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Join Us For TechCrunch Bangalore
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Alexia Tsotsis
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India’s startup ecosystem is showing some promise. In the first half of 2013, for example, investors dropped $400 million into 141 deals, and startup Red Bus had a sweet $150 million exit. In other words, the time is right for our first ever event in India: , which we are hosting with PlatformPlay in India’s tech hub on November 14-15. TechCrunch Bangalore will focus on how to build companies in India that will go global — the question is how and when India’s startups will crack the code. The event will feature a hackathon, startup pitch presentations and startup exhibits. On the second day there will be speakers, panelists and TechCrunch editors (including me!) on stage. In the hackathon, over 400 hackers were shortlisted from over 750 entries. Picked from across the country, these hackers will work in groups to create their hacks in just 24 hours. The following day, each team will get 60 seconds to speed-pitch their creation to a panel of expert judges and audience members. The pitch presentations will showcase 50 startups selected from over 400 entries, each launching their products before a live and online audience. The judging panel for the event will include VCs, investors, seasoned entrepreneurs and tech and product experts. The main conference keynotes will feature speakers from across the globe, including Turochas “T” Fuad, CEO and co-founder of Travelmob, and Keith Nilsson, partner at TPG Growth. In addition, Troy Malone of Evernote and Anthony Hearne of Outbrain will join us for panels in Bangalore. The winning teams will be awarded tickets to the TechCrunch New Delhi event, planned for August 2014, and a chance to attend TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2014. TechCrunch and PlatformPlay will host two additional India events together next year in Pune and New Delhi. The exhibits in Startup Zone are a great place for attendees — especially investors, media and potential partners — to look over some great new entrants to the startup scene. You can find more details on the event
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Here Comes The FUD: UK Police Claim To Find 3D-Printed Gun Parts In Raid On Home
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John Biggs
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Greater Manchester Police in the UK raided the home of a criminal suspect where they found a 3D printer and 3D printed parts. With great pride and fanfare the : Sadly, they were quite wrong. The items in question, a little piece that looks like a trigger (shown here) and something that looks like a magazine, are actually a poorly-printed and a – essentially two parts you’d build if you were building another 3D printer. The criminal masterminds also printed it out of PLA plastic, which is not ideal for heavy-duty use, let alone firing a projectile. The printer, pictured above, is a 2 which, in fact, only prints PLA. The jeers, needless to say, have been flying. https://twitter.com/Codepope/status/393661206000840704 https://twitter.com/foxsoup/status/393724792194760704 https://twitter.com/thefalken/status/393725471881326592 This sort of fear, uncertainty, and doubt will soon be flowing fast and heavy from “authorities” all over the world. What by creating a media spectacle around his nearly useless 3D gun is set back the 3D printing industry considerably in the eyes of the uninitiated. While his gun works and can be fired, it requires far better materials and a higher-resolution printer to prevent death or maiming of the person behind the trigger. This “gun,” on the other hand, is simply plastic scrap.
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Consolidation Heats Up In Subscription Economy, As Quarterly Buys Celeb-Endorsed Rival 12Society
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Rip Empson
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Today, TechCrunch has learned that , a subscription giftbox service that features monthly instalments curated by respected entrepreneurs, designers and organizations is buying , a rival startup with a similar, celebrity-endorsed approach to subscription commerce. Terms of the deal are not yet being disclosed, although a source tells us that it’s a small cash and equity deal that is expected to officially close in the next week or two and will lead to the closure of 12Society this summer. While 12Society’s 11 employees are all headed in new directions, the startup’s celebrity co-founders, which include veteran rapper Nas, rapper and comedian Nick Cannon, L.A. Clippers star Blake Griffin, the Timberwolves’ Kevin Love, all-star San Francisco Giants pitcher Tim Lincecum and former New York Giant Michael Strahan, will take a stake in Quarterly as part of the deal. Co-founders Nadir Hyder and Sameer Mehta were both offered the opportunity to join the new company and, while Hyder opted not to stay, Mehta is staying on in a consulting role while joining Five Four Clothing to lead the brand’s new eCommerce and subscription box service. Another key result of the deal is that, as part of taking a stake in the new company, 12Society’s celebrity co-founders will join Quarterly’s pool of influencers to help expand its scope and diversify its roster. While 12Society’s site will go dark this summer, the startups plan to have the celebrity contributors integrated and active on Quarterly by August. The 12Society-Quarterly deal is an important one for the fledgling subscription commerce market, coming at a potentially pivotal point in its evolution. Evolution tends to be cyclical in Startup Land; hang around long enough and you’re bound to experience deja vu. For the most recent example, look no further than subscription commerce and its business model’s reappearance over the last few years. In reality, the subscription model is as old as these hills. The comfort and stability of subscription-based recurring revenue streams have held sway over businesses for ages. But ever since tipped the domino, a new generation of subscription-based, home-delivery startups have poured into the market — and they come bearing gift boxes. A lot of them. Over the last two years, startups have churned out a litany of Birchbox-inspired variations, across every vertical ( ), but, in truth, FedExing stuff-in-a-box and flanking it with a pretty website doesn’t a revolutionary business make. In reality, subscription commerce is just a spin on the standard eCommerce business model, and like its predecessor, it’s still just a race to scale. A few years ago, the hype around daily deals and flash sales led to a similar gold rush and, while a couple of big companies were minted in the process, fatigue eventually set in and the consolidation began in earnest. In the wake of the surge in popularity of the Birchboxes and Dollar Shave Clubs of the world, the space has attracted increasing attention both from consumers and investors over the last two years. But it’s also begun to attract the attention of bigger fish. In fact, last year, Gartner ( ) estimated that more than 40 percent of media and digital products companies would use subscription services for fulfillment, billing and renewals by 2015. Beginning at the end of last year, not only did Birchbox (of European copycat/competitor, JolieBox), but it marked the first real interest from behemoths like Walmart, which that aims to offer specialty products not usually found in its trillion-odd stores. The presence of giants like Walmart will pose a very real threat to subscription commerce startups going forward. The space is maturing, and the “bigger” startups and companies are already racing to hit scale and expand internationally, and many of these players will have to turn to acquisitions if they hope to survive. And, on the flip side, it’s likely that we’ll see an increasing number of the “sub-scale” startups in subscription commerce begin looking for exit opportunities. By teaming up at this stage of the game, Quarterly and 12Society appear to be making a smart move. “I think it makes sense to start consolidating more of the sub-scale players, which I think we’re going to see more and more of in the ‘subscription box’ space,” says Diego Berdakin, a co-founder of subscription commerce startup, BeachMint, and an investor in 12Society. Ultimately, by starting early, Quarterly (which has raised $1.25 million from True Ventures and the Collaborative Fund) and 12Society (which raised under $1 million from the Lightbank partners and others) may be putting themselves in a better position to be players in future subscription commerce consolidation. The 12Society acquisition also makes a lot of sense given the similarities in the way the two startups have approached the market. Both startups set out to leverage the early success of celebrity-endorsed subscription services, like ShoeDazzle and Kim Kardashian, Christina Applegate’s FabKids and BeachMint’s categories, each of which is endorsed by a different celeb — to name a few examples. 12Society put a spin on this model by not only going after the men’s market by offering customers monthly boxes of products that ranged from razors to headphones, but by making their celebrities co-founders. The startup’s box-o-dude-stuff cost $39 a pop and included $125 worth of items, which was part of the initial appeal of quality items at a discount that allowed the company to attract 5,000-plus subscribers and generated several hundred thousand in revenue. However, Mehta tells us that this model also proved to be a problem for the company. Margins were tough as was sourcing, Mehta said, as as its small team had to not only curate, fill and ship boxes every month for its customers, but they were only able to get about 40 percent of those products for free. While it was able to lean on the networks and brand affiliations of its co-founders, the company still had to purchase the majority of its product, which it bought in bulk. Quarterly launched in late 2011 with a similar model, offering customers the chance to sign up to receive monthly boxes curated by its list of “influential contributors.” Yet, unlike athletes and musicians, Quarterly’s influencers hailed more from the startup, media and design worlds, including writers, Behance founder Scott Belsky, the New Yorker’s Sasha Frere-Jones, Rhode Island School of Design President John Maeda, and Alexis Ohanian of Reddit, Breadpig, and Hipmunk fame. Ultimately, in hindsight, the 12Society co-founder believes that Quarterly’s decision to allow influencers to curate their own boxes (instead of consolidating several in one), its wider price range (Quarterly subscription prices range from $25 to $100 depending on the curator), larger roster of influencers and the reduced demand inherent to less frequent shipping and fulfillment deadlines put Quarterly in a better position to be successful over the long-term. From the outside (and, really, from the perspective of an investor and entrepreneur), the subscription commerce market looks pretty attractive, as it continues to grow in popularity and reach among consumers. Plus, its relatively low barriers to entry make it look like an easy way to make a buck. But, in reality, subscription commerce isn’t a walk in the park. But you know what helps give Quarterly some critical street cred in a noisy market? The fact that its new CEO, Mitch Lowe, is the co-founder one of the largest subscription-based services out there, in Netflix, and helped lead movie rental giant Redbox as an early executive before eventually taking over as president. Lowe initially joined Quarterly as an advisor, but after experiencing some hiccups, , he took over as chief executive from former GOOD Magazine editor, Zach Frechette, in September. Ultimately, outside of the most familiar names, it’s nearly impossible to say with any authority which startups will survive the evolution of the subscription commerce landscape. Building a distinct and lasting brand while keeping costs low is tough, especially in this space. If Quarterly is smart about how it curates its own box of diverse influencers and can incentivize them to really commit and spend time creating memorable experiences for their fans, then it could be the next-gen “Fan Club for Adults.” While that’s a tricky balance, having someone at the helm who helped build Netflix and Redbox into giants is key. What’s more, by acquiring 12Society, it continues to expand and diversify its roster of influencers, and it’s a lot easier to be optimistic about Quarterly’s chances of surviving and becoming a real player in subscription commerce.
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Here Come The Bespoke Apps: Dolo Is Just For Finding Friends In SF’s Dolores Park
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Josh Constine
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Apps don’t have to be for everyone. Development tools, reduced costs, and the trend of nailing a single use case are spawning a generation of homespun applications. The latest is . Useful for finding friends in San Francisco’s crowded Dolores Park, useless for everyone else. Bespoke apps designed exclusively for little groups of friends, neighborhoods or inside jokes could be the next big thing. Dolo was stitched together by , Facebook mobile engineer , and Foursquare engineer in their spare time. They found it annoying trying to locate friends in the hipster haven of Dolores Park. Often referred to as the funemployment capital of the world, the sunny park . Cell reception can be shoddy, and people are terrible at explaining their location. “I’m, like, equal to the bathrooms, on the left,” or “Dude, I’m right near the sidewalk.” And sometimes you’d be just down the street and not know your friends are all enjoying a beer in the grass. For the privileged techsters like me who are ruining San Francisco, this is actually a problem. Sure you could try to take a screenshot of your GPS dot, or check-in to the official mini “neighborhoods” of Dolores on Foursquare, but the park deserved something that captured its unique character. So Xie, Prado, and Williams built Dolo, a free iOS app. It offers an adorable, animated cartoon map of the park where you can drop a location pin with your face on it. You log in with Facebook account and can see where you friends are in the park. You can also set it to send you push notifications when friends are there so you don’t miss the party. The map is even responsive to the time of day so you can watch the sun set. Hopefully future updates will bring the ability to syndicate checkins to Facebook and Twitter. You can call it silly, a sign of a bubble, or the downfall of SF. Maybe it’s all of those, but it’s also cute, simple, and gets the job done for the tiny fraction of the world who might want it. Xie tells me “We made the app mostly to encourage our own friends to meet up and make the most of the beautiful summer coming up in San Francisco. Dolores Park has spawned lots of amazing memories for the three of us, and Dolo.app is sort of an expression of our love. We thought writing an app is as good a love letter as anything else, regardless of the size of its intended audience. DIY apps can let us extend our interpersonal worlds, change the ways we behave in our free time, and let us have connections to our peers that were previously impossible.” Some cringe at the word “bespoke,” especially after Path founder used it to describe the special Operator app he had built to help him and his assistant communicate. But it’s an apt app adjective for custom-tailored mobile experiences — ones not made to scale to the entire world, but instead delight a defined audience. Xie agrees that bespoke apps like Dolo will proliferate, telling me “I think lowered software barriers mean more opportunities for people to build software that answers to their specialized needs. Apps give us new ways of interacting and increasingly people will want to shape technology to fit the new ways they want to connect.” Another example is Intros.io. Baldwin Cunningham, CEO of , found he was constantly being asked to make introductions between friends, colleagues, and the brands his startup works with. So he had Partnered’s developer Addison Hardy build him a bespoke app to streamline the introduction process. Cunningham says he uses it every day, and enough friends wanted it that they put in the app store. Nowadays you don’t need to work at a big company, hire premier tech talent, or even know how to code to make your own app. Startups like , , and are all building front-end app-building tools, some that let you drag-and-drop in entire mechanics like photo filtering. Meanwhile, backend-as-a-service providers like Facebook’s new acquisition Parse will handle all your hosting and data storage. All you need is the idea. Make an app for mom and dad to keep track of you instead of sending them a birthday card. Make one for your kids that accompanies that treehouse you built them. Or make one just for yourself. What matters is that you’re making. It’s an art many thought lost to the age of ones and zeros. For a while, many of us didn’t have a way to get our hands dirty in the digital world. But the era of bespoke apps is here. Now you can build something more interesting than a spice rack.
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BeachMint Founder, President, And Investor Rebuke Report About The Startup’s Implosion
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Rip Empson
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This morning, Los Angeles-based eCommerce startup, , had finally tanked after a long, “slow unraveling.” The problem, however, is that this doesn’t exactly mesh with reality. The reporter, Michael Carney, says that “multiple sources” informed him that the startup’s board had essentially fired CEO Josh Berman and President Diego Berdakin, and, on top of that, had asked them to return their remaining $20 million (of the $73.5 million total) to their investors. Were that the case, it would be a clear indication of BeachMint’s impending demise. However, TechCrunch has since spoken with Berdakin, Berman, NEA General Partner and BeachMint investor and board member Pete Sonsini and JewelMint Product Lead David Oh, who tell us that the reports of the company’s death have been greatly exaggerated. In a series of emails and conversations, the founders reported that, in fact, Berdakin and Berman remain 100 “percent committed to and focused on BeachMint” and at no time have been asked to step down by the company’s board of directors. Nor were they asked to return any of the money they’d raised. Sonsini says that the board is “completely behind the founders” and NEA, which is the largest stakeholder in BeachMint, has invested in each of the startup’s three financing rounds because the firm believes in the founders’ vision. Even if actualization of that roadmap takes time. So, in short: Everyone we’ve talked to at BeachMint says that these reports are completely untrue. In its report, Pando essentially speculates that BeachMint’s lack of traction and burn rate have forced the company into an overhaul reminiscent of the one that recently took place at fellow Los Angeles startup, Viddy, in which it in funding to investors and reshuffled its board. The BeachMint President tells us, however, that the company has been laser-focused on limiting its burn rate, still has “north of the $20 million [in capital] that was reported” left in the bank and has plenty of runway left. If there is any truth to the story, Sonsini says, it’s that the company has been talking to strategic partners about fundraising. Whether that’s smart or not, well, the truth would appear to lie in the middle. In the big picture, subscription commerce is beginning to enter a period of consolidation similar to the one that the Daily Deal space went through after its gold rush. As the space matures and the big fish (like Walmart) move into the market, some of the “early-mover” startups in the space are going to experience (or are currently experiencing) growing pains. In eCommerce marketplaces (subscription commerce is no different), scale is critical. So, even with celebrity endorsements and early hype, the road hasn’t been a cakewalk, and BeachMint is no different. The company, which began began with a single brand, JewelMint, before expanding to six, features endorsements from celebrities like Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen (StyleMint), Jessica Simpson (BeautyMint), Rachel Bilson (ShoeMint) and so on, with each brand offering different collections of products in their particular vertical and operating behind some kind of personalized subscription commerce model. Berdakin says that BeachMint went in knowing it wanted to experiment with various models and permutations and that, even if each brand didn’t end up a total success, the process would hopefully identify the ideal vertical and model. Going forward, BeachMint likely won’t be able to sustain or dedicate equal resources to all six brands and thus may have to eliminate a couple of these brands in the future. So, it hasn’t just been smooth sailing for the company. However, while Carney says that the startup’s brands mostly failed to get any significant traction (with the exception of JewelMint and ShoeMint) and that they’ve since been “left to idle,” Berdakin, of course, says that the company is not giving up on its brands and continues to focus on all of its “FashionMints” and within that, he says, to turn more aggressively to a marketplace model, while increasingly on “removing inventory while keeping exclusivity.” The “quality of BeachMint’s revenues continue to increase as well as revenue itself,” the BeachMint co-founder continued. In turn, while he declined to share specifics, David Oh, who leads acquisition and is the head of product for JewelMint, said that he’s run R.O.I. calculations and found nothing in growth trajectory or the company’s margins that even remotely justifies PandoDaily’s conclusion. “That’s why I’m still here after two-and-a-half years,” Oh says. The reporter has also written several articles about the departure of senior executives from BeachMint, which he implies act as corroborations of BeachMint’s inevitable tanking, especially as he claims they were a result of “internal strife.” Multiple members of the BeachMint team (including the co-founders) admitted that the company was guilty of scaling too quickly, too early, hiring faster than they likely should have. So, while they confirmed that reductions were made and people were let go, it was because they weren’t the right fit and because it was forced to tap the breaks. While certainly an indication of fallibility, people within the company disputed Carney’s portrayal of the events, which seem to take liberty with certain facts in order to support a pre-conceived conclusion. “We are growing 50% year-over-year and continue on path to profitability,” the BeachMint President said and hinted that he and his co-founders were working to draft a response piece that would share further details on the company’s traction, user base, churn and so forth. While founders are reliably biased towards the sunny side when it comes to the success of their business, it doesn’t seem as if this is quite the obituary the initial report made it out to be. As of yet, it is not clear whether or not the board or the company will pursue legal action. But one thing is clear: Wherever he is, . Below you’ll find the official response from BeachMint to PandoDaily, passed along to us by Berdakin, and below THAT, you’ll find the BeachMint President’s short letter to employees that was subsequently posted to Facebook. “The recent article on PandoDaily suggesting that Diego Berdakin and I have left BeachMint and that the company has been asked to return capital to our investors is not accurate,” said Josh Berman, CEO of BeachMint. “Diego and I remain 100% focused and are fully backed by the BeachMint Board of Directors, and there are no plans to make any changes to our leadership team. Unfortunately, nobody at BeachMint or the Board of Directors was contacted to confirm or provide input on this story. Josh continued: “We are fortunate that our Board of Directors and our partners are closely aligned and as excited by our company’s ambitions and performance as we are. BeachMint overall has grown 40% year over year, in both sales and subscribers, and we continue to add top talent to our team, including a new General Merchandise Manager for our FashionMints from Kellwood, a Senior Marketing Executive from eHarmony and a VP Finance who joined us from ShoeDazzle. “I am more confident than ever that BeachMint will exceed all expectations and continue to deliver amazing product to our customers, and strong performance for our investors,” added President Diego Berdakin “The Board of Directors is incredibly positive about the future of BeachMint and we fully support both Josh and Diego in their efforts to build a phenomenally successful business,” said Peter Sonsini, General Partner, NEA, Beachmint’s largest shareholder and a member of BeachMint’s Board of Directors. “BeachMint’s business performance, alongside the talented and experienced executive team at the helm, ensures we remain incredibly positive about the future of this company, and the role we know it will play in driving innovation within e-commerce.” Update: Here is PandoDaily’s .
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New Twitter Tool Translates The Last Desperate Tweets Of Egypt’s Fallen President
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Gregory Ferenstein
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Avid Twitter followers saw the short reign of Egypt’s Mohammed Morsi crumble in real time this afternoon, as the army overthrew the . Twitter began , who issued . “Pres. Morsy urges civilians and military members to uphold the law & the Constitution not to accept that coup which turns #Egypt backwards,” tweeted the official account (more tweets embedded below). [tweet https://twitter.com/AP/statuses/352517220921913347] [tweet https://twitter.com/EgyPresidency/statuses/352510972046483459] [tweet https://twitter.com/EgyPresidency/statuses/352510525436997632] [tweet https://twitter.com/EgyPresidency/statuses/352509205959286785 [tweet https://twitter.com/EgyPresidency/statuses/352508863490179072] After widespread protests, the Army , which he defied in vain. Morsi, with cabinet members resigning , took to his social media accounts in the hopes of starting a revolution. It was, in the words of the Internet, an epic fail. This afternoon, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces announced that the chief justice would assume the presidency until a new leader can be democratically elected. The successful overthrow of Morsi puts Egypt back at square one. On the eve of America’s Fourth of July, let us hope that Egypt can enjoy their own independence day by this time next year.
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New Zynga CEO Mattrick’s Package Is Worth About $50M In Stock, Options & Salary
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Kim-Mai Cutler
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New Zynga CEO Don Mattrick, who , is getting incentivized heavily with stock for his new gig. He starts with a sign-on bonus of $5 million, a base salary of $1 million, then gets a pro-rated minimum annual bonus that is either worth 200 percent of his salary or the average bonus percentage for the rest of the company’s executives — whichever is greater. The first big stock part of the package is worth about $25 million at the moment, and vests over three years. It’s a “make whole” grant that makes up for the stock Mattrick is giving up in leaving his job at Microsoft. Then on top of that there’s an “inducement grant” that vests over five years that’s currently worth a little over $6 million at about 1.8 million restricted stock units or RSUs. It also gives Mattrick the option to purchase more than 7 million shares of stock equal to the closing price on the grant date, with the target for these options being worth about $10 million. If Mattrick is successful in turning the company around, that grant could be worth much more. He is also eligible for equity grants every year, with the one for 2014 being worth about $7 million in restricted stock units. If Mattrick leaves, he gets a severance benefit worth twice his annual salary of $1 million plus two times his bonus. He also gets accelerated vesting of all of his initial “make whole” $25 million stock grant and any other grants that would have vested in the same year. If he gets terminated in the event that Zynga has a “change in control” or gets acquired, both the big stock grants get fully accelerated with the cash severance being paid in a lump sum. Zynga also covers his legal fees with the salary offer up to $60,000. If any payments to him trigger a “golden parachute” tax, the payments and benefits may get reduced to the point where he would be better off overall on an after-tax basis. It’s a package that’s designed to incentivize him to get that stock price up, which has been hovering around $2 to $3 for the past six months. Zynga debuted at about $10 during its IPO but its stock sank by almost 75 percent in the year afterward as investors lost confidence that the company could keep its hold on the Facebook platform and successfully transition to Android and iOS. Indeed, Zynga and King are neck-and-neck in terms of monthly active users on the Facebook platform, according to In the same SEC filing, Zynga also reveals that Owen Van Natta, who was at one point Zynga’s Executive Vice President of Business, is also stepping off the board.
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New Moto X Details Point To Customizable Cosmetics, Not Components
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Matt Burns
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An ABC News report is dashing the hopes and dreams of Android fans everywhere. According to Joanna Stern, a version of the Motorola X with custom casings and wallpapers, not customizable internal hardware . Owners will reportedly be able to order a version of the phone with different color options, backside engravings, and pre-installed custom wallpapers. This is said to be done in a new 500,000-foot factory in Texas, enabling Motorola and Google to deliver the custom phone to State-side customers in a quick manner. Another version of the phone will be available for purchase in retail stores, sans the artistic flair of their custom-ordered counterparts. Motorola previously announced that the upcoming phone would be assembled in this facility and kicked off the phone’s marketing campaign with in several U.S. newspapers touting its American roots. The company’s new logo has gotten plenty of spotlight lately too, and the colorful new design may be representative of the chromatically diverse options for Motorola’s new flagship handset. The Motorola X has long been rumored to be available with customizable options, though colors and trim weren’t exactly what some people were hoping for. It was widely speculated that the phone would be offered with various hardware options, and while that could still be the case, today’s report points towards a more logical plan. Ordering a phone with more or less memory is one thing, but the thought of a user getting to pick and choose internal components such as the SoC, amount of RAM, and type of screen is rather ludicrous. Smartphones are relatively inexpensive through the economics of bulk ordering — if that’s removed, allowing the owner to swap different parts, the device’s price will ultimately be higher. And in the end, doesn’t everyone want the best option anyway? These customizable options aren’t exactly novel. Apple has long offered backplate engraving on its iPods, and once upon a time Microsoft also offered the Zune with stunning backside artwork. As for custom color cases, is one of a few startups offering a similar service, allowing owners to customize their gadgets with a fresh coat of paint. But Motorola’s reported plan is the first to combine all the services prior to purchasing. According to ABC News, the Moto X is currently in testing with carriers. With the ad campaign in full swing, it will likely hit stores sometime this summer. : the pictures below reportedly showing the swappable backsides. Details are light and to me, I would wager these plastic backsides are for a mid- or low-level model. Motorola definitely doesn’t need a massive manufacturing facility to pump out colorful plastic back panels. [gallery ids="842375,842374,842373"]
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Cambridge Audio’s Minx Go Couples Crazy Battery Life With Great, Portable Sound
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Darrell Etherington
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A little while ago, I and found it a solid new performer in the UK-based company’s new lineup of wireless speakers. Today, I’m looking at the Cambridge Audio Minx Go, a portable Bluetooth speaker with 18 hours of advertised battery life and a $149 price tag. It’s bigger than cheaper competitors like the Jawbone Jambox, but it’s got plenty more juice, too, and Cambridge’s high-quality pedigree. Cambridge is sticking to a common design language with its Minx line of wireless speakers, and the Minx Go resembles its older sibling the Minx Air almost exactly, but shrunk down to about a quarter of the size. That still makes it larger than the comparably priced (though more expensive) Jawbone Jambox, arguably the most recognizable competitor in this category. [gallery columns="4" ids="842355,842354,842353,842352"] The size is still fairly portable, however, and the same design principles that give the Minx Air 200 such room-filling sound are at work here, too. The arc of the front grille projects sound out, and the narrow base is supplemented by a small, extendable foot that keeps it upright. It can do without, as well, in my experience, but those wary of the thing toppling off a deck railing will want the foot. As far as Bluetooth speakers go, the Minx Go is pretty barebones. It connects to your smartphone, tablet or computer via Bluetooth, and streams audio from that source (or from a hardwire connection via the 3.5mm jack). The device itself features a volume up, volume down and power button for controlling music, without any kind of back/forward or play/pause features like you might find elsewhere. It’s simplicity defined. Simplicity is nice in terms of offering a straightforward user experience, but competitors like the Jambox offer speakerphone capabilities, and remote control is nice if the speaker is more portable than your source, for instance. Plus with gadgets like the , that speaker function is very useful, especially when hanging out lakeside. One very nice feature is the USB charging port, however, which unfortunately only works for pass-through charging when the AC adapter is plugged in. The Minx Go also charges very quickly, topping up completely in just two hours. The battery is the real star for features: 18 hours of advertised battery life isn’t an extreme exaggeration. I’ve used the Go extensively, and have charged it only twice during that time. It’s been a cottage companion, and a daily work soundtrack provider, and it goes so long you forget it isn’t plugged in. Truly a category leader in this regard. Battery is impressive, as mentioned, but audio performance is also obviously important in a Bluetooth speaker. And in my experience, the Cambridge is one of the top contenders in that area. Cambridge has a long pedigree of building high quality audio products, and the Go is no exception. It delivers plenty of clarity at even high volumes, along with impressive bass performance from such a small package. At least one other review I’ve read suggested that the bass performance on the Minx Go led to undue case rattle and distortion, but I haven’t found that at all with my unit. To the contrary, the bass remains strong and clear at even high volumes, which is in contrast with more muddy speakers like the otherwise excellent Big Jambox. The Cambridge at $149 rivals many AirPlay speakers that cost $200 and up, in my opinion, which is all the more impressive since it’s primarily using Bluetooth as its source. Cambridge’s Minx Go is a new bright spot in the portable wireless speaker category, and the battery life along paired with the relatively low price tag should turn a lot of heads. If you don’t mind missing a few bells and whistles like a speakerphone function, this is the Bluetooth speaker I’m recommend, for summer adventures and beyond.
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Mike Butcher
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Xobni Was Acquired For More Than $60 Million
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Ryan Lawler
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So email management startup was , the company officially . Initial reports said the company was acquired for “ ” but TechCrunch has learned that total consideration for the deal will be more than twice that amount, at more than $60 million range. Founded in 2006, Xobni raised about $42 million over the years, as it tried to reinvent the way email was done. The company’s , and investors over the years have included First Round Capital, Khosla Ventures, RRE Ventures, Baseline Ventures, RBC Venture Partners, Relay Ventures, Cisco, Atomico, as well as a number of angels. A source with knowledge of the acquisition disputes the $30 million figure, saying total consideration is double what had been reported. We’ve had another source verify this, and say that the price was actually closer to $70 million. A price in the high $60 million range (including earnouts and other considerations) isn’t a fantastic return for its investors, but at least the company wasn’t acquired for less than it had raised. While the company didn’t get to be as big as the team or investors might have hoped, they also didn’t in the transaction, as has been suggested. We’re still hoping to talk to both Yahoo and Xobni about the deal and how the startup will fit into Yahoo’s products and culture. It’s likely that Yahoo will be able to incorporate some of its technology into its own mail products as a way to improve them. We’ve also reached to Yahoo and Xobni about terms of the deal. Yahoo says that it’s not commenting on the financial terms, and a representative from Xobni hasn’t responded to our request yet.
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Yahoo Acquires Xobni
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Greg Kumparak
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Yahoo has just announced that they’ve acquired Xobni, the startup that tries to make your inbox and contacts list less terrible by focusing on the people you communicate with most. Back in 2007 (at TechCrunch 40!), Xobni launched as a plugin for Microsoft Outlook that sorted all of your correspondence by contact, automatically pulling in each contact’s data from the likes of LinkedIn, Twitter, and other social networks. Over the past few years, they’ve rolled out similar functionality to Gmail, iCloud, and (fittingly) Yahoo! Mail. Around the end of last year, they launched Smartr Contacts — an app that sorted your contacts by their perceived “importance” — for iOS and Android. There’s no official word yet on how much the acquisition was finalized at, but previous rumors had pinned it at . We’re still trying to confirm a number with our own sources. The company had raised almost $42M to date, says the data. Okay, Yahoo, seriously, I’ve run out of “Ha-ha-ha, Yahoo bought another thing” jokes. As for the future of Xobni’s existing products: the company says that if you’re already using Xobni’s stuff, you’ll be able to keep using it indefinitely. No word yet on whether or not they’ll let more people onto the Xobni-boat moving forward, though their Smartr Contacts app still appears on at least the iOS App Store following the announcement.
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Video Editor Givit Beefs Up Social Experience With iPad App Update
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Eliza Brooke
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The video editing app is releasing their first dedicated iPad app today, an effort to bolster the social, video watching side of the platform. The app includes an expanded screen view, hashtag tracking, and improved friend feeds — nothing major, but necessary changes to make Givit a more viable social site. People tend to shoot and edit on their phones, making social a better bet for iPad use, which stands at 21% of total Givit activity. This comes at the behest of users who have been pushing for a more social experience lately. CEO and founder Greg Kostello told TechCrunch that although he initially imagined that users would edit their videos on Givit and then share through more established social platforms like Facebook and Twitter, they seem disinclined to do so. That’s an interesting finding given that Givit , the second largest video sharing site after YouTube. It was the first US app to integrate into the France-based Dailymotion’s API, and the partnership was intended to make Givit an easy feed to the site. But as it stands the vast majority of videos stay on Givit, despite a prominent “share” button placed front and center, Kostello said. This seems to be because users want to interact with makers with similar interests. Parkour pros with like-minded souls, for instance. Although Givit is appeasing its users with a better social platform, it will have to make some moves to encourage them to move their videos over to Dailymotion. If the “share” button has been there all along and users haven’t been eager to click on it, it should be interesting to see how they’ll accomplish that.
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4chan Launches Self-Serve Ads To Stay Lean And Let Users Pay To Troll Each Other
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Josh Constine
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4chan, one of the wildest corners of the web, is growing up without losing its edge. The image board just opened a for scrappy businesses and trolls willing to pay for lulz. Founder Moot tells me “We’re already seeing users using it to troll one another, advertise specific threads or their favorite boards, etc. I think there’s a lot of potential for people to use the self-serve ads in a creative manner.” Known IRL as Christopher Poole, Moot tells me “I’ve always operated 4chan more as a hobby than a business.” The site lets anyone post pictures and comments to any of its 60+ themed image boards. They range from Safe-For-Work topics like and l to decidedly adult stuff like “Sexy Beautiful Women” and “Hentai/Alternative” (I’m not linking to it, and you’ve been warned). 4chan is most famous for /b/, its totally anonymous board where freedom of expression spawns both offensive filth and brilliant memes. Moot’s tried to keep the site true to its counter-cultural roots, but wanted a way to make it more sustainable, especially as he devotes his time to his , which tries to inspire fledgling artists. “We’ve had trouble making ends meet over the years — which comes as a shock to most people since 4chan serves approximately 575 million pageviews to 25 million unique visitors per month,” says Moot. 4chan has always managed display ad sales, but that’s tough to scale to the long tail of small businesses while staying lean since it requires sales people. To help bring in some money while fighting spam, 4chan introduced the $20 “4chan pass” that lets users bypass the captchas you have to complete to post to the site. Now, self-serve ads could let the site stay healthy without the need for headcount bloat or outside funding. It’s almost completely DIY beyond ad creative approvals, so self-serve ads could bring in the cash to pay for servers without the team having to do much work. Anyone header, middle-of-page, and footer display banners targeted to specific boards. Though ads might end up next to images of unspeakable debauchery, they can’t be NSFW. Moot says one big advantage is that 4chan ads are “a great deal with prices starting at $0.20 CPM and a minimum buy of $20 (read: damn cheap).” What’s really fascinating about all this is that these ads aren’t just for advertisers. Originally, the self-serve ads FAQ explained “Self-serve ads are intended for anyone who wishes to promote a product, website, Kickstarter project, etc—or just for fun/to get a message in front of the 4chan community (“MODS=FAGS”, promoting a board or thread/contest, etc).” Wait, what? “MODS=FAGS”? I told you 4chan was a little rough around the edges. That’s 4chan slang for “moderators of this forum are annoying,” a sign of the site’s rebellious users who hate even the tiny bit of censorship and restriction needed to keep the site usable. The phrase has since been removed from the FAQ, but yes, 4chan was encouraging users to buy ads to call each other homophobic slurs. I’m not condoning that. But the suggestion may have been intended to show the site’s diehard community members that it’s still firmly rooted in controversial Internet culture even though it’s maturing and focusing more on advertising. And considering the gore, tentacles, and copious gay porn that live on 4chan’s racier boards, being offensive fits. There’s no denying that 4chan is its own community with its own code of morals. By democratizing its ad offerings, it can avoid heavy-handed big brands or venture capital and retain its identity indefinitely.
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Health App Maker Azumio Launches Argus, A Comprehensive Food And Activity Tracker
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Kim-Mai Cutler
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the maker of health apps, such as Fitness Buddy and Instant Heart Rate, has another one up its sleeve. The Palo Alto-based startup, which is backed by Founders Fund, Accel and Felicis, is out with a comprehensive activity and food-tracking app . Argus follows how much you move, walk, run or cycle through the accelerometer; it does not rely on signals from cell towers like other competing apps which might drain the battery more. It also helps you log what you eat, how you sleep, how much water and coffee you drink and how much you exercise. The idea is that it’s a catch-all, life-logging app where people can store all of their activity, eating and sleeping habits in one place without having to switch from app to app. It was a common request from Azumio’s user base, the company’s CEO Bojan Bostjancic says. The app has a beautiful honeycomb design with individual cells showing behaviors like cups of water or coffee consumed per day. You can scroll through it like a visual diary of your past habits. If you hold down a cell for two seconds, the app will aggregate your activity data. If you press down on a walking cell, it shows how many steps you’ve taken in the day hour-by-hour and how long you’ve been active. For other types of activity tracking, users have to proactively do things like take pictures of their food or log a workout or yoga session. If you take a picture of food, Argus will ask you to categorize it into one of six categories including grains, fruits and veggies. The other cool part is that the app also syncs with other activity-tracking devices. It’s a platform that can pull in data from some New Balance devices and the Salutron Lifetrak automatically without the need for switching from app to app to see different data. It also works with the Withings’ weight scale and ore devices on the way. Argus also gives users personalized goals and reminders if they fall off track with their workout regimens. The company says the beauty of having all of this data in a single app is that it makes it easier to track different correlations. Does working out regularly affect your standing heart rate? How much does changing your diet affect your weight? There are also basic social features for sharing photos of what you eat with friends inside the or on Facebook. The startup itself has been around for two years, and has been an early pioneer in building mobile health apps for smartphones. Their earlier heart rate app would measure a person’s pulse by using a phone’s camera to detect faint changes in color in their fingers. Through a suite of apps, they’ve racked up about 40 million different users with 2 million weekly actives. Some are paid, but ultimately Azumio plans to switch to more of a subscription-based model. The revenue they make now is enough to cover their costs, but the hope is that freemium could bring them a larger revenue base. Other companies in the mobile health space like Fitstar, which partners with athletic celebrities to make interactive workouts, also use a subscription model where people pay per month for extra workouts or features. Argus is competing with other apps like Moves, which is another activity tracker. That one doesn’t do food, sleep or coffee intake, but it does follow where a person goes and guesses whether they are walking, cycling or in a car. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YB4UddXj2sc&w=560&h=315]
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Vine Fights Instagram With Biggest App Update Yet
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Jordan Crook
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Vine, Twitter’s six-second looping video-sharing app, has just , including a redesigned camera, categories for various vine genres, and the ability to revine people’s existing Vines. The update brings some much-asked-for features to the social network, and also improves users’ abilities to gain and following and get noticed within the app. To start, you’ll notice that the camera has been redesigned to make it even easier for hard-core creators to frame their shots, which is especially important with stop-animation (something that’s become a bit of a hobby for many Viners). The redesign brings a grid, the ability to focus, and “ghost tools”. Ghost tools let you view your previous shot, but , there is no editing within Vine. The update also brings with it some new ways to explore and be noticed on Vine. For one, Vine now includes 15 channels, letting you submit posts to the Explore screen with a better chance of being noticed. These categories include music, nature, comedy, and more. Each one has it’s own theme and popular feed, which allows for a number of different ways for you to be discovered on Vine. I recently spoke to Meagan Cignoli, who makes her living making stop-animation videos for various brands on the platform, who explained that she was truly hoping for Vine categories so that others can be discovered as she was. She now has over 200,000 followers, as opposed to a measly 10,000 on Instagram, which she claims has to do with Instagram’s lack of options to rise to popularity. But if channels aren’t enough, Vine has also included a new “On the Rise” category, which lets you check out people who are gaining popularity on Vine. The ever-growing community of Viners has also been clamoring to have the ability to “Re-vine,” which seems like a logical request given that Vine’s parent company is the original creator of the Retweet. Now, users will be glad to know they can share a Vine in their feed to their own set of followers with the simple tap of a button. Finally, Vine has added the ability to control who you share with. When the app originally launched, users had no privacy whatsoever. Once a Vine was shared within the community, it was public. Now, users can decide to only let followers see their posts by going into Profile > Settings > Your Content. With Instagram’s recent launch of Instagram video, many have posited that the end of Vine is near. However, Vine has shown rapid growth and an active community over the past six months, with over 13 million users on the service. The limits put forth within the app, like a six-second maximum, and a lack of editability, have actually made the app more appealing to users both creatively and consumption-wise. Obviously, time will tell if Instagram Video is hurting Twitter’s new video-sharing beast, but it seems like there’s plenty of room for both in the market. Especially when Vine continues to iterate quickly. Remember, the app launched as a relatively barebones video-sharing service before responding to user requests for front-facing camera functionality and user mentions. And shortly thereafter, Vine made its way to Android. This is just the latest in a succession of solid updates from Twitter and Vine. Interested users should update the app .
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Pave, The Crowdfunding Platform For Investing In People, Launches Option For Those Who Just Want To Pay It Forward
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Ryan Lawler
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New York-based startup launched with the idea to allow investors to put their money not into startups or companies or ideas, but into people. The idea was to highlight a group of potential prospects who wanted to get a particular personal project off the ground and to help them get that funded. In return, those who contributed money to help would receive a small share of their future income afterward. Now it’s offering a way for backers to pay it forward, with a new investment plan called Ripple. For , Pave provides the ability to get things funded that are more creative or aspirational than through other crowdfunding platforms. And it enables backers to bet on individuals — like a or — looking to pursue individual dreams. While still in the beta phase of its rollout, Pave has had a number of its prospects already backed, and hopes to continue adding more as time goes on. During its pilot phase, the average campaign size was around $24,000, with some as high as $75,000 and others as low as about $2,500. At first, the platform was opened just to — which for individuals would mean people who either have a net worth of more than $1 million or who make more than $200,000 a year. Those people would then receive some return on their investments in Pave’s prospects. But that potentially limited the base of backers that could participate in its platform. So Pave has introduced a new way for backers to make contributions with its new . With Ripple, backers don’t have to be accredited investors, and they won’t necessarily be expecting individual returns based on future income. That’s because instead of having that money go back to the backer, it gets pooled into a fund that can be reinvested into other prospects and projects. Essentially, returns from Ripple contributions end up being reinvested into others on the platform. That offering will be open to anyone, but backers must contribute at least $250 as part of the program. Anyway, it’ll be interesting to see if this new model takes off, and if it does, how it changes the way we think about crowdfunding people rather than products or companies.
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Location Tracking App Glympse Links With Evernote To Let Users Archive Their Trails
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Ingrid Lunden
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, the navigation tracking app that has made inroads into location-based services by inking deals with the likes of Ford, Mercedes Benz and BMW to integrate its app into their in-car systems, is today laying down ground in another direction: other cloud-based mobile platforms. Today it is announcing that Glympse users will be able to archive their “trails” directly to . The feature is getting rolled out first on Android, with iOS coming soon, the company said. The feature gives Glympse users a way of recording trips that they have made, either for practical purposes such as remembering a particular driving route, or just to be able to preserve a memorable journey, such as a vacation road trip. Bryan Trussel, co-founder and CEO of Glympse, says that this was one of the more demanded features from users: “Many of our users have requested a way to save a snapshot of their Glympse map trails so they can view road trips, keep runs and bike rides, archive a special trip abroad, or just remember an interesting location. We wanted to make this feature simple and easy.” This is the start of a number of further integrations the company plans to put in place, and now that the company has it will be easier to create more links in that web of connectivity and usefulness. And by tapping into services like Evernote, which now has , it gives Glympse a glimpse of attracting new users. (The company does not disclose user numbers yet.) “We’ve got a pretty long list of potential features and partnerships and customer requests,” a spokesperson says. Adding photos, trip details and logistics, calendar and social network integrations are all on the list. “We’re definitely going to be busy for quite a while.” Further integrations will be announced in the coming months. It plans to double the number of companies with which it is linked by the end of this year. The Evernote integration will work like this: users will be able to sign into their Evernote accounts from the Glympse app, similar to how they would sign in to Facebook or Twitter to share a route with a friend. Then, they would be able to save a trail automatically from the trail window. When they do so, it will automatically go into a folder on Evernote called “My Glympse Trails.” The trails subsequently don’t appear as animated/video views, but as snapshots and details, which in records of who you shared a Glympse trail with, as well as the date, time, and duration of the Glympse as well as the destination if included) of each Glympse saved. “Evernote helps people remember their lives, and a big part of living is traveling from place to place. With Glympse, those trips can be recorded alongside an Everote’s users other memories. It’s a natural fit,” said Rafe Needleman, director of developer relations, in a statement. For now, all of these services will remain free, with no plans for premium, add-ons for the time being.
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TSA’s New Instagram Account Highlights The Crazy Things People Try To Sneak On Planes
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Greg Kumparak
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Seemingly tired of being chewed out by every third traveler to step through their scanners, the TSA is trying something new to connect with the people: Instagram. And, uh… it’s actually pretty friggin’ effective. Over the last few days, the TSA has been Instagramming some of the crazier things they’ve confiscated at their checkpoints from people who apparently didn’t get the whole “don’t bring things that can kill people on planes” memo. Guns! Grenades! Secret spy knives! This one is probably the strangest so far, confiscated in Cleveland:
It’s like someone thought to themselves, “Well, they say I’m not allowed to bring a knife on the plane. I’m also not allowed to bring a gun on the plane. But no one said anything about a . LOOP HOLE’D!” They’ve been posting one or two pictures per day, mainly focusing on the zanier stuff — from a to a . And yeah, as you might expect, the account is spreading fast. The old saying suggests that a picture is worth a thousand words; here, a picture seems to be worth about 1,600 followers. They’ve posted just 10 images so far since launching just days ago, but already have 16,000 people following the account. That’s already half of the following they’ve amassed on Twitter, and they’ve been tweeting for .
Note that while the TSA clearly doesn’t love hidden weaponry, they seem to have pretty strong feelings for hash tags. Hashtag knife! Hashtag TSA! Hashtag… photo? Really? #photo? On Instagram? Anyway, You can find the TSA’s new instagram account and all of the crazy contraband that comes with (If you’re dubious that it’s really the TSA posting these, note that they’ve linked to the account from their a few times)
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Doug Engelbart, “Father Of The Mouse” And American Inventor, Passes Away At 88
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Billy Gallagher
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Doug Engelbart, an American inventor best known for creating the early computer mouse, passed away last night due to kidney failure. He was 88 years old. Engelbart pioneered many early Silicon Valley technologies, mostly surrounding human-computer interaction, including the creation of hypertext and work on graphical interfaces. In his own words in a , Engelbart describes the early development of the mouse: I first started making notes for the mouse in ’61. At the time, the popular device for pointing on the screen was a light pen, which had come out of the radar program during the war. It was the standard way to navigate, but I didn’t think it was quite right…We set up our experiments and the mouse won in every category, even though it had never been used before. It was faster, and with it people made fewer mistakes. Five or six of us were involved in these tests, but no one can remember who started calling it a mouse. I’m surprised the name stuck. Engelbart is survived by four children, nine grandchildren, and his second wife, whom he wed in 2008. Engelbart’s first wife died in 1997 after 47 years of marriage. One of my favorite memories is visiting Engelbart’s home in 2006 and using his old mouse and chord keyboard. RIP Doug — Joe Hewitt (@joehewitt) Below, you can see part of the December 9, 1968, presentation that Engelbart and 17 researchers gave at the Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park; among other things, Engelbart and the researchers displayed the mouse for the first time in the presentation. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfIgzSoTMOs&w=640&h=480]
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WordPress.org, Reddit, Mozilla & Others Will Participate In Anti-NSA Web Protests On July 4th
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Sarah Perez
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A number of high-profile websites will be taking part in an online protest tomorrow against the National Security Agency (NSA)’s surveillance of online activity and phone calls. The protest is organized by non-profit organization , and will see participation from thousands of sites, including WordPress.org, Namecheap, Reddit, 4chan, Mozilla, Fark, TOR, Cheezburger, Demand Progress, MoveOn, and EFF, among others. However, none of the tech companies – like Facebook or Google – whose cooperation with the NSA was outed in will be involved in tomorrow’s events. The online protest is being described as a website and media takeover, where visitors will see the 4th Amendment plastered over sites in banners. There are also a number of blog posts planned, as well as proposed TV ads (see below). [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5iz66dwrms?feature=player_detailpage] In WordPress’s case, the open source WordPress community will be involved, but WordPress.com users supported by Automattic will not be affected, unless they choose to participate themselves by blogging or posting banners of their own. The to this project was built by , which also runs related efforts at the and the “take action now” site , which will serve as the main landing page for tomorrow’s campaign. The group has also helped build , a movement backed by a number of technical and political organizations, including also , the , , and the . Fight for the Future likens tomorrow’s event to the previous anti-SOPA protests, which rallied Internet users against a misguided bill known as the “Stop Online Piracy Act” that had been criticized due to how it would harm existing web companies’ ability to do business in the name of fighting piracy. Those protests were more dramatic in nature, seeing complete blackouts of websites and other content on sites like , Reddit, and others before Congress dropped the bill. No sites will be blacked out tomorrow, but rather the campaign will direct visitors to a website where they’ll be prompted to sign an online petition, call Congress, make donations to fund TV campaigns, or even join offline protests in the real world, put together by a group called . This organization, a grassroots, nonpartisan movement, is planning to hold protests in ., tying the July 4th holiday to the Fourth Amendment which states: The , which will benefit from the exposure raised by the online protests, has already gained over 539,769 signatures (as of the time of this writing) on its petition to U.S. Congress demanding that a special committee be formed to investigate the PRISM allegations. Its letter asks for “legal reforms to rein in spying and that public officials responsible for this unconstitutional surveillance be held accountable for their actions,” including specifically a reform of Section 215 of the Patriot Act (the section that allowed the NSA to get phone records from all the major U.S. phone companies) , and changes to the state secrets privilege. According to Fight for the Future co-founder Tiffiniy Cheng, the momentum from the related online movements will be combined. “We’re going to deliver [our signatures] to Congress, and combine the total number with the StopWatching.Us petition numbers,” she says. “There has been an in-person delivery early on with the StopWatching.Us numbers, we’ll probably do another.”
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Lyft Takes On SoCal: Launches In San Diego, Plans Community Meeting In LA
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Ryan Lawler
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On-demand ride-sharing startup is looking to make more of an impact in Southern California, with a launch in San Diego and increased community efforts in Los Angeles. That’ll open a new market for the company and hopefully quell some regulatory issues that it’s faced in another of the cities it operates in. First, the launch: Lyft has officially opened for business in San Diego, which will be the company’s sixth market since launching in San Francisco a little more than a year ago. After a successful run here, the startup has been busy expanding into other cities, including Los Angeles, Seattle, Chicago, and Boston. San Diego seems like a natural city for Lyft to be in — it has a bit of a car-centric culture but there’s a dearth of good transportation alternatives for those who don’t want to drive. As we pointed out a year ago, when , there are only 0.55 taxis per 1,000 people in San Diego, which is actually lower than in San Francisco. Having another option through a ride-sharing service like Lyft will likely be a welcome addition to residents there. Meanwhile in L.A., Lyft is fighting to continue operating, after the city’s transportation department , as well as to competitors Sidecar and Uber. The startup’s community members have been petitioning the local government there, and the new mayor, Eric Garcetti, met with a driver and passenger earlier in the week to discuss the service. The L.A. regulatory battle is partly a battle over regulatory jurisdiction. All three companies receiving cease-and-desist letters there had previously been . However, the local Transportation Department has demanded that those services cease operating what amounts to unlicensed taxi services in the city. Lyft co-founders Logan Green and John Zimmer will be headed there next week for a meeting with the community to help stir support for continued operation in the city. The goal of the community meeting will be for drivers and passengers to share their stories, which can hopefully be shared with regulators going forward. (Local L.A. Lyft users can .) For Lyft, getting regulators and community members on board is now just a part of its job when it comes to expansion. We’ll likely see more of this as it enters into new markets. To do that, the company has raised a total of $83 million now, including a from Andreessen Horowitz that it closed in May.
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STABiLGO Kickstarter Hopes To Take Its Action Sport Video Stabilizer To Market
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Eliza Brooke
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Watching GoPro footage makes it clear that there is basically nothing cooler than first-person action sport shots. And for those who are spending the day at the skate park, one Kickstarter project is hoping to take that genre of filming to the next level. is a handheld, motorized GoPro stabilizer that keeps the camera level and steady as you turn down a half-pipe or mountain. Creators Michael Boczon and Christine Reilly have raised $33,885 of their $100K goal so far with 12 days left. If you’re wondering how this product didn’t exist already — produced by someone like GoPro or one of its die-hard fans, for instance — don’t ask Boczon. He doesn’t know either. A technical producer and video editor at MTV, he said others had advanced directly to creating aerial rigs and somehow bypassed handheld stabilizers. But Boczon and Reilly have clearly caught a technology wave that others are riding, too. The day after they had been rewinding motors for the STABiLGO, a pre-made motor became available for purchase online. After playing catch-up with the development of the individual components, STABiLGO seems to have broken ahead of the pack. After STABiLGO went up on Kickstarter, six different groups reached out to say that Boczon had beaten them to the punch by only a few weeks. The aim is to move STABiLGO into retail production in China, which Boczon said he intends to do with or without the Kickstarter money. The prototype costs about $450 in parts to produce, and Boczon said they would likely set the retail price between $600-$700. “In the end, our goal was to use it when we go snowboarding,” he said. “Come this season, I will have my unit.”
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Jordanian Startup Dakwak’s Translation And Localization Platform Helps Web Sites Go Global
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Catherine Shu
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Jordan might not seem like the most obvious place for a tech hub, but the country is leading the Middle East’s growing startup industry. 500 Startups’ features two Jordanian companies, including , a Web site translation and localization platform that wants to help small- to medium-sized businesses go global in the shortest amount of time possible. The company, which launched its current platform six weeks ago, was founded in 2009 by Waheed Barghouthi after he attended a conference about how developers can help increase the amount of Arabic language content on the Internet. “I wanted to make simple tools for Web site owners to translate their sites in an easy way, that would not only increase Arabic content, but also content in all languages. Many business owners are still in the mindset that 70% of the world’s population speaks English, but that number is only about 27%,” says Barghouthi. In addition to 500 Startups, Dakwak’s investors include Jordanian accelerator program Oasis500, Silicon Badia Ventures and IV Holdings. When customers first sign up for Dakwak’s platform, all they need to enter their Web site’s URL and select a target language. Dakwak’s least expensive option is a machine translation, while professional translations are performed by translators. Translated Web sites, which have their own language subdomain, are stored on Dakwak’s servers, allowing the startup’s team to make quick updates. Dakwak’s clients have access to a dashboard that allows them to order and review new translations and then publish it to their Web site. [vimeo 33456467 w=500 h=281] from on . “There’s no email back-and-forth with translators. You can send your guidelines, but there is no operational headache,” says Barghouthi. “Web site owners just need to keep sending new content, and it comes back translated. If you have a lot of information to maintain, the network is the right solution because you don’t have to manage your Web site’s translation.” Dakwak’s localization services go beyond written content–the platform’s dashboard lets Web site owners replace images and stylesheets and add JavaScript for specific languages. The startup is also developing email translation software that will allow users to read and respond to translated emails through Dakwak’s platform. The company currently offers an email translation service with an average turnaround time of 30 minutes to an hour. Since launching its full platform six weeks ago, Dakwak has signed 30 customers, with the most-requested translated languages being English, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, French and Arabic. The company currently has five employees and offices in Jordan and Mountain View. Barghouthi’s goals for the next four to five months are to find more distribution channels in the U.S. and build the platform’s user base.
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Fly Or Die: Samsung Galaxy S4 Active
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Jordan Crook
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We first caught wind of the back in May before it had been announced. Ruggedized smartphones aren’t always so tantalizing, but seeing that the is a variant of the Samsung flagship Galaxy S4, we thought it wise to bring the little guy in for an episode of Fly or Die. This week’s episode is particularly special, as we’re joined by . So what do Brian and I think of the waterproof Galaxy S4? Personally, I find the design language to be a bit loud, and it’s unclear why the rugged version of the phone can’t come in the same standard black and white as opposed to grey, blue and orange. We’re also unsure if the flashy screws on the backside of the device are necessary to keep the phone shockproof and waterproof, or if they’re just to portray ruggedness. If the former, excellent. The latter? Not so much. On the brighter side, we’re both quite pleased to see a manufacturer ruggedize a hot-selling, full-featured phone as opposed to locking down a mid-range device with bulky armor. As for waterproof smartphones in the future? Please! Keep them coming! Two flies.
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Qualtrics CEO Ryan Smith On The Utah Tech Scene, Taking His Company Global, And More [TCTV]
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Colleen Taylor
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Qualtrics’ founder and CEO Ryan Smith swung through San Francisco recently, so we invited him to come by the TechCrunch TV studio to catch up on the company in the midst of its global expansion. In the video embedded above, watch him talk about growing a startup outside of the SF and NYC bubbles, how that monster has shaped Qualtrics’ trajectory over the past year, how the company’s internal culture has evolved with that growth (and how it will continue to evolve now with the new international operations), and much more.
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Help Me Help Uses Crowdsourcing To Make Disaster Response More Efficient
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Frederic Lardinois
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wants to make it easier for emergency responders to get a full picture of the situation after a disaster happens. The service combines crowdsourcing, a smartphone app and web service that allows trained professionals and civilians to mark up a map in real time with the location and photos of downed power lines, damaged structures, fires, road obstructions and other hazards. Help Me Help was developed by a group of students at the University of Hawaii in Hilo. Team Poli’Ahu, as the group calls itself, will represent the U.S. in Microsoft’s student technology competition in St. Petersburg, Russia, next week. The original idea behind the project was to track invasive species in a number of Hawaiian state and national parks. As Help Me Help’s Mike Purvis told me last month, the team quickly decided that it could also apply the technology it developed for this project to a larger range of problems. The team believes that its service can provide the situational awareness to help emergency responders respond more efficiently when there are disasters. Currently, organizations like the often still track this data by using paper maps, magnets and dry-erase boards. Currently, disaster reports are often fragmented and distributed across many forms of media, the team says. Besides the mobile app, Help Me Help can also scrape content from Twitter into its database, which will make it even easier for people to submit updates. As the team plans to somewhat customize the service for its clients, the customers can decide on whether they want to allow anybody to submit information or if they just want to restrict the ability to add content to a set of trusted and verified submitters. Help Me Help will present its service during the Imagine Cup finals next week. In total, Microsoft and its partners are making about available to the students that made it into the finals. In total, 69 countries will be represented at the event and the awards ceremony on Thursday July 11 will be .
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Roamz Hits The Deadpool, But The Team Stays Together With A New Focus
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Greg Kumparak
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After a series of rapid fire pivots, Roamz, one of many services launched during the location-centric app explosion to try and help you find things to do nearby, has shut down. To date, the team had raised around $3.5M, almost entirely from Australian direct mailing/marketing house Salmat. The writing has been on the wall for a while now. When Roamz launched back in October of 2011, it focused on what they considered “serendipity”, scanning Facebook, Foursquare, Twitter, and Instagram to find things going on around you that you might not know about. By July of 2012, founder Jonathan Barouch declared that this didn’t seem to be . By August, they’d pivoted to using that data to help people find good venues — the best coffee, the best ice cream shops, etc. You know, kind of like Yelp. Or Foursquare. By March, Roamz’ grave had been dug. They’d managed to pull just 200,000 downloads in nearly 2 years. The team had shifted their focus to a new project, and Barouch that he didn’t know what would happen to Roamz. As of today, Roamz has been pulled from the iOS and Android app stores, the web version shuttered. But all is not lost! That ‘new project’ the team had focused on? It’s called . Using some of the tricks that the team picked up while building Roamz, Local Measure promises to show business owners what their in-store customers are sharing, even if the business isn’t mentioned by name. If someone tweets out “LOL, look how nasty this food looks” while dining in your restaurant, for example, they’ll try to find it and bring it to your attention. So far, it seems to be working — that is, it’s actually making money. In an email sent to Roamz users, Barouch says “that in the 12 weeks since launch, we’ve already successfully on-boarded hundreds of businesses and have already have some large paying customers”. (For the curious: smaller, single shop businesses pay Local Measure around $60 per month, while larger operations pay around $100 per month) While the B2B customer sentiment space isn’t an empty one, it’s certainly a lot less crowded than the one they were in before. Plus there’s, you know, actual money being spent there. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaR4IzeaKwI?feature=player_embedded&w=640&h=360]
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A Very Celebratory Giveaway: A Pebble Smartwatch And A Free Ticket To Disrupt SF
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Elin Blesener
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to everyone who is celebrating today! We hope you are enjoying the sunshine, family and friends, booze, fireworks, hot dogs — whatever you’re into. To help commemorate the holiday, we decided to give some fun stuff away. As you know, is coming up fast. Disrupt NY was a blast, but Disrupt SF this year will be even better. We have a ton of surprises up our sleeves and special guests we still have yet to announce. If you’d like to come, this is your first chance to win a free ticket (valued at $1,795). ALSO. Because it’s a holiday, whoever wins this giveaway will also win a black (valued at $149.95). Excited? We are, too. And somewhat jealous because this is supposed to be the best smartwatch you can buy right now. So, want a chance to win some stuff? Then just follow the steps below. 1) 2) – Retweet this post (making sure to include the #TCDisrupt hashtag)
– Or leave us a comment below telling us what your favorite thing is about the Fourth of July. If you don’t celebrate, then tell us what your favorite holiday is. The contest starts now and ends July 8 at 7:30 p.m. PT. Please only tweet the message once or you will be disqualified. We will make sure you follow the steps above and choose our winner Monday. Anyone in the world is eligible. Please note the ticket does not include airfare or hotel.
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Nokia’s New Flagship (The Lumia 909?) Spotted In Leaked Images Ahead Of July 11 Event
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Chris Velazco
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For many of us the 4th of July signifies a day of patriotism, fireworks, and grilled meats, but it also means that there are only seven days left until Nokia opens the doors to a New York press event that’s expected to highlight the company’s new flagship Windows Phone. The volume and legitimacy of pre-launch leaks surge in the days just prior to a device’s unveiling, so it’s little surprise that noted gadget leaker (or , if you prefer) posted a pair of authentic looking images of the phone with just days left to go. In case you haven’t been keeping tabs on the the tale of Nokia’s newest Windows Phone, the major draw is that it’s expected to feature the same sort of 41-megapixel rear camera sensor made the Symbian Belle-powered such a powerful curiosity. This most recent batch of images seems to confirm a handful of earlier leaks (primarily of the EOS’ voluminous rear end), and Evleaks has followed up with what he claims is a final model number for the device. Rather than the Lumia 1020 moniker that the oft-rumored phone was previously tagged with, he now claims that it will be called the Lumia 909. Throw in the AT&T livery it’s clad in (which is no surprise since the carrier has been bullish on Windows Phone from the start) and most of the mysteries have already been solved — now we just need a price tag. Regardless of what name this thing actually ends up with, the folks from Finland have been eagerly talking up the possibility of bringing that sensor to a Windows Phone, and that boosterism has recently given way to a campaign of tireless teasing. You can’t really blame Nokia for attempting to pique interest ahead of the the 909’s launch — as our own Ingrid Lunden pointed out when Nokia released in April, Lumia sales are finally picking up, but the company could still use a runaway hit to help make up for other organizational deficiencies. At the very least though Nokia is outperforming at least one competitor — it sold twice as many Lumia devices as Blackberry sold BlackBerry 10 phones.
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America’s Robot Heart, Half Broken
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Josh Constine
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You’d think we’d have given up. Signs of the technology police state whip gale force at our flag. Our social tools serve to serve us tragedy while our legislative bodies do their best to serve themselves. There’ve been plenty of reasons to hang our heads low. But we clench our fists and push on, even if our faith’s been shaken. When regulators tried to hand the Internet to Hollywood, we beat back SOPA. When terror struck Boston, perhaps we followed along a bit too eagerly, but hung in there together as the Redditors did their best to dig up evidence. But PRISM. It’s made us question everything. Our government, our tech giants, our privacy, and our morals. Does Obama really fight for us? Have our social networks and search engines pushed back hard enough? Is anything secret anymore? Are those secrets worth sacrificing for security? It’s legitimately scary to think that the greatest threat to our way of life may come from within. Abraham Lincoln understood. In 1838, he asked: “Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant to step the ocean and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa combined…could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River or make a track on the Blue Ridge in a trial of a thousand years. At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer. If it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us; it cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men we must live through all time, or die by suicide.” While Lincoln spoke of the brewing civil war, his warning holds just as true for surveillance. Not only could its overstepped application strip us of our freedom, but its looming spectre casts a chill over expression, discussion, and the dissent our nation was built upon. Today we must celebrate our independence differently. Not just by remembering our founding fathers’ ideals By refusing to sit idle behind our screens. By demanding not the nation we have or even had, but the nation we need. And none are as empowered to take a stand as we, the makers of tomorrow. It’s up to the founders, doers, and entrepreneurs whose work touches the world to say that we won’t watch liberty slip away. Perhaps this technological intrusion had to rear its head in order to bind us together — to half-break America’s robot heart so we can solder it back together, stronger.
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Independence Day Was The Most Superlative Of All Days For Instagram And Vine
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Billy Gallagher
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The Fourth of July was another record-shattering day for Instagram and Vine, as users shared millions of hours of video. As Americans fired up their barbeques and enjoyed the holiday, millions were faced with a decision not dissimilar to Patrick Henry’s choice between liberty and death: ? Some chose to share videos of fireworks in red, white, and sepia, while others opted for looping videos. And, naturally, everyone had to be kept up to date on these impressive vanity metrics. Vine announced that it set a world record for number of re-vines ! Instagram fired back by proclaiming that the Fourth marked an all-time high for ( ) Instagram video. Given recent evidence from and , it seems as though people like to share photos and videos of fun, cool events they’re enjoying. Who knew? These sharing stats fit with overall trends in the industry. Indeed, given the spread of mobile devices and skyrocketing photo and video sharing, someone could have practically written this story beforehand.
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Feeling Nostalgic? Shoebox Lets You Scan Old Photos With Your Phone, Update Your Ancestry.com Family Tree
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Sarah Perez
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, the mobile photo archiving app from San Francisco-based 1000memories last fall, has now gone live at its new home. The updated version of the app, , still allows users to scan in their old non-digital prints – you know, those things the old folks still refer to as “photographs” – while also cropping and auto-flattening the images for the correct perspective. But now, those photos are no longer in their own, more isolated social networking site, as they were when hosted by 1000memories. Instead, the photos can be mapped, tagged and added to your family tree at Ancestry.com. Founded back in 1983 as a publishing company, Ancestry.com went online in 1996, making it one of the older web properties among the big-name family research sites – a group which also includes competitors such as and , for example. An app for scanning in old photos, like , makes sense as a part of a larger service like Ancestry.com, but unfortunately, some of the features that made Shoebox more interesting on mobile have disappeared in the new app version. 1000memories allowed users to fill virtual collections (“shoeboxes”) of their old photo scans, then tag them and share with others, as well as post them to other social sites like Facebook. Those earlier scanned in photos didn’t seem to transfer over to the new mobile application, though they’re still live . In other words, the updated version of Shoebox serves mainly as a utility to scan in items to Ancestry.com, instead of as a mobile, social network of its own. That being said, Ancestry does have a few other things in the works that take advantage of all those earlier photo uploads from the startup’s users. The company plans to integrate the old 1000memories photo memories into Ancestry.com as a new photos experience, and it will also soon be introducing a new way to tell visual stories that’s far more modern and compelling than those you can make today with the somewhat outdated tools the site and others like it currently offer. ( .) Brett Huneycutt, 1000memories co-founder, now Director of Product at Ancestry, tells us that Shoebox is only the first step in integrating the two companies’ products. Later this month, the above-described “Story View” feature will go live, and in August, the site will debut the new photos experience as well. Though the pace of our culture today is so fast that we have to download time traveling apps like and that pull out photos from our exponentially growing photo archives in order to force us to stop and reflect, Ancestry’s whole network is about reflecting on our past. But even though that’s something I’m personally interested in as the inheritor of my grandmother’s photo collection (which now fills actual “shoeboxes” in my closet), using these older ancestry research websites hasn’t held much appeal for me. Having spent my years uploading and tagging photos on more “youthful” sites like Facebook or Flickr, I’d like to see a research site that could reach me with a simple, modern, and more automated experience on the platforms I use the most – smartphone and tablet. That was my hope for 1000memories and , but though the mobile app itself is now faster and more streamlined since the update, it has also lost that sense of being something that could stand on its own and engage.
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Personal Q&A Site Ask.fm Is Growing At A Clip Amid Media Backlash Over Safety Of Its Young Users
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Steve O'Hear
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, the Latvian startup that’s been left carrying the personal Q&A torch after its inspiration, Formspring, to pastures new, is continuing to grow at an absolute clip. It’s now at 65 million registered users, up from 8 million in June , and is adding about 300,000 new users per-day, seeing it garner 190 million unique visitors last month. User sessions sit at a highly engaged 15 minutes on average, too. But this growth isn’t without cost. In a media backlash reminiscent of some of the reporting around MySpace in its heyday, and to a lesser degree Facebook, Ask.fm has recently faced claims in the UK, Ireland and elsewhere that the site isn’t doing enough to protect its predominantly teen user-base, not least because questions can be posted anonymously. This, say its critics, has created an environment rife with cyber bullying and other inappropriate behaviour, as well as that this has led to some users taking their own lives. Frankly, it makes for grim and rather depressing reading. The charge that the company isn’t doing enough or that Ask.fm is inherently bad is one that Ask.fm’s CEO and founder Ilja Terebin refutes, of course, though he isn’t insensitive to the issues being raised. Despite being told by another journalist that the company is on somewhat of a PR lock-down, I was able to speak to Terebin earlier today and got the sense that he was still coming to terms with the turn of events. Even though Ask.fm knew it was on the path to growth, to have overtaken Formspring this time last year, that the site has continued to grow at such a clip has clearly caught its founders off-guard. Not necessarily in terms of pure traffic — that’s what the cloud is for — but how to scale the startup’s community and customer support, and in turn its relationship with the media. Terebin says there has been some fundamental media misconceptions about the way Ask.fm works. Firstly, the ability to accept questions anonymously, although on by default, can be switched off. However, based on anecdotal evidence, lots of teens using the service, even after receiving unsavoury messages, choose to keep anonymous questions enabled. That’s part of the “fun” of a service like Ask.fm, concedes Terebin, though of course it’s also a feature that is open to trolling and further abuse. “Users want to attract attention to themselves,” he adds. Secondly, although profiles on Ask.fm are public, questions sent to a user’s profile aren’t published until a user chooses to answer. Don’t like the tone or subject of a question, then don’t answer it, says Terebin. Thirdly, and most importantly, Ask.fm has a ‘Report’ button for users to report content that breaks the site’s terms of use, which Terebin says is seen by the company’s growing team of moderators. In addition, users have the option to block specific users from posting questions to their profile. And, of course, users are required to be over 13 years of age to use Ask.fm, though this is largely self-policed, like other social media sites. Terebin also says that most of these systems were in place the media backlash began, despite reports to the contrary, although he admits that it’s an area where the company is having to scale up. Once you have nearly 200 million monthly unique visitors, “you can’t control everything,” he adds understatedly. Finally, Terebin says that although he doesn’t feel that Ask.fm has done anything wrong and he’s not sure what he could do differently in hindsight, “we understand we have to be responsible for our users”. Actions, of course, speak louder than words, although I’m inclined to take the Ask.fm CEO at his word. It’s also a message that, until now, appears to have got somewhat lost in translation. To that end, Terebin says that it was only two months ago that Ask.fm hired an outside PR firm. The lesson here is that there’s a lot more to scaling than code alone.
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Dell Looks To Smartwatches And Wearable Tech, But That’s Just Another Boat To Miss
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Darrell Etherington
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Dell is reportedly investing in wearable tech, with an eye to developing smartwatch devices, according to a . Dell itself is saying that it’s looking closely at the wearable-tech trend, with the aim of predicting what personal computing will look like in five years’ time. Sure, it’s a smart move, but it’s also an obvious one: If there’s a computer company out there with an R&D department that isn’t at least exploring wearables, they should probably just pack it in. Of course, Dell isn’t doing anything different from what it has done for the past decade or so with R&D efforts aimed at a five-year outlook for wearables. Which is to say it’s probably missing the boat. its first bold experiment with Google Glass. And Apple is said to be , possibly as soon as later this year, prompting the company to secure trademarks for the iWatch name in a variety of different global markets. If this does become a trend, and if consumers actually like it and embrace it as the next wave in personal computing, Dell will be years late and probably offer something uninspiring and derivative, the same way it did with PDA and mobile/smartphone tech. Dell had a really bad recent financial quarter, and is seeing its global share of PC sales slip continually – not great when that’s a market that’s already facing problems. News that it’s looking to wearables as a life raft shouldn’t exactly be taken as uplifting, but at least it’s a sign the company still has a pulse.
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Darrell Etherington
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The Declaration Of Independence, 2013
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Gregory Ferenstein
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When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. [tweet https://twitter.com/aminmusa/statuses/341330445511843840] We hold these truths to be self-evident, that , that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. –That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. –Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world. [Image credit: , , , , ]
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France Has A PRISM-Like Program With Millions Of Trillions Of Metadata Elements
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Romain Dillet
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The NSA isn’t the only security agency that’s collecting data. In fact, France’s program is going very strong with of metadata elements stored in a Parisian basement, according to a report from French newspaper . The program targets phone communications, emails and data from Internet giants, such as Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft and Yahoo! It is deemed illegal by the , the French data protection authority, but it is not as clear as it seems. At least eight deputies and senators know about the program but they have been sworn to secrecy. They mention 2008 as a pivotal year for the DGSE (General Directorate for External Security), which could be the starting point of the unnamed surveillance program. The DGSE entirely designed the program and no data protection representative is overseeing it. As is the case with PRISM, the agency only collects metadata elements — a call history, recipients and sizes of text messages, email subjects, as well as all your activity on services operated by Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo! and Apple. With a single query, French authorities can list your contacts. For each contact, they know how frequently you talked and what communication channel you are using. For phone data, the DGSE uses electromagnetic technologies to collect the metadata. The caller’s location is recorded as well. That’s why a former DGSE official claims that the program isn’t illegal. It doesn’t actually record your calls. The DGSE is on the fringe of illegality. In the basement of DGSE’s headquarters, a three-story high supercomputer handles this flow of information. The computer even heats up the entire building, according to Le Monde. It could be the second biggest supercomputer in Europe behind the one in London. So far, the French government hasn’t reacted or provided a statement. While European Union representatives — including French president François Hollande — were by the NSA/PRISM controversy, it appears that and now France use the same methods to collect data.
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NSA Spying Risks Undermining Trust In U.S. Cloud Computing Businesses, Warns Kroes
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Natasha Lomas
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The risks undermining trust in U.S. cloud computing businesses, the European Commission’s vice-president, Neelie Kroes, has warned in today. Kroes also reiterated calls for “clarity and transparency” from the U.S. regarding the scope and nature of its surveillance and access to data on individuals and businesses living and conducting business in Europe in order to avoid a knock-on effect on cloud businesses. Loss of Europeans’ trust could result in “multi-billion euro consequences” for U.S. cloud providers, she added. Kroes was speaking during a press conference held in Estonia, following a meeting of the EC’s European Cloud Partnership Steering Board, which was held to agree on EU-wide specifications for cloud procurement. In her speech, part of which follows below, she argued that cloud computing businesses are at particular risk of fallout from a wide-reaching U.S. government surveillance program because they rely on their customers’ trust to function — trust that the data entrusted to them is stored securely. Kroes said: If businesses or governments think they might be spied on, they will have less reason to trust the cloud, and it will be cloud providers who ultimately miss out. Why would you pay someone else to hold your commercial or other secrets, if you suspect or know they are being shared against your wishes? Front or back door – it doesn’t matter – any smart person doesn’t want the information shared at all. Customers will act rationally, and providers will miss out on a great opportunity. In this case it is often American providers that will miss out, because they are often the leaders in cloud services. Which brings me to another interesting consequence of recent allegations. Particularly allegations about US government surveillance concerning European partners and allies. If European cloud customers cannot trust the United States government or their assurances, then maybe they won’t trust US cloud providers either. That is my guess. And if I am right then there are multi-billion euro consequences for American companies. If I were an American cloud provider, I would be quite frustrated with my government right now. I do not have an agenda here: I am committed to open markets, to liberal values, and the opportunities of new digital innovations. Yet even I am thinking twice about whether there is such a thing as a level playing field when it comes to the cloud. She added that in the context of a mass surveillance program, such as is apparently being conducted by the NSA security agency, using U.S. companies as its data-harvesting tentacles, being able to guarantee privacy can be viewed as a competitive advantage — which, she suggested, is food for thought for non-U.S. cloud startups and businesses. “Companies focused on privacy need to start coming forward into the light and help them do that. That would be a smart company, indeed. And 2013 is the year. That includes European companies who should take advantage of interest to provide services with better privacy protection,” she said. While Kroes conceded there are “some cases” where it may be legitimate for authorities to “access, to some degree, information held online” — citing child protection and terrorism as “good examples” — she stressed such access must be based on “transparent rule of law” and “is the exception to the rule.” Routine surveillance by governments on digital data turns that on its head by making spying the rule — and thereby risks tainting the U.S. businesses that are forced to comply and spy on routine day-to-day business. “Concerns about cloud security can easily push European policy makers into putting security guarantees ahead of open markets — with consequences for American companies,” she added. “The cloud has a lot of potential. But potential doesn’t count for much in an atmosphere of distrust. European cloud users and American cloud providers and policy makers need to think carefully about that.” However, Kroes made her remarks on the same day it emerged that . While the via its GCHQ spy agency. So the potential pool of European cloud companies that could benefit from any NSA-fuelled U.S. backlash might not be as large as Kroes suggests. [Image by via ]
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AngelList Now Has More Than 100K Startup Profiles, Makes More Than 500 Intros Between Startups And Investors A Week
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Ryan Lawler
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In just a few short years, has very quickly emerged as an indispensable resource for connecting entrepreneurs with investors. Started as an email newsletter, the website now has more than 18,000 accredited investors, including more than 6,000 that it would consider “sophisticated investors” — i.e. superangels and VCs who do a lot of deals. AngelList also has more than 100,000 startup profiles, of which about 3,000 have been funded through AngelList. About 500 introductions happen between investors and entrepreneurs every week, according to AngelList founder and CEO Naval Ravikant. Another 2,000 introductions happen between startups and talent, as developers and engineers who like working in the startup world increasingly turn to AngelList as their go-to place for job listings. Those introductions are double opt-in, with both sides agreeing they want to meet each other. Based on the data that they’ve been able to track, AngelList has resulted in more than $10 million worth of investment per month. But it’s difficult to tell exactly how much investment comes from the platform, since so much actual investing ends up happening offline. What it can track is investing that happens directly on its platform in small dollar amounts — $1,000, $5,000 and $10,000 checks. AngelList handles all the transactions for those types of investments, bundling them all up into a single fund to put into the company. AngelList moves about $2 million a month in direct investments that happen through its platform. “I don’t see us making money through introductions or charging investors or startups. I don’t think anyone wants middle men in the mix,” Ravikant told me. And while there are costs associated with forming funds for smaller investments in startups on the platform, AngelList will likely only charge to cover its own costs there. Where there could be an opportunity to make money is on the recruiting side of things. Right now, AngelList is still scaling up that part of its platform and still sees it as a public service, but over time, Ravikant believes it can make money on that side. That said, it will probably charge much less than anyone else does today.
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CommonFloor Raises $7.5M From Tiger Global, Accel To Be India’s Zillow
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Leena Rao
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, a real estate search engine and listings site in India, has raised $7.5 million in funding from existing investors, Tiger Global Management and Accel India. CommonFloor is similar to Zillow and Trulia but is a marketplace for real estate listings in India, particularly for apartments and gated communities. Similar to other listings sites, the startup includes apartment and home features, amenities, master plan, location map, builder profiles, property pictures, neighborhood profiles and reviews. The site says that property listings have grown by 500 percent in the past year, with revenue growing 100 percent each quarter. The company also offers apartment management software and accounting software for residential communities and has more than 1,000 paying customers that include builders, agents and vendors. CommonFloor also manages small neighborhood-focused social networks (i.e. NextDoor). The startup says that the new funds will be used to expand into new markets, for sales and marketing and for product development. As broadband penetration and smartphone adoption continue to rise in India, we’re going to see successful replicas of companies like and Zillow in the country.
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Valta Turns To Kickstarter To Fund Home Gadget Energy Management Platform
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Darrell Etherington
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Toronto-based startup to help it bring its remote energy-management system to life, in order to give homeowners complete control over power usage by devices in any home. It combines special socket attachments with a hub, iPhone app and web-based application to deliver energy waste monitoring, as well as remote control of unused devices sapping juice. Valta works by combining sockets with built-in chipsets designed for energy management that can detect inert power vampires with an app that can receive push alerts for when energy is wasted. You can turn off the socket completely from your phone to save energy when that happens, and view which of your home devices are in a “standby” state, where they’re plugged in and consuming juice but not actively being used. The system also uses geofencing to turn off gadgets when you leave the house and turn them back on when you return, which takes away the chance that you simply forget to do it on your own. You can also schedule power off and on events, like turning on the coffee maker or turning off your home theatre, as well as group devices together for easy management of a number at one time. Valta tracks all data and presents it via app- and web-based dashboards that fetch info from cloud-based servers, so you can see how your energy consumption is trending over time. The Internet-connected v-Hub is what ties the cloud to the socket adapters to the iPhone and web apps, which plugs into your home router via Ethernet and can pair with up to 16 individual sockets. Valta also plans to release an Android app in addition to the iPhone app that will be available at launch, the company says. The founding team has lots of experience in hardware engineering, iOS and cloud computing programming and electrical engineering. They have the chops to pull this off, and now they need the cash, which is why they’re looking for $100,000 to get it off the ground. Backer pre-order systems start at $139, which gets the v-Hub and three sockets, which is around $55 less than what Valta plans to charge at retail when it ships sometime around November.
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Android ‘Master Key’ Security Hole Puts 99% Of Devices At Risk Of Exploitation
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Natasha Lomas
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Mobile security startup has unearthed a vulnerability in Android’s security model which it says means that the nearly 900 million Android phones released in the past four years could be exploited, or some 99% of Android devices. The vulnerability has apparently been around since Android v1.6 (Donut), and was disclosed by the firm to Google back in February. The Samsung Galaxy S4 has already apparently been patched. It’s likely that Google is working on a patch for the vulnerability. We’ve reached out to the company for comment and will update this story with any response. Bluebox intends to detail the flaw at the end of this month but in the meanwhile it’s written a delving into some detail. The vulnerability apparently allows a hacker to turn a legitimate app into a malicious Trojan by modifying APK code without breaking the app’s cryptographic signature. Bluebox says the flaw exploits discrepancies in how Android apps are cryptographically verified and installed. Specifically it allows a hacker to change an app’s code, leaving its cryptographic signature unchanged — thereby tricking Android into believing the app itself is unchanged, and allowing the hacker to wreak their merry havoc. The flaw is made worse if an attacker targets a sub-set of apps developed by device makers themselves, or third parties — such as Cisco with its AnyConnect VPN app — that work closely with device makers and are granted system UID access. This sub-set of apps can allow a hacker to tap into far more than just mere app data, with the potential to steal passwords and account info and take over the normal running of the phone. Here’s how Bluebox explains it: Installation of (and their data) currently installed. The application then not only has the ability to read arbitrary application data on the device (email, SMS messages, documents, etc.), retrieve all stored account & service passwords, it can essentially take over the normal functioning of the phone and control any function thereof (make arbitrary phone calls, send arbitrary SMS messages, turn on the camera, and record calls). Finally, and most unsettling, is the potential for a hacker to take advantage of the always-on, always-connected, and always-moving (therefore hard-to-detect) nature of these “zombie” mobile devices to create a botnet. While 99% of Android phones being technically vulnerable to app hackers is a tough stat to ignore, it’s worth emphasising that just because such a flaw (apparently) exists it doesn’t mean it has or will be widely exploited — especially as, in this instance, it has been flagged to Google prior to being made public. And Google is presumably hard at work on a fix. That said, the nature of the Android ecosystem does slow down the patching process. On the fix front, Bluebox notes that it will be up to device manufacturers to “produce and release firmware updates for mobile devices (and furthermore for users to install these updates)”, adding: “The availability of these updates will widely vary depending upon the manufacturer and model in question.” Getting timely OS updates has always been a problem for Android users (Nexus owners are the exception), owing to Android’s openness necessarily encouraging variation and fragmentation within the ecosystem, with different manufacturer skins and carrier additions all standing in the way and delaying updates. That likely means the window of risk attached to this latest Android vulnerability takes longer to close for the majority of users than many would be comfortable with. In the meantime, Bluebox advises the following: — not because there’s a high actual risk of users being infected with malware but because, in relative terms, it’s the biggest target for mobile malware writers, being as it’s the dominant mobile OS. It’s also not as locked down as some other mobile platforms, making it an easier target for hackers. Yet its worth stressing that mobile malware remains a very marginal risk, even for Android users, and especially if you’re a mainstream user getting your apps from the likes of Google Play, rather than alternative third-party app stores or routes. This latest Android security flaw adds to the general low-level risk attached to using Android but how widely it ends up being exploited by malware writers remains to be seen — so how much more actual risk it introduces into the ecosystem is hard to quantify. According to a report in , Google has already modified its Play Store’s app entry process so that apps that have been modified using this exploit are blocked and can no longer be distributed via Play.
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AT&T Considers Selling Your Browsing History, Location, And More To Advertisers. Here’s How To Opt Out
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Greg Kumparak
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Good news, everyone! Wait, no. Not that one. The other one. Bad news, everyone! AT&T is considering selling your usage data (location, web browsing history, etc.) to advertisers, having seemingly decided that it’s been too long since everyone was mad at them. They noted the plan in a preview of an upcoming change to their privacy policy published earlier . AT&T is quick to point out that other companies, like Verizon, have been doing this for a while. (Oh, okay — as long as data is getting thrown about, too, I guess it’s okay. Cough.) They also note that Facebook and Google do similar things, somehow forgetting that those users generally aren’t already paying those guys $100 a month for a phone that can only make or receive calls when it feels like it. If there’s any upside, it’s that AT&T is promising to anonymize and aggregate the data before they sell it. It’s just too bad that “anonymizing” large chunks of data At least you’ll be getting a sweet discount on your bill since AT&T is making a bit of change slingin’ your daterbits around, right? Just kidding, you won’t. They’re just going to use it to show you “more relevant advertising.” Fortunately, it’s not too hard to opt out — you just have to know to do it, and then dig around AT&T’s site to find the link. Don’t feel like digging? Here’s the link you’ll need: . Sign in, opt out, and you’re done. If you feel like digging a bit deeper, here’s AT&T’s about opting-out of things like this. And for all of you who might’ve just learned that your carrier probably does something similar:
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Songza Founders Talk About Newly Launched Club Songza, Competition From Apple, Pandora
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Jordan Crook
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is one of the hottest music-streaming services on the market, with a special feature called Concierge that matches specific, expertly crafted playlists with activities it thinks you might be doing based on time, day and your preferences. Until very recently, Songza was an entirely free experience with a few visual ads (never audio ads) to help pay the Songza bills. But Songza has just introduced a few new revenue streams to the mix, including native advertising, high-intensity pre-roll experiences, and a subscription ad-free version of the app called . According to co-founders Elias Roman and Peter Asbill, users had been clamoring for an ad-free Songza for a long time, and now for $.99/month, they have it in Club Songza. And beyond that, users will have access to exclusive content, including special activities like “stargazing,” celebrity-crafted playlists, and especially rare songs that can’t be heard anywhere else. Obviously, $.99/month is a pretty low barrier to entry, but with the growth of Songza’s userbase, it should still rake in some cash for the startup. Songza reports that, in May, the streaming service saw 4.8 million monthly active users who spend around 70 million minutes every day on the service. This is why competitors like iHeartRadio, which to a tee, Pandora and iRadio aren’t such a threat to the little music startup out of Long Island City, NY. Songza collects so much data around its users, and has been for so long, that the Concierge experience can’t really be copied, Roman tells me. Plus, the company has plans down the road to finally nail social in the streaming space. Roman explains that one-to-many broadcasting is not very popular among many users, as it “outs” their feelings or activities in a way that’s personal. Instead, he sees one-to-one recommendations as a good way to make social work for Songza.
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Bing As A Platform Will Allow Microsoft To Compete With Google For Developer Cred
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Frederic Lardinois
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Microsoft knows how to build platforms, so when it announces , it’s worth taking a closer look. Until last week, Microsoft mostly wanted you to think of as a that could compete with Google. At its Build developer conference, however, the company made a surprise announcement: Bing is now also a developer platform. Microsoft is opening up tools like Bing’s Entity API, speech capabilities, optical character recognition, translation and a number of other tools for developers of third-party apps. It’s also bringing its under the Bing Services umbrella. Microsoft as “an intelligent fabric” that it uses to build products “to help people interact with the world’s knowledge and their surroundings in a more human way.” Microsoft already uses some of these capabilities internally, but it’s now opening them up to others, as well. The Entity API is the highlight of the Bing services. If Microsoft plays this smart, it could establish Bing as the go-to platform for developers who need easy access to information about the real world for their apps. While not everything from Bing’s advanced — Microsoft’s version of Google’s Knowledge Graph — will soon be available through the Entity API (Microsoft has not announced a launch date for the Entity API yet), the company believes it will allow developers “to build scenarios that augment users’ abilities to discover and interact with their world faster and more easily than they can do today.” As Microsoft’s Director of Search told me during a brief chat after Microsoft announced the new Bing developer services, there had been some discussion inside the company about making these tools available to developers outside of the company. It’s a very good sign that those in favor of opening the platform up to outsiders won this fight. The limitation right now is that some of these new Bing services will at least for now only be available for Microsoft’s own platforms, including Windows 8, 8.1 and Xbox One. Given Microsoft’s push to get more and better applications onto the Windows 8 platform (in the form of more “metro” apps), this move makes sense in the short-term, but if Microsoft really wants to turn Bing into a developer platform, it will have to open all of these services to developers on all platforms. Microsoft knows that it’s competing for developers’ attention and mind share. Google already offers a plethora of services for developers, and Microsoft, despite its investment in Azure, Visual Studio, Team Foundation and the ecosystem around them, was never the go-to company for most developers who were looking for API-based services like maps, speech recognition or search tools. If the company continues to invest in Bing as a platform and can demonstrate its commitment to these tools, it has a real chance to attract many developers who otherwise would have never considered using its tools or building for its platforms.
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Meet Consano, The Crowdfunding Platform That Wants To Help Cure Cancer [TCTV]
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Colleen Taylor
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That’s what Molly Lindquist believes, so she founded a non-profit organization called for allowing people to browse through vetted medical research projects at select universities and research institutions, and then contribute funding directly to the ones they find compelling. It’s a fascinating model that could really shake things up and help to empower individual scientists. So we invited the Portland, Oregon-based Lindquist to come by the TechCrunch TV studio when she was in San Francisco recently to tell us all about it. Lindquist told us that herself is a breast cancer survivor, so the roots of Consano come from a very personal place. She realized when she was diagnosed that she wanted a way to provide direct funding to research about the specific gene that may have triggered her ailment, which is the same gene her also carry. Organizations such as are wonderful for getting the word out about breast cancer and funding general research, but Lindquist also wanted a way to provide direct support to projects herself. After lots of discussions with medical professionals and research institutions, Consano was born. Please watch the video above to see what the site looks like and hear more about Consano’s beginnings and plans for the future.
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This Tiny, Portable Laptop Stand Will Finally Fix Your Posture
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Billy Gallagher
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“The Roost–stop hunching over your laptop,” I read, back and neck aching as usual. I had been working at my laptop like a gargoyle since early in the morning. But in the Roost, a laptop stand that’s raised , I’ve finally found a solution. My main issue with most laptop stands is that they’re big and bulky. At the least, I’d have to buy a stand for the office and one for home. But as a writer and college student, I’m constantly working on the move–so even multiple stands wouldn’t help me much. Last summer, I resorted to resting my laptop on , which was . Enter , a literal rocket scientist who decided that designing systems at Lockheed Martin wasn’t for him anymore. “I was on this blind path for working on aerospace for probably no other good reason than rocket science sounded cool,” he says. Olander started working at Odesk, where he would work remotely a couple days a week. He says that after a few months, his hands, neck, and back shut down on him, and he had to see multiple doctors and start physical therapy. Olander says he was terrified of being unable to use a laptop, and he bought “probably every stand that’s on Amazon.” “I didn’t find anything that really met the need, because nothing was portable enough to the point that you’d actually use it,” he tells me. Naturally, Olander decided to build something himself, and The Roost was born. The Roost, which Olander builds himself in Denver, weighs just five ounces and folds down to a 1” x 1.5” x 13” package. Olander built it using strong materials (carbon fiber and a super plastic), so it’s also incredibly durable. It’s going for $65 on Kickstarter right now, more than some of the , but well worth it in my opinion. He sent me a near-production unit to test out and I’m going to miss it sorely when I return it. The stand is super convenient–I toss it in my bag every day along with my thin Apple keyboard and track pad, and can quickly set up shop in the office, in coffee shops, wherever. The laptop clips on to the stand and is really secure and sturdy. About four months ago, Olander had a chance meeting with , the creator of the that raised over $10 million, who told Olander to put his project on Kickstarter. Olander set out hoping to raise $10,000, but the stand has obliterated that goal on Kickstarter, now approaching six figures in funding with over a thousand backers. The campaign ends Monday, but Olander says that won’t be the end of the Roost. “I’ve been approached by a lot of folks that want to resell it,” Olander says. “As well as folks interested in joining the team to make it into a real company. I want to explore all ways to produce more Roosts but I’m really set up right here to produce them in my shop in Denver.”
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Ask A VC: Lightbank’s Paul Lee On The Art Of Finding Your Co-Founder
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Leena Rao
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In this week’s episode of Ask A VC, Lightbank partner Paul Lee stopped by the studio. Lee, who is based in Chicago, joined Lightbank as a Partner in February 2011 and has led investments in BabbaCo, Udemy, ElaCarte, Skyvu and Contently. Previously, Lee was Managing Director and Group Head of Digital at Playboy Enterprises and was a founding Partner and Senior Vice President at the Peacock Equity Fund, a joint venture between NBC Universal and GE Capital. Lee wrote an interesting piece on finding your , so we asked him what advice he has for entrepreneurs outside of Silicon Valley who are looking to partner with someone on an idea. We also talked about how founders should structure salaries for themselves and employees at the early stage. Tune in above for more!
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Darrell Etherington
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This Week On The TechCrunch Gadgets Podcast: Boxee Bows Out, Samsung And HTC Suffer And Moto X Unmasked
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Darrell Etherington
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Boxee got , and announced that it would be closing down the Boxee Cloud DVR’s cloud DVR feature. So that’s done. Both and , albeit in very different ways, and . We’re chatting about that and more on today’s , on this Friday after the July 4th holiday. We’re so festive you can practically taste the BBQ. Today on the show fearless leader John Biggs is absent, but Matt Burns valiantly steps in to lead Greg Kumparak, Darrell Etherington and Chris Velazco into battle. Strap in, take a swig from the beer in that stars-and-stripes patterned beer koozie and enjoy!
We invite you to enjoy our every Friday at 3pm Eastern and noon Pacific.
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No More 3D TV On The BBC Please, We’re British — And Glasses Are A Hassle
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Natasha Lomas
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The grand old BBC may sound about as cutting edge as a buttered scone and a cup of Yorkshire Gold but the taxpayer-funded British broadcaster has pushed the boat out on the digital front, with, for instance, its pioneering iPlayer on-demand TV service. It’s also not been a tech laggard when it comes to 3D. Auntie — as the Beeb is affectionately referred to by long-term consumers of its programming (aka the British) — has been running a pilot 3D broadcast program for the past two years. But not for much longer. It’s decided to pull the plug on 3D TV production, in the face of massive audience 3D ennui. According to a report in the , Kim Shillinglaw, who heads up the Beeb’s 3D pilot, told the that viewers were finding 3D too much of a hassle — adding that the time was therefore right “for a good old pause.” Swiftly followed by a nice cup of tea, no doubt. “I have never seen a very big appetite for 3D television in the UK. Watching 3D is quite a hassly experience in the home. You have got to find your glasses before switching on the TV,” she is quoted as saying. She also speculated that take-up of the tech might be being held back by difficult economic conditions. When times are tough, a 3D TV set isn’t exactly going to top the shopping list. “We will see what happens when the recession ends and there may be more take-up of sets, but I think the BBC will be having a wait and see. It’s the right time for a good old pause. I am not sure our job is to call the whole 3D race,” she said. So, in other words, 3D isn’t going to fly until glasses-killing autostereoscopic TV sets have been honed to headache-free, multiple viewing angle perfection. And are cheap as chips. Which means: don’t wait up for this one. The forthcoming Wimbledon ‘ and ‘ tennis finals will both be broadcast in 3D by the BBC but Shillinglaw said there are no further plans for the format after the trial period ends. According to the , the last 3D BBC broadcasts will take place in November — and will include a 50th anniversary episode of .
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“Made In America”
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Matt Burns
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The five-day work week. Chevrolet. Grand Funk Railroad. Steel plants on the shores of Lake Michigan. This is America. There is a rebirth happening right now. It’s happening all over the country. Pockets of makers here, a consumer electronics company there. A startup accelerator . They’re appearing all over this land. And it’s all heavily advertised. “Made in America” is, sadly, in vogue right now. “Imported from Detroit”, “This American buys American.” All bumper sticker catch phrases fueling America’s greatest innovation: capitalism. And why not? Manufacturing is the brawn that built this land but capitalism is the beating heart. Capitalism drives this country. And it drove companies out, too. Labor is cheaper elsewhere. Tim Cook’s supply chain management became the norm. Profit and loss statements trended towards “build it somewhere else.” “Made in China”. It’s stamped on the bottom of my coffee mug. On the back of my phone. It’s everywhere because we put it there. There was a time not all that long ago that America was the center of manufacturing and innovation. General Motors. Bell Labs. Motorola. Fairchild Semiconductor. Silicon Valley. The lone entrepreneur making it big. America has always been a land of chance. Risk it all and move out west. Find gold. Build with silicon. It’s this sense of entrepreneurship that makes the country great. Most startups fail. A dramatic amount fail. But it’s that sense of possibility that initially made America great and is fueling its current growth. All across this land, young technology companies are popping up, addressing the needs of a select few or the masses. App makers building with bits. Makers building with things. Coders hacking together and occasionally stumbling upon something great. There’s innovative companies like Tesla, MakerBot, and Betaworks. There are visionaries like Limor Fried, Troy Carter, and David Karp. Deborah Benton, Marissa Mayer, and Gentry Underwood. They’re all united in building, growing, and making “things” in America. There’s the lesser known: , a data-driven farming startup from the middle of Michigan. , attempting to reinvent transportation. And Durham, NC’s , makers of customizable paper journals. These companies, along with countless others, do not have to stamp a “Made in America” sticker to the front of their products to sell it. They’re making a world-class product, in America, that will sell on its own accord. They’re doing it right.
I write this while sitting in a diner in Flint, Mich. It’s a safe harbor in the midst of massive abandonment. Capitalism built my city and ultimately destroyed it. And it’s the fine people here and in other cities like it who are wronged by companies playing to their broken emotions. American consumers want to buy and use products made by Americans. Lay-Z-Boy recliners. Whirlpool washers. Chevy trucks. Many will pay a premium with the hope a bit of their cash will help other Americans. Sadly, the spirit of capitalism preys on the ignorant. The Chrysler 200 might be imported from Detroit as the proclaimed. But it’s a pathetic example of an automobile compared to other U.S.-made cars. Eminem might sell his song for a paycheck, but he wouldn’t buy that car. There’s an ugly side of “Made in America”. The part where the American origin of a product is more loudly advertised than the products themselves. The products advertised with a waving American flag, white picket fence and an old Ford truck. It’s sickening. Disgusting. The “Made in America” label should be used with pride, not greed. It’s too often a cheap ploy. A tactic designed to incite emotion over practicality. And it’s this trick that companies need to use sparingly. Companies need to walk a delicate line, carefully crafting an American message without overplaying a point that can be construed as trivial. is a Detroit-based watch maker. I spoke with the company’s CEO, Heath Carr of Texas’ Bedrock Manufacturing, at some length about Detroit, making watches, and selling on a schtick. “Ultimately it came down to ‘Why not Detroit?’,” Carr told me. “Everyone we met [in Detroit] wanted to help. There wasn’t a city that had a trained workforce. We didn’t expect there to be one.” Shinola now employs 45 people in Detroit making watches, bikes, and paper journals. And Detroit needs every job it can get. Born out of Bedrock Brands, a privately held Texas-based firm owned by the founder of Fossil Inc. Tom Kartsotis, Shinola now occupies a 30,000 square foot space in Detroit’s historic Argonaut building. Carr explained that Shinola wants to be transparent. Its website lists the sources of all the materials used. In this case, the transparency is obnoxious. The “Made in Detroit” mantra is exclaimed loudly throughout Shinola’s website. Carr believes that the product can stand on its own. Most watch geeks disagree, pointing to inexpensive Swiss movement and mass manufacturing. But the watch isn’t the problem. It’s the messaging. Tone down the rhetoric. “Where American is made.™” Just make the damn product. Who cares where it’s made? Makerbot invigorated the maker movement and never left Brooklyn. Yet these amazing products are advertised on their own merits, not place of origin. The only place you see Brooklyn is hidden under the machine – where “Made In China” used to hide. MakerBot’s Bre Pettis explained to me that American manufacturing is extremely important to him. A fact proven by the pains the company had to endure keeping the manufacturing process in the New York City area. “By manufacturing MakerBots with Brooklyn pride, we can iterate faster and innovate more,” Pettis said. “Our mechanical engineers work closely with our manufacturing engineers to build solutions quickly. It really helps to have everyone in the same borough when you’re making a precision engineering tool like the MakerBot Replicator 2 Desktop 3D Printer.” There are inherent advantages of having products built here. Practical advantages. Financial advantages. And yes, advertising advantages. Tesla, for their part, is trying to sell cars in America. On their own. But in every city they try, the entrenched car dealerships are trying to stop them. Mom and Pop car lots, fat on the benefits of zero competition, are standing in the way of the upstart manufacturer wanting to sell cars on their own. “That’s not how it’s done.” That’s not how it’s done in America, friends. If we’re going to put down the flag and do business, it should be on an even playing field. Tesla isn’t going to sink Grandma’s Chevy out on Route 60. Grandma is going to sink her own dealership if she doesn’t grow up. I live just outside of a dead factory town. It’s with that thought that I find it so refreshing to see small-scale manufacturing return. Parts are made elsewhere, sure, but it’s important to many that the gadget is, at least in part, from here. Take the Nexus Q. It was to be made in America at a low volume facility just up the road from Google. That was bigger news than the device’s feature set. Many Americans desperately want to buy products from here. Assembled, manufactured, made — the actual amount of work doesn’t matter. Just as long as American hands had a part in the process before the product was encased for retail. They want to feel like part of the solution. They want to help fix the country. And a few companies have hijacked that sense of pride to hawk their wares. But that’s freedom. That’s America.
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Local Food Delivery Service Fluc Goes Live In Palo Alto And Menlo Park
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Ryan Lawler
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People like to eat and generally don’t like to cook. All of which means that food delivery is becoming all the rage among startups lately.* Anyway, there’s a whole new food delivery service called , opening up for service in Menlo Park and Palo Alto, that hopes to let people pick and choose all their favorite foods and have them delivered for a small fee. Fluc, which stands for Food Lovers United Corp, began the way I imagine most food delivery services do: as a result of its founders feeling lazy and not wanting to cook. In this case, Fluc founders Tim Davis, Adam Ahmad, and Pako Magdaleno were all living together in a hacker house in Palo Alto. None of them wanted to use the kitchen, because it was generally messy all the time, and because, well, hackers. So they started thinking about what they would want out of a food delivery service. They wanted something fast, of course, and they wanted something comprehensive — something with every menu item of every popular restaurant nearby. They wanted something where they could modify their orders and make sure that their cheeseburger didn’t come with pickles or that their Starbucks order came with an extra shot of espresso. So they built all of this into the system. Fluc is starting small, just making deliveries in select areas of Silicon Valley at first, and only launching with a select group of restaurants in those areas. The startup has a website of options available and also a mobile app for perusing choices. Unlike services such as Seamless or Grubhub, it doesn’t start out work directly with the restaurants themselves, so the team is inputting menu options on its site and app. That said, it is talking to local businesses about the service as a way for them to provide delivery without paying for a “delivery guy” who sits idle most of the time. The startup wants to differentiate itself mainly by the ability to customize your orders, and the fact that they do only food. There’s no writing special notes which get ignored by the restaurant — all orders are fully detailed. They also have nice branded boxes to keep food warm while en route and cup holders to keep drinks from spilling. (There’s also the name, which inspires hilarious conversations like, “Let’s get Fluc’d” and “Fluc me? No, Fluc you.”) Fluc charges a $5.95 flat rate for each delivery, and has inflated prices of menu items slightly within the app — about 5-10 percent to make a small margin on those sales. ==
* Seriously, I’ve talked to like, a dozen of them over the past month.
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Samsung’s Quarterly Earnings Suffer On Slowing Growth, Gives Apple Room To Shine In The Fall
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Darrell Etherington
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Samsung has , which is bad news since those expectations were already pretty low. The slowing growth of the smartphone market dominator is being attributed to lackluster Galaxy S4 sales. Samsung’s premiere handset has reportedly sold 20 million units since its launch, according to a from Yonhap News, however. Overall, the picture is of a briskly selling phone (faster than the previous generation) that’s nonetheless not growing Samsung’s smartphone sales at the rate analysts and investors were hoping. Samsung may be able to rectify this by throwing a whole bunch of new devices at the problem, including the S4 Active, that fall under the S4 brand and therefore inflate the number of sales for the flagship, but it’s still an issue that Samsung’s Galaxy S4 isn’t selling at the pace of either the iPhone 5 or the iPhone 4S when those devices first debuted. Samsung didn’t do poorly by any standards that normal people would respect: its profits were up to a record $8.3 billion, for instance. But stock price tumbled on the miss of expectations, and fears there’s no longer anywhere to go higher in terms of the global smartphone market. Fears the global market is reaching a saturation point aren’t limited to Samsung; Apple CEO Tim Cook has been discussing the , a subject which wouldn’t come up unless there were worries that wasn’t the case. Still, the less-than-staggering Galaxy S4 numbers give Apple a big chance to impress in the fall, and for Cook and company to show investors, analysts and company watchers that there is indeed room for continued growth in the smartphone market. There are challenges inherent in accomplishing that, however; the iPhone coming in the fall is likely an iPhone 5S device, which would be only a slight hardware improvement over the iPhone 5, and not a complete redesign. That could fail to convince some to upgrade. But there’s also the possibility Apple will debut a low-cost version of the iPhone, which could greatly enhance iPhone total sales numbers for the period. Word is this won’t be bargain-basement priced, but as the first addition to the iPhone line that is made concurrent with the flagship model, it’s sure to attract a lot of attention if it ships. The industry is looking at Samsung and Apple for indication of the health of the global smartphone market, and they’ve found Samsung lacking this time around. That puts a lot of pressure on Apple to perform come fall, but with a newly redesigned mobile OS and a potentially dramatic change to the iPhone product line, Cupertino could be up to the challenge.
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How Health Trackers Could Reduce Sexual Infidelity
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Gregory Ferenstein
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I wear a that monitors minute-by-minute my heart rate, calories burned, steps taken, and if I’m sleeping. Anyone who had access to my data, like a spouse, could tell when I was exercising. Most importantly, they would know if I was having sex — and how intense it was. Indeed, I inadvertently discovered that people knew whether I was engaging in sexual congress after I gave my health tracker data to a friend and he wryly quibbed about my night time activities. I instantly realized that it will become far more difficult for anyone to cheat on a spouse or fake an orgasm, thanks to a radical transparency in daily exertion that will follow health trackers as they become ubiquitous. Health trackers give me a daily read-out of my minute-by-minute exercise and when I’m sleeping. Here, for example, is the calorie burn profile of weight-lifting at the gym: Notice from 7:15pm to 8:45pm, I have a steady state of calorie burn around 5.7 calories per minute. It also records my steps as I walk between lifting stations (in the graph below, I start walking more than usual at the same time I’m at the gym). Sex looks quite different: it has a bi-modal caloric burn distribution (i.e. lots of calorie burn at the beginning and end). Most importantly, I wasn’t walking much while I was burning calories (not shown). Were I married, my wife might like to know why I burned 100 calories between 1:07 to 2:00 am, without taking a single step, and fell asleep right afterwards. Many married couples hold joint online accounts for Facebook and email, and even more share their passwords. Anyone looking at my exercise readout that night would instantly know that I was getting a sweaty workout. Skeptical readers may claim that not all infidelity happens at night, and that clever philanderers could simply claim that they were hitting the gym, when they were actually knee-deep in sin hotel. But, as we’ve seen above, sex looks quite different than weight-lifting. In fact, the profile of sex looks distinct from any exercise I’ve recorded myself doing, including weight lifting, sprinting, yoga, martial arts (capoeira), TRX, spin class (stationary cycling), grocery shopping, and cleaning the house. For reference, the It’s important to note that health trackers aren’t perfect measures of calorie burn. For instance, the makers of BodyMedia tell me that the band has difficulty matching the minute-by-minute intensity of circuit training, like Crossfit, where the body moves from one high-intensity exercise to the next. I remember a distinctly different experience than BodyMedia recorded that night. But, the accuracy doesn’t matter, since the calorie profile of sex is sufficiently different than normal exercise to alert a suspicious spouse to illicit activity. In other words, I couldn’t disguise my nefarious sexual escapades by doing them during the day, even If I wanted to. Nor can someone remove their health tracker: they’re designed to be worn all the time, even in the shower (cue steamy memories). In fact, the next evolution of health trackers are , which never need to be recharged or removed. Of course, in the future, very (very) sophisticated horn dogs could inject software in their health tracker that gave false readings while they are having unwedded relations. But, that wouldn’t help the more common drunken-hookup or an unexpected passion-fueled romp with an ex. Most people don’t get to pre-plan their cheating, which health trackers would virtually eliminate. Aside from cheating, there are a few deliciously intriguing twists from living a life of radical health tracking. Transparency is also likely the end of the fake orgasm, since I will know exactly how hard my partner is working. See, in addition to wearing the BodyMedia armband, I was also wear the Basis watch, which measures my heart rate and skin perspiration (I know it’s a lot to wear, but I think women in San Francisco have come to terms with uber-geeks like me). During the hot night in question, my heart rate steadily climbed from 81 beats/minute to a peak of 135, and quickly dropped to 78 (indicated in red on the graph). My perspiration (blue dots), measured in microsiemens per centimeter (the scientific unit of conductivity), jumped roughly 10-fold throughout the horizontal mambo. In other words, I was getting slippery. “Faking it” doesn’t get the heart rate pumping nearly as much as a body-shaking orgasm. While the Basis watch isn’t designed for accurate heart rate measurements during exercises, even this first generation device can tell you if your partner is working themselves up to a peak of ecstasy or laying around like a dead fish. Indeed, there’s all sorts of fun statistics couples could do to quantify their love-making (or lack thereof). You could track the average duration of sex over a decade, the number of afternoon delights in a month, or the quality of one’s sleep with and without a partner to spoon. For techno-optimists (like myself), radical transparency in sex is a welcome part of life: it will reduce cheating and prompt honest conversations about satisfaction. For techno-pessimists, it opens a can of worms (no pun intended) that people would sooner keep closed. But, like it or not, transparency is coming. In fact, I bet after this article, a few suspicious readers will look up their partner’s late night exercise habits. And, statistically speaking, there’s a high probability that of those couples who have health trackers, some have been cheating on each other.
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Aviate Reveals A Smartphone Interface That Adapts To You & Your Surroundings
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Sarah Perez
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Given , an Android homescreen replacement app which makes interacting with the social network easier for mobile users, it’s wise to be cautious about the chances for success of other, alternative “intelligent homescreen” apps. Apps like Andreessen Horowitz-backed , for example, which though still in alpha format was recently thrust into the limelight following a recommendation on . Supposedly, a user happened upon the app’s alpha version which had been live on Google Play in the hopes of picking up a couple hundred early testers, and then shared that link in Reddit’s /r/Android section. Whether clever viral marketing or legitimate word-of-mouth (one can never be too sure), , unable to scale the capacity the Reddit posting demanded. For those unfamiliar, Aviate was created by an ex-Googler team at ThumbsUp Labs in Palo Alto, and closed on . Its efforts involve a smart Android homescreen replacement, where apps are automatically categorized and shown to you based on your current context like home, going out, night, etc. At the time of the funding announcement, the company spoke only vaguely of the app’s capabilities, explaining that the overall goal was building a mobile interface that adapted to users, rather than offering a grid of apps. It’s an idea whose time has surely come. Today’s app stores are operating at full capacity, even as the app store gold rush shows . At this year’s WWDC, for example, Apple announced there available for download, and Google’s Android marketplace, Google Play, isn’t too far behind with over 800,000 apps, according to in May. No user would ever download every mobile application, of course – and, yes, a lot of them are spam. But even if a user downloaded a fraction of the available offerings, under half a percent for example, you’re still talking about filling a phone with hundreds or thousands of applications. Today, there’s just no way to grow your app collection without dumping some of your lesser-used apps off your device. This problem is a byproduct of the way our mobile interfaces have been designed. Smartphones today are inspired by Apple’s iOS, which presents row after row of app icons which you can stuff into folders to save space. Android, though having popularized the concept of homescreens and app trays, doesn’t deviate far from that original format, especially since users’ homescreens tend to still house a bunch of app icons. Aviate, refreshingly, is quite different. The app does away with the app grid, which is a welcome change, but it also overtakes your entire phone’s interface in the process – like the way Facebook Home does. This is not as welcome. Since the app is still in early testing, it’s unfair to do a formal review. But so far at least, color me intrigued. After installation, basically works like any Android launcher – you have to set it as the default (hit “Always” when prompted), in order to have it respond when you tap your phone’s “Home” button. The launcher is more limited than typical homescreen replacements in terms of being able to add and resize widgets and move them around between various screens. Instead, widgets are placed above a row of favorite apps (Gmail, Phone, SMS, e.g.) and below a built-in date/time/weather drop-down. What’s more interesting however, is the concept of “Spaces” which Aviate introduces. Swiping to the side reveals a list that lets you move between contexts like “Work,” “Nearby Places,” “Going Somewhere” and “Settings,” as well as the default space which is based on the time of day. As you move between these spaces, your screen updates to display a different collection of applications and other built-in widgets, like a Calendar in work or Directions widget for “Going Somewhere.” You can also swipe to the left from any customized homescreen to find more app collections – automatically organized groupings based on apps’ functions and features, like “Social,” “News,” “Music,” “Games,” “Morning Routine,” “Grocery Shopping,” “Home” and more. And if you don’t have enough apps for one of these categories, you just tap the “new” button for an app recommendation. Another swipe takes you to an A-Z list of applications, which you can scroll through like an address book. What’s interesting about Aviate is that it doesn’t just redecorate your homescreen, it actually updates as you change what you’re doing. For example, when you wake up, you’ll have one display with meetings and weather info, but when you’re out driving, you’ll have another with traffic and directions. The problem it has, though, like Facebook Home does, is that it takes over your smartphone’s interface entirely. I’d prefer being able to access Aviate as an add-on to Google Now, perhaps, or through a special gesture from my “normal” homescreen. It’s disconcerting to have to give up the personalization efforts I’ve already made in order to have the benefits of its contextual intelligence. That being said, there’s a grain of an idea here that’s truly radical, if deceptively simple in its execution: that our mobile devices need to organize themselves around us and our lives, instead of the other way around. After spending more than a few hours with a phone that seems to have an intelligence of its own, it’s obvious just how dumb our phones today really are, and how much further they can still go. Aviate co-founder Mark Daiss says the team is now working on improving the performance, refining the UI and UX, and squashing bugs, as well as building out more Spaces while improving the content in those that already exist. The invite system is live in the now, but the company does not plan on releasing more for at least a week or two, if then. Stay tuned.
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Google Ordered To Amend Its Unified Privacy Policy In Europe By September
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Natasha Lomas
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continues to . In the latest development, the U.K.’s has confirmed it has written to Mountain View to confirm the privacy policy raises serious questions about Google’s compliance with the UK Data Protection Act (h/t to for spotting). Specifically, the ICO said it is unhappy about the level of information Google is providing users about how their data is being used. In a , a spokesperson said: “We have today written to Google to confirm our findings relating to the update of the company’s privacy policy. In our letter we confirm that its updated privacy policy raises serious questions about its compliance with the UK Data Protection Act. “In particular, we believe that the updated policy does not provide sufficient information to enable UK users of Google’s services to understand how their data will be used across all of the company’s products. “Google must now amend their privacy policy to make it more informative for individual service users. Failure to take the necessary action to improve the policies compliance with the Data Protection Act by 20 September will leave the company open to the possibility of formal enforcement action.” The watchdog confirmed to TechCrunch its three main areas of concern — namely that Google needs to provide more information about how it processes users’ personal data; that Google needs to inform users specifically what their personal data is being used for so they fully understand the implications of using Google’s services; and that it must inform users when their personal data is being retained in a way they might not expect. Here are the ICO’s three areas of concern in full: An ICO spokesman said it has various enforcement action options it can take against Google if the company fails to amend its privacy policy by September 20 — including serving Google with an enforcement notice — “which is essentially a legal stop-now order… if they breach that it could be taken to the courts” — and also a monetary penalty of up to £500,000. “That’s for serious breaches of the data protection act that cause, or have the potential to cause, substantial damage and distress,” the spokesman added. The spokesman noted that its main areas of concern are “similar to those already raised by the French, Spanish and other data protection authorities also investigating this issue”. six European countries kicked off data protection investigations into Google’s unified privacy policy: France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, and the U.K. This means Google is facing enforcement action on multiple fronts in Europe. “France has also put a legal order in place on its recommendations so if they don’t comply with ours by the 20th of September there will also be problems across Europe,” the spokesman added. A Google spokesperson provided the following statement in response to the ICO’s action: “Our privacy policy respects European law and allows us to create simpler, more effective services. We have engaged fully with the authorities involved throughout this process, and we’ll continue to do so going forward.”
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HTC Suffers Another Bad Quarter, With Profits Down 83% In Its Q2
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Natasha Lomas
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HTC has just put out unaudited results for its Q2, with profits down 83% on last year. The Taiwanese phone maker, which is battling for oxygen in the fiercely competitive Android OEM smartphone space dominated by South Korea’s Samsung, said its total revenues for the quarter reached NT$70.7 billion ($2.35 billion). Profits came in at NT$1.25 billion ($41.63 million), , with earnings per share after tax standing at NT$1.50. HTC’s Q2 profits were higher than the NT$85 million it made in the previous quarter but down from NT$7.40 billion it made a year earlier. The reports that the average expected net profit of seven analysts it polled for HTC’s Q2 was NT$2.0 billion, making for another sizeable miss for HTC. The latest results put a dampener on some more positives signs last month. HTC’s surged 48.03% — its best uplift all year — but for June took a considerable dive, down 23.88% month-on-month and 26.43% year-on-year. That’s a worrying sign for the company which has been banking on its flagship HTC One handset keeping the tills ringing as it works to expand its portfolio, and . The problem HTC faces is extremely fierce competition in the smartphone space, with rivals like Samsung wielding a huge portfolio of devices at multiple price-points taking more and more share of the market. HTC has announced a smaller, more affordable version of the HTC One — the — which it will be hoping can grab share from the likes of the but the One Mini has yet to hit shelves. Trying to turn around a phone business with just up for grabs is a huge ask. A is due to go on sale next week, albeit alongside a Google Play edition of Samsung’s Galaxy S4.
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Google Glass Could Soon Get Device Locking, Music Player And ‘Boutique’ App Store, Firmware Reveals
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Darrell Etherington
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Google Glass is still a pre-release product that’s fairly rough around the edges, compared to a lot of shipping consumer hardware, but new clues (via ) from the latest firmware update suggest that there are a number of practical additions coming to the device. Those include a Glass app store dubbed “Boutique,” which would be a welcome addition for app discovery, as well as a locking mechanism that would let it be locked down when not in use using a swipe gesture code combo. The lock feature is something Google has discussed in the past as a means for keeping user data private, so that’s not a complete surprise, but we may see it sooner rather than later. The Glass Boutique, which would offer up Glassware software in one central location directly accessible from the device likewise isn’t surprising, either. Still, this is the first time it’s been mentioned, and indications are that it will offer access to both Mirror API titles like those currently available and native SDK apps that run on Glass itself. New cards are also on the way, which help with media playback. There’s a music player with all the typical playback controls as well as artist and track information, and there’s a note about a video player, too. volume control for the bone-conduction speaker that Google uses to deliver audio without earbuds is also now included in the code, and that feature’s even functional with a little extra hacking. All of these changes are essentially key elements of existing mobile device platforms, like iOS and Android for smartphones. Which isn’t to downplay them; they should result in big functionality improvements for Glass users when they do arrive. The point is that they illustrate just how far off from being a shipping product Glass still is. Glass is said to be headed for a 2014 release, and even these features are likely just the start of what needs to happen between now and then, so it’s nice to see them appearing even in prototype form.
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Goodbye Mr Silva — A Brief History Of East London’s ‘Tech City’
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Mike Butcher
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It was December 2009 and I was headed to a Christmas party at Number 10 Downing Street. This wasn’t exactly a regular diary date for me. Two years in to working for TechCrunch out of London and it had proven harder than I’d thought to attract the attention of government people to the concerns of technology entrepreneurs and startups. This was despite . I guess Twitter wasn’t big enough a deal in 2009. And this wasn’t exactly a tech big hitters event. Sarah Brown, the wife to then Prime Minister Gordon Brown, was throwing a party dubbed , a sort of zeitgeist-driven event of the UK’s top Twitterers, many of them supporting Mrs Brown’s charitable efforts. I presumed I was there after being the that she was even on Twitter, rather than to give my views about why the UK itself had yet to produce a similar such technology giant of the new wave of social media. It was a great party, filled with interesting people. Later, any waifs and strays from the tech community de-camped to the famous Red Lion pub opposite. But, waking up with a mild hangover the next day, I wondered if perhaps we’d get any further than inviting prominent Twitterers to Number 10. Back in 2009, despite some halting attempts to support the burgeoning UK tech startup scene, including a reception for entrepreneurs who had visited Silicon Valley (among them, stars that went on to become huge UK success stories like and ), a party for Twitterers at some government office seemed to be as much recognition most tech startups could get at that time. Government only ever seemed to encounter technology companies when it issued vast public sector contracts, won usually by one of three companies. The previous year the Labour government’s Culture Secretary (who’s Twitter account I had swiped) had set out to regulate Web site content and even strengthen Britain’s iron-fist libel laws online. Instead of encouraging startup innovation, we’d seen the usual lobby-driven legislation, (also, as it happens,supported by the Conservatives) driven through by big record labels and old fashioned tech businesses. There had been some promising signs – there was a big policy shift to – but instead of laws to support tech startups, the then PM, Labour’s Gordon Brown, seemed to prefer a ‘top-down’ approach to tech policy. In March of 2010, Prime Minister Brown announced the , which would be headed up by Tim Berners Lee, creator of the Web. OK, I thought, this is something. But still the focus was handing down laws from above rather than engaging with the revolution that was happening on the ground – and little in the way of backing technology entrepreneurs. For whatever reason – and despite an upcoming election – the Labour government didn’t seem to take much interest in the , which had gradually started to appear in the Summer of 2008. By the time of the general election, it was too late for them to do so. The new Conservative / Lib Dem coalition won the election and Labour had missed their chance to co-opt the support of the booming tech sector. With a brand new Coalition government between Conservative and Liberal democrats, and with the economy in dire straits, it seemed like government would not be focusing very heavily on the comparatively well-off tech sector to concentrate on saving the country from economic disaster. But, just over three years later, and Britain’s technology and science sector scene has had a heck off a lot more recognition than a Twitter party. And it’s largely down to the efforts of one man, Rohan Silva (pictured above). The departure last week of the Prime Minister’s Senior Adviser on Policy was preceded by a party in the Rose Garden of Number 10 Downing Street and a final “Tech City” Breakfast (and it should be noted that the phrase “Tech City” had never been uttered until Silva came along, but more of that later). But while there are no-doubt many such events at No.10 when a special adviser (or SpAd) leaves, this one was perhaps different to the average. After all, how many civil servants can attract Google’s Eric Schmidt (pictured below) to their leaving drinks? Over the last three years, Silva was undoubtedly the prime architect of the UK government’s sea-change in attitude towards the tech startup entrepreneur community. His departure provides us with an opportunity to analyse where we are now, what’s been achieved and what is left to be done. The story starts in 2008. That Summer was fecund with new startup projects as the fruits of the older “Web 2.0” movement started to ripen. Hunting down cheap offices, tech startups in London had gravitated towards the old industrial buildings of Shoreditch, alongside the many creative agencies and artists that had moved there in previous years. The area had been home to the first dotcom boom. Dopplr relocates to a sublet at Moo Studios, 100 City Road, directly overlooking the roundabout. This is the famed and huge Transworld House, which is due to be re-developed, so the rent is cheap. There are regular rooftop barbecues at nearby Last FM and Moo on Friday evenings. about the area, the CTO of Matt Biddulph thought up tweet: “ “. After many Retweets indicated the community’s approval, he and others set out to shout about East London tech startups to anyone who would listen, especially the media. Two days later as the music pumped and the drink flowed, deep in the bowels of the Vibe Bar, at a summer party thrown by influential founder Richard Morross, Biddulph tells an FT journalist of the idea and about a Google map he’ll make of all the startups in the area. A few days later the story breaks. Of course, it as did many others. Much later on, Wired . A definable community had been born. A year past. Other companies gravitated towards the area… Long before this happened, in 2006, well before the Coalition took over, Rohan Silva was working as a policy analyst for the Treasury. One day George Osborne (then the Shadow Chancellor) took him out for coffee and asked him to join his team. “But I’m not an economist,” Silva protested. “That’s Ok, neither am I,” shot back Osborne. It was fortuitous timing. That Silva had begun to realised the growing impact of the technology sector on the economy, and the facts had started to come in. According to Boston Consulting the internet economy’s contribution to UK GDP was approaching 8 per cent, higher than that of any other G20 nation. Silva was also interested in , where society could be coaxed in a certain direction rather than legislated into it. Post election, in a pivotal moment, Silva went on a trip with Jeremy Hunt (then the brand new Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport) to Silicon Valley, and to Google’s HQ, the Googleplex. The trip was designed to land some major investment deals that the PM could announce a few weeks later. After a meeting with Eric Schmidt and Nikesh Arora, Google agreed to create the in East London. A largely unsung hero of this moment was , then head of M&A at Google in London. It was Hansjee who kept pushing the idea internally until a 10 year lease on a building was finally secured (he later left to become an independent investor). Also influencing this new policy was . He was amongst those (arguably the main one) that helped the case regarding the new wave of technology, and, importantly, the fascinating cluster of startups in East London, . He went on a trip to India with government ministers, and Silva, and . In these early days, Jones was Silva’s “in” to this burgeoning scene. And there were other outliers, including, for my sins, me. A year earlier for someone – anyone! – to start a co-working space in East London, as a side project to help startups and entrepreneurs get off the ground. It seemed to me there were too many events, but not enough serendipitous moments where tech people could simply wander into each other and create things, just as they did in Silicon Valley and San Francisco. We need a space to call our own. Frustrated there’d been little movement on this, I started working on the idea with a friend, , in 2009. It was eventually launched in the Summer of 2010 ( , so that is my interest declared). In the process of banging on doors to attract interest and backing, we’d gone to see a few government people, but the conversations on 2009 went literally nowhere. We carried on, thinking tech was not a priority for that government, just as other governments had treated it. It would be up to the private sector to fix this. By the Summer of 2010 TechHub had found a space the Old Street Roundabout. At the same time entrepreneur Charles Armstrong had switched his Trampoline Systems office into a co-working space, . And around the same time the had switched from meeting in the Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese pub to opening a hacker space in Cremer Street. Things were coming together. That October of ’10 I was working out of TechHub, when a guy rang up. “Can I come over and talk to you guys?” he said over a crackling line from New York. The next week, Tim Luke, seconded to , came in direct from his red-eye flight from Heathrow. Gulping down cups of coffee to stay awake, he grilled us and every startup founder he could find for about 4 hours. Then he disappeared. What happened next took many of us in the tech scene pretty much by surprise. A number of people were invited to an East London venue (the Truman Brewery) on November 4th 2010. The excitement was palpable as Prime Minister David Cameron took the stage to to recognise London’s growing technology startup community, as well as the East London tech cluster – but more importantly, board policy ideas like a new Startup Visa and a shopping list of new initiatives. His speech – worked on extensively by Silva – effectively spoke the language of technology entrepreneurs. Startup founders were even invited to speak. Glenn Shoosmith from , who spoke about the need to open up government procurement to SMEs (something which later turned up in actually policy), and Steve Hardman from , who spoke about the need to take action on early stage funding – which later helped inform the widely-praised EIS / SEIS tax changes. It’s fair to say many in the tech startup community were blown away at this hail of initiatives. That, and the rather satisfying recognition that anyone had noticed there was something exciting going on in East London in tech. Certainly it seemed like every event and networking maven in the tech startup scene had suddenly shifted East. Following the pioneering efforts of and , many other things emerged in the area, such as Facebook Developer’s Garage London, Hacker News London and great community events like the Moo annual summer party. Alongside the emergence of TechHub and The Trampery, Michael Acton Smith of Moshi Monsters started (which continues now), and multiple events and organisations later arose including, , , , , , , , , , – the list goes on. Of course, the Prime Minister turning up in “Silicon Roundabout” – as TechCrunch – had something of a positive and negative effect. On the one hand, it was going to blow the cover on what seemed – till then – like an exciting private party. But on the other, it sent the entire movement mainstream. Ultimately this was “a good thing” – tech startup entrepreneurs were suddenly getting the recognition they deserved. After the doldrums of the Dotcom Bust, Tech was allowed to be cool again. And in an era where so many people – many of them young – were looking for jobs, here was a bunch of people actually making new, highly skilled jobs. Although not obvious in the early days, it gradually became clear that Silva was behind this new approach. Supported by an able team including , and , Silva drove the agenda onwards (all four have since left for the private sector). Only a day or so after the PM’s speech, at a hastily convened ‘breakfast’ (there was none, just coffee and tea) Silva presided over a meeting in the famous Cabinet Room of No 10 Downing Street consisting of some of the UK’s leading VCs, major technology companies and four representatives from the East London cluster. Shoesmith, Varley, Christian Ahlert (who runs Mini Bar, the London equivalent of the NY Tech Meetup), and myself. It quickly became clear that Silva was deadly serious. The PM’s announcements weren’t to be a flash in the-pan-media event, with the agenda moving on elsewhere. They were really going to do this thing. There would be no party and then a press release and then nothing. They were actually going to use this idea to make legislation. Over the course of the next few weeks and months, the breakfasts kept going, and going. They got bigger. More stakeholders in Tech and in East London turned up. Bigger tech companies. Representatives from the financial institutions, the Square Mile. Pretty much all the movers and shakers were invited. At almost every one, Silva was there, curating the conversation, and never ducking a subject when something controversial was asked – such as why startups still found it hard to get a fast install of broadband in the area. Silva, was often first in line to berate the poor representative from BT at those breakfasts. He drove forward on the creation of the and brought in a card-carrying entrepreneur, Eric van der Kleij, to head it. This was not without controversy. To some critics it looked like the government was trying to take credit for the organic growth of “Silicon Roundabout” (itself a phrase conjured from the community) and wastefully spending money it didn’t have. The most vociferous of these was the journalist . These critics criticised the £2m budget for the TCIO to be, effectively, a PR company for a cluster which contained no actual silicon or hardware, unlike the hugely successful Cambridge cluster which has seen the rise of the likes of ARM Holdings, the maker of the chips in the iPhone. The cluster had also only produced one sizeable exit, of Last.fm to CBS. Was it really sustainable to draw such attention to one cluster in such a way? But what did happen was something which quite clearly piqued the interest of the media. The previously open secret – (at least amongst geeks) that some of the UK’s smartest, most visionary entrepreneurs were contained in this relatively small, grubby patch of London – was now out. It turned out that the stories of Last.fm, where one founder had slept in a tent on the office roof to save money, which was later acquired by CBS; or the story of Dopplr, hanging out with TweetDeck and Moo.com in the old Transworld House building facing the Old Street Roundabout, were not just random flashes in the pan. The Roundabout already boasted the biggest developer meetup in London (in 2010 Mini Bar had 3,000 members now it has double that) and was sprouting co-working spaces and a myriad new companies. The game was on. Emerging in the area, or later attracted in, were companies like 7digital, AMEE, Conversocial, Duedil, GroupSpaces, Huddle, Mendeley, Moshi Monsters, Mixcloud, Peer Index, Skimlinks and Songkick among others. At least five of them have since been tipped as future IPOs. Almost all were companies which had raised multiple venture rounds. Some companies, like Mendeley, were . Songkick went on to create the biggest hiring event for technology startups London (and possibly the UK) has ever see: . “Silicon Roundabout” was becoming a media sensation. So why, then, do the government start to insit on calling it “Tech City”? Where did the phrase “Tech City” come from? When we first heard it, those of us in the tech scene tended to react with horror. “What was wrong with Silicon Roundabout” we thought?! Let’s hear from Silva himself: “I felt that ‘Silicon Roundabout’ was a great nickname for the businesses around Old St, but that we needed an official name for the cluster as a whole that captured the global ambitions we had for the area (and which would also be easily understood overseas). Also, I believed that the cluster would grow over time far beyond the Old St Roundabout epicentre, and so it was important that the cluster had a title that moved beyond a narrow geographic area. After kicking around other suggestions with various tech folk (eg Silicon City, Silicon Shoreditch), I settled on Tech City.” Whatever the case, it became clear that having an organisation – TCIO – beating the drum for tech startups in a cluster needed a name that people “got” in one go. Explaining that “Silicon Roundabout” had been coined by Dopplr CTO Matt Biddulph at a Moo party in 2008, had gotten retweeted a lot and had ended up on some T-shirts, would have been little complicated. The phrase said Tech and it said City. It didn’t need much more. But the phrase had a three-way effect. It confused the heck out of locals, who suddenly thought these Tech City government types were there to either “help” them (shudder!) or bark orders at them. In fact, Tech City and it’s tiny staff – aided by the long arms of UKTI and British Embassies abroad – simply started bringing people in. Lots of them. Delegations started arriving from just about everywhere, but especially the US. They’d turn up looking for gleaming towers of technology – instead they were presented with grungy Shoreditch back-streets and startup offices bathed in strip lighting. In a very British manner, Eric and his team ploughed on. Where Cambridge had showcased its ‘Silicon Fen’, the Tech City people presented fast-moving startups in SAAS, consumer mobile, enterprise and FinTech startups build by entrepreneurs and engineers who would sink flat whites during the day and pack the pubs and bars of Shoreditch by night. Whether anyone liked the idea or not, with a ‘place’ called ‘Tech City’ to actually visit, the Prime Minister could steer the media’s search light onto the whole theme of technology entrepreneurship, turning up at co-working spaces and convening . It was becoming a case study in political signalling. Suddenly, after years of being labelled mere geeks, startup founders were , and attracting in mainstream newspapers. Did it help awaken the UK to the idea that technology, science and engineering could be sexy again, just as it was for the Victorians? When Isambard Kingdom Brunel was the pin-up of his day? It couldn’t have hurt. movie of 2010 had arrived to help bolster the idea that anyone could join this movement. The UK was busy creating its own heroes of the scene. The main downside was in thinking Tech City was almost separate to London itself. I had many startups CEOs complain to me that they were being discriminated against because they didn’t have an EC1 or EC2 postcode. And that’s absolutely right – why should they be treated this way? The point about recognising the area was that it was, and is, a big cluster in London itself – definitely the biggest cluster, but by no means the ONLY cluster. But then again, there was clearly an external marketing advantage of zero-ing in one particular area. Whether Silva had planned it that way or not, the whole Tech City schtick was more like a Trojan Horse – a foot in the door to open a conversation. And the name proved to be a broad enough phrase that could act not just as a showcase for the largest cluster of new-wave technology startups in London, but a sort of opener for the wider London and UK tech scene itself. And under the pretext of “Tech City” entrepreneurs suddenly found themselves able to talk directly to the policy makers. Silva set up the which included such high flying names as Michael Acton Smith (MindCandy), Eileen Burbidge (Passion Capital), Sherry Coutu (angel investor), Ian Hogarth/ Pete Smith (Songkick), Robin Klein (Index Ventures), Mike Lynch (Autonomy), Richard Moross (Moo), Joanna Shields (Facebook), Reshma Sohoni (Seedcamp), and a number of other heavy-hitters. You can imagine what ideas they fed into him – and it was to his credit that he listened. And the move to bring startup entrepreneurs closer to the heart of government was not without significance in the context of Europe. At the hastily convened in the Summer of 2011 – a shindig thrown largely as part of President Sarkozy’s election campaign – Silva threw a party for UK entrepreneurs at the British Ambassadors residence. A handful of sheepish Paris-based tech entrepreneurs turned up, complaining that their own government had, a week earlier, been frantically ringing around because they had no idea which French tech startups they could invite, or that “ ” was a street full of startups (it was, and is today, despite moves to , as French governments are want to do). Back in London, at the Number 10 Tech City Breakfasts curated by Silva, entrepreneurs conveyed the problems with broadband in the centre of London, the issues around Angel funding, the problems with hiring people outside the EU. You literally couldn’t shut them up. Suddenly, tech entrepreneurs – like Greeks streaming from a wooden horse into Troy – were let into the heart of the UK government’s policy-making unit. It almost certainly lead directly or indirectly to changes in national policy, and Silva lost no time firing off policy initiatives. Indeed, he PM’s nick-name for him was ‘Big Bazooka’ – someone he could fire at a problem to fix it. Within a year, the UK had (March 2011), Google had , the first in the world, in London, (April 2012) and Amazon and Facebook began moves to the area (July, 2012). To a city used to having mere sales offices packed with advertising people, while the real coding was done elsewhere, this was big news. That wasn’t all. There were new tax breaks for angel investment (EIS / SEIS), Entrepreneur Relief, a 10% CGT rate for employees who joined start-ups; moves to open London’s public markets to high growth tech companies (with the London Stock Exchange); the abolishing of stamp duty on the AIM market; the opening up Government ICT contracts to SMEs; creating the UK’s open data agenda; reform of the UK IP regime; and several other initiatives like the UK’s Life Science Strategy. Most of these were in fact driven by Silva. In the year of the Olympics, the pace of this emphasis on tech didn’t let up, with the government throwing an innovation conference for visitors within walking distance of the much sought after Beach Volleyball courts. And the Tech City breakfasts kept coming. Eventually, October 2012 rolled around and Van der Kleij left. For some weeks, the only voice there was , an enthusiastic roustabout who’d run a lot of events in the area and had excellent connections with the developer community – but the organisation needed someone more high profile who could talk to big industry. Silva clearly opened a voluminous contact book and wooed a big hitter to join the project: namely Facebook’s CEO in Europe, Joanna Shields. Shields had which sold Bebo to AOL for $850 million. Shields also had an excellent Silicon Valley pedigree. She had been CEO of Veon (which had sold to Philips), joined RealNetworks, and became, variously, Google’s Managing Director for EMEA, head of People Networks for AOL, and was later hired by Sheryl Sandberg to run Facebook in Europe. Admittedly this move to Tech City by Shields was after Facebook’s floatation, but still this was a huge coup. It meant Tech City area had what few other government initiatives in Europe had – a card-carrying entrepreneur and a seasoned technology executive with a Rolodex to kill for. So when Rohan Silva gave his farewell speech on an overcast Summer’s day in the Rose Garden of Number 10 last week, it seemed as if – even for the harshest of critics – quite a few things had actually been achieved for the state of technology entrepreneurship in the UK. Not everything, of course, is fixed. The critics of Silva, Tech City and the government’s initiatives say a number of issues remain. The Entrepreneur Visa for hiring people from outside the EU has been less useful when it comes practicalities, namely the US – though geo-politics around that issue goes beyond the tech sector. On this point, Silva simply tells me: “Speak to the young Israeli entrepreneur I know who has been able to move to the UK via the Entrepreneur Visa, and you’ll see the difference it’s making.” And a appears drastically over-funded. The jury is out, but most agree the funds would be better spent, perhaps on a world-class conference venue that could attract major technology conferences and events (anyone in London will tell you the Excel centre is too far away and lacks any character). Silva says: “The money is not to refurb the Roundabout. It’s to create a civic space for Tech City that will contain facilities that individual start-ups can’t afford themselves – including 3d printing labs, classrooms and auditoriums. Think of it as a Google Campus on steroids – it’s going to be just as catalytic as Campus for the growth of the Tech City economy and community.” Unfortunately this sounds too much like duplication. Both Google Campus and the many co-working spaces in the area may have something to say about that. The in particular has unleashed a wave of Angel investors, who’ve realised that SEIS almost completely de-risks their investment. Most have seen this as a positive move. However, a criticism of the scheme its low levels – its £150,000 cap could mean that many of the startups who qualify might end up being undercapitalised for the product they want to launch. Of course, this all depends on how the scheme is deployed by investors – but most investors I speak to favour it. And the Left-leaning DEMOS think tank has criticised the Tech City initiative in a report saying startups were “frustrated” and some policies were counterproductive. The fact that some younger startups are moving out because of higher rent could be a sign that Silva over-played his hand. The landlords in the area are certainly happy for all the attention. Although, with the UK economy now showing signs of recovery, cheaper offices just north of the wealthy Square Mile were always in danger of being eyed-up by bigger firms, financial and tech. Silva calls this “a sign of higher demand for office space on Tech City as more companies want to move there, similar to the trend in San Francisco. We’ve done a huge amount to help startups get the space they need, from bringing Google Campus to East London, to supporting the growth of shared working spaces.” Google Campus itself surveyed its own progress and found that it now housed over 100 startups, with one in four moving on to bigger premises. And while the Cambridge cluster has it’s Fab labs and ARM, ‘Tech City’ still needs to prove it can break out of being a cluster focused often on apps, rather than global, game-changing platforms – although the like of Huddle, Moshi, Moo, Import.io and Songkick are clearly having a go. Was it a good idea letting Amazon, Facebook and Google start engineering offices? Would they simply suck the talent out the startups on bigger salaries? In 2013, it seems too early to tell. At the very least we can hope some of that amazing talent will rub both ways, and hopefully towards startups. And then there is the contentious numbers. Tech City says three years ago there was something like 100-200 Tech companies in east London. As of January 2013 they say there are 1,300 tech companies in East London in, with 92,000m2 of real estate acquired by technology, media and communications start-ups in London in the first nine months of last year. And, they say, there’s been a 39% increase last year in City office space rented to ‘tech and media’ start-ups. The trouble is, the numbers look too high. Take this for instance. , the body responsible for promoting San Francisco as a tech cluster (as if they needed to), says the city houses over 1,500 tech companies and the industry employs more than 30,000 people – and that was just in May 2012. It seems fanciful to suggest that London is already equal with San Francisco. In being too eager to please its masters . While everyone agrees the East London cluster has definitely grown, few can agree on the numbers. But London’s big cluster in the East is clearly not shrinking, and is now broadening out to other parts of the city nearby, such as WhiteChapel and Stepney. The White Heat of the technology boom in the area has also added fuel to a project to re-vitalise the furthest reaches of the East End, with . At the end of the day, one still comes across startups that want to move to the East – the desire to be able to be amongst ones’ peers – to bump into each-other, to kick around ideas – still remains extremely strong. If there remain issues to hammer out, the tech community still has a foot in the door of No. 10. The Tech City breakfasts and the TCIO will carry on. Importantly, Chris Lockwood, formerly the US Editor of The Economist, will now take Silva’s place on Tech City and entrepreneurship policy. Daniel Korski, senior policy fellow at the Pan-European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), takes on Silva’s innovation policy work. And what of Silva? He’s clearly left government with plenty of fans. Pete Smith, co-founder of Songkick called him “a great advocate for UK tech entrepreneurs.” Eileen Burbidge, Passion Capital said his “grasp of the ways Government policy can improve the environment for startups has been second to none.” Those new friends might prove useful: He’s moved on and this week began a new career – as a startup Entrepreneur-In-Residence, initially working out of ‘ offices. He says he’s been “straining at the leash” to do a startup of his own, which will likely be in the field of online education. Indeed, here’s a mischievous thought: Was “Tech City” simply Rohan Silva’s own Trojan Horse into his second career? I put that to the man himself, but he laughs and says my theory is “definitely a conspiracy theory too far!” He insists he created the Tech City agenda and associated policies around tech “because I passionately believe in enterprise and innovation – that’s also why I’ve taken the plunge to start my own business!” Well, he’s about – as they say in the US — to “eat his own dog food”. If any of his policies weren’t up to par — he’s poised to find out for himself.
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Solve Media Lands $6M From New Atlantic, First Round, AOL And Others For Its Fast-Growing CAPTCHA Advertising Platform
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Rip Empson
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You know those you run into from time to time during your Web surfing sessions and Internet escapades? Well, a startup named has developed a way to upgrade and monetize those pesky CAPTCHAs and, , is beginning to see real results. In fact, TechCrunch has learned today that Solve Media this week closed a $6 million round of series B financing, led by New Atlantic Ventures, with contributions from First Round Capital, AOL Ventures, BullPen Capital and others. The new round, which co-founder and CEO Ari Jacoby says the company will use to expand its sales and engineering teams so that it can continue developing new technology to improve anti-bot security solutions for publishers, brings the startup’s total investment to $15 million. Yes, it raised $6 million for a CAPTCHA advertising platform. But what’s a CAPTCHA, you ask? For those unfamiliar, CAPTCHAs are those security mechanisms one finds when taking actions across the Web (signing up for accounts, making purchases, etc.) that require us to input a random set of letters and numbers so that, say, Ticket Master knows that a human being is buying tickets to the Giants’ next home game and not some bot or evil supercomputer. Founded in 2009, Solve Media has since been on a mission to bring more value to this necessary-but-annoying real estate by allowing advertisers who run “Type-In” CAPTCHAs to use display ads, video ads or prompt users to type in a brand name or message instead of serving users with those fuzzy alphanumeric puzzles. Naturally, the idea behind Solve Media’s CAPTCHA ad platform, then, is to give publishers an additional revenue stream from the impressions and clicks brought in by these ads and messages. And, in turn, to offer advertisers an alternative way to get their messages in front of consumers, while, running the same ads across CAPTCHA real estate and during the pre-roll before their video ads. If nothing else, the startup’s ad model is unusual. Of course, it’s also one that Jacoby claims delivers 10x higher brand recall than standard display ads. , Solve saw over 1 billion engagements with its Type-In ads last year and expects to exceed that number in the second quarter of this year alone, potentially topping 4 billion for all of 2013. As a result, the company’s revenue projection is forecasted to move up-and-to-the-right as well, as Jacoby estimated that the company will see $13 to $16 million in total revenue this year. The CEO also tells us that the startup is now working with over 100 major brands, like Unilever and InterContinental Hotels Group, and is currently adding “hundreds of publishers each month.” In part, he attributes Solve’s recent customer growth to the fact that its average click-through rate is now over 1 percent, while the average is a fraction of a percent. The startup’s raise today follows the launch of its , which sees it beginning to work with partners like Unilever and Songza to offer alternative ways for publishers to monetize using ads (including video) on their mobile pages. “When it comes to mobile, we use our devices in a very purposeful manner,” Jacoby tells us. “Most mobile advertising stinks because it competes with the content you want to view and is easily — and accidentally — clicked on, which detracts from the value both for consumers and advertisers alike.” The Solve Media CEO believes that, if consumers are going to have to grit their teeth and bear mobile advertising and security mechanisms like CAPTCHA, they should be given a system that allows them to unlock the mobile content they want to view in exchange for ad engagement. Admittedly, as a user, it seems like this model could have the potential to add friction to and further gum up the mobile viewing experience. But, at least it’s a more direct way of advertising than the sneaky, surreptitious display shenanigans that still pervade the mobile Web today.
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Marc Samwer, Marco Boerries And Sonali De Rycker Join TechCrunch Disrupt Europe
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Mike Butcher
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We’re delighted today to announce the first round of speakers for the first-ever conference, to be held in Berlin this October. Disrupt Europe will feature an outstanding slate of global startups, influential speakers, guests and more. The conference lands in Europe just as TechCrunch has seen double-digit growth in unique global visitors over the previous year. While other speakers will be announced shortly, the first speakers at Disrupt Europe we’re announcing are: Marc Samwer holds a Master’s Degree in Law from the University of Cologne where he graduated among the top of his class. After his studies, Marc worked in marketing for Visto Corporation in Mountain View, U.S.A., a Silicon-Valley start-up for communication services. In January 1999, he and his two brothers founded Alando.de which became the market leader of internet auctions in Germany. After the successful sale of Alando.de to eBay Inc., Marc was Managing Director of eBay, responsible for Germany, Switzerland and Austria. Together with his brothers, he turned eBay Germany into the most profitable international site of eBay worldwide. In 2000, Marc and his brothers founded Jamba! AG which became the market leader for wireless content such as music, pictures, games and videos for mobile phones in Europe and the US. In 2004 Verisign Inc. acquired Jamba! AG. In 2006 News Corp. acquired 51% of Jamba. In 2003, Marc received the distinguished Eisenhower Fellowship Award.
Sonali has been active in the European venture business for 14 years focusing on investments in the consumer internet and digital media sectors. Sonali is responsible for investments in KupiVIP, Wonga, Seatwave, Spotify, and Top10. Sonali is also an independent director on the board of IAC. Prior to Accel, Sonali was a Partner at Atlas Venture in London where she invested primarily in internet and software as a service businesses. While at Atlas Venture she led investments in Moo, Globoforce, Skinstore (acquired by Drugstore.com) and Seatwave. She was also a board member at Magicalia (acquired by Exponent Private Equity) and Moreover (acquired by Verisign). Sonali started her career as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs in New York City where she was actively involved in M&A and financings for a number of clients including many high-growth technology businesses. While at Goldman Sachs, Sonali co-founded the Business Development Group, a new business unit within the investment banking division successfully set up to exclusively source and execute on acquisitions of smaller, fast-growing businesses for the Fortune 50.
A German entrepreneur with a passion for making ideas work, Boerries founded his first company Star Division, as a 16-year-old in 1985. The company created the popular office suite StarOffice and later OpenOffice.org. Marco sold Star Division to Sun Microsystems in 1999 and stayed on as Vice President of Desktop & Webtop Software until 2001. In parallel to Star Division he started his second company Star Finanz as a joint-venture with the Deutsche Sparkassen Organisation in 1996, to re-invent online banking with StarMoney – that became the leading product in Germany. Marco sold his share in StarFinanz to his joint venture partners in 2001. After leaving Sun Microsystems and selling Star Finanz, Marco started his third company Verdisoft in the summer of 2001 based in Palo Alto, California and Hamburg, Germany. At Verdisoft Marco and his team developed the Connected Life platform for connected devices like computers, smart phones and connected TV’s. Marco sold Verdisoft to Yahoo in early 2005 and stayed on to lead the ConnectedLife division until early 2009 – driving Yahoo’s Broadband, Mobile and TV efforts, globally. Returning back to Germany in 2009 Marco started his fourth company NumberFour in Berlin to re-imagine the way small businesses are run, and later established offices in Hamburg, Germany and Palo Alto, California. Together with his team he is working hard to develop and design a business platform to fulfill NumberFour’s Mission “Helping 200 Million+ Run Their Business”. I’m sure you’ll agree that these represent some of Europe’s leading personalities in technology today. In addition to onstage panel sessions and fireside chats, Disrupt will also welcome and to the Arena Berlin venue. Startup Battlefield competitors pitch their companies live and onstage to innovators, investors and influencers in the tech community. TechCrunch identifies emerging companies to demo and compete for a prize of €40,000 ($50,000) and the coveted Disrupt Cup, won previously by Mint.com, Yammer, Fitbit, and Dropbox. Companies , and the . The Startup Battlefield will select 30 brand new startups to launch on stage in front of a panel of top VCs and other founders, coverage on TechCrunch and the winner gets the €40,000 prize. We review applications on a rolling basis, so it’s to your advantage to submit as soon as you can. Due to strong demand, it’s unlikely that we will review applications more than once, so please don’t submit a draft application before you are ready. All submissions are confidential unless otherwise permitted by applicants on the application form. PowerPoint slides and video demos are optional but highly encouraged. We reserve the right not to review applications without video demos based on application volume. Startup Alley offers another way for early-stage companies to gain exposure with a setup that encourages both exhibiting and networking, and provides high visibility. Roughly 100 startups comprise Startup Alley with around 50 new companies demoing on Monday and 50 demoing on Tuesday. Startup Alley companies will have the opportunity to sign up for one on one conversations with the editorial staff of TechCrunch, also known as Office Hours. Additional speakers and agenda details will be announced between now and the show – find all the latest information on the Disrupt Europe website. Extra Early Bird tickets are available for a limited time. . Our sponsors help make Disrupt happen. If you are interested in learning more about sponsorship opportunities, please contact our sponsorship team here sponsors @ beta.techcrunch.com Media enquiries by can be directed to John Nolan on john.nolan @ teamaol.com
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YouTube Confirms Renewed VEVO Deal, Takes Stake In Company
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Catherine Shu
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YouTube confirmed that it has renewed its deal with music video distributor VEVO. Not only does the deal allow YouTube to keep VEVO’s videos on its site, but it also requires Google to invest in VEVO. Though the terms of the deal have not been disclosed, Billboard in February that it is worth between $40 million to $50 million and would give Google a 7 percent stake in VEVO. “We made an investment in VEVO,” YouTube said in a statement. “We are excited by their future prospects and to provide YouTube users with the best possible music experience.” The investment is important for VEVO as it continues to build its international presence. The company’s brought the total number of countries it operates in to 12, including the U.S., Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, Spain and the U.K. VEVO has also been expanding its product offerings beyond music videos to apps for iOS, Android and Windows Phone Xbox, as well as . On Google’s end, its investment helps ensure that VEVO won’t sign a content deal with Facebook. Back in February, VEVO started requiring that , which fueled speculation that it was planning to move away from YouTube. YouTube and VEVO’s prior contract ended in April. Before signing a new deal, the two companies negotiated the amount of ad revenue YouTube could take from VEVO’s video stream, which is the top channel partner on YouTube with 50.2 million unique views, . Vevo is owned by Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and Abu Dhabi Media Group.
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Another Video Ad Network Plans To Go Public, As YuMe Files For $65 Million IPO
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Ryan Lawler
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This was supposed to be the year that all the big video ad networks would , and it looks like it’s starting to come true. Less than a week after Tremor Video listed on the NYSE, competitor YuMe , announcing its intent to raise $65 million in an initial public offering. YuMe’s numbers look decent for a company looking to go public: The company had revenue of $116.7 million in 2012, which grew by 70 percent over the prior year. It also increased its gross margin from 38 percent to 46 percent in that time. And YuMe is already profitable, posting net income of $6.3 million, compared to a net loss of $11.1 million the year before. YuMe’s IPO filing comes despite a on the public markets for newly listed . While Tremor opened trading with shares priced between $10 and $11, the video ad network has seen its stock decline to below $8 today. But while Tremor stumbled out of the gate, YuMe actually might be better positioned to please investors, at least from a numbers perspective. Its revenue, gross margin, and net income were all greater than what Tremor showed in its . YuMe is also growing a heck of a lot faster, perhaps due to the proliferation of connected devices serving up video ads. YuMe is betting on more streaming video replacing TV watching, and on more ad dollars shifting to online viewers as a result. The company has an SDK that allows manufacturers to deliver ads from its network into devices like Roku streaming boxes and Samsung connected TVs. That’s probably a pretty solid bet over the long term. The question is how quickly that shift will actually start to happen. YuMe has since being founded in 2004. Investors include SV Angel, Accel Partners, e.ventures, Khosla Ventures, DAG Ventures, Menlo Partners, Intel Capital, Samsung Ventures, Translink Capital and WestSummit Capital.
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Apple Hires Paul Deneve From CEO Spot At Luxury Fashion House Yves Saint Laurent To Work On ‘Special Projects’
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Colleen Taylor
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The fashion world was all abuzz this morning with that high-end fashion house Yves Saint Laurent was losing its CEO Paul Deneve. At that time, the announcement was that the San Francisco Bay Area-based Deneve was leaving to “join the high-tech industry.” Now it’s clear that he’s not just joining any high-tech company — he’s joining one of the biggest ones. has hired Paul Deneve in an executive role, this afternoon. Details are scarce at the moment, but the word is that Deneve will report directly to Apple CEO Tim Cook as a vice president working on “special projects.” The rumors of Deneve joining Apple started to pick up steam earlier today, due to an anonymously-sourced . The leap from Parisian fashion to Silicon Valley tech might seem like a big one, but looking at Deneve’s résumé it doesn’t seem so out of the blue. Though the past decade of his career has been in the upper echelons of the fashion world in senior roles at Nina Ricci, Lanvin, and YSL, Deneve’s also indicates that he worked in sales and marketing at Apple Europe from 1990 to 1997. He also holds a Master’s degree from tech entrepreneur hotbed Stanford University, and work as a part-time advisor to several Silicon Valley startups. And of course, if any gadget company is known for its design principles, it’s Apple. It will be interesting to see what Deneve works on in the months ahead. We’ve reached out to Apple for details and will update this when more details come in.
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VCs Confident In Bitcoin’s Bright Future, Despite So Many Unknowns
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Natasha Lomas
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, the decentralised digital crypto currency, is undoubtedly riding high right now. A few have even . But there’s still plenty of confusion and uncertainty around the nascent digital currency. VCs are clearly thinking about making investments in Bitcoin startups but many are also still in a learning phase, as several investors taking part in the noted today. Passion Capital’s Stefan Glaenzer openly described himself as “totally clueless” and “on a learning mission” regarding Bitcoin, quipping that VCs usually only arrive for the start of their panel and depart abruptly at the end — yet he said he intended to stay the whole day to learn as much as possible. Indeed, as another speaker at the event put it, Bitcoin is rather like the quantum physics of new technologies: anyone who says they understand it really doesn’t. So the issue is this: no one really knows enough about Bitcoin to have fully formed opinions about it yet — not even VCs, even though all the investors speaking on stage at today’s event sounded like they needed no convincing of Bitcoin’s investment potential. Put another way: they’re bullish at bottom, but acting a little bearish on the surface — likely owing to a healthy respect for how much remains unknown. From Bitcoin’s mysterious origins, to the scope of its future role as an alternative currency. To various details to be hammered out in between, such , how banks might react to it, whether governments will accept it or try to kill it, and so on. “I’m as clueless as everyone else out there,” was how Spotify investor and founder of Bitcoin news site Coindesk, Shakil Khan, put it. Founding Coindesk was, he said, at least in part about coming up with a way to educate himself about Bitcoin. Mangrove Capital’s Michael Jackson said the fund hasn’t yet made any Bitcoin investments but is “very prepared to”. “We see the financial services area as something which has a lot of the same trends as we saw in the telecoms area and therefore I’m convinced there are opportunities there,” he said, speaking during a VC panel. Mangrove Capital was an early investor in Skype, and Jackson pointed to similarities between that decentralised comms network and Bitcoin, the decentralised digital currency. Meanwhile, of the nearly 2,000 business plans Passion Capital saw from April 2012 to April 2013, Glaenzer said “there was not a single Bitcoin business plan among them” — his assumption being that Bitcoin startups are therefore mostly bootstrapping. Or at least not throwing themselves en masse at VCs’ feet to get their attention just yet. “You tend to become lazy as a VC,” he added. “You wait until somebody is approaching you. And the reason why I gladly accepted this invite [to the conference] is I want to be more on active side and understand what action is really going on with Bitcoin.” Not getting pitched yet by Bitcoin startups was also something Jackson commented on. “We haven’t received in our inbox, any Bitcoin company per se,” he said. “But something’s going to happen here, it’s absolutely going to happen here and if you don’t get out to listen to people nobody knows you have an inbox so this is part of the outreach we have towards this community.” Of course this lack of Bitcoin pitches is likely to change soon enough, as exposure and awareness grows — in turn helping to dial up the quantity and ambition of startups in the space. Big name investors making public bets is also likely to encourage a few more VC bears to become Bitcoin bulls sooner than they might otherwise. “There is an element of herd mentality around all this,” said Jackson, discussing whether the likes of Peter Thiel investing is a tipping point for the Bitcoin investment ecosystem. “It’s this element of respectability you need when you’re going upstream to the guys who’ve given you the money.” “We’re very much getting to the point where the exposure of the investors and our customers is there — and that’s going to make things a lot, lot easier,” he added. “I feel there is a lot of stuff happening over the next five years,” added Glaenzer. “I’m pretty sure that we at Passion will do one or other investment in this sector.” Nick Shalek of Ribbit Capital, who was also speaking on the VC panel at today’s event, is in the vanguard of Bitcoin startup investment. Ribbit has, he said, already made two investments in Bitcoin startups, as well as investing in Bitcoin (i.e the currency) itself. “Our approach is generally to try to make fewer investments and be more involved with our businesses,” he said. “There are lots of interesting Bitcoin companies we have seen — maybe we’ve made ourselves too available!” Despite being (relatively) bullish about Bitcoin, Ribbit has only had skin in the game since March. “We consider ourselves very early investors in the space,” Shalek said. “We are incredibly early days, and the entrepreneurs who are coming into this space are getting better all the time, all the time, month over month and I think that will continue over the next number of years as Bitcoin grows.” What has Ribbit been looking for in its early Bitcoin investments? Startups that are focused on building trusted consumer brands for the long term, according to Shalek. “What we’ve been looking for at Ribbit is people who are building trusted consumer brands and experiences — and we think that those are enduring if you look across the financial services sector. It’s very important who people entrust their money to, entrust their livelihood to, so with the partners that we’ve been working with in the ecosystem we’ve been stressing that, encouraging them to focus on security, to get regulated… and to always put the user and the user experience first,” he added.
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Facebook Brings Its Mobile Messaging Stickers To The Web As Their Designer Exits
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Josh Constine
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Facebook is rolling out the ability to send private messages with stickers — cute, pre-made, sometimes animated images — from its website. Facebook launched stickers on , but now the web chat smiley button reveals a basket leading to the web sticker store where you can choose from 16 free packs to add to your repertoire. Stickers could keep Facebook users from straying to other messaging mediums. However, Facebook’s sticker progress could slow down. I’ve learned that , the designer who started the Facebook stickers initiative at a hackathon and was their product designer and art director, has just left the company. Stickers for the web was one of her final contributions, which is why she appears in the screenshots below sent out by Facebook PR. Xie had only been with Facebook since 2012 but her departure is a significant loss for the company, whose stickers team will have to carry on without her. She’s now working on a bespoke hyper-local location app. Despite calling it a Sticker Store, for now Facebook confirms that it won’t charge users for sticker packs the way other messaging apps like Line and Path do. While it worked with Universal Studios to create a for the new Despicable Me 2 film, Facebook says it also has nothing to announce regarding the potential for sponsored stickers that brands might pay to have added to the store. The store also doesn’t appear to include any new sticker packs. That doesn’t mean stickers won’t make Facebook money. The fun little visual communication tools could be reason enough for users to stay with Facebook Messages rather than choosing Google Hangouts, the new unified chat system that combines Google+, Google Messenger, and Google Talk (Gchat). Hangouts has no stickers as of yet. Facebook can monetize engagement from messaging and stickers both directly and indirectly, especially on the web. Users might open Facebook to respond to a sticker message, but end up browsing the news feed where they see ads while waiting for the conversation to progress. Meanwhile, the more you message, the more Facebook knows about who you’re closest with. It can use that data to refine its content relevance algorithms and show you feed stories about people you care most about. Facebook is serious about stickers. It’s brought in top-notch outside designers (like David Lanham who turned into his own pack) to make sure it has some of the cutest stickers around. It’s also worked with at UC Berkeley to create a new generation of animated smiley emoticon stickers that more vividly convey emotion than the little unicode or text-only emoticons you’re used to. It all might seem silly, but stickers could be a powerful differentiator for Facebook and others in the sea of messaging apps.With SMS dying out, whoever claims the text-messaging throne could be heir to a ton of traffic.
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TC Cribs: Inside StumbleUpon HQ, Where The Web’s Fearless Explorers Work And Play
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Colleen Taylor
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Welcome back for a new episode of , the TechCrunch TV series that goes inside the offices of the tech industry’s hottest companies to see what day-to-day life is like for the whiz kids who work there. This time, we headed over to the San Francisco headquarters of , the long-running “discovery engine” for surfacing fresh web content. StumbleUpon is a very interesting company, since it’s both an established name (it’s been around !) with a big user base and a proper independent startup. Watch the video embedded above to see take us all around StumbleUpon HQ, where work, play, and delicious lunches all come together into one spot. He is also an amazing sport when it comes to laughing at the inevitable “trip and fall” gags about his company that I may or may not have made within the first 60 seconds of meeting him (get it, I ? Get it??)
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Bangstyle Seeks To Establish Itself As Go-To Image Platform For Hairstyling Industry
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Eliza Brooke
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When Bangstyle, the image-based site devoted to hair styling, came onto the scene in 2011, it hoped to fill a hole in online platforms for professionals and styling enthusiasts. As the company releases the third iteration of its app next week, it marks two years of working to solidify itself as an industry mainstay, a pursuit in which it has in many ways succeeded. Everyday users know Bangstyle for its wealth of imagery of cuts and updos, and it has been touted as a replacement for the tradition of bringing a torn-out magazine photo to the hair salon. At its core, though, Bangstyle was designed to solve an industry-wide visibility problem by giving professionals a much-needed portfolio platform from which to publicize their work. Founder Geoff Nelson said he was seeing great work from stylists prior to creating Bangstyle, but they weren’t uploading it because they either didn’t have websites or did have ones that were difficult for them to manage technically. Bangstyle does that and then projects stylists’ work to potential clients nationwide. Next week’s app updates include more search filters, new photo editing capabilities, curated hair collections updated daily, and a “Stalk” function, the equivalent of “following” on any other social media site. Nothing groundbreaking, but necessary improvements if Bangstyle wants to remain #1 in the online hair universe. The app is intended for hair artists on every level, from editorial stylists to those working in salons. It found a key user base in beauty schools, because students are simultaneously looking for work to emulate and need an avenue to find jobs while self-promoting. In professional salons, stylists pull up their Bangstyle profiles so clients can pick a look from their range of work. The people who are most active are, of course, those who take themselves seriously as a personal brand. Bangstyle is currently seeing 400-500K monthly actives, with mobile composing 70% of total user interactions. Nelson estimated that professionals make up about 60% of the user base and are averaging between 20 and 30 uploads each. Nelson has worked hard to make Bangstyle a community destination by feeding into the culture of hairdressing. Because he views hair stylists as artists in essence, rather than trade workers, Bangstyle includes the kind of lifestyle content that would inspire their work. Pin-worthy subjects like food, fashion, photography, and architecture play prominently on the site in articles and images. Bangstyle also sponsors a weekly competition, called “The Supremes,” in which hairdressers submit images of their work to be judged — yes — by a “Supreme Court.” Winners get their 15 minutes of fame and community-wide publicity. At 1300-2000 submissions weekly, it has become the biggest hair competition worldwide, Nelson said, and is a natural tie-in for promotional mo
The company is currently bootstrapped, and it is monetizing on images sponsored by hair artists, along with an eponymous range of hair products. The point is that sponsored content integrate seamlessly into the user-generated images.netization. Bangstyle has begun speaking with investors in preparation for a for a $2-5M investment round, although they would not release names. The site emerged out of a dearth of good hair platforms, and it is making strides to establish itself as the industry standard while the competitors are few. That they only have now added a follow function to the app suggests that Bangstyle may be slow on the tech, so they will have to watch that as they develop the breadth of their community features.
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Google Maps Gets New And Updated 3D Imagery For 50 U.S. Cities
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Frederic Lardinois
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Google today one of its largest updates to Google Maps’ 3D imagery since it launched last year. The service now covers a number of additional cities that weren’t included in the previous releases. Most of these are smaller towns like Las Cruces, NM and Bend, OR. The company also released updated imagery for a number of cities, including, for example, San Francisco, CA. Here is a with new or updated 3D imagery: Anniston, AL; Auburn, AL; Barstow, CA; Bastrop, TX; Bend, OR; Birmingham, AL; Boulder City, NV; Buffalo Core, NY; Cape Girardeau, MO; Casper, WY; Cheyenne, WY; Chicago, IL; Chico, CA; College Station, OH; Delano, CA; Desert Hot Springs, CA; Dubuque, IA; Edmonton, NY; Enid, OK; Farmington, NM; Grand Forks, ND; Grand Junction, CO; Great Falls, MT; Hanford, CA; Healdsburg, CA; Helendale, CA; Hot Springs, AR; Idaho Falls, ID; Kelso, WA; Killeen, TX; Las Cruces, NM; Lawton, OK; Leeds, OK; Madera, CA; Malibu, CA; Merced, CA; Modesto, CA; Ocala, FL; Odessa, TX; Ojai, CA; Picture Rocks, AZ; Pittsburgh, PA; Prescott, AZ; Rapid City, SD; Redding, CA; Riverside, CA; San Angelo, TX; San Francisco, CA; St George, UT; Texarkana, TX; Twentynine Palms, CA; Victoria, TX; Winnipeg, TX; Yuba City, CA. With this update, Google is clearly on a path to bring 3D imagery to the majority of larger U.S. cities, something it promised to do when it first launched this service last year. Microsoft, which previously featured 3D imagery in its mapping service but then dropped it in , also recently that it will add 3D building to its mapping product again. These images, Microsoft says will be newly captured just for this new 3D feature. Microsoft, we hear, plans to launch its 3D imagery for about 100 cities, but it’s not clear if those will all be in the U.S. or if this will be an international launch. The first demo I saw of Microsoft’s service easily rivals Google’s imagery.
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Apple’s Reported Time Warner Cable Deal Great For Extending Provider Reach, But Not For Real Change
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Darrell Etherington
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Apple is to be working on a deal that would bring Time Warner Cable content to its Apple TV set-top streaming box, for subscribers to TWC’s existing cable packages. Which is nice, for those people, and something that’s like the iOS apps which allow cable and satellite subscribers to view content they pay for access to on devices other than their TV, but in the big picture, it’s a minor update, not a revolution. The update would offer subscribers access to content in the same way that the – if you’re already paying for it, you’ve now got one more window to watch it through. Time Warner also owns HBO GO, so it isn’t surprising to see a relaxing of content rules from TWC. Nor is it a completely novel deal, since TWC already has similar agreements in place with Roku, Xbox and will soon integrate some of its channel line-up into Samsung smart TVs. The news that more content is potentially coming to Apple TV is good for the ecosystem, good for Apple and good for device users. Apps on Apple TV are great, even when Apple is metering them out carefully instead of opening up the platform the way it has on iOS. And another channel, even if limited to subscribers, is still better than that content not being made available to Apple TV users, for sure. But at the same time, this sounds like a deal that will further the goals of cable providers more than it will prompt any kind of real upheaval in the way we consume and interact with TV. An actual Apple TV is an exciting prospect because at one time it held the promise of doing something different not just with interfaces or with content vehicles, but with actual content divisions, packaging and pricing. Apps for existing subscribers who still buy plans based on the old way of “here’s a bunch of stuff, some of which you need,” is all well and good, but what about a la carte content? What about the possibility of cutting out the middleman and only paying for what you want to see? It makes sense for Apple to play ball with legacy providers, especially after so many years have passed with so many reports of it being frustrated when working out broadcast right with media providers. That’s probably why Apple is poaching Pete Distad, an ex-Hulu exec, to come on board and smooth out media co. negotiations. But the world doesn’t need another Hulu, or another extension of the type of “TV Everywhere” campaign that cable companies are fond of putting forward as true change – it needs to be upended, so hopefully that’s still something in Apple’s sights.
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An American Tech Company Is Advertising Its American-Built Smartphone On The Most American Holiday
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Matt Burns
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Happy Independence Day, fellow Americans! It’s time to go to the lake, eat some red meat, and, of course, buy a cell phone from a good ol’ American company, Motorola and Google. Motorola is running a full-page spread in the July 3 editions of The New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post. And it’s all for the upcoming, and very American, Motorola X smartphone. As , this is an American phone from an American company. After all Motorola is as American as country music and type-2 diabetes. Once upon a time Motorola stood tall as a beacon of American ingenuity and prosperity. Founded in 1928 in Illinois, the company lead the world in mobile technology for decades. Motorola put audio in cars. Motorola went to the Moon. Motorola made the cell phone. Then came the Motorola RAZR, a clamshell phone that went on to be the best selling flip phone in history, but also marking the beginning of the end. Motorola is now an empty vestigial of its former self, existing as two entities: one within Google and another part as a telecommunications provider. There is not much known about the upcoming Motorola X smartphone. So far several leaked pics showed a rather pedestrian smartphone with modest specs — nothing that’s anything better than products from Samsung or Apple. But hopefully, now a full year after Google scooped up Motorola’s consumer division, the two companies have slow-cooked something rather tasty. And as someone from a dead middle America factory town, it’s amazing to watch the manufacturing come back to America. Dell never completely left Texas. Lenovo in North Carolina. formerly shuttered when overseas manufacturing was in vogue. But please, I beg you, consumer electronic companies, do not make a mundane product, slap a Made In America sticker on the back and pawn it off on unsuspecting Americans. Americans and American companies can build world-class products so please do nothing less.
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iOS Winning More Mobile Ad Share In 2013, AT&T Losing Its iPhone Edge, Velti Reports
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Darrell Etherington
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Apple’s iOS mobile operating system is winning even more ground in mobile advertising market share, according to mobile ad firm . The firm saw Apple’s share grow from 59 percent overall to 64 percent between May 2012 and May 2013, with the iPhone 5 grabbing a lot of those new impressions. The iPhone 5’s share grew by 7.4 percentage points between May last year and May of 2013, and the iPad added 3.7 percentage points, too, though the iPod touch saw big losses. The iPhone grew 15 percent overall however, thanks to older models, resulting in a net gain for iOS in general. Apple is more than making up for sluggish sales of the iPod touch, and is also adding share thanks to the iPad mini. Samsung is also growing its own share, however, but it isn’t climbing at anywhere near the rate of its Apple competitor. There’s some volatility to come in the next few months, Velti predicts, as consumers hold off in anticipation of the new iPhone which will likely arrive in September. This has become basically an age-old tale at this point, and factors indicate it won’t affect Apple’s long-term dominance of mobile ads all that much. There’s also been a considerably shift in which carriers are serving the bulk of ads to iPhones. Once dominant AT&T is giving ground to Verizon, specifically, and that’s big news for the carrier landscape. Sprint has also shed share since May 2012, Velti says, and T-Mobile is still barely scratching the surface, though the report only covers until May, so that may change as more people take their business to the new UnCarrier. For those who’d rather not see much of the advertising that powers a lot of mobile apps these days, there’s also bad news: increasingly, advertisers are switching to larger display units and ditching the smaller ones, Velti finds. Full screen interstitial, as well as 300 x 250 and 728 x 90 ads are all showing positive growth, while 320 x 50 ads on the iPhone specifically have seen a decline in usage. Bigger is better for mobile display ads, or at least that’s the way advertisers are increasingly leaning. Winning the mobile ad race is a key victory for Apple, which continues to excel in metrics around mobile app engagement and monetization, both of which are extremely important to developers. It’s part of a cycle that helps make iPhone desirable to consumers, too, so Apple is likely pleased to see it extend its lead.
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GoldieBlox, The Toy That Aims To Get Girls Hooked On Engineering, Is Coming To A Toys ‘R’ Us Near You
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Colleen Taylor
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Move over, Barbie — there’s a new toy in town now. , the San Francisco Bay Area startup that has created an engineering-focused toy aimed specifically at little girls, has inked its first nationwide distribution deal with retailing giant Toys ‘R’ Us. The company’s flagship toy, the story-oriented construction set called “ ,” is at every Toys ‘R’ Us store in the United States for $29.99. If you have a minute, you should definitely watch GoldieBlox made to celebrate the Toys ‘R’ Us deal. The feature image above is a screenshot from the video, in which a bunch of rad little girls storm the aisle of the toy store that’s dominated by the pink-colored toys that are typically marketed to them. Founder and CEO Debra Sterling, the Stanford engineering grad who has said to give girls today the kind of toy that she wishes she had when she was growing up, tells me that the distribution deal is a huge coup for her company — but there is still a long way to go. “We are now just one tiny box in a sea of pink plastic princesses… we have our work cut out for us,” she said. The idea behind GoldieBlox is simple: Engineering is clearly a prime field , but today some of engineering jobs are held by men. Meanwhile, toys like LEGOS have inspired many young people to think like engineers, but those products are typically marketed towards boys. GoldieBlox aims to create toys that appeal to girls and also ignite their interest in building things. I sat down with Sterling and had some hands-on time with the Spinning Machine toy , while GoldieBlox was raising funds through its (ultimately, the campaign blew past its own expectations, raising a total of more than $285,000.) Check that out in the video below:
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Yahoo Acquires Qwiki For Around $50 Million
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Greg Kumparak
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In another display of their intent to buy the entire Internet, Yahoo has just acquired Qwiki, an iOS app that helps users create movies out of the photos and videos in their camera roll. When Qwiki first launched, it focused on generating short, informational videos on popular search terms. Search for Lady Gaga, for example, and it’d automatically compile a short description of the life of Ms. Stefani Germanotta, presumably narrated over a slideshow of meat-based clothing. That initial service saw some success — Apple picked it as an Editor’s Choice app in 2011, and, hey, — but it never really blew up. Earlier this year, the company shifted their focus a bit. In February, they re-launched as an iPhone-only app that focused on the user’s own content, using the technology they’d built before to create movies from the photos and videos in the user’s camera roll. A says that Qwiki was acquired for somewhere between 40 and 50 million dollars. The company had raised $10.5M to date, Unlike a few of Yahoo’s most recent purchases, Qwiki says their app will and continue to be supported. The team, meanwhile, will be moving into Yahoo’s New York Office — which, conveniently, is just a few miles from where they already were. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvC-EaQxJW8
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Basno Raises $1M For Its Digital Badges Platform That Aims To Monetise Boasting
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Natasha Lomas
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You’ve probably noticed how and have spread like a virus all over . Well, New York-based startup is hoping its digital badges platform can tap that trend for sharing cutesy visual stuff, too. And it’s convinced a group of outside investors to take a punt — today announcing the closure of a $1 million round from Index Ventures, RRE, MESA+, Plough Penny Partners, Empire Angels and others. The round tops up its first tranche of funding back in 2011: a $225,000 friends and family round that included entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk. It says the new funding will be used to expand and deepen its proposition. Which specifically means moving away from (Foursquare-style) faddish gamification, whereby badges are earned for unremarkable actions, and towards more impressive achievement-based awards — meaning badges that carry a certain cachet and/or have some kind of reward or incentive to encourage their display. Like badges for running a marathon, or completing a Tough Mudder. Here’s how Basno describes its new emphasis: That means building a place where people can create and collect badges that recognize real accomplishments, skills, commitments and expertise (think running a marathon, not checking in to coffee shops). That means getting badge owners real recognition and real value (think VIP access, not just points in a game). “We are growing the team,” adds CEO Nicholas Thorne when asked about its plans for the new funding. “Focus is on creating deeper badge owner experiences, developing better self-serve tools for badge issuers and onboarding more high quality brands.” On the rewards side, examples of the sorts of offers that are being attached to Basno’s badges include entry into prize-draw contests, access to VIP events and loyalty discounts on products or services. “Rewards are mostly dollar value in the near term: owners of a badge that will become available this week will be entered to win a $250 gift card from Foot Locker, for example. But the opportunity exists to expand beyond exclusives into access: cutting lines, meet-ups, etc,” adds Thorne. “Badge issuers themselves are seeding this ecosystem initially (e.g. Virgin America giving badge owners bonus miles) and are bringing their partners to bear. We have a good head start in the athletics vertical, so we will begin to roll out exclusive value from some of the big names in that space over the coming months.” Beyond the surface similarities to sticker sharing, the bigger underlying trend here is of course the quantifiable self — aka the increasing options and ease for people to measure, slice and dice their own participation with a service/gadget. Basno is clearly hoping to ride that trend by becoming a vehicle of choice for brands to reward their most measurably active customers. Where do these badges go on display so that others can appreciate the boasts they represent? On Basno’s website “first and foremost,” says Thorne. “We are big believers in the mobile web and are already serving the majority of our traffic through mobile browsers,” he adds. But it is also supporting badge syndication to the likes of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, and also for embedding in blogs and email signatures. “Wherever else we see people wanting to put their accomplishments on display.” Basno’s business model is freemium — focused on badge issuance, with issuers paying to “take advantage of premium distribution, analytics and design tools.” Which means it’s going to need to be able to demonstrate that badges not only bring a warm glow to their owners but act as a soft marketing channel for the brands who commission them, bringing in additional custom.
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Keen On… The Cave: What Silicon Valley Can Learn From The 2012 Election
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Andrew Keen
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Who says that the Beltway always lags behind Silicon Valley? In , his best-selling book about Barack Obama’s 2012 Presidential campaign, veteran political journalist writes about “penetrating” The Cave – Obama’s top secret digital command center. Run by the campaign’s Chief Analytics Officer, the 30 year-old whiz , The Cave was staffed with an eclectic group of number crunching geniuses including a bio-physicist and three professional poker players. What The Cave achieved, Alter told me, is “marriage of technology and shoe leather,” thereby making 2012 the first real “big data election” (the Republicans, of course, didn’t get it). And it was Dan Wagner’s highly sophisticated big data operation, Alter insists, that separated the Obama and Romney campaigns. Indeed, the Cave was such a remarkable success, Alter says, that Silicon Valley has much to learn from its implementation. Eric Schmidt’s close relationship with Wagner is . Less well known, Alter says, is the need now for all companies to invest in a Cave of big data experts who can enable their businesses to “connect better”. It’s the new way of reaching customers, he says. So does your company have a Cave yet?
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iOS 7 Shows Interest In Apple Pre-Release Software On The Rise, Per Onswipe
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Darrell Etherington
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Apple’s iOS 7 is growing quickly with more tablets and iPhones running the beta software than were running iOS 6 at the same time last year, according to new data released by mobile web optimizing company . The startup found that by July 1, 2013, 0.28 percent of all iPad visits to its mobile-optimized sites were from devices running iOS 7, and as of June 17, 0.77 percent of all iPhones making Onswipe visits were also on the new beta OS. Compared to iOS 6, those numbers, while small, have increased considerably. 0.19 percent of all iPad visits were on last year’s beta software as of June 25, and only 0.38 percent, or under half of iPhones ran the pre-release mobile OS. All together, iOS 7 accounts for 0.46 percent of total traffic to Onswipe sites as of this writing, while iOS 6 was responsible for just 0.25 percent of all visits at the same time last year. The takeaways from Onswipe, according to CEO Jason Baptiste, are that developers are around twice as excited about iOS 7 as they were about iOS 6, and that they’re spending more time getting ready for the big changes coming in the new version of Apple’s mobile OS in order to have everything nice and tidy for the consumer launch coming this fall. There are other possibilities in terms of what’s at play, of course. Developer interest in the iOS platform does indeed seem to be at an all-time high, as indicated by the record sellout of Apple’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference this year. But it’s also possible that more and more everyday users are dipping their toes into the beta pool, even if it’s specifically advised against by Apple (and by me: pre-release software is pre-release for a reason). There’s a great lure to being on the cutting edge of something new, especially when all that’s required to take part is to register for a $99 per year Apple developer account. Whatever the cause, this is also one of the most blogged about releases in iOS history. And it’s a significant change from any previous version, so that’s likely at play, too, in terms of the number of devices being used to test it. All of which adds up to it not being surprising that iOS 7 is seeing strong usage even before its arrival; we’ll see if that translates to consumer uptake with the official release come fall.
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Splitmo’s Poker Night TV Offers A Perfect Use Case For Apple TV As A Gaming Device
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Darrell Etherington
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The Apple TV is already a game console, in case you didn’t know, and a new app from independent developer and AirPlay-focused startup Splitmo shows why. The company has just released , its second app and first game, which uses AirPlay and the Apple TV to let up to eight players join in for a virtual poker game on their TV set. The free to play game displays the common cards from a game of Texas Hold’em on the Apple TV-connected display, while individual hands are shown on connected iOS devices. If you don’t have an Apple TV handy, an iPad can also substitute as the virtual “table” or main display, or just use their individual devices on their own, too. Splitmo started out with a special focus on AirPlay, having created Air Show, as a slideshow creator and controller for Apple TV on iOS. The startup, which is built by a team of founders based in North Carolina that have previously worked on mobile apps built specifically for carrier customers, is going all-in on a strategy of promoting the capabilities of Apple’s cross-device ecosystem, and Poker Night TV is an exemplary use case of those special hooks that Apple offers for those customers who embrace their product lines across a range of hardware. Poker Night TV also offers a number of other bells and whistles for poker aficionados, including the percentage likelihood specific hands have to win. And it offers in-game real world prizes for winners, such as pizza, as an incentive to keep playing. But the real trick is AirPlay, since it’s an execution of Apple’s secret gaming payload. Others have been exploring the uses of this tech, including and . It has lots of potential, most of which remains unexplored. It’s true that there’s massive upfront investment required to make it work; users need not only an Apple TV but various iOS devices to use with it. But the difference between it and traditional home consoles is that AirPlay gaming doesn’t require users to buy things just for gaming. In most cases, they’ll already have the devices required, minus maybe a $100 Apple TV unit. Big consoles may still be attracting eyeballs and , but the one to watch long-term is Apple, as it increases the interoperability between its mobile devices and other platforms including the Apple TV and OS X.
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LinkedIn Continues Its Mobile Transition With Expanded Search On iPhone & Android
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Sarah Perez
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Following , the company today rolled out another major upgrade for its service on mobile, which now allows users to do more than search for other people — it also lets you search for Companies, Groups and Jobs. These additional search options appear after you tap into the search box at the top of the app. Plus, even if you don’t kick off a keyword search, you can tap through the categories to see a list of your LinkedIn connections and groups, as well as companies you follow or jobs available to you. The move comes at a time when LinkedIn is working dutifully to transition its business to mobile, as so many of the early web giants — including Facebook — are also now doing. To aid in these efforts, LinkedIn this spring from polling app Maybe, and more notably . With the most recent mobile update before today’s — which at the time was the first big upgrade in — the focus was on building a personalized activity stream for app users, improving navigation, and introducing ads in the form of sponsored content in the main stream. Though the new changes are now focused on search and discovery, the overall goal is the same: the company wants users to spend more time in the app, which is still used more sporadically when compared with the Linkedin.com website. This is somewhat alluded to in the , which presents a variety of use cases that take advantage of the new features, including things like keeping track of industry intelligence or colleagues’ promotions, browsing groups or looking for jobs. The post encourages users to “take advantage of your ‘in between’ moments throughout the day,” which positions LinkedIn on mobile as an app meant to become a daily habit, not just a utility you dust off when updating your resume. Like other businesses that first established themselves as web companies, LinkedIn has a large feature set that it’s still figuring out how to properly port to mobile. , Joff Redfern, head of mobile products for LinkedIn, admitted that “it’s hard to get everything that LinkedIn does on to a single application on a small screen.” To date, the company has split up some of its functionality between apps, with its card-scanning function (via acquisition) maintained in an app called CardMunch, while its Contacts section on the web . There’s still room for LinkedIn to split off more of its features into dedicated applications, if it ever chose to do so in the future, but it would need to be careful not to overly fragment its user base, if so. Supporting mobile isn’t only about addressing a general shift in computing, it’s about supporting those users worldwide whose first Internet-connected device may be their smartphone. LinkedIn has already said that 64 percent of its overall member base is from non-U.S. markets, which includes a number of emerging regions, and the mobile explosion happening now in China. LinkedIn today offers access to more than 225 million professionals, 3 million Company Pages, 2 million Groups and thousands of job opportunities, all of which are searchable through the updated applications, live now in and .
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Mingyian Raises Half A Million From M. Night Shyamalan And Others To Connect Western Celebrities With Fans In China
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Billy Gallagher
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, a platform that connects Western celebrities to their fans in China, has raised $500,000 in seed funding from , , , , and Eric Yao, an executive at one of China’s largest energy companies. Co-founders and say they realized celebrities and influencers already have a great hold in China and the ability to move products, but don’t know how to capitalize on it. The duo paired with , who previously founded E! Entertainment, and started Mingyian. “How can they leverage [their popularity] if they can’t use any of the digital tools that are available to them in the U.S.?” Eydeland tells me. She says Mingyian seeks to bridge gaps in technology, where they will help celebrities find the right platforms to grow their brand, and in culture. The company is already working with a range of celebrities, from Hollywood director Brett Ratner to former NBA All-Star Gilbert Arenas. When Arenas signed with a Chinese team, fans were worried that his knee wasn’t healthy enough to play. Mingyian helped him open a Weibo account to connect to fans and posted a short clip of a healthy Arenas dunking. Bai and Eydeland say Arenas saw a huge response from his Chinese fans. “There are huge opportunities in the Chinese market, and Mingyian is the team to seize them,” #DominateFund co-founder Ben Parr says. “Every brand and entertainer that wants to make an impact in China needs to work with Mingyian.” Bai says most celebrities are copying or pasting their tweets or doing something random in the market, and their visits to the country are haphazard and don’t add much to their brand. “As China becomes a more and more important part of the financial equation for all media projects (as well as just about every other industry) the need for understanding how to build brand takes on paramount importance,” Namer says. “China is a very distinct market and you have to understand completely not just how it works functionally but you also must understand the mentality and cultural heritage. Simply trying to take what you do in the west and try to replicate that in China does not work.” The platform will mostly monetize through advertising and selling digital packages, like online events with celebrities. The founders tell me there will also be a premium, paid service for celebrities who really want to grow their influence in China.
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Google Surveys Can Make Anyone A Professional Pollster
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Gregory Ferenstein
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and I are of Google’s Consumer Surveys tool. “Perhaps it won’t be long before Google, not Gallup, is the most trusted name in polling,” wrote Silver, on how Google conducted one of the most accurate polls of the 2012 election cycle. But I didn’t know how useful they’d be for media outlets until I was able to identically replicate a non-election Gallup poll for a fraction of the cost. Last week, Gallup released an important poll on the (relatively) anti-immigration attitudes of Americans, which was one of the best pieces of evidence I had seen demonstrating why immigration reform has been so difficult to pass. It turns out that no one needed to wait for Gallup or any professional outfit to conduct these very important barometers of public opinion. It took me about 10 minutes to recreate Gallup’s own poll with Google’s Surveys wizard tool. For the question “In your view, should immigration be kept at its present level, increased, or decreased?”, Google was within a few percentage points for every single answer, except for two (it was off 15 percent for Republicans who wanted to decrease immigration and 12 for Republicans who wanted to keep them at the “present level”). And, here’s the detailed table It’s not clear whether Google was for the answer on Republicans. Internet and phone surveys naturally have different responding populations, since the Internet skews younger and the phones skew older (people still have phones?). And some people may have an aversion to saying they want to decrease immigration over the phone, whereas they’re perfectly willing to let their inner xenophobe fly at a faceless computer screen. There’s still a lot more testing needed to see when Google can replace professional polling operations. But it looks very promising enough to start using it now. Every journalism school in the country should be teaching students the (very difficult) science of survey methods, so they can all start adding more objective evidence to their stories — because, thanks to Google, all of them have the capacity to be pollsters. Color this writer excited, more deliciously informative stats to come.
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MBank And The Future Of Responsive Banking
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John Biggs
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I’m not a huge fan of banks, but when senior director approached me about , my interest was piqued. How could a banking spin-off of BRE Bank and founded in 2000 create one of the coolest, most high-tech banking experiences I’ve seen? The more important question, however, was how could a Polish bank beat the big guys — the Chases, the Citibanks, and the Credit Suisses of the world — to the punch in terms of improved user experience and unique features? In short, a small group of programmers and finance guys in Warsaw, Poland, did what the rest of the world couldn’t. And, more importantly, they were quite successful. [vimeo https://vimeo.com/70488246] MBank, in its current incarnation, is very nearly a startup. While they still get some funding from their parent organization, mBank was designed to be a greenfield operation and work independently from the staid old banks that aggravated customers with long lines and odd rules. Now, however, it’s a snappy, surprisingly usable web-only service that lets customers view their transactions using user-experience rules that are more familiar to Steam users than bank customers. The new mBank is built on a completely responsive design that uses HTML5 and UI tricks to create a unique experience that is more reminiscent of a Windows 8 app than a bank website. While other bank websites show a list of transactions and little else, mBank can show you where those purchases appear in your overall account balance and how and where they fit into your budget. This is done with some clever animations and dynamic objects that are as modern and sleek as an app.
To be clear, banks are still pretty boring. However it’s important that mBank is trying something new. If my own bank, Chase, had something like this — complete with mBank’s gamification aspects, as well as its clever deal offers that mimic the best of Groupon and Pinterest — I’m sure I’d be far more interested in staying on the site. By making the site, for lack of a better word, fun, mBank has changed the relationship between bank and customer. This is important in almost any B2C environment and more important when the traditional customer/business relationship in banking has always been vaguely adversarial. mBank isn’t better, per se, but has done far more about user experience than any other bank I’ve seen. That’s what’s important here — the attention to detail. I spoke with Panowicz at our Warsaw meet-up and thought it would be interesting to get his input on how to turn a banking website around in a few short years. Panowicz is a former Microsoft employee and a true technophile. He brought a unique vision to a 10-year-old company and turned it around, which is quite important. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32Xvq_fmOpA&list=PLXQOK_iZPiMd8BBdDdPqFsthuspUn95f7&index=1]
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How To Self-Publish A Bestseller: Publishing 3.0
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James Altucher
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came out on June 3. Follow him on Twitter My most recent book, ” sold 44,294 copies in its first month out [update: just tipped over 100,000 copies as of Dec 30] , hit the Wall Street Journal Bestseller list, was No. 1 on Amazon for all non-fiction books for a few days and is still flirting with No. 1 in its various categories. This post is about what I did differently, why I did it differently, and how I think anyone can do this to self-publish a bestseller. I describe all the numbers, who I hired and why, and how I made the various choices I did. Every entrepreneur should self-publish a book, . If you want to stand out in a world of content, you need to underline your expertise. Publishing a book is not just putting your thoughts on a blog post. It’s an event. It shows your best curated thoughts and it shows customers, clients, investors, friends and lovers what the most important things on your mind are right now. Unfortunately, most people suck at it. I’ve largely sucked at it. I’ve published 11 books — five with traditional publishers and six that are self-published. The distinction now is no longer between “traditional publishing” versus “self-publishing.” The distinction now is between versus publishing. My first 10 books were done unprofessionally. Even the ones with the big publishing houses. They will probably hate me now. I hope not. I really like the people I worked with at these publishers. I hope that everyone self-publishes. The benefits are enormous: . Unless you are a John Grisham or E L James you will make much more money by self-publishing. It’s not just money on sales but also foreign rights and special packages that you can offer if you control all the rights to your work. Packages that the traditional publishers almost never go for. Traditional publishers usually keep that control. You will probably speed up your publication date by over a year or more if you self-publish. My bet is close to 100 percent of the people reading this post have content in them strong enough for a book. But 22-year-old interns at publishing companies won’t recognize that content. Even the editors, the publishers, the marketing guys — most of them — will not recognize the message you have to offer. Which leads me to… I hate getting that feeling of, “I hope he or she chooses me for X.” Where “X” could be an investment, an acquisition, publishing a book, buying my product, whatever. I try to limit this feeling in my life whenever possible. When you have to deal with more and more layers of people who have to choose you, you don’t get the opportunity to choose yourself (!), which is infinitely more valuable. A traditional publisher is not even going to look at you unless you have your own platform, which means a Twitter following, Facebook following and/or a significant blog following. But if you already can hand-deliver the customers, what do you need the traditional publisher for? Wasn’t that supposed to be what the publishers would get for you? Don’t they get you in bookstores? Bookstores take very few of the books published by publishers. And whenever you see a book facing forward, or on the front table, or a “staff pick” that means the publisher usually paid to have that special placement. Most books don’t get this. And if you don’t get that, chances are your books won’t sell. Have an honest voice. Don’t be afraid to say things about either yourself or your industry. Provide unique perspective. If it doesn’t bleed it doesn’t lead. Make sure every post or video you do bleeds from the heart, entertains, and educates. In that order. How do you get traffic? Blog on bigger sites that aggregate bloggers or podcasts or whatever. It takes time to build up. But sincere voices will always rise to the top. This is not a post about writing or how to write a good book. The assumption is that you will write a good book. BUT, two tips: write 500-2000 words every day to keep exercising the writing muscle. And read good writers every day. Then you will write an even better book. A typical book is anywhere from 40,000-80,000 words. So if you can average 1,000 words a day, seven days a week, you can write four to eight books a year. Or one very very good, edited, revised, professional one. Or 10! Knock yourself out! I also wanted a high-quality foreword for the book. I was really grateful that Dick Costolo, CEO of Twitter, agreed to do mine. I realize why he used to be an improv comedian when I read what he wrote. If you are self-publishing then you can publish your book right now without any other effort. Go to (owned by Amazon), check the box that you want to be both paperback and Kindle (it costs an extra $69 to be on kindle), pick a cover, upload your manuscript, and in a few days you will be published on Amazon and people can start buying your book. If your goal is to have a published book and use it to get customers, consulting gigs, speaking gigs, etc., or a beginning set of readers for your next book, then by all means publish this way. It’s the fastest way to do it. I highly recommend it. But if your goal is to put out the best possible product, maximize the money you make, and get the most readers, then follow the next steps, what I call “Publishing 3.0.” Previously my editing was just a spell check. And that was more than some of my mainstream publishers did. My wife asked me if I was kidding on this. But I told her to read my second book and she stopped questioning it. In other words, it was awful. With my latest book, I went all out. I hired two copy editors to go through the basics on spelling and grammar. Then I hired , run by Nils Parker, to help me structurally edit, i.e. do the job that editors used to do (example: Maxwell Perkins in the 1930s) but have been sorely lacking in the past 20 years from traditional publishers. Nils has previously edited bestsellers from Tucker Max, Kamal Ravikant, Ryan Holiday, and a dozen writers, as well as written screenplays, books, etc. I am not saying “hire Nils” by the way. I’m just saying this is who I used (and paid). Make sure who you use is among the best in the world, or else you aren’t taking advantage of what the Publishing 3.0 world has to offer. Nils and I went back and forth on more than 15 different rewrites for my book. The difference between the original version and the final version is like the difference between chicken shit and chicken salad. And yes, publishers have editors. Some very good ones. But I specifically wanted to choose my own editor and use an editor that has worked on books that have sold millions of copies. The entire idea of “Publishing 3.0” is that I am not limited to who is on the publisher’s staff but I can pick the absolute best people in the industry. With millions of books out there, the competition is incredible. Hiring the best editor, design firm, marketing firm, and audio firms were all part of that. Not just the best around but who I felt were the best in the world. I never liked any of the designs on my traditionally published books, but I had no control over them. I don’t mean this to sound so anti-publisher. But they were busier with bigger authors, and I don’t think they were always able to devote resources to me. I made sure I put out a product I could be proud of. I used who helped me find the right , and she also managed the interior design process, which was a lot trickier than I thought. She designed the spine, picked the fonts, the inside flaps, the back cover, and all the quirks — tables, pictures, asides, etc. — inside the book and then helped format for when I uploaded to on Amazon. I was at a dinner that Amazon had for self-published authors last October. One guy who was making a solid living self-publishing science fiction novels told me that he always made an audiobook. I thought that was a horrible idea, and told him so. But two things about audiobooks: So Claudia, my wife who has been supportive of every aspect of this effort, set up her office in our house to be a mini-recording studio. I wrote to Tucker Max that I was going to make an audiobook. He wrote back: “James, where are you doing the audio, and who’s editing it? Please tell me you aren’t just doing it yourself with your Mac and a mic you bought online.” We looked at our Mac and a mic that we had just bought online and decided to go to a professional studio. Tucker suggested . They had done audiobooks ranging from President Clinton’s autobiography to the Harry Potter books to Freakonomics. It was a thoroughly annoying experience but it was worth it. I felt uncomfortable just sitting there for eight hours reading words I had written. For one thing, it hurt. Reading for eight straight hours was killing my throat. Second, I didn’t want to just read stories I had already written. So I did it totally unabridged and improvised quite a bit, making it somewhat original compared to the book. But the best reason for doing the audiobook is it forces you to really look at your writing and hear what works and what doesn’t. I rewrote about 20 percent of the book after reading things that didn’t quite sound right out loud. It meant another round of edits (with the help of Nils) to improve the book, a process I never would have gone through if I hadn’t done the audio version. This deserves its own category. I had total control over the title. My first choice for the book was “The Choose Yourself Era.” But whenever anyone asked me to say the title I had trouble saying it. “Era” sounds like “Error.” One person asked me if it was going to a book about archaeology. So somehow it wasn’t working. So I picked 10 titles that I liked, combined them with the cover and created Facebook ads that I sent out to all my friends and friends of friends in the U.S. Then I sat back and watched the click-throughs. After a few days and thousands of click-throughs I had my title. came in a distant third place. was right above it in second place. And ” came in first by far. I then took the same Facebook approach to pick the subtitle and the final version of the cover design. Results of the Facebook Title test: I used Ryan Holiday’s company . Ryan is the head of marketing for American Apparel, and has marketed many bestsellers, including books by Tim Ferriss (“The Four Hour Chef”), Robert Greene (“Mastery”), Tucker Max (“I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell”), and others. I had never before used an outside agency, always trusting either my own basic platform or a publisher. What Ryan provided was unbelievable. Between his Rolodex and mine we scheduled about 60 podcasts, radio interviews, speaking engagements and guest posts on popular blogs and websites. There were also some other things that I would not have been able to coordinate: that got over 3,000 comments and probably close to a million views over the past month. His company created a that became the most viewed SlideShare on the site the week of the launch with over 300,000 views. My schedule the month after launch was non-stop marketing. I was burnt out by the end of the month. I had also become a fan of Bitcoin. So I set up a month before I released the book and became the first book ever pre-released solely on bitcoin. Ryan then got several key media sources to cover this. I also wanted to market an offer in the beginning of the book. My goal was not to necessarily make the most money but to make sure the message reached as many people as possible. So on the very first page, before the editorial information and dedication, there is “the offer.” I offer to pay people back for the book if they could prove to me that they bought it and read it. Then I would pay them back completely for the book (losing money on each transaction because of the cut Amazon takes plus shipping). The idea was I would be happy to give the book for free, but I know people don’t value things they get for free. And I also know most people don’t read the books they buy. Hence the offer. Ryan was successful at making sure that the offer itself was covered in various media outlets. Brasscheck also scripted the video trailer that was produced and animated by . I describe the results of the marketing below. I found with my prior books that the traditional publishers would more or less wait for foreign publishers to call and then they would sell the rights and my split would be minimal. Typically the split was 50-50, but out of my 50 would come my agent’s split. I was competing with too many of the other authors in the publisher’s stable to get any attention from foreign publishers. Now I own all the rights to my book. Most people who self-publish aren’t thinking foreign rights. You still have to have someone who is going to be your advocate with the foreign publishers. So I got a foreign rights agency, , to handle all of the foreign rights on a commission basis. They go to book conferences all over the world and have connections in each country. In June, the first month the book was out, Marleen Seegers from 2 Seas sold rights to: Brazil (USD 2500), China (USD 4300), Korea (USD 5000). She is currently in negotiations with publishers from 10 other countries. The three mentioned above are where the contracts were finished blindingly fast. Since I own the rights I can do whatever I want. Below in the “Numbers” section I describe a bundle I put together combining a hardcover version of the book with three earlier books plus some original writing that was sent out by an e-newsletter company that did all of the fulfillment and split the proceeds with me. With the help of and I also made a poster that is designed like the cover of the book when you look from afar but when you get close to it you see clearly all 67,000 words of the book. I’m also making that into a shirt. What will I do with it? I have no idea. But it’s fun and I wanted to do it. In the below photos you can see the far away version and the words when you are standing about an inch from the poster. First off, what were my prior numbers? Here are my advances on my first mainstream-published, five books in order: $5,000, $7,500, $30,000, $100,000 and $30,000. Advances are coming down quickly! My first book made back my advance and with about a 10 percent royalty I probably made another few thousand dollars on it. None of my other books came close to making back their advances. I don’t have all the numbers on my first five self-published books, but I gave an enormous number of books away for free in order to build up my readership. Almost all of those books I produced for free but my revenues were minimal even though I had many readers for them. In the first week “Choose Yourself!” was out I made the WSJ Bestsellers List with about 10,000 copies sold. To hit the New York Times bestseller list I can tell you anecdotally (and it depends on the week) that you need about 2,500-3,000 copies sold in your first week. I couldn’t get on the NYT Bestsellers List because they do not look at books that do not appear in bookstores. I’m not in any bookstores at the moment, although I’m working on ways that can change. Suffice to say I would have hit that list as well as the WSJ list. In the first month I sold 44,294 copies between my paperback, audio, e-book, and even hardcover versions. The hardcover version was sold , that bundled the hardcover with three free versions of my past books plus an original report written by me. He split the proceeds 50-50 with me after the cost of the hardcover was recovered. I sold about 20,000 through this method in the first month. Email marketing is almost never attempted by mainstream publishers. Of the remaining 24,000, close to 50 percent was Kindle, 45 percent was CreateSpace and 5 percent was Audible. On all the Amazon Kindle sales, the royalty is 70 percent of the $4.99 cost. On the Audible version the royalty is approximately 52 percent, give or take a few percentage points. On CreateSpace the royalty given my pricing was about 26 percent. The total cost of everything described above was $31,000 (which can be reduced significantly depending on your specific needs. For instance, not every book needs an audio version and a video trailer), not counting traveling I did for the marketing and other marketing costs involved in building my platform. I am happy to answer questions about the process in the comments below.
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How This Kid Tossed One Raccoon In 43 Seconds
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Ryan Lawler
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Some days you’re on call for weekend news duty and it’s pretty boring and you get tired of just sitting around waiting for something to happen and then . And other times, you’re just sort of hanging out and watching Twitter and ? Why yes, yes it is. The epic raccoon toss came after Rose heard his dog “crying and yelping in pain” around 1:00 a.m., leading the Google Ventures general partner to come to the dog’s aid. Rose broke up the fight by picking the up by the sides and HURLING IT DOWN A SET OF STAIRS . Seriously, the Internet hasn’t seen a raccoon so thoroughly PWNED since this image: Animal violence critics should note that the toss was in self defense (or rather, the defense of Rose’s best friend). That said, as some YouTube commenters have noted, it’s not clear who started the fight. I mean, the raccoon could have just been minding his own business before Toaster attacked him, for all we know. https://twitter.com/TossedRacoon/status/358701472311017472 Anyway, Toaster is apparently “ok, but has some minor claw and bite marks,” according to Rose’s video. The entire Internet, meanwhile, is urging Rose to take Toaster to the vet today to get a rabies shot. We’ve reached out for comment and will follow up with any additional details if Rose responds. In the meantime, this: Founders – all VCs claim they have your back, but only Kevin Rose will wrestle a racoon for you. — Benedict Evans (@BenedictEvans)
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Dropbox Acquires Mobile Coupon Startup Endorse A Month After Shutdown
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Ryan Lawler
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About a , mobile coupon startup has been acquired by Dropbox, the team today. The deal follows a number of other recent acquisitions Dropbox has been making, as it looks to add headcount in an increasingly constrained talent market. Endorse had in 2010, and launched a web version of the product before moving to mobile with the launch of an iPhone app last August. The mobile coupon service was shut down a month ago, with Endorse that users would have until the end of June to transfer cash that they’d accrued to their bank accounts. Importantly, we’ve heard that this was an acquisition and not an acqui-hire of the company’s talent, although terms haven’t been disclosed and no one’s really budging on price. (If we can find out more, of course, we’ll update this post.) Last we heard, Endorse had about a dozen employees, the majority of whom will be joining the Dropbox team in the acquisition. That includes Steve Carpenter, who founded the company as an entrepreneur-in-residence at Accel after selling . Other notable members of the Endorse team include CTO Erik Klein, who had held engineering roles at SofaLabs and YouTube; Jiten Vaidya, lead engineer and former SRS/DBA manager at YouTube; and Franck Chastagnol, former lead engineer for YouTube ads. Dropbox has been on a bit of a hiring and acquisition spree over the last year, as it , as well as . It’s also made a number of significant hires, including , , and .
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Bay Area Tech Wages Are The Nation’s Highest At $123K, But Should Entrepreneurs Look Elsewhere As Costs Rise?
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Billy Gallagher
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The San Francisco Bay Area pays the highest median tech wage, at $123,497, but comes with higher taxes and housing costs, according to , an based in SF. Despite the significant gap in wages and costs between the Bay Area and other tech hubs, it doesn’t look like it’s causing a significant talent exodus yet. The median wage for tech workers in San Francisco, Marin, and San Mateo counties is nearly 21 percent higher than the second highest, Boston, at $102,230. However, while this wage is good for top-flight engineers, it leads to significantly higher costs for entrepreneurs. Good April found that salaries for a 10-person team, on average, would total $1,234,970 in San Francisco, but only $932,490 in Austin, Texas. The difference in how much equity a founder has to give up can be substantial. If you were raising capital at a $5 million valuation to run your company for one year, you would have to give up 27 percent equity to hire the hypothetical San Francisco team versus only 20 percent for the Austin team. The high taxes and pricey housing market in San Francisco can hurt both entrepreneurs and employees. Good April co-founder Mitchell Fox argues that companies have to pay a higher salary in order to offset the higher cost of living in the Bay Area; then those higher salaries lead to a higher willingness to pay for a house or apartment. The cost of buying a home in San Francisco dwarfs other tech hubs, according to median sale prices from Zillow. San Francisco’s houses went for $805,500, a 50 percent increase over New York’s $535,900, and nearly four times the median sale price in Austin, $206,600. The rental market isn’t any better, with the in San Francisco reaching $3,295 in June. Fox says he recently met an entrepreneur who’s moving his business to Austin, saying, “The business case to move is just too compelling. Austin has everything we need at a much lower cost.” Matt Mickiewicz, the co-founder of DeveloperAuction, a startup that enables startups to bid on engineers and designers, says data from the platform shows “nobody is leaving SF because of the high costs so far.” He adds that 87 percent of the developers on the site end up taking jobs with a company that did not make them the highest salary offer.
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Why 3D Printing Will Work In Fashion
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Eliza Brooke
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In case you haven’t heard, 3D printing has , and it will disrupt every industry’s manufacturing processes slightly differently. Let’s talk about why it will work in fashion. 3D printing is not entirely new to the fashion industry, as jewelry designers have for years outsourced quick modeling jobs to printing companies. But as 3D-printed pieces begin to pop up on the runway and in presentations outside of fashion week as the finished product, it’s worth asking why the method stands a chance of proliferating among designers. , a designer trained in classic garment cutting at Yves Saint Laurent and Emanuel Ungaro, is currently exhibiting a collection of masks, corsets and helmets at the Arnhem Mode Biennale in the Netherlands. Designers and collaborated with Shapeways to produce a 3D-printed gown modeled by the burlesque icon Dita Von Teese at a presentation in February. The results are beautiful. Comprising 3,000 articulated joints and dotted with 12,000 Swarovski crystals, Dita’s gown fits her curves like a glittering Chinese finger trap. Wales’s feathered shoulder piece fluffs and falls like the real thing. This is art. It isn’t wearable, but it suggests that 3D printing has the finesse necessary to break into an industry known for its attention to quality craft. Printers are getting closer to producing good fabric-like materials, using interlocking structures to create weaves and stitches. Duann Scott, ‘ “Designer Evangelist,” said that once more fashion designers start using 3D printing, it will make a case for 3D manufacturers to develop more breathable, wearable materials. This is, of course, a chicken and egg situation, as designers aren’t going to want to migrate to 3D printing until they know it’s as good if not better than their current methods. At the moment, 3D printing may be most compelling to designers when used in conjunction with organic materials. Bitonti told me that he’s currently working on 3D-printed handbags finished with stingray leather, an idea that has a lot of potential. Designers and consumers have a strong historical and emotional affinity to non-synthetic materials like leather, silk and cotton, and they aren’t going anywhere. It wouldn’t be surprising to see designers incorporating complex printed elements with traditional materials in the near future. If 3D printing disrupts mass fashion production, it will do so because it will have become cheaper and more efficient than current manufacturing methods. Ready-to-wear, however, with its smaller production runs, financial insecurity and impulse toward the artistic, is the ideal space for 3D printing to take root now. The designer , who showed a small range of Shapeways-printed nylon jewelry with her ready-to-wear collection at New York Fashion Week in February, said that 3D printing revolutionized her production timetable. Consumers could buy the jewelry immediately after her show and receive the product in two weeks. “I found that there are so many benefits for small designers. You don’t have to deal with minimum or volume issues. You can design as many prototypes as you want as intricately as you want, and it doesn’t affect anything the way it does with clothes.” For small, young brands, which have a failure rate not unlike tech startups, 3D printing offers the previously unheard-of option to manufacture exactly to order. In a world where botched manufacturing runs and over-estimated interest in an item leads to unusable and unsold stock, printing minimizes risk in a way that never existed before for fashion designers. One of the obvious challenges facing mainstream adoption of 3D printing in the clothing industry is a longstanding appreciation for handcrafted pieces. Would a Birkin bag cost as much as it does if it were not stitched by human hands? Scott argues that the traditional idea of handcraft is romanticized. Manipulating code to make a dress flow and fall over the human form is the new craft, he said. But Scott is a Shapeways guy, and not all classically trained designers would agree. , a New York-based jewelry designer who experimented with printing finished products for an event sponsored by Shapeways at the Ace Hotel in February, told me that while she sees the advantages of using 3D printing to create a finished product, it’s not right for her brand. She likes the slivers of imperfections that can result from casting. “In some ways it can be used to enhance the design,” she said. “But in other ways I think it leaves a generic motif on all of the goods, and to me it would be better to make the product and make a mold and cast it and finish or change it in some way. Hammer it. Something that gives it a more sensory feel. I’m a bit of a purist.” 3D printing is, however, part of Sheffield’s arsenal. While she often hand-makes wax models, Sheffield will go digital for repeating patterns, as on a ring of overlapping wheat sheaths. Scaling and altering designs on a CAD file reduces her workload by hours. For designers with an interest in preserving the uniqueness of handcrafted pieces, 3D printing could simply be a standard design tool to be used as needed. If 3D printing is making moves on manufacturing in general, you can bet fashion won’t be exempt, even if it is initially treated by the press as a futuristic conceit. It’s dubious that the Fashion Institute of Technology and Parsons will start training their students as coders just yet, but printing could easily make inroads in accessories, shoes and non-fabric elements of clothing in the near future. It isn’t hard to imagine that some of fashion’s more avant-garde talents would be willing to experiment with printing in a more substantial way soon.
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Gillmor Gang: iBeacon & Eggs
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Steve Gillmor
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The Gillmor Gang — Robert Scoble, John Borthwick, Keith Teare, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor — woke up, fell out of bed, dragged a comb filter across our head. Television is going streamland in a big way, and the Emmy nominations of Netflix’ House of Cards are but the most obvious indicator of the transformation. And what Apple has in store for us is becoming tangibly clear based on its dance with the studios. Apple is in position now to do to the studios what it couldn’t do to the record business: provide a way to integrate the first and second screens without disrupting revenue. Right now it looks like TimeWarner is to Apple TV as AT&T was to iPhone. HBO ToGo and ESPN are here today on the Apple TV home screen, and my Comcast app lets me manage my DVRs at 30,000 feet. The Gang consensus: Apple goes TV by the end of the year. @stevegillmor, @borthwick, @scobleizer, @kteare, @kevinmarks Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor
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CrunchWeek: Microsoft Stock Nosedives, Path Raising Again, Netflix’s Emmy Nods
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Colleen Taylor
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This time around, I was joined by and to talk about Microsoft’s massive after its disappointing , the latest rumors of Path , and tech taking over Hollywood with Netflix’s .
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“Designing Facebook Home” Video Gives Rare Look At Prototypes And Iteration Process
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Josh Constine
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Facebook Home’s launcher was inspired by Lunchables. That’s just one nugget of insight into Facebook’s design process from a presentation it gave to Bay Area designers in May and that it’s now released as a video. The 40-minute clip illustrates how Home evolved, iteration by iteration. Facebook’s Julie Zhuo introduces it saying “the things that the articles never write about is the journey.” “We all just see the final product, we see the design in its completed state, and we don’t really get to tell the story about all of the things that happen along the way, the ups and downs, the bad ideas we tried, the endless iteration and critique,” product design director Zhuo explains. , embedded below, tells that story. While that end product hasn’t gained the traction Facebook might have hoped for, it’s slowly getting better. The relentless brainstorming and testing process exposed here are why Facebook keeps evolving, and why Home could eventually become a livable mobile “apperating system.” “This is how we should design our products” says Facebook designer Justin Stahl. “I think they should mirror this feeling of being alive. The way we do that at Facebook is by drawing parallels between the real world and the virtual world that we’re building.” Stahl breaks down some of the key features of Facebook Home by outlining the meatspace experience they mimic: – “If you think in real life, news tends to find you. You don’t really have to seek it out, and that’s how we designed Cover Feed. I woke up one day…and had the brand new trailer for Iron Man 3 I was totally into [on my Cover Feed]. It was delivered to me. I didn’t have to check a bunch of feeds and bounce between apps. It was as if someone had told me about it and it was available right when I turned on my phone.” – “It doesn’t matter what I’m doing. If [my friend and co-worker] Francis comes to talk to me, I’m willing to talk to him. I’m not just going to tell him to leave and get back to him later that day. With Chat Heads I can quickly pop in and out of conversations. I can continue what I was doing. It’s just like Francis dropping by my desk every day.” Stahl then takes a dig at the design of apps like Path, which use showy “fly-out” animations to reveal their navigation buttons. “There’s a tendency to solve tough navigation design problems by doing little magic tricks like having menus fly in out from nowhere. What’s really important for us is maintaining a sense of where you’re at.” That’s a bit rich, considering Facebook has cribbed stickers and from Path. The most fascinating part of the video shows early prototypes of Cover Feed, gesture-based navigation, and the app launcher on Facebook Home. Originally, Facebook considered simply docking a more traditional version of the mobile news feed at the bottom of the Home lock screen. Facebook’s Francis Luu explains that “we put news feed at the bottom so you could just scroll up. And the background was my cover photo.” But that didn’t show how the feed is the “lifeblood of Facebook.” In fact, it conveyed the opposite. In this design, Luu says “the majority of the screen is just this big photo that doesn’t change much and something that makes the news feed a bad experience is when it feels stale. So we just decided, ‘what if we fill up the entire screen with your friends’ content?'” The video then shows a series of designs for the like and comment buttons, and how it settled on the option to double-tap to Like. Facebook then tackled how to reveal your apps. Eventually it settled on swipe left for Messenger, right for your last app, and up to open the app grid. The designers originally considered offering more than three gestures to get you to your apps but realized it would confuse people. “What about 5, 6, 8? And you’re like ‘what the hell is going on?'” says Luu. One solution Facebook tried was swiping to open an overlaid panel of a few favorite apps on top of Cover Feed. Luu says with a laugh that “Maybe instead of swiping up and getting three separate options you got a tray of apps as inspired by Lunchables [the pre-packed kids lunch]. We actually called this design direction Launchables, and we literally turned it into a tray of apps you could curate. In the end, Facebook stuck with the apps gesture opening a full-screen launcher. Unfortunately at first it came with no widgets, folders or dock. But with time , and now Launchables has emerged as Dock, a single row of favorite apps locked to the bottom of the launcher like on iOS. The video concludes with Facebookers discussing the need to design mobile experiences right on a touchable mobile phone, not some image-editing software like Photoshop. Facebook designed Home using Quartz Composer so they could feel the physics of flinging Chat Heads around the screen. The company’s insistence on careful design led it to have the employees who built Home oversee the productions of the commercials that promote it. Facebook is famous for its “Move Fast And Break Things” iterative design. By letting its guard down and giving us a peek into its process, we gain better understanding of what works in Home and how it and the rest of Facebook are likely to progress.
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When Will Doom Come To Hollywood?
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Jon Evans
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Jane Austen? Shakespeare? Tolstoy? Hacks. Beethoven? Bach? Mozart? Wildly overrated. Statistically speaking, at least. It’s a curious fact that while the long-dead titans of literature and music are revered above all others, they were working in a time when the talent pool — the educated population of the planet — was a tiny rounding error compared to today’s. What’s more, today’s writers and musicians have the advantage of learning from those who went before. Simple statistics implies that most of history’s great works of art must have been created within the last 50 years– –but you’ve probably never heard of them. These days it’s nearly impossible for even to elbow their way out of the teeming masses of would-be writers, musicians, and other artists. It was bad enough back in the 18th century, when Samuel Johnson’s biographer Boswell wrote: I told him that our friend Goldsmith had said to me, that he had come too late into the world, for that Pope and other poets had taken up the places in the Temple of Fame; so that, as but a few at any period can possess poetical reputation, a man of genius can now hardly acquire it. JOHNSON. ‘That is one of the most sensible things I have ever heard of Goldsmith. It is difficult to get literary fame, and it is every day growing more difficult.’ That’s a sentiment echoed more recently by Microsoft Research’s Duncan Watts, who a few years ago performed that indicated market success is driven less by intrinsic talent than by “cumulative advantage,” a rich-get-richer process in which early, possibly even random events are amplified by social feedback and produce large differences in future outcomes… someone who is incredibly successful may owe their success to a combination of luck and cumulative advantage rather than superior talent. What’s more, the traditional gatekeepers have mostly been beaten down by the hammer of technology, and find themselves fighting for smaller slices of a . The music industry has been so utterly transformed that we barely remember what it was. The book business is in the throes of the same transformation: Borders is dead, Barnes & Noble , 60 percent of book purchases , the lines between agent, publisher, distributor, and retailer grow blurrier daily, and anyone who wants to can and frequently does self-publish. As for television, as Ryan Lawler pointed out a couple of days ago, : Re: latest Apple TV rumors. Is Ad Skipping really a killer feature? Aren't live sports and the only reasons left to even need cable? — Rich Kearney (@richkearney) But even as the supply of what the industry cynically calls “content” skyrockets, the demand for it is at best flat. There are only so many books one can read, so much music one can listen to, so many movies and TV shows one can watch, so much content one can consume — and many consumers nowadays refuse to pay for any of the above when free or pirated versions are available. Paradoxically, in the face of this ever-expanding panoply of choices, today’s audiences are frequently reading and viewing diversely. It seems that today’s tech has actually intensified the Watts effect mentioned above — meaning that if you don’t already have a brand or a franchise, odds are you’re in big trouble before you even get started. Just ask . Or ask Jonny Geller, CEO of major literary/talent agency Curtis Brown, who : “We used to operate on the 80-20 rule. Now, it’s more like 96 to four.” I’m all too grimly aware of that myself; I was represented by Curtis Brown back when I was a full-time thriller writer. I’m pleased to report that were quite well-reviewed but sold very modestly. Just like J.K. Rowling’s! …er, as Robert Galbraith. (But it’s okay. Writing software is three times as lucrative and sometimes almost as fun.) And yet. There remains one last unransacked bastion, one creative castle as yet unconquered by this rising sea of disruptive technology and social change. I refer, of course, to Hollywood. They’re , thanks to higher ticket prices. The common wisdom is that they’ve become more megahit-driven, but if you look at the numbers, the top 10 releases of 2012 commanded of all U.S. box-office income that year, compared to and 10 and 20 years ago; not exactly a shocking change. True, streaming has to which the studios had become accustomed: but at the same time, the rest of the planet has grown enormously wealthier over the last 20 years, and it turns out they like going to movies, too. Almost everyone does. It’s a social event that isn’t really a social event; how great is that? So: “In the past decade total box-office spending has risen by about one-third in North America while more than doubling elsewhere,” . As a result the studios just keep sailing along. True, Spielberg and Lucas have a Hollywood “implosion” — but they see it happening because “three or four or maybe even a half-dozen megabudget movies are going to go crashing into the ground, and that’s going to change the paradigm.” Not because of Netflix, or piracy, or increased supply, or diminished demand, or the democratization of the means of production. None of those actually seem to be a problem yet. Is this a false sense of security? A rising tide lifting a fleet of sinking ships? Maybe–but I don’t think so. I think Hollywood is on to something here, and that the death of the DVD was not such a bad thing in the long run. Movies at home have to compete with every other form of entertainment, and that’s a loser’s game; but if you can drag people out of their living rooms and into your theaters, then you’ve won the battle already. People who see movies in theaters aren’t just absorbing entertainment, they’re attending a performance. In the same way that live shows remain music’s great cash cow, movie theaters can vaccinate Hollywood against Netflix and BitTorrent. So that big red flag waving over the iconic Hollywood sign isn’t the death of the DVD; it’s the steadily diminishing number of tickets sold. Ticket inflation may keep short-term revenues high, but in the long run it could be what cripples the business forever. The question is, will Hollywood realize in time that they need to take a short-term revenue hit, and lower their ticket prices, in order to keep their audience coming out to theaters? As a movie lover, here’s hoping that the answer is yes. Kaiju, . Go see it.
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Ingrid Lunden
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URGENT FOR ALEXIA AND ELDON …
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Ryan Lawler
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ALEXIA / ELDON: This note is obviously not for publication. I’m concerned that a personal message (see below) from [XXXX], the CEO of [XXXX] in Japan, . The company has asked me to help unravel the mystery. This is the third attempt by the company in the last two weeks to reach out to your U.S. staff and get your attention with an exclusive. [XXXX] is a legendary figure in the world of Asian personal computing. He brought kanji characters into the digital universe and word processing to Asia. He was a pal of Steve Jobs when Jobs was first brooding about touch tech and pad computing. He provided Sun with some of its most important early algorithms. He sells the No. 1 business productivity app in Japan and just introduced worldwide an Apple iOS edition of his best-selling [XXXX]. He is now preparing a broader assault on the US apps market in the Fall. You don’t seem to know him. You don’t seem to care. Let’s give it one last shot, shall we? [XXXX] is on Sandhill Road and South of Market next week to meet with friends and funds. Also along for the ride is his brilliant mathematician wife [XXXX] who is the most famous woman programmer in Asia and who has done most of the coding that made his ventures famous there. We are offering you an opportunity to meet them. We are offering you an advance glimpse at what they will do in September. No one is demanding that you love what they might tell you. But we are baffled and bewildered at why you don’t seem to value that! [XXXX] has approached you because two years ago, he gave you advance access to his first entry into the U.S. apps market, [XXXX] – and your very small story helped introduce that app in a big way to American and European audiences. Loyalty, as you know, is a big deal on that far side of the Pacific. I know the pressure you are all under at TechCrunch. … and I know the whimsical, faltering nature of your own expansion plans into European and Asian markets. ([XXXX] and [his wife] met at great length this week with the new TechCrunch Japan leader in Tokyo, Ken Nishimura. Ken knows [XXXX] well. Ken knows [his wife] well. But Ken Nishimura doesn’t seem to know you or your staff at all. One TechCrunch, one world? My guess is you don’t have a clue about the major stories TechCrunch Japan is breaking ever day in Tokyo. Perhaps you didn’t get the memo, guys: Asia is about to have more than half of the world’s Internet users. Japan is in recovery. Asian content providers are now targeting global markets for growth. [XXXX] is a “first mover” in this global push. All props to the bedroom Internet trolls and fan-boy hackers of your recent past. I knew them well at Xbox. But your own newby staff foreshadows your future audience –- go East … East Asia. Love [XXXX]. Hate [XXXX]. Whatever. But give him the courtesy of a response today. You can shake his hand at the next Friday. Smile. You can even tell him to his face that you aren’t interested in anything new coming out of Asia. Then we’ll smile back, and leave the party before the band is done. But we would rather offer you one last dance. ( Want to meet the writer of this email? You too can attend the August Capital Party and drink our scotch. .) Photo Credit: via
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Freedom Of Information Act Machine Fights Government Secrecy By Automating Transparency Requests
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Billy Gallagher
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The Freedom of Information Act Machine, an open online platform that automates Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, two days ago and has already surpassed its funding goal. At the time of publication, it had cleared $20,000 in funding from over 600 backers. The issue is simple — the state and federal laws and processes for FOIA requests are complex, often purposefully so, and it can be a pain for even experienced reporters to navigate the process. The FOIA machine does three main things: it automates FOIA requests; it tracks requests, their progress and the dates you filed them; and it aggregates information about FOIA requests and helps build information around how to improve the requests in the future. “Those who have abused public trust often are able to hide behind all of this bureaucracy,” the team explains on the Kickstarter page. “Their secrets, held in millions of government documents, simply won’t reveal themselves.” , the FOIA Machine’s developer and a data reporter at The Huffington Post, tells me the team had expected to reach the funding goal in around two weeks and has been blown away by the response. The FOIA Machine, the usefulness of which should be pretty obvious in the wake of PRISM, will be open and free to anyone. The team says over 800 journalists have signed up to use it when it opens to the public, which Shifflett estimates should happen by Christmas. The team, made up of investigative journalists, data scientists, and coders, put the project on Kickstarter to raise money to finish developing the site, improve its functionality and to offset server costs. The (CIR) will be the FOIA Machine’s home until it’s launched to the public, at which point it will be handed off to the nonprofit (IRE). Maybe they should start an Acronym Machine while they’re at it. Shifflett says the extra money raised on Kickstarter will go toward more features (possibly the ability to raise funds via crowdsourcing to pay for users’ FOIA fees that may arise) and an API; he says the group is currently drafting more official stretch goals beyond the original $17,500. You can check out the Kickstarter page, which is unsurprisingly well written, and contribute .
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Microsoft Finally Reveals That No One Wanted The Surface RT
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Matt Burns
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Windows RT is a dog. We’ve been saying that from the beginning. We weren’t alone. It’s very hard to find a positive review of Windows RT, and more specifically, the nine-month-old Microsoft Surface with RT. And now Microsoft, in its , finally revealed that we were right. The company took a massive $900M writedown last quarter because of unsold Surface RT’s. Even more telling is that Microsoft actually revealed this loss. It’s that big. The company had to tell investors why it didn’t meet Wall Street’s expectations. Sadly, the Surface RT hardware is not at fault here. The tablet itself is actually a beautiful machine: sleek, solid and downright stunning. It’s hard to pick one up and not be impressed. The Surface RT’s designers and engineers should be proud of their creation. It’s not their fault. Windows RT should not exist as a consumer-facing product. It’s a reactionary move against the iPad and the multitude of Android tablets flooding the market. It’s Microsoft punching down where it should have just walked away from the fight. While Intel is quickly bringing most of the advantages of ARM chips to its x86 line, Microsoft decided it couldn’t wait and built a product that ignored Windows’ main advantages of legacy software. The Surface RT was sadly part of the ecosystem that is predictably failing. The Surface product line was a big risk for Microsoft. The company went all-in on a PC for the very first time. And in a way, it was successful. The Surface RT and Pro brought a lot of attention to Windows 8 tablets — much more attention than HP, Dell, or Samsung could have provided. The striking product line put a lot of consumer electronic companies on notice, especially since Microsoft — historically a software-first outfit — took on the task of creating their own first-rate hardware. These tablets are the standard for Windows 8 tablets even if it’s clear after today’s news that they failed to live up to Microsoft’s expectations. Without the Surface Pro and RT, the Windows 8 tablet world would be as stale and lifeless as Windows 8 laptops. All signs point to a being announced in the coming weeks. And even with today’s news, it’s entirely possible that Microsoft will release a second generation Surface RT with a starting price point much lower. If anything, Microsoft is a company that does whatever the hell it wants even if no one is buying the products.
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Never Forget A Face With NumberSnap
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Stephanie Yang
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Have you ever been in, let’s say a discotheque, and gotten caught in a whirl of names, numbers and faces that you just can’t keep straight? Happens all the time. Luckily, just became available for Android on Google Play. The premise of NumberSnap is that sometimes, you just can’t remember what your new friend from the night before looks like. Because reasons. But, with NumberSnap installed, whenever someone enters contact information into your phone, the app instantly takes a picture from the front-end camera. NumberSnap’s promo copy explains that this eliminates the need to painstakingly go through all your numbers and assign display pictures. Personally I don’t even bother assigning pictures, assuming that I remember the faces of most of my important contacts. On top of that, I doubt any of my friends would enjoy an unsuspecting and unflattering snapshot of them coming up every time they called. So let’s call it what it is: A sneaky way to snap a photo when you aren’t sure what or who you’ll remember the next morning. That being said, NumberSnap isn’t exactly discreet. Your new contacts will see a message informing them that their picture is about to be taken, followed up with a similar text from your phone. These settings can be turned off with “stealth mode.” Creepy. The other problem is that NumberSnap doesn’t work in conjunction with the Android contact forms, but requires opening a whole other page (as shown below). So while your new contact might be tipped off by the fact that NumberSnap’s logo is right above their name and number, here’s to hoping he or she will be just as bad with details, faces and, you know, overall memory. You also just might end up with a bunch of contacts looking exactly like you, considering how often people input new numbers themselves. And, although you would probably get really good at posing for quick pictures, its not very helpful for networking or keeping track of contacts. As a frequent observer (and sometimes participant) of people discreetly snapping pictures of others, there is an alternative to NumberSnap: the tried and true Fake-Snapchat-Selfie move. For those who have never used this, hold up your phone as if taking a selfie, presumably to send on Snapchat. Meanwhile, the engaged camera is actually on the back of the phone, snapping a shot of your unsuspecting subject. It’s simple, effective and free. It’s also handy if you aren’t slick enough to actually get someone’s number, but want a picture anyways. The Fake Snapchat Selfie require a bit more positioning and effort than installing an app. You also run the risk of forgetting to turn off your camera flash, at which point it can turn a tad uncomfortable for everyone. So then again, it might be better to just cough up the $1 for NumberSnap. So if you’ve “ever gotten a person’s phone number and forgotten what they look like the morning after,” or “found taking contact display pictures awkward,” it might be worth a shot. Use it as you will.
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A Visit To DogVacay’s L.A. HQ To Meet The People (And Dogs) Behind The Airbnb For Pets
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Colleen Taylor
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It turns out that DogVacay has also made a name for itself as a startup to watch in its local scene — while TechCrunch TV was visiting Los Angeles this past week, when we’d ask local techies what companies were heating up lately, DogVacay’s name came up quite often. So we made it a point to stop by DogVacay’s Santa Monica headquarters to see what all the buzz is about for ourselves. Watch the video embedded above to get a quick look at DogVacay’s Santa Monica digs and hear CEO and co-founder Aaron Hirschhorn talk about DogVacay’s founding, growth, and plans for the future.
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