Category: Tech news

In July, Kickanotch Mobile, a mobile marketing services startup based in the outskirts of Kansas City, raised $500K from a bunch of angel investors and was “incentivized by” the Kansas Technology Enterprise Corporation, a private/public partnership created by the state of Kansas to promote technology-based economic development and support local entrepreneurship.

And it seems that they’re not the only ones rooting for Kansas startups, as Kickanotch Mobile today announced that it has raised another chunk of outside investment: A $1.1 million series A round led by 42 Ventures of Salt Lake City. The company said that it will use its new funding to expand its sales, marketing, and engineering teams, as well as accelerate the development of new features for its mobile platform.

Kickanotch provides mobile application and mobile marketing platform services to allow its clients, which include TV broadcasters, radio stations, publishers and corporations, a way to increase brand exposure and better utilize mobile revenue channels and consumer engagement opportunities. Brands can take advantage of its mobile marketing and monetization applications and platform management SaaS without having to involve developers or spend a lot of time worrying about marketing spend.

The startup has built a mobile platform that includes native apps for all major devices, as well as an easy to use control panel, analytics dashbord, and an ad delivery solution all under one roof. Its newly launched “REVkick platform” does exactly this, giving clients an online web control panel to manage campaigns, track user data, and manage web content in realtime.

The startup has some competition in the mobile advertising space, but its solution has already drawn more than 50 broadcast, publishing and corporate brands and its media partners’ apps have been downloaded in more than 100 countries with user growth consistently doubling month over month.

The team thinks that its newly launched features, like mobile analytics, lead tracking, and sponsorship marquees can drive significant boosts in mobile ad revenue, while the ability to engage mobile users with social features, deals, and “free, we hate spam” offers, can drive 3-times the engagement of current solutions.

For more on Kickanotch’s mobile apps, check ‘em out here.

As Zynga announced at an event a few weeks ago, the newest title in the “Ville” franchise, which includes FarmVille, FrontierVille, and CityVille, is CastleVille. The newest title from the social gaming giant allows players to build mini-empires from castles, craft art and armour and trade, and defend your kingdom in a medieval world. The game was created by the Zynga Dallas team, which was part of the social gaming giant’s acquisition of Bonfire Studios.

Zynga Dallas director Bill Jackson explains that the studio took key elements of each ‘Ville’ title and brought the best into CastleVille. He explains that CastleVille combines with elements of self-expression from FarmVille, the ability to build the fantasy city of your dreams with CityVille, and the rich narrative and storytelling features from FrontierVille. The game is also experimenting with new ways of being social, and self-expression.

When first beginning the game, you’ll need to choose your character and build your look. Jackson says this is the most expansive character building features to date, with dozens of looks to choose from. Once immersed in CastleVille’s medieval world, peasants, princesses, pirates (and players) will choose their own path in the game by meeting new and different characters, completing quests and exploring mysterious areas.

The basis of the game is around building the castle of your dreams and transforming the unexplored land into your very own kingdom. Along the way, you’ll encounter a number of characters, who are all involved in the storyline of the game. You’ll first see Duke, who will help you build your castle and is from a neighboring kingdom. There’s Yvette (the beautiful songstress), Giselle (the lovely maiden) George (the friendly village Viking), Sonja (a sexy pirate), Rafael (a playboy woodsman) and Tom (the rough dragon slayer).

As Jackson says, this game has the most intensive storyline, which is why there are so many characters. Zynga also wants you to feel like you are immersed fully in the world, bringing in elements of fantasy and adventure. “You have to do work yourself and be part of the adventure to success at the game,” he explains. You choose your own path to discover mysterious locations, find rare items and reveal hidden characters within the game.

Another feature that makes the kingdom more real is that this is the most graphic-rich, expressive game to date. You’ll see actions like fish-hopping in the pond, trees shaking, and other sound effects tied to actions from within the game,

In terms of social interactions, you can visit your friends’ kingdoms and gift them art, armor and potions to help complete quests and challenge the forces of the Gloom. There is also a reputation system that gives you more points by how social you are in the game. Basically, the more social you are, the more reputation points you earn, and the faster you progress in the game. Obviously, this gives you more of an incentive to interact with friends and buy virtual goods. Jackson says this streamlined social experience makes it easier and more fun to play the game with friends.

CastleVille will be available to play for free in the next few weeks in 17 languages (English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Indonesian, Turkish, Traditional Chinese, Korean, Malay, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Dutch, Japanese and Thai).

Zynga has been churning out games over the past week months. The company launched Mafia Wars 2, Adventure World, The Pioneer Trail, Empires & Allies, and Hanging with Friends.

we know that developing new hits is a big part of Zynga’s business model and that profits were down in Q2 of this year because of the lack of any new game launches in the first half of 2011. We haven’t seen Q3 numbers yet, so it’s hard to tell whether these new launches are actually making a meaningful difference in Zynga’s top line.

According to Inside Network’s AppData leaderboard, Empires & Allies seems to be doing the best out of all the new titles with 19.8 million monthly active users. This is followed by Mafia Wars 2, with 13.7 million users. Of course, CityVille and FarmVille are the top games for Zynga, with 54.2 million and 28.2 million monthly active users, respectively. Perhaps the next Ville to top the list will be CastleVille.

In this evening of dueling announcements (RED announced their compact high-res camera system tonight as well), Canon has shown that it’s serious in the area of digital cinema with its new Cinema EOS system. The first camera in the line is the C300, a compact camera that, contrary to expectations, doesn’t produce a 4K image. They’ve instead focused on maximizing the performance of a Super 35-sized sensor producing 1080p footage.

To many this resolution will be a disappointment, but Canon has something for that crowd as well (though now quite in complete form): a DSLR “concept” which they stopped short of calling the 5D Mk III, but which seems to fill that role, complete with 4K recording:

It’s a new focus on pro but not super-pro cinema (i.e. not $100k cameras) using the EOS branding and EF mount, and it builds on Canon’s existing reputation in that area. I noted the issues with DSLR sensors years ago, and it looks like Canon is aiming at keeping the strengths while mitigating the weaknesses.

While the DSLR is less than real at this point (though it likely just lacks final design and manufacturing), the C300 is as real as it gets.

It records 1920×1080 images of the red and blue channels, and 1920×2160 for the greens, in semi-traditional RGBG style, for a 1080p stream at up to 24fps and 50mbps. As far as the numbers go, it’s a far cry from RED’s scarlet, which at half the price offers four times the resolution and eight times the datarate. But specs aren’t everything and what matters is how well these perform in real life situations.

The C300, in PL and EF mount versions, will be available in January and March of 2012 respectively for around $20,000.

For more than three years, upstart camera maker RED has been teasing the Scarlet, a compact camera in the same class as their more powerful, but bulkier, RED One and Epic cameras. We actually saw one at CES this year, but they’ve completely redone the design and capabilities. They were going to publish all this information on their website, but they’re apparently under attack so we’re doing this live.

It used to do 3K and have a fixed 8x zoom. Now it’s essentially the same type of camera as the Epic (that is to say, a sort of chunky “brain” onto which you can fix lenses and so on), just for a much lower price.

The brain:

Fully accoutred:

The Scarlet X, as it’s now called, will sell for $9750 and will be shipping as early as November 17th – the date they said they’d ship earlier, at least after they revised the shipping estimate a dozen times or so. So what can it do?

Well, it does 4K, for one thing. That’s 4096×2160, at up to 25FPS, or quad HD at 30. This is at compression rates that are superior to what they’ve been shooting movies on for years, yet at a data rate that’s still eight times what Canon’s new C300 system shoots at. That’s 50 megabytes per second, or 400mbit/s for those keeping track. The full sensor size is 5120×2700 for stills.

It’ll also do 3K at 48fps, 2K at 60fps, and 1K at 120fps, which is fairly low-resolution but retains the color depth and so on. It’s a Super 35-sized sensor and they’re using leftover chips from Epic brains, which cost almost three times as much. In fact, if you shoot the same type of footage with the same lenses using the Scarlet and the Epic, the images should be “identical.” Here are some datarate specs for those who like that sort of thing:

Aesthetically, it’s similar to the rest, since it’s compatible with all the accessories, but it’s “battleship grey,” as RED founder Jim Jannard described it, and it doesn’t have “ribs,” because “she’s a girl, she’s smooth.”

It’s shipping November 17th, but only if you’re willing to shell out an extra $1500 for the titanium PL mount. The new aluminum Canon mount they’re putting on it will be available starting on December 1st. That $9750 price gets you the brain and an SSD; Jannard said that a fully-functional camera, with LCD, lens, rails, and handles will set you back around $13k.

Groupon has priced its IPO at $20 a share according to reports, which would give the company a $12.7 billion valuation and mean that it’d be seeking $690 million in tomorrow’s offering, by floating only 5.4 percent of its shares.

Right before the pricing news hit, I sat down with SoftTechVC founder and Groupon shareholder Jeff Clavier to talk about the strategy behind the company’s decision to go public. Clavier guessed accurately that Groupon’s IPO pricing would be about $20 a share and dismissed earlier reports of a $25 billion valuation as unrealistic.

On the more modest pricing; “They need a warm reception in the public market, because they have all this baggage — They have all this bad history of press and analysts hating the company,”  Clavier said, referring to press coverage of their unconventional accounting on Groupon’s S-I as well as its tricky international expansion and scaling issues.

Despite the offering being “oversubscribed” Clavier emphasized that whether or not people actually buy the stock tomorrow and don’t dump it six months from now as the key harbingers of whether Groupon has what it takes to avoid being the Pets.com of our time, “In the long run it’s an interesting viable long-term business. [But] they have a lot to prove as a public company that has gone from zero to IPO in three years.””

Amazon’s Kindle Fire turned its fair share of heads this past September, but rival Barnes and Noble wasn’t just sitting around twiddling their thumbs with the Fire grabbed headlines. Barnes and Noble has already tested the tablet/reader concept with the Nook Color, and now Engadget reports that the company is ready for round 2 with the new Nook Tablet.

At first glance, the Nook Tablet looks just about identical to the original Nook Color — hopefully the resemblance is close enough that older model accessories will be able to see continued use. The screen still comes in at 7 inches, but the BN swapped the original display for an improved VividView IPS touch panel.

Under the hood lies a 1.2GHz dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM, 16GB of internal storage, and a WiFi radio. Oh, and it supports enough file formats to make you go cross-eyed. It’s undoubtedly a solid package, and it’s coming down the pipeline fast: it’s slated debut on November 16, with a $249 price tag.

So, what exactly does the extra $50 net you? Well, double the amount of RAM, for one thing: the Nook Tablet pits 1GB against the Kindle Fire’s 512. What’s more, the Nook Tablet takes microSD cards, so media hoarders will be able to lug entire seasons of Doctor Who around on a whim. B&N also appears to have quite the media environment built up for their new tablet: a closer look at the leaked imaged confirms support for Netflix, Hulu Plus, and Pandora right out of the gate.

In short, Amazon’s going to have a real fight on their hands soon.

Following in the footsteps of GroupMe, another startup born at a Disrupt Hackathon is moving on to becoming areal company. Last May, Docracy was one of our Hackathon winners, and now it’s raised a $650,000 seed round led by First Round Capital. Vaizra Investments, Rick Webb and Quotidian Ventures also participated.

When Docracy launches publicly, it will be a repository for legal and business documents such as NDAs and term sheets. Anyone will be able to upload a document, which will be translated into native HTML5. The documents can be redlined, shared, and even signed. The more a document is signed, the more social proof it gathers that it is a well-accepted document.

Founders Matt Hall And John Watkinson were frustrated with how hard it is to find standard business documents online they could trust. They want Docracy to be “a place for documents to live and be discussed,” says Hall, so that people can figure out if it is the right document for them. The usage stats will be key here.

Once you find a doc you like, you can edit it to suit your particular needs. Here is a sample doc. It is time ro liberate documents from PDF and .doc files.

Oink, the first app from Milk, Kevin Rose’s startup lab is now available in iTunes. Oink is an app that lets you rate things at different places, and uses social reputation to help others figure out who to trust about what topics.

Rose gave a preview of Oink a couple weeks ago at the Web 2.0 Summit. At the time, I wrote:

Oink is a mobile app that lets you rank things in different places. So instead of ranking a restaurant or point of interest, you can rank specific things at those places. Rose showed an example of one of his favorite places, The Samovar Tea Lounge. On Oink, you can rank the different teas at the lounge, and see how they rank against the other teas there and teas you can get nearby. Everything is based on hashtags like #tea, and each type of #tea is ranked by place or within a geographic radius. You can chose to find the best #teas within 1 mile, 5 miles, 25 miles, etc. And they all show up on a map

Okay, I am off to see Kevin Rose to get a demo. Try out the app and let me know what you think. Update: the full app is invite-only, but you can check out most of the features without an invite. Milk will be letting in thousands of people a day.

According to Robert Levine, the author of the just published Free Ride: How Digital Parasites Are Destroying the Culture Business, and How the Culture Business Can Fight Back, the Internet is destroying the market for high quality culture. Blaming both the ideology of free culture and online piracy, Levine argues that the digital world is making it increasingly hard for professional writers, journalists, musicians and film makers to make a living selling their content.

Levine, the former executive editor of Billboard magazine, isn’t necessarily the first to make this argument – but Free Ride is probably the most credible and coherent book to date on the impact of the Internet on our culture.

Free Ride has already ignited controversy for its portrayal of Google’s central role in the free culture movement. “Follow the money,” Levine told me, when he came into our New York City studio last week to talk about Free Ride, and you’ll find Google bankrolling organizations like Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society and The Stanford Center for Internet and Society which pursue extremely permissive positions on copyright reform. So is Levine right – could Google really be killing our culture?

With leaks galore and this afternoon’s announcement, there’s not much reason to rehash HTC Rezound deets. So I’ll just cut to the chase and hit you guys with some first impressions.

As you must already know, the Rezound touts a 1.5GHz dual-core processor, and was snappy enough to prove it. Combined with 1GB of RAM and Verizon’s 4G LTE network, that speedy little processor offered up one of the smoothest experiences I’ve had with Gingerbread. And even better, the Rezound will ship Ice Cream Sandwich-ready, with an update to be released “early next year.”

I never experienced any hiccups, though there was a very slight slow down with a handful of apps running at once. HTC’s Sense UI happens to be one of my favorites (if forced to choose between manufacturer skins), but many of you may still want to ditch HTC’s UI for something a little more vanilla.

The 4.3-inch 720p display is just the right size, as HTC clearly isn’t concerned with the “giant screen” trend we’re seeing from its competitors. But that’s good news. If resolution and pixel density is up to snuff, there’s no real reason for a 4.5-inch screen, unless of course you’re a hardcore gamer. In that case, you may need a tad more screen real estate than the Rezound offers.

Speaking of ignored trends, the HTC Rezound is much heftier than some of the smartphones it’ll be lined up against in-store, including the world’s thinnest smartphone, the Droid RAZR. That said, it’s still a pretty slick phone, especially for those who lean toward the HTC design style. Super similar to the HTC Droid Incredible 2 in design, the phone sports a nice soft touch back panel, with a little textured patch in the middle for a better grip. Just like the HTC Rhyme sports a female-friendly purple casing, the Rezound seems to aim itself at the male demographic with a hefty helping of red on black.

As far as the camera is concerned, the Rezound’s 8-megapixel shooter can get the job done, whatever that job is. We shot a little 1080p video and snapped a few shots with one of the tester units at HTC’s media event in New York City, and quality was right on par with what the specs promise. Sense also brings some fun into the camera app, offering up Action Burst, Instant Capture, and Panorama options, along with other cool effects and photo editing tools. In fact, you can even shoot video or pictures with the effect already applied in the view finder, just to make sure you don’t miss that special moment by applying the wrong effect. Oh, and if that weren’t enough, the Rezound’s camera can play back 1080p video in slow motion.

Thanks to the deal between HTC and Beats by Dre audio, the Rezound packs Beats audio support which includes a pair of Beats earbuds and a special Beats profile that boosts bass and volume when toggled on. To be honest, I was a bit skeptical over whether or not Beats would make a big difference, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the Rezound and its audio quality. I was really able to hear those low notes in a way that’s lacking on my iPhone and other phones I’ve tested, and anyone who’s all about the tunes will surely appreciate Beats integration.

The HTC Rezound will be available on November 14 with an on-contract price of $299.99.

In August, Y Combinator grad Kicksend launched in beta to make sending and sharing large files easy as pie, especially for the non-technical crowd. (Read our initial coverage here.) Since then, founders Pradeep Elankumaran and Brendan Lim tell me that they’ve been heads-down fixing, tweaking, and developing some big new features. While those are not yet ready for broadcast, the startup is today announcing that it has raised $1.8 million in seed funding.

The seed round was led by True Ventures, with participation from Digital Garage, SV Angel, Start Fund, and Milo Founder and CEO Jack Abraham. Kicksend will be using its new capital to grow its team and push out several big enhancements to its file sharing service.

Though the founders said that they’ve seen a number of businesses using the site to share and send files, Kicksend remains focused on the consumer, particularly on creating a simple, intuitive user experience that even your grandmother can use. To date, the service is available both on the Web and on the desktop, but mobile apps are on the way.

For those unfamiliar with the service, Kicksend’s value proposition lies both in its simplicity and the fact that its platforms are connected in realtime, enabling users to drag and drop big batches of files from their desktop app and have them delivered instantly to the recipient’s desktop and web apps, their inbox (and soon) their mobile apps.

What’s more, in comparison to other file sharing media, Kicksend has no size limits, is private, and works effortlessly and asynchronously (unlike IM). In contrast with syncing backup solutions, the service removes the need for share folders and permissions.

It’s a nifty tool for those looking to effortlessly send large batches of files and with backing from some notable VCs, there’s surely more interesting stuff to come.

Check out Kicksend at home here, or read our full launch coverage here.

In its second quarter as a public company, LinkedIn posted Q3 earnings today. Revenue for the third quarter was $139.5 million, up 126 percent from the third quarter in 2010. GAAP Net loss for the third quarter was $1.6 million (or a loss of $0.02 per share), compared to net income of $4 million for the third quarter of 2010; Non-GAAP net income for the third quarter was $6.6 million (or $0.06 per share), compared to $6 million for the third quarter of 2010. Analysts expected LinkedIn to break even on an earnings on a per share basis with revenue expected to come in at $128 million.

Members grew to 131.2 million, an increase of 63% from the third quarter of 2010. “LinkedIn had a strong third quarter, with significant, broad-based growth across all of our revenue streams, member engagement metrics, geographies, and sales channels,” said Jeff Weiner, CEO of LinkedIn. “Our results underscore the long-term strength of our global platform and our business model.”

Revenue from the U.S. totaled $94 million, and represented 67% of total revenue in the third quarter of 2011. Revenue from international totaled $45.5 million, and represented 33% of total revenue in the third quarter of 2011.

LinkedIn’s main revenue channel, from Hiring Solutions products, totaled $71.0 million, an increase of 160% compared to the third quarter of 2010. Revenue from Marketing Solutions products totaled $40.1
million, an increase of 113% compared to the third quarter of 2010. And revenue from Premium Subscriptions products totaled $28.4 million, an increase of 81% compared to the third quarter of 2010.

In terms of the outlook, revenue for the fourth quarter of 2011 is projected to be in the range of $154 million to $158 million. Revenue for the full year of 2011 is projected to be in the range of $508 million to $512 million.

As you may know, LinkedIn filed to go public back in May, and has seen its stock remain steady for the past six months. And the product itself has been luring in more engagement and activity. Traffic is up post IPO, and LinkedIn now has more unique monthly visitors than MySpace and Twitter. The company reported average comScore unique visitors of 87.6 million per month, an increase of 64% from the third quarter of 2010 and total page views of 7.6 billion, an
increase of 51% from the third quarter of 2010

And LinkedIn is now adding two new members every second.

In the third quarter, Linkedin continued to push its data-focused products, unveiling a new feature called Classmates, which gives the professional social network’s users new insights and networking features to connect with fellow alumni of colleges and universities. The company also redesigned its mobile offerings, and adding HTML5 technology to its mobile site. And LinkedIn is seeking to open up new revenue streams with more customized products for recruiters.

The company was more acquisitive this quarter, buying real-Time, hosted search startup IndexTank. AllThingsD reported that LinkedIn bought social contact management startup Connected. And in September, LinkedIn hosted U.S. President Barack Obama for a town hall.

LinkedIn’s stock is down around 5 percent in after hours trading.

We’ve embedded the Earnings call for LinkedIn, which will start at 2 pm PT. We’ll live blog the call.

Liveblog:

CEO Jeff Weiner and CFO Steve Sordello are leading the call.

LinkedIn users conduct over 4 billion searches on the platform in a given year.

More than 15 million people joined LinkedIn in Q3.

Hundreds of thousand of job applications have been submitted with the new Apply For LinkedIn button.

Mobile page views are up 400 percent and mobile visits accounted for more than 13% of LinkedIn’s unique visits

LinkedIn has 7,400 customer using its hiring solutions product.

More than 180,000 domains use the LinkedIn Share button on their sites, an increase of more than 250%.

LinkedIn added 200 employees in the quarter.

Q&A

Q: This is the second quarter where you have been overly conservative in you guidance-why have you been coming in above your guidance? What does Q4 look like from a hiring perspective?

A (SS): The top line revenue flowed through to the bottom line in the third quarter. We take a long term perspective on our business. In Q4, we are trying to pull in some of the 2012 hires. We are going to pull in 500-600 more employees especially in consumer products, technology, and sales.

(JW) We’ll be able to manage this hypergrowth of employees. We won’t hire folks that we aren’t capable of being productive from day one.

Q: Mobile page views-what percent of pageviews are from mobile and how did that compare to Q3 last year?

(SS) Mobile page views are north of ten percent of total pageviews, last year was immaterial.

Q: How will mobile usage differ from usage on the desktop?

(JW) We are trying to learn as much from mobile interaction as possible and leverage that into interactions. Mobile is our fastest growing service and we are going to think next year about how we monetize mobile.

Q: Any update on new product talent pipeline?

(JW) It has yet to be rolled out officially, we will have pilot partners that will use the product in the next few weeks. It’s the first step in making our recruiter product into a platform

Q: You talked about an interesting growth area with students and recent graduates? What are the monetization opportunities there?

(JW) It’s consistent with the existing business model. There are nuances about that demographic, such as adjusting the profile so that it is unique for a student vs. someone who has been in the industry for a few years. We also rolled out the alumni product (mentioned above).

Q: You mentioned record levels of engagement, can you expand on this? What impact do new products have on engagement?

(SS) We’re very pleased with the engagement this quarter, our page views are growing faster than our unique visitors. In terms of the financial impact, it’s much more directly correlated with online businesses.

New York City’s Art.sy, which wants to change the way people buy fine art, recently closed a $6 million series A. Peter Thiel personally led the round, with existing investors Josh Kushner’s Thrive Capital, Wendi Murdoch, and Dasha Zhukova participating. The startup previously raised $1.25 million a year ago. Eric Schmidt, Jack Dorsey, and Jim Breyer also invested in that seed round.

Art.sy first appeared at TechCrunch Disrupt NYC in May, 2010, but the site still has not launched beyond a small private beta. The company is taking a long-term approach to digitizing the art world, striking deals with top galleries before it opens up so that it can launch with some of the best art in the world. So far, it has deals with 180 galleries in 40 countries. This approach is akin to what Spotify did when it took two years to line up all the record labels before launching in the U.S.

Art.sy is creating a website that makes it easy to browse and discover paintings and other fine art, and connect prospective art collectors with galleries. The art world is a high-end industry which has resisted the encroachments of the Web. Art.sy hopes to change that by making art more accessible to a broader class of consumers who are currently ignored by the art establishment. The company will use the funds to hire more people (it is currently looking for a top-notch Web designer and director of museum relations).

The HTC Rezound (formerly the Vigor) has been on our radar for what seems like forever now, but we’re here in New York City for HTC’s big event, and they have just officially pulled back the curtains on their next Gingerbread-powered smartphone. Fear not though, Ice Cream Sandwich fans: the Rezound will ship ready for Ice Cream Sandwich, and HTC and Verizon are aiming to push it to the Rezound early next year.

One of the first things you notice about the Rezound that it bucks the recent trend of super-slim smartphones. It’s not terribly thick, but it easily makes devices like the Droid Razr and the Galaxy Nexus look downright skeletal in comparison.

Fortunately, the Rezound’s edges taper pretty dramatically, so it feels much less bulky than it looks. It takes more than few design cues from the Droid Incredible family too, right down to the red accents and the translucent red body under the battery cover.

To make up for the heftier body, HTC saw fit to fill the Rezound to the brim with some impressive innards. The Rezound is powered by a 1.5GHz dual-core processor and 1GB of RAM, which should be plenty for power users to enjoy. It comes with 16GB of internal storage, and the truly media hungry can take solace in the fact that it can also comes with a preloaded 16GB microSD card.

As expected, the Rezound also sports a sizable (but not overly so) 4.3-inch 720p display. Just above the screen is a 2-megapixel front-facing camera, and around the back (just above the funky textured finish) there sits an 8-megapixel camera with an f/2.2 lens and a dual LED flash. HTC has tried to address some of the flaky camera issues that have appeared in early HTC devices, and added new functionality like panorama support and action burst modes. The camera is also capable of shooting video in 1080p, so mobile cinematographers should have a little bit of fun with it.

Like the Thunderbolt before it, the Rezound is a Verizon LTE device, so people lucky enough to live within Verizon’s 4G coverage area should be able to enjoy some pretty snappy network performance. Fortunately, after having seen how lackluster their first LTE phone’s battery was, HTC has outfitted the Rezound with a 1,620 mAh battery for a little extra longevity.

Since we’re talking about HTC here, the Rezound also features the latest version of the Sense UI over Android 2.3. We’ve seen it before on devices like the Sensation and the Rhyme, and while it adds a pretty layer of paint to the UI, ardent Android fans may still swap it out in favor of a more basic approach.

If you happened to miss the Beats logo on the device’s backside, the Rezound is the first HTC device in the U.S. to feature Beats Audio. HTC’s Beats Audio functionality consists of two major components: a pair of included Beats earbuds, and a special audio profile on the phone. Once the headphones are plugged in, the Beats audio profile automatically kicks in, and plays with the sound output to give it some extra oomph over the pack-in cans.

All things considered, HTC may have a holiday winner here. It’s not the slimmest, sleekest device you’ll ever see, but it packs plenty of horsepower and enough nifty frills that it will probably top many a geek’s wishlist. You’ll be able to pick up a Rezound from Verizon Wireless or Best Buy on November 14, with a $299 pricetag.

Gogobot, a social travel site that launched less than a year ago, is on a tear. The company has racked up accolades including being named one of Time’s top sites of 2011 and winner of the 2010 Crunchie award for Best Design. They’re seeing very strong growth. And today, they’re announcing that they’ve raised a very large Series B funding round of $15 million. The round is being led by Redpoint Ventures, with Battery Ventures and CrunchFund participating. Redpoint General Partner Satish Dharmaraj will be joining Gogobot’s board. This brings Gogobot’s total funding to $19 million, after a $4 million Series A in June 2010.

Given how young Gogobot is there’s a chance you haven’t stumbled across it before. But there’s also a solid chance that some of your friends have: Gogobot founder and CEO Travis Katz says that the site is now the biggest social travel service on the web, and that its userbase has grown 10x in the last six months. Two weeks ago the company launched a mobile app, which is now a top-10 travel app in 31 countries on the App Store. And it’s the biggest travel-related app on Facebook. The company isn’t sharing any specific user stats yet, but it sounds like things are going very well.

Gogobot’s pitch is one that seems obvious: it’s combining social with the immensely lucrative travel market, allowing you to connect with your friends to get their advice on where to visit, what to eat, and where to stay. You can use the service to plan things ahead of time, or you can poll your friends on the fly. Thing is, this is an idea that I’ve seen many times over the years — and the majority of Gogobot’s competitors haven’t managed to get nearly the same traction. So why are they taking off?

The key to Gogobot’s success, according to Katz, is largely one of experience. Gogobot includes many of the social mechanics you’ll see on other sites: viral loops, badges, rewards for engaging with friends, and so on. Katz says that building a social site is something that sounds easy, but in practice, getting all of these things right is much harder than most people think.  But Gogobot’s team knows what they’re doing. Katz was an early employee at MySpace, as are several other key Gogobot employees. And Katz’s cofounder, Ori Zaltzman, built Yahoo Answers. In other words, they’ve had a lot of experience with helping services go viral.

Another key factor in the site’s growth is its attention to design, which looks significantly more modern and user-friendly than incumbent travel sites like TripAdvisor. TripAdvisor, by the way, is the biggest player in this space (it’s headed toward an IPO), but Katz says Gogobot has a few advantages over it. For one, he points out that most TripAdvistor reviews are left by strangers, so you don’t have much context as to the reviewer’s personality or tastes. And he says there’s “a ton of fraud” on the site from employees at various restaurants and hotels. With Gogobot you’re being presented from your friends first-and-foremost, who don’t have any incentive to leave misleading reviews.