Tag Archives: neato

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So what does a minnow like Mxit have that makes it so confident it can crack India? The answer is simple: a vision beyond smartphones. Unlike its bigger, richer, more established competitors, Mxit offers connectivity to old fashioned “feature phones,” of which there remain many users in India.

“An African messaging app could beat out WhatsApp, Line and WeChat in India” via Leo Mirani at Quartz.

As a mobile app company we know (and love and hate) the choices you have to make when supporting multiple devices and OS’s. It’s easy to get tunnel vision and think about amazing experiences that we can build on the latest, high-powered devices; Mxit’s potential success is another great reminder that for large portions of users in developing countries, feature phones remain the primary (and sometimes only) way they experience the mobile internet.

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You have to have innovative ad units … and we’re probably the most innovative in the marketplace.

“10X growth in 18 months: StartApp hits 1.5B downloads, 70K installs, and 200M daily impressions” via VentureBeat

Eighteen months after it reached the 150 million download plateau, mobile ad platform StartApp announced today that it has now hit over 1.5 billion downloads. And while the official release says the company’s ad software is now embedded in 60,000 apps, CEO Gil Dudkiewicz told me the number is actually higher.

Impressive growth and great platform; their ad quality and display flexibility is going make them a strong player on iOS.

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I have no idea how long this could take to happen, but if it was anytime soon (read = 5 years) I feel like there is no way our current bandwidth could handle the demand. I still can’t watch a Netflix movie on a snowy Friday night without it dipping out of HD every 10minutes and I have 100mb/s FiOS. Regardless, it’s cool to see the FCC encouraging telco’s to explore innovation at this scale.

US phone companies to explore replacing all phone numbers with IP addresses

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Origami Logic, a startup that has created a way for marketers to analyse, visualise and glean insights from the disparate and often impenetrable big data..

“All the same, it’s the early customer wins that have helped with securing this new investment.”

Especially with enterprise-focused products, securing early wins is crucial to proving unique value to investors and being able to demonstrate ROI to new customers.

Still In Stealth, Origami Logic Raises $15M More To Help Marketers Tap The Big Data Mother Lode | TechCrunch

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The company tells us that the way things are organized within each section is based on its algorithm and curation team — in a sense its process is similar to Inside.com, which launched earlier this week. Paper is relying on computational programming and human-based expertise in order to know how good of a story is on Facebook, whether it’s receiving any shares or comments or if it’s visually appealing.

“Facebook announces Paper, a visual and social news app that launches in the US on February 3” via TheNextWeb

I will add this to the already too-numerous-apps I have for reading news, and I’ll be interested to see how it compares in both content and style to Flipboard (my primary iOS newsreader).

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As the high end segment of the smartphone market is becoming increasingly saturated, Apple is starting to feel the pressure from its smaller competitors in the smartphone market. While Apple increased smartphone shipments by 13% in 2013, its competitors managed to realize much higher growth rates. 

Good summary of 2013 phone shipments from Statista.

Infographic: Apple Is Lagging Behind in Terms of Smartphone Growth

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Fresh from closing a reported $60 million from Institutional Venture Partners with the Chernin Group, valuing the Berlin-based company at $700 million,..

I love SoundCloud almost as much as I love bacon. And I love bacon. They just pushed some cool updates to their embeddable player after a big funding round supports their bacon-like awesomeness even more.

SoundCloud Launches New ‘Visual’ Player Allowing Artwork Alongside The Music | TechCrunch