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European VC Funding Bounces Back, Information Technology Is “Star Performer”

admin — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 11:44:09 +0000

European VC funding as bounced back. That’s according to Q2 figures produced by Dow Jones VentureSource which reports that investment is up by 50 percent compared to the record low of this time last year. €1.1 billion into 289 deals against 252 deals, which raised just €735 million. But specifically, says Dow Jones, the Information Technology (IT) industry, which apparently accounted for much of the venture market’s losses during the economic downturn, was the “star performer” in the most recent quarter. IT saw a 69% increase in investment from the second quarter last year to €334 million, as well as a 13% increase in deal flow to 90 completed deals. For the first time in two years, the report notes, IT was Europe’s largest industry for venture investment, taking 31% of overall investment. Here’s a few more interesting tidbits quoted from the report:

European VC Funding Bounces Back, Information Technology Is “Star Performer”

Hungry For Growth, Search Marketing Startup KENSHOO Raises More Funding

admin — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 10:54:57 +0000

Search engine marketing startup KENSHOO has secured an undisclosed late-stage round of funding from Sequoia’s Growth Fund, the Israeli company announced this morning.

This marks the fourth time Sequoia Capital has injected capital into the company, which claims it is now profitable and has doubled in valuation since 2009.

KENSHOO offers search marketing campaign management and optimization tools (KENSHOO Search and KENSHOO Local are its flagship products) and provide automation solutions for advertisers’ online demand generation needs across channels like Google, Yahoo, Bing, Facebook, AOL, Baidu, and Yandex.

It’s a very crowded market, but with lots of room for growth left, particularly geographically speaking.

KENSHOO currently already operates from nine locations on four continents, including a recently added office in Sydney, Australia. Armed with fresh funds from the famous Silicon Valley VC firm, the company will be opening two new offices in Europe (in Paris and an unnamed city in Germany) and also look at way to expand its presence in Asia.

The new funding will also enable KENSHOO to enter into additional domains such as new social media advertising channels, and enable the development of re-targeting technologies.

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Kenshoo

Sequoia Capital

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Hungry For Growth, Search Marketing Startup KENSHOO Raises More Funding

IPS Company Blog – Easier Documentation Search

admin — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 20:08:00 +0000

IPS is constantly looking for ways to improve, and one area of focus is documentation. We get a lot of feedback regarding documentation, and quite frequently the feedback we receive is, unfortunately, too vague to act on specifically. It’s always a pleasant delight to get specific, focused feedback on how we can improve.

Last week I happened across a topic on our forums with just this kind of feedback, and after reviewing the suggestion and what it would take to implement, we agreed that the work was worth it. Cap’n Refsmmat posted some well-thought-out, clear and concise feedback on a specific action we could take that would make finding documentation easier, and I’m happy to announce that this change has been put in place on our website.

It was pointed out that as a user, it doesn’t matter too much where the documentation you are searching for is located specifically. Whether it is a community article, official documentation, or an error code – you just want to find out more information, regardless of where that information is located. Today I built a few Sphinx search indexes of our downloads area, our error codes database, our official documentation, and our community-submitted articles, and then built a search interface to query all of these areas at once. We have replaced the search form in our documentation area with this new search utility.

Feel free to test out the new search tool and let us know what you think! Just head on over to our documentation page and use the search box at the top of the page to look for whatever it is you need to find. We may evolve this new tool further in the future, but for now we hope that it helps you find what you are looking for with less hassle and bouncing around.

IPS Company Blog – Easier Documentation Search

Apple’s Innovative New… Battery Charger?

admin — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 15:17:31 +0000

Apple unleashed a range of new and updated products earlier today — everything from new Mac Pros to new iMacs to a new Magic Trackpad device. Lost in the shuffle was a tiny new product Apple also unveiled: the Apple Battery Charger.

But just because it’s not as big or a pricey as Apple’s other new toys, don’t think Apple loves it any less. In fact, when I spoke to Apple today about their new products, they made sure to dedicate some time to talking all about this new battery charger.

Apple says it’s proud of its new “sleek and very compact” battery charger because they managed to take a product that other companies have been doing for a while and perfect it. “The honest truth is that most [manufacturers] don’t care about these,” an Apple representative told me. This allowed Apple to come in and create a product that performs ten times better than the industry average, they say. What they mean by this is that their battery charger uses only 30 milliwatts when it completes a charge cycle thanks to sensors — many other draw 300 or more milliwatts in the same setting. “We’ve engineering these chargers to have the lowest power vampire draw of any AA chargers,” Apple says.

Vampire draw. Nice.

Apple is selling this charger for $29 but that comes with 6 rechargeable AA NiMH batteries. “These are very long shelf-life batteries,” I was told. Apple’s website claim they can last up to 10 years. “No more late night trips to Walgreens,” an Apple representative joked.

So why six? Apple envisions people using two of them in their wireless keyboards, two in their Magic Mouse or new Magic Trackpad, and then two that will remain in the charger in case the others run out.

No word on the margins Apple is seeing on these bad boys.

CrunchBase Information

Apple

Information provided by CrunchBase

Apple’s Innovative New… Battery Charger?

37signals Buys Campfire iPhone App Ember

admin — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 15:03:43 +0000

Collaboration software developer 37signals has bought Ember, an iPhone app for Campfire, according to a blog post. on the company’s site. 37signals develops Campfire, which is a popular real-time group chat tool used by developers and businesses. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

37signals founder Jason Fried says that Ember’s iPhone app, which was developed by app developer Overcommitted, lets you chat, view transcripts, jump between rooms, share pictures in a Campfire chat. The app caught Fried’s eye earlier this year and the company decided to buy the developer and re-launch Ember as Campfire for the iPhone.

The app, which was priced at $9.99, is now free. 37signals also develops Basecamp, a project management and collaboration application; Highrise, a contact management platform; and Backpack, and information organization application.

CrunchBase Information

37signals

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37signals Buys Campfire iPhone App Ember

IPS Company Blog – IP.Nexus First Pre-Sale

admin — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 12:47:00 +0000

We are very excited to be nearing the first public beta release of IP.Nexus! There has been much interest in the community for this new product and we cannot wait to get it out the door so everyone can start to enjoy its ecommerce, support, and other features.

As this product deals with monetizing your community, we are being very careful with its release. We do not want to release a product that might be unstable when it is designed to collect money on your behalf. Therefore, we are going to offer pre-sales for IP.Nexus in two phases. The first phase will be limited to 50 people and will be offered at a generous discount off the retail price. In return for this large discount, these 50 people will have access to pre-beta release of IP.Nexus and a private forum to give us feedback.

The final, retail price of IP.Nexus will be $74.99 plus an optional renewal of $35 every 6 months for continued support, services, and upgrades. For this first round of limited pre-sale, we will be offering the first 50 people to buy IP.Nexus a reduced up-front price of $50 plus no renewals for a full year.

Once this first limited, 50 sale offer is full we will not accept new sales until our second pre-sale which will come when the first, public beta is available. The second pre-sale will be offered to unlimited people for a short time so please keep an eye on our company blog for updates.

Please note that if you are one of the lucky 50 pre-orders, no ticket support will be offered. You are also going to be using pre-beta software so there will be issues and we will appreciate your feedback and bug reports.

To order, simply login to the client area and click New Purchase. You will see IP.Nexus under IP.Board Optional Addons. Once the first 50 are sold out it will disappear so act now! Once you purchase, login to the company forums with same you use in the client area and you will see an IP.Nexus testing forum appear under the Customer Lounge forum.

First 50 Sold Out

In just an hour we have sold out of the first 50 pre-sale licenses. Please keep an eye on our company blog for the public pre-sale coming soon. Thanks for your support!

IPS Company Blog – IP.Nexus First Pre-Sale

The Wallee: The Real Apple TV

admin — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 03:42:31 +0000

Look at me. Now look at the kitchen wall. Now look at me again. I’m on a horse. Look again? Look at the iPad on the wall!

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I’d like to present to you the Wallee, a thingamabob for your iPad that lets you attach it to your wall. That’s right: you’ve just made your own 10-inch Apple TV.

Some Tech Behind Inception And Avatar Becomes A Reality On Your iPad And iPhone

admin — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 01:30:18 +0000

Several years ago, it seems like just about everyone saw the film Titanic. This past year, it seems the same was true for Avatar. And this past Summer, it seems as if everyone is seeing Inception. All three films share something in common: their use of Autodesk Maya, a piece of visual effects software. Now that technology has been ported to the iPhone and iPad.

Obviously, Autodesk Fluid FX isn’t going to be as powerful as Maya running on a hardcore system. But Fluid FX is nonetheless impressive. And it’s pretty amazing that these kind of effects can be done on these relatively cheap consumer devices, whereas a just a few years ago systems costing thousands of dollars were required to render this stuff.

The best way to describe what the app can do is to show it to you. For that, watch the video below. But basically, it’s an app that lets you manipulate pictures with a range of effects. And it has other natural elements like smoke and fire that you can manipulate on your iPad or iPhone.

The use of these devices’ multi-touch capabilities is the key to all of this. The app can recognize up to 10 simultaneous multi-touch inputs, we’re told.

The resulting work you make can saved to your devices. Or you can output any of this to a larger screen, like a television. There’s also a way to cycle through various effects and put them on display. But to me Fluid FX is just as interesting as a technological demonstration of what these devices are now capable of. And perhaps even more so, as a way to show was the other software Autodesk offers is capable of.

Autodesk’s Joe Stam, who has won two Oscars for his work effect work on films, created this app. Previously, Autodesk has released Sketchbook Mobile for the iPhone and iPad, which was a top-selling app.

Autodesk Fluid FX will be out in the App Store tomorrow. It will cost $1.99.

CrunchBase Information

Autodesk

iPad

iPhone

Information provided by CrunchBase

Some Tech Behind Inception And Avatar Becomes A Reality On Your iPad And iPhone

A Must Listen: The Steve Jobs Song [Video]

admin — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 00:30:26 +0000

I thought I was a fanboy. I’ve got nothing on Jonathan Mann.

Regular readers may recall that Mann is the guy behind the Bing jingle (which we didn’t like – but students did, or were forced to), the song about me (which we did like), and most recently, the iPhone 4 antenna song (which not only did we love, but apparently Apple did too). Mann, touched by the fact that Apple decided to play his song at their press conference last Friday, decided to follow it up with a serenade for CEO Steve Jobs.

Warning: if some of my posts about Apple drive you crazy, this song is going to make your head explode.

We have lyrics like:

“If that sounds like Moses, it’s no accident. The cult of Macintosh is a religion.”
“We bow down to products that make us weep. The beauty of simplicity. The shepherd and his sheep.”
“In his

Queer Eye-Phone: Gay Social Network Fabulis Gets An App

admin — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 23:28:23 +0000

Since its public beta launch in April, fabulis has been growing quickly. The gay mens’ social network now has over 51,000 members — up 40 percent in the last 30 days alone. And they’re taking that growth mobile, with the launch of a new iPhone app today.

The app offers all the best parts of the website, but extends upon them by utilizing the location element that the iPhone offers. The default view of the app is the “nearby” tab which shows fabulius members, known as “fabbits,” that are close to your actual location. If you find someone nearby that you want to engage with, you can chat with the click of a button.

There’s also a “shake-it” functionality, which launches a fabulis slot machine. This returns you a random fabulis member nearby who you may or may not know, and allows you to view their profile and chat with them.

The other major