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Lawdingo Raises $690K More To Help You Talk To Lawyers Instantly
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Anthony Ha
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Y Combinator-incubated legal startup is announcing that it has raised another $690,000 in funding. The company’s goal is to make it more convenient and affordable for users to connect with a lawyer (in contrast to a service like LegalZoom, which offers legal forms rather than actual consultation with an attorney). Users can search the site and browse profiles based on a lawyer’s location and expertise, then schedule an appointment or talk to them right then. Founder and CEO Nikhil Nirmel said one of the more popular features, which was added since , is the ability to “get a call now” — Lawdingo can instantly connect users with a relevant lawyer by phone. Lawyers provide Lawdingo with their availability, so when a request comes in, the system reaches out to the ones who are available and have relevant expertise until it finds one who’s free to talk. Nirmel added that this is an efficient way for lawyers to find new clients. They’re available for these conversations because lawyers “don’t operate as much on a strict appointment schedule … Unless they’re in court, they can still take client calls.” The business model has also been tweaked, with Lawdingo abandoning a plan where lawyers bid to promote their listings. The company has since gone back to the flat subscription fee that it started out with. Lawdingo now has lawyers in every state, with the biggest concentration in California, New York, and Massachusetts (Nirmel said there are more than 200 lawyers listed in each of those states). To address the challenge of managing supply and demand in different categories, he said his team built a feature that will automatically spend more money in targeted advertising when the site needs to attract more clients in a given area. Speaking of advertising, Lawdingo also produced the tongue-in-cheek marketing video that I’ve embedded below. Nirmel said his aim is to “lighten up the legal industry,” which he said “takes itself too seriously — they’re a service provider like everyone else.” [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQ-4tMF30e0&w=560&h=315] Nirmel earlier this year but has since moved to New York. Lawdingo’s 15-person team remains distributed in multiple locations, with Nirmal using tools like GitHub and Skype to manage everyone. When pressed on whether this is actually an effective way to run a company, he replied, “Truthfully, I don’t know how large it can scale, but for now, I think it works well.” The new funding comes from angel investors (and funds run by angel investors) including Nathaniel Stevens, Kartik Hosanagar, Gene Alston, Altair Capital, Atsany Captial, and Andrew Moroz. It brings Lawdingo’s total funding to $850,000.
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Analytics Startup Mixpanel Expands Into Mobile Surveys
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Anthony Ha
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Mobile-focused analytics company is growing its offerings today with the launch of Mixpanel Surveys, a product that allows developers to integrate user surveys into their mobile apps. Currently, co-founder Suhail Doshi said the options “kind of suck” for developers who want to find out more about what their users think. Usually, they end up emailing a giant list of user addresses, an approach that isn’t particularly well-targeted and doesn’t necessarily result in many responses. With Mixpanel Surveys, the questions can be integrated into the app itself, so users are being surveyed in a context where it’s relevant, which should lead to “conversion rates that are much higher,” Doshi said. He gave me a quick demo of the editor, and it took only a few minutes to create a survey that looked like it was a native part of the app. The surveys that Doshi created only had one question per screen, and he said that mobile surveys really shouldn’t be longer than a few questions. Nonetheless, Doshi argued that the results can still be quite meaningful, especially when paired with Mixpanel’s audience segmentation capabilities. For example, if a developer wanted to know if level 10 of their game was too easy, too difficult, or just right, that’s a one-question survey that could be targeted specifically at players who just finished that level. When I asked whether other companies couldn’t do the same thing, Doshi replied that the makers of most survey products aren’t “mobile first”: The technology that you’re asking about, it’s not so much that SurveyMonkey couldn’t go and build this UI, but I don’t think they have the DNA to go and build it. They don’t have the design DNA and the mobile DNA. That takes a long time to build. One specific technical challenge that Doshi said Mixpanel has solved is the ability to integrate these surveys “at scale” while minimizing any effect on the performance of the mobile apps in question. He also argued that surveys are a “natural, tangential” area for Mixpanel to move into, and something that many of the company’s current customers have already expressed interest in. The existing analytics product helps developers understand how their users behave and , but with surveys, Mixpanel can also “help companies measure how people think and feel about things.”
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Scringo’s Community-Builder SDK Now Lets Developers Add Stickers & Paid Sticker Packs To Any App
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Natasha Lomas
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Israel-based startup , which offers a cross-platform SDK to help developers add social elements such as messaging to their apps to increase user retention and boost in-app engagement, has added a new feature that taps into the consumer craze for stickers. From today, developers using Scringo’s SDK to add social features to their iOS apps (Android support is due soon) will also have the option to add stickers — and even a sticker shop, so they can monetise the addition by selling paid sticker packs to their app’s users. Selling stickers is a strategy that has worked well for Japanese mobile messaging app Line. Close to a third (27 percent) of its $132 million came from sticker purchases. And stickers are continuing to spread like a rash across the social messaging space — with everyone from to to (to ) seeking to surf the sticky craze. Most to eke out a revenue stream, others like Facebook just trying to keep up with the craze. Scringo’s platform offers developers a handful of pre-made sticker packs which they can add to their apps as free stickers, or paid packs. The platform also allows them to upload their own sticker designs, so they can customise the content to fit with their specific app. Scringo is a whitelabel offering, focused on giving developers a hand to expand their feature-sets via the likes of a customisable chat UI. Scringo is monetising its own services by taking a cut of any additional revenues it helps developers to generate. So in the case of stickers, it’ll get a small cut of any sticker sales. It’s the first such monetising feature for Scringo — since its main platform is free. “I see a very bright future for stickers, and for messaging as a whole,” says Scringo co-founder Ran Avrahamy. “And we have several other in-app features to add to every type of app. We have, maybe going into adding small games into apps. We actually started a couple of months ago… we added a quiz into apps — so any type of app could add a quiz into its app for its users, with leaderboards and stuff like that. “We will add more and more of these features in the very near future. We have a very clear future — which is trying to utilise every type of app into a social network. And bring in the users… Every type of app or game has the potential of a social network.” Scringo launched its community and messaging platform back in March, and now has more than 1,000 developers on board. It argues that adding social features enables developers to improve user retention and boost time spent in app. “What we’ve seen is that utilizing an app’s community potential increases its retention by up to 500%,” he tells TechCrunch, adding: “The users are already in the app, with an obvious mutual interest (at least one) — the only thing an app developer should do, is to allow them to communicate.” Scringo customers can be developers of any stripes — although there are certain types of apps that make more sense than others. Apps that are primarily social to start with aren’t likely to need Scringo’s feature-set, while certain utility apps may struggle to build a sense of community among users, however hard they try (although Avrahamy says Scringo’s SDK has even found its way into a calculator app). “Every type of app that doesn’t have the initial intent of being a social network [could add social elements via a platform like Scringo]… We see a huge variety of apps using us. From sports to artists, musicians, entertainment apps. Games that people can talk about a certain level in a game, or characters inside a game. We’re trying to break the industry into sub-categories that can use us, and basically it’s all except social networks and simple utilities,” he adds. Things are certainly afoot in social. A subtle disenfranchisement of the grand old daddies of the category as more and more mobile apps embed their own social features, giving users alternative channels to ping, prod, poke and message each other. Comms are being routed through many different gateways, splintering the pipeline of social chatter into myriad streams. Twitter, for instance, cited the new breed of mobile messaging apps, such as Korea’s Kakaotalk, as competitors to its business, in its recent ahead of its IPO. It’s fair to say that digital comms tools have never been so diverse. And the risk is death by a thousand cuts to any catch-all social networking service. Not immediate death, evidently. And likely not complete service death — Facebook will probably always have a place as a mainstream channel for people to post baby photos to and so on. But little packets of user engagement are inevitably being sucked elsewhere, at a rate that’s accelerating as services proliferate and attention fragments across more socialised apps. And of course, the advent and uptake of platforms like Scringo — that make it even easier for developers to ‘socialise’ their apps — is only going to accelerate this fragmentation. In terms of competitors, Avrahamy argues that Scringo is “pretty unique” in focusing on messaging and allowing users to communicate with each other within an app — and because of its grander “mission” of helping developers turn any app into an independent social network. And also because Scringo is addressing both the front-end and back-end portions of development. But he does name the likes of as a rival platform for enabling in-app messaging, along with companies offering “social SDKs” for game apps, such as Heyzap and PapayaMobile. “What we’re bringing is more of a front end, not only the back-end on the stores. So we’re bringing you the screens, the GUI, the UI that you can customise,” he adds. “We’re doing the back-end and the front-end for you in one piece.” So far, Scringo, which raised a $700,000 seed back in March from Israeli VC Inimiti and “several other angel investors” — and is apparently in the process closing a Series A — is seeing the greatest traction for its platform among developers in the U.S., U.K. and Germany, and in the games app category. It’s keen to expand on this. “We’re trying to expand both on vertical and on industries. Now we’re very into games. We’ve opened up our platform for Unity, for game developers to operate it on Unity. So we’re very strong now in games and trying to also fight other verticals in terms of demography,” says Avrahamy. “There’s a million people that are using your app — using your property. And we just want to help developers understand that — let your users talk to each other, let them communicate. You have created that one thing in common for them. You have that common interest. Let them express themselves.”
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Fantastical 2 Brings Deep Reminders Support, Revamped iOS 7 Look To The Best iPhone Calendar
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Matthew Panzarino
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As my default Calendar replacement app, Fantastical has been on the home screen of my iPhone since its release nearly a year ago. As one of the few pieces of productivity software that I use regularly, I was extremely nervous about how the app was going to change with its iOS 7 update. I shouldn’t have worried. , is one of the best examples of taking the opportunity presented by Apple’s iOS 7 update and using it for more than just a visual ‘re-skin’. It’s a fitting return for the spot on Apple’s paid charts. If you’re unfamiliar with Fantastical, its strengths are a natural language parsing engine that lets you dash off regular phrases like ‘meet with Joe at noon on Tuesday at The Crab Shack’ and end up with a fully inputted calendar entry without ever typing in any numbers. It’s clever and powerful and almost always works exactly how you want it to. This is coupled with a unique layout that places either a ‘day ticker’ of 1 week or a monthly calendar above a simple continuous agenda of appointments. For the second time in as many weeks, we’ve seen a very popular app with a distinctive feel re-imagined for iOS 7 with great results. While it could be argued that , Fantastical hit some notes pretty hard that it couldn’t have been easy to give up. Flexibits’ Michael Simmons says that the decisions made in the re-working of the app went far beyond how to make the visual language of the app fit in with iOS 7. Yes, the staples along the top of the virtual ‘calendar’ are gone, but there are also deeper changes that make a real difference in how useful the app is. One of the biggest examples of this is the trademark ‘lens’ that sits in the center of the ‘day ticker’ in Fantastical. The old design was very heavily influenced by a ‘real’ magnifying glass, of the type that you’d slide over a desk calendar or log book to read a certain entry. The new design retains some of the magnification aspects, but gets winnowed down visually so it doesn’t punch you in the eyeballs with its cleverness as much any more. But the design changes didn’t stop there. “We moved it to position one, so you can see the full week ahead,” says Simmons. He notes this as an example of one of the hard decisions that was made to make the app work better, rather than cling to the conventions established in the original. The added context of a couple of extra days ahead in the ticker is welcome, and a good choice. There have been some other additions as well, background syncing is in full effect, making sure that appointments and reminders are at your fingertips when you open the app. Test Expander support has been added for keyboard shortcuts. It supports Apple’s dynamic text sizing for the trademark list of items. The customized keyboard in the event creation view now features an additional row of number keys for those times when you want to enter times or dates quickly without having to swap keyboard. There is also now a beautifully expanded landscape week view, which animates in context to give you a bigger eye on your current week ahead. And, at last, there is now extensive reminder support built right in to Fantastical. The reminders support, says Simmons, goes far beyond adding support for ‘to do’ actions with tick boxes in the list view. The whole app was re-thought to make reminders an integral part of your calendar. Not only do you get color coded list options for completed and uncompleted reminders, the parser has also been customized, adding thousands of trigger words that let you automatically add items as reminders. You’ll notice that the composer now has a toggle to force an item you’re creating to be a Reminder, but simply typing a trigger phrase will also create a reminder. ‘To-do, ‘remind’, remind me’ will all work, and hundreds of others. Of course, all of this is integrated with Apple’s Reminders app. And it all supports geo-fencing to trigger on arrival to or departure from a location. One example of how well thought out those reminders are: you don’t just get a list of all of you ongoing, undated items in the list. This would clutter up the display and become meaningless over time. Only the items you’ve attached a date or time to show up here. This retains the list’s status as your ‘agenda’, only showing you the stuff you must get done on a timely basis. The new iOS 7 background notification support means that you can also now set alarms, using keywords like ‘alarm’. Previously, because of Apple’s restrictive backgrounding rules for apps, these would only trigger if they were synced to Calendar and that app sent the alert. Now, you can set alarms right within Fantastical and have them synced to the desktop version and triggered in the background. One of the most powerful things about the original Fantastical — and which gets retained in the new version — is that it was truly a calendar built from the ground up for how we use our mobile phones. There have been some other notable entries , but the simple swipe-able interface of the app and powerful timeline view still makes it a standout. Fantastical 2 is out on the , which fits in with another trend we’re seeing. Developers who put in a significant amount of work on an iOS 7 update are charging for the new versions of the apps. Tweetbot did it and had major success on the App Store charts — while receiving a significant amount of blowback from users who saw it as a money grab. As far as I’m concerned, paying a couple of bucks for a productivity app, especially one as essential, and great, as Fantastical is an easy choice. This is an app that I will open thousands of times over the next few years, and rely on heavily to make sure I’m where I am when I need to be. After an initial sale period, the app will go up to $4.99, which is still a bargain.
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Amazon Wants To Do Good With Its Goods, Launches ‘AmazonSmile’ Charity Donation Program
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Chris Velazco
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At the beginning of the year, just after Amazon reported a for Q4 2012, business correspondent posited (with tongue planted in cheek) that Amazon was “a charitable organization being run by elements of the investment community for the benefit of consumers.” Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos pointedly dismissed that observation in his following shareholder letter, but today one has to wonder if the charity implication didn’t have some sort of lasting impact on the company. That’s because Amazon has just rolled out a new initiative called , which will see the e-commerce titan automatically donate 0.5 percent of all eligible purchases to a U.S. charity of the buyer’s choosing. And to top it all off, there’s no upper limit to the amount Amazon will give away. The high-level message is clear: Amazon wants people to know it cares about people and communities. But there’s an underlying message that seems just as apparent: Let’s consider the brass tacks. Starting today, interested users can mosey on over to , at which point they’re prompted to select a charity for the proceeds of each transaction to go to (naturally, you can change your mind at any time). Amazon says there are nearly a million charities available to choose from, with recipients ranging from prominent projects like charity:water to much more local, grassroots affairs. A quick search for my hometown for instance revealed that I could indirectly donate to the Bahais Of Cherry Hill Township, the local fire department, or (my personal favorite) the Friends of the Cherry Hill Free Public Library. Once all that’s done, it’s essentially the exact same shopping experience, complete with Prime shipping if you’ve already shelled out for it. AmazonSmile GM Ian McAllister said that “tens of millions of items” are eligible for the program but there are some notable exceptions. Auto-renewed subscription purchases don’t fall under the AmazonSmile umbrella, and neither do digital products like mp3s, video content, and Kindle books (“for now,” anyway). And this isn’t just a temporary move meant to reflect the spirit of the upcoming holiday season either — McAllister confirmed that the company intends for the program to be around for the long haul. To hear him tell it, there was no specific moment of inspiration or event that prompted Amazon’s brass to venture down this charitable road, just a desire to build things the company thinks its customers will “love”. Love, suffice it to say, is a curious thing in business. Apple aficionados love their Apple products to the point of waiting in line for days, and BlackBerry fans are among the most ardent and vocal I’ve ever seen in spite of waning fortunes. And if Amazon can entice a larger swath of people to it because of this new charitable angle, the company won’t be seeing hearts as much as it sees dollar signs. The upsides here are obvious. With only a fraction of a fraction of each transaction being passed along to charities, Amazon still stands to make gobs of money, especially if this program manages to lift sales volumes in any appreciable way. And you can bet that Amazon is going to play up this charitable angle over time, a move that should only endear users to the process of buying their, well, everythings from the massive e-tailer. After all, the very thrust of this initiative is to make sure that end users like you and I won’t see any functional difference between plain ol’ Amazon and AmazonSmile — why we donate to charity if doing so didn’t impact us in any appreciable way? What are we, a bunch of jerks? And then there are the potential tax implications to consider too. You as a user won’t be able to claim these donations the next time you fill out your taxes, as they’re all being made on behalf of a foundation established by Amazon. In short, if Amazon plays its cards right, it stands to make plenty of money by giving a ton of it away.
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That Curved Display Smartphone From Samsung Is Real: Meet The Galaxy Round
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Jordan Crook
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Remember that from Samsung? You should, considering it popped up under our noses just a few hours ago. Well, in case you don’t, Samsung wants to remind you. The Korean firm has just sent out a press release announcing the Galaxy Round, “the world’s first curved display smartphone.” With the curved display, Samsung can offer Galaxy Round owners a range of “exclusive experiences,” like a roll feature that will let them check date, time, missed calls and battery life with the display off. Users will also have the ability to tilt the phone to control things like music, pictures and videos. To be honest, the press release isn’t very clear on what features the curved display brings about, or how they’ll work, but we’ve pasted the full presser below for you to peruse yourself. We’ve spotted some photos and videos released by Samsung, so check those out below: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIEExKSjWi4&w=640&h=480] In terms of specs, the Galaxy Round features a mammoth 5.7-inch Super AMOLED display, and weighs in at 154 grams with a waist line of 7.9mm. To deal with such a beastly screen size, the Galaxy Round will also include features like One-Hand Operation, letting a user put customizable controls on a specific, close corner of the display. Users can also run multiple applications in the same window, or run simultaneous multiple instances of the same application if they so choose. The phone will run Android 4.3 Jelly Bean on a 2.3GHz quad-core processor, complete with 32GB or 64GB of internal memory under the hood. The Round will also sport a 13-megapixel rear-facing shooter and a 2MP front-facing for video chat, as well as a 2,800 mAh battery. As it stands now, the Galaxy Round is only going on sale in Korea, and will come in “Luxury Brown,” with more color flavors to follow. Exact pricing and availability were not disclosed.
Here’s that press release we promised: Samsung GALAXY ROUND Pioneers the Curved Display Smartphone Experience New device presents world’s first commercialized full HD Super AMOLED flexible display Seoul, Korea – October 9, 2013 – Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. today introduced GALAXY ROUND, the world’s first curved display smartphone. Samsung has been a mobile display innovator by introducing color TFT-LCD, AMOLED, and Super AMOLED flexible display for its mobile product. With this pioneering curved display technology, GALAXY ROUND blends the latest smartphone screen innovations with unique design features. The sleek and thin Samsung GALAXY ROUND which equipped with a 5.7” Full HD Super AMOLED with 7.9mm thick and weighs 154g offers a comfortable hand grip feeling to user, and exclusive experiences of curved display. As a result of its unique curved design, users can take advantage of round integration experiences like the Roll Effect that enables user to check information such as date, time, missed call and battery easily when home screen is off, and the Gravity Effect for creating visual interaction with the screen by tilting the device. For music, the Bounce UX enables users to control their music. When the GALAXY ROUND’s display is off while the music player is running, a short press to the left of the device will play the previous track while a short press to the right will play the next track. For pictures and videos, the Side Mirror feature enables users to gain access to list of the album content with a left and right tilt. The large screen size of the GALAXY ROUND provides additional benefits to users. Useful One-Hand Operation features bring a user’s most desired controls closer to a preferred side of the screen. The device enables enhanced multitasking capabilities that allow users to fully utilize the larger screen through Multi Window, a feature that enables users to open more than one application on the screen, run simultaneous multiple instances of the same application or to easily share content between applications. Samsung GALAXY ROUND is available in Korea with Luxury Brown, and more color will be available soon. * All functionality, features, specifications, and other product information provided in this document including, but not limited to, the benefits, design, pricing, components, performance, availability, and capabilities of the product are subject to change without notice or obligation. About Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. is a global leader in technology, opening new possibilities for people everywhere. Through relentless innovation and discovery, we are transforming the worlds of televisions, smartphones, personal computers, printers, cameras, home appliances, LTE systems, medical devices, semiconductors and LED solutions. We employ 270,000 people across 79 countries with annual sales of US$187.8 billion. To discover more, please visit www.samsung.com.
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What Really Happened At Twitter’s Pre S-1 Tea Time?
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Alexia Tsotsis
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“With , & at today, together, guessing the IPO/S-1 filing will probably happen tomorrow,” Om Malik last Thursday, presciently predicting the arrival of the a couple of hours — not 24 hours — later. So clearly this was planned, the world is thinking. Twitter, champion of the news cycle, doing some more skillful cycling. Well, not exactly. From what we’re hearing, the was not a pre-IPO production. The three founders were at the company’s 1355 Market headquarters coincidentally after Twitter CEO Dick Costolo had promised to bring the band back together in front of all employees. Jack Dorsey and Ev Williams had jointly appeared at a recent sales conference in San Francisco this past summer to great success, and someone had asked for a rematch. The last time all three core founders had spoken together was when Twitter had first opened the new office . Apparently Costolo thinks it’s culturally beneficial for new Twitter employees to be connected to their roots and inspired by their past. It’s like the techie version of Magic Johnson Michigan State. As to why the wasn’t there? Well, history is written by the victors. So Biz Stone, Jack and Ev took the stage at the company’s Tea Time last Thursday, more out of obligation than anything else, we’re hearing. Promises made, promises kept. At least two of them, the two on the board, must have known that the company’s financial documents would later set the world on fire. Twitter functions as its own amplifier/replicator/self-fulfilling prophecy. But what would the three co-founders speak about? The company mission perhaps, carrying the Twitter spirit forward — anything but the IPO, which isn’t . Because it was Tea Time, the founders were introduced and preceded by CEO Costolo. Employees had submitted questions in advance, which were asked by Twitter Head of Communications . The questions were voted on electronically by employees using a Digg-style platform. The first question was “How does it feel to be here?” and it was answered almost unanimously by all three (all quotes paraphrased): “It used to feel big and now it feels small.” Which is what going from 6 to 2,000 employees would feel like for anyone. Said Biz: “I remember when we first came into the space, and it felt so big, and now when you see all the employees here it seems kind of small.” The second employee-vetted question was “How do you envision Twitter many years from now?” which led to all the founders doing a variation on the theme of the product being timeless: Though it will evolve, it will serve the same purpose, which is the basic human need to connect with one another. Biz and Ev have often talked about how the best technology : More and more and more unobtrusive. That is the plan for Twitter. The third question was, “If you could have done anything differently would you have?” To which Biz replied, “I wouldn’t have done anything differently. In our early days we were talking with these other startup guys in Palo Alto, and they said, ‘We have this platform and want hundreds of millions of users. You have hundreds of users but an imperfect platform.'”The grass is always greener, according to Biz, who admitted there was a point when he considered the trade of platform stability for user traffic, and didn’t. The fourth question was, “Is there anything that you thought of shipping that you never shipped?” Yes, said Biz. Some sort of word-game app. Which he did not name. The fifth and last question was on the subject of Nick Bilton’s which, from what we’ve heard, employees are itching to read. Basically, they were asked how much of the book is real and whether they care about it or are genuinely indifferent. Biz said (again paraphrased), “Actually I think it’s kind of cool that we’re significant enough to warrant a whole book being written about us.” Whereas Ev said that if the true vision of Twitter is actualized, what’s written in the book will eventually seem irrelevant. Jack said that it would be interesting to take a look at one moment in time with regards to Twitter, but looking forward 10, 20, 50 years from now, he didn’t think this will be a large part of Twitter’s story. The entire interview, which started at 10:30 a.m. last Thursday, lasted for about 20 minutes. From what we’ve heard, the packed house of close to a thousand employees and more tuning in remotely enjoyed hearing the founders talk about the early days in 2008, and what it was like to build the company to in six years. When Stricker said that they were going to have to wrap, Biz asked, “Is this an expensive meeting?” Well, yes, just the four of them and the entire company. From what we know, very few people in the room knew that this was the day that the private IPO document would become public. That was a bigger moment than the public S-1 in many people’s eyes. Since Tea Time happens every other Thursday or Friday, next week’s will likely raise questions inspired by last week’s S-1, and about revenue and the member. This week’s did not, and it’s timing with the IPO was a coincidence, according to people familiar with the matter. As to when the company will eventually IPO, who knows? With the shutdown and the debt cliff, everyone is rechecking their math. The plan is still before Thanksgiving as far as we’ve heard. As previously reported, the company would like to be as as possible, so the sooner the better. The temperature of the room was sweet. And there was affection there, we heard. But the event, though top-secret and cool for people who cared about the company’s history, was unremarkable. Which is unusual for Twitter. [Image credit: and .]
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Ingrid Lunden
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By Acquiring IndustryBrains, Adiant Aims To Bring Its ‘Content-Style’ Ads to Financial Publishers
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Anthony Ha
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Ad company says that it has acquired a number of assets from MarchEx, including the cost-per-click ad network formerly known as (which nearly a decade ago). Adiant CEO Ash Nashed said this should help his company’s ad network Adblade expand into financial publishing. MarchEx/IndustryBrains serves publishers, including Bloomberg, Bankrate, MorningStar, and Investopedia, so Adblade advertisers will get access to inventory with those publishers, while the publishers will get access to Adblade’s network and technology. “In essence, this allows us to become the web’s largest financial network, period,” Nashed said. He added that the possibility of a deal first came up a year ago: “I don’t think they were ready at the time. It took about a year of working together to make the deal happen.” Some MarchEx team members will be joining the Adiant office in New York City, while others will remain in Seattle. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. During our interview, Nashed also took a dig at the “native” advertising buzzword. He described Adblade as a “content-style ad network,” i.e. a network of ads that are formatted to resemble regular content. “We don’t call ourselves native, because to us, native is a subset of content-style advertising,” he said.
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Office 365 Is Coming To The iPad, Scout’s Honor
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Jordan Crook
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You’ve been played before. You’re vulnerable and nervous about opening up again. It wouldn’t be the first time you’ve been lied to. Back in 2011 we heard rumors that the iPad would be graced with Office’s presence in 2012, and shortly thereafter of Office on an iPad. But… nothing. And then some more nothing. Until today. The company is finally letting Office 365 smooch up against the iPad. Steve Ballmer today revealed at a Gartner event in Florida that an iPad-friendly version of Office 365 is in the works. The iPad version will be released after a touch-first user interface is delivered to Windows-powered machines. According to , that special touch interface is “in progress.” Microsoft has already let Office partially into the iOS ecosystem with the release of (catchy name, huh?). This application is only available to iPhone owners who already have an expensive Office 365 subscription. The Verge also claims that Microsoft COO Kevin Turner expressed the “need to own the productivity experience across all devices” in a recent company meeting, which makes sense considering Office is one of Microsoft’s best and most competitive products. Expanding distribution of the software is smart, especially if it coaxes users to pay for the pricey Office 365 subscription in order to access it. Smarter still would be to offer a specially tailored version of Office 365 on iPad and iPhone for a hefty yearly price that isn’t quite as high as the full-on desktop subscription. In either case, though, Microsoft runs the risk of slowing down its own lagging tablet sales. After all, the only slightly interesting advantage that Surface tablets have is Microsoft’s productivity suite. After Office is rolled out to all iOS devices, that advantage simply shrinks down to the fact that it’s free on a Surface.
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AmEx And TripAdvisor Team Up To Allow Card Members To Get Credit For Travel Reviews And Access Spend Data
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Leena Rao
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American Express has been steadily partnering with various consumer technology companies to allow cardmembers to integrate their accounts and access new ways to spend. For example, the financial services giant debuted a earlier this year to allow cardholders to use hashtags to buy items. Today, AmEx is furthering its presence in the online travel space by teaming up with travel reviews giant and booking site TripAdvisor. Basically, AmEx cardholders in the U.S., U.K. and Australia can connect their American Express Cards with their TripAdvisor profiles to post verified AmEx cardmember reviews, access exclusive lists and get special merchant offers. TripAdvisor users will now see an “Amex Traveler” badge for cardmembers that connect their cards. Users will also see an “Amex Card Member Review” next to reviews on TripAdvisor when a cardholder has made a transaction with their connected card and then written a review for that place. AmEx tells us that cardholder data is never passed to TripAdvisor. To incentivize cardholders to integrate and leave reviews, AmEx is giving them a statement credit for $5 in the U.S. and Australia and £5 in the U.K. for reviews. The integration also leverages the American Express Spend Graph – an aggregate, anonymous mapping of cardmember spend and location data that shows trends in dining, travel and entertainment. So members can access lists like where most business travelers stay and eat in London, or where “foodies” eat in Paris. AmEx says it has created personas (i.e. “Globetrotter” or “Strictly Business”) for cardmembers, and within these anonymous personas, AmEx has done a deep data dive into spending habits and trends as related to restaurants and hotels. Lastly, cardmembers who integrate with TripAdvisor will be able to access unique offers. To redeem an offer, a cardmember can simply click on the offer within TripAdvisor to save it to their connected American Express Card, and then use that Card to make a purchase in-store or online with that merchant. Savings are delivered automatically. This same Sync technology powers couponless offers on Facebook, Foursquare, Twitter and Xbox. As of earlier this year, of AmEx users linked their accounts to Twitter, Facebook and others. Considering that travel is a big expense for many, credits and offers are a good incentive for cardholders to actually feel compelled to integrate their accounts. But what is even more interesting about this announcement is the data dive that AmEx is doing with personas. According to AmEx, this spend graph data was never available to consumers previously. I’m curious to see how AmEx ends up expanding this beyond travel — perhaps into food, shopping and other categories.
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Report: Apple To Hold Event On October 22nd To Talk New iPads, OS X Mavericks And New Mac Pro
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Matthew Panzarino
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Apple will hold an invitation-only event on October 22nd to show off its new iPads, as well as the new Mac Pro and OS X Mavericks release, according to a John . That timing seems just right for the new iPads to make an appearance — last year’s event was held on October 23rd — and Apple has previously slated OS X Mavericks for a ‘fall’ release. It also makes some sense for Apple to talk about the Mac pro, also slated for fall, and to hopefully deliver us a release date. The new iPads will include a full-size iPad and new iPad mini. It’s unclear whether Apple will up the Mini to Retina resolution this time around, but that seems fairly likely. The larger iPad is expected to get trimmed down bezels and a thinner casing and, we would assume, will also get the A7. A report last month from CE’s Micah Singleton and says that Apple’s iPad mini will get the A7 processor, instead relying on Apple’s A6, currently used in the iPhone 5C. The All Things D report says that the mini get the A7. There have been fingerprint recognition as well, hence the image above, but that’s unconfirmed as of yet. If the releases of Apple’s iPhone 5S are an indication, the new iPads may come in Space Grey, Gold and traditional silver. October 22nd is also the date that another couple of tech events are slated to take place, including the arrival of Microsoft’s Surface 2 for sale and , where it’s expected to announce six new devices including a tablet.
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Twitter Updates Its Windows Phone App With In-Stream Translation To 54 Languages
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Alex Wilhelm
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Twitter updated its Windows Phone application today to include in-stream tweet translation to 54 languages, which is powered by Bing. Tweets can now be displayed on the lock screen of Windows Phone devices. This will come in handy when Nokia’s ‘Glance’ feature is released for the platform, which allows information to be displayed even when a phone is locked. Twitter updates will presumably be viewable with that feature when it reaches general availability. The Twitter application update includes improved search functionality, and so-called discovery features that mesh with Twitter’s current efforts to mitigate its . Visually, a new dark theme has been introduced, something that is fitting on Windows Phone, which allows users to set their backgrounds to light or more obscura tones. All told the update is worthy and welcome, as it demonstrates that Twitter remains – at least for now – committed to Microsoft’s mobile platform. You can snag the updated application , if you are so inclined. Why would Twitter support Windows Phone? The platform has managed to claw its way to the third spot in mobile. Billions of dollars, and several years in, Microsoft has managed to earn a seat at the smartphone table. And Twitter, which is hungry for user growth and mobile ad dollars, can’t afford to ignore any player in mobile. So, an update to the Twitter application for Windows Phone. Expect continued support.
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Freedom Of Information Requests At The NSA Are Up 1,054% Year-Over-Year
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Alex Wilhelm
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According to leaked emails, freedom of information requests at the National Security Agency (NSA) have skyrocketed more than 1,000 percent this year, following revelations from Edward Snowden that detailed the agency’s mass surveillance programs. MuckRock, which relating to freedom of information requests, reports that the NSA received 3,382 requests this year during a three-month period. That’s 1,054 percent more than the same period in 2012, during which the NSA received a mere 293 requests. The gist is simple: Far, far more people are asking questions of the NSA in the wake of the Snowden leaks, and the increase in requests is not hard to explain. We can now ask better questions, because we know more about the NSA’s activities and what form they take. We can ask about phone metadata programs, the tapping of the core fiber cables that make up the Internet’s spine, and about PRISM and other programs that force data from the servers of public and private companies. A little information here goes a long way, and we have far more than a little information. Don’t forget, though, that the NSA and the larger U.S. surveillance apparatus has lied, obfuscated, and behind a throughout its public examination. So keep the requests and leaks coming. There is probably another coming, and we need to know what it is, and how it works. Then we get to decide if it is legal, and if we want to keep funding it.
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Possible Image Surfaces Of Samsung’s Rumored Smartphone With Curved Screen
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Matthew Panzarino
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Back at the Galaxy Gear event, Samsung executives cryptically said that they had plans to “introduce a curved display smartphone in October”. Today, an image shared by reliable leak displays what could be the fruition of those plans. The device is curved across the vertical axis, producing a device that looks like it would fit in a cupped hand. How practical such a design might be to use, or what function it might serve, remains to be seen. One possibility is that a curved screen might be more difficult to scratch or more resistant to breakage if dropped. But this design does not show off any of the interesting utility of its earlier OLED prototypes, which used the to display status information. A patent in May of this year details a device that looks very much like the image from today. LG has plans to build a curved handset display that will launch at some point in November, if a is accurate. And Nokia showed off a flexible at Nokia World in late 2011 (that’s the image you see above). No flexible Nokia devices have ever made it to market, but the flexible display genre is heating up and I’d expect to see quite a few of these types of curved devices make it out to market soon. The utility of such screens is going to be a question that we should all be careful to ask for answers on when they inevitably arrive. Samsung, like many other mobile companies, has a penchant for throwing things at the wall to see what sticks. Without a specific reason for a curved screen to exist, is this just more ‘spitballing in public’, or will we see some real benefit that makes ‘curved’ the next ‘multitouch’? Top Image
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Luminate Health Raises $1M To Make Patient Lab Results Comprehensible
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Eliza Brooke
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Although blood tests are meant to tell you something about your internal state of affairs, it usually feels like you need a medical degree to decipher the results. A New York-based startup called has raised a $1 million seed round led by KEC Ventures to do just that. A of the health tech accelerator , Luminate is promoting patient empowerment by facilitating easy access to lab results and then helping people understand them. Although many doctors use portals like Patient Gateway to communicate lab results, they often don’t provide much in terms of explanation, either requiring a written letter from the doctor or a follow-up consultation. “Today, if patients are able to access their information at all, it’s a paper spit-out of the results,” said cofounder Sidd Sinha. “If you get your physical done and get blood work done with it, you may not get a lab report. Or you do, and it has no context.” Using a slew of clinically backed resources and physician consultants, Luminate tells the patient what the test means and why they had it done, and then provides additional information in the form of articles and video content. They are not aiming to be an interpretive or diagnostic tool, though: the goal is to give the patient as much information as possible so that they can engage with the data, ask better questions, and actively manage their own health. Moving forward, they will continue to simplify content to give users better information. Although patients are the end users of the product, Luminate is a SaaS startup and its clients are the labs, both commercial and hospital. They’ve partnered with one of the 10 largest labs in the U.S. already, although the founders can’t yet say which. Luminate is also working with physicians and hoping to show them that the tool can improve communication with patients, which would certainly help with adoption. Initially, Luminate will focus on a broad set of routine tests, Sinha said. Down the line they will expand to more specialized medical tests in areas, including endocrinology, genetic testing and oncology. They are also looking to implement the system in retail clinics like those at Walgreens and Target, as doctors offices continue to see greater traffic.
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Keen On… Clive Thompson: Could Technology Really Be Making Us Smarter?
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Andrew Keen
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As a feature writer for the and many other publications, is one of technology’s smartest journalists. And now Thompson has brought his considerable intelligence to book writing. In Thompson takes on Internet critics like and and argues that technology is actually making us smarter. He acknowledged the Internet can be a distraction and can degenerate into mob-like behavior on networks like Reddit. But when used right, Thompson insists, genuinely collaborative social networks like Ushahidi are actually boosting our cognitive skills and making us not only smarter, but also more productive and creative than ever before. Thompson remains generally unimpressed, however, with giant silos of public thought like Twitter and Facebook. They are too large, he says, to effectively engineer social intelligence. And it’s here that he sees an interesting opportunity for entrepreneurs. The key, he says, is creating what he calls “clusters” of like-minded people in smaller groups. So, Clive Thompson suggests, entrepreneurs who think small might actually be smarter than you think.
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Mobile Ad Startup Locket Hires Charity Sabater, Formerly Of Candy Crush Maker King, To Lead Sales
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Anthony Ha
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, a startup that runs ads in Android lockscreens and , has hired as its first vice president of national sales. Co-founder and CEO Yunha Kim told me Sabater has been brought on to bring more big brands into the program. The startup recently for Scharffen Berger chocolate, and Locket even has a page where users can . Sabater was previously senior director of U.S. brand sales at King.com, the company behind the popular mobile game Candy Crush. (Back in June, to focus on virtual purchases.) In an emailed statement, Sabater said she received offers from more than five top digital and mobile advertising companies. She chose Locket because “I like being in a place where true innovation happens, at crazy speed.” She added, “Rewarding users for allowing advertising on their lock screen is simple yet brilliant.” Locket currently has a nine-person team, Kim said, and it recently opened an office in San Francisco. Both its New York and San Francisco offices (that’s the NYC office pictured above) are basically apartments where the company lives and works — apparently Sabater is the first hire who won’t be bunking with other team members.
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Facebook Continues To Simplify Ad Buying With New ‘Objective-Based’ Interface
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Anthony Ha
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When Facebook announced in June that it planned to , it also outlined a broader vision for simplification, where the company could guide advertisers through the ad-buying process based on their objectives, eliminating any “guesswork.” Today, it sounds like Facebook is making that vision a reality. The company just announcing what it calls “objective-based ad buying and reporting.” Advertisers will now choose from a number of possible objectives for their ad campaigns — such as driving clicks to their website, getting more Likes for their Facebook Pages, or driving app installs — then Facebook will recommend the ads that will help meet that objective. The company says these objectives are now “the new starting point for buying ads on Facebook.” It also says it has updated its Ad Manager so that advertisers can get a clear view of how many times the objective was met and the cost paid for each of those times. “We’re making these updates so marketers can focus on what matters to them most: driving results for their business,” Facebook writes. This approach could be particularly important for bringing on small businesses into the company’s advertising programs — they might might be intimidated if they have to choose from a plethora of ads and learn the ins and outs of Facebook’s programs, but now, as long as they have a broader goal, Facebook says it can help with the rest of the process. At the same time that it’s announcing these changes, Facebook says it’s also giving advertisers more control over where their ads are shown — now those advertisers can specify whether they want their ads to show up in Facebook’s mobile News Feed, the desktop News Feed, or the right-hand column of the site. And knowing the location of the ad, businesses can tailor their messages accordingly. These updates are live now, Facebook says.
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True&Co Raises Another $4 Million To Help You Find The Perfect Bra
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Ryan Lawler
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E-commerce company to apply a bit of personalization and technology to aid women in their searches for new bras. The company just raised a little bit more funding to invest more in its algorithm for matching customers with bras that not only fit well but also look good. True&Co has raised another $4 million in funding from a series of new investors that include Crosslink, VegasTechFund, Pejman Nozad, and FundersClub. True&Co had previously raised $2 million in seed funding from investors that included First Round Capital, SoftTechVC, Softbank, and Aileen Lee’s Cowboy Ventures, all of which also participated in the round. The company hopes to fix the seemingly impossible problem of finding a bra that fits — and do so with technology. New users to the site take a “fit quiz,” which helps the company get a feel for the user’s true size, body type, and the bra that will look best based on answers to a bunch of questions about how they usually fit. Once that’s done, the company provides a personalized home try-on kit with free shipping and returns that allows customers to find products that best suit them. While most women tend to find one brand and style that fits and then stick with it, True&Co hopes that its personalization engine will open customers up to trying out new types of bras that complement their body types, according to founder Michelle Lam. That algorithm is key to the company’s success, which explains why True&Co recently hired CTO , who was previously the director of engineering at Netflix. Chris Pouliot, one of its advisers, is also on the Netflix engineering and algorithm team. Just as Netflix’s recommendation engine highlights titles that users might not have known about, but match their individual tastes, the True&Co algorithm is designed to connect users with styles and bras they might not have tried before. For most women, it would be considered risky to order a bra on the web from a brand they don’t know, but True&Co hopes to eliminate that fear and connect customers with new products. That plan seems to be working, as Lam says customers are coming back to the site and “not just buying the same old bras” that they know fit well, but trying out new ones. As a result, True&Co continues to add new inventory, including products from boutique brands that customers have never tried before. With the new funding, True&Co is looking to invest more heavily in its technology to improve the algorithm and find more interesting applications for it. The company now has 20 employees in San Francisco and New York, but is looking to grow the team to help scale its business.
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Docstoc Redesigns Its Site To Become The Go-To Place For Small Business Documents
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Ryan Lawler
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Over the past several years, has positioned itself as the go-to place for small and medium-sized businesses to find the documents they need to grow. Today, it’s taking a big step toward making it easier to do that, with the launch of a major redesign to improve the way its customers find and access its content. Docstoc was founded in 2007 — it was one of the ! — as a repository of user-generated documents for small businesses. A few years ago, however, it began shifting focus and started producing its own professional content, launching a premium subscription service to access those documents. According to Docstoc CEO Jason Nazar, Docstoc now has more than 20,000 pieces of professional content, including documents, videos, and tutorials that it’s created since then. That’s in addition to more than 20 million pieces of content that have been submitted by the community. It’s also increased its content production plans to create more than 300 new pieces each week. Having all that content is great, but there was one big problem — on the old Docstoc, it was damn near impossible to find anything. So the Docstoc team set about reworking its entire website and database to connect users with the content that they were looking for. The new site introduces a number of new features to improve content discovery. For one thing, Docstoc now has Topic Pages, which act as repositories for common types of documents and tutorials that small businesses need to use them. For instance, the Topic Page for “Business Plans” connect users with a number of resources for creating and refining that document. That includes documents that they can use, as well as articles and videos on the topic, and even full video courses to guide small businesses. The site has also launched a new semantic search engine designed to provide a more refined way of connecting businesses with the documents they need. The new discovery engine is linked on the front page, which should simplify the process of helping business owners find content that is appropriate to them. That’s important, since different companies will have different needs at various stages of their growth. Docstoc has also refined its regular search engine, bringing in all of its content and providing users with new ways to filter it. The search page allows users to filter by content type, as well as view documents, videos, and courses individually. With the new design, Docstoc has also refined article, document, and video pages. Once users have found what they need, the site provides a simplified interface for viewing that content. Finally, Docstoc has introduced the concept of personalized folders in a user’s profile. Nazar says it’s important to note that its folders are not meant to replace cloud storage services like Box or Dropbox. Instead, the folders are meant as a place to save and store documents that users would like to quickly have access to later. So more like bookmarks for relevant content on Docstoc. To get users started, it’s even included some “starter” folders for small businesses just starting out. The redesign follows on a number of other moves that Docstoc has made to shore up its position in the SMB market, including a , as well as its and its recent .
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Fly Or Die: Amazon Kindle Fire HDX
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Jordan Crook
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Amazon has been churning out LCD-based Kindle tablets for the past two years, and there’s no question that the company has improved from the original, BlackBerry PlayBook-style Kindle Fire. But with the Fire HDX, is there enough of an improvement to upgrade from the Kindle Fire HD? That’s the question John Biggs and I investigate on this . John, as a real-life Kindle fanboy, feels that this is the very best Fire that Amazon has to offer. The specs have been bumped considerably, with a 1920×1200 display at 323ppi, a 2.2-GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor, and up to 64GB of internal storage under the hood. Biggs also reported in that battery life is improved, while camera functionality has some strange issues. But for me, I’m not sure that a slightly better display is worth the upgrade, considering that the Fire HD already has a hi-res screen. The form factor is nice, as the new model is thinner and lighter, but again the improvements aren’t convincing enough for me to advocate throwing down $300 on a tablet limited to Amazon content if you already have one. Of course, Amazon is a strong competitor in the tablet market against Apple, and the HDX will most certainly sell well. Plus, at the end of the day, the decision is yours.
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Amazon’s ‘Login and Pay with Amazon’ Service Challenges PayPal For The Web’s Payment Business
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Matthew Panzarino
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Amazon today at that lets partner sites enable a payments button that will compete with PayPal and credit cards for customer checkout. This is a direct blow at one of the bigger third-party payment options that consumers have at checkout and an effort by Amazon to capture a huge chunk of the web’s payment business at large. This new service combines Amazon’s long-standing payments services with its relatively new login services to form a new one-stop-shop integration for web payments. “Amazon has more than 215 million active customer accounts,” Tom Taylor, Vice President, Amazon Payments says in a release today. “Login and Pay with Amazon enables companies to make millions of our customers their customers by inviting online shoppers with Amazon credentials to access their account information safely and securely with a single login.” Now, at the end of a checkout process, you’re going to be seeing ‘Pay with Amazon’ buttons alongside credit cards and PayPal buttons: Amazon has been offering payment services for some time, which direct users to Amazon to authorize one-time or recurring payments. Kickstarter is a good example of this, as users log in to Amazon and are charged when rewards ship. Earlier this year, Amazon launched ‘ ‘, a developer feature which allowed sites, games and other apps to offer login services using customers’ Amazon IDs. The seamless nature of the button, along with the security of the Amazon payments system and a simple oAuth implementation should make this attractive for developers and consumers. One of the initial partners for the Pay with Amazon rollout is Gogo, which is already using the retailer’s payments system for its in-flight Wi-Fi services. It will integrate the button later this year. Amazon says that the payments system is covered by its ‘A-to-z Guarantee’ that offers buyers the same protection as they get on Amazon.com. This offering takes that one step further by enabling a login process right on the partner site, letting people use their Amazon credentials to authorize a payment. This leverages the trust that people have in the Amazon name to expand Amazon’s third-party payments business. The , and companies like PayPal have been leveraging this to sublimate credit cards for some time. Square has also been making inroads into this with its ‘Pay with Square’ digital wallets and payment code support. Before , Square was said to be interested in acquiring BrainTree, which may have aided it in rolling out its own cross-site payments solution. Currently, Square seems to be exploring another branch of the payments tree with a to use pre-built storefronts and Square’s payment framework to peddle their wares. When we inquired about Square’s entry into this kind of API-based payments service, it said that Intuit is currently using something like it for its integration announced last month. A Square spokesperson would only tell us that they’ll have ‘ . http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6TnK5MRSVY Amazon is second only to Apple in businesses that have collected massive numbers of customer credit accounts. Apple has over 575 million accounts on file at this point and Amazon has never published numbers of credit cards, but Taylor does quote 215 million “active accounts.” Apple says that it An external button will allow it to leverage those accounts in a big way. Other companies have made attempts to convert login information into a payments path, including Google with Wallet and Facebook, with its own currency and then with physical gifts. There are some more technical details about the program that are available now. You can receive seamless mobile payments across the web, Kindle, iOS and Android. The transaction fees are simple, at . Developers interested in integrating Login and Pay with Amazon can .
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Amidst Obamacare’s Marketplace Madness, The YEC Wants To Help Startups Take The Hassle Out Of Health Insurance
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Rip Empson
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Amid partisan shenanigans, a government shutdown and much squabbling, that will eventually allow Americans to compare the price of health insurance plans — which is now mandatory under the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare. While the exchange, or the Insurance Marketplace as it’s being called, did in fact go live this morning, it’s been having a rough day, thanks to technical issues and an onslaught of heavy traffic. Today has been a showcase of how challenging it will be to bring coverage to millions of uninsured Americans, reiterating many of the concerns that entrepreneurs, startups and small businesses across the country have had in anticipation of Obamacare going into effect in January. In response, one organization is taking steps to help startups navigate these new premiums, exchanges, compliance issues — and the change health insurance landscape as a whole — with the launch of , a portal where startups can go to buy health insurance and other policies. The new resource is a product of , an invite-only organization of entrepreneurs that aims to provide small businesses with the resources, mentorship and tools they need to thrive — and counts executives or co-founders of startups like ReTargeter, Yodle, Disqus, Klout, Hipmunk, Rent The Runway, Hootsuite and Indiegogo, to name a few, as members. The organization has been developing its new portal over the last year in the hopes of providing a resource and “insurance destination,” says YEC founder Scott Gerber, which will contain a curated collective of providers and affordable insurance plans from around the country. The goal, he explains, is to provide startups, business owners and all those likely to transition into self-employment as a result of being able to purchase health insurance, with direct access to affordable plans that are compliant with Obamacare. Minus the confusion and time sink, of course. Thanks to the direct carrier partnerships the YEC has been able to strike, StartupInsurance will give entrepreneurs access to “one of the largest medical footprints in the U.S.,” with insurance options available in nearly every state. “In speaking to thousands of entrepreneurs, freelancers and small business owners over the years, we have learned what is important to them, what’s working for them–and most importantly, what isn’t,” Gerber says. “And this direct feedback has guided our thinking in creating StartupInsurance — it’s meant to be a destination created by the people it aims to serve.” The idea, according to Gerber, is that the YEC has done the homework for startups so that they don’t have to worry about spending the time, energy and resources it usually takes to assemble these packages and navigate the new exchanges. When asked what the plans will cost when the portal officially goes live with Obamacare in January, what kind of coverage will be offered and so on, Gerber said that he isn’t able to discuss the details yet for legal reasons — in other words, because he is not a broker himself. However, we do know that, like Kayak and other metasearch engines have done for years in travel, The YEC will be paid referral fees every time it sends a customer to one of its insurance partners and, while other carriers will no doubt enter the fold over time, as of now, the portal’s chief insurance carrier is Assurant Health. , however, a spokeswoman for Assurant said that the plans “were the same plans Assurant already offered,” which is certainly a good deal for the insurance carrier, but doesn’t necessarily seem like it will guarantee startups access to the most affordable plan. Other questions remain as well, particularly around what will differentiate StartupInsurance.com from the two additional portals YEC is launching, and , other than the fact that they will be serving their own particular verticals. However, the YEC founder did point out that the freelancer portal will not be offering group coverage and that differences between the three will be come clearer overtime, as the organization incorporates feedback from startups and entrepreneurs and preps for January. While some of the plans that the portals will be offering will not, in fact, comply with Obamacare’s provisions for minimum value — meaning that they’d have to pay the penalty of the individual mandate — Gerber said that, after speaking to thousands of business owners, the YEC found that a portion of entrepreneurs would be willing to pay a tax penalty in order to receive more affordable coverage. The portal, he continues, will offer an array of Obamacare-compliant plans, but that a one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work for startups. Instead, some will prefer to incur the tax penalty in exchange for accessing its lower premiums — as well as a destination that could be decidedly less noisy. The YEC founder rightly points out that, today, many insurance providers are moving away from offering individual or small group coverage, because, put simply, the new regulations will make it difficult for brokers to make money off of these types of customers — and plans. It’s a fact that has led companies set up and manage group health coverage, payroll and other benefits by automating the process in the cloud — to believe that there’s opportunity in this space. Or, said another way, there’s a gulf that’s growing as insurance brokers move away from small group coverage, and someone has to meet the demand. It’s likely that, rather than compete, the two will likely be able to help each other meet the growing demand among small businesses that are looking to comply with Obamacare and get their employees covered. The YEC’s portals still have some time before Obamacare goes into effect in January, and it will need to be able to distinguish its three portals from each other, and make clear the benefits of each. Startups and entrepreneurs themselves will need to decide whether the inexpensive, affordable option is what they want, or whether costlier, fuller coverage is a better way to go in the long run. But, either way, for startups, the more options and the less headache they have to wade through, the better. After all, as Gerber says, “we want to stay away from all this partisan nonsense … in the end, healthcare is a personal decision, and one startups and entrepreneurs need to make for themselves.” Readers can find more of our coverage on the launch of the White House’s or find .
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Net Power & Light Launches Spin, A Fun, Tactile Video Chat App For iOS
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Anthony Ha
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I don’t think I’ve ever had a great video chat experience on my smartphone or tablet. Until now, I assumed that was just because I’m super-awkward, but the team behind a startup called Net Power & Light seems to think there’s a broader problem here, one that it’s trying to solve with the launch of a new app called . Obviously, there are plenty of other chat services out there, including Apple’s own FaceTime. But when Net Power & Light co-founder and CEO Tara Lemmey gave me a demo, I had to admit that it felt pretty different. There’s no single feature that makes Spin stand out, but as a whole it has clearly been optimized around the touch experience of an iPad (and to a lesser extent the iPhone and iPod Touch). When you’re chatting with someone, it’s easy to use the screen to zoom in and out of the video, and also to share and swipe through photos and videos (which can be imported from Facebook, Flickr, or their iOS camera roll). Other features include the ability to invite people for a scheduled call (you can have up to 10 people on a call), adjust the audio mix of the call (you just increase the size of someone’s image to make them louder and decrease it to make them softer), and introduce fun, random elements to the call by doodling or adding “FXPs” like paper airplanes or hearts. “We really wanted people to emotionally be together and to be entangled in each other’s lives,” Lemmey said. “We want to deliver emotion at the scale of the Internet.” For example, Lemmey said she uses Spin to stay in touch with her children when she’s traveling, and to have shared sessions with her extended family when they want to watch football games together. Again, people already do that kind of thing with Skype and FaceTime, but Lemmey’s goal is to make that a more natural experience, where “the technology is in the background.” The video and audio are also pretty high-quality. To illustrate that, Lemmey brought multiple people from multiple locations onto the demo chat, some of them in the Net Power & Light office, others out-and-about in San Francisco, without Wi-Fi, and everything ran smoothly. Although Spin feels like a consumer product, the company says it has been tested out by organizations such as Harvard University, TED, and DC United — this could be used for business video conferencing, or for larger webinars and virtual classrooms. In fact, it sounds like Net Power & Light sees a bigger business opportunity by selling the technology to enterprises. It’s a good thing the app looks as nice as it does, by the way, since the company has apparently been developing the technology since 2009. Net Power & Light has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from investors that include Alsop Louie, John Seely Brown, BSkyB, and Singtel Innov8. You can .
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Apple Says Small Fraction Of iMessage Users Having Issues And It’s Working On A Fix
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Matthew Panzarino
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Over the last few days, we’ve been hearing reports of people having issues with iMessages, on both the receiving and sending ends. The complaints have grown in volume and frequency and we began inquiring about the issue yesterday. Today, Apple tells us that the issue is affecting a ‘fraction of a percent’ of iMessage users, though that appears to include a big chunk of our timeline, anecdotally. Apple also says that it’s working on a fix for these issues that will come in a future update. Apple fixes bugs and issues on a ‘point release’ basis as it needs to, pushing out software updates that may have no other major changes. If there’s one conclusion that we can draw from this statement, it’s that the software bug is in iOS, not on Apple’s servers. If it were, it would be able to fix it without a software patch. This could be why Apple’s has continued to show a green light for iMessage. The system is working; it’s the client that isn’t. Here’s the full statement from Apple: We are aware of an issue that affects a fraction of a percent of our iMessage users, and we will have a fix available in an upcoming software update. In the meantime, we encourage any users having problems to reference our troubleshooting documents or contact AppleCare to help resolve their issue. We apologize for any inconvenience this causes impacted users. If you’re interested in a quicker fix, the method spelled out has been working for some users getting sending errors. Basically you toggle iMessage off then use the Reset Network Settings function of iOS to clear activation. Turning iMessage back on re-authenticates your device with iMessage. And this fix appears to be temporary, going by we’re seeing on Twitter. A more permanent fix will have to wait for the software update. If you’re the kind of person that wonders why we post about iMessage statuses or outages, then . Apple is a services company through and through, even if it is in support of its hardware. People learn to rely on those services and are seriously inconvenienced, if not worse, when they’re unavailable. Yes, iMessage has a text fallback, but there are certain cases where that’s not available, and no modern backbone service should have to rely on a 20-year-old backup plan to save its bacon. Image Credit: / Flickr CC
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Three Top Microsoft Investors Allegedly Want Bill Gates To Step Down As Chairman
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Alex Wilhelm
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According , three of Microsoft’s top 20 investors are making noise that Microsoft remove its founder and former CEO Bill Gates as chairman of its board, his current role. The information is almost odd, and points to a potential blank slate for Microsoft. In the midst of a massive reorganization, current CEO Steve Ballmer is stepping down. If Gates were to transition away from the company as well, it would leave Microsoft with new top leadership and serve as a pivotal moment in its history. Microsoft is more than working to better align its internal teams and revamp its larger business model by moving away from selling software and towards vending both “devices” and “services.” Its early services efforts, such as Office 365 and Azure, have , while its Surface project (the devices side of things) . Why shift Gates? According to Reuters, the grumpy few feel that he might hold the company back from finding new direction. Don’t think for a minute that Gates is about to let go of the reins gently. He’s been a fixture at Microsoft since its soul was first formed, and even though he has , there is little to indicate that he be willing to relinquish the role. Also, if you are a Gates fan – and so very, very many of you are, as I’ve learned from your tweets – it doesn’t make sense to change Gates’ board role precisely when his guidance could be key to helping the company pick its next leader. People that won’t be: Steve Ballmer, Bill Gates, Steven Sinofsky, You, Me. Everyone else is pretty much up for speculation. I’ll just say that with the , I don’t see who could cause enough ruckus to manage a Gates role change, especially at this time of intentional turmoil. A final point: ValueAct controls around 0.8 percent of Microsoft. Gates: 4.5 percent. Ballmer . That combined is a hefty chunk of the equity. Gates won’t have to step down if he doesn’t want to. I misread the initial Reuters report as indicating that the investors wanted Gates to step down from his chairmanship, not exit its board entirely. My overall analysis holds, that Gates doesn’t have to do a damn thing given his position and popularity, but I have updated the headline and post to reflect the correct source report. I apologize for the error in interpretation.
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Disrupt Alum Monsieur Launches Kickstarter Campaign For Its Robo-Bartender
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Chris Velazco
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If the prevailing wisdom of years past were any indication, we should have been up to our necks in sassy, autonomous robot servants a decade ago. While I wait for someone to develop a to cater to my every whim, the folks behind the Monsieur robotic bartender that , have just recently launched a Kickstarter campaign to bring its drink-slinging machine to market. The Monsieur itself is easy enough to use — an Android tablet is nestled within that front facade to give users the ability to choose from a variety of drinks from the catalog (which can also be expanded through additional themes or user recipes). In the event you run low of potables, the Monsieur can also fire off an email or text message to keep the owner abreast of drink levels so they can pop off for a refill. And, because I know you were wondering, you can crank up the strength of your drink using a strength meter — dial it up all the way and there’s a distinct possibility you won’t be able to see straight for much longer. Now, all that is just peachy, but there’s a much bigger question to tackle here: How do these drinks actually taste? Your mileage is naturally going to vary, but I fixed myself a Screwdriver backstage at Disrupt with the Boss level set smack in the middle and came away rather pleased with the outcome. Over time the Monsieur will also grow accustomed to the nuances of your drinking habits — it can detect when you get home from work and offer you a double, for instance, and it’ll eventually learn how strong you like certain drinks. While the version that the Monsieur team demoed onstage was a larger model meant for bars, restaurants, and other sizable venues, the big addition today is a Mini version with no built-in tablet and four peristaltic pumps rather than the customary eight. That means you’re going to have to be a bit more judicious with the liquor bottles you load into the thing, though the Monsieur itself will offer recommendations based on what sort of drink theme you’ve chosen. It’s ostensibly meant for home use, and while I’m sure there’s some satisfaction to be had in pouring your own drink at the end of a long day, the ability to remotely order a drink from the Monsieur partner app may ultimately win over some of the lazies among you. Then again, the price tag may prove to be a bit too steep: early backers can lay claim to a Mini model for $1,499, while the big one can set up in your saloon for $2,299.
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Yiftee Opens API To Give Developers The Option Of In-App Gifting
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Eliza Brooke
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Yiftee, the service for sending local gifts to friends, has opened its “GiftUp” API with the hope that developers will incorporate its gift-giving capabilities into their own apps. is banking on the notion that people will be more inclined to send gifts in context. When a calendar app notifies you of a friend’s birthday, for instance, it could also suggest that you buy her a cupcake from the local bakery. At the moment, Yiftee has homed in on dating apps and social network platforms as their primary targets, CEO Donna Novitsky said, since the holidays and Valentine’s Day mean that people will be looking to buy presents for others. Through a partnership with Mastercard, Yiftee works with more than 2 million retailers. The big competitor here is Facebook Gifts, which recently a redesign that ended the sale of physical gifts in favor of digital gift codes or Facebook’s Gift Card. Although Facebook Gifts manager Lee Linden, previously the CEO of gifting app Karma before it was acquired by Facebook, said revenue from gifts is increasing, it has historically proven to be a tough sell to users, paling in (revenue) comparison to ads and games. So can Yiftee do Facebook one better? Since integrating with Yiftee’s gift functionality now only involves adding a few lines of code, it wouldn’t be surprising to see apps testing it out to see if it takes, since it could be an easy point of new revenue. “One of the main feedback points we’ve had is that we’ve talked to all these awesome apps, but they don’t have a way to monetize,” Novitsky said. “With apps, there are in-app purchases, and this gives them another channel to monetize.” Yiftee will monetize on this through revenue sharing, with the plan to charge a $1 or 3 percent convenience fee for in-app gift purchases, whichever is greater. It takes a 75 percent cut of that. Last we heard from the startup, they had in seed funding from Scott Cook, Mohr Davidow Ventures, and other angel investors. In August, the team launched a feature for gifting to college students, an update on care packages.
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Senior Facebook, Netflix Scientist Joins Identified To Help It Fix Professional Search, Take On LinkedIn
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Rip Empson
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This summer, pulled back the curtain on a new artificial intelligence technology, called “SYMAN,” which it developed to help organize and clean the swaths of unstructured professional data that today lives on the Web. In doing so, the startup moved away from its original focus — a kind of Facebook data-driven “Klout score for professionals” — essentially admitting that if it were going to give job seekers and companies a better way to connect and find talent, it would have to address the elephant in the room: Data. To deliver a quality search or analytics product that could compete with LinkedIn (and actually produce some actionable insight), with SYMAN and then productize it to enable customers to power their recruiting, human capital management, CRM and others. After beginning its mining and cleaning operation with Facebook’s professional data, the startup now has the help of one of the lead data scientists at Facebook, whose job it was to craft strategy around that very dataset. Today, the company officially announced the hiring of Mohammad Sabah, the former Manager of Data Science and Analytics at Facebook, who will be joining Identified to lead its data science and engineering team as “Chief Data Officer.” At Facebook, Sabah led data science and analytics for the “Identity Team” at Facebook, where he was responsible for building the team and developing strategy for key products like Timeline, Profile Completeness and Privacy. Essentially, the Identity Team owns and cultivates Facebook’s most valuable asset: Your personal data — and the data generated by the 1.2 billion people (and their relationships) on its platform. Sabah and his team tackled the challenges of deciding what are the most relevant stories that should be surfaced in your Facebook profile’s Timeline and figuring out ways to encourage Facebook users to complete their profiles, increase accuracy of those profiles and so on. Before joining Facebook, he was a principal data scientist and engineer at Netflix, the Rubicon Project and Yahoo, where he focused on large-scale machine learning algorithms to improve personalization, search, click prediction and keyword recommendation — among other things. Identified began its data mining by targeting the healthcare industry (and jobs in medical fields) in particular, and Sabah joins Identified to help develop the company’s patent-pending tech, build a team of data scientists around it and help apply it to new industries. Prior to launching SYMAN earlier this summer, as it pivoted in this new direction and began hiring a team of data scientists that would help lead the way. While Facebook may not seem like the go-to source for professional data (usually, that’s LinkedIn’s expertise), the co-founders point out that its dataset is actually five-times the size of LinkedIn but far less complete — and structured. Plus, it helps that there are over one billion people using the social network today. So, essentially, the data architecture they’ve developed since enables machines to more quickly draw inferences about Facebook’s data entries based on context, natural language and a host of other signals. Knowing that someone has listed their title as “Analyst” on Facebook isn’t much good to a recruiter, however, if, by digging into context and related data, SYMAN can help hiring managers deduce that the person is actually a “Systems Analyst” at Salesforce, then you have something recruiters would probably be willing to pay for. Identified began testing SYMAN with around 30 companies, including enterprise health clients like Kaiser Permanente, but is now in the process of expanding to target other industries — beginning with consumer goods — and its list of clients has grown to 58 since . The company has raised $22.5 million to date from investors like VantagePoint Capital, Capricorn Investment Group, Tim Draper, Innovation Endeavors, Chamath Palihapitiya and others.
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Apple Has 10% Of All Corporate Cash? Not Really
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Alex Wilhelm
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Reality: Apple’s foreign and domestic cash reserves, if taken in aggregate, constitute around 10 percent of U.S. corporate cash, if you discount financial corporations. So if you take all the cash reserves of an international company that happens to be headquartered in the United States, call it a U.S. company, ignore the most cash-rich genre of all U.S. corporations, and compare the Apple tally to the artificially constrained aggregate, it has around 10 percent of corporate cash. That’s far less impressive than the Wall Street Journal’s headline, and a firm discount on QZ’s. But we’re being a bit pedantic. Let’s take a look at Apple’s bank stash. An dated May 21, 2013 detailing how Apple arranges its affairs to avoid paying taxes – a perfectly legal and expected endeavor – indicates that the company had $145 billion in cash, of which $102 billion, or 70 percent, was foreign. That’s to say that Apple the international conglomerate has $102 billion in cash, equivalents, and marketable securities abroad from its titular home country of the United States. Cash is not mobile across certain borders. If Apple wanted to bring that money “home” it would pay a stiff corporate tax rate. So, most of its cash is essentially exiled in perpetuity. To count it as cash that sits under the jurisdiction of a company that we can deem a U.S. firm is to therefore bend the definition of what is reasonable. Apple’s domestic cash is around $43 billion (May data is the best that we have here regarding the foreign/domestic split). The Wall Street Journal reported that, according to Moody’s, aggregate U.S. corporate cash totals $1.48 trillion. Apple domestic cash is therefore around 3 percent of that figure. That’s less impressive. But we are in a further muddle here, as we are comparing domestic cash of one company to aggregate cash of others. And, we are still dealing with cash of non-financial corporations (not all), so we are too far down the rabbit hole to see light. Apple remains immensely wealthy. Today, however, activist investor Carl Icahn the company to add $90 billion to its share repurchase program, which would strain Apple’s cash position. The proper way to compare corporate cash would be to find breakdowns for the 1,000 firms that Moody’s rates (those are the firms from which it created the $1.48 trillion figure, I believe) and compare domestic cash to domestic cash and foreign to foreign. That’s provided you wanted to compare the subset of global corporations that call the United States home. It would be far more interesting again to compare all wealthy global corporations and their aggregate cash position. Have fun.
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The Artist Formerly Known As BlackBerry Now Approved For NATO Deployment
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Alex Wilhelm
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today that its Enterprise Service and have been approved by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to handle up to the level of “Restricted.” The new certification theoretically allows BlackBerry to sell its new smartphones to 28 member countries’ NATO workers. The question is whether there is demand for its hardware among those nations. There might not be. Here’s TechCrunch’s Chris Velazco on how BlackBerry on under $2 billion in revenue: “[T]he total GAAP loss from continuing operations came in at $965 million, right in the middle of the company’s forecasted range. The big culprit? A hefty writedown (think around $934 million) incurred thanks in large part to a glut of unsold BlackBerry Z10s.” BlackBerry is a troubled company on the cusp of for $9 per share that will see it head private for about $4.7 billion. The company’s most recent earnings report saw it lose a stunning $965 million on $1.6 billion in revenue. Prior to this certification, BlackBerry was drowning under insufficient demand. In fact, that Z10 writedown was larger than the infamous Microsoft Surface writedown that . The Microsoft loss has been deemed by some as partial reason for the exit of current CEO Steve Ballmer. So, well done BlackBerry on the certification. Let us know if anyone wants a Z10. As an aside, here’s the first line of BlackBerry’s own corporate explainer: “A global leader in wireless innovation, BlackBerry® revolutionized the mobile industry when it was introduced in 1999.” Can you spot what is wrong?
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With 37M Users And Revenues At $34M, DIY Website Creation Platform Wix Files For $100M IPO On The NYSE
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Rip Empson
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Once upon a time, there were few places that the not-so-technically-inclined could go to secure their own slice of web real estate and build themselves a professional-looking websites. Either they had to speak Internet, or they’d have to pay someone who did a boatload. Just as WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr and others would put blogging, content creation and the ability to chronicle what your cat is having for dinner into the hands of the public, launched in 2006 to do the same for website creation. Capitalizing on the maturation of the Web and an escalating demand for “DIY” web design and publishing tools, the Israel and U.S.-based company has since grown to a team of 400 strong, has raised $60 million from investors and has built a user base of 37 million registered users. Behind this strong growth over the past three years, the company quietly announced today that it is officially heading to the public markets — the New York Stock Exchange, to be precise — under the ticker symbol “WIX.” The website creation platform isn’t hesitating. Today’s filing comes less than four months after the company took its first — the first public indication that the startup was on the road to a public offering. Of course, it’s been unclear whether Wix would be confident enough in its rate of growth and future prospects to pull the trigger right away or whether it would choose to wait. But, with the thanks to Twitter et al, Wix has opted to press on, with the SEC today, demonstrating its intent to go public in the near future. While the date is not set yet, and its valuation and share price price range have not yet been determined, the company did make clear that it intends to list its stock on the NYSE and plans to raise up to $100 million ahead of its IPO. , the $100 million IPO will be underwritten and managed by J.P. Morgan Securities, BofA Merrill Lynch, RBC Capital Markets and Needham & Company — with the latter two acting as co-managers. J.P. Morgan Securities LLC and BofA Merrill Lynch are acting as lead joint bookrunners for the proposed offering. RBC Capital Markets, LLC is acting as other book-running manager and Needham & Company, LLC and Oppenheimer & Co. Inc. are acting as co-managers. also gives us the first glimpse inside Wix’s business, its growth rate and what to expect going forward. On the bright side, the company said that it has “achieved 14 consecutive quarters of sequential growth in the accumulated number of premium subscriptions … and 14 consecutive quarters of growth in revenues in collections.” Going further, the company generated $9.9 million in revenue in 2010, which grew to $24.6 million in 2011 and $43.7 million in 2012, with collections of $13.8 million, $29.6 million and $52.5 million, respectively. In turn, Wix generated $34.1 million in revenue, with collections of $41.9 million for the six months ended June 3rd, 2013. Furthermore, the company’s user base grew from 6.5 million at the end of 2010 to 28.2 million at the end of 2012, representing a 108 percent compounded annual growth rate, while its premium subscription base has grown from 149K to 469K over the same period, representing a 78 percent compounded annual growth rate. As of August 30th, 2013, Wix’s premium subscription base has grown to 679K. It’s not all sunshine and roses, however, as Wix posted a net loss of $11.5 million in 2010, $22.7 million in 2011 and $15 million in 2012, respectively, along with a net loss of $10.1 million during the six months ended June 30th. The filing follows six months of relative quiet for the company, considering the slew of significant product announcements that defined the previous 12 months for the company, including the launch of its new app market and SDK in October. The new app market was part of the company’s effort to build an ecosystem around its platform, and drive value, by enabling third-party developers to integrate their apps into its platform. Among others, the launch of its app platform followed the release of an HTML5 builder in March, allowing that would “display across both PC and mobile browsers in a drag and drop format that Wix co-founder Avishai Abrahami compared to HTML5 for Dummies.'” The move was evidence of the company’s growing focus on mobile, a strategy which Abrahami claimed in December had not only been working but had led to its current position as the “largest mobile site builder in existence,” with users (at the time) creating mobile sites at a rate of 50K sites/month. While it’s this perspective that no doubt led Wix to that it does not compete with any “provider that offers the same design capabilities or range of products and services that we offer,” it’s difficult to believe that Wix completely stands alone on the competition front. At the very least, the company seems to have been spurred along by the growth of, Weebly in particular, as the Y Combinator grad appears to have been experiencing strong growth of late. , which have collectively created 15 million sites on its platform, and the company plans to add 500+ employees over the next couple of years, along with a move into big, new headquarters in San Francisco. Nevertheless, Wix has a head-start and appears to be the clear leader in this space in terms of size of its user base and revenue growth. The Israeli-American startup has raised $60 million from investors like Bessemer Venture Partners, Mangrove, Benchmark, DAG and Insight Venture Partners, and The Globes reported that the company planned to raise $75 million at a $400 million valuation ahead of its IPO. This is likely a conservative estimate as we now know that the company could raise up to $100 million ahead of its initial public offering, and although we don’t yet know Wix’s valuation, if we project that the company will generate somewhere in the ballpark of $75 million in revenue this year, and we apply a 7 to 8x multiple, then the company’s valuation could be fall in the $500 to $600 million range — although, at this point, this is just speculation. Either way, it marks the impending exit of another strong Israeli startup, and adds to the increasing excitement on the tech-side of the IPO market. Stay tuned for further updates, and find Wix’s .
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Yahoo To Acquire Sports-Centric Mobile Developer Hitpost
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Kim-Mai Cutler
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Yahoo is set to acquire Hitpost, , to beef up its own sports offerings on iOS and Android, say sources familiar with the deal. The company’s team of seven or so is heading over to join Yahoo. The company was co-founded by Aaron Krane who learned the science behind making social games at Slide. He wanted to marry that knowledge with products that appealed to sports fans. The idea was that there was an unexploited sweet spot in between freemium games like Zynga Poker and sports media. (We hear that Krane, who shifted into an executive chairman role from the CEO position, isn’t joining Yahoo. But .) Indeed, betting on sports is probably as old as sports are to human civilization. But an analogue to this behavior hadn’t really existed on mobile platforms. So for the last two years, Hitpost has made a series of apps that support live discussions and polls on sports. They also supported virtual currency bets (not real-money gambling, though). In the app, players can make bets on who will win games, or which player might end up having more rebounds in basketball or strikeouts in baseball. Their expertise in building these sports apps , Khosla Ventures, RRE Ventures and Quotidian Ventures to put in more than $2 million into the company. So now Yahoo is pulling the team in to augment its own mobile sports offerings. This actually comes on top of another fantasy sports-related acquisition earlier this year, with Yahoo . The company also unveiled a new sports app in the second quarter. The company’s mobile acquisition strategy has been to pick up talent to bolster six or seven different core product areas like mail (Xobni), weather, Flickr, search (Qwiki), sports, news (Summly), and the main Yahoo! portal.
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littleBits’ Exploration Kits Will Make You Think Differently About Building Hardware
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Chris Velazco
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Whole worlds have been built out of LEGO and K’Nex and Meccano and a seemingly endless supply of childhood wonder, but the world is changing and so too are our toys. That’s where an ambitious New York hardware startup comes into play — is trying to create a sort of LEGO for a new generation of tinkerers. The company just recently launched its new batch of Exploration Kits to bring its vision of clever, fun hardware education to the masses, and founder/CEO Ayah Bdeir joined us in our office to show off what people have managed to create with those cutesy components. But let’s back up a moment first: what exactly are littleBits? They’re a bunch of color-coded components — think motors and lights and buzzers and sensors and batteries — that can be snapped together (thanks to magnetic connectors) to create honest-to-goodness circuits and systems. The beauty of these little things though is that they require precisely zero expertise, and encourage blind experimentation — I spent a few moments snapping a few of them together while shooting the video above, and I wished I had the rest of the day to just muck around further. What happens when you connect a battery bit to a light bit? Or a light-sensing bit to a motor bit that can drive a small set of wheels? All it takes a few clicks to assemble those rudimentary designs, and just a few clicks more to refine and augment them further. And perhaps best of all, since the team are strong believers in the power of the open-source community, you could always and modify those too. That family of bits is growing by the moment, too.The startup raised a last year and since then it’s been dutifully chugging along, configuring new kits to introduce to the masses and developing new bits to extend the value of the littleBits ecosystem. Bdeir also offered us a very quick peek at some of the more interesting new bits that are currently under development — expect to see a number bit and bits that enable wireless communication sooner rather than later. As our own John Biggs noted while playing a with a , these things don’t always come cheap. The most basic Exploration Kit offers up 10 bits and the accoutrements to make them work, and will set tots and tinkerers back $99. Meanwhile, the $149 Premium kit comes with 14 bits and the $199 be-all-end-all Deluxe kit ships with 18 bit modules. For some though, it’ll be a small price to pay into get their young ones and the people around thinking about hardware in a different light.
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US Angel Investing This Year Likely Won’t Pass 2012 Levels
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Mark Lennon
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Angel investing in the US this year looks like it’s falling back towards 2011 levels, after a record 2012. Meanwhile, there are more Series A rounds than ever, based on our latest CrunchBase data. The much-feared “Series A Crunch” has yet to materialize. Early-stage founders and investors have been mulling the possibility of a flood of new angel investor money overwhelming the venture industry’s ability to fund all worthy young startups. But here’s what we’re seeing. In the first three quarters of 2013, the enormous annual growth of Angel investments has been falling, especially in relation to first venture rounds. From the period of 2007-2012, the number of Angel investments grew by almost 6x, while Series A rounds only grew by about 1.6x. However, according to our dataset the total number of 2013 Angel investments are unlikely to reach the 2012 peak of 1,520 deals, while 2013 Series A investments are already very close to eclipsing the 2012 total at over 960 and counting. In total dollar terms, the trend reversal is equally striking. In the first three quarters of 2013, Series A rounds have amassed $5.43B, nearly surpassing the 2012 total of $5.96B while year to date Angel investments of $545M are well under the $707M total of last year. At this point, we’ll pause to note the various caveats with early-stage funding data. Not all early-stage funding data shows up here immediately, because financing mechanisms like convertible notes let startups legally delay announcing the money until they raise a venture round. Some seed and angel rounds have also gotten quite large, in the millions range similar to a traditional first venture round. Large outlier rounds in any category can also make them skew large. This said, our data is based on a composite of data provided by companies and investors, cross-referenced with public filings and news reporting. We believe it’s the most accurate public data set out there. So what’s happening with angels? We can speculate that they’ve been scared off by a Series A Crunch concerns, or anything else. But instead how about you take a look for yourself using our latest data set — download the and let us know what you find.
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Be Still My Beating Heart, This Might Be Logitech’s Gamepad For The iPhone
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Matthew Panzarino
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A leaked image of what appears to be Logitech’s gamepad for the iPhone has hit the Twitter wire today, via the @ . The account has been known to reliably tweet images of upcoming products from a variety of mobile companies including Samsung, Nokia and others. The gamepad looks a lot like the from earlier this year and images that were shown during presentations to Apple’s WWDC developer attendees back in June. The pad has four physical buttons on the right, what appears to be two bumper buttons on the top and a d-pad on the left. Apple added support for gamepads with its iOS 7 update, but the gamepads themselves have yet to materialize. Logitech also last month with an image of empty hands and an iPhone. There were three types of controllers mentioned during Apple’s presentations including two types of ‘case controllers’ and a standalone unit that communicates with the iPhone via Bluetooth. Any one of those controllers would offer more precise tactile control over platformers, shooters and any number of other game types that don’t do so well with touch screens. Two of the possible designs that Apple showed off included dual thumbsticks, but it doesn’t appear that this design includes those. Logitech is an MFi (Made for iPod) member, so this would likely be produced under that partner program. Previously, accessory makers had to rely on very poor Bluetooth keyboard hacks to simulate the button inputs of a gamepad. The new integration will allow not only physical connection via the Lightning port but also more precise button mapping and better response times. The addition of gamepad support comes at an interesting time for Apple, as gaming revenues for Android and iOS begin to rival those from established giants like Nintendo. If these take off — especially if they do integrate analog sticks — it could spell real trouble for the powerhouse portable business represented by offerings like the Nintendo DS line. Image Credit: / Flickr CC
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New Calls To Action In Facebook’s Mobile App Ads Can Help Publishers Reconnect With Users
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Anthony Ha
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The purpose of Facebook’s Mobile App Ads seems pretty clear. They’re supposed to drive installations, right? Well, , the company says its ads can now help with what comes afterward, namely, keeping users engaged and active — and in some cases encouraging them to spend money. To illustrate the challenge on the mobile side, Facebook cites a Localytics study that found that 66 percent of app users will only open an app between 1 and 10 times. The idea of re-engaging users is a familiar one in online marketing. On Facebook, that can now take the form of targeting users who have already installed a mobile app and then presenting them with custom calls to action. The options include general actions like “Use App” and more specific ones such as “Shop Now,” “Book Now,” or “Listen Now.” Behind the scenes, an advertiser can deep link to a specific area in the app itself. To illustrate how different advertisers could take advantage of the new options, Facebook offers the following examples: A Facebook spokesperson noted that the new calls to action should make the ads more tailorable to apps beyond gaming (as suggested by the examples above). They also said this won’t change the way the company charges for the ads. According to the blog post, Mobile App Ads (which ) have driven more than 145 million installs this year for advertisers, including Target, eBay, HotelTonight, and Kabam. And mobile ads, of course, have become . [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_mQftkC_Tc&w=420&h=315]
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The Best From Glenn Greenwald’s AMA: The British Gov Lied, The NSA’s Vision, And What’s Coming Next
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Alex Wilhelm
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Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald regarding the NSA, Edward Snowden, and his current work breaking news concerning both. The open-source interview is worth reading, but you are at work, so allow me to act as your guide. I have rephrased the questions asked for clarity. [sic] [Emphasis original] — That is a taste. If you have time over lunch or a cocktail, I recommend the full suite of Greenwald’s answers. I also recommend checking out the on its Snowden coverage and , colleague , and on Twitter. While the mass media and political organs of this country are focused on a government shutdown and a dollar fight, the NSA machinations roll on. Given the extent of current and past NSA revelations, we can only imagine what is coming next. That said, Greenwald has supported his claims about upcoming document releases by releasing documents and breaking ground. I don’t see a reason to doubt that he will continue to publish. I’m not privy in any sense to what Greenwald has coming next, but will continue to cover what he breaks to the best of my ability. More as it comes.
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Keen On… Why MessageMe Might Be The Future Of Real-Time Communications
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Andrew Keen
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joined Facebook back in early 2006, when it was a 50 person startup with 4 million users and she quit at the end of 2011 when it employed 3,500 people and was closing in on a billion users. As a member of Facebook’s founding business team, she helped pioneer their mobile business, growing their mobile base from 100,000 to 250 million and leaving as the company’s head of mobile business development. But after a year as the Executive-in-Residence at Greylock, Rosenthal is back at a small startup. , she became the COO at , the 17 person real-time mobile communications platform which a Series A round of $10 million in May. So why MessageMe? I asked her. Why would a heavy hitter like Ali Rosenthal join a little start-up? I “bet on people”, she told me – reeling off a list of names at MessageMe including co-founders Alex Chee and Arjun Sethi. And, of course, it’s the product too. MessageMe is what Rosenthal calls a “multi-model messaging” system, built for “speed”, and designed to “mimic” real conversation. In contrast with Facebook, which she describes as a “web product”, Rosenthal sees MessageMe – which has been designed specifically for smartphones – as the future of real-time rich communications. As an accomplished athlete, Rosenthal knows all about the importance of timing. She made a smart choice in 2006 when she joined Facebook. And I suspect that her decision to join MessageMe might well also look remarkably prescient in a few years time.
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Send In Your Questions For Ask A VC With Battery Ventures’ Brian O’Malley
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Leena Rao
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This week on TechCrunch TV’s Ask a VC show, we have Battery Ventures partner Brian O’Malley in the studio. As you may remember, you can submit questions for our guests either in the comments or and we’ll ask them during the show. O’Malley leads Battery’s Seed & Early Stage practices, while focusing on investments in e-commerce, online marketplaces and Internet applications. His investments include Bazaarvoice, BoostCTR, BrightEdge, Coupa, Duetto, H.BLOOM, Insitu (acquired by Boeing), J. Hilburn, Joor, HotelTonight, Peerflix (acquired by Live Universe), Serena & Lily, Skullcandy, Sociable Labs, Sosh, TradeKing, Viddy and World Golf Tour. Prior to Battery, O’Malley spent several years at Bowstreet (acquired by IBM), as Director of West Coast Technical Sales and earlier as the company’s Technical Evangelist preaching the future of web service-based APIs. He started his career as a web developer for Motorola Computer Group while only a sophomore in college. O’Malley has invested in a number of startups that are aiming to transform offline industries, so we’re interested to hear where he sees as the next big opportunity in offline industries in need of transformation. And considering that O’Malley is a seed investor, we’re curious on his thoughts on AngelList’s . Please send us your or put them in the comments below!
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Internet Explorer 6 Market Share Finally Falls Under 5%
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Frederic Lardinois
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The Internet Explorer 6 death watch continues, but the end is near. Microsoft’s ancient browser may still haunt web developers’ nightmares, but according to the , its global market share has now finally . Even Microsoft will be quite happy to see this, especially given that, for Internet Explorer as a whole, the last month was pretty good (though it still has IE6 at ). While other browsers barely registered any changes in their global market share last month, all versions of Internet Explorer together now account for 57.79 percent – its highest number this year. Most of this is still driven by IE8 users, however, who account for 21.39 percent of users in Net Application’s stats and still make it the most popular browser version in its rankings. The reason for this is that Windows XP users just can’t upgrade beyond IE8 and as long as those XP machines are out there, that number isn’t going to change all that fast. The launch of IE11 for Windows 7 and 8 is just around the corner. Microsoft’s latest browser is probably its best so far, but the IE legacy will forever be tainted by those earlier versions that got so much wrong and the fact that Microsoft has essentially abandoned them without any upgrade path beyond switching to another vendor. While IE8 and 9 at least include , IE6 predates so many of these efforts that drag-and-drop and @font-face are really the only semi-modern web technologies it supports. Maybe now that it has fallen under 5 percent, developers can finally completely forget about it. IE8, however, and in some ways, has already become the new IE6, thanks to its lack of an update path and for the latest web technologies.
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TextTeaser Lets Developers Integrate Text Summarization Into Their Apps And Sites
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Catherine Shu
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is a service that creates tl;dr (too long; didn’t read) summaries for lengthly online articles. Available as a Web service and , TextTeaser’s developers also want to turn it into the “ of text summarization” by making a platform for users to upload summaries of their favorite articles. The service was created by Jolo Balbin as part of his graduate research. Balbin programmed the adaptive algorithm that powers TextTeaser while working on his Masters degree in computer science at De La Salle University in Manila. Now a data scientist at job-matching site , Balbin maintains TextTeaser with fellow programmer Ben Sarmiento. Balbin claims TextTeaser, which can summarize articles in any language written using the Roman alphabet, is more accurate than text summarization tools and (which was for a reported $30 million). The bullet-pointed summaries created by TextTeaser can be shared as a link or image or embedded as HTML. Here is how it summarized Sean Parker’s , a response to media criticism about his wedding that was in turn for its 10,000-word length.
For other examples of TextTeaser in action, see this or read what a has produced for news summary subreddits. Like other text summarization tools, TextTeaser’s algorithm sometimes misses out on important info, but I found that it’s handy for creating a quick abstract of key points before I delve into longer articles. Balbin envisions students using it to help study or developers integrating it into news aggregators and read-it-later services such as or . One such site that has already started using TextTeaser is , which delivers daily email summaries of headline news. Balbin first began working on a text summarization algorithm as an undergraduate and expanded on the project while pursuing his Masters. The algorithm looks at four things. First, it considers the relationship of the words in a title to the rest of the article. The second factor is sentence length and the third is sentence position (Balbin says the second sentence of an article is more important than the first because that is where most authors introduce key points). If certain words appear more frequently on the Web site an article appears on, then sentences with those words are given more weight. TextTeaser’s API and documentation and will be made open-source in the near future, says Balbin.
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Leena Rao
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Nielsen Preps Its Twitter TV Report, While Facebook Extends Data Partnership To Foreign Networks
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Catherine Shu
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is set to publish its first report with TV rankings based on data from . The report, which comes out on Monday according , will look at the number of tweets about a show and the size of the audience that sees them. This is an important move for Twitter ahead of its IPO because it sees TV-related data as an important part of its monetization plans. Providing data about TV viewer engagement is also a key part of Twitter’s rivalry with Facebook, which has been trying to distract from the Nielsen-Twitter partnership by presenting itself as an alternative source of potentially valuable information to networks. Facebook announced last week that to major broadcasters in the U.S. detailing user activity around TV programs on the social network. Meanwhile, Facebook is expanding access to its to 10 television networks in eight countries, says a report in . Facebook rolled out early access to a few American TV and web media companies, allowing them to view public posts that contain certain words, and see anonymized demographic insights about the authors of public and private posts mentioning a word. As , however, despite having 1.15 billion monthly active users compared to Twitter’s 200 million, Facebook’s inclusion of Likes of TV-related posts as TV buzz makes it tough to compare its data to Twitter’s which only counts tweets, replies, and retweets. In this particular competition, Twitter is currently ahead of Facebook with its Nielsen partnership, , tools like , which allows broadcasters to embed short video clips in tweets in near real-time, and an experimental feature that will allow when they watch a show after it originally aired. One potential drawback for Twitter, however, is that its user base may be too small to convince network executives of its data validity. No matter who ultimately wins the battle to become the preferred “second screen” app of viewers, Twitter and Facebook’s efforts to provide data to broadcasters is a boon for TV lovers because it helps boost shows that have a relatively small audience, but deep cultural impact and engaged audience. This may convince TV networks to spend more advertising dollars reaching the younger audiences that use Twitter. It could also influence their thinking when it comes to deciding which shows to renew or cancel. Users who are engaged enough while watching the show to talk about it online may also be paying more attention to ads aired during their favorite TV shows. (Just imagine if “My So-Called Life,” “Arrested Development” or “Veronica Mars,” all shows with fervent followers but low viewer numbers, had been able to benefit from the online buzz generated by their legions of devoted fans).
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There’s Life Left In Delicious Yet
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Frederic Lardinois
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For a long time, the web-based social bookmarking service was a poster child for the Web 2.0 movement. It was open, collaborative and full of the tags and user-generated content that made VCs instinctively open up their checkbooks at the time. It’s been 10 years, since the service opened to the public – then still running on the domain – and while it’s changed owners a few times since, it’s still up and running and its original concept hasn’t changed all that much. But the site did give itself a fresh new design for its 10th birthday, so it’s worth taking another look. Yahoo famously acquired Delicious back in 2005, two years after it was founded, and then let it linger for years. That’s what Yahoo did with way too many of these popular Web 2.0 services (Flickr being the other key example) and , it looked like Delicious’ days . Delicious had long stopped being a hip product, users weren’t all that interested in taxonomies, folksonomies and all those other buzzwords anymore, and it felt like its shot at mainstream appeal and new growth was long behind it. If Delicious had shut down at the time, its frequent users would have been furious, but among mainstream users, its closure would have mostly gone unnoticed. Yahoo, however, didn’t close Delicious. Instead, it sold it to AVOS in April 2011, a company YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen founded for what, at the time, seemed like the express purpose of buying Delicious (it since launched video service MixBit and the Chinese Vine clone ). Ever since, AVOS has quietly continued to work on improving Delicious, though it doesn’t look like its traffic is or user interest in the form of social bookmarking is making a comeback. Joshua Schachter himself, Delicious creator, left Yahoo in 2008 and as far as we know, none of the early developers are still working on the project today. I’m not sure its is going to make a big difference, either. The user interface is now significantly less cluttered and responsive, and it features some new Twitter-powered personalization options for content discovery. And the new bookmarks editor that you can bring up with a double-click is something its users would have happily paid for eight years ago, too.
Still, it looks like AVOS continues to back the service, which doesn’t seem to have any discernible business model at this time. Based on the redesign announcement, which went almost completely unnoticed, the team is working on an Android app and new browser extensions. Since link sharing has almost completely moved to Twitter and Facebook, however, it’s hard to see how Delicious could stage a comeback without completely altering its course. In the Mixbit video the team made for the relaunch, the team says that “it’s only just getting started.” Two years after the acquisition, it’s hard to believe this statement, but it’s still nice to see that AVOS continues to support Delicious.
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What Games Are: The Unfulfilled Promise Of Videogames
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Tadhg Kelly
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There are few figures in the games industry more deserving of respect than Chris Crawford. He founded GDC, has designed numerous games and written that are considered vital reading for budding game designers. Like many game makers Crawford wants gaming , at least as much as movies, ideally more. He’s not the only one. While Crawford is trying to make games and stories work together, others attack the problem differently. Jane McGonigal, for instance, is very focused on helpful applications of gaming in the real world. Gabe Zicherman is promoting the idea of gamification. David Cage is focused on stories and games and beating Hollywood. Palmer Luckey wants to make your virtual reality dreams come true. All of them are trying to fulfill the great promise of videogames. It’s a promise that most of us have instinctively felt at one time or another. It’s the cyberpunk future sentiment (without the depressing bits), the time when games are all. Growing up in the age of computers and technology and watching games grow up, we can almost taste it. We don’t just like to play videogames, we like to imagine how they might influence society. We like, as noted designer and author , to think of the 21st century as the “ludic” century. The century when games become the premiere art form. “Easy” problems may be very difficult to solve yet their their parameters are definable. But “hard” problems have qualities that are indefinable. A certain segment of the games industry thrives in considering games as a hard problem. There is much wrangling over what . There are many debates over the maturity of games, what games should become and what lens they should be viewed through. There’s a lot of extrapolation over where games might go. And yet. The problem with always thinking of games in terms of their promise is that the present looks disappointing. If you’re deep in the scene, for example, you probably already know that sold a hilarious number of copies. But you also know that the reaction from the critical community has been lukewarm. . Where’s the progress? Where’s the sense of the next step on this journey? Why are we repeating ourselves? Why do we seem to be stuck? The problem is not the market but rather the promise itself. It is the key growing pain of games as a medium. Fundamentally what the promise says is that games are not yet good enough (in whatever capacity) and could be better. Deeper perhaps. More meaningful. More engaging. More social. More visceral. More real. More… But what if they are good enough? What if this is all there is? Videogames have been around for a long time. You buy and play them on your chosen device. What do you do in them? Mostly you swap jellies, race cars, grow virtual vegetables, sort words, wait on tables, fish, dance, fight, shoot stuff and so on. They may be difficult to learn but the essence of what they are is not hard to grasp. We’ve been playing them for decades, and the successful ones often have a sense of format. Not formula per se, but certainly of form. Yet the very fact that games are in some ways formed aggravates some. Leigh Alexander, for example, the essence of her frustration: What used to be fun is now an empty experience because she’s been here before. Crawford doesn’t play games any more. Both are reflecting a tiredness with games as they are and wish them to move on. When’s their promise going to come true? When will they be more than they’ve been? Sidestep the all-too-typical press rage and look at what Rockstar has made in . It’s an incredible playpen with a lot of action, detail and satire. Consider the scale of it and how much human effort was involved. It may have the same form as previous , but what’s wrong with that? A whole lot of other media settles into successful patterns but it doesn’t bother us. Why should it with games? Games don’t really change from game to game, platform to platform. They tend, like any art form, to have some practical boundaries beyond which they become difficult to make work. They don’t necessarily live up to everyone’s dreams all the time, but that’s okay. As a type of thing they may be well understood but that’s not necessarily cause for misery. We may not live in the age of games any more, the time when games could be considered to be in their infancy. But that’s no cause to be depressed. One of the most powerful and important stories through the medium for at least the last two years is representation. There’s . There’s Anna Anthropy. There’s critical observations that doesn’t yet have the balls to include a female protagonist. Game makers are not yet confident enough in themselves to regularly show strong powerful women, such as Sandra Bullock aptly reminds us can be done in . There’s the growing sense that game makers need to broaden their horizons, and that doing so isn’t some endless hard problem. It’s tangible, doable and happening. Another issue is the acceptance of games outside of the community that already knows what they could be. It’s about how the medium is treated, such as in the press, and how it is in the ludic century that companies like Apple still treat games as second class culture. Platforms still commonly stand in the way of games, often with no reasonable justification, and that’s a problem that few are tackling head-on. It’s not just about making incredible games like . It’s about getting those games into the hands of people who play on iPads or game consoles. Overcoming those kinds of issue are, to me at least, how we fulfill the real promise of games. I don’t care if games never really beat movies at their own game, or if gamification or exercise/motivational games always remain on the fringes. I also don’t mind that most game mechanics are recycled. They simply provide a great framework to take content to interesting, even promising, places. I fully expect most games we have to day will still be alive and well throughout the ludic century. I don’t think it’s useful to think of games in founderwork terms any more. I want to see more and better games that are cultural events. But I don’t think that we have to keep finding fault with the form itself in order to get there. We may have invented many genres of game and in some ways repeat ourselves year after year, but that doesn’t mean we have failed. ( )
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LG’s New Nexus Phone Gets Detailed In Leaked Service Manual
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Chris Velazco
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There has been no shortage of leaks that claim to show off Google’s next Nexus smartphone (including this from Google itself) over the past weeks and months, but we may have just hit the mother lode this weekend. The folks at have gotten their hands on a hefty, near-final draft of a 281-page service manual for the forthcoming device, which still technically bears the LG D821 model number. Really though, LG isn’t fooling anyone here. The document is chock full of diagrams and images (some of the device in various states of disassembly) that depict a very familiar-looking phone sporting some Nexus 7-like branding on its rear end. An already revealed some of the juicy details — the inclusion of a 4.95-inch 1080p IPS screen and a 2.3GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 with 2GB of RAM — but this newly leaked manual manages to shine a little extra light (not to mention extra credibility) on those earlier reports. The new Nexus will likely be available in 16 or 32GB variants, and will feature an LTE radio and an 8-megapixel rear camera with optical image stabilization (there’s no mention of that , though). NFC, wireless charging, and that lovely little notification light are back, too, but don’t expect a huge boost in longevity — it’s going to pack a sealed 2,300mAh battery, up slightly from the 2100mAh cell that powered last year’s Nexus 4. That spec sheet should sound familiar to people who took notice of what happened with the Nexus 4. Just as that device was built from the foundation laid by the LG Optimus G, the Nexus 5 (or whatever it’s going to be called) seems like a mildly revamped version of LG’s G2. At this point I’d usually urge you to approach such leaks with caution, but it hardly seems necessary now. As much as I love my mental image of a lone prankster toiling into the wee hours of the morning on a meticulously crafted forgery, the sheer complexity and granularity of the information contained in this document makes that scenario an unlikely one. And the icing on the cake? LG asked Android Police to pull the offending document and images earlier today — AP complied with the request, but there’s no way to get the cat back into its bag now. It’s hard to argue with the timing, too. The first anniversary of the Nexus 4’s unveiling is fast approaching, and as solid as the device was, it found itself being outclassed by a more powerful breed of smartphone within a matter of months. The Galaxy Nexus and the Nexus 4 made their official debuts in October 2011 and 2012 respectively, and now that we’ve got persistent rumors of a Google event scheduled for October 14 floating around, I’d wager all this cloak-and-dagger business should be dispensed with very shortly. Until then, feel free to dig around in the full document below for more technical tidbits — happy hunting!
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In Russia, Olympics Watch You
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Gregory Ferenstein
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The ever-curious Russian government is reportedly going to monitor “all communications” during the Winter 2014 Olympics. A newspaper investigation authorities are hard-wiring the game’s Black Sea resort of Sochi with pervasive surveillance. Investigators “found that major amendments have been made to telephone and Wi-Fi networks in the Black Sea resort to ensure extensive and all-permeating monitoring and filtering of all traffic, using Sorm, Russia’s system for intercepting phone and internet communications.” And don’t worry, comrades. This up-and-coming scandal already has a catchy name for delicious virality: Ron Deibert, a University of Toronto professor, describes the program as “Prism on steroids.” Loves it. The real difference between the U.S. and Russia, explains The Guardian, is the laws governing the collection of the data. Leaked reports show that both countries may be monitoring all communication, but (at least in theory) the U.S. has strict laws about when such data can be accessed and analyzed. America’s friends to the East may not have such inconvenient legal checks. “Business travellers should be particularly aware that trade secrets, negotiating positions, and other sensitive information may be taken and shared with competitors, counterparts, and/or Russian regulatory and legal entities,” warns a U.S. State Department document released earlier this year. The document advises travelers how to practice spy-free communications, including removing batteries from phones when not in use. But, don’t take the State Department’s word for it. Ask Edward Snowden yourself. Won’t he be at the games?
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Seedrs Lets Armchair Investors Take A Punt On WebStart Bristol’s First Incubator Cohort
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Steve O'Hear
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If the premise of equity-based crowdfunding is to enable a greater range of individuals to take a punt on a startup, while oiling the wheels of investment overall, then a natural evolution of the model would be to enable armchair investors to place bets on a group of promising startups in one pool. In what it claims is a first for the equity-based crowdfunding industry, the UK’s has done just that by offering investors the chance to take a stake in ten companies with a single investment via a partnership with , a soon-to-launch startup incubator based in Bristol, UK. Interestingly, however, they won’t know who those ten startups are, since they’ve yet to be selected for participation in WebStart, which doesn’t open till January next year. Like similar incubator/accelerators, the programme will see the chosen companies put through a 10-week bootcamp involving mentoring in areas such as product development, finance and marketing, along with providing co-working space and other support, cumulating in a final demo day in front of potential further investors. In that sense, what Seedrs is offering is the chance to crowd invest into a “ ” unpinned by WebStart. In total, the fund is looking to raise £150,000 in return for ten percent of equity in each of the ten startups. At an average of £15,000 a pop, that works out pretty generously compared to other fundraising campaigns on Seedrs and isn’t a million miles away from most European accelerators who tend to offer the same sort of money per startup for around six to ten percent equity. The fact that investors are essentially being asked to invest blind, however, trusting the selection process of WebStart Bristol, makes this an especially interesting development — though, again, this doesn’t deviate from the usual accelerator play, aside from how the money is being raised. It could, in fact, even be seen as of backing idea/early-stage startups via equity-based crowdfunding, as Seedrs is claiming. In addition, Seedrs is keen to point out that investors in the WebStart Bristol fund will be able to access the UK Government’s Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme (SEIS) which gives tax-relief on investments. Cue a statement from Jeff Lynn, CEO of Seedrs, who said: “We set out to be a new kind of financial services firm that makes investing in startups simple and rewarding. Setting up this fund complements that by making it much easier for people to diversify their investments and show their support for the thriving tech ecosystem that has emerged in Bristol over the last several years.” Lynn also says that WebStart is likely to be the first of a number of funds run by the . Finally, it’s good to see WebStart cropping up to support Bristol, as the centre of gravity in the UK to be drawn to London. Perhaps equity-based crowdfunding will in future offer another avenue for startup bootcamps to run outside the UK capital city or in other smaller tech hubs in Europe that don’t have the same draw as the major tech cities, especially as these more regional offerings have tended to rely quite heavily on state funding through various EU-funded regeneration schemes.
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The Already Abysmal NSA Surveillance Panel Is Now On Hold Due To The Government Shutdown
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Alex Wilhelm
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Under-promise, and then under-under-deliver is the name of this game. The panel to vet the NSA set up by President Barack Obama, and nurtured by current Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, is now on hiatus, its funds being frozen as part of the larger governmental shutdown. The panel, one of the president’s small promises in the wake of sweeping leaks concerning the actions of America’s intelligence and surveillance apparatus, was to contain outsiders who could take a critical look at the actions of the NSA, investigating their legality and relationship to personal privacy. Instead, the panel was a miasma of “insiders, former insiders, and a previous colleague of the president’s.” For example, one member is Michael Morell. He was the CIA’s director until August. I’m sure he is bursting with enthusiasm for change. Following the revelation that the makeup of the panel itself left it neutered out of the gate, it later became known that Mr. Clapper’s offices house the group and manages its public relations operation. The panel, at that moment, moved from potential laugh to utter farce. And now it’s iced until Congress kicks off again. According , who broke the news of the panel’s shuttering, the funds in place to allow for travel to Washington for its members are now unavailable. Given that the participants, it points out, work for free, they can go on if they wish, but it’s effectively on hold for the time being. What will the result of this be? That our impending disappointment at the panel’s future set of recommendations will disappoint us a bit later than expected. Oh, and don’t forget that whatever the panel does produce, the White House has to approve it for public distribution. So, we might get nothing at all, slightly later. Progress!
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Airport Car Rental Service Silvercar Is Headed To LAX In November
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Ryan Lawler
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continues to expand its tech-focused airport car rental service into new markets, and in a few weeks will be making its biggest debut yet. According to an email sent to customers late last week, Silvercar said that on November 4 it will be launching at LAX, which will soon house its largest fleet of Audi A4s. As we’ve written before, Silvercar hopes to , by simplifying the process of getting a car and paying through its mobile app. In doing so, it does away with all the usual issues that people run into when renting a car — the long lines, the constant upsell, having to worry about whether a car has GPS and whatnot. Instead, Silvercar has one make and model of car available — the Audi A4 — so there’s no choosing between different classes of vehicles or worrying overly much about upgrades or features. All cars can be unlocked through the Silvercar mobile app and have GPS and in-car WiFi for getting around. So all a renter needs to do is show up and take the car out. The launch at LAX is a big move for Silvercar, which has been gradually expanding since late last year. Since then, it’s launched in Austin, Houston, and Dallas Love Field before in August. The Los Angeles airport will house the company’s largest fleet of vehicles, as it seeks to go after what is one of the largest airport car rental markets in the country. LAX not only does a huge volume of rentals — but it also is home to a number of tech-savvy business people who like to drive in style. So offering up an Audi A4 and a VIP, no-hassle experience to renters could be a huge win for the startup. Believe it or not, customers have already begun booking rentals from LAX even though the service doesn’t launch for about three weeks, according to a representative for SilverCar. As for why Silvercar is waiting until November 4th before launch — the company is expecting huge demand for Austin City Limits, and will have a lot of its fleet in town for that, before moving several cars over to LAX. Check out a screen grab of the email sent to customers below:
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Meet Piena, A Hassle-Free Baby Formula Maker Developed By Two Ex-Samsung Engineers
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Leena Rao
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Any parent who has used powder formula to feed their baby knows that measuring the formula, making sure the water is clean and at room temperature, and mixing the formula and water is a challenging task. Especially when it is 3 a.m., and you have a hungry, screaming baby in your arms. is a new gadget that basically takes some of the hassle out of mixing baby formula. Developed by a husband and wife team who are both former engineers at Samsung, Piena is a freestanding formula mixer and water purifier. As one writes, it’s the Keurig of formula mixing. The mixer itself looks a lot like a coffee maker — you simple plug it into an outlet. There are separate compartments for water and for the formula. You can put up to 24 oz. of formula into the container and the patented freshness seal guarantees the powder stays fresh and dry for up to four weeks. You can then fill the water reservoir with up to 8 oz. of water, and you place the bottle under the dispenser. When you hit the on button, the water will come to a boil within 60 seconds, and then the water is cooled to near body temperature and automatically dispensed into the bottle. The water sterilization process is a concern for some parents (the World Health Organization does parents to boil water). If you live in an area where your water is relatively safe and clean, then you don’t really have to be concerned about its quality. But in many areas of the world, water isn’t clean and this 60-second water purification process that Piena provides could be particularly useful to parents. After the sterilization water is dispensed into the bottle, you turn the wheel on the formula reservoir to dispense the right amount of baby formula powder into the bottle. One wheel turn equals 2 oz. of formula, we’re told. While the gadget itself doesn’t provide completely hands-free formula mixing, it does make the entire process that much easier, especially when it comes to sterilizing water. And all of the parts are dishwasher safe for easy cleaning. In terms of the competition, there are many , and a few high-powered mixers similar to Piena, but Piena promises complete water sterilization and cooling down in one. While I think the gadget could save sleep-deprived parents some time and energy, my biggest complaint with Piena is its price. Right now Piena, which is still in production mode, is retailing for around $150 on . For parents who spend hundreds of dollars on strollers, swings and more, that price may not be as steep, but for most of the world $150 is a stretch. I see this gadget being incredibly useful to international markets where water quality is a real concern. Compounded with the high cost of formula, the cost of the Piena may disqualify many of the parents who need the mixer the most. While Piena, which is part of , is only available on Indiegogo for now, the company is currently in talks with retailers to include in stores and online. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwAlP0MixyE&w=420&h=315]
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Fly Or Die: iPhone 5s
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Jordan Crook
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What’s there to say? It’s the flagship iPhone 5s. To say that it won’t be wildly successful would be silly. We already know that Apple of the iPhone 5s, alongside the more colorful iPhone 5c, in the very first weekend of availability. That’s more than any previous generation. So instead of asking ourselves whether this finger print-reading, awesome picture taking, gold-clad phone is a viable product or not, we should ask ourselves if it’s worth upgrading from the iPhone 5 or the iPhone 4S before it. The three major upgrades on the phone are the TouchID sensor, letting you unlock your phone or submit purchases with a quick scan of your finger, as well as a major camera update and a processor bump. Where the camera is concerned, I’ve played around with this TrueTone flash a lot ore after shooting this review, and I’m not impressed as I’d like to be, though I still think it’s a fine improvement over the original, white-washing flash. I’m far more excited about the camera’s ability to zoom and remain more crisp than before, and slow-motion video functionality is also quite impressive. In terms of processing speed, daily activities don’t yield a noticeable improvement, as you can see in . But I feel as thought the M7 motion coprocessor makes a big difference with the little things, like being constantly asked to join wifi networks. Last, but certainly not least, the TouchID feature is the most surprising to me. After a couple weeks of using TouchID, something I didn’t expect to care about at all, it’s the one feature I’ve grown most attached to. It only shaves a second or two off of unlocking time, but it’s easy to be spoiled by it. Not only that, but TouchID is clearly a building block toward a new way of computing. Combine a Siri google search with a quick TouchID unlock and you have answers right before your eyes, with nary a virtual key pressed. Two flies.
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Glass Theft Auto: Google Glass Hack Beams Grand Theft Auto’s GPS Straight To Your Eye
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Greg Kumparak
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You know, it’s been a while saince I’ve written up some clever Google Glass hack simply because it was awesome. Let’s fix that. Looking to test the concept of using Glass as a second screen, Android developer has managed to capture Grand Theft Auto’s oh-so-crucial in-game GPS interface, beaming it to the player’s eyepiece in real time. Now, if you’ve spent every free minute since GTA V’s release blasting around Los Santos, one caveat: Mike had to go back a few generations to make this work. It requires GTA to be running on a computer, which, as many a scorned PC gamer could tell you, means Grand Theft Auto V is out. GTA 4, meanwhile, didn’t want to boot up on any of Mike’s systems. So this is all built around 2001’s Grand Theft Auto 3. ( ). So, how does it all work? While Google has promised to give developers a way to communicate from device-to-device, they haven’t released much on that front yet. So Mike built his own two-part solution; on the PC, you’ve got an app that is capturing the portion of the screen where GTA’s on-screen GPS unit sits and sending it off to your Glass unit. On Glass, you’ve got an application (built on the “plain old Android SDK”, as Mike tells me, since Google has yet to release the official, native ) that listens for the GPS visuals to be fired over across the WiFi network and then pushes them to the display. Is it a bit hacky? Absolutely! But as a proof-of-concept to demonstrate how devices like Glass can be used as a secondary display, it gets the job done, and does a damned good job of conjuring up further concepts. Imagine being able to say “Okay Glass, set waypoint to Ammu-Nation” instead of having to pause the damn game every time. Imagine Metal Gear Solid’s signature video chats floating in front of your eyes as the game carries on. Are game developers likely to embrace relatively niche wearables like Glass any time soon? Probably not – but it’s a damned fun thing to think about.
Mike tells me that the whole thing runs at “about 10 frames per second” with minimal delay. “[It’s working] to the point where you could look only at Glass and still drive around” he says. “You would likely run into [virtual] pedestrians, but you could definitely drive around the streets perfectly.” Before you start diggin’ around for a link to download the app for yourself, a heads up: while Mike says he “definitely has plans to release it”, it’s a “very fragile proof of concept” at this point. Amongst other things, the heavy use of WiFi paired with a need for the display to be always on means that the app chews through Google Glass’ battery in about an hour. While he hopes to release it in the future, he’ll likely hold off until Google releases the official Glass SDK and he gets a chance to polish it up accordingly. Mike previously made headlines with the , a Glass app that lets you snap photos by winking your right eye, and he’s released a number of other apps on I got a chance to chat with Mike about the project and the technical hurdles involved. Our chat provided some pretty interesting insights into the current state of Glass development (and his plans for this project moving forward), so I’ve pasted the dialog (with Mike’s permission) below: Right now there’s no officially supported way for a Glass device to communicate with another device in real time. Older versions of Glass and the My Glass companion app for Android hinted at a way that we could communicate between an app on a phone and Glass, but those have disappeared from recent builds. This [project] sets up a channel for network communication between an app on Glass and a small piece of software on your PC. Once that’s setup and you start playing GTA, you will see the GPS navigation on the display of Glass. It’s really similar to how you would use the built in GPS navigation of Glass in a real car. It currently gets about 10 frames per second, but is effectively realtime and smooth enough to the point where you could look only at Glass and still drive around. You would likely run into pedestrians, but you could definitely drive around the streets perfectly. It’s definitely technologically possibly to improve that to a point where it’s as smooth and fast as watching any video. I used the plain old Android SDK. The real GDK for Glass development is rumored to be coming out this month, but right now you can dive in with the standard Android SDK. There’s a handful things to watch out for, but after releasing quite a few native Android SDK apps for Glass, I know what to keep in mind. I actually just gave a talk to developers in Toronto at Screens 2013 about how to develop for Glass without owning the Glass hardware, in which a large portion of it spoke about the potential pitfalls of using the standard Android SDK. The tech side of it is really basic. We have a small piece of software running on the PC that’s playing GTA. This software is pretty much pulling a subsection of the screen and streaming it to Glass over your network. There are a few downsides to this approach, it doesn’t look amazing and it’s prone to network congestion. If given the chance to turn this into a fully feature product, we would likely make a decision to build up the software that runs on the PC and do image analysis to turn the map data into non-bitmap data. This would likely result in a much crisper image on Glass and give us the ability to customize the map completely. This is pretty much the perfect solution to “hacking” support onto any sort of existing games. If we had the opportunity to turn this into an officially supported function of a game or other product, it becomes much easier to send perfect data or images to Glass directly from the game. All in all, the development side of things for this project is pretty mundane. The most exciting part about this has been opening the conversation up to using Glass or even other wearables as a second screen. It’s a use case that hasn’t been talked about much. It could be something as simple as moving your hud or map to a wearable device as is demonstrated with this software. Or it could be similar to how the Wii-U tries to bring forward asymmetric multiplayer gaming. Not very long at all, less than an hour. One of the biggest battery killer on Glass is keeping the screen on. Right now, this software keeps the screen on all the time. There’s potential ways to address this, like letting the screen go off after a certain period of time, but there’s a usability problem with that with the current SDK. Whenever the Glass screen goes off, you get kicked out of any app that you were running. This means you would have to run this piece of software on Glass every time the screen turned off, it’s a terrible experience. There’s a few “hacks” that you could do to get around that, but it’s not likely something that would continue to work in the long run, and I do believe that when the GDK is released, we will have a real solution for this. With that in mind it’s something I decided not to address at this point. It only took a few short hours to put it together. I worked on it during my train commute to work over the course of a few days. Of course, that’s just a very fragile proof of concept, that I can reliably run on my computer, with my phone, and my Glass setup through my phone acting as a router. At this point, for anyone else it would probably fall apart. I have a list of things to cleanup to get it working in a more general less controlled environment so others could experience it. I definitely have plans to release it similarly to my other apps. I may hold it off until we get the real GDK, in the hopes that the user experience and battery issues could be addressed
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Why Tech’s Hottest Companies Want To Hire More Female Engineers
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Colleen Taylor
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So TechCrunch TV took a lap around the job fair at Hopper to talk to a number of the companies there about why they’d like to see more women in their engineering ranks. Their responses made it clear that it’s not that tech companies are looking to blindly fulfill some kind of gender quota — they’re simply looking to build the best products they can. Dropbox engineer put it this way: “When you create new products, having differences in background helps you surface more issues that your users might face, and just generally create better ideas. It’s really at the boundary of two spheres where the best ideas emerge. So just having people of different backgrounds working together means that we’re coming up with better material.” Check out the video embedded above to see more.
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Samsung’s Galaxy Gear Ads Show A Dated Device, Not A Futuristic One
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Darrell Etherington
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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3qeJKax2CU&w=640&h=360] Even Samsung thinks its is anachronistic – at least if the commercials are to be believed. New ads for the new Samsung Galaxy Gear that popped up on the company’s official YouTube page this weekend are supposed to be an exercise in wish-fulfillment, but they end up showing off a company and design mentality that’s been stuck in the same gear for 20 or 30 years. As you can see, Samsung is pulling out nostalgia strings in these new ads, counting down the best sci-fi wrist-mounted communication tech from Star Trek, Knight Rider, The Jetsons and Might Morphin’ Power Rangers to remind us that we’ve always secretly wanted to talk into our wrists and be heard and understood by others. Except that what comes across isn’t how Samsung has finally been able to deliver this space-aged tech to a populace that’s been waiting for it for ages; instead, we see how dated this concept is, and how hilarious and awkward it looks with cheesy sets, bad special effects and costumes that definitely don’t scream ‘modern’ or ‘contemporary.’ [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2AjPfHTIS4&w=640&h=360] By all accounts, the Galaxy Gear is a first attempt that pretty clearly misses the mark for what a smartwatch ultimately should be, and consumers don’t seem all that energized by the concept, at least not based on local evidence here in London. Per CNET UK editor Jason Jenkins: Samsung Galaxy Gear & Note 3 stand at Waterloo not exactly overwhelmed with people — Jason Jenkins (@jenkojenkins) And again later: Still no love for the Galaxy Note 3/ Gear stand at Waterloo this morning — Jason Jenkins (@jenkojenkins) These ads do a good job of taking those of us old enough to remember the shows in them on a trip through memory lane, but in no way does that make me want to strap something to my wrist and start talking to it. And call me crazy, but I can pretty much guarantee that each of those devices depicted in these fictional TV shows got more than a day’s worth of use on a full battery charge, too.
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Student Tablet Hardware Melts, District Suspends $30 Million Amplify Program On Safety Concerns
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Gregory Ferenstein
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A North Carolina school district has suspended the use of 15,000 tablets after of multiple hardware issues, including the device’s charger melting at home. Guilford County Superintendent Maurice “Mo” Green has suspended the $30 million program on safety concerns. The recall is a major sting for NewsCorp’s , which released of its digital-first education initiative back at TechCrunch Disrupt 2012. Directed by former New York City education chancellor, Joel Klein, there are high hopes that Amplify can help bring K-12 education into the 21st century. But, melting tablet accessories aren’t a good sign. “We recognize that suspending the program on short notice is going to be disruptive to students, staff and parents,” Green Explained. “My decision was made out of an abundance of caution, and I decided to err on the side of safety.” Apparently, that’s not the only problem. As reported by News & Record, “Parent Linda Mozell said her daughter and other students at Southeast Middle School had repeated problems connecting to the Internet with their tablets. And even though her daughter got one of the “hard shell” protective cases, that caused its own set of problems, she said. The keyboard’s hard-shell case kept rubbing against the tablet screen in a way that could scar it, she said. In addition, the cord connecting the tablet and keyboard broke easily, the stylus was too big for easy use, and the equipment came home without a user’s manual.” Amplify has given us a response (pasted in full below) and tells us that the breakage rate of screens is around 3%, which compares to Asus’s industry average, around 2.5%. An Amplify spokesperson says the melting charger is (so far) an isolated incident. Amplify and Guilford County aren’t the only ones experiencing hiccups with tablets. Los Angeles Unified it’s 1-for-1 iPad program after students hacked through the filters, granting them full-fledged access to the bountiful wonders of the Internet. Presumably the next round of Amplify’s tablets will not pose a safety risk to children. Amplify’s response is below:
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The Future Of Mobile Taps And On-Demand Services
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Semil Shah
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TechCrunch One of the hottest trends in “mobile consumer tech” is the idea where one can simply just tap their phone and receive a range of services in the form of on-demand labor. While many services are in this crowded space, there is one which exemplifies the trend: Uber. As we all know by now, launch , wait for it to grab your location, request a car, and you’re on your way, with the payment automatically charged. Consumers love the ease and simplicity of these check-out and delivery service flows, so it’s no surprise legions of entrepreneurs are riding on the back of the mobile wave and Uberizing other daily tasks. This post will discuss some of these new apps — but it will not list all of them. The main point of this post isn’t to be a laundry list of apps in this space, but rather to consider what the future of these services could be. Here are some ideas I came up with: Uber and other transport companies like and have already captured audience and brand attention, so they could be great channels for customer acquisition by the other startups in this category. Right now, new companies in the space are acquiring customers through a mix of public relations, Facebook mobile app installs, creative Twitter promotions, and targeting location and affinities on Facebook. But, if I use Lyft and Uber a few times a week, and I’m already predisposed to these types of services, maybe a potential revenue stream for them is to help adjacent businesses find similar customers and cross-promote and cross-target. An idea like this could really help outside the echo chambers of the Bay Area and lower Manhattan. Assuming that a decent slice of Bay Area and NYC folks already have Uber on their phone and have a username and password associated with it. So, when I signed up for , , and the rest of them, it would be easier for me as a consumer just to sign-in with my Uber keys that contain my credit card information and social graph, where appropriate. As people who develop mobile apps know painfully well, there is so much user dropoff at the top of the funnel at sign-in, so creative one-touch options like this could lead to gains, though the future seems to eventually be in fingerprints for mobile identification. Just like airlines fight over every available inch, the competition among startups in this space will only increase for a variety of structural economic reasons. Lately, I’ve ordered dinner from Munchery, or via , and once had some food sent to me in SF via Postmates. Where is my loyalty at that time? It’s an obvious question and one I suspect these companies will introduce internally within their app at some point (maybe Munchery credits?) when they reach scale, though the real part that interests me is a cross-service rewards program, akin to what Starwood does with its suite of hotel brands. Loyalty creates a reason for users to keep coming back, extra reasons to communicate (push notifications!) with them, and affords more creativity in pricing plans by segmenting customers and creating incentives for them to reach certain milestones. Most of these apps charge customers on a per-transaction basis, tap and charge the card, but once a service gets more sticky, another form of loyalty hooks could come in the form of subscription-based revenue lines, such as monthly or yearly plans for premium levels of service. For example, recently their version of Amazon Prime, called Instacart Express, where customers pay an annual fee of $99 in order to receive free deliveries for a year. Consumers are already comfortable with subscriptions so long as they’re priced reasonably and deliver value, and companies (and investors) love subscriptions because they all love the ability to model recurring revenues. Many of these services — what has brilliantly “Convenience Tech,” apps which turn taps into instant gratification — are growing at a time of and (what I believe are) permanent changes to labor markets. Some of these services who use contractors have enough work to provide a full week’s worth of work, which is pretty incredible when you stop and think about it. Last night, I ordered DoorDash for takeout food delivery in a pinch, and the gentleman who came by mentioned to me he’s making almost 1.5x more with DoorDash than he did previously in construction, and there’s a lot of construction going on around here. I asked him if he’d like the option to fill slack time running deliveries around the area, and he said yes. Maybe he could do that for . So, what if these companies created agreements to share access to contractors? This is akin to what Uber does for town car drivers, who can fill in slack time by having Uber send them leads for rides. The taps on mobile are powerful things. Users are addicted to the instant gratification. As pointed out last week, the up-and-coming generations are “ ,” accustomed to simply tapping buttons for what they want. Inputs like typing in credit cards and location and instructions present friction. At the same time, there is some inefficiency in using hyper-specific services for laundry versus dry-cleaning. While all of these industries have their own economics, the competition among startups in all of these spaces is good because it is a race to see which teams can figure out the best model, and then someone else will figure out the scale. And, whom might that be? I always come back to Uber here. It may sound crazy, and it’s a long way in the future, but I believe Uber has a chance to be the one global brand that unifies all this disparate consumer demand activity on mobile. Tap Uber, pick what you want (like a Google search), and Uber will just deliver that service to you. This may take a decade or more to happen, if it does at all, and like all things these days, could get derailed by something that doesn’t even yet exist.
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Transactional Big Data Startup ERN Raises Another $1M As It Sets Targets On Asia
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Steve O'Hear
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In what feels like an ever-so-slightly protracted seed round, has raised a further $1 million in seed funding, bringing the total raised by the London-headquartered company to $5.6 million. This time the fresh injection of capital is pegged to finance its expansion into Asian markets, as ERN is also announcing that it’s hired ex-American Express Head of Global Marketing Brian Thom as its president for Asia. Unsurprisingly, given the startup’s mission to use big data to enable banks and merchants to create loyalty-based offers for cardholders, Thom has a background in retail banking and cards, having previously served at American Express Bank, along with being Regional Marketing Head for MasterCard Asia Pacific, and President of Citibank Card Services for Japan. He’s also said to have “more than 10 years of experience” in managing startups in Asia. So, on paper at least, the fit is good. ERN’s analytics platform, dubbed “Looop,” enables banks/card issuers and participating merchants to boost customer loyalty by creating new products and offers based on the analysis of their card transactions. The idea is that by drilling into the big data around a customer’s transactional history — after they’ve opted in, of course — individually tailored offers can be pushed to their smartphones via the Looop app or other channels in the form of an e-coupon redeemable in-store. In addition to insights gained through mining customers’ transactional big data, the targeting of offers can also be geo-fenced, e.g. only pushed an offer when a customer who has previously bought a dress is within a certain radius of the participating store. Last month the company announced its first major client win since unveiling the platform at the FinovateEurope 2013 conference in February. It’s signed up The Retail Data Partnership (TRDP), which supplies a network of some 1,500+ independent merchants in the UK with EpoS systems, who will have access to ERN’s Looop Big Data Analytics platform and customer loyalty capabilities to maximise the transactions that customers make. In today’s announcement it also mentions a number of other unnamed clients in both Europe and Asia. As for why it needed to raise more funding, which once again comes from unnamed private investors, , while specifically, Asia expansion is the target this time around. We can also presume that some of its previous funds will have been spent on . It bought two UK companies, Inspired Analytics and Elucidata, to bolster the analytics side of its platform, not least personnel, in what looked a lot like an acqui-hire.
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My Response To Dick Costolo: Twitter Must Lead Silicon Valley On Diversity
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Contributor
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Twitter has taken a lot of fire for having an all-male board, almost all-male management team, and all-male investor group. The root of this problem is arrogance and a “don’t-care” attitude. This was exemplified by a response by its CEO Dick Costolo to comments I made in a —about Twitter’s gender imbalance. Instead of responding to the issue that was raised, he “Vivek Wadhwa is the Carrot Top of academic sources.” In on Twitter, he continued to hit below the belt rather than address the problem. [tweet https://twitter.com/dickc/status/386625705171120128] Costolo isn’t alone in the way he responds to criticism about sexism. Here is the harsh reality: Silicon Valley is a boys’ club — a fraternity of the worst kind. It stacks the deck . It leaves out blacks and Hispanics. And it provides unfair advantage to an elite few who happen to be connected. Yes, it is also one of the most diverse places on this planet, where anyone can strike it big. But that opportunity only comes of learning the Valley’s and mastering them. Very few can. In its IPO filing, Twitter, for the first time, revealed detailed information about its investors and operations. This brought to light its severe gender imbalance. This is tolerable of companies in their infancy that can’t easily pick and choose whom they take money from and whom they place on the board. But the rules change once companies grow up and become public entities. They have a responsibility to the people they are taking money from: the public. What Twitter should have done in preparation for being a public company is to have it resemble the people they are going to be taking a billion dollars from — the people who are going to be making its executives and investors rich. This includes women as well as men, and blacks as well as whites. This is not only the right thing to do from a social perspective; it : companies with the highest percentages of women board directors outperform those with the lowest by 53 percent. They have a 42 percent higher return on sales and 66 percent higher return on invested capital. Getting beyond the IPO, Twitter is also doing itself — and its future owners — a big disservice by cutting itself off from the people who use its services and from which it derives all of its revenue. As the ’s in the article, “Having women executives matters not just for purposes of equality, business analysts say, but for product development and the bottom line. More women use social media than men, according to last month by the Pew Research Center; men and women use Twitter roughly equally. Twitter earns revenue from advertising and women are the chief consumers.” What I had said to Miller was that elite arrogance of the Silicon Valley mafia, the Twitter mafia, is male chauvinistic thinking; how dare they think they could get away with this? It isn’t that Twitter didn’t know that going public with such an imbalance would look bad for the company. I used the word “mafia” because there is an echo chamber in Silicon Valley that hears only itself and shows a disregard for the people whom it derives revenue and investment from. It is time to change this. Twitter, and other technology companies in the echo chamber, must lead. It’s not enough for company executives to make donations or be advisers to groups such as . They must take action and be the good example — just as Facebook did before its IPO. In addition to its COO, Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook University of California San Francisco Chancellor Sue Desmond-Hellmann to its board. Sandberg, with her book and the , is also being proactive about fixing the gender gap and inspiring women to become engineers. She provides a good role model for the rest of the tech industry. I am finalizing a crowd-created book, titled , that builds on Sandberg’s work. More than 500 women worked with journalist Farai Chideya and me on this project, which tells the stories of women who were excluded from the innovation economy but defied the odds and achieved success. Women share their lessons and provide motivation and inspiration for others. After researching the subject, I have realized that there is no shortage of great women who can lead organizations and be on boards. Women are at least as innovative as men are. They are more sensible. That is why I so vehemently argue that we should not leave them out — our economic growth depends on this. What I learned while editing my upcoming co-authored book, , is that leaders must take a proactive stance in integrating diverse voices. Leaders can’t just wait for them to come across their desk in the failed hope that the best people will rise to the top. Dick, I know some great women who can help you build an even greater company. I would be glad to introduce you to them. [tweet https://twitter.com/dickc/status/386360727469948928]
[tweet https://twitter.com/dickc/status/386608717245849600]
[tweet https://twitter.com/dickc/status/386609083702206464]
[tweet https://twitter.com/dickc/status/386614839415562240]
[tweet https://twitter.com/dickc/status/386623089842221056]
[tweet https://twitter.com/dickc/status/386625705171120128]
[tweet https://twitter.com/wadhwa/status/386625905780473856]
[tweet https://twitter.com/dickc/status/386634971743399936]
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Alex Wilhelm
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PureVPN Hit With A Zero Day Exploit, But CEO Says Email Alleging Data Compromise Was Fake
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Ingrid Lunden
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Earlier today, VPN service was dealt a double blow by malicious hackers: a zero-day exploit; and the mailing of a subsequent, fake email alleging account closure and a data compromise. Uzair Gadit, the founder of the VPN tunneling service — which assigns new IP addresses to users’ connected devices, enabling them to access the Internet in firewalled countries or to use services that are usually geo-restricted at their current locations — tells us that there is no issue with PureVPN. “Our VPN service is functioning 100% fine and there is no interruption whatsoever,” he wrote in an email. While the company is investigating the cause of the email, he continued, “we hereby confirm that, as we do not store any of our users’ credit card nor PayPal information in our on-site databases, there has been no compromise in our users’ personal billing information.” The incident highlights how, while VPN tunneling services are often thought to be more secure routes for those worried about data compromises, they are not immune from attacks themselves. Perception of these services can be especially precarious considering that they have not been immune to crack-downs from restrictive governments in the past, such as in from December 2012. The PureVPN story was brought to TechCrunch’s attention by one of PureVPN’s customers who is based in China. Several hours ago, he sent over the following letter, noting that his account was closed, and that his billing information was being handed over to authorities, who might be contacting him in future: A couple of hours later, his first email was followed up with another, which noted that the earlier email was fake: “We are sending this note as a clarification,” the note said. “We are NOT closing down nor do we have outstanding legal issues of any sort. We have neither been contacted by any authorities nor do we store our user’s personal data to share with anyone.” The company says that while the VPN service remains fully operational “secure to the highest possible levels of encryption,” it has disabled the billing portal and client area while it is investigating the issue. The company is also posting on its blog. We reached out to PureVPN about the two emails, and Gadit gave us a bit more information about what has happened. He says that the email appears to have hit only a subset of all of PureVPN’s users, but the fact that our tipster was in China is not an indication that it’s only users in that country who may have been affected, with email IDs and names being the only data that appears to have been accessed. “I confirm that the subset is NOT limited to Chinese users,” he says. “The motive is yet unclear.” Gadit says that PureVPN has hundreds of thousands of users from over 100 countries worldwide. “There is NO issue with the service, there has been a fake email sent to some of our users talking about legal issues and other misleading stuff. Our VPN service is functioning 100% fine and there is no interruption whatsoever,” he wrote. “While we are investigating the cause of the email we hereby confirm that, as we do not store any of our users credit card nor PayPal information in our on-site databases, there has been no compromise in our users personal billing information. Similarly, service troubleshoot logs (connection attempts, users IPs and location) are safe and intact as we do not store such logs on site. Furthermore as we vouch for privacy, security and anonymity on the internet we do not store actual VPN service usage logs so there is no point in users’ privacy or anonymity being breached.” He says that initial reports “suggest that we [were] hit with a zero day exploit, found in WHMCS.” This is a third-party CRM service used by PureVPN on its site. WHMCS had to . At the time, it noted that “the vulnerability allows an attacker, who has valid login to the installed product, to craft a SQL Injection Attack via a specific URL query parameter against any product page that updates database information.” So far, this, combined with PureVPN’s growth itself, are Gadit’s two reasons for the breach. “Clearly we are getting more and more popular crossing new heights too fast,” he wrote. “Such attacks are not unexpected with popular services these days. Such incidents only add to our resolve to emerge as more securer and faster privacy and security VPN service.” He said that PureVPN is working on posting a complete report when it has completed its investigation. In the meantime, if you’re a PureVPN user, be extra vigilant in looking out for any emails that ask you to reconfirm any billing details that you use for the service; they may be related to data collected during the zero-day exploit. That is in addition to being vigilant of the many other kinds of phishing emails you may get every day. : In another update on the PureVPN blog on , the company has confirmed that it was a zero-day exploit related to a vulnerability at WHMCS. The compromised data were email addresses and names for a subset of registered users, and “no billing information such as Credit Card or other sensitive personal information was compromised.” It also notes that after it publishes its final report it will be offering compensation for affected users.
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Samsung Reports 26% Growth In Q3 Operating Profit, But Warns Of Slower Smartphone Sales
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Catherine Shu
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Samsung reported that its Q3 operating profit surged 26% to 10.2 trillion won (about $9.6 billion), but continued to warn that its smartphone sales will slow thanks to increased competition. Its earnings growth was driven mainly by Samsung’s chip business profit, which doubled to 2.06 trillion won, the highest in three years, thanks to stronger chip prices this year after at one of competitor SK Hynix’s Chinese plants created a shortage in a key component. Demand for chips was driven by mobile devices, servers and the release of new game consoles. Samsung’s mobile division reported a record 6.7 trillion won, thanks to growing shipment volumes of its inexpensive smartphone models, which balanced slowing sales of high-end handsets like the Galaxy S4 and Note 3. The company warned that demand for its smartphones will slowdown during the upcoming holiday season, due to competition from other devices (such as Apple’s iPhone) as well as tighter margins as it ramps up spending on year end advertising and marketing. Samsung says it expects to see smartphone shipments grow about 1% to 5% in the current quarter from the previous quarter. Samsung has now reported record profits in six of the past seven quarters, but the South Korean tech giant has also warned investors over the past year to expect a slump in mobile sales thanks to the slowing global smartphone market and increased competition. Its most recent product launches are also unlikely to be major growth drivers. Samsung’s got a lukewarm response from consumers and its curved smartphone, , will have a limited launch in Korea only.
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Apple.com Now Selling $20 OS X Mountain Lion And Lion Redemption Codes For Older Macs
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Matthew Panzarino
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Apple has begun selling redemption codes for $20 each. Lion was previously available for purchase directly from Apple over the phone, but the company has decided to make it easier to purchase either version of the older OS X vintages directly online. The codes that you purchase can be redeemed on the Mac App Store to download and install OS X. We did some asking around about the thinking behind this particular arrangement and the nut of it is that Apple only offers one version of OS X at a time for purchase on the Mac App Store: the current one. But OS X Mavericks, though it does support some devices as far back as 2007, still has a lot of compatibility gaps for old Macs. If you’ve previously purchased either Lion or Mountain Lion, these are freely downloadable from the Mac App Store, but this new arrangement allows customers who may not (for some reason) have owned either one to purchase new copies. This will also allow users who have old Macs running Leopard or Snow Leopard to upgrade to “new-er” versions of OS X. OS X Mavericks was released to the public yesterday, and according to early reports from some tracking networks, of all OS X traffic in North America. Thanks .
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The Surprisingly Small Decline In Microsoft’s OEM Revenue In Its Fiscal Q1
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Alex Wilhelm
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In Microsoft’s fiscal first quarter of 2014, Windows revenue from OEM partners . That’s a noticeable decline, given that Windows revenue from third-party hardware partners is the most ‘Microsoft’ income that the company has. The decline, however, is somewhat blunted compared to what Microsoft anticipated. Here’s what the company said in its fiscal 2013 year-end wrap up, regarding the first quarter of fiscal 2014: “Excluding the impact of the Windows Deferral, OEM revenue (~65% of total) should decline mid-teens.” To see that decline come in at 7% means that the fall in OEM revenue for the quarter was around half of what the company expected. That’s surprising. Naturally, Microsoft doesn’t make predictions that it doesn’t think that it can’t at least meet, so the “mid-teens” estimate was likely somewhat conservative. But you don’t tell investors to expect a revenue decline of 15% or 16% in one of your key revenue streams if you don’t mean it. Oddly, there are some rays of light in the PC market, a place in the technology world that has had a damningly bleak year. Following the rollout of Windows 8, and its lackluster round of hardware that shipped with it, the PC market has recorded painful, repeated quarterly declines. In the third quarter, for example, the PC market . That was a surprising for PCs. But that 7.6% decline in different context is slightly benign. In the first quarter of 2013, the . That was a rollicking moment, as it came in the first quarter following the release of Microsoft’s new operating system, and first line of tablets running its own code. Ouch. And yet, there are some encouraging signs. Microsoft won’t disclose new Windows 8 (8.1, etc) sales numbers, but it will tell you that October was the biggest month for Windows 8 activations yet. And Surface unit volume doubled in the recent quarter. And OEM revenue fell about half as far as it was supposed to. And the larger PC market is contracting slower than before. We are . But now I’m starting to feel that there be a bottom, instead of a long inexorable decline. A 7% slip in OEM revenue for Microsoft is not clean. And it does hurt. But if it is indicator that the PC market is finally slowing its record declines, then we can view it as such. A note: Unit volume for the PC market was 81.6 million in . That’s a massive base to decline from. Will the PC market find a floor at 70 million units per quarter? 60? I know that we are increasingly post-PC in our daily lives, but I still can’t get fuck done on a smartphone other than tweeting from the dive bar. The moment we are looking for will be the first quarter that shows positive year-over-year unit growth in the PC market. Shall we take bets?
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Tweetbot 3 Makes The Case For 3rd-Party Twitter Apps With Bones-Deep iOS 7 Rewrite
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Matthew Panzarino
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Today marks the launch of the full rewrite of . The app is a paid upgrade, which is available for $2.99 at launch and will go up to $4.99 after the initial sale. As one of the most popular third-party clients available for Twitter, the app has become the poster child for what outside developers brought to the Twitter equation. And with the iOS 7 update, it’s going to set another sort of precedent by showing what you can do with a truly bones-deep re-thinking of an app with Apple’s new aesthetic in mind. When iOS 7 was released, we saw a lot of updates come down the pipe that were little more than a re-skinning of iOS 7 apps. A nip and tuck here and there for sure, but only a few were stripped down and redone with Apple’s new indicators in mind. iOS 7 is all about physicality and far less about the illustrative pixel-perfect character of iOS 6. “We wanted to have a very clean and iOS 7 look to Tweetbot, with a strong focus on content. We used Physics and custom transitions to add that sense of joy that we add to our apps,” Tapbots’ Paul Haddad says of the Tweetbot 3 redesign. That sense of joy permeates the app, with subtle animations and wonderfully redone audio cues. Everything is lighter, brighter and more readable overall. Within a couple of days of using the new app it was nearly impossible for me to look at the old version of Tweetbot for any extended period. It felt dark, static and very, very old. Part of this is the natural effect that iOS 7’s ‘shock to the system’ has had on all apps, but a lot more of it is a careful re-evaluation of what makes Tweetbot work. Going from a very illustrative style to one that has to convey personality via subtle animations and clever uses of Apple’s new physics system is no small feat. Especially for an app as distinct as Tweetbot. The main timeline of Tweetbot 3 has a brand-new lighter look with a white background and crisp typography. The tweets obey Apple’s system-wide font-sizing controls under Dynamic Type Size if you want to fit more on the page. One major change that many will notice is that there is only a single directional swipe (right to left) to expand Twitter conversations now. Haddad says that this was to eliminate the confusion between the reply and conversation views. It takes some getting used to if you commonly used the replies view, but it’s less confusing over all. Tweetbot 3 also features background tweet fetching using Apple’s new APIs. This means that you’ll see your newest tweets as soon as you open the app, a major improvement on the old “open and refresh” behavior. Tapping on a tweet still swings down the quick-action pane and tapping-to-hold offers additional features like copying links. The one complaint that I have with Tweetbot 3’s new interface is that once you’ve drilled down into a conversation, you must drill down one more level on another tweet in that conversation to favorite or retweet it. I’d love it if you could tap to drop the action pane as you can in the main timeline. I also wouldn’t mind a discrete font-size control within the app, separately from the system controls. The personality of Tweetbot 3 really peeks through when you encounter animated elements though. Try tapping on a media link and you’ll get a full-screen image that can be moved around with a finger and tossed off the screen in any direction — enabled by Apple’s new dynamics engine. This isn’t a pre-programmed animation. The app’s reliance on motion to tell its story once again makes a on the App Store. The personality of Tweetbot 3 doesn’t translate to screenshots, but it shines on actual usage. This is something that’s likely to come up with all of the best iOS 7 apps in the future. Frosty panes of translucency are used when appropriate, like the accounts screen and profile views. It all feels crisp and futuristic — and very much like a poster child for the design aesthetics that Apple wanted developers to take away from its new direction. The incredibly useful and feature-rich nature of Tweetbot, thankfully, has remained in full force. This is truly the preferred client of Twitter power users in every way. There’s no comparison between the utility of Tweetbot and the Twitter apps that are currently offered for iOS. We’ve heard that there is a redesign still in the works at Twitter, and that’s good because as it is, there’s simply no reason for heavy tweeters to use those apps over Tweetbot. One major, subversive feature of Tweetbot 3 is the way that it prominently displays Twitter’s Verified check mark. There’s something about seeing the blue badge right in the timeline that makes verification a bigger deal than Twitter ever has. Those avatars jump out at you and the badge is even more of a status symbol now. I have this theory that Twitter is slowly working its way toward verifying all users, but until it does, the blue check is going to become insanely sought after among users of Tweetbot. Hilariously, Tapbots Haddad and Jardine have their own custom badges. The new Tweetbot uses the same token pool as the previous version, so users updating to the new app will not take up an additional slot. But that pool remains just as limited as it was when Twitter instituted its new caps on user tokens, so there is a limited amount of Tweetbot revenue still available to Tapbots. That’s why I find the plan to pay not only justifiable but relieving. I want to pay Tapbots for their hard work getting this thing in the shape that it’s in, which is fantastic. And paying for all of those months of work is the least that most of us can do for as much utility as Twitter power players get out of the app. The app is available on the .
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Breather Aims To Launch Its Network Of On-Demand Rooms In New York In Early 2014
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Chris Velazco
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There’s no denying that New York is full of coffee shops and coworking spaces where a person can hunker down and get things done, but there’s something to be said about a little privacy. And that’s the gist of a buzzy startup called . It wants to offer up an on-demand batch of stylish, carefully curated rooms for people who need to work or take it easy for a few moments. Or anything else, really. “Breather is all about peace and quiet on demand,” founder and CEO Julian Smith told me. “But there are all these potential use cases that we can’t expect; Breather is agnostic that way.” Breather first started picking up media steam when it announced its mission and a $1.5 million capital infusion from Real Ventures, social media/wine guru Gary Vaynerchuk, and Loic Le Meur to name a few. On some level, it’s not hard to see why these people and their checkbooks have gravitated toward this venture — the lure of a private space in cities defined by their hustle and bustle seems like a hard one to resist. That said, the startup’s grand rollout is taking a little longer than expected. The team was originally hoping to get users in New York into those well-furnished, Wi-Fi-equipped Breather rooms by October, but Smith confirmed to me over the phone that they’ve had to fiddle with that launch window considerably. Now he hopes to officially launch Breather in the Big Apple in January, with outposts in (where else?) San Francisco to follow soon afterward. For the time being, the startup is still quietly testing the concept with about 100 users in Smith’s native Montreal. To hear him tell it, that delayed launch isn’t about a flawed concept (the beta is purportedly going “very well”) as it is a side-effect of supply. At least part of the problem are those smartphone-friendly electronic locks that the Breather concept hinges on… or the lack thereof. Startups like Lockitron promise to make the prospect of remotely allowing users into secured spaces drastically easier — there’s no more need for a set of easily lost keys to physically change hands any more — but there just aren’t enough of them available to power the expansion Breather is planning on. Even so, those sorts of early hurdles have done little to dampen Smith’s spirits. He ultimately wants to get Breather rooms up and running in “every major city,” a task that apparently isn’t as arduous as it would seem at first glance. To hear Smith tell it, the amount of demand necessary to make opening a new location worthwhile is lower than one might think. “All I need is 250 users to support a single location,” he said. “Even in, like, South Dakota, there are 250 users in a sort of village that need a private space.” Building or venue staff will still be responsible for keeping the room in good shape (though most of that ultimately comes to the service’s users), but the largely hands-on slant to the Breather concept means that all it takes to scale in a big way are some willing landlords with some unused space and enough smart locks to go with it.
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Apple, Microsoft And Free Software
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Alex Wilhelm
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that it will make its iWork suite of productivity applications free on new OS X and iOS devices. The company also made the Mavericks update to OS X . Microsoft recently to Windows 8 for free, has begun to bundle its Office set of products with Windows RT, and now sells Office as a service through its Office 365 product. The overlap between the two companies’ strategies and current product lineups both impact their short-term revenues, and long-term software and hardware margins. There is an increasing tension between the two companies’ largest computing platforms: Windows, iOS, and OS X. Given the spate of recent updates to those platforms, the transformation of Office, and Apple’s tossed productivity gauntlet, the software space that two firms are fighting to control is worth looking into. We’ll deal with operating systems first then productivity software, and we’ll approach the topics as numbered lists to allow for brevity of a sort and clarity. 1. Apple will no longer charge consumers directly for OS X. Consumers will still pay for the operating system when they purchase an Apple computer, as the cost of developing OS X and its updates is implicit to the sticker price of the machines. 2. Microsoft generates most of its Windows revenue from selling licenses of Windows to its OEM partners. Consumers, therefore, rarely pay directly for Windows. However, the link between the cost of Windows and the consumer is far more direct than Apple’s consumers and OS X. There is an explicit cost to a copy of Windows – rumored to be around $80 – that is passed directly onto the consumer from the OEM at the moment of sale. Still, for most consumers of both platforms, the cost of the operating system is blurred to the point of complete obscurity. 3. Both companies moved to free updates to their operating systems at the same time, and that’s hardly coincidental. Imagine if Apple and Microsoft tried to charge for their updates. The result would be depressingly familiar fragmentation. This is a larger problem than in the past for both firms, as their desktop operating systems are increasingly fusions of software and services. Let the software fall sufficiently behind, and the services begin to choke. That won’t do. So, free updates. 4. The Mavericks update and Windows 8.1 are not directly comparable. Mavericks will upgrade a number of OS X variants, while Windows 8.1 won’t update more than a single Windows SKU (for this, we’re holding the RT version of Windows 8 close to its brethren). 5. Still, saying that Apple is now providing free of charge something that Microsoft is selling is at best partially correct. Keep in mind the dollar flow that exists between the teams that are creating the operating systems for each firm, and the — internal or external — hardware team in question. 6. This makes things all the more muddled, as there are both internal and external OEM groups that build Windows-based products. Microsoft has to move revenue from one bucket to another, but that’s more accounting than cost. So, there are external OEMs that pay Microsoft a fee for Windows, and a Microsoft group that has to shuttle money to that division. The point here is that consumers don’t see any of this. They simply see the sticker cost and then make a choice on the computer they want. 7. That leads to the following point: Apple has amazing margins on its hardware. The company’s gross margins are unheard of at other OEMs. Windows-based OEMs have abysmal margins. If Windows-based OEMs didn’t have to pay for Windows, their margins would be pretty good. Apple’s margin gap is essentially where the cost of its operating system would be if it were a non-platform-owning OEM. Apple’s margins can be viewed as the cost of the operating system, or where that cost might be. So to say that the company isn’t charging consumers for its operating system is a bit off. 8. You could argue that the software really is being given away at no cost, and that the margins are all hardware-based, but when you sell a device that has both software and hardware, you can’t be so puritanical. 9. So, finally, to directly compare the cost of Windows 8.1 Pro – $199 – with the cost of the Mavericks upgrade is slightly asinine, though Apple’s choice to make its update free was certainly a good one that will delight its users. Apple’s decision to make the Mavericks update free accompanied its decision to drop the fees for its iWork suite of applications. Apple is a fan of iWork. Microsoft, as you might have guessed, is not. At all. Frank Shaw, Microsoft’s head of corporate communications, yesterday against Apple’s plan to take on Office, which is a key business for Microsoft. Previously, Apple priced its iWork applications for $10 each on iOS. So, let’s quote Frank before we move forward: Surface and Surface 2 both include Office, the world’s most popular, most powerful productivity software for free and are priced below both the iPad 2 and iPad Air respectively. Making Apple’s decision to build the price of their less popular and less powerful iWork into their tablets not a very big (or very good) deal. […] Now, since iWork has never gotten much traction, and was already priced like an afterthought, it’s hardly that surprising or significant a move. […] So, when I see Apple drop the price of their struggling, lightweight productivity apps, I don’t see a shot across our bow, I see an attempt to play catch up. All right. For flavor, let’s sample some commentary from a different perspective. Here are a few bits from entitled “All of the Ways Apple’s New Free Mac OS Hurts Microsoft Windows:” Apple also decided to make its iLife and iWork productivity suite free, another headache for Microsoft, which continues to generate significant revenues from its Office suite of products. Certainly, Apple’s productivity suite doesn’t have the adoption rates of Microsoft’s Office and Excel programs. But by offering its suite for free, Apple–of all companies–makes Microsoft look greedy for deciding this year to start charging for Office 365 on an annual subscription basis: $99 per year. As Apple executive Eddy Cue snarked, “Others would have you pay a small fortune” to use their software. Oh my. Let’s get into it. 1. iWork as a productivity suite has been an afterthought at best for as long as we can remember. Even at $10 per application on iOS, iWork was hardly world-changing. The Business division at Microsoft, of which Office is a part, reported that its revenues were $7.2 billion in the most recent quarter, for reference. 2. Will iWork becoming free directly harm Office revenues? Perhaps in the short-term on the Mac platform. I do not know how popular Office for Mac is. Free iWork could stunt sales of that Microsoft product, on Macs that are sold from yesterday on (current devices in the market, both OS X and iOS do not receive the free software, oddly). 3. However, Office for Mac sales, I suspect, are only a fraction of the Business division’s revenues, so the impact, for now, can’t be too large. And as Microsoft sells Office at its highest margin to business customers that are nearly always running fleets of PCs, the change to free iWork on Mac isn’t material. 4. All that adds up to the following: The danger that Apple is pushing for Microsoft is that it is lowering the cost of a software category from which Microsoft generates trucks full of cash. The Business division at Microsoft had revenue of almost $25 billion in its most recent fiscal year. If Apple can, over time, acclimate customers into not paying for productivity software, it could undercut Microsoft’s ability to sell Office at the margins it has for so long. 5. Microsoft is guilty of this, as well. By bundling Office into its Surface 2 and Surface tablets, it is baking the cost of Office Windows, which is already baked into the hardware itself. And, it isn’t doing so on a subscription basis. So, Microsoft is also devaluing Office. I’m sure it doesn’t enjoy that fact, but I also don’t see a way around it. 6. Microsoft is aware that the traditional Office business model is fucked. Software In A Box (SiaB) is over. Not in the , but over in that it is a failing business model and one that must be replaced. Proof of that fact is simple. Adobe and Microsoft, two companies that made more money than Croesus off of SiaB, are both scrambling to move to subscription services (SaaS). 7. So, Microsoft has to at once protect Office revenues while transforming the products therein. Not that simple of a task when you need to generate about $80 million in daily revenue from the division. This is akin to rebuilding your car while racing it against increasingly nimble competition. 8. Microsoft, however, provided that it has margins of any strength on the Surface 2, can recoup some of that lost software revenue, as Apple does. This is where Apple goes to war. Its gross margins allow it to drive the marginal cost to consumers of its software products to a near uniform zero price point. Microsoft’s OEM partners can’t compete in the same way. And as Apple dings key Microsoft revenue lines, the latter has to find other areas of profit, such as hardware, where it already has deep competition from its own partners. That’s a tough spot to win from. 9. Still, Microsoft has something that Apple doesn’t: The most popular productivity suite in the world. And, it has shown that its new Office 365 product can connect with customers. Microsoft loves to crow that Office 365 as a whole is now on a $1.5 billion yearly run rate (that number is somewhat dated, Microsoft. How about another one, yeah?), and that the consumer-facing SKU of Office 365 now . That milestone took about 200 days to reach. Taking all that in pace, Apple is challenging a Microsoft cash-cow, but only on its own platforms, and only for new customers. However, demand for Apple’s productivity suite hasn’t been spectacular in the past, even at low price points, and Microsoft does have a competing suite in place. Microsoft understands that its legacy business model is dying out. It is reworking the Office suite to create new incomes, even as Apple subsumes its own productivity software into its hardware packages. Apple is therefore making its productivity software a component of its operating system, which it charges for in the same moment as its hardware. That’s attractive. But given that Apple is , the iWork challenge to Office is really a mobile play. Can Apple take over mobile productivity? Free iWork for iOS is something that will blunt Microsoft’s current edge when it comes to mobile productivity, to some extent. However, since the iPad lacks a strong keyboard option (that is first party, the third-party hardware I’ve used with iPads has been uniformly disappointing), precisely how much you can get done with free iWork on your next iPad isn’t immediately clear to me. All the above illustrates that there is an incredible confluence of software, services, and devices in the market today, the three components coming together to support platforms and to attack other platforms. There is no simple answer to the question “What will be the impact of iWork becoming free?” We should avoid simplistic answers to questions that demand nuance. We can synthesize by stating that Apple is certainly looking to lower the price that consumers are willing to pay for software. This means that Microsoft will increasingly need to follow in its footsteps by generating incomes from things like its own App Store and hardware. The pressure of slipping software costs is already apparent in the Surface 2’s inclusion of Office. Though, large customers and their needs will mostly protect the Business division until Microsoft can figure out its next generation of services. Apple is increasing the pressure on trends that Microsoft was already addressing. The question that remains is simple: Who wins?
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Zynga’s Shares Pop Nearly 12% On Lower-Than-Expected Losses
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Kim-Mai Cutler
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Zynga’s shares rose nearly 12 percent in after-hours trading on lower-than-estimated losses. Zynga posted a net loss of $68,000 on about $203 million of revenue, so they managed to stay roughly break-even. Their top line revenues are down 36 percent year-over-year as Zynga deals with disastrous losses in its user base on the Facebook platform. At the same time, they haven’t made as strong a transition to mobile gaming platforms as other com Daily active users are down to 30 million, or half of what they were a year ago. Monthly active users are similarly now less than half of what they were a year ago at 133 million. Today, they have just three of the top games on the Facebook platform by daily active users, a far cry from the days when they dominated the charts. Yet new CEO Don Mattrick argued to shareholders that he is making the changes necessary to return Zynga to its former glory. “We believe we are poised for future growth,” he said on the earnings call. “I am confident that Zynga is rewiring itself in a meaningful way that will strengthen the core of our business and put us back on track to achieve even more significant growth and progress.” Today, Mattrick just Clive Downie, from DeNA and previously Electronic Arts, to be its chief operating officer. Mattrick said in reorganizing Zynga, he’s flattened the management structure. Creative product leads now report directly to him. “Entertainment is an excellence business,” Mattrick said, adding that Zynga is aiming to build games “with the fit, finish and polish that truly engages a mass market audience.” In the last quarter, the company launched a number of new titles, including Fairy Tale Twist, Ninja Kingdom and Hit it Rich. In mobile games, they’ve launched 1 Word, which was with the KiK Messenger App, and CastleVille Legends. They also released New Scramble with Friends, Baseball Slam (3P), and CityVille KRE-O. While monthly payers declined to 1.6 million in the third quarter from 3 million the year before, the average bookings per daily active user rose to 5.5 cents from 4.7 cents. It also rose 4 percent on a quarterly basis. (That’s how much a daily active user spends on average on virtual transactions in Zynga’s games.) Zynga said that its revenue will decline even further in the fourth quarter to $175 million to $185 million — which is usually a lucrative holiday quarter for game makers. Its loss will be in the range of $21 million to 31 million, the company added.
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Microsoft Surface Unit Volume Doubled In Most Recent Quarter
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Alex Wilhelm
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Microsoft today reported that its Surface line of tablets had revenue of $400 million in the most recent quarter. On its earnings call, the company stated that in the most recent quarter (fiscal Q1, 2014), Surface unit volume doubled from the prior quarter (fiscal Q4, 2013). I confirmed the fact with Microsoft directly, following the statement. It’s an interesting fact, because it underscores that Surface is at once growing, but that it also had a weak summer sales season. For the fiscal year that recently ended for Microsoft, total Surface revenue totaled $853 million. Given that the $400 million figure for the most recent quarter (which was not part of that $853 million sum) was essentially half the former total, it can be deduced — in conjunction with the doubled unit volume — that Microsoft’s tablet line sold slowly during the summer. That’s not unexpected, of course, but it’s important to keep in mind where Surface is coming from, so that we can put its later figures into context. Microsoft noted that in the most recent quarter, there was some hesitation among potential Surface Pro purchasers, as the Surface Pro 2 was on the horizon. That pent-up demand could skew Surface revenue higher in the current quarter that will include the release of the Surface Pro 2, the Surface 2, and the holiday sales cycle. In a call, Microsoft declined to forecast Surface revenue for the coming quarter. So we’ll have to do it. I think that $600 million will be the absolute lower bound of “not terrible”; $800 million will be solid; and a $1 billion tally will be a win. Your move, Microsoft.
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Amazon Reports Q3 Sales Of $17.09B, Up 24%, But Records Second Straight Loss
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Alex Wilhelm
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Amazon in its third quarter, with net sales of $17.09 billion, and a per-share loss of $0.09, or $41 million. The street Amazon to lose $0.10 per share on sales of $16.8 billion. In after-hours trading, Amazon is up a strong 7 percent. Investors are clearly heartened by what they see. As , however, this is Amazon’s second straight quarterly loss, and the company expects to lose a stunning $500 million in its fourth quarter. Component to that loss, however, is $350 million for stock-based compensation, and amortization of intangibles. So, the cash loss should be somewhat blunted. The company is growing like a weed, but not a very profitable weed. Amazon expects its net sales for the coming fourth quarter to land between $23.5 billion and $26.5 billion. Those figures represent a 10 percent to 25 percent year over year gain for the company. Amazon has around $7.7 billion in cash and equivalents, so it is hardly running low on funds. In its year-ago quarter, on $13.81 billion in net sales, Amazon lost $274 million. So, the quarter is progress of a sort. The company is infamous for its lackadaisical view towards profits, instead pouring money into growing its various business units. Amazon sells tablets, streams video, delivers all sort of goods — even groceries — while also providing enterprise-grade cloud computing solutions. It’s a diverse firm. Amazon could slow investment, and reach higher levels of profitability. But not soon, it seems. On the good ship Bezos steams.
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Zynga Poaches DeNA’s Clive Downie As New COO
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Kim-Mai Cutler
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The management shuffle at Zynga continues as new CEO Don Mattrick fills the executive ranks with longtime colleagues and friends from the industry. He’s poached Clive Downie from Japan’s DeNA to be the company’s new COO. Downie has been in the gaming industry for more than 20 years, with 15 years of experience at Electronic Arts overseeing franchises like FIFA Soccer, Need for Speed, Medal of Honor and Command & Conquer. After Electronic Arts, Downie joined Neil Young at ngmoco (which was short-hand for next-generation mobile company). Ngmoco was an early iOS developer that Japanese mobile gaming giant DeNA ultimately for up to roughly $400 million in cash and stock. DeNA bought the startup as part of an effort to duplicate the company’s success in the West through creating a dual game distribution platform and first-party game developer. (Ironically, Zynga was also an interested bidder in the deal several years ago.) While at DeNA, Downie oversaw the development of the Mobage gaming platform and managed a number of first-party gaming studios in San Francisco, Vancouver and Chile. Downie, who will report directly to Mattrick, takes the role after David Ko left the position two months ago. He has a tough job ahead, as Zynga is in the process of resetting its entire product pipeline. He had mysteriously resigned from DeNA earlier this week, and DeNA West’s chief financial officer Shintaro Asako took over his role.
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Microsoft Crushes FQ1 Expectations With Revenue of $18.5B, EPS Of $0.62, $400M In Surface Top Line
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Alex Wilhelm
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Microsoft , with revenue of $18.53 billion and earnings per share of $0.62. Analysts the first quarter of Microsoft’s fiscal 2014 to generated revenue of $17.8 billion and earnings per share of $0.54. Microsoft’s net income was $5.24 billion, and its operating income was $6.33 billion. Microsoft ended the quarter with just over $80 billion in cash and equivalents. It remains exceptionally wealthy. Though, keep in mind that most of that cash is overseas. In its most recent sequential quarter, Microsoft reported an earnings miss, with revenue of $19.9 billion, far under the expected $20.74 billion figure. Also, in its most recent quarter, Microsoft recorded a $900 million charge relating to its Surface tablet project. It also reported that Surface revenue for the concluding fiscal year of 2013 was $853 million. Surface revenue for the quarter was $400 million, with Microsoft reporting that that figure represents “sequential growth in revenue and units sold over the prior quarter.” That figure is almost half of its former tally for several quarters, including launch. Microsoft will likely beat that figure in the current quarter, as it has several new Surface devices racing to market. That decent Surface figure is contrasted in the quarter by slipping Windows OEM revenue. According to Microsoft, revenue derived from selling Windows to its OEM partners fell 7 percent on a year-over-year basis. This is a reflection of the sickness in the PC market. Microsoft tried to bully pulpit the decline by stating that “Windows Pro revenue grew for the second consecutive quarter.” Please. Overall, revenue from the Devices and Consumer division was up 4 percent year over year to $7.46 billion. Top line from so-called “Commercial” sources was up 10 percent year over year, to $11.20 billion. I can’t imagine a better illustration of Microsoft’s current health than that: Enterprise, strong – Consumer, middling. Microsoft is up 5 percent in after-hours trading. TechCrunch is speaking with Microsoft regarding its quarterly performance shortly, and will have more context following that call. In its fiscal second quarter, Microsoft will begin to sell the Xbox One, Surface 2, and Surface Pro 2, along with a slew of new Lumia handsets. Microsoft doesn’t own that part of Nokia yet, but I haven’t met a person who thinks that the deal will fail, so we can unite the two. This means that its fiscal second quarter of 2014 will be by far Microsoft’s largest in terms of its device strategy. The numbers reported in January will detail success, or explain a failure of strategy.
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Twitter Announces NBC’s Vivian Schiller As Head Of News Partnerships
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Matthew Panzarino
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In a tweet today, Twitter Chief Digital Officer of NBC Vivian Schiller as head of its News Partnerships. Schiller will be leaving NBC News at year’s end and joining Twitter in January. Schiller had been rumored as the choice for Twitter’s head of news for some time, including a report from this month that she was a ‘lock’ for the role. Excited to join as Head of News in January. Leaving at year’s end. Grateful to my beloved colleagues for 2+ great years. — Vivian Schiller (@VivianSchiller) Schiller has been at NBC Universal since 2011 and has held positions at the NYT, Discovery and NPR. Twitter began formally searching for a candidate for the position in April of this year. The original job posting noted that the person in the position would be “responsible for devising and executing the strategies that make Twitter indispensable to newsrooms and journalists, as well as an essential part of the operations and strategy of news organizations and TV news networks.” Twitter is in the process of making sure that people continue to view it as a source for news. It’s currently experimenting with a breaking news notification account called @eventparrot and recently expanded its emergency alerts program. A large portion of Twitter’s development efforts over the past few months have been centered around big media partnerships with TV and sports organizations. But one of the earliest codified uses of Twitter beyond ‘here’s my lunch’ was breaking news. It was a natural jump from daily minutiae to daily news and then news by the minute. One of the prime early examples of this was the “just felt an earthquake” tweets that outpaced most traditional methods of alert. Twitter also began getting recommendations from governments for use during emergencies. For some, Twitter is viewed as the biggest, most powerful unified conduit for real-time news that we have. Now, Twitter needs to convince news organizations to use it in a way that will benefit both parties. And that’s Schiller’s job. Image:
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Twitter To Offer 70M Shares Priced At $17-$20 Per Share To Raise Up To $1.4B In IPO
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Matthew Panzarino
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Twitter will offer 70 million shares in its initial public offering, and will price them at $17-$20 per share, . Twitter’s IPO pricing range was rumored to drop today, several weeks after it announced plans to go public. The $20 pricing indicates that Twitter could raise as much as $1.4 billion with this IPO or $1.6 billion, including the over-allotment option — which accounts for around a 13 percent stake in the company overall. Twitter notes that underwriters have an option to purchase 10,500,000 more shares if the IPO is exceeded at the IPO price less discount. “Prior to this offering, there has been no public market for the common stock. It is currently estimated that the initial public offering price per share will be between $17.00 and $20.00,” the amendment reads. “Our common stock has been approved for listing on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “TWTR”. At the maximum $20 price per share, Twitter would have a valuation of close to $11 billion, which is lower than the close to $15 billion that had been rumored. This could set the stock up for a springy landing when it hits early next month. That could help Twitter avoid the public perception issue that Facebook faced when its high-priced shares flopped on initial offering. Several of the company’s directors and executives are sharing stock. Chairman Jack Dorsey is selling roughly .6 percent of the company and will own 4.3 percent after the offering — making his share worth around $434 million. Co-founder Evan Williams is selling 1.6 percent of the company and will own 10.4 percent after the offering. Williams will be worth just over $1 billion if the shares go at a median price of $18.50. CEO Dick Costolo will own 1.4 percent of the company after IPO. Twitter’s road show begins tomorrow and will wrap up in two weeks, after which it will set an official price. How about it, are you going to buy?
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This Is What Instagram Ads Look Like
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Josh Constine
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has the first image of an Instagram ad. Last month the Sponsored Photos and Sponsored Videos would begin appearing in people’s feeds from brands they don’t follow, promising something beautiful and engaging. This “sneak peek” is a picture of a guy at a desk. So what do you think? The ads will be labeled “Sponsored” and have a button to hide them. If you tap the three dots ‘more’ button (…), an ad will be hidden and you can provide feedback on why you didn’t like it, or choose to opt out of that particular ad. The sample ad comes from Instagram itself, and it will be the first ad that many Instagram users in the US will see. As , Instagram says that only a handful of brands will be allowed to advertise on the platform (in the beginning), all of which will be familiar to existing users on the platform. Here’s the official word from the : Our focus with every product we build is to make Instagram a place where people come to connect and be inspired. Building Instagram as a business will help us better serve the global—and ever growing—Instagram community, while maintaining the simplicity you know and love. Instagram also reminds users that we own and have control over our Instagram photos, a question that was hotly debated when Instagram changed its TOS to allow for ads made from user-generated content. After an uprising, . Users have been less vocal about the introduction of ads this time around, now that it doesn’t involve our faces (Google style), but that may change once ads actually begin appearing in the feed.
You can see a slew of Instagram ad examples below from premier brands including Levi’s, W Hotels, Michael Kors, Macy’s, and Lexus, as well as some less fashionable companies like PayPal and Ben & Jerry’s.
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Tesla Snags Apple VP Of Mac Hardware To Lead New Vehicle Development
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Matthew Panzarino
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Apple VP of Product Design is leaving the company for Tesla according to a . Field will head programs that will drive the development of new vehicles for the electric car maker. The hire was first . “Doug has demonstrated the leadership and technical talent to develop and deliver outstanding products, including what are widely considered the best computers in the world,” said Elon Musk, Tesla co-founder and CEO in a statement issued today. “Tesla’s future depends on engineers who can create the most innovative, technologically advanced vehicles in the world. Doug’s experience in both consumer electronics and traditional automotive makes him an important addition to our leadership team.” Field says that he had never seriously considered leaving Apple. He began his career as a development engineer at Ford but says that he left the auto industry in “search of fast-paced, exciting engineering challenges elsewhere.” “As the first high tech auto company in modern history,” says Field, “Tesla is at last an opportunity for me and many others to pursue the dream of building the best cars in the world—while being part of one of the most innovative companies in Silicon Valley.” Field has been with Apple for over five years and worked in Mac hardware. Before that, Field was VP of Design & Engineering and CTO at Segway. Apple robotics expert John Morell last year but it’s unclear what he’s working on. Tesla has other Apple DNA on staff, as its VP of Sales & Ownership George Blankenship where he was its Vice President of Real Estate.
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Pricing Engine Data Shows Lower Costs For Businesses That Advertise On Bing
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Anthony Ha
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, a company that guides small businesses through the process of buying online ads, is presenting its first report today (at the Street Fight Summit New York) on data from its customers. That data is already an important part of its business, because Pricing Engine (which CEO Jeremy Kagan demonstrated for me last week) compares the performance of its advertisers to related companies and is able to provide recommendations, as well as a report card. (Companies with a similar approach .) This, however, is the first time that Pricing Engine is sharing information about the broader trends it’s seeing from around 1,500 accounts. Kagan admitted that the data is “not statistically rigorous,” but he said his goal is to more “to get the conversation started about the VSB [very small business] level of business.” That’s an important point for him — he said there are other companies claiming to serve small businesses but still targeting customers larger than Pricing Engine’s, who typically don’t spend more than hundreds or thousands of dollars on online ads in one month. One of the main points in the report: Even though small businesses are (understandably) focusing most of their advertising on Google AdWords, there may be a bit of an untapped opportunity in Bing. AdWords advertisers through Pricing Engine saw an average clickthrough rate of 2.4 percent (compared to 2.3 percent on Bing), but the price for those clicks was lower on Bing, which saw a cost-per-click of $1.10 (versus $2.40 on AdWords). Pricing Engine also said stores were the biggest category in terms of number of accounts (17 percent of the total), while digital services firms were the biggest spender on AdWords, with an average monthly spend of $3,200 per month.
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Messaging App Line To Go Public In 2014 On The Tokyo Exchange, Report Says
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Alex Wilhelm
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According , Line, a popular messaging and call service, intends to go public in 2014 on the Tokyo stock exchange. The company is expected to go public at a valuation between $8 billion and $10 billion USD. According , Line has 270 million registered users. It isn’t clear what percentage of that user base is active on a monthly basis. Twitter, a company that is also set to go public shortly, has around 230 million monthly active users. The comparison matters are both mobile-focused communications applications. And Twitter could go public at an IPO valuation of as high as $20 billion, if scuttlebutt is to be believed. We can’t be too perfectly sure, but it would seem that Twitter is being valued much higher on a per-user basis. Line as a company has been at the forefront of the rising profile of so-called ‘over-the-top’ (OTT) messaging services that have quickly grown in recent years. Others include Viber and KakaoTalk. Essentially, they replace the native SMS and call capabilities that come in smartphones. It has become a massive market. Line’s 270 million users are only a fraction of the larger OTT communications market. When Line goes public, it could clear the way for other OTT applications to follow suit.
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Viber Releases Update To BlackBerry App To Catch Up With iOS And Android
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Jordan Crook
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If you’re a BlackBerry fan, it may feel a bit like you can’t catch a break. But today Viber wants to change all that, delivering an updated version of the free calling and messaging app to the BlackBerry platform. The update marks the first big upgrade that BlackBerry-flavored Viber has seen since . BlackBerry has been supported by Viber since . The new update includes a few details that Viber has already gone the extra mile to implement on other platforms, like iOS and Android. For example, user images and read receipts are shown in conversations, and users can now use custom location sharing. Overall, the UI received a much-needed facelift. To be clear, this app supports BB 5, 6, and 7, but not the new BB10 operating system that’s compatible with newer BlackBerry devices. Viber CEO and founder Marco Talmon reminds us in the press release that BlackBerry is the third larges platform for Viber, a company with over 200 million registered users. iOS and Android comprise first and second place. Official quote: Our continued support for the community of Viber users on the platform goes hand-in-hand with our efforts to reach the broadest possible audience of users around the world. Viber has also included Bahasa Indonesian as an available language in the BlackBerry version. On top of the new features, the new BlackBerry version has also been translated into Bahasa Indonesian, allowing Viber users who speak the language to easily access the app. Viber recently flipped the switch on monetization with the launch of a sticker market. However, the sticker market isn’t available in the latest BlackBerry release. The update will be rolling out over the next 24 hours.
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Tumblr Rebuilds Search Feature To Be More Powerful, Filter NSFW Tags Better As It Passes 65B Posts
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Matthew Panzarino
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Tumblr has completely to make it more user friendly and powerful. Among the updates are the ability to use multiple tags in one query, easier access to the explicit content filter and filtering by post type. In the post announcing the search changes, Tumblr also notes that it has posts, making a more powerful search something nice to see. The previous version of Tumblr search was…anemic to say the least. Most of the time using a Google site operator would get you more relevant results. The new search feature allows you to use multiple tags in one go, letting you narrow the field to more specific cross-categories. You can search for #puppies and #wagging all at once now to find the perfect excited GIF. There is also a subtle change to search that allows you to use simple queries without a hashtag to return both mentions of a term and posts tagged with that term. Searching for “ponies,” for instance, will get you posts that mention ponies and posts that are tagged with #ponies. Search results now also return blogs related to those queries. The final update is related to the explicit content filter, which many have criticized for being buried and confusing to tweak. It’s now right on the search results page where it can be easily accessed. Tumblr also mentions that it’s tweaked its NSFW filtering to stop blocking tags that are not “natively” explicit. There was some over Tumblr not showing tags that were considered NSFW, but that weren’t by default (things like “gay,” “lesbian” or “bisexual”). This release attempts to tweak those results to surface non-NSFW tags in regular searches, even with the filtering enabled. Tumblr also mentions that this was partially done to unblock tags that were filtered due to policies like those on Apple’s App Store.
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Mobile Payments Provider Fortumo Launches Program To Help Chinese Developers Expand Into New Markets
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Catherine Shu
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Mobile payments provider has launched a program that will serve as a “one-stop shop” for Chinese developers that want to distribute their apps in other countries. Called , the program offers Android, Windows Phone and Windows 8 developers access to the Estonia/U.S.-based company’s network of mobile carriers in 80 countries, as well as localization, testing, distribution and marketing services. Fortumo Expand is a counterbalance to the company’s , which helps foreign developers gain a larger foothold by allowing them to offer carrier billing for their apps. While working with Western clients like , , , and , Fortumo saw that it was just as difficult for their counterparts in China to scale internationally, especially if they do not have partners in other countries to help deal with differences in language, culture and business practices. Fortumo Expand will be headed by Martti Mustila, who was formerly Head of Global Developer Programs at Nokia.
“We want to help Chinese developers get visibility. For Android developers, we help them publish in independent app stores and carrier stores. In the best cases, if an app is doing well, we can also build up a promotional campaign for them,” says Mustila. Fortumo Expand’s monetization plan follows the same model as the company’s other developer programs. The mobile operator takes a cut, while Fortumo charges a 2% to 5% commission. Fortumo is already working with 30 Chinese app development companies, primarily in the gaming sector. Developers who sign on for Fortumo Expand can decide which countries they want to enter. Fortumo is especially active in Brazil, Russia, Latin America and Southeast Asia, where most consumers make mobile payments through carriers and not with credit cards. In addition to gaining access to Fortumo’s international network of 300 mobile operators, developers will also have the option of distributing their apps in 23 third-party app stores and receiving monthly reports so they can see which emerging markets have the most revenue potential. Fortumo Expand offers developers free localization and testing services for their first app through and free advertising for Windows Phone and Windows 8 apps from .
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Cruise.me Makes Booking A Cruise Social And Not Horrendously Difficult
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Eliza Brooke
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Although the founders of SF-based Blueseed have garnered some attention recently for their desire to turn a cruise ship into a for foreign entrepreneurs, booking floating vacations for everyday folks remains a surprisingly untouched area of the travel startup scene. Enter . With the understanding that cruising is inherently a social experience (see “Titanic,” etc.), the startup is part booking service, part social network. Unlike travel by plane or train — but much like life! — cruises are all about the journey, and people often make good friends aboard the ship. The startup has been bootstrapped for the last eight months and is currently in alpha. It will enter beta by the end of the year, with the aim to launch to the public in 2014. As CEO and co-founder Stephen Chip explained, the search experience for cruises is relatively outdated. “The truth is that cruise line and online travel agencies have built online cruising based on the hotel- and flight-driven models,” Chip said. “The search experience is broken and you really need a Ph.D. if you want to book a cruise online.” Fewer than 15 percent of cruises are currently booked online, Chip said. At the same time, cruise lines are increasingly catering to a younger crowd — both singles and families — meaning there is a big opportunity to make inroads as an online service. Last year we heard about — which was acquired by TripAdvisor in May and integrated into — a startup that also cited low online booking rates and terrible websites as grounds for disrupting the industry. So Cruise.me is aiming to be smarter and more flexible than other cruise-booking sites, many of which are functional but and not optimized for discovery. As far as the social side of things, Cruise.me allows travelers to connect before, during, and after the trip. Users create a cruise profile, giving them the ability to share photos and favorite destinations and see which of their friends knows a particular destination or cruise line. Using data from the user’s searches and Cruise.me social profile, the site can make suggestions for destinations and cruises (and better target advertising). The user can also save favorite destinations and ports along the way, making it easier to construct an itinerary later. By their estimates, the team is projecting that they can reach a minimum of 2 million monthly uniques, with 50,000 new site registrations per month and 2,000 direct payment bookings.
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UK Peer-To-Peer Lending Platform Funding Circle Raises $37M, Targets U.S. SMBs In Merger With Endurance Lending Network
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Ingrid Lunden
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Small businesses have been called the lifeblood of our economy, and today a financial services startup has picked up a significant round of funding to help it circulate better. , a UK-based peer-to-peer lending platform that lets individuals and institutions loan money to small businesses, has picked up a $37 million round of funding. Along with this, it’s announcing plans to take its business to the U.S., its second market, in a merger with San Francisco-based Endurance Lending Network. Its ambition, in the words of co-founder and CEO Samir Desai, is to become the “NYSE for small business lending.” Going into the U.S. will also bring Funding Circle a fresh wave of competition. Today, by virtue of the JOBS Act, there are already a number of platforms for crowdfunding initiatives, with Kickstarter and Indiegogo among the more popular. Now, new, more relaxed crowdfunding rules could see the number of companies increase. Funding Circle’s Series C round was led by new investor Accel Partners, along with participation from Ribbit Capital (another new investor) and Union Square Ventures (also a Kickstarter investor) and Index Ventures. The latter two also clubbed together in a in April 2012. It brings the total raised by Funding Circle to . Samir Desai, the co-founder and CEO, tells me that as part of its merger deal, Endurance will be rebranding as Funding Circle USA. It’s a convenient union: Endurance will give Funding Circle regulatory and country-specific knowledge, while Funding Circle will come with experience-based risk modeling and the capital to take on the U.S. more aggressively. Desai estimates that today there is some £14 million ($23 million) lent each month in the UK, “and we think it’s three to four times as much in the U.S.” “Like Funding Circle, Endurance Lending Network was created to help the millions of small businesses being starved of the money they need to grow,” said Alex Tonelli, the co-founder of the U.S. startup, in a statement. “As small business owners ourselves, we know how acute the need is for a viable alternative to bank loans.” (Tonelli, who co-founded the company with fellow Stanford grad Sam Hodges, says he was spurred to start it when he was turned down for a $75,000 loan to expand an existing fitness center business.) The smaller U.S. company had some $1.5 million from angels, including Barry Silbert, the founder and CEO of Second Market. Since 2009, Funding Circle says that it has facilitated over $250 million in loans in the UK, the only market where it has operated up to now. While it got its start as a platform for ordinary people to lend money, it has over time expanded to include accredited investors, institutional investors, the UK government (which put £20 million/$32 million into its marketplace in ) and even the banks that it was originally set up to shake up and disrupt. That’s because it’s become financially unfeasable for banks to make small loans to small businesses, but they still want to keep those companies as larger customers. “A lot has changed for banks since 2008. High capital requirements have led them to pull away from the low end of the market, and so £50,000 investments” — the average amount lended on Funding Circle — “are too expensive for them to do. But rather losing those businesses as customers altogether it’s good to partner with Funding Circle,” noted Accel investor Michel Kotting. “It means they can still serve customers they can’t serve themselves.” Typical turnaround time for a loan is days from application, compared to 15-20 weeks if the same loan was requested from a bank. In the U.S., the model will be modified somewhat: lending will only be open to accredited investors; unaccredited individuals will not be able to invest. Desai says that this is partly because of regulatory issues (although that can change, per ), but he also points out that this doesn’t mean a small pool of lenders, since there are some 10 million accredited investors in the U.S. today. So far, the business model behind Funding Circle has been an effective one for getting money to businesses that need it to grow. It turns out that there are a lot of small businesses out there that need capital for projects that haven’t been able to raise it elsewhere. “These aren’t the types of small businesses that you read about on TechCrunch,” he told me, saying they are on average 10 year-old companies. “The market size in the UK alone has felt gigantic to us. That’s the reason why we haven’t had to go to other countries. We didn’t have to go to the U.S. but we felt it was a huge opportunity and are quite excited.” Indeed, figures from the Small Business Administration (provided by Funding Circle) estimate that there is a $100 billion funding shortfall in the U.S. economy with small businesses. Desai says that typical loan periods for deals on its platform are around 48 months, but with a range of between six months and five years, with an average interest rate of 9%, small compared to traditional banks. He says that over 70% of the companies that have borrowed through the platform return for more. “We have a lot of marketplace investments, and we see that you need one side working well to get the flywheel going,” says Kotting at Accel. “Here, we have it going on both sides, for the borrowers and the lenders. It’s a situation that is extremely advantageous.” Indeed, on the lending side, it’s proven to be a success as well. Using the risk modeling and credit profiling algorithms created by Funding Circle, investors are able to invest directly in specific companies and projects, or can spread their bets across a range they select or choose Funding Circle to select on their behalf. In all, these investors are typically seeing returns of 6-10% per year. Not rock star returns but a steady and positive rate that comes with the knowledge that you’re doing something to help push along the wider economy in the right direction. Longer term, the plan for Funding Circle will be to expand its platform to cover more lending services for businesses. That will start in part with this latest round of funding in the UK market, where the company will start to offer lending services specifically for asset finance and real estate. As part of the investment, Harry Nelis, a partner at Accel, will be joining the board of Funding Circle. Image:
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Pinterest Raises Massive $225 Million Series E, Valuing The Firm At $3.8 Billion
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Sarah Perez
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According to sources at (which TechCrunch now confirms) Pinterest has closed on a significant new round of financing: $225 million in new funding, with Fidelity Investments in the lead. TechCrunch sources are now confirming the full AllThingsD report. The funding values Pinterest at $3.8 billion, an exceptionally rich valuation for the young company. The round included participation from Andreessen Horowitz, FirstMark Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners and Valiant Capital Management, but not its most . The Japanese e-commerce giant invested $100 million in the service in May 2012. That May 2012 round of funding was said to value Pinterest at $1.5 billion, or less than half of what the company is now worth on paper. That’s an impressive $2.3 billion market cap bump in just over a year. The funding is being used for international efforts. The company has hired country managers recently in Italy, France and England. The $225 million will also be used to purchase “talent” and “technology.” Expect Pinterest to pick up a number of small firms in mostly stock transactions that contain a cash component. The question now is how will Pinterest make good on a $3.8 billion valuation. The answer might be an untraditional advertising model. Charging advertisers for impressions or relatively rare mobile clicks might not earn enough money. But if Pinterest developed an advertising scheme that looked more like a revenue share where it gets paid dollars when its ads lead directly to people buying things, opposed to getting paid cents when people click, it could earn revenue worthy of its valuation. Still, given its high valuation, the company has almost priced itself out of acquisition range. If it can’t IPO, it may struggle to find an open door elsewhere. : Pinterest also confirmed the funding, investors and valuation, with a statement from co-founder and CEO Ben Silbermann to AllThingsD: “We hope to be a service that everyone uses to inspire their future, whether that’s dinner tomorrow night, a vacation next summer, or a dream house someday. This new investment enables us to pursue that goal even more aggressively.” They’ve also released some stats:
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Healthcare.gov Ignores Birthdates, Dramatically Underestimates Prices
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Gregory Ferenstein
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Healthcare.gov’s newest feature is presenting consumers with disturbingly misleading health insurance prices. CBS how the beleaguered federal insurance marketplace website is underestimating the actual cost of insurance by 50% or more, because–and I’m not making this up–it forgets to ask users their birth date. CBS found (and TechCrunch confirmed) that Healthcare.gov estimates that a 48-year-old North Carolina resident ineligible for government subsidies will pay $231/month for a “Silver” plan. But, the website for Blue Cross Blue Shield, the actual insurance provider, reveals a price tag of $360 (few cost estimates are pictured below. healthcare.gov’s cheapest prices are pictured in the top image. Blue Cross’s cheapest price is bottom picture). See, on Healthcare.gov’s new “Shop and Browse” feature, users are only asked whether they are under 49 years of age. Problem is, the calculator appears to be averaging in the cost of consumers who are also in their 20s, some of whom are eligible for steeper discounts. The shocking oversight gets even worse. While Healthcare.gov is exceedingly careful to note that the prices are just estimates, it only says that plans are likely to be cheaper. Healthcare.gov and the state-run websites have been making headline news for ongoing issues with crashes and logins. President Obama chided the press for being impatient, saying that . True, companies have troubled launches, but I’m pretty sure Apple never mislead users into thinking they could get an iPhone for $200, when it was actually $400. We’ve that the government’s calculator can be seriously misleading and is better done by tech startups offering sophisticated calculators which accounts for individuals’ unique needs. However, the Affordable Care Act lets states optionally partner with tech startups; California and New York have chosen to delay partnerships for roughly 2 years. Another day, another government screw-up.
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Inside A Google Ventures Design Sprint
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Leena Rao
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Design isn’t something you would normally associate with a VC firm. But as more firms are adding value-added services, Google Ventures has created an all-star team of designers from Google, Mozilla and more to help portfolio startups create beautiful and easy-to-use products. In particular, Google offers its portfolio startups the opportunity to participate in a Design Sprint, which is an intensive, visual bootcamp around a design problem for portfolio companies. We were able to embed ourselves in one of these recent sprints, in which a few members of the Google Ventures Design team were helping , a startup that connects investors with retail and consumer companies that wouldn’t attract traditional venture funding. The entire process, which would normally take six months for a startup to work through, is compressed to five days (hence the word “sprint”), and starts with the design team spending time with the startup’s product and engineering teams to understand the problem and challenge. [gallery ids="904235,904250,904239,904237,904238,904257,904236"] Day two is spent drawing out and sketching a number of solutions, day three is when the team decides which idea is best for the user, and day four is spent developing a prototype. Lastly, GV’s design team and the startup expose the design to potential users to understand what works with the design and what needs to be changed. As GV Design Partner Jake Knapp explains, this thinking and structure is based on a strategy developed by IDEO and Stanford’s d.school. As we witnessed with CircleUp’s sprint, the entire process is interactive, visual and effective, ending with real prototypes that have been tested by real users. The room where the Design Sprint takes place looks like a real research and testing lab, complete with pictures, Post-its and voting stickers all over the walls, as well as a giant timer clock. With CircleUp, we sat down with Knapp, who previously worked on design for Google Search, Chrome, Ads, Gmail, Apps, Google+, Security, Commerce and the 2011 Google-wide redesign, as well as Braden Kowitz, the first designer to join GV who also led design for Google Buzz, Gmail, Apps for Business and more. CircleUp founder Ryan Caldbeck tells us that GV taught his team how to think differently about design and come to conclusions that could have taken months. And Caldbeck tells us that the company adopted the eventual product that came out of the sprint, adding, “Ninety percent of what we used came from the process we went through with the GV Design Studio. The design sprint helped us completely redesign our core page, which helps investors evaluate private companies on CircleUp.” In total, the Google Ventures Design Studio has done 27 design sprints for portfolio companies so far this year and 28 user research sprints. Last year they did about 30 design sprints and about 30 research sprints. It’s clearly a unique service that most other VC firms do not supply.
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German Chancellor Merkel Less Than Pleased That U.S. Likely Tapped Her Phone, Calls Pres. Obama In Protest
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Alex Wilhelm
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Earlier today the reported that that country’s Chancellor, Angela Merkel, likely had her cell phone tapped by the United States intelligence apparatus. Germany is a key ally of the United States, both economically and politically. According to Spiegel, the Chancellor called United States President Barack Obama in protest over the revelation. The United States National Security Council told Spiegel that the country is not currently monitoring Merkel’s communications, and will not in the future. It did not comment on past actions. That is only a denial of a sort. And, as we have seen previously, whenever the United States agencies tasked with national security and intelligence release a carefully worded statement, is usually more relevant than what they state plainly. It would have been simple for the National Security Council to definitively state it has never monitored the Chancellor’s communications. It chose to not do so. The White House released a statement that mirrored the Security Council’s remarks: “The President assured the Chancellor that the United States is not monitoring, and will not monitor the communications of Chancellor Merkel. But regarding everything up until this morning? Yeah, shh. This is only yet another ding to the United States’s credibility in the European region. After it became known that the United States was calls by the tens of millions monthly, that country wasn’t too pleased. The NSA has been caught . The list goes on. The role of that National Security Agency – the governmental group at the very heart of the current espionage and surveillance dragnet and its ensuing scandal – is to collect and decode foreign intelligence. Recently, it became known that the United States also of now former Mexican President Felipe Calderon while he was office, and the communications of then candidate for the presidency of that country, Peña Nieto. It’s hard to keep your allies close while you systematically spy on them, and then get caught.
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About.me Launches Collections, A Pinterest For People
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Alexia Tsotsis
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have been busy since it spun out of Aol. A spin-out often puts the wind back in your sails, and the team, led by and has not been content to idle. Instead they are iterating on product, today launching Users can now find About.me Collections in the drop-down menu on their home page. Clicking on the link will bring them to two pre-populated Collections — Twitter Friends and Facebook Friends. While it’s kind of nice to see those two social graphs away from their primary platform, the use case for About.me Collections versus Twitter Lists, Facebook Groups, or any other way you can bookmark personal connections, has yet to be proven. Pinterest is full of beautiful photos of things you wish you owned, instead you can “own” them on the Pinterest. Do people want the same functionality for their friends, family and/or Internet acquaintances?
To create a new About.me collection, select on your collections page, and title it whatever you want: “People who always wear blue”; “ “; “People who look like their dogs”; etc.
Then you can either use the About.me search or the +1 button over each page to create a new collection, add people to pre-existing Collections or , or pay them a compliment on their page like “Well written” or “Great photo.” Collections you’ve been added to will now appear in your About.me timeline and, like Pinterest, you can browse other people’s collections for discovery. About.me CEO Tony Conrad tells me that he built the feature because About.me users demanded it and argues that there’s a compelling call for it. “The goal of Collections is to make it easy to both discover new people (i.e. if you check out my Collections, you’ll discover Journalists, Artists, Athletes, etc.), as well as bookmark people and categorize them for future reference,” he says, “Early results from our beta test were amazing.” Conrad also tells me that he’s happy with the metrics since the company left . Product developments like the company’s iOS 7 app and the About.me Dashboard have driven engagement, according to Conrad. The site is about to reach over 100 million profile views this month versus 4 million pre-spin out — with mobile users averaging 25+ profile views a second. Registered users have grown to 4.1 million, up from 1.8 million last February. Around 41% of users (around 1.7 million) logged in this past month. He wouldn’t share DAUs. About.me has raised $5.7 million, led by True Ventures (where Conrad is a partner) and followed by SoftTech VC, Google Ventures, CrunchFund (yes, CrunchFund, ) and others. After , it is for Conrad, his partner Freitas and the About.me team.
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Apple Crosses Its Hardware Rubicon
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Matthew Panzarino
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According to legend, a vision delivered by the gods caused Julius Caesar to commit the ultimate act of insurrection by crossing the Rubicon. Splashing through this minor river dividing Caesar’s province from Italy proper committed him to an inevitable armed conflict with the Roman Senate. Though Apple hasn’t set about conquering any empires, it has crossed its own Rubicon in one way: It has decided to offer its operating system OS X as a free download for all users and its iLife and iWork suites as free downloads with the purchase of a new iOS or Mac device. Thus, it has erased the boundaries between its hardware and software offerings for the first time in a decade. Apple has offered its operating system free before. Until OS 9, updates were offered for its Macintosh computers as a matter of course. Patches fixed bugs and added features free of cost. When it shipped OS X for the first time, that all changed. Since then it has only offered one free update as a concession to customers who felt OS X 10.0 came out a bit half-baked with regard to the performance of its new Aqua interface. But that’s only sort of accurate. Apple actually began offering a free version of OS X in 2007, when it began selling the iPhone. “iPhone runs OS X! Why would we want to run such a sophisticated OS on a mobile device? It’s got everything we need,” said Apple CEO Steve Jobs at the time. “It let us create desktop class applications and networking, not the crippled stuff you find on most phones, these are real desktop applications.” Specifically, the original iPhone ran an operating system internally called “ .” Now, Apple has unified its OS pricing strategy and offers free OS updates on both iOS and Mac hardware. In many ways, this is a culmination of a path that Apple has been trundling down since it first began writing operating system software for its own hardware. I’ve joked before that Apple had a hardware + software epiphany in the 70s and that it took other companies like Microsoft decades to come to the same conclusion. That’s a simplification because Microsoft has actually been building hardware for a long time. The big difference is the level of commitment Apple gave to integrating its software with hardware, and the bet that it made in the 70s and 80s that paid off in spades when the mobile era rolled around. Microsoft’s licensing method worked incredibly well for it for many years, and it deserves massive credit for making its Office and Windows offerings absolutely indispensable tools for the vast majority of business and personal users of computers for over two decades. But, and there’s always a but, this strategy has taken a big hit in recent years, as our main computers have become the small screens in our pockets. Licensing an operating system for money went out of style overnight as Apple began offering one single product that combined hardware and software — and Google followed suit as best it could by offering Android to hardware partners for free. Microsoft underestimated the massive importance that an integrated software and hardware strategy would take on when our primary computers became the ones in our pockets. Mobile devices have almost no tolerance for poor judgement when it comes to design or implementation. Users are less tolerant of touch latency, poor design decisions and other foibles, even if they can’t articulate it. The stakes are higher now and the gap that Google shot in the early days of this mobile age has closed. Android skated by as the only viable alternative early on, and Microsoft arguably produced a more polished and unique first product with Windows Phone. But it was very late, all things considered, and it’s been playing catch-up ever since. Now, Apple has reset the expectation of millions of users with regards to paying for core operating system and productivity software. Both Google and Apple are now offering a holistic product with “everything you need to get started.” Meanwhile, Microsoft still makes the majority of its income on Office and Windows licensing. To give it credit where it’s due, the Surface program was begun because Microsoft saw this coming. And the hundreds of millions of people who still rely on Windows and Office aren’t going to switch to Mac overnight just because the software is free. There’s an enormous amount of momentum in Microsoft’s model. But Microsoft’s opposition has all but codified its strategies in one degree of firmness or another. Amazon co-opted Android and now makes Kindle tablet devices with Fire OS and will soon release a phone. Google purchased Motorola as a hedge against Samsung moving to do the same with its enormous Android market share. And Apple has eliminated the last remaining division between its software and hardware products: price. Surface has now become an incredibly important effort for Microsoft, and its licensing business will now be under increased pressure from all sides. As Caesar was reported to have said, “the die has been cast” and the next few years will determine whether it can make the transition as its competitors have.
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Microsoft Confirms That The Desktop Start Screen Tile Is No Longer The Default In Windows RT 8.1
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Alex Wilhelm
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Microsoft today confirmed with TechCrunch that it has made the desktop Start Screen tile non-default in Windows RT 8.1. You can return the tile to the Start Screen in any size if you wish. It also exists in the “all app view” that is new to Windows 8.1, if you don’t want it on your Start Screen at all. Yesterday I noted that in Windows RT. This matters, as it indicates that Microsoft may be moving to an all Metro future for Windows RT. Currently, the only applications you can run in desktop mode in Windows RT (any version) are Office and Internet Explorer. Internet Explorer already has a Metro version, and Office apps are in the process of being Metro-fied. So, quickly, Microsoft will have built Metro versions of all apps that were previously desktop-dependent. This leaves the desktop with all but no in Windows RT. In fact, aside from deep-settings work and Task Manager, it really would have essentially no use-case. So Windows RT, starting with Windows RT 8.1, is moving away from having a bicameral Windows experience it seems, and is instead rapidly changing its form to that of a Metro-only operating system. We’re still a ways off from that, but I think the direction is plain. Will Microsoft fully kill desktop in Windows RT? That I doubt. But it can be buried so deeply as to be, for all real purposes, over. Here’s a Microsoft spokesperson explaining the company’s reason for the change the standard Start Screen: “The only desktop apps without modern versions which run on RT are the Office apps: Outlook, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. In order to streamline access to them, we pinned those apps directly to the first page of Start. Clicking any of these takes you directly to that Desktop app. You can also bring up the switch list from the left edge if you have a Desktop app open and click Desktop to get back to the Desktop. If you want a Desktop tile (ala Windows RT 8.0), you can go to All Apps, and the Desktop tile is in the list of apps there. Simply right-click, or press-and-hold (with touch), and you can pin it to the main Start screen and make it as large as you want.” For the sake of doing my job, I did go through the steps, and what Microsoft describes does work. Will consumers give a damn that the desktop is exiting stage Windows RT? This is what I call the Microsoft Defense. It goes something like this: “Yeah, Alex, but you aren’t a normal consumer. They really won’t mind or notice at all! We have telemetry data to back this up!” Maybe, but I think that consumers have very, very deep connections to the vanilla desktop experience of Windows. For many, it’s the only computing environment that they know. It will take quite a bit of time in Metro to get them mentally crossed over, I’d wager. Perhaps that is why Microsoft is de-emphasizing the desktop by degrees. For now, all you need to know is that if you buy a Surface 2, expect to add back your damn desktop tile.
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Yahoo Acquires Startup LookFlow To Work On Flickr And ‘Deep Learning’
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Anthony Ha
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LookFlow, a startup that describes itself as “an entirely new way to explore images you love,” just announced that it has been acquired by Yahoo and will be joining the Flickr team. The company , “Fret not, LookFlow fans. Keep an eye out for our product in future versions of Flickr — with many more wonderful photos and all that Flickr awesomeness!” It also says it will be helping Yahoo to form a new “deep learning group.” When I emailed Yahoo for confirmation, a company spokesperson told me, “We have acquired LookFlow, an enhanced image recognition company,” and they pointed me to the aforementioned LookFlow homepage. I wasn’t able to find much information about LookFlow online, but according to the LinkedIn profiles of its co-founders and , the company was founded back in 2009. Osindero wrote, “Our approach integrates recent developments from artificial intelligence, information visualization, and interface design.” The acquisition message also thanks “friends of LookFlow” including Michael Dearing, John Lilly, Reid Hoffman, Alex Rampell, Josh McFarland, Max Ventilla, and Jeff Hammerbacher — I’m guessing at least a few of them invested in the company. (Hammerbacher is listed as an investor on .) Yahoo has been famously acquisitive since Marissa Mayer took over as CEO last year. The company reported that in the last quarter. And back in August, it announced that it was , also for Flickr. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
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Hulu Finally Brings Free Videos To Mobile – But It’s Just Clips, And Only Works In The Browser (For Now?)
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Sarah Perez
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Days after , Fox Networks Group president Mike Hopkins, Hulu has finally free video content for mobile users. But don’t get too excited – it’s just clips, not full-length episodes. And they’re only available for now in the mobile browser, not within the Hulu Plus mobile application. According to a blog post penned by Senior Product Manager Karan Nischol, mobile users who visit Hulu.com from their device’s web browser will now be taken to a page where Hulu’s editorial team has curated a collection of recent clips from popular shows on the service. The option to view the clips is one of two on Hulu.com’s updated landing page – the other still directs users to download the Hulu Plus app for access to the full episodes instead. If you choose to “instantly watch top clips,” however, you’re then taken to the “Trending Now” page, where there are currently clips from shows like Jimmy Kimmel, Jay Leno, SNL, The Colbert Report, The Daily Show, The Voice, Dancing with the Stars, The View, WSJ Live, Grimm, Family Guy, and several others. You can also dig into clips by genre by selecting a category option from the menu at the top. Here, you can choose to navigate to Trailers, Comedy, Celebrity, News, or Latino sections instead, and Hulu says that more channels are coming in the future. In addition, there’s another option to upgrade to the full “Hulu Plus” experience from this menu. As you view the clips, you can choose to share them on Facebook, Twitter and via email using small sharing buttons at the bottom. The way the mobile site is designed is very app-like – it even uses that standard left-side navigation (aka “ ” navigation, named for the three stacked lines you tap to reveal the menu, which could resemble a sandwich of sorts). You could easily imagine this interface working in the Hulu Plus app, if the company decided to go the freemium route with clips for logged-out or free users, and full episodes for those who pay. Whether or not Hulu does so, it’s still a notable change for the company to provide any of its content to mobile users, where so much video viewing today now takes place. We’ve reached out to Hulu with some other questions about this feature, including the number of clips and networks available, as well as other questions regarding its future plans, but have yet to hear back. We’ll update the post with those answers, when or if provided. The mobile web experience soft-launched earlier this summer for testing purposes, but prior to that, users had only been pointed to a landing page where they could sign up for and download the Hulu Plus app. Today, the company detects mobile users coming form iPhone, iPad, iPod, Android, Kindle and Nook. “Tens of thousands” of clips are being made available at launch, from networks including ABC, Fox, NBC, NBC Sports, Bravo, The USA Network and Oxygen. The company has no current plans to offer any full-length content on mobile outside of its premium Hulu Plus application.
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LinkedIn Launches Intro That Embeds Rapportive Info Into The iOS Mail App, Plus An iPad Redesign
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Josh Constine
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LinkedIn’s Jeff Weiner says the barrier to his vision is scale, so it’s beefing up its mobile experience with , an integration adding LinkedIn and Rapportive info to the iOS Mail app, and a . Intro Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Aol Mail, iCloud, and Google Apps, and inserting LinkedIn profile photos and job titles below the To/From section of emails in Apple’s Mail app. Today’s news comes beside . Thirty-eight percent of LinkedIn’s unique visits now come from mobile, up from 8 percent in Q1 2011. LinkedIn also launched a , the news-reading app it . Intro is available to everyone starting today and you can to get access. The app is based on the idea of in February 2012. Rapportive is a desktop app that provides a sidebar of info on who you’re emailing with inside your Gmail or Google Apps mail client. Intro brings this same info to the iOS mail app. You’ll instantly see a photo, job title, and company in a tiny Intro panel inserted into your emails. Clicking it reveals a person’s full LinkedIn bio including mutual connections, previous jobs, college, current city, links to web presences like their blog, and a LinkedIn button to connect with them on the professional network. You can see the side by side comparison of iOS Mail with and without Intro below. LinkedIn hopes this context will make you a more informed emailer. Pitching a client? Seeing they went to school at University Of Michigan could help you make right “Go blue!” small talk that greases the wheels. And rather than Google search someone you’ve never heard of that just emailed you, you can get some background info on them without ever leaving your Mail app. Intro is similar to , which runs as its own email client but with personal info about the people you email with pulled in. Intro works in a clever way. It didn’t require any partnership with Apple. Instead it uses the publicly available API for “Configuration Profiles”. You give Intro your email address and password, it sets up the Configuration Profile, and the content appears in iOS Mail. You can turn it off in your phone’s settings or in the Intro app that appears on your home screen. But you won’t turn it off. My initial impression is that Intro is brilliant. It squeezes a ton of value into a tiny space that reveals even more with a tap. Once you install it, you’ll automatically become a daily LinkedIn “user” even if you never visit the professional network itself. The new comes out today, and is built to be tablet-specific, not just a website scrammed into a medium-sized screen. It has a personalized navigation carousel at the top and lets you search for companies and jobs, not just people. LinkedIn for iPad also now has a beautiful reading experience for LinkedIn Influencer content. The program publishes blog posts of professional tips from 400 industry-leading executives. Now these posts appear in their own clean reading screen. Since LinkedIn monetizes in other ways, it doesn’t need to show ads on these blog posts like most thing you read on the web, so they look great on iPad. Photos expand to full-screen and videos play in-line. Together, the new mobile experiences should expand LinkedIn’s footprint across more small screens. If the strategy works, LinkedIn could become more of a daily habit than an occasionally-used utility. Since it’s been focusing more of its monetization efforts on advertising opposed to recruiting, getting consistent eyeballs is crucial to LinkedIn’s business, and it’s plans to create an “economic graph”.
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Pulse Will Become A One-Stop Content Shop For LinkedIn, Using LinkedIn Profile Logins For Curated Content
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Ingrid Lunden
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, the social network for the working world now with over 238 million members globally, is presenting an update on its mobile strategy today. As part of that, its parted the curtain a bit to show us how its planning to integrate one of its recent acquisitions, Pulse. , the news aggregation and news reading app, will become the “content brand” for LinkedIn, according to Ankit Gupta, Pulse’s co-founder. With the new Pulse app, users will be give the ability for people to log in with their LinkedIn identities to receive recommended stories, and it will start to incorporate content from influencers. The idea is that Pulse will be not just a place to read news, but a place for people to read news tailored to their professional lives. “We will be bringing better content experiences to empower users throughout their day and their careers,” he said. The app will be released later this year, Gupta said. Pulse, a Flipboard competitor, was acquired by LinkedIn for some $90 million in of this year. Pulse has remained operational and LinkedIn has up to now not commented on how it planned to use the service. This effectively keeps the service standalone, but tethers it much more closely to LinkedIn. The concept of a single sign-on and a user’s identity that will be used outside of LinkedIn’s own platform is an interesting one: it’s also something that LinkedIn’s acquisition of Rapportive is exploring with its new app for iPhone. Read more on that . LinkedIn today also announced a new a that it says underscores its new approach to mobile with an updated feed with more visual images and video, as well incorporating its rebuilt search engine, introduced earlier this year on the desktop. The company said that , and next year LinkedIn’s CEO Jeff Weiner projects that LinkedIn will cross its “mobile moment,” where mobile traffic will surpass that of desktop traffic. The evolution of Pulse, as well as the LinkedIn mobile experience in general, is part of the company’s push for more personalization. There is, after all, no connected device today that is as constant a companion as your mobile phone. Before today, other mobile moves at the company included improved search, more features in its mobile apps — including the ability to upload and edit resumes and , and a separate app to manage . That is in addition to updates to the desktop experience that have inlcuded a better home page, LinkedIn Today, to include . And LinkedIn’s ambition to position itself as the repository for people’s “professional graph” has led it into other areas, too. One of these has been to target . The effort started in August and now has some 1,500 universities on board, Weiner said. The ambition is big, but Weiner — possibly aware of some of the “creepy” reputation it has, giving users insight into who has viewed their profiles and so on — is perhaps more Google and less Facebook when he describes it. “We’d like there to be a professional profile for every one of the 3 billion-plus professional people in the world today,” said Weiner, “and then we’d like to step away.” It’s something that reminded me of how Google has described its approach to search in the past. LinkedIn sees mobile as key to how it can do that. “How is mobile allowing us to reinvent LinkedIn?” Weiner asked today. “The expectations of our users today is that those applications are going to continue to evolve… We can’t just take the desktop experience and port it over to mobile.” This includes taking into account screen size as well as user expectations and the need for users to find information faster. It hasn’t always been smooth for the company, but it is increasingly trying to up its game lest Facebook decide to become more focused on targeting people in the working world and therefore stealing LinkedIn’s thunder. During the presentation today Joff Redfern, VP of mobile products, admitted some of what LinkedIn learned along the way. When it launched its first iPhone app in 2010, it thought it had everything sewn up, he said. “Ten months later we had to completely rewrite it.” And then it had to do it again, and again. Its efforts have included training existing staff, and hiring new people, to think and act mobile-first. “The magic of mobile is keeping simple simple. I have a five-second rule,” noted Kiran Prasad, Senior Director, Mobile Engineering. He noted that there is no way of putting the 500-odd distinct pages that LinkedIn offers on desktop into its mobile app. It’s a step away from trying to achieve parity in a single site, and a move towards a multiple-app strategy.
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Keen IO Raises $2.35M For Its Custom Analytics Platform
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Anthony Ha
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There are lots of analytics services out there, but what if they don’t give you the exact information that you’re looking for? Well, you could build your own system from the ground up — or you could use , a startup that recently raised $2.35 million in new funding. The company describes itself as “the API for custom analytics.” Basically, it offers tools via an API that developers can use to build their own analytics products. Keen IO can supposedly help customers gather data from any source, store it, and visualize it in any way that they want. Co-founder and CEO Kyle Wild said he’s not trying to compete with products like Google Analytics. (In fact, Wild said was as a “developer success” consultant with Google Analytics.) “You can’t rely on out-of-the-box parts for everything,” Wild said. “One of my favorite examples is a smartwatch. No one’s ever going to make an out-of-the-box smartwatch analytics product. It’s just too fragmented.” He added that some Keen IO customers sign-up when they’re thinking about building their own analytics system and they realize it’s “faster to build it on us, and more future proof and robust and cheaper, at least in the beginning.” Others, meanwhile, have already built their own system: “They come to us when it starts to break.” To illustrate what Keen IO can do, Wild said that building a system for tracking conversion funnels is difficult (“funnels are hard”), but using the API, a developer could create a funnel with some simple code. (You can see code samples of Keen IO implementation on .) It customers can also upload historical data, access new data in real-time, and white label the service for their own customers. Wild also emphasized that Keen IO can scale to large amounts of data, and that the company aims to be transparent about the different technology it uses — “a lot of the meat,” he said, comes from , an open source system for real-time computation. Keen IO launched a beta version last year, and it started charging customers in April. The company is already “approaching profitability pretty rapidly,” Wild said. The funding, which Wild described as an additional seed round in seed funding), was led by Amplify Partners and Rincon Venture Partners. Pelion Venture Partners also invested, as did previous backers 500 Startups, XG Ventures, Jason Seats, and Loren Siebert. “Keen IO has all of the attributes we look for in a company: a passionate, expert founding team; a sound scalable business model; big market tailwinds; and a compelling customer value proposition,” said Rincon’s Jim Andelman in an emailed statement. “As a testament to market receptivity, we introduced the company during our evaluation to four prospective customers in SaaS and Ad-tech, and every single one of them plans to use the service.”
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Anthony Ha
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YouTube Network Maker Studios Introduces Its Platform For Managing Videos And Engaging With Fans
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Ryan Lawler
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Over the past several years, has turned its talent-focused media haven for YouTube stars into a huge business, attracting tens of thousands of channels to its network, which in turn have attracted hundreds of millions of subscribers and billions of views per month. One thing Maker doesn’t usually talk about is the technology that’s running things behind the scenes. Well, that’s changed, as the company is finally taking the wraps off its technology platform, called Maker Max, allowing creators to better manage their video libraries and engage with viewers. Adding a technology to its network is a relatively new phenomenon for Maker, which had virtually no engineering staff to speak of just two years ago. Until then, it was mostly focused on helping its creators build their audiences through more traditional means — through collaboration and by aiding them in creating higher-quality productions. But it became obvious that the company could do a lot more, so it brought on CTO Ryan Lissack in early 2012 to begin building out the framework for what would eventually become Maker Max. Along the way, Maker has hired about 45 personnel as part of its tech team, and that number continues to grow. So what did it actually build? Maker Max is designed to be a one-stop shop for all the information Maker creators might need to grow their audiences. It provides a dashboard with analytics to show all their views, subscribers, revenue, and social engagement that has happened around their videos. Connect your YouTube channels, as well as your Facebook page and Twitter account, for instance, and you can instantly see all of the mentions on social networks right alongside your views. For creators, doing this provides some actionable insights into how they can better engage with fans. The dashboard also has a place for those in the Maker network to chat with each other in forums — which allows them to share best practices and encourages collaboration between them. There’s also a support system built in to provide answers to common questions and connect creators with Maker’s support specialists. Finally, there’s a referral program built in, through which creators can suggest other talent to join the Maker network. “We have access to an enormous amount of data, and we spend a lot of time looking at data in a variety of ways,” Lissack told me. The goal is to use that data as a sort of business intelligence and apply it to a content creation paradigm that has in the past been more focused on talent. Of course, Maker isn’t alone in touting its backend management platform. Each of the multichannel networks is trying to differentiate itself, either through content-specific vertical focus or through technology that it can offer to maximize viewership and increase engagement with viewers and subscribers. The competitor that most often talks about its technology is probably Fullscreen, which has its own tools for video management, collaboration and engaging with fans. It’s called the and was formally announced over the summer. Oh hey check out this video I did with Maker Studios over the summer:
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LinkedIn Hits 38% Of Unique Visits From Mobile, Up From 8% In Q1 2011
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Josh Constine
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is making the shift to mobile. It now sees of unique visits from mobile, which is up from 8 percent in the first quarter of 2011, and users who access via mobile are 2.5x as active as desktop-only users. At an event in San Francisco this morning, CEO Jeff Weiner said LinkedIn will release a slew of new mobile apps. include an that integrates your LinkedIn info, an iPad redesign, but most excitingly, a new experience called Intro. It leans on LinkedIn’s acquisition Rapportive to integrate professional info from LinkedIn profiles directly into you Apple Mail app on your iPhone or iPad. Intro can show the LinkedIn profile photo, company, and job title of the people who you email with, and let you connect with them on LinkedIn. Weiner expects LinkedIn to have its “mobile moment” with more than 50 percent of visits from mobile next year. Some countries have already had that moment. Singapore is over 50 percent, and Australia is fast approaching at 45 percent. For reference, YouTube announced that 40 percent of usage now comes from mobile, while Twitter sees 70 percent of ad revenue from mobile and Facebook sees 41 percent of ad revenue from mobile. It’s important to note that LinkedIn isn’t saying 38 percent of traffic is from mobile, as web users may spend more time per session browsing its professional graph. The company now has 3 million businesses and over a quarter-billion professionals with LinkedIn profiles. Though its profiles for schools and universities only launched six weeks ago, there are now 1,500 education outlet profiles on LinkedIn. Those are just the first steps. “Our vision today is to develop the world’s first economic graph…[which will] map the global economy and and every economic opportunity in the world, either part-time or full-time,” Weiner says. LinkedIn doesn’t just want to know where you’ve worked. It wants to know what’s the next job opening you’ll fill.
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