Starbucks customers can now use the Square Wallet mobile payment app to pay for their coffee. We take a look at how it work, what its limitations are and what it means for the larger mobile payment market. Read more »
Crowd-sourced navigation app Waze is launching its own ad platform, allowing advertisers to insert ads that users can see on their maps and search results when they navigate to their destination. Waze believes these “location-guided” ads can succeed because they incorporate where a user is headed. Read more »
Sprint, which is in the process of getting majority owned by Softbank, has reached a deal with U.S. Cellular to buy up customers and spectrum in the midwest for $480 million. Read more »
With gas shortages rampant following Hurricane Sandy, FEMA and the White House turned to crowd-sourced navigation app Waze to gather data on where to send gasoline fueling trucks. The episode showed how mobile crowd-sourced data and tools like Waze can be helpful in a crisis. Read more »
Dave Gilboa, Warby Parker’s co-founder and co-CEO, said the future of its business and all retail will involve the blending of online and offline commerce. He said Warby Parker does more sales per square foot at its headquarters showroom than all retailers except for Apple. Read more »
Foursquare has said it’s gunning for Yelp and Google and now it has a 10-point rating system that shows how it will compete head-on in the local search and recommendation space. Read more »
WhatsApp, the huge mobile messaging app, has hit 100 million downloads on Google Play. The company is still not releasing overall mobile install numbers from its other five platforms. But the milestone shows why carriers are signing deals with it. Read more »
Ex-Huffington Post execs Ken Lerer and Eric Hippeau are finally out with their social video news app NowThis News. Will younger users find it more captivating than just flipping channels, or picking off videos from a user’s social stream? Read more at paidContent »
BillGuard, a crowd-sourced financial protection service that flags suspicious activity for consumers, is taking its services to mobile wallet app Lemon, which has 2.5 million users on iOS and Android. Now, Lemon users can check their balance on stored cards, see recent transactions and suspicious activity. Read more »
Spanish startup Spotbros is trying to muscle into the mobile messaging market with an app that combines location-based communications with rich web-like messages and extra security. The company has raised $500,000 from former Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo and other investors. Read more »
The market for mobile wallets is getting awfully crowded with Isis, the carrier joint venture joining the fray. But all of these options, which are not ubiquitous, are likely to create a lot of confusion for consumers and merchants slowing down the adoption of mobile payments. Read more »
Foursquare has released a heat-map of check-ins showing how Hurricane Sandy affected local traffic in Manhattan. The southern half of the city, which suffered blackouts and flooding, took the brunt of it the impacts. Read more »
App analytics and advertising firm is raising $25 million from Crosslink Capital as it builds out internationally and looks at a possible IPO by the second half of 2013. The company is riding the boom in mobile as more consumers turn to smartphones and tablets. Read more »
Android Police has gotten a hold of a leaked version of a new Google Wallet which suggests the company is preparing to release physical Google Wallet cards to work alongside its NFC-based mobile payment system. Read more »
PayPal is trying to lure in customers with new holiday promotions that allow shoppers to get pricing matching, free return shipping and free six-month financing. The deals apply to sales online, at eBay sites and in-store. Read more »
Design site Fab is getting festive with new holiday shops that help people find the right gift for the holidays. The new shops caps off a huge year of growth for Fab, which is now up to 9 million members. Read more »
AT&T and T-Mobile have signed a roaming deal that lets their customers in New York and New Jersey make calls on which ever network is strongest in their area. The deal helps customers who are struggling with poor service in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. Read more »
New York co-working spaces and startups are opening their doors to workers who are either displaced from their offices or can’t get to work because of the crippled transit system. Read more »
Crowd-sourced mapping and navigation app Waze is getting a lot more social by allowing people to share their location, request rides and see which friends are navigating to the same place. The service is now up to 29 million users. Read more »
Kickstarter launched its UK site Wednesday with about 200 projects, part of a larger planned international expansion. Now U.K. creators can begin using Kickstarter to fund their creative projects. Read more »
Google is releasing an updated search app for iOS devices that allows users to ask their questions by voice and get quick responses, many of them spoken back to users. It doesn’t replicate everything Siri does but it also provides more answers. Read more »
Nokia is launching the Nokia Ad Exchange to help developers monetize their apps through in-app advertising. Using technology from Inneractive, developers can advertise easily on Nokia phones but also on iOS, Android and BlackBerry. Read more »
ItsOn, a startup founded by wireless gurus Greg Raleigh and Charles Giancarlo, is coming out of stealth mode with $15 million in funding from Andreessen Horowitz and SV Angel. The company is creating a cloud platform that allows operators to offer tailored data plans for consumers. Read more »
Fancy, a social discovery and shopping site that competes with Pinterest, has raised $26.4 million according to a new filing with American Express vice chairman Ed Gillespie joining the board of Thing Daemon, the company behind Fancy. Read more »
PayPal is letting go of 325 full time employees and 120 contractors as part of its restructuring under new CEO David Marcus. Marcus has been trying to make PayPal a more nimble organization built around mobile. Read more »
Smartphones are from Mars, tablets are from Venus. Well, not exactly. But new data from Flurry shows how usage differs between the two devices and how consumers turn to them for different needs. Read more »
Freemium app revenue is now dominating premium for developers on both iOS and Android, said App Annie. The analytics firm said that freemium apps generate 69 percent of the worldwide iOS app revenue and 75 percent of global Android app revenues. Read more »
Marissa Mayer, Yahoo’s new CEO, made her first acquisition: Stamped, a mobile recommendation app. The details were not released but it appears this was a talent acquisition. The Stamped employees will form a new mobile product team for Yahoo. Read more »
Triposo, a maker of smart downloadable travel guides, has updated its app to version 2.0, which allows users to bookmark places on their iPad and then retrieve them on their iPhone or Android device. They can also create a journal of their travels while offline. Read more »
Lerer Ventures, an early stage New York investment firm, has announced a $36 million fund, its third, which will help it pump more money into the local technology community. The firm has backed more than 130 startups since launching two years ago. Read more »
The first reviews are in for Microsoft’s Surface, its first attempt at making personal computer hardware. Though reviewers mostly like the Surface hardware, with its keyboard cover and kickstand, the software is another story. Read more »
UPDATED: Room rental service Airbnb confirmed its Series B fundraising round from last year in a filing with the SEC. The company is been rumored to be raising a big $100+ million round at a possible valuation of $2.5 billion. Read more »
Square is launching in Canada Wednesday, its first international market. Merchants in Canada will be able to take credit card payments through their iPhone, iPad or Android device. Read more »
Facebook’s mobile monetization efforts are just getting going but the company said it is now getting 14 percent of its ad revenue from mobile. That’s not where Facebook wants to be ultimately, but it’s a promising start, said CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Read more »
Facebook reported third-quarter earnings Tuesday, posting revenue of $1.26 billion and earnings of $0.12 per share, which were slightly above analyst expectations. The company said 14 perent of its advertising revenue in the quarter came from mobile. Read more »
InfoArmy, a startup that creates crowd-sourced competitive intelligence reports for the iPad, has raised $17.3 million from Norwest Venture partners and Trinity Ventures. InfoArmy was founded Jim Fowler, who sold his previous startup Jigsaw to Salesforce for $175. Read more »
Google is working on an update to Google Wallet and it may include support for the iPhone. New users who request an invite to the next version of Google Wallet are asked what phone they use: Android, iPhone or other. Read more »
Square is growing like a weed and that means only one thing: new digs. It has signed a lease for a new headquarters building in San Francisco, a block away from Twitter. Square expects to have nearly 1,000 employees by the end of next year. Read more »
After missing its planned summer launch, mobile payment joint venture Isis is now finally live in its first two test cities of Austin and Salt Lake City. Users can try out Isis on nine handsets from Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile. Read more »
Mobile developers are getting a new cloud-based development tool called Icenium that allows them to build cross-platform hybrid apps without having to download a traditional integrated development environment. With Icenium, developers can build for iOS or Android from any computer. Read more »
