The Latest from TechCrunch

Exclusive First Look At Spin’s New Music-Playing Website
Canonical Announces Ubuntu for Android
FindTheBest Wants To Personalize Comparison Shopping With AssistMe
For Some Developers, Amazon Appstore Now Brings In More Money
Kisai Releases The (Readable) Stencil Watch
Could Google Delete Copyrighted MP3s From Gmail? ‘Only In Extreme Cases’ It Says
Looking To Dominate Social Gaming In Emerging Markets, Peak Games Gobbles Up Another Studio
U.S. Cellular To Add Galaxy S II To Their Lineup, No Love For LTE
Australian Ride-Sharing Marketplace Jayride.com Grabs $400K In Angel Funding
Arch Grants Raises $2.5M To Turn St. Louis Into A Startup Hub; Square Co-founder Signs On
OMGPOP Hits 1M Downloads For Draw Something App, “Locked Down” On Mobile Strategy
Zynga Loses Ad Chief Manny Anekal To Mobile Monetization Startup Kiip
Braintree Extends Merchant Payments To Mobile Apps
Netflix And The Weinstein Company Enter Into Their First Multi-Year Streaming Deal
It’s On: 8GB Nook Tablet Takes Aim At Kindle Fire With $199 Price Tag
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Barnes & Noble Misses In Q3; NOOK Business Up 38 Percent To $542M
Leaked! Here’s The iPad 3′s Bulky Back Casing
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Exclusive First Look At Spin’s New Music-Playing Website

Posted: 21 Feb 2012 09:45 AM PST

Music magazines are getting hit with a double whammy in the age of digital media. Like all print publications, their audience is going online—but so is the music. Why read about a new album when you can just listen to it on Spotify? Spin magazine is responding by shifting its focus online in a big way with a major redesign that literally puts the music first with a music player right at the top.

In the video above, digital general manager Jeff Rogers gives us an exclusive preview of the new site, which launches tomorrow. It is part of a sweeping redesign of both the print magazine and website. The print magazine is larger, back to the original size of Spin, with a mix of heavy stock and glossy paper. It will only come out bi-monthly instead of monthly and become more of a high-end collector's item for music aficionados.

The homepage is divided into sections. As you scroll down, the background color and layout changes,. The top is news, interviews, and profiles, with a black background. Then below that are the music reviews: essentials, classic, and "worst music." There will also be a whole new set of blogs to keep the stories fresh.

The new Spin site is filled with thousands reviews—both long form and 140-character Twitter reviews. The print magazine will no longer carry reviews. They have all been moved online. "Getting your reviews in a magazine is like getting your stock quotes in a newspaper," says Rogers.

The new site takes some of its design cues from Spin Play, the magazine’s iPad app that came out last year. Every article has full tracks that you can listen to while you are reading, and even as you browse around the site, the music keeps playing in the player which takes up the top nav bar. Clicking on the player while you are listening to a song gives you more songs and articles about the artist, and the ability to buy the song through iTunes or Amazon.

There will also be a Spin 30—which are 30 songs the Spin staff thinks you have to listen to now, and other Spin Lists. Hit play at the top and you get the current playlist. Spin is offering full tracks, but only a few hundred at any given time. It is not trying to compete with streaming music services like Spotify, rather it is doing what magazines do best: offering an edited selection of articles and related music. (In the future, it plans to export its playlists to other music services like Spotify). The majority of songs are promotional tracks which will exist on the site for a limited time, but Spin will license tracks as well.

Spin is finally treating its website like a product instead of just another music news site. It will be a place to go to not just to learn about music, but to experience it.

Canonical Announces Ubuntu for Android

Posted: 21 Feb 2012 09:10 AM PST

Canonical’s Ubuntu TV, unveiled earlier this year, was the first in a series of announcements about “Ubuntu on devices”. The next device in Canonical’s multi-screen strategy for world domination is being unveiled next week at Mobile World Congress 2012, and it’s an Android-powered smartphone. It’s not entirely what you might think, though.

This is not an Ubuntu app running atop Android. Nor is it an all-Ubuntu device running an Android emulator. Rather, Ubuntu for Android it the full Ubuntu desktop running side-by-side with Android on a shared kernel that provides context appropriate access to all your content. When out and about, the phone operates as any other Android-powered phone; but when you slip the device into a dock connected to a monitor, keyboard and mouse you get the familiar Ubuntu desktop experience.

I admit that I think this is pretty novel. It’s not an Asus Transformer trying to play both sides of the smartphone / laptop experience with a single OS. Instead, it’s something completely new that’s trying to leverage the right interface and experience for the right context. It’s a phone in most senses, but only activates the Ubuntu desktop when connected to peripherals that benefit from them.

What’s this good for? I asked Jane Silber, Canonical’s CEO, that question. The most immediate use case is enterprise users: people who carry a smartphone and a laptop. Ubuntu for Android would allow many mobile professionals to reduce to a single device. Average users would benefit from this convergence, too. According to Silber this allows “the right experience on the right form factor.”

What are the benefits of this Android/Ubuntu hybrid? Data consolidation, for one. You don’t need to duplicate your address book, or even synchronize it: whether you’re looking for a number to call from the Android phone app, or looking for an email from the Ubuntu email app, both programs are interrogating the same single address book. The same holds true for documents, media, and any other content stored on the device.

Another neat trick: if you connect your Ubuntu for Android device to a television via HDMI you don’t get the Ubuntu desktop: you get the Ubuntu TV interface. You can browse media on your phone or access online content as you would with any Ubuntu TV appliance.

Ultimately, says Silber, this hybrid approach reduces the mental “context shifts” required by using multiple independent devices. When your Ubuntu for Android device is docked and you’re composing emails, you can still send and receive texts and phone calls — and, indeed, access and launch all the Android apps on your phone — meaning that you don’t need to move away from your laptop to pick up and use your phone. You simply mouse over to the incoming call indicator and select the action you desire: take the call, hang up, whatever. Efficiency, for the win!

When I asked Silber how long it would be until they kick Android to the curb and release an all-Ubuntu phone, she simply said “We’re not going to be announcing that at MWC 2012.”

As with the Ubuntu TV, Canonical won’t be unveiling a completed product ready for purchase next week. They’re showcasing the technology they’ve developed and are looking for hardware partners.

FindTheBest Wants To Personalize Comparison Shopping With AssistMe

Posted: 21 Feb 2012 09:00 AM PST

Kleiner Perkins-backed comparison shopping platform FindTheBest has been focused on solving a specific problem for the past year: how to help people compare different products and services so that they can quickly figure out which is the best one. And today, the platform is adding data-driven personalization as part of the solution with the launch of a new data-driven feature called AssistMe.

Co-founded by DoubleClick founder and former CEO Kevin O’Connor, FindTheBest performs in-depth comparison searches that crawl large amounts of data. For example, the engine can compare colleges and break down comparisons by acceptance rates, SAT scores, tuition, and more. As we’ve written in the past, the quality of the data they've gathered from government and other trusted sources, the transparency into how the data is sourced, and the tools available to slice, dice and manipulate it make FindTheBest a compelling destination.

Until now, FindTheBest has been drawing data from other services and sources to best serve its customers. AssistMe aims to draw data from the user, attempting to personalize the shopping experience. The tool focuses on capturing explicit data by asking the user which aspects of a product are most important. The user gets to weigh approximately five aspects of the product or service—from unimportant to very important. FindTheBest's AssistMe algorithm then calculates the options and then returns a set of personalized results. Basically the feature attempts to create more of a dialogue between the consumer and the site.

For example, when comparing dog breeds, AssistMe will ask questions such as “How important is the temperament of the dog?” or “Is the Size of the dog an important factor?” or “Is minimal shedding or grooming important to you?”. The questions are fairly simple and users can answer in a range of five choices from ‘unimportant’ to ‘very important.’

In the user’s search results, FindTheBest will suggest which options are best suited based on the AssistMe data. Today, AssistMe is rolling out for 20 comparisons, but will eventually be extended to all the comparison subjects FindTheBest offers.

FindTheBest now has 6 million unique visitors per month, says O’Connor, which is up from 4 million unique visitors per month in December. The company has also raised $6 million from Kleiner Perkins, and will be looking to raise another round later this year.

For Some Developers, Amazon Appstore Now Brings In More Money

Posted: 21 Feb 2012 08:37 AM PST

In the latest monthly report from app analytics firm Distimo, the company delved into the revenue generating possibilites for apps sold through both Google’s Android Market and the Amazon Appstore. Looking at the top 110 apps available in both marketplaces, Distimo found some surprising data: 42 of those top apps made more money on Amazon’s store than in the more widely available Android Market.

That the Android Market has its challenges when it comes to paid applications, is widely known. In fact, just the other day a friend was telling me how when she went to buy her first new smartphone, the Verizon rep was pushing Android devices because they “have more free apps” than the iPhone. Great story, right developers? Now the Android Market’s inability to make you money is a selling point for Android phones. Excellent news.

So maybe it’s not so surprising that Amazon’s Appstore is beginning to prove itself as a better revenue generating platform for some mobile application developers than the official Android Market. After all, Amazon’s store is a “curated” collection of apps. The apps are tested, reviewed and made sure to be malware-free and stable before being listed on Amazon’s store. (Hmm. Does that process sound familiar?)

Still, the Amazon Appstore is only a small piece of the overall revenue pie for now, delivering just 28% of the top 110 apps’ revenue. But then again, Amazon’s Appstore is barely a year old, and is rapidly gaining strength. For example, the total number of downloads generated by the top 100 apps in the Amazon Appstore increased 14-fold in December 2011, compared with just 2 months earlier, Distimo found.

Today, Amazon hosts 28,826 mobile applications, compared with about fourteen times more apps on the Google Android Market. (It’s now pushing 400K+). Half of all Amazon’s apps are also available on the Google Android Market. But the Amazon market is catching up in terms of size. In December and January, the number of new apps in the Android Market was only 5x the number new apps in the Amazon Appstore, as compared with 22x in September 2011.

The Amazon Appstore is also more likely to favor paid applications than the Android Market, as 65% of all its apps are paid apps, a figure that has remained stable for the past 7 months. Meanwhile, Google’s Android Market sees 32% of all apps as paid apps, and that figure has dropped from 38% during the same time frame.

In addition, the average price for the top 100 paid applications is 40% lower on the Amazon Appstore ($2.89) than on the Android Market ($3.47) for the top 100 paid apps. That’s because Amazon, not developers, controls the apps’ prices. That means some of the discounted top apps could be bringing down the average, of course.

This pricing strategy appears, at least in some cases, to be working in developers’ favor. Users think they can find cheap apps on Android’s store, and aren’t disappointed. But while there, they download other apps, too.

Download volumes on Amazon’s store during November (when the Kindle Fire launched) quadrupled from the previous month. In December, downloads increased even further to more than 14 times October’s volume, then stabilized once again in January. During this time, 42 of the top 110 revenue-generating apps made more money on Amazon’s store than on the Android Market. It’s not a majority, obviously, and information about what types of apps, or what these apps may have shared in common, are details that are unfortunately lacking in Distimo’s analysis.

But this is the real gem in Distimo’s data: for some developers, Amazon’s Appstore is working. It’s too soon to call the success a fluke or a trend, especially with the Kindle Fire’s new(ish) arrival on the scene. But if Amazon is helping some developers make more money, it’s probably not due to a single, easily pinpointed reason. It’s more likely to be a combination of all factors: app curation, discounts, catalog size, promotions, user interface, brand recognition, price setting, and more.

Kisai Releases The (Readable) Stencil Watch

Posted: 21 Feb 2012 08:26 AM PST

Thank heavens: finally a Tokyoflash that you can read immediately without depending on a manual or detailed instructions. The Stencil is a fan design that uses for LCD blocks to display the current time and date in a very “bubble letter” sort of way.

Designer Heather Sable wrote:

I found that I had a knack for creating read-at-a-glance designs with cryptic looking, yet easy to read digits. I designed the digits for this concept by starting with rectangular shapes, and cutting out unnecessary pieces using line segments and dots. By arranging them into four quadrants with some connecting lines, the display appears to be just a bunch of stencilled in lines and dots, while if you read the background, you can see the digits clearly.

The watch looks surprisingly big and comes in multiple colors and styles, including a hot mirrored LCD design that adds a little bling to what would be considered standard digital watch. The watch is available now for $99.

Product Page

Could Google Delete Copyrighted MP3s From Gmail? ‘Only In Extreme Cases’ It Says

Posted: 21 Feb 2012 08:13 AM PST

Some rather inflammatory news has been making its way around the web today: a user posting on the Pirateweb message board has accused Google of removing copyrighted MP3 music files from a Gmail account — possibly using the scanning services that Google employs to block illegal content on YouTube, possibly using something else.

Shocking if true, so we went to Google to get a response. And the short answer is: no. Or not, at least, just like that.

Perhaps it’s the confluence of other things — Google’s upcoming privacy policy changes, and murmurs that Google could remove illegal content that people store in their Google Music digital lockers — that make this story sound plausible.

But a spokesperson from Google has come back to us with a denial that it is doing anything of this kind.

However — and this might be a worry for some who store all kinds of things in Gmail — he also left open the possibility that Google could do something like this “in extreme cases,” for example, in response to court orders.

“We do not go into or interfere with user’s Gmail accounts, except in extreme cases, such as in response to court orders. Emails, data and files contained in Gmail are users’ private information.”

But before you read too much into that, it’s worth noting that the Content ID service used by Google on YouTube for copyrighted material is only used on that product, not Gmail or any other Google service.

The original note raising the issue was published last week. The user, one Honey Escreveu, said that a folder she kept in her Gmail account, which contained MP3 files for copyrighted music, suddenly got deleted. It’s not clear whether those were legally-owned files or not. The only two MP3s that remained in her Gmail, apparently, were for “unsigned indy artists” who are not on YouTube.

So, the jury is still out on whether Honey got the wrong end of the stick, is a hoax, or really has seen the phantom disappearance of her files. If the latter, we are still none the wiser about where the music has gone.

Looking To Dominate Social Gaming In Emerging Markets, Peak Games Gobbles Up Another Studio

Posted: 21 Feb 2012 08:01 AM PST

You may not know this, but Turkey has a fever. And the only prescription is more games. That’s right. Sifting through some of Pando Networks’ recent numbers on international gaming, we found that Turkey owns an increasing share of the global downloads of free-to-play games. Over the last year, the number of gamers in Turkey downloading free games climbed to over 5 million, a 534 percent increase since 2010 — and more than 14 percent of the country’s total population.

Not only that, but Turkey has a growing appetite for social games, which is precisely the reason Peak Games has parked its headquarters in Istanbul. In case you’re not familiar, Peak Games is a social gaming company that produces titles specifically for emerging markets — specifically in Turkey, the Middle East, North Africa, and South America.

In conversation with the gaming company’s Chief of Strategy, Rina Onur, she made it abundantly clear that the company is aware of the huge lead Zynga has built in social games in the U.S. (its titles have over 55 million daily active users, compared with Microsoft in second at 22 million), and that there is stiff competition among Zynga, EA, wooga, and others for the Western markets. But Turkey, the Middle East, and North Africa (MENA) have increasingly connected populations, their young people are coming online in droves, and they love to play games.

So, while Zynga, EA, and wooga focus their efforts in Europe and North America, largely lacking a presence in MENA, Peak Games has been busy acquiring studios or creating their own games like Okey, Umaykut Online, Akvaryum, Erlikhan Günlük Falınız, which Onur says now have over 7 million daily active users. (Although AppData puts that closer to 4 million.) These games are all built around popular Turkish and Arabic card/board games that are native to the region, so the titles are tailored towards their specific local markets, in their native tongue.

Peak Games’ MENA focus has caught the attention of top tier VCs in Europe, as the company closed a $11.5 million series B funding round in September from Earlybird Venture Capital and Hummingbird Ventures, among others, bringing the startup’s total investment to just under $20 million. At the time, Turkey was the fourth largest Facebook market, with some 30 million+ using the social network, and those numbers continue to grow across the Middle East and North Africa.

With this high rate of adoption, the startup has been eager to acquire studios with strong development talent and established titles and help bring those to the Facebook platform, make them more social, and expose them to its multi-million-strong existing user base. Last summer, it acquired two hardcore strategy game studios, Umaykut and Erlikhan, (both of which are Turkish) in an effort to continue bringing these emerging markets to social gaming.

And today, Peak Games is announcing the acquisition of Saudi Arabian social games giant, Kammelna Games, as it looks to further expand its reach into underserved markets with localized, culturally-specific games. The startup already has a popular Arabic-language title with Happy Farm (at some 2.2 million daily active users), which it will now complement with Kammelna’s “Baloot,” a popular Saudi trick card game.

Onur tells us that Kammelna founder Essam Alzamel will now run Peak Games’ new studio in Damman, Saudi Arabia, keeping the company’s 15-odd employees in their home country, and successfully adding another location to Peak Games’ already existing offices in Istanbul, Ankara, Amman, Barcelona and Berlin.

The Chief of Strategy says that more than two-thirds of Internet users in Saudi Arabia play games online, and the country has one of the highest average revenue per user (ARPU) rates in social gaming. Capitalizing on what they see as a massive regional opportunity (that is only going to get bigger), Peak will now set about launching Baloot across platforms, including Facebook and mobile, as well as using Kammelna to develop (and launch) more Arabic card, board, and table-top games.

Peak Games now claims to have over 20 million active players worldwide, with 150 employees (40 of whom are in MENA), and you can be sure that this is not even close to the end of the startup’s near-term M&A strategy, as we hear that Peak is in the process of acquiring yet another studio. It’s not clear which studio yet (and the company would not divulge the price of its Kammelna acquisition), but you can be sure that the acquisition will be another stepping stone in its mission for MENA dominance. More to come as we learn more.

Check out Peak Games at home here.

U.S. Cellular To Add Galaxy S II To Their Lineup, No Love For LTE

Posted: 21 Feb 2012 07:59 AM PST

Like the original Galaxy S before it, Samsung’s Galaxy S II sure knows how to get around. After having touched down on Sprint, T-Mobile, and AT&T (twice even), the Korean giant’s one-time flagship handset is now being embraced by the folks at U.S. Cellular.

Customers who have pledged their allegiance to the nation’s sixth-largest wireless carrier are probably celebrating the news, considering the last big Android handset to grace their shelves was the Motorola Electrify, a non-WiMax version of the Photon 4G.

As far as specs go, U.S. Cellular’s GSII variant plays it straight — it sports the same 1.2GHz Exynos C210 processor that most of the U.S. models do, as well as the bog-standard 4.5-inch Super AMOLED Plus display, 8-megapixel camera, and 16GB of onboard storage. Oh, and expect it to feature the now-classic Gingerbread/TouchWiz combo we’ve come to know and tolerate.

Sure, the Galaxy S II may seem passe these days (especially with MWC right around the corner), but good hardware is still good hardware. Sadly, U.S. Cellular’s version of the Galaxy S II is 3G-only, so anyone looking to pick it up won’t be able to jump on their LTE network when it lights up later this year. It’s not as though the hardware doesn’t exist — AT&T’s Skyrocket features an LTE radio — but for now it seems like U.S. Cellular customers will have to make do with a revamped Galaxy S if they want their mobile LTE fix.

U.S. Cellular’s is keeping mum on the Galaxy S II’s release, but that should give customers a little time to either weigh their options or scrimp together $230.

Australian Ride-Sharing Marketplace Jayride.com Grabs $400K In Angel Funding

Posted: 21 Feb 2012 07:16 AM PST

Australian-based travel marketplace Jayride.com has lined up $400,000 AUD in seed funding for its ride-sharing service, which also aggregates transportation data. The angel funding was led by Andrey Shirben, one of the first investors in Kenshoo, a digital marketing software company. In addition to helping in the financing, Shirben will also bring his digital marketing expertise to assist the company, as well as connect Jayride with other players in the global travel sector.

Compared with other current ride-sharing and carpooling startups, Jayride’s unique angle is to provide a single interface for finding all your transportation options, including commercial transport, and combining that data with the available ride-sharing options. This way, travelers will never be in a situation where they research a route and end up without options. Instead, when there are no ride-shares found on your planned route, Jayride will show you bus schedules, shuttles, relocation cars and other transportation options.

Shirben tells us that the angel round was supposed to be for $350,000 AUD, but after he put his money in, it became overbooked by 30-40%. Within a year, Jayride plans to raise another round led by a U.S. VC firm, as it prepares to expand its geographical transport data coverage.

“Jayride is the only land-transport marketplace attacking ride-sharing this way,” says Shirben of the startup’s transport data aggregation play. “There are many ride-sharing startups around the world, but almost every one fails this simple UX test: if you search from point A to point B outside a main thoroughfare, you find no search results. This is the main limitation of ride-sharing today.”

Shirben says that after meeting the Jayride founding team, and following up over the course of a few months, the decision to invest was an easy one. “Great team, disruptive idea, lots of business potential in a huge market,” he remarks.

Founded in 2008 by Rod Bishop and Ross Lin as a carpooling site, Jayride made the move to aggregate all travel data last fall. The service currently supports Australia, New Zealand, and is coming soon to the U.K. and Ireland.

Arch Grants Raises $2.5M To Turn St. Louis Into A Startup Hub; Square Co-founder Signs On

Posted: 21 Feb 2012 07:05 AM PST

Entrepreneurs and small businesses are integral to the engine of job creation. According to the White House, companies less than five years old created 44 million jobs over the last three decades in the U.S. and what’s more, accounted for all net new jobs created over that time. In a struggling economy, the incubators and accelerators that help grow startups and SMBs, giving them access to the network and capital they need to grow, are essential to job creation and building a healthy economy.

Accelerators have been popping up around the U.S. (and the world) in the past year, and the big incubation houses (like TechStars, Y Combinator, 500 Startups, etc.) continue to grow. Yet, these generators can (and should) have the most influence not in big cities/markets like New York, San Francisco, and Boston, but in places where unemployment is high and economies are stagnating.

Cities like Detroit are depressed, but they are doing everything they can to encourage innovation and fuel business development. Another is St. Louis. St. Louis has a rich big-company history, and has at various times been home to the headquarters of a slew of Fortune 500 companies. Anheuser-Busch still makes its home there. Yet, while headquarters may live there, the production likely happens elsewhere.

The city wants to fight stalling unemployment by building an innovation-focused ecosystem, which is why Arch Grants was born and launched last month. Arch Grants is a non-profit organization led and supported by a band of lawyers, investors, real estate managers, entrepreneurs, civic leaders, and more, that wants to create a more robust startup culture and infrastructure in St. Louis. The company wants to turn the city into a place where entrepreneurs want to go to grow their businesses.

Arch is starting with a business plan competition that selects the most promising startups, giving them $50K in grants to turn their ideas into reality. Typically, accelerators offering venture capital take equity stakes in the startups they choose, but Arch Grants offers non-dilutive capital — they are, as one would expect, grants and therefore don’t require founders to cough up any equity in exchange for the capital.

After receiving the initial $50K grant, startups then go on to compete for a second round of up to $100K in funding, along with access to angel investors. Arch Grants President Jerry Schlichter, a trial lawyer, says that the program will be selecting at least 12 companies per year, and plans to run the program for at least three years.

Generally speaking, it’s tough for non-profit organizations that dish out growth capital to for-profit companies to receive approval from the government, but the IRS makes exceptions in areas of high unemployment, and Schlichter says that they were surprised by how quickly Arch Grants was able to be approved.

To that point, Arch Grants isn’t a business accelerator, but they want to, for all intents and purposes, operate like one — or at least create the same opportunities for their startups. The organization has tapped five local universities, business mentoring organizations, experts, investors, and a host of other support organizations to offer resources and assistance to its founders.

Its affiliates can also hook up startups with affordable apartments and office space, business networking and mentoring, free legal and accounting services, and collaboration with local universities, etc.

While Arch Grants has a model that may be slightly unusual for startups and entrepreneurs used to the Y Combinator approach, Schlichter and others believe that the real hook for entrepreneurs can be that they would be part of something broader than their own goals, helping to put a city back to work. “These startups are going to get a deep level of support here, because this is something that is really important to the entire city,” he says, “because it has greater implications and importance than it does for Silicon Valley.”

To assist it in its endeavors, Arch Grants today announced that it has secured a $150K donation from Peabody Energy (the largest private-sector coal company in the world). This donation brings the organization’s total funding to $2.5 million, which has been contributed by a mix of individual and corporate donors.

Another feather in the cap for Arch Grants? It’s also officially announcing today that Square Co-founder Jim McKelvey (who along with co-founder Jack Dorsey is a St. Louis native) will head the organization’s advisory board. This means that, among other things, McKelvey will help lead strategy for the business plan competition and selection of grant recipients as well as advising the selected startups and founders.

Again, while tech companies will be the program’s focus, all entrepreneurs are encouraged to apply. Arch Grants is currently accepting applications through its proposed deadline of March 9th. Those interested in applying can do so here.

And young entrepreneurs looking for another cool pitch competition and resource/hub for entrepreneurs, should check out Intel Innovators. More here.

OMGPOP Hits 1M Downloads For Draw Something App, “Locked Down” On Mobile Strategy

Posted: 21 Feb 2012 07:03 AM PST

Social game-maker OMGPOP says it has another mobile hit — its app Draw Something has been downloaded more than 1 million times in 10 days.

Draw Something is based on OMGPOP’s online game Draw My Thing. Described by CEO Dan Porter as a turn-based version of Pictionary, players are assigned things to draw, which can be simple (like a smile) or complicated (like a zombie), then their friends are supposed to guess what it is.

Players have already created more than 20 million drawings, Porter says. The game’s average load is now 50 drawings per second, and where the company took nine days to reach its first 10 million drawings, it’s now seeing 10 million new drawings every 24 hours. The main driver of that growth? Porter says it’s Twitter and Instagram, where users post their drawings and look for other people to play.

And he says the game is already seeing five figures in revenue per day. OMGPOP runs ads in the free version of the game, and Porter says the biggest source of revenue is actually users upgrading from free to the ad-free, paid version. The game also makes money through virtual goods, like bombs, which help with guesses and also give players better words to draw.

The game is available on both on iOS and Android, but iOS supposedly accounts for 85 percent of installs and 90 percent of revenue.

There have been some mistakes too. Porter says OMGPOP had to remove its original cap of 100 turns per game, when it realized that games were going for longer than that. It’s also a challenge to store the rapidly growing number of drawings, he says.

The success of Draw Something also confirms a broader shift in OMGPOP’s strategy. We covered the company’s first mobile game Puppy World in August 2011, and now Porter says he’s fully committed to mobile.

“When we started in 2008, we focused on socializing traditional arcade style games on the web,” he says. “As Facebook grew as a game platform we moved to Facebook and we did OK. Now though that we have reoriented to creating truly social game experiences on mobile – iOS and Android – we have locked down our strategy, socializing mobile games, and we are having monster success with it. We want to be the #1 competitor to Zynga with Friends and eventually pass them.”

Zynga Loses Ad Chief Manny Anekal To Mobile Monetization Startup Kiip

Posted: 21 Feb 2012 07:01 AM PST

Zynga’s Global Director of Brand Advertising Manny Anekal who led the company to a 233% increase in ad revenue this year is leaving to become COO of Kiip, which lets brands reward gamers with real world prizes. Anekal is a monetization rockstar who pioneered social game brand integrations, helping companies like McDonald’s offer FarmVille players in-game powerups.

But now he’s moving to Kiip’s greener pastures seeking a bigger impact with a startup that’s aiding developers and redefining brand advertising for the next big opportunity: mobile

Kiip’s 20-year old co-founder and CEO Brian Wong calls Anekal “a triple massive win” for his company, pun perhaps intended. See, during Anekal’s 10 years of experience in the space he was the brand integration manager of Massive, one of the first in-game ad networks. Next he became the Global Director of Ad Ops for Electronic Arts before joining Zynga and growing its ad revenue to $74.5 million. Business Insider heard rumors about Manny’s move to Kiip last week, but now the news is confirmed.

Anekal popularized the concept of a reciprocal value exchange between advertisers and gamers, where brands give players something of in-game value in return for their attention, rather than just being obtrusive and annoying. For example, Anekal closed a deal with Farmer’s Insurance to protect FarmVille players from crop wither if they displayed the brand’s blimp on their property.

However, since the 3000-employee Zynga mostly relies on in-game purchases and not ad revenue, Wong says Anekal wasn’t making as big of a dent as he wanted to. Now he’s the 21st employee of a hot new startup with $4.3 million in funding and a disruptive model for making mobile game developers money without traditional display ads.

When a Kiip-powered game player levels up or gets a high score, they’re rewarded with Popchips snack samples mailed to their door, Amazon gift cards, or entry into tournaments where they can win home theater systems. Brands get exposure, developers earn money, and gamers are rewarded rather than bombarded with ads.

With copycats targeting Kiip’s model there’s no time to waste, so Anekal will start immediately. His brand relationships and expertise could get top-tier advertisers offering rewards in Kiip, which is already working with Disney and 1-800-Flowers to rack up millions of interactions from gamers.

As for compensation, Wong hinted that Anekal was tempted with substantial Kiip equity, saying “We’re doing what’s responsible to to keep talent like him on board.”

Watch as Kiip’s young co-founder Brian Wong maps out the road to disruption in this interview with TechCrunch’s Alexia Tsotsis.

Braintree Extends Merchant Payments To Mobile Apps

Posted: 21 Feb 2012 07:00 AM PST

Braintree, an online payments provider, is debuting a set of new tools for mobile app developers that allow merchants to accept payments within a mobile app, rather than through a web browser. For background, Braintree powers and automates online payments for merchants and companies online. The company provides a merchant account, payment gateway, recurring billing, credit card storage, support for mobile and international payments, and PCI Compliance solutions.

The new offering from Braintree helps developers avoid PCI compliance issues by encrypting sensitive credit card data when it is entered by the user on their mobile device. The encrypted data is passed from the merchant's server to Braintree for processing, and only Braintree can decrypt the information using a private key, preventing the merchant from being exposed to sensitive credit card data. The libraries support both mobile phones as well as tablet devices running Android, iOS, and Windows Phone 7 operating systems.

Braintree maintains that the customer entering the credit card information on the app is the last person to see it. Other mobile app payments solutions typically use a web browser masked as an app, says the company.

Braintree's client list includes LivingSocial, 37signals, OpenTable, Fab.com, GitHub, Airbnb, Heroku, Engine Yard, Animoto, Shopify and HotelTonight. Braintree is processing more than $4 billion in annual credit card volume and is adding more than 100 new merchants a month. The company also raised $34 million in funding last year from Accel.

Netflix And The Weinstein Company Enter Into Their First Multi-Year Streaming Deal

Posted: 21 Feb 2012 06:46 AM PST

Netflix streaming just got a bit more classy. The Weinstein Company is releasing “a diverse slate” of its titles exclusively to Netflix streaming. These titles will hit the service within a year of their theatrical release and will include foreign language films, documentaries and other hits from TWC. This is the first deal between TWC and Netflix.

Netflix subs should expect several critically acclaimed titles. 2012 Academy Award Nominee The Artist will hit Netflix prior to pay TV on traditional premium cable. Other titles like French-language World War II drama Sarah’s Key and The Intouchables, Bully, and Coriolanus will hit Netflix streaming in the future as well.

“We couldn’t be happier to be working again with Harvey and Bob, who have an unmatched track record of creating critically acclaimed and commercially successful movies,” said Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos stated in today’s announcement.

This was a big win for Netflix. It was the first deal between the media company and Netflix and adds a fair selection of high-profile releases even if there is a long wait until they’re available. But Netflix needs more similar deals. Netflix streaming is facing tough competition from Amazon and others. Content is king.

Terms of the deal wasn’t released.

It’s On: 8GB Nook Tablet Takes Aim At Kindle Fire With $199 Price Tag

Posted: 21 Feb 2012 06:17 AM PST

While initial reports pointed at a launch on February 22, Barnes & Noble has just taken to the wires to officially announce the release of the new 8GB Nook Tablet. As expected the new Nook variant has a price tag to match its reduced memory capacity, and with both now selling for $199 the battle between the Nook Tablet and the Kindle Fire seems ready to heat up once more.

BN is clearly trying to capture some of the marketshare that the less-expensive Kindle Fire has laid claim to in recent months, but their efforts aren’t without a few casualties. In addition to the dip in memory — not much of a problem thanks to the Nook Tablet’s microSD card slot — the new Nook Tablet only sports half the RAM of the original version.

With only 512MB of RAM on board (a fact they conveniently left out of their press release), buyers ultimately end up with a device that just isn’t quite as robust as the original. Still, desperate times call for desperate measures.

Amazon recently announced tremendous year-over-year growth in Kindle sales, and BN had to react before the market they created with the original Nook Color was completely wrested from them. To bolster their position there the Nook Color’s price has been slashed to $169, so frugal customers looking for an above-average (and easily hackable) eReader/tablet hybrid a respectable choice.

Amazon still owns the bottom of the eReader space with its $79 ad-supported Kindle (even though it’s a pain in the ass to use), but BN’s revamped product portfolio now offers up some stiffer competition. With the still-solid Nook Color wedged in between the $100 and $200 price points, BN arguably has the more compelling lineup, but we’ll soon see how consumers react to the Nook shakeup.

This Is What Microsoft Office Looks Like On An iPad

Posted: 21 Feb 2012 06:08 AM PST

We heard all the way back in November that Microsoft would launch an Office app for the iPad, and it would seem that the big day draws even closer. According to an unverified image captured by The Daily, a version of Microsoft Office for iPad was caught running on one of Apple’s tablets.

Now, we still don’t have an official launch date but the report claims that Redmond is about ready to submit this thing for approval from Apple. The image seems to reveal what we’ve been expecting — a metro-style UI that should fit in swimmingly with all the other metro UIs MS is sending out into the world, like Windows Phone, its other iPad apps like MSN and Bing, Xbox 360 and the forthcoming Windows 8 OS.

As you can see, there are tiles for Word, Excel and PowerPoint, along with a button to create a new document. You’ll also notice, if you look close enough, that there are search and Messenger icons, which will presumably send you to Bing and Windows Live Messenger respectively.

There’s no word on an Android version of the Suite, but the Daily reports that MS’s OneNote iOS app will get a revamp to reflect Microsoft’s decidedly metro direction.

Attachments.me Goes Automatic, Adds Box To Its Cloud Storage Partners

Posted: 21 Feb 2012 06:05 AM PST

Attachments.me, the startup that promises to take the pain out of searching through email attachments, is gradually ramping up the services it’s offering to users: from today, it is launching an option to automatically file your attachments to specific folders in the cloud; and it has also expanded support to include Box, which now joins Dropbox in its list of supported cloud storage partners.

The news caps off some significant developments we’ve seen at attachments.me since announcing a seed round of $500,000 from Foundry Group last year: others have included Dropbox support and Gmail extensions for Chrome and Firefox.

The addition of an automatic filtering feature underscores the growth of time-saving services that we’re seeing around cloud storage — in other words, it’s not just yet another set of dumb folders for filing things away. In this case, attachments.me will let users set up rules to decide how attachments get stored, and then when the attachments come in, they’ll automatically go to specified folders.

The service sounds promising, if somewhat limited in this first iteration: for starters, attachments can be filtered by sender and file type — but not subject or other keywords. Also, a user can only set up the rules in attachments.me’s Chrome extension.

However, it’s worth nothing that in a blog post announcing the new service, co-founder Jesse Miller says that this is just 1.0 of this service: “We have a ton more options we are going to add to automatic filing,” he writes.

One of these, apparently, will be letting users set up automating rules via the tools’ iPhone app as well. Another area that has room for expansion: the platforms that attachments.me supports overall. It has yet to add other email providers, apart from Google’s Gmail.

Meanwhile, the new support for Box is a logical next step for attachments.me as it looks to grow its customer base, which currently accounts for some 40 million Gmail attachments.

Specifically, it could see attachments.me make bigger inroads into the enterprise segment: Box.net last year signed a strategic deal with HP to offer its cloud services on selected HP desktops, and, on the back of an $81 million Series D round of funding in October 2011, Box could have other, more aggressive expansion plans on the cards, too.

Barnes & Noble Misses In Q3; NOOK Business Up 38 Percent To $542M

Posted: 21 Feb 2012 05:54 AM PST

Barnes and Noble reported earnings this morning, with total sales increasing 5% compared to the prior year, from $2.3 billion to $2.4 billion, falling short of analyst expectations. Net income was $52 million, which is flat with the previous year’s earnings. Third quarter earnings per share was $0.71; missing analyst expectations of $1.01 per share.

The company said retail sales in general increased 2% from $1.46 billion to $1.49 billion. BN.com sales increased 32% over the prior year, from $319 million to $420 million. Comparable sales increased 42%, on top of a 64% increase a year ago. This increase was driven by continued growth of NOOK device and digital content sales, offset by a decline in online physical product sales.

The NOOK business across all of the company's segments, including sales of digital content, device hardware and related accessories, increased 38% during the third quarter to $542 million. NOOK unit sales, including NOOK Simple Touch, NOOK Color and the new NOOK Tablet, increased 64% during the third quarter as compared to the same period last year. Digital content sales increased 85% on a comparable basis.

B&N previously stated that Nook Tablet "exceeded expectations" over the holidays, with device sales up 70 percent. As a whole, today’s earnings were not stellar considering that this is supposed to be the company’s high season for sales because of the holidays.

Barnes & Noble College sales declined 3% from $540 million to $525 million, due to the shift from selling new and used textbooks to lower priced textbook rentals.

As reported yesterday, Barnes & Noble also stated that it would release a new 8GB version of the Nook Tablet, which is priced at $199.

Leaked! Here’s The iPad 3′s Bulky Back Casing

Posted: 21 Feb 2012 05:48 AM PST

The iPad 3 is still weeks away from being announced, but Chinese tech blog M.I.C.gadget managed to snag a back shell for the iPad 3 from “one of our most reliable sources.” As you can see from the pics after the jump the case is slightly thicker than the svelte iPad 2 back panel. The next-gen tablet still has the tapered styling of its predecessor. It just looks like a slightly overweight iPad 2.

The iPad 3 is said to be thicker than the iPad 2. That should be considered as a fact now. Everything from LTE to the high-resolution screen to the predictably larger battery is cited as the cause for the thicker case. But outside of fanboy flame wars, an extra couple of millimeters doesn’t matter. M.I.C.gadget even found several iPad 2 cases still worked with the thicker casing. The addition of the aforementioned specs should more than justify the additional thickness — and that’s coming from a guy that doesn’t want the damn thing.

There is of course a chance that this isn’t the back case of the iPad 3. It’s entirely plausible M.I.C.gadgets is trolling the Internet. But I doubt it. I’ve found the site to be reliable in the past and the timing is about right. If the site had posted this, say, even a month ago, I would have a lot more doubts. But the iPad 3 is said to be launching in the coming weeks. Components are already being made. Case makers already have the specs. Expect more leaks to hit the interwebs prior to the official launch.

M.I.C.gadget also notes that the iPad 3′s back panel has room for a larger camera lens. This is in line with previous rumors that place a higher-resolution camera within the next iPad. But of course these are all rumors. Nothing is 100% confirmed yet. Apple is said to be announcing the next iPad the first week of March, but that’s still a rumor too at this point.

Pricelock Mobile App Puts The Energy Auction In Your Pocket

Posted: 21 Feb 2012 05:30 AM PST

Pricelock is all about making the buying and selling of energy more efficient. It was true when the company launched the Marketplace, a customized online energy auction platform for utilities companies, power plants and other government and/or commercial entities to buy and sell natural gas, motor fuels and coal. But today, Pricelock is taking things one step further with the launch of a mobile app.

The Pricelock Mobile app extends the auction into the pocket of the buyer or seller, which is meant to improve the speed and efficiency of how energy is purchased. The app notifies suppliers of upcoming auctions and lets them watch how their bids are doing in real-time.

Unfortunately, it seems as though the app only offers view-only access, rather than the ability to place a new bid. But theoretically, the app would make it easier for a supervisor or monitor to keep up with what’s happening at the auction (where there’s supposedly a proxy) without getting behind in day-to-day work.

The Pricelock Mobile app is available now for free in the Apple App Store, Android Market, and BlackBerry App World.