MobileMonday 28 January: Mobile Tourism

Grey Singapore has recently created a meaningful corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiative, and has developed a mobile app, Lend an Eye, that aims to aid and to empower lives of the visually impaired (video demo above). Instead of requiring someone to be next to a blind person to assist them, the app allows the user... Read more »

The impending release of Xiaomi’s next-gen smartphone, the Mi3, isn’t exactly a secret. After all, Xiaomi has a released a new model in the early fall in both of the past two years, and all signs point to the company planning to do that again. Late yesterday, iMobile reported that the new handset is coming... Read more »

GiftCards.com, a Pittsburgh-based company that has been around for more than a decade and has sold 5 million gift cards, agreed to buy San Francisco startup Giftly to grow out a mobile platform. The terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, but Giftly had raised about $2.8 million from investors including Baseline Ventures, SoftTech VC, Floodgate, Thrive Capital, and Techstars’ David Tisch. Giftly’s acquisition follows a number of other ones. Karma was picked up very early by Facebook although it may not produce meaningful revenue for some time for the social network, according to its earnings results earlier this year. Another gifting startup, Giftiki, which pooled together people’s money to get gifts, was acquired by Launchrock. Giftly built a platform that avoided the hassle of individually dealing with merchants and point-of-sale systems. They came out with a native mobile app last fall that made it easier to send presents to friends and family. The company’s platform didn’t put any limitations on what kinds of presents you could send because the company had a web of relationships with banks and credit card processors. When a recipient would go to redeem their gift, they would pay out of their own pocket, but Giftly would reimburse them that amount through their credit card. GiftCards.com said Giftly will be rolled into their operations, but will maintain offices in San Francisco. “We will continue to build out Giftly,” said Giftly’s CEO Timothy Bentley. “Our backend infrastructure will be used for their next generation products. We’ll continue to expand the ways our technology and services are available to developers, through our API, and merchants, through our merchant services.” The company is also looking to raise a first venture round, even though it’s been around for more than 10 years. That round will go toward completing the acquisition of Giftly. GiftCards.com has been around since 1999; they sell personalized, pre-designed and discount gift cards.

Fresh from closing its purchase of newsreading app Pulse, LinkedIn has made another acquisition to dive deeper into the mobile space. TechCrunch has found out, and confirmed, that the social network has aqui-hired Maybe, the social polling startup founded by Omar Hamoui -- the man who set up, ran and then sold mobile ad company AdMob to Google for $750 million.