BlablaCar, a European carpooling marketplace that connects any driver who has empty seats with paying passengers, has now launched its iPhone app in the UK. The app connects drivers who have spare seats with paying passengers. At the same time its competitor Carpooling.com has released a new app for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.

BlablaCar’s app features the ability to post a trip then add the number of available seats and price per passenger. You can find a ride, message other travellers, rate your fellow travellers. Members also specify how "chatty" they are by choosing either "Bla", "Blabla" or "Blablabla"; hence the name BlablaCar…

Munich-based Carpooling.com says it moves over 1 million people each month in 5,000 cities and 45 countries across Europe. Key new features of its app include messaging, online booking, search for rides, and payment with Paypal.

Both BlablaCar and Carpooling are similar to GoCarShare in the UK, and to U.S.-based startup Ridejoy and ZimRide, which also aims to be a carpooling marketplace.

Blablacar raised $10 million back in January taking total funding to $12.5 million and rolled up competitors. It now operates in Italy, Spain and the UK and has over 400,000 drivers among its members.

We’re a month away, and are very excited to reveal our workshops & judges for the upcoming NYC TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon, taking place on May 19th & 20th.

This will be the second Hackathon TechCrunch has organized at Pier 94 in NYC. Last years event had over 300 developers and 100 teams present, and this years event promises to be even bigger and better.

But enough about the past, let’s chat about the future.

We’ve got a lot of really great sponsored API’s, prizes and contests including AT&T, Hatch, Mashery, City Grid, Spotify, The Echo Nest, Knodes, Mobli & more!

To make matters even better, we’ve released more tickets for the event.  They’re going to go quickly, so get yours now at: http://tcdisruptny-hackathon2012.eventbrite.com/  If you’re a developer interested in participating, and are looking for people to work with, toss your hat in the collaboration ring at: http://bit.ly/nyc-disrupt-collab.  If you’re a designer, we can help you find a match by having you fill out the form at http://bit.ly/nyc-disrupt-dt

We’ve got some great names presenting workshops & judging the competition, and here’s the scoop:

API Workshops

On Saturday, May 19th, we’ve got a big list of the industry’s best presenting 1/2 hour workshops detailing the inner-workings of their APIs.

2pm – foursquare
Presenter: Anoop Ranganath, lead iPhone developer @ foursquare
Anoop will be going over the ins & outs of the foursquare API.

Details regarding the API can be found at: http://developer.foursquare.com

2:30 – The Echo Nest
Presenter: Glenn McDonald, Senior Knowledge Engineer at The Echo Nest, responsible for the quality of the music data platform.
Doing anything with Music with Echo Nest

Search for and find tons of data about any artist or song in the world’s largest music database. Get the tempo of your favorite song and then beatmatch it automatically with a whole playlist. Mash up videos and music or make a game out of any song. Build your own Pandora using Spotify, Rdio or any number of our music partners. Fingerprint audio from your phone or find the most popular artist on twitter right now. The Echo Nest API is the best way to do anything with music and Glenn will run you through all the possibilities.

Details regarding The Echo Nest API can be found at http://developer.echonest.com/

3:00 – metaLayer
Presenter: Jon Gosier, Founder and Director of Product at metaLayer.
Contextual disambiguation using metaLayer’s Text and Image analysis REST APIs. metaLayer’s APIs allow users to process streams of text or images to extract contextual features where they don’t exist. For instance, extracting place names from tweets or articles using NLP to attempt to geolocate content makes it possible to then visualize where content is coming from or referencing on geospatial maps. With images, extracting text makes it possible to search words in photos or auto-categorize them based on the objects they contain.

Details regarding the metaLayer API can be found at: http://api.metalayer.com

3:30 – Twilio

Presenter: Jonathan Gottfried, Developer Evangelist at Twilio and a diehard hacker.
Twilio is the leading telephony platform for developers to extend and expand their applications with Voice and SMS communications. Our focus for this workshop will be to get an overview of the basic features and functionality of the Twilio platform; send, receive, and respond to SMS messages; place, receive, and respond to phone calls; and use Twilio Client to use your browser to place and receive phone calls.

Details regarding the Twilio API can be found at: http://www.twilio.com/docs

4:00 – bitly
Presenter: Matt LeMay, Platform manager at bitly, where he helps developers and ecosystem partners get the most out of bitly’s API.
I will be showing off the powers of the bitly API beyond simply shortening links. Our analytics API has grown much, much more robust in the past months, allowing developers to pull end-users’ entire link history, and retrieve powerful time-series analytics on both the link and the user level.

Details regarding the bitly API can be found at: http://dev.bitly.com

4:30 – Tumblr
Presenter: John Bunting, Developer Extraordinaire at Tumblr, working on the Tumblr API
The workshop will be an introduction to the Tumblr API, showing off a client or two. We’ll finish up with showing off some of the neater projects that people have come up with for inspiration!

Details regarding the Tumblr API can be found at: http://www.tumblr.com/docs/en/api/v2

5:00 – Knodes
Presenter: John Goodwin, CTO & Co-Founder, Knodes
Introducing the Knodes Context API. Knodes makes it simple and easy to augment your applications with powerful social integration and data analysis. We take your users’ social network credentials and provide a normalized, searchable index of their world. We integrate data from Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, and LinkedIn to create a unified "uber-graph" that maps the connections among people, places, content, schools, and companies in your users' networks. Note this is a user utility, not ad-tech. Privacy and security are our top priority, and we don’t sell any data ever.

Details regarding the Knodes API can be found at: http://developer.knod.es/docs

5:30 – Spotify
Presenter: Andrew Mager, Hacker Advocate at Spotify
During this workshop, you will learn about Spotify Platform; including the Spotify Play Button, Spotify Apps API, and libspotify for iOS/Hardware. The workshop will focus on Spotify Apps API; which enables you to create an experience inside the Spotify Desktop client. Using JavaScript, HTML5, and CSS3, you can control playback, interact with a user’s playlist, build beautiful interfaces that engage users, and make their music-listening experience the best it can be.

Details regarding the Spotify API can be found at: https://developer.spotify.com/

6:00pm – Mobli
Presenter: Moshe Hogeg, CEO of Mobli, a photo & video sharing community built to bring people together around common interests.

Mobli, the booming cross-platform photo & video sharing network is launching their API at TC Disrupt 2012! Hackthoners will be the first to have a crack at integrating Mobli into their products. Mobli is a photo & video sharing community built to bring people together around common interests. Photos and videos are captured with the app’s pro-level camera, beautified in Mobli’s all-purpose Darkroom, and then shared across multiple channels for maximum visibility. Each photo or video is placed in up to 3 themed Mobli Channels (e.g. fashion, sports, music, etc), and upon uploading, is pushed out to every “watcher” of those channels. Photos and videos are also simultaneously pushed out to a user’s Mobli “watchers”, his Facebook, and his Twitter. Mobli’s Live feed, which displays every photo or video uploaded from around the globe, in real-time; and Mobli’s Local feed, which displays photos and videos uploaded from within city limits – provide two more outlets for visual media to be discovered. Mobli’s unique multi-stream approach provides unmatched discovery potential and ensures visual media is only delivered to the most captive of audiences. Mobli is the premier place for making new friends, not just connecting with old ones.

Details regarding the Mobli API can be found at http://www.mobli.com/api

Judges

If you were impressed by our A-List of API workshops above, then our list of judges for the competition are likely to knock your nerdy socks off.  Judging the 2012 NYC TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon will be our elite handpicked team, consisting of:

Nora Aboutsteit, Founder & CEO of Kollabora
Nora Abousteit is a “rare leader who can pull together technology, publishing, and fashion, and inspire people” (Fast Company).  Nora recently founded Kollabora.com, an online craft supply market place with with multiple communities that offer fashion forward DIY projects in jewelry, knitting, and sewing.  Before starting Kollabora, Nora reinvented an old sewing magazine into the DIY fashion community BurdaStyle.com, with over 700,000 members now an icon in the sewing community. She is part of the founding team of the DLD (Digital Life Design) conference.  Nora is a published author and has been invited to share her experience at Picnic, FOO (Friends of O’Reilly Media), Parsons School of Design, Stream, the World Economic Forum Media Summit, and NY Forum.  Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Wired, BusinessWeek, Women’s Wear Daily, and Fast Company. She was just elected to the board of the Craft and Hobby Association.  Nora grew up in Germany, lives in Brooklyn, NY and holds a degree in Middle East Studies, Political Science, and Philosophy from the American University in Cairo.

You can find Nora on Twitter @ http://twitter.com/noraa and her personal site at http://www.noraabousteit.com

Dave Jagoda, Director of Technical Talent at Andreessen-Horowitz
Previously he has been a Director of Engineering, Engineering Manager, Support Engineer, Consulting Engineer, Sales Engineer, and a Software Developer. He has worked at HP, Opsware, Loudcloud, and Netscape. He studied Computer Science at Columbia. He is fascinated by computers, software, and the Internet.

You can find Dave on Twitter @ http://twitter.com/davejagoda and Andreessen-Horowitz online at: http://a16z.com/

Tarikh Korula, Co-founder and CEO, Mahaya

Tarikh is Co-founder and CEO of Mahaya. Mahaya organizes social media to help people see and understand their world.

In 2005, Tarikh Co-founded Uncommon Projects, a pioneering New York based hardware and software design studio. Uncommon Projects worked with Fortune 100 companies to research and develop myriad digital media products. Uncommon Projects was a winner at Yahoo's first open Hack Day. Tarikh is a member of root at NYHacker and has helped organize or advise the TechCrunch hackathons.

Tarikh has lectured on hardware and software prototyping at the Web 2.0 conference, Maker Faire, NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP), SVA's MFA in Interaction Design program (IxD) and the Parsons Design Technology Program. Tarikh received his Masters from NYU/ITP.

You can find Tarikh on Twitter @ http://twitter.com/tarikh and his blog at http://unprojects.tumblr.com/

Dinesh Moorjani, Founder and CEO of Hatch Labs

Dinesh Moorjani is the Founder and CEO of Hatch Labs, a mobile technology innovation sandbox. Mr. Moorjani also serves as the Sr. Vice President of IAC Mobile, where he is responsible for building the mobile business across leading IAC Brands. Prior to starting IAC Mobile in 2007, Mr. Moorjani was the VP of Strategy & Corporate Development at Citysearch, now CityGrid Media. Previously, Mr. Moorjani built consumer technology products at Samsung Electronics and worked in Investment Management at Golden Sachs.

Dave Tisch, Founder TechStars NYC and Managing Partner BoxGroup

David is the Managing Director of TechStars NYC. David is also the Managing Partner of Box Group, a New York City based seed-stage angel capital firm. David was named to NYC Mayor Bloomberg's Advisory Council on Technology and serves on the Investor Board of Venture for America.  Prior to joining TechStars, David served as Executive Vice President of Interactive Strategies at kgb, a global information services company. While at kgb, David founded and lead Knowmore.com, a social aggregation startup within kgb.  David has a B.A. in American History from the University of Pennsylvania and a J.D. from New York University School of Law. David was born and raised outside of NYC in Westchester. David likes wearing hoodies and over using ellipses…

You can find Dave on Twitter at http://twitter.com/davetisch and his personal site at http://www.davidtisch.com/

Kip Voytek, SVP, Director Digital Innovation | MDC Partners
As Director of Digital Innovation, Kip is responsible for leading the integration of creative technology and digital marketing with MDC agencies and their brands. Kip was SVP, ECD of Interaction Design at R/GA, providing creative leadership on the Nike, Nokia, SC Johnson, J&J, IBM and other accounts. Before marketing, Kip designed PC games based on licensed properties such as X-Men, Spiderman, Barbie, Clue, Scooby-Doo and Animaniacs.

You can find Kip on Twitter at http://twitter.com/kipbot and online at http://www.kipbot.com

The heat is on to migrate more digital marketing activities into the cloud, and while we have seen a lot of movements from smaller, fleet-0f-foot startups in this area, the big players don’t want to be left out in the cold, either. Enter WPP, which today announced a partnership with the Bangalore-based outsourcing and IT specialist Infosys for a new cloud-based digital marketing platform.

Called “BrandEdge,” the two say the platform is the first of its kind in the industry, in that it brings together, into the cloud, a range of digital marketing activities such as creation and management of digital media across multiple locations and tools to manage campaing execution — all running on a single platform.

The two say that they have already signed up three major customers to use this, and while today they have not announced any specific names, in March Reuters ran a report that WPP and Infosys had nabbed a large deal with GlaxoSmithKline to manage its global marketing activities, so this could well be one of the companies signed up already.

The tie-up with Infosys also gives WPP potentially more links into working with companies in emerging markets, both as clients and as executors for different marketing services.

WPP’s involvement in the BrandEdge service is being run by Fabric, one of WPP’s digital marketing subsidiaries, and comes just days after WPP made another bet on digital: the company invested $7 million into MySupermarket, an online price comparison service based in the UK but planning to extend to further territories.

These movements are all part of a bigger strategy WPP has to grow revenues in the area of digital media over traditional advertising. In 2011, digital accounted for $4.8 billion out of total revenues of $16 billion. The plan is for WPP to make 40 percent of revenues from digital activities in the next five years.

In the case of BrandEdge, the product definitely serves a basic need: because of the internet, companies have become increasingly global in their marketing, but at the same time a lot of marketing functions have remained quite localized. As agencies look to win business, one area where they can have an edge over others is to offer a more centralized platform for all those local marketeers to use, with the added benefit of lower prices and a more efficient workflow.

At the same time, we are seeing some evolution in how advertisers pay for digital media: whereas in the past people have been billed by campaigns, the BrandEdge platform is offered on a subscription-based, pay-per-use model. That’s a trend we are seeing in other parts of the digital marketing chain, too. Just earlier today, Jonah Goodhart, the CEO of Moat, noted that his company’s offer of basing its analytics services on a subscription model was proving more popular than basing pricing on media spend. (WPP’s claim is reducing time-to-market by up to 40 percent and costs by up to 30 percent.)

Some of the services included in the new cloud platform are the ability to re-purpose digital media assets; integrate CRM and other third-party data for measurement, privacy, security standards and so on; provide analytics on that data; and offer services to deliver out that data to social networks, ad networks and other marketing channels. That could spell a challenge for smaller startups like Moat and Hootsuite who have been early movers in cloud-based services up to now.

BetterWorks, a startup that helps companies give their employees perks and rewards, is launching new features that should make it a better fit for big enterprises.

The startup offers customers a dashboard for managing things like office catering, discounts at local businesses, and a rewards program called Bonus Bucks. For the most part, it has focused on small- and medium-sized businesses (between five and 500 employees) — after all, those are the companies that normally don’t have the resources to offer these programs on their own. However, Director of Product Varun Krishna says that larger organizations, with 1,000 or more employees, are starting to show interest too.

Naturally, big companies have their own needs, prompting the BetterWorks’ new features. For the first time, the system allows employers to divide the workforce into different groups, so that they can have their own conversations. Companies can determine how they want to set up the groups, whether it’s by department, floor, or building, but Krishna says the biggest use case will probably involve grouping by different locations — after all, a lot of the discussion in your Los Angeles office probably isn’t relevant to the folks in San Francisco. For now, people can only belong to one group; eventually, Krishna says you should be able to join multiple, so you could belong a group for your department and another for people who go to yoga after work.

And to support the more complex hierarchy at larger organizations, BetterWorks has also created different permission levels. You can identify different managers as Company Leads and Group Leads, and then specify what each of those roles entails.

Krishna and Head of Communications Nicole Jordan argue that these features are the next step in achieving one of BetterWorks’ big goals, which is to make the incentive system targeted for each employee, so that you’re not just giving everyone the same rewards.

BetterWorks is now used by more than 500 companies in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, and Austin.

It’s been spotted in leaked press renders and blurry photos before, but Verizon has just recently (and perhaps inadvertently) made the new Droid Incredible nice and official. The Droid Incredible 4G LTE just popped up on Verizon’s Droid Does promotional site, and while you can’t have one just yet, it’s comforting to know that it’ll see the light of say sooner rather than later.

In addition to a mildly unnerving robo-lady talking up the device’s LTE radio and HTC’s Sense UI, the site also confirms most of the specs that have been previously reported.

The Ice Cream Sandwich-powered Incredible 4G LTE indeed sports a 1.2GHz dual-core processor (though as usual, they don’t mention what make), 1GB of RAM, an 8-megapixel camera, in addition to a 4-inch qHD Super LCD display, 8GB of internal storage, and the now-standard Beats Audio profile.

All of that is squeezed into a frame that comes in at 0.46-inches thick — a bit more of a handful than your iPhone or Galaxy Nexus, though I imagine the difference won’t mean much for anyone but the most jaded sticklers. The device also features the same sort of hardware navigation key layout as seen in the HTC One series, though I wish Verizon and HTC would have opted to carry over more of the One series’ wonderful industrial design language.

According to the Droid Does site, Verizon could be sell the Droid Incredible 4G LTE (I’m getting really tired of typing that out) for the princely sum of $299 with a two-year contract — I say “could” because there are plenty of references on the page to the Droid Razr MAXX, which coincidentally costs exactly that. Hell, despite having a Buy Now link placed prominently on the page, clicking the link takes you to the product page for the Motorola Razr MAXX. Something seems slightly amiss here, and I’ll keep you posted on any developments.

Independent mobile ad network InMobi released its Q1 2012 Ad Data report for North America this morning, covering the mobile ad landscape for the first part of the year. Not surprisingly, the report found the top two mobile operating systems were, again, iOS and Android, each with a sizeable chunk of market share and growing. RIM, meanwhile, was still clinging to spot #3, but has dropped 4.6% since Q1 2011, the report found, going from a 11.9% share to 7.3%. this past quarter.

InMobi’s report is not a full picture of the mobile landscape, of course – it’s only a slice of it, pulled from data sourced by ad impressions on its network. Today, the company reaches 578 million consumers in over 165 countries, serving more than 93.4 billion ad impressions each month.

In the new report for North America, InMobi found that Apple’s iOS platform has maintained its lead over Android for the third consecutive month, with total iOS impression share at 37% versus Android’s 34%. However, even though InMobi refers to iOS as “iPhone OS” in its findings (but not its graphics…), it appears they’re also counting iPads and iPod Touches when determining the platform’s totals.

When this so-called “iPhone OS” is broken down, InMobi says the iPhone itself has 19.7% market share, the iPod 12.2% and the iPad 4.9%. Given Android’s fairly small tablet footprint, an apples to apples comparison (groan, sorry) of mobile phone platforms alone would put Android phones ahead if you were only looking at mobile handsets. InMobi did not, so you can claim this data is skewed in Apple’s favor, if you choose.

Anne Frisbie, InMobi’s VP and Managing Director for North America, says that Apple’s position in this market has a lot to do with the new iPad. “Apple maintained its lead over Android and further increased its share of impressions and handset dominance; the new iPad certainly helped its overall position,” she says. “However, we know that fierce competition is created across the operating systems when new devices enter the market, and this time last year Android surpassed iOS globally.”

In other words, things can still change.

But in terms of ad impressions (if not device type), iOS leads globally, too. InMobi found Apple devices claiming the top three positions at a combined 18% global market share.

Globally, however, Nokia devices combined have the highest number of impressions at 35%. This grouping didn’t just include Symbian phones, though – it also included Windows Phone as well as Nokia feature phones that have Internet access.

Meanwhile, as iOS reigned in North America, in the U.K. specifically, Apple’s share was even larger, with 45% of all ad impressions, compared with Google’s Android at 26% and RIM at 16%.

But in all of Europe combined, Google’s Android was most popular, with 36% of all impressions versus Apple’s 28% and RIM’s 13%.

Gavin Kim certainly knows how to keep things interesting. After spending years at Samsung and winding up as the company’s VP of Content and Services, Kim jumped ship to take point on Microsoft’s Windows Phone marketing efforts only to resign his post after five months.

So what greener pastures has tempted Kim this time? As it turns out, he has found himself a new home at NQ Mobile (formerly known as NetQin), a provider of mobile security services and applications where he will fill the newly created Chief Product Officer post.

Interestingly enough, Kim is the latest in a line of high ranking former Samsungers to make the switch to NQ Mobile. Ex-Samsung VP of Strategy Omar Khan was was tapped just a few months ago to become the company’s co-CEO alongside company co-founder Henry Lin, and one-time Samsung PR head Kim Titus recently joined up as NQ’s director of communications.

It may seem like something of step down — going from the likes of Samsung and Microsoft to a mobile security firm without much of a presence here in the United States. NQ Mobile pegs their mobile security application as being the most widely-used in the world (thanks in part to their huge presence in China), and with these recent staff additions in place it looks like NQ Mobile is gearing up to tackle that problem head on.

A representative for the company tells me that part of that strategy going forward is to take a page of the company’s Asia-focused playbook and build upon “OEM and carrier relationships” in the States. Considering that Kim has had experience working with major hardware manufacturers as well as wireless carriers, he seems like a strong choice to push NQ forward, though only time will tell if they pick up the traction they need to compete. The mobile security place is one occupied by plenty of big brands, and Lookout in particular looks like a savvy competitor — they’ve already locked down partnerships with carriers like T-Mobile USA and Deutsche Telekom.

Locu, the data-focused startup launched out of Sir Tim Berners-Lee’s lab at MIT to provide structure to the world’s information, has just announced a $4 million Series A round led by General Catalyst Partners. Also participating in the round were Chris Sacca’s Lowercase Capital, Lightbank and SV Angel, as well as Locu’s existing angel investors, Naval Ravikant, Babak Nivi, Quotidian Ventures, and Matt Ocko of Data Collective.

The new round follows Locu’s raise of over $600,000 in seed funding back in September 2011.

If you haven’t heard much about Locu yet, you wouldn’t be alone. Co-founder Rene Reinsberg says the company has been “flying under the radar” and has just been focusing on building their product.

That product is technology to structure the world’s information – a refrain that sounds a lot like a follow-on to Google’s goal of organizing the world’s information. It’s the next logical step.

Explains Reinsberg of what his company does, “if you look at the ways people are currently making sense of unstructured information, it’s often an approach that’s based on building crawlers and maybe some machine learning techniques – that works well if the data is out there in an already semi-structured format,” says Reinsberg. “But oftentimes, you come across really messy, distributed data sets for which automation or any machine-based approach doesn’t work, so the only way you can really tackle it is manual labor and the brute force approach.”

“So what we’ve built,” says Reinsberg, “is a system that leverages both the machine learning side and crowdworkers.”

But Locu’s crowdworkers are not Amazon Mechanical Turk users…they’re skilled, technical types who are trained (for around two hours) in how to use Locu’s special markup language to map data to the schema. Before they’re set loose on the job, they’re even quizzed first to ensure they’ve understood the system properly.

Their job, then, is to clean up, correct, tweak and otherwise adjust the data the machine-learning side of the system hasn’t managed to translate 100% correctly. Locu has, to date, trained thousands of these workers, but only a couple hundred or so are actively working to make sense of the data at any given time.

For now, the first vertical Locu has been attacking with its proprietary technology is local business information, and specifically, restaurant menu data – something that Reinsberg says is “still a really big pain” for the industry.

Locu already has some early customers and traction, but Reinsberg can’t disclose who it’s working with right now. The customers are really big companies, which you would have heard of, he says, but Locu is also working with a few early stage startups as well.

Going forward, the startup will use its system to build up a database of other non-restaurant business data, like the price lists at personal services businesses (spas, hair salons, etc.), for example. But further down the road, the technology could be used to provide structure to other data sets, like patents or healthcare. Locu will also look into allowing enterprise to use its technology to structure any data they would have a need for, whether internally or externally sourced.

The timeliness of the system is ideal for the smartphone age, Reinsberg believes. “We think the platform that we’ve built is so important is because more applications rely on structured data,” says Reinsberg. “Search is moving towards more towards structured data. You look at things like Siri and on the backend, Wolfram Alpha…and you can see how there’s much more emphasis going forward on having structured data in a variety of different verticals,” he says. “Local for us was an obvious one because of the rise of smartphones. People want to have a lot more actionable data at their fingertips and in the apps that they’re using,” he adds.

Locu, which currently houses its team of thirteen in Cambridge, is now opening an office in San Francisco, and will be using the new funding for product development and hiring.

Nokia just rolled out a new browser for Series 40, Asha devices. Browser 2.0 as it’s called features numerous improvements and enhancements, but its cloud-based compression is arguably the most important. Nokia claims that it condenses data by up to 90% making pages load three times faster while reducing the data cost to the user. The updated browser also features a download manager, improved search and it also enables multitasking while browsing allowing users to quickly switch to text messages and the like.

The cloud-based compression sounds a lot like Amazon’s Silk browser for the Kindle Fire. By routing web traffic through a Nokia server, the technology is able to compress the data on-the-fly. In many cases can speed up the page load time. Plus, it reduces the amount of data consumed by the phone, allowing owners more freedom from carriers putting the squeeze on data plans.

The feature phone is still Nokia’s bread and butter and still vastly outsells its smartphone devices. This update brings smartphone-like features to its otherwise mundane handsets. Browser 2.0 will ship on all new Series 40 devices including the Asha series. Existing owners can obtain the app as a free, optional over-the-air download.

Amazon is debuting a new vertical today, called AmazonSupply, which is a new site for mechanical parts and other hardware for business and industrial sectors. Amazon says the site sells over 500,000 items, including bench-top centrifuges commonly found in laboratories, radiation detectors designed for environmental testing, and carbide end mills used to machine titanium.

AmazonSupply aims to fulfill the parts and supply needs of the business, industrial, scientific and commercial. Customers can shop for items by product, material and brand across 14 categories, including Lab & Scientific, Test, Measure & Inspect, Occupational Health & Safety, Janitorial & Sanitation, Office, Fleet & Vehicle Maintenance, Power & Hand Tools, Fasteners, Power Transmission and more.

Amazon says that most orders of $50 or more receive free two-day shipping. In addition, AmazonSupply will offer 365 day returns, and corporate lines of credit and a dedicated customer service center.

The site has some crossover with Invetables, an online marketplace for technical materials and hardware.

Getting into B2B supplies is interesting for Amazon, considering its e-commerce initiatives have been more consumer-focused. With AmazonSupply, the e-commerce giant is expanding to a whole new set of professional and business customers, including those in the construction, mechanics, automobile, and research industries.

I am regularly reminded of the amazing innovation coming out of the Nordic region. Countries like Sweden, Finland and even tiny Denmark regularly punch above their weight, producing global companies like Spotify, Rovio, Tradeshift and Everbread. But there remains one country which seems bizarrely content not to engage nearly as much with the global tech scene, and that’s Norway.

There’s a huge irony here. The web browser Opera started out in 1994 as a research project within Telenor, Norway’s main telco. If they’d played it right we would be continuing to talk about Opera, rather than Chrome, Safari or Explorer these days. And there remains a few bright sparks on the horizon like the innovative Bipper, founded by Silje Vallestad. But take a look at the stats and they are disappointing.

NORWAY BY THE NUMBERS

There are only 42 companies listed on CrunchBase for Norway. Because of its global nature, CrunchBase is usually a good indication for how internationally active the startup are in a country. In Finlad there are 55, Sweden 131.

And despite a world-renowned education system, social support system and a great quality of life, Norway looks like it is losing the battle to join the global innovation race.

In February, a report titled “Norway scores poorly on innovation” news site E24 noted that Norway came out badly on an EU Commission overview of innovation and R&D.

Indeed, Norway ranked as achieving only moderate levels of innovation, and was in the same bracket as Greece, the Czech Republic, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Hungary, Malta and Slovakia.

The best rated EU countries turned out to be Sweden first, followed by Germany, Denmark and Finland – so most of Norways close neighbours. Sweden was only defeated by the non-EU countries of Switzerland, the USA, Japan and South Korea.

According to the EU Commission’s report, Norway had great human capital, good research systems, and “relatively” good access to capital and assistance to entrepreneurs. But, it said, there has been a sharp decline in investment in innovation. The report also found Norway was low on its investment in innovation, the number of new patents, new products and new services.

The report did not go into innovation in the field of oil and gas, where Norway usually does well. But that’s hardly the point. If Norway is to develop further its going to need more than just natural resources.

IS INNOVATION NORWAY FAILING ENTREPRENEURS?

I spoke to a local entrepreneur who is frustrated with the situation.

Hanna Aase is a well known social media expert in Norway, founder of Toveis Media. However, she now plans to launch a tech startup called Wonderloop.

Wonderloop will be based on live interaction though video and is currently raising a $100,000 in seed funding. The idea is to increase someone’s chances of meeting the right person to do business with via video, combined with integration with social networks. It’s a hot area right now, with Sean Parker backing the new Airtime project and a new startup called Runfaces suddenly getting traction in the US.

But Hanna’s quest for financial backing in Norway is a powerful indication of the lack of vision Norway’s funding bodies have.

She says she recently had her application for Wonderloop rejected by Innovation Norway – the government-backed fund – because, they said, it was “aiming too high”. It’s ironic because Innovation Norway’s slogan is “We give local ideas global opportunities” and they claim to look for unique business models.

“If you have a product in oil, shipping or natural resources then you’re good in Norway, anything else, forget it,” she tells me.

“There is little real angel funding culture in Norway. There are no well known incubation programs. Although I easily raised funding for a media company which had clients, there seems to be zero appetite for early stage technology companies which need funding to grow if they are to succeed.

“In Norway we like to invest in what’s already successful. The fear of failing here is huge even though you can’t predict in advance how a company will do. Norway is missing the boat compared to our neighbours in this field. And we hate being beaten by Sweden. The government knows what it must do and they have given Innovation Norway a lot of money, but it’s being controlled by people who have little knowledge of tech startups. The ‘senior advisor’ who reviewed my application is not even on Facebook. It’s like evaluating a new car model without ever driven one.

It appears Innovation Norway is not well connected to the international tech scene. They insisted the business plan for Wonderloop be submitted in Norwegian, even though it was written in English for international investors.

Hanna says the experience has put her off trying to raise capital in Norway.

“The result is that I’ll probably move. It’s basically as expensive for me to move to Oslo as it is to move to Silicon Valley. It pains me to leave what I think is one of the best countries in the world but I can’t stay in a country that does not believe in me.”

Aase’s story will no doubt chime with many European entrepreneurs who get let down by short-sighted government back funds, which they must often turn to when private capital is so scarce outside of major centres like London, Paris or Berlin.

But it’s also an indication that Norway is losing the battle to take its place in the fast-paced Nordic tech scene. It didn’t need to be that way.

SIRI COULD HAVE BEEN NORWEGIAN. IT WASN’T.

Siri, the magical application in the iPhone that returns search results when you talk to it, could well have been built-in Norway.

Its creator, Day Kittlaus, is half Norwegian and half American. He held management positions in Telenor prior to moving to the US to create Siri with Adam Cheyer and Tom Gruber in 2007. Siri was famously a startup which Steve Jobs took a personal interest in and later bought for a rumoured $200m.

Siri is even said to be named after the famous Norwegian meteorologist and business woman Siri Kalvig.

But Siri did not end up being a Norwegian company, it was American.

Interviewed by e24, Kittlaus was asked what he thought Norway should do to become a technological superpower?

He replied that the government should take some of its oil wealth and invest in a cluster near the airport and fund basic research that companies could commercialise.

“The state would recover all their money many times over,” he said.

The question is, is anyone at Innovation Norway listening?

UPDATE:

Here’s a little more on Norway’s woes.

Out of a total population in Norway of 5 million, the workforce is 2.62 million. The welfare system in Norway is so strong, that 616,000 persons get welfare payments (sickness,
disability etc) and 19 % of the population of active working age is now partially
or completely unable to work [source].

Plus, a very high taxation regime does not encourage taking risks – why spend years on education or a risky tech startup when you can be carpenter and have a guaranteed job and about the same salary as a software developer?

In the words of Dropbox CEO Drew Houston, sharing documents and other files online is “bafflingly, still really difficult.” I mean, clearly it’s doable through email and, yes, services such as Dropbox, but it’s still kind of a pain. With a new feature launching today, Houston and his team are trying to make things as absolutely simple as possible. And it looks like they’ve succeeded.

Houston and Product Manager Ivan Kirigin demonstrated the feature to TechCrunch Editor Eric Eldon and me last week. It was one of those demos that flew by — in a good way. Now, if you want to share a file in Dropbox, you just click on the file, then click on “Get Link”, and Dropbox will automatically generate a custom URL. You can share that URL via email or however else you like, and whoever clicks on it will be able to view the file in their browser. Simple, and also the first easy way for Dropbox users to share files with people who don’t have Dropbox accounts.

There are other things worth pointing out beyond the basic functionality. One is that the experience is simple for both the person viewing the file and the person sharing it. There’s no complicated upload process — you just need to drag something into your Dropbox folder (assuming it isn’t there already), and then it takes two clicks to get the URL. The Dropbox team showed us that it’s not just about documents, but also photos, videos, and even folders. You can also share files from the Dropbox mobile app, and view them in a mobile browser. (Dropbox has already quietly launched the feature in its mobile apps.) Oh, and there’s an option for deleting a file that you’ve previously shared.

Houston says the team spent a lot of time trying to create a beautiful viewing experience (in fact, a spokesperson tells me that Kirigin, engineer Makinde Adeagbo, and designer Jon Ying have been working on this for more than a year). He also imagines that this could be applicable to a broad range of use cases, from coach wanting to share photos with their team to a professor sharing the class syllabus with students.

One current drawback is the lack of security features, aside from the link itself — as long as someone has that link, they can view the file. On the bright side, that means there viewing experience is as easy as Houston wants it to be. He also notes that guessing a long, randomized URL is incredibly difficult. However, he wants to add more security eventually, like optional password protection.

You can read more about the links feature here. Eldon and I were actually so taken with it that we’re going to be encouraging companies to follow Dropbox’s lead. So startups and PR people: Please use Dropbox links to share press materials with us.

Last year, we wrote about Copious, an eBay-like marketplace that leveraged your social graph on Facebook. The site aimed to use your social graph from Facebook to make the marketplace experience that you’d find on Amazon or eBay more social, allowing buyers and sellers to see if friends in common, previous purchases, social reviews and more. Today, the company is launching a new version of its marketplace, focused exclusively on fashion and with a number of new personalization features.

Copious now asks shoppers who join the site to connect through Facebook or Twitter and to follow five trends that fit their style, everything from color-blocking and vintage wear. You’ll also be suggested people to follow on the site that match your chosen trends. By following trends and people, shoppers will get a more socially curated experience every time they visit.

In addition, Copious will used this information to give users suggestions of products sold on the site that match their personal style. In particular, the startup says it is focusing on allowing popular fashion bloggers the ability to sell some of their looks on the site.

In terms of the merchant experience, you can still see how many followers a merchant has, who has liked and bought from the merchant, photos and more.

Copious, which raised $2 million in funding from Foundation Capital, Google Ventures, and BlackBerry Partners Fund, was founded in January 2011 by former Mobshop CEO Jim Rose, Critical Path VP of mobile strategy Rob Zuber, and former Facebook head of marketing Jonathan Ehrlich. All three worked at MobShop, which was a group-buying site that launched during the bubble.

Since testing the new version of the marketplace, Copious says it has seen a 100% increase in user engagement on the site and a more than 250% increase in month-over-month transactions. The company has also integrated Pinterest into the shopping experience, allowing users to pin their favorite items on the site.

Facebook and commerce don’t necessarily go hand in hand. Some e-commerce ventures who have leveraged Facebook as a platform for buying have flopped. But other reports point to a potentially lucrative model in integrating Facebook into the shopping experience. Clearly Copious is hoping to be part of the latter group.

The best way to get someone to spread your dumb video is to include something controversial. That’s day one material in Viral YouTube Marketing 101. And so, Samsung, clearly a graduate of said class tapped that knowledge and took a shot at iPhone users, somewhat calling them sheep for using the same phone as everyone else. Funny? Only in the sense that this lame jab is the high point of an otherwise humdrum video spot. Seriously, this might be the worst teaser in the history of teasers.

Samsung is gearing up to launch the next generation Galaxy S smartphone on May 3rd at a London event. Rumors have speculated that this phone will pack a quad-core CPU, come encased in a ceramic bezel and, like other recent Samsung smartphones, rock a massive screen. And, if this teaser is to be believed, Samsung hopes to sell a very limited number of these phones to prevent owners from feeling like sheep, mindlessly following trends and looking like everyone else.

Much has been said about the role social media has come to play in the global landscape over the last few years. Whether one sees it as the tool of revolutions or not, there is no denying its utility as a means of realtime communication — as a medium to connect, share, and disseminate news and information across borders. Facebook, Twitter, and other media played an integral role in organizing the socio-political upheavals in Egypt, Libya, and across the Middle East and North Africa, allowing those oppressed and marginalized by despotic regimes to communicate and organize, and to expose human rights violations.

Of course, social and other forms of digital media have just as much potential for ill as they do for use among democracy advocates — something that has not gone unnoticed in the White House. According to the Washington Post, President Obama will today issue an executive order that gives U.S. officials the ability to impose sanctions on foreign bodies that use these “new technologies” to carry out human rights violations.

The report cites cellphone tracking and Internet monitoring as chief among those abuses, reflecting the recent actions of authoritarian regimes that have used kill switches, illegal wire-tapping, etc. to stem and/or monitor web-based communication among those in opposition — abuses perpetrated not only by governments in Libya and Egypt, but more recently in Iran and Syria as well.

The report, which cites senior administration officials, holds that President Obama will issue the executive order on Monday during a speech at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, using the opportunity to acknowledge that U.S. national security must be updated to reflect a world that is being rapidly transformed by the application of new technologies. The order is also said to be a direct response to to criticism over the country’s (and the administration’s) inaction in the face of the Syrian government’s bloody crackdown, which has led to the death of thousands of civilians.

Syrian forces have reportedly been using technology to track their opposition, and “Syrian officials may also have tracked satellite phones and computer addresses to locate a group of foreign journalists in February who were covering the siege of the city of Homs,” according to the Washington Post. During the attacks in February, two journalists seeking refuge were killed, one of them an American working for the Sunday Times of London.

The executive order, on which the Washington Post alone was briefed, reportedly states that “the same GPS, satellite communications, mobile phone, and Internet technology employed by democracy activists across the Middle East and North Africa is being used against them by the regimes in Syria and Iran … and the new steps are designed primarily to target companies explicitly aiding authoritarian governments with new technology that assists in civilian repression.”

But what is perhaps most relevant to the tech industry is that the Executive Order contains provisions that aim to target companies that design or provide aid authoritarian governments with technology that helps them repress or monitor their civilians. As reports have surfaced that American technology is being used by the Syrian government to monitor and censor its citizens, senior administrations reportedly said that “the measures should prompt all companies to think harder about how the technology they are providing to other countries might be employed and to take steps to ensure that it is not used in harmful ways.”

While it is easy to welcome sanctions against those clearly and transparently using technology to assist in human rights violations and to oppress large groups of people, beyond the extremes, this kind of stuff can quickly get into thorny territory. It is not always so easy to divorce those using “new technology” to impose restrictions on access or monitor others — from the opposite. The Executive Order comes close on the heels of the disruption and reported cyberattack on an American website that has been covering “China's biggest political scandal in decades.” It is not certain whether the attack came from the Chinese government itself, or some third-party trying to make it look like the government was responsible.

Obama’s Order is specifically geared towards the situations in Iran and Syria, but opens the doors to sanctions on other foreign bodies in the future. It will reportedly be used only in extreme circumstances, and likely on a case-by-case basis.

On a bright note for American tech companies, the Obama Administration will also be looking to them to develop more effective ways to help those afflicted in human rights abuses communicate and organize, according to the report:

The president will also announce a set of U.S. development "challenge" grants designed to encourage technology companies to develop new ways to help residents in countries vulnerable to mass killings better detect and quickly alert others to impending dangers.

For more, check out the Washington Post’s report here, and you can check into the webcast of Obama’s speech at the Holocaust Museum on Monday here.

Ad-tech may not be the most obvious face of digital advertising, but in a world in which the role of big data is getting ever more essential to how things work, it is taking up an increasingly important role. One sign of that comes from the funding that ad-tech players are getting in this space: today, ad-tech startup Moat announced that it has picked up a $12 million investment led by the Mayfield Fund and including existing investors.

The Series B investment takes the total amount invested in the company to $16.5 million with past investors including Ron Conway's SV Angel, Founders Fund, Vast Ventures, Lerer Ventures, Founder Collective, and First Round Capital; as well as the WGI Group, an investment vehicle from Moat’s founders, Right Media ex-CEO Mike Walrath and brothers Jonah and Noah Goodhart.

As a result of the deal, Mayfield partner Tim Chang will join the board of Moat.

The news of Moat raising funds was first made public last Friday, in a Form D SEC filing, in which Moat noted it was raising up to $15 million. That filing did not mention the names of the investors or the amount of the VC investment and also included funds from previous rounds.

Unlike other ad-tech companies that also run ad networks, Moat has focused only on analytics that seek to take advertisers and publishers beyond the traditional metric of “clicks” as a way of gauging the effectiveness of a digital media campaign, which it offers in a software-as-a-service model.

Jonah Goodhart, who is also CEO of Moat, says that it is doing this in response to what he sees as possibly the biggest issue in digital advertising today — and you could argue the biggest gating factor restricting more growth. “What is clear to us is that there is a critical need to address how brand advertising is measured online,” he told me. “We hear that from advertisers, publishers, creative agencies, and ad exchanges. It is the topic of conversation at most advertising conferences and it is what everyone is talking about in the industry.” Even Google, he points out, has started to release its own non-click metrics, “which is
pretty remarkable given that the vast majority of Google's revenue is based on ad clicks.”

Its Moat Intelligence product is now being used by 15,000 businesses including companies like Forbes and AOL (which owns TechCrunch). The newest product, a patent-pending analytics platform called Moat Analytics, follows campaigns in real-time and is based on engagement rather than simple clicks. So far it has measured billions of impressions on behalf of advertising and publishing clients. Moat says that today’s investment will be used to further expand that portfolio of products: the next will be a Premium Intelligence Platform due out later this year.

Goodhart says Moat it is not providing visibility on revenues at the moment, but that it is experiencing “very strong demand” for its SaaS business model, based on subscriptions rather than percentage of media spend. “I think clients are finding it refreshing to have a flat monthly price.”

What might be the next area to disrupt?

I asked Goodhart about where he sees mobile today, an area that many think has a bright future in digital advertising but has so far only represented a small fraction of overall media spend.

“It’s important from my perspective that we be able to measure apples-to-apples across different mediums as best we can. Each screen or platform has some unique features that are different but we should still be able to compare, for example, whether the ads were viewable by the user and for how long,” he said. He points out that its Intelligence and Analytics products already support mobile and tablet devices but “this is just in its infancy in terms of actual media spend today.”

[Image: Jim Mead, Flickr]

A sign of more big money being poured into the tech sector, by way of a new development for the Chernin Group, the digital media company founded by ex-News Corp. executive Peter Chernin: it has sold a “significant minority stake” to a group of investors led by Providence Equity Partners, reportedly for $200 million.

The Chernin Group, which has invested in a number of hot online properties including Tumblr and Flipboard, says that the deal gives it the financial muscle to go after “any deal of any size” anywhere in the world, according to a report in the FT. The deals will focus on digital media assets, and will span the range from incubator investments through to later-stage funding rounds. The first investments will be announced “within weeks.”

A $200 million investment from the Providence group would value the Chernin Group at around $400 million, a source told the newspaper.

The Chernin Group has used some of its funds to date to invest in U.S.-based properties like Tumblr, Flipboard and Pandora, and it has also produced films and TV shows with primary distribution in the U.S. market (eg Fox’s New Girl and the feature film Rise of the Planet of the Apes).

However, it looks like this new injection of cash will be used to help it also focus on investments in emerging markets like India, China and Indonesia. Asia is a region where the Chernin’s group has already been active, with a majority stake in CA Media, which Chernin had founded with another ex-News Corp. executive, Paul Aiello.

The deal also marks another step into VC activity for the Providence Group, which has made most of its investments on the side of private equity but is clearly interested in also making sure that it is riding the wave of “high-growth” tech investing as well — exemplified not just by Facebook’s purchase of Instagram for $1 billion, but the many other companies that are now being touted at similar valuations. Those are investments that the big media players are also missing out on, says Jonathan Nelson, chief executive of Providence. "It's very hard for incumbents to pursue those opportunities [because] they are threatening to incumbents," he told the FT. As part of the deal, Chernin will become an advisor to Providence, and Providence people will join the Chernin Group’s board.

And it’s as interesting to look at what the Chernin Group pursues as what it will not: apparently it had teamed up with Providence a year ago to look at buying Yahoo, but decided against it after it “didn't feel like it made sense," Chernin told the FT.

The new Estonian accelerator program Startup Wise Guys, backed by the Estonian government-owned Estonian Development Fund and some former engineers from Skype, has just announced the seven teams it will be working with. Two of them from Estonia and one from Croatia, Ukraine, Germany, The Netherlands and UK.

Wise Guys received over 200 applications, and will provide the shortlisted projects with an extensive startup developing program. The projects will be supported by a squad of international mentors. The program starts on April 23 and includes three steps: shaping (3 weeks), building (4 weeks) and selling (3 weeks), supported by Wise Guys mentors. There will be an Investor Day in Tallinn on June 30th, followed by one in London on July 6th.

Startup Wise Guys, launched few months ago, is a joint effort of the players in Estonian startup ecosystem to bring international mentors to Estonia and attract talent across Eastern Europe and CIS countries.

The first members of the new Startup Wise Guys family are:

Monolith (Croatia)

This is a machine powered by an Augmented Reality Engine that turns regular commercials into movie-like experiences. There are many possible use for Monolith, for example: in a clothing store you can try on a new collection in front of the Monolith, even without going to the fitting room; or, you could have a movie-like experience of your favorite story, movie or game just in front of the Monolith. Monolith is the first fully integrated augmented reality advertising device combining a hardware solution based on Kinect and a proprietary software platform for creating, distributing and measuring AR ads. Their first customers are a local Croatian soft drink company and will work for the Lenovo store in Zagreb.

Moojoo (Germany)

Mojoo let´s people discover, organize & share local events, based on their interests and curated by their friends and tastemakers. It is a social discovery site for local events and things to do, curated by your friends and people who share your interests and your lifestyle, by leveraging word-of-mouth conversations on the social web. Think Pinterest-meets-Twitter for your local life, creating exciting and memorable moments every day. This could be a powerful formula: the hand-curated quality of a visual event & lifestyle magazine plus the speed of a blog plus the personal relevance of a social and local network. Thats moojoo! While people spend about 90 % of their time and money offline, the social and mobile market size is about to rise to $30 Billion by 2015. There is a huge potential for the next stage of the web aiming to connect people online in order to organize their life offline. 75 % of people already use the internet to organize things offline. People have about 6 h daily leisure time in average, which we want to help them to fill best possible.

Like A Local Guide (Estonia)

This is like a local guide travel site where reviews are written by locals and creating your personal city guide takes only a minute. It helps people to create high-quality personal city guides that compile tips from locals into personalized travel guides that can be created quickly. Instead of browsing through hundreds of listings they have to look through only those places which fit their interest and budget. Their goal is to create an active community of local editors all around the world and offer local activists and travel bloggers a new medium to share their favorite places in their hometown. The market is the whole independent travel sector, who travel longer and spend more money in destinations. They are offering businesses that have been selected by editors an opportunity to highlight their listing with different features, like allowing direct booking of accommodation or tours, adding more photos, advertising their events (parties, live music, concerts etc), answering to customers more personally and letting people know about their specials (discounts, happy hours etc).

Wellbeing In the City (UK)

Wellbeing In the City is a social platform that offers simple & practical ways to achieve a balanced lifestyle through intimate communities & Wellbeing marketplace.

Wellbeing In the City is a social platform that offers simple & practical ways to achieve a balanced lifestyle. People are not living balanced lifestyles – Lacking time, energy, confidence and freedom – Forced to choose between competing needs of work, family, friends & self – 80% of people feel stress at work, but can't find help in learning how to manage – Need to be inspired and supported by people they can relate to. Their solution is a social place that balances lifestyles. They are trying to get people to become addicted to positive, engaging and healthy living.

Monday52 (Ukraine)

Monday52 helps people to have a better career by sharing their work experience and comparing it to others. Employees can rate their employers and get personalized job recommendations. Monday52 wants to prove the idea on a few pilot markets before expanding further. These markets are tech companies in Estonia and Ukraine. The business model is not yet clear, two big ideas so far are HR analytics and lead gen for recruiters. Their direct competitor is Glassdoor.com in US. Monday52 thinks that their edge is that they think you can't get trustworthy reviews and ratings with real people (e.g. anonymous) and that's what we're going to do. In terms of a biusiness model, there are lots of "workplace rankings" from Hewitt to BBB and regional bodies. Unlike those folks, on Monday52 employees will get actual value out of participating in a survey.

WappZapp (The Netherlands)

They bring your daily dose of video on the web. By turning your device into your social remote, you can zap videos to any webTV.

Your personal TV portal. Flipboard meets spotify for video. With WappZapp you zap your way through the best internet video, track your favorite shows and share cool stuff with friends. Best of all, you can turn your iPad or iPhone in to the remote to zap any video to your internet TV.

WeatherMe (Estonia)

WeatherMe aims to boost farming production by combining farming science and weather data in a simple way.

Farmers today are not benefitting from farming science because it’s complicated. For example only 4% of farmers use some kind of an information system to determine what pesticide to use. They use guesstimates and research has shown that these decisions are not always optimal. The product: They will create field and crops management system that is simple to use because it has most of the data, like weather inside already. The farmers will have to input less data manually and therefore are more likely to start using an electronic system for field management. With that, farmers will get a greater yield from their fields because they actually use the farming methods modern science provides through the system.

1Knows (Estonia)

1Knows is your personal eLearning manager which guides you on your life-long learning path.

They aim to enhance your professional self via gamification. Based on your interests, 1Knows combines free as well as paid-for training, lessons and milestones to end up with a better and smarter you.

Q&A platform Answers.com is announcing a ‘significant’ minority investment from private equity firm TA Associates. Financial terms of the investment were not disclosed.

Answers operates a community-generated Q&A site at Answers.com, and was acquired by AFCV Holdings, a portfolio company of Summit Partners, for $127 million in cash last year. AFCV then delisted Answers, which was a public company, from the NASDAQ and took the company private. Shareholders were very unhappy with the terms of the deal, claiming it tremendously undervalued Answers.com, and tried to block the sale. Answers was also hit with a round of layoffs in June 2011.

On Answers.com, consumers can ask questions, provide answers to existing questions, and search for Q&A topics that fellow community members have created. Answers says the new investment will be used to ramp up personalization, social and other features on the Q&A community. The company says it has more than 150 million users who have generated more than 15 billion answers.

Lookout, a company that offers security services for a number of smartphone platforms, is continuing its international expansion to Europe with a strategic partnership with European telecommunications giant. Deutsche Telekom. Financial terms of the partnership were not disclosed.

For background, Lookout's web-based, cloud-connected applications for Android, Windows Mobile, BlackBerry and iOS devices help users from losing their phones and identifies and block threats on a consumer's phone. Users simply download the software to a device, and it will act as a tracking application, data backup and a virus protector much like security software downloaded to a computer. People can also manage multiple mobile devices and locate a phone or tablet on a Google map. Lookout, which now has 20 million users, says it identified more than 1,000 instances of mobile malware in 2011, which is a significant increase since 2010.

Last year, Lookout raised $40 million in new funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Khosla Ventures, Accel Partners and Index Ventures to help expand the company’s presence abroad.

The partnership focuses on distribution and joint innovation, aiming to bring mobile security and better device health to Telekom's millions of customers throughout Europe. CEO John Hering tell us that this is the company’s first strategic carrier partnership in Europe. He explains that while product details of the deal are still being determined, Deutsche Telekom and Lookout are teaming up to drive innovation in new areas of product development for the security company. Deutsche Telekom has set up a facility for Lookout in Berlin, he says, to build new functionalities together. In some Deutsche Telekom phones, Lookout will be preloading its mobile security app, he adds.

"The mobile environment is increasingly led by downloadable mobile applications, often with people customizing their devices with mobile applications from different sources," says Heikki Makijarvi, Senior Vice President Business Development at Deutsche Telekom. "This drives the importance of security and health on mobile. Lookout's experience in developing leading-edge security applications for this new dynamic environment makes them the ideal partner for Telekom in this critical new category of device solution."

This partnership adds to relationships Lookout has with a number of U.S. carriers, including Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile (a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom). And the company’s mobile security app is already available in Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom via native apps.

Herring says that the expansion of Lookout to European customers will also help boost the security company’s Mobile Threat Network, a cloud-based network which constantly analyzes global threat data to identify and quickly block new threats with over-the-air app updates. The Mobile Threat Network scans billions of apps a month.