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OK Glass, this is the voice I use to tell you to change settings
We many need to use a different tone to talk to the spectacles on our face than to talk to friends in front of us. Maybe we’ll drop our voices, Batman-like?
Funding Daily: Data bouncers and mail comrades
Today, BlueTalon snagged $1.5 million to play data bouncer and Magisto found a $2 million comrade in Mail.ru.
Roku is reportedly plotting an IPO for 2014
Set-top box maker Roku has started laying out plans to make an initial public offering this year.
2U: The biggest ed-tech IPO you’ve never heard of
2U partners with top universities and colleges to craft online degree programs.
5 reasons your threesome will be way better if you don’t use this stupid app
Get real with yourself: If you can’t land a threesome on your own, you haven’t attained threesomeworthiness.
With a focus on photos, Trulia’s new mobile apps will help you find your dream home faster
Trulia sure knows how to appeal to the real estate voyeur in all of us.
Facebook’s annual Hacker Cup starts… NOW!
“Hackathons are a big tradition at Facebook. They serve as the foundation for some great (and not so great) ideas.”
BlueTalon nets $1.5M to be the bouncer for your big data
BlueTalon’s technology lets admins set policies about which data each business analyst can access. Data Collective likes the idea and has given the startup $1.5 million.
Silicon Valley’s forgotten public offering: 18 percent of our community lives in poverty
Guest Post The Silicon Valley wealth divide is increasing. In a region famous of innovation and entrepreneurship, huge swaths of our population are being left behind.
How Bazaarvoice became the poster child for how NOT to do an acquisition
Guest Post The DOJ is out to squash reviews network Bazaarvoice. And emails between the company’s own employees are the core of the government’s case.
Struq’s new ad targeting will identify 100% of people, 60-70% of the time, across all devices
If Struq CEO Sam Barnett gets his way, no ad anywhere would ever be delivered if it was not personalized. And every ad would be tailored to you, your likes, your previous purchases, your location, your device, and precisely what you’re doing at this very moment.
The Force is no longer with us: Fitbit stops sales, issues recall over health tracker complaints
Fitbit’s Force, a health-tracking wristband that’s truly difficult to talk about without the occasional Star Wars pun, is being taken off the market.
Mobile ad tech’s dirty secret: Real-time bidding isn’t all it’s cracked up to be
Guest Post Why mobile advertisers have it all wrong.
GamesBeat weekly roundup: Irrational winds down, Harmonix makes a shooter, and where the Kickstarters are now
Check out our entire week’s worth of coverage on VentureBeat’s channel for video games, GamesBeat.
Y Combinator’s ‘PG’ steps back from day-to-day work
Paul Graham is stepping away from the helm at startup accelerator Y Combinator. Sam Altman is filling the vacancy.
Apple reportedly snaps up TestFlight parent Burstly, amid product shutdowns
Burstly, the operator of the SkyRocket ad service and owner of Testflight, has reportedly been acquired by Apple.
Why emerging countries are driving enterprise investment deals
Guest Post If you want to see the best deals, you have to be ine emerging markets.
Blazestage wants to make webpages for bands ‘as easy as a tweet’ (exclusive)
Chuck Baker, an entrepreneur and former music executive, saw a need for tools to help artists and professional manage their online identity and content.
How Bay Area techies — men & women — are really learning from ‘Lean In’
I caught up with three tech companies — Salesforce.com, Change.org and NerdWallet — to assess the impact of “Lean In” on their company culture.
Startup accelerator DreamIt Ventures sees executive shakeup in New York (exclusive)
Tech accelerator DreamIt Ventures, best known for housing startups such as SeatGeek and LevelUp, today announced major leadership changes in New York.
LoveFilm to rebrand as Amazon Prime Instant Video in Europe
European streaming video service LoveFlim is getting rebranded as Prime Instant Video in the U.K. and Germany, the service’s owner Amazon announced today.
Google buys ad fraud fighter Spider.io
Google has built its empire on clickable ads, but its hidden vulnerability is that those clicks may not come from humans. It’s latest acquisition will help lessen that vulnerability.
Indiegogo founder Danae Ringelmann: ‘We will never lose sight of our vision to democratize finance’
In an interview, Indiegogo’s Danae Ringelmann described how she built a gatekeeper-free way for any small business to access capital.
Amazon reportedly planning March rollout for web TV box
Amazon’s rumored set-top box for streaming media may finally arrive next month.
Why Sen. Al Franken’s ‘smart card’ schtick will likely fall flat with big banks
“I’m wary of any government initiative to create any technology standard in the private sector,” said analyst Rajeed Chand of Franken’s letter-writing campaign to American banks and card issuers.
The DeanBeat: What Facebook’s $16B acquisition of WhatsApp says about the rise of Asian games
Will games prove to be the decisive source of monetization on mobile messaging networks?
Google Ventures’ Rich Miner joins Crittercism’s board, as the app monitoring firm nears 1B devices
App performance monitoring startup Crittercism is getting a huge vote of confidence from the cofounder of Android.
Steve Jobs approved for a 2015 U.S. postage stamp
While Steve Jobs probably didn’t send much snail mail in his later years, the US Postal Service intends to honor the late tech icon by putting his visage on a commemorative stamp.
Verizon closes $130B deal to buy out Vodafone’s stake in Verizon Wireless today
As of today, Verizon finally has full control over its wireless future.
Why retailers should embrace the omnichannel
Sponsored Post Retail is at a reset moment thanks to the disruption that the Internet, mobile phones, and social media are all bringing to the shopping experience. It means the entire supply chain — retailers, suppliers, and 3rd party logistics providers (3PLs) — has to become more efficient, competitive, and knowledgeable to be able attract and keep customers.
Magisto grabs $2M & finds a comrade in Mail.ru
Automatic video editing startup Magisto grabbed yet another major investor today: massive Russian email and web portal Mail.ru Group.
China-based social marketing service Kmsocial raises ‘tens of millions’
The capital will be used in R&D of new products and team construction, according to founder and CEO E Wei. Around 1,600 companies are using its services.
New Relic opens Europe office as it nears IPO
New Relic’s application monitoring technology is gaining popularity in Europe, so it’s opening a new office in Dublin.
As Facebook buys WhatsApp, Korea’s top messaging app preps for an IPO
Kakao Talk began as a simple messaging application that gained immediate popularity in Korea. But will its IPO plans stagnate as WhatsApp gets a Facebook infusion?
Former Fab manager launches her own Fab clone, says Fab lost sight of its goals
I took a lot of positives from Fab and learned a lot. Fab grew very rapidly in a short time, which is also important for us. We will, however, be careful not to lose sight of our long-term goals.
Mobile threats, powered by risky behavior, are evolving country by country
Russia, where the encounter rate is 63 percent, is a kind of malware paradise. The malware money engine in Russia is leading to a robust environment of rarely prosecuted criminal startups.
This is what Esri’s doing with Geoloqi’s location tech
On Wednesday, Esri launched its “Geotrigger” software development kit, which enables iOS and Android developers to add location-based features to their mobile applications.
ClubLocal Completes $10.7M Round Led by Groupon, Inc.
Sponsored Post ClubLocal, the easiest way to book and buy household services, today announced that it completed a $10.7M round of funding led by Groupon, Inc., a group of individual investors, and two of the original founders of ReachLocal, Inc….
Battery Ventures pours $7 million into retail intelligence outfit Smarter Remarketer
The founder said his startup’s software extracts and analyzes what he called “texturalized” data on consumers based on their behavioral patterns when perusing e-commerce sites.
Funding Daily: February 20, 2014
$25 million for Ionic Security, $20 million for Cylance, and a new $100 million fund for IDG Ventures — and many more deals, too.
