Last week at CES, Netflix announced that a number of ISPs had adopted its Open Connect technology, which provides a more direct connection between it and a cable operator, lowering the cost of delivery and increasing the quality of its streaming video. And for those who do participate, Netflix has a bonus: Due to those efficiencies, it will be able to offer up Super HD and 3D video to their broadband subscribers.
But here’s the flip side: One cable provider is arguing that because Netflix ...
Encoding.com’s Vid.ly Integrates With FreeWheel To Provide Monetization Of Universal, Cross-Platform Video URLsComments Off
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GiftCards.com Agrees To Buy Giftly To Grow A Mobile PlatformComments Off
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Twitter Ups Web Security With Two-Factor Authentication Via SMS, But Shared Accounts May Still Be In DangerComments Off
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Twitter Introduces Charts By Genre And Popularity For Its #Music ServiceComments Off
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Founder Stories: Parse’s Ilya Sukhar On Founding A Startup With StrangersComments Off
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Cloud encoding vendor Encoding.com launched 
GiftCards.com, a Pittsburgh-based company that has been around for more than a decade and has sold 5 million gift cards, agreed to buy San Francisco startup Giftly to grow out a mobile platform. The terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, but Giftly had raised about $2.8 million from investors including Baseline Ventures, SoftTech VC, Floodgate, Thrive Capital, and Techstars’ David Tisch. Giftly’s acquisition follows a number of other ones. Karma was picked up very early by Facebook although it may not produce meaningful revenue for some time for the social network, according to its earnings results earlier this year. Another gifting startup, Giftiki, which pooled together people’s money to get gifts, was acquired by Launchrock. Giftly built a platform that avoided the hassle of individually dealing with merchants and point-of-sale systems. They came out with a native mobile app last fall that made it easier to send presents to friends and family. The company’s platform didn’t put any limitations on what kinds of presents you could send because the company had a web of relationships with banks and credit card processors. When a recipient would go to redeem their gift, they would pay out of their own pocket, but Giftly would reimburse them that amount through their credit card. GiftCards.com said Giftly will be rolled into their operations, but will maintain offices in San Francisco. “We will continue to build out Giftly,” said Giftly’s CEO Timothy Bentley. “Our backend infrastructure will be used for their next generation products. We’ll continue to expand the ways our technology and services are available to developers, through our API, and merchants, through our merchant services.” The company is also looking to raise a first venture round, even though it’s been around for more than 10 years. That round will go toward completing the acquisition of Giftly. GiftCards.com has been around since 1999; they sell personalized, pre-designed and discount gift cards.
After scores of accounts were potentially compromised a few months ago, Twitter today launched two-factor authentication through SMS to protect people from hacks and phishing scams on the web. Unfortunately, it may not help shared accounts like big brands and news agencies where multiple people need to be able to log in and out but only one phone number can get the login verification codes.
We’ve confirmed with Twitter that it has rolled out a new part of its 
For this week’s episode of Founder Stories, I sat down with 
