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- NetShelter Hires A Raft Of Senior VPs To Help Build Its InPowered Ad Platform
- Survey Says: Online Video Is Catching Up To TV In Ad Effectiveness
- Whither The Console: Is This The Sunset Of The Dedicated Game Machine?
- Stealthy Startup Gumhouse Raises $6M+ For A “Social Stream Video Shopping Network”
- Yep. Developers Are Still Building For Apple’s iOS Over Android By A Factor Of 2-to-1.
- Cloud Storage Encryption Service BoxCryptor Comes to Mac, Improves Free Version & Closes Funding Round
- Mobile Apps Come To AdWords Thanks To AdMob Integration
- Party Rockin’ On Facebook: Disrupt Winner Shaker Hits North America With Club 53 Launch
- Photo Aggregator Pixable Acq-hires The Badass Developer Who Built Their Android App In 3 Weeks (And It’s Live Now)
- Alleged iPhone 5 Housing Gets Manhandled On Video
- Ringadoc Virtually Connects You With A Doctor Anytime, Raises $750K Seed From Founders Fund’s FF Angel
- Meet The Top 15 Finalists In Google’s Annual Science Fair
- TechCrunch Gadgets Webcast: Live From E3
- Citrix Goes After Carriers With Acquisition Of Mobile Data & Video Optimization Firm Bytemobile
- Drchrono Now Lets Doctors Accept Payments Via Square, View Real-Time Insurance Info On iPad
- Virgin Mobile To Launch Prepaid iPhones On June 29: $549 iPhone 4, $649 4S, “Unlimited” Data
- Netgear’s NeoTV Pro HD Media Streamer Can Throw Your Laptop Content To Your TV… Wirelessly
- DJ Software Specialist Algoriddim Brings Video To The Turntable With vjay iPad App
- Fast-Growing App Search Engine Quixey Raises $20 Million Series B
- Another Super Angel Levels Up: Aydin Senkut’s Felicis Ventures Closes $70M
| NetShelter Hires A Raft Of Senior VPs To Help Build Its InPowered Ad Platform Posted: 07 Jun 2012 09:00 AM PDT  Tech-focused blog network NetShelter is announcing four new executive hires today, part of what co-founder and CEO Peyman Nilforoush says is a larger company shift to focus on its InPowered Platform. NetShelter first announced InPowered back in December, saying the platform was conceived with advertisers like Samsung. The basic idea is that expert opinion has a much bigger impact than brand advertising, so brands should create ads that highlight positive editorial content — and that’s what InPowered enables. Then in May, Netshelter announced the beta of InPowered Sponsored Stories, which allows advertisers to promote these articles underneath a blog post as recommended related reading. Nilforoush says that with the positive response to InPowered, NetShelter is devoting more and more attention to it, and that the shift is reorienting the company in other ways. Instead of just functioning as a normal ad network (albeit one that, in NetShelter’s case, was focused on infleuntial tech blogs), it’s important for that the company “figure out what is the expert word-of-mouth that is resonating.” That focus gives NetShelter more of a “product and technology mindset,” Nilforoush says. So when NetShelter made its new hires, it was looking for people with experience in those areas. (All of the positions except for SVP of Sales are new.) Here’s a list of the appointments:
With all the talk about NetShelter’s new focus, will we be seeing a changes in its larger workforce as too? Nilforoush says probably not, because the company has been hiring aggressively in product and engineering for a while now. That will continue, he says, but NetShelter will still be hiring the people “we would need support them on the operational side, on the marketing side, the sales side.”
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| Survey Says: Online Video Is Catching Up To TV In Ad Effectiveness Posted: 07 Jun 2012 09:00 AM PDT  Every year online video ad startup BrightRoll does a survey of advertisers to see how they’re approaching online video and what their budget plans are for the coming 12 months. And every year, respondents tend to get a little more into the whole online video thing. This year, respondents continue to be bullish on online video, in part because they’re starting to believe that it can be just as effective as TV. A majority of advertisers surveyed — 64 percent — said they believe that online video advertising is equally or more effective than the ads that show up on TV. BrightRoll posits that could be due to a number of factors, one of which is that 70 percent of Internet users watch video online, meaning that there’s no longer a question of scale when it comes to buying online. The engaging nature of online video also makes it more effective than display and social media. According to BrightRoll, 87 percent of respondents believe that online video is equal to or more effective than display ads, while 69 percent said it was more effective than social media. A majority of advertisers still found direct response and search ads to be more effective than online video, however. That’s probably why more advertisers are becoming bullish on the format. 30 percent of respondents said they expect online video to grow faster than any other type of advertising. And it’s not just growing in the traditional web browser — advertisers are increasingly spending on video across multiple platforms. 64 percent of respondents said they would place video ads on smartphones, while more than half will target tablets and 30 percent said they would buy ads on connected TVs over the next year. Not everything is fine and dandy when it comes to online video ads, however: Advertisers still want better metrics to determine how effective those ads are. About 70 percent said that they needed a more clear ROI and success metrics to justify increasing spend on online video. And about a third want more info about the impact their online video buys have on offline purchasing. And that thing about online video being comparable to TV? It’s got some advertisers thinking that they should start measuring online streams in the same way they measure TV, with these things called gross ratings points, or GRP for short. About 18 percent are interested in more research on using GRPs for online video, even though only 5 percent say it’s the most important metric today. As always, it’s worth noting that BrightRoll is a video ad network and so it has a vested interest in showing off how much the online video market is going to grow. Anyway, if you’re interested in seeing more, you can grab the whole report here.
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| Whither The Console: Is This The Sunset Of The Dedicated Game Machine? Posted: 07 Jun 2012 08:57 AM PDT  After sitting through three major press events at E3 this year and wandering the halls, I began seeing comments regarding the viability of consoles in a constantly-changing tech landscape. First there were the memes that essentially suggested that this year’s E3 was a gift to PC gaming and then John Carmack, the granddaddy of FPSes, (and bear in mind Carmack is working on a virtual reality helmet so he may not be quite grounded in absolute reality) said: “Console gaming might morph. You can certainly see cloud gaming being built into every display device and traditional consoles could become more like the audiophile niche of people who want the extreme experience there.” Now his statement may seem absurd on the surface but let’s unpack it. He’s suggesting that as a piece of hardware the console may go the way of the high-end turntable or a really nice stereo. The rabble will use cloud-connected PCs to play popular games but those who want “pure” experiences will spend thousands on gold master discs and a powerful console to play them on. Again, this is far-fetched – a game that is truly divorced of the media on which it resides – but it could happen. But assessing how things look in the short term is a different animal. Take, for example, the rumored Steam console. This device will epitomize the vision of cloud gaming but, if rumor is correct, it will be less a purpose-built console and more a living-room PC. And there’s the rub: as technology swiftly outpaces even the most conscientious of gamers, how can a console hope to beat an upgradable PC or a simpler streaming service like OnLive in the living room? Why would a parent buy a Wii U when junior is just as happy with a few games on a platform that will grow as the child grows? Obviously there are lots of reasons for buying a console – franchise titles, a stable experience, media streaming – but many consoles are now jacks of all trades and masters of none. A console offers a stable platform that developers can grow into and a universal control device that works (for some people) better than a keyboard/mouse combo. But is that really enough? Sure the Xbox is encroaching on cable boxes, but is that really a source of revenue? Most of the folks Microsoft hopes to woo with cable channel access don’t want a game console. They just want to watch reality shows on TV after surfing five hundred channels with giddy abandon. I’m definitely not saying that this E3 nailed the lid on the console coffin. It’s clear that the manufacturers are biding their time and allowing current generation hardware to reach its natural end of life. We can probably expect to see new consoles announced next year from Sony and Microsoft with shipping dates in 2014 or 2015, but I worry that by then a high-end, dedicated console will look as quaint as an HD-DVD player in the living room. The technology can catch up, to be certain, but that doesn’t mean the consumer will always wait for it. [Image: Kesipun/Shutterstock]
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| Stealthy Startup Gumhouse Raises $6M+ For A “Social Stream Video Shopping Network” Posted: 07 Jun 2012 08:53 AM PDT  A somewhat stealthy new startup called Gumhouse just raised over $6 million according to this SEC filing, and there are some big names attached to the project, it seems. According to the Gumhouse.com website, the service is described as a “social stream video shopping network,” which uses Facebook to personalize your shopping experience. After a little digging, it appears the service has already soft launched. Listed as “Directors” on the filing are LegalZoom, ShoeDazzle, and The Honest Company co-founder Brian Lee and former Photobucket Biz Dev VP and Color co-founder Peter Pham, who’s also at Science, the Betworks-like technology studio/incubator based in L.A. Meanwhile, “Executive Officers” include Tom Dare, former VP of Business Intelligence at MySpace and Mike Jones, both also of Science, and RxVantage co-founder Greg Gilman. Polaris Ventures General Partner, Jason Trevisan, is listed as a director, too. Despite flying a bit under the radar, the company has been busy tweeting and posting deals to its Facebook page. For example, a post yesterday encouraged Facebook fans to RSVP to their favorite sales at sites like Uncovet, Wittlebee and RescueTime. The Gumhouse Facebook page also “likes” companies such as 12Society, Dollar Shave Club, Swag of the Month, Gentlemen Square, Uncovet, SaneBox.com, and HelloShop, and is pointing users to “video sales” that happen on the Gumhouse.com domain. These sales seem to involve time-sensitive, exclusive deals accompanied by a video showcasing something about the company or offer being touted. (Really bummed, for example, that I missed this one from Wittlebee, as it turns out. I have a shower this weekend!) A big yellow button tells users to “share & see price,” for the current deal (not pictured). After doing so (which posts the deal to Facebook), the price is revealed and you can buy whatever’s being offered. A handful of these deals have been posted to Facebook during May, and have featured things like fitness programs, kids’ clothes, albums, and more. While none of this has been officially confirmed by the company (we reached out, though), a startup that aims to help us make sense of the plethora of deals and discounts available through various flash sale sites, subscription services, and other e-commerce offerings would be a big help to regular shoppers, and using Facebook profile data to match shoppers to deals is just clever. In addition, Gumhouse says that the more you use the service, it will continually improve your experience, suggesting an adaptive learning aspect to its matching algorithms. The main Gumhouse URL is just a Launchrock page for now, but you can sign-up here.
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| Yep. Developers Are Still Building For Apple’s iOS Over Android By A Factor Of 2-to-1. Posted: 07 Jun 2012 08:42 AM PDT  MG Siegler asked this question yesterday. Where are those awesome Android-exclusive apps that Google chairman Eric Schmidt said were coming? Not here yet, if you look at Flurry’s data. The company, which has its mobile analytics service in 185,000 apps and 100 million unique devices, says that developers are still building for iOS over Android by a ratio of 2:1. This ratio is pretty much unchanged from a quarter ago, although Apple always gets a huge bump up during the holiday quarter. Yes, the holiday quarter is really that lucrative with 250 million downloads on last year’s Christmas Day alone. The main reasons for iOS’ continued edge are that monetization is just that much easier plus there are fewer fragmentation issues. “Android delivers less gain and more pain than iOS, which we believe is the key reason 7 out of every 10 apps built in the new economy are for iOS versus Android,” wrote the company’s vice president of marketing Peter Farago in a post. Just to revisit why iOS is still ahead (and all of these charts represent pretty widely-known problems) – Fragmentation is still a beast. Unlike iOS where you might have to deal with the 4S, the 4, the 3G and the 3GS (or maybe a half-dozen models), Android developers generally need to support dozens of devices. Or if you want to go the extra mile, hundreds! Beyond the Samsung Galaxy S II and the Samsung Galaxy Ace, no other phone holds more than a seven percent market share of global user sessions, according to Flurry. Versioning is always an issue with the latest Ice Cream Sandwich edition of Android being on just 7 percent of phones. The leading version is still Gingerbread, which is well over a year old. ”This means the that majority of consumers are running on an Android operating system that is three to four iterations old,” Farago writes. Google tries to be as helpful as it can by actively tracking versioning here: Then there’s monetization. For every dollar that a developer earns on iOS, they can expect to earn about 24 cents on Android. Flurry published this chart awhile ago but apparently the ratio hasn’t changed that much. The reasons for this gap are also very well-known. Basically, Google doesn’t have as mature a payments product as Apple does and it has a fraction of the customer database that Apple does. Apple had more than a decade to build out a wealth of credit card information on more than 250 million users through iTunes. Because the original version of Google Checkout wasn’t wildly successful, the company basically had to start from near square one in building payments infrastructure for Android. But they’re working on it! They recently added features like the ability to do subscription billing.
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| Posted: 07 Jun 2012 08:20 AM PDT  BoxCryptor, an on-the-fly encryption service that’s optimized for cloud storage services like Dropbox, Box.net and Google Drive, just announced the launch of its native Mac application. This new Mac app joins the company’s previously released Windows, iOS and Android apps. In addition, the Germany-based company is also announcing its new pricing structure, which now for the first time includes a free version without limits to the size of your encrypted folder. The company’s mobile apps, which let you access your encrypted cloud storage folders, are also now available for free (though the free versions have some limitations and feature in-app purchases to unlock some features). In addition, the BoxCryptor team told us that it quietly closed its first funding round at the beginning of May. While the company wouldn’t specify the exact amount of this round, it did note that it was a “mid six-digit amount.” The investors in this round are Jan Hichert, Markus Hennig and Gert Hansen, the founders of German security firm Astaro, which was acquired by Sophos last year. The company launched last year and was founded by first-time startup founders Andrea Wittek and Robert Freudenreich. Over the course of the last year, the team, which now consists of 7 people, launched its Windows, Android and iOS apps. The company tells us that its apps have been downloaded more than 100,000 times and are currently being used in 30 countries. The company was a finalist at the London Web Summit in March 2012 and a finalist at the NEXT conference in Berlin in May 2012. When our own Mike Butcher briefly wrote about the company earlier this year in the context of the London Web Summit, he noted that it “could have plenty of potential especially in the security conscious enterprise sector.” Indeed, given that it’s inevitable that employees are going to use Dropbox or Google Drive – whether their IT department authorize this or not – there can be little doubt that adding an extra layer of security to business data in the cloud is a good thing (Boxcryptor encrypts your data using the AES-256 standard). Unsurprisingly then, the BoxCryptor team says that it’s especially popular among business users and especially small teams.
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| Mobile Apps Come To AdWords Thanks To AdMob Integration Posted: 07 Jun 2012 08:00 AM PDT  Google today announced that AdWords advertisers will be able to run campaigns in the AdMob network of more than 300,000 mobile apps — a move that could turn out to be lucrative for both mobile app publishers and Google. In a blog post announcing the integration (Google sent me an early copy), the company says that AdMob campaigns will be added to the regular AdWords dashboard. When the advertiser is choosing the type of campaign that they want to run, they can just select the “Display Network only (mobile apps)” option, and then they’re creating an AdMob campaign. In AdWords, they can also target their ads at specific smartphone or tablet models, and direct their campaign at specific app categories. They can even target specific apps. Google acquired AdMob for $750 million two years ago, and the company describes this as “the latest chapter in our ongoing efforts not only to bring AdMob's and Google's tools together, but to mobilize all of our ads products and services.” Last November, for example, Google opened the doors for AdMob developers to make their ad inventory available on the DoubleClick ad exchange. Since we’re talking about Google, this kind of integration could have big implications. The company brought search advertising to an enormous scale thanks in large part to AdWords’ simple, self-serve model. Google executives said earlier this year that they want to achieve similar scale in video by integrating video ads into AdWords, and now it looks like they’re trying to do something similar in mobile. (Specifically in mobile apps — even before this you could buy mobile search ads in AdWords.) After all, Google says AdWords has 1 million advertisers, and I wouldn’t be surprised if many of them are still in the early (or pre-early) stages of thinking about their mobile strategy and are only vaguely aware of AdMob (note how the campaign selection process described above downplays the AdMob connection). This makes mobile advertising more accessible to them, and also makes it easier to manage a campaign across multiple platforms from the AdWords dashboard.
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| Party Rockin’ On Facebook: Disrupt Winner Shaker Hits North America With Club 53 Launch Posted: 07 Jun 2012 07:41 AM PDT  Sometimes you want to be out partying on a Friday night and simply can’t muster the energy. It happens. But last year at TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco, a service launched that aimed to solve that problem, and the company ultimately won and took home the Disrupt Cup. That company is Shaker, and it’s just making its way Stateside from Israel with the forthcoming launch of Club 53 tomorrow at 7:53pm PST. If you don’t already know how Shaker works, it’s essentially a virtual world inside a Facebook app. That may mean a beach, a sports arena, a park, or the aforementioned Club 53. But, that’s not a real club. It’s about as real as your strawberry patch in FarmVille, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t fun right? You have an avatar (or Shaker) that performs different actions in real-time, with other avatars that are hanging out in the venue. You can buy drinks, dance, enjoy the music and socialize just like you would in a real club, except for the fact that you’ll be on your couch in front of your computer (and your chances of getting laid go way down). The launch of Club 53 marks the first public venue created by Shaker for North America, and as long as you’re 18, all you have to do is head over to Shaker’s website and sign up. Far East Movement, the same group that’s Fly Like A G6, will be “there” at launch time to celebrate, as will other bands such as Mayday Parade, Escape The Fate, and Daniel Bedingfield. BandPage is helping out with the music side of things, offering musicians a way to easily host events and share content within Club 53. But perhaps club-hopping isn’t your thing. In that case, Shaker is preparing a sports environment in collaboration with the NBA. Starting on June 12, in line with the playoffs, Shaker will launch an NBA Playoff Finals space two hours prior to tip-off for each game, where fans can hang out and enjoy the game together, sports-bar style. There will also be trivia competitions and prizes. I still can’t quite wrap my head around a service that wants you to have real-world experiences alone in your home, face aglow from the light from the computer screen. How am I supposed to enjoy a virtual tequila shot? But now that the service is going live here in the U.S., maybe Shaker will prove me wrong. Editor’s Note: None of these photos are of Club 53. It will be unveiled tomorrow night.
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| Posted: 07 Jun 2012 07:33 AM PDT  Pixable, the iPhone app that aggregates the photos and videos shared by friends on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube, is now arriving on Android. But how it got there is something of an interesting story. Instead of designing and building the Android version in-house, as is typical, the company instead “acq-hired” an independent developer who crushed out his own Pixable Android app in just three weeks. Juan Carlos Viota of Spain, the winner of the 2009 Global Android Developer Challenge (and Pixable fan, obviously), had previously requested access to Pixable’s private API to build an independent Android version. When the app was complete a few weeks later, the Pixable team liked it so much they gave him a job and made his creation the new official Pixable Android app. But before any of you budding developers get crazy ideas about how to land a job at your favorite tech company, you should know that Viota was already a widely respected Android developer. As noted above, he not only took home the top prize of $250,000 in the Android Developer Challenge, he had been a finalist the year before, too. “We’ve been focused on iOS since the beginning, but when you’re given the opportunity to have your Android application developed by one of the best developers in the world, you go for it,” said Pixable co-founder Inaki Berenguer of the news. Pixable is now processing Viota’s visa and is setting him up with English classes as he prepares to move from Spain to New York, where Pixable is based. However, his Spanish will come in handy, as around 70% of Pixablers also speak Spanish. Building for the Android audience (while still not developers’ first choice, apparently) made sense in this case, as the company was already seeing 20% of its traffic coming from Android users who were visiting the mobile web version at m.pixable.com. The new Android app (technically still a “beta”) is faster than the web version and takes advantage of native Android features, while also still allowing users to flip through photos sorted in “photofeeds” like “Top Photos of the Day,” “Shared Videos,” “New Profile Pics,” and more. Pixable now has 3 million users on iPhone and mobile web (after a bump from getting featured by Apple). Its users swipe through over 2,000 photos per minute, and open up the app 11 times per month. Pixable for Android is available from the Android Market here.
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| Alleged iPhone 5 Housing Gets Manhandled On Video Posted: 07 Jun 2012 07:30 AM PDT  Love it or hate it (I find myself strangely leaning toward the former), that peculiar two-tone metal housing supposedly meant to wrap around Apple’s forthcoming iPhone has just recently been given the video treatment by the folks at eTradeSupply. Now, there’s not much here that wasn’t visible in the original set of images that 9to5Mac obtained — a thinner, longer frame to accommodate a larger 16:9 display, the inclusion of a much smaller dock connector port, an annoyingly positioned headphone jack — but the fellow on video seemed eager to provide viewers with a bit of extra context. It isn’t long at all before he whips out an iPhone 4S and starts addressing design changes point by point, though it’s still infuriatingly unclear whether or not the component will actually grace Apple’s final product. The video also points out an interesting little change in the new casing’s SIM card tray — it’s noticeably smaller than the one Apple uses in the iPhone 4/4S, which has prompted some to believe that it’s meant to work with the new, ETSI-approved microSIM format. It’s tough to tell whether or not that’s the case, or if Apple just found a way to trim some of the (admittedly minor) cruft from their existing SIM tray designs. Though I’m sure some people are hoping against hope for a surprise appearance at WWDC what with Apple’s previous predilection for June unveils, the iPhone 4S’s October debut may mean that Apple will hold off on an official announcement for a few months yet. Bummer, I know, but look on the bright side — that just means we’ll have plenty more wacky iPhone leaks and rumors to tear apart.
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| Posted: 07 Jun 2012 07:14 AM PDT  Ringadoc lets you pay a flat fee to instantly talk to a real doctor at any hour of the day, and its big vision to be “the frontline of primary care” has landed it a $750,000 seed round led by FF Angel. So if its 2am and you’ve got some weird rash, you can call Ringadoc’s toll-free number, record a quick description of your condition, and get matched with a doctor who’ll give you medical advice or a diagnosis, write you a prescription, and tell you whether to wait until you doctor’s office opens or go to the hospital immediately. The money comes from from Founders Fund’s seed investment vehicle as well as Ringadoc board member Ryan Howard, CEO and founder of electronic medical records startup Practice Fusion. Right now Ringadoc is just a phone number and app for patients, but the seed will pay for key hires as well as development of a direct-to-doctor product physicians can distribute to their patients. Ringadoc is available in California today, but it hopes to bring instant medical gratification to more places soon. Ringadoc’s founder Jordan Michaels told me a story of how he got poison oak one weekend but couldn’t get his primary care doctor on the phone. With Ringadoc, he got a virtual house call from a doctor in two minutes so he could find out how to take care of himself. “Why not enable people? Their time is valuable, and in-person visits to the doctor don’t fit into normal people’s schedules anymore” Michaels tells me. Ringadoc costs just $39.99 per consultation with no time limit. There’s no appointment to set up, and no need to call your insurance company. You just pay out of pocket — probably less than what you co-pay at the doctor’s office. The consultation could help you avoid an expensive but needless trip to the emergency room, or save you from freaking out all night or weekend until you doctor’s office opens. Sure, “you’re not going to be able to get your temperature or blood pressure taken, or have the doctor look down your throat, but there’s stil a lot that can be handled” says Michaels. Ringadoc is also testing an iOS and Android app in California that lets you shoot footage of your condition and talk face-to-face with doctors over real-time video. Eventually it hopes to pull in data from the new waves of medical and fitness devices so doctors could measure your vitals remotely, and its actively looking for those partners now. Michaels tells me Founders Fund was a natural choice because of their investment in other medtech companies and focus on life changing ideas, like Ringadoc’s mission is to become the backbone of all patient-to-doctor communication. If the service takes off, Ringadoc could shake the insurance industry it sidesteps. “[We want patients to] have a great experience, then call their insurance company and say ‘why don’t you offer this?’”. Founders Fund partner Bruce Gibney crystallizes the value-add of Ringadoc: “Direct, no-wait access to physicians has not been solved even though telepresence is extraordinarily fast, cheap and widespread. Ringadoc has finally solved that problem and will bring relief to thousands of people with immediate medical needs." You can sign up here for Ringadoc though coverage is only available in California and a few other states for now.
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| Meet The Top 15 Finalists In Google’s Annual Science Fair Posted: 07 Jun 2012 07:13 AM PDT  The annual Google Science Fair is an effort to encourage young people from all over the world to think about what’s next. Whether it’s in health, ecology, or entrepreneurship, Google has been doing its part to turn the spotlight onto an international group of youngsters who are doing just that. Today, Google announced the 15 finalists of this year’s Science Fair, a group of young scientists whose projects are tackling a variety of real world problems, from helping those with hearing loss enjoy music to telemedicine and bringing water purification systems to the masses. The final group of 15 has been selected from a group of 90 regional finalists, with the chosen few receiving word in a Google+ Hangout session this morning. For those unfamiliar, the Google Science Fair is an international online science competition in which individual students (or groups of three) between 13 and 18 can submit their most innovative ideas in pursuit of the “Science In Action” prize. The competition asks students to complete a “scientific investigation into a real world problem or issue,” and carry out their investigation from experimentation, recording of the results, and a conclusion. Students are then asked to submit their ideas (showing their work, of course) and leave the rest in the hands of the judges. The winners were broken down into three age categories: 13-14, 15-16, and 17-18. You can see the winners below and find out more about their projects here. The U.S. was represented by the most finalists, with seven in all, backed by three students from India, and one each from Swasiland, Ukraine, Spain, Malta, and Canada. Surprisingly, after the girls cleaned up last year, winning top prizes in each of the age categories, the boys fared better this year, with fifteen in total, compared to six young ladies. As to what’s next? In July, all fifteen finalists will get to head to Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, where they will present their projects to a panel of judges, competing for the final prize. Top honors include $100K in scholarship funds, a chance to check out 100-year-old tortoises in the Galapagos, among others. The winners will be announced on July 23rd, streamed live over YouTube. Google also announced that Scientific American awarded a special “Science in Action” prize to a “project that addresses a social, environmental, ethical, health or welfare issue to make a practical difference to the lives of a group or community.” Sakhiwe Shongwe and Bonkhe Mahlalela from Swaziland claimed the top prize for their project, which develops an “affordable way to provide hydroponics to poor subsistence farmers.” On top of $50,000 in prize funds, the winners are receiving access to a year’s mentorship “to explore how their project can help the lives of subsistence farmers in Swaziland and around the world.” (The pair are also still in the running for the age category and grand prizes.) Way to go, young scientists. Makin’ the world proud. Winners below:
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| TechCrunch Gadgets Webcast: Live From E3 Posted: 07 Jun 2012 07:04 AM PDT  We went. We saw. We gamed. As we discuss in the video here, E3 was strange this year. Sony focused on just new games. Microsoft is jamming the Kinect down gamers’ throats. Nintendo finally unveiled the final Wii U hardware but then announced a series of Wii U mini-games including the underwhelming Nintendo Land. But more telling was the mature undertone clearly audible throughout the whole event. Gamers are getting older and for the most part, never minding new titles like SiNG and Just Dance 4, the titles are aging with them. Skip the lines and join John and I as we roam the halls of E3. We visit the Nintendo booth, highlighting the new Wii U games. Sony is all about new games including new PS Vita releases. We end the show in Microsoft’s massive green E3 booth. The Electronic Entertainment Expo was a bit underwhelming this year but it’s still a festival of video games, making it one of the best places on Earth.
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| Citrix Goes After Carriers With Acquisition Of Mobile Data & Video Optimization Firm Bytemobile Posted: 07 Jun 2012 06:29 AM PDT  Citrix announced this morning that it’s acquiring mobile traffic optimization company Bytemobile - a move which Citrix says will allow it to enter the mobile and video market with access to the infrastructure of 130 mobile operators in 60 countries worldwide. Combined, the two companies will offer the mobile operators solutions to help them better manage the ever-increasing amount of network traffic, of both data and video, while also giving them better visibility into metrics related to performance, visibility and efficiency. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but it has been approved the Board of Directors and is expected to close in Q3 2012. Following the deal’s completion, Bytemobile will form a new Service Provider Platforms team within Citrix, as a part of the Citrix Cloud Networking product group. It will allow Citrix to move beyond its current enterprise and cloud customers, to also begin to offer solutions within the telecommunications space. Bytemobile and Citrix were already partners on the Bytemobile T1100 Traffic Director, having announced a formal relationship at this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The T1100 helps mobile carriers scale their networks using the application delivery intelligence of the Citrix NetScaler platform, which provides the load-balancing technology. Bytemobile has other products as well, specifically two “Smart Capacity” platforms – the Unison Platform and the T-Series Adaptive Traffic Management System. Its technology portfolio includes things that help with web and video optimization, content caching, policy control, traffic management, mobile analytics and deep packet inspection. Its solutions work on 3G and 4G LTE networks. Based in Santa Clara, Bytemobile has 300 employees, but through its network of 130 mobile operators, its optimizations reach 2 billions mobile subscribers worldwide. Currently, Bytemobile says it sees over 20 petabytes of data traffic through its customer networks every day. Bytemobile routinely puts out data-filled reports on the impact of mobile’s growth on carrier networks, which reveal the need for optimization solutions. For example, a report from February found that video now accounts for half of all mobile traffic – something which can be attributed to the growth of smartphones, tablets, increasing speeds provided by operators themselves, as well as the popularity of services like YouTube, Hulu and Netflix. Optimization and performance is critical to the carriers’ bottom line, because, if not managed properly, network congestion leads to poor experience for end users (mobile subscribers) who then jump to other networks instead. One solution, of course, is to add infrastructure and new spectrum to help provide the capacity for all the mobile data and video being pushed through the carriers’ networks. But Bytemobile allows the operators to defer those costs, by smartly managing network performance and traffic instead.
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| Drchrono Now Lets Doctors Accept Payments Via Square, View Real-Time Insurance Info On iPad Posted: 07 Jun 2012 06:00 AM PDT  Drchrono, a startup focused on bringing medical records and more to the iPhone and iPad, is announcing a big update today which introduces mobile payment feature to its platform, as well as a new way for physicians and patients to access their health insurance information from mobile devices. Specifically, the company is adding two new features to its product line-up today: iPhone patient payment processing, which allows doctors and staff to process payments using the Square card reader attached to an iPhone or iPod Touch, and a real-time health insurance eligibility checking feature which will integrate with Drchrono patient check-in app for iPad called OnPatient. For those unfamiliar, DrChrono is a startup creating a freemium SaaS solution for doctors that’s built on top of Apple’s iOS platform. The company offers an online service and accompanying iPad app which doctors can use to schedule patient appointments, write or dictate notes via audio, take pictures, write prescriptions and send them to pharmacies, enable reminders, access lab results, or input health records. There’s also a more lightweight EMR (electronic medical record) app for iPhone and iPod Touch as well as an iPad app called OnPatient, which replaces the patient check-in process by swapping out clipboards for digital input. The company raised $2.8 million in funding this January, in a round led by Yuri Milner, with Google's Matt Cutts and other investors participating. The startup had previously raised $1.3 million in seed funding from Milner, General Catalyst, Charles River Ventures, 500 Startups, Gmail creator and FriendFeed co-founder Paul Buchheit, Cutts, and the Start Fund. What’s notable about today’s announcement is that this is the first time that real-time medical insurance checks have become available through an iPad application. Although there may have been standalone solutions for mobile or legacy software solutions that have allowed for this, it hasn’t been done before on the iPad. But more typically, office staff has had to phone insurance companies in order to find out the details of a patients’ current coverage. Now they’ll be able to verify it instantly. In addition, for patients, they’ll be able to immediately see details like what their co-pay and deductible are, or what procedures are covered. Drchrono CEO Michael Nusimow says that the feature covers the top 20 commercial carriers in the U.S., including the top state Medicare and Medicaid carriers. By volume, the top 80% of insurance companies offer the APIs the app needs to pull in this information – and if they offer it, then it’s integrated. Meanwhile, the newly added Square-based mobile payments feature is targeting the smaller scale doctors’ practices (one to ten doctors). However, notes Nusimow, these practices account for 80% of the U.S. healthcare market today. Already, the company is making inroads into this market, with some 23,000 registered doctors on its service, the majority of whom are in the U.S. For comparison purposes, that’s up from 15,000 at the beginning of the year, and up from 5,000 last summer. Nusimow thinks the Square feature will entice even more to try the service, saying it’s almost “like bribing doctors,” by giving them “something sexy,” that they really want to use. “It makes them feel modern,” he says. The company doesn’t talk revenue numbers, but COO Daniel Kivatinos compares the split between free and paid customers to something that’s comparable with other freemium services like Evernote or Dropbox. (Doctors pay for premium features like speech-to-text, medical billing, the new insurance checks and more. The additional features are available as in-app purchases.) The new features are live now. More info and sign-up is here.
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| Virgin Mobile To Launch Prepaid iPhones On June 29: $549 iPhone 4, $649 4S, “Unlimited” Data Posted: 07 Jun 2012 05:43 AM PDT  Today, Virgin Mobile has finally put months of rumors and speculation to rest — on June 29, the prepaid Sprint subsidiary will start selling Apple’s iPhone 4 and 4S, joining Cricket as the second prepaid carrier to stock Apple’s tiny mobile juggernaut. Virgin customers can expect to shell out $549 for the off-contract 8GB iPhone 4, and $649 for a 16B iPhone 4S. The duo of prepaid iPhones are paired with Virgin’s existing slew of Beyond Talk plans, which will set customers back $35, $45, and $55 a month for 300, 1200, and unlimited voice minutes, respectively. All of the plans come bundled with unlimited SMS, and so-called unlimited data — like Cricket before them, users with Virgin Mobile iPhones will be able to use as much data as they want but, but data speeds will drop as they tiptoe over the 2.5GB threshold. Unlike Leap Wireless subsidiary Cricket — who announced last month that their own prepaid iPhone would debut on June 22 — Virgin isn’t offering any price breaks on the hardware itself. Those slightly steeper price tags could mean that the devices will be a tougher sell to consumers pondering a switch to prepaid (especially considering that Virgin’s top-tier Android smartphones top out at $299), but the thing to remember is that Sprint has committed to purchasing over $15.5 billion worth of iPhones over four years. They’re going to have gobs of devices that need to be moved anyway, so it isn’t a huge surprise to see Sprint turning to their other wireless divisions to help out. Rumors of Sprint-owned Boost Mobile getting the iPhone made the rounds not long ago as well, a move that seems more likely now that Sprint has broken their own prepaid barrier.
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| Netgear’s NeoTV Pro HD Media Streamer Can Throw Your Laptop Content To Your TV… Wirelessly Posted: 07 Jun 2012 05:00 AM PDT  Streaming media players are no joke. In fact, cable has become the joke. Just take a look at this “Shit Silicon Valley Says” video — the first joke is, “are you cancelling cable?” But at the moment, it’s still difficult to do so. You can’t get everything that you could possibly want through a streaming set-top box. The only place you can get everything you want is on the TV, or (cough cough illegally) on the internet. But what if you could get everything a streaming media player has to offer, like Netflix, HuluPlus, etc., but also wirelessly stream all of the content on your laptop to your big screen TV? That’s clearly the question Netgear asked itself before building the NeoTV Pro HD streaming media player, which is one of the only media players on the market that can wirelessly stream your laptop display up onto your television screen. Of course, there are some limitations, as you’ll need an Intel-based Wireless Display laptop to play along. Sorry Mac users. Past that, there are plenty of channels offered through the NeoTV Pro HD, including Netflix, HuluPlus, YouTube, Amazon Video, and Vudu and hundreds more. It also comes with built-in 300Mbps Wifi, an Ethernet port, and supports 1080p HD video resolution. You’ll be able to download an iOS or Android app that will let you control the media player straight from your smartphone. And if you don’t have a smartphone, a regular remote comes in the box. The NeoTV Pro HD is available now for $69.99.
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| DJ Software Specialist Algoriddim Brings Video To The Turntable With vjay iPad App Posted: 07 Jun 2012 05:00 AM PDT  DJ software specialist Algoriddim has come out with a new app for the iPad, and man is it cool. The company already makes the incredibly popular djay app, which has been a mainstay for Mac-, iPad-, and iPhone-equipped DJs over the years. But its new vjay app adds a whole new visual element to the process of DJing, allowing users to easily create, remix, and share their own music videos. All of Algoriddim’s apps work by hooking up with users’ iTunes libraries, allowing them to instantly begin spinning and remixing tunes. The new vjay app takes that a step further — users can now mix and match any song or music video that they have purchased in their iTunes libraries, along with videos that they’ve shot. It works with all the same touch-screen controls as previous Algoriddim iOS apps, syncing up audio and video tracks and allowing users to use multiple effects, looping tools, and video scratching, while also leveraging real-time transitions between videos. While mixing, users can plug into a TV with an adapter and show off their video mixes in real-time, stream to Apple TV via AirPlay, or record their mixes, save them, and share them. The app costs $9.99 and is available now. And you don’t even need any of your own videos to get you started (although it’s highly encouraged). To help, Algoriddim has pre-bundled songs and music videos from a couple of creative artists. Anyway, I hope I’ve made it sound cool, but the truth is, words just don’t do the app justice. So check out this TechCrunch TV video I did, in which Algoriddim CEO Karim Morsy shows off all the cool things you can do with the app:
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| Fast-Growing App Search Engine Quixey Raises $20 Million Series B Posted: 07 Jun 2012 04:30 AM PDT  App search company Quixey is today announcing it has closed a $20 million round Series B funding. The round includes previous investors WI Harper Group, U.S. Venture Partners and Innovation Endeavors as well as new investors Atlantic Bridge, SK planet and Translink Capital, which the company says it chose with internationalization in mind. The additional capital will be primarily used to help continue fund Quixey’s growth, and specifically to help it deal with its increasing overhead. The company has been hiring like crazy, going from 6 to 30 people over the past year, and it plans to pass 60 employees by year-end with new hires arriving on Quixey’s data, technical and research teams soon. The company, whose main focus is on improving app discoverability through search, may not be as well-known as the app search service Chomp, which Apple acquired in February. However, that’s by design. Instead of focusing on a consumer-facing service, Quixey primarily works with partners to power the backend of their own app search products. These partners include OEMs, mobile carriers, web platforms, browsers, and search engines. However, due to partner agreements, Quixey can’t disclose the companies using its service today. But to give you an idea of where you would find its offerings – it could be in an carrier’s app store, an app search feature built into a browser, or a search feature built into a mobile phone platform, to name a few. The company is even working in the newly app-enabled auto industry to make app discovery work better in cars where driver distraction needs to be kept to a minimum. According to CEO Tomer Kagan, Quixey will have “a lot more” announcements to come over the next six months, but has to wait for the green light from partners before revealing what those may be. One thing I was curious about was how the Chomp acquisition may have affected Quixey’s business, and therefore, perhaps, this new round of funding. But according to Kagan, the impact in terms of deals lost or gained due to Chomp was virtually non-existent. “I only know of one deal Chomp ever had, which was Verizon, and it never went live,” Kagan says. “We never in the past lost a deal to them when they were out there…Chomp was more of a mixed user-play and integration, but we built all of our tools and services so that they’re easy to integrate,” he adds. One thing Kagan did credit Chomp with was drumming up interest in the app discovery market. “I will say that what Chomp did that was really great is bring more light on the need for discovery. And Apple’s acquisition of Chomp really highlighted the fact that app search and app discovery in any form is necessary,” he says. That need is more apparent than ever, as the web moves further away from the static websites of years past to services which exist on many platforms, both as websites and native experiences. “We believe in something we call the functional web,” says Kagan, “which is the functional web of software. When you look at something like Yelp, for example, is Yelp a website or app? It doesn’t matter if you’re accessing Yelp on the web or a phone, you’re accessing a piece of software on a server somewhere,” he explains. “The connection between your need and [apps'] ability to do what you want them to do, we call this the ‘functional web.’” To address the challenge of crawling the world of apps, Quixey employs different techniques than a traditional search engine. App search companies today often replicate the traditional search model when it comes to indexing apps – that is, they examine an app’s title, metadata and description (things all input by a developer) in order to figure out what an app is and what it does. Quixey, however, looks at the world around an app – meaning any time someone talks about an app, writes about an app, reviews an app, etc. Quixey can predict how people think of the app, how they use the app, what functionality the app provides and more. “We built our search from ground up,” says Kagan, “new data collection, new ways we structure our data, and then we had to build new algorithms on top of that.” As noted above, internationalization was key factor in choosing investors, as were their ties to partners. On that front, Quixey will be rolling out its app search engine in a dozen more languages in the near future.
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| Another Super Angel Levels Up: Aydin Senkut’s Felicis Ventures Closes $70M Posted: 07 Jun 2012 03:00 AM PDT  What happens when a super angel gets its wings? You become a boutique fund. Or at least that’s how Aydin Senkut’s Felicis Ventures is putting it with a fresh fund worth about $70 million. That’s up from the firm’s previous $41 million fund and a big change from Senkut’s early dabbling in angel investing from years ago. Senkut is an early Googler who has turned a hobby into a fund that now supports a team of five and more than 80 companies. The Palo Alto firm is mirroring a trend we’re seeing across the entire industry as early-stage funds get bigger. Dave McClure’s 500 Startups recently raised $50 million while True Ventures closed $205 million yesterday and Seattle’s Madrona Ventures closed its biggest fund yet this week with $300 million. First Round, which is laser-focused on supporting companies through their first 18 months of life, also closed a $135 million fund last month. Then there are the big venture firms with early-stage funds like Greylock’s Discovery Fund and a new seed fund led by Kleiner Perkins’ Aileen Lee. What this means is that there is plenty of early-stage capital chasing companies despite headwinds from Facebook’s lackluster IPO. Senkut tells us that he went for a bigger fund so that he could support more services like recruiting, marketing and PR and design for Felicis’ portfolio companies. The firm has added additional partners like Renata Quintini and Sundeep Peechu, who bring legal and technical expertise. There is also the desire to keep some dry powder in case the fund wants to do follow-on investments. “We don’t want to be limited to seed investments,” Senkut tells us. “We want to support companies through multiple rounds. We’re graduating to what we call a boutique fund.” This is key because Series A rounds remain more elusive compared to the easier money for seed and angel funding. The ease with which many founders have been able to attract seed funding had raised concerns that there might be companies that are orphaned when they try to raise more capital in a “seed crash” or a “Series A crunch.” That hasn’t been the case so far. The fact that so many early-stage investment firms are getting bigger means that more super angels are able to continue supporting their companies later on. Despite the amount of early-stage capital chasing startups, Senkut says Felicis has a unique angle in focusing on health, education, mobile, e-commerce and enterprise. He pointed to some of the fund’s more prominent investments like Finland’s Rovio, which Felicis went in on when it was worth about $200 million, and Practice Fusion, which is focused on building free, web-based electronic medical records. It also invested in Inkling’s Series A and Series B rounds. Inkling is a company led by Apple alums that is revolutionizing the textbook industry with tablets and the iPad in mind. He says Felicis is taking a closer look at areas like bioinformatics and connected devices. Dropcam, which is a Wi-Fi-enabled video monitoring camera that saves HD video online, is an example of this strategy. Felicis supported the company in its seed and Series A rounds. Felicis says that the top one-fourth of its portfolio companies now generate $800 million in annualized revenue and that the total enterprise value from all of the firm’s exits is about $1.2 billion. There have been notable exits like Mint’s $170 million sale to Intuit, Chomp’s roughly $50 million sale to Apple and Karma’s roughly $70 million sale to Facebook. He added that the fund was more than 40 percent oversubscribed and that all of the existing institutional investors came back this time. He said they also added a “leading endowment,” a “leading foundation” and Tencent as additional limited partners. Senkut’s relationship with Chinese Internet giant Tencent goes way back to his Google days, when he arranged the first strategic deal between the Shenzhen-based company and Google in 2004. It underscores Felicis’ more international approach to thinking with investments in Finland, Brazil and Israel.
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