LAUNCH Blog

LAUNCH Blog

Written by: Megan

Nimble Is Free No More, Launching CRM Platform at $15 Per User Monthly for Businesses

Nimble, the social CRM company that lets you monitor your Gmail, calendar, Facebook, Twitter and other social accounts, is set to publicly launch in January 2012 at a price slightly hire than expected.

"As you know, Nimble has been free during our testing phase," CEO Jon Ferrara writes to users. "We wanted to wait until Nimble was something worth paying for...something truly helpful in growing a business."

While a free single-user version of Nimble for basic social relationship management will still be available, businesses who use Nimble as a team will have to pay $15 per user per month...

Google Search Makes Graphing Math Functions Easy and Free

Students can now plot mathematical functions including trigonometric, exponential and logarithmic, using Google search.

Simply type in a function and Google will show you an interactive graph at the tip of the search results page. You can zoom in and out across the plane to explore the function in more detail and also plot multiple functions.

"I still recall the day when my friend Yossi came to school and showed off his brand new graphing calculator," Google Engineer Adi Avidor writes on the Google Inside Search blog. "I was stunned by how easy it was to plot complicated functions -- meanwhile, the rest of us were still drawing them by hand on graph paper."

While there are a number of free and paid mobile apps that function like...

Is @TwitterMusic Faking its 256K+ Followers?

@TwitterMusic, a verified account on Twitter, has 260K+ followers but the vast majority don't have any tweets, followers or photos which makes us wonder if Twitter is faking its followers?

The @TwitterMusic handle, which first tweeted on Oct. 17, seems to be a Twitter-owned account because we doubt Twitter would verify a fake account. While @TwitterMusic does have seemingly legitimate followers, such as @hanaofangel with a Klout score of 57 and @MikeyS809 with a Klout score of 41, in addition to having a spot on the @TheGRAMMYs/grammynoms list, many of the handles other followers have little to no Klout.

LAUNCH has contacted Twitter via email, Twitter and phone and will update this story if we hear back from them.

Other users following @TwitterMusic include @RahmiSoq, who...

Gowalla Acquisition Means Better-Looking Apps for Facebook

Facebook has acquired social guides service Gowalla for an undisclosed amount, a source close to Gowalla told CNN Money, which partnered with Gowalla back in 2010.

This is certainly an admission that despite a lot of effort, Facebook's mobile products are simply not as elegant an well-designed as those of Instagram, Gowalla and the new Path. Gowalla, which is known for superior design and UX, partnered with Facebook in August 2010 when Facebook launched Places.

As part of the acquisition...

Facebook Boosts New York's Startup Cred -- Here's Why NYC Is So Hot

[ Image courtesy of fotopedia.com via creative commons license. ]

When Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced Facebook's New York engineering office earlier today, the Big Apple saw its startup cred go up more than a few notches.

Facebook's first East Coast office for engineering is set to open in early 2012 with long-time engineer Serkan Piantino heading it up. No word yet on how many engineers it will hire, but 15 positions are currently open. Facebook will join -- and compete with -- top New York born-and-raised startups like Tumblr, Etsy, Kickstarter, Gilt Groupe and foursquare.

New York-based Hunch co-founder Chris Dixon, whose company eBay just acquired, tweeted, "Congrats to Serkan & Facebook. Awesome guy & great for NYC.

Gilt Groupe retweeted Bloomberg's note, and Foursquare appears to have...

Social Travel Engine Tripl Lets You Pimp Your Profile

Travel recommendation network Tripl lets you add trips, recommend people to see worldwide and earn points based on how global you are.

Sweden-based Tripl went live in September but recently revamped its service with the addition of profiles that feature a bio line, trip timeline, showcase of services like Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr, and passion and interest tags.

When you first sign up, Tripl asks you to...

It's About Time: Spotify iPad App Is Coming Soon

[ Spotify for iPad concept image courtesy of Cult of Mac. ]

Spotify is reportedly currently working on an iPad app and should be coming out soon, Spotify's UK Media Director Chris Mapes told Pocket-lint in an exclusive interview.

Maples says that the iPad app is "a priority" and "absolutely in the pipeline." He also hinted that Spotify might follow Amazon's lead and manufacture its own hardware for music playback.

"At the moment we're absolutely not a manufacturing business but if consumers demand something cool that we should create ourselves and we think we could do it better than anyone else, who knows?" Mapes says.

The Spotify apps, which were just announced yesterday, are only...

Google+ Goes After Skype, Adds Voice Calling to Hangouts

For people who don't use Google+ or simply don't quite understand how to Hangout, you can now communicate with those people via a voice calling feature in Hangouts with extras.

"We are constantly listening to feedback so that we can make Hangouts even better for Google+ users, and we're excited by the really cool ways people are using the product," Jarkko Oikarinen writes on Google+. "Today we’re making it possible to make phone calls from inside a hangout, so you can dial people into the room from wherever they’re at. (Helpful for party lines and conference calls alike.)"

To use the free feature, visit Hangouts with Extras to make a call to anyone in the US or Canada but to make an international call, you must use your Google Voice account. From the top of the Hangouts window, click Invite and then Phone.

Skype, on the other hand...

(RED) and ONE Use Klout to Get Influential People to Fight AIDS

In observance of World AIDS Day today, Klout teamed up with (RED) and ONE to offer influential people a chance to fight AIDS by 2015. As long as you have a Klout score of 10+, you can be one of the first people to add your panel to the digital (2015)Quilt.

"We're very excited to be a part of this initiative with (RED) and ONE to fight for an AIDS Free Generation," Klout Senior Marketing Manager Megan Berry tells LAUNCH via email. "This Perk is one of our most open and we expect the numbers to grow exponentially today as we push it out further."

(RED) and ONE International are two organizations designed to help prevent and eliminate AIDS. As the Klout blog states, 1K babies are born with HIV every day and by 2015, that number could be zero.

Since the (2015)QUILT represents everyone who is fighting to end AIDS by generation 2015, anyone with Klout of 10+ -- the default Klout score -- can participate. We asked Klout how many users have made panels, but Megan says they will report numbers at the end of the campaign.

[ See screen shots after the jump. ]

Digital Wine Journal Grapeshare Launches, But Will it Succeed Unlike Cork'd?

Wine connoisseurs now have another digital place to share the wines they love with Grapeshare.

"We're building Grapeshare to be a place for wine enthusiasts to track their experiences with wine and share them with others mostly because we couldn't find anything that worked the way we envisioned," Grapeshare CEO Spicer Matthews tells LAUNCH. "So, in a way we're not like...

First Look: Spotify with Music Discovery Apps and Google-like Search

If you don't feel like waiting for Spotify to launch its revamped platform, you can download the beta version to start using apps right now.

Currently, there are 11 apps available for music discovery in the App Finder, such as Rolling Stone, Wearehunted, Pitchfork, Fuse and Songkick Concerts. Some of our favorites are Last.fm, Soundrop and Moodagent.

Last.fm is awesome for music recommendations based on music you've liked in the past. What's even better is that you can then create a playlist based on those recommendations to access on Spotify.

As you listen to music on Spotify, the Last.fm app provides information like artist bios and similar tracks playlists.

Soundrop lets you create a music spot where you add a playlist to listen to with friends. Who needs to go to Turntable.fm when you can listen to music with your friends on Spotify?

[ See screen shots after the jump. ]

Will Developers Create Apps for Spotify If They Can't Make Money from Them?

Now that music apps like TuneWiki, Pitchfork, Songkick and Rolling Stone are emerging on Spotify, we wonder if developers and brands will flock to Spotify.

In the "What's Next for Spotify" event today, Spotify CEO and founder Daniel Ek said that while developers won't get any revenue from their apps, they can get value in earning clout simply by being visible on the Spotify platform.

Now, any developer can build an HTML5 app for Spotify's desktop version. But similar to the Apple App Store process, Spotify will approve each app before making it available on the platform. Unlike Apple and Android, however, all of the apps will be free meaning that developers still cant monetize apps on the platform.

While Spotify apps could pose a threat to Apple, Amazon and Google, the...

"What's Next for Spotify?" Live Blog

Spotify is gearing up to most likely announce Facebook-style apps and an open app platform to developers, but we expect there's more to come at Spotify's first-ever press event in New York. Follow the live blog below.

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The band, named Fun, performance at Spotify. Image courtesy of Mashable.

[9:55] Up-and-coming artists are now performing at the Spotify event. Unfortunately, the Ustream feed went down and we can no longer see the event.

[9:52] A: "We pay every time someone plays a song and we feel that's a great model because obviously there's value created whenever someone listens to a song," Daniel says. They pay out vast majority of all the revenues.

[9:51] Q: What do feel as you scale in terms of number of users in regards to...

Spotify Will Offer Apps and Open Platform to Developers

Spotify is about to start offering Facebook-style apps and open its app platform to developers, according to The Wall Street Journal.

"When it starts on Wednesday, the "app finder" is likely to include reviews from magazines and blogs that allow users to listen to albums as they read reviews, the people say," the article states. "One app will display lyrics as a song plays, while another will generate a list of upcoming concerts by artists in a user's Spotify playlists and offer links to buy tickets."

As The Verge notes, Spotify has tried to appeal to developers in the past by offering the libspotify set of APIs to integrate Spotify music into other apps.

Leading up to the "What's Next for Spotify" event...

Can Facebook Get You a Job? (Infographic)

Many people associate modern day job searches with LinkedIn more than Facebook, but according to a recent study by Jobvite, 18.4M Americans say Facebook helped get them a job, while only 10.2M Americans say LinkedIn got them their job.

As an infographic from MBA Online shows, the number of people who found jobs because of Facebook is more than the populations of New York City and Los Angeles combined. The number of people who reported getting jobs because of LinkedIn, on the other hand, comes out to a little more than the state of Michigan.

"The days of printing out a stack of résumés and handing them out at job fairs are definitely over," the infographic states. "Social media is the new 24/7 job fair, providing amazing ways to constantly stay on the radar of prospective employers, but many people still don't know how to utilize it."

[ See full infographic after the jump. ]

Google Says Good-Bye to Black Navigation Bar, Introduces "Google Bar" with Rollover Menu

Just when you were getting used to Google's ubiquitous black navigation bar, Google has decided it's time for the "next stage" of their redesign, which means removing the black bar, pushing up the wide light-gray bar you already have and making your Docs, Calendar, etc. accessible from a rollover menu that appears when you mouse over the Google logo. The idea is that you'll have the same bar in exactly the same place as you navigate from Gmail to Docs to Reader to Maps.

The explanatory video says the black bar takes up precious space on your screen. Yeah, but that gray bar is even fatter, so why is that staying -- and not shrinking?

We first caught a glimpse of the new navigation bar in October, thanks to...

A Cute Waste of Paper? Little Printer Is Like AOL's Editions without the Screen

Hello Little Printer, available 2012 from BERG on Vimeo.

Little Printer by BERG Cloud condenses and curates content from foursquare, Google, The Guardian, Nike and Arup to print content twice a day like headlines, weather reports, puzzles, to-do lists and more.

Editions by AOL is a personalized magazine, similar to Zite and Flipboard, that virtually delivers content to your iPad daily. Little Printer, on the other hand, delivers personalized content via good old-fashioned paper.

"The act of printing--committing to paper--makes a statement, so you want to be sure that what you print is important," BERG CEO Matt Webb told Fast Code Design. "What we concentrate on now is density of information or delight. Great publications are...

Google Maps Takes a Stab at Bing with Indoor Maps Feature for Airports and Malls

Starting today, Android users with Google Maps 6.0 can navigate through 60+ airports, shopping malls and other retail stores throughout the US and Japan.

While search competitor Bing has offered floor plans for select malls since 2010 for desktop users, it does not let users track where they currently are in stores. Despite now offering 400+ mall floor plans on mobile devices, it does not work with the native apps for iOS and Android, but rather only on Bing's mobile site.

"When you’re inside an airport, shopping mall or retail store, a common way to figure out where you are is to look for a freestanding map directory or ask an employee for help," the Google blog states. "Starting today, with the release of Google Maps 6.0 for Android, that directory is brought to the palm of your hands, helping you determine where you are, what floor you're on, and where to go indoors."

Detailed floor plans now automatically appear when you're viewing the map and zoomed in on a building or store that has indoor map data available. And if you use Latitude, you can...

Did Google+ Copy Diaspora* or Vice Versa?

Diaspora* and Google+.

With the recent launch of Diaspora*, it appears that either Google or Diaspora* were inspired by the other when creating privacy features that let users decide which groups of people to share content with, as Diaspora*'s Aspects are quite similar in functionality to Google+'s Circles.

Earlier this week, Diaspora* posted to its Google+ page, "Why Diaspora looks like Google+? Ask to Google," which is accompanied by an image since Diaspora* has Aspects while Google+ has Circles. [ See image after the jump. ]

"There’s been big news in the social networking world recently, and we can’t help but be pleased with the impact our work has had on two of the biggest developments," the Diaspora* blog stated in September. "We’re proud that Google+ imitated...

Google Catalogs Android App Arrives on Cyber Monday

Just in time for Cyber Monday, which had sales exceeding $1B last year, Google has released its Google Catalogs app for Android, though it has offered the app for iPad since August.

"With rich product images, videos, and the ability to curate your own personal collages to share with friends, Google Catalogs makes browsing your favorite mail order catalogs easy, fun and interactive," Google Business Product Manager Abigail Holtz writes on the Google blog.

The app features 400+ digital catalogs from 125+ brands including Nordstrom, Williams-Sonoma, Nike, Urban Outfitters, Bloomingdales, Patagonia, Ugg and Sephora. Shoppers can...