Posts tagged Urban
Salesforce & Verizon Help Pump $15m More Into Urban Airship
Nov 6th
Urban Airship, a Portland, Oregon mobile infrastructure company focused on push notifications and in-app sales as a service, has quadrupled its war-chest with a $15.1 million Series C round of funding, the company is announcing tonight. New investors Salesforce and Verizon join existing investors True Ventures and Foundry Group as participants in the latest round.
Airship has now raised more than $20 million in financing. Last week the company announced it has acquired geolocation data provider SimpleGeo in an all-stock deal reportedly worth $3.5 million. Those two companies together, along with their new backers Verizon and Salesforce, plus the forward-looking portfolios of True and Foundry, point toward a future based on mobile user engagement, analytics, rich geolocation data, marketing, sales, lead generation, CRM, network services, developer services and probably some other crazy things.
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Widely-admired investor Brad Feld of Foundry Group spoke to a group of entrepreneurs assembled last week when he and partner Jason Mendelson visited the Urban Airship office in Portland. Feld said he hasn’t looked at a business plan or a resume in 15 years, but that he invests in products and teams that target themes that he and his co-investors find interesting. The two hinted that they would be in Portland a lot more over the next year, presumably because they were on site to help negotiate the large new round of funding.
Foundry invests in about 10 to 12 businesses a year, Feld said, and he urged the up-and-coming Portland tech community to think in terms of a 20 year plan. The firm focuses on 7 different categories of investments they believe will have long term significance; Urban Airship is listed under the company’s Protocols theme.
“The way humans interact with computers 20 years from now will make the way we interact with them today look silly,” the firm’s website says. Speaking about Foundry’s investment in Makerbot, Feld said last week that he firmly believes machines will be self-replicating 20 years from today.
Presumably those self-replicating robots will need to send and receive push notifications, too.
New Airship investors Salesforce were most recently in the news for making a large investment in cloud storage firm Box.net Verizon has reportedly been making an unusually large number of investments in startups this year. True Ventures invested in Urban Airship’s first round, along with A and B round participants Founders Co-Op, in early 2010.
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How Will Urban Airship & SimpleGeo Affect Mobile Backend Services?
Nov 1st
Urban Airship made big news in the startup community yesterday with its acquisition of backend location services provider SimpleGeo. Last December we called SimpleGeo the most promising company of 2011 because of the way it provides location data for applications and the approach the company uses to tackle the problem. Urban Airship agrees that SimpleGeo has great potential, hence the acquisition.What does this mean for the backend-as-a-service mobile cloud realm?
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A Natural Partner
Urban Airship does not see itself competing against the likes of StackMob, Kinvey or Parse, but it definitely works within that space. One exec called it a “really clever move.” Another thought that this is a sign of consolidation within the backend mobile services realm. Either way, it is a big move for both Urban Airship and SimpleGeo.
SimpleGeo + Urban Airship t-shirts have already been made
Urban Airship was one of the first companies to tie push notifications, rich push (with multimedia elements), in-app purchases and subscriptions together into third-party service applications for developers.
SimpleGeo provides similar backend support, but from a location perspective with a location library and the ability to send push notifications based on where as user is. In terms of how the two companies will mesh together, they both tie to the cloud via Amazon Web Services, are built on top of Cassandra and use programming languages like Java and Python.
The acquisition of SimpleGeo by Urban Airship is a natural step for the two companies after they formed a partnership earlier this year. The way Scott Kveton, CEO of Urban Airship, sees it, his company has a significant opportunity to create a dynamic mobile services ecosystem through these types of partnerships. Urban Airship has already partnered with Nitobi for PhoneGap integration and Appcelerator. Urban Airship has more partnerships on the horizon, some to be announced next week. Urban Airship and Kinvey have also done some research together on how political campaigns do not use use push notifications in an unpublished article called “Political mobile apps have a payphone strategy in a smartphone world.”
Source: Kinvey
Consolidation of the Backend Space
One of the founders of a backend mobile service I spoke with agreed there will be some type of consolidation within the vertical. That could come in several forms. A company like Apple, Google or Microsoft could acquire a company like StackMob, Kinvey or Parse. For instance, Microsoft wants to tie its application development to its cloud service Azure, but could do well by cutting across platforms by acquiring one of the startups working in the space. Or, more companies like Urban Airship buying companies like SimpleGeo.
In the long run, some type of consolidation of the backend services vertical may be necessary. In the short term, probably not. StackMob, Kinvey and Parse are all still in beta periods and have significant room to grow. The explosion of mobile devices and the application ecosystems that support them will provide plenty of opportunity as developers look for ways to provide cloud functionality to apps without building it out themselves. Kinvey published an infographic through GigaOm that shows that most native applications are not yet tied to mobile backend service.
Developers: What do you think of the Urban Airship+SimpleGeo pairing? Also, what types of services are you looking for from the backend-as-a-service mobile platforms? Let us know in the comments.
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Urban Airship’s In-App Purchase for Android Goes Live
Apr 7th
This morning, Portland-based Urban Airship commercially launched its In-App Purchasing Product for Android. The company describes the service as a “last mile” offering for developers that simplifies the process of integrating in-app purchasing features within Android applications. The new service is similar to Urban Airship’s in-app purchases services for iOS, which launched just 18 months ago. Since then, the company has enabled over 2.8 million transactions.
Urban Airship says it designed its in-app service for Android while participating in Google’s in-app beta test program, developing its features alongside Google’s in preparation for this launch.
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The new In-App Purchase for Android service offers the following features:
- Dynamic content: The Android Market limits application size to 25 MB, but apps using Urban Airship In-App Purchase can grow beyond that. Developers upload paid and free content to the Urban Airship servers, and those servers deliver the content to the end user when it’s needed.
- Security: Urban Airship validates all purchase receipts before delivering content to the application.
- Versioning and updates: Urban Airship tracks updates to purchasable content and notifies users when updates are available. Developers can fix bugs in their updates without shipping an additional app update.
The program complements UA’s recently launched Push for Android service, launched in March, which offers an alternative to Google’s default solution, C2DM. You can learn more about that service here.
Urban Airship by the Numbers
Urban Airship supports a large number of developers on the iOS, Android and BlackBerry platforms, and serves over 100 million mobile devices. To date, it has delivered over 2.6 billion push notifications in total, at a rate of 15 million push messages per day. Year-over-year, the company says the number of notifications it sends out has increased by 1,555%.
With in-app purchases, as noted above, Urban Airship has delivered over 2.9 million transactions, and its customers make an average of 8,000 in-app purchases per day.
Developers interested in signing up for the new Android service can do so here.
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Urban Interns Reports Growth In Demand For Technology, Financial and SEO Skills – San Francisco Chronicle (press release)
Mar 29th
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Urban Interns Reports Growth In Demand For Technology, Financial and SEO Skills
San Francisco Chronicle (press release) "The fact that all of these in-demand skills are highly specialized and require specific training – technology for web development, creative arts for web design, keyword analysis for SEO – is interesting as well," continued Urban Interns Co-Founder … |
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Urban Interns Reports Growth In Demand For Technology, Financial and SEO Skills – Benzinga
Mar 29th
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Urban Interns Reports Growth In Demand For Technology, Financial and SEO Skills
Benzinga “The fact that all of these in-demand skills are highly specialized and require specific training – technology for web development, creative arts for web design, keyword analysis for SEO – is interesting as well,” continued Urban Interns Co-Founder … |
View full post on SEO – Google News
CTIA: Urban Airship Launches Push for Android
Mar 24th
Mobile services platform provider Urban Airship launched a new service for Android developers at the CTIA Wireless 2011 conference in Orlando, Florida this week. The service, Embedded Push for Android, is an end-to-end push notification system, an alternative to Google’s default solution, C2DM.
The benefits of the new solution include additional features like the ability to configure “quiet time,” plus Quality of Service guarantees and return receipts. The push system is also said to be more battery-friendly than Google’s solution, according to the company.
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UA on Android
The new solution works outside of Google’s stack, and supports more Android-based devices than Google’s own C2DM service does. Urban Airship works on any version of Android from 1.7 and up, while Google’s push notifications only work on phones running Android 2.2 (Froyo) and higher.
Citing recent OS share figures which show that 31.6% of Android phones are still running 2.1, Urban Airship CEO Scott Kveton says that “this is a significant subset of the app market that can’t be ignored.”
“App developers do not care which device a user carries in his pocket, whether it’s an iPhone, an Android running Froyo or Honeycomb, a Blackberry or a Nokia,” Kveton explained. “Our customers have been telling us that being able to reach all their end users is their goal. Period. Urban Airship serves this need.”
In addition to the “quiet time” feature, which lets users configure times when they don’t want to be interrupted, Urban Airship provides QoS, return receipts, an inbox of past notifications and it gives each app its own open connection that is synchronized to save battery life.
Brands Using UA on Android
Urban Airship already has several major brands using the push notification service within their Android applications, including ESPN in its SportsCenter app, the mobile shopping and rewards app Shopkick and also Tapulous, makers of Tap Tap Revenge, a Guitar Hero-like game for mobile.
Tapulous uses the alerts to tell game players when a friend has beaten their high score or has proposed a challenge as well as when there are new songs available for purchase. Tapulous, incidentally, was the first app in the iTunes App Store to offer push notifications, which are also powered by Urban Airship’s service for iOS developers.
In case you’re unfamiliar with the company, here are some notable stats about Urban Airship, which it also released this week, along with the news:
- Urban Airship has delivered more than 2.5 billion push notifications across the iOS, Android and BlackBerry mobile platforms.
- It delivers more than 15 million push notifications each day.
- Year over year, the number of notifications Urban Airship has delivered has increased by 1,555%.
- Urban Airship has authenticated and delivered more than 2.5 million purchases via in-app purchase.
- Customers make an average of 8 thousand in-app purchase transactions per day.
- More than 100 million mobile devices are connected to the Urban Airship platform.
Developers can sign up for the new Push for Android service beta here.
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World Bank to Launch Web-Based Platform for Urban Development
Mar 23rd
The World Bank has announced the launch of a Web-based urban development platform for July 1.
In conjunction with the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Institute for Urban Research, the Urbanization Knowledge Platform will link policy makers, academics, the Bank and other groups struggling to address the rapid increase in the size and importance of cities around the world.
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Urbanization Knowledge Platform
The Knowledge Platform seeks to use online communications to make rapid exchange of information in the urbanization field available more quickly and leverage the power of conversation to solve policy questions. According to the Penn Institute the site will be shaped around a series of “knowledge exchanges.”
“Topics for each knowledge exchange will center on the four core themes of Economic Development, Social Inclusion and Mobility, Environmental Sustainability, and Governance and will be proposed by members. These knowledge exchanges, and subsequent discussion and networking, will be conducted via cutting edge technology and online audio-visual meeting tools.”
That technology includes fora, real-time conversation, live online meetings and presentations. Elements of the platform are currently being rolled out, with regional launches in June and the official debut in July.
Who’s On Board?
Already signed on, in addition to the Bank and Penn, are the Kinsey Global Institute, the Cities Alliance, the Indian Institute for Human Settlements, MIT’s Deptartment of Urban Studies and Planning and the Brookings Institution. Talks are also being held with Harvard, Cisco, the African Centre for Cities, the Global Development Network, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and a host of think-tanks around the world.
The Penn Institute, devoted to the study of cities and their dynamics, is partnering with the World Bank’s Urban Sector, the bank agency responsible for developing its urban development policy. The World Bank, co-owned by 187 member countries, is a union of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the International Development Association, with a mission to “advanc(e) the vision of inclusive and sustainable globalization” and reduce global poverty.
Criticism and Participation
The Bank has seen its share of criticism. This includes philosophical objections to its “free market reform policies” and practical objections to their implementation, which some have said is too quick and too jarring to native economies. The way it is governed has also come under scrutiny. It is said to be run more often than not by representatives from highly industrialized economies to the exclusion of those from developing ones.
Given this criticism, the Knowledge Platform might be a great deal more valuable were the citizens effected by the Bank’s decisions able to watch, listen and even join in these discussions. Whether provision has been made for that is uncertain. We have asked the question and will update if we receive an answer.
World Bank building photo from Wikimedia Commons | protest photo from Radio Nederland Wereldomroep
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Turning Cell Phones into Urban Supercomputers
Feb 21st
One of the primary ideas behind IBM’s Smarter Planet concept is a web of sensors all over the planet, leading to a data explosion. But what if that web of sensors was more directly under the public’s control? Strategic forecast consultant Chris Arkbenberg hits on an interesting idea in a recent blog post. He muses on the idea of using mobile phones for grid computing, a la SETI@home, to create massive distributed supercomputers for processing all of this data. “Consider the processing power latent across a city of 20 million mobile subscribers, such as Tokyo,” he writes.
Arkenberg takes the idea further by suggesting that sensors could be built into mobile phones that could monitor air quality or act as a sort of distributed surveillance system. The possibilities are endless. “Consider what could be done with an API for addressing clusters of mobile sensors,” he writes.
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The idea reminds me of Open Sailing‘s SwarmOS, which aims to help individuals make decisions based on the collective intelligence reported by “swarms” of users with mobile phones. Adding sensors to that mix is a powerful notion.
Arkenberg warns that such a network and API could also be exploited by insurgents, criminals or regimes. Much like the massive data sets created by surveillance, there’s a lot of potential for unsavory uses of this sort of data. But the mind boggles at the possibilities.
Although there’s a clear possibility for abuse by authorities, a decentralized approach to measuring air quality could help check authorities. For example, The Economist reported last week that the mayor of Madrid has been accused of moving air pollution monitoring systems from the city’s streets to parks, where the sensors would detect less pollution.
Other, more centralized attempts at creating an urban operating system include IBM’s work in Rio and PlanIT in Portugal.
Photo by Daryl Mitchell
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