Startups

Some more consolidation afoot in the worlds of mobile marketing and mobile payments: Payvia, one of the many startups working in the area of carrier-based mobile billing, is buying Mogreet, a mobile marketing company that delivers campaigns via text, video and picture messaging services. Terms of the deal were not disclosed — although we have contacted the company to ask. Payvia says that the whole of the Mogreet team will be coming over, including Mogreet founder and CEO James Citron, who will become Payvia’s Chief Marketing Officer. The move is an interesting one, in that it signals payvia, to differentiate itself from the pack, wants to create applications itself that utilize its payment services. “Our mobile payments offer resonates strongly with the market because it is built on our proprietary carrier connected technology that gives us a unique ability to understand consumer mobile usage,” said Darcy Wedd, CEO, payvia, in a statement. “Our clients have told us they also need a simpler way to link targeted mobile transactions to their marketing campaigns. By integrating Mogreet’s solutions on our platform we answer that need. As the only company to solve a known disconnect between traditional mobile commerce and engagement solutions, payvia is well positioned to increase mobile’s share of the $252 billion* e-commerce market.” Payvia says that it has the largest direct carrier connected messaging and mobile payments platform in the U.S., covering 120 million unique mobile users and processing billions of mobile messages every year. The company says it has paid out to merchants and developers worldwide more than $2 billion in global mobile commerce revenues. (There are other carrier billing platforms that will claim they are bigger, but the qualification here seems to be around the messaging platform that Payvia does this through.) Last year, Payvia hit the news when it won a deal to power mobile/SMS-based donations for the Obama re-election campaign: a more classic example of how many mobile payments companies generate revenues, as the backend provider for services created by others, and also a sign of how Payvia was already formulating services that basically let users make transactions from within messages. What the Mogreet acquisition will give Payvia is the ability to apply this to a wider variety of messages, and also a client base. Current customers of Mogreet’s include Cox Media Group, Emmis Communications and Gamefly. The acquisition also signals a potentially new phase in the development of mobile marketing campaigns. While Mogreet’s services up to now have been more focused on encouraging people to click through to mobile web sites, or to enter short codes to receive further information, this potentially could mean that now marketers could create campaigns that encourage purchases from within the message. Payvia is backed by Silver Lake Sumeru, Montgomery & Co., and Trinity Ventures (amount undisclosed), while Mogreet has raised some $14 million from DJF Frontier, Black Diamond and others. More to come.

A new report commissioned by research giant GfK claims that the growth of the high density cluster of technology companies in East London (dubbed Tech City by the UK government) is being “stunted” by a talent shortage and lack of access to capital. The ‘Tech Futures Report’ – commissioned by publishing company TechCityInsider and sponsored by accountant Grant Thornton, recruitment firm Vitamin T, City University London and Digital Shoreditch is based on 141 interviews of ‘tech’ company senior management. In fact, only less than half of these admitted to developing technology products and platforms. It’s simply the latest in a long line of reports that conflate consultants and digital advertising agencies with technology companies, leading to yet more confusion about the state of the cluster. When quizzed by TechCrunch, the reports authors admitted that only 41% of those surveyed made apps, while 21% did social networking, 17% retailing/ecommerce, 12% publishing, 12% IT consulting and services, 8% data processing/management and 7% were in gaming – though it’s not clear whether than meant games or gambling. And of those 141, only 77% of respondents were CEO/Founders of the business they represented. As a result of this over-sight, an important opportunity has been missed to find out more of the needs of real high-growth technology companies in the cluster, rather than normal growth advertising agencies. But for what it’s worth we present the rest of the reports findings below. Make of them what you will. Among the reports key findings: • Nearly a half (44%) find a shortage of skilled workers is the biggest challenge they face • Over three quarters (77%) say a lack of skilled workers is restricting their growth • A third (33%) believe a lack of access to capital is hindering their business. • In terms of the businesses represented, 30% had an annual turnover of The report says the 141 executives surveyed had "mixed feelings" about the the effectiveness of government support, with some liking it, others not. Not eactly ground breaking news then. Clearly, despite the 'glass half empty' tone, the situtation is in flux. Ryan Garner, Research Director for GfK said: "Our research shows Tech City is at a tipping point, and hopefully this report will help it find its way in spearheading that economic growth." Indeed, the reports authors could equally have spun the situation as a 'tech hiring boom'. Unfortunately, the report struggles with some of the common terms of the technology world. The top skills most in demand are said to be "coders and developers" and something called "research and development" leading one to wonder if the reports authors could possibly be more vague. The others skills said to be in short supply (again, not news) are marketing and PR, business development, web design and user experience specialists. Someone is hiring. Hold the front page. The report claims that staff retention remains a challenge, though is not clear on whether that is because it's a booming startup market generating more spin-out startups, or if people are leaving for big corporate jobs. As for accessing capital, a third of those surveyed said their businesses are hindered by a lack of capital, whether sourced from investors or banks. Once again, because the report conflates technology businesses that might be fundraising with digital agencies that might just want a bank loan, the picture here is vague. Of course, it's common knowledge that most startups fail to raise external funding anyway. If there is a gem of new information here it's in the finding – which has been largely anecdotal till now – that there is a growing gap for businesses requiring investment of £500,000 to £2 million. The "Series A gap". However, the report mistakenly thinks that all startups which can't raise a Series A in London will skip of to bag "the Silicon

Back in the early days of AVC, I did a thing called VC Cliche Of The Week. There was an RSS feed of all of them powered by Delicious, but it is broken and most likely can't be fixed. You can find some of them on gawk.it. One of the cliches I posted about is "success has a thousand fathers." I thought I would re-run that post. Here it is. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ You can count on it - when a deal works out spectacularly everyone involved will take credit for it. This behavior is particularly annoying to the entrepreneurs who put the sweat, blood, and tears into the Company. They watch the VCs take credit for the big success and it grates on them. I have a couple rules that I try very hard to live by in this regard:1- the management team always gets the credit.  VCs don't do the dirty work and should not get the accolades when things work out.2 - don't gloat.  it's not becoming.  humility in times of great success is a very becoming characteristic. But it's really hard to follow these rules when things work out well.  Because success doesn't come that often, and when it does, it has a thousand fathers.

Here in this tutorial we will tell you how to enable hibernate in Ubuntu 12.10. Complete procedure is explained below: If you love Ubuntu as much as we do. You should be reading this article, we have stumbled upon a bunch of posts on various tech blogs, where folks are looking for some pointers to enable hibernate in Ubuntu 12.04 and 12.10. That triggered us to post the solution, so that you have the resource available handy. Firstly, enabling Hibernate in Ubuntu 12.04 and 12.10 is no rocket science. This article will help you enable Hibernate in Ubuntu 12.04 and 12.10. The solution can be accessed from the session menu itself without much hassle. The first step is you have to press  Ctrl+Alt+T  at the same time and  promote a terminal window, then you have to track the commands on your  terminal to build a hibernate policy file. After this is done then you have to write the following stuff  [Enable Hibernate] Identity=unix-user:* Action=org.freedesktop.upower.hibernate Result Active=yes Then copy and paste this code into the file and do not forget to save the file. After this step is done, you got to reboot your computer and then you can hibernate in Ubuntu session If you didn’t already know hibernation is disabled by default in Ubuntu, owing to a various reasons. There are persistent issues like No resume after suspending the PC, folder missing after opening a file, Shutdown instead of hibernation, Wi-Fi goofing up & devices not working after waking up, etc. This always happens because of lack of hardware support. Even in Ubuntu derivatives like Linux Mint it comes disabled by default. There are many advantages of Hibernation. You can save your power, plus the exact condition of the computer is resumed. There is also another method by which you can enable Hibernate in Ubuntu  in 12.10.The very first step that you have to do is see whether it works on your hardware. In this you have to open the terminal by pressing (CTRL + ALT + T). You have to initially save your work done and start further typing. Once this is done then you can start your laptop and go ahead if everything is in order. If you notice anything unusual then you have to see that the size of SWAP is at least as big as the RAM. Once you have gone executed the above step you can carry on using that command securely or make it stable by enabling it on the menu. We hope this resolves most of your queries around Ubuntu hibernation… Until next post, keep it techy folks!! The post How to enable hibernate in Ubuntu 12.10 appeared first on Startup news.

At a party the other day, I saw a dead TV monitor. On the screen it said something like, "No signal... check power, cable and source selection..." It doesn't matter at all how hard the DVD player was trying to put on a show. It is irrelevant how good the show on cable was. If it's not getting through, no one sees it. All of us own our own media companies now. We each have the ability to speak up, to tell our stories, and if we're good and if we're lucky, to be heard. Too often, though, there's no signal. You may be pumping noise through your social media outlets, but noise isn't signal. It's merely a distraction. You're talking, but you're not saying anything, at least nothing that's being heard. You get to choose your story. If the story you've chosen doesn't get through, it's up to you to fix that. Pick a story that reflects your work, sure, but also one that resonates with the receiver.

An insight into the state of Silicon Valley Fosun eyes $1bn PE fund Singapore’s MediaCorp invests $40m in online retailer Reebonz What Tumblr’s sale means for New York startups Who’s coming and going in tech and biotech Danone takes second chance with China Mengniu Click here to find out about a greener America littered with roadkill Find out more about the determinants of takeover defenses in IPO firms Photo courtesy of Shutterstock The post peHUB First Read appeared first on peHUB.

Amid grumblings of a “general fatigue” when it comes to software-based startups, a potentially transformative technology called 3D printing is poised to reach critical mass and mainstream awareness. Today’s news headlines about the technology tend to focus on the extreme possibilities in being able to print objects on demand – from the terrors of things like a homemade 3D-printed gun to heartwarming tales of printed robotic hands for children born without fingers. But the innovation is also powering a revolution of a different kind. An emerging class of creatives are using 3D printing techniques, not to either save or destroy the world and the people in it, but simply create a little beauty along the way. These creatives, makers of the new “handmade” goods, are selling their art in online storefronts like Etsy and Shapeways, as well as within brick-and-mortar stores, and even museums. They range from technically adept programmers who never dabbled in hands-on art involving paint or clay or other materials, to formally trained artists and even do-it-yourselfers who taught themselves 3D modeling by watching tutorials on YouTube. Regardless of how they got there, the end result is an output of affordably priced, print-on-demand goods that reflect their own unique vision and inspirations, whether that’s a new kind of jewelry that couldn’t exist before the capabilities introduced by 3D printing, one-of-a-kind items used to decorate your home, or objects which buyers help craft themselves, using simple online tools. Here are some of their stories. This is part one of an ongoing series which will showcase some of the art that’s being fueled by the increasingly accessible 3D printing technology, and the artists behind the work. ~~~ Part One: The Formally Trained Artist Summer Powell has always been an artist. She has both undergrad and graduate degrees in graphic design, and has worked on a number of products involving mixed media, vacuum forming, and lenticular technology, while exploring the intersection of art and technology in years past. Along with a collaborator, she once produced a clock which used high-resolution animations to tell the time, for example. Powell says she first heard about 3D printing around ten years ago, and had been watching the space ever since, waiting for it to become viable for use in her art. “I had industrial designer friends in New York, and I’d go see their prototyping 3D printing machines,” she says. “They were making prototypes of consumer electronics and some furniture.” But it wasn’t until a few years ago before Powell had the opportunity to begin playing around with 3D printing techniques herself. She decided to pay a visit to Silicon Valley-based TechShop, one of the earlier “maker spaces,” as these tool-filled workspaces are called. TechShop, which has since expanded to several cities in California, New York, D.C., and elsewhere, offers a wide range of professional equipment which members can train on and use for just about any kind of project. It was where Square co-founder Jim McKelvey once built the first three protoypes for the Square card reader, and where a datacenter technology startup called Clustered Systems designed a prototype of a fanless liquid-cooling system which outperformed IBM in a “chill-off” contest. But Powell didn’t want to build gadgets or technological components; she wanted to produce art. “I created a prototype of this idea I had – which I still want to produce – of salt and pepper shakers,” she says. The object is designed to look like a wall socket, if laid flat on a table. The actual shakers then extrude upward from that. “It’s sort of a funny, visual pun,” says Powell. Coming from a background in graphic design, Powell was used to doing a lot of what she describes as “virtual” work. But 3D pri

Presenting an eye-popping, fully interactive experience for youngsters and everyone in a magical and innovative app – also available in two quality book formats – Bubble Tubbie! Bubble Tubbie is a sensory romp through a child’s imagination bursting with award-winning contemporary artist Epiphany Schwarz’ original art, poetry and photography. Designed to nourish the minds, ignite the senses and engage the imaginations of children ages 1-6, it’s the first in the upcoming Bubble Tubbie series. The design of Bubble Tubbie is decidedly modern, bright and engaging with material which perfectly transitions from “read to me” to “learning to read” developmental stages. Sound effects, animation and narration by the author’s two young daughters make this app a must-have for preschoolers. “A sublime combination of artistic innovation, educational enhancement, and imaginative storytelling that both children and adults will love reading! This is the book that my son requests every night before bed!” – Tracey C., business owner and mother to two boys Bubble Tubbie is available in hardcover book with bath stickers, a translucent plastic bathtub book with LED light bubble ball, and a fun-filled, on-the-go app for iPad. Learn more about the full product line: bubbletubbie.com facebook.com/BubbleTubbie twitter.com/BubbleTubbie Photos: facebook.com/bubbletubbie/photos_stream Download App: bit.ly/BubbleTubbie Amazon: bit.ly/BubbleTubbieBook

SAN MATEO, Calif. — Biolite founders Alec Drummond and Jonathan Cedar were working at a design firm in New York when they had the idea to combine a thermoelectric generator with a wood-burning stove. The result: The CampStove, a portable, $130 stove that can boil a liter of water in about 4.5 minutes while recharging your iPhone — just by burning a handful of twigs. What’s more, its internal fan produces a very efficient reaction, so the fire is very hot and nearly smokeless. Source: Dylan Tweney/VentureBeatBioLite Campstoves turning sticks into electricity at Maker Faire Bay Area 2013. Photo: Dylan Tweney/VentureBeat “We started to do the CampStove because it was a really good exercise in understanding how the technology worked,” said Drummond. It also encouraged them to build the device as compactly as possible. But the company has bigger aims in mind than helping well-heeled backpackers go green. Its big project is the HomeStove, a larger stove meant for use in the developing world, and it is using sales of the CampStove to fuel (ha!) development and testing of the HomeStove. “The company follows a model that we call ‘parallel innovation,’ where we have one technology that has near-term application in an accessible market recreation and emergency preparedness, and take the revenue to incubate longer-term markets in emerging companies,” said Jonathan Cedar, the company’s CEO. It’s a model that, Cedar says, gives them the large-scale infrastructure and resources needed to bring their technology into the developing world effectively — something that nonprofits often lack. Open fires: More lethal than malaria According to BioLite, about half the human population — 3 billion people — cook their food over open fires, creating 1 billion metric tons of CO2 each year and killing 2 million people annually from smoke inhalation (twice as many as malaria). Of those 3 billion, about 1.3 billion lack access to electricity. The HomeStove gives these people a way to cook more cleanly and efficiently: It consumes about half as much fuel as an open fire and produces only 5 percent as much smoke. Plus, by producing electricity, it can recharge a cellphone and small LED lights, helping these people get access to the Internet, communicate with others, or help their children stay up a few more hours at night so they can study for school. Cedar says the company is currently market-testing the HomeStove in India and Ghana to find out what kind of prices and marketing are most effective. The goal is to make the HomeStove cost about the same as a feature phone in the local markets, or about $50; the fact that it can recharge those phones helps win the acceptance of men, even though it is a tool that will mostly be used by women for cooking. NIH and USAID projects are helping with the testing of the HomeStove. BioLite is venture funded: It took a $1.8 million Series A investment led by Clay Christenson’s Disruptive Innovation Fund in Boston in 2011, with additional investments from angels and from Toniic, a network of “impact investors” in the Bay Area. It is based in Brooklyn, NY, and currently employs about 21 people. Makers to world-changers BioLite’s founders have deep roots in the maker community, which is one reason the company was exhibiting at the Maker Faire here. “I think makers are really kind of our roots. Some of the first prototypes I built in TechShop here in Menlo Park,” Cedar said. He’d moved here temporarily from New York to learn about stove technology, for which U.C. Berkeley is apparently a real hotbed of innovation, and found that TechShop was a good place to work on his own stoves. “We like to see science and technology applied to real-world problems, and I think that’s a lot of what makers are all about,” said Cedar. “Also, from a customer standpoint, the intersection of technolo

3D printers haven’t quite made the leap to mainstream — they’re still a bit too finicky, unreliable, and expensive for most consumers — but they’re getting close. Next month, you’ll be able to buy a 3D Systems Cube printer at Staples for about $1,300. At least a dozen companies are offering consumer- and hobbyist-friendly 3D printers now. They range in price from about $800 to $3,000 or more. Some, like the earliest models, can only make small plastic objects no larger than a few inches on a side. The biggest can (or will soon be able to) print objects up to two feet on a side out of a variety of materials, including ABS plastic, PLA plastic, nylon, ceramics, Play-Doh, cupcake frosting, and even hot liquids. (The days when you can tell your replicator you’d like a cup of “Earl Grey, black” — well, that’s not quite here yet, but will be soon.) And if you’re not ready to make the leap to running your own 3D printer, you can work up 3D printing files on your computer (using software like Autodesk’s 123D app, an easy-to-use 3D design studio) and send them off to service providers like Shapeways. There are so many makers of 3D printers and 3D-printed gadgets that the organizers of Maker Faire gave them an entire section of the main expo hall. The gallery here is far from an exhaustive look at this budding field — but it should give you a sense of how many options there are for 3D printing enthusiasts today. Top photo: Makerbot Industries has done more than any other company to kick off the home 3D printing market. Its printers are looking more polished and professional than ever: Instead of the plywood look of the early models, this fourth-generation Makerbot has a black powder-coated steel chassis and decorative purple lighting on the inside that give it a futuristic look. The new MakerBot Replicator 2 can print objects in PLA plastic up to 11.2x6x6.1 inches with a resolution of 0.1mm. It costs $2,199. Filed under: Entrepreneur