Startup, Cell Phone | featured news

Oleg Kostour moved from Canada to Mountain View to build a 3D software startup. Instead, he built an app to stay in touch with the girlfriend he left behind in Canada. The iPhone app, Pair, launched in the app store this week. It creates a private shared timeline for couples that allows them to easily swap SMS messages, photos, videos and locations.

The Flip video camera had been one of the great hardware-start-up successes of the previous decade, but it lost traction as the smartphone came on the scene.

New data from mobile application tracker Flurry reveals that 20% of the companies building iPhone applications started business specifically for the iPhone platform.

What recession? Startup Bling Nation just raised $20 million in Series B funding from Balderton Capital for a new cell phone payment system. This brings the startup's total funding to $33 million since its launch in 2007.

Bling Nation's ambitions are to establish a revolutionary and comprehensive payments system for physical goods.