Hello ,
This is the V1.0 of the Limedigest Pluggd.in newsletter where we bring you articles / insights from across the web. There is no bias towards a particular geography (although we might have a subconscious one as we are based in India) or towards a particular source. These are posts / articles which we have enjoyed reading and think will be relevant to you in varying degrees if you have any interest in technology. In some cases the posts are instantiations of the larger news stories themselves – and there might be better coverage for the same. The thought is to ensure you don’t miss out on the news itself.
As this is a nascent effort, we would greatly appreciate if you can send in your thoughts / comments to pratyush@limedigest.com to help us improve this further.
The articles in this newsletter are in no particular order or priority.
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In the last two weeks, most of the news was obviously dominated by Instagram and various analyses of the same. So for this newsletter we have purposely refrained from covering that subject
VCs Invested $5.8B In 758 Deals In Q1 2012, Total Dollars And Deals Both Down From Last Quarter
Venture capitalists invested $5.8 billion in 758 deals in the first quarter of 2012, according to a MoneyTree Report from PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP and the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA). The report shows that after a strong fourth quarter 2011, VC investment activity for the quarter fell 19 percent in terms of dollars and 15 percent in the number of deals compared to the fourth quarter of 2011 when $7.1 billion was invested in 889 deals
Comment: An indicator of times to come? Are VCs becoming more circumspect on the number and kind of investments - or is it just early year ennui?
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Evernote Raising $50 Million To $100 Million At A $1 Billion+ Valuation
Cloud note and storage app Evernote is raising a massive fifth round of funding of between $50 to $100 million at a valuation that tops $1 billion, according to our sources.
Comment: Evernote has been a great use case of cloud storage of notes and documents. How are they going to use this investment - position as competition for dropbox?
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7 Surprising Facts About Mobile Shoppers
As we all know, the spike in smartphone adoption is changing the way users interact with their mobile devices. For instance, phone calls are no longer the point of phones for many of us.
Instead, we expect our phones to perform more complicated tasks in shorter amounts of time, and we take them with us wherever we go. People also treat the smartphone as a first screen, rather than a second screen, because it’s the go-to device to instantly source real-time information like directions, prices, and reviews.
Comment: Are the shopping habits of users different when they use a desktop browser and a mobile phone? A not too deep but interesting survey on the mobile shopping habits.
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Xolo X900: Meet Intel's first smartphone & Intel based Lava XOLO X900 launched in India, Priced at Rs. 22,000
As expected, the first smartphone powered by an Intel processor launched this week: the Lava Xolo 900.
Intel and India-based Lava International today announced the general availability of the Xolo X900, built around the Intel Atom Z2460 processor. The phone will be available for purchase in the India market on April 23 at a street price of approximately 22,000 rupees, or about $420.
Comment: Intel integrates upstream with a play in phones. Will it also antagonise their customers who make phones? Will it fly?
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Here Are The 17 Radical Ideas From Google's Top Genius Conference That Could Change The World
Google just hosted a series of super high-level talks and invited about 50 entrepreneurs, innovators, and scientists to the deluxe CordeValle resort in the mountains south of San Jose.
They were going through some pretty radical ideas. The kind of stuff that could change the world.
Comment: While we are caught up with incremental developments - Google got some radical innovators talk about things that could change the world.
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What is PaaS all about? – Part 1: It’s all about Abstraction!, PaaS for enterprises is more than DevOps!, Cloud, PaaS and the Rise of the Visual Developers
Comment: A three part series on PaaS by Suresh Sambandam - good insights into the various aspects of PaaS.
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Gartner Says the Personal Cloud Will Replace the Personal Computer as the Center of Users’ Digital Lives by 2014
Gartner Special Report Examines How Businesses Must Meet Consumers’ Cloud Expectations in Order to Win Customers
Comment: A Gartner report on how cloud computing is going to change a lot of things in our digital lives. As with all analyst reports to be taken with a pinch of salt - but some good numbers to quote.
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Nokia May Be Down, But They’re Not Out & RIM unveils low-cost BlackBerry for developing markets
Comment: The old warhorses get out their best game - but is it enough to save them from the onslaught of the Apples and Androids?
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AT&T hopes to make Watson key element in mobile apps
Company will launch several Watson Speech APIs in June and will also offer up a software development kit for the speech recognition technology.
Comment: AT&T will expose some speech recognition APIs - if the promise is delivered, a lot of apps leveraging them should crop up - and maybe kill Siri? Original AT&T article here.
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Making money in mobile apps isn't easy: Majority of app developers are moonlighters
Mobile applications have a central place in the wireless industry but despite their pivotal role, most developers who create these apps find it very difficult to succeed in this business and even harder to make money at it.
Comment: Monetization has been a long pole for app developers. This interesting post talks about how developers resort to other sources of income in the interim.
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If Oracle wins its Android suit, everyone loses
Besides Google, biggest loser is free culture in general and open source in particular. Here's your guide to what's at stake
Comment: A great article on why the Oracle - Android battle is a bit of a sham and how a ruling could affect the general ecosystem as a whole.
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Some Thoughts about Selling at Startups & What Startups Need to Know About Marketing
Comment: Two good posts about the importance of Marketing and Sales at startups. Some good insights - especially for early stage startups!
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Expat scientist-entrepreneurs are relocating to India to offer cost-effective healthcare innovations
Global scientists of Indian-origin, who have made path-breaking discoveries in the field of healthcare, are moving to India to test, validate and market their innovations. Their aim is to provide handy, affordable solutions for the diagnosis and treatment of life-threatening diseases like cancer. Shiladitya Sengupta and his team, who developed technology to help in cancer treatment at Harvard-MIT division of the Health Sciences and Technology in Boston, have founded a start up - Invictus Oncology - in India.
Comment: Is India all about cost effective innovation? While this post talks about that aspect only (as a thought its beaten to death), the article delves into some other aspects which are often ignored - innovation for the market itself (cost aside)
And lastly - a great piece of insights on how to survive a startup & a great but long essay on Startups
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Four tips for startup survival
It’s not a pretty picture. While sixty-six percent of new businesses will survive to the two-year mark, less than half will reach four years. And how they reach those four years is less than inspiring. Most are working their tail off to just keep the lights on.
http://blakemasters.tumblr.com/post/20582845717/peter-thiels-cs183-startup-class-2-notes-essay
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This newsletter is edited by Pratyush Prasanna and is contributed to by Sameer Shishodia, Ashish and Parag Arora (supported by Pluggd.in team).
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