Category: Tech news

Smartphones have long since established themselves as the preferred camera for the majority of users, and even though there are now a number of ways to share their digital output, there’s still something fun about receiving photo prints by mail. A new app called Printic, which has just this week arrived on Android following its earlier iPhone debut, aims to simplify the process of ordering these mobile prints, which it lets you ship anywhere in the world.

Based in Paris, Printic’s founders Benjamin Grelié, Florent Malbranche and Nicolas Reboud, had previously come together to work on Mayoz, a company that sold art photography online. “We realized that people really like to print their own pictures, and not only other people’s pictures,” explains Rebound. Eighty percent of smartphone owners take pictures with their phones, he adds. (What, only 80%?)

In April of last year, the team began to work on Printic, a fairly adorable app for iOS which has gotten better over time. The app at first felt very French, with little quirks and misspellings that made it feel more foreign to non-French users (e.g. the default country in the app was “France,” payment info was in euros, the address field was laid out differently, etc.). The new Android app is also a bit imperfect, as it sometimes pulls in other photo caches on your phone outside of a user’s main Gallery. (This may vary depending on the version of Android you use).

These are minor pet peeves, however, and not entirely unexpected from an early-stage startup. The overall experience of using the app is still simple enough, and it even has some cute pieces – like the little record you spin to increase the number of prints you’re ordering, for example.

However, the other very European thing about Printic’s mobile photo-printing service is that its prints arrive on thinner, Fujicolor Crystal Archive paper – something that the founders tell us has not been an issue with those in its home market and elsewhere in Europe, but that some Americans have complained about. Here in the U.S., it seems, many prefer thicker paper or matte prints.

But the thin prints, with their Polaroid-inspired look, are still quite cute and perfect for scribbling messages on before sharing. Plus, the company hopes, the Instagram-loving, hipster crowd will fall in love with Printic’s (faux) vintage feel.

Using the app is straightforward – it connects you with photos from your Camera Roll or Android gallery, as well as Facebook or Instagram, and you can then crop the photo, or type in a caption to be added to the white border at the bottom of the print. Compared with larger photo-printing services like Shutterfly, the cost per print is a bit pricey – it’s 99 cents in the U.S. or 79 euros. But if you’re ordering just a small handful, it’s not too painful. Plus, shipping and tax is included anywhere in the world.

Since the debut of the iPhone app in January, Printic has seen “tens of thousands” of users sign up, 40 percent of whom live in France, with 60 percent coming from elsewhere in the world. The U.S. accounts for about a third of Printic’s overall user base, and the remainder of the users are in other parts of Europe.

The startup also has a small round of seed funding from The Leclercq’s Family Office, the founder of French retailing giant Decathlon Group, as well as from L’Accélérateur, a French startup accelerator founded by Michel de Guilhermier. (They did not participate in the three-month program, only received an investment.)

Printic is available for download from here for iOS and here on Android.

Pay no attention to the Toyota badge on the boot. This is Tesla’s first crossover, albeit one dressed in the sheet metal of Toyota’s last-generation compact SUV.

It happened to me. Yes, I once uploaded a pic of my friend to Facebook from my phone, forgot to change the setting from “Public” to “Friends” and had the friend get told that day by a random person: “Hey I just saw a picture of you on Alexia from TechCrunch’s wall!” So now I’m circumspect.

Apparently this social media disaster was happening to more people, because Facebook just fixed it — at least on iOS. Android has apparently had the new feature for over a week.

Now iPhone users too are able to easily edit Facebook’s photo privacy settings — by selecting the drop-down arrow on the status update and selecting “Edit Privacy.” Though you still can’t edit the update text or any comments themselves from your iPhone, this is pretty useful. The last time I messed up on a photo privacy setting, I had to access Facebook’s Mobile Web page on a foreign connection to fix it. Not pretty.

In addition to this nod to paranoid people, Facebook iOS Version 6.2 allows users to post the emotion and action updates they’ve come to know and love on the web, including Happy, Sad, Wonderful and, my favorite, Loved.

You can also now start a new conversation with a photo sent to you in messages in Version 6.2, though I don’t think this feature will be remembered enough to see that much traction, unless teenagers are exhibiting some novel group photosharing behaviors on Facebook Message that I don’t know about.

And speaking of Facebook Message, let me take this post about an app update to let you know that a standalone Messenger for iPad is likely not happening, though a trial app was in the works when we reported on it. Basically Messenger was not seeing the growth Facebook hoped for (turns out people don’t want a messenger app PLUS a Facebook app) after Facebook’s primary app became less buggy and slow. So, nixed.

PSA: Update your apps periodically, people.

More and more jobs deal in the virtual realm, and are done by people sitting down at desks at computers. Desk work can be made interesting in its own ways, but it’s always fun to visit a company that’s actually making physical stuff.

So for this episode of TechCrunch Cribs, we jetted over to New York City to check out the headquarters of Quirky, a startup founded back in 2009 with the aim of “making invention accessible.” Quirky is a company that crowdsources ideas for unique physical products — gadgets, kitchenware, furniture, and the like — and manufactures them at large-scale production so that they can be actually sold in stores.

This process entails lots of prototyping, so Quirky’s downtown Manhattan office is full of fun stuff like 3D printers that help them bring invention ideas to life. It all made for a really fun tour, led by Quirky’s co-founder and head of people and culture Nikki Kaufman, and you can see it all in the video embedded above.

As it promised it would, Google is fighting the government’s gag order on releasing how many users are monitored by the National Security Agency. Unlike Facebook and Microsoft, Google and Twitter publicly rejected a government deal to disclose the total number of spying warrants for user data, which would include (but not detail) the number of requests coming from the controversial Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA).

“Lumping national security requests together with criminal requests—as some companies have been permitted to do—would be a backward step for our users,” explained a public statement following the petition.

Unfortunately, as both I and the Washington Post have suggested, even if Google is successful, the most pressing concerns would remain a mystery. Google’s transparency report discloses the number of court orders and users affected, but not what data was given up. Can the government read emails, monitor Gchats and Google Voice phone calls, as leaker Edward Snowden has claimed?

Additionally, if it’s true that the government can demand broad swaths of data, like search logs, the number of affected users could number in the millions. Releasing the total number of users affected would be tantamount to revealing vital sources and methods of surveillance.

Citing their 1st Amendment rights, the petition notes that “Google’s reputation and business has been harmed by the false or misleading reports in the media…Google must respond to such claims with more than generalities.”

There is reason to be optimistic that allowing Google to detail the FISA requests would help repair its reputation. Facebook reported that between the 9,000-10,000 government requests, only 18,000-19,000 users have been affected. This seems to cast doubt that a single government request permits wholesale monitoring of an entire population’s activity. So, while we wouldn’t know what was being given away, most users could breathe easy that they aren’t a target.

I’m sympathetic to Google’s position; certainly they probably want to disclose everything, or just stop the snooping altogether. But, even under the best case scenario, the public is still in the dark.

Read Google’s full petition below.

Editor’s note: Jeff Jordan is a partner at Andreessen Horowitz and is on the boards of Airbnb, Belly, Fab, Circle, Crowdtilt, Lookout and Pinterest, as well as Wealthfront and Zoosk. Previously, Jeff was president and CEO of OpenTable, which he took public in 2009. Before OpenTable, Jeff was president of PayPal, and he was previously the SVP and general manager of eBay North America. Follow him on his blog and on Twitter @jeff_jordan. 

The venture industry is awash with talk of the “Series A Crunch”, where it’s getting progressively more challenging for seed companies to land follow-on financing. In my short two-year tenure as a full-time investor, I’ve seen this crunch hit very hard at a number of quality, early-stage consumer companies. Why is this happening? A number of factors are coming together to create this crunch.

A significant supply/demand imbalance has emerged between seed and Series A financings coming out of the economic near-meltdown of 2008-2009. In 2009, there were about the same number of seed and Series A financings, but the number of seed deals have exploded since then while the number of A rounds grew only modestly. In 2012, there were 2.5x as many seed financings as A-round financings, whereas historically these were more in balance. This suggests something like 60 percent of seeds could be stranded.

A number of our recent Series A investments built multi-million dollar revenue run rates on their seed rounds. We’re getting spoiled.

Investor expectations have expanded substantially. It’s become steadily less expensive to launch many consumer-oriented Internet businesses over the years due to things like Moore’s law, improving programming tools, the cloud and the ability to access users from multiple large platforms. Now we often see the kind of traction that we used to expect from Series B companies in Series A companies, and from Series A companies in seed companies. For example, a number of our recent Series A investments built multi-million dollar revenue run rates on their seed rounds. We’re getting spoiled. Combine this with the above supply/demand imbalance and you’ve got a situation where the bar is being raised exactly when the competition for the A round is becoming particularly fierce.

The source of seed capital has been changing. In recent years, the amount of seed investment from non-traditional institutional sources has increased dramatically. More and more seed capital is coming from sources like angels, “super angels,” micro-VCs and incubators. To under-score this point, we have close to a thousand separate angels as co-investors in the consumer companies in our less-than-four-year old portfolio. This influx of new capital has arguably had an inflationary impact on seed valuations, which obviously has an initial attraction to many entrepreneurs but can create challenges in a “crunch” scenario. These non-institutional sources of capital are not inclined or structured to potentially help a company secure additional capital in a crunch. And the higher valuations provide a higher hurdle that must be overcome by potential new investors in a crunched company.

The number of potential Series A investors appears to be contracting. The venture business is showing early signs of a significant consolidation. The amount of capital invested has trailed the amount raised for a number of years, and the capital that is being raised is increasingly consolidating among fewer, larger firms. The number of investors who can write that Series A check is starting to fall.

The impact of these factors is playing out before our eyes. We’re seeing more and more potentially promising companies who have spent much of their seed rounds to generate solid early traction, but not the kind of traction that sets them up well for a Series A financing these days given the higher bar. These companies face a brutal situation. They are running low on money. Prospective new investors want more proof, particularly given the higher seed valuations. And many of the existing investors, particularly on the angel side, become “tapped out” or “want to stay diversified” when approached for bridge financing. These companies’ futures are rapidly called into question. It’s been very painful to watch.

So here are a few suggestions for entrepreneurs who are trying to start consumer-oriented Internet businesses:

You should consider suffering a bit more dilution early on…

Raise more money in the seed round to give yourself runway to make the progress you’ll need for a Series A, along with some contingency if things don’t go perfectly along the way. The size of seed rounds has increased substantially in our firm’s short history, from under $1 million a few years back to almost $2 million this year.

But I’d argue that even these larger new rounds are often too small given the rising Series A bar. Increasingly, a $1 million to $2 million raise requires absolute perfection on the part of the entrepreneur. You should consider suffering a bit more dilution early on to secure the resources to deliver the metrics that will attract the more demanding Series A investors: things like up-and-to-the-right user and revenue results, deep engagement, compelling cohort economics, and a proven ability to acquire users with a positive ROI on their marketing spend.

Structure your round differently. I’d suggest getting more institutional participation in your seed round, as institutions are more likely to support a high potential but not-yet-ready-for-Series-A company in the event it encounters the crunch. That in no way suggests that follow-on financing from institutions is a certainty or even more likely than not, but my observations suggest the odds are higher. Similarly, consider structuring your seed deal in a way that doesn’t scare off potential new investors in the event that you’re facing a potential crunch. Obviously these recommendations can be interpreted as self-serving given my role as an institutional investor, but my motivation for writing this is in the hopes of helping even one entrepreneur avoid the pain and suffering I’ve been witnessing by those who have been caught in the crunch.

Raise from multiple institutional investors. This can help accomplish a few things. First, it brings more deep pockets to the table that can fund a Series A or a bridge if needed. Second, it can fire up the competitive juices of the participating VCs who don’t want to risk losing out to a rival on the A round at a hot seed company in which they’re both invested. Lastly, having multiple VCs can diminish any potential negative signaling issues down the road if an institutional investor in your seed round does not do the A.

Cultivate these institutional investors as you launch the company, updating them periodically on your progress and learning. Some entrepreneurs do this extremely well, managing to stay top-of-mind with investors and building a relationship, a track record and credibility. These can come in very handy with investors if you find yourself potentially entering crunch territory.

Resist the temptation to raise too early. We often encounter companies that come to us saying that they had inbound interest from another/other firm(s) and elected to use this as a signal to start broader fundraising conversations. But there’s interest and then there’s interest. One of the jobs of a VC is to network broadly with potentially interesting companies, and their “interest” more often than not does not result in funding. And if you swing and miss at an early round, it can be much harder to create positive momentum behind an A round once you go out again. You need to be disciplined. Wait until you have multiple months of metrics moving in the right direction before you start fundraising. Resist the temptation to talk to every prospective investor who calls when you’re not fundraising. Ironically, nothing piques the interest of an investor more than an entrepreneur who remains relatively inaccessible.

There are signs that the startup ecosystem is already correcting to mitigate the crunch going forward. The number of new seed financings is down meaningfully so far in 2013, which would help to correct the supply-demand imbalance. And capital is starting to be attracted to the gap between seed and traditional A rounds, which some term “mango seeds.” But higher investor expectations earlier in a startup’s life are here to stay, and the smart entrepreneur will take steps to mitigate follow-on financing risk. On each and every financing, they should ask themselves one key question: What do I need to prove in this round to get the next round?

I’d like to thank my partner Chaz Flexman for his many insights on this post!

Android home gaming consoles are nearly arriving for the consumer market, but one at least needs a little more time in the oven to bake. It’s the GameStick, the super portable USB-stick style device that plugs into an open HDMI port on your TV to turn it into an Android-powered gaming machine, and its release schedule is being pushed back another month until August, with a retail launch to follow after that, because of a need to gather more feedback related to the GameStick UI so that it can be refined prior to wide release.

GameStick wanted to nail the user experience strikes me as a familiar refrain; another company, Leap Motion, which also achieved lots of support from the community for a novel idea, said something very similar when it delayed its own product recently. In both cases, the apprehension about getting things right the first time around is understandable, since these are products that have few if any antecedents with demonstrated success in the wider consumer market.

The GameStick delay, though another one on top of its first ship date slip, isn’t yet one that should really raise any eyebrows – projects typically underestimate how long it will take to go to market on Kickstarter. The Ouya was also delayed from its original planned launch by three weeks, owing to “demand” on the retail side. BlueStacks’ GamePop hasn’t been delayed as of yet, but it’s targeting a more open-ended end of year launch, and that gives it some flexibility to make sure the experience is just right before putting too fine a point on things.

All of these companies are venturing into relatively uncharted territory, so delays are fine; you can’t hold them to the same standards as an Apple or a Samsung, and even those giants sometimes encounter problems shipping exactly on time. One, two, or even three small delays isn’t surprising; but once the months start to fall away and you don’t hear much, that’s when it’s time to worry.

Tired of your friends texting on their phones while they should be getting schnockered? This clever hack is called the Offline Glass and it’s designed to ensure that you and your friends don’t sit at the bar checking Wikipedia for who starred in The Greatest American Hero and whether Tabitha will totally come out tonight oh my god she won’t she and Christian just broke up oh god she’s with Raul and Paula and maybe she’ll come in an hour! In fact, you can’t hold your phone because of the unique shape of the glass’ bottom.

The glass has a notch cut out of it so it will only stand if it’s situated on top of a phone (an iPhone works best) and you can only use your phone if you’re also holding your beer. Knowing the average drunk person I suspect a) this will destroy hundreds of iPhones a night and b) this will result in lots of spilled beer, but by gosh if it isn’t a clever idea.

The glass is being used in the Salve Jorge Bar in Sao Paolo and was created by the Fischer & Friends ad agency in Brazil. You can’t buy one but, with the right tools, you could probably make a few. I’d like to see someone 3D print a few of these for house parties.

Whenever I go out with the TC team I make everyone play the phone game which consists of piling up all the phones in one place so no one can reach them. It helps encourage conversation and, unless they’re wearing Google Glass, the pained expression after the first few minutes of the game is mesmerizing. Here’s to anything that helps recreate that experience.

The Offline Glass from Mauricio Perussi on Vimeo.

via PSFK

Adobe just reported earnings for its second financial quarter of 2013. The company reported revenue of $1.011 billion and non-GAAP operating income of $247.3 for an earnings per share of $0.36 (though diluted GAAP earnings were only $0.15). That’s a little bit better than most analysts expected, especially with respect to the company’s earnings per share.

The Wall Street consensus was that Adobe would report revenue of about $1.01 billion and earnings per share of $0.34. These numbers, it’s worth noting, are very much in line with Adobe’s last quarter, when the company announced revenue of $1.01 billion and earnings per share of $0.35. In the year-ago quarter, however, Adobe still reported revenue of $1.12 billion.

“Our Q2 results reflect our leadership position in Digital Media and Digital Marketing,” said Shantanu Narayen, Adobe’s president and chief executive officer a canned statement today. “Creative Cloud is revolutionizing the creative process, and Adobe Marketing Cloud is quickly becoming the platform of choice for the world’s leading brands, advertising agencies and media companies.”

Adobe is clearly betting the company on its Creative Cloud subscription service, which is set to almost completely replace the company’s offering of shrink-wrapped software. Just yesterday, Adobe launched its latest offering of all of its major Creative Cloud apps, and today, the company announced that Creative Cloud now has over 700,000 subscribers. That’s up from 479,000 subscribers in the first quarter of 2013. The vast majority (92 percent) of its subscribers, Adobe says, are on its annual plan (vs. paying a slightly higher fee for a month-to-month subscription).

Adobe itself expects to hit over 1.25 million Creative Cloud subscribers by the end of the year and a number of analysts believe this is actually a very conservative number.

Besides Creative Cloud, Adobe’s second main group of services is its Marketing Cloud, which includes services for social marketing, media optimization, analytics, testing and targeting. Last quarter, Marketing Cloud achieved quarterly revenue of $215.4 million, a 20 percent year-over-year increase. This time around, Adobe reported Marketing Cloud revenue of $229.9 million.

It’s that time of the year again for us nerds to infiltrate Sand Hill Road, let loose, and enjoy some good food and libations. We’ve been hosting the TechCrunch summer party with VC firm August Capital since 2006. This year, as in years past, we’ll be partying on August Capital’s beautiful, sunny Sand Hill balcony on Friday, July 26. The party starts at 5:30 p.m. and goes til 9:00 p.m.

Tickets, which you can buy here, are $80 each and include drinks and food. We also have a number of sponsorship opportunities available and inquiries can be sent to [email protected].

TechCrunch parties have a history of being the place you want to meet your future investor, acquirer or co-founder. Case in point, back when TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington used to hold these ragers in his Atherton back yard; Box founders Aaron Levie and Dylan Smith met one of their first investors, DFJ. In 2010, we spotted 500 Startups’ Dave McClure writing a check to then stealthy startup Tello (which was recently bought by Urban Airship in December) at the August Capital party.

Hope to see you all there this year!!

About the 8th Annual Summer Party at August Capital

• July 26, 5:30 – 9:00 pm
• 2480 Sand Hill Road, Menlo Park CA 94025
• Get Tickets here, $80 based on availability. Tickets will be released in batches. Stay tuned to TechCrunch for releases as they sell out quickly.

Hardware is so hot right now. So hot, in fact, that another European hardware startup is formulating an attack on the smartphone hardware space — joining the likes of Finland’s Jolla and Spain’s Geeksphone to have a go at handset making. The newest comer stepping in with a plan to shake up the “status quo” is called Kazam: a startup co-founded by a pair of former U.K. HTC execs, Michael Coombes and James Atkins.

Coombes, who spent just over a year and a half as a U.K. head of sales for HTC, according to his LinkedIn, is Kazam’s CEO. Prior to HTC he apparently worked for mobile and telecoms companies including Nokia and Vodafone. While Atkins, Kazam’s CMO, spent just over a year as HTC’s head of marketing for U.K./Ireland, and has previously worked in U.K. marketing roles for freesat, LG and Panasonic. The pair’s professional network is clearly tied tightly to the local market, hence, presumably, Kazam’s focus on Europe first.

“Kazam will focus on Europe at the outset,” Atkins tells TechCrunch via email, adding with some typical marketingspeak embellishment: “We are currently establishing a network of regional sales and marketing offices to ensure we deliver outstanding products and customer service.” The startup has a U.K. base in Mayfair, London.

Details of how exactly Kazam plans to assault the Samsung and Apple smartphone duopoly were not forthcoming when I asked. Atkins declined to answer the bulk of my questions — including such specifics as whether Kazam’s planned smartphones will run Android and be skinned with a  custom UI or keep the experience familiarly stock. Instead, he trotted out a repeated PR mantra: “Today we are just announcing that the Kazam brand is here, for the rest you will have to wait and see.”

It’s notable that this startup has already engaged a PR company (Noire) — and talks about creating a mobile brand — even before having a great deal to talk about. Which does serve to underline how smartphones have become a game of who can shout the loudest. A game of brash tones (as I have previously described it).

What did Atkins say? Not a whole lot. He declined to reveal how much funding Kazam is backed by at this point, or whether it is currently looking to raise a round. He did at least confirm it has backers, and that those backers have links into Asian mobile manufacturing companies — which suggests it’s following Jolla’s manufacturing playbook.

“Kazam Mobile has been set up by a group of private equity investors, who have previously launched and operated successful mobile telecommunications companies and technology businesses. Some of their current investments include NF Technology Limited, an R&D company specialising in developing and customising mobile phone devices and tablets and Nichefinder (S’pore) PTE Limited, a proven technology procurement and supply company,” he told TechCrunch.

He also confirmed Kazam’s plan is to launch “a range of smartphones at different prices point/specs” later this year. Asked whether it will look at other types of mobile devices, such as tablets, he said only that its initial focus is on smartphones. He added that he and Coombes left their roles at HTC earlier this year “with the desire to build a new brand that really stands out in the mobile space”.

He also declined to be drawn on the differentiation question but in Kazam’s inaugural press release today Coombes said: “We believe your smartphone is a digital reflection of who you are, and since we are all different, it’s important that we don’t adopt a one size fits all approach. Kazam’s dynamic structure and focus on local markets means we can react quickly to the ever evolving and diverging needs of today’s consumer. We aim to provide quality smartphones that are accessible to everyone.”

The release also includes a statement from Atkins hinting that aftersales service might be how Kazam attempts to stand out in a crowded market: “There is a real opportunity for a new mobile brand to disrupt the status quo. We are passionate about delivering a truly positive mobile experience that doesn’t just stop once you’ve bought the phone. Kazam is about stunning design, robust hardware and intuitive technology, underpinned by outstanding customer service.”

Further details about exactly what kind of customer service opportunity Kazam reckons it has identified were not forthcoming.

So there are huge question marks over any startup entering such a fiercely competitive space, especially with so many better resourced former mobile giants continuing to struggle. Disruption often starts small but in a market so beholden to carriers, where the bulk of phones sales occur, it’s especially hard for an upstart to get traction. Carriers tend to be risk averse and have established distribution partnerships and (incentivised) relationships with the smartphone giants so have  disincentives to push anything too new. Going it alone with online retail distribution is the alternative, but that route requires a sizeable marketing budget to even get noticed.

Creating handsets for an underserved niche may be one way to carve out a business, as Geeksphone has been. Securing carrier distribution agreements to carry your hardware is another strategy, as Jolla has with Finland’s DNA. For now, it’s unclear whether Kazam has any similar moves up its sleeve, but it will certainly be hoping it has enough local telco connections — and financial backing — to give it a regional chance of inching in. To say it has its work cut out to make any kind of impact is an understatement.

Waze’s big exit to Google proved one thing: if companies can harness the power of the crowd to deliver real-time, granular data, big tech corporations will be watching them closely as potential acquisition targets. There’s another category ripe for the picking, even if the problem being solved isn’t as apparent or immediately useful as traffic and navigation data: weather. A few apps are trying to harness the crowd to provide accurate, ground-level forecasts and conditions, and they’re catching on with consumers, too.

Montreal-based startup SkyMotion is one such firm, and it recently launched its 4.0 update, which not only harnesses crowdsourced weather reports, but also allows other businesses to plug into that data using a public API, to integrate real-time reporting data from SkyMotion’s users into their own products. That provides an up-to-the-minute forecast, one that probably won’t show you weather conditions completely dissimilar from the ones you’re actually feeling outside at any given moment, as can still be the case with apps that pull weather data only from specific weather monitoring stations.

SkyMotion has had considerable success harnessing the crowd to populate its real-time forecasts, with over 200,000 people currently submitting observations according to the company. Over 50 percent of those who download the app actually keep it and use it, and 65 percent of all users are active between 15 and 200 times per month. The company is now close to reaching 500,000 total downloads, and anticipates being well over 1 million by the end of the year should the pace remain near its current rate.

SkyMotion isn’t alone in crowdsourcing weather data. There’s also Weddar, the “people-powered” weather service and mobile app that encourages location-based reporting with a very human element, since it asks people how conditions generally feel on the ground, instead of seeking out specifics. The Weddar team, which is based in Portugal, launched its app back in April 2011, and where once you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone using it outside of its home market, now you’ll probably see results just about anywhere you open it up.

Crowsourced weather data could appeal to big tech companies for the same reason that crowdsourced data does; it greatly improves the quality of consumer-facing products. But it also offers a lot more besides, by providing services that can be combined with other local data including maps and traffic, as well as shopping and advertising information, to give a much more accurate, much more complete snapshot of any given location at any given time. Weather affects everything from the average user’s day planning, to marketing, to budgeting, and companies that are improving the quality of that data will no doubt be on the radar of anyone who makes those things its concern.

At the end of last year, Google introduced a new design for some local search results on tablets that put a carousel with the top results at the top of the page. Today, it’s bringing this design to the desktop, too. This new feature can be triggered by searches for restaurants, bars and other local places, Google says, and it’s currently rolling out in English in the U.S. and should roll out for other languages in the future.

A typical search to see this feature would be something like “Mexican restaurants in nyc.” Google will then put the carousel at the top of the page, including a photo, the standard Zagat ratings, price class and cuisine. A click on these places will bring up their Google+ Local sites with more information.

Users can click on an arrow in the right to see more places and they can use the map in the sidebar to zoom in and the carousel will automatically restrict your searches to this specific area.

Google, of course, also uses a similar design for some of its Knowledge Graph results. As a number of bloggers noticed recently, these Knowledge Graph carousel results seem to be popping up more frequently now than ever before. Given today’s addition of the local search carousel, chances are that Google’s stats show that this is a very effective way of presenting search results. I wouldn’t be surprised if the company continued to expand its use of this design element for other kinds of queries in the near future.

Stealing a page right out of a startup called Aggregift’s playbook, Amazon today launched a new feature called “Amazon Birthday Gift,” which allows a group of Facebook friends to go in on an Amazon.com Gift Card together. That gift isn’t posted to the recipients’ Facebook Timeline until their big day arrives.

To get started with the service, a user buys an Amazon.com gift card, then invites other mutual friends to donate using the Birthday Gift website here. When the birthday arrives, the recipient is tagged in a Facebook Timeline wall post, receiving the digital card and everyone’s birthday greetings.

The new addition is a further expansion of Amazon’s deepening integration with Facebook, as the company last December launched a “Friends and Family Gifting” feature just ahead of the holidays to generate Facebook-enabled gift suggestions, send out reminders, and enable gift list sharing via both email and social networks. Online competitor Walmart, too, had previously launched a similar Facebook-based gift recommendation service in 2011, which was added to the Walmart.com site ahead of the 2012 holiday season.

Social gifting is still very much in the experimental phase, despite the support from e-commerce giants like Walmart, Amazon and others. For instance, Facebook has also dabbled in this area with the fall 2012 debut of Facebook Gifts (built on top of former social gifting startup Karma). The service is meant to tie into one of Facebook’s most regular draws — its birthday reminders. The idea is that users could visit the site, and in addition to wishing their friend “happy birthday,” they could also add a gift to accompany that message. The social network offers gifts like iTunes digital Gift Cards and physical goods, and it even launched its own self-branded “Facebook Card” earlier this year.

However, even with Facebook’s broad reach, its Gifts service has been struggling to generate serious revenue, and certainly falling short of earlier projections and estimations regarding its potential. Meanwhile, some startups like Sincerely (with Sesame) and recently funded Wrapp, carry on in this space, while others head off in new directions. Giftly, for instance, exited to GiftCards.com this March, while Boomerang has turned its focus to the B2B market instead in recent months.

That being said, Amazon still has a shot at winning the social gifting space with its new Amazon Birthday Gift feature, since it can be argued that users don’t associate Facebook’s brand with spending or shopping the way they do with Amazon. (See also: various f-commerce struggles). Plus, Amazon’s cards are the go-to for the “generic” gift option, which people buy when they don’t know what to get, or when they need something last minute.

However, the new service is still limited today to smaller gift amounts ($1, $5, $10 and $25), which can be a challenge for those attempting to raise funds for a larger present like an electronics purchase. Plus, being tied only to birthdays eliminates the big holiday, graduation or wedding presents users may want to go in on together. Often these larger presents are led by a close family member or friend who puts in a big chunk of change, to which others pile on. Not supporting these other types of gifting narrows the already potentially narrow market for digital, social gifting even further.

Amazon Birthday Gift is live now here for interested users.

The world of alternative browsers is littered with also-rans like Rockmelt, but there are also companies that have managed to make a name for themselves in the shadow of Microsoft, Mozilla and Google. One example of this is Maxthon, but another browser that’s quietly gaining a following is Torch, which the company tells us just passed 10 million monthly active users on Mac and Windows after about year on the market.

Torch just launched the latest version of its Chromium-based browser, which now includes a download accelerator and a large update to the Torch Music service, which uses YouTube and Vevo as the basis of its music catalog. Torch Music now offers customized recommendations based on your listening history, location and your Facebook friends’ tastes. Currently, the service has about 5 million songs in its database.

While Torch previously included a version of this service, it has now integrated this service deeper into its user interface with the help of a widget that allows you to search, pause and skip songs.

Torch now also features a built-in download accelerator. While download accelerators were very popular in the early days of (slow) broadband, today’s fast and stable connections have mostly pushed them aside, and the vast majority of Internet users probably doesn’t even remember them. There are some advantages to using a download accelerator, however, especially if you are on a slow or unreliable connection.

The browser also features a built-in BitTorrent client and a media grabber for downloading embedded video files. It also features a smart drag-and-drop-activated search and sharing tool that pops up large boxes for sharing links to services like Facebook, Google+, Twitter and Pinterest and for initiating searches on Google Search, Wikipedia and other services.

Torch Browser only launched on the Mac about a month ago, so most of its users are currently on Windows, the company tells us. If you’re currently a Chrome user and interested in the browser’s features, switching is about as easy as it gets, as Torch just imports all your bookmarks. As it’s based on Chromium, all of the usual Chrome extensions and apps should also work, though Torch seems to be about a generation behind Google’s own release cycle.