 |
 |
|
|
||
 |
 |
Do you like sex with other people? Do you like Android? While it is my opinion that those two questions are mutually exclusive, someone, somewhere matches those two criteria. Thankfully, Cosmopolitan Magazine is there for them.
Basically, this is an app that shows sex positions, albeit in a cartoony way. Fair enough. Android is for pornographers, after all. And that’s basically the news, but I’d like to inject a little outrage into this otherwise mundane story.
Today sees the public launch of SaveWave, a digital promotion, distribution, and rewards fulfillment company recently spun out of Sallie Mae’s Upromise Grocery operations.
The company, which is based in Belmont, MA, launches armed with $2.3 million in financing from a slew of high-rollers (more on that below).
SaveWave will take over the technology and operations that power Upromise’s all-digital grocery coupons and plans the introduction of a white-label program for consumer packages goods brands, retailers, membership programs, and media companies to deliver nationwide grocery rewards.
The startup plans to launch this white label platform for select partners in the coming months. It will also feature mobile applications for consumers to activate coupons from their smartphones, enabling them to reach consumers at the grocery store looking for deals.
SaveWave manages Upromise’s grocery service, a program through which Upromise’s 12+ million members can earn college savings rewards by activating grocery offers online and redeeming them through their supermarket and drug store loyalty cards, saving them the hassle of clipping or printing coupons.
With 22,000 partner stores nationwide, SaveWave’s platform is able to work with what they say constitutes the largest network of retailers enabling digital coupons in the United States, straight from the get-go.
Coinciding with its public launch, SaveWave has scored a $2.3 million Series A funding round led by Flybridge Capital Partners and First Round Capital with participation from Founder Collective, IA Capital and several angel investors, including Ron Conway and Upromise founder, former Chairman and CEO Michael Bronner.
As part of the funding, Jeff Bussgang, a general partner at Flybridge and co-founder and former President of Upromise, First Round Capital’s Josh Kopelman, and Upromise President, David Coppins, will join SaveWave’s Board of Directors.
Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.
Although it seems as if Foursquare and Facebook are new bosom buddies now that Foursquare has officially joined the Places parade, along with Yelp, Gowalla and Booyah— the popular geo-location service is clearly treading carefully.
During Wednesday’s presentations, many of the partners presented the outlines of comprehensive integration plans. For example, Booyah’s CEO Keith Lee announced the launch of InCrowd, a new social game specifically designed to leverage the functionality of Facebook Places. By comparison, Foursquare’s presentation was bare bones— a mere gesture that at some point in the near future Foursquare will find a way to take advantage of Places. The truth is they have no idea how this Places partnership will shake out.
Of course, these rivals are no strangers. The companies have been working together since last year, when Foursquare added Facebook integration (to allow users to push check-ins to Facebook’s feed). That foundation has led to a high level of interactivity and, according to Holger Luedorf, Foursquare’s new VP of Mobile, about 20% of Foursquare check-ins are now pushed to Facebook. Thus, it makes sense for Foursquare to want to ultimately closely integrate with Places. According to Luedorf, who sat down with us after the Places announcement (see video above), Foursquare has known about the project for a few weeks and their relationship is generally friendly. “It’s interesting to see how this plays out, but the discussions so far have been very amicable,” he says.
However, given the overlapping functionality of Places and Foursquare, and yes, what I imagine are still fresh wounds from a (rumored) Facebook takoever that almost happened, I don’t blame Dennis Crowley for taking some time to plot his next move. Interesting indeed.
Not according to me – I haven’t yet had the pleasure of meeting both women in person, unlike Justin Timberlake – but according to security software company McAfee, which has just published the fourth version of its delightfully linkbaity report entitled “McAfee Most Dangerous Celebrities™” (see, I linked, so the strategy works!).
McAfee purports that its research shows that searching for photos, information or videos of the famous actress is super duper dangerous. According to the company, there’s a ten percent chance of landing on a website that’s tested positive for online threats, such as spyware, adware, spam, phishing, viruses and other malware when looking for shots and whatnot of La Diaz on the Web.
Last year, actress Jessica Biel took the top spot in the ranking, which means … well, I don’t know what the heck that’s supposed to mean, but the stats don’t ever lie and if McAfee says Biel is now the third most dangerous celebrity on the Web instead of numero uno, than I’d like to see your counter-arguments, damned!
(On a sidenote, McAfee was just acquired by Intel for oh, $7.86 billion in cash)
Not that the report bears not a single nugget of uplifting news, fortunately.
“This year, the search results for celebrities are safer than they’ve been in previous years, but there are still dangers when searching online,” said Dave Marcus, security researcher for McAfee Labs.
Thanks for giving us the heads up, Dave! Let us know when it’s safe again!
Here’s the full list of the top 5 celebrities from this year’s study, with the highest percentages of risk (you’ll have to click the link at the top for the top 10 list):
As for less dangerous celebrities: McAfee says Justin Bieber (who is that? he keeps popping up in my Twitter stream continuously) ranked towards the bottom of the list at #46. Also not very dangerous: U.S. President Barack Obama (#49) and Sarah Palin (#50).
I’m in need of some very strong coffee now, if you’ll excuse me.
Sometimes, hurling a timeless classic into modern times can be a formula for success. Case-in-point P-Kama, an Israeli company with $1.8M in funding that purchased the licensing rights to market Rummikub online.
What’s Rummikub, you ask? True, it’s not as synonymous with boardgames as Monopoly is, but the tile-based game sells 3 million units a year globally. Add an avid following since the seventies, and you can quickly come to the conclusion that it might not be a bad idea to try pressing Rummikub’s luck in the times of the social Web.
That is precisely what P-Kama has done with its recently debuted Rummikub for Facebook app, which can also be played right on Rummikub.com thanks to Facebook Connect.
Rummikub is a multiplayer game whose objective is to create either a sets three tiles bearing the same figure in different colors, or sets of runs—three consecutive numbers in the same color.
The first player to place all the tiles on their rack on the table wins.
From Wikipedia:
Rummikub’s main component is a pool of 106 tiles, consisting of 104 number tiles and two joker tiles. The number tiles range in value from one to thirteen, in four colors (black, yellow, blue and red).
Each combination of color and number is represented twice. Players each have a rack to store tiles, without revealing them to the other players, similar to that used in Scrabble.
In Rummikub’s online version, game play takes place in both private and public rooms that accommodate up to four players at a time. Extra bells and whistles include video chat and throwing of tomatoes at slow-playing opponents.
Unsurprisingly, Rummikub is running a virtual goods ecosystem based on ‘Joker Credits’ as currency. The credits can be used to purchase entry to tournaments, as well as gifts and room themes. For example, gifts players can send each other during a game cost 1-3 Joker Credits, room themes can cost up to 20. Pricing is tiered, where 50 credits will run you $5, 150 credits will cost $10, and so on.
Will Rummikub be the next Zynga Poker? Probably not, but with a third of its users being women in the 20-40 yearold demographic (a virtual goods sweet spot), it could still make loot.
Credit card juggernaut MasterCard has agreed to acquire DataCash Group in a bid to drive its e-commerce payment expansion in the Asia-Pacific region, Europe and Australia.
U.S.-based MasterCard, which makes money from processing credit and debit card payments on its network, said it would pay 360 pence per share for the British processor of Internet credit-card sales, representing a 54 percent premium to the company’s Wednesday close.
The deal represents approximately £333 million (roughly $520 million), to be paid in cash.
The news has sent shares DataCash flying: they rose more than 50% today so far. DataCash is listed on the London Stock Exchange.
The news comes a couple of months after rival Visa acquired another major e-payment company, Cybersource, for a total consideration of approximately $2 billion in cash.
DataCash offers a single, comprehensive interface that provides e-commerce merchants with the ability to process secure payments across the world. The European payment service provider develops and provides outsourced electronic payments solutions, fraud prevention, alternative payment options, back-office reconciliation and solutions for merchants selling via multiple channels. The company also markets a fraud solutions and technology platform.
In 2009, DataCash says it processed more than 240 million transactions for more than 1,400 merchants in a variety of sectors. Last year, DataCash reported revenue of £36.9 million (US$58 million). The company employs 362 people worldwide with operations in London, Dublin, Mannheim and Cape Town.
Here’s how MasterCard president and CEO Ajay Banga pitched the buy:
“E-commerce represents an important part of MasterCard’s growth strategy, and this acquisition will allow us to provide new services to our acquiring customers, as well as drive increased e-commerce penetration in both existing and new markets.
The acquisition of DataCash will expand our already significant e-commerce merchant gateway presence in Asia and Australia to European countries and other high-growth, emerging markets worldwide.”
MasterCard expects the transaction to be approximately $0.05 dilutive to its fourth quarter 2010 earnings per share.
The transaction, which is subject to customary closing conditions as well as DataCash shareholder approval, is expected to close by the end of October 2010.
Less than one hour after Facebook struck the ceremonial gong, signaling the official birth of Places, the ACLU of Northern California was ready to cry foul play.
In a 429-word post titled, “Facebook Places: Check This Out, Before You Check In,” the ACLU branch rips the new feature for a perceived lack of user control, complaining (in dramatically bold font) that “in the world of Facebook Places, “no” is unfortunately not an option.” While this anonymous ACLU member may have a real knack for writing movie trailers, I don’t buy the case they’re building against Facebook. To be honest, I’ve never been a fan of Facebook’s history with privacy, but they are making a real effort to dial up privacy with Places.
So while all sins are not forgiven, let’s start with a solid B for Places and a promise not to burn them at the stake (at least not today). First, let’s walk through what you need to know as a user (this post is updated with further clarification from Facebook’s Director of Policy Communications, Barry Schnitt).
Places is an opt-in feature. You cannot pass go, you cannot collect $200, until you give Facebook the greenlight. As a first time user, you have to check-in yourself via the iPhone app or touch.facebook.com or your friend has to check-in for you. If your friend tries to check you in, you have two options: pick “not now” or to accept friend check-ins (as implied, once you select yes, you will automatically accept friend check-ins). In their Places guide, the ACLU brings up the valid point that if you pick “not now,” you will continue to receiving annoying check-in requests every time a friend tags you. Of course, there’s an easy fix, simply go into your privacy settings, click on “customize settings” under “Sharing On Facebook,” scroll down to the second section (“Things Others Share”) and switch “Friends Can Check Me Into Places” to disabled.
Places will tell you when your friend has checked you in. Similar to photo tags, you will be notified every time a friend checks you in. And like photos, you can untag yourself. The ACLU and other critics are wagging their fingers at Facebook for automating this process and not giving the user the choice to accept or reject every single request. Facebook had to make a judgment call here, between enhancing control and making the experience easy and enjoyable. As a new user, I would be frustrated by a service that demanded my attention for every friend check-in. Of course there is a chance that a rampaging ex-girlfriend or arch nemesis will exploit this tool to slander your good name, tying you to trysts that never happened or houses of ill repute—- then again, there is that nifty difty defriend option.
Here Now is not the devil. This is probably the most controversial aspect of Places. The feature is enabled by default if you have loose privacy settings, however, it is not enabled if you’ve set your master privacy control to Friends of Friends or Friends or if you’ve customized your settings to be restrictive.
Under “People Here Now,” you can see who else has checked into a location with you. This public check-in (which is only public to those that have checked into the location) is only available for a short period of time. In a longer post detailing the features of Places, the ACLU chided Facebook for not giving users granular controls on Here Now. The ACLU claims that users can only choose between enable and disable and cannot narrow their Here Now audience to just friends or something more customized. While Here Now is technically an on or off switch, by turning it off and customizing your Places profile, Facebook effectively achieves the ACLU’s demands. As Facebook’s Director of Policy Communications, Barry Schnitt told us, “By configuring the Places I Check-In setting, which can be configured granularly, and turning off Here Now, you guarantee that only the people you specify will see you on a Place page. Their [the ACLU] suggestion adds complexity without adding any utility and we are very surprised that a privacy advocate would be taking such a position, especially after all of the progress we’ve made in making control on Facebook simple and easy to use.”
The default is friends-only. When you begin completing and accepting check-ins only your friends can see your activity, not your friends or friends or your college network, just your friends. I can’t really give Facebook a lot of credit for this one, it’s just good common sense. Under your privacy settings you can customize this further, even selecting which friends can see your check-ins. Considering the sensitivity around location, I think Zuckerberg & Co. recognized early on that any default less than “friends only” would be an open invitation for privacy sharks.
Your apartment is safe. During the press conference, someone asked the Facebook team what would happen if someone turned their apartment into a “place” on Facebook, how could they protect their privacy in that situation? We spoke to Facebook Product Manager Michael Sharin who says the company has a strong system in place to rapidly accept complaints from users. While there is no set time frame for handling a red flag, he says problems will be dealt with swiftly and often within 24 hours. See video below.
Sharing is not always caring: the ACLU’s best point. There is one place where I find common ground with the ACLU: Facebook’s policy when it comes to sharing location information with third-party applications. As a user, the applications you install will need your explicit permission to get your check-in information. That’s valid, however, if your friend has weak privacy settings, s/he is free to share your check-in information to applications and Connect partners. This can be easily remedied by unchecking a box in your privacy settings but it is permitted by default. According to Schnitt, this exchange exposes information on your “check-ins, details about a place, ability to search for places and check-ins from friends.”
Not surprisingly, Facebook claims this is all in the name of creating “new social experiences with location.”
I completely agree that it will ultimately enhance applications (and Facebook’s bottom line) but this should be an opt-in service. For example, when you first check-in or accept check-ins, Facebook should immediately ask you if you want to give your friends’ applications access to your check-in data. To be fair to its users, Facebook needs to increase the visibility of this feature. Because nlike the other settings, like Here Now, this exchange takes place in the background and I suspect the vast majority of Facebook users will not know that their data is being quietly siphoned off by their friends’ applications.
If after all this you’re still thrusting your pitchfork in the air, you can always click here.
More information can be found on Facebook’s blog post here.
(Top image via Flickr/Colin Purrington)
Lunascape, the company behind the eponymous triple-engine browser for desktop PCs, has just released its first browser created specifically for the iPad. Dubbed iLunascape, the browser is available for free in the App Store, and it’s a more than solid alternative to Safari on the iPad.
Most importantly, iLunascape allows for desktop-like tabbed browsing on the iPad (a first for a free app). Up to six tabs can be opened at the same time, and users can switch between them easily via thumb taps. Tabbed browsing works great (and fast), especially because iLunascape comes with a iPad-specific UI that takes into account how most people actually hold and use the device (see below).
The so-called “In Reach Interface” clusters not only all tabs but also most buttons (page forward/back, search, home, etc.) at the bottom of the screen in both portrait and landscape mode. In other words, all major functions can be reached quickly, without having to move your fingers across the screen.
Other features include a screenshot capture and storage function, rotation lock, and “simple bookmarking”. iPad users should definitely give iLunascape a spin (again, it’s free). Other browsers for the device include Atomic ($0.99), Perfect ($2.99), and iCab Mobile ($2.99).
Perhaps you’ve heard: Facebook just released their new location feature called Places. If not, we have about a dozen posts about it that we recommend. But the obvious next question is what this means for those already in the space — and specifically the current buzz leader, Foursquare. Sure, they’re partnering with Facebook on the API launch, but are they in trouble? They don’t seem too worried about it. Instead, it’s expansion time.
Foursquare is on the verge of opening their first office outside of their New York City headquarters, we’ve confirmed with the company. Shortly, they will open an office in San Francisco’s SoMa district. Both new Foursquare VP of Mobile, Holger Luedorf (who was on-hand at the event tonight), and VP of Business Development, Tristan Walker, will be based out of that office, we’re told. And they hope to hire a couple more people to work there soon too.
The building Foursquare has chosen as their west coast home is one that is becoming a hot bed for startups: the San Francisco Chronicle Building. Currently, both the mobile payment startup Square and the gadget community startup gdgt call that building home, among others. The choice also continues Foursquare’s tradition of taking over old media spaces — their current NYC headquarters is in The Village Voice building (which Foursquare just took over another floor of).
It’s interesting that both Foursquare and rival Gowalla were able to build their startups without a major presence in Silicon Valley up until now. Though, to be fair, Walker has been based out here from the beginning, as he was still a student at Stanford when he started at Foursquare (and actually just graduated). Gowalla is based in Austin, Texas.
Obviously the lack of major Valley presence hasn’t been detrimental to Foursquare’s growth — but the new office shouldn’t hurt either. But the real question is: who will be the first to check-in? My money is on Luedorf.
[photo: flickr/niallkennedy]
If you hate the idea of Facebook gaining a location element, you’re really going to hate this. It’s awesome.
Tonight, immediately after their Places launch event, the company flipped the switch (an actual switch, by the way) to make the location product live. While it was a few hours before the new location-enabled iPhone app went live, touch.facebook.com went live for millions of users around the U.S. right away. And Facebook had some giant projections to showcase that.
As you can see in the video below and image above, all across the U.S. people immediately began checking-in when Facebook turned the feature on. Oh look, there’s Vikas at San Francisco Fine Arts. Oh, there’s Alex at Jenkins Canyon. Etc. Those glowing dots are people checking in. And big clusters of glowing dots mean a lot of people are checking-in in those areas (New York, San Francisco, LA, and a few other obvious ones).
Obviously, Facebook was just showing people’s first names to placate those worried about the privacy ramifications of such a wall. It’s a little like that wall of sonar monitors from The Dark Knight — which is to say, awesome.
It’s also a bit like Apple’s App Wall:
More about Facebook Places:
Total Beauty Media is adding to its quickly-growing fashion empire. The Santa Monica-based startup operates cosmetics tips and review site TotalBeauty, BeautyRiot, and ModernMan (the latter as a joint venture with Break Media). Now, it has acquired LimeLife, a woman’s lifestyle portal in an all-stock deal. The value of the acquisition is not being disclosed, but it is less than the $21 million raised by LimeLife since 2005.
Limelife is struggling as a women’s lifestyle site on the Web, but on mobile it is doing much better, with about 2 million monthly mobile visitors (versus only 750,000 for the Website). Much of this traffic comes from being placed on the carrier deck of many feature phones. LimeLife will bring the company’s total reach to about 6 million people a month, including its ad network of about 40 fashion blogs and other sites. Most of Total Beauty’s traffic is driven by search.
With the LimeLife acquisition, Total Beauty will also get some mobile technology still in development called MySnaps, which works as a Web bookmarking tool now. The mobile version will let women snap pictures of products they want to buy in stores and share them instantly with their friends, who get the to vote on it (similar social shopping ideas have been tried before, see JustBoughtIt and iliketotallyloveit).
Total Beauty is trying to pull together a cosmetics and fashion-oriented audience for advertisers. CEO Emrah Kovacoglu used to be the global digital brand manager for Procter & Gamble before leaving to start Total Beauty Media in 2007. “At P&G,” he says, “we couldn’t find enough inventory online. I saw how much money we planned to shift.” So he created a place where women could learn about cosmetics, and rate and review different products. If he could bring the women, he knew he could get the advertisers. He estimates $300 million to $500 million will be spent this year in the U.S. on online advertising for beauty products alone.
The company has raised $16 million in three rounds from Wallington Investments and U.S. Venture Partners. Revenues are ramping from $2.5 million in 2009 to $10 million in 2010 well within reach. The first half of the year already brought in $4 million, and the majority of revenues usually comes in the second half. Sounds like just the kind of company Demand Media might want to buy.
