The daily deal space continues to be as active as ever. This means, on the one hand, there’s a lot of innovation and experimentation with new models happening in the space, but, on the other, there’s also plenty of derivative technology, clones, and noise. This is largely because the barriers to entry are so low, if not non-existent; everybody and their mother seems to have a daily deals site, or is using one. Of course, this generally results in deal overload, expiration, disorganization, and a thousand other pain points.

Deal wallets, deal maps, secondary resale marketplaces, and more have popped up to address these issues. And today, another startup enters the space (in beta), called deel.io, which, simply put, wants to bring a bit of organization and simplicity to the wild and woolly deal space.

Deelio’s method of attack isn’t exactly new, as it is essentially an aggregator that lets users view deals in the local area through map and list-based UIs. Dealmap, which was scooped up by Google in August, did pretty much exactly that. 8coupons has a great dealmap, too, and so on.

Of course, deelio does have search expertise going for it. The co-founders, Sanjay Mavinkurve and Vijay Boyapati are both former Google engineers. While there is plenty of competition in deal aggregation, Mavinkurve holds that no one is really doing search well, and being former Googlers, “search is in our blood”, he says. It also happens that Mavinkurve was one of the early engineers at HarvardConnection (later known as ConnectU), which was founded by the Winklevosses and Divya Narendra in 2002. Mavikurve began the early work on HarvardConnection, but graduated in 2003 and went to work for Google. Victor Gao replaced Mavikurve in a part-time capacity, before recommending Mark Zuckerberg. The rest, as they say, is history.

While deelio’s “Deal Search Engine” already offers deal search for some dozen cities, it still has a ways to go in terms of volume of deals. But the site is still in beta, and that will come. The real value proposition, aside from the easy-to-use search function is the design. Both the deal map and the list interface are very clean, are quick to respond and load, and offer the ability to view Yelp reviews in search listings, which is a nifty little feature.

With plenty of options in terms of deal aggregators, offering a great product experience an appealing visual layout can make all the difference to user acquisition and retention. Many daily deal users complain about receiving deals or only being able to find deals that really have no relevance to the things they enjoy. Especially for guys who aren’t necessarily looking for $50 off spa treatments, offering the ability to find what they’re looking for without signing up for multiple deal sites is key.

In addition, deelio incorporates vacation and escape packages, a vertical that is becoming increasingly popular on daily deal sites through its so-called “deelio Vacations”, which map out discounts at hotels around the world so that users can see if there are deals being offered in their target destination. The team is also currently working on a number of other enhancements to the site’s usability, including features like personalized email digest, additional categorization, and advanced search criteria.

In the crazy free-for-all that is the daily deals space, deelio’s clean design and navigable deal map and search engine are definitely welcome additions. Check deelio out at home here and let us know what you think.

Application performance and analytics solution provider Tracelytics has just closed a seed round of $600,000 from Battery Ventures, Flybridge Capital Partners, Google Ventures, and several prominent angel investors. The Tracelytics solution, currently in a limited release, is a SaaS-based application performance management (APM) tool that’s used to  provide visibility into complex, distributed Web applications written in PHP, Ruby or Python.

As any startup can tell you, ensuring that your Web applications stay up and running is critical, but it’s not an easy task. It can also be a big, expensive time suck, especially when many of the current siloed solutions don’t give you the full view of what’s going on. Tracelytics attempts to make that process easier by handling the data collection across layers and machines, then presents it to you in an easy-to-read dashboard interface, so you can see what’s going on, where and why.

The service provides end-to-end tracing, data filtering, machine-level metrics and error reporting. At present, it works on Debian, Ubuntu, Red Hat and CentOS, and supports the HTTP and Thrift protocols.

The Providence, Rhode Island-based company was founded in June 2010 by Spirios Eliopoulos, Dan Kuebrich and Chris Erway. Eliopoulos and Kuebrich previously worked together at Amie Street, while Erway was previously at IBM.

The company is currently offering discounted pricing to early users via its website.

A new startup called Euclid Elements emerged from stealth mode today to debut its customer-tracking solution for brick-and-mortar merchants it’s calling “Google Analytics for the physical world.” The name is an apt description for the new solution, which employs sensors and wireless technology to track customer behavior, as its founding team actually includes former Google Analytics engineers.

Euclid also announced its $5.8 million in Series A funding from New Enterprise Associates (NEA), Harrison Metal, Triple Point Capital and other angel investors.

Euclid Co-founder Scott Crosby previously c0-founded Urchin, which was acquired by Google in 2005 and became Google Analytics. His brother, Brett Crosby, also an Urchin Co-founder, now sits on Euclid’s board. The company’s CEO, Will Smith, has an interesting background too, as the grandson of John Smith, an early shopping center developer and co-founder of the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC). You can kind of say that retail runs in his blood.

The rest of the 15-person team, primarily engineers (save for one new hire), has backgrounds that include experience at ShopperTrak, IBM, Ariba, TIBCO/Reuters, Google, Playdom, Qualcomm, 23AndMe and Mint/Intuit.

So what does Euclid actually do? It uses preconfigured in-store sensors plugged directly into switch in the network closet to track the Wi-Fi signals on customers’ smartphones. In doing so, Euclid can map out and analyze customer shopping behavior, including things like foot patterns (the movement in and out and through the store), plus customer loyalty, retention rates, “dwell time,” and even things like “window conversion rates,” which can be thought of as the offline “click-though.” (A window conversion means a customer sees a window display and then decides to enter the store).

The technology has been in development for a year and nine months, says Smith. He also explains that the sensors don’t collect personally identifiable information on customers themselves, despite their ability to track an individual’s movements throughout the store. “The phones ping for access points in the store, and the sensor listens for that,” he says. “It then hashes the MAC address on the phone.” What that means is that the sensor isn’t storing the actual unique identifier (the MAC address) itself, but a representation of that. For customers who still feel uncomfortable, stores will display a sign indicating how to opt-out of the data collection process.

Although the data is not available in real-time (there’s a 12-hour delay), it is presented in an online dashboard similar to Google Analytics. The focus for the team’s efforts now is on improving the dashboard’s interface.

The analytics service will be sold to merchants on a subscription basis at a cost of $200 per sensor per month. One sensor covers around 1.3 zones (departments), so a large retailer like a Macy’s might need a few sensors to cover its whole store.

Palo Alto-based Euclid Elements has been in private beta testing with select retailers in the San Francisco Bay area like Philz Coffee, but is now open to all U.S. merchants.

Moolah Media, a recently launched mobile ad network that uses a cost-per-action and cost-per-lead model, is rolling out a new performance optimized ad units for advertisers and publishers with the launch of its new SmartMoolah layer.

The network launched last year allowing advertisers to drive inbound calls directly to a call center, collect signups and registration leads, while also tracking conversions. Moolah promises higher payouts and 100 percent fill rates for publishers, and ads can be placed within apps, on the mobile web or within text messages.

Earlier this year, the startup added a number of new ad formats for display or in-app advertising. Currently, Moolah reaches 20 million users and serves a billion ad impressions in the U.S. per month on its network.

The newest ad unit, which is being unveiled today, aims to measure consumer actions beyond the click, subsequently, helping serve more relevant ads for each consumer. The startup compared the relevance technology to a Pandora-like experience for the consumer. Unlike traditional cost-per-impression, cost-per-click, or cost-per-download advertising, SmartMoolah measures actions after the click. SmartMoolah ads are mobile display units measured on a cost-per-action basis. Actions include download, form submit, click-to-call, and interactive SMS.

Actions that occur after a click show publishers when a consumer makes a purchase, clicks on content, or shares the experience with others. Based on a consumer's actions, Moolah can serve up more relevant ads to that consumer in the future.

SmartMoolah ads can be deployed in Android and iOS mobile apps through the company's SDKs, and within mobile websites using standards-based APIs. The startup says that a campaign optimized by SmartMoolah ads performs eight times better than a campaign that is not targeted, resulting in $0.96 eCPMs over just $0.12. SmartMoolah ads also promise to double click-through rates.

The music industry industry has taken some questionable stances on digital technology over the years. To call it resistant to change probably wouldn’t be stepping too far out of line. That’s why, as music fans, we love to hear about cases in which the music industry demonstrates forward thinking and proactively constructs policy that takes new technologies and distribution media into account. Maybe it’s unfair to paint the entire industry with a single stroke, but if this is true of any part of the industry, it’s traditionally been true of the major record labels.

The good news is that EMI, one of the big four, is taking some laudable steps to open its vault of music. The record label has teamed up with The Echo Nest, a music intelligence platform whose technology powers a number of music apps from big media companies to indy developers, to create an initiative that will put thousands of its songs and other music-related content (video, photos, and artwork, for example) into the hands of more than 10,000 app developers.

According to Echo Nest’s release, the collaboration represents one of the most extensive collections of licensed music to be made available in this way, giving developers a one-stop destination to create cool digital products for EMI’s artists.

Traditionally, the labels haven’t played nice with the developer community, bleeding them dry on licensing fees or shutting them out altogether. EMI has an amazing stock of content that is typically very difficult for third-parties to access without jumping through a ton of hoops or involving someone’s lawyer.

This new partnership is part of the record label’s OpenEMI initiative, which is focused on digital innovation and improving the music licensing process for new digital apps in a way this is flexible and adaptive for developers. Basically, it’s focusing on letting developers bring their products directly to market, without the requisite hoop-jumping. Man, this kind of stuff should be the norm for music labels, but just the fact that a major record label has created an initiative like this is enough to make me want to stand up and cheer.

As part of the new initiative, Echo Nest and EMI have created a sandbox that offers developers creative briefs and a chance to play around in EMI’s bullpen of about 12,000 songs. Only 2K of these are from the general catalog, but precleared content will be offered from artists like Gorillaz, Pet Shop Boys, Professor Green, and a few more. The pair have also worked out a standardized fee for these songs, which will see the label take 60 percent of net revenue, with the remaining 40 percent split between Echo Nest and developers, though Echo Nest says that developers should see the majority of that money.

As to what will come out of this partnership, that remains to be seen, but it’s certainly a great start for developers looking to get legal, painless access to a great pool of music. Granted, if developers want to play with music outside of the EMI catalog, they’re out of luck, but if EMI can continue to approve more songs, this could have the potential for the development of some cool apps. Probably won’t see a Spotify or a Pandora, but really anything is better than nothing.

According to new data from Nielsen, Android has continued to pick up steam in the United States, and retains its crown as the most-used smartphone OS during Q3 2011. Google’s mobile OS now accounts for 43% of U.S. smartphones, up from the 39% we saw back in July. Apple’s iOS, on the other hand, has remained lock-steady at 28% this whole time, putting it at a distant second.

Despite their lack of growth on the software front, Apple still rules the roost when it comes to hardware. Apple’s iPhones are used by a full 28% of all smartphone customers, making them the top manufacturer for yet another quarter.

Meanwhile, use of RIM’s BlackBerry OS has slowly begun to slip: while it previously accounted for 20% of the smartphone OS market, it now accounts for 18%. Certainly not a drastic dip, but the Q3 report doesn’t take into account some of the more recent unpleasantness that the folks in Waterloo have been dealing with.

Surprisingly, Windows Phone’s adoption rate seems to have slowed down as well, as it now only accounts for 7% of smartphones, down from the 9% figure we saw last time. Microsoft and Nokia certainly aim to change that come next year, but we’ll soon see how well their grand designs pan out.

The Q3 results are definitely interesting, but I think the Q4 report is really the one to look out for. New hardware (and OS) announcements are coming at a blistering pace, and it’ll be a hoot to see how the landscape changes after the holiday retail wars have come and gone.

Japan took the top spot from China in the ranking for the world’s fastest supercomputer back in June, when the International Supercomputing Conference said “K”, a supercomputer made by Fujitsu, is outperforming China’s Tianhe-1A. In August, the Japanese government said it is ready to pump another US$1.3 billion into supercomputer development, and today, K is faster than ever.

As announced by Fujitsu, K is now the first computer in the world being able to handle over 10 quadrillion calculations per second, or 10 petaflops. To be more concrete, K’s 88,128 CPUs (arrayed over 864 racks) ran continuously for almost 30 hours, achieving a performance of 10.51 petaflops (benchmark in June: 8.162 petaflops).

According to Fujitsu and its other maker, Japanese government agency RIKEN, this performance translates to an execution efficiency of 93.2%, a number that’s higher than that of other supercomputers, too (benchmark in June: 93.0%).

K is expected to help the government predict earthquakes and other natural disasters, analyze climate change, develop new drugs, explore outer space, etc. Fujitsu and Riken plan to put it to practical use in November 2012.

This morning, popular audio platform SoundCloud is debuting its brand-new HTML5 widget which will now be offered in beta format alongside its current Flash widget, but will eventually replace it. The completely redesigned widget allows SoundCloud users to embed their recordings and uploads on their blog or website, view information about the sound, its creator, the likes, comments and plays, and easily share the sound to social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.

Also, it just looks way, way better.

SoundCloud says the new widget was redesigned to encourage more interactivity around the sound itself and with the listener comments. The timed comments are now more usable on this version of the widget, at the request of SoundCloud users. Before, they would pop up over the track as conversation bubbles. In the new widget, they appear beneath the track in a much more readable format.

This first public beta includes the social sharing options noted above, but subsequent versions will include even more social elements. When you click the share button on the top-right, Facebook (Likes), Twitter and Google+ are featured, but smaller icons for Tumblr, Facebook (Share), Reddit, StumbleUpon, and email are available below. The link and embed code are also provided.

Because the widget is now built on top of HTML5 technology, SoundCloud will be able to add more features at a faster pace going forward, the company says.At some point in the future, this new widget will replace the Flash version entirely.

The HTML5 widget is already live on some Sony Music artists’ pages, including Britney Spears and Big Time Rush, as well as on the Tumblr for Wattpad, a social network for readers and writers.

Below are screenshots (not embeds) of the old Flash widget (top) and the new one (below).

It’s with a heavy heart that I write this revised Google TV review. The product is teetering on a ledge between falling into an abyss of obscurity or sliding downhill into geekdom. There doesn’t seem to be an exit path to the mainstream. Google TV, at least in this latest incarnation, fails to impress or resolve the major fundamental issues that doomed the first version. Oh how I wanted Google TV to finally be the bridge between cable and internet content. But it’s still nothing more than a fancy Netflix and YouTube box.

Hear this: The latest Google TV, referred to as Google TV 2.0 throughout the rest of this review, is a star performer. It runs like a champ and it’s clear that Google engineers paid close attention to criticism of version 1.0. Most of the functions and design elements previously missing are elegantly included. However, most of the downfalls of the older version had nothing to do with user interface. Content is king and Google TV sill doesn’t wear the crown.

Google TV 1.0 was a design mishmash. Different screens featured different design cues; each screen was almost completely different. Google TV 2.0 features a mostly unified experience throughout and Android users should feel right at home. The Honeycomb influence is undeniable and it works well on the living room scale of things.

The home screen is now a single bar of icons that overlays the background content. These are the most used apps or swapped for favorites. It also provides a natural navigation path to the apps and the new key features of TV & Movies, YouTube and Chrome. It’s a gorgeous menu tree.

Google TV is now built on Android 3.1 rather than 2.2. The new system runs silky smooth even on the year-old Sony Internet TV Blu-ray player. Google previously stated that it was designed for the older hardware but new models are coming next year that feature new CPUs so the performance should get even better. The older chipsets still choke on the HTML 5 apps. Any of the so-called “Spotlight TV optimized websites” stutter and are generally laggy in operation. It’s so bad that it’s understandable that Google clumped the lot together in one app rather than featuring the content separately. That way, you know, people are less likely to stumble upon them.

Part of Google TV’s draw is the web browsing and it’s vastly improved in Google TV 2.0. Basic features like bookmarks are finally present. Pages load quicker and it’s overall a more natural internet experience.

But that’s where the fun stops.

At its core, Google TV is about serving more entertainment content to the viewer. And it does. It accomplishes this goal, but the additional content is mainly just from Netflix, Amazon and Youtube as Hulu, ABC.com, NBC.com and all the rest of big media’s ad-supported websites are blocked. GTV’s strength has always been its search function that queues several internet sources and the owners cable TV guide. The new TV & Movies app is a major revision of the first generation’s search function. It intelligently presents available content to the viewer. But the limited amount of available services means that it’s mostly an alternative front-end to Netflix and Amazon. It looks and works great, but this smart guide eventually dumps users into the other apps anyway.

During an interview with Google TV’s head, Mario Queiroz, he stated to me that an API is planned for this search so it should grow and improve overtime — at least in theory. That’s the problem with Google TV: In theory it’s great. It sounds like a great service until you use it and find the hassle isn’t compensated by any real value.

Google TV is a great Netflix and YouTube box but that’s about it. The revised YouTube Leanback app features great navigation paths and content discovery, but it seemingly runs on Flash, which as I found, likes to crash. Still, it’s the best way living room YouTube experience I’ve seen yet even with the crashes.

The internet community has long stated that apps will save Google TV. Well, apps are here and I don’t see anything of value. You have a problem when AOL HD is the top featured app. More apps will likely come in time but I for one do not care about playing Angry Birds on Google TV. Besides, the Roku XS already has Angry Birds and a motion control remote. My negative outlook on Google TV would likely change completely if big media outs apps with free access to their ad-supported content.

Worse yet, there don’t seem to be many notable apps exclusive to Google TV. Most video apps are just ports of existing Boxee or Roku apps. Minus Google TV’s arguably trivial cable TV integration, those two devices are superior in many ways to Google TV even with this major revision.

Take the Roku devices. The entire line features access to the same sources, which tower over Google TV with over 100 streaming sources. Most aren’t memorable but Roku has the big three: Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu Plus. All the rest are just a bonus. Google TV has Roku beat with a unified search but Roku has a lot more content. Roku devices also do not have a quality web browser but the additional content — and an interface easy enough for your grandma to use — makes it an easy choice for the person just looking to supplement their cable TV with additional content.

The Boxee Box costs $179, which is $80 more than the Logitech Revue Google TV. But for most, the extra cash is well worth it. Once again, Google TV has Boxee beat in the web browsing department and while Boxee does have a built-in client, the remote only has a four-way directional pad that makes navigating a bit strenuous. But Boxee has a very similar unified search as Google TV. It’s not as pretty as GTV’s but since Boxee still has access to websites like ABC.com, NBC.com and all the rest, the search function presents a lot more available sources, most of which are free. Plus, much like on Google TV, it looks at local network sources, but Boxee doesn’t rely on sloppy DLNA servers like GTV and it can play back nearly any file type, including MKV containers and full Blu-ray disc images from any network source; Google TV 2.0 seems to only like mpeg2 and .avi files and it has to be from a DLNA server.

That said, Google TV 2.0 is fundamentally different from the other devices in that it’s not just another box. Where the Roku and Boxee Box requires owners to switch inputs on their TV and use another remote, Google TV does not. It sits in between a cable or satellite box in a novel way that streams the content through the Google TV, allowing owners to use one remote to control everything and the overlay interface. It’s this scheme that essentially saves Google TV from the deadpool by working with existing equipment, and could perhaps be its savior — at least eventually.

Google TV feels very much like Honeycomb tablets right now. Google is having a party but failed to invite anyone but the socially awkward. It’s just a bunch of dudes standing around, discussing Gabe Newell and Episode 3. Much like with Honeycomb tabs, Google TV 2.0 a solid start and a huge improvement over the first generation, but there’s still isn’t a must-have selling point. People buy Roku devices because they’re dead-simple and have a ton of content. Likewise, the Boxee Box is a hit because of its love of Internet media and vast file format support. Google TV has a good YouTube app and a fancy guide that looks at Netflix. Google TV doesn’t necessarily need more services as other devices, but simply the same amount. Any less and it’s irrelevant.

This isn’t Google TV’s last chance. More hardware is coming in 2012 from Samsung, Vizio and other unannounced partners. Google TV has always shown a ton of promise and this version finally brings the platform the high quality interface it deserves. But it’s still missing content. A pretty face is good for a hit single or two, but staying power requires real substance, which is something Google TV is currently lacking.

We’ve been seeing them in one form or another for months now, but today Motorola has officially unveiled the Xoom 2 and Xoom 2 Media Edition tablets.

In most ways, the two tablets are nearly identical: they both sport 1.2GHz dual-core processors, 1GB of RAM, 16GB of internal storage, a 5-megapixel rear shooter, and a 1.3-megapixel front-facer. As expected, both run Android 3.2 (sorry Ice Cream Sandwich fans), and they both pack the same complement of Google apps out of the box.

There are, of course, a few differences. The full-sized Xoom 2 sports a 10.1-inch HD display with Gorilla Glass, while the smaller Media Edition makes do with a 8.2-inch display. Thanks in part to a bigger battery, the Big Xoom 2 (as I’ve taken to calling it) is expected to run for around 10 hours after a full charge — the Media Edition is only good for about 6.

For what it’s worth, the full-sized Xoom 2 also features a “splash-guard” for the particularly clumsy among you. Meanwhile, Motorola makes no mention of the oft-rumored IR blaster that was supposed part of the Media Edition, although the smaller tab does make use of the MotoCAST remote media streaming service.

Tablet fans in the U.K. and Ireland will be able to pick up a Xoom 2 of their choice in “mid-November.” Mototola hasn’t hinted at pricing structure yet, but a recent Carphone Warehouse ad pegs the at Media Edition as starting at €399.90 (roughly $522). Now the question we’re left pondering is when we’ll see these things on our side of the pond.

Coraid, a developer of Ethernet SAN storage solutions, this morning announced that it has closed a sizable $50 million series C round led by Crosslink Capital. Coraid’s existing investors Menlo Ventures, Allegis Capital, Azure Capital Partners and affiliates of Silver Lake all participated in the round, as well as new investors including Seagate Technology and Kinetic Ventures.

As Robin pointed out in coverage of the company’s series B investment, it’s interesting to see Menlo Ventures both lead series B and continue with follow-on, considering it was the largest investor in data storage company 3PAR, which was acquired by HP for $2.35 billion last year. It seems like Coraid is Menlo’s next big bet in enterprise storage, and with the startup now having raised $85 million in outside investment, it may well be a target for acquisition.

To that end, Coraid also announced today that it has surpassed 1,500 customers in 45 countries, making it one of the up-and-comers in the $30 billion enterprise data storage market. With its series C investment, Coraid plans to expand global operations and continue developing technology in storage and cloud orchestration.

Coraid’s value proposition lies in its so-called EtherDrive, which offers a considerable price and performance advantage over legacy Fibre Channel and iSCSI solutions. In line with its mantra, Coraid recently acquired of cloud orchestration software vendor Yunteq to enable automation of storage, networks, and security for both public and private clouds.

John Jarve, GP at Menlo Ventures, said in the press release that Coraid has “pioneered a new category of storage” with Ethernet SAN, and that the company represents the next-generation of scale-out virtualized storage which helps companies with growing sets of data move past those aging storage technologies.

In other words, Coraid wants to help remove the roadblocks to virtualization and cloud computing, and the company thinks that leveraging improvements in flash storage can help do just that. Its new EtherFlash solution delivers 200,000 IPOS per shelf at $10 per GB.

For more, check ‘em out at home here.

We’ve shown you robots completing various tasks in the past, but this new model, a small hobby humanoid, can ride a bicycle like a human being. It’s not the first of its kind (Murata’s robot and Panasonic’s EVOLTA robot come to mind), but the model that’s pictured on the left costs just US$2,220 in its standard configuration.

Dr. Guero [JP] from Japan modified KHR3HV, a bipedal robot made by Japanese maker KONDO that has been available in many robot stores for years. The humanoid can even stop for a moment and continue riding the bike on his own, which is pretty cool.

PRIMER-V2 weighs 2.5kg, stands 495mm tall and can reach a top speed of 10km/h. This video shows the robot in action:

Via Plastic Pals via IEEE Spectrum

I wasn’t surprised to hear that both Sony and RIM are spiraling into market irrelevancy. It’s been an inevitability since about 2009 that Sony would see declining fortunes and it’s been clear for months that RIM is near death. I’m just sad to see both of them go.

Sony is losing because it lost the popular imagination. Once upon a time, Sony build solid, popular products for the world. However, with the rise of mobile technology and the ridiculous Sony Ericsson partnership that effectively hobbled Sony in the cellphone race, Sony lost much of its cachet and could make its money in what folks would term “CE” – TVs, sound systems, and the like – leaving little else in terms of high-turnaround items with an acceptable (but not amazing) margin like laptops, phones, and media players.

Sony, in short, fiddled while Samsung, Apple, and Dell/HP took its markets away one by one. Sony was known for music players. They haven’t had a best selling player in years and Apple has. Sony was known for laptops. They haven’t had a compelling laptop in years and Dell/HP have. Sony was known for selling good TVs and sound systems. Samsung is slowly creeping up in that regard. Sony, in short, can’t make a living doing the things at which it used to excel.

Then there’s RIM. They, too, lost the popular imagination. Now that the IT market and the consumer market have converged, there’s little draw for a phone that prides itself at being the pride of businessmen. You used to buy a Blackberry because your IT team made you. Now you buy a Blackberry because your IT team is lazy or scared and doesn’t want to support new standards.

Joel Johnson wrote a nice series on Sony back in 2010 outlining everything wrong with everything at Sony. In short, the biggest problem was the rise of proprietary formats, which Joel noted were a “screw job.” The same goes for RIM – RIM locked up its network and locked in its customers. Now those customers want out.

But I don’t want to excoriate these guys too much. Sony and RIM redefined computing in their own ways, adding technologies and techniques to the techno lexicon that didn’t exist before they created them. The compact disc, the keyboard phone, mobile messaging, HD video – these are all things that Sony and RIM introduced to a benighted world. But they rested far too long on the laurels of temporary success. Companies at their apex – Apple and Samsung included – would do well to learn from their mistakes.

[Image: Danomyte/Shutterstock]

Hewlett-Packard has announced that former Verizon Wireless SVP and CIO John Hinshaw has agreed to join the company to serve as its executive vice president of Global Technology and Business Processes, a newly created position.

Hinshaw most recently worked at The Boeing Company, where he was vice president and general manager of Boeing Information Solutions. His job there involved delivering information solutions to the U.S. government, among other tasks.

He will report to recently appointed HP chief exec Meg Whitman.

He’ll also join the company’s executive council on November 15.

In addition to Hinshaw’s appointment, HP also announced that it has promoted Craig Flower to senior vice president and CIO (he will report directly to Hinshaw).

Flower, who has been with HP since 1984, will be responsible for ‘data management, application architecture, global business intelligence, sales, and product development and engineering applications’ according to a press statement.

The news comes just days after the announcement of the departure of Phil McKinney, CTO for HP’s Personal Systems Group (its PC division, if you will). McKinney said he would be retiring to advise other companies on innovation.

Another executive, EVP and chief strategy and technology officer Shane Robison, also recently announced that he would be retiring at the beginning of this month.

Whitman has one hell of a job ahead of her trying to turn the giant HP ship around and orchestrate a successful reorganization with a vision that safeguards its future.

As always in times of transitions, expect more executives to join – and leave.

This week, Technode’s chief editor Gang Lu interviewed YouTube founder Steve Chen backstage at TechCrunch Disrupt Beijing. As we covered earlier, Chen and our own Sarah Lacy chatted on stage about the $1.65 billion YouTube acquisition.

Chen told Lu that he “believes in the entrepreneurship inside China,” and the speed at which innovation is taking place in the country. While the competition is tough for startups in China, Chen cautions that you will live in regret if you don’t try your ideas. When Lu asked if social bookmarking service Delicious (which Chen and YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley bought from Yahoo this year) can be in China, Chen responded with a “We’ll see.”

You can watch the full interview with Chen below.

Here are some of yesterday’s stories on TechCrunch Gadgets:

Here's The First GTA:V Trailer And It's Spectacular

Video: Toyota Shows Four Healthcare And Nursing Robots

Negroponte On OLPC Future: Air Drops And Hands-Off Education

Ooma Invades Canada, US Premier Subscribers Can Now Talk To Their Northern Cousins For Free

Sony Forecasts US$1.15 Billion Loss For This Fiscal Year

Kaggle, a platform for predictive data modeling competitions, has raised $11 million in Series A financing led by Index Ventures and Khosla Ventures. SV Angel, Yuri Milner's Start Fund, Stanford Management Company, which invests and manages Stanford University’s endowment and other financial assets, PayPal Founder Max Levchin; Google Chief Economist Hal Varian; and Applied Semantics' Co-Founder and Factual Chief Executive Officer Gil Elbaz, all participated in the round as well. Neil Rimer, partner at Index Ventures, will join Kaggle's board of directors, and Levchin has been named chairman of the company.

Kaggle's platform for predictive modeling competitions helps companies, governments, and researchers identify solutions to some of the world’s hardest data problems by posting them as competitions to a community of more than 17,000 PhD-level data scientists located around the world.

The Kaggle community of data scientists comprises thousands of PhDs from quantitative fields such as computer science, statistics, econometrics, maths and physics. They come from over 100 countries and 200 universities. In addition to the prize money and data, they use Kaggle to meet, network and collaborate with experts from related fields. As Kaggle founder Anthony Goldbloom tells me, “we’re making big data science into a sport.”

Here’s how it works. Companies, and organizations can post large data sets to the platform, and ask scientists to solve a problem or question from the data. The thousands of data scientists who participate in Kaggle competitions then develop algorithms to solve these large-scale problems and submit iterations of their algorithms throughout each competition.

Kaggle actually maintains a real-time leaderboard of each competition's standings, so competitors are motivated to exceed the current benchmark until the competition closes. Once a competition ends, the sponsoring organization has a solution, and the field's top entrants take home the competition prize. Thus far, data scientists from all over the world have submitted nearly 47,000 entries to various Kaggle competitions.

Kaggle says the results have actually led to new data discoveries and breakthroughs across many industries. For example, a competition for NASA, the Royal Astronomical Society, and the European Space Agency identified new ways to map dark matter in the universe, while another competition helped better determine the likelihood that the health of a HIV patient would improve or deteriorate.

Another example was showcased by insurance company Allstate, which ran a Claim Prediction Challenge and wanted to determine which motor vehicles were more likely to end up in a car accident from their subset of users. Allstate provided two years of data on the cars insured by the company for scientists to run.

Kaggle is currently hosting the $3 million Heritage Health Prize, the largest medical prize ever, designed to help reduce billions of dollars in unnecessary hospitalizations.

Google's Varian says this of Kaggle: "Kaggle is a way to organize the brainpower of the world's most talented data scientists and make it accessible to organizations of every size. By structuring incentives to create a competitive environment, Kaggle drives data scientists to produce better results than they would if they were working alone."

Of course, many companies and firms may not want to upload classified and sensitive data to a public platform. Kaggle offers private competitions for organizations working with sensitive data or intellectual property. In private competitions, data is shared with a carefully selected group of Kaggle scientists who are held to a non-disclosure agreement, have been subject to a background check, and who have performed extremely well in previous Kaggle competitions. And every competitor who participates in the competition is awarded prize money based on his or her performance.

"Kaggle is working on one of the most exciting opportunities in big data analytics that I've seen in the last twenty years," said Vinod Khosla, founder and partner, Khosla Ventures. "Kaggle's platform has the potential to change the way we tackle data analysis problems.”

Kaggle says the new funding will be used towards hiring (the company has just one developer currently) and for sales and marketing efforts.

In today’s VC market, it’s age before beauty. This is according to a new study released today by Shareholder Representative Services (SRS), the company that represents shareholder interests during the post-closing process in mergers and acquisitions deals. In other words, SRS is an independent advocate for shareholders that offers communications, accounting, and dispute resolution services to an impressive list of clients, which includes the likes of Accel, Benchmark, Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia, Khosla, and more. (Basically, the list is a who’s who of venture firms.)

The study, which looks at the 196 transactions SRS was involved in between July 2010 and September 2011, identifies trends in these M&A deal terms: One of which is that startups are today raising significantly more outside financing before exit than they were three years ago.

The study found that companies are, on average, raising 3.57 rounds of preferred stock financing — the type of investment that’s the staple of venture capital and private equity firms. This represents a 27+ percent increase from 2008, when startups were averaging 2.8 rounds of financing. Essentially, buyers are favoring companies that have raised more money and are profitable. In a sluggish economy, companies are more risk averse to dumping a lot of money into M&A, so buyers are looking for safe bets.

Furthermore, thanks to market volatility and poor financial conditions, global M&A activity fell by 19 percent in the third quarter, according to Dealogic. Thus, with deals drying up and few companies looking to buy, startups have instead opted to go after further rounds of financing. This is likely the reason that we’ve been seeing “series F” pop up more and more, and may also be another result of how late-stage funding is undergoing a seachange.

As Business Insider says in depth, companies are now waiting for longer periods of time to IPO, secondary markets are on the rise, there’s a rise in late-stage private equity, and investing in maturing private companies is becoming ever-more efficient thanks to the Internet and the plethora of financing options, be they crowdfunding, accelerators, etc.

SRS also identified another trend on the rise this year: Cash transactions. According to the study, 86 percent of deals it participated in were all-cash transactions, thanks to low interest rates and brimming cash reserves. As Mark Vogel, Managing Director at SRS, told peHub, buyers today “have lots of offshore cash and don't want to pay the repatriation taxes to the U.S. They'd rather use it”.

And this cash seems to be flowing into big deals, as 25 percent of transactions were for over $200 million — with the software and IT services industries representing over 40 percent of the businesses being sold over the last 14 months.

Thus, with more cash exchanging hands as part of this elevated rate of follow-on and late-stage financing, management teams have become more diluted and are requiring further incentives to get in-line with the milestones set by buyers during acquisitions. The study found that this has led to an increase in management carve-out plans, which were part of 33 percent of deals in 2010 and have been part of 25 percent of deals in 2011.

For startups and mid-level companies, it seems that the prevailing trend is to raise more money, hold-off on IPO, and wait for the right buyer — with cash.

Excerpt image from myLot.com

Barcode scanning and product search app ShopSavvy has raised $7 million in new funding led by Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin with Brad Martin (Former CEO of retailer Saks Fifth Avenue), James Bailey, and participating. This brings the company’s total funding to $9 million.

ShopSavvy is a mobile app that allows you to scan in a barcode, do a product lookup and find comprable deals on products nearby or online. Here’s how it works. Using the phone’s camera and the app, you point your phone's camera at any barcode and it will read it, do a product look up, and give you information about the product, as well as where you can find it online or at nearby stores and for how much.

Since launching in 2008, ShopSavvy has over 10 million current unique users and counts over 40,000 partnerships with retailers, including Walmart, Target, Best Buy, Sears, Nordstrom and Barnes & Noble. The company's technology brings real-time pricing and product information directly into a consumer's hands.

The app, which available for iOS, Android, Windows Phone 7 and Nokia phones, has seen 20 million downloads to date, says the company’s co-founder Alexander Muse. By way of history, ShopSavvy was one of the best early Android applications. It launched in October of 2008 after winning one of the initial Google Android Developer Challenge top prizes (back then, it was still known as GoCart).

ShopSavvy boasts 50 million product scans a month and also includes “Deals” function takes into account a shopper’s location, shopping history, and preferences when serving up most offers. Last year, the company acquired Snappr.

"Much like the nascent days of social media, I believe the mobile shopping services market is in the very early stages of change,” said Saverin. “In my opinion, ShopSavvy has the right connections, the right partners and the right technology to be a game-changer."

The company has also built an impressive business of licensing scanning technology data to over 200 companies including Pricegrabber, The New York Times, Cnet, Consumer Reports, and Walmart.

Of course, product search and barcode scanning is a huge market and ShopSavvy faces competition from the likes of eBay (via RedLaser) and Amazon. But Muse isn’t afraid to take these e-commerce giants on and believes that the company’s technology has been able to gain a loyal (and quite large) group of user.

There’s no doubt that ShopSavvy is playing in a space that is expected to only grow by leaps and bounds According to Forrester Research, mobile commerce is expected to reach $31 billion by 2016, up from $3 billion in 2010. Clearly, a large part of m-commerce will be product scanning and purchasing on the fly. And ShopSavvy wants to be the go-to app for this.

Australian-based crowdsourcing website for creative projects DesignCrowd has received a $3 million investment Starfish Ventures.

DesignCrowd allows anyone to upload a design project, set a deadline, set a budget and invite the platform’s group designers. The startup says that on average 25 to 100-plus custom designs are submitted from designers around the world, and the project manager can then decide which one suits his needs. Users can also give feedback to the designers and request changes. Once the design is set, payments are transfered and the design can be used for the submitter’s use.

How DesignCrowd aims to differ from other crowdsourced design platforms is that the site gives participation payments to designers that don’t win but participate in a bid. And DesignCrowd only
allows designers to see each other’s work once a project is completed, preventing group think
and copying issues.

For example, Harvard Business School used the site to crowdsource a new logo for the Harvard Forum for Innovation and received 267 logo designs from 57 designers. The company plans to use the funding towards additional hiring, product development and expansion to the U.S.