Startups Scrape Your Financial Data for Good. (No, Really!)

Two personal finance apps, SaveUp and Mogl, offer rewards as a byproduct. Their CEOs describe them as “a bit of gummy on the financial vitamin” and “Toms shoes for food,” respectively.

Recent Posts By Liz

Quantified Elf: Tracking the Santa Trackers

Where is Santa Claus, right at this moment? Sources disagree.

Venture Capitalist Tries to Drum Up Support for Splitting California Into Six States

“An opportunity to be awesome.”

General Catalyst Raises $675M Seventh Fund

The venture capital firm General Catalyst Partners has raised $675 million for its seventh fund to invest in startups.

News Byte

Knewton Raises $51M for Personalized Learning

Education technology startup Knewton, which makes tools that adapt to each student’s learning style, has raised $51 million led by Atomico, along with GSV Capital and existing investors Accel Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, First Round Capital, FirstMark Capital and Founders Fund. This doubles the New York-based company’s funding and is meant to help it expand around the globe with schools and academic publishers.

People Are More Freaked Out by Hacking Than Tracking, Survey Finds

Of course, the computer industry is well served by seeing one the fears of its main business models pale in comparison to the threat of evil hackers.

Google Was More Resistant to Government Takedowns Than Government Surveillance in 2013

Requests by governments for Google to take down videos, search results, blog posts and other content grew 68 percent in the first half of 2013 compared to the last half of 2012.

News Byte

Ticket Search Service SeatGeek Buys Competitor FanSnap

SeatGeek, a ticket search service that gets about 3.5 million visits per month and expects $12 million in revenue this year, has bought its competitor FanSnap in order to take it off the market. FanSnap, which had raised $16 million in funding (more than twice as much as SeatGeek), had previously been bought in 2011 by Wize Commerce. SeatGeek said it raised $2.2 million to finance the acquisition, but didn’t offer other terms of the deal.

Prismatic Social News App Overhauls for a Better Personal Interest Graph

It’s yet another social news app, but perhaps a smarter one.

WhatsApp Does a Passive-Aggressive Stats Release to Call Out Others for Bullshit Metrics

WhatsApp now has 400 million active users.

oDesk and Elance Merge to Create One Big Freelancer Company (But Still With Two Brands)

The two companies aim to combine technology and data science work, while keeping their separate sites running.

Big Money for Mobile Crowdsourced Transit App Moovit, With Sequoia Leading $28M Round

Pact Raises $1.5M to Help People Hit Health Goals by Putting Money on the Line

San Francisco Gets Fast, Free Public Wi-Fi on Market Street

Crowdtilt Collects a Quick $23M to Bring Crowdfunding All Over the World

15 Million Students Learned to Program This Week, Thanks to Hour of Code

Lasso Promises to Deliver Wine and Cheese Within Two Hours for Free

Ice Cube, Kevin Hart and Conan Share a Lyft Car (Video)

N3twork Wants to Reshape Online Discussions Around Interests

MindMeld Assistant App Listens Along to Conversations to Help in Real Time

VCs — Not “Shark Tank” — Give DoorBot $1M for Caller ID for the Doorbell

Google Speeds Up Its Online Spreadsheets

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Nobody was excited about paying top dollar for a movie about WikiLeaks. A film about the origins of Pets.com would have done better.

— Gitesh Pandya of BoxOfficeGuru.com comments on the dreadful opening weekend box office numbers for “The Fifth Estate.”