Category: Tech news

Editor’s note: Aditya Mahesh is an associate product marketing manager at Google where he works on the Get Your Business Online program. Follow him on Twitter @amahesh22.

I always knew I should have gotten a CS degree. It’s challenging to be a nontechnical person at a technical company. Last month marked my one year anniversary at Google. While I’ve learned a ton over the past year, I’ve realized that the foundations of the skills I’ve picked up could have easily been learned beforehand. I just wish someone had told me what I should focus on and where I should learn it.

I graduated from UC Berkeley in 2011 with a Business degree. While I took many amazing classes (Engineering Entrepreneurship with Jon Burgstone and Perspectives on Entrepreneurship with Jennifer Walske ), my biggest regret is not taking more courses that actually taught me how to build, design and create.

Fortunately, education is being revolutionized and hundreds of people are creating classes about the skills I want to learn. Many of these are available for free online. After spending the past year exploring these classes, here is a list of skills I wish I had learned earlier and my favorite (free) classes/resources to help you get started.

1. Learn How To Mock-Up What You Want To Create (Design)

If you can’t code, then make sure you learn Photoshop (or something similar) so you can at least mock-up what you want to build. You’ll find that this is incredibly more effective than trying to communicate your ideas with words or wireframes.

To learn the basics of Photoshop, I recommend this video tutorial from PSD Tuts+. This course on UX Foundations is another good resource. However, the best way to learn is by doing and PSD FanExtra has written a great blog post featuring step-by-step tutorials on how to create everything from an online portfolio to a corporate website.

It can also be a good idea to review lessons 26-30 of 30 Days to Learn HTML and CSS by Tuts+ which teaches you how to splice a Photoshop file and turn it into a live site.

Lastly, there is HackDesign, a new Codecademy-esque design course that launched last month (previously covered on TechCrunch here).

2. Start Learning How To Code (Build)

Mock-ups are great, but it helps to be able to build what you design. The importance of learning how to code has been discussed at length so I’ll be brief. The one thing I will say is that learning just the basics of HTML and CSS can still be helpful. Even with a rudimentary understanding of these languages, you will be able to create simple websites, landing pages, well-structured emails, and more, all of which will come in handy.

There is no shortage of resources to help you get started. Apart from Code Year I recommend taking 30 Days to Learn HTML and CSS by Tuts+. From there you can take more advanced courses on JavaScript and jQuery, Python, Ruby on Rails, and more.

3. Understand How To Gather, Analyze, And Share Data (Track)

The ability to gather data, make sense of it, and present it in a way that is easy to understand is a valuable asset in nearly every position. It’s not the most exciting skill, but it will help you track your project’s performance, understand it’s shortcomings, and resolve any issues.

To gather data I recommend learning Google Analytics. It enables you to track an incredible amount of information about who your visitors/customers are, where they are coming from, what they are doing, and how you can increase conversions. It takes some time to master, but Google’s IQ Lessons are a good place to start.

If you want to make sense of data sets you already have, take a look at this course from Excel Exposure. You may also want to take some time to learn basic MySQL.

4. Hone Your Real-World Writing Skills (Write)

Writing in the real world is nothing like writing in school. I can’t remember the last time I wrote a thesis statement or topic sentence. Instead, it’s about being as clear, concise and authentic as possible – whether it’s for a presentation, marketing campaign, or e-mail.

To get started, CopyBlogger has a Copywriting 101 series worth taking a look at.  There is also this report on concise writing from Penn, a guide to writing magnetic headlines from CopyBlogger, and a course on effective website copywriting from Smashing Magazine.

Yet with writing (like design), the best way to improve is to practice. Everyone knows a great writer. To improve, write something (an e-mail, report, landing page, etc.), get feedback, revise and repeat.

5. Experiment Running Online Advertising Campaigns (Promote)

Every marketing course will cover online advertising, yet few will teach you how to run campaigns. Understanding how to set-up a campaign, measure performance and optimize to increase conversions will help you spread the word about your projects.

Search Engine Land has a PPC Academy to teach you the basics of search engine advertising (it’s from 2010 but it’s still a good starting point). However, it helps to experiment in real accounts – identifying keywords, testing ad copy, and monitoring landing page performance. If you’re a student, Google has an online marketing challenge that allows you to run real campaigns for a business or non-profit organization and get hands-on experience. Even if you are not a student, it has created a digital marketing course that covers the basics.

To learn more about online promotion, check out the Beginners Guide to SEO by SEOMoz, the E-Mail Marketing Field Guide by MailChimp and the Inbound Marketing University from HubSpot.

A traditional undergraduate business education does a great job of teaching you the concepts. However, it lacks classes that show you how to implement these concepts –  by building and creating things. Hence, I strongly recommend you take other non-business courses to pick up these skills. The list above is the starting point I wish I had earlier.

One caveat is that this list is based on my personal experiences. If you have other recommendations for skills/classes, I would love to hear them.

Basecamp, the project management platform developed by 37 Signals that launched in 2004, is still alive and kicking, which is something of a feat considering how many companies have come and gone in this space over the years. Plus, more recently, a slew of promising new players have entered the market, including Dustin Moskovitz and Justin Rosenstein’s Asana, Joel Spolsky’s Trello, Siasto and Podio (now part of Citrix) — to name a few.

Basecamp has also managed to stand the test of time (and is now managing over 8 million projects) by bucking the trend and sticking to the mobile web rather than developing native apps for iOS and Android. But, after 8 years, Basecamp’s first official iOS app finally hit the App Store today. While the company will be quick to tell you that Basecamp has long been on the mobile web and available through a bunch of third-party iOS and Android apps, most of them are pricier (SuitChamp, for example is $7) and haven’t been of the highest quality.

But Basecamp’s new app is free and, from the first look, it seems to be fast, usable and the quality of design puts its other apps to bed. The app uses much of the same design scheme and familiar look and feel of the major redesign its web platform underwent in early 2012. That means that user can access and monitor all of their Basecamp projects from their iPhone, have discussions with colleagues, view and check tasks off to-do lists, attach files and read and add comments.

Basically, it’s the mobile app that many Basecamp fans have likely been waiting for over the past few years — the functionality of it’s web platform optimized (and native) for the iPhone and actually made by the company that produced the original. (Weird, I know, though it’s similar to what happened to Twitter, except that it bought Tweetie and turned it into their official iOS app.)

The app uses native web views and in that sense is a bit of a hybrid, 37Signals Founder Jason Fried said, and Michael Dick talked this fall about how the team has approached the web/native debate in developing for mobile.

The iPhone app also works with Basecamp Personal, a new platform that the company released in January that attempted to make the project manager more accessible for individual users, as its target audience up to this point has been small businesses. In addition, the new platform allowed users to pay a one-time fee of $25 to buy a Basecamp project, rather than having to pay for a monthly subscription fee.

That being said, 37Signals has long been saying that it would stick with web-only development for mobile, so it remains to be seen how this will affect third-party Basecamp clients. Many were likely under the impression that they wouldn’t be dealing with any direct competition from 37Signals, which could put them in a bit of a tough spot.

Then again, Michael Dick did say on the Basecamp blog in September, “Does this mean there will never be native apps? Of course not, this isn’t our final word on mobile.” Not totally explicit, but also not hard to infer what the team has been up to.

The apps also looks great. The visual design definitely puts it among some of the best productivity apps for iOS out there. It goes further than the typical pared-down, over-produced look and feel of many of today’s productivity players and gets high usability points. This is great for 37Signals and Basecamp but not so great for Basecamp clients. If you’re a regular user, there’s now significantly less incentive to use a third-party app. Great to have the choice for those who are doing the detail or integrations better, but you don’t really need it.

One (potential) drawback of the app on the user experience end is that — as Juli Clover points out — the app only works with new Basecamp projects. That means it only works with the stuff you’ve created since Basecamp launched its redesign in early 2012. For those using the original version of the platform — Basecamp Classic — no such luck. Why not include compatibility? From the company’s perspective it was probably less oops-we-forgot-to-make-them-compatible and more that the new design is just better and easier to use.

It makes sense that they’d want to encourage people to create accounts on the new version of the platform, which has been optimized to make their lives easier anyway. Though not so good if you’re a staunch Classic user. Users need a Basecamp account and projects on the new framework, so Classic users will have to stick to the mobile site or third-party apps. Which may be a silver lining for apps like Camp, which just launched yesterday. Although, that being said, it doesn’t look like Camp works with Classic either. Ouch.

All in all, the new app looks great, and most Basecamp users are going to jump for joy that they actually get to use a functional, good-looking product on their iPhone to manage tasks and projects. Basecamp became one of the most popular productivity platforms for small businesses without it, but that position looks a little bit more defensible now that it does. Well, maybe once it gets to Android (which is coming “eventually,” according to Fried.)

Find the app here.

All too often, tech startup founders feel like they have to move their headquarters to an industry hub such as the San Francisco Bay Area in order to really be successful. But while it’s good to be in touch with the hustle and bustle of Silicon Valley or New York City, there can also be big benefits to building your startup outside of these typical tech epicenters. A great example of this is SoundCloud, the popular audio distribution platform that has scaled up quite nicely while maintaining its home base in Berlin, Germany.

SoundCloud was recognized at the 6th annual Crunchies last week as the “best international startup” of the year, so we pulled aside co-founder and CEO Alex Ljung after he came offstage for a brief talk about how the company has grown. Watch the video embedded above to hear about how SoundCloud kept its international roots even after raising funds from Silicon Valley and New York City investors, what his advice is to other international founders looking to grow, what his favorite things on SoundCloud are right now, and more.

We also talked to Ljung before the show started, when SoundCloud was just a Crunchie nominee and not yet a winner — and that was a pretty enlightening conversation too. Watch that in the video embedded below to hear about the perks of building a company in Berlin, what SoundCloud’s official language is, and what’s up next for the company.

A new tennis racket design from one of the game’s biggest names promises to put more spin on each shot.

Tune, strum, solo, and shred with apps designed to help you get the most out of your six-string.

The Surface Pro looks like a tablet, but it’s not a mobile device. It’s a portable device.

Seen enough hybrid laptops with sliding or detachable keyboards? This contraption is totally unique: a desktop/tablet hybrid.

When did “business laptop” become a euphemism for a machine that’s stripped down and overpriced?

Turns out the BlackBerry Z10 was a weekend sell out after all. U.K. mobile phones retailer Phones 4u has confirmed that a majority of its stores sold out of the first BlackBerry 10 handset in its first weekend of sales. Phones 4u said 55 per cent of its 680 stores sold out of both black and white versions of the Z10. It would not confirm how many handsets each store had in stock, though, so it still doesn’t tell us a whole lot about the level of interest in BlackBerry’s reboot at this early point.

Analyst ABI Research is forecasting that BlackBerry will end with year with close to 20 million BB10 handsets in play, out of a total global smartphone pool of 1.4 billion.

On Tuesday, at its European developer event, BlackBerry talked up early demand for its next-gen OS that BlackBerry fans spent the whole of 2012 waiting for, saying some U.K. retailers had sold out of the full-touch Z10 over its launch weekend, and describing demand for the device as ‘exceeding its expectations’. BlackBerry president and CEO Thorsten Heins followed this up with a public statement, saying: “In the UK, we have seen close to three times our best performance ever for the first week of sales for a BlackBerry smartphone.”

In an interview with the Associated Press on Tuesday, Heins added more, saying the white Z10 had sold out already. “It’s beyond expectations. White is sold out already. The black is hard to stock up again. It’s very encouraging. I won’t share the number because I need to verify it, but we are getting a substantial number of users moving from other platforms to BlackBerry. That is an interesting data point,” he said.

BlackBerry also described Canadian first day sales of the Z10 as “the best day ever for the first day of a launch of a new BlackBerry smartphone”, adding: ”In fact, it was more than 50% better than any other launch day in our history in Canada.”

But, despite all this noise, media reports circulated yesterday suggesting the Z10 had not in fact been a sell out in the U.K. after all. The source of the reports was a blog called Mobile News which rang Phones 4u customer service and two of its retail stores to be told the white Z10 was in fact in stock after all — which appeared to contradict Heins’ comments.

Not so, though, says Phones 4u today — the stock has merely been replenished. The retailer couched demand for the Z10 as “exceptional” (but, as previously mentioned, did not put a figure on it). Of course part of a successful launch is managing supply so you can ensure demand appears high, even if it’s nothing special. Piles of unsold stock is never a good look, but — on the flip-side — you don’t want to frustrate customers who genuinely want to buy your product. And BlackBerry certainly can’t afford to frustrate anyone right now — it needs every customer it can get.

Returning to U.K. sales situation, it looks like BlackBerry has encouraged its “longstanding” retail partner to shine a little more light on stock levels following yesterday’s negative reports.

“As Phones 4u is currently the only place people can get their hands on the BlackBerry Z10 in white, it has been a huge success and continues to sell extremely well,” said Scott Hooton, Chief Commercial Officer at Phones 4u, in a statement.  “A large number of our stores DID sell out of the white model on launch weekend, but because we knew demand was so high and we didn’t want anyone to miss out on getting one, we replenished stock within hours.”

“We have a longstanding relationship with BlackBerry and we’re delighted to report such a strong sales performance within less than a week of the new handsets going on sale,” he added.

Phones 4u’s Regent Street, London store had sold out of the Z10 when we phoned to ask about stock levels today, and one of its Oxford Street stores was only selling the device on contract (not on pay-as-you-go) because stock levels were “quite” low. A store rep said it only has three black Z10s in stock. The shop has been limiting PAYG customers who want to buy multiple Z10s to three devices each.

Phones 4u’s full release follows below.

BLACKBERRY Z10 SEES EXCEPTIONAL FIRST WEEK SALES AT PHONES 4U

Demand for white variant, still only available at Phones 4u, particularly strong

London, UK, 7^th February 2013: Phones 4u today confirms it has enjoyed an exceptional response to the new Blackberry® Z10 in both white and black, with over 55% of their 680 stores selling out of the devices during the first weekend of sales.  Phones 4u has since replenished stock to cater for the high demand.

 

Demand for the white model is particularly strong among UK smartphone customers and Phones 4u remains the only retailer where consumers can get their hands on the white device.

Scott Hooton, Chief Commercial Officer at Phones 4u, comments: “As Phones 4u is currently the only place people can get their hands on the BlackBerry Z10 in white, it has been a huge success and continues to sell extremely well.  A large number of our stores DID sell out of the white model on launch weekend, but because we knew demand was so high and we didn’t want anyone to miss out on getting one, we replenished stock within hours.”

“We have a longstanding relationship with BlackBerry® and we’re delighted to report such a strong sales performance within less than a week of the new handsets going on sale. It’s fantastic to see this consumer excitement and demand, and we’re looking forward to seeing sales continue to grow over the coming weeks, particularly for the BlackBerry Z10 in white which is still only available at Phones 4u.”

A survey conducted via Phones 4u’s co-creative consumer panel, uBar (www.theubar.co.uk), has revealed that desire for a new BlackBerry smartphone handset has doubled since December 2012. The survey also highlights the top BlackBerry Z10 features driving consumer demand, with 42% of respondents voting for the BlackBerry Z10’s larger screen as being one of their top three, followed jointly by the touch screen and faster mobile browsing at 40%, and its new Flow feature at 31%.

Phones 4u is the first to range the new BlackBerry Z10 in white, which is available now along with the black model too, at Phones 4u stores from £36 a month on contract, on a choice of networks. The full range is also available online atwww.phones4u.co.uk.

4GEE, the U.K.’s first — and still, it’s only — 4G network, owned by carrier EE, is continuing to grow its coverage footprint. Currently the network reaches less than half (45 per cent) of the U.K.’s population but by the summer EE will have built it out to cover a majority (55 per cent) of the U.K.’s people.

EE’s rivals are in the process of bidding for spectrum to build their own 4G networks, with the earliest timeframe for the likes of O2 and Vodafone to launch their own 4G networks being Spring/Summer, according to telecoms regulator Ofcom’s auction timetable. Which means that EE will be able to claim its network reaches a majority of the U.K.’s population while its rivals are still scrambling to get off the starting blocks.

EE said today it would be switching on a further 27 towns and cities by June as it builds out coverage. A week ago the carrier announced it had added nine more towns to the rollout, to bring the coverage level up to 45 per cent of the population — claiming its rollout was ahead of its schedule of covering 98 per cent of the population by 2014.

Between April and June, EE said it will switch on 4G in the following 27 towns and cities:

Aldershot, Ashford, Basildon, Basingstoke, Blackpool, Bracknell, Camberley, Colchester, Crawley, Farnborough, Guildford, Horsham, Huddersfield, Leatherhead, Maidstone, Milton Keynes, Oldham, Oxford, Redhill, Reigate, Sevenoaks, Stevenage, Tonbridge, Royal Tunbridge Wells, Warrington, Wigan and Woking

While EE has continually declined to reveal the number of sign-ups it’s had for 4GEE, it today named some of the business customers using its network – name-checking Addison Lee, Foxtons, Gatwick Airport, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, Kier, Microsoft, Morrisons, Sony Music, TNT Post and Urban Outfitters.

Olaf Swantee, Chief Executive Officer, EE, said in a statement: “Our business customers want a 4G network that covers the markets in which they operate, and that is exactly what we are building for them – and at a phenomenal rate. We’re set to cover more than half of the UK population by Summer, staying ahead of the schedule that we set for ourselves at launch.”

On Monday the U.K.’s smallest mobile network Three, which is unlikely to be able to launch 4G before September as it waits to acquire the necessary spectrum, said it will not be charging its customers a premium to use LTE – in contrast to EE’s strategy of putting a pricing premium on 4G and requiring customers to sign new contracts.

With hacking and malware on the rise, Europe is cracking down on cybersecurity: today the European Commission, working with the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, is launching a new cybersecurity strategy along with a proposed directive on how to implement it (both embedded below). Among other things, the directive calls for each member state of the EU to set up “CERT”s — Computer Emergency Response Teams — to deal with hacking and malware crises, along with plans for how to deal with major incidents; and it wants also to put more pressure on private companies in different vertical sectors like banking to be more forthcoming in reporting major breaches.

Points like these could prove to be sensitive issues because of the costs for implementing them; and the potential damage the publicity around breaches could cause for affected organizations.

“Sometimes companies want to avoid [publicity on breaches],” admitted Neelie Kroes, European Commission Vice-President for the Digital Agenda, today. “But you can’t say that it is unique when you have a breach, it is normal, so no reason you should not be mentioning it and learning from it.”

Kroes is due to hold a press conference with Catherine Ashton, EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Cecilia Malmstrom, Member of the EC in charge of Home Affairs, to present the strategy and directive. The work builds on findings released by ENISA, the European Network and Information Security Agency, in January, that detailed trends in the biggest cyberthreats of the moment, and who is affected most.

We’ll be watching that and updating the story accordingly, but as we understand it, here are the main points that will be covered in the strategy, whose objective is to generally improve cybersecurity across Europe, laying the groundwork for more ICT investments from public and private organizations longer-term:

– Each member state must set up a Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT).
– Each member state must nominate a competent authority to deal with network and information security, where companies would report breaches. These authorities need to put in place plans for dealing with major incidents. (Not clear whether these authorities will be public organizations or whether they can be run by private firms.)
– These national authorities will be required to form a network and to work with ENISA to lift overall security.
– Specific sectors like banking, transport, energy, health, Internet companies and public administrations must adopt risk management practices and report major incidents. TechCrunch understands this is an extension of existing scheme in Framework Directive for e-communications.

“The goal is to support Member States to get better at cybersecurity, not dictate the exact methods for achieving this outcome,” a spokesperson noted in an email on the directive.

With the cybersecurity proposals coming in at the same time that the EU is debating wider budget negotiations, those who are keen to put the directive in place argue that Europe has not done enough to date when it comes to its Internet safety, and that this will have an impact longer term when it comes to investments in ICT in Europe.

At the moment ICT accounts for 5% of GDP in the EU and is growing, but proposed EU budget spend for ICT is just 2.5% of the region’s overall budget, equivalent to 0.02% of GDP in the EU. “If ICT spending falls below 2% of the MFF we fall below what developing countries invest in ICT,” a spokesperson for Kroes noted in an email.

Update: From the press conference: “The principles we hold offline should be the same as those we hold online. It has to remain free and open,” said Ashton, “but we have to recognize responsibility.” She also mentioned that working on cybercrime will involve coordination between civilian and military organizations. Asked on how the military fits into this: she later noted that NATO and other organizations would be involved.

“Internet is very important for our economy and values,” said Kroes. “We are all aware of the phishing scams… and natural disasters like storms. We need to protect our networks and make them resilient.”

There were also questions probing on how much member states are able to negotiate with other governments such as China’s: China is among the countries from which many attacks allegedly originate. Kroes would not comment on these individual discussions but this issue could prove to be a lever for states and businesses that claim that doing more at home will only work if there is cooperation with organizations further afield — and that they should need to invest in their end of the deal until the others start to play ball.

Kim Dotcom’s latest venture Mega, which opened its doors last month offering encrypted cloud-storage services, has a new CEO — announcing today that Vikram Kumar, former CEO of not-for-profit open internet advocacy organization InternetNZ, will take over from Mega’s interim CEO, Tony Lentino.

Lentino, who is owner of Instra Corporation, the domain name registrar based in Australia and New Zealand that is providing product, billing and technical support services to Mega users, remains a Mega shareholder and will keep a director’s seat.

Kim Dotcom announced Kumar’s appointment in a tweet:

Mega Limited appoints new CEO. Welcome Vikram Kumar. mega.co.nz/#blog twitter.com/KimDotcom/stat…

— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) February 7, 2013

Since launching around two weeks ago Mega has managed to attract 2.5 million registered users.

Commenting in a statement, Kumar said his job would be to build on “this initial success to develop MEGA into a significant company on the international Internet stage”, adding: ”MEGA is an exciting business and one that I am delighted to be joining.”

In addition to working to promote — in Mega’s words — an “open and uncapturable Internet” at InternetNZ, Kumar has also worked for New Zealand’s central government (State Services Commission), and for Telecom NZ in “a variety of roles covering management, strategy, innovation, policy and programme management”.

Kumar’s LinkedIn page lists him as: “Looking for new opportunities, new challenges” — and describes his main strengths as “strategic leadership, management, innovation, and public communications”, and adds: “One talent I’m particularly proud of is the demonstrated ability in building and leading teams where excellence is the norm. This sets off a wonderful virtuous cycle of the best people delivering the best results with the organisation becoming attractive to the best people.”

Writing about the job on his blog, Kumar said his first thought when Kim emailed him about the role was “great opportunity but risky”, but after a visit to Kim’s mansion to meet the team and “look at Mega from every angle” he was convinced.

“Mega is off to a good start, despite the initial overload at launch. There has been a lot of scrutiny of the services offered. Overall, it has been generally positive and many of the start-up risks have been managed well. This should provide the company with much-needed cash flow to break even and then create a solid platform for growth,” he adds.

According to his LinkedIn page Kumar has studied marine engineering, management accountancy and holds an MBA in international business from the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade.

The Android + iPhone duopoly in the smartphone space will ease up slightly this year, according to a marketshare forecast by ABI Research. The analyst predicts Google’s platform will take a 57 per cent share of the global smartphone pie, while Apple’s iOS will cut itself about a fifth (21 per cent) — giving the two rival platforms a 78 per cent chunk of the market. (In Q4 last year the two had a 92 per cent share, according to Strategy Analytics’ figures.)

While 78 per cent is still a huge majority, the relative newcomers to the market of Microsoft, fuelled by its rebooted Windows Phone 8 platform, and BlackBerry with BlackBerry 10, will end the year powering millions of devices apiece — albeit, their share of the pie will still be in very low single digits, with Windows Phone taking around three per cent, and BlackBerry 10 around half that share.

The analyst is forecasting 45 million Windows Phone handsets in use by the end of the year, along with a BlackBerry 10 installed base of close to 20 million. Commenting in a statement, senior ABI Research analyst Aapo Markkanen says “2013 should be seen as relative success for both Microsoft and BlackBerry”. The analyst predicts the global installed base of smartphones will total 1.4 billion by the end of the year, meaning Android will be powering close to 800 million handsets, and iOS approaching 300 million — which puts Microsoft’s and BlackBerry’s “relative success” in context.

Commenting on BlackBerry, ABI’s enterprise practice director, Dan Shey, said the company needs to woo and win both enterprise and consumers to its new BB10 platform. “BlackBerry needs strong backing from IT administrators but it also needs enough consumers and more specifically, employees to choose BB10 over Android, Apple, and Windows smartphones. The BYOD trend is having a big influence on enterprise mobilization strategies,” he said in a statement.

On the tablet front, ABI predicts there will be 268 million tablets in active use — with 62 per cent of them built on iOS and 28 per cent on Android. It expects Microsoft to have some 5.5 million Windows-powered tablets in circulation by the year’s end.

ABI says the annual growth rate against 2012 will be 44 per cent for smartphones and 125 per cent for tablets. The figures come from ABI’s Mobile Application Technologies Research Service.

Rally.org, the U.S.-based crowdfunding platform designed for socially-minded causes, is taking its mission to Europe. Today, the startup is opening an incubator in Berlin, its first outside of the U.S., and on a limited beta will start to process donations made on its proprietary payment platform in euros, with the intention of adding British pounds and other currencies in the very near future.

Rally.org — which, commendably, used its own platform to raise $7.9 million from the likes of Relay Ventures, Mike Maples of Floodgate Fund, Reid Hoffman of Greylock Partners, Kevin Rose of Google Ventures, Craig Shapiro of Collaborative Fund, Michael Birch of Bebo, Tim Ferriss and Eric Ries — recently passed 3 million people contributing to 23,000 campaigns on its platform, and the idea is to tap into more local social causes and fundraising activities in this part of the world to grow that base even more.

In an interview with TechCrunch, Rally.org co-founder and CEO Tom Serres says that the company chose Berlin for its incubator and head office partly because Rally.org had already opened a Rallypad co-working space of sorts in the city last year; and partly because it’s a very startup-friendly city economically (in other words, it doesn’t cost an arm and a leg to start a new company there). “We wanted a community, not just a product,” he said.

But the intention is to expand very soon to the UK, which Serres notes has the highest concentration in Europe of people who donate money to good causes. For Rally.org, a cause can be anything from a donation drive for a non-profit; to an environmental startup project aimed at improving, say, energy consumption; to someone looking to raise money for their education — not a small issue in Europe, where student fees are skyrocketing in many countries as states pull back spending in these recessionary times. (Rally takes a 5.75% commission on all final fundraises.)

While crowdfunding sites seem to be approaching a dime a dozen these days, Rally.org has a few points that distinguish it from the pack. Its emphasis on good causes is the obvious one. But the other may be the one that helps it grow: it has built its own payment platform — independent of PayPal, Amazon and the rest — that underpins the service, which is already capable of handling 17 different currencies, says Serres.

“My long term vision is to be the infrastructre of the next economy, the cause economy,” Serres told TechCrunch, describing a future where we make purchasing decisions based on making bigger statements and helping the world: think Tom’s Shoes and its idea of donating one pair to a needy child for each pair bought, expanded into all of your daily transactions. “The idea is: Everywhere I go I make a statement to the world.”

Serres points out every person who makes a contribution through Rally.org gets a virtual wallet, and the idea is to eventually make that wallet into something that consumers can use for more donations, as well as for purchases elsewhere.

For now, those posting campaigns on Rally.org will need to have German bank accounts to receive funds — although this will expand over time, Serres says. Companies based in the company’s Berlin incubator — Startup Weekend, music resource-sharing company Muzup, and social relocation community G1OBALS — will be the first Europeans to use the product. Another group is starting a campaign to preserve Berlin’s princesses garden, Prinzessinnengarten.

Evernote, the popular personal information and productivity app, is taking another step today in building out its premium service offerings: its enterprise app, Evernote Business, which formally launched in seven markets in December 2012, has now been switched on throughout the European Union, Norway and Iceland, with Australia and New Zealand coming online next week. In keeping with the company’s growth, it has also now appointed its very first chief operating officer, Ken Gullicksen, who will head up Evernote Business, on top of other roles.

From today, the full list of countries that will be supported by Evernote for its Business services are Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK and the U.S. Australia and New Zealand get turned on February 12, bringing the total number of countries to 26 and aiming for 50 by the middle of this year, with the next targets territories in Latin America and Asia.

It also follows on from Evernote releasing a major update on another one of its apps, Evernote Hello, last week.

Expanding Evernote Business into new markets is the company’s way of tapping into its existing user base to build up revenues: some 70% of the company’s 50 million current subscribers are outside the U.S., and Evernote says that two-thirds of them are already, less formally, using their free apps to increase work productivity.

The idea is to look to them first as a natural audience for the paid, premium product, which is charged starting on a $10 per user, per month basis, and gives them a number of features on top of those that are included in the free product.

These extras include access to a Business Library, an information repository that can be controlled by an administrator; Business Notebooks, which are distinct from personal notebooks and can be shared with co-workers or posted to a group’s Business Library; expanded sharing capabilities; an automatic Related Notes feature with semantic search capabilities; administrator privileges; and increased upload allowances of up to 2GB each month for personal notebooks, and 2GB more for Business Notebooks.

CEO Phil Libin has in the past described the development of Evernote Business as a product designed for companies like Evernote itself — up to 300 people — and fulfilling functions for information management that both its existing customers and own employees were demanding.

This is a strategy that Evernote Business will continue under Gullicksen: “We learn from our business customers every day and continue to enhance the product to meet their needs,” he noted.

With Evernote Business’ international expansion also comes platform expansion: most of the premium app had already been available for Mac, iOS, Android and Windows Desktop; from today, Evernote’s also extending Related Notes to work on the Mac client, as well as Evernote Clearly for Chrome and Firefox and Evernote Web Clipper for Chrome. 

Since formally launching Evernote Business in December, the company says that 2,000 businesses — primarily small and medium enterprises, or groups within larger companies — have signed up to use the service, with 40% of them coming from outside the U.S.

A company spokesperson declined to comment on how many individuals that translates to paying for the product. But part of the idea of appointing Gullicksen as COO is that now he will be the main person overseeing how that product develops and gets commercially deployed as it widens its international reach.

Gullicksen is an internal appointment, and he had already played an important role in how Evernote has developed. As VP of corporate development, he has led on Evernote’s five acquisitions and its launch of its service in China, Yinxiang Biji. And before taking that role, he was a general partner at Morgenthaler Ventures, where he led on Evernote’s first venture round and was a part of its board of directors. (Evernote has raised a whopping $251 million since 2006.)

In addition to Evernote Business, he will also oversee investor relations and corporate development, the company says.

“As COO, Ken will be instrumental in continuing to foster strategic initiatives, building on the momentum we’re seeing with Evernote Business and developing efficient services to support our entire global operation,” CEO Phil Libin noted in a statement.