Last year, Dropbox raised a whopping $250 million funding round at a valuation in the ballpark of $4 billion. The raise had been rumored for months so it didn’t come as a huge surprise, but it still raised plenty of eyebrows. Because while Dropbox is totally awesome (I use it every day), at this point people see it as a convenient way to sync their files between computers — which it already does pretty well. So what’s all the money for?

Today, we’re getting our first taste of what’s next, and what cofounder and CEO Drew Houston calls Dropbox’s mission to solve all of the “hidden problems” that people have with technology, many of which we’ve simply become accustomed to dealing with.

Their first solution to one of these hidden problems? Helping you keep all of your photos, from all of your devices, in one place. And to get things started, they’re launching a new version of their Desktop and Android clients that’ll automatically upload your photos to your Dropbox account. Snap a few photos on your phone, and, without having to hook up any wires, they’ll be on your computer within a minute or two.

I know what you’re thinking, because it’s the first thing I said to CEO Drew Houston and Product Manager Aseem Sood: “err, don’t iCloud and Google+ already let you do this?”

I’m pretty sure they saw it coming.

The first thing they pointed out is that there are a lot of people out there who aren’t using either of those services. Most Dropbox users aren’t using Macs at all, so iCloud is out of the question (actually, iCloud will work with Windows if users install the iCloud Control Panel) and Google+ is still just getting started (yes, the service has lots of users signed up, but how many of them are using it and have the app installed on their phone?).

Dropbox also does a couple of things that Google+ doesn’t: for one, it’ll automatically sync the full-sized version of your images — Google+ sync will downscale images to 2048px at their longest edge. And Dropbox can also sync any photos it detects on your PC: if you plug in a camera or SD card into your computer and it detects images, you’ll have the option of automatically adding them to your Dropbox folder.

This new feature could potentially eat up a significant amount of space in your Dropbox folder, so Dropbox will also be gradually boosting the limit for free users from 2GB to 5GB (they won’t do this all at once — as you use the photo feature, you’ll be able to gradually accrue more free storage). Houston explains that the goal of this feature is to make life easier for people, not to get them to upgrade to larger Dropbox storage limits, which is why they’re offering the additional free space.

It sounds great, and I’ll be enabling it immediately, but there are still some obvious areas for improvement. Images that are synced to your Dropbox account are placed in a special Photos folder, but they’re just sorted in chronological order — there isn’t any intelligence around event or location detection, for example. Another potential issue is that Dropbox doesn’t offer any tools for managing or editing these photos, so it’ll be up to you to drag them into iPhoto or another photo editing app (the best solution will likely be to make your Dropbox folder your default image folder).

Houston agrees that they’re just beginning to scratch the surface of what’s possible here, so I’m sure we’ll see improvements soon. Oh, and don’t worry iOS users — Dropbox will be updating its app to include this functionality soon as well.

It’s worth nothing that, while this is the first time Dropbox has baked this functionality into its official app, it’s been possible to do the same thing on Android using third-party applications that take advantage of the Dropbox API. Of course, the official app has a much bigger install base.

For the last few years we’ve been tracking the growth of a service called Textfree, offered by San Jose-based startup Pinger. As the name implies, Textfree has a very attractive value proposition: you sign up, it gives you a free, real, telephone number, and you can send text messages and make phone calls with it free of charge — the service makes most of its money by displaying ads alongside the texts.

It’s also massively popular: last month alone, users sent and received a total of 2 billion text messages, and it’s one of the most downloaded iOS apps of all time. Even more impressive is the fact that the vast majority of their efforts have been concentrated in the U.S. alone — Pinger is preparing to sweep across Europe this year.

Pinger’s service is potentially disruptive to the telecom world, which is why it’s so notable that the company is now getting in bed with one of the biggest names in the business: it’s raised a $7.5 million funding round led by T Venture, the VC arm of international carrier giant Deutsche Telekom. T Venture’s Investment Director Bernhard Gold will be joining Pinger’s board as part of the deal. The company had raised around $11.5 million prior to this round.

So why, given its disruptive nature, is Deutsche Telekom actually supporting Pinger, with plans to look for various partnership opportunities down the line? Pinger CEO Greg Woock sums it up pretty nicely: “They hate us the least.”

You see, there are several popular services these days that take advantage of the rise of smartphones and VoIP — like Viber and even Skype — which essentially live ‘on top’ of the carriers, without actually using their traditional ‘minutes’ and SMS allotments (instead, they operate via data connections). The downside to these is that users can only communicate with contacts who also have the service’s client installed (or, in the case of Skype, they can pay extra to get a ‘real’ phone number).

Pinger’s Textfree, in contrast, has more in common with the traditional way of doing things. Because you’re given a real phone number when you first sign up, anyone can text or call you without having to download an app themselves. And this traffic doesn’t bypass the carriers’ networks, which means they can still make some money.

I spoke with Bernhard Gold, who is leading the investment. He says that at the end of the day, he’s looking to make money with the deal (in other words, this isn’t a purely strategic move), and he thinks Pinger offers a very strong value proposition. But he adds that because Pinger is operating on the carriers’ infrastructure, it stands to be strong as a partner rather than a competitor. Expect to see a number of integrations and partnerships announced in the coming year.

Pinger is also testing a promising version of its service in Germany right now, which it plans to roll out more broadly in Europe this year. Because of the way carriers pay each other in Europe, offering a free texting service in Europe is a much trickier affair than in the U.S. But Pinger has figured out a way to encourage users to send and receive an equal number of messages, which negates the costs it would otherwise need to pay.

With stories of Terminator-esque Google glasses making headlines these days, you’d think a basic task like screen sharing would be something that’d be pretty well solved by now. But while there are many different ways to share your desktop (or some portion thereof) with your friends or coworkers, more often than not the process isn’t something you’d call easy.

It’s bad enough that many people (including me) often find themselves steering their peers around computers the old-fashioned way: voice instructions over the phone (“Okay, now look in the Dock, do you see the Settings button? The one with metal gears, right. Click that…”)

ScreenLeap, a new startup out of the latest Y Combinator batch, wants to make this process a lot less painful, so that next time you’re confronted with an issue that could be better dealt with via screen-share, you actually take advantage of it. And to do that, they’re offering a product that’s about as straightforward as it gets: click a link, and you’re looking at your friend’s screen.

Of course, ScreenLeap is far from the first company that’s looking to take on WebEx and the other well-established screen-sharing platforms — competitors include GoInstant, which debuted at TC Disrupt SF back in September, JoinMe, and even Google+, which offers screensharing as part of its Hangouts feature. So what sets ScreenLeap apart? Co-founder Tuyen Truong says that it’s the only service that uses JavaScript and HTML in its viewer, which means that just about any browser — including those on smartphones — can view a broadcast without having to install any additional software.

Conversely, competitors like JoinMe (which is part of LogMeIn) use a Flash-based viewer, which won’t work on many smartphones (including, famously, any iOS devices), so they require standalone mobile apps. And while GoInstant doesn’t use Flash (in fact, it doesn’t require any downloads), it’ll only let you share a browser screen, and not content from other apps.

From the viewer’s perspective, ScreenLeap works great. You click the link (or enter a short PIN on ScreenLeap’s homepage) and you’re looking at the sharer’s screen within a few seconds. Unfortunately the experience isn’t quite as straightforward for the person who wants to share their screen — they’ll need to download and run ScreenLeap’s Java applet, a process that’s quick and relatively painless, but is a significant hurdle nonetheless (some people are wary of running such applets, especially if it’s from a site they’ve only recently heard about).

The site itself is the epitome of a minimal viable product. It looks pretty generic (to the point that I might initially assume its homepage was an ad of some sort), and from a functionality perspective it’s missing some obvious features, like the ability to create screen-shares that are restricted to certain users.

But the design issue is easily remedied, and the company says user accounts (and permissions) will be coming in the next few weeks. Another obvious omission is audio: at this point ScreenLeap is for visual sharing only. But Truong says the service has found that many people are already having a phone conversation when they launch the service anyway.

At this point ScreenLeap is free, but down the line the company plans to utilize a freemium business model, with certain additional features available for a price. Truong says that ScreenLeap is hoping to appeal both to businesses — who have traditionally been the main users of screensharing software — and consumers, who he believes are an untapped market. He likens the current situation with screensharing to the quick rise of the camera phone, as the ubiquity and ease-of-use of smartphones have led to people snapping photos far more often than they would otherwise.

He’s less certain about what they’ll be screensharing, but expects that users will demonstrate use-cases in the coming months. Personally, I seriously doubt that screensharing will see anything near the boom mobile photos have, but it wouldn’t surprise me if there were a more modest uptick as it becomes easier to do.

Finally, one interesting anecdote. ScreenLeap’s four founders are Tuyen Truong, Lawrence Gentilello, Steven Liu, and Allison Huynh, and two of them — Truong and Gentilello — were founders some thirteen years ago of a site at Stanford called Steamtunnels. A site that featured an online version of Stanford’s (print) Facebook, and had aims that were very similar to what Facebook.com eventually became. Alas, Stanford’s faculty wasn’t receptive to the idea. From the Stanford Daily:

As the site’s “About Us” page stated in 1999, “Let’s face it, the Facebook is an integral part of Stanford’s social structure: you poured [sic] over it freshman year getting to know your class, and now it remains a desktop reference more cherished and abused than your Webster’s Dictionary…we put the Facebook online.”

However, only a week after the release of the beta version of the site, the trio said the University pushed for Steamtunnels to shut down, citing potential Honor Code violations and removing Gentilello and Truong from academic advising positions

Groupon has just acquired Hyperpublic, a NYC-based startup that’s spent the last two years building technology related to geo-location and the layers of information — like deals and events — that live on top of it.

Terms of the deal are not being disclosed, but CEO Jordan Cooper describes it as a “huge win for our team and our investors”. He adds that Groupon was after Hyperpublic’s technology — this isn’t a case of it acquiring the team alone.

Cooper, who is also a General Partner at Lerer Ventures, says that a portion of Hyperpublic’s team will be moving out to Groupon’s engineering offices in California, while others will be leaving the company to pursue other ventures post-acquisition. Cooper will continue in his role at Lerer, and he’ll also be assuming a role with Groupon (he says he can’t get into specifics, but that he’ll be spending a lot of time in California as well).

The startup’s developer platform is going to be shut down, with maintenance and support continuing through March 2 2012 — all data will be deleted after that. Developers can find a FAQ on transitioning their data here.

The startup was founded in 2010 by Cooper and Doug Petkanics, who leads the company’s engineering team and helped forge what Cooper describes as a very engineering-focused environment. Hyperpublic raised $1.15 million in 2010 — Cooper says that board members Jordan Levy (Softbank Capital) Ken Lerer (Lerer Ventures) were also instrumental in the company’s development.

Finally, Cooper points out that Hyperpublic — which has more APIs than it does user-facing services — is a decidedly tech-heavy company. Which breaks with the stereotype of NYC startups being more focused on social platforms and media than on building ‘hard’ technology (incidentally, I suspect this stereotype will fade in the next year or so as the NYC tech community continues to grow).

You’ll never forget your first time.

Huddled in a hallway three feet wide, arms reaching every which way for a cup or a beer or the microphone. It’s hot and it’s messy and it’s noisy and everyone is pushing against everyone else but it doesn’t matter because your best friend is at the front of it all belting Total Eclipse of the Heart (how did she just hit that note) — and the world outside is whirling by in a blur.

It’s incredible. And now the RVIP Karaoke RV is ready to take the country by storm.

Today, the people behind this legendary tradition are announcing that they’re turning their passion into a full-fledged company. The papers have been filed, they’re fully insured, and the RV fleet has doubled in size (to two — with more on the way).

For those that haven’t been fortunate enough to take part in one of these karaoke-infused voyages, here’s a little background.

The Karaoke RV first got its start in 2007, when Jonathan Grubb and Kestrin Pantera — a couple who, brought together through the power of karaoke, are now married — decided that they “wanted to have the awesomest party there was at SXSW… but it had to be cheaper than a hotel room.”

And so the Karaoke RV was born. They rented an RV, drove around downtown Austin during the festival, and opened their doors to anyone and everyone who wanted to sing their hearts out.

It was a hit, and the RV has been a SXSW staple ever since (veteran attendees like myself use GroupMe to keep tabs on its whereabouts at all times). For the next few years the team would also rent an RV for a handful of other appearances throughout the year, stopping by at occasional film and music festivals.

And then, thanks to the generosity of entrepreneur Tara Hunt, who heads Buyosphere, RVIP had an RV to call its own — Hunt literally gave them a 27′ Winnebago because “she liked what we were doing and wanted us to do it more.” And so they have.

The team has systematically demolished and rebuilt the interior of the vehicle to maximize its Karaokeing Capacity, and spent much of last year driving it to events across the country, making appearances at venues including TC Disrupt SF and the Sundance film festival. And they’ve recently purchased a second, much larger RV (a 37′ CAT Diesel A-Class), to expand their potential reach — and participants’ shoulder room.

The idea to turn the Karaoke RV into a company, Pantera says, came about late last summer, when she realized that the core team that typically runs the show would be at Burning Man during an event that warranted an RV appearance. So she put together a team to test if the RV could function smoothly when the original founders weren’t onboard. It worked — and they realized that this could be bigger than a hobby.

Which brings us to today.

“We wanted to open a bar, but the rent, buildout, and liquor license costs are really high and it takes forever. So we thought about it like a software project and eliminated the hardest features–alcohol sales and a location–and started iterating. It’s a minimum viable bar,” Grubb says.

Pantera, an actress and musician by trade — who has worked with Weezer and Beck and has made appearances in films that debuted at Sundance and Cannes — is the company’s CEO.

Grubb, who cofounded Get Satisfaction and Rubyred Labs and was previously head of Lookout Mobile Security’s product team, will take the helm as the RV’s Chairman, Builder, and Driver. Grubb was most recently the lead product designer of Isis, the mobile industry’s NFC solution — he quips, “I feel like I’m leaving the hottest industry in the world to have parties all the time, which is awesome.”

Rounding out the executive team is CTO Scott Watson, the Senior Vice President and CTO of Imagineering at The Walt Disney Company (a position he’ll keep while he simultaneously works at RVIP), whose work includes designing Disneyland rides like Indiana Jones and California Aventure’s Soarin’ Over California. Watson is responsible for converting the RVs into the best karaoke machines they can be — and some of the techniques developed for the RVs are being incorporated into Disney rides. Read that again. These people are awesome.

Finally, the company’s advisors include Nate Bolt (who runs SF design firm Bolt Peters); Mark Trammell, Design Researcher at Twitter; and Jon Snoddy, VP of R&D at Disney Imagineering, who has also been involved with big-name rides.

The company is being funded by its founders, but this isn’t just a benevolent force of awesome, — RVIP actually makes money. Venues and events are willing to pay to have the Karaoke RV make an appearance, and, aside from that appearance fee, these events also are responsible for covering the cost of alcohol, which gets freely distributed to any riders who wish to partake (you need to be over 21 to hop onboard).

In case it wasn’t clear, I love this: some of my favorite memories took place on the Karaoke RV. If you get a chance, don’t hesitate — jump on and sing the way you do in the shower when no one else is home. Even if you’re a little off-key, or you a miss a few lyrics, it doesn’t matter. Your friends probably won’t remember anyway. You won’t regret it.

I’ll close with a quote from Pantera:

“RVIP, for me, is an obsessive labor of love. I hope that the friendships forged here expand beyond the RV, beyond the karaoke, into someplace where people feel an exhilarating sense of love, creativity and liberation. “

Yesterday I reported on a bizarre incident I witnessed at Sundance last month: VEVO, the music portal owned by some of the biggest record labels in the US, had a pirated NFL playoff game playing on screens throughout its ‘PowerStation’ venue.

The incident was immensely hypocritical, given that VEVO is owned in part by Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment (with EMI licensing its content to the service) — the same music labels that have made a habit of attacking consumers over alleged acts of piracy.

Now VEVO CEO Rio Caraeff has written a post to the VEVO blog, where he tries to explain what happened. In it, he writes that the game was accessed and streamed by a guest of the event without VEVO’s knowledge.

A guest of our lounge asked for an NFL game to be aired. We said no. There was a laptop hooked up to VEVO.com that fed into the large TV screens around the bar. Unfortunately, the laptop was easily accessible to the public. That was our mistake for not making sure the laptop was more secure. While VEVO staff was in other areas of the venue, the game was put on – via a website transmitting ESPN’s broadcast of the NFL game – without our permission or knowledge.

As soon as we realized the game was airing to the room, we removed it and went back to playing VEVO videos. The game was not aired in its entirety. Rest assured, we rectified this mistake as soon as we became aware what was going on.

What happened was unfortunate and we can’t take back what happened.

I don’t have any proof to indicate that what Caraeff writes is incorrect, but I’m raising my eyebrow at this explanation. The game was playing the entire time I was at the PowerStation — this wasn’t just a brief blip — and it was playing on several screens, so it was hard to miss, too. After all, one of the key aims of this event was to feature VEVO videos, it wasn’t as if these screens were hidden in a corner.

Likewise, this wasn’t a case of someone launching the stream and walking away — I saw the mouse cursor appear onscreen at least twice, and someone was pretty clearly doing their best to make sure it was watchable. That said, as you can see toward the end of the video below at around 1:39, the computer was potentially accessible to non-employees. But it was hardly inviting, and I have a hard time believing a random guest could just commandeer the computer without any employees noticing.

In any case, imagine what the music industry would say were it on the other side of this. Is there any doubt it would dismiss these explanations and, lawsuits in hand, cry foul over such an overt act of piracy?

Furthermore, this seems no different than an accused pirate explaining that they left their Wifi open, only to have it used by someone else to download content illegally. Which happens to be a defense the RIAA has previously fought vigilantly against, when it sought to make owners of ISP accounts liable for any infringing activity, even if the owner had no knowledge of it. Hypocrisy, indeed.

Below you’ll find Caraeff’s whole post.

You may know we had some fun at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah last month. Our VEVO Powerstation & Sorel Suite was a popular spot for celebrities to get warm, pick up some gifts from our friends at Sorel and Fresh and, most of all, to relax with a drink and play their favorite VEVO videos. We were excited that LMFAO, James Mardsen, Lil Jon, Tommy Lee, Isla Fisher, Josh Kelley and many others all came down to watch some music with us.

But with all the snowy fun we had, there has unfortunately been a report that something other than VEVO music videos was played at the Powerstation. We feel it important to explain exactly what happened so we hope you’ll take a minute to read further.

A guest of our lounge asked for an NFL game to be aired. We said no. There was a laptop hooked up to VEVO.com that fed into the large TV screens around the bar. Unfortunately, the laptop was easily accessible to the public. That was our mistake for not making sure the laptop was more secure. While VEVO staff was in other areas of the venue, the game was put on – via a website transmitting ESPN’s broadcast of the NFL game – without our permission or knowledge.

As soon as we realized the game was airing to the room, we removed it and went back to playing VEVO videos. The game was not aired in its entirety. Rest assured, we rectified this mistake as soon as we became aware what was going on.

What happened was unfortunate and we can’t take back what happened.

Let’s just make this clear. VEVO is not in the business of streaming illegal video content. We work really hard to give our fans access to the best HD music videos and original programming – legally. VEVO takes intellectual property and copyright issues very seriously. We have always supported our artists and content owners and have the same respect for all content creators in every industry and of every art form. So we are very sensitive to what happened at Sundance and the issues it has raised.

Thanks for reading.

Rio D. Caraeff

Over the last decade the major music labels — and their trade organization, the Recording Industry Association of America — have established a repeated pattern of attacking consumers in the name of squelching illegal file-sharing. Piracy, they claim, has been the industry’s undoing, accounting for an over 50% drop in sales since 1999 (the industry likes to discount the impact of legal per-song music downloads via services like iTunes, and the myriad other changes facilitated by the rise of high-speed Internet connections).

Their efforts to combat piracy are often draconian: threatening tens of thousands of people with lawsuits claiming obscenely high damages; attempting to coordinate their threats with consumers’ ISPs; and, most recently, supporting legislation like SOPA and PIPA that would undermine the fabric of the Internet. Hell, Universal once pulled down a 30 second YouTube video of a dancing baby because the baby had the audacity to dance to a Prince song.

Which is why my jaw dropped when I saw that VEVO, a property jointly owned by some of the biggest record labels in the world, was showing a pirated stream of an ESPN football game at its Sundance PowerStation venue last month — on no fewer than two televisions, and a pair of laptops.

First, some background. VEVO is a sort of ‘Hulu for music videos’ that’s owned by Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, and the Abu Dhabi Media Group. EMI (which Universal and Sony are in the process of acquiring chunks of) has licensed its content to the site. Together, these labels comprise three of America’s ‘Big Four’ music labels — Warner Music being the lone holdout. And these Big Four make up the vast majority of the RIAA.

So when you hear about the record labels suing people, or trying to get ISPs to clamp down on users, or trying to pass legislation that could destroy the web as we know it — a lot of these people are behind it.

Back to the story.

The scene at the VEVO PowerStation was fairly typical for a Sundance event. VEVO and a pair of other companies had taken over a local venue, emblazoning their logos on the wall in bright red and replacing the normal drink menu with an array of cleverly-named concoctions designed to help you forget you were sipping liquor at three in the afternoon. Celebrities strolled through at regular intervals, making rounds through the bar before they headed over to a room set aside to pick out their gift of furry Sorel boots.

The event’s redeeming factors, at least as far as this reporter was concerned, were the tasty hamburger sliders and the Patriots v. Ravens playoff game on ESPN that was playing throughout the venue. That is, until the game was rudely interrupted — not by a commercial break, but by a bizarre buffering warning.

In hindsight, I should have noticed it immediately. The shoddy video quality and jitters clearly didn’t belong to an HD feed, despite the ESPN America HD logo in the lower right hand corner. And then there’s the fact that ESPN America isn’t even available in US markets (it’s a UK-based station).

But between the blaring music and having James Marsden (Cyclops!) standing three feet in front of me, it wasn’t until the pirate flags were fully unfurled that I finally noticed them. First the buffering message appeared, then a mouse cursor — controlled by forces unseen — flew onto the TV to exit out of full-screen mode and refresh the page. I think it may have also closed a few popover ads.

At this point I tried to figure out the origins of the feed. As far as I could tell, the stream itself was coming from a Spanish-language live-streaming site called TuTele.tv. But that feed had apparently been accessed via a site called Frontrow.tv, which is itself an aggregator of live sports streams. At first glance, neither site looked particularly trustworthy.

But copyright on the web is a notoriously complex issue, so I went to the source to verify my suspicions: ESPN. Which confirmed that neither site has the rights to stream its content. In other words, yes — that game was indeed being pirated. In fact, Frontrow.tv has since apparently gone dark, likely as a result of a recent crackdown by federal authorities on sports sites with pirated content.

Given that the venue probably had access to a cable subscription (or perhaps an antenna, given that this was broadcast over the air), I’m not sure why it would decide to go the piracy route. But I do have a strong suspicion that it was done primarily as a matter of convenience.

The next day, when I made a return visit to the VEVO PowerStation, the football game obviously wasn’t on. This time the TV screens were playing VEVO music videos, which were being coordinated to match whatever celebrity was currently in the room — Tommy Lee walked in, and his music video serendipitously started playing, then the same thing happened when Deadmau5 made an appearance.

My hunch is that the team hooked up a computer to the TVs throughout the venue so that they could accomplish this synchronized star-caressing — then, rather than rework their entire setup just to play the football game for a few hours, they opted for the easier route and looked for a stream on the web.

Which perfectly underscores everything wrong with the media industry’s approach to piracy. They’ve long made out pirates to be lawless thieves who think they’re entitled to receive everything for free.

But the reality is far less black-and-white. Sure, there are some people who will duck the bill when they can — but many of them were never going to buy the content they downloaded in the first place. And a huge swath of ‘pirates’ are driven to their ways because it’s easier to stream or download something via an illegal site, not because they’re averse to paying for content. Stick a bunch of DRM and ads in front of the media they’ve already paid for, and they may opt to go with the path of least resistance next time.

Oh, and if the venue had wanted to stream that football game online legally, they would have had a tough time doing it: the only NFL licensee that offers streaming games is DirectTV, which requires you to purchase an entire season of ‘NFL Sunday Ticket’ in order to stream a game from the web. For a mere $350.

Reached for comment, VEVO unsurprisingly tried to shift any blame: it says that the event was produced by a creative agency called Continuum Entertainment, and that there were several other companies involved. However, the venue was broken into different sections, and the televisions in question were clearly those belonging to VEVO’s PowerStation — and VEVO confirms that the televisions were supposed to be used to showcase VEVO videos and “original content”. VEVO also claims it wasn’t aware the game was being streamed and that it turned it off once it realized that it was (though it was on the entire time I was there, a period of at least thirty minutes).

As for who actually decided to play the stream, or why, VEVO says the public had access to the computer being used so they can’t say for sure who exactly was responsible. Which is dubious (and almost certainly spin) — there was clearly someone actively controlling the computer, because they refreshed it when the connection stalled, and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a random attendee who was taking the helm. Must have been one of those nasty pirates.

In any case, were it the music industry that was on the other side of this, you can be sure they’d dismiss all of the aforementioned explanations without a second thought. And then they’d probably assess damages in the realm of $20,000 per down.

We’ve reached out to ESPN to ask if it will be pursuing legal action against VEVO, Continuum, or any of the other companies involved with the event.

Update, 2/10:: ESPN says it will not be pursuing legal action. A spokesperson gave us the following statement:

“We’re disappointed the exhibitor took this route, especially at a festival for an industry whose jobs are most at risk if we are not able to curtail stolen content.”

If you have one of the few Android devices currently running Ice Cream Sandwich, then you’re going to love this post. The rest of you, including those of you on iOS, will have to gaze longingly for a while.

Because Chrome just landed on Android.

It’s faster. It syncs everything (provided you want it to). It has nifty transition effects and a more intuitive system for jumping between tabs. And it’s also loaded with potential.

Google’s Chrome browser, which has skyrocketed to popularity since its debut in 2008 and consistently gets top marks for being the fastest browser in town, has long been strangely absent from Android. To be clear, Android has always shipped with a browser of its own — and it actually shares much of the same codebase with Chrome, including the V8 JavaScript engine. But next to the real Chrome, it’s a clear wannabe. After using it for a day, I really have no intention of using the older browser again.

Unfortunately, as I alluded to earlier, Chrome is only available for Android 4.0 and higher — which means the vast majority of Android users won’t be able to take advantage of it yet (devices that support 4.0 at this point include the Galaxy Nexus, Transformer Prime, Xoom, and the Nexus S). Google says this was done in part because Chrome needs to take advantage of the hardware acceleration features that were introduced in the latest build of the OS. If you have a device that supports it, you can download it right here.

So what makes Chrome great? Let’s take a look at the features.

The most obvious difference between Chrome and the stock Android browser is the UI.

For one, Chrome comes with the browser’s gray color scheme, rather than the ICS ‘Holo’ styling. Browsing through the app you’ll notice plenty of subtle effects that contribute to the browser generally feeling more polished. Tabs slide in when they open, and fade out when they’re closed, which helps you stay oriented in the app. The ‘all tabs’ button, which includes a number to indicate how many tabs you currently have open, pulls up a ‘stack’ of your open tabs that you can slide around to get a better look at the tab’s content before you actually open it.

Another nice touch: if Chrome notices you’re trying to tap an area that has a dense cluster of links (in other words, you might have trouble tapping the right one), it’ll launch a neat magnifying pane so that can you tap the one you want.

But the changes run far deeper than the UI. My favorite is the support for sync.

For some time now, the desktop versions of Chrome have allowed you to connect a Google account to your browser, allowing you to sync browser history, bookmarks, apps, autofill, and other data between multiple computers (in other words, if you have a laptop and a desktop machine, you can ensure they’re configured the same way). Now you can hook your Chrome mobile app to your Google account too, and it’ll sync much of the same data (it doesn’t autofill or apps yet, though).

The syncing feature comes with a neat trick: open up Chrome on your phone, and you can see a list of all of the tabs you currently have open on your computer’s copy of Chrome, which is awesome if you’re frequently having to email yourself directions or links to various product reviews. Better yet, this works even if you’ve shut the lid on your laptop and it’s in ‘sleep mode’ — though if you exit out of the browser entirely, the list will go blank.

(As an aside, if you’re looking for these features and are on an older Android device, check out Firefox for Android, which can do many of the same things).

And then there are the speed boosts. Chrome definitely feels snappier, no doubt in large part to its hardware acceleration. It also comes with several speed-related features like pre-fetching — Chrome will automatically begin loading the page it thinks you’re visiting next (it only does this on Wifi by default, though you can change it to work over your mobile connection as well). It also includes some key features that the stock browser doesn’t, like Web Workers and WebDB. One thing it doesn’t have: Flash, because Adobe stopped development on mobile Flash. Can’t say I miss it.

But while Chrome is definitely a major upgrade, its Beta tag is well deserved, because it’s actually missing some subtle features found on the stock Android browser. The most noticeable omission is the lack of a ‘Request Desktop Site’ feature, which made its debut in the browser that ships with Android 4.0. If you’ve ever browsed to a site from your phone, only to find that it detected your mobile browser and served up an inferior, “mobile-friendly” version of what you were looking for, then you’ll appreciate that tiny checkbox. It’s missing on Chrome for now, but it seems obvious that it’ll be added at some point.

As for the long-term outlook, Chrome is looking great. Extensions aren’t part of this launch, but they are inevitable. And while Android 4.0 will continue to ship with its stock browser for now — which means it will live side-by-side with Chrome — down the line Chrome will be replacing that stock browser (it’s a little unclear how exactly this will fit into the Android Open Source Project, but for starters much of the code from the mobile client will be upstreamed to the Chromium project).

Oh, and as for you iOS users? I asked Google’s VP of Chrome Sundar Pichai whether Google had considered building on top of iOS’s WebKit-based browser (they wouldn’t be able to introduce Chrome’s rendering engine, but they could potentially offer the syncing features). Pichai didn’t rule this possibility out, but it sounds like an iOS version won’t be coming any time soon — for now, the team is watching how the Android version is received.

A few weeks ago we wrote about Backplane — a platform for creating interactive, highly visual communities — that counts Lady Gaga as one of its backers, along with plenty of the Valley’s most well-known investors.

Now the company is harnessing its star power to hold a unique (and potentially awesome) event at SXSW: the SXSW Managers Hack — a hackathon that will be judged by some of the most accomplished managers in the music industry, including: Scooter Braun, best known for facilitating Justin Bieber’s rise to fame; Jay Brown, President of Jay-Z’s Roc Nation; and Troy Carter, manager of Lady Gaga (Carter is also one of Backplane’s cofounders).

Developers are being asked to hack together “apps, platforms, and technologies designed to advance the future of digital music distribution” — where they’ll be judged by the people who actually decide which apps and platforms their artists will use. In order to attend the event, you’ll need to apply for an invitation, which you can do right here.

The event will take place on March 11 2012, from 2 PM til 10 PM, and will also be live streamed by R to Z Studios, Randi Zuckerberg’s new social media firm (she’ll be hosting the stream as well). Note that while the event will revolve around music, it’s being held during the ‘Interactive’ portion of SXSW (SXSW Music begins on the 13th).

Music-themed hackathons have been held before (check out Music Hack Day if you’d like to find one that’s coming up in your area), but the presence of top industry managers at this one will likely help make it especially interesting. It’s also another sign that the industry recognizes the potential that startups and hackers can bring to the table — which is a lot better than the innovation-squelching lawsuits that the record companies have slung around before.

The event also fits in line with Backplane’s stated goal of attracting the best developers around (they’ve previously discussed their aim to foster an engineering-focused culture).

Oh, and Backplane fittingly promises that ”live music and DJs will jam throughout” the hackathon.

It’s the Super Bowl season, when a host of services and apps debut just in time for the biggest television event of the year. And, if you’re a fan of Madden’s NFL Superstars (a web app that’s available through Facebook), then you’ll like this launch: the game is now available as a Pokki right here.

Pokki, for those that haven’t used it, is a platform that lets you install lightweight apps that live in your Windows Taskbar (a Mac version is on the way). Each app gets its own icon — click on it, and the app will pop open immediately, click away and it’ll hide itself, and when you click it again, it’ll pick up right where you left off.

The point is to give you quick access to apps without having to deal with browser tabs or standalone windows, and it works well.There are other apps and services that do something similar (Mac users may want to check out Fluid), but Pokki’s platform features apps that are specifically designed for its quick, pop-over design.

Pokki has landed two major gaming companies so far: Kabam and, with this launch, EA, and it seems likely that more will follow suit (the platform is well-suited for quick sessions of gaming throughout the day). And there are other apps available as well, including Gmail and eBay.

The company says that Pokki is still in beta and hasn’t yet focused on marketing, but that its early numbers are very promising — so far they’ve seen “hundreds of thousands” of app installs, with users who have used the apps “tens of millions of times”.

The platform is also seeing strong traction with its built-in app market: 60% of users are browsing and installing two new apps per month.

Pokki is one of two main products from SweetLabs — their other major product is OpenCandy, which lets developers include targeted ads within their application’s install flow.

Earlier this afternoon Droid-Life noticed something strange: the Android developer devices page had been modified to remove the Verizon Galaxy Nexus, leading the site to question whether Google may have removed support for the device because of its spat with Verizon over Google Wallet.  Which would stand to infuriate a lot of new Galaxy Nexus users (including myself), who are looking forward to receiving device updates directly from Google and not having to wait for Verizon to get around to pushing their own releases.

Thankfully, we’ve confirmed this isn’t the case: Google says it will indeed be updating the Verizon Galaxy Nexus in the future.

Turns out Droid Life made a bit of a logical leap, as the page stated that No CDMA Devices were supported any more, and other devices including the Sprint Nexus S 4G had been removed as well. In response to the post, Google has written a clarification to the Android Contributors group, in which it explains that CDMA devices are being removed from the Android Open Source Project site because they need carrier-signed .apk files (which users can’t generate). Here’s the post:

Hello! This is a quick clarification about support for CDMA devices.

For various technical reasons, recent CDMA Android devices implement core telephony functionality in .apk files provided in binary form by the carriers. To function correctly, these .apk files must be signed by the so-called “platform” key. However, when an individual creates a custom build from the AOSP source code, they don’t use the same signing key as these CDMA flies were signed with.

The result is that these files don’t work properly, and pure AOSP builds running on these devices can’t place calls, access mobile data, and so on. Because we aim to make sure that we are as clear as possible about the degree of support that devices have, we updated the docs over at source.android.com to reflect this reality.

We will still make available as many as possible of the closed-source binaries for these devices, and Nexus devices will continue to have unlockable bootloaders. And, of course, GSM/HSPA+ devices are still supported, as are any other devices we’re able to support. We’ve simply updated the documentation to be clearer about the current extent of CDMA support.

We are of course always working to improve support, and we’ll keep everyone updated as we make improvements. Thanks as always for your interest in AOSP!

- Dan

Earlier this week during the Crunchies we snagged the founders of Warby Parker for a backstage interview — which was fitting, as I’ve been wearing a pair of their specs myself (they seemed pleased by this).

Tune in to the video above for some details on the company’s ‘Buy A Pair, Give A Pair’ program, through which Warby Parker matches every purchase by donating a pair of glasses to people in need. And for those of you looking for an alternative to the hornrimmed classes, there’s good news: wireframe glasses are on the way (early spring can’t come soon enough).

Oh, and we also take a stab at what the founders do when people tell them they look like hipsters (given their response, you may want to hold off on doing that).

Warby Parker was nominated for the Crunchie for Best Shopping Application of 2011 — and while it ultimately was named runner-up for the award (Fab took home the coveted ape) they’re doing very well for themselves – the company recently released a ‘Year in Review’ showing huge growth throughout 2011.

For those that haven’t checked them out, Warby Parker sells stylish prescription glasses for under $100 (they often go for $200-300 or more through traditional retailers), and they’ll ship you five pairs to try on so you can shop from the comfort of your PC.

The wait is over: Facebook has just filed for its IPO.

Facebook is looking to raise $5 billion— and will mint hundreds (perhaps even thousands) of employees as millionaires in the process. You can find its S-1 embedded below, or right here.

Rumors of Facebook’s public offering have been swirling for years, and have long been routinely sidestepped by CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg. The company has openly acknowledged that an IPO was indeed inevitable, but has avoided giving any sense of timing — “When we’re ready” has become a familiar mantra from Facebook executives.

The wait has been made possible, in part, by the rise of secondary markets and special stock sale programs, which have allowed early employees to sell off some of their valuable stock for liquidity. Such sales have helped reduce the amount of internal pressure to go public, which has given Facebook more time to build up its reach and products prior to the IPO.

Facebook also received an exemption in 2008 that allowed it to surpass the SEC’s ’500 shareholders’ rule, which would have mandated that the company begin releasing some of its financial figures publicly (Facebook argued at the time that most of its shareholders were employees — and their request was approved).

Here is some of our additional coverage on the filing:

• Facebook’s S-1 Letter From Zuckerberg Urges Understanding Before Investment
• Facebook’s S-1 Reveals: 845 Million Users Every Month, More Than Half Daily, Half Mobile
• Facebook’s S-1 And The Largest Shareholders: Who Owns What?

Artspace, an e-commerce startup that helps connect contemporary artists and galleries with potential customers, has raised a $2.5 million Series A funding round with participation from Felicis Ventures, Accelerator Ventures, Blue Equity LLC, and Metamorphic Ventures.

The round also includes a wide range of accomplished entrepreneurs. The full roster: Michael Yavonditte (Hashable, Quigo), David Rosenblatt (1stdibs.com, Doubleclick), Dave Morgan (Simulmedia), Seth Goldstein (turntable.fm), Thomas Stemberg (Founder/former CEO of Staples); Rob Selati (Madison Dearborn Capital Partners); Todd Simon (SVP of Omaha Steaks) and Peter Ricketts (former COO of Ameritrade). The company previously raised a $1.2 million seed round last spring.

Artspace is setting out to make contemporary art accessible to those of us who aren’t necessarily deeply immersed in the art world already — and to help connect artists and galleries with potential buyers. The site also allows art fairs to create a virtual representation of their fair, which helps expand the number of potential buyers beyond those who can attend an event in-person.

The company says it plans to use the money to expand its team, boost marketing, and to continue to build out its product. Alongside the funding news, the company is also announcing that Andrew Goldstein, who was previously executive editor of ArtINFO, will now lead the site’s editorial teams, who will be writing educational content and tracking art-related news.

Cofounded by Catherine Levene (formerly COO of DailyCandy) and Christopher Vroom (founder of Artadia), Artspace is one of several NYC-based companies looking to help bring the art world to the web. Other startups in this space include Art.sy (a service, currently in private beta, that looks to be a sort of Pandora for fine art) and Artsicle (which lets customers rent art for $25 a month). There are also sites like 20×200 that sell curated art prints, and Etsy, which has been connecting artists with shoppers directly for years.

Asked about how the site differs from Art.sy, which has also generated plenty of buzz, Levene says that Artspace is focused on ecommerce — everything on the site is available for purchase and can be bought directly through the site. In contrast, pieces on Art.sy are not always for sale, and you can’t actually purchase pieces directly through the site (you need to get in touch with Art.sy to coordinate the transaction).

The site itself looks great, and there are options available for most pricepoints (the homepage currently includes pieces running from $100 to $6500).

One of the most buzzed-about startups over the last few months has been Codecademy — a site that looks to make programming accessible to just about anyone, with a variety of interactive, web-based courses that have users writing their first lines of code within a few seconds. The site’s ‘Code Year’ program, which invites users to receive one programming lesson each week, racked up a whopping 100,000 signups in only 48 hours — and it even has the White House on board.

But, as anyone who has spent much time on the site can attest to, Codecademy has had one big problem: there just aren’t that many lessons available. And the ones that are on there sometimes seem to be moving too quickly, without many practice exercises to explore and reinforce what you’ve just learned.

Today, the company is launching a feature that will go a long way toward fixing that. Meet the Codecademy Course Creator.

Cofounder Zach Sims says that as soon as Codecademy first launched, the site was inundated by requests from teachers and programmers who were eager to contribute their own lessons. To date that hasn’t been possible — all lessons on Codecademy were written in-house, or by special guest contributors. Starting with today’s launch, which the company is considering a beta, anyone will be able to write their own interactive lessons using the site’s tools (with documentation available explaining how to use them).

Sims says that these tools are essentially identical to what the team uses to craft their own in-house courses, so it’s possible to make lessons that are just as good (or better) than the ones that are already on the site. And the tools suport both Ruby and Python in addition to JavaScript (which has been the site’s focus so far), so we’ll be seeing lessons covering more languages very soon.

There’s no approval process involved in publishing a lesson — you write it, and Codecademy will give you a link that you can distribute as you wish. However, there will be a screening process that’ll determine which lessons Codecademy will feature on the site. In other words, users won’t be presented with lessons that aren’t any good, but if you want to create a lesson that’s applicable to a class you’re teaching, or to explain an internal company tool to coworkers, you can use Codecademy’s platform to do it.

The site doesn’t have any current plans to pay contributors, but to help incentivize users to write high-quality courses, Codecademy aims to provide significant exposure to the best lesson creators.

I also asked Sims if Codecademy has any plans to make the site friendlier to users who have no programming experience — in my use of the site I’ve noticed that there isn’t much hand-holding after the first few lessons, and I’m pretty sure I’d be lost if I hadn’t previously been introduced to these concepts. Sims says that the startup is indeed hoping that these additional lessons will help fill in the gaps, and that Codecademy is also introducing new features to help with this: for example, you’ll now be able to click on certain keywords (like ‘Variable’) to jump to the lesson where that concept was explained, in case you need a refresher.

Above all, this is a very important shift for Codecademy. With only six employees, the company would have had to to go on a hiring spree if it wanted to keep up with demand and produce a comprehensive collection of lessons addressing both the basics and more advanced concepts. By turning to the community, it can sidestep that problem — it’ll still have the challenge of identifying the best lessons (and incentivizing the best teachers to write them), but given how much traction the site has already, I suspect it won’t have too hard a time collecting an impressive array of course materials in the coming months.

Y Combinator has just announced the newest partner to join the prestigious firm: Geoff Ralston. Ralston’s previous credentials include founding Four11, which was acquired by Yahoo back in 1997 for $96 million and served as the foundation for Yahoo Mail. Ralston spent eight years at Yahoo, eventually becoming Yahoo’s Chief Product Officer. Several years after leaving Yahoo he was named CEO of Lala, before it was acquired by Apple in 2009.

Most recently he cofounded Imagine K12, a tech incubator for education-related startups, which presented at TechCrunch Disrupt SF (you can find the incubator’s first batch of companies here). In his post announcing the news, Y Combinator’s Paul Graham writes that Ralston will continue as a full partner at Imagine K12. He also writes that he’s known Geoff for 13 years, ever since his days at Yahoo (Graham’s startup, Viaweb, was acquired by Yahoo in June 1998).

The news comes only a few days after YC announced two other new partners: Garry Tan (formerly of Posterous) and Aaron Iba (formerly of Appjet/Etherpad), both of whom are YC alumni. The timing probably isn’t a coincidence — YC just opened up applications for its Summer 2012 batch yesterday, and a bigger team will doubtless help the firm deal with the growing number of inbound applications (and larger batch sizes).

Fun sidenote: Ralston holds the honor of taking part in one of the most entertaining startup pitches I’ve ever seen, when he and fellow Lala execs Bill Nguyen and John Kuch (now both at Color) explained how Lala — whose previous incarnations included a CD swapping and a failed music hub — was being reborn as an innovative streaming music service.

It took around an hour (and a lot of hilarious handwaving and bickering between the three then-Lala execs as they debated what they could tell me — in front of me), but I went from being convinced Lala was launching something completely illegal to believing it was a taste of the future. Lala never got too much traction, but it was great, and it had a nice exit: Apple acquired the company for a reported $80+ million.

The Wall Street Journal has just reported that Facebook may file for its long-awaited IPO as soon as this Wednesday, but notes that the “timing is still being discussed”, according to an anonymous source. The article says that Facebook is eyeing a valuation between $75 and $100 billion as it raises up to $10 billion, which is in line with a previous WSJ report last November.

The article also reports that Morgan Stanley is currently the frontrunner to secure the top, “lead left” position in the filing, with Goldman Sachs playing a “significant role” as well. The news comes shortly after Facebook temporarily froze secondary trades on its shares, sparking speculation that the IPO filing may be imminent.

Facebook’s IPO has been the subject of constant debate and anticipation in the tech world for years now — though CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg have long avoided committing to any kind of time-table for the company to go public. The long wait for the IPO has led many employees to turn to the secondary markets to sell some of their valuable shares and secure some liquidity.

Here’s an excerpt from an interview this past November between Charlie Rose, Zuckerberg, and Sandberg, where they discuss the timing of Facebook’s public offering (you can full the full transcript here):

Charlie Rose:
What’s the valuation today of Facebook?

Sheryl Sandberg:
So we’re a private company so we don’t really have a valuation.

Charlie Rose:
So then why do you want to be a public company? Why do you even think about an IPO?

Mark Zuckerberg:
I actually think the biggest thing for us is that a big part of being a technology company is getting the best engineers and designers and talented people around the world. And one of the ways that you can do that is you compensate people with equity or options, right, so you get people who want to join the company, both for the mission, right, because they believe that Facebook is doing this awesome thing and they want to be a part of connecting everyone in the world, but also, if the company does well, then they get financially rewarded and can be set. And, you know, we’ve made this implicit promise to our investors and to our employees that by compensating them with equity and by giving them equity, that at some point we’re going to make that equity worth something publicly and liquidly, in a liquid way. Now, the promise isn’t that we’re going to do it on any kind of short-term time horizon. The promise is that we’re going to build this company so that it’s great over the long term, right. And that we’re always making these decisions for the long term, but at some point we’ll do that.

…

Charlie Rose:
You’ll go when what? When will you decide?

Sheryl Sandberg:
When we’re ready.

Mark Zuckerberg:
Yeah.

BeachMint — an ecommerce startup that lets customers subscribe to receive products hand-picked by celebrities each month  — has quickly become one of the hottest companies in Los Angeles.

Today the company is announcing that it’s raised a $35 million funding round with some big-name investors: the round is being led by Accel Partners, with participation from Goldman Sachs, New World Ventures, NYC-based and Millennium Technology Value Partners, with existing investors participating as well. Accel’s Greg Waldorf will be joining BeachMint’s board. This brings BeachMint’s total funding to a whopping $75 million.

This is obviously a big raise, and it comes only seven months after the company raised $23.5 million at a rumored $150 million valuation. Why are they raising so much? The short answer: they’re growing like crazy and are planning to go international — and they’ll be fending off plenty of competition.

BeachMint, which was founded by MySpace cofounder Josh Berman and Diego Berdakin, has made an art out of launching celebrity-endorsed monthly subscription sites for a variety of verticals, using a model very similar to ShoeDazzle, which launched in 2009.

BeachMint launched its first vertical, JewelMint, in October 2010, pairing actress Kate Bosworth with her stylist Cher Coulter. Each month the duo select or create pieces of jewelry that get delivered to subscribers, who pay $30 a month for pieces that the company says would normally retail for a multiple of that price.

JewelMint proved a success, and the company launched its second vertical, StyleMint, in July 2011 — this time backed by Mary-Kate Olsen and Ashley Olsen, who design exclusive T-shirts for the site.

Since then, it’s been a stream of rapid-fire launches: BeautyMint launched in November 2011 with Jessica Simpson on board, and ShoeMint launched a few weeks later with Rachel Bilson, Nicole Chavez, and Steve Madden attached. And two more ‘Mints’ will be launching in the next two months.

Those launches have contributed to some major growth for the company: Berman and Berdakin say that the subscriber base and revenues have more than tripled in the seven months since the company’s last funding round. And the company’s headcount has growth to 120 — a third of whom are focused on tech and product, a third on customer support, and a third marketing and content.

As for competition, Berdakin says that there are indeed competitors in each individual vertical, but says that none of them have grown to target multiple verticals simultaneously, the way BeachMint has. He adds that another differentiating factor is that the celebrities aren’t simply involved in name only — they’re actively participating in the product creation and selection.

In addition to launching more verticals and expanding internationally, Berman says that BeachMint will also be holding more online events similar to the Cyber Monday stream it held on Facebook last November. He says the event was very successful, and that ultimately the company hopes to use these sorts of streams to create a new at-home shopping experience — one that takes the QVC experience on television, and brings it to the web.

As a former resident of Los Angeles, New York’s public transportation system feels magical at times. Trains — underground trains — that go places you actually want to go. It’s a wonderful system. And I thank my stars that I live in an age when my smartphone can tell me how to use it.

Because for all its convenience, NYC’s subway system can feel a bit labyrinthine at times — particularly when there’s a planned service disruption (there’s always a planned service disruption). Thankfully I’m equipped with a well-crafted Android app called Embark NYC, which makes it easy to plot my subway route and get notified about any potential delays.

Embark NYC (which was formerly called Ride NYC) was built by a company called Pandav, which is also responsible for the popular, and similarly polished app iBART. And today, the company has some big news: it’s changing its name to Embark, and it’s releasing some data that gives an idea as to just how popular it’s gotten. Namely, that it’s now plotted a total of 20 million trips since its first app launched ten months ago, and that users are plotting an additional two million trips per month.

Oh, and they’re also announcing that they were a member of Y Combinator’s most recent batch of companies. And that they’re launching a new app today that caters to Boston’s subway system, the T. To date Embark has launched support for a total of twelve cities on iOS, with three available for Android (NYC, the Bay Area, and Washington DC, which are the biggest markets). You can find all of these apps on their homepage, right here.

So what’s driving Embark’s success? Cofounder David Hodge says that one of the company’s biggest differentiators is its attention to detail. Aside from the apps’ fantastic design, the team is doing everything it can to make its recommended routes as accurate as possible — including manually timing how long it takes to make transfers at different subway stops, and even how quickly people walk in different cities (yes, New Yorkers do indeed walk faster).

Other key features include the ability to use the application offline (you don’t need a data connection to plot your trip), and, starting today, the ability sign up for Push notifications that’ll let you know when there’s an issue affecting your specific subway line. There’s also a handy sharing function that will let you email, text, or (if you really want to) tweet to your itinerary.

Alongside the news, Embark is sharing another key bit of information: the company is now profitable. The apps are all free — Embark is pulling this feat off through advertising alone. These ads are particularly effective, Hodge says, because users looking at the app are frequently at a so-called ‘decision point’ in terms of figuring out where they’re going and how they’re going to get there. Run a well-timed ad for Starbucks when someone is figuring out their morning commute, and they may well figure out a way to stroll past one. And with two million trips plotting per month — and growing — Embark has a lot of opportunities.

Warby Parker — the New York-based startup that sells prescription, designer glasses for a relatively modest $95 a pop — has just released its annual year in review, outlining some key stats and factoids from the past twelve months. My favorite section: most popular misspellings people search for when they’re trying to find the site, with the leaders including “Worvey Parkers” and “Warmby Parker” (Warmby? Really?).

Oh, and there’s some more serious stuff too.

It’s been a big year for the company, which has seen traffic and orders soar (your intrepid reporter is actually wearing a pair as he types this). The YIR is worth browsing in its entirety, in part because it’s interactive — a bevy of graphs and stats slide in as your scroll across the page, with key milestones and nifty artwork running across the bottom.

The site has plenty of interesting data, like Warby’s success with various social networks (Facebook is by far the biggest social media referrer, besting Twitter by a 3-to-1 margin). But while it includes such amusing minutiae as the average employee’s pupillary distance (59 mm), there are a few things it doesn’t include — like absolute numbers on its traffic or sales growth (plenty of companies opt to keep this information secret, so this isn’t really surprising). In any case, the graphs make it clear that things the company is growing quickly.

And there’s one stat that’s impressive for another reason: Warby Parker distributed over 100,000 pairs of glasses to people in need through its ‘Buy a Pair, Give a Pair’ program (the company donates a pair of glasses for every pair its customers purchase).