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TuneIn Raises $25M Round Led by IVP, Already Surpassed 1 Billion Listening Hours on this Year
TuneIn, the popular online radio service, today announced that it has raised a $25 million funding round led by Institutional Venture Partners (IVP) with participation from many of its previous investors, including Sequoia Capital, Google Ventures, and General Catalyst Partners. Jules Maltz, a General Partner at IVP, who will join the TuneIn board of directors.
TuneIn Raises $25M Round Led By IVP, Already Surpassed 1B Listening Hours This Year
TuneIn also today announced that it surpassed 1 billion listening hours for this year in April, making it the top online destinations for live audio content (and likely the #2 online music destination behind Pandora).
As TuneIn’s CEO John Donham told me earlier this week, the company plans to use this new round of financing, which comes less than a year after it raised a $16 million round in 2012, to continue to invest in content and its product.
One area the service is clearly going to focus on is on providing more services for the broadcasters that opt to use its services to get access to online listeners. While Donham didn’t go into details, he did note how many local stations still run the same local ads online, even though the online listener is often anything but local. The company, it seems, may soon allow these broadcasters to substitute their local ads for more targeted messages.
As for adding content on the platform, Donham said that while TuneIn already features quite a bit of content (over 70,000 FM, AM, HD and online radio stations and 2 million on-demand programs), the ultimate goal is obviously to “have everything.”
One group of stations it may have trouble with, though, is Clear Channel’s lineup. Clear Channel, which owns the competing iHeartRadio platform, is using a walled garden strategy in his view, while TuneIn offers an open platform for stations. He does believe, however, that it is still very early in the game (and he cited this new funding round as an example) and that the business is really just starting out to live up to its potential.
TuneIn says it currently has about 40 million active listeners in over 230 countries and territories. It powered 227 million listening sessions of more than 60 seconds in March. The service recently launched its TuneIn Live service and a major redesign on the desktop. The majority of its growth, however, comes from mobile listeners, where it is still experiencing “triple-digit growth,” according to Dunham, as well as from the automotive market, where TuneIn is now available on over 30 platforms.
Google Now’s “Topics” Page Returns & Shows You How Much Google Knows About You, But it Only Works on Android
A few weeks ago, Google briefly made a “Google Now” topics page available on the web and then took it down again. The page showed a list of topics Google believed you were interested in, based on your search history. Now this feature is back, but it’s a bit different from the leaked page. A few days ago, it seems, the company quietly (re-)launched this feature with the latest Google Now update. The leaked page was also visible on the desktop, but it looks like Google has plugged this hole the cards are now only available on Android – and only by going through Google Now‘s research cards.
On this page, you can still see many (but not all) of the topics that Google thinks you are interested in. The feature will now pop up at the bottom of Google’s research cards, which often appear after Google realizes that you’ve been researching a certain topic in depth. One of the reasons for this card to pop up, for example, would be when Google detects you are planning a trip.
To see this information, Google Now offers a link will appear underneath these cards (“Explore now,” then look for the “More of your topics” links in the top right) that allows you to delve a bit deeper into the topics you recently looked for and to get a different view of your search history. Indeed, besides powering the research cards, they mostly offer you a richer view of your search history.
Unlike Google’s search history page, however, this feature shows you an aggregate view of what Google believes you are interested in, not just a list of all of your searches.
In my case, for example, Google knew that I was looking for a hotel last weekend and had been looking at hotels in New York a few weeks ago, too. It also knows that I was looking for restaurants in Portland, did some research on web browsers, smartphones and Sim City.
For now, this feature is only available on Android, as the Google Now research cards haven’t launched on iOS yet (where they would be available trough the Google Search app).
Sadly, there doesn’t seem to be a way to just surf to this page without having a research card available through Google Now.
Google Now has always been about anticipating your needs and performing searches for you before you. The research cards clearly fit into this pattern and so does the ability to delve a little bit deeper into what Google thinks it knows about you.
This, of course, shows you how much Google really knows about you – which is either really cool or creepy, depending on your overall thoughts about Google and privacy.
When Google mistakenly leaked the topics page earlier this year, it looked like this would be another step in bringing Google Now to the desktop. Sadly, it looks like that isn’t quite the case and that we’ll still have to wait a bit before Now makes it debut on Chrome for the desktop, but with the new notifications system and a flag to enable Now in Chrome, it’s just a matter of time before Google will launch this feature.
6 Games Banned From iOS
Apple bans games that deals with serious issues from its app store. Some of the most high-profile banned games have come to Android and the web, so you can play them yourself to see what all the fuss is about.
The app store’s guidelines state that “We view apps different than books or songs, which we do not curate. If you want to criticize a religion, write a book.”
Apple is fine with games containing graphic violence and gore, but one thing they won’t tolerate is games that explore serious sociopolitical issues.”Write a book,” Apple tells game developers who want to explore these issues.
Sweatshop
Submitted to Apple’s app store as Sweatshop HD, Sweatshop is a tower defense-like strategy game that sees you running a sweatshop. In spite of its cartoon graphics, the game is meant to be a serious, thought-provoking game about sweatshops and manufacturing in general. You have the ability to hire child laborers and cut corners to save cash, or you can hire more highly-skilled workers and strive to eliminate dangers in your workplace at the cost of your profits. The game’s mechanics put you in the hot seat and allow you to explore the consequences of your choices, offering a new perspective on the issue of sweatshops.
Sweatshop HD hasn’t yet been ported to Android — no surprise, as it’s rejection from Apple’s app store is fairly recent. However, you can play Sweatshop in its original Flash form in a web browser. You may also be able to play it in your browser on Android devices with Flash.
Play it on the web
Phone Story
Phone Story is a satirical game that explores the full story of our smartphones — not just iPhones, but Android phones and everything else. The game tells the player about some of these issues, from precious metals being mined by enslaved children in the Congo and the Foxconn suicides to planned obsolescence and the problems of pollution due to electronic waste. The game is short and its mini-games are simple and crude, but the juxtaposition of serious issues and dead-simple smartphone-style game mechanics can be seen as a satire on the silly and trivial things we use our smartphones for, in spite of their huge hidden costs.
In a Permanent Save State
In a Permanent Save State is a surreal and abstract game described as being “about the collective afterlives of seven overworked laborers who committed suicide in the Foxconn camp, commissioned by Apple.” It’s one game designers’ response to the Foxconn suicides and the conditions the people assembling not just iPhones, but most other electronics we all use. The game stands out visually with its hand-drawn graphical style.
Endgame: Syria
Endgame: Syria is a so-called “newsgame,” which attempts to explore current events through game mechanics. Endgame: Syria take the form of a trading card game looking at the conflict in Syria. The game is divided into political and military phases that explore the political and military aspects of the conflict. It’s not perfect, but it’s an interesting attempt at turning the news into an interactive game that may reach people the news wouldn’t reach otherwise.
Smuggle Truck
Smuggle Truck is an over-the-top driving game where you’re responsible for smuggling your passengers across the US border while dealing with exaggerated physics that cause them to fly out of your truck. The game is controversial and is seen as offensive by many, but the developer’s website says the game is a commentary on the difficulty of immigrating to the US legally:
“As we lived through a painful 12 months of our friend struggling through the absurd legal minefield that surrounds U.S. immigration, we felt that we should create a game that touches on the issue. The comment was thrown around that ‘it’s so tough to legally immigrate to the U.S., it’s almost easier to smuggle yourself over the border’, and thus Smuggle Truck was born.”
After its rejection from the app store, the game was submitted as “Snuggle Truck,” which replaces your passengers with cuddly teddy bears — something that can be seen as a shot at Apple’s policies.
If you purchased the Humble Bundle for Android #2, you already own Smuggle Truck (and Snuggle Truck) and can download it from your Humble Bundle page or the Humble Bundle Android app.
OnLive
OnLive isn’t a game in and of itself, but its cloud-gaming app has apparently been sitting in a “waiting for approval” state for over a year now. If you want to use a cloud-gaming service, you’ll need to use a PC, Android tablet, or another device — Apple won’t approve it so you couldn’t use OnLive on your iPad if you wanted to.
OnLive is available for Android in Google Play and for Windows PCs, Macs, and other devices via its website.
iOS is different from Android in that Apple has a veto over what can be run on their devices. A game banned from the app store can’t be installed at all without jailbreaking, while a game banned from Google Play could be installed via sideloading. Moreover, jailbreaking an iPad is considered a crime in the US under the DMCA.