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Thursday, 28 March 2013
OUYA ships early backer consoles, staggers delivery over the weeks ahead
NOvA neutrino detector captures cosmic rays in 3D, aims to unlock the mysteries of the universe
Samsung Galaxy S 4 Pre-Sale Starts April 16 for $249
D-Link ships its AC1200 802.11ac WiFi router / thermos doppelganger
Zinio magazine app heads to Windows Phone 8 as a Lumia exclusive
Pop-up Gmail compose now default whether you like it or not
Apple updates Find My Friends with new UI, more in-depth location controls
OUYA available at retail on June 4 for $99
Google posts Android 4.2.x factory images for Sprint and Verizon Galaxy Nexus models
Well-Funded Gaming Startup Booyah Confirms Layoffs And New CEO Brian Morrisroe As It Shifts Focus To Tablets
It looks like some changes are afoot at Booyah, the location-based gaming company best known as the maker of the MyTown franchise. MyTown and MyTown 2 attempted to evolve the location-based check-in model in gaming, allowing users not only check into locations within a city-building sim, but also scan and check into products in the real world.
With the early success of MyTown and, to a lesser degree, its location-based riff on Second Life, InCrowd, Booyah has been able to raise nearly $30 million to date in three rounds, with the most recent being its $20 million Series C from Accel, Kleiner Perkins’ iFund and DAG Ventures — in the summer of 2010.
Since then, however, Booyah hasn’t been able to sustain the early success of MyTown, leading to some big changes this week. First, Booyah is getting a new CEO. Chief Creative Officer and co-founder Brian Morrisroe will be taking the reins this week, replacing Jason Willig, the former EA and Hasbro exec who had been acting as CEO since co-founder Keith Lee stepped down in 2011.
Morrisroe tells us that Willig will be stepping back into an advisory role and will no longer be involved in day-to-day operations, though he will continue to advise the company on game development and strategy.
The management shuffle comes as a result of a broader, more fundamental directional shift for Booyah. The startup likely raised too much money too early and had a difficult time deciding on which platforms to attack, without diluting efficacy or over-extending. Now, having seen the emergence of tablet gaming, the new CEO says, which is defined by longer sessions, takes place at home, and now that connected play is appealing to more traditional core and mid-core gamers, Booyah is “shifting focus to this huge opportunity,” he says.
“We’re going to continue releasing our products on many mobile devices, but focusing efforts on tablets first gives us the best opportunity to deliver exceptional, original experiences to our users,” he continued.
Morrisroe is stepping into the CEO’s chair to lead the company in its new direction, and, although Willig will now only be advising the company, the rest of the leadership will remain intact, including co-founder and CTO Sam Christiansen.
In addition to its change in leadership and direction, Booyah has also made some significant reductions to its staff. We’ve been hearing from sources this week that Booyah had made as much as an 80 percent reduction in its staff as a result of these changes. After some digging, this estimate may be a bit high, but it’s fairly close. While the co-founders would not give specifics, Morrisroe did say that (as of today) the company does have about 20 employees. And as of January of last year, Booyah had about 50 employees, so it’s at least a 60 percent reduction of its staff.
“These moves are always difficult, but it’s about positioning the company for future success,” Morrisroe said via email, “and we believe moving aggressively toward the emerging tablet market provides the biggest opportunity.”
While layoffs, management changes and pivots don’t a success story make, the co-founders did say that they have some new, original games in development that will be tailored to the tablet gameplay experience and continue to push its evolution forward.
As of today, Booyah has a total install base of around 25 million users across its portfolio, which includes the MyTown, Early Bird and No Zombies Allowed franchises. The company also saw strong revenue growth last year, Morrisroe says — about 5x from 2011 to 2012, although he wouldn’t say more.
More on the company’s changes here.
via TechCrunch » Startups http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/techcrunch/startups/~3/971M-8wvPq8/
Amazon acquires Goodreads, aims to make better recommendations for Kindle users
Tweetdeck update for Mac and Windows adds filters for columns and search
iFixit breaks open an HTC One, literally
BlackBerry makes $94 million on revenue of $2.7 billion, ships 1 million BB10 devices in 2013 Q4
Final Fantasy V arrives on iOS, is unlikely to be the last
Congress adds cyber-espionage review for government tech purchases, scrutinizes Chinese products from Lenovo, Huawei
The Telegraph erects paywall for UK readers
EE switches on 4G in 13 more areas, claims half of the UK population now covered
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Boundless Vows To Continue Disrupting The Textbook Market, Even As Second Founder Departs, Litigation Drags On
Since emerging on the scene in early 2012, the Boston-based Boundless has been on a mission to give students of all ages a free, open-source digital alternative to the pricey world of hard-copy textbooks. But when you try to rock the boat, the powers-that-be will likely have something to say about it — especially when thousands of beta testers across 2,000 universities are using free, open alternatives. Pearson, Cengage and Freeman & Worth sued Boundless in March of last year, and the startup has been battling these lawsuits ever since.
The startup has since evolved from the original product that became the subject of these lawsuits (more on that here), which the team hopes could expedite what is often a seemingly un-ending legal process. Nonetheless, we’ve learned today that another co-founder is exiting Boundless. As first reported by BostInno, co-founder Aaron White, who has up until now served as Boundless’ CTO, will be stepping down after this week. He will stay on as a member of the board.
White offered some elucidation and context to the decision on his personal blog on Monday, though did not say what he plans to do next. However, we’ve been hearing that it was in fact a mutual decision between himself and fellow co-founder (and CEO) Ariel Diaz, who said that White’s skills and talents are better suited to the early-stages of product and company building — which is likely a sign that White may be cooking up a new startup of his own.
In the meantime, the co-founders said that White will be leaving his responsibilities as CTO in the care of Matt Hodgson, Boundless VP of Engineering. Hodgson has already been running engineering for the last year, White said in his blog post.
The CTO’s departure follows co-founder and CMO Brian Balfour’s exit last year, leaving Diaz as the last of the three founders standing at Boundless. Balfour has since become an EIR at Trinity Ventures.
Just because two founders have departed a startup still in the relatively early stages, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the sky is falling. Boundless raised $8 million in April of last year from Venrock, adding to the $1.7 million in seed it raised in 2011 from Nextview, Founder Collective, Kepha, and SV Angel. So it still has runway left in terms of capital, and Diaz says that the litigation isn’t really affecting the day-to-day business at this point. “Of the whole team, I’m pretty much the only one dealing with the legal stuff,” he tells us.
Plus, as Jordan wrote earlier this month, Boundless believes that it has a real case against the big three publishers, because its current product, “which we have significantly enhanced and improved based on student feedback and our own editorial efforts, [does] not infringe the copyrights in the publishers’ static and outdated products.” Boundless believes that the lawsuit against its beta product is baseless, and since the beta is really no longer in use, that the publishers don’t really have a case.
Boundless also claims that its open textbooks, which it recently began releasing under Creative Commons open licenses, have been used by over 500K students at over half of colleges in the U.S.
However, that also doesn’t mean that everything is sunshine and daisies. Boundless may not be headed to the deadpool in the next 24 hours, but it’s also never a good sign when two co-founders leave without much in the way of an explanation. Especially considering that both Balfour and White are product-oriented entrepreneurs, and White especially is known as a talented engineer. Startups are dying to hire great engineers — not watch them walk out the door.
Diaz followed up with his own explanation of the leadership changes on the company’s blog today. Find it here, excerpted below:
I understand Aaron’s decision to get back to an early-stage role, but will personally miss having him on our team. I look forward to seeing what adventure he attacks next.
Aaron is one of the best early stage startup technologists out there, and we are very pleased that he is staying on as a member of the company’s board. We, Aaron included, are committed to changing higher education for the better, and look forward to helping even more students and professors in the years to come.
via TechCrunch » Startups http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/techcrunch/startups/~3/gp50bqOpzgU/
Shutterstock Launches Offset, A New Brand For Its Curated Collection Of Licensable Images
The leading online stock photography company Shutterstock launched a new search tool called Spectrum in January, which allowed users to search through the site’s 22 million images with keywords and specific colors. Today Shutterstock officially announced Offset, its new brand for its collection of top notch images that have been specifically curated for creative distinction and quality.
“These are images you’ll want to spend time with,” says Matthew Smith, director of New Products at Shutterstock.
Offset is currently running as a private beta, and its users are able to browse through 15,000 images that Shutterstock promises were hand-picked for authenticity and artistic direction. What this means, simply put, is that Offset won’t feature your run of the mill stock photography. Shutterstock promises that Offset will be a consistent source of quality.
Agencies, magazines, and photo buyers will visit Offset precisely because they’ll be able to find good images there. According to Shutterstock representatives, they’ve assembled quite a few notable clients in their private beta, but they wouldn’t disclose who they were. However, their launch party at the Leila Heller Gallery tonight did feature some of the images in their collection, as well as some of Offset’s curators. These curators for Offset, Shutterstock’s reps explained, were selected for being “disruptive in their respective categories”.
The event had seven kiosks which projected each curator’s selected gallery of images unto the wall. Amongst the seven featured curators was Cliff Huang, design editor at Fast Company, Liz McDaniel, writer and comedian, and Annie Werner of Tumblr. And as I visited kiosk to kiosk, I’ll be perfectly honest, none of the images I browsed through were boring. If Offset’s aim is to reliably provide a collection of engaging artwork and photography, then it seems they know what they’re doing.
Offset will also offer royalty free licenses with unlimited print and web usage once purchased. They’re also boasting simplified pricing terms. Small files of pictures will go for $250, whereas large files will go for $500. Shutterstock’s reps said that they would open up Offset to the public in the coming months, although they didn’t give any indications as to exactly when that would be. For now, you can request an invitation at their website here.
via TechCrunch » Startups http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/techcrunch/startups/~3/A8atFNi6Al0/
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AlumniFunder Launches A Crowdfunding Platform Where Alumni Can Back Student Entrepreneurs
AlumniFunder launched in beta this week with a simple mission: Help create a deeper relationship between current students and alumni, while supporting collegiate entrepreneurship and creativity. To do that, AlumniFunder wants to give alumni a platform by which they can invest in innovative projects created by students at their alma mater. Whether it be for a new science lab, natural language processing research or a documentary film, the startup also wants to help give students access to the capital they need to get their ideas off the ground.
Riding the crowdfunding wave, the startup is essentially putting a spin on (or splitting the difference between) Kickstarter and education-focused, P2P funding platforms like SoFi and CommonBond. Not unlike these platforms, AlumniFunder has no affiliation with a specific college, instead providing a marketplace for those with ideas that need funding to connect with those looking to open their wallets to a worthy cause.
In other words, the platform works like this: Those registering for AlumniFunder are split into “Doers” (those looking to create a project) and “Alumni” (those looking to browse and fund projects). Doers are required to register with a “.edu” email address to set them up as part of a particular collegiate and alumni network, and then, like Kickstarter, their projects are posted to that network for a specified duration — usually between 30 and 60 days.
If the team or student hits their funding target, the money is then transferred via Stripe to the team; if not, no credit cards are charged. AlumniFunder provides a layer of oversight during the process to make sure the projects meet a minimum level of decency and appropriateness, while providing students with tools from Prezi and Vimeo, for example, to help them build and share their presentations with alumni.
The core value behind AlumniFunder, co-founder S. Ryan Meyer tells us, is to create a more direct and transparent channel for alumni to connect with students, in turn supporting alumni engagement in on-campus programs and entrepreneurial initiatives. Rather than crowdfunding being the focus of the platform, Meyer sees it as a technological tool for pooling resources — not a panacea for every capital-raising scenario and every hobby project out there.
Meyer started AlumniFunder last July as an “elaborate work-around,” he says after experiencing problems raising money for “the technology spinoff” of his brick-and-mortar, children’s brain-training company, Minds-in-Motion. Looking into crowdfunding as an alternative and, after considering using Crowdtilt’s white-label product, Meyer and team decided to create their own solution.
Meyer has raised $125,000 thus far, mostly from friends in his alumni network, he says, “crowdfunding it the old-fashioned way” through phone calls and in-person meetings. Crazy, I know. The team has since grown to five, including CTO and co-founder Brandon Goldman, who was the 13th employee at Box and is building the site in Node.js.
As for pricing, at launch, the site is free to all users, save for the requisite credit card processing fees. Going forward, AlumniFunder plans to launch an equity investing platform (set to launch at some point this summer), which will also be free-to-use. The team is currently raising a fund (at an undisclosed amount) that it will likely use to co-invest one-third with the accredited investor crowd in equity-based campaigns, “using crowd-vetting as a way to deploy capital to early-stage investments,” Meyer says.
Although much of the crowdfunding regulation is still in limbo, Meyer says that the team has been working to build its equity model in such a way as to both be efficient while operating within the present regulatory environment. “Hence the summer launch,” he concludes.
For its beta launch, AlumniFunder started by holding contests at Georgetown and Princeton for the most disruptive crowdfunding campaign, with Tom and Elevation Partners MD Adam Hopkins judging for Princeton and Ellie Wheeler from Greycroft judging from Georgetown. So far, the co-founder says, 22 campaigns are live, which are collectively seeking over $400,000 in capital. The first two contests ran for three weeks and offered $1,000 cash prizes to the best campaign submitted by March 20th.
Rather than working directly with either university, AlumniFunder approached a variety of both undergraduate and graduate “entrepreneurship clubs” to get the word out. Today, the startup announced the winners, and you can find Georgetown’s winner, HoyaChallenge, here and Princeton’s winner, Orchive, here.
Next up, AlumniFunder will look to continue pushing its contests onto more campuses to help spread the word, beginning on April 9th at U.C. Berkeley, Stanford on April 18th and USC at the end of April, with more schools to be added in the near future.
“We aim to be a marketplace for ideas, using crowdfunding as a tool to change the dynamics of university education and alumni relationships, creating untold opportunities for experiential learning,” Meyer tells us. “And we want to fund some kick-ass startups, too.”
via TechCrunch » Startups http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/techcrunch/startups/~3/GHvdQDBPDlM/