This morning Google officially unveiled App Inventor for Android, giving non-developer Android users the ability to build their own applications using a visual, puzzle-like interface. I’ve been playing around with the tool all morning (more on that soon), and noticed that one set of Components allows users to seamlessly integrate Twitter functionality. As far as [...]

A lot of venture money is chasing social commerce startups right now because group buying sites are chasing a lot of money (in the form of consumer spending). Groupon kicked things off with its 5 million mega-round last April. LivingSocial has raised million so far. And now BuyWithMe just closed a million B round led [...]

Luxury products giant LVMH (Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton) has reached an agreement to acquire a 70%, controlling stake in Sack’s, a Brazilian online retailer of fragrances, cosmetics and toiletries. With the acquisition, LVMH aims to expand its Sephora subsidiary into the Brazilian perfumes and cosmetics market, reportedly one of the largest and fastest-growing beauty markets [...]

Energy efficiency tracking company OPOWER added Hadi Partovi to its Technology Advisory Board and will open new offices in San Francisco next month. The Arlington, VA based company’s 10,000 square foot office in San Francisco’s South Park neighborhood will have room for between 75 and 100 employees, a large part of which will be engineers. [...]

Last year we found out Reevoo, the online customer reviews startup which had looked like it was slowing down, was actually signing up partners and getting traction. Today it announces a Series B round of funding from existing investors, though terms were undisclosed. The funding has been secured from existing investors Eden Ventures, Banexi Ventures [...]

Opera Software has struck a deal with Russia’s federal mobile operator OJSC MegaFon under which MegaFon’s special package “Unlimited Internet with Opera Mini” will be distributed to all Russian territories. That may not sound like much at first glance, but you have to consider that MegaFon boasts over 53 million mobile subscribers, spanning all seven [...]

Social network application developer and advertising platform RockYou has just raised another million in funding from SoftBank. With the deal, the company has acquired a majority of the shares in its joint venture, RockYou Asia. The company previously raised a whopping million in funding last November. This latest investment brings the startup’s total funding to [...]

Facebook and Zynga have just announced a five year partnership and the expansion of use of Facebook Credits in Zynga games. After months of discord, Zynga and Facebook have made peace— at least for now. Despite Zynga’s earlier frustrations and reports that it was ready to abandon Facebook, the two companies were able to agree [...]

We’re big fans of UK-based startup Huddle, which offers a business-friendly collaboration and storage platform for the workplace. Today the startup is announcing that it has closed .2 million in Series B funding led by Matrix Partners, existing investors Eden Ventures and Charles McGregor, participating in the round. This brings Huddle’s total funding to million. [...]

When you think of developer-focused web computing services, the first thing that probably comes to mind is Amazon’s hugely popular AWS, which includes S3 (storage) and EC2 (processing). Google has its own web computing service — namely, Google App Engine — and the search giant is looking to significantly expand its offerings. During a roundtable [...]