Internet Identification Service Tru.ly Opens API to Developers



Tru.ly, a peer-to-peer age verification service, just released a free API for developers to integrate age authentication into apps.

Tru.ly checks user-submitted data against government databases and public data. The service lets users link various social accounts like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, and have a unique QR code to share throughout the web.

“Our API represents the foundation for responsible age gating, something that has never been done well on the Internet,” David Gordon, Tru.ly’s co-founder and C.E.O., writes on the company blog. “The days of simply entering any birthday are over. Companies have a responsibility to...
Read more

Spotted: Google Store Views in California



Google seems to be quietly rolling out store interiors to street views in Google Maps [h/t to Hacker News user mikeocool ].

So far, LAUNCH editors have found two instances of Store Views, one at Comics Toons N Toys in Tustin, CA and the other at Gluten Free Speciality Market in Sacramento. 

In February 2010, Search Engine Land received a tip from a New York retailer that Google came to their store to take pictures for a new product called "Google Store Views." In April, the Google Lay Long Blog confirmed that they started taking pictures of business interirors.

[ See screen shots after the jump. ]
Read more

AirPlay TV (Joe Hewitt's Prediction for Apple TV)


The new Steve Jobs biography revealed that an Apple TV is likely in the works. Firefox co-creator and Facebook iPhone app developer Joe Hewitt explains why Apple's AirPlay -- pictured above, currently for streaming music to multiple rooms -- is the key to an Apple TV and why iOS developers should invest their time in it now. This post syndicated with permission; read the original here.

By Joe Hewitt

I've been reading a lot of speculation recently about what a future Apple TV might look like. Not nearly enough of these analyses have talked about AirPlay. It's clear to me that AirPlay would be so important to the Apple TV, you might as well call it AirPlay TV.

There's so much compelling video content and games available on the App Store, it's not really that big of a deal if you can't watch cable TV, DVDs, or play Xbox on the Apple TV. This trend is only accelerating. When Steve Jobs said "I finally cracked it", I'd bet he was thinking of how AirPlay and the App Store had eliminated the need to support old set-top boxes.
Read more

Today's Funding: Mobli, Ustream, Tradeshift, BlueCava and Subtext ($43.5M, Five Deals)


Israel-based startup Mobli, a real-time photo sharing app, raised $4M in a round led by actor Leonardo DiCaprio.

Mobli
Twitter: @mobli  
Website: http://www.mobli.com/
CrunchBase: http://www.crunchbase.com/company/mobli

Moshe Hogeg, CEO
Twitter: @moshehogeg  
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/moshe-hogeg/5/136/8a1

Leonardo DiCaprio
Twitter: @LeoDiCaprio 
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/LeonardoDiCaprio

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Ustream, a video streaming site, raised $10M in a funding round led by,,,
Read more

Cupcake Ipsum Makes Readers Want to Eat Your Filler Text



If you are looking for ways to spice up placeholder text -- assuming you're not satisfied with the Samuel L. Jackson placeholder text -- try out Applicake's Cupcake Ipsum.

"We thought there was a niche in the lorem ipsum generators market and we wanted to make one that was really nice and sweet," Applicake co-founder and CEO Ela Madej tells LAUNCH via email. "Unfortunately, we came up with one that makes everyone at Applicake hungry!"

Cupcake Ipsum generates text related to cupcakes, gummi bears, marshmallows and other sweet treats. You can determine how long the text should be, set your text to start with "Cupcake ipsum dolor sit amet" and integrate several instances of "love" into the text. 

[ See screen shot after the jump. ]

Read more

Good Geek Fun: GitHub Makes Campfire Bot Hubot Open Source


Any company that relies on the group-chat service Campfire to manage workflow could use a chat bot to automate everyday tasks like finding images -- or fun things like giving a quote from a movie.

GitHub, where millions of developers store and share code, loved its Campfire bot Hubot so much the company rewrote the code and just made it open-source.

Anyone can host Hubot for free on Heroku. The bot comes with some scripts although GitHub's Corey Donohoe is encouraging developers to write their own (in CoffeeScript or Javascript) and contribute to the repository.
 
Corey tells LAUNCH, "Many of our employees have been
Read more

Yamanote Train Net: Know How Hot and Crowded a Train is Before Boarding



Commuters with smartphones in Tokyo can access information on car crowd levels and temperatures with the Train Net web browser and mobile app, thanks to a recent partnership between Japan Rail and Mitsubishi.

Train Net is currently only available through Nov. 2 on one Yamanote line train -- one of Tokyo's busiest lines -- while they test the service. Train Net provides individual car and railway information, like temperature, train delays and where to switch trains through its own on-board Wi-Fi network. 

"For the information about crowding rates, rather than installing sensors for this trial, we've used the weight sensors that are already attached to each carriage in a train," Mitsubishi's Junichi Kimura says. "Those sensors are used to control the brakes when a train stops. We've converted the information from those brake sensors into the crowding rate data displayed here."

[ See screen shots after the jump. ]
Read more

Rep Tech on Halloween with DSLR, iPhone, iPad and Angry Birds Costumes


[ Photo courtesy of Tyler Card. ]
 
With Halloween fast approaching, LAUNCH editors have found some awesome DIY tech-related costumes. Keep in mind that some will take longer to make than others.

One of our favorites: a fully-functional Nikon DSLR camera built with cardboard, a Dell laptop and a bucket by photographer Tyler Card [ h/t +Scott Beale. ]
 
When you press the shutter release button, the camera actually takes a picture and displays it on the LCD screen on the back.

[ See screen shots after the jump. ]

Read more

Tantrum Apps' Letter Quiz Hits Top 10 for Educational iPad Games in App Store, Keeps Your Kids Engaged


WHAT: iPhone and iPad games for kids and their parents. The Tantrum Apps library features quiz games, peek games and sounds games. The most popular apps include Letter Quiz, Zoo Sounds and Timmy's Preschool Adventure. Parents can help their children learn their ABCs, numbers, and city and animal sounds.

LAUNCHER: Lawrence Ingraham, founder of Tantrum Apps and web developer at Cisco.

WHY: It's hard to keep your kids entertained when at medical appointments or when you just need a quiet moment. Instead of letting them watch TV, they can play fun, simple and educational games. What's even better is that you can play with them.

WHEN/WHERE: May 2009/Raleigh-Durham.

BACKSTORY: In 2009, Lawrence's daughter, who was two years old at the time, had respiratory issues that recquired him and his wife to take her to the hospital immediately.

"Typically my wife brings around this bag of everything in the kitchen sink: coloring books, crayons, toys, you name it," Lawrence tells LAUNCH. "We didn't have anything and we got to the hospital and there we were with absolutely nothing for her to do. So I whipped out my iPhone and...
Read more

Today's Funding: Workday, Kanbox, Sencha and More ($131.4M, Six Deals)


Workday, cloud-based HR services company, raised $85M in a funding round led by T. Rowe Price, Morgan Stanley, Janus Capital and Bezos Expeditions.

Workday
Website: http://www.workday.com/
Blog: http://blogs.workday.com/
Twitter: @Workday  
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/workday

David Duffield, co-founder and co-CEO
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/david-duffield/8/695/601

Aneel Bhusri, co-founder and co-CEO
Twitter: @aneelb 
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/aneel-bhusri/0/45/b40

Read more

TouchFire: Kiss Your iPad Typos Goodbye with Screen-top Keyboard



TouchFire, a transparent screen-top keyboard for iPad, eases the tablet typing experience with physical keys to help you type as accurately as you can on a traditional keyboard.

TouchFire sits on top of the iPad's keyboard and is compatible on both the original iPad and iPad2, weighing less than one ounce. The project, which just launched on Kickstarter on Oct. 20, already has 76 backers who have pledged more than half -- $6,174 -- of its $10K funding goal.
 
Backers who pledge $45 or more get the TouchFire standard pack, which includes a keyboard, storage case and a pair of cover clips.

[ See screen shots after the jump. ]

Read more

Identify Your Creepy Neighbor Before It's Too Late with Docket in Your Pocket



Have you ever wanted to run a criminal background check on a potential new roommate or that creepy looking guy your daughter is dating? Docket in Your Pocket (DYP), which officially launched today, will let you perform a simple criminal records check in about five seconds on your smartphone.

The service currently only has access to criminal records in Pennsylvania, but co-founder Matt Haindfield, an attorney in Iowa, tells LAUNCH they are looking to expand to places with major metropolitan areas.

The current DYP database contains data obtained from the State of Pennsylvania dating back to Jan. 1, 2000. Users can find public records related to criminal charges, lawsuits, civil judgments, traffic offenses...
Read more

GetGlue Now Lets You Chat with Friends in Real-time While Watching TV



GetGlue, a social recommendation engine for entertainment, just launched real-time conversation, sharing capabilities on Tumblr and widgets.

The new Conversation experience lets you communicate with other users checked-in to the same television show, sports event, music and more in real-time. The Conversation tab shows all comments from friends, but only "interesting comments from other fans." It also shows tweets and lets you reply without needing to leave the site.
 
LAUNCH has contacted GetGlue CEO Alex Iskold and will update this story if we receive a response.

Other new features include embeddable sticker widgets that show your latest activity on GetGlue, as well as check-in widgets. GetGlue also integrated sharing on Tumblr, in addition to Facebook and Twitter, to facilitate sharing.

[ See screen shots after the jump. ]

Read more

CloudMine Launches in Public Beta Because Doing Back-end Yourself Sucks


WHAT: Back-end as a service platform for mobile application developers. CloudMine generates API keys in one click to easily cloud-enable your application. Cloudmine powers the back-end for apps through a simple API call. Developers can use the REST-based API or download SDKs for the platform of their choice and not need to worry about servers, web applications and scaling. Server maintenance is now CloudMine's problem.

LAUNCHERS:  Brendan McCorkie, co-founder and lead of business development. Marc Weil, co-founder and engineer. Ilya Braude, co-founder and engineer.

WHY: Developing the back-end is something developers have to do, rather than something that they like to do. Back-end is not the thing that makes apps awesome, but powers all the things that do. Developing the back-end for every app slows down the ability to release apps. Developers can now...
Read more

300milligrams Eliminates Noise in Workflow Conversations, Joins 500 Startups



300miligrams, a priority inbox for team conversations that maximizes your team's workflow conversations, has entered its public beta and been accepted to the 500 Startups accelerator program.

The priority inbox threads conversations by team, project, document, customer or other work-related topic into individual groups.

"We were running a team that was distributed and we realized the tools we used for conversation were really bad," Mark Kofman, co-founder and CEO of 300miligrams, tells LAUNCH. "If you use email you lose important conversations because of spam or noise messages. The same applies with instant messenger, microblogging tools. Nothing solved the problem...
Read more

Family Management 2.0: Home Tribes Won't Let You Forget About Soccer Practice Again



Managing a family in the world of Web 2.0 can be complicated with parents and children using a variety of work, school and personal email accounts and calendars, but a new site launched yesterday called Home Tribes helps you organize all of your family schedule in one place.

Home Tribes provides weekly digests -- daily if you upgrade to a premium account -- of the agenda for the week or day to eliminate any "surprises" throughout the week -- like say soccer practice is cancelled and you need to pick up your kids from school at three instead of five.

"The inspiration for Home Tribes came from my personal needs," Vincent Lamanna, Quebec-based programmer and engineer who founded the site tells LAUNCH via email. "I am pretty busy at work, like most of us are nowadays, and I have to take care of my family. I felt I was lacking a tool to communicate with my wife about appointments, events and other important stuff I had to do. That's how Home Tribes was born...

Read more

Card Gnome: Netflix for Eco-Friendly Greeting Cards



WHAT: Card Gnome is a wind powered e-commerce site for eco-friendly greeting cards created by professional designers. Card Gnome features a catalogue of more than 4.5K cards created by greeting card designers that can be mailed anywhere in the U.S. for $4.99. Card Gnome's Netflix-like suggestion system will learn your favorite styles and users can refine their search with advanced options for the cards message -- which can be personalized -- keyword and gender. Unlike other crowd-sourced card options Card Gnome employs a community of screened designers -- some of whom create cards for major greeting card companies like Hallmark. 

WHY: Greeting cards are a way of expressing emotions. A lot of people seem to think greeting cards are a communication tool, but they're a gift that lets someone know you're thinking of them, but the sheer size of the online catalogue of cards makes it hard to find the right one, users need a system to streamline the selection process.

LAUNCHERS: Joel Wishkovsky, CEO, and Chad McGimpsey, COO...

Read more