Category: Tech news

So the reports have proven to be true: Sony has now officially said that it will be reducing its headcount by 10,000 people worldwide, some six percent of its workforce, as the struggling electronics giant reorganizes under new management and its new “One Sony” plan.

Sony says the employee reductions will be made over the course of this fiscal year, and will also include some employees leaving the company through sale and transfer. Meanwhile, the organizational restructuring will see Sony strengthen its focus on the core units of digital imaging, gaming and mobile; attempt to turn around its ailing TV business and expand in emerging markets. Altogether Sony estimates that the restructuring will cost it ¥75 billion ($926 million).

Sony has a huge task ahead of it: it is coming into this new financial year (which started on April 1) with a $6.4 billion loss for FY 2012. Once a gold standard for consumer electronics, the company will have to work hard to convince those who have strayed away from the brand that it is still current and still setting the pace in the field.

Although Sony is calling its plan “One,” there are actually five different areas that it says it will tackle under its new management (that in itself could make this strategy problematic). They include strengthening core businesses (Digital Imaging, Games and its new Mobile division); turning around the ailing television business; expanding in emerging markets; the generic area of creating new businesses and accelerating innovation; and realigning and optimizing the business (the last is where the layoffs come into play).

At least one of these initiatives — innovation and new business — will see Sony moving into new areas altogether like medical technology; another — emerging markets — will be a challenge because of how it will impact margins for Sony’s traditionally not-cheap products; and yet others, like mobile (and possibly TV if reports are to be believed) will see Sony face the formidable task of going up against the likes of Apple, which has effectively replaced Sony as the pace-setter for the rest of the pack, although as we have seen in mobile Sony is attacking the new business with gusto.

Through this, Sony says it is aiming by 2014 for sales of ¥6 trillion in electronics — with 70 percent of those sales coming from imaging, games and mobile — on overall sales of ¥8.5 trillion by 2014. Sony is positioning digital imaging, game and mobile as the three main focus areas of its electronics business and plans to concentrate investment and technology development resources in these areas.

Feeling overloaded by social recommendation apps? Get ready for another one hitting the market, although this one says it will come with a twist: LoveThis, the UK-based social recommendation service that launched last year with $2 million in funding, today has launched an iOS app to let friends recommend across 10 categories, from books and films to places to eat.

But unlike apps like Amen or Foursquare that rely on people using the app to suggest or tag things, this one says it will also take into account recommendations made by contacts elsewhere, such as Facebook and email, who do not have to be signed up to LoveThis to put their two cents into the mex.

And, unlike many other apps that focus first on scale before trying to work in the business model, Alex Dormandy, the CEO of the company, says LoveThis already has a plan here, too. LoveThis is free to use, but the idea will be that something recommended through LoveThis can subsequently be bought via the app. It’s not there yet but is in the works.

“We will have a buy button sitting there at exactly that moment,” he tells me. “And it’s not just people with the app who can buy, non registered friends who receive or make recommendations will also receive the purchase links.”

He says that LoveThis is trying to work some viral elements into the new service as well: while the functionality allows for discussion on your own topics between the app, Facebook and email, LoveThis will also include an invite to download the app if you want to see friends’ other recommendations.

That could come in useful especially in the early days when most people will not have the app. LoveThis doesn’t say how many people have registered with the service since it launched last year, but it picked up around 40,000 recommendations in its first eight weeks of launch: that quick growth speaks to how there is still a hole in the market waiting to be filled. And how people are still looking for the “killer app” that gives them more trusted and intelligent discovery tools beyond the more anonymous search results that you get today.

For now the service works around three points of engagement: the app, Facebook and email. But Dormandy also says that LoveThis is already working on integrating with other social sites like Foursquare and Twitter. “Absolutely there are a lot of options,” he says. “The work on integrating with them is going on now.”

LoveThis should be watched to see if this kind of cross-platform, semi-opted-in model of social networking can work, but another reason to keep an eye on it is because of the track record of the people who behind the startup.

Dormandy is a veteran of Branson’s Virgin group, having founded both Virgin Mobile and the fitness chain Virgin Active. Another exec helped design and launch one of the UK’s biggest online grocery-and-beyond shopping/delivery outfits, Ocado. Angels include Gi Fernando (founder of Techlightenment, later sold to Experian).

Paris-based business social networking site Viadeo may have put a planned IPO into a holding pattern last year, but it is not having any trouble raising capital elsewhere as it forges ahead with its international expansion.

Today, it has announced that it has picked up funding worth $32 million — one of the largest recent tech investments in Europe and the biggest ever for a social network in the region.

Investors in this round included government-backed funds the French Sovereign Wealth Fund and the Fonds Stratégique d’Investissement; institutional shareholders Idinvest and Ventech; and several new investors such as Allianz, Jefferies, and Middle Eastern private funds. This most recent round of funding, Viadeo’s fourth, takes the total amount invested in the company to $50.2 million.

Viadeo says the investment will be used to grow its business in Europe and China. In the latter market, it operates as Tianji and claims to be the biggest professional social network in the country, with 10 million members — nearly one quarter of all of Viadeo’s 45 million registered users.

Following through on that success in China, Viadeo says funds will also be used to expand operations in more emerging markets such as Latin America, India, Africa and Russia. In Russia, the company established a JV with Finnish publisher Sanoma Oyj in December 2011 to create a more localized version of the site for the Russian market.

Viadeo describes itself as the world’s second-largest social network for business people. Indeed, LinkedIn is still far ahead of it, with 150 million users as of February 2012.

But while LinkedIn can claim that it has users are spread across 200 different countries and territories, Viadeo says its unique selling point is that it takes more of a local approach than its rivals. That has seen, for example, Viadeo’s Chinese site attract a much younger demographic than the rest of its footprint, with the average age of a Tianji user being only 30.

“We have always been laser-focused on our ‘multi-local’ approach, which goes beyond simple translation and focuses on catering to, and understanding, the business and cultural needs of each market,” said Dan Serfaty, CEO, Viadeo. “This approach has awarded us tremendous growth and success in both European and emerging markets.”

Considering that both LinkedIn and Viadeo offer a similar range of services within the app — the opportunity to network, enhance reputation and visibility, chatter about business with others, and so on — it will be interesting to see whether this more “laser local” approach will draw more users to Viadeo over the promise of bigger scale from LinkedIn.

Editor’s note: Adeo Ressi is founding member at TheFunded and The Founder Institute. Follow him on Twitter @adeoressi.

Q: What does the Instagram acquisition mean for startups?

A: A LOT.

At the close of 2011, there was a lot of uncertainty for startups. Stock market fluctuations, underwhelming talent acquisitions (“acqui-hires”), and structural investment problems threatened the prospects for startups.

But what a difference a few weeks can make. The passage of crowdfunding legislation in the US coupled with the $1 billion acquisition offer of Instagram, signals the beginning of a full startup boom. In preparation for the good times, venture capitalists have started to raise new fund money at their pre-crash highs.

Two and a half years ago, Mint.com was acquired for $170 million, and everyone thought that was an amazing deal following the great recession. Now, a fledgling company with a small team gets acquired for $1 billion.

My best guess is that it is about to get crazy. And, only fools sit on the sidelines. Many strong and older entrepreneurs that I know are wealthy today because they made intelligent decisions during the dot-com bubble of the late ’90s. Success was not easy then, and it will not be easy now, either. But, the likelihood of a great outcome is much higher in a boom.

There are a lot of newly minted entrepreneurs that pursue their dream company in a half-hearted way. You may tinker with your idea while toiling at a day job. You may refuse to put in the work required to recruit the best talent. You might be afraid of launching an imperfect product. Or, you may put a mediocre effort into fundraising.

However, if you want to take advantage of a boom cycle and reap the rewards, you need to slide all of your chips on to the table. You need to go all in. And, you need to play smart. Every move that you take and every bet that you make needs to have the best odds of success.

You can’t enter the game too late, either. If what I predict happens, very soon you will start to read about more and more crazy deals. When “crazy” becomes the new normal, the opportunity will have already passed you by.

So, let me get really specific. As an entrepreneur, you have a decision to make. Ask yourself, “is this my boom?” If your answer is “yes,” then you have a lot of work to do.

Look around you. If everyone that you deal with is not top-notch, from cofounders to vendors, fire them immediately and bring on the best. Now. Right now. Seriously. Now. To really win during a boom, you need to play at the top level, and the winners in every boom always have the best talent. Always.

Is it your time? Is this your boom?

[image via flickr/V1LL14N]

Voxer, a walkie talkie mobile app that lets you talk to friends across iPhones and Androids, looked like an overnight success last November when it soared to its current place as a top social networking app in the app stores. But the company is five years old and has been working hard to figure out the software and design it needed to win big.

It’s ready to go all the way, having just closed a funding round of more than $30 million led by Institutional Venture Partners, Intel Capital and numerous angels including SV Angel, CrunchFund, Chris Dixon and Roger McNamee, I’ve heard from multiple source. The company has confirmed the amount and agreed to share more — but it didn’t confirm the valuation, which I hear ended up at $180 million pre-money after a couple months of discussions with many interested investors.

Its long history helps explain why it went with firms known for their later-stage investments. Over the course of its life it has raised nearly $20 million, the majority of which has come from founder Tom Katis. Conceived of during his time serving in the Special Forces in Afghanistan, he originally thought the company would be for enterprises — large dispersed groups that needed a way to quickly share what was happening.

And it is, to some degree. He says that big organizations like hospitals and businesses are using it. But the app turned out to be fundamentally viral, as it discovered in November. Starting in a few Midwestern cities and growing out from there, Voxer has anecdotally spread to high schools, small towns, families… Katis says that based on the numbers and the inbound emails from users, it’s getting used in most circumstances you can think of. Usage numbers are healthily in the “double digit millions [of monthly uniques],” he adds. Less anecdotally, it has top rankings in the app stores for countries around the world, according to App Annie.

So how has it grown? While the app has made heavy use of Facebook to help users find and invite friends, Katis and Gustaf Alstromer (its head of growth, a long-time mobile entrepreneur), tell me that it’s word of mouth more than anything else. How do they know? “When new users discover how to use it they tend to get excited and tell friends to get it, because it is a brand new experience that seems to fill a void. It’s the etiquette of text messages but is faster and easier and uses live voice.”

The future of voice is what the big plan is really about.

The company believes it can be one of the key services of the mobile-first world, like Instagram has become for photos and like Path intends to become for social networking. Smartphone penetration has only just grown to the point that the combined market size of iOS, Android and other platforms are surpassing feature phones in the US and across the world. Mobile is where the next 1 billion users are at.

“We’ve seen Zynga and others do it in games, we’ve obviously witnessed first-hand with Shazam, Pandora, Spotify and others in the music space,” IVP’s Dennis Phelps adds, managing to include some of his firm’s investments in that statement. “We think Voxer has the ability to become the 800-pound gorilla when it comes to voice messaging — a fundamentally different and more convenient way to communicate.”

Voxer’s size isn’t the only attractive part. Along its way in the early years, it has picked up a number of voice-related patents,and a keen understanding of Node.js, a Javascript-based system that it is now possibly the largest user of.

Which points to where the new funding will go — infrastructure, and hiring more engineers, particularly out of the Node.js developer community. Katis, a serial entrepreneur who still co-owns his previous hit, security contractor Triple Canopy, says the long-term plan here is to build a big-freestanding business. So, a possible IPO candidate, that his new investors could provide the follow-on rounds to help it get there.

As research from the Startup Genome is beginning to show, the world has become a global entrepreneurial playing field, as cities from Tel Aviv to Santiago evolve into thriving startup ecosystems, becoming both regional and global engines of job creation. With such a large, increasingly internet-connected population, China, too, has become an important part of this conversation for web startups. (See TechCrunch Disrupt Beijing.) In spite of the huge market opportunities, however, historically it’s been tricky for foreign technology businesses to gain significant traction inside the Eastern power. (Groupon, anyone?)

Today, a consortium of Chinese and American financial institutions are looking to change that by launching Silicon Valley’s first U.S.-China tech accelerator, called InnoSpring. The new incubator officially opened its doors today, giving the world a sneak peek at its first batch of 12 startups, which will be making their home in the company’s new 13,500 square-foot facility in Santa Clara, California.

The accelerator itself was established by a joint partnership between Tsinghua University Science Park (TusPark), Shui On Group (Shui On), Northern Light Venture Capital (NLVC) and Silicon Valley Bank (SVB). And, during its ribbon-cutting event today, at which more than 100 investors turned out to see its new digs, the Sino-American accelerator also announced its new Seed Fund, backed by both Chinese and American VC firms. The seed fund is being backed by Kleiner Perkins, Northern Light VC, GSR Ventures, China Broadband Capital, and TEEC Angel Fund.

Thanks to these contributions, the 15 companies which InnoSpring plans to select every six months for its “Seed Program” will receive an initial $25K investment outset of the program, with the potential to receive an additional $250K in capital from TEEC upon graduation. As to the equity stake InnoSpring is taking? Zhang says that will be decided on a case-by-case basis, but I’d expect the average to be in the one to five percent range.

As it stands today, InnoSpring is the first accelerator to focus on supporting American and Chinese startups to expand beyond their home countries and, although it will be in part focused on jumpstarting Chinese startups, its program is not restricted to founders hail from China, it is also looking to seed American startups with Chinese expansion strategies — in both the long-term and the short-term.

Like those tech accelerators before it, InnoSpring will be offering a mix of services and support for its startups, including funding, mentoring, workshops, in-house resources like accounting, bookkeeping, and paralegal advisement, access to VCs and angel investors, as well as physical office space and professional services for both U.S. and Chinese startups looking to increase cross-border development.

InnoSpring is being managed by Eugene Zhang, the co-founder of the TEEC Angel Fund and JEDA Technologies (and also formerly of Juniper Networks, Cisco and Sun). Zhang and team have located some impressive office space, which can accomodate as many as 40 startups during the accelerator’s 6-month startup bootcamp.

If it weren’t made clear by the accelerator’s impressive collection of founding financial partners, seed fund investors, or the fact that it’s a 6-month program, InnoSpring is showing that it wants to be a full-service resource for Chinese and American startups by going beyond its “Seed Program.”

In a move that’s somewhat unusual for domestic accelerators, it’s offering both “Pre-Seed” and “Post-Seed” programs, aimed at both helping very early-stage companies get off the ground by providing office space, mentoring, and help with raising seed fund, as well as giving more established tech startups the ability to find workspace in satellite offices of big corporations, among others, which are in turn looking to tap into that energetic startup environment.

If an accelerator is serious about kickstarting viable companies, ensuring that they have the resources and office space to grow their businesses — both before and after they’re at a seed-ready stage — can be critically important to the difference between building a viable company and stuttering along the road to the deadpool.

What’s more, the accelerator has established what it calls a “China Gateway Program”, which is intended to provide domestic startups with strategy consulting services that help them design the most effective approach to entering the Chinese market. In turn, for Chinese startups looking to come to Silicon Valley, InnoSpring offers integrated services, like virtual offices and office hours, to connect Chinese startups to American talent and help them establish business in the U.S.

InnoSpring also today unveiled its inaugural batch of startups, some of which will be beginning the accelerator’s 6-month program this month. So, without further ado, here is a brief look at InnoSpring’s first 12 startups. Note: Most of these startups are in stealth mode or in early-stages of growth (with the exception of Hillstone Networks, which is China-based), and a number of them do not yet have websites, but stay tuned for more.

• Accusilicon, a semiconductor company
• Dewmobile, mobile-to-mobile communication compan
• Hillion Tech, an interactive video technology compa
• Hillstone Networks, network security solution
• Mugeda, a HTML5 animation platform
• Narvelous, a social game company
• Peaya, software for the second brain
• QuestBid, a virtual assistant and online bid system
• SecuredInside, a software (SaaS) security company
• Sunube, clean technology company focused on greening data centers
• Trusper, a stealth social network company
• Weaver Mobile, PhotoBox for Facebook

London-headquartered Adfonic is getting into the video side of the mobile ad business today with the launch of its first video ad units.

Chief Marketing Officer Paul Childs says that as smartphone and tablet usage grows, advertisers should be able to treat mobile as just another channel for their campaigns — so Adfonic wants to provide an easy way for them to bring the video content they’re already creating for TVs and movie theaters onto mobile.

Adfonic is also touting the seamlessness of the experience. Viewers aren’t pushed to YouTube or another video player to watch the ad. Instead, they activate the video by tapping on a banner, then the ad takes over the screen via the native iOS or Android player, and they return to exactly where they were in the app or mobile website once it’s over. Adfonic provides an engagement score for each ad based on how long people watched them, as well as other metrics like clickthroughs. The company says the data is delivered in real-time, so advertisers can see how their videos are performing as the campaign runs.

Last fall, the company raised a $7.5 million round from Gordon Shields and other angels.

I just happened to have my TV turned to the Cooking Channel (which part of the Food Network) and saw a commercial for payments platform Square. This appears to be the first big commercial ad push for Square on TV. I’ve contacted Square for confirmation.

The commercial was pretty straightforward and featured a number of merchants that all use Square to accept credit card payments, including a hair stylist, tailor and mechanic. The commercial showed the merchants actually swiping cards from customers, e-signatures on the app, and mentioned that Square can be used on Android and iPhones.

It isn’t particularly surprising that Square is spending more dollars on marketing as it looks to expand merchant use. And the company now has competition from PayPal’s new mobile credit card reader and payments platform, PayPal Here.

Last year, Square put up a massive Times Square billboard in New York City, but this was paid for by a generous supporter, the company said at the time. It’s unclear if that was the case with this new ad campaign; however, Square certainly has the cash for a TV ad blitz after raising $100 million in new funding last year.

We’ll update this post with Square’s response and a video of the commercial, if we can find one.

Subscription flower delivery Service H.Bloom, which once described itself as the ‘Netflix of Flowers,’ raised a $10 million Series B funding round today. The investment was lead by Shasta Ventures with the participation of a number of existing VC funds and angel investors, including Battery Ventures, Thomas Lehrman of Gerson Lerhman Group, and ShoeDazzle’s Brian Lee. Shasta’s Sean Flynn is also joining the H.Bloom board. In total, including this round, H.Bloom has now raised $18 million.

H.Bloom was founded almost exactly two years ago. The New York-based service currently operates in four metropolitan areas (New York City, Chicago, San Francisco and Washington, D.C.) and has 53 employees.

As H.Bloom CEO Bryan Burkhart told me earlier today, the floral business is a “sleepy but $35 billion industry” that’s ripe for disruption. The company plans to use this funding round to build out its marketing and sales operations, as well as to make its delivery infrastructure more efficient. Most importantly, though, Burkhart said, H.Bloom will use this money to expand into new cities, but he wouldn’t say which specific metropolitan areas the company is targeting for this expansion.

The concept behind the service is pretty straightforward and indeed very Netflix-like. After you sign up, H.Bloom will regularly deliver a fresh bouquet of your choice to your door. You can choose how often per month you would like these fresh flowers to arrive (weekly, bi-weekly and monthly). The price for this service starts at $29.99 and goes up from there (orchids are $85 per bouquet).

By all accounts, Y Combinator’s latest Demo Day held last month for its Winter 2012 class was a biggie. With 66 companies presenting their apps, it was pretty impossible to name a startup that was the clear star of the group. But judging from the industry and investor buzz over the past few weeks since then, Socialcam, a mobile app for shooting, editing, and sharing smartphone videos, has emerged as one of the standout companies from this latest YC batch.

So we were pleased have the chance to talk with Socialcam’s co-founder and CEO Michael Seibel last week when we visited Founders Den, the co-working space in downtown San Francisco. Watch the interview above to hear Seibel talk about how Socialcam looks at growth just two weeks at a time, why his team chose to work in Founders Den rather than renting out its own office, why now is an extremely good time to be a tech startup founder, and more.

The Instagram Effect

Of course, something big has happened since we sat down with Seibel: Now that Instagram has been snapped up by Facebook in an eye-popping $1 billion deal, it’s become even more clear that the excitement around apps like Socialcam may just be getting started. Tech investors are now looking even more feverishly for the next big hit in the mobile media space — an “Instagram for video” play. Socialcam stands out in part because its team has already had one proven success, having been born last year as a spin-out from the well-known video sharing website Justin.tv. Socialcam was co-founded as a standalone entity by Justin.tv founder and namesake Justin Kan, former Justin.tv co-founder and CEO Seibel, and former Justin.tv senior engineer Ammon Bartram. Seibel and Bartram now serve as Socialcam’s CEO and CTO, respectively; Kan pulled away to work on his own Y Combinator Winter 2012 startup, Exec.

Beyond the credentials of its founding team, Socialcam seems to have gained some good traction with real-world users. The app surpassed three million downloads on iOS and Android way back in December, and Siebel said the app saw 300 percent growth in its daily active user count in the three months leading up to YC Demo Day. Also in his Demo Day pitch, Seible noted that his company was set to close an angel round of around $1.5 million. In our interview above, however, he was a bit more mum on all numbers having to do with the company. He did promise, though, that there will be more news out of Socialcam that he can confirm “soon.”

The Larger Landscape

Socialcam is of course not the only startup looking to make shooting and sharing mobile phone videos as easy and fun as possible. Viddy, Klip, Mobli, and even the infamous Color are all in the running as well, to name just a few. It’s still early to tell which apps will be the winners, but it’s safe to say that this week’s Instagram deal has turned up the heat for all the players involved.

Google launched a massive redesign of Google+ earlier today. The reaction to this new interface for the company’s fledgling social network have been generally positive, but most users are somewhat confused about why there is suddenly so much whitespace on the site. Indeed, the #whitespace hashtag is currently trending on the site and it’s probably the most discussed “feature” of the new design. I think there is a reason behind this madness, though.

What Google’s Vic Gundotra didn’t talk about when he announced the changes this morning was the fact that Google has now also switched to a responsive web design for Google+. Instead of a traditional fixed-width design, responsive design adapts to the size of your browser window. So while your Facebook page always looks the same, no matter whether you’ve maximized your browser window or not, the new Google+ design actually changes as you resize your browser window. Right now, Google isn’t doing much with this capability, but it definitely built this redesign around this idea.

To see this in action, just head over to Google+ and resize your browser. If your window is big enough, your Google Chat buddy list will either appear on the right side of the screen or, as you make the browser smaller, show up as a collapsed menu in the bottom right side of the window.

In a short hangout earlier this morning, Vic Gundotra pointed out that Google is obviously quite aware of the whitespace. He also said that Google isn’t planning to use the space for advertising, but wouldn’t say more about it.

What Google will do with this space is anybody’s guess. As we’re moving to bigger and wider screens, though (which are actually rather suboptimal for the kind of news feeds that are at the center of services like Google+, Facebook and Twitter), it only makes sense for Google to experiment with wider layouts as well and to figure out how to best use them.

Until it actually does something with all of this newfound space, though, you can install this Chrome plugin to remove the whitespace for the time being.

[image credit: Mark Thurman]

Samsung teased the masses this past February when they revealed that one of their first Ice Cream Sandwich-powered tablets would be the Galaxy Tab 2 7.0, a decidedly mid-range device that seemed lacking in the style department. At the time, Samsung made it known that the Tab would arrive in the U.K. Before trickling down to the rest of the world, a plan that didn’t really pan out.

These days, Samsung has been a bit more forthcoming with details for the U.S. market, and the company has just recently given me what I’ve been waiting for: a price and a release date. The Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 will officially launch in the United States on April 22 with a pretty enticing $249 price tag attached to it.

I’ll be posting a more comprehensive review of the Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 after I’ve gotten the chance to play with it for more than a day, but here are a few of a my first impressions.

Despite having a slim plastic body, the Galaxy Tab 2 has a surprisingly solid feel to it. That’s not to say it’s particularly heavy — in fact, at 12.2 ounces it’s a shade lighter than Amazon’s Kindle Fire, which makes it very comfortable to hold with one hand. It’s also about as thick as the Kindle Fire, a fact that’s obscured rather well thanks to the device’s nicely-tapered edges. While I appreciate the Galaxy Tab’s build quality, there isn’t much to write home about when it comes to physical aesthetics. There’s no sex appeal to be found here, just lots of gray plastic and a few Samsung logos.

As I noted when Samsung first announced this little guy, the Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 doesn’t have the most impressive spec sheet you’ve ever seen. Nestled inside the Tab’s slim frame (and behind the 7-inch 1024 x 600 display) is a 1GHz dual-core TI OMAP 4430 processor, 1GB of RAM, the usual slew of WiFi and Bluetooth radios, an IR blaster, and 8GB of internal storage. If that’s just not enough space for you to work with, there’s also a microSD card slot capable of taking up to 32GB of additional storage embedded in the device’s left edge.

Despite being outflanked by its cousin the Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus in terms of hardware, this little guy held up fairly well to my (admittedly unscientific) tests. It handled an extended bout of Minecraft without any major issues, and more graphically intensive games like Shadowgun were completely playable, if a bit jerky at times. Navigating through the device’s menus was generally nice and smooth, even after I loaded up my homescreens with a few of Samsung’s love-them-or-hate-them TouchWiz widgets.

That said, I still ran into a few hiccups during my day of testing — I would occasionally be booted back to the homescreen while scrolling through my list of apps, and the keyboard would mysteriously disappear while I was trying to set up the Peel Smart Remote app for a little veg-out session on the couch.

Tablets don’t always have the best luck when it comes to the cameras they’re graced with, and the 7-inch GalTab 2 doesn’t manage to buck the trend. It sports a 3-megapixel rear-facing camera, and a smaller VGA sensor right above its display, neither of which managed to blow me away. While I was in New York City meeting with Samsung to pick up the demo unit, I snapped this image in the Theatre District — it’s downright lousy, though it probably goes without saying that a tablet shouldn’t be your primary shooter.

It goes without saying that the Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 is no iPad killer (not that it’s meant to be), but its price tag and performance mean it could definitely give the Kindle Fire some competition for that number 2 spot. Sure, at $249, it isn’t quite as cheap as the Fire, but the difference in performance between the two is definitely noticeable, and barring any weird issues that could pop up over the next few days, I’d much rather own one of these.

Publisher Condé Nast has acquired ZipList, an online service that allows users to save recipes and turn them into ingredient shopping lists.

AllThingsD’s Peter Kafka is reporting that the acquisition price was $14 million, including earnouts for some employees. I’ve asked a company spokesperson to confirm the amount, but I haven’t heard back.

Last month, the company announced that it has been used by more than 1 million people. Founder and CEO Geoff Allen also told me that ZipList was focusing on a partnership strategy, where it provides recipe search and/or shopping list capabilities for partners like Martha Stewart, The Daily Meal, and Ming Tsai.

ZipList will continue to operate as an independent company and serve its existing customers, Condé Nast says.

“Our goal is to build ZipList as an independent company while collaborating with our food brands to integrate its core technology, and to create partnerships that allow other companies to do the same,” Condé Nast president Bob Sauerberg says in the press release.

The startup has raised $4.5 million from SoftBank, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, and others.

Here we go: it’s the last night of our whirlwind Virginia tour and this time we’re in Richmond, home of the Fan District, Altria (everyone’s favorite tobacco company), and our friends at Snagajob. It looks like this town is just started to unwind a little and consider entrepreneurship as a viable alternative to the corporate life so we’re pretty excited to be here.

We’ll be doing full posts on most of the folks we met on our journey and until then, enjoy these views of Snagajob’s handsome slide and orange/orange color scheme. If you’re in town, head down.

Click to view slideshow.

Sponsors

Here’s a little bit about our Norfolk sponsor:

Wednesday, April 11 – Richmond – SnagAJob HQ – 6pm-10pm – 4851 Lake Brook Dr – Finally, we’ll meet in Glen Allen, outside of Richmond, for our final meet-up. Thanks to SnagAJob for donating a space with a bar and some booze. We’re still looking for Richmond sponsors as well, so please email me directly. RSVP hereor email me at [email protected] with the subject “RSVP RICHMOND.” Try to include a rough headcount.

Here’s a bit about our first Richmond sponsor:

AisleBuyer, makers of a virtual shopping assistant app that lets in-store customers bypass checkout lines by paying directly on their mobile phone, has been acquired by Intuit. The Boston-based startup will be joining Intuit’s payments team, where their technology will be used to transition Intuit’s existing point-of-sale solutions as well as Intuit’s Square competitor GoPayment to the cloud.

The solution will also be opened up to Intuit’s own developers as well as third-party developers, according to the company.

The announcement, which was rumored earlier this week, was confirmed by AisleBuyer CEO Andrew Paradise on the company’s blog.

He writes,

I’m really happy to share with you that the rumors are true! AisleBuyer has joined the Intuit team to develop superior solutions to meet the mobile point of sale needs for small business. By leveraging our technology and talent, together with Intuit’s rock star payments team, we will continue to work on creating the best small business POS solutions in the world.

For the past three years we’ve enjoyed the support and camaraderie of the Boston start-up community. As we embark on this next stage in our evolution, we are lucky to be staying in our offices in the Innovation District, and can’t wait to work with our new friends to create the future of the mobile point of sale payments business. We really appreciate everyone’s support in making this happen. It’s been an amazing ride that we’re excited to take forward.

For those unfamiliar with the company, AisleBuyer allowed shoppers to skip checkout lines – or even self-serve checkouts – by paying with their credit card directly on their mobile phone. Initially, the company required you to manually enter your credit card information, but it later rolled out an update which allowed you to snap a photo of card to have the info entered via OCR.

The app, available on iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry, also allowed shoppers to scan an item’s barcode to learn more about the product, see ratings and reviews, or even order the item from the company’s website and have it shipped to their home.

On the retailers’ side, AisleBuyer provided analytics surrounding scans, showing, for example, which products had been scanned but not purchased, among other things.

The startup makes for a smart acquisition by Intuit, whose GoPayment product has been fighting competitor Square fiercely, matching Square on per transaction fees, and beating Square in being first to market in Canada at the beginning of the year. With integrated technology from AisleBuyer, GoPayment would have an interesting selling point – not only could merchants accept transactions on mobile, they could eliminate the face-to-face interactions altogether. That’s something Square is already doing through geofencing techniques – shoppers within 100 meters of a Square merchant can just say their name at checkout today.

With AisleBuyer’s support for barcode scanning – support for allowing merchants to track those scans – AisleBuyer fits Intuit’s target merchant profile – not the individual seller who couldn’t afford to accept credit cards, necessarily, but the small to medium-sized merchant who wants a mobile payments option.

The two companies had begun working together in partnership this year, exploring integration possibilities between the two companies’ solutions. However, an Intuit spokesperson says, “we soon realized that we could accelerate the value of a fully integrated offering easier as one organization, rather through a partnership.”

AisleBuyer employees in Boston will continue to work from their office in Boston, while employees in Palo Alto will work from Intuit’s Mountain View offices.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed. AisleBuyer had raised a $7.5 million round of Series E funding last June, led by Old Willow Partners, LLC (which led AisleBuyer’s first round of funding in 2010). The new round brought the total raised to $11.5 million.