Leena Rao

Ustream Shutters Live Mobilizer, Partners With Mobile Roadie To Allow Broadcasters To Create Mobile Apps

August 23, 2011

Taylor SwiftLast year, popular live video platform Ustream launched a mobile app development platform called Ustream Live Mobilizer that offered brands, celebrities, and bands a customizable iPhone application that featured Ustream’s live steaming capabilities. But today, Ustream is shutting down Live Mobilizer and announcing a partnership with Mobile Roadie which allows anyone develop and create sleek, rich media iPhone and Android apps.

Mobile Roadie will work with Ustream broadcasters to create mobile apps that showcase their Ustream live channels as well as a number of of other complimentary features. For example, Mobile Roadie’s Ustream apps will send push messages automatically when a broadcaster goes live, will allow visitors to “Check in” to a stream and share to Facebook and Twitter, will collect real-time analytics and location data on broadcaster live streams, and will allow users to chat with each other as they view a live stream.

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Accel Boosts Social Enterprise Expertise, Adds Salesforce Chatter Creator As EIR

August 23, 2011

chuckAfter adding online payments exec Bill Ready as an Executive-In-Residence, Accel Partners is shoring up another area of expertise with the addition of former Salesforce.com executive Chuck Ganapathi as the firm’s newest Entrepreneur-in-Residence. At Accel, Ganapathi, who was the creator of Salesforce’s “Facebook for the Enterprise” Chatter, will focus on developing a company in the social enterprise space.

Prior to joining Accel, Ganapathi served as Senior Vice President of Products for Chatter and Mobile at Salesforce.com, leading the company’s product development efforts in enterprise social networking. Not only was Chatter Salesforce’s first real foray into social, but the platform has been lauded as the company’s most successful product release ever.

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Erply Takes On Square And Intuit With NFC Enabled-Mobile Credit Card Reader For iOS

August 22, 2011

ERPLY2Erply, a company that develops retail inventory management software, is taking on Square, Intuit and VeriFone today with a new mobile credit card reader for iOS devices. Erply’s credit card device connects to an iPad or iPhone and will transmit a customer’s encrypted credit card data to its own point of sale and inventory management software suite to process payments.

With the Erply’s reader, a retailer attaches the device to an iPad or iPhone’s charging port and this communicates with the company’s POS software to process the transaction and record the sale in inventory. The credit card information is actually encrypted inside the device, ensuring that the transaction is safe and secure.

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Desktop Virtualization Company Wanova Raises $10M From Greylock And Others

August 22, 2011

wanovaWanova, a turnkey desktop management cloud provider, has raised $10 million in series B funding from Greylock Partners, Carmel Ventures and Opus Capital. This brings the company’s total funding to $23 million.

Wanova provides Distributed Desktop Virtualization solutions that centralize control of the desktop infrastructure while optimizing the user experience and providing full support for offline use. Wanova’s flagship product Mirage, combines centralized PC image management with the ability to run images natively on a PC, allowing enterprise to reduce desktop Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and improve IT operations.

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Streaming Flash Games Startup iSwifter Says Revenue Will Pass $10M This Year

August 22, 2011

iswifteriSwifter, an iPad app that allows developers to stream flash games to the tablet device, is announcing that revenue for 2011 will past $10 million. That’s impressive considering the company is only a year old.

As we’ve written in the past, iSwifter allows users to browse, play and rate Flash games from gaming portals (like Facebook) on the web, with each game optimized for iPad. The startup actually spun out of incubator YouWeb last year. With iSwifter, Flash does not run on the device at all but it is streamed to the tablet just like a Netflix movie or a YouTube video.

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Placecast Brings Location-Based Shopping Alerts To Retailer Smartphone Apps

August 22, 2011

placePlacecast’s ShopAlerts service, which delivers retailer and merchant offers and discounts to consumers via their mobile phones, is announcing new functionality today—integration with mobile smartphone apps.

As we’ve written in the past, ShopAlerts is a white-label geofencing platform for businesses that want to deliver geo-triggered offers to their customers on their mobile phones. Consumers can opt-in to receiving text messages in a variety of ways—at the store, online, via text-message, mobile websites or on Facebook. Geofences are virtual areas set around physical locations; when an opted-in consumer is inside a geofenced area, she receives a message from a business, including a discount, notice of a sale, directions to a store or other content.

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YC-Backed Vidyard Is A YouTube For Businesses

August 22, 2011

VidyardMany businesses embed YouTube videos on their sites, but one of the pain points of using YouTube as a platform is that visitors can click through the video to YouTube and off the brand’s site — and those videos also include YouTube’s ads and branding. Ooyala and Brightcove both offer professional, enterprise-hosted video platforms but these can be expensive. Enter Y Combinator-backed Vidyard, which is launching today as an affordable way for businesses to host videos that can be viewed either on a landing page or via an embeddable player.

Basically, Vidyard is offering a service that’s very similar to YouTube, but without that link to a third-party portal. The startup also offers instant, detailed and real-time analytics with regards to the embedded video performance. Co-founder Michael Litt says that currently 3.5 million businesses host YouTube videos on their site and there’s a huge opportunity to offer a better, simpler, easy to use video hosting product to companies.

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Square Makes iOS Apps Speedier, No Longer Requires Signatures For Transactions Under $25

August 22, 2011

squareDisruptive mobile payments company Square has pushed a number of new updates to its iPhone and iPad apps today and rolled out a redesigned and updated website. First, the apps are speedier and transaction speed has improved, says the company. The company actually eliminated a number of screens for the transaction process and payments can be completed in as little as four seconds.

Additionally, Square will will no longer require signatures for transactions less than $25. Of course, this saves time at the cash register and a number of credit card companies already don’t require signatures for transactions under $25.

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NextDocs Raises $10.3M To Provide Microsoft SharePoint Software To Life Sciences Industry

August 22, 2011

nextdocsNextDocs, a company that sells Microsoft SharePoint based software for the life sciences industry, has raised $10.3 million in a Series A financing from OpenView Venture Partners.

NextDocs helps life sciences companies of leverage SharePoint-based document and management software.The company actually customizes SharePoint for companies in the pharmaceuticals, medical device and biotech industries. NextDocs actually has over 100 customers across the life sciences industry (including five of the ten largest pharmaceutical companies in the U.S.).

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Stipple Debuts New Self-Serve ‘AdWords For Images’ Ad Platform For Publishers And Brands

August 22, 2011

sStipple, a technology that allows you to tag people in images no matter where they reside on the web, has launched a platform today that serves as an ‘AdWords for Images.’

For background, Stipple’s technology allows publishers to tag a person in a photo on the web, enter contextual information such as a Twitter name or Facebook name and then anyone can see their most recent social updates as overlays on that picture. But Stipple also partners with e-commerce sites to provide a way for each photo to show exactly what piece of clothing the person in the photo is wearing — to show you who makes it, how much it costs, and where to buy it. And it allows you to “Want” it (save it to look at later) or “Shop” for it via two overlay buttons right on the picture itself.

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