A town in Australia has been overrun by Lego-built foliage. The trees and flowers are built to exactly resemble their toy counterparts, but are 66 times larger than those children’s playthings. Check out a photo at the source. (And yes, we know that everyone outside of the US refers to “Legos” as “LEGO” at all times. Substitute as appropriate.) [Source: Lego]
Fast Company reports that Not Another Bill, a subscription e-commerce service that, like so many others, promises to “bring a bit of magic back to the postal service,” has launched. So if you have yet to find joy in getting the mail from Dollar Shave Club, or Birchbox, or any other “you subscribe, we ship” service, well, your options have just expanded.
[Source: Fast Company]
Samsung has announced new display technologies that it promises will offer better color reproduction and pixel density than displays currently available. In addition to offering a better picture, Samsung claims that the displays are more power-efficient than other tech.
[Source: Samsung]
Features from Google Voice, the telephony service from Google, will be making their way to the company’s new messaging platform, Hangouts. Users will soon be able to make calls from their Web browser via the Hangouts application.
[Source: Google]
“After 3 and a half years of fusing my self-worth with the success of the company in the crucible of startup survival, it was impossible to tear them apart without pain. But while my first reaction was disappointment and failure, it was almost immediately washed away by a wave of relief. I knew change was inevitable, but I had no idea how stressful and exhausting maintaining my internal reality distortion field had been until they gave me permission to turn it off.”
— Awe.Sm founder Jonathan Strauss on replacing yourself as CEO
Statistical analytics startup Alteryx has raised $12 million in an extended Series A round led by Toba Capital with participation from existing investor SAP Capital. The company wants to be the place where analysts and data scientists can blend their data, model it, and visualize it. The company also offers a gallery of prebuilt analytics models. [Source: GigaOM]
Nokia descendent Jolla is accepting pre-orders its first smartphone running the Sailfish OS today. The €399 smartphone has 4.5-inch “Estrade” display, an unspecified dual-core processor, 16GB of internal storage plus a microSD slot, an 8-megapixel rear camera, and can run Android apps. Orders will be fulfilled at the end of 2013. [Source: Jolla]
Educational market focused computer maintenance startup Neverware has raised $1 million from Thrive Capital, Khosla Ventures, General Catalyst, Collaborative Fund, and Nihal Mehta. The company charges schools a monthly fee to maintain the performance of aging computers with the goal of extending their usefulness and saving costs. [Source: TechCrunch]
The two largest forces in mobile food ordering, Seamless and GrubHub, have announced their merger. The combined companies cover 20,000 restaurants in more than 500 cities, and collectively processed $875 million in food sales last year. The deal is still subject to regulator approval. GrubHub CEO Matt Maloney will lead the combined company, which could see a dramatic reduction in its customer and merchant acquisition costs. [Source: GrubHub]
Carrier billing platform-maker Payvia has acquired Los Angeles-based mobile marketing startup Mogreet. Pauvia has 120 million clients and processed more than $2 billion in payments in its lifetime. Mogreet had raised $14 million in three rounds of venture financing. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. [Source: PayVia]
“Tumblr may not drive revenue (today), but it’ll increase Yahoo’s traffic by an enormous multiplier. Tumblr may not be directly rebranded as a Yahoo property, but it’ll increase the brand-value and mindshare of Yahoo exponentially. And Tumblr may not be the blogging platform of choice for professionals, but it’s veritably filled with young, taste-making people.”
Hulu, which had been talked about as an acquisition target for Yahoo, has received acquisition interest from DirecTV as well, reports the Wall Street Journal. [Source: WSJ]
Websense, which makes security software, has agreed to go private with the help of private equity firm Vista Equity Partners for around $1 billion. [Source: Wall Street Journal]
FusionStorm Global, an enterprise IT company focused on public sector customers, withdrew plans for a $175 million IPO, which it filed for in late 2011. [Source: Renaissance Capital]
Zyme Solutions, which provides channel data tools, raised $5 million from Susquehanna Growth Equity. The company offers managed services for multi-tier channel visibility, which integrate Salesforce.com, SAP and Oracle. [Source: Zyme Solutions]
Pinterest has taken its first step toward monetizing by making pins more “actionable,” the social network said. The company introduced new types of pins, one for recipes, one for movies, and one which makes it easier for users to click through and buy items they see on Pinterest. The retail product pin resembles a feature that has become popular on other “social shopping” sites like Fab, Opensky and Wanelo. [Source: GigaOm]
Online food delivery company GrubHub has merged with its competitor Seamless. The companies, which processed a combined $875 million in sales (which they take a cut of for facilitating), have not decided which of its brands will live on. Seattle-based GrubHub has 350 employees. Seamless in New York has 300. [Source: Bloomberg]
“[T]he launch of the pay model is the most important and most successful business decision made by The New York Times in many years.”
After leaving Cisco in April Joe McCool has joined the team at Firetide, a mesh networking technology provider. McCool has become the president and chief executive. [Source: The Wall Street Journal]
According to an Asymco analyst, Apple’s revenue per visitor in its Apple Store hit a new record this Q1. In addition, visitors to the Apple Store rose by 7%. [Source: CNET]
Pinterest has announced that pinning an item will now provide some more information to users. Information includes prices, availability, cook time, etc. [Source: AllThingsD]
Data analytics platform provider Alteryx has raised $12 million of additional funding. This brings its total funding now to $18 million. [Source: TechCrunch]
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