New York doctor appointments startup ZocDoc has seen relatively good traction in the U.S., but it is not available in other countries. So it makes sense that international startups similar to ZocDoc have emerged.

Case in point: KelDoc, a young French startup that books doctor and dentist appointments online, has just nabbed €700,000 ($913,010) in funding from Alven Capital.

KelDoc co-founder Eduardo Ronzano told VentureBeat that the average waiting time to see a doctor in France is between one week and six months. This has led to a substantial rise in people searching for information online about other doctors in the area and trying to book appointments faster.

“KelDoc provides a new service for patients in France whereby they can instantly access all necessary information about a doctor and then book their appointments 24/7 without needing to ring up the practice,” Ronzano said via email. “Doctors see KelDoc as a way to fill in the empty slots in their agenda [and] a way to cut back on hours of unnecessary phone calls.”

KelDoc’s initial focus will be on singing up dentists in highly concentrated urban areas. It is only available in Paris today, but Ronzano says the company will eventually expand to other European cities “in the coming months.”

The funding will go toward hiring new members for its sales and technical teams to help it expand more quickly.

Photo via KelDoc

Virtualization startup MokaFive has replaced CEO Dale Fuller with former BigFix head Dave Robbins, the company said today.

MokaFive is best known for making it possible to let workers securely use iPads, iPhones, and Macs for enterprise. Fuller will remain on MokaFive’s board of directors.

Robbins most recently was the CEO of Quantivo, but he might be best known as the CEO and founder of systems and security management startup BigFix, which was acquired by IBM in August 2010 for a reported $400 million. Ideally, his time with BigFix and other companies will help him improve MokaFive’s success.

“I couldn’t be more excited about this new challenge,” Robbins said in a statement. “MokaFive’s unique, client-side approach to device management represents the next wave in the management of distributed end points. We have a tremendous opportunity to help companies effectively deal with today’s biggest enterprise challenge: how to maximize employee productivity while keeping corporate data and applications secure on an increasing range of devices.”

Before Quantivo and BigFix, Robbins was the CEO of Quippe Technologies and Lucidity. He also served as the chief operating officer of Citadon and vice president of product management and services at UltraData.

Redwood City, Calif.-based MokaFive has raised $38 million in three rounds from Fuller, Vinod Khosla, Highland Capital, Khosla Ventures, and NGEN. Rivals include Citrix, VMware, Virtual Computer, and Wanova.

Updated at 10:17 a.m. PT with original quotes from Blake Irving.

Former Yahoo and Microsoft executive Blake Irving will take over as chief executive officer of major web domain business Go Daddy, succeeding interim CEO Scott Wagner.

Irving takes command a company that’s successfully attracted nearly 11 million customers — mostly small businesses — that use its domain purchasing and web hosting tools. But the company has attracted scrutiny as well, especially when it came out in support for the controversial SOPA bill. After a major backlash, Go Daddy reversed its position. Irving said he supports the privacy of Go Daddy’s many users.

“My position is that we fully respect the privacy of website owners,” Irving told VentureBeat today. “I look at SOPA and PIPA as things that are behind us.”

Irving’s last role was as Yahoo’s Chief Product Officer for two years. Before that, he served as a professor at Pepperdine University and as corporate vice president of the Windows Live platform at Microsoft for eight years.

He said he will use his recent experience at Yahoo to help Go Daddy expand its platform and number of applications. Two of his major priorities will be expansion in mobile and international.

“Many people internationally are going on the web for the first time through mobile devices,” Irving said. “We’ll want to design for mobile-first in many cases. … 11 million is a nice number, but 20 million or 30 million is what we should be striving for.”

On the topic of Go Daddy’s bombastic advertising, Irving said he appreciates the “edginess” of the ads. But he said future videos, like a recent Frank’s Pizza ad, will have a greater emphasis on how Go Daddy helps small business owners.

Irving will begin at his new post on Jan. 7, 2013. He will also join the Go Daddy board of directors at that time.

Blake Irving photo via Yahoo/Flickr

New York health tech startup ZocDoc will soon open its second office in Phoenix, a city not usually known for attracting startups the way San Francisco, Boston, or Chicago does.

ZocDoc helps digitally connect patients with doctors for all kinds for appointments. As with all things medical, the service needs high-quality customer service and support. This was the thinking behind Phoenix — the city is geographically distant from its NYC headquarters and is isolated from most extreme weather events. When NYC was threatened by Hurricane Irene, ZocDoc had to create a pop-up office in Chicago for customer service in case the HQ lost power or would be without power for days.

“Many companies may look at the Bay Area, where people try to attract engineers, but this is for customer service and sales,” ZocDoc director of communications Allison Braley told us. “We want better customer service coverage and it’s an untapped place in a sense.”

Braley admits that it’s a little strange to see a quickly growing 320-person startup like ZocDoc pick Phoenix for its second office, but the company especially liked the weather and proximity to universities to find talent. Phoenix also offers many emerging private companies to pluck talent from, as listed in the Inc 5000.

“For tech companies of our size, it is a bit unusual, but it made sense for us,” Braley said. “We only have a few employees there now, but we’ll add many more as we scale and grow.”

ZocDoc has raised about $95 million so far, including a large $50 million round last year from DST Global.

The New York Times Company has tapped BBC Director-General Mark Thompson as its new president and CEO after an eight-month search.

Long before the exit of former CEO Janet Robinson last December, the New York Times had been struggling with the move to print to digital. The organization is still treading water today, and it is reportedly trying to sell off faltering web property About.com. It hopes Thompson is the right person to turn it around.

“Mark is a gifted executive with strong credentials whose leadership at the BBC helped it to extend its trusted brand identity into new digital products and services,” said Times chairman Arthur Sulzberger in a statement. “Our board concluded that Mark’s experience and his accomplishments at the BBC made him the ideal candidate to lead the Times Company at this moment in time when we are highly focused on growing our business through digital and global expansion.”

Thompson joined the BBC in 2004 as Director-General and was the highest paid public employee in U.K. Before taking on work with the BBC, Thompson was the former chief executive of Channel 4.

During his tenure at the BBC, Thompson focused on digital expansion and finding new ways to connect with viewers and readers online. The Times is counting on that leadership.

“The New York Times is one of the world’s greatest news providers and a media brand of immense future potential both in the U.S. and around the world,” Thompson said in a canned statement. “It is a real privilege to be asked to join the Times Company as it embarks on the next chapter in its history.”

Mark Thompson photo: University of Salford/Flickr

Networking giant Cisco has added Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff to its board of directors, a sign that it wants to get more serious about cloud-focused services and hardware.

Benioff spent 13 years at Oracle before he founded Salesforce on the correct notion that SaaS applications would become a hot thing. Salesforce is now a cloud-services powerhouse, offering services like Force.com, Heroku, Radian6, Desk.com, Do.com, and more. (Check out our coverage of Do.com, which just launched.) Benioff might be able to bring some of his knowledge into the Cisco fold and get the company looking to the future.

Cisco also added Enduring Hydro CEO and former U.S. Under Secretary of Energy Kristina Johnson. Other folks on the now 14-person board include former Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz, Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang, Emerging Company Partners founder Steven West, and Cisco CEO John Chambers.

“We are extremely pleased to welcome Marc and Kristina to Cisco’s board of directors,” said Chambers, in a statement. “Marc has changed the face of technology through his bold ideas around cloud computing and the social enterprise. Kristina brings us an unmatched expertise in science and technology, which will help guide Cisco as we continue to innovate and transform our customers’ experiences.”

Marc Benioff photo: Kevin Krejci/Flickr

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Most business owners are already aware of the benefits of having a user-friendly website that is easily viewed and accessed by smartphones and tablets. Now, many of these same companies are finding fresh and unexpected ways to use tablets in stores, while helping to broaden the boundaries of what a brick-and-mortar store is capable of. Yes, the tablet revolution has finally reached retail, proving itself to be an essential tool in a new way of doing business.

Recent research indicates that by 2014, more than one in three American Internet users will have a tablet device, and that 52 percent of tablet owners prefer to shop online using their tablets. However, this data isn’t discouraging retail-store owners, who more and more are seeing the advantages of working with tablets to enhance their brick-and-mortar businesses.

For example, at the ‘Gas Station of the Future” in Rio de Janeiro, a Cisco Cius tablet is available to connect customers to specialists in real-time, and can also use videoconferencing to gather information on maintenance specials offered by the station, as well as show addresses across the city. Over at the the Shanghai Lotus Supermarket in China, SK Telecom has started a trial of its Smart Cart — a WiFi-enabled tablet PC mounted to a shopping cart (pictured above). While walking through the aisles, the customers can use Smart Cart to find product and discount information linked to their current location. It can even be synched to a companion smartphone app.

A recent survey of retailers done by RISNews.comRISNews.com showed 31 percent had plans to begin testing tablets in stores this year, 22 percent had already begun such testing and six percent had fully deployed tablets within stores. Tablets have already proven themselves to be extraordinarily adaptable and flexible at a variety of uses.

With the adaptation of Square and VeriFone point-of-sale (POS) services, there is an emergence of the concept of ‘t-commerce’ or tablet-commerce. And indeed, retail-business owners are beginning to understand the advantages of having a tablet with POS capabilities.

NYC-based Saturdays Surf uses the iPad with LightSpeed software to show merchandise to customers, order out-of-stock products, and complete sales. Putting tablets into the hands of sales associates is a smart move for a variety of reasons; using a tablet as an additional POS device helps free up floor space for merchandise, and customers no longer need to wait long check out lines for a cash register. Not only that, but studies show consumers who have been to stores where tables are being used feel that those stores are more innovative. Sixty four percent of businesses with tablets found their employees to be more helpful when assisting customers if they had a tablet.

An employee with a tablet in hand is at an advantage to help the average customers, who are more and more likely to have access to information on their smartphone or have researched their purchase on a tablet before entering a store.

Likewise, more and more retailers are catching on to the trend of using tablets. Here are some other great examples:

• Disney Stores and Urban Outfitters allow employees to ring up a customers purchase (and email their receipts) from an iPod Touch.
• Sears, Converse, Puma and Burberry have all rolled out tests of in-store tablets.
• Gucci and JC Penny are experimenting with ways to incorporate tablets into their stores.
• Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s both have tablet devices available at specific store locations to assist customers in researching a product, or to shop from a variety of styles.
• Nordstrom is rolling out 5,000 mobile checkout devices at 116 full-line stores in preparation for its Anniversary Sale in July.

With so much potential, and such quick adaptation, don’t be surprised to see tablets start showing up in stores near you.

IAC-owned video-sharing-site Vimeo has appointed former AOL and Yahoo executive Kerry Trainor to chief executive officer, the company announced Monday morning. Trainor will replace Dae Mellencamp, who will continue working at the company as President.

“Under Dae’s guidance, Vimeo has grown from a fledgling video sharing site to a business with over 70 million unique users a month and hundreds of thousands of paying subscribers,” said IAC CEO Greg Blatt, in a statement. “By uniting Kerry’s understanding of monetization and scale content businesses with Dae’s keen product and community sensibility, I’m confident Vimeo’s growth will accelerate. We really have high ambitions for this business.”

Despite a strong portfolio of products, including an assortment of new mobile apps and a striking redesign, the company likely isn’t making much money. Its focus has mostly been on signing people up for premium memberships rather than selling in-video advertising, which is where YouTube makes its bucks.

Bringing Trainor over from AOL signals that the company may finally set its sights on generating money through ads and ad-products. At AOL, Trainor served as senior vice president of entertainment for about two years. Before that, he was the CEO of FlipGloss Media and head of global media products at Yahoo Music, according to Trainor’s LinkedIn profile.

When Jobs stepped down as CEO because he was too sick to continue working, he retained his title of chairman. But since he passed away in early October, that spot has been vacant. Levinson (pictured left) makes sense as a replacement because he has been a long-time member of Apple’s board and has been a successful chairman for biotech firm Genentech. When Jobs stepped down as CEO back in August, Levinson spoke on behalf of the board and praised Jobs’ “extraordinary vision and leadership.”

“Art has made enormous contributions to Apple since he joined the board in 2000,” said Apple CEO Tim Cook in statement. “He has been our longest serving co-lead director, and his insight and leadership are incredibly valuable to Apple, our employees and our shareholders.”

The company also announced Disney CEO Bob Iger will join Apple’s board of directors. Iger also had a strong relationship with Jobs, who was Disney’s largest shareholder at one time.

“Bob and I have gotten to know one another very well over the past few years and on behalf of the entire board, we think he is going to make an extraordinary addition to our already very strong board,” Cook said. “His strategic vision for Disney is based on three fundamentals: generating the best creative content possible, fostering innovation and utilizing the latest technology, and expanding into new markets around the world which makes him a great fit for Apple.”

Apple’s board also includes Cook, former Vice President Al Gore, Avon CEO Andrea Jung, Intuit Chairman Bill Campbell, J. Crew CEO Millard S. Drexler and Ron Sugar, the former CEO of Northrop Grumman Corp.

Online appointment booking startup Schedulicity on Tuesday announced it will now offer a service called “Pop-Up Offers” that lets businesses post last-minute time slots with a discount in hopes of attracting more customers.

“The worst thing in the service industry is to suddenly have an empty slot at 3 p.m.,” Schedulicity CEO Jerry Nettuno told VentureBeat. “Regardless if it’s a massage therapist or a C.P.A., you want as many time slots filled as you can and we can help with that.”

Launched in 2009, Bozeman, Mont.-based Schedulicity is online service with the stated goal of helping small businesses save time and money with appointment booking. It also gives them the advantage against their peers by letting people book appointments 24 hours a day.

Nettuno originally started the company based on the idea that booking a hair cut should not take more time than booking a flight or a hotel room. He said was struggling to get an appointment booked with a hairdresser, but it only took him minutes to book a flight to Paris.

Pop-Up Offers, while not the most memorable name, seems like a smart additional service to attract more businesses to the company’s online software. Pop-Up Offers can be posted on the company’s website as well as pushed out on social networks, including Twitter and Facebook.

“In a few clicks, businesses can assign a discount at any level they want and get an appointment re-booked pretty quickly,” Nettuno said.

Schedulicity charges $19 per month for single-user accounts and $39 per month for multi-user accounts. The 20-employee company said it is picking up traction, and its growth averages 10 to 15 percent per month. More than six million appointments have been booked to date, with one appointment booked every four seconds. It serves clients in more than 1,900 cities across the U.S. and Canada.

Schedulicity is privately funded company and declined to disclose its financial details. However, the company said it is in the process of closing its first major round and will reveal the amount raised once the round has closed.

A screenshot of the new Pop-Up Offers can be found below:

Schedulicity is one of 80 companies chosen by VentureBeat to launch at the DEMO Fall 2011 event taking place this week in Silicon Valley. After our selection, the companies pay a fee to present. Our coverage of them remains objective.

“With engineering well in hand and a strong partner in Adam Freed (our COO), it’s time for me to focus my attention on other aspects of the business,” Dickerson wrote on the company blog Thursday. “I’m stepping into the role of CEO at Etsy, and I’m looking forward to working with all of the teams at Etsy to move faster as we scale while staying true to our values.”

New York-based Etsy has been around since 2005 and has succeeded at turning its ragtag community of arts-and-crafts sellers into a growing business. While still dwarfed by eBay’s billions in sales each year, Etsy handled $400 million in sales and had yearly revenues of over $40 million by 2010.

Kalin helped establish Etsy in 2005 and gave up his CEO role in July 2008 when NPR exec Maria Thomas took over. Kalin resumed the CEO position in Dec. 2009 after Thomas’ departure.

So yet again, Kalin is transitioning out of day-to-day management with Dickerson now running the show. Dickerson says he will focus on making the company more efficient and try to take more risks to get there.

“I’m going to prioritize the needs of the Etsy community in the broadest sense — Etsy’s sellers, how we work with each other within the company, our local communities, and everyone whose lives we touch,” Dickerson wrote.

Dickerson thanked Kalin for hiring him in the early days of Etsy.

“Rob started Etsy,” Dickerson wrote. “It was his idea. Hiring me was his idea. We all owe him a huge debt for starting the company that we all love, and I owe him a huge personal debt for bringing me to Etsy.”

Union Square Ventures’ Fred Wilson sung his praises for Kalin on his own blog.

“Rob is so very much that founder who cares intensely,” Wilson wrote. “He has given so much to the company over the years and he just completed a product roadmap that provides a guidepost for what Etsy will become in the coming years. As Rob transitions out once again, I want to personally thank him for all of this and more. Etsy is his creation and will always be.”

Are you a fan of Etsy? What do you make this change?

Users will be able to select a section of the day they would like to block off for appointments, which can be split into any type of time block (e.g. 30 minute slots). Each Google account will also have its own appointments sign-up page that users will access to book appointments. That page can also be embedded into personal websites.

Google uses the example of college professors booking appointments with students and hair dressers as some of the obvious candidates for the service.

The new feature will begin rolling out today, according to the official Gmail blog. The blog post didn’t indicated if people booking appointments need a Google account or whether the new feature would roll out for Google’s enterprise app accounts.

I was hoping to get the feature before this post went up so I could offer some initial feedback but I’m still waiting for Google to enable my account. For now, check out the initial screen shots from Google’s blog post.

Last month, Jalichandra was replaced as Technorati CEO by senior vice president and general manager Shani Higgins. Jalichandra still serves as a board adviser to Technorati Media and also advises for Weather Underground, MyYearbook, and Skimlinks. Before joining Technorati in 2007, Jalichandra was entrepreneur-in-residence at Battery Ventures.

“I’m very excited to join the MapMyFitness team,” Jalichandra said in a statement. “The company has already achieved so much, and I look forward to helping it continue to grow. MapMyFitness provides me a truly unique business opportunity that combines my lifelong passion for fitness with social media, online advertising and e-commerce.”

MapMyFitness closed a $5 million venture round from Austin Ventures in August 2010, according to TechCrunch. The company operates a series of mobile apps and websites including MapMyRun.com, MapMyRide.com, MapMyHike.com, MapMyMountain.com, and more.

International business network MerchantCircle today launched its new Appointment Scheduler, a free, easy-to-use online tool for customers to book appointments with local businesses online.

Founded in 2005, over 1.4 million merchants currently use the MerchantCircle network to upload pictures, blog, create coupons and newsletters, and connect with customers and other merchants.

In addition, regional consumers can find more than 20 million business listings through the company’s homepage or major search engines in the U.S., Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom.

The free Appointment Scheduler now lets small, local merchants capture inbound online appointment requests from potential customers via an easy-to-use calendaring system, and manage their bookings right from their MerchantCircle Dashboard.

More than 1.4 million members of the site can now set up appointments online, with businesses then receiving email notifications that a meeting has been booked and a confirmation is required.

Customers who schedule an appointment will be automatically notified by email of confirmed appointments—and have automatic reminders about those appointments sent to them within 24 hours of their booking date and time.

The Mountain View, Calif.-based company compares the new tool to popular embedded restaurant reservation website Open Table, but for other kinds of businesses besides eateries.

“We’ve set out to increase conversations between local business owners and customers and the Open Table style Appt Scheduler will allow them to easily manage inbound appointment requests online at no cost,” Darren Waddell, MerchantCircle vice president of product marketing, told VentureBeat.

The Appointment Scheduler is also available as an embeddable widget for members’ personal business websites, in addition to their MerchantCircle listing, as a way to centralize all appointments.

The company said it will soon take advantage of social networking tools as a way to schedule appointments and raise its profile, with Facebook integration in the pipeline for the near future.

“Consumers will also enjoy the convenience of seeing available time slots and requesting appointments online for their favorite neighborhood businesses who haven’t previously been able to offer this capability in large part,” said Waddell.