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• Sincerely Ink And Brit Morin’s Weduary Team Up On Wedding Invites Collection
• Snapguide Raises $5M From CrunchFund, Atlas And Index To Reinvent ‘How To’ Guides
• One Firm Push: Hands On With The 4Moms Breeze Playpen
• Samsung Making Enterprise Push With “SAFE” Galaxy S IIIs
• TC Disrupt Winner UberConference Sees Major Update: Adds Instant Conferences, Chat & Evernote Sync
• Yapp Founder Maria Seidman On The Rise Of App Creation And Being A Pregnant Founder
• Online Ticket Sales Startup Eventbrite Passes $1 Billion In Total Sales
• Trippy Brings Its Social Travel Planner To iPad
• App Store Data Provider Distimo Partners With Interarrows To Take On Japanese Market
• Accelerate Your Database: MemSQL Launches With $5M From Ashton Kutcher, Max Levchin & More
• Meet Feel UX: Sharp’s Answer To HTC’s Sense And Samsung’s TouchWiz
• Celestica, A Canadian Manufacturing Contract Company, Parts Ways With RIM
• Music Streaming App Songza Surpasses 1 Million iOS Downloads In 10 Days
• Don’t Forget: TechCrunch Is In Philadelphia Tomorrow
• SaneBox Now Has A Solution For The Enterprise Email Overload Crisis
• ClickTale Brings Its Visitor Tracking Tools To The Mobile Web
• Nutmeg Raises $5.3M From Pentech, Tim Draper To Make Financial Management Less Stuffy
• Video Services Provider Ooyala Lands $35M From Australian Telco Giant Telstra To Go Big Overseas
• Honestly Wins Pitch In Berlin Competition, As HackFwd’s Event Grows Up
• Facebook’s Social Olympic Ambition, Explore London 2012: A Dedicated Athlete Portal, But No Ads

Sincerely Ink And Brit Morin’s Weduary Team Up On Wedding Invites Collection Posted: 18 Jun 2012 09:04 AM PDT Sincerely, the startup behind photo and card-printing mobile apps Postagram, PopBooth, Sincerely Ink and Dotti, has partnered with Brit Morin’s latest venture,  Weduary, a service for designing social wedding websites. Through the new partnership, Weduary will now offer a special collection of wedding invitations and other wedding-related cards within Sincerely’s flagship app, Sincerely Ink. For those unfamiliar with these two companies, Sincerely Ink is like a beefed up version of Apple’s Cards app (with a better selection of cards), and Weduary is a newly launched weddings startup that’s taking on top brands like TheKnot and MyWedding by leveraging Facebook to build more social wedding websites. As anyone who’s had a formal wedding knows, managing all the invites and announcements is time-consuming and tedious process. There’s not just the wedding, mind you, but also mailings for the “save the date,” the engagement party, the bridal shower, the bachelor and bachelorette parties, the rehearsal dinner, and sometimes even more – like fittings, brunches, and other gatherings dedicated to wedding preparations. (Also, this is why I went to Vegas.) That’s why it’s nice to see an easier alternative to the traditional process like this, courtesy of the new collection from Brit & Co’s Weduary. I mean, let’s face it, weddings would be a lot more fun if it wasn’t for all the work involved. Through Sincerely Ink, Weduary is now offering users some really adorable stationary, which can also be customized using your own photos, addressed via the in-app address book or the one on your phone, and whose designs are made to match up with the website designs currently offered through Weduary.com. In addition, not only is card creation and mailing simplified through “app-ification” of the process, Sincerely has introduced a feature that automates another tedious aspect to the invites issue – address collection. Users will be able to send out a custom link (e.g. sincerely.com/janeandjohn) to their friends and when the recipients add their address, the sender’s Sincerely Address Book is automatically updated with their contact info. Cards are $1.99 for U.S. mail and postage, but volume discounts are available. The new invitations are available in Sincerely Ink now – you can grab it from the App Store here.

Snapguide Raises $5M From CrunchFund, Atlas And Index To Reinvent ‘How To’ Guides Posted: 18 Jun 2012 09:02 AM PDT Founded by former Yahoo and Google employees Daniel Raffel and Steve Krulewitz, iOS app Snapguide is announcing a $5 million Series A raise this morning, from investors Atlas Venture, Index and Crunchfund. This financing comes after a modest $2 million seed round. Snapguide’s simple UI makes it easy for users to build “How-To” guides via iPhone. Co-founder Raffel tells me that already the company has had 10K guides created since its launch this March, with millions of unique views spread among them. The company is currently working on partnerships with “major” brands. “We’re excited to double down on Snapguide and will be using this money to grow our engineering, design and editorial teams,” Raffel tells me, on how the company will be using the money, “We are weeks away from a major website overhaul and are also currently working on a big mobile app update.” When asked if that app update included iOS, Raffel told me that the company is currently “focused on iOS.” Sign of the times?

One Firm Push: Hands On With The 4Moms Breeze Playpen Posted: 18 Jun 2012 08:22 AM PDT There used to be an old line, “Why is this on TechCrunch?” that lazy readers would toss with a tone like that of bored, obese potentates shooing away a particularly rancid piece of lamb proffered by a eunuch. Luckily, that’s mostly over now since we’ve just about saturated the front page with startup news and posts like this one, about one of the most amazing playpens you’re ever going to see, are hidden behind a click. So this is the 4Moms Breeze. It is, in short, the future of playpens. If you don’t have kids, then you might as well stop reading but if you’ve ever tried to open a Pack And Play or similar playpen, you’ll understand this concept immediately. Most playpens are garbage. There is a central pivot that lets you open and close them but, in reality, this process is more like snapping the legs and arms of a Plastic Man while holding a soiled diaper and preventing the older kids from watching pay-per-view porn on the hotel TV. This playpen, on the other hand, requires one firm push. One… firm… push. Read that again. Want to close it? Pull up. Pull… up. In a world where playpen manufacturers are allowed to create horrifically complex button, widget, and joint systems, this is a godsend. We’ve talked about 4Moms quite a bit but I think this is their real breakout product. If you put this playpen next to any other at the store and said “Here, open and close this 4Moms Breeze and then narrowly avoid snipping off your fingers by trying to close this other one,” they would sell a million of these per day. Why is this on TechCrunch? Because 4Moms is actually an engineering and robotics firm masquerading as a company that makes baby stuff. It’s a clever, clever ruse but these guys have taken something that is abysmally painful and made it fun and exciting. The Breeze, in short, is the coolest thing I’ve seen in months and it doesn’t even contain a motor. The Breeze is coming to stores this August so I would suggest that you attempt to maintain a longer gestation time if you’re expecting because you’re going to want to put this on your baby registry. If you must give birth now, though, I would definitely recommend telling the in-laws to buy this for you as soon as they’re able. Even if you think you’ll never use it, the resale value and parental cool value are enormous. Product Page

Samsung Making Enterprise Push With “SAFE” Galaxy S IIIs Posted: 18 Jun 2012 08:20 AM PDT BlackBerrys may still be the corporate device of choice, but that won’t be the case for much longer if Samsung has anything to say about it. The consumer electronics giant’s Galaxy S IIIs will sport the company's SAFE (Samsung Approved For Enterprise) branding in an attempt to ingratiate their shiny new Android handset with business types and IT admins. These enterprise-friendly devices will find their way to all five of the carriers that will sell the Galaxy S III (Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and U.S. Cellular). SAFE won't hold any special significance for a considerable chunk of Galaxy S III owners, but with AES-256 encryption, Exchange ActiveSync, VPN capabilities, and "support for 338 IT policies," Samsung hopes that their Android flagship will make the same sort of splash in the business sector as it almost certainly will in the consumer market. As the final countdown until the device’s launch commences, it would seem that business customers have already started to vote with their wallets — Infoworld reports that 44% of an unspecified U.S. carrier’s Galaxy S III pre-orders were made by business users. We've seen Samsung make these sorts of overtures to the business community before — the Galaxy Note and Galaxy Tab 7.7 were granted SAFE status at this year's CES, and much attention was paid to the Galaxy S II's enterprise friendliness at its big unveiling in New York last year. Meanwhile, enterprise competitors like RIM have certainly seen better days. After a a brief glimpse at their BlackBerry World event, the Waterloo company is busy trying to drive developer support for their forthcoming BlackBerry 10 operating system. Handing out Dev Alpha devices to every attendee of their multi-day conference is sure to help, but with the mobile enterprise space heating up, RIM needs to fire on all cylinders if they want to maintain their grip on the business market.

TC Disrupt Winner UberConference Sees Major Update: Adds Instant Conferences, Chat & Evernote Sync Posted: 18 Jun 2012 07:54 AM PDT Only a few weeks following its TechCrunch Disrupt NYC win, UberConference, the service which aims to fix crappy conference calls, is out with its first major update. Today, the company is introducing three new features for its beta users, including Evernote integration, group chat, and something it’s calling “instant conferences.” Although the company isn’t talking exact download numbers at this time, according to Firespotter Labs (the folks behind UberConference)’s CEO Craig Walker, demand for the service has “exceeded expectations,” and the system has “tens of thousands” of beta users and just as many now on its waitlist. Walker, who previously founded GrandCentral, the service that later became Google Voice, left the Google Voice team in late 2010 to join Google Ventures as an EIR, and then founded Firespotter Labs. The company has pushed out a few projects already, including food photo-sharing app Nosh, waitlisting app for restaurants NoshList, and even a spoof app turned real, Jotly. But when Walker hinted back in March that he was starting to look into VoIP again, our ears perked up. With UberConference, the company introduced an alternative to the huge pain the ass that is audio conferencing today, by offering an attractive, visualized interface for calls that also addresses everyday conference call annoyances like background noise, not knowing who’s present and who’s doing the talking, and even the tedious “login” process involving the entry of long PINs. Instant Conferences Today’s update will make the conference call creation process even easier than it was when UberConference launched, thanks to the introduction of “instant conferences.” With this feature, there’s no need for an organizer to go online to create and schedule a conference and send out invites. Instead, the company can use its own dedicated number to create conference calls on the fly using its number and an “open PIN.” “If I don’t know who’s going to be on the conference, I can just share this open PIN with everyone in the company and anyone can call in,” explains Walker, “it’s just, boom, dial your number and you’re on an instant conference.” Group Chat & Evernote Also new in today’s update is group chat, which allows conference call participants with a text-based backchannel for sharing thoughts, questions or links. And as of today, UberConference integrates with Evernote. If you watched the demo at Disrupt, you may remember how UberConference presents a summary page of the call once complete. Here, you can see things like the date/time, who attended, who talked the most and least, and other sorts of call analytics. This data, alongside the call recording itself, will now be able to be saved into Evernote. Best of all, Walker tells me that the company is talking to partners about adding some sort of call transcription feature to UberConference as well. Transcription is a major challenge because decent transcriptions still require humans, not algorithms, to be successful. “It’s the human language that causes the problem, not so much the computers,” says Walker. But the team there is working to get the cost down on the feature, in order to make it something businesses would want to use. (The going rate is around 75 cents per minute, for what it’s worth.) As for funding, Walker says the company raised $3 million a year ago, and they still have the  ”lion’s share still in the bank.” It’s nice to raise when you don’t need money urgently, he adds. UberConference is still not open to the public, but the waitlist is here. The plan is to go live sometime this summer, with mobile apps and premium offerings to follow.

Yapp Founder Maria Seidman On The Rise Of App Creation And Being A Pregnant Founder Posted: 18 Jun 2012 07:19 AM PDT Yapp has been around for a little over two months, offering consumers an easy way to create and publish mobile apps based around events. But the vision is much bigger than some conference or your weekly book club — eventually Yapp will allow any consumer to make almost any kind of app to broadcast as they please. It’s founder Maria Seidman’s big bet on trends. She dropped by the studio to tell us about where she sees app creation (rather than consumption) going in the next few years, and being 36 weeks pregnant, she also filled us in on what it’s like to found a company while a baby grows inside of her. Once upon a time, there were far fewer websites on the Internet, simply because not everyone knew how to build one. Only the brands with enough money to hire developers and designers could be “online,” until platforms like WordPress and Tumblr made website creation super easy. Seidman sees the same transition happening with apps. There are over 650,000 apps on the App Store, but building an app isn’t nearly as easy as using Tumblr to build a website. Yapp is meant to help bridge the gap between today and tomorrow by letting anyone be an app publisher. Of course, Seidman warns that Yapp isn’t for making the next Instagram or Angry Birds, it’s about letting anyone have a way to broadcast themselves through a mobile app, just as they would with their personal website. Another topic of discussion was her pregnancy. I hate to get all “Women in Tech” (seriously), but starting a company while starting a new life seems like an extra difficult form of multitasking. Seidman said she never felt any hesitation from her co-founder or investors, but that she believes it may be an issue for some female founders, and that it’s important to have a conversation around the issue as women begin to found more and more companies.

Online Ticket Sales Startup Eventbrite Passes $1 Billion In Total Sales Posted: 18 Jun 2012 07:00 AM PDT Eventbrite has become the go-to platform for selling tickets online. And it’s announcing a major milestone to prove it today: It’s sold more than $1 billion tickets in total. For Eventbrite, the milestone also highlights some accelerating growth. It took nearly two years — from January 2009 to December 2010 — to go from $100 million in sales to $400 million. But it only took the next 18 months or so for Eventbrite it to more than double that amount and hit $1 billion of total ticket sales. Previously Eventbrite had said that it had doubled the number of events and tickets sold on the platform in 2011. Part of its revenue growth comes from Eventbrite leveraging social networks like Twitter and Facebook. In its announcement, Eventbrite noted that on average, organizers receive an additional $2.52 in ticket sales whenever a user shares an event on Facebook. And part of it comes from a big push toward mobile platforms. That includes the launch of Eventbrite’s “At the Door” iPad app, which lets people pay for events if they show up at the door without having previously paid. Also, it released a credit card reader that works with the app to let ticket sellers collect payments at the door. Eventbrite’s business is truly international, with events created in more than 170 different countries worldwide. That said, English-speaking countries still rule: The top five countries that it operates in includes the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia, and Netherlands. Its most popular events are conferences, followed by classes, fundraises, concerts and social events. Last year, Eventbrite raised a $50 million round of financing led by Tiger Global. Altogether, it’s raised a total of $80 million since being founded in 2006.

Trippy Brings Its Social Travel Planner To iPad Posted: 18 Jun 2012 07:00 AM PDT Trippy a social travel planner for web and mobile (and former TechCrunch Disrupt participant) is launching its first iPad application today to complement its current iPhone-only offering. The app, like many focused on content discovery, looks much more amazing on the iPad, where you can browse big, beautiful photos of places you want to go. You can see the photos laid out in the now-popular, Pinterest-inspired grid layout, or you can view them full screen or alongside a map view. For those unfamiliar with the service, Trippy’s social travel planning application offers place discovery in a fashion that’s somewhat reminiscent of a Pinterest for travel. Where Pinterest has boards, Trippy offers “travel boards.” And instead of “pinning” or “liking” items, you can mark photos of places as “want” or “been.” You can also build your own boards for trips you want to take, making collections of things like local attractions, restaurants, or whatever it is you want to remember to do and see. Then Trippy’s trip planning tool will actually help you build an itinerary based on the places you’ve saved. That itinerary syncs to the Trippy iPhone app, providing access to travel plans on the go. Another key piece to Trippy’s service are its social elements. As you build your boards, you can share items to your social networks to see what friends think. There’s also Facebook-style commenting on the site itself, and other social features that let you see what your friends on Trippy recommend, then incorporate those items into your travel plans with a click. The new iPad app mirrors much of the online experience, and syncs all your boards to web and iPhone. It’s also handy for travelers to use during the trip, so they can view the map and search for more things to do nearby the place they’re currently visiting. The iPad also makes a handy after-the-trip companion, too, allowing you to show off  the places you went during your travels to your friends. Trippy joins quite a few other social travel planners in this space including Gogobot, Tripbirds, Gtrot, HipGeo, and Wanderfly, to name just a handful, but the iPad app’s functionality is more like that of Jetpac,which also features big photos which you can mark as “loved” or “I’ve been,” and find friends via Facebook to ask for travel tips. But Trippy’s itinerary builder and mapping functions give it a more utilitarian angle beyond simple inspiration. There’s a good chance Trippy gets used during and after the trip, too, which is something not all travel services can offer. The startup has raised $1.75 million from Sequoia Capital, True Ventures and SV Angel, and has the support of some notable folks including Randy Zuckerberg, Jason Mraz, Rachel Zoe, Tim Ferriss, Anthony Bourdain, Gary Vaynerchuck, Soleil Moon Frye, Andrew Zimmern and more, who serve as Trippy's advisors. You can download Trippy for iPad in the iTunes App Store here.

App Store Data Provider Distimo Partners With Interarrows To Take On Japanese Market Posted: 18 Jun 2012 07:00 AM PDT App store analytics firm Distimo is announcing a strategic partnership with Tokyo-based digital marketing and internet data provider interarrows in order to launch a version of Distimo’s service in Japan. The new service, live now at Distimo.jp, aims to target what the company called a “hotbed of developer activity” in Japan. Citing several top Japanese players including GREE, DeNA, NHN (NAVER Japan), SEGA and Capcom, Distimo explains that Japanese companies are in need of more than just localized analytics – they are now competing on the world stage. Japan is a crucial market for mobile app distribution and is the second largest country in the world in terms of app monetization from the leading app stores, Distimo says, citing its own internal data. The U.S. is the top market. And, in terms of  the overall download volume of applications, Japan ranks third. (You can probably guess which market ranks second.) Despite Japan’s ability to generate revenue for app publishers, to date, most of Japan’s smartphone business is currently being done inside the Japanese market. Distimo, which provides data from the Apple App Store, Google Play, BlackBerry App World, GetJar, Nokia, the Amazon Appstore, Samsung App Store, and Windows Phone Marketplace, will now begin offering Japanese firms insights that will help them with the creation of their multi-national strategies. The data includes things like app store overviews, top category breakdowns, top publishers and app, download volumes, pricing, and business models. It also offers estimated download volumes and revenues for each app in major app stores. Through the new partnership, Distimo will now offer “multi-country” packages by region, which will help Japanese developers target new markets. For example, the “U.S. and EU5″ package includes Apple App Store and Google Play data for the U.S., U.K., Germany, France, Italy and Spain. An “Asia” package includes the same for China, Korea, India, Indonesia, Singapore and Hong Kong. Under the terms of the new agreement, interarrows will sell Distimo’s app store data to Japanese companies using its application business and marketing services.

Accelerate Your Database: MemSQL Launches With $5M From Ashton Kutcher, Max Levchin & More Posted: 18 Jun 2012 06:59 AM PDT Last year, we introduced you to MemSQL, a plucky young Y Combinator alum that was building technology that would let developers give their databases a Nitrous boost, while simplifying application development and maintenance. Founded by ex-Facebookers Eric Frenkiel and Nikita Shamgunov, MemSQL raised $2.1 million in seed funding last July from an impressive roster of investors, before going silent to plug away at their private beta. After a year of development, MemSQL is officially ready for primetime. Today, the startup launches its next-gen database into the world, and it’s got some shiny new coin to go with its new product, bringing total investment to $5 million. As part of the follow-on seed funding, existing investors First Round Capital, SV Angel, Y Combinator, Paul Bucheit and Ashton Kutcher are joined by IA Ventures, Max Levchin, Aaron Levie and Data Collective — to name a few. The startup intends to use its new capital to scale its infrastructure and take advantage of areas of the market where fast analysis of machine data is crucial, like financial services, digital advertising technology, and telecom and mobile services. Those familiar with the space may wonder what makes MemSQL so special, out of the multiple VC-backed, already-been-around-for-awhile “newSQL” startups out there doin’ their thing. (Like Clustrix, GenieDB, VoltDB, RethinkDB, ScaleDB, JustOneDB, Tokutek, Akiban, CodeFutures, ScaleBase, etc.) Well, because both Frenkiel and Shamgunov were previously database guys at Facebook, and they’ve taken some parts of FB’s approach and repurposed it for speed and flexibility — and a wider audience. It also helps that Shamgunov spent 6 years as a database engineer at Microsoft working on SQL, has several patents to his name, and is a world medalist in computing machinery contests. We’re still not really sure what that means, but it sounds impressive. The co-founder’s Microsoft experience also helps MemSQL, because essentially what these guys are trying to do is offer a cheaper, works-for-everyone alternative to what the big players like Oracle and MSFT offer for the enterprise at a much higher price point. But before going any further, for those unfamiliar, the “newSQL” movement is basically trying to build a better replacement for legacy SQL databases, like MySQL, which tend not to play so well with all these modern, newfangled web applications. They struggle to keep up with these data producers, when that, after all, is their job. What’s more, big data is big and will only get bigger, and developers and companies need better ways to manage that data, control it, and get the most out of it. For companies that operate businesses on the Web, it’s imperative that when they get hit with a lot of traffic or once they move all their data etc. into the cloud (which can make for slower through-put thanks to bottlenecks) that they be able to fall back on memory storage to keep their apps or operations up and running. Big companies like Facebook and Twitter have the engineering resources to be able to do this efficiently, but most companies don’t. MemSQL offers a database that is relational and distributed, and tweaks the way data is put into memory, with the right structures and access patterns, so that apps can functionally use SQL at scale without having to use Memcached or NoSQL. For those who just fell asleep, basically that means less engineering overhead — less work for developers. This is ideal, Frenkiel says, for apps that need to process machine data at hyper speed, as MemSQL claims to be able to increase an app’s through-put (and ability to retrieve actionable insight) by 30x while still offering SQL and flexibility. “Quickly sifting through actionable data has become a competitive advantage in the enterprise, particularly as organizations are saddled with increasingly large and complex data sets,” Frenkiel says. “MemSQL was designed to tackle Big Data problems by accelerating an application’s throughput while still offering SQL, unlike other solutions which tend to either be too slow or too limited in functionality." MemSQL at home here and product demo below:

Meet Feel UX: Sharp’s Answer To HTC’s Sense And Samsung’s TouchWiz Posted: 18 Jun 2012 06:37 AM PDT Every Android device manufacturer has at one point or another pondered how to make their devices stand out in a crowded field of competitors. There are plenty of ways to tackle that question but Sharp is taking a tried and true approach for their newest Japan-only smartphones — throwing their own custom UI over the stock Android experience, thanks to a little help from global design firm frog. The so-called Feel UX greets users with the image-centric lockscreen, which lets them swipe left and right through their stored photos in addition to displaying notifications, stock quotes, the current weather and (naturally) allowing people to unlock their device. Once users have navigated past the lockscreen, they’ll be met with a very different sort of homescreen — instead of the typical multiscreen layout, Feel puts most of the focus on the app launcher, while swiping to the right brings up a tightly-packed widget page and another page solely for shortcuts to contacts and actions like changing a Facebook status. It’s a sharp looking concept to be sure, but I’d caution Sharp to keep their ears open for consumer issues. There’s a tendency for some of the more overwrought Android skins to make the process of actually using the device rather sluggish (earlier versions of HTC’s Sense spring to mind), and all the eye-candy in the world won’t make up for a device that can’t keep up with its user. Of course, it may be some time before anyone in this neck of the woods actually gets to play with Sharp and Frog’s take on the Android UI. Sharp doesn’t have much of a presence in the mobile space outside of their native Japan — the company’s global device page is rather spartan, and their American portfolio consists of a single Android phone. The company’s Feel UX will make its debut on seven of Sharp’s newest Aquos smartphones, though with any luck their novel Android skin will give HTC, Motorola, Samsung, and the rest some more competition around these parts soon.

Celestica, A Canadian Manufacturing Contract Company, Parts Ways With RIM Posted: 18 Jun 2012 06:02 AM PDT Canada-based Celestica announced plans today to “wind down” manufacturing services for Research in Motion over the next three to six months. More details will come next month during Celestica’s second-quarter conference call, but this comes as a direct result of RIM’s downturn. The two Canadian companies worked closely together in the past and Celestica is likely looking to sever ties before things get really ugly. Celestica is a big part of RIM’s ecosystem. As the old idem says about GM and the US economy, as RIM goes so goes Celestica. There was even a time during RIM’s heyday that savoy investors could jump on the crackberry bandwagon through Celestica and it’s relatively lower stock price. But recently, as RIM crashed, Celestica decision to diversify into supply chain management caused its stock to hold strong. In fact, in mid 2009, the lowly manufacturer’s stock price overtook RIM’s and the two haven’t changed positions again. Celestica will continue to work with RIM through the company’s restructuring by assessing its supply chain strategy. Celestica doesn’t expect the restructuring charges to exceed $35 million. RIM is just one of Celestica contracts which also builds wares for other industry giants such as IBM and Cisco.

Music Streaming App Songza Surpasses 1 Million iOS Downloads In 10 Days Posted: 18 Jun 2012 06:00 AM PDT Last week, music curation and streaming service Songza launched an iPad app to join their already-available iPhone, Android, and web apps. And over the course of the last ten days, the company’s iOS apps have been downloaded more than 1.15 million times. This is a testament to how startups can disrupt crowded spaces as long as the core idea is solving the problem differently. Songza achieves that with some added user delight to boot. Unlike Pandora’s algorithms or Spotify’s blank canvas approach, Songza offers up playlists that have been curated by music experts, like Rolling Stone writers and DJs. But the way these playlists are delivered is what really makes the app special (and likely abutting threatening to the other companies in the space). Songza has a feature called Concierge, wherein the app takes bits of information, like your preferences, the day and time, and the fact that you’re on a mobile device, and gives you a list of activities common for that specific moment in time. So, on a Friday late at night, Songza will give options for a sweaty dance party or getting high, with filters for each like Pop and Hip Hop. Users can then choose from playlists that fit under that umbrella. On the other hand, you’ll see activities like getting up and working out on a Monday morning like this one. There’s also an Explore feature which lets you select your playlist by Activity, Genre, or Mood. Songza hasn’t shared numbers from before the release of the iPad app, but founder Elias Roman did say that before this week, the web was their most trafficked platform. But that’s all changed with the release of the iPad app, which is only good news as Roman sees Songza as a mobile-first product.

Don’t Forget: TechCrunch Is In Philadelphia Tomorrow Posted: 18 Jun 2012 05:46 AM PDT Tomorrow we’re invading Philly for an evening of networking, fun, and bacchanalian pleasure. Are you coming? Josh Zelman, Jordan Crook, Chris Velazco, and myself will be rolling into Philadelphia on Tuesday morning and we’re ready to talk startups, tech, and all things in between. We’re excited to head out to the city of brotherly love and we’re also excited to announce a new sponsor, Uber, who is offering a special gift to our Philly readers. The Philly Meetup will begin promptly at 6pm and go until 10pm, and will be held in The Fieldhouse on June 19. If you’d like to RSVP, head on over to our Plancast page. Specific questions can be directed to john@techcrunch.com. Oh, and if you want to tweet us, it’s @johnbiggs and @jordanrcrook. We’re also holding Office Hours earlier on in the day, around high noon, although the official reservations are already closed. Still, it wouldn’t be the first time we met up with some eager, yet unannounced startups at an Office Hours session, so feel free to stop on by the Caribou Cafe around then and we’ll try to squeeze everyone in. Special thanks to our excellent sponsors who helped get this thing off the ground as well as Anthony Coombs who was our ears on the ground. We’ll also be hunting for Disrupt Battlefield companies, so get your pitch down cold. If you would like to volunteer to help at the event, please email jordan @ techcrunch.com with the subject line “VOLUNTEER PHILLY.” We need people to hang out at the door and help with signage, etc. Uber would like to help you get to and from the event so if you enter the coupon code TechCrunchPhilly before requesting a ride you’ll get 20% off of 2 trips. Sponsors appRenaissance Located in the heart of Old City Philadelphia, appRenaissance is a developer of inspired, handcrafted mobile applications and an inventor of ingenious mobile application tools and infrastructure. Our products include the revolutionary Unifeed™ Mobile Middleware™ platform that dramatically speeds mobile application development time, simplifies integration with enterprise services, and reduces ongoing maintenance costs. Our clients hail from industries as diverse as music and entertainment to retail sales and mortgage insurance. For more information, please visit www.apprenaissance.com. Interact Interact is a geosocial app that connects you to the people you ought to know. Using our Comp Score Interact not only visualizes the people you’re most compatible with and gives you reasons to connect with them. With Interact, the user determines why they’re using the app at any time. Connect to network, socialize, or even date. 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Monetate also helps marketers implement best practices and drive online revenue through its expert strategic services and content publishing teams. For more information visit http://monetate.com/ or follow us on Twitter @Monetate. Novotorium Novotorium is for entrepreneurs who strive to grow their businesses. Our comprehensive program provides the environment, advice, services, and funding that are needed for entrepreneurs who strive to accelerate their emerging companies. Our unique approach focuses on the mid to long term, helping entrepreneurs cross the chasm and be able to grow and operate their businesses to achieve sustainable growth and profitability. We offer everything we do at no cost and no risk to the entrepreneur. Our payback is when we get the chance to participate in the future potential of a business by providing capital that might be required for growth. Novotorium is an independent, private sector initiative funded by the Baron Innovation Group, and based in Langhorne, Bucks County, Pennsylvania. OneTwoSee OneTwoSee is a Philadelphia based interactive television company that has created a B2B platform for television broadcasters and producers allowing them to deliver a rich interactive television experience to their viewing audience through their connected devices. The platform bridges what you are watching on TV by making the experience interactive through your connected device. Seed Philly Seed Philly is the Philadelphia region's only Collaboratory—a hybrid incubator, accelerator and co-working space dedicated to supporting the needs of seed-stage tech startups. We follow the core tenant that "A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats". In addition to our 6000 square foot shared office, community clubhouse and classroom, we maintain a vetted community directory and business intelligence collection engine designed to make the startup growth process more efficient and effective. All members of Seed Philly- startup entrepreneurs, investors, mentors and service providers- collaborate to form a more vibrant ecosystem; sharing best practices data to create blueprint for success. Find more information at seedphilly.org. Uber Uber is your on-demand private driver.Request a ride at any time using our iPhone and Android apps or from m.uber.com.

SaneBox Now Has A Solution For The Enterprise Email Overload Crisis Posted: 18 Jun 2012 05:00 AM PDT Enterprise users get more than their fair share of unimportant email. To help this problem, SaneBox, a time-saving email product, is now targeting in the enterprise space. Two months ago, TechCrunch wrote how SaneBox was taming email overload with its smart email filtering service. Today, the Boston-based startup is launching SaneBox for Business. Enterprise customers will be able to setup SaneBox on existing systems such as Google Apps, Exchange, Outlook and Lotus Notes. SaneBox filters non-important emails out of your main inbox. It’s easily customizable and learns from your actions. It also lets you zap emails to the Black Hole, so you never see email from that sender again. Some of these features could be set up using mail rules and filters, but its much quicker with SaneBox. Other SaneBox features include smart reminders, snoozing email, and calendar syncing. For a more in-depth review, see the earlier post. Corporate email clutter is a big problem. A study by the research firm Radicati estimates corporate users are now dealing with 200 emails per day. Middle managers spend 100 hours a year on irrelevant email, according to another study by The Grossman Group. That study also says companies experimenting with email black-outs or time-outs are taking the wrong approach. It argues email misbehavior needs to be addressed, not bans. SaneBox VP of Growth Dmitri Leonov, tells TechCrunch the reason email overload affects corporate employees more “is largely due to lots of internal emails that aren’t really important to each individual’s job. We see an opportunity to alleviate this problem for corporate users.” Leonov says another reason for the new product is the “vast majority of enterprises use Exchange/Outlook, which haven’t been spoiled with add-ons, unlike Gmail users. With this release, we’re allowing IT managers to enable SaneBox for all of their Exchange users easily and securely.” Sanebox is a cloud service, so there is no download or application for corporate IT to maintain. The company has also launched an integration with Salesforce.com, that treat emails from top CRM leads as a high priority. SaneBox for Business gives a 15% discount to qualified enterprises off the regular $5 per month user account. The company already claims a very high conversion rate, saying lately half the users who sign up for a free trial become paying customers. Still, each corporate user would be able to make their own decision whether use it or not. In the first post about SaneBox, Leonov talked about how solving the email overload problem with filtering was a “very difficult and expensive problem to solve – one giant edge case,” requiring a lot of infrastructure per-user. With 12 million employees in just the top 50 for the Fortune 500 companies, SaneBox better be ready with a lot of that infrastructure. While SaneBox says the personal business is a huge opportunity for them, the enterprise approach is more scalable. I’ve been using SaneBox for more than two months now and its really made a difference for me. I can’t imagine going without it. The B2B business is a whole different ball game from the B2C business. But SaneBox will be trying to win over some new corporate customers as they launch and demo their product at today’s Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston.

ClickTale Brings Its Visitor Tracking Tools To The Mobile Web Posted: 18 Jun 2012 05:00 AM PDT Israeli company ClickTale promises customers a better understanding of what visitors are actually doing on their websites, through tools like visitor recordings and heatmaps showing mouse movements and clicks. Today, it’s launching a mobile product in private beta. ClickTale’s senior technology evangelist Shmuli Goldberg says that on a conceptual level, the company is trying to bring the same capabilities that it offers for desktop websites to mobile. But in order to make that happen, it had to start tracking a whole new set of behaviors — not just clicks, but also every swipe, scroll, tilt, and pinch. The goal, Goldberg says, is to offer data that’s “literally like standing next to somebody on an iPhone or an iPad.” That kind of granular behavior-tracking should help differentiate ClickTale from the other mobile analytics services out there. Goldberg also makes the case that this kind of data is especially important in mobile, because when many publishers created their mobile websites, they just said, “Let’s shrink our websites.” They didn’t really rethink them for a touch interface and a smaller screen. “On the browser, we’ve gotten very good at usability — we started from the user,” Goldberg says. “But on mobile, we started by looking at the desktop. [ClickTale] gives the chance to take it back a step to look what the customers are doing on the device.” For now, ClikTale is focusing on mobile websites, rather than native apps. Goldberg says the need is greater on the mobile Web, because that’s where the aforementioned “shrink down our website” approach is more prevalent. He adds that if customers ask for it, the company will also build similar capabilities for apps. ClickTale plans to take the product out of beta near the end of 2012, when it will included in the features offered to the company’s enterprise customers. (ClickTale claims to have more than 2,000 customers total.) You can request an invite to the private beta here.

Nutmeg Raises $5.3M From Pentech, Tim Draper To Make Financial Management Less Stuffy Posted: 18 Jun 2012 04:56 AM PDT Nutmeg, the U.K. ‘online investment manager’ that aims to take the complexity out of financial products, has raised a £3.4m ($5.3m) VC round led by Pentech and Daniel Aegerter, the Swiss chairman of Armada Investment Group. But perhaps more headline-grabbing is that legendary Silicon Valley investor Tim Draper also participated. Draper is probably best known for investing in Hotmail, as well as being an early investor in Skype in Europe, along with many, many other startups. European Investor Klaus Hommels (who notably sits on Spotify’s board) also joined the round. Nutmeg, which is gearing up for a U.K. launch this summer, says it wants to “democratise the stuffy world of financial management”, which, let’s face it, can be mind-bogglingly complex for outsiders. It does this through a neat web-based UI that tries to align any savings and investments with a user’s “life goals” without the need for them to get as involved as actually picking out stocks themselves or paying for financial advice. Of course, there’s no such thing as free financial advice, even if it’s partially algorithmically driven and Nutmeg’s revenue model is based on an annual management fee set at 1 per cent (including VAT) or less. Additionally, “by collecting nutmegs, a loyalty scheme based around referrals and pounds invested, users can reduce their management fees to as low as 0.3 per cent”, says the company. In a canned statement, Craig Anderson, a partner at Pentech, says “I believe Nutmeg will do nothing less than re-define the entire world of investment management”. That’s the “entire world” folks. We’ll be watching.

Video Services Provider Ooyala Lands $35M From Australian Telco Giant Telstra To Go Big Overseas Posted: 18 Jun 2012 04:24 AM PDT Back in 2007, Bismarck and Belsasar Lepe and Sean Knapp left Google with aspirations to revolutionize in-video advertising. Ooyala didn’t quite revolutionize advertising, but it has found more than a little success in what has become a very crowded market. The company’s video player now delivers cross-device content to over 6,000 domains, reaching nearly 200 million viewers, and the company claims that one in four Americans watch Ooyala-powered video each month. With its footprint in the states gaining traction, the company is announcing today that it is taking on a big new chunk of capital to expand its reach overseas. Ooyala’s new $35 million round — its fifth to date — is led by Telstra Applications and Ventures Group, the investment arm of Australia’s telecom giant, Telstra. Previous investors Sierra Ventures, Rembrandt Venture Partners, and CID Group also participated, along with several other strategic investors. According to a statement released today, along with its investment, Telstra is also working on a commercial agreement with Ooyala that would make the telecom company “a major reseller,” deploying Ooyala’s software, analytics, and service offerings throughout Australia in attempt to transition content owners users to IP-based video delivery. Ooyala has already begun building a network of resellers abroad, with current partners including Telefonica and Yahoo Japan, to name a few. At home, big brands and publishers like ESPN, Victoria’s Secret, Rolling Stone, Dell and North Face are using Ooyala’s technology to power video distribution and management. While ESPN was a big win at home for Ooyala, making it the video provider for a network that serves some billion-odd streams per month, for the overseas market, Telstra represents a big win. The telecom company has presence in 15 countries, including China, and owns Australia’s biggest integrated IP and broadband networks. It’s also one of the 20 largest companies in Australia in terms of market cap. In terms of its funding, Ooyala will use its new capital to help Telstra integrate its technology, as well as to fuel further expansion outside of the U.S. with multiple service operators and TV programmers, specifically in Europe, Asia, and Latin America. Currently, over half of Ooyala’s business comes from overseas, and have helped “quadruple” revenues since its last funding round in 2010. The new round of capital brings the startup’s total funding to just under $80 million, and sees Gary Traver, director of Telstra Media, join the company’s board of directors.

Honestly Wins Pitch In Berlin Competition, As HackFwd’s Event Grows Up Posted: 18 Jun 2012 03:31 AM PDT Participants of the quarterly event Build organized by the European accelerator HackFwd usually stay in Motel One in Berlin, where Honestlybranded posters suggest guests leave anonymous feedback in exchange for discount vouchers. As it happens, Honestly emerged as a winner of Hackfwd’s Pitch In Berlin startup competition recently (here is a list of all participating teams). To leave feedback through Honestly, users need to download a mobile app. With this app they can scan a QR code or NFC sticker on the poster and provide the feedback in a form of a one-to-five rating and a comment. The tool is available as a mobile app or a mobile website, so even the feature phone users can leave feedback. As for the business clients, the feedback management is cloud-based. Companies with more than one location can analyze the level of customer service between individual units by comparing their feedback scores and send discount vouchers and special prizes as incentives. HackFwd’s Build event was initially been conceived as a format for its own companies to get feedback on their progress, meet experts and attend talks. But it’s morphing into something bigger. The latest Build 0.10 for example featured Rene Obermann, the CEO of Deutsche Telekom and Niklas Zenström, the founder of Skype and Atomico. Build is also deal flow, as the winner of the previous competition German startup Hike has just joined the accelerator program. Hike develops free Facebook apps, and has over 220,000 fans on Facebook. The winner of the popular vote Polish ScatchApp, an app that turns paper sketches into digital interactive models, has also received investment from HackFwd. In addition to Honestly, which won the judges' vote at Build 0.10, the winner of the popular vote at the latest Pitch in Berlin is Uncover, which personalizes MacBooks with laser-cut light-emitting designs. It will be interesting to see if they too will join HackFwd. Build 0.10 coincided with a milestone, as HackFwd celebrated two years in the running. In the meantime some of its startups have reached their own milestones. The video bookmarking and content curation app WatchLater from Germany already has over 10 million video bookmarks. Latvian cloud-based infographics builder app Infogr.am has seen over 1000 infographics created daily, while Cobook, an address book app for Apple users also from Latvia is the number one app in the Mac App Store in eleven countries. The way European startups can apply for the program is to go through a referral (disclosure: I am one of the referrers for Central and Eastern Europe, but do not get paid by HackFwd). They can also directly apply to participate in the Pitch in Berlin competition. The accelerator offers between 91,000 and 191,000 Euro for 27 percent of the equity. The focus is on the B2C businesses and geeks who build them. HackFwd Reloaded from HackFwd on Vimeo.

Facebook’s Social Olympic Ambition, Explore London 2012: A Dedicated Athlete Portal, But No Ads Posted: 18 Jun 2012 02:57 AM PDT A lot of Londoners (me included) haven’t been able to get tickets to the London Olympics this summer. But we’ll all get something else, Facebook announced today. The company is launching Explore London 2012, a dedicated page for athletes to communicate with fans and provide their own personalized updates around the event, including metal wins and their own photographs as well as status updates. Alongside that, Facebook is adding other data to pad out the story: historical photographs and other information about notable events — part of an effort to be able to claim that 2012 will mark the first “Social Olympics.” Officials from the International Olympics Committee tell me they started to work with Facebook on the effort some 18 months ago. So far there are only 250 of more than 10,000 Olympic athletes on the site, including UK athletes Tom Daly, Jessica Ennis, and the cycling team, although Facebook expects that to ramp up significantly in the weeks ahead. Significantly, although the pages may expect to get a huge amount of traffic from the millions of people who tune in to watch the sporting event, Facebook will not run any advertising alongside any of it. “We will follow the athletes’ stories for the next 17 days,” says Joanna Shields, Facebook’s international head at an event in London this morning, pointing out the clear opportunity on a network to better curate and harness on a platform that already gets 1 billion comments and 300 million photos uploaded daily. “It’s that discovery through friends that makes things interesting and makes you want to click on media. We want to bring discovery to the Olympics.” But that will not extend to discovery of brands. Because of “the notion of a ‘clean venue’” at the Olympics itself, with no branding or ads, “we will not be running ads against these pages,” adds Christian Hernandez, a head of platforms for Facebook. Facebook’s relationship with the Olympics, it should be pointed out, is not exclusive. There will also be dedicated portals on Google+, as well as a Twitter branded page, a one-day check-in event with Foursquare (on Olympic Day), a project with Tumblr, and other specifically with Instagram. And, in China, because so much social media traffic comes over local sites, the Olympics is also working with  Sina Weibo and Youku, Mark Adams, Director of Communications at the IOC, tells me. But with Facebook the biggest of them all, it is the one that cannot be ignored and is perhaps the one that will make the biggest impact. “You really can’t ignore Facebook,” said Adams. That was also part of the reason why Facebook was able to convince the International Olympic Committee to go with a dedicated page on its platform rather than trying to create an athletes’ portal of this kind on its own Olympics.com site. Alex Hout, head of social media for the International Olympic Committee, noted to me that Vancouver was the Olympics’ first efforts in social media, where its friend count shot up from five to one million in the course of a few days — hence its interest to push the medium even more this time around. For Facebook’s part, its Olympic reach will not end there, of course. Hernandez notes that the social network is working extensively with advertisers and brands to bring the Olympic experience to the social network — even if that will not appear on its Olympics page itself. (Here’s a fun experiment: let’s see which Olympics social media efforts end up getting more likes and traffic. So far there are some million fans of the Olympics on Facebook, and the organizers say that half a million people tune into its website daily to follow the progress of the Olympic torch. Another half million are on the daily email update list.) Hernandez also noted that a number of broadcasters and other media companies are integrating Facebook into their own Olympics sites to enhance the social aspect of the experience. What’s perhaps most cool about the Facebook Olympics effort — and that of other social media sites — is that it will be one more example of how much more democratizing the event has become with the evolution of the internet. With hundreds of events (and 10.5k athletes) to watch, TV broadcasters and newspapers can only use the highlights and never deliver a comprehensive picture. With Facebook’s effort, users who want to know every last detail of what is happening in gymnastics or synchronized swimming (ahem) could — that is, if the athletes participate in the process. “These are stories that were not headline-worthy and may not have reached the public, but the real stories from the athletes themselves are the interesting ones,” noted Shields. It also marks another kind of evolution of how the International Olympics Committee is also trying to make the whole thing into a more social and audience-focused event, while at the same time balancing that against the multi-million-dollar commercial interests for broadcasting that have been so closely entwined with the event. The social media rules and guidelines up to now have been fairly strict but they are loosening a bit.  ”You can now take pictures in stadiums and share them, but videos in stadiums are still not allowed because of the agreements with broadcasters,” Adams told me. “We have to respect those contracts. We’ve freed up still photography and are working with the rest at the moment.” More to come. Refresh for updates.

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