August 4, 2008
What you need to know - Thursday 9/16/10
TuneUp Media raised $4.3M; Bloomspot raised $9M; Kapost raised $1M; AK Networks raised $8M
OpenTable bought UK-based company toptable.com for about $55 million. OpenTable is a provider of free online reservations and guest management systems for restaurants.
Apple is working on a newspaper-based subscription plan. There is no word yet if this will be a stand-alone app or an added feature into iBooks.
TuneUp Media rasied $4.3M in a Series C funding. The round was led by IDG Ventures. TuneUp focuses on helping users fillin thier iTunes meta data.
Skyhook Wireless Inc. is suing Google. The company, provides software and a database for determining location using nearby Wi-Fi signals, is claiming copyright infringement. The amount of damages sought has not been disclosed at this time.
Android based phones gained a 5% market share between April to July 2010, according to a comScore report. The company with the smallest losses was Apple.
BranchOut, a job searching app for Facebook, raised $6 million in A Series funding. The round was lead by Accel Partners.
TwitChange is auctioning off celebrities for charity. The auction began on the 15th and will run to the 25th. Winning gets you a celebrity Twitter follower, a re-tweet of one of your posts and a celebrity tweet to you.
Myspace now hosts American Idol auditions. Participants upload an A Capella video, no longer than 40 seconds, to the site They are then judged with the rest of the applicants.
Dynamics wins the People’s Choice Award at DEMO and reveives $1 million. Their product is a computerized smartcard based credit card.
Apple to bring wireless printing to iPad, iPhone & iPod users. The feature will come as a free iOS 4.2 software update in November.
Motorola bought Aloqa for an undisclosed amount. Aloqa makes develops location-based software and Motorola has already stated that they will use the technology acquired to upgrade a feature called MOTOBLUR.
Bloomspot, a flash sale site raised $9 million in Series A funding. The round was lead by Menlo Ventures.
Kapost raised $1.1 million in A Series capital. The round was lead by High Country Venture and Highway 12 Venture. Kapost is a crowd source newsroom platform.
AK Networks raised $8 million in funding. The round was lead by Jon Callaghan (of True Ventures’) and Dixon Doll (of DCM). This was the Series A round of funding.
Halo Reach made $200 million in sales in its first 24 hours. The game sales, which count only U.S. and Europe, had made this title the most popular of the year, so far.
Related Companies, Investors, and Entrepreneurs
Aloqa
Startup/Business
Joined Vator on
Aloqa has solved two problems for mobile users: it takes away the need to type search terms into browsers or other mobile applications to find something, and also proactively recommends interesting local opportunities to users on the go. Wherever they are, users can simply glance at their phones and see which friends, favorite businesses, events like music concerts, local offers and other interesting places are close by, without having to launch a browser or search application. Aloqa takes into account the user’s location, preferences and social relationships to make these recommendations in real time.
“Aloqa makes mobile phones a lot more useful. As a user, it’s painful launching browsers and typing or speaking into apps. And even if doing searches becomes easier on mobile, it still doesn’t solve a bigger issue – every day all of us miss out on all kinds of opportunities we aren’t even aware of such as discovering friends who happen to be close by, or that there are concerts happening locally that we’d like, or sales and bargains all around us. Aloqa solves both the search and discovery issues by utilizing a user’s context – their location, time, preferences, and relationships – to notify them in real time of friends, places, events, and entertainment opportunities around them without delays” said Sanjeev Agrawal, CEO of Aloqa.
About Aloqa
Aloqa is the first company to provide mobile users with context relevant alerts and notifications. Based on their location, preferences and social relationships, Aloqa users see what’s close to them without having to type anything into a browser or search application: their favorite businesses and points of interest, deals / coupons nearby, music performances and events, and Facebook friends in proximity. As they move, Aloqa refreshes automatically, so users never miss a social opportunity, event, or bargain.
PLEASE NOTE: On July 16, Aloqa (www.aloqa.com) announced that it closed $1.5 million in series-A funding and opened a beta of its context-aware mobile application on Android handsets. Aloqa was also selected to demonstrate its application on stage at the MobileBeat Conference, hosted by VentureBeat in San Francisco, and was chosen as a "Winner of Tesla Award" -- The people's choice award at mobilebeat.
Aloqa has also received some glowing coverage and comments in TechCrunch, ReadWriteWeb, AndroidGuys and others. Seel:
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/mobile_search_gets_a_push_aloqas_location-aware_app.php
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/16/former-googler-sanjeev-agrawal-to-lead-just-funded-mobile-search-startup-aloqa/
http://androidguys.com/?p=6023
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