Getting a new laptop or buying a new license for an operating system is often cheaper in the U.S. than in most other countries. Europeans, for example, are used to paying a hefty premium for Apple products and the situation is similar in Australia, where the cheapest MacBook Air currently costs about 15% more than in the United States. Now, however, the Australian government is starting a parliamentary inquiry into these pricing schemes. According to Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald, the politicians behind this inquiry hope that calling these companies out publicly will result in prices dropping.

The final details of this inquiry are still being finalized, says the Sydney Morning Herald, but the committee that will oversee the proceedings plans to invite “all the big computer and software companies including Apple and Microsoft.” The committee will also look at the price differences in eBooks and games in different markets.

Ed Husic, a member of the Australian Parliament and a member of the committee that has been asking for this investigation for the last year or so, argues that “small to medium-sized businesses might pay over $10,000 more on software compared to overseas counterparts.”

The standard argument for higher prices in these markets is that local taxes and the cost of setting up overseas operations increase cost, which are then passed on to local consumers. According to a report by Australia’s Productivity Commission, however, “these excuses, in most cases are not persuasive, especially in the case of downloaded music, software and videos, for example, where the costs of delivery to the customer are practically zero and uniform around the world.”

[Image credit: Sydney Morning Herald]

CustomMade , an online marketplace that connects shoppers with artisans to make customized goods, has raised $4 million in funding co-led by Google Ventures and Schooner Capital. Existing investors Launch Capital, Nextview Ventures, Andrew McCollum and First Round Capital all participated in the round. This brings CustomMade’s total funding to $8 million.

CustomMade allows customers who want to make custom products like jewelry and furniture post project proposals. The startup has built a community of makers that can browse through customer project requests and assign themselves to ones they are suited to. Makers can sign up for and build profiles on the site, which allows customers to browse through their portfolios.

Currently, the site has over 3,000 artisans and are seeing $500,000 worth of project requests per week. An average project receives three bids and is completed for $1,000. And transaction volume is growing at 50 percent each month.

The site aims to differentiate itself from artisan marketplace for homemade goods, Etsy, by focusing exclusively on items that have are customized or personalized. For example, you could have a piece of jewelry replicated, or a piece of furniture custom designed and created. And CustomMade’s price point is higher than Etsy.

Co-founder Seth Rosen explains that the site been around since 1996, but he and co-founder Mike Salguero bought CustomMade in 2009, and for the first two years, focused on adding high-quality makers and artisans to the platform.

"CustomMade as a platform is creating a fundamentally different retail paradigm," said Google Ventures partner Rich Miner. "The model of giving consumers the ability to access, select and create custom work as an affordable and fun alternative to shopping at a retail store is a large opportunity and one that we are excited about as we continue to work with CustomMade."

The new funding will be used to expand the site’s technology infrastructure.

Brit Morin, the Martha Stewart of tech, is today announcing a $1.25 million seed round for her technology and content company Brit. The list of investors is actually pretty sympatico with “the next generation of lifestyle” branding of Brit & Co, with fashion-heavy Index Ventures, tech fashionista Marissa Mayer, KCPB’s Aileen Lee, Tina Sharkey and Seth Goldstein, Kevin Colleran, Annabel Teal, General Catalyst Partners, Founders Fund Angel and DMGT all going in.

In addition to the funding the company is also launching its first app, Weduary, which lets tech-savvy couples build their own attractive and dynamic wedding websites. The Facebook app, which users can try for free, lets prospective brides and grooms build a custom wedding website in four steps, leveraging the Facebook social graph to make it easy to import photos from Facebook, invite guests, coordinate registry details and other event RSVPs.

In addition to logistic planning, the app allows guests to build personal pages using their Facebook profiles and encourages them to connect with other guests through common interests. The app monetizes by offering premium features, right now custom URLs are $15 and premium themes are at $20.

The concept for app originally developed after Morin and her husband (Path founder Dave Morin) had friends keep asking to borrow the code used in planning their own "Pixel Cowboy"-themed wedding this summer. Disappointed with the general aesthetic hideousness of the website creators already available, Morin decided to build her own.

Morin tells me that while TheKnot.com, MyWedding.com, and WeddingWire.com all let users create wedding sites, Weduary is at an advantage due to its novel Facebook integration, “We are combining the social power of Facebook groups with beautiful themes, plenty of customization options, and other premium features for brides and guests alike.”

An iPhone version of Weduary is coming soon, and Morin tells me that she wants to add more themes and more robust social features to the app’s existing offerings. And while this is the first Brit app to launch, it won’t be the last, as the tech style maven is also looking into other verticals like Home, Style, Food, and Health for her next trick.

Want a zombie on your underwear? Good, because soon, you will have that opportunity. Today, there comes more proof that mobile gaming is the entertainment franchise opp of the future as EA-owned PopCap, makers of Plants vs. Zombies and the Bejeweled series of games, announced a number of new partnership deals that will see its game brands turned into merchandise – much like Rovio’s Angry Birds has already done to great success. The company has six new partnerships on tap which will see its properties featured as everything from plush toys to branded headphones. And yeah, boxers, too.

According to PopCap, the deals are the first brand licensing partnerships to emerge in the company’s 12-year history, and they’ll kick off with top game Plants vs. Zombies to start. Bejeweled will then follow, followed by other games, and the merchandise will arrive in early 2013.

The partnerships include those with Bioworld Merchandising for apparel, headwear, bags and accessories; Jazwares for plush toys, figures and electronics, like headphones, USBs, speakers and device cases; Walls360 for wall graphics; Funko! will produce Plants vs. Zombies vinyl figurines; MjC will do adult sleepwear and boxers; and Trends International will do calendars and posters.

While Rovio has seen success with its likable (and kid-friendly) Angry Birds series of games, it’s unclear how well that type of success can translate to less huggable brands…like Bejeweled. Don’t get me wrong – I’ve wasted as many brain cells on that game as everyone else has, but Bejeweled hats and bags? I mean, that Tetris bag of mine is kind of old but still…it never really went with my outfits.

PopCap also has Zuma, Peggle and Bookworm to bring into the merchandise play, but again, none are as standout-ish as Angry Birds.

EA acquired PopCap back in 2011, and now has a worldwide staff of over 600 with offices in Seattle, San Francisco, Vancouver, B.C., Dublin, Seoul, Shanghai and Tokyo. Its games have been downloaded over 1.5 billion times, with Bejeweled alone selling over 50 million units.

With the rise of startups building on top of the collaborative consumption model – that is, where users are buying from and selling directly to other users – there’s a growing need for some sort of system to help verify user identities. Although there are others quietly working in this space, today the U.K.-based startup Miicard, which is building an identity verification service, has moved a step ahead. The company has just completed its second seed funding round, raising $2.5 million from New Wave Ventures, IQ Capital and Par Equity. MiiCard had previously raised $.75 million back in September, also from IQ and Par Equity.

The company says it aims to use the additional funding to move into the U.S. market.

Currently, users register their identities with MiiCard’s service by providing access to a bank account – a requirement which still makes some nervous. Are banking details safe in the hands of an early-stage startup, you may ask? MiiCard says that it uses banking info to verify, but focuses on validating a user as a unique individual, verifying through a link to their online account. That proves they actually have access to that online account, and aren’t just providing banking account details which could be stolen.

To be clear, MiiCard doesn’t ask for your bank account number, and oddly enough, that’s something that seems to worry some folks, even though it’s info that many people and companies would know. (Hint: it’s on your checks…Besides, aren’t those the same people who are scared to shop online, but have no problem handing their credit card over to a starving college student working three shifts at their local diner to pay their bills?) Oh, and MiiCard’s service is also VeriSign Trusted and TRUSTe certified, if that makes you feel better about the security precautions in place. And it runs its tech on top of Yodlee, which powers solutions for seven of the top ten banks. (OK, that helps).

Once registered, you can begin attaching other accounts to your profile, like your social networking accounts, for example. You can then use your MiiCard where you see fit – on your eBay shop, perhaps, or your Craigslist posting.

To date, no banks have yet signed up in partnership with the system, but the company says it’s in negotiations with several entities. The system currently works in North America, the U.K., South Africa, India, Australia, and New Zealand.

Last week, MiiCard launched the first third-party Twitter validation system, which allows anyone – not just celebs and public figures who get special attention from Twitter – to verify their account. After verification, the idea is that you could place the link to your MiiCard in Twitter’s profile section. Of course, the problem the startup now has to overcome are all the people going WTF is a MiiCard? Maybe the additional funding will help.

MiiCard was founded in September 2011 by Canadian entrepreneur James Varga, who previously worked with Centrica Business Services, Thomas Cook and Sky Sports.

Rovio to Houston. The Mighty Eagle as landed. Big time.

Rovio just took to Twitter to announce that its latest Angry Birds installment, Angry Birds Space, was downloaded 50 million times in 35 days. As the company brags, that makes Angry Birds Space the fastest growing mobile game in history. People clearly cannot get enough of flinging upset birds at moderately evil (or perhaps, misunderstood) pigs.

Angry Birds Space launched on March 22 with much fanfare. Rovio had been on a sort of media tour, hyping the gaming to astronomical levels. And for good reason. It had been a full year since a new Angry Birds game hit. Angry Birds Rio launched on March 22, 2011. Rovio had to hype not only the new title, but also the franchise. But, 35 short days later, Angry Birds Space hit the record books, shattering previous benchmarks.

Rovio isn’t going to wait another year this time around. In an interview with TechCrunch Mr. Angry Bird himself, Peter Vesterbacka, promised four new games yet this year.

The mobile industry will reel in more than $1.5 trillion in revenues in 2012, with 28 percent of that, $400 billion, attributable to mobile data, according to new research out from analyst Chetan Sharma.

He notes that within the revenues expected for mobile data, non-messaging revenues led by apps, mobile web browsing and streaming media have finally overtaken those of traditional messaging like SMS as smartphone usage continues to grow. Non-messaging, he says, will account for 53 percent of the total: in other words, some $212 billion will come from apps, music and video streaming, games and mobile web browsing.

Still voice is still accounting for a huge part of the value in mobile, and “OTT” services provided by third parties — be they Apple or others — are still only a small piece of the pie:

Sharma’s report also notes in the U.S. smartphones now account for 69 percent of all mobiles sold — the highest rate with the global average at about half that, 32 percent. He notes that some operators are even more bullish than that and expect 90-95 percent of all sales to be smartphones this year (O2 in the UK led that charge last year as you can see in the slides below). In the meantime, the adoption rate will lead the U.S. finally to be able to claim that more than half of all consumers will own smartphones. The U.S. is also, overall, accounting for about 40 percent of all smartphone sales worldwide.

The total worldwide base of mobile subscribers now stands at 6 billion, and while it took 20 years to reach the first billion, the speed at which this has accelerated is pretty remarkable: Sharma notes that it took only 15 months for that number to go from 5 billion to 6 billion.

As you would expect, a lot of the growth now is coming from developing countries but still the numbers are astounding. He notes that together China and India are adding 75 million new subscribers every quarter to the global base, and points out that China alone already has 1 billion mobile subscribers, the first country to reach that milestone, and that India currently has the highest subscriber growth rate.

But India may, at best, be an opportunity for the future rather than today. Sharma points out that India monthly ARPU is an “anemic” $2.50. “Even with a signficant subscriber base, there is going to be a general lack of opportunity in the market for the next couple of years relative to other markets,” he writes.

In contrast, the early adopters of Japan have helped that country remain in the lead for mobile data usage, with some 60 percent of ARPUs attributable to data. And because the U.S. has nearly the same proportion, but is significantly bigger, it is currently leading the world in terms of data revenues as well as overall ARPU revenues.

Still, the tide is turning: A number of emerging nations are now in top 10 mobile nations by subscribers, he says. They include Brazil, India, Russia, Indonesia, Pakistan, Mexico, while Korea, UK, Italy and Germany “have dropped off or slipped in rankings.”

Patents. Although we’ve had a lot of noise about patent acquisitions, purchases and lawsuits around internet and (specifically) social media patents, Sharma points out the mobile continues to lead the field with patent applications, and that mobile companies are filing more in the U.S. than in Europe — on average 1.7 times more. He notes that in the U.S., the biggest patent holders are IBM, Microsoft and Nokia. In Europe they are Alcatel-Lucent, Nokia and Samsung. Nokia also appears in the list for top-three device patent holders, along with Samsung and Sony. And among carriers, AT&T, NTT Docomo and Sprint lead the charge.

That gives pause for thought about what Nokia has and what kind of value the company holds, beyond the cash that has been mentioned several times in the last week as ratings companies continue to downgrade the company.

Full slide deck here:

Liftopia, the startup offering consumers discounts on ski tickets and other snow-related activities, is today launching a new e-commerce platform for the ticket sellers themselves called “Cloud Store by Liftopia.” The service will be offered for free to any mountain resort for use on their own websites (including mobile), starting first in North America, then followed by resorts in Europe. Once up-and-running, Cloud Store allows the resort to sell tickets using variable pricing – similar to how airline tickets, hotel stays and car rentals are sold today.

The idea behind the new system is to give the resorts more control over their ticket prices on a daily basis – and it’s a timely launch, given one of the worst ski seasons in recent history. On bad days, resorts can offer deep discounts to entice skiers to head out. On good days, the discounts (if any) may not be as low.

Liftopia says it has been piloting the program with 15 resorts in North America, including Park City, Utah, Whiteface, Crystal Mountain (Mich.), Mad River Glen, and Bretton Woods. The participating resorts grew their Liftopia revenue by as much as 12x year-over-year, the company is now reporting.

For example, the first pilot resort, a small regional resort, sold more than $240,000 in season passes during October, before there was any snowfall. Another generated $25,000 in net revenue on the first day of implementation, and made more than $11,000 in daily net revenue before the season’s end. A small New England resort sold $15,000 worth of lift tickets in the first two hours following an email blast which pointed users to the Cloud Store system.

The system is powered by the same technology that Liftopia already uses to sell lift tickets online, but is designed for integration into the resort’s own websites using their own branding. In addition, it offers mobile integration, social integration and social sharing tools, support for product merchandising, and, of course, data and analytics to help the resort determine demand and adjust pricing accordingly.

Although the system itself is available for free, Liftopia takes a cut of the tickets sold through the service. The company doesn’t disclose how much, but it’s a sliding revenue share, based on volume.

Liftopia raised $1.3 million in October from First Round Capital, Dave Morin, Chris Sacca, Erik Blanchford and Sam Shank, bringing its total funding to nearly $3 million.

Update: Liftopia doesn’t think it’s fair to call this a white label system, because although it’s built on top of the same tech and lets the resorts do custom branding, the system offers a “more robust suite of tools and analytics” than Liftopia.com did. 

A bit of silly for your Monday morning: this is a flying, RC-controlled robotic dragon that actually breathes fire and sounds like a monstrous squeal demon as it takes off. The Dragon took a year to build and won Best In Show at the Toledo RC event, Weak Signals.

A modeler named Rick Hamel built the dragon and painted over 600 airbrushed scales on its plastic carapace. Sadly, he did not use it to cover his private parts after hatching it in a funeral pyre a la the Khaleesi

via Hobbymedia

Reuters is reporting that Nokia is exploring selling the Vertu phone line to holding company Permira for $264.26 million, freeing itself from the difficult process of selling phones no one wants to people who should know better. Nokia called Vertu a “non-core asset.”

It’s odd that Vertu has been kept on life support for so long. Nokia has sold the underpowered, gem-encrusted phones since the turn of the century, depending on expensive cases to jack up the price on what amounts to a low-end Symbian phone in a pretty shell. Nokia has been trying to liquidate the company since 2011

Watchmaker Ulysses Nardin also sells a similar luxury phone, the Chairman, which is equally baffling.

Sure, Windows Phone is still but a baby alongside Android and iOS, but the platform shows promise. Woz likes it. And the fact that it’s backed by hardware partners like Samsung and Nokia says good things, as well.

But it would seem that LG, coming off of a few quarters in the red, has decided to back away from the platform.

LG reportedly told the Korea Herald that the company would be focusing on Android handsets going forward, since “the total unit of Windows Phone sold in the global market is not a meaningful figure.”

Of course, the platform is way late to the game and shouldn’t necessarily be expected to come in and change the mobile landscape overnight. Yet, the fact that Nokia has put so much of its weight behind the OS should say something about the potential of the platform, as well as the huge differences between the companies.

Both LG and Nokia have had a rough past year. Nokia saw its lowest market share in 14 years, in fact, but despite the fact that change is scary and risky, it’s better to take a chance on something new when you’re down and out than to repeat the same formula.

The Nokia Lumia 900 doesn’t really compete very well on paper, but Windows Phone is its saving grace. The OS is engaging and different, and that can go a long way in a world where iOS and Android have been dominating for so long.

LG, on the other hand, has decided to go back to its original plan, even though a fresh new OS on a few solid pieces of hardware could be the beginning of a refreshed LG.

It’s too early to tell if Windows Phone will be the third mobile ecosystem, but Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam has faith in it, and so do I.

[via WP Central]

Pepsi is launching a big rebranding campaign today, and the company says social media is going to play a crucial role. Specifically, PepsiCo Global Head of Digital Shiv Singh tells me that the biggest online piece of the campaign is a “social media cheat sheet” called the #NOW board — it has, in fact, taken over the Pepsi website.

The board is built on top of Pulse, the social media visualization platform that Pepsi launched last fall. Looking at the RSS feeds from across the Web, as well as the firehose of wants being shared through Twitter and bit.ly (with help from startup SocialFlow), Singh says the #NOW board presents the pop culture stories that are hottest in social media at any given moment, presented in easily-digestible form.

Beyond serving as a news aggregator, Singh says the site will include other features, like the ability for celebrities to pose challenges to their fans, and exclusive deals courtesy of sites like Thrillist. And naturally, the content can be shared on Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest.

That all sounds fun, but what does that have to do with a food and beverage company? Well, the theme of the campaign is “Live for Now,” and it tries to reconnect the Pepsi brand with, as Singh puts it, “the heart of pop culture.” He argues that “the more deeply integrated” Pepsi is with broader pop culture trends, the better the company does.

My other question: Are people actually going to return to a Pepsi-branded site as a source of news? I mean, any news website is probably going to have advertising and sponsorships, and sure, we’re not probably not talking about hard-hitting journalism here, but it still feels a little weird to treat a Pepsi-owned site as a “real” news aggregator. Singh counters:

In the last few years we’ve seen people in general care less about the source of an experience or who’s creating the content, and more about the experience itself. People care less whether it’s a TV network that’s creating a really funny piece of video or whether a brand is.

The argument carries some weight, when you think about how ads like the Old Spice guy have become popular viral content. So is this advertising? Is it content? It’s a little bit of both, and it sounds like that’s what Pepsi wants.

Barnes & Noble has found a new, major partner in its fight to get an edge over Amazon and Apple in the market for e-books and the devices being used to consume them: it is teaming up with Microsoft in what the two are calling a strategic partnership, name yet to be determined.

It will come in the form of a new subsidiary of B&N that will include all of its Nook business as well as its educational College business. Microsoft is making a $300 million investment in the subsidiary, valuing the company at $1.7 billion in exchange for around 17.6 percent equity in the subsidiary.

The news leaves the door open for B&N to eventually spin these off into a separate business altogether — or even sell them to Microsoft. And it leaves a load of questions about what B&N will do next with the Nook, which is currently built on a forked version of Google’s Android platform.

The new company, referred to for the moment as Newco, will contain B&N’s digital business, as well as its College division. While Microsoft will take 17.6 percent, B&N will own 82.4 percent of the venture.

This is a key way of getting more content on to the Microsoft platform — specifically e-books content to ensure that its Windows 8 tablets will be able to compete not only against the best-selling iPad but also the Kindle Fire from Amazon, along with the rest of the company’s e-readers. The Kindle Fire has stolen a march among Android tablet makers and part of the compelling offer is not only the low price ($199) but also the fact that it contains so much content, including seamless access to all of Amazon’s e-book offerings.

This is also a progression — a very big one — of the funding etudes that Microsoft has been making to developers to make sure they are making apps for Windows Phone. It’s a way of getting more content on its two mobile platforms — which, it can be argued, may have come too late to the market. The first product to come out of the door of Newco? A Nook application for Windows 8, the companies say.

And given that education has been one of Apple’s bigger pushes this year, and the obvious and close links between education and e-reading, it’s not too surprising to see that B&N has also put its College division into this subsidiary.

Microsoft, too, has been courting the education market — inking its biggest-ever cloud-services deal in the education sector earlier this month. Nevertheless the pair have a long road ahead of them. In January, Apple noted that there were already 20,000 educational apps for iOS and that there were already 1.5 million devices deployed in schools, numbers that will inevitably have grown in the last 4-5 months with the launch of the new iPad and numerous initiatives to spread the tablet in the educational sector.

And there is a legal twist to the deal, too: the two companies say they have definitely sorted out their patent litigation now: “Moving forward, Barnes & Noble and Newco will have a royalty-bearing license under Microsoft's patents for its NOOK eReader and Tablet products,” the two write in the release below. If Microsoft doesn’t use this as an opportunity of possibly persuading B&N to swap over to Windows 8 for a version of the Nook, it will also give it a very interesting inroad into developing more for Android.

As for B&N and the future of these products… this deal looks like it could potentially pave the way for B&N to spin off this business into its own standalone operation, if not into the waiting arms of Microsoft itself — long speculated to be looking at ways of gaining a stronger foothold in the area of mobile devices to better implement its bigger strategy. The idea of a subsidiary was something that B&N had first floated back in January, when it noted that it was weighing up how best to separate its digital business to “maximize shareholder value.”

There are many more questions — such as what this could mean for the company’s broader strategy for growing the market for the Nook (international being a key push that the company has yet to make, apart from some baby steps); and how well, exactly, those products are doing for the company: IDC puts the Nook’s share of the tablet market at just 3.5 percent.

The company is holding a conference call on the deal later today and we’ll update as we learn more.

Full press release below.

New York, NY and Redmond, WA (April 30, 2012) – Barnes & Noble Inc. (NYSE: BKS) and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) today announced the formation of a strategic partnership in a new Barnes & Noble subsidiary, which will build upon the history of strong innovation in digital reading technologies from both companies. The partnership will accelerate the transition to e-reading, which is revolutionizing the way people consume, create, share and enjoy digital content.

The new subsidiary, referred to in this release as Newco, will bring together the digital and College businesses of Barnes & Noble. Microsoft will make a $300 million investment in Newco at a post-money valuation of $1.7 billion in exchange for an approximately 17.6% equity stake. Barnes & Noble will own approximately 82.4% of the new subsidiary, which will have an ongoing relationship with the company's retail stores. Barnes & Noble has not yet decided on the name of Newco.

One of the first benefits for customers will be a NOOK application for Windows 8, which will extend the reach of Barnes & Noble's digital bookstore by providing one of the world's largest digital catalogues of e-Books, magazines and newspapers to hundreds of millions of Windows customers in the U.S. and internationally.

The inclusion of Barnes & Noble's College business is an important component of Newco's strategic vision. Through the newly formed Newco, Barnes & Noble's industry leading NOOK Study software will provide students and educators the preeminent technology platform for the distribution and management of digital education materials in the market.

"The formation of Newco and our relationship with Microsoft are important parts of our strategy to capitalize on the rapid growth of the NOOK business, and to solidify our position as a leader in the exploding market for digital content in the consumer and education segments," said William Lynch, CEO of Barnes & Noble. "Microsoft's investment in Newco, and our exciting collaboration to bring world-class digital reading technologies and content to the Windows platform and its hundreds of millions of users, will allow us to significantly expand the business."

"The shift to digital is putting the world's libraries and newsstands in the palm of every person's hand, and is the beginning of a journey that will impact how people read, interact with, and enjoy new forms of content," said Andy Lees, President at Microsoft. "Our complementary assets will accelerate e-reading innovation across a broad range of Windows devices, enabling people to not just read stories, but to be part of them. We're at the cusp of a revolution in reading."

Barnes & Noble and Microsoft have settled their patent litigation, and moving forward, Barnes & Noble and Newco will have a royalty-bearing license under Microsoft's patents for its NOOK eReader and Tablet products. This paves the way for both companies to collaborate and reach a broader set of customers.

Newco,

On January 5, Barnes & Noble announced that it was exploring the strategic separation of its digital business in order to maximize shareholder value. Barnes & Noble is actively engaged in the formation of Newco, which will include Barnes & Noble's digital and College businesses. The company intends to explore all alternatives for how a strategic separation of Newco may occur. There can be no assurance that the review will result in a strategic separation or the creation of a stand-alone public company, and there is no set timetable for this review. Barnes & Noble does not intend to comment further regarding the review unless and until a decision is made.

Additional information will be contained in a Current Report on Form 8-K to be filed by Barnes & Noble.

Barnes & Noble and Microsoft will host an investor call and webcast beginning at 8:30 A.M. ET on Monday, April 30, 2012. To join the webcast, please visit: www.barnesandnobleinc.com/webcasts.

The UK may have just entered a double-dip recession but that doesn’t seem to have trickled down to how consumers are spending money on take-out food — and the companies that are building businesses around that. The UK-based online food ordering site Just-Eat has picked up a third round of funding totaling $64 million, its biggest yet, to further build out its online food ordering service.

The round was led by private equity firm Vitruvian Partners, with participation from existing investors Index Ventures, Greylock Partners and Redpoint Ventures. The investment comes only a year after the company raised a venture round of $48 million, and a Series A of $17.4 million in 2009, and brings the total funding in the company up to a whopping $129.4 million in the last three years.

Just-Eat will be using the money to expand into more markets outside of its current footprint of 13 countries in Europe — a footprint that Vitruvian’s managing partner Mike Risman says makes it the “world’s biggest takeaway e-commerce provider.” The FT cites figures from Experian Hitwise that say Just-Eat gets more hits than Domino’s and Pizza Hut.

That expansion will likely be the in form of entirely new operations but also acquisitions, something the company has already been active in doing, the company buying up Alloresto in France in February.

“This new investment will help our continued expansion. Takeaway e-commerce has massive growth potential,” said Klaus Nyengaard, the Copenhagen-based CEO who has been with the company since 2008 (it was originally founded in Denmark in 2000).

If a lot of e-commerce is about sorting out the logistics that makes it happen (for examples look at companies like Amazon, Ebay and KupiVIP — and more recently Uber, which may, longer term, try to use its network for more than just a car service), then Just-Eat is in a strong position for growth. The company says that it already covers 25,000 take-out restaurants in that 13-country footprint, and it sends out 100,000 meals per day.

The company says that it generates more than $750 million in revenue annually at the moment, but its own margins on that are pretty thin and shows why the company needs scale. Last year when it reported $500 million in sales generation, its own revenue bookings were only $10 million. Extrapolating from that, revenues for the $750-million year will be only $15 million unless there are better economies at scale or other efficiencies — and it appears that this is the case: the FT story notes that Just-Eat is projecting an annual run-rate of £60 million ($98 million) for this year. The company takes an 11 percent commission on all orders placed through the site, and says it has a 40 percent pretax profit margin in its most developed markets like the UK and Denmark, and less so in markets where it is still building itself up.

Vitruvian’s venture and private-equity activities focus on middle-market buyouts, growth buyouts and growth capital investments in Europe. The investment it’s making in Just-Eat is coming out of its inaugural fund of €925 million ($1.23 billion), which has also included investments in a variety of businesses in the tech/media/telecoms sectors as well as others. They include Tinopolis, Callcredit, Inspired Gaming, Openbet, Unicom, IMD, College Group, Flexpay and Healthcare at Home.

Greylock Partners has been long focused on two distinct areas when it comes to venture investments—consumer and enterprise. The last consumer partner hire the firm made was former CEO of Mozilla, John Lilly. And today, the firm is deepening its experience in its enterprise practice with the addition of Dev Ittycheria as Venture Partner in Greylock’s Silicon Valley office.

At Greylock, Ittycheria will be focusing on investing in enterprise software companies, with a focus on cloud-based services and enabling IT infrastructure. Ittycheria is a long-time enterprise veteran with a history of not only founding successful startups, but also helping lead established companies towards revenue growth. He co-founded BladeLogic, which he led through a successful IPO and eventually a sale to BMC Software in 2008 for $900 million.

Following the acquisition, Ittycheria was the President of BMC Software where he led BMC's $1.4 billion enterprise service management business with more than 4,000 employees in over 25 countries. Prior to BladeLogic, he founded early cloud computing pioneer Applica, which merged with Breakaway Solutions (Breakaway went public in the late 1990s). He also had a brief role as Entrepreneur-In-Residence in Bessemer Venture Partners.

More recently, Ittycheria has been a startup investor and board member at several companies including Bazaarvoice, AthenaHealth and application management company AppDynamics (where Greylock is a founding investor). It was actually through his recent work with AppDynamics that he grew closer to Greylock partner Asheem Chandna, who also serves on the company’s board. Chandna tells us he felt that Ittycheria’s experience advising enterprise companies and leading his own ventures would fit perfectly with Greylock’s venture strategy.

Ittycheria, who has already started actively helping a number of Greylock companies think through and refine their go-to-market and distribution strategies, tells us jokingly that after having started, built and scaled two companies, he has lots of scar tissue, and enjoys helping advising other enterprise companies navigate through these waters. He explains, “I chose Greylock because they have amazing track record in both enterprise and consumer…It’s a great cultural fit.”

With the addition of Ittycheria, Greylock’s senior investing team in enterprise now includes six professionals, says Chandna.

Ittycheria explains that particularly interested in investing in companies enabling cloud servers and underlying management and IT infrastructure, including storage, big data, enterprise mobility, and security.

He adds that he believes that IT buying behavior has changed significantly since his days at BladeLogic. “Companies are realizing there’s not a lot of innovation coming out large incumbents in the enterprise. Today, because of the disruptive technologies coming out of startups, customers are much more open to working to smaller, innovative companies.” Because of this trend, he believes it’s a “great time to be en enterprise investor.”

On the desktop, Opera‘s browser is only a minor player compared to Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome and Safari, but as a mobile browser, Opera competes head-to-head with Apple and Google. Worldwide, depending on which statistics you believe, it is either just ahead of the competition or a close runner-up. In developing countries, Opera is generally far ahead of the competition. According to an interesting new white paper by Opera, in which the company took a look at how its users around the world actually use the browser, it’s hard to underestimate the importance of mobile browsing in developing countries.

The study, which was conducted between November 2010 and November 2011, found that globally, 56% of Opera users and 43% of those who use another browser only access the Internet via their mobile devices. In some countries, including Egypt (72%), Bangladesh (69%), Brazil (65%) and South Africa (61%), these numbers for Opera users are significantly higher. At first glance, these numbers look very high. Given that traditional wired Internet access in many of these countries is rather limited, though, mobile phones are often the easiest and cheapest way to get online for many of these users.

This being an Opera report (so take this data with a grain of salt), the company also compared what its users do on the mobile web to users who use other browsers. The company, for example, found that its users are 35% more likely to purchase music and games via their mobile devices than those who use another browser. In most countries, Opera users are also younger, better educated and report higher satisfaction with their mobile Internet experiences. According to the report, these users are also “eight percentage points more likely than average to spend more than an hour online in one session and 12 percentage points more likely than non-Opera users.”

As for Opera itself, the company also today announced that it now has 168.8 million Opera Mini users (up 64% from March 2011). These users viewed over 117 billion pages. That’s up 96% from last year and up 8.1% compared to February 2012. In total, Opera Mini users generated over 1,918 million MB of data worldwide.

With a $4M investment, McCann Worldgroup has bought a 15% stake in Israeli incubator ‘thetime‘.

This move isn’t a particularly surprising considering ‘thetime’ was founded by Ilan Shiloah, who for the past 10 years has been chairman of McCann Erickson Israel. ‘thetime’ was also co-founded by angel investor, Nir Tarlovsky. Uri Weinheber, previously of Lab One, acts as the incubator’s CEO.

A Chief Scientist licensed incubator, the stated objective of the ‘thetime’ is new media investments (although this seems not to be a hard constraint). The current portfolio consists of 30 startups, including Tawkon & SohoOS.

This is of course great news for the Israeli startup ecosystem, which over the past couple of years has seen a substantial increase in early-stage investment outfits and accelerators.

Zillow, according to one report, may be closing in on a deal to buy rental marketing software maker RentJuice for $45 million, but in the meantime the online property portal is focusing on the rental market in another way: by launching its first dedicated rentals app — a free app for Android devices.

Zillow Rentals is the latest development in Zillow’s strategy for mobile, which — now numbering at 10 apps — has become a huge part of its business: on weekends, a full 40 percent of all of Zillow’s traffic — 32 million uniques in March — comes from mobile devices, and in the same month 155 million homes on Zillow were viewed from mobile devices: that works out to 57 homes per second, the company tells me.

And although users are able to view some rental information on the original app, the new, dedicated app gives a speedier and more streamlined experience for the fast, high-volume property viewing that characterizes the average would-be renter, says Jeremy Wacksman, VP of marketing at Zillow.

Wacksman says Zillow opted for Android first over iPhone for the launch because its Android users “tend to skew younger, and we felt this group of earlier adopters could benefit from an app developed specifically with renters in mind.” He says the company will extend it to other platforms in the “near future.” Other apps from Zillow work on iPhone, iPad, Kindle Fire, Windows Phone and BlackBerry platforms.

Zillow is partly launching this rental app — and in general getting more focused on the rental space because activity in that segment is on the rise. At the moment, some 70 percent of markets tracked in the Zillow Rental Index showed increases in annual home value. In contrast, only 14 percent of markets tracked in the Zillow Home Value Index (for house sale prices) went up in price.

The new app will have several features that are unique to it. Among them will be the ability to view Rent “Zestimates” — the company’s proprietary rental price estimates on some 100 million properties in the U.S.

The app also lets users compare selected rental properties on a side-by-side list and to narrow searches by geography by drawing boundaries around neighborhoods. It also integrates with Android voice search to find homes in a specific area. People can also browse based on the age of the rental posting, to find those that have just been listed versus those that have been on the market for longer or have already been viewed (and may therefore be a waste of time to visit). Users can also get push notifications for when homes that match their search criteria get posted. There is also the ability to contact owners or landlords through the app.

Zillow has added in a few elements to its property portal that have set it apart from many others in the same field: in addition to list prices, it compiles a list of data around price valuations and recent renovations among other things; and it has inked big deals with other portals like Yahoo and some 180 newspapers to extend its reach.

Wacksman says that Zillow is still seeing “tremendous” growth from its activities in the U.S. so it is continuing to stay focused here rather than expand internationally.

Wrapp, a social gifting service backed by Greylock Partners and Atomico, is crossing the pond with the U.S. launch of its mobile gift card and retail app. Wrapp, which was available previously only in the UK, Norway, Sweden and Japan, Wrapp is actually launching today with a number of U.S. retailers including Fab, Gap, H&M, Sephora, The Wall Street Journal, Wayfair, and others.

As we’ve reported in the past, Wrapp was co-founded by Rebtel and SendIt founder Hjalmar Winbladh, Spotify founding CTO Andreas Ehn, and lets friends give, receive and redeem digital gift cards using mobile devices, and allows friends to contribute to gifts given by mutual friends. With Wrapp, which offers iPhone, Android and web apps, you sign in via your Facebook account, and you can then tap the Celebration tab on the app, browse your friends or major events, and select the person you want to send a gift card to. All available gift card offers for that friend are automatically listed.

You can then select the retailer and the gift card offer you want, write your celebration greeting, select a delivery date, enter payment details (if you're contributing extra funds to a free gift card), and send the gift. Your friend will be notified and celebrated through Facebook and the Wrapp application. Merchants can actually specify the amounts they’d like to offer via the service, and target specific demographics of users with gift card options, which is something other online social gifting options don’t allow.

To collect a gift card you click on the link sent to you in email, text message (SMS) or on your Facebook wall, which lets the user automatically download the Wrapp app. To use the card, you select the card you want to redeem, and then show the resulting barcode to the cashier, which then gets scanned to complete the transaction.

For merchants and in-store retailers, says founder Winbladh, Wrapp is an ideal way to connect with potential customers because it not only allows them to target specific users by demographics, but also provides a valuable form of advertising.

Winbladh says that while he’s always been bullish on mobile, in 2008, he started observing the increased pressure on brick and mortar retailers and was thinking through the ways that retailers can drive people in stores. He and his co-founders sought out to reinvent the gift card market to help drive traffic for retailers. He believes the gift card, which has gone through little innovation to date, can be made social, viral and mobile.

“Friend to friend marketing is best way to drive sales in retail market,” he explains. “Not only is Wrapp a innovative, social way for consumers to gift, but it’s also a performance tool for big retailers.”

And the service seems to be gaining traction amongst both consumers and retailers. Participating merchants report that each sale averages four to six times the value of the free gift card they let Wrapp users give to their friends.

In December alone, Wrapp users used the service to buy 250,000 gift cards. And the app went viral in the country, with 2 percent of all Facebook users in Sweden downloading the app. After three months live in Sweden, one percent of the Swedish population had interacted with Wrapp. During the last four months more than 165,000 people have given their Facebook friends over 1.4 million free gift cards that could be redeemed in stores operated by nearly 60 major retailers in Europe.

A launch in the U.S. could be a turning point for the company. As board member and Greylock partner Reid Hoffman tells us, for the vast majority of Internet companies, the degree with which they succeed is determined by how well you an do in the U.S. But he believes Wrapp is in a perfect position to potentially reach critical mass, and create a network between retailers and consumers at a high volume. “Retailers know that they need to move towards retail 2.0; and Wrapp provides this valued experience,” Hoffman tells me. And because of the upswing in consumer use of smartphones and social network, Wrapp is in a prime position to gain traction amongst shoppers.

There are other players trying to shake up the gift card market with mobile technologies, including recently launched Karma. But what’s compelling about Wrapp is the win for retailers in helping drive traffic in-store and being able to target certain user based upon social and demographic data provided by Facebook.

What’s next for Wrapp? We’ll be seeing a number of more big-name U.S. merchants announced in the next few months, says Winbladh. We’re told that more than 15 additional U.S. merchants are now scheduled to start using Wrapp in the coming months. And we’ll see the company expand to other countries as well.

Editor’s note: This guest post was written by Prerna Gupta, who is CEO of Khush (now part of Smule), whose music apps,like Songify and LaDiDa, have been used to create over 200 million songs worldwide. You can follow her @prernagupta.

When I became an entrepreneur at the age of twenty-three, I began in earnest, as do all entrepreneurs, chasing a dream. My dream was clear. I would build a consumer technology company that reached ten million people and sell the company for millions of dollars, before the age of thirty. Then, as the dream went, I would retire to an oceanfront house on a warm Pacific beach and learn how to surf.

I recently had the fortune of celebrating a year in which I saw that lofty goal fulfilled. My company's iPhone apps had over ten million downloads, and a competitor paid a large sum of money to acquire what we had built, just a week before my thirtieth birthday. Dream had become reality.

I took a trip soon after to a secluded surf beach on the Pacific coast of Nicaragua. Sandy-bottom beach break. White sand. House so close to water that the sound of crashing waves made it hard to sleep. This was it. I had made it.

Yet, as I sat dangling my feet off a seven-foot surfboard, missing wave after perfect wave, I saw an unmistakable truth. I was terrible at surfing, and all I really cared about anymore was launching another hit app. Far from retiring, I found myself more in the thrall of ambition than ever before.

Having risked my career in order to escape, at all costs, the Great American Rat Race, this was disconcerting to me. My entrepreneurial intentions had, after all, been pure at the outset. I was drawn to entrepreneurship by the lure of freedom: control of my time, the ability to work on my own creations, no boss, and, of course, the potential for independent wealth. But the purpose of the money was never to buy fancy cars and houses, or to be richer than my peers. I viewed the money simply as a lifelong guarantee of these freedoms. When I had enough wealth to live modestly for the rest of my life without working another day, I would quit. I would stop chasing the dream. And yet here I am, still slaving away. How could this be? I am not one of those miserable over-achieving types who are satisfied with nothing less than better-than-everyone-else. Really. I'm not.

Am I?

You see, a funny thing seems to have happened just before I reached the ten million users mark. That goal of mine nefariously shifted by just a bit, a decimal point to be precise. I have a new goal now. It's 100 million.

This is the disillusionment of the entrepreneur. There is no such thing as success. It is a moving target. A mirage. By the time you attain what you thought was your wildest dream, reality has moved on and left your dreams in the dust. And the desire for success grows stronger still.

I do not like being enslaved, by anything. There are times when I can feel ambition, that greatest of American virtues, imposing its power over me. There are times when I succumb, for a short while. But to allow myself to be driven by ambition alone would be the ultimate failure. I strive for happiness. Not happiness when I am sixty, but happiness now, and tomorrow, and the day after. And although ambition and happiness can coexist, I have found that the first much more readily thrives without the other.  I understand this now, as I understood it at twenty-three, and my values are unchanged. What can then explain the control ambition has over me today?

Many who run in entrepreneurial circles would say that my dream was insufficient in the first place. Indeed, Silicon Valley frowns upon such middling goals as selling one's company for mere millions. We should aim for billions, we are told, or not aim at all. I am loath to admit that I have let that over-achiever's ethos influence my own thinking, but I suppose it is at least partially true.

That's not the only reason though. While my values have not changed, what has changed is this: work is more fun than it used to be when I was twenty-three. Work actually makes me happy. I always enjoyed entrepreneurship, even though I had many setbacks and failures along the way, but it is infinitely more fun now that I have had some tangible success. This is the real reason I continue. Success builds upon itself, and in so doing, makes the journey more fun. That is not to say I won't still have failures, in abundance; I am certain I will. Yet underlying the day-to-day failures is the knowledge that I can never truly fail again, because if success does not exist, neither does failure. I am finally free. I am free of the fear of failure. Perhaps that was my dream all along.

I'll still learn how to surf one day, as soon as I reach that 100 million.