After more than a decade of going it alone, Canadian online learning company Desire2Learn is accepting its first round of venture funding – $80 million from New Enterprise Associates and the venture arm of OMERS, one of Canada’s biggest pension funds. Read more »
Earlier this year, social learning company Grockit launched Learnist as a Pinterest-like platform for education. The company is on Thursday rolling out iPhone and iPad apps for the new platform. Through the apps, users can both create and consume content. Read more »
Through a browser extension, Montreal-based Wajam lets users see relevant activity from friends on Facebook, Twitter and other social channels as they conduct searches through the major search engines. This week, the startup is bringing similar functionality to the iPhone. Read more »
Across all kinds of verticals, it’s never been easier to use apps and services to instantly find things that might match my interests. But what do we lose if we don’t put in the time to actually develop taste? Read more »
Since launching five months ago, Mover, a startup based in Edmonton, Alberta, has picked up thousands of users with data migration service, but the company’s ultimate goal is broader. This week, the startup graduated from Vancouvers’ GrowLab accelerator. Read more »
Social commerce startup Wikets, backed by Andreessen Horowitz and Battery Ventures, is rolling out a new version of its app that builds out its shopping functionality. To date, it has focused on building a network of shoppers who ask for and make recommendations. Read more »
After a report last week about plagiarism incidences on Coursera, which offers free online courses, the startup has added honor code reminders to help keep students honest. The startup recently announced that it has enrolled more than one million students from around the world. Read more »
Y Combinator ed tech startup Clever, which helps education-focused developers more easily integrate with school data, has reached 1,000 schools barely three months after launching. The company is part of the startup accelerator’s most recent class of companies. Read more »
After a summer that has seen increased activity in social media marketing, media giant Gannett Co. today announced that it has purchased BLiNQ Media, which helps companies execute and manage ad campaigns on Facebook and other social networks. Read more »
Treater, a social gifting startup launching Wednesday, wants to use Facebook help people send impromptu, casual gifts to friends. The Washington, DC-based startup is also announcing that it has raised $2.5 million dollars. Read more »
Since launching less than a year ago, LearnSprout, an API platform for education, has helped 150 schools and 15 developers bring new software into the classroom. With a suite of new products, it plans to do even more to open and clean up student data. Read more »
Personalized learning site Alleyoop is partnering with several top partners to increase its science content for students. The Pearson-backed ed tech startup, which helps students prepare for college with customized and gamified interactive subject-based content, wants to inspire future STEM leaders. Read more »
BenchPrep, a Chicago-based startup providing interactive test prep courses, is adding several new publishing partners, including Pearson Education, Inc.,O’Reilly Media, Inc., Microsoft Press. The new partnerships put the company on track to offer 200 courses by the end of September, up from 120. Read more »
ClassDojo, a San Francisco-based startup that helps teachers manage student behavior with game mechanics, is launching out of beta with $1.6 million from some of Silicon Valley’s top investors. To date, the company says 3.5 million teachers and students globally are using its service. Read more »
For the past two years, Beautylish has developed a strong community of makeup enthusiasts and artists who contribute comments, reviews and ratings. On Wednesday, the beauty startup is announcing a new e-commerce feature to help it remake the cosmetics industry for the digital age. Read more »
Twitter founders Biz Stone and Evan Williams Tuesday unveiled their latest publishing platform, Medium. The new tool aims to give people a collaborative, lightweight way to express themselves online with images and text. Read more »
Despite LinkedIn’s push to attract college students and recent college graduates, career site AfterCollege is on Tuesday announcing a new professional networking layer built on top of its job platform that targets college-age users. Read more »
Launched by the executives behind Flip video camera, Knowmia offers a video lesson platform for teachers and students. The startup, which is part of startup accelerator Y Combinator’s latest class, works with teachers to review and curate videos. Read more »
Pinterest, Fancy and plenty of other websites help shoppers find deals and inspiration for clothing they can buy online, but some early startups are developing mobile apps that encourage shoppers to make their fashion purchases in stores. Read more »
Despite the momentum behind digital advertising at the local level, Savveo, a Charlotte, NC-based company, has raised $2 million to build an online marketplace to help advertisers buy offline advertising, from ads on television and the radio to billboards and print. Read more »
Gannett Co., the media giant behind USA Today and other properties, is reportedly buying social-media marketing company BLiNQ Media, which helps brands execute and manage advertising campaigns on Facebook and other social platforms. Read more »
Armed with a new chief technology officer, and other new execs, One Kings Lane hopes to emerge as a leader of the mobile web. The company expects to double revenue to $200 million this year and says 25 percent of revenue comes from mobile. Read more »
Online education startup Coursera, which provides free online courses taught by professors at top universities, has attracted one million enrolled students from every country in the world. The company has raised $22 million and partners with universities including Stanford, Princeton and Duke. Read more »
TechStars alum Wantworthy, a New York-based startup that helps online shoppers track items they might want to purchase, has raised $1 million from RRE Ventures, Google Ventures, Quotidian Ventures and several angel investors. Read more »
At the Time Life Center in New York on Wednesday, startup accelerator Dreamit Ventures showcased its latest class of 15 startups. The companies were selected from a pool of 500 applicants and originated from cities across the country and around the world. Read more »
Facing a lawsuit from major publishers, Boston-based free textbook startup Boundless Learning is now available for students at any university. Just in time for the new school year, the startup is opening to the public with an updated, more comprehensive platform. Read more »
San Mateo, Calif.-based FreeMonee, a ‘gift incentive network’ startup, has raised another $34 million to enable merchants to drive traffic and sales by giving consumers ‘gifts’ in the form of credits to their credit and debit cards. Read more »
Kno, a digital textbook startup that has previously focused on the college market, is partnering with publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt to bring its interactive textbooks to K-12 students. The textbooks can be rented for $9.99 a year and are available on a range of devices. Read more »
Gokul Rajaram, a longtime ad tech executive and Facebook’s ads product director, is joining the advisory board of Sociocast, a New York-based big data startup that focuses on predictive analytics. Prior to working at Facebook, Rajaram managed Google’s AdSense network and has advised several startups. Read more »
Miss Nev (as in “never miss a package”), the winning hack of Dwolla and Etsy’s eCommerce Hack Day in New York, plans to launch a platform that lets local businesses receive packages for customers in exchange for purchases or payment. Read more »
According to GSV Advisors, an investment firm specializing in education, investments in K-12 education climbed to $389 million in 2011, which is up from $13 million in 2005. But despite massive growth, the sector isn’t without its obstacles. Read more »
After acquiring productivity app Manymoon and relaunching it as Do last year, Salesforce.com is announcing that it is rolling out new contacts and deal flow management features to make Do more of a work collaboration platform for everyone from individual consumers to teams within big corporations. Read more »
For the first time, the U.S. will surpass Japan as the world’s biggest market for mobile advertising, according to research firm eMarketer. In 2012, advertisers are expected to spend more than $6.43 billion globally in 2012, with the U.S. contributing $2.3 billion. Read more »
CakeHealth, a Mint-like website that helps consumers manage and track healthcare expenses, is partnering with GoodRx, a startup helping consumers find the lowest prices on medication, to help users save money on prescription drugs. Read more »
Former executives from mobile gaming company ngmoco are set to launch Mango Health, a San Francisco-based health startup focused on developing mobile applications that use game design principles to help consumers improve and manage their health. Read more »
On the heels of other social advertising startup acquisitions, Google on Tuesday announced that it has purchased Redwood City, Calif.-based Wildfire, saying that social marketing can complement the other online advertising services Google already provides. Read more »
Chicago-based Boomerang, backed by Groupon founders’ Lightbank, is launching Tuesday to give Facebook users a way to give friends paperless gifts, including vouchers for local restaurants, spas, sporting companies and theaters. Some gift options are free, offering merchants a new way to attract customers. Read more »
Women are underrepresented at the top of the health field, including in entrepreneurship. According to health startup accelerator Rock Health, the lion’s share of VC funding goes to startups founded or led by men. But several new women-led startups are emerging. Take a look. Read more »
New York-based Codecademy, which offers online programming courses, said it is expanding to support server-side languages, starting with Python, which was the language most requested by users of the platform. To date, Codecademy had focused on in-browser languages like JavaScript and HTML. Read more »
Despite ongoing debate about the effects of online learning, a report from the Pew Internet and American Life Project and Elon University shows that a majority of technology stakeholders expect it to transform higher education by 2020. Read more »
