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TechCrunch Has Redesigned, Again
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Alexia Tsotsis
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, we were at a dinner, and when one of us mentioned that we were an editor at TechCrunch, the guy across the table from us chimed in, without introducing himself, with a well-worn complaint: “Why does your site load so slow? It’s unreadable on the tablet.” It’s not like we’re oblivious to this. We’re not just TechCrunch writers and editors, we’re also, first and foremost, TechCrunch readers. It’s a pain point for us that our current site has the distinct honor of being among the slowest at AOL. AOL is, well, pretty slow. We took the scads of this type of anecdotal, and later much more formal, feedback into account when prioritizing our latest design, aiming for simplicity and optimal page load first and foremost. While there is definitely room for creativity and pizzazz! when presenting the news, if a news site isn’t immediately conveying needed information to you as fast as possible, it has failed. See: for a great example of this. Our new website is speedy, clocking in at an initial five seconds of desktop page load time versus 15 seconds, with each subsequent load taking about three seconds in user tests. Our mobile site is now a first-class citizen, displaying features just as robust as our desktop, including all 20 home page headlines, our CrunchBase islands and event calendar. Its site-load time is around 10 seconds but will continue to improve after launch, as we continue to optimize for speed. The new site is clean and fast, and now our logo is free of clutter, too, with the gaudy pixelation being removed entirely. We’ve decided to keep the outline of the new logo, however, because as our first project manager Dave Feldman explained during our , “It’s the first and only design Heather, Mike and I looked at and said . It screams TechCrunch.” None of the logo changes we looked at “screamed” anything, so we’re going to go with what Arrington liked. In addition, font snobs among you may have noticed that we’ve changed the font for headlines and body text to Alright Sans and Open Sans, respectively. Nothing, not even 24/7 Helvetica, will appease you guys. Though it’s not exactly haute couture, we’ve revamped our feature article template to improve article layout, with larger images and video playback. Overall TechCrunch.com is now cleaner, more readable, and less cluttered, without sacrificing our competitive advantage: scrappiness. We have also made it easier to follow and connect with our individual star writers. From a 27-inch monitor to an iPhone screen, the new site adjusts to all screen sizes due to a single codebase for web and mobile. Users of extra-large screens will notice extra features on the sides while some of these bonuses are stripped away on smaller screens. Within individual posts, there is strong focus on recirculation, because we want users to easily find our invaluable, evergreen content on TC. Like this from 2006. Speaking of invaluable, our massive startup database, which , is now much more prominently featured. From article pages to the front page, CrunchBase is now deeply integrated into TechCrunch — as it should be. You’ll now occasionally be seeing the CrunchBase island in the main article river, in addition to stacked CB cards in article templates. In order to improve navigation and the logical organization of our site, our Event, TCTV hub and announcement bar will now look the same, whether you’re on mobile or desktop web. Channels and trending topics can now be found under News. With a major TechCrunch event nearly every month, the new site more prominently features upcoming, past and current events; we have elevated and TCTV to the announcement bar to
make them easier to find. TechCrunch has 11 regular TCTV shows along with countless interview, hands-on, and review videos. Find all of them in the new . As you may have noticed, like with this very post, we have a new, image-focused article template for Feature and Long Form articles. Continuing on the image-heavy bent, we can now support slideshows, which is something we’ve been wanting for a while. Or at least some of us have. Our design team through this seven-month-long process has been : Josh Clark guided the project and oversaw the user experience design; Brad Frost led markup and responsive design; Jennifer Brook led information architecture and interaction design; Dan Mall led visual design; and Jonathan Stark led JavaScript development. The product team included us, Ned Desmond, Christine Ying, Alex Khadiwala, Nicolas Vincent, Matt Burns, Jon Orlin, Bryce Durbin, Sean Nakamura and Stephanie Unger from the TechCrunch side, and Nirmala Lourdusamy, Kaushik Jadav from AOL. Cass Chin (AOL Tech/gdgt) and the APAC team (Chandrasekhara Raju, Binay Jojo, Vishwanath Kulkarni) were responsible for QA from the AOL side. We also would like to give a special shout out to developers, John Bloch, Eric Mann and Luke Gedeon, who were invaluable partners with us on the project. Finally, we want to thank the , especially Nick Daugherty, Steph Yiu, Mo Jangda, and Paul Maiorana, for their countless hours of code review, planning, testing, and executing the release. As you may know, we’re big fans of redesigning: We’ve done it five times. You can see some of the before pics and .
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Square Cash Goes Head To Head With Venmo And Google Wallet To Allow Anyone To Send Money Via Email
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Leena Rao
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Square today is formally launching , a product that allows anyone to send money to a contact via email. Square initially soft-launched the product to a limited number of users earlier this year but is opening the service more broadly to users with a few tweaks to the initial payments system. As Square’s director of products Brian Grassadonia explains, this launch aligns with the company’s goal of reducing friction around payments and making commerce simpler. Whereas Square’s core products, including its iPad register and swiper, make payments easy for merchants, this makes sending cash to anyone as simple as sending an email. Here’s how it works. The sender simply emails the person they want to send the money to with the amount of money either in the subject or body of the email and CC’s cash@square.com. If the sender has not already added his or her debit card, then Square will instruct the sender to register a debit card on a web page with just the card number, billing ZIP code and the expiration date. The recipient will immediately get another email from Square telling them that they have received money from the sender with a link to add the recipient’s debit card, billing ZIP and expiration date. Once they type in their debit card information, this begins the transfer, which takes one to two business days. We’re told that the recipient has up to 14 days to enter the debit card and receive the money, and the recipient will get reminders every other day via email. Square is also releasing native apps for Android and iOS that incorporate email, as well. When you open the Square Cash app on your phone, you’ll be prompted with a number pad, in which you type in the amount of money you want to send. Once you do this, the app will bring up an email from the dedicated email client on the phone. The email will be pre-filled with the amount the sender entered, and they can type anything in the body of the email, as well as input the email of the person they want to send money to. The user experience from then onwards is similar to how you receive/send payments via a traditional email client on the web. The app, Grassadonia adds, are for users who want to keep Square Cash at top of mind. “We want this to be an extension of your offline world, so that no matter where you are, you can send money to anyone,” Grassadonia says.
As for fees, Square says there aren’t any associated with Square Cash. This actually is a change from the initial version of the service, which charged senders $0.50 per transaction. There are, of course, a number of competitors in the space. First, Venmo offers a similar peer-to-peer payments system that allows you to pay your contacts and Facebook friends from within apps. Google is also rolling out Gmail integration with Google Wallet that would essentially allow users to perform the same functions as Square Cash. But Grassadonia says that Square Cash differs from some of the other offerings out there because you don’t have to be an account holder, and the service only requires you to enter your debit card number. In addition, Square Cash is email-client-agnostic so you can send from any email client. As for whether Square will add the ability for integration with Facebook, we’re told that there are no plans for social integrations as the company wants to keep Square Cash lightweight. It’s not surprising that Square is betting on P2P payments with Square Cash. There are a considerable amount of opportunities to incorporate P2P payments into apps and scale across a number of markets. We heard that Venmo, which was just acquired by PayPal via the payments giant purchase of the Braintree for was particularly attractive for eBay and PayPal. And PayPal CEO David Marcus to build out the service to a global platform.
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Apple Solicits Developers For OS X Mavericks-Ready Apps, Signaling Imminent Release
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Matthew Panzarino
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Apple sent a message on its (public) today encouraging developers to submit apps that are fully compatible with its upcoming operating system OS X Mavericks. If the fact that Mavericks went GM (Gold Master) recently isn’t enough for you, we’re hearing that it is indeed “ready” for release, hence the encouragement on Apple’s part. The logical time to announce availability would be around Apple’s October 22 event, for which invites were sent out this morning. Though an announcement could be made there, it seems likely that at least a small gap would present between then and public availability. Apple announced OS X Mountain Lion as a part of its quarterly earnings release last year and the OS was available on the following day via the Mac App Store. If the announcement about Mavericks availability isn’t made during Apple’s event at Yerba Buena center in San Francisco, then the earnings report on October 28 could be another option. But our bet is on the event itself. Apple’s invitation to developers reads as follows: Make sure your app takes advantage of the great new features in OS X Mavericks when the world’s most advanced desktop operating system becomes available to millions of customers later this fall. Download OS X Mavericks GM seed and Xcode 5.0.1 GM seed, now available on the Mac Dev Center. Build your apps with these latest seeds, then test and submit them to the Mac App Store. Generally, Apple does not start allowing developers to submit apps that are compatible with new versions of its operating systems until they’re ready to ship. We’ll be at the event next week bringing you the news as it breaks, so stay tuned. Image: / Flickr CC
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Twitter User Growth Decelerating: +6% In Q3 To 231.7 Million Now Vs +10% In Q1
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Josh Constine
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Twitter’s percent user growth is slowing. In a new to its IPO filing, Twitter notes it hit 231.7 million monthly users by the end of Q3 2013, up 6.13% from 218.3 million at the end of Q2. If you look back, you’ll see Twitter had 6.86% growth in Q2, 10.27% in Q1, and 10.77% in Q4 2012. The trajectory could indicate trouble signing up new users or retaining older ones. Twitter’s growth didn’t slow nearly as much in Q3 as it did in Q2, indicating some of Twitter’s efforts to break into the mainstream via television and embeds on websites are helping. Tweets shown outside of Twitter’s own properties received 48 billion online impressions in Q3 2013, an impressive increase over the 30 billion impressions in Q2. Twitter’s US user count also had a big jump of 7.11% in Q3 from 49.2 million to 52.7 million. That far outpaces the Q2 growth from roughly 48 million to 49.2 million users Still, its year over year growth is decelerating as well. Monthly active user growth was 38.74% from the end of Q3 2012 to the end of Q3 2013, 44.37% from Q2 to Q2, and 47.82% from Q1 to Q1. As I wrote earlier this month, for its decelerating expansion in user count. As Twitter users follow more accounts, they may lose track of their favorites unless they use the relatively buried Lists feature. That may decrease their engagement, and discourage them from following more people. This in turn makes it harder for new users to gain an audience, feel like they’re being heard, and stick with Twitter. One promising sign for the IPO is that Twitter’s percentage of advertising revenue coming from mobile has hit 70%, up from 65% at the end of Q2. As it’s widely believed that much of social networking usage will shift from the desktop to mobile, proving it can earn money on the small screen is critical to bolstering investor confidence in the long-term health of Twitter’s business as it .
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TC Cribs: The Lights, Cameras, And Classrooms At CreativeLIVE’s San Francisco HQ
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Colleen Taylor
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So this time around, Cribs just turned our cameras on the people who turn their cameras onto others. So meta! It was very fun to see behind the scenes of a truly modern kind of video studio. Check out the video embedded above to see CreativeLIVE’s very charismatic co-founder show us through the company’s massive San Francisco office, where plants grow on walls, PBR-fueled afternoon rooftop meetings abound, and teachers become worldwide video stars.
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Using 3D Modeling, Threadmason Aims To Be A Solution For Badly Fitting T-Shirts
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Eliza Brooke
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Today in t-shirt startups, a New York operation called has launched a Kickstarter to use 3D modeling to create basic shirts that fit guys really, really ridiculously well. If Bonobos got its business of the ground by focusing on fit, Threadmason is aiming to one-up that standard by offering their wares in 24 different sizes, ensuring that at least one of them makes you look like Ryan Gosling on an off day. After the user manually inputs his height, weight, and waist size, Threadmason generates a 3D avatar to show how different sizes will fit. It looks like a heat map, with different colors marking tight and loose spots. The site serves up a recommended size, but users can click through other sizes to see how the fit changes. “If a guy has a smaller waist but is heavier, that means the weight is in the upper part of his body,” co-founder Vincent Ko said. “If he’s average weight but has a wide waist, he has big hips.” Threadmason is one of a growing number of startups trying to crack the fit equation (or, rather, algorithm). , another startup that launched a Kickstarter this summer, used pre-existing body scan data to generate better sizes for guys without requiring them to input their own measurements. Last April, the London-based raised $7.2 million to expand the presence of its virtual fitting room technology throughout Europe and into the US. , meanwhile, helps people figure out the best fit for them on third-party retailers’ sites. The plus size women’s marketplace asks users to take a photo from the front and side in order to generate dozens of data points in order to make recommendations on clothing styles. Meanwhile, the traveling suiting startup implemented a 3D body scanner in a refurbished ice cream truck to take men’s measurements on the spot. Threadmason’s three-measurement formula is certainly less specific than either of those last two, but t-shirts are a relatively forgiving medium and 24 options provides a lot of room to get it right. Ko and his co-founder Jake Huston acknowledged that stocking 24 different sizes is an inventory risk, so the team is planning on using their Kickstarter campaign as a way to accumulate data on the most popular sizes, which will feed their core supply. The price point hits at about $35, putting it on par with retailers like Bonobos and Banana Republic. Yes, that’s more than a lot of guys would otherwise spend on a t-shirt, but it’s 100% organic cotton! Made in America! Look, some people will definitely pay for this. I’d probably encourage my brother to, since he’s 6’3″, lanky, and has yet to find a shirt that’s not too baggy or too short. To an extent, every clothing startup has to sell itself on an improvement in some dimension, be it customization, ease of purchase, better quality, better price, or fit. When it comes to body scanning and avatar creation, it still remains to be seen what will become a practical, non-kitschy part of the shopping experience, and how that might be translated into a more mainstream retail setting.. [kickstarter url=http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1399375262/threadmasontm-the-perfect-fitting-t-shirt width=661]
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Twitter Doubles Its Q3 Revenue, But Its Aggregate 2013 Loss Has Widened To $133.8M
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Alex Wilhelm
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According to its , Twitter has lost $133.8 million to date in 2013. That compares negatively with its equivalent loss of $70.7 million in 2012. Both loss figures include the results of the first 9 months of the calendar year. Twitter’s covered only the first two quarters of 2013. That report indicated that Twitter had lost $69.2 million in the first half of the year. The figures therefore indicate that Twitter lost $64.6 million in the third quarter alone. Or it lost almost as much in the third quarter of 2013 as it did in the first three quarters of 2012. What did Twitter spend the money on? According to its balance sheet, a large chunk went to research and development costs. Twitter’s accumulated R&D tab in 2013 rose from $111.8 million for quarters one and two, to $199.1 million through the third quarter – Twitter spent $87.3 million in the third quarter on research and development. Just under $30 million of that third quarter R&D tally comes from stock-based compensation, it’s worth noting. Twitter’s accelerating losses could throw a shade over its public offering, if investors are concerned about its path to profitability. While its nine-month 2013 loss is essentially double its equivalent 2012 loss, it has work ahead of it to prove its long-term viability. The other side to all this is that Twitter’s revenues are rapidly expanding. The company posted third-quarter revenue of $168.6 million, which compares favorably to its collected $253.6 million in the first half 2013 revenue. Twitter has opted , moving away from the tech-traditional NASDAQ exchange. It will raise up to $1 billion in its flotation. Oh, and Twitter’s growth is .
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Yahoo Spent $163 Million In Cash On Acquisitions In Q3, Down 84% From Its Tumblr’d Q2
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Alex Wilhelm
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In the , Yahoo purchased eight companies, including Lexity, Rockmelt, and Xobni. According to its , the net cash impact on those purchases totalled $163 million. Does that mean that the total value of the eight purchases came to $163 million? Not at all. That figure is merely the net cash outflow for Yahoo, or, the total cash that it paid to the companies’ shareholders, less cash that the companies had on hand. This doesn’t give us the full picture of the total cost of Yahoo purchases, given that the company could also employ stock as well as cash to make acquisitions. In fact, that seems to be the majority option. Here’s Yahoo in its : During the second quarter of 2013, Yahoo! repurchased 25 million shares for $653 million and used a net $1 billion in cash for acquisitions (including a net $970 million to acquire Tumblr). That appears to imply that Yahoo used a net $30 million that quarter to acquire the eight companies that it picked up in the second quarter that were not Tumblr (for a total of nine second quarter acquisitions). Unless Yahoo bought exceptionally cash-rich companies – not likely, frankly – then it appears to have used far more of its own stock as bargaining chip than cash to purchase the smaller firms. The Tumblr deal was nearly all cash, though the company had over $15 million in cash on hand at the time of the deal. Speaking very purely, Yahoo has under $1 billion in cash and equivalents. But, its total cash position, as it is usually calculated including “[c]ash, cash equivalents, and investments in marketable securities” total $3.2 billion. That, tied to its , and Yahoo is more than sufficiently capitalized to keep on buying if it wants to. Though, it isn’t clear if Yahoo will pursue more cash-focused, or stock-based purchases moving forward. It has shown an appetite for both.
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Walmart Expands Same-Day Grocery Delivery To Denver
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Sarah Perez
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Walmart today announced its plans to expand its same-day grocery delivery service, a part of its “Walmart To Go” offering, to a new market: Denver, Colorado. This move follows the company’s ongoing grocery delivery tests which have been taking place over the last couple of years in San Jose and San Francisco. The Denver area test is currently a closed beta, meaning customers will be allowed to trial the new service on a first-come, first served basis only. For now, they can request access by signing up at Walmart.com/togo. The retailer says it began online grocery delivery in San Jose and San Francisco back in April 2011, where the service is also available to most cities along the peninsula. Customers can choose from tens of thousands of eligible items online, including fresh produce, meat and seafood, dairy, bakery items, and even non-grocery items like health and beauty products, electronics and toys. Shoppers designate a two-hour slot for their delivery, then orders are fulfilled by local Walmart Supercenters and delivered in Walmart To Go trucks. These branded trucks have previously been used in the San Jose and San Francisco areas, and are now coming to the Denver area, too. Denver was already participating in Walmart’s broader efforts in same-day delivery, which began in select markets last fall. Denver in particular gained same-day delivery in November 2012. For background, last October, to experiment in this area of same-day delivery, which began with tests in Northern Virginia (outside D.C.), Philadelphia, Minneapolis, and San Jose/San Francisco, initially. Customers in those regions could shop online – though not necessarily for groceries – then have their orders sourced and fulfilled by their local Walmart stores. The company is still experimenting with price points for this service, it seems, as they note that the Denver area delivery fees will be “in the $5 to $10 range.” However, it will run some introductory offers for new participants in order to encourage sign-ups, including some free delivery options, we’re told. Same-day delivery is available for orders placed by 8 AM M.T. in the Denver market, and returns can be handled at the time of delivery, in-store, or by phoning to have a driver return to pick up the item. Though Walmart remains the largest brick-and-mortar retailer worldwide, it has lost ground online to Amazon.com over the years, which threatens its business as more consumers shift their shopping online. And Amazon has been moving into the same-day grocery delivery space with its AmazonFresh service which this summer when it arrived in L.A. In addition, Walmart’s news follows that of which indicated that Amazon is now looking to bring AmazonFresh to the San Francisco Bay Area, too. This region is currently serving as a hotbed for similar same-day delivery market experiments from a variety of retailers, including also (with Google Shopping Express), (with eBay Now) and various startups like , , and others.
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Path Axes 20 Percent Of Staff In A ‘Realigning Of The Company’
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Colleen Taylor
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Mobile-only social networking app laid off 13 staffers today, axing 20 percent of its workforce. Rumors of the layoffs have been percolating around the tech industry this afternoon, and were first by Valleywag. Path founder and CEO , who celebrated his 33rd birthday , has not responded to requests for comment. In a phone call today, a Path spokesperson told TechCrunch that the layoffs represent a “realigning of the company” as it places a “huge focus on Path 4,” the next version of its app. We’re hearing that the layoffs affected primarily data and marketing operations, but Path would not confirm what departments were affected, saying only that “it was across the organization.” The spokesperson said that Path currently has 20 million users — but she would not say how many of those have purchased to the app. Presumably, not enough to cover the costs of the 50-person headcount that Path had until today. Path has raised $41.2 million in venture capital funding since it was founded three years ago, in November 2010. The company has been said to be in talks in new funding for months now, but it appears that as of today a deal has yet to be closed.
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Twitter Announces It Will List On The NYSE Under TWTR
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Matthew Panzarino
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Twitter has to note that it will be listing on the New York Stock Exchange under the TWTR symbol, a detail that was . The new document was uploaded to its EDGAR archive today. There is still no valuation or IPO estimation listed in the document. Twitter notes that it now has 230 million MAUs, marking a growth of 15 million MAUs over the last three months since June 2013, . Twitter says that its . According to a , Twitter currently plans to do an IPO roadshow from October 28 to November 6, will price its IPO on November 14 and start trading on November 15. But the final date for pricing is said to be “fluid.” There had been some speculation that Twitter would list on the more tech-heavy Nasdaq previous to the announcement. Nasdaq shares fell 1.6 percent on the news that the listing will go to the NYSE. Twitter chose to list on Nasdaq, which may have been a component of Twitter’s decision to list on the NYSE. There are several new items in Twitter’s updated S-1 filing as well, including the fact that, as of September 30, it now has 2,300 employees. Twitter has also updated the S-1 to note that there were 48 billion tweet impressions online in Q3, up from 30 billion in Q2 2013. There is also growth in MAUs accessing Twitter from a mobile device, up to 76 percent of users in Q3 versus 75 percent in Q2, and over 70 percent of its ads revenue was from mobile devices, up from 65 percent. The five-point jump in the mobile revenues on mobile devices is worth noting, as it shows just how much Twitter is working on its revenue plans for mobile. Revenue is up 106 percent over the past nine months to $422 million, which marks a slowing from the 107 percent growth over the six-month period ending June 30. The bigger gasp is that the net loss figure increased by 89 percent to 133.9 million over the past nine months as compared to the figure for the last six months ending in June 2013, which put net loss increases at 41 percent to $69.3 million. Twitter notes in the filing that it will likely tweet about financial matters via the following accounts: @ , @ and @ . is a new one, and currently has no tweets. The other two are Twitter’s official account and that of its CEO Dick Costolo. Twitter’s amended filing also reveals that it’s looking to build out its data centers. “In addition, we entered into amendments to certain lease agreements in 2013 to expand the capacity of existing data center facilities through 2020, and increased our total commitments under such leases to $230.3 million.”
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Wikileaks In A Box: SecureDrop Is WhistleBlower Communication Tool For Media
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Gregory Ferenstein
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In an effort to protect government whistleblowers from unprecedented levels of surveillance, the Freedom of the Press Foundation has launched , an anonymous submission tool for secure communications between sources and journalists. SecureDrop accepts encrypted documents and tips from sources and facilitates communication without putting journalists in jeopardy of having to reveal sources under the threat of imprisonment. The need for security is heightened given the Obama Administration’s aggressive prosecution of leakers under the Espionage act. Last Spring, for instance, the Justice Department seized the phone records of AP journalists in reporting a foiled bomb plot in Yemen. “One of the reasons that the Obama administration has prosecuted so many whistleblowers is that there’s an easy way to find digital trails of how journalists meet sources and talk to them,” Freedom of the Press Foundation Executive Director, Trevor Timm. “We need to figure out a way for journalists to talk to sources without that fear.” SecureDrop was originally the project of (then called DeadDrop). The project has since been updated to account for recent National Security Agency spying revelations, though the organization reminds reporters than nothing is 100% secure. The code base is open source and has been vetted by security experts from the University of Washington [ ]. Freedom of the Press Foundation has even offered to help outlets install the rather complex encryption tool. Learn more about it . [ ]
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SB Nation Partners With BlogTalkRadio For Its Move Into Live Podcasting
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Anthony Ha
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has signed a big partner to its live podcasting network — sports site . The timing might seem interesting, since news broke today that Vox Media, the company behind SB Nation and tech news site The Verge, has . However, SB Nation shows have actually been live on BlogTalkRadio’s site since September — they just haven’t formally announced until now. (Plus, it took me a little while to write this post.) This isn’t the first network to launch within the broader BlogTalkRadio network. Most notably, the company back in June, which includes a program featuring Smiley (a well-known talk radio host) himself. SB Nation is an interesting choice for a partner since most of its content comes from communities of sports fans, not professional sports writers or broadcasters. When I asked how BlogTalkRadio translated those communities into live podcasts, co-founder and CEO Alan Levy said, “We just went out to the community and their editors there said, ‘How many guys would like to host your own talk radio show?'” Looks like lots of people said yes. on BlogTalkRadio is launching with more than 50 shows, including (which looks at mixed martial arts), (which discusses the NFL Draft), and MCM Jimmy (about the Tennessee Titans). Levy also noted that BlogTalkRadio is SB Nation’s exclusive live podcasting partner. I’m not a big consumer of sports media, but the lineup seems to back Levy’s claim that his company enables people to host talk shows covering topics that you wouldn’t find on traditional radio. And like other BlogTalkRadio shows, these programs are first broadcast live online, with the ability for listeners to call in and interact with the host, then distributed as traditional podcasts. So Levy said he sees podcasting services like TuneIn as distribution partners, not competitors.
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MyHeritage Partners With FamilySearch To Add Billions Of Historical Records To Its Genealogy Database
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Frederic Lardinois
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When it comes to online genealogy, the two major for-profit players are and . Ancestry.com got a major head start over MyHeritage, but it mostly focused on gathering historical records while MyHeritage put an emphasis on building and matching family trees. But now it’s also starting to amass a wider range of historical records. Today, MyHeritage announced a major multi-year partnership with the largest nonprofit player in the space, the Mormon church-sponsored . Thanks to this partnership, MyHeritage’s users will now gain access to 2 billion historical records and family tree profiles from FamilySearch. In return, FamilySearch’s users will be able to use MyHeritage’s technology (through that company’s API) for matching family trees with historical records. MyHeritage has committed about 40 of its 150 employees to this project. While the partnership has a time limit, MyHeritage founder and CEO Gilad Japhet didn’t disclose the length of the agreement. Japhet says the service currently has about 75 million registered users who have added 1.6 billion profiles. It’s available in 40 languages, and while Ancestry.com may be bigger in the U.S., MyHeritage argues that it’s the biggest player in most European and South American countries. Because it’s hard to migrate family trees between services, it’s seeing very high retention rates, but this also means that it’s hard to gain new users from smaller competing services without outright acquiring those services. About a year ago, for example, to acquire its engineers, user and data. One feature that makes MyHeritage unique is its ability to match up its users’ family trees, which helps them discover previously unknown branches of their families. The service’s fuzzy matching algorithm can find these matches even when there are minor errors or alternative spellings. Today’s partnership with FamilySearch.org brings a wide range of new documents to MyHeritage, which the company is now ingesting and plans to start exposing over the next few months. Given the Mormon church’s focus on genealogy for religious reasons (which at times lands it ), FamilySearch has amassed one of the largest – if not largest – database of records related to family history. In total, FamilySearch will provide about 1 billion records to MyHeritage. As Japhet noted, FamilySearch was sitting on a treasure trove of data, but didn’t have the technology to easily analyze it. MyHeritage, on the other hand, has the technology but needed more data. This then is a “win-win-win” in his view because both companies, as well as their users, will benefit from this partnership almost immediately.
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Sarah Perez
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Yahoo Reduces Planned Sale Of Alibaba Shares By 20%, Will Keep More Skin In The Game When It IPOs
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Alex Wilhelm
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Today in conjunction with its third quarter earnings release, that it has come to a new agreement with Alibaba that will force the company to sell less of its shares in the Chinese ecommerce firm when it goes public. The number of shares that Yahoo will be required to sell now totals 208 million. That figure represents a 20.4 percent decrease on the former 261.5 million share requirement. Yahoo owns 523.6 million ordinary shares of Alibaba. Yahoo’s Alibaba stake is worth tens of billions of dollars, provided that Alibaba goes public in the $100 billion to $120 billion range that is usually discussed. Yahoo was required to sell half its Alibaba stake when the retail giant goes public. Yahoo claims to be “pleased” to hold onto more of its stake, post-IPO. Joe Tsai, a member of Alibaba’s board, said that “[u]nder its new leadership, Yahoo has made it a priority to build a good relationship with Alibaba.” So, this reduction can be chalked up to Mayer’s influence as CEO. Also, in late 2012, Yahoo exec Jacqueline Reses . As a company, Yahoo doesn’t need to sell its Alibaba stake to stay solvent, but as a bank account, the more it taps the resource, the more shiny things it can buy. Yahoo will net plenty, even with the reduction. Early-stage, mobile-first companies in the Bay Area beware, Yahoo is .
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Yahoo Q3 Barely Beats Estimates With $0.34 EPS, Revenue Flat At $1.08B
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Anthony Ha
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Yahoo just released for the third quarter of the year, with revenue of $1.08 billion (minus traffic acquisition costs) and earnings per share of 34 cents. That’s in line with on the revenue side ($1.08 billion) and the estimated EPS of 33 cents. Revenue is down 1 percent from the same period last year, while net earnings are down 91 percent, to $297 million. “I’m very pleased with our execution, especially as we’ve continued to invest in and strengthen our core business,” said CEO Marissa Mayer in the earnings press release. “In Q3, we launched new user experiences across many of our digital daily habits — Yahoo Screen, My Yahoo, Fantasy Sports, and more. Now with more than 800 million monthly users on Yahoo — up 20 percent over the past 15 months — we’re achieving meaningful increases in user engagement and traffic.” Focusing on specific segments of the business, Yahoo said its display ad revenue (again, minus traffic acquisition costs) is down 7 percent year-over-year, to $421 million. The number of ads sold (excluding Korea) is up 1 percent, while the price-per-ad decreased 7 percent. Meanwhile, search revenue ex-TAC was up 3 percent to $426 million. In its previous earnings report, Yahoo also , but revenue was essentially flat. Mayer has been touting Yahoo’s new and revamped mobile products, , but the company doesn’t seem to have translated that into a significant improvement in the bottom line yet In a separate announcement, by 20 percent. Oh, and if you’re interested in asking Mayer a question that she might answer during the earnings call (which starts at 5pm Pacific), you can do so with the hashtag #YHOOearnings
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Intel Beats The Street In Q3 2013 With $13.5 Billion In Revenue And $0.53 EPS
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Chris Velazco
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Well, it’s that time again — famed chipmaker Intel has just reported its and they’re just a bit better than expected. The company reported quarterly revenue of $13.5 billion (which is pretty much flat compared to its performance last year) and earnings of $0.58 per share (again, same as last year). To put that in a little perspective, the analyst consensus as per Yahoo! Finance was for the company to report $13.47 billion in revenue for the quarter, along with earnings of $0.53 per share. It’s not the biggest beat you’ll ever see (Intel CEO Brian Krzanich said this quarter saw “modest growth in a tough environment”), but it’s a beat nonetheless. Still, that’s not to say everything is downright peachy in Intel’s world. Industry analysis firm Gartner said that global PC sales were down 8.6 percent this past quarter, making the sixth consecutive quarter of decline. Granted, that’s not as big a dip what we saw last quarter, but it’s further proof that the traditional PC market isn’t done contracting just yet. That shift is reflected in the performance of the company’s PC Client group, which raked in a respectable $8.4 billion in Q3… though it’s still down some 3.5 percent year-over-year. As such, it’s no surprise to see Krzanich point out the fact that Intel is steadily increasing its focus on “ultra-mobile devices and 2 in 1 systems.” This is also one of the first quarters where we’re getting to see what sort of impact Intel’s new Haswell chips are having — they’re already seeing widespread use in devices across OEM borders, especially in devices that seek to bridge the performance gap between more traditional PCs and newfangled ultraportable designs like Ultrabooks and Surface-esque tablets. As it happens, Haswell has helped the situation somewhat but perhaps not as much as Intel had hoped right now. To quote CFO Stacy Smith from his commentary addendum, “the worldwide PC supply chain saw a small increase in inventory levels in the third quarter as customers continued to build inventory of Haswell based PCs but inventory levels are still being managed well below historical averages.” Fortunately, things looked a little brighter for the company’s Data Center group as it saw revenues surge just over 12 percent since last year. All in all, this has been a solid (if admittedly unremarkable) quarter for Intel, and the company’s share price has surged slightly in after-hours trading as a result. What’s really interesting here though is that Intel has offered up some guidance for the next quarter which is lower than what analysts had previous called for, but we’ll tackle that when the time comes. For now, I’ll be sitting in on the customary earnings call in just a few moments and will update this post with any interesting tidbits that come up.
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Why Accel Is Leading A $40M Round In Vox Media, A Digital Content Company (!)
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Eric Eldon
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“At some level, it is still contrarian,” Accel Partners’ Andrew Braccia admits about leading a $40 million fourth round of funding in , the publisher of hundreds of major league sports fan blogs as well as tech/culture site and gaming site . Coming on top of $30 million in previous rounds, the Washington, DC-based company will have the most venture backing of any high-end content creator when the round is finalized in the coming weeks. There are precious few other examples on this scale. Viral-oriented in total. Politically-focused had reached $37 million before Aol (TechCrunch’s parent company) bought it. Silicon Valley investors, at least, are still not very optimistic about startups that put content first. But Braccia has been venture rounds in Vox since its first in 2008. What does he like? Vox’s long-term strategy, which it has been building out for a decade. It was founded in 2003 by Markos Moulitsas and others from The Daily Kos, his namesake political commentary blog. That site had grown into a pillar of the progressive blogosphere in that turbulent political era because it focused on big issues and let readers publish their own posts. But instead of expanding into other parts of the political world, the founders stepped back and wondered how the model might apply more broadly. The answer they found was sports. Co-founder and sports writer Tyler Bleszinski decided to focus on a personal passion, Oakland baseball, and launched . Readers loved it, and from there the company slowly built out a content management system, more sports sites, the start of an ads business, and eventually attracted a former Aol executive, Jim Bankoff, as an advisor. Braccia, who is known in these parts for finding unusual, big-time deals (Braintree, Lynda.com and 99Designs are some fresh examples), first met the company through Bankoff when Vox had around 75 sites. He quickly got the big idea, he tells me today, as he’d already been a long-time reader of two of the sports sites, for the S.F. Giants baseball team and for the Golden State Warriors basketball team. “Building a media company is not as well understood in Silicon Valley as building a software company, or building other types of companies that scale differently based on network effects, virality, or whatever it might look like,” he explains. “You have to take a longer view of this category, and fundamentally ask the question: ‘Billion dollar media franchises have continued emerging through all the technology change over the last 50 years, so why should the next 5 to 10 years be any different?'” When Vox raised venture money and made Bankoff the CEO in 2008, the focus went towards building out the tech and ads. Today, the manifestation of the plan includes featuring content management, forum software, analytics, site layout formats, and much more. Its advertising, meanwhile, is comprised of traditional inventory like banners and background takeovers, as well as newer products like — Vox added its own in-house agency earlier this year to help with that effort. On the content side, the plan was always to look at other big verticals outside of sports, where the community + tech + brand ads formula could apply. The Verge launched in 2011 and has distinguished itself for tech reporting, commentary, production quality plus traffic and monetization growth, as somewhat direct competitors like me are obliged to acknowledge. Polygon, launched late last year for the video gaming world, appears to be on a similar track. Overall traffic has been booming, too, with web measurement firm Quantcast now showing global monthly unique visitors to Vox properties (this number is more reliable than most third-party stats because Vox uses Quantcast tracking software to directly measure its own traffic). Bankoff also confirms to me today that Vox will hit profitability this year, repeating his promise from when . So Vox’s odds of survival — a big question at most media companies — look good, particularly with all this extra money in the bank. It has the tech built out even as many companies struggle with older systems. It has the in-house ads system running pretty well, apparently, which should help the company continue making money as more of its content is read on mobile devices, even as many publishers face new business struggles because of poorly performing mobile ads. Vox will be investing the new money in its current products and properties, particularly in its new focus on video and video ads, Bankoff says. The question will be if it, or really any content site, can actually get to the size that it dreams of. “It’s about that moment in time, about capturing emotion with a certain voice,” Braccia says about the media companies that reach the billion dollar mark. “In my generation it was MTV. For my parents it was and and magazines like that. In this next generation, it’s Vox Media, TechCrunch, Gawker, Buzzfeed.” The lower production and distribution costs of online media, and the hoped-for eventual migration of brand advertising from TV to web and mobile, are what he thinks will make the difference. All of these sites still have a long way to go for that sort of valuation. Many other types of companies could eat into that kind of potential ad revenue, for starters. But whatever competitiveness we all might feel, the fact that tech investors are going all-in is a great sign. As Bankoff puts it, “VCs aren’t for or against media or any other industry, they look for companies that use tech and innovation to disrupt existing industries, including media and brand advertising. No one has really approached it the way we have.” Accel isn’t the only Silicon Valley firm putting money into Vox. $33 million of the planned $40 million round has closed already, and Bankoff confirms that long-time existing investors Khosla Ventures and Comcast Ventures are both participating. He won’t say who else, though, and won’t say whether any of the other participants are strategic or not. What about the specific liquidity event, that any investor has to care about? With around $70 million in venture money, Vox’s valuation is likely too high for what most potential buyers would want to pay, leading many to speculate that an IPO is the plan. Bankoff demurred on that question, too, so I bet some people will be watching to see if any new strategic investors are added before close.
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Microsoft’s Scroogled Ad Campaign Appears To Be Working
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Alex Wilhelm
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The Scroogled advertising campaign undertaken by Microsoft to ding and scuff its rival Google appears to be an effective effort, according to statistics . That publication’s report details data collected for Microsoft by Answers Research indicating that, following a visit to , Google’s favorability gap with Bing with users fades from 45 points, to 5. Also in the AdWeek report is internal Microsoft data, indicating that after watching a Scroogled ad, the chance of a viewer recommending Google to a friend falls by 10 percent. The chance that they recommend Bing rises by 7 percent after watching the same ad. So what we can take from this is that Microsoft likely isn’t going to give up on the Scroogled push any time soon. The ads, pitting Bing against a somewhat strawmanned Google, are slightly reminiscent of the now historical Mac vs. PC advertisements that pitted Apple devices against Windows-based machines. Microsoft views its Scroogled ads as comparative, not negative, a perspective that I can’t share as I felt that Apple’s ‘comparative’ ads were comparatively negative, and slightly petty. I view the Scroogled ads in the same way. That said, Microsoft is spending money to generate a certain impact, and its dollars do appear to be generating that result. In my conversations with Microsoft, I’ve heard the same note hit, that while you and I might not be in the target demographic for the advertisements, they do work among the folks that Microsoft is trying to reach. Fine. This is the first time I’ve seen hard numbers, so I could previously only estimate the impact of the site and campaign. I doubt that all Scroogled ads generate the same favorability swing as the campaign’s website, but even if the result is one-third as great, Microsoft is likely content with it. Bing from its first days has suffered from a reputation — deserved or not doesn’t matter here — as something less than an also-ran next to Google’s market-dominating search technology. The long-term way to end that perspective is to invest heavily in technology and build a product that evangelizes for itself through excellence. Microsoft is certainly pursuing that strategy, pumping money into Bing and integrating it as a service into its various platforms. The faster way to change opinions is to trash the competition, calling their integrity and business practices — and even focus on — into doubt. And, as in politics, the negative advertising appears to be working. And don’t think that this is too surprising. Microsoft said that “Scroogled will go on as long as Google keeps Scroogling people.” Okay, sure, but Microsoft defines what “Scroogling” is, not Google, and I think that some of its advertisements are unfair in their portrayal of Google. For example, the following ad says that Google “goes through” every line of every one of your emails, with human eyes superimposed over the screen, implying that Google is reading all of your email. It isn’t. It automatically scans them, which is different, but Microsoft makes the implication anyway. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iI1ominSL_c&w=640&h=360] So, who is really getting Scroogled? Google, for serving ads against your email, or the user, after Microsoft misdirects them?
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Ditto Defeats Patent Claim After Teaming Up With A ‘Troll’
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Anthony Ha
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Earlier this year, I called , which launched a campaign on Indiegogo to fund patent battles against 1-800-CONTACTS and Lennon Imaging Technology — or, as Ditto characterized it, to “save” the startup from “patent trolls.” Since then, Ditto’s story has taken a couple of turns. Over the summer, the company partnered with IPNav and its founder Erich Spangenberg. Spangenberg is an odd ally, since Ditto co-founder and CEO Kate Endress described him and IPNav as “one of the largest patent trolls in the country.” However, as , he reached an agreement with Endress where IPNav is paying for Ditto’s legal costs, and if it wins, it gets a $1 million stake in the startup. Endress said this approach seems to be working, with Ditto scoring a victory this week. As I mentioned above, the company was actually facing two suits, including one from Lennon, which is a “non-practicing” company that owns intellectual property but doesn’t offer any products or services of its own. A judge has granted Ditto’s motion to have Lennon’s lawsuit dismissed — I’ve embedded the motion and the court order granting the dismissal at the end of this post. That still leaves Ditto’s case against 1-800-CONTACTS (which is owned by WellPoint). Endress has pointed out in the past that the larger company is suing her startup over a patent that it didn’t acquire until its CEO had visited the Ditto website. The Electronic Frontier Foundation 1-800-CONTACTS was “little better” than a patent troll, while a company spokesperson claiming that 1-800-CONTACTS “offered to discuss an amicable resolution to the lawsuit through licensing or other options.” (Both sides accuse the other of misrepresenting their discussions.) So the startup isn’t out of the woods yet. But when I spoke to Endress yesterday, she sounded optimistic — she noted that not only has partnering with Spangenberg given Ditto more resources for its legal fights, but it has also freed the Dittos team’s time to actually focus on building the business (a site where shoppers can virtually try on eyeglasses) again. And although only resulted in about $10,000 of funding, Endress said that talking about her story has “resulted in nothing but good things” — she’d encourage other startups facing patent threats to follow Ditto’s lead rather than staying silent. Oh, and when I asked about how Spangenberg feels about being called a troll, so Endress noted that when asked about using patents to attack other companies, , “I don’t stand accused. I stand guilty of that.” “He’s not doing this out of the goodness of his heart,” Endress said. “He sees a big opportunity here.” by
by
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CrunchWeek: Facebook And Google’s Big Privacy Changes, Zulily’s IPO, And All The Latest Twitter Talk
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Colleen Taylor
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This time around, , and I discussed Facebook that allowed people to hide their profiles from public searches, Google to start using regular users’ product ratings and photos , e-commerce for moms site Zulily filing for , and the latest buzz around Twitter on its from its board of directors to the latest revelations of just there was in its early days.
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Gillmor Gang: Context Matters
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Steve Gillmor
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The Gillmor Gang — Robert Scoble, John Taschek, Keith Teare, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor — took out their devices and slapped them down on the table. By any measurement, the Context Wars are well under way. But neither Apple or particularly Google seem to realize what Twitter does — that notifications are the way to roll up both armies in the battle for user engagement. Twitter’s direct message lab is producing experiments in personalized notification of group swarming. Right now it looks very tentative and potentially too much of nothing. But the more companies and even political parties reform around these new dynamics of user cloud attention, the more likely a meaningful way forward out of the swamp of gerrymeandering gridlock. Yeah, we talked some shutdown too. @stevegillmor, @jtaschek, @scobleizer, @kevinmarks, @kteare Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor
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The Panopticon Is Extremely Convenient (So Use Facebook, Google, And Chrome)
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Jon Evans
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I write from the Philippines, where a phone has which, if stolen, can be remotely triggered to repeatedly scream “ ” Back home, BART riders have been hearing: “Ladies and gentlemen, this is your train operator. If you have any electronic devices with you, please make sure they are secure, especially if you are near the exits.” Phone theft is a big problem everywhere. Fortunately, there’s a technical solution: Apple’s and Google’s can render your stolen phone essentially useless. If enough people use them — which means opting in to services which can track their users’ locations at any time — there’ll be no economic incentive to steal phones. You can whether we have to make trade-offs between privacy and security, but this is an excellent example of how we currently .(1) The is much more appealing when you find yourself looking for something lost. It’s easier to sympathize with the NSA when you think of them as searching for a thousand stolen phones, some of which are rigged to explode. Please note: , not . The NSA and their allies have gone , and , in trying to save us from danger by giving themselves police-state powers. As security guru Bruce Schneier : The NSA’s actions are making us all less safe. They’re not just spying on the bad guys, they’re deliberately weakening Internet security for everyone—including the good guys. It’s sheer folly to believe that only the NSA can exploit the vulnerabilities they create. Additionally, by eavesdropping on all Americans, they’re building the technical infrastructure for a police state. But at the : Virtually everything we work with on a day-to-day basis is built by someone else. Avoiding insanity requires trusting those who designed, developed and manufactured the instruments of our daily existence. The NSA is no longer worthy of our trust; they have not to increase our collective security, but to continue to avoid any . No one should (and I suspect few would) opt in to any NSA data-collection program. But what about Apple and Google et al? All of the outrage and discussion about the NSA tends to obscure the fact that the data collection and data collection are two connected but essentially separate issues. Corporations can destroy your data, and maybe, at worst, your job and your reputation; governments can destroy your entire existence and imprison you until you die. You can choose to avoid individual companies, but you cannot choose not to live under NSA scrutiny. As John Lanchester says in , the NSA/GCHQ attitude is: just because we hand data over to Google and Facebook the government automatically has the right to access it. It’s as if, thanks to a global shortage of sticky gum, envelopes can no longer be sealed, so as a result the government awards itself a new right to mass-intercept and read everybody’s letters. Now, people can and do disagree with Lanchester’s conclusion that what we need is more and better oversight — I read that and thought: wow, this guy still thinks we need spies? Doesn't he get that he can't have it both ways? — Jacob Appelbaum (@ioerror) — but we can agree that the less data we collectively give to the NSA the better. What they want is a massive online dragnet which collects . What they want is to have to make for specific information about specific people. We need to trust , as Schneier says. But who? Which services are least likely to turn our data over en masse, deliberately or negligently, and/or most likely to fight demands to do so? Well. Major phone carriers are all basically evil incarnate, but you knew that already. Facebook, unexpectedly, seems to be high on the list of companies you should trust. I know, I’m as surprised as you are. But this isn’t a judgement call, this is a technical fact. Facebook is one of the major web sites moving towards implementing when connecting to modern browsers. PFS means a company have to rely entirely on the integrity of a to prevent an intruder like the NSA from decrypting all of their communications in transit, because every session is encrypted with a new ephemeral key. Sites which implement perfect forward secrecy could, , be compelled to surrender their secret keys and hence open all of their past, present, and future communications to their government’s prying eyes. But it’s Google which remains, by far, the gold standard for online privacy and security. They implemented PFS some time ago. They recently . GMail is the only major mail provider which supports two-way encryption when mail is passed from one server to another; Microsoft doesn’t do server-side encryption at , whereas AOL and Yahoo, inexplicably, do outbound but not inbound encryption. Oh yes, and Google now rewards people who fix security holes in open-source software, too: Whoa. Google now paying bug bounties for OSS including OpenSSH, BIND, ISC DHCP, OpenSSL, zlib, libjpeg, libpng, etc — Jeremiah Grossman (@jeremiahg) Meanwhile, Chrome is the to include a preloaded list, and, more importantly, implement (albeit only for Google properties and a handful of other sites.) This is a big deal because the entire SSL certificate system — which, essentially, ensures that a site claiming to be google.com actually — has been, I’m sorry to say, built on a of quicksand. Certificate pinning helps shore that up. Twitter doesn’t yet implement PFS, but, to be fair, they don’t keep nearly as much personal data as a mail provider, and they do have default HTTPS connections and a proud history of fighting for their users. Yahoo can boast the latter — they tried to a few years ago — but they really need to implement HTTPS-by-default, at least for email, along with perfect forward secrecy, stat. At the end of the day, though, Chrome connections to Google servers are about as secure as you can get without resorting to and/or (which anonymizes, rather than encrypts.) I hope that will be the norm, some day…but it won’t be any time soon. In the interim, Facebook, Google, and Twitter seem to be earning your trust. But Yahoo? ? ? ? Sorry. I can’t say that any of those companies seem to be working hard to protect your online privacy and/or security. Again, that’s not a judgement call, it’s a cold hard technical fact. Onceuponatime13, . (1) Assuming there are no low-level Android/iOS services that already can and do report location in response to a server ping, in which case that “opt-in” is nothing but a deceptive fig leaf. But for argument’s sake let’s take Apple and Google at their word.
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How To Opt Out Of Google’s Weird New Ads That Use Your Face And Name
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Greg Kumparak
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Angry that Google is planning on using your face and name ? Here’s how to make them not. If there’s any upside, it’s that opting out is, quite seriously, two clicks away. Two clicks that I only discovered because I went out of my way to look and because I checked the depths of Google+ (lol). But hey — it’s two clicks from . And you’re done*. [* Until there’s another TOS change, in which case, get ready for another rousing game of !]
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LG May Fire Back At Samsung With Its Own Curvy Smartphone Next Month
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Chris Velazco
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And the seemingly age-old war between LG and Samsung continues. This time the battle is centered around curved displays on smartphones — Samsung has already shown its hand with the , and now some newly disseminated images seem to indicate that LG is going to return fire in short order. Earlier this evening a handful of press renders obtained by (and later by ) showed off what appeared to be LG’s forthcoming G Flex smartphone… and the pronounced dip that marks its slim midsection. This is no mere blatant knockoff of the Galaxy Round, though. In a bid to outdo its rival, LG has apparently decided to pull out all the stops and develop a device that curves the opposite way — that is, the curve runs across the device’s waist. Engadget also reports that the G Flex will sport a hefty 6-inch display (a hair larger than the Galaxy Round’s screen), but other than that the G Flex seems to stick to the same sort of spartan design language that prominently marks so many other recent LG devices. That curve looks rather familiar though — it’s almost a bit Galaxy Nexus-y, a bit of ironic design minutia that probably didn’t escape LG’s design team. At this point there’s no firm word on what other components are nestled inside that slim frame, or what sort of software LG has cooked up to try and take advantage of that curvy screen. For now we’ll have just to debate the merits of the whole curved display craze as a whole, and I’m not convinced just yet. As visually alluring as these things can be, I can’t shake the feeling that this first batch of curvaceous smartphones is nothing more than a pissing match between two companies that have been jostling to out-innovate each other for decades. That said I have to wonder if Samsung’s approach to design isn’t the smarter one here. Say what you will about the Galaxy Round (I still think it’s pure gimmickry masquerading as a game-changer), but it’s going to slide in and out of a pocket with ease. The G Flex is ostensibly meant to better fit the contours of a user’s face much like the Galaxy Nexus did, but that big ol’ screen may make that proposition a hairier one than LG had hoped. Either way, we’ll find out the truth soon enough — the G Flex is reportedly set to make its debut some time next month. And then, hopefully sooner rather than later, we’ll discover whether or not this whole “curve-fuffle” will have the sort of impact on the industry that both Samsung and LG clearly hope it will.
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Facebook Buys Mobile Data Analytics Company Onavo, Reportedly For Up To $200M… And (Finally?) Gets Its Office In Israel
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Ingrid Lunden
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Big news for a Monday/late Sunday night (depending on where you are): , the Tel Aviv-based mobile analytics company, has just that it has been acquired by . Onavo will become the anchor for Facebook in Israel — its first office in the country. Terms of the deal have not been disclosed; we are trying to find out. Right now we’re seeing reports of between $100 million and $200 million. Specifically, Israeli paper is reporting $150-200 million; other sources tell us the range is more like $100-$200 million. Both Calcalist and another Israeli paper, , are writing that some 30 Onavo employees will join Facebook and work in the company’s new office in the country (which is Onavo’s office, for now). Onavo, which was founded in 2010, has two parts to its business: a consumer-facing apps to help optimise device and app performance and battery life on and devices; and an analytics business for mobile publishers to chart how well its own apps are performing, and to chart that against apps of its competitors. It had raised some from investors like Sequoia, Horizons Ventures, Motorola and Magma Venture Partners. The rationale for the deal is easy to see on a few levels. Facebook has been focusing on building up its mobile business, which is seeing the most growth and is the platform that most users in developing markets are turning to first when signing up for and using the social networking service. So this means beefing up Facebook’s mobile operations in general, but also for making Facebook as usable as possible in these emerging markets. Today, Onavo’s technology is focused only on smartphones rather than feature phones, but what it does on those devices is help users track how well those devices work, in terms of battery life and so on. Those apps will continue to be sold, but that technology can also be used by Facebook itself to optimise what it offers to its users. (One possible pitch: Use Facebook on Mobile to see the world, and we’ll help you save money on your mobile data bills!) Indeed, the company’s co-founders, Guy Rosen (CEO) and Roi Tiger (CTO) even cite Facebook’s , which also targets those on the less fortunate side of the digital divide, in the company’s short blog post announcing the deal (below). “Today, we’re eager to take the next step and make an even bigger impact by supporting Facebook’s mission to connect the world,” the pair write. More practically, Onavo will also give the company a much deeper technology bench to measure how those mobile services are working — who is using them, as well as how to make them work in the most optimised way on mobile devices. This can be applied in a number of areas both for basic user experience and commercial ends. (One commercial end: performance of mobile ads.) Right now Onavo is all about smartphones. Will that extend to feature devices as well longer term, I wonder? It will also be a very strong play to attract more mobile developers to Facebook overall, much like Facebook’s last year. Just as Parse gave Facebook its first paid B2B service for developers, it will be interesting to see whether Facebook expand that B2B offering with its new Onavo assets. (For the record, an Onavo spokesperson has just declined to comment on these kinds of details.) Facebook was interested in buying Waze, the social/mobile mapping company that eventually got . One of the sticking points of that deal (reportedly) was that Facebook wanted all of Waze in Menlo Park’s HQ. Today’s deal shows that Facebook clearly isn’t adverse to having a presence in the country after all. But Onavo is not the first Israeli company that Facebook has acquired. There have been two others: one also to further its mobile operations, with feature phone interface developer (bought for up to $70 million in March 2011); and one to expand its photo sharing and storage platform, acquiring facial recognition specialist in June 2012 for $50-60 million. Update: A Facebook spokesperson has emailed me a comment that basically underscores all of the above: “Onavo will be an exciting addition to Facebook. We expect Onavo’s data compression technology to play a central role in our mission to connect more people to the internet, and their analytic tools will help us provide better, more efficient mobile products.” He also pointed to the Onavo blog post, which we have embedded below. We are excited to announce that Facebook has agreed to acquire our company. Three years ago, we started Onavo with the goal of helping today’s technology consumers and companies work more efficiently in a mobile world. We developed the award-winning Onavo mobile utility apps, and later launched Onavo Insights, the first mobile market intelligence service based on real engagement data. Our service helps people save money through more efficient use of data, and also helps developers, large and small, design better experiences for people. We’ve built world-class products and a remarkably talented team which has pioneered important breakthroughs in data compression technology and mobile analytics. Today, we’re eager to take the next step and make an even bigger impact by supporting Facebook’s mission to connect the world. As you know, Facebook and other mobile technology leaders recently launched Internet.org, formalizing Facebook’s commitment to improving access to the internet for the next 5 billion people — this is a challenge we’re also passionate about. We’re excited to join their team, and hope to play a critical role in reaching one of Internet.org’s most significant goals – using data more efficiently, so that more people around the world can connect and share. When the transaction closes, we plan to continue running the Onavo mobile utility apps as a standalone brand. As always, we remain committed to the privacy of people who use our application and that commitment will not change. We are incredibly proud of the talented team we have assembled, and, recognizing this, Onavo’s Tel-Aviv office will remain open for business and will become Facebook’s new Israeli office. We’ll continue to advance the work we are doing in collaboration with Facebook’s great team. Thank you to everyone who has joined us on this journey. We’d like to extend a special thanks to our investors, who believed in us and in our vision from the early days. We’re excited for what’s next.
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Netflix Reportedly In Negotiations With U.S. Cable TV Providers
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Catherine Shu
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is in the early stages of negotiating with U.S. cable providers to make its online streaming video service available as an app through their set-top boxes, . If a deal goes through, it will mark a major victory for Netflix, signifying that it has changed viewer habits so much that cable TV operators can no longer afford to ignore it. We’ve emailed Netflix for comment. The report comes a month after with U.K. cable operator Virgin Media. That agreement allows Virgin Media’s 3.8 million customers to search for Netflix shows on the same on-screen guide used to look for cable TV programs. Netflix has positioned itself as a less expensive alternative to cable TV for viewers who want on-demand television, and the deal is one way for cable providers to avoid losing more customers to the service. A potential boon for cable operators in a deal with Netflix, however, is that Netflix users may be willing to shell out for faster broadband connections. Cable operators may also be able to leverage Netflix’s library of old TV shows in negotiations with channels for lower carriage-fees (dispute over the fees has led to major channels ). The deal would allow viewers to access Netflix through an app in newer set-top boxes provided by cable operators, meaning that they don’t have to connect their television to the Internet. This means they can skip the step of setting up devices such as , consoles or . A potential obstacle in the negotiation is the fact that Netflix wants cable operators to use technology in its program, which is designed to improve delivery of streaming video. This means that Netflix would connect special servers directly into broadband providers’ networks. The WSJ report says that Comcast, Time Warner Cable, AT&T and Verizon Communications have declined to use Netflix’s technology because they are concerned it would lead to other online services asking for special treatment. The cable providers also insist that their broadband networks are already capable of handling Netflix traffic (an important point to reiterate if it wants customers to pay extra for speedier connections).
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Of Course Harvard’s Larry Summers Hates The Thiel Fellowship
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Contributor
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The former President of Harvard the Thiel Fellowship. In his shoes, neither would we. A program that asks the best and brightest from top universities to pursue their interests outside Harvard’s hallowed campus walls? Larry Summers’ critique of the Thiel Fellowship as “single most misdirected bit of philanthropy in this decade” is predictable and thick with vested interest. As with any community (or company), the power of a university lies in the quality of the people it attracts. Good students attract more good students, and in that environment learning and innovation become possible. The problem the Thiel fellowship poses for a place like Harvard is that it un-bundles the institution from the people it attracts. The Thiel fellowship has created an alternative ecosystem where the best and brightest can thrive in ways unsupported by a four-year, quarter-million-dollar degree. As a member of the of Thiel Fellows in 2011 and a mentor for the program, we’ve been working together for about a year building our startup of adult and vocational training. Dan, the fellow, dropped out of Yale to explore technology and education. In his two-year fellowship he worked at a venture firm, developed products for a dozen startups and started working with Darrell on Thinkful. Darrell, the mentor, took a more traditional path. Darrell finished Columbia with bachelors degrees in Art History and Computer Science. He went on to work in finance, started and sold his first startup, and is now the CEO of . Given our different educational backgrounds, working together has taught us a lot about the value of a good education, both inside and outside the classroom. What’s clear is that learning must take place over a lifetime. When universities were in their prime, 17-year-olds gained acceptance into a network that helped them learn enough to get their first job. That job would lead to a promotion and hopefully a steady career track. But those days are long gone. Today, we expect to change jobs or careers every five years. As a result, the education we need dramatically changes over and over. It’s just not reasonable to expect four years of education in our early adulthood to serve us in a world where the skills we use change so quickly. Add the enormous costs and debt burden that schools like Harvard ask students to take on and it’s no wonder so many twenty-somethings are looking for an alternative. Leaving college early isn’t easy, but neither is entering the workforce after receiving a traditional four-year degree. As peers of new grads, hirers and adult educators, we see this every day. The benefits of being a Thiel fellow are easy to spot when you see the angst, uncertainty and compromises made by so many traditionally educated young people today. It’s not just that new grads are ill-prepared for their first jobs after college. The problem lies in the compromises they must make in order to keep from moving back home into their high-school bedrooms. Those compromises have long-term consequences, much longer than the four years of college. Where to live, whom to live with and what career to start are a lot to decide on one deadline, but that’s exactly today’s definition of graduation day. Not so for Thiel fellows. The decisions that shape young people’s careers are made by the Thiel fellows over two years, not in one shot. Many fellows travel and many take advantage of the program’s incredible network to work for and with diverse groups across several sectors. Most important, every fellow tries ideas in the real world secure in the knowledge that failure at age 22 is a low-consequence setback. It’s impossible to avoid compromises in your life, but how could you argue that a system that makes for less of them is “misdirected,” as Summers claims it is? We do believe in the value of a liberal arts education. There’s something hard to measure that comes from the abstract thinking and logic we gain from our time in college. Our team of nine at Thinkful already represents decades of advanced and undergraduate education few should trade for the couple years’ living expenses Dan received from Peter Thiel. But it’s also the case that taking political science classes and getting drunk in a dorm isn’t the only way to go through your late teens and early twenties. We don’t believe a liberal arts education is necessarily restricted to the exact way American universities deliver it. It’s a sign of fragility that someone like Summers can be so scared by a single billionaire. Schools like Thinkful, accessible graduate programs across the country, engineering bootcamps and myriad other options, online and off, are sprouting up to fill the needs left behind by traditional institutions. We believe this represents an enormous shift in where our society’s expectations for learning come from. In the short-term, the popularity of programs like Thinkful is being driven by folks trying to dig themselves out of the hole of the recession. As the economy recovers we’ll come to realize that the stability we thought we were purchasing with college is actually much less applicable going forward. In the future (and by and large the Thiel fellows have come to this conclusion faster than everyone else) a one-size-fits-all education won’t work in the complex, rapidly changing world in which we already find ourselves. What does this all mean for Harvard and the other elite universities? For these select few, not much. The point is that their world is shrinking. The university education of today will represent a smaller and smaller percentage of our life’s education. Harvard, with its massive brand and endowment, will most likely still be among the best, but it will matter less. The world today is shifting too quickly to allow for a single source or moment of our education. Similarly, Peter Thiel’s vision for free-form education is by no means a model that will work for everyone. What’s shocking is that Larry Summers thinks his model still does.
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Woojer Is A Wearable Audio Accessory For Bass Junkies Who Want To Feel The Noise
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Natasha Lomas
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Woojer is a wearable mobile accessory designed to allow its wearer to feel what they’re listening to on their mobile device — via the medium of haptic feedback — rather than simply having banging tunes inserted into their earholes. It’s also being aimed at gamers who want a more immersive in-game experience, or for watching movies or other audiovisual content on a mobile device. The Israel-based startup behind Woojer, which closed a $600,000 angel round earlier this year, has been developing the product since the start of 2011. It currently has a working prototype — and plans to launch a Kickstarter campaign next month to raise funding for an initial production run. If that’s successful, they hope to ship to backers in early Spring 2014. How exactly does Woojer work? Its creators describe it as a “tactile transducer” that reproduces sound as a polyphonic vibration, allowing a haptic, noiseless element to augment the standard stereo audio the user hears via their own headphones (which plug into the Woojer box via a 3.5mm headphone jack). Unlike some of the rival offerings in this space, such as and , Woojer doesn’t require the user to strap on some form of backpack or wear a special headset. (Or look like they buy all their clothes at .) Instead, the roughly matchbox-sized box is clipped to clothing so it rests against the body. Its low frequency vibrations then create a physical bass sensation — similar to hearing live music at a concert or cinema surround sound. Or that’s the theory. Here’s how Woojer explains the tech — which it will be showing off next week at Pepcom in San Francisco: The key Woojer know-how lies in the novel tactile transducer that reproduces sound as a polyphonic vibration. The device has accurate frequency response throughout the sonic and subsonic ranges. Clipped to the clothing along strategic meridian bodylines, the signal synergy convinces the brain that the whole body is exposed to high acoustic energy by the principle of “Perceptual Inference”. The device is compact, low cost, energy efficient and scalable. We have demonstrated both corded and wireless configurations. “When playing games on smartphones or tablets with headsets the audio experience is two dimensional. With our device you ‘feel the sound’ in a similar manner when in the presence of strong speakers. Users claim it feels like being at a club or in a cinema with surround sound,” adds Woojer founder Neal Naimer. “The Woojer device can be used in many ways — to give some simple examples: simulators, in games to provide subsonic sensation — unaudible feelings of people walking behind you, earthquakes [etc].” Advantages over rival offerings in this space include its small size and portability; lower price (final retail price is still being decided but Naimer suggests a ballpark figure of $70 for two devices vs $300 for some rival offerings); polyphonic sound; improved latency over rivals’ so that the tactile sensation doesn’t lag the audiovisuals; and a longer play time (Woojer will be good for more than four hours of use), according to Naimer. The startup is taking to Kickstarter to push production forward rather than attempting to partner with games or headset makers as a faster way to get to market. “We can partner with any of the OEMs (both games and headsets) and are in touch with a number, but their decision cycle is proving to be too long for us,” Naimer told TechCrunch earlier this year, adding: “There is no real need for a formal relationship at the outset as we are backwardly compatible with all headsets and all consoles that have a standard audio jack.” Here’s a video of Woojer’s Naimer pitching the concept earlier this year: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30QFmhbf0o0&w=640&h=360]
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The End Of The Library
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MG Siegler
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A simple link. That’s all it took to unleash a hailstorm of angry emails, messages, tweets, and comments. Why? I dared wonder if libraries will continue to exist in the future. I mean, it’s not that crazy a notion, right? (If a , you’re not allowed to answer that.) Last Monday, to from my blog. In it, he argues that beyond the recent around e-book pricing, the real problem with e-books is what they’re doing to libraries. That is, killing them. As Brodsky notes: Imagine walking into a library or bookstore and needing three or four pairs of different glasses to read different books manufactured to specific viewing equipment. Or buying a book and then having to arbitrarily destroy it after say, two weeks. That’s just nuts. But it’s the current situation we’re in with ebooks. He’s referring to the fact that Amazon, Apple, Google, and others now have their own e-book stores which sell goods which only work on certain devices or within certain applications. Also, while the economics of e-books at a library should theoretically be better (since there is no more physical product, and any replacements or new copies are just a download away), they’re actually far worse: Take the example of J.K. Rowling’s pseudonymous book, Cuckoo’s Calling. For the physical book, libraries would pay $14.40 from book distributor Baker & Taylor — close to the consumer price of $15.49 from Barnes & Noble and of $15.19 from Amazon. But even though the ebook will cost consumers $6.50 on Amazon and Barnes & Noble, libraries would pay $78 (through library ebook distributors Overdrive and 3M) for the same thing. Somehow the “e” in ebooks changes the pricing game, and drastically. How else does one explain libraries paying a $0.79 to $1.09 difference for a physical book to paying a difference of $71.50 just because it’s the electronic version? It’s not like being digital makes a difference for when and how they can lend it out. And so, with these things in mind, it’s hard not to imagine a future where the majority of libraries cease to exist — at least as we currently know them. Not only are they being rendered obsolete in a digital world, the economics make sense. One can easily envision libraries making their way to the forefront of any budget cut discussions. I know this sucks. Libraries have been an invaluable part of human history, propagating our culture and knowledge over centuries. But recognizing the changing times and pointing out the obvious shouldn’t be considered blasphemy. It is what it is. The internet has replaced the importance of libraries as a repository for knowledge. And digital distribution has replaced the role of a library as a central hub for obtaining the containers of such knowledge: books. And digital bits have replaced the need to cut down trees to make paper and waste ink to create those books. This is evolution, not devolution. It’s hard for me to even remember the last time I was in a library. I was definitely in one this past summer in Europe — on a historical tour. Before that, I think it was when I was in college. But even then, ten years ago, the internet was replacing the need to go to a library. And now, with e-books, I’m guessing the main reason to go to a library on a college campus is simply because it’s a quiet place to study. I do recall the last several times I went to a library in high school — it was to borrow some CDs. (Which may or may not have been subsequently ripped onto a computer…) The point is, times have changed. And things continue to change with increasing speed. So where does that leave libraries? Undoubtedly, some of the largest, most prestigious libraries will live on. But the people lurking in them may increasingly look like Gandalf in the bowels of Minas Tirith looking through the scrolls of Isildur. Meanwhile, some other spaces currently known as libraries may live on as cultural and/or . Others like the notion of using libraries as some sort of newfangled technology demo pits. Tablets over here! 3D printers over here! even likened them to Apple Stores. There is also the notion of libraries shifting their focus to go further up the stack, as it were, to help content creators earn a better living from their writing. Eli Neiburger of the Ann Arbor District Library has extensively about this. (Multiple people dismayed by my original link, pointed me to Neiburger’s thoughts.) But even Neiburger admits that this is likely only a possibility for niche and/or independent writers. The big name publishers and big ticket books are never going to go for this. And again, this may mean a future where libraries have less of a focus on actual books. All of these prospects for sound nice on paper (figuratively, not literally, of course). But I’m also worried that some of us are kidding ourselves. These theoretical places are not libraries in the ways that any of us currently think of libraries. That’s the thing: it seems that nearly everyone is actually in agreement that libraries, as we currently know them, are going away. But no one wants to admit it because calling for the end of libraries seems about as popular as the . It’s almost like some people want to interpret anyone talking about the end of libraries as talking about the end of learning — and, by extension, the end of civilization. The reality is that learning has evolved. It’s now easier than ever to look something up. And the connected world has far better access to basically infinitely more information than can be found in even the largest library — or all of them . This is all a good thing. A very good thing. Maybe the thing in the history of our civilization. Yet we retain this romantic notion of libraries as cultural touchstones. Without them, we’re worried we’ll be lost and everything will fall apart. So we’re coming up with all these other ways to try to keep these buildings open. Co-working spaces! Media labs. We’ll see. But it’s impossible to see a world where we keep libraries open simply to pretend they still serve a purpose for which they no longer serve. I’m sorry I have to be the one to write this. I have nothing but fond memories of libraries from my youth. Of course, I also have fond memories of bookstores. And we all know how that has turned out…
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Magnify Is Buying Waywire To Build A Consumer-Facing Video Curation Powerhouse
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Ryan Lawler
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New York-based video startup Magnify is in the process of acquiring Waywire, the company that Cory Booker founded, to build a consumer-facing business around the curation of videos online. The deal, which was , isn’t quite done yet, but is expected to close early this week. When it closes, it will give Magnify access to a whole bunch of content deals to go after the nascent curation space. Since being founded in 2006, Magnify has been building tools to enable others to collect and share videos on the web. For the most part, it’s made money by offering a platform for content providers and video publishers to curate their own videos, along with those of partners, and to give consumers viewing them the opportunity to share via email and social networks. The idea is to boost engagement — and therefore boost monetization — while also providing detailed analytics about the videos viewed and where viewers came from. Apparently the folks at Magnify believe that, after however many years, the time is right for consumers to begin curating videos in the same way they curate and pin articles and whatever else on sites like Pinterest. That’s a bit of a transition for Magnify, which has been focused on the enterprise side of the market for the last few years. In fact, at one point Magnify had a free, consumer-facing tool for video curation. It shut that service down a few years ago, however, to go after the more lucrative enterprise market opportunity. So why buy its way back into consumer business? According to a source familiar with the deal, Waywire has one thing that Magnify doesn’t right now — and that’s deals with a bunch of media companies. Acquiring Waywire will give Magnify instant access to a library of videos from companies like AOL, Yahoo, and MSNBC, which consumers would be able to curate, collect, and share. And it’ll be able to do so without a whole lot of technical build out. The consumer-facing service will live on Waywire.com, but will use the Magnify backend to power its curation tools, we’ve heard. For Waywire, the acquisition should put to bed a bunch of questions about its viability and Senate-hopeful Cory Booker’s role in the startup. While he was one of the company’s three founders, in the wake of his Senate campaign, the mayor of Newark stepped down from the board and . Booker wasn’t the only co-founder to depart: Then-CEO Nathan Richardson and a few weeks later . Sarah Ross, the third co-founder and last remaining member of the founding team, is not expected to stick around for day-to-day operations after the acquisition, either, but will remain on in an advisory capacity. Magnify has raised a little more than $5 million in funding since 2006, including earlier this year from investors that include TED producer Chris Anderson and former Facebook chief privacy officer Chris Kelly.
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Microsoft: Yeah, The Surface RT’s Name Confused Consumers
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Alex Wilhelm
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In its new generation of tablet hybrid hardware, Microsoft renamed its lower-end, ARM-based Surface device, calling it the Surface 2. It kept its prior Surface Pro branding in place. Why ditch the original Surface RT name? As you expected, consumers didn’t get what it meant. Speaking , an Australian publication, – a Microsoft employee who works on Surface marketing – stated that there was “some confusion in the market last year on the difference between Surface RT and Surface Pro.” That’s correct. To combat that issue, the Surface RT has been rebranded as the Surface 2. Frankly, I wonder why Microsoft didn’t just call it the Surface. There isn’t, so far as I can tell, any ‘connection’ between the phrases ‘Surface 2’ and ‘Surface Pro.’ It can be said that Surface 2 is a more consumer-friendly name that Surface RT, given that the public is very accustomed to sequentially numbered products (films, albums, etc). And, Microsoft had done reasonably well with its Surface Pro set of devices, meaning that it likely didn’t want to disturb a working brand. Calling the Surface 2 just the Surface would negate the RT entirely, which – as it continues to sell old Surface RT stock – might have been even more confusing. As you can read between the above, the core confusion is that the Surface 2 depends on Office, and the Windows Store for all its applications, while the Surface Pro does not. You can’t bridge that gap in a name, I don’t think. So the tension will remain. The Windows Store has improved, the core set of Windows applications has been extended, and Windows 8.1 brings with it an expanded set of Office products. Is that enough for the average consumers is the remaining ARM-based Surface question. And let’s be frank ,’RT’ was an ugly sounding creation. Microsoft’s candor in this is nice – we knew that the Surface RT had branding issues, but it remains slightly refreshing to hear a company cop to past errors. As Tom Warren of , Windows RT has been essentially abandoned by every OEM that isn’t Microsoft. This means that if Microsoft can’t make the Surface 2 work, Windows RT is essentially over. So the name change, and the new hardware come as package to save a large slice of Microsoft’s vision for what Windows should look like over the next half decade and beyond. Those are large stakes indeed.
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Xero Zeros In On Another $150M To Do Battle With Intuit In The World Of Online SMB Accounting Software
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Ingrid Lunden
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Nearly a year after Peter Thiel, Matrix Partners and others into , the online accounting software company is adding yet more capital to its coffers. Today the New Zealand-based startup that it has raised $150 million (NZ$180m), led again by Peter Thiel-backed Valar Ventures and Matrix Partners. Xero says it will use the funds to continue building out its business targeting small and medium businesses, and their accountants, with its cloud-based software globally. This brings the total amount raised by the company to over $230 million. Prior to today’s funding announcement, the company was at over $2.07 billion. But it is not yet profitable, reporting a net loss of US$12 million (NZ$14.443m) for the last fiscal year. Xero’s unique selling point is its slick and simple user interface, or “beautiful cloud accounting making business enjoyable,” as Xero describes it. Into this the company adds functionality that SMBs are increasingly coming to demand: integration with payment services like PayPal, for example; and the ability to add CRM apps, general online invoices and and manage it all from a smartphone — all sold under an SaaS pricing model. “Xero has had seven years to build the best global accounting platform,” said Rod Drury, Xero’s CEO, in a statement. “That investment puts us in a strong position as the cloud market accelerates. The calibre of our investors and our strong cash position sends a clear signal of our aspirations to serve millions of small businesses around the world.” Indeed, Xero hopes to use this funding injection to overtake dominant players in the SMB market like Intuit’s QuickBooks, and it is driving especially aggressively into countries like the U.S. to do it. (That’s because the U.S. represents “29 million potential customers.”) Tellingly, some $123 million of the $150 million announced today comes from investors in the U.S. the company . “Xero is emerging as the definitive software platform for small business worldwide. Capturing the power and affordability of cloud-based computing, Xero has democratized accounting, payroll, and other business software that was once the privilege of only the largest companies,” noted David E. Goel, Managing Member of Matrix Capital Management, in a statement. “Having empowered hundreds of thousands of small and medium-sized businesses in New Zealand, Australia, and the United Kingdom, Xero is poised to do the same for its 29 million potential customers in the United States. We are adding to our investment to help facilitate and accelerate this goal.” Xero’s longer-term aim, as laid out in its last annual , is to reach 1 million paying customers. As of , it had 211,300, with annualised committed monthly revenues are NZ$70.6 million (US$58.7 million). This new funding, along with Xero’s existing US$45.8m in cash, in will go some way to potentially driving up that number. The news comes after Xero — publicly traded in New Zealand and Australia — halted trading in its shares on Friday pending a funding announcement. Xero has been pushing especially hard into new markets outside of its traditional base of New Zealand, Australia and the UK. In the year that ended September 30, 2013, the company says its user base grew by 89%, but the growth outside of NZ, Australia and the UK was 141%, with revenues up 84% in the previous six months. Right now, New Zealand remains its biggest base of users, with 85,500. As for why public Xero is raising funding from VCs, it’s an interesting predicament that seems unique to markets like New Zealand. , an investor, tech commentator and “long-time Xero-watcher” tells me that Xero had no choice but to list at launch in 2007 — “a function of limited capital in New Zealand and the fact that they had no credibility with their target market.” That also drove the company to dual-list in Australia as well; and CEO Drury “has already flagged a likely U.S. cross listing.” Nevertheless, “given the fact their original IPO was relatively modest and they’re not yet profitable, further equity funding is necessary,” he notes. Other investors in Xero include Craig Winkler and Sam Morgan.
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What Games Are: The Nintendo Difference Still Exists
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Tadhg Kelly
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There are three kinds of articles that regularly get written about Nintendo. The first article says Nintendo’s and talks about how impossible it is becoming for the company to survive in the modern world. The reasons for the doom are several (a few years ago it was the encroachment of HD, now it’s the rise of mobile). Either way, its author says, there’s no room for Nintendo in the New Order of Devices. It better start making games for other platforms. The second article is similar, but rather than focus on devices, it laments the state of the company’s games. How long, the author asks, can Nintendo get away with pumping out sequels and rehashes year after year? How much life do those old tired characters have? will surely die any day now. It needs some new games or else. The third article, including this one, says that only a fool bets against Nintendo. Nintendo, it says, is different. Because it is. This week we saw two pieces of evidence that show Nintendo’s still got its groove. The first was the news that the release of an HD’d version of caused sales of the Wii U to rise by in the U.K. And the second was the release of the 2DS. It’s very cheap and I reckon it’s going to sell well. Nintendo is uniquely positioned. There are a few companies that attract legions of fans who live or die with its successes or failures (Blizzard and Valve for instance) and equally few that have the financial muscle to make games machines. Only Nintendo has both. In the games industry it’s the one platform maker whose strategy is to make machines that fit the kind of games it wants to make. It trusts that the market will buy in. Nintendo isn’t trying to be a platform business in the way that most tech companies are. It doesn’t tend to aim for the cutting edge or be too bothered about how much extra functionality is included in its platforms. It doesn’t seek to impress through power. Instead its consoles and handless are frequently plasticky and cheap rather than svelte and expensive. However they’re usually innovative, and fans love them for it. Another key difference is Nintendo’s games. While game reviewers have always bemoaned the slow pace at which , , , , and a bunch of other games actually develop, these franchises continue to find an audience. Almost every game developer I know buys a Nintendo system despite themselves because they want to play one of those new releases. A recent example is which, over the summer, filled my Twitter feed. Everybody had something to say about the comings and goings of Tom Nook. At the same time “ ” is somewhat divisive. The company’s games can be chalk and cheese and its platforms often don’t show the same breadth of content as others and its third-party dealings have always been a bit iffy. In some ways its boxes the company in. While it has had some huge hits in the last decade, most notably the Wii, it has done so at a cost. A lot of true fans felt that the company had turned its back on them in search of the casual gaming dollar, and so when it came time to buy into the sequel they paused. But that doesn’t mean they’d gone for good. The reason this formula keeps working is that Nintendo understands franchises. The games business likes to act like the movie business sometimes (see David Cage’s ) but really it’s more like the comics industry. Games journalists may like to think there should be an overall narrative to the medium where new faces are supposed to replace the old, like Hollywood, but historically that’s not supportable. Rather than find a ton of new faces, the industry keeps updating old faces year after year, just as comic companies do with their characters. And, again just like comics, fans respond with undying loyalty. The plain fact is people buy Zelda after Zelda after Zelda. Ultimately the Nintendo difference is about patience. Because the company has zillions of true fans it is not in a position where it has to rush. It may come across as dorky, and its products may fail to find market fit on first release. Yet over time it wends its way through those issues and finds the right game and price point to make its platforms attractive. It sits, waits, evaluates and patiently prods until it gets to where it wants to be. It relies on the quality of its software product to eventually persuade people to come around. It takes the time to make its games right. It knows that the physical quality of its hardware is not a deal breaker. And even when it diverges from what the fans believe in, Nintendo has the patience to win them back. And that’s why Nintendo survives and usually thrives. In the short term it’s obvious that it has some issues to deal with, and in the medium term yes there are threats. Mobile gaming is a big deal. Yet as long as Nintendo continues to satisfy those fans who’ll go out and buy whole game systems just to get their hands on rehashed versions of The Wind Waker, Nintendo’s going to be okay.
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Alex Wilhelm
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Fifteen Years On, Pokemon Still Holds Power Over This Thirty-Something
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Darrell Etherington
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While iPhone launch days and big gadget reveals represent some of my most anticipated events because I’m a tech blogger, a day like today can still awaken just as much excitement. Today is the launch day of a new Pokemon game, you see – the newest installment of the “Catch ‘Em All” franchise, Pokemon X/Y for the Nintendo 3DS, hits store shelves and is being delivered to pre-order customers everywhere. Kids are choosing from three new starter Pokemon, and beginning a familiar adventure all over again. And a fair amount of adults like me are, too. I’ve played every single Western-release Pokemon title in the main franchise (not all of the spin-offs, sadly) since Pokemon Red and Blue were introduced back in 1998. When those games made their North American debuts, I was 15 years old – probably a little above the target age group of the games, but a lot closer to them than I am now, starting Pokemon Y at the ripe old age of 31. To prepare for this new Pokemon arrival, I did two things: I bought a Nintendo 3DS XL, and I picked up a copy of Pokemon Black 2, the one main franchise title I hadn’t played so far. Did I buy the 3DS console only because of the impending Pokemon release? Yes. Am I alone in finally getting on board with Nintendo’s most recent mobile gaming console specifically to roam a virtual world capturing strange, often adorable little creatures to complete some kind of grand and tedious menagerie? Definitely not. Pokemon is a killer franchise for Nintendo, one that has the power to ship hardware as well as sell games. Recently, I’ve been asked why I like Pokemon, and continue to play the games, including by many of my coworkers on our weekly gadgets podcast. I’ve seldom stopped to think about what parts of the Pokemon experience I actually find enjoyable. Surprised with the request to be self-reflexive about a game I’ve been playing for well over a decade, I surprised myself by coming up with some fanciful crap about how playing each successive generation of Pokemon — and replaying the games through all of their minor variations — is a little like a classical musician playing through symphonies that have been played by countless other artists, and themselves, time and time again. Each play is a variation, and enjoyable to fans and appreciators, no matter how small or subtle the differences. Pokemon has a basic recipe, a set of notes on paper that make it identifiable for what it is, but it also offers a lot of variety in terms of how it can be played. For instance, I’ve never battled or traded with others, despite that being a core component of Pokemon gameplay. Sometimes I feel religious about having to stick with starter Pokemon; other times I ditch them quickly and never look back. Each playthrough can focus on using a different kind of team, which completely changes how you battle and how you collect and train. But ultimately, Pokemon is a game for those who find routine comforting, and who enjoy obsessive tabulation, statistics and strategy analysis. Its proponents could just as easily be avid baseball fans, huge Settlers of Catan enthusiasts or even coin collectors. It’s a game that manages to scratch a number of those itches at once, too: If you’re soothed by repetitive action, but also want to flex your brain with something slightly more involved (but not terribly different from) Sudoku, you’re probably a Pokemaniac, whether or not you realize it. In the time I’ve been playing Pokemon, I could’ve had a child and raised them to young adulthood; I could’ve ; I could’ve built a nation’s fighting force ; instead, I’ve been trying to catch them all. I never have, and I don’t even think it’s possible without superhuman effort, but I imagine there’s still another 15 years at least left in my Pokemon infatuation.
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The Precise Art Of Mobile Push Notifications
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Semil Shah
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TechCrunch I may sound like a record when I consistently reference this phrase in my weekly column: “mobile is the only under-hyped thing in tech.” Yet, it is hard to argue with, and if we agree to agree, then within a mobile context, almost everything we can do with our phones and apps is , as well. Take mobile push notifications, for example. As entrepreneur , “it’s hard to over-hype the power of mobile push notifications. For the first time in human history, you can tap almost two billion people on the shoulder.” Push notifications aren’t an entirely new phenomenon, but as mobile handset growth continues to accelerate (along with faster handset releases), push alerts only grow in importance as a channel for applications to communicate with and re-engage users. In theory, push notifications seem elegant, a way to prompt a mobile user at the right place, at the right time, regarding the right piece of information. In practice, however, Apple’s notification channel was flooded by marketing techniques almost out of the gate, taking the great promise of push and watering it down as application developers ruthlessly ask users for the permission to send alerts, and then often abuse that permission. The result? Many mobile users doggy-paddle aimlessly through an ocean of push notifications or some learn about OS-level settings and disable them selectively (or altogether). It doesn’t have to be like this. I don’t have aggregate data on the ratio between total push notifications sent versus those which are opened, or any specific application-level data, but what I can share — from working in and writing about mobile — is there are some apps that leverage the data on the phone and from their services to send great, timely, contextual, personalized, relevant push notifications, and from these providers, they could be wider lessons we can all learn from. Briefly, here’s what I’ve noticed works for me: Push notification from red-colored app icons tend to be apps which send me notifications and run in the background, but I rarely open the app itself. The examples which immediately come to mind is the “Breaking News” app, which sends about 4-7 alerts per week. This app has earned my trust to sit on my phone and work in the background, and it doesn’t interrupt me often, so I keep it around. For banking, Bank Of America sends a weekly balance update via push, and then whenever money is credited or debited from my account. Seems appropriate to me, so I keep it around. Most blue-colored app icons are around messaging and therefore are opened often so I can close that communication loop. The usual suspects are here, like TweetBot, Facebook Messenger, MessageMe, and Mailbox, though I recently decided to disable email push notifications because of the constant buzzing and battery drain. I open the phone to look at email enough already. That said, there is an obvious desire by the user to see a personalized message (like email) and then open the push alert. Green is an interesting color for push, I recently discovered. The most important green push alert originates from SMS, of course, and since those are the most personalized messages one can receive on their phones, we all pay attention to them. Recently, for the first time, I was tricked into thinking I received another SMS push notification in bright green, only to find it was sent by the crafty folks at one of my new favorite services ( ), and perhaps because I like Munchery and pay attention to them in general, the fact that their push icons are green captured my attention before I even realized what happened. Of course, the color of an app icon and its corresponding push notification are just a surface-level observation, something I noticed personally as my eyes glance at my phone but aren’t fixated on the device. Here are some other examples of push notifications I’ve found to be timely, relevant, contextual, and only sent when appropriate: (1) sends me a highly-personalized push notification right before any meeting, but goes behind calendar-level data to show me more information about the person I’m going to meet. As a result, I open it nearly every time (see picture above). (2) push notifications are opened because there’s timeliness built into the company’s brand, and I know the communication is relevant right now (and will likely also expire when I open it); (3) alerts are tied to explicit daily habits I’ve selected I want to complete, so it perfectly ties together the daily habitual use of smartphones with the things I should be doing anyway; and (4) , a mobile news service, sends me news alerts like the “Breaking News” app, with the added bonus that I can subscribe to a specific story and then be alerted around that, if I opt-in. (There are many other great examples of push done well, but I can’t list them all here.) The lesson in these apps and others who do not abuse the push notification channel is that the best alerts tend to be personalized, contextual, timely, and relevant — and some don’t require that I go back into the app. It’s this tactic of re-engagement where the trouble starts. Even Facebook mobile ads , which is currently profiting handsomely by arbitraging the difficulty of app discovery among users and the thirst (and willingness to pay) of app developers, recently announced a new ad product targeted at re-engagement, to push users to open and interact with apps which are already on their phones. (A new startup is also in this space, where not only is discovery a problem, but engagement is, too.) Seidman : “the basic problem with push notifications is they are used an email replacement. I can see marketers and growth hackers getting all hot n’ heavy realizing that they can now send the weekly “people you should follow” email that nobody reads as a push notification to your mobile device.” And, that’s what usually happens, and why mobile users, over time, begin to intuitively disregard worthless push alerts, either learning to disable the functionality in settings or even deleting the app altogether in frustration. It’s early days in mobile, but I believe the tacky growth-hacky tactics which persist on the web and through email won’t work as well on mobile because push notifications are even more of an interruption and limited to 140 or less characters. This puts app developers in a bind: If an app desperately needs re-engagement, there’s a perverse incentive to flood the notification channel, but if those alerts (and the app itself) aren’t truly relevant to the mobile user, well, the clock starts ticking before either the company doesn’t exist or the user shortcuts it all and deletes the app from the phone altogether.
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Fly Or Die: Samsung Galaxy Note 3
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Jordan Crook
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Samsung’s is here. If you haven’t met her already, say hello to the Galaxy Note 3, a barge of a phone with incredible processing power and no fashion sense whatsoever. There’s no question that the Galaxy Note 3 is a powerful device. It’s the first smartphone to come with 3GB of RAM under the hood, and it also packs a 2.3GHz quad-core Snapdragon 800 processor. The phone is noticeably snappy, and even though Samsung sadly felt the need to inflate the phone’s speed, rest assured that this mammoth phone will be able to handle anything you throw at it. But will you be able to handle the GalNote? That’s the real question. See, the phone sports a 5.7-inch (gorgeous) 1080p AMOLED display, making it characteristically large in the hand and pocket. As the Galaxy Note and Galaxy Note 2 have proven, there are people in the world who don’t mind (and actually enjoy) this size phone, but personally, I’m not attracted to it. That said, those who have previously enjoyed a Galaxy Note-sized phone should seriously consider an upgrade to this generation. The S pen is better, the battery life is longer with a 3200mAh battery, and it’s just plain faster. However, it does feel like the GalNote 3 got hit with the ugly stick a few too many times. The leather back is ghastly, and the shiny silver bezel looks a bit cheap. It’s not awful, but it could be way better. In the end, John and I cancel each other out with one unenthusiastic Fly and one unconvinced Die. Sales will inevitably show that the Galaxy Note 3, and more importantly the GalNote line as a whole, is in good shape for the future. In other words, it comes down to you. Fly or die? You tell me.
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Flipcase Adds Some Fun And Games To Apple’s iPhone 5c Case
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Darrell Etherington
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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTVoD-3MDr0&w=640&h=390] Apple may not have hit a home run with its iPhone 5c case, which in my view would’ve been better off without the cut-out dots on the back, but those holes have proven inspiring for at least one enterprising game-maker. , a new game from Australia’s Dave McKinney and Stuart Hall, who created the , uses the case to its maximum advantage. Flipcase was a “weekend project” for McKinney and Hall, and it doesn’t offer up much in terms of complexity – keen observers will notice straightaway that it’s really just Connect Four with touch-based controls. But it does flip the iPhone 5c case on its head – literally – to make the cut-out spaces on the back the game board for one- or two-player dot-lining action. It may take you some tries to get the iPhone into the case with the screen facing out the back without accidentally locking the screen (it did for me at least), but once you’ve overcome that hurdle, the Flipcase app provides some entertaining distraction paired with clever UI design that lines up perfectly with the 5c case’s perforations. It’s hardly groundbreaking, but it’s simple and fun, and it gives you something to do with your official iPhone 5c case from Apple while you’re figuring out just what to use to .
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Study: Facebook Comments Are More Civil Than Newspaper Website Comments
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Gregory Ferenstein
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: A person is less likely to accuse a complete stranger of being a socialist demon hell-bent on killing babies with free health insurance, when their friends can see him being a complete asshat. : True A new study finds that Facebook users are about twice as civil as the anonymous trolling netizens that comb the badlands of ‘s comment section. “The occurrence of uncivil communicative behaviour in reader comments is significantly more common on the website version of the Washington Post where users are able to maintain their anonymity, compared to the Facebook version,” explained Professor Ian Rowe of London’s University of Kent, in what I hope is a delightfully British accent [ ]. Comparing comments on the website to those made on the same article when posted on Facebook, Rowe found that users were more than half as likely to be uncivil on the website, with comments on stereotypes, sarcasm, name calling, and a host of other characteristics that we’ve all seen before. Now, it wasn’t all roses and sunshine for Facebook: Users were more likely to call people names and be vulgar, though vulgarity appears to be . Rowe’s findings are generally consistent with what my friends at other news outlets have found. When the switched over to Facebook comments, the level of discourse dramatically improved. “Trolls don’t like their friends to know that they’re trolls,” said Jimmy Orr, LA Times online managing editor. The availability of Facebook, however, hasn’t stopped some sites from gutting comments entirely. PopScience recently comments, citing that trolls skew how readers interpret evidence and therefore crush open-minded discussion. TechCrunch itself briefly flirted with Facebook comments, before switching over to Livefyre. It was decided that Facebook does kill trolls, but community and insightful anonymous commenters. Google is the intellectual sewer that is YouTube comments over to Google+, which may help a bit. Regardless, let us all repeat together: We do not know how any of these experiments scale. As I’ve written before, real-name laws in South Korea to improve the quality of comments. We do not know the exact conditions that breed trolls, so we don’t really know how to stop them. That said, feel free to log in to Facebook and thoughtfully let me know why I’m an Obama acolyte leading America into a puppy-drowning dictatorship ruled by the iron fist of biracial gay couples who shoot children with confiscated guns.
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Shouts And Murmurations
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Devin Coldewey
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comments? You know, the comment section there at the bottom of the post. It seems like a simple question. And indeed, there is a simple answer: So that people can express themselves regarding the topic or article to which the comment section is appended, or peruse the expressions of others. But that’s not exactly correct. True, that is what comment sections are for, but do we have them? The Internet asks this question of itself time and again (and again, and again), but rarely if ever has there been any decisive action. Despite a few improvements in weighing and promoting comments, things still look largely the same as they did ten or more years ago. I think the failure of this portion of the Internet experience to advance in any meaningful way is not due to a lack of a breakthrough method, but a higher-order problem: no one is challenging the fundamentals of discussion on the Internet. Note, I am not talking about sites specifically formed for the purpose of structured conversation, like Quora or forums. I mean the omnipresent comments at the bottom of an article or some other morsel of media, by which whoever happens to be in the vicinity of that website can leave a memento of their presence and share their wisdom with others. The comments on this page or thousands of other news websites, on YouTube, on random blogs, on livestreams — those ones. Let’s look honestly at some of the ostensible reasons for having comments. I said “look honestly,” so the first thing we should do is acknowledge the almost universally poor quality of Internet-based discussion. Very little worthwhile commentary or argument is produced even on the rare occasions when things are kept civil. Certain communities produce reliably good discussions, but we can chalk that up to their being . As fun as it is to think so, most websites (to say nothing of single posts) and the Internet at large do not constitute communities except by the loosest possible definition. Where there is no community, there is no accountability; where there is no accountability, there is no civility; where there is no civility, there is no discussion — none worth having anyway. This is the case in probably 99 out of 100 Internet discussions, if not an even greater proportion. Comments, as a rule, have not promoted discussion, nor do they take place in a community. While it is true that one scrolls to the bottom of an article to see what people are saying about the topic in question, a comment section is simply not a good way to find that out — and not only are there better ways, but there are few worse. Already a substantial amount of the discussion of an article happens elsewhere than that article. It is always revealing when I see a link on Reddit with 250 comments, leading to a blog post with 50 comments, which links to a second, smaller blog with 10 comments, which leads to the source, which has 0 comments. A cursory observation (of history, let alone the Internet) shows that discussion, like mold, will occur wherever there are favorable conditions. Why contribute to the discussion below, in the comment section of this website, for instance, where you have to sign up for an account and may be subject to additional terms and conditions, when you can simply leave a comment at Reddit where you found the post, or the referring blog where you already have an account — or for that matter, on Twitter or some other high-level communication platform? Where you choose to have the discussion has little to do with the subject or material itself, but rather with the community with which you feel comfortable sharing that discussion, or alternatively, the one which is most convenient. Considering the highest-level distributors of content will always be the most convenient (aggregators, social news) and vanishingly few websites have communities worth involving oneself with, local comments appear not only inadequate if a dialogue of even the most minimal value is the effect desired, but also superfluous. The comment section of a popular article may provide valuable insight or timely corrections. Many is the time I myself have been set straight by a friendly commenter pointing out a grammatical or factual error (yes, I). And a misleading post may be countered by a skeptical comment that has risen to the top of the stinking heap below. Who hasn’t skipped to the bottom to see whether an author is being called out by some eloquent and informed critic? Surely, then, this must be a good reason for keeping comments around. But ask yourself: why should corrective feedback use an indirect, public method, yet a public callout of the facts or author be isolated in the microclimate of the post itself? For the first case, a more direct method is preferable, allowing for quick access to whoever should know that there’s a stray “teh” or that Socrates did not, a quick check suggests, fight at the battle of Cannae. A direct flagging mechanism with basic noise control serves better for this than a comment section, which is sort of like paper-clipping a concerned letter onto your local paper and leaving it at the editor’s front door. In the second case, when someone clearly wants to address the content of an article, support (or snipe at) the author, or otherwise publicly take a stand, again, there has to be a better method than a comment. To begin with, the content creator generally has admin rights over the comments, and may simply delete that critical comment and ban the author. this hypothetical sensible comment is suffered to survive, a visitor may indeed see it — , to be sure, but given subordinate billing and of dubious provenance. The problem of community appears again: Who is that masked commenter? Are they to be trusted? Are they a crank? Are they known for being helpful? Outside of a group where such things are considered valuable and can be tracked, these questions can’t be answered satisfactorily. Furthermore, for such a comment to have maximum effect (to counter an opinion article, say), it is not necessarily best to place it in close proximity to the source. As we have all seen, discussion and traffic occur not where one might logically expect them, at the source, but rather at the highest levels of organization, where one finds greater levels of both visibility and convenience. Using a direct comment system for substantive feedback is simply not a good option by almost any metric. Let’s not forget that we are running a business here. Commenters stick around longer, providing those all-important clicks, reducing bounce rates, and so on — and they come back, too, especially to controversial topics where a good flamewar is to be had. One 10-second visitor is multiplied, and the guys negotiating ad deals feel the pleasant warmth that only inflated traffic numbers can bring. Although I’m tempted to offer the observation that if a significant portion of your site’s traffic is the byproduct of flamewars, you are dancing on a burning path businesswise, or similarly that pageviews and other dated, limited metrics are a mare’s nest analytics-wise, I must forbear; the benefit of a active discussion section on a website must be addressed in good earnest. The problem is that thriving discussion sections are, I assert without evidence, overwhelmingly caused by good traffic, whereas the reverse, a story or piece of media garnering traffic because of the discussion, is quite rare. Consult yourself. Have you ever linked to something because of an interesting comment thread? I certainly have linked to a Hacker News thread or left the #comments anchor on a link — but the other seven hundred times, I linked because the content was compelling. To attract, occupy, and monetize visitors is the goal of most public-facing businesses, numbering among which are a great proportion of websites. But the comment section seems like such a crude mechanism for promotion and retention that I’m embarrassed to see it used as such, like when I pass the guys on street corners in costume, dancing and spinning a sign for a nearby business — it’s not the sign guy I feel bad for (it’s a job), but the business that may as well be employing a carnival tout to hustle passers-by. In the end, this is really the only reason. Inertia. Comments, as they now exist, are an organ that belongs to an earlier form of the Web, a form less intercommunicative and organizationally flat. A form that was shaped around an ecosystem of modems calling BBSes and IRC channels, not globe-spanning services like Facebook and Google. An obsolete form. Many of us have already adjusted our expectations. When we read a current events article at CNN, we don’t look at the comments because we know they are less than background noise — they’re litter, and should be treated as such. Go ahead, throw them away. Discourse will improve, feedback will be more direct, people will express themselves amongst communities instead of shouting into the void, and eventually a global mechanism for dialogue will even contribute to the bottom line. The few comments and communities we value for their own sake (including present company, it goes without saying) will move happily into the new home, like hermit crabs switching shells. A global and collaborative discussion is neither of those if it is an archipelago of separate conversations. The parts do not form a whole. Instead of (if you will join me in switching visual metaphors) the latticework of a molecule, dots of varying size and composition, connected to some by one bond, others by two, with diverse conformations, chiralities, and no clear center (this metaphor excludes nice symmetrical structures like benzene, obviously) — why don’t we attempt something more like the atom itself? Arrayed around a central mass, a murmuration of outspoken electrons, the affiliation and foci of which are clear, yet from which emerge mysterious patterns and strange attractors. A probability cloud of commentary. How to do it? It is not so much a technical problem as it is a presentational one. After all, every article and webpage on the Internet has a unique address or indicator. Indexers, crawlers, search engines, and other Argus-like data-shepherds already examine and speculate on relationships between these URIs — Google and others are having a ball working out how to establish weight and directionality among news items, blog posts, tweets, and everything else. This is just an extension of that. When I browse Google News, I see sources, refinements, news hits, and other formats listed and categorized intelligently, and services like Facebook and Twitter love sorting and promoting trending units of shared data. So, in fact, the question isn’t we are to collect and organize all the discussion, meta-discussion, rebuttals, tangents, memes, and everything else — we’re already doing that, and not so poorly either. Instead, we should be asking this fecund and fruitful data (produced by us, of course, though admittedly threshed by Big Analytics) is not being presented to us as prominently as simplistic and largely useless derivations thereof, such as Like counts and targeted Google ads. Really, now — as long as we are compelled to be perpetually logged into a dozen megavisors who make it their business to track, in near-realtime, everything that is happening on the Internet, and as long as we have a drive to learn how an item is being received, what else is being written on the topic, what luminaries and friends have weighed in, what communities have provided insight, and make our contribution to this massive, shifting collective ideation, why is the tool at hand a stale, spam-ridden holdover from the 90s, supplemented by a few limp numerical indicators? Somehow the one thing in which the Internet has acted as a community is the sabotage of its own mechanisms for discussion. A powerful mechanism for tapping into the zeitgeist can’t be far around the corner, but until we let go of the past, no one will be advancing. [image credit: ]
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500 Startups Alum Dakwak Launches Freemium Model For SMB Site Translation
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Catherine Shu
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Web site translation and localization platform , which we , has launched a new freemium model to attract small- to medium-sized businesses. The startup hopes that the simplicity of its translation service and search-engine optimization for sites across different languages will convince companies to upgrade to . Dakwak has also signed deals with Web security provider and domain hosting service to market its services to their customers. On CloudFlare, Dakwak’s , which performs search-engine optimized translations, is now available for download. Waheed Barghouthi , founder and CEO of Dakwak, says the freemium model is meant to position Dakwak as an attractive alternative for SMBs that want something more powerful than , which allows site visitors to instantly translate text into different languages, but don’t want to invest in . The incentive for customers to upgrade to paid plans include the ability to host translated Web sites at their own domain (free translated sites have a Dakwak URL), more languages and in addition to machine translation. Dakwak has so far acquired 50 paying customers in different sectors and countries. Barghouthi hopes the new freemium model and deals with CloudFlare and Go.Co will allow Dakwak to add 10,000 paying customers in the next six months. Half that number will allow the startup to break even, he says. Dakwak’s next plans include finding more distribution partners, including hosting companies. The company plans to close a new round of fundraising by the end of this year, which allow it to hire more people and expand its marketing and business development.
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To Get Around US Law, The NSA Collects Email Address Books And Chat Buddy Lists From Foreign Locations
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Alex Wilhelm
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The that the National Security Agency (NSA) is collecting for both foreign individuals and United States citizens. It appears that the NSA lacks Congressional authority to collect buddy lists and address book information in the way that it currently does. As the Post rightly points out, address book data can include physical addresses, very personal information, and more. To get around that lack of a mandate, the NSA has agreements with non-U.S. telcos and works with other, non-U.S. intelligence groups. So to get its hands on even more information, the NSA avoids the constraints of its provided oversight and legal boundaries, by going to alternative sources of the data that it wants. That matters because the rules of other countries for tracking the communication of United States citizens are more lax. Recall that the NSA is in some ways slowed from collecting information on citizens of the United States, but not those of other countries. So, if the NSA is willing to accept data from foreign intelligence agencies that it is not able to collect in this case, why not in other cases as well? If the NSA won’t respect the constraints that are put in place on its actions for a reason, and will instead shirk its responsibilities and find a way to get all the data it could ever desire, then we have even less reason to trust its constant petitions that it follows the law, and is the only thing keeping the United States safe from conflagration. The Post continues: “When information passes through ‘the overseas collection apparatus,’ [an intelligence office] added, ‘the assumption is you’re not a U.S. person.'” This means that when the NSA sweeps up contact data, buddy lists, and address sets from overseas, the same rules that keep it from collecting information on United States citizens aren’t likely in play. Minimization, it would seem, would be minimal. The phone metadata program knows . PRISM can out of major Internet companies. XKeyscore . And the above program circumvents Congressional oversight by collecting more data on U.S. citizens by merely executing that collection abroad. How private are you feeling? — Facebook provided TechCrunch with the following statement: “As we have said many times, we believe that while governments have an important responsibility to keep people safe, it is possible to do so while also being transparent. We strongly encourage all governments to provide greater transparency about their efforts aimed at keeping the public safe, and we will continue to be aggressive advocates for greater disclosure.” Microsoft repeated to TechCrunch what it had told the Washington Post, that it “does not provide any government with direct or unfettered access to our customers’ data” and that if the above revelations are true, then the company would “have significant concerns.”
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Voxer Adds A Web Version To Its Push-To-Talk Business Messaging App
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Ingrid Lunden
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, the mobile messaging app that started out 2013 with a little notoriety (thanks to its API access), is today taking the next step in its transformation into a paid enterprise push-to-talk and chat product: the company is launching , a version of the service that links up the company’s paid iOS and Android apps with a desktop version. Priced as part of the company’s bigger Voxer for Business service — rates for that are currently $4.95/user/month but are going up to $9.95/user/month January 1, 2014 for sign-ups after then — the web version will help Voxer transform from one that can be used as a person-to-person communication system into a more unified product, to also include those who are in a stationary place and need to communicate with many workers at once. Think dispatchers for taxi or other delivery servicees. (As for the price hike, Voxer also says that for those who sign up before the end of December, they will get the lower pricing option applied until October 2014). Voxer for Web essentially takes several of the features from the company’s existing mobile apps for business users and extends them to desktop computers, with the ability to push live and messaged audio, sending images and text messages and chat. Added features include the ability to have multiple chats open on a single screen; and voice messages, texts and images sent from a whole team. Users can also listen to multiple chats in live mode — similar to what you get in lower-quality existing dispatch services. Itamar Kandel, COO at Voxer, tells us that the company has gone for a web version in response to requests from businesses. “We’ve heard from customers across a variety of industries that need to enable their mobile workforces and desk workers to collaborate,” he said. “Voxer for Web addresses this by providing a unified experience while also including unique features that will enable administrators and dispatchers to monitor multiple conversations, people or teams – all from a computer.” He notes that the idea is that this not just signifies an increase in functionality, but also in terms of the kinds of businesses that Voxer is targeting. “Our vision is that mobile will be for the moving workforce, whereas desktop is ideal for businesses that have large workforces that vox and need to communicate quickly with a central person, such as a dispatcher,” he said. “By adding the ability to send messages from a desktop, we have increased our addressable market tenfold, and can now service the communication needs of not just mobile employees but also the needs of the entire organization. Voxer for Web will serve as the connective tissue between the mobile and stationary workforces.” Voxer’s consumer product — which stands apart from other messaging apps like WhatsApp for being primarily focused on voice-based exchanges — has had tens of millions of downloads, with a , the same year it raised a . The company today is not revealing how many enterprises have signed up to Voxer for Business (we’re asking). It’s unlikely to be a volume play like the consumer product, but it represents a couple of different and important evolutions for the company. The first and most obvious is the startup’s move to targeting a paying audience with its products, and along with that a push to make Voxer into an enterprise-class company, complete with stronger service levels, security and a roll-out of features that are needed and demanded by those paying customers. The second is how Voxer has become, yes, one of the many to tap into the bigger consumerization trend, taking a product originally created for average consumers and applying it to the enterprise market — but it is one with a twist. Voxer is also a sign of how in fact even consumer products can come out of enterprise beginnings: founder Tom Katis apparently first out of his own experiences as a communications specialist with the military in Afghanistan. In making the switch to business users, Voxer is not exactly entering unchartered territory. It competes against those services also with origins in consumer apps from the likes of Sprint, with its . Perhaps more importantly for Voxer, there are a number of other messaging services and dispatch messaging services that are specifically aiming at the same market it is. Take taxi services, one of Voxer’s key targets. (In a press release announcing the new web version, it quotes Tom Brennan, owner of Future Cab: “Voxer has played a central role in my company, allowing my team to constantly be in touch with each other and with me.” He lives in Virginia Beach and operates a service in New York from there, apparently.) There are dozens of companies out there already, some working on legacy systems that require special in-car equipment; but many more riding on the explosion of mobile networks and mobile handsets to run services. Competitors include and (which I’m guessing are close rivals), , , and many more. Whether Voxer’s additional functionality, letting users send pictures and more, its strong brand recognition on the consumer side, and Katis’ connections to VC money and subsequent networks, will be enough to set it apart and win new customers, will be worth watching. Voxer has raised some $30 million to date with backers including Institutional Venture Partners, Intel Capital, SV Angel, TC-founder Michael Arrington’s CrunchFund, Chris Dixon, Roger McNamee, Windcrest Partners and Webb Investment Network.
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How Will The Fiscal Mess In Washington Impact Twitter’s IPO?
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As excitement grows for the upcoming Twitter IPO, the federal government shutdown and pending debt-ceiling issue looms large. There are some in Silicon Valley who believe that the current innovation cycle, powerfully led by mobile and cloud computing, will overwhelm any public market dislocation caused by Washington D.C. ineptitude. After all, Twitter and other high fliers, such as the rumored 2014 IPO class — including Dropbox, Palantir, Airbnb and Box — are growing fast, operating in huge markets with big and slow-moving incumbents and beginning to show business models that will generate meaningful profit. This has been the recipe of success for LinkedIn, Splunk, Workday, ServiceNow and even Facebook, where IPO investors have done extremely well. Recent history suggests, however, that in times of macroeconomic disruption, even the strongest of companies can see their IPO price get hit hard. One good way to assess the severity of a market dislocation caused by external events is the VIX, a measure of the implied volatility of the S&P 500. The chart below plots the VIX relative to IPO pricing over the past three years. As you can see, during periods when the VIX spikes due to external events, the implied IPO pricing discount increases sharply. For example, during the late summer/early fall 2011 period when U.S. debt was downgraded after the failed debt-ceiling negotiations followed quickly by the Greece-led Euro crisis, the VIX spiked and IPO pricing discounts went from an average of approximately 20 percent down to over 50 percent. Similarly, when the fiscal cliff led to the automatic federal spending cuts in early 2013, the VIX sharply increased, sending ensuing IPO discounts up to over 30 percent, from a range of 10-20 percent in the months prior. Should the mess in Washington go unresolved over the coming several weeks, a clear risk for Twitter is that the VIX spikes up. If this happens, recent history suggests that Twitter will be forced to price its IPO well below levels it could otherwise achieve. While this situation, if it transpires, will cause Twitter to either raise less capital or suffer more dilution than it would have otherwise, all is not lost. Aftermarket performance of the IPOs that have priced in the last three years doesn’t appear to be highly correlated to IPO pricing. In fact, as you can see from the chart below, some IPOs that price at steep discounts perform quite well in the ensuing 30 day period. For example, IPOs that priced in mid 2012, during the height of the macro concerns in Europe, were done at steep discounts, yet these IPOs were up 15-32 percent on average in the ensuing 30 days. More recently, IPOs priced at a steep discount during the “taper talk” of this past summer, but this class also performed very well in the ensuing 30 days. So, while Twitter may face IPO headwinds if Washington doesn’t come to its senses soon, a buying opportunity may follow. Whatever happens, Twitter’s long-term stock price trajectory will have everything to do with its operating performance and the market around it, and very little to do with how its IPO fares.
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NSA “Is Harvesting Hundreds Of Millions Of Contact Lists,” Reports WaPo
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Gregory Ferenstein
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The National Security Agency has been secretly “harvesting hundreds of millions of contact lists from personal e-mail and instant messaging accounts around the world, many of them belonging to Americans,” the Washington Post from documents obtained by whistleblower on the lam, Edward Snowden. PowerPoint slides reveal that, “During a single day last year, the NSA’s Special Source Operations branch collected 444,743 e-mail address books from Yahoo, 105,068 from Hotmail, 82,857 from Facebook, 33,697 from Gmail and 22,881 from unspecified other providers.” Moreover, it collects contact lists from more than 500,000 chat-based contact, or buddy, lists. Apparently, the practice is illegal in the United States, so the NSA collects them for foreign access points “all over the world,” according to an anonymous official. Because they’re collected overseas, there is an assumption that the person is not a U.S. citizen (we’re not making this up). Google, Facebook and Microsoft all offered statements of plausible deniability with the program, since the NSA picks up the information directly from Internet switches, rather than downloading it from company servers. Both Congress and President Obama have vowed to reform the NSA’s controversial practices. Assuming the government ever reopens for business, there are and a White House task force charged with recommending changes to surveillance policy. The task force was supposed to present its findings in the coming months but has been delayed by the shutdown. The Washington Post’s documents can be read . [ Flickr User renaissancechambara]
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Can Yahoo’s Growing Mobile Usage Drag It From The Revenue Doldrums In Q3?
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Alex Wilhelm
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Yahoo will report its third-quarter earnings tomorrow. Analysts per-share profit of $0.33 on revenue of $1.1 billion. That compares unfavorably to Yahoo’s year-ago third quarter, in which it reported $1.1 billion in revenue, and a slightly higher $0.35 per share income. So investors are expecting Yahoo to be essentially stagnant at best. This is almost an oddity, as Yahoo has posted reasonably strong user growth in the past year, especially on mobile platforms. In September, Yahoo reported , up from 300 million reported for February 2013 in its . During the 18 months preceding the end of 2012, Yahoo doubled its mobile user tally. In under three years, Yahoo picked up several hundred million monthly active mobile users. Yet, in its most recent quarters, the company has suffered from declining, or flat, revenue figures. GAAP display and search revenue, for example, were both down on a year-over-year basis in its most recent quarter. Though, if you remove traffic acquisition costs, those figures are roughly flat. Total ads sold across Yahoo properties have declined in every quarter since (and including) the third quarter of 2011. The impact of those declines was blunted by rising per-ad revenue, something that was consistent until two quarters ago. Starting with the first quarter of 2013, Yahoo’s per-ad income began to fall. That decline coincides with a decline in the quarterly decrease of Yahoo’s total ad sales. Taking each component in order, we have growing mobile usage of Yahoo, a slowing of the fall of Yahoo’s ad volume, and a decline in per-ad rates. That points to, in my view, increasing monetization of Yahoo’s mobile properties and usage. Those sold ads are staunching its overall ad decline, but are perhaps not monetizing at rates similar to desktop ads. So the per-ad price slips as sales improve. Here’s what we are discussing in chart format, via Yahoo’s : All that is preamble of a sort to Yahoo’s earnings report tomorrow. The company has been on an to grow its mobile development staff, improve its mobile apps, and drive mobile usage. It has accomplished each, via strong updates and acqui-hires. The question now becomes “when do we see the results?” (We’ve asked a similar question before, but we now have more numbers to play with.) If Yahoo can’t show year-over-year revenue growth from the third quarter of 2012, when it had – let’s guess – 100 million fewer monthly mobile users (that’s one-eighth of its entire user base that it reported last month!), it would seem to indicate that mobile usage growth can’t replace falling search and desktop display ad incomes for the company — at least not yet. And that leaves Yahoo with a falling or flat top line until something changes. If the company can’t monetize the growing traffic that it directly wanted to monetize, how sound is its strategy? So, tomorrow we will be afforded another benchmark into Yahoo’s larger push to revamp its business. If revenue doesn’t beat expectations, and things are middling, we’ll hear the usual miasma of “we remain optimistic” and “our metrics are on par with our expectations” and something close to “stay the course.” But what would be encouraging would be a revenue beat on of rising mobile usage. Such a result would be the strongest possible validation of CEO Mayer’s strategy for the company as sound and operational. Facebook and Twitter have both recently proven that it is possible to monetize mobile traffic, provided that ad products match user activity. It’s Yahoo’s turn to step up. We’ll be watching tomorrow.
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Send In Your Questions For Ask A VC With Greylock’s Simon Rothman
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Leena Rao
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In this week’s episode of Ask A VC, we have Greylock’s newest partner, Simon Rothman, joining us in the studio. You can submit questions for our guests either in the comments or and we’ll ask them during the show. Rothman, who was recently promoted from EIR to Partner on Greylock’s consumer investment team, was formerly at eBay. He joined eBay in 1999 when it was still a small, U.S. collectibles auction business and helped scale eBay to nearly 200 million users generating over $40 billion in merchandise sales. While at eBay, Rothman led U.S. operations and also founded eBay Motors, which he built into a $14 billion a year global business. Following eBay he also founded Glyde, an e-commerce marketplace for electronics and more. And Rothman served as a board member of and adviser to Tesla Motors. With Greylock’s new commitment to investing in marketplaces, we’re curious to hear where Rothman is bullish when it comes to networks. Please send us your or put them in the comments below!
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Zenefits Rolls Its HR Automation Services Out To All 50 States
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Greg Kumparak
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Back at TechCrunch Disrupt NY in April, a company called debuted a service that aimed to automate away many of the most annoying bits involved with running a startup or small business. Hire someone? Give Zenefits the basic details, and they’ll get them insured, on payroll, etc. Fire someone? Click a button to pull them off payroll and send out the COBRA details. Life event changes? They handle it. And they do it all for free. If your company doesn’t have group health coverage, Zenefits can fetch all the quotes you need and help you pick a plan. If your company already have health covergae, Zenefits still works — they’ll just take over as your insurance broker. At the time, Zenefits only operated in two states: California, and New York. Today, they’re rolling out to all 50. There’s one catch, though: for now, they’re only rolling out to the other 48 states for companies with 20+ employees. Come January 1st of 2014, however, they’ll be in all 50 states for all companies with at least employees. Why draw that line? Zenefits CEO Parker Conrad tells me it all comes down to changes in the health insurance system put into play by the Affordable Care Act. Many of those changes don’t go into effect until January 1st, 2014 — but once they do, it’ll be considerably easier for them to pull insurance data and quotes for smaller teams. As you may recall from , Zenefits makes its money by acting as your insurance broker. When a company buys a plan through Zenefits, Zenefits gets a commission from the insurance company. So the small business pays nothing, but Zenefits still makes money for each employee the business brings onboard. Oh, and they make that commission each month. Sweet deal, right? In addition to the insurance and payroll services already in place, Zenefits is also introducing a new suite of compliance (read: things you have to do as your company gets bigger) tools. Here’s some of the stuff they handle now: As of July of this year, had raised $2.1M.
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Founder Stories: For Ping Identity’s Andre Durand, Patience Is A Virtue
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As someone who is — at times — impatient (that’s me), this conversation with Durand impressed upon me in powerful ways. For instance, he discusses how he viewed time as a founder at age 35, recalling the feeling of constantly being in a rush; yet 10 years later, now, he strives for patience in business. Surely, the success of Ping has afforded him this luxury, but there are lessons for young- and first-time entrepreneurs here, as well. Durand is a repeat founder and possesses a great amount of wisdom that could help out first-time founders. He doesn’t blog or tweet much, or seek out too much attention, but his patience in building a company over 12 years provides a different kind of story for all of us to reflect on.
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BlackBerry Reaffirms It Isn’t Gone Just Yet In An Open Letter To Customers
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Chris Velazco
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BlackBerry is currently dealing with some serious, serious issues — no one wanted its , one of its co-founders might be making a dark-horse bid to , and the company might just end up being parted out to the highest bidders. So what’s a once-dominant smartphone player to do in light of all this uncertainty and depressing soothsaying? What can it do to bolster the morale of the BlackBerry faithful who watched as friends and colleagues embraced new platforms? The answer is a complex one but for now BlackBerry plans to reassure people the old-fashioned way — by writing a letter. According to BlackBerry fansite Crackberry, the Waterloo company will publish an impassioned letter to the people in 30 newspapers across nine countries spelling out exactly why they shouldn’t count the company out just yet. You can find the full text of the letter at the bottom of the post, but if you’ve been following BlackBerry’s current trajectory there’s not going to be any surprises here. The positives? A debt-free balance sheet, plenty of cash holed up in the reserves, and gobs of expertise in delivering productive mobile computing experiences in secure enterprise environments. All valid points, except perhaps for the team’s invocation of BBM’s popularity as a global social messaging platform. The original launch for iOS and Android didn’t exactly go — it’s been some three weeks since those apps first started popping up in their respective app stores, and there’s still no firm word on when BlackBerry will open the floodgates again. I find it interesting too that the letter is signed by the BlackBerry team and not by, say, CEO Thorsten Heins. It’s a clear indicator that there’s no one single person to blame for the company’s current shakiness, nor does the future of the company rest solely on one person’s decisions. Of course, that team is only going to grow smaller for the time being, as some 4,500 positions will get the axe by the end of the year. It’s all ostensibly for the greater good, but there’s no guarantee that the company’s cost-cutting measures will be enough to see them to eventual platform victory. I don’t mean to unduly rag on BlackBerry — I was a member of that BB addict community for a spell, and I still look back on my time with devices like the BlackBerry Pearl and Tour very fondly. And to the extent that we can give BlackBerry credit for it, the company easily has one of the most devoted, vociferous fanbases I’ve ever seen, and those people will continue to support the company. Here’s the thing though — as optimistic as the letter is, words are cheap and platitudes are unconvincing. BlackBerry needs to prove to its core customers that it’s still a viable horse in a race dominated by nimble giants, and I wish them the best. They’re going to need it. To our valued customers, partners and fans, You’ve no doubt seen the headlines about BlackBerry. You’re probably wondering what they mean for you as one of the tens of millions of users who count on BlackBerry every single day. We have one important message for you: You can continue to count on BlackBerry. How do we know? We have substantial cash on hand and a balance sheet that is debt free. We are restructuring with a goal to cut our expenses by 50 percent in order to run a very efficient, customer-oriented organization. These are no doubt challenging times for us and we don’t underestimate the situation or ignore the challenges. We are making the difficult changes necessary to strengthen BlackBerry. One thing we will never change is our commitment to those of you who helped build BlackBerry into the most trusted tool for the world’s business professional. And speaking of those dramatic headlines, it’s important that we set the record straight on a few things. Best in class productivity tool. We have completely revamped our device portfolio this year with the launch of BlackBerry 10. We have four BlackBerry 10 devices – two all touch and two hybrid (touch and QWERTY) – and all are running the third update of our new platform. If what you care about most is getting things done – taking care of your business – we have the best range of devices for you. And we continue to offer the best mobile typing experience – no ifs, ands or buts about it. Best in class security. Governments all over the world, global corporations and businesses that simply cannot compromise on security choose and trust BlackBerry. Security is our heritage, and the industry recognizes that BlackBerry is the most secure when it comes to the device, server and, of course, our global data network. Have no doubt that you can continue to trust us to keep your communication safe and private. Best in class enterprise mobility management. We changed with the market, embracing BYOD because we understand that as iOS and Android devices become common in the workplace, businesses still need to manage all of these different platforms seamlessly and securely. This is not a trivial task. While there are a number of startup companies that make bold claims, BlackBerry has more software engineers and the most resources dedicated to developing the most innovative solutions to address this complex challenge. And our customers know it. Over the past quarter, our BlackBerry® Enterprise Service 10 server base grew from 19,000 to more than 25,000. Corporate clients are committed to deploying and testing the latest enterprise technology from BlackBerry. We are committed to evolving with our customers. That will never change. Best in class mobile social network. We are bringing the most engaging mobile messaging platform to all, with our BBM launch for Android and iPhone. There are already around six million customers pre-registered to be notified of our roll out. This number is growing every day, and speaks to the tremendous opportunity we have to expand BBM beyond BlackBerry smartphones to make it the world’s largest mobile social network. Yes, there is a lot of competition out there and we know that BlackBerry is not for everyone. That’s OK. You have always known that BlackBerry is different, that BlackBerry can set you apart. Countless world-changing decisions have been finalized, deals closed and critical communications made via BlackBerry. And for many of you that created a bond, a connection that goes back more than a decade. We believe in BlackBerry – our people, our technology and our ability to adapt. More importantly, we believe in you. We focus every day on what it takes to make sure that you can take care of business. You trust your BlackBerry to deliver your most important messages, so trust us when we deliver one of our own: You can continue to count on us. Sincerely,
The BlackBerry Team
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Threadless Gets Into The Greeting Card Game With Strategic Partnership And Investment In Open Me
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Ryan Lawler
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For more than a decade, has been the place to go to get interesting T-shirts and other apparel, all of which have been submitted and vetted by its own community. Now you’ll be able to find and send those designs on greeting cards, thanks to a strategic partnership with a new player in the space called . As a next-generation greeting card company, Open Me provides an interesting take on the category: While incumbents have over the years created their own editorial designs to place on cards, Open Me hopes to adopt the Threadless model of crowdsourcing its content. That is, the company will accept user-submitted designs and have its community vote on new ones to be added to its inventory. It will then make those designs available to users both as e-cards — which are free — and as printed greeting cards, which will be mailed off to customers. Printed cards will cost $4 each, with Open Me handling all the printing, shipping, and handling. Right off the bat, Open Me will have a library of designs to choose from, thanks to its partnership with Threadless. It’s getting a large number of crowdsourced content that has been contributed and approved by the Threadless community already, allowing it to make those designs available as e-cards and greeting cards to its customers. The partnership also benefits artists by opening up a new revenue stream for those who have submitted and had their work chosen for sale on Threadless. Those artists will continue to get credit on all designs and receive royalties for work sold on Open Me. That said, the company also plans to open the crowdsourcing model up to its own users and designers over time to crowdsource its own content. Thanks to the strategic partnership, Open Me will hopefully be able to get past the cold-start problem that usually accompanies these types of collaborative, community-led models. It’s hoping that Threadless will also send it some customers, as the apparel company will pimp Open Me out to its large user base and email subscribers. Open Me is also looking to benefit by making its cards inherently social. While it enables the traditional one-to-one greeting card transaction — i.e. I buy a card and send it to you — it’s also rolled out a product that will allow multiple users to take part in signing and sending a card. Just as you pass around birthday or other cards in the office for everyone to sign, Open Me allows multiple users to virtually sign a card before having it shipped out to a user. Ilya Pozin, founder and CEO of Open Me, sees a huge opportunity to provide an alternative to greeting card stalwarts like Hallmark and American Greetings. That’s because while sales of traditional greeting cards sold in stores have over the last year, according to research firm IBISWorld, online greeting card sales have in the same period. And it looks like that trend is going to continue over time. Threadless isn’t the only investor in Open Me; the company has also secured institutional money from Rothenberg Ventures and angels that include Michael Liou, Dennis Phelps, Josh Pyatt, Ziver Birg, Chris Camacho, Amplify Partners, Nick Grouf, and Sam Englebardt. Open Me is based in Santa Monica, Calif. and has eight full-time employees.
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The Boston Meetup + Pitch-Off Is In One Month, Apply Now To Be In The Pitch-Off
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Jordan Crook
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Boston in the fall. There’s nothing like it. Leaves are falling, a crisp wind blows in from the bay, and the particular pencils being sharpened are owned by Harvard, Boston College, and MIT students. That said, TechCrunch can’t help but pay a visit to one of the oldest cities in the nation to enjoy some of the newest technological innovations New England has to offer. Who’s ready for the ? The event will be held on Wednesday, November 13 from 6pm to 10pm at . and include a drink ticket (meaning you need to be 21 or older). There will be tons of networking opportunities, and then we start in on the pitch-off competition. Anywhere between 15 and 25 entrepreneurs will pitch their startup ideas to a panel of expert judges, including TechCrunch staffers and local VCs, with only sixty seconds to impress and excite the judges and the audience. There are absolutely no visual aids or demoes. At the end of the night, judges and the audience will vote on the best pitch of the night and winners will be announced. First place will receive a table in Start Up Alley at the upcoming TechCrunch Disrupt. Second Place will receive 2 tickets to the upcoming TechCrunch Disrupt. Third Place will receive 1 ticket to the upcoming TechCrunch Disrupt. We’re still looking for entrepreneurs to pitch, so if that sounds like you, head over . Just remember, these products must currently be in stealth or private beta. Those chosen to participate in the pitch-off will also join us for Office Hours, where you’ll get one-on-one meetings with a member of the TechCrunch editorial staff to discuss the product and pitch ahead of time. But whether you’re an entrepreneur, a student, or a fan of technology, it should be an amazing night. See you there!
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iTunes Radio Product Manager Gareth Paul Jones Joins Twitter To Work On Ad Partnerships
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Anthony Ha
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Apple product manager Gareth Paul Jones is leaving the company to join Twitter, . , he was a product manager on iTunes Radio (which recently ), and he’s also worked as a product manager at TRUSTe and as an engineer at Google. We wrote about Jones when after leaving Google. ( .) TechCrunch’s Ingrid Lunden asked Jones what he’ll be doing at Twitter, and he , “I’ll be working on Platform Partnerships – specifically advertising focused.” And speaking of Twitter ads, more details have just come out in around how Twitter might of its user data to target ads outside of Twitter itself, thanks to its acquisition of MoPub. (By the way, I’d normally try to find a less silly photo for a story like this, but hey, I wish I could pull off a moustache like that, and if it’s good enough for his LinkedIn profile …)
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Twitter Plans To Use What You Follow And Tweet To Target MoPub Ads On Other Apps. Here’s How
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Josh Constine
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Everything that happens on Twitter could become fuel for targeting off-site ads run through its recent ad network , according to the ‘ sources. In theory, users logged in to Twitter could see ads related to who they follow and words they tweet on sites with MoPub-powered ads. Twitter could then earn money on its data rather than by showing more ads on its service. Twitter’s “Interest Graph” data, not the eyeballs it brings in, may become a cornerstone of its business. The prospect of Twitter generating revenue on a large scale without cluttering its site and apps with ads could be a big selling point as it shops its fast-approaching IPO to bankers and the public. The Financial Times that once Twitter’s acquisition of MoPub closes, “Twitter is planning to mine data on its messaging platform to help sell advertising on other mobile apps or websites…it plans to use data about who users follow and what they tweet about to target ads beyond its own Promoted Tweets, according to people familiar with the plans.” Though the report is a bit hazy, there are two core ways for Twitter to leverage its data through MoPub beyond its walls. First, as I mentioned above, MoPub could use Twitter as a cross-device identity layer for off-site/off-app ad targeting. Imagine that I’ve tweeted “I want to go to Hawaii” or “What’s the best DSLR camera?”, or follow @HawaiianAir or Digital Camera World’s @DCamMag. Then while logged in to Twitter, I visit a website that runs MoPub ads. Twitter could use my keyword and follow data to target the MoPub ads on that site and show me promotions to buy cheap flights to Hawaii or news about DSLR cameras. In the example to the right, a Songza app user who is logged into Twitter and has tweeted “I love cleaning” could be accurately targeted with this ad for Mr. Clean cleaning solution. An alternative or complementary way for Twitter to employ its Interest Graph, which ties people to interests, is to generate an affinity graph, which ties interests to other interests. This could allow it to improve MoPub targeting even for users who have never signed up for Twitter. Here’s how. Twitter could see that people who tweet about flying to Hawaii also frequently tweet links to certain types of websites, say Golf.com. Twitter could then tell MoPub to show ads for flights to Hawaii on Golf.com (if it was a MoPub client). In this way, people who use Twitter provide the data to improve ad targeting to those who don’t. For some, the use of Twitter data to market to them elsewhere might come off as a bit creepy. In reality, though, most of what people do on Twitter is public already. This method just leverages it. And compared to other sites that use the private personal information you volunteer to target ads, in some ways these Twitter-MoPub integrations are more innocuous. They could even lead to a more organic Twitter experience for users. A year ago I wrote a piece called , where I discussed how by using its vast trove of biographical and interest data, Facebook could eventually power an offsite ad network and show fewer or even zero ads on its own site. That was shortly after Facebook announced beta trials of where it would contribute data to improve targeting to Facebook-logged in users. The company a few months later citing a desire to focus on improving ads on its own properties. However, sources told me it was also because Facebook found the margins it was getting through these partnerships were too low. The publishing sites that host ads, the ad networks that find them advertisers to fill the space, and in some cases ad exchanges that serve the ads, all needed to be compensated, leaving too little margin left for Facebook. But last month, again. By buying MoPub, Twitter doesn’t have to split the margins on serving off-site ads, making it a much more lucrative business. The strategy could make it a ton of money, helping it to satisfy investors and boost its soon to be public share price. Twitter is getting very serious about ad partnerships considering the company today to work on the initiative. It all begs the question of whether Facebook should or will buy a mobile ad network itself to rapidly scale up its plans in the space. in cash and stock is expected to close in Q4 2013. Once it does, we’ll see how the integrations begin. Perhaps it’s a Twitter with a lot more revenue but not a lot more ads in its own stream that we should be imagining.
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PayPal Expands “Real World” Presence Via Integration With iPad Point-of-Sale Maker Revel Systems
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Sarah Perez
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PayPal has today scored another deal to bring its technology to more point-of-sale platforms via an integration with iPad POS solution provider, , a company whose business has grown by 400% year-over year and now includes big-name clients like Dairy Queen, Goodwill, Popeye’s, and others. While PayPal is currently focused on building up its point-of-sale presence involving its own proprietary hardware and software with its , the company is not attempting to take on quickly growing Square and other competitors with in-house technology alone. In recent months, PayPal has made deals with a number of point-of-sale hardware makers to bring its payments technology into the “real world” via deals with the makers of existing systems. One of the larger partnerships was with NCR, , which allowed PayPal to begin integrations with several products in the longtime hardware maker, as well as expand PayPal from online and mobile into new places, like restaurants, gas stations and convenience stores. It has also teamed up with others like (gas stations POS tech), as well as a number of other POS system providers both large and small, including Booker, Leaf, Erply, Leapset, ShopKeep POS, and Vend, for example. With Revel Systems, however, the company has found its way onto another growing startup’s POS platform. For background, Revel in Series B funding earlier this summer, with new investments from Tim Tighe, former CEO of Hungry Jack’s and SVP of McDonald’s Southeast Asia, and Sean Tomlinson. The round was focused specifically on increasing the pace of Revel’s expansion, the company explained. Revel has been profitable as of Q3 2012, the team told TechCrunch at the time of the announcement, but says this will allow them to grow even more quickly – as well as internationally – than had they just continued to reinvest revenues. Founded in 2010, the San Francisco-based startup currently has traction with a number of businesses, primarily in restaurants, retail and grocery, with its iPad-based platform. In addition to support for transactions, it also offers tools for managing other aspects to the business, such as payroll, inventory tracking, CRM, and more. Just last month, it also allowing it to outfit the entire football stadium with Revel-powered iPads found at some 30 concession stands throughout the facility. The new PayPal integration is good for Revel as it offers another way for its customers to pay; they will be able to use the PayPal app on iOS and Android at any Revel Systems’ POS shop. But it also means that restaurants can offer an “order ahead” option where payment takes place via mobile, instead of at checkout upon pickup. And Revel’s customer base will gain added exposure through inclusion in the PayPal app’s discovery feature, which highlights nearby retailers accepting PayPal. But more importantly, perhaps, it gives PayPal another foothold at POS in the real world, which is key to its ongoing growth strategy. The company already has established relationships with , giving itself an in at thousands of well-known locations across the U.S., and it to allow for better integrations with merchants’ existing systems. Through Revel, PayPal gains access to those merchants who are already ditching dated POS systems for more modern technology – a good base to kickstart PayPal’s mobile payments adoption, too. Revel today has , [update: Revel says these figures are no longer accurate. It has deployed over 5,000 POS terminals], and is now hiring over 100 people in San Jose, San Francisco and elsewhere. Around half its clients have already upgraded their systems to include the PayPal support, while the remaining customers will need to run a 2 minute update procedure. Revel also offers other third-party integrations via its Marketplace, including LevelUp, First Data, Heartland and more.
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Skimbox Goes Beyond Email Triage With A “Priority Inbox” App For Consumers & Enterprise
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Sarah Perez
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A new application called is attempting to take on the heady challenge of fighting email overload in a way that makes sense for both consumers and the enterprise. The app, , uses the concepts popularized by – with its various swipes and gestures – as a way to move through email messages. But Skimbox’s core idea does not involve email triage – it’s about intelligently surfacing the most relevant email messages you need to see first, similar to Gmail’s “Priority Inbox” feature adopted by heavy email users. Skimbox’s backend technology has been in development for over a year, but the app itself didn’t get worked on until this May. Its early nature shows a bit here, as the Skimbox iOS application is lacking the elegance of Mailbox, which is lighter, more attractive, and generally more readable. Mailbox, however, may not be quite as powerful. Skimbox’s CEO David Wihl, whose enterprise background involves founding , a fifteen-year old software company which sold its OfficeWriter product to Microsoft in 2007, understands the challenges first-hand that enterprise customers have when facing email overload, but also the security and compliance issues they face. Though Skimbox works with Gmail, making it also a consumer product, he refers to its Gmail support as ‘more of demo’ of the Skimbox technology, and not the startup’s business model. Its larger goal is selling into Microsoft Exchange-based organizations. Wihl says he began Skimbox initially by building an ingestion tool which would allow enterprise customers to run reports and analytics on their email. But the feedback he got from early testers is that they were facing much larger problems with email handling and overload. “For us, it was a small step to take the email that was already in a NoSQL database and do some classifying and sorting of email on their behalf,” he says. “[With Skimbox], what we’ve built is the same ingestion technology, but we’ve added a machine-learning layer on top of that.” While Gmail’s “Priority Inbox” technology works well enough over time as it learns which messages you flag and delete, Skimbox’s is meant to work well right upon its first install. It uses a series of pre-configured “beliefs” that helps it sort your email for you, placing the must-reads into the “Skimbox” section of the app while the rest of your messages remain in the main “Inbox.” “We’re basically building a neural net,” explains Wihl. “As a user uses it and classifies something from main to skim or skim to main, that’s a very strong signal. And we rarely make the same mistake twice.” (The company blogged about this in more detail .) Skimbox today looks at things like who messages are coming from, whether or not you’ve replied, whether the message comes from a mailing list or some other automated means (e.g. an “out of office” reply doesn’t hit the skimbox), and dozens of other signals. In tests, however, I found that while Skimbox did well at surfacing some personal and business emails, it wasn’t yet smart enough to know a good pitch from a press release blast, for example, and it also let several “app notifications” messages slip into the Skimbox, too. So clearly, its algorithms also need a bit of training. The app is designed for knowledge workers, execs and others who receive 50 to 500 “actionable” emails daily, as opposed to those whose inboxes receive 1000’s of these (as they likely already have rules in place, says Wihl), nor consumers with a manageable amount of email. In addition to the intelligence used in sorting messages from skim to main, Skimbox does include Mailbox-like gestures for archiving, deleting and deferring, but also offers multi-edit capabilities, which lets you work through messages in batches. “Right now, we’re just working on triage, but once you have this corpus of email, you can group it in different ways,” says Wihl, hinting at future plans. “One of the problems with email today is that there’s no context around a message…the machine learning technology on the backend can provide that and surface it in the app.” That would make Skimbox like the second coming of Xobni, in a way, the latter which for extracting data from your messages, before moving to mobile, and ultimately . While those with a Gmail or Exchange account can download and use the app that’s , the goal is to sell the software to enterprise customers, leveraging the relationships Wihl already has in the industry. For consumers, the app is free with no ads, while enterprise customers would buy Skimbox on a per user, per month fee (likely around $5 per user). An on-premise solution is available, too – possibly a $20,000 licensing fee plus annual maintenance, though pricing is not yet set in stone. The company uses enterprise grade technology, OAuth, and other standard security practices to protect the copies of emails it stores on behalf of clients. Skimbox has a few enterprise customers trialing the service on-premise now, but having just launched, it hasn’t started signing contracts at this time. The Boston area company has twelve full-time employees, and is self-funded. Skimbox is considering raising a $1.5 million seed round in the future. The app is .
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Europe’s iversity Launches 1st MOOCs With 100k+ Students & Curriculum Of 24 Courses
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Natasha Lomas
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Berlin-based startup , which last year began a pivot away from online learning collaboration tools with the aim of , is launching its first clutch of free online courses today. Back in , iversity told TechCrunch it was hoping to attract six-digits’ worth of students at the launch of its MOOCs. And it’s managed to do so — saying initial student sign-ups have exceeded 100,000. iversity CEO Marcus Riecke said the level of launch traction it has achieved proves the MOOCs concept can fly in continental Europe, which has lagged the U.S. in experimenting with the massive online courses model for free-to-learn higher education. In the U.S. a raft of MOOCs players have sprung up, with , Harvard- and MIT-backed and being among the biggest. Size is key to the MOOCs phenomenon — the M stands for ‘massive’ after all — with typically requiring a portion of students to be willing to pay to get certifications. Ergo, the more students a MOOCs purveyor attracts, the more profits they are likely to be able to generate down the line (since only a percentage of users are likely to end up paying). Six MOOCs are available from iversity at launch, with its initial curriculum spanning 24 courses in total (15 of which are in English, with the rest in German). The other courses will start at later dates this year and on into 2014. iversity originally planned to finance 10 MOOCs at launch. Riecke said it’s been able to co-finance “some” of the additional 14 in its curriculum out of existing budgets, but the “bulk of financing” came from the universities and individual professors who are offering the course content. The MOOCs are being provided by a range of continental European universities, including Hamburg University and the University of Osnabrück, and individual professors from Europe and the U.S. “While our main focus is European universities and professors, we are certainly open to U.S. institutions and teachers who want to work with us,” Riecke added. Initial course content spans a wide spectrum of topics — including philosophy, physics, architecture, economics, politics and engineering. Some of the courses hosted on iversity.org will grant students credit points for completion, in line with the . iversity also revealed that certain of its initial MOOCs have “reached five-figure enrolment numbers” — with the three most popular at launch being: “We receive requests from professors and institutions wanting to produce a MOOC on a daily basis,” said Hannes Klöpper, Managing Director of iversity, in a statement. “This is a clear sign that universities and professors have recognised the potential for bringing university-level education online.” How big does iversity hope to get? “We envisage that by the end of 2014, we will have scaled to more than 100 MOOCs and more than 1 million students/users,” Riecke told TechCrunch. To enable it to keep on growing, iversity is gearing up to raise a Series A — either before Christmas or at the start of the New Year — according to Riecke. Discussing how it plans to monetise its MOOCs, he said business models it’s considering are: However iversity’s initial focus is on scaling the number of students and ensuring its courses are well received. “Before extracting revenues, real demonstrable value for the end user is key: therefore, we want to get to greater scale economies first and genuinely improve the lives of our users by the kinds of education opportunities we have provided,” he said. “Once we’ve succeeded in demonstrating the value that we and our MOOCs offer, we will focus more on monetization.” iversity’s MOOCs launch comes hot on the heels of another European newcomer to the massive open online courses space, . Futurelearn is offering 20 free courses for starters, eight of which are scheduled to begin within October to December. (Indeed, coincidentally, the first Futurelearn course also starts today.)
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Unbundled Channels Coming To Canada, But Terrible Taste Could Make It A Disaster
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Darrell Etherington
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If you want History Channel, you also have to get Biography Baby or something non-fictional but equally dumb. It’s the magic of cable and satellite bundles, and it’s the Way Things Are Done. But in Canada, that might not be true for much longer, as the government is gearing up to force and offer them to customers on an basis. U.S. Senator John McCain would have U.S. TV providers follow suit, . This is objectively good news on the face of things – when you go to a grocery store and order peanut butter, it would be weird if they made you buy a jar of Marmite, too, even if you hate the stuff. Consumer choice is generally something that should be respected, and catered to, by private business, and it’s completely within reason for a cable or satellite subscriber to expect that they only have to pay for what they want to watch, rather than for a general mishmash of things that includes, but is not limited to things they actually find interesting. But programming could be potentially disastrous for good taste, unfortunately. If you look at the Nielsen ratings for top shows, you’ll find NCIS twice in the top 10, as well as The Big Bang Theory and two iterations of The Voice, plus Dancing With The Stars. Go to the cable charts, and you find Duck Dynasty, Sons of Anarchy and some sports. I might get some pushback on my dislike of Big Bang Theory, and I’ve heard Sons of Anarchy is okay, but by and large this is not what I would call representative of good TV. Especially given that Homeland premiered the week these ratings were taken. The current model helps to support expensive-to-produce, riskier content by offsetting it with the cheap, saccharine pablum that your average TV viewer loves to gorge themselves on; it’s a win-win, in that the cheap, unscripted shows that involve following near braindead jerks with a camera and then hastily slapping it together get made, and draw in mass market audiences, and then those audiences buy bundles that help subsidize the stuff that’s impactful and deep, but not necessarily as much of a volume draw when it comes to viewership. There’s some good, but a lot of garbage on these , and clever broadcast TV like 30 Rock and Fringe only managed to limp along on life support before finally getting the axe long before the eight season mark. All of which is to say that if McCain gets his way and brings , it might not be all roses and sunshine – there could be a lot more faux folksy millionaire bearded fellas making duckcalls gracing your TV sets, too.
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Cluster Brings Simple Group Photo-Sharing To Android
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Sarah Perez
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Photo-sharing app , which this summer in a round led by early Instagram investor Steve Anderson of Baseline Ventures, is today making its mobile photo albums app more practical for real-world use with a launch on . The new app is similar to the 1.0 iOS app released earlier this year, with its smart, easy-to-build photo collections you can others to view or contribute to, and share privately. The Cluster app first debuted this February on iOS-first (as most do), and has been adding new features over the course of the year including things like commenting, sharing, an updated design, and more. On , the experience is much like that on iPhone: you tap “new” to start an album, then choose “event” or “topic” depending on whether you’re collecting photos around a certain activity, like a birthday, wedding, party, vacation, etc., or whether you want to build a theme-based albums of some sort (e.g., photos of your dog). When you go to add photos, Cluster’s interface makes it quick to pick all the photos from a given date and location, which reduces the number of steps in building the initial album. Far too often, other apps make you tap on photos one-by-one ahead of sharing or album creation – so this is a minor, but time-saving detail. After setting up the album, you tap to add contributors, who are invited by email or text. One of Cluster’s nicer features, in an age when too many social apps take it upon themselves to , is that you can opt whether you want Cluster to handle the inviting for you, or whether you’d like to compose your own invitations instead. You can also choose to do so in the app itself, or just save an invite code which you can later share however you choose – such as, on Facebook, in a personal email, posted to a website, in a messaging app, or elsewhere. Although Cluster isn’t 100% feature-complete with iOS yet, all the core features are present, making it possible for Android users to fully participate as both album creators and invitees. Previously, I had used Flock (by Bump, ) for a large part of my personal photo-sharing among close friends and family, but I was consistently disappointed by the lack of care that went into the Android version. That’s not the case with Cluster, though, I’m glad to see. In addition, the company is updating its web experience, bringing photo uploading, commenting and favoriting to those who want to use the service online as well as, or instead of, on a smartphone. That’s another important element too many mobile photo-sharing apps overlook – that to reach a broader audience, you have to build a service that serves the needs of everyone in the larger group – from those not carrying the latest devices to the most tech-savvy early adopters clamoring for new features. As we become more overwhelmed by the sheer volume of photos we’re creating, consumers today are moving away from building Facebook albums, once painstakingly curated but now worrisomely trafficked by others we don’t really consider “friends.” Many are now opting for more private sharing experiences via mobile messaging apps, or are picking only a handful of their best photos to share more publicly, like on Instagram. fits well into this broader paradigm, by allowing you to share with those closest to you, while also opting for a more public album at time, which can then be posted to Facebook for others to view. But as a mobile-focused company it will also struggle with an App Store filled with competitors too many to name, as well as the photo-sharing services from the “big” guys like Apple’s iCloud, Google+, Facebook and Yahoo’s Flickr. User acquisition on mobile can often cost more than what early stage startups can afford, too, and matters are only going to get worse as say they’re shifting away from consumer A rounds. Meanwhile, Cluster’s business model, which will involve photo books and gifts, and maybe more, has yet to kick in. Cluster’s cross-platform nature, good design and ease-of-use seem like the kind of features that could draw a crowd over time, however. The new Android app is .
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TRAFI Raises $500K In Seed Funding To Be The Go-To Transit App For Emerging Markets
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Darrell Etherington
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Lithuanian startup is announcing a seed funding round of $500,000 U.S. today, provided by Practica Capital. In addition to the funding, former Nokia Maps chief Sylvain Grande is joining the board, and the company hopes to pursue a strategy of aggressive expansion in key markets not well covered by leading players like Google. TRAFI already reaches over 300,000 unique users monthly in its launch market in Lithuania, providing commuters and travelers there with journey planning that seamlessly combines public transit, taxi, bicycle routes and walking, offering suggestions as to which modes will be most convenient and most expedient given real-time traffic information. I asked TRAFI co-founder and CEO Martynas Gudonavičius why his startup has a chance to excel in a market where there’s already a lot of activity, and recently a fair amount of consolidation through acquisitions by Apple and others. He said that TRAFI is targeting opportunity specifically left on the table by the transit directions players you already know. “Citymapper, Hopstop and those guys only work with open data which is pretty easy,” he said in an interview. “We are going different, harder way and using not only open data, but also data which is very complex and harder to obtain, especially in cities in less developed, emerging markets. Google transit only uses their own defined data feed formats, and if particular city doesn’t have it – Google doesn’t cover it. We do.” TRAFI also offers distinctive features, including an “interesting” route suggestion algorithm that plugs into Foursquare’s API to provide suggestions of potential places to stop along the way. But the real opportunity is to serve markets that are underserved at the moment, and that’s where TRAFI’s expansion plans will take them. “Expansion will be very aggressive in 2013/2014 and mainly focused on emerging markets around the world and multi-million population cities for example Sao Paulo, Mexico City, Moscow, etc.,” he said. “There is definitely a huge opportunity to grow in this market, it’s actually under-invested, especially in emerging markets where open data is still very rare and Google/Apple are not really well established.” Currently, TRAFI is available on the web and on Android, but it’s undergoing a redesign and the team hopes to unveil its new look soon, ahead of trying to achieve a more global footprint.
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Gillmor Gang Live 10.22.13 (TCTV)
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Steve Gillmor
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– Robert Scoble, Dan Farber, Keith Teare, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor. Like us on Facebook at Facebook.com/GillmorGang
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Prism Skylabs Raises $15M Round Led By Intel To Use Surveillance Cameras For In-Store Analytics
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Anthony Ha
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Video analytics startup Prism Skylabs that it has raised $15 million in Series B funding. The company in 2011 (co-founder Ron Palmeri is also co-founder of MkII Ventures and ). It says it can use footage from existing security cameras to provide retailers and other businesses with “web-style analytics”. For example, the company says it can provide graphics showing footpaths through the store, heat maps of customer interest, and customer counts and conversion. It supposedly works with more than 80 customers. The new funding was led by Intel Capital, with participation from Presidio Ventures, Triangle Peak, Data Collective and Expa. Prism Skylabs last . (Past investors include CrunchFund, which, like TechCrunch, was founded by Michael Arrington.)
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With $2.6M From SoftTech, 500 Startups & More, BetterDoctor Wants To Take The Pain Out Of Finding The Best Local Care
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Rip Empson
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After a frustrating search to find the best local doctor in San Francisco during a “series of family emergencies,” Ari Tulla teamed up with friend and co-founder Tapio Tolvanen to do something about it. The result of what Tulla calls his “vendetta against the broken healthcare system” is , a search engine and ranking service for doctors that . As veterans of the mobile space, most recently at Nokia, the co-founders focused on building a simple, device-friendly interface around their physician database, starting with an iPhone app and a mobile-optimized web experience for iOS and Android. Since launch, the doc-centric search engine has grown from 5,000 physicians in five medical specialties to more than 1 million across 60 medical specialties. Today, the co-founders tell us, more than 4 million people have used the service to find a doctor, and 5,000 physicians have now signed up to access its “doctor dashboard.” With 1 million people now using BetterDoctor to search for local physicians each month and with a staff that’s grown to 21, the startup is looking to expand and refine its patient-doctor matchmaking algorithms. To do so, the startup announced today that it is taking on $2.6 million in seed funding from Jeff Clavier at SoftTechVC, 500 Startups, Burrill & Co, among others. As a result of the round, Clavier and Burrill & Co.’s Dirk Lammerts will be joining BetterDoctor’s board of directors. Of course, one of the big challenges that remains for BetterDoctor is awareness, particularly on the doctor front, which is something its new capital will help it to address. While 1 million doctors are currently listed in the startup’s database — and 300,000 have passed its “quality screening,” which means their experience, education, licenses, board certifications and referral network all pass muster — many of these doctors would be surprised to discover that this is the case. Plus, there’s the fact that physicians, generally speaking, are wary of listing services, thanks to the difficulty of discerning which are legitimate, which will stand the test of time and which can actually add value. Some opt out of all of them to avoid having to vet a new one ever week; after all, doctors hopefully have more important things to do. BetterDoctor, however, hopes to get over the hump by acting as a lead-generation service for doctors and their practices. Some physicians already have over 10,000 profile views via BetterDoctor’s search engine, Tulla says, and as a result, the company thinks it’s in a position to begin helping doctors not only find more patients but market their practices more effectively. Physicians who sign up and pay to use the service — become “verified” — can claim their profiles and use BetterDoctor for promotion. This sounds appealing, of course, but in running this kind of service, it can be tough to strike a balance between making money and staying objective in search results, while dedicating (relatively) equal attention to the user experience for both physicians patients. To avoid skewing search results, the service takes into account both consumer and peer feedback, as well as qualifications, to avoid surfacing only those “doctors who pay the most, but might not be of good quality,” the CEO says. This is a good start, but it likely won’t be the first time this issue comes up, and hopefully it won’t be the only precautionary measure BetterDoctor pursues. After all, , it’s a fine line. By offering lead-gen value for doctors and by casting a wider net with search results (while maintaining quality control) for consumers, the co-founders believe they can compete with and , and the increasing number of services that offer ways for consumers to search, browse recommendations and book appointments online. Furthermore, because 90 percent of people still book doctor appointments by phone, Tulla believes that by focusing on creating a mobile-optimized and accessible user experience, it can attract a wider audience and offer a better alternative. To that end, the other area where BetterDoctor believes it can really add value to the doctor search process is by not just offering more results but by actively matching patients with the doctor that best fits their search criteria and needs. It’s a complex problem to solve, and BetterDoctor is still putting the pieces together on this front, but it’s started down the road to better filtering and enhanced results by allowing users to key in their insurance plan to find practices that will cover them. BetterDoctor is also optimizing the search experience by, thankfully, keeping its pages free of advertisements and keeping doctors with negative ratings — those who have had legal trouble or are fighting malpractice suits — out of search results. The team isn’t ready to go into any real details on its new plans for improving rankings and matchmaking, but it’s clear that this is where the startup plans to focus a significant portion of its attention in the coming months. After all, if BetterDoctor can continue to convince more doctors to claim their profiles and sign on, offer more information about their services and continue to hone its patient-doctor matchmaking, it could find a way to give the ZocDocs of the world a run for their money. And, perhaps more importantly, help make the tedious process of searching for doctors less, well, awful.
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Two iPads To Tango
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MG Siegler
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I walked into today’s Apple event positive that the iPad mini with a retina display, if unveiled, would be the one iPad to rule them all. I was sure that such a device would so thoroughly upstage the 9.7-inch iPad, that there would be no shortage of folks wondering why the larger sibling even continued to exist. And actually, that proved to be prescient. Apple no longer sells the device simply called “iPad”. Enter . The new heir apparent to the iPad throne. When you hear about the upgraded dimensions of the iPad Air, you’re undoubtedly impressed. 28 percent lighter. 20 percent thinner. 1 pound. 1 pound! But it’s not until you actually hold the device until what Apple has done here really registers. I got the chance to play around with the iPad Air for roughly 20 minutes today after the event. When I first held it, it reminded me of the first time I held an iPhone 4 — or perhaps more appropriately, a MacBook Air. It’s an immediate and visceral “whoa”. As someone who still regularly uses a larger iPad (technically, the “iPad 4”), it just doesn’t seem possible that a company could pull off such an upgrade from one generation to the next. I’m not sure it even seems possible to perform such an upgrade at all just based on the laws of science. I mean, not only is this iPad Air absurdly thinner and lighter, it actually boasts hugely upgraded internals as well. It’s just silly. Holding the iPad Air actually feels closer to holding an iPad mini than to the regular-sized iPad. And it is closer. The iPad 4 weighed 650 grams. The (last generation) iPad mini weighed 308 grams. The iPad Air weighs 469 grams. But the other key in the device feeling more like an iPad mini is that it’s not only significantly thinner, but also smaller, thanks to Apple reducing the bezels on the side of the iPad Air. This takes a device that was 7.31-inches down to 6.6-inches . That’s a huge reduction that’s actually very meaningful when you’re holding it in your hand. And that’s another key: the biggest problem myself and many others had with the original iPad is that it was hard to hold it with one hand for any extended period of time. This issue became even more pronounced when the iPad mini came onto the scene. But thanks to the size and weight reductions found on the iPad Air, this is finally . So, an iPad that’s insanely thinner and lighter while getting huge spec upgrades and maintaining the large screen size. It’s a device that’s “meant to be taken places. Handled. And really used,” as Jony Ive described it in of the iPad Air. This must be the new king of the iPads, right? Not so fast. Here’s the strangest thing to me about today’s unveilings: while the iPad Air perfected and upgraded the larger iPad in every way, the iPad mini got spec upgrades that are nearly unfathomable. How unfathomable? The iPad mini now has the as this new iPad Air. Think about that for a minute. The iPad mini was previously running on an A5 chip. This new one has the just-unveiled-in-the-iPhone-5s top-of-the-line A7 chip. Yes, it skipped a generation. Apple could have easily given the iPad mini an A6 chip and everyone would have been happy. “Want an iPad running the A7? Try the top-of-the-line iPad Air.” That could have been a perfectly reasonable message. It would have still been a big upgrade for the iPad mini and presumably would have saved Apple quite a bit of cost. But Apple didn’t do that. “We want everyone to have access to all our best features,” is what Tim Cook said when referring to Apple’s other massive move today: making all their software — including OS X — free. But he could have just as easily been talking about these new iPads. Buying an iPad mini is in no way a step down from buying an iPad Air. It’s simply a smaller device with a slightly smaller price. Chips. Graphics. Screen. Battery life. Storage space. They’re all now exactly the same on both devices. It’s really just a matter of preference. But for many of us, this is now an extremely hard choice — much harder than I thought it would be. I had thought the retina display on a slower iPad mini would trump the faster performance of the iPad with a 9.7-inch screen. Instead, we have a retina display on an iPad mini that has the same performance as a ridiculously svelte iPad with a 9.7-inch screen. First world problem? Yes. Maybe now the first world problem. I’m torn. And I won’t be the only one. When I briefly ran into Tim Cook after the event and brought up this issue, he laughed, noting that I had another option: I could buy both. My wallet curses you, Apple. Again.
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Microsoft Would Really Prefer If You Called The Surface RT Just “Surface” From Now On
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Alex Wilhelm
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Microsoft has renamed, or partially unnamed its Surface RT tablet to merely the “Surface.” The Surface RT struggled in the market through its first year in the wild. It has been mostly replaced by the new, and quite nice, Surface 2. However, Microsoft intends to continue selling the Surface RT for some time, perhaps getting rid of unsold inventory, at a reduced price. You can now purchase three different Surface devices: The Surface [RT], the Surface 2, and the Surface Pro 2. Why the name change? Consumers were confused as heck at what it was, how it was different from the Surface Pro, and so forth. Microsoft . Microsoft provided a statement on the name change to , stating that “To stay consistent with the naming structure of our new offerings, Surface RT is now referred to as ‘Surface,’” Right, then. Tom also found out something else that I am working to confirm: The desktop tile is gone on new Windows RT 8.1 devices. Microsoft appears to have hidden it. I don’t like this. Microsoft is moving to kill the desktop on Windows RT 8.1. Here’s what this looks like next: Microsoft releases a Metrofied version of Office. Now, you don’t get kicked to the desktop when you fire up Office. Now, the average consumer never goes to the desktop on Windows RT 8.1, unless they add the tile to their Start Screen. For all intends and practical purposes, that means desktop is for Windows RT 8.1. Call me sentimental if you will, but that just doesn’t feel right from a product perspective. I’m working to confirm the change with Microsoft, and will update this post when I get said affirmation.
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TechCrunch TV Apple Event Wrap-Up: Software Free And Now, New iPads And Macs
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Darrell Etherington
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The today was a big one in terms of just how much stuff Apple trotted out between software updates, pricing bombshells, and new hardware. The iPad underwent a makeover and lost some weight with the , and the stepped up to the big leagues with an uncompromising 64-bit A7 processor and Retina display. There were too, and more . Apple also updated just about every piece of consumer software it makes, and all those updates were available today, and they were all free for existing users and anyone buying a new Mac or iOS device. That includes , the 10th and latest iteration of OS X, and the first major desktop OS update Apple has ever offered for free. Software pricing was probably the biggest surprise here, in terms of something that wasn’t leaked, but it’s a doozy in terms of throwing down a gauntlet for the competition.
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Meet Nexmo, The Telecom API Firm On Track For $40M In 2013 Revenue
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Alex Wilhelm
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Given the massive global popularity of messaging, the market in play is enormous. is a quickly growing company that provides carrier-direct SMS and Voice APIs that developers can use to reach phones around the world. Vying for traction in the space with competitors like Twilio, Nexmo has raised , and unlike so many other young technology companies, is profitable. However, it is a somewhat quiet company. I recently sat down with Nexmo’s CEO Tony Jamous to dig into just how quickly his company is growing, how it managed to break into the black and what its next plans are. Jamous is affable, and provided TechCrunch with far more hard numbers than most firms are willing to share. Then again, most companies don’t share, because showing off how much money you lose isn’t too flattering. Nexmo doesn’t have that problem. I won’t be focusing on the technical aspects of Nexmo and its industry in this post. That’s a discussion for another day. Nexmo’s revenue grew at a stable 20 percent monthly for the first half of 2013. That income directly corresponds to the firm’s 20 percent average monthly growth rate of its through-traffic during the same period. Chronologically, Nexmo began to accelerate around the time of its most recent round of funding – the company has raised a total of $3.83 million. Jamous referred to the cash injection as a “shot in the arm.” Ask any CEO what he intends to do with a new round of funding, and her response every time is the same: Acceleration. Nexmo is no different. Using its most recent $3 million, Nexmo grew its sales team and signed several new and large clients. But in its favor, existing customers grew in scale, directly boosting traffic through its APIs and, thus, increasing revenue. Nexmo has been caught in a contented updraft: It counts among its customers, by its estimation, about 80 percent of the “Over-The-Top Content” message market (OTT). Line, Viber and KaKaoTalk are among the larger OTT messaging services, and they use Nexmo. The company also works with other OTT players, but asked me not publish their names, citing private contracts. To supplement the growth in its SMS business, Nexmo began to support voice calls in June. In July, 4 million calls were sent through the new service. Jamous stated that the voice part of Nexmo grew quickly at launch because existing clients had requested it, putting demand in place from its first day in operation. Twilio, which has been in the call game far longer, that it is handling about 4 million calls daily. I don’t have Nexmo’s comparable figure. Jamous did tell me that Nexmo has handled more than 1.4 billion voice and SMS API transactions. Voice currently comprises 7 percent of Nexmo revenue, and the company expects it to rise to 15 percent of its fourth quarter revenue. Nexmo had revenues of $4 million in August. That figure is more than the company has raised, to date, it’s worth noting. That revenue rate puts Nexmo at around a $50 million yearly run rate. The company will exceed that rate in 2013, provided that it continues to grow. According to Jamous, Nexmo expects total revenue of around $40 million for calendar 2013. Twilio was tipped earlier in 2013 to be on track for about for the year, putting the companies on rough top-line parity. Extrapolating from the August revenue figure, assuming that Nexmo grows at 5 percent monthly – a reduced pace, but one that I think is a reasonable projection – Nexmo would generate just under $9 million in top line next December. That would put it on a nine-figure yearly run rate. Nexmo is looking to raise another tranche of cash. Why raise when you are profitable? Jamous wants to accelerate the growth of his product and support team. He still handles the bulk of support work himself, something that probably worked when the company was smaller than it is now. Jamous indicated that he wants to raise more than $20 million, and the company is talking to new investors. Previously, Nexmo raised cash from foreign investors in China and Korea, helping it to build relationships in those markets where it didn’t have local clout. I wouldn’t be surprised if Nexmo raised its next round at least partially from investors of several continents. Will the company struggle to raise cash? Probably not. Twilio recently raised $70 million. But the companies aren’t complete analogues, so we should avoid over-comparison, but in this context they are relatable. If Twilio can land $70 million (bringing its total raised cash to over $100 million) Nexmo shouldn’t struggle to pick up $22 million or $23 million. The company also wants to put together a proper marketing strategy. You likely hadn’t heard of Nexmo before today. I only recently became acquainted with the firm. It could use a higher profile. Nexmo was founded in June of 2010, and the first message went through its systems in January of 2011. So, in a little over three years, it has grown to a company on a $50 million yearly run rate. That’s an impressive tear. Still, the growth of OTT applications that were its clients did contribute greatly to its success, and growth. To say right place, right time is lazy. Nexmo built a product and scaled as some of its larger firms did the same. Still, growth could slow if OTT app partners slow, and if those applications themselves lose relevance in the notoriously fickle mobile world, Nexmo could suffer from flat or declining incomes. Also, Twilio is ludicrously well funded, and could begin to hem in on Nexmo’s key customers. Competition is a standard business risk, however, and not one that is unique to Nexmo. Still, for a company that wants to raise money on the strength of its growth, Nexmo has to keep a closer eye on its acceleration than comparable firms. Provided that Nexmo secures the funds that it is looking for, it can begin marketing with a decent ROI, and can continue to develop its voice business. I don’t see why the company can’t continue steady growth. The days of 20 percent monthly revenue growth are likely past, but that doesn’t mean that the firm can’t keep putting points on the board. It will be interesting to see how heavily Nexmo invests after it raises, and whether it will be willing to dip into the red for a few quarters to accelerate its top line. Once profitable, there is a certain momentum to making money. It can be uncomfortable to become cashflow negative (we’re speaking loosely here, of course) after being acquainted with profitability. After digging through the numbers, Jamous and I discussed culture for a few minutes. The operating philosophy of Nexmo is to not hire until the need is painful, and even then to try and solve the need with technology. The company currently has 33 employees, spread throughout the United States, Hong Kong, London, and other locations. I don’t think that we’ll see Nexmo hire half of San Francisco once it secures its new funds. — The core challenge for Nexmo is proving that it can continue revenue growth. It doesn’t have to prove that it can generate profits. But to command the valuation it likely wants, it will have to detail how it can grow outside of the OTT as quickly as it grew with it. I’ll be checking back in with the company towards the end of the year to see how its internal metrics are looking. For now, Nexmo has built a track record that it has to continue to live up to.
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Content Recommendation Service (And Rumored IPO Candidate) Outbrain Raises Another $35M
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Anthony Ha
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Outbrain is announcing that it has raised $35 million in new funding. If you’ve ever read an article and found a widget at the bottom recommending stories you might also like (which can come from multiple sites), there’s a good chance those recommendations were provided by Outbrain. It’s not the only content recommendation service, but in my experience it remains the best known. The company says it has been installed on more than 100,000 sites and has a network of 700 “premium publishers” that includes CNN, Hearst, Rolling Stone, and Fast Company. It also says it serves 100 billion recommendations each month, including both organic and paid recommendations. The company makes money by including sponsored content. There were that the company was preparing for an IPO in which it would raise between $100 million and $300 million at a valuation of up to $1 billion (the stories differed on both the amount Outbrain was looking to raise and the valuation). Shortly after that, the company announced that it was . The new funding doesn’t necessarily put the kibosh on those rumors — the company may want some extra cash as it considers going public. I asked an Outbrain spokesperson how the funding might affect any IPO plans, and they said, “We’re looking at this as a fundraising event like any other.” In the press release announcing the funding, CEO Yaron Galai said Outbrain (which was founded in 2006) is at “a pivotal moment” in its evolution. When I asked him to elaborate, Galai told me via email: Outbrain has evolved from a start-up into a mature company that has helped to shape the content recommendation space that it created six years ago. We’ve seen incredible growth over the last few years and we now rival Google and Facebook in terms of the page views that we generate. Our goal for the next year is to continue scaling our business and building out our mobile and self-serve products. This funding will enable us to do that as well as continue our expansion into new markets. Outbrain has now raised a total of $99 million. The latest round was led by HarbourVest Partners, with participation from new investor Vintage Partners and existing investors Carmel Ventures, Index Ventures, Gemini Israel Funds, GlenRock Israel, Rhodium, and Lightspeed Venture Partners.
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Fashion GPS Gets Cozy With Editors, Provides Access To Product Stills
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Eliza Brooke
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Three years after it began powering the event management logistics of fashion week, Fashion GPS is going one step deeper into the seasonal editorial cycle. Its newest feature, Styles 2.0, launched today as a platform for PR agencies to push assets to editors when they begin requesting styles for shoots after the shows are over. Starting in September 2011, editors could access Style.com-type runway images through Fashion GPS’s Radar platform. (There are a number of different platforms built specifically for PR agencies and editorial teams. We’ll try to keep them straight.) This gave them the ability to favorite shots, take notes, and request full looks. Styles 2.0 breaks those runway images down even further, enabling PR teams to put up stills of individual products. They can then make it public, private, or downloadable as a high-res image for print or online publication. Depending on their level of access, an editor could theoretically pull a photo of a particular shoe straight from the site to use in a slideshow without having to request a Hightail file from the designer’s PR agency (or worse, have to call it into the studio to be photographed). When I interned at a fashion magazine in college, I spent a good chunk of my time trolling through blurry iPhone photos of clothing items that my editor had taken on visits to the designer’s showroom after fashion week. Sometimes it was unclear if the pants at hand were… denim? Cute? Terrible? So you can see how a tool like this would be really exciting. And with the steady integration of Fashion GPS’s technology into the different facets of fashion week, it makes a good case for ready adoption. For the time being, the PR and production agency KCD has an exclusive on the Styles 2.0 platform. The platform will open up to other agencies in January, just in time for February’s show season. Still, a rep for Fashion GPS said that a safe 90 percent of runway images now appear on Styles 2.0 at this point.
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Catherine Shu
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TechCrunch TL;DR: Apple’s October Keynote In A Nutshell
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Chris Velazco
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at the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco earlier today and, as promised, there was plenty to dig into. We’ve pumped out , but in case you’re looking for a highlight reel of sorts, we’ve put together a quick rundown of everything Apple pulled back the curtain on. Yeah, people tend to swoon about new iGadgets, but the company’s refreshed batch of are nothing to sneeze at. Apple showed off slimmer 13- and 15-inch versions that sport Intel’s latest Haswell chipsets and bigger batteries and come preloaded with OS X Mavericks. In the event these things struck your fancy, you can lay claim to yours in the Apple Store starting today. Here are Darrell Etherington’s thoughts on based on initial impressions. Many a nerd has salivated over Apple’s curious Mac Pro redesign, and today we got a better look at what’s ticking away under the hood. Long story short, the back provides you all the access to input/output/expandability you could want, and the otherwise unbroken smooth cylinder evokes a ‘Darth Vader’ vibe. It’s got dual workstation GPUs (proprietary in design but potentially upgradeable down the line) and an amazing Intel processor, making it an awfully powerful machine housed in an awfully pretty body. The new Mac Pro will be starting at $2,999, and you can see our hands-on impression of the computing powerhouse (courtesy of Matthew Panzarino) . And who could forget the iPads — Apple pulled back the curtain on two new models, the and the . The two actually have plenty of things in common: both sport the same 64-bit A7 chip that recently debuted in the iPhone 5s, both have screens that run at 2048-by-1536 resolution (though the smaller screen on the mini will make for much crisper images), and both are going to hit store shelves starting in November. They even resemble each other to an extent — the Air essentially looks like a 10-inch iPad mini, making it significantly slimmer and lighter than the model that came before it. If you’re not looking to spend too much, though, Apple is keeping some older models around to make sure that anyone who wants to jump on the iPad bandwagon can do so. The (non-Retina) iPad 2 is still kicking and will set you back $399 to start. Today it seems the name of the game was ‘free.’ Apple announced that two of its most prominent software suites — and — would now be free with the purchase of any new Mac or iOS device. But that’s not all. Apple’s next big OS X update, , is . This should help dramatically raise the rate at which users update their software, which has a benefit for security and for developers, too. Considering that the Apple has been charging for these annual updates since the earliest days of OS X, this is an unexpected (though very welcome) change. It’s true the company has been reducing the cost of updates with each new version, but going completely free was a move almost no one saw coming. Apple also delivered an update about how quickly people are taking to iOS 7, and the numbers aren’t too shabby. It’s been just over a month since the update went live and started getting pushed to iDevices across the globe, and so far a full . And that’s about everything there is to know about Apple’s big fall event, without getting too deep into the nitty gritty. Safe to say, Apple has a lot of new stuff for people to get excited about going into the holiday shopping season.
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Twitter Sets Up $1 Billion Credit Line, MoPub Had $6.5M In Revenue In First Half Of 2013
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Josh Constine
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Twitter has just announced via an that “the Company entered into a revolving credit agreement with certain lenders which provides for a $1.0 billion revolving unsecured credit facility maturing on October 22, 2018.” Twitter also listed out financials for its acquisition MoPub, including that it brought in $6.51 million in revenue in the six months ending June 30th 2013. The credit line could help Twitter if it suddenly wanted to make an acquisition, expand, handle changing month to month expenditures, or pay for sudden unforeseen costs. Twitter says its underwriters or their affiliates are the lenders of the credit, which include Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan, Bank Of America Merrill Lynch, Deutsche Bank Securities, Allen & Company LLC, and CODE Advisors. Here’s how the credit line’s interest and fees work: “Loans under the credit facility bear interest, at our option, at (i) a base rate based on the highest of the prime rate, the federal funds rate plus 0.50% and an adjusted LIBOR rate for a one-month interest period plus 1.00%, in each case plus a margin ranging from 0.00% to 0.75% or (ii) an adjusted LIBOR rate plus a margin ranging from 1.00% to 1.75%. This margin is determined based on our total leverage ratio for the preceding four fiscal quarter period, but will be at the highest level at least until we consummate this offering.” Twitter will have to pay standard upfront and unused commitment fees for a credit facility this large. It hasn’t drawn on any of its $1 billion in credit yet, but it’s a big well to draw from considering Twitter’s IPO itself is expected to raise about $1 billion. For reference, Facebook took a $8 billion credit line for its IPO where it raised $16 billion. Note that I cover Twitter competitor Facebook frequently but have no financial conflicts, and criticism of both comes from a desire to see my fellow users of theirs have the best experience. As for MoPub, the S-1 amendment also lists out the first hard financial details of the private adtech startup Twitter bought for about $350 million. MoPub took in $6.51 million in net revenue (Correction: not earnings as we briefly wrote here and in the headline) in the first half of 2013 with a net loss of $2.82 million, and had revenues of $2.69 million in all of 2012 with a net loss of $8.14 million. The acquisition is expected to close in November. You can see the charts below. Twitter also detailed how it will handle the stock plan for its January 2013 acquisition Crashlytics. The new info comes as Twitter prepares for a much anticipated IPO on the NYSE under the symbol TWTR. The company’s showed that it now has 230 million active users and earned $168.6 million in revenue in Q3 2013. for 2013 as of the end of Q3 was $133.8 million. Twitter sees 70% of its ad revenue coming from mobile. That means its financial future as the world shifts to the small screen is somewhat proven.
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Handybook Hoovers Up $10M To Bring Its On-Demand Cleaning And Household Services To 5 New Cities
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Rip Empson
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Are you unhappy with your cleaning service? Your local handyman? Thanks to the advance of the Web and adoption of mobile services, a handful of startups have popped up to take advantage of an opening they see in the fragmented and slow-to-change home services space. As many local cleaning and repair services continue to live offline, offer atrocious websites (or none at all) and show up late, launched in June of last year to help people find better, trustworthy professionals to take care of their household needs. After raising $2 million in seed funding last year, Handybook announced today that it has received a significant, new influx of capital, led by General Catalyst Partners, Highland Capital Partners and TechStars co-founder David Tisch, among others. With this $10 million Series A raise, Handybook now has the capital it needs to expand beyond its home stomping grounds in New York City and begin operating in five new cities by the end of the month. Along with its impending arrival in Dallas, San Diego, Houston, Atlanta and Seattle, the startup is also releasing a new version of its mobile app, which will be compatible with all iOS devices. Like its web service, the app aims to simplify the process of booking cleaning or repair services, cutting it down to three steps. Select the service that you want, confirm the time you want the cleaner or repairman to show up, and then enter your email address. Like HomeJoy, Exec, MyClean and GetMaid, Handybook wants to take advantage of the growing number of people that are turning to on-demand services (particularly cleaning), as well as increasing comfort people have with using their mobile devices to search for, book and rate these services. However, the principal difference between Handybook and the startups mentioned above (among others) is that, while the majority focus on cleaning, Handybook wants to do both — cleaning and repairs. To that end, Handybook currently offers on-demand search and booking for three types of “household services”: “Handy person”-type jobs (assembling furniture, mounting your TV, etc.), along with plumbing and moving. While these types of services seem complementary to cleaning, and some of the startup’s competitors dabble in offering household services, most have focused solely on cleaning because, in part, it’s a competitive enough space as it is. Plus, as mentioned above, it’s fragmented, is tough to scale while maintaining a trustworthy brand and quality — whether of jobs, employees or customer service It remains to be seen how effectively Handybook will be able to manage each of its tentacles over the long run. However, for now investors seem to be optimistic over Handybook’s potential, and, as is often the case, that’s because the startup has been able to maintain a quick and steady growth rate. Handybook has seen its user base double month-over-month over the last four months, co-founder and CEO Oisin Hanrahan explains, and has been seeing fairly consistent double-digit growth in bookings this year. The company is also currently seeing users book thousands of jobs each week, the CEO added. Beyond that, Hanrahan seems to believe that Handybook can gain a competitive edge by not hesitating to pull the trigger on expansion. Today, the startup offers coverage in eight cities, and by the end of the month, it will be in 13 markets. That’s not bad for just being just over a year removed from launch. Handybook and other startups of its ilk also have the benefit of timing, or at least it seems that way from the “all boats rise on a rising tide” rule. Uber has really been the first to on-demand, mobile-first services to achieve “crossover” success — in the taxi industry or any other — and the “Uber-For-X” model is all the rage among startups as a result. Unsurprisingly, the on-demand luxury car service provided part of the inspiration for Handybook, Hanrahan says. While both Angie’s List and YP are big names in the local repair service market, Handybook sees both companies more as partners than potential competitors. Whereas both have taken the “Yelp route,” by offering a search and reviews engine, Handybook is taking a page from Uber and working to round up the fragmented local service providers and become their digital booking and billing engine. Yes, there’s a lot of competition out there, but there are also a lot of dirty apartments and houses — and broken toilets for that matter. But will there be more than one winner?
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Distimo’s New App Lets You Track Analytics, Competitive Intelligence & App Store Leaderboards Right From Your iOS Device
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Sarah Perez
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Mobile analytics firm Distimo launched on iPhone and iPad today, which allows anyone – even non-developers – to keep an eye on app store trends. The company, which currently offers a suite of tools for mobile app publishers that allow for tracking downloads, purchases, rankings, revenues and more, is primarily targeting its developer customers with the new release, of course. However, Distimo also thought to include its Leaderboard rankings, which will give its new app broader appeal. The app currently requires at least a free Distimo account, and for app developers using its analytics service, it will allow them to see both their own app data, as well as competing app intelligence data. This includes the above-mentioned metrics, plus, ranking and reviews, across all major app stores like Apple’s iOS App Store, Google Play, Amazon’s Appstore, Samsung Apps, Apple’s Mac Store, the Windows Phone Marketplace, Windows Store, BlackBerry World and Nokia Ovi Store. App publishers using can additionally view premium transactional data including the daily download and revenue volumes of any app worldwide, for the purpose of gaining competitive market intelligence. They can then track their own app’s performance next to those from the others in their same space. Though a number of leading app analytics firms offer this kind of market insight in their online platforms, Distimo has beaten companies like App Annie and appFigures, to name a few, in delivering the details about competing apps across app stores to a mobile application for easy of access. (That’s not to say others don’t have these kind of features in the works, though). The other thing that makes Distimo’s app interesting is that it can be used by those who are not developers or paying customers interested in tracking their own app’s analytics. For those who don’t have an app to watch, Distimo for iOS will send users to its Leaderboards section instead. Here, you can browse the top charts for any app store, and even filter the data by country, app category, device, or type (free/paid). You can also choose to see just the top apps or the top publishers, and can break down data by day, week, month, or quarter. It’s the kind of thing that’s handy for others interested in watching the app industry, like analysts, VCs, or yes, even tech news reporters. According to Distimo CEO and co-founder Vincent Hoogsteder, his service is now being used by developers worldwide to track over 3.2 billion downloads per quarter, for over 260,000 apps across platforms. App Annie, for comparison’s sake, is data on over 300,000 applications, as of earlier this month. The Distimo app is a free download on the iTunes App Store.
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Former BabyCenter Exec Tina Sharkey Hired As CEO Of Sherpa Foundry
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Ryan Lawler
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Scott Stanford and Shervin Pishevar’s Sherpa Foundry has brought on BabyCenter executive Tina Sharkey as its CEO. Previously, she was CEO of Johnson and Johnson wholly-owned subsidiary BabyCenter, and prior to that co-founded iVillage and built out AOL Networks. Sharkey, who also sits on the board of HomeAway and Brit + Co, will be tasked with running operations at the “ ” company builder/incubator launched by Stanford and Pishevar earlier this year.
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Hands On With The New 2013 Retina MacBook Pros
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Darrell Etherington
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Apple has updated its today, with changes that make both machines more powerful under the hood and that actually result in a size and weight savings for the already-svelte 13-inch Retina Pro. The core of each update is the Intel Haswell processor, which adds considerable benefits in terms of battery life. This means that, combined with the OS X Mavericks release, the 13-inch model gets a more impressive nine hours of battery life, while the more powerful 15-inch version stays steady at an advertised eight hours.
Playing with both reveals little immediate observable difference for the 15-inch version, though it does seem speedier and generally more responsive. The 13-inch version is a big change, however – the 3.46 lbs compared to the 3.57 of the last generation may not feel like much, but combined with a thickness of just 0.71 inches, it feels like a lot, and will probably be even more impressive if you’re carrying one around with you every day. Before this release, the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display was essentially the best notebook on the market. Now, with a $200 price cut and an even slimmer profile, not to mention two Thunderbolt ports (which are gen 2) instead of just one, I’d say it stands a very good chance of retaining that crown.
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Hands On: Apple’s New iPad Air Makes The Tablet A One-Handed Device
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Matthew Panzarino
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The most important thing about Apple’s iPad Air is the fact that it is now a one-handed device. Previous generations of the full-size 9.7″ iPad could not be held in a single hand for long periods of extended periodical reading or web browsing. This new version fixes that by making it much, much lighter. It weighs in at just 1lb, which is .4lbs lighter than the iPad 4. In our hands-on tests this difference in weight was marked, and made for a hugely different experience. Users who may have wanted a lighter tablet, but didn’t want to sacrifice screen real-estate to move to an iPad mini, will probably be pleased. The reduction in weight comes with a 20 percent reduction in thickness and a trimming down of the bezels along the edge of the screen. I was able to easily palm the new iPad Air in one hand from edge to edge. [gallery ids="903544,903555,903554,903553,903552,903551,903550,903549,903548,903547,903546,903545"] The screen of the iPad Air looks just about the same as the iPad 4 or the new iPad mini, which isn’t too surprising as the resolution should be above the perceptive levels of our eyes at this point. In addition to the thinner bezels, the back of the Air has also been trimmed and tucked to look very similar to the iPad mini. This comes along with a redesign of the mute and volume buttons to match the smaller tablet. The new iPad Air also comes in two back colors: space gray and silver. The silver model has a white front and the space gray model has a black front. The iPad Air is also 0.29″ thick, which is exactly the same as the new iPad mini. An interesting note: the new mini is actually ever so slightly thicker than the old model. So far the new iPad looks like a fairly nice update, especially for those who found the old models a bit cumbersome. We haven’t done any extensive testing or performance benchmarking; that will have to wait until we’ve got review units in hand.
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Hands On With The New iPad Mini With Retina Display
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Darrell Etherington
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The was near-perfect in terms of a small tablet, with the one big shortcoming being that it lacked Apple’s impressive Retina high-resolution display. It was hard to go back to a standard-res screen after the iPad 3 and iPhone 4, which is why it’s great that the new version offers a Retina screen. The eye-boggling 2048 x 1536 screen looks excellent in person, and for anyone coming from a generation one device it’s going to be a dramatic change. The iPad mini itself is very slightly thicker and heavier than its predecessor to accommodate the Retina Display with the same battery life, adding 0.01 inches and 0.05 pounds to the specs of the original, but that makes minimal difference to the actual feel of the product in the hand.
Also new to the iPad mini is a new space gray color scheme, which is lighter than the dark black of the original version. As with the iPhone, it’s an attractive color option, and I suspect also less susceptible to scratches. It’s actually quite close when compared side-by-side to the silver version, but it’s still got the solid black front bezel. The new case options feel about the same as the existing versions, though they come in new color variants. I’m always a fan of the smart cover, and this time around is no exception. Everything else aside, though, the big attraction here is the Retina display. Apple may have beefed up the iPad mini’s processor power with the A7 chip and added a 128 GB storage option, plus much better global LTE coverage, but the Retina is what’s really going to make it worth the extra $70 over the original cost of the gen-one iPad mini. And considering that you do get an iPad essentially as powerful as its larger sibling in such a small, one-hand holdable package, it really is worth the minor price hike, based on my initial impressions.
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Google Debuts Parental Controls For Chrome & Chromebook Computers With A “Supervised Users” Feature, Now In Beta
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Sarah Perez
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Google is officially beginning to roll out parental controls in its Chrome web browser in the form of a new “Supervised Users” feature that is live now in the for early testing ahead of its expected public release. The option allows a user, most likely a parent, to lock down the Chrome browser running on their device in order to allow and block access to certain websites, enable SafeSearch for filtering Google search results, and maintain a history of the websites visited, among other things. The “Supervised Users” option has been in testing for some time. It was first spotted in the wild when developers found an option called “Managed User Settings” in Chrome’s build. Then this summer, the feature to users of the Canary build, as it was able to be switched on and off using a couple of flags. Google had yet to officially comment on its plans with parental controls, however, until today. In , software engineer Pam Greene introduced the “Supervised Users” option, relating how she liked to sit with her own daughter when browsing the web, but also needed more tools to keep her family safe. Though the option is offered in the Chrome browser, it’s obviously designed with Chromebook users in mind – like those buying the new , which TechCrunch recently got its hands on. On Chromebooks, the browser the operating system, so locking down how it behaves can change the entire user experience. In the case of Supervised Users, a Chromebook user with full permissions can visit to control and edit their kids’ (or other supervised users’) accounts. Parents can set the browser to only allow access a pre-approved list of websites; they can turn on Google’s SafeSearch to filter adult content from search results; review children’s requests for access to restricted sites; and view web histories. There are also options for more granular controls, like blocking all subdomains for a host. (To do so, you enter a star * before the main domain, e.g. *.example.com). On Chromebooks, the option to create a Supervised User will appear on the main sign-in screen. You’ll click “Add user” to launch the “Sign In” dialog box, then click on “Create a Supervised User” on the right. On Mac, Windows and Linux PCs, however, the option to create the account will be accessible from the “Users” section in the “Settings” menu. Google says the Supervised Users setting will begin rolling out to users this week. Having just attempted to try it on the Chromebook 11, I found it hadn’t arrived just yet, but your mileage, as they say, may vary.
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Jony Ive And Marc Newson Customize An Unreleased Mac Pro For (RED) Auction
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Matthew Panzarino
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Apple head of Human Interaction Jony Ive and designer Marc Newson have . Apple is a (PRODUCT)RED partner and often produces editions of its products for the organization, whose proceeds go to fighting to eliminate Aids. The charity recently . The machine is absolutely beautiful, making me wish that all of Apple’s Mac Pro machines came in colors like this one. The machine is one that Apple has yet to release, announcing only that it would be available in December. The auction has an estimated $40K-$60K price tag attached. Ive and Newson have collaborated on several other one-off items and customizations like a Leica camera, and a Neal Feay-fabricated desk. The images on the Sotheby’s site appear to be comped together, so it’s likely this isn’t even a final product, but it’s still striking. We’ve reached out to (RED) and Apple to see if they have any more details to share. has garnered donations from a bunch of other designer types like Deiter Rams, clothiers like and artists like George Lucas. For reference, here’s our hands-on video of the “real” Mac Pro from Apple’s event earlier this week.
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The NSA’s Website (NSA.gov) Is Down
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Gregory Ferenstein
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The National Security Agency’s website has been down for at least 30 minutes. , but won’t say if it was hacked. At least a few Twitter accounts that like the elite hacktivist contingent, Anonymous, . Official Anonymous channels are just making fun of the outage: [tweet https://twitter.com/YourAnonCentral/status/393867375247753218] To be sure, The NSA’s website . But, we won’t speculate, for fear of perpetuating the kinds of rumors implied by this delightful : While we’re all waiting to figure out what went wrong, feel free to add your own Healthcare.gov jokes in the comments. LOLZ [tweet https://twitter.com/harper/status/393871474303729664]
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Pinterest Closes Another Copyright Hole, Inks A Deal With Getty Images, Will Pay A Fee For Metadata
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Ingrid Lunden
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With a fresh in its pocket, is gearing up to spend a little of it to build out its platform and the data that powers it — and close up a copyright hole in the process. Pinterest today a deal with — the image agency that holds digital rights to some 80 million still images and illustrations and over 50,000 hours of stock film footage. Getty will provide Pinterest with metadata, and in exchange, Pinterest will pay Getty a fee. Metadata will start to get added in the coming months, the companies say. Financial terms of the deal are not being disclosed, but offering a fee for image metadata is a first for Pinterest. Up to now, Pinterest has offered traffic to partners for more data — such as in the case of the it introduced, or the from last year that added a Pin-it button to Flickr.com and Flickr backlinks for images posted on Pinterest. “As part of our agreement, we’ll pay Getty Images a fee for the data they share and will help make sure that their images get proper attribution,” Pinterest notes today. “We’re just getting started with Getty Images but we’re excited about the possibilities of what their data can help us deliver.” Shareaholic that Pinterest is the second-biggest referrer of traffic on the Internet after Facebook, so for consumer sites based around advertising and (hence) traffic, this makes sense. But in the case of Getty, traffic is less important than the data it is able to provide about the images that it holds. And of course it has photographers and illustrators that want to be compensated for their images getting used. Getty says that it will be sharing the fee with its contributors (that is, those photographers and illustrators) — which means that this deal closes up another awkward copyright hole for Pinterest. As Getty Images co-founder and CEO Jonathan Klein laid out for us , this was something that the company was gearing up to address. “We’re comfortable with people using our images to build traffic,” he said. “The point in time when they have a business model, they have to have some sort of license.” Pinterest, which is now starting to court more advertising and really focus on monetization, definitely fits into that category of now having a business model. For Pinterest, it will be able to use this data to provide more detail to its users about what they’re looking at, including photographers’ names and what’s in the picture. But it sounds like Pinterest will also go much deeper with that data. For example, in the example of the picture of scallops with brussels sprouts above, Pinterest will be able to use the metadata to suggest more pins for recipes using those ingredients, or maybe more images from Thomas Barwick (the photographer). That will make it more likely that a user will spend more time on Pinterest looking at more content. And creating a stronger web of linked pins will also help Pinterest then monetize against that content better — more tags to match against relevant ads, and more of the all-important “engagement” that has become such an important metric for social media sites. While Pinterest these days sometimes leads people to “dead ends” when there is not enough information about a picture that has been shared — a fetching handbag, yes, but who is the designer? — this potentially will open up more avenues for users to travel further, so to speak (at least where Getty pictures are concerned). Getty says that it will be providing two pieces of technology for this service. The first is its image-recognition technology — which will crawl Pinterest to identify Getty Images. It will then link those images with Getty’s metadata using its API. “We’ll get a photo credit for our images on Pinterest’s site and a link back. Pinterest users get more context and have more fun,” Getty today. The service will go live first with Getty Images house content and will later expand to iStock content and other Getty collections.
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Hands On: Apple’s New Mac Pro Is An Insanely Quiet Thermal Wizard
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Matthew Panzarino
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Today at an event in San Francisco, Apple reintroduced its new Mac Pro computer which will form the vanguard of its new high-end lineup of machines for the professional set. The new Mac Pro got a December release schedule and a $2,999 starting price. We went hands on, as much as we could, with the new machine today and can give you a few more details about how it looks and feels now that it’s out from behind a glass case. We watched some folks utilizing them for video and photo editing and the results certainly appeared smooth and impressive. Though it is hard to tell how that will work out in the real world away from a controlled demo. [gallery ids="903516,903515,903514,903513,903512,903511,903510,903509,903508,903507,903506,903505,903504,903502,903501,903500,903499,903498"] The machine itself is a smooth cylinder that emits almost no noise at all. The dim rush of air being expelled from the circular vent hole on top was nearly impossible to hear over the demo room noise. And it was warm enough to take the chill of the cool October air out of my hands as I hovered them over the vent. The sides were on the hotter side of warm but not unpleasant to the touch. It’s such a small package that the heat has almost nowhere to go. It’s a testament to the vent system with an intake underneath and port on top that it’s as cool as it is. The central column of the new Mac Pro is a triangular vent that wicks heat from the memory and CPUs, which are attached to its outer skin. That heat is then sucked up through the top of the machine and thrown out the top. The back of the device is a dense cluster of ports, and softly shifting the computer around on the desk was enough to trigger the lit-up port guides that will help you guide cords into their proper receptacles. Other than the demo situations, it’s hard to say a whole lot about the performance of the devices, so we’ll have to wait until we get a review unit in hand to make any statements about the innards. But the industrial design is certainly striking and exhibits at least some initial evidence that Apple’s thermal design is working as intended.
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Ask A VC: Google Ventures’ Dr. Krishna Yeshwant On The Opportunities For Health-Focused Mobile Apps And More
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Leena Rao
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In this week’s Ask A VC show, we sat down with Google Ventures partner Dr. Krishna Yeshwant in the TechCrunch TV studio. Yeshwant is unique among most of the VCs we have on the show. Not only is he an investor, programmer and former entrepreneur, but he is also a practicing physician. Yeshwant, who is based in Boston, helped lead the firm’s investments in a number of health companies, including Flatiron Health, Foundation Medicine and One Medical Group. We asked Yeshwant about what the major opportunities are in mobile health and diagnosis. He also commented on the new for mobile medical apps. Check out the video above for more!
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The Other IPO Roadshow: Design Your Initial Product Offering To Attract Fortune 500 Enterprises
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Contributor
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Getting to a successful initial public offering is not an easy road for enterprise startups selling to Fortune 500 customers. Earlier in the lifecycle, the first question of death they encounter is: “Who are your other customers?” This can be effectively addressed by taking your startup on the other IPO roadshow: the initial offering roadshow targeted at Fortune 500 enterprises. Unlike consumer products, where early users will join a platform to discover something new, CIO offices in Fortune 500 companies are trained to play it safe. Many companies stick to Oracle, VMWare, EMC and Cisco not because their products are the best in the world, but because no one got fired for selecting one of them. Asking about your other customers is a way of de-risking the purchase decision – air cover in case something goes wrong. There are a few simple and concrete steps available to founders to develop this “quotable referencability.” Never before has it been easy for startups to engage CIO offices. In this era when cloud computing, big data, international cybercrime and mobile are simultaneously disrupting decades-old legacy infrastructure in most CIO departments, Fortune 500 enterprises realize that they will be left behind if they don’t use innovative products from startups. So how do you programmatically exploit this opening to win reference customers? “Sell first and code next” is my advice to any enterprise entrepreneur trying to win Fortune 500 reference customers. Selling starts before you develop your alpha/beta product and not after it. Once you have convinced your VCs to fund your seed or series A round, it is your privilege to ask them to help you organize an initial product offering roadshow, aka a design customer roadshow. While most VCs are great in helping with ultimate initial public offering roadshows, very few can guide you through the first initial product offering roadshows. This is more than just making a couple of customer introductions. You need guidance in planning a trip to NYC and Boston to meet with 10-30 of the top financial institutions, pharma companies, insurance majors and media conglomerates. Getting to the right person in these organizations is key. Busy Fortune 500 executives will give you guidance only if the intro comes from a prior entrepreneur they have engaged with or from a trusted VC who is familiar with the problem domain. It is also important that the founders (not product managers or sales engineers) represent the startup in these early discussions. In my work as a venture capitalist, I find this roadshow to be the most crucial eye-opening experience for engineer-founders who have no prior interaction with Fortune 500 companies in a sales role. It helps them understand the meaning of the notoriously long enterprise sales cycle that may include RFPs, the complexity of the decision-making processes involving many stakeholders and the importance of finding a “budget.” When you are on this roadshow, you are not expected to have a beta product, but you can still engage these prospective customers on key sea changes in the industry, their perceived needs and your mission on changing the world. Jointly brainstorm an architecture/product design that can help them address this change in a 10x cost-efficient and 10x faster manner. Make them feel a part of the company’s creation process. The output of this roadshow is to select three to five design customers who are willing to engage on paid PoCs (proof of concept). Select only those design customers who have been quotable references to other startups before. After securing soft commitments from design customers, it is time to start developing your alpha product. This may take 3-12 months. Keep your design customers engaged through this long hiatus by giving them key milestone updates and organizing joint design discussions. Make them feel like they are developing the product with you. Be well-informed on their budget changes and ensure that they still have a budget allocated to engage you on a paid PoC. Do not use unpaid PoCs even if you have to wait one to two months to get a paid PoC. The best VCs realize this and will tolerate such delays. The conversion rate of a paid PoC to a “production-referencable” sale is significantly higher than the conversion rate of an unpaid PoC. Understand what success in a PoC means. Define clear parameters and talk to other startups that have undertaken PoCs with the same customers. Make sure your sponsor has experience in helping other startups through this conversion process. Once you have completed a PoC, convince your design customer to be a reference for future investors and other customers. It is a good practice to hire a program manager and a sales engineer to ensure the smooth running of these PoCs. I have also seen a few startups first engage in testing the waters with alpha PoCs before starting an almost-feature-complete beta PoC for a much larger group of customers. This is specifically useful when you have a complicated product that has a long development cycle and also has multi-week testing cycles for customers to appreciate its complete value proposition. Don’t talk about your product until you’re ready for its general availability. This serves three purposes. First, it keeps you focused on the proof-of-concept game. I have seen enterprise startups that stay in stealth mode for two years after funding to ensure that they have a few key reference customers before announcing the product publicly. You can’t open many war fronts. An all-out PR war front is unnecessary, as you already know who your design customers are. Second, power and influence in the early days can come from public silence for enterprise startups (unlike consumer startups). Your competitors, the media and your customers like a game of treasure hunt to find out what you are doing. As you are selling to a select group of Fortune 500 customers, there is no point in announcing to your powerful enterprise tech competitors (e.g Cisco, Oracle, IBM, HP) what you are up to. Convince your design customers first before you open up the kimono. Finally, stealth-mode PR is highly recommended instead of an open all-out PR strategy where all details are disclosed publicly. The cornerstones of stealth-mode PR are: a) speaking in industry conferences about where the world should be headed to enable a key transition and how you may have a unique plan to enable that key transition; b) getting your design customers to talk to their fellow CIOs and to the investment community; and c) engaging industry analysts and mentors. Successful startups almost never sell to just two to three customers. There is a major risk that is built-in to the design customer PoC strategy described above. You can become hyper-focused on solving the problems of your design customers and forget that the product you create should be widely usable in the industry. You can mitigate this risk by engaging a few key external stakeholders in this phase. Firstly, recruit a strong sales oriented entrepreneur to be a mentor, adviser or a board member. Such a person can provide expert advice on the problem described above, guide you in converting paid PoCs to production sales and help craft your recruitment strategy. Start briefing industry analysts such as Gartner, IDC, 451 Research and Forrester. Boutique analysts such as Bernd Harzog and Curt Monash also have influence in the customer community. Get them to talk to their Fortune 500 clients about you and to provide you with the feedback. It is also a good practice to open early discussions with key channel partners such as Trace3 and Cambridge Computer, who have experience in guiding early-stage startups to expand your beta customer pipeline. They give you an extraordinary amount of leverage in helping you focus your resources on your direct engagements. Keep these stakeholders informed of your PoCs and reference wins. At the same time, keep these interactions limited to two to three industry analysts and two to three channel partners to maintain the stealth-mode effect. Once you are through these steps you have validated your product-market fit. You have a few quotable reference customers and solved the first chicken-or-the-egg problem. And you’re now ready for GA of your product, which will be the next inflection point in your startup’s lifecycle. This is when you start talking publicly about your company and vision. The next sales steps are to create a repeatable sales process and scale the revenues. For that you will have to raise a series B, hire a strong sales team, win the love of channel partners, start your public-facing content marketing strategy, create a top-notch customer advisory board, raise a few larger rounds to reach $100M in annual revenue and establish thought-leadership in CIO forums. And that will position you well for a successful IPO roadshow.
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A Way To Save BlackBerry
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Contributor
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The first smartphone I owned was a Nokia Communicator, which I chose because the C++ dev kit gave me the most freedom. When the iPhone appeared I did not switch, because mandatory App Store signing to execute code seemed like a major step in the war on general computation. Eventually I rid myself of Nokia and got an Android acting upon a moral imperative. Many hackers adhere to the ideology of Richard Stallman. We believe that the use of free software (that is software whose source can be viewed, altered and distributed by all of its users) is morally advantageous. We subject ourselves to “inferior” platforms in exchange for more liberty. Android is not free software, but has many free software components, so it is the most free for the time being. Stallman himself refuses to carry a cellphone because none of them are free software and they have government back doors. His ascetic devotion to our cause is noble, but not realistic for those of us who find mobile devices irreplaceable tools for improving our incomes and sex lives. We less devout followers of the Church of Emacs settle for the most free platform in lieu of true freedom. I hate Android’s UI/UX cesspool and Google’s growing surveillance state. There are vast numbers of us sharing that sentiment, and all of us could be happy BlackBerry users. BlackBerry would merely have to perform a single revolutionary act: the liberation of mobile users and developers. Release every line of source under the GPLv3. Open up the specs for every hardware component and let the community build their own devices without NSA or corporate backdoors. Our gratitude and fealty will show themselves in BlackBerry’s quarterly earnings reports. BlackBerry is a flickering candle about to be snuffed, but hope yet lies in the baptismal flame of liberty. With nothing left to lose, perhaps BlackBerry will have the courage to disrupt its competitors and world governments.
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Huge Google Shift Points To Faster Search Results
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Natasha Lomas
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Researchers at USC have stumbled on a huge change in how Google architects its search services. The result? Reduced lag in serving search queries, especially in more far-flung regions (as in, far from Google’s own data centres). The insight into Mountain View’s pipes stems from other research the team was doing to develop a new method for tracking and mapping servers, identifying when they are in the same data center and estimating where that data center is. The method also identifies the relationships between servers and clients, and — as luck would have it — the team happened to be using it when Google made its big move. Unless of course Mountain View makes such massive shifts regularly (which seems unlikely). According to the findings, over the past 10 months, Google has “dramatically” increased (by 600 percent no less) the sites around the world from where it serves client search queries (the animated GIF at the top of this post depicts this ramping up — with black circles being Google data centres, and red triangles being others’ sites now being utilised by Google to relay search traffic). The researchers note: The USC team says Google has made this change by repurposing existing infrastructure — utilizing client networks it was already relying upon to host content such as videos on YouTube, and reusing them to relay — and crucially speed up — user requests and responses for search and ads. “Google already delivered YouTube videos from within these client networks,” said USC PhD student Matt Calder, lead author of the study, commenting in a statement. “But they’ve abruptly expanded the way they use the networks, turning their content-hosting infrastructure into a search infrastructure as well.” Previously search queries would have gone direct to a Google data centre, a network structure that could introduce an element of lag — based on how far from the data centre the query originated. The new architecture means searches go to a regional network first, and are then relayed on to Google’s data centre. While that might sound more long-winded, it actually has the opposite effect, thanks to the continuous connection between regional node and Google data centres, keeping speeds up and helping to mitigate the effect of lost data packets. The researchers explain: Data connections typically need to “warm up” to get to their top speed – the continuous connection between the client network and the Google data center eliminates some of that warming up lag time. In addition, content is split up into tiny packets to be sent over the Internet – and some of the delay that you may experience is due to the occasional loss of some of those packets. By designating the client network as a middleman, lost packets can be spotted and replaced much more quickly. Google’s new search architecture resembles the architecture of content delivery networks (CDNs) — such as Akamai and Limelight Networks — which are used to support video services to reduce lag when streaming content. How much lag is Google’s new world order for search eliminating? Report author Ethan Katz-Bassett told TechCrunch that’s difficult to assess at this point (the team is doing ongoing work to quantify the performance implications of the change), and said lag reduction will also necessarily vary “a lot” by region. But he described one example where search latency looks to have decreased by around a fifth. “To eyeball results from one machine in New Zealand, it used to get served from Sydney, and now it is directed to a frontend in NZ. As a result, it looks like the latency dropped by about 20%,” he said. “The high level implication is that many regions around the world that were previously somewhat underserved should receive faster performance,” he added. “For example, of the networks we see using these new servers, 50% were 1600+km away from their old server on Google’s network. Now, half of them are within 50km of their new server in the local ISP.” The new infrastructure looks to be a win not just for users (getting faster results) and for Google (delivering more ads), but also for ISPs — because it should lower their operational costs since they are now serving more local traffic. And if Google is leaning more heavily on their infrastructure, it’s possible Mountain View is paying them more too. Rather than the shift being about Google future-proofing for expected global growth in search queries, Katz-Bassett’s view is this is about helping to serve existing users around the world better. “On its own, it doesn’t necessarily aid capacity, but is probably mainly useful for improving performance,” he said when asked. Why has Google made this change now? Again, hard to say (Google isn’t commenting on the research). Katz-Bassett speculates that there were engineering and technical challenges preventing it from routing search traffic this way before (more likely that than a lack of business partnerships, at least — since the study notes that Google is ‘mostly’ utilising existing client networks, such as Time Warner Cable, for this new search topology). That and prioritising this change vs other performance improvements, said Katz-Bassett. “It does introduce some challenges: how should the system decide which server to direct a particular client to to get the best performance? In the past, Google controlled the whole path as soon as a request hit a frontend. Now that most of the frontend locations are outside Google’s network, the frontends have to relay it over the public Internet (towards Google data centers), so I imagine the conditions vary more (congestion, available bandwidth, etc), and it is a very large system to manage,” he added. The USC team presented their findings at the SIGCOMM Internet Measurement Conference in Spain yesterday.
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Bang With Friends Rebrands As ‘Down’ To Match You With Friends Of Friends By Hotness
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Josh Constine
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After settling a Zynga trademark infringement suit, today and reveals its revamped set of dating apps. Down’s update lets you browse friends of friends rather than just friends, say you want to date as opposed to just being ‘down’ [to bang] someone, as well as browse the hottest people in your network. And believe it or not, founder Colin Hodge says he wants Down to empower women. The updates for Bang With Friends’ one million+ users come to , iOS soon, and the in the coming weeks. At its heart, Down still an app for selecting people you think are sexy, hoping they choose you too, and then being connected over chat, similar to Tinder. But the new changes could make Down a vain curiosity for many and a daily habit for those on the prowl, rather than the rarely used utility Bang With Friends was. [We’ll have screenshots and links ready as soon as they’re available] “There’s still a stigma for using tech for dating. It’s rapidly eroding but we still think it’s crucial for our users to feel comfortable. That’s part of the reason we rebranded”, Hodge tells me. That sure minimizes the fact that Zynga owned the “With Friends” trademark from its hit game series that include Words With Friends. But being could come as a blessing in disguise for Hodge’s company. Launched in January 2013, Bang With Friends and its brash name and doggystyle logo (right) immediately started turning people off. It blew off the subtlety or purported focus on finding you a soul mate that led previous generations of dating apps to have names like Match, eHarmony, and OKCupid. It was about finding you someone to fuck right now. It takes two to tango, though, and women didn’t seem so keen on joining anything called Bang With Friends. At the peak of its hype in the spring of 2013, a way to see which of your friends had installed the supposedly anonymous app . I wasn’t too surprised when I saw a ton of dudes and essentially zero women had signed up. But “Down”? That’s an app whose name you could bring home to mother [wait, eww, no]. But seriously, the term ‘down’ is slang for ‘approve’, and is much more inviting. That means the app has a better chance of recruiting women, which might just make it a success. Hodge writes “We chose DOWN to represent the simple, natural way that our generation dates, without alienating people who may not want an app that says ‘bang’ but are totally down otherwise.” You can see the new app icon below. Functionally, the biggest change from Bang With Friends to Down is that you can see friends of friends, not just your existing friends. The exponentially expands the pool of people you could be matched with. Friends of friends are less awkward to proposition than people you already know, yet the mutual connections provide a layer of trust that could convince people they won’t get axe-murdered on date set up through Down. Hodge explains “One of the biggest requests was, ‘I love using the app but I’m running out of people.'” If you have 1,000 friends with 1,000 friends each, you could now have a million potential mates and the number keeps growing. “We’re making it something you want to come into all the time.” For the tamer among us, down lets you say you’re interested in dating someone, rather than only being allowed to request a hookup. You’ll still be connected if one person wants to get down and the other wants to date, but your intentions will be made clear. What’s most interesting may be Down’s ‘hotness’ scores. Previously, you’d just be shown a random selection or alphabetical list you could click to ‘bang’ on web, or swipe to accept or reject on mobile like Tinder. On Down, you get intelligent recommendations based on a matching algorithm. It takes into a variety of characteristics include mutual friend count, but also your hotness score, which is based on what percentage of people who see you dig into your profile or say they’re interested. This means you’ll be matched with people “in your league”, who you’re more likely to both approve of and get approved by. Relevant matches = happy Down’ers. When you’re viewing someone, you’re also shown a list of their 10 friends with the highest hotness scores. This could lead to a sort of Wikipedia-chain browsing pattern, where you browse to Amy, get temped by her friend Diana, only to end up saying you’re ‘down’ with Emily. Oh, and you can see your own hotness score and how you stack up against friends. Even if you’re taken or not into online dating, I bet a fair number of people will sign up for Down just to peek at how desirable they are. There’s still no sign of monetization to make good on the rumored but unconfirmed million dollars in funding Down has received. You can imagine it eventually going with standard dating app premium features, though, like the ability to pay to appear in front of more potential lovers. “We want this to empower both males and females to be straight forward with their dating life, whether that means sex or a more traditional commitment, so we very much dispute any cries of sexism” Hodge tells me, though it’s tough to tell if he’s earnest or if this the sweet talk of a player. Yes, Down is still inherently shallow. It’s about looks first and foremost, which promotes a degree of objectification. It may still have trouble getting enough users of both sexes to make connections. It has to compete with the now-established Tinder plus its army of clones. And some people will always think it’s gross. But from another perspective, maybe Hodge is right. We spend our lives beating around the bush when it comes to our sexual desires. Being shy, playing hard to get, denying our desires, and getting stuck in stale relationships. Maybe we deserve an app that lets us say how we really feel about someone without the fear of rejection.
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Twitter Co-Founder Evan Williams’ Blogging Platform Medium Opens Signups To All
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Matthew Panzarino
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Twitter co-founder Evan Williams has a new blogging platform called Medium, which has been a closed-signup affair since its introduction. Today, the platform sent out an email with the news that . There are a few requirements set out to sign up and use Medium. You must be writing from Chrome, Safari or Firefox browsers, and you must have a Twitter account to post. There’s a verification link sent via email that you click on and then you’re in. Posting is still not available from mobile devices. Williams founded Odeo — the parent company of Twitter — with Noah Glass after selling his company Pyra Labs to Google. The main product of Pyra was Blogger, which was one of the early products that codified what we now know as ‘blogs’. Now, Williams is in the blogging game again. Last month, Williams : “I think more people would be in a better place if more people shared their ideas,” says Williams. Seen this way, Medium is just the next logical step in Williams’ three-product cycle to inject better ideas into the world. Blogger helped open the doors for pajama bloggers to compete with the media moguls. A few years later, Twitter gave the power of broadcast distribution to everyone who had 140 characters to share. Now, to complete the circuit, Medium wants to make viral information more substantive — the hope in the Pandora’s box of communication. “It’s also an optimistic stance to say that we can build a system where good things can shine and get attention. And there’s an audience for ideas and stories that appeal to more than just the most base desires of human beings.” I’ve had access to Medium for a while and haven’t used it a whole lot. But I did love the overall writing experience, which is clean and quick. It feels easy to dash off a post based around an image or zip some text in and hit publish. It’s definitely far lighter weight than other options like WordPress, and has a lot in common with the publishing tools offered by Dustin Curtis’ . Medium has managed to gain some relative popularity among a sea of other blogging alternatives, but not always for the best reasons. While there has been some interesting content, there have also been missteps like a false claim of and Peter Shih’s ‘ . Topics like these have given Medium a rep for being an incubator for lack of self-awareness and inaccuracy. Still, Williams addressed those issues fairly plainly in his chat with TC. “Please don’t set this up as Evan thinks tech blogs are crap and therefore is fixing them with Medium,” Williams told us. “People are going to publish crap on Medium.” If you’re interested, you can .
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Healthcare.gov Likely Broken Until Key Thanksgiving Deadline
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Gregory Ferenstein
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Healthcare.gov until the end of November, says Jeff Zients, a consultant brought in to fix the beleaguered federal health insurance e-commerce website. On a press conference call, Zients finally acknowledged wide-spread enrollment problems, estimating that only 3 in 10 users have been able to sign up and complete an application (or a measly 700,000 total). “We’re confident by the end of November, HealthCare.gov will be smooth for a vast majority of users,” Zients. That estimate should scare the Obama administration: the end of November is dangerously close to the Thanksgiving deadline some experts say is crucial to snagging young, healthy consumers. “If it’s not running by Thanksgiving, that’s DEFCON 2,” MIT Economist Jonathan Gruber, who worked on both President Obama’s and Gov. Mitt Romney’s health care laws. “It’s a real problem because people want to get insurance by January, but it’s not a crisis.” Health and Human Services an army of field salesman and celebrities to convince young “invincibles” to sign up for health insurance, which is needed to subsidize the costs of their elders. In Massachusetts, which has a similar individual mandate, enrollment numbers increased exponentially . But, Massachusetts had twice as long and didn’t have a funky enrollment deadline, where users had to sign up 3 months after the website launched to pick up insurance when the new plan started (for the Affordable Care Act, consumers must sign up by Dec. 15 to get insurance by Jan. 1). Zients says a government contractor that worked on the malfunctioning backend, QSSI, will be taking over the Center for Medicare and Medicaid as the lead developer. However, continuing the White House’s trend of bizarre and abject secrecy, he would not reveal who is part of the “ ” to fix the website. [ ]
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At Coworking Space Runway, Allan Young Says He’s Trying To ‘Kill The Idea Of The Garage Startup’
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Anthony Ha
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San Francisco coworking space isn’t quite like other shared offices and incubators. Yes, there are still conference rooms, rows of people bent over their laptops, and so on. But there are fewer desks than usual, and, true to the name, everything’s organized around a wide central walkway. There’s even an igloo-style private space for calls and meetings, which is a pretty cool place to conduct an interview. Founder took TechCrunch TV on a tour, and he said that less than half of Runway’s square footage is devoted to traditional desk space. Everything is laid out in a way that encourages startups to connect and work together, he said: We don’t talk about, ‘Oh, there’s a shared receptionist or shared printing.’… Those things aren’t conducive, or aren’t critical, to building awesome startups and awesome companies, and we just focused on some of the most basic things. You need to be part of a community. We’re trying to kill the idea of the garage startup, which is a cherished myth in Silicon Valley, right? Jobs and Wozniak and Hewlett and Packard. But those were different days. (It’s not mentioned in the video, but Young has said that he wants Runway to be a break-even operation, not a big moneymaker. His eventual goal is to cover expenses through corporate partnerships and sponsorships, so he can offer the desk space for free.) Runway, which is located in the same building as Twitter and Yammer headquarters, opened earlier this year, and Young said the space is completely full. He also said that four companies hosted there have already been acquired.
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Wishbone Lets Kids Apply To Have Their Educations Crowdfunded
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Josh Constine
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Eighty kids got to attend academic summer camps and after-school programs this year thanks to , and today its education crowdfunding platform starts allowing needy children in the Bay Area or NYC to apply for assistance. The non-profit startup has spent the last year building out its fundraising and impact fulfillment components. Now Wishbone is ready to scale and redefine the scholarship space. and the programs they want to attend. People can choose to , or let Wishbone allocate the funds. Later, donors receive information about the progress of the kids they sponsor. Its goal is to narrow between low- and high-income kids. Richer families spend 10x as much on out-of-school programs as less fortunate families. Wishbone harnesses the crowd to even the playing field. But at its heart, Wishbone is about the stories of disadvantaged kids who receive funding for an academic program, realize their passion, and stay engaged with education. This is foundation of long-term success. And all 80 kids it put up for funding this year got the money they needed. Take Gabriella, a high-performing, low-income high school student from Astoria, New York. She volunteered at a local hospital and discovered she wanted to be a doctor. Wishbone set up a profile for her, and 13 donors paid to send her to Georgetown’s Summer Medical Institute program. She excelled, found a professor to mentor her who then recommended her to the admissions office, and she got a scholarship. Now she’s attending Georgetown University for college as a pre-med and is excelling. Here’s the update she sent to her donors: Education beyond the standard classroom is crucial to helping kids discover their calling and fight academic fatigue. Engaged students turn into productive members of society that are happier and healthier, spur innovation, or at least get high-paying jobs that contribute taxes and buying power to the economy. If we want to fix America, it starts with showing kids that education is the road to fulfillment. Wishbone does that. Founder and only full-time employee Beth Schmidt tells me “We’ve found that Wishbone students are understanding and pursuing their passions. Interest in school and extracurriculars is going way up.” The kids love it too. A study shows their GPA goes up, and they say they’re better able to express themselves, manage time, and are more interested in school. “The support from the Wishbone community has shown me that there are other people that believe in me and my interests…This program has showed me who I can become and offered me useful resources. I am so grateful and thankful for the Wishbone community.” Now that has shown it can make a difference with the , it’s time to maximize that impact. First up, high school students from low-income schools (where more than 70% of students are on free or reduced price lunch) can apply to be funded. Teachers can help kids with their applications, nominate them directly, and help them promote their campaign to find donors. This is crucial to getting the best possible applicants — students who work hard and have big dreams, but lack the money to get the training they need. The startup is now working on business development, seeking discounted tuitions and free spots from program providers and corporations in exchange for spreading awareness. Wishbone will also provide new tools to help kids and their teachers discover local programs that fit their interests. People looking to give money can also now buy gift cards for friends that let them pick a kid to support. This is important as Wishbone competes with other non-profits like health crowdfunding site for donors. What’s next will be the real test for Wishbone: going nationwide. Wishbone plans to expand city-by-city across the country. Schmidt (right) believes every low-income kid deserves a chance to turn what they love into a profession. She explains that the ripple that starts when a student gets a Wishbone scholarship can grow into waves of improvement for their whole life. “There’s a dramatic shift in the way they think about what’s possible for themselves.”
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Another Member Of Congress Calls Congressional Oversight Of The NSA An Utter Farce
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Alex Wilhelm
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Members of Congress calling Congressional oversight of the United States intelligence empire flaccid at best, and utterly incompetent at worst, is becoming a trend. Recently , Rep. Alan Grayson called Congressional oversight of the National Security Agency a “joke.” Calling oversight in Congress nothing more than “overlook,” Rep. Grayson also stated that he has “learned far more about government spying on citizens from the media than [from] official intelligence briefings.” Us too, Congressman. The comments of a lone, controversial representative in the House isn’t usually news, but Rep. Grayson’s comments come as a member of a larger grouping that is worth highlighting. Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee , complaining that briefings provided to Congress were “limited” and did not provide “a fulsome accounting of the totality of surveillance activities conducted by the federal government, and in particular, by the NSA.” He went on to repeat a refrain that by now is quite familiar: As a result [of lukewarm briefings], members of Congress regularly read new revelations on the front pages of various newspapers. Even more troubling, members of Congress are left to wonder why the prior briefings provided by the Executive Branch did not cover the material contained in these articles. Senator Patrick Leahy : We sometimes find we get far more in the newspapers — we get crossword puzzles as well — we get more in the newspapers than in classified briefings. Now, you might say, it can’t be as bad as all that, can it? Well, it’s actually worse. Even when you manage, as a member of Congress, to get the intelligence apparatus into the same room as yourself, you have to essentially beg them for answers. Here’s Rep. Justin Amash on the : So you don’t know what questions to ask because you don’t know what the baseline is. You don’t have any idea what kind of things are going on. So you have to start just spitting off random questions: Does the government have a moon base? Does the government have a talking bear? Does the government have a cyborg army? If you don’t know what kind of things the government might have, you just have to guess and it becomes a totally ridiculous game of 20 questions. With members of both political parties in both chambers of Congress shouting that their own oversight , we can safely agree with them. That fact undercuts the NSA’s horse-beaten-dead line that it has more oversight than darn near anyone else. No. Oversight on paper is just that. As such, the NSA’s spying activities are essentially unilateral authority provided to the Executive Branch of the United States government to decide whether I get privacy. That won’t do.
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Lots Of Hollywood Interest In Making Bilton’s Twitter Book A Movie
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Matthew Panzarino
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Interest is swirling at Sony and several other major Hollywood studios around Nick Bilton’s book “ “, TechCrunch has learned. While we’ve only heard Sony named, word is several other major studios are nibbling at the worm. At least one of the studios involved wants to explore producing the project as an HBO or Netflix series, rather than a feature film. This could be due to the fact that there are a lot of dramatic arcs to cover in Hatching Twitter, coupled with the relative heat around award-winning series from the online video houses at the moment. Bilton’s book about the drama and intrigue surrounding the founding and growth of Twitter to a public company seems like ideal fodder for a Netflix original. Sony is the parent company of Columbia pictures, which it purchased in 1989. Columbia is the studio behind the Facebook drama-mentary The Social Network. That flick wasn’t exactly an accurate history of the company, but it definitely attracted viewers — and awards attention. There are also a few actors looking to attach their names to the product as well, sources tell us. Alexia thinks was born to play Jack Dorsey. A recent in the New York Times paints a picture of uncertain origins, founder bickering and jostling for footing and control. As we said in our commentary, it’s a , and those often make good films. Bilton declined to comment on any of the rumors. The Bilton book goes on sale November 5. Twitter is expected to go . As the author , sometimes timing is everything.
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Late-2013 15-Inch Retina MacBook Pro Review: Apple’s High-Performance Notebook Tops The Field
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Darrell Etherington
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with Retina Display will soon be just the MacBook Pro, period. But this generation two version of both the 13- and 15-inch super slim notebooks with high-res displays is still something many average users will be weighing as an outlier possibility versus the more mainstream MacBook Air. But thanks to price cuts and smart improvements under the hood, Apple’s Retina MacBook has grown up a lot since the 15-inch version made its first appearance back in June 2012. The MacBook Pro with Retina display is a crowning achievement for Apple’s notebooks not only because of its screen, but also because it manages to trim size and weight compared to the legacy non-Retina MacBook Pro models. You’re not going to get the featherweight quality of the MacBook Air, but you will get a big break if you’re used to one of the older, bulkier pro models.
This 2013 15-inch model retains the exact same physical dimensions as its predecessor, weighing in at just under three and a half pounds, and under three-quarters of an inch thick. In absolute terms, that’s not all that svelte, but for a device that gives you a spacious 15 inches of display real estate, which can manage a surprising 2880 x 1800 resolution if you use a third-party app to scale beyond the built-in supported max resolution, it’s very impressive. It’s hard to tell from my limited time with the machine so far, but I also believe that Apple has addressed one of the primary failings of the generation one product, which could suffer from case creak with the bottom panel in some instances. Compared to my personal 2012 15-inch Retina Pro, it feels more solidly constructed, for what it’s worth. And as always, Apple’s aluminum and glass construction stands up to any aesthetic test you could apply to it. This Retina Pro actually appears on paper to take a step back when it comes to its graphics card, which is an Intel Iris Pro integrated model, vs. the NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M that shipped alongside an Intel HD 4000 integrated card on the original version. The dedicated graphics on the past model could definitely come in handy for graphics-intensive processes, but as AnandTech pointed out in a earlier this year, it manages to come “within striking difference” of the 650M when it comes to performance, while offering considerable battery and heat savings, both of which are good in the short term and for extending the overall life of the notebook. Of course, the really important factor to consider here is how the Iris Pro holds up in real-world usage situations, and I found I didn’t miss the discrete GPU in any of my usage scenarios. Whether working with Final Cut Pro X, Photoshop CC or even games like Bioshock Infinite, the Intel Iris Pro seemed to handle my needs pretty adequately, though you aren’t going to want to run games at maxed out graphics settings. One advantage of not having the discrete GPU, too, is that I find the fan spins up far less often, making for a much quieter notebook overall. If you’re new to flash storage, you’re also in for a treat with the 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro, since it now uses a super fast PCIe-based memory type that all but eliminates any thought of startup delays, or stutters while opening apps. It’s now gotten to the point where, just like on mobile, it’s not a question of how fast your computer is – the only way you notice any slowness is when you go back to a previous version. This year’s model is snappier all around that the one it replaces, and that was already essentially a machine that gave you everything at your fingertips pretty much as soon as you think about wanting it. Apple’s 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro from mid-2012 boasted seven hours browsing time on Wi-Fi on a full charge; this year’s model bests that by an hour. Apple also said separately during its launch event earlier this week that the OS X Mavericks update it’s putting out will add about an hour to the Haswell MacBook Airs it just launched, so this could be mainly a software benefit. But in terms of actual usage, I found that indeed, the new version beats the old, even when both are running Mavericks. Estimated life on a full charge on the new Retina MacBook Pro in my “extreme battery extension” conditions (Wi-Fi on, brightness to minimum visible, no keyboard backlight, Bluetooth off, running browser with just a few tabs) comes in at over 10 hours on the new version, while the older model barely edges out 9. In practice, the new version seems to get about two hours more than the older one given similar usage patterns. Some of that could be ascribed to natural decrease in battery health, but there’s still a difference, and it favours the newer machine. The screen on the Retina MacBook Pro this year looks as good as it always has, which is to say it’s the best in the notebook business. But Apple also appears to have gotten rid of any image ghosting on the 15-inch version, based on my tests, which was an issue that plagued a healthy percentage of last year’s model. Devoid of any of those failings, the 220 PPI screen is a visual smorgasbord. And as mentioned above, you can also tweak it to display at ultra high resolutions in non-Retina mode, giving you a still very crisp huge canvas to work with, arraying windows wherever you please. Maybe the best part about the screen is that by now, many websites and apps have managed to catch up with the concept of high-resolution screens. That means there’s more content that looks amazing on the 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro, versus when it launched back in June. I still remember marvelling at how ugly most of the web was when I switched; that’s no longer the case. This year’s Retina MacBook Pro packs some great new hardware features that were absent on the first-gen device, including Thunderbolt 2 (20 Gbps maximum throughout vs. 10 for the original) and 802.11ac Wi-Fi networking. Both are nice features, but mostly forward-looking, so if you’re not dissatisfied with your current Retina MacBook Pro I’d wait a cycle for the next upgrade, when 802.11ac will be more commonplace, and some peripherals will be able to take advantage of Thunderbolt 2’s higher data transfer rates. On the other hand, this year’s model ships with iWork (Pages, Numbers and Keynote) free, which is a great productivity suite made even better. And Apple has ironed out any rough edges the bleeding edge first-generation Retina MBP may have had, so this is the one to get if you’ve been waiting for something better to come along, or if you were satisfied with your original machine but want something just *that* much better. Apple’s 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Pros with Retina Displays are simply the best available notebooks, and which you choose depends totally on budget and priorities over anything else. If power is what you’re looking for, look no further than the 15-inch reviewed here.
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Today In Dystopian War Robots That Will Harvest Us For Our Organs
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John Biggs
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Say goodbye to a good night’s sleep and say hello to night terrors because we have some very special things to share with you today in our ongoing feature, Today In Dystopian War Robots That Will Harvest Us For Our Organs. This week we have Elmo, a vacuum, and a twerking automaton that will soon replace Miley Cyrus. First we present Elmo and Teddy Ruxpin doing what they do best – haunting our dreams. Built by from broken toys, hard drives, and Casio keyboards (all powered by a some PIC16F84A micro controllers), this robotic band is so proficient that one day they could replace all the member’s of Green Day. Teddy sings backup to while the Tomy Omnibot keeps the beat. Although today these robots may be rapping about “popping tags” and “wearing your grandma’s clothes,” I assure you that one day they’ll be literally “popping kids” and “wearing your grandma’s skin.” [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KckYd9qdorw#t=77] Next up we have , the Twerking, 3D-printed robot. Apparently originally built for fighting competitions, Fonzie has been reprogrammed to dance to LMFAO, which is horror enough. Fonzie is nearly entirely 3D-printed and he will be the basis for future research into humanoid robots with usable hands, eyes, and powerful motion control. Soon, perhaps, Fonzie will take you as a human concubine! Finally, there’s some kind of new Roomba-like vacuum floor washer, called the that costs $400 and creates “random patterns” on your floor, allowing you to fall and die. The Rydis will then drink your cold, congealing blood. Available soon at Best Buy!
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Foundry Group Raises Fourth $225M Fund To Make Late-Stage Growth Investments In The Firm’s Portfolio Companies
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Leena Rao
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has , called Foundry Group Select. This new fund is $225 million (the same size as Foundry’s previous funds), but has a much different focus. This fund is purely for late-stage growth rounds in Foundry’s existing portfolio companies. The firm says it will invest up to $25 million into companies that Foundry has backed through its previous funds. As managing director Brad Feld writes, Foundry has been limited in the amount it can invest in later stage rounds due to the firm’s early-stage strategy. The Foundry Group invests in early-stage North American-based software and IT companies, following a philosophy it outlined back in 2008, “thematic investing.” Startups that Foundry has backed include Zynga, Jiraffe, Fitbit, MakerBot, Awe.sm, Modular Robots, and . Common areas where the fund invests in include storage, semiconductors, enterprise software, consumer Internet, communications equipment, etc. Foundry, which fund last fall, also just debuted its on AngelList a few weeks ago, which was one of the first VC firms to jump into the syndicates pool. Foundry said it would be investing as much as $2.5 million with a goal of making 50 investments between now and the end of 2014 in companies that list on AngelList. The fund may have a number of startups in the portfolio that are at a later stage, as it’s been over five years since the firm’s first fund. SendGrid, Fitbit (which just raised $43 million in new funding) and a number of others that Foundry backed early years ago, may eventually raise late-stage growth funding. While Foundry did participate in Fitbit’s recent funding, it’s unclear if Fitbit’s recent round received investment from Foundry Group Select. It should be interesting to see if other smaller, early-stage VCs will start raising separate funds to get into late-stage investing. Stay tuned.
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Twitter’s IPO Roadshow Video Unites Dorsey, Stone And Williams, Emphasizes News And Media Uses
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Matthew Panzarino
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Twitter has to its upcoming IPO Roadshow, scheduled to begin next week. The video accompanying the posting unites Twitter co-founders Evan Williams, Biz Stone and Jack Dorsey, who all pitch the company to investors together. Seeing all of the founders together pitching the company wouldn’t be such a strange thing with any other firm. But there have been some recent revelations care of the NYT’s Nick Bilton’s new book about Twitter. Tension has been central to the accounts we’ve seen so far. Dicing apart the video a bit we see the evolution of Twitter laid out in succinct bursts. A simple timeline, which begins with Jack’s famous “Setting up my Twittr” tweet, stretches out. And then there is the canonical Twitter experience, which they describe as a “simple” concept. The video then quickly turns to Twitter’s first major utility application: breaking news. Important events that were either broken or discussed heavily on Twitter flash on the screen.
CEO Dick Costolo also makes an appearance, emphasizing that with Twitter, you’re in the middle of a conversation rather than a passive observer to a “broadcast” platform. Which, in the end, is the ideal but not always the reality for Twitter which has had some difficulty getting a large portion of its users to actually contribute to those conversations. After that, there is a bunch of media and a heavy emphasis of Twitter cards, including those showing off Twitter’s Vine video platform. Notably, after all of its forays into media and entertainment, Twitter has just turned its focus back towards fostering the news capabilities of the platform. Just yesterday it , who will work on building tools for newshounds and journalists to use on Twitter. She is also in charge of making sure that people making news view Twitter as a true broadcast platform. The roadshow video putting such an emphasis on news is no accident. As we mentioned when we talked about its new breaking news , Twitter is wise to build up the platform as a place to find out things first. Mirroring media found elsewhere on the web or on TV is fine and dandy, but news comes to Twitter in many instances, and it’s important to foster that, as Twitter struggles to grow its user base at a rapid clip. Costolo stresses the news aspects in his pitch, saying that Twitter is “ place to find out what’s happening, right now,” and highlights as an example. “Twitter users,” Costolo continues, “receive content on Twitter faster than any other media.” And, not to be forgotten, brands get a mention as Costolo explains how Twitter enables ‘true one-to-one’ marketing. There is an extended presentation, about 40 minutes long, that you can watch here that goes through all of the growth figures, statistics and more. It’s narrated by Costolo and you can .
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