Development

Microsoft December 26 said it was opening new stores in 2013 after what it said was a momentous year for its retail stores.

According to Jonathan Adashek General Manager, Communications and Strategy, Sales & Marketing Services Group, Microsoft in a post:

Sgrouples is the world’s private social network. It was built on the belief that people want to replicate their real life online–to communicate personally and privately with the people that they really care about in their real life–which is a different model from the current social networks. Simply, Sgrouples is designed to allow its users to share exactly what they want with exactly who they want without having anybody else see it.

Netflix Inc and The Walt Disney Company have joined hands to give US film lovers high quality animated and live action films.

According to Ted Sarandos, Chief Content Officer at Netflix, “Disney and Netflix have shared a long and mutually beneficial relationship and this deal will bring to our subscribers, in the first pay TV window, some of the highest-quality, most imaginative family films being made today.”

News Corp has announced it will cease publication of its standalone publication of The Daily iPad app December 15, 2012 and embed its technology and staff into the The Post.

At Silicon Beach Fest Hollywood 2012 Kevin Winston organized a panel called “How to Find and Hire a Developer”. Below are some take away tips… and the video of the of the panel.

Being an entrepreneur is about, “The journey through the ‘NO’ to get to the YES’ ” said by Ryan Caldbeck, CEO of CircleUp, on a panel at the Connections Conference in Indianapolis. CircleUp is an online social marketplace that supports direct equity investments from individual investors to small private consumer and retail companies. He was talking about the history of VitaminWater and how the creator went through bankruptcy, had a failed marriage and spent years going from local mom n’ pop to mom n’ pop store trying to convince each one to carry Vitamin Water out of his car… eventually it went national as we all know

The Spiridellis brother-founder team behind the popular JibJab eCard line featuring personalization Starring You®, (think Elf Yourself)—have grown up and now have children of their own. Children that have iPads, and a need for great content to interact with on those iPads that meet the tough standards of Gregg and Evan Spiridellis. The criteria for this JibJab dad approved content is that it must be fun, engaging, with music that doesn’t suck after the 3rd play, and also promotes learning…

Email marketing and cross-channel interactive marketing saas solutions provider ExactTarget has acquired Pardot, a marketing automation provider and iGoDigital, web personalization provider in a move that will revolutionize its marketing platform.

ExactTarget ,founded in 2000 and headquartered in Indianapolis injected $95.5 million for Pardot, $85.5 million of it in cash and $10.0 million in ExactTarget common stock

I recently had the pleasure of interviewing engineer and PageWoo’s CEO and co-Founder Jason Crilly about his side project, the new hacker news site for the Southern California tech community called Develop.la.

First off, there are a few things about Jason you should know.

Armed with a BSc, Chemistry from The University of Manchester, Jason Njoku, CEO and Co-founder of iROKO Partners left London for Lagos in what could have seemed a wrong move.

But Jason Njoku with his fearless determination saw success ahead, the CEO and Co-founder of Iroko Partners, world’s largest digital distributors of Nigerian music and movies, with a library of over 1600 licensed movies.