Go Go Content: Amazon’s LoveFilm Adds 2,000 Children’s Shows, Including Inspector Gadget, In New DHX (Cookie Jar) Deal

The battle for customers for streaming video services is being played out at all age demographics. Today, Amazon’s LoveFilm upped the ante on the youth front by announcing a deal with DHX Media (formerly known as Cookie Jar Entertainment), which will add 2,000 new childrens shows to its catalog in the UK, a massive expansion of its existing kids entertainment offerings. Among the well-known titles that will be coming to LoveFilm are Inspector Gadget and Dennis the Menace.

Amazon competes against the likes of Netflix on OTT streaming video services. On the kids front, Netflix has also been honing its products. It has a “Just for Kids” user interface that’s been around since 2011. In October Netflix finally extended it to its iPad app.

DHX had an existing deal with Netflix in the U.S. but not in the UK, where both companies operate.

Other series included in the DHX deal are Mona the Vampire, Paddington Bear and Sonic the Hedgehog.

“We are delighted to offer LOVEFiLM members access to our award-winning kids programmes. Just like LOVEFiLM we are market leaders and DHX Media’s shows already air on some of the top European broadcast destinations, so this is a natural partnership,” said Michael Donovan, CEO at DHX Media.

“DHX Media has created some of the best children’s TV of recent years and we are pleased to bring their great content to our service. LOVEFiLM Instant is the first choice for parents who want high quality, fun and safe entertainment for their children, so naturally the addition of shows such as Mona the Vampire and Paddington Bear is an exciting prospect for us,” Jim Buckle, MD at LOVEFiLM, said in a statement.

In other markets, Hulu has also been ramping up its children’s content. Earlier this month, it unveiled Hulu Kids, a children’s-only, commercial-free channel available to Hulu Plus subscribers.

For its part, Amazon has been honing how it targets young people across the whole of its business. Its Quidsi subsidiary in October launched AfterSchool.com and Bookworm.com, respectively a kids activity and kids book site. Both move the company away from Amazon-direct branding â€" something we have also seen in another guise yesterday, the launch of Pages for businesses to build their own custom web pages to sell their Amazon-marketplace-powered products.

Release below.

AMAZON’S LOVEFiLM SIGNS DEAL WITH DHX MEDIA
- Additional 2,000 premium kids’ TV shows available to stream on
LOVEFiLM Instant -

LOVEFiLM, an Amazon company, has partnered with DHX Media (formally
Cookie Jar Entertainment), a worldwide leader in animated and
live-action kids’ content, giving members instant access to classic
children’s TV shows such as Inspector Gadget and Dennis The Menace.

The subscription video on demand (SVOD) deal will offer LOVEFiLM -
Europe’s largest subscription service instantly streaming films and TV
series over the Internet and sending DVD and games by post â€" members
instant access to thousands of new, premium quality children’s TV
series such as Mona the Vampire, Paddington Bear and Sonic the
Hedgehog, expanding the extensive catalogue of child friendly TV shows
and films already available on the LOVEFiLM Instant service.

Jim Buckle, Managing Director at LOVEFiLM, commented:
“DHX Media has created some of the best children’s TV of recent years
and we are pleased to bring their great content to our service.
LOVEFiLM Instant is the first choice for parents who want high
quality, fun and safe entertainment for their children, so naturally
the addition of shows such as Mona the Vampire and Paddington Bear is
an exciting prospect for us.”

Michael Donovan, CEO at DHX Media, commented:
“We are delighted to offer LOVEFiLM members access to our
award-winning kids programmes. Just like LOVEFiLM we are market
leaders and DHX Media’s shows already air on some of the top European
broadcast destinations, so this is a natural partnership.”

LOVEFiLM Instant is available on PC, Mac or via Sony Playstation®3,
Microsoft Xbox 360, Kindle Fire HD and Kindle Fire, Apple iPad® and a
growing number of Internet-connected TV sets and Blu-ray players,
giving members immediate access to a huge range of films and TV shows
from as little as £4.99 a month.

- Ends -

• LOVEFiLM is an Amazon company and is the leading European film subscription service with over 2 million members in the UK, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, and Norway • In February 2011 LOVEFiLM was acquired by Amazon EU SARL • LOVEFiLM members can enjoy the benefits of DVDs delivered straight to their door with LOVEFiLM By Post and streaming films online via LOVEFiLM Instant • LOVEFiLM Instant is available on over 200 Internet-enabled devices including PCs, PlayStation®3, iPad®, Xbox 360, plus a growing...

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Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN), is a leading global Internet company and one of the most trafficked Internet retail destinations worldwide. Amazon is one of the first companies to sell products deep into the long tail by housing them in numerous warehouses and distributing products from many partner companies. Amazon directly sells or acts as a platform for the sale of a broad range of products. These include books, music, videos, consumer electronics, clothing and household products. The majority of Amazon’s...

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With A Flick Of The Wrist, Facebook Could Destroy Current Advertising Models

Advertising is something that we’ve all grown accustomed to in today’s society. For companies that provide free services, it’s an important part of keeping those services free for everyone to use. But are ads even working on us anymore? That’s up for debate and discussion, and those are decisions everyone can make for themselves.

One of the biggest companies ever facing the conundrum of introducing advertising is Facebook. The social network is inherently made up of people, and in turn, their content. There’s private content, personal content and public content. Facebook is trying to monetize as much of it as it can to keep its shareholders happy, the service free, and its users from leaving for another option, of which there are none to speak of at the moment.

No matter where the advertising is placed, it’ll either rub people the wrong way, or will be ignored completely. Here’s what Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO, has been quoted as saying regarding ads:

Advertising works most effectively when it’s in line with what people are already trying to do. And people are trying to communicate in a certain way on Facebook â€" they share information with their friends, they learn about what their friends are doing â€" so there’s really a whole new opportunity for a new type of advertising model within that.

Is that “new” advertising the future or is it more of the same? Remember those flashing animated banner ads on websites in the early 2000′s? They were annoying and people didn’t really click on them. Just ask Myspace. Sure, they got some clicks, but only because advertisers became sneaky enough to turn them into “games” and interactive modules using Flash. They still sucked, though.

Where Myspace failed, Facebook has a real opportunity to capitalize on the fact that ads are just not so good for the user’s experience. How, you ask? By offering an option to turn them off, something that has worked for services like Amazon’s Kindle, Pandora and Spotify recently. Yes, they are different, because they are offering up entertaining content. However, that Facebook content is entertainment, especially since a lot of people spend a lot of their free, and busy, time on it. On mobile devices, there is way less real estate for unwanted content. Good thing that Facebook stopped working on them for a while.

Making Something You’re Proud Of

Zuckerberg has also made this statement time and time again:

What really motivates people at Facebook is building stuff that they’re proud of.

As I used Facebook last night on the desktop, I wondered, as I’m sure many of us have, “Is this something that Facebook employees are really proud of?” Have a look:

For whatever reason, this advertisement from Dodge was shoved into my News Feed. It’s probably because one of my friends liked their page at some point in time. However, that’s where it stops making sense. I don’t like trucks, Dodge, anything with the word Ram in it, and I prefer to take the train. This isn’t about me, though. This story is told at bars everywhere when it comes to Facebook ads. The lack of “targeting” isn’t really a shortcoming, it’s a near impossibility. Knowing what people want to see and when they want to see it is human, not algorithmic. Sentiment and moods can’t be measured in 1′s and 0′s.

Facebook shows popular content on your News Feed with its magic algorithm. What happens with this “advertorial content” is that brands pay money to get it in as many faces as it can, maybe a thousand people “Like” it, and all of a sudden, it becomes “popular.” It’s not organic, and it’s not something that we really wanted to see in our feed of friendly content.

Is that experience best for users, or even advertisers at the end of the day? No.

What’s Best For Users

Users should be able to do what they do best on Facebook, which is update their status messages, share photos and video, and add new friends. They should be able to play games, talk to their parents, have a video chat and find old high school mates, without interference. All of the ads along the right-hand side of the News Feed, and every other page on Facebook just about, are distracting. Users are being distracted from what Facebook makes its money off of, our information.

The more a user is interrupted when interacting, the less they’ll use a product, even if it’s just by a tiny bit. It’s a pretty obvious fact, and something that Facebook is most certainly aware of. The position that the social network is in now, is that most of its users are addicted to the site, and there are plenty of people to fill gaps when one or two fall off. Over a billion users is ridiculously massive.

All of this is somewhat obvious, but it’s something that should put fear into marketers’ minds. The worse these ads are, the less targeted they become, the more pissed off users will be, thus not caring about your brand. The next time I see a Dodge Ram commercial on TV, I’m going to remember that obnoxious ad that I saw on Facebook. Did that help sell trucks for them? No.

How Advertisers Should Connect

Advertisers should start thinking about new ways to engage people, the way it used to be on Facebook, before its advertising platform was pushed. Why? Because Facebook could very easily turn on an ad-free model, allowing its users to pay a nominal fee, maybe $10 a month, to move about the site uninhibited â€"without ads.

This would be catastrophic for the advertisers that have their “campaigns” on cruise control, looking at stupid metrics like clicks and how many people viewed or commented on a status update. While they let “social media gurus” irritate the users that can bring them massive revenue, those who use Facebook the right way to engage with customers and potential customers would benefit from an “ad-free” Facebook. Seeing advertising should be optional, and great advertising doesn’t feel like advertising.

How much money could Facebook make if they were to offer an ad-free option? Let’s do some easy math:

If 100 million of its users paid $10 a month for 12 months, Facebook would make $12 billion. How good would that be for Facebook? They reported $1.26 billion in revenue last quarter. These numbers are based solely on 100 million users. Do the quick math as you add more users into the fray. Ten bucks a month isn’t a lot to ask, especially for something that we use daily. You could even give a yearly subscription as a Gift…a Facebook Gift. This wouldn’t all be straight profit though, as they’d have to do a full opportunity cost analysis based on what they’re making in ad revenue, plus actually refactor an ad-free version of the site.

If Facebook turned this option on, the marketers and brands that are relying on self-serve ads to survive would stumble and fall quickly. Advertising as we know it, especially in the social stage of the Internet, would be turned on its ear. And Facebook would still make billions. Of course, people are already trying similar things, but they don’t have the userbase and potential that Facebook has.

Would you pay for an ad-free Facebook? In 2008, some people thought that it would never happen. Maybe most people don’t mind ads, but as they are shown more and more in our News Feed, will that change? Since Facebook is focused on mobile now more than ever, it just might.

If you missed Zuckerberg’s fireside chat with Michael Arrington from TechCrunch Disrupt this year, it’s a great Sunday watch:

[Photo credit: Flickr]

February 1, 2004

NASDAQ:FB

Facebook is the world’s largest social network, with over 1 billion monthly active users. Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg in February 2004, initially as an exclusive network for Harvard students. It was a huge hit: in 2 weeks, half of the schools in the Boston area began demanding a Facebook network. Zuckerberg immediately recruited his friends Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes, and Eduardo Saverin to help build Facebook, and within four months, Facebook added 30 more college networks. The original...

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Dave McClure Backs Comparison Engine VERSUS IO — More Silicon Valley Love For Berlin

Berlin as a startup hub continues to heat up, with some commentators placing it alongside or overtaking London (heresy!), so it should be no surprise to see the German city’s best and brightest tech companies attract investment from Silicon Valley. And so it is that news comes today that Dave McClure has made what is thought to be his first German investment: $100k in VERSUS IO, the natural language-styled comparison engine. It follows earlier funding from Hightech-Gruenderfonds and JMES Investments, bringing the total raised by the Berlin-based company to just shy of $1 million.

Launched in July as way to compare smartphones but with plans to add 640 additional verticals by summer 2013, VERSUS IO has since expanded to also let consumers compare tablets and cameras, while most recently it added city comparisons as its first non-product vertical â€" the startup claims its engine is able to compare just about anything using natural language processing, frequently talking up the potential to even add people to its list of verticals.

In terms of growth, VERSUS IO claims 2.5 million monthly visitors per month, and that 10 million product comparisons are available to date, available in 18 different languages, no less. It plans to add TVs and projectors as a vertical next.

So, how did today’s investment come about? I’m told that McClure attended the ‘Geeks on a Plane’ event in Berlin at Google-funded The Factory where VERSUS IO is based. CEO Ramin G. Far was giving a talk about the growth of the company and later that day he received a call from The Factory’s team to say that McClure had asked to meet. Subsequently, after just a few minutes of talking, an investment was put in motion.

In other words, rack this up as another typical McClure story.

As for the wider debate on London versus Berlin, why not leave the last word to VERSUS IO’s algorithm. I won’t give it all away, suffice to say that London wins hands down.

VERSUS IO brings product comparisons to the next level offering natural text comparisons of any kind of product or service, in any language, fully automated.

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500 Startups, FF Angel LLC, Founders Fund, fbFund, 500 Hats, TeachStreet, Samasource, Life360, KISSmetrics, Jambool , Worldly Developments, Recurly, AwayFind, ERPLY, TextualAds, Keen Systems, Twilio, FanBridge, SlideShare, bitly, Gengo, Ninua, Linkdex, Wildfire, a division of Google, UserVoice, CapLinked, Simply Hired, PayPal

Dave McClure is a venture capitalist & the founding general partner at 500 Startups, an internet seed fund and startup accelerator program in Mountain View, CA. Dave has been geeking out in Silicon Valley for over twenty years, and has worked with companies such as PayPal, Mint, Founders Fund, Facebook, LinkedIn, SlideShare, Twilio, Simply Hired, O’Reilly Media, Intel, & Microsoft. He also likes to play ultimate frisbee when his knees don’t hurt. Dave has been an investor in over 100...

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Why Did Google Buy BufferBox? Because The Entire Mail And Package Delivery System Is Broken

Today, Google bought an Ontario-based company called BufferBox. In a way, it kind of came out of left field. Since it’s a Google Ventures company, one can guess that those on Google’s campus were very familiar with the service, which provides an easy alternative to waiting around for packages at your house.

Not only is package delivery a bummer, because things get lost, hitting up your mailbox when you get home isn’t that much fun either. The worst is when you don’t even have a mailbox and you come home to twenty pieces of junkmail slipped under your door. The mail delivery system is broken and old. It’s ripe for…disruption. How broken? The US Post Office lost $15.9B in 2012.

So at first blush, one could say that Google wants to compete with the likes of shipping magicians like Amazon and UPS, but I think that it goes a bit deeper than that. This doesn’t feel like an “e-commerce” play. Google has the knack of honing in on verticals that are a pain for people in the real physical world. Don’t want to drive your car? Maybe one day it’ll drive itself thanks to Google.

Back to BufferBox, the YCombinator company that currently only operates in Canada. It’s an area that is great to test things out in, away from our needy grubby hands in the United States. Google also rolled out its Fiber product in Kansas City, away from us geeks in San Francisco and New York, so that it could perfect its product before unleashing it on the universe.

This is how BufferBox describes itself on its website:

Today’s parcel delivery system is outdated â€" missing package deliveries is crazy! You’re not home during the day, so stop shipping parcels there! Ship them to your closest BufferBox instead! We’re a network of parcel pick-up stations that are conveniently located, allowing you to grab parcels securely and on your schedule!

Google challenging the Post Office? Altruistic? Kind of. Business savvy? You betcha. Sounds like it’s right up Google’s alley. What does a company have to have to take over the mail routing system? Brilliant mapping technology.

One day, I could see a world where we don’t have mailmen and women coming to our houses every single day to deliver junkmail. These things can be dropped off in a box in a place that’s more convenient for you, say by your office. That way, you can pick it up when you want to, and come home to a nice relaxing home, and clean doorstep. Let’s not forget to mention the anxiety of worrying about a package being stolen by a neighbor. It happens.

So in a nutshell, one must only wonder why Google picked up BufferBox, because Google never really goes into great detail on why it acquires companies. It doesn’t really have to, for competitive reasons. Just know that everything at Google tends to happen as part of a master plan, and this particular acquisition could lead to a massive master plan.

Remember when Google bought GrandCentral? It turned into Google Voice. The service that could one day compete with the likes of AT&T and Verizon. That acquisition was led by Google’s Wesley Chan, now a partner at Google Ventures. He thinks big, so does Google. Just when you thought the GrandCentral acquisition was going nowhere, Google Voice was launched.

Searching all of the world’s information, free or cheaper Internet for all, free phone numbers and voicemail, devices like laptops that are priced fairly for Education and lower-income families running powerhouse open-source software, services that make everything we do online feel more intimate and social, both at work and home, reinventing television…there is an obvious pattern. Google wants to help reshape, and evolve, the world.

You’ve got Google Mail.

September 7, 1998

NASDAQ:GOOG

Google provides search and advertising services, which together aim to organize and monetize the world’s information. In addition to its dominant search engine, it offers a plethora of online tools and platforms including: Gmail, Maps, YouTube, and Google+, the company’s extension into the social space. Most of its Web-based products are free, funded by Google’s highly integrated online advertising platforms AdWords and AdSense. Google promotes the idea that advertising should be highly targeted and relevant to users thus providing...

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In today’s environment, everyone shops online, typically for convenience. The problem? Failed parcel deliveries - being able to actually receive the purchases when they are delivered. BufferBox has developed an automated, self-serve kiosk to eliminate the frustrations and hassle involved with failed parcel deliveries. BufferBox has successfully deployed our first kiosk that allows for 24/7 pick-up of parcels at a convenient location. The kiosk supplies the user with a unique BufferBox address to have their parcel delivered to. Upon its arrival,...

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Facebook’s High-Stakes Poker Game

Editor’s note: Antone Johnson is a startup lawyer specializing in early-stage consumer Internet and location-based businesses, with particular emphasis on social and digital media. Before founding his own firm, he served as eHarmony’s first VP of Legal Affairs and was one of the original in-house lawyers at Myspace. Follow him on Twitter @antonejohnson.

“Ma’am, we at the FBI do not have a sense of humor that we’re aware of.” â€" Tommy Lee Jones, Men In Black

Is it juvenile to snicker at the obvious double entendre of Facebook’s new ephemeral messaging app, Poke, given its utility for sexting? If so, send me back to repeat sophomore year, but the powers-that-be are unlikely to crack a grin.

Facebook has rightly been accused of creating a slavish copy of Snapchat, a viral sensation that surpassed one billion shared photos last month.  The speed with which Facebook was able to emulate and release a competing app â€" 12 days in the making, according to Facebook’s Blake Ross â€" is cited as an example of the competitive threat Facebook and other giants pose to new social startups. Yet Poke may turn out to be a poster child for why most multi-billion-dollar public companies try not to break things, and as a consequence, are often precluded from moving fast like startups.

It would be foolish for most companies to build a clone and expect it to succeed at all, let alone approach Snapchat’s massive usage, but Facebook isn’t your ordinary competitor. With its billion active users, trove of personal data and immediate access to their social graphs, the network effects are unparalleled. Facebook also has unique competitive disadvantages on multiple fronts that could render Poke a crippling liability for the company; paradoxically, the more successful Poke becomes, the more it may hurt the company as a whole.

Facebook has grappled with the consequences of its market dominance for years. The recent ruckus over Terms of Use changes for Instagram under its ownership is only the latest example of Facebook’s uneasy relationship with the public on privacy issues. The company’s governing philosophy of stretching the boundaries of personal transparency while simultaneously insisting on the use of real-world identities â€" coupled with its tendency to ask for forgiveness rather than permission â€" has drawn the ire of regulators and advocacy groups.

More than any other company, Facebook surely appreciates the extent to which massive use of a social service draws massive abuse, as predators “go fishing where the fish are.” The sheer volume of tragic incidents involving teens at Myspace and Facebook forced the companies to come to the table and strike a “voluntary” deal in 2008 with attorney generals nationwide to address vexing, persistent child-safety issues.  The thousands of smaller sites were largely ignored. Scale can make all the difference between benign obscurity and CEOs being hauled into Congressional committee hearings.

Setting aside the debate over what proportion of usage and growth is driven by sexting, the ability to send images that disappear after no more than 10 seconds using an app that alerts the sender if the recipient takes a screen shot, removes some psychological barriers. The percentage of total “snaps” involving nudity may be low, but the possibility that interactions could take that turn at any moment undoubtedly adds a charge to the hormone-flooded young brain. Speaking from experience at Myspace, a site that banned outright nudity from inception, our young user base had seemingly infinite desire to push the boundaries and circumvent those rules at every opportunity. They also knew that to freely exchange nude images they had to go elsewhere: From ImageShack or Photobucket to Kik or MMS. Today, Snapchat is that elsewhere; tomorrow it may be Poke.

There’s nothing inherently problematic or illegal about sexting between consenting adults, but minors are another story. Law enforcement is currently grappling with a head-on conflict between the realities of teen behavior and the legal status of sexting images: Possession and distribution of child pornography is a serious felony â€" one of the FBI’s highest enforcement priorities â€" punishable by lengthy prison sentences and registration as a sex offender. Authorities often use discretion not to prosecute peer sexting incidents among teens, rightly viewing those laws as disproportionately harsh for the context. Yet that doesn’t mitigate the fact that a service such as Snapchat (and now Poke) at any given time is guaranteed to be in possession of thousands or millions of images the FBI considers to be “contraband.”

If there is one existential threat to Snapchat, assuming its continued popularity and eventual revenue model, this is it. Even if we instantly became comfortable as a society with sexting among teens as relatively benign (fat chance), there will still be interactions between adults and minors. As it scales to tens of millions of users and ugly headlines begin to appear about creepy use by sexual predators, it’s a certainty that law enforcement will come knocking with search warrants in hand for records in cases of suspected underage porn and solicitation of minors.

Encryption keys be damned; under the right kind of court order or warrant, services will be compelled to retain and produce some images and data for specific users. (Privacy advocates may be outraged at the concept that “ephemeral messaging” isn’t completely ephemeral, but consider how you would react if a 35-year-old man were sending pictures of his genitalia, however ephemeral, to your 13-year-old daughter.)  This is why Snapchat, like most social media services, includes “CYA” language in its privacy policy:  “We may share your personal information with third parties… [to] comply with laws or to respond to lawful requests and legal process.”

These issues aren’t new, of course. Myspace at its peak received hundreds of law enforcement subpoenas and warrants each month. We also employed and ultimately outsourced an army of image reviewers. Age and identity verification have been thorny challenges throughout the age of social media. That didn’t stop state attorney generals from ganging up on MySpace and Facebook in 2007 to demand action on child online safety.  The pressure to “do something” was intense, and companies resist such demands at their peril.

At scale, the gravest threats are political and reputational. When asked, “What are you going to do about this?” the acceptable CEO answer is not “nothing.” Snapchat and its investors may have thought a few moves ahead in this chess game, but if they have a brilliant solution to prevent the kind of abuses that come with scale, I’d love to hear about it.

Returning to Poke, Facebook faces a unique competitive disadvantage from its long history dealing with child-safety issues, its ubiquity, and unparalleled scale. Simply put, Facebook will be held to a higher standard than startups from day one. Unlike Snapchat and others, Facebook can’t plead ignorance or lack of resources to address abuse issues that accompany explosive growth. In fact, no other company in the world has access to the same range of resources and depth of knowledge in the area of online social interaction among teens and adults.

This is not a technical problem that can be solved by engineering or sheer resources. It’s a byproduct of a legal regime that makes the same interaction perfectly legal between two adults; not-really-legal-but-essentially-unstoppable between two minors; and a felony involving prison time and sex offender registration between an adult and a minor. Anything Facebook does to make the product cleaner or safer is likely to degrade the user experience, add friction to new user registration, and so on. These tradeoffs could well keep Poke a “PG-rated” product with the accountability of real-name, real-identity culture, while the more adventurous remain over at Snapchat â€" at least until it too gets called on the carpet.

Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, Silicon Arabia, Bottom Line Law Group, ideakick, Gust, Kibin, AHHHA , eHarmony, MySpace, Intermix Media, Excite@Home, Stroock & Stroock & Lavan LLP, Fox Interactive Media, Gemstar-TV Guide, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati

Antone Johnson is a California business lawyer and executive advising technology and media companies, entrepreneurs and investors in corporate, commercial and intellectual property matters. His area of focus is the intersection between technology, media, finance, law and public policy, with particular emphasis on lean startups and growth companies in social media, Web 2.0, digital media, location-based services, and other IP-intensive, consumer-facing businesses. Johnson is Founding Principal of Bottom Line Law Group, a business and IP law firm in San...

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The 10 Best iOS And Android Games Of 2012

Editor’s note: Stephen Danos is the associate editor for the mobile app discovery site Appolicious. Follow him on Twitter @sdanos.

This year’s most captivating games either pushed the envelope with state-of-the-art graphics and rich narratives or perfected already proven formulas for touch-based devices. The best titles also bridged the gap between casual and hardcore gamers.

Some developers (Phosphor Games and Vivid Games, most notably) went for realistic 3D graphics that often packed in hours of story-based gameplay similar to console titles. Others like Rovio and RocketCat Games, stuck to churning out repetitive, casual gaming experiences that kept us fully engaged. All being equal, these disparate approaches produced truly riveting games that took full advantage of the features and processing capabilities of mobile devices.

The developers with games in this list should be very proud of their creations. Despite certain genres being oversaturated (such as pick up and play or side-scrolling games) and the unpopular monetization trend of forcing customers to pay for content through in-app purchases, these geniuses managed to make games that are infinitely addictive and rewarding. The picks listed below were curated by Appolicious advisors (most notably gaming guru Andrew Koziara) and members of our user community.

We also have a separate list of the best iOS and Android apps of 2012.

Horn (iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, Android $6.99)
The character Horn is a young blacksmith’s apprentice who must defeat giant monsters who are villagers transformed by a horrible curse. Using a melee combat system similar to Infinity Blade, but with major gameplay enhancements like using a crossbow and puzzle-solving, the developers on the Phosphor Games team were truly pensive during Horn’s development. Horn is the best game of 2012 because it combines an imaginative narrative with top-of-the-line graphics, proving that mobile games with endearing stories can be beautiful despite the limitations of iOS devices. Horn appeals to gamers young and old, and is a great title that will enlighten you as to just what your smartphone or tablet is capable of handling. We should note that Horn does suffer a bit on earlier generation Android devices and operating systems.

ARC Squadron (iPhone, iPod touch, iPad free â€" limited time only)
ARC Squadron is a rail shooter game that combines the retro experience of playing an old Nintendo 64 console game with state-of-the-art graphics geared specifically to touchscreen devices. Powered by the Unreal Engine 3 development toolkit, ARC Squadron has players try their hands (and fingers) in intergalactic warfare. Each area of the galaxy involves a handful of levels with bonus challenge levels along the way, culminating in an epic boss fight. ARC Squadron is very arcade in nature, as scores in each level directly translate into currency that lets players upgrade and purchase new ships, weapons, and skins. Somehow ARC Squadron manages to ape the gameplay of classic console titles like Star Fox 64, yet feel fresh in a mobile media environment.

Angry Birds Star Wars (iPhone, iPod touch 99 cents, iPad $2.99, Android smartphones free, Android tablets $2.99)
Star Wars merchandising, both before and after the Disney acquisition, has never felt so good. The newest edition to the Angry Birds family is just plain awesome. Old birds are re-dressed as Luke, Han, Obi-Wan, Chewie, and the rest. The birds also get all new powers, including shooting blasters and swinging light sabers. The game is a brilliant mix of the old school Angry Birds mechanics and the gravity mechanics of Angry Birds Space (also a worthy addition to any “best of 2012” list). Add all the Star Wars references and visuals (from the original trilogy, only) and you have a game that is out of this world.

Rayman Jungle Run (iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, Android $2.99)
Apple named this Ubisoft title the 2012 game of the year, and for good reason. Many of us were totally praising this game before it was cool. Based on the utterly brilliant Rayman: Origins (a console-based platformer to rival even Mario), this auto-scrolling runner manages to keep all the creativity and bizarre charm of its predecessor, but with bite-sized levels and half of the controls removed. Seriously though, Ubisoft stripped ‘Origins’ down to its core for this simple game, but it’s just as fun and the visuals are just as jaw-droppingly crisp and vibrant as ever. It’s a bit more challenging than other runners, but do not skip this one.

LetterPress â€" Word Game (iPhone, iPad free)
Move over, Words With Friends. Developed by atebits, Letterpress is an inventive multiplayer word game that mixes the strategies of Boggle and Chess. The virtual board of this game is covered in red and blue tiles, each representing you or your opponent. The objective is pretty basic: change as many tiles as possible to match your color while spelling words. Games end when tiles run out. It helps to both have a high letter count and know when to play defensively, blocking off letters by placing your tiles around them. LetterPress supports asynchronous multiplayer through Game Center, so you can face off against as many players as you desire from all over the world at the same time.

Beat Sneak Bandit (iPhone, iPod touch, iPad $2.99)
Beat Sneak Bandit elegantly combines rhythm games (in which players tap along to the beat of the music playing in the game), with puzzle gameplay and stealth action. You’ll need to tap to the beat to make the Beat Sneak Bandit character take his sneaky steps, and time your way through the game’s obstacles and traps. The game is really a clever take on touchscreen games, has a great art style and musical selection, and is easy to play while challenging to master.

Punch Quest (iPhone, iPod touch, iPad) (Free)
Punch Quest is an impressive side-scrolling, endless running game where the main objective is to meet monstrous obstacles head-on with a barrage of uppercuts and jabs. Enemies include feeble skeletons, shield-wielding orcs, fire-breathing imps, and spellcasting wraiths. During the game your fully-customizable protagonist collects coins called “punchos” for buying skills, super moves, boosts, and upgrades. There are even bonus levels where your warrior rides a dinosaur that shoots lasers out of its mouth or transforms into a cartwheeling gnome! RocketCat Games, one of the most reliably talented and awesome developers in the iOS gaming space, are is responsible for the Hook Champ games and the excellent Mage Gauntlet.

Real Boxing (iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, iPad mini) $4.99
Real Boxing, developed by Vivid Games, delivers a one-two punch of well-designed gesture controls for a touchscreen combined with beautiful, console-quality graphics. Your device’s camera catches punch gestures using the V-Motion Gesture Control System. The game features a surprisingly effective Career Mode, where you develop, train, and customize your prizefighter. You’ll be hard-pressed to find flaws with this game as you build up your fighter and even take him online into real-time multiplayer fights over Game Center.

Jetpack Joyride (Android) Free
Jetpack Joyride, released by Halfbrick Studios on Android in September, is the endless running game closest to perfection. Although it launched and rocketed to the top of the charts on iOS in 2011, the game’s presence in the Android Market was substantial. In Jetpack Joyride you play as the fiery and uber-manly Barry Steakfries who swipes a top-secret machine gun-powered jetpack from a laboratory only to be met by thousands of obstacles including electric pillars, rockets, and terrified scientists. Your goal is to collect coins and get as far as you can before dying. The game has an exceptional sense of humor and an impressive array of interchangeable costumes, jetpacks, power-ups, and vehicles. What sets Jetpack Joyride apart is that behind its simple formula, there’s a hugely addictive mission/challenge system which pushes you to play again and again. The difficulty and learning curve are set perfectly so even casual gamers will never feel overwhelmed.

The Room (iPad, iPad mini) $1.99
With The Room, Fireproof Games delivered the most intriguing puzzle game of the year. Mind-bending puzzles, a surreal atmosphere, and delectable 3D graphics in stunning HD quality make The Room a necessary app for every gamer who owns an iPad 2 or higher. The game works ostensibly as a mystery that you solve using a single finger control scheme through puzzles contained within ornate boxes. It is definitely the most realistic looking game released in 2012, even more so than titles from the Zen Bound series. The Room was designed to be a pick up and play game, and although it is rated 9+ for Infrequent Horror/Fear Themes, it is the sort of game you can play with your family if they’re cool enough and can handle the suspense.

The Weekly Good: DonorsChoose And “Big Hairy Audacious” Goals To Help Teachers

[Note: This is a weekly series. If your company is doing something amazing to help a charitable cause or doing some good in your community, please reach out.]

Sometimes, the right people are in the right place at the right time. For DonorsChoose.org, all of this came true. In 2003, Oprah Winfrey mentioned the non-profit on her show, calling it a “revolutionary charity”, and her viewers donated $250k to benefit projects in classrooms around the world.

Yes, DonorsChoose.org is all about helping people help teachers, who of course help teach our students. Being a teacher isn’t the easiest job in the world, and for many reasons, it’s difficult to perform all of the tasks that you want to do to teach our youth in the right way.

I spoke to DonorsChoose founder, Charles Best, about where the idea came from, what they’ve accomplished thus far, and what we can expect in the future.

How did you come up with the idea for DonorsChoose?

In 2000, as a New York City public school teacher, I spent a lot of time in the teacher’s lunchroom, talking with fellow teachers about the books they wanted their students to read, the art projects they wanted their classroom to do, and the field trips they wanted their students to take. They didn’t have the funding to do these things, so I founded DonorsChoose.org out of my classroom. In 2007, DonorsChose.org expanded to serve every public school teacher in the U.S.

How do you explain DonorsChoose to people, to grab their attention?

With DonorsChoose.org, anyone can give as little as $1 and get the same level of choice, transparency, and feedback that is traditionally reserved for someone who gives millions. We call that citizen philanthropy.

Can you provide us with some real stories and stats on what you’ve accomplished thus far?

We strongly believe in transparency â€" that people should be able to see exactly how every dollar is spent. The impact page of our website provide information at the national and state levels about what types of projects are being funded, how many students have been impacted, dollars raised, projects funded and more.

Check out the progress we’ve made in helping schools impacted by Hurricane Sandy.

What have you done differently that helped your program get off of the ground?

We believe teachers know best what their students really need, and we’ve dedicated a lot of time to building and supporting our teacher network. In addition to posting projects and sending us thank you notes for our donors, we have a dedicated corps of teacher volunteers who help us review project requests and compile thank you packages.

DonorsChoose.org is also different in the level of transparency our donors receive, whether they’ve donated $5 or $500. They can see the resources their donations are purchasing, and they receive a thank you letter from a student they’ve reached. We know this is something our donors value tremendously.

What are your future plans for the site and movement?

Teachers at more than half of America’s public schools have posted projects on our site. These projects reveal the resources students most need in particular communities and the activities teachers find most effective. Maybe, just maybe, such discoveries could make government education spending smarter, better targeted, and more responsive.

Our big hairy audacious goal is to inspire 1 million people to give $100 million to classroom projects from 100% of our country’s high-poverty public schools. All in one school year.

How many total people have donated so far, and how much?

To date, 1 million supporters have donated $164 million, which has funded 329,000 projects and helped 8.2 million students.

How do you want people to remember your organization when the Internet and nonprofits have evolved in 20 years?

We want to be seen as a pioneer of peer-to-peer philanthropy and as a platform that unleashed teacher innovation.

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Can you imagine being able to give just a few bucks to send a few kids on a cool field trip that a school wouldn’t be able to fund otherwise? You can do it with DonorsChoose, and I think that’s great.

Mr. Daunis’s project for Cesar A Batalla School in Bridgeport, CT is to get two Samsung Galaxy tabs to help teach his kids how to read. Maybe during this holiday season we can all kick in a bit? Helping out a classroom also makes a great gift for someone.

Daunis has this to say about his classroom request:

I want to help cultivate their love of learning. Through the use of tablets I will not only have access to a library on demand through apps such as Google books, but I will also be able to access many educational apps that can help my students learn from the comfort of their seats. Not only will my special needs students be able to access visually captivating sites, but my bi-lingual students will also benefit from this. Education through the use of this technology is the direction the modern world is heading in. By giving my students experience with manipulating this type of technology they will have a distinct advantage over peers in terms of understanding how to effectively use technology to enrich their learning.

We sure do take a lot for granted, don’t we?

In case you’ve missed our previous Weekly Good pieces, have a look here, here, here, here and here.

DonorsChoose.org is a non-profit startup that matches school projects with donors. Here’s how it works: teachers upload proposals for needed resources or projects and users can view proposals and make donations. Each proposal gets its own page with a written description from the teacher and detailed information on the classroom, project, school and funding needed. DonorsChoose.org reviews each submission before posting it to their site. All proposals can be easily browsed by subject, region, type of resource, student profiles,...

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There’s A Difference Between Private And Personal

While most of us were enjoying the holidays with our families all over the world, someone who is related to the CEO of Facebook posted a photo of her family to friends, and then some journalist person downloaded it and tweeted it.

There’s a real difference between something being private and something being personal. And that, as the aforementioned incident highlights, is a notion that a lot of people â€" including Randi Zuckerberg â€" have forgotten, online and off. What I mean by this is that just because you post something online, doesn’t mean it’s meant for public consumption. Yes, this all sounds very conflated, and yes, Facebook privacy controls are about as easy to understand as left-handed scissors for a right-handed person.

However, somewhere in this slow news big news cycle, publications started to tell the story that said Facebook CEO’s sister clearly didn’t understand Facebook’s privacy controls. This is simply not true, because the photo wasn’t private, it was personal. Allow me to explain the difference.

Private As A Peacock

Private: confined to or intended only for the persons immediately concerned; confidential: a private meeting

If something is “private” in your mind, it’s probably not a good idea to share it on the Internet…anywhere. I don’t care what types of controls a social network gives you. There’s no such thing as full-on “privacy” on the Internet. Do you know what is private? A good-old-fashioned photo in a scrapbook, passed around one by one at the dinner table during the holidays.

If you see someone try to pull out their phone to snap a photo for Instagram purposes, you can say “HEY! That’s private.” This can’t be done on the Internet. Once something is out there, it can be screen-shotted, captured and re-shared just as easily as it was uploaded in the first place. As we learned with Snapchat and Poke, those sexy private photos and videos aren’t really “private” either. I’m not even going to get into the difference between public and private, because I feel like that’s fairly obvious.

Privacy is a lost art in humanity these days. We’re so used to sharing every darn thing that happens to us, myself included, that we have lost a sense of self, therefore leaving ourselves open to the shit show that ensued during the boringest news week of the century.

No matter what Randi Zuckerberg said after the fact, people were going to jump on it and make the situation a poster child for how confusing Facebook privacy controls are. But like I said, nothing is ever private on the Internet.

Personal As Punch

Personal: relating to, directed to, or intended for a particular person: a personal favor; one’s personal life; a letter marked “Personal.”

When something is personal in your mind, you may share it on a channel that you feel safe on, such as Facebook. The site does give you some controls on who can see what. All parties involved in this fiasco were very aware that friends of those who were tagged in the photo-seen-round-the-world would see it, but nobody thought that someone would use this access for “evil.”

The photo that Randi Zuckerberg shared was personal. It was of her family, and she knowingly shared it with friends and friends of those friends. She had every right to do so, as all of us do. Downloading the photo and tweeting it to 40,000 followers was a stupid move. Just because you see something on the Internet doesn’t make it “public.” When something is shared personally, that doesn’t mean that you have to run to thousands of people to show them, too.

If I were to grab a photo of someone’s naked baby butt out of that family scrapbook and run around the block showing everyone, that’s a jerk move. That’s what this “reporter” did. The photo wasn’t private. It was personal.

The Generational Shift

Now that a lot of Internet-native folks are growing up and having families of their own, they are now understanding the value of having a personal life and being able to share it with their friends via the Internet. Being completely public isn’t good, and being completely private isn’t good either. You have to have a balance, and sharing personal photos or videos is a part of that balance. It’s a good thing and it should be cherished and treated with respect.

Remember David After Dentist? That was a personal video that wasn’t meant to go public, but it did. And it blew up. It wasn’t private though, or David’s dad wouldn’t have uploaded it to the Internet.

See the difference? Generation Y thinks that if they see something, then it’s meant to be public. And if something is meant to be public, then everyone and their sister should see it, too. That’s wrong, and it’s disrespectful. It’s taking things to the extreme and taking advantage of the technology we have at our fingertips. If you think that everything should be freely viewable on the Internet, or anywhere else, you should think about that for a while. It’s not healthy. Also, the fact that their parents don’t really understand the Internet doesn’t help the matter. There’s a disconnect for some parents when it comes to the Internet, as in the people we interact with online are somehow not “real.” That “ignorance” can hurt the development of our senses on how to treat others in general.

The Overlap

Sure, there are grey areas, as with anything. Some people feel like they need to, or should, share very private moments, like an engagement, or the birth of a child. That’s a personal choice, of course. Once you share, you lose control of where it goes and what gets said about it, though. When Marissa Mayer announced her pregnancy right after becoming the latest CEO of Yahoo!, there were all types of stories written about it.

The key with Mayer sharing that news, was that Yahoo! is a public company, and sometimes, private information needs to be shared so that those who are invested in the company can know all of the details. Clearly, Mayer has handled becoming both a new mother and a CEO extremely well thus far. At the end of the day, normal folks do have a choice. Steve Jobs’ health was another example of something very private and personal that became public, for important reasons.

So where do we go from here? Nowhere, really. All of these things are judgment calls that require your brain, heart and conscience. The photo that made its way to every TV set in America wasn’t private, it was just personal. The Zuckerbergs are fine. They’re over it. They’re just bummed that a personal moment found its way to the public airwaves.

The moral of the story is if something is truly private, sharing it anywhere outside of that dinner table in your home isn’t a good idea. And even then, be vigilant.

[Photo credit: Flickr]

The Founder Quotient: How To Measure Founder Strength

Editor’s note: Saar Gur is a general partner at Charles River Ventures. Follow him on Twitter @saarsaar.

At Charles River Ventures, we seek to support founders who can build foundational companies in their respective industries and, in so doing, have a huge impact on the world. Over the last 40 years, 15 funds, 70 IPOs, and 100+ M&A events, we have been fortunate to get to know thousands of talented entrepreneurs. We know that high-impact companies are able to constantly face adversity and navigate changes in markets, technology and competition over extended periods of time (years â€" not months!). The key to this capability is outstanding founders. That is what drives our business.

It is also one of the greatest mistakes that venture capitalists make. A false read on a founder, or a founding team, has cost us more in missed opportunities than almost any other decision in our business. And when we find amazing founders we support them through thick and thin. Just this summer, David Sacks sold Yammer to Microsoft for $1.2 billion in cash (CRV was the largest investor). The story that is less often told is that my partner George Zachary had also invested $10 million+ in David’s prior company, Geni, that did not work out as planned. However, despite this first outcome, George still had a ton of conviction to invest in David again before Yammer ever got any meaningful traction.

My point is that our history has shown us that investing in early product/market fit can create a false positive about a company which can be a big mistake. Similarly, so can reading too much into the lack of early product/market fit. Great companies have to continually adapt and be willing to take risks. And while we work our asses off to help, ultimately we rely on our founders to make the right calls in navigating their respective markets.

As such, we spend a tremendous amount of time at CRV getting to know founders and evaluating founding teams. We have to do this, because a majority of our investments are in founders raising venture capital for the first time. They are not known entities. Internally, we call our founder analysis FQ or the Founder Quotient. The Founder Quotient is an assessment of founder strength and founder/company fit. Similar to an EQ or IQ test, but for founder strength (hence FQ).

The way we measure FQ has been refined over the years. I could write a book about each of these factors. For now, I will share a high-level list of attributes we look for and weigh, in different ways, in our FQ:

1. Original product thought. Most founders copy. We look for the 1 percent of founders who have their own original strong views on how to build a great product (e.g. it took a Steve Jobs to set the touchscreen standard for smartphones).
2. Psychological factors. What drives this person? Are they driven to face the adversity and uncertainty of startups? Do they have a chip on their shoulder and/or something to prove? Do they have a strong desire to win? Are they willing to make the sacrifices required to succeed? This is often influenced by their childhood.
3. Authenticity. Does this company align with the founder’s beliefs and values? Do the founders care deeply about the problem they are working on? How passionate are they?
4. Unique market insight. Do they have a unique insight into what the problem is, market timing, how the future may play out?
5. Intelligence. IQ, EQ, self-awareness, ability to hold convictions loosely, etc. Startups are like chess. The founder needs to be able to think several moves ahead as it relates to product decisions, business decisions, and people decisions.
6. Values. Are they honest? If they are in a people-intensive business, do they genuinely like and value people or are they too focused on themselves?
7. Judgment. Product judgment, people and hiring judgment, etc. Do they exercise good decision-making skills no matter how small or large the decision?
8. Experience. Are they uniquely capable of executing? Do they have a relevant 10,000 hours?
9. Ability to recruit. Includes selling a vision, being respected, build a cross-functional team, having a network, etc.

What other factors do you think we should look for in determining FQ?

Saar is a General Partner at Charles River Ventures. Named one of the top 8 up and coming Venture Capitalists by Forbes and a top 10 VC under the age of thirty-six by Venture Capital Journal, Saar loves consumer products and services and is passionate about helping his companies succeed. Saar has been involved in 11 acquisitions in the past few years by firms such as Google, Facebook, Disney, Warner Bros. and Intuit. Prior to CRV, Saar was...

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Founded in 1970, Charles River Ventures is an early-stage venture capital fund that takes a value-added, hands-on approach to support its portfolio companies. Charles River Ventures is one of the nation’s oldest and most successful early-stage venture capital firms with approximately $2.1 billion under management. CRV is dedicated to helping exceptional entrepreneurs turn their ideas into the next category leaders in high growth technology and media sectors. Since its founding in 1970, CRV funds have been ranked among the industry’s...

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Backed Or Whacked: Kids Projects Put The ‘Fun’ In Crowdfunding

Editor’s note: Ross Rubin is principal analyst at Reticle Research and blogs at Techspressive. Each column will look at crowdfunded products that have either met or missed their funding goals. Follow him on Twitter @rossrubin.

‘Tis the season when our thoughts often turn to the wee ones in our lives, and that has certainly been on the minds of some crowdfunding project owners and backers.

Backed: ATOMS Express Toys. Clearly aimed at the little (or not so little) maker in the house, the ATOMS line consists of three kinds of components: Blue bricks sense things; red bricks connect things; and green bricks do things. Yes, you can see the faint outlines of the developer mindset already. The bricks are all linked together with standard audio cables. Taking a cue from the construction masters at LEGO, ATOMS has packaged its bricks into different sets, one for building monsters, another for activating things via a “magic wand,” and a third for iOS control using a Bluetooth brick. One gets the feeling, though, that the young ones’ favorite component will wind up being the exploding brick. Just a hunch.

ATOMS isn’t the first kid-friendly DIY e-bricks set out there. Littlebits uses magnets to link together components, but ATOMS seems to offer more functionality without any more complexity. With about 10 days left to go in the campaign, ATOMS has cleared its $100,000 goal by more than a third. The sets run from about $50 to $80 with the lot going for an early-adopter price of $190 with retail expected at $250 next June.

Backed: Sqord. The first IndieGoGo project to be profiled on Backed or Whacked, Sqord combines children’s activities with one of crowdfunding’s favorite product categories: wristwear. Essentially, a 3D accelerator-based activity monitor for kids, the product is durable and cheap. Sqord’s video shows off whacking the product with a hammer, something you wouldn’t want to do to a Nike FuelBand or an original Striiv monitor. Unlike those products, the Sqord has no display and can relay its latest results up to the cloud by tapping the monitor against a base station using NFC.

Reward levels include two Sqord monitors and the base station for $50, which the company expects to deliver in May. With about two weeks left to go in the campaign, Sqord has raised less than $20,000 of its $85,000 goal. But because they’ve used IndieGoGo’s option for a flexible funding campaign, it gets to keep all contributions.

Backed: iBuKu Pets. At first glance, the iBuKu Pets look a bit like a number of other rubbery protective shells for smartphones and tablets like the Speck iGuy for iPad (with perhaps a bit more cushion). Those taking a second glance will discover that co-creator Royce Channey has gone beyond that, integrating cable storage and a backup battery into the iBuKu; the latter is a particularly handy feature if it is to encase iPhone hand-me-downs. And those taking a third look will find that the team has even designed an iBuKu Pets app that features a quartet of characters, including the Furby-faced Alvie.

One thing’s for sure: The gang over at Arbor Cube runs a tight ship. The campaign, which ended on December 15th, met its $25,000 goal with only $585 to spare and actually shipped the $35 appcessory to backers three days later, hinting that this was one of those campaigns where the fundraising was more of a formality than a necessity.

Backed: Genetipetz The mooraffe, zebugraphant and snurtlegator sound like the work of a collaboration between Dr. Seuss and Dr. Moreau. Actually, they are under the supervision of the animated Dr. Genetipetz. Charlotte, N.C.-based Jackson and Cavan Meade are the entrepreneurial young stars of the enthusiastic pitch video for Genetipetz, animal body part “plushups” that have a tenuous tie to genetics. The early bird-creatures who got a jump on the toys grabbed the first batch of 35 at $50, but this was another campaign that raced to the wire like a zepheetah, just poking past its $20,000 funding goal. The toys are slated to be delivered in February, which should get them out the door in time to avoid scrutiny from the People for the Ethical Treatment of Stuffed Animals.

Whacked: Maze-O “Pretty much everyone loves mazes,” asserts Dan Friedman, half of the Lakeville, Minn., spousal pair behind Maze-O. Maze-O is a set of 2.5-inch squares that easily fit together to allow kids to create mazes wide enough to accommodate a Matchbox car or Hexbug. Maze-O was inspired by the length of time it took for Master Friedman to create mazes using tools such as wood blocks combined with the resulting fragility of such mazes. Most parents would probably outsource the work to China, but not Dan, who spares us the special effects in noting, “We knew there had to be a better way and â€" light bulb â€" Maze-O was born.”

A starter 36-piece set of Google/Windows/eBay-themed red, yellow, blue and green Maze-O pieces was made available for $30. Alas, the Friedmans will need to rely on their 3D printer for printing such pieces for a bit longer. While just over 100 backers were willing to enter Kickstarter’s labyrinthine funding process, the 30-day campaign lost its way in seeking the cheese of its $50,000 funding goal.

France Telecom Invests Up To $20M In Lookout, Preloads Its Mobile Security Solutions On To Android Handsets

Lookout, the mobile security company with ambitions to become the Symantec of the wireless world, is picking up a new backer, and and a major distribution partner in its bid to become a household name. France Telecom, owner of the mobile carrier Orange, is making a strategic investment in the startup, and it has also signed a deal in which Lookout will be preloaded on devices that it sells. Orange has 169 million subscribers and it will start first with Lookout service bundles covering antivirus protection and device tracking for Android devices, installing it as standard on devices in France, Slovakia, Spain, and the UK (through its EE JV with T-Mobile) starting in early 2013.

Exact financial terms of the investment in Lookout â€" which has 30 million active installs and has already raised $76 million from a top list of VCs including Khosla Ventures, Chris Sacca, Trilogy Equity Partnership, Index, Accel Partners, and most recently $40 million from Andreessen Horowitz â€" were not disclosed, but it could be as high as $20 million (€15 million).

That’s because the investment comes out of the OP Ventures Growth fund, a $400 million fund backed by Orange and two other French leviathans, advertising giant Publicis and Iris Capital Management. First announced in March, OP Ventures makes investments of up to €15 million in startups that are strategic for one or both of the companies. This is the first U.S. investment made out of the fund.

Xavier Perret, VP of partnerships for Orange, says that the investment in/distribution deal with Lookout is structured similarly to its past stake in Deezer, the music streaming company. In other words, the plan is to use the technology as much as invest in it.

“We wanted a strategic investment because this is not just a distribution agreement,” said Perret in an interview. “We are including Lookout into our service bundles, but we also see mobile security as an important part of the bigger security-privacy-personal data issue, and in that sense we wanted to be close in terms of positioning.”

While mobile security may have found early adopters among enterprises and organizations with sensitive information, Perret calls Lookout “a consumer play.” The growth of smartphones has given rise to new security threats in the form of malware and lost devices. But equally, there are now more consumers â€" later adopters â€" that may be less proactive in how they use the devices, and will be less inclined to seek out security solutions on their own. Alex Abey, the VP of business development for Lookout, describes consumer awareness of mobile security as still “emerging, although it is increasing over time.”

The opportunity, Orange believes, is to sell consumers â€" later adopters specifically â€" more service bundles that include security solutions from Lookout, as retailers have done for years with antivirus software sold with PCs. “Orange has the opportunity to be the digital coach for those consumers, explaining the services and offering support,” Perret said.

Orange is focussing on Android first for a couple of reasons: it is the most popular mobile platform in the world at the moment, but it is also, as an open-source platform, one of the most targeted by hackers. The Kaspersky Lab found that in Q2 2012, the number of malicious programs targeting Android had risen to 14,900, nearly three times the number in Q1. Lookout estimates that 40% of Android users will click on a malicious web link on their phone this year.

Orange plans to extend Lookout to other platforms in the future, too. Lookout’s software already works on iOS and it has plans to cover Windows Phone in the future, and others if market penetration merits it.

While France Telecom may want sole use of new technology in some cases, in this one, perhaps because FT is an investor and can benefit regardless, the deal is anything but exclusive. Lookout already works with other operators â€" another European giant, T-Mobile owner Deutsche Telekom, as well as Verizon and Sprint are among Lookout’s customers. Some 40% of Lookout’s 30 million active users are outside the U.S., and international will be a big focus going forward, says Abey.

France Telecom is, however, the first carrier that has chosen to take that customer relationship to investor level. Abey believes that having a carrier as an investor is an important step for Lookout as it continues to develop its mobile security “ecosystem.” His description of that ecosystem could also be an indication of where we might see Lookout announce its next partnership beyond traditional VCs as it continues to build out its product.

“It’s about OEMs, carriers and security companies working together to make mobile computing safer for consumers,” he says. So: perhaps look out for Lookout and what it might do next with device makers.

France Télécom is the main telecommunications company in France, the third-largest in Europe and one of the largest in the world

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Lookout provides award-winning security to protect your mobile phone from viruses, malware and spyware, the ability to backup and restore your data, and tools to help locate lost or stolen phones. Lookout’s unique cross-platform, cloud-connected applications are designed to be lightweight and efficient while delivering the best protection possible. Our Mobile Threat Network scans applications worldwide, allowing us to find and stop threats before they ever become a risk to you so you can rest assured that you’re protected...

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