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Apprenda – v2.5 – Apprenda
- Winner In: Best Cloud Platform
As reported on the Software & Information Industry Association website
Apprenda is an Open Platform as a Service (PaaS) stack that enables any organization to transform existing infrastructure into a self-service cloud application platform. By decoupling applications from infrastructure and developers from IT, Apprenda empowers organizations to achieve significant cost savings, and massive productivity improvements resulting in better business/IT alignment.
Apprenda makes PaaS a reality for even the most mission critical applications and workloads, focusing on helping companies leverage their vast amounts of .NET code and existing Windows infrastructure by offering a ‘plug-and-play’ self-service .NET cloud platform approach. Apprenda can be deployed on public or private infrastructure, providing flexibility and freedom from lock-in and tremendous increases in developer productivity, infrastructure utilization, and agility in the management of.NET, SQL Server, and IIS-based apps. Apprenda provides a self-service utility model that allows users to upload compiled code and in a click, ‘publish’ it. Developers can deploy apps in minutes rather than weeks or months, while IT can maintain control and consistency of service.
The Apprenda platform is the only installable PaaS that is proven and in use by organizations like Symantec, Honeywell, and other substantial enterprises. Companies who have deployed Apprenda see increased agility, reduced complexity resulting in faster time to market.
Ticketing startup finds big growth in small venues
As seen in San Francisco Business Times
Back in 1995, Andrew Dreskin helped bring ticket selling online with before-its-time startup Ticketweb. Nearly two decades later, much has changed, but Dreskin’s goal is still the same: disrupt ticketing through cutting-edge technology. And this time around, the skyrocketing startup doing that is Ticketfly.
The San Francisco-based startup has grown revenue 4,484 percent in the last three years by integrating an innovative event ticketing platform with rich social media features so venues and promoters can market events through multiple channels in a few simple steps.
Two-thirds of the company’s focus is on music events, but the Ticketfly platform has expanded beyond live music to include sports events, food festivals, fairs and other attractions.
Dreskin said the growth of Ticketfly can be attributed to the company’s innovative technology, the advent of social media and Ticketmaster’s merger with event promoter Live Nation, which sent smaller event promoters in search of new avenues for promotion and ticket sales.
It has raised $15 million in funding from investors Including Mohr Davidow Ventures, High Peaks Venture Partners, Contour Venture Partners, the NYC Seed Fund, and individual investors including Howard Lindzon and Roger Ehrenberg.
The company has grown to about 80 employees since its founding in 2008 by Dreskin and Dan Teree, and plans to Increase staff 15 to 20 percent by year’s end. According to Pollstar’s 2011 roundup, overall ticketing for the music Industry grew 2.7 percent In contrast, Ticketfly clients’ sales Increased 16 percent year-over-year; about five times the industry average. Ticketfly sales also doubled in 2011 over 2010.
Dreskin said Ticketfly has swooped in to capitalize on the growing reach of social media, offering marketing and data analysis tools to its customers so they can more easily promote events across the web, while other ticket providers haven’t kept up to speed on marketing technology.
Dreskin said many ticketing competitors have non-Integrated systems, whose websites don’t communicate with news-letters, Facebook, Twitter and other platforms that get the word out about events. Ticketfly’s cloud-based ticketing platform provides venues and promoters with the ability to enter data once for a multi-channel social media campaign.
“Let’s say you have 300 acts a year at your venue. Every time you confirm an act, you have to recreate that data in all of your various channels,” said Dreskin. “At our core is an integrated content management system where we push that data out to all of those channels.” He said the platform accomplishes in minutes what older practices would take hours and days to do.
Dreskin said Ticketmaster’s 2010 merger with Live Nation “put a lot of wind in our sails.” Ticketmaster, which bought out Dreskin’s Ticketweb in 2000, “is a brand the public doesn’t love,” and the perception it would play favorites to Live Nation events sent event promoters to Ticketfly in droves, he said.
“In terms of website and show-building, (Ticketfly) has cut our time in half,” said Allen Scott, executive vice president at Another Planet Entertainment, the exclusive promoter for San Francisco’s Independent music venue. “They’re a very progressive company and they think of ticketing beyond just selling a unit-more about how to make our business more efficient.”
Dreskin seems well-equipped to take on the big kid on the block. In the early ’90s, Dreskin and Rick Tyler founded Ticketweb, the first company in the world to sell tickets online, beginning in 1995.
Prior to Ticketweb, Dreskin spent 20 years in the entertainment industry, starting out as a college junior doing event promotion.
Ticketfly aims for more growth and a number of innovations in coming months. More technology is key for the startup, as it sees itself as an enterprise-level technology provider for event promotion, as opposed to just a ticket provider. For this year, the company is working on developing the technology to support personalized ticket buying, as well as a system to reward “mavens,” influencers who are sharing and selling tickets to friends. Ticketfly is also working on advanced ticketing capabilities for the biggest promoters.
“Merriweather Post Pavilion (in Columbia, Maryland) is our strongest venue currently, there’s more like Merriweather out there; said Dreskin.” We’re strong mid-market, and we’re slowly moving upstream,” he said.
jhughes@bajoumals.com /415-288-4953
PublicStuff: NYC firm with Philly ties wins long-delayed city 311 app contract, due Labor Day, with real-time API
As reported by Technically Media Inc.
The City of Philadelphia has chosen New York City-based PublicStuff as the vendor to produce its long-delayed 311 mobile application, and its release will include a real-time API.
The deal is a $18,000 one-year contract and is scheduled for an initial release by Labor Day.
Why choose a NYC shop for a Philadelphia project? Two reasons, says city 311 project manager Tim Wisniewski: PublicStuff, which has a client list of more than 110 smaller cities, “provides the most intuitive user experience of all the apps we tested” and no Philadelphia firm applied.
“The company was chosen through a competitive process by a working group comprised of representatives from the Office of Innovation and Technology, 311 and the Managing Director’s Office,” said a city press release, noting that four proposals were originally received. Typically, all city contract work must be posted online, though if no local firm applied, a hole in communication between the city and a technology community may be gaping.
City representatives are quick to point out that PublicStuff has local roots: it was incubated by GoodCompany Ventures and received early funding from First Round Capital. Additionally, PublicStuff founder Lily Liu says her firm is opening a small satellite office in Philadelphia before the end of the year — which may come after the initial deadline and, she says, is partly in relation to its FRC investment.
“In addition, they will allow us to reach the highest number of residents by being as cross-platform as it gets – users can submit requests on an iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Windows Phone, through mobile web, Facebook and Twitter,” added Wisniewski.
(You may remember Wisniewski, dubbed “the Developer in Black” for his dark wardrobe, from his many hobbyist hacker projects, but earlier this year, he took a role with the city’s 311 office).
In 2009, the City of Boston set off the local 311 app craze, followed by a Council-based one in Los Angeles. Neither seems to have transformed city governance. Locally, a similar iPhone-only tool from freshman Councilman Bobby Henon — though it direct complaints through his staff before 311 — has already shipped.
One big difference will be the potential availability of a scalable data tool to allow for other development.
“With Mayor Nutter’s recent executive order on open data, the ability for our app to offer easy access to 311 data was a high priority in selecting a vendor,” said Wisniewski. “PublicStuff provides an API that conforms to the Open311 standard, allowing other developers to build apps that plug into our system and retrieve real-time data.”
April 25, 2012
As seen on www.timeinc.com.
Time Inc. today unveiled its second annual list of the 10 NYC Startups to Watch for 2012. The startups will be recognized at a special event on Wednesday, May 16th, as part of Internet Week New York 2012.
Editors from Time Inc. brands, including TIME, FORTUNE, CNNMoney.com, PEOPLE, Sports Illustrated, Entertainment Weekly, and InStyle, scoured New York’s thriving technology scene to uncover the ten most promising startups this year. The diverse list spotlights New York City-based startups with the potential to reshape areas from social media and entertainment to commerce and art.
The list made its debut during Internet Week New York 2011 with a selection of startups that have experienced significant growth and success over the past year including GroupMe, the group messaging app, which was later bought by Skype for a rumored $85 million, and online eyewear designer and retailer Warby Parker, which has grown 500% over the past year. The event itself has quickly become one of the flagship events of Internet Week New York, bringing together the most buzz-worthy innovators and entrepreneurs driving New York City’s digital renaissance.
“Whether as journalists on the lookout for the next big thing, or as a publishing company pursuing growth in a rapidly evolving environment, Time Inc. is constantly searching for the kind of digital innovation that changes behavior in the simplest and most profound ways,” said Mark Golin, Digital Editorial Director for Time Inc.’s Style & Entertainment and Lifestyle Groups. “And, given the increasingly hot startup scene here in New York City…we don’t have to look too far to find that innovation.”
The Divide platform by Enterproid allows companies to embrace the “bring your own device” phenomenon. Enterproid has created a user experience that allows IT to manage the work persona without compromising an employee’s privacy – so employees can use one device for all their work and personal needs.
Divide.com
As seen on Google Commerce Blog.
Earlier today, Google announced the acquisition of HPVP portfolio company, TxVia, which provides market-leading technology tools and services to enable improved product offerings in the rapidly growing prepaid debit card industry. You can see Google’s announcement below.
“Over the last year, we’ve been hard at work developing Google Wallet, a payment service that makes it possible for people to redeem discounts, earn loyalty points and pay—all at the same time, whether they’re shopping online or at the store around the corner.
Today, we’re thrilled to announce that we’ve acquired payments technology company TxVia to complement our payments capabilities and accelerate innovation towards our full Google Wallet vision. TxVia is a technology pioneer that offers a fast, flexible and highly reliable payments platform—which we believe is one of the best in the world.
Since 2008, TxVia has supported the management of more than 100 million accounts. They’ve partnered with the industry’s best known brands, and their leadership team has played an instrumental role in defining the fast-growing prepaid card segment of emerging payments. In this time, TxVia has also certified and directly connected to the major payment networks, which establishes a solid foundation for Google Wallet and our partners to drive innovation on a global scale and in a partner friendly way.
Finding and purchasing products is a big part of day-to-day life. At Google, we’re working to create new ways to improve the commerce experience. We’ve worked closely with TxVia over the last year, and they’re a forward-thinking team that will help us take the next steps in realizing the future of commerce. We welcome the TxVia team to Google.
Posted by Osama Bedier, Vice President of Wallet and Payments, Google”
As seen on: PublicStuff Blog, Tuesday, March 6, 2012
PublicStuff, the innovative web and mobile based public service request management system, is donating its services for free to the towns and counties affected by the recent tornado outbreaks throughout the country. Through the web and mobile platforms, residents are able to report nonemergency service requests like down trees, flipped cars, broken street lights and more, and have those requests sent directly to the appropriate city department and staff member.
Local governments in these affected tornado zones will also be granted access to the backend workflow suite in order to manage and process these requests in an efficient, organized manner. These agencies may also embed the web portal on their website so residents can submit online requests directly through their respective town/county’s website. For residents without internet access, they may use their mobile phones to report issues, regardless of their wireless provider. If using a smart-phone, users can snap a photo of the issue and submit it with one click. All requests will get sent directly to the managing staff person. Mobile phone options are available for residents to submit service requests via the iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, Blackberry and Android PublicStuff applications. For residents without smart phones, they can still submit requests via text messaging to 1-617-500-3111and through land-line calls toll free to 1-888-491-3119. Once a request is submitted, residents can easily track their requests, support other requests and receive status updates from their local government. City staff will also be able to utilize PublicStuff’s professional software system to manage and improve the efficiency with which they respond to the needs of the public and even send out reverse 311 alerts.
“At PublicStuff, we are committed to improving communities and enhancing the quality of life for every citizen. As such, we want to help communities that have been affected by natural disasters. We understand this is an overwhelming and devastating time for many people. We hope that enabling an easy way for citizens to report the nonemergency damage around them and giving city staff access to a simplified workflow suite, will help them in their efforts to rebuild their community and spirits during this trying time.” stated Lily Liu, CEO and Founder of PublicStuff.
Government agencies that would like access to the complimentary backend workflow suite can sign-up by emailing team@publicstuff.com. To access any of the public services, please visit the following links:
Online Portal: www.publicstuff.com
iPhone App: www.publicstuff.com/iphone/
Android App: www.publicstuff.com/android/
New Zipmark Developer Program Launches with Sunshine Suites, Singular Payments, UnitConnect, InvoiceASAP and Eastmedia on Board
February 21, New York, NY – Zipmark, a pioneer in mobile and online payments, today
announced the launch of its Developer Program, giving businesses and application
developers access to an entirely new kind of fast and secure payment system for online and
mobile transactions. The Zipmark Biller API provides the first real-time authorized checking transactions and is currently being used by the following companies to process payments: Sunshine Suites, the largest co-working space provider in New York City, Singular Payments, which specializes in bill payment solutions, UnitConnect, a property
management software company, InvoiceASAP, a mobile invoicing provider, and Eastmedia, an integration partner that builds commerce apps for clients.
“We created Zipmark to address the billing and operations challenges faced every day by
startups and established businesses alike. The same thing happens across all industries:
too much time and resources focused on collecting money instead of their actual business.
That is why we’re giving the checkbook an update – to increase cash flow and decrease
hassle with payments,” said Zipmark co-founder and Head of Product, Jake Howerton.
The need for efficient payment solutions is consistent among small and large businesses as
interchange fee structures continue to change and merchants continue to seek relief from
the complexity and costs. With each transaction, Zipmark helps businesses and their
customers lower payment processing costs with lower fees that are easy to understand, and by eliminating the lost labor hours that result from having to handle mailed-in paper checks as well as dealing with bounced checks. The newly-launched Zipmark Biller API can be easily integrated into web payments, offering a lower cost alternative to credit and debit cards.
The Developer Program is designed to be efficient and effective for developers looking to
integrate payments into their apps. Developers can register and instantly get access to a
test environment at dev.zipmark.com.
Zipmark’s iPhone app, which is slated to debut at South by Southwest Interactive, will
enable users to make payments for items such as rent, fees or subscriptions directly from
paper invoices via QR codes.
“Our goal is to simplify the way businesses get paid,” said CEO and co-founder Jay
Bhattacharya. “There are so many inefficiencies in the payments system right now — from
the length of time it takes for a payment to process to the cost of transaction fees and
unnecessary labor dedicated to handling collections – which we see as a major opportunity.
We want to give product developers an ideal payment mechanism: low-fee, high utility, fast settlement.”
###
About Zipmark
Zipmark’s goal is to remove barriers between people and their money by bringing the
checkbook into the 21st century: reducing the amount of time and money it takes to make a check payment, eliminating the possibility for bounced checks and taking all risk out of the equation for payer and payee alike. Zipmark was launched in 2010 by Jay Bhattacharya and Jake Howerton, and is based in New York City. Zipmark’s investors are Village Ventures, Contour Venture Partners, NYC Seed, High Peaks Venture Capital and the New York City Investment Fund.
About Zipmark’s Platform:
Zipmark’s state-of-the-art platform brings sophisticated check-processing infrastructure
directly to billers and their customers, enabling businesses to accept secure payments from
any bank, thrift or credit union checking account without onerous fees or long delays. The
service charges 1% for each transaction with a cap at $5 regardless of the payment amount
and offers secure, Check21 compliant digital checks.
Startup Aims to Make Social Media Easier for Superstars
When Tom Hanks tweets or posts a photo on Facebook, chances are he’s not using one of those social media management platforms built for the unwashed masses. Instead, celebs like Hanks, Steven Tyler and Sofia Vergara have been granted free access to the insider world of WhoSay, an easy-to-use management tool that integrates access to a variety of social media, including Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and YouTube, allowing celebs to share their innermost thoughts with their fans–without having to put too much thought into the process.
The gatekeeper of this tony world is Steven Ellis, the founder of music licensing agency Pump Audio. Ellis says the Los Angeles-based Creative Artists Agency (CAA) came to him when it realized it needed a centralized way to harness the power of the social media content its clients were generating. In March 2010, the agency tapped him to design the platform and provided seed funding. WhoSay launched in September of that year with a steady stream of users referred by CAA. WhoSay also serves celebrities who are not affiliated with the agency, such as Kevin Bacon and Gwyneth Paltrow.
“We view media as valuable and our clients as capable of producing great media,” Ellis says. “We try and make it possible for them to publish and broadcast optimally wherever and however they want.”
Each post made through WhoSay’s simple interface is tagged with a shortened URL that drives fans back to a website with the celebrity’s photos, videos and text. The sites are optimized and controlled by WhoSay. Unlike similar platforms such as HootSuite and TweetDeck, WhoSay is actively working on publicizing its clients’ content to be picked up on sites like ESPN.com and Yahoo.com, “so you would stumble across a great picture from someone like [Miami Heat basketball star] Dwayne Wade on the ESPN site like you would if you were following him on Facebook,” Ellis explains. WhoSay also has international options, including distribution through Chinese social media.
The cadre of more than 900 celebrity users–folks who have passed the velvet rope in a vetting process that consists of Ellis deciding if they’re influential enough–has investors a little star-struck. Despite the lack of a revenue model, the company has managed to raise $7 million in Series A and B funding from Amazon.com and High Peaks Venture Partners, a Troy, N.Y.-based venture capital firm, among others. In October, Greylock Partners, the Menlo Park, Calif., venture firm that funded Facebook, LinkedIn, Pandora and others, invested an undisclosed amount as part of the Series B funding round. Greylock partner David Sze sees revenue potential down the line, if WhoSay becomes the go-to source for self-created celeb content.
“In the long run, there could be any number [of revenue options]: advertising, value-added services, product-based offerings,” Sze says.
Indeed, as the mantra seems to be “create celebrity content, and the money will follow,” WhoSay is focused on getting the infrastructure right, which requires a slew of publishing permissions and working with agents, managers and publicists, in addition to making it easy for stars to program, schedule and publish content.
“We’re kind of working backwards,” Ellis says. “Make it simple for the client engagement to occur. Make it easy for the fans to discover this great content that our clients are now capable of creating. Then, optimize that engagement wherever it might occur.”
This article was originally published in the February 2012 print edition of Entrepreneur with the headline: Fame, Fortune and Facebook.
As seen on Bloomberg Businessweek:
Feb. 2 (Bloomberg) — Ticketfly Inc., the online ticket service, says it is winning venues from Live Nation Entertainment Inc.’s Ticketmaster and weighing an initial public offering.
The four-year-old company has signed about 70 halls that were previously with Ticketmaster, including The Troubadour in Los Angeles and the 9:30 Club in Washington, said Andrew Dreskin, co-founder and chief executive officer.
“The momentum has been overwhelming, and we’ve gotten where we are today faster than we had envisioned,” Dreskin said in an interview. “I could see this being a public company.”
The 2010 merger of Ticketmaster, which dominates event ticketing, and Live Nation, the world’s biggest concert promoter, has led some live-music venues to look for alternatives, Dreskin said. Ticketfly, where about a fifth of the locations are former Ticketmaster clients, doubled revenue and the number of tickets sold in 2011 from a year ago, he said.
The San Francisco-based company, founded by Dreskin and Dan Teree in 2008, said in April it raised $12 million from investors led by Mohr Davidow Ventures. High Peaks Venture Partners was among the earlier investors who added more. The funding brought the total capital raised to $15 million.
Before Ticketfly, Dreskin created TicketWeb, an online ticker seller that he sold to Ticketmaster in 2000 for $35.2 million.
Facebook Sales
Ticketfly allows venues, promoters and artists to sell tickets directly through their own websites and pages on Facebook Inc.’s social network. They only have to enter the information once, and Ticketfly will automatically send messages on Twitter Inc.’s micro-blogging service. It also manages clients’ e-mail newsletters.
“I can post an event from my iPhone and it’s immediately on sale,” Jonathan Halperin, talent booker at The Glass House, an 800-capacity venue in Pomona, California, that switched about two years ago, said in an interview. “That just wasn’t possible with Ticketmaster.”
Ticketfly charges lower fees and some artists and promoters prefer it over Ticketmaster, which has irritated customers with surcharges, Halperin said.
Venues using Ticketfly sold 16 percent more tickets on average in 2011 than a year earlier, compared with an industrywide gain of about 2.7 percent, the company said.
“We’re seeing a transformation in ticketing, a moment of great disruption,” Dreskin said. “I’m not sure we’ll see this kind of opportunity again.”
As seen on USA TODAY
SAN FRANCISCO – Facebook is dramatically expanding Timeline, the re-imagining of its user interface, in a move that could delight consumers and vex some security experts.
Thursday, it will unleash more than 60 apps for Timeline ranging from fitness (Nike) and events (Ticketmaster and Ticketfly) to food (Foodspotting) and movies (Rotten Tomatoes). The aim is to give Facebook’s 800 million members additional reasons to spend more time on the site, by sharing their experiences with others as they happen.
The apps avalanche is the next stage in the development of Timeline and a major part of Facebook’s push to maintain its competitive edge over Google+, which has about 40 million members. Late last year, Facebook got a face lift in the form of Timeline. Since then, it has methodically released apps — including a “Listen with” button that lets up to 50 members listen to songs at the same time.
“For the first time on the Internet, consumers can share with others what acts they are planning to see,” says Andrew Dreskin, CEO of Ticketfly. “For example, on Timeline, you can say you plan to see Radiohead in San Jose in April.”
Millions already use music, video and other apps designed for Timeline. But the prospect of hooking users on apps that show when they exercise, where they shop and what they listen to — as they do it — should have marketers and advertisers salivating, analysts say. “There is nothing more that advertisers and marketers like than knowing the frequency and relevance of a consumer’s habits,” says analyst Patrick Moorhead, principal at Moor Insights & Strategy.
At the same time, Facebook has its eye on a potential mega initial public offering in the first half of 2012 that could raise an estimated $10 billion and value Facebook at more than $100 billion. “Facebook is merely trying to leverage its standing as a service that has become part of our lives,” says Anjelika Petrochenko, general manager of LiveJournal blog service.
Facebook “grows through absorbing people and ideas,” such as check-in services and messages, Petrochenko says.
Still, the notion of sharing so much personal information with so many others could be enticing to hackers in pursuit of valuable data. “Facebook is a malevolent multiplier,” says Alisdair Faulkner, chief product officer at computer-security firm ThreatMetrix. “It’s turning cybercrime into an armchair sport.”
From USA Today
Textbooks are often a luxury for college senior Vatell Martin. The accounting major at Virginia State University got by in several courses with study groups and professors’ lectures. “It’s not that I didn’t want to buy,” he says. “Sometimes, I just didn’t have the money for a $200 book.”
VSU, a 129-year-old historically black college in Petersburg, Va., knows Martin isn’t the only one. More than half of its students routinely skip buying textbooks.
For a solution, the school is turning to e-textbooks. VSU partnered with Flat World Knowledge, a start-up publisher that produces exclusively written e-books with “open” content that can be modified by professors. In a trial with 14 business courses, students would be required to pay $20 and receive a Flat World e-book and digital learning supplements. (The university and a local grant have been covering the cost, so far.)
“That’s nothing. It’s what I put in my gas tank,” says Martin, who participated in the trial. “If I was walking into a discussion on a topic, I can just (download and) take out the book and read it on my phone.”
With their promise of ubiquity, convenience and perhaps affordability, e-textbooks have arrived in fits and starts throughout college campuses. And publishers and book resellers are spending millions wooing students to their online stores and e-reader platforms as mobile technology improves the readability of the material on devices such as tablet computers. Silicon Valley start-ups, such as Inkling and Kno, are also aggressively reinventing textbooks with interactive graphics, videos and social-media features.
Despite emerging attempts at innovation, the industry has been slowed by clunky technology, the lasting appeal of print books, skeptical students who scour online for cheaper alternatives, and customer confusion stemming from too many me-too e-textbook platforms that have failed to stand out.
The late Steve Jobs, founder of Apple, believed textbooks to be an $8 billion market ripe for “digital destruction,” biographer Walter Issacson writes in Steve Jobs. Apple is expected to make an announcement Thursday about its new education products.
“Today’s 8th graders will enter college expecting to use e-books,” says Dan Rosensweig, CEO of Chegg, an online seller of textbooks. “We are at the beginning of this arc.”
The market is small but growing. Sales for e-textbooks in the U.S. higher education market grew 44.3% to $267.3 million in 2011, according to Simba Information, a publishing industry research firm.
Print still rules
So far, students have been less than impressed and more likely to opt for print books. About 11% of college students have bought e-textbooks, according to market research firm Student Monitor.
Availability isn’t the chief problem. Most popular textbooks have a digital version, and they’re available online. But students have largely stayed away because the most readily available technology today — PDF (portable document format) or other document reader versions of the print book — is clunky and eye-straining to read.
When Andrea Soto, a freshman biology major at the University of Maryland, bought Principles of Biology, the $192 price tag came with a free online version. She prefers the tangible presence of a thick book on her lap. “You can’t highlight or underline things in the e-book. I find it more of a hassle,” she says.
Digital books aren’t necessarily cheaper, either. While priced lower than new print books, they’re often more expensive than buying or renting used books online, says Kathy Mickey, an analyst at Simba.
A federally funded pilot study at Daytona State College in Florida found that some students who rented an e-textbook paid only a dollar less than students who bought a print edition. And e-textbook users couldn’t sell the book back after the class ended.
Despite e-textbooks’ shortcomings, most agree that the print market is ripe for a technological overhaul. Prices of new books are skyrocketing. Authors complain about used book sales that don’t generate royalties. Professors and students bristle at new editions that seemingly add little in content vs. the previous one.
“This is an industry that’s failing everyone — parents, authors, professors, and students,” says Brad Wheeler, chief information officer at Indiana University, which is running a program that distributes cheaper e-textbooks but requires all students in the class to buy.
Publishers are eager for a quicker transition to the format because e-textbooks cost less to publish and would generate income from every student who buys one. Digital books can’t be resold, at least, not legally. “We’d prefer that all of it to go digital,” says Vineet Madan, senior vice president of new ventures at McGraw-Hill Education. “There isn’t a secondary market for e-books.”
Seeking market niche
If current e-textbooks are mostly unappealing, what’s next? Like online music in its infancy, the textbook industry’s key players — publishers, resellers, bookstores, tech companies, even some universities — are all scrambling to proffer their digital solutions, an effort that has only intensified with the advent of tablet computers and app stores.
“Everybody and their brothers are coming out with an e-book platform,” says Iam Williams, director of strategic learning solutions at Wiley, a textbook publisher.
They all agree on one thing: The quality of e-textbooks must improve dramatically. More value-added, interactive features — such as graphics, notes-sharing, digital annotation, instant quizzes, easy search, links to social networking, videos and the ability to add third-party content — will keep students interested and spur sales, they say.
Tablet computers are a key catalyst in this endeavor. At Kno, tablets have allowed the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company to embed interactive tools onto an existing e-textbook in a more intuitive way, for example, the ability to write directly on the book with a finger stroke or tap on a keyword for notes. “Tablet was a needed development,” say Kno founder Osman Rashid.
Inkling, while similar in goal, takes a different approach. The start-up works directly with authors to re-create an existing print book in the app environment by adding 3D graphics, original videos, audio and a tool for professors to embed explanations.
By linking to Facebook, students in the class can talk to each other. Students can also buy a chapter at a time for $2.99 at the Apple app store. Because of the painstaking process involved, it has only 110 titles completed. More are coming, says founder Matt MacInnis.
“Unless you construct content from the ground up, it’s just lipstick on a pig,” MacInnis says.
CourseSmart, which has an app for iPad and Android tablets, found that the number of customers accessing its e-textbooks from mobile devices shot up from less than 3% to 9% after the app was rolled out, says Jill Ambrose, chief marketing officer. Competing publishers — Pearson, McGraw-Hill, Wiley, MacMillan and Cengage — jointly founded CourseSmart in 2007 to distribute their e-textbooks and digital learning materials.
Abilene Christian University in Texas is one of several universities studying the possibility of iPads in the classroom.
Sophomore Landon Long was issued an iPad by the university for a semester trial and given a free microeconomics book on Inkling’s app.
“Once you get used to it, it works fine,” he says. But he’s not about to buy an iPad for himself. “I don’t think I can afford it.”
For now, he’ll stick to his usual money-saving strategy — buying used books online, often at Amazon.
Despite threats to their print book sales, university bookstores are also coming around to embracing e-books. Follett, which runs 930 university bookstores in North America, launched Follett CafeScribe last year, a cloud-based digital textbook platform.
Barnes & Noble has a similar product in Nook Study, a website for interactive learning.
Publishers not on sidelines
Textbook publishers are partnering with universities for exclusive trials, buying stakes in start-ups and developing their own technologies.
Last year, publisher Cengage launched MindTap, an e-book/digital learning website that is now being tried by about 50 professors, says Bill Rieders, Cengage’s executive vice president of global new media. Instead of tables of content, MindTap provides “a learning path” that students can access for text, multimedia, self-assessment tools, quizzes and note sharing.
Wiley, whose sales of digital textbooks and learning aid kits totaled about $46 million last year, operates WileyPlus, an online site that contains 340 university courses and 1,100 titles.
Pearson has introduced a competing product, OpenClass. The cloud-based website — meaning students can access information wherever there’s an online connection — features social networking, and works with Google Apps for Education (a suite of software designed for universities, including calendar, information sharing and document reader applications).
Reed College in Portland, Ore., is one of several universities that will test OpenClass this fall.
Some schools worry about the potential for student confusion, stemming from dealing with so many e-book platforms.
Indiana University is directly negotiating with publishers on prices and is deploying discounted books through an online learning site operated by an Indianapolis start-up CourseLoad.
“Unless universities get ahead of them, students may get four or five platforms. We wanted to nip that and cut that off,” Wheeler says.
The CourseLoad trial has been in place since 2009 on a limited basis, with students receiving free books. It has been expanded to 130 courses this spring semester.
Students now pay a discounted price for access to CourseLoad books and learning kits, typically “60% to 70%” cheaper than new print books, Wheeler says. In exchange, students must pay a fee to enroll.
The no-opt-out feature is also central to Flat World Knowledge’s trials. E-books are exchanged for per-student fees from each class, says Jeff Shelstad, CEO of Flat World.
Despite the lack of flexibility, school officials and students have embraced the low-cost approach, he says.
“Students aren’t locked out of learning. They aren’t trying to beat the system. Students love us at these schools. We’re like rock stars there.”
This year’s list appears in the Jan. 20 issue ofThe Hollywood Reporter magazine.
Poor Reed Hastings. If only he hadn’t tried to split Netflix in two, his personal stake wouldn’t have plunged $640 million. It was just one of many floundering attempts by Hollywood and its partners in the past decade to navigate the digital world.
Who would have thought Rupert Murdoch’s 2005 acquisition of MySpace would turn into a disaster? Or that a Finnish game company would become a Hollywood sensation via a flock of angry birds?
At any time, it seems impossible to know who’s got the juice. Right now, the entertainment industry largely is operating out of fear — witness its attempts to get Congress to back the Stop Online Piracy Act, which in many ways would curtail Internet freedom.
Digital revenues remain pennies on each dollar, but if this year’s CES — where the hottest items are web-enabled televisions — is any indication all that could change overnight.
Which is why, instead of playing defense, Hollywood might do well to pay attention to the innovators listed below. Each has found a way to make digital technology work for them in what still is essentially the Wild West, as in, still yours for the taking.
Steve Ellis
CEO, WhoSay
“Plenty of websites post celebrity photos, but the celebrities don’t get any of the benefits,” says Ellis, 40. That’s why he created WhoSay, which hosts free, easy-to-update online content for invite-only celebs like Tom Hanks, Enrique Iglesias, Stan Lee, Steve Martin, Gwyneth Paltrow and Rihanna. WhoSay stars collectively boast 570 million fans across Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and other platforms, and their pages draw 10 million unique users each month. All those eyeballs, he says, will be worth money one day through endorsements, advertising and e-commerce, and WhoSay will split the revenue with its celebrity partners.
By Kimberly Nordyke
As seen in the Hollywood Reporter
The deal will allow the members of Hollywood’s newest social media hub, who include Charlie Sheen, Eva Longoria and Rihanna, to have complete control over which content they share with their fans via the mainstream media, CEO Steve Ellis tells THR.
WhoSay, Hollywood’s newest social media hub, has teamed up with the Associated Press to give its members the option to provide their exclusive, personal photos and videos to AP Images for licensing to major media outlets worldwide.
Under the agreement, each time WhoSay members create new photos and videos, they will be able to make that content available for licensing via AP Images, the AP’s commercial photo division.
AP Images also will provide photo services at events upon request to WhoSay members, who will own these images while giving AP Images the ability to license them.
“At WhoSay, our members create thousands of unique and authentic images every month for their fans to enjoy,” CEO Steve Ellis said. “By partnering with AP Images, we’ll be able to give our members the option to personally participate in the mainstream media marketplace, where they already generate such enormous interest and value.”
The members get to choose which content gets licensed to the AP.
“It’s totally within their control,” Ellis told The Hollywood Reporter.
Asked whether the clients will receive money as part of the AP arrangement, Ellis replied: “To the extent the AP ends up licensing images for fees, our clients are able to participate in that, yes.” But he didn’t provide further details.
The members get to choose which content gets licensed to the AP.
WhoSay, which launched last year, was co-founded by CAA; Amazon, Greylock Partners and High Peaks Ventures are investors.
WhoSay’s member list, which currently numbers at nearly 1,000, is comprised of actors, athletes, recording artists and other famous personalities such as Charlie Sheen, Eva Longoria, Kristin Cavallari, Jordin Sparks, Lindsay Lohan, Sofia Vergara, Rihanna, Nikki Reed, Paris Hilton, Bravo’s Andy Cohen and Snoop Dogg. Celebrities can join by invitation only or request to become a member.
The site was designed to allow its members to upload their own images and videos to WhoSay and then post them to social networking platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, YouTube and China’s Tencent. The draw is that the celebrities can have a more direct connection with their fans in the social media arena while also retaining legal ownership of their content.
So far, all of the response to the AP deal has been positive, Ellis said.
“They know they have the unique ability to create interesting content, and that’s powerful stuff,” he said, adding that WhoSay is looking to add more options of a similar nature for its clients.
Separately, AP and WhoSay also have agreed to allow AP journalists to use the WhoSay platform to post their self-shot photos and videos on their pages and distribute them onto social networks. The AP is starting with 20 journalists and may expand to include others.
“We continue to look for new ways to innovate in the social media space, and this agreement does so in the photo marketplace and with our journalists,” said Lou Ferrara, the AP managing editor who oversees the agency’s social media efforts.
Village Ventures and Contour Venture Partners lead round with NYC Seed, High Peaks Venture Capital and The New York City Investment Fund.
As seen on PRWEB
Zipmark, a pioneer in mobile and online payments, today announced that it has secured $2M in Series Seed funding led by Village Ventures and Contour Venture Partners and supported by NYC Seed, High Peaks Venture Capital and the New York City Investment Fund. The New York City based company provides a direct and easy-to-use online payment platform that offers secure, Check21 compliant digital checks, and brings sophisticated check-processing infrastructure directly to billers and their customers.
“Our goal is to modernize the checkbook—to reduce the amount of time and money it takes to make a check payment, eliminate the possibility for bounced checks, and take all risk out of the equation for payer and payee alike,” said CEO and co-founder Jay Bhattacharya, former SVP at Citi Ventures and co-founder of Mobile Money Ventures (acquired by Intuit in 2011). “Improving the payment and collection process is a huge opportunity for any company that bills its clients, such as real estate managers and utility companies where inefficient collection practices can be detrimental to the bottom line.”
Zipmark’s state of the art platform accepts secure payments from any bank, thrift or credit union checking account without onerous fees or long delays, charging 1% for each transaction with a cap at $5 regardless of the payment amount. With each transaction, Zipmark helps businesses and their customers lower payment processing administrative costs and eliminates the additional labor hours that result from bounced checks. The Zipmark Biller API can be easily integrated into traditional web payments, offering a lower cost alternative to credit and debit cards. Zipmark’s iPhone app enables users to make payments for items such as rent, fees or subscriptions directly from paper invoices via QR codes.
“Zipmark is the first online payments company to dig beneath the user interface level and change the way money moves at the settlement level, correcting inefficiencies inherent in the current system,” said Matt Harris, Managing Partner and Co-Founder at Village Ventures. “For a company in this space to succeed, it is critical to have a CEO with a strong financial background, which Zipmark has in Jay Bhattacharya. Co-founder and CTO Jake Howerton brings the technical vision to make the concept a reality.”
With the cost of credit and debit transaction fees as well as NSF (non-sufficient funds) fees on the rise, there is a significant need among both small and large businesses across many industries for a more efficient electronic checking payment solution. Zipmark has seen overwhelmingly positive results in its pilot program with NYC real estate company Sunshine Suites: after only four months, ten percent of Sunshine Suites’ tenants have begun paying their bills via Zipmark, significantly reducing payment processing fees for the company. In addition, because of reduced costs and no risk of bounced payments, Sunshine Suites was able to eliminate convenience fees for tenants.
Best-in-Class Industry Leaders Join Forces to Provide End-to-End Offering
Ticketfly, Inc., the fastest-growing independent ticketing and social marketing platform, announced today at the International Music Festival Conference in Austin, a comprehensive festival ticketing solution designed to increase operational efficiencies and revenue opportunities for promoters, while improving the festival going experience for fans.
The Ticketfly solution combines Ticketfly’s next-generation ticketing and social marketing platform with best-in-class festival technology specialists to offer a fully-integrated, end-to-end festival ticketing solution, including:
- Centralized contract and events logistics management
- Custom, feature-rich iPhone and Android mobile apps
- Secure and reliable RFID authentication
- Ride sharing transportation services
- Online, mobile and onsite box office functionality
- Industrial-grade scanning technology
- Integrated social marketing capabilities
“While the festival industry is booming, so is the complexity in operating these large scale events,” said Dan Teree, Ticketfly Co-Founder, President & COO. “Festival organizers are forced to cobble together often incompatible, non-integrated technologies at significant cost. Our goal is to reduce this friction by offering festival promoters a true end-to-end festival ticketing solution, saving them time and money while greatly improving the festival-going experience for fans.”
The Ticketfly festival ticketing solution brings together the best technology and service providers in the industry, including:
Aloompa Aloompa is the premier smartphone application provider for the top US music festivals, including Bonnaroo, Outside Lands, and the CMT Music Festival. Ticketfly and Aloompa have partnered to seamlessly integrate event data and provide mobile-ready ticketing capabilities that promote sales while reducing the need for data replication.
“We’re extremely excited to be partnering with Ticketfly. Integrating their social marketing and ticketing capabilities with our mobile apps will help our clients sell more tickets and create a richer mobile experience for fans.” — Drew Burchfield, Founder of Aloompa
DataFlow Workspace Copyright The driving force behind the operations and data management of most major US festivals including Austin City Limits, Burning Man, Bonnaroo, Outside Lands, and Coachella, DataFlow Workspace provides an easily customizable platform to manage festival event production. Ticketfly will allow DataFlow Workspace to better facilitate ticketing and access control for VIP packages.
“Ticketfly understands the need for a comprehensive approach to ticketing. It’s not enough to get them through the door, there’s an entire ticketing operation within the festival that requires diligent access control. Our combined solution will more tightly control costs and thus increase profitability for our clients.” — Robby Black, CEO of DataFlow Enterprises
DoStuff Media DoStuff Media provides a completely customizable website platform tailored specifically to the festival space. Clients include Lollapalooza, Moog Fest, and Austin City Limits, as well as the New Orleans Jazz Fest. Through this partnership, Ticketfly clients will gain access to a sophisticated festival website platform, coupled with Ticketfly’s advanced social connectivity and analytics.
“We’re committed to partnering with the best and Ticketfly’s growing festival business is a great opportunity for DoStuff Media. We’re excited to combine these two very powerful platforms into one incredible offering.” — Scott Owens, CEO of DoStuff Media
Intellitix Known as the industry standard for RFID access control and cashless payment systems for live events, Intellitix activated over one million RFID tags at festivals including Coachella, Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza, Outside Lands, Electric Zoo, and Austin City Limits this year. The non-exclusive Intellitix integration with Ticketfly will provide event promoters with seamless access to critical buyer behavior while managing fraud and unwanted resale.
“This software development allows Ticketfly to offer our next generation RFID solutions such as secure access control, social media integration, and cashless payment. This is a fantastic step in continuing to make Intellitix a ubiquitous platform that benefits all promoters and music fans.” — Serge Grimaux, CEO of Intellitix
Zimride Zimride is the fastest growing ridesharing application used by the largest universities and corporations. Their clients range from Facebook to Lollapalooza. With Ticketfly, event organizers will be able to offer concert-goers a way to dramatically reduce their carbon footprint while building a greater sense of community.
“As we expand into the event space with partners like Lollapalooza, Jack Johnson and Dave Matthews Band, we are excited to work with Ticketfly to vastly improve the fan experience. The ability to marry Zimride’s ridesharing solution with Ticketfly will save fans and venues millions of dollars on transportation costs while creating a new community for fans to meet before and after the show.” — Logan Green, Founder & CEO of Zimride
About Ticketfly
Ticketfly is the fastest-growing independent ticketing and social marketing platform in North America. The Ticketfly platform provides next-generation ticketing, website, social marketing and analytics tools that enable event promoters and venues to drive ticket sales, build community and grow revenue. Ticketfly was founded by the team that first brought event ticketing to the Web. Recently, Fast Company named Ticketfly one of the Top 10 Most Innovative Companies in Music and Billboard called Ticketfly one of the Five Hot Digital Music Companies to Watch. For more information on Ticketfly, visit www.ticketfly.com . Connect on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ticketfly , or follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/ticketfly .
Need Your Street Plowed Or A Pothole Filled? File A Ticket On PublicStuff, A Community Help Line In The Cloud
As seen SAI
Written by: Alyson Shontell
Cities spend a lot of time and resources developing help lines and community management systems. If you live in New York, you’ve undoubtedly seen its multi-million-dollar 311 system for connecting the public with government services.
PublicStuff, a New York-Based startup founded by Lily Liu, is a much cheaper solution. It is a platform for submitting requests in your city in the cloud; it utilizes social-media so tickets can be filed and tracked in real-time.
For example, if you see something that needs to be fixed on your street, in your apartment building or on a campus, file a ticket on PublicStuff. Complete the form, hit submit, then check your email for the request confirmation. PublicStuff guarantees the request will be seen by the right people and get completed. Requests can be filed online or on your mobile device.
Today, PublicStuff is announcing that it has received funding from Lerer Ventures, First Round Capital and High Peaks Venture Partners.
As seen on PCWorld.
AT&T on Monday announced plans to offer a new service, called Toggle, that will securely run enterprise apps like email on any Android phone a worker chooses to buy.
The service will run on technology developed by Enterproid, a company that just last week received funding from Google, Qualcomm and Comcast.
End users with Toggle will see two separate personas on their Android phones. One includes enterprise-grade email, calendar, contacts and messaging apps and a browser, all of which can securely access corporate data. The other is the open Android platform, where users can download and use any app they please.
Any corporate email service that uses ActiveSync can be delivered to the phones.
IT administrators will have access to a Web console that lets them manage the service. They will be able to manage which employees have access to which company resources, remotely delete or add business applications to the devices, and remotely wipe corporate data stored on the phone.
AT&T will sell the service to enterprises but will allow them to apply it to phones running on other operators’ networks. The service will work on phones running Android 2.2 or higher. It requires an application on the phone, which IT administrators can push out to users, and works in coordination with a hosted backend system.
While the service only works on Android phones now, Enterproid is developing a client for iPhones and may target other operating systems. In a couple of weeks it also plans to offer the service directly to end users and enterprises under the Enterproid brand.
Enterproid hopes its technology will appeal to people who would like to choose their own device to use at work but who don’t like the idea of their IT department potentially accessing personal information on their phone. With Enterproid, “people can still download what they want and browse what they want. They can SMS whatever they want about their boss and be reassured that the company has no insight,” said Alexander Trewby, vice president and co-founder of Enterproid.
Enterproid is also continuing to build an SDK that will let developers create other applications using Enterproid’s secure system. The company expects to begin offering that around the end of the year, Trewby said.
AT&T said its Toggle service will become available before the end of the year.
Enterproid’s technology is not the only one that aims to address the conflict between people who want to choose their own phones and enterprises that want to make sure those phones don’t open security holes when used to access corporate data. VMware, Red Bend and Open Kernel Labs are all developing types of virtualization technology to separate enterprise apps on phones — particularly Android phones — that are susceptible to malicious apps.
As seen on Techcrunch.
Enterproid, the developer of a platform that allows professionals to maintain completely separate professional and personal profiles on a single Android device, has raised $11 million in Series A funding led by Comcast Ventures, with Google Ventures and Qualcomm Ventures participating.
Called Divide, the platform allows users to create a completely separate profile on Android devices that includes enhanced security, access control, remote wipe capability and a set of enterprise-grade versions of applications like email, a web browser, instant messaging, and SMS. Users can switch back and forth between their professional and personal profiles but no data can cross the division, so that no business content is compromised in the personal profile.
And Enterproid comes with a bunch of useful tools, including the ability to segregate voice and data usage for work, or hand a child a phone without the risk of the child accidentally emailing or calling a contact.
Enterproid’s Divide also allows users to manage devices from the cloud. Lost devices can be remotely located and wiped with corporate data being erased on the entire handheld. IT administrators can also reset passwords, and lock corporate profiles. Additionally, Divide has built-in expense management tools to help identify roaming devices and display network operator usage data.
Divide is available exclusively for Android phones and tablets but the startup plans to extend the service to iOS and Windows Phone 7 platforms in the future. The app is currently in private beta and will debut soon for download on the Android market.
Andrew Toy, CEO of Enterproid, tells me the platform is capitalizing on what he calls the BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) trend. He explains that more and more employees are frustrated by having to carry around two separate smartphones, one for work and one for personal use. Enterproid solves this pain point, makes mobile computing more efficient and gives companies the ability to still maintain a secure mobile environment.
Google Ventures partner Rich Miner agrees that Enterproid is the future of enterprise mobile computing. “When you have one smartphone, you don’t want another phone,” he tells us. “Enterproid is leveraging the technologies now offered by these new sets of devices and creating a mangeable wall between enterprise and personal.”
Founded by former Morgan Stanley, MTV and Smule execs, Enterproid is working with carriers and manufacturers to develop partnerships, which will be announced soon, says the company. The startup is also releasing an SDK as well. The new round will be used to extend engineering capabilities, expand distribution internationally and launch additional global partnerships.
As seen on HPVP Venture Partner Mark Peter Davis’ blog, Get Venture.
Today HPVP announced the launch of its new ambassador program.
The ambassadors are a whos-who of founders, CEOs and community organizers in the New York ecosystem who are great folks & close friends of the firm.
Here’s a list of who’s involved:
- Dave Whittemore: Co-Founder Clotheshor.se, President of CVC & NYVC
- Vin Vacanti: CEO & Co-Founder Yipit
- Shane Snow: Co-Founder Content.ly, Mashable Contributor
- Jesse Middleton: Founder Guyhaus, Co-Founder WeWorkLabs
- Dan Leahy: Co-Founder Savored
- Eddie Kim: CEO & Co-Founder SimpleReach
- Brad Hargreaves: Co-Founder General Assembly
- Steve Cheney: Biz Dev Group.me, TechCrunch Contributor
- Tony Bacigalupo: Mayor New Work City
- Yoni Agraman: Product Manager Yahoo!, President NYUVC
The ambassadors have a pretty cool role. They will be the gatekeepers to exclusive events, enabling them to help other entrepreneurs access the venture capital community. We also think this community will prove to be a powerful support network for HPVP portfolio CEOs, other founders that are friends of the firm and each other.
Congrats to all of the ambassadors!
As seen on AllThingsD
By Liz Gannes
A start-up that counts megastars like Tom Hanks, Steven Tyler and Ellen DeGeneres among its active users now has a high-profile Silicon Valley investor: Greylock Partners.
In an interview last week, Greylock partner David Sze said he thinks a celebrity content management system will be a big business. “It used to be when these platforms first started, the top users were always digital stars — the Kevin Rose and Robert Scoble types. If you look at it today, there’s an amazing shift going on — it’s all general celebrities and the scale is order-of-magnitude multiples of when the tech stars were dominating the system.”
As I’ve described it before, WhoSay is a social media tool for celebrities, aimed at “helping them manage their social media presence and making sure photos and videos are posted on a page the stars themselves can control and eventually monetize.”
For instance, here’s a picture of Tom Hanks’s refrigerator, via an embed code that allows the actor to maintain the rights to his image. Hanks also used WhoSay last week to bitch about how RSS feed readers of Gawker’s headline about his new movie might think he was actually dead. (Tom Hanks knows what RSS is?!)
Greylock has one of the most extensive venture capital portfolios of the leading social Web companies, among them general and open platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Pandora, Airbnb and Tumblr. WhoSay, by contrast, is a much more specific publishing tool.
WhoSay — which was incubated by Creative Artists Agency but operates independently — had already raised $6 million from investors including Amazon and High Peaks Ventures. Greylock is adding an undisclosed amount into a previous Series B round.
