Chinese Internet giant Tencent, often ranked the third biggest Web firm on the planet, has announced Q1 2013 profit of RMB 4.04 million ($645 million), up 16.8 percent on the last quarter, from revenue of RMB 13.54 billion ($2.16 billion), up 11.5 percent on Q4 2012. Income came in ahead of analyst estimates of $3.75 billion. Looking at those figures in an annual context, revenue is up 40.4 percent of Q1 2012, while the company’s profit increased by 37.1 percent on a year prior. Basic earnings per share were RMB2.204 ($0.36). The lionshare of income came via value added services (RMB 10.66 billion ($1.70 billion), which grew 13.6 percent quarter-by-quarter and 28.6 percent year-on-year. Tencent’s online advertising business contracted by 10.3 percent on the previous quarter — bringing in RMB 849.5 million ($135.5 million), while its e-commerce efforts accounted for RMB 1.913 billion ($305.2 million), up 10.3 percent quarter-by-quarter. In its ever extensive earnings report, Tencent says its WeChat mobile messaging service (known as Weixin in China) is at 194.4 million monthly active users, which represents 23.1 quarterly growth a whopping 228.4 percent rise in the past year. An estimated 40 million users are thought to be based overseas, with the remainder of the 300 million plus registered users in China. Ma Huateng, Chairman and CEO, said growth has enabled Tencent to focus on the internationalization of WeChat: During the first quarter of 2013, we saw broad-based growth in user engagement and revenue across our key activities. This growth has enabled us to fund investments in longer-term opportunities such as WeChat international user acquisition, online video content aggregation, and eCommerce footprint expansion, while maintaining a healthy expansion rate in earnings and cash flow. We saw both strategic and financial benefits from our portfolio of investee companies, including a further special dividend from Mail.ru. We will continue to invest proactively in innovation and technology, and to cultivate our open platform, in order to capture the mobile opportunities ahead and strengthen our position as the leading Internet platform company in China.” The company is yet to monetize the WeChat service — which lets users send and receive free text messages and make voice calls — but it has previously committed to integrating its Paypal-like Tenpay system to encourage e-commerce. It is also thought to be considering a games platform, following the success of Korea’s KakaoTalk, which Tencent is an investor in. Tencent makes no mention of specific upcoming plans, but its note to investors says it is “integrating new services into Weixin to explore emerging business opportunities” and “investing in user acquisition activities in international markets”. More to follow
Read More...

Helsinki, Finland-based e-commerce personalization engine maker Nosto Solutions (Nosto) today announced that it has opened up new offices (PDF) in London at TechHub @ Google Campus. The company, which is working with brands like Rovio’s Angry Birds, JOY and Intersport, made the move to support the growing number of UK retailers using its solution. Nosto essentially offers ‘plug-and-play’ solutions for online marketing automation to e-retailers. The company’s SaaS solution enhances customers’ online shopping experience by enabling personalized product recommendations in real time, based on their behaviour on the e-commerce vendors’ websites. The company currently hand-picks customers and partners while it’s in ‘invite-only’ mode, but says it will publicly launch its service later this year. The establishment of its new offices in London follows a significant round of seed financing totalling £1.9 million ($2.5 million), which included some debt funding and grants. One of the company’s backers is Open Ocean Capital, which boasts MySQL creator and original developer Monty Widenius among its partners. Another investor is Sanoma Ventures. Image credit: Flickr / trenttsd
Read More...

We knew it was coming, but the BBC has finally launched iPlayer for Windows Phone 8. As we previously reported, the UK broadcaster inked a deal with Microsoft to bring its uber-popular streaming app Windows Phone by summer time. This would mean that it’s available Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone and iOS. However, it’s worth noting here the app actually comes in the form of a shortcut that wraps the mobile website version of iPlayer with its media player app – which the BBC developed to circumvent issues with Flash on Android – allowing iPlayer to work on Windows Phone 8 handsets via a live tile. The BBC previously suggested it would also be available for Windows Phone 7.5, but that’s not happening now. “Unfortunately, platform limitations with Windows Phone 7.5 have meant we’ve been unable to provide the same quality playback experience as on Windows Phone 8,” explains Dave Price Head of BBC iPlayer, Programmes and On Demand, BBC Future Media. “This led to the joint decision not to make BBC iPlayer available on Windows Phone 7.5.” BBC iPlayer is available to download for Windows Phone 8 now. ➤ BBC iPlayer | Windows Phone 8
Read More...

Rocket Internet-backed Square clone payleven has teamed up with MICROS, which offers robust point-of-sale (POS) hardware, software solutions and services for the restaurant, hotel, hospitality, specialty retail and other markets. The partnership between the two companies will result in the introduction of a cloud-based, pay-as-you-go POS system with integrated Chip & PIN card payments, at least in the initial stage of the collaboration agreement. The joint product is based on MICROS’ new, bafflingly poorly named Kachng! solution, and enables merchants to set up a complete point-of-sale system in minutes. All that is required from merchants is to download the payleven app and access Kachng! online from any HTML Web browser. A Kachng! rolling subscription costs £49 per month per POS and upwards, depending on the merchant’s needs. Payleven in turn charges 2.75 percent per transaction, and £89 + VAT for the card reader. The cloud-based POS system works via 3G, 4G or Wi-Fi and comes with integrated Chip & PIN card payments functionality, as well as automatic sales and card history transactions reconciliation. Payleven debuted a fully certified Chip & PIN technology-supported payment system in February this year, in partnership with Visa Europe. Alston Zecha, COO and founder of payleven, says: “We constantly look to enrich our customer experience by extending payleven’s functionality. Today marks another important step on that journey partnering with MICROS, a proven leader in Point-of-Sale technology. We are continuing to help growing businesses expand, by designing a system that can scale to offer increasingly sophisticated functionality as required.” The new system is available to all existing and new customers of both MICROS and payleven from today in the UK, and will shortly be available in other places across Europe. Founded by Zecha along with Konstantin Wolff (CMO) and Rafael Otero (CTO), payleven currently boasts 90 employees working in the UK, Germany, Italy, Benelux, Poland and Brazil. Last month, the mobile payment startup moved beyond catering to business users only, and opened its service up to individuals. The company secured a “high single-digit USD million funding round” in the beginning of this year in a bid to become the ‘Square of Europe’. Also read what the competition is up to: PayPal eyes Europe’s mobile payment space, Chip & PIN-flavored PayPal Here coming to UK this summer Mobile payments firm iZettle solves its Visa Europe problem, launches ‘Chip & Pin’ device SumUp demos its latest mobile-payments tech for Europe: Order a coffee simply by saying your name After $15B in payments, Square debuts Square Stand hardware to select US retailers for $299 Square hires former PayPal Vice President Alex Petrov to lead its partnerships effort Top image credit: Flickr / avlxyz
Read More...

Panasonic has strengthened its range of Android smartphones today with the ELUGA P-03E, a new handset with a 4.7-inch full HD display (1920×1080) and a 1.7 GHz Snapdragon quad-core processor. The high-end device is just 10.9mm thick and leans on 2GB of RAM, coupled with 32GB of internal memory for downloading apps and multimedia content. It’s equipped with a 13.4-megapixel rear-facing camera, alongside a low-resolution 1.3-megapixel snapper on the front. It weighs roughly 146 grams and is powered by a 2600 mAh battery. The ELUGA P-03E comes with a new “touch assist” feature which, similar to the Air Gestures found on the Samsung Galaxy S4, can detect swipes before the user has touched the screen. This proximity-sensitive touch screen can detect movements from up to 15mm away and is designed to stop users from selecting apps or menu options accidentally. For instance, if the user hovers over the camera menu or a supported app, the device will provide a description of the software before asking them to confirm the action. Likewise, hovering over an image will show an enlarged preview, and it’s also possible to access a zoom slider through the Internet browser without using the traditional pinch-to-zoom gesture. Panasonic says the ELUGA P-03E has a user interface built specifically for one-handed use. Swiping up from the bottom will bring the top half of the screen further down, making content and apps much more accessible. The size and position of the keyboard can also be adjusted to fit small hands, as well as the position of the padlock on the lockscreen. The ELUGA P-03E is only available from the Japanese version of the Panasonic website, so it’s unclear whether this smartphone will ever see an international release. The product page says it will be released in late June, and pricing is yet to be confirmed. Image Credit: TOSHIFUMI KITAMURA/AFP/Getty Images
Read More...

GREE, the Japanese mobile game firm best known internationally for its RPG Knights & Dragons, announced today that it would close down its China branch. According to a report in Sina Tech (first spotted by Tech in Asia), the struggling firm will lay off its staff of over 30 employees and will officially cease operations on June 28th. The announcement follows another recent round of layoffs in the firm’s California branch, which saw the departure of 25 employees. The announcement appears to be an indication that the firm is struggling to convert its domestic success internationally. In 2007, the company was was one of Japan’s leading providers of web-based social games, along with rival firm DeNA. Since smartphones gained popularity comparatively late in the game for Japan, for a long period of time, most device owners in the country would play GREE’s games their feature phone’s built-in web browser. With a domestic market firmly attached to feature phones, the firm could continue build momentum in this space, and ultimately acquired many smaller competitors throughout Asia. With a stronghold on the local Japanese market, the company went on to establish offices in San Francisco and Beijing. But by that point, mobile device purchasers were beginning to switch from feature phones to smartphones with easy access to the App Store and Google Play. According to analysts, GREE struggled to adapt to this market shift. At present, 60 percent of the GREE’s revenues come from feature phone users that play its games online. But with that market segment destined to shrink in size, the firm finds itself in a less than desirable position to compete with bigger players in the mobile apps category. In the Sina Tech piece, analysts also state that the firm’s rigid, Japanese-style bureaucratic structure, coupled with its inability to successfully localize its offerings, made its retreat all the more likely. While the firm said it expects to earn over $300 million in US profits for the fiscal year ending in June, the earnings are likely to mark an overall decline compared to the previous year. With news of these layoffs now official, GREE finds itself among many Japanese tech firms that are struggling to make the transition from domestic giant to international giant. DeNA, another Japanese Game developer, saw declining growth in Q4 2012, thereby raising the stakes on its recent efforts to venture outside the island country. We’ve reached out to GREE for comments and are awaiting a response. Image Credit: Kiyoshi Ota/Getty Images
Read More...

Paymill, the digital payment service and Stripe clone started by the Samwer brothers’ Rocket Internet accelerator, is today announcing that it now enables merchants to accept multiple credit cards. After integrating big brands like MasterCard and VISA earlier, Paymill now also offers American Express, Diners Club and other credit cards. In addition, merchants can now accept payments with Paymill all over Europe in 120 transaction currencies, and 20 payout currencies. On top of that, Paymill now lets merchants add invoicing and notifications to their account, basically enabling them to send out automated, branded invoices to their clients. Paymill was founded in Munich, Germany, in June 2012 by CEO Mark Henkel, and currently operates in 34 countries across Europe and other regions. The company is backed by Rocket Internet, Holtzbrinck Ventures, Sunstone Capital and Blumberg Capital. Also read: US Web payment enabler Stripe finally comes to Europe, launches beta service in the UK Image credit: John Moore / Getty Images
Read More...

There’s been speculation that Google will launch a revamped version of its Map service at Google I/O this week, and, according to new screenshots that leaked this morning, we can expect to see revamped platform with a new user interface and integration with more Google services. Droid Life spotted a new layout for the Google Maps sign-up page which was briefly live, providing a taste what the Internet firm will almost certainly unveil this week at its flagship event. The service — or at least the one that briefly appeared — features data from a range of related Google products, including: images from Google Earth, flight search and a revamped route finder that compares methods of transport on the map. Interestingly, it was described as “a map that gets better with use”, which indicates that Google Maps will now track user behavior and history in order to further customize and personalize the app’s general functionality.  That’s the way Google Search and newer services operate, so introducing more intelligence to Google Maps and makes absolute sense — it also may be a hint that Google Now integration is coming too. Also notable is the new ‘smarter search box’ which, previously leaked, now digs into a broad range of data — such as destinations, ratings, reviews, and indoor maps — to help power a more sophisticated search experience. Here’s a selection of screenshots, you can find them all at Droid Life. Headline image via toprankblog / Flickr
Read More...

Malaysia-based digital media companies Catcha Media and Says.com have announced a $20 million merger deal that will seem them combine to become one of the largest Internet advertising groups in the country. Catcha Media, which specialises in online advertising, digital content and e-commerce solutions, says it will merge two of its business units with Says.com — a national social news network — to take advantage of the growth in Internet usage and the rising adoption of new media services. Says.com is led by CEO and co-founder Khailee Ng, who is also an entrepreneur-in-residence for 500 Startups. The site collects the latest news and buzz from across Malaysia using a crowdsourced and user curated model. Users are paid to publish advertiser-sponsored content, which sits along news and features on the site. The deal is the second exit for Ng, who sold Malaysia-based group-buying site Groupsmore to Groupon in January 2011. Catcha Media says that it will merge Says.com with its digital advertising and publishing business, with a viewing to expanding the company across Southeast Asia. For now, in Malaysia, the two Catcha Media businesses together reach 9.78 million Internet users in the country each month, and account for 15 national print magazines. The group also manages Microsoft’s Web presence in Malaysia, including its popular MSN portal. The new entity will also explore the possibility to go public in Malaysia within the next year, according to Patrick Grove, CEO of Catcha Media, who said: This new company offers a tremendous opportunity to dominate the future of digital marketing in Malaysia by pairing two clear leaders in the space. We intend to expand this business regionally and the expected profitability of this merged entity should make us able to consider an IPO within the coming 12 months. Use of digital media has rocketed in Southeast Asia over the past few years, with Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and other markets ranked among the world’s top users of Facebook, and most engaged nations on Twitter. Headline image via ThinkStock
Read More...

Fresh from passing 1 million users in Singapore — or 20 percent of the country’s popular — LinkedIn has announced another milestone in Asia, after it reached 20 million registered members in India, it’s second largest market worldwide. Its presence in the country is only bettered by the US, its home turf. The company says sign-ups for the professional social network have risen by 200 percent since it opened an office in the country in November 2009. Now, India represents 9 percent of its 225 million user base worldwide, and half of the 40 million it has in Asia Pacific. IT services, computer software and accounting are the top three industries for LinkedIn users in India, with management, sales and training accounting for the rather nondescript top skills. Other factoids include: Bollywood (1,565), Yoga (4,775), Cricket (2,924) and Curry (231) are some interesting keywords mentioned by members in their LinkedIn profiles Most InDemand Employers: TCS, Infosys and IBM Ganganagar, Jalandhar and Delhi-NCR are the top 3 locations where people love their jobs In additional to a sizeable number of users in India, LinkedIn itself also has a strong presence in the country, with three offices — its Mumbai-based HQ and two locations in Gurgaon — and a technology centre in Bengaluru, which is notable for becoming the first such center outside of the US. Nishant Rao, LinkedIn India’s Country Manager, said that the service is “helping to create economic opportunities for all” in the country, but has further inroads to make among the one billion plus population: While we have come of age in India, we still have a long runway to grow with our members and clients. Helping members get the most out of the LinkedIn platform remains our primary focus, and it’s exciting to see professionals in India continuing to leverage LinkedIn in multiple ways. LinkedIn celebrated its tenth birthday this month, and the service is growing fast in APAC, where it is anchored by its regional office in Singapore. Away from India, its top markets in the continent include: Australia (4 million members), Indonesia (2 million), Singapore, Malaysia and Philippines (1 million each). Headline image via mariosundar / Flickr
Read More...

Georgia Tech has announced a partnership with Web-learning startup Udacity that sees the two organizations team up to offer its first online master of science degree, which will run as an entirely Internet-based program. The degree is for computer science, and AT&T is also onboard to help cover costs and to provide guidance on the courses and degree content. Launching for the next school year, the degree will initially be a pilot program limited to just “a few hundred students” selected from AT&T and Georgia Tech affiliates. However, the plan is to expand the intake over the next three years. The degree is not free, but, at less than $7,000 for the year, it is significantly cheaper than a traditional masters course. Most importantly, however, the core course materials will be available without charge, opening access to potentially millions of students, as Udacity co-founder Sebastian Thrun explains: While the degree rightfully comes with a tuition fee — after all, to achieve the very best in online education we will provide support services — the bare content will be available free of charge, available for anyone eager to learn. We are also launching non-credit certificates at a much reduced price point, to give a path to those who don’t care about Georgia Tech credit or degrees, but still want their learning results certified. We’re seeing plenty of online learning breakthroughs, particularly from Udacity — which raised $15 million last October – and Coursera, in particular. The latter recently expanded into K-12 courses and partnered with a range of publishers to provide free course textbooks to students. Harvard research professor Thun firmly believes in the opportunities of the Internet and the possibilities that online learning can bring to people worldwide, saying: I wish I had been born in the 1990s. Back when I was a college student, the Web did not exist. How many young students are there in the world today as eager to learn as I was? Only time will tell how many young people we’ll be able to empower to reach for the stars. Randall Stephenson, AT&T chairman and CEO, commented: Because of this collaboration, anyone with a broadband connection will have access to some of the finest computer science instruction in the world. We believe that high-quality and 100 percent online degrees can be on par with degrees received in traditional on-campus settings, and that this program could be a blueprint for helping the United States address the shortage of people with STEM degrees, as well as exponentially expand access to computer science education for students around the world. Zvi Galil, Dean of Computing at Georgia Tech’s College of Computing, explains the university’s goal to lead online learning at degree level. It will certainly be interesting to see how the course fairs, and whether it kickstarts other higher educational organizations into striking similar partnerships. More details of the degree can be found at the dedicated Georgia Tech webpage. For those that are not familiar with Udacity, it’s a company focused on merging education with technology to help make learning accessible, engaging, and effective to the world. The founders believe that higher education is a basic human right and hope to “empower students to develop their skills in order to advance their careers.” Related: Udacity makes its video lessons available for download to help reach more students Headline image via hxdbzxy / Shutterstock
Read More...

In my office, which is a repurposed formal dining room, space is a premium. So while I might have a beast of a computer setup, I have to try to keep things small when it comes to my other hobbies, namely my guitars. The instruments themselves take up enough room, but packing in a pedal board, effects and an amplifier for my electric guitar cramps things to beyond any level of comfort. Vox’s AC1RV mini modeling amp lets me play around to my heart’s content, and keep size to a minimum. The AC1 is a battery or AC-powered miniature amplifier that looks just like its full-sized brothers. But measuring a mere 5 inches tall, and just shy of 7 inches wide, it’s small enough to fit into the corner of your desk without getting in the way. An auxiliary input and headphone output will let you play along to your favorite tracks without bothering everyone else in your house with your Joe Walsh impressions. But the AC1 has a few more tricks up its sleeve, and they come in the modeling and beat tracks that are native to the amplifier. Of course you have gain, tone and volume controls, as well as a clean and overdrive switch, but there are also rhythm patterns like Rock, Triplet, Jazz, 16 Beat and Reggae among others. Knobs for tempo and level allow you to match up the speed that you want, and there’s even a tuner function built in. While the sound that these beat tracks provide isn’t going to win any Grammy awards, they’re a fun feature that you should think of as more of a value-added feature to an amp that’s already well worth the $50 street price. Now, a word of caution — When using battery power (six AA-size batteries are required) I couldn’t manage to completely eliminate buzz from the system. Switching over to AC power, however, alleviated the problem. Fortunately, when playing, the buzz is low enough that you can easily forgive the amplifier, but it’s still present and worth noting. Given its minuscule size, you have to cut the AC1 some slack for its audio quality. It’s not the best sounding amp that you’ve heard, and it’s not even the best-sounding mini amp that I’ve used (that nod still goes to Marshall MS-2, at least for its overdrive setting. Clean fans will want to snag the Fender Mini ’57.). But it’s probably the most feature-packed of any mini amp on the market, and it’s a heck of a lot of fun to use.
Read More...

Japan’s largest mobile operator Docomo has announced a partnership with Line, the mobile messaging app from Japan with more than 150 million registered users, that will see the two offer joint services to Docomo customers. Under the agreement, the two companies will develop two Line-Docomo apps. One will cater for owners of the operator’s Raku-Raku smartphone range for seniors, helping older customers to better understand the service and limit their transactions and purchases of Line games and virtual goods to prevent bill shock and excessive spending. The Raku-Raku application is slated to launch “before the end of the year”. In addition, from September 2013, Docomo customers that use Line on an Android device will get an update that introduces a dedicated button for making calls via the operator’s 4G LTE network: Xi, which hit 10 million subscribers in February. Docomo says the call button will allow Xi customers to call other users of the 4G network without charge, taking advantage of the quality of LTE voice calls. Line and Docomo will also work to reduce the traffic load on the operator’s network. That’s an important measure since a number of operators have expressed their frustration with the large amounts of data that messaging apps send them. In Korea, for example, a number of operators throttled chat app Kakao Talk‘s voice call feature within a month of its launch last summer. The deal is the second significant announcement for Docomo this week, after it invested $50 million in Pioneer on Monday. For Line, the partnership is testament to the service’s growing adoption in its home market of Japan, where it has more than 45 million users. Indeed, such is its usage that 10 of Japan’s political parties opened ‘officials accounts’ on the service to increase their engagement with voters, following the recent reversal of legislation banning the use of the Internet in electoral campaigns. Line’s business continues to go from strength to strength this year. The company says it is seeing increased adoption in Europe, Latin America and Africa, while it is dedicating significant resources to increasing its visibility in the US, China and Southeast Asia. The company’s range of virtual items and its Line Game platform saw it bring in $58 million in revenue during the first quarter of 2013. With plans to introduce music and shopping services, partnerships with carriers will help not only user engagement but revenue too. It isn’t all plain sailing for the company, and last week Apple forced it to remove the gifting feature from its iOS app. Also from the world of mobile messaging this week: Mobile chat service Kakao Talk launches Facebook Home-style app in Korea, no global plans yet Headline image via Toshifumi Kitamura / Getty Images
Read More...

Salesforce.com has unveiled a new feature for its Chatter Mobile product. Called Files for Chatter Mobile, users can share files with other people right on the go using their iOS device. The cloud computing enterprise service company believes we spend a lot of time on mobile devices and that it has had an incredible impact on our lives. When we spoke with the company, it told us that in a recent Gartner study, a person spends 19 sessions on a smartphone an average of 1.2 minutes each time. The numbers vary by device, but what’s noteworthy is that there are more instances of phone usage than tablets and laptops. Salesforce says that it’s “doubling down” on mobile in 2013 and has released a series of products and updates to help make productivity better in the space. It started with the launch of the Service Cloud Mobile app, and then branched off to Salesforce Chatter getting updated, and ultimately to the release of the company’s SDK and mobile tools for developers. With Files for Chatter Mobile, users can find any file that’s stored within Salesforce. Think of it almost like Salesforce is now a Box, Dropbox, or even a Google Drive competitor. Anyone can upload a file, whether it’s a Word document, Excel spreadsheet, PowerPoint, Photoshop file, movie, or image. Once uploaded, the creator can assign it to a specific project, group, or segment so that it can easily be found. Files can be shared both with internal teams and also external groups and partners. Michael Peachey, Salesforce’s Senior Director of Solutions Marketing, tells us that within the enterprise, files need to reside in the cloud. This data is essential to the enterprise as photos are to Facebook. He believes that files ”convey critical information for every deal won, every marketing campaign launched, and every service question answered.” Just like with Dropbox and other file-sharing services, Chatter Mobile enables creators to grant editing permissions to other users. Enterprise CRM services like NetSuite, Oracle Fusion CRM, and SugarCRM can take advantage of Box’s embed feature, which enables files to be shared across the entire platform. Until now, Salesforce didn’t really have an efficient way that would help users become more productive. Peachey claims that the difference between what Box has done and what Salesforce is doing involves the belief that the relationships should not be about the files, but around being social with them and sharing it with individuals. Users can preview files right on their device. If no data connection is available, Chatter Mobile will cache the file so that it can be worked on offline. However, Salesforce is not providing any editing tools — that’s the responsibility of the user. Chatter Mobile users can take advantage of this file-sharing feature today through the iOS app. Peachey says that an Android version will be updated soon. ➤ Chatter Mobile for iOS Photo credit: ORLANDO SIERRA/AFP/Getty Images Disclosure: This article contains an affiliate link. While we only ever write about products we think deserve to be on the pages of our site, The Next Web may earn a small commission if you click through and buy the product in question. For more information, please see our Terms of Service.
Read More...

Facebook is becoming a mobile company — or rather a “mobile best” one if you believe founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. It’s no secret that the company has had its hiccups when it comes to mobile applications, but in a new post on its engineering blog, Facebook reveals a build system that it uses to produce Android apps it calls Buck. Today, that system has gone open source and is available on Github. Written by Michael Bolin, a software engineer at the social networking company, the post reveals that one of the plights Facebook faced was the inability of the standard set of Android tools to keep up with the company’s growth. It wasn’t until July 2012 that Bolin came up with a working prototype of Buck, what would soon be its newest Android build system. The idea came up during Bolin’s first hackathon at the company. His objective: Create a build tool that favored the creation of many small modules rather than a handful of large modules. Earlier that year, Facebook had switched from building Webview apps to more native ones on Android. Previously, the company’s engineers had written a plethora of Java code, which just wasn’t able to keep up. Buck went live a month after the hackathon and based on Bolin’s post, seems to achieve its purpose. A couple of weeks later, all build.xml files were removed from Facebook’s Android repository. In his own words: It took less time to download Buck’s source code, build it from scratch, and then build the Android app with Buck than it took to build the Android app with Ant. From Day 1, Buck was twice as fast as Ant, cutting Facebook for Android app build times down from 3:40 to 1:30. The rest of his post is rather technical in nature, but feel free to take a look through if you’re so inclined. Suffice it to say, Buck appears to have helped Facebook streamline all of its Android code and provides a useful design that helps aid in the development of smaller apps. Here’s a video of Bolin talking about Buck at the Mobile DevCon conference in New York and how it’s now available as open source: Photo credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Read More...

Apple CEO Tim Cook is going on perhaps one of the most expensive coffee runs ever. His CharityBuzz auction has just ended and the winning bid was $610,000. To put that into perspective, the auction said the value was estimated at $50,000. It’s not immediately known who the winner is. The auction just closed and the last bid was $610,000, although if you go to the CharityBuzz page, it has removed the amount bit and just marks the auction as “closed”. Last April, Cook participated in a charity auction to help raise funds for the RFK Center for Justice and Human Rights. Bidders were competing for a chance to have coffee with Cook for up to an hour and is able to bring a companion. More to follow. Photo credit: Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images
Read More...

Facebook on Tuesday announced it has completed rolling out the new sections on its Timeline profiles to everyone. Furthermore, the company says users are now collectively adding almost 200 million items daily. Two months ago, Facebook began rolling out the new one-column Timeline. The company emphasized the redesigned sections on user profiles that let them have one place to add music, movies, TV shows, and books that interest them. Yet everyone realized this was Facebook’s way of admitting the previous two-column design for posts simply wasn’t working. In case you’ve abandoned the service, here’s the new one-column Timeline (posts appear on the right side, and only on the right side, while everything else is on the left): More to follow.
Read More...

Tokyo-headquartered Cinemacraft is going to the movies after Sony Pictures picked Videogram, its interactive video platform, to help promote its upcoming flick Battle of the Year, and get feedback from fans. The 500 Startups-backed firm believes that “video embed and thumbnails are archaic” and Videogram is its alternative that breaks content up into scenes using clickable (and embeddable) pictoral summaries. In doing so, it provides a more immersive experience that lets users start viewing parts that look the most interesting, while specific clips can be shared to an array of supported social networks, including Pinterest, Tumblr, Twitter, Google+ and Facebook. For content publishers, the segmenting of scenes and comments provides a more contextual and specific method to measure user engagement and opinion. For example, rather than sifting through feedback about an entire movie trailer, an embed with Videogram allows them to see which scenes are the most popular — the thumbnail-size windows grow larger with more engagement — what users are saying about each specific piece of action and more. In addition, since the social sharing sits atop of the Videogram service, publishers can tap into a rich range of data to learn more about how users are engaging with their friends around the content, which parts are causing the highest engagement levels, etc. That’s the reason Sony Pictures has adopted the service to promote Battle of the Year. The movie is due in cinemas September 13 but the trailer went live today, and it includes a link to the dedicated landing page — battleoftheyear.tumblr.com – which features both a YouTube embed and a Videogram embed (to the left of the screenshot below). Cinemacraft CEO and founder Sandeep Casi tells TNW that the agreement is not financial, and is instead an exploration of how Videogram can help Sony Pictures, and likewise how the service fares as a tool to promote the film. Typically, studios will release a number of different trailers long in advance of a film’s planned release in order to gauge opinion, and identify the main talking points that would appeal to audiences. With that feedback they tailor their promotional activity, and perhaps even the film. Casi believes that Videogram can help make this process more efficient for producers. Casi — who divides his time equally between the offices in Japan and the US — says the startup has struck a number of deals with paying customers which will be announced in the coming month or so. The companies involved, he says, range from movie studios to other entertainment and consumer brands across Japan and the US. Videogram for iOS was launched last month, and Casi reveals the startup is close to finalizing the Android version. Also on the horizon is a customer dashboard that will allow content owners to mine information for themselves. As of now, Cinemacraft works with content providers to dig up relevant stats and analytics from its data. The startup currently has seven staff (Casi included): a four-person development team in Tokyo and two US-based business development personnel. That’s up from just four employees in May and Casi says more hires will join this year as Cinemacraft brings on paying customers and continues to develop the Videogram services. The company initially planned to relocate to Silicon Valley when it launched the Videogram service last November, but Casi admits that he didn’t want to risk upsetting the work of the Tokyo-based development team so it has remained in Japan. Similarly, plans for the San Francisco-based office changed when it was relocated to Los Angeles to be closer to business opportunities. Related: Here’s an interesting Videogram we spotted. ➤ Videogram | App Store Headline image via The Eggplant / Flickr Disclosure: This article contains an affiliate link. While we only ever write about products we think deserve to be on the pages of our site, The Next Web may earn a small commission if you click through and buy the product in question. For more information, please see our Terms of Service.
Read More...

Foursquare on Tuesday announced that more restaurant menus have arrived in the service’s Explore section. Furthermore, the company is working on incorporating price and service lists for non-restaurant businesses as well. The first part is possible via a new partnership Foursquare has struck with Locu, the menu dashboard for local merchants. Back in January 2012, about a week after it announced its latest Explore feature, the social networking company started to publish pricing menus via SingleTable. Now it’s doubling down with Locu: Today’s Locu update means you can click through to menus on the right-hand side of venue pages that have more such information (breakfast, brunch, lunch, dinner, dessert, and drinks), and you’ll also see pricing information in your Explore results. For some of these restaurants, Foursquare wouldn’t say how many, the company has also added a pricing icon to give you a quick sense of how expensive the place is. Interestingly, just last month Yelp partnered with Locu for the same reason. Yet it wasn’t the first: in January, TripAdvisor and Citysearch did the same. Looks like Locu’s having quite a busy year so far. Yet Foursquare is having a busier one. As already mentioned, the company wants to move beyond restaurant menus and into price and service lists for other types of businesses. It specifically mentions spas, nail salons, hair salons, yoga studios, gyms, dry cleaners, and says it won’t stop there. See also – Foursquare adds location filters by price, hours, and friend check-ins to its website, coming soon to apps and Foursquare reportedly keen to sell advertisers check-in data for targeted ads on other platforms More to follow.
Read More...

Today Walmart’s @WalmartLabs announced that it has acquired two companies, adding their capabilities to its technology team. @WalmartLabs acquired OneOps, in hopes of boosting its Platform as a Service capabilities, and its private cloud efforts. Also acquired is Tasty Labs, a software development firm from Mountain View. The reasoning behind the two small acquisitions is plain, as Walmart notes that the effect of the purchases will be the addition of top-notch staff to its technology teams. According to the CrunchBase database, @WalmartLabs is not new to buying companies. In 2012, the group picked up a firm by the name of Small Society. @WalmartLabs isn’t all pure technology however. It has launched a subscription food service, which TechCrunch called an undercutting of startups operating in the same space: Walmart’s experimentation with subscription-based commerce continues today, with the public launch of Goodies.co, a food subscription service featuring boxes of sample-sized treats shipped monthly. The service is the latest to emerge from @WalmartLabs, the retailer’s Silicon Valley-based innovation lab focused on quickly building, launching, and testing new business models that may or may not make their way to Walmart.com or Walmart stores at a later date. If this all feels out of step for Walmart, a company generally not part of the broader technology conversation, it’s worth noting that the firm actually has a rich history in the space. Walmart was early in the use of satellite technology to keep its stores and workers in sync, for example. Certainly, it’s long days since that work was launched in 1987. Prices of the acquisitions were not disclosed. Tasty Labs raised $3 million in 2010. Top Image Credit: TheChanel
Read More...

With the likes of TodoMovies, Recall, and Flickd Movies already in the App Store, there’s no shortage of to-do list apps designed to help you remember what movies you’ve seen, and remember which ones you’d like to see. But another app has hit our radar that brings enough to the table to merit a look. Courtesy of a new iOS app development agency called 9:42am – coincidentally (or not) the same time the iPhone was launched by Steve Jobs more than five years ago - Limelight is the first app off its proverbial conveyor belt. It’s also worth adding here that Oliver Cameron, co-founder of private social network Everyme (see previous coverage), is at 9:42am’s helm. In a nutshell, Limelight lets you browse a movie database, creating lists of movies you plan to watch, you have watched and share these across the social sphere. How it works Once you’ve created your account (quick and painless), you can begin browsing existing users’ lists, or start creating your own. There’s Editor’s Choice, which is a curated list, and other users.     If you’re perusing another user’s library, you can click on any flick and indicate whether you’ve already seen it, want to see it or simply share the title directly with your friends (email, Twitter, Facebook etc).     You can browse by ‘Popular’, ‘Upcoming’ (cinema launches), ones that are still currently showing in movie theaters or ‘Top Rated’.     But the real fun lies in building your own lists, right? The idea is that over time, you create two main libraries – ‘Watched’ and ‘To Watch’. You can add titles at any time by clicking the ‘Plus’ icon at the top right of each. This is where the one minor inconvenience comes in to play. With Limelight, there is no quick and easy way to access a manual search function. As things stand, you have to hit the ‘Plus’ icon, then scroll all the way back to the beginning, which is potentially five steps if you’re in the ‘Top Rated’ section. With other apps, such as IMDb, you’re usually only one tap away from a search field at any given time.     It’s also worth mentioning the trailer-streaming feature which is particularly useful, though this is also available in other similar movie apps such as TodoMovies. The one particularly stand0ut element for Limelight is the sharing feature – you can email, tweet, text message, Facebook or simply copy/paste a link, to your libraries. With email, for example, the recipient is whisked away to a Web page where they can glean your recommendations and click through to read more information from TMDb. The verdict While Limelight is one of a growing list of such apps, it does bring enough to the table to merit your time (and money). If all you want to do is create a library of your movie watching, receive recommendations and share lists with friends, this could be for you. One final point here – Limelight could secure itself an easy-win differentiator by going cross-platform. So many of these apps are restricted to iOS, so if this could be made available for Android that would be a great starting point. However, given the core raison d’être of 9:42am is Apple, well, we won’t be holding our breath. Limelight is available to download now for $0.99 or your local currency equivalent. ➤ Limelight | iOS Disclosure: This article contains an affiliate link. While we only ever write about products we think deserve to be on the pages of our site, The Next Web may earn a small commission if you click through and buy the product in question. For more information, please see our Terms of Service
Read More...

According to the Wall Street Journal (via CNBC), Dell will report fiscal first quarter revenue of $14 billion, higher than the $13.5 billion that was expected. However, the firm’s earnings per share were dramatically weak, coming in on a non-GAAP basis at $0.20, under the expected $0.35. For context, in the preceeding fourth quarter, Dell had revenue of $14.3 billion, and earnings per share – non-GAAP – of $0.40. In regular trading, Dell is down around 0.6 percent. However, given that an offer to buy the company’s shares at a price of $13.65 exists, the price is all but pegged to that figure. That explains why, even with a dramatic miss regarding its earnings per share, Dell’s stock might not fall as far as you might expect. Dell is in the process of going private. When Michael Dell and Silverlake announced their intention to take the storied computer manufacturer off the public markets, rival shareholders complained that the price was too low. However, following rough financial performance and a shrinking PC market, bids have fallen away. However, recently, a new offer for Dell was floated. As TNW’s Jon Russell reported: Dell shareholders Carl Icahn and Southeastern Asset Management has clubbed together to propose an alternative solution to the buyout of the computer firm. [T]he sides are collaborating to propose a $12 per share cash and finance deal to buy the remainder of Dell. The two sides that the deal would guarantee the company’s debt. Southeastern Asset Management owns 8.5 percent of the company, while Icahn’s stake is 4.6 percent. The weak earnings figure might help Michael Dell prove that his offer isn’t too low, but the better than expected revenue figure might dictate the opposite to his opponents. Top Image Credit: Steve Snodgrass
Read More...

Zendesk, a customer service software provider, has shared that it is now being used by more than 200 million people worldwide. In addition, it is reaching 30,000 customer companies, with 50 percent coming from outside of the US. The company has put the 200 million mark in perspective: there are more people served through Zendesk than there are in Brazil (194 million people) and roughly two-thirds of the US population (315 million). A company spokesperson said that this number has doubled since it hit the 100 million mark back in March 2012, more than a year ago. There’s also a shift in just who is using Zendesk. Before today, there were more US-based customers using the product, but now, it has become evenly-split between US and non-US. The root of this movement comes from the company opening up an office in Tokyo and a data center in Dublin. Of course, Zendesk has always been an international company, with other offices in Copenhagen, London, and Melbourne. Zendesk’s 30,000 customers are defined not by the employees that use the service, but rather the company that has subscribed. In looking at this statistic in this manner, some people would find it astonishing to hear that there are 30,000 companies, with nearly 15,000 from outside the US, using it. Photo credit: GUILLERMO LEGARIA/AFP/Getty Images
Read More...

Tradeshift, the company that turns invoicing between businesses into an online activity across a ‘social network’-style platform, is set to announce some big hires today, part of a recruitment drive that has seen it take on almost 50 people in that past two months. Mihir Nanavati, previously VP of product management at YouSendIt has joined as SVP of Product; Andy Huang, who previously worked in commerce business management and product quality management at Google is now VP of Global Strategy; Patrick Svenburg, who until last September was Microsoft’s ‘Director, Platform Strategy, Developer & Platform Evangelism, Public Sector’ (now that’s a long job title), joins with the much shorter title of VP of Strategic Business Development, while Jovan Marjanovic, whose career includes stints at Deutsche Telekom’s T-Systems, SAP and Oracle, is now SVP of Market Development. These are all new positions within the company, which has raised a total of $24 million in venture funding over two rounds. It’s announced some big client wins lately, including DHL and chemicals manufacturer DSM – not to mention a “multi-million dollar” partnership that saw Tradeshift’s platform integrated with Intuit’s Quickbooks accounting software and some kind of undisclosed investment from Intuit into Tradeshift. Meanwhile, a recent company blog post hinted at “a massive public sector organisation,” “a leading, global apparel brand,” “a global healthcare innovator dedicated to improving patient care,” and “one of the most innovative global publishers” as all having signed up. Founded in Copenhagen, Denmark in 2009, Tradeshift now has offices in San Francisco and London too. Things certainly seem to be on the up for this company that is trying to drag a staid, dull business practice into the 21st Century. It’s not alone though, last month saw the launch of Senddr, a Dublin-based rival.
Read More...

iTunes is a big, profitable business for Apple. Revenue for the iTunes marketplace rose 32 percent in Apple’s most recent quarter to more than $4 billion. According to the Apple, iTunes is on track to bring in $16 billion in 2013. That’s exceptionally impressive. However, when those numbers came out, a certain figure component to the news was interesting: According to Asymco’s analysis, each iTunes user spends around $40 per year on the platform. Frankly, I find that number strong. However it reminded me of a bit of Microsoft arcanea that I wrote about the other week, based on that company’s most recent quarterly report. Microsoft had, in a phone call, informed that transactional revenue on its Xbox platform outstripped that of subscription revenue. Or, among those who pay, they spend more money buying content and the like on the Xbox platform than they do paying the company directly for access. A year’s subscription to Xbox Live will set you back $60. Therefore, for the 23 million or so paying subscribers to Live, they are generating at least $60 per in additional revenue for Microsoft, per year. That indicates that Xbox Live subscribers generate, on average, more than $120 per year for Microsoft, in terms of top line. That is roughly $2,760,000,000. Naturally, the aggregate figure pales in comparison to Apple’s titanic $16 billion iTunes sum, but it does help to belie an important point for each company: Control the platform, and you control the marketplace; control the marketplace, and the spoils are yours. Apple, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon control the lion’s share of the world’s music, app, and book distribution platforms and channels. And they are taking their fee. This is a reminder of just why each of the above companies both control their own application and other content marketplaces, but also sell hardware to support those shops. The money, is massive. Top Image Credit: Jo Jakeman
Read More...