Toluu

VentureBeat

Silicon Valley news about tech money and innovation

Zapproved’s web app makes decisions easierYesterday

A startup called Zapproved recently launched the public “beta” test of a new web application that should cut a lot of the confusion and ambiguity out of the decision-making process.

Okay, so you still have to deal with passionate disagreements and little things like that. But Portland, Oregon-based Zapproved handles the infrastructure, so you don’t have to worry about the little headaches — like wondering, “Hey, has everyone responded yet?” or “Okay, after reading all of your comments I have no idea if you gave me a ‘yes’ or a ‘no,’” — just the big ones. It provides an easy interface to ask people to comment on a proposal, vote “yea” or “nay” and to track all of the votes. ReadWriteWeb’s Marshall Kirkpatrick described Zapproved as an “Evite for approval processes,” which sounds about right. As with event-planning on Evite, you could probably just s

Life360 wins the Android challenge, has big aspirations but has yet to see an Android phoneYesterday

With the first mobile devices running Google’s Android coming shortly, the development community at large seems apprehensive about the platform. After all, why develop for something that may or may not work when there is already a hot, new mobile platform out there, Apple’s iPhone, that has proven to be extremely successful? Well, the team behind the life update and emergency messaging application Life360 took the opposite approach.

“It was clear Android was going to be open,” Chris Hulls, a part of Life360’s core development team told me today. That openness and the fact that no details about Apple’s iPhone software development kit (SDK) were known at the end of last year when development of Life360 began led them to choose Android as a “concept car,” as Hulls puts it.

The bet paid off — literally. Life360 was chosen as one of the 10 winners of the first Android Development Challenge. The app, chosen from 50 finalists, won the team a $275,000 prize. Money which Hull says will go back into the development of the application.

You see, Life360 is far from complete. While it won the prize for its Android ap

Video: Upcoming version 1.1 of Last.fm’s iPhone app?Yesterday

Last.fm, one of the truly great online music sites, has an iPhone app, but I find it somewhat lacking. It seems to have most of the features it needs, but for whatever reason the app just doesn’t flow well. Loading time seems to be a constant issue and site navigation is clumsy.

That looks to change with new version of the application, as you can see in the video below leaked out by Digg founder Kevin Rose onto Twitter. (He claims it’s version 2.0 but it’s clearly labeled in the video version 1.1 — the current version is 1.0.2.) It’s not clear when this version will be out, but when it is, it’ll likely compete with Pandora and AOL Radio for my online music time with the iPhone.

LastFM2 from MG Siegler on Vimeo.

Tap Tap Revenge gets new music (and ads) to rock the holiday weekendYesterday

Tap Tap Revenge held the mantle as the most downloaded application on Apple’s App Store for a while. It’s a solid Guitar Hero-like music game that utilizes the iPhone and iPod Touch’s touch screen with the right price: Free. A new update out today could push it back to the top.

Version 1.2 contains the option to download a brand new song by the popular artist Everlast. The song, available for free, shows how artists can utilize games such as this as promotional tools. We’ve already seen it with the hit console games Guitar Hero and Rock Band, now we’re likely to start seeing it on the iPhone as well.

I’m playing the game with the new song right now. It’s the actual version of the song, not a cover. It’s great.

Alongside the new version and song, Tapulous, the parent company of Tap Tap Revenge, is launching a contest for players. A few round will take place this weekend, with the final round coming on Monday (Labor Day) with an event that will be streamed live on uStreamTV at noon PST. The winner will receive $1,000, and the finalist will get a signed Everlast CD. (A CD? What?)

This Everlast release is the first of what Tapulous is calling “Tap Tap Thursdays�

Contest winner could help Presdo win at the scheduling gameYesterday

I have to admit, I’ve been a little skeptical about scheduling startup Presdo — I previously gave it the benefit of the doubt because founder Eric Ly (who cofounded professional networking site LinkedIn) is obviously a smart guy. Yes, Presdo makes it really easy to set up meetings, but so do competing companies like TimeBridge. Now, however, I’ve seen the winners of Presdo’s developer contest, and I’m sold.

Basically, Ly had a very smart idea for how to build functionality for his product. There are a lot of areas where Presdo needs to expand, but it’s a small startup, and its team can’t tackle everything at once. Instead, it rele