Category: Tech news

Technology is all about convenience. At least, that’s where it’s headed. I can now ask someone to run across the city and pick up a package for me on Zaarly (which I did), Songza chooses my music playlists for me, and I can literally push a button and ask my phone where the nearest burger joint is (even if she never quite understands me).

It’s incredible.

And now that same convenience is entering into our love lives in the form of a site called Coffee Meets Bagel (CMB), which just launched today in NYC.

It’s quite simple.

After signing in through Facebook, CMB will match you with one person every day at noon. This person isn’t just some rando, but more often than not it’s a friend of a friend whom you’ve never met before. You have two simple options: like or pass. If you pass, it’s over. That person is gone, and tomorrow is a new day.

If you click like, things get a bit more interesting. Well, they really only get more interesting if that special someone happens to “like” you, too.

If such a connection occurs, you and your new love interest will be immediately connected through a text message sent from a private company phone line. How convenient, right?

It gets better, though. Once you’re connected, CMB will hook you guys up with free gifts from dating spots in NYC like Billy’s Bakery, Cafe Grumpy, and Pierre Loti for your first date.

The company has plans to roll the service out in four other cities by the end of the year, but for now this app is for New York-based love birds only. Other cities will be added once Coffee Meets Bagel receives 1,000 emails from users in this or that city who are interested in the service.

As Spotify continues its march to becoming a $1 billion-revenue company, the music streaming service is launching a battery of new products to increase the amount of time that people spend on the site: There is an iPad app that could launch as soon as tomorrow; and there is the ability to play Spotify tracks on third-party websites, launched last week. Another development in Spotify’s stickiness has been the rise of third-party, web and mobile apps, which have been planting themselves on its platform and growing in use.

One of the more popular has been Soundrop: a jukebox-style app that lets users create playlists or listen to “rooms” of music created by others, adding their selections to the mix — similar to Turntable.fm, except that it works in more countries (everywhere that Spotify does; currently 13 markets compared to Turntable’s U.S.-only limit).

It’s not only users who are finding Soundrop popular: Inge Andre Sandvik, the co-founder and CEO, says the company is weeks away now from closing its first round of funding from “leading VCs.”

Soundrop’s growth is what first caught my eye: In January after being live for 20 days, Soundrop reported 2.4 million tracks played. By February, that number rose to 15 million. And now Soundrop tells me that in March the number more than doubled, to 34.2 million tracks played. Inge Andre Sandvik, the co-founder and CEO of Soundrop, points out that March alone saw more tracks played than Turntable had in a period of three months.

The company is hoping to better those numbers yet again with the launch of a new version of its app, out this week. New features include the ability to search for a specific room; find rooms where your Facebook friends are; create your own private rooms; a new layout; and the ability to edit and bookmark rooms once created.

Much like Instagram’s early bet to develop only for iOS until it got things really right, Soundrop has put its money on Spotify rather than extend to work with other music services.

For now, Soundrop’s service offers a way of getting around one of the big opportunities/challenges with Spotify: You can play whatever you want, but as Sandvik puts it, “That is also part of the criticism of Spotify: it’s just too difficult [for most users] to get started.”

And even among those already using the service — those who Sandvik calls “heavy music listeners” — there are already tendencies to be less adventurous. There is apparently enough music already on Spotify to listen continuously for the next 100 years and still not hear the same track twice. But a recent study at the University of Oslo found that even with a wide catalog, most people stick to a very narrow selection of music on services like Spotify.

In addition to Sandvik, other founders include Ali Sabil, CTO; Johann Prieur, running product management; and Ole André Vadla Ravnås who is responsible for client development. Their backgrounds span the range of Norway’s tech scene: they are ex-Opera (the mobile browser that could), ex-Tandberg (now Cisco), and the CEO, Inge Andre Sandvik, sold his last company (Mobile CTI, a mobile search and apps company) to the country’s biggest carrier, Telenor.

These four have been funding the company up to now but Sandvik says Soundrop currently has offers on the table from “leading VCs” and is likely to close its first round “within weeks.”

Soundrop also has other plans on the horizon that point to some interesting ways of combining music, social and a user’s physical location.

Soon, users will be be able to find “music rooms” based on their physical location. Why? The plan, says Sandvik, is twofold: to let users listen to music from other locations, and to extend the market of legally played music to public places.

“We have reason to believe that the license model for streaming music players will change and that it will be legal to use a streaming music player in bars, cafes, restaurants and shops. Soundrop is a perfect tool for all of these businesses to engage their guests and customers with. You can imagine checking in with your phone to your favorite cafe and be able to either vote on the music that is upcoming or add your favorite tracks.”

And just as other companies like Foursquare want to offer data management to retailers, so plans Soundrop: “We will offer professional customers a CRM tool that they can use to understand who their customers are and a tool for them to communicate with them.” He says this is the same tool that Soundrop offers labels and artists so they can understand more about who their fans are and how they can build stronger relationships with them.

The other area where Soundrop hopes to create revenue, especially as it continues to add users, is in the area of contextual music ads. “More recommendations of tracks than ads,” explains Sandvik, with the ads relevant to the type of music in each playlist room.

VenueSeen launched their new platform today that lets businesses aggregate location specific sentiment, via social photography. What does that mean in layman’s terms?

It means this startup company will monitor and identify any shared photos that a consumer takes inside a place of business. If the photos are shared via Instagram, Foursquare, Foodspotting or Facebook then VenueSeen can tabulate and send reports about those photos to a subscribing business, complete with comments.

The service meets business demand for this information, as analytics like this are not currently supported by all these networks, with this degree of granularity.

“Until now” says creator Brian Zuercher, “the general public has been unable search geotagged Instagram photos. From coffee shops and restaurants … to attractions and retail locations – photos and comments are forming a brand’s social identity. VenueSeen’s dashboard reveals who is posting what about a brand on Instagram, Foursquare and Foodspotting.”

“The benefit” continues Zuercher, “is that one-off shops up to large retail chains can learn about who is sharing photos and comments (positive or negative) inside their business locations.”

Essentially, this is real-time Social Media management/monitoring with the added benefit of photography and brands can choose to re-share these photos through their own social properties, if so inclined.

Currently, I am guessing this kind of information is largely compiled by interns or social media teams at larger business — perhaps by owners themselves at smaller venues. Either way, someone needs to be staffed for it if you are interested in collecting this info.

Rates for the service are $20 per month for single locations (store, bar, museum, etc.) and $40 per month for up to five locations. Larger chains require consultation.

I wonder how a service like this could fit in with Facebook’s recent acquisition of Instagram. Could this reporting structure become more valuable as a partial revenue model for Instagram? I’m just thinking out loud here.

A new breed of mobile applications is coming. These new apps will not only “sense” the world around you, using the smartphone’s sensors like the compass, GPS, and accelerometer – they’ll also be able to combine that data with a history of your actions to intelligently determine your likes, interests and favorites. This understanding of the world, or “ambient discovery” if you will, could then be piped into any app to make it smarter, whether it’s a social app for finding friends, a Siri-like personal assistant, a fitness app, a mobile game, or anything else.

This, at least, is the promise from the Palo Alto-based startup, Alohar Mobile, which recently introduced new SDKs for mobile app developers interested in experimenting with the possibilities of smarter apps.

Alohar Mobile (newly emerged from stealth mode), was founded by a former Platform Architect of Google’s Location Server Platform, Sam Liang. You may know him as the guy who put the “blue dot” location service in tens of thousands of mobile apps, including the default Map app on iPhone and Android, as well as in the Facebook check-in, Foursquare and Yelp. He also architected Google Latitude.

Liang started the company with Stanford alumni, Larry Wang and Alvin Lau, and they’ve now raised $2 million in funding from notable angel investors, including David Cheriton, the first investor in Google, Fortinet founder and CEO Ken Xie, and Tim Draper of Draper Fisher Jurvetson.

As for what, exactly, Alohar is providing – that’s a bit more complicated. It’s not just developing a smarter Siri, although that description is sure to catch more readers’ attention than something like “mobile development platform,” for example. While a smarter Siri-like app could be the product of Alohar’s work, it is not the work itself.

Lau describes the technology as an “ambient sensing platform.”

Um, say what?

“We’ve developed technology that sits on a smartphone that analyzes data coming from all the different sensors on your phone – for example, GPS and Wi-Fi – but a lot of companies do that, that’s nothing special. But we also gather data from the accelerometer, the compass, the gyroscope,” explains Lau. “It helps us to determine a person’s exact location.”

What that means is that apps using Alohar’s technology can precisely determine where someone is because of the way data is combined. For example, an app relying on GPS alone may know that you’re somewhere near a Starbucks, but can’t really tell if you’re there or in an adjacent store. Alohar-enabled apps, however, could detect things like the rate at which you’re moving (60 MPH? You’re probably driving down the road past a Starbucks), the direction you’re headed (moving towards the building slowly? You’re probably walking into the Starbucks), the network you’re connected to (ATTWIFI? You’re probably inside the Starbucks), and even time of day (8:30 AM? You’re probably at the Starbucks on the ground level of that skyscraper, not the nightclub on the top floor).

None of the data is used in isolation, but is instead parsed by advanced algorithms to make sense of your actions and movements. The algorithms give the app higher or lower probabilities to different types of places.

These algorithms can also take into account what you’ve done in the past and use that to help weight the data appropriately. For example, if you’ve visited that Starbucks several times over the past couple of weeks, but have never visited the bagel shop next door, the algorithm knows that you’re probably at the Starbucks.

Alohar’s technology has been packaged into a SDK for mobile developers, which allows them to create new apps or enhance existing ones. They’ve also released a sample app into the App Store called PlaceMe, which is an interesting product on its own. The app tracks and records your movements, producing a virtual trail you could later pull up online. A bit creepy, perhaps, but the company says it would be handy for Alzheimer’s patients to have installed.

But while PlaceMe is a fun experiment, the focus for the company is more so on the tech behind it. Some mobile app makers are already working on integrations, but Alohar can’t reveal who just yet, only give general descriptions. “Developers who are using [the SDK] are in the categories of dating, fitness and health apps that want to track your exercise and make recommendations, and shopping apps that make suggestions based on your location and your likes and favorites,” says Lau.

He also mentioned some check-in apps were experimenting with auto-checkins and the reduced battery consumption the tech enables. Plus, two of these twelve “ambient location” startups that were hot during this year’s SXSW have begun to implement the technology, too.

But it’s still early days for Alohar. The Android SDK came out in March and the iOS version arrived just this month. Both are in beta. So far, around 65 developers are evaluating or integrating the technology, Lau says.

And yet, almost any app that uses location services could benefit from the more precise targeting the tech offers, assuming everything works as advertised. More than that, the tech could enable a whole new kind of experience for developers to build on top of – one where users don’t have to do so much manual labor to explain to apps where they are and what they’re doing and what they want to do.

It’s yet another step towards engineering the serendipitous discovery of the world around us, via our mobile devices. It’s the underpinnings that could breathe intelligence into our apps, which could then make them, at best, more useful, more engaging, and ultimately, more loved…or, at worst, more creepy, more intrusive, more stalker-ish.

How developers choose to implement the technology, and the level of control they give to users surrounding that data’s use and storage, could raise a whole new series of questions about data privacy even though Apple, Google, developers and the government, are still figuring out what to do about the concerns we already have now – those that come more basic actions like accessing the address book or storing GPS data.

But with the fast pace of technology, sometimes you have to weigh the good with the bad and choose to move forward or get left behind. Using this scale, the possibilities to develop more intelligent apps – not to mention ones that can reduce battery drains – is a more exciting and promising step than the potential for abuse, real as it may be, from unscrupulous developers or the government (at least in less authoritarian regimes like the U.S.). You may not agree. That’s fine. But sometimes the laws have to catch up with the world, and in the mobile ecosystem, this is clearly going to be the case for years to come.

Below, a demo of how Alohar, doing things like automatically ordering an ambulance for you. “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up?” Yes, your phone will know.

Image credit: Ryan Orr

In what I suspect will be an increasing trend, cartoonist Bill Amend has released three “packs” of his popular FoxTrot comics for the iPad. He built the books by himself using iBooks Author and proceeds go to the Help Bill Amend Eat Food Fund (I suspect).

He’s selling three titles including a special issue — number 3.14 — featuring geek strips. Each book contains 100 strips and is optimized for the new iPad.

Amend is another in the long line of legitimately popular artists self-releasing their work. Jim Gaffigan just released a comedy special on his own and I expect others to give this a try as the means of production is placed back into the hands of the artists.

You can pick up the books in the iBooks store for $1.99 each.

IBM just reported mixed first quarter earnings for 2012. GAAP earnings came in at $2.61, up 13 percent with non-GAAP earnings at $2.78, up 15 percent. Revenue was flat for the quarter coming in at $24.7 billion, up 1 percent adjusting for currency. Analysts expected $2.66 a share and $24.82 billion in revenue.

Net income for the quarter came in at $3.1 billion, up 7 percent from last year. “In the first quarter, we drove strong profit and earnings per share growth. We delivered another excellent software performance, expanded services margins, and continued the momentum in our growth initiatives,” said IBM CEO Ginni Rometty. “Our investments in growth market countries continued to generate strong revenue growth across software, hardware and services while contributing to the company’s ongoing margin expansion.

In terms of geographic area, the Americas’ first-quarter revenues were $10.5 billion, an increase of 1 percent. Revenues from Europe/Middle East/Africa were $7.6 billion, down 2 percent. Asia-Pacific revenues increased 4 percent. OEM revenues were $509 million, down 17 percent compared with the 2011 first quarter. Revenues in the BRIC countries — Brazil, Russia, India and China — increased 10 percent

The company said that cloud revenue doubled first-quarter 2011 revenue. Revenues from the Software segment were $5.6 billion, an increase of 5 percent compared with the first quarter of 2011. Revenues from IBM’s key middleware products, which include WebSphere, Information Management, Tivoli, Lotus and Rational products, were $3.5 billion, an increase of 7 percent. Global Technology Services segment revenues increased 2 percent. Global Business Services segment revenues were down 2 percent to $4.6 billion.

The company ended the quarter with $12.3 billion of cash on hand.

The quarter has been mixed for IBM. While the company revealed layoffs in February, IBM has spent some cash in the first quarter on acquisitions, buying Worklight for $70 million and Green Hat. Big Blue also sold 750 patents related to networking, software and other technologies to Facebook.

IBM actually raised expectations for full-year 2012 GAAP diluted earnings per share to at least $14.27 from at least $14.16; and operating (non-GAAP) diluted earnings per share to at least $15.00 from at least $14.85.

During the earnings call today, IBM said that it spent $1.5 billion on acquiring five companies in the quarter.

Yahoo today reported its financial results for the first quarter of 2012, and after three years of declining annual revenues, the company looks like it may just be on track to stop the streak — or at least slow it down.

Yahoo posted first quarter revenue on a GAAP basis of $1.22 billion, up one percent from the $1.2 billion in GAAP revenue Yahoo reported in the first quarter of 2011 (which itself was down 25 percent year-over-year from its Q1 2010 revenue.) This is the first time Yahoo’s quarterly revenues have grown on a year-over-year basis since the third quarter of 2008.

At the bottom line, Yahoo’s performance was solid, with net income of $286 million, up 28 percent year-over-year from the $223 million the company reported in Q1 2011. Net earnings were 17 cents per diluted share. Overall, these results are largely in line with what Wall Street analysts expected from the company. Investors responded favorably to the news, pushing Yahoo’s stock price up 2.4 percent in after-hours-trading within the first hour after the Q1 results were posted.

The basic numbers are of course informative, but hearing how things are going from the horse’s mouth is always key. So we’re currently popping the popcorn and settling in for Yahoo’s quarterly earnings call, which is scheduled to begin at 2pm PT. This represents Scott Thompson’s first full quarter as Yahoo’s CEO, and it has certainly been an interesting one: Between the financial results announced today, co-founder Jerry Yang’s abrupt exit from the company in January, Yahoo’s major patent litigation with Facebook, the pressure it’s getting for a dramatic turnaround from activist hedge fund Third Point, Yahoo’s recent large-scale layoffs and subsequent management restructuring, and the relative success of so many other tech companies at the moment, there are sure to be some hot topics on deck for Yahoo’s quarterly chat with its shareholders and analysts. Check back for our coverage of that later this afternoon.

Chrome for Android is becoming somewhat of a flagship mobile app for Google, but given that it’s only available on phones and tablets running Ice Cream Sandwich, its reach is pretty limited. It’s still one of the best mobile browsers on the market, though, and Google is adding a number of cool features to it today. Chrome for Android is now also available in 31 additional languages and in all countries where Google Play is available.

Among the new features is the ability to request the desktop version of a website instead of the mobile version that site may have defaulted to. Quite a few mobile sites offer their mobile users to switch back to a desktop version already, but this option is notably absent from far too many sites. Many sites also default to the mobile view whenever they see an Android device, no matter the screen size, which can get a bit annoying on a tablet.

With this new version, Chrome for Android users can now also choose to add bookmarks to their Android home screens and choose which apps should handle links opened in Chrome.

The updated app also now allows users to download files to their device and includes support for complex text layout and right to left text. In addition, this new version now suggests country-specific search engines and users can now use Chrome with the system proxy configured in their Android settings.

Skybox Imaging just closed a massive $70M Series C round led by Canaan Partners and Norwest Venture Partners. Michael Arrington’s CrunchFund got in on the action as well. The new investors join Khosla Ventures and Bessemer Venture Partners and brings Skybox Imaging’s total amount raised to $91 million.

The latest round of financing will allow Skybox to launch its first two high-resolution imaging microsatellites, dubbed SkyStat-1 and SkyStat-2. Eventually other microsatellites will join these two as Skybox surrounds the Earth with imaging satellites. It’s the company’s goal to provide high-resolution imagery of any spot on earth multiple times per day.

The additional funds will also help Skybox hire new talent. The company is currently looking to hire engineers, operation managers and satellite technicians.

“We will also use this capital to expand strategic alliances, position Skybox for initial commercial operations, and to accelerate the development path towards the full constellation of microsatellites,” said Skybox CEO Tom Ingersoll in a statement released to TechCrunch.

The first two satellites are set to launch in the fourth quarter of 2012 aboard an International Space Company Kosmotras Dnepr rocket. Eventually Skybox Imaging claims its constellation of satellites will be able to provide much more up-to-date imagery including high-definition video. I for one welcome our new satellite overlords and look forward to the day that I can inspect the grass in my front yard with a livestream from space.

So, I’ve just recuperated from our VA mini meet-up tour, during which John and I visited DC, Norfolk, and Richmond in an attempt to find startup gems in unexpected corners of the country. This time we’re bringing things a little bit closer to home.

That’s right New Yawkers: get your pitch in order, your demo up to snuff, and throw on your schmoozing hat! We’re having a meet-up in the Big Apple, and if you aren’t there, you’re probably shaped like a box.

This isn’t a seminar, panel, a conference, or really anything that requires people to sit down at a desk and look through a PowerPoint. Instead, John and I simply want to look upon your beautiful faces and hear about how you plan on disrupting the world through technology. Over beers.

So this is the plan:

We’ll meet on May 8 (that’s a Tuesday) at a location TBA. The meet-up will begin promptly at 6pm and will end around 10pm, at which point we can all caravan to a bar for an after party.

There’s just one little piece of business we need to attend to, before you go out and buy a brand new outfit.

We’re also looking for sponsors. The more the merrier (since that means more beer). If you’re interested in a sponsorship, please send an email to john (at) techcrunch dot com with the subject: NY Meetup Sponsorship.

To RSVP to the event, head over to our PlanCast page.

Finally, if you’d like to connect with us pre-show time, you can follow me on Twitter at @jordanrcrook or John at @johnbiggs.

The Apple II personal computer is 35 years old today, a bit of news that I’m sure is either making you feel wildly old or gives you an odd rush of steampunk retro-nostalgia. The computer, launched on April 16 and 17th at the 1977 West Coast Computer Faire, went on to become the definitive machine for primary and high schools everywhere and whose wonky screen and clacky keys brought millions of kids and adults into the information age.

Steve Jobs was 22 when he and Steve Wozniak launched the II. The device, with its eight expansion slots and rapid upgrade cycle, defined the computer as a platform rather than a one-time purchase. You could improve this thing, although I’ve rarely seen any models that were truly tricked out. As Harry McCracken notes, the Apple II and its progeny existed well into the 1990s as a computing solution for many customers.

Not to wax nostalgic, but I still remember typing in long programs into the Apple II and running them just to see them crash and burn because of our sub-par typing skills. A few LIST commands and line edits later and we were up and humming, creating 20 questions simulators and trying to build wonky Spy Hunter clones.

And there was always Oregon Trail. Always.

As I write this, my month old son is panting in his sleep, probably dreaming about something organic and strange. He was been born into a world remade by great men – Jobs, Wozniak, Gates, and Torvalds – who in turn built their castles on the bedrock laid by Bell Labs and the tag team of Richie and Thompson. I still remember the wonder of seeing my first hard-drive powered PC and magic that happened when I went from a Sony Ericsson P900 to my first iPhone. We say technology is all around us, but in a way that’s comforting, at least in the long term.

Kids born in 1975, like me, grew up in a world gently kissed by the promise of technology and then, with the rise of the Apple II and its ilk, we were suddenly swimming in it. I wonder what launched this year that we’ll remember 35 or even ten years from now. Here’s hoping that it’s a technology that will improve our lives in the long run.

Editor’s Note: Leonid (“Lenny”) Kravets is a patent attorney at Panitch, Schwarze, Belisario and Nadel, LLP in Philadelphia, PA. Lenny focuses his practice on patent prosecution and intellectual property transactions in computer-related technology areas. He specializes in developing IP strategy for young technology companies and blogs on this topic at StartupsIP. Follow Lenny on Twitter: @lkravets and @startupsIP.

Twitter is an innovative company, and today’s introduction of the Innovator’s Patent Agreement shows that their legal department can be innovative too. The Innovator’s Patent Agreement, a draft of which was released on GitHub, will allow inventors to retain control of their inventions to make sure that they are only used for defensive purposes. This new agreement is a clear PR and recruiting win for Twitter, but whether it will be anything more is debatable.

A PR and Recruiting Win

At first glance, the Innovator’s Patent Agreement is a huge derivation from the standard assignment model, where an employee assigns all of their rights in an idea to their employer. In today’s climate, where many developers openly dislike the patent system, this new agreement may be a game changer. Recently, a Yahoo developer openly lamented the use of his technology in Yahoo’s lawsuit against Facebook. The Innovator’s Patent Agreement appears to be Twitter’s direct response to that mindset.  Thus, the most likely initial result will be the use of this agreement as a recruitment tool. Indeed, in Twitter’s blog post Twitter asks interested developers to #Jointheflock.

The Innovator’s Patent Agreement may at first set Twitter apart from other Silicon Valley technology companies like Google and Facebook, with which Twitter competes for developers if these companies do not provide a similar agreement. However, the end result for Twitter and for the engineer is not as obvious.

What does “Defensive” Really Mean?

While Twitter retains the right to use these patents for defensive purposes, what is and what is not a defensive purpose is not always obvious. The draft agreement defines defensive purposes as follows:

Company, on behalf of itself and its successors, transferees, and assignees (collectively “Assignee”), agrees not to assert any claims of any Patents which may be granted on any of the above applications unless asserted for a Defensive Purpose. An assertion of claims of the Patents shall be considered for a “Defensive Purpose” if the claims are asserted:

(a) against an Entity that has filed, maintained, threatened, or voluntarily participated in an intellectual property lawsuit against Assignee or any of Assignee’s users, affiliates, customers, suppliers, or distributors;

(b) against an Entity that has filed, maintained, or voluntarily participated in a patent infringement lawsuit against another in the past ten years, so long as the Entity has not instituted the patent infringement lawsuit defensively in response to a patent litigation threat against the Entity; or

(c) otherwise to deter a patent litigation threat against Assignee or Assignee’s users, affiliates, customers, suppliers, or distributors.

The final element of the definition is incredibly broad and allows for Twitter to interpret almost anything as a defensive use. For example, could Facebook have sued Yahoo for patent infringement before being sued itself and call it a defensive use? If so, I am not sure what would not be a defensive use, short of a pure non-practicing entity asserting a patent or a litigation against a company that has no patents of its own. With such a broad catch-all clause, Twitter may be put into an uncomfortable position with current or former employees when deciding to assert its IP assets.

Management vs. Employees

The draft agreement further states that:

If Assignee needs to assert any of the Patent claims against any entity for other than a Defensive Purpose, Assignees must obtain prior written permission from all of the Inventors without additional consideration or threat. An “Entity” includes any related entities, where the entities are related by either ownership, control, financial interest, or common purpose.

This clause requires Twitter to seek approval of the inventor for any assertion that is not for a defensive purpose. I commend Twitter for explicitly stating that this approval must be without additional consideration or threat. However, the reality is that while an inventor remains an employee of the company, management has significant control over the actions of the employee, especially if the employee is looking to advance their career. It appears unlikely that employees would be able to deny the use of the assets if management feels it is in the best interests of the company to do so.

While this initial draft appears to be an interesting first step to a new assignment system, I expect this draft to change significantly as Twitter begins implementation. It will be worth monitoring what effect this new agreement has other than giving Twitter some good press and a recruiting boost in the short-term.

This post was originally published on Kravets’ personal blog. Image via flickr/Michael Neubert.

Well, Sprint certainly seems hell-bent on making this Earth Day one to remember. Not only have they decided to launch the LTE-friendly LG Viper and Galaxy Nexus on April 22, Sprint has announced that they have chosen that same day to release the new eco-friendly LG Optimus Elite.

Unlike the flashier handsets launching alongside it, the Optimus Elite is unlikely to turn too many heads. It’s a strictly entry-level device, though I imagine its $30 price tag (after a $50 mail-in rebate) should help it pick up a little steam among first time smartphowners.

And what exactly does $30 net you these days? Pretty much exactly what you’d expect — a 3.5-inch display, a single-core 800 MHz processor, and a 5-megapixel rear camera, all conveniently wrapped in a body made of 50% recycled plastic. Like its big brother the Viper, the Optimus Elite also runs Android 2.3 Gingerbread, because you apparently can’t be environmentally conscious and up-to-date at the same time.

I’m having a very tough time seeing what’s so elite about this thing, but it isn’t completely without surprises. The Optimus Elite sports an NFC chip and support for Google Wallet, so we cheapskates can finally tap to pay for our Slurpees. Users who take the plunge will also be able to score 50GB of free storage from Box, though I’m guessing it’s the same sort of limited-time deal that Dropbox has in place with partners like Samsung and HTC.

Here’s a quick word of warning though: if you’ve somehow succumbed to the Optimus Elite’s charms, you had best steer clear of Sprint stores comes April 22. You see, Sprint intends to start selling the Optimus Elite on their website and over the phone on the 22nd — you’ll be able to saunter into a Sprint store and walk out with an Elite of your very own come May 18. In the meantime though, I’ll just ball up in a corner and wait for LG to release some of their fabled high-end hardware around these parts.

The Lumia 900 is an excellent handset, whether or not European carriers like it.

But it’s hard to imagine how Nokia and Microsoft plan to achieve a high level of penetration with the phone on a single carrier (AT&T).

Luckily for the partnership, it would seem as though T-Mobile will be getting the Lumia 900 over the course of the summer as well. Andrew Bares over at WMPowerUser sauntered in to a T-Mo store today and a sales rep told him “without interrogation” that the “Lumia 900 will be coming to T-Mobile this summer.”

Hooray!

There had been rumors that the phone was only an AT&T exclusive for the first 45 days of its availability. But, hearing that a T-Mobile rep was confident in the Lumia 900′s arrival on T-Mo is a bit of a confirmation.

Storify, the startup that lets anyone “curate” stories from around the web by collecting posts from social media sites like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, is today announcing its first-ever syndication deal. Through a new partnership with popular news reader Pulse, Storify’s curated feeds will now appear within Pulse’s app, allowing readers to subscribe to curated stories from a number of sources across tech, politics, social media and more.

For those unfamiliar with Storify, the service offers a different way to tell stories for the digital age. Instead of writing a blog post or producing a video, for example, Storify’s news tellers create timelines of content pulled in from third-party services including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Instagram, and more. It’s an entirely new way to present information for consumption, ideal for news readers’ shorter attention spans prompted by the never-ending stream of content coming from dozens of sources simultaneously.

In addition to being read on the site, Storify’s stories can also be embedded on any website using a single line of Javascript. The company had previously partnered with Breaking News, an MSNBC-owned Twitter account and associated services for realtime updates on news breaking around the world. This deal, however, made BreakingNews a new source for Storify’s stream, not a syndication partner.

According to Storify co-founder Burt Herman, the Pulse integration is the first time Storify has ever been syndicated to another platform. He says that, initially, there will be nine Storify feeds featured in Pulse, which offers apps for iOS, Android, Kindle and Nook. The plan is to add more based on user feedback.

“Pulse users can follow certain select user accounts that have been doing great work with Storify, including The Washington Post, Al Jazeera and the White House,” explains Herman of the new offering. “We’re also offering our own Storify Featured Stories feed as a channel, where we curate the day’s best stories created across the platform – the same stories that are also featured daily on our own homepage,” he adds.

Storify now has 1.2 million users visiting its site as of March, up 50% from the prior month. During March, Storify’s stories were read 14 million times across all sites, including those were the feeds were embedded. For comparison’s sake, Storify, which launched into public beta this time last year, was averaging 6.5 million monthly views as of last August.

When the startup launched its iPad app this February, it reported that users had curated over 3 million social media objects to date. However, last month alone, users created 1 million objects on the service.

You can see the startup’s growth plotted here on Compete, which Herman says isn’t accurate in terms of numbers, but shows the general trend.