Startups Archives - Page 144 of 144

We Talk With Selena Gomez Backed Post Cards On The Run

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7o5qegNMIk&version=3&hl=en_US&rel=0]
Some may know her as a Disney Channel princess while others may know her as the other half of Justin Bieber, but Selena Gomez is now part angel investor. Gomez has invested in a new company called Postcards on The Run.

Postcards is a simple concept, an app for your iPhone or Android device allows you to send real post cards through the mail for a very small fee, for your friends back home. Did you take a picture that is worthy of timeless saving? Would you rather sent a personalized postcard from Disney World with you and the fam instead of another postcard with a picture of the Magic Kingdom?

These are all perfect use cases for Postcards On The Run.

According to JWT Intelligence turning digital products into physical goods is one of the biggest trends as we head into 2012 and Postcards on the Run is on the cusp of that. Our Senior Editor, Brent Fishman talks with Postcards on the Run at CES 2012’s Eureka Park, a booth area specifically for start ups.

Selena Gomez artist page on Google Music Store and Apple iTunes

Intel Backs Urban Airship

Two weeks ago Urban Airship, that specializes in shaping engagement for mobile app developers across multiple platforms announced that they have completed a 15 million dollar round of financing. That round, was led by big names like Salesforce and Verizon. Today it was revealed that Intel also participated in that round of financing.

In addition to the capital investment from Intel Capital, Urban Airship also announced that they’ve entered into a business collaboration agreement with Intel’s Software and Services Group. In this agreement Urban Airship will help developers who’ve already partnered with Intel to provide superior engagement services, push notifications and app infrastructure for those developers.

“The top app companies look to Urban Airship for help shaping the most engaging user experience onmobile,” said Lisa Lambert, vice president, Intel Capital. “We are well aligned with Urban and they help us bring even more value to developers creating apps for the users of millions of Intel® Atom™ processor-based devices.”

“Our mission is to shape mobile experiences that are constantly getting smarter, more fun and more useful,” said Urban Airship CEO Scott Kveton. “Working with Intel lets us extend our influence beyond smartphones and into the fast-growing markets for tablets and netbooks.”

Android Focused A-Fund Yields 7 Great Android Start Ups

Earlier this year venture firm DCM announced a cooperative effort for a new venture fund. The fund calls itself the “A Fund” where the A stands for Android. The fund started with an announcement and $100 million dollars back in April and today they’ve announced their startups. DCM’s A Fund is a direct competitor to the $200 million dollar iFund at Kleiner Perkins.

Here’s the list:

Appia: a derivative of pocketgear and the original Handango is actually the longest running third party app store. They also offer private labeling for OEM’s and carriers to provide app stores. In the past, Eric Schmidt and Blackberry Ventures have financed Appia.

Billing Revolution: One click billing solutions for Android

Pappayamobile: Social mobile gaming for Android with 30 million users and 350 games already

Happy Elements: provides social mobile games for large social networks outside of Facebook.

Kanbox: Cloud storage firm in China

Loki Studios: specializes in environmental aware and location focused smartphone games

Kakao Corp: mobile messaging platform with over 25 million users.

Source: Venturebeat

He’s baaaaaack, Arrington post from his new blog

The man behind one of the most if not most influential Tech blogs out there is back after his week vacation. Michael Arrington has returned to create his own blog, get this Uncrunched.com. A straight attack against his former employer AOL and Arianna Huffington who ousted him just weeks ago after he started his own VC company with the backing of AOL’s own money. Nothing has been posted yet except for the picture above and Here I am. Which AOL is now looking back and thinking maybe we could have either handled this different or bought up some domains before letting him walk out the door.

Starting his own blog wasn’t a shocker as other well known VCs do the same, however this one may go into direct “war” with TechCrunch his former baby and home. What we known from the past is his tendency to favor certain start-ups VS others. Will the same be said about this one we don’t know. Or will he just use this as those others and talk about their own companies they’ve invested in. Either way, this is going to be an interesting end of 2011 when it comes to Tech sites.

Source: GeekNewsCentral

Nibletz & TDG Live At TCD With Ring Shuffle

With so many exhibitors at TechCrunch, each startup company had to do something different to set themselves apart from one another. One company gave free samples of chocolate covered bacon (yum!). Another startup gave away free socks. RingShuffle raffled off a free date. First of all,..what?! Second, what did a date have to do with RingShuffle? Thirdly, no I didn’t go on a date but the app is pretty awesome!

More after the break
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Swype Secures Another 6 Million in Financing

Swype, the most popular alternative keyboard for smartphones, announced today that they have received another $6 million dollars in a new round of financing. Leading the pack in this round were Samsung Ventures, Nokia Growth Partners, Benaroya Capital, DOCOMO Capital and Ignition Partners.

Swype is an alternative keyboard to the stock keyboard found on many Samsung and Nokia smartphones. It allows the user to “swype” on their keyboard by drawing a connection between letters for the words they want to type. Nuance’s multi keyboard app called Flex T9 allows for similar technology.

Swype founder Cliff Kushler says he hopes to have Swype on 100million devices by the end of the year. In addition to smartphones and tablets Kushler is hopeful that the technology will adapt to other connected devices like car stereo head units, and home control devices. Kushler is also known for his involvement in the creation of T9 texting, a short form texting language that “dumb phone” users made popular at the beginning of the decade.

Source

StartupBus Kick-Off Party July 8th in San Fran

What do you get when you add some beer, a bus, a bunch of hackers, pizza, coffee, Mountain Dew and ideas? The Start Up Bus, why that’s what!

The StartupBus is the brain child of Elias Bizannes who thought if you throw a bunch of entrepreneurial minded hackers into a moving bus they could come up with excellence, and they have. The start up bus started in 2010 as a half baked idea by Bizannes to take a bus full of likeminded individuals from the bay area to sxsw to launch their start ups. Well apparently this idea caught on and people began to blog about it. This left Bizannes having to find a bus and actually do the trip.

Fast forward to 2011 and this time he had multiple buses from across the country all leave just before SXSW and launch their ideas at SXSW. The catch though, whatever was launched had to have been created on the bus. The busriders formed teams after deciding on the project. Some members would code the back end, some would code the front end. Other team members would jump on the phone with their colleagues, investors, friends and potential users to drum up excitement.

Sleep is evidently not an option. This is the mother of all hackathons on wheels.

Tomorrow StartupBus is launching the next phase of the start up bus at it’s new headquarters, the start up house. If you’re in the bay area and a start up minded individual you can bet that the Start Up bus launch party will be worth checking out. StartupBus has some very exciting news they will be sharing on site tomorrow night. If you can’t make it to the event check here Saturday morning!

Want to sign up email: info@nibletz.com