Category: Tech news

Photos by Greg Broom/Wired

Siri is available only on the iPhone 4S for now, but there are other voice-activated valets to do your bidding, no matter what platform you’re on.

Vlingo

On iOS, Vlingo’s speech recognition seems just as accurate as Siri’s, yet the app still offers up autocorrect suggestions, just in case. It’s great for dictating e-mails and updating social media, but it jumps to Google Search or Google Maps for most queries instead of reading results aloud, which is kind of annoying.

WIRED Lets you turn off profanity filter. $*&% yeah!

TIRED So-so search experience. Voice recognition is a bit wonky on Android.

iOS, Android: Free | Vlingo

Rating: 8 out of 10

Evi

Evi gives Siri a run for her money in the search department. The app delivers query results in speech bubbles rather than redirecting to search engines. Alas, search is all Evi does — no speech-to-text here.

WIRED Yelp-sourced food and business info. Text inputs for situations in which talking would be rude. Recipe-search results display in app. Slickest interface of the bunch.

TIRED No dictation. Doesn’t integrate with calendar apps.

iOS: $0.99, Android: Free | Evi

Rating: 6 out of 10

Ask Ziggy

It may share the moniker of the supercomputer on Quantum Leap, but certainly not the brains: Ziggy sources answers for many queries from dubiously accurate Yahoo Answers. Calendar integration and reminders make it a handy assistant, though.

WIRED Intuitive Windows Metro-style UI. Siri-like natural language processing makes interactions easy.

TIRED Speech-to-text no match for Siri or Vlingo. For keyword searches, stick with Bing voice search.

WP7: Free | Ask Ziggy

Rating: 5 out of 10

Photo by Greg Broom/Wired

Sploosh! According to a recent online survey, nearly one in five people have dropped a smartphone in the toilet. But there’s good news: A surface treatment from a California startup called Liquipel could protect your Droid against accidental dunkings. Just ship your device to the company’s Santa Ana HQ. Liquipel will place it in a vacuum chamber, which is then filled with a proprietary vapor that settles into every nook and cranny to create a superhydrophobic coating just a few molecules thick. We sent in an HTC Nexus One and a Motorola Talkabout walkie-talkie for treatment. Amazingly, both survived repeated dunks in a sink—not splashes but full immersions—before finally giving up the ghost in a hot tub.

WIRED Tweets from the shower! Nanocoating is invisible and won’t interfere with mics or speakers.

TIRED Tweets from the shower! Currently, only a dozen devices are “approved” for treatment. Including shipping time, you’re phoneless for about five days.

$59 and up | Liquipel

All photos: Greg Broom

Photos by Jon Snyder/Wired

Dell’s entry into the ultrabook world may not break any new ground, but does it have to? By covering all of the ultrabases in a good-looking package, Dell’s XPS 13 keeps up with the Joneses while not really trying to show off. The strategy works.

You’ll find absolutely no surprises under the hood here, as the XPS 13 stays almost exactly in lockstep with the rest of the ultrabook market. Specs include a 1.6GHz Core i5, 128GB SSD hard drive, 4GB of RAM, and a 13.3-inch screen with 1366×768-pixel resolution. The gently tapered chassis features one USB 3.0 port, one chargeable USB 2.0 port, and, oddly, a mini-DisplayPort connector. Landing right at three pounds, it’s an awful lot like a blacker, and slightly smaller, version of the MacBook Air.

Performance tests drew no complaints or surprises: Scores were within the Air’s numbers within a couple of percentage points across the board, plenty fast with general apps but simply unfit for graphics or gaming duty. The only real weak spot in testing: Slightly sub-par battery life that didn’t reach four hours (when 4.5 to 5 hours is common for the industry).

The little touches are nice, including a handsome keyboard backlight, a soft-touch palmrest and underside, and surprisingly beefy speakers. Touch-typing on the island keys was easier than usual thanks to a slight depression built into the top of each key. Overall, it’s a very attractive ultrabook that can almost go toe to toe with Apple in the design department.

Speaking of design, I only have a few complaints about the system. First is the hinge: It’s so tight that you can’t adjust the screen without the laptop tipping backwards. But a bigger issue is the clickpad. While it’s big and spacious, it didn’t register taps half the time, and pushing down on the pad to physically click required an inordinate amount of effort — and usually caused the cursor to move involuntarily. Neither is a dealbreaker, but both features could benefit from more thorough usability testing.

In the final analysis, at $1,000, the XPS 13 is a good value in a market that is rapidly becoming as commoditized as the rest of the laptop space, but where fairly hefty prices still rule.

WIRED Lovely design with great portability (and a carbon fiber undercarriage). Solid performance numbers compared to the competition. Better keyboard than most ultrabooks.

TIRED Touchpad performs well as long as you don’t have to click on anything. Light on ports (and no SD card slot). Rather loud fan (but it only kicks in under heavy load). Wouldn’t mind a resolution upgrade.

Samsung has been doing their damnedest to keep their next Galaxy phone under wraps, but there’s one thing they just couldn’t keep quiet about — the processor.

The Korean electronics giant announced not long ago that their new 1.4 GHz Exynos 4 Quad chipset would be the one to power their next big smartphone, which is expected to be unveiled in London on May 3.

Alright, so the name could use some work. Fortunately, the processor seems to have more than enough oomph to make up for Samsung’s strange choice of nomenclature — the 32mm processor’s big claim to fame is that it provides twice the horsepower of its predecessor while cutting power consumption by a full 20%.

Those are some impressive numbers to be sure, but we’ll soon see how well those claims hold up in the real world. After all, scores and benchmarks are one thing, but much of a device’s feel when it comes to responsiveness and fluidity relies on how well the developers can handle that hardware.

Interestingly enough, the Exynos 4 Quad was designed to have the exact same pin layout seen on its dual-core predecessors, which means that manufacturers could easily adopt the new high-powered chipset without too much headache. It’s not like that many companies beside Samsung use Exynos chipsets (China-based Meizu comes to mind though), but hey — it’s the thought that counts, right? Oh, and if the sound of a 1.4GHz quad-core Exynos processor sounds familiar, that’s because it seems to been the same chipset spotted in that surprisingly thorough Vietnamese leak from last week.

With the new Galaxy’s official reveal set to take place in one week, here’s hoping that Samsung gets even more gabby with details ahead of launch. I’m not really holding my breath since they’d effectively be stealing some of the event’s thunder, but I’m still betting on a massive leak making the rounds just before May 3 rolls around. Any takers?

Although the iPad has been available for more than two years, LinkedIn has yet to offer its users a native app despite the fact that mobile engagement has been growing at a fast pace for the network. But last August, LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner said that the company is doubling down on its mobile strategy. And the network then debuted new versions of its iPhone and Android apps as well as an HTML5 mobile site. In fact, LinkedIn now says 22 percent of its active members have been visiting on mobile device. And today, LinkedIn is finally launching its native iPad app to the public.

As LinkedIn’s head of mobile products Joff Redfern explains, the app was built with the user and tablet interface in mind. Since the iPad has become a leanback experience, LinkedIn wanted to make sure that the app satisfied iPad users’ needs. Via the web, LinkedIn noticed that iPad users were visiting the site mostly in early in the morning, which they call a “coffee session,” and in the evening, between 7 pm and 11 pm,. With this data, the company wanted to build an application that allowed professionals to start the day and end the day with LinkedIn.

Via an updates section, users can access a stream of updates from your connections, including who’s changed jobs, who’s viewed your profile. You can also access news that connections are sharing and see the latest discussions from the groups you are members of.

In addition to an activity stream, you can also access your own profile, connections and activity dashboard and send and receive your LinkedIn invitations and messages from your inbox in the network.

One of the more compelling features included in the iPad app is the ability to sync the device’s calendar with your LinkedIn profile information. So you can have a schedule of what your meetings are for the day paired with contextual information about contacts from their LinkedIn profiles. This feature is also available with the latest upgrade of LinkedIn’s iPhone and Android apps. As Redfern explains, many users on the mobile devices were doing the most searches for contacts right before meetings, so it made sense to add the feature. And LinkedIn is debuting an iPad-friendly mobile website as well. by visiting touch.linkedin.com.

While the app is available in English today, LinkedIn will soon launch the app in other languages.

Although LinkedIn offered its users iOS and BlackBerry apps, it took the professional social network a few years to launch a native Android app, so it’s not entirely surprising that it has taken the company a while to develop an iPad app as well. Redfern explains that Linkedin had three dedicated engineers working on the app. As for what’s next, Redfern says LinkedIn will be monitoring what makes sense when it comes to developing an Android tablet app.

TechCrunch TV reporter Colleen Taylor sat down with Redfern to demo the app and chat about what’s new. Watch below.

Colleen Taylor contributed to this article.

You’d never think that the world of Nerf guns and dart shooters was so intense, but Hasbro apparently sued a blogger for leaking information about unreleased Nerf products he found on Chinese marketplace Taobao using the sweetest bait imaginable: free Nerf guns.

Urban Taggers is a blog about “assault blasters” for “kidults.” Essentially they cover Nerf guns and the like and are fairly popular in the space. The lead blogger, Pocket, ran a review of an unreleased gun. A few days later, he received a note from Hasbro offering some guns to giveaway to his readers. Eager to share the blaster love, he agreed and sent his address. That’s when his troubles began.

Immediately after the emails went back and forth, Pocket received a letter from Hasbro’s lawyers accusing him of IP theft. Fans of the site planned a boycott of Hasbro in Australia where Pocket is based. It looked like the great Nerf war of 2012 was about to commence, just as the Aztecs foretold.

I asked Hasbro about their decision to litigate and they explained that things weren’t exactly as they seemed. They wrote:

We appreciate the opportunity to provide the following statement concerning Hasbro’s investigation into “leaked” IP information regarding its NERF brand products. As with anything, there are two sides to every story. While we cannot comment on the details of any ongoing investigation, Hasbro takes all circumstances of its stolen and leaked IP very seriously and will continue to investigate sources of unauthorized information and products as it relates to its brands. We would like to clarify one of the inaccuracies that has been reported. While a local Hasbro Australia marketing team did reach out to the Urban Taggers website to engage in promotional activity for which it required its address, it was completely unrelated to the confidential global investigation being conducted on Hasbro’s behalf by independent investigators looking into sources of leaked IP information. Hasbro greatly values and appreciates its fan communities and is very proud of its strong relationships with many bloggers and sites that cover our brands and products.

Arguably, this seems to be a matter of one hand not knowing what the other is doing. Although Hasbro wants to support the blogging community – heck, I love me some Nerf – they also want to heavy-handedly go after the blogging community by shooting expensive lawyers at them like so many whistling darts. In short, they want both their cake and their torts.

via BoingBoing

Ben Chiang, is an editor at TechNode, a bilingual blog based in China.

Are Amazon’s Kindle tablets and e-readers ready to break into the world’s biggest market? We’ve spotted some Chinese Help documentation for Amazon Kindle devices on the company’s China-facing site in a sign that they may be coming for real this time.

Even though the online documentation was yanked, we have a screenshot of Google’s cached version of the site (see below). Amazon’s China office declined to comment.

This isn’t the first time that Chinese Kindle fans have been disappointed. It was widely reported in 2010 that the popular e-reader was going to enter China after an internal document from Amazon China was leaked to the local press. It showed a Kindle e-reader with the Chinese name Jing Du, which literally translated to ‘Golden Reading.’ But after nearly two years, Kindle devices still haven’t entered the country.

As yesterday’s blowout Apple earnings show, it’s a missed opportunity for Amazon. Apple said China alone brought in $7.9 billion in revenue last quarter and has become the second largest market for the company. So it’s time for Amazon to step up and bring Kindle products into China, especially as tablet sales start to eat the market share of e-readers, according to a Digitimes Research report.

There are already many dirt cheap local e-readers like Shanda’s Bambook and Hanvon’s WISEreader. Both accounted for 19.6 and 59.6 percent of China’s e-reader market in the third quarter of last year, according to a report by Beijing-based technology consultancy AnalysysInternational. Both companies lowered the price of their devices in last year. Now the cheapest models are available at RMB 499 (or about $79).

Wang Hanhua, the president of Amazon China said late last year that Kindle products are definitely coming to China. But he didn’t have an exact timetable.

Two quarters ago, Apple unleashed Godzilla. It was a quarter so spectacular that the only appropriate way to describe it was in pure expletive form. $46 billion in revenue. $13 billion in profit. 37 million iPhones sold. 15 million iPads sold. A gross margin of 44 percent. These weren’t just good numbers, they were obscene.

That’s what made yesterday’s earnings release insane: Apple almost managed to match those numbers last quarter.

While pound-for-pound, Apple’s Q1 is the clear winner, I actually think Apple’s Q2 was more impressive. It was Apple’s Mothra.

In Q1, Apple was coming off a quarter than some considered “disappointing”. It was their first “miss” in forever. I put those terms in quotes because that’s where they belong. Those who actually knew what they were talking about with regard to Apple, knew that Q4 2011 was a fluke that happened for a few reasons — namely the launch of a new iPhone in Q1 rather than Q4 (in terms of Apple’s fiscal calendar, which is different from the ones human beings use). So it wasn’t hard to predict that Q1 was going to be big. Hell, Apple itself even hinted at it.

Of course, no one knew the quarter would end up being that good, but plenty of us were thinking big. But last quarter was more complicated. First of all, it was the quarter after the holiday quarter, which typically sees a good sized drop as buying slows. Second, because of an oddity in Apple’s fiscal calendar, Apple’s Q1 was actually a week longer than their quarters typically are. That means a week less of sales in Q2 compared to Q1. Third, the iPhone 4S was no longer brand new, so the pent-up demand was probably going to dissipate. Fourth, a new iPad was expected, but it wasn’t expected to be on sale until the end of the quarter, creating a sales void leading up to the launch. Fifth, there were no new Macs released in the quarter.

All of this seemed to be setting Apple up for a fairly significant drop quarter-to-quarter.

Nope.

Instead, what happened was that iPhone sales remained insane. 35 million for the quarter. While the phone grew its command of the smartphone market in the U.S. percentage-wise, the absolute sales numbers were down (again post-holiday and post-launch). But it was a different story in China. Because the phone was introduced in Q2 in that country, sales went through the roof. And it nearly offset the drop-off in the post-holiday and post-launch U.S. market.

Since the iPhone is Apple’s most important product revenue (and profit)-wise, this bolstered the overall numbers — especially with regard to profit (more on that in a bit).

Much was made yesterday about the iPad’s “miss” in terms of sales. Because Apple “only” sold 11.8 million of them, plenty of folks were disappointed. Those folks are idiots.

The new iPad only went on sale in the last two weeks of the quarter. But everyone knew it was coming. As a result, buying of the old iPad slowed in anticipation. This isn’t rocket science.

Further, Apple had trouble meeting demand for the new iPad in those two weeks on the books. If they can get the inventory up to speed, it will be this quarter which will be the big one for iPad. You release a new product, people buy more of them when they’re available. That’s generally how it works.

But again, this iPad dip did little to slow Apple’s quarter because of the iPhone sales. And more broadly, Apple’s overall business in China is booming. As Kim-Mai pointed out yesterday, Apple’s revenues for the quarter in China reached a record $7.9 billion, which was up threefold year-over-year. If you look at the graphs at the bottom of her post, you’ll see that Apple is becoming a much more global company. This means that their numbers are less susceptible to the ebbs and flows of the U.S. market.

But the most amazing number from Apple’s Q2 was 47.4. That was their gross margin for the quarter. It’s hard to describe how ridiculous that number is, but I’ll try.

In Q1 — again, the Godzilla quarter — Apple’s gross margin was 44.7 percent. It was so high that Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer noted during the earnings call that the company didn’t expect to match such lofty levels ever again. Instead, they destroyed the number in Q2.

Why?

It was mainly because the iPhone made up an even larger percentage of overall revenue in Q2. The iPhone is Apple’s biggest money-maker and their product with the best margins, thanks largely to carrier subsidies (though more in the U.S. than other countries). The iPad also has great margins, but they’re significantly less (the iPad is not carrier subsidized anywhere). Less iPad sales (both in quantity and percentage-wise) and strong iPhone sales meant a higher margin. That’s why Apple’s revenue dipping $8 billion only equated to profit dipping less than $2 billion.

For some other margin context, look at this chart that Horace Dediu of Asymco put together. For the first time, Apple’s operating margin (different than gross margin, but just as important) surpassed that of both Google and even Microsoft. Apple is predominantly a hardware company. Google is predominantly an advertising company. Microsoft is predominantly a software company. This is not supposed to happen.

Going forward, those margin numbers almost have to drop. Not only will the iPad sales be big this quarter (again, the first full quarter the new iPad is on sale), but the $399 iPad 2 is apparently selling very well. That will drag margins down (but likely drive revenues up and make Apple less of an iPhone company).

The bigger questions will be if China sales continue on their torrid pace and if/when Apple finally gets around to releasing some new Macs.

While there is some confusion as to the timing of the next iPhone (due to the history of the launches), it seems pretty safe to assume that Apple will stick to the fall timeframe. Apple announced WWDC 2012 today, and while iOS was mentioned, it will probably be an iOS 6 developer reveal followed by a new iPhone in the fall again. This means iPhone sales should remain strong this quarter and will weaken in the following quarter leading up to a new device.

Apple is expecting revenues of $34 billion in Q3, which means they actually expect to destroy that number in Q3. I’ll probably have to come up with another Kaiju at that point.

[image: Toho Kingdom]

A new startup called ShopLocket says it’s ready to serve people who want to sell things online, but don’t need to create a full-blown storefront.

Supposedly, co-founder and CEO Katherine Hague was part of that group herself. She wanted to sell some T-shirts on her blog and website, but she didn’t need to create a full-blown Shopify store, nor did it make sense to pay the $29 monthly fee. With ShopLocket, she wanted to create something that was simpler and more affordable, while still looking professional.

So with the new service, you just enter a few details and upload some photos, then you’ve got a virtual “display case,” where people can browse the products and make purchases,and it can be embedded anywhere online. The display cases also have buttons for sharing on Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest. Customers just pay a one-time, $2 publishing fee and a 2.5 percent transaction fee, so it’s an easy, low-risk option if you’re just selling a few things, say as a hobby, or if you want to experiment before building a full online store.

Although ShopLocket is officially launching today, the site went live earlier this month, and 1,200 people have already signed up.

Facebook quietly released an API for its new real-time Insights last week that lets developers build tools that allows companies to track news feed post performance, virality, and negative feedback. Just five days later, EdgeRank Checker has just released a dashboard for monitoring this data so clients can publish the best possible content on their Facebook Page, and earn the biggest return on their social media investment.

Before Facebook even announced the real-time Insights API, my scoop on its coming launch kicked EdgeRank Checker into high-gear. Founder Chad Wittman tells me “when you broke the news about real-time coming, I had a million great ideas. Now is the time to implement as many as possible.” We hustle all day on the news here at TechCrunch, so we like to see when developers put the same passion into their code.

Facebook used to take days to update its Insights graphical user interface and API with data on news feed post performance. That was too slow for companies to realize a post was getting so many clicks that they should promote it with Sponsored Stories ads. It was also too slow to show a post was so annoying that users were unsubscribing from that Page and that the publisher should delete the post immediately. Only Likes, comments, and shares were shown in real-time.

Now Facebook Insights and its API update every five to fifteen minutes, and so does EdgeRank Checker’s tool. Unlike Facebook’s native Insights GUI which has to be refreshed for new data, EdgeRank Checker clients can just leave the browser-based tool open and watch data roll in. This per post data includes:

• Organic, viral, and paid impressions
• Unique viewers
• Clicks of links, photos, videos or any other in-post content
• Likes, comments, and shares
• Virality and viral lift (how paid and viral impact organic)
• Negative feedback such as unlikes and being hidden from the news feed

The bootstrapped EdgeRank Checker is still scrambling to increase its server capacity, so unfortunately for now clients have to leave the dashboard open in a browser window  to get data every five minutes. Otherwise when they return they’ll see data points for every hour. Wittman tells me “Regardless, we felt this tool was valuable enough to contribute to users immediately. There’s nothing like this out there.” EdgeRank Checker gave TechCrunch the exclusive on this launch, which it will announce later today.

As the roll-out of real-time Insights is just now hitting the last Facebook Pages, expect other analytics providers like PageLever and Webtrends to release real-time tools soon. The fact is you can’t win at social media by going on hunches. You need data to know what do. Otherwise you could be shooting yourself in the foot without realizing.

Socialcam, the “Instagram for video” iPhone app that spun out of user generated video pioneer Justin.tv last year, has had a pretty crazy past week. A Hacker News post aimed at recruiting engineers for the company said that the app added four million new users over the past weekend alone — I’m hearing rumors that Socialcam’s total user count may have pushed past 10 million — and the company is part of the most hotly pursued YC classes from an investor standpoint. You’d think that Socialcam’s three-person team would be totally overwhelmed.

Well, they probably are — but they’re still apparently shipping lots of app updates. This latest one, made today, has two main tweaks that seem small but helpful. Now when users click on a video it plays right within the app’s main feed rather than sending them to a different viewing window; and videos start loading right when a user hovers over them. Essentially they’re both aimed at making the app faster to use.

When reached by phone this afternoon, Socialcam CEO Michael Siebel confirmed that his company was indeed responsible for the Hacker News post, so the four million user number is actually legit — he declined to give any more detail on Socialcam’s total user numbers, or on its funding situation. (Don’t worry, we’ll keep working on it.) But that’s because according to him, Socialcam’s main focus is not on numbers, but on making sure the users it has attracted stick around for the long term. He was quick to point out, also, that this is the third app update Socialcam has made since YC demo day on March 27. “We’re not just looking for distribution. We want the app to be better for everyone, to make sure that we take all the pain out of both making and watching videos,” Seibel said. “My goal is to make the process of taking and watching videos as easy as it is for photos.”

It’s smart for Socialcam to keep its eye on the ball, being that it is certainly not the only game in town when it comes to the suddenly very hot mobile video space. Since Instagram’s $1 billion sale to Facebook earlier this month, the hunt for a similar app for video has been especially intense — and smartphone users, the media, and of course venture capital investors are all on the trail. Viddy, which is currently at the top spot in the iTunes store, just raised a $6 million round from some super high profile investors; Mobli has also attracted some star-studded investors and users; and other apps such as Tout and Klip are in the mix as well.

It’s fun to watch from an industry perspective, but for users, this environment is especially good news. There are some real technological challenges in making sharing video as accessible as photos, so it’s good to have some earnest energy in the space to hopefully deliver a real solution to the problem.

Check out TechCrunch TV’s interview earlier this month with Socialcam CEO Michael Seibel:

Spotify has been busy over the last few months, launching brand apps, adding more social functionality through a partnership with Turntable.fm competitor Soundrop, overhauling its Android app, adding a Play button, and more.

And it seems that the company has hit a few more scaling milestones recently: According to AppData, there are more than 18 million monthly active users now on the Spotify platform. While Spotify CEO Daniel Ek wouldn’t confirm the AppData number, he did say that the company was at 17 million tracks and 700 million playlists across the platform.

“We’re growing really fast, and the U.S. is our fastest growing market,” Ek said.

The numbers have grown since a February presentation given by one of Spotify’s early developers, Jon Aslund, who joined the company in 2006. In a recent lecture at Uppsala University in Sweden, Aslund shared a number of interesting tidbits about Spotify’s early history, and growth (sent to us by a Tipster).

The leaked deck includes a snapshot of the first sketch of what eventually became Spotify’s user interface. The pre-UI drawing is obviously very basic, and Ek told us that it was completed in Stockholm, on, funnily enough, MacPaint. “As you can tell my drawing skills were not that great,” he says, “and at the time we were only Swedish people so it is in Swedish.”

Herein, you can see (my Swedish not being perfect) the early foundation of what became Spotify player’s interface, with “Search” at the top left, “My Library” on the left side, playlists/files in the middle, and “Parent Library” on the right.

Web advertising is included at the bottom right, and in the footer, while tracks are shown at the top. In concept, it looks pretty similar to a MacPaint-style iTunes, doesn’t it?

Aslund also included confirmation of a few other Spotify stats floating around, including the fact that as of February 2012 the company had over 15 million tracks, with over 500 million playlists created. Also of note: The startup has over 1,000 servers operating across three countries.

The early Spotify engineer also made reference to Spotify’s speed, and explained how Spotify works in engineering terms across a distributed system, and presumably, judging by slides, how the company combines consistency, tolerance, and partition tolerance for maximum efficiency. Image below.

All in all, the deck is a cool glimpse into the presentation that Aslund, and perhaps other early Spotify engineers are using to go out and recruit top talent at local universities.

Check out the deck below:

Online private sales burst onto the scene a few years ago in the shape of Vente Privee in Europe and, later, Gilt in the US. It’s a model we all know and love – and it’s rapidly proving a model with which emerging economies are, well, rather obsessed. I was just recently in Istanbul where you can almost throw a stone and be sure of hit a private sales startup entrepreneur. And from there, and across the Middle East and North Africa (known as MENA), online businesses are growing like weeds.

And some investors know it. Thus today MarkaVIP, a runaway private sales success story in the Middle East has completed a $10 million Series B funding led by European venture firm Prime Ventures. It’s joined buy participation from New York City-based Invus Financial Advisors (IFA), Antwerp-based Hummingbird Ventures, and San Francisco-based Lumia Capital.

The cash will be used to expand MarkaVIP’s current operations and marketing, and expand into other parts of the Middle East, specifically the region known as the Gulf states, of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) to its friends.

Ahmed Alkhatib, founder and CEO, MarkaVIP says the company pursued the funding to “focus on decreasing product delivery lead times and improve quality across the board.”

If you’re unfamiliar with MarkaVIP, was founded in Jordan in November 2010 by Alkhatib and Amer Abulaila, MarkaVIP’s CTO.

Since its launch in Jordan and Saudi Arabia in November 2010 and expansion across the GCC and Lebanonit’s garnered 1.5 million registered users and is adding around 5,000 new members per day.

Here’s a few stats for ya: The MENA apparel and accessories market is worth US$15 billion/year. But right now almost all of it is offline. Additionally, there are only 77m Internet users in MENA (excluding Turkey) right now with an overall Internet penetration of 30%, but this is still growing fast. Plus, there are 36m Facebook users in MENA (and this grew 30% in the last 6 months). So there is a huge opportunity here.

But MENA is not ALL about e-commerce, and that’s a theme I’ll be returning to soon, so watch this space…