Ceci N’est Pas Une Sandy The affordable-art-dealing website 20 x 200 is now selling a print of a NASA satellite image of Hurricane Sandy. All proceeds from the sale will go to the Red Cross to help relief efforts. The striking image was taken at 9:02 a.m on Sunday, approximately 10 hours before NYC’s MTA shut transport service down throughout the tristate area. Hang it above your couch of a constant reminder of the grander universe and just how much you appreciate your wifi.
More Money, More Fancy Fancy, Pinterest’s cooler older brother, has raised just over $26 million in additional funding. New investors include Celtics owner Jim Pallotta, Twitter and Square cofounder Jack Dorsey and Edward Gilligan, the vice chairman of American Express. This also ruins rumors that Apple was planning to acquire the company. No word yet on what their favorite user, Kanye West, thinks of the new influx of cash.
Santa Set to Make a Lot Of Web Boxes This Year Boxee, the New York rival to Apple TV and Roku, is planning to sell its $98 Boxee TV in Walmarts all across the U.S. The new device will be sold in 3,000 Walmarts. This is obviously a huge boost for the company, which sold 120,000 units last year. And unlimited DVR is about as American as Apple pie.
Zynga, What? Zynga may have picked some slightly unpronounceable Gibraltar-based startup to launch its foray into real-money gaming. But that hasn’t hurt Betable’s chances of becoming the Spotify of online social gambling. The platform, which is backed by investors like Path’s David Morin and TechStars’ David Tisch, lets developers build real-money games on its platform. Today, Betable announced that it will be lending its services to Slingo, Digital Chocolate and Murka. The company also just helped Big Fish launch a casino app called Big Fish Casino that lets U.K. users gamble with actual money.
NYC vs. SF, Finally Settled If you’re ever stuck trying to decide whether to decamp to the Valley, then Versus IO is the site for you. It uses an algorithm to compare two alike things and show you points and counterpoints in a sparse layout. It currently can compare cities and a variety of tech products (think iPhone 4 vs. iPhone 5). But what about the immortal conundrum of pizza vs. Chinese?
Shiny New Doors Glassdoor, a California-based jobs site, has raised $20 million in a new financing round led by DAG Ventures. The round also included Benchmark Capital, Sutter Hill Ventures and Battery Ventures. The company told GigaOm that traffic to Glassdoor has reached 13 million monthly uniques and that revenue has increased 175 percent.
Get Your Game on GitHub has just announced a monthlong gaming hackathon on its blog. The GitHub Game Off will take place during November, and entrants will have to create a game looselybased on the concepts of forking (or forks), branching (or branches), cloning (or clones), pushing or pulling. There are five new iPads with Retina displays (64GB wifi models) available as prizes.
Big Conductor Conductor, an SEO platform, has just announced a big raise that it’s calling “the largest venture capital round of funding in SEO technology.” The company managed to scoop up $20 million, led by Investor Growth Capital. FirstMark Capital and Matrix Partners also participated.
Vimeo Workout Plan Reece Pacheco’s video startup Shelby.tv, which is still in beta mode, has teamed up with workout site Nerd Fitness to create Nerdfitness.tv. The new site has a scrolling feed of videos to keep you motivated and to teach you how to work out. Let’s hope no one gets caught up watching too many videos and forgets to go to the gym.
Dream It, Do It, Microsoft It Startup accelerator Dreamit Ventures has partnered up with Microsoft to give its startups access to the software development tools and networking of the BizSpark program. DreamIt also is planning to select one company from each of its programs to receive additional benefits as part of the BizSpark Fellow program. Fellows will get access to Microsoft expert engineers and evangelists to help build out their products. Qualifying startups can also access up to $60,000 in Windows Azure services over two years. FlagTap, an online capture the flag game that aims to increase web traffic, has been chosen as the first fellow of the program.