Payments giant PayPal has been offering online merchants the ability to use its Express Checkout service, which is a one-stop payment option streamlines the checkout process for consumers. A buyer will not have to reenter shipping, billing, or payment information for a PayPal payment, expediting the checkout process. All they need to do is enter their PayPal account login. It's similar in theory to Amazon's one click ordering option. And PayPal recently incorporated this for mobile payments as well. Today, PayPal is releasing an Ipsos Public Affairs reports that shows that incorporating the seamless payment offering has helped online merchants increase sales.

According to the report, eight in ten (83 percent) of PayPal merchants surveyed say Sales
have increased since offering Express Checkout. Among online merchants who are able to track their revenue, sales have increased an average of 18 percent since adding the Express Checkout service. Eight in ten (84 percent) of those who noticed an increase in sales say it happened within the first 3 months after offering PayPal. Others say it took four to six months (8 percent) or longer (8 percent) before they noticed an increase in sales.

Since offering PayPal, merchants claim that 22 percent of their total revenue comes from
PayPal's Express Checkout. And 25 percent of revenue coming from new customers
is channeled through PayPal's Express Checkout.

It’s important to note that this report is anecdotal and is by no means indicative of the sentiments and sales of all online merchants. But it does highlight an important trend: a seamless payments experience, whether it be online or via a mobile device, is a contributing factor to an increase in sales. PayPal has been working to offer additional seamless payment options, including a Digital Goods product.

PayPal isn’t the only company to start making transactions easier for consumers and merchants. Google launched its own Google Checkout-powered digital goods payment option recently. And we know NFC technologies on mobile phones are picking up steam.

We’re big fans of Apture, a startup that brings instantaneous search to content on the web. Today, Apture is announcing a new board member and new publishers using its plug-in. As we’ve written in the past, 'Apture Highlights’ plugs the "search leak" that is taking place with content on the web. The feature allows you to highlight any word or phrase on a page and instantly bring up search results in a window. The startup brings results from 60-plus sources including YouTube, Twitter, Wikipedia, Google and more for extra context around content.

Apture is adding former About.com CEO Peter Horan to its board of directors. Horan was formerly the CEO of About.com, which was acquired by the New York Times for $410 million in 2005. Most recently, Horan was the CEO of IAC Media & Advertising.

Apture’s business model offers publishers a white-label version of Apture Highlights, which is being used by Scribd, The Financial Times and Reuters. CEO Tristan Harris is also announcing a number of new publishers are adopting Apture, including Economist.com, ScientificAmerican, BleacherReport.com, and Times of India. While Harris cannot comment on the amount of searches being made via Apture’s plug-in, he says that consumers stay on a publisher page with Apture two to three times longer than without the plug-in.

The startup, which has raised $4.1 million in funding, has also started to place ads in the browsing experience. Publishers pay a monthly licensing fee to have a branded, ad-free experience, but Apture now includes ads within searches for the consumer facing and free products.

WordPress.com and WordPress.org have a little more in common this morning, as Automattic has announced Jetpack, a bridge between the two WordPress related offerings. For those that still don’t know the difference, it’s as follows: WordPress.com is the blog hosting platform and WordPress.org is the open source and fully customizable CMS.

Apparently people on WordPress.org had been clamoring for more of the premium features of WordPress.com, and today founder Matt Mullenweg has decided to give them the “best of both worlds,” with Jetpack, a plugin that gives the self-hosted users all of the “goodies” of WordPress.com with the freedom (and GPL) that being a WordPress.com user affords.

Mullenweg explains his motivation behind the offering, “The dot.org users can get the best of WordPress.com without giving up control, which might be the future of open source in general.”

Jetpack will eventually replace 20/30 plugins with just one and WordPress has partnered up with Bluehost, Dreamhost, Go Daddy, Hostgator, Media Temple and Network Solutions to make this bundle available immediately with the one-click WordPress.org installs upon launch.

While premium features like Blackbird Pie still remain in the realm of WordPress.com users only, WordPress had combined eight of its most requested features into JetPack: Hovercards, Stats, After the Deadlines, Twitter widget, shortcodes, shortlinks, easy Facebook/Twitter/Wordpress sharing buttons and Latex.

Says Mullenweg, “If you’re on WordPress you’re part of the family, it shouldn’t matter if we host you or not.”

There’s no shortage of apps for iOS, Android and other mobile platforms that enable you to easily share photos with your family, friends and/or the rest of the world. In fact, there hasn’t been a shortage of those for years now, and yet we continue to get pitched for new ones being released seemingly every day.

Enter Dropico, which got me to test-drive its brand new iPhone app (an Android app is also available).

They pitched it as vastly different from the likes of Instagram, PicPlz, Path, Bubblegum, PhotoRocket, Posterous, Flickr, Picasa, Plixi, Minus, Burstn, Yfrog, Facebook, Twitpic, DailyBooth, SmugShot, PhonePic, Shutterfly, Snapr, Drippic, Rrripple, Imgur, Photo Beam, PhotoScatter and a host of other photo sharing apps.

And is it? Yes … and no.

The truth is that if Dropico’s app was the first photo sharing tool you’d ever try on your smartphone, my guess is you would absolutely love it.

The app genuinely functions well and comes loaded with features like filtering (yes, like Instagram) and automatic pushing to your favorite social networking and photo sharing services (including storage services such as Dropbox).

But if you already use one of the services mentioned above and weren’t specifically looking for an alternative, you might not even care. Still, the Dropico iPhone app I tested – a couple of times – is definitely one you should check out if you’re ready to switch to another service.

I, for example, use Posterous to automatically push photos I upload to my blog to Facebook, Flickr and Twitter. In that sense, and since I don’t like to apply filters or other special effects to pictures I take with my phone, I simply don’t see why I should use Dropico instead of the Posterous iPhone app. There’s just no added value in it for me.

Two things that makes Dropico stand out, however: the variety of filters one can apply to photos, and how easy it is to privately share photos with a limited list of close friends (it works with Twitter direct messages, a private feed on Facebook, and so on).

If you feel those are features that really matter to you, be sure to give Dropico a whirl.

In conclusion: there’s no way around it – Dropico really is yet another photo sharing app. Check it out anyhow: the app is feature-rich, the design of the UI is nice and it just works.

Mobile payments are heating up and companies are taking ruthless steps to knock down competitors. Today, VeriFone is claiming that Square’s mobile payments processor contains a serious security threat to credit cardholders and businesses.

In an “open letter,” VeriFone CEO Doug Bergeron warns consumers and the industry of a serious security threat with Square's card reader and calls on Square to recall its devices (we’ve pasted the letter below). Bergeron claims that anyone can “skim” or steal personal information off of a credit card’s magnetic strip using the Square card reader with a hacked app and to illustrate the vulnerability, VeriFone wrote a test app that can "skim" to prove their assertions.

VeriFone says the flaw is in Square's hardware, which the company says lacks the ability to encrypt credit card data. It’s unclear if VeriFone’s claims have grounds, but it is a serious move on VeriFone’s part to call out a competitor publicly. VeriFone offers its PayWare Mobile app and hardware to allow iPhone users to easily accept credit card payments. Clearly, Square is a threat to VeriFone’s product, so its intentions aren’t so pure when exposing this potential issue.

Credit card fraud is not new, of course. Criminals steal credit card numbers all the time, both online and offline. Consumers are not liable for fraudulent charges, the credit card companies are. But if Square becomes a magnet for fraud, the credit card companies won’t be happy with that.

We’ve contacted Square and are awaiting a formal response.

An Open Letter to the Industry and Consumers

Today is a wake-up call to consumers and the payments industry. Last year, a start-up named Square introduced a credit card reader for smartphones with the goal of making it very easy for anyone to accept credit cards through a mobile device. Seems like a great idea, but there is a serious security flaw that Square has overlooked that places consumers in dire risk.

In less than an hour, any reasonably skilled programmer can write an application that will "skim" – or steal – a consumer's financial and personal information right off the card utilizing an easily obtained Square card reader. How do we know? We did it. Tested on sample Square card readers with our own personal credit cards, we wrote an application in less than an hour that did exactly this.

Let me explain how easy it is to exploit the vulnerability.

A criminal signs up with Square, obtains the dongle for free and creates a fake Square app on his smartphone. Insert the dongle into the audio jack of a smartphone or iPad, and you've got a mobile skimming device that fits in your pocket and that can be used to illegally collect personal and financial data from the magnetic stripe of a payment card. It's shockingly simple.

The issue is that Square's hardware is poorly constructed and lacks all ability to encrypt consumers' data, creating a window for criminals to turn the device into a skimming machine in a matter of minutes.

There are hundreds of thousands of these unsecure devices already floating out there and more are given away for free every day. And because anyone can get their hands on these Square readers, anyone can masquerade as a legitimate business or vendor and swipe your payment card. Your card data is then instantly and illegally captured in the smartphone, un-encrypted – and voila, you're a fraud victim.

Consumers who hand over their plastic to merchants using Square devices are unwittingly putting themselves in danger.

Don't take our word for it. See for yourself at www.sq-skim.com where you can download the sample skimming application and view a video of this type of fraud in action.

Today we are handing a copy of the application over to Visa, MasterCard, Discover, American Express, and JP Morgan Chase (Square’s credit card processor), and we invite their comments.

Consumer trust is what's really at stake. If the industry allows Square and other similar attempts to short-circuit security best practices, it will seriously jeopardize the integrity and security of the payment infrastructure and financial systems developed over the last three decades.

Secure payment systems, like those provided by VeriFone and other credible providers which adhere to the highest level of security practices, are critical in protecting consumers, merchants and banks. Without this protection, all commerce – conducted with plastic or mobile devices – is a catalyst for massive personal and institutional financial loss.

There is great promise in the future of mobile payments and our innovations will help drive the industry forward. It is our hope that both consumers and merchants will take it upon themselves to become educated on the security risks involved with some of these experimental payment acceptance methods, like Square, and make informed decisions to protect themselves and their customers.

We take security very seriously. Securing payment transactions is what we do, and yes – calling attention to and protecting against these types of security threats to consumers, merchants and banks is our responsibility.

We call on Square to do the responsible thing and recall these card skimming devices from the market.

Doug Bergeron
CEO, VeriFone

Australia’s Special Broadband Service has warned that the steady increase in broadband speed, and its increasing availability, may lead to "digital ghettos." The premise is simple: faster and more reliable broadband means that more and more people can participate effectively online. As affordable broadband access spreads to different ethnic groups, argues the SBS, these communities could form tight-knit "communities" online—ghettos, in other words. Instead of broadband, and more generally the Internet, bringing people together, it threatens to further separate different groups of people from each other.

Read more…

We’ve learned exclusively that Chicago-based startup GrubHub, a service that lets you order food for delivery or take out from local restaurants online or by mobile phone, has raised a whopping $20 million in Series D funding led by DAG Ventures with Benchmark Capital participating in the round. The startup recently raised $11 million in funding in November 2010, and has raised $34 million to date.

GrubHub gives its users access to food delivery service from more than 13,000 restaurants in U.S. cities including: New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Oakland, Boston, Los Angeles, Washington DC, Philadelphia, San Diego, Seattle, Portland, Denver and Boulder. CEO and co-founder Matt Maloney says he expects to list 80,000 restaurants in the next three months and will be in over 26 cities by the end of this year.

GrubHub is free for diners who order and pay for their meals with while restaurants pay
commissions on each order processed. Restaurants that do not currently partner with GrubHub can still list their telephone numbers and menus for free. And of the 13,000 restaurant menus currently available on GrubHub, 5,000 establishments are paying GrubHub to manage and market a white-label online order and food delivery service.

Mobile has also been a part of GrubHub’s expansion strategy, and the startup has launched iPhone and Android apps in the past year that allows users to find the restaurants that deliver near their current location. The apps feature the same functionality as the website, including the ability to view menus, comments, reviews and order, but adds GPS to the mix, making it easy for users to order food from the restaurants near their location.

GrubHub has experienced a 300 percent increase in mobile food orders since last Fall. The company projects mobile orders to make up 20 percent of its total food sales by the end of 2011, which is compared to less than two percent in 2009 (mobile food orders accounted for 10 percent of total food sales in 2010).

And if you take a look at the numbers (which GrubHub is more than willing to be reveal), the startup appears to be on a high-growth track. GrubHub sent $85 million in orders to restaurants in 2010 and is projected to send $200 million in orders by the end of this year. Last year, GrubHub pocketed $8.5 million in revenue (which is over 1000 percent growth from 2007′s revenue), and is on track to more than double revenue in 2011. And the company has only 100 employees.

Maloney says he wasn’t planning to raise such a big round but after the recent $11 million Series C raise, he said he received emails and calls from over 30 top-tire VC firms looking to invest in the company. The new funding, says Maloney, will be used towards acquisitions and to boost GrubHub’s product development. For example, within the website and mobile apps GrubHub will be adding a “pick-up” option which will show users restaurants within a mile or so, that allows for pick-up orders.

Bill Gurley, general partner of Benchmark Capital, said of the new round: "This additional funding will further support GrubHub's momentum and enable it to follow in the footsteps of Benchmark's other on-line portfolio companies such as OpenTable, Yelp and Zillow, which all share a template of local, social and mobile components."

Maloney feels that GrubHub can become the next OpenTable (which also had roots in Chicago), and that there is tremendous room for growth in the ector. He says that there are more than 300,000 delivery and takeout restaurants in the country and on average, GrubHub users order out more than 10 times a month. "Pickup and delivery are the fastest growing segments in restaurants and one of the largest sectors of the U.S. economy,” he explains.

Another goal Maloney has is taking GrubHub public, also following in the footsteps of OpenTable, which filed for an IPO “Going public is a very realistic opprtunity for us wihtin the next two years,” says Maloney.

Of course, for this to happen, GrubHub will have to increase revenues (OpenTable has close to $60 million yearly revenue when it went public), and prove to investors that its business is stable and growing in terms of both sales and users. Those are challenging and ambitious goals and certainly won’t be easy to achieve. But with savvy acquisitions, the right business model and a significant uptick in usage, GrubHub certainly shows potential to be a lasting presence in the online food services industry.

A Boston startup that makes energy auditing software for the commercial buildings industry, Retroficiency, raised $800,000 in a seed round led by energy management services firm World Energy Solutions (NASDAQ: XWES), and joined by a number of angel investors including Jean Hammond and Jill Preotle (both early investors in ZipCar) the companies announced today.

Facility managers, auditors or engineers who need to improve the energy efficiency of an aging building input whatever basic information they know about that building into Retroficiency’s system. The software uses the available details, and a comprehensive set of data about tens of thousands of other buildings with similar traits, then uses predictive analytics to generate an energy model for that building. (Retroficiency’s team has been compiling data on commercial buildings and energy efficiency since 2008.)

The site then generates, within hours, suggestions as to what kind of retrofit and renovation projects will have the biggest impact on a building from an energy and cost perspective. Chief executive officer and founder of Retroficiency, Bennett Fisher, offered this example of what the enterprise software can do:

“If you tell us you have fluorescent lights in a certain type of building, we can statistically infer that you have 526 fixtures with four 40-watt T12 lamps and magnetic ballasts. We can then suggest you upgrade to three 32-watt Super T8 lamps and electronic ballasts and show the relevant costs, savings, rebates, increases in ENERGY STAR ratings, decrease in Greenhouse Gas Emissions, etc.

Our optimization engine sorts through thousands of possible combinations like this over all of the building's systems and builds packages that match the customer's goal whether that is a specific reduction in energy, a payback period, or total spend limitations. All of the inputs, inferences, etc are fully transparent so a user can go back and change/update any information.”

In pilot testing, Fisher said, the system’s building assessments were at least as accurate as reports done by on-foot inspectors at massive facilities. The company aims to make old-school physical audits obsolete, and instead give auditors a tool to make the whole process faster and easier. “Physical audits take weeks and several employees’ time, and are a bottleneck to advancing retrofit and energy efficiency projects,” Fisher noted.

The market opportunity for a company like Retroficiency is growing. MacGraw Hill Construction researchers predicted:

[By 2015] non-residential green building activity [will likely] triple, representing $120 billion to $145 billion in new construction (40%-48% of the non-residential market) and $14 billion to $18 billion in major retrofit and renovation projects.

Retroficiency’s early customers include facility management firms, which own and operate real estate, and ESCOs or energy service companies which are third-party providers who develop, install and arrange financing for projects to improve buildings’ energy efficiency, and lower maintenance costs over time.

Startups gearing up for the SXSW are shining up their apps and hoping to Wow the crowds of iPhone-toting hipsters by releasing major upgrades in advance of the Austin conference. Among group texting apps alone, in the past week we’ve seen new releases from GroupMe, Fast Society, Beluga, and others. Everyone’s put their best face forward and now the race is on to see which one will become the group texting app of choice at the SXSW.

But wait, not so fast, SXSW society. GroupMe is not quite done. A week ago, it pushed out an impressive new app that offers the option to swap out SMS for push notifications and a full in-app stream. But today, it just put out a “2.1 More Thing” release for both iPhone and Android, including the ability to broadcast “joinable groups” on Twitter and Facebook, better group discovery, data connection speed detection, and special features for people setting up SXSW groups.

The joinable groups feature lets you set up a group and make it visible to other friends who you did not explicitly add to the group. It also lets you broadcast to your friends on Twitter and Facebook. People can then request to join the group. Group creators must approve new members, keeping the semi-private nature of the groups intact. (Fast Society added a similar feature in its release yesterday).

Now, when you tap on the name of anyone in one of your groups, you will see a list of mutual groups you both belong to. And if you start a SXSW group, you will see special locations in the map view, including parties and GroupMe’s “secret plans.” This feature seems like it could be ripe for sponsorships. Finally, GroupMe will detect the speed of your data connection, and drop down to SMS for people using the apps when other mobile data pipes are congested or not available.

SendGrid, an email delivery and management service, has reached an impressive milestone today—the startup has helped companies send 7.5 billion emails. That’s up from 1.2 billion emails sent through the platform last April. SendGrid is also announcing that former Oracle exec Jim Franklin has joined as CEO.

SendGrid, which was incubated in TechStars and has raised $5 million in funding, offers businesses a way to manage transactional emails (emails generated by web applications). It can handle services like subscription, bounce management and complaint feedback. Its service is aimed towards business who send out 100K emails per month or millions of emails. Clients include Foursquare, Swipely, and Hootsuite.

And with a new CEO, SendGrid is hoping to take its platform to the next level. Franklin most recently served as the Vice President of Enterprise Performance Management at Oracle. Franklin joined Oracle via its acquisition of Hyperion Solutions where he served as VP and General Manager. SendGrid’s co-founder and former CEO Isaac Saldana is stepping down to focus on product development at the startup.

While SendGrid is growing fast, recently a new, formidable competitor joined the space. Amazon Web Services launched its own email management service that directly competes with SendGrid’s offering. But Franklin seems optimistic about Amazon as a competitor. He says that Amazon entering the arena validates the importance of using an email delivery and management service. And he adds that SendGrid offers additional features, such as metrics and analytics.

And in case you are heading to SXSW, SendGrid is holding a VIP party at the conference. The first ten TechCrunch readers to email sendgrid@themixagency.com will receive a free wristband to enter the party.

Another day, another three-stringed guitar on Kickstarter. This instrument comes to us courtesy of Rafael Atijas and started out as a thesis project at NYU. It is a simple, 3-string guitar for kids that is tuned to open chords and allows you to strum up and down the neck without having to perform many fretting maneuvers. The guitar comes unassembled and includes an instruction book.

The project isn’t currently funded (we suspect it will be shortly) but the guitar costs $150 and for $300 you get a special lesson from Rafael himself. $500 gets you a few guitars while $1,000 gets you a set of two. The Loog is also upgradeable.

Read more…

Over the past few days, Foursquare has made headlines for a partnership with American Express, and for a completely revamped version of their mobile experience on the iPhone and Android phones. And they’re not done yet.

The latest bit of what co-found Dennis Crowley calls Foursquare’s “shock and awe” campaign (leading up to SXSW later this week), may be the most important. It certainly will have the deepest ramifications for their eventual business model: a totally revamped Foursquare Merchant Platform — one that is completely automated.

Crowley notes that Foursquare first started taking the steps to make the service a platform for merchants in late 2009. And by early 2010, the model was already breaking out. But it was all manual work. “It used to be Tristan [Walker, head of business development] answering the phone,” Crowley says of how merchant deals got done. As bigger brands started to show interest, that method didn’t scale. Foursquare knew they had to build a fully automated system.

Things like merchant verification moved towards an automated phone service. But that also wasn’t good enough for what Foursquare needed. So they built a set of robust tools that will now work for business large and small — from a single mom-and-pop store, to a chain with thousands of locations around the world.

Once a business is verified with the new system, they’ll be free to use these tools as they please. They can create deals on the fly and have them up and running across Foursquare’s network in minutes. That includes all of the new types of deals that Foursquare announced today as a part of the 3.0 release (Flash Specials Friend Specials, Swarm Specials, Newbie Specials, etc). And here’s one key to all of this: Foursquare already has 250,000 verified businesses in their database. These new tools empower every single one of those immediately.

A few highlights of this new platform include the ability for venues to run multiple specials at once. Previously, only one special could be run at a time — the old one had to be removed to be replaced by the new one. Now, not only can venues run different types of specials, merchants with multiple locations can run and manage different types of specials at different stores.

Along those lines, Foursquare is now giving merchants aggregate stats to show how well their specials are working. Previously, you could only see one special’s stats at a time. Now you’ll be able to see the big picture and compare and contrast how the various specials are doing.

Merchants will also now be able to take advantage of Foursquare’s new “Specials Nearby” area of the newly revamped apps. And they’ll be able to see what kind of check-ins this is bringing in.

All of this will be extremely useful when it comes to merchants interacting with Foursquare’s nearly 7.5 million users. In fact, these tools should spark a true explosion of digital loyalty and deals across the Foursquare ecosystem that could ripple across the entire location industry.

But the obvious next question is: does this mean big business for Foursquare as well? As in: cold hard cash?

Not yet.

Crowley says that while all of this is a potential foundation for Foursquare’s eventual business model, “we won’t charge for something still being baked.” “We've always said we won't monetize until we get it just right,” he continues, noting that they’re getting closer with these tools, but not quite there yet.

For now, with the new tools, Foursquare will have to simply be proud of the big names already interested in the platform. These include names like Sports Authority, Applebeels, RadioShack, The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, Barnes & Noble, Arby’s Chilli’s, Whole Foods, Toys R’ Us, and H&M.

As for gaming these new deals, the same system Foursquare has used for a while remains: users are welcome to check-in where they please, but deals require the check-in to be location verified. And, obviously, you have to present the deal on the screen to a person working at the venue to redeem it.

Expect a lot of merchant deal action going down this week in Austin, Texas while the new system is put to the test during SXSW. Merchants should look for the new tools to go live on Friday.

Credit Sesame, which helps consumers make smarter credit decisions and optimize their loans for maximum savings online, this morning announced it has raised $6.15 million in Series B funding in a round led by Menlo Ventures. Early backer Inventus Capital also participated in this round.

Credit Sesame is a free online service that helps consumers monitor their debt and credit information as well as the lending market, all in one place.

The service, which was launched in public beta in November 2010 after the company first introduced its wares at TechCrunch Disrupt, is designed to help consumers optimize their credit and loan portfolios, including mortgages, consumer loans and credit card debt.

Credit Sesame says its solution, which is backed by an analytics engine developed by Stanford University scientists, already helps consumers manage nearly half a billion dollars in loans.

The company has now raised $7.35 million in funding in total.

OpenFeint, the comprehensive mobile social gaming platform from Aurora Feint, is teaming up with its recent investor and Chinese gaming company The9 on a joint initiative to bring game developers to the Android platform. Basically, OpenFeint and The9 will be using the $100 million Fund9, a Chinese-based mobile internet development fund, to fund game developers.

As we’ve written in the past, OpenFeint has taken a cross-platform approach to its social gaming platform, first launching on the iPhone and iPad and more recently adding Android game developers to its rapidly growing community, launching its plug and play social game development to developers to the public a few weeks ago. The startup, which has over 68 million players, has already helped launch 250 games on the Android platform.

The fund is designed to help indie developers who may not have the resources to build for additional platforms. OpenFeint and The9 will review and select the best games and will fund their port to Android and OpenFeint integration. The companies will also pick select games to expand to China and will facilitate their localization. The companies say that the games will be chosen based on the quality of the experience, past download performance in other app stores, and the talents of the actual developer.

The $100 million Fund9 is a Chinese-based development fund that invests in mobile app, game engine, and platform technology developers. Announced last December, the fund is a collaboration amongThe9, China Rock Capital Management, Chengwei Ventures, and China Renaissance K2 Ventures.

Multiplatform has been an important strategy for OpenFeint, as the company faces competition from Apple’s GameCenter. The Android platform is rapidly growing and may be a wise bet for the company.

DIGIOP Technologies, a developer of video and data management software solutions, this morning announced that an investor group led by The Carlyle Group has acquired them earlier this month. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. DIGIOP offers a suite of video and data management solutions, primarily for the surveillance industry, and plans to launch the next version of its client software Reflection later this spring.

Tier 3, which bills itself as an enterprise platform-as-a-service (PaaS) company, today announced that it has scored $8.5 million in Series A funding from Ignition and Madrona Venture Group. John Connors from Ignition and Matt McIlwain from Madrona will join the company's board of directors. Founded in 2006, Tier 3 provides infrastructure services for nearly 100 customers across consulting, e-commerce, SaaS and e-discovery industries, serving customers such as Exterro and Microsoft.

Offermatic, which we dubbed the freak love child of Blippy, Groupon and Mint early on, has secured $4.5 million in funding in a Series A round led by early backer Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

A group of Silicon Valley investors, including Ron Conway, former AdMob CEO Omar Hamoui and early execs from Facebook and Mint.com, also participated in the round.

Hamoui will also join Offermatic’s board of directors.

The additional capital will be used to hire more people and expand its services for consumers and retailers, Offermatic says.

Launched in beta last December, Offermatic basically delivers personalized savings to consumers based on their spending history. By linking existing credit and debit cards to an Offermatic account, people receive automatic discount offers on products and services, without the hassle of redeeming coupons or vouchers.

The company says, combined with offering one-click automatic rebates, the conversion rate among beta users has been 15 percent or more, which it says is 15 to 30 times higher than the average for online coupons.

The backstory isn’t exactly detailed, but somehow M.I.C. Gadget got their hands on what seems to be an unreleased 64GB iPhone. All they’re stating is that the phone is not for sale and it was “definitely leaked from Foxconn’s factory in Shenzhen.” True? We don’t know, but it at least seems like the real deal. The backside shows a model number of XXXXX and an FCC ID of BCG-AXXXXX — just like Gizmodo’s prototype iPhone 4. The software however registers the phone with a model number of 995-6049LL running iOS 4.1 and is not SIM-locked. Best of all though, the phone shows 64GB of storage.

Interestingly enough, the casing itself seems void of any changes. Even the external antenna is the same, which seems to state that either this is a fake — possible — or Apple is following previously-set precedents and throwing accessory makers a bone by keeping the casing the same for another model year.

Still, it’s anyone’s guess if this is the real deal. It is slightly different in several key areas — silver ring around the lens, symbols on the volume buttons, different faceplate — from the last purported 64GB iPhone posted by M.I.C. Gadget. You may wanna peep the video after the break before coming to any conclusions.

Read More

Flite (formerly Widgetbox) has raised $12 Million in Series C funding led by General Catalyst Partners with existing investors Sequoia Capital, Hummer Winblad and NCD Investors participating in the round. This brings Flite’s total funding to $27 million.

Along with the funding, Widgetbox is rebranding itself as Flite. Since 2006, Widgetbox has built a name for itself by creating web widgets to aggregate content and increase engagement. The company then began building and distributing mobile web apps for the iPhone and Android.

And Widgetbox launched ClickTurn, which allows publishers to easily create dynamic ads with multiple tabs that include content from YouTube, Twitter and Facebook streams. Now, Widgetbox is rebranding as Flite, emphasizing the focus on the company’s rich-media ad platform.

Flite provides brands and publishers with a ad-serving and creation platform for rich-media advertisements. The platform allows advertisers and publishers to deliver real-time, interactive display ads, which CEO Will Price likens to the iAd format. Price says that Flite’s ads are focused on engaging users with rich-media formats

Specifically, Flite’s tools create rich media ads with little to no technical knowledge, allows users to dynamically update campaigns in realtime, integrates third-party data into ads, and incorporates social content into ads. Flite’s ad formats are also compatible with mobile devices such as the iPad, iPhone, and Android.

More than one hundred and twenty leading brands have used the Flite platform to deliver
their brand experiences across the Web. Flite, which faces competition from Google’s DoubleClick platform, has helped serve twenty-five billion units with more than one hundred and twenty million monthly uniques, and fifty-five million unique daily events captured by Flite's metrics system. Flite’s publishing partners include LinkedIn, Forbes, Yahoo, CBS Interactive, TechCrunch and brands like Microsoft, L’Oreal, Charles Schwab and Toyota.

Flite is probably wise to transition the focus of its business to its ad-serving platform. While $1 billion of the $7.4 billion display ad market involves rich media ads, this sector is rapidly growing. Advertisers are demanding a more customized feel to campaigns and are expecting a higher audience engagement as rich media ads evolve.

The funding will be used for product development and to hire additional staff.

In 2011, with web usage, bandwidth, smartphones and tablets all on the rise, it can hardly have escaped the average small business they they must have an online presence. But with “hosting solutions” baffling the majority and even mapping a domain to a free WordPress site still beyond most, the options can be bewildering. At the same time people are more aware of design than ever. UI amongst the best new startups has changed the game and even old laggard portals have undergone a facelift. The iPhone and iPad have brought a new expectation in interface. So the opportunity to make all this easy is potentially huge.

Thus today, simple web site builder Moonfruit has raised new funding from Silicon Valley fund 500 Startups and is re-launching with a new site capable of creating these new design-focused and socially integrated sites for small businesses.

It’s main competitor in this space is Wix. However, its problem is that it is really a surface layer to a building platform (via Flash) and thus there is no rendering on other platforms like mobile. With its new funding Moonfruit is using an extremely consumer-friendly Flash builder for all those web newbies which then renders sites in either Flash or HTML or whatever you are using on Web, mobile or any Tablet browser. Most of Moonfruit’s revenues come from premium paid subscribers are small businesses who want better designed tools to design these better looking sites for the new design-conscious era.

Terms have not been disclosed but the strategic funding with Valley maverick Dave McClure is designed to springboard Moonfruit's business development in the US. Moonfruit already raised $2.25m in a Series A last September from the US-based Stephens Inc. bank to grow in the US, and is currently the no.1 DIY website builder in the UK, while 30% of its customers are now in the US.

Growth is palpable. Some 3.4 milion sites were built on Moonfruit as of February 2011, versus 2.4 million in the same period last year. It now has 300,000 users, 50,000 premium paying subscribers (a 40% increase from January 2010) and turnover has increased by 51% since Jan 2010.

McClure, Founding Partner, 500 Startups, told us this is a later stage deal than it normally goes for, so therefore a lot of the risk has been taken out of it. But that it was the “great design sensibility, and solutions to everyday problems” that lead it towards Moonfruit.

Cofounder Wendy Tan-White notes that the overwhelming number of entrepreneurs in the United States are still small businesses: 99.7% of companies. Thats a big potential market being left on the table by more slightly more tech solutions like WordPress.

From April Moonfruit is also adding easy blogging with RSS into its core site offering. Where as you can’t edit most blog templates without getting into CSS/HTML, Moonfruit’s will combine ‘literal’ design editing with dynamic, on the fly publishing. Shops are coming in July, editable from an iOS app. A highly customised version of Zendesk is also now integrated.

Begun, the alternative app stores war has.

According to a tweet from GetJar Networks, which provides an alternative, platform-agnostic mobile applications marketplace, the Opera’s Mini browser has been kicked off the alternative app store offered by the Lithuanian company.

The reason for the ban (based on later messages GetJar posted on Twitter – they say an explanatory blog post is coming soon) is that Opera Mini now boasts an app store of its own, courtesy of a partnership with Appia (formerly PocketGear).

The news of Opera Mini’s ejection from GetJar’s marketplace was first reported by PaidContent.

GetJar responded to someone on Twitter who cynically stated that it “looks like GetJar isn’t the anti-App Store after all” that it would explain the reasoning for the Opera Mini ban in detail on its developer blog later today, but added to the tweet that “we all have to make a living”.

Translation: GetJar is clearly not going to allow competing mobile app stores to enjoy the marketing and distribution power of its network because it would have a direct impact on their business. Appia says it offers 140,000 free and paid apps, which is roughly the same amount of apps and games GetJar claims it offers.

Update: a reader suggests the possibility that GetJar bid for Opera’s inclusion of its app store in its mobile browser products but lost out on Appia. Neither company has confirmed, but something to think about.

GetJar has raised $42 million in venture capital from Accel Partners and Tiger Global to date – the company secured a $25 million round last month.

We’ve asked Opera for comment, and they’ve responded thusly:

As we have worked closely with GetJar for a number of years we would like to find a solution to still be part of their offering. Opera Mini has been one of the most popular downloads in GetJar’s system historically, so we also believe this means that their users are missing out on a popular app.

We are in dialogue with GetJar about the process going forward. At this stage we can not confirm anything.

To be continued, in other words.

Update: here’s the upcoming blog post, penned by Patrick Mork, Head of Marketing at GetJar:

Dear GetJar Users,

This week we had to take a very drastic and unusual step at GetJar: to remove one of our long-time favourite apps. This is something that we don’t take lightly and is nearly unprecedented in the 5+ years we’ve been distributing apps to consumers in more than 190 countries. The app in question, Opera Mini browser, had racked up more the 30 million downloads on GetJar over the last several years and was one of the most popular apps in the browser category. It was also the winner of the prestigious Gettie Award last year for best mobile app in the Windows Mobile category.

So why did we do this?

Apps on Getjar are free to download. This has always allowed us to provide quick, unrestricted and worldwide access to apps for all our users. It’s a central part of our business and philosophy and one that we find fundamental to allowing consumers to try great content no matter where they live and how they want to consume apps. However, to keep our service running GetJar needs to make money ;)

Therefore, we allow app developers to promote their applications on GetJar using advertising. Developers can obtain extra visibility to promote their apps and pay for this on a per-download-basis. This keeps your content free, keeps us running and allows developers to get extra visibility.

The simple problem is that Opera mini decided to include a competing app store in its browser. Although we don’t have any issue with this in principle, in practice it means that consumers might start using this app store instead of visiting GetJar to get their favourite apps. This robs GetJar of traffic and therefore of the advertising necessary to keep our service free for the more than 25 million consumers that use GetJar. It also jeopardizes an ecosystem that has generated over 1.6 billion downloads for tens of thousands of developers who depend on us to make money from their apps.

Don’t get me wrong: we’re happy to go head-to-head with any other app store and are certain that once you’ve tried the Opera App store you’ll find the depth of content, discovery and download from GetJar more compelling than ever. But it’s an another thing entirely to help competitors grow their business at our expense or that of our community.

We spent many months negotiating with Opera to avoid this scenario and are disappointed that GetJar consumers will no longer have access to Opera Mini. Fortunately, there are a number of excellent options on GetJar for our users including Bitstream Bolt, UC Web browser and Squace. All are excellent products.

In the meantime, we hope to resolve this solution with Opera in the future and want to thank you all for being such dedicated GetJar fans ;)

Thanks,

Patrick Mork, CMO GetJar

Avangate, an Amsterdam, The Netherlands-based company that enables software makers to sell their products online as well as to manage a solid distribution network, has raised €4 million euros (roughly $5.5 million) in funding. Eastern European venture capitalist 3TS Capital Partners has acquired a minority stake in Avangate, out of what it is informally known as the 3TS Cisco Growth Fund. Founded in 2005, Avangate offers a combination of an eCommerce platform, a partner management system and a worldwide affiliate network.

Telecom gear company Nokia Siemens Networks‘ acquisition of Motorola‘s wireless networks infrastructure assets will be delayed further beyond the Q1 deadline as Chinese regulatory authorities continue to review the deal, the company announced this morning. The joint venture had originally announced that it would be acquiring Motorola’s network unit for $1.2 billion in cash in July 2010.

In a press statement, Nokia Siemens Networks says the transaction is still pending anti-trust approval from China’s antitrust authorities and that closing activities will not be completed in the first quarter of this year, as previously targeted.

From the press release:

The proposed acquisition has entered phase three of the review process with the Anti-Monopoly Bureau of the Ministry of Commerce in China (MOFCOM). Nokia Siemens Networks remains committed to the acquisition but will provide no further guidance on when it is likely to be completed.

NSN originally hoped to complete the acquisition by the end of 2010, but it now appears to have been delayed indefinitely. The deal has already received the approval of regulators worldwide, from the United States to Europe and Japan.

Nokia Siemens Network, as the name suggests, is a joint venture between Finland’s Nokia and Germany’s Siemens.

As if European startups weren’t already at a notional disadvantage in addressing smaller markets, having access to less venture capital and being geographically spread out, a new EU-wide law proposes to hobble its innovation companies by slapping big privacy warning signs all over their sites.

From 25 May, new European laws will dictate that “explicit consent” must be gathered from web users who are being tracked via cookies. That translates into warnings which will put off consumers from EU sites, while US-based startups will be free to continue as they are. How convenient huh.

BlackBerry maker Research In Motion this morning announced that it will launch its PlayBook tablet computer with 7digital's music store pre-installed. The music store will come installed on the tablet at its launch in the United States and Canada, with further international roll out in 2011, the companies said.