Let Me Goo.gl These New Features For You

Back in September, Google formally launched goo.gl, the official URL shortener from the tech giant. The service first went into operation late in 2009 and was tied to Google’s own products, like Google Toolbar, but now it’s a direct competitor to the myriad consumer-focused shorteners, the most famous of which is bit.ly. Today, goo.gl has announced a handful of new features that should make fans of the service happy.

First up is easier copy and pasting — after you submit a link, Google will automatically highlight the resulting shortened URL, which means you can immediately hit Control-C to copy it. No, not a huge deal (and rivals like bit.ly already do the same thing), but if you use this as part of your workflow, you’ll appreciate it.
 


Next, you can now remove URLs that are shown on your dashboard. Again, another minor feature — but one that comes in handy if you’re a big Goo.gl user. As you use the service, it builds a list of URLs you’ve generated and displays how many clicks each has received. But that list got cluttered fast if you frequently used it. Now you’ll be able to highlight your most important links while hiding the ones that you don’t care so much about.

Google also goes out of its way to say that it has had zero downtime since the service launched in September, which is notable because URL shorteners are often criticized for adding additional latency and points of failure to the web.

Finally, you can now report spammy links. Hooray!

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LG Thrive, IE 10 & Final Cut Pro X Unveiled: This Morning’s Top Stories

Welcome to this morning’s edition of “First To Know,” a series in which we keep you in the know on what’s happening in the digital world. We’re keeping our eyes on three particular stories of interest today.


AT&T Launches First Prepaid Smartphone

AT&T and LG have launched LG Thrive, the first Android smartphone to be available as part of AT&T’s GoPhone prepaid plan.


Microsoft Unveils Internet Explorer 10 Preview
Microsoft has released the first platform preview for Internet Explorer 10, less than a month after the launch its much-hyped Internet Explorer 9 browser.

Apple Announces Final Cut Pro X

Apple has unveiled Final Cut Pro X, the newest version of its popular video-editing software.

Further News

• Cisco is discontinuing its line of Flip video cameras, the company’s CEO announced.
• A group of volunteer bloggers has filed a class-action suit against The Huffington Post, its founder, Arianna Huffington, and AOL, which acquired the digital media company for $315 million in February.
• Flock, the 5-year-old social web browser, is also going out of commission. Support for the browser will be discontinued on April 26.
• Walmart-owned movie streaming service Vudu is now accessible from web browsers.    

       Image courtesy of iStockphoto, DNY59

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Motorola And Huawei Settle Patent Lawsuit

In case you hadn’t heard, Motorola Solutions and Chinese telecommunications company Huawei Technologies have been embroiled in a nasty patent lawsuit. In January, the Chinese company has filed a lawsuit to prevent Motorola from giving Nokia Siemens (which acquired Motorola’s wireless network for $1.2 billion last year) Huawei’s IP information. Today, Motorola and Huawei have issued a joint statement announcing that the two companies have settles all litigation. Both parties have agreed to withdraw and dismiss their claims from the courts.

Huawei has actually entered an agreement with Motorola Solutions and Nokia Siemens that allows Motorola Solutions to transfer its commercial agreements with Huawei for a fee, and allows Nokia to receive and use Huawei confidential information revealed to Motorola. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. And Motorola is also dismissing a prior complaint filed against Huawei, which alleged that the Chinese company was conspiring to steal trade secrets from former Motorola employees.

The backstory is that Huawei was claiming that because Motorola and the company has a previous licensing relationship (worth $880 million), Motorola’s wireless networking unit was provided with details on Huawei’s confidential intellectual property. Huawei was trying to ensure that Motorola does not transfer this confidential information to Nokia. Motorola, Huawei contended, did not provided any assurances that it will prevent disclosure of that IP information to Nokia and if this transfer of information did happen, Huawei would suffer from this.

It appears that Motorola ponied up the funds to pay off Huawei in this suit. In February, Huawei won a court order preventing Motorola from transferring the Chinese telecom-gear maker’s intellectual property to Nokia Siemens.

Greg Brown, President & CEO of Motorola said in a statement: “We regret that these disputes have occurred between our two companies. Motorola Solutions values the long-standing relationship we have had with Huawei. After reviewing the facts, we decided to resolve these matters and return to our traditional relationship of confidence and trust.”

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Former OfferPal CEO George Garrick Joins SocialShield

SocialShield, a startup that helps parents monitor their kids’ online behavior without violating kids’ privacy, is announcing a new CEO today, George Garrick. 

Garrick, who was an investor in SocialShield, is a seasoned technology exec that was most recently the CEO of Offerpal (which is now TapJoy) as well as Mochi Media. Garrick was also previously the CEO of Jingle Networks, Wine.com, PlaceWare (which was acquired by Microsoft), FlyCast Communications, Information Resources and A.C. Nielsen.

Founded by Noah Kindler and Arad Rostampour, SocialShield gives parents high level visibility into what kids are doing online and on social networks, and who they’re interacting with online and via mobile phones. SocialShield, which requires that both parents and children opt-in to the service, monitors kids’ picture sharing, social gaming and other social activity on networks that kids use the most (currently Facebook, Myspace and Twitter). Rather than giving parents access to kids’ accounts or copies of their online communications, Social Shield sends parents alerts when activity indicates potential danger.

The startup, which raised $10 million in funding and inked a licensing deal with AOL, was also recently invited to The White House to participate in a Presidential Summit on CyberBullying.

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Dailyplaces Turns Ups The Social, Adds Realtime Chat To Locations

Dailyplaces, the social recommendation service for places, has upped the social today by adding realtime chat to its iPhone and Android apps.


Dubbed ‘Places Chat’, users can communicate directly and in realtime with other users that are checked-in at the same location. Additionally, it’s possible to chat with other users that aren’t nearby via a user’s friend-list. The thinking behind the feature is to enable users to converse with each other around locations so that they can ask about the place, give recommendations or even book appointments, says the Frankfurt, Germany-based startup.

• Read the rest of this entry »

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Was the Charlie Sheen Tweet a Win for Internships.com?

The Behind the Social Media Campaign Series is supported by Oneupweb, an award-winning agency specializing in search marketing, social media and design for mid-to-enterprise level brands. Download Oneupweb’s free whitepaper, “The Bloody Truth about Social Media.”

When it comes to brand building, there are basically two schools of thought: “Build it and they will come” and “brainwash the masses.”

The latter is based on the belief that any publicity is good publicity. If you get your name out there, the rest will fall in to place. A good example of this philosophy is GoldenPalace.com, which recently bought Justin Bieber’s hair, and in the past has purchased William Shatner’s kidney stone for the free publicity.

At the moment, Internships.com fits the latter category as well. If you’ve heard of the brand, it’s most likely due to a single effective marketing campaign: An endorsement by Charlie Sheen via Twitter.

Internships.com, Charlie Sheen & Ad.ly

When Sheen joined Twitter on March 1, it’s safe to say he wasn’t a great fit with a lot of brands. Sheen had just had a major falling out with Chuck Lorre, the producer of Sheen’s hit show Two and a Half Men and gave a series of bizarre interviews. It was clear that the star was something of a train wreck, and, to many, a fascinating one at that. Sheen became a trending topic on Twitter and, when he joined, set the Guinness World Record by getting 1 million followers in about 25 hours.

That combination of public pariah and social media star had appeal for a brand that was chiefly concerned with creating awareness. But Internships.com and Sheen needed a matchmaker.

That’s where Ad.ly came in. Founded in 2009 by Sean Rad, Ad.ly sought to link celebrities with social media endorsements. The firm first came on a lot of people’s radars when it arranged for client Kim Kardashian to receive $10,000 per tweet for spreading the message about Carl’s Jr., a fast food chain. By now, Ad.ly claims more than 1,000 celebrities, who make endorsements on behalf of some 150 brands.

About the Internship

As it so happens, Internships.com’s CEO, Robin Richards, sits on Ad.ly’s board. Nevertheless, the year-old company — which connects internship seekers with companies offering internships — had some stipulations for working with Ad.ly and Sheen. “There were two things we needed to make sure of,” says Kat Garcia, a rep for Internships.com. “We needed to make sure this was a legitimate internship and it was a paid internship.”

The eight-week internship is real, but it’s a little odd — the winner gets to manage Charlie Sheen’s social media operations. It also pays — $10 an hour.

With those specifications in place, Sheen gave his tweet/plug on March 7: “I’m looking to hire a #winning INTERN with #TigerBlood. Apply here – http://bit.ly/hykQQF #TigerBloodIntern #internship #ad.”

A Win For Internships.com?

The response to Sheen’s tweet was immediate. Within the first hour, the tweet got 95,333 clicks. A week later, the offer got more than 82,000 replies. “It’s been overwhelming in a positive way,” Garcia says.

While the promotion was undeniably successful in getting responses to the internship, it’s not clear that Internships.com can build a brand off of it. The company, which had previously only run paid search advertising and the occasional print ad, is now known to most people as an extension of the Charlie Sheen brand.

Rob Frankel, a Los Angeles-based branding expert, says that’s not necessarily a bad thing, but that this appears to be nothing more or less than a publicity stunt. “Awareness for awareness’s sake never works,” he says. “Cancer has a high awareness, but how many people want it?” Frankel says he believes that an attention-getting strategy is fine as long as it ties in with what the brand is offering — for him, the fact that the promotion is around a Charlie Sheen internship doesn’t cut it.

When asked if there are potential downfalls to being yoked to Sheen — what if he dies for instance? — Lindsay Plotkin, another rep for Internships.com, sidestepped the question, focusing instead on what the promotion has meant for Internships’s brand. “It kind of propelled us from maybe not being as well known to being a contender in this space,” she says.

Potential concerns aside, Internships.com still has control of some of the message. One of the cleverer aspects of the campaign is that a single tweet launched a story arc for Internships.com. After narrowing down the field, the winner of the contest should be announced in a few weeks, no doubt providing more free publicity. After that, it will be up to Internships.com to plan what it will do with its newfound awareness. When asked, however, if anyone has successfully built a brand with publicity stunts, Frankel thought for a second. “I can’t think of anyone that has,” he said. “That should tell you something.”

Series Supported by Oneupweb
 
The Behind the Social Media Campaign Series is supported by Oneupweb, an award-winning agency specializing in search marketing, social media and design for mid-to-enterprise level brands. Download Oneupweb’s free whitepaper, “The Bloody Truth about Social Media” to learn how to cut through the clutter and be sure to catch up with them on Facebook and Twitter.

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LG Thrive: Meet AT&T’s First Prepaid Smartphone

AT&T and LG have launched LG Thrive, the first Android smartphone to be available as part of AT&T’s GoPhone prepaid plan.

LG Thrive is a 3.2-inch device with a 3.2-megapixel camera with autofocus, Wi-Fi, HSDPA and 160 MB of memory expandable via SD memory cards up to 32GB. The device will be powered by Android 2.2, and while it cannot compete with the top Android phones such as the Motorola Atrix or Samsung Galaxy S, it is the most powerful device on the GoPhone plan.

Customers who choose the Smartphone $0.10/min Plan or Smartphone $2/day Unlimited Talk and Text Plan Data will be able to choose between the following data plan options: $5 for 10MB, $15 for 10MB as well as $25 for 500MB.

The device will retail for $179.99 and is expected to hit the market April 17. On that same date, AT&T also plans to launch LG Phoenix, which is the same device as the Thrive but with a dark blue case, a price tag of $49.99 and two-year service agreement requirement.

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Apple Announces Final Cut Pro X At NAB

It’s NAB (the National Association of Broadcasters conference) in Las Vegas, that means lots of new camera and video stuff. It’s more pro gear than consumer stuff, which is probably why Apple took over the Final Cut Pro User Group Supermeet there to unveil the newest version of their professional video editing software. They’re calling it as revolutionary as the original Final Cut released back in ’99. Guess the rumors were right.

After a preamble where they described FCP has having over 2 million users and teasing the competition, they launched into the new features. They’re still in the middle of the presentation, but so far it appears we have 64-bit, a revamped UI, and a ton of automatic clip-optimization going on in the background by utilizing Grand Central Station.

•  Read the rest of this entry »

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Google Invests in World’s Largest Solar Power Tower Plant

Google has just sealed a deal to invest $168 million in a Mojave Desert solar energy plant.

The investment is going to BrightSource Energy, a company that developes and operates large-scale solar power plants, specifically to fund its Ivanpah project.

Ivanpah is a solar electric generating system that uses solar thermal technology and “an environmentally responsible design,” according to the project’s website, to deliver reliable, clean and low-cost power to Californians.

The plant will generate energy with a technology called power towers. Mirrors, called heliostats, are arranged in an array and aim the sun’s rays at a receiver atop a tower. The receiver generates steam; the steam causes a turbine to rotate; the rotation causes a generator to generate electricity. Because such large quantities of solar energy are being directed to such a small area, the power towers are very efficient.

The power tower at Ivanpah will be around 450 feet tall. The plant will use 173,000 heliostats, and each heliostat will have two mirrors, making Ivanpah the largest project of its kind.

Construction at Ivanpah should be completed in 2013. Here’s a video from the plant’s groundbreaking ceremony:

Google’s been on something of a clean energy investment kick over the past year or so. The company was granted the ability to buy and sell energy as a public utility last February, ostensibly to find better ways to power its own massive data centers.

A short time later, Google began making significant investments in green energy technologies. The company sealed a $38 million wind farm investment in May, bought 20 years’ worth of wind farm energy in July, and provided a substantial investment for a huge offshore wind farm in October.

Rick Needham is Google’s Director of Green Business Operations. On the company blog, writes, “We hope that investing in Ivanpah spurs continued development and deployment of this promising technology while encouraging other companies to make similar investments in renewable energy.”

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VHX Wants To Be Your Video Dashboard For The Entire Internet

Launching in private beta today and founded by original Vimeo developer Casey Pugh and Know Your Meme co-founder Jamie Wilkinson is VHX.tv, a site that aims to “combine the best parts of the TV experience with the best of the web.” But wait, haven’t we heard this like a bajillion times?

Right away there’s something different about VHX as a video-sharing experience, namely that when you hit the service after initially registering and following other users, the videos in your VHX dashboard start playing right away, almost like you’ve turned on the social video TV.

The site, which runs in flash, is admittedly quite slow to load, but once it does the experience of watching videos in your dashboard stream (what your friends have decided to share), in your queue (what you have flagged to watch later) or in your history is pretty much the closest I’ve come to non-fragmented experience on the web. This is great if you want to watch online video while folding clothes or cooking or doing exercise, and don’t want to have to click around aimlessly for the next thing distraction.

VHX also lets you download a bookmarklet that lets you share or queue up videos from around the web, and the VHX browser extension tracks what videos you’ve watched on other sites, adding them to your history. You can share directly to Twitter, Facebook, Gmail and Tumblr from within the app, linking to the original video. And while VHX currently only supports Vimeo and YouTube, Wilkinson tells me he wants to add other formats soon, essentially becoming a video dashboard for the entire web.

Working on in the online video space is a hard row to hoe, especially when you stand in the shadows of YouTube, Vimeo and Boxee, and audience success is not necessarily matched by a viable business model. “Online video consumption is not a simple problem to solve. Everyone distributes video differently and we’re here to smooth out these inconsistencies for the end-user.  We’ve been working in online video for years, have great relationships with all the players,” Wilkinson acknowleged.

VHX is working on more-in depth features that would turn the service into “your own personal Internet TV Station” where users would be able to create video playlists to share on VHX or embed on their own blogs. Wilkinson eventually wants to give user the ability to edit the videos themselves. The team also has native iPhone and iPad apps in development, as well as a Boxee app for those not content with watching videos on a computer screen.

The first hundred TechCrunch readers can get early access to the VHX beta here.

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Indian Stealth Startup Mojostreet Secures $350K From Former Microsoft VP, Others

Hyderabad-based Mojostreet, a location-based mobile gaming startup, announced today that it has received $350K in seed funding, led by Srini Koppolu, former Managing Director of Microsoft India and J.A. Chowdary former Managing Director of Nvidia India. Mojostreet will use its infusion of capital to ramp up hiring efforts and to assist in the startup’s beta launch in early May.

Like a mix of its American counterparts Foursquare, SCVNGR, and Booyah’s My Town, Mojostreet’s first product is a location-based app, which will allow users to check in at various point of interests in a game format. At launch, Mojostreet will be restricted to 5.5 million locations in India, but Founder and CEO Kalyan Manyam said that he hopes to launch Mojostreet in the U.S. and Singapore shortly thereafter.

The startup has partnered with several major national retail outlets in India to provide real world offers to complement the virtual gaming experience. So, as users check in at various locations, they will be awarded virtual currency, or “Mojo bucks”. Gamers are pitted against their friends in a mobile scavenger hunt, unlocking special offers at check-in, and stockpiling virtual cash along the way.

Manyam, who also founded Indyarocks.com — an Indian social network with more than 6 million users — said that mobile gaming is currently exploding among the more than 600 million mobile phone users in India. As a result, Mojostreet will be available on Blackberry, Nokia, IPhone and Android phones.

“As data plans become more affordable in India, location-based services are going to play a crucial role in community-based entertainment and eCommerce”, Manyam said. “And we are very excited to see the ways Mojostreet can influence real world experiences and commerce”.

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Startup Helps Small Restaurants Get Online

The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.

Name: BistroSquare 

Quick Pitch: BistroSquare is a website builder specifically for restaurants.

Genius Idea: Making it easy for restaurants to create websites that are as simple or as fully featured as they need them to be.

Richie Ward’s family has been in the restaurant business for three generations. Ward prefered to start a tech company, but didn’t want to abandon his deep understanding of independent restaurants. So last month Ward and his co-founder Andrew Kurz launched a website builder targeted specifically at the 311,548 businesses in the United States that fit into that category. 


“I’m sure that there are some out there who have a background in web development and just kind of landed in the restaurant industry that could build a website themselves and never need our service,” Ward says. “But by and large there seem to be restaurateurs out there who are excellent at running restaurants but don’t really know where to start when it comes to building a website. That’s who our product is geared toward.”

BistroSquare is designed for restaurants and other small food businesses, like bakeries and caterers, and has features that easily create online menus, coupons and reservations. Instead of paying hundreds to thousands of dollars for a functional website, restaurant owners with minimum technology skills create and maintain their own sites.

Other startups like Culini and LetsEat.at are also targeting independent restaurants with web builders that integrate social media and help create a sleek website. Ward says his bootstrapped startup is different in that its web builder goes beyond putting up a “build it and forget it” website.

“We’re not really just a web builder,” Ward says. “We’re kind of the complete package for managing a website.”

BistroSquare’s site offers the basics, but it also has advanced features like a reservation system, email accounts, multiple user management tools and a shopping cart. LetsEat.at integrates with OpenTable, but doesn’t have its own system.

An ad-supported free version of BistroSquare has limited features and doesn’t include the $19.99 annual domain name fee. Other plans run from $29.99 to $49.99 per month, which is considerably more expensive than LetsEat.at but on par with Culini, which has more complicated features.

•  Image courtesy of iStockphoto, nikada 

 Series Supported by Microsoft BizSpark

The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark, a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.

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What Impact Has The New York Times Paywall Had on Traffic? [STATS]

The New York Times‘ paywall has now been up for two weeks. What impact has it had on the popular website’s traffic? More importantly, is the paywall working as intended, or is it taking a bite out of The New York Times‘ revenues?

Experian Hitwise thinks it has the answer to the first question. The research and intelligence firm analyzed traffic data for NYTimes.com from before and after the paywall was erected. According to its data, traffic has declined overall by 5% to 15%.

Hitwise measured the change in total unique visitors between February 22 and March 5 as well as the number of visitors between March 29 and April 9. Overall, it was no contest: unique traffic has dropped since the paywall, with most declines in the 5% to 10% range.

The effects of the NYTimes.com paywall are far more pronounced on the website’s total pageviews, though. Using the same time period, Hitwise found that pageviews dropped between 11% and 30% after the paywall was erected. Pageviews typically exceeded 5.8 million before the paywall; after it went into effect, the site’s overall traffic has dropped under this number.

There are a couple of caveats to remember about the paywall before making any conclusions. First, The New York Times is currently running a promotion: $0.99 for the first four weeks of access. There could be a lot of people accessing NYTimes.com that won’t pay the normal $15 to $35 subscription fee. It’s also important to remember that the paywall doesn’t kick in until someone reads 20 articles a month (plus free visits from search and social media), which could explain why pageviews have dropped so much more than total visits.

So here’s the big question: Is NYT‘s paywall a success or a failure? When it comes to this big-picture question, we still don’t have enough information to make a conclusion. The paywall simply hasn’t been around long enough and we don’t have the financial data to see whether the paywall has made up for the loss in advertising revenue.

What do you think of the paywall? Is it the future of the news, or will sites that use a paywall destined for a slow death?

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Ask a VC: Bijan Sabet Returns to the Hot Seat. Send Your Questions Now!

This week, I invited Bijan Sabet of Spark Capital back to Ask a VC, because it’s been a while and there were a ton of questions we didn’t get to last time.

Sabet is in the middle of some of the most interesting companies on the Web today including Tumblr, Twitter and Boxee. And as you can see from his last time on the show, he’s a great guest. Last time we talked about everything from investing in Africa to why Boston is struggling to get its startup mojo back.

What do you want to know? Send your questions to askavc(at)techcrunch(dot)com. Feel free to check out his blog to come up with some good ones.

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nSphere Acquires Couponing Startup Peekaboo Mobile

Online business directory company nSphere has acquired mobile couponing startup Peekaboo Mobile. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but we hear the transaction was in the seven-figures. Peekaboo’s team will also join nSphere to manage its new mobile marketplace and future mobile-related initiatives.

Peekaboo Mobile provides a platform to local businesses looking to connect to consumers with location-targeted offers. Peekaboo says that it currently reaches over 50 million smartphone users through its Android and iPhone deal applications and partner network.

nSphere’s technology powers search results for local services, events, relevant news articles and more. The acquisition will be used by nSphere to establish a mobile platform to deliver hyper-local coupons and information on any search topic directly to mobile handsets. Peekaboo Mobile will continue to run its mobile couponing company and will eliminate all monthly or yearly service fees required of current business owners and provide the Peekaboo platform free of charge for all future clients.

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Court to Winklevoss Twins: Facebook Settlement Stands, Time To Move On

Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss must accept their $65 million settlement from Facebook and move on.

A U.S. appeals court ruled Monday that the settlement — which was featured in the movie The Social Network — still stands, despite the Winklevosses’ claim that Facebook did not disclose an accurate valuation.

The suit stems from the Winklevosses’ claim that Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg stole their idea for the social-networking site. Zuckerberg and Facebook deny the allegations, but agreed to settle in 2008. Since then, the Winklevoss twins have attempted to secure a higher settlement by claiming that Facebook is guilty of securities fraud.

“The Winklevosses are not the first parties bested by a competitor who then seek to gain through litigation what they were unable to achieve in the marketplace,” Chief Judge Alex Kozinski wrote in today’s ruling. “And the courts might have obliged, had the Winklevosses not settled their dispute and signed a release of all claims against Facebook.”

With both the district court and appeals court in agreement, it seems this may be the end of the Winklevosses’ claim to any additional shares of Facebook.

“For whatever reason, they (the Winklevosses) now want to back out. Like the district court, we see no basis for allowing them to do so,” Kozinski wrote. “At some point, litigation must come to an end. That point has now been reached.”

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Windows App Store? I Swear I’ve Seen This Before…( Images )

With a tide rapidly shifting towards mobile and tablet devices, it should be no surprise that work is well already underway on Windows 8. An early build circulating apparently hints at a more unified OS to combat what Apple is doing with OS X/iOS and what HP is doing with Palm webOS. And some screenshots are starting to leak out. And a few appear to include, what else, an app store.

WinRumors posted the shots this morning while noting that they’re unverified. But actually, the shots in English were previously out there, what’s new are the ones in Chinese that Cnbeta found that seem to verify the design. And what a design it is — I swear this looks familiar…

Last year, we ripped Google for ripping off the design of Apple’s App Store for their Chrome Web Store. This actually might be worse. It looks almost as if Microsoft is ripping off Google ripping off Apple. Again, allegedly — the shots aren’t confirmed.

Let’s hope Microsoft isn’t actually doing such a lame copy job with their actual store. Rushing to release a store baked into the OS months after a competitor is bad enough. At least nail the design or bring something new to the table.

Stop me when these look familiar.

Windows App Store:

Mac App Store:

iOS App Store:

Chrome Web Store:

Android Market:

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Kiip Is An Entirely New Mobile Ad Model: Real Life Rewards For In-Game Achievements

Kiip, the seven month-old mobile ads startup, is finally coming out of stealth today and revealing an entirely new model for in-game advertising, one that offers users value instead of fighting an uphill battle for their attention.

Going beyond the banner and text ads used by industry leaders iAd and AdMob, the team behind Kiip has thought long and hard about the way people actually play games and has come to conclusion that the moments when players experience in-game achievements like upping a level, completing a challenge or accumulating a certain number of points are the most valuable in terms of providing the most user engagement.

Unlike Tap.me, Kiip doesn’t just show an ad when those moments are achieved. What it does instead is pretty interesting: Kiip has partnered up with big brands like Sephora, popchips, Homerun.com, Sony Dash, Vitamin Water, 1-800-Flowers, Dr. Pepper, GNC, Carl’s Jr and Hardee’s to offer players actual in-game rewards like a voucher for six bags of popchips, a lipstick sample or a complimentary smoothie when they complete gaming milestones.

“Achievements are the universal currency for accomplishment and every game in the world has achievments,” 19-year-old Kiip co-founder Brian Wong tells me, explaining what he calls the “Achievement Moment.” “The achievement itself isn’t the cool thing, it’s the moment. We realized that the moment was worth something. The natural evolution is to put something there that actually matches the achievement.”

Wong emphasizes that Kiip (pronounced Keep) isn’t a conventional ads network but a “Rewards Network”. Hmmm … It depends on what you consider an ad. Offering players custom-tailored rewards is basically lead generation. It’s an easy away for advertisers to associate their brand with a positive moment, almost diabolical in its simplicity; “Driving for customer acquisition when players are happy.”

As of midnight tonight the Kiip Rewards Network will be rolling out rewards in over 15 games, reaching 12 million monthly active users (Wong wouldn’t tell me which games they were involved with so if anyone sees a Kiip ad please let me know). Brands will pay up when a user signs up for a reward, from 25 cents to $3 per cost per engagement.

The rewards themselves are actually targeted algorithmically based on the game demographics, for example if no girls play a game there will be no offers for lipstick. If someone ends up with something they don’t want they can always gift it.

Kiip is also complimentary to other mobile ad networks as it only provides rewards for achievements and doesn’t get into banner ads or the real estate business. Says Wong, “People have been too focused on real estate and pieces of the screen being part of the advertising equation, but they’ve completely overlooked the notion of moments, moments where you’re happy, moments when you engage. These moments are worth something.”

Co-founded by former Digg employees Wong, Courtney Guertin and Sequence’s Amadeus Demarzi, Kiip pocketed $4 million in Series A funding from Hummer Winblad and True Ventures just last week. Wong tells me the team has got a lot more up its sleeve, and as always, you’ll read about it first here.

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Adobe And Zend Launch Flash Builder 4.5 For PHP Development

Adobe and Zend Technologies, the PHP distribution company, are announcing Flash Builder 4.5 for PHP software, a new integrated product aimed at helping PHP developers create rich Internet applications for mobile, Web and desktop leveraging the Flash Platform.

Zend, which has been working with Adobe since 2008, offers its own distribution of PHP, the popular open-source scripting language for Web applications, and sells software and support services around the language.

The Flash Builder 4.5 for PHP gives developers a single code base for applications for Android, Blackberry Tablet OS and iOS while sharing code from Web applications. Adobe Flash Builder 4.5 for PHP includes an integrated copy of Zend Studio 8, which allows developers to develop Flash based applications within a single environment. Specifically, the integrated software offers a single UI framework to create Flex and PHP projects for desktop and mobile and the ability to connect to PHP services and generate ActionScript value objects.

The combination of the two frameworks in one suite is powerful, says Zend CEO Andi Gutmans. Adobe says that more than 131 million smartphones are expected to have Flash Player installed by the end of the year. And PHP is the leading language for public facing web applications, says Gutmans.

It’s good to see Zend back on the mend, after a rough patch a few years ago.

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HOW TO: Optimize Your LinkedIn Company Profile for Recruiting

This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.

LinkedIn offers companies the ability to provide more information about their organization via their company pages. On a company page, you can include information about your products and services along with information about job opportunities.


This is a relatively new feature, relaunched back in November 2010. Several Fortune 500 companies were part of the launch of this new feature including Dell, Eastman Kodak, JetBlue and Microsoft. But company pages are not exclusive to only large businesses — Harvard Business School, Rypple, Squarespace and other well-known, successful organizations have LinkedIn company pages.

Since one of the primary purposes of LinkedIn is career networking, it only seems logical to make sure your company profile is being leveraged as much for recruiting as it is for marketing. Here are five things to consider including in your LinkedIn company profile to attract candidates.

1. List Job Openings

This might sound very obvious but, as we all know, sometimes the obvious gets overlooked. Candidates expect job openings to be listed under the “Careers” tab on your LinkedIn company profile. Job openings should be current and link to information regarding how to apply. Here’s a great example from CVS Caremark Corporation.

As an example, if you select the first position, it takes you to a page with a job description, desired skills and company description. It also indicates how to apply, whether it’s via the company website or an introduction from a connection.

If the position selected doesn’t look like a good match, a candidate’s time has not been wasted — similar positions are listed at the bottom of the screen.

2. Employee Profiles Drive Information

 
Eve Mayer Orsburn, CEO of Social Media Delivered, an international social media optimization firm that offers consulting, training and marketing services, says “90% of information in a LinkedIn Company Page comes from employee personal profiles.” As such, it only benefits a company to make sure its employees know how to use LinkedIn properly.

One of the places that information is aggregated is in the statistics section located at the bottom of the “How you’re connected” box on the Overview page.

This section offers some very valuable information, as reported by employees. For example it includes annual company growth, years of company experience, as well as highest degree attained.

Orsburn adds, “If your company really wants to rule the LinkedIn universe and recruit top-notch talent, make sure ALL employees have completed and fully optimized personal profiles to improve content and effectiveness of the company page.”

3. Let Employees Tell Your Story

Candidates are interested in understanding what it would be like if they came to work for your company. LinkedIn company profiles offer an opportunity for candidates to connect with the organization.

Shannon Seery Gude, vice president of digital and social strategy for Bernard Hodes Group, says, “Nothing communicates the heart and soul of a company like real employees sharing their personal narratives of their work experience.” Bernard Hodes Group helps companies find, keep and engage the best possible talent via recruitment communications and support, hiring process assessments and staffing technology.

One way to provide personal narratives is via video, like the example above from Virginia Mason Medical Center.

Seery Gude also recommends that companies include a variety of diverse employee voices to reflect your organization. “Our social strategy team commonly sees companies that only include quotes from the recruiting team, or from a single business unit in the ‘What employees are saying…’ section.” You want to provide a bigger snapshot of your company’s employees.

4. Talk Corporate Culture

If you’re trying to leverage your LinkedIn company profile for recruiting, it’s important to have it reflect the strengths of your organization. This isn’t the place for marketing spin, and you should take the time to customize the different job opportunities available. Also be careful not to duplicate text, which could be perceived as not putting forth effort. An example would be not using the exact same copy in the “Overview” and the “Work at…” sections.

Shally Steckerl, executive vice president at Arbita, Inc., a global consulting firm connecting leading employers with the best talent on the Internet, says candidates want to connect with interesting people who are doing the work the candidates wants to do. “Candidates want to find exclusive insights about a company’s culture, environment and products on LinkedIn. If they want to see an advertisement (or a job posting), they can go to the company’s website.”

A LinkedIn company profile becomes a great way to showcase your culture and share company best practices, recent awards or news articles, along with partnerships the organization is proud of.

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