Posts Tagged ‘power’
iBUYPOWER announces 4 systems using the i7 980X processors
iBUYPOWER announced today its latest, 4 new “Paladin” systems using the i7 980x processors .
See the rest here:
iBUYPOWER announces 4 systems using the i7 980X processors
Square Now Being Used For Mobile Payments At Political Fundraisers
Jack Dorsey’s Square was unveiled last December as an innovative way to let people quickly and easily accept physical credit card payments from their mobile phone.
Since then, Square, which has been in limited beta, has been used in a variety of use cases. E.g. philanthopic organization charity:water recently used Square at the SXSW festival to collect donations.
A local flower cart in San Francisco is using Square to take payments from customers. Denim, a jeans store in New York is using Square to take payments from shoppers. We even used Square at this year’s Crunchies to raise money for the UCSF Foundation.
Here’s how Square works: A small device attaches to the phone via the headset/microphone jack. The device gets the power it needs to send data to the phone from the swipe of the card, and sends the information over the microphone connection. The device is compatible with both the iPhone and Android. It’s similar in some ways to PayPal, but anyone can now accept physical credit card payments, too. With no contracts or monthly fees. People are sent receipts by text and email. If you haven’t seen Square in action, check out this video.
And now, a new use case has popped up for Square: political fundraising.
Square is currently being used in two campaigns. Silicon Valley VC Josh Becker, who is running for state assembly in California’s 21st district, has been using Square at fundraising events. And lawyer Reshma Saujani, who is running for Congress in New York’s 14th district, is using Square at campaign fundraising events, including at an event in San Francisco on Friday.
Square is ideal for taking money at political fundraisers for several reasons.
Currently, if you want to donate money at a fundraising event, you often have to fill out a form and hand over a check or cash at the event. If you don’t have your checkbook or cash handy (which, many of us don’t), credit cards are the only option. You can write down your credit card number and info for fundraisers to charge at a later date, but you have to trust that the fundraiser keeps track of that information and paper.
With Square, there is both a convenience added for both the payee and fundraiser. The donation is instantly processed, and Square will send the receipt via SMS or email to the payee. Of course, political contributions and donations are a little more complicated because of the reporting requirements associated with donations.
For many types of donations, you need to take the donator’s name, occupation, address, and other information. Currently Square doesn’t allow users to input all of this information but Dorsey says that they are releasing Square’s API to allow fundraisers to build additional applications on top of Square, where they could input all of the necessary data. Once this is enabled, Square will allows fundraisers to eliminate paper collection and payments all together.
Dorsey says he’s already getting significant interest from politicians and political candidates across the country, but because Square is in limited beta, is being selective about how the service is distributed. Dorsey expects Square to be open to the public sometime in the next few months.
Valued at $40 million even before launch, Square is off to an impressive start. And technology’s most notable investors and leaders seem to think so as well.
Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, investor Ron Conway, Google’s Marissa Mayer, Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley, Digg creator Kevin Rose, investor Esther Dyson and a host of others have invested in Square. The company also raised funding from Khosla Ventures.
RunKeeper Goes Social
I’ll let the video after the jump do most of the talking on this one but RunKeeper has improved its sharing service by building out a cool run sharing service that works like a social network for the preternaturally skinny yet surprisingly hungry.
The system allows you to share runs with friends and/or strangers. You can turn off maps for privacy and selectively share runs with the world. For example, I have one visible activity while RunKeeper founder Jason has like 5,000 (actually 130). This means he is better than me and, in fact, better than most of us.
AT&T ZERO to save the planet one phone charger at a time
They’re in our homes, and they’re in our schools. There they sit, silently, eating our power . Even if you unplug your phone, they keep devouring power
Read more here:
AT&T ZERO to save the planet one phone charger at a time
Video: This is what Red Dead Redemption looks like
Oh thank God for Rockstar . We’re short-staffed today, plus it’s nice outside and I’m very easily distracted by the weather, so what better way to pass the time than by watching fancy trailers?
Read the original:
Video: This is what Red Dead Redemption looks like
Former Yahoo Execs Launch nPario To Help Companies Understand Consumers
A new startup dubbed nPario and formed by ex-Yahoo and SAS executives opened its business operations today. The company essentially wants to help clients better understand and market consumer commercial intent through optimal data management and data mining products and services.
The company is led by former senior Yahoo executives Bassel Ojjeh (he left the Sunnyvale company in November 2009) and Krishna Uppala, and former SAS executive Basel Tutunji. According to a regulatory filing, the Palo Alto startup recently raised $300,000 in seed funding.
The company’s website is pretty scarce on details, but according to the release nPario will deliver data solutions that allow companies to increase their revenue by acting upon consumer behavior insights.
In the words of Ojjeh, founder, president and CEO of nPario:
“The digital world gives us an unprecedented opportunity to identify and understand the commercial intent of consumers in order to deliver the right message or product. At nPario, we believe that organizations stand to boost revenue by more than 10% if they harness the power of consumer intent.
Our goal is to provide our customers with a comprehensive set of data products that focus on the vast amount of commercial behavior data and generate immediate impact to their business and revenue.”
Prior to nPario, Ojjeh served as Senior Vice President of the Strategic Data Solutions division at Yahoo, where he was responsible for building data products that leveraged Yahoo data to drive audience engagement and advertising revenues, so it’s safe to say he knows what he’s talking about. Still according to the release, CTO Krishna Uppala is behind more than 15 database technology patents – he served as Senior Director/Architect at Yahoo before nPario.
Finally, nPario Chief Revenue Officer Basel Tutunji will be responsible for sales and business development for the startup. Before nPario, Tutunji held sales management roles at several multinationals including SAS, Intershop Communications and Oracle.
The $75 iPod levy that will solve all of Canada’s problems
Apparently it’s illegal in Canada to copy music from a CD you bought to an iPod (or whatever). It’s simply not allowed, even if you’re not breaking any DRM in the process.
Here is the original post:
The $75 iPod levy that will solve all of Canada’s problems
PowerReviews Lands $6 Million To Power Customer Reviews For Retailers
PowerReviews, a company that provides customer review technology for retailers and e-commerce sites, has raised $6.1 million in funding led by current investors Menlo Ventures and Tenaya Capital. This brings the company’s total funding to over $30 million.
The additional funding will be used fuel customer acquisition and for new product development. The company’s original products let retailers include Amazon-like product review features into their websites, for free. Last year, PowerReviews launched two more social technologies for retailers to integrate: BrandConnect and Social Megaphone. BrandConnect tracks what consumers are saying about a company and/or brand on the social web and Social Megaphone allows customers to post their reviews to Facebook, Twitter and blogs. Last fall the company also brought on a new CEO, Pehr Luedtke.
PowerReviews, which launched in 2007, also powers a consumer-facing site, Buzzillions.com, that aggregates reviews from its partners retailers. The site includes over ten million product reviews. Customers include Staples, Drugstore.com, Walgreens, Diapers.com, Callaway and Jockey.
Vittana Applies The Kiva Model To Help Finance Education In Developing Countries
The microfinance model has proved to be a valuable way to raise funds for entrepreneurs all over the country, as exemplified by the success of Kiva. Seattle-based Vittana is taking a similar approach to helping fund education in developing countries by allowing you to lend directly to students in the developing world. The idea is to bring student loans to the developing world through the power of person-to-person microlending. Today, the site is existing its beta period.
Vittana partners with microfinance organizations located in developing countries to donate to students in need of funding. Loans for students range from $200 to $1,500, are then funded by individual lenders, via $25 donations or more, on the Vittana website. One hundred percent of the loans are given to the student. Launched in beta last May, the Vittana community has made over $110,000 in loans to nearly 200 students around the world, who are now getting their degrees. Thus far, Vittana has programs in Mongolia, Nicaragua, Paraguay Peru and Vietnam and plans to expand to India and countries in Africa soon. And Vittana students have had a 97 percent repayment rate.
The non-profit organization was founded by former Amazon employee Kushal Chakrabarti and was incubated in the fbFund REV program. Vittana has received funding from a number of notable investors and leaders in the technology space including Mike Murray, Mitch Kapor, Joel Spiegel, Dave McClure, and Dave Richards. Qifang is implementing a similar model for education in China.
In conjunction with NCAA March Madness, Vittana launching a Microfinance Madness initiative to help bring together bloggers, college students, startups and other groups in a competition to lend the most money to college students around the world. TechCrunch is participating in the initiative and will be facing The Huffington Post, Redfin and others to raise funds. Join our group and make your donation today!
