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Wednesday, 21 August 2013

Onavo Launches Acquisition Insights To Let Mobile Developers See How Their Competitors Are Spending

onavo


One of the biggest white lies mobile gaming studios and other app developers often tell is that they don’t rely on ad spending to get new users.


“It’s all organic,” is the common refrain.


Or is it?


Onavo, which is like a Quantcast for mobile apps, is launching a new tool giving more transparency around this. Called Acquisition Insights, the new product gives clients a dashboard that shows how other competing mobile apps are using advertising to bring in new users.


“It’s really going to give a first glimpse of how this whole ecosystem of paid app distribution with different ad networks is working,” said Guy Rosen, the company’s CEO. “It will show what’s working and what strategies different players are really using.”


While the product was in beta, a screenshot of it actually leaked to Gawker’s Valleywag gossip site when there was controversy around how Path was attracting new users. The screenshot showed that a spike in spending correlated with a bump in the app’s rankings.


Because the biggest mobile games and apps have multi-million dollar marketing budgets every month, this is a tool that Onavo is going to offer in enterprise deals that are worth more than $100,000 a year.


They’re betting that the user acquisition teams for these bigger gaming companies will want deep analytics where they can see how well ad campaigns for competing apps are working.


The dashboard can slice and dice advertising spend by different networks, so it can show a bump in activity on the Millennial Media network or on Facebook ad spend. It can even break out the actual ad units that other studios are using, so marketers can see the creatives and how well they are performing in terms of clickthrough rates.


The product has also been in existence for more than a year, so it has historical data as well.


Onavo, which is backed by Sequoia Capital, started out by offering mobile data tracking apps that helped consumers lower their monthly bills. Through those products, they are able to see the traffic that hundreds of thousands of mobile apps have on millions of devices.


They turned around and used this data to start building a Quantcast-for-mobile that gives observers visibility into which mobile apps actually have active users. It’s data that’s hard to come by since rankings in Apple’s app store, for example, focus on downloads and not retention. Onavo naturally uses aggregated anonymous data.


The company has raised $13 million in two rounds from investors including Sequoia Capital, Horizons Ventures, Motorola Solutions Venture Capital and Magma Venture Partners.









via TechCrunch » Startups http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/techcrunch/startups/~3/T6fA4zdIH64/

Scientists Just Figured Out How to Make Lightning-Fast Graphene CPUs

Google Play bests Nintendo and Sony handheld devices in mobile gamer purchases, gets cozy in second place



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Panoramas navegables de los lugares de alunizaje de las misiones Apolo

Apolo 11, Estación 5

Apolo 11, Estación 5


Durante sus paseos por la superficie de la Luna los doce astronautas del Programa Apolo que aterrizaron allí tomaron miles de fotos usando las cámaras Hasselblad que llevaban para ello y que aún están allí.


En Apollo Surface Panoramas se puede navegar por una serie de panoramas construidos a partir de muchas de estas imágenes usando Zoomify, por lo que se puede hacer zoom hasta la resolución máxima y moverse de un lado a otro a voluntad.


Cada uno de los panoramas incluye enlaces a las fotos originales a partir de las que está montado y versiones anotadas para saber qué estás mirando.


Eso sí, es necesario tener Flash instalado para poder usar la función de navegación.


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With Field Trip App, Google Glass Is a Virtual Tour Guide



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Carbyne Could Be the Strongest Element Known to Man



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Clinch Lands On Android With Location-Based Video Editing App

Location-based photo and video sharing has been tried before, most notably by Color, but it doesn’t mean that the topic is at rest.


Clinch, an app that threads together video clips, photos, etc. based on location, today launches on Google Play for Android smartphones.


The app takes video and photos from the user’s phone and auto-edits them into something beautiful and special. If the user chooses, the app will scour the area for friends, various social media activity, etc. to include other people’s content. You can pick up clips from friends, Twitter or Instagram.


The app will even throw in a map to add some context to your Clinch.


According to the official release, Clinch uses algorithms and cloud computing to aggregate various photos and clips, which the user can then select to include in the finished product.


Toward the end of the process, users can choose from customizable backgrounds, themes and music.


We’ve seen a number of apps focus in on video lately. Obviously, Vine and Instagram video come to mind, with more of a rough-cut short video experience. Meanwhile, phone manufacturers are getting in on the action too.


HTC offers an app called Zoe that auto-sorts through photos and videos from a certain event or location to make a beautiful, themed story. Samsung’s new Galaxy S4 has a Gif-making option within the camera, allowing users to take 8-second videos and turn them into animated Gifs. Plus, BlackBerry has the Story Teller app which also combines photos and videos into a nice package.


Clinch simply offers more control to the same idea, along with availability on both iPhone and Android.


The app costs $.99 and is available now on both the App Store and Google Play.








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A Simple Waterproof Camera That Automatically Shares Your Shots Online

Bing for Schools pilot begins, lets searchers earn Surface RT tablets for classrooms (video)



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The Horror: If Super Mario Bros. 3 Were Made For Smartphones

Dino Pet: marine algae in a sauropod-shaped case that glow when irritated



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Sony at Gamescom 2013: the story so far



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Audi App Turns Your iPhone Into a Robust User Manual



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Samsung's Smart Watch Rumored to Come in Five Colors



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Unite US Raises $2M In Seed Funding To Help Build A Community And Online Resource For Armed Forces Veterans

unite-us

New York-based startup Unite US, founded by three members of the Armed Forces both past and present, announced that it has raised $2 million in seed funding from a number of private investors today. The startup is still partly in stealth mode, with a public launch planned for this fall, but its goal is to help veterans better connect with public and private agencies designed to help them transition to civilian life, and to build a community that can help with post-service careers and more.


The U.S. Veterans Affairs agency estimates that there were around 22.2 million vets in the U.S. in 2010, and around 200,000 service people depart every year. There’s also a much higher rate of unemployment for veterans from the most recent Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts compared to the national average. Unite US wants to address that market with a platform that’s designed to bring together the disparate and disorganized options and avenues of help available to them under one digital roof. It’s about connecting people for opportunities they might not otherwise have found, but don’t call it a LinkedIn for service men and women.


“While our solution does have a professional/job facilitation component to it (about 10%), it is far from a LinkedIn model,” Unite US co-founder and CEO Dan Brillman explained via email. ” Consumer facing- it is a social approach through interactive mapping, but not at all ‘a professional network.’ Instead, it’s comparable to a Yelp (local discovery of who and what resources are around you) and a match.com (connecting and matching people based on finite interests/location which allows discussion and interaction).”


Organizations can also use it to manage membership, via built-in CRM tools, and that allows them to work with other groups and agencies and find meaningful connections between memberships to better serve their communities.


“There are over 50,000 organizations that support veterans. Many are membership based, and some provide great services,” Brillman said. “But access to them is limited, which is why many struggle to stay afloat even though they provide direct impacts for veterans. This is why we want to create visibility for all of them and provide a mechanism to create visibility and organization management for them.”


Unite US is in talks with the various arms of the United States Armed Forces, the company says, and say those have been promising but that it will take time to work out formal partnerships with each. The startup is for-profit, despite its apparently noble aim, and plans to partner with companies that value visibility and access among veterans. Unite US says that being a for-profit company is the only way to develop the kind of tech that non-profit organizations in the space haven’t been able to put together on their own so far.


We’ll know more about Unite US’ ambitious plans in the fall, but a $2 million initial investment in something that at first glance appears quite niche indicates there is a good amount of support and need for this kind of company.









via TechCrunch » Startups http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/techcrunch/startups/~3/6_Hsu7HMCMw/

Omate TrueSmart watch launches on Kickstarter, works with or without your smartphone



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Xbox One dashboard: what to expect



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Streaming outfit Orb Networks acquired, winding down operations



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Gameloft and Amiga Games to release 56 titles on Windows 8, WP8 before 2014



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Mark Zuckerberg Explains How He Plans to Get the Whole World Online

Samsung announces another dual-screen flip-phone: the Galaxy Golden



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Netflix's new 'My List' replaces queues, lets users worldwide bookmark their favorites



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8 Tech Etiquette Tips to Enforce in Your Office



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Verizon LG Enact leaks in press image, proves QWERTY sliders still exist



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LG exec: tablet, phablet, smartwatch and Firefox OS device coming soon



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Escape for Google Glass brings casual gaming to explorers (hands-on)



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LG's 'V500' 9.8-inch tablet makes its presence known at the FCC



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Here are the PlayStation 4's 33 'launch window' games, from Knack to Minecraft



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How to Back Up Your iPhone Photos



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Call of Duty: Ghosts PS4 upgrades will run $10, says Activision



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Your Phone Will Soon Spew 4K Video From Its USB Port

Bloomberg: General Motors to add wireless chargers on some 2014 car models



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Fukushima's Radioactive Puddles Are More Serious Than Anticipated

Pitch'd Launches To Help Brands Run Vine, Instagram, And MixBit Video Competitions

Logo-new

When I woke up this morning I said to myself, do you know what the world needs more of? Engagement marketing, that’s what. Then I went back to sleep. But, seemingly, engagement marketing, where consumers are enticed to produce brand-related User-Generated Content, is the social media gift that keeps on giving. Enter: Pitch’d, a new UK startup that launches today with a platform to help brands get in on the engagement marketing action by running video competitions on Vine, Instagram, and MixBit.


Founded by Adam Stamper, who was perviously a brand builder at Procter & Gamble and has built various social apps on the side, Pitch’d is targeting brands and agencies who want to run video competitions that challenge users to shoot short videos on a specific topic and — surprise, surprise! — have them share those creations within their social network.


Functionality supported by the platform includes the ability to pre-moderate entries, and a live analytics dashboard that shows per-channel entries, reach and voting status while the contest is running.


In addition, a public-facing ‘leader-board’ is offered in the form of a web-based widget, a Facebook page tab, and a mobile-ready HTML5 version.


To enter a Pitch’d-powered contest, users can tweet their video @mentioning the brand with a specific #hashtag, and entries can be voted on by users via Facebook or retweets on Twitter.


Agencies can also skin the leader-board to fit the campaign’s ‘look and feel’, while an API lets them directly integrate the leader-board into their native mobile apps if desired.


Pitch’d founder Stamper says the catalyst for developing the platform was the launch of Twitter-owned Vine. “It’s a fantastic app which really inspires its users to express their creativity,” he says. “I felt this opened up a huge opportunity for brands to harness and reward that creativity, challenging their audience to create and share content on the brand’s behalf.”


More broadly, the inspiration for Pitch’d came from a disparity Stamper sees between expensive top-down marketing campaigns and bottom-up social (or, dare I say, engagement) marketing. “I saw on one side the huge media budgets spent by advertisers, and on the other side epic social-graph-driven traction with no marketing spend,” he says. “That duality was the inspiration for Pitch’d; the idea that advertisers would be better served by working with their audience rather than (expensively) yelling at them”.


Pricing-wise, Pitch’d says it’s offering a “limited number” of subscription packages for digital marketing agencies from £749 plus taxes per month, whilst standard pay-per-contest pricing begins at £1,795 plus taxes.


At the high end, something like the video competition platform MoFilm, which targets professional or semi-pro film makers and challenges them to create video content for advertisers, might be considered a competitor to Pitch’d. Or at the lower end, “there are sweepstakes providers like OfferPop or WooBox who offer simple photo competitions with the primary objective of keeping an advertiser’s fans vaguely engaged,” says Stamper. “We’re in the middle – we let brands solicit powerful creative content but from a wide variety of people thanks to the low-friction entry mechanic, easy integration, and multi-app support”.








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SwiftKey Cloud exits beta, available as free update in version 4.2



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Muebles, casas, y otros edificios hechos con Lego

El Lego-Brücke de Wuppertal

El Lego-Brücke de Wuppertal


Vale, algunos sólo están pintados para parecerlo, aunque otros están fabricados con piezas que simulan ser piezas de Lego XXXXL, pero molan las ideas que aparecen en Why Not: LEGO Real Life Construction Ideas .


¡Hasta hay un puente de tren en Escocia!





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WSJ: Vevo TV deal signed for Samsung, Apple TV platforms



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CCP's Oculus Rift demo becomes EVE: Valkyrie, space dogfighting due in 2014 (video)



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Google invites users to share their expertise over video Helpouts



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Formlabs debuts Mac software for Form 1 high-res 3D printer, adds mesh repair



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Zuckerberg's Internet.org plan hinges on more efficient apps, starting with Facebook



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Surprise! Facebook Wants to Get the Entire World on the Internet

Mercedes-Benz Tests Google Glass Integration



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Facebook and others form Internet.org to foster global internet adoption (video)



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