A lil something for Sumpto Billing itself as the Klout for college students, Sumpto announced that it’s gathered $350,000 in investments from the likes of SocialStarts.net and Nick Brien, former CEO of McCANN Group. Sumpto uses students’s output on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc. to determine how influential they are among their peers. But Sumpto doesn’t want to just be “Klout for college students” – it wants to take into account each student as an individual and reward them for being themselves… as much as it’s possible to be any version of your college self and still be deserving of a reward.
Cleverbuh-bye Well, there go all my excuses for never sending those thank you cards. Cleverbug, the custom gift and greeting card app, has decided to rebrand and relaunch, breaking up a few features and adding a couple new ones. You can still make and send those custom photo-based digital or printed physical cards from your phone, but the service is now called “CleverCard.” In addition, the new CleverBook feature acts as a nifty address book to help keep track of exactly when you need to send those cards and keep tabs on other details of your friends’s lives.
Foursquare ads four all Local businesses, it is your lucky day, because Foursquare has finally deemed you worthy of its precious ad space. The company announced that businesses everywhere (including little ones) can use their platform to make their own ads and set their own weekly budget. With the check-in system, local venues can actually tell how often people who see their ads are moved to visit the physical location. So far, businesses that have signed up include the Bronx Beer Hall and Barcade.
RebelMouse covers all its bases It was just a few weeks ago that RebelMouse launched the app version of their social media feed aggregator, and this week they launched the iOS version. Just like the site and the Android app, this one has all the goodies. You can still push all your feeds from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and everything else into its tile format, and now you can even bypass all those things you reportedly love on your iOS device.
Expedia’s home away from home Just in time for spending disgusting, dreary winter days staring at beach rentals online, Expedia announced that they’ll be partnering with HomeAway. Through the agreement, starting early next year, you’ll be able to see vacation rental options from HomeAway in the U.S. and Mexico when you’re using Expedia to plan your vacay. Expedia has already partnered with the HomeAway operation BedAndBreakfast.com. “This is a significant milestone for the vacation rental industry and for realizing HomeAway’s mission to make every vacation rental in the world available to every traveler in the world,” said HomeAway CEO Brian Sharples. Keep dreamin’ big, you crazy dreamers!
Hit the (spooky) e-books Just because you’re stuffing your face with candy all day doesn’t mean Halloween can’t teach you anything. Which is why the New York Public Library is celebrating the launch of its new digital collection of famous manuscripts tonight. Two scholars from the University of Maryland’s Institute for Technology in the Humanities will be on hand for discussion of the collection’s first manuscript to be encoded, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein notebooks (quite appropriate). Other treasures from the larger physical collection will also be on hand for one night only, including the 1818 first edition of Frankenstein and the 1831 first illustrated edition.