Category: News

The Samsung Galaxy S 4 can now be pre-ordered from AT&T with a ship date set for April 30. That’s the good news. The bad news is that’s only available in certain areas. I tried a couple of major cities, but all I get is “The device you’ve selected is not available in your area.” Pricing for the 16GB is $199 for a two-year contract or $449 with a one-year contract. If you are brave and want to go no-contract, you can get it for $639. If you do pre-order, you can expect to see your shiny new white or black Galaxy S 4 by May 3rd. Let us know if it’s available in your area and where you live.

source: AT&T
via: Engadget

Come comment on this article: Samsung Galaxy S 4 shows up on AT&T website with April 30 ship date

Comedian and actor Patton Oswalt, a frequent Twitter user on a day-to-day basis, took to the medium following Monday’s tragedy in Boston to offer some brief thoughts, as many other celebrities and ordinary people did.

“Look for the helpers. You’ll always find people who are helping.” — Fred Rogers, on what to do when scary things are on the news #boston

— Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt) April 15, 2013

“…seconds after the explosions, you see hundreds of people running TOWARDS the carnage to help.Not away.” — Paul Kozlowski

— Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt) April 15, 2013

But Oswalt really opened up on Facebook, in a post that so far has over 250,000 likes and nearly 190,000 shares. Here’s what he said:

Boston. Fucking horrible.

I remember, when 9/11 went down, my reaction was, “Well, I’ve had it with humanity.”

But I was wrong. I don’t know what’s going to be revealed to be behind all of this mayhem. One human insect or a poisonous mass of broken sociopaths.

But here’s what I DO know. If it’s one person or a HUNDRED people, that number is not even a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the population on this planet. You watch the videos of the carnage and there are people running TOWARDS the destruction to help out. (Thanks FAKE Gallery founder and owner Paul Kozlowski for pointing this out to me). This is a giant planet and we’re lucky to live on it but there are prices and penalties incurred for the daily miracle of existence. One of them is, every once in awhile, the wiring of a tiny sliver of the species gets snarled and they’re pointed towards darkness.

But the vast majority stands against that darkness and, like white blood cells attacking a virus, they dilute and weaken and eventually wash away the evil doers and, more importantly, the damage they wreak. This is beyond religion or creed or nation. We would not be here if humanity were inherently evil. We’d have eaten ourselves alive long ago.

So when you spot violence, or bigotry, or intolerance or fear or just garden-variety misogyny, hatred or ignorance, just look it in the eye and think, “The good outnumber you, and we always will.”

Over 10,000 people have responded to Oswalt’s words in the comments of the post alone. The reactions have been overwhelmingly positive.

image: Patton Oswalt’s Facebook Page

It was revealed yesterday that the first round of Google Glass devices are finished. Google will start shipping to those who pre-ordered the device at Google I/O last year first, and those developers will presumably start building apps for the hardware immediately.

Google Developers was updated today with the Google Mirror API page. The page contains all the information you need to start building apps for Google Glass. The page also includes a number of videos to walk you through specific actions of the API:

Timeline Cards

Menu Items

Subscriptions

Contacts

If you need help getting started on Glass development, Google has released two starter projects in Java and Python that can be loaded into App Engine. From there, developers can use the starter project as a foundation for their own projects. If you need the API in other libraries, you can grab it in Java, Python, Go, PHP, .NET, Ruby and Dart from here.

Once developers have the tools they need, they will also need to follow the rules. In the Terms of Service, Google says quite plainly that Glass developers can not serve ads in their Glass apps, nor can they charge for them. Google also says that all Glass apps must be hosted on Google’s own distribution channel “unless otherwise approved in writing by Google.”

It seems that Google isn’t quite ready to monetize Glass, but it will probably allow developers to start selling apps later this year once the device goes into mass production. It would make little sense for the company not to. Either way, we’ve reached out to Google for comment and clarification and will update if we hear back.

EDIT: A Google spokesperson gave us the following comment:

“Developers are crucial to the future of Glass. The focus during the Explorer Program is on innovation and experimentation, but it’s too early to speculate how this will evolve.”

[h/t: Engadget]

Even after Facebook released a direct copycat of its service, Snapchat is continuing to grow at breakneck speed. Tuesday CEO and co-founder Evan Spiegel said Snapchat users are uploading 150 million images every day. That’s up from 20 million a day in October, and compared to Instagram’s 40 million a day.

The hallmark of Snapchat is, of course, the impermanence of its images: 10 seconds after an image is viewed by the recipient, it’s deleted from Snapchat’s servers, Spiegel said.

Facebook released Poke in December, a feature that mimics Snapchat’s disappearing images. It clearly didn’t have any kind of slowing effect on Snapchat becoming a major rival for image uploading. It was “the best Christmas present ever, I think,” Spiegel said Tuesday at the D: Dive into Mobile conference.

The uptake of Snapchat’s take-it-and-delete-it photo service has come in only about a year. Though the company existed before January 2012, the service didn’t really start to take off until then, Spiegel said. It was after the 2011 holiday season when “people bought a lof of iPhone 4s” with a front-facing camera, which he said is crucial to to the service.

The main demographic of the service is pretty much what you’d think: 13-year-olds to 25-year-olds, and not a lot of 30 to 40 year olds. The main thing most people are sending before they disappear? “Lotta selfies,” he said. And they’re not to random people, he said; they’re to people who are friends in real life. Most users are snapping with iOS devices, though Spiegel predicts Android growth will come. Eighty percent of users are in the U.S.

But the unifying characteristic of users is their belief in the importance of ephemerality in social media, something Spiegel shares: “I don’t use Facebook. I’m a big Snapchatter … I posted my first Tweet a couple days ago.” He said they’re not “totally ruling out” permanence, but it’s not something they’re focused on right now, he said. ”We’re not anti-permanence, but we believe ephemeral should be the default.”

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Are you snapping ephemeral photos with the Snapchat app? If not, you may be quickly becoming the minority.

Apparently, Snapchat is processing more photos daily than Instagram. And not just more – nearly four times as many.

The figure was announced today by Snapchat founder Evan Spiegel at the D: Dive Into Mobile conference put on by All Things D.

According to Spiegel, Snapchat is moving upwards of 150 million photos across the network every day. If you compare that to another popular photo-sharing service like Instagram, you find that Snapchat is moving a significantly more amount of total photos. Instagram currently boasts 40 million photos taken per day.

Of course, Instagram and Snapchat are very different services. Instagram is about long-lasting photos, ones that can be liked, commented upon, and browsed in a social networking frame. Snapchat, on the other hand, is a lot more focused on person-to-person communication.

If you’re unfamiliar with Snapchat, the premise is quite simple – but rather ingenious. Users can send short photos or videos to other users – self-deleting photos or videos being the most important aspect. Users can designate exactly how long they want the photo or video to stay viewable, after which time it will disappear. The app even notifies the sender if the recipient tried to make the communication more than ephemeral by taking a screenshot.

When it first launched, Snapchat defended itself against allegations that it was simply an app for sexting. On its face, it does appear like the perfect sort of app to send sexts without the fear of permanence. And believe me, I’m sure that there is plenty of that going on. But with 150 million photos taken daily, it’s clear that Snapchat is more a serious player and less of a niche sexting app.

Earlier this year, it became clear that Facebook saw Snapchat as a competitor when they released their “Poke” app. To say that the Poke app is heavily inspired by Snapchat is putting it the best way possible.

Oh, and speaking of Facebook, they say that they see “more than 300 million photos uploaded every day.” By that figure, Snapchat is seeing nearly half of what Facebook sees every day. Now that’s incredible.

Keeping a double life organized must be hard enough without the intrusion of social media. One man learned the hard way this week that Facebook only allows users to link their relationship status to one person at a time.

According to an Associated Press report, a corrections officer in Seattle was outed as a bigamist after one of his wives found him on Facebook. The man, Alan O’Neill, is now facing bigamy charges.

The court documents show that O’Neill married one woman in 2001. He then left his wife, changed his name, and remarried in 2009. O’Neill’s first wife found out about his second wife through a “People You May Know” suggestion on the Facebook sidebar. She and O’Neill, though separated, had not been divorced.

According to the AP, O’Neill has been placed on administrative leave and is awaiting a court hearing for bigamy charges later this month.

Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe, the 2008 fighting game released by NetherRealm and Midway, was a flawed experience that toned down Mortal Kombat’s gory nature and didn’t give enough room to the different heroes and villains of the DC Comics universe.

After producing the very successful Mortal Kombat reboot back in 2011, NetherRealm once again tried its… (read more)

It’s been so long in coming that many folks stopped waiting for it, but Microsoft’s Windows Azure Infrastructure as a Service — its long-promised response to Amazon Web Services — goes live for all customers on Tuesday.

While he did not characterize Azure IaaS as an “Amazon killer,” Azure GM Bill Hilf did say Microsoft will match AWS on price for any of its base-level infrastructure — storage, compute instances, etc. — continuing a price war that flared last November when AWS, Google and Microsoft traded price cuts on their respective cloud storage offerings.

And, Azure IaaS pricing will be uniform across all geographies and data centers. Microsoft runs 8 data centers worldwide, 4 in the U.S., 2 in Europe and 2 in Asia. This is a pointed response to AWS, which relies heavily on its aging-but-humongous U.S. East data center farm in Ashburn, Virg. Many AWS services debut there and prices for U.S. East services are often lower than the same services originating in other AWS regions. “Many customers architect their applications in really weird ways to take advantage of that pricing,” Hilf said. U.S east is also the epicenter for most of the AWS outages over the past year or so.

And before you write off Azure as too late to matter, consider this: For the many companies that run Windows applications and may want to move them betwixt and between a public cloud and their own Windows-centric server rooms, Azure may be a really smart choice. In the run up to this news Microsoft announced Active Directory for Azure  last week.

PaaS priority hurt Azure

Microsoft’s problem is that it zigged when it probably should have zagged 3 years ago when it rolled out Azure as a full Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS). It was a great idea in theory, but by then developers — especially those in startups — were already flocking to AWS and its easy-to-spin-up-and-pay-for infrastructure.

That interest started to spread to bigger, more established businesses or departments within enterprises where developers loved the idea of being able to quickly build their own sandbox on AWS without IT interference. Fair or not, the perception soon became that Azure was a development and deployment platform for old-world Windows and .Net applications. It was deep and rich, but it was attacking a moribund market.

Ironically, those old-school Windows shops could now be Azure’s saving grace. The majority of legacy enterprise applications run on Windows and many of those enterprises are evaluating cloud deployments, although not many of them are wild about moving enterprise applications to a public cloud. Hilf’s argument is that since Azure’s underpinnings mirror those of Windows Server 2012 shops, applications can run on premises or in the cloud and partially in either.

Google Compute Engine, aka the wild card cloud

For many developers, the great unknown here is what impact Google Compute Engine will have when it becomes widely available. I would bet that might happen at Google I/O  next month, but who knows, Google may want to counter program this Azure news. Plus the OpenStack Summit is this week with lots of news coming out of companies including Rackspace, IBM, HP and others —  which hope to combat with AWS with OpenStack-based public clouds.

But many think that Google, by virtue of its sheer scale, will be the cloud to watch vis-a-vis Amazon Web Services.

The other issue is whether Amazon, which is by all accounts the world’s largest public cloud provider, can maintain the advantages of being first to market with its gigantic cloud and whether it can attract enterprise accounts with higher-end services like RedShift data warehousing.

AWS has rolled out hundreds of services and features since launching in 2006 — Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos  put the count at 159 new features last year alone. That’s quite a head start and Amazon fans say it’s market position is unassailable.

But remember: People used to say the same about Microsoft.

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You are a star salesperson. And after years of exceptional performance, you’ve just become the sales leader. How can you translate star sales performance into star sales leadership?

If you are like many sales leaders I’ve worked with your first impulse will be to try to clone yourself — that is to inject some of your star power into as many sales calls as you can.

Soon (if you’re lucky) and rather a bit too late if you’re not, you’ll see this for the micromanagement it is (or at the least admit that you simply don’t have the time to go on every sales call yourself).

It’s time to set some rules of engagement — not for your team but for yourself.

Don’t go for the sake of going. One of my clients talks about the considerable cost of the “four- and six-legged sales calls” in which everybody and their brother and sister tags along, including you. But you should confine yourself to going on only those calls in which you are essential — where only you can gain access to the right people, owing to your position, your special industry expertise, your extensive product knowledge, or some useful connections. Sure, you probably could always make a difference on every call — you were not a star for nothing. But your job now is to open doors for, back up, and develop your future stars; not to outshine them (or do their work for them).

Don’t go it alone. And while we’re on that subject, an easy rule of thumb is this: Never get involved with a client unless you are accompanied by the salesperson. There are few things more de-credentialing, for both you and your sales team, than to do an end-run around your own staff (what, you don’t believe in them?) and step into an account without their involvement. At the very least, you’ll waste time having to relay all the relevant information from the meeting to the rep who should have been there to begin with. Worse, it starts a vicious, time-sucking cycle in which that initial direct connection leads to your presence on follow-up calls and your responding to minor customer issues that should be handled by the rep. The only possible exception here is in interim periods when you’re making a change in your representation, because then there’s no salesperson to undermine. Otherwise, as we are taught at the beach, use the buddy system.

Have an exit strategy. Who wouldn’t want to deal with the top guy? When clients have the opportunity to work with leaders from an organization, they understandably want to keep on working with them. This might be necessary in certain short-term instances (recovering from a service mishap, correcting a serious problem, launching a new initiative). But stay involved too long, and you just become a third wheel, doing the same job as your rep. To avoid that, you need to have an exit strategy at the outset. By all means, help with the problem at hand. But make sure the salesperson is the one actually making things happen for the client, so that when the crisis is over, the rep remains the main point of contact.

Do your homework. All that being said, I will admit that joint calls can be incredibly valuable for both client and sellers. But they require coordinated effort. Planning too often consists of “Where are we meeting and at what time?” But in addition, you should both be clear beforehand about who is going to cover what topics, what questions each one of you will ask the client, and what you are doing here — are you playing a coaching or selling role? This is critical because it’s almost impossible to sell and coach at the same time, since coaching requires observation and not participation. If you are going to be there in a selling role, you both need to be clear about who will be leading at any point on the call.

Don’t be a closer. I’m guessing that this will be the hardest rule to follow. What, after all, made you a star, if not your ability to close business? This is one of the most frequent mistakes I’ve seen sales leaders make — focusing too much time on closing opportunities. But by the end of the sales cycle, it’s getting too late for sales leaders make a profound difference in the outcome. At that point you should be putting your effort on the front end of the next sales cycle, focusing on expanding opportunities, helping clients to see additional needs, and offering solutions not previously considered.

These are tough criteria to be objective about because most sales leaders have been great salespeople and are still inexorably drawn to making as many sales calls as possible. The best leaders carefully consider these criteria for getting involved in sales cycles and, as a result, make the most significant impact when they do.

You’ve got work to do. And when you want to be productive, you shouldn’t be limited by restrictions such as time and place. Enter Cubby by LogMeIn — the easiest way to sync and share your stuff digitally.

Flexibility for your stuff
Most cloud solutions force you to conform to their storage rules. Not Cubby. You can sync your files and folders as you have them on your computer, so everything is stored where you like it. And DirectSync™ lets you sync unlimited files across your own computers without using precious cloud space. Want even more flexibility? You can share your files publicly but restrict others’ ability to edit, privately for easy collaboration with coworkers, or add password protection for extra security with Cubby Locks.

Freedom for you
Not only can you store your stuff your way, you can access it your way, too. Connect to your folders from anywhere with the mobile app or directly from Cubby.com, and manage everything from the desktop app. And unlimited versioning lets you download an older version of your files from the archives, just in case you want to refer back or decided you didn’t like an update.

Work your way with Cubby, and leave limitations behind.

Digital Realty is getting a boost from digital effects. RenderWurks, a provider of large-scale server farms that can be used for animation and computer generated visual effects, has signed a lease for Turn-Key Flex space and plans to deploy more than 10,000 servers at a Digital Realty data center in the Dallas market, the companies said Monday.

RenderWurks is a new company offering hosted digital effects, which says it can offer access to rendering farms at more affordable pricing than existing providers, most of whom are based in the Los Angeles area. RenderWurks, which is a sister company of dedicated hosting provider TruSurv, will have a Los Angeles office that offers remote access to the server farm in Dallas.

In June RenderWurks will commence go live in the Digital Realty campus in Richardson, Texas with 5,280 servers  in the Dallas facility, harnessing 42,200 CPU cores to bring more than 105 Terahertz of processing power to its clients. This project will make RenderWurks the largest continually available, publicly accessible dedicated render farm in the world, the company said. Primary and failover storage arrays totaling 420 usable terabytes in size will be located in the Dallas data center.

More than 10,000 Servers Soon

RenderWurks said it has signed two contracts that will fully utilize the new space through the remainder of 2013. The company plans to add bring online another 5,280 servers before the end of the year, and will also double the storage capacity.

“RenderWurks is a pioneer in the server/rendering farm industry and we are pleased to welcome it to our portfolio,” said Andrew Schaap, vice president of sales at Digital Realty. “Our flexible solutions will allow RenderWurks to provide its customers with a solution that is both scalable and cost effective. It is exciting for us to be part of the early-stage growth of such a dynamic firm and industry.”

“Digital Realty’s state-of-the-art data center will make it possible for us to accommodate the rendering needs of our customers across a range of verticals – animation, computer-generated visual effects, engineering and architecture,” said Jeremey Poe, Marketing Manager for RenderWurks and TruSurv. “The way business is done today, we have to provide a solution that is flexible and will allow our customers to grow or shrink their services as their processing and data storage needs change on a per project basis.”

In the wake of the terrible attacks at the Boston Marathon on Monday, Funny or Die has decided to delay the release of their Steve Jobs biopic, iSteve, for a couple of days.

The film, a rare foray into feature-length content from Funny or Die, was originally supposed to debut on Monday, April 15th. Funny or Die has decided to delay it until Wednesday, April 17th.

On their site, you can find this banner announcing the decision, along with a link to donate to the Red Cross:

So, while you wait you can check out these posters from the film, and watch this trailer.

And you can donate to the Red Cross.

With hectic schedules, it can be hard to keep track of everything in your news feed. That’s why we created the TalkAndroid Daily Dose. This is where we recap the day’s hottest stories so you can get yourself up to speed in quick fashion. Happy reading!!

Guides

How to securely lock your phone while using Facebook Home as your launcher

How to get your status bar back full time with Facebook Home

How to turn off Facebook Home and go back to your stock launcher

Reviews

Featured Android Game Review: Mr. Eyes [Sports & Puzzles]

Apps

New tools available in latest OfficeSuite 7 update

Google Glass

Google Glass Explorer units now ready to begin shipping

Google releases Mirror API to developers, complete with documentation and code examples

Google TV

ASUS Qube becomes the Cube and is now available for pre-order

Phones

HTC One Hitting T-Mobile April 24, Reveals Leaked Photo

Pink HTC Butterfly to grace Taiwan market

Pantech Vega Iron To Be Unveiled April 18, Takes On The Galaxy S 4

Samsung Galaxy S 4 Lands on Telus April 27th

Updates

Verizon’s Droid DNA gets updated to fix SIM card detection

Miscellaneous

J.P. Morgan upgrades HTC to “neutral”

DISH Network targets Sprint with competing $25.5B bid to trump SoftBank offer

 

 

 

 

Come comment on this article: TalkAndroid Daily Dose for April 15, 2013

Kevin McNamara has joined Health Evolution Partners as an operating partner. McNamara is a founding principal of McNamara Family Ventures, a family investment office providing venture and growth capital to health care companies.

PRESS RELEASE

Health Evolution Partners, a health care private equity firm, announced today that Kevin McNamara has become the firm’s newest Operating Partner. McNamara brings extensive experience in corporate operations, finance and investing with particular expertise in helping leading health services companies mature and grow.

“We are excited to add Kevin to our team of accomplished health care professionals,” said David J. Brailer, MD, PhD, Managing Partner and Chief Executive Officer of Health Evolution Partners. “As Chief Financial Officer of HealthSpring, Kevin helped shepherd the company’s incredibly successful IPO and we look forward to bringing his expertise to help guide our portfolio of growth companies.”

“While I have spent my career leading large corporate enterprises, my passion lies with fast growing companies,” said Kevin McNamara. “Health Evolution Partners allows me to combine my experience with my passion, and provide valuable contributions to some of the most innovative health care companies operating today.”

David Smith, General Partner for Health Evolution Partners’ Growth Buyout Fund said, “I’m delighted to welcome Kevin to our team and look forward to working closely with him in weeks to come. He brings a wealth of practical knowledge from a broad swath of organizations within the health care continuum. His experience guiding organizations as varied as HealthSpring, ProxyMed, Luminex and HCCA will be invaluable to our partners and portfolio.”

McNamara is a founding principal of McNamara Family Ventures, a family investment office providing venture and growth capital to health care companies, and currently serves on the boards of directors of Tyson Foods, a member of the S&P 500, and Luminex Corporation, a publicly-held life sciences company. He also serves on the board of directors of Leon Medical Centers, a privately-held health care services provider serving Medicare patients in the Miami-Dade region, and chairs the board of Agilum Healthcare Intelligence, an early stage health care IT enterprise offering business intelligence solutions to smaller hospitals and physician practices.

McNamara’s career includes leadership positions with managed care organization HealthSpring, Inc. (EVP and Chief Financial Officer), health transactions facilitators ProxyMed, Inc. (Non-Executive Chairman and Interim Chief Executive Officer) and Envoy (Chief Financial Officer and Director), clinical recruitment service provider and strategic planning firm HCCA International, Inc. (Chief Financial Officer), among others. He received a B.S. in accounting from Virginia Commonwealth University and an M.B.A. from the University of Richmond, VA, and is a Certified Public Accountant (inactive.)

With Health Evolution Partners, Kevin McNamara will serve as Operating Partner with the firm’s Growth Buyout Fund and join the boards of portfolio companies CenseoHealth and Optimal Radiology.

About Health Evolution Partners | www.healthevolutionpartners.com

Health Evolution Partners invests in rapidly growing companies in the health care industry. We target opportunities across the key sectors of the health care economy – hospitals, physicians, managed care, pharmaceutical developers, device makers and consumer products and services. Our investments are led by an exceptional team of health care investment professionals and seasoned operators. We believe that the firm’s extensive network of health care specialists, policymakers and thought leaders give our companies a significant competitive advantage. By partnering with talented management teams, we are able to create long-term value and in turn, drive attractive returns for our investors.

The post McNamara Joins Health Evolution Partners appeared first on peHUB.

Wayne Kawarabayashi has joined Union Square Advisors as a partner in the firm’s New York office. Kawarabayashi was most recently an MD of M&A at Barclays.

PRESS RELEASE

Union Square Advisors LLC, a leading technology-focused investment bank, announced today that Wayne Kawarabayashi has joined the firm as a Partner in its New York office. Mr. Kawarabayashi most recently served as Managing Director of M&A at Barclays. “We are very excited that Wayne is joining Union Square Advisors,” said Carter McClelland, Executive Chairman of the firm. “Wayne brings significant leadership and execution experience in technology M&A and a breadth of relationships with investors and corporations alike. Wayne will help Union Square to continue to drive its growth and leadership in our core technology investment banking business.”

“Union Square Advisors will be a unique opportunity for me to join a platform that provides a differentiated value proposition to its clients,” said Wayne. “I am impressed by Union Square Advisors’ team which brings deep industry insights, strong execution and remains focused on the most dynamic areas in technology. The firm has undeniable momentum right now and I am enthusiastic about its prospects going forward.”

The demand for Union Square Advisors’ M&A and capital-raising expertise has continued to accelerate and grow. Since 2009 the firm has announced 33 transactions for a total transaction value approaching $3.5 billion. Most recently, the firm served as an advisor to VMware in the creation of the Pivotal Initiative with EMC. Union Square Advisors actively works with leading technology companies on a wide range of M&A and financing transactions across the entire technology ecosystem – in the software, Internet/digital media, networking, storage, systems and semiconductor spaces; on both buy-side and sell-side transactions with public and private companies; on cross-border, competitive and other transactions with significant structural complexities; and across the investment spectrum working with venture capital, growth equity, public equity and private equity investors.

About Union Square Advisors

Union Square Advisors LLC is a leading investment banking advisory firm serving technology companies through its mergers & acquisitions, private capital financing and advisory services. Founded in 2007 by a group of the world’s premier technology banking professionals, the firm has offices in San Francisco and New York and works with leading public and private firms across the technology landscape – including software, Internet/digital media, networking, storage, systems and semiconductor companies, as well as with the strategic capital providers that invest in these sectors. For more information on Union Square Advisors, please visit www.usadvisors.com.

The post Kawarabayashi Joins Union Square Advisors appeared first on peHUB.

In its second acquisition since scoring a $31 million round from Steve Case’s Revolution Growth Fund, education technology company Echo360 has picked up New York-based startup ThinkBinder.

On Tuesday, the Dulles, Va.-based company, which makes software that helps colleges bring their classroom lectures online, said it plans to integrate ThinkBinder’s peer-to-peer communications tools with its service and transition the startup’s 4-person team into roles in product expansion.  The company declined to share financial terms for the deal.

“ThinkBinder’s social collaboration tools offered [us] an opportunity to compliment a modern student’s 24/7 digitally connected lifestyle,” said Echo360 CEO Fred Singer.  “By empowering students to engage, share and solve problems in an on-demand environment, we’re able to stretch learning beyond traditional classes and improve academic outcomes by encouraging peer to peer interaction at all hours.”

Since launching about a year ago, ThinkBinder has been in beta. But, during that time, co-founder Greg Golkin said it was able to attract tens of thousands of users with a simple web app that enables students to organize and conduct group work online. Students can sign up for free and then easily invite peers via email and Facebook to share a group calendar, exchange files and multi-media content, organize tasks and chat.

“We think of engagement outside the classroom as this next frontier in education. Historically, you interact with teachers and students in the classroom and then the day ends and you go off and do your own thing,” said Golkin, who will become Echo360’s head of platform innovation. “If you can keep the student thinking about content outside the course that has been shown to [improve] outcomes. We wanted to create a way for students to collaborate with each other and teachers out of the classroom.”

When Echo360 announced its investment from Revolution last year, the company said its goal was to expand from 5,000 classrooms to 30,000 by 2017. So far, it says it’s reached 6,000 classrooms in 30 countries. But as it competes with other higher ed-focused companies, including BlackBoard and Desire2Learn, which also offer colleges and universities tools for digitizing content and enabling online collaboration, Echo360 wants to ramp up its social product set.

In November, the company said it acquired Lecture Tools, a startup founded by a University of Michigan professor that solicits real-time feedback from students and increases in-classroom engagement.

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Booker, formerly GramercyOne, said it raised $27.5 million in Series B funding in a deal led by Bain Capital Ventures and joined by existing investors Revolution Ventures, Grotech Ventures, TDF Ventures, and Vital Financial. The company will use this money to scale its product and sales staffs.

PRESS RELEASE

BOOKER RAISES $27.5 MILLION LED BY BAIN CAPITAL VENTURES

Growth Funding to Help Accelerate the Enablement of SMBs and Multi-Location Enterprises With Leading Cloud-Based Service Management Platform

NEW YORK—April 16th, 2013—Booker (formerly GramercyOne), the leading service management platform (SMP) that helps small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and multi-location enterprises unify operations and automate marketing on a single cloud-based system, has secured $27.5 million in Series B financing led by Bain Capital Ventures. Booker’s Series A investors, Revolution Ventures, Grotech Ventures, TDF Ventures, and Vital Financial, also participated in the financing round. Booker will use this funding to aggressively scale its product and sales teams focused on developing and delivering enterprise-class technology to multiple vertical markets in an affordable and intuitive system.

“We give local service businesses the technology they need to succeed,” said Josh McCarter, CEO of Booker. “Our technology helps these businesses connect consumers with services as seamlessly as Amazon connects buyers to products. And this round of financing, along with adding Bain Capital Ventures to our team, will ensure we continue empowering our clients to grow in ways they never could before.”

Unlike the many disconnected point solutions on the market today, Booker’s unified platform is the system of record, providing all the tools necessary to run a successful service business, including: scheduling, point of sale, CRM, employee management, marketing and loyalty programs, and comprehensive reporting.  Over 60,000 service professionals use Booker’s products across multiple verticals, including: health, wellness, beauty, home improvement, and professional services.

“We’ve been closely tracking the adoption of SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) by SMBs.  Service businesses are the backbone of our economy, and Booker’s platform revolutionizes the way that these businesses operate on a daily basis by providing tools that directly grow revenues, increase productivity, better manage data, and lower costs,” said Deepak Sindwani, Partner at Bain Capital Ventures and the newest member of the Booker board of directors. “Booker’s impressive growth trajectory, team, and multi-vertical strategy were key drivers for our investment.”

Booker’s platform facilitates and captures the entire purchase cycle and customer history from promotion to sale. As a result, owners get detailed, unique insights into their businesses’ performance, which they leverage to make informed business decisions.  Booker also generates new customers by distributing real-time appointment availability online and automating specials at optimal price points, bringing yield management technology to SMBs.

Booker recently announced the launch of its mobile and tablet apps on Apple iOS and Android devices, empowering business owners and their staff to manage operations anytime, from anywhere.

Booker is coming off of an impressive 2012, achieving triple-digit revenue growth for the fourth consecutive year and doubling its annual transaction volume to nearly $1 billion.  The company has also expanded its team substantially, growing from 65 to 200 employees to support the growing demand for its SaaS product.

Solidifying its position as New York City’s breakout startup, Booker recently won the first annual Take the H.E.L.M. Competition in the “Expanding in Lower Manhattan” category. In addition to the recognition, the company also received a cash prize of $260,000, which Booker is giving back to its local community by providing a one-year license of its software (a $2,000 value) to over 100 beauty and wellness-related small businesses in Lower Manhattan.

Connect with Booker
Booker company video: booker.com/b
Booker blog: booker.com/company/blog
Company website: booker.com
Twitter: @getbooker
——————-
About Booker

Booker helps small and multi-location businesses run and grow successfully by replacing everything from manual methods to disconnected software with a unified web-based platform, accessible from any device. Booker also enables service businesses to sell their services online, through their website and a network of partner sites and apps, creating a seamless online booking experience for consumers. Booker processes over one million appointments each month across 73 countries in 11 languages. Headquartered in New York City, Booker’s customers include thousands of local service businesses as well as Fortune 500 companies. For more information, visit www.booker.com.

About Bain Capital Ventures

Bain Capital Ventures is the venture arm within Bain Capital, which has approximately $70 billion of assets under management worldwide. The firm’s history of investing in early stage companies dates back to 1984 with over 125 venture investments since inception. Bain Capital Ventures manages over $2 billion of assets, has over 70 active portfolio companies, and has offices in Boston, New York, and Palo Alto. The firm has helped steer many ideas to success by working in partnership with management teams, pairing talented and passionate entrepreneurs with industry experts, opening doors to customers, and collaborating on long-term strategies. For more information, please visit www.baincapitalventures.com.

The post Booker Raises $27.5M From Bain, Revolution, Grotech, Others appeared first on peHUB.

As a Consumer Reports subscriber, I received an email asking for my input on vehicles. Here’s what Consumer Reports asked and how this particular survey might come up short.

Can You Say “Complicated”?

Surveying people with accuracy is difficult. First of all, many questions are open to interpretation. Second, the method for collecting answers is often imperfect. Finally, not every survey response offers the same amount of diligence and effort.

NOTE: If you need proof that surveys are problematic, think about all those political survey results we hear…more than half the time, these scientific surveys are patently incorrect.

In my opinion, the biggest flaw in the survey I received from Consumer Reports is that it’s too damn complicated. Take a look at this survey page (click for a larger view):

Did you read each and every line of that survey? Me neither. Quite frankly, I can’t imagine that most people read this list carefully. Instead, they problem skim the headings like “steering/suspension,” and then click if/when they think they’ve had an applicable issue. I have three problems with this:

1) Some of the headings – like “Drive System” – are incredibly ambiguous. If I asked a random man or woman on the street about problems with their vehicle’s “drive system,” who knows what kind of response I might get. Granted, the survey offers some examples, but there are a few sub-headings here that just aren’t descriptive enough.

2) This detailed list requires the respondent to make some fairly nuanced distinctions. For example: Let’s say your vehicle had a manual transmission with a grinding noise caused by worn synchros. Which category would you mark this down under?

• Transmission and Clutch: Major?
• Transmission and Clutch: Minor?
• Noises and Leaks?
• Drive System?

If you review things carefully, you’d probably pick the second item on my list. OR, you might get annoyed, close the survey, and move on…which brings me to my third problem.

3) This survey requires a fair amount of effort on behalf of the respondent. Therefore, you’re more likely to get responses from people who are either really angry, really happy, and or really excited about contributing to Consumer Reports.

For all these reasons, I’d argue the results from the Consumer Reports surveys are anything but definitive.

Is the Consumer Reports Survey Worthless?

Of course not. Imperfect survey data is better than no survey data, and while the length, detail, and ambiguity of the survey undoubtedly leads to erroneous conclusions, the survey data is likely good enough to spot trends.

If (for example) very few Lexus owners report problems compared to BMW owners, it’s likely that Lexus is more reliable than BMW…especially if this trend holds for a period of years. Likewise, if a greater percentage of Chrysler owners report problems compared to the average, it’s likely that Chrysler products are below-average in terms of quality.

Yet it would be foolhardy to trust Consumer Reports data exclusively. In fact, the best approach would be to consult data from Consumer Reports alongside data from JD Power, reviews from trusted entities like Edmunds.com, and of course market data (resale value), which is arguably the economic expression of a vehicle’s quality and reliability relative to competing models. Looking at historical trends would also be wise, at least in the case of JD Power and Consumer Reports.

The point? Consumer Reports survey data is imperfect. Don’t buy a car just because Consumer Reports says so.

The post Consumer Reports Annual Car Survey – What It Looks Like appeared first on Tundra Headquarters Blog.

Tengram Capital Partners has collected $173 million for its first institutional fund. Fund I’s target was $150 million, according to a statement. Mt. Vernon Group and Triple A Partners were placement agents for the pool while White & Case was fund counsel. Founded in 2010, Westport, Conn.-based  Tengram targets middle market consumer and retail companies.

PRESS RELEASE

Tengram Capital
Partners LLC (“TCP” or “Tengram”), a private equity firm that invests
in leading middle-market consumer companies that own strong,
recognizable brands, has completed the fundraising of it first
institutional fund. The fund closed with $173 million of commitments,
exceeding its target fund size of $150 million.

TCP received commitments from a broad array of institutional and
individual investors, including endowments, pension plans, alternative
asset managers, and large family offices. Matthew Eby, Co- Founder and
Managing Partner, commented, “The team at Tengram is thrilled to have
the trust and support of a strong group of long-term investors. We
value their partnership and look forward to working on their behalf.”

Tengram was founded in 2010 by William Sweedler and Matthew Eby.
Richard Gersten joined as a Partner in 2011. Together, they have spent
almost 50 years operating and investing in branded consumer businesses.
TCP’s brand-focused strategy has led to current fund investments in
Robert Graham, Sequential Brands Group, NEST Fragrances, and Laura
Geller Beauty. William Sweedler, Co-Founder and Managing Partner, said,
“Rich, Matt and I have unique, complementary backgrounds that together
bring a collective expertise that differentiates our partnership from
many consumer investors. Tengram’s core philosophy is that brands are
the most vital and valuable part of the consumer experience. The
partners, along with our consumer focused investment team, will
continue to attract unique and proprietary investment opportunities in
our areas of expertise, including apparel, home, sporting goods,
retail, health and beauty, and food and beverage.”

Tengram partners with exceptional entrepreneurs and operators,
providing the strategic guidance and resources required to effectively
activate and grow their brands. As Richard Gersten, Partner, explained,
“We work closely with our management teams and strive to create strong
partnerships founded on a basis of trust. Our partnership approach
resonates with many founder and family-led businesses that are seeking
the operating expertise and intellectual capital to help grow their
businesses.”

Tengram used Mt. Vernon Group and Triple A Partners as placement agents
and White & Case as fund counsel.

ABOUT TENGRAM CAPITAL PARTNERS:

Tengram Capital Partners, LLC is a private equity firm that focuses
exclusively on leading middle-market consumer and retail companies that
own strong recognizable brands. The team has a diverse background of
consumer investing and operating expertise that assists and guides
company management to unlock the true potential of their brand. Tengram
invests in both traditional “growth” and “restructuring/turnaround”
situations in either the public or private sectors. Previous and
current investments for Tengram and its predecessor investment entity,
Windsong Brands, LLC, include Laura Geller Beauty, NEST Fragrances,
Sequential Brands Group, Robert Graham, Joe Boxer, Joe’s Jeans, Field &
Stream, Design Within Reach, and Cloudveil. Tengram’s website is
(www.tengramcapital.com ).

The post Tengram Capital Collects $173 Mln for Fund I appeared first on peHUB.

Microsoft has updated Skype for Windows Phone 8, dropping the preview label associated with the app. Among the most noteworthy improvements, the stable version of the popular voice, video and text chatting application brings a change in message notifications and a number of bug fixes meant to improve the stability and overall functionality.

Skype for Windows Phone 8, which is now at version 2.5, introduces a new default setting for message notifications. After Microsoft announced that Messenger will be dropped and replaced with Skype, message notifications for Messenger friends are now enabled straight off the bat, likely to ensure a smooth transition to the new service.

The latest version of Skype for Windows Phone 8 also fixes a number of bugs related to calling, notifications, stability and video chatting. The app now enables the video call button right after accepting a contact request and message notifications should display contact names correctly at all times.

Skype is also stable upon starting and signing in using a Microsoft account and received video calls and local video previews are displayed correctly.

There is also a known issue related to the HTC Windows Phone 8X. The microphone is muted during voice calls for users who have yet to update their smartphone to the latest available software.

Skype 2.5 is available to download from the Windows Phone Store.