Category: Tech news

As the capabilities of modern browsers expand and developing standards like Google’s WebRTC initiative for real-time communications slowly find their way into most popular browsers, we’ll likely see more video collaboration software that’s currently still client-based move to the browser as well. TenHands, which is launching its private beta today (you can request an invite here) wants to be the first out of the gate in this market and sees itself as a direct competitor to Cisco’s WebEx, Microsoft Lync and other incumbents in this space. The service offers free video conference calls, screensharing, as well as built-in support for sharing documents from your desktop and Box.net.

As for pricing, TenHands’ COO and co-founder Jack Blaeser told me earlier today, the company is planning to use a freemium model after the beta phase ends. Users will get three free hours of usage per month and will have to pay $10/month if they need more time.

The service currently uses a small plugin to enable WebRTC in Chrome, IE, Safari and Firefox on both Mac and Windows machines. The idea here, though, is to move away from plugins as soon as more browsers support this standard natively. Technically, TenHands’ architecture can handle calls with an unlimited number of participants, but the beta currently has a soft limit of ten.

One major advantage of being web-based, TenHands’ COO and co-founder Jack Blaeser told me earlier today, is the fact that this makes it very easy for the company to add support for other web-based services. Currently, TenHands supports Box.net, for example, but the company plans to add more services (think Yammer, Google Drive, DropBox, etc.) in the near future. This approach, said Blaeser, will also allow the team to easily customize the service for large enterprises that want to whitelabel it.

TenHands, according to Blaeser, is currently about a year ahead of its closest competitors in moving to WebRTC. It’s worth noting, too, that Blaeser’s co-founder and TenHands’ CEO Mark Weidick was formerly the head of Cisco’s Telepresence Exchange business.

As far as the video quality goes – and that, after all, is one of the most important aspects of these kinds of services – the company promises high-quality video – and in my tests, that’s definitely what it delivered. The easy-to-use web interface lets you start and accept calls with just a few clicks. After that, your browser window will be taken over by your contact’s video or screen. For calls with multiple participants, TenHands uses the same “active speaker” setup as Google+, for example, and automatically features whomever is currently speaking in the main window.

The Sunnyvale-based company currently has 10 employees and has received funding from Trinity Ventures. The size of this funding round was not disclosed.

The people behind college flirting network Likealittle have launched a new app in the App Store, Circle, an app that attempts to be more granular and thoughtful about the burgeoning ambient location space, which includes startups like Highlight, Banjo, Meetup and recent Facebook acquisition Glancee. While Likealittle will continue to run its course, the company will be shifting most of its focus to Circle.

Before Highlight launched at SXSW, I wrote that it needed to allow you to drill down into who could see you on the app, who could message you, and who you could see — Because some people were cool with people being alerted to their whereabouts, but wanted control levels, like being able to limit the functionality to only their friends. While Highlight has yet to add these granular settings,Circle operates exactly on this premise, allowing you to see the people around you if you and they are part of  limited shared networks.

To use the app, download it from the app store and sign in with Facebook Connect. Circle pulls your employment and education information from Facebook and automatically adds you to those networks on Circle. Overall the initial interface looks like what would happen if Steve Jobs had designed Google+’ Circles (demo here).

On its very sparse and simple landing screen, which asks “Who’s around?”  you can see your location, and which Facebook Friends are “around” and also which people in your networks are around — the app will only show you people if they are a part of shared groups like school, work and friends of friends (a setting which you can turn off).

In addition to networks created by Facebook designations, Circle itself has created unique mobile networks for groups like YCombinator, Stanford Alumni, Harley Davidson, Army Veterans, A16Z Founders and even TechCrunch. Eventually the founders tell me that they’ll allow users to build their own networks themselves but users who currently want custom networks can contact the company at [email protected].

Users can choose the radius of  Circle’s reach, from “around a few steps” to “within the universe.” Like in Highlight you can’t turn the location updates off, but unlike Highlight you can block people, turn off alerts for friends and/or people in your Networks. You can also hide themselves from each individual network, like if you don’t want your former colleagues from your last job to know you’re hanging out in Vegas or something.

People can also message the people they see nearby through the app, and fiddle with those settings as well.

“In actuality, with all of the products from our company, we have focused on the same problem of how to decrease the friction of offline human to human interaction,” said co-founder Evan Reas, “We evolved into Circle as we think it is the best product to solve that. The way we think about Circle is that it creates a ‘virtual bubble’ over everybody’s head in the world and helps you connect with the people nearby that you care about, around the things you care about. Adding that layer of virtual context is the best way to decrease the friction of communication.”

The founders also tell me that they’ve optimized the timing of location pinging in order to not put too much strain on your iPhone battery, “Some of the other challenges of local-social apps are battery and privacy issues and we have solved both by easily letting people choose what they want to share and getting location in a way that does not affect your battery at all, unlike many other apps in this area,” says Reas.

Circle, via Likealittle, has raised a little over $6 million, from investors like Andreesen Horowitz, Michael Arrington, Ashton Kutcher, Mark Pincus, Joshua Schachter, Dan Rosensweig and Lee Linden.

And the app, oddly enough was a labor of love built in India, as the cofounders had to move to India for more than three months during the development cycle, sleeping in the same bed and working on PDT time because two of the cofounders couldn’t get Visas to work from the United States. The entire team is now back in the states (!) all living out of the nerdiest Palo Alto home I’ve ever seen.

Disclosure: As noted above, TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington is investing in LAL. You can read more about his investment policy here.

You know how many Android developers complain about fragmentation? Yeah, this is what fragmentation looks like.

Animoca, a Hong Kong mobile app developer that has seen more than 70 million downloads, says it does quality assurance testing with about 400 Android devices. Again, that’s testing with four hundred different phones and tablets for every app they ship!

The photo above is just a sampling of Animoca’s fleet of Android test units. Yat Siu, who is CEO of Animoca’s parent company Outblaze, snapped and posted it from Outblaze’s headquarters today. In total, Siu says their studio has detected about 600 unique Android devices on their network.

“We haven’t managed to track down all of those devices because, in large part, they are no longer available for sale,” he says. Sad cakes!

On top of that, Siu said that the number of handsets from the lower-end Asian manufacturers is also growing rapidly. These are the phone makers that Nokia chief executive Stephen Elop was probably talking about in his famous “burning platform” memo when he said that are Chinese OEMs were “cranking out a device much faster than, as one Nokia employee said only partially in jest, ‘the time that it takes us to polish a PowerPoint presentation.’” If you take those out, the actual number of devices you need to test for is much lower.

But if you want to break into Asian markets, these phones matter and make it especially challenging for Android developers to ensure their apps work on every single Android device. Android fragmentation is a huge issue because developers have to check their work on dozens of devices. Animoca happens to be backed by Intel Capital and IDG-Accel, so it has the resources to buy all of these devices for testing and pay employees to use them.

But imagine the long-tail of developers! Imagine the people who make the roughly 500,000 apps in the Google Play store. Total nightmare.

It puts a real dent in Eric Schmidt’s prediction from six months ago that developers might start going Android first within six months. His deadline is up now and there aren’t signs of this happening. Appcelerator did a survey of 2,100 of its developer clients in March and found that, if anything, interest in Android development is stagnating.

Siu isn’t fazed though. He’s told me in the past that thorough QA testing makes Animoca’s apps retain users better because so many other Android developers do a bad job at it. Unlike iOS users who throw up their hands in frustration, write bad reviews and just leave, Android users tend to be delighted when they find apps that work even if they have a glitch or two.

He adds, “We like fragmentation as users prefer choice. We are not big believers that one size fits all.”

Update: We just got more photos of QA testing walls from another developer! Pocket Gems had two of the 10 top-grossing games on iOS last year, according to Apple’s iTunes Rewind. Plus, they’re backed by top-tier venture firm Sequoia Capital.

Co-founder Harlan Crystal sent us these photos. Here’s a photo of the iOS testing wall:

Then here’s their Android QA table. They actually keep their Android testing devices in a safe. But apparently, there are so many of them now, that they overflow out of the safe.

So Crystal spilled them out onto a table:

Note: I am not necessarily ragging on Android. The platform just presents more of a QA testing challenge than iOS does. Pocket Gems actually launched their first Android exclusive game this week called Tap Dragon Park.

If you’re a mid-size or large developer, how do you deal with QA on Android?

A new app has just taken the App Store by storm — a colorful, rainbowful storm. It’s called Color Text Messages+ and the idea is relatively simple, but clearly appealing judging by the app’s popularity. The app is so popular, in fact, that Facebook Messenger, Facebook, and Twitter have all just dropped down a spot to make room for the new kid on the social block.

In essence, you can now send your friends customized color text messages, complete with backgrounds and various fonts. Yep, a huge chunk of Samsung’s Galaxy Note campaign around personalizing communication on smartphones just went down the drain courtesy of a free app. But that’s not the point — the point is that you can now send a Comic Sans text message inside a colored (or butterfly-themed) bubble.

It’s glorious.

So here’s how it works: You download the app from the App Store and once you’re in, you have at least 50 different colors to choose from for both background and text. You also have 42 different themed backgrounds, like ones with rabbits, hearts, stars and the aforementioned butterflies. Then you hop on over to the font tab, which offers way more fonts than I care to count out. Type in your message, and you’re almost done.

There is the small obstacle of copying your message and pasting it into the Messages app for iPhone, but for most that’s a very small price to pay for the ability to send really cool colorful messages to your friends. And the best part is that the recipient doesn’t need to have downloaded the app to see the magical message on their phone.

Oh wait, the best part is that it’s free.

What’s perhaps more interesting is the fact that this app, from a relatively unknown company called Leping Li, has dethroned the most powerful and popular social companies in the world, Facebook and Twitter. Now, Facebook and Twitter haven’t maintained the top two spots consistently since their launch, but instances in which another app has surpassed the two power networks are few and far between.

Congrats, Color Text Messages+, all you need now is a catchier name and you’re good to go.

Online legal services company LegalZoom filed an S-1 form this morning declaring its intention to raise up to $120 million in an IPO.

LegalZoom offers documents and subscription services to make it easier for individuals and businesses to accomplish basic legal tasks. As evidence of the company’s traction and impact, the S-1 says LegalZoom has served about 2 million customers in the past 10 years. It also says that in 2011, those customers placed 490,000 orders on the site, and during that period, more than 20 percent of limited liability companies formed in California did so through LegalZoom.

The company’s revenue has been growing steadily, if not dramatically, in the past couple of years — it was $156 million in 2011, up from $121 million in 2010 and $103 million in 2009. LegalZoom also became profitable for the first time last year, with $12.1 million in net income.

LegalZoom says its future plans include adding more services, expanding its subscription legal plans, and growing internationally. Risk factors listed in the S-1 include:

• The company is switching from a transaction-based model to a mix of transactions and subscriptions, so it’s not clear how many customers will become subscribers.
• LegalZoom’s reputation could be harmed if it doesn’t protect its customers’ privacy.
• There’s increasing competition from online and offline legal services.
• The company is involved in several class action lawsuits.

LegalZoom has raised more than $100 million in funding, including a $66 million round last year. The largest shareholders in the company are Polaris Venture Partners (with 35.1 percent of the company), Institutional Venture Partners (14.7 percent), Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (6.4 percent), and co-founder and chairman Brian Liu (8.7 percent).

The company is headquartered in Los Angeles suburb Glendale, so this is also nice validation for the LA tech community.

Google’s map data has been baked into the iOS Maps app since the days of the first, thick, aluminum-backed iPhone, but that may no longer be the case once iOS 6 hits the streets. Unnamed sources told 9to5Mac that the Cupertino company would instead take that opportunity to reveal their own Maps application, and those early reports paint a pretty impressive picture.

Astute readers may recall that Apple has been on something of a mapping company shopping spree these past few years — what began with the purchase of Placebase in 2009, continued with Poly9 in 2010, and culminated with Apple snapping up C3 Technologies late last year.

As far as the app itself goes, the biggest addition to the mix is a robust new 3D mode that is said to be a straight implementation of the what C3 was already working on when they were acquired. Considering how damned good some of their 3D maps looked, this should be a real treat (assuming the report isn’t just hot air). Also on deck is an updated street view mode also courtesy of C3, and what would a major revamp be without a new app icon?

While C3′s (and possibly Poly9′s) tech seems to have been used in building (or replacing) features, the purchase of white-label mapping service Placebase presumably allowed Apple to build up their store of map data to the point where they apparently feel comfortable giving Google the boot. Apple has forecast their shift away from reliance on Google in other ways, too — about two months ago, Apple switched from using Google’s map data to data provided by the OpenStreetMaps project (even if it did take them a while to own up to it).

While Apple isn’t expected to fully unveil iOS 6 and all the changes they’ve made until this year’s WWDC in June, if you’re champing at the bit for nifty 3D mapping functionality on your iDevice, apps like UpNext Maps may be able to hold you over until Apple delivers their next big iOS update.

Photos by Jon Snyder and Ariel Zambelich/Wired

This microphone wraps around to your neck, where it picks up your voice even if you’re speaking quietly or battling hurricane-force winds. Photo by Jon Snyder/Wired

Anyone with a smartphone is essentially a super-spy, carrying around miniature surveillance-and-communication technology that would have made Connery-era James Bond so enraged by envy he’d have sipped his martini slightly too quickly.

Nonetheless, it’s well known that all primates have an innate urge to acquire possessions that make them feel like they’re on a secret mission for a clandestine government agency. Even bonobos, I’m pretty sure.

The Black Ops 2 Professional Tactical Headset from iASUS is designed to work with your iPhone to make you the perfect merc, spy or paintball hero. The device wraps around your neck like a dog collar, only slightly more butch, and the two pickups nestle up against your vocal cords.

This is supposed to provide two benefits. First, loud sounds from rushing wind or nearby airstrikes don’t get picked up by the mic, so you get, in iASUS’s words, “direct voice communication free from environmental and wind noise.” Second, you can speak in a whisper and still be heard, which could be handy in conditions where you don’t want your cover blown and you’re also wearing a turtleneck.

Of course, most of us aren’t involved in infiltration, incursion or assassination on a regular basis. But the prospect of a noise-free, whisper-sensitive mic opens up a lot of options, from a phone chat in a cafe that doesn’t disturb your neighbors, to calling in sick to work from the baseball stadium.

Taking the mic out of the box, you’re likely to be a bit confused by a manual that’s clearly intended for the non-iPhone version of the headset. For instance, it refers to a push-to-talk connector, but what it supplies is just a standard iPhone remote button; if you’re using Skype or making a phone call, it’s actually a “push to hang up” button.

It looks badass, at least, with a couple of black discs on a black piece of rubber that attaches to some black elastic with a black magnetic clip in the back, along with a black in-ear headphone with a curly wire just like the Secret Service. If nothing else, you’re going to look the part.

So how well does this spy-tech setup work? I took it for a spin in a variety of environments, from a noisy Seattle cafe to a windy freeway with the windows open. I didn’t actually see any combat, but I gave it a good run.

Unfortunately, while the noise cancellation is an improvement over a pair of standard iPhone earbuds with mic, it’s a lot more marginal than the catalog copy would suggest. Background noise is just reduced somewhat — music and conversations around you are still going to be picked up — and most of what you gain in noise reduction you lose in clarity. Speaking in a normal tone of voice into the Black Ops rig, you sound a bit like you’re recording into a circa-1986 boom box while recovering from dental anesthesia, pretty much nixing any attempt at podcasting or breezy conversation.

Whispering is even more of a disappointment. Actual whispers are completely indecipherable, and even a hoarse, Batman-like stage whisper is extremely difficult to make out. The standard iPhone headset is realms better, background noise and all.

The headset does, however, shine when faced with wind noise. Rushing wind that makes a normal headset completely useless is merely a low roar with the Black Ops throat mic.

Here are some sound samples. First, here’s the iPhone’s standard, bundled heatset mic. I recorded with it in a quiet environment, a noisy cafe, a noisy cafe with speech kept to a stage whisper, and in high winds.

[dewplayer:http://www.wired.com/reviews/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Headset-set.mp3]

Now, here’s how the Black Ops 2 throat mic performed in the same four environments.

[dewplayer:http://www.wired.com/reviews/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Throatmic-set.mp3]

There appears to be a niche here for motorcycle enthusiasts and other people who want to make calls on their iPhone while in a heavy wind. It’s not clear who else that would include. Parachutists? Tornado chasers? The host of the “Roller Coasters Live” podcast?

To be fair, the device is built as a combat mic, not a cafe mic or a van mic. If you’re playing paintball, and for some reason you’re really attached to your iPhone, then a coarse bark might be at least a bit more stealthy than a normal speaking voice, and if your communication is limited to phrases like “flank left” and “enemy sighted,” the loss in call quality might be worth the convenience — and, let’s be honest, coolness factor — of a black mic strapped to your throat rather than a pair of white earbuds.

But that’s a mighty thin slice of pie, and doesn’t live up to the claims of the enthusiastic ad copy on iASUS’s website, or the website of reseller ThinkGeek. If you want a spy mic for more mundane purposes like 24/7 podcasting or having phone sex without waking your roommate, the Black Ops 2 Professional Tactical Headset is more F/X than effective.

WIRED Looks the part. Reduces wind noise considerably. Would probably work well on a motorcycle.

TIRED Picks up considerable background noise. Doesn’t pick up whispers decipherably. Voice distortion interferes with communication.

Livio’s Bluetooth dongle plugs into your cigarette lighter, giving your older car the powers of the internets. Photo: Ariel Zambelich/Wired

The Bluetooth-enabled Livio Radio car kit attempts to be the Holy Grail of dashboard connectivity devices, marrying smartphones with older cars that lack the hardware to fully support them.

The main idea behind the device ($120 from Livio, cheaper elsewhere) is that you can wirelessly play music from your iPhone or Android phone via your car’s speakers using an FM radio connection, so whatever’s playing on your phone gets piped through the car’s radio.

The phone and the Livio dongle (which plugs into the cigarette lighter and is about the size of a small stack of credit cards) communicate using Bluetooth. It easily syncs with your car’s radio and your phone, and has a USB port on the side to keep your handset juiced up.

Like other devices in this category, it also works as a hands-free telephone. You can answer calls with the press of a button, but dialing out must be done on the phone. The caller’s voice comes through your car’s speakers and sounds nice and clear. Of course, anybody else in the car can hear the conversation — a plus or minus depending upon one’s viewpoint.

But Livio isn’t only intent on connecting your MP3s and your phone, it’s tackling apps, as well. The company recently opened up an API for the device, allowing developers to code their apps so they can be controlled via the buttons on the unit. Some of the partners already using the API are streaming services like Rdio, NPR, Live365 and AirKast, which is a streaming platform for small radio stations, so it’s useful for listening to sports broadcasts outside your local market. In addition to the apps the are enabled through the API, Livio makes its own phone app that can access some 45,000 internet stations, which is pretty cool.

In theory, the device is the perfect accessory for vehicles without built-in smartphone capabilities, such as my 2002 Volkswagen Eurovan camper. It does work as advertised, mostly without hassle. But in my months of testing it, I encountered a few annoyances that nearly prompted me to toss it out the window several times.

There were some things I liked. After years of suffering through touchscreen menus while driving, this device let me just cue up some Beatles without ever losing sight of the road. On family trips, my 11-year-old son, sitting in the back seat, could take control of the device with his iPhone and stream from his iTunes library or his Rdio app, keeping him busy and entertained. That was pretty awesome, except when I had to bark at him to turn off the latest profanity-ridden rap song.

But the biggest travesty of the Livio is how it nearly made my ears bleed on multiple occasions, not to mention those of my black Labrador and two juvenile-delinquent sons. If you turn the device off while leaving your radio on, you’ll be greeted with an ear-frying pop. If my dog could talk, she would have yelped “WTF!” every time.

When all goes well, the device just pushes your music through a vacant FM station on your radio. However, the same maddening popping sound (sometimes accompanied by static) happens whenever the vacant slice of spectrum you are dialed into starts to get edged out by radio stations as they come into range. If you’re driving long distances, or if the radio dial is already crowded in your city, this happens quite a bit. And if you’re an audiophile, you can forget about being pleased with the sound quality. The Livio leaves a tiny hissing sound in the background, however slight. But it was a nuisance enough that it turned my session with the Discovery box set of Pink Floyd remasters into a bummer.

But don’t get me wrong; all of the Bluetooth and app connectivity functions work very well, and the audio-quality problems I experienced are par for the course with most of these devices that rely on an FM transmitter. But I have yet to see something that clears these hurdles elegantly.

So despite the damage to my family’s eardrums, the Livio has promise.

WIRED Wireless music streaming through your car’s speakers. Some apps can be controlled using the buttons on the Livio, so you can stash your phone and reduce distractions. Setup is a breeze. It doubles as a USB charger.

TIRED Mind-blowing for the wrong reasons. Is an injustice to Pink Floyd. Pricey — the budget-minded are better off using a Bluetooth earpiece for telephone calls and wiring up a stereo input connection for music.

Photo: Ariel Zambelich/Wired

Asus’ 27-inch dekstop PC is a solid all-in-one Windows machine. Photo by Ariel Zambelich/Wired

Driven mostly by Apple’s iMac, the all-in-one PC market has seen a boom lately. And why not? You can cram an entire computer behind a big, floating display and control it with a couple of wireless peripherals. The minimal, clutter-free design of an all-in-one PC works in every room of the house, and the big screen can comfortably double as an HDTV for watching videos. They tend to be more difficult to upgrade, but they’re very convenient.

This 27-inch all-in-one from Asus is no iMac, but it holds its ground as a great choice for a desktop workstation — it’s a powerful Windows 7 machine with a big, bright screen, an attractive design, and a wide array of features that give it a high level of versatility. The bundled keyboard and mouse are sub-standard, but there are enough positives here for me to recommend it.

The PC’s big, crisp display is one of its best features. The 16:9 widescreen HD panel sports a resolution of 1920×1080 pixels. It has LED backlighting and a 178-degree wide viewing angle, and colors appear bright and vivid. With its edge-to-edge glass display, surrounding black bezel, silver front-facing speaker bar and silver metal stand, the entire hardware package is attractive. You won’t see any buttons cluttering the front display — the menu icons are visible on the bezel, but the buttons are hidden underneath the panel. An understated camera eye peers from the center-top.

It’s not all about looks. Inside is a quad-core Intel Core i7 2600S processor, an Nvidia GT 540M graphics processor, 8GB of RAM and a 1TB hard drive. A read/write Blu-ray drive is standard on this model. You also get plenty of ports on the Asus, which is another strong point. Our loaner came with two USB 3.0 ports, two USB 2.0 ports, an eSATA/USB 2.0 combo port, VGA-out, HDMI-in, Ethernet, an SD card reader, and all the standard audio ports you’d expect.

If you’re cramped for space — like if you live in a San Francisco studio, for instance — then the Asus ET2700INKS could easily double as an HDTV. Using the HDMI-in port, you can connect the PC to a set-top box like the Roku or your DVR. You can even mount it on a wall, as the back of the computer has a VESA-compatible mounting bracket. This is a choice that more and more manufacturers are going with these days, and we like it — when the computer inside becomes obsolete in however many years, you can just repurpose the thing as an HDTV by mounting it on a wall or on a stand.

Asus is marketing the ET2700 as the “centerpiece of your family’s entertainment,” so I’d expected the computer’s internal speakers to produce some decent audio. With the help of an external subwoofer — a squat, black obelisk tethered to the back of the PC by a cord that’s about a foot too short — music came out sounding better than what most computer speakers produce. But the sound didn’t fill a large room. I turned the volume all the way up, and it still couldn’t compete with the droning traffic noise outside the Wired office.

The subwoofer. Photo by Ariel Zambelich/Wired

Like almost every all-in-one PC, the ASUS comes with a keyboard and mouse. But in this case, the computer would have been better off without them. The keyboard, in particular, was an ergonomic nightmare — just imagine a Mac keyboard made out of super-cheap plastic and with a mushy, pillowed typing experience. The included wireless mouse was too small for comfort, even for my dainty lady hands. If you plan on using the ET2700 as your daily computer, expect to drop some extra cash on a keyboard and mouse that are actually usable.

That issue gives me some pause, because with a $1,500 price tag, the Asus sits in the high end of all-in-one PCs. Still, it’s cheaper than a similarly spec’d iMac, plenty powerful, and stuffed with nice-to-haves. And especially if you’re looking for a computer to double as a home entertainment display, the Asus will more than suffice.

WIRED Bright, sharp display. Classy chassis with edge-to-edge glass panel and front-facing silver speaker bar. Packed with every port and feature you’d want in a PC. Blu-ray combo drive and HDMI-in makes it a great home entertainment device.

TIRED The included keyboard and mouse are maddening. Speakers are only so-so — if you’re using this as a TV replacement, you’ll want to upgrade the audio. Glass screen doesn’t handle glare well.

EveryMove, an alum of TechStars’ Seattle accelerator program building what they’ve dubbed a “mileage plan for health benefits, today announced that it has closed a $2.6 million round of series A financing. Participating investors include Penera Blue Cross, Blue Cross, Blue Shield of Nebraska, BlueCross BlueShield Venture Partners, Founders Co-op, Summit Capital, Jonathan Sposato, Voyager Capital Partner Geoff Entress, Matt Shobe, William Lohse, BuddyTV Co-founder Andy Liu, Ken Kuntz, and others.

As the startup is currently in private beta, it will be using this infusion of capital to ramp up its team as it prepares to launch into the market more broadly in the third quarter.

So what is EveryMove all about?

Founder and CEO Russell Benaroya tells us that the way health care is set up (in the U.S.) today, the people making healthy lifestyle choices end up subsidizing those who are making unhealthy decisions; instead, they should be rewarded for it. If the country is going crazy for consumer-centric healthcare, then that inherently demands that people be given control over their health (and healthcare).

EveryMove is looking to give consumers control by way of an interactive web and mobile platform that helps them connect and organize their health and fitness activities while turning their lifestyle actions into rewards and incentives within their health plans. The market has been primarily focused on “wellness” and “behavior change,” but wellness, Benaroya says, happens to crowded and employer-centric, while behavior change is actually really hard to get right because building building a “one size fits all,” scalable platform tends to do so by sacrificing the individual.

In turn, health providers have less than growing reputations among consumers (let’s be honest here — just ask Castlight) so they’re looking to build closer/better relationships with their customers. Generally speaking, to do this, they’re looking to partner with them to encourage actions that have a positive outcome on their long-term health — and their wallets. (This latter part is, admittedly, hard to believe given where their interests lie, but again, see our Castlight coverage.)

In other words, U.S. health insurance premiums increased by an average of 8 percent between 2008 and 2009 (which has gotten worse since) and health care costs comprise a bigger portion of America’s household budgets year-over-year than most others as costs rise and income growth remain flat. As a result, Americans are trying to be smarter, make better lifestyle decisions to avoid going to the doctor, and EveryMove wants to reward them for doing so.

Instead of going after wellness or behavior change, EveryMove is taking a different approach: Marketing. The service connects people through their lifestyle actions, which are captured through the passive collection of data via health apps, devices, and platforms, with companies that want to engage those healthy customers. This can be plans, employers, or brands, the EverMore CEO tells us, but, importantly it’s the consumer that gets to main control of their data — data which is portable and isn’t tied to their employer or insurance company.

EveryMove plans to monetize its platforms on a cost-per-action basis by taking a fee when users redeem rewards or incentives from their plan, brands, or employer. As EveryMove plans to sit in the middle of the marketplace, it takes a toll on each transaction.

Benaroya has been working on EveryMove for the last two years, working closely with Premera Blue Cross, he says, to understand their goals and objectives as the healthcare landscape changes. Benroya himself is a co-founder of Blink Digital Health, REM Medical, and a former senior associate at Blue Point Capital Partners. Taking the customer development work with the insurance plan and his experience with the marketplace, the founder has been looking to build something that’s not just a “nice to have” app, but a “need to have” source of information that will be critical to core business decision making.

The founder also sees real opportunity long-term in big data around lifestyle analytics — how that data and info can help inform decisions companies are making around positioning their products and services.

The ability to offer health plans that provide customized incentives for leading healthy lifestyles “is key to helping meet both employer and individual needs,” says Kent Marquardt, the executive vice president and CFO of Premera Blue Cross. (Premera is also an investor.) Programs like EveryMove, he says, can help them find better ways to do just that.

For more on EveryMove, check them out at home here. Below you’ll find Benaroya’s pitch from TechStars’ Demo Day:

More Facebook riches all around! The company granted about $796 million in restricted stock units to employees less than a week ago, according to an amended IPO filing.

These are ”employee refresher grants,” or new grants for employees. They don’t replace existing ones. These restricted stock units, or RSUs, could be worth anywhere from $707 million to $884 million based on Facebook’s expected $28 to 35 price range per share. Of course, if people hold on for longer and the stock pops by the time their lock-up period finishes, these shares could be worth a great deal more.

Here’s the excerpt from the filing:

“On May 3, 2012, we granted an aggregate of 25,257,815 RSUs. We will determine the fair value of these grants during the second quarter. If the fair value of our Class A common stock was $31.50, the midpoint of the price range set forth on the cover page of this prospectus, the aggregate grant date fair value would be approximately $796 million.”

Remember: RSUs or restricted stock units are not actual Facebook shares. They are contracts which promise actual shares upon a certain event (like an IPO!).

Facebook originally issued RSUs because the older SEC regulations said that companies with more than 500 shareholders had to report their financial performance like public companies do. Facebook was getting close to that critical limit, so the company started issuing RSUs instead. Under the recently passed JOBS Act, however, the landscape is totally different. This rule was changed to allow up to 2,000 shareholders excluding employees. So now companies can keep their numbers private for much, much longer.

RSUs have one other major benefit that sets them apart from options: employees don’t have to pay to exercise them. The downside is that they’re taxed as ordinary income (which could mean around a 45 percent tax rate with state taxes and Social Security contributions). Normal shares are taxed under the 15 percent capital gains rate.

On a separate note, on the same day that Facebook awarded these units last week, the company said that many early shareholders including CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Accel Partners and more were selling up to $5.5 billion in stock during the IPO.

Most people probably don’t stick around social music service SoundCloud’s site to ogle its design, but apparently the team felt there was plenty of room for improvement.

To that end SoundCloud, who not long ago raised a $50 million funding round led by Kleiner Perkins, officially pulled back the curtains on their handsome new interface in San Francisco earlier today.

Here’s the thing though — chances are you can’t see it yet, as it’s only open to users in their private beta. So what will SoundCloud users have to look forward to when the new interface makes its official debut? A whole slew of new aesthetics tweaks, for one — the the waveform players that have long been a focal point of SoundCloud’s design have been revamped to be smaller and slightly less intrusive, but with more social controls at the ready. Situated right below the player, for instance, is a repost button that lets users quickly spread their favorite tunes around. Profiles have also been redesigned to be much cleaner than before, and put greater emphasis on your actions — what you’ve liked, and what tracks you’ve commented on.

Also new to the mix are real-time notifications — you’ll be notified whenever a user reposts or likes your content, while other users can keep tabs on your activity as well. Throw in support for continuous playing of tracks in your stream, enhanced search functionality, and the thoughtful addition of keyboard shortcuts, and you’ve got the next SoundCloud in a nutshell.

A more widespread release is expected to come in a few months once the kinks have been worked out, and if everything goes to plan we’ll see this redesign take center stage by the end of the year. According to GigaOm, SoundCloud hopes to get the updated interface in front of as many pairs of eyes as possible in the mean time — they’ll be bringing an additional 10,000 users into the beta this week, as well as everyone who takes part in their upcoming SoundCloud global meetup.

Facebook has just filed a sixth amendment to its S-1 filing to IPO in order to provide more transparency about how the shift of its user base from the web to mobile is causing it to show fewer ads per user, which could hurt revenue in the long term. Facebook also granted about $796 million in restricted stock units to employees less than a week ago. I’ve excerpted the significant changes and embedded the whole S-1 below. Specifically, Facebook is warning investors that daily active user count is rising faster than the number of ads the site is showing, which it predicts will lead to a lower average revenue per user.

As we noted when Facebook originally filed, it hasn’t proven its ability to monetize mobile yet. It now has Sponsored Stories ads running in the mobile news feed, but it can’t show nearly as many ads in this format as it does on the web, where it often shows four to seven ads per page, though less prominently in the sidebar.

By injecting ads directly into the news feed, Facebook is meddling with one of the most addictive features of the site. If it shows too many ads, users could become less prone to frequent return visits, and might spend less time browsing the feed. The company must walk the tightrope, testing to see how many in-feed ads it can get away with.

While on the web it can keep ad presence in the news feed conservative, on mobile this is it’s only real revenue driver. Facebook may have to slowly ramp up the frequency of mobile feed ads in order to acclimate its users. Unlike other free mobile apps that plaster banner ads over content or force users through interstitials, Facebook is trying to pioneer a less obtrusive way to monetize mobile through ads. Unfortunately,  investors may be weary of weathering the process with their money on the line.

Here’s the important changes to the S-1, in bold:

Page 14: “We do not currently directly generate any meaningful revenue from the use of Facebook mobile products, and our ability to do so successfully is unproven. We believe this increased usage of Facebook on mobile devices has contributed to the recent trend of our daily active users (DAUs) increasing more rapidly than the increase in the number of ads delivered. If users increasingly access Facebook mobile products as a substitute for access through personal computers, and if we are unable to successfully implement monetization strategies for our mobile users, or if we incur excessive expenses in this effort, our financial performance and ability to grow revenue would be negatively affected.”

Page 17: “Based upon our experience in the second quarter of 2012 to date, the trend we saw in the first quarter of DAUs increasing more rapidly than the increase in number of ads delivered has continued. We believe this trend is driven in part by increased usage of Facebook on mobile devices where we have only recently begun showing an immaterial number of sponsored stories in News Feed, and in part due to certain pages having fewer ads per page as a result of product decisions. For additional information on factors that may affect these matters, see “Risk Factors—Growth in use of Facebook through our mobile products, where our ability to monetize is unproven, as a substitute for use on personal computers may negatively affect our revenue and financial results” and “Risk Factors—Our culture emphasizes rapid innovation and prioritizes user engagement over short-term financial results.”

Page 78, regarding the RSUS: “On May 3, 2012, we granted an aggregate of 25,257,815 RSUs. We will determine the fair value of these grants during the second quarter. If the fair value of our Class A common stock was $31.50, the midpoint of the price range set forth on the cover page of this prospectus, the aggregate grant date fair value would be approximately $796 million.”

The RSUS grant will serve as a reward for hard-working employees, and could be worth a ton if Facebook’s stock price pops and holders wait to sell them. It could also encourage employees to stick around after the IPO if they’re set to vest over a long period of time. Kim-Mai Cutler has deeper analysis about what this RSUS grant means.

I’ve learned that analysts at Facebook’s first IPO roadshow events have been especially concerned about how Facebook’s ad business will be impacted by the shift to mobile. Adding additional transparency to its S-1 is Facebook’s attempt to be up front critics. By showing it recognizes the problem rather than sweeping it under the rug, investors could be more confident the company will come up with a solution.

[Image Credit: WatBlog]

Facebook’s platform may have come to life on the back of freemium apps, but now it’s taking another page from Apple’s playbook by offering paid apps. A beta program starting now will let developers charge Facebook users a flat fee to use their apps. This will cover both HTML5 apps and apps on the canvas (meaning on Facebook.com).

This was part of a bigger announcement today, in which Facebook gave a sneak peek at a new “App Center,” which is kind of like an app store. It’s very different from the iTunes store in that there aren’t rankings by popularity. App recommendations are personalized and social. Josh Constine is doing a full feature-by-feature take on the new app center here.

Here’s the excerpt from Facebook’s post:

Many developers have been successful with in-app purchases, but to support more types of apps on Facebook.com, we will give developers the option to offer paid apps. This is a simple-to-implement payment feature that lets people pay a flat fee to use an app on Facebook.com. If you are interested in the beta program, please sign up to receive more information.

This could make it easier for Facebook to break into other categories outside gaming. Facebook’s chief financial officer David Ebersman reiterated in the company’s IPO roadshow video that the company is looking to support payments for other types of apps outside of games. They’re also considering lowering the standard 30 percent revenue share that they charge developers for apps that aren’t games and that have higher operating costs (which we reported on first!)

In general, though, this move totally goes against the major trend of the last year and a half — which is to move away from paid apps and toward freemium ones. Even if you look at iOS’ top grossing list today, about 80 percent of the top 25 apps are free.

If Facebook can get some developers to offer really interesting paid apps, then it will be able to get the number of paying users up. In 2011, only 15 million out of the company’s then 845 million monthly active users paid with Credits, according to Facebook’s IPO filing.