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Facebook’s Rooms app gets a curated ‘Explore’ feature

Dec17
by on December 17, 2014 at 4:37 pm
Posted In: Apps, Around the Web, Product Updates

Facebook is rolling out a small but notable update to its topic-based discussions app for iOS, Rooms today. ‘Explore’ highlights rooms created within the app that you may want to join. The Rooms team says on its blog that it has “been wonderfully surprised by the breadth of topics that are connecting people.” Still, some people may have tried the app and never come back (be honest, a lot us did that with most of Facebook’s spinoff apps, right?), so this is a good way of showing off some of what Facebook considers is the best content on offer. The update hasn’t rolled out yet…

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Ex-Hulu CEO unveils Vessel, a video subscription service featuring YouTube stars

Dec17
by on December 17, 2014 at 4:27 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, Insider, Product Launches

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After departing from Hulu back in Q1 of 2013, former CEO Jason Kilar has unveiled his latest project: Vessel, a video subscription service featuring content creators and media brands. The service is aimed toward viewers who follow YouTube stars and other internet personalities like Marcus Butler, Ingrid Nilsen and Shawn Dawson. Actor Alec Baldwin has also reportedly agreed to produce a Web series titled “Love Ride,” where he’ll dish relationship advice for couples during their taxi ride together. The subscription service will launch in early 2015 as a two-tier service: an ad-supported free version and a $2.99 monthly subscription for fewer ads…

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ChatGrape launches iOS app as it prepares to take on messaging juggernauts

Dec17
by on December 17, 2014 at 4:00 pm
Posted In: Apps, Around the Web, Insider

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The business chat space is heating up right now. Slack’s explosive growth in popularity just shows how prime the space is for disruption, but it’s not the only company making waves in the business messaging space. ChatGrape, a European startup, hopes to take on heavyweights like Slack, HipChat and Flowdock with its own spin on business chat. The company is relatively new — only founded in January 2014 — but said it looked at the market and “realized that all the existing tools really are just better looking versions of a 20 year old IRC chat standard, with very little…

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BlackBerry officially announces the Classic, a QWERTY-toting productivity-focused smartphone

Dec17
by on December 17, 2014 at 3:36 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, Insider

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At an event in New York today, BlackBerry announced its newest device, the BlackBerry Classic. Harkening back to BlackBerry’s strongest days of yore, the phone features a, well, classic QWERTY form-factor, running the company’s newest version of BlackBerry OS, version 10.3.1. Like the Passport before it, the phone features a square display. The screen is 3.5 inches diagonally, touchscreen-enabled, and comes with a 720 x 720 resolution (291ppi). There’s also an 8 megapixel rear camera, a 2 megapixel front facing one and the usual array of transmitters and sensors. Performance-wise, there’s a dual-core 1.5 GHz Adreno processor and 2GB of RAM on 16GB…

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Venturefund.io wants to help startups understand their traction, and invest in them too

Dec17
by on December 17, 2014 at 3:00 pm
Posted In: Apps, Around the Web, Insider, Product Launches

venturefund
We’ve seen a few innovations in approaches to venture capital in recent years – most popularly a service model, where VC firms offer ‘value adds’ like Google Ventures’ design sprint sessions or Index Ventures’ Index Network support system for portfolio companies. Actually finding the teams to invest in still generally remains the stuff of contacts and introductions, however. A new fund is looking to change that. VentureFund.io is a new Palo Alto-based early-stage fund that is taking an innovative approach to identifying potential investment oportunities  – an API. The free-to-use Traction API connects to a startup’s end-user app and presents data like acquisition, activation,…

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