WICKA WICKA. Turntable.fm is in the big leagues now as the young music based social platform signs deals with Sony BMG, Universal, EMI and Warner, TechCrunch reports. Turntable has over one million users now and a new mobile app since September.
HIPSTARTER. San Francisco based Indiegogo, a crowdfunding platform with offices in Soho that competes with Kickstarter, announced the perfection of their “gogofactor,” a proprietary algorithm that ranks projects based on popularity and viability. This makes Indiegogo the only crowdfunding platform with this type of merit-based ranking functionality. Your move, Kickstarter.
TAP TAP WHO’S THERE? After wandering around like a lost child in the woods for a bit, Taap.it is back with a newly stated purpose and redone app. Taap.it, originally touted as a hyper-local, mobile-first version of Craigslist, has Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare integration to bring users information about local events and businesses. Users can also follow friends, hunt for deals, make wish lists and compete in weekly contests.
MONEY. Knodes, the company on a mission to make social network data accessible and meaningful, just announced a $250 thousand Knodes Fund for the “best products, websites and applications built on the Knodes platform.” Companies who want a chunk of that change should apply here beginning May 1.
SCHOOL OF TECH. General Electric teamed up with Skillshare and debuted their new “GE Works” campaign last week at SXSW. The “GE Garages,” which look more like train cars or truck trailers sans wheels, invited participants to make an iPhone case, play with a laser cutter, cold saw and 3D printer. Sexy stuff. Excuse us while we wipe the steam from our glasses. The garages will be appearing in Houston Cincinnati and San Francisco soon.
SEARCH DOJO. Q-Sensei, a German-American “multi-dimensional” search engine that organizes data sets based on various descriptions, correlations and metadata simultaneously, is laying down offices in Downtown Brooklyn. The startup, which raised $2.5 million in seed funding in 2009, serves enterprise clients that need to search the oodles of data on the Internet, in private networks, on private computers and hand-held devices. Q-Sensei also has an API that lets businesses to build their own search apps.
JETSET. Wanderfly, a site for sharing and finding travel recommendations, just went live with a refreshed site and already won best design at last week’s LAUNCH in San Francisco. We must admit, it looks good.
THERE’S A MAP FOR THAT. CityMaps just re-emerged from its NYC beta cocoon and went live in San Francisco and Austin for the first time. The maps sort of look like the “clients” page of a big name ad shop but despite the harsh logo-on-white scheme, the site has a ton of useful features such as Foursquare integration with tips, photos and check-ins, integration with daily deal sites and tweets from businesses—like a digital sidewalk sandwich board. A brand new iPhone app rounds out CityMaps’ big changes.
WORK IT! OMGPOP needs a mobile QA tester to test mobile games and log bugs. Every boy’s dream. Apply here. ZocDoc wants a software engineer and Table Tennisseur with OOP language experience who is driven by an “unknown force to change healthcare for the better.” Applications go right here. Lean Startup Machine is looking for a workshop coordinator, web engineer and a “sales or sponsorship hacker.” Find job descriptions and apply here.
