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The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.

Name: Threadflip

Quick Pitch: Buy and sell pre-owned clothing and accessories.

Genius Idea: More convenient and personal than selling on eBay.

Copious, 99dresses, Fashionlend, Nearly Newlywed, Poshmark: there’s been a proliferation of web and mobile-based channels for selling pre-owned clothing and accessories as of late. These businesses are aiming to carve a slice out of an area long dominated by the likes of eBay, Etsy and local consignment shops.

Threadflip, a San Francisco-based company that launched with $1.6 million in seed funding last month, is among the latest of these.

Like its competitors, Threadflip lets you buy and sell secondhand fashion goods. Where it differs is in its level of service. Threadflip provides an end-to-end shipping solution that saves sellers laborious trips to the post office. The company also offers a “white glove service” for sellers who want to be less involved: simply send your items, and the company will do the photographing, listing and shipping for you.

You’ll be charged a 15% transaction fee if you do your own listing. For white glove service, you’ll have to fork over between 40% and 50% of the selling price.

Threadflip has done a good job of making the site feel human and personal. Buyers and sellers are identified not by anonymous usernames, but by their Facebook profiles, which creates a greater sense of transparency and trust between parties. The site also profiles various sellers — many who are, seemingly, fashion bloggers — inviting you to explore their wares as if you were inside a boutique of their own design. That format also encourages users to spend more time browsing and exploring — rather than searching — for goods, making it more likely that they’ll buy something they didn’t know they wanted.

What’s next? Founder and CEO Manik Singh says the startup is focused on building out support for its white glove service, and preparing to release its iOS app. After iOS, Android is next on the road map.

Series Supported by Microsoft BizSpark

The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark, a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.

More About: bizspark, ebay, fashion, threadflip

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Sydney Morning Herald
News Analysis: Chicago summit to focus on Afghanistan, sharing expertise among ...
Xinhua
LONDON, May 19 (Xinhua) -- The chief focus of the upcoming NATO summit in the American city of Chicago will be on Afghanistan, experts say. The summit takes place on Sunday and Monday against the backdrop of the 2014 deadline for withdrawal from ...
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Mix and match your weapon combos, and play with a control style that suits your skill in DmC: Devil May Cry.

Mix and match your weapon combos, and play with a control style that suits your skill in DmC: Devil May Cry.

The English Premier League is arguably the world’s most popular sports organization, and this season saw explosive growth off the pitch in the realm of social media.

Manchester City snagged its first English title in 44 years last weekend to cap off another dramatic EPL season. To recap how the league developed digitally this year, Mashable hunted down some stats. We also consulted Sean Walsh, whose blog Digital Football is a leading source on the intersection between English soccer and social media.

“EPL clubs have been criticized in the past for their out-of-date approach to social media in comparison to the youthful and creative tactics employed by U.S. franchises in the NBA and NFL,” Walsh, who’s interviewed the digital directors of several top European clubs over the past year, told Mashable in an email. “But the 2011-2012 season has seen the rise of social media in ‘the beautiful game,’ and Premier League clubs have finally begun to invest in it.”

Walsh says EPL clubs added a total of more than 17 million Facebook fans over the course of the season. In total, the league has almost 60 million Facebook likes — all the more impressive when you consider England’s total population is just over 50 million people.

So far, both the league and its individual teams have a much stronger presence on Facebook than on Twitter, where clubs count a combined following of less than 4.5 million. But the EPL’s presence is growing rapidly on Twitter as well as Facebook — Walsh counts a 126% increase in followers league-wide since last season.

SEE ALSO: How Social Media Is Changing Sports [INFOGRAPHIC]

Premier League side Chelsea was also involved in a piece of Twitter history recently. Its win over FC Barcelona in last month’s Champions League semifinal set a Twitter sports record of 13,684 tweets per second, eclipsing the previous record set by the most recent Super Bowl. Chelsea takes on Bayern Munich in the Champions League final this Saturday, so we’ll see if it can make Twitter history again.

Liverpool, meanwhile, became the first Premier League team to promote itself using Pinterest. The team stocked boards with historic photos, fan gear, old uniformas and memorabilia. Pinterest has become one of the newest ways sports teams around the world are seeking to leverage social media.

Among Walsh’s favorite individual digital EPL moments this year: Manchester City launching a YouTube partnership taking steps toward integrating fans’ in-person and social media experiences; Queens Park Rangers owner Tony Fernandes using Twitter to ask fans which players they wanted the club to acquire; and midfielder Joey Barton using promoted tweets to apologize to fans for being thrown out of a match.

How do you think English soccer stacks up to other pro sports in leveraging social media? Let us know in the comments.

Image courtesy toksuede, Flickr.

More About: Facebook, sports, Twitter

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#facebook The day Grayson James Walker was born, his parents—Heather and Patrick Walker, of Memphis, Tennessee—knew their time with him would be brief. Grayson had been diagnosed in utero with a rare neural tube birth defect called Anencephaly, in which a baby is born without parts of the brain and skull. More »

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#diablo It's a tricky thing, choosing an online handle. You've gotta stick with it forever, so the dumb inside joke or ironically stupid insult you choose will be your name forevermore. More »

Toronto Star
Regime forces fire on massive Syrian protests
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There are those who look up at the stars and decide to become astronomers, while others want to be astronauts. Then there are those who want to build the Starship Enterprise.

That’s right, a guy known only as BTE Dan (stands for Build the Enterprise) believes a replica of the iconic Star Trek spacecraft can be built to scale within the next 20 years. He’s even started a website — BuildTheEnterprise.org — to rally support for the cause.

“This Gen1 Enterprise can go on missions to key points of interest in our solar system, like Mars and Venus,” Dan writes. “It will be the biggest ship of any kind ever built by humans, and it will be larger than the tallest building in the world.

“It’s possible to build the Enterprise, and it would be a monumental achievement for us humans who inhabit the planet earth.”

TBE Dan’s site covers pretty much all the bases, with detailed specs including size (3,150 feet), maximum capacity (1,000 people) and hull design (triple walls at all points). The site also presents a white paper on how the Enterprise could be used to help build bases on Mars and the moon, a process that would involve “laser diggers,” a modified gravity wheel and a nuclear reactor.

SEE ALSO: How One Actor Used an iPhone to Land a Role in the ‘Star Trek’ Sequel [VIDEO]

The Enterprise would be built entirely in space, Dan says, and “will cost no more than $1 trillion spent over twenty years.” A lengthy chart shows where that trillion bucks would go. He argues the United States should set aside 0.27% of its GDP each year to fund the project.

It would be easy to dismiss Dan as some Trekkie living in his mother’s basement. But you shouldn’t. According to his site bio, the man has spent the past 30 years working as a systems engineer and electrical engineer for a Fortune 500 tech company.

So how can you help in his quest to build a real Starship Enterprise?

“It’s by simply doing this,” Dan writes. “Tell someone about the ideas on this website. This matters because the only hope for building the 1st generation USS Enterprise will ultimately depend on an enthusiastic core of people who are encouraging the undertaking.

“Enthusiasm for an idea can become contagious.”

Do you think it’s possible to build an actual Starship Enterprise within 20 years? Let us know in the comments.

More About: Star Trek, Startups

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Brothers in Arms: Furious 4 may be in trouble. Some lapsing trademarks for the its title intimate the Gearbox-developed game is all but abandoned (or the name is changing), and our inquiries into Gearbox Software have yet to be answered. "We don't have anything to share at this point in time," an Ubisoft representative told Joystiq.

Brothers in Arms: Furious 4 was announced at last year's E3 ... and then that was it. We didn't hear a single thing after that preliminary announcement, even though the game was given a tentative 2012 launch window. Right now a cancelation isn't confirmed, but it's looking like these four will have something to be really furious about soon enough.Expiring trademarks suggest trouble for Brothers in Arms: Furious 4 originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 18 May 2012 20:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.




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Your Retro Reference Guide to Community's "Digital Estate Planning"

A complete list of the old-school gaming nods made by The Greendale Seven.

By: Bob Mackey and Marty Sliva May 18, 2012




Community creator Dan Harmon isn't a stranger to video games; he's been public about his love for the medium, so it wasn't surprising to see the first episode of last night's season finale hat trick devote itself completely to old-school gaming references. What would have been a throwaway gag in any other sitcom took over most of "Digital Estate Planning's" 22 minutes, as Jeff, Britta, Pierce, Shirley, Abed, Annie, and Troy found themselves participating in a multiplayer platformer in an attempt to wrest the Hawthorne Wipes fortune from the grasp of a bastard child. This episode overflowed with visual gags devoted to the blocky roots of gaming culture, most of which flew by at a blink-and-you'll-miss-it pace; but, thankfully, your friends at 1UP are here to comb over this chunk of comedy gold to dig out the purest pieces of retro gaming nostalgia. Read on, and be sure to let us know if any references slipped past our intricate knowledge of gaming's past.


"Digital Estate Planning's" title sequence doesn't seem to point to any specific title; it's more of a pastiche of retro games that gave the player a brief preview of all the playable characters and their awesome abilities. Though Gilbert's fake game offers a resolution and color depth the NES could only dream of, the opening credits feel a lot like the intro to the NES version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.





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Quebec's provincial government passed an emergency law Friday that sets restrictions on demonstrations and shuts some universities as the government seeks to end three months of demonstrations against tuition hikes.

Mark Zuckerberg

Zuck, who owns 503.6 million shares, is now worth $19.14 billion, though his personal fortune surpassed the $20 billion mark several times.

Click here to view this gallery.

OK, so Facebook’s IPO may have seemed like a lot of sound and fury for 23 cents, but there will still doubtlessly be some celebrating in Menlo Park Friday night.

That’s because a lot of Facebookers got fabulously rich on Friday. True, it probably would have been an even more festive occasion if the stock had hit the $54 that Twitter had predicted, but Facebook’s measly gain on its first day of trading was still worth $115.7 million to Mark Zuckerberg.

Here’s why Zuck and some other big Facebook investors still have cause to pop the Champagne.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, AUDINDesign

More About: bono, Facebook, facebook ipo, Greylock partners, mark zuckerberg, sean parker

#theworstyear My worst year on earth may well have been 2005. I had gone from a blood-and-guts newspaper writer to headcount hire sitting in a cubicle with nothing to do for weeks on end. I'd once been the coolest guy at the cocktail party, now I was just another stiff with a badge around his neck in the cafeteria. I'd moved from a log cabin in North Carolina to an apartment underneath the flight path of San Jose's airport. I couldn't be in my apartment without headphones on, pumping white noise into my eardrums. I literally went into therapy. More »

A complete list of the old-school gaming nods made by the Greendale Seven.

USA TODAY
Heading Into Talks With Iran, US Sees Hopeful Signs
New York Times
WASHINGTON — American negotiators, heading into a crucial round of talks with Iran over its nuclear program next week in Baghdad, are allowing themselves a rare emotion after more than a decade of fruitless haggling with Tehran: hope.
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