Custom product company Zazzle just announced that it’s teaming up with Dodocase, the manufacturer behind what we’ve described as “one of TechCrunch’s favorite iPad cases.”

When I met with Zazzle’s co-founder and Chief Product Officer Jeff Beaver a few months ago, he told me that one of the company’s goals is to partner with local manufacturers. Zazzle is based in the Bay Area (Redwood City, to be precise), and it says that each case produced through this partnership will be “handcrafted in San Francisco.” The company is offering Dodocase iPad cases in the style of hardcover books and iPhone 5 wallets. As with any other product offered on Zazzle, you can customize the cases with your own images and text.

Zazzle writes:

The Dodo bird remains on the list of extinct animals but thanks to DODOcase, bookbinding continues to thrive. DODOcase has expanded and grown their San Francisco operation to include an in house print shop, bookbindery and woodshop. Combining DODOcases’ style and quality with Zazzle’s customization — now that’s something you can hold onto for years to come.

You can browse the selection of iPad cases here.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

For all its successes Facebook has yet to conquer mobile. With that thought in mind TechCrunch is hosting our 5th annual CrunchUp today at the gorgeous Fox Theater in Redwood City, CA. Throughout the day leading developers, Facebook executives and industry experts will take the CrunchUp stage and speak on the state of Facebook’s platform, products, ads and mobile initiatives.

Our live stream is available below, thanks to our partner Ustream. You can join the conversation on Twitter using #crunchup. You can create your own sound bites to share using the SnappyTV app.

AGENDA

(all times Pacific Time)

1:00 PM Opening Remarks By TechCrunch: Eric Eldon, Alexia Tsotsis, Josh Constine

1:10 PM Fireside Chat with Mike Schroepfer – Vice President of Engineering – Facebook

1:40 PM Product Tour – Peter Deng – Director of Product Management – Facebook

1:55 PM Panel: Designing and Growing A Modern Mobile App with Peter Deng, Sean Kelly, David Lieb and Matthaus Krzykowski

2:20 PM Break

2:40 PM Product Tour – Doug Purdy – Director of Developer Products- Facebook

3:05 PM Panel: What’s Next For Facebook’s Platform with Doug Purdy, Rick Marini, Joe Zadeh, and Mathieu Nouzareth

3:30 PM Panel: Social Ads: What’s Working, What’s Not, and Where’s Everyone Else? with Greg Badros and Tom Bedecarre

4:00 PM Office Hours and Happy Hour with Facebook

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

As promised, we have released another batch of August Capital Summer Party tickets. Tickets sell out quickly and if your buyer bot is too slow to snag passes for you and 400 of your closest friends, you can always purchase a ticket to the Facebook EcoSystem CrunchUp here which includes a ticket to the Facebook Ecosystem Conference and a fast track ticket to enter the August Capital Summer party!

About the Facebook Ecosystem Conference at the Fox Theater (capacity limited participants)

August 3, 12:00 – 5:00 pm
Fox Theater
2215 Broadway Street, Redwood City CA 94063, Map
12:00 – 1:00 Registration and lunch
1:00 – 5:00 Facebook Ecosystem CrunchUp
Get Tickets @ Eventbrite: $180 based on availability. Tickets INCLUDE admission for one (1) to the August Capital party and expedited fast-pass door entry. You DO NOT need to purchase a separate August Capital Party ticket if you purchase a CrunchUp ticket. Tickets are non-transferable, based on availability. Limited seating for the CrunchUp. #crunchup

CrunchUps are highly participatory mini conferences hosted by TechCrunch where we focus in on important “now” themes in non-traditional formats.

About the 7th Annual Summer Party at August Capital
August 3, 5:30 – 9:00 pm
2480 Sand Hill Road, Menlo Park CA 94025, Map
Get Tickets @ Eventbrite: $50 based on availability. Tickets to be released weekly in batches. Stay tuned to TechCrunch for releases as they sell out quickly. #tcaugustcapital

Join us for a great mix of start-up demos, networking, giveaways, drinks and fun on the best deck on all of Sand Hill Road.

Due to limited capacity and strong demand for tickets, we regret tickets are NOT TRANSFERABLE and NOT REFUNDABLE. If you use your name to purchase multiple tickets, your guests must arrive with you to check in at the door. Attendee identification will be checked at the door against the guest list; paper tickets not necessary.

Parking will be extremely limited so we encourage you to leave plenty of time to find parking, or carpool with friends and co-workers.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Social games company RockYou just announced that it has acquired developer Ryzing.

The two companies had already worked together on the game Bingo by Ryzing — the game has been available since early 2011, but RockYou took over as publisher through its Studio Partners program in January of this year.

The six-person Ryzing team, including CEO Manu Gambhir, will be joining RockYou. And the company is acquiring Bingo by Ryzing too, which it says has more than 75,000 daily active users. (AppData puts the number at 80,000.) In the announcement, RockYou CEO Lisa Marino says that the game’s model (where users can win real-world prizes through free sweepstakes drawings), combined with RockYou’s more ad-focused business, makes for a unique company: “Not only is real-money gaming superior in monetization to other types of game genres, it is also an accelerator for our ad monetization solutions, and ports well to mobile and other platforms.”

The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. RockYou also announced that it’s moving offices from Redwood City, Calif., to the Potrero Hill neighborhood of San Francisco.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

What’s a SXSW bump worth? To Redwood City’s Banjo, which pools check-ins and geotagged updates from friends across all the major social networks, it was worth 100,000 downloads during the interactive part of the conference. That brought the app to more than 900,000 users. Of those, a little more than a half-million users are active every month and iOS users still outnumber Android ones by two-to-one.

That’s not bad for an app that has grown pretty much organically since it came out nine months ago, and Banjo is showing an upward tick in users at least if you look at its footprint on Facebook. Social networking is a tougher category to acquire customers in at least compared to games, where developers usually have very cash rich businesses that can pay for marketing. For comparison, Path has said in the past that it has two million registered users, but it’s not clear how many of those are active. Banjo’s numbers almost certainly make it larger than every new social, local and mobile app that we profiled ahead of SXSW.

On the back of that momentum, Banjo has an update out that makes the app even more of a central hub for all location activity on other social networks like Twitter, Foursquare and Facebook. It adds Instagram to the other social networks that Banjo pulls check-ins and location-tagged status updates from. Our own Sarah Perez has called Banjo the “creepy/awesome cyber-stalking app“ that shows you who’s nearby based on their Facebook and Foursquare check-ins and geotagged tweets.

Banjo now feeds all notifications all into one place and there’s a new slide-out navigation menu that’s similar to what Facebook introduced to its mobile apps a few months ago.

Banjo’s chief executive Damien Patton said the company was extra careful around not creating too much hype around SXSW. The issue is that the conference has gotten very crowded with product launches which mostly flame out afterward.

“We made a conscious decision not to have a big presence at SXSW,” Patton said. “They’re not our target market.”

He also says that like in earlier years, post-SXSW consolidation is coming soon. “I don’t have a crystal ball to know who will get acquired, but we’re really trying to focus on the mainstream user for now,” he said. Banjo is funded by BlueRun Ventures and Lightspeed Venture Partners.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Mobile device management company Zenprise, Inc. today announced it has raised $30 million in new financing. The round was led by Silicon Valley-based Greylock Partners, with participation from all of Zenprise’s existing investors.

The investment will be used to support the company’s growth, and accelerate product development, sales and marketing efforts.

As part of this new funding round, Zenprise also announced that Asheem Chandna has joined the company’s board of directors. Asheem, a partner at Greylock Partners since 2003, was previously VP of business development and product management at Check Point Software.

Current and prior company investments and board seats include: AppDynamics, Aruba Networks (ARUN), CipherTrust (Intel),Delphix, Imperva, Palo Alto Networks, Port Authority (Websense), Securent (Cisco), Sourcefire (FIRE) and Xsigo Systems.

Last month, Zenprise debuted a new product to lockdown iPhones and iPads in the enterprise, and plans to extend that solution to Android in the near future.

Earlier this year, it was one of the vendors selected by analyst firm Gartner as a “visionary” in its Magic Quadrant ranking. Companies designated as visionaries demonstrate “long-term strategies that point to the product and service approaches that will be most competitive in the future,” Gartner said.

The company was also named as a top new security vendor by HP at HP Protect 2011, a top 50 startup winner by TiE Global and has expanded its U.S. HQ with a new 24,000 square foot facility in Redwood City, CA. It also has a new European HQ in Paris, and new sales offices in Florida, Georgia, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, Texas, Washington, Germany, the Netherlands and The United Kingdom.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Redwood City, California-based Sequent Software, formerly known as Sparq Mobile Solutions, has raised an undisclosed amount of capital in a Series A round of funding led by Opus Capital and SK Telecom Ventures.

Sequent provides near-field-communication software, enabling its customers and partners to deploy NFC payment systems to allow consumers to make payments and other transactions with their mobile devices.

The company’s CEO, Drew Weinstein, says Sequent is the only company whose sole focus is being a “neutral, pervasive administrator of individuals’ personal identification and credentials” between the payments world, retailers, smartphone providers and carriers.

Bob Borchers from Opus Capital and Rob Trice from SK Telecom will join Sequent’s board.

For your further reading pleasure:

Google Joins NFC Forum To Advance Near Field Communication Technology

So Why Should You Care About NFC? (CrunchGear)

The Ever-Elusive Mobile Wallet: Why NFC Chips Are Overhyped And Will Underdeliver

Apple Aims To Take NFC Mainstream; Perhaps The Greatest Trick They’ve Ever Pulled?

With The NFC Wave About To Hit Shore, RFinity Raises Money To Make It Fast, Secure

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

The Inside Network Job Board is dedicated to providing you with the best job opportunities in the Facebook Platform and social gaming ecosystem.

Here are this week’s highlights from the Inside Network Job Board, including positions at Sharkius Games, Idle Games, Loot Drop, Blue Fang Games, Synapse Games, and Kabam.

• Flash AS3 Developer (City of London, UK)

• Senior Software Engineer C++ (San Francisco, CA)

• Software Engineer (San Mateo, CA)

• Lead Analyst (Waltham, MA)

• Flash Game Programmer (Chicago, IL)

• UX Director (Redwood City, CA)

Listings on the Inside Network Job Board are distributed to readers of Inside Social Games, Inside Facebook and Inside Mobile Apps through regular posts and widgets on the sites. Your open positions are being seen by the leading developers, product managers, marketers, designers, and executives in the Facebook Platform and social gaming industry today.

Article courtesy of Inside Facebook

The Inside Network Job Board is dedicated to providing you with the best job opportunities in the Facebook Platform and social gaming ecosystem.

Here are this week’s highlights from the Inside Network Job Board, including positions at Blue Fang Games, Idle Games, Kabam, Sharkius Games, Synapse Games, and Loot Drop.

• Lead Analyst (Waltham, MA)

• Senior Software Engineer C++ (San Francisco, CA)

• UX Director (Redwood City, CA)

• Flash AS3 Developer (City of London, UK)

• Flash Game Programmer (Chicago, IL)

• Software Engineer (San Mateo, CA)

Listings on the Inside Network Job Board are distributed to readers of Inside Social Games, Inside Facebook and Inside Mobile Apps through regular posts and widgets on the sites. Your open positions are being seen by the leading developers, product managers, marketers, designers, and executives in the Facebook Platform and social gaming industry today.

Article courtesy of Inside Facebook

Article courtesy of Inside Facebook