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Credit Karma has raised $30 million in Series B financing. Ribbit Capital and Susquehanna Growth Equity led the investment, with participation from existing investor Felicis Ventures. The financing brings the total amount raised by Credit Karma to $33.5 million.

PRESS RELEASE
Credit Karma, the consumer’s financial advocate, today announced it has raised $30 million in Series B financing. Ribbit Capital, a venture capital firm focused on the financial services industry, and Susquehanna Growth Equity, a private equity affiliate of Susquehanna International Group, LLP, led the investment, with participation from existing investor Felicis Ventures.
The financing brings the total amount raised by Credit Karma to $33.5 million. Since its Series A announcement in 2009, the company has increased revenue by more than 4,000 percent and registered an additional 10 million members, who turn to Credit Karma for free online tools that help them take charge of their financial health. Credit Karma is also available on the Android and iOS platforms.
Credit Karma intends to use the capital to accelerate its product roadmap, including expansion into new verticals and markets. The funds will also enable the company to increase headcount, expand its infrastructure and resources, and continue to innovate through the development of new products and services.
“The new funding will help us continue to improve our products and find innovative ways to serve consumers,” said Ken Lin, CEO and founder of Credit Karma. “We are thrilled to welcome Ribbit Capital and Susquehanna Growth Equity as investment partners and look forward to leveraging their deep industry knowledge and expertise to take Credit Karma’s growth to the next level. Importantly, all of our investment partners share our vision to become a household name for consumer advocacy and empowerment.”
“Credit Karma has revolutionized the relationship consumers have with their credit, as evidenced by the company’s exponential growth over the past several years,” said Micky Malka, founder and General Partner of Ribbit Capital. “Credit Karma is truly a trusted consumer brand — a key element of success in personal financial
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services — and we look forward to working with the team to continue to build out the platform and capitalize on the broader opportunities in this space.”
Ribbit Capital targets disruptive, early-stage companies that leverage technology to reimagine and reinvent what financial services can be for businesses and individuals.
“Whether a mortgage, credit card, auto loan, student loan or other financial product, the process of accessing credit is cumbersome, costly and confusing,” said Scott Feldman, Susquehanna Growth Equity director. “We spent the last seven years looking for a disruptive player in personal financial management and credit analytics that set out to bring transparency to the market, and we finally found Credit Karma. No other company offers consumers access to their personal financial condition data and assistance in finding the right credit products, at the right time and at the right cost. All of this for free! It’s a game changing business model that we think could redefine how consumers and financial institutions interact in the future.”
With this investment, both Malka and Feldman will join Credit Karma’s Board of Directors.
About Credit Karma
Credit Karma provides more than 11 million members free financial peace of mind by tracking their credit and finances all in one place. Founded in 2008, Credit Karma’s goal is to help its members make the most of their credit by offering insightful saving recommendations based on unique data comparisons. It also provides financial education and access to free tools, such as the free Credit Report Card and credit card statistics, which empower consumers to take charge of their financial health. To learn more, visit creditkarma.com.
About Ribbit Capital
Ribbit Capital is a venture capital firm that invests globally in unique individuals and brands who are aiming to disrupt financial services. Headquartered in Palo Alto, Ribbit believes the category is profoundly under- innovated and is looking to support entrepreneurs who have already launched the businesses of the future. For more information, please visit http://ribbitcap.com/.
About Susquehanna Growth Equity
Susquehanna Growth Equity, LLC (SGE) is a private equity group investing in growth capital and buyout opportunities in software, information services, internet and payments. SGE’s team of dedicated investment professionals brings a unique set of experience combining venture investing with operational expertise. SGE is

an affiliate of Susquehanna International Group, LLP (SIG), a leading technology empowered financial trading firm specializing in making markets and providing liquidity. For additional information, please visit www.sgep.com.
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The post Credit Karma Seals $30M appeared first on peHUB.

Late last week, HERE Drive Beta disappeared from Nokia’s exclusive app collection for Lumia smartphones, leaving many users stranded in the process. The issue affected new devices, as well as older phones which had been factory reset, with the Store returning a 805a0194 error when users tried to update from Nokia Drive or install HERE Drive Beta.

But lo and behold, Nokia’s navigation app for Windows Phone is available to download and install from the Store once more. Users will get an updated counter in the app store tile informing them of an upgrade to HERE Drive Beta from Nokia Drive, a service which comes preinstalled on compatible Lumia devices.

Impatient users who have yet to be informed of the update can head over to the Store, tap on Nokia Collection, scroll down to HERE Drive Beta and select the app. From there on just press the “Update” button to take advantage of the new navigation software. Or simply open this link for HERE Drive Beta on Lumia smartphones.

Via Twitter, Nokia Care has said the following regarding the app’s availability: “Good to hear that you can see Drive+ Beta from Store, unfortunately we don’t have the info why it happened”.

I have reached out to Microsoft and Nokia for an official statement as to what was causing the HERE Drive Beta mishap. Neither company has responded at the time of writing this article.

Mozilla has released Firefox 20 FINAL for Windows, Mac and Linux, and version 20 promises to be something of a landmark new release with a number of notable new features migrating across from the beta version.

The headline new feature has to be the long-awaited panel-based download manager, but Firefox 20 also debuts per-window Private Browsing, plus new developer features including an option to view Developer tools in a separate window to Firefox itself.

The new download manager is represented by a dedicated down arrow button that appears to the right of the Search bar. Clicking this or initiating a new download reveals the new panel-based manager, listing all current downloads with progress bars for those not yet complete. Right-clicking reveals additional options: pause/resume, cancel, go to download page and open downloads folder.

Clicking Show All Downloads opens the new Downloads Manager, which is integrated in the Library window alongside History, Tags and Bookmarks. The same options are displayed here as in the pop-up window, allowing users to manage downloads in the same way.

Also new in Firefox 20 is the ability to open individual windows in Private Browsing mode via the New Private Window option on the Firefox or File menu. This allows users to mix and match public and private browsing in the same session; a first for Firefox.

Another notable new feature allows Firefox to close hanging plugins without crashing the whole browser. Should a plugin hang, Firefox will wait 11 seconds by default before displaying a dialog box allowing the user to exit the plugin, allowing Firefox to function normally again.

Mozilla has also implemented the getUserMedia HTML5 control, which allows websites — with user permission — to access their camera and microphone. To see the new functionality in action, check out ShinyDemos.com’s Photo Booth.

Developer updates
Developers also enjoy a number of major new features in Firefox 20: the Developer menu has been reorganized to group the burgeoning number of developer tools more logically, with a Toggle Tools option added for quick access to the new, redesigned toolbar.

Clicking this reveals the Web Console, the new default view for developers. Firefox 20 adds a new Window button that allows the tool to be viewed in its own separate window, freeing up screen real-estate for the current web page and supporting multiple displays, allowing developers to pin them to a second monitor for convenience.

The only disappointment for developers in Firefox 20 is that the new Javascript Profiler tool for tracking the responsiveness of Javascript code is missing, stuck in beta.

Other changes include the usual evolutionary performance improvements around common browser tasks — including page loading, downloads, and shutdown of the browser, improved HTML5 support, and the usual round of minor bug fixes and security tweaks.

Firefox 20 FINAL is available now as a free, open-source download for Windows, Mac and Linux. Expect the Beta and Aurora channels to be updated in the next few days.

In a departure from the standard cloud company playbook,  Nebula likes to tout a hardware component of its newly available Nebula One cloud solution. That core component — the Nebula Cloud Controller — plugs into existing standard servers and can connect to existing services, speeding deployment and lets Nebula position itself as a plug-and-play cloud provider. 

“We’re a computer systems company,” CEO and founder and OpenStack pioneer Chris Kemp told me recently. “We provide enterprises with a system that includes the standard servers they’re used to buying. They plug it in and can be up in running fast.” The controller yokes together “certified standard” servers from Dell, HP and IBM and ZT into a scalable cloud system, he said.

“To add capacity you just add a rack or two of servers,”Kemp said. The controller handles provisioning of the workload . That plug-in scenario could be attractive to many companies that want to implement cloud with minimal muss and fuss.

PARC has beta tested the Nebula One system for months (running with ZT servers). The research facility is predisposed to OpenStack because it prefers open source technologies and it went with Nebula because it wanted to minimize time and energy spent on set up. “We don’t want to do too much of the plumbing [work.] All that racking and stacking takes a lot of time. We want to push one button and deploy on demand,” said Surendra Reddy, CTO for cloud and big data futures at PARC.

How many OpenStack choices do we really need?

At this point — we’re in year four of the OpenStack journey — the various OpenStack providers — Rackspace, Internap, HP, Cloudscaling, IBM, Red Hat and others need to differentiate themselves both from each other and from other cloud provider using other technology. Even the most hard-core cloud booster will admit privately that there’s no need for dozens of slightly different OpenStack flavors in this market and some say consolidation is inevitable — the only question is when.

Nebula One’s ability to plug into existing systems and services adds a comfort factor for many IT buyers that other OpenStack releases lack.

“If you bring software into an enterprise, you end up in a conversation with the server people who want to know what the management system is, then you have to deal with the storage people and then the virtualization people who all hate each other,” he said. But, if you can bring in an appliance that plugs into existing systems, you can minimize the dissonance and blowback from those constituencies. And that could prove valuable.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Cloud computing 2013: how to navigate without a map
• Infrastructure Q3: OpenStack and flash step into the spotlight
• The fourth quarter of 2012 in cloud

The growing resistance to the world’s supply of antibiotics is becoming a “catastrophic threat” that will manifest itself over the next 20 years, according to a new report from the British government. Dame Sally Davies, Britain’s Chief Medical Officer, called for…

The defense of the Bill of Rights will not be achieved by lying down and remaining passive. Freedom-hating gun grabbers have conspired in Connecticut to criminalize millions of law-abiding gun owners unless they submit to being fingerprinted and tracked in a government…

The following is a republishing of an important article written by Dan Roberts from AmmoLand.com. It reveals the real truth about mass shootings that bureaucrats and lawmakers are choosing to sweep under the rug: psychiatric drugs. If you want to know the real reason…

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!!

Reviews

DivX Stash [Media & Video]

April Fools

The complete listing of Google’s April Fools Jokes for 2013

SwiftKey launches SwiftKey Tilt keyboard, just in time for April Fools

Apps

Feedly Rolls Out New Mobile App, Adds Over 3 Million New Users

TuneIn Radio update brings new intuitive design to discover new music

Google Glass

Rent Google Glass starting April 30th?

Phones

Facebook’s new “home on Android” will actually be a forked OS called Facebook Home

RadioShack gets HTC One signs a bit early, shows Google Play credit offer

HTC officially unveils its Desire P smartphone

HTC One preorders to begin on AT&T this week, $249 for 32 GB variant

T-Mobile Offers Official HTC One Car Kit with Online Orders

LG Lucid 2 headed to Verizon on April 4th

Samsung Galaxy S 4 gets rooted… well the Exynos 5 Octa version at least

More details about Samsung’s Galaxy S 4 mini surfaces including a possible release this week

One Sony Line Will Start With 20 Megapixel Cyber-shot Camera

5000mAh battery could be coming to Chinese smartphone

Tablets

Amazon’s Kindle Fire HD 8.9 coming to AT&T’s 4G network on April 5th

Miscellaneous

Android takes early lead in 2013 for U.S. smartphone sales

 

 

 

 

Come comment on this article: TalkAndroid Daily Dose for April 1, 2013

Attune Consulting said it raised $20 million from South Asian apparel maker MAS Holdings. As part of the investment, attune will merge with software developer Sabre Technologies. Attune helps implement SAP’s Apparel and Footwear Solution to the fashion industry.

PRESS RELEASE

attune Consulting Announces $20 Million Investment From MAS Holdings to Build World-Class Business and Technology Solutions Company Focused Exclusively on the Fashion and Lifestyle Industries

Investment Includes Merger with IT Services Provider Sabre Technologies to Deliver Innovations in Cloud, Mobile and Other Web-based Technologies

BURLINGTON, Mass. – April 2, 2013 – attune Consulting, a premier global solutions provider to the fashion and lifestyle industries, today announced that MAS Holdings, the leading South Asian manufacturer of fine apparel, and supplier of the world’s leading brands of intimates, activewear and leisure wear, has chosen to invest $20 million to fuel attune’s development as the world’s leading IT business and technology solutions company focused exclusively on the fashion and lifestyle industries.  As part of this investment, attune will merge with Sabre Technologies, a software services provider specializing in cloud, mobile and other Web-based technologies, giving the combined company an unparalleled set of skills and services with which to serve its clients.

“The time is right to create a world-class IT solutions company dedicated to serving the needs of fashion and lifestyle,” said Mahesh Amalean, chairman of MAS. “Today’s leading brands face a highly competitive global market along with a growing reliance on emerging digital technologies to drive operational efficiencies and engage with consumers, partners and other stakeholders across the value chain. attune is in an ideal position to capitalize on this opportunity by delivering a full array of solutions and services to meet the needs of customers – from product design straight through to retail store shelves.”

attune was founded in 2006 and has historically focused on implementing SAP’s Apparel and Footwear Solution (AFS) for many of the world’s most recognized brands. Spanning five continents and 16 countries, the company has developed a unique expertise in SAP AFS and Retail best practices that allows it to reduce project costs, resource requirements and timelines.

Sabre was founded in 2001 as a solutions company specializing in cloud and mobile technologies, with particular expertise in .NET and Java development frameworks. The company has a long track record of helping companies in the fashion and lifestyle industries capitalize on business opportunities through the application of technology, including custom application development.

With this new round of investment, attune will aggressively expand its technology and service offerings across all areas of the fashion and lifestyle value chain, developing solutions that offer clients a strong competitive advantage, and that integrate and transform their activities across people, processes and technology

“Our exclusive focus on the fashion and lifestyle industries, coupled with our global organization of full-time, highly experienced consultants, has enabled attune to build a reputation that is second to none,” said Vajira De Silva, CEO of attune. “With this investment from MAS, we can now accelerate the development of additional services to help our clients address all of their technology challenges, across the entire value chain.”

About attune
A premier global solution provider to the fashion industry, attune empowers companies at all stages of the fashion value chain to maximize revenue, ROI and supply chain visibility. Established in 2006 as an SAP solution provider – for manufacturers, brand owners and retailers – its mission is to partner with the world’s great fashion and lifestyle companies to develop customized, innovative solutions that will transform their business success. attune’s comprehensive offering of end-to-end ERP solutions, combined with full lifecycle services, include preconfigured solutions for accelerated SAP Apparel & Footwear (SAP AFS) and Retail implementations. For more information about attune, please visithttp://www.attuneconsulting.com.

About Sabre Technologies
Founded in 2001 and backed by MAS Holdings, one of Sri Lanka’s largest and most successful companies, Sabre Technologies specializes in developing Web, cloud and mobility solutions for companies looking to use technology to increase their competitive position and differentiation in the marketplace.

About MAS Holdings
Founded in 1986, MAS Holdings provides innovative design-to-delivery solutions in intimate apparel and sportswear through its MAS Intimates and MAS Active divisions. The Sri Lankan company currently comprises a portfolio of 38 world-class apparel facilities spread over ten countries, providing employment to more than 58,000 people.

The post Attune Raises $20M From MAS, Merges With Sabre appeared first on peHUB.

Most network administrators at enterprises in North America are talking about software-defined networking. Most think they have a pretty good handle on it. But not every one of them knows what SDN actually is, even though the term has been thrown around for three years or more. Far from it.

Most network admins know what they want to do with SDN, which virtualizes physical networking gear so administrators can tweak their networks without unplugging boxes and moving cables. Admins want to deploy applications and services more quickly. Many also want to use it to cut down on mistakes and get new customers running as soon as possible. But problems loom. Admins expect SDN to cost a lot of money and possibly lead to security concerns. And they don’t think their colleagues know about SDN in the first place.

Such are the contradictions that resulted from a February and March survey of 237 enterprise network decision makers, sponsored by the Swedish SDN company Tail-f Systems. The results point to the lack of real knowledge about what SDN is and how to implement it. There’s still no shortage of hype, though, and with vendors using different definitions and trying to drive their own standards, it’s hard for everyone to agree on common terms.

So far, 65 percent of survey respondents said their companies are in SDN trials, have implemented SDN or are implementing it now. That number will keep going up. A February GigaOM Research report (subscription required) forecasted the global SDN market will swell from $320 million in 2014 to $2.45 billion in 2018. But how soon the hype will go away and genuine understanding will replace it is anyone’s guess.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Cloud and data third-quarter 2012
• The promise of software-defined networking
• Takeaways from the second quarter in cloud and data

In 2010, the founders of Midokura set out to become the top provider of public Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) clouds in Japan, but they realized networking challenges stood in the way. So they decided to focus on networking, and in the meantime the software-defined networking (SDN) space got hot. Now Midokura is trying to rack up more large-scale customers, particularly existing IaaS clouds, to validate its software’s capabilities.

Toward that end, the company has secured $17.3 million in Series A funding, bringing the total the company has raised to $18.6 million. The Innovation Network Corporation of Japan led the round, which also included participation from NEC Capital Solutions and NTT Docomo Innovations Ventures.

Midokura’s software virtualizes the network to let OpenStack cloud-management software rapidly create virtual networks and manage virtual routing and switching. Unlike some SDN startups, Midokura’s software does not use the OpenFlow networking protocol. Midokura executives see Nicira as a major competitor, and to a lesser extent Big Switch, even though those companies incorporate OpenFlow in varying degrees. Since releasing a beta version of its overlay in October, the company has found a customer in one large unnamed technology company in the United States, said Midokura’s chief strategy officer, Ben Cherian.

Midokura executives are changing roles. Dan Mihai Dumitriu, chief technology officer and a co-founder, is becoming CEO, while the CEO until this point, co-founder Tatsuya Kato, is becoming board chairman.

Midokura has managed to develop a product and take on venture funding after realizing its IaaS dreams weren’t going to pan out — not immediately, anyway — and changing course. Now, with Microsoft, Rackspace and especially Amazon becoming larger IaaS providers, the move looks like a good one. If Midokura can sign up a few IaaS customers, it could capture a foothold in the SDN market, which does not yet have clear leaders.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Cloud and data third-quarter 2012
• The promise of software-defined networking
• Takeaways from the second quarter in cloud and data

T-Mobile recently updated their sign-up page for the HTC One. They have announced a special offer for online orders of the HTC One, a free official Car Kit.  The offer comes as an addition to their “$100 Prepaid Visa Card or the trade-in value of your old handset – whichever’s greater” offer announced the beginning of February.

T-Mobile has gone to great lengths to ensure they maximize the number of qualified buyers, which is great for those of you out their waiting in the wings for the official release. To qualify, buyers need only pre-register for information on the site by Apr 04, purchase the One by Apr 26 (which supports a possible early April pre-sale launch date), and trade-in their current, working smartphone by May 31.

The offer, coupled with the “$99 down payment” plan also announced for the One, will definitely make current customers happy, entice new customers, and draw in those of you out there who are currently undecided on whether or not to stick with your current carrier. I have to admit, these deals, along with T-Mobile’s latest “UNcarrier” plans, have made me think a lot about my current carrier decision.

Though an exact launch date has not officially been announced by T-Mobile, buyers can more than likely expect to see the handsets available for pre-order sometime around the beginning of this month. If you happen to be one of the “undecided”, you should probably head over to the source and pre-register for info now to ensure you qualify for this incredible deal…in case you do decide to jump ship.

Source: T-Mobile

Come comment on this article: T-Mobile Offers Official HTC One Car Kit with Online Orders

TuneIn Radio, a popular radio and music streaming app, has been updated to make discovering new music easier. Called “TuneIn Live”, the update presents consumers with a new tab on the homepage of the app. Upon tapping the live tab,  album art in the form of tiles appears that represents the music playing on each respective station. By default, the live feeds will display stations from the country, hip hop, jazz, news, rock and sport genres, but allows for user customization beyond these. This UI leaves behind confusion and brings forth an intuitive new design that allows users a better experience of discovering new music. The update comes for both the free and pro versions of TuneIn Radio and is available after the break.

Play Store Download Link – Free

Play Store Download Link – Pro

Come comment on this article: TuneIn Radio update brings new intuitive design to discover new music

It has been over year since HTC (2498) has released a tablet, however a new report suggests the struggling company is preparing to take on the iPad once more. According to NPD DisplaySearch, HTC will reportedly debut a new tablet later this year, FocusTaiwan reported. The slate is expected to be equipped with a 10.1-inch full HD 1080p display and run Microsoft’s (MSFT) Windows 8 operating system. The research firm believes mass production began in the first quarter of this year and the tablet could be announced in the coming months. HTC previously released the 7-inch HTC Flyer in February 2011 and the 10.1-inch HTC Jetstream tablet in September 2011, both of which ran the Android operating system. The company has not unveiled a new tablet since then, however.

As the curtain starts to drop on April Fool’s Day 2013, we have witnessed all sorts of pranks from Google Blue to treasure maps to the shutting down of YouTube. However, most of these are far too easy to immediately identify as an April Fool’s joke. Fortunately, online camera rental site BorrowLenses.com has come to the rescue with an item on their site that makes you pause and consider whether it is real or not. BorrowLenses has a listing for the rental of Google Glass devices which they indicate are expected to be available on April 30th.

It would make sense for BorrowLenses to make Google Glass devices available for videographers. Their catalog includes other point-of-view and wearable devices, so why not Google Glass. However, the listing includes several hardware details that have not been previously disclosed. If BorrowLenses actually got their hands on some of the devices, releasing this information seems like it might get them in some hot water with Google.

What do you think – April Fool’s joke or real item listing? If you don’t think it is real, do you wish it were true?

source: BorrowLenses
via: Phandroid

Come comment on this article: Rent Google Glass starting April 30th?

Data loss can take many forms, but one of the most devastating is through physical drive failure. There’s no knowing how long your hard drives will last — one drive might last well beyond its projected five-year lifespan while another identical model fails within six months. But it’s not just bad luck that can shorten a drive’s life — it’s the physical environment it operates in (hotter hard drives die sooner) and how well it’s maintained (a fragmented hard disk works a lot harder, and the physical stress again shortens its life).

Windows can provide some built-in tools for monitoring hard drives, but you’ll need a good third-party program to check on its physical status. The good news is, keeping an eye on your hard drive doesn’t have to cost a cent, thanks to the freeware tool CrystalDisk Info 5.5.0.

CrystalDiskInfo, also available as a portable build, allows you to monitor the health of all the physical hard disks attached to your PC — internal and many external USB drives — using their own built-in SMART tools plus any temperature-monitoring tools that may be present in the computer or hard drive.

Each physical disk is clearly marked with a rating of Good, Caution or Bad, color-coded accordingly. Also displayed is the drive’s current temperature, allowing you to see just how hot your drives are running (anything over 50 degrees C in a desktop should be considered bad for your drive’s long-term health).

Click on a drive’s entry and you’ll see plenty more information about the drive — its key statistics such as firmware, serial number and interface, plus its supported features. Also displayed are two useful figures: power-on count (the number of times the drive has been booted up) and power-on hours. These help monitor how long the drive has been in operation, which in turn can give you an idea of whether or not a replacement may be in order sooner rather than later.

The tool also displays detailed SMART information about the drives — it’s these figures which are used to generate the drive’s overall health rating, and those marked yellow or red will be responsible for potential problems. It’s worth Googling attribute names before panicking too much however, and with issues marked with Caution, simply keep an eye on the Current and Worst figures over a period of time to determine if the potential problem is stable or rapidly deteriorating, suggesting the drive will need replacing (after backing up).

Version 5.5.0 has just been released with improved support for Intel and OCZ support, better support for Internet Explorer 10 and improved drive letter mapping.

Both CrystalDisk Info 5.5.0 and CrystalDiskInfo Portable 5.5.0 are available as freeware downloads for PCs running Windows XP or later.

Photo Credit: vision001/Shutterstock