Not surprisingly, India’s only listed microfinance lender, SKS Microfinance Ltd, posted a loss of Rs 69.7 crore in the fourth quarter (Q4) of 2010-11 compared to a net profit of Rs 62.9 crore during the same period previous year, as the company went through poor repayment rates and also faced a new policy regime in Andhra Pradesh, which is its main market.

The company's revenue also fell to Rs 193.8 crore from Rs. 304.5 crore in the same period.

read more

Apax Partners and Bain Capital jointly with Norway's Telenor ASA are among the final bidders for Polish mobile operator Polkomtel SA, people familiar with the situation told Dow Jones Newswires Friday.

Greg Dracon, Principal, .406 Ventures

Greg brings 14 years of venture investing and technology company operating and management experience to .406 Ventures. Prior to joining .406, Greg was a Vice President of Core Capital Partners, a venture capital firm focused on early stage venture and small to mid-sized growth technology companies. At Core, Greg focused on software, digital media, technology-enabled services and wireless opportunities and led the investment process for five of the seven investments made during his tenure. From 1995 to 2005, Greg held various operating roles at Texas Instruments, including positions in technical and field sales management and business development. He has investing and industry expertise in wireless technologies; internet and digital media; telecommunications; technology-enabled services and enterprise software. Greg received his MBA, with majors in Entrepreneurial Management and Finance, from Wharton and his BS in Electrical Engineering from Pennsylvania State University.

.406 Ventures
.406 Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm that invests in innovative Information Technology ("IT") and services companies founded by the finest entrepreneurs. We are a veteran team of industry entrepreneurs, operators and investors who apply real world experience, deep industry knowledge and networks, and strong company-building skills to create value for our entrepreneurs and investing partners. We typically are the lead, first institutional investor in early-stage and de novo investments in market-changing IT Security and Infrastructure, Technology-Enabled Business Services, and Next-Generation Software companies.

As investors, we bring an entrepreneurial energy, enthusiasm and tireless commitment to our companies. Every member of the .406 team is an entrepreneur, each of us having been a founder, builder or principal driver in several successful companies. As a result, we are able to offer real-world advice based on first-hand experience with the unique challenges, opportunities and rewards associated with growing early-stage businesses.

We have a passion to share the benefits of our past experience so that entrepreneurs can make better decisions and avoid costly mistakes. We can help anticipate and manage rapid-growth risks as well as identify and support first-mover advantage on potential opportunities.

Finally, we understand the importance of mutual alignment in creating value every day. We believe in being fair to founders and sensitive to their ownership concerns. We work to achieve a balance of being an exceptionally strong advocate and a constructive sounding board. And we are committed to direct and honest communications with our investors and business partners.

Some Previous Investments:
ThingMagic
is a leading provider of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) readers, sensors, and embedded solutions. ThingMagic's RFID readers offer unprecedented functionality, performance, and value. ThingMagic's products are used by its partners in applications and industries including supply chain management, manufacturing, mobile data collection, automatic identification, and point-of-sale/self-checkout.

Health Dialog
uses sophisticated analytics, consulting, and technology to help reduce healthcare costs, improve outcomes, and create better patient satisfaction. Health Dialog identifies opportunities for improvement within a patient population and delivers programs that help individuals better understand their medical issues and become more engaged in managing their healthcare with their physicians.

www.FundingPost.com - Meet Angels and VCs

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iPhone app listing VC and Angel Events: http://www.fundingpost.com/iphone

This past November, the blogosphere was briefly set on fire when a comment Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak made in passing stated that Apple had acquired the voice recognition company Nuance. Wozniak quickly came out and corrected that comment, and most believed that he had simply confused Nuance with the company he mentioned right afterwards, Siri — a company that Apple actually did acquire in April 2010. But as it turns out, Wozniak's comment, whether he knew it or not at the time, may not have been as off as it seemed. Apple has been negotiating a deal with Nuance in recent months, we've heard from multiple sources. What does that mean? Well, it could mean an acquisition, but that is looking fairly unlikely at this point, we hear. More likely, it means a partnership that will be vital to both companies and could shape the future of iOS.

With two online game services down and 100 million accounts possibly compromised, Sony is mulling a reward for information leading to the arrest and prosecution of the hackers, according to AllThingsDigital.

Sony hasn’t reached a final decision on whether to offer the reward. The options shows that the company is still taking a hard line on pursuing hackers, even as Anonymous, the hacktivist group, considers more attacks in the coming days against different Sony sites.

The PlayStation Networks, which has 77 million registered users, has been down fore more than two weeks as a result of a hacker attack. The Station, an online network for 24 million PC online gamers, has been down since Monday. Sony has apologized multiple times for the outage and says it is beefing up security.

If Sony moves forward on the reward, it will do so in cooperation with law enforcement agencies such as the FBI. Sony is hoping to knock loose information about who carried out the attack on April 19. Our timeline on the sequence of events is here. Meanwhile, Sony said that accusations by computer security expert Gene Spafford during a Congressional hearing Thursday were wrong.

Spafford said that Sony was running outdated versions of Web server software and had not been using a firewall on its servers. In a statement, Sony spokesman Patrick Seybold, said the company was using updated software and had “multiple security measures in place,” including firewalls. Anonymous is rumored to be planning a new attack.

Tags: Anonymous, hacker attack

Companies: Sony

People: Patrick Seybold

A new document shows that Zynga is raising a new round of funding up to $490 million, according to Inside Social Games.

The filing shows that Zynga, the largest social gaming firm on Facebook, has authorized a new series of Series C preferred shares as of early March, according to financial analysis firm VC Experts.

In February, published reports suggested that Zynga was raising a round of $500 million at a valuation of $10 billion. But the round was never announced. The filing shows that the deal may still be in the works or has already been completed. VC Experts calculated that the post-investment value of Zynga after the new round could be $9.1 billion, assuming that all authorized shares have been issued.

AllThingsD previously said that Morgan Stanley, T. Rowe Price, Fidelity Investments, venture firm Kleiner Perkins were participants, while the New York Times said in April that T.Rowe Price now owns $71.8 million in stock. The murky things about the filing is that Zynga doesn’t have to file these documents on a timely basis and they are somewhat vague as well.

Tags: social games

Companies: Zynga

Joe Hewitt who built the initial version of Facebook for the iPhone, left the social networking company today. Hewitt, who has had incredible influence over Facebook's mobile success, left to work on his own focusing on tools for developers and designers.

This week, 3,000 people converged to the Milken conference at the Beverly Hills Hilton in Los Angeles. Not withstanding the glamorous locations and grounds for this large reunion, the event deserves its reputation as one of the most amazing platforms of the year.

JiWire Inc. , a location-based mobile advertising company, has raised $20 million in Series C funding led by Trident Capital with participation from existing investors Comcast Interactive Capital, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Norwest Venture Partners and Panorama Capital.

Jonathan Kislak, General Partner, Antares Capital Corporation

Mr. Jonathan I. Kislak, General Partner, is an experienced banker, mortgage banker, and investor with an extensive background in business and government. In 1991, Mr. Kislak founded Kislak Capital Corporation, a successful investor in start-up and early stage companies. From 1989 to 1991, Mr. Kislak was Deputy Under Secretary for Small Community and Rural Development at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, where he was responsible for policy development and management oversight for three USDA agencies: Farmers' Home Administration, Rural Electrification Administration, and the Federal Crop Insurance Corporation. Mr. Kislak is currently on the board of directors of Micro Networks/Andersen Laboratories and Let's Talk Cellular (LTCW). Mr. Kislak also serves as Chairman of the Board of Kislak National Bank, a community bank with seven offices in Miami-Dade and Broward Counties, Florida, and is Chairman and President of the bank's holding company, Skylake Bankshares, Inc. Mr. Kislak received a B.A. degree in economics from Harvard College.

Antares Capital Corporation
Antares Capital Corporation is a private venture capital firm investing equity capital in developmental and expansion-stage companies and in management buy-out opportunities.

Our partners are highly-experienced operating managers and entrepreneurs, willing to be constructive and helpful to the management teams running the companies in our portfolio. Our investments are concentrated in the Southeast and Texas in order to facilitate a healthy interaction between portfolio company managers and Antares' partners. We have a broad background in a variety of industries and business models.

Candidates for investment should have good management teams in place, established sales, and serve large and growing markets. There are no industry restrictions with the exclusion of real estate, distribution, franchisees, and mineral exploration projects.

Some Previous Investments:
Neotonus, Inc.
Marietta, GA; medical devices utilizing a proprietary, non-invasive technology known as Extracorporeal Magnetic Innervation, or ExMI(tm), initially targeted at urinary incontinence.

SportsLine USA, Inc.
Fort Lauderdale, FL; sports media company providing information, entertainment and merchandise to sports enthusiasts over the World Wide Web. SportsLine USA completed an initial public offering co-managed by BancAmerica Robertson Stephens, Cowen and NationsBanc Montgomery in November 1997, and a secondary offering led by BancAmerica Robertson Stephens in April 1998.

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Venture capital-backed startups got a slap on the back this week, but that was followed by a slap in the face in the latest round of Washington political gamesmanship over how much lawmakers should or should not encourage venture capital-backed innovation. So far, the battle to enhance U.S. innovation is taking yet another hit. What [...]

San Francisco-based JiWire, which operates an online advertising network targeting public Wi-Fi networks in places such as airports, said today that it has raised $20 million in new funding. New investor Trident Capital led the Series C round, which was joined by existing investors Comcast Interactive Capital, DFJ Frontier, Norwest Venture Partners, and Panorama Capital. The [...]

Whoa there tipsters, slow down. We've just been bombarded with tips coming our way that Google has rolled out a new-look search results page. Scanning Twitter, it looks like there are in fact a lot of people seeing this. And boy is it ugly. I mean, it's great that Google appears to be trying to clean up the look of the results page, which has gotten pretty cluttered over the years as they add more and more types of information and snippets. But the new design is too sparse. And the colors are too soft. It looks like Bing on a bad day.

Notable developer Joe Hewitt has left Facebook to pursue independent projects. From his blog: "Today was my last day at Facebook. Normally when I leave a job I go out cursing the management and wishing I had left much sooner. In the case of Facebook, I sent heartfelt emails to all of my managers thanking them for the privilege of letting me work there, and I genuinely meant it. Facebook was the longest I ever worked at one company, and the best employer I've ever had." Updating.

Facebook leads the location-based market, with Google Latitude and Foursquare close behind

Yesterday, I was lucky enough to attend the Social-Loco Conference in San Francisco, which brought together many of the best minds in the social media and location industry to see and discuss the latest greatest innovations in that booming space. AskLocal, BUMP.com, Hearsay Social and Neer (from Qualcomm) are just a few of the many startups and services that showed ... [Read more]

Slim week: nearly $130 million for 17 startups (two seed, nine early-stage, six late-stage)

Seed-stage AppDirect, a new way for businesses to find, buy and use Web-based software, raised a $3.25 million seed round led by iNovia Capital. Mobile developer NoiseToys raised $1.2 million in seed funding from several investors, including DCM, former Playdom Chairman Rick Thompson, and Guitar Hero co-creator Charles Huang.   Early-stage COLOURlovers raised $1 million from a long list of ... [Read more]

Lenovo is backing a new video game system that is expected to launch in the second half of this year in China. The iSec system has Kinect-like motion controls and is aimed at a mass market consumer that doesn’t buy the current game consoles.

Beijing-based Eedoo Technology (spelled eedoo by the company) hopes to cash in on the fact that foreign companies like Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft are barred from direct sales in China. Eedoo is funded by Lenovo, China’s biggest PC manufacturer, and it unveiled the iSec (previously known as the eBox) on Friday. The name refers to Sports Entertainment Center.

The iSec uses a 3D depth camera, much like Microsoft’s Kinect motion-sensing system does, so that a user can control the system with hand gestures or body motions. The games that the company has talked about so far focuses on exercise or martial arts. The system also supports other kinds of entertainment such as movies and web surfing or karaoke.

China’s government hasn’t approved the game consoles in the past because they have been focused purely on fun, rather than entertainment. Eedoo has an edge in getting approval because it is locally made and it is family friendly, with a focus on health and entertainment.

Jack Luo, chief executive of the company, said the company will focus on the Chinese market first. He did not disclose the price. China’s online game market based on the PC is going through a boom right now, with overall revenues expected to hit $5.8 billion in 2011, according to Niko Partners. Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft are still trying to get approval to sell their machines in the country. Zeebo, another low-cost console maker, launched in China with a focus on education titles.

Tags: China, game console, iSec, online gaming, video games

Companies: eedoo Technology, Lenovo

People: Jack Luo

Rather than scaling back on its plans for its own NFC payments network, the carrier-led Isis joint venture is ramping up and welcoming more credit card companies and banks. And that, Isis believes, will make the carrier venture even more critical to the success of NFC.

British researchers have built a cheap, fully-functioning computer the size of a USB stick. But while efforts to bring low-cost computing to the masses are laudable, do they misunderstand the reality of the way the world uses computers in the 21st century

Last week, Facebook formally announced "Hackamonth," an internal initiative that allows some engineers to leave their team to work on a side project of their choosing. The goal is to prevent burnout among the staff and should result in some cool new products.

May 5th was the 50th anniversary of the first U.S. manned space flight.

The astronaut was Alan Shepard, and it was a huge deal back in 1961 -- the Russians had beaten the U.S. with the first satellite in 1957, and again with the first manned space flight a month before.

Computers played a huge role in that flight, and Art Cohen was the main mathematician behind them.

As the leader of IBM's Space Computing Center in Washington, D.C., Cohen's team was responsible for all computing support for every Project Mercury flight from 1961 through 1963.

Cohen is now 83 years old, and he retired from IBM in 1988. But he gave us an interview as part of the company's 100th birthday celebration this year.

Things were very different back then, as he explains:

• The two computers that directed the first space flights filled a large room, but only had 1/100,000 as much storage space as today's least powerful iPhone. They also had the processing speed of 3Mhz -- about the same as an early 1980s vintage PC.

• All data about the space craft -- position, velocity, and so on -- was tracked by radar on the earth. The only data sent directly to earth was medical data from sensors connected to the astronaut's body.

• Data traveled from the radar stations to Cohen's team at a blistering fast pace of 1,000 bits per second -- about 1/5,000th as fast as today's wireless connections.

Here's a transcript of the interview, edited slightly for length.

Business Insider: What was the computer system like that you used in the Mercury Mission and how would you compare it with today’s PC or a smart phone in terms of power and storage? 

Art Cohen: We were at something called the Guided Space Flight Center, which was in Beltsville, Maryland. That was the central communication hub for Mercury. And we supplied all the information to the Cape, to mission control and so on.

What we had there were two 7090s. They were second generation computers, transistorized. And at that time NASA was so concerned about transistorized - would it be reliable enough? - that they made us have a duplex system. They felt that tubes were more reliable than transistors because they weren’t sure about transistors.

We had two of these things right next to each other. It took up a whole room. And by room, I mean a large room -- with tapes and DASD and storage units, and so and so forth -- a very, very large set up.

We had 32,000 "words" of storage -- ten-digit words of storage -- that’s what we had.

[Ed: This is equivalent to about 150 kilobytes (kB) of storage on today's computers, which store data in different-sized chunks. Most hard drives today are measured in gigabytes (GB), which are 1,000,000 kB each. Wikipedia articles on the IBM 7090 and 36-bit word length have more background.]

Now you’ve got things you could hold in your hand that are more powerful than what we had. With tremendously more storage. But compared to the world I lived in ... in ‘52, we worked on something called the CPC, the Card Program Calculator, and we had 34 -- get this -- 34 ten-digit storage units. 34 units of ten digits each. But we solved all kinds of problems with that. It was a challenge, but we did it.

So we thought this was gravy. I mean, we had 32,000 units of internal storage -- that was pretty good.

We had pretty sophisticated programs for Mercury. All kinds of mathematics -- orbit mathematics. Orbit mechanics. Differential correction, sliding wire techniques, short arc techniques, re-entry, knowing the positions of all the radar sites, acquisition. We told them where to point the radars and we told the ships where to go for landing.  So it was a lot of complicated stuff that we did we those 32,000 pieces of storage. It’s kind of remarkable when you think about it, isn’t it?

MR: What was the rate of processing?

AC: [After checking] The 50,000 transistors could read and write a the rate of 3 million bits per second.

[That's about 3Mhz, which is about the same as the Tandy TRS-80 -- one of the first personal computers introduced in the early 1980s. Today's fastest processors are over 5Ghz, and benefit from multiple cores and other advances as well.]

It was slow. In those times, it was very fast, and that’s why we used the 7090.

At that time we were always worried -- can you pack integrated circuits close enough, because the heat would build up so badly that there’d be a limitation on how much you could do, how fast you could go.  And we obviously broke that sound barrier, right?

BI: You had to get that data in there, process it in real time, and then send it back.

AC:  Yes, you're absolutely right. IBM had built up in Kingston something called the 7281 which was called the real time channel.

By the way, the data that was coming in from down the Atlantic missile range -- hold onto your hat -- was 1,000 bits per second. The fastest data we had for Shepard’s flight was 1,000 bits per second coming in -- that’s position data coming in and we also were receiving velocity data. 

[By way of comparison, Verizon's 4G wireless network is at least 5,000 times faster.] 

And then later we improved it -- it was a big deal to get it up to 2,400 bits per second. And the radar data was coming in much slower than that.

All that data was coming in fast enough so that the people down at the Cape were able to make decisions.  We drove all the displays at mission control and they were able to make decisions about retro fire, separation from the booster, and all this kind of stuff.  All that was done with the data that we provided to mission control.So it was good enough.

BI: How was the data getting from the rocket back to earth?

AC: We had radars that were actually tracking that thing. They were watching it. And that data was then being sent over this 1,000-bit-per-second line.

MR: So there wasn’t any positioning data coming from the spacecraft to you? 

AC: No. The position data was coming from the radars which were watching the craft. 

MR: Was there any way for Alan Shepard to communicate?

AC: We had voice communication.

MR: How did that work? 

AC: I suppose radio. [In 1962, John] Glenn orbited the earth. Whenever he got near a radar site, there was an astronaut there with voice contact with the astronaut. And then, all of sudden he went over the horizon, and then they lost contact. So, there was a short period of time when there was contact.

It was voice communication to find out how things are, and also, they had telemetry data coming down which was like medical stuff. He was hooked up, and that came to us and we also sent that down to mission control.

They couldn’t bounce signals off of satellites at that time. It was all direct. What they could see is what they could get.

MR: When you see some of the consumer technology today, do you see any technologies that came out of the space program in the 1960s?

AC: You name it.  First of all, we had all the radar sites, and all these sites in the United States where we knew exactly what the latitude and longitude were. That was done by people who were on Mercury. Not IBM, but other vendors who were doing that -- and they did a great job. And that of course helped GPS.

Guys who worked for me then went on to were in charge of the airline reservation system. The Saber and the Passenger Airline Registration System, PARS, came out of that.

The people who developed the air traffic control system, which now has to be replaced from what I understand.  But the one who was in charge of that was a guy that I hired.

Computers are the silent partners behind medicine, particle physics, you name it.  

BI: When the mission was happening, what were you most concerned about? 

AC: We had a great team of people -- and I developed a system where we communicated very well -- whether it be the launch system or the orbit or the re-entry or whatever. That was number one.

Number two, this system was tested at the sub-system and at the systems level very, very well -- very, very carefully. And we used simulation techniques to simulate orbit or launch.  We had data put in so we would think that it was actually real data, and then they would be able to indicate that there’s an abort, and we would get an abort signal or an interrupt, and we’d find a landing zone for that thing.

We had the duplex in case one computer broke down, we had tested out that we could switch from one to the other and it was self-correcting. Even though each computer might be getting data a millisecond sooner than the other, we worked it out so it would all smooth out nicely.

The only thing is that we were a little anxious about were the astronauts. We had met these astronauts. I had never met Shepard, but I met [Gus] Grissom and [Deke] Slayton. The booster, sitting on top of an 83 foot Redstone rocket, with this little capsule and a guy who’s strapped into it, and a tremendous amount of rocket fuel that’s going to send the guy up into space going 5,000 miles an hour, suffering 11 Gs of force. So there was a lot of anxiety about this, but it had nothing to do with the computing.

By the way, this thing started May 2nd, and even before that, we had been prepared for the countdown, then there were weather delays, things happened. So it didn’t go off until the 5th. We were sleeping on the ground. We had people who brought in mattresses and sleeping bags and I was sleeping on top of the console of the 7090 I did damage to the 7090. IBM never fined me for it, but I dented the vent.

MR: How many people were working on your team?

AC: I had about 100 people. We had machine operators, we had systems programming, and they were terrific. I mean, that was key. I mean, the monitor that was handling the real-time channel. But they were really systems people, not necessarily mathematicians...say, off hand, about half of the group [were mathematicians].  At least 50.

MR: What do you think about the state of space exploration today? Is it going private?

AC: NASA can give you a better answer about their plans. Of course, right now the budgetary problems are crippling what they want to do.

I don’t know exactly what the private people -- if it’s just tourist stuff, you know, that’s private enterprise, we can’t really talk against that. But I would think that the government will have to still be involved with any concerns of looking into deep space.  I think that’s important work that I don’t think you would be having private entrepreneurs doing that kind of work. I think that’s important, and I hope NASA will stay in that business.

For the latest tech news, visit SAI: Silicon Alley Insider. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• The Bull's Case For Research In Motion (Yes, There Is One)
• Weird Timing: The Facebook Exec Who Just Launched The Open Compute Project Is Leaving
• WHOOPS: HP Exec Spills Huge Company Secret On LinkedIn Profile

Scott Cho, Fernando Guillot, and Brian Batenburg! Congratulations and enjoy your brand new Boxee Box.

Thank you all for participating and stay tune for the next sweepstakes.

 

 

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Looking to get more out of your treasured Kindle?

We'll show you the best tips and tricks that let you customize your Kindle, use shortcuts to get more done, and get PDFs and Word Documents on your Kindle.

Thanks to KindleBar and aSiteAboutNothing for many of these tips.

Minesweeper is built into your Kindle

All you need to do to activate minesweeper is to hold down ALT, Shift, and M.

Nobody said this would be a fully-featured minesweeper game, but it's a fun easter egg.

Tap G from Minesweeper to play Gomoku, a "five in a row" game that's also built-in.

Check how much free space you have left on your Kindle

All you need to do is press the menu button, then look in the top left corner of your screen.

You'll see a number saying how many megabytes you have left of storage in your Kindle.

When using the experimental web browser, navigate to mobile pages instead of full ones

It may seem like a waste given the size of the Kindle screen (compared to a cell phone screen), but if loading a page quickly is what you're after, navigate to mobile versions such as:

m.gmail.com

google.com/reader/m

mobile.twitter.com

Or, use a special Kindle web app called KinTweet to post updates to Twitter.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

For the latest gadget news, visit SAI: Tools. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

See Also:

• 10 Things Amazon's Android Tablet Absolutely Must Have In Order To Crush The iPad
• How To Swap Out Your iPhone's Browser For A Better One
• HTC's Newest DROID Phone Won't Knock Your Socks Off: Here's Why That's A Good Thing [REVIEW]

More than 1,000 people waited in line outside the Apple Store for the iPad 2 launch this morning, according to a report by the Chinese news agency Xinhua.

Some of the people in line were scalpers, who turned around and sold the devices for a profit of about $30, reports Apple Insider.

The lines started last night, with more than 100 people waiting in Beijing and Shanghai. The Apple Store in Beijing offered an overnight waiting room and numbered wristbands. Folks who left the line had to give the wristband to an Apple employee, but could get the same number back if they returned within an hour.

Apple only has four stores in China, in Beijing and Shanghai, but Apple has said it plans to open 25 stores there over the next few years. The iPad 2 also went on sale at consumer electronics retailers like Gome and Suning, according to Xinhua.

Click here to see more iPad 2 lines around the world >>

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AOL CEO Tim Armstrong likes to remind people that AOL sites are the fifth most trafficked in the United States. Only Google, Facebook, Yahoo, and Microsoft sites beat AOL's 118 million unique visitors in March. Google, in first, had 176 million.

Armstrong also likes to point out how AOL, with a $2 billion market cap, is entirely dwarfed by the other four companies in that group. Yahoo is worth $25 billion, Facebook, $60 billion, and Google $176 billion.

Armstrong says this demonstrates AOL's huge opportunity. Maybe. Or maybe it demonstrates a hugely blown opportunity.

We left Microsoft off the chart below, because it's not an online-only business.

Follow the Chart Of The Day on Twitter: @chartoftheday

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• THE GOOGLE INVESTOR: Facebook Becoming Even More Of A Threat
• This Timeline Of When Big Websites Were Launched Will Make You Feel OLD
• Are Facebook Employees Worried About A Bubble? -- The SAIcast Discuss

Group Buying Global (GBG), an international Groupon-like company with a $200 million revenue run rate, is partnering with Brazil-based Globo, one of the largest TV networks in the world.

Globo's investment arm, Mosaico, purchased 40% of one of GBG's sites, Clickon, which has a nine-digit revenue run rate. The new capital will help Clickon expand aggressively to new cities and produce large-scale advertising campaigns.

GBG is run by Klaus Hommels, a European angel investor who is well known for his early investments in Facebook, Skype, and Spotify.

For the latest tech news, visit SAI: Silicon Alley Insider. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

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• AT&T Launching A Groupon Clone -- Why It Actually Makes Sense
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Smart business owners find customers by placing their marketing messages where the most eyeballs are focused.

And nowhere are there more eyeballs than on the screens of mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets.

More than two thirds of the world’s population has a mobile subscription, and mobile users are highly active.

Facebook recently reported statistics indicating that over half of its 500 million subscribers access Facebook from a mobile device and exhibit twice the activity level of non-mobile users. The time for mobile marketing is now.

Finding customers with mobile marketing involves either pulling people toward your messages or pushing your messages out.

This post originally appeared on Entrepreneur.

Text-messaging (SMS)

Pull customers to your SMS messages by asking people to opt-in to your text-messaging list. Use a text-messaging provider such as eztexting.com or motomessage.com to access a short phone number known as a common short code and an opt-in keyword. Then, use the text-messaging service to push periodic text messages out to the people who opt in.

Multi-media messaging (MMS)

MMS messages are like SMS messages, but they can contain pictures, sound and a lot more text. Pull customers in with the same opt-in process as SMS, and then push out multi-media content via your MMS service provider.

Mobile email

Pull customers to your email list with signup links on your website or ask people to text in their email addresses to join. When you push your emails out to mobile users, ask for mobile-friendly actions such as clicking phone numbers instead of links or using the mobile device to show an email coupon at the point of sale.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

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New Android apps come out even more frequently than the phones themselves.

To help you keep out, we've collected some of our favorite apps that made news this week.

Click the link below to see what we came up with.

Angry Birds Rio got its first update

Angry Birds Rio was updated this week with a bunch of new levels for you to enjoy.

Price: Free (ad-supported) from the Android Market

Google Earth for tablets will let you tour Bin Laden's compound

Google Earth finally got a Honeycomb-optimized update for tablets. You can view 3D models of famous landmarks, including Bin Laden's secret hideout in Pakistan. AMERICA!

Price: Free from the Android Market

Amazon Appstore (for AT&T; users)

AT&T Android users rejoice! Starting with Samsung's Infuse 4G, you can now download non-Android Market apps. That means you can finally get access to Amazon's amazing Appstore. Be sure to take advantage of the free paid app of the day.

Price: Free. Click here to learn how to install it on your AT&T phone >

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

For the latest gadget news, visit SAI: Tools. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

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Since people seem to like this sort of thing, a quick list of my current reading: Attention & Time, edited by Nobre and Coull. An anthology papers on our ability to attend selectively to our surroundings. Their Arrows Will Dark the Sun, by Mark Denny. On the evolution and science of ballistics — you know, [...]

Smart and empirical discussion of how the bin Laden death information spread on The Twitter, first as rumor and then as fact. Read the whole thing. It’s worth seeing how the new news works, but it’s also just superb analysis.

With Dollar in Turmoil, Two Debates on Gold Captivate Manhattan (Source) What apocalypse reveals about us (Source) Is the Wristwatch Past Its Time? (Source) Why Cisco’s John Chambers has to go (Source) Greece: You can’t fire me, I quit (Source) Gold & Lady Gaga (Source) Latest issue of Chance wiki (Source)

This might just be the best blog post I have read this year. It’s nominally on patients with delusions of parasitic infestations, but it’s so much more. I saw a patient recently for parasites. I get a sinking feeling when I see that diagnosis on the schedule, as it rarely means a real parasite.  The [...]

Tiger Global Management LLC, a hedge fund run by Chase Coleman, bought a stake in Brazilian Groupon Inc.

Facebook, for me at least, has mainly been about looking for newly updated photos of my two-year-old nephew who lives two time zones away in the Midwest. But I’m well aware this isn’t a mainstream point of view, and that many of the online social network’s 600 million global users really like to get their [...]

Anytime you get a few hundred people in a room and add a couple of drink tickets, there are bound to be some interesting moments. And when that crowd is comprised of the techies, entrepreneurs, risk-takers and rich people from the startup scene, you’re starting from some pretty fertile ground for quirkiness. Last night’s Seattle [...]

The cleantech industry has a million different technology ideas out there, and just about as many financing strategies. There are mom-and-pop companies raising cash from friends and family, there’s venture capital, government grants, big energy company partnerships, and huge projects such as wind farms or ethanol refineries that rely on deep pockets in private equity [...]

What do the top executives at Qualcomm view as the key developments as mobile communications accelerate with the proliferation of smartphones, tablets, and other wireless devices? At a town hall forum last night at the wireless giant’s San Diego headquarters, Qualcomm chairman and CEO Paul Jacobs said the mobile experience has gone through a critical [...]

Brands may be pouring money back into online display advertising, but that doesn't mean that display advertising works or won't be replaced by something else in the next few years. Will it be social, mobile, or something else? At TechCrunch Disrupt NYC, we'll get into this debate with three of the best operators in online advertising: Facebook's new VP of Global Advertising Carolyn Everson, Medialets CEO Eric Litman, and Right Media founder Mike Walrath. Media companies and brands still don't understand the power of social advertising, and Everson is going to explain it to them.

The idea behind Grubwithus is an awesome yet simple one. You browse for a restaurant you'd like to go to in a certain city and buy a ticket for your meal at a set price. But the key is that others do this as well, all with the intention of meeting new people over dinner. And when you're buying your ticket, you can see who your dinner buddies will be. Yes, it's sort of like Groupon meets Meetup. And yes, it's brilliant. So it should be no surprise that a long list of prominent early-stage investors have decided they'd love to back Grubwithus. The service, which launched out of Y Combinator last year, has just raised a $1.6 million round. Who's at the funding table? Andreessen Horowitz, First Round Capital, NEA, SV Angel, Ashton Kutcher, Guy Oseary, Vivi Nevo, Maynard Webb, Matt Cutts, Elad Gil, Paul Buchheit, Alexis Ohanian, Start Fund, and Y Combinator.

LAGOS, NIGERIA-- I'm in Lagos to speak at an event and decided to come a week early to check out the country's tech and entrepreneurship scene. Apparently Arrington thought I was kidding when I told him this. But he should know by now, I don't need a lot of arm twisting to visit a country of 150 million people chaotically surging into modernity. Where there's that much opportunity, there's always entrepreneurship. Nigeria has fascinated me for the last few years: It has the largest population of any country in Africa. It has abundant natural resources, most notably oil. And it has a ton of potential outside of oil. According to the World Bank the non-oil economy has grown at 8% per year for most of the last decade. The problem is employment hasn't budged, and the country has fifty million unemployed young people. Those are the official figures, but people in the country tell me it's actually much higher than that. That helps explain why Nigeria is more known in the West for 419 email scams than its vast economic potential.

Who needs another social network? Maybe you, friend. Admittedly, the social networking space is packed with so many players, it makes the mind reel. Across the Web, it seems like a new social network is born (and dies) every day. There are niche social networking sites for everything you can imagine. The knitting and crochet community has one, as do gamers, pet-lovers, and bowlers. Some of these specialized networks have significant traffic, and while Facebook Groups continues to evolve, it seems that there may still be room for social networks that revolve around shared interests, and specific groups and activities. It's also true that more and more companies are becoming interested in leveraging online activity and interaction to create meaningful connections, relationships, and services offline. The examples are endless. It's for these reasons that Zenergo, an activity-based social network that launches today, still believes there's room to succeed.

Demand Media reported a 48% increase in revenue; SV Angel raises $11.7 million for new fund

Demand Media reported $79.5 million in revenues in Q1, an increase of 48% over Q1 2010, when the company posted $53.6 million in revenues Google is gearing up to map the world’s newest country, the Republic of South Sudan, which is expected to take shape later this year.   Group messaging application GroupMe acquired “personal relationship management” company Sensobi. Terms ... [Read more]

A convenient guide for navigating the online world of Mother's Day gifts

Look alive, slackers! Mother’s Day is this Sunday, and if you haven’t gotten something for your mom yet, now is the time to start looking. Of course, many of you will go online for all your Mother’s Day shopping needs, but a word of warning: there are many seemingly ideal gifts online that don’t actually translate well in real life. ... [Read more]

T-Mobile had a hard time holding on to subscribers in the first quarter, despite the carrier’s cute Apple-esque TV ads and every-increasing 4G speeds.

The company announced today that it lost 471,000 contract customers in the first quarter, compared to a loss of 118,000 contract customers this time last year. T-Mobile lost 99,000 customers overall in the last quarter, ending with 33.63 million customers.

It’s not entirely surprising to see T-Mobile subscribers jumping ship — AT&T’s impending acquisition of the company isn’t helping to attract new subscribers, and it’s had a very limited (though high-quality) selection of Android smartphones. Still, it’s going to be interesting to see how long T-Mobile’s subscribers numbers continue to freefall.

T-Mobile’s earnings were $135 million for the quarter on $5.16 billion in revenue. That’s down from $362 million in earnings last year on $5.28 billion in revenue. Contract churn, or the number of subscribers who left the carrier, jumped to 2.4 percent in the quarter, up from 2.2 percent last year.

The company blamed “competitive pressures” for its contract customer loss. It certainly didn’t help that it was facing off with the Verizon iPhone and a slew of other Android smartphones on other carriers.

Tags: 4G, carriers, smartphones

Companies: Apple, AT&T, T Mobile

When Sprint announced it was working with Google to offer seamless integration of Google Voice for mobile phones on its network, it seemed like a win-win situation. But barely three days after integration support went live and its clear that everyone is losing — most of all, Sprint customers.

Everything that made Google Voice so appealing has become unavailable for some Sprint subscribers who have attempted to integrate their accounts.

Problems those subscribers have encountered include crippled Google Voice accounts, losing the ability to make or receive phone calls (and SMS messages), security breaches to voicemail and expensive international calling fees (that use Sprint’s rate instead of Google’s). Some can’t activate GV at all, but considering the mess integration is causing that seems more like a blessing than a problem.

What’s worse still is that if you are suffering from GV integration problems, Sprint customer service reps will direct you to the Google Voice Forum, which Google really isn’t acknowledging at this point in time. If you fall under one of these confirmed subscribers or are just someone who relies on their phone for more than just data, it’s probably best to hold off on any integration plans until things have been patched up.

According to Engadget, the problems stem from a failure to correctly issue unique access codes that grant your phone the authority to access things like voicemail and Google Voice. The blame seems to be shared by both human and computers at this point.

But regardless of how these problems are happening, it’s pretty clear that neither Google nor Sprint did enough error testing to ensure a successful launch.

The integration was intended to boost the number of Google Voice users, give Sprint an edge over other carriers and grant Sprint customers access to all the great benefits of using Google Voice without the drawback of having to reroute all calls through a Google utility number.

Instead, everything backfired and may even result in turning people off of Sprint and Google Voice in favor of something more reliable.

Tags: Google Voice integration, wireless

Companies: Google, sprint

Every year, as the weather improves in the spring, gasoline prices start to creep higher. But this year, could it be that the pattern is broken?

The recent run-up to record levels — California is now paying an average of $4.26 per gallon — might be halted, even reversed, if wholesale oil prices continue to fall as they did today. As of Monday, according to Department of Energy data, prices in New England, the Midwest, and the West Coast were over $4 a gallon.

In those states, a car that averages 25 mpg will cost you 16 cents per mile or more in gasoline cost alone. The lowest regional average price was in the Rocky Mountain states, at just $3.70. And the cheapest single state was Wyoming, at $3.61.

Today, briefly, the price of a barrel of light crude oil fell below $100 for the first time in several weeks. But why? There’s generally a lag of several weeks between oil-price declines and falling pump prices, as the cheaper oil has to work its way through the refining and distribution process.

And no decline in oil prices is ever particularly simple to explain. In aggregate, more expensive gasoline cuts consumption as car owners drive less. That reduction in demand, in theory, reduces the price over time. Poorer and more rural drivers, particularly in the Southeast and West–where driving distances are longest–have indeed cut back on driving in recent months as gas prices have risen.

Data from the Department of Energy and other sources suggests that gasoline consumption is 2 to 4 percent lower this year compared to a year ago, despite a slightly better economy this year. Last year at this time, gasoline was fully $1 per gallon cheaper.

Most analysts agree that continuing demand for energy in China will outstrip any reductions in gasoline use in the United States and Europe. China is the world’s largest vehicle market, at 18 million units last year against roughly 11 million in the States.

All those vehicles may travel shorter distances than do cars in the U.S., but they’re still burning gasoline. In other words, U.S. drivers are at the mercy of consumer behavior on the other side of the globe. At least among some analysts, the consensus is that the recent slide in oil prices may lead to a temporary cut in gas prices–but that won’t last.

In other words, gasoline will continue to be as expensive as it is now, or higher, over the long-term. So enjoy those cheaper gallons now, while you can. They may not last.

Written by John Voelcker, this article originally appeared on Green Car Reports, one of VentureBeat’s editorial partners.

Tags: crude oil, Electric car, electric vehicle, gas prices, gasoline

Social Media Optimization Conference (SMOC), produced by SocialTimes and Mediabistro, will take place May 23-24 in San Francisco. The conference will teach marketing and business leaders how to go beyond SEO to create organic user engagement on the social web. Save 15% with code SXGO.

Mobile advertising is ramping up quickly and is poised to grow by more than 40 percent over the next several years, outpacing traditional online advertising. And that is fueling a spate of funding announcements and deals as the competition in this space heats up.

Washington Post publisher Philip Graham called journalism the "first rough draft of history," but as a new research paper from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism notes, that role is increasingly being played by social media such as Twitter,