February 10th, 2012

OpenLabel Exits Stealth, Raises $80K To Turn Barcodes Into Public Labels

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OpenLabel, a startup that wants to augment everyday products’ barcodes with crowd-sourced information that helps you decide whether to buy, has raised $80,000 in seed funding in a round led by Peter Kirwan, also an investor in IFTTT. Also participating in the round were Tim Drees and Doug Taylor. According to OpenLabel co-founder Scott Kennedy, this $80K is just the first part of a larger $300,000 seed round, which the company expects to close prior to the April launch of the mobile application.
→ Read More

February 9th, 2012

Appcelerator Acquires Mobile Cloud Services Startup Cocoafish

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Appcelerator, the company behind the popular Titanium app-building platform, is announcing its third acquisition today. The company is buying Cocoafish, a mobile app infrastructure provider that lets developers add various features to apps including messaging capabilities, push notifications, photo uploads, checkins and other social features, storage, discussion forums and more. Although the name implies an iOS affiliation, Cocoafish is actually a cross-platform backend service provider supporting iOS, Android, and even Flash and Ruby.
→ Read More

February 8th, 2012

Stealthy Startup timeRAZOR Raises $3.4M Pre-Launch, Partners With Major Household Brands

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Got FOMO? (That’s “fear of missing out” for those of you who don’t do slang.) There will soon be an app for that, or so says the $3.4 million in angel funding the stealthy D.C.-area startup called timeRAZOR has raised. In its pre-launch state, the curious company is already lining up brand partnerships with big names like Marriott and L’Oreal in preparation for its March debut.

But what the heck is a timeRAZOR? → Read More

February 7th, 2012

Want An In-App Notification Center? There’s A SDK For That

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Today, mobile promotion and discovery service AppsFire is launching a new toolkit for developers called App Booster. Meant to boost user engagement and retention, two of the toughest challenges developers face today, the App Booster SDK (software development kit) introduces a suite of tools for things like in-app notifications, user feedback, analytics and mobile app cross-promotion.
→ Read More

February 7th, 2012

Dwolla Raises $5 Million Series B From Union Square Ventures & Others

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Disruptive payments network Dwolla confirmed today it has raised $5 million in Series B financing in a round led by Union Square Ventures. Also participating in the round are Village Ventures, Thrive Capital, Artists and Instigators and Paige Craig of Betterworks. As a part of the deal, Albert Wenger of Union Square Ventures will join Dwolla’s board.

The company says that additional funding will be used to continue product development, expand its API and “maybe buy some Doritos.” (Yeah, you gotta love these guys). → Read More

February 3rd, 2012

Ansca Mobile Accuses Partner PapayaMobile Of Copying Its Code

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Ansca Mobile, the Palo Alto-based mobile development company and makers of the popular Corona SDK, is accusing its partner PapayaMobile of ripping off parts of its SDK  for use in PapayaMobile’s Social Game Engine. According to Ansca Mobile COO David Rangel, his company recently discovered that Papaya’s engine is what he calls a “blatant copy” of some aspects of the Corona SDK.

In addition, says Rangel, some of PapayaMobile’s syntax and sample code is identical to Ansca’s, and the company is using graphic assets it took from the code on the PapayaMobile website. → Read More

January 31st, 2012

iOS App Downloads & Marketing Costs Hit Record High In December

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Mobile app marketing company Fiksu just released new data revealing the impact the holiday season had on iOS app downloads and user acquisition costs. According to the company’s App Store Competitive Index, a measurement of the average aggregate download volume of the top 200 free U.S. applications, December saw 6.04 million daily app downloads. That’s a nearly 7% increase from November’s 5.65 million, and a clear indication of how many folks were unwrapping new smartphones during the holiday season.
→ Read More

January 26th, 2012

What Happens When Apps Go On Sale?: Revenue Up 22% On iPhone, 29% On Android

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In a new research report from Distimo, the app store analytics provider examined two different ways that allow mobile developers to get a bump in both their download numbers and revenue. One way, which is within the developers’ control, is putting the app on sale. Within the first day, iPhone developers see an average increase of 41% in revenue using this method, and see revenue increases of 22% by the sale’s end. Android apps, however, rose just 7% on day one, but closed out the sale with higher percentage gains than either iPhone or iPad.

The second method Distimo looked into is getting the app featured in the app store. This is up to the app store’s operator, like Google or Apple, of course. (We’ll examine Distimo’s findings on featured apps in a subsequent post).  → Read More

January 24th, 2012

Online Ordering Provider OLO Hits 1M Customers, Prepares To Launch GrubHub Integration

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OLO, a web and mobile online ordering service for restaurants, is celebrating a lot of things: bigger office space in New York’s South St. Seaport district, hitting the 1 million customer milestone, adding new restaurant partners, and plans to launch its long-awaited GrubHub integration, nearly a year in the making. → Read More

January 24th, 2012

Onavo’s Data-Compressing Mobile App Raises $10 Million Series B From Horizons, Motorola Ventures

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Onavo, makers of the money-saving, data-compressing app mobile app, just raised $10 million in Series B funding. Horizons Ventures, the private investment arm of Li Ka-shing, led the investment along with Motorola Mobility Ventures, the strategic equity investment arm of Motorola Mobility, Inc.

The company’s previous investors, Sequoia Capital and Magma Venture Partners, also participated in the round. → Read More

January 23rd, 2012

1-Month Old BuzzDoes Scores $750K For Mobile App Marketing Platform

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BuzzDoes, a newly launched word-of-mouth marketing tool for mobile app developers, has secured $750,000 in seed funding from angel investors and Proxima Ventures. The tool, which operates as a drop-in SDK (software development kit), allows developers to add a viral recommendation feature to their application using a single line of code.

Once installed, app users are “incentivized” (meaning rewarded), for recommending the app in question to their friends. → Read More

January 23rd, 2012

Polar Mobile Raises $6 Million For HTML5-Based Publishing Platform, MediaEverywhere

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Polar Mobile, a digital media platform provider that builds apps for some of the biggest media companies, today announced it has secured an additional $6 million in funding. The new round, led by growth equity firm Georgian Partners, joins more than $3 million invested in the company previously from private investors, bringing its total funding to $9 million.

The company is also announcing its plans for a new product line called MediaEverywhere, an HTML5-based content distribution solution for smartphones, tablets and desktops.
→ Read More

January 19th, 2012

It’s Still Funny, But It Might Not Be A Joke: Jotly Arrives On Android

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I’m beginning to think the team at Firespotter Labs are marketing geniuses. Prior to launching their new iPhone app Jotly (you know, as a joke), they released a hilarious video featuring a “fake” app by the same name. In the video, a guy goes around rating things like parking meters, hiding spots, ice cubes, and a beer in the alley that was left in the sun (F-, if you’re curious). The video was meant to be a parody of our mobile/social app obsession, and perhaps our culture’s tendency towards over-sharing. It also was strikingly similar to Kevin Rose’s Oink, which launched soon after.

But here’s the thing: Jotly is no longer a joke. The company (also the maker of Nosh), has just released the Android version of Jotly. And an API, too. → Read More

January 18th, 2012

Should RIM Abandon Ship?

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Peter Rojas published a thought-provoking piece about RIM and BlackBerry 10. He said, in short, that the Canadian company should wipe out Blackberry OS and run Android or Windows or, barring that, sell out completely and offer a software package running on another OS. While both of those are logical positions, I think RIM will end up in far worse shape than those options allow.

RIM is popular for three reasons: the keyboard, BBM, and the back-end software. For most of this decade, IT shops have been able to send out fleets of BlackBerry products without concern simply because there was nothing better for email and messaging. Over the past three years, however, that claim has gone completely out the window. I would reckon that a nice IMAP server install is far easier and cheaper than any BB Enterprise Server ever was and, given this screenshot from the actual BBES “purchase” page, there is a lot of sales pressure involved. → Read More

January 18th, 2012

Direct Deals Mobile Ad Marketplace Chartboost Expands To Asia

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A month after its expansion to Android, Chartboost, the newly launched (already profitable) direct deals mobile ad marketplace for game developers is expanding to Asia. Starting today, the company is rolling out localized versions in ChineseJapanese and Korean.
→ Read More

January 18th, 2012

Mobile Payments Company BilltoMobile Launches One-Click Checkout For The Mobile Web

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Mobile payments company BilltoMobile, which now has relationships with all four major carriers in the U.S. (Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile), is today launching one-click processing for mobile web transactions. Previously, users had to enter in their mobile number manually, sometimes a zip code, then wait for a verification code that was sent to their phone through an SMS text. Now, the company says it’s able to identify a user’s mobile number automatically thanks to deeper integration with the carriers’ networks. → Read More

January 18th, 2012

API Management Service Apigee Acquires Mobile Data Platform Usergrid

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Apigee, a provider of API management products and services, which we’ve referred to in the past as a “Google Analytics for APIs” has acquired the mobile cloud platform Usergrid. For those unfamiliar, Usergrid helps to make mobile app development easier by providing the APIs needed to manage data, users and events. The company provides these kind of core APIs for the backend so mobile developers can speed their time to market.
→ Read More

January 17th, 2012

Cálmate: Put Down Your Smartphone To Feel Better

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A study by the British Psychological Society found a link between stress levels and the number of times a person picks up their smartphone to check messages and mails. As an addict, I can completely agree with this finding. In short, the more you do it, the worse you feel.

Oddly, the study found that less stress was induced when checking work e-mail rather than other online interactions. The group conducted a survey of 100 Britons in different lines of work.
→ Read More

January 17th, 2012

InMobi: Smartphone Ad Impressions Up 488% In 2011, Tablets Up 771%

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Independent mobile ad network InMobi has released its Mobile Market 2011 Review report today, finding significant growth in mobile advertising over the past year, with global smartphone impressions up by 488%. The company also saw 251% growth in mobile impressions on its network, which includes tablet devices and smartphones combined.

Tablet impressions alone grew by an incredible 771% year-over-year, up to 1.2 billion. And the market is growing still, led by, of course, Apple’s iPad. → Read More

January 16th, 2012

GroupShot Launches Impressive Face-Swapping, Photo Editing App For iPhone

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Remember when Microsoft rolled out Photo Fuse, the crazy feature in its Windows Live Photos product that let you swap people’s heads around in in your photos order to get the perfect shot? Well, now there’s an app that does the same thing, and it’s not from Microsoft. It’s from an Israeli-based startup called Macadamia Apps, makers of the new app GroupShot. And it’s live now in the App Store.
→ Read More

Real-Time
Crunchbase

Media Armor — Received $1.53M in Series A funding from iNovia Capital and Greycroft Partners
2.10.2012
MyAutoZap.com — Company added to CrunchBase
2.12.2012
Greycroft Partners — Invested in Media Armor.
2.10.2012
Cidade Internet — Acquired by Populis.
2.1.2012
Jive Software — Went public with stock symbol NASDAQ:JIVE.
2.3.2012
Cidade Internet — Acquired by Populis.
2.1.2012
2.1.2012
2.9.2012
LetsBuy.com — Acquired by Flipkart.
2.9.2012
Cocoafish — Acquired by Appcelerator.
2.9.2012
Media Armor — Received $1.53M in Series A funding from iNovia Capital and Greycroft Partners
2.10.2012
rollApp — Received $243k in Series A funding from TMT Investments
2.7.2012
GCI Com — Received £10M in Unattributed funding from Business Growth Fund
2.9.2012
Stripe — Received $18M in Unattributed funding from Sequoia Capital
2.9.2012
BoardProspects — Received $650k in Seed funding from Mike Verrochi
2.9.2012
Greycroft Partners — Invested in Media Armor.
2.10.2012
iNovia Capital — Invested in Media Armor.
2.10.2012
TMT Investments — Invested in rollApp.
2.7.2012
Business Growth Fund — Invested in GCI Com.
2.9.2012
Sequoia Capital — Invested in Stripe.
2.9.2012
Jive Software — Went public with stock symbol NASDAQ:JIVE.
2.3.2012
MyAutoZap.com — Company added to CrunchBase
2.12.2012
Repairhub — Company added to CrunchBase
2.12.2012
WineMob — Company added to CrunchBase
2.12.2012
Alcoa Inc — Company added to CrunchBase
2.12.2012
Media Strike — Company added to CrunchBase
2.12.2012
2.12.2012
Metier HR - Cloud Based HR Process Automation Suite — Product added to CrunchBase
2.12.2012
TweepsMap — Product added to CrunchBase
2.12.2012
Wupbox account — Product added to CrunchBase
2.11.2012
Pocketbook (Mobile app, coming soon) — Product added to CrunchBase
2.11.2012
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