You guys may remember a post on TechCrunch yesterday about a trademark spat between an entrepreneur named Brian Hamachek, who built an app called Who’s Near Me Live, and a Lightbank-backed startup called myRete, who built an app called WhosHere, strikingly similar in both functionality and name. The story unfolded that Hamachek had been bullied by WhosHere in the legal realm, despite the fact that WhosHere was built two years earlier, but there are at least two sides to every story.

Hamachek’s side of the story was written by Rip yesterday, but the main points you should know are these: Hamachek changed the name of his app to WNM in most (but not all) instances of its appearance after being hit with a C&D from WhosHere over a year ago. But the spat was revived after WNM got some traction on TechCrunch in March (this is where it gets really good).

This apparently led WhosHere to hit Hamachek with a federal lawsuit, alleging trademark infringement, unfair competition, cybersquatting, and breach of contract. But what Rip likely didn’t know is that WhosHere has a relationship with John and I. We met with Bryant Harris and Stephen Smith in DC before the mini-meetup (and various times thereafter), and we thought it highly unlikely that they would whip out a legal team based solely on a competitor getting TechCrunch coverage.

Hamachek paints himself as the victim here, but there’s another side to the story: he borderline-copied an app that was already on the market, right down to the name.

Here’s the other side to that story from myRete, addressing Hamachek’s points about the timeline, the name, how the legal docs got served, and the offer the parties had already discussed.

In an email sent to us, Smith and Harris state the following:

We are not patent trolls, we are entrepreneurs and developers, and here’s what we’re struggling with.

We founded WhosHere in 2008. Mr. Hamachek approached us in 2010 to integrate his idea for a Windows Mobile version into WhosHere. At that point, we had built a successful app on iOS with just us two founders doing everything from coding to customer service. We had to make a decision on where to put our resources and declined his offer.

We bootstrapped WhosHere for 3 years, through 4 million users and into a profitable company when we met with and ultimately took an investment from Lightbank last summer. We were exceptionally proud of everything we had built including our brand name.

After we declined the opportunity to integrate a yet-to-be-built Windows Mobile version, Mr. Hamachek said he was going to go ahead and develop his own app. Our only response was, 'fine, but please don’t trade on our brand name. We’ve invested a lot into WhosHere and our trademark.’

We felt that it would be unfair competition (and bad for the strength of our trademark) if we let another app in the space have a name that sounded very similar to WhosHere. We then politely asked him to rebrand. He agreed. When the original brand name came back this spring we felt sucker punched. Despite a lot of correspondence with Mr. Hamachek, we have arrived at this unfortunate point.

To all the other entrepreneurs and developers out there, this is the bottom line for the two of us. We literally bet our life savings on this and years of zero vacations to bring WhosHere to where it is. We were both down to a week or two of savings when we turned WhosHere into a profitable company. Would you protect your company and its name?

In Sarah’s post, the one covering WNM, Hamachek’s app is first referenced by its Christian name, Who’s Near Me Live. I believe this is what myRete is referencing in that second-to-last paragraph of their statement.

But there are some other points to consider when looking at this from the side of WhosHere.

First of all, Hamachek alleged that WhosHere withheld certain deadline information, and as a result, he missed the deadline to file a response in the lawsuit. Apparently, this can be a standard practice among IP lawyers who are looking to take advantage of defendants unfamiliar with the system. But WhosHere rebuts:

We did not withhold any court documents from Mr. Hamachek. The documents filed with the court confirm that WhosHere has served Mr. Hamachek with all relevant documents.

From a more objective viewpoint, it seems as though WhosHere didn’t withhold any info, but they probably weren’t as forward as they could have been.

Then there’s also the matter of cooperation. Hamachek claimed that he approached Smith two years ago to build out a Windows Mobile version of WhosHere for them. Hamachek says that Smith rejected the offer and suggested Hamachek build it himself and see what kind of traction he could get. Based on that, WhosHere would decide whether or not to bring him on. From there, Hamachek’s story dives straight into the original C&D sent to him.

But myRete says that they actually made Hamachek an offer:

Just a few weeks ago, we offered to partner with Mr. Hamachek. We offered to integrate his Windows Mobile work into WhosHere and offered a revenue share deal for $100,000, plus fees, for ongoing development (that is where the license agreement that Mr. Hamachek references comes into play, but he left this upside out of his blog post). We truly expected a counter offer. But, when he rejected the offer outright, we asked him what he thought was fair. We never received a response.

It’s clear that both parties have invested a great deal of time and energy (and undoubtedly money) into these efforts. And there’s no question that the apps are a huge part of these founders lives — hell, Bryant Harris met his wife using his own app, WhosHere.

MyRete had the idea first, Hamachek then followed up with his own version in an area they hadn’t been focused on. Everyone involved has worked hard and created something valuable for users. Sure, it’s understandable why Hamachek feels like the victim here, but it’s equally understandable why MyRete does too — and thus decided to take this to court.

Only time, and the courts, can decide who’s right.

Editor’s note: Abhi Nemani is Strategy Director at Code for America, which is a nonprofit helping develop public service opportunities for developers, designers, and entrepreneurs. The Code for America Accelerator is providing seed funding, support, and networking for startups interested in working in the civic space.

At TechCrunch Disrupt New York, the White House's chief geeks — CTO Todd Park and CIO Steve Van Roekel — rang the bell for Silicon Valley to step up and help recode the federal government with their Digital Government Strategy. They hammered home the need for developers to leverage the mountains of open data coming out of the government to create new services and products for consumers.

But you shouldn't do this just for fun, or even out of a sense of civic duty: you should do it because there's money there — lots of it.

You hear a lot about government going broke and not having money (which they are and that's true), but what's often lost in the debates about budget reduction and spending is the magnitude of the market. First consider the iOS apps market, which developers are always clamoring at: it prices out at roughly $2 Billion annually. Or take the entire video games industry, which includes not only software but hardware too: $16 Billion.

Now back to government. Last year alone, federal, state, and local governments in the United States spent over $140 Billion just on technology. And the kicker is this: the tech sucks.

Ripe for Disruption

Here’s a situation that might sound familiar: after slogging through piles of paperwork (none of the forms were available online, so even finding out what information you needed to supply was an ordeal) and trekking back and forth to several different offices at City Hall, you're finally waiting at the right counter to get a permit to build a new deck. There's two people in front of you, and you've already in line for twenty minutes.

As you wait, you respond to a few emails, find a new restaurant near your office to try for lunch, and check your bank balance. How could it possibly be taking so long to perform a routine government service in a world where you can order sushi delivery from your iPhone in thirty seconds flat?

Through our work at Code for America, we've gotten some insight into what's happening behind the scenes. When you are filing paperwork or reporting an neighborhood issue, here is the kind of software that the people on the other side of the counter are using:

If it looks like it was built twenty years ago, that's because it probably was. (Sidenote: most of the web apps only run on older versions of IE.)

This is the software that congressional staffers use to log incoming concerns from constituents — which number into the tens of thousands. You can imagine it takes quite a while to fill out one of these forms:

And it doesn't help when the machines they're stuck with look like this:

There are deeply-rooted structural issues that have caused this situation: the way government procures software is slow, there's a bias against risk in government, and sometimes it's just hard to get things done. But unless smart, creative, entrepreneurial people get excited about the opportunity to bring innovation and disruption the government IT space, there will never be a driving force for change.

That's why it's exciting to see leaders like Park and Van Roekel call on the Valley to step up. We're starting to see it actually happen with the emergence of "civic startups" — and I think it's just the beginning.

Consider Brightscope. The BrightScope tools allow consumers — and employers — to compare their 401K choices, and learn when they are getting a good deal or when they're getting ripped off. Or take SeeClickFix, which allows citizens to report neighborhood issues — illegal dumping or sidewalk defects — to local government through their mobile device or computer, saving the city time and money. GovLoop, a social network for government with tens of thousands of users, was acquired, and runs fairly easily on the Ning platform. (Some of this stuff isn't hard.)

Additionally, more established tech companies are taking the government sector seriously as a major enterprise opportunity. Google Apps and Microsoft are competing for their email and documents, and Box.net and Amazon are vying for their cloud contracts.

But again, this is just the beginning.

Civic Opportunities

We have had the privilege to work inside nearly a dozen cities across the country, and we've seen first hand the need for this kind of disruption — in fact, our city contacts are asking for it. Three themes are emerging as opportunity areas for entrepreneurs:

• Leverage Open Government Data. As Park and Van Roekel mentioned onstage and off, open government data can be the jetfuel for innovation, ranging from the federal datasets like the healthcare.gov API or the green button for energy data to local datastores like crime data from Chicago or 311 reports in San Francisco.

• Create New Government Technology. While contracting can be difficult at times, governments themselves need and are asking for new service providers for their infrastructure. The success of Palantir or Socrata in offering innovative, web 2.0-style services for government shows the way forward for new government-focused enterprise companies.
• Change the way citizens ask, get, or need services from government. Sometimes you may not even have to contract with the government to change it. For an older example — that's not even a startup anymore — think about TurboTax. Instead of changing the software government was using it just offered a better interface for citizens. With scrapers and web services now readily available, nearly any government service is ripe for a similar workaround.

Tim O'Reilly has often called on the web industry to "work on stuff that matters." As citizens — of the web, and of the government — we have the power bring the same innovation that's transformed the consumer web to the public sector to create a better, more efficient democracy. But this is not just an chance to do something that matters — it's also a huge market opportunity.

All the pieces are in place for dramatic disruption in the government IT space. Now it's up to entrepreneurs to make it happen.

So Facebook’s IPO was a disaster. Or maybe it wasn’t. Yes, it was an utter fiasco. No, wait: “The debacle was not the IPO but all the whining by speculators who didn’t make money.” Nope, it was “the flop of the decade“, the worst first week of any IPO in years. Au contraire: “What we have here is an investment banker acting ethically. And the whole financial press is atwitter about it.” Nuh-uh: “The IPO discount is the cost of going public.” Yadda, yadda, yadda, ad nauseum.

Why, what with all these furious alarums and excursions and outraged complains, Benchmark Capital’s Bill Gurley was moved to compare Facebook to another company that immediately dropped below its high-profile IPO issue price and stayed there for weeks and weeks; that well-known loser called … er … Amazon.com. You may have heard of it.

Why is anyone paying attention to the this ultimately meaningless pageant? Probably because suckers people used to think tech IPOs were a guaranteed way for those lucky enough to buy at the issue price to make money. Now everyone is shocked — shocked! — that Facebook’s investors may have been treated unequally, and grousing "I'm just extremely skeptical about the ability of a retail purchaser to be able to play on a level field in the market." Gee, you think? Come on, folks: it’s not like you weren’t warned.

The weird thing is that people actually seem to think that the sinking stock price means Facebook’s prospects are grimmer than they were a few months ago. Now, I can’t stand Facebook — indeed, I’m on record as a regular and frequent Facebook basher myself — but this is nothing but a colossal failure of imagination. Take Henry Blodget’s deconstruction of Facebook’s “natural” value: it’s sharp, it’s incisive, it’s insightful, and it completely misses the point.

Facebook is indeed, as Blodget says, extremely expensive relative to its expected earnings over the next year or two. But, unlike most businesses, Facebook’s long-term upside has nothing to do with its expected earnings over the next year or two. It’s believed by many to be extraordinarily valuable not because of its advertising income but because it has a real chance of becoming a company unlike any that has ever existed before, with the possible exception of pre-breakup AT&T.

Look into the medium and long term, something that the stock market is notoriously bad at. In 10-20 years’ time, everyone on the planet has a smartphone, and/or some even smaller and more ubiquitous form of wireless access. We spend more and more time online. Indeed, the whole notion of “online” disappears, as the Internet is woven into literally every facet of our waking life. As this happens, what company defines our identity, and becomes the gateway to every activity and every service?

Yep. Facebook. Sure, Google+ is arguably better, but that doesn’t matter. Bing search is roughly as good as Google’s, but Google won that land grab; similarly, Facebook has won the identity wars. So their advertising income is (relatively speaking) peanuts. Who cares? They don’t need to invent a new form of monetization. They have one already: Facebook Credits. Right now their income from it is a rounding error. But as years go by, and people slowly get accustomed to buying and using and transferring them, and as Facebook grows more and more intertwined with every online action we take–which is to say, nearly every action we take–it could well become the first global virtual currency … and then ultimately lose that “virtual” disclaimer.

Now, to be clear, I don’t actually think this will happen — and I don’t want it to happen, because I think Facebook is a colossal testament to the triumph of lowest-common-denominator homogenizing mediocrity devoid of any real innovation — but I do believe that they’ve got a legitimate shot at it. (Not least because they’re so paranoid that they decided a twelve-person company with no revenue was an existential threat and spent a billion dollars to buy them out. As Andy Grove always says, “only the paranoid survive.”) That longshot long-term possibility, not potential growth in advertising revenue, is what’s baked into Facebook’s more extreme valuations; and that possibility hasn’t diminished because of the IPO. In fact, with billions upon billions of cold hard cash now sitting in Facebook’s war chest, it has if anything grown.

Editor’s note: Scott Weiss is a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz and the former co-founder and CEO of IronPort Systems, which was acquired by Cisco in 2007. He blogs at http://scott.a16z.com.

One of the most frustrating things I've experienced as a leader is putting months into recruiting an amazing VP or engineer, only to have them change their mind at the 11th hour because of a ridiculous counteroffer. This is the big risk you face when aiming for the best people on the planet (see: "Hiring Rockstars") as they are the "beating heart" of their existing employer, and the incumbent company will often go beyond great lengths to keep them. They may be prized recruits for you, but they are absolutely the most critical people at their current employer. For instance, Google has been rumored to be especially aggressive at countering with restricted stock grants in the millions of dollars for their top people. But they aren't alone. Any employer will do whatever he or she can to keep key talent.

We found out the hard way at IronPort by being overconfident and sloppy at the offer stage. In reality, once an offer is accepted and before the start date, candidates can still be lost—and won—in this no-man's land. The work of getting a top recruit in the door can't stop until they started working for us (and, even then, keeping employees excited to come to work every day never really stops). To mitigate the risk of getting left at the altar, we took a sledgehammer to this egg of a problem and came up with a systematic approach that gave us the best opportunity to close on our most prized recruits (and make them feel good about joining our organization):

Have an outstanding recruiting process. Candidates would go through 2-3 rounds of interviews at 2-4 people per round, which usually resulted in 8-12 total interviews. The interview team would meet beforehand to discuss the job description, learn about the hiring manager's hot buttons and assign interview roles (so everyone doesn't ask the same bullshit resume questions). After each round, the hiring manager would lead a live input discussion and decide whether to pass the candidate to the next phase. We were prompt, organized, responsive as hell and would over-communicate with the candidate. (For more insight into improving your hiring process, see Peter Levine's blog post on hiring.) In addition to making damn good and sure that we hired the best people, the process was a reflection of a well-run company, allowed the candidate to meet and connect with a critical mass of our great people and, lastly, it made them feel like they successfully ran a gantlet to get an offer. It made the offer feel hard earned and special.

The hiring manager must control the offer process. Many companies use a recruiter or HR for managing a candidate pipeline, but when you get close to making an offer, the hiring manager needs to take the wheel completely. People leave and join companies primarily on the connection they have with their boss and negotiating the offer is the crucial start of building this relationship. There's also a lot of critical information that can be gleaned: When will they give notice? What's the candidate's psyche? Who did they connect with during the interviews? I'd always want to get a handshake and an eye contact "yes" to the "Are we done-done?"  question. This commitment mattered a lot during the notice process.

The Welcome Basket. We would put together an awesome basket of IronPort swag: t-shirts, coffee mugs, hats, Nerf guns, fruit, wine, chocolate and a handwritten note to let them know how excited we were to have them join. We'd deliver it to their home a few days after acceptance and we'd always get a shockingly enthusiastic email or phone response: "Wow—totally unexpected!" I always thought it was much harder to consider a counteroffer when our swag was strewn all over the house and their daughter was walking around in our hat and a baby-sized logo T-shirt.

Enlist the interview team. Once I knew when the candidate was planning to give notice, I would schedule a team dinner or drinks within 24 hours to help diffuse the pressure and reinforce the decision. It's also important to keep in constant contact with the candidate during the notice period and the team would help there as well. It's a little weird for the hiring manager to be calling every day, but a coordinated effort among the 8-12 interviewers was not only appreciated but unexpected.

Pay attention to onboarding. The first day, week and month of an employee's experience carries a lasting impression. Everything needs to scream: "We've been expecting you!" Business cards printed, desk with supplies, lunch buddy schedule, basic orientation meeting and a thoughtful plan for training and beginning real, useful work. As CEO, I had a standing 30-minute meeting every Monday to greet and connect with new hires. We also had a daylong new hire orientation scheduled every quarter where I would go over the founding history, values, goals and the most recent board presentation. The product managers would go through every product and an available VP would go through the organizational structure.

Changing jobs is a scary, precarious proposition and the very best people have lots of options. It's the hiring manager's job to connect with the candidate, quarterback the process and get the candidate emotionally comfortable with the new job situation. All of this requires a ton of work AFTER the offer is presented. At the end of the day, I knew we were hiring a real rock star when we would get a "cease and desist" letter from a big public company—a last resort to prevent a beating heart from leaving their organization.

So here’s a story that hopefully will be an eye-opener for entrepreneurs and startups, while providing a painful peek into trademark harassment and the importance of due diligence. It goes a little something like this: About two years ago, software engineer Brian Hamachek decided to build an app first on Windows Mobile (how some horror stories have been known to begin), then on Windows Phone, that enables location-based chat — and calling. In other words, call and chat with new friends who live close by, for free. He called it Who’s Near Me Live.

Long story short: A Lightbank-backed startup called myRete owns and operates a similar app called WhosHere, which was founded two years earlier. Well, they didn’t like the name Brian had chosen for the app — claimed it was too similar — so they asked him to change it. At first, he said “why no thank you,” but then they hit him with a C&D and then a lawsuit, so he acquiesced. Sounds like standard stuff for startup vs. incumbent, right? Well, it doesn’t end there.

Remember, this account is one-sided, and only tells Hamachek’s side of the story. We’ve reached out to WhosHere co-founder and COO Stephen Smith as well as WhosHere PR and will update when we learn more. After having slowly built his user base to about 400K (with limited revenues), he decided to expand and launch an iPhone app. Fellow writer and awesome person Sarah Perez covered the app’s launch for TC. According to Brian’s account of events, that’s when things turned sue-y — or, sour, if you prefer.

But don’t blame TechCrunch. Brian had changed his app’s name to WNM and moved all appearances of “Who’s Near Me Live” under the more prominent “WNMs” on the homepage, social channels, etc. The name still appeared, but Brian made it clear that the name was now “WNM.” WhosHere had apparently thanked him and things remained gravy for about a year — until the TechCrunch post. Seeing that WNM was getting some coverage, WhosHere slapped him with a federal lawsuit, alleging trademark infringement, unfair competition, cybersquating, and breach of contract.

They apparently gave him two choices (paraphrased, put simply): Hand over all your assets to us, or shut everything down completely. (See Brian’s description here.) Obviously, the WNM founder wasn’t particularly thrilled with either of those ideas, but even after exchanging emails with those on the other side, things remained unresolved.

Locked in a stalemate, WhosHere pushed for a default judgement and sent Hamachek the resulting paperwork. Not long after, he received a notice saying that he’d missed the deadline to file a response to the lawsuit. Unaware of any proposed deadline, he dug around and found that the page that included the terms had been cleverly (or dickishly) removed from the paperwork he was sent.

Now he has 7 days to “lawyer up,” and respond. In his words:

I have less than 7 days to find an affordable, but competent, lawyer, request the default be put aside, and respond to their accusations. The lawyers I have spoken to thus far are asking me for at least a $10,000 retainer just to get started on the process and I don’t have those kind of resources laying around. I have spent 2 years building this project into something of a success, sacrificing my time, sleep, and social life for this app every waking day. I fear without help in the next couple days, everything may have been wasted.

The WNM founder today posted the above, non-abridged story to his blog, asking the startup community for support and advice — and included a “Donate” button should readers want to give to the cause. The post found some traction on Hacker News, and he tells us that he’s been surprised (and humbled) to find a community ready to support him, or at least lob pearls of wisdom from the comment section.

He also tells us that there’s more back story. About two years ago, having devised the idea for Who’s Near Me Live, he contacted Smith. Knowing they were already working on a similar app and service, he wanted to build a Windows Mobile version of WhosHere for them. After a back and forth that lasted about two weeks, Smith decided that they didn’t want to take on Hamachek’s services, but they encouraged him to build it himself and see what kind of traction he was able to get.

According to Hamachek, Smith told him that if the app found a user base, they would consider bringing him on, or taking the next step. (Psych!) It took awhile as Brian worked on Who’s Near Me Live in his spare time, working at cloud storage startup, Storsimple, full-time. But a year later, Hamachek says that Smith reached out to him and asked him politely to change the name. When he refused, he received the C&D letter and a lawsuit.

For entrepreneurs and founders out there, as Johnny_Law suggests in the comment section of Hamachek’s post, it’s at this point that he should have retained the services of a lawyerin’ type. But, understandably, not wanting to pay an armload, and, as he says, believing that two reasonable parties would/should be able to work things out, he declined to do that and just accepted the need to change the name.

He might also have removed all incidences of “Who’s Near Me Live” from the site, but he didn’t do that either. He might also have chosen a better name to begin with, but thinking there was enough differentiation, he didn’t bother. A mistake many would make, and, after all, hindsight is 20/20. (Also why sites like Trademarkia exist.)

In regard to the missing “deadline” from WhosHere’s second, federal lawsuit, as Hamachek has since learned, this can be standard practice for lawyers looking to take advantage of those defendants who are unfamiliar with IP/Trademark law and the litigation process. And it seems to have worked, sadly proving their point.

So, while it’s difficult not to see all this as being a bit underhanded, again, as JohnnyLaw points out, painting WhosHere as the “bad guy” may be a little bit misguided. Although, admittedly, if Hamachek’s account is true, it does seem rought. It could also just be a play for 400K users and some SEO. (Again, we’re waiting for a response from WhosHere.)

While Hamachek says he’s open to fully changing the name and removing any appearance of “Who’s Near Me,” he says that the lawsuits seem to be evidence that WhosHere is no longer satisfied with a name change, they want the whole kit-and-kaboodle. So, as a result, he’s currently looking for lawyers and hopes that they can still negotiate a fair result, although the two parties may be beyond that at this point.

A friend who works at one of the biggest business litigation firms told me that courts usually don’t have a lot of sympathy for those that miss filing deadlines. If that happens because one was improperly served or there was a procedural defect in play, avoiding the default is easier. If, instead, the lawyers can prove they did everything right, it generally depends on the judge. And even if there is a default, WhosHere would have to collect the judgement, at which point they may go back to court, where a judge may be more willing to hear the merits rather than resolve on a technicality.

But, again, the moral is: If someone sticks you with a lawsuit, hire a lawyer. And to the bullies: Listen to Bart Simpson (above).

You can find Brian’s post here and myRete is here.

What do you think? How can both startup get back to building their products and avoid the distraction of litigation?

Below you’ll find the original lawsuit and attachments in one:

Affectiva, a startup that tries to measure the emotional response people have to ads and brands, just announced that it has a $500,000 grant from the National Science Foundation.

The company spun out of MIT’s Media Lab. This is its second NSF grant — in January 2011, it won another grant to help launch its Affdex service, which uses webcams to track consumers’ responses as they watch videos. That should allow companies to test their ads with a broad audience in a quick and affordable way. When I spoke to co-founder Rana el Kaliouby last year, she also touted Affectiva’s ability to recognize complex emotions — not just whether you’re smiling or frowning, but also whether you look confused.

Among other things, Affectiva says its technology has been used to crowdsource readers’ responses to ads at Forbes.com, and that it worked with research agency Millward Brown to test Super Bowl campaigns. In addition to Affdex, the company also offers a wireless biosensor that it calls the Q Sensor.

Affectiva says it will use the grant to continue developing Affdex, and to build an “emotional norms database,” which is supposed to answer questions such as “How does an ad’s emotional engagement compare to other ads?” and “How do people in different countries respond to humor in a campaign?”

The startup has also raised venture funding, most recently a $5.7 Series B. Eventually, Affectiva says its technology could expand beyond ad testing, for example by helping people with autism disorders understand facial expressions.

Last summer, after graduating from AngelPad, San Francisco-based Crittercism announced that it had raised $1.2 million in seed funding from the likes of Google Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, Opus Capital, Shasta Ventures, and AOL Ventures.

Today, the startup has received further validation for its diagnostic and management tools for mobile developers, as Opus Capital, Shasta Ventures and Google Ventures have all re-upped, investing $5.5 million in the startup’s series A financing. Not, in fact, $7.2 million as the company’s SEC filing stated this morning. Crittercism CEO Andrew Levy tells us that the filing included the convertible note from the startup’s seed funding.

For those unfamiliar, Crittercism began as a platform that enabled mobile developers to diagnose and analyze app crashes as well as provide quick, easy customer support to their users. The startup has since expanded its focus and today officially announced its app performance management solution, which captures and processes realtime app performance data — not only offering crash reports and diagnostics, but realtime views for app loads, system logs, handled exceptions and transaction tracing.

Levy tells us that the solution works for both small, indie developers and enterprise alike, saving companies from having to throw all their engineering resources at the latest crash, and, in turn, let developers focus on the most important issues, like analyzing user behavior and tracking specific attributes so they can optimize app performance.

The idea, Levy says, is to help developers increase their user retention, ratings and revenue, and companies like Netflix, AT&T, Eventbrite, and NPR are already on board. The startup’s solution allows for realtime app diagnostics and performance analytics on both iOS and Android — in other words, over 125 million unique devices and 3 billion app downloads. It’s currently beta testing its HTML5 SDK along with BlackBerry and Windows Phone integrations as well.

Right now, similar to other infrastructure plays, for indie developers, Crittercism charges based on volume and for enterprise charges a small flat rate per month based on the number of active monthly users using their apps. The company plans to release further pricing info in the next two weeks.

As it’s now tracking over 125 million unique devices, the startup has scaled quickly over the last year, which Levy sees as being one of its key value props to big and small companies alike. At scale, he says, Crittercism collects data that other solutions don’t touch and can thus offer a greater degree of insight, both by normalizing their data and by giving them a peek into the performance of each successive release of an app. Did v2.1 actually attract more downloads, fix the bugs that were a part a part of v2.0? That kind of stuff is critical to mobile developers that want to get the best performance out of apps — especially considering that attention spans are decreasing, and there are plenty of options to overwhelm the consumer on app stores. There’s not as much room for error as there was even a year ago.

For more on Crittercism, check them out at home here.

When the Galaxy S and the Galaxy S II made their respective journeys to the United States, they lost a little something that international customers have enjoyed since the beginning: the physical home button.

According to some new images obtained by The Verge though, that era may be drawing to a close, as T-Mobile’s GSIII variant may sport that home button after all.

It may seem like a minor thing to get worked up over (because it is), but it’s a considerable shift from the four-capacitive-button days of yore. Those design changes were mandated by carriers, and if true, these new images may mean that Samsung is flexing their muscle as the most prolific smartphone manufacturer in the world. That could also mean that the models meant for other carriers will sport a similarly untouched design, and I get the feeling it won’t be long before they start popping up in the wild.

Though the device’s looks may not have changed, you can bet the internals are at least slightly different from the international model. Samsung Mobile chief J.K. Shin noted at the company’s London launch event that the North American variants would be 4G-capable, but that raises another question about T-Mobile’s version — will it have an LTE radio?

T-Mobile’s made it clear recently that they’re working on getting their own LTE network up and running, but it isn’t expected to go live until some time next year. Meanwhile, Verizon, AT&T, and even Sprint have either already lit up their LTE networks or are right on the verge of making it happen. T-Mobile could certainly try and pull a Sprint by releasing LTE-capable hardware ahead of the network actually going live, but I somehow don’t think they’re that bold.

It wouldn’t be the first time a T-Mobile Galaxy device would have its insides changed — when the three domestic GSII flavors were revealed last year, the T-Mobile version remained awfully mum about the device and went as far as locking their demo unit up in an acrylic cage so as not to be manhandled. While the AT&T and Sprint models both sported Samsung’s own Exynos processor, T-Mobile’s was later revealed to be running on a Qualcomm chipset that allowed it to take advantage of the carrier’s HSPA+ 42 coverage.

All that geekery aside, there’s still no official launch date on the books this little looker, but with a Canadian release slated for June 20 we can’t be too far behind. Here’s hoping Samsung has ironed those issues with their hyperglaze finish though, because the last thing they need is to launch some peculiar looking hardware.

It’s a testament to how important Facebook has become in the web ecosystem that the social network’s performance issues yesterday didn’t just affect the site itself (and its 900 million users) but also a wide variety of other sites as well. Performance monitoring company Compuware APM, which analyses the performance of thousands of top sites, just sent us some interesting data about how Facebook’s problems yesterday correlated with significant slowdowns across major U.S. media and retail sites.

As our friends over at GigaOm pointed out today, “Facebook's faltering didn't lead to any noticeable traffic dip.” According to Compuware’s data, however, it did affect sites in other ways because of how tightly many media and retail sites integrate with services like Facebook’s “like” button, which was also affected by yesterday’s outage.

According to our own Josh Constine, yesterday’s outage wasn’t caused by anything external. Earlier reports indicated that Facebook was the victim of a denial-of-service attack, but a Facebook spokesman confirmed that the outage was not the result of third-party involvement. The outage started around 4:30pm yesterday and the site continued to struggle until around 3am PT Friday.

Overall, major Facebook outages are pretty unusual. When the site does go down, though, the ripple effects of these outages now affect large chunks of the web.

Gillmor Gang – Kevin Marks, John Taschek, Robert Scoble, Keith Teare, and Steve Gillmor. Recording has concluded.

Well, it’s about time. Many of us were absolutely floored by the iCache Geode mobile wallet when it first appeared back in April, and now the company has announced that the hotly-awaited accessory is now available for $199.

In case you missed it the first time around, the iCache Geode is an iPhone case with a particularly wonderful twist — in addition to just wrapping a protective layer of plastic around your phone, it also sports a rewritable magstripe card on its rear end. Once the corresponding app has been installed on an iPhone 4/4S, users can store their credit card information on their smartphones and write it onto the so-called GeoCard.

That one card can effectively become any credit card you own whenever you need it, eliminating the need to schlep all that plastic around. What’s more, there’s a small e-ink display also mounted on the back of the Geode which displays the barcodes for loyalty cards that have been stored in the app. To tie it all together, a small fingerprint reader sits just south of the iPhone’s home button, ensuring secure access to your digital funds.

iCache founder (and Oracle alum) Jon Ramaci has been working with his team to create the Geode mobile wallet for the past three years, and it seems like their efforts have paid off. Their Geode Kickstarter campaign garnered $352,918 in funding, absolutely demolishing their original goal of $50,000.

Though their Kickstarter campaign officially wrapped up back in April, that doesn’t mean the team has been resting on their laurels. They’ve been busy getting their manufacturing processes squared away — last time Ramaci and I spoke, he mentioned all of the production would take place in the United States — and responding to customer requests for more colorful cases and a way to carry around ID cards. In short, these past few months have been busy but fruitful — they even took home a few E-Tech Awards from CTIA 2012.

This is quite the milestone for the iCache team, but if recent reports are any indication, they’ll have to keep on their toes. Two of the major recurring rumors about Apple’s forthcoming iPhone deal with substantial hardware changes — specifically a much longer body and a redesigned dock connector — that would render this particular $199 purchase useless. Ramaci is no stranger to these reports though, and mentioned to me that the company would do what it could to help their customers out if a dramatic redesign actually came to be. He noted that the company was mulling over offering existing users a 50% rebate on a redesigned Geode if the current model won’t fit the new iPhone, but for now we’ll have to wait and see what Apple has up their considerable sleeves.

There’s been a lot of flirting going on in recent months between Apple and Facebook. In February, Apple CEO Tim Cook told a group of investors that Facebook was “the one company that is closest to being like Apple”. Last week, Apple did a big App Store promotion for Facebook’s new Camera app, and clearly knew about it well beforehand. Then, of course, there were Cook’s comments at the D10 conference earlier this week. ”Facebook is a great company.” “And the relationship is solid.” Not to mention the ever-provocative ”stay tuned.”

Now the two sides appear on the brink of formalizing the relationship. After much speculation, Facebook integration will indeed be baked into the latest version of iOS, we’ve learned.

Following Cook’s most recent comments, there was much speculation about this finally happening. After all, Facebook integration did appear in an unreleased build of iOS 4 a couple years ago. But much like the Facebook/Ping integration, this fell by the wayside and Apple instead went with Twitter as the main third-party authentication and sharing service in iOS 5.

To be clear, Twitter will still very much be a part of the new iOS (presumably named “iOS 6″ and codenamed “Sundance“), and that company will be holding sessions at WWDC to chat more about the continued partnership (including the integration into the forthcoming OS X Mountain Lion). But Facebook integration will be very important for iOS — tons of apps use Facebook for sign-ups and authentication (many use Facebook as the only way to do this, to the dismay of some). Apple was undoubtedly watching this activity and realized that it was time to formally bring Facebook on board.

This is also a huge win for Facebook, which until now has relied on the sort of clunky Single Sign On technique in iOS where you click a connect button in an app and get fast-app-switched into the Facebook app to authorize permissions. Once you do this, you’re fast-app-switched back into the original app. Other apps still use the old HTML pop-up for Facebook authentication. Needless to say, Facebook being built right into iOS will provide a more seamless way to handle this — see the Twitter integration for an example of how it should work now — or Facebook’s clever cross-app way of doing it.

It’s important to note that Apple being Apple, something could change in the next week and a half (see again: Facebook/Ping). But as of right now, Facebook is a go in iOS “Sundance”. One thing still being hammered out according to our sources is exactly how sharing will work. Sharing is the other big part of the iOS/Twitter integration, and will be important for iOS/Facebook integration as well. But Facebook is significantly more complicated than Twitter in that there are all kinds of permissions for what you can post where and who can see what. And Open Graph adds another layer of complexity to all of this.

My guess is that Apple will keep things simple with at least the initial Facebook/iOS integration. Beyond authentication, there will probably be a Facebook button in the existing share screen which will allow you to share something to your Facebook Wall. I doubt there will be much done with Open Graph and auto-sharing, but I could be wrong. It remains an open question as to how a Facebook iOS SDK might play with the existing Facebook SDKs if an app still does want access to more robust sharing features. All of this is the reason Apple previews iOS to developers before releasing it.

One Apple product that won’t be graced with Facebook’s presence just yet: OS X Mountain Lion. Again, Twitter integration is coming, but Apple is going to take the Facebook integration one step at a time — which means iOS, for now.

Also not coming anytime soon/probably ever: Google+/iOS integration. Just wanted to make that clear.

One interesting trend I’ve been watching over the last year or so is the intersection of social and personalization as a way to discover new videos. And, of course, how it helps users to discover new music videos. The latest entrant into the social music video discovery category is Rockify, which just launched its public-facing portal for music videos, Rockify.TV, in public beta.

Rockify.TV is kind of like Pandora for music videos, but with social hooks to help users find interesting content based on their own musical preferences, and those of friends. Like most other video sites, it takes advantage of social networks by allowing users to share the videos they’re watching with their friends, which is pretty standard stuff.

The big difference comes in how Rockify displays videos to users — like the way MTV used to do it. Once signed in, users get a stream of music videos, based on trending music, personal favorites, and personalized suggestions. The site serves up a continuous stream of content, meaning that users never have to stop and search for the next video they want to watch — that is, unless they want to.

The startup has more than 200,000 videos available in its database, although those videos are mostly hosted by and served up from other sites, like YouTube. The startup has rolled out a web app that can be accessed from HTML5-ready browser — meaning that users with iPads and other mobile devices can access it. It’s also built native apps for the Chrome browser and Boxee Box, and is working on more connected TV apps.

It’s an interesting time for Rockify.TV to launch: After all, Vevo already has licensing relationships with the major record labels, and recently rolled out a new design aimed at leveraging publicly shared social data, as well as Facebook Open Graph integration, which has helped increase user engagement. And Cull.tv, which was also doing social discovery of music videos, recently sold to Twitvid, and will used to power recommendations across other verticals as well.

That said, the Rockify.TV site is kind of a proof-of-concept for backend technology that Rockify hopes to license to publishers themselves. Its platform gives publishers the ability to provide all the same functionality that is available on the consumer-facing site, but limiting it to just their videos. Austin City Limits, for instance, has signed on to let users browse through its library of performances in a personalized, continuous way. That allows Rockify to keep its streaming video site available for free — at least for now.

If you’ve got a vacation coming up, a startup called HoozTrippin is aiming to make it more fun by connecting you with other travelers.

Co-founder and CEO Steven Oh (who was formerly the head of product at Rotten Tomatoes and Movielink), describes the site as “Match.com for travelers,” except broader: “We don’t limit ourselves to just singles.” In some ways, it sounds like a complement to a service like Triptrotting, which connects travelers to locals. Local guides can make for a better trip, for sure, but so can hanging out with fellow travelers — for example, that’s one of the big reasons many of my friends prefer staying in hostels.

So when you enter your trip information into HoozTrippin, you can see a list of other members who are going to be in the same location at the same time. If you enter the specific hotel, you can even see who else has said they’re going to stay there. Then you can send those other travelers a message or a “wink”. (And yes, if you’re more, uh, romantically inclined, Hooztrippin profiles also include relationship status.) After a trip, you can also share photos with other users.

Oh says there’s functionality for students, too, allowing them to see who’s traveling to the same location from their school.

One challenge for the site, as for most other just-launched social networking services , is getting enough users to make the things interesting or useful. When I explored the site, Oh gave me a location and specific dates to enter, so that I’d find other people with similar trips. When I entered a trip that I’m actually taking, I wasn’t as lucky. Oh admits that this is “definitely an issue,” but he says the site is working on features (he won’t say what they are) that should improve things.

As for privacy and safety, Oh notes that you can choose to share your trip publicly (so that the information is available to all other members) or privately (so that the dates and hotel information only show up when people have a matching trip).

HoozTrippin is self-funded.

The Nokia Lumia 900 The Dark Knight Rises Edition handset has made its way on the interwebs recently and it’s nothing short of a beauty, with a black polycarbonate unibody frame and a laser-etched Batman logo across the back. Moreover, the phone — which is usually limited to either a black or white background and a handful of color themes like Nokia blue, teal, lime, mango, and pink — will also come with a black and grey theme.

Of course, plenty of Dark Knight Rises content will come pre-loaded as well, including a game called Claim Gotham City and the Dark Knight Rises app. We had gotten a glimpse of the phone in what appears to be official press shots (or renders) a few days ago, but the first hands-on photos of the phone have surfaced, courtesy of Phonerpt.

Take a look:

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Now, the Lumia 900 Batphone is far from the first Batman/Nokia collaboration to date. After a little light research, I’ve learned that there are quite a few Nokia batphones out in the world.

Here’s a brief image-tastic history of Nokia’s obsession with Batman:

Nokia 5800 XpressMedia

In 2008, a now-incredibly famous movie hit the silver screen. You may have heard of it: The Dark Knight. It featured Heath Ledger as the Joker, who tragically died before the movie was ever released. But it also featured another shining star known as the Nokia 5800 XpressMedia. The phone appeared in the trailer for the movie and was then blogged by dozens of tech sites. It was the first touchscreen phone Nokia put on the market, complete with stylus and three home buttons. It was nicknamed the Tube, and ended up in a handful of music videos including Britney Spears’ “Womanizer”, Flo Rida’s “Right Round”, and Cobra Starship’s “Good Girls Go Bad”.

[Images via TrustedReviews and Phonerpt]

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Nokia 6205 Dark Knight Edition

Then, in June of the same year, Nokia realized the potential of putting actual Batman imagery and design language on the phone itself, and came out with the Nokia 6205 Dark Knight edition. It was a basic flip phone, with a flash-enabled camera and tons of pre-loaded Batman content like ringtones and wallpapers. It had a Batman home screen background, along with a Batman icon along the back of the solid black (rather sleek) flip phone. Verizon sold the device, along with a white version for non-Batman fans.

[Images via Engadget]

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Nokia Batman Concept Style N19

Also in 2008, a Finnish Nokia designer named Heikki Juvonen came up with this concept design, likely piggy backing off of the hype from the 5800′s cameo in The Dark Knight. It’s now known as the Nokia Batman Concept Style N19, and it’s said to have a “futuristically transparent” display. There’s no list price for it, nor is there any spec sheet. Essentially, it’s an awkwardly-designed feature phone inspired almost entirely by Batman, from the wing-esque keypad section to the black and goldish coloring.

[Images via ITechNews]

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Nckla Batman/Spider-Man phone

About a year later, Shenzhen picked up on the trend. So, this isn’t necessarily Nokia’s obsession with Batman, but rather Nckla‘s (think Prado instead of Prada). This phone hit the web in June of 2009, and seemed to be the lovechild of a Spider-Man fan and a Batman fan. It came in both black versions, and white with red and blue trim. Along the back there is a large Batman symbol, which is a part of the loudspeaker, and the small speaker on the front is also emblazoned with a Batman icon. The phone also happens to light up in blue and red.

[Images via JustAmp]

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Nokia Lumia 800 Dark Knight Rises

Fast forward a couple years, and you’ll find the Nokia Lumia 800 Dark Knight Rises smartphone. It’s nearly identical to the 900 Dark Knight Rises, but without the big brother’s LTE connectivity, 4.3-inch Super AMOLED display, and front-facing camera.

[Video via NokiaLumiaDownload]

[Images via PC Authority, ITechSources, and PocketLint]

Zillow, the popular online real estate search engine,  just announced that it has closed its previously announced (and rumored) $40 million acquisition of RentJuice. With RentJuice, Zillow now owns a rental relationship management service for landlords, property managers and rental brokers that helps them market their inventory and client relationships. RentJuice is currently being used to manage one million rental units and their rental listings.

As the U.S. real estate market slowed down over the last few years, Zillow started to focus more on rentals, too. Now, Zillow considers rentals to be one of its three core businesses besides real estate and mortgages. According to the company’s own data, 6 million renters currently visit Zillow every month, “browsing hundreds of thousands of rental listings.”

The market for rental listings is, says Zillow, still highly fragmented. RentJuice serves about one million units, but there are more than 43 million rental units in the U.S.

Zillow CEO Spencer Rascoff argues that he sees “a huge market opportunity in rentals. More than seventy percent of movers each year are renters and rental units turn over six times as frequently as homes for sale, yet the professional market is highly fragmented.”

RentJuice launched in 2009. The company raised a total of $6.2 million before the acquisition, with Tim Draper and Highland Capital Partners as its lead investors. The RentJuice team will continue to work out of its San Francisco offices (Zillow is headquartered in Seattle, WA and also has an office in Irvine, CA). The company’s founder and CEO David Vivero is now vice president of rentals at Zillow.

Ticket search engine SeatGeek is best known as the place to find good deals on sports tickets, but it’s working to dominate ticketing for any live events, including concerts. It just announced its first partnership deals on the music side, with AOL Music (which is, yes, owned by the same parent company as TechCrunch), Pollstar, and Emusic.

Now, if you go to AOL Music, for example, and you’re looking at Justin Bieber’s tour dates, clicking on any of the “Get Tickets” buttons will take you to the relevant SeatGeek page. (For the record: Using Justin Bieber as the example was SeatGeek’s idea, not mine.) The page includes a list of tickets available from a range of other sites including StubHub, eBay, and TicketsNow, and a map showing where all those tickets would actually seat you.

Co-founder Jack Groetzinger says similar partnership deals (with publishers like Hearst and the New York Daily News) were crucial to growing SeatGeek on the sports side — he notes that the company, despite its success, is “not a major American brand by any means,” so these deals “help us reach people who would not normally hear about us.” Meanwhile, Lisa Namerow, GM of AOL Music and AOL Radio, calls SeatGeek “the most powerful ticket search interface online.”

The music side of the business is growing, Groetzinger adds. In April, SeatGeek sold twice as many music tickets as it did in December, and three times as many as it was selling in the fall. Plus, there are now more music events on the site than sports events (though presumably many of the sports events dwarf the concerts in size and sales).

Groetzinger says a big focus in the coming months will be event recommendations through Columbus, SeatGeek’s personalized events calendar. This is more important for concerts than for sports — as Groetzinger notes, if you’re a Yankees fan, “it’s not exactly difficult to figure out when the Yankees are playing,” but “it’s not trivial to figure out what shows you want to go to.”

The online mapping space is quickly heating up. What used to be a relatively straightforward competition between Google and Microsoft (with OpenStreetMap and a few other smaller players standing on the sidelines) will likely become a far more complex scenario now that Apple is likely to reveal its own solution at its WWDC later this month. Google, it seems, is trying to steal some thunder from Apple and is holding an invite-only press event in San Francisco where the company promises to unveil “the next dimension of Google Maps.”

The invitation also notes that Google will offer attendees “a behind-the-scenes look at Google Maps and share our vision. We’ll also demo some of the newest technology and provide a sneak peek at upcoming features that will help people get where they want to go – both physically and virtually.”

Given that Apple is widely rumored to drop Google Maps in iOS6 in favor of its own solution with a focus on 3D maps, it’s hard not to look at Google talking about “the next dimension of Google Maps” without thinking about more 3D features.

Google Maps, of course, already lets you switch to Google Earth in the browser. This feature only works once you have installed a plugin, though. Maybe this update will bring this functionality directly to the browser through WebGL. Maybe Google is adding more 3D buildings and trees, or maybe it is also updating Street View with a more virtual world-like look.

Whatever it is, we’ll be attending the event next week and will keep you posted.

Earlier this month, Bing, the other white meat search engine, revealed its big redesign, which put a heavy emphasis on social search. Today, Microsoft announced the new version of Bing.com is now available to all U.S. users. Nothing has changed between then and now, but if you regularly visit Bing.com to perform searches (ha, right?) then you’ll definitely notice a big difference. The new search interface opts for cleaner search results, a three-column design, and deeper Facebook integration.

The move to the pared down search experience and social sidebar you’ll find on the new bing is Microsoft’s response to Google’s attempt at merging its own social network, Google+, with its search results. On Google, pages your friends have shared on Google+ or have +1′ed (Google’s alternative to the Facebook “like”) appear at or near the top of search results. Microsoft instead, claims that moving social off to the side lets its own social results “complement the standard search results without compromising them.”  It’s a message buried amid a ton of happy noise in Microsoft’s blog post about new Bing’s official U.S. debut, but it’s a real zinger. Microsoft is essentially saying that Google’s move to infuse its search results with Google+ has damaged their quality.

Microsoft, of course, is an investor in Facebook and powers the web search and maps on Facebook’s social network. Although Google remains the top search engine by a wide margin, getting people to “switch” their affiliation may eventually end up happening not by consumer choice, but by default. As more people use Facebook to search the wider web, more will use Bing. (Or at least, that’s the hope).

TechCrunch previously covered what the new redesign brings in detail, but as a refresher, the three-paned view puts the pure, algorithmic search results in the center, additional context like maps, reviews and other related links off to the right (integrations with restaurant and hotel booking services, ticket sellers, etc. show up here, too), and social search on the far right. In the social column, you can ask for friends’ input on your searches by posting questions and reply to questions from others, all in real-time.

For what it’s worth, I just set my default search engine to Bing in Chrome for now, in order to really see what’s it’s like. (It’s jarring, I have to admit). I don’t think I’ll be able to de-Google myself in the long run, but it’s an interesting experiment for a day (or hour…whatever). My Twitter followers have already proceeded to mock me for doing so. Oh, Bing, no matter what you do – can you ever be cool?