Infotrade

Already three weeks have past but we’re still high after The Next Web Conference in Amsterdam. (was epic!)  find out what happened . The last few couple of weeks we’ve been elsewhere however, to Germany in fact! Next11: Data Love in Berlin  was superb. Amongst  150  other speakers was our very own  Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten  and Hermione Way . Plus we filled our special  Next11 channel  with full coverage of the event. Check it out if you missed it. Ok, let’s crack on with other upcoming tech & media events you should be attending. Would you like to have your conference or event listed here?  Contact Sophie . We’re also always happy to meet with TNW readers at events we’re attending. Contact us as well if you’d like to arrange a TNW meetup somewhere. (*) denotes events we’ll be attending. University students with entrepreneurial ambitions, pay attention! The Intel® Challenge Europe is part of a global business plan competition for ...

BankSimple , an ambitious startup looking to reinvent banking online, is opening its online branch to employees and issuing its first bank cards for testing in New York, Portland and San Francisco. The newly  issued cards , which double as ATM and credit cards, represent an important milestone in BankSimple’s cautious maturation process. BankSimple  is not a bank. Rather, FDIC-insured banks manage the money. But BankSimple  is  a hybrid provider of online and social banking services and a distributer of physical bank cards for purchases and ATM withdrawals. Founded in 2009, the startup has remained relatively stealthy.  Mashable  got an  inside look  at the startup’s plans in July 2010. Co-founder Alex Payne, an early Twitter employee, told us at the time that the startup’s focus was on “worry-free” money management and unrivaled customer service. When it opens to bankers, likely sometime later this year, BankSimple’s draw will be fee-free ATM w...

Simon Mainwaring is the founder of  We First , a social branding consultancy that helps companies, non-profits and consumer groups build a better world through social technology. He is the author of a new book,  We First: How Brands and Consumers Use Social Media to Build a Better World . Are you committed to building a better world? Would you like to see corporations take greater responsibility to implement sustainable business practices, protect the environment and contribute to a more just and equitable society? If your answer is yes, chances are you’re already taking action to create change as best as you can. But aside from altering your shopping habits or investing in socially responsible funds, you may feel limited in what else you can do. The following is a “framework” or guide for social activism designed to cut through the confusion and indecision that so many socially conscious shoppers experience. Rather than thinking about activism as a sequence of unrelated, one...

Welcome to the post- Mashable Connect  edition of  “Top Funding Stories,”  a weekly series where we summarize the big startup funding and investment stories of the week. Here’s what we found interesting this time around: Eventbrite Banks $50 Million in Funding Popular event ticketing startup  Eventbrite raised $50 million  in a Series E round led by Tiger Global Management. Eventbrite intends to use the money to expand its operation and take on industry behemoths like Ticketmaster. Later this summer, it will power its  biggest event to date : a Black Eyed Peas show in Central Park. Khosla Ventures Raising $1 Billion to Fund More Startups Khosla Ventures, the VC firm started by Sun Microsystems co-founder Vinod Khosla, is raising $1 billion to finance new investments. The firm’s portfolio includes GroupMe, Slide, Meebo, Square, Xobni, BOKU, Jawbone and Storify. Other News Job recruiting platform  Jobvite  has secured $15 million in funding in a r...

Kohler ‘s been busy gadgetizing the bathroom for a few years with its DTV system. Now it’s added the DTV Prompt, a digital showering controller that mounts on the wall and lets users precisely select water temperature with its touch controls. In essence, it’s a wall-mounted electronic shower remote with a one-button pause control.  DTV Prompt  works with up to two shower heads or faucets, letting users toggle between one or the other with a button push. Before getting into the shower, the system’s “warm-up and pause” feature lets a user select the desired temperature. As soon as the water heats up to that level, it pauses the flow, awaiting a touch to begin showering, saving water in the meantime. Further water and energy savings are possible with a countdown timer that can be set from four to 12 minutes, warning the user with a beep when there are two minutes and one minute left. The controller, available in four different finishes, can be installed up to 20 feet away from th...