Encoding.com's Vid.ly Integrates With FreeWheel To Provide Monetization Of Universal, Cross-Platform Video URLs

Cloud encoding vendor Encoding.com launched Vid.ly a couple of years ago to provide video creators with a way to publish a single universal video URL and then have that content accessible on any device. Now it’s providing a way to monetize those videos, thanks to an integration with ad delivery platorm FreeWheel.

The idea behind Vid.ly is that Encoding.com does all the hard work of encoding it into as many video formats and renditions as necessary, then serve up the appropriate copy of the video depending on which device was accessing it. In addition to transcoding, it also provided all of the storage, video player technology, device detection, streaming, and analytics needed by video creators. Customers could simply connect with the Vid.ly API and have a single universal URL created for them.

All of that’s great, especially for brands and agencies and marketers who wish to make their videos playable for all audiences on every PC, mobile phone, or tablet. But what Vid.ly didn’t provide (until now) was a way to monetize all of those videos. Hence, the partnership and integration with FreeWheel.

By integrating with FreeWheel’s ad-serving platform, Vid.ly will be able to provide all the same convenience and reach to publishers, but it will also enable them to monetize those videos across all those devices. By connecting with Encoding.com’s user interface or API, when a video is requested, Vid.ly will pass along user info to the FreeWheel ad server and pass along targeted ads along with the video. Pre-rolls, mid-rolls, and post-rolls, as well as banner overlays, will all be supported.

Encoding.com has raised $4.5 million since being founded in 2008. While Vid.ly is a growing piece of its business, the company is still primarily focused on providing cloud encoding services to a growing number of publishers moving their content online.

via TechCrunch http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/22/vid-ly-freewheel/

GiftCards.com Agrees To Buy Giftly To Grow A Mobile Platform

GiftCards.com, a Pittsburg-based company that has been around for more than a decade and has sold 5 million gift cards, agreed to buy San Francisco startup Giftly to grow out a mobile platform.

The terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, but Giftly had raised about $2.8 million from investors including Baseline Ventures, SoftTech VC, Floodgate, Thrive Capital, and Techstars’ David Tisch.

Giftly’s acquisition follows a number of other ones. Karma was picked up very early by Facebook although it may not produce meaningful revenue for some time for the social network, according to its earnings results earlier this year. Another gifting startup, Giftiki, which pooled together people’s money to get gifts, was acquired by Launchrock.

Giftly built a platform that avoided the hassle of individually dealing with merchants and point-of-sale systems. They came out with a native mobile app last fall that made it easier to send presents to friends and family.

The company’s platform didn’t put any limitations on what kinds of presents you could send because the company had a web of relationships with banks and credit card processors. When a recipient would go to redeem their gift, they would pay out of their own pocket, but Giftly would reimburse them that amount through their credit card.

GiftCards.com said Giftly will be rolled into their operations, but will maintain offices in San Francisco.

“We will continue to build out Giftly,” said Giftly’s CEO Timothy Bentley. “Our backend infrastructure will be used for their next generation products. We’ll continue to expand

the ways our technology and services are available to developers, through our API, and merchants, through our merchant services.”

The company is also looking to raise a first venture round, even though it’s been around for more than 10 years. That round will go toward completing the acquisition of Giftly. GiftCards.com has been around since 1999; they sell personalized, pre-designed and discount gift cards.

via TechCrunch http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/22/giftcards-com-agrees-to-buy-giftly-to-grow-a-mobile-platform/

Twitter Introduces Charts By Genre And Popularity For Its #Music Service

We’ve confirmed with Twitter that it has rolled out a new part of its #Music service for the web, charts that we were accustomed to from the company We Are Hunted, that it acquired and now powers the service.

The charts are broken up into a few areas: the familiar genre breakdown, as well as some categories like “Superstar” and “Unearthed” that appear to be built based on current Twitter trends and trajectory of artist mentions.

As you click on each category, the tiles on the page shift quickly, letting you click around to find new artists and songs as you could before:

These are the types of charts that will get artists themselves more engaged on Twitter, as well as catch the attention of record labels who want to know what people are saying about the musicians that they’ve signed.

The service, which is still finding its footing, is still in the mode of getting musicians to participate by getting on Twitter and engaging with their fans. That engagement give them a better shot of shooting up the charts and being found. With the addition of charts, which music listeners are also familiar with, people will be able to go deeper in finding songs that fit the genre that they like the most. Rather than waiting for Twitter to pair you with matches that it’s taking a guess on, the power is now in your hands.

If you’re an Rdio or Spotify user, then the entire #Music experience is seamless, but if you’re only buying music from iTunes, you’re not getting to hear full tracks within the app. It’s going to take a while for #Music to grip.

These charts aren’t available for the Twitter #Music iOS app, but is available to everyone on the web today.

This is developing.

via TechCrunch http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/22/twitter-introduces-charts-by-genre-and-popularity-for-its-music-service/

Founder Stories: Parse's Ilya Sukhar On Founding A Startup With Strangers

For this week’s episode of Founder Stories, I sat down with Ilya Sukhar, co-founder and CEO of Parse. The interview was taped days before Parse was acquired by Facebook last month. Parse is a cloud app platform that provides a set of SDKs that enable developers to focus on the execution of their application instead of rebuilding backend functionality for every mobile platform. Sukhar shares his experience of leaving Salesforce after his first startup, Etacts, was acquired and going through Y Combinator for the second time.

Sukhar, who entered YC as a solo founder, was connected to co-founder Kevin Lacker through Paul Graham. The duo then joined up with another co-founding team about a month into YC to build Parse.

“It was a big risk,” says Sukhar. “The founding relationship is a really deep one and there’s a lot of ups and downs to go through together.” Having only known his co-founders for a short time before deciding to work together, Ilya explains the risks and reality of starting a company with strangers. “It worked out well for me but I would not recommend it to other folks.”

In the later half of our discussion, Sukhar explains how he uses arguing tactics to learn whether an employee is a good fit and why stepping back from coding to focus on under-staffed areas of the company has given him the opportunity to learn more about each role before hiring someone to fill it.

Editor’s Note: Michael Abbott is a general partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, previously Twitter’s VP of Engineering, and a founder himself. Mike also writes a blog called uncapitalized. You can follow him on Twitter @mabb0tt.

via TechCrunch http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/22/founder-stories-parses-ilya-sukhar-on-founding-a-startup-with-strangers/

Adobe Acqui-hires Thumb Labs To Make Mobile Apps For Behance And Its New Creative Cloud

Another step for Adobe in its bid to become the go-to place in the cloud for those working in design and other creative industries: it is acquiring Thumb Labs, a bootstrapped, New York-based mobile app design agency.

Jared Verdi, one of the co-founders of Thumb Labs along with Rich Kern, tells TechCrunch that financial terms of the Thumb Labs acquisition are not being disclosed.

The news follows on from Adobe’s acquisition of another New York-based design startup, Behance, a platform for designers and others in the creative industries to share their work, which Adobe picked up in December 2012 reportedly for around $150 million. Earlier this month, Adobe put the Behance acquisition into context when it announced a massive push on its Creative Cloud strategy, with social/community features powered by Behance.

Verdi tells TechCrunch that Thumb Labs will see out existing contracts it has with other clients, but as of May 31, it will focus its efforts exclusively on making mobile apps for Behance.

That’s a position it knows well. Thumb Labs, which officially launched as a business in 2011, created the first mobile app for Behance, and as it points out in a note announcing the deal on its site, “We have been working closely with their talented team ever since.” That’s included a new version of the Behance app, and its Creative Portfolio app. There are around 10 people working for Thumb Labs right now, Verdi says, and all of them are joining Adobe, based out of New York.

Thumb Labs’ other clients have included a roster of startups, such as TechStars alum Bondsy (a platform to trade goods with friends); CanDoBaby (an app to make baby books); and ReadyForZero (a debt management app).

The main part of Thumb Labs’ work will now be focused both on maintaining Behance’s existing apps, as well as developing new ones. This will include “definitely some tablet work”, including an iPad app, as well as apps for more platforms beyond Apple’s, and in general making Behance’s main site design responsive so that it’s more mobile-web friendly.

Over time, there will be more focus on other Creative Cloud initiatives, which makes sense considering how linked the rise in cloud services has been with the boom in smartphone and tablet use. “We’ll also be working with other teams at Adobe for integration into the Creative Cloud. Mobile is a big part of that,” Verdi said.

In a way, getting acquired by Adobe is a natural fit for a design house like Thumb Labs, and Verdi says that it’s coming at a key time of change for its new owner. “In the creative profession everyone uses Adobe products, and the new focus on Creative Cloud is the biggest change we’ve seen in a while,” he said. “They’ve announced a number of exciting things, and hopefully we will be a part of them, too.”

via TechCrunch http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/22/adobe-acqui-hires-thumb-labs-to-make-mobile-apps-for-behance-and-its-new-creative-cloud/

Google X Acquires Makani Power And Its Airborne Wind Turbines

After previously investing into the company, Google has now acquired Makani Power, a green energy startup that is currently building airborne wind turbines. The acquisition was first reported in Brad Stone’s Businessweek story about Google X and judging from Stone’s story, the team will join Google X. Google invested $10 million in the Alameda, CA-based company in 2006 and another $5 million in 2008. As far as we can see, this also marks the first time Google has acquired a company specifically for its Google X skunk works.

Stone reports that Google CEO Larry Page approved the acquisition, but as Google X’s director Astro Teller notes, Page said that X “could have the budget and the people to go do this, but that we had to make sure to crash at least five of the devices in the near future.”

Makani says it hopes that this acquisition will provide it with ” the resources to accelerate our work to make wind energy cost competitive with fossil fuels.”

The acquisition comes just a week after the company completed the first autonomous flight of its Wing 7 prototype.

Here is how TechCrunch columnist Matylda Czarnecka described the project back in 2012:

The Makani Airborne Wind Turbines, which resemble mini airplanes, are launched when wind speeds reach 3.5 meters per second. Rotors on each blade help propel it into orbit, and double as turbines once airborne. The blades are tethered to the ground with a cord that delivers power to throw them into the sky and receives energy generated by the turbines to be sent to the grid-connected ground station.

via TechCrunch http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/22/google-x-acquires-makani-power-and-its-airborne-wind-turbines/

Amazon Wants To Build A Bio-Dome Three Blocks From An Actual, Normal Park

Amazon has reportedly submitted plans for a new futuristic headquarters in Seattle that combines a skyscraper and a tri-sphere, bio-dome-like structure. According to the plans, the structure will be able to hold various forms of plant life and become a place where employees can “work and socialize in a more natural, park-like setting.”

Because, God forbid, employees walk to the park that’s three blocks away.

Here’s an excerpt from the plans (also, hat tip to GeekWire for the find):

While the form of the building will be visually reminiscent of a greenhouse or conservatory, plant material will be selected for its ability to co-exist in a microclimate that also suits people. To encourage growth and maintain the health of the plants, the building’s interior will include high bay spaces on five floors totaling approximately 65,000 SF and capable of accommodating mature trees. The exterior enclosure will be highly transparent and be composed primarily of multiple layers of glass supported by a metal framework. In addition to a variety of workplace environments, the facility will incorporate dining, meeting and lounge spaces, as well as a variety of botanical zonesmodeled on montane ecologies found around the globe. The building will be anchored at either end by publically accessible retail spaces entered from 6th and 7th Avenues.

Generally, it all sounds very cool and very futuristic and very trendy (read: Apple did the whole “plans for a spaceship” thing ages ago). However, it’s interesting to see how the biggest companies in tech are tackling the issue of working in an office or with a more loose structure.

Remember, everyone made a pretty big deal out of Marissa Mayer’s recent policy change that requires all Yahoo employees to work in an office. And just recently she announced that Yahoo would be taking up space in the Times building in New York’s Times Square, which is capable of housing up to 700 employees.

As it stands now, all of the big four tech companies — Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon — favor keeping employees in the office.

Google has one of the best campuses you could dream of, both in Mountain View and in New York, feeding employees free lunch from world-renowned chefs. Apple is working to build out one of Steve Jobs’ final projects, a new spaceship office. Facebook has the same diversions: chess boards, and video games, and basketball courts, and free lunch.

So of course, the fourth horseman in the race, Amazon is devising its own tricks to keep employees at the office as long as possible. It’s a win-win: Employees do more and better work due to a pleasing and comfortable work environment, and employers get more, and better work, out of their employees.

Also, there’s a perfectly good park just three blocks from the new campus.

Here’s the full set of plans:

Amazon’s new HQ design by John Cook

via TechCrunch http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/22/amazon-wants-to-build-a-bio-dome-three-blocks-from-an-actual-normal-park/

Photo App Piictu To Join Betaworks Company Kandu, Will Shut Down On May 31st

Another photo sharing app bites the dust? Or is something with promise getting another chance? Either way you look at it, betaworks is adding more technology and team members to its arsenal, as photo sharing app Piictu has announced that the team will “join forces” with a betaworks company that has yet to launch.

Piictu had raised $1.73M in seed funding, yet never really took off. The app allowed you to share photos with captions, but Piictu wanted to focus on letting photos start conversations, rather than sit in a stream waiting for likes. The app’s approach was to get you to share photos in context of what you were doing.

Here’s what the Piictu team shared today, including instructions on how to get your photos out of the service. You’ll have until June 7th to do so:

Piictu is joining Kandu (a Betaworks company)!

We’re excited to announce that Piictu is joining forces with Kandu – “a Betaworks company” that shares our vision and ideals of how technology is a catalyst for a better and richer world. Together we will continue to build and bring users great products and experiences for a brighter future.

Obviously, this news doesn’t come without hardship. Unfortunately, the Piictu app will no longer be available. The important thing: You will not lose any of your photos and we trust you will reconnect with all your piictu-friends on other networks like tumblr, kik, twitter and instagram – some of our fave.

Over the past two years we’ve had the opportunity of supporting and sharing unique moments of our lives in pictures. Piictu was built on the idea that “the change in use of photography” is opening new opportunities to communicate and interact as humans. We’ve seen this stand true and flourish not only on piictu, but on other networks as well.

On Friday May 31st, the piictu app will no longer be available. You’ll be able to download your photos until Friday June 7th by following the instructions here

From the entire team we want to thank you for the great energy, trust and support you have brought to the community and we look forward to bringing you more fun, exciting and heartfelt products in the future.

No terms were made available, but we’ve reached out to betaworks for comment. However, this does feel like a stay of execution for an app that never took off.

Again, it’s not known what Kandu is exactly, but we assume that it will have something to do with photography. Another betaworks product, Giphy, has been moving along quickly, to provide a home for all of those awesome animated GIFs that we like to share.

During TechCrunch Disrupt, betaworks CEO John Borthwick discussed his vision for the company, calling it a “puzzle.” What Borthwick and team are doing is bringing together the most useful parts of services, be it Digg or an eventual Google Reader replacement, and creating a suite with them. How it will all look once it fits together is unknown, but betaworks is on a bit of a roll after launching its game Dots recently.

via TechCrunch http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/22/photo-app-service-piictu-to-join-betaworks-company-kandu-will-shut-down-on-may-31st/

Google Drive App For Android Gets Card-Style Redesign, Document Scanner With OCR And Improved Spreadsheet Editing Experience

Google’s Drive app for Android just got a major redesign that brings the Google Now-like card-style look the company introduced with Google Now to its mobile productivity app.

This new look, which Google says is cleaner and simpler than the previews design, will likely be the first thing users notice, but the company has also added a number of new features to the app. Most of these are small, like the ability to download copies of your files to your Android device, but the new document scanning features opens up a whole new range of use cases for Drive.

The scanner tool, for example, which you can now find under the “Add New” menu, allows you to easily turn paper documents like receipts, letter and billing statements into PDFs. Thanks to Google’s advanced optical character recognition technology, you can also easily search them later on. This definitely feels a bit like Evernote and it’ll be interesting to see if Google will continue to go down this path in the future updates to the app.

Also new in this version is an updated editing experience for Google Sheets spreadsheets. Users can now adjust font types and sizes for their spreadsheets and change cell text colors and cell alignment right from the application. The app now also finally supports Google’s Cloud Print.

via TechCrunch http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/22/google-drive-app-for-android-gets-card-style-redesign/

Tribune Confirms Former Yahoo Exec Shashi Seth Will Lead Its Newly-Formed Digital Ventures Unit

Shashi Seth, whose résumé includes management and executive roles at Yahoo, Aol, and Google, is joining the Tribune Company as the president of a new unit called Tribune Digital Ventures.

Seth’s role was first reported yesterday at AllThingsD, and the company is now confirming the news. It says Tribune Digital Ventures will operate as an independent unit based in Silicon Valley.

Seth told me that his job will be to develop new products around Tribune content, making sure that it “gets used appropriately on the Internet and mobile side.” A big part of that is finding new ways to circulate traffic between Tribune’s different properties, whether they’re in print (it publishes newspapers including the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times), broadcast, or digital. The goal, he said is to create “a network effect across these disparate mediums and build a bridge between them.”

It sounds like partnering with startups is going to be a part of that mission. As for whether that will involve making startup investments, Seth said, “It is within the realm of possibility, but I think first and foremost we have to come up with a strategy.”

Seth left Yahoo in January, where he was most recently the senior vice president of its Connections business unit, which included products like Yahoo Search and Mail. He has also been the senior vice president of global ad products at Aol (which owns TechCrunch), head of monetization at YouTube, and search product lead at Google. He has startup experience as well, founding and serving as CEO of a wireless startup called Conexo and chief revenue officer at Cooliris.

“I’m fascinated and disappointed at the same time with what the traditional media world is going through,” Seth said when asked why he joined the Tribune Company. “I know and feel it in my heart that the content itself is amazingly valuable. … I think newspapers and broadcasters have given up the ownership of that space to the new Internet world. What I’d love to do is find a way to actually a reclaim it.”

via TechCrunch http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/22/tribune-confirms-shashi-seth/

EAT Club Goes Mobile, Bringing A Food Truck With Mobile Ordering And Payment To San Francisco

Food trucks aren’t exactly new, but most only have one specific type of cuisine — even if that cuisine just happens to be all the latest rage in molecular-gastro Indian-Irish fusion. Not only that, but you’re often stuck waiting in a long line to order and pay, then waiting some more for your food to be ready.

EAT Club, which is launching in private beta today, has a unique spin on the way that users get lunch. The service hopes to get rid of all the hassles around waiting in line, paying, and waiting for your food, all with a convenient food truck that serves a variety of foods, and a mobile app to handle ordering and payment.

Over the last few years, EAT Club has served lunchers on the Peninsula with a variety of different food choices, but now it has made its was up to San Francisco, where it will serve startup kids and other hungry office workers. And it’s coming here with a food truck specially designed to provide eaters with a variety of awesome food choices.

EAT Club’s food truck will have a variety of dishes from multiple restaurants available all in the same truck, giving customers a selection of cuisines to choose from. Charter restaurants participating include Bar Tartine, Nopalito, City Smoke House BBQ, and Onigilly, among others. Altogether, EAT Club has more than 30 restaurants signed up so far, and will have options from at least three available on any given day.

How did EAT Club get those restaurants on board? Partly through the food truck itself, which is designed to provide the best experience for customers. A gutted-out old school bus, the EAT Club truck has been renovated with mobile ovens for hot foods and refrigerating units for cold foods. The end result is that all dishes are loaded into the truck right from the kitchen, so that when a customer picks up his food, it’s kept at the desired temperature.

So the food is great, but what about the service? EAT Club handles that with a mobile app that allows you to choose among a bunch of different food options. It provides you with details about why the dishes were picked — EAT Club has a food curator, natch — and more information about the restaurant.

Once you’ve found something you like, you just click to order and the app automatically charges your credit card. After that, you’re free to head down to the truck at your convenience and just pick up your food. No waiting, no fuss.

To start, EAT Club will have its food truck parked around the Financial District and SOMA neighborhoods in San Francisco, hoping to appeal to office workers downtown who don’t have lunch provided to them every day. The app is available now in private beta, as the company tries to measure demand and make sure that it’s got the right amount of food ready for new users.

via TechCrunch http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/22/eat-club-goes-mobile-bringing-a-food-truck-with-mobile-phone-powered-ordering-and-payment-to-san-francisco/

Google Updates Chrome For Android With Fullscreen Mode For Phones, Simplified Searching From Omnibox

Chrome 27 for the desktop arrived yesterday and today, Google updated Chrome for Android to version 27 as well. While the desktop update mostly focused on improved speed, the Android version actually includes a number of new features. The most important of these is probably the new fullscreen mode for phones. Just like in the iPhone app (or in the old stock Android browser), the toolbar will now disappear as you scroll down.

Also new in this version is a somewhat simplified search experience: searching from the omnibox, Google says, will “keep your search query visible in the omnibox, making it easier to edit, and show more on your search result page.”

The company has been experimenting with a similar feature in the desktop version of Chrome. It essentially turns the omnibox into the search interface instead of switching to the URL for your search and then replicating the search interface it on the search results page. On the desktop, this always takes me for a loop, but given the space constraints on a smaller screen, this will probably allow for a few more lines of search results to show without the need to scroll down.

Other new features in this update include support for client-side certificates (something that’s often needed to connect to enterprise intranets) and tab history support for tablets (so you can use a long press on the back button to bring up your tab history.

via TechCrunch http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/22/google-updates-chrome-for-android-with-fullscreen-mode-for-phones-simplified-searching-from-omnibox/

Skyhigh Networks Raises $20M For Service That Discovers, Analyzes And Controls Apps Employees Use

Skyhigh Networks discovers,manages and analyzes data from all the apps that people use at work. Today the company raised $20 million in a Series B round led by Sequoia Capital with participation from existing investor Greylock Partners.

Skyhigh discovers, analyzes and controls the cloud services that a customer’s employee uses. It sees the cloud services customers use and all the associated security issues associated with it. It analyzes the services to find the abnormalities and ways the company can save costs on subscriptions. It also adds an element of control by enforcing IT policies.

The difference for Skyhigh is in the fine grain controls. When it finds abnormalities it can provide encryption, access control and other security features. The discover is based on existing logs and data from proxy and doing analytics. It has a registry of 2,600 services with 500 added every six weeks. For each service they create an independent score across 30 criteria. For the analysis the company has a Hadoop infrastructure. For the control the company has a reverse proxy and associated services it runs through its data centers.

The company is about 18 months old. It raised a Series A round last March from Greylock. Skyhigh will primarily use the funding for sales, marketing, and engineering.

Skyhigh has a platform that provides services with aspects of what you see in something like Splunk. It’s a market that security providers might serve as potential competitors.

Skyhigh is leveraging the bring your own device movement (BYOD), which it addresses at its intersection with the thousands of services employees use but can’t afford to keep exposed to security risks.

via TechCrunch http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/22/skyhigh-networks-raises-20m-for-service-that-discovers-analyzes-and-controls-apps-employees-use/

Recargo And Xatori Merge To Make PlugShare The Essential App For Electric Car Drivers

People are afraid that if they drive an electric vehicle, they’ll run out of juice somewhere. So to convince more people to buy electric cars and dominate the charging station locator market, Xatori and Recargo are merging. The combined charge finder developers will go by the name Recargo to promote their station map and trip planner app PlugShare.

Xatori and its co-founders Forrest North (CEO) and Armen Petrosian (CTO) had raised $400,000 in 2011 for its suite of apps. PlugShare is North America’s largest network of EV charging stations, boasting 15,000 locations and 100,000 downloads. GreenCharge lets Nissan Leaf, Chevy Volt, and Plug-in Prius owners monitor their vehicles’ energy levels. ChargeManager lets businesses track the status of whole fleets of EVs. Recargo is a privately funded startup that runs a self-named charging station locator and Plugincars.com, a popular EV news source and community.

Recargo CEO Brian Kariger will be the chief of the newly merged company, and North will become COO. All their employees are staying on through the deal, bringing Recargo’s headcount to around 15. Both companies’ offices in Venice and Menlo Park, Calif., will remain open. “Our goal is still to do whatever we can to encourage the growth of EV and plugin vehicles,” North tells me. “We met Recargo, hit it off, found we had some of the same objectives, and decided to work together.” North called the merger a “small deal” financially but said that “investors were taken care of.”

Both Recargo and Xatori doubled their user base now, and will significantly grow their communities through the merger, as North says the companies only had about a 20 percent overlap in users. Beyond Recargo becoming a one-stop app for finding charging stations and EV news, the deal should boost its status with auto-makers. North tells me some car companies weren’t experienced working with tiny, nimble startups, but doubling its headcount will give it more clout. “We’re on a little more stable footing, have a longer runway, and a bigger team to help EV adoption.”

The fact is that gasoline is everywhere, but most people don’t realize that electric vehicle chargers are rapidly proliferating. The are more than 10X as many charging stations in the U.S. now as at the start of 2011. Domestically, there are now over 20,000 charges, and by the end of 2013 there will be over 170,000 EVs on the road. If Recargo’s PlugShare app for iOS and Android can instill confidence in potential EV buyers so they’re not worried about ending up stranded, sales could accelerate.

And honestly, that’s good for the rest of the tech world as well. Sometimes I worry that smart people are building frivolous apps and trying to get rich instead of tackling a serious global problem: climate change. If we don’t get the environment back on track, we might need to start factoring climate change into the valuations of giants like Apple. What happens to sales of iPhones if whole cities are consumed by the ocean as greenhouse gases from cars melt the ice caps and raise the sea level?

Recargo‘s charging station maps might not be sexy, but they could help save the world.

via TechCrunch http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/22/best-electric-car-app/

Foursquare Introduces ‘Super-Specific' Search And Filter Options For iOS And Android To Help You Find New Venues

As Foursquare evolves, it wants to help you find either new places to check out or lead you to places where your friends have already been. Mixed in with that is recommendation technology to show you places that you might be interested in based on where you’ve been before. Today, Foursquare updated its iOS and Android apps with an advanced search option that lets you control how the service seeks out new venues for you.

In its blog post today, Foursquare “dares” you to get “super specific” with your searches. Basically, the company is saying that they have enough data to find any place that you could imagine. One of the example searches is: “A cheap sushi place that’s nearby and open now, but that I haven’t been to yet.” Again, this is a search performed based on all of the data that Foursquare has collected over the years, but its first move into a more conversational search experience. Companies like Google are jumping on this bandwagon as well.

When you perform a search like the one suggested above, you just get results as you’d normally expect. Foursquare is processing these inquiries surprisingly fast, which means that you’re likely to settle on a place quickly:

The interesting part comes with the new filter options, where you can hone in on a venue based on whether you or a friend have checked in before, by price, if the venue has a special or if you’ve saved it to check out later:

I feel like with this dynamic search and filter options, Foursquare has made the jump to become a true utility that might even cancel out a Google search or a Yelp deep-dive. That’s a pretty bold thought, but when you think about how much data Foursquare truly has, a lot of things that we haven’t even seen yet are possible.

The filter options makes all of this data more manageable and of course, usable, to get you to try out more places. It’s also an incentive for more businesses to adopt Foursquare’s offerings, such as specials. If people start filtering their searches in the way that Foursquare suggests, then it behooves these restaurants and bars to have multiple specials lined up and ready to go. Think of it as a highlighted ad in Google search.

via TechCrunch http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/22/foursquare-introduces-super-specific-search-and-filter-options-for-ios-and-android-to-help-you-find-new-venues/

Collaborative Gastronomy? Cookening Lets Tourists Dine In A Local's Own Home

In years to come, when we look back, it’s only then that we’ll know if Collaborative Consumption really is a movement or if history deems it to be the hollow marketing term that it sometimes appears to be. But in the midst of things, it’s hard not to think that something pretty interesting is happening, specifically relating to the issue of trust. Airbnb and its European rival 9flats, for example, got users used to the idea of inviting strangers into their home. Meanwhile, Housebites enables people to sell home-cooked meals as an alternative to a take-out.

Launching today is Cookening, a new French startup co-founded by Cédric Giorgi (previously co-editor of TechCrunch France) that combines elements of both Airbnb and Housebites. Starting with France first, a country known for its gastronomy, it enables locals to be matched with foreigners — tourists in particular — so they can invite them into their homes to experience an authentic, in this case French, home dining experience.

The pain-point that Cookening is targeting is that when traveling it’s not always easy to meet local people and experience authentic food. “As a passionate cook, it is impossible to easily invite new and relevant people to share a home cooked meal,” Giorgi tells TechCrunch. “This is what Cookening wants to solve.”

Hosts create a profile on Cookening, which includes a table page showing photos of their favourite home-cooked dishes, a preset menu/meal structure, and a price for the guests. The profile is manually vetted by Cookening. Non-locals then simply choose the host/table booking, and make contact. Like similar peer-to-peer marketplaces, payment is handled by Cookening in order to help establish and maintain trust between hosts and guests, and the host only receives payment the day after a successful meal. It’s also how the startup will make money, charging a 20% commission.

If it all sounds quite similar to an existing concept in France, known as “Table d’hôte”, where people host home cooked meals, that’s because it is. However, Giorgi says the practice was highly regulated. “We want to globalize and ease this concept so that everyone can experience the wonderful moment of sharing a meal with people you don’t know and that have different origins,” he says.

Another important element of the Cookening concept is that hosts dine with their guests. This adds further trust — both parties are in theory eating the same food — plus it’s as much a social as gastronomic experience, a cultural exchange, if you will.

To date, Cookening is bootstrapped but is looking to raise external funding. Alongside Giorgi, the startup’s other co-founder is Sébastien Guignot, previous head of development at French fintech startup Quanthouse that exited to Standard & Poor’s.

Meanwhile, Cookening’s potential competitors include Feastly in the U.S., which focuses on meals organised between locals, not locals and tourists specifically. Israel’s (and Disrupt NY nominee) EatWith is probably a closer competitor, but isn’t targeting France at the moment. There are also some local rivals in the “Table d’hôte” tradition, though Giorgi says they lack Cookening’s peer-to-peer model.

via TechCrunch http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/22/cookening/

Scale Out Provider Cloudscaling Raises $10M With Investment From Juniper And Seagate, Networking Takes Center Stage

Cloudscaling has raised $10 million from Trinity Ventures, Juniper Networks, and Seagate Technologies in a deal that shows how software defined networking has become a focal issue for companies building out their own clouds.

Cloudscaling delivers an OpenStack-powered cloud infrastructure system for enterprises, SaaS providers and cloud service providers. The company foreshadowed a deal with Juniper when it announced the company would provide Cloudscaling with its virtualized networking controller. That deal was precipitated by Juniper’s acquisition of Contrail Systems. The startup raised $10 million last July from Khosla Ventures. By December, Juniper had snatched up the company for $176 million.

Network controllers have become a hot topic as more cloud projects get underway. The importance stems from the need to scale out networks in an affordable manner. Adding more hardware just gets too expensive. Virtualizing the controller means that the data flowing through the pipes can be managed in a granular way, optimized through software so the network can be used efficiently without lots of spillover costs for additional hardware.

Contrail points to how Cloudscaling has positioned itself with a focus on providing networking for its customers building out enterprise and SaaS clouds. It puts the company in the same space as VMware-owned Nicira and BigSwitch. The difference for Cloudscaling comes in its dual focus on software to build out programmed cloud systems and SDN to give it scale and better manageability.

Juniper, for its part, has spent a lot of time focusing on advancing its silicon and keeping on pace or even in front of the likes of Intel, Bias said. The company has also hired top-talent. For example, they hired Bob Muglia, a lead executive at Microsoft who oversaw the development of Windows Azure. Muglia now heads an entire division at Juniper dedicated to software.

For Seagate, a traditional hard drive company, the opportunity is in providing the storage infrastructure and partnering with Cloudscaling and other providers such as Egnyte. It is also active in OpenStack and OpenCompute, the Facebook-led effort to open hardware to make it more adaptable for the new, cloud oriented infrastructures of the world.

Cloudscaling represents the demand for scale out infrastructures. Data is spreading but for companies to keep up, they need the networking to extend but without adding a sprawling array of big hardware boxes. Instead they need software to virtualize the network so it can spread far and wide.

via TechCrunch http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/22/scale-out-provider-cloudscaling-raises-10m-with-investment-from-juniper-and-seagate-networking-takes-center-stage/

Korean Startup Accelerator SparkLabs Reveals Its Second Intake

SparkLabs, the startup accelerator that wants to inject South Korea’s startup ecosystem with Silicon Valley expertise, announced its second intake today. Its latest class is an international lineup of companies that represent a variety of sectors and are at widely different stages of funding, from bootstrapped financing to those that have closed a Series A round.

Founded in 2012, SparkLabs’ offers a three-month-long mentorship driven program. Co-founder Bernard Moon says that one of the main challenges faced by South Korea’s startup industry is the lack of role models and guidance for founders. For example, many angel investors and venture capitalists have a financial background but lack entrepreneurial experience. SparkLabs has focused on building an impressive roster of mentors, many of whom are Silicon Valley founders.

“We’re not the first accelerator or incubator in South Korea, but we are the first with a tangible outside network that is easily accessible by Korean entrepreneurs,” says Moon. “We also get applications from China, India, Taiwan, everywhere in Asia. Our dream is to be a gateway not just into Silicon Valley, but also to high-level people these founders never thought it would be possible to access.”

While SparkLabs’ first class consisted of South Korean companies hoping to break into overseas markets, the latest intake include companies from Singapore and the U.S. that view South Korea as a gateway into Asia.

“They see South Korea as more developed in terms of technology and a large early adopter base. A good foothold and feedback in South Korea helps them expand into Japan and possibly China,” says Moon.

SparkLabs is also hosting its first annual conference, NEXT, on June 14 in Seoul. The event will focus on innovation and technology, with speakers including Ray Ozzie, the founder and CEO of Talko, Richard Florida, author of “The Rise of the Creative Class,” Maria G. Gotsch, president and CEO of Partnership Fund for New York City and Jonathan Levine, CIO and CTO of Rakuten Group.

SparkLabs’ inaugural cohort included educational tech startup KnowRe and WePlanet, the developers of Step Journal. Here is its second class:

StyleWiki: A Seoul-based social wiki platform for fashion enthusiasts.

iBabyBox: A Palo Alto-based online community where parents can share and sell secondhand baby products.

Megaphone: Founded in New York City, this participation TV platform’s clients include NBC, Bravo, BBC, Amex, LG, Sprint, NFL and the New York Knicks. Megaphone integrates game graphics that can be controlled by Web browsers into TV shows and allows viewers to see aggregated results of all user activity and 30-second ads in real-time.

MangoPlate: A mobile app that offers personalized restaurant recommendations in Seoul. Its search engine fine-tunes results each time a user adds a review or wish-list entry.

Zoyi: A Korean tech company that has built products including AdbyMe, Korea’s first social media advertising platform and Cooki, a news summary curation service. Zoyi is backed by Southbridge Capital, a leading Korean venture capital firm.

HeyBread: One of Korea’s leading curation commerce companies, HeyBread focuses on delivering premium organic breads from local bakeries to customers. The company plans to expand its service to the entire fresh food industry.

Petsbe: A Seoul-based premium subscription service that delivers personalized orders of pet food and monthly supplies.

Lateral: Headquartered in San Francisco, Lateral wants to redefine the fundamentals of online search by revamping outdated search methods.

DesignPlusD: A Seoul-based productivity app that includes note taking, alarm reminder and calendar functions. The company’s Remember-Block memo app was the App Store’s number one productivity apps in 12 countries and was the top paid app in South Korea during January.

TrakInvest: A Singaporean online social investment platform for equities that will be launched next month. The company, which is led Bobby Bhatia, the former managing director and head of principal investments at AIG for APAC, provides tools to identify and create future “alpha” generators. It has partnered with Thomson Reuters to provide research and analytics to its user base.

via TechCrunch http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/22/korean-startup-accelerator-sparklabs-reveals-its-second-intake/