2012: On Track for Record Setting Year for Music Downloads

CRM provider Nimble today launched the 3.0 version of its platform. New features include search improvements, a signals screen, and more social integration. [Source: Nimble]

Free VPN service HotSpot Shield has crossed over 10 million downloads. In addition, it is growing at a rate of around 1.5 million new downloads per month. [Source: TechCrunch]

Open-plan offices are the latest fad in interior design, what with their promises of increased serendipity and total transparency and other kinda-cute notions that make employers feel better about having workers come in beyond the supposed 40-hour work week. Now Quartz has compiled a list of ways open-plan offices are actually kinda shitty, from increased distractions to the cesspools of disease and frustration that they really are.

[Source: Quartz]

The Onion has published a cartoon depicting ride-sharing services as a communistic Grim Reaper threatening the darling baby representing our “precious way of life.” Looks like you’ve finally made it, UberX, Lyft, SideCar, GetTaxi, Zipcar, and every other ride-sharing startup!

[Source: The Onion]

Pandora has announced new “Pandora Premieres” stations that will allow users to listen to full albums up to one week before their official release in the US, the company has announced. The service actually sounds less like Pandora and more like Spotify in that it allows users to listen to tracks in whatever order they would like, for as often as they would like, without restrictions.

[Source: Pandora]

Newly-appointed Intel CEO Brian Krzanich has created a “new devices” division and restructured other “key business groups,” Reuters reports.

[Source: Reuters]

Postmaster, a startup seeking to improve shipping processes with the REST API, has raised a $600,000 round from Capital Factory, Cloud Power, and Zelkova Ventures, TechCrunch reports.

[Source: TechCrunch]

About.me has introduced a premium product that will allow users to pay $4 per month to remove the About.me branding from their pages, view Google Analytics for the page, and more.

[Source: AllThingsD]

Sports team management platform TeamSnap has acquired athlete social network WePlay, and its 2.25 million users, for an undisclosed sum. TeamSnap is backed by $4.3 million in venture funding, but WePay took in $15 million over its five years. [Source: SoCalTech]

Online petition site Change.org has raised $15 million from Pierre Omidyar and his wife Pam’s firm Omidyar Network. The six-year-old company has not taken on outside capital before and is not a non-profit, though Omidyar says his minority stake does not anticipate an exit. [Source: All Things D]

Uncovet, an LA-based fashion deals and discovery site, raised $1.3M from Javelin Venture Partners, Siemer Ventures, and Paige Craig. The company is also backed by Science, Inc. [Source: SocialTech]

Portland, Ore.-based Orchestrate.io has raised $3 million in seed funding led by True Ventures with contributions from Frontline Ventures and Resonant Venture Partners. The company’s software provides an API that customers can use to send data from multiple databases. [Source: GigaOm]

HasOffers, mobile advertising attribution tool, has raised $9.4M in a round of funding led by Accel Partners, with participation by Rob Glaser, founder of RealNetworks, and Chris DeVore of Founder’s Co-op. The company has bootstrapped itself to 79 employees to this point. [Source: HasOffers]

Brightpearl a provider of cloud for integrating orders, inventory and customer data for retailers, raised an $8 million Series B financing, co-led by Eden Ventures and Notion Capital. [Source: Brightpearl]

Adaptive Planning, a business analytics software company, has raised $45 million in a new round of VC funds led by Bessemer Venture Partners with participation from existing backers ONSET Ventures, Norwest Venture Partners, RBC Venture Partners, Cardinal Venture Capital, and Monitor Ventures. [Source: Adaptive Planning]

Google will soon unveil a Chrome OS Web app launcher for the Mac, according to a Google+ post from engineer François Beaufort. Users can try the app launcher in beta by installing Chromium. [Source: The Verge]

London-based edtech company Edxus Group has said it will spend up to $77 million over the next year and a half to develop and buy e-learning businesses in Europe that will give it to scale to compete against American edtech players. Edxus’s move mirrors similar strategies from US edtech companeis Pearson, Blackboard, Macmillan, Kaplan, and McGraw-Hill. [Source: TechCrunch]

ConsultingMD, which launched last year to help patients get second opinions from specialists via the Web, has announced today that it has raised $10 million Series B funding from Venrock. The startup was founded by Reputation.com co-founder Owen Tripp and Dr Lawrence Hofmann, chief of interventional radiology at Stanford Hospital. [Source: TechCrunch]

Mobile chat app MessageMe has passed 5 million users two months since it launched. The startup has also confirmed that it has closed $10 million of funding, building on the $1.9 million round it announced in late 2012. Its new round was led by Greylock Partners, an existing investor. [Source: The Next Web]

Cross-platform video game engine Unity has made its mobile tools free for small and independent studios. While Unity has provided free PC, Mac, and Web tools for indie developers since 2009, developers have until now had to pay $400 to release the game on either Android or iOS. [Source: Unity]

Spotify has launched a “top 50″ songs chart for the most-listened-to and the most-shared tracks on the platform each week. The charts are available for, and sortable by, Spotify’s 28 markets and are updated every Monday at noon EST. The charts are also embeddable. [Source: Spotify]