Consisting of all-woman team, Caroline Howes, Daniela Neumann and Jude Ower, PlayMob is creating a marketplace allowing charities to place virtual goods and characters into social games, while allowing developers to entice users to get used to the idea of pay for virtual goods by donating to charity. It’s actually an incredibly good idea, and while creating a win for both parties, could develop further into a powerhouse brokerage business.
Charities get to reduce the costs of fundraising while increasing engagement by getting in front of mass audiences online. This is smart, since spikes in charitiable giving are not sustainable. How many requests for JustGiving handouts have you had? Exactly people have philanthropy fatigue. ‘Little and often’ is better, and it maps perfectly to the purchase of virtual goods. → Read More
Big old creaking training companies like Outstart typically deliver programmes into corporates typically deliver “Learning Management Software (LMS)” via actual boxes and desktop application. This is a market ripe for disruption via the web and mobile.
Hubflow delivers training courses straight to mobile devices in a snackable form so remote workers can learn on the go.
It already has clients like TKMaxx and traction through direct sales efforts and licensed resellers, and is being evaluated by companies including GlaxoSmithKline, KPMG, Volvo, BT, Homebase/Argos and LloydsTSB. It has 4 licensed resellers and 5 paying clients. The business is cashflow positive and is in the process of employing its first staff members but plans to raise cash to go faster and take over the space. → Read More
I find myself playing the air drums rather regularly when boppin’ along to some tunes, and the drum set on Rock Band is by far my favorite instrument, but neither of those hold a candle to what Maayan Migdal has up his sleeve. My air drums don’t make real music. My Rock Band drums do, but they also take up a hunk of space in my room.
His make real music and are invisible. → Read More
It’s never been hard to use Google’s search engine from your iPad or Android tablet — but the experience is about to get significantly nicer. Today Google has announced that it’s rolling out a new, touch-friendly version of Google search that makes some key changes for the tablet form factor.
The biggest is the change in navigation. Gone is nav bar at the left hand side of the screen (which has pretty dense menus, and is thus prone to accidental taps). It’s been replaced with a series of tap-friendly menus at the top of the page that let you jump between standard results, video, images, and other options. An adjacent menu will let you narrow the date range of results as well. → Read More
Springboard Startups:There has been an explosion of browsers across first the web now smartphones and soon TVs. This is a problem. It’s going to get harder for companies to test applications across these platforms. Currently companies are dependent on customers complaining in order to identity problems with their site. With this reliance on user feedback, companies are losing revenue to competitors without even realising. Ideally they’d fix the issues before users complain. And while usually you can tell someone dropped off a site, but you can’t tell why.
So MaydayHQ is out to alert companies when users have problems with a site, and tell them why. → Read More
Springboard is a UK-based accelerator programme for startups. Today is their investor day, which we’re covering. 10 teams are pitching to investors, mentors and colleagues in Cambridge. The first is Adwings.
SpringBoard Startups: Adwings bills itself as a one stop advertising destination that lets advertisers plan, book and track advertising across various media channels, from print to digital media, from mobile to outdoor, and even video (TV to YouTube).
The startup is building a platform for campaign planning, cross media booking, creative and campaign tracking statistics. Quite a tall order, and unfortunately it’s not the only player looking to do similar things. But, the Lithuanian team has had success in their home country, aggregating media from 95% of the country’s 40 newspapers newspapers and bringing in 1,000 paying customers. → Read More
If you’re anything at all like me, then you update your apps as soon as possible; after all, new is always better right? Well those who rely on certain apps and widgets that tie into Gmail may want to hold off.
The latest update for the Gmail Android app packs some performance fixes and battery improvements, but we’re hearing that there’s more to the update than meets the eye. → Read More
TechCrunch Disrupt SF is going to be huge. We have already announced Peter Thiel, Ron Conway, Marissa Mayer, Mike McCue, and Vinod Khosla as a few key speakers who will be joining us and that lineup is just the beginning. We have many more speakers and surprises to announce, which we will do every week as we get closer to the event.
Disrupt SF is being held on September 12th – 14th, following our Hackathon which is September 10th – 11th. At Disrupt, we talk with the top founders and investors in tech, while also watching two dozen startups battle for the Disrupt Cup, $50,000, and all the triumph that comes with it. → Read More
Online store GetJar has consolidated its position as the biggest marketplace for free apps by reaching its two billionth download. The company, which makes its money through advertising, was one of the earliest players in the app market. Admittedly it still trails paid-for offerings such as the Apple App store, the market leader, which as recently as May had a reported 59% of the app market worldwide.
GetJar, which along with Handango pretty much established the app store concept before every passer-by knew what an app actually was, believes its continuing viability is down to its open policy and commitment to the free model. Unlike the Apple, BlackBerry and Android equivalent marketplaces, it allows developers to upload their apps for any platform they wish. Android, Blackberry, Java, Symbian and Mobile Web customers will all find something that will work on their phone, with 150,000 apps available supporting (the company believes) 2,500 devices. → Read More
When companies go through a rough patch, it’s pretty rare to see the big man upstairs step up in an awesome way.
Take RIM for example. In the middle of security troubles in India and amidst tough competition from Apple and others — right before a major product, the BlackBerry PlayBook was launched — co-CEO Mike Lazaridis shut down a BBC interview not only making himself look overly defensive, but making the company look frazzled.
Today Nintendo’s president took a different route. → Read More
Well, this is a potentially huge partnership. After extended negotiations, Groupon deals will finally start to appear in Foursquare. And it’s not just the normal daily Groupons that will appear, but also the newer mobile Groupon Now deals. The inclusion of instant Groupon Now deals sets this partnership apart from the other daily deal partnerships Foursquare announced earlier this month with LivingSocial, Gilt City, zozi, BuyWithMe and AT&T.
Those specials are all for regular daily deals which cannot be purchased immediately. You need to buy the deals, but cannot redeem them until after all the deals have been sold that day. That is just how daily deals work, which makes sense when you are buying them from your computer. But when you are looking for deals nearby on your mobile phone, you want to be able to redeem them spontaneously. → Read More
U.S. President Barack Obama has been flocking to Twitter of late, starting to actually send out Tweets himself and even holding a town hall on the platform. And in his statement to the American public today, President Obama encouraged U.S. citizens to “call, email and Tweet,” their members of congress about the debt ceiling issue.
Basically the U.S. treasury is in danger of running out of cash and the government has a limit in borrowing. The President has asked lawmakers to raise the debt ceiling, and both Democrat and Republican lawmakers are currently embroiled in negotiations. Of course, politically speaking, the president is in a desperate situation with the debt ceiling issue and is relying on the American people to put pressure on lawmakers to raise the ceiling before the Treasury runs out of cash. → Read More
Apparently not all Thunderbolt ports are created equally. Anadtech discovered that the Thunderbolt chip within the latest MacBook Air is not the same found in the current MacBook Pro. The Air’s version packs less power and throughput resulting in less abilities. Hope you weren’t planning on hooking up two of those new fancy Thunderbolt Displays. → Read More
With HD video recording, great image quality, and a solid selection of lenses, the Nikon D5100 and Canon T3i are on the top of a lot of wish lists out there. For people already in the Canon or Nikon camp (full disclosure: I’m a Canon man), the choice is obvious if an upgrade is in their future, but for the less dogmatic and new recruits to the DSLR crowd, it’s not nearly as clear-cut. $800 buys you a lot of camera either way.
Pixel peepers will want to check out the reliable and exhaustive reviews at DP Review (here and here) and other photography-centric sites where systematic checks on image quality are conducted, but I wanted to just put these two worthy devices head to head and see not just how they compare technically but in everyday use. → Read More
Sony’s Qriocity service isn’t exactly a stranger to the mobile space — its Music Unlimited app launched in the Android Market just last month — but astute users know this is only half of what Qriocity really has to offer.
Their video-on-demand component sees a lot of action across the Sony ecosystem, with footholds on the PS3, PSP, and web-connected Bravia televisions. The question, then, is if will we ever see that service make the same mobile shift that Qriocity’s music offerings have.
According to a post on Sony Ericsson’s Product Blog, the answer is yes, and soon! → Read More
Looks like things are going well over in Taiwan, as HTC has reported record-breaking Q2 results this morning. In fact, the company sold 12.1 million units in the second quarter totaling a 123.7 percent year-over-year growth rate. After Q2 taxes, that brings YOY growth to 102.9 percent.
If you aren’t good with percentages, that’s huge. In terms of quarterly growth, HTC is up 24.8 percent from the first quarter. → Read More
In Japan, a multiple-megabit Internet connection costs pennies. I pay $99 for 50-mbps (and that’s really about 1 mbps (when it’s not raining) in Brooklyn. But why, you ask? Well, to hear cable companies (and carriers) tell it, it costs a pretty penny to get all that data to your door. Providers have to lease connectivity from the backbone and, as such, they’re forced to add caps to prevent us users from sucking down too much data and bankrupting them. But Mr. Cringeley, in an excellent examination of the real bandwidth costs in America, proves them wrong.
→ Read More
Anybody notice something missing from Samsung’s Q2 results? Hint: it was the phone/tablet sales data. But why? Well, according to Samsung’s “new information policy,” phones and tablets data will henceforth remain a secret.
“As competition intensifies, there are increased risks that the information we provide may adversely affect our own business,” said Samsung’s investor relations boss Robert Yi on the Q2 conference call. → Read More
IT software giant CA Technologies has acquired website monitoring startup WatchMouse. Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
WatchMouse product tests the availability of websites, services and applications and monitors the performance and security of sites by simulating regular visits from its monitoring network of 60 stations in more than 40 countries. WatchMouse will tell a you if visitors can reach your site, if the basic interactions and click paths work, and whether they do so within the clients performance limits. → Read More
