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Wednesday, December 4, 2013
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Jon Jenkins

Jon Jenkins, who joined Pinterest a year ago as its head of engineering, is leaving the company in what he describes on Quora as a “bittersweet” decision. Jenkins says wants to launch his own company, a wish he had even before he joined Pinterest. We’ve contacted Pinterest to ask for more details about who their next engineering head will be.


“Long before I made the decision to move to the Bay Area I had the spark of an idea brewing in the back of my mind,” Jenkins wrote. “Since being immersed in the startup rich environment of San Francisco that spark has grown into a flame and now is the time for me to see if I can turn that idea into a real business. In the coming months, I’ll be developing the concept and talking with investors about how to build an entirely new business. I’m really excited for what lies ahead for both Pinterest and myself!”


Jenkins also said that during his year at Pinterest, the company’s engineering team has more than tripled in size. New features launched include place pins, a localized Japanese site, its first API for partners and new versions of its Android and iOS apps.


Before joining Pinterest, Jenkins served as Amazon’s engineering lead for eight years and led the team responsible for the Silk browser on the Kindle Fire. He was also director of development tools, director of platform analysis and director of website platform. Jenkins’ hire was a sign that Pinterest, which has three non-technical co-founders, was starting to get serious about the technical challenges of building up its site’s infrastructure.







9:38 PM

Jon Jenkins, who joined Pinterest a year ago as its head of engineering, is leaving the company in what he describes on Quora as a “bitter...

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Brian O'Malley

Accel Partners has announced that Brian O’Malley will join the venture capital firm as a partner on its early stage team. O’Malley was formerly a general partner at Battery Ventures, where he led its seed and early stage practices. Other recent hires include the addition of Hilary Mason as Accel’s new data scientist in residence, Kobie Fuller as a principal and several new associates.


In 2013, Accel saw $5 billion in exits among its portfolio companies. Acquisitions include payments gateway Braintree, which was sold to eBay for $800 million; the sale of a 51% by Finnish gaming company SuperCell to Softbank for $1.53 billion, representing a $3 billion valuation; and the acquisition of MoPub by Twitter for a reported $350 million. Foreign exchange and payments provider OzForex had its IPO on the Australian Securities Exchange in October, while enterprise data company Nimble Storage is currently preparing its first public offering.


O’Malley joined Battery Ventures in 2004. His investments in e-commerce, online marketplaces and Internet apps included companies like Bazaarvoice (which went public on Nasdaq in February 2012), Insitu (acquired by Boeing in 2008), HotelTonight, Skullcandy and Viddy. Before joining Battery, O’Malley was director of West Coast technical sales at Bowstreet.







9:23 PM

Accel Partners has announced that Brian O’Malley will join the venture capital firm as a partner on its early stage team. O’Malley was form...

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apple china shanghai

China Mobile has finally signed a deal to offer Apple iPhones on its network, an agreement that took years to reach, reports the Wall Street Journal. China Mobile is the world’s largest mobile carrier, with more than 700 million subscribers, and is the last of China’s three major carriers to offer the iPhone. We have emailed Apple and China Mobile for more information.


The reported deal comes after two months of signs that the rollout of iPhone’s on China Mobiles network is imminent. The launch date is expected to coincide with the Dec. 18 China Mobile conference in Guangzhou, when the carrier is supposed to reveal more information about its new 4G LTE network.


In September, the WSJ reported that Apple is preparing to ship the iPhone 5S and 5C to China Mobile and earlier this week, China Mobile began quietly taking pre-orders for both models on a website owned by one of its subsidiaries.


China’s top three carriers recently received licenses from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology to start operating 4G networks. In September, reports emerged that Apple’s newest iPhone models will be compatible with China Mobile’s network. The completion of its 4G network was an important sticking point for China Mobile to agree to start selling iPhones. One of the major roadblocks was that China Mobile operates on a different 3G standard that was developed in part by the Chinese government, and Apple said that the carrier’s proprietary network as too unreliable. China Mobile, on the other hand, did not want to agree to Apple’s sales volume guarantees.


China is currently Apple’s third biggest market and CEO Tim Cook has said he anticipates it will eventually become the company’s largest. But over the past year, Apple has quickly lost market share there to Android handsets from Samsung and domestic handset makers, as its revenue also slowed down in the U.S. But deal with China Mobile may give it a boost. Research firm Trefis says the deal with the carrier may result in the sale of an additional 20 million iPhones in 2014, a 17% increase from the year before.







7:39 PM

China Mobile has finally signed a deal to offer Apple iPhones on its network, an agreement that took years to reach, reports the Wall Stree...

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wywy

Wywy, a German company promising to help monetize TV activity on mobile devices, is announcing that it has raised $7 million in Series B funding.


According to the wywy website, the company’s history goes back to 2001, with video and audio detection technology, but it only launched its second screen products last year. Those products include multi-screen ad synchronization, so that mobile and tablet users see online advertising that corresponds to the commercial they’re seeing on TV; real-time TV campaign tracking; and content sync technology for second screen apps.


The company also offers an app of its own, but it sounds like that’s just meant to showcase wywy’s technology for potential customers.


The new funding follows a $3.1 million Series A last year and comes from existing investors Cipio Partners. Wywy says it currently supports 200 channels in five countries, and one of the big goals is to expand in Europe and the United States.


“Today, using a Second Screen device in parallel to watching TV has become the norm,” said Cipio managing partner Werner Dreesbach in the funding release. “It is clear that TV advertisers require new approaches to ensure the effectiveness of their campaigns. wywy’s huge success with media agencies and TV advertisers in Germany made the decision to internationalize easy.”







6:24 PM

Wywy , a German company promising to help monetize TV activity on mobile devices, is announcing that it has raised $7 million in Series B fu...

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The troubled Healthcare.gov website seems to have found its sea legs at last. After a botched rollout, the White House set itself a new deadline of Nov. 30 and hunkered down to repair the many glitches to the site, through which Americans in the 36 states it serves must get their health insurance under the Affordable Care Act. By and large, it appears to have succeeded, with some 29,000 people reportedly signing up for health care insurance through the site on Sunday and Monday alone.


4:38 PM

The troubled Healthcare.gov website seems to have found its sea legs at last. After a botched rollout, the White House set itself a new de...

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iTunes

AmEx has made a fairly significant improvement to its points redemption system, via the financial institution's mobile app. So all those points that AmEx users rack up when swiping their card or making online purchases, can now actually be automatically used right after the transaction for a designated purchase.


Here's how it works. AmEx Card members accumulate membership rewards points with transactions. The program allows card members to earn one point for every dollar charged on enrolled American Express cards. These points, which have no expiration date, are redeemable in a number of categories. In the past, members were able to redeem points for purchases from brands online via AmEx's redemption hub or for travel (airfare, hotels and more). But the general consumer behavior was to redeem big purchases, not everyday expenses like food or other transactions.


Previously, members could check their account balances, make payments, browse rewards options, and load special offers to their cards from their phones. With this recent addition, card holders can redeem points for any purchase, from gas and groceries to clothing and manicures, on their phones. Card members have to download or upgrade their existing iOS or Android AmEx app, and sign in with their online username. Whenever they make a purchase with their card, they can open the mobile app and select Use Points for that particular charge once it hits their AmEx statement. A credit in the amount of the charge is applied to the card holder's account so the merchant is left out of the equation completely.


As David Yoo, AmEx's SVP Mobile Products and Services, explains, the company is seeing that more and more card holders are making purchases through mobile devices, and are reliant on these devices. So it made sense for AmEx to develop a way where consumers could redeem points in the offline and online worlds.


There are a few caveats to the new feature. You can't use the points towards any card membership fees. AmEx is currently testing out push notifications, so that when you spend at a restaurant, you would see an alert on your phone to remind you that you could redeem points for the charge. Yoo says the company is only implementing push notifications for restaurants at the moment but this feature could be extended more broadly in the next few months (and users could turn this feature off as well, he adds).


For me personally, I rarely use my AmEx points unless I am booking travel. But it's a lot easier to be reminded to use your points when your phone is on hand, and you can simply click from wherever you are to redeem points. This isn't the first new technology iteration added to the membership rewards points system - the company also partnered recently with VeriFone to allow card members to use points to pay for cabs. This new update is simply another way that AmEx is attempting to encourage and incentivize users to use their payments system and credit card over others. And the key to accomplishing that goal is to use the mobile phone as a touch point, and to extend rewards into the offline world.







4:38 PM

AmEx has made a fairly significant improvement to its points redemption system, via the financial institution's mobile app. So all those...

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Following news that Amazon plans to use unmanned drones for rapid delivery of goods to customers, security researcher Samy Kamkar has developed a way to skyjack drones. The hack may resonate with many Americans, who are concerned about the increasing use of drones by law enforcement to conduct surveillance on citizens within the United States' borders. Kamkar's attack employs a Parrot AR Drone 2, various components, and a Perl application he wrote called, appropriately, "SkyJack", for about $400.


4:12 PM

Following news that Amazon plans to use unmanned drones for rapid delivery of goods to customers, security researcher Samy Kamkar has deve...

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