Runa Capital Invests $500K Into A Security Platform Built By Ex-White Hat Hackers

Who would you like to build a startup which could address the massive amounts of security attacks apps and sites get these days? A bunch of standard grade IT people? Or a team of ex-white hat hackers that previously helped Russian companies like Mail.ru, Yandex, and Parallels to block security threats? I know I'd prefer the former. This was a factor which was probably on the mind of Moscow-based Runa Capital, given that today it is making a $500,000 seed investment into Wallarm a “next gen” web security solution to protect online businesses from application level hacker attacks. Alongside this news, Wallarm is releasing its first product. Runa's investment director Dmitry Galperin will join the Wallarm board. The cash will go into developing the company which is switching from a service model to a product business model, and partnering with managed service providers, public and private clouds, PaaS/IaaS, monitoring and log management systems, cloud IPS/IDS services. The security and vulnerability management market is worth an estimated $4 billion, (according to IDC). The Wallarm team was previously in the info sec space since 2009 providing security audits as white hat hackers to a dozen of large businesses in the U.S. and Europe. Ivan Novikov, CEO and co-founder of Wallarm says they have “built a product for customers operating large user base and processing huge amount of data.” And Runa's investment director Dmitry Galperin says “this is where most WAFs traditionally fail, so web security is a really hot market with lots of new challenges.” Playing in this space are existing companies including Imperva and Trustwave, but also Qualys and the open source platform Modsecurity. But Wallarm says its advantages compared to other platforms are that the platform is smart and "learns" from application and user behaviour. It can also protect from 0days attacks and vulnerabilities; doesn't overload the security team with tons of info; shows only attacks that represent a real threat; works with very high load projects as it is built on top of nginx and is easy to install as there is no custom configuration. Wallarm vulnerability detection supports Ruby, PHP, .NET, Perl, Python and other popular web platforms and integrates with most popular bug trackers. They say it especially fits companies that adopted continuous integration (CI) which introduce and deploy code updates daily. Runa Capital's investments announced to date include: Nginx, Jelastic, Ecwid, Zopa, LinguaLeo, BigTime Software, Capptain, Mambu, Rocketbank, Infratel and Dnevnik.ru among others.

Facebook Like Button, Viewed 22B Times A Day On 7.5M Websites, Gets A Redesign

Facebook has today updated the design of its Like button for the first time since inception. An image of the new design can be seen below. Websites currently using the like button will be automatically upgraded. According to the company, Like buttons appear on over 7.5 million websites and are seen 22 billion times each day. The new design has a Facebook blue background and ditches the “thumbs up” for a simple F with the word “like”. F Like. Flike. The company is also pairing like and share buttons together in a single embed, hoping that websites will opt to use both. What's the difference, you ask? Well, the share button allows for a comment to be added before sharing, while the like button simply auto-posts to your feed. You can take a look at the brand new Like button below. Let us know if you flike it.

Blockbuster’s Demise; An Elegy To Video Store Culture

After years of clinging to life, Dish Network has announced it will pull the plug on its remaining 300 Blockbuster Video brick-and-mortar locations by early next year, signaling another death knell to the age of home video rental. The once-mighty video juggernaut had more than 9,000 locations at its peak in 2004, a number that significantly plummeted over the past decade. I worked for Blockbuster as a teenager in New Jersey in the late ’90s. The job had its ups and downs, and some parts that downright sucked, but it was a generally fun time in my life. With the advent of Redbox, a machine not much larger than an ATM performs a service that in my lifetime once took a building, a payroll, a management hierarchy, and two-dozen employees to deliver. Despite the distinct lack of “experience” involved in sauntering up to a machine and pressing a few buttons to make your selection and pay for it, the store model didn’t stand a chance. While most of us probably haven’t set foot inside a physical video store in a while, those of us of a certain age undoubtedly have a multitude of memories associated with the now almost quaint practice of going out to “rent a video.” When I was a kid, going to the video store was an event. We’d excitedly pile in the car and chatter the whole trip about which movie or game we wanted to rent. As part of the first generation with the technology to re-watch at home a movie we saw in the theater, we took full advantage of this brave new world of home entertainment. My parents grew up in a cinematic era littered with classics; the start of the James Bond film franchise, “The Graduate,” “Planet of the Apes” and countless others. Once they saw them in the theater, the only way to ever see them again was as a movie of the week on one of the handful of television channels available at the time. The roots of the “on-demand” home entertainment world we all now live in started with those robust black rectangles called VHS tapes. Everything about the video store was novel. The different membership cards, how they displayed the boxes and the security mechanisms on the tapes themselves were each unique, seemingly with an endless number of permutations. “Ooh, this place cuts one side of the spine of the display box and puts them in a clear case”; “ooh, this one has the boxes you have to pinch on the sides to release the tape”; “Ohhhh—this place displays their tapes SIDEWAYS?!” were common refrains among my friends and me. Each trip had something a little different. Renting video games was always the biggest deal. I lost count of how many times I mowed the lawn, shoveled the driveway or cleaned the gutters for a crack at renting a game of my choice. Who knows how much deeply discounted labor my parents got out of me in those bargains? On display at the store were always dozens, nay, hundreds of video game boxes. Back in the NES era, about the only way I could get my hands on a new boxed game was at Christmas or birthday time. The standard $50 price tag was too rich for my Pixy Stix-laced blood. So visiting the video store games section was like a trip to Shangri-La. The carefully drawn boxes at eye level, featuring full-color paintings of dragons or knights with swords or race cars. Sure, the actual game graphics never matched up to the box art, but it didn’t matter. I was at the video store, and would be taking one of those puppies home to play with. Except for possibly the toy store, no trips to a place of retail commerce inspired such joy and happiness for me growing up. Every time was an adventure, and mystery lurked behind every corner. Who knows what untold secrets lived in the back of the store behind a creaky pair of swinging old west saloon-style doors under a conspicuously placed “Adults Only!” sign? As the last decade-plus of home entertainment has really emphasized the “home,” most Americans now have access to a virtually bottomless library of movies, TV shows, documentaries and adult entertainment literally at their fingertips. Even as an admitted fairly infrequent purchaser of new gadgets, I personally have six different platforms available to me through which I can rent my little heart out. Six platforms, with no effort on my part to accumulate so many choices. Don’t get me wrong. It’s wonderful having the world of video-based entertainment accessible without leaving our couches. But what’s lost are the experiential qualities of obtaining and watching it. The concept of video “stores” (even the word “video” only lives on as an anachronistic colloquialism these days) took another step into the yawning chasm of obsolescence today. And with it, a place of cherished childhood memories for any kid who ever peeked through a return slot, or had to step on their tippy-toes to put a returned tape up on the counter.

With $1.2 Million In Seed Funding, Sprig Launches To Bring Fast, Healthy Meals To SF Eaters For $12 Each

It seems like every day there’s a new food delivery service launch, each seeking to connect a large and growing number of hungry customers with high-quality meal choices. While the way each tries to approach the market and handle demand differs, it’s clear that there’s huge interest in revolutionizing the way that food is sourced and delivered. So anyway, here comes Sprig, yet another food delivery service with an interesting new approach to the market. With its own executive chef and delivery team, the service officially launched in some select neighborhoods of San Francisco earlier this week, seeking to make available a few interesting meal choices each night for about $12 each. How Sprig Is Different There are a few different ways to approach food delivery. Some companies are positioning themselves to handle delivery and logistics, and work with existing restaurants to improve the order and delivery experience. That includes incumbent food delivery services like Seamless and Grubhub, as well as newer startups like Postmates and Zesty. Meanwhile, others are seeking to produce and deliver the food themselves, which they believe can increase the quality of what’s available, while lowering costs all around. Companies in this group include startups like Y Combinator alum SpoonRocket and Munchery, which works with in-house chefs and “chef partners” to come up with meals for delivery. For the most part, they offer a limited, curated selection which changes daily. Sprig falls into that latter category of food delivery services, giving customers a choice of three different meal choices for delivery. Meals cost $12 each (plus a $3 delivery fee) and generally include one entree selection and a couple of sides. Sprig users make purchases via mobile app, which stores their location and payment information, and food is delivered within about 15 minutes. So, Um, How’s The Food? Ok, so it’s one thing to announce that there’s a new food delivery service, but I wanted to try it out myself so I could let all of you know what to actually expect. So here goes. I ordered all three available meal options on Monday night, which happened to be the first night of Sprig’s “soft opening” in San Francisco. There was one beef dish, one pork dish, and one vegetarian dish, each of which came with a couple of interesting sides. And I shared with a friend, to see what she thought as well. Dishes were as follows: Pork tenderloin brined and grilled, topped with an apple fennel compote. Served with roasted maple garnet yams and Rodoni Farms brussel sprouts with sweet onions. Coleman natural beef tri-tip rubbed with herbs and spices and cooked sous vide. Presented atop black-eyed peas and River Dog Farms collard greens. Cabbage dumplings stuffed with wheat berries, Coke Farms radichio, and Sonoma dry jack cheese. Accompanied by roasted Frazier Lake butternut squash and red beans and rice.

All of the meals were hot when delivered, but not soggy or overcooked, as sometimes happens when you get delivery. Presentation wasn’t bad, considering meals were delivered, and overall the food was better than you might expect from usual delivery options. But there were definitely some highlights to the meal, and some things we weren’t thrilled with. Far and away, the pork tenderloin was our favorite part of the meal, and the apple fennel compote went perfectly with it. The yams and Brussels sprouts were also paired well, and weren’t overdone, as one might expect. We also liked the tri-tip, but the best part of that meal was the spicy collard greens that came with it. My friend thought that, while ok, the amount of black-eyed peas was a little overwhelming — she would have preferred more greens instead. Which brings us to the vegetarian offering, the cabbage dumplings. We were both disappointed in the dumplings, which was a shame, especially since it was the only veg-friendly option. Butternut squash and red beans and rice were also both ok, but nothing to fawn over. Some other notes: The lightweight wooden “cutlery” that came with our meal is compostable and great for the environment, but not so great for slicing up tri-tip. We had one fork just completely break on us in the process. We weren’t in love with the bonus dessert truffle that came with the meals. Instead, my friend suggested that Sprig add actual optional dessert options to go with them — cookies, cake, or something similar. While the dishes were labeled with pig, cow, or vegetables on the top of the container to quickly show what each was, we would have liked to see a more detailed description of each meal, and maybe a nutritional information breakdown alongside it. All in all, not bad for the opening night of the service. (At 6:00, we placed the first order of the service’s soft opening.) But it could have been improved, and hopefully will be with time. Founders, Investors, And Advisors Sprig was co-founded by Gagan Biyani, who had been on the founding team of online education startup Udemy, and had also worked as an advisor to Lyft during its expansion into the Los Angeles market. (Disclosure: Once upon a time, Biyani was part of the TechCrunch family as a contributor to MobileCrunch.) The startup’s executive chef is Nate Keller, who was previosuly executive chef at Google during its growth from 400 to about 40,000 employees. Other co-founders include Neeraj Berry, who runs ops; product lead Morgan Springer; and engineering lead Matt Kent. To help get it off the ground, Sprig has raised $1.2 million in seed funding. Investors in the round include Battery Ventures’ Brian O’Malley, Greylock Partners’ Simon Rothman, Andrew McCollum, Larry Braitman, Haroon Mokhtarzada, Darian Shirazi, MHS Capital, Jim Payne, Dan Martell, Andrew Garvin, and Pascal Levy-Garboua. In addition to its investors, Sprig is also receiving help from some big-name folks in the restaurant and logistics world. Advisors to the startup include three-star Michelin chef Kyle Connaughton, Lyft co-founders Logan Green and John Zimmer, Google’s first executive chef Charlie Ayers, AF&Co founder Andrew Freeman, and World Wrapps and Pacific Catch restaurant co-founder Aaron Novesheen. The company is operating under what it calls a “soft opening” — which means that it’s available during limited hours (6:00 pm to 9:00 pm) and in just a few neighborhoods in San Francisco. For now, Sprig is serving SOMA and Mission Bay (zip codes 94107, 94103, 94105 and 94158), but plans to be available more broadly throughout the city by early 2014.

This Week On The TechCrunch Droidcast: We're All Getting The Nexus 5, So Break Me Off A Piece Of That KitKat

Google messed up Daniel Bader's Nexus 5 order, and that makes him sad. Truly, our guest from MobileSyrup and BetaKit deserves better than having half his hopes dashed by a UPS delivery man live on air. We've all ordered Nexus 5 smartphones like the Android suckers we are, and so we chat KitKat and what dreams may come. Other topics up for discussion with Daniel, me and Chris Velazco this week include Samsung's awful assault on the English language, Motorola's Moto G mid-range phone announcement next week, and whether or not we're too attached to our devices (i.e., the eternal metaphysical struggle of the gadget lover). So turn off your phone/Pebble/fonblet for just over half an hour and join us. We invite you to enjoy weekly Android podcasts every Wednesday at 5:30 p.m. Eastern and 2:30 p.m. Pacific, in addition to our weekly Gadgets podcast at 3 p.m. Eastern and noon Pacific on Fridays. Subscribe to the TechCrunch Droidcast in iTunes, too, if that's your fancy.

AWS Updates Its Elastic MapReduce Console For Exploring Large Amounts Of Data

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has updated its Elastic MapReduce console, making it easier to manage large amounts of data. The update centers on providing better usability and access to new features that include resizing a cluster by adding or removing instances; cloning a cluster; running Hadoop 2; and targeting a specific availability zone. The EMR console to configure clusters is now on one page: A developer can choose between multiple versions of Hadoop and MapR: The cluster list has also been improved: AWS is notorious for its complexity and usability. The model is to provide the bare minimum and let the user add AWS or third-party services for their deployments. But with the acceptance of cloud computing from the overall market, there comes a higher bar for the way a service is presented. “The new Elastic MapReduce console is a great step forward towards better usability, an area where AWS has struggled in the past,” said Jeff Martens, co-founder and CEO at CPUsage in an email interview with me today. CPUsage is a platform as a service that launched at TechCrunch Disrupt. “Kudos to the team in Seattle. I hope this is a sign of more to come, especially for some of the other products in their siloed eco-system which desperately need UI and UX improvements.” AWS executives made a point last year at AWS re:Invent of stressing their commitment to the enterprise market. That's a challenge for AWS as competing providers like Google offer managed services that abstract the complexity that comes with using cloud services.

Microsoft Unifies Windows And Windows Phone Developer Programs, Lowers Registration Fees

Microsoft announced today that it is bringing together its Windows and Windows Phone developer programs. The commingling of both groups is a move by Microsoft to encourage developers to build for more than one of its supported device classes. It also represents another step in Microsoft's effort to unify its platforms on top of a shared Windows core. Microsoft now pitches Windows Phone and Windows as a package. The company has also combined the products' marketing teams, likely helping to further unify their messaging and prevent crosstalk. The Xbox One also leans on the shared Windows core. So, when that console is released, Windows will extend to your smartphone, tablet, laptop, desktop and TV. Thus to see Microsoft bring together the Windows and Windows Phone developer groups is hardly surprising. If you were a registered Windows Store developer, you can submit Windows Phone apps at no cost and vice versa. Microsoft has also lowered the price of registering to build for (now) both platforms. If you were already both a Windows Phone and Windows Store developer, Microsoft will give you a code for a free year-long renewal of your account. The application ecosystem issue has long been the key issue holding Windows Phone back, and has become the largest issue with Windows 8.1, after Microsoft fixed a swath of usability plagues that made it frustrating to use Windows 8. Therefore, Microsoft needs to eliminate all hurdles to building for its platforms. I noted above that the unification of the Windows and Windows Phone developer registration systems wasn't surprising. That doesn't mean that it isn't a smart move.