If you haven’t heard of Tech Cocktail, you probably haven’t partied much with the startup community.

Tech Cocktail‘s goal is to support emerging tech hubs through events and provide relevant news and information for entrepreneurs on its website. And today, the company raised its first $2.5 million funding round from Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh.

As part of the funding, the team opened a new office in Las Vegas, which will serve as its headquarters. On the company blog, CEO Frank Gruber said the goal is to become the “leaders” of the local, burgeoning tech community.

Entrepreneurs are relocating to Vegas in large part due to the efforts of Hsieh’s “Downtown Project.” Hsieh and his team are on a mission to revitalize the downtown economy through a $500 million fund. Investments are already being made in urban planning and development, schools and hospitals, small businesses, and technology startups.

Last week, I travelled to Vegas with a group of entrepreneurs and investors to find out more about the Downtown Project. Most of the activities, including speaker sessions and networking events, were organized by Tech Cocktail.

“We’ve known Tony Hsieh for over five years, dating back to a party that we threw together for CES 2009,” Gruber said on the Tech Cocktail blog. “It’s great to have a strategic partner who really understands entrepreneurship and the importance of celebrating and building community around it.”

It should come as no surprise that the founders would raise a sizable round of funding (especially for a media company) from the downtown project. Gruber said the team will focus on expanding throughout the United States, and building the brand. He claims that 30,000 people attend one of Tech Cocktail’s events last year alone.

Tech Cocktail will also release a “national platform” for entrepreneurs, but hasn’t disclosed much at this point.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

We may not have flying cars yet, but one thing is certain: We now expect a great Mobile Experience.

We expect it in almost every aspect of our daily lives: At home, parents are video chatting from their phones with their teenagers, who know better than using SMS for texting. At work, we’re using well-designed consumer apps on our tablets. While shopping, we expect quick and seamless browsing and payment options. I’m not even talking about how you’ll soon pay for that latte while scanning news with your Google Glasses.

Mobile Experience is the sum of all this. It is how content, mobile site design and development, advertising, commerce features, hardware — and even your surroundings — are all converging together more seamlessly in your mobile life than they have before. And that’s what we’re debating at our upcoming MobileBeat 2013 conference in San Francisco on July 9th and 10th (get your early bird tickets here; we sell out every year, so move quickly).

The Mobile Experience is not optional, it is mandatory. If your company isn’t serving its content or services with a great experience, the odds are you’re probably going to go down.

What’s more, inherent technical constraints are combining with merciless competition in the mobile space to drive a continual process of natural selection. This allows only the cream of the crop of services to rise to the top. Thousands of developers are releasing new apps every day. Legacy providers who aren’t moving quickly enough are getting left by the wayside.

Who is claiming the eyeballs and wallets by providing the best Mobile Experience? What are the top brands in the world doing to keep up with this shift, and who are they working with? Which upcoming releases will help you make your design even sleeker, your technology stacks even faster, your revenue streams even safer? Those are some of the topics we’ll be discussing at MobileBeat.

This is an expansion of last year’s MobileBeat theme, which was about the emergence of the superiority of design. This year, design is still extremely important, but we’re seeing that other functionality — whether it is commerce, payments, advertising or other technology — is being built into that design in a more integrated way.

That’s why we’ve widened our focus, and are going with the tagline: “How to build the Winning Mobile Experience.” The Mobile Experience refers to the overall mobile experience — and it also nods to the need for business models and other functionality to be incorporated into pretty design. How to build that winning Mobile Experience is what every company needs to know.

This year, we invite you to discover best examples of companies that know how to craft a great Mobile Experience. We’re on the prowl right now to invite them all at MobileBeat 2013. We will focus on the recipes for success. Come hear from top brands what they see their customers wanting, and meet the leaders from technology companies large and small that help redefine what you expect from a smartphone. Oh by the way, you may not think “phones” for much longer either when talking about mobile.

Tailored for business executives and technology decision-makers to stay on top of news in this fast-changing industry, the event will address all the topics that are impacted by mobile, from brand engagement and advertising, to user acquisition and monetization, consumerization of IT in the enterprise, and technology and infrastructure. Find the complete list on MobileBeat’s website.

Look forward to seeing you there!

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

If you couldn’t make it to this year’s Mobile Summit, you can at least live through the experience vicariously through the photos below. (And there’s always our upcoming MobileBeat conference.)

Just like our past two Mobile Summits, this year’s event was filled with passionate discussions about big mobile issues. We invited 180 of the most influential minds in the industry to chat about mobile experience, monetization, and commerce, as well as mobile’s role in the enterprise and as the “remote control for life.”

There was, of course, plenty of time for carousing and deep meditations on the future of technology — from the viability of Google Glass, to the inevitable robot apocalypse. We thank everyone who joined us for the Summit, and if you’d like to attend next year, start cracking on your invitation pitch now.

Photos by Michael O’Donnell/VentureBeat, unless otherwise noted.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

VentureBeat’s Mobile Summit, our annual get-together with top-level mobile industry executives, is kicking off today at the beautiful Cavallo Point Lodge resort in Sausalito, Calif.

Mobile Summit is different from your typical tech conference: It doesn’t have any crowds, and the conversation isn’t driven by PR handlers — and it’s also not set in a cramped convention center. Instead, we’ve invited 180 of the brightest minds in mobile to tackle issues facing the industry in an intimate and relaxed setting.

This year we’re focusing on mobile experience, mobile commerce, the future of infrastructure, and three other topics. We’ll be chatting with folks from AT&T, Google+, and others onstage, and we’re also wrangling all of the attendees for boardroom sessions to debate our core topics. By bringing together executives from all across mobile for spirited discussions, we think we can cut through most of the industry drama for solutions that will help businesses and consumers alike.

Keep an eye out for coverage from the Mobile Summit today and tomorrow on VentureBeat.

Photos: Michael O’Donnell/VentureBeat

And adding a handy second-round funding of $1.5 million from initial backers Detroit Venture Partners and Ludlow Ventures.

“We always knew we wanted to do this,” CEO Greg Schwartz told me yesterday. “But we didn’t realize how important it would be. … It’s a pivot in terms of energy.”

The company’s mobile app integrates with the calendar app on your smartphone, focusing not just on your own events but on the future events that friends, family, and colleagues consider important. You can also share events out to your UpTo connections – Schwartz described it as the Instagram of calendars last time I talked to him: a layer on top of your calendar, just as Instagram is a layer on top of your camera.

People used it, Apple featured the app in the App Store, and downloads grew, but access to public streams grew even faster. Last year UpTo tentatively opened up the platform to public streams, and pro sports teams, organizational calendars, speaking tours, and organizations jumped on the new capability, to the point where there are now more than 2000 streams of events on the UpTo system .

The problem with that growth? Most of them have been placed there by the company itself.

So now Schwartz is opening up the platform, allowing any business, school, club, or organization to create their own event streams. Interested users can subscribe to those streams, and organizations can also embed live UpTo calendar streams on their websites, for an experience Schwartz says is much more dynamic and social than the standard static event pages.

It’s good timing, as user growth is coming faster than ever: UpTo has had more downloads in the last 45 days than in the previous year. And it’s also a smart one-step-removed user acquisition strategy.

“It’s a B-to-B-to-C user acquisition strategy,” Schwartz explains.

Once organizations join, their members and fans join, meaning that one “sale” (the app and the event stream are currently free) generates hundreds or even thousands of installs.

This is a much bigger vision, and a much bigger product than UpTo had envisioned before. It’s essentially the social network of tomorrow: What’s happening, who’s attending, which friends will be there, and which ones do I want to attend? And it will bring some new competition, too, as UpTo enters space occupied by companies like Eventful and Meetup.

For Schwartz, Upto doesn’t always need to be in the forefront.

“It’s not all about downloading the app or using the app,” he says. “You might experience UpTo and maybe not even realize it. It’s a more distributed approach.”

Schwartz wants to work with companies like Eventful and Meetup, and it is actively pursuing Facebook as well to bring in Facebook events natively and share events from UpTo not as status updates but as Facebook events. The goal is a future in which when users like the Detroit Lions or New York Yankees, for instance, UpTo and Facebook can then recommend other event streams they might be interested in.

The pivot, such as it is, was mostly due to good fortune, Schwartz suggests:

“We sort of got lucky that we were able to experiment, bring a few streams into the app,” he says. “Then we gave people the ability to suggest streams … and huge traffic resulted.”

That sort of luck is how startups stop being startups and start being contenders, and the new round of funding from existing investors Detroit Venture Partners and Ludlow Ventures, both based in Detroit, will help.

photo credit: Mike Rohde via photopin cc

Amped for this year’s Google I/O conference? Google just announced that registration for its annual developer conference will open on March 13 at 7 a.m. Pacific (10 a.m. Eastern).

Google I/O 2013 is May 15-17 at San Francisco’s Moscone Center. Ticket prices remain the same as last year: $900 for general attendees and $300 for academic attendees.

You need Google+ and Google Wallet accounts ready to register for the event. Last year’s I/O tickets sold out within 20 minutes, so get your magic fingers ready if you’re eager to attend.

At last year’s I/O event, Google announced the Nexus 7, Nexus Q (RIP), and its powerful Compute Engine. The company also showed off the power of Project Glass by livestreaming people jumping out of an airplane.

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Big Data and Predictive/Real-time Analytics startups: Are you looking to jumpstart development & accelerate market traction? Sign up for the SAP Startup Focus program to receive technology, support, resources and community to help you develop new applications on SAP HANA, a cutting edge database platform. Get started here, and enter promo code “VB2013″ on the form.

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The launch party is not only a key feature of the startup’s promotional plan but it’s also a celebration of their teams’ hard work. A lot of startups  however, don’t do parties right and waste a lot of effort and anticipation on events that fall flat.  Here are seven things startups forget when planning their launch parties, and seven ways to make parties better.

You invited key people, but forgot how to reach the press

Startups can increase retention by sending invitations directly to the journalists that would normally cover the beats that the startups are in. To coax more journalists to come to your event, include an extra pair of passes with your press invitation. Allowing journalists to bring their friends will give them a greater incentive to attend. That means more press.

And while we’re talking about press, don’t forget about local bloggers.  People who write about trends in your niche and/or community have eager and up-to-date followers, so make sure you include them on your list.

You got them in the door, but forgot to establish a giveaway

Increase the overall retention of your event by greeting guests with a raffle ticket and letting them know what the prize is as well as the time you plan to give it away. (“Welcome, we’re auctioning off an iPad at 7pm so make sure you stick around.”)

Give everyone a reason to listen up and have the giveaway take place directly after the (tiny) promotional portion of your event.

You hired a DJ, but forgot to tune them in

Keep your entertainment on the same page by providing your DJ with a timeline for the evening, allowing them to match their music accordingly. And while you’re at it, be sure to inform your caterers, bartenders, hostesses, and doormen, too.

You have bartender, but forgot to create special branded cocktails

For your guests, providing a menu of a few specialty cocktails is an easy conversation starter (“Oh, which one did you get?)

Special cocktails also give your company a good branding opportunity: Give cocktails titles that match your brand, products, services, or theme. For example, the “VentureBeat Bourbon” or the “Google Gimlet.”

Also, be sure to not leave anyone out and include one fashionable non-alcoholic drink. Shake up some lemon, honey, and elderflower syrup, pour it over the rocks into a highball glass, top it off with a splash of ginger beer and you’ve got all of the yum with none of the buzz.

You have a great theme, but forgot to tie it into activities

Your best bet is to brand activities alongside your theme and launch product. If your motto is “technology made simple”, consider relaxing activities like free massages.  If you’re known for “paving the pathway to the future”, hire a tarot card reader to perform readings.

Remember to create a Twitter hashtag for your event and promote it so that people can still be active even when using their smartphones.
You thank everyone for coming, but forgot about take-a-ways

Can’t score great goods?  Get creative instead.  Set up an exit cupcake stand for people to grab on their way out. By frosting the cupcakes with your colors you’ve scored another brand tie-in and ended your event on a sweet note.

You threw a great event …but forgot to end things while they were still having fun

This is a golden rule among event managers and a commonly overlooked practice for those new to party planning.

It’s human nature to want what you can’t have; so find the happy medium in your time frame and cut things off while everyone is still having a good time.

Keep the networking alive by suggesting a nearby after-party spot so people can continue to socialize on their own time.

Kelly Gregorio writes about topics that affect small businesses and entrepreneurs while working at Advantage Capital Funds, a provider of small business loans. You can read  her daily blog here.

Photos: Flickr/The Arches, Canadian Film Centre,  Seo2 | Por Puro Amor Al Rap

Highlight is a location-based mobile app that notifies you when people in your social network are nearby. I was skeptical of the app engineering “serendipity” until it led to an impromptu dinner party in Tahoe over the weekend.

Today during a small event at Highlight’s offices, founder and CEO Paul Davidon demoed the new features and set out his vision for the future of communication. Highlight 1.5 pulls in elements like photo-sharing, commenting, and events from other social apps, but it still takes its own serendipity-centric approach. 

“How can you take people walking around cities and connect them in the physical world?” said Davison during his presentation. “Taken together, the photos and events features are really complimentary. The applications extend to conferences, fashion week, weddings, football games, company holiday parties, small group dinners, concerts. There are so many situations where we gather together as friends, people, part of community. Being able to see who else is there, and have real-time conversations, and have that memory of that after you leave, will create a richer experience.”

The app now has a photo icon, and you can use it to post photos and share them publicly with people in your vicinity. Davison gave the example of Fat Tuesday, when he snapped a picture of the donuts he brought to the office and watched friends and coworkers filter in for the treats.

“We want to allow people to share an experience they are having right now,” Davison said. “It’s not photo sharing in the typical sense, it’s photos plus physical space. If I am walking down the street and see something interesting, or I am standing near someone else’s photo physically, it will show up on my phone.”

The vision is that rather than emailing photos or organizing them into an album on Facebook, people will simply have access to photo albums simply by being in a particular place. The caption feature encourages communication between users, and Davison said this element is more popular than he initially expected.

Events are the other major update. Highlight events, however, do not have an official organizer or an invite list, and these are only visible to people in the immediate vicinity.

“We didn’t want to re-create services that already exist,” Davison said. “We want to create something that allows people to create shared experiences that are lightweight and fun.

“You can only start an event ‘here and now.’ You enter a title and it defaults to the current location, but that can be altered. Only people near you will get a notification.”

When Highlight went through its first update, it made the application “smarter” and more interactive. The team spent the past year rebuilding the notification backend and infrastructure to make the notifications more relevant. They also worked on extending the battery life, since the app runs in the background on phones and can be a power-drain and introduced a search function.

Davison said that these changes helped Highlight grow its user base and receive Apple’s Best of 2012.

Highlight launched in January 2012 and quickly became popular within the tech scene. It took off at the South-by-South-West conference as startup kids used it to network, meet new people, and track down their friends. Davison formerly worked as an entrepreneur-in-residence at Benchmark Capital, which invested in Highlight along with SV Angel, Crunchfund, and other angel investors last March. 

Photo Credit: Highlight

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

There’s an elephant in the room. There’s a massive one, stinking up the living room of the mobile industry. And no one seems to be talking about it.

Well, VentureBeat is. The elephant is the focus of the Mobile Summit, which is is back for a third year. It’s shaping up to be our most significant Summit yet.

So what’s this elephant of which I speak?

It’s easy to miss. Superficially, everything looks fine. The adoption of mobile smartphones and tablets is explosive right now, and folks like Apple, Samsung and Google are making billions.

However, a lot of other players are getting killed. Publishers, developers, advertisers and a lot of other folks, are suffering because they can’t deliver their messages, or make money, as effectively as they used to. Traditional advertising isn’t working on mobile. Brands refuse to advertise, because ads are too small to grab a reader’s attention.

Witness Facebook: Last year, when the company couldn’t clearly communicate how it would recover from its mobile advertising problem, it lost billions of dollars in market capitalization.

To add insult to injury, the device gatekeepers, like Apple, are doing things like squeezing 30 percent of the revenue from everything publishers make on the mobile platform.

The Summit is all about hosting conversations in the key areas where collaboration might improve mobile profits and revenue for everyone. Even for the guys making money, they’ll do even better if the rest of the economy thrives too. That’s why this year, we’re exploring seven key themes surrounding the mobile industry. Our conversations will include some of the brightest minds in the industry, including executives, investors, and policymakers.

The Mobile Summit will be held at the beautiful Cavallo Point Resort (just across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco) on April 1-2. To be sure, the Mobile Summit is an invitation-only event. We’re inviting the top 180 mobile executives, as ranked on our internal list. We know we may be missing some thought-leaders, so we’ve got a few spaces reserved for additional mobile leaders not already on our list. You can request an invite here.

While the Mobile Summit itself is invite-only, we’ll be taking the conclusions reached during the Summit’s workshops to the wider public. We’ll be writing up stories about them, and also continuing the discussion at our wider, larger MobileBeat event in July.

We’ve learned a lot after hosting the Mobile Summit over the last two years — mostly, putting significant industry players in the same room, focused on a single problem, can lead to some intriguing results. We’ll divide the 180 into working groups of 20 people, who will roll up their sleeves and come up with wishlists that they’ll take back to the wider group and share. It’s an intimate event where big ideas and lively discussion are always at the forefront.

Here are the seven themes:

1. The Mobile Experience: Platforms and Design

The big OS players — Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon and more — have caused significant fragmentation in mobile, using different user interface and other technologies that make standardization difficult. This poses challenges for developers and web designers. That comes at a time when design and user interface are as important as ever. Mobile devices have changed the way humans interact with data. App makers and platform builders are expanding the boundaries of how those interactions take place. All the more important, therefore, that developers and other ecosystem players agree on standards and basic experience, in order to thrive and make money.

2. Can mobile monetize?

Developers are still searching for ways to profit from their work. This is possibly the most pressing question facing the industry today — and will remain so for some time. The number of apps continues to grow and the field is intensively competitive. At the same time, the market is rapidly shifting from paid downloads and advertising models to in-app purchases, offers, and virtual currencies. Advertisers, brands, and publishers need to find the best ways forward.

3. Mobile Commerce – the rise of context and personalization

Mobile devices are becoming our close companion for all kinds of commercial activities, including mobile payments and shopping. It’s driven by technology that gives phones context about its location and environment. And here too, the market is fragmented, and issues such as personalization, targeting and privacy are still being worked out.

4. How will we get to 5G?

By the time the industry had reached 100 million shipments of 3G phones, we knew what 4G looked like. Last year we passed the same milestone for 4G, but today the industry has no clear vision of what 5G is — or if 5G will even exist. Compounding the problem, we still see many questions lingering around 4G: service roll-outs, data speeds, chipset availability, and more. Users have come to expect a steady increase in data rates.

5. Future of mobile infrastructure

The rise of smartphones has brought new pressures to bear on the hardware and networks we rely on. Software and systems are shifting the building blocks of the mobile industry. Carriers are looking to equipment makers to build more flexible software into their systems, while changing network architectures are driving the adoption of application acceleration and CDNs.

6. Mobile as remote control for life

Smartphones and tablets are entering new aspects of our lives, at home and at work. Phones could become the center of the digital living room, and tablets a companion to media. Increasingly, our phones can be used to anticipate our desires, opening new channels for marketing, and targeted advertising.

7. What’s next for enterprise?

The first wave of the consumerized enterprise is behind us. As enterprises move beyond security concerns, they are looking for new ways to harness the productivity of their mobilized workforce. Meanwhile, iPhones and iPads have opened the floodgate, as executives on down adopt these devices en masse.

We’d like to thank Flurry for partnering with us on the Mobile Summit. Keep an eye out as we reveal the speakers participating in this year’s event.

[Elephant image credit: David Blackwell, Flickr]

KANSAS CITY — On the day before Thanksgiving, offices slow down and attendance dwindles. Not at 1 Million Cups (1MC), the most popular weekly startup event in Kansas City. Today, there are more than 80 people here ready to hear pitches and connect with other entrepreneurs.

1MC is held every Wednesday morning for one hour at the Kauffman Foundation, the massive not-for-profit organization that created the event. The goal of the event to help foster a community of entrepreneurship, and it has quickly grown. It began in April of this year with 12 people attending. Last week, it attracted 145.

“A lot of our growth was fueled by word-of-mouth,” Nate Olson, an analyst at the Kauffman Foundation who helped get 1 Million Cups off the ground, told me. “The people that would attend to pitch would keep coming back to hear people pitch during the following weeks.”

The unusual name “1 Million Cups” derives from the idea that it takes one million cups of coffee to build an active community of startups. Kansas City is clearly not San Francisco, New York, or Boulder, but the Kauffman Foundation wants KC to be a premier destination for tech and startups in the Midwest.

“We wondered what it would take to change the culture of entrepreneurship in KC,” Olson said. “We decided it was one million cups of coffee. That’s what it would take to create a dynamic and diverse startup community.”

The format is simple: Two startups pitch every each morning for six minutes and then each conduct a 20-minute question-and-answer session. The final minutes of the event are for networking.

The two startups pitching today at Umzuzu, a Google Apps reseller and support provider, and Riega Foods, a company that sells specialty and gluten-free food products at about 2,000 stores in the U.S. Watching these two companies pitch, the mood here is relaxed and the questions asked by the group are of a high-quality.

“1 Million Cups is an integral part of the entrepreneurial community in Kansas City,” Bryan Azorsky, a web designer who has been attending 1 Million Cups for the past five months. “I’ve helped spread the word to lots of people. Sometimes I’m surrounded by people I’ve invited.”

Olson said that the next step for 1 Million Cups is bringing it to other cities. Right now, the Kauffman Foundation is hosting 1 Million Cups in Des Moines, Ia., where it launched last week in a coffee shop and attracted 12 people.

The Kauffman Foundation has plans to launch 1 Million Cups in another 18 cities in the next year. Cities that will get the program have not been finalized, but Olson said it will start in the Midwest and then grow out to other part of the U.S. Likely locations include St. Louis, Omaha, Cedar Rapids, Ia., Lincoln, Neb., Atlanta, and Phoenix.

“We’re really interested in helping cities build a vibrant startup community,” Olson said. “Being an entrepreneur can be a lonely journey. But people come here and find like-minds. A couple months ago, someone said that they quit their job to work full-time on their startup and everyone clapped. This is the only group in Kansas City that would clap for leaving your job and chasing your dream.”

Photo credit: Sean Ludwig/VentureBeat

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Big Data and Predictive/Real-time Analytics startups: Are you looking to jumpstart development & accelerate market traction? Sign up for the SAP Startup Focus program to receive technology, support, resources and community to help you develop new applications on SAP HANA, a cutting edge database platform. Get started here, and enter promo code “VB2013″ on the form.

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Nobody wants to attend a concert or a sporting event alone, but buying tickets for a number of people is a hassle. PayByGroup has added a “fixed price” feature today to make it easier to collect funds for group ticket buying.

PayByGroup is payment platform where people can pool their money to make a collective purchase. Users create a “PayByGroup” for a specific purpose, dictate the amount that each person needs to pay, invites participants to join. No money is charged until the goal has been reached, at which point the initiator can collect the funds. The new fixed-price option specifically targets occasions when every participant throws in the same amount.

The fixed price feature is also useful for merchants who can implement PayByGroup’s technology to create a group checkout option. Any business, from a theater to a vacation rental site, can use the platform to lower friction during the payment process and increase conversions. PayByGroup has formed partnerships with “marquee merchants”, although it has not yet revealed who these partners are. It distinguishes itself from crowd funding site Crowdtilt in this way, which does not currently work with vendors.

PayByGroup was founded by a team of “group organizers” who were consistently frustrated while planning parties or orchestrating trips. Their ultimate mission to have fun was tainted by the awkwardness of asking friends for money and the sting of never getting paid back. Rather than relegate themselves to a lifetime of passive aggressive text messaging and check collecting, they built a better alternative themselves.

PayByGroup received investment from 500 Startups and is based in Mountain View, CA.

Check out this video about the fixed-price feature below:

A boat is not normally something you want to tilt over, unless it is a yacht party and you are trying to Crowdtilt it.

Last week, startup Crowdtilt enabled the largest crowd funded party to date. Its Halloween mega yacht party in the San Francisco Bay had 435 backers and “tilted” at $30,000. The demand for the event was so high that it sold out in three days and those who didn’t get tickets for the first boat waged a campaign to fund a second, 360 person boat.

The success of these campaigns inspired me to check in with Crowdtilt on their progress since graduating from Y Combinator in February and raising $2.1 million in venture capital funding in May.

Crowdtilt was founded as a place where friends could pool their money together online for a specific purpose. Unlike Kickstarter and and Indiegogo which mostly feature creative and business projects, Crowdtilt focuses on enabling group experiences or shared causes. Like spending Halloween dancing on a boat.

Anyone can start a campaign on Crowdtilt by writing a brief description and setting the fundraising goal. They then reach out to their social network to help achieve the objective by throwing in money. No money is charged until the campaign “tilts”, and if a campaign misses the mark, all contributors gets their pledged money back.

“Prior to Crowdtilt, there was no easy way to organize a 450 people yacht party in 3 days,” said founder James Beshara. “Being able to set a ridiculous high tilt amount at $20K and seeing whether this will happen is a pretty big deal. Everybody knew that if we didn’t get enough people for the event, then no one would be charged anything. I think that really freed up the first people to contribute toward the goal, since they knew they’d only be charged if it was a huge success. The way we collaborate around money is changing, and we want to push these boundaries forward when it comes to you and your group.”

The service is available to just about anyone, whether they are looking to throw a party, buy an expensive gift, or raise money for Hurricane Sandy victims. One user said he would officially change his middle name to “Awesome Danger” if his friends pooled $350 for a name change application. The biggest campaign to date raised $99K to preserve the only Catholic School in Tallahasee, Florida from shutting down.

Beshara initially intended to create a crowdfunding portal for good causes, but his friends kept requesting to use the prototype for activities like fantasy football and weddings. The company pivoted to its current model and since then has grown quickly.

It is interesting to see the way group dynamics are reflected in user behavior. According to statistics shared by Crowdtilt’s team, 86% of campaigns are successful, and on average, raise almost twice as much as they need to tilt. Campaigns that reach a 34% of their goal have a 99% chance of going all the way, and 38% of activity happens in the last few hours. Herd mentality is reflected here – once a few people go in, everyone wants in.

With Winter upon us, people are using the platform to plan holiday events. Groups of people are coming together to raise money for Thanksgiving feasts, holiday parties, ski leases, and collective donations to charitable organizations. There has also been a lot of activity surrounding Movember and Hurricane Sandy fundraisers. Crowdtilt will put $20 towards any Movember campaign and waive all fees for Sandy fundraisers.

In many ways, Crowdtilt is most distinguishable for its flexibility. The platform is not only for creative projects, emerging businesses, or good causes. Rather, it is for anything and everything and can turn pipe dreams into reality.

Veterans day is coming and what better way to celebrate — by doing a hack-a-thon, of course!  Ok, perhaps this is not your normal parade-and-BBQ kind of thing, but VetsinTech is having a hack-a-thon on the weekend of Veteran’s Day, November 9-11, to get returning vets immersed in the tech community.

There will be two classes on Friday, November 9th. One is an introduction to JavaScript and the other an introduction to iOS programming. So not knowing how to code is no excuse for skipping the hackathon: Take one of these classes, and come to the hackathon the next day!

The VetsinTech origination is focused on connecting newly returning veterans with training, job opportunities, and startup opportunities.

Below is some information from the VetsinTech website.

What: Vets in Tech Startup Veterans Hackathon/Weekend – Co-chair Craig Newmark of craigslist and board member IAVA – Iraq/Afghanistan Veteran’s of America
When: Friday, November 9th to Sunday, November 11th.
Where: Adobe Systems , SF – 601 Townsend Street
Registration Link: click here

100 copies of The Lean Startup book are being donated by Eric Ries to the first 100 veterans who register for this event!

In this two-day event the tech community in SF will come together to support our returning Iraq/Afghan veterans.  Teams of approximately 5-10 people will be formed with a variety of skills -the vets can have the idea, help with business plan, marketing or just sit in to audit/participate for educational purposes – coding skills are NOT required.  Our tech community is encouraged to come (and to code) and recognize the unique perspective our returning veterans will have to offer.

What is it:

The Vets in Tech Startup Veteran weekend is a two-day business and app development competition. The event’s goal is to invite returning veterans to be part of a team focused on building successful startups around the next generation social, mobile, gaming, ecommerce, health or other applications and to foster a community of (veteran) entrepreneurship.  Our veterans can add a unique perspective to many of these types of applications.

Registered idea generators are given 1 minute to pitch an app concept to a tech audience on day one. Attending veterans, engineers, designers, marketing and business people as well as our team of glorious mentors preselect the best ideas that will be developed into applications during the weekend. Teams are formed around the most promising projects and the competition begins.

What to expect:

• Expect to find the complimentary skills that help you to connect in the tech community. Be open, share your ideas and don’t hold back – “Ideas without actions are usually called dreams”
• Expect to meet super talented and inspiring people, to work under time pressure, to sleep little, and to dedicate the whole weekend!
• Expect to gain valuable feedback and insight not only from your teammates but also from other participants and the all-star panel of Judges.
• Expect, apart from seeing your project turning into a shiny demo, to win prizes that will help you get that sexy app out the door.

Tentative Agenda:

Friday November 9th

• 6:00 Basic Training – Introduction to iOS Programming
• 9:00 Networking

Saturday November 10th

• 9am – 10am Breakfast, Networking, Team Building
• 10am-10:45am – Keynote speakers
• 10:45am – Break
• 11am – 12:30pm 1 minute pitches – voting and team formation
• 12:30pm – Lunch
• 1:30pm – Teams start work!!
• 5:00pm – Dinner Break and Keynote

Sunday November 11th

• Teams work until 5pm when presentations begin!
• Break for judges to vote and then return to award prizes

Register Now!

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Google is just as freaked out about Hurricane Sandy as the rest of the East Coast. Today, the company canceled its New York Android event scheduled to take place on Monday.

It looked like Google didn’t want to be left out of the party when it announced its event to take place less than a week after Apple and Microsoft held their own. The company was expected to announce a new 10-inch Nexus tablet that is said to have 2,560  by 1,600 pixels. The tablet hardware is rumored to be built by Samsung and will have a higher resolution than Apple’s iPad.

Apple recently announced its fourth generation iPad during its event this week, along with an iPad mini that competes directly with Google’s Nexus 7.

The Nexus 7 was also rumored to be getting some love at the event in the form of an update to its 32GB model. Google was also remored to be releasing a cellular version of the tablet. To top it all off, many believe Google is ready to release its next version of its Android operating system.

As The Next Web notes, Google planned on having its event in what is now an evacuation zone in New York City. Looks like we’ll have to wait for the new products until after Sandy blows over.

Hurricane image via Shutterstock

Just one day before Windows 8 hits retail and online stores, Microsoft has corralled journalists, analysts, and its partners to officially kick off the new operating system.

After a bombastic opening video, Microsoft’s Windows head Steven Sinofsky bounded on stage to announce that Microsoft has sold more than 670 million Windows 7 licenses, including to more than half of the major enterprise companies. But with Windows 8, he said that Microsoft is aiming to bring computing to “the next billion people.”

Windows 8 is also available for download today for existing Windows users who wish to upgrade.

Across all of Microsoft’s early Windows 8 releases available to the public, Sinofsky said that the OS has had more than 1.24 billion hours of prerelease testing. He also noted that more than 1,000 new PCs have been certified for Windows 8 — including traditional laptops, tablets, and laptop/tablet hybrids.

With Windows 8 also comes the Windows Store, Microsoft’s new app marketplace. According to Sinofsky, it’s launching with more apps than any competing app store had at their launch.

Sinofsky proceed to introduce Windows RT, Microsoft’s Windows 8 variant for ultrathin ARM-powered devices. Windows RT is also powering Microsoft’s Surface tablet, which is launching tomorrow as well.

Microsoft’s Julie Larson-Green, Windows VP of program management, and Mike Angiulo, Windows VP for planning and hardware partners, showed off some of the new Windows 8-powered PCs. Angiulo noted that by upgrading his Thinkpad Carbon X1 to Windows 8, he managed to get 33 percent faster boot times (versus Windows 7).

“What you’ve seen and heard should leave no doubt that Windows 8 shatters perceptions as to what a PC really is,” Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer said when he stepped on stage, with the enthusiasm of a quarterback gearing up for the Super Bowl. “Windows 8 will do everything, and will frankly make it a lot easier to do nothing,” he added.

Proudly, Ballmer proclaimed that more than 400 million PCs will be sold within the next year, according to figures from analysts.

With complete confidence, Ballmer encouraged the crowd to head out to stores and try out new Windows 8 machines. “In the case of Windows 8, seeing touching, clicking, and swiping is really believing,” he said.

Apple’s finally going to start streaming its events live again — starting with today’s Apple event, where we expect the iPad Mini to debut, on the Apple TV. Update: Apple just announced that it will stream the event online as well, but only for Mac and iOS users.

Apple TV owners will be able to watch the event via a special “Apple Events” app, MacRumors reports. The event is scheduled to begin today at 10 a.m. Pacific.

Apple hasn’t offered a livestream of an event since October 2010 (that was also only viewable on iOS devices). It’s unclear why Apple has gone so long without streaming its events, as I can’t imagine the cost is much of an issue. Perhaps the company finds it useful to let the media do most of its publicity work when it comes to events.

The Apple Events app also lets you view several older events — clearly catering to the Apple faithful.

VentureBeat will be on the ground at today’s event, so check back for updates and our live blog! We’re also hearing that Apple may debut a 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro and some refreshed computers.

Sometimes getting people to respond to an invitation is hard. Maybe they’re lazy, maybe they didn’t get your text, or maybe you sent your invitation right before the event was going to begin. iSocialite hopes to fix that.

The startup wants to help you get friends to your events without having to call, email, or text them. The app, which debuted in the iOS App Store yesterday, acts basically like a calendar. You and your friends upload events you’d like some social interaction on into the app. Friends who have RSVPed show on the event’s page. And you can push those events out to Facebook and Twitter and can sync with your calendar should your regular morning run turn into a rager.

On stage at the DEMO conference in Santa Clara, Calif., the company used the app to set up a happy hour for the attendees in a matter of minutes. “With two clicks, you’re in the social mix,” said the company’s founders.

“Clearly events need to be mobile,” said Josh Elman from Greylock Partners when offering feedback during the sage panel. He asked, “This seemed very easy to use. But how do you stand out from the noise?” Mike Cassidy of Google was also impressed by the app’s simple user interface, but said that this company will need to reach critical mass to succeed.

iSocialite provides all the information you might want for an event as well, including the date, time, location, organizer’s name, and even how far the event is from you. Each event gets its own icon as well, indicating the type of activity involved, such as “cheers,” which indicates that there will be drinking at the party.

The three-person startup has its sights set on renting office space in SOMA (South of Market Street) in San Francisco. Currently DreamWare, the creator of iSocialite, is based in Los Angeles.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Hatch Labs, IAC’s semi-accelerator/sandbox for intriguing mobile innovations, is stepping into spontaneous event creation today with the launch of the free iPhone app Mob.

The app is a simple way to gather your friends and people nearby for any sort of event, and it can also help you find out what’s happening nearby. IAC is kicking off Mob at the Dumbo Arts Festival in Brooklyn today, where it will be using the app to create quick art-related events.

Mob sports a simplistic design, which IAC claims will allow you to create events in under 20 seconds. It’s not tough to find nearby events either, simply find a yellow dot on the app’s map, select it, and click “I’m in!” to add it to your collection of events. Since I’m only a few neighborhoods away from Dumbo, I’m already seeing a few events popping up on Mob.

“Mob was inspired by the desire to simplify how people create local activities in their communities and connect with one another,” said Hatch CEO Dinesh Moorjani in an e-mail to VentureBeat.

Facebook is now the most popular way to plan events with friends, but the beauty of Mob is its simplicity and ability to connect with people you don’t already know. That also gives it a leg-up on similar apps, like GiddyUp, which also relies on your existing friends for planning events.

IAC is also announcing that Patricia Adler, founder of the London design firm Pepper-mint, is joining Hatch Labs as part of the firm’s Teaching and Research Fellowship Fund. IAC has partnered with NYU’s Tisch School of Arts for the fund, and it has backed the school’s post-grad Interactive Telecommunications Program with $250,000.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

DETROIT — If Facebook is about what you did yesterday, and Twitter is about what you’re doing right now, UpTo is about what you’re planning to do tomorrow — and sharing with those you actually know.

UpTo is a social network based on your calendar. Alternatively, it’s a social replacement for your calendar. Or it’s just a way of seeing what is happening in your neighborhood and for those you care about, in the near future.

Or possibly, all four — in the form of an iPhone app.

I had a chance to sit down with UpTo’s chief executive, Greg Schwartz, on my current tour of Detroit-based startups. He gave me a tour of the updated app — and some insider info on what’s coming soon.

“The calendar has not evolved,” he said, for decades. “It’s still the same singular view of your own life.”

And while Twitter and Facebook are great for sharing, by the time you share and others read … they have missed out on the event. Or you have missed out on a great event that, if only you had known, you would have liked to attend. So while Facebook owns the social graph and Twitter the interest graph, UpTo is focusing on the intent graph: what you will be doing in the future.

The app proved its worth when Schwartz connected with one of the investors in UpTo on the app and saw that he was meeting Jason Calacanis. Schwartz immediately asked him to rep UpTo to Calacanis, and within a few weeks he found himself onstage at LAUNCH conference.

The timing of my visit to Detroit was unexpectedly excellent, as UpTo just released a new version into the app store yesterday, which the official @AppStore account tweeted out last night and Apple promoted as a featured app in the app store today.

That’s as good as it gets for a mobile startup, and the team was celebrating with high fives, hugs, and a special cake with a message I promised not to reveal (although I will say: One word rhymed with “witches”).

I asked Schwartz to walk me through the app:

“It’s very similar to Instagram being a layer on top of your existing camera,” Schwartz said. “UpTo doesn’t replace your calendar … it adds to it.”

It seamlessly integrates with the native calendar on your iPhone. Any events you add on the standard Calendar app are automatically synced to UpTo (and are set as private by default). And any events you add on UpTo are synced to the native iPhone calendar.

When you’re using the app with friends, family, and coworkers, the result is amazing insight into what’s happening in the next days and weeks for those you care about. It’s simple just to browse what’s upcoming. And it may be even more powerful to view groups and individuals to see both what they’re doing — and how busy they are, or when they’re available.

“We spent about a year really trying to figure out the calendar piece,” Schwartz says, and the effort shows. “There are a lot of calendaring apps out there, and there’s a lot of challenges in making a great one.”

The app is a free download. UpTo is focusing on user acquisition right now, adding 55,000 in the last three months (that number will rise dramatically as a featured app.) Eventually, with scale, Shwartz sees monetization opportunities in intent-based advertising, affiliate revenue from ticket purchases, and such, and a software-as-a-service models with organizations.

And the news?

The new version of UpTo now supports calendar streams from sports teams or other organizations you care about, events in your industry, and more. It’s part of the onboarding experience — UpTo wants to make sure that new users have more than just their own personal events in their calendars — and it’s an acknowledgement that your important events aren’t just to-do’s or meetings.

In addition, UpTo just completed a $500,000 seed round with participation from existing investors Detroit Venture Partners and Ludlow Ventures.

And, probably the biggest news is that UpTo is launching a fully native Android app next month with deep calendar integration.

“On those big-screen Android phones, UpTo just looks amazing,” Schwartz said.

Next on the agenda for Schwartz, in true founder fashion, is a Series A funding round. But if the team’s execution continues at this pace, and the Android launch is as successful as the iOS version is becoming, that doesn’t look like it will be a problem.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

September is turning into one crazily crowded month for mobile, with Nokia, Motorola, Amazon, and Apple holding launch events. Now we can add HTC to the list, with a likely Windows Phone 8 event planned for Sept. 19.

HTC sent us and others an invite for the event to “see what’s next.” While the invite does not say Windows Phone 8, that’d be our best guess based on the timing.

The only Windows Phone 8 device that’s been officially announced is Samsung’s new ATIV S. Nokia is set to show off two Windows Phone 8 devices tomorrow at an event in New York City.

Even with these events, Windows Phone 8 isn’t expected to debut until Oct. 29. (We’re crossing our fingers for an earlier release.)

Windows Phone 8 photo: Microsoft

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Just yesterday we reported on a compelling argument for why Apple would separate its iPhone 5 and iPad Mini events, and now it looks like Apple will indeed debut its long-rumored smaller iPad in October, sources tell AllThingsD.

If true, the report means that the iPad Mini will likely debut alongside new iPod models. It would also give Apple a month to devote to hype for the iPhone 5, which is expected to be announced at a September 12 event.

While we’ve been using iPad Mini name as a placeholder for the new smaller tablet, Japanese blog Macotakara claims that will indeed be the name. That wouldn’t be too surprising, since it would harken back to Apple’s popular iPod Mini line.

Moving the iPad Mini event to Apple’s typical media event is somewhat telling — after all, when was the last you were truly excited by a new iPod? Apple could end up pitching the new iPad as more of a portable media device than the 10-inch iPad. We’ve heard that the smaller iPad could look a lot like a bigger iPod Touch as well (which is particularly funny, since that was a common criticism of the first iPad).

Macotakara also reports that the revamped iPod Nano could get Wi-Fi, which would make it ready for a future cloud-based iTunes service. At this point, I wouldn’t be too surprised if that prediction came true. The iPod Nano is still a strong seller, and Apple would want to keep it compatible with its new services.

Via MacRumors; Photo via Repairgenius

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Motorola and Verizon Wireless just sent out “save the date” notices for an event at starting at 2 p.m. on Sept. 5 in New York City. (We guess that they don’t care that Nokia and Microsoft are unveiling their Windows Phone 8 Lumias earlier that morning.)

The companies will likely show off the long-rumored Droid Razr HD, which is said to boast a 720p HD resolution. Since the invite points to a singular main event, we’re not expecting any other new products alongside the Razr HD (Motorola hasn’t released a new tablet since the disappointing Droid Xyboard earlier this year).

Motorola Mobility announced last week that it would soon cut 4,000 workers and focus on fewer device as part of Google’s reinvention of the company. In Google’s recent Q2 earnings, Motorola Mobility reported an operating loss of $233 million on $1.25 billion in revenues (10 percent of Google’s total revenues).

After struggling for so long, I can’t imagine that Motorola has had time to develop a truly groundbreaking smartphone or tablet, but we’re excited to see if “Droid does” again. VentureBeat will be on the ground at the event, so stay tuned for more.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Nokia just sent out invitations for a joint NYC press event with Microsoft on Sept. 5. Judging from the invite’s design, as well as the impending launch of Microsoft’s new mobile OS, the event will clearly focus on Nokia’s first Windows Phone 8 devices.

We heard last week that Nokia and Microsoft planned to announce Windows Phone 8 devices as early as Sept. 5. Now that the date is locked in, it’s even clearer that the companies are trying to preempt Apple’s iPhone 5 announcement, which is rumored for Sept. 12.

As I’ve said before, given the general media insanity leading up to a new iPhone announcement, Nokia likely needs more than a week of lead time to truly make consumers excited about its new devices. And from what we’ve seen so far with Nokia, its new phones probably wouldn’t be available for several weeks after their unveiling — long after the iPhone 5′s expected Sept. 21 release.

Perhaps even more than its initial Windows Phones, Nokia’s Windows Phone 8 entries will have to be particularly innovative to sway consumers. Nokia and Microsoft are facing stiffer competition from all sides, and gadget hounds likely still feel burned by Nokia’s refusal to upgrade its earlier Lumia devices to Windows Phone 8.

Ticketfly, the online ticketing website, today announced a new infusion of cash: $22 million in the startup’s third round of institutional funding.

The new money comes from SAP Ventures, which led the round. Northgate Capital, Cross Creek Capital, and Series B lead investor Mohr Davidow Ventures also participated. With $15 million in previous rounds, this brings Ticketfly’s total VC bill to $37 million. (And they say girls are bad at math!)

Ticketfly gives its customers (promoters and event venues) ticket-selling microsites and online marketing tools, including write-once-publish-everywhere social media promotional features and customer support via email and phone for ticket-buyers.

Late last year, the company also added RFID features and built-in ridesharing services for ticket-buyers via Zimride.

The startup has been on a tear, increasing its internal headcount to 100 souls as of this writing and broadening its affiliate network to 300 partners.

It’s also grown its client base of venues by 65 percent during the first six months of 2012 and adding such illustrious names as The Echo and Spaceland (hipster enclaves in Los Angeles) and the Foam N’ Glow Tour, which is billed as the country’s largest foam party. Think about that for a minute.

“It’s a time of great disruption in the ticketing space, and we’re thrilled to have investors who share our vision: to transform the event ticketing industry,” said Ticketfly CEO Andrew Dreskin in a statement on the funding.

Ticketfly was founded in February 2008 and is based in San Francisco, Calif. The startup claims its team members were responsible for the first-ever online ticket sale in 1995.

Image courtesy of Jim Barber, Shutterstock

That’s up 50 percent from last year, and it represents 8,100 companies booking 47,000 meetings. The company still has room to grow: Its event-booking system includes more than 200,000 hotels and venues worldwide.

I spoke with CEO Reggie Aggarwal in June just after the company’s Seed Labs acquisition, when he told me that Cvent was “the walking dead” from 2001 to 2005 after a high-flying dot-com bust. The company has battled hard since 2005, building itself into “the number one marketplace for group meetings.”

One of the company’s key competitive advantages is technology that helps both meeting planners and hotels quickly create and respond to requests for a quote. The goal: faster, frustration-free event selection.

Cvent vice president Bharet Malhotra says the company has ”invested heavily in technology revisions and trained tens of thousands of hotel employees with a goal of making the request-for-proposal response process a very manageable process of responding in just minutes.”

In mid-2011, Cvent announced a monster $136 million round of funding that has helped the company expand quickly and make strategic acquisitions. At that time, an IPO was not on the table — at least not for another six months, Aggarwal said.

One has to wonder if now, with growth like this and press releases being sent out to ensure the world knows, Cvent is starting to think about going public.

With Palo Alto Network jumping 31 percent and Kayak seeing a nice bump on opening day as well, perhaps the time is getting to be right.

Losevsky Photo and Video / Shutterstock.com

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

It’s only been a few days since MobileBeat 2012 concluded, but I’m already missing the great energy and conversations from the show.

Thanks to everyone who joined us at the conference to discuss design and its implications for the mobile industry. And if you missed the show, check out our story highlights below, as well as a gallery of some choice moments. (For a different perspective on the show, check out these awesome 360-degree panoramas from MobileBeat 2012, our gallery of photos from GamesBeat 2012, and our full collection of MobileBeat 2012 stories.)

• Zynga’s Mark Pincus says focus more on content, less on investing in platforms
• Google’s Jason Spero: Tablets will lead to more innovative and valuable ads
• Box CEO Aaron Levie says these mobile startups are the ones to watch
• How Dropbox continues to win: Pre-loads on devices like the Samsung Galaxy S3
• Placed rises to the top at our MobileBeat startup competition
• The Good Ear wins our MobileBeat smartphone app competition
• Poshmark CEO: Great mobile design is simplicity
• Nukotoys wins our MobileBeat tablet startup competition

File this one under: why didn’t they think of this sooner?

Facebook announced a new format for Facebook Events today that finally lets members view friends’ upcoming birthdays, event invites, and suggested events on a calendar. Rocket science, we know.

The new calendar view (pictured right), which comes with an equally organized and functional list view, was built in a night as part of a hackathon project by Facebookers looking to improve the social network’s Events functionality.

“A couple of us felt there should be a better way for people to see their friends’ birthdays a few days in advance and make plans for the weekend. So we built it,” Facebook software engineer Bob Baldwin explained in a note on Facebook.

The new and improved Facebook Events with calendar and list view comes with a few niceties. Facebook members can respond to invites and leave birthday messages without leaving the Events page. Posts, photos, and videos are a part of the experience as well. The social network has even finally spruced up the Events icon so that it actually displays today’s date.

The update is in the process of rolling out to Facebook members and will eventually replace the more mundane Events experience for all.

Photo credit: Shutterstock

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Tomorrow VentureBeat will kick off our fifth annual MobileBeat conference, where we’ll be focusing heavily on the theme “design is the new battleground.”

We’re not just talking about pretty apps — we’ll be exploring design from all angles, from the services powering the explosion of mobile devices, to the innovative techniques developers are using to make their apps useful and addictive.

Why the spotlight on design? Across all of our MobileBeat conferences, as well as our Mobile Summit events, we’ve intensely charted the maturation of the post-iPhone mobile industry. The mobile platform wars of yesteryear have plateaued, with the iPhone leading in revenue, and Android leading in market share. Tablets are no longer the hot new thing (except for Microsoft’s upcoming Surface). Now that developers and consumers are familiar with what works for mobile, the focus is now shifting to crafting killer mobile experiences. And in the end, that’s all about design. (Be sure to check out VentureBeat Editor-in-Chief Matt Marshall’s post on how design can make or break your company.)

Come learn how user interface and user experience design is reshaping mobile. This year at MobileBeat, we have 103 speakers ready to share their insights, including big names like Google’s Jason Spero, Path’s Dave Morin, fuseproject founder and designer Yves Behar, and Zynga’s Mark Pincus. Check out the full list of speakers here.

We’ve only got a few tickets left for the event, which is being held on July 10th and 11th at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. Grab your tickets here before they run out! Mobilebeat 2012 is also co-located with GamesBeat 2012 this year, where we’ll be exploring the crossover era of gaming.

Within our broader design theme, we’ll also be exploring six sub-themes at MobileBeat 2012:

1. Tablet: Tabula Rasa “The Tablet Reset”
The tablet’s time is now. Learn why your business is lost if you can’t create a compelling tablet strategy.

2. IT: Consumerization
“Enterprise Grade” is no longer an excuse for subpar design. With the consumerization of IT deepening, you must take control of UI/UX to survive and retain key employees. At the same time, you can’t lose sight of things like security, scalability and rock-solid reliability.

3. Infrastructure/Cloud: Scale is Beauty
Elegant networks and cloud systems are based in good strong design ethics. We’ll explore principles to help you avoid inevitable system failure.

4. Monetization
Monetization is all about UI/UX, end of story. 5 reasons why cleaning up UI/UX will boost everything from advertising, to click-throughs, and more.

5. Retail: Wait, Why Are They Coming?
How do you cope in a world where a mobile device can show customers better offers and then walk them right out of your store? If you can’t capture customers or their device with a good experience, you will lose their pocket books.

6. Designing Distribution
If you’re a hot consumer app, content site, or retailer, you crave viral growth and reach. But the tricks of distribution and engagement are inextricably rooted in UI/UX. As Facebook, Twitter and smaller players like Hipmunk have shown, everything flows from design. Strive, conquer, and win by creating best practices around both UI and UX.

We want to thank the industry leaders that are supporting MobileBeat 2012: W3i as Platinum Sponsor; Box as Corporate Sponsor; Flurry, Tapjoy & YouWeb as Gold Sponsors; Animoca, Greystripe, Nokia Developer, LifeStreet Media, Ludei & Sequoia Capital as Silver Sponsors; Game Insight, Apsalar, PayOne, Kontagent, GREE, Nexage, Pontiflex, Swrve, Urban Airship, PayPal, Betable, Xyologic, and Tandem as Event Sponsors; and MyPref, Scandit, LeadBolt & PubNub as Contributing Sponsors.

Design is determining the winners in everything mobile. The most successful players are focusing on one thing: How to make products, services, and devices as compelling and delightful as possible — visually and experientially. MobileBeat 2012, taking place July 10-11 in San Francisco, is assembling the most elite minds to debate how UI/UX is transforming every aspect of the mobile economy, and where the opportunities lie. Register here.

We’re pleased to have YouWeb and Tapjoy joining in on the fun at MobileBeat 2012 and GamesBeat 2012 next week in San Francisco. YouWeb shines the spotlight on its portfolio of companies across two breakout sessions, and TapJoy CEO Mihir Shah  helps us to figure out the mysteries of monetization, distribution, and discovery.

This year’s GamesBeat conference focuses on the “Crossover Era” of gaming, and MobileBeat looks at “Design as the New Battleground.”

YouWeb Companies: Financing and Strategic Partnership Opportunities

YouWeb, the technology incubator famous for kicking off successful gaming companies like OpenFeint and CrowdStar, hosts a two-part breakout session. In the first part, VCs and angel investors can hear from early stage YouWeb portfolio companies looking to raise capital. The second part focuses on YouWeb portfolio companies looking to make strategic partnerships. Serial entrepreneur Peter Relan founded YouWeb. He’s served as a Silicon Valley executive, angel investor, and technology veteran for over 20 years.

Session 1

Phoenix Guild, Spaceport.io, Flit, Pluto Games, BugSense

Session 2

CrowdStar, iSwifter, Insta Poker, Joypad

Moderator

Peter Relan, Founder & Chairman, YouWeb

Overcoming Hurdles in Monetization, Distribution and Discovery

Given the ever-changing landscape of the mobile industry (especially among mobile tracking in the past few months), panelists discuss trends in terms of successful monetization business models, current app market opportunities and recommendations for analytics tools that track engagement, and discovery among consumers.

Speakers

Mihir Shah, CEO, Tapjoy
Joe Bayen, CEO, ICS Mobile (FreeAppADay.com)
Brian Doxator, vice president of business development, PlayHaven
Josh Williams, president, Kontagent
Andy Yang, CEO, Playhaven

Moderator

Mark Friedler, game executive, Worlds and Games

We want to thank the industry leaders that are supporting GamesBeat 2012: W3i as Platinum Sponsor; King.com as Corporate Sponsor; Flurry and Tapjoy as Gold Sponsors; Greystripe, LifeStreet Media, Ludei and Nokia Developer as Silver Sponsors; and Betable, Game Insight, Gree, Kontagent, Nexage, Paypal, Pontiflex, Swrve, and XYOlogic as Event Sponsors.

GamesBeat 2012 is VentureBeat’s fourth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. This year we’re calling on speakers from the hottest mobile, social, PC, and console companies to debate new ways to stay on pace with changing consumer tastes and platforms. Join 500-plus execs, investors, analysts, entrepreneurs, and press as we explore the gaming industry’s latest trends and newest monetization opportunities. The event takes place July 10-11 in San Francisco, and you can get your tickets here.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Tablets are a dream come true for news junkies, but with a tidal wave of content spread across countless apps and sites, it’s tough to just sit back and stay informed.

Watchup, a new startup competing at our MobileBeat 2012 Innovation Competition next week, hopes to reduce the noise with its free tablet app, which lets you queue up news videos and watch them uninterrupted.

“I wanted a hands-free experience — just the best and latest news videos coming straight to me,” founder Adriano Farano told VentureBeat in an interview this week. “It’s almost a TV-like experience, but much more intimate and portable.”

The app sports a simple and elegant interface, with your queue of selected videos on the left, and videos on the right from popular news sources like the Wall Street Journal, CNN, and the AP. Simply choose the videos you want to watch and hit Play.

Watchup launched last week, and while Farano wouldn’t share download numbers just yet, he was excited to point out that Apple featured the app under its “New and Notable” section in the iTunes Store on Monday. That’s a sign that it’s getting enough downloads and good reviews for Apple to notice. Publishers are also interested in working together with Watchup, Farano tells me.

The app competes with Newsy, which makes its own news reports based on breaking news, as well as apps from CNN and other organizations. But Watchup has a leg-up on all of them when it comes to simplicity.

Watchup is also a finalist for our MobileBeat 2012 Innovation Competition, where it will be duking it out against other tablet apps. This year at MobileBeat we’re focusing heavily on mobile design, and with its minimalist interface and ease-of-use, Watchup caught our eye pretty quickly.

“For web design it’s all about what you show, with iPad design it’s all about what you hide,” Farano said. “I really think that the strength… the goal of designing a tablet screen, it’s still very different from designing a website.”

Farano has news in his blood. His father was an entrepreneur who owned local TV stations in Southern Italy, and Farano himself spent 12 years running news organizations in France and was a Knight Fellow at Stanford. With Watchup, he wanted to figure out a new way to augment the news experience with tablets.

Watchup got its start at Stanford’s StartX Acclerator, but Farano tells me the company is soon moving out and shacking up with another StartX alum in Palo Alto. Together, they’re aiming to build a workspace they’re calling the “tablet dojo.”

Design is determining the winners in everything mobile. The most successful players are focusing on one thing: How to make products, services, and devices as compelling and delightful as possible — visually and experientially. MobileBeat 2012, taking place July 10-11 in San Francisco, is assembling the most elite minds to debate how UI/UX is transforming every aspect of the mobile economy, and where the opportunities lie. Register here.