Today, Amazon has announced the acquisition of social reading service, Goodreads. Specific terms of the deal weren’t disclosed and it should close by the end of Q2. Goodreads had raised $2.75M in funding from the likes of True Ventures, since launching in January 2007.
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Amazon Acquires Social Reading Site Goodreads, Which Gives The Company A Social Advantage Over Apple
Manchester City manager Roberto Mancini reacts during Saturday’s costly 2-0 defeat at Goodison Park.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
(CNN) — Alex Ferguson was too angry to talk to the press after Manchester United’s Champions League exit, and Roberto Mancini was feeling very much the same way after a shock defeat surely ended his side’s English title defense on Saturday.
Manchester City crashed 2-0 at Everton, which allowed United to march 15 points clear with just nine games to play following a functional 1-0 win over second-bottom Reading.
Mancini’s ire was raised not only by a controversial refereeing decision late in the match — mirroring Ferguson’s frustration after Nani’s red card against Real Madrid — but also by his team’s capitulation against a side thrashed by struggling Wigan last time out in the FA Cup.
Everton even had Steven Pienaar sent off with half an hour to play, but the key moment came when Marouane Fellaini’s handball inside the area was penalized with a freekick outside of it as City trailed 1-0 with four minutes left.
“He is a bit angry, as you can imagine,” Mancini’s assistant David Platt said after the match.
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“He is just taking stock of the situation and calming down. He doesn’t want to come out here and say anything that might get him in trouble.”
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Platt later told City’s website: “From where I was down on the touchline I didn’t know if it was inside or not, but we quickly had a message come through to us that it was inside — having now seen it myself, it was well inside the box, but it’s not gone for us.
“But even then we probably created enough decent chances to get something out of the game.”
Everton also had an appeal for a penalty turned down when Fellaini fell, and Kevin Mirallas had an effort ruled out for offside.
Even so, goals from midfielder Leon Osman and substitute Nikica Jelavic kept David Moyes’ team in sixth place, three points ahead of city rivals Liverpool with a game in hand as the club’s manager celebrated 11 years in charge.
More importantly in terms of the Premier League title race, it left United in pole position to claim a record-extending 20th English crown at the expense of their bitter rivals.
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Ferguson made eight changes following last weekend’s FA Cup draw with Chelsea, but it was two of the players who retained their places that made the difference against managerless Reading.
Center-back Rio Ferdinand charged upfield and directed the ball towards Wayne Rooney, who teed the ball up and then saw his volley balloon over goalkeeper Stuart Taylor after taking a big deflection.
That 21st-minute effort — Rooney’s 12th goal in the league this season and 16th overall — was enough to see off a visiting team which had sacked manager Brian McDermott last Monday.
Ferdinand has been called up into the England squad for the first time since 2011, and Ferguson confirmed that the 34-year-old would be available for this month’s World Cup qualifiers against San Marino and Montenegro despite earlier expressing fears about his fitness.
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Ferdinand was omitted by Roy Hodgson for Euro 2012 as the coach cited “footballing reasons” — though it was widely reported that the United defender missed out due to the fallout from his younger brother Anton’s racism case against John Terry, who was selected for the tournament in Poland and Ukraine.
“It wasn’t a great performance but where we are now is not down to today, but the last six months,” Ferguson said.
“The team has shown great consistency and played a lot of great football. Our goal difference is big over City now — 13 goals.
“The problem I’ve got is a lot of players are away on international duty and play two games. They come back and then we’ve got a lunchtime game against Sunderland on Saturday (March 30) and then it’s lunchtime again against Chelsea on the Monday. We have a squad to use it and that’s what we did today.”
Fifth-placed Arsenal bounced back from the club’s midweek Champions League exit with a 2-0 win at Swansea.
Left-back Nacho Monreal scored his first goal since leaving Spanish side Malaga on January’s transfer deadline day, and Ivory Coast forward Gervinho also netted as Arsene Wenger’s team moved to within two points of fourth-placed Chelsea — who host London rivals West Ham on Sunday.
Seventh-placed Liverpool crashed 3-1 at Southampton, who moved seven points clear of the relegation zone.
West Brom could have climbed above Brendan Rodgers’ former European champions, but drew 0-0 at midtable Stoke.
Aston Villa won for the second match in a row to establish a six-point buffer over the teams in the relegation zone, beating bottom club Queens Park Rangers 3-2.
In Sunday’s other matches, third-placed Tottenham will look to bounce back from successive defeats against Liverpool and Inter Milan in the London derby at home to Fulham.
Third-bottom Wigan host Newcastle, while Sunderland will seek to halt a slide down the table at home to 14th-placed Norwich.
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Ready for action, the Springboard startup accelerator, part of the Global Accelerator Network, is settling into its new home at the Google Campus in East London.
Eleven teams have been chosen as the starting point for the UK expansion from Cambridge to the capital. More than 120 mentors will attend the program over the next three months to get these startups into ship shape.
Jon Bradford, co-founder and managing director of Springboard is enjoying the opening atmosphere of the course:
“The tension has been building during the first week of the programme amongst the teams, both with excitement and fear in equal measure not being entirely sure about what they have let themselves in for.”
Springboard has chosen eleven teams rather than the ten it had planned. With over 350 applications from 23 countries, a 50% increase over the previous program, it is not surprising that there had to be room for one more.
Springboard is an intensive 13-week programme and it was originally based at the ideaSpace, part of Cambridge University’s state-of-the-art Hauser Forum before opening up in London.
The first round of teams working out of the Google Campus are a rich and varied selection with wonderful ideas an eagerness to push forward. The Springboard blog notes today, “Desks are all filled, the room is cheerful with bright smiling faces, and we are quickly getting through that ‘first day of school’ feeling.”
So let’s take a look at the lucky startups about to launch into orbit with Springboard.
Self-described as ‘the easiest way to get from a new URL to a full-blown website in 5 minutes or less’ 5minutes.to is an easy-to-use Web app that helps users create a website from scratch.
Users can get their site going with this service by registering a new URL, customizing the design for their needs and learning how to tweak everything in an impressive 5 minutes or less.
5minutes.to also helps users to create accounts on all social media channels in a snap and get automated website backups and daily security checks right out of the box.
The service, which began in Bucharest, is designed for people who need a premium website but don’t want to spend a lot of time and money on it.
5minutes.to says, “We hide the complexity of the technical process in the back and offer a very clean, easy-to-use interface in the front for our users.”
The site got more than 2,000 subscribers from its teaser page in less than 2 weeks and is ready for closed beta.
Birdback comes from Copenhagen and is designed to turn your existing credit cards into a loyalty cards while giving up to 15% cash back on selected bars and restaurants. The company says, “Go out, cash in”.
It’s an interesting take on the idea of a loyalty program and is created by and for restaurants and bars with no upfront costs.
Birdback drives loyalty with rewards for customers that turns them from ‘randoms to regulars’.
According to the firm, “We’re combining a unique credit card tracking technology with game mechanics to drive up loyalty by giving incentive to customers to come back and spend money.”
All users start out with a flat 10% cash back and as they spend more at Birdback’s community of merchants they earn their way into higher levels of cash back percentages.
Birdback is also sharing its experience of working as a startup in an interesting way. The team’s blog says, “We’re writing a book about building Birdback, the ups and downs, the challenges and all the cool interesting people we’re meeting on the road. We aim to release a chapter every Sunday about what we went through.”
No doubt it will become a good future resource not only for Birdback to monitor growth but for other startups to read and recognise similar events or get advice.
London-based Blottr is a people-powered news service that enables anyone to capture, report & collaborate on news they witness from the scene. As we recently reported, Blottr is taking on social publishing methods as well as newsgathering as it launched it’s Facebook app last week.
Blottr is using mobile & web technology to game change the way news is gathered and reported by leveraging the power of the crowd to report and collaborate on news events they witness.
The company says, “We believe people at the scene are best placed to report news.” With more than 2 billion people using smartphones that’s a huge resource to tap into for finding breaking news details and information.
This team comes from Edinburgh and aims to help academics to communicate complex subjects quickly and easily to a wide audience using video.
Engage101 says, “For the past three years we’ve been helping experts at institutions such as MIT, Cambridge University, and Edinburgh University to communicate their research quickly and accurately. We know what works and what does not. We are building a platform that helps academics to create engaging and accessible videos for both academics and the wider public.”
With experience in some of the finest learning institutions on the world, Engage101 looks to be setting standards in the academic video arena.
Hipsnip is a personal shopper. Ask a human-sounding question and get some nice recommendations in return.
HipSnip says, “We’re focused on creating a great mobile and Web application that saves people time and money by helping them buy the right stuff for them.”
Kicktable is the p2p version of Time Out magazine: an online platform to discover and book urban activities hosted by passionate people.
The company says, “We believe that urban life has more to offer than daily deals. Our mission is to help life enthusiasts to discover those people and talents and to live memorable moments with friends and like-minded people. We feature dinners, tasting events, art walks, workshops, etc. allowing people to explore, taste or learn something new.”
Kicktable initially launched in Brussels to test the idea and based on the massively enthusiastic feedback from early adopters, it decided to launch in a city with a bigger market and a different startup ecosystem.
The company moved to London in mid-February. Since its launch, it has hosted more than 65 events on the platform with more than 300 guests.
Knodium is based in London and provides an open learning network enabling students to engage with peers and tutors to develop understanding through question-driven discussion.
The platform is targeted specifically at universities and schools. The company says, “While online tools for course management are readily available, great online tools for course engagement are rare. Knodium creates learning networks that drive social collaboration”.
Knodium’s aim is to provide integration with courses as well as analytics on student engagement and tutor performance. With real-time use, lecturers can gain instant insight into problem areas, before the lecture is even over.
With Knodium in universities, it might mean that students not only have to turn up, but that they should also be awake.
Another academically-minded startup, Student Reading Lists aims to make reading requirements transparent. It also hopes to connect students and universities with commercial partners on a central platform.
The service makes compiling, validating and sharing course resources between educators, administrators and students a seamless and cost-effective process.
Student Reading Lists says, “By offering an integrated web solution for university staff, reading lists can be managed and students can access their course material in all media forms from a central location.”
Since launching, Student Reading Lists has secured the University of Cambridge as an early user of the platform and has sold over 800 books in its first month of operation.
Also based in London, Teddle is a local services marketplace that matches trusted providers to customers.
The team describes itself as, “3 peeps shedding corporate life to fulfill our desire to build a successful start up”.
Teddle aims to help local service providers grow and manage their business through a robust platform that allows real time bookings and customer management.
The service allows customers to search providers based on a reputation score and then book them in real time.
Teddle’s preferred market is any provider that sells services hourly, like dog walkers, tutors and personal trainers. It is currently in the user testing phase of its beta product.
The Backscratchers is an invite-only skills swap and project collaboration website for the creative community.
As you might note from the name, there is no money exchanged on the site. Instead, skills are our currency and members use them to connect, collaborate, inspire and create. As the company says, “It’s simply ‘you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours’, or as we see it: you work on my project, I’ll work on yours.”
This startup hopes to target customers who work and/or have hobbies within the creative industries, including advertising, architecture, arts, crafts, design, fashion, film, music, publishing, software, TV and radio.
The site is international in scope with users being able to work together across continents and time zones. The Backscratchers’ prototype is already built and it is currently in “alpha” testing.
According to its site, Tray.io is cooking up a smart way for users to manage their inbox, by turning messages into actions.
Quite rightly the team has identified that for many people, email is a big problem. In order to address that, Tray.io is building a series of tools that helps to turn long indigestible emails into simple actions.
Tray.io says, “No more never-ending email threads or rigid RSVP events, just a neat solution to get more done, faster.”
No doubt everyone online today would benefit from a little help with their email inbox, so Tray.io is certainly looking to launch into a hungry market.
Springboard culminates in an ‘Investor Day’ where the teams get to present to venture capitalists and angel investors.
Historically, over 50% of the startups who enter the Springpad programmes have succeeded in raising capital in the next round of funding.
It’s exciting to be starting with a team and even more so to work in an environment alongside others who are in a similar position. No doubt the next 13 weeks will be ones to watch as each business develops and prepares for the next level.
Check back with us as we will be following the course and there’s sure to be updates as Springboard helps to shape these exciting startup ventures.
See the article here:
Meet the teams working with Springboard for its London accelerator program
Amazon likes to call itself a technology company that sells things, but it’s also a company that has massive supply chain chops. Today, it was announced that Amazon has purchased Kiva Systems for $775 million in cash.
Kiva, in case you haven’t heard, makes fantastically important robots that scuttle through warehouses and move products about; they do a robot dance, and it helps to make the modern supply chain flow.
Amazon, in purchasing Kiva, could give itself a leg up on its competition by keeping certain technologies that Kiva produces to itself. Also, it brings into Amazon’s fold a company that specializes on an element of Seattle-based retailer’s workflow that it perhaps wants to use as a weapon against its rivals. From a different perspective, Amazon has had staffing issues in its warehouses, which may have led the company to want to invest more in non-human technologies.
Just for fun, check the following clip for a look at Kiva’s robots in action. I’ve pasted the press release after the video, in case you want to hear Amazon tell its own story.
SEATTLE–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Mar. 19, 2012– Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) today announced that it has reached an agreement to acquire Kiva Systems, Inc., a leading innovator of material handling technology.
“Amazon has long used automation in its fulfillment centers, and Kiva’s technology is another way to improve productivity by bringing the products directly to employees to pick, pack and stow,” said Dave Clark, vice president, global customer fulfillment, Amazon.com. “Kiva shares our passion for invention, and we look forward to supporting their continued growth.”
“For the past ten years, the Kiva team has been focused on creating innovative material handling technologies,” said Mick Mountz, CEO and founder of Kiva Systems. “I’m delighted that Amazon is supporting our growth so that we can provide even more valuable solutions in the coming years.”
Following the acquisition, Kiva Systems’ headquarters will remain in North Reading, Massachusetts.
Under the terms of the agreement, which has been approved by Kiva’s stockholders, Amazon will acquire all of the outstanding shares of Kiva for approximately $775 million in cash, as adjusted for the assumption of options and other items. Subject to various closing conditions, the acquisition is expected to close in the second quarter of 2012.
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Who needs people? Amazon just bought robotics firm Kiva Systems for $775 million in cash
We knew Microsoft was revamping the design of Office 15 with a sleeker, Metro look, but until now there has been little details available about the impending release. After looking over the screen shots below, I’m slightly taken aback. Microsoft has done an impressive job redesigning the suite, making it quite beautiful without dumbing anything down.
According to The Verge, Word 15 will include a number of features, including a brand new Read Mode that “removes distractions from the user interface, providing easy reading with text that reflows automatically into columns to fit the screen.”
Word 15 will also feature Object Zoom, which allows users to zoom in and out on pictures and objects with a double click (like a touch screen’s double tap), and Expand and Collapse, which “gives you a one-click option to hide or reveal paragraphs under their headings.”
As for Excel 15, Microsoft is reportedly aiming to make visualizing large data sets much easier. Other improvements to Excel should help users find new and better options for representing their data and simplify formatting charts and graphs.
For presentations, PowerPoint 15 really embraces the touch screen, turning it into an instant presentation tool with a default aspect ratio of 16:9 for that “cinematic look.”
As for mail, Outlook 15 is also set for a number of improvements, including a Peeks feature, which allows users to preview their schedule, view contact details and manage tasks within the app. Outlook users will also be able to check the weather before accepting meetings.
Lastly, OneNote is receiving a Metro update with auto-updating file views, tables support, Touch Mode and Resume Reading.
All and all, Office 15 is no simple update. It’s a major revamp that takes the suite in an elegant, yet highly productive direction. The aesthetics are wonderfully minimalist, but the powerful business features haven’t been lost. In fact, they’re probably more accessible now than ever before — and easier to find.
Taken from:
Office 15 embraces Metro, looks beautiful & packs brand new features
Since privacy is going out of the window left and right with apps like Highlight giving up your location in real-time, why not tell the world what you’re Googling, as you Google it?
An app created at Angelhack SF by developer Darren Nix will let you do just that. It’s a Chrome extension called OverShareMe, and as the name suggests, if you install it you might just become the biggest oversharer in the history of the Internet.
I’m all for sharing a lot about myself, more than most, but what I search for on Google is something I hold onto very closely. I use Google at least fifty times a day to source stories, dig for more info, and find things to do in the evening. It’s not a stream of consciousness that I necessarily want to share with people on Twitter. You might feel differently though, so try it at your own risk.
When you install the app for Chrome, you can set a hashtag for your searches to be sent out to the world via the app’s Twitter account, @PlzOverShareMe. Luckily the app doesn’t tweet out to your followers, although I’m sure it’s something that could come next. In addition to your searches being tweeted by the app, they will be shown on the site as well:
Reading what other people search for on Google is definitely interesting, but if you install this app don’t forget that you have it on. The site suggests that installing it on the computer of someone that you know might be a rad prank, but I certainly don’t suggest doing that.
OverShareMe is an interesting hack and a concept that flies in the face of everything Google is doing with its new privacy policy, but if you want your history of searches shared with the world then this is the way to do it. It’s somewhat anonymous too, since you don’t have to share your name or anything with your searches. I’ll stick with keeping what I Google private for now, though.
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If you want all of your Google searches tweeted automatically, this app is for you