Team Europe Makes Early Investment

March 16th, 2010 admin No comments


Team Europe Ventures, the Berlin-based VC firm focused on early stage Internet companies, has made a minority investment in Infakt. The Polish startup provides web-based accounting and invoicing solutions for small companies locally.

Alongside Team Ventures, angel Christoph Janz also brings new investment, with the combined funding amounting to a 30% stake in Infakt. Polish business angel Krzysztof Nowinski (formerly with the VC firm BMP) is an existing investor.



View full post on TechCrunch

You Might As Well Jump!

March 16th, 2010 admin No comments


by Sean McCullough, Software Engineer, Blogger

It’s time to announce another Blogger Birthday feature! Many users have been asking for an easy way to implement “Read more” links on their blog’s index page. In fact, for years bloggers have been implementing “Read more” jump breaks themselves by manually editing their HTML — a process that was complicated and error prone.

Today we are excited to announce our latest birthday present: Jump Breaks.

With Jump Breaks you can show just a snippet of your post on your blog’s index page. Blogger will insert a “Read more” link to the full post page where your readers can keep reading.

There are a couple of ways to insert a “Read more” jump to your posts. If you use the new post editor (available on Blogger in Draft, or by enabling it via the Settings tab), you’ll notice the “Insert jump break” icon in the editor’s toolbar. Click this icon and the “jump break” will be inserted into your blog post at your cursor’s position.

If you don’t use the new post editor, you can still insert a jump break in Edit HTML mode by adding <!– more –> where you want to position the jump break.

Want to change the “Read more” text to something more your style? No problem. You can edit the “Read more” text by clicking Layout and then Edit the Blog Posts widget.

One more note, the Jump Break feature does not change how your post appears in your feed. You can configure post feed options by going to Settings | Basic | Site Feed, and editing Allow Blog Feeds.

Update
: Users that have customized their Blog Posts widget or otherwise have highly customized templates: You may need to edit your HTML to enable Jump Breaks. First, back up your template, then follow the instructions at the bottom of this help article.

This is one of many features announced as part of Blogger’s 10th birthday. Happy Birthday!

View full post on Blogger Buzz

Categories: Blogger.Com Tags: , ,

Magento Scores $22.5 Million For Open Source E-commerce Platform Play

March 16th, 2010 admin No comments


According to a regulatory filing, LA-based Magento Commerce, which develops an open source e-commerce software suite, has recently received a $22.5 million capital injection in an equity funding round.

Magento was originally a product developed and marketed by Varien, a 9-year old company that also delivers e-commerce business consulting and other services, but has now effectively been incorporated as a stand-alone venture. It’s unclear whether the financing of Magento comes from Varien, or if the latter company’s existing and / or other investors have stepped in to provide funding. Either way, the company says it concerns ‘fresh’ cash.

If I were to venture a guess, I would say PayPal plays a part in this story – from what I can gather the least you can say is that the digital payment company has a deep partnership with Magento that spans both co-marketing of their respective services as well as a collaboration on a product development level.

I had a brief chat with Tim Schulz, the former MySpace product manager who recently became Magento’s Senior Product Manager, who told me they’re positioning the Magento Commerce solution right in the center of various growth areas in electronic commerce and that its goal is to become the provider of the single largest e-commerce platform in the world. Bonus points for showcasing some ambition.

Magento currently has over 60,000 merchants using its software, which was downloaded about 1.5 million times as of January 2010. The company also says they’ve registered over $15 billion in transactions to date. The roadmap for the future is apparently paved with additional products, with a number of “Mobile Commerce, Saas offering and other products/services” coming later this year.

Here’s a video of Varien / Magento CEO Roy Rubin outlining his vision on open source e-commerce:



View full post on TechCrunch