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E-Cig Companies Will Never Promise To Help You Quit Smoking | Jordan Crook | 2,013 | 8 | 11 | Two or three years ago, e-cigarattes were exotic. These strange sticks, their ends LED-lit and their owners expelling odorless smoke – “It’s vapor!” – would look as futuristic as a Replicant’s food injector. They gave the smoker nebulous powers, namely the ability to smoke on a plane, and they were expensive and hard to find. Now, they’re everywhere. Even Leonardo DiCaprio was caught sucking on one on set. But are they safe? And what will they really do for the hard-core smoker? Today the e-cigarette industry is worth around $3 billion globally, outpacing the entire stop-smoking industry including patches, gum, and other addiction killers. Yet unlike smoking cessation products, which are sold over the counter in pharmacies, e-cigarette companies will never, make a claim that e-cigs will treat smoking addiction. In fact, these companies claim the opposite in their marketing materials, citing that they are not intended “to treat, prevent or cure any disease or condition.” This is the same language that appears on other dubious health concoctions Even though it seems obvious that e-cigarettes are meant to help people tame their addiction to analog cigarettes — and there is even anecdotal evidence suggesting they are more effective than smoking cessation therapies — the claims made by these companies will partially determine the fate of the entire industry. But before we get into the regulation of tomorrow, let’s look at the history of the tobacco industry. In 1906, the Food and Drug Administration was created under President Theodore Roosevelt. In 1938, the FDA passed the , giving the federal government jurisdiction over products like foods, medicines, and other substances that could harm the public health. For years, that didn’t include tobacco products. It was only in 2009, under President Barack Obama, that the was put into place, giving the FDA the power to regulate the Tobacco Industry. Before this, big tobacco was allowed to experiment with new products and market their wares however they pleased, with regulation coming from state governments. In the 1950s, the realities of smoking were just beginning to show their ugly head. We began to realize there was a clear connection between smoking cigarettes and developing cancer and other fatal illnesses. So what did the industry do? They created something called “harm reduction products”, which were meant to be “safer” than your usual cigarette. In the beginning, this simply meant adding a filter. By the 80’s, companies were taking it a step further. RJ Reynolds introduced a type of smokeless cigarette called Premier, which seemed to disgust everyone and eventually went off the market, only to resurface itself as the . The American Cancer Society that the Eclipse line, which went on sale in 2000, was not as safe as the marketing campaign suggested, as it still delivered carcinogens and other harmful substances. In other words, harm reduction has long been a strategy for Big Tobacco to keep sales up in the face of… well, cancer. Keeping that in mind, it’s not too much of a surprise that harm reduction products have never really taken off. Until now. In public perception, smoking cessation products are the good guys. These are the products like Nicoderm CQ and Nicorette that are sold by pharmacies only, used for a temporary period, and regulated as treatment and/or therapy. I quit smoking for a while with the help of the patch, and got more congratulations during that period then I did graduating from NYU, winning State Championships in volleyball, or landing a job at TechCrunch. Harm reduction products, on the other hand, seem like ploys. Many people hear “safer” and “cigarette” in the same sentence and assume it’s yet another trick to increase sales. But e-cigarettes are different. The movement wasn’t led by Big Tobacco. The e-cigarette industry began to boom in 2007 led by hundreds of smaller companies. Eventually, Big Tobacco took notice. Unlike the patch, or the gums, e-cigarettes actually made a dent (a small, but noticeable one) in cigarette sales. Rather than fight it, major tobacco companies are now investing in e-cigarette offerings. Lorillard, the maker of Newport, Maverick and Old Gold cigarettes in April 2012. Reynolds American, which makes Camel, Pall Mall, Kool and others, is now selling its own Vuse e-cigarettes in select cities as a trial run. And Altria (formerly Phillip Morris), seller of Marlboros, now sells an e-cigarette line named MarkTen. This has pushed distribution of e-cigarettes far beyond what small, independent companies could ever manage. However, Big Tobacco’s involvement is a double-edged sword. While distribution is greatly increased, pushing these devices into the far reaches of the country, big tobacco also gives off the perception that these devices, like the products they’ve sold for centuries, will probably kill you. “What are these products?” asks and supporter of e-cigs. “Are they harm reduction or are they smoking cessation? It’s a tough situation because, on the one hand, you have what it does and on the other you have the claims are that are allowable under the law. It’s a strange situation where they are being regulated as tobacco products. But they are not tobacco products. There’s no tobacco in them.” To be clear, any product that delivers nicotine into the human body is automatically considered “unsafe.” That’s the nature of nicotine itself. It’s not meant to be in our bodies. That said, smoking cessation products like Nicoderm and Nicorette are automatically forgiven. Their purpose is to wean you off the nicotine addiction, and then be discarded. No one quits smoking and says, I’m going to use the patch for the rest of my life. That’s not how it works. In fact, doctors who prescribe smoking cessation therapies have strict limits on how long they can continue to provide the patch, gums, etc. E-cigarettes are different. These companies don’t want you to quit smoking entirely; they simply want you to switch from smoking to vaping. In fact, the business model is built around your return. The idea is that you pay a larger sum up-front, for the device and a first set of cartridges, making an investment in it, and then return to buy refills. In this way, e-cigarettes are simply a cigarette alternative, and not a therapy to help you quit. But even though e-cigarettes deliver nicotine into the body, and for an extended period of time, many experts agree that they are much, safer than combusting cigarettes. Right now, however, clear cut information on their safety is limited. To start, there have been no finished clinical trials to measure the difference, and holding a clinical trial that is effective knowing that subjects would be exposed to a known carcinogen. Moreover, the lack of regulation here allows e-cigarette companies to be lazy or negligent. The nicotine dosage may vary from one product to the next, or perhaps they’re using something other than propylene glycol (the standard liquid found in e-cigarettes). They might even have a shoddy battery or wiring that exhausts burning plastic along with the nicotine. Many e-cigarettes are manufactured in Asia, sold at gas stations, and the consumer is none the wiser that these products haven’t been checked out by any governing body. In short, there is no oversight. Thankfully, according to Dr. Siegel, e-cigarettes are “orders of magnitude safer” than combusting cigarettes. “Even if e-cigarettes only cause a five to ten percent reduction in cigarette consumption, you have to understand that from a public health perspective, that is an enormously positive impact,” said Dr. Siegel. On the other hand, it’s the lack of regulation that makes e-cigarettes potentially dangerous. So what can be done? This is where things get tricky. The FDA is set to regulate the e-cigarette industry over the next year, at the latest. How they will regulate them is anyone’s guess. There are three possible scenarios: The first is that e-cigarettes will be regulated just like traditional cigarettes, with rules on how they can be marketed. This would still allow for distribution, letting e-cigs be sold anywhere traditional cigarettes are sold, but it would limit these companies’ ability to market themselves as a cigarette alternative, or at all. The second option is that these products will be regulated in the same way as smoking cessation therapies. They would be sold only in pharmacies, over the counter. This would limit visibility and distribution enormously. The third option is that the FDA will create brand new regulation for e-cigarettes, which would covers things like dosage, materials used, quality control testing, etc. but would still allow for broad distribution and marketing. There is a raging debate right now over these options, or more pointedly, the time it will take to get to these options. Those that are pro-e-cigs want to ensure that the regulation is fair, and are willing to wait as long as they’re waiting for something close to option three. Others believe that the e-cigarette companies are purposefully stalling, asking the FDA to wait for more hard evidence on the effects of e-cigarettes (especially compared to traditional cigarettes) in order to grow marketshare in an unregulated field. They see this as a huge risk considering that the e-cig industry is growing rapidly, and these unregulated products are in the hands of more and more unknowing consumers every day. Bloomberg is even working to e-cigarettes in New York. Big Tobacco’s involvement in the matter only muddles things further. The industry doesn’t have a great track record when it comes to reducing public harm (or even admitting their products cause it in the first place), so in a way, Big Tobacco’s investment in the industry almost discredits e-cigarettes as just another marketing ploy. On the other hand, Big Tobacco has the brawn to lobby the FDA in a way that these small manufacturers wouldn’t be able to do. Thanks to Big Tobacco, e-cigarette companies now have a voice in the pending regulation of their products. The future of the industry is surely in question, but one thing is quite certain: this isn’t the last you’ll hear about e-cigarettes and the debate is heating (not burning) up. |
Hands On With The Seven Best Fantasy Football Sites And Apps | Billy Gallagher | 2,013 | 8 | 29 | With the NFL season just a week away, fans are poring over stats, trash talking their friends, and gearing up for the real season: fantasy football. The national phenomenon has spawned five seasons of a TV show, The League, has NFL teams refitting their stadiums so that fans can track their teams more closely, and costs businesses due to distracted employees. So, easily distracted employees, here are the coolest and most useful places to play fantasy football out there—from the household names like ESPN to a small startup that’s doing fantasy exclusively on your phone. I didn’t rank them because a lot of deciding “which one is best” depends on what type of player you are and what fits you. ESPN has been my go-to for years now. It has an awesome interface that’s easy to use–especially the drafting tool, a great mobile app that it’s improved this offseason, and solid player rankings. ESPN’s Livecast, which shows you the scores of all the NFL games alongside your fantasy matchup in real time, is a godsend. ESPN is my personal favorite, and whether you’re a fantasy rookie or a seasoned veteran, you really can’t go wrong with it. The old Yahoo fantasy football app was like watching the Oakland Raiders play. You could tell it was supposed to be (fantasy) football, but man it was awful. The company redid their app this summer, and it’s a huge improvement. One of my leagues just switched from ESPN to Yahoo, and I have to say the two are about even so far for me. Yahoo has a nice, easy to navigate mobile app, and had a really smooth drafting tool. Yahoo even gave out report cards for each team grading their drafts right after it concluded, which was a fun little feature. The app itself prominently displays links to Yahoo’s other mobile apps, which is smart and may further Yahoo and CEO Marissa Mayer’s refocused on the company’s mobile apps. Check out our new app – thanks for the rave review! — marissamayer (@marissamayer) In football, the where the running back takes the ball and runs towards the line before turning and pitching it back to the quarterback who then throws it downfield. the site is anything but a trick play–more of a dive straight up the middle. The old school site hearkens back to a simpler time, before mobile apps and big ESPN and Yahoo sites with beautiful displays, when people drafted on big boards in their basements, adding up stats on pencil and paper. Fleaflicker goes with a clean, simple spreadsheet look that does a good job of feeling like old school fantasy football, while still offering real-time scoring and other modern-day features. It’s super customizable for the hardcore fans out there, but also has a really simple interface for the beginners. has an interesting take on fantasy, going solely mobile. The interface is super simple, with very little information. But this is a double-edged sword, as there are few stats or insights to look up if you really want good info on your players. I participated in a Fanium draft (8 teams, 16 player each), and each player was given up to eight hours to make their selection. The draft went from Thursday afternoon to Tuesday morning, as not everyone was right near their phones all the time. I had mixed feelings about the draft—it felt a lot like fantasy football for people who find fantasy to be a chore. I love gathering together and smack talking during a few hour-long draft. In many ways, Fanium is the antithesis of Fleaflicker and My Fantasy League–it’s not customizable, with rigid preset roster sizes, and is missing some of the classic elements of fantasy football, like kickers and defenses. At first, I didn’t like it. It felt like fantasy football for people who don’t like fantasy football. But it is a really fast, lightweight app, which is awesome if you’re out all day Sunday checking your fantasy team while watching the games. Fanium is a great intro to fantasy football, as it isn’t much of a time commitment or too much to understand, but still maintains the key awesomeness of fantasy. It could also be a great accompanying app, with the more hardcore players using something like Yahoo or ESPN and the more casual fans using Fanium. We know Yahoo loves to make acquisitions, even … These three are fine places to play fantasy football. I just don’t understand why you’d play on one of these sites when the experience you’re looking for will be better on ESPN or Yahoo. All three have pretty good unique content and offer the typical fantasy settings and features that veteran players are used to. and have nice mobile apps, but I strongly prefer Yahoo’s and ESPN’s. doesn’t even have a mobile app (seriously, what are you doing, FOX?) for their fantasy game. Most of the smaller offerings out there are slight tweaks on the existing game. If a startup really wants to make an impact in this space, they need to make their core offering different. Several options immediately jump out: Despite the comparable popularity in college football, no one has really cracked a good way to make fantasy football fun and engaging for college teams. The leagues are inherently very different, and current fantasy is largely based off of the NFL style—win as many games as you can to make the playoffs, keep your team healthy, then ride hot players and some luck to a championship (or so they tell me—being an , I can’t confirm anything about ). But the college game is very different—strengths of schedules and conference matter a lot more, and the goal is to go undefeated and land in the top two—err, four—spots to compete for a championship. Basing a league off of this would be an interesting departure from the typical NFL-centric leagues. Most of the people I know who do play a version of college fantasy football have made their own systems for tracking and awarding points, as fans are left with very few options if they want to really customize their leagues. Give users an insane amount of options—essentially just the software and storage for whatever league they want to create—and you could grab a nice niche of fans who want to branch out and do their own thing. And fantasy leagues have failed to capture the impact of individual defensive players on the game rather than merely defensive units. One running back typically has a much larger impact on a fantasy game than an entire defensive and special teams unit, which is obviously not how the actual games work. Offensive players are much easier to track, as their individual accomplishments can be recorded by how many yards and touchdowns they have, whereas solid defensive coverage or touchdown-saving tackles are harder to objectively measure. But sports statistics are getting more and more advanced, and someone will be able to figure this thing out sooner or later—might as well be the little guy or they have no shot in the long run against ESPN and Yahoo. And as much as NFL Red Zone has attracted diehard fans who want to watch every touchdown, the bridge between fantasy football and watching games live leaves much to be desired. Whether its DirecTV and its Sunday NFL ticket package, , or another company, users would go bonkers if their fantasy rosters were connected to live games on their TVs. , the company that for TV, is working on technology that would allow viewers to see their players highlighted on the field (you can see Sportvision’s early mockup of this above). Well, that about does it for me. Good luck out there, and don’t draft Aaron Hernandez. Once you’ve picked a site to host your fantasy league, has you covered with your opponents. |
From The Experts To You, Six Fantasy Football Tools For Total Domination | Eliza Brooke | 2,013 | 8 | 29 | Yes. Fantasy football season is upon us. Amid a sea of apps and sites promising to get you a little closer to perfection, I turned to some of 2012’s most accurate fantasy experts to get their take on which online tools you actually need to be using when you’re quietly researching your lineup at work. As fantasy sports have moved into the digital age, there aren’t many people scanning newspapers with a pencil in hand anymore. But you know what? A lot of these guys still rock it old school to an extent. FF Toolbox writer watches tons of game footage in addition to doing online research. , a senior writer at , suggests opening a magazine every now and again. They’re not the type to buy into hype. So when the fantasy football app scene can seem like an arms race for sexier offerings, better predictions, and more comprehensive news aggregation, here are six tried-and-true tools that will help you do it right this season. Because when you hear the same advice enough, it usually means something. It seems almost , but when it comes to following breaking news and knowing who’s injured before the rest of your league, Twitter is your best friend. According to David Dodds, the co-owner of Footballguys.com, all NFL news now breaks on Twitter, and that happens much faster than conventional news sites. Plus, as Smith pointed out, it’s not just a news source: it’s an accessible, friendly community of fantasy talent. (Smith himself promptly responded to my interview request via Twitter.) “The only app I use for fantasy football is Twitter (or Tweetdeck),” said , a senior web editor in the sports department of the New York Times and the co-author of its column. “I have one Twitter list of my favorite NFL beat writers and one list of my favorite fantasy football writers and that’s all anyone really needs in my opinion.” Right up there with Twitter is , which has become the gold standard for fantasy news and general updates. (“I’ll be honest, I’m reading Rotoworld,” said Dodds, whose website also does news.) “That website rarely misses a beat when it comes to breaking news. And they almost always link to their original source, be it a newspaper article or a Tweet,” Sablich said. Fantasy Pros’s uses an algorithm powered by expert cheat sheets and ADP sources to simulate a live draft and shows users what how experts would handle each pick. Live mock drafts are slow and subject to human error: as Draft Wizard puts it, sometimes “some bozo takes a kicker in the first round just to be funny.” A simulator lets you run as many drafts as you want, fast. Sablich is also a fan of Fantasy Pros’s , which take into account 88 different fantasy experts. Among the longtime players I spoke with, there is some debate over the extent to which you should make decisions based on algorithms. While Dodds feels that number crunching is the way of the future — Football Guys has developed its own application — of FFMagicMan said that raw numbers aren’t all there is to making decisions. “It’s more helpful for everyone to take another close look and say, ‘If this is what I’m being told, how does that correlate to what my eyes are telling me, and how does that mesh with the latest news?’ I think taken with a grain of salt they can be very helpful.” Still, got solid feedback, and James said he likes their website. In addition to their predictions, the tool, which is updated daily, is a simple way to judge players side by side. Oh yes. In perhaps the best possible use of this service, Google+ Hangouts with NFL fantasy football last August to spur on , among other things. But according to Smith, Hangouts are also a great way to connect with the brilliant minds of the fantasy football world and get their insights. Sablich cited as one of his favorite researchresources. The site has a number of different calculators, including a scenario calculator (to predict the likelihood that a player will fall to you at a particular spot in the draft), live mock drafts, a draft simulator to mock alone, draft hosting, and weekly custom projections for each player on your team. Just remember, don’t become a slave to what these algorithms and so-called experts tell you to do. If you haven’t picked at your league yet or this piece gave you an unquenchable thirst to read more about fantasy, breaks down . |
Snowden Leaks $52 Billion Intelligence Budget, Reveals “Offensive Cyber Operations” | Gregory Ferenstein | 2,013 | 8 | 29 | National Security Agency leaker and new Russia resident Edward Snowden has . The partially redacted budget reveals the successes and shortcomings of the United States’ sprawling intelligence apparatus, as well as the justifications for top-line budget items. The CIA and NSA have launched aggressive new efforts to hack into foreign computer networks to steal information or sabotage enemy systems, embracing what the budget refers to as “offensive cyber operations,” writes The Post. The most notable findings are: While the redacted budget itself doesn’t reveal any shocking new details (or reasons to put another layer of tinfoil on your head), it is surprising just how much information that independent analysts like Snowden had access to. Readers can explore the full budget in an interactive graph . |
Remote Work Collaboration Startup Sqwiggle Closes On $1.1M In AngelList’s First Syndicate Round | Colleen Taylor | 2,013 | 8 | 29 | , a startup that makes a web application that aims to close that communication gap between remote workers, has just closed on $1.1 million in a brand new seed funding round. We’ve written about the San Francisco-based Sqwiggle , but in light of the new million dollar boost I thought it was a good idea to bring a couple of the company’s co-founders into the studio to see the app in person. Check that out in the video embedded above. The funding round is also notable because Sqwiggle is the to utilize , which lets angel investors syndicate deals with each other. In all, about 30 percent of the $1.1 million round was raised through an AngelList Syndicate. This is a brand new feature that is still finding its place, but it has the potential to be very disruptive for both startups and investors. We talked about what the process was like for Sqwiggle in the video above as well. It’s great to see Sqwiggle get funding to help take its growth to the next level, as it’s a thoughtfully made product with founders who are clearly quite passionate and knowledgeable about the problem they’re looking to solve. Sqwiggle itself was built while the founding team was working remotely, so was a way of life as the product was coming together. It will be exciting to see how Sqwiggle progresses in the months ahead — and what other projects are able to get off the ground thanks to the exciting new funding tools that are available to ambitious developers. |
Digg (And Digg Reader) Arrive On Android | Sarah Perez | 2,013 | 8 | 29 | , the Betaworks-incubated social news service and new home to Google Reader replacement Digg Reader, has just , the company announced today. Included in this release are all the stories you would find on the Digg.com homepage, Digg Reader, as well as integrations with over a half dozen other services including Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Google+ and more. According to a , an Android app had been users’ most common request over the past two months, following the . The company has been working at breakneck speeds to push out its own RSS reader alternative to the now-shuttered Google Reader, which began with a launch of a to the web this June, and a couple of days later, . As on iOS, the Digg Android app bundles Digg’s stories and the RSS reader under one roof, as two complementary parts to the Digg product experience. According to a post on the Digg blog, the new Android app includes several notable features, like the below: However, the app is lacking a few option like a still-in-testing “Show Only Unread Items” view, text size and display mode options, and background updating, all of which are being worked on now for future releases. Digg says updates will roll out steadily over the next few months. Digg Android users have been fairly happy until now to use the company’s HTML5 website, which remains a decent way to browse the site on other non-iOS or Android devices. The company had previously explained that it sees Digg as a part of a broader suite of products, where Digg Reader and Digg.com’s collection of popular links are two ends of a spectrum. Reader, an RSS feed reading service obviously built for power users, is meant to serve as ground zero for beginning the news discovery process, while Digg.com’s final link collection is the result of crowd-sourcing voting and other filtering algorithms. In the middle, are things like Betaworks’ also newly refreshed Instapaper, a read it later utility, that , which was pushed to the public just yesterday. The new Digg Android app is . |
With Sinofsky On Board, Box Is Now Capable Of Mounting The First Credible Threat To Office | Alex Wilhelm | 2,013 | 8 | 29 | Today Box announced that Steven Sinofsky has . The relationship was kicked off via Facebook message, consummated over pho, and gives Box key talent and experience that it needs to grow its enterprise-facing document storage solution. And to build its next set of products. The race to store your files online is not a mere struggle for dominance of low-margin cloud document management. Price pressure via increasing competition from wealthy technology companies is already leading to, in some cases, the elimination of consumer storage costs. For example, Flickr will give you a terabyte of space for your pictures, and Outlook.com has essentially unlimited storage. However, on the enterprise side of things, Microsoft and Box are currently locked in a mini arms race, with Microsoft boosting its SkyDrive Pro business offering per seat. Box its consumer offering to 10GB, and added a new, $5 per month per seat plan that gives small businesses 100GB per employee. So the marginal price of storage is rapidly declining, and those savings are being passed to consumers and customers in the form of price cuts that lead to constant pressure for storage companies. Thus, Box will want to expand beyond its current key offering — file storage and syncing — and into something harder to commoditize. We stated earlier that the struggle to store your files is about more than their mere storage. It works out like this in practice: The company that stores your files is the firm with the best shot at helping you edit them due to sheer proximity and convenience. Therefore, he who holds the files, gets to generate software income from their ownership. The analog to this situation is a hard drive and a new set of Office apps. The files were on your hard drive, and Office lived in the same environment, making their existence harmonious. Now, cloud storage has moved that content away from Office, leaving Microsoft to scramble to build a suite of web apps to handle the editing work that had begun to slip out of its control. Box has done a terrific job at signing up corporate clients to its service. Clients that, I presume, are Office users. Eventually, those customers will have the choice of upgrading their Office software, or snagging Office 365 subscriptions for their employees. But if their files are stored with Box, how palatable is that? At best a connection would have to be built between their productivity software, and their files that Box holds. This is not a perfect solution. What if there were another option? What if Box built a set of editing tools on top of its cloud storage service, moving its business up the value stack, while defending its margins in the face of slipping data-retention fees. To do something like that, it would want to have on board someone with intimate knowledge of Microsoft and its Office products and how to sell productivity software to enterprise customers. That’s Steven Sinofsky. Box claims to have 180,000 business customers and expects 100 percent revenue growth in 2013. Those figures indicate that Box could scale a productivity solution to a meaningful size in short order. It would need to be damn good code, of course. I am not saying that this would be easy, more that it is now possible. Box has hinted that it is working on some internal software that could be construed as indicative that it is working on the above. In an , CEO Levie stated that the company is testing “some of [its] own applications.” There are ample reasons for the success of Office, and Office 365 has shown rapid growth in its early stages. The cloud productivity suite is at a , up 50 percent in a single quarter. If Box generates $8,333 in yearly income from each of its 180,000 business clients, the two are the same size (this calculation is more for fun than any other reason). I am not saying in any way that Box is an Office “killer” or any such baiting nonesense. The gist of this is that Box has an enviable enterprise install base, a key strategic advantage as being The Holder of the Files, and now the exec that called the Office shots at Microsoft for years. That sums together into an enterprise-facing productivity solution, in my view. Box is going public sometime soon — I’m trying to get more on that, but haven’t heard much lately — and when it does it will want to tell investors how it will increase its per-seat revenue to ease fears of margin pressure. We know at least one way they could do that. |
Anki, Nest, Shasta, And Skycatch To Discuss The Present And Future Of Robotics At Disrupt SF | Anthony Ha | 2,013 | 8 | 29 | Next up on the agenda for : Robots! Now, when I bring up robots, you may be thinking about C-3PO from Star Wars, or Rosie the maid from The Jetsons, or something else entirely. But I’m guessing that we’ve got something similar in mind — a machine that looks and acts kind of like a human being, something that’s still years in the future at best. But after a discussion with Rob Coneybeer, co-founder of Shasta Ventures, we started to think about the ways that robots, or robot-type devices, are already starting to infiltrate our lives: Industrial robots, robotic vehicles, robotic devices in the home, and more. So we decided to bring together companies that are doing exciting work with machines that resemble the traditional science-fiction robots for a panel titled “These Aren’t The Droids You’re Looking For.” We’ll talk about the work they’re doing (some of them may stretch , but hey, that’s kind of the point), where they see the most interesting trends, and I think we’ve got at least one cool demo in the works. Our speakers are: , who co-founded Shasta Ventures in 2005, previously worked as an aerospace engineer and automotive engine tester. As an investor, Coneybeer focuses on smartphone companies, collaborative consumption, and The Internet of Things, and his investments include . at Nest Labs. Prior to co-founding Nest, Rogers was part of the iPod software development team and an early iPhone and iPad engineer. , co-founder and CEO at Skycatch, a platform for deploying automated drones for commercial use. He was previously founder of DroneGames, CTO at Storify, chief architect at Break Media, and a software engineer for Disney Interactive. , co-founder and CEO at Anki, a company you may remember from at Apple’s most recent Worldwide Developers Conference. The company is working to bring robotics and artificial intelligence to the real world by, for example, helping machines understand where they are in the physical space. Disrupt SF will run from September 7 to 11, and the robotics panel will take place at 11:35am on the 9th. General-admission tickets and exhibitor packages are currently available. Buy tickets . |
Here’s Why Microsoft Coming To Foursquare’s Salvation Might Make Sense | Alex Wilhelm | 2,013 | 8 | 29 | Rumors that Foursquare is looking to take on a strategic investment from a large technology company kicked up a gear when several sources have reported that Microsoft is perhaps the potential suitor, and, to quote , the talks are “advanced.” What the hell, you might be thinking, does Microsoft want with Foursquare? It’s not application support for its platforms, that’s already a done deal. Instead, I think that the investment is being considered for the same reason that Microsoft : Bing. By buying into Facebook as its only corporate investor, Microsoft has locked up a long-term deal to provide mapping and search capabilities for the social giant. Snagging a chunk of Foursquare is pro-Bing, albeit in a different fashion. Bing competes with Google and Apple to provide local data, and mapping. The two domains are increasingly overlapping as mobile maps become increasingly multifaceted and less about directions, and more about how to live. Bing, of course, on Windows Phone has Local Scout, a tool that combines geolocation and local business information. Foursquare fits into this by simply having data that Microsoft wants. The startup has spent years accreting information from its users about more than restaurants, hotels, houses, and everything in between. Back that into Bing and it could enrich its offering perhaps past what Google proffers to mobile users. Bing already uses Foursquare data. That is the reason I think that Microsoft is interested in the stuff: It knows its value. Also, it would hate to see the inflow stop (if Facebook died), or other parties buy it (Yahoo, etc) and cut off its access. The move is a combination of offense and defense. Yahoo, of course, leans on Bing for the moment to power its search technology, but that might not be the case in a year’s time. This would improve the user experience of Windows 8, 8.1, Windows Phone 8, and the online desktop Bing experience. Now, why not buy Foursquare outright? I don’t think that Microsoft has to. Foursquare’s last round valued the firm at $600 million. Investors would want a premium, and Microsoft has cash. It would not be a cheap acquisition, even given Foursquare current weaknesses. But with say, $50 million, Microsoft could bail Foursquare out of its most recent loans, and inject enough capital for it to prove a revenue-fueled future. Microsoft gets access to its data, and doesn’t have to pay a meaningful (it’s quite rich) price for it. And, if Foursquare really does unwind, who would be there to pick up the pieces and pick out the assets that it wants but Microsoft, a current shareholder. We’re also hearing that Yahoo is a possibility. Let the games begin. |
Deliv Partners With Mall Operator GGP To Enable Same-Day Deliveries From Its Stores | Ryan Lawler | 2,013 | 8 | 29 | Peer-to-peer delivery startup wants to provide a new way for major retailers to offer up same-day delivery to their customers. And it just partnered with one of the biggest mall operators in the country, General Growth Properties, to begin making that vision a reality. Deliv is kind of like Lyft or SideCar in that it isn’t building out a big fleet infrastructure of trucks and drivers to make deliveries for it. Instead, it’s looking to crowdsource drivers to make delivery runs in their own cars. By doing so, it massively reduces costs associated with deliveries, while also enabling brick-and-mortar retailers to provide speedy deliveries that beat Amazon Prime. To make the plan work, Deliv needs to get retailers on board. And that’s where GGP comes in. GGP is the second-largest mall operator in the country, with 123 regional malls nationwide. And it’s got hundreds of millions of square feet of shopping space, according to Scott Morey, Chief Information and Technology Officer of GGP. In that respect, it’s not that different from a bunch of big warehouses around the country, he said. Which means that retailers can almost use the malls like Amazon uses its various distribution outlets. The pact will enable a mix of online and offline sales and deliveries to occur through stores that sign up in select GGP malls. In the online case, shoppers going to certain retailers’ e-commerce sites will be able to add items to their cart and then select same-day delivery from the store. At the mall, runners will collect the goods and hand them off to a Deliv driver. But the partnership will also enable deliveries to be made on purchases made in-store at certain GGP malls. In that way, customers will be able to buy from multiple stores and have their purchases aggregated in one spot before they are delivered. That’ll be perfect for folks who came on shopping trips together with friends or who took public transportation to the mall in question. In either case, the service is designed to make the deliveries the same price, or even cheaper than, standard shipping costs. To begin, the service will be available in four GGP malls, including Stonestown Galleria in San Francisco, Eastridge in San Jose, Glendale Galleria in Los Angeles, and Oakbrook Center in Chicago. The whole thing will hopefully be launched around the holidays, according to Deliv founder and CEO Daphne Carmeli. While Deliv has GGP’s support, though, ultimately it will be up to the retailers to decide whether they want to participate or not. To get them on board, Deliv and GGP have been meeting with a number of retailers to convince them to offer same-day delivery and “out-Amazon Amazon.” Deliv has raised $1 million in seed funding from investors that include General Catalyst, Redpoint Ventures, Trinity Ventures, Operators Fund, and PivotNorth. |
Flickr Grows Post-Relaunch, Tumblr Now 7.2% Of Site’s Referral Traffic | Sarah Perez | 2,013 | 8 | 29 | Yahoo’s efforts at improving Flickr with , , and revamped web and appear to be paying off, at least in the form of website traffic and engagement. According to a new report from , visits to Flickr have been increasing steadily, and are now up by 38 percent since April. Note, though, that the big Flickr redesign was at the end of May. That’s when the site its Pro pricing tier, introducing instead an ad-free tier and power user option ($500/year for another terabyte of space). The site also got , and updated mobile apps as part of Yahoo’s bigger product push under CEO Marissa Mayer’s lead. From April to May, monthly site visits to Flickr went from 86 million to 90 million – indicating that Flickr was still seeing some growth, despite what was then a bit of stagnation in terms of look-and-feel and feature set. But post-relaunch, site visits increased to 107 million in June, and then 110 million in July. In addition, the average time on site grew by 11 percent since April (4.5 minutes) to 4.9 minutes in June, and then to a full 5 minutes by July. Social traffic also increased from 9.7 million in April to 12 million in June, and then to 13.7 million by July, which seems to point to Flickr benefitting from the social media buzz regarding all its changes. What’s also interesting is that Yahoo’s acquisition of Tumblr plays a special role here, as it’s the biggest referring website for Flickr outside of search engines and social networks. 7.2 percent of Flickr’s referral traffic over the past three months came from Tumblr (4.75 million visits) – another reason why Yahoo may have wanted to add the site to its portfolio. That referral traffic has remained relatively consistent pre- and post-Tumblr purchase, SimilarWeb tells us. However, many photographers have long since found this to be the case. For instance, at the time of the Flickr overhaul, professional photographer and blogger Thomas Hawk that: “already, I get the most viral views on my Flickr photos from Tumblr, more than any other site.” The crossover between the two social services, Flickr and Tumblr, could leave the door open to some interesting potential integrations in the future. Post-acquisition, Flickr users began ideas, thinking up tools that would allow easier image posting to Tumblr from Flickr, backup to Flickr of photos posted to Tumblr, and more. Of course SimilarWeb, like many third-party, web-traffic analysis products, relies on a panel of users to determine site rankings. , it has a large network of unbranded, consumer-facing plug-ins doing this work, while others use toolbars and other means. Numbers then should not be determined to be exact, but rather, when viewed at a distance, are able to tell the story of a site’s changes over time. In that case, it’s worth pointing out that several of these traffic-measurement tools point to bumps in site traffic following the Flickr revamp. For example, in Flickr’s largest market, the U.S., you can see post-relaunch growth via Quantcast (estimated) and Compete. However, Quantcast data hints that there’s still the potential for the site’s growth to drop again after the initial post-relaunch glow (see third chart from Google Trends) wears off. |
Lodgify Launches Its Build-Your-Own Solution For Vacation Rental Websites And Listings | Darrell Etherington | 2,013 | 8 | 29 | [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJ3uaLSOha4?feature=player_embedded] Barcelona-based startup is launching its product today, which aims to be the “Shopify of vacation rentals” according to its co-founder Naveen Sharma. Like Shopify, Lodgify allows small business owners to easily set up an online commerce presence – but this time the target is people who are renting out their homes to vacationers and short-term renters. Lodgify has some existing competition in the space, thanks to and came out of Y Combinator in March last year. According to Sharma, Lodgify has some key advantages over MyVR, however, including a better user interface, an instant booking function powered by Stripe and PayPal, website templates that feature responsive design and integration with vacation rental listing sites 9flats and Roomorama out of the gate, with HomeAway coming soon. Forr the same reason that Hotel owners don’t exclusively list on Booking.com and abandon their own website, VR hosts don’t want to list exclusively on Airbnb,” Sharma explained in an interview. “VR owners can increase their income by having their own proprietary website and by additionally listing on multiple booking channels, such as Airbnb, Homeaway, 9flats, Roomorama, etc. The problem here is that it is very costly and time-consuming to build your own website and manage all these listings on multiple sites manually. That’s where Lodgify comes into play.” The Lodgify platform allows VR proprietors to combine site building with listing on multiple rental services (including those mentioned above and 20 more channels on the roadmap for inclusion by end of year) at once, saving them time and money with a platform offered on a SaaS basis for plans starting at $9 per month, with no additional fees for making bookings or setup. And while MyVR is a competitor in that vision, Lodgify’s focus is primarily on the UK and Europe, and the built-in “book now” feature is a key competitive advantage. Vacation rentals are a , rising faster than hotels and on track to become a hugely important player in the hospitality sector in the next half-decade or so. Sharma says this represents both opportunity and challenge for Lodgify, as it attempts to evolve with the changing demands of an evolving market. “We’ll have to stay on our toes and closely monitor travel and booking habits,” he said. “We’ll need to constantly develop features and functions to meet the needs of future owners and travelers. Especially our focus on mobile devices and analytics will steadily increase to match demand.” While MyVR is a noteworthy competitor, it sounds like the vacation rental space is progressing at such a clip that it can support more than a few players. We might see consolidation down the road, but for now, a major European opportunity exists that the bootstrapped Lodgify has plenty of breathing room to capitalize on. |
Three Months After Being Banned From The App Store, Bang With Friends Returns As “Down” | Greg Kumparak | 2,013 | 8 | 29 | They’re . Bang With Friends, the Facebook friend hookup app that seemed to be endlessly engulfed in one controversy or another earlier this year, is returning to the iOS App Store (albeit in a slightly toned-down form) after gettin’ the boot back in May. For those who missed all the hubbub, even the behind Bang With Friends tends to get some people worked up: you open the app, and select which of your Facebook friends you’d want to hook up with. It’s all kept anonymous, that same person picks you as a would-be fling in turn. If there’s a match, Bang With Friends attempts to connect the dots. After a recent update, users can also mark a friend as someone they’d like to “hang” with. Why anonymity is required to say you’d want to hang out with someone you’re already friends with on Facebook, I have no idea. Bang With Friends wiggled its way into the App Store as the moderately more mild “BWF” (on Android, it ditches the acronym in favor of its full name.) Ten days later, however, Apple As you might expect, the app’s creators — who once tried to remain anonymous themselves, though their identities — protested the decision. They argued that they limited use of the app to adults, contesting that plenty of other apps served the same purpose, just without being quite as blatant. “We’re working with Apple to get BWF back into the App Store shortly,” promised BWF’s site. “Shortly”, here, eventually proving to mean “in three months”. The app returned this morning, though not without its fair share of tweaks and changes to appease the powers that be. Gone are all traces of the word “Bang”; gone is the app’s uber suggestive launch screen imagery. The app is now called “Down”, its namesake “Down To Bang” button now reading just “I’m Down”. Down to what, you ask? Down to share a pop? Down to go kiteboarding? It’s left open to interpretation (at least theoretically), vague and innocuous enough that it’d be hard to get too offended without already having offended by the app’s earlier iterations. The name change also works out alright in a few other ways. After the influx of users from their early controversies, the company had seemingly been trying to steer the app into less of a straight up hookup app into something a bit more broad, like a general dating/friend finding service — hence the introduction of the “Down To Hang” button. Plus, there’s that whole Zynga lawsuit It’s unclear as to whether or not the potential legal battle had any influence on the name change; while it gets them away from using “with Friends” on the App Store, the name remains unchanged for the company’s Android and web variants as of this morning. Their company name in the App Store is still listed as “Bang With Friends, Inc.” The new, self-censored app is up on the App Store What do you think? Can the app formerly known as BWF carry on in a milder form, in a world awash with and and and ? |
Bug In Apple’s CoreText Allows Specific String Of Characters To Crash iOS 6, OS X 10.8 Apps | Matthew Panzarino | 2,013 | 8 | 29 | A bug in Apple’s in iOS 6 and OS X 10.8 causes any apps that try to render a string of Arabic characters to crash on sight. The string of characters which can trigger the bug — which was discovered yesterday and has spread around the hacking and coding community — has made its way to Twitter, where even looking at it in your timeline will crash the app. The issue affects apps on iOS 6 and OS X 10.8 but does on OS X 10.9 Mavericks and iOS 7 beta releases. So whatever bug the characters are triggering, they’ve already been fixed in future releases of the engine. This doesn’t help anyone still on iOS 6 of course. Because it’s a CoreText bug, any apps that access this font framework to render text are affected. This means that any apps that use WebKit like Safari are also affected because WebKit uses CoreText. This is a picture of the string of characters, not replicated here for obvious reasons: If you’d care to experience the bug for yourself, feel free to seek out the tweet in the pic above, I’m not posting a link. For the record: Tweetbot appears to be immune to this, though it also uses the CoreText engine. The characters were discovered and posted on a . The site claims that Apple has known about the problem for ‘six months’ and has not reacted. There is some evidence of the string appearing on Twitter . The posting includes a request to click the crash report button on any apps affected and report it to Apple. The malicious possibilities are simple: if you send the characters in an SMS, it can initiate a revolving crash of Messages on both OS X and iOS. We confirmed this on both operating systems. You can also deliver the string of text via a web link. You could also change the name of a and it will crash any device that scans that network to connect. That being said, this is an extremely specific set of unicode characters, so the possibilities of accidentally coming across it are nil. Unfortunately, once this stuff is out in the wild, it’s all down to who has the knowhow and will to try to use it to annoy or offend. Looks like Facebook has blocked the unicode string from being posted on walls and timelines: — NickDe (@nickdepetrillo) The Facebook team has already caught onto the bug and will no longer allow you to post this particular string to its site. An error message is presented alerting you that your post contains a security vulnerability. We’ve reached out to Apple about the bug and will update this post if we receive a response. This isn’t the first time that iOS and OS X have had ‘DoS’ (denial of service) attack issues that stemmed from bugs. In February, it was found that typing the on Macs would cause the app to crash. That bug was tracked back to the NSTextField call. In addition, in , several iOS developers were targeted with sustained DoS attacks using large volumes of text and/or large chunks of characters. These would render the iMessage app unusable and eventually cause it to crash. This was attributed to forcing iMessage to render ‘ and the fact that Apple didn’t limit how fast messages could be sent. In order to combat that kind of attack, Apple introduced iMessage blocking in iOS 7, allowing users to eliminate any incoming messages from a particular address or sender. |
Lyft Launches Its Ride-Sharing Service In 3 New Markets: Indianapolis, St. Paul, And Atlanta | Ryan Lawler | 2,013 | 8 | 29 | Ride-sharing startup Lyft continues to grow, adding new markets where users can hail a ride via their mobile phones and have a mustachioed car pick them up. With the launch of service in Indianapolis, St. Paul and Atlanta, the company now has operations in 10 markets nationwide. Today marks the first time that Lyft has announced service in more than one city, launching in three at once just ahead of the Labor Day Holiday weekend. As is its habit with new launches, the startup will have a “Mustache Parade” — whatever that is — in Indianapolis today at 11:30. And the service will be available in Atlanta and St. Paul beginning this morning for “friends and family” with full service launching Friday. For Lyft, the launch expands it into a few smaller cities, but that’s by design — after adding service in tightly packed metropolitan areas like San Francisco, as well as some very large and sprawling cities like Los Angeles, the company wants to see what traffic patterns and logistics look like in less packed-in, less sprawling urban areas. The Midwest in particular is interesting to Lyft, as Chicago had been its fastest-growing new market to date. At the same time that Lyft is launching in new cities, it’s also having its second , in which it gathers together drivers and passengers to rally support in one of its local markets. This time, the meeting is in Seattle in advance of a local city council meeting that will address peer-to-peer transportation next week. Seattle has been one of the markets that has been friendliest to ride-sharing startups, but these things are never a slam-dunk. In California, Lyft, SideCar, and Uber received from the local Public Utilities Commission last year, and it took some time for those companies to get the regulator to come around. But the PUC here has issued that could legitimize peer-to-peer transportation services in the state. If they are passed, those companies hope to take them to other jurisdictions as an example of a new regulatory framework for their services. While Lyft has grown a lot over the past year since it officially launched in San Francisco, it’s still playing catch-up to Uber, which just from Google Ventures and TPG. Uber also continues to launch in new cities, soft-launching in Dubai, Cape Town, and Bangalore this week alone. It now has service in more than 40 cities worldwide. But Lyft hopes to expand quickly, as well. It has raised more than $75 million from Andreessen Horowitz and Founders Fund over the last nine months, and also added to its war chest, thanks to the acquisition of its legacy Zimride business by Enterprise Holdings. The company now has more than 100 employees, most of whom operate out of its headquarters in San Francisco. |
With Its Flickr iOS Update, Yahoo Swaps Out Aviary For Newly Acquired GhostBird Tech; Says It’s Keeping It On The Web | Ingrid Lunden | 2,013 | 8 | 29 | Earlier today, a landed for Flickr that sports new, enhanced filters and other photo editing options among its new features, and when I wrote about it I wondered aloud if it was the first signs of a speedy integration of GhostBird, a photo app developer that Yahoo in June of this year. Turns out this was right. And it also turns out that, as a result, Yahoo is dropping Aviary as a technology provider on its mobile app, although for now it is keeping Aviary in its web app. “Aviary is a great partner and we’re excited to continue working closely with them on Flickr for web,” a spokesperson told me. “But with this iOS update, we’ve integrated technology and features from our recent acquisition of GhostBird Software.” The change underscores a Yahoo very much still in flux as it looks for the right mix of products that will bring in the punters and keep them coming back for more. Aviary-powered filters Yahoo had incorporated Aviary technology into its iOS app — an important moment for Flickr and Yahoo, since it was the first update in a year for the app, and a signal that things were going to be different from there on in. Yahoo’s relationship with Aviary, meanwhile, started back in April 2012, when Yahoo partnered with Aviary to replace Picnik, acquired and shut down by Google. Around the same time that Aviary got added to Flickr’s iOS app, it also picked up as a user of its photo filter and editing SDK. GhostBird-powered filter Apart from things like a basically different user interface (one where the filter tabs are pretty big), the swap means a degradation of some features, and the appearance of others. Red eye removal and blemish fixes are out; light and saturation levels reminiscent of those from GhostBird’s KitCam app are in. Yahoo wouldn’t say whether it plans eventually to update the Android and Web apps to look like the Flickr experience on iOS with GhostBird-powered editing, except to note, “We’re continuing to update Flickr on every device.” Its latest Flickr Android app was released on May 20. That will include additions that will go beyond storage and deeper into creation. “At Flickr we know that taking photos is one of our users’ favorite daily habits and we’re continuing to make Flickr available wherever our users are.” As for what that might mean in terms of relationships with other companies, as Yahoo continues to fill out its ambition under Marissa Mayer as a product-focused company, it makes sense that they’re putting some of their many acquisitions to use and thereby moving off of third-party products where that works. |
Greylock Promotes EIR And Former eBay Motors Founder Simon Rothman To Partner; Commits $100M To Invest In Marketplaces | Leena Rao | 2,013 | 8 | 29 | After former Facebook and Twitter product lead Josh Elman to partner, Greylock is adding another consumer investing partner to its ranks from its existing team–executive in residence . And as part of this move, Greylock is announcing a $100 million commitment to invest in marketplace entrepreneurs and companies, which Rothman will be managing. Rothman, who will be on Greylock’s consumer investment team, is uniquely positioned to be leading this new initiative as he worked for a number of years at one of the original marketplaces, eBay. Rothamn joined eBay in 1999 when it was still a small, US collectibles auction business. He helped scale eBay to nearly 200 million users generating over $40 billion in merchandise sales. While at eBay, Rothman led US operations and also founded eBay Motors, which he built into a $14 billion a year global business. Following eBay he also founded Glyde, and ecommerce marketplace for for electronics and more. He also served as a board member of and advisor to Tesla Motors. In 2011, Rothman joined Greylock as an Executive-in-Residence and ws helping advise a number of the firm’s network effects businesses, transaction-based startups, and mobile apps with a specialty around marketplaces, including Lyft, Wanelo, Poshmark, Tango, and others. He said he joined with the intention of finding a startup that he wanted to join, and help scale the company. But he began to enjoy actually helping individual startups and entrepreneurs. “I used to think that VC was more about money, but from an operators standpoint, being a VC is really about adding value to a startup,” he told us in an interview. There are huge opportunities to build marketplaces with the current technologies available to entrepreneurs, including mobile platforms, hardware, and social identity, and more. But building lasting marketplaces is a challenge of itself, Rothman explains. These include creating content worthy of drawing a community and transactions, and long build cycles that often take many years. As part of the new initiative, Greylock is forming an advisory network of executives and leaders in the space and will be organizing a marketplace conference to take place later this year in Silicon Valley. Speakers include: Airbnb CEO & co-founder, Brian Chesky; eBay CEO, John Donohoe & Linkedin co-founder and Greylock Partner, Reid Hoffman. “We’re pleased Simon will continue on the Greylock team as a Partner,” said Hoffman. “His unique experience of helping to scale one of the most definitive marketplaces in the world has already proved to be invaluable to our entrepreneurs. Personally, I’m excited to support a new wave of innovative marketplaces. With Simon’s leadership and with guidance from committed speakers and friends like Brian and John, we believe we can build out a fantastic network in this space.” As for the new initiative, Rothman says the $100 million is more of a focus than an actual fund. And the investments made will be stage agnostic, and across Seed, Series A & B and more. “I believe marketplaces have the perfect business model,” says Rothman. “As they get bigger, marketplace grow stronger and more durable.” He thinks that in the next five years there will be more $1 billion dollar marketplaces than there were in the past 20 years, in areas like transportation, fashion, hotels, and more, with Airbnb kicking of this new generation of successful companies (at last count Airbnb was valued at $2.5 billion). As for new areas where Rothman believes there could be growth, health care and education provide interesting opportunities for marketplaces. He acknowledges some of the complex regulatory environments and laws in these areas (especially health care), but says that eventually this frameworks will succumb to innovation. Clearly, many marketplaces such as Airbnb, and others are flourishing, with multi-billion dollar valuations. It’s no surprise that Greylock is seeing the future potential of this business model, and wants to make a big bet on this. It’s similar in some ways to which was created to spur and fund development around the iPhone. |
Doo Releases iPhone App For Its Paperwork-Killing Platform | Mike Butcher | 2,013 | 8 | 29 | Back in 2011 Doo for its big play to attack the world of collaboration and documents. Basically they want to and make everything digital. To that end they have released an earlier this year and today they have launched their iPhone version, . We have also gained exclusive access to a preview of their upcoming iPad app, see below. Essentially Doo wants to be the “The Document App” where you can find and edit every Document you have, whether it is stored in Dropbox, Google Drive, Evernote, you name it. As well as working with documents you can use the apps to scan with OCR, which also comes with auto-tagging, creating searchable PDFs and sending them to your preferred storage location. Doo also has apps for OS X, Windows 8 and Windows Desktop will follow. It’s ompetitors include Evernote and more recently Quip. |
Waywire CEO Nathan Richardson Departs As Company Shifts Focus From Content Creation To Curation | Ryan Lawler | 2,013 | 8 | 16 | The CEO of — the startup co-founded by Newark mayor and Senate candidate Cory Booker — is stepping down, TechCrunch has learned. The resignation comes as the company is in the midst of a strategic shift from content creation to content curation, according to a source familiar with the company’s strategy. Richardson was one of three founding members of the Waywire team, along with Booker and . According to our source, the company is in search of a new CEO, who is expected to be named shortly. In the meantime, Ross is handling the company’s day-to-day activities and Richardson will remain on the company’s board of directors. The change in leadership comes as Waywire is at an inflection point in its strategic direction. The company, which originally planned to focus on , is expected to bet big on content curation. While still in beta, original content has gone on the back burner as the company seeks to tweak its product and prepare it for launch. In that way, Waywire will lean on others to highlight interesting content that emerges. So instead of being responsible for creating interesting content, users and brands will hopefully highlight content created elsewhere. With the new direction of the company, Waywire is focused on ways in which it can provide value to users through three different types of content curation: that which is done by its own editors, that which is done through its community, and that which is done by content partners. With that new goal in mind, the company has been working to partner with big media companies — and has signed up two, who will be named later. So where’s Richardson going? We’re not sure, but TechCrunch received a tip earlier today that he’s joining AOL, to be reunited with AOL Brand CEO Susan Lyne. The pair worked together while Lyne was CEO of New York City-based Gilt Groupe, and Richardson served a variety of roles, including GM of the Men’s section of the site, as well as president of Gilt City. (Our parent company AOL didn’t respond to our requests for comment.) Richardson isn’t the only person to leave as a result of the transition, we’ve learned. A total of eight Waywire employees have moved on as the company has shifted gears over the last several weeks. It’s not all bad news for Waywire: With the strategic shift in focus and a new CEO expected to be named soon, the company is also poised to announce a new round of seed funding over the coming days or weeks, we’ve learned. That investment will come on top of $1.75 million that the company raised from investors that include First Round Capital, Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors, Atom Factory founder Troy Carter, LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, and all-around celebrity Oprah Winfrey. The news of Richardson’s departure also comes after Senate hopeful Cory Booker has advanced in the race, and as his opponents seek . That said, Booker has said that if elected, he would and also put his holdings in a financial trust. |
Lessons From Monks About Designing The Technologies Of The Future | Klint Finley | 2,013 | 8 | 16 | “The purpose of technology is not to confuse the brain but to serve the body,” William S. Burroughs once said in a , of all places. But things haven’t worked out that way, at least not for most of us. Our technologies are designed to maximize shareholder profit, and if that means distracting, confusing or aggregating the end-user, then so be it. But another path is possible, argues Alex Soojung-Kim Pang in his new book . He calls the idea “contemplative computing.” Contemplative computing, Pang writes, is something you do, not something you buy or download. He does mention a few useful-sounding applications, such as , which will block your Internet connection for a set period of time, and full-screen text editors like and (my personal favorite is ). These tools, along with applications like and , are great — but they’re meant to treat the symptoms of a digital environment designed to distract you. Pang points out that OmmWriter was, ironically, designed by an online ad agency to help keep its copywriters from being distracted. These applications tend to promote escape from the Internet, but others advocate a more extreme approach to escaping online distractions: getting off the Internet for days or months at a time. Several books and essays in recent years, such as Nicholas Carr’s , recommended spending less time online as a way to rejuvenate your brain. “ ,” where people give up their laptops and cell phones at least one day a week, have become trendy. Like monks casting off worldly possessions and retreating to monasteries, free from the temptations of the modern world, unpluggers yearn for a simpler time, decrying our lack of appreciation for the offline world. “But as the proliferation of such essays and books suggests, we are far from forgetting about the offline; rather we have become obsessed with being offline more than ever before,” Nathan Jurgenson, an editor at and researcher at , wrote . “We have never appreciated a solitary stroll, a camping trip, a face-to-face chat with friends, or even our boredom better than we do now.” But he warns that our idea of offline time has become a delusion. “Disconnection from the smartphone and social media isn’t really disconnection at all: The logic of social media follows us long after we log out.” In other words: are we really “offline” if all we’re thinking about is the Facebook post we’re going to write when we get back online? The issue is that technology shapes the way we think, and it’s difficult, perhaps impossible, to extricate ourselves from the technologies we use. Pang calls this “entanglement,” and he points to ancient examples — such as soldiers feeling that swords were extensions of their bodies — to illustrate how core this is to the human condition. But being entangled with a tool like a hammer or even a machine like a car is different from being entangled with a social network. Your mind is meshing not just with a computer but with the people you interact with — and the designers of the new technology. Pang does suggest taking digital sabbaths to cope with these technologies, but thankfully it’s not the only strategy he suggests for coping with network technologies. One of his other major pieces of advice is to take up meditation, and that’s where things get interesting. While sketching the history of these techniques, he notes something interesting: the rise of meditation and other contemplative techniques coincided with the rise of urbanization, imperialism and international trade. Although these techniques existed for many years as part of “mystery schools,” it wasn’t until between 800 and 200 B.C. that they started to become available to outsiders. We might not think of cities, governments and economies as technologies, but they are. And just like social networks and mobile phones, they entangle us with other people and with the logic shaped by policies crafted by other people. People have long coped with urbanization by turning to restorative spaces such as zen gardens, cathedrals and walking paths. According to Pang, these spaces tend to: Although Pang outlines several principles of contemplative computing — such as “be mindful” and “extend your abilities” — I’m more interested in the idea of designing computer applications with the principles of restorative spaces in mind. Most applications take pains to preserve the look and feel of the operating system. This is considered good user interface design. But I’ve noticed that music applications like Propellerhead Reason and Ableton Live often abandon the native UI of their host operating systems in favor of their own conventions. This creates a sense of “being away” from the rest of the computer. I run Live on the same laptop I use to write, do research and pay my taxes, but it feels like I’m using a completely different machine. Clearly not every application can or should head in this direction, but it does offer a few clues to applications that promote a more mindful user experience. But will the computer industry pick up on this stuff? Companies like RescueTime and recognize the value of preserving attention. The “ ” seeks to deliver information at the right time instead of in real time. But I can’t help but think we need computing environments reconsidered from the ground up: from the hardware to the operating system to the software. That means getting buy-in from giants like Apple, Microsoft, Google and Facebook. Contemplative computing does have an unlikely ally in Facebook. In a feature for , Noah Schachtman that Facebook engineering director Arturo Bejar, a student of meditation, brought in a group of “Buddhist-inspired academics” to suggest changes to the social network’s tools for reporting offensive content. The company ended up making a range of simple changes to make the tools more personable. Schachtman notes that it’s easy to be cynical about meditation teachers working with barons of distraction like Facebook. And much like Internet blockers or distraction-free writing apps, these sort of fixes are aimed at symptoms, not the disease. But they are evidence that people are paying attention. The trick will be to get enough people paying attention to make it matter. Pang’s notion of mindful, or contemplative, computing is useful, but ultimately it’s just a way of coping with a world of applications designed without our best interests at heart. Just as meditation, prayer and weekend retreats can help us cope with the harsh realities of the modern world, so too can it help us cope with flame wars, feral inboxes and the non-stop rush of social media. But just as citizens can demand safer cities, more humane governments and even economic reform, we can demand a new class of technologies. |
Beddit, The Sleep Sensor You Tape To Your Bed, Looks To Build Cloud App With Indiegogo Stretch Goal | Kim-Mai Cutler | 2,013 | 8 | 16 | Smart pedometers are just the beginning. Sensors of all kinds are emerging to track the way we move, what we do at home and the way we sleep. Last week, I wrote about a that ran for a sleep sensor you attach to your bed. They say it is so sensitive, it can pick up a person’s heart-rate. After making devices like this for medical professionals for a couple years, they are looking at the consumer market with a cheaper product for $149. They quickly reached their goal of $80,000 in about a week and are looking to tack on more. The company’s pledging to build a web app called Beddit Cloud for backing up and sharing sleep data if they can reach $200,000. The original Beddit already syncs to a mobile app through Bluetooth. But if they build Beddit Cloud, then a person can automatically upload their sleep measurements to a private web account. This will include visualizations for looking at long periods of sleep data, spreadsheet exports and an anonymous aggregated comparison of your sleep data with other Beddit Cloud users. They’ll also make the data easily shareable to social networks, putting in some of the social features that are common in more generalized activity trackers like the Jawbone Up. There will also be an open API for third-party apps. They’re planning to have it out by the second quarter of next year if they make this stretch goal. |
Fox Invests In Vice, A Media Company That Makes Money Being Terrible And Brilliant | Anthony Ha | 2,013 | 8 | 16 | 21st Century Fox has invested $70 million in youth-focused media company , giving Fox a 5 percent stake in the company and valuing Vice at $1.4 billion, . I emailed a company spokesperson to confirm the funding but they have not responded. Still, the news has been enough that it seems pretty solid. Although Vice started out as a print publication, most of its recent success has been online, especially in video (which led to ). A said that in 2012, the company brought in $175 million in revenue, more than 80 percent of it from the web. Vice has also received funding from ad holding company WPP, merchant bank Raine, and former Viacom CEO Tom Freston, but according to the FT, the company’s senior management still controls 75 percent of Vice. I was a semi-regular hate-reader of the magazine when I was in college, but eventually I got tired on its brand of hipster cynicism. Yet perhaps the most interesting thing about its recent transformation is not its shift online but the fact that it’s actually investing in reporting, especially international reporting. For example, the top story on the front page right now is , and TechCrunch’s Colleen Taylor also pointed me to . Now, Vice approaches a lot of that coverage with its usual sensationalist style — take its high-profile trip bringing Dennis Rodman to North Korea. And yes, Vice is still quite capable of . But hey, there’s nothing unusual about digital media companies . |
Despite Flaws, Ashton As Jobs Is Worth Seeing | Cyan Banister | 2,013 | 8 | 16 | When Ashton Kutcher was first tapped to play Steve Jobs in the movie Jobs, which opened in theaters today, I was nervous. Mostly for Ashton. In addition to being a friend, I’m also Ashton’s fan, and celebrate his entire oeuvre. But most of his roles thus far have been lighthearted (Dude Where’s My Car? for one). Portraying Steve Jobs was his most ambitious career move yet and an impossible situation. Here we have a very well-known actor, known for a specific type of work, playing a very well-known, and very serious, public figure. During the , Ashton admitted that the role terrified him. But he said he followed the advice of Jobs himself and tried to attempt the impossible. He watched many hours of video and studied Steve’s mannerisms. He predicted that people would tear him apart, picking at every little thing he did and point out what wasn’t right. He also acknowledged that he wouldn’t be able to get everything completely right, but he badly wanted the part and to give it everything he had. He offered more insight on Quora, which you can find . Director Joshua Michael Stern said choosing Ashton for the role was a no-brainer because of his passion for Steve Jobs and the tech industry. He said that beyond physical likeness, he felt that Ashton deeply wanted the role and understood it. There are scenes in the movie where the uncanny likeness between Ashton Kutcher and Steve Jobs is shocking. At some point, hippie Steve grows up and transforms into more of a business man and shaves — that’s when I think Ashton looks like Steve the most. There’s also a scene where Ashton briefly plays Steve announcing the iPod. They put him in full makeup and gave him short, peppered hair. If this were a silent movie, I would have completely believed Ashton as Steve; it was clear he studied, as he delivered on his motions and gestures. But the only thing he couldn’t get rid of, which I’m sure is hard, is his voice. You can recognize Ashton’s voice immediately and there’s no way to separate the two so that you can fully give yourself away to the character. If you are a fan of Ashton’s at all, you just can’t escape it. There are very few actors (Gary Oldman?) that I’m able to “forget” in a role because they are so good at transforming into someone else. Ashton is not one of them. If you think about the recent movie Lincoln, you can marvel at Daniel Day Lewis’s performance and remark what a good Lincoln he was, but how would we even know? We never got to live in a time with him and see him walk up and down the hallway. We never saw him give a speech at Macworld. Steve, on the other hand, is fresh in all of our minds as are his voice and charisma. Despite this, there were many times that I was able to suspend my disbelief and get caught up in the story. The filmmakers succeeded in getting me emotionally involved which, given I watch upwards of 60+ movies a year, is pretty hard to do at this point. Ashton did an amazing job; I hope that people try to imagine how hard that role was to take on, and give him credit for how well he did. I can’t imagine anyone really doing much better. Well, except for Steve. If the Jobs filmmakers set out to make something entertaining, they also did a spectacular job. Jobs is inspiring and shows how difficult and isolating it can be to start a company — the long hours, the rejection, occasional wins, loss of personal relationships and the “overnight success” after struggling for years. I think it should, and will be, embraced by the startup and tech communities. The movie will no doubt be a success with those who like Apple but really don’t know much about it, but hard-core fanboys and girls will likely take issue with some of the historical inaccuracies. There may have been technical inaccuracies, as well, but I didn’t catch them. All filmmakers should seek to achieve historical and technical accuracy in their film making. Unfortunately, with docu-dramas, some of the ways situations are portrayed become fossilized as “truth” when people recount what happened with the story around dining room tables, which only serves to spread misinformation. Woz watched a snippet of the film and that a scene never even happened. However, discussions around these historical inaccuracies are probably good for the film in the long run, and for the audience as a whole, because they spark debate and encourage people to come out of the woodwork to give their versions of what happened. This only fuels publicity for the movie, so from a marketing standpoint, it’s a huge win. Aside from details and inaccuracies, one problematic aspect of Jobs is that the mainstream non-tech audience member might get the impression that it is commonplace for early employees in Silicon Valley either to get no equity or dispute their equity. The movie has a heavy emphasis on some early employees that Steve Jobs insisted should not get stock grants in Apple. In The Social Network, a primary plot point was that Eduardo Saverin didn’t receive his fair share of the company and was diluted to next to nothing during a round of funding (which from what I understand isn’t true). Compared to most companies, Apple and Facebook are corporations that were started somewhat by accident, and in those situations stuff like this can happen, i.e. . But for every story like this, there are hundreds of others where this does not happen. Aside from being an actor, Ashton is an entrepreneur and investor. He was an entrepreneur prior to becoming more well-known in the tech scene and has since become a prolific angel investor in addition to co-managing a fund. I was fortunate to conduct a brief interview via email with Ashton about the film, as well as the challenges of being an entrepreneur. An excerpt is below: I think we clearly show that Woz was the creator of the germ innovation that started Apple. Had we been able to enlist Woz’s help in the creation of the film I’m sure we could have incorporated more of his perspective. But unfortunately this wasn’t the case. Woz was bought by Sony as a consultant for a film they may be doing. So his services were not available. There are some inconsistencies no doubt, getting everything right is always difficult however we attempted to tell the story of Steve’s life with in the confines of the format. We fought for historical accuracy the whole way through but also had to service the story. My job as an actor was to give people a feeling/a sense of who Steve was. When we showed the film to the original Mac team they seemed to be accepting of our interpretation and we hope the audience is too. Being an entrepreneur is tough and I hope this story inspires the technology community to overcome the obstacles that will come their way and build brilliant things to make the world more connected efficient and beautiful. **************** Ashton has used his role as a very public figure to spread some absolutely amazing messages about building interesting things and creating your own life. He has promoted these messages through his TV roles, movie roles and most recently in his acceptance speech at the . I guarantee you it isn’t something you’ve ever heard before on a major award show targeted towards teens. It is spectacular. Even if you end up not seeing or liking the movie, perhaps you will at least respect the broader long-term impact Ashton may have because of speeches like these. He focuses on what is most human – building your own life. Not just a business, but your own life. Jordan Crook interviewed Ashton for TechCrunch TV earlier this month. You can watch it . A post shared by (@jobsthefilm) on |
FundersClub Ditches Dumb Money By Going Invite-Only | Josh Constine | 2,013 | 8 | 16 | “Democratizing venture capital” sounds great until equity crowdfunding fills startup financing rounds with amateur angels who don’t add value. So while other funding platforms open the floodgates to any accredited investor, and eventually anyone if the JOBS Act goes into full effect, will now only accept investors who’ve been invited by existing members or . FundersClub was a pioneer in the equity crowdfunding space when it launched a year ago. The company acts as an online VC that vets startups looking to raise money, secures space in their upcoming funding round, and then lets its members invest money to fill up the space. The idea is not to replace traditional expert venture capitalists, but augment them with a crowd of evangelists, recruiters and connectors. Since it was founded, the Y Combinator-accelerated FundersClub has . It has also collected $7.2 million for its 31 portfolio companies from its crowd of 6,700 investors. But since it launched, several other equity crowdfunding platforms have gotten off the ground, including , while and AngelList have gotten more serious about the space. Meanwhile, the Securities and Exchange Commission recently voted to implement part of the JOBS Act and remove the ban on general solicitation. This allows startups, and platforms like FundersClub, to openly advertise that they or companies they work with are looking for investment. Competing crowdfunding platforms are now trying to grow their investor member base. But in doing so, they threaten to let in people who don’t have much to offer startups beyond their money. The potential for equity crowdfunders to only provide this “dumb money” is a key talking point of traditional VCs that compete with them. Experienced entrepreneurs, engineers, recruiters, marketers, and testers can all provide value, but a random accountant with enough personal wealth to be considered an accredited investor might not be worth bringing in as an investor. FundersClub CEO Alexander Mittal tells me his platform’s members are usually veterans of the startup ecosystem, including C-level executives and managers who can bring a lot to companies they fund. “We realized we had a special community we got out there first,” Mittal says, and he wants to keep that community elite so startups want FundersClub in their rounds. All existing FundersClub members won’t have to be re-vetted, but any new members will need an invitation from a member or from one and be approved. That should help the community grow organically and stay top of its class. The friction could deter some potential investors, but at the very least it will differentiate the platform. The invite-only system could become even more important if the true crowdfunding part of the JOBS Act is implemented. This would let anyone invest, and not just accredited investors with more than $1 million in personal wealth. That could bring in even dumber money if funding platforms aren’t careful. Mittal concludes, “People are getting loud, so we’re starting to speak softly while carrying a big stick.” |
Rep. Himes Points Out That The Intelligence Community And The President Lied To Him | Alex Wilhelm | 2,013 | 8 | 16 | Irked that the government lied to you about the privacy abuses of the National Security Agency (NSA)? You’re not alone. Today, of Connecticut on the recent revelation that the NSA had breached privacy laws thousands of times in a one-year period. The Washington Post, , also reported that the NSA kept news of such encroachments from Congress, and that the rate of abuse was increasing. This is not in keeping with the official party line, bipartisan take that the NSA is a benign evil that could abuse your privacy — but doesn’t(!). That narrative is now over. The NSA’s abuse of our privacy is systemic, widespread and often banally accidental. I could go on, and I will in later posts, but let’s give space to the good Congressman (emphasis mine): Hot damn, that’s the ticket. Here Rep. Himes points out that the false information tendered to him by both the “intelligence community” and the president was in fact not correct. And, even more, he points out that due to that false information, he himself cast a vote that he might regret. And what do we call the dissemination of false information with the intent to deceive, my fine friends? Lying. We do not need to hide behind the language of This Town or relate to playing-card analogies. We can instead be honest: People lied. This perhaps led to the that would have curtailed elements of the NSA’s pervasive surveillance programs. That amendment failed, narrowly, in the House. There has been a pattern of lying and obfuscation by the NSA and its assorted fans in government in the past few months. The record is . Good on Rep. Himes for raising his hand and asking that fewer lies be served up in the Congressional cafeterias. |
Taxi E-Hail Startup Flywheel Launches In Los Angeles To Take On Uber, Lyft, And SideCar | Ryan Lawler | 2,013 | 8 | 16 | Mobile taxi-hailing app is growing fast, doubling its number of rides over just the last two-and-a-half months. And with new funding in place, it’s looking to enter new markets to provide a way for passengers to hail a cab from their mobile phones. The next big market it’s launched in is Los Angeles, where it already has 300 drivers lined up to start accepting rides via the app. Flywheel recently , with participation from RockPort Capital and Shasta Ventures. It got that money to expand its service to new markets, and expanding it is. With the exception of San Francisco, Flywheel is mostly available in a number of smaller markets, such as Cleveland, Ohio; Daytona Beach, Fla.; Lansing, Mich.; Lexington, Ky.; Louisville, Ky.; Miami, Fla.; Naples, Fla.; and Oklahoma City, Okla. Bringing the service to Los Angeles will greatly expand its potential customer base. Just as Uber partners with black car companies to get drivers for its mobile ride service, FlyWheel works with taxi fleets to enable e-hailing in the various cities that it operates in. As a result, it was able to very quickly turn up service in L.A., going from zero to 300 drivers in just about 10 days, according to CEO Steve Humphreys. By launching in L.A., Flywheel will be bringing electronic hails to taxis in a market where consumers are already pretty accustomed to using their mobile phones for transportation. Uber, Lyft, and SideCar have launched service in the city — which means there’s already significant competition in the market. But Flywheel will be the first significant player to have a large number of yellow cabs available. Flywheel’s Los Angeles launch also comes as there’s some question about the legality of ride sharing services in the city. Although the California Public Utilities Commission has struck deals with Uber, Lyft, and SideCar to enable them to operate, and has also proposed regulations that would legitimize ride sharing in the state, local authorities in L.A. have attempted to shut down services that allow drivers without commercial licenses to get paid for providing rides to passengers. Flywheel, of course, is trying to position itself as an alternative to the anarchy that is ride sharing: “This is in contrast to several ride-sharing applications currently available. Unlike those solutions, Flywheel offers a safe and reliable way to get around LA,” the company says in its press release. Anyway, if you’re in L.A., or San Francisco, or Oklahoma City, try it out. |
The Problem With The Lean In-tern | Stephanie Yang | 2,013 | 8 | 16 | I am a college student in a field that traditionally offers unpaid internships. If you were to ask me two years ago to work for a big-name publication with no pay, I would have jumped at the chance. But this year, while browsing internship listings for this summer, I had no interest in unpaid positions. I considered them a last resort, only applying to a few in case I had no other choice. But really, no internship was more appealing than an unpaid one. I considered traveling, waiting tables and a couple other alternatives I thought would be more rewarding than working for someone for free. Judging from the backlash on this asking for a part-time unpaid editorial intern, it seems I’m not the only one with dwindling tolerance for unpaid internships. The job requisition came from New York editor at Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In Foundation, which promotes powerful women in the workplace. As Slate , it is hypocritical for a foundation that promotes workplace equality and support to hire interns without paying them. And Sheryl Sandberg isn’t exactly strapped for cash (her net worth is estimated around ). Bennett tried to repair the damage the following day, with clarifying that it wasn’t an unpaid intern she was looking for, but a “volunteer.” “LOTS of nonprofits accept volunteers. This was NOT an official Lean In job posting. Let’s all take a deep breath,” she wrote. But I don’t buy it. Bennett first listed the position as an “editorial intern,” which typically attracts more ambitious applicants than “volunteer.” And while volunteers are dedicated and skilled, Bennett’s post listed job qualifications that applicants would have to satisfy. The title “Intern” (or “Lean In-tern”) promises a more hands-on experience, guidance and qualifications to add to your résumé. And while unpaid internships have been widely accepted in the past, there are a couple of trends that are leading to harsher criticism. Aside from the legal implications of free labor, the increasing demand for higher education means that more students are competing for whatever internship they can find. While companies from a wide pool of qualified applicants, unpaid interns are taking the place of entry-level jobs. Working for free will take an even bigger toll on students who will need Stafford loans, whose interest rates will double . People are also pushing for , and not just in internships but also in generally lower-paying positions at places like and Walmart. Students who travel to expensive cities such as San Francisco, New York and Washington, D.C., are basically paying thousands of dollars for the opportunity to simply be an intern. In Bennett’s defense, a part-time unpaid internship is a lot more flexible than a full-time position. I know some students who have worked an unrelated part-time job to support an unpaid position in their field. I’ve also taken a part-time, unpaid internship during the school year, because I had the extra time and was living an hour away from Chicago. There will also surely be people interested in Bennett’s editorial position, even if it is unpaid. They may consider the rewards greater than the costs to be a part of the Lean In Foundation’s work. Some of my friends and classmates justify taking one unpaid internship because they think it’s a necessary step to a better option the next year. It’s a trade-off, a sacrifice in hopes that it will pay off in future hires. And in some cases, the name means more than the pay. As a student at one of the top journalism schools in the country, I know the value that some people place on working at prestigious organizations and stacking a résumé. There comes a time in the spring when everyone you run into asks, “Where are you working this summer?” Sometimes it’s a lot easier to say an unpaid internship than nothing at all. But unpaid internships undermine the work of qualified and motivated interns. Even if they are the least experienced workers at the company, they were chosen from an increasingly competitive pool and are aiding the company (unless you hired one of .) If a company doesn’t think an intern’s work is worth paying for, then don’t hire them. Positions like this won’t be widely sustainable for long, especially as more interns are filing lawsuits against media companies for fair compensation — . In Lean In’s case, the media outburst prompted a public statement that they will pay interns. In an effort to back-pedal, the president of LeanIn.org, Rachel Thomas, on the organization’s Facebook page, denying the existence of any internship program. She said while the organization has attracted many volunteers, any interns they take going forward will be paid. There are a couple of organizations that still avoid paying interns by requiring students to receive class credit. But this is a cop-out, because class credit is effectively useless when it comes to getting a diploma. Others don’t call it an unpaid internship, because they offer a “stipend,” usually enough to cover cost of travel. While this limits applicants to those who can afford to take these positions, some people make it work. I have close friends that took on unpaid internships this summer and are doing great work. I have another friend who isn’t getting paid this summer, so she is considering taking a year off college to work and earn more money. I’m lucky to be working a paid internship this summer that I love; I didn’t believe I was going to find something like this. But it seems that, increasingly, employers and pundits — and even interns — are recognizing that unpaid internships just aren’t sustainable. May this post serve as more coal for the fire. |
Startups Apparently Do Not Care That Android Is Better | Sarah Perez | 2,013 | 8 | 16 | In a must-read post for the tech industry, Twitter experience designer and serial startup founder Paul Stamatiou writes: “ ” His op-ed serves as something of a wake-up call for the industry, where developers building the next generation of mobile applications still heavily prefer the iPhone, not only as their personal smartphone of choice, but also as the launch platform for their latest creations. Many who have already heeded Android’s siren song found themselves nodding along to nearly every point Stamatiou made, ranging from the minor details, like how Android handles notifications, to broader statements about Android’s “magical user experience,” which involves the use of a global back button, Google Now integration and Android intents for app-to-app interoperability and communication. While obviously an opinion piece, Stamatiou’s thoughts came across as reasoned and well-argued, and didn’t at all resemble the fanboy-ish op-eds often published to incite religious wars between the iPhone and Android zealots for website traffic’s sake. Having recently made the switch from the iPhone 5 to the Nexus 4 and then back to the iPhone 5 myself, the pro-Android argument struck a personal chord. It’s at least the third time I’ve attempted to leave the iPhone. For all the same reasons, I too had found myself again falling in love with the Android operating system. But there’s one thing that keeps pulling me back to iPhone: . As an early adopter, and technology enthusiast in general — a mindset TechCrunch readers probably share — being solely on Android can be a frustrating experience. Today’s tech companies are . This includes apps from the smallest of startups to some of the largest, like Twitter, which launched its video-sharing app Vine as well as Twitter Music on iPhone first (the latter of which is not yet on Android, four months after its ). The iOS-first mentality is so ingrained in the culture of the tech and startup scene, in fact, that begging employees to switch to Android. Later, the company released its own take on what Android users supposedly want with “Facebook Home,” an Android launcher that quickly . Had Facebookers understood the true ethos of Android, they would have perhaps realized that Android users favor the customization and personalization aspects of the platform. Meanwhile, Facebook Home was a full-on takeover of the entire Android interface and experience, with little wiggle room to change much of anything about its behavior. If you look at Android’s top charts, you’ll find they’re continually filled with apps that let users tweak, customize, and better control their Android devices. For instance, in July of this year, the top five paid Android apps included a keyboard replacement (Swiftkey) in the No. 1 position, a fairly geeky utility for users who had rooted their phones (Titanium Backup) in the No. 2 position, and an alternative launcher (Nova) as No. 4, according to analytics firm Distimo. The constant tweaking and customizing is fun, but at some point, it becomes just another way to pass the time while waiting for the latest and greatest new application to make its way to Android. You know — . This is not the story you’ll hear from headstrong Android devotees who point to the sheer number of Android apps available today. Of course, it’s true that the Apple and Android app stores are roughly close in terms of the numbers of applications offered, and have been for . There are over iOS applications, while analysts estimated as of May there are over Android apps available. It’s not that there aren’t enough Android apps out there. There just aren’t the brand-new ones early adopters might want — those from startups you may read about here on TechCrunch, for example. Those almost invariably go iOS-first. It’s hard to even think of tech companies that launched on Android first in recent months, but there are a few. , a mobile task list app was on Android before iPhone; bet on Android, too. on Android before iPhone, but only because it had to clean itself up a bit, in order to be approved for distribution through iTunes. And Zillow, with what feels like an awkward nod to the demographics of Android users, its Rentals app on Android first last fall. (These are off the top of my head. I asked on Twitter, and a few responses trickled in, including and … um, does Google Now count?) To be clear, there are certainly many, Android applications that aren’t on iOS, but this is mainly the result of developers taking advantage of the Android platform in ways that Apple would not allow. This includes the tweakers and customizers, but also the suite of Google apps that are better baked into Android, such as Google Now. (On iPhone, “Now” is more like a feature within the Google app — a standalone experience.) Ignoring games or children’s apps, which are also too often iOS-only, I took a look at my iPhone to see what apps I would have to give up to make the switch to Android today. As it turns out, there are still quite a few. Here’s a short list of iOS-only apps broken down by category: , , , (though seemingly abandoned), , , , a couple of AngelList apps like , (but replaces) , , , , , , , , (soon!), , , , , (Reddit), (news clips) , , , , , , , , , , , (smart weather) , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , (Max Go incompatible), , (Kindle only), , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , I can live without most of them, sure, but a couple are painful to give up. A caveat here is that the list includes companies that have already promised Android is in their future. It also includes some well-known iOS-only publishers who will likely never come to Android. But a good chunk of it includes the tech companies who, with limited resources, just to pick iOS first. There are , of course. Tech companies are often lacking in in-house Android expertise, or are influenced by the fact that they and everyone they know uses an iPhone. Plus, according to , 44 percent of more experienced developers (3-5 years experience) choose iOS, while 31 percent pick Android. These are the folks building startups. Companies also like to say that most of their users prefer iOS devices, citing mobile web statistics. This seems to be true – . But most importantly, there’s the situation. Apple’s App Store still earns roughly double that of Google Play. (Depending on who you ask, it could be or as high as ). That being said, Google Play’s revenue capabilities are growing, having climbed by 67 percent in the past six months, per Distimo’s . At some point, as Android market share grows (Android , outside of ), the revenue possibilities may begin to shift in favor of Android. The large install base . And it’s than on iOS. The startups that “make it” to Android will have acquired developers with the chops to code for the platform, and perhaps one day, they’ll take those skills to a startup of their own. Today, , and only 21 percent pick iOS. In other words, there’s still the potential for the market to change. And there is some indication that Android users are hungry for great apps. A year after Instagram arrived on Android, for example, . In late 2011, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt once that a wave of Android-first apps was on the near horizon. Over a year and a half later, that hasn’t happened yet. That’s not to say it never will. Here’s hoping. |
Toutpost Wants To Turn Online Debates Into Shopping Advice | Chris Velazco | 2,013 | 8 | 16 | I’ll just throw this out there right now: I am known around TechCrunch for making, let’s say, unwise purchasing decisions. Whereas my problem stems mostly from making those choices without much forethought, others suffer from the reverse. Some people will do research until they’re blue in the face, and they still can’t make a decision. That’s where Amir Elaguizy, Alex Morse and Paul DeVay come in. The trio has formed a Y Combinator-backed startup called that wants to make it easier to figure out what you should buy. How? By basically harnessing the passion and ire of fanboy throwdowns in order to give people actual, valuable purchasing advice. “We want to remove merchants from the review process,” co-founder Amir Elaguizy told me. “Those other review aggregators are telling a story about stuff; we’re trying to tell a story about people.” Here’s the Toutpost formula in a nutshell. If you’re the sort of person who has opinions on products and gadgetry, you can sign up for the service and either create what’s called a “bout” (a direct comparison between two similar products) or pop into one of said bouts to lay down some informed opinions. From there, fellow users can rank the usefulness or insightfulness of your thoughts, add their own musings, and vote for whichever product they think should come out on top. And since there are bound to be multiple bouts involving the same product, the top points made in each bout are displayed on the product’s page so would-be purchasers can skim through what the community thought was most important. Don’t think you need to be a technical expert to enter the fray, either. People have (for whatever reason) started to debate the superiority of Oreos vs. Skittles, Home Depot vs. Lowes, and a perennial winter favorite, Snowboards vs. Skis. Granted, it may seem a little rudimentary for people to focus so intently on just two products when there are usually countless options to weigh, but that’s exactly how the three co-founders want it. As far as they’re concerned, most purchasing decisions ultimately come down to a choice between two things anyway, and these Toutpost bouts are meant to give people the information they need to pull the trigger. As you might expect from a team made up mostly of former Zyngites, there’s a sort of gamified angle here, too — thoughtful, popular responses earn you merit points, and you get a neat little badge whenever one of your arguments is upvoted the most. Elaguizy says that sort of ego-stroking appeal has played a big part in the company’s growth strategy, since users who make interesting points can share them on their Facebook wall to show off how clever they are. It seems to be working pretty well so far, too: The team hasn’t spent much energy on marketing, but the site has picked up some 5,000 users since it quietly went online a month ago, and the biggest source of traffic has been referrals from existing users. That’s not to say Toutpost doesn’t have its hurdles to clear. What’s to stop, say, a dedicated PR flack from logging in and trying to artificially inflate a client product’s status in a given bout? Well, there’s the community for one. The redditesque upvote and downvote mechanism means the quality of any given bout depends on the people engaged in it. The team is also mulling a switch in the service’s onboarding scheme that would see every new user logging in with a social account. Sure, the move could theoretically stymie user-base growth, but about 90 percent of Toutpost’s current users have already connected that way so there’s a decent enough argument for it. And then there’s the lingering question of money. Despite wanting to keep bouts as pure as possible, Toutpost isn’t indifferent to brands and the sort of interactions they can bring to the table. Elaguizy says they’re open to the possibility of running ads and monetizing brand experiences if they can figure out how to do it without being “incentivized to sell products.” At this point though, the team isn’t worried so much about making money as it is growing Toutpost into what Elaguizy calls a “take-over-the-world” site — easier said than done, sure, but they may just be onto something there. |
Ask A VC: Floodgate’s Ann Miura-Ko On Rajeev Motwani’s Legacy And More | Leena Rao | 2,013 | 8 | 16 | In this week’s episode of Ask A VC, Floodgate’s co-founding partner Ann Miura-Ko joined us in the studio. Miura-Ko and I chatted about her role at Stanford, where she is a lecturer in the school of engineering, and where she received a Ph.D. focused on mathematical modeling of computer security. Miura-Ko recalled how impactful and important , a Stanford professor of computer science, was to Ph.D. students who wanted to found companies based on their research. As she explains in the video above, Motwani served as a mentor and advisor for Larry Page and Sergey Brin during the formative years of Google. Miura-Ko, who serves on the boards of Modcloth, Refinery29, Chloe and Isabel, Wanelo, Lyft, and others, also tackled reader questions around what’s next in mobile commerce and more. Tune in above. |
After Saving The Phone Metadata Program, Rep. Pelosi Finds NSA Privacy Infractions “Disturbing” | Alex Wilhelm | 2,013 | 8 | 16 | Timed contrition has a certain air of the false. Today Rep. Pelosi of California stated that she found a report on the National Security Agency’s history of massive, continuing privacy infractions to be “disturbing.” As , Rep. Pelosi states that “Congress must conduct rigorous oversight to ensure that all incidents of noncompliance are reported to the oversight committees and the FISA court in a timely and comprehensive manner.” She also noted that the NSA’s lack of reportage to Congress concerning its infractions are troubling. Let’s contextualize this. Here’s , which broke the story that the NSA had racked up an impressive 2,776 privacy “incidents” in a 12-month period, and that the rate that the NSA was breaking the law was increasing: The documents, provided earlier this summer to The Washington Post by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, include a level of detail and analysis that is not routinely shared with Congress or the special court that oversees surveillance. Given this, I would argue that simply stating that the NSA should be subject to increased oversight is a flat claim. It means nothing, given that the NSA refuses to tell those that oversee it what it is doing, something akin to the petulant child who breaks a lamp and hides the pieces before his parents find out. So for Rep. Pelosi to state that the NSA should report its “incidents of noncompliance” is somewhat laughable. From the Post: In another case, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which has authority over some NSA operations, did not learn about a new collection method until it had been in operation for many months. So, there’s that. However, we have a case of irony that we should open, and drink from, because in this situation it is too rich a vantage point to abstain from. The Post — if you haven’t read its full report, — states that the NSA committed “serial telephonic data collection” that broke the law. One such case “involved the unlawful retention of 3,032 files that the surveillance court had ordered the NSA to destroy.” Those were kept, with each file containing “an undisclosed number of telephone call records.” That this is the sort of revelation that Pelosi finds troubling is humorous, as she was . The Amash amendment would have passed . So her efforts to save a key piece of the NSA are circling back and troubling her. In fact, I don’t think that the good Representative is troubled at all. I think that her statement is nothing more than padding for her left flank. By dressing down the NSA publicly, Rep. Pelosi can claim to be on the side of civil liberties. Yet she’s doing so while protecting those violate them. If Rep. Pelosi is as disturbed as she now claims to be, let’s see what sort of legislation she moves forward to curtail the NSA’s programs that are breaking privacy laws daily. |
Hey! You! Come Build Crazy Stuff At The Disrupt SF Hackathon —More Tickets Now Available | Greg Kumparak | 2,013 | 8 | 16 | It’s almost here. In less than a month, our Disrupt conference returns to San Francisco — and with it, one of our legendary Hackathons. We’ve released two big batches of Disrupt SF Hackathons tickets so far. Both of them sold out so fast that it was almost scary. Here. Have another batch. I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again: If you’ve never been to one of our Hackathons, it’s tough to explain just what you’re missing. Take a gym-sized room and cram it full of incredibly talented developers. Give’m 24 hours to build their craziest ideas, with thousands of dollars in prizes and an opportunity to present their hacks to the entire Disrupt audience on the line. Give’m enough pizza to feed an army. We close the doors, cross our fingers.. and what we end up with on the other side is always something incredible. There’ve been sudden, late-night NERF wars. There’ve been impromptu (and dangerously competitive) 50-person dodgeball games. We’ve seen people build everything from apps that to a We’ve had founders meet each other here, and we’ve seen Hackathon projects later spun into full-fledged companies go on to be If you’re going to build it somewhere, you really should be building it here. (Shout out who mined the ticket widget to figure out when our previous ticket batch was scheduled to be released. That’s the spirit! .) The Disrupt SF 2013 Hackathon runs from September 7th to the 8th, and we’ve just released . Don’t delay, though — these things go
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Meet Grand Circus, A Startup That Aims To Be Detroit’s General Assembly | Matt Burns | 2,013 | 8 | 16 | Detroit’s startup row just got a new tenant. Housed in the recently renovated Broderick Tower, just set up shop with the stated goal of elevating the Detroit tech community. The 15,000-square-foot space will soon house tech training, events, and co-working space for up to 49 entrepreneurs — something that will go a long way in Detroit’s nascent startup scene. “The Detroit tech scene is booming and the supply of talent simply can’t keep up – a characteristic of tech markets everywhere,” Grand Circus CEO and co-founder Damien Rocchi said. “Unlike other markets, however, Detroit has a vibe and hustle that’s unique, and there’s the opportunity to have a huge impact. We both have a personal connection to the area and are thrilled to be part of creating something that’s really making an impact in the city.” Detroit’s companies and learning institutions have dabbled in tech training in the past. And then there are of course a handful of for-profit learning centers in the area that will award a buyer with a useless certification in PowerPoint or Lotus Notes. But Grand Circus is something totally new to Detroit. Following in the footsteps of NYC’s General Assembly and Chicago’s 1871, Grand Circus has lofty ambitions. Rocchi tells me “the real difference is we plan on playing a real prominent role in the city — more so than General Assembly in New York. We’re very focused on Detroit and the surrounding metro region.” Rocchi and co-founder Bradley Hoos both have ties to the Michigan area. Rocchi is a native Australian and Brad a boomerang Michigander who’s spent the last seven years in Chicago working with startups. Prior to forming Grand Circus, Rocchi worked at Fairfax Business Media in Australia where he managed a group of digital businesses dealing in research & data, professional education, and digital news. Located across from Detroit’s historic Grand Circus Park (hence the name), Grand Circus takes up three stories of the Broderick Tower. The building stood vacant for decades, rotting like so many other looming skyscrapers left over from Detroit’s glory days. Just last November the tower opened its doors. , all 126 new apartments were claimed in just five days. Grand Circus’s location is key. The Broderick Tower is located right next to the Madison Building — the much-publicized building housing DVP, Bizdom and dozens of startups and even a sales office for Twitter. The Madison is the heart of Detroit’s startup revival. Grand Circus is funded in part by Detroit Venture Partners and is housed in Dan Gilbert’s corner of downtown Detroit. As Josh Linkner, DVP’s managing partner, explained to me, the Madison was always designed to be an up-and-out workspace. DVP and Bizdom, both located in the Madison, help young companies get their footing, and then like a mother bird, eventually push them out of the nest when they’re ready to fly. Grand Circus will no doubt absorb a lot of the overflow and allow even more young companies to relocate to downtown. There is co-working space for up to 49 entrepreneurs with space already filling up. Apply for space on the website . Doors open on September 16. At launch the depth of the training isn’t as complex as that offered by General Assembly. Thirty classes will be offered this fall, and the subjects are broad and basic. Think “Build an Android App,” “become a Salesforce developer,” and, for the community-ed crowd, a seminar called “Introduction to the Internet.” “Our curriculum is designed to appeal to a variety of backgrounds and experiences,” Rocchi said. “We largely focus on cutting-edge technology, but also offer beginner offerings designed to remove the ‘wall of intimidation’ associated with technology newbies. The seminar ‘Intro to the Internet,’ for example, is a beginner course for people who want to get into tech but don’t know where to start.” Grand Circus tapped Michigan talent to teach these courses, most notably Terry Cross, a beloved Detroit angel investor and Wayne State University’s first and current Executive in Residence for Entrepreneurship. His three-hour seminar on creating a business plan is only $30. Most classes are 10-12 week programs that cost $3,400 and are taught by local professionals from Detroit Labs, Adobe, Apigee and more. Right now, at launch, Grand Circus seems rather simplistic. The courses are basic and there are only a few to choose from. Worse yet, they’re not proven as a trusted educator or startup partner. But that will come in time. Downtown Detroit needs a space like this if it is to be the startup destination it aims to be. Detroit is hungry for web startups and Dan Gilbert’s venture arm is seemingly willing to give them the cash and resources needed. “There’s a big gap that’s slowing down Michigan’s recovery,” said Linkner. “Startups are trying to hire specific people with tech skills. Then there are underemployed people who lack the skills needed. Grand Circus is a modern training tech academy. “There are other tech training schools.” he added. “This is a relevant modern practical approach. The people who come out of here will get the best high-paying jobs. The instructors are actual industry leaders currently working and not some instructors hiding in academia.” Michigan’s startup community is quickly maturing. Venture funding in the state is exploding, as well. 2011 saw a record year for venture fundraising, and in 2012, firms invested $232 million over 47 deals. It was a dramatic increase over 2011 levels where less than $100 million was invested. This spike caused the state’s national ranking to jump 10 spots, making it the 15th most prolific state in terms of capital investments. Barred from talking specifics, the founders tell me that DVP is Grand Circus’s lead investor. The startup is also funded by Invest Detroit and received funds from the area’s Creative Corridor Incentive Fund. Detroit’s startup culture is hungry. And Grand Circus should go a long way to satisfy the craving. But its success is not guaranteed. Like the struggling city it calls home, Grand Circus’s future will be determined solely on the tenacity of its leaders. The startup isn’t just making an app or creating a service. They’ve set out to reinvent education and co-working in one of the most unlikely places. And we wish them nothing but the best. |
Gillmor Gang Live 08.16.13 (TCTV) | Steve Gillmor | 2,013 | 8 | 16 | – Robert Scoble, Dan Farber, Keith Teare, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor. Like us on Facebook at Facebook.com/GillmorGang |
null | Alex Wilhelm | 2,013 | 8 | 29 | null |
This Week On The TC Gadgets Podcast: Sphero 2.0 And Speculation | Jordan Crook | 2,013 | 8 | 16 | Sometimes it’s summer, and instead of real news like the robotic ball, we hear a lot of news . Will Elon Musk’s high-speed train idea, , ever actually get built? How sure are we that the next iPhone will be revealed at ? And is Amazon building or is that just a persistent rumor? We discuss all this and more on the latest episode of the TechCrunch Gadgets podcast, featuring , , , and Enjoy!
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Canvsly Rewards Parents For Saving Photos Of Their Kids’ Art | Sarah Perez | 2,013 | 8 | 16 | A new mobile app for iPhone called wants to encourage parents to photograph, save and share their children’s artwork by snapping pictures of it with their phone. Yes, just like direct competitor , which has caught the attention of more than a few mommy bloggers already. But this latest entrant has a slightly different take on the whole experience, as it also incentivizes the activity of saving art by offering users real and virtual rewards as they hit certain milestones. Much like Artkive, the premise of Canvsly is that parents who feel guilty over trashing junior’s fingerpaint creations can assuage those feelings by turning them into long-lasting digital memories. Also like Artkive, you can create profiles for the different children in the household, and build galleries of their work, where the art is organized for you. Explains founder Amit Murumkar, a technology consultant who has dabbled with startups in the past, he was inspired to build this app after having been something of an artist himself during his childhood. “I won a lot of school-level competitions, but I don’t have a single piece of art from then today,” he says. As an adult now, he understands that it’s just not possible to save everything forever. But as the parent of a three-year old, he also wants to ensure that her memories aren’t as casually discarded. While Artkive already exists to serve the same demographic he’s currently targeting with Canvsly, there are a few notable differences between the apps. Canvsly, for instance, is designed to be a more social experience, where family members and friends can keep an eye on the shared activity feed and then comment or like (called a “high-five”) the art that’s posted. Over time, members are rewarded for their continual usage of the app, with milestones directed at both the parents and the kids (“artist of the month” for submitting the most art, or the most “high-fived” art, for example). These come in the form of virtual awards, like badges, as well as real-world rewards through the integration of Kiip’s rewards system. The app, in fact, was a . (Kiip, for those unfamiliar, allows app developers to reward users with free product samples, gift cards, mp3 downloads, and more, for hitting certain milestones or achievements in the app.) In addition, while Artkive recently introduced into its app, Canvsly offers a different line up of products. Instead of books, which it may add later, it instead offers 25 different gifts and keepsakes, including magnets, mousepads, coffee mugs, water bottles, postcards, or, for the holidays, ornaments. The app was only pushed to the App Store around a week ago and has done little marketing outside of some Facebook ads since, so it doesn’t have much traction to speak of at this time. But the founder has been out and about, talking it up at local preschools and art classes, in hopes of gaining some word-of-mouth action. As a parent of a three-year old myself, I’ve given both these apps a whirl. But I have the same complaint with Canvsly as I did with ArtKive: there are just too many steps to getting a single piece of art uploaded and saved. Canvsly, for instance, forces you to enter a caption, and god knows what some of my kid’s work is even a picture at this point. Plus, both apps should let users import older photos from the Camera Roll, then organize them appropriately based on the timestamp. After all, the default way many moms (and dads) save kids’ artwork today is with an iPhone photo that later gets uploaded to a more generalized cloud photos site, like Facebook, Google+, Flickr or Shutterfly. That’s still a far quicker and easier process, and pressed for time, the value-add of a niche app like either of these may not be enough to keep users engaged – whether there are rewards or not. Based in Princeton, New Jersey, is a bootstrapped team of one. You can . |
ShopAdvisor Closes $5M Funding Round As It Grows Roster Of Magazines Using Its Comparison-Shopping Tech | Eliza Brooke | 2,013 | 8 | 16 | has closed a $5 million investment round led by , with participation from Seavest Capital, Rationalwave Capital Partners, and the Boston-based investors Rob Soni and Bob Davoli. The company, which originally launched as an app to help consumers remember and shop for products later, has moved in a B2B direction in the last year by adding comparison-shopping opportunities for media sites, tablet apps and print publications. This round brings ShopAdvisor’s total funding to $7 million. ShopAdvisor CEO Scott Cooper told us that the investment will be used to build out the company’s customer base, which currently includes Time Inc. and Hearst titles like Cosmopolitan and the beauty magazine Allure. “You’re reading Cosmopolitan on your tablet, paging through that magazine, and you come upon an Oscar de la Renta ad for a new fragrance. A button appears to shop, you click on it, and you see more products that hover over the ad. You put them on a list of products to interact with later. It’s the deferred concept; it’s like dog-earring a magazine,” Cooper said. In recreating the experience of dog-earring a magazine page, ShopAdvisor is aiming to give magazines a point of sale that feels natural to print readers. Consumers can keep track of items they may be interested in purchasing once they’re done reading, and when they give ShopAdvisor their email address, they open themselves up to later marketing. Magazines can make both advertisements and original content shoppable. The placement of the shopping opportunities, which typically appear as buttons, is up to the editorial team, Cooper said; ShopAdvisor provides the technology and product suggestions from their 16,000 affiliated merchants. Cosmopolitan has done a particularly good job engaging their readers with comparison shopping by being careful to build a button that works with their aesthetic and positioning it consistently to make it feel comfortable and familiar to readers. Cooper acknowledged that readers won’t interact with ShopAdvisor product suggestions the first time they see it, but instead need a bit of soak time to become comfortable with using it. Although Cooper declined to comment on click-through rates on ShopAdvisor’s shopping buttons, he did say that tablet use rates have been particularly high. “The average rate of clicking on a banner ad for a website is well below 1 percent. [With digital magazines] we see click rates 10 times higher than on banner ads.” is a fan of the current state of magazine apps, but as more publications look to digital as a way of boosting and monetizing their readership, they’re going to want services like this that replicate familiar habits of print media consumption. In that light, ShopAdvisor could do very well for itself. |
Announcing Disrupt SF’s Startup Alley, Hardware Alley, And International Pavilion Companies | Matt Burns | 2,013 | 8 | 16 | is the loud and boisterous marketplace of Disrupt. Young companies, huddled around cocktail tables demoing their wares, are vying for attention and a spot on the Disrupt stage. All of these startups are amazing and we invite you to visit this amazing group at Disrupt SF early next month. As in years past startups covering nearly every category are exhibiting, including separate pavilions with startups from Brazil by , China by , India by , Ireland by and , Israel by , and Korea by . Needless to say, Disrupt SF is truly an international event. The first two days of Disrupt will feature web startups covering media, mobile, lifestyle, enterprise, and many more. Then, on Wednesday September 11th, hardware companies will take over the Concourse exhibit hall for Hardware Alley, our semi-annual celebration of gizmos and gadgets. The full list of Startup Alley and Hardware Alley companies is . These companies are also fighting to demo in front of Disrupt judges on Monday and Tuesday. If selected as the Audience Choice, they’re fast tracked to the Startup Battlefield where they compete for the Disrupt Cup and $50,000 grand prize. You can find out more at the Disrupt event page but the gist is this: The event runs from September 9 – 11. We’re running a pre-event 24-hour hackathon for folks who want to get one free ticket but, as it stands, you still have the opportunity to pick up a ticket to the show. Or better yet, get a Startup Alley and Hardware Alley package and show off your startup. Packages are available . |
Xiaomi, What Americans Need To Know | Catherine Shu | 2,013 | 8 | 28 | smartphones are currently sold only in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, but its is a clear signal that the three-year-old company plans to break into international markets soon. Its track record of rapid growth and savvy marketing means that it may not be long before Xiaomi, which means “little rice” in Mandarin Chinese, starts making a big footprint in the U.S. smartphone market. For those of you who are still thinking -WHAT JUST HAPPENED?,” here’s a quick primer on Barra’s new employer. Xiaomi Tech was founded just three years ago, but it already has . To put that into context, Xiaomi is now on par with Lenovo’s market value of $10 billion and almost twice BlackBerry’s . The company only started selling smartphones in October 2011, but it recently , up from its previous 15 million goal. Xiaomi is staffed by former employees of Microsoft, Motorola and (of course) Google. Barra joins former colleague Lin Bin, who was previously the Vice President of Google China’s Engineering Research Institute and Engineering Director of Google before co-founding Xiaomi as its President. Xiaomi’s founding team was carefully put together by co-founder and CEO Lei Jun with the . Many profiles in the Western media center on a narrative that presents Lei Jun as a startup founder ” Lei Jun has encouraged that comparison, but it belies the fact that he is already one of China’s most influential and successful tech entrepreneurs. Lei Jun’s resume includes Joyo.com, which was purchased by Amazon in 2004 for $75 million and is now Amazon China and chairing the board of UCWeb, the largest mobile Web browser in China. He also founded YY, which . Lei Jun has said that he wants Xiaomi to push the idea that high-end hardware can be made in China, despite the country’s reputation for manufacturing low-cost, low-quality goods. In May, Lei Jun told the GMIC conference in Beijing that he : a 340-year-old traditional Chinese medicine company called Tongrentang and hot pot chain Hai Di Lao. Lei Jun says these two companies taught him never to produce lower-quality products for the sake of cost, as well as the importance of customer service. A recent report showed that , followed by Samsung’s Galaxy S4. The Mi 2S was released in April, at about the same time as the S4. Xiaomi still trails Samsung in overall market share. According to Analysys International, in the second quarter Xiaomi had a 2.5 percent share of China’s smartphone market, compared to 18.6 percent for Samsung and 4.6 percent for Apple. If smartphone sales continue to grow at their current pace, however, Xiaomi has a good chance of making a significant dent in Samsung’s market share. Xiaomi announced in July that it had sold 7.03 million handsets in the first half of 2013. Over that period, it made RMB 13.27 billion (about $2.16 billion) in revenue. That means Xiaomi sold almost the same number of phones in the first half of 2013 as it did in all of 2012, and made more than double the amount of revenue in the first half of 2013 as the $957.46 million it netted in the corresponding period a year ago. Xiaomi’s sales can be attributed in part to its willingness to try offbeat marketing strategies. In December 2012, Xiaomi announced that it will sell phones directly from Sina Weibo, China’s top microblogging platform with 400 million members. The unusual marketing tactic proved successful: within two days of the announcement, Xiaomi said it had sold 50,000 smartphones in five minutes, with 1.3 million additional reservations. The company has gained a loyal fanbase by incorporating user feedback into the design of its latest sets and Android skins, which in turn helps the company keep its development costs down. Every week, Xiaomi releases a new version of miUI, its customized Android skin, which is then scrutinized by a few hundred thousand hardcore users. Xiaomi’s smartphones are typically made available in batches of 200,000 to 300,000 on its Web site and sometimes sell out in less than an hour. Xiaomi has dismissed complaints that its limited supplies are meant to inflate demand. Instead, the company insists gauging consumer reaction before rolling out more handsets helps it keep prices down. Xiaomi is ramping up production, however, and there are signs that it may . Xiaomi’s plan is to sell high-end smartphones at or slightly beyond the cost of materials and eventually monetize through software and services. Its (US$130 to US$278). The company has not revealed its profits, but investor Hans Tung, a partner at Qiming Venture Partners, has said that Xiaomi . Xiaomi still has to prove, however, that its business strategy will bear fruit. Xiaomi’s sales figures are living up to the company’s hype from a consumer perspective, but as , Xiaomi still has to show that it can monetize software services, an area in which it faces competition from Chinese tech giants such as Alibaba and Tencent. It remains to be seen what Xiaomi’s plans for its business strategy are now that Barra, Google’s former Vice President of product management for Android, is on board to head its international expansion, but we might find out soon: Xiaomi’s next big press conference, at which it is expected to launch its latest product lineup, is on September 5. |
Google Exec Departs Amidst Rumors Of Tangled Love Quadrangle | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,013 | 8 | 28 | We’ve a report today that Android VP is leaving Google for . The report was timed to coincide with about the dissolution of Google co-founder Sergey Brin’s marriage to 23andMe co-founder It also revealed that a person whom Hugo Barra had been in a previous relationship with was now dating Brin. Barra’s departure was said to be “unrelated” to the above. Barra had been at Google since March 2008, coming over from Nuance where he was a Product Manager. In his five years at Google he worked his way up from Product Manager to Vice President of Android Product Management and garnered many fans. Xiaomi co-founder/president (and former Googler) Lin Bin himself on Sina Weibo that Barra will start as Xiaomi Vice President this October. According to AllThingsD, the split between Brin and his wife was amicable and will not affect Google from a business standpoint. It’s less clear whether Brin’s new relationship will have a business impact, as all signs point to it being with an individual on the Google Glass Marketing team. Brin Google Glass from a product standpoint, though PR and Marketing do not directly report to him. Strangely fitting that the company trying hardest to robotize our lives is getting ripped apart by the simplest of Maslow's needs. — Dan Frommer (@fromedome) A Google spokeswoman has also confirmed Barra’s exit and given us this comment, “We wish Hugo Barra the best. We’ll miss him at Google and we’re excited that he is staying within the Android ecosystem.” In addition, Barra has written a goodbye post, . |
With New Funding In Tow, Lendio And Creditera Are Helping Small Businesses Secure Loans And Avoid Bad Credit | Rip Empson | 2,013 | 8 | 28 | Brock Blake and Levi King have founded more than six companies between them. Over the course of their various entrepreneurial endeavors, like many other small business owners entrepreneurs, Blake and King applied for dozens of business loans — and received dozens of rejections. When they did receive approvals, they usually came with terms, rates or amounts that made the loan more of a hassle than a help. In 2011, Blake and King launched , a service that aims to simplify the process and help match small business owners on Main Street with the right type of loan (and lender) for their business. Rather than forcing small business owners to go bank to bank, lender to lender and wade through complicated terms and thousands of options, Lendio essentially automates the process, partnering with hundreds of lenders and aggregated more than 3,500+ loan options across those lenders to help remove the friction. Rather than compete with small business lenders or , much like Kayak does for airfare, Lendio partners with these lenders to enable business owners to receive (what is often same-day) pre-approval, while providing their partners with access to quality candidates (and business). Today, having helped hundreds of thousands of small business owners connect with loans, Lendio is announcing that it has closed a $4.5 million round of Series B financing, led by Runa Capital. Two of the startup’s previous investors, Tribeca Venture Partners and Highway 12 Ventures, also participated in the round, bringing Lendio’s total investment to $10.5 million. For the average Main Street small business, sorting through the thousands of loan options can be a headache. Generally speaking, entrepreneurs have to start from scratch, with little knowledge of which loans work and which don’t, and the research required to find the right loan takes time that could be better spent elsewhere. Furthermore, it’s no wonder that, writ large, small business lending suffers from a lack of transparency, when brokerage firms charge exorbitant fees to help businesses find the right loan options. Like , Lendio is essentially attempting to become a next-gen broker, streamlining and automating the process by cutting the middle men out of the process and connecting lenders directly to those in need of capital. To do so, the startup asks business owners to answer four questions that help them build a profile on the business and get a sense of what type of loan would best suit their needs. Lendio allows entrepreneurs to choose the best loan from a set of options it serves, then introduces businesses directly to lenders. And, in the case of some of the more tech-savvy lenders, like On Deck and CANN, Lendio has built a set of services and API tools that integrate with their underwriting platforms. This means that, when Lendio finds a quality applicant that is a good match to one of their loan packages, it pings the lender and can get an answer on whether or not they’re pre-approved and what the loan amount will be within a matter of seconds. This isn’t true for every lender, Blake says, but the number of lenders integrated with its APIs is growing. Lendio wants to optimize the chances of finding the right loan for every small business, but the fact of the matter is that not every business is going to qualify. The startup claims that about 70 percent of businesses are approved and, for those who aren’t, the platform offers tools to help them prepare. But Lendio isn’t the only startup that’s trying to make the lending process less of a pain. In fact, at the end of last year, Levi King left Lendio to tackle another point of friction within small business lending: Credit. Launching earlier this year, King’s new startup, , aims to give business owners easy access to personal and business credit reports, scores and ongoing alerts through a single sign-on interface for both types of credit data. After watching hundreds of thousands of business owners come through Lendio attempting to acquire financing for their business, he says, the biggest obstacle that stood in the way of securing a great loan came down to credit, personal or business. This, in and of itself, is the same reason why On Deck developed its own scoring system for a business’ creditworthiness — because so many banks rely on personal credit score to evaluate a business owner’s credit. While an owner may run a legitimate, profitable business, forced to let their own credit stand in place of their business, their personal credit score often rules them out. With Creditera, King isn’t looking to compete with his former startup, especially considering he’s still a shareholder, he says. Instead, Lendio helps business owners get loans by matching them to the right loan and lender, he explains, but personal and business credit are the two most important qualification factors in underwriting. So, by allowing business owners to get quick access to credit reports, scores and alerts, becoming a kind of aggregator for all the “freecreditreport.coms” of the world, King thinks Creditera could be a potential partner for Lendio and other commercial lenders. It’s also intended to be a place where small business owners can go to find educational material and resources on credit, something he believes is sorely needed in the space. King says that he believes that there’s a huge market opportunity, considering that there are 30 million small businesses in the U.S. and many of them aren’t keeping an eye on their credit score, in spite of the fact that it’s the lifeblood of their business and has a huge impact on success. The company wants to differentiate from other options out there by offering small business a platform that combines personal and business credit with identity theft solutions into a single platform. The business model, for now, is simple, King says, with Creditera charging business owners for access to their credit, but that could change going forward. Using this model from the get-go allowed the startup to become cash-flow positive within three months of beta, and raise $650K in seed funding, $500K of which came from Kickstart Seed Fund, and $150K of which came as royalty financing from Rock & Hammer Ventures. For more, find and . |
The GMax Large-Format 3D Printer Is Far, Far Bigger Than A Breadbox | John Biggs | 2,013 | 8 | 28 | Given that the average breadbox is 12 inches wide by 6 inches high and deep, we can safely say that the GMax 3D printer, a can print one. The printer, which is available for a pledge of $1,000 for an entry-level model or $1,200 for a nicer model with LCD screen. The GMax is a fairly basic additive printer with a few tricks up its sleeve. It has a 16″ x 16″ x 9″ build envelope and 75 micron layer height – on par with other 3D printers out there. The best thing is that the creator, Gordon LaPlante, is building these things in Brooklyn using his own, smaller RepRap printer to print the pieces of this model. LaPlante is looking for $50,000 total before he begins production of the units. The printer is obviously more a labor of love than a mass produced, slick production. However, the large build envelope makes it far more interesting to interior designers, creators of wearables, and engineers. Heck, you put print a pair of shoes inside this thing. At less than $1,500, this handmade beast is fairly affordable, especially considering its artisanal, Brooklyn-born pedigree. It’s actually kind of funny – we’re now in the era of hipster-quality 3D printers.
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Mailbox Adds Cloud Search For Gmail And Opens Links In Chrome | Matthew Panzarino | 2,013 | 8 | 28 | Dropbox-owned has just added a couple of nice features, including the ability to search all of your Gmail messages in the cloud and locally on your device. Previously, you could only dig through messages that had already been downloaded, which was one of the big flaws that stopped me from continuing to use the app. Searching is quick and happens in two stages. Type your query and you’ll get an instant list of local results. Mailbox polls Gmail in the background and begins filling out results from the server as soon as it has them in a list. At some points in my testing, I did get a gray overlay that said ‘no results’ while it was still searching the cloud. I’d love to see this better indicate that you might have results, they’re just on their way — especially when you have a poor network connection. Most of the searches were quick enough to fill out the list fairly swiftly. In addition to the new cloud search option, you can now also attach signatures to individual emails based on the address that you’re using to send them. So if you’re replying to an email from your work address, they’ll see the signature you use for work, not the pocket robot joke you use on your personal account. In what is a growing trend with apps on Apple’s iOS platform, the new Mailbox also allows you to toggle an option to open links inside Chrome, Google’s alternative browser. Google’s apps have, of course, been making a habit of this. That includes Gmail, which now makes it possible to open links in Chrome and almost all attachments in their corresponding Google apps like Drive. Mailbox, in what is an unsurprising but nice little synergistic move, 1GB of free space on Dropbox when you link your account up to Mailbox. Mailbox recently added Dropbox integration for attachments, and this is a great way to drive people to the settings menu to toggle that option on. Mailbox continues to iterate on its initial promise, especially in terms of thinking outside of the device itself and into the cloud. Which is, pretty much, the exact reason why you’d be excited about being acquired by a company like Dropbox. |
Singaporean Accelerator JFDI.Asia’s Latest Intake Brings Together Entrepreneurs From 9 Countries | Catherine Shu | 2,013 | 8 | 28 | Singapore-based accelerator has announced the 10 startup teams in its latest class. Modeled after , JFDI.Asia looks for founding teams who are ready to take their startups from concept to early-stage investment in 100 days. JFDI.Asia is the first Southeast Asia member of the , which was started by TechStars’ co-founders to create a standardized model for mentorship-based seed-stage accelerators. The 10 teams in its new cohort, who will begin working with JFDI.Asia today, were chosen from 321 applicants. The program is open to startups from around the world and the 30 founders in the current cohort represent Vietnam, the U.S., France, Taiwan, India, Thailand, Canada and the Philippines in addition to Singapore. Teams that complete the program will present to over 100 early-stage investors at JFDI.Asia’s next Demo Day. JFDI.Asia was founded in 2010 by Hugh Mason and Wong Meng Weng and focuses on tech businesses targeted toward markets in Asia. The program provides each of its startup teams with $11,700 in cash, as well as mentoring, technical infrastructure and working space, in exchange for a minority equity stake. The latest batch includes: is a social commerce-based payment and marketing startup that enables individuals and businesses to sell products and services across different online and mobile platforms is a behavior analytics platform that helps patients and their families make healthcare decisions. ‘s iOS and Android mobile app allows colleagues to collaborate on field reports in real-time instead of emailing files back and forth. uses photo-sharing to help increase user engagement for brands. is a feedback system for multi-venue food and hospitality businesses. payment service is targeted toward e-commerce companies that want to break into emerging markets TapTalents makes tools that enable enterprises to develop data analytics-driven mobile business apps for field-based knowledge workers. bills itself as the “Dropbox for your physical stuff” and offers secure, on-demand storage that can be managed through Web and mobile apps. Visual-Marks is visual storytelling platform that provides an immersive writing, styling and reading experience. creates healthcare products, including medication reminders and pharmacy validation services, that bridge the gap between pharmaceutical companies and patients in emerging markets. |
Test Driving The Evelo Aries, An Electric Bicycle For Commuters From A Bootstrapped Startup | Billy Gallagher | 2,013 | 8 | 28 | When co-founder and his team at were ready to launch their electric bicycle company in April 2012, they took an unusual approach: They rode electric bikes from New York to San Francisco, stopping frequently along the way to demo their bikes to prospective bicycle dealers and customers. Now, the bootstrapped startup, which sells three models of electric bikes, is on track to exceed $1 million in revenue in 2013. Mordkovich says the company will be open to VC funding “in another year or so” to help accelerate its growth. With the worldwide electric bike market from its current $8.4 billion in annual revenue to $10.8 billion a year by 2020, Evelo could be striking at just the right time. I tried out the Aries, a sporty bike that feels a lot like a mountain bike, but with a motor that can hit 20 miles per hour and go 40 miles on a single charge. I rode the Aries around SOMA near our TechCrunch San Francisco office, and really enjoyed it. It feels a lot like riding a heavy mountain bike, with a nice assist for those tough San Francisco hills (or if you just want to zoom without getting all sweaty). The bike isn’t on the same level as the Specialized Turbo, from a major bike manufacturer, but the Turbo, at $5,900, is almost three times the price of the Aries ($1,995). At this lower price point, the Aries is a great option for an urban commuter. If I lived in San Francisco full time, I would definitely nab one of these. Check it out in the video above.
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Three Becomes The Fourth Carrier To Throw Its Hat Into The LTE Ring, Will Offer Price-Busting 4G On 3G Tariffs Starting In December | Ingrid Lunden | 2,013 | 8 | 28 | On the heels of Vodafone and O2 turning on their LTE networks to compete against EE in 4G services in the UK, has confirmed its roadmap and pricing for 4G services. The UK’s fourth-largest carrier, owned by Hong Kong’s Hutchison Whampoa, will start offering LTE beginning December 2013, starting first in London, Birmingham and Manchester; then going to 50 cities in 2014; and finally extending to 98 percent of the population by the end of 2015. It may be the last of the bigger carriers to lay on LTE, but Three is doing it with a bang: to lure more people to its network, which today has 7.4 million active users. Three will be offering services at the same rates as it currently sells 3G — effectively a sizeable discount on what its competitors are doing. “Our base point all along has been that LTE/4G is a much more efficient way of transporting data across the network,” corporate affairs director Hugh Davies told TechCrunch. “It allows the networks to carry more data more efficiently, and allows more users to benefit from better capacity. Why would you charge more for that?” Prices for different phones and different plans differ but as a point of comparison, at £31 per month and include unlimited mobile internet, with a £29 upfront cost. At EE, at £46 per month, with a £9.99 upfront cost and a 10GB data cap (EE has less expensive monthly tariffs but they have much higher upfront costs and even lower data caps). SIM-only plans for those who bring their own phones to Three’s network are typically also priced lower. Three says that it will roll out the 4G capability as an over-the-air update. Its flavor of LTE will work on the 800MHz band, capacity it picked up in a round of spectrum auctions in March of this year for £225 million, a part of a . While Three owns its spectrum, it has a 50-50 infrastructure sharing agreement with EE. By switching LTE on automatically for Three customers who already have 4G-capable devices, Three estimates that it will hit the ground with 1.5 million 4G users from the very start (it already sells a number of 4G-capable phones from Apple, Samsung, BlackBerry and Nokia; two pictured here to the right). Compare that 1.5 million to EE, which launched its network in , in July reported around , and projects that it will hit . Still, Three’s smaller overall customer base is the biggest focus for the company: it needs to drive up that 7.5 million subscriber figure to get better economies of scale on its network. Ironically, it’s the last of the bigger UK mobile carriers to move into LTE, but Three was the first to offer 3G when networks went through their last major upgrade. |
If Tinder And Snapchat Shacked Up And Had A Baby, It Would Be Called Swipe | Ryan Lawler | 2,013 | 8 | 28 | is the latest in a series of “people discovery” apps to pop up over the last year or so, connecting users who have expressed interest in one another. In that way, it’s not that much different from apps like Tinder or Let’s Date. But , the startup behind the Swipe app, hopes to provide a bunch of features that will keep users coming back for more, even after their users meet one another offline. If you’ve used a mobile dating app recently, you’re probably familiar with the mechanics of Swipe. Log in with Facebook Connect and the app shows a series of other users you might be interested in. It’ll let you know if they share interests or friends with you, based upon the info it gets from Facebook. You can also drill down and check out the other user’s description and up to four additional photos. If it seems like someone you might be interested in, you swipe their photo to the right. If not, swipe left. And if someone you’ve expressed interest in also swipes right on you, well then you’ll be notified that you have a match! And that’s when the fun starts. In other dating or “people discovery” apps, matched up users can message one another, and that’s about it. You message each other and then eventually you get each other’s contact info, and then you meet IRL. Or maybe not. But the point is that after that initial connection, your interaction ends up moving offline, or at least off-app. Swipe wants to be different — it wants to provide ways that its matches continue to communicate with each other after they’ve connected. The first feature it’s enabled allows users to send photos to their matches, and, just like Snapchat, have those pictures disappear after a period of time. Ephemeral photos don’t have to be shot in the moment, as they do in Snapchat, but they can be sent to multiple matches at once. So you can send your favorite selfie to everyone you know shares an interest in you, all at once. For Swipe, those interactions are designed to take it beyond being just a dating app and to become a “mobile entertainment platform,” according to co-founder Jon Viner. Photos are just the first step. The company is looking to add more interactions over time, including the ability for matches to share stickers and doodles, and play mobile games together — all from directly within the app. That means creating a whole new social graph within Swipe, of course. But it also means that its users aren’t as likely to take their conversations with other users to SMS, or email, or whatever the kids are using these days. GameChanger Labs was founded by Jon and Josh Viner, brothers who came out of the social gaming space. They previously built the Facebook sports game “PageFad,” which had millions of users around the world. To help grow their latest venture, the two recruited former Zynga VP of studios Bill Mooney as their COO. While there, Mooney was in charge of games like Farmville, Zynga Poker, and Mafia Wars. The startup already has 15 employees working on building new features and interactions into the app, thanks to an undisclosed round of seed funding. While GameChanger Labs won’t say how much it’s raised to date, investors include Lightspeed Venture Partners, Bullpen Capital, Blumberg Capital, Matt Ocko, Tarkan Maner, and Karl Jacob. |
This Week On The TechCrunch Droidcast: Samsung’s Galaxy Glut, Nexus Price Cuts, And HTC’s Next Step | Chris Velazco | 2,013 | 8 | 28 | Is it Wednesday already? It must be, because we’ve got yet another edition of the TechCrunch Droidcast to carry you through the rest of your day (or least the next half hour). This week it’s just Darrell Etherington and I shooting the breeze about the goings-on in the Android world, but there’s plenty for us to dig into. Samsung has a new tablet for kiddies and confirmed it’ll show off the Galaxy Gear smartwatch next week for starters, and Google has just priced its 8 and 16GB Nexus 4s to move. Meanwhile, poor old HTC may be trying to put together a mobile operating system of its own so it can make some inroads into the Chinese market (and hopefully secure itself a future). Throw in a bit of Kobo talk (at Darrell’s insistence, being Canadian and all) and a few off-topic moments at the end of the show to tear apart Nintendo’s downright ridiculous 2DS handheld, and you’ve got this installment of Droidcast in a nutshell. Interest piqued? Take a listen below and subscribe to the podcast in iTunes if you’re picking up what we’re putting down.
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Come To The Disrupt Hackathon, Leave Smarter — Here Are The API Workshops (And More Tickets!) | Greg Kumparak | 2,013 | 8 | 28 | The is so damned close that we can almost smell that rare amalgamation of sweat, excitement, exhaustion, and pizza grease in the air. We’re just over a week away from the big event, where hundreds upon hundreds of coders and designers will be locked in a battle to build the coolest thing they can build in a single 24 hour stretch. The prize? Fame. Glory. Oh, and a nice stack of cash. Even if you don’t win, you’ll probably walk away with the most important prize of all: knowledge*. [* ] We’ve got some pretty great API workshops lined up for the first day of the Hackathon, where you’ll learn the ins-and-outs of a few APIs right from the folks who help make them. If your mobile application continues to run in the cloud, even when the application is closed, how do you go about providing your customers with useful information about background events? For example, if your application is a game with a leaderboard, how do you notify your users that their leaderboard position has been overtaken by another player? Or, if you’ve created a traffic application, how can you warn users that there is slow traffic ahead? With Amazon Simple Notification Server (SNS), you can transmit push notifications from backend server applications to mobile apps on Apple, Google and Kindle Fire devices using a simple, unified API. In this session, we’ll discuss the benefits of using Amazon SNS for mobile push messaging, and we’ll demonstrate how easy it is to use. Founded in 1911 in Detroit, Chevrolet is now one of the world’s largest car brands, doing business in more than 140 countries and selling more than 4.5 million cars and trucks a year. Chevrolet invites developers to explore what’s possible with in-vehicle and Remote API apps to help drivers bring their digital lives into their vehicles. Add the capability to control millions of vehicles to your app, including location, navigation, remote start, unlock, telemetry & more. Find out more about Chevrolet’s APIs at Clover is transforming the face of brick-and-mortar commerce by developing Android-based hardware, cloud services, and an open platform for third-party developers, complete with a marketplace enabling merchants to purchase and distribute your apps to all their devices with a single tap. And we’ve partnered with the world’s largest credit card processors to provide you massive leverage. Michael will give you an architectural introduction to Clover, present our Android and REST APIs, and show some examples of integrating popular apps and services with Clover. He’ll show real-world examples of integrating your existing consumer- and merchant-facing applications with Clover, and how to publish your Android app in our marketplace. For API documentation see: Dropbox isn’t just for files anymore! With the recently launched Datastore API, structured data like contacts, app settings, and game state can be synced instantly and effortlessly. Datastores work across platforms (iOS, Android, and JavaScript), support offline access, and resolve conflicts automatically. Of course, Dropbox also has rich APIs for accessing and manipulating files from both web and client apps. Join us in this workshop to learn about the full range of the Dropbox APIs. Find out more about the Dropbox APIs at . The Evernote API lets you tap into the functionality offered by the Evernote service and gain access to the millions of users around the world who use it every day. Using the same API that powers all of Evernote’s native apps, you get full access to a user’s Evernote account, allowing you to create new notes and access existing ones. In this workshop we’ll introduce the API and look at Evernote’s SDKs, then discuss creating new notes, rendering notes, searching for existing notes and other common operations. You’ll learn how your application can store its data in Evernote, how to tap into the information that a user has already stored in Evernote, and why Evernote is great for more than just note taking. Find out more about Evernote’s API at: .
If you’ve yet to attend to one of our hackathons (we tend to throw one on the weekend before each of our biggest conferences), it’s hard to adequately explain what you’re missing. We’ve seen projects of all shapes and sizes, from to . We’ve had impromptu, 50-person NERF battles break out at 2 a.m. We’ve had projects spin out of the hackathon and . Plus, everyone who gets on stage and presents a finished project gets into the main Disrupt conference (and all the parties) for free! That’s a $2000+ ticket, on of the chance to win some massive prizes. If you’ve got something you’ve been dying to build, you’d be crazy to build it here. The Disrupt SF 2013 Hackathon runs through the night on September 7 and 8, and we’ve just released . What are you waiting for? |
Udacity And San Jose State See Improvement In Their Online Education Experiment [Updated] | Gregory Ferenstein | 2,013 | 8 | 28 | Experimentation is a roller coaster. San Jose State University suspended its controversial . But the university and its platform partner, Udacity, bounced back on their second try, improving students’ outcomes in four of five summer courses, compared to their traditional online counterparts. SJSU’s pilot with Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs) is supposed to usher in an era of super-low-cost courses for the masses — without sacrificing quality of instruction. In fact, the theory is that the self-paced learning style of online video lectures is more tailored to individual needs than a one-size-fits-all classroom. Students consult with tutors and their peers whenever they desire, and they can listen to lectures as many times as they need to in order to master the material. SJSU was the first to offer college credit, which caused a . So, when SJSU’s Spring semester fell short of expectations, it was potentially a huge setback. Turns out, the failure was premature. According to SJSU Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Ellen Junn, they ramped up orientation efforts for new students, improved email communications during the course, and added ways to encourage students to finish the course. “Everyone needs a little encouragement to stay on track. So we’ve added tools that help students gauge their progress and we’re checking in with individual students more often,” Junn said a statement. One major issue plaguing the experiment is that Udacity and SJSU have opened up the course to high schoolers and part-time college students. , “20% were high school students, 62% of students in the pilot were not regular San Jose students, and all of the matriculated ones had failed a remedial math class before.” In other words, students with sub-par performance dominated the class, driving down the scores. I should note that there’s an additional level of complexity to the story. The problem of different student populations between online and offline is compounded by poor reporting methods used by SJSU. Both during the Spring and Summer classes, SJSU reported simple percentages of student outcomes. Contemporary education researchers, however, usually group students by age, gender, race, socioeconomic status, IQ, and/or educational experience. Instead, SJSU just releases the average scores of all the students (the graph above), even though the average MOOC student is much different from the average on-campus student. Using modern techniques, instead of simple percentages, we’d likely see that the MOOC was both less of a failure in the Spring and less of a home-run in the Summer–saving everyone a big headache. . Regardless of the outcomes (and the methods of assessment), this is all one big experiment, so we’ll have to patient with the outcome. I maintain, however, that SJSU will . [Image Credit: Flickr user ] |
You Can Bet On Who Will Be Microsoft’s Next CEO (Marissa Mayer Pays Out 33 To 1) | Alex Wilhelm | 2,013 | 8 | 28 | A betting service has for Microsoft’s soon-to-be-vacant CEO role that you can wager on. It’s a partially serious, partially silly list. Microsoft COO Kevin Turner as CEO? Perhaps. Apple CEO Tim Cook as the new Microsoft boss? Probably not. But Turner pays out but 6 to 1 while Cook is a 100 to 1 longshot, so place your bets accordingly. In the thinking of betting group Ladbrokes, Steven Sinofsky might make a return to Microsoft (8 to 1 odds), Stephen Elop might leave Nokia to run his former employer (5 to 1), Marissa Mayer might ditch Yahoo for Big Redmond (33 to 1), and Jack Dorsey might head up a company whose products he likely hasn’t used in years (40 to 1). Yes, you can bet that Bill Gates will come back to Microsoft as its chief, but it pays out 50 to 1, which is a pretty decent indication that the boys at Ladbrokes aren’t utterly silly. But they have “Cheryl Sandberg” [sic] on the list at 40 to 1, so I doubt their savvy. CNET that “bookie’s algorithms are more finely tuned than a first violinist’s Strad,” which makes the above fun, as the bookies in this case have created a few bets that they know won’t pay out. Hell, they could offer Cook at 1,000 to 1 and it would still be a decidedly negative EV bet for the average piker. We here at TechCrunch recently played ourselves, noting that Google’s Vic Gundotra might be in play. Ladbrokes will pay out 25 to 1 if that happens. In reality, a short list of candidates has not been leaked yet, probably because Microsoft is early in the process of picking its next CEO. Who will it be? I know it’s not me or you. The list of candidates — people with enough experience and knowledge and charisma to run a technology company at the scale of Microsoft — is small, but not vanishing. For now, bet away — current Windows boss Terry Myerson pays out 12 to 1. |
null | Josh Constine | 2,013 | 8 | 16 | null |
Online Ad Company Turn Launches In Japan | Anthony Ha | 2,013 | 8 | 28 | , which offers advertising tools in areas like real-time bidding and analytics, is announcing today that it has opened its first office in Japan. This is part of a larger move into the Asia-Pacific region, said CEO Bill Demas. The company expanded in Singapore, Hong Kong, and Australia in the past year, and it also has a data center based in Hong Kong. “We know we need to be in population centers. There are certainly users [in Japan] who are immersed in the Internet, and it has an active and thriving advertising community,” Demas said. “The inbound interest in Turn relative to other markets is just about as high as I’ve seen anywhere.” To lead the company’s efforts in Japan, Turn has hired Akito Sato to be its country manager. Sato was previously strategic business development manager at Google Japan, where he launched the DoubleClick Ad Exchange, DoubleClick Search, and DoubleClick Bid Manager. Sato will be in charge of building out a larger Japanese team. He said that when it comes to real-time bidding, Japan is a big market “dominated by local and domestic players,” so having a local team will give Turn an advantage over other global companies trying to enter the country. In addition, he said Turn will be “doing an extensive amount of localization,” both from a language and feature perspective, for the Japanese market. Sato has been on the job for about six weeks, but the office itself only opened this week, Turn says. |
Obama’s NSA Panel Is Dead Before It Even Starts, Lacks Tech And Telco Execs | Alex Wilhelm | 2,013 | 8 | 28 | As part of his promises regarding better oversight of the National Security Agency, President Obama called for expert external opinion on where the lines of privacy should be drawn: And yet, no. Obama’s panel is not a set of outsiders in the slightest. As some have , the group is instead a slurry of insiders, former insiders, and a previous colleague of the president’s. Member Michael Morell is from the CIA, Richard Clarke is former national security, Cass Sunstein is ex-Obama White House, Peter Swire was part of the Clinton administration, and Geoffrey Stone is also University Chicago stock, same as the president. Stone, at a minimum, is part of the ACLU, and thus might have a bit of a backbone on the privacy side of things. But the group is surprisingly un-outsidery, and hardly undogmatic. This has not gone unnoticed. However, something that is that the group contains no technology or telecom folk. This is almost comical, as we are arguing over digital and telephonic surveillance. PRISM, tapping of fiber-optic cables, storing the nation’s phone records, and forcing telcos to send huge swatches of the Internet to the NSA, and yet not a single voice from the industries impacted will take part. In the age of cynicism, this must be a high point. The group is in fact a good mix of people from the establishment who have perspectives on security, but it is utterly incomplete. To exclude from the conversation companies that are directly impacted by the NSA — bullied is probably a better word — is to silence possible dissent. And that is the opposite of open, or fair. Not that in this discussion there has been much proffered openness of fairness, but when the president assembles a panel of “outsiders” to examine current policy, one could hope for a bit of each. In the assembled group, those in favor of curtailing the NSA’s surveillance activities couldn’t win a voice vote. That’s not so good, really. If we are going to legally force tech and telco firms to hand over private information of regular folks, they deserve a hand in the discussion. Unless, naturally, the meetings are a sham in the hopes of quieting public outrage and dissent. In that case, a few former insiders can be tossed together for a chat that will mean little and accomplish less. Which appears to be the case. At each stage of the NSA revelation saga, the government has obfuscuated or offered little. This is another example of the latter. |
Twitter Reverses The Flow Of Its Timeline In Effort To Humanize It For Newbies | Matthew Panzarino | 2,013 | 8 | 28 | Twitter just flipped the format of its . The full timeline will still show in the traditional ‘newest stuff at the top’ view, but now there are linked conversations which display tweets in an easier-to-understand format. At first glance, this might seem like a simple update that links related tweets together with a thin blue line and a fancy expandable box. But the reasons for this go deeper than just making it easier to read. It’s also making it feel more and less The new view is rolling out on Twitter.com, as well as in the iPhone and Android apps and features an ‘old’ tweet first, with newer replies to it in order afterwards. Here’s an example of an expanded conversation in a timeline (only a couple of the replies are visible until you spread them out): Note the timestamps along the side. Instead of the traditional ‘countdown’ as you go up, the tweets actually get older, not newer. This is a reversal of the way that Twitter has worked before. And, at least to my eye, it’s much easier to follow conversations when you’re reading them chronologically from the oldest tweet through replies that add to the discussion. From the beginning, Twitter has had its own system of communication. Third-party developers helped define the conventions like the @ symbol, the RT and more, but that system has grown increasingly opaque to new users of the service. As with any network, the conventions grow organically to include in-jokes, little nooks of oddness and big swaths of unintelligible conversation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnRmayAuB4M Twitter had backed itself right into a similar situation by letting the audience define those conventions for so long. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, Twitter wouldn’t be half of what it is if those early enthusiasts hadn’t stretched and pulled the SMS messenger into its current shape. But, if Twitter wants to execute on its plan of embracing media companies and new users that will actually interact and engage, it now needs to make things simpler and more coherent. Recently, at the D11 conference, CEO Dick Costolo need to address this communication issue: As far as what Costolo says that Twitter is missing, he says “simplicity”. ”Bridging the gap between the awareness of what Twitter is and…going in and understanding what it is right away.” That gap is what happens when you have people who are deeply invested in a platform, and others who find the complex jargon and mechanics of Twitter confusing. Costolo specifically called out the ‘period before a user name’ behavior when you want a reply to be seen by all as confusing. “Because of the 140 character constraint, users have created this remarkable language for communication,” he says. “Public real-time conversational distributed” is where Twitter wants to ‘enhance its abilities’. That’s where Costolo says that they’re spending almost all of their time. This is one of the reasons that Costolo says that they haven’t put a lot of time into private group chat. Instead of private group chat, we now have ‘public group chat’. That being said — the conversation view is bound to cause some complaints among long-time users. There’s a bit of jumping around involved with conversations expanding and contracting. When tweets are replied to, the conversation also gets pushed upwards in your timeline, moving whole bunches of tweets at once. There’s also the fact that the conversations, while making linked tweets easier to read, arguably make the harder to read. Twitter is emphasizing atomic units of conversation over a ‘big stream of sayings’. For better or for worse. As a side note, when do you think Twitter will remove handles from its feed altogether, relying on the name field alone? That will make it even more ‘human’ and could free up a few more characters if they move the handle to a ‘metadata’ field. There’s also an interesting side effect to conversations in that you’ll only see people who you follow in a ‘collapsed’ view, but when you expand it you’re going to see the whole shebang, including new users that are unfamiliar to you. That has the potential to raise some eyebrows when it comes to newbies seeing ‘strange’ people in their feed, but the tradeoffs could be worth it. Remember: Twitter is always looking for ways to encourage users to follow new people. More than almost any other network, you only get out of Twitter what you ‘follow’ into it. If you happen to tap into a conversation now, and see a new user with a clever reply to one of the folks you follow, you might very well decide to follow them. That’s a clever little bonus to this new view. The new conversation view isn’t just about making it easier to read connected stuff though, it’s also about taking advantage of the unique nature of Twitter. This harkens back to the ‘Town Hall’ jargon Twitter seems to be enamored with lately. These aren’t just linked conversations, they’re linked conversations that are happening in . That’s something that no other network currently has going for it at such a scale and in public. There is a ton of stuff going on in the messenger space, with hundreds of millions of users, to be ‘messenger’ friendly and Facebook surfacing in a big way. But Twitter might actually scoop them all by making itself more welcoming to coherent, readable conversations. (And it also helps explain why Twitter wanted control of its basic experience so badly that it cut third-party developers off at the knees.) At least, that’s what it’s likely hoping, or it wouldn’t have changed the fundamental building blocks of the service in such a major way today. The timeline is no longer immutable. It’s been bent and will continue to be bent in the service of Twitter’s grand plan. Who knows what it might . Image Credit: /CC Flickr |
Founder Stories: Zendesk’s Mikkel Svane On Applying Customer Service To Business | Contributor | 2,013 | 8 | 28 | Can you measure corporate performance based on customer happiness? According to my Founder Stories guest this week, Zendesk’s , happiness is actually an important metric in the business of customer service. What has happened over the last five or six years is that the notion of customer service has changed from just being this call center to something where you can create real meaningful long-term relationships with your customers and think about it as a revenue center.” produces a customer service platform that is used by more than 30,000 businesses worldwide. Started five years ago in Denmark, the once “virtual bootstrap” startup now has 400 employees and is experiencing at least 100 percent growth year over year. In our conversation, Mikkel and I discuss why he decided to move Zendesk to the U.S., how to create corporate culture when a third of the company works locally, and why Zendesk is opening an office in Madison, Wis. We try to keep this culture of exchanging a lot and traveling a lot and really getting to know each other as people. I think getting the individual people to meet each other is kind of the platform for building good structures that can scale globally.” |
Twitter Updates Android, iOS And Web With New Conversation View, Abuse Reporting | Jordan Crook | 2,013 | 8 | 28 | Twitter has just released an update for iOS, Android and the web application with a brand new interface for conversations, as well as enhanced sharing and abuse reporting capabilities. According to , the idea is to make it easier to follow and discover conversations. With the updates, users will see full conversations between people they follow in their timeline as opposed to standalone @replies that may be sent hours or even days after the original tweet (the conversation starter) was sent. This always allowed for strange, context-free tweets in the consumption experience, but with the new update users will have a bit more understanding of what’s being tweeted back in forth in a conversation. Conversations are shown with a blue vertical line between them, with the first tweet in a conversation appearing on top, chronologically. If there are more than two replies, you can click into the blue line to see all the replies in that conversation. This is a pretty major update to the way that Twitter works and is fundamental to getting a larger demographic on a social network that can be pretty scary and unfamiliar at first. But that’s not all. The update also lets you share conversations via email, as well as the ability to share individual tweets by email on either iPhone or Android. Android users even have the benefit of sharing tweets via PM within Twitter. Past the conversations revamp, Twitter has also included the ability to report individual tweets for abuse or spam directly from the web and Android apps, which was previously unavailable. The feature, which has been available on iPhone for quite a while, will roll out slowly. The updates are available now in the and . Take a look at the video: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnRmayAuB4M&w=640&h=480] |
With Trendrr Acquisition, Twitter Continues To Beef Up Its Social TV Efforts | Anthony Ha | 2,013 | 8 | 28 | Twitter has acquired , a company that tracks social media engagement around TV content, as and . Trendrr says it’s “excited to be joining Twitter’s world class team, enabling us to realize bigger opportunities that drive better experiences for users, media and marketers – across Twitter and around the globe.” It also says it will continue to honor its existing contracts but will not be signing new ones. For its part, Twitter says the acquisition “will help us to build great tools for the rest of the TV ecosystem.” It’s pretty clear that Twitter sees TV to be a big part of its monetization efforts (not to mention user growth). In fact, the company recently announced . The feature was based on technology from earlier this year. Trendrr was first launched in 2007 and was developed by digital agency Wiredset. It recently made news by releasing a report stating that , though as we noted, . The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. |
ShopPad Raises $500K To Instantly Turn Online Shops Into iPad-Friendly Websites | Sarah Perez | 2,013 | 8 | 28 | , an e-commerce platform that turns retailers’ desktop websites into tablet-optimized experiences, is today announcing $500,000 in seed funding for its software-as-a-service technology now used by more than 10,000 online merchants. Angels in the round include Mashery co-founder and CEO of MyBlogLog, Lookery and Lumatic, ; (Director of Product at PayPal); Peter Horan (President of Answers.com); (previously GP at Mayfield Fund, and Fab.com board member); (previously GM PayPal Media); and others. The company was founded around a year ago by , a long-time product guy and founder and CEO of , in 2009. Wadler says he got excited about the iPad’s potential to change computing a couple of years ago, around the same time he became an online shopper. He started imagining how those two passions would soon intersect, but despite rapid iPad adoption and tablet market share growth, he discovered that online retailers were lagging behind these major consumer trends. “Big retailers weren’t doing anything exciting [on iPad],” he says. “A lot of them had broken sites, and it really seemed like a mess. It got me thinking – if the really big guys can’t get this figured out, it’s going to be a huge problem for everyone else down.” To help him build what’s now ShopPad, Wadler brought in co-founder and “Chief Creative Officer” , previously founder of VinoTrac. O’Donnell’s background involves an understanding of conversion rates from a UI/UX perspective – a necessary skill set for creating a better tablet shopping experience. With ShopPad, the initial idea was to target the lower to middle online retail market with a solution sold through the Shopify and Magento app marketplaces. Retailers simply install the plug-in to begin immediately serving the tablet-optimized website. “They don’t need to know any programming. They don’t need to enter in any code. It’s all a WYSIWYG interface,” explains Wadler. “We go in through the store’s API and we mirror and sync to our servers their categories, product and store information.” ShopPad then puts a line of JavaScript on the retailer’s website to detect and redirect tablet traffic to its servers instead. In addition to changing the interface itself, ShopPad also handles under-the-hood things like automatically creating and serving Retina product images, connection adaptation, offline abilities, dealing with orientation changes, and more. If retailers want to change the default settings, they can choose to adjust the branding, add their logo, or bring in other content pages with things like store hours or return policies, for example. These various options are available in the company’s paid plans, starting at $6 per month. A $19 per month plan also offers priority customer service and support for retailers’ own domains. Once live, consumers visiting the tablet websites can browse through inventory and add things to their carts using the ShopPad interface, but the final step – checkout – is yet to be tablet-optimized. Wadler says, however, that they’re working with Shopify on this, and are excited to get into this area in the future. Now a team of four, the San Francisco Bay Area startup is working to bring its technology to smartphones and even in-store, allowing retailers with limited room or sales staff to offer tablet kiosks where customers can view additional inventory online, or just browse the website for themselves. ShopPad is also beginning to move up market, and has started working with a few undisclosed, but bigger-name, retailers. Interested retailers can learn more . [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBgEx63Zf24?feature=player_embedded] |
CrunchBase Analysis Of Investment Activity By Season | Contributor | 2,013 | 8 | 17 | Many people in tech believe that VCs slow the pace of their investing during the summer, especially in August. We wanted to verify this using the CrunchBase dataset by comparing deals over the past few years. We graphed total deals by month in CrunchBase from January 2010 to July 2013, but there was no apparent slump that occurred during the summer months. We did however, discover an interesting trend in January — a New Year’s resolution-like phenomenon: There is a sudden spike in total deals in January, with a sudden drop in deals in February. From 2010 to 2012, the average total deals per season was highest in the summer and lowest in the spring. Even with the deal spikes in January, winter was the second-highest season. The VCs that contributed the most to these January spikes were , , , , and . These VCs accounted for more than 100 deals during the month of January between 2010-2012 and 8 percent of the 2010-2012 winter deals. The same investors continue to invest in the spring, as well, with a couple of additions. Active investors in the spring between 2010-2012 were , , SV Angel, 500 Startups, New Enterprise Associates and Sequoia Capital, combining for 7 percent of all deals. The same group of VCs was also active in the summer with a minor drop in the fall. Looking at all deals of 2010-present, SV Angel accounted for 0.9 percent of all deals, 500 Startups accounted for 0.8 percent of all deals and New Enterprise Associates and Accel Partners both accounted for 0.6 percent of all deals. From the CrunchBase data, we concluded that the most active VCs tend to be active year-round, with summer averaging the most deals, which is contrary to the common belief that VCs take a summer break. |
Cloud Service Architecture Will Power New Era Of Intelligent, Automated Applications | Contributor | 2,013 | 8 | 17 | The new way of the world for most web software development is the assembly of applications from cloud-based APIs. Developers are saving loads of time by pulling in various cloud services and focusing their attention on the novel business logic of their solutions. Hundreds of new APIs are sprouting up monthly, as tracked on . And as the very existence of a website dedicated to tracking APIs implies, application assembly has fundamentally changed software development. Yet as monumental as that is, it’s the tip of the iceberg when it comes to realizing the potential of a cloud service-based architecture. Distributing the logic within an application across numerous centralized cloud services will enable more automated, intelligent applications. And the timing couldn’t be better. Interestingly, this separation is similar to how software defined networking (SDN) splits the components of a network into a “control” plane and “data” plane to enable more automated, intelligent networks. Just as an SDN controller can analyze data from the various nodes in a network and automatically change the behavior of a network to improve performance or security, a cloud service can analyze data across all the applications it powers and make changes to the applications to improve their behavior or performance. In fact, a deeper look at SDN offers important clues about the benefits a decoupled architecture can provide for cloud applications. The control plane in SDN contains the intelligence responsible for defining the behavior of the network (the “rules”) while the data plane moves packets within the network according to these rules (the “processing”). Separating the “rules” of how network packets should be processed from the actual processing allows the feedback loop of measure, analyze, and modify that is critical for enabling automated, intelligent networks. Cloud application architecture does bear some resemblance to SDN, where a centralized intelligent element (a cloud service) often plays the role of analyzing data from across numerous end nodes (in this case application instances) and modifying the behavior of those end nodes. Most startups haven’t exploited this because they have been able to deliver so much value to customers by simply offering a service or application with a modern web-based delivery model. That in and of itself adds enough of a value proposition to get off the ground. However, as they mature, more and more of these companies will deploy intelligence and automation in their service. This will enable them to use the SDN qualities of their architecture to analyze data from all the applications powered by these services and then modify the application to improve performance or change the behavior of these applications. One area already leveraging the intelligence enabled by a disaggregated architecture to provide a leap forward in value delivered to customers is security, where large-scale correlation analyses, machine learning, and other big-data techniques are utilized to determine if a threat is present. If a threat is detected, the data is shared across the network, alerting people of the threat. This is an intelligent cloud service at its best. When I meet with startups offering cloud-based services, the discussion often leads to the tremendous value of the data they are gathering from all the applications that implement their service. But in order to benefit from this data, machine learning heuristics and other advanced analysis techniques will need to be applied so that action can be taken in real time to modify these applications. Centralized, intelligent cloud services will improve the functionality or performance of applications automatically based on the data they are seeing — not unlike Amazon making recommendations for you based on past purchases or ad-tech companies optimize retargeting. While a majority of cloud services startups today are creating a lot of value simply by delivering their service as an easy-to-use API, intelligence and automation is where the next large opportunity lies. |
CrunchWeek: BlackBerry Puts Itself In Play, Google’s Geeky Easter Eggs, Mobile Ad M&A | Colleen Taylor | 2,013 | 8 | 17 | This time around, , would up discussing BlackBerry’s (which basically means it is up for sale), the cheeky new hidden “Easter egg” , and what says about the state of mobile advertising. |
AngelList Tells SEC New Fundraising Rules Will Kill Startups | Josh Constine | 2,013 | 8 | 17 | Startups could face a “death sentence” one year ban from fundraising if they violate awkward new general solicitation fundraising rules, co-founder Naval Ravikant wrote in a this week. Ravikant says the Regulation D and Form D changes that go into effect soon are designed for Wall Street, not Silicon Valley, and must change or they’ll harm rather than help startups. Last month the some parts of the JOBS Act, including lifting the ban on General Solicitation. This allows startups and funds to openly advertise that they’re looking for investors, rather than quietly using private communication to solicit money. The theory is that this will make it easier for startups to raise money, build companies, and create jobs. The problem is that the SEC also decided to to the fundraising process too. This includes notifying the SEC 15 days prior to fundraising, filing all changes to written investor materials to the SEC, and providing verbose disclosures whenever soliciting funding. As TechCrunch contributor and Seattle lawyer William Carleton , “the SEC’s proposed new Reg D rules and filing requirements, if adopted, will make general solicitation more of a burden than an efficiency.” Ravikant shares Carleton’s opinion, and delivered to it to the SEC , hoping the rules can changed. “We are concerned that the newly proposed Form D filing rules could create disastrous unintended consequences for the startup community…Rules that may be easy for Wall Street are a death sentence for startups…Since young companies are responsible for most of the job growth in the US, we believe this is against the spirit of the JOBS Act” Ravikant writes. He explains that while Wall Street actors are used to this level of formality and have lawyers to navigate it, they would cause big problems for budding companies. Startups likely can’t afford expensive legal counsel to help them avoid breaking the rules, yet “the very severe penalty for non-compliance (not fundraising for a year) is a death penalty for a not-yet-profitable business.” Startups are often in a constant state of fundraising as they test the waters of investor interest. That makes it tough to know when to file the start-of-fundraising notice, and could force them to turn away spontaneous opportunities. As startups often iterate quickly and evolve the messaging to investors by updating their websites, filing each of these changes with the SEC would be a huge hassle. And it would nearly impossible to fit a proper disclosure into a tweet soliciting investment. Some of these rules are designed to protect inexperienced investors that would be allowed to fund companies if the equity crowdfunding portion of the JOBS Act is finally implemented. Right now , people with over $1 million in personal wealth, are allowed to invest. They’re generally tougher to dupe into sham investments. But if average Joes can invest, they may need greater protections afforded by tighter regulations. The hope is that more focused rules that actually guard amateur investors could be put in place alongside true crowdfunding so the frictions described here wouldn’t be necessary. After breaking down the threats to startups in his letter, Ravikant provided the SEC with a list of remedies: The question now is whether the historically slow-moving SEC will budge on these rules, despite the sound logic behind Naval’s suggestions. Postscript: The suggestions Ravikant makes surely would benefit his company, but they would like help many others too. |
Formvertise Launches With Form-Based Mobile Ads And ‘Sue Me’ Campaigns Offering A Guaranteed ROI | Anthony Ha | 2,013 | 8 | 17 | Startup is committing financially to the effectiveness of its mobile ad campaigns. It’s is actually a spinoff from another company , which offered mobile marketing tools for small businesses and nonprofits. The problem with that approach, as explained to me by CEO Shaunak Khire, is not hugely surprising — many of those organizations don’t have significant budgets. With Formvertise, the team is focusing on a more specific problem — acquiring customers and users. To that end, it created an ad unit that presents consumers with a form that they can fill out. It’s not a new idea, even in mobile, but Formvertise is trying to eliminate some of the issues with other types of mobile advertising. For one thing, it’s based on software-as-a-service pricing. In this case, advertisers pay a set campaign fee on a cost-per-submission model, so they’ll know how many submissions they’re going to get for their money. For another, the form should be very simple for users to fill out — depending on what the advertiser is looking for, consumers either enter their name, email, and zip code, or they fill out three poll questions. (They’re offered rewards like discounts for filling out these forms, but Khire noted that with these ads, the advertiser isn’t offering a discount to just get a one-time purchase, but instead to build a relationship.) Khire also emphasized the difference between cost-per-lead ads and the cost-per-submission model that Formvertise is offering. He said it’s less about identifying with a sales lead and more about connecting with customers for purposes as varied as “creating communities, registering for newsletters, creating brand subscribers, market research, and so on.” Formvertise is backing up this approach with what the team has internally called “sue me” ads. If advertisers sign up for a campaign of $20,000 of more, Formvertise will contractually commit to delivering a certain number of submissions within a certain period of time or they get all of their money back. If advertisers sign up for a campaign of at least $100,000, Formvertise will commit to both user acquisition and sales goals, and again, if it doesn’t meet those goals it will offer a full refund. “It’s an outright guarantee from our end,” Khire said. “We are confident because of the datasets that we have, so we essentially take on all the execution risk of that particular campaign.” The company is also announcing a Mobile Direct Response Fund of $250,000 which will be used to double the number of accounts provided to small ad agencies — so an agency that pays for five accounts will receive 10. And Khire said he will consider taking in-kind payments for campaigns from small businesses and bootstrapped startups. By the way, Adlibrium isn’t going away completely. Instead, Khire said he’s going to turn it into an incubator of sorts for other local commerce products. |
How LinkedIn Became A Wall Street Juggernaut | Contributor | 2,013 | 8 | 17 | In 2010, had you suggested to the smartest Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and investors that LinkedIn would have a larger market value in 2013 than Groupon, Zynga or Twitter, you would have been laughed at. Had you hypothesized that LinkedIn would be worth more than Groupon, Zynga and Twitter and worth nearly one-third the value of Facebook, no one would have believed you. LinkedIn just wasn’t as exciting as the internet darlings of the day, and, as a result, there were many LinkedIn doubters at that time, myself included. While LinkedIn circa 2010 might not have been as exciting as its go-go Internet brethren, the company was clearly doing something very right, building out a product roadmap, company strategy and team that has paid handsome dividends since the company’s IPO. The case study of LinkedIn raises interesting questions for founders and investors alike: Why has LinkedIn worked so well as a public stock? What can we all learn from its IPO and after-market performance? In this post, I’ll briefly make four arguments as to why LinkedIn has performed so well: LinkedIn has played Wall Street perfectly. The company priced its IPO well below the market-clearing price, kept expectations muted and, since its public debut, has obliterated both its guidance numbers and consensus Wall Street estimates. In fact, as you can see below, the consensus Wall Street expectation for LinkedIn’s 2013 revenue has risen from $755 million at the time of its IPO in mid May, 2011, to $1.5 billion presently. Ditto for 2013 EBITDA consensus, which has climbed from $147 million at IPO to $367 million today. As revenue and profit expectations have shot up, so has the stock price. Source: Deutsche Bank Securities This strategy requires patience. It takes time to build enough maturity in a business for the team to predictably deliver results and maintain visibility. On Wall Street, to quote Radiohead, “no alarms and no surprises.” This strategy also requires the company to take a hit, a tough thing to do. The value transfer from early investors to the new IPO investors comes in the form of higher dilution or less money raised in an IPO. Most Valley folks are trained not to do this, but one has to think about paying it forward, even for Wall Street, as crazy as that sounds. If companies can make money for their investors, these shareholders tend to remain loyal and attract others who recognize the value. At the same time, management gains more and more credibility among investors, a very valuable asset for public companies. hough it’s now obvious to us all, LinkedIn created a very deep competitive position for itself. The heart of LinkedIn is its remarkably large data set of professional information on individuals and companies. The company spent many years figuring out how to build up this corpus of information and create the right user experience to keep the data set growing in value. Arguably, no pot of money from Microsoft, Google or Salesforce.com could rebuild this data set at this point. This is the moat. The fact that it took a long time to build only makes it more valuable, and it’s not going anywhere. Wall Street has gained confidence that a competitor cannot come up and kill LinkedIn, and on Wall Street, once the fear of credible competition evaporates, valuation multiples shoot up. To wit, while 2013 revenue expectations have nearly doubled since the IPO, as the chart above shows, the multiple investors are willing to pay for this revenue has more than (from 5.2x to 17.5x). Fear of competition is subsiding and confidence in the company’s ability to exceed its guidance is growing. LinkedIn built not one, but many, growth vectors. Wall Street investors love a large, addressable market, and while they don’t love when companies spread themselves too thin by going after many disconnected markets, they do love adjacent markets that leverage core assets. With this, investors can model out more growth over more time and will continue to pay up for a stock, expecting high growth rates. LinkedIn has done incredibly well at building multiple revenue streams (Talent Solutions, Marketing Solutions and Premium Subscriptions are all rapid growers that contribute a healthy share of overall revenue), increasing their product set, and moving to mobile with an aggressive iOS plus HTML5 strategy, all leveraging their core data set. LinkedIn has aged like a fine wine, getting better and better with age and size. In the Valley, people focus on growth at all costs. This makes sense. Wall Street is also enamored with growth, but investors also typically love margin expansion and expanding profit growth as much (and sometimes even more). LinkedIn has invested in its business so that the company now benefits from great profit dynamics — a fast-growing top line alongside expanding margins (EBITDA margins, for example, were up in the June quarter to 24.4 percent from 22.1 percent a year earlier). My guess is that company management opted to sacrifice more rapid growth early on in order to make sure they engineered the right model. This may explain why some didn’t view LinkedIn positively on Sand Hill in the early days, but it’s all moot now as their patience is paying off on the Street. In the wake of the Facebook IPO debacle and recent resurgence, I’m often asked about how companies should plan for Wall Street. My answer: the more you can emulate LinkedIn’s approach, the better. |
DO-RA Is An Environmental Sensor That Plugs Into Your Phone & Tracks Radiation Exposure | Natasha Lomas | 2,013 | 8 | 17 | There’s a thriving cottage industry of smartphone extension hardware that plugs into the headphone jack on your phone and extends its capabilities in one way or another — feeding whatever special data it grabs back to an app where you get to parse, poke and prod it. It’s hard to keep track of the cool stuff people are coming up with to augment phones — whether it’s or or even . Well, here’s an even more off-the-wall extension: meet — a personal dosimeter-radiometer for measuring background radiation. Granted, this is not something the average person might feel they need. And yet factor in the quantified self/health tracking trend and there is likely a potential market in piquing the interest of quantified selfers curious about how much background radiation they are exposed to every day. Plus there are of course obvious use-cases in specific regions that have suffered major nuclear incidents, like Fukushima or Chernobyl, or for people who work in the nuclear industry. DO-RA’s creators says Japan is going to be a key target market when they go into production. Other targets are the U.S. and Europe. It reckons it will initially be able to ship 1 million DO-RA devices per year into these three markets. The device is due to go into commercial production this autumn. The Russian startup behind DO-RA, , claims to have garnered 1,300 pre-orders for the device over the last few months, without doing any dedicated advertising — the majority of pre-orderers are apparently (and incidentally) male iPhone and iPad owners. So it sounds like it’s ticking a fair few folks’ ‘cool gadget’ box already. The DO-RA device will retail for around $150 — which Intersoft says is its primary disruption, being considerably lower than rival portable dosimeters, typically costing $250-$400. It names its main competitors as devices made by U.S. company Scosche, and Japanese carrier NTT DoCoMo. Last year Japan’s Softbank also announced a smartphone with an integrated radiation dosimeter, with the phone made by Sharp. This year, a San Francisco-based startup has also entered the space, with a personal environmental monitoring device, called (also costing circa $250), so interest in environmental-monitoring devices certainly appears to be on the rise. DO-RA — which is short for dosimeter-radiometer — was conceived by its Russian creator, Vladimir Elin, after reading articles on the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in Japan, and stumbling across the idea of a portable dosimeter. A bit more research followed, patents were filed and an international patent was granted on the DO-RA concept in Ukraine, in November last year. Intersoft has made several prototypes since 2011 — and produced multiple apps, for pretty much every mobile and desktop platform going — but is only now gearing up to get the hardware product into market. (Its existing apps are currently running in a dummy simulation mode.) So what exactly does DO-RA do? The universal design version of the gadget will plug into the audio jack on a smartphone, tablet or laptop and, when used in conjunction with the DO-RA app, will be able to record radiation measurements — using a silicon-based ionizing radiation sensor — to build up a picture of radiation exposure for the mobile owner or at a particular location (if you’re using it with a less portable desktop device). The system can continuously monitor background radiation levels, when the app is used in radiometer mode (which is presumably going to be the more battery-draining option — albeit the device contains its own battery), taking measurements every four seconds. There’s also a dosimeter mode, where the app measures “an equivalent exposure over the monitoring period” and then forecasts annual exposure based on that snapshot. The company lists the main functions of the DO-RA mobile device plus app as: – Measuring the hourly/daily/weekly/monthly/annual equivalent radiation dose received by an owner of a mobile/smart phone; – Warning on allowable, maximum and unallowable equivalent radiation dose by audible alarms/messages of a mobile/smart phone:”Normal Dose”, “Maximum Dose”, “Unallowable Dose”. – Development of trends of condition of organs and systems of an owner of a mobile phone subject to received radiation dose; – Advising an owner of a mobile/smart phone on prevention measures subject to received radiation dose; – Receiving data (maps of land, water and other objects) on radiation pollution from radiation monitoring centres collected from DO-RA devices; – Transferring collected data through wireless connection (Bluetooth 4.0) to any electronic devices within 10 meters. Why does it need to transfer collected data? Because the startup has big data plans: it’s hoping to be able to generate real-time maps showing global background radiation levels based on the data its network of DO-RA users will ultimately be generating. To get the kind of volumes of data required to create serious value they’re also looking to shrink their hardware right down — and stick it inside the phone. On a chip, no less. The DO-RA.micro design, which aims to integrate the detector into the smartphone’s battery, is apparently “under development” at present. The final step in the startup’s incredible shrinking roadmap is DO-RA.pro in which the radiation-sensing hardware is integrated directly into the SoC. “This advanced design is under negotiations now”, it says. It will doubtless be an expensive trick to pull off, but if DO-RA’s makers are able to drive their technology inside millions of phones as an embedded sensor that ends up being included as standard they could be sitting atop a gigantic environmental radiation-monitoring data mountain. Still, they are a long way off that ultimate goal. In the meantime they are banking on building out their network via a universal plug-in version of DO-RA, which smartphone owners can use to give their current phone the ability to sniff out radiation. In addition to the basic universal plug-in, they have created , called Yablo-Chups (pictured left), presumably aimed at appealing to the Japanese market (judging by the design). They are also eyeing the smartwatch space (but then who isn’t?), producing for an electromagnetic field monitoring watch that warns its owner of “unhealthy frequencies.” It remains to be seen whether that device will ever be more than vaporware. All these plans are certainly ambitious, so what about funding? Elin founded in 2011 and has managed to raise around $500,000 to-date, including a $35,000 grant from Russia’s Foundation, which backs technology R&D projects to support the homegrown Tech City/startup hub. In September 2013 Intersoft says it’s expecting to get a more substantial grant from the Foundation — of up to $ 1 million — to supplement its funding as it kicks off commercial production of DO-RA. It also apparently has private investors (whose identity it’s not disclosing at this time) willing to invest a further $250,000. Even so, DO-RA’s creators say they are still on the look out for additional investment — either “in the nuclear sphere” or a “big net partner to promote DO-RA” in their main target markets. Additional investment is likely required to achieve what Intersoft describes as its “main goal”: producing a microchip with an embedded radiation sensor. That goal suggests that the current craze for hardware plug-ins to extend phone functionality may be somewhat transitionary — if at least some of these additional sensors can (ultimately) be shrunk down and squeezed into the main device, making mobiles smarter than ever right out of the box. |
Gillmor Gang: Drunken Avatars | Steve Gillmor | 2,013 | 8 | 17 | The Gillmor Gang — Robert Scoble, Dan Farber, Kevin Marks, Keith Teare, and Steve Gillmor — turned what seemed like a slow news week into a tour of emergent hardware and big tech ideas. A Down-Under visitor to Robert Scoble’s studio showed us how he used a 3D printer to prototype a Steadicam-like handheld image stabilizer. Closer to home, we handicapped Elon Musk’s HyperLoop project, the possibility of using wearable computers to detect an interest in donuts from eye movements, and the timing of the end of Apple’s year-long drought of new product. As the new school year approaches, even a slow week turns out to be bursting with promise. @stevegillmor, @dbfarber, @scobleizer, @kteare, @kevinmarks Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor |
Why Venture Will Abandon Seed Investing | Contributor | 2,013 | 8 | 17 | Five years ago, I noticed a growing gap between angel and venture investing. Venture was getting bigger and writing bigger checks, while angel checks were getting smaller and their process was becoming more cumbersome. Since it had also become exponentially easier to launch a web, and later mobile business, entrepreneurs had ideas that needed a million dollars or less to launch, but no clear path to funding. This gap which I and a few other early adopters wanted to fill is now called “seed investing.” Nature abhors a void, of course, and the void has long since been filled to overflowing. One hears numbers quoted from 1,900 to 19,000 startups being seeded a year. Angels, super angels, celebrity investors, institutional seed funds, and more recently top-tier venture firms got in the game. Venture entered seed for two reasons: deal flow and pricing. The best seed investors favor the fingerful of firms they already have strong relationships with, and no one else gets to see the best deals. Seed investors have also grown in size, and some, like traditional venture firms, are doubling down on their winners, which means more time for the companies to grow and higher valuations when the venture round comes. So venture got into seed, and started throwing financial darts. Funds either assigned a partner or two to the project, or authorized partners to make small investments on their own, or with one other partner’s vote. They thought their seed stake would buy access to the Series A and they’d be there early, but it often hasn’t. Successful entrepreneurs don’t remember the financial dart; they remember that time and value delivered. Like so much in life, it’s what have you done for me lately? Time is hard to come by for senior venture folk. They serve on a litany of boards and work on new deals 10 to 100 times larger than the seed deal they did in a moment of passion. They just can’t justify meaningful amounts of time, beyond being responsive to e-mails and an occasional meeting, if asked. Seed deals are prolific, interesting and early, but well over 90 percent of them never mature into Series A-level companies. The numbers just don’t add up for partner time. Entrepreneurs don’t think that way, and those that make it, the prettiest girls at the ball that everyone wants to dance with, remember how their suitors treated them after their first date so long ago. If they never called, then the new guy with sweet nothings and promises of fidelity and “added value” will likely win her hand. In parallel, many of those other startups who had venture one-night stands so long ago in the form of a small check, and who didn’t quite get there, assume the venture firm may still step up at the altar, but there are no shotgun weddings in venture. So the hoped-for optionality that firms sought isn’t assured, and the specter of girlfriends past is a reputational risk. What’s a VC to do? The same thing they did before: focus on the Series A when the time comes, compete on being the best board member and company builder. Stay focused on what they’re expert in, and stay friends with the folks who focus on seed. |
CrunchWeek: Jeff Bezos Buys WaPo; Max Levchin Tackles Fertility With Glow And Fail Week | Leena Rao | 2,013 | 8 | 10 | Welcome to a new episode of CrunchWeek, the show that brings a few of us TechCrunch writers together to talk about the most interesting tech news stories from the past week. This week, our star intern and I kicked off with the news of The Washington Post’s for $250 million. It should be interesting to has up is sleeve for turning around the journalistic institution that was owned by the Graham family. Next up was the debut of in the app store this week. And lastly, don’t forget to tune into our new series (not to be confused with of course). |
Casio Updates G-Shock Bluetooth Line With Added Functionality | John Biggs | 2,013 | 8 | 10 | Don’t call it a smart watch. The line appeared in 2011 with little fanfare – it was up against devices like the Pebble in the public imagination and so an underpowered smartwatch was of little interest. However, Casio has updated their Bluetooth line with the GB-6900B And GB-X6900B, improved versions of their iconic G-Shock watches that allow you to control your phone from your watch and, more important, control your watch from your phone. For example, you can do the standard remote control actions on the watch including turning phone audio up and down and seeing snippets of text messages and emails. However, the new Casio Engine 2 movement also allows you to set watch features via an interface on the phone including alarms, stopwatch activation, and the like. Most interesting are the phone sensing features that allows you to find your phone if it is near the watch and to tap the watch to turn off an incoming call. has a full rundown of features and notes that many of these are things you might actually use. While it doesn’t sense your heartbeat, blood pressure, and pants size it does do a few important things well and, more important, connects to your phone via low power Bluetooth profile 4.0. This makes it easier to justify connecting the watch to your phone simply because the battery will wear slower than traditional Bluetooth devices. Again, the G-Shock isn’t for everybody. However, if you’re looking to geek out you could do worse for $200. The watches should . |
Apple Will Reportedly Unveil The Next iPhone On September 10 | Frederic Lardinois | 2,013 | 8 | 10 | It’s about time for a new iPhone, and with the rumors about an iPhone 5S and maybe even a cheaper version getting stronger, that the next iPhone will launch on September 10. Apple introduced the iPhone 5 on September 12, 2012, so there is a good chance AllThingsD’s sources are correct, though we haven’t heard anything from our usual sources yet (and earlier of a June launch definitely didn’t pan out). Last time around, Apple started taking pre-orders two days after the launch event and the phone went on sale two-and-a-half weeks later. As far as the iPhone 5S rumors go, most point to an incremental update with the usual speed improvements, thanks to a faster chip, a better camera with a dual LED flash and enhanced battery life. The only really exciting rumor so far is that Apple will introduce a for unlocking your phone. There are also of a cheaper iPhone 5 — maybe with a plastic back. Otherwise, iOS 7 will likely be the most controversial feature of the new iPhone, given its radically new design. Unless Apple still has a few aces up its sleeve, iOS 7 isn’t likely to introduce any major new services besides iTunes Radio. While the first betas of iOS 7 were almost unusable, the latest versions are very stable and feel like they are almost ready for prime time. Apple, of course, is also about to launch OS X Mavericks, but it would be unusual for the company to announce this during an iPhone launch keynote. |
StartupEquality.org: Remove Restrictions On Gay Investors | Contributor | 2,013 | 8 | 10 | has a simple mission, which is to get same-sex couples the same rights to invest in startup companies as heterosexual couples. My dad received his PhD from Yale for a number of reasons. One of those reasons was that, just a few years before he enrolled, the university removed its Jewish quota. In subsequent years, both of my parents saw the even more egregious restrictions on African-Americans begin to slowly, painfully unravel. Their generation saw a wave sweep from buses to schools to wedding chapels as our nation desegregated. I never thought I would see anything like this in my lifetime. Seeing America start to untangle, over the course of a few decades, a giant hairball of laws and prejudices and assumptions that have plagued the lives of gay and lesbians has been a singularly amazing experience. States have begun to recognize loving couples. The Supreme Court overturned the Defense of Marriage Act. And I have been watching friends and family I have loved and respected all my life come out to share with me and the world who they really are and who they really love. Over the last decade particularly, I’ve taken a measure of pride that my community of entrepreneurs and startup investors has been relatively immune to this discrimination. I’ve always believed that the world of technology startups has never erected artificial barriers to those who want to pursue the American dream. But we’ve got a bug in the code, and it was two lawyers who found it. My friends and sent me an email out of the blue one day. They told me that they found something amiss with the SEC rules about who is eligible to invest in startups. We all read the rules, and the problem doesn’t look deliberate. It’s just an artifact of changing times and changing rules. But it’s a bad artifact, and we’ve got to set it right. SEC rules describe something called “accredited investor” status. If you’re not an accredited investor, you are effectively blocked from startup investments. (Under the JOBS Act, small investments may be possible without accreditation, but larger investments — the angels who enable ideas to take wing — will still be restricted.) As a result, these rules around accreditation define who is, and who is not, a part of the startup angel community. To take an excerpt from these SEC rules: “‘Accredited investor’ shall mean . . . Any natural person whose individual net worth, or joint net worth with that person’s spouse, exceeds $1,000,000.” But we live in strange times. Couples who love each other, who’ve pledged their lives together, who’ve decided to join their resources together for an eternity, do so under more than one name: “marriage”; “civil union”; and “domestic partnership.” By only referring to spouses — which is defined to mean only married couples — the SEC disqualifies couples in civil unions or domestic partnerships in 15 states across the country. That means these gay and lesbian investors can’t use their partners’ assets or income to qualify as angels. Instead, they must qualify alone, under significantly more restrictive standards. In the future I hope that, as a country, we set a single standard for what it means for couples to love each other, pledge their lives together, and join their resources. I hope that’s called marriage. But until we get there, the SEC needs to fix angel investing. Startups are not just my industry but my passion. I’m proud of how startups have made this country better. Now it’s time for our country to make startups better. Please join me at StartupEquality.org in calling on the SEC to set this right. Let’s unlock dollars for small companies. Let’s welcome people of all backgrounds to the table. And let’s make startup investing available equally to all couples across America. |
The Pirate Bay Celebrates Its 10th Birthday By Launching A Tor-Based Anti-Censorship Browser | Frederic Lardinois | 2,013 | 8 | 10 | The Pirate Bay (TPB), the torrent site that really doesn’t need an introduction anymore, celebrates today. To mark the day, TPB , “a bundle package of the , (with ).” The package, the group says, includes “some custom configs that allows you to circumvent censorship that certain countries such as Iran, North Korea, United Kingdom, The Netherlands, Belgium, Finland, Denmark, Italy and Ireland impose onto their citizens.” If you’ve ever tried the Tor Browser Bundle from the Tor project, you’ll feel right at home with the PirateBrowser. It’s essentially the same package, but with the latest version of Firefox and a number of torrent sites pre-bookmarked for you. Given that it is basically the Tor Browser Bundle, you could use it to access Silkroad and other hidden onion sites as well, but overall, it looks as if the PirateBrowser won’t offer the same kind of protections that the Tor projects bundle offers (and as we saw last week, that ). From what I can see, it won’t use the Tor network to access non-torrent sites that aren’t in its proxy settings, for example, so it’s not a replacement for a regular Tor setup. TPB says as much on its download page, too (but it’s so far down the page, chances are most people will miss it): “While it uses , which is designed for anonymous surfing, this browser is intended just to circumvent censorship — to remove limits on accessing websites your government doesn’t want you to know about.” |
Your Miyagi Moment | Contributor | 2,013 | 8 | 10 | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWMtUDJQfYs There’s a classic scene in the 80s movie The Karate Kid when Daniel LaRusso discovers that he’s actually learned how to fight. Here’s how it goes down: Miyagi agrees to train Daniel-san after learning that he’s been taking daily beatings from Johnny and the cobra-kais. To Daniel’s surprise, Miyagi has him sanding floors, painting fences and waxing cars. Daniel gets frustrated that the old man is wasting his time and is about to quit when something important happens. Miyagi starts to throw punches, and Daniel realizes that he can actually defend himself. As it turns out, “sand the floor” is a killer way to block a punch. Daniel-san had been learning all along. I’m willing to bet you’ve experienced a similar breakthrough – a moment of surprise when you realize that your effort has actually paid off. Maybe you were asked a tough question during an investor pitch and were surprised when you delivered a clear, cogent answer. Maybe you ran a race and were surprised when you actually accelerated during the final stretch. Maybe you asked someone out on a date and were surprised when you stayed composed despite the awkwardness. We tend to walk away from these moments believing that we just “got lucky” when in reality it was the byproduct of hard work and experience that finally “clicks” into place in a given moment. Prior to that moment, however, it’s easy to believe that our time and effort is being wasted. Here’s the problem: We expect learning to be linear. When we invest 10 hours of effort into learning a new programming language, we expect to feel 10 hours smarter. In reality, we could actually feel less smart than before we started. Why? Because by starting — not conquering — a new challenge, we’re positioning ourselves somewhere in the uncertain middle of a learning curve. Not a predictable line, but an unpredictable curve. You’re not advanced enough to be an expert and not remedial enough to be a novice. You’re just out there at your own specific point between mediocrity and excellence. During that sometimes lonely climb, it’s the Miyagi moments that pull us through. The moments of breakthrough and epiphany when we realize we’ve actually learned something. So how do we experience more of those moments? Writing out your thoughts is a common way to crystallize your thinking and arrive on insights, but teaching those thoughts to someone else, even if they’re half-baked, is even more effective. The only reason I ever passed the California Bar Exam is because Leena Rao is an incredibly patient wife (then fiancée). Every day, she’d have me spend an hour teaching her what I learned. It was mind-numbingly boring material, and I can’t even imagine how she feigned interest, but those sessions forced me to convert a massive amount of unorganized information into a presentable construct. My former boss, (and current Greylock partner) John Lilly, once told me that he’d learned more by teaching computer science at Stanford than from actually taking the classes. During my first day at Mozilla, he spent a couple of hours whiteboarding ideas. I took copious notes and said very little, which is why I was surprised when he concluded with: “Thanks. I learned a lot.” When you’re on a steep learning curve, find a way to teach out your learnings. If you’re a novice, then find someone who doesn’t care whether you’ve mastered the material. If you can get them to
understand something new, then you’re getting closer to a Miyagi moment. I’ve been fortunate enough to observe lots of strong leaders and would argue that the ability to ask good questions is the most under-appreciated craft of effective leadership. Without being able to ask good questions, your learning is handicapped by false assumptions and a narrow view of the overall problem you’re trying to solve. Steve Case (AOL Co-Founder) calls this craft the “listening gene,” but the good news is that it can actually be learned. Yet if you search Amazon for “how to speak effectively,” you’ll find about 10 times as many results than if you search for “how to ask good questions.” When you learn to ask good questions, everybody becomes your teacher — even candidates that are clearly not the right fit for your team and investors that are clearly not interested in investing in your idea. If you want to learn how to ask good questions, observe people who rely on that art for their career — trial lawyers, journalists, socratic-style professors, etc. Spend an hour watching Charlie Rose, and pay attention to how intently he listens. He’s constantly using what he learns to unlock new stories, and even make like Shane Smith . Whether you realize it or not, you are learning something new every day. Taking time away from the firehose can help you appreciate and process what you’ve learned. Much like athletic training, the learning sets in between the training sessions during recovery. Schedule breaks during the day, during the week, and annually (vacation). Take up hobbies that get you away from the office. Put them on your calendar. My friend and advisor, serial tech entrepreneur Michael Wolfe, has helped me transition into fatherhood and entrepreneurship, and posted this on how to bake exercise into a busy schedule. Whatever you do, spend some of your recovery time alone and all of it away from new information. Give yourself the whitespace you need to organize what you’ve already learned. I’ve been using the to effectively shut down all sources of new information for 20 minutes each day. It’s fantastically effective. Charlie Chaplin once said that “life is a tragedy when seen as a closeup, but a comedy in long-shot.” In the tech world, we love the idea of conquering a steep learning curve, but that journey can be frustrating and often lonely. Zoom out from time to time and realize that you’re actually better off than you were before you started the journey, if only because you’re closer to reaching your next Miyagi moment. |
Close A Round With New “Inbound” Tools And Techniques On AngelList | Contributor | 2,013 | 8 | 10 | Last week, my company closed a $1.75 million seed round using an “inbound” approach to fundraising. In past ventures, we’d used the “outbound” approach that virtually all startups use – identifying investors, networking to coordinate calls and meetings, and working 1:1 to create demand. Our new inbound approach applied new marketing technology to crowdfunding sites to generate broad investor demand, track investor engagement, and transform the traditional and inefficient outbound fundraising process to an efficient inbound raise. How much more efficient? In an outbound model, a strong startup is lucky to close 5 to 10 percent of investors contacted. In our inbound model, we closed 37 percent. $1.25 million of our round came from investors we know well, including True Ventures, CrunchFund* and Toba Capital, as well as individuals we’ve worked with in the past, including Ray Lane and Esther Dyson. An additional $500,000 came through AngelList and SecondMarket via from companies, including Dell, eBay, Facebook, Hewlett-Packard, IAC, McKinsey, Nuance, Oracle, PayPal and SAP. This post will cover some of the things I wish I had known eight weeks ago. In it, I will: explain an inbound approach you can use in your next raise; describe tools and technologies you can set up in a few hours; and show you our detailed results, from first inbound contact to close. Our overall approach applied the latest marketing technology and techniques to AngelList. We ran a campaign to generate inbound demand, hacked technology together for total investor awareness, and used a sales funnel to move from commitment to closing $500,000 from individual investors. Here’s how we did it, along with a few tips from our investor , who helped design this approach. The first and most important thing we did was to shift the way we thought about the fundraising from “outbound” sales to “inbound” marketing designed to generate demand. Instead of reaching out to specific investors who may or may not like our business and chasing them for calls and meetings, our goal was to maximize our initial exposure and create interest from folks already interested in our space and company. Tactically, this meant: — Starting with a credible and connected referrer (in our case, Gil)
— Focusing on categories we care about (mobile, crowdsourcing, etc.)
— Enlisting 100+ of our friends on AngelList to share our profile
— Publishing updates regularly to our followers
— Publishing new investors in the round every 1-2 days By treating this as a campaign, we were able to create a surge that brought us to the top 10 on AngelList and ultimately helped us reach No. 1 and be featured. Over three weeks, this campaign resulted in 650 follows and 150 inbound introductions. We accepted 97 of the introductions that were from individuals we thought were a good fit and closed 36 of them — a 37 percent close rate. It’s important to note that we didn’t stop our direct pursuit of investors we wanted in the round. We pursued institutions and individuals outside of AngelList, but we folded these efforts into the broader campaign. The right tools changed the game for us with an unprecedented level of awareness and visibility into interested investors. In a sales and marketing context, you might use Marketo and Salesforce.com to push out content, track engagement, score leads, and prioritize your follow-up. In a fundraising, you can use less expensive alternatives to get the same benefits. We depended on Clearslide (and their companion mobile apps); Rapportive (as a sidebar in Gmail); Gmail, Gmail folders, Gmail canned replies; and Angie (AngelList’s companion iPhone app). Clearslide is an online service for hosting sales presentations. I uploaded the first half of the investor deck to and posted the link on AngelList. I configured the deck to require the viewer to sign in with their email address, and then activated alerts that emailed me whenever someone signed into the deck. Finally, the last page of the deck teased about new service we are releasing and prompted the reader to request an introduction or email me for more information. This alone created many of the inbound intro requests. You can see this deck in action . . Rapportive is a social sidebar for Gmail. When I received these email alerts in Gmail, the sidebar would link to the AngelList and LinkedIn profiles of the investor viewing the deck. With one or two clicks, I could learn in detail about the investor and determine if they were a fit and worth pursuing. In general, I responded most quickly to investors that had made prior investments off AngelList and individuals who had expertise in the areas we care about. . I drafted canned replies in Gmail to help me respond quickly to qualified investors, and I could often send them a personal note (gleaned from understanding who they were from Rapportive) and the full investor deck while they were still viewing the initial deck. Gmail folders allowed me to create individual folders for key prospects, and since I was notified each time they opened the deck, this helped me “score” them: If an investor was opening the deck frequently, their folder contained more alerts and I knew they were interested. is a companion iPhone app for AngelList and alerted me each time an investor followed the company or requested an intro. It was useful when I was on the go and away from email, helping me to follow up quickly. It also sorted tasks well and I found the stripped-down UX a good complement to the AngelList website. The result of sewing all these technologies together is that I was able to instantly understand who was viewing the deck and reach out to them, often while they were still reviewing the materials. This allowed us to go from interest to engagement quickly. The last important thing we did was treat the investor funnel like a sales funnel, moving prospects through five defined phases: — Interest – 600 follows
— Engagement – 150 intro requests (we accepted 97)
— Reservation – 50 reservations
— Commitment – 40 commitments
— Close – 37 closed Here’s what the same funnel looked like from a dollar perspective: Because it was a funnel, we focused on yield – converting the reservations to close as efficiently as possible. We thought the “reservation” concept alone might lead to a lot of fallout (ask the in your favorite restaurant about “no shows”), so we created a “commitment” step where we asked investors to send us complete investment information and to confirm their online reservation. This was effective: only three investors totaling 5 percent of the total dollars abandoned after making a commitment. We also worked to minimize fallout over the weeks between initial interest and close. This meant a steady stream of updates – some delivered en masse, some delivered individually. I didn’t go overboard. The trial versions of these services were inexpensive and took a total of two to three hours to set up and configure. And I managed the entire pipeline in Excel, even though we generally use Salesforce.com, because I needed maximum flexibility to reconfigure the spreadsheet on the fly (and because I was the only one updating the records). If you want a blank version of the spreadsheet I used, feel free to . If you’re tackling a big market with a strong team, strong investors and good early traction, AngelList can be an invaluable way to extend your round and your reach, and the right techniques and tools can transform an inefficient “outbound” fundraising exercise to an efficient “inbound” raise. Run a campaign to generate inbound demand, take advantage of the tools and technology that can give you precise visibility into investor activity, use a sales funnel to relentlessly close – and you will transform how you raise money. I’ve always found fundraising exciting, but this is the first time it’s been fun. |
null | Sarah Perez | 2,013 | 8 | 28 | null |
YouTube’s Geek Week Easter Eggs Celebrate Missile Command, Star Trek And Bronies | Frederic Lardinois | 2,013 | 8 | 10 | YouTube just wrapped up its first Geek Week, a celebration of all things geek. Besides featuring daily videos of things like slow motion , Neil deGrasse Tyson and , YouTube also featured a daily Easter Egg each day. If you’re like us and you didn’t fully pay attention to every single one of these, here is a full list of all of them, including a pretty fun Missile Command clone that has you defend your favorite videos from those pesky missiles. We don’t know how long any of these will remain live on YouTube, so give them a try now before they’re gone. : To play Missile Command on YouTube, just type 1980 while your watching a video. The trick here is to just click on the white space on the page and start typing (not in the search bar!). Need some extra power? Type ‘2300’ while you are playing. : Looking for something less stressful? Just search for ‘ ‘ or ‘ .’ If nothing happens right away, just give it a few seconds. : Star Trek and Star Wars fans will be happy to hear they weren’t forgotten, either. Just type in ‘ ‘ or ‘ ‘ to get “Jedi-style control over the page elements” (that’s what Google called it) and see videos load Star Trek-style. : Still enjoy l33t speak? Type ‘1337’ on any page and take a look at the YouTube comments. They all suddenly make a lot more sense. : A slightly older Easter Egg that’s also still working is ASCII YouTube. Just put a ‘/’ in front of any search term and see what happens. The one Easter Egg I haven’t been able to get to work anymore is “fibonnaci.” Searching for this apparently made your videos load into a golden spiral last Monday (8/5//13 – all Fibonnaci numbers). : In case you are wondering what ‘bronies’ are all about, here is a video that explains it: |
NSA Reportedly Changing Section 702 Of The FISA Amendments Act To Search US Citizens’ Communications | Alex Wilhelm | 2,013 | 8 | 10 | Today that a change to section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act (FAA) appears set to allow for the searching of communication information of United States citizens. Previously, section 702 was restricted to communications of foreign individuals who were located outside of the United States at the, to quote the Guardian, “point of collection.” United States citizens were outside the scope of section 702 authorization. However, that appears now to be potentially changed. An image published by the Guardian’s James Ball – it was leaked by Edward Snowden – states that a change has been enacted to section 702, that “the FAA 702 minimization procedures approved on 3 October 2011 now allow for use of certain United States person names and identifiers as query terms when reviewing collected FAA 702 data.” In other words, the NSA now claims the authority to search databases for the communication data of United States citizens. However, there is a firm caveat to the above: “[A]nalysts may NOT/NOT implement any USP [United States Persons] queries until an effective oversight process has been developed by the NSA and agreed on by DOJ/ODNI.” That’s somewhat encouraging, as it demonstrates a certain moral imperative at the NSA to build oversight into its activities, even if it appears to be able to set its own rules. What is discouraging is that the NSA appears to be reinterpreting section 702 far from its earlier mission. This is a key change, and one that should be aggressively pushed upon for distinction. And if the above “oversight” process has been put into place, we need to understand its strengths, and weaknesses. There is a current school of thought that, sans proven abuse of collection and search operations at the NSA, we are not proving enough; that until we have documented cases of misuse, we are overreacting. It’s my view that mere existence of programs and authorities that could quickly allow for the abrogation of rights should be opposed simply given their potential. Therefore, in my view, we do not need to wait for the gun to smoke. The firearm is sufficient. Now you know my bias. According to Ball, Sen. Wyden told the Guardian that section 702 allows the NSA “warrantless searches for the phone calls or emails of law-abiding Americans.” If that is not correct the onus is now on the NSA to step up and explain itself. |
Gillmor Gang: I Spy | Steve Gillmor | 2,013 | 8 | 10 | The Gillmor Gang — Robert Scoble, Doc Searls, Kevin Marks, Keith Teare, and Steve Gillmor — well, let’s just say this show went to some very strange places. Kangaroo balls, Google auto-urinary services, the real reason Jeff Bezos bought a newspaper, and other details of the Lull before the Next Storm. Much to be entertained with, but bolstered by some serious business about the tradeoffs around privacy in a dangerous world. @stevegillmor, @dsearls, @scobleizer, @kteare, @kevinmarks Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor |
Apple Brings Final Developer Services Back Online, Extends Memberships By 1 Month | Frederic Lardinois | 2,013 | 8 | 10 | Apple today announced that all of its developer program services are now . Apple’s portal for developers, which also hosts its iOS and OS X beta downloads, on July 18th and a few days after, the company acknowledged that there . To make up for the prolonged outage of some of the services, Apple will extend all memberships, which are usually for a year, by one month. In typical Apple fashion, the company remained quiet for a while after it took the Developer Center down, but then quickly released admitting that it had taken the site down because “an intruder attempted to secure personal information of our registered developers from our developer website.” No “sensitive personal information” was accessed, Apple said at the time, but it couldn’t rule out that the intruders had gained access to developers’ names and mailing and email addresses. It’s never been clear what exactly happened, though as we , a 25-year-old Turkish security researcher named Ibrahim Balic had just posted a security bug in the developer center a few days earlier. After shutting the site down completely, Apple brought its services back online in batches, starting with certificates, identifiers and profiles, as well as its developer forums, bug reporter and libraries. It then brought back software downloads, including its iOS 7, OS X Mavericks and Xcode 5 betas. Now, it has also restored access program renewals and enrollment, as well as Xcode Automatic Configuration. |
Spotify Wants To Be Everything To Everyone | Josh Constine | 2,013 | 8 | 10 | You can get a little music from a lot of places, but Spotify is on a quest to be your omni-jukebox. It’s already offers on-demand streaming and radio, and it’s , a new way to discover critic and community playlists for different moods and genres. Spotify hopes to combine social, algorithms, and expert curation to beat the platforms and become the only music companion you need. “It’s a really good time to be in music ” Spotify product manager Miles Lennon tells me. “Five years ago people wrote off the ability for music startups to succeed. We’re really happy to be part of a resurgence.” The only problem is music is becoming a commodity. Every smartphone manufacturer and operating system want to have their own music service, because the iPod proved that music is a fundamental part of the mobile experience. Apple has iTunes, and soon . Google just launched . and have their own, while HTC bought MOG. They all have the benefit of device pre-installations or preferred access. How can Spotify compete? By being a music company. Not a “media company” that dabbles in video and books. Not an advertising company that uses music as a medium. And not a hardware company looking to round out its offering. Spotify just has to be a music company 100%. That’s the plan. Spotify now has over 24 million active users and over 6 million premium subscribers. A spokesman says its global headcount is now around 800, and financial filings show it doubled its revenue in 2012 to $533 million. It’s a good start, but Spotify is still struggling to convince people music is worth listening to ads or paying for after the Napster era convinced the world that music is free. Spotify Director and Napster co-founder Sean Parker has said that the only way to beat piracy is with convenience and accessibility, so Spotify is trying to put access to every music service you could want in one easy place. At first it just did on-demand streaming like Rdio and now Google Music, letting you play anything from a huge catalogue whenever you wanted at no cost per song. Then in late 2011 it barged into Pandora turf and with a that learns from your tastes and lets you expand any artist or song into a station. Just this week radio stations and soon iTunes will enter this fray. In December, Spotify tackled social networks like Facebook and Twitter with . Basically, if you knew exactly what you wanted to listen to, you could search for it, and if you didn’t know or care, you could turn on the Spotify Radio. But what was missing was a more human touch. Often when we reach for music it’s because we’re in a particular mood or situation and wants sounds that match well. You could make your own digital mixtapes with Spotify, but many people don’t have the time or expertise to constantly build fresh playlist. It’s this premise that’s made successful. The service for particular scenarios like stargazing, waking up for work, or when you’re feeling romantic (time for the “The Golden Age Of Slow Jams”). So in May, , which it tells me powers the it just launched. Open up the tab and you’ll see an array of playlist themes like Party, Chill, Mood, and Top Lists. Each contains a set of playlists — ones for dinner parties and dance parties, classical chilling or techno chilling, excitement or heartbreak, and top indie songs or top songs in Sweden. Some of these come from music experts Spotify works with directly, and others are surfaced from the billions of playlists created by Spotify’s users. Lennon says “If it’s five minutes before friends arrive and you think ‘shoot, I haven’t put together the music I need’, you’re two clicks away from a playlist designed for having friends over for dinner.” The launch could be tough on Songza but great for Spotify and its community. “Browse is a great distribution system that’s giving a lot of love to these playlists” Lennon explains to me. He believes that by netting subscribers and messages of thanks for normal users who build playlists, Spotify can offer “emotional reward” that endears them to its service. Fostering that emotional connection also led Spotify to revamp its messaging features. The new Spotify inbox collects all your messages with each friend into lifetime threads of every piece of music you’ve shared. It also lets you start a new thread with someone without a song attached, so you can simply send some kudos for a great playlist of the posted on Facebook, or ask for recommendations. The new Spotify messages system is coming to desktop soon and mobile later. What’s Spotify missing? Well you can’t add your own songs like SoundCloud, buy MP3s like on iTunes, identify songs you hear like Shazam, or listen to live FM radio. Those last two could create new inroads to Spotify or suck in talk radio fans. Spotify’s also isn’t pressuring celebrities to make playlists. Lennon insists, We don’t need to go out and recruit celebrities because celebrities want to be curating on the service to connect with their fans.” Yet none of these organic celebrity playlists have reached the stellar popularity of that has over a 800,000 subscribers. It does have exclusive content, though. Turning concert bootlegs like or stripped-down studio sessions with bands like into albums only available on Spotify keeps these artists; followings loyal to the service. Still, Spotify now has the building blocks of an omni-jukebox. It just needs to make it better. A better way to save your favorite music to a collection, improved mobile navigation, and better personal profiles would smooth out Spotify’s edges. “It’s important to have it all under one roof. Our hypothesis is that the best discovery experience will combine social — recommendations from people you trust, influencers, and artists; intelligent recommendation algorithms based on your listening history and tastes; and human curation by experts and millions of community members. The way we move the needle is by satisfying more use cases” Lennon tells me. Breadth could be the answer to fighting off focused music services, outdoing the platform owners, and seducing the mainstream. If Spotify can fulfill all of your musical desires, your ears will never go astray. |
Why Founders Fail: The Product CEO Paradox | Contributor | 2,013 | 8 | 10 | If I knew what I knew in the past
I would have been blacked out on your a** —Kanye West, Because I am a prominent advocate for founders running their own companies, whenever a founder fails to scale or gets replaced by a professional CEO, people send me lots of emails. What happened, Ben? I thought founders were supposed to be better? Are you going to update your “ ” post? In response to all of these emails: No, I am not going to rewrite that post, but I will write this post. There are three main reasons why founders fail to run the companies they created: Not every inventor wants to run a company and if you don’t really want to be CEO, your chances for success will be exceptionally low. The CEO skill set is incredibly difficult to master, so without a strong desire to do so the founder will fail. If you are a founder who doesn’t want to be CEO, that’s fine, but you should figure that out early and save yourself and everyone else a lot of pain. Sometimes the founder does want to be CEO, but the board sees her making mistakes, panics and replaces her prematurely. This is tragic, but common. Many founders run smack into the Product CEO Paradox, which I explain below. A friend of mine led his company from nothing to over $1 billion in revenue in record time by relentlessly pursuing his product vision. He did so by intimately involving himself in the intricate details of his company’s product planning and execution. This worked brilliantly up to about 500 employees. Then, as the company continued to scale, things started to degenerate. He went from being the visionary product founder who kept cohesion and context across the increasingly complex product line to the seemingly arbitrary decision maker and product bottleneck. This frustrated employees and slowed development. In reaction to that problem and to help the company scale, he backed off and started delegating all the major product decisions and direction to the team. And then he ran smack into the Product CEO Paradox This happens all the time. A founder develops a breakthrough idea and starts a company to build it. As originator of the idea, she works tirelessly to bring it to life by involving herself in every detail of the product to ensure that the execution meets the vision. The product succeeds and the company grows. Then somewhere along the line, employees start complaining that the CEO is paying too much attention to what the employees can do better without her and not enough attention to the rest of the company. The board or CEO Coach then advises the founder to “trust her people and delegate.” And then the product loses focus and starts to look like a camel (a horse built by committee). In the meanwhile, it turns out that the CEO was only world-class at the product, so she effectively transformed herself from an excellent, product-oriented CEO into a crappy, general-purpose CEO. Looks like we need a new CEO. How can we prevent that? It turns out that almost all the great product-oriented founder/CEOs stay involved in the product throughout their careers. Bill Gates sat in every product review at Microsoft until he retired. Larry Ellison still runs the product strategy at Oracle. Steve Jobs famously weighed in on every important product direction at Apple. Mark Zuckerberg drives the product direction at Facebook. How do they do it without blowing their companies to bits? Over the years, each one of them reduced their level of involvement in any individual set of product decisions, but maintained their involvement. The product-oriented CEO’s essential involvement consists of at least the following activities: The CEO does not have to create the entire product vision, but the product-oriented CEO must drive the vision that she chooses. She is the one person who is both in position to see what must be done and to resource it correctly. How good must a product be to be good enough? This is an incredibly tough question to answer and it must be consistent and part of the culture. It was easy to see the power of doing this right when Steve Jobs ran Apple, as he drove a standard that created incredible customer loyalty. When Larry Page took over as CEO of Google, he spent a huge amount of his time forcing every product group to get to a common user profile and sharing paradigm. Why? Because he had to. It would never have happened without the CEO making it happen. It was nobody else’s top priority. In today’s world, product teams have access to an unprecedented set of data on the products that they’ve built. Left to themselves, they will optimize the product around the data they have. But what of the data they don’t have? What about the products and features that need to be built that the customers can’t imagine? Who will make that a priority? The CEO. But how do you do that and only that if you have been involved in the product at a much deeper level the whole way? How do you back off gracefully in general without backing off at all in some areas? At some point, you must formally structure your product involvement. You must transition from your intimately involved motion to a process that enables you to make your contribution without disempowering your team or driving them bananas. The exact process depends on you, your strengths, your work style and your personality, but will usually benefit from these elements: If there is something that you want in the products, then write it out completely. Not as a quick email, but as a formal document. This will maximize clarity while serving to limit your involvement to those things that you have thought all the way through. If teams know that they should expect a regular review where you will check the consistency with the vision, the quality of the design, the progress against their integration goals, etc., it will feel much less disempowering than if you change their direction in the hallway. It’s fine and necessary to continue to talk to individual engineers and product managers in an ad hoc fashion, because you need to continually update your understanding of what’s going on. But resist the attempt to jump in and give direction in these scenarios. Only give direction via a formal communication channel like the ones described above. Note that it is really difficult to back off of any non-essential involvement yet remain engaged where you are needed. This is where most people blow themselves up: either by not letting go or by letting go. If you find yourself where my friend found himself — you cannot let go a little without letting go entirely — then you probably should consider a CEO change. But don’t do that. Learn how to do this. [Image via ] |
Microsoft Doesn’t Want To Admit Windows RT Is Dead | Matt Burns | 2,013 | 8 | 10 | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNpmhcYodwI Microsoft is in a tough spot. Windows RT is all but dead in the water. But Microsoft has approximately a zillion and a half Surface RT tablets collecting dust in warehouses. And so Ballmer and Co. continued its ignorant fight against Apple and the far more successful iPad with another TV spot that pits the two against each other. Spoiler: The Surface RT is declared the winner. Like in previous commercials, the Surface RT’s legitimate advantages are touted over the iPad and iOS. And in many cases, Microsoft isn’t exactly deceitful. The Surface, and with that, Windows RT, has clear advantages over the iPad. At first blush Windows RT feels more productive and advanced than iOS. But after a couple of swipes left and right on the Start Screen, the novelty wears off. Of course Microsoft failed to stack Windows RT’s apps against those found in iOS. Windows RT was a dog from the start. And now that , the little brother to Windows 8 will quickly fade into irrelevance. With Asus out, just Dell and Microsoft remain as the only Windows RT hardware providers. Samsung, HTC, HP, and Lenovo previously pulled plans for a Windows RT tablet. “It’s not only our opinion,” CEO Jerry Shen remarked to the Wall Street Journal. “The industry sentiment is also that Windows RT has not been successful.” At this point, with Windows RT’s support quickly drying up, Microsoft is doing consumers a disservice attempting to pawn their unsuccessful tablet onto unsuspecting buyers shopping on specs alone. The Windows RT product segment will soon be dead, and with it, the little developer support it currently has will quickly follow suit, leaving consumers with a tablet that will be stuck in the past. Like I wrote in June, . |
The Angel Health Monitor Is A Fitbit For Hackers | John Biggs | 2,013 | 8 | 10 | The , besides having a fairly morbid name (you rarely see angels unless you’re sailing down the river Styx), is actually quite cool. Designed to be a “developer’s” health monitoring system, the Angel senses motion and acceleration, skin temperature, blood oxygen saturation, and heart rate. Created by Eugene Jorov and Amir Shlomovich in Israel, the pair have focused on first building a sufficiently open platform and SDK. Rather than depend on a stock piece of software, the Angel is potentially infinitely malleable, becoming a heart attack sensor for one developer and a sports band for another.
Is this model a good one? I don’t see why not. I could see Angel as being a white label solution for developers and designers who want to create solutions for diagnostics and testing. While it won’t be as commercially popular as, say, the , it still makes sense. They plan on creating an SDK and running a crowdfunded project in the next few weeks. It will work with iOS and Android and also be accessible via a web API. “We are already working with medical advisors to ensure the data developers can access will enable irregular heart rate detection, fall detection, early heart failure warning and beyond,” said Jorov. “The raw data Angel provides for each sensor enables independent health research by partners.” Jorov started the company after losing a friend to a heart attack a few years ago. He also puts his health where is mouth is. Amir snowboards and Eugene is a “nutrition experimenter” and “yacht sailor.” Clearly both of them could use this band, especially if Amir falls off a mountain or Eugene “experiments” too much. |
Mobile Video Consumption Is Increasing Dramatically In China | Catherine Shu | 2,013 | 8 | 19 | Android users in China are becoming increasingly avid consumers of mobile video, according to a from , one of China’s largest third-party Android app stores with over 200 million users. This underscores the importance of online video for Internet companies as consumers’ viewing habits shift to online content. In China, there have been several high profile mergers and acquisitions in the online video space within the last 18 months. In 2012, until , which it purchased earlier this year for $370 million. In recent weeks, rumors have emerged that Alibaba is , though the video sharing site has repeatedly denied the rumors. Though many mobile video apps in China focus on providing professionally produced content, including TV shows, Youku-Tudou has sought to set itself apart from competitors by focusing on user-generated content. Its strategy appears to be working, according to Wandoujia’s data. In July, Tudou’s app scored 276,000 downloads in the store, an increase of 163% from the month before. Xunlei Kankan, which provides high-definition movie downloads, was the second fastest growing mobile video app with a 126% increase in downloads over the past month. Tudou and Xunlei Kankan were numbers four and five, respectively, on Wandoujia’s list of the top five fastest growing apps in its store in July. Wandoujia says one factor driving the growth of mobile video is the increase in the popularity of phablets, or smartphones with screens that are five-inches wide or more, as well as better battery life for Android devices and increased availability of Wi-Fi. In Dongguan, an industrial city in the Pearl River Delta, manufacturers attract workers by offering speedy Wi-Fi connections in factory dorms. “One of the things we’ve seen is that factories compete for workers by having Wi-Fi in dorms because mobile devices serve as their entertainment centers and with Wi-Fi they can watch shows without having to spend too much money on data plans,” says Wandoujia International Project Manager Kai Lukoff. User engagement with mobile apps has increased dramatically over the last 18 months. According to the “China Mobile Internet 2012 Review” by , the largest mobile app analytics platform in China, the average total time a mobile user spent daily on video apps grew 259% from 9 minutes to 31 minutes in 2012. There was a 24% in increase in app usage frequency rates. This was the highest growth by far among app categories. As the mobile video industry continues to grow, Wandoujia believes it will become more vertically integrated, with apps striving to compete by offering specific services targeted to different user demographics. In anticipation of an increasingly fragmented video app marketplace, Wandoujia has been improving its Video Search, which it launched in 2010. The tool allows users to look for videos across different apps that are already on their Android devices or that can be downloaded from Wandoujia. “There is competition between apps like Qiyi and Youku-Tudou, so can’t find all of the content you want in a single app. You have to download different apps, so we’ve provide a search engine that works across different apps and will launch an app for you if you already have it installed,” says Wandoujia CEO Wang Junyu. |
The Future Of Work: Amazon vs. Zappos | Jon Evans | 2,013 | 8 | 10 | Twenty years ago was part of the three-man Harvard team that won the hyper-prestigious ACM Programmming Contest. Five years later he sold LinkExchange to Microsoft for more than $250 million. Then he sold Zappos to Amazon for $1.2 billion, while retaining operational independence. Now he’s trying to make the desert bloom. And if he fails, we’re probably all in big trouble. I’m speaking metaphorically. Mostly. The desert in question is the derelict remains of Downtown Las Vegas, which Hsieh is with $350 million of his own money. The results so far are impressive. (Witness these TCTV and .) Who knows? Downtown Vegas may one day make and jealous. At the same time, this is very much a business investment…of a sort. You could call it an investment in building a community where businesses can thrive, but that would be missing the larger point. To me it seems like a $350 million bet on the idea that doing good, having fun, and working more productively are not at all incompatible; that, in fact, they can reinforce one another. Hsieh has : “I want to be in an area where everyone feels like they can hang out all the time and where there’s not a huge distinction between working and playing.” It’s easy to mock that, in the same way non-Googlers mock Google’s campus, as an attempt to sucker people into working more for less money. But if you meet the man, as I did last week, it soon becomes clear that Hsieh is very serious about breaking down the barriers between work and play. Granted, the results can seem faintly terrifying to introverts like me. “I’ll be honest, it’s a bit like living in a dorm,” said the rainbow-haired woman named Heidi who showed a group of us around the luxury condo building which hosts Tony’s own apartment, other members of the Zappos/Downtown Project braintrust, and “crash pads” for visitors. There are bumper-car desks, a “ ” with walls covered in growing plants, a podcast/TV studio, spectacular desert views, and–at least the night I was there–live penguins frolicking in the kitchen. The new district, some two dozen city blocks and counting, will be built to maximize the number of serendipitous collisions among strangers, and would-be entrepeneurs will be measured by their Return On Community more than their return on capital. Little wonder that my more cynical friends describe and its 1500 employees as “a cult.” The fact that they as “The Zappos Family” doesn’t help. But there’s a lot here that even curmudgeons can cheer. Raising the urban density from 14 to . Playgrounds for children, grants for teachers, a whole new magnet school built to foster tomorrow’s entrepeneurs. A shared-car service with . Down the street they’re building a cafe/theatre where you can “grab a coffee and watch a TED talk” as part of your morning ritual. (OK, I have issues with TED, but that’s a separate post.) A slew of cafes and galleries and restaurants are up and running already, and there’ll soon be a hackerspace to go with the existing . All this in a sprawling urban landscape dotted with sculptures built for Burning Man, an event Hsieh attends regularly. (Full disclosure: .) That’s no coincidence. Burning Man is an excellent example of an environment where the barriers between work and play disintegrate — it’s a bacchanal, yes, but it’s not known as “recreational moving” for nothing. I think it’s fair to interpret the Downtown Project, and Zappos itself, as an attempt by Hsieh to instill and extend the Burner ethos into urban life and the working world. And he’s been surprisingly successful. People may call Zappos a cult, but by almost all accounts it’s a great place to work. “ ” (Although indicate that some employees are troubled by Hsieh’s new focus on the Downtown Project.) But there’s a gargantuan elephant in this brave new room, and its name is Amazon. It’s strange to think that Zappos, with its communal-family culture, is a owned of a efficient . Amazon’s treatment of its employees recently caused –a Jeff Bezos investee–to : “Brutal Conditions In Amazon’s Warehouses Threaten To Ruin The Company’s Image.” My friends who used to work there inform me that it doesn’t treat its techies much better. No coincidence that it has the among the Fortune 500. (Yes, Google is fourth on that list, but that’s different. Google employees still benefit from the “Google halo”: having been employed there immediately makes you more valuable elsewhere, so it can make sense to move on, in much the same way that it can make sense to drop out after a short period at MIT/Harvard/Stanford, because their primary benefit–the prestige–has already been reaped. Former Amazon employees wear no such halo.) It seems to me that Amazon and Zappos are microcosms of two potential futures of work. On the one hand, you have , “ ,” and the bifurcation of the population into a diminishing elite of skilled/tech/finance workers, and a growing mass of jobs increasingly threatened by technology and international competition. (Both of which also create jobs, of course…but these days, probably .) Call that the Amazon future. Or even the Amazon present. It’s what Henry Blodget is talking about when he : Obviously, the folks who own and run America’s big corporations want to do as well as they can for themselves. But the key point is this: It is not a law that they pay their employees as little as possible. It is a choice. It is a choice made by senior managers and owners who want to keep the highest possible percentage of a company’s wealth for themselves. And then there’s the Zappos future. Its take-home pay still isn’t spectacular; but it’s a future where companies genuinely try to create a social fabric–and safety net–woven from excellent benefits, a thriving culture, a strong community, and the encouragement of entrepeneurs, on the theory that these rewards will eventually redound to companies and their executives. It says a lot about today’s America that this sounds almost impossibly idealistic and starry-eyed. But Tony Hsieh is betting $350 million of his own money on it, and he’s been right once or twice before. In the end this is largely about what kind of world today’s mega-successful founders, CEOs, and executives desire. Do they want to live in a tiny parallel bubble world cut off from 99% of the planet? That’s easy to arrange, and much more stable than most Americans and Europeans realize. Or–whisper it–might they want to shape, and improve, and be part of, the larger social fabric in which they exist, a la ? Might that actually be better for everyone, including them? We’ll see. Tony Hsieh’s Downtown Project is a hell of an interesting experiment. I sure hope it doesn’t fail. |
Tesla Model S Earns Highest Safety Rating Ever From US Agency | Billy Gallagher | 2,013 | 8 | 19 | The , both overall and in each individual category, from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). The company claims that the Model S achieved a new combined record of 5.4 stars. Around 1 percent of cars tested by the NHTSA earn five stars in every category. Tesla claims that the Model S was able to earn a 5.4 star rating because the NHTSA, which does not publish star ratings above 5, captures safety levels above 5 stars in the Vehicle Safety Score, which it sends to manufacturers. Tesla says this rating is tops among every major make and model in the United States. The best part of the company’s release was this badass factoid: “Of note, during validation of Model S roof crush protection at an independent commercial facility, the testing machine failed at just above 4 g’s. While the exact number is uncertain due to Model S breaking the testing machine, what this means is that at least four additional fully loaded Model S vehicles could be placed on top of an owner’s car without the roof caving in.” In the press release, Tesla noted that “it is possible to game the regulatory testing score to some degree by strengthening a car at the exact locations used by the regulatory testing machines.” However, the company claims that it analyzed the Model S, determined the car’s weak spots, and then retested until it was sure the car would receive a 5-star rating no matter how the test was administered. The safety rating prompted Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff to tweet high praise. I agree with S is best car ever. I want an X. — Marc Benioff (@Benioff) It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that a car with no gasoline tank invented by a billionaire who also runs a space company is super safe, but the rating should nonetheless boost Tesla’s and the Model S’s appeal to customers. A the car has been purchased mostly by young, affluent males, a much different demographic than the one attracted by other electric cars. The higher safety rating could help Tesla, the Model S or as a company, reach other demographics, such as people with children. |
TiVo Launches New ‘Roamio’ Family Of DVRs, With Up To 6 Tuners, 3 TB Of Storage, & Out-Of-Home Streaming | Ryan Lawler | 2,013 | 8 | 19 | TiVo is unveiling a whole new family of DVRs today with more tuners, more storage, and soon the ability to stream live and download pre-recorded video to mobile devices outside of the home. The new TiVo Roamio line of devices go on sale today, with prices starting at $199 and going up to $599 depending on features and configuration. The new family of products represents TiVo’s and represents an ambitious strategy of enabling its users to record a seemingly impossible amount of channels and shows. The new devices push the limits of DVR storage while also staying true to the company’s usual look and feel, with personalization built in to help users easily discover and record the shows they love. At the high end, TiVo offers a monster of a machine called the Roamio Pro that can be used to watch or record up to six shows at once, with 450 hours of HD recording capacity for $599. The company is also hoping to appeal to users on the lower-end of the scale with the Roamio, giving them a similar TiVo experience with four tuners and 75 hours of HD recording capacity for $199. In between is the Roamio Plus, which features six tuners but only has 150 hours (1 TB) of HD recording capacity. While the big selling point for new buyers will probably be the hardware — that is, more storage and more tuners — the software has also seen a few upgrades that could prove appealing to hardcore TiVo users. That includes better recommendations with Wish Lists, smoother streaming applications like Netflix, and better integration with TiVo’s Mini set-top boxes for whole-home recording and viewing. But the big new feature for the Roamio Plus and the Roamio Pro, which unfortunately isn’t quite ready at launch, is the device’s ability to stream live and pre-recorded content to mobile and tablet devices which have the TiVo app installed. The ability to stream to devices out of the home is something that the company , which retails for about $100. Now, owners of the two more expensive TiVo Roamio boxes will be able to enjoy their favorite live events or recordings whether they’re in their bedrooms or traveling around the world, so long as they have an internet connection. They’ll also be able to download recordings from their DVR to their mobile device for viewing later — like if they wanted to take those shows or movies and watch them on a plane while traveling. Of course, out-of-home streaming isn’t exactly new technology, and TiVo isn’t the only one to enable it — that type of place-shifting tech was pioneered by Sling Media, which was bought by EchoStar. And the feature is available as part of Dish’s hopper set-top boxes and DVRs. But this is the first time that TiVo will have built the feature directly into one of its own DVRs. While the company is working to get out-of-home streaming built-in to the DVRs, it won’t be ready for the launch. After updating the software for the TiVo stream, it’s now preparing to introduce the software to its new DVR line, which it expects will happen in the coming months. In addition to out-of-home streaming of traditional TV, TiVo has updated the software for a whole other type of streaming. The TiVo devices support a number of over-the-top apps, including Netflix, YouTube, Hulu Plus, MLB.tv, and AOL On. Between the improvement in hardware as well as a totally redesigned app, the Netflix experience on the new TiVo line of DVRs should be a lot better with much faster load times. One other feature that was snuck in for the Netflix and YouTube apps is the ability to pick a piece of content on a mobile app and have it beamed to the TV. This is enabled through support for . Households that hope to enable whole-home DVR through the company’s will also have a better experience, as the new DVRs will allow users to manage their season passes from other rooms in the home. The new devices also feature dynamic tuner allocation, and hey, they have six tuners, so you can watch and record more different stuff then you could before. There are a few other small features that have been added — like for instance, the ability to add your favorite star to a “Wish List” and then have everything they’re in that appears on TV be automatically recorded. The new boxes also come with integrated WiFi and a new RF-based remote, so there’s no more trying to point the remote at your DVR box to make it work. But overall I think you get the point: More tuners, more storage, more expensive, more better. |
Wacom Reveals Cintiq Companion Windows 8 And Android Tablets, Intuos Pressure-Sensitive iPad Stylus | Darrell Etherington | 2,013 | 8 | 19 | Wacom promised a standalone tablet solution earlier this year, to be revealed this summer, and now they’re revealing not one, but two such devices. The new bring Wacom’s pressure-sensitive graphics power to creative pros in standalone devices. The Cintiq Companion is a Windows 8-powered tablet that comes in both an 8GB of RAM, 256GB SSD version with Windows 8, and an 8GB of RAM, 512GB version with Windows 8 Pro, both of which have Intel Core i7 processors, and 13.3-inch displays with 1920×1080 resolution. They come with 2 USB 3.0 ports, 802.11n networking, a rear camera with an 8-megapixel sensor and a front one with a 2-megapixel shooter. At only 3.9 pounds, it’s not going to break any backs either, and it runs full Windows graphics apps like Photoshop and Autodesk Sketchbook Pro. The Cintiq Companion Hybrid is a different beast, with Android powering the tablets when they’re operating on their own, and with the ability to turn into a fully functional accessory tablet when paired with a Windows or Mac computer. Like the Companion, the Companion Hybrid has a 13.3-inch, 1920×1080 display, and 2048 levels of pen pressure sensitivity, as well as multi-touch input. But it’s powered by an Nvidia Tegra 4 processor, comes in either 16 or 32GB flavors, and runs Android 4.2 Jelly Bean. There’s 2GB of RAM on board instead of 8, too.
There’s also a big price difference: The Companion is either $1,999 for the 256GB version, or $2,499 for the 512GB model; the Companion Hybrid is either $1,499 or $1,599, depending on whether you want 16 or 32GB of onboard storage. Both models closely resemble the , but manage to also have an entire computer stuffed inside, and built-in batteries that probably also go a long way toward explaining the extra pound and a bit that the new tablets gain on the 13HD. A lot of creative pros have been lusting after devices like these since Wacom introduced its pressure-sensitive display/drawing tablet combos, and while the appetite has been whetted by devices like the iPad, and the Galaxy Note line of tablets (which Wacom supplies the tech for), there’s been no substitute for a homegrown Wacom solution. It sounds like the Android-powered Companion Hybrid probably will be suitable more for light work while used away from a computer, whereas the Companion can probably act as a digital artist’s only machine. Either way, I think these will be welcomed by digital creatives everywhere when they arrive in October. Alongside the Companion series, Wacom is also announcing a new pressure-sensitive stylus for iPad so that iOS devotees don’t feel too left out. The Intuos joins the Bamboo stylus, which offers no pressure sensitivity, and has built-in wrist detection with compatible apps. The Intuos offers 2048 levels of pressure sensitivity, which is better than most of its competitors on the market, and connects to the iPad 3, iPad 4 and iPad mini via Bluetooth 4.0. A whole host of apps will be compatible with it at launch when it arrives in October for $99. |
Instagram Cracks Down On Connected Apps Using “Insta” And “Gram” | Matthew Panzarino | 2,013 | 8 | 19 | Instagram has updated its brand guidelines to ban apps that feature either the word “Insta” or “Gram” in their names, and it has begun sending emails to existing apps requesting that they change those components “within a reasonable period.” The emails specifically call out a few updates to that restrict the use of things like logos and the full “Instagram” name. Now, they’re even more specific. An email sent to the Luxogram team, for instance, reads as follows (emphasis ours): We appreciate your interest in developing products that help people share with Instagram. While we encourage developers to build great apps with Instagram, we cannot allow other applications to look like they might be official Instagram applications or endorsed or sponsored by us. As we hope you can appreciate, protection of its well-known trademarks is very important to Instagram. For example, it has always been against our guidelines to use a name that sounds or looks like “Instagram” or copies the look and feel of our application. Similarly, as we have clarified in the new guidelines, use of “INSTA” and “GRAM” for an application that works with Instagram is harmful to the Instagram brand. It is important that you develop your own distinctive branding for your applications, and use Instagram’s trademarks only as specifically authorized under our policies. The two new points that Instagram indicates that Luxogram is treading on are the fact that it uses “gram” in its name, and that (a highly customized variant of) the camera logo is being used. Instagram notes that a response to the email is expected within 48 hours and that a “reasonable period” will be provided to fix these items. Though the Instagram name itself has always been protected by trademark and by the company’s API guidelines, the terms “Insta” and “Gram” have not. In fact, until the recent changes to the brand policies, use of those terms were . You could use “ but not both together in the name of the app. So the new rules exhibit a pulling back of sorts when it comes to the branding and naming of apps that connect to Instagram. While Instagram, and by extension Facebook, cannot stop apps that don’t use its API from using the terms, the continued use of that connection is now dependent upon apps not using either term in their names. We’ve reached out to Facebook for comment. And well, that’s most of them. , , , , , and dozens more use either word. All of them will need to be re-branded entirely under the new rules. Statigram especially is a very useful tool that offers a host of statistics about your Instagram account that are not surfaced by Instagram itself. And these aren’t tiny little sites. Luxogram was still serving 1 million people a month and Statigram also appears to do a brisk business judging from the prolific use of its hashtag on both Instagram and Twitter. Luxogram’s creator says that he’s unlikely to make all of the changes that Instagram wants, and will probably shut it down for good. Others could be in the same boat. So, can you blame Facebook for protecting the valuable Instagram brand name? No, not really. But it does show that there has been a change in posture from the early days when connected apps helped the service to grow, and it welcomed the additional exposure. Now, it has its self-propelling growth curve and it’s reigning in anything it believes might be a point of confusion, driving people to the Instagram apps and web client. Sounds like we know well doesn’t it? |
UK Govt. Destroyed Journalists’ Hard Drives In Failed Attempt To Stop NSA Story | Gregory Ferenstein | 2,013 | 8 | 19 | The plot thickens. British authorities in an attempt to stop the Guardian from disseminating stories about classified mass-surveillance projects. Guardian Editor Alan Rusbridger details how security experts from British intelligence agency, GCHQ, told him that the Guardian would have to either hand over their information or have their hard drives destroyed. The revelation is especially damaging to British authorities after yesterday’s international incident, where they of Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, in London’s Heathrow airport and confiscated his laptop and camera. The story has an aura of dark humor, as the agents apparently didn’t understand that the Guardian could report on places outside of London and that a destroyed hard drive won’t stop information from getting out. Quoting from the article in full: “I explained to the man from Whitehall about the nature of international collaborations and the way in which, these days, media organisations could take advantage of the most permissive legal environments. Bluntly, we did not have to do our reporting from London. Already most of the NSA stories were being reported and edited out of New York. And had it occurred to him that Greenwald lived in Brazil? The man was unmoved. And so one of the more bizarre moments in the Guardian’s long history occurred – with two GCHQ security experts overseeing the destruction of hard drives in the Guardian’s basement just to make sure there was nothing in the mangled bits of metal which could possibly be of any interest to passing Chinese agents. “We can call off the black helicopters,” joked one as we swept up the remains of a MacBook Pro. Whitehall was satisfied, but it felt like a peculiarly pointless piece of symbolism that understood nothing about the digital age. We will continue to do patient, painstaking reporting on the Snowden documents, we just won’t do it in London. The seizure of Miranda’s laptop, phones, hard drives and camera will similarly have no effect on Greenwald’s work.” Unlike the United States, Britain does not have a constitutional right to “no prior restraint.” Except under extreme circumstances, the government is forbidden from stopping the flow of information, even if they wish to prosecute journalists after the fact. Still, the idea that destroying a hard drive would stop the spread of information is kind of silly. Twitter, of course, had the best reaction to this laughable ignorance [tweet https://twitter.com/pourmecoffee/status/369601068550090752] |
Graft Concepts Wants To Be The Swiss Army Knife Of iPhone Cases | Stephanie Yang | 2,013 | 8 | 19 | Card slots. . . . Whatever you might need on the go, people are thinking of ways for you to integrate it right into your iPhone case. But Y Combinator startup is trying to cover all your basic needs with one case, using a simple latched frame and interchangeable backplates. Named Leverage, the case’s frame alone is meant to be a bumper for the phone and comes with either a plain backplate for $40 or a card holder (which fits about five cards) for $50. Additional backplates range from $7 to $30 based on design and material. The idea behind Graft Concepts is to offer easy installation and removal, functionality and a complement to the iPhone’s sleek design. Inspired by watch clasps, the metal latch lets you fit the frame around the phone and then click it into place to avoid any damage from snapping or pulling the case. Co-founder Anthony Ko describes the product as “a Swiss army knife” for iPhone cases, because users can switch out backplates to suit their current needs. “People’s complaints weren’t being addressed, like phones being damaged from their cases and being really difficult to take off. So that’s how the quick-release mechanism was developed,” co-founder Peter Szucs tells me. “Because of the way we do it — we’re just swapping out the backplate — we can offer it for less so people can buy more sorts of backplates.” The founders of Graft Concept say the smartphone accessories business is a . But there are many other companies that are either dominant in, or trying to enter, the same space, including OtterBox, and . Known for its thick and protective casing, is a main competitor in the iPhone case space. As my first and only iPhone case, the OtterBox has kept my phone well intact, but is a little too clunky for my taste sometimes. The white material of the standard case also makes it really hard to clean, which has been driving me crazy. OtterBox’s key feature is also something that Graft Concepts isn’t necessarily focused on — protection. As someone who is prone to dropping things, this is my foremost concern. Although the Leverage case has passed drop tests for protection, the thin frame is nowhere near as hefty or reassuring as my OtterBox. But Szucs tells me Graft Concepts is more about functionality and design. The founders are focusing on personal customization by opening up ideas to the design and 3D community. Graft Concepts has partnered with several sites to offer customization options for backplates, so customers will be able to design their own with and . The company also offers files for that work as kickstands and bicycle mounts. Graft Concepts is also working on backplates with a headphone cord wrap and a battery pack. The company has sold 45,000 cases and is in talks with several retail stores. |
Zillow Prices Follow-On Offering At $82 Per Share To Raise $205M | Kim-Mai Cutler | 2,013 | 8 | 19 | Zillow, the real estate listings juggernaut, priced its follow-on offering to its IPO . The company is selling 2.5 million shares, or raising about $205 million. The $82 figure is a bit lower , as the company’s shares have slipped by more than 7 percent over the past day. Additionally, existing shareholders are putting 2.52 million shares up for sale. The underwriters of the deal also have the option to buy an extra 750,000 shares from Zillow itself. Citigroup is the leading underwriter, while Goldman Sachs Group & Co, Allen & Company, Canaccord Genuity, Pacific Crest Securities and JMP Securities are also participating. The company, which reported quarterly revenue of $46.9 million, is trying to fend off competitors like Trulia. Zillow itself said it plans to use the additional capital for general corporate purposes, like sales and marketing activities, general and administrative matters and capital expenditures. The company said it also might use the funds for acquisitions. Trulia similarly had a follow-on In its last earnings report, Zillow posted a 69 percent year-over-year increase in revenue along with record traffic of 61 million users in July. But the company is still operating at a net loss, with losses per share widening to $0.30. That was still 10 cents better than what analysts had estimated on average. The company also expanded by announcing that it for $50 million in cash. That potentially brings up to 1.2 million monthly visitors into Zillow’s folds and gives the company a stronghold in New York City, one of the country’s most concentrated and biggest real estate markets. |
At This Rate, Nokia Will Be The Only Windows Phone OEM By The Holidays | Alex Wilhelm | 2,013 | 8 | 19 | The monthly Windows Phone is out for August, and is essentially a : The Lumia 520 is crushing other Windows Phone handsets, and Nokia is quickly becoming the de facto OEM of the platform as HTC slips. Nokia moved from 85 percent market share of Windows Phone hardware in July, to 86.9 percent in August. Rounding that to 87 percent, we can say it gained two points in a month. At this pace, Nokia will quickly consume the small slice of the Windows Phone platform that it does not control. And, as AdDuplex notes, the Lumia 1020 is outselling the also recently released Lumia 928, meaning that, most likely, Nokia’s sales are accelerating. Given that, it isn’t outside the realm of possibility that Nokia could expand the pace at which it grows its share of Windows Phone over the next few months — the Lumia 520 continues to grow in secondary markets, and the Lumia 1020 is attacking the U.S. market with fresh vigor following a $100 price cut. Who else builds Windows Phone handsets? HTC, sorta. HTC slipped from 11.5 percent market share in July to 9.8 percent in August, which almost mirrors Nokia’s gains. At what point does HTC essentially not matter in market share? Five percent? If so, it’s three months away from that point. That’s before the holidays. Total Windows Phone handset shipments are expanding. The platform could conceivably ship 10 million units in the fourth quarter. However, unless something dramatic changes in the Windows Phone market, and quickly, those fourth-quarter devices will likely be from the Nokia Lumia family. Good or bad? That Windows Phone is expanding is catnip to Microsoft, but declining platform support is dangerous. Windows Phone is now more dependent on Nokia’s health than ever before. Therefore, Microsoft’s mobile efforts are fully dependent on Nokia’s action. This is disconcerting, given how expensive and important the Windows Phone effort is to Microsoft. The argument that Microsoft might buy Nokia did not make sense when it was among a cadre of other OEMs, all bustling to build devices for Windows Phone. That’s all but over as eras go. And that makes Nokia a singular, potential fail-point for Windows Phone. Yikes. |
BotObjects Vows To Put A 3D Printer In (Almost) Every High School | John Biggs | 2,013 | 8 | 19 | , an intriguing 3D printing outfit that builds real, full-color additive prints out of multiple colored plastic filaments, has announced that it will offer free printers to select high schools in the United States and the U.K. High Schools can register at in late August. Between 150 and 200 classrooms will receive a suggested curriculum, a ProDesk3D printer, and a 3D design package designed specifically for students. “After we’re done giving away the freebies, we’ll reduce the price of the ProDesk3D by 65 percent only for high schools,” said , co-founder of the company. “We envision schools having up to seven of these in a lab that will create what hopefully is a computer room for the future.” The education initiative will begin on August 23 and then be available in the U.K. in November. They will ship the ProDesk3D in October, in time for back-to-school season. Schools will get a continuously updated curriculum for the machines as well as yearly updates for the study guides and software. “It’s a way to really get fast penetration,” said Martin. “I think it’s going to really accelerate things in the 3D printing space.” The printer itself is quite unique in that it uses a cartridge of multiple colored filaments, as well as a standard “base” color. It is best at producing color gradients and can create 25 micron prints using a mix of five separate colors to create separate bands of color. Theoretically it could also print full-color objects with a bit of design trickery. You can see it at work . Inexpensive color printing has always been a dream in the 3D printing world and it seems like Martin and his partner Mike Duma may have it licked. It will be particularly interesting once kids get their hands on these things and start creating — and learning — in ways deemed impossible only a few years ago. |
This Is How Maker Studios Scales Video Production For The YouTube Generation | Ryan Lawler | 2,013 | 8 | 19 | As one of the earliest multichannel networks on YouTube, Maker Studios has built a pretty big business out of putting talent first. Founded four years ago by some of the biggest YouTubers of the time, the company was designed to provide its creators the tools to collaborate with one another and create really compelling videos. The founders began working together and built a community in which they could leverage each other’s skills to improve their content. That collaboration turned into a big business, with a very diverse and growing group of creators that are part of its network. Unlike some vertically focused multichannel networks on YouTube, Maker has everything from gaming to comedy to music and women’s lifestyle channels. “This company really is rooted in talent,” COO Courtney Holt told me. “It was a talent-first company; it remains a talent-first company. Our goal is to work very collaboratively with the talent and provide the services they need.” With that in mind, the company designed a production space that was built to scale — that is, for creators to be able to very quickly set up, shoot, and edit high-quality videos in a short period of time. With that space, it’s able to not only increase the number of videos that can be shot, but also the average quality of each. It does that by keeping things lean and agile. All of its sets are built to be built and torn down in just a few hours, which enables it to have multiple productions shot over a few days. It also stores and catalogs all its set pieces so that it’s easy for them to be re-used whenever they’re needed. And of course, it’s got makeup, wardrobe and post-production. Watch the video above to learn more about how Maker has evolved, and how it is working with creators to step up their productions. And check out the rest of our series on all the new digital media companies that have emerged in Los Angeles over the last few years: |
YouTube For Android Gets Major Makeover, Lets You Minimize Videos While Browsing And Searching | Frederic Lardinois | 2,013 | 8 | 19 | Google today started rolling out a major new version of . This update is one of the most significant for the service in a long time and introduces a cool in-app multitasking feature that lets you minimize the screen while you browse channels or perform searches. It also features Google’s standard “card” interface. Until now, viewers had to stop the video. In this new version, the video will just move to the bottom-right corner of the screen and continue playing. From there, you can always get back to full-screen mode or just swipe right or left to dismiss the video. This new “picture-in-picture” feature is the highlight of today’s release, but the YouTube team also added a bunch of other new features. You can now, for example, more easily search for and browse channels for playlists to watch collections of videos back-to-back. With the recent launch Google Chromecast, it’s no surprise that the company has added deeper integration with the new YouTube app. This means you will now see a preview screen on your device while a video is playing on Chromecast or other smart TV that supports this feature. This should make it easier to queue up the next video. It’s not clear when this update will hit iOS, but a Google rep told me it will come to all platforms soon. The update should start rolling out to all Android devices soon. If you can’t wait, the good folks at Android Police have for your downloading pleasure.[gallery ids="864017,864018,864015"] |
Losing Our Childhood To LinkedIn | Josh Constine | 2,013 | 8 | 19 | What’s scarier than a 14-year-old girl choosing her sexiest Facebook profile pic? Maybe a 14-year-old girl inflating her résumé on her new LinkedIn profile. Childhood used to be a time of self-exploration, but the Internet is pushing kids to define themselves early and put that facade on display. This dynamic gained momentum today as 14 and up, with kids age 13 and older allowed on the platform in some countries. The idea is to let them get a head start on building a professional network, as well as scope out the new LinkedIn launched today. These show the companies and the fields that a college’s graduates get hired in to help young students find the right fit. In terms of , LinkedIn’s doing everything it can to keep kids physically safe: They’re hidden in search results; don’t show their full last names, and can’t share much publicly. But what about the mental, developmental and emotional impact of plotting your career just as you hit puberty? It used to be enough to get good grades and a summer job. Soon that could leave kids looking like slackers. Where are your internships? What student club did you start? Have you chosen between robotics and computer science? It’s never too early to search for your passion. Kids should try things out. Dabble in different areas, take some art classes, learn an instrument, or try some temp work at Mom’s office. I wish I’d given journalism a shot when I was younger. I didn’t discover how much I enjoyed it until after I graduated from college. Maybe LinkedIn prodding me to get a column in the Brighton High School or a mailroom job at the local paper would have catalyzed my career. The problem isn’t teens doing things that could fill out their LinkedIn profile. It’s them choosing what to try after judging themselves through the hypothetical eyes of recruiters and college admissions officers lurking the web. That could pressure them into making decisions based on what others want, rather than what excites them — a social network-propelled . “I love painting but should probably go to coding camp because college recruiters will like it.” “Political science is cool but economics gets people better jobs.” These thoughts could derail the next Picasso or Obama. Kids had enough to feel subconscious about without a professional network presence. For instance, their bodies. And now their Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest profiles. They’ll have their whole lives to feel overly proud or utterly insignificant because of their jobs. People are fulfilled and often contribute more to the world when they do what they love. That’s a process filled with lots of trial and error. But boxing up life into a profile could discourage teens from taking the scenic route to a career path. Parents should be counteracting this by telling their children they’ll support whatever makes them happy. Too often they do the opposite, pressuring them to do what they’re best at, what’s lucrative, and what’s traditionally respected. That’s the real root of the problem, not technology, but tech can exacerbate it. And it’s not just LinkedIn. Facebook increasingly has professional significance, and kids already need to watch out for posting inappropriate content to social media. Lots of services allow young users in hopes of locking them in as their influence and discretionary income grows. LinkedIn could get left behind if it stayed adults-only. And it’s not just self-serving.There’s no denying that LinkedIn could benefit kids by getting them to think about their careers in the first place. Most don’t, and many end up underemployed or with generic jobs they hate. Perhaps the same “everyone is doing it” temptation of networks could get teens on LinkedIn’s professional one. Some families don’t provide any job guidance at home, and with still-high unemployment in the US and abroad, there are plenty of kids who can use all the help they can get. And for privileged kids with grand ambitions, LinkedIn could offer another leg-up. It might help them connect with peers with similar interests, find mentors, or ask adults for opportunities. LinkedIn’s university pages may bring more transparency to how well different schools prepare students for their future. Unfortunately, if parents don’t step up, it might force that future on some kids before they’ve discovered who they are. |
The Nvidia Shield Seemed Like A Fringe Device, But It’s Actually A Mobile Gaming Must-Have | Darrell Etherington | 2,013 | 8 | 19 | Nvidia went a little outside of its comfort zone when it built the , a portable gaming device based on essentially stock Android with an integrated hardware controller. I wasn’t sure what to make of it when it was announced: Was it a reference device for potential Tegra partners? Simply a showcase for what its mobile graphics processors can offer devs and device-makers? Or a true competitor to the 3DS and PS Vita, a genuine consumer product with true mass-market appeal? After trying it out, I can say that no matter what Nvidia’s purpose was in putting together the Shield, I’m glad they’ve done so. More than my 3DS and Vita, this is a portable gaming console I could see myself using for a long, long time, and it is so much more than that. The Shield is more than just a mobile game console. First, it’s an extremely good mobile gaming console, better than both the 3DS and the PlayStation Vita (both of which I’ve owned). Dedicated big console aficionados might rake me over the coals for saying so, but even with the Shield’s limited initial library, it’s just better already. The games optimized for the device play great, and every game that has controller support works very well, too. Also, the sad truth is that the Shield has a lot more future potential as a gaming platform than do either the 3DS or the Vita. Android accounted for , according to a recent count by Gartner, which makes for a much larger audience than either the Vita or the 3DS (or both devices combined) currently enjoy. Content built specifically for Shield might not grow to epic proportions, but Android games that have controller support is a class of software that isn’t going to have any problems generating developer interest. There’s also something about Shield that vintage gaming fans will love: It supports and runs a lot of the beloved Android emulators available, and it does so with panache. Remember, emulation is something you should only do if you own the original cart, but if you do, the Shield is amazing at this. The Shield lacks cellular connectivity, but it can do pretty much anything an Android-powered phone can do in terms of using apps and Google services, and the OS is basically stock Jelly Bean. There’s no obtrusive skin (the included Shield app runs like any other, and most definitely doesn’t count as bloatware), with the minor issues that it’s attached to a hefty controller and that it lacks a multi-tasking tray button. Still, if you haven’t used an Android device and are curious about it without wanting to replace your phone or get a tablet, the Shield provides an accurate idea of what switching would be like. And of course, full Google Play store access means that this gadget also has a much better media and apps ecosystem built-in than anything Sony or Nintendo can manage. A neat trick the Shield has in its back pocket specific to its Android roots is the ability to control a Parrot AR Drone. It accomplishes this task masterfully, making up for the sometimes-awkward, touchscreen-based control scheme typical of the drone with good old joypads that make it far less likely you’ll smash your drone into a wall. Trying the two methods side-by-side, there’s no question which I preferred: Nvidia could market the Shield purely as a high-end Parrot drone accessory, and I’m sure they’d sell more than a few to enthusiasts who took it for a spin. The Shield has a beta feature that allows it to stream PC games over a user’s home Wi-Fi network via Steam, and it’s incredibly fun to do so. But there’s a catch: you need a GeForce GTX 650 or higher GPU in your Windows 7 or Windows 8-powered PC to get it working. And only a few games work for it currently – mostly those that have a console equivalent because of the button layout, though the pool should expand once the feature exits beta, according to Nvidia. PC gaming worked very well with the Shield, but the telling thing is that Nvidia had to send out a Windows PC with a compatible GPU for the purposes of review so that I could test it out. Nvidia has built a gaming device that is aimed at gamers, but I bet that the Venn diagram of those prospective buyers who also have optimal setups for PC streaming probably doesn’t show overwhelming overlap. And while I managed to stream games including Skyrim and Just Cause 2 seamlessly from desktop to Shield (with settings automatically tuned for optimal performance), these games aren’t designed to be played on a 5-inch screen. That makes a difference. More than once I found myself straining to see things that would be easy to spot on a larger display, but the overall experience of playing full Skyrim on the couch while another person watches TV, Wii U style but with better games, was amazing. This generation of portable consoles has been a disappointment so far, which is why Nvidia’s surprise decision to enter the fray with an Android-powered alternative is so refreshing. And the Shield is excellent on its own merits, from the quality of the screen, to the battery life that managed around seven hours on average during my use, to the quality and ergonomics of the controller itself. With its HDMI-out capabilities, it’s also a better home Android console than an OUYA, so long as you’ve got a long enough cable. The price of $299 is as expensive as some more affordable Android phones outright, however, and pricier than the Vita or the 3DS, but for those looking for this type of thing, it’s a small price to pay, on par with an Android tablet. As someone who owns both, believe me when I say that if you’re a gaming fan, you’ll get more use out of Nvidia’s quirky hybrid hardware than a slate running Android. |
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