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The issue of information privacy around free services like some mobile apps and social networks has often been met with a rebuttal from the other side of the argument: if the service is free, you the user are the product, and so you shouldn’t be surprised when your information is “sold” as part of that business model, the so-called “hidden cost” of free.
That can seem like an uncomfortable arrangement, however, so now some academics at Cambridge University in England are coming up with a way of fixing that, and are revealing some striking research about data collection in apps as part of their effort. → Read More
Here are some of yesterday’s posts on TechCrunch Gadgets: → Read More
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On the eve of what is very likely to be the launch of a new iPad from Apple comes some new analysis from Forrester Research on the current competitive landscape — or lack thereof, as the case seems to be.
In short: despite the rush of tablets that have come out in the past year, many built on Google’s Android OS, Apple has managed to continue to run away with the competition, and how has 73 percent of the tablet market. No Android tablet maker, it notes, has more than a five percent share against it.
There is a caveat to Forrester’s research, however. → Read More
Disruptive mobile and online payments startup Jumio has raised $25.5 million in Series B funding led by Andreessen Horowitz. The firm’s General Partner Scott Weiss has joined Jumio’s board of directors. Jumio’s earlier investors include Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin Peng T. Ong, partner at GSR Ventures and founder of Match.com and Vivek Ranadiv?, founder of TIBCO. Founded by Daniel Mattes in 2010, Jumio has raised $32 million to date. We previously reported the most recent raise, which was disclosed in an SEC filing, but the new investors were unknown.
Mattes, who sold his latest company, Jajah, to Telefonica for $207 million, founded Jumio because he felt that existing online payments solutions both presented a security risk and caused churn, as most people didn’t want to input their credit card and payments details by hand for each transaction made on a phone or online. → Read More
Connotate, which aims to help companies collect data and content from the Web and transform this unstructured data into actionable enterprise intelligence, has acquired fellow competitor Fetch Technologies. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Fetch Technologies helps companies access massive amounts of real-time Internet data, especially in the areas of retail and background checks. The company pulls in everything from pricing data for retailers and shopping engines to criminal background history or news stories. Customers include Shopzilla. → Read More
Kontagent, a startup offering analytics for Facebook, mobile, and Web apps, says that its annual revenue grew 500 percent in 2011, to “just under $10 million.”
The company’s kSuite tools allow developers to track virality, engagement, retention, and revenue. The company signed up 100 new enterprise customers last year, including its first mobile clients. The current customer base includes Peak Games, Gaia Online, and Popcap. (In addition to game companies, Kontagent says it has large clients in e-commerce, but it isn’t naming them.) → Read More
Seth Besmertnik, co-founder and CEO of startup Conductor, admits that Web search isn’t that “sexy” anymore ― hell, by slapping a +1 button on everything, Google itself seems more excited about social than search. But Besmertnik says he’s still building a big business focused on search engine optimization (SEO).
Specifically, Conductor is announcing that there are 1,000 global brands (including Ticketmaster and Gilt Groupe) who use Conductor’s Searchlight product to monitor and improve their ranking on Google, or whatever the dominant search engine is in a given country. → Read More
After Apple pushed its 25 billionth app this weekend there was nothing especially surprising about the list of all-time paid apps for the iPhone: games and novelty apps dominated it. But the list of all-time paid apps for the iPad was somewhat revealing. Pages, Apple’s word processing app, was up there at number one. Numbers and Keynote were on the list as well, as well as Penultimate, QuickOffice Pro HD, Notability and Splashtop Remote Desktop. Almost 25 percent of the list was comprised of productivity apps. → Read More
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TestFlight could have been a safe little business, but co-founder Ben?Satterfield is a true entrepreneur, and his dreams are not so small.?Before today, only the most successful mobile app developers could afford sophisticated real-time usage and revenue data tracking. Costs prevented indie developers from getting the data they needed to build great apps and games. By being acquired by in-app ad management platform Burstly?(scooped by MG Siegler for PandoDaily), Satterfield’s team gained the resources necessary to launch TestFlight Live,?democratize this data, and get better apps built for everyone.
Satterfield tells me “This is us believing in the bigger vision. [The original TestFlight] is a great product on its own, and we could have charged and gone scrappy with it month to month,?but we want to wake up every day and go after something big.” → Read More
Gaming startup Heyzap has found a way to take some of the pain out of stumbling on a 404 error message on its website.
Now, Heyzap’s 404 page comes with a little bonus ― a simple spaceship combat game, where you move your mouse to shoot off a flood of enemies. Co-founder Jude Gomila says this was actually built by an engineer named Micah during one of the company’s monthly hack days. → Read More
SmartSync, which has been doing good business on the iPhone app store [itunes link], has released an updated version that is a big improvement on the original app, which has become popular because it makes you sound like some sort of omnipresent god. No, I got that wrong. Let’s try that again. It’s like having a CRM for your friends. When someone calls you, SmartSync displays their latest Facebook statuses or photos against the call. Say they said they were tired. When they call you you say “Wow, sorry to hear you’re feeling tired!” even before they’ve said hello. See, suddenly you’re all-knowing.
→ Read More
Getaround, a car rental community that only launched in May 2011 and subsequently won TC Disrupt NY, is ready to get you where you need to be in time for SXSW.
The app that lets you rent a car by the hour, day or week, and comes fully loaded with insurance, 24-hour roadside assistance, and a Getaround car-kit has broken ground in some new territories, including (yep, you guessed it) Austin, Texas. → Read More
There’s little question that Nokia is taking the low-end of the smartphone market very seriously these days. They just kicked off their race to the bottom with the colorful, budget-conscious Lumia 610 at this year’s Mobile World Congress, and while it’s far and away the least powerful of the Finnish company’s Windows Phone brood, it’s certainly priced to move at ?189.
According to Nokia EVP Niklas Savander though, that price tag isn’t quite cheap enough. In a brief interview with Pocket-lint, Savander revealed that in order to better compete with Android, Nokia is very concerned with getting their hardware to even lower price points.
→ Read More
TVGuide.com has acquired social TV startup Fav.Tv in what executive vice president and general manager Christy Tanner says is a straightforward talent acquisition.
Plenty of startups are trying to reinvent the tv guide ―?including Fav.Tv, which was described, when it launched last fall, as not “your grandmother’s TV Guide.” But TVGuide.com (which operates the TV Guide digital properties while licensing the name to the print magazine publisher) has been trying to evolve too. It unveiled a new feature in August called Watchlist, which incorporates social elements, as well as on-demand/digital listings. → Read More
We’ve heard a lot about photo-sharing apps over the last year or two, and although the launch of a new social photo app may result in eye-rolling by some, images are becoming an ever-more important medium for communication. As our lives, products, and communications become increasingly visual, content producers, app developers, and site owners alike all have to ramp up their services to meet that escalating demand. Of course, that’s easier said than done.
That’s why Chute, a new Y Combinator startup launching today, doesn’t just want to be another photo sharing or syncing app, it wants to the service every app developer and content producer uses to manage and enhance their photo capabilities. Chute is an Images-as-a-Service startup or, in other words, a cool API for photos. What does that mean? → Read More
I’m on a privacy tear today so I thought I’d mention this start-up. Officially launching on Wednesday, Spotflux is a browser encryption plug-in for Windows and OS X. Simply put, it protects your Internet connection by encrypting all connections through a VPN. Arguably there are approximately a billion VPN services, but this one looks to be one of the simplest I’ve seen in a while.
→ Read More
You might spend more time using Facebook if you didn’t have to leave a browser window open, so today Facebook officially launches its Messenger for Windows free downloadable desktop client. But since an early tester leaked the download link in December and Facebook responded by making it publicly available, you might already have it. The client lets you persistently chat, receive notifications, and read your news feed from your desktop.
Facebook says “For those of you on Macs, we’re busy working on Messenger for Mac right now. Stay tuned.”?Facebook Messenger for Windows can be downloaded here for Windows 7, and it will be promoted to Windows users around the world over the next few weeks. Facebook has exhausted much of the supply of new users to sign up in many countries. The product demonstrates its shift to focusing on squeezing?every last drop of engagement?from existing users. → Read More
As a forty-year veteran of the venture capitalist industry and the Managing Director of the private equity firm Warburg Pincus, Jeffrey Harris has unusual insight into what makes CEOs like FedEx’s Fred Smith and Starbucks’ Howard Schultz winners. And to pass his insights into this successful entrepreneurial mentality, Harris has just authored a book, Transformative Entrepreneurs: How Walt Disney, Steve Jobs, Muhammad Yunus, and Other Innovators Succeeded. → Read More
Remember?Greenstart, the San Francisco-based startup accelerator trying to make cleantech sexy? Well, today, it’s taking a big leap in that direction. The organization announced it’s bumping up the amount of funding its companies will receive. In addition to the $15,000 in seed funding the incubator provides, startups now also have the opportunity to receive a $100,000?convertible?note. → Read More
Much was made of the news last week from Apple that its businesses had effectively created over 500,000 jobs in the U.S. not just directly at its company but at the many that link into the ecosystem it has created. Today, Microsoft teamed up with IDC to publish some research that took that one step (or actually 13.5 million steps) further:
The two say that cloud computing services will generate nearly 14 million jobs worldwide by 2015, and that in 2012 that number is already at 6.7 million. That development, IDC says, could account for $1.1 trillion annually in new business revenues.
That will come in the form of more efficiency for people whose jobs would have originally had more tie-in with IT — now outsourced in the form of cloud-services — but also completely new opportunities: half of the jobs that will be created, says IDC, will be in China and India. → Read More
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