Blink, A New App For Ephemeral Text And Photo Messaging, Arrives On iPhone
Blink, a new mobile application for ephemeral messaging, is debuting today on the Apple App Store allowing users to text, plus share photos, and soon videos, with other friends as well as with groups. The app represents a spin-off from the same technology which also powers social friend finder, Kismet. Though the company says it has no plans to shut down Kismet at this time, its current focus will be on continuing the development of Blink at present. You may remember Kismet, founded by ex-Googler Kevin Stephens and Michelle Norgan, as one of the apps which surged in popularity around the time of SXSW 2012, when “ambient location” seemed to be the latest trend. As it turned out, while Kismet saw some pick up on college campuses, and particularly in the Greek community, its user base remained under a million. Now Blink is repurposing the company’s technology platform to attack mobile social networking from a new angle: disposable messaging. The mobile messaging market is huge, fragmented, ...
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Chinese Gaming Publisher Yodo1 Raises $5M In Round Led By Singapore's SingTel Innov8
Yodo1, a Beijing-based company that works intensively with Western game developers to bring their titles to the Chinese market, raised $5 million from SingTel Innov8, the corporate venture arm of a mobile carrier. An earlier investor, Chinese online game maker Chang You, also participated in the round. Yodo1 has a co-production model where they actually get access to the code base of a Western developers’ game. They modify the graphics, virtual goods and music for local Chinese tastes. An example CEO Henry Fong points to is Ski Safari, a game from Brisbane, Australia’s Defiant Development. In the platformer title, a character races up and down ski slopes (kind of like last year’s indie hit Tiny Wings out of Germany). For the Chinese version, they made the architecture of the houses in the background more Chinese, added a zither to the music and put in terra cotta warrior outfits. “We’re a full blown co-production team,” Fong said in an interview a few weeks ago at San Francisco’s ...
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Google Maps Beefs Up Its Live Transit Information With Updates For NYC, DC And Salt Lake City
One of the things that’s frustrating about Apple’s Maps is that you don’t get the integrated transit information that’s the lifeblood of living in a place like New York City or San Francisco. Google Maps has always had that information integrated into the product, which is a huge help for people who live in those metropolitan areas. The difficulty for Google is to keep up with all of the transit options, especially when it comes to live information. Today, it announced updates for NYC, D.C. and Salt Lake City, which will show you live departure times for seven lines on the NYC Subway system (MTA) and buses, subway in D.C. (Metrorail) and trams in Salt Lake City (UTA). There are more than 800 cities with transit information available in Google Maps, but these three cities are getting more attention, since they have the most riders. Google Maps has been a massive success since launching on iOS last December, and transit information is a huge advantage. Here’s what Soufi Esmaeilzadeh, ...
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Youth App Maker TabTale Buys Kids Games Club For $3-4M, Preps New Buying Club Model
The market for children's and educational apps continues to grow -- evidenced by Apple last week announcing 1 billion downloads of educational apps from iTunes U -- and that growth is leading to both consolidation and new business models. In one of the latest developments, TabTale, a publisher of children's and family apps, has bought Kids Games Club, maker of apps like "Paint Sparkles" (a favorite of my kids), in a deal that TechCrunch understands was in the region $3 million - $4 million. Together, the two Israel-based companies have produced nearly 200 apps, covering close to 100 million downloads. That makes it one of the bigger publishers of youth/family apps around, says TabTale CEO Sagi Schliesser.
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Youth App Maker TabTale Buys Kids Games Club For $3-4M, Preps New Buying Club Model
The market for children's and educational apps continues to grow -- evidenced by Apple last week announcing 1 billion downloads of educational apps from iTunes U -- and that growth is leading to both consolidation and new business models. In one of the latest developments, TabTale, a publisher of children's and family apps, has bought Kids Games Club, maker of apps like "Paint Sparkles" (a favorite of my kids), in a deal that TechCrunch understands was in the region $3 million - $4 million. Together, the two Israel-based companies have produced nearly 200 apps, covering close to 100 million downloads. That makes it one of the bigger publishers of youth/family apps around, says TabTale CEO Sagi Schliesser.
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