BizSpark One Week in Review - Nov 12

Over the past week, here’s a sampling of news highlights of members of the BizSpark One program, identifying a small number of the best companies in BizSpark, which is now comprised of over 40,000 startups.

Week of November 6-12, 2011

  • § Digital Folio, a multi-channel, real-time shopping platform, was featured in USA Today in a piece on how ‘Mobile Apps Can Help You Spend Wisely’. Planning to launch a mobile app in time for the holidays, Digital Folio will allow shoppers to compare prices from 5 major retailers and access results from their phone or home computers.
  • § Glympse, a mobile service that enables simple and safe location sharing was recognized for the ‘Most Innovative Use of Location by a Company’ at the LOCALS Awards, recognizing the best in location-based services and advertising.
  • § Kobo, a global eBook retailer with 5 million users was acquired by Japanese e-commerce company, Rakuten for $315M. The acquisition will expand Rakuten’s offerings in providing downloading media products to consumers, starting with eBooks. Kobo was founded in 2009, spun out of Indigo, the largest book, gift and specialty toy retailer in Canada.
  • § Metaio, focused on augmented reality software solutions produced the Believe-o-Magic application, an element of Macy’s annual ‘Believe Campaign’ to support the Make-a-Wish Foundation. Through the application, customers can see, interact and take photos with characters from New York Sun’s famous “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus” editorial from 1897.
  • § News360, a next-generation news personalization and aggregation service, received a $1.5M grant from the Skolkovo Foundation, a non-profit organization that works with innovators, scientists and corporations to spur technology entrepreneurship in Russia. News360 was selected because of the great potential of its linguistic analysis engine, creating new ways to search for content across the web.