America is a White House partnership with AOL co-founder Steve Case and the Kauffman and the Case Foundations, with the aim to increase "the number of new, high-growth firms that are creating economic growth, innovation, and quality jobs; celebrate and honor entrepreneurship as a core American value and source of competitive advantage; and inspire and empower an ever-greater diversity of communities and individuals to build great American companies." 15 companies are upping the ante on their Startup America commitments today, delivering over $400 million in value over the original Startup America commitment, derived from partnerships with companies like IBM and Intel. Startup America is also rolling a membership program in which companies in various stages (like “Startup,”"Rampup” and “Speedup”) can apply for these resources. And the resources are impressive. Here’s a run down of the specific companies: Google is donating over $100 million worth of Google Ads to the cause and HP is offering an estimated $100 million in discounts on printers and other products. Facebook will be hosting startup specific events (Startup Days) in May, with “Mobile Startup Day” on May 4th in Palo Alto and “StartUp Day: Platform” on May 18th. American Express has devoted over $125 million in value to member companies by giving preferred pricing to Startup America startups. Cisco has committed to provide training to around 6,000 entrepreneurs in 50 cities by January 2014, valued at $3 million. Ernst and Young has pledged more than $7.5 million’s worth of its finance services for SA companies. And Electronic commerce and payment processing site First Data is giving discounts on processing services. LinkedIn will be contributing services, training and products to partner companies, and Microsoft will be offering qualified Startup America participants entry into its BizSpark program. Silicon Valley Bank will be holding an event for the specific purpose of helping entrepreneurs succeed and Salesforce will be providing its products and services free or at a discount as well, such as its CRM platform and workflow engine, to all participants. Global funding platform IndieGoGo is giving Startup America members the ability to raise $30 million at a 50% campaign fee discount, and will feature their campaigns on its partner pages. Intuit will be investing $37 million in services and products including QuickBooks and Intuit Payroll services. From the non-profit sector come contributions from The National Center for Women & Information Technology NCWIT, which will be providing female mentors and promoting the achievements of women to other female entrepreneurs in the program. Palindrome Advisors will be connecting 1,000 Startup America entrepreneurs with key advisors in the industry who will commit to mentor and engage with the individual startups. Advisors such as Chris Kelly, Former Chief Privacy Officer of Facebook, Adam Bain, Chief Revenue Officer at Twitter, Neal Mohan, VP of Product at Google and Brett Brewer, Founder of MySpace will all be participating. "Young businesses have created 40 million jobs over the past 25 years, and the need to create a strong ecosystem for startups in our country is more paramount than ever," said Startup America’s Scott Case. The roster is indeed impressive and companies seem to be jumping behind this thing, so if anything it’s a good bandwagon to be on.        
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| Facebook, Android Increasingly Under Attack: AVG Q1 Security Threat Report Posted: 20 Apr 2011 02:59 AM PDT
Internet and mobile security company AVG Technologies has observed a jump in attacks targeting Facebook and Android, unsurprisingly both platforms with a user base that continues to rapidly grow all over the world. In its just released "AVG Community Powered Threat Report", the company posits that the first quarter of this year saw a major jump in malicious campaigns on Facebook, which have increased threefold in the last 12 months. The company also noted a notable increase in risk for smartphone users, and the Android platform in particular. AVG says the open source nature of the OS as well as the “open-garden approach” in allowing users to install software on their phones opens the door for hackers to write malicious code. The fragmentation of the Android platform also doesn’t help, AVG adds. During Q1 2011, AVG marked 0.20% of downloaded Android apps as malicious. Going back to Facebook, AVG Technologies notes in its report:
AVG data shows that approximately 42% of the detected malware on the social network is related to Facebook applications. According to the report, Facebook users are increasingly being lured to go through multiple ‘surveys’ in order to watch some promised seedy video or picture. Often, one of the survey pages includes click-jacking or so-called like-jacking, where the victim is asked to press a button, but although it's not visible to the viewer, the attack page has placed a transparent GIF over the top of the button, so that instead of the button getting the click, the GIF gets it. The GIF then runs a script to tell all their Facebook friends that he or she "likes" a video or image, and that they should check it out. Thus, the malicious campaigns take advantage of the viral nature of Facebook to spread. Last year, AVG spotted an average of one such campaign per week, usually running on weekends, and usually netting 200,000 to 300,000 victims, but this has now apparently accelerated to a fresh campaign every other day or so. The report is based on traffic and data from AVG’s Community Protection Network, which the company bills as an ‘online neighborhood watch’, followed by research performed by the security software maker, over a three-month period. AVG notes that during this period, attacks using Blackhole Exploit Kits, attack toolkits that exploit several vulnerabilities to execute arbitrary code, are clearly on the rise. During one week in February 2011, the company observed a jump in Blackhole attacks from a few hundred per day to a whopping 800,000 in a single day. Also worth noting: AVG says bit.ly is the URL shortening service most often exploited to spread spam messages. Popularity indeed seems to have its price. According to AVG, the United States is still the dominant source of spam, followed by the UK, with Brazil a clear runner up. English remains the main language used in spam messages.        
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| Toshiba Announces 10.1-Inch Regza Tablet With Android 3.0 And LED Backlight Posted: 19 Apr 2011 11:14 PM PDT  As reported back in January, Toshiba is preparing what looks like a pretty powerful Android tablet, and today, the company took the wraps of the so-called Regza Tablet AT300 [JP]. Judging from the spec list, Toshiba might have a serious Motorola Xoom competitor in the pipeline. Read the rest on CrunchGear.
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| Social Jukebox exfm Raises $750,000 For Its Music Discovery And Sharing Extension Posted: 19 Apr 2011 04:41 PM PDT
Formerly ExtensionFM, in December of last year, the startup rebranded its product exfm and added a bunch of new features, including Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr integration. Although Pandora and Last.fm may be your go-to services for streaming radio and recommendations for similar artist, exfm is a fantastic complement to these services. Once you’ve installed exfm’s Chrome extension, you just continue to surf the Web as you normally would, and exfm alerts you when a website you visit has an embedded or linked mp3 file. You can then either listen to the song on exfm’s player, or you can create a playlist and add it to your queue. The extension remembers where it found the songs, and can stream from the host site at any point, even if you don’t revisit the page. Thankfully, exfm doesn’t just autoplay every song on a site while you’re there. Instead, when you arrive at a site, exfm scrapes the content and identifies each mp3. At the top of your browser, the extension indicates how many songs its found, allowing you to “play all”, or hear individual songs and add them to your queue. exfm also provides some great ways to share. The extension’s equivalent of the “like” or “favorite” button is “note”, so that when you note a new song you’ve just heard, it tags those songs on your exfm profile so that your friends can see what you’re listening to. And, in addition to being able to link to and share songs with your Last.fm account, the extension will (if you’re a Tumblr user) scrape through the songs that your Tumblr friends have on their profiles and will hoover them into your exfm playlist. This also holds true for Facebook and Twitter — in that exfm adds songs your friends have posted to their social streams to your playlist, and can show you a realtime feed of your friends’ music fare. This social component is absolutely huge, and it takes exfm from “just another extension” to the next level. I can’t tell you how many times I will hear a song over the course of my Internet wanderings that I really enjoy, play it a few times, but then later forget where I heard it, and don’t want to take the time to scour the Web to rediscover it. exfm makes that difficulty a thing of the past. For those music enthusiasts out there, exfm is a bit like Songbird for Chrome. Unfortunately, exfm doesn’t yet offer a Firefox plug-in, but COO Charles Smith tells me that one should be coming down the pipeline in the next month. (Along with iOS and Android apps.) For more, check out the video below:         
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| Music Gaming Startup JamLegend Acqhired By Zynga Posted: 19 Apr 2011 04:19 PM PDT
From the JamLegend blog:
At the time of acquisition JamLegend had $2 million in funding led by cofounder of Tellme and iLike Hadi Partovi. The startup was founded by Ryan Wilson, Arjun Lall and Andrew Lee and managed to accumulated a registered userbase was around 2 million. No word yet on the price of the acquisition. A Zynga representative would not comment.        
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| Libellous URLs Are Hilarious. Except That One Time I Nearly Went To Jail Posted: 19 Apr 2011 03:09 PM PDT
The danger, according to Neiman’s Andrew Phelps, stems from the fact that many news organizations include the text of headlines in their URLs in order to improve SEO. In many cases, the headline text is superfluous, and the URL works just fine without it. The result? A story from the UK’s Independent newspaper that started out with this URL…
…went viral, after a prankster tweeted it out as…
(Both URLs work just fine.) Embarrassingly, and amusingly, several news organizations including Slate and Nieman itself, fell foul of the prank, assuming that it reflected an error at the Independent. Finally realizing his mistake, Phelps wrote his follow-up story, describing “How URL spoofing can put libelous words into news orgs' mouths” Well, yes. And no. For a start, the problem isn’t a new one. I remember, almost ten years ago, laughing my ass off when my friend Tim Ireland noticed that the website of British Member of Parliament, Ann Widdecombe could be sabotaged using a really fun URL hack. By changing the text in the URLs of Widdecombe’s photo gallery, the on-site photo captions themselves also changed; with potentially obscene consequences. Secondly, Phelps talks about the “recipe for confusion — and maybe legal issues, if someone can insert a libelous URL into one of your stories and spread it around” but he doesn’t clarify who is at risk from those legal issues. In fact, it’s highly unlikely that a news organization could be found liable for a URL that is hacked by a third party. Generally speaking, you can’t be held responsible for a libel you neither wrote or published. (News organizations can, of course, be liable for URLs they create themselves, as I explained last year). Really, the biggest risk from URL spoofing lies not for the news organizations but for the pranksters themselves, and anyone unfortunate enough to fall for the prank and retweet a libelous link. This I know from bitter experience. Back in 2003 – still a young, smart-ass columnist for Media Guardian, and editor of a satirical ezine called The Friday Thing – I stumbled across what I thought was a great piece of gossip. A very famous British sportsman – who should definitely not be named here – had apparently been conducting a sordid affair, and had secured a legal injunction to prevent UK newspaper from writing about it. Being a smart-ass, I wrote a column for the Guardian pointing out the ludicrousness of the injunction system, given that foreign newspapers were free to write about the story with impunity. Thinking myself far cleverer than I was, I then wrote a follow up story in The Friday Thing, linking to the foreign coverage of the story. It was at this point I made an idiotic mistake: I decided to include the sportsman’s name in the short URL linking to the foreign coverage. Less than 24 hours later, I received a letter from a very large London law firm informing me that I was being sued for libeling their client, and that they would be pressing the English High Court to charge me with contempt of court (maximum sentence: about ten years in jail) for breaching the injunction. It took a year, and thousands of pounds in legal fees, to convince them to drop the case, on the grounds that I had no money for their client to win in damages. Lesson one: URLs can be libelous too. And it gets worse: in most jurisdictions repeating a libel is considered almost as serious (if not actually as serious) as the initial publication. In theory, anyone who retweets or quotes or simply links to a libelous URL could also find themselves on the receiving end of a libel suit. Lesson two: if a URL seems too funny to be true, it’s probably a good idea not to forward it around.        
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| Byliner Launches With A Splash, Aims To Disrupt Long-Form Journalism Posted: 19 Apr 2011 02:28 PM PDT
Amazingly, within days of 60 Minutes breaking the story, a new book was already released about it. Only don’t call it a “book.” Byliner, the company that published it, is touchy about this, because this format is really something new. After all, we didn’t call blog posts articles, because blogging was a new kind of news. But there’s not another good word for what this is. This isn’t some longer, rushed blog post released on a Kindle. Called “Three Cups of Deceit,” it’s written by award-winning author Jon Krakauer, painstakingly edited and even available to download for free for the first 72 hours of its launch. Welcome to the stunning, new rapid-fire world of long-form publishing. Singles– as Amazon calls them– are like books, but meant to be read in a two-hour sitting, delivered quickly and electronically without the usual publishing house lags. The company releasing the book-like-thing burst on the scene yesterday too. I first met with Byliner’s co-founder and CEO John Tayman a few weeks ago, at the request of a friend who was thinking about investing and wanted an author’s take. Let’s be clear: I took this meeting purely as a favor to a friend. I went into the meeting expecting another ill-thought-out nouveau vanity publishing platform. I came out of the meeting wanting to write a Byliner single. (A few weeks later, and we’re actually in talks to do one during my third trimester when I can no longer travel. Call me a workaholic, but it sounds more fun than over-planning a nursery.) Byliner has raised just under $1 million in funding from Freestyle Capital, SoftTechVC and other individuals including Andrew Anker, Karl Jacob and Russ Siegelman. The company officially launches in May. So know reading this that I’ve become fully-biased since I met the company and am now betting on Byliner with my own time and my own name. I don’t know if it can get big enough to score a venture-style return, but it’s one of the first things that’s truly excited me about the future of high-quality, long-form journalism in more than a decade. Or, at least, half of Byliner’s business excites me. The other half I fear is a distraction from the more exciting side of the business. Let’s talk about that one first. Byliner.com is a discovery engine for readers to find great long form content. Say you like the style of Michael Lewis; Byliner will recommend other less-well-known, long-form journalists you might enjoy. It’s a rich database filled with back-catalogs of magazines, newspapers and the Web and a great way to find forgotten long-form pieces on a variety of subjects. My issue isn’t with the UI or the mission of Byliner.com. I just don’t think people are sitting around waiting for more long-form pieces to read. If you’re like me you already have a stack of books you are trying to find time to get through and stacks back issues of the New Yorker, the Economist and Vanity Fair are taking over your house. My problem has never been finding more great long-form stuff to read– my problem is finding time to read it. I think there’s a niche group who will love this site. But largely, I think it’s designed for a mass audience that reporters like me wish existed. It’s one of those sites designed for the way we wish we were and the time we wish we had– never a great starting point when it comes to the consumer Web. And, I’m not sure it allows you to find the best content, because even magazines and newspapers have been moving towards shorter and shorter articles. I doubt most up and coming reporters get much of an opportunity to write pieces that are more than 3,000 words long. I’ve probably written ten in 15 years. But that erosion of the art of long form is exactly why I was so excited by the other half to Byliner’s business: A new publishing house designed from the ground up to take advantage of the immediacy of digital publishing, and yet, keep the best aspects of a traditional publishing house at the same time. Authors will spend a few months– not years– writing, and Byliner will invest in real editing of the piece. That’s something traditional publishers no longer do, and most writers I know yearn for. Great writers can always benefit from great editors, and great editors are disappearing from journalism and publishing. The singles are turned around in a matter of days and weeks, not months or years. In the case of “Three Cups of Deceit”, new reporting was added just hours before publication. I assumed to get all of these benefits, and to sign with an upstart publishing brand, authors would have to sacrifice economics. But Byliner is even competitive on that one, largely because it’s stripping so many unnecessary bloated costs out of the publishing model. The authors assume none of the back-end costs – unlike a vanity self-publishing label – and are instead simply paid for their work. And they’re paid pretty well. Byliner doesn’t disclose what it pays for advances, and it will probably change over time depending on the imprint’s success, but right now we’re not talking about anything close to jaw-dropping 6-figure deals. Yet the advances are comparable with what many lesser-known authors and journeyman journalists I know have been paid to write a book; and remember– these aren’t the length of full-books. Byliner splits revenues with authors 50/50. Tayman hopes that Byliner.com will be key to marketing the singles, and that the label’s curatorial eye will lend cache to being a “Byliner original.” That cache is important. In the old media world, there’s a big difference between having a publishing house and self-publishing. It not only effects distribution and press, but it effects how seriously people take you as an author. There are about a dozen authors with contracts so far, and Byliner will be actively signing more (the company’s first few singles have been announced here). Its goal is to release a new single every 10-to-14 days, and it’s not afraid to be current. The label just sent National Book Award winner William Vollmann to Japan for two weeks to write a first-hand account of life in the nuclear evacuation zone. Byliner may wind up disrupting the likes of Vanity Fair and the New Yorker more than it disrupts publishing houses. If blogs deconstructed the breaking news element of newspapers and magazines, Byliner is trying to disrupt the investigative cover story.        
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The Honeycomb slate market is getting crowded. With new devices launching every day and current models getting incremental updates that put them on parity with just about anything else out there, manufacturers gotta have a gimmick. 
Who says Amazon is trying to kill the local library? The company’s latest venture brings the power of the Kindle to public and educational libraries through a partnership with OverDrive. That sounds like love, not hate.
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eBay has acquired location-based media company 
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This is a guest post by Alex Hoye , a London-based entrepreneur and angel investor and in Internet, media, and consumer markets. He is CEO of Latitude Group, a European digital marketing agency, and before that co-founded GoIndustry plc, an online industrial auctions firm. Hoye invested in Seedcamp Seedcamp and is chairman of Skimlinks and BraveNewTalent .
Earlier today we 
An interesting 
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