Smart: YC-Backed Picplum Targets Parents with Photo Printing and Sharing Service


WHAT: High-end photo printing and shipping to friends and family on an as-needed or monthly basis. Cost is based on how many people you send to: $7 per recipient for 15 4x6 photos, or about $0.47 per print. Picplum's target market is parents of young children.

LAUNCHERS: Paul Stamatiou and Akshay Dodeja. Paul previously co-founded two startups, one of which (Notifo) went through Y Combinator's winter '10 class. Akshay founded electronic dance music site Mugasha.

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Google+ Giving Four Days' Grace Period to Potential Name Policy Violators


After heated discussions about Google's name policy -- which requires people on Google+ to use their real name and not a pseudonym -- Google will now give potential violators four days to comply before suspending their account.

Saurabh Sharma, a product manager on the Google+ team, says in a YouTube video that those notified about a name-policy violation will be able to use their Google+ account during the grace period "as usual" adding, "We're hoping that most affected users will able to quickly fix their profile name while enjoying all that Google+ has to offer." [ Note that the creepy giraffe is back in the video.]

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RunKeeper Blows Past 6M Registered Users


Over 6M people now have RunKeeper accounts to track and share their workouts -- triple the number since November 2010 -- and just 30% of them are in the U.S., CEO and co-founder Jason Jacobs told LAUNCH.

Growth exploded when the Boston-based, three-year-old company made its $10 Pro app free on Dec. 30, 2010, despite being a top-10 grossing health and fitness app in the iPhone store last year.

"Although we did forgo a lot of short-term download revenue, it's not about the short term for us," says Jason, who points out the company has not touched any of the $1.5M raised so far "because revenues are scaling faster than expenses."

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Start-Up Chile Entrepreneur Tear-Gassed as Students Riot (video)


With Chilean high school and university students planning to protest in central Santiago this evening despite government warnings not to, the Start-Up Chile office advised its startups and then closed the office at 4:30pm local time.

Start-Up Chile is a government program that gives foreign entrepreneurs $40K and a one-year visa and takes no equity in exchange for them bootstrapping their startup in the country.

American entrepreneur Marshall Haas, in Chile for the program since early June, was working from home today but tweeted frequently about the clash between riot police and students. He ventured too close to the action out of his own curiosity and got tear-gassed (see his video and photo above).

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Better for the Planet than Farmville -- SimpleEnergy Makes Saving Energy a Game


WHAT: Reduce individuals' energy consumption with game mechanics. Customers see how their usage compares to those of their friends and share their achievements on Facebook. Rewards include prizes like iPads and even electric cars. SimpleEnergy gets context about customers (e.g., house size) from city records and factors in weather conditions when alerting people about their usage trends.

Available only to customers of utilities that work with SimpleEnergy and those who buy a third-party device that attaches to their meter (about $200).

LAUNCHERS: Yoav Lurie, CEO [ @yoavlurie, LinkedIn ]. Justin Segall, EVP [ @JustSegall, LinkedIn ]. Chris Ennis, VP [ @ChrisEnnis, LinkedIn  ].

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With 20K Listings, Flextrip Takes on Tours -- Another Travel Market Ripe for Disruption



WHAT: Online travel companies add tours and activities to their site with Flextrip's API, which has over 20K listings. Consumers can go directly to consumer site to search for and book tours. Supply is global and activities include indoor and outdoor, one-day and multi-day.

LAUNCHERS: Leith Stevens, CEO [ @leithstevens, LinkedIn ]. Alex Kremer, COO [ @axk,
LinkedIn ]. Andrew Glover, CTO [ @ajglover ].

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Brands Winning: GoSpotCheck Reinvents Secret Shopper with Crowd-sourced Missions

 


WHAT: Brands get real-time insights into their in-store merchandising when GoSpotCheck's crowd-sourced workforce go on brand-directed “missions” like taking pictures of a product’s shelf positioning.

LAUNCHERS: Matt Talbot, CEO [ @MattTalbot, LinkedIn  ]. Samantha Holloway, head of customer insights [ @SamBHolloway, LinkedIn ]. Joey Alfano, head of mission control [ @JoeyAlfano, LinkedIn ]. Bart Ciak, head of technology [ @BartCiak, LinkedIn ].

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Airbnb's New Safety Features: Verified Phone Numbers, Connections to Twitter and LinkedIn


In the wake of what's now dubbed Ransackgate, Airbnb has just announced more safety features, including verified phone numbers and the ability to connect your member profile to LinkedIn and Twitter. Integration with Photo Booth allows members to take photos with their webcams within Airbnb.

The news appeared on Airbnb's blog this afternoon and in a promoted tweet.

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With Fortune 50 Clients and $1M+ in Revenue, Affectiva Proves Market for Measuring Emotion

WHAT: Tools for measuring emotion in research and business outside a lab. The Q Sensor, worn on the wrist, measures emotional arousal, temperature and activity (will soon have streaming capabilities). Affdex uses a webcam to read facial expressions and can determine whether someone likes or is paying attention to the commercial or movie trailer she is watching.

LAUNCHERS: Co-founders are Rana el Kaliouby (CTO) and Rosalind Picard (chief scientist and leader in affective computing). CEO David Berman helped build WebEx, which Cisco acquired.

WHY: Testing in lab is more invasive, labor-intensive and expensive. Marketers can measure actions but cannot assess emotion. Webcams capture good-quality video and are ubiquitous. Emotional data can be used in social networking and gaming.

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Google Hands Justice Department Antitrust Gold -- Invests in WhaleShark Media


The day after Google acquired Dealmap, which shows Groupon-like deals on Google maps, its venture arm Google Ventures invested in Austin-based coupon/deal marketplace WhaleShark Media.

Given Google’s failed attempt to buy Groupon and the U.S. Justice Department's interest in Google's search practices, to what extent will Google incorporate Whale Shark's offers into its search results?

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Famous for Getting Charlie Sheen on Twitter, Ad.ly Launches Open-Source Analytics Software


WHAT: Matches brands with celebrities to start conversations about the brand and drive clicks, mainly on Twitter (paid, in-stream messages not allowed on Facebook). Target audiences include moms, sports fans, teen boys and girls, and men and women ages 18 to 34. Celebrities pick brands and approve copy, Ad.ly delivers the endorsement. Must have at least 25K followers to be accepted to platform.

Blingalytics, which Ad.ly developed for its own real-time business intelligence needs, is open-source software for tracking social engagement and creating custom reports. Also integrates with financial software for billing and revenue reporting. Built in Python.



LAUNCHER: Arnie Gullov-Singh, CEO, is a former Fox and Yahoo executive.

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Nodejitsu Takes on Heroku and Joyent as Node.js Goes Mainstream


WHAT: Cloud hosting for Node.js applications and websites, individuals to enterprises. Because Nodejitsu's platform is open-source, customers can use any cloud computing provider or their own hardware. Also, Nodejitsu focuses on the "user-land" part of Node.js, meaning everything outside the language's core functionality.

Coming soon: marketplace for Node.js apps so people can customize their Node.js sites.

LAUNCHERS:  Charlie Robbins (CEO), Marak Squires (chief evangelist), Paolo Fragomeni (CTO). All are developers.

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Sergey Brin Surfs at Google+ Beach Party -- "I'd +1 that"


Google is riding the wave of success today -- the Google+ team got treated to a "beach party" outside their building. Even Sergey got in the wave pool for a little surfing action.

Larry Page, Bradley Horowitz and Vic Gundotra -- who do not attend every Google event -- took part as well, showing the importance of Google+.

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Google+ Allows Users to Reorder Their Circles -- and Adds Creepy Giraffe


In response to user feedback, Google+ now allows you to drag and drop your circles in the order you would like them -- not the order Google+ sets.

The new order appears in your list of circles on your left nav and in the drop-down menu when you add someone to a circle.

Google+ engineer Brett van Zuiden announced the change on his Google+ page and explains it in a 47-second video, which ends with the appearance of a stuffed giraffe -- perhaps related to the "zookeeper" circle moved around in the demo.




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Barack Obama Spamming the Hell out of Twitter


With the deadline for raising the nation's debt ceiling closing in, President Barack Obama has flooded his @BarackObama stream this morning with tweets directed at voters in every state (in alphabetical order) to ask their Republican reps in Congress "support a bipartisan compromise to deficit reduction." Tweets include the handles for members in that state.

UPDATE: As of 2:30pm Pacific Time, @BarackObama had sent 109 tweets about the debt ceiling stand-off.

Dave Morin of Path.com tweeted that he loves this approach: "The future of political media is social. It just took a couple of years :)"

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