Salesforce Strikes Cloud Partnership With HP

And, as its big Dreamforce conference got under way in San Francisco, the company reported earnings roughly in line with expectations.
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IBM Acquires UrbanCode, Speeding Up Software Updates

Deal-making continues.

Seven Questions for Gree’s SVP of Studio Operations, Anil Dharni

The Japanese-based mobile games company still has ambitious plans for the U.S., although they’ve changed.

News Byte

mFoundry Acquired for $120 Million in Cash for Its Mobile Banking Tech

The original developer behind the Starbucks mobile application, mFoundry, has been acquired by FIS, which already owned a 22 percent stake in the company. FIS said it will pay $120 million in cash for the remaining stake, meaning the entire deal was worth around $165 million. Other investors in the nine-year-old company include MasterCard, Intel Capital, Motorola Mobility, PayPal, Bank of America and Ignition Partners. MFoundry had 850 clients, many of which were banks that deployed the company’s technology inside of their mobile apps.

News Byte

ShopKeep Raises $10 Million for iPad-Based Point-of-Sale Service

New York-based ShopKeep POS has raised $10 million to continue the development of its application that allows merchants to manage inventory, track customers and conduct transactions from an iPad. The second round of funding was led by Canaan Partners, with Tribeca Venture Partners and TTV Capital also participating. The company is already serving 3,000 merchants and is working with several partners, including LevelUp, Dwolla and PayPal. It has raised $12.2 million to date.

Why Zynga Should Have Seen Draw Something’s Fall Coming

A study conducted by Flurry, a mobile-analytics provider, found that social games can be among the most intensely used apps, but they have a short shelf life.

Twitter Acquires Cabana to Improve Third-Party Developer Tools

Starting today, Cabana will be joining Twitter’s platform team, to help “third-party developers create new experiences on Twitter.”

OpenTable Helping Restaurants to Lift Last-Minute Reservations on the Phone

More than a quarter of OpenTable reservations are made on mobile phones today, but it could be a whole lot higher if it were easier.

Soaring Customer Acquisition Costs Drive TinyCo to Create Affiliate Fees for Mobile

The program, called Tiny Partners, is a spin on the affiliate models used by online retailers like Amazon, which share revenue from any sale that originated on another site.