Crazy For Tech - Gadgets,Cell Phones,Cameras » site

Artspace Raises $2.5 Million For Its Contemporary Art Marketplace

bestcbstore — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 21:00:20 +0000

Artspace , an e-commerce startup that helps connect contemporary artists and galleries with potential customers, has raised a $2.5 million Series A funding round with participation from Felicis Ventures, Accelerator Ventures, Blue Equity LLC, and Metamorphic Ventures. The round also includes a wide range of accomplished entrepreneurs. The full roster: Michael Yavonditte (Hashable, Quigo), David Rosenblatt (1stdibs.com, Doubleclick), Dave Morgan (Simulmedia), Seth Goldstein (turntable.fm), Thomas Stemberg (Founder/former CEO of Staples); Rob Selati (Madison Dearborn Capital Partners); Todd Simon (CEO of Omaha Steaks) and Peter Ricketts (former COO of Ameritrade). The company previously raised a $1.2 million seed round last spring. Artspace is setting out to make contemporary art accessible to those of us who aren’t necessarily deeply immersed in the art world already — and to help connect artists and galleries with potential buyers. The site also allows art fairs to create a virtual representation of their fair, which helps expand the number of potential buyers beyond those who can attend an event in-person. The company says it plans to use the money to expand its team, boost marketing, and to continue to build out its product. Alongside the funding news, the company is also announcing that Andrew Goldstein, who was previously executive editor of ArtINFO, will now lead the site’s editorial teams, who will be writing educational content and tracking art-related news. Cofounded by Catherine Levene (formerly COO of DailyCandy) and Christopher Vroom (founder of Artadia), Artspace is one of several NYC-based companies looking to help bring the art world to the web. Other startups in this space include Art.sy (a service, currently in private beta, that looks to be a sort of Pandora for fine art) and Artsicle (which lets customers rent art for $25 a month). There are also sites like 20×200 that sell curated art prints, and Etsy, which has been connecting artists with shoppers directly for years. Asked about how the site differs from Art.sy, which has also generated plenty of buzz, Levene says that Artspace is focused on ecommerce — everything on the site is available for purchase and can be bought directly through the site. In contrast, pieces on Art.sy are not always for sale, and you can’t actually purchase pieces directly through the site (you need to get in touch with Art.sy to coordinate the transaction). The site itself looks great, and there are options available for most pricepoints (the homepage currently includes pieces running from $100 to $6500).

View original post here:
Artspace Raises $2.5 Million For Its Contemporary Art Marketplace

Nerve Dating Re-Launches To Put The Humanity (And Humor) Back In Online Dating

jos — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 05:51:21 +0000

Last year, Nick Paumgarten wrote an interesting article for The New Yorker that detailed the rise of online dating and the effects it’s had on web culture. What struck me most were some of the eye-opening statistics he shared about the size and popularity of the industry, beginning with the fact that fee-based dating sites have become, collectively, a billion-dollar industry — that “one in six new marriages is the result of meetings on Internet dating site.” What’s more, online dating is now the third most common way for people to meet. It’s clear that much of the early blush (read: stigma) around using online platforms to meet new people and pursue relationships has worn off. But anyone who’s spent any time on dating websites knows that plenty of friction still exists, whether it be in the awkwardness of online-to-offline interaction, the inherent dangers of meeting an eStranger, or the problem of having to rely on algorithms and science to find your perfect “match.” As much as dating sites strive to find a scientific method (or a more efficient way) by which to introduce us to the loves of our lives, many of them still feel impersonal and gimmicky, and, as Paumgarten points out in his article, it’s for this reason that online dating remains an isolating pursuit. Sean Mills, the CEO of Nerve Dating , agrees that online dating today still feels like a search for the best deals on airline tickets. It seems as if, in playing online games, we go to buy more missiles, and in doing so suddenly find out that we’re the proud member of an online dating community. Dating sites will do anything to attract new customers, promising true love, infinite happiness, and walls filled with fewer cat pictures. And thus, people are itching for a better way to meet their match, and they’re no longer content with an industry where the prevailing methodology for introducing us to other humans is based on these gimmicks, or on pseudoscience, robot matchmakers, and the deployment of virtual fruit, as Mills said in his introductory letter to the Nerve community . In 1997, Rufus Griscom and Genevieve Field launched a website and eMag dedicated to sex, relationships, and culture called Nerve . After spending eight years as president of everyone’s favorite satirical news source, The Onion , Sean Mills took over as the chief exec at Nerve , looking to bring the same brand loyalty and affinity people had for The Onion to Nerve’s community of sex-addicted readers. Early on, Nerve was defined by some amazing editorial content, boosted by contributions from writers like Jonathan Lethem, Chuck Palahniuk, and Joyce Carol Oates (to name a few), and it evolved into one of the few early success stories of New York’s Silicon Alley. Created as an online sex magazine that both men and women could enjoy — a less raunchy, more highbrow Penthouse, with broad appeal — Nerve has since become a site dedicated more broadly to love and culture. Having witnessed the success of The Onion’s dating site firsthand, which capitalizes on a more relaxed and humorous approach to online dating, Mills officially re-launched Nerve Dating in New York in December as an extension of the existing site. Because Nerve already had a loyal readership and fanbase (about 2 million monthly uniques), there was a readymade audience for Nerve Dating, making it easier, Mills says, to reach critical mass. When creating a new dating website (or really any other consumer-facing web business), scale is one of the biggest challenges, and online dating really doesn’t work unless there is a crowd of people on the site ready for love. Nerve Dating already has over 10,000 users, and Mills says that the team is already hearing success stories. Today, the team is launching Nerve Dating in San Francisco, with plans to continue rolling out across the U.S. The main thrust of Nerve’s bi-costal dating service is to create a platform that “celebrates individual voices,” without the taxonomy inherent to dating websites that tends to lump people into categories so that matching technology can do the heavy lifting. As Mills tells us, the challenge facing the users of online dating sites is not so much in figuring out whether you like someone (people are already pretty good at doing that on their own), but simply in starting the conversation. Walking across the room to introduce yourself to someone you don’t already know? Gulp. That can be challenging, and it’s something that sites like Commonred identify with, as they attempt to meld the meetup and “new people” discovery space, inhabited by startups like Sonar, Meetup, and LetsLunch, with professional networking sites/apps like Branchout and Hashable. Just as Shaker launched to bring a fun, interesting way to socialize on Facebook, Nerve is trying to make dating more like an enjoyable cocktail party, something that’s more natural and casual than an awkward blind date. Thus, on Nerve, users can actively share their thoughts and opinions about restaurants, bars, movies, music, and books, and are instantly introduced to other people who enjoy the same things. Mills equates it to seeing someone at a bar who’s wearing a t-shirt with your favorite band on it — this makes it much easier to approach them and strike up a conversation. On the other hand, an online dating site lives or dies based on the attempts it makes to make its users feel safe and secure, and Mills believes that many sites make the mistake of trying to offer an online dating service for free. If you can make it affordable, he says, it’s to everyone’s benefit, because it boosts the quality of the service offered and helps to keep out unsavory types. (Neve Dating costs $20 a month.) And to that point, Nerve has made it their mission to monitor activity on the site, and the team keeps a close eye on suspicious activity, flagging users for abnormal behavior, and booting them if necessary. In fact, Nerve recently flagged a user for setting up what looked to be a fake profile, and when they contacted the owner, they found that the profile was created by none other than OkCupid Co-founder Chris Coyne. (It’s always a good sign when your nominal competitors are setting up profiles on your site to “check it out.”) While Nerve Dating costs $20 a month, users can respond to messages they receive for free, unlike many other sites. The idea here is to encourage people to interact with each other, to socialize, and reach out, but initial messages are kept to a Twitter-length 141 characters, with the idea being that this takes the pressure off and is a little more casual. Nerve also has a “Last Night” feature, which Mills says is a bit like a checkin, in that users are encouraged to write what they did the night before. And, on that note, an additional perk is that Mills says that he’s enlisted some of the writers at The Onion to pen questions about culture and what users were up to last night. The site will also soon be introducing something which is now internally called “The Like Machine,” which will enable the site to create virtual affinity groups, and help daters meet other people who are interested in similar music, books, and so on. The topics and categories that you follow will show up on your profile, and the site will also be hosting a database of categories people can search through to find users with similar interest graphs. The site also has a “Notice Him/Her” function, which is akin to “poking” someone on Facebook, a nonverbal expression of interest. Building a profile on dating sites can be excruciating, and this is designed to make that process easier, as few people enjoy creating their own personal statements for dating websites. The process is awkward to say the least. When I asked Mills if the team had plans to establish Facebook connect or allow users to pull in their other social profiles, he said that, interestingly, dating sites that implement Facebook Connect have seen a 50 percent drop in signups. This seems to be evidence that, while people want their dating lives to be social, it’s all about discovering new people, they don’t want to be followed by their social graphs, people want to be anonymous. Though Mills is open to potentially integrating with Spotify, or GoodReads — sites that would enable people to share personal information without porting their entire social profiles. Nerve is also hoping to leverage the community its created around its lifestyle and culture publication, hosting live events for people to mingle and hang out, to facilitate yet another opportunity for users to move their online identities into the real world. Innovating in online dating is tricky, and Nerve seems to be off to a great start by giving people a more casual platform through which to interact and meet new people. It’s a tough nut to crack, but check them out at home here , and let us know what you think. (Oh, and mobile apps are in the works.) Readers interested in testing out the site can get two free weeks on Nerve Dating by registering here .

Go here to read the rest:
Nerve Dating Re-Launches To Put The Humanity (And Humor) Back In Online Dating

Codecademy Becomes A Platform: Now Anyone Can Write Programming Tutorials

user — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 03:59:38 +0000

One of the most buzzed-about startups over the last few months has been Codecademy — a site that looks to make programming accessible to just about anyone, with a variety of interactive, web-based courses that have users writing their first lines of code within a few seconds. The site’s ‘Code Year’ program, which invites users to receive one programming lesson each week, racked up a whopping 100,000 signups in only 48 hours — and it even has the White House on board . But, as anyone who has spent much time on the site can attest to, Codecademy has had one big problem: there just aren’t that many lessons available. And the ones that are on there sometimes seem to be moving too quickly, without many practice exercises to explore and reinforce what you’ve just learned. Today, the company is launching a feature that will go a long way toward fixing that. Meet the Codecademy Course Creator . Cofounder Zach Sims says that as soon as Codecademy first launched, the site was inundated by requests from teachers and programmers who were eager to contribute their own lessons. To date that hasn’t been possible — all lessons on Codecademy were written in-house, or by special guest contributors. Starting with today’s launch, which the company is considering a beta, anyone will be able to write their own interactive lessons using the site’s tools (with documentation available explaining how to use them). Sims says that these tools are essentially identical to what the team uses to craft their own in-house courses, so it’s possible to make lessons that are just as good (or better) than the ones that are already on the site. And the tools suport both Ruby and Python in addition to JavaScript (which has been the site’s focus so far), so we’ll be seeing lessons covering more languages very soon. There’s no approval process involved in publishing a lesson — you write it, and Codecademy will give you a link that you can distribute as you wish. However, there will be a screening process that’ll determine which lessons Codecademy will feature on the site. In other words, users won’t be presented with lessons that aren’t any good, but if you want to create a lesson that’s applicable to a class you’re teaching, or to explain an internal company tool to coworkers, you can use Codecademy’s platform to do it. The site doesn’t have any current plans to pay contributors, but to help incentivize users to write high-quality courses, Codecademy aims to provide significant exposure to the best lesson creators. I also asked Sims if Codecademy has any plans to make the site friendlier to users who have no programming experience — in my use of the site I’ve noticed that there isn’t much hand-holding after the first few lessons, and I’m pretty sure I’d be lost if I hadn’t previously been introduced to these concepts. Sims says that the startup is indeed hoping that these additional lessons will help fill in the gaps, and that Codecademy is also introducing new features to help with this: for example, you’ll now be able to click on certain keywords (like ‘Variable’) to jump to the lesson where that concept was explained, in case you need a refresher. Above all, this is a very important shift for Codecademy. With only six employees, the company would have had to to go on a hiring spree if it wanted to keep up with demand and produce a comprehensive collection of lessons addressing both the basics and more advanced concepts. By turning to the community, it can sidestep that problem — it’ll still have the challenge of identifying the best lessons (and incentivizing the best teachers to write them), but given how much traction the site has already, I suspect it won’t have too hard a time collecting an impressive array of course materials in the coming months.

Original post:
Codecademy Becomes A Platform: Now Anyone Can Write Programming Tutorials

For Those Who Can’t Let Go Of The Past: The Techmeme Re-Underliner

Achilles — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 09:48:38 +0000

Remember the old Techmeme of a week ago, before the new design took effect? Sure, the new design is easy on the eyes. But is it better ? Personally, I’m already used to the new look, other than the sponsored posts stuck in your face in the new middle column (push those to the right, please, where ads belong). But some people just can’t let go of the past—people like Eric Marcoullier (founder of OneTrueFan, Gnip, and MyBlogLog). Marcoullier hates the new design so much that he created a Chrome extension to revert it back to its old look. The main feature he cannot live without is the underlined links. In the new design, the underlines are gone, making the site much cleaner with more room to breathe. But it also removes a key part of the information density which makes the site so useful, argues Marcoullier. Techmeme’s headlines and excerpts now makes it look more like a blog or other primary news source than a link aggregator. Partly that is because the links have been de-emphasized. Marcoullier thinks it is easier to parse the different sources when they are underlined than when they are separated only by a comma and spaces that make them look too similar to the excerpted text below the main headline. You can see a before and after below. Which one do you think is more scannable? I always found the underlines too cluttered. But seeing them here next to the new look, Marcoullier does have a point that the source names in the “More” section now tend to bleed into each other when the conversation gets too dense.

Original post:
For Those Who Can’t Let Go Of The Past: The Techmeme Re-Underliner

Curebit Apologizes for Copying 37Signals: “Stupid, Lazy, and Disrespectful”

bestcbstore — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 05:38:03 +0000

That’s awkward: Just as it was announcing a $1.2 million round of funding , online referral startup Curebit was caught lifting designs and code from 37Signals, the company behind popular collaboration tools Basecamp, Highrise, and others. The copying was called out on Twitter by 37Signals partner David Heinemeier Hansson , who, after an exchange with Curebit co-founder Allan Grant, called the Curebit team “fucking scumbags.” It probably didn’t help that Grant’s initial responses didn’t seem particularly contrite — he defended the copying as a “quick test” and at one point told Heinemeier Hansson , “Chill dude ” ( VentureBeat has a good blow-by-blow account of the initial controversy.) Now, however, Grant has posted an apology on the company blog — in fact, it attracted so much attention that the blog is crashing. He also published the text on Hacker News : Recently we launched a site with several pages copied from 37signals’ Highrise. We did more than take inspiration from their design – we actually used html & css code, and hotlinked to images on their site. We apologize to David and 37signals for ripping off their work. It was stupid, lazy, and disrespectful of their creative efforts. It’s particularly painful for us to have done this to 37signals because they are big heroes of ours. We just hope they will accept our apologies. Grant sent me an email emphasizing his admiration for 37Signals, admitting that he “crossed the line,” and concluding, “I would caution other startups from making such mistakes in an effort to ‘be lean.’” The controversy attracted particular attention because Curebit was incubated by Y Combinator and raised money from 500 Startups (among others), something that Heinemeier Hansson didn’t hesitate to point out . It looks like a reader at Hacker News (which is run by Y Combinator) created a post asking for YC co-founder Paul Graham’s opinion. Graham killed the thread, saying that it violated the site’s guideline to “not use posts to ask us questions,” but he also wrote, “I think they shouldn’t have done it, and that they compounded the problem by not taking the initial complaints seriously enough.” Meanwhile, back on Twitter, 500 Startups founder Dave McClure said he spoke to the Curebit team and “strongly asked them 2 re-evaluate thr policy on design & content; hope they take that 2 heart” and later added , “new founders aren’t children, just inexperienced. furthermore investors aren’t parents, just uncles & aunts. and we all make mistakes.”

Continued here:
Curebit Apologizes for Copying 37Signals: “Stupid, Lazy, and Disrespectful”

Apple Buy Hollywood? That’s A Terrible Idea

Administrator — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 04:51:47 +0000

Editor’s note: Jordan Kurzweil ran AOL’s original programming and video group from 2004-2007, and before that built and Fox Entertainment’s first digital studio (1999-2002). He now runs Independent Content , an agency that helps media companies launch new digital products and businesses. Apple should not use its $100 billion in cash to buy, or buy into Hollywood . While it would most assuredly (ahem, cough) disrupt the system, it would not spur the kind of creative chaos and innovation that would lead to the Emerald City of any show, on demand, for free, to rent, or buy, or subscribe, and organized by taste or popularity, or you! In fact, Apple buying into Hollywood, would actually kill Hollywood. Here’s why: Time and again, tech companies have proven a keen disability when it comes to marketing and promotion. It is an amazing blind spot, likely born out of tech culture’s macro focus on “the platform” and its abundant disregard for the bits that fill it (the content). From iTunes, to Netflix, to YouTube, and to Yahoo!, AOL and MSN before them, not a single tech company has been able to build and launch a single media brand that connects in any real way with an audience. They have failed time and again to build awareness and excitement for original shows, live events, new content verticals and new apps with audiences remotely approaching mass. The proverbial timeline is littered with a never ending list of momentary memes, flashes in the pan and never cut-throughs: wacky one of a kind animated web shorts, Red vs. Blue , Lonely Girl , Prom Queen , In the Motherhood , The 9 , Gold Rush , The Failure Club . And building excitement — at scale — is what unlocks the value of content. In contrast to the Hollywood marketing machine, tech companies devalue content. Some would say they do this by making movies, TV shows, music and apps ubiquitously available for low cost, or, for OMG free! But really, tech companies devalue media by jamming it into impenetrable noisy troves, stacks and databases filled with other content of equal, better or worse quality making it completely undiscoverable. Look at iTunes, NetFlix, Amazon and YouTube – tell me, where’s the good stuff at? If I were Steven Spielberg, J.J. Abrams, or Matt and Trey Parker, I would not want you to take my creative baby and drop it willy-nilly into one of the behemoth digital grist mills left to fight against light saber wielding kitties and direct to DVD softcore. The Apple App Store with its hundreds of thousands of apps does not build value for individual apps, or create real revenue for but a select few top players. It builds value for Apple, by achieving scale, so Apple can make bunk loads of cash by taking pennies off of each transaction, and selling more hardware. What is missing from all digital entertainment services are efficient, effective promotional platforms — and throwing algorithms, ratings and popularity and trending data at the problem, or gobs of display ad inventory are not solutions. Yes, these tactics help sift and sort the databases of content, or game audiences into clicking and trial, but they do not bolster new brands, help them find audiences and build hits. Can the homepage of the iTunes store build mass hysteria for the next Avatar? On a smaller seemingly more achievable scale, can the homepage of YouTube create demand for the next season of Mad Men? No. But if the next season of Mad Men was only available on YouTube, it would certainly make a large group of people go to YouTube to watch (that is if they could find it), because Mad Men already has value. Netflix, Amazon, iTunes and YouTube need to develop marketing chops, and ways to communicate with audiences on a deep visceral level. They all have a huge and powerful opportunity to move audiences — an intimate, activated, one-to-one relationship with a person sitting just an arms length away from their computer screen; or on their couch with a brand-new jury rigged gadget, invested, motivated and ready to get their socks knocked-off. Instead, users are greeted with a miasma of cover art, lists of titles in all shapes and sizes and a search box — no communication, no connection. How can digital entertainment services connect with audiences? Three easy steps, and a bonus feature: People. Tech companies need to hire people to shine a light on the best stuff, and craft the stories that sell it to audiences (at least for now, until computers catch-up and develop wit, emotion, creativity the ability to write with heart). Some people call this curation. Others packaging and promotion. Design. They need to create interfaces to capture audiences and connect to users. Living, breathing beautiful displays that make you watch, and want to click. Tools. Tech companies should leverage what their platforms do best — target, track and account — to deliver those stories to interested audiences en masse. Bonus feature: Marketing money. If companies like Apple plan to get into the first-run business, they need to deploy some of their treasure chest on good old marketing, online and off — TV commercials, movie trailers, billboards, print, PR campaigns, online display, SEM, social, events and so on. And not to market their platforms, to market programming. Hollywood is right to resist licensing first-run content to the Valley. The platforms aren’t there, and there’s no discernable path to building value or profit. But once tech companies begin to crack the code of their own networks, develop their promotional muscles, and commit to spending real marketing money to build new media brands, then they will truly be on the path to fuel growth and effect positive change on an industry in search of a future. And they will have the latitude to make advances in how we consume our entertainment.

More:
Apple Buy Hollywood? That’s A Terrible Idea

Pirate Parties Organizing Lawsuit Against FBI Over Megaupload Takedown

blogger — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 07:00:14 +0000

The Megaupload troubles make for interesting discussion because there is much to be said on both sides. Whether the illegal aspects of the network “outweigh” the legal aspects is a question that will be discussed for months and perhaps years. But one thing can’t be disputed: after the two-year investigation by the FBI, the site’s takedown was swift and perhaps over-thorough. Thousands and thousands of users who had legitimate and often critical files hosted on the site have been left behind, their legal files hosted on a simple file-hosting service. A coalition of Pirate Party organizations, led by Pirates of Catalonia , are planning to sue the FBI over what they say are “huge personal, economic and image damages to a vast number of people.” The group leading the charge contends that the FBI may have violated Spanish Law, and at any rate, Regardless of ideology, or opinions on the legality or morality of those running Megaupload, actions such as the closure of this service cause huge damage to lawful users of the sites and are unacceptable and disproportionate violations of their rights. Hard words to disagree with, whether you think Megaupload is a patsy being taken to school by IP mongers or a den of thieves getting what was coming to them. Either way, you have to agree that the wholesale takedown of the site harmed a lot of people totally unconnected to the alleged crimes performed by Megaupload. The question of a grace period while the law does its work doesn’t seem to apply here: if, say, a cache of drugs was found in a public storage facility you used, you wouldn’t be surprised if the whole place shut down for a couple days while the law did its work. In this case the takedown may be permanent; having arrested the main actors in the company and seized many of their assets, chances are the site couldn’t be restored to working order without a fair amount of work. Not that that hasn’t happened before: The Pirate Bay relocated some servers last year to an actual secret cave after repeated raids and takedown attempts. And plenty of other favorite targets of law enforcement have proven more tenacious than expected. The point is it’s not much of a stretch to suggest that files hosted on Megaupload will never again be accessible. If they are restored, it will still have been a clumsy and potentially illegal action that made them inaccessible, and the Pirate Parties hope to call out such actions for what they are and perhaps cause authorities to think twice before taking them again.

Original post:
Pirate Parties Organizing Lawsuit Against FBI Over Megaupload Takedown

ScholarPro Intelligently Matches Students With Educational Scholarships

ACMAir — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 19:00:00 +0000

Chicago-based ScholarPro is launching today as an intelligent matching system for students and educational scholarships. Designed to ease the search and application process, ScholarPro’s adaptive matching engine promises to deliver smarter, targeted lists of scholarships. It aims to fix the current dated process that require students to navigate complex application processes and then fail to deliver relevant results. On the site, you answer a few simple adaptive questions, such as where you are from, etc. and the platform will match you to scholarships that fit your needs. You can actually apply for the scholarships directly from ScholarPro. As founder Francis Kim explains, the startup’s matching engine is actually built on the adaptive quiz and aims to strictly qualify student for scholarships so results are opportunities students actually qualify for. Fot now, ScholarPro only offers scholarships available in California but will be steadily expanding. Kim says the site is free to use and wouldn’t reveal revenue plans just yet. The startup recently raised just under $1 million and was led by Sandbox Industries with Sam Yagan, Mac Harman and KD Capital participating.

Original post:
ScholarPro Intelligently Matches Students With Educational Scholarships

CouchSurfing Gets More Cash As Point Nine Capital Becomes Its First European Investor

vertical8 — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 18:36:58 +0000

Exclusive – Berlin-based early-stage venture capital firm Point Nine Capital has become the first European investor in CouchSurfing , a site that helps travelers connect with locals worldwide to share accommodation, experiences and whatnot. The investment is in fact an extension of the $7.6 million Series A round raised from Benchmark Capital and Omidyar Network in August 2011. Read more at TechCrunch Europe .

The rest is here:
CouchSurfing Gets More Cash As Point Nine Capital Becomes Its First European Investor

500 Startups Grad OneSchool Raises $750K For College Student-Focused App

jos — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 18:00:41 +0000

OneSchool , a free mobile app for college students which provides easy access to maps, course schedules, directories, bus routes, news, student groups and more, is announcing its official launch today in eight universities around the U.S. The company is also revealing it has raised $750,000 in seed funding from 500 Startups, Learn Capital and Magnolia Ventures. The startup, which had the honor of being the first to raise angel funding after participation in the minority-focused accelerator called NewMe , also graduated from 500 Startups ‘ fall class this past October. For those unaware, what OneSchool aims to offer is a single, mobile destination for college students to find everything they need about their campus. This includes the above-mentioned student directories, course listings, maps, groups, etc. There’s even a bulletin board-like feature dubbed the “Wall,” which is like a dumbed-down version of Facebook’s own Wall, supporting only text posts and image uploads (the latter coming soon). The application is available for the mobile web, iPhone , Android , and Windows Phone , and requires an @edu address to sign up. Currently more social utility than social network, OneSchool has been up-and-running in these eight schools since late August, but was in “testing mode” until today. It now supports Penn State, Stanford, Yale, Columbia, UCLA, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the University of Houston and the University of Waterloo. To be clear, OneSchool isn’t partnering with the schools here – it’s pulling in publicly available information, and making it available in a useable mobile format. Based on demand, there are now 150 schools on the company waitlist, the company says. That’s one reason why they’re now considering creating a proces that would involve crowdsourcing techniques to get new schools online faster. However, no such tools are publicly available at this time. In terms of market positioning, the company hopes to capitalize on the ubiquity of smartphones on college campuses today. “In 2008, just 10% of students across the country had smartphones,” says Co-founder and CEO David Adewumi, “but just last year, 57% of students were connecting to the Internet from their smartphone.” Although some colleges and universities may have their own mobile applications, they don’t often include the kind of info students really need. The apps often are focused more on press releases and info for prospective students than on their current student population, the company found. There are also few schools that have even produced such an app, period. Says Adewumi, of the 4300 schools across the country, just 270 have a dedicated mobile application. Clearly, the demand for this type of app has been high. At Penn State, the first school supported, OneSchool estimates that 83% of the iPhone and Android users on campus have adopted the app (based on current smartphone adoption rates). That’s 16,000 downloads out of 31,000 students, 18,000-20,000 of whom own a smartphone. Across the rest of the schools, around 50% of the undergrad population have done the same. In addition to CEO David Adewumi (24), OneSchool’s young founders include CTO Pindi Albert (18) and Zach Johnston (20). David and Zach met at a fraternity at Penn State, where David’s father is a professor, and decided to create an entrepreneurship group there. Pindi, whose parents are also professors at Penn State, attended high school with David prior to joining OneSchool. Adewumi says the idea for OneSchool came to him when he saw how much students were using their smartphones, including snapping photos of homework problems and texting them to friends for help. “Students are really using their smartphones, but there wasn’t anything for them in a college-specific environment,” explains Adewumi. “Kids have had mobile phones for four to five years before coming into college. For most of these kids, their smartphone is their primary computing device…We saw that trend and realized there’s a big opportunity to deliver [OneSchool's content] on mobile devices.”

Here is the original post:
500 Startups Grad OneSchool Raises $750K For College Student-Focused App