Burstly‘s grand vision coming out of its TestFlight acquisition is getting full reveal today with the announcement of the company’s new corporate structure, which rebrands Burstly’s monetization tools as SkyRocket, and opens them up to all mobile developers and publishers with a new self-serve option, whereas previously they’d been accessible only to the biggest fish in the app ecosystem pond.

Burstly’s new corporate structure puts its three products under the larger brand, including TestFlight, FlightPath, and now SkyRocket. Together, these represent a full cycle of support covering the entire development process, from beta testing straight through analytics for shipped software, and on to monetization tools to help capitalize on insights gleaned from the analytics to increase conversions and revenue.

There’s cross-functionality between each of the three components as well; including the TestFlight API in a mobile app means that it’s available to plug into and use for the FlightPath mobile analytics suite, and devs can use custom user segments created in FlightPath to then build different monetization options in SkyRocket. So, that means you could, for instance, see high flight risk users like those who have consistently run into crashes or been frustrated by bugs and target them with in-app rewards, or even unlock additional content for high value users to keep them pleased and spending.

The new Busrtly suite will help the company funnel users between and across its products, but each will still remain available independently from the rest. But the sales funnel is remarkably clever, and TestFlight co-founder Ben Satterfield explained that it is indeed the hope of the company that customers will see the use value of embracing the whole cycle, versus just one or two components. Still, the flexibility is there to pick and choose.

Burstly’s triple-threat play couldn’t come at a better time; at this year’s Google I/O developer conference, Google revealed that it would be including a beta testing dashboard and provisioning portal on its site. But that is primarily aimed at release candidate testing, which does occupy a role that’s quite different from what TestFlight offers in a number of ways. Still, also having the full-featured three-part platform as an additional bonus can’t hurt its ability to stand out as distinct from Google’s own developer tools.

The new SkyRocket offers free add mediation, with as many partners as a developer needs, Satterfield says. There’s also a simple management platform that automates the process of setting up different partner accounts, and sends you a unified monthly check in exchange for a 10 percent monthly commission. “Some developers don’t have the bandwidth to manage multiple ad partners and our goal is to make this turnkey for a small percentage,” Satterfield explained regarding the pricing structure.

More developments in the Sprint acquisition foodchain saga. As expected, Sprint is upping its offer for outstanding Clearwire shares to $3.40 per share, working out to an offer of about $2.5 billion. This comes after originally making an offer of $2.2 billion, based on $2.97 per share.

The new offer values Clearwire at $10.7 billion, but for those investors and bankers who are now thinking they can play a game of chicken against Sprint while the carrier itself is being courted by both Softbank and Dish, think again: “The offer represents Sprint’s best and final offer,” Sprint says flatly.

Sprint was widely expected to up its price for the 50% of shares of Clearwire that it does not already own after shares in Clearwire rose last week to close at $3.20 per share on Friday. Clearwire shareholders were going to meet to vote today and were anticipated to vote against Sprint’s earlier offer, because it was too low. Pre-market today, Clearwire’s shares are at $3.46 and rising.

Sprint, in its statement to the market today, said that its offer is a 14% premium to its previous offer (first made in December 2012), and a 162% premium to the price of Clearwire shares when Softbank made its first formal offer for that company in October 2012, offering to buy it for $20.5 billion.

Sprint itself is embroiled in a game of acquisition tug-of-war, with Japan’s Softbank currently getting outbid by Dish Networks. The news comes a day after Sprint received a special waiver from Softbank so that it could consider Dish’s offer of $25.5 billion for the company.

As we understand it, the two potential buyers are not only arguing over who is willing to give Sprint shareholders more for the carriers’ assets, but which partner would make the best strategic sense. Dish would offer Sprint a very U.S.-focused convergence play with more wireless bandwidth. Softbank would bring better technology and more scale and buying power for its wireless business. The Softbank deal is already fairly advanced and Sprint’s board has so far been appearing to favor that deal, although to answer to shareholders, it’s also considering the Dish offer. The Softbank deal has a $600 million break fee attached to it if it falls through.

Clearwire is an important part of that picture because of its spectrum in the 2.5GHz band.

“The revised offer demonstrates Sprint’s commitment to closing the Clearwire transaction and improving its competitive position in the U.S. wireless industry. Sprint is uniquely positioned to leverage Clearwire’s 2.5 GHz spectrum assets. Sprint’s Network Vision architecture should allow for better strategic alignment and the full utilization and integration of Clearwire’s complementary 2.5 GHz spectrum assets, while achieving operational efficiencies and improved service for customers as the spectrum and network is migrated to 4G LTE standards.”

Sprint says it has now submitted the bid to Clearwire’s board of directors for formal approval.

“Payment marketing” startup Swipely is announcing that it has raised $12 million in Series B funding.

Although founder and CEO Angus Davis (who founded TellMe, which was acquired by Microsoft) said that he’s focused on “looking forward to the future,” it’s worth noting that this is the first round that Swipely has raised since the company moved on from allowing users to share credit card purchases with friends to its current focus on payments, marketing, and loyalty. He did say that the company was able to sustain itself for three years on its $7.5 million Series A because it spent the money “judiciously,” and because it was already bringing in significant revenue.

Swipely’s helps merchants use their credit card payment data to gain a deeper understanding of customer behavior. Customers can also sign up for a loyalty program that’s tied to the card that they already use, and the merchants can then send them targeted messages and offers.

There have been a lot of new payment startups emerging in the past few years, Davis said, but they’re not competing with Swipely for the same customers — Square, for example, has also been adding features for merchants to manage loyalty programs, but Davis said Square businesses tend to be smaller than Swipely’s, who normally do at least $1 million a year in credit card sales.

“We’re the new kids on the block in a pretty enormous market, and frankly, the peopel that hurt when we win are the legacy, old school payment providers,” he said.

The round was led by Shasta Ventures, with participation from new investors First Round Capital, Greylock Partners, and Index Ventures. Davis said the funding should help Swipely “pretty dramatically ramp up the size of our team” and go “from serving hundreds of merchants today to thousands of merchants within the year.”

In addition to finding new customers, Davis said he wants to offer additional services to the existing ones. When I asked what he had in mind, he pointed to Swipely’s most recent upgrade, which added a reputation tracking feature and analytics for measuring the in-store success of online promotions.

Swipely says it currently manages $700 million in sales for its businesses, as well as relationships with nearly 2 million customers.

Kudos to Apple’s finance lawyers, who are the Cirque Du Soleil of legal contortionism. On the eve of live testimony from CEO Tim Cook, CFO Peter Oppenheimer and Phillip Bullock, head of Apple’s tax operations, a scathing congressional investigation of Apple’s tax dodging strategy reveals how the computer giant avoided $13.8 billion in taxes through a clever labyrinth of offshore tax havens, shell corporations, and paper shuffling.

“The ability to pay taxes of less than 2% on all of Apple’s offshore income gives the company a powerful financial incentive to engage in convoluted tax planning to avoid paying U.S. taxes,” notes the report from Senators Carl Levin and John McCain of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

The 37-page report is jam-packed with all the edge-of-your-seat thrills one would expect from a congressional report on multinational tax policy; we summed up the good parts so you can concentrate your valuable workday procrastination on cat videos.

1. Ireland: Come For The Beer, Stay For The Tax Haven

In addition to the majesty of rolling hills, towering waterfalls, and a rich culture, Ireland also welcomes billion-dollar multinational corporations with an appealing 12% tax rate. Even better, in a sweetheart deal with the makers of the laptop used to type this story, the Irish have offered Apple a tax rate below 2%. At least since 2009, according to the report, it was, on average, 0.06%.

Senate investigators found this curious, since nearly all of Apple research, development, and board meetings are conducted in the United States. So, when they quizzed Apple about where it calls home, “Apple responded that it had not determined the answer to that question.”

As a result, Apple has had an effective tax rate of just 20.1%, below the 24-32% it tells investors (according to the report), and well below the 35% the U.S. government wants it to pay. In 2011, it paid a mere $2.5 billion.

2. Sell To Yourself and It’s (Technically) Not Income

On paper, Ireland would appear to buy enough Apple products to reconstruct Blarney Castle from discarded iPods, but Apple’s Irish HQ legal entity is merely a passthrough shell corporation to funnel profits to tax havens, says the report.

The investigators determined that Apple cleverly splits itself into entities around the world, charged with selling products and intellectual property at distorted prices. For instance, Apple Sales International, a shell corporation entitled to Apple Inc’s intellectual property, sells products to its worldwide retailers at a “substantial” markup, technically raking in most of the profits from goods sold in stores.

“For example, in 2011, Apple reported $34 billion in income before taxes; however, just $150 million of those profits, a fraction of one percent, were recorded for Apple’s Japanese subsidiaries, even though Japan is one of Apple’s strongest foreign markets. ASI, meanwhile, reported $22 billion in 2011 net income,” explains the report.

3. Choose Which Entity Pays Taxes (Hint: The One With The Lowest Income)

Apple avoids taxes on its $102 billion in offshore holdings, thanks to an unintentional loophole that allows the company to decide which subsidiary gets taxed. In an effort to simplify the global tax rules, the IRS permitted multinationals to “disregard” sub-entities that were normally taxed (the so-called “check-the-box” rule).

Apple structured the relationship so that its tax-haven entities received billions in otherwise taxable dividend payments from subsidiaries it had elected to be among its disregarded entities.

In other words, according to the IRS, the payment within corporations is treated as a kind of internal transfer, which Apple funneled to its tax-friendliest locations.

“Those figures indicate that Apple’s Japanese profits were being shifted away from the United States to Ireland, where Apple had negotiated a minimal tax rate and maintained two non-tax resident corporations.”

Looking For A “Reasonable” Tax Code

Apple, of course, is not the only major tech firm accused of dodging taxes through offshore havens. In Apple’s case, Tim Cook has already donned the good cop role ahead of his congressional grilling, alongside Apple also providing written testimony to the subcommittee.

“If you look at it today, to repatriate cash to the U.S., you need to pay 35 percent of that cash. And that is a very high number,” said Cook. “We are not proposing that it be zero. I know many of our peers believe that. But I don’t view that. But I think it has to be reasonable.”

Cook will reportedly plead with Congress to simplify the tax code. But, if that happens, a lot of very clever tax lawyers will lose their jobs.

[Image Credit: Flickr User jpmpinmontreal]

Expect a swathe of consolidation in the European e-learning sector in the coming months. Edxus Group, a new London-based corporate operating edtech company, is planning to plough in €50-60 million ($64-$77 million) over the next 18 months to develop and acquire European e-learning businesses and build out a single regional player with the scale to compete against U.S. edtech giants, it said today.

Edxus plans to execute the first phase of its “buy and build” strategy over the next three to four months, deploying an initial €15-20 million to “consolidate a handful of European e-learning companies”.

It did not specify which companies it has in its sights but said the target is those serving the K-12/primary and secondary school market. Northern Europe and the U.K. are the initial markets for the first wave of investment, with other European regions “under assessment for future plans”. The aim is to bring together “complementary expertise and products in curricula, data and instructional systems”, it added.

Edxus said its overarching aim is to rival similar U.S.-backed moves. In the U.S. edtech giants such as Pearson, Blackboard, Macmillan, Kaplan and McGraw-Hill top the list of acquisitive e-learning companies. The European market is more fragmented and ripe for consolidation, according to Edxus — meaning a local scale player is needed to ensure U.S. companies don’t end up dominating the region too.

“The US e-Learning market is already a few years ahead of Europe,” commented Edxus Group co-founder and CEO Benjamin Vedrenne-Cloquet in a statement. “Unless we can create scale and a fertile ecosystem, the European e-learning space will be dominated by American content and software. This buy and build strategy is designed to help foster the consolidation, scale and operational efficiencies required in Europe to help e-Learning companies to thrive.”

Edxus’ initial investment funds come from its partner and backer: specialist media investment and advisory firm IBIS Capital. It’s unclear whether IBIS will fund the full program of consolidation, or just the first wave.

“The European e-Learning industry currently displays both disruptive innovation and rapid growth but it is highly fragmented and lacks a dominant player. These are all characteristics of an attractive pre-consolidation phase industry so we expect our strategy to help the marketplace as a whole meet its enormous potential,” said IBIS Capital’s co-founder and CEO, Charles McIntyre, in a statement.

In what is effectively a follow-on round, Brightpearl, the cloud software provider for multichannel retailers, has raised $8 million in Series B funding from previous backers Eden Ventures and Notion Capital. Both Eden and Notion seed-backed the UK company, before adding a further $5 million Series A in May 2011. This brings the total raised by Brightpearl to $14.5 million.

Brightpearl provides cloud software for small to medium-sized retailers, which integrates orders, inventory and customer data across multiple retail channels — both online and bricks ‘n’ mortar. The problem that it’s set out to solve is that whilst it’s arguably easier than ever to start an e-commerce business, even a blended off-line/online one, there’s fragmentation in terms of the number of channels that you’re expected to sell into. The headache here occurs when trying to manage stock/inventory across channels, and dealing with things like double-selling, support, delivery, and tracking customers from one channel to another.

Brightpearl’s cloud offering aims to take care of this heavy lifting, helping businesses scale and manage a multitude of SKUs across all of their online and brick-and mortar channels, with a “unified system for inventory, order, and customer data.” The customer data element is particularly noteworthy.

To that end, earlier this month, Brightpearl announced further multichannel support by adding integrations with Amazon, Bigcommerce and Shopify, claiming to make it even easier for retailers to accelerate growth through “more effective merchandizing, better customer data and fully synchronized inventory management”.

Since 2011, the company says that more than $600 million of gross merchandise value has been traded on its Brightpearl Commerce Acceleration Platform.

The barrier to entry for the Unity game rendering engine for developers on iOS,  Android and BlackBerry 10 has gotten lower, as use of Unity tech is now free on both mobile platforms. Unity CEO David Helgason announced the changed terms today during the Unite Nordic trade conference, according to Pocket Gamer’s Keith Andrew. The dropping of licensing fees for the engine’s basic tier means that features which once cost $800 now carry no charge at all.

The change in pricing structure is all about building momentum for indie game creators and studio, according to Helgason. Unity has shifted to a free licensing structure on the web and on desktop platforms, and has long hoped to bring the same model to its mobile platform products, according to Pocket Gamer. Later on, the same deal could be made available to Windows Phone 8, the company says.

Unity 4 on mobile offers a number of impressive features, including real-time shadows and multi-screen AirPlay support for building unique game experiences. For Unity, offering the basic license free to game devs is essentially also lowering the barrier to their revenue-generating paid tiers and offerings, including assets for in-game use and Pro and Basic add-ons, team licenses and more.

For mobile devs, it gives them a level of access to tools used by some of the biggest and most successful gaming studios on Android and iOS, including Rovio (which uses Unity for Bad Piggies), as well as those used by hit indies like Year Walk, The Room and more.

This is a good thing for the independent games development community, and hopefully it means we’ll see even more top-tier titles coming out of brand new places. The iOS and Android mobile software stores aren’t quite the Wild West of new and exciting indie content they once were, but they still provide small developers more exposure and opportunity than other platforms, and maybe this will help that continue to be true in the face of increasing investment in mobile software from big name game studios.

Last week we reported that MessageMe, one of the latest messaging apps to hit the smartphone market, had picked up a $10 million Series A round of funding, and today, the company is officially confirming the news, along with some more details on how it’s been doing in the 2.5 months since it launched. It now has 5 million users across both iOS and Android — a five-fold increase on the 1 million that downloaded the app in its first 10 days.

MessageMe aims to carve out a name for itself by offering more ways than the rest of the pack — which includes WhatsApp, Line, KakaoTalk, Viber and Facebook (from which MessageMe gained some notoriety when it was restricted from using Facebook’s social graph API to find friends to use the app) — for users to communicate with each other on its messaging platform. In its case, this is done through notifications via text messages, but also pictures, doodles, video, voice, location and music sent from one user to another. Altogether, usage of these has risen three-fold, to 1,500 per second from 500 65 days ago.

From what we understand, although MessageMe is partly founded by people with extensive gaming experience — Arjun Sethi and Justin Rosenthal both worked together at social games company LOLapps (acquired by 6waves in 2011) — it will be messaging, not games, that will be the revenue driver for the company. Also: no plans to add in advertising, nor to charge for the app. Instead, it will build out premium messaging features such as stickers and money transfers.

The latter is shaping up to be a particularly interesting area, with not only Google swaggering into the ring, but as of yesterday Square as well, alongside a number of other companies like Venmo and established names like PayPal and Western Union already dabbling in features like this.

As we reported last week, and as confirmed by the company today, this latest round was led by John Lilly, the former CEO of Mozilla who is now a partner at Greylock; Lilly now joins the board of LittleInc Labs, makers of MessageMe. Other investors in the round include previous backers True Ventures (where MessageMe was first incubated), First Round Capital, Google Ventures, SVAngel, Resolut.vc, Andreessen Horowitz, and Social+Capital Partnership. The company’s angels also include Airbnb’s Brian Pokorny, Hiten Shah, Eric Wu and TinyCo CEO Suleman Ali.

The company is still in an early and small stage: currently there are only 10 people working for TinyInc Labs.

I caught up with co-founder Sethi to speak a little more about the direction of the company:

About those greyed-out tabs on your app. When are you launching stickers and money?
We’ll start rolling out new features in about a month, although we’re already doing some staged rollouts in beta. Stickers will feature our own content, as well as branded content, from companies that we’ll be working with. Money will be done in partnership with someone. A lot of the new features will come first on Android. Although it’s an app that we launched only last week, it’s easier to add and develop new features on Android.

What about Windows Phone and BlackBerry?
We are taking a close look at all the platforms out there, including web, Windwos and BlackBerry. We’ll see where most of the demand is and what users are asking for to decide what the next step will be for MessageMe.

Talk to me a bit about your thoughts on paid messaging services like WhatsApp or those that rely on adds for revenue.
There is no paid version planned. We’re definitely adamant on keeping it free, simple and fast. We’re also not doing any banner ads or third-party data stuff. We want to make sure that everything you do is private and secure. Even with premium services, you will pay or have option to opt out before you see or use it — that will come into play with how we roll out stickers and accessing content.

WhatsApp (200m+ users) has stolen a march on the messaging apps world with its seemingly global appeal, with Facebook Messenger also doing this to a lesser extent. Meanwhile others have a very regional focus. Where do you sit in that spectrum so far?
Outside of the U.S. most of our growth has been in Europe, and the UK specifically. Most of the usage so far is of a younger demographic.

What message apps do you use?
Besides MessageMe, I use WhatsApp because that’s what’s popular in South Africa [where he hails from] and also BBM. Because I worked in Asia, I also use KakaoTalk for friends in Korea and Line for friends in Japan. I think you’ll always have fragmentation, just as you still do in email [that begs the question of interoperability....]. Then again, I’m not your average user, but I use Line as heavily as MessageMe.

When it comes to diagnoses and the possibility of undergoing serious medical procedures, we want second opinions (and trustworthy referrals) whenever we can get them. With 30 to 40 million Americans slated to receive insurance for the first time next year thanks to Obamacare — and with millions expected to experience higher costs and reduced coverage as a result — the system is in for a shock.

That’s why one Bay Area startup sees a huge need for trustworthy, affordable online resource for second opinions, and referrals. And, potentially, a huge business opportunity.

Conceived by Reputation.com co-founder Owen Tripp and chief of interventional radiology at Stanford Hospital, Dr. Lawrence Hofmann, ConsultingMD launched in early 2012 to streamline the diagnosis process and help patients connect with top specialists for speedy second opinions. In other words, it wants to be the “Mayo Clinic of the Web,” as The Wall Street Journal intoned in February.

Investors are intrigued; particularly, a firm that has quite a bit of experience investing in Health IT companies. Today, ConsultingMD announced that it has raised $10 million in series A financing from Venrock, which follows the $1 million in seed capital it raised from Harrison Metal last year, bringing its total to just over $11 million. While Tripp (like every founder on the planet) says that the company had interest from a range of investors, the company chose Venrock to lead its round because he sees them as the “leading venture firm” when it comes to healthcare IT, and one that is committed to “advancing patient-centered care.”

At first blush, the concept behind ConsultingMD may sound similar to that of familiar HealthTech startups, like ZocDoc, which allows anyone to search for doctors, find ratings and reviews and book appointments online, or the fast-growing information and doctor Q&A platform, HealthTap, for example. However, the co-founder tells us that ConsultingMD wants to reach higher — to go beyond simply creating a directory or Q&A service for physicians to build a real “virtual clinic” — something Tripp feels is still missing on the Web.

With Consulting MD, the co-founder continues, someone who is experiencing anxiety over his or her medical condition can answer a few questions, and let the site do the rest. ConsultingMD will then automatically pull the patient’s medical records and images — along with digitizing any written records — organizing them in reverse chronological order and annotating the history. Previously, it’s taken patients weeks to collect all this information and, in turn, takes a physician weeks or months to read through those records and offer a diagnosis. Tripp says that the startup’s technology has reduced that process to one that takes 48 hours from start to finish.

The other key part to ConsultingMD’s model is that, once a patient starts a case on the platform and it has collected and digitized all its records, it automatically matches the patient with the “best” expert for their case. The startup has developed a physician network that the founders say is comprised of the “top 0.1 percent of experts in each field.” And these experts tend to be the chiefs or chairs of major medical research universities, Trip explains.

In other words, the real problem ConsultingMD is trying to solve is one of access. In today’s world, the average person has no idea how to find or connect with these top physicians. By creating a network of elite doctors and specialists and by digitizing a patient’s medical records for them, ConsultingMD wants to simplify that discovery process — and help push the digitization of medical information forward.

The one problem, however, is that this service doesn’t come cheap. ConsultingMD is trying to create an elite platform that features the best specialists in the country. For those looking for a second opinion — after authorizing the site to access their medical records and disclosing their history — the service will cost $3,750 on average. While that’s a fairly expensive price tag for individuals, ConsultingMD believes the real opportunity is in working with companies to help employees get access to better care, and outcomes.

For an additional $200, the startup also offers a referral service, which connects patients with top medical professionals in their area, scheduling an appointment and providing doctors with all of their medical information, digitized.

In the end, the startup wants to provide value for both sides of the table by enabling physicians to network with other elite doctors in their network, admitting only those who’ve received quality peer recommendations. And by allowing them to tap into a platform that automatically connects them with more cases that directly apply to their area of focus and specialty, ConsultingMD hopes to provide a more attractive lead generator and additional source of income.

On the flip side, the startup hopes to provide a way for patients to get access to the best of the best and, by doing so, offer them a shot at achieving far better outcomes than they would with their family doctor. That kind of service has plenty of appeal to be sure, but admittedly, with a fairly high price tag and without being covered by insurance, ConsultingMD may lose some of its potential audience.

However, by using its new funds to attract companies and startups looking to reduce costs and improve treatment outcomes for their employees, the startup could be able to create a lot of value in that growing, B2B niche.

How many crowdfunding platforms is evidence of a crowdfunding bubble? Well, when an organisation feels the need to launch a directory to list and detail all of the crowdfunding options in a single market it’s perhaps a sign that exuberance for crowdsourced financing is running a little high. Nesta, a U.K. charity focused on promoting national innovation, has launched just such a directory, detailing the U.K.’s crowdfunding landscape — and all, by its count, 31 current crowdfunding platforms up and running and begging for money on your behalf.

The CrowdingIn directory certainly looks like a useful resource if you’re trying to figure out how best to get your next project funded, with the ability to filter by model and sector/area of interest. So, for example, if you’re looking for an equity investment model in the arts-creative sector then using the directory quickly narrows down those 31 platforms to just one. Or if you’re looking for a donation model in the same sector you’ll find there are four options to choose from. The rewards model is generally more populous, with two pages of results to sift through. But as a signposting service it’s still doing some useful legwork.

The directory also summarises what each crowdfunding platform offers, details their conditions of use and links through to each website. Add to that, Nesta has put together a crowdfunding how-to guide. So far, so handy. But at the same time, 31 crowdfunding platforms does feel like an awful lot of local players for a single market. Consolidation feels inevitably and probably necessary. Or, as my colleague Steve O’Hear jokily puts it, how many crowdfunding platforms does it take to get a lightbulb funded? Not 31 surely…

Of course there is variation in the crowdfunding platform offerings, with levels of specialism — including some very niche offerings, such as SolarSchools: a platform for U.K. schools to raise money to buy solar panels to fund clean energy. That’s not the place to go to fund your next great business idea, clearly. But there is also still plenty of crossover, especially for the rewards model in creative sectors — which is really where the whole crowdfunding phenomenon kicked off.

Also worth flagging that the UK Crowdfunding Association, a self-regulating trade body for the sector, counts about half the number listed on Nesta’s directory among its membership — so there may be some useful cross-referencing to be done there. The Association does also include some platforms that aren’t apparently on Nesta’s list. So, depending on how you count it, the U.K. appears to have (even) more than 31 crowdfunding platforms…

Uncovet, a startup that wants to be the recommendation engine for indie designer clothing and accessories, has raised $1.3 million from Javelin Venture Partners, Siemer Ventures, and L.A. angel investor Paige Craig.

A graduate of Science, Uncovet is an accessories and home décor site that is building a style graph to personalize product recommendations. With more than 500,000 monthly visitors, the startup uses Facebook Connect to allow users to invite friends to the site and can also take a user’s Facebook Likes into account when recommending products.

The result is a personalized and curated group of products that act as a style graph. The company, which launched last year, also features “Daily Finds” and will be launching its first native iPhone app early June (half of the startup’s daily visits already come from mobile device. Android and iPad apps will be released later this year.

Uncovet shoppers visit the site more than six times per month and will open an Uncovet email nine times per month. Uncovet delivers a more engaging experience by targeting specific consumer segments with products that resonate with their specific tastes. Uncovet is a next-generation version of Urban Outfitters; filled with unique items from independent designers, targeting a young, trend-conscious audience, and leveraging a new world of social data to fuel growth and loyalty,” says Michael Jones, CEO of Science.

Wanderful Media has raised another $9 million from the long list of newspaper and media companies that were already backing the startup and its local deal service Find&Save.

The announcement comes after the relaunch of Find&Save last month. The service allows readers to browse deals aggregated from newspaper circulars, retailers, and other data sources. That was the first big redesign since Wanderful acquired Travidia (the print-to-digital conversion company that started Find&Save), and at the time, CEO Ben T. Smith IV told me that it was Wanderful’s first opportunity to put its own stamp on the product. That involved adding more personalization and social features, such as the ability to create shopping lists and to follow retailers and other users.

COO Doug Kilponen said yesterday that the relaunch has gotten a positive response so far. That’s one of the reasons for the new funding — to increase the distribution around a product that seems to be working. He added that the new Find&Save spurred interest from new investors too, so “we’ll hopefully see some news on that as well.”

This brings Wanderful’s total funding to $36 million. All of Wanderful’s existing backers participated, Kilponen said, and the round had no lead investor. The existing investors include (deep breath) Advance Digital, A. H. Belo Corporation, Community Newspaper Holdings Inc., Cox Media Group, The E. W. Scripps Company, Gannett Co., GateHouse Media, Hearst Corporation, Lee Enterprises, MediaNews Group, The McClatchy Company, and The Washington Post Co.

Although Find&Save has its own website, it also integrates with the sites of newspapers like the San Francisco Chronicle — in fact, it says its network already reaches 100 million unique visitors each month. The next step, Kilponen said, will be the launch of Find&Save apps for mobile and tablet.

Browser maker Opera’s first WebKit browser has exited beta. The full launch for the browser previously code-named Ice adds a few additional minor updates to the meaty feature-set demoed at the Mobile World Congress tradeshow back in February.

The new updates in this full launch version of the Android browser are as follows:

• Toggle navigation bar from top to bottom
• Wrap text when you zoom
• View active tabs in full screen
• Search and navigate with a responsive address bar

The Android browser represents a huge shift for Opera as it moves its business from technical development to product-focused development, leaving its Presto framework behind and adopting the de facto standard WebKit engine, plus Chromium — a move Opera confirmed in February. Update: Since then Google has announced it’s forking WebKit as Blink. Opera confirmed to TechCrunch that while the current version of its Android browser is built on WebKit/Chromium 24 it will be moving to Blink once it arrives in the Chromium code (due in a later version, it says).

At the time of its WebKit switch announcement, Opera argued then that ditching Presto and adopting WebKit frees up its engineers to focus on product development in a bid to stand out in the increasingly homogenous smartphone browser space.

The other issue for browser makers is that they are fighting with apps for users’ eyeballs. Research put out by mobile analytics firm Flurry in April found that U.S. Android and iOS owners spend an average of 80% of their time within apps, and just a fifth (20%) within mobile browsers. Moving the needle back in the direction of the browser is Opera’s goal here.

Key features of Opera’s Android browser include a content discovery feed that can be accessed by swiping right from the home screen — a feature clearly designed to encourage users to spend more time inside the browser, and less time using social networks and apps like Twitter which also incorporates a  personalised discovery feed to try to keep users within its apps, supplementing its even stickier social content.

Opera has also leveraged its data compression expertise for the Android browser with an “off-road” mode that can be toggled on to reduce data consumption in order to improve browser performance when network coverage is poor, or lower data costs when roaming.

Gestures and a light coloured user interface round out Opera’s offering here. According to Google Play the browser has had between 10 million and 50 million downloads in the past 30 days, and appears to be sustaining users’ interest with no sign of a big drop in interest yet. Its Google Play rating is currently 4.5 stars with close to 350,000 ratings.

Screengrabs below.

Game developer Rocket Jump had already proved its mettle with its hit Major Mayhem. But the company’s location in Wellington, New Zealand meant its team often felt isolated from the resources they needed to build an even bigger hit. Enter Scopely, the Los Angeles-based mobile gaming platform founded by social gaming entrepreneur Walter Driver and AdSense co-creator Eytan Elbaz.

The two companies’ partnership produced the hit Mini Golf Matchup. Launched at the beginning of March, the game reached 10 million downloads in its first month and took the number one spot on the App Store in 28 countries eight hours after its launch.

Antony Blackett, the managing director of Rocket Jump, says that working with Scopely helped his team mitigate the disadvantage of being so far away from other game developers.

“When your head is down and you are building a product, you don’t really have the time to build the relationship you need to talk with Apple and constantly show them what you are building. When you are in New Zealand, you don’t get that opportunity,” he says.

Rocket Jump is exactly the kind of company Scopely looks for, says co-founder and CEO Driver. Scopely was “born out of the recognition that there is a lot of amazing content created out there that can make lots of amazing user experiences, but conditions in mobile gaming make it hard for independent developers to compete at a higher level in terms of distribution, monetization and service side infrastructure,” Driver says.

Since Driver and Elbaz launched Scopely in 2011, the company has raised $8.5 million in seed funding in a round led by Anthem Venture Partners.

Driver first noticed Rocket Jump after seeing Major Mayhem, which was published by Adult Swim and marketed with ads on its TV network. The rail shooter game was a top ten overall app in nine countries in the App Store and in the top 25 all-time user ranked games in Google Play. The two companies began working together in February.

Scopely helped develop the Mini Golf Matchup’s multiplayer experience and monetization model. The company also marketed the game by leveraging its user base, which Driver says is in the tens of millions.

“Discoverability is a huge challenge. You can make one of the best games that people have ever seen and if you haven’t exposed it to enough people at launch, then it won’t have a life. Our advantage is having a large user base to market to and launching stuff on a consistent basis,” says Driver. “Independent game studios might launch a couple titles a year, but we know the partners that are most effective at paid user acquisition.”

Scopely’s pre-launch marketing efforts helped Mini Golf Matchup achieve over one million downloads on its first day. After that, Scopely focused on the game’s multiplayer mechanics, with incentives for players to invite more friends. They also created a monetization model with advertising partners like Starbucks and Coca Cola for free versions of Mini Golf Matchup.

The company faces competition from game publishing giants like GREE, Zynga, DeNA and Chillingo, but Driver says his Scopely’s smaller size is one of its strongest assets. In addition to Rocket Jump, Scopely’s partners currently include four other game studios: Double Fine, Big Cave, Highline and Zupcat.

“We feel like we can’t provide the kind of value we want to provide for 100 partners and we don’t want to,” says Driver. “There are quite a few publishers out there that make a volume play of as many things as they can and hope something becomes a huge phenomenon. We don’t feel that provides the best service for our partners and it’s not the most likely way to make Scopely successful.”

Though Scopely also creates its own games, Driver says that those projects are meant to help it improve its tech platform and develop new mechanics, such as a tournament feature, that it can in turn apply to its partners’ games.

“Scopely has been very hands-on. On the development of the parts, it feels like they are a lot more committed to it than other publishers are,” says Blackett. “It felt more like a co-development than a publisher-developer deal.”

MavenSay, a social recommendation app, just got a surge of unplanned downloads coming from Indonesia, and its founders are moving quickly to include Southeast Asia in its expansion plans as a result.

The company’s Toronto-based co-founder, Jesse Dallal, said the two-month old app got 100,000 downloads over the past fortnight. It has a total of 130,000 downloads so far, and the sudden surge was tracked back to a power user based in Indonesia. They’re not sure which one it is, but the source of traffic points to the country, he said.

The way the app works is similar to Pinterest, in that users follow other users’ recommendations. These could cover places they’ve eaten or music they’re listening to, for example. For its launch, MavenSay roped in what it called “influencers”—featured brands to follow such as Momofuku and Refinery29.

The Indonesian user that triggered the downloads isn’t a celebrity that MavenSay had canvassed, but was clearly influential enough over his or her social network to move the downloads, said Dallal.

“It’s been an unanticipated consequence of our [social] strategy,” he said, referring to the way things get viral on these recommendation platforms where people reblog items from influencers.

“We’ve reached out to influencers in North America, but we’re also going to reach out to influencers in Asia now. We’re thinking of coming out there and talking to users to understand what the differences in culture and usage might be,” he said.

MavenSay has seven people, including its three co-founders Dallal, Mike Wagman and Bryan Friedman. The small company can’t be expected to have concrete plans for Asia yet, but seeding interest in one of the world’s fastest-growing, mobile-hungry countries may pay off eventually.

According to mobiThinking, Indonesia has 260 million mobile subscribers, although those with data connections make up just 47.6 million, or 18 percent of that.

And Indonesians have been quick to embrace social networking sites, with fierce loyalties once something sticks. Aged social network Friendster started to pivot towards Asia around 2008, when it realised that 90 percent of its user base was coming from the region. While it was, by that time, lagging behind Facebook globally, some markets like Indonesia stayed loyal to Friendster.

MavenSay has raised funding of $890,000 so far.

Real-time parking startup ParkMe wants to help find you parking — in real-time. The company, which originally started out on the Web, has been making a big push behind mobile apps, which is really smart, because most times when you’re looking for parking, you’re not on a PC, but you have a smartphone nearby.

There was just one problem — this app to find parking spots in real-time was only available on iOS, so there were a whole bunch of people who couldn’t use it. And their real-time parking finding powers were thus severely impacted. ParkMe is trying to correct that, with the release of an Android app that provides parking help to even the most helpless among those seeking to find a place to put their cars.

Android users will not only be able to find the closest parking for where they are now or where they happen to be going, but they’ll also be able to find the cheapest parking. And somewhere in between, maybe even the best value — the mythical “cheapest parking which is not so far away from their destination.”

The app accomplishes that by showing relevant parking rates, hours of operation, payment types, and — for those of you who want to know exactly how many free spots are available in the potential parking garage of your choice — real-time occupancy information for garages and street parking.

Oh, and did I mention the Android app was designed with the new Google maps API? Yeah, that too.

ParkMe CEO and co-founder Sam Friedman told me that the company wanted to make sure the experience on iOS was finished before moving on to another platform. In part, that meant getting as much real-time parking data as possible. ParkMe is available in 28,000 locations, 1,800 cities, and 32 countries around the globe. That comes after it has struck partnerships with Amco and Amano McGann, which are two of the largest parking providers around.

ParkMe has raised funding from Los Angeles-based private equity firm Angeleno Group, as well as IDG Ventures and Fontinalis Partners, the investment firm co-founded by Ford Executive Chairman William Clay Ford Jr.

HasOffers, a startup that helps mobile app developers see which ad efforts are actually paying off, is announcing that it has raised a $9.4 million round of funding led by Accel Partners.

The company was founded in 2009 — the product that it initially built, and the one that’s still highlighted on the HasOffers website, is a system that helps ad networks and agencies manage their performance-based programs. (Those agencies and ad networks include Bucksense, Tapjoy, and Sponsorpay.)

However, CEO Peter Hamilton said the team realized that mobile advertisers were facing a similar problem, so it built a product called MobileAppTracking, allowing developers to see where app installs, engagement, and purchases actually come from. So as publishers run ad campaigns, they can see which social networks, publishers, and ad networks are giving them the best results, and they can adjust their efforts accordingly.

Rich Wong, the Accel partner who’s joining the HasOffers board, definitely sounded more excited about the mobile side of the business when I spoke to him today. (Wong’s past investments include Google-acquired AdMob and Angry Birds-maker Rovio.) He said “some of the biggest spenders in the Accel portfolio, people who are on the cutting edge of doing customer acquisition,” such as HotelTonight, Spotify, and Trulia, were already using MobileAppTracking. (Other customers include Yahoo, Zynga, Pandora, and Square.)

Wong also argued that the company is part of towards a broader shift in mobile advertising. He said the industry’s first phase, was the early “walled garden” period, followed by a second stage dominated by ad networks like AdMob, Quattro (acquired by Apple), and Millennial (now public). The third, current phase is all about the shift to programmatic buying — in Wong’s words, “the machines are taking over.” In this phase, developers are running campaigns with a wide range of different sources, so they need a better attribution system.

And that system needs to be independent of any of the existing ad networks, so it can measure all sources of traffic effectively. After all, Wong said, many networks have their own attribution systems, and while they might work fine, publishers probably don’t feel entirely confident that AdMob’s can report accurately about one of its competitors, or vice versa. That point about independence came up repeatedly during our conversation, with Wong emphasizing that HasOffers is a software business, not a company that’s selling ads.

“One of the reasons we’re able to do what we do with over 150 ad networks and publishers is that we’re not competitive with them,” Hamilton added.

Until now, Hamitlon said HasOffers has been bootstrapped and profitable, with 79 employees, so it didn’t necessarily need the money. At the same time, he said the mobile ad tracking product has really taken off: “We saw an opportunity to put our stake in the ground as the attribution analytics platform, and we didn’t want it to pass us by.” For now, that means continuing to invest heavily on the technology and product side of the business.

In addition to Accel, RealNetworks founder Rob Glaser and Founder’s Co-op partner Chris Devore also invested. (Glaser and Devore are both based in Seattle, as is HasOffers.) Even though HasOffers is a bit older than your normal Series A company, and even though Accel has a separate fund for investing in bootstrapped, mature companies, this specific investment came from Accel’s early-stage fund: “Even though it has characteristics of a ‘growth-stage business’, we looked at it as an early-stage Series A.”

Google Checkout is being sunsetted as the company focuses on shaping Google Wallet into a viable PayPal rival. Google Commerce announced today that Google Checkouts will be retired on November 20.

Google suggests that merchants who do not have their own payment processing transition to Braintree, Shopify or Freshbooks, which are offering discounted rates for Google Checkout users. U.S. merchants who do have their own payment processing can apply for Google Wallet Instant Buy. Developers selling through Google properties will automatically transition to the Google Wallet Merchant Center in the next few weeks.

News of Google Checkout’s demise comes a week after several major updates to Google Wallet, all designed to attack PayPal’s dominance from different angles by leveraging several of Google’s properties.

These include storing payment credentials in Chrome to make it easier for consumers to checkout and reduce shopping cart abandonment; making Google Wallet available in the desktop version of Gmail; the Instant Buy API, which is designed to streamline transactions for merchants selling physical goods and services; and the Wallet Objects API for merchants offering loyalty programs.

Founders Fund, the firm founded by Peter Thiel and other PayPal executives, famously declared that it wants to back companies with big, ambitious visions (not just dinky web startups). And that description certainly fits Hampton Creek Foods, a startup that wants to move the world from animal-based foods by creating alternatives that are genuinely tastier, healthier, and cheaper.

Founder and CEO Josh Tetrick told me that he just closed a $1 million round from the firm. It’s Founders Fund’s first food tech investment, he said — which seems to be true, judging from the portfolio companies listed on the firm’s website. Hampton Creek previously raised $2 million from Khosla Ventures.

The startup recently launched its first product, Beyond Eggs, a plant-based egg replacer for baked goods and other food products. I actually took a tour of the Hampton Creek, where I saw the labs for testing different plant-based proteins, the kitchen where the company’s cooks stress test the products, and yes, tasted some mayonnaise and cookies created with Beyond Eggs (you can see a video of the tour below). The broader vision is to launch other plant-based alternatives.

By the way, we took a broader look a few weeks ago at the startups trying to reinvent food, including Beyond Meat and Modern Meadow. (Thiel actually funded Modern Meadow through Breakout Labs, an arm of the Thiel Foundation.)

Does my music do better on Facebook or Twitter? Where should my next tour be? Is my new song too repetitive? Musicians can get free answers to these questions and more from BeatDeck, a Y Combinator analytics company launching today. BeatDeck plans to license this data to labels and music stores to help them sign and recommend tomorrow’s superstars. Yep, BeatDeck is an enterprise music startup.

Everyone (who isn’t a cold-hearted robot) loves music. That’s led lots of entrepreneurs to start companies aiming to help listeners discover new artists and songs. But the fact is that selling music is a tough business. Selling what music to listen on someone else’s service is even tougher. BeatDeck is different. It does nothing for the listener. Zero consumer products. Instead, it focuses solely on the music industry — the artists, the labels signing them, and the stores selling them.

The first part of the equation launches today on BeatDeck.com. Artists sign up and connect their social media accounts like Soundcloud, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and Last.fm. This lets them track their performance and compare it across channels, as well as see their fans’ age, gender, and location demographics. Artists also get fan influence and sentiment breakdowns thanks to reputation measurement and natural language processing.

For even deeper analytics about their music, artists can share their songs to social networks through BeatDeck’s publishing system. This gives them a heatmap of which parts of their songs users are skiping to, pausing at, or rewinding to so they can listen again. Conversion metrics indicate which channels best turn listeners into fans, and where they’re getting reshared. It’s valuable data mosts indie rockers don’t have the skills or time to track by hand. It could tell them where to book their next tour date, which part of their song to pitch for commercials, and which social networks they should focus on.

That’s phase one. Soon, BeatDeck will start selling enterprise licenses for its data to record labels and A&R departments (the people who decide which artists a label or management agency should sign). BeatDeck will let them monitor their artists and find new ones to catapult into fame. “We’re already in talks and worked out a couple of deals for enterprise solutions” says BeatDeck co-founder Josh Mangel. He explains that with just six big customers, which would have to include most of the big record labels, BeatDeck can be a sustainable business.

“Sustainable business” isn’t what being a startup is all about, though. BeatDeck will need additional revenue streams to truly succeed. Luckily, I was able to squeeze out of Mangel that the company is working on making its data useful to online music stores. One day it could have iTunes, Spotify, and Amazon paying it to tell them whose music to recommend to you. BeatDeck could tell them that people who try to listen to screechy industrial dubstep hero Skrillex, but pause 20-seconds in, should be recommended a lesser known artist like Robert Delong who is somewhat similar but easier to listen to.

There are plenty of music stores out there that could benefit from these kind of insights. BeatDeck will be battling it out with fellow music analytics services Next Big Sound and Musicmetric. However, they charge artists to monitor their music, and most musicians can’t afford to pay. BeatDeck’s free analytics for artists could win it lots of sign-ups who will fill it with data it can sell. It’s going to be a long, hard road convincing independent musicians that they need analytics, and bundling their data into something lots of companies want to buy.

In the end, the hope is that BeatDeck can help fledgling artists grow and get noticed by the bigwigs. Mangel concludes, “Right now the business isn’t really fair. Artists are not getting big because they’re talented, but because they’re backed by a lot of money. We want to make the music industry a meritocracy.”