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Now On Your iPhone, ReadyForZero Is Ready To Save You From Debt

jos — Tue, 22 May 2012 19:30:21 +0000

YC alum ReadyForZero , an online financial service that’s trying to get people out of debt faster, is today expanding to mobile with the launch of its first mobile app. For now, the experience is designed mainly to give you at-a-glance insight into your current debt situation. However, the mobile app also uses iOS push notifications to alert you to large purchases and payments which could impact your financial goals. Says ReadyForZero CEO and co-founder Rod Ebrahimi, this feature is designed to “keep you honest,” similar to the free ReadyForZero credit card stickers , which shame you into putting your card back into your wallet. As with the stickers, ReadyForZero’s push notifications are like nagging reminders when you’re not staying on course. But while the stickers are like a simpler solution than having to put your credit card in ice (yep, this is a thing), the app’s push notifications aren’t just about keeping you from being naughty – they also alert you when you complete financial goals, make payments, or the interest rate changes. For those unfamiliar with the service, ReadyForZero automatically imports data from your bank accounts, credit card accounts and loans, then uses this information to actively make recommendations as to when you’re able to make extra payments in order to save on interest. It can also alert you to the repercussions that recent big-ticket purchases will have on your plans to pay down your debt within a given timeframe, and can suggest ways you can get back on track. The mobile app, like the desktop-size website, lets you track your progress, payments and view all your accounts (loans, credit cards, etc.). Ebrahimi says that he knew now was the right time to go mobile because of the huge problem with student loan debt in particular. “Earlier this year, total outstanding student loan debt surpassed $1 trillion, overtaking total outstanding credit card debt,” he says. And on July 1st, the federal student loan rate is scheduled to double from 3.4% to 6.8%, he adds, depending on the results of this vote. In other words, it’s a good time to expand the ReadyForZero service to other platforms – especially one favored by students (their phones). The iOS app is going live now in iTunes. And yes, Android version is in the works.

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Now On Your iPhone, ReadyForZero Is Ready To Save You From Debt

Fellody And Tastebuds Are New Spotify Apps To Help You Find Your Perfect Music Partner

Administrator — Thu, 10 May 2012 22:40:44 +0000

This post is written by our regular contributor Natasha Starkell , the CEO of GoalEurope , the outsourcing advisory firm and a publication about outsourcing, innovation and startups in Central and Eastern Europe. Twitter @NatashaStarkell . Gplus.to/natashastarkell .† There are some of us who believe that having matching tastes in music is an essential for a relationship. Now two Spotify apps are setting out to prove it. The German founders of Fellody , Robin Simon and Thomas Vatter created an online flirting website where top matches are identified based on users’ music preferences. And they weren’t the only ones. Today Fellody and Spotify are launching Fellody music flirting app, available in English and German languages. At the same time Tastebuds.fm is launching it’s own Spotify app. Tastebuds.fm helps you ‘meet people who share your love for music’. The startup has been making waves with users, especially in the UK (lots of dates and at least one wedding so far). The site was founded by two musicians from London: Alex Parish and Julian Keenaghan. Both founders are members of the band Years Of Rice And Salt. The app integrates with Spotify, scanning a user’s most played music and instantly showing people near to them who have similar tastes. Users can browse prospective dates, listen to their matches’ favourite music and send them a quick message if they catch their eye. The app also allows users to share mixtapes with each other using Spotify’s in-built playlists. Some 48% of Tastebuds.fm’s users have never used a dating site before so it’s reaching a new audience. With the Fellody app users drag and drop their Spotify playlists into the Fellody app. Then Fellody compares the songs on the playlists and offers top matches, which users can engage with by sending flirts and messages directly via the app. Users can also sign up via the Fellody website and add your music history from Last.fm or iTunes. Windows Media Player can also be used to establish music preferences. Fellody is essentially a social network based on musical tastes, where flirtatious behavior is acceptable and encouraged. Its community shares music in a public feed and cheers with a “this rocks!” button for good finds. Fellody “friends” are called “Groupies” and the whole look and feel of the website is rather fun and cool. Unlike its competitor, Tastebuds , Fellody might be considered quite purist. You can only upload those music titles you have actually played on your computer, listened to on Last.fm or added to the Spotify playlist. It goes as far as taking into account music genres and play count. This, according to founder Robin Simon, is to prevent someone pretending they like a band only to get attention. Both founders spend most of their free time with music, and the idea of Fellody was born at one of the music concerts they attended. Simon is a serial entrepreneur, whose previous businesses include Sodatech and Sodapix . He is a lead singer in his band Grant Lassie . His co-founder Thomas Vatter worked for several years as a product manager at German ProSiebenSat.1 Media AG .

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Fellody And Tastebuds Are New Spotify Apps To Help You Find Your Perfect Music Partner

Facebook Helps Third-Party Mobile Apps Grow Today…So It Can Monetize Their Content With Ads Tomorrow

bestcbstore — Wed, 02 May 2012 03:08:08 +0000

The fundamental misunderstanding of Facebook’s mobile prospects is that it’s trying to compete with iOS and Android for in-app payment revenue via HTML5. It’s not. What Facebook really wants is the content produced by apps on every platform, which it can monetize with ads. Payments revenue is a very nice bonus, but not critical. That’s why Facebook announced today that it’s making money on mobile for everyone else by pouring traffic into their apps. Facebook says it drove 160 million visitors and 1.1 billion visits to third-party apps last month, up from 60 million visitors and 320 million visits in February. And now seven of the top 10 grossing iOS apps and six of the top Android apps integrate it to power discovery and virality. By showing that it can drive traffic to mobile apps, devs will keep integrating Facebook and sending it news feed stories that the social network show ads next to. Facebook has powered many of the big recent mobile success stories. The Flixster movie review and info mobile web app saw Facebook referral traffic soar to 480,000 hits a day, up 10x in the last four weeks. BranchOut released its Facebook-integrated professional networking mobile app 12 weeks ago, and has since seen its traffic boost from one million monthly active users to 12.5 million MAU. Apps like Viddy (now at 16 million registered users) and SocialCam have jetted to the top of the free charts thanks to traffic from their Facebook Timeline integrations. Viddy’s a perfect example for understanding Facebook’s mobile strategy. Facebook is promoting the app here even though it’s a native mobile app where the social network can’t make any money taxing in-app purchases. But that’s fine because instead, Viddy is sending tons of highly engaging video content to the Facebook news feeds and Timelines. When users spend time on Facebook to watch Viddy videos, Facebook makes money on ads. And even as its user base shifts towards mobile, Facebook will still make money on ads. Sponsored Stories on mobile work. I know because I don’t mind seeing them, opposed to the obtrusive banner ads and instantly-scrolled-past sponsored Google search results you typically see on mobile. When old media like Forbes write that “[Facebook] has no idea how it will make money in mobile”, they reveal its them that are clueless. In fact, I think Facebook has one of the most enduring ad-based mobile monetization strategies out there because its managed to create ads we hardly notice but that still do their jobs — promoting the brands and apps your friends interact with. Imagine how much an app developers like Viddy are willing pay to show this Sponsored Story like that surely drive installs? The only thing Facebook needs to make that strategy work is a news feed that stays addictive. That’s why it wants to be social layer and data hub, not a traditional mobile platform. If it’s aggregating all the best content created by today’s top mobile apps, and filtering by relevancy to show stuff made by your friends, you can bet that years from now you’ll still have a reason to visit Facebook. Everyday. Like 500 million other people already do.

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Facebook Helps Third-Party Mobile Apps Grow Today…So It Can Monetize Their Content With Ads Tomorrow

Foursquare Launches $10 Instant Verification Service For Businesses

admin — Wed, 02 May 2012 02:31:19 +0000

Foursquare is enhancing its feature set for businesses today, with the introduction of a new verification service for merchants. The company says that for a one-time, $10 fee, owners and managers will now be able to instantly verify their business in order to start using Foursquare’s business tools, which include the ability to offer specials, update the business listing, and access data about their customers and visitors. For those businesses who can’t register online, there’s still an option to verify the business via snail mail, but this is a much slower method. Foursquare says the mail-in option can take anywhere from three to four weeks to complete. In today’s age of instant gratification, that may as well be forever . The business verification process walks the venue owner through a series of simple steps which begin with locating the listing on Foursquare, clicking the “claim” link which appears next to the listing (note that business owners will have to register and log in with a Foursquare account in order for this to work), and then finally, verifying that the manager is, indeed, actually the manager. Business owners and managers have typically needed to provide Foursquare with their ID, the URL of the venue and links to the venue’s website, and/or page on Yelp, Google and CitySearch. Foursquare would then review the data and would follow up with a phone call to the business to confirm. Obviously, the new $10 fee is only meant to slow down those who would want to illegitimately claim a venue as their own, but isn’t meant to be a major new source of revenue for the company to tap into. Foursquare says that as of today, over 750,000 business have signed up to reach the company’s 20 million users via the free merchant tools provided. The new verification feature is U.S.-only for now. (Sorry, world).

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Foursquare Launches $10 Instant Verification Service For Businesses

Kickstarter: These Nerdy Glasses Will Record Your Life

Administrator — Wed, 02 May 2012 02:15:52 +0000

While the use case for these glasses can quickly become quite dubious, the YouGen.tv glasses by Vergence Lab are pretty cool. Not only do they instantly change from sunglasses to clear Buddy-Holly-style specs they also record your life as it happens. Created by Jon Rodriguez and Erick Miller, the glasses will go for a $199 pledge (they’ll retail for $299) and the creators expect these things to become more powerful over time by including HUD features in future versions. Arguably, they’re pretty simple. Here’s the run down: We’re beginning this big idea by creating social video sharing, trend setting electric powered sun glasses. Our product will record 1st person point of view, and have “magic-glass” (chromatic shifting conductive glass) lenses for an instant on/off “electric powered sunglass” feature. It’s a consumer electronics fashion accessory designed with technology to enable cool new social video and new electric sunglasses lens capabilities while being fashion-forward and stylish in the process. There aren’t many details in terms of actual hardware, storage, wireless capabilities and the like and I suspect it will be amazingly hard to get all that circuitry inside those frames, but gosh they’ll be great if and when they work. Project Page

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Kickstarter: These Nerdy Glasses Will Record Your Life

Hack Your Housing: Check Out This Berkeley Freshman’s ‘Ridiculously Automated’ Dorm Room

vertical8 — Tue, 01 May 2012 05:16:27 +0000

So this is pretty fun. A University of California at Berkeley freshman named Derek Low uploaded a video to YouTube today of what he’s calling the “BRAD”, or the Berkeley Ridiculously Automated Dorm. Apparently, Low set out three months ago to make “the most ridiculously automated dorm room in the school ever.” That’s a hard claim to verify, but by the looks of the results — which apparently only set Low back a few hundred dollars — I’d venture to say he has probably taken the crown. You should really just watch the video above, which is fun and well-edited, but some highlights include: Motion sensors that detect when someone enters or exits the room The ability to control things in the room such as the lights, window shades, and music via voice controls and mobile apps An emergency red “party mode” button that closes the shades, swaps out the overhead lights for flashing neon and strobe ones, and turns on dance music A quick glance at Low’s web presence shows that the BRAD is far from his only hack — he actually has an entire website he describes as “a home laboratory site which showcases the projects and experiments I’ve done in my free time,” and categories on the site include High Voltage, Lasers, Pyro, Weapons & Ballistics, Electronics, and Chemistry. In general, it’s a refreshing sign that not all young people are consumed in listening to bad pop music, playing Fantasy Football, and sexting (not that there’s anything wrong with those things, per se , but this world is not going to engineer itself.) At this point Low is still only a teenager, so it’ll be interesting to see what more he comes up with in the years ahead — and actually, whether he makes it through Cal before getting swept up in the tech hiring-pocalypse . Getting an education is important, but something tells me that there are lots of startups and larger tech companies out there that are chomping at the bit to have more people like him on their teams.

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Hack Your Housing: Check Out This Berkeley Freshman’s ‘Ridiculously Automated’ Dorm Room

A Rare Sale: Despite 30 Million Activations In The Last Year, Google Sends SketchUp To Trimble

admin2 — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 01:17:57 +0000

At this time of year, we usually find ourselves reporting on Google breaking out the brooms for a little spring cleaning. Last week, Google again proved seasonally reliable, as Frederic reported on its shuttering of Google Patent Search Homepage, One Pass, Google Related, and a number of other features and products. CEO Larry Page said in his “Update From The CEO” earlier this year that Google has shuttered or combined 30 products since April 2011. Google is prolific when it comes to its in-house production, churning out new ideas and products all the time, and the company isn’t afraid to pull the plug if the idea doesn’t pan out. But this morning Google pulled a relatively unusual move, announcing not a closure, or a purchase, but a sale (!). The product, called SketchUp has become one of the most popular 3-D modeling tools in the world, with over 30 million activations of the program in 2011. And today, Google announced that the SketchUp team and technology will be leaving the Google campus to join Trimble Navigation , for an undisclosed sum. Since then, SketchUp has lived at Google, undergoing a number of upgrades, and growing exponentially thanks to Google’s sizable reach. Yet, it’s hard not to see Trimble as a great fit for SketchUp, considering that Google has its hands full with everything from ads to social networks. Trimble, on the other hand, builds location and positioning technology used in surveying, mapping, construction, agriculture, and marine navigation equipment. In its post today announcing the acquisition, SketchUp said that Trimble will give its platform a greater opportunity to be integrated into equipment that’s used in the field, and potentially into the hands of those who will really know what to do with it. In SketchUp’s words, “with Trimble’s commitment to invest in our growth, we’ll be able to innovate and develop new features better than ever before.” And while that’s likely the case, this does seem an intimation that Google wasn’t either willing to or capable of getting the product into the field, or into the hands of that niche, specialized user. SketchUp said that, in spite of joining Trimble, it will continue to offer the free version of its platform, whose importance to its operations “isn’t changing in the least.” Google helped SketchUp’s technology reach a wide audience of woodworkers, filmmakers, game developers, and engineers — with over 30 million activations — but now it’s Trimble’s turn at the wheel. No word on what SketchUp will be doing with its $495 Pro version, if anything. Stay tuned. According to Reuters , the acquisition is expected to be finalized in Q2 2012. For more, check out SketchUp’s blog post here .

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A Rare Sale: Despite 30 Million Activations In The Last Year, Google Sends SketchUp To Trimble

The Rise Of Instagram: Tracking The App’s Spread Worldwide

admin2 — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 19:00:33 +0000

The industry just can’t stop analyzing the Instagram success story , and this month, it’s app store analytics firm Distimo’s turn to take a crack at it. The company, which typically releases reports revealing notable mobile app and app marketplace trends, has turned its focus to the rise of Instagram. In its latest report , Distimo looked at how Instagram became successful, how it spread across the world, how the app’s usage compares to the number of downloads it received and more. Instagram was launched about a year and a half ago, in October 2010. By October 2011, Distimo says the app was seeing under 10,000 downloads per day in the U.S. However, by April 2012, Instagram was generating well over 100,000 downloads per day in the iTunes App Store in the U.S. Using data from real-time photo search engine Skylines in conjunction with its own, Distimo charted the app download increases from May 2011 to April of this year, and found that the cumulative downloads of Instagram were about 7 times higher in March 2012 than in May 2011. Instagram shares on Twitter had also increased more than 12 times – a metric that matters even more than downloads to some extent, because it points to active users and the average number of shares per user increasing. After the release of the Android app and the Facebook acquisition , Instagram downloads increased to become around eight times higher than in May 2011. Shares also spiked to increase more than 20 times over May 2011. Distimo then examined how the app fared outside the U.S. by analyzing trends in the top non-U.S. markets: Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea and the U.K. Combined with the U.S., which alone accounts for 25% of the free downloads in the App Store for iPhone, these countries generate around 72% of the free app downloads. Interestingly enough, Instagram is not equally successful in all these markets. It took Instagram only one day to reach the number one position in the Photography category in the App Store for iPhone in the U.S., but it took it over a year and a half in Korea and nearly two months in China. The reason for the slower rise is that these markets showed a preference for apps like Instagram , but that allowed sharing to local networks like Sina, QQ Space and me2day. Instagram never reached the Top 300 apps list one day post-launch in China and Korea, and in Germany it only made it to position #288 one day post-launch, then disappeared off the top 300 list for a week. In English-speaking countries, however, the app followed the same general course as it did in the U.S. It rose in popularity during the first month, dipped in December 2010, then rose again gradually during 2011, eventually becoming the most popular app in the whole iTunes App Store. During March and April 2012, Instagram has never been ranked lower than the top 35 overall app in English-speaking countries. In Australia, the U.S. and Canada, it never dropped out of the top 25 during the same time. Meanwhile, in Italy, Instagram followed the same general pattern as in the U.S. over the past year, but in France, Germany, China and Korea, it lagged behind in popularity when compared with the U.S. Instagram has been fairly popular through the entire period in Japan, but its popularity grew less there over the year than it did elsewhere, with its average monthly rank between 35 and 85. In Japan, Italy and Australia, Instagram became a top 10 app within a month of its launch. In Germany, the U.S. and Canada, it took around 350 days. The moment it reached that spot coincided with when Instagram announced it reached 10 million users . Twitter sharing had also increased, with over 200,000 pictures posted to the network in one day via Instagram – 14% more than a week prior. In China, Instagram never made it into the top 10 position. The highest it has been there is #12, which it reached on April 11, 2012. While most of Distimo’s report looks into iTunes trends, Instagram did launch on Android on April 3, 2012 . When Google’s algorithm began ranking the app a few days post-launch, it was already a huge success. By April 6, it was #3 in the U.S. Google Play store. Similar to iPhone trends, the app was most popular in the U.S. and less popular in Korea and China. It never made the top 300 in Korea and ranked #48 in China. In all English-speaking countries and Italy, Instagram reached the #1 spot in days and in France, the Android version became more popular than the iPhone version, reaching spot #9. In Germany, however, Instagram only reached #51. The industry, media, pundits, and critics alike have been analyzing Instagram’s phenomenal rise over the past months, and debating whether it was worth the $1 billion price tag Facebook paid. Distimo says Instagram certainly “made its mark on the app market,” noting also that Instagram is a new kind of social network – one built entirely from an app. That alone was reason enough for Facebook to take interest, we’d say. Adds Distimo: “Instagram definitely proved the app store economy is something everybody should keep an eye on as the next big thing might just come from an app store.”

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The Rise Of Instagram: Tracking The App’s Spread Worldwide

Shared Task List Maker Asana Gets A New Pose For Big Groups, Adds Premium Workspaces

Administrator — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 19:00:15 +0000

Asana has been slowly sleeping across TechCrunch lately, and the low-key but ambitious company revealed last week that it has been doing the same elsewhere – Twitter, Foursquare, LinkedIn, and Airbnb are some of the other workplaces it’s been showing up. And today, the shared task-list maker is rolling out the next part of its enterprise plan. It will now be officially available to teams of more than 30 people, via a monthly membership fee. Prices start at $300 per month for up to 50 teammates, with 75 and 100-person groups running higher. Those who subscribe will be able to use project-level permissions, which co-founder Justin Rosenstein tells me is one of the more sought-after features so far. It’s a smart one to charge for, as large groups can typically afford the cost, and have use cases that require it. People in these Premium Workspaces plans will also get priority support; the product may be simple, but when you get into a big organization, someone is bound to have questions. The product will otherwise stay free for teams under 30, although they can also pay $100 a month for project permissions and support. The big picture, as Josh wrote last week, is about building a centralized tool that naturally fits into any project you’re trying to get done. Instead of trying to build a fancy superstructure of features like older enterprise software companies, it has focused on the humble task list as the the most important feature to help people organize and complete their work more quickly. Rosenstein and co-founder Dustin Moskovitz hope to one day offer a work graph. It’d be like Facebook’s social graph, but for any type of task that you need to get done with anyone else — a way for people get their work out of email and into something they can actually keep track of. And, customizable via the developer platform it just introduced last week. If it wasn’t obvious already, the founders’ background building Facebook in the early days made its mark, and now Asana is on its way to taking on the world, becoming the Facebook of work.

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Shared Task List Maker Asana Gets A New Pose For Big Groups, Adds Premium Workspaces

Spain Gets Its Own Netflix Today With Youzee’s Public Launch

blogger — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 20:47:14 +0000

Spain is getting its own version of Netflix, thanks to a company called Youzee , which exits its private beta period today. Like Netflix, Youzee offers streaming movies and TV on-demand, but it also features titles for rent, too. The company has agreements with a number of distributors, including BBC, Sony, Disney, Fox International Channels, TVE, Telemundo and more. To kick off its launch, Youzee is offering new users to try out the service for free. New users can watch up to 10 hours from Youzee’s catalog for free, without entering in their credit card information. Another option invites users to try out Youzee for 30 days for free, if they’re willing to hand over their payment data in advance. Both offers provide access to the entire catalog, and will include the ability to stream from desktop, tablet or mobile. After the free trial ends, Youzee’s subscription service is 6.99 euros monthly to continue watching, plus the option to rent out of catalog content for 2.99 or 4.99 (HD). In terms of content, while the company may have deals in place with several distributors, clicking on them from the drop-down box provided sometimes leads you to an empty section – so, clearly access to content is not on par with U.S.-based Netflix, for example. The service also includes social sharing options built-in, which let its users post to Facebook and Twitter. Based in Madrid, Youzee describes itself as a startup with “an international outlook,” and the company previously told us that it plans to develop the model in other European countries in the future. The service launched into private beta in December 2011, and now counts nearly 50,000 users, according to the ticker on its website.

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Spain Gets Its Own Netflix Today With Youzee’s Public Launch