Last we heard from Game Closure, the young startup had just turned down offers from Zynga and Facebook on its way to a $12 million raise from Greylock, Benchmark, General Catalyst, and more. Even in spite of $100 million-plus offers, Game Closure CEO Michael Carter tells us that the startup is not eager to sell — not now, and not in the future. Yet, stealing high-placed executives at the big gaming companies? Not a problem.
Today, Game Closure, which is building a game development environment and SDK that makes it easy for developers to create, host, and deploy HTML5, cross-platform, multiplayer games, is announcing that it has poached Laurent Desegur away from Zynga, making the engineer and executive VP of Mobile Engineering. Until recently, Desegur had been CTO of Zynga Mobile, on top of being a veteran of Netflix, Big Fish Games, Amazon, Apple, and EA — to name a few. → Read More
Amazon just announced that its Instant Video service is now available on Microsoft’s Xbox 360. With the Amazon Instant Video app for Xbox Live Gold subscribers, Xbox users can now access the roughly 120,000 movies and TV episodes available for renting and purchasing on Amazon’s streaming video service. The app also offers access to the more limited Prime Instant video selection, Amazon’s video service for its $79/year Prime members. → Read More
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An Irish women’s charity, Women’s Aid, linked to some articles on the Irish Examiner (like this, this, and this) and thought that all was right with the world. Heck, that’s how the Internet works, right?
It turns out that according to the Irish Newspaper Licensing organization, you need to pay to link to the newspapers. And there the troubles begin.
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Evo.
It’s one of the few HTC/Sprint models to make a splash in the mobile ocean, and after a brief stay at U.S. customs, the latest iteration should do the same.
The Evo 4G LTE is the most powerful Evo to date, with a 4.7-inch 720p display, a 1.5GHz dual-core processor, and 1GB of RAM under the hood. But these specs are in no way novel, which means that quite a bit comes down to HTC’s software offerings and design language. → Read More
Mobile video sharing service Viddy has been busy adding new features to its iOS app, which will now provide more customization options for content that users upload. Along with the latest app update, Viddy has also rolled out a new web experience that makes more of the mobile features available to users who don’t have the app installed.
Viddy version 1.7, which goes live in the app store Tuesday, will let users designate Instagram-like cover art for their videos. The app will suggest a few still images from each video to use as thumbnails, or users can select to upload their own images from the iPhone’s photo library. Once an image is chosen, users can then add one of 16 different custom effects to the thumbnail. → Read More
Although one could argue that Facetime and Skype are already nearly perfect telepresence systems, there’s definitely some value in having a jolly little robot sit on your shoulder and transmit, in real time, everything you see and hear to a friend far away. Right? Please say I’m right?
This experimental robot is called the Miniature Humanoid 2 or MH2 and was built in Japan by Yuichi Tsumaki, Fumiaki Ono, and Taisuke Tsukuda of Yamagata University in Japan. The robot requires a big honking backpack so it’s a little bit cumbersome but essentially the MH2 can move around on your shoulder as you move around the world, creating a sort of Master/Blaster relationship or, more likely, a Kuato/host human situation. → Read More
Mobile app downloads continued to decline in April and the cost to acquire loyal users picked up, reports mobile marketing firm Fiksu in its latest report out today. This downward trend was expected, as no major events sparked app discovery during the month, explains Fiksu CEO Micah Adler. However, mobile app marketers were particularly aggressive in the social networking and games categories during April, both of which experienced volatility throughout the month. With the former (social networking), the reason had to do with the $1 billion acquisition of Instagram, which drew increased attention to the category. There were also a number of new game releases in April, which led to increased interest and competition among the developer community in that category, as well.
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In the aftermath-analysis about what exactly happened in the Facebook IPO, and what it might mean for the future, here’s one side-effect to the east of Nasdaq: Vkontake, the top social network in Russia, which shares a shareholder with Facebook, Mail.ru, has decided to delay its own IPO.
The news was confirmed by the company’s CEO Pavel Durov on Twitter. In Russian, he tweeted, in answer to a Russian journalist’s question about the planned IPO date, “It’s not planned. The IPO of Facebook has destroyed the faith of a lot of private investors in social networks and the IPO of VK has now been postponed indefinitely.”
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Link shortener Bitly today launched a major redesign and number of new features that all add up to what the company itself calls “a new bitly.” Among these new features are ‘bitmarks,’ bitly’s name for its new bookmarking features, the ability to search and find these bookmarks, a fast search functionality, as well as enhanced public profiles that give users more privacy control. Bitly is also rolling out new bookmarklets, a Chrome extension and its first iPhone app. → Read More
Now look: these are probably fake as all get-out, but bear with me. These handsomely watermarked photos are purported to represent a brand new iPhone design with a sort of two-tone brushed and chromed casing. Whether they are real or not (they’re definitely going to get UBreakIFix plenty of SEO juice), there is still a bit more to this story than just some blurry-cam shots (and these nice shots on 9to5mac). The most important thing to note is the size of the dock connecter. That’s right: it’s a micro USB port (or, less likely, a Thunderbolt port). → Read More
Social commerce startup Lockerz just announced that it has acquired online fashion community Chick Approved.
Lockerz allows its members to earn “PTZ” by sharing content and other activity on the site, which are then redeemed for discounts in the Lockerz store. Fashion, style, and beauty are the company’s fastest growing categories, says founder and CEO Kathy Savitt, and she describes this acquisition as a way to “really double down” in that area.
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Peer to peer (p2p) lending was always an idea with great potential. It is a simple concept. Match people who want to borrow money with people who want to invest money. Cut the banks out of the equation and everybody wins.
Of course, it hasn’t been that simple. When the industry was just getting established the two leading players, Lending Club and Prosper, found themselves coming under the scrutiny of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). In 2008, while still in their infancy, both companies had to go through the expensive and time-consuming SEC registration process. Even though many people were writing the industry obituary at this point both Lending Club and Prosper survived.
Today, both companies are thriving as the industry is gaining widespread support from borrowers and investors alike. With greater than 100% year over year growth p2p lending is one of the fastest growing investments. Industry volume is now over $50 million in new loans a month and over the Memorial Day long weekend total loan volume passed the $1 billion mark since the industry began back in 2006. → Read More
The purchase of Face.com by Facebook is happening and is a done deal, say multiple TechCrunch sources.
Those familiar with the matter have confirmed the price will be $100m, as per the media speculation in the last few days. So far Face.com itself has declined to comment. CEO Gil Hirsch told us via email today “I have nothing to announce.” However, among our sources, one told us “Yes, the wheels are in motion on the deal”. We understand lawyers are huddling over the details of the deal right now but the acquisition is agreed. → Read More
Rumblings of a new, Google-free iOS Maps app have been winging their way around the web for a few weeks now, and just in time to whet our appetites before WWDC, an early version of the revamped app has apparently been caught on film.
The folks at BGR managed to score a handful of (extremely blurry) photos depicting the new in-house Maps application that Apple will reportedly unveil alongside iOS 6 next month. → Read More
Dell has sold various all-in-one computers for years. These systems were mostly insipid, humdrum computers not fit for anything other than being a family’s portal to Facebook. Even with touchscreens, Dell’s all-in-one systems failed to be serious contenders in the space.
Enter the XPS One 27. Announced today and detailed by Engadget, this all-in-one-system is clone of the iMac. Even the 2560 x 1440 screen resolution is the same. To Dell’s credit, the XPS One 27 ships with Intel’s latest generation of processors while the Apple iMac is still stuck with the older chips — something Apple will no doubt address in the next revision. But it’s hard to ignore the similarities. Hell, even the computer’s support tower has a large hole for cable management a la iMac. → Read More
JackThreads, the members-only shopping club bought by men’s lifestyle brand Thrillist two years ago, just hit a major milestone this morning: 2 million members. At the time of the original acquisition, JackThreads was really small, says Thrillist co-founder and CEO Ben Lerer. It only had around 100,000-150,000 members in total. But it soon grew. JackThreads hit the 1 million member mark in July 2011, and since then, the average number of orders placed per month has more than doubled, average daily sales have more than doubled, unique site visitors per month grew 143%, and mobile visits grew 163%.
The company hosts flash sales with top apparel brands, but is now starting to try new things. It recently launched its own private label line collection called Goodale, which Lerer says led to the best-selling sale the site has ever hosted. It’s also planning to expand beyond flash sales, and will soon allow members to search the site’s inventory for specific items. → Read More
Founded on the premise of making it easier for independent creators to interact with their customers, Stitch Labs launched to offer a cloud-based solution for small businesses that wish to manage CRM, product orders, and inventory management. Now it’s taking that a step further by helping SMBs complete the full cycle of sales transactions through an integration with Austin-based startup ShipStation to handle shipping and order fulfillment for customers.
Through its partnership with ShipStation, Stitch Labs will help SMBs close the loop with customers, taking them all the way through shipping and order fulfillment. While Stitch handles all the inventory management for its customers, ShipStation will ensure that products get to SMBs’ end-customers. → Read More
Last December, file-sharing startup Kicksend went mobile, with an iPhone app designed to enable easy sharing of photos and videos that are captured from your mobile device. Now, six months later, the startup is taking that same functionality and making it available to Android users as well.
Kicksend, which was incubated as part of the Y Combinator Summer 2011 class, aims to make file-sharing easy, with a way to share and access photos, videos, and other large files across multiple platforms. The startup has a web application at kicksend.com that lets users connect to all their files online. It also has access through a desktop app for Mac users, and an app for iPhone users as well. And now it’ll be available on Android as well. → Read More
Listen up, ladies! (And upwardly fashionable gents!)
A new service has hit the web that you’ve likely been waiting for for a long time. Gone are the days of trotting over to a store sales associate and getting help with matching makeup or clothing colors. Now all it takes is a trip to Plum Perfect and a camera to get your style on.
Here’s how it works: → Read More
Last month, San Francisco unveiled a new cloud-based open data site as part of its move to adopt cloud services and, in turn, to encourage open government, transparency and accountability by improving access to data and information. San Francisco is hardly alone — both public and private sectors in the U.S. and around the world are pulling back the curtain on their data. Of course, opening the doors is one thing, but unlocking and making sense of that data? Not quite as easy.
That’s why Santiago and Palo Alto-based Junar has developed a platform that allows businesses, governments, and NGOs not only to unleash their data in order to drive collaboration and enhance transparency, but to remove the headache of having to develop their own proprietary software. And to fuel its initiative, the startup announced today that it has raised $1.2 million in seed funding from Aurus, Austral Capital, and a host of national and Latin American angel investors. → Read More
San Francisco, CA
