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GetHired Nabs $1.75 Million To Launch Its Video-Centric Recruiting Platform & Job Board

Achilles — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 14:46:51 +0000

Paper resumes are — or should be — going out of style. They rarely give employers a complete profile of a potential hire, they’re filled with value-less buzzwords (or in my case, action verbs), and the thought of them makes trees cry. You don’t want to make trees cry, do you? No, you don’t. So many companies are turning to alternative, technological means to find the right candidates for job openings, some using algorithms, ranking systems, SaaS solutions like Taleo’s , and more. In fact, one in six are now finding jobs on social networks . What kind of user generated content is often found posted to social networks? Video. Facebook was, for a time, the number three video site in the U.S. Furthermore, we’re telecommuting more and more frequently, using Skype, Google Hangouts, Facebook video — you name it. Videos are helping startups to explain their products and goals. So, when applied to the hiring process, it would make sense, then, that job videos can enhance the process, for both sides, right? This is the bet being made by a young startup, founded this year and based in Palo Alto, called GetHired . The startup is today launching a video-based, social recruiting platform and job board that is looking to empower job seekers — allowing them to set themselves apart from the competition — by creating video and audio profiles to accompany their resumes. On the flip side of the boardroom table, GetHired believes that its platform will help employers more effectively discover and manage their applicant pools. To help it along in its mission, accompany the launch of the platform, GetHired is today announcing that it has raised $1.75 million in seed funding from a host of angel investors, including CEO of the Global Environment Fund, Jeffrey Leonard , former CEO of Discovery Communications and the current Under Secretary of State For Public Diplomacy And Affairs, Judith McHale , CEO of LegalZoom.com, John Suh , and Mack Capital CEO, Ralph Mack . With its seed round in tow, GetHired is looking to be the first job board to focus on video by enabling users to embed video and audio capabilities directly into the platform so that users can replace stale cover letters with more personal, dynamic responses to employers’ pre-screening questions that kick off every hiring process. GetHired thus allows employers to, at no cost, post open positions online in conjunction with existing job boards, ask pre-screening questions for specific postions, and hopefully search for and pre-screen candidates more efficiently, while starting and finishing the interview process online, in realtime. With video, employers can turn a static pile of resumes into real, human candidates. And addressing the same issue StartWire is looking to disrupt , GetHired allows job seekers to access realtime updates on the status of their applications, alerting them when an employer shows interest, all the way through until the opening is filled. Applicants hate when they spend hours filling out job applications, only to never hear back — and because this is a notorious problem — many don’t waste time going overboard on their applications. With video and a more multimedia applications, applicants just may be encouraged to spend that extra time. As for job seekers, GetHired enables them to create a personal video introduction to accompany their resume, or create a public video to use as a form-intro when applying to multiple positions, follow their favorite companies so that they can get updates on any new jobs posted, or upload their interview availability in realtime, so that employers can hop on the early birds — and schedule meetings and interviews in realtime with GetHired’s scheduling feature. GetHired has a clear and universal value proposition for both job seekers and employers. The resume is dead, or at least dying a lengthy, prolonged death, and it’s being replaced by more dynamic approaches to hiring and putting your best foot forward. Employers want to connect with people who are talented, yes, but also who they know they can work with day in and day out. Video is one piece of the puzzle. It also helps that, at least initially, GetHired is free both for job seekers and employers. However, the company plans to charge employers to post jobs in the future, starting at around $25 a job. The startup’s sizable round of seed funding enables it to launch as a free service, giving it latitude and some time to scale and attract employers and job seekers. Once it does so, no doubt we’ll see the company’s revenue streams come into play, starting with charging for job postings. As with so many other startups grabbing early funding, GetHired will use its seed round to ramp up hiring (GetHired currently has 14 employees), specifically of engineers, and going after that essential customer acquisition. Also, worth asking this rhetorical question: Why do so many startups emulate Facebook’s UI? Is that really necessary? For more, check out GetHired at home here .

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GetHired Nabs $1.75 Million To Launch Its Video-Centric Recruiting Platform & Job Board

Mark Shuttleworth Unveils New Head-Up Display for Ubuntu 12.04

Budowniczy425 — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 19:24:34 +0000

Every time I write about Ubuntu and its (not-so) new Unity interface, I see lots and lots of comments decrying it as useless, an abomination, the worst thing to ever happen to computers, etc. Personally, I’m not so flummoxed by it, but there’s no denying that Unity has been a divisive addition to Canonical’s flagship Linux distribution. The choice to move application menus up to the global bar at the top of the screen has been frustrating to many, and a lot of power users find Unity too mouse-intensive. Mark Shuttleworth, Ubuntu’s Self-Appointed Benevloent Dictator For Life, yesterday unveiled the next step in the Unity evolution: the Head-Up Display . According to Shuttleworth, their testing revealed that “users spent a lot of time, relatively speaking, navigating the menus of their applications, either to learn about the capabilities of the app, or to take a specific action.” The goal of the new Head-Up display is to — eventually — replace menus altogether. Instead of clicking through menus, users type the command they require in a search box. It may sound a bit counter-intuitive at first blush, but take a look at this video for a few examples: Certainly typing “undo” is not a particularly good example of efficiency, but it’s important to remember that not everyone can commit “CTRL+Z” to memory. If you know what you want to do, typing it into an assisted search box may well be faster than navigating nested menus or memorizing arcance key combinations. As Shuttleworth notes, “Hotkeys are a sort of mental gymnastics, the HUD is a continuation of mental flow.” And for power users who railed against the importance of the mouse in Unity to date, the HUD should be a welcome first step toward a better all-keyboard experience. Shuttleworth also mentions that the long-term goals of the HUD include full voice integration, allowing you to simply say the word “undo” rather than type it. Before you start casting aspersions, do read Shuttleworth’s blog post about the HUD . It’s worth a couple minutes of your time.

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Mark Shuttleworth Unveils New Head-Up Display for Ubuntu 12.04

Amazon Web Services Debuts Storage Gateway To Securely Upload Enterprise Data To The Cloud

Budowniczy425 — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 18:29:50 +0000

After launching distributed database DynamoDB last week, Amazon Web Services is debuting another product—AWS Storage Gateway, which is a service that provides enterprises with a new option to securely upload and backup data to the AWS cloud from on-premises software appliances. Basically, the Gateway connect san on-premises software appliance with Amazon’s cloud-based storage for a more secure integration between on-premises IT environments and AWS storage infrastructure. Via the Gateway, data is uploaded to AWS, where it is encrypted and stored in the Amazon’s Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3). The Gateway provides a solution fir enterprises looking for effective backup and rapid disaster recovery between on-premise applications and the cloud. And there is no need to re-architect on-premises applications as the AWS Storage Gateway exposes a standard iSCSI interface that works with existing applications, explains Amazon. As Amazon says in a release: The AWS Storage Gateway also makes it easy to leverage the on-demand compute capacity of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) for additional capacity during peak periods, for new projects, or as a more cost-effective way to run normal enterprise workloads. The Gateway is prices at $125 per month per installed gateway and comes with a 60 day free trial. Snapshot storage pricing starts at only $0.14 per gigabyte per month.

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Amazon Web Services Debuts Storage Gateway To Securely Upload Enterprise Data To The Cloud

Android May Have Consumer Market Share, But iOS Is Tops In Enterprise

Achilles — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 18:00:10 +0000

According to a new report from managed enterprise mobility provider Good Technology , iOS devices (iPhones and iPads) hold the top three spots in the list of the top 10 enterprise activations by device type. The report includes data gathered by Good for Q4 2011 and includes half of the Fortune 100, providing insight into enterprise activation trends among some of the world’s biggest businesses. The company found that despite Android’s overall market share growth and steady absolute growth among Good’s customers, only 35% of all smartphone activations were on Android, compared with iPhone’s 65%. The mid-October release of the iPhone 4S helped that particular device quickly earn the number one position on the top 10 enterprise activations list, with the iPhone 4 moving into spot #2. The iPad 2, meanwhile, claimed the third position. Since there are far more Android devices than iPhone models, it’s not as fair to compare trends on a device-by-device basis. After all, there’s aren’t just a couple models of Android phones out there – there are dozens upon dozens of “top” (popular) devices. However, even when looked at as a whole, Android activations accounted for just 35% of the smartphone activations and only 6% of tablet activations. The Samsung Galaxy S II was the top Android device at spot #6 and was followed by the Motorola Droid Bionic, the Motorola Droid 3, Sprint EVO 4G (Q3′s most popular Android device) and the Motorola Droid X2. Motorola phones were popular over the course of the past year, too, and were represented in the top 10 each quarter. Good does note that iPhone activations had slowed in the previous quarter, in anticipation of the new iPhone, then jumped significantly after its launch, with 31% of smartphone activations from that device alone. But collectively, iOS devices accounted for over 70% of all activations in Q4, an indication that enterprise customers’ iOS preference wasn’t just being boosted by the iPhone 4S launch. iOS is the preferred choice in the enterprise, Good says. On the tablet front, iOS’s domination is even more apparent – the iPad and iPad 2 account for 94% of the total tablet activations in Q4, compared with 6% for Android tablets, where the Galaxy Tab leads the pack. iPads were most popular in three industries: financial services (accounting for 42% for the quarter), business/professional services and life sciences. Going into Q1 and Q2, Good says that it expects iPad and iPad 2 activations to slow heading into March, as customers prepare for the (rumored) launch of the iPad 3. It also expects Android activations to increase on a relative basis after the immediate impact of the iPhone 4S lessens and as BYOD (bring your own device) programs become more common. However, says John Herrema, Senior Vice President of Corporate Strategy at Good, the company expects the iOS/Android numbers to be roughly the same during the first half of 2012 as they are now. A change would require a major shift in tablet trends. “I don’t see that happening with the iPad 3 on the horizon,” says Herrema. “If Android and iOS split smartphone [market share] or even if Android takes the overall smartphone lead, it would still likely be no more than 40% of all Good activations overall, given the dominance of Apple on tablets and the large numbers of tablets we are activating. Meanwhile, I don’t see Android dropping substantially below where it is now because that would require major shift among BYOD smartphone users.” We should note that this report does not look at RIM devices or Windows Phone, as Good doesn’t have insight into these platforms. This is only a comparison between the iOS/Android adoption rates in the enterprise, which by itself, limits itself to enterprise environments where BlackBerry has already fallen from favor.

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Android May Have Consumer Market Share, But iOS Is Tops In Enterprise

Video: Dunder Mifflin’s Office Remade As A Counter Strike Source Map

Achilles — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 17:15:15 +0000

Long before the advent of such games as Minecraft, virtual worlds were coded primarily as first person shooter maps. You could play Half-Life deathmatch in a super-sized kitchen, Counter Strike on a World War II battlefield and so on. Map making was an artform. But it’s clearly not dead. The story goes that this CSS mapper starter building the map in 2009. Since then he’s logged over 500 hours of crafting every detail but he’s not done. In fact he’s looking for someone to complete his masterpiece. Perhaps he’s like me and just bored with the series now that Michael Scott followed his love to Colorado. Who knows, anyway, the map is impressive as is, although I’m not sure if it has the same playability as the original cs_office. Unless of course the map includes Dwight’s weapon caches and super heated door knobs.

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Video: Dunder Mifflin’s Office Remade As A Counter Strike Source Map

Aviary Launches Major Upgrade To SDK, Now Powering 10 Million Photo Edits Per Month

Budowniczy425 — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 23:06:25 +0000

Aviary , the company that makes it easy for mobile developers to integrate image editing into their apps, has a major launch today: they’re introducing an overhauled version of their mobile SDK that’s both more powerful and significantly better looking than the previous one, which launched in September. You may associate Aviary with the startup’s advanced suite of web-based image editing apps, which is what it focused on for years. But last year it shifted toward this developer-facing mobile SDK, which allows third-party developers to quickly integrate photo editing, filters, virtual stickers, and other related features into their applications. It’s essentially a drop-in photo editor, and given how popular image sharing apps like Instagram are these days, it’s no surprise that plenty of mobile developers are baking it into their apps. Today’s update, which is available for both Android, iOS, and web apps includes additional image effects and a refreshed UI. It also paves the way for Aviary’s monetization plans: developers will be able to sell special filters and stickers via in-app purchases, and Aviary will take a cut of these transactions. These monetization features aren’t available broadly yet — Aviary is currently rolling them out to select partners. The first application to include the SDK (which will let you try it out for yourself) will be Pic Stitch (the updated version of their app is currently pending approval from Apple and should be up soon). Alongside the update, Aviary is also sharing some stats: usage of the SDK is growing 50% a month (measured based on how many users are accessing the editor and editing images). And across the 300 partner web and mobile apps to have integrated the SDK, users are editing over 10 million photos each month. Aviary says that a lot of this growth is concentrated among its top applications (it grows as they grow), but says that it’s seeing a nice long-tail in usage too. To help reduce confusion over the mobile SDK and their old suite of image editing tools, Aviary recently revamped its homepage at Aviary.com which now focuses on the developer-facing SDK. If you’re looking for the old, consumer-facing image editors, you’ll need to head to advanced.aviary.com .

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Aviary Launches Major Upgrade To SDK, Now Powering 10 Million Photo Edits Per Month

Hate When Companies Don’t Provide Feedback On Job Applications? StartWire Is For You.

bestcbstore — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 17:05:05 +0000

If you’ve ever been on the job search, you know how frustrating and time consuming it is to manage the process. (If not, just ask one of the more than 13 million people in the U.S. currently there .) You spend untold hours filling out the right forms and fields, adding more action verbs to your resume, etc., and you fire off the application. Then comes the infuriation: Your prospective employer doesn’t respond, so you send a follow-up. Nothing. And another follow-up. Still nothing. Job searchers absolutely hate this — the so-called resume (or application) black hole. While larger companies may be able to afford a few bruised egos, in the end, this deficiency frustrates potential employees — an customers. It can damage your company’s reputation and make you an enemy. It’s not as if job searchers expect the red carpet to be rolled out after every application submitted, all people want is a response or an update. “Thanks, we’re reviewing now. May take a few days,” or “Thanks, but we hired your wife.” Fair enough. People move on. This is the primary pain point a young startup called StartWire is trying to solve. There are plenty of job search engines, recruitment vehicles and so on out there on the Web. So, while the startup does assist in job discovery by allowing you to connect your social network accounts (like LinkedIn, Facebook) and serves you targeted recommendations based on who you know, what companies you’ve applied to, etc., that’s just part of the story. The real value proposition of StartWire lies in its being a project management tool for the job search process. You can use the service without ever actually applying to a job through the site. While most job search sites focus on discovery, StartWire wants to keep you organized and make sure that you’re receiving automatic updates on all of your applications. The startup provides users with these status updates from over 5,400+ companies, automating the connection between the company’s site and StartWire, so that any change made by the company automatically populates in the user’s account. Users’ updates are private and never shared. For companies, the service is free and they don’t have to do anything differently than what they’re doing right now, so it’s a no brainer. For job seekers, they can either automate status updates by tracking the application through StartWire, or they can forward the confirmation email to apps@startwire.com. This too is free, and works with any company job searchers apply to, even if you applied through other websites — all you have to do is give permission for the service to track your applications. If companies don’t provide online status updates, searchers can do so manually on the site. StartWire then organizes all of your applications in one place, labeling each as “active”, “stalled”, or “no longer in the running”, sending you updates in daily emails or texts. StartWire Founder Chris Forman tells us that companies are encouraged to give more feedback to applicants than just “job no longer available”, but that it’s not mandated. This brings up the recent study StartWire released on what most irks job searchers about the process. Unsurprisingly, not responding to a job candidate has serious potential harm for companies’ reputations. The study found that 77 percent of job seekers think less of a company that doesn’t respond to a job application, while 72 percent of respondents said they would be less likely to recommend companies’ products or services or write a positive review online. Obviously, this is one of the biggest causes of anxiety when searching for jobs. Of those polled, 90 percent said that getting feedback on their applications would make the overall process less frustrating. And certainly, it’s not for lack of trying, as the study found that 90 percent of job seekers follow up with potential employers on their status, while only 33 percent of Fortune 500 companies provide feedback through their application system. It’s difficult to stress enough how big of a problem this is, and how companies are potentially doing irreperable damage to their reputation by not doing something that should be very easy to do, just by automating. As for StartWire, the startup launched in early 2011 and had attracted 50,000+ registered users by January 1st of this year. Foreman says that the company is currently on pace to double that number by the end of the month. As it’s operating as a free service, you might be wondering how StartWire is making money. Like many travel and job sites before it, StartWire is a lead generator for job boards and consumer advertisers. Based on a user’s profile, resume, and job search activity, StartWire recommends job sites and offers that it deems relevant to its users, taking a cut if visitors turn into paying customers. It also doesn’t hurt that the New Hampsire(!)-based company is backed by $4 million in venture capital, from a $750K round of seed in late 2010, and a $3.25 million series A round led by Baird Venture Parnters in October of last year. For more, check out the startup’s webinars here .

Fujitsu Japan Rolls Out 2 “Girls-Only” Cell Phones

ACMAir — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 15:23:33 +0000

Do women need special cell phones? Certain companies, such as Deutsche Telekom or Samsung , seem to think so. Now Fujitsu Japan is ready to roll out [JP] not one but two handsets specifically designed “for girls”, a feature phone and an Android model. The Android phone, the so-called F-03D Girls’, has been developed in cooperation with popular teenage fashion magazine Popteen : It comes with a waterproof body, special lights at the bottom and around the camera (see below), pre-installed (and extra-cute) photo frames, and pre-installed apps specifically designed for a female user base. Technically, the F-03D Girls’ features Android 2.3, a 3.7-inch LCD with 480×800 resolution, 1GB ROM, 512MB RAM, an MSM8255 1.4GHz processor, an 8MP CMOS camera, Wi-Fi IEEE802.11b/g/n, 2.1+EDR Bluetooth, a TV tuner, an e-wallet function, and a microSDHC card slot. The F-06D Girls’ is one of the very few new feature phones that are coming out in Japan. Fujitsu designed the handset with nicola , another teenage fashion magazine: Buyers get an original tote bag, a stylus pen (the phone has a 3.3-inch touch display) to decorate pictures (see above), an 8MP camera, various nicola wallpapers, 39 different photo frames, and a total of 3,010 pre-installed emoji for cuter emails. Like its Android counterpart, the F-06D Girls’ is waterproof. Japanese mobile carrier NTT Docomo plans to start offering both Fujitsu phones on January 20.

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Fujitsu Japan Rolls Out 2 “Girls-Only” Cell Phones

Financial Times Acquires London-Based Developer Of Its HTML5 Web App

Administrator — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 17:44:03 +0000

The Financial Times has acquired London-based application development firm Assanka, which built a nifty HTML5 web app – and other applications – for the publisher. (Hat tip to Benedict Evans ) FT staffers such as Katie Morley and Jonathan Wheatley started spreading the news on Twitter, garnering retweets from FT.com managing director Rob Grimshaw and PR rep Tom Glover , who confirmed the acquisition to me but declined to share more details. Read more at TechCrunch Europe .

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Financial Times Acquires London-Based Developer Of Its HTML5 Web App

Google Ventures And Foundry Group Put $9M In Crowdsourced Search Advertising Marketplace Trada

bestcbstore — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 17:28:30 +0000

Crowdsourced SEM management startup Trada has raised $9 million in Series D financing from existing investors Foundry Group and Google Ventures. This brings Trada’s total funding to $17 million. Here’s how Trada works. Agencies and advertisers can specify a budget they are willing to spend on ads, decide which advertising platforms they want their ads to appear on (the site currently supports Bing, Yahoo, and Google), and enter how much they willing to pay-per-click or per acquisition. The site then sources the heavy lifting, like choosing thousands of keywords to target and writing ad copy, to its community of SEM experts to build and manage and advertiser or business’ paid search campaign across search engines. Trada coordinates the payments and takes a small cut of each transaction between advertisers and SEO experts. In November, Trada launched a marketplace that let advertisers and agencies leverage Facebook ad experts to create campaigns on the social network. With the Facebook integration, marketers can enter their parameters and Trada’s Facebook optimizers and creatives will build hundreds or thousands of hyper-targeted profiles and ad creative combinations. Trada says optimizers and creatives earn money on a performance basis by generating low-cost clicks, conversions and social interactions such as “likes” for advertisers. The company says the new funding will support the expansion of Trada’s paid search and Facebook ad marketplace. Founder and CEO Niel Robertson, who is hoping to get the company profitable by the end of 2011, tells me that Trada is also looking to expand to other advertising formats, including retargeting, display and mobile ads. He adds that Trada is seeing particularly strong growth in the Facebook marketplace, and anticipates that the social network advertising marketplace spend will soon rival that of paid search. Considering the massive growth in advertising on Facebook, it’s not surprising that the startup is seeing major traction in this area. Since Trada’s launch nearly two years ago, the startup has helped more than 500 advertisers successfully run paid search and Facebook campaigns, and created a source of income for thousands of paid search and Facebook advertising experts and designers. In January 2011, the highest earning Optimizer (paid search or Facebook expert) in the Trada marketplace earned $4,500 for the month. Last month, the top earner made $14,500, or $175,000 annualized earnings. And at the beginning of 2011, the startup’s largest advertiser had a monthly budget of about $35,000 per month. Today, Trada’s largest advertiser budget is $500,000.

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Google Ventures And Foundry Group Put $9M In Crowdsourced Search Advertising Marketplace Trada