title stringlengths 2 283 ⌀ | author stringlengths 4 41 ⌀ | year int64 2.01k 2.02k | month int64 1 12 | day int64 1 31 | content stringlengths 1 111k ⌀ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Tour Management Startup TourCommand Upgrades With An Eye On Up-And-Coming Musicians | Anthony Ha | 2,013 | 8 | 23 | Given the challenges facing the recorded music industry, touring seems like an ever-more-important way for musicians to make money. Yet co-founder Asad Yusupov said there hasn’t been that much done to make it easier to actually manage a tour. “There are very few tools for the backend of the music industry,” he said. So Yusupov and his three co-founders (Joshua Gunter, Ivan Veskov and Brian Putt) have built online software that’s supposed to make the menial touring tasks easier. They launched the company two months ago with the ability to manage the guest and equipment lists and make hotel reservations. These are things that artists and managers could have done before, but TourCommand brings them together in one place. And now they’re launching TourCommand 2.0, which Yusupov said should make the platform particularly useful for “entry-level artists who want to become touring professionals.” The new features include the ability to create custom artist pages, to share directly from TourCommand to Facebook and Twitter, to track tour budgets, and to search a database of different venues. These features aren’t necessarily for newbies only, but Yusupov said the marketing tools in particular can help someone who’s trying to start their career. (It also puts TourCommand, whose main competition on the tour management side was , in a position where it could be competing with services like and .) “The way we’ve set up TourCommand is that it is the artists’ tour kit,” Yusupov said. “You can literally go in there and build the beginning stages of your career.” Although Yusupov talked up the number of customers that TourCommand could potentially serve, he also acknowledged that new musicians don’t necessarily have a lot of the money, and they might not stay in the business for very long. However, he said there are always new people entering the business. And to make TourCommand affordable, pricing starts at $7 a month (the team is probably hoping some of those users will find success and graduate to a higher pricing plan). By the way, even though Yusupov and his co-founders are young (their ages range from 20 to 25), they claim to know the touring business from real experience. Yusupov, for example, co-founded booking company EMG Management — he said the company booked appearances by the Jersey Shore cast among others. He added that TourCommand is being tested by companies including record label Roc Nation, and no one has canceled yet. |
This Week On The TechCrunch Gadgets Podcast: Ubuntu, Omate, Digitizer And A Gold iPhone? | Jordan Crook | 2,013 | 8 | 23 | The Ubuntu Edge may have been the most successful crowdfunding campaign in history, but that doesn’t mean it made its goal. Meanwhile, yet another smartwatch joined the fray this week, coaxing John’s money out of his wallet by being just a tad “smarter” than the rest. Makerbot released a scanner this week called the Digitizer, which lets you scan objects to then print them, but we’re not sure we’re down with the high price tag. And last, but certainly not least, we all pretty much agree that a gold iPhone will make its way into the world come September 10. We discuss all this and more on the latest episode of the , featuring , , , , and . Enjoy!
We invite you to enjoy our every Friday at 3pm Eastern and noon Pacific.
You can subscribe to the .
Intro Music by . |
Facebook Feed Change Punishes Pages For Posting Crappy Memes | Josh Constine | 2,013 | 8 | 23 | Facebook is cracking down on Pages that try to trick their way into your News Feed. Today it announced a feed algorithm change for Pages that gives more visibility to timely, relevant, sharable content from trusted sources. Meanwhile, it punishes Pages that ask people to Like their posts and that post “low-quality” memes. The update could drive more traffic to reputable Pages while strangling spammers. Earlier this month Facebook announced that it would to the News Feed. It revealed that there are hundreds of thousands of signals taken into account when customizing the feed for each person. Instead of tuning the algorithm quietly, Facebook decided that the impact on users and businesses is so large that it’s best to be transparent and explain the changes in detail. The were focused on content from friends. These included Story Bumping to make sure you don’t miss great posts, Last Actor to show you more about people you’ve recently interacted with, and Chronological By Actor, which is still in testing but could help people follow along with real-time updates. Now Facebook is focusing on how Pages appear in the feed, a more sensitive topic because so many businesses have grown to depend on the News Feed for content. Many Page admins vocally criticized Facebook for starting to ask them to pay to reach their existing fans. Much of the fervor stemmed from Facebook simultaneously getting . The problem was that Facebook wasn’t up-front about these changes, leading to rampant speculation that it was trying to . By being clear about what’s going on this time, Facebook should avoid much of the backlash. Facebook says it did a survey of users asking what they thought made a Page post worth seeing. The questions included: It took the user feedback and built a better machine-learning algorithm that can distinguish between high- and low-quality posts, and then show the best ones higher in the feed. Facebook says that in its tests of the changes, “we saw a significant increase in interactions (likes, comments, shares) with this content” and “People in the test group also hid fewer stories overall”. That showed the algorithm tweaks were a success so it will begin rolling out the update over the next few weeks. Facebook says the impact should be minor for most Pages. The most important thing for Pages to know about the change is that posting Lolcats-style with overlaid text on images might not be the best strategy going forward. I asked whether Facebook’s machine-learning algorithm will be able to identify and demote them, and it seems that it can. The company tells me: “Pages producing some low quality, meme content can expect to see a slight decrease. Pages that are exclusively posting low quality, meme content might see a bigger drop. The magnitude of the change will be greatest for Pages creating high quality content. Generally, these Pages should see increased distribution.” In general Pages should focus on a strategy of posting great, engaging content that doesn’t use dirty tricks to get Likes. And that should mean that more of what you see in your News Feed is worth your precious attention. |
Lies, Damned Lies, And The NSA | Alex Wilhelm | 2,013 | 8 | 15 | Today the Washington Post documents demonstrating that the NSA breaks privacy laws “thousands of times” each year. Consider this the conclusion of what was the last-ditch argument put forth to defend the NSA: Yes, they have the capability to abrogate your Constitutional rights, but there is no evidence of abuse! Wrong. We now have proof that the NSA both wittingly and unwittingly breaks that law on average of 7.6 times per day, using leaked 2012 numbers. That’s a nontrivial number of infractions. Let’s tease our way through the path to today. The story broke that the NSA on phone records of Americans. This proved James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, to more than the American people, but also to its Congress. Leaker Edward Snowden then said that, with a mere email address, he the content of that account. He was mocked by Rep. Mike Rogers, who said that Snowden “was lying. […] It’s impossible for him to do what he was saying he could do.” But then . And former NSA Director General Hayden . Oops. The President that no abuse was ongoing: What you’re hearing about is the prospect that these could be abused. Now part of the reason they’re not abused is because they’re — these checks are in place, and those abuses would be against the law and would be against the orders of the FISC. Well, that’s not true either. The Post’s report is utterly damning. A few excerpts for flavor: They [infractions that broke the law] range from significant violations of law to typographical errors that resulted in unintended interception of U.S. e-mails and telephone calls. […] In one instance, the NSA decided that it need not report the unintended surveillance of Americans. […] Despite the quadrupling of the NSA’s oversight staff after a series of significant violations in 2009, the rate of infractions increased throughout 2011 and early 2012. […] James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, has acknowledged that the court found the NSA in breach of the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures, but the Obama administration has fought a Freedom of Information lawsuit that seeks the opinion. Generally, the NSA reveals nothing in public about its errors and infractions. It gets worse. The Post spoke to members of the government close to the situation who stated that the above figures only count infractions recorded at the NSA’s headquarters, and other Washington facilities. So, the tally and examples do not take into account the abuses of the private data of United States citizens by other parts of the NSA. In short, the above is therefore but foretaste to the real feast of abuse that is ongoing, day in, and day out. Another point: The Post’s documents directly corroborate the story that . Calling it the “one of the most serious violations,” the Post states that the National Security Agency “diverted large volumes of international data passing through fiber-optic cables in the United States” to its data centers. The data was then up for analysis. We knew this was happening, but it’s nice to have yet another confirmation of the information. At every turn the NSA has lied and obfuscated. It has dodged, and later been forced to correct the record. Again, and again. There has been a steady drumbeat of bullshit from those unconcerned with privacy. What was once perhaps dismissed as speculation and intrigue is now confirmed. The Post clutches this: In a , the NSA said it attempts to identify problems “at the earliest possible moment, implement mitigation measures wherever possible, and drive the numbers down.” The government was made aware of The Post’s intention to publish the documents that accompany this article online. So, the Post in short showed the government proof that it had been lying, and was given a statement that essentially read “yes, but.” Well I won’t “yes, but” my right to privacy and the Fourth Amendment. I thank the damn stars that at a minimum – for now, – most of us still enjoy our First Amendment rights to shout that the government shouldn’t take apart other parts of the Bill of Rights. One final caveat to all of this. There exists an argument that for our well-being, the government must at all costs protect the safety of its citizens. Under this argument, physical security is the first, and primary goal of government. Bullshit. The first goal of the government must be to protect the rights of its citizenry. This fact is simple to prove: The United States is more than willing to expend the lives of its youth and the treasure of its coffers to stand up for the fundamental rights of the American individual. Therefore, rights matter more than physical security. I find it odd that I have to say this out loud. So we should stand by that, and realize that the price that we pay for the right to privacy is that the government simply will not have as much data as it otherwise might. I am willing to live slightly less physically safe to be far, far more free. And I suspect the same of you. Stand up. |
Selling Hopes And Dreams In Southeast Asia | Victoria Ho | 2,013 | 8 | 15 | Being a startup means believing in your dreams, and Southeast Asia needs dreamers, say incubators. , for one, is keen to sell hope to the growing communities of startups in Southeast Asia, and is willing to back that up with real money. When I spoke with its founder, , in Jakarta a couple of months ago, he said the accelerator’s plan for the region starts with “throwing some money” at startups, simply to get the ball rolling. “It has to start with the ability to write some checks. It gets people off the ground. That’s the problem with other investors—they’re not willing to throw money away,” he said with a laugh. “But really, a better way to spend a million bucks is to invest in 20 companies at 50 grand each. We’d probably emerge with three wins out of that. “That isn’t even the main success of it though; the process of investing in 20 companies gives people the chance to believe in themselves, and creates an ecosystem where people believe in something,” he said. McClure is on a march to conquer the world. 500 Startups has dedicated about 20 percent of its capital to international companies, and this year set up shop in and . This follows last year’s expanded coverage to include India, Japan and . His interests in revving up the startup community, of course will mean that 500 Startups’ relatively early presence in these markets will allow it to enjoy the first fruit. For Southeast Asia’s startup scene, which he says trails behind that of Western markets and other emerging markets like Mexico, that first step needs to start with more money being up for grabs. He highlighted as an example. In 2010, the Chilean government set up an incubator program that offered startups $40,000, office space and industry support in exchange for them moving to Santiago for six months to build their companies. The program has launched its seventh intake, and according to , 37 percent of the applicants in this latest round were local, up from 10 percent in the first round. This boost to the local ecosystem cost its government about $10 million a year, spread out over 200 companies. “That’s cheap, for changing the brand of your entire country,” said McClure. “In Silicon Valley, there’s such a strong belief system that it’s possible to be the next Yahoo, YouTube, Google. People don’t question that belief, and that cycle is self-sustaining. “People in Asia, on the other hand, need cheerleaders. That’s what incubators should be doing here. We’re in the movie business—we’re selling dreams,” he said. Reza Behnam, founder and CEO said, of his experience raising funding as an Asian startup, that many investors in the region still shy away from technology investments. “Tech venture investments are relatively new here. There seems to be a lot of expertise in Singapore for more traditional, mature types of companies. This cycle needs to mature in order for investors to feel more open to the higher initial risk,” he said. Hugh Mason, co-founder and CEO at incubator said the ecosystem in the region is at the point of maturity where startups are keen, but need to be taught the basics of getting organized and pitching their ideas. “I believe you can probe, sense and respond to how the market responds to your idea, and there’s a process by which you can teach people to be entrepreneurs,” he said. “It’s not about the MBA-style business plans, it’s about being able to tell a plausible story around your idea, backed up by evidence. But once a business reaches Series A, it needs to change its culture to fit into the kind of standardized box that a venture capitalist expects,” said Mason. Eventually, as more successful entrepreneurs return to the community, startups shouldn’t need to go through Entrepreneur 101 anymore. “Right now, it’s harder to find investment-ready startups here. There is a lot of tacit knowledge in the air in places like Silicon Valley about how to make businesses work, and all that is teachable if we can get the right clusters of people together in a community,” he said. JFDI just closed applications for its second program for 2013, and 317 startups applied to it. The incubator has accelerated 20 startups in the last year-and-a-half, with eight closing funding, raising $3.2 million between them. |
Coinbase Adds SMS Commands So You Can Send BTC Via QR On The Q.T. | John Biggs | 2,013 | 8 | 15 | has added SMS commands to their already user-friendly Bitcoin wallet and purchasing systems. The system, which uses simple commands (qr $100 will make a QR code for a $100 request to your account) and a trusted phone to make things a bit easier on BTC lovers. Another example, “request 1.5 user@example.com sold him a bucket of steam,” allows you to request 1.5 BTC from a certain user with a note in the request. You can read more about the commands . To use the system you must first register your phone with the Coinbase server and then text your commands to 1-650-316-5555. Bitcoin is hard to use on mobile. There are a few solutions but nothing as simple as, say, a PayPal transaction. That’s why these basic commands are so important: they allow you to securely transfer BTC between users using little more than SMS messages. This means you can interact with your Bitcoin even without a data plan. Love it or hate it, Bitcoin seems like it’s here to stay. It’s cool that Coinbase is thinking about the problem of BTC transactions so creatively. |
WaPo: NSA Broke Privacy Rules Thousands Of Times, Harms Uncertain | Gregory Ferenstein | 2,013 | 8 | 15 | According to obtained by , the National Security Agency broke its own privacy rules thousands of times per year. Many of the violations seem like unintentional infractions, such as a typo while searching telephone area codes, which results in a swath of phone records that shouldn’t have otherwise been scanned. It is unclear whether any of the wrongly obtained information was used for illegal or illicit purposes. While White House officials admitted the validity of the Post’s records, the story itself doesn’t reveal any harms that came from the violations. “We’re a human-run agency operating in a complex environment with a number of different regulatory regimes, so at times we find ourselves on the wrong side of the line,” said a senior NSA official, speaking with the White House’s permission. The more concerning aspect of the report is that the court charged with NSA oversight, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, seems to have loose control over the spy agency. “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. The court ruled it unconstitutional,” explains The Post. , U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton told the Post,”The FISC does not have the capacity to investigate issues of noncompliance, and in that respect the FISC is in the same position as any other court when it comes to enforcing [government] compliance with its orders.” President Obama , but it is unclear whether the new reports to Congress for the yet-to-be formed independent review group will also report on the NSA self-audited privacy violations. |
Digital Retox – My Week Using Tech Every Minute | Josh Constine | 2,013 | 8 | 15 | Can too much information drive you crazy? I’m about to find out. As we struggle to adapt to the mobile age, digital detoxes have become a trend. But I wanted to see what true toxicity feels like. So I’ve begun what I’m calling a Digital Retox, where I’ll be using high-tech devices during my every waking minute for a week straight. The inspiration came from tales of detoxes like and . They described their impetus for taking a break as a creeping feeling that constant connection was making them burned out, unproductive and emotionally vacant. Baratunde found peace and Miller found isolation in their detoxes, but neither seemed to consider swinging the other way — waterboarding themselves with full technological immersion. That led me to dream up the Digital Retox, and wonder what it would do to me. So here I am, the guinea pig in my own sci-fi experiment. A few questions I’m looking to answer are: At the end of the week I’ll spend a few days writing up my thoughts, experiences, some stats. We’ll see if I come away loving technology, or like I’ve been . Then I’m doing a digital flip-flop — I’ll be embarking on full digital detox with no phone at all for the last week of August. Here are the Digital Retox rules. I’ll be using an Internet-connected device every minute I’m not asleep from 9 a.m. August 14th to 9am August 21st. I didn’t post this yesterday when I started so I’d have a bit of a trial run. I wanted to make sure it was feasible and I wouldn’t need to immediately abort. Sometimes my usage of technology will be constant, like when I’m on my laptop for hours straight working. Sometimes it will be interruptive, with me stopping to check my phone or other mobile device while I’m out. To remind me to stay connected, I’m using the , which lets me set a reoccurring alarm that goes off every minute. No activities are excluded. I’ll pause in-person conversations to check notifications, and listen to dictated blog posts like those on while in the shower. How can you help? Annoy me! No seriously. @ reply me on Twitter at or tweet with the hashtag and I’ll see it. You can also distract me on , and . Some plans I’ve got for using my time include getting to some version of inbox zero, reorganizing my laptop, demo’ing a bunch of new apps, and writing a lot. Ultimately, my goal is to find out if information overload is as detrimental as people think. The fracturing of our attention may very well be the psychological crisis of our generation. From our days hunting in the wilderness to survive, we’ve evolved to respond to changes in light, sound, and movement. It just so happens that’s what our phones emit. But not when there’s a deer to spear or a tiger to run from. Just whenever someone likes our Instagrams, sends us an email, or wants to plan something for later. None of these are truly urgent, yet we interrupt our flow to check them. That can halt conversations, agitate us when we’re trying to relax, and keep us from noticing the beauty of the world around us at that very moment. Some believe we need periods of either meditation or recreation to unwind big, abstract problems, and that can’t happen if our minds keep flitting about. This isn’t to say digital connection is bad. Applying a moral judgement on technologies or the future is rarely productive. But if our evolutionary psychology causes us to be distracted by our devices against our will, we may need to learn to moderate our digital connections. But this week, I’m going to binge. Most people say goodbye when they go on a detox. With my Digital Retox, I don’t have to. I’ll be right here, at the other end of the Internet from all of you, always. See you now. And by that I mean… |
Adap.tv Founders Discuss Their $405M Acquisition And The Company’s ‘Secret Ingredients’ | Anthony Ha | 2,013 | 8 | 15 | A week after AOL (which owns TechCrunch) announced that , we drove down to the company’s office in San Mateo to speak to co-founders Amir Ashkenazi (the CEO) and Teg Grenager (the chief product officer). Ashkenazi told me that there were “secret ingredients” leading to the company’s success — namely, its engineers. That’s because the company’s goal was to create an ad platform that directly connected buyers and sellers: Take every engineering team of that size, they’ll tell you it’s impossible. ‘Really, you should decide whether you want to be a DSP or an exchange an SSP’ — but that model is broken, you cannot have five people between a buyer and a seller and have an effective and efficient advertising ecosystem. So we gave them this task and they didn’t know it’s impossible, so they just did it. Grenager, meanwhile, offered more details about the technology and the need that it’s filling. Just as the move from network to cable TV led to fragmentation, the move to online video is making things even more complicated, he said: Now as it goes from cable television to Internet-delivered video, we get to thousands or millions of different potential programs delivered on thousands of different sites and so on. When you think about it from a brand advertiser’s perspective, they have a need to plan and deliver and measure a campaign to a particular audience with particular performance goals across that fragmented landscape. And this creates not just a problem of the technology stack that’s required but actually a problem of data — of actually knowing where that audience is and making that data actionable. By the way, these interviews were recorded before quoting a number of anonymous ad buyers who complained about Adap.tv’s inventory, particularly “straight-up bogus ad impressions generated by bots.” Ashkenazi told Adweek, “We believe we are the leader in quality.” When I asked about Adap.tv about this, Ashkenazi emailed to say that “voluntary cleanup efforts” in the past 12 months have reduced the number of ad opportunities that Adap.tv has access to from 8 billion to 4.8 billion: “It’s an ongoing battle for everyone in the industry, and we’ll keep leading the charge.” |
Vungle Raises $6.5M For A Growing In-App Mobile Video Advertising Business | Kim-Mai Cutler | 2,013 | 8 | 15 | As iOS and Android have matured, the mobile ad units on both platforms have had to evolve, becoming richer and more interactive. The tiny banner ads that earlier mobile advertising startups like Google AdMob pioneered are falling to the wayside as mobile video ads and rich interstitials have taken off. One startup, , has built an entire business around native mobile video ads in high-definition, and they’re picking up a $6.5 million Series A round from Crosslink Capital for it. Also participating are Google Ventures, AOL Ventures, 500 Startups, SV Angel, Maynard Webb, Scott McNealy and Tim Draper, bringing Vungle’s total funding to $8.5 million. SoftTech VC was also part of the round as well. Since last year after graduating from San Francisco’s AngelPad, they’ve grown to reach 2 billion cumulative video views and now have 35 employees in offices across San Francisco, London and Berlin. They recently poached Wayne Chan, one of the co-founders of Kabam, which is a 600-person midcore mobile and social gaming company, to become vice president of engineering. They are part of a newer wave of startups in the mobile advertising space like Mopub. The older generation of mobile ad companies is consolidating, with one notable deal this week as Millennial Media picked up Jumptap in an acquisition. Naturally, a lot of Vungle’s clientele is in the gaming space with marquee indie studios like Cut The Rope-maker Zeptolab. In gaming, they face a ton of competitors like Flurry and Tapjoy and others, which have also built networks for mobile game trailers after pivoting from earlier products. But Vungle focuses on a shorter format, with 15-second high-definition videos. They also have an in-house creative team that works with advertisers to make the catchiest ads. “We want it short and snappy,” said CEO Zain Jaffer. “They need to fit into the flow of the app, with placement in the part of the user flow.” Jaffer said that while this was an inside round, with participants from previous funding rounds, he said there were a few external offers that they considered. He said they went for Crosslink as the lead because they work with companies at all stages from seed to publicly traded companies like Pandora. “We’re at a crazy inflection point, where people are starting to spend more time watching video on their phones,” he said. The company initially charged on a CPI, or cost-per-install, basis, which is standard for mobile app advertising. But they’ve since shifted toward ads that users complete. The company’s round of funding will go toward expanding the team and its technology platform. |
Birchbox Says Its Subscription Model Is Working, With 25% Of Revenues Coming From E-Commerce Store | Kim-Mai Cutler | 2,013 | 8 | 15 | , a pioneer in the field of subscription e-commerce, said that its model of letting men and women sample personal care products and then up-selling them to buying the full products in an e-commerce store is working. While reaching 400,000 monthly subscribers, the startup helped inspire a wave of copycats with monthly boxes of products for pretty much every demographic and vertical you could possibly think of — , , , , and on and on. However, the thing is that sending boxes every month for as little as $10 is not ultimately that profitable, even if the samples are provided for free or at-cost. In Birchbox’s case, the startup was making a bet that some percentage of the company’s customers would leap to pay for full-size products after trying out the samples. The company’s now sharing stats today that suggest this might be working. Birchbox says its e-commerce sales are on track to triple this year, with more than one-half of Birchbox’s monthly subscribers going on to make purchases from the company’s e-commerce store. “When customers find a product that they love from Birchbox, we try to make it as easy as possible for them to shop and then transact,” said co-founder Katia Beauchamp. Stila, a pretty well-known upscale cosmetics brand, said that they saw an 11.2 percent conversion on sales after shipping a sample eye shadow palette. There are also full-size e-commerce orders that come from non-subscribers. About 15 percent of the company’s orders come from customers who don’t get the monthly box of sample products. Birchbox hasn’t raised any additional funding since the fall of 2011, but a good story about conversions to full-sized product sales would be something they could raise a growth round on. Beauchamp played down that possibility, though. “We don’t have plans to raise,” she said. “We’re excited that we’re able to grow this business aggressively by ourselves.” The company has been around since 2010, when Beauchamp co-founded it with another Harvard Business School alumna Hayley Barna. They were looking for a way to help women discover new cosmetic products and started shipping boxes of samples for about $10 per month. They with a slightly more expensive subscription service full of lifestyle goods and grooming products. They also faced down a number of copycats globally in Asia and Europe, and eventually called JolieBox, which let them expand into France, Spain and the U.K. |
InteraXon Raises $6M Series A Round From Horizon, A-Grade And Others For Its Brainwave-Sensing Headset | Frederic Lardinois | 2,013 | 8 | 15 | , the Toronto, Canada-based company behind the Muse headset for thought-controlled computing, today announced that it has raised a $6 million Series A round from a number of prominent investors, including , , (Ashton Kutcher’s investment company), , , and Bridge Builders. The company, which was founded in 2007, made the announcement at Vancouver’s . The Muse is a that monitors your brainwaves, and the company positions it as “leading in brainwave-enabled devices, applications and experiences.” The Muse is scheduled to launch next year and InteraXon plans to launch it together with its Brain Health System, a development platform for the headset and a brain fitness application with exercises that help users enhance their cognitive skills. As the company notes, it also plans to build numerous other Muse apps. The company has been demoing its headset for a while now and also raised almost $300,000 on Indiegogo. The idea here is that you will be able to control your computers with your brain. It’s technology we’ve seen in numerous lab prototypes over the last few years, but it hasn’t quite made it into consumers’ hands (and onto their heads) yet. As InteraXon CEO Ariel Garten told me after she made the announcement at GROW, her expectation is that developers will take the first version of the Muse and start building innovative applications right from the start. In her view, it will take about 10 years, though, before we’ll really be able to control our computers with our brain and maybe even 25 years before this will become the default way of interacting with our machines. Our own Colleen Taylor got a chance to try the Muse . |
Gif.Me Is A Chrome Extension For Gif Storage… Because GIFS! | Jordan Crook | 2,013 | 8 | 15 | is a new Chrome extension that allows users to store and share gifs they find on the internet with nothing more than a right click. It’s wonderful. The extension lets you right click on any gif, on any website, and choose the GIF ME option. From there, each gif is saved in a folder right in the browser window, with the option to view that gif or auto-copy the link to your clipboard. You can even tag various gifs to add a little organization to your Gif.me library. Gif storage and organization isn’t something we all think about regularly, but I firmly believe that it should be. Maybe you simply search for the right gif (with , potentially) at the moment you need it, or perhaps you bookmark your favorites as your trek along through the web. Maybe you even go so far as to save these gifs in a file on your computer. Hell, you could even be a weirdo like me and save your favorite gifs in a macro application with shortcuts, so you can lay one out at the drop of the hat. Long story short, if the above sounds like you (or you care about saving/sharing gifs at all) you should probably check out this Gif.me chrome extension. It essentially takes the same workflow as copying a gif (with the right click) but gives you the automatic option to save it as you do. Plus, the gif URL stays exactly the same, giving credit where credit is due. If you want to check out Gif.me, head on over .
|
Zumper Goes National And Releases An iPhone App To Help You Find Your Next Apartment | Ryan Lawler | 2,013 | 8 | 15 | About one year after launching and , apartment rental startup is expanding beyond New York City, San Francisco and Chicago and is going national. Along with all the new places where users will be able to find listings, it’s also launching an that is designed to help renters find their next apartment. For those who might have forgotten, Zumper launched as a platform to simplify the way that real estate brokers and apartment managers listed and managed available apartments. It then and for real estate pros to help them create beautiful listings for their apartments on the fly. Now it’s ready to connect renters with those listings with an iPhone app aimed just at consumers. The new Zumper iPhone app gives users all the tools they need to search for and discover properties that have been listed through its platform. They can scan a map of nearby properties and drill down apartments based on location, or they can search by neighborhood. For finicky renters in San Francisco, for instance, you can choose to only look at apartments that are in the Mission, or Castro, or Noe Valley areas, for instance. Once you’ve narrowed down the acceptable neighborhoods you’d live in, you can refine your search further based on price, number of bedrooms, how recently the space was listed, and whether or not it accepts pets. That’ll give you a listing of places that fit your criteria, and you can look at individual listing pages to learn more about the apartments or the properties themselves. Found something you like? You can favorite a listing or you can share it, either by email, SMS, or Twitter. You can also send a message directly to the rental company within the app, which speeds up the time to get a response, and could speed up the time it takes for you to ultimately find an apartment. That’s part of why Zumper wanted to build a consumer-facing iPhone app in the first place, according to CEO Anthemos Georgiades: It wanted to close the loop on mobile-to-mobile communications between real estate professionals and prospective tenants. With mobile users on both sides, neither has to wait to get back to a computer to reach out or set up an appointment. Since all listings come from its own management platform, apartments found in the Zumper app are accurate and up to date, at least in terms of availability, which is not something you could say for last week’s Craigslist ad. That said, while Zumper has a number of listings in cities where it’s been operating, Craigslist will have more — but then you have to deal with Craigslist. With the launch of the iPhone app, it’s also expanding nationally, enabling apartment owners and potential tenants to connect no matter where they are in the U.S. While it had previously been focused just on New York City, San Francisco, and Chicago, it will now target the 100-million-strong apartment rental market in the country. Zumper has raised a total of $1.7 million in seed funding from an impressive list of investors, which include Kleiner Perkins, Andreessen Horowitz, Greylock, CrunchFund, NEA, Dawn Capital, The Experiment Fund, and the DeWilde family trust. == |
Microsoft Calls Foul After Google Yanks YouTube Access In New Windows Phone App | Alex Wilhelm | 2,013 | 8 | 15 | This morning Google admitted that it had to YouTube from Microsoft’s brand-new Windows Phone application. This came fewer than 50 hours after the launch of the application. Windows Phone users were predictably disappointed. What happened? In the intervening hours I’ve learned enough to piece together the situation. Let’s go. When Microsoft released a new YouTube application for Windows Phone in May, Google was not pleased. The application didn’t properly carry Google advertisements, allowed for video downloads, and wasn’t branded to Google’s liking. Microsoft took the app down, and the two vowed to work together to get something done. Why, then, did the new application have its YouTube access cut off? In short because of a spat over building the application using native code, or HTML5. Google wanted Microsoft to build the application using HTML5, which Microsoft said that it cannot do because of technical limitations of its current Windows Phone platform. So Microsoft rebuilt its application — again, in native code — to meet Google’s three initial demands. The company also told Google that it was willing to move to HTML5 in the future, when Windows Phone could manage it. (Spoiler: Microsoft is working on a new version of Windows Phone.) It appears that the two sides couldn’t sort this out, so Microsoft launched its application anyways. Google obviously was not entertained and axed its YouTube access. It was also not pleased that Microsoft had built its own system to interface with Google’s ads so that they could be delivered to the application. It might break, and so forth. Microsoft wanted access to the advertising APIs that Google itself uses, but was rebuffed. Google said in a statement that it wants everyone in its developer community to follow the “same guidelines.” That sounds reasonable: everyone builds YouTube apps with HTML5. Except Google. Google’s two mobile apps, for iOS and Android, are built with native code. Precisely what Microsoft wanted to do. This didn’t sway Google, who wants the darn thing coded in HTML5. So, Microsoft was stuck: It needs to provide a solid YouTube experience for its users, but Google won’t let it do so sans using HTML5, which it can’t until Windows Phone itself is improved. So, a jam. In a bit of a cheeky move, the company released its own app, almost daring Google to cut off YouTube. Which it did. Technology: Stranger than fiction. The real crux of this is that millions of Windows Phone users can’t YouTube on the go via an app. Of course, they can watch YouTube on Internet Explorer on their Windows Phone handsets. Whatever the case, Google and Microsoft continue to slap each other. This isn’t over. Microsoft has written its own that addresses the HTML5 spat in detail. [Image via ] |
Mobile Ad Startup Apsalar Raises $9M For International Growth | Anthony Ha | 2,013 | 8 | 15 | , which offers mobile ad buying and targeting tools, has raised $9 million in Series B funding. The company , and CEO and co-founder Michael Oiknine told me it started out by offering free analytics for mobile app developers. Apsalar then used that data to create anonymized user profiles, of which there are now 800 million. Those profiles, in turn, are used for ad targeting through Apsalar’s demand-side platform (namely, a platform for buying ads on multiple networks and exchanges). “The key differentiation is we do audience targeting with our first-party data to basically execute buys against these audiences,” Oiknine said. So for example, Apsalar could help an advertiser target “a highly relevant audience” that has “a high propensity to make in-app purchases.” Oiknine added that Apsalar is particularly important because it can help advertisers reach valuable users across the currently fragmented mobile landscape. He predicted that the industry will see more consolidation through acquisitions, but he said Apsalar will be “very well-positioned” when that happens because of its data and targeting. The new round was led by , with participation from new investor Correlation Ventures and previous backers including Thomvest Ventures and DN Capital. Oiknine said one of his main reasons for taking money from DCM (which invests in both the U.S. and Asia) is to expand in Asian markets. In the funding press release, DCM partner Osuke Honda described Apsalar as “definitely the player to watch in the mobile DSP space.” Apsalar has now . Apsalar says it has raised a total of $14.8 million, not the $14 million stated above. |
null | Josh Constine | 2,013 | 8 | 23 | null |
Parrot Announces The A.R. Drone 2.0 Power Edition | Matt Burns | 2,013 | 8 | 15 | It was hovering. Just sitting there. The livery was different. A black body with different color blades. Something was clearly different about this . It wasn’t as colorful as the ones he had seen before. He sat there for a lot longer. This drone was clearly hiding something under the piano-black shell. Eight minutes passed. 16 minutes passed. Then, just before the 36 minute mark, the drone, nearly silently, returned over the trees. But before he could react, another one appeared. And then another. A pair this time. Two second generation Parrot A.R. Drones. This time, instead of just hovering, the two made slow passes. Back and forth. Over and over. He had seen this before. They were controlled, not by a smartphone, but by an internal black box and satellites high above. GPS. These modules were easy to obtain and configure, at just $130. He had previously learned that they connect to the drone’s USB ports and not only provide geolocation and route planning, but also record a lot of flight data. He sat there a bit longer. A lot longer than normal. Soon he couldn’t take it. The others were signaled. They downed the drone with a bed sheet. It fell harmlessly to the ground. He ran over and grabbed it. He knew one of the two cameras on the other drone had seen him. They had to. But he had to risk it anyway. Soon the cover was off the drone. He was shocked. There were two 1,500 mAh batteries inside. Two. This was something new, indeed. That explains the longer flight time. It almost exactly matched that of the normal Parrot A.R. Drone 2.0 equipped with the new HD battery. The black exterior was slick, he admitted, a touch impressed. The standard A.R. Drone 2.0 always looked like a toy to him. But the new paint job adds a menacing touch. Suddenly, as if on commend, the drone’s colored blades whirled to life. Damn, he thought. I should have unplugged the Flight Recorder, as the drone rose quickly through the air. Apparently she discovered it was missing and activated the return home command built into the Flight Recorder. He was careless. Again. She knew he would take the bait. The new drones, appropriately called the Power Edition, cost her the majority of her remaining cash from her birthday. $379. Just $80 more than the standard A.R. Drone 2.0. But it packed two HD batteries that allowed for 36 minutes of flight time. And then, the flight recorder, was just the added touch. Sure, she knew, that for a bit more she could get an entry level quadcopter that offered more flexibility, allowing for add-ons like better cameras. But she didn’t care. The Parrot A.R. Drone 2.0, and now the Power Edition, was very easy to fly. Even her mom could do it. Best yet, her two friends , too. He returned back to base. His friends were already there. He took off his spy gear and stored it in the box his dad built into the tree house. His birthday was just two months away. Right before Halloween. He was going to be Lion-O. They were going to be Tygra and Panthro. It was getting late. His mom was calling him into dinner. She was going to be there. Sitting across the table from him. Smirking. Oh how he wished he hadn’t wasted the money his grandma gave him on a Wii U. He so wanted an A.R. Drone 2.0 like his little sister and her friends. Just two more months. And sweet, sweet vengeance would be his. |
After Initially Locking Down Funds, PayPal Relents And Gives GlassUp Access To Indiegogo Cash | Darrell Etherington | 2,013 | 8 | 15 | The , an ambitious that wanted to take the concept of Glass and make it more about passive consumption of content than about privacy-treading recording, video and photography, was in danger of losing a full third of its funding earlier today due to a PayPal rule, but is now on track again after the payments giant reversed its initial decision. In what was potentially a disastrous development for hardware companies and others that use Indiegogo to fund projects and collect money from backers to help devices enter production, PayPal had at first stated that any backing pledges made via its service would have to be withheld until GlassUp delivered its hardware to buyers. That’s fine and dandy when it comes to traditional e-commerce endeavours, where a product is generally shipped before someone is charged, but awkward when the whole point is to fund the creation of something that doesn’t exist with money freely offered up front. GlassUp had managed to raise over $100,000 when it found out that PayPal had locked its account and made a third of its funds (those pledged via PayPal, as opposed to the other payment methods on Indiegogo) unavailable to the creators, which understandable put a bit of a dent in their plans. The project still has some ways to go – it needs $50,000 more in just a week – and it turns out that the PayPal donations were turned off around a week ago, with GlassUp creator Francesco Giartosio finding out only when a prospective backer notified him that his pledged didn’t go through. PayPal has resolved the issue as of today, and offered the following statement to TechCrunch via a spokesperson: We looked into what was happening with GlassUp and corrected the situation earlier today. GlassUp now has access to all of the funds that they’ve raised on Indiegogo through PayPal. We think they are developing a fascinating product and don’t want to impede their innovation in any way. So from PayPal’s perspective, this was a simple screw-up and the company even goes out of its way to commend GlassUp’s “innovation.” But the fact remains that for up to a week PayPal had locked the GlassUp account, meaning it’s not clear where exactly the funding would be at this point had that not happened. GlassUp could still make its goal by the deadline, but there’s always a chance that future crowdfunding programs face similar difficulties. Perhaps the answer lies in looking elsewhere for handling pledges to these kinds of campaigns, but keeping PayPal off the list of available payment methods would definitely limit the ease with which contributors can offer up funds, so hopefully this issue helps make sure similar problems don’t happen with other projects down the road. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=os6bqbTo4Qs?feature=player_embedded] |
Perch Launches Video “Portal” Service For Distributed Teams | Frederic Lardinois | 2,013 | 8 | 15 | for iOS wants to help businesses build a persistent video portal between their offices to help teams work together more effectively. The service originally started out as an asynchronous video chat tool for families, but as the company’s CEO Danny Robinson told me yesterday, the team quickly realized that businesses would be the ideal market for this technology. Robinson officially unveiled the new version of Perch at Vancouver’s increasingly popular today. The idea here is that you can hang an iPad on the wall in a high-traffic area of an office (or just connect a cheap iPod touch to a larger screen), and whenever Perch’s face-recognition algorithms notice that somebody is standing in front of it, it will un-mute the microphone and let you talk to the team on the other side. The video, of course, is always live. As Robinson stressed, this tool is not meant to be a replacement for video-conferencing software. Instead, he believes that it can help teams bridge the culture gap between offices and locations. [vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/71929407 w=640&h=360] Besides the “office portal,” Perch can also be used for regular Skype-like one-on-one conversations. Just like Yammer, for example, you can register with your company email address and quickly set up a network for your company and then initiate conversations from there. One interesting twist here is that the address book regularly grabs images from all of the other people on the network (assuming they also have the app running), so you can always see when somebody else is available and what they are currently doing. The other nifty feature is that whoever you are trying to call will see your video feed before accepting the call, so you always have a chance to reject the request if it’s somebody you don’t want to talk to. As Robinson noted, his company is mostly seeing inbound interest from larger companies, while startups seem to be more reluctant to adopt it. Clearly, it would take a bit of a culture shift for individual remote workers at a startup to adopt this technology, so it makes sense that larger offices — where you don’t have an expectation of privacy anyway — would feel more comfortable with having this kind of persistent video portal on their walls. |
Dropbox Alternative Lima (Née Plug) Works With Chromecast, Breaks Into Kickstarter Tech Top 10 | Romain Dillet | 2,013 | 8 | 15 | It’s been a crazy 36 days since Plug its . First, Plug is now called due to some trademark issues. But everything else stays the same. The $69 adapter will seamlessly transform your USB drives into a personal Dropbox for all your devices. And now it will support . As a reminder, here’s how Lima works: you plug your router into the little adapter, as well as one or multiple USB drives. After that, you launch the app on your computer and then everything will go through Lima thanks to a deep filesystem integration. All your files will be moved to those drives and available on all your devices, at home or away. The only limit of this Dropbox alternative is the amount of storage space you have on your USB drives. Lima is actually a small Linux-based machine that creates a VPN network between your devices and the adapter. The overall experience feels a lot like browsing and using your Dropbox files, except that you can choose to cache some folders on your device or not — it works like the offline playlist button in Spotify. Finally, you don’t have to pay a subscription fee and you own your files since they are not stored in an Amazon S3 data center. Lima expects to deliver its adapters in December. For its new Google Chromecast feature, the company takes advantage of the SDK to stream media content to your TV using your phone or tablet. Music, photos and even videos should all work. For a little bit more than $100 ($69 + $35), you can stream everything that is on your computer from your sofa. “We automatically re-encode all the videos that are stored on Lima,” co-founder and CEO Séverin Marcombes tells me. “An h.264 version of each video will be kept in Lima’s cache.” That step was already necessary to allow Lima users to watch their videos on their phones and tablets — especially for iOS devices that can really only stream h.264 videos. The team just took it one step further by building Chromecast support into the iOS and Android apps. Even more impressive than the device itself is the . Back in July I wrote: “the Kickstarter campaign just started but its goal is pretty low. At $69,000, the Paris-based team will certainly attract a thousand backers to reach its goal.” It turns out that this sentence diminishes what the team has accomplished. In just 12 hours, Lima managed to shatter its $69,000 goal. In fact, with $858,000 and 24 days to go, the campaign is now the 10th Kickstarter campaign in the technology category. In this list, there are pretty well-known projects, such as Form1 and Oculus Rift. The question on everyone’s mind now is whether the campaign will break the $1 million barrier.
|
Wittlebee Co-Founder (And Former Myspace Exec) Sean Percival Joins Topix As VP Of Marketing | Anthony Ha | 2,013 | 8 | 12 | , who was most recently co-founder and CEO of children’s clothing subscription startup , has joined online discussion site as vice president of marketing. earlier this year due to fundraising trouble, and he said he’s taking a role at Topix that has been “vacant for a bit.” includes a stint as vice president of online marketing at Myspace (back in the good old days where they still capitalized the “S”), and director of content/content manager at Tsavo Media, docstoc, and Mahalo. I first became familiar with Percival as of LA startup gossip site , so I was surprised to hear that he’s moved up to the San Francisco Bay Area to take the job at Topix. “It was tough to leave LA, but the possibilities up here were just too hard to ignore any longer,” he told me via email. As for why he’s joining Topix in particular, Percival said he wanted to get back “into content and growth related product development,” adding, “Topix is the perfect match for that with its large foundation of millions of existing users and exciting opportunities for developing new verticals.” said earlier this year that it saw (thanks in part, one assumes to ), and it says it continues to be profitable. (Topix is also , so whenever I write about it there’s always someone popping up to talk about how much they hate it.) In addition to announcing Percival’s hire, Topix also says senior director of sales Laurie Hironaka has been promoted to vice president of sales. In the press release, CEO Chris Tolles said, “We now have the product, marketing and sales teams in place to complement our top tier engineering organization and drive growth in the next part of our story.” |
Watch Ashton Kutcher Blow Kids’ Minds With Steve Jobs Quotes In “Smart Is Sexy” Speech | Josh Constine | 2,013 | 8 | 12 | “The sexiest thing in the entire world is being really smart. And being thoughtful. And being generous. Everything else is crap!” Ashton Kutcher passionately shouted (yes, shouted) life advice at Nickelodeon viewers as he accepted a Teen Choice Award . Most spend award speeches thanking people yet Kutcher seemed hell-bent on enlightening kids with Steve Jobs’ philosophy “Build a life. Don’t live one!” Whether he’s trying or not, and whether you want to believe it or not, Ashton Kutcher is making a bid to be the voice of our generation. He’s not your average celebrity. Yes, Kutcher is rich, famous, and handsome, but as demonstrated with this speech, he’s also trying to make a difference in the world. He’s got a of following smart people, betting on great founders, and looking for companies solving big problems. That’s led him as and through his fund to put money into booming startups like Airbnb, Spotify, Fab, and Uber. Together, acting and investing have earned him a massive 14 million+ Twitter following for pushing his views. And that’s just what he did at the Teen Choice Awards. It’s not often you have to wait for throngs of teenage girls to stop screaming so you can deliver Steve Jobs quotes, but that was the scene. Kutcher clearly recognized his chance to talk to a younger audience, as he both outlined his speech before he started, and gave a recap at the end so the kids would remember it. That message, yelled with arms flailing? Be smart. Be thoughtful. Be generous. Don’t buy what the world is trying to sell you. Opportunity looks a lot like hard work. No job is beneath you on your path to success. Don’t surrender to life as it is. Rebuild it for yourself and others. The fact is that kids don’t get told this stuff enough. Let alone by someone they think is cool via mainstream media. If we want more engineers, more innovation, this needs to be curriculum, not cable television. Really, you just have to watch the video to understand why this and Ashton are a big deal. I wish someone shouted this stuff at me when I was 12. The good part starts at 1:42. |
How YouTube Network Big Frame Focuses On Big Stars With Four Vertical Brands | Ryan Lawler | 2,013 | 8 | 12 | Some YouTube networks focus on specific vertical interests — like gaming at Machinima or food at Tastemade. And some try to add a technology layer to the business, like ZEFR or Fullscreen. But at Big Frame, it’s all about the talent and nurturing four specific vertical segments, helping creators to collaborate and build their audiences together. Since being founded, Big Frame has signed some big-name YouTube channels, including Mystery Guitar Man, Life According To Jimmy, Tyler Oakley, DeStorm Power, Tay Zonday, and Laina. It’s also gathered talent together under four vertical channels — there’s , its network for innovative female creators; , which is a fashion-lifestyle vertical; , which is Big Frame’s LGBT vertical; and , its urban channel. The company wants to help YouTubers grow their audiences, give them best practices for production quality and the types of videos they should make. The company also helps them monetize by connecting them with advertisers for branded integration deals. And, for some of their bigger channels, Big Frame also directly manages the talent. For Big Frame, the company is looking for quality over quantity when evaluating which creators to have as part of the network. Check out our video interview with co-founder Sarah Penna to learn more about Big Frame. And then compare that with all the other videos we’ve done with other new media companies as part of our tour of YouTube’s new video ecosystem, every Monday and Wednesday over the next few weeks. Here are all the videos we’ve released so far: Here are the videos we’ve released so far: |
New App MyFab5 Wants To Offer Better Restaurant Recommendations By Nixing Reviews And Ratings | Catherine Shu | 2,013 | 8 | 15 | Restaurant discovery apps have become increasingly simple, all the better to cater to diners rendered indecisive by low blood sugar. signature gimmick is serving up new listings with a shake of your phone, while . The freshly launched , however, may be the most streamlined. The Web site and only lists the current top 5 restaurants in each category as ranked by users (or, as its motto puts it, “discover the best, forget about the rest”). Users can rank their favorite restaurants, agree or disagree with top 5 lists and leave short comments about each venue, but MyFab5 eliminates reviews and ratings entirely. MyFab5’s founders see it as an alternative for consumers who are tired of reading reviews on or distrustful of the algorithms used by recommendation engines like . The app, which launched last week, was founded by University of Michigan graduates Omeid Seirafi-Pour, Calvin Schemanski and John Gulbronson. The trio financed the development of MyFab5 through bootstrapping and grants from their alma mater, incubator program and the Michigan state government. CEO Seirafi-Pour says he came up with MyFab5’s concept while on the hunt for the best thin-crust pizza in Chicago. His online searches brought back a ton of reviews for restaurants specializing in the city’s signature deep-dish pie, but none of them told Seirafi-Pour exactly where he needed to go to satisfy his craving for the crispiest slice of thin-crust. Around the same time, he began working with a consulting company that helps Fortune 500 companies understand the review industry. “I got to learn that customers really want an easy-to-understand system instead of the frustration of having to read long reviews or deal with an inaccurate rating system,” says Seirafi-Pour. Schemanski adds that MyFab5 was designed to be intuitive by replicating the way people talk about their favorite restaurants. “No one turns to a friend and asks for a star rating or review,” says Schemanski. “The conversation always sounds something like ‘what’s a good place to get pizza in this town?’ or ‘this is my favorite place because it has great deep-dish pizza.'” MyFab5’s founders say its straightforward methodology will help it avoid the complaints that many small businesses have about sites like Yelp and Foursquare because there is little room for fake reviews or inflated rankings. In order to avoid sockpuppet accounts and ensure the accuracy of its lists, MyFab5 requires users to sign in with their Facebook accounts and is building an account-verification system for email signup that will possibly include phone-number verification. As MyFab5 gains user traction, it help restaurants see who their most loyal customers are, what items sell the best and who their main competitors are. MyFab5 is exploring a monetization strategy that uses its data to help restaurants target diners and figure out what kind of promotions to offer. “Small businesses don’t want to pay for an ad from Yelp or deals on Foursquare or Groupon,” says Seirafi-Pour. “They have deals already. What they want is a better way to distribute them.” |
From The Founders of .Co, Pop.Co Is A Fast, Simple Way To Launch Businesses Online | Anthony Ha | 2,013 | 8 | 12 | The behind the .co domain has been . Now its founders are trying to make it as easy as possible to start a business online with a new company called . Basically, Pop.co is a bundle of online services that should remove any barrier between coming up with a cool idea and building a web presence around that idea. This approach is particularly important in a future where entrepreneurs run “three or four micro-businesses at a time, easy come, easy go, and you don’t have to keep the domain forever,” said CTO Tom Lackner — he suggested you should even be able to set all this up from your smartphone. Lackner and CEO Juan Diego Calle gave me a quick demo of Pop.co. You just pick the .co address that you’re interested in (assuming it’s available, and if it’s not, Pop.co will suggest alternatives), then the company automatically claims it for you, and you can either use Pop.co’s simple web page editor to create the page with just a little bit of typing, or use its simple DNS editor to point the website to a page you’ve created on another service like LaunchRock or Barley. That approach, Lackner said, means that it’s easy to get started, but when someone needs a more sophisticated publishing system, “We don’t want to build a 200 person team to take on WordPress — I want to link to those other services.” Pop.co also signs users up for a Google Apps account at their .co address. Ultimately, Calle said he wants Pop.co to offer “a catalog of great apps that plug into your site immediately.” I wondered whether this whole “reduce friction” approach might encourage squatting on potentially valuable .co domains, but Calle argued that Pop.co’s payment structure (after a free trial period, users pay a $5 a month) encourages people to sign up when they’re starting an actual business, then return that domain to the general pool when and if they don’t need it anymore. Pop.co’s founders have invested $1 million in the company, and they’re currently splitting their time between Pop.co and .Co. Calle said the idea could eventually be expanded to include other top level domains too. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go claim anthony.co. |
The Mobile Tipping Point And Why Yahoo Must Mimic Groupon And Facebook | Alex Wilhelm | 2,013 | 8 | 12 | When Facebook announced in its report that 41 percent of its advertising revenue was generated by mobile usage, it was a watershed moment: The social company proved that it could monetize its increasingly on-the-go user base. Key to the 41 percent figure is that it was up 11 percent as a percentage of total revenue in a single quarter; the first quarter’s mobile share percentage was a now-modest 30 percent. The figure is important for Facebook as it indicates that as smartphones and tablets take increasing stature over the desktop Internet, Facebook as a business won’t be left behind. That shift threw Zynga into a downward spiral, for example. I ran the math and, given past average growth rates, Facebook could generate more advertising income on mobile than desktop . But growth could, of course, slow. There is a shift worth noting that is emerging in technology companies — born in the age of the desktop web — that are working to harness mobile usage to generate revenue: Reaching the tipping point of bringing in half their top line or more in mobile-derived incomes. To say that you are a “mobile-first” company is all well and good, but you one when your dollar flow is more mobile than not. Facebook, presuming another banner quarter, could cross that line soon in terms of its advertising revenues, but let’s not split hairs. Who else is edging close? Two firms that are form something of a cadre with Facebook: Groupon and Yelp. Facebook went public in mid 2012, Yelp in early 2012, and Groupon in late 2011. The companies are essentially IPO siblings. That fact gives us journalistic license to write a trend piece. You are welcome. Facebook brings in 41 percent of its ad dollars from mobile users. Yelp generates 40 percent of its . Groupon, it was revealed during a recent earnings call, derives almost half of its revenue from mobile usage. The Groupon number is the largest, and the broadest, encompassing all revenue, not merely advertising top line, making it the most interesting. As a public company, Groupon has been on a tear in the past few months. Since it fired its founder and CEO Andrew Mason, its stock . Since March. Some of that increase is certainly due to the executive shakeup, but its contain a separate narrative. Allow me a short self quote for the sake of brevity: Groupon today reported the appointment of Eric Lefkofsky as its CEO, Ted Leonsis as the Chairman of its board, revenue of $609 million in the second quarter, operating income of $59 million excluding stock compensation expenses, and non-GAAP earnings per share of $0.02. So, sans a few items, Groupon managed to eke out a per-share profit of a few pennies, and operating income worth around 10 percent of its total revenue, again in a non-GAAP sense. What’s interesting is how those numbers came about. Yes, Groupon generated half of that revenue from mobile usage (smartphones, essentially), but what does that mean for other Groupon revenue sources? MediaPost : “Direct email is now responsible for less than 40 percent of transactions in North America, the company says.” Direct email incomes are in decline — presumably revenue from direct email is correlated to transaction volume, which is heading down — and revenue is all but flat year over year? What plugs the hole? Mobile income, naturally. So, Groupon’s modest earnings beat is constructed firmly on the back of its growing mobile revenue. The same is true for Facebook, as you already know: Facebook’s mobile revenue grew by a quarter billion dollars in the second quarter. Not bad, given that as a percentage gain it works out to around 75 percent. And, perhaps more importantly, the $282 million figure is more than four times our previous $69 million sum [Note: That is the dollar figure for Facebook’s desktop advertising revenue growth during the second quarter]. Therefore, mobile ad revenues on a dollar basis grew four times as fast as desktop advertising incomes in the most recent quarter. These companies are finding material revenue support from mobile usage, as the desktop side of their business either slows, or in fact shrinks. Facebook, like Groupon, has been rewarded by investors with a buoyant stock. I’d posit that for modern Internet companies, the percentage of their total revenue that comes from mobile usage, and the rate by which that figure increases, are the two most important financial indicators that you can report (apart from profits and the like). They are not, in my view, to be dismissed as vanity metrics. And that brings us to Yahoo. Yahoo has very publicly plotted a course towards mobile. It is aggressively buying small firms comprised of mobile engineers, closeting their products, and plugging that talent into its own organization. Talent acquisition through corporate war. And it’s working, in case you hadn’t noticed. The company is coy, however, about how much money it brings in from mobile advertising; that revenue is the result of its mobile focus. Yahoo did not provide that metric in its most recent quarterly report, and declined to disclose it to TechCrunch via email. The question is a fun one: Like Facebook, Groupon, and other companies, is Yahoo seeing large new doses of income from its mobile efforts? As I , if Yahoo’s talent spree doesn’t drive revenue growth, the company is perhaps deploying funds that could be returned to shareholders, in one fashion or another, in perhaps not the most effective fashion. There’s a rule about financial metrics: If a company doesn’t disclose a figure, it’s because they either don’t want their competitors to know how big that number is, or they don’t want the press to know how small it is. In this case, I doubt the former is at play. That leaves the latter. I’m not picking on Yahoo. Instead, the company has enjoyed a simple fawning treatment in the media in its last year — more than partially deserved, I’d say — that should be tested and pushed back against at least lightly. Yahoo has managed to greatly expand its mobile usage. That is plain. The company, proud of those figures, : 340 million active mobile users at the end of the most recent quarter, 300 million the quarter before, and 200 million monthly mobile actives at the end of calendar 2012. So, that’s 70 percent growth in a half year. Impressive. That said, either Yahoo mobile usage isn’t monetizing incredibly fast, or it is not growing quickly enough to plug declining desktop advertising revenue. As part of its “Global Display” revenue, Yahoo counts mobile income. Or, as : “Display metrics include data for graphical and sponsorship units on Yahoo! Properties (including mobile).” That figure was down 2 percent in the most recent quarter, and has declined in each of the past eight quarters. However, there is a possibly green lining to those two facts: Advertising revenue decline is in decline itself. So the amount of money that Yahoo generates less per quarter is going down. It has all but stabilized. If that is true, and Yahoo’s now much larger mobile userbase hasn’t contributed, or not much, that’s a shame. But I don’t think that is the case. I suspect that Yahoo’s mobile strategy has in fact helped staunch declining advertising revenue. But not enough to shout about, it would seem, given the company’s reticence. — It’s interesting to watch companies older than say three or four years tack mobile. It’s not a simple maneuver, as Yahoo is demonstrating. However, to avoid pulling a Zynga, it isn’t much of an option, expect perhaps for companies that service enterprise activity that is inherently non-mobile. And that is a shrinking bucket. All told, Facebook, Groupon, and Yelp are blazing a trail for Yahoo. The question is now whether what Yahoo is (no, we’re not getting into that now) can be translated as well as those other firms into the language of mobile. That’s Mayer’s bet. We’ll know in a few quarters in which direction things are moving. |
CloudZync, (Yet) Another M-Payments Startup, Launches In London With 280 Retailers Willing To Give Its Wallet App A Go | Natasha Lomas | 2,013 | 8 | 12 | There’s no shortage of ways to pay for stuff involving a mobile phone, even if most people still reach for the coin in their pocket — rather than trying to grapple with or or or or stick their bank/credit card in someone else’s or . The future of money is a pretty flavourful place already and it hasn’t even properly arrived yet. In all this noise one thing’s for sure: more entrants and experimentation are inevitable before some kind of order emerges. Case in point: today another mobile payments player has elbowed in. U.K. startup CloudZync, founded in June last year, has just launched a wallet app called (on iOS and Windows Phone, with an Android app due later this year) that seeks to combine preloaded mobile payments with in-app loyalty schemes and a messaging space for customers and merchants to share info with each other — e.g. stuff like discounts and offers, from the merchant’s side, and details of a favourite drink or sandwich, from the customer’s. CloudZync co-founder and CTO, Andrew Smith, tells TechCrunch the problem this latest mobile payments startup is trying to fix is that existing payments systems aren’t actually broken — hence retailers’ sloth in adopting the various newfangled m-payments offerings. CloudZync’s premise is that a mobile payments offering therefore needs to more than just a conduit for payments in order to make it compelling enough for retailers to get behind it. It’s not the only m-payments startup thinking along those lines — another that springs to mind is . And of course Apple added a loyalty scheme/mobile ticketing hub to iOS last year with its feature (fully-fledged mobile payments not included, however). Smith said CloudZync has spent a lot of time over the past year talking to merchants, small and large, about what they want from “mobile technologies”, broadening the query beyond just payments. The resulting app is, he says, a “personal communications channel” between customer and merchant which also offers a payment facility — by allowing consumers to pre-load money onto their Zync Wallet which can be spent later via the app. “The payments industry already works… I can quite easily pay with cash, I can pay with cards as they are, so mobile really needs to be an evolution of payments — add extra value to that particular process. Just being able to pay on a mobile phone isn’t enough,” he says. “Because of this we started to look at the different things that are important to a business at the point of check-out — such as deals, such as personalised deals, such as loyalty schemes.” The app includes a personalised pinboard where merchants’ deals, vouchers and messages can be displayed to customers. CloudZync’s merchants’ service also includes a white label loyalty scheme so retailers can set up, brand and manage their own loyalty scheme within the app. How does Zync Wallet work for consumers wanting to make payments? The app is unlocked with a PIN code, and the user then selects an option to make a payment, which brings up a QR code for the retailer to scan. The retailer of course needs to be using the corresponding merchants’ Zync Wallet terminal app to accept payments. This app allows them to verify the buyer’s identity by checking they match their Zync Wallet account photo ID. (Attaching a photo to your Zync Wallet is currently optional in version one of the app but Smith said users will be required to upload a photo of themselves in future versions, arguing it’s an anti-fraud safeguard that merchants are likely to appreciate.) Because consumers preload money onto the app there are no credit or debit card fees for the merchant to process — which presumably makes CloudZync’s system more attractive than similar mobile payment offerings from banks and credit card companies that levy standard payments companies’ fees. Not that CloudZync is fee-less: it gives merchants two options to pay for using its service — either a basic pay-as-you-go package or a monthly subscription. For merchants, the PAYG option means they pay purely for each completed transaction (with the fee ranging from 5p per transaction for up to 5,000 transactions per month, to 1p if they push 5,000+ monthly payments through the app), and don’t get any of the ‘value add’ business services. Ergo, it’s just a way to take mobile payments. Or merchants can opt in to CloudZync’s full business service package — getting all the additional services, such as the messaging facility, loyalty scheme option and ability to push offers at app users — for a monthly fee that starts at £40 (+VAT) for the entry level package. Why should consumers use this app to pay when cash/card is apparently convenient enough already? Because Zync Wallet’s merchant customers will encourage them to do so, argues Smith — by touting the deals and discounts they will be offering via the app. CloudZync is thus co-opting its business customers into marketing the (free) consumer version of the app for it — which is probably a better bet than trying to convince consumers to abandon their entrenched cash and card habit and use (yet another) app instead. CloudZync says it has signed up 280 merchants in London for launch — ranging from coffee sellers to beauticians, hairdresser and personal trainers — although it’s not clear how many of those early adopters are subscription fee-payers vs ‘give it a go’ PAYG users. For now, CloudZync says only that it’s planning to scale up and take Zync Wallet nationwide within three months. The startup has previously raised seed funding but is not disclosing how much it’s backed by thus far, or who it’s investors are. Smith will say only that it’s currently looking to raise a Series A. Despite the initial focus on the U.K., he claims CloudZync has grand ambitions. “At the moment our target is the U.K… but the infrastructure that we’ve built is built entirely to roll out across the globe — so we’re already looking at rolling out into the US, Canada and other areas,” he adds. |
Anthony Weiner Has No Idea Why He Didn’t Use Snapchat Either | Alex Wilhelm | 2,013 | 8 | 12 | Today during a session with , New York mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner was asked why he didn’t use Snapchat during his infamous sexting campaign with half the single women of the United States. His answer will rest immortal: “I don’t have a good answer to that.” It isn’t clear whether Weiner is simply unaware of what Snapchat is, or whether he feels foolish that we have all seen so much of his genitalia, and that it could have been avoided with a simple app download. Then again, Carlos Danger ain’t afraid of no digital paper trail. And where’s the fun in knowing you won’t get caught, right? Unless Snapchat doesn’t, you know, . As soon as we have the clip, we’ll post it here. |
Stantt Uses Body-Scan Data To Create A Shirt For Every Body Type | Stephanie Yang | 2,013 | 8 | 12 | Clothing brands have begun using body-scan data to tweak their clothing sizes and to help customers find the right fit. But is taking this method further by creating sizes from the ground up. With 50 different sizes modeled after body scans, Stantt wants to provide a quick and cheap alternative to custom-tailored clothing. Stantt founder Matt Hornbuckle started by scanning the bodies of more than 1,000 men ranging in age from 25 to 35. Each scan was composed of about 200 body measurements. He narrowed these down to three main measurements that would determine how well a shirt would fit: chest width, waist width and arm length. Using the data collected, Hornbuckle created each new size from digital models of various body builds. Right now, use to find or manufacture a size. The difference with Stantt is it uses already collected data to predict potential body types. Instead of taking your own body scan, you can measure yourself at home and enter in the three numbers. Stantt also already has sizes constructed based on these measurements, so you won’t need to wait for the actual production of the shirt. To order a Stantt shirt, customers enter their measurements, and the corresponding size will ship right away. After comparing his data to popular brands, Hornbuckle says he found that standard small, medium and large sizes only fit about 15 percent of men. But Stantt isn’t looking to take on large consumer brands. “If you look at some of the big stores out there where a lot of guys shop, their casual shirts have 50 different styles, with six to seven sizes, and those numbers add up in a big way.” Hornbuckle tells me. “What we’re focusing on is a line of being really simple and straightforward. We’re going to focus on just the essentials.” Hornbuckle also faces competition from startups who are making custom-tailored clothing much more accessible and affordable. For example, sends “outfitters” to take 12 personal measurements, determine the right size and deliver a custom-made shirt. Another company, , makes custom-fitted polo shirts, based on height, weight, body type and waist size. After trying on some sample shirts, you can tweak the fit online and then start ordering. Both these options are able to offer more styles and customization options for cuffs, pockets, colors and more. But they also take time and effort to finesse the fit. Hornbuckle says his solution makes shopping easier for men, with measurements they can take themselves and no waiting for clothes to be custom manufactured. Hornbuckle says he recognizes that supplying shirts in 50 different sizes to ship immediately is a lot of hassle for production. That’s why he is starting the Kickstarter off with five simple options: a standard button-down shirt for $98 in three colors and a polo shirt for $68 in two. Stantt is planning to offer other styles and garments based on demand. You can check out their campaign . [vimeo 71741786 w=620 h=348] from on . |
Facebook Acquires “Mobile Technologies”, Developer Of Speech Translation App Jibbigo | Josh Constine | 2,013 | 8 | 12 | Facebook’s latest acquisition could help it connect users across language barriers. It has just announced that the team and technology of Pittsburgh’s , a speech recognition and machine translation startup that developed the app . From voice search to translated News Feed posts, Facebook could to a lot with this technology. Facebook tells me “We’ll continue to support the [Jibbigo] app for the time being.” Jibbigo launched in 2009, and allows you to select from over 25 languages, record a voice snippet in that language or type in some text, and then get a translation displayed on screen and read aloud to you in a language of your choosing. This made and useful companions for travelers and international health care workers. Why fumble with a phrase book when you could just bring an app with you? Through purchasable offline translator packs, Jibbigo made money by letting users understand foreign speech without the need for a data or wifi connection. “Members of the MT team will join our engineering teams here in Menlo Park” Facebook tells me, implying some might not be joining the social network’s ranks. Facebook refused to specify exactly how many people were joining it from Mobile Technologies which was founded in 2001, or the terms of the deal. Considering it had never raised outside funding, the acquisition is likely a sizable financial win for Mobile Technology’s founders. Facebook’s Tom Stocky wrote in a “I’m excited to announce that we’ve agreed to acquire Mobile Technologies, a company with an amazing team that’s behind some of the world’s leading speech recognition and machine translation technology.” The Jibbigo team writes “Facebook, with its mission to make the world more open and connected, provides the perfect platform to apply our technology at a truly global scale.” Facebook could do big things with this new tech. It could one day power cross-language chat, voice translation for traveling Facebook users, or help it take News Feed posts written in one language and display them in another. Another possibility is that Facebook wants to offer voice Graph Search, considering . Facebook is currently trying to expand the feature beyond English, and could probably use a little help. Facebook previously worked on translating News Feed posts and comments thanks to help from , which also . Bringing translation technology in-house could give it the control needed to make translation a more core part of the Facebook experience. Part of Facebook’s mission has long been making the world more connected. A huge obstacle to that connection is the diversity of languages we speak and type. If Facebook can find a way to surmount this hurdle and allow us to communicate despite our different tongues, it could promote greater racial and international tolerance. It could also help advertisers reach a much wider audience without doing extra work. Doctor Who author Andrew Smith once said “People fear what they don’t understand.” Thanks to Mobile Technologies, Facebook could be one step closer to turning science fiction into a reality while helping us grow closer as a species. |
In Wake Of Teen Suicides, Ask.fm Faces A “Myspace” Problem | Sarah Perez | 2,013 | 8 | 12 | The teenage brain is not fully developed, say . Specifically, the part of the brain called the frontal lobe, which houses judgment, insight, dampening of emotions, and impulse control. This is relevant in a discussion about building companies that target young adults, especially if those sites are social media outlets where users are allowed to participate anonymously, share positive and negative feelings, react to posts made by others, and otherwise quickly publicize any idle thought that comes to mind. And we need to have this discussion, calmly and rationally, because it’s clear social media websites play some role in pushing those susceptible to to take desperate measures. We need to address this situation, but not with the goal of blaming the Internet or social media or individual outlets, or sometimes even the bullies who can often just be children, too, making mistakes of their own. We need to think about: whether sites that ignore these problems can be sustainable businesses; whether there are ways to do things differently; and whether we could do more to help children left to wander throughout the web — and all its good and bad parts — quite so alone. The latest example, and current Internet whipping boy, is . The wildly service among teens (and those even younger who lie about their ages), is by the parents of 14-year old Hannah Smith who recently took her own life after receiving abusive messages from other users on the site: “drink bleach”; “go get cancer”; and “go die” among other things. Sadly, Hannah’s suicide is one of many suicides linked to Ask.fm as a result of being bullied by other Ask.fm users — typically children whom the suicide victims know. In December, 16-year old Floridian was found dead in her home after bullying on Ask.fm — one commenter had even asked “can you kill yourself already?” Others had her “fat” and “a loser.” Fifteen-year-old Ciara Pugsley of Dromahair, Ireland, , was on the site who her “slut” and “ugly.” She took her own life in September 2012. 15-year old Canadian teen in October, after online and offline bullying, and blackmail over inappropriate photos. , who faced vicious bullying about her weight and looks, committed suicide the next month. Then her sister Shannon, who missed Erin deeply, in December 2012, extending that family’s personal tragedy. Each news outlet retold these families’ personal devastations as cyberbullying cautionary tales, and Ask.fm as the enabler. Our hearts break for these teens and their families, and in the wake of tragedies like this, humans have an instinctual need to place blame. But is Ask.fm at fault, and if so, to what extent? There are two arguments that can be made regarding Ask.fm’s situation. One, of course, is that the site could and do more: more moderators, more reporting tools, more site-wide user bans. Less anonymous trolling. At the very least, anonymity should not be the default, says Patti Agatston, Ph.D. and co-author of . “Sites that offer the opportunity for anonymous queries should not be anonymous by default, but rather should allow questions and comments with identities shown by default. A user would have to actively change their default preferences if he or she wishes to allow anonymous questioning,” she says. “This would offer some protection for vulnerable youth since such sites typically allow users as young as 13.” However, Agatston adds that shutting down Ask.fm wouldn’t solve any problems, as other sites will pop up to take its place. What we really need to do is better educate children about how to navigate social media, as well as social situations offline. The other argument is that the site does provide adequate controls: The ability to accept anonymous questions can be switched off; questions aren’t published unless a user chooses to answer; and it offers a “report” button where users can report abuse to moderators. Plus, this argument continues, those at blame for the fallout from cyberbullying are and not the platforms where the bullying occurs. The Ask.fm problem is not at all new. It is not the first, and certainly not the largest, platform to deal with challenges of bad behavior online and the consequences — sometimes quite tragic — it entails. Those with longer memories may remember another prominent social network that once faced the same finger-pointing that Ask.fm now does: Myspace. This network, too, became for , particularly for the bizarre case where . Eventually, the panic around cyberbullying, investigations into sexual assaults linked to Myspace users, and high-profile decrees from then to improve safety standards on the site damaged the site’s reputation. And as the perception of Myspace changed, so did the business. Newcomers Twitter and Facebook targeted Myspace users looking for an out (Facebook with richer privacy tools) as advertisers fled. News coverage helped spread the message that Myspace was a place for kids, and Myspace had to turn its efforts toward user safety and away from innovation. More importantly, it lost its “cool” factor. The crowd moved on, and . Today, it lingers on, seemingly only . The stain of association became too difficult to remove for Myspace. And now Ask.fm is riding out a similar trajectory with a financial impact of its own: , including Save the Children (which is leading a boycott), eBay, Vodafone and BT. Ask.fm may not be any more to blame than Myspace was, or user forums and bulletin boards were in the pre-social media days. But it is increasingly being perceived as the new dangerous playground for children, and it’s facing a crossroads all the same: Clamp down on the free-for-all and risk losing the fickle teens now , or continue as is, even if the reputation — and revenue possibilities — suffer? Perhaps a better idea, if one that may come too late for Ask.fm, is to have the foresight to think about these kinds of problems before launching a new social network. One service that has taken this approach is newcomer , . The service looks a lot like the online website , except that users can socialize around the confessions — yes, even anonymously. The difference is that Whisper takes its role seriously in enabling a younger, perhaps sometimes even emotionally fragile, audience to have productive and positive discussions about their issues. The service quickly bans accounts in violation of its community policies around abuse. Co-founder Michael Heyward estimates that trolling content is gone in less than a minute and a half, in fact. In addition, the company is associated with which it refers to those who post suggestive or “triggering” thoughts, specifically if they’re sharing messages related to self-harm, such as suicide. Heyward recently his position on these, saying that a lot of those building social media sites are unwilling to make short-term sacrifices for long-term viability of the business. The services then become addicted to the traffic, he says, the story of Myspace’s fall from grace fresh on his mind. “They’re not willing to do anything that even remotely alienates a small amount of the audience, or that’s going to affect their daily numbers.” That statement could also be a subtle jab at Ask.fm, which has benefitted from the Wild West nature of its service, where , and policies around prohibiting abuse (“ “) are obviously not enforced. But Ask.fm’s CEO and founder Ilja Terebin seems more caught off-guard by the fallout as of late, rather than more deviously hoping to profit from the free-for-all, teen-angst-fueled drama. “We understand we have to be responsible for our users,” , but admitted he didn’t know what he could have done differently. He upheld his belief that Ask.fm has done nothing wrong. The company is now on PR lockdown. Humans seem to operate better when things can be neatly placed into boxes and viewed in black and white, but the issue of cyberbullying, self-harm, teen suicide, and social networking sites’ role in all that is not one where answers come easily. But we do need to acknowledge that, of all the social media users out there, children and teens are the least able to think through the potential consequences of their actions, which does perhaps place responsibility on platform makers to have moderation, abuse reporting ( ) and content policies in place — especially when anonymity is an option. And maybe before the next Twitter, or Myspace, or Ask.fm comes along, the founders could take a minute to ponder whether or not there’s a better way to do this. One where user safety can be built in from the start, without losing the cool factor that draws users — and often the very young — to its service in the first place. |
Google Drive Now Lets You Spellcheck Entire Documents At Once, Adds Customizable Lists | Frederic Lardinois | 2,013 | 8 | 12 | We haven’t seen any groundbreaking updates to Google Drive’s productivity tools lately, but the company continues to regularly make to them. Today, it’s a new spellcheck mode and more customizable numbered and bulleted lists for those “who love structure.” The new spellcheck mode will look familiar to those who grew up in the age before real-time spellcheck became the standard (or who still use this mode in Word, for example). With it, you can check the spelling of the entire document or presentation at once. To get started, just head for “tools” and then select “spelling.” A small window will pop up on the side of the screen, and you can change or ignore all those unfortunate typos in your document. As for the new customizable bulleted lists, Google says you can now “change the color, size, and style of individual bullets, or even customize your own — whatever you prefer!” The most useful feature here is probably the ability to change individual bullets so you can mark certain items as done, for example. Just last week, Google Drive added an to its feature set, and it also recently improved . |
Week One With The Misfit Shine — A Hands-On Review From Someone Who Hates Most Activity Trackers | Colleen Taylor | 2,013 | 8 | 12 | Fitness is a very personal thing, so when it comes to the ever-expanding market of activity tracking gadgets, it always helps to hear what exactly different people love or hate about a given device when trying to assess if it’s the right one for you. It’s kind of like why is good for restaurant reviews — it helps to get details from lots of different people when coming to your own conclusions. So when I kept hearing , my coworker here who heads up the programming for TechCrunch TV, talk about her brand new device, I dragged her in front of the camera to discuss it in-depth and provide us with on what the experience is like. Felicia says she never considered herself to be an activity tracker type of person — she hates wearing things around her wrist, for starters — so to have her get so into using the Misfit Shine has been fascinating to watch. The Shine just hit the shelves of Apple stores , but Felicia had her device since she funded Misfit’s . Watch the video embedded above to see Felicia using the Shine during her daily jogs and dog walks, check out the “pretty” software that Felicia says has made her practically addicted to opening the Shine app, and hear Felicia talk about several of the downsides of the gadget and app that keep her from giving the Shine experience a 10 out of 10 rating. |
Elon Musk’s Hyperloop Explained: A Technically Possible Sci-Fi Dream He’s Too Busy To Work On Right Now | Darrell Etherington | 2,013 | 8 | 12 | Elon Musk, the extravagant entrepreneur know for his futurey projects, has explained his Hyperloop project to ahead of publishing his blog post and holding his press conference today. It’s an ambitious project that borders on the crazy. This is the guy who built Tesla Motors and SpaceX, but he actually says he regrets bringing Hyperloop up to begin with and says it’s up to someone else to build it. “I wish I had not mentioned it,” he’s quoted as saying in the Businessweek article. “I still have to run SpaceX and Tesla, and it’s fucking hard.” The Hyperloop does indeed sound hard, and expensive, but it’s the alternative to a $70 billion high-speed rail plan that’s been widely criticized already, and that one’s going into production. The Hyperloop features tubes with a low level of pressurization that would contain pods with skis made of the SpaceX alloy inconel, which is designed to withstand high pressure and heat. Air exiting those skis through tiny holes would create an air cushion on which the pods would ride, and they’d be propelled by air jet inlets. And all of that would cost only around $6 billion, according to Musk. Musk’s project has a number of advantages over the current high-speed rail plan in terms of economics, and it’s meant to be built above ground on pylons that mean it wouldn’t require purchasing of huge tracts of land or uprooting of farms and other infrastructure. It also eliminates ambient noise problems, Musk says in his detailed plans, and minimizes derailment risks. It’s also self-powered thanks to solar panels placed along the top of the pod-containing tube’s length. One potential sour note: Musk says in his prospectus that security checks akin to those made by the TSA at airports would be de rigueur for Hyperloop travel. I’m not going to try to pin down the physics; , and they’ve spoken to a preeminent physicist who says it’s all feasible (and adds it would be “cool” if the tubes were transparent). Perhaps the best summary of it all is what Valleywag’s Sam Biddle has to say about it on Twitter: https://twitter.com/samfbiddle/status/367022858465054721 Musk’s on the subject is live now on his blog (direct link to the , which will apparently be ), and it’s also meaty reading. On a conference call describing the system, Musk did say that he wanted to at least create a small-scale demonstration prototype to hand off to someone else. But the bottom line is that Musk came up with something that he has no intention to build, and that sounds incredibly hard to build, and will probably remain firmly imaginary. Fun. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkGMY63FF3Q?feature=player_embedded&w=640&h=360] |
Sony’s Crazy Plan To Improve Mobile Photos Involves Making Attachable Cameras For Phones | Chris Velazco | 2,013 | 8 | 12 | While Samsung and Nokia (and everyone else really) are locked in a sort of mobile photography war by baking elaborate cameras into new smartphones, Sony is apparently testing a slightly different approach. Rather than cramming a high-end camera into a phone, the folks at have happened upon a set of photos that depict a pair of Sony “lens cameras” that latch onto your smartphone instead. This isn’t the first time Sony’s curious camera phone attachments have popped up — they were the earlier this year — but now we’ve got a clearer picture of what these things are actually capable of. At first glance, the hefty things don’t seem too different from some other smartphone accoutrements out there right now, but their looks are deceiving. See, the attachments don’t actually augment your phone’s built-in camera so much as they replace them entirely. That’s the weird thing about what Sony has cooked up: They’re more than just a lens, but they’re not quite a standalone camera, either. Instead, the devices float in the limbo between both of those things and relies wholly on a smartphone to actually make it usable. According to the SonyAlphaRumors’ report, everything — from the 18- or 20-megapixel sensor to the image processor to the SD card slot — is packed into those barrels while the phone it’s connected to acts as the viewfinder. For what it’s worth, Sony’s rationale seems at least partially defensible. So long as companies like Samsung, Apple, HTC, and even Sony want to duke it out over how thin they can make their smartphones, they also need to figure out how to continuously improve those mobile cameras while keeping heft to a minimum (unless they temporarily lose their minds). By moving the lion’s share of the hardware outside of the chassis completely, Sony gets to continue trying to push the envelope on camera performance without having to worry about the impact all that extra hardware has on the aesthetics of a new phone. And since these lens cameras aren’t tied into one specific device, Sony could see continued sales of the things even after consumers ditch their old phones for new ones. It’s definitely a strange approach, but it’s also pretty smart. As we all know, though, being smart doesn’t necessarily translate into being successful, and there are plenty of reasons why something like this wouldn’t catch on. You’ve got to carry around another gizmo for one, and the potential price tag could cause would-be mobile photogs to balk (especially when decent point-and-shoots are getting stupidly cheap). It shouldn’t be long before these lens cameras start trickling into the wild, so we’ll soon see if Sony is actually onto something here. |
Google’s Bug Bounty Program Has Now Paid Out Over $2M, Increases Some Chromium Rewards To $5K | Frederic Lardinois | 2,013 | 8 | 12 | Google’s bug bounty program, the company today , has now paid out more than $2 million to security researchers. Since the program launched three years ago, the company rewarded researchers for reporting more than 2,000 security bugs in and its . About $1 million of this prize money went to researchers who reported Chromium-related issues and the other million to researchers who looked into its web apps. With today’s announcement, the company is also significantly raising the reward for some reports. “Bugs previously rewarded at the $1,000 level will now be considered for reward at up to $5,000,” Google’s “masters of coin” Chris Evans and Adam Mein write in today’s announcement. More significant threats, of course, come with higher rewards ( ), and Google decided these on a case-by-case basis. Researchers who provide a patch with their bug reports, for example, are eligible for . Today’s announcement followed a in its web vulnerability program, which now pays $7,500 for cross-site scripting bugs and $5,000 for Gmail and Google Wallet bugs, as well as authentication bypasses. The basic reward level for web app bugs is $3,133.70 (up from $500) There is clearly some money in reporting bugs. Facebook just made a similar a week ago. The social network says its Bug Bounty program has now paid out more than $1 million. Microsoft, which had long resisted the idea of a security bounty program, recently gave in and (with bounties of up to $100,000). |
Hackermeter Wants To Kill Your Résumé And Replace It With A High Score | Greg Kumparak | 2,013 | 8 | 12 | If you’re looking to hire a bad-ass programmer, fielding résumés can start to feel like an exercise in futility. They’re good for quickly filtering out folks who are clearly applying to — but when everyone in the industry has some crazy made-up senior ninja/rockstar/space cadet title, when considers themselves a coder, and when “Proficient with C” can mean two different things based on a person’s ego, that’s about all they’re good for. , part of the most recent Y Combinator class, thinks they have a better alternative: a coder score. Hackermeter is based around the concept of coding challenges. The better you perform on each challenge, the higher your score. The higher your score, the more enticing you’ll be to a potential employer. When you first sign up for Hackermeter, you’re given the choice: developer or employer? As a developer, Hackermeter initially presents itself as a set of around a dozen challenges for you to pick from. On one end, you’ve got your basics: can you make a fibonacci sequence generator? Can you determine if a string is a palindrome? On the other end, you’ve got the tougher stuff: can you recursively parse a chunk of JSON to look for a very specific type of data structure? Can you test for limitations in a lightweight cryptography model? Each challenge can be completed in one of five languages: Ruby, Python, Java, C++, or C. You type and test your code right in the browser (more on that in a second), submitting it once you feel it’s up to snuff. Once you’ve submitted a code sample that successfully tackles the challenge at hand, it goes in your portfolio, and your score changes accordingly. As an employer, you’re able to search through the coders in Hackermeter’s database, with Hackermeter attempting to automatically pair you with developers best suited for a job. Looking for a hard-core Python expert? Filter your search to those who’ve completed the harder challenges using Python. Want an entry-level Rubyist? Disable the difficulty filter, flip on the Ruby filter, and you’ve got your list. Once you’ve found a few coders who fit the bill, you can send them messages — or, if you’re still not quite sure about their coding talents, send them a “screening.” Screenings are sets of custom-built, rapid-fire coding challenges built by each employer. You can use Hackermeter’s pre-provided challenges, or build your own. You set the time limit, determine how many challenges (if any) can be skipped, then fire your screening off to those you’re interested in hiring. The most obvious issue, of course, is… well, Google. If you can write a test, someone else can put the answers up online. Ta-da! With a pinch full of the Googles and a fistful of copy/paste, everyone is an expert. But remember when I mentioned that you’re expected to write your code through Hackermeter’s built-in code editor? That’s why. Employers can play back your coding, keystroke-by-keystroke. If you dump the correct answer to the challenge into the editor in one swift paste, it’d be pretty obvious that you looked it up (or, more innocently, that you wrote it all up in your editor of choice — but you’re not supposed to be doing that.) A bit creepy? Sure — but it’s not really all that different from the live code interviews that most big companies do anyway. At this point, I’ve got two main gripes with the site: Will Hackermeter kill off the résumé, or otherwise turn the entire coder-hiring process upside down? Probably not —effective or not, résumés are an institutional building block, the heartbeat of a billion HR departments (and beyond the résumé, the best coders are often hired through very well-paid referrals and cut-throat poaching). But it’s an interesting approach, and with good developers being harder and harder to find — and more expensive to hire — every day, one that I’d imagine many companies would be willing to try. And if you’re a developer who can’t find a job, putting your face and skill set in front of more employers is a bad thing. is free to developers, with would-be employers paying a commission per hire. |
Last Chance To Sign Up For Hardware Alley At Disrupt SF | John Biggs | 2,013 | 8 | 12 | Every year I’m given the best job a guy could ever want: planning hardware alley, a one day extravaganza of some of the best hardware I’ve ever seen. This event, which happens on the last day of Disrupt, is a crowd favorite and I’d love to feature your gear. What is Hardware Alley? It’s a celebration of hardware startups (and other cool gear makers) that features everything from robotic drones to 3D printers. We try to bring in an eclectic mix of amazing exhibitors and I think you’ll agree that our previous We’d like you to register as a Hardware Alley exhibitor. You’ll get to exhibit on the last day of Disrupt SF, Sept 11, to show off your goods and get access to some of the most interesting people (and most interesting VCs) in the world. We’d love to have you. All you need to demo is a laptop. TechCrunch provides you with: 30″ round cocktail table, linens, table top sign, inclusion in program agenda and website, exhibitor WiFi, and press list. To find out more please .
You can reserve your spot by purchasing a . If you can’t attend Disrupt but would like to demo on the final day use promo code: H@rdwareSF13-1day. If you are Kickstarting your project now or bootstrapping, please contact me at john@beta.techcrunch.com with the subject line “HARDWARE ALLEY.” I will do my best to accommodate you. Hope to see you in SF! |
Google Glass Update Adds Video Player, Voice Actions For Path And Evernote, And New Cards | Darrell Etherington | 2,013 | 8 | 12 | Google has added some new features to Glass in the for its experimental face-based computing device. There’s a new video player with simple tap to start/pause, swipe to fast forward and rewind commands, and new voice commands for posting an update or taking a note that uses Path or Evernote glassware by default if you have them installed. Google has chosen these partners based on opportunity it seems, and promises that there will be more supported Glassware apps that can use these and other new default voice actions in time. So presumably, once Facebook offers a Glass app that does more than just photo sharing, you’ll be able to select that as the default option for posted updates, though it isn’t exactly clear how things will work beyond Path and Evernote just yet. Google also added a new Volume control card in settings, and made it possible to check your timeline and use other features of Glass while on an active video call. This mutes your camera and closes down your POV video feed, until you return the call to the foreground. Also new are contextual voice commands while navigating for hands free operation, voice captioning for photos and videos and the ability to add hashtags to both as well, voice commands that are better at recognizing strings of things at once, better SMS support that shows you messages sent from your phone as well as Glass, and some new Google Now cards. The new cards include reservations drawn from your Gmail, nearby movie showtimes with posters, public alerts and the ability to send birthday messages for birthday reminder cards. Once again, Google has dropped a whole slew of new features in a Glass update, and it really does look like it’s moving forward with making this a more generally usable product. All the updates so far have focused on features that will either make the experience of using Glass more natural, or make Glass more feature-rich for everyday activities. Whether or not that’s going to result in a product that normal people actually want to wear on their heads remains to be seen. |
null | Darrell Etherington | 2,013 | 8 | 15 | null |
New ‘Listiclock’ Campaign With Pepsi Shows BuzzFeed Really Has A List For Every Second Of The Day | Anthony Ha | 2,013 | 8 | 13 | If you have any doubt that has published a crazy amount of lists over the years, well, check out the front page right now and click on the “Clock Mode” button at the top of the page. Doing so will bring up the “ ,” which was created for a campaign to promote Pepsi’s new soda . (Pepsi’s agency OMD was also involved.) Every hour, minute, and second on the clock points to a BuzzFeed list that uses the same number — so for example, when I took a screenshot at 10:46:11, the hour display pointed to “10 Pictures of Henry the Flying Baby,” the minute display to “46 Photos of Christina Hendricks”, the second display to “11 Baby Animals Who Fell Asleep During ‘Lincoln’.” (Yep, .) Every 10 minutes, the minute display will show a list that’s specifically sponsored by Pepsi — apparently, these lists are supposed to be “‘unbelievable,’ fun, and amazing” but aside from a few mentions of Pepzi Next, I’m not sure most readers will be able to detect a big difference between a normal BuzzFeed list and sponsored piece like “ .” Josh Nafman, Pepsi’s senior digital brand manager, said described this as a way to bring “true entertainment and great content” to consumers: “That’s the way brands have to go, rather than hitting them over the head with advertising.” I asked Nafman if he had any favorites , but he admitted that after approving every single list that showed up in the clock, it’s a bit of a blur. This isn’t the first time BuzzFeed has offered a new way to navigate the site as part of an ad campaign, either — a couple of months ago , which was promoting GE Aviation’s presence at the Paris Air Show. BuzzFeed President and COO Jon Steinberg told me that ideas often pass back-and-forth between the company’s ad side and editorial side, and that he’s actually interested in exploring a non-sponsored, desktop version of the Listiclock. “You can actually sit back and have a leanback BuzzFeed experience, letting the front page do the owrk for you in some ways,” he said. “Depending on the reception for this maybe we’ll try to make it more permanent type thing.” |
Om Malik, Father Of Tech News Blogging, American Citizen | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,013 | 8 | 13 | is good people. He is also as of today, after a cornucopia of visas and a decade as a Green Card holder, an American citizen. For those of you not familiar with Om Malik, he happens to be one of the forefathers of professional tech news blogging, when he realized he was seeing more engagement on his personal website than at his Business 2.0. Like many immigrants, his journey is inspiring: After graduating with a chemistry degree from St. Stephens College in New Delhi, Malik got his start in the news business as a typesetter in India, and worked his way up to a reporter position at — based out of New York. While he’s come to be known as a writer of technology analysis, Malik is the first blogger to have covered , and the of TechCrunch’s acquisition by Aol. And . As weird as it sounds, a common dictum around TechCrunch is, “Write every post thinking that Om is your audience.” Our aspirational audience was naturalized this morning, taking his Oath of Allegiance at the Paramount Theatre in Oakland, California. The group was “a rainbow of colors,” according to Malik, and, in a divergence from current , not all engineers. “We all looked so different from each other,” he told me over the phone. “All a representation of what an immigrant wants and dreams of.” When asked why it took him a relatively long time , instead of just renewing his Green Card, he replied, “I just knew it was time.” Malik, as he outlines in , takes a more holistic and nuanced approach to immigration reform. He believes that a combination of education and revamped immigration laws will have the most impact on the undocumented workers who reside outside Silicon Valley. “Everybody has a different interpretation of immigration problems and it’s a highly personal experience,” he told me, “If anyone tells you there is a uniform solution to it, there isn’t. As far as I’m concerned, it worked for me. And I don’t know how to fix the problem.” When asked if he personally had experienced immigration challenges, he replied, “I chose not to remember any of that.” And further, “It was all worth it. You have no idea how happy I am.” Did he have any advice for immigrants just starting on their path to American citizenship? “Just do the right thing day in and day out, that is the only way that you can feel like you deserve to live here.” Malik underscores the fact that it’s taken him two decades to figure it out, “There’s only one way to succeed: Show up, work hard, and do everything right. Regardless of who you might be or what kind of job you may have.” |
India’s Accelerator GSF Graduates A New Batch Attacking Everything From Trip Planning To ECGs | Kim-Mai Cutler | 2,013 | 8 | 13 | , an incubator endeavoring to become a “TechStars” for India and the developing world, just graduated its second batch of startups covering everything from trip planning in South Asia to CRM to cheaper electo-cardiograms. The accelerator, , is the brainchild of longtime Reliance Entertainment executive Rajesh Sawhney. He’s been seeking a way to jumpstart a startup culture in India, even as multi-national foreign and domestic companies continue to recruit the best technical talent out of the country’s universities. India has had a few notable growth-stage startups like advertising network InMobi and Flipkart, but Sawhney wants foster a broader pool of startups across the entire country. Instead of concentrating the accelerator in a single city, GSF simultaneously runs a 10-week program in New Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai and Chennai. Sawhney says this is because India has so many major cities with technical talent, each with their own strengths. Mumbai is at the heart of India’s entertainment industry while Bangalore is the tech hub that attracts foreign companies. Since the first batch, Sawhney has added a few more weeks onto the accelerator program and strengthened the mentor system to help companies after they’ve graduated from the program. Out of the company’s first batch of 14 companies, eight have gone on to raise additional funding and GSF has participated in four of those rounds. One of the more interesting companies to come out of this round is , a company that’s creating a very basic electro-cardiogram machine (pictured left) that can hook into smartphones and send reports for remote readings. The company estimates that there are 32 million heart patients in India, yet there are only 6,000 cardiologists. The vast majority of these patients also live in rural areas, where they have poor access to medical professionals. So basic ECG machine could allow rural patients to have access to diagnoses from remote doctors where there would otherwise have no ability to receive medical care. The other companies include: is a CRM platform that’s very visual and designed for smaller businesses. lets people buy posters and merchandise in India. They let brands design and distribute merchandise using a “just in time” model. lets people create travel itineraries on the fly in major cities in India. lets merchants in India easily integrate and track sales analytics from all the major e-commerce platforms like Amazon and Flipkart. is a startup that is kind of like a version of Exec in India, where people can book services like house cleanings and laundry on short notice. lets consumers stream content from their PCs onto their mobile devices. Swym makes promotional emails from consumers’ favorite retailers more engaging on mobile devices. is a curated marketplace for baked goods and small, unusual gifts. is a subscription e-commerce startup with a monthly box full of toys and games meant for three to seven year olds. Tradestreet helps regular retail investors parse through stock research and trading strategies and was co-founded by a IIT graduate who worked for DE Shaw. is a ride-sharing platform for India, but it’s meant more for carpooling in highly-trafficked cities like Bangalore. |
Apple Scoops Up Matcha.tv To Pack More Smarts Into Apple TV | Victoria Ho | 2,013 | 8 | 13 | Apple may still keep us guessing over whether it will ever make a physical Apple TV set, but it’s clearly strengthening its play for the living room, by becoming the conduit between us and the screen on which we choose to watch video content. On Tuesday, it emerged that Apple has made a key move into second-screen TV: the company acquired video recommendation site, , a service which let users aggregate programming guides for different video services like Netflix, Hulu and Amazon. We reported Matcha abruptly in late-May, but it hinted that it would not be disappearing altogether. Now we know why. The acquisition was for a rumored sum of between $1 million and $1.5 million, according to a source spoke to, although another source in its report stated that it is likely a higher amount than that. This move is in line with Apple’s recent efforts to add new content and channels to its Apple TV set top box. In June, it announced that users now purchase over per day, to add to a total of 1 billion to date via iTunes. They’ve also bought 350,000 movies per day, or 380 million to date. To that end, Apple added two major content sources in the form of HBO Go and WatchESPN to its roster in June, and also partnered Sky News, East Asian-focused and Qello, to pack some international content to its line-up. Apple’s also been selling more Apple TV devices, which it first released in 2007. It sold more than Apple TV boxes over the festive period in 2012, up from 60 percent the year before. Matcha’s technology brings to Apple TV the kind of smarts that other technology companies have been boasting about recently. Microsoft, for one, has been reorienting its Xbox away from a pure gaming play to include TV offerings like Hulu and Netflix, as it tries to anchor Xbox’s role in the living room. The company’s upcoming next-gen will takes this to the next level, allowing personalized recommendations, as well as content aggregation. A home viewer will be able to say aloud “watch Arrested Development”, for example, and the service will pick and pull up the TV show automatically. Nintendo’s newest Wii generation, the , also aims to replace cable boxes and smart TVs. Its free TVii service, launched late 2012, has an on-demand streaming TV service, across various providers including DVR, live TV and online providers. It allows users to search online video sources as well as cable subscriptions for shows they want to watch, similar to what Matcha did. The impressive thing about TVii is its ability to track what you’ve watched, and even pair it with another user at home, allowing TV shows recommend to couples to watch together, for example. There’s plenty of interesting things happening with video delivery platforms. Chinese e-commerce giant , for example, recently unveiled a and set-top box, that will allow people to use their phones to control their TVs and buy video content (and possibly physical items from Alibaba’s other e-commerce sites like ). Purchased content won’t just be for the living room; users will be able to stream that to their mobile phones so they can watch their TV on the go too, Alibaba said. |
Why Ladar Levison Shuttered Encrypted Email Service Lavabit In The Face Of Government Pressure | Alex Wilhelm | 2,013 | 8 | 13 | Today Ladar Levison, owner of the Lavabit email service, about his decision to close his company and the government pressure that led to that choice. Along the way, he touched on Edward Snowden and the limits of what he is allowed to say in public. provided an encrypted email service for its users, designed so that even Levison, who owned it, could not access the information of his users. After it became known, or perhaps heavily hinted, that NSA document leaker Snowden used the service, it fell under the sharp eye of the government. They, I feel safe in stating, wanted his digital missives. Levison shuttered the service. It isn’t precisely clear what the shutdown procedure was, but the reasons are somewhat plain: I felt that in the end I had to pick between the lesser of two evils and that shutting down the service, if it was no longer secure, was the better option. It was, in effect, the lesser of the two evils. Levison didn’t want to run an encrypted service — the implication of which is complete privacy — that was not secure. What directly follows from that is that government pressure would have forced Lavabit to compromise its integrity and the privacy of its users. He makes that point again, later, but in a fashion that perfectly describes how little he is allowed to say: I didn’t want to be put in a situation where I had to turn over private information. I just didn’t have it. I didn’t have access to it. And that was sort of—may have been the situation that I was facing. You know, obviously, I can’t speak to the details of any specific case, but—I’ll just leave it at that. Or, in non-terrified-speak, Levison just said that he did not want to turn over private information, and that, in some fashion, he might have had to. But no specifics! Lest what, exactly? Levison’s lawyer was succinct, stating that his client has to “watch every word he says when he’s talking to the press, for fear of being imprisoned.” That legal aid, Jesse Binnall, went on to point out that the First Amendment is precisely what is supposed to protect his client in situations like this. But it does not given current law. I’d argue that such restrictions are in fact unconstitutional, but as I’m not a federal judge, it doesn’t matter much. Levison indicated in his discussion with Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman and Aaron Mate that while “Lavabit wasn’t the first service provider to receive a government request,” which was to be expected, it was also not the first “service provider to fight it.” This is encouraging. That behind closed doors people are retaining their spine is somewhat comforting. Late in the interview, Levison said that he has “a lot of respect for [Edward] Snowden, because he gave up his entire life […] so that he could speak out.” He notes that his own efforts have not yet reached that point. Snowden, from the other side, that he found the shuttering of Lavabit by Levison to be “inspiring.” What is Levison’s takeaway from the ordeal? He’s surprisingly candid: [T]here’s information that I can’t even share with my lawyer, let alone with the American public. So if we’re talking about secrecy, you know, it’s really been taken to the extreme. And I think it’s really being used by the current administration to cover up tactics that they may be ashamed of. I’d just state in closing that there has been quite a bit of talk about talking. That we need to have a conversation. A national discourse! But when the key actors who are part of the actual tension are muzzled as Levison has been, we can have no such confab. This makes such talking points from leaders enforcing the very rules that have silenced Mr. Levison hypocritical in that they are most certainly saying one thing and doing another. They claim to want a dialogue, but they refuse to provide the details needed to have that dialogue. So we can’t move forward, and it is their fault. The stifling of Levison is brilliant testimony to how broken the current system is. His inability to speak encapsulates precisely what those who worry about government overreach are attempting to describe. No misdeeds? Lavabit should not be dead, and yet it is. That’s one, for starters.
|
New York’s Financial Services Subpoenas Bitcoin Firms To “Root Out Illegal Activity” | Romain Dillet | 2,013 | 8 | 13 | Twenty-two companies received a letter from New York’s top banking regulator to determine whether they respect the current financial regulatory guidelines. More importantly, the authority wants to create a new set of rules to make sure that bitcoins are not used for illegal activities. “We have also seen instances where the cloak of anonymity provided by virtual currencies has helped support dangerous criminal activity, such as drug smuggling, money laundering, gun running, and child pornography,” Financial Services superintendent Benjamin M. Lawsky said in a statement. “Taking steps to root out illegal activity is both a legal and business imperative for virtual currency firms,” he added later in the statement. Companies include Bitcoin startups Coinbase and BitPay, as well as major Bitcoin investors such as Winklevoss Capital Management, Andreessen Horowitz, Google Ventures, Founders Fund and Union Square Ventures. They will have to show what they are currently doing to prevent money laundering, to protect customers and more generally where the money is coming from and why they care about Bitcoin. A federal judge already declared that Bitcoin a currency and should therefore follow the same regulation guidelines as any currency. The original appeal of Bitcoin was that there was no central bank, but financial authorities now want to its transactions. Finally, as a result of today’s news, Bitcoin companies will have to register as money transmitters in the state of New York. With Federal Services overseeing Bitcoin companies, it will become harder to found a Bitcoin startup. Yet, the authority is very confident that it will actually increase Bitcoin’s legitimacy. It even considers it an entirely new industry. Bitcoin offers great new opportunities for entrepreneurs, investors and traders, and Bloomberg terminals now even provide — a first step toward widespread Bitcoin trading. But the virtual currency now faces a great challenge. If it is regulated and taxed like U.S. dollars, will it actually be useful? Let’s hope that it won’t just become a financial instrument for traders, like any stock on the NASDAQ or NYSE. You can’t pay your web-hosting provider using General Electric shares. In May, the feds Liberty Reserve because it was used for child porn activity. In his statement, Lawsky goes so far as to say that Bitcoin’s existence depends on the responses to those subpoenas. – BitInstant
– BitPay
– Coinabul
– Coinbase Inc.
– CoinLab
– Coinsetter
– Dwolla
– eCoin Cashier
– Payward, Inc.
– TrustCash Holdings Inc.
– ZipZap
– Butterfly Labs
– Andreessen Horowitz
– Bitcoin Opportunity Fund
– Boost VC Bitcoin Fund
– Founders Fund
– Google Ventures
– Lightspeed Venture Partners
– Tribeca Venture Partners
– Tropos Funds
– Union Square Ventures
– Winklevoss Capital Management |
Wholesale Catalogue Lookboard Aims To Open Up Buying Process For E-Commerce Sites | Eliza Brooke | 2,013 | 8 | 13 | A startup called is hoping to bridge the gap between e-commerce retailers and small-scale suppliers by functioning as an online wholesale catalogue. The site aims to simultaneously streamline the buying process and expose merchandisers to a broader range of products than they might be able to track down on their own, while giving traction to designers who might otherwise go unnoticed. Daily deals sites like Zulily, No More Rack, and Living Social are some of Lookboard’s biggest buyers, which has also gained traction with more discovery-focused sites like Fab. The sellers are lesser-known designers spanning categories, such as home decor, women’s and men’s clothing, art, tech, jewelry and food. Lookboard treats the buyer like a consumer, and the experience of searching for products by keyword and category is not unlike any other e-commerce site. When a buyer signs up, they take a photo-based quiz in order to determine their taste, which filters the products they are shown. They curate collections, and over time Lookboard’s taste algorithm further refines its suggestions based on the items they select. The site also has a number of tools for retailers, including a collaboration feature similar to Google Docs and gives multiple people a space to work on the product lineup. Most importantly, Lookboard allows commerce sites to export Excel files of standardized product information and high-resolution images without having to start an email thread with the vendor. Since it fully launched in March, Lookboard has signed up 3,000 buyers and 4,800 sellers, with over 50,000 products available. The company will be raising a $1 million seed round in the near future and has begun talking with several investors, founder and CEO Duy Huynh tells me. “It takes a lot of time to work with a vendor, getting product info and asking them to send high-res images,” Huynh says, “and the buyer often gives up on the vendor about that. We streamlined the process into one place, so the buyer can click the button and export it into their data feed.” E-commerce buyers purchase products on the site, and the vendor fills the incoming order and ships it to them. Lookboard marks up products 10 percent from wholesale to the buyer’s purchasing price, a structure that Huynh said has yet to present any problems. The site has done $400,000 in revenue to date, at a monthly rate of about $40,000. Lookboard is free to sellers, in order to reduce friction in its adoption. Huynh added that they have deliberately kept the Lookboard dashboard simple on the vendor side, because suppliers are often not very tech savvy, so much so that many still track their inventory on pen and paper. Sellers set up a storefront on which they can update their inventory and pricing daily, and each product is given a unique URL. “If you look at a retailer today, to source products you have to hire five to 10 merchandisers or buyers,” Huynh said. “Then they have to travel to trade shows. It takes over six months to find products, which will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. We streamline that entire process of sourcing products into one single line of code.” Outside of helping e-commerce sites find more products faster, Lookboard gives small designers visibility, especially when they’re trapped in the limbo of being too big for Etsy but too small to have built any name recognition or major retailer relationships. Commerce sites like AHAlife have sought to bring these kinds of makers to the public eye, too, but they do so through curation. What Lookboard is offering is a more democratic way of putting sellers in front of buyers. Does that mean that every brand will get picked up by a retailer? Of course not. But it gives them a better shot. |
What Zynga’s Management Shake-Up Under New CEO Mattrick Means | Kim-Mai Cutler | 2,013 | 8 | 13 | Just as the new CEO of Zynga, former Microsoft executive Don Mattrick is . He restructured the top level of management in a move that will see COO David Ko, CTO Cadir Lee and Chief People Officer Colleen McCreary leave. Mattrick explained the move, saying that senior executives could work more directly with product. He said in a memo today, “We are taking layers out of the executive rank to get senior leaders closer to important product initiatives.” Lee and McCreary are very, very long-time Zynga executives who have been with the company for more than four years and have a complicated history. Lee was close with co-founder, former CEO and now chairman and chief product officer Mark Pincus, while McCreary was . Ko more recently from Yahoo. He had started off overseeing Zynga’s mobile efforts, then was promoted to chief operating officer later after former . When Ko had talked to us in previous calls, he emphasized that Zynga was simplifying its slate of games and re-evaluating prospective titles in the pipeline, which has led to an intentionally thinner set of launches this and next quarter and lower revenues. While he has a reputation as savvy political operator, he lacked the years of direct experience in game development that many other longtime Zynga managers have had. Mattrick also said the changes should embolden studio leads to take more initiative on product and game decisions. There are now three overall divisions: 1) studios, 2) technology, live ops and publishing and 3) functional areas covering legal, finance and human resources. One observer said that the changes with studio leadership effectively put everyone in a horse race where they’re more transparently and directly responsible for the performance of their units. In about two quarters, it should be obvious who is underperforming and who is not. The studios are getting consolidated with Steve Chiang overseeing the which could be interpreted as a demotion since it doesn’t include FarmVille. Meanwhile, Tim LeTourneau, who successfully oversaw the launch of Farmville 2, gets to continue to oversee Zynga’s crown jewel franchise. Travis Boatman, a longtime EA Mobile executive who joined Zynga under Schappert’s tenure, also continues to oversee mobile titles that fall under the “With Friends” brand. Barry Cottle, who was chief revenue officer, is now overseeing social casino games like Zynga Poker. Steve Parkis gets to oversee Zynga’s very nascent foray into midcore gaming, where it faces a ton of competitors like Kabam, Kixeye and Supercell. Mark Skaggs will presumably continue to handle new game launches as senior vice president of games, while John Tien will also serve as a senior vice president of games in casual genres. With the second division covering tech, live ops and publishing, Nick Tornow will be CTO, while Dorion Carroll will be CIO. Adam Sussman oversees Zynga’s game publishing efforts, which are still very young after former lead . The last division covers functional areas and Reggie Davis will serve as General Counsel and executive vice president of legal, corporate and business affairs. Mark Vranesh continues as CFO while Meg Makalou will be the vice president of human resources. Here’s : Over the past month, I have had a chance to interact with a cross section of our employees and have been able to get a general sense of the caliber of people working here, the passion for winning and desire to get Zynga back to a strong leadership. Zynga is an amazing company and has tremendous potential for future growth. Thank you for taking the time to share your stories and business, as well as your creative and technical insights with me. On a personal level, I feel privileged to be the CEO and am more aware than ever before that the time for us to decisively move forward is now. In parallel to these meetings, I have been working with our leaders to review different parts of our business in order to develop a set of operating principles to help reset the company. We are now calibrating against the market opportunity and developing detailed plans to achieve topline growth and improve profitability in the future. To support the above, we are announcing today a number of changes to our organization. We are taking layers out of the executive rank to get senior leaders closer to important product initiatives. With that in mind, I have asked the leaders to sharpen their focus and properly densify talent to resource teams. Our studios leaders include Steve Chiang EVP Games, , Barry Cottle, EVP Games, , Travis Boatman, SVP Games, , Tim LeTourneau, SVP Games, , Steve Parkis, SVP Games, , Mark Skaggs, SVP Games, and Jon Tien, SVP Games, Tech, live ops and publishing includes Nick Tornow, CTO, VP, Dorion Carroll, CIO, VP, and Adam Sussman, SVP Game Publishing (which includes distribution, direct advertising sales and ops). Our functional area leaders are Reggie Davis, General Counsel, EVP Legal, Corporate and Business Affairs (which includes Corporate and Business Development and Communications), Mark Vranesh, CFO, EVP, and Meg Makalou, VP Human Resources. These leaders will report to me and form our new executive team with immediate effect. As part of the change, Cadir Lee, Colleen McCreary, and David Ko will be leaving the company to pursue other interests. Each person has contributed to the growth of Zynga and I would like to take this opportunity to thank Cadir Lee for his dedication in the creation of a world class technical organization during his 5 year tenure, Colleen for her work with our recruitment and people process over the last 4 years and David Ko for the 3 years that he spent in leading various teams across the organization. We appreciate their contributions to Zynga’s first chapter and wish them well in their future endeavors. With the above in place, I believe that we will have the best chance to grow, build a world class executive team and culture, establish cadence and really become committed to important priorities and opportunities for our long term success. I look forward to sharing more detail and answering your questions at tomorrow’s All-Hands meeting. Best, Don |
Following Comical Scrap With Google, Microsoft’s YouTube App Will Return To Windows Phone Today | Alex Wilhelm | 2,013 | 8 | 13 | Well, Windows Phone fans, you are almost home. Today Microsoft’s YouTube application for Windows Phone will return to the platform’s marketplace. At last, Google and Microsoft appear to have worked out a compromise that will allow for a fully featured YouTube experience on the latter’s mobile platform. Google and Microsoft have had a fraught year, over email syncing, search dominance and mobile mapping. And the YouTube thing. Microsoft had pulled its home-built YouTube app for Windows Phone from its mobile store that resulted in a cease-and-desist letter. The stakes are somewhat high, if in the distance: Microsoft is hell-bent on building a first-tier mobile platform. Google is dedicated to Android’s continued hegemony. It has scant incentive to grant Microsoft even one extra scrap of oxygen. Windows Phone users have been somewhat caught in the crossfire. Google once extended its support of Exchange ActiveSync at the proverbial last minute, granting Microsoft enough time to support its CalDAV and CardDAV syncing systems to keep Windows Phone users, who depended on Google web services, happy. TechCrunch reached out to Microsoft, which provided the following statement: “We’ve released an updated YouTube app for Windows Phone that provides the great experience our consumers expect while addressing the concerns Google expressed in May, including the addition of ads. We appreciate Google’s support in ensuring that Windows Phones customers have a quality YouTube experience and look forward to continuing the collaboration.” Users will be able to live stream YouTube content that is ongoing, and upload video from their phones. What matters more than the generic feature breakdown of the application is that it exists at all, at last, with full coronation from both parties. That’s something to be applauded. It has been a scrap for Microsoft to fight for a place at the table. Each time Microsoft has butted heads with the Mountain View search giant, it has always done well by its users in the end. So, if you are a Windows Phone user, to get you started. |
TC Cribs: Mulu, The Cozy And Cool Startup That’s Right In The Heart Of Hollywood | Colleen Taylor | 2,013 | 8 | 13 | We made sure to put on our trendiest hoodies and shiniest sneakers for this episode of , which brought us out of our casual hometown of San Francisco and into the heart of Hollywood. Here is where we found , the startup that combines cutting edge online commerce with charitable goodness — Mulu’s technology lets web publishers to products referenced in their content and give a portion of the proceeds to the charity of their choice. You’d expect something special from an L.A.-based company with tight ties to fashion, and Mulu delivered on those expectations and then some by striking the perfect balance between cozy and super cool. Watch the video above to see how Mulu created a space that’s just as fun for its grownup employees as it is for their pint-sized offspring, with a tricked-out kid’s room, a very lucky company pet, and a secret roof deck with a gorgeous view of that famous Hollywood sign. |
Glam Media Raises Another $25M As It Prepares To Go Public | Anthony Ha | 2,013 | 8 | 13 | Digital media company has raised $25 million in new funding, according to an industry source. (The company declined to comment.) My source said this is a “top up round” for Glam — in another words, some extra cash to keep the company going while it goes through the IPO process. back in February that Glam (which runs a number of lifestyle-focused sites including and , and runs advertising across a broader network of publishers) had filed for an IPO, using a provision in the JOBS Act to initially keep the filing secret. The round was led by new investor , which was joined by previous backer . Glam previously raised more than $150 million in equity funding, as well as $20 million in debt, that valued the company at $750 million. After raising all that money, it for what my old editor Erick Schonfeld heard was $150 million in cash and stock. With about 450 employees currently, Glam is also hiring — there are more than 35 jobs , but my source said the number of openings in the U.S. alone is actually more than 90. |
White House Says Intelligence Director Will Not Lead NSA Review Group | Gregory Ferenstein | 2,013 | 8 | 13 | Despite some initial freakout, the White House that embattled Director Of National Intelligence, James Clapper, will direct a new independent review group of the National Security Agency. “Director Clapper will not be a part of the group, and is not leading or directing the group’s efforts,” a White House spokeswoman, Caitlin Hayden, told The Hill. After President Obama’s of a new agency to review mass surveillance procedures, he sent out an obligatory note to Clapper, “by the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, I am directing you to establish a Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies (Review Group).” [ ] A number of tech blogs were up in arms, running stories , “President Obama orders intelligence chief accused of lying to Congress to lead NSA review.” Clapper has come under criticism after denying in congressional testimony that his agencies were collecting records on millions of Americans (they, in fact, are). So, he would be a terribly biased leader if he were in charge of the review group. But, it takes a pretty liberal reading of a rather perfunctory note to assume that Obama had already failed on his promise of transparency. In truth, we know nothing about the commission, its participants, or the authority it will have. It did, , produce some funny tweets. [tweet https://twitter.com/Atrios/status/367071934489853952] |
Straight Pride UK, A “Heterosexual Rights” Group, Sics The DMCA On A Journalist | John Biggs | 2,013 | 8 | 13 | In an excellent example of the working its sordid magic, a group called has forced WordPress.com to pull a story by that featured an interview with the group in regards to heterosexual rights in the U.K. In response the post has been retweeted and reposted in multiple places. While the group ostensibly supports “straight rights,” it is clear from their responses to Hotham’s questions that they are, at the very least, homophobes. Wrote Hotham: After he ran the post, Straight Pride’s UK’s press officer, Nick Steiner, asked him to remove the post because the organization didn’t like it. In the end, Hotham received a DMCA takedown notice and his provider, WordPress.com, initially complied. In their defense, Automattic, owner of WordPress.com, wrote: In fairness, the answers do make the group sound quite militant, especially in their support of Putin’s anti-gay efforts in Russia. Their mission, for example, is “to make sure that the default setting for humanity is not forgotten and that heterosexuals are allowed to have a voice and speak out against being oppressed because of the politically correct Government.” For more examples of their lucid, clear-eyed hatred, I’ve reproduced Hotham’s entire post below: There has never been a better time to be gay in this country. LGBTI people will soon enjoy full marriage equality,public acceptance of homosexuality is at an all time high, and generally a consensus has developed that it’s really not that big of a deal what consenting adults do in the privacy of their bedrooms. The debate on Gay Marriage in the House of Commons was marred by a few old reactionaries, true, but generally it’s become accepted that full rights for LGBTI people is inevitable and desirable. Thank God. But some are deeply troubled by this unfaltering march toward common decency, and they call themselves the Straight Pride movement. Determined to raise awareness of the “heterosexual part of our society”, Straight Pride believe that a militant gay lobby has hijacked the debate on sexuality in this country, and encourage their members, among other things, to “come out” as straight, posting on their Facebook page that: “Coming out as Straight or heterosexual in todays politically correct world is an extremely challenging experience. It is often distressing and evokes emotions of fear, relief, pride and embarrassment.” I asked them some questions.
Straight Pride is a small group of heterosexual individuals who joined together after seeing the rights of people who have opposing views to homosexuality trampled over and, quite frankly, oppressed. With the current political situation in the United Kingdom with Gay Marriage passing, everyone is being forced to accept homosexuals, and other chosen lifestyles and behaviours, no matter their opposing views. Straight Pride has seen people sued, and businesses affected, all because the homosexual community do not like people having a view or opinion that differs from theirs.
Straight Pride aims are neutral and we do not follow religion, but we do support people who are oppressed for being religious. Only today, Straight Pride see that two homosexual parents are planning to sue the Church because they ‘cannot get what they want’. This is aggressive behaviour and this is the reason why people have strong objections to homosexuals.
The Straight Pride mission is to make sure that the default setting for humanity is not forgotten and that heterosexuals are allowed to have a voice and speak out against being oppressed because of the politically correct Government. Straight Pride feel need to raise awareness of heterosexuality, family values, morals, and traditional lifestyles and relationships.
Homosexuals do currently have more rights than heterosexuals, their rights can trump those of others, religious or not. Heterosexuals cannot speak out against homosexuals, but homosexuals are free to call people bigots who don’t agree with homosexuality, heterosexuals, religious or not, cannot refuse to serve or accommodate homosexuals, if they do, they face being sued, this has already happened. Straight Pride believe anyone should be able to refuse service and speak out against something they do not like or support. There is a hotel in the south of England, called Hamilton Hall which only accepts homosexuals – if this is allowed, then hotels should have the choice and right to who they accommodate.
The response to Straight Pride’s formation has been as expected; hostile, threatening, and aggressive. Homosexuals do not like anyone challenging them or their behaviour. We have had support from many people saying that if homosexuals can have a Pride March, and then equality should allow Heterosexuals to have one too. After all, the homosexual movement want everyone to have equality.
Heterosexuality is the default setting for the human race, this is what creates life, if everyone made the decision to be homosexual, life would stop. People are radicalised to become homosexual, it is promoted to be ‘okay’ and right by the many groups that have sprung up. Marriage is a man and a woman, homosexuals had Civil Partnerships, which was identical to Marriage with all the same rights, they wanted to destroy Marriage and have successfully done so.
Straight Pride would praise Margaret Thatcher for her stance on Section 28, which meant that children were not taught about homosexuality, as this should not on the curriculum. More recently, Straight Pride admire President Vladimir Putin of Russia for his stance and support of his country’s traditional values.
Straight Pride support what Russia and Africa is doing, these country have morals and are listening to their majorities. These countries are not ‘anti-gay’ – that is a term always used by the Homosexual Agenda to play the victim and suppress opinions and views of those against it. These countries have passed laws, these laws are to be respected and no other country should interfere with another country’s laws or legislation. We have country wide events which our members attend, and ask people their opinions and views, on such event at Glastonbury this year was very positive with the majority of people we asked, replied they were happily heterosexual. For the record, Straight Pride did not respond to these questions: “Pride” movements such as Gay Pride and Black Pride were making the argument that the stigma against them meant that proclaiming their “pride” was an act of liberation from oppression. Can being heterosexually really compare? A problem that Gay rights activists cite is the issue of bullying, and the effect this can have on young LGBT people. Do you think a similar problem exists with straight children being bullied by gay children? I will obviously add to this if they do respond. |
Facebook Reveals 78% Of US Users Are Mobile As It Starts Sharing User Counts By Country | Josh Constine | 2,013 | 8 | 13 | A new level of transparency from Facebook will help the world see whether its mobile growth is entirely propped up by international users that don’t earn the company as much money. Today Facebook announced it will start sharing country-by-country web and mobile monthly and daily user counts. Facebook’s 101 million US daily mobile users make up a whopping 78% of its 128 million daily US users. Facebook’s increased 10.3% from 425 million to 469 million from Q1 to Q2 2013. But how much of that growth was in its high-monetizing first-world markets? And how much was in its emerging international markets where more people are on feature phones and it earns less per user? Before we couldn’t tell. Soon we’ll be able to. In a statement, Facebook said: “We are doing this because we believe brands and businesses should think differently about how people engage with Facebook, especially on mobile. A lot of people focus on monthly active users or even registered users to demonstrate their size and scale. We think this is becoming on old way of looking at the media world. In this world, understanding who comes back at least once a month is only part of the picture. Instead, businesses should focus on people who come back online every single day.” Facebook tells me it will soon start revealing user counts for other countries beyond the US and UK (whose full data is below) once teams in each country are ready. To be clear, total stats count each individual user as 1 regardless of whether they accessed from desktop, mobile, or both. Mobile stats count each user who accessed via mobile, whether or not they also accessed via desktop. The data will certainly be helpful for advertisers trying to figure out which international markets they should be focusing their efforts on. Salesforce CMO and Buddy Media CEO until it was acquired) Michael Lazerow says “What we’re seeing in these numbers is Facebook’s ‘mobile first’ strategy has really paid dividends. But for the rest of the world, this transparency provides a much better understanding of where Facebook’s business is headed.
The reason that’s a problem is that all users are not created equal when it comes to Facebook’s business. In Q2 2013, Facebook said it made $1.60 in average revenue per user (ARPU) per year as a global average. But in the Rest Of World region that includes its fast-growing developing markets like India and Brazil, it only makes $0.63 per user while it earns $4.32 ARPU per year in the US & Canada region. That means every user it added in the Rest Of World market was worth less than 1/6th of what it makes per North American user. That’s why back in May during and again last month that Facebook provide mobile user counts by geography. Soon we’ll have the data, and the little released today is already enlightening. For example, 78.9% of Facebook’s daily American users are on mobile, and in the UK 83% of daily users are on mobile. We can also tell that 71.5% of monthly US Facebook users come back every day, while in the UK Facebook has a “stickiness” of 72.7%. The real juicy insights will come once we’ve had this data for a few quarters. In the short term, stats on Facebook’s fastest growing international markets and most critical first-world markets will be eye-openers. They’ll reveal whether Facebook is still growing its mobile presence in developed countries, or if it’s reached saturation there. If Facebook has run out of rich first-world people to sign up, it may need to concentrate more on squeezing dimes out of the developing world by increasing ad salesperson presence and getting more local game companies onboard. For now, though, the social network should be proud that it’s surviving the shift to mobile that many thought would be its demise. The company swallowed its pride, admitted it had made mistakes designing for desktop first and building apps on HTML5, and righted the course. Now it’s not only surviving, but thriving on mobile. With 41% of ad revenue coming from small screens and more than 3/4ths of daily users in it homeland visiting via phones and tablets, Facebook’s “mobile-first” strategy seems to be a success. US UK |
Pinterest Targets Casual Visitors With New “Pinterest For Teachers” Site, May Add More Content Hubs In Future | Sarah Perez | 2,013 | 8 | 13 | Pinterest has launched what may be the first of several official “hubs” featuring content targeting a particular segment of its user base, with today’s debut of a new “Pinterest for Teachers” site at . Obviously timed to coincide with the back-to-school rush and news cycle, the company tells us that the new hub will also serve as something of a test to see if it makes more sense to continue down this path in the future, with more hubs devoted to other interests or groups. The Teachers hub was actually launched a few weeks ago, and grew to 1,300 users ahead of any public announcement or promotion — like today’s company blog about the new section. Here, Pinterest explains that it teamed up to work with , an online resource for educators, to build out content for the hub, which at launch offers 19 boards, including those focused on preschool and elementary school teachers (grades K-6), as well as topic-based boards on subjects like art, science, math and other things teachers would finding interesting, ranging from classroom decor to recommended blogs. Each board is being maintained by a Pinterest user who’s also a teacher, most of whom also have their own educational websites or blogs, too. The will later expand to cover more areas and grades in the future, the company notes. In addition to the fact that it’s simply that time of year for a back-to-school marketing push, Pinterest also adds that a teacher-focused board makes sense for the site because it has developed a large community of teachers using its service for tips and tricks, lesson plans, craft and activity ideas, and more. Edutopia cites Pinterest as one of the top five professional websites for teachers, and Pinterest today sees over 500,000 education-related pins added to its service daily. But the hub’s launch follows several other recent pushes into content recommendations by Pinterest, including the debut of pin and board recommendations, first in late July. The company switched on an opt-out mechanism (“do not track”) at the same time – a hint of how deeply it plans to tap into user data in order to personalize the service. And at the end of last month, those same pin suggestions started as well. That being said, the Pinterest for Teachers hub is not going to be a part of any sort of personalization efforts right now, but rather will serve as a starting-off point for people coming to the site for the first time, possibly wondering what it’s all about. They may be looking for recommendations, such as whom to follow, or they may just want to browse around for inspiration. The hope is that by offering users the hub as a starting-off point (you can click around its pages without needing an account), those more casual visitors will eventually convert and create boards of their own, we’re told. Pinterest evaluates whether or not all these plans hold up – not necessarily by looking at hard numbers, but at community engagement and feedback, including things like comments on today’s blog post or on its Facebook page, among other things. Though the company does not have publicly announced plans for other hubs, the service is also seeing traction in categories like Food, Fashion, Design, Technology and the Outdoors. If it decides the hub concept works, these will likely be the next areas the company will explore. |
null | Leena Rao | 2,013 | 8 | 12 | null |
AOL CEO Tim Armstrong Apologizes For Brutally Firing Employee During Patch All-Hands Call | Darrell Etherington | 2,013 | 8 | 13 | After a call with the AOL-owned Patch team , AOL CEO Tim Armstrong has issued an internal memo apologizing for the action and providing some additional context (disclosure: AOL also owns TechCrunch). In the memo obtained from a tipster, Armstrong says that he has apologized to Lenz for the behaviour and that it was unfair to the former employee at a “human level.” The entire memo follows: AOLers – I am writing you to acknowledge the mistake I made last Friday during the Patch all-hands meeting when I publicly fired Abel Lenz. It was an emotional response at the start of a difficult discussion dealing with many people’s careers and livelihoods. I am the CEO and leader of the organization, and I take that responsibility seriously. We talk a lot about accountability and I am accountable for the way I handled the situation, and at a human level it was unfair to Abel. I’ve communicated to him directly and apologized for the way the matter was handled at the meeting. My action was driven by the desire to openly communicate with over a thousand Patch employees across the US. The meeting on Friday was the second all-hands we had run that week and people came to Friday’s meeting knowing we would be openly discussing some of the potential changes needed at Patch. As you know, I am a firm believer in open meetings, open Q&A, and this level of transparency requires trust across AOL. Internal meetings of a confidential nature should not be filmed or recorded so that our employees can feel free to discuss all topics openly. Abel had been told previously not to record a confidential meeting, and he repeated that behavior on Friday, which drove my actions. We have been through many difficult situations in turning around AOL and I have done my best to make the best decisions in the long-term interest of the employees and the company. On Friday I acted too quickly and I learned a tremendous lesson and I wanted you to hear that directly from me. We have tough decisions and work to do on Patch, but we’re doing them thoughtfully and as openly as we can. At AOL, we had strong earnings last week and we’re adding one of the best companies in the world to the team. AOL is in a great position, and we’ll keep moving forward. – TA It’s worth noting that at no point in the memo does Armstrong discuss Lenz’s current job state, so the firing likely sticks. Armstrong says the firing is a direct result of Lenz having exhibited this kind of behavior before, and being told explicitly not to, but other reports have suggested that he . Patch is currently in a state of considerable upheaval, as employees wait to hear more about the “hundreds” of layoffs coming down the line. TechCrunch spoke to a local editor about the original conference call discussing the changes to come for Patch, and they expressed some skepticism about its ability to turn around, though he did suggest refocusing on the core Patch sites which have proven profitable covering specific areas could effect considerable positive change. Patch was listed specifically as a in its most recent quarterly earnings result, and AOL has promised to make Patch profitable by year’s end. |
Yammer Releases Open Source SDKs For iOS And Windows Phone | Alex Wilhelm | 2,013 | 8 | 13 | Today two public, open-source SDKs for its social enterprise communications service: one for Windows Phone 8 and one for iOS. Android, for now, remains on the outside of the Yammer love circle. The APIs will, according to the Microsoft subsidiary, work for smartphone and tablet applications (presumably this means iPads and not Windows Phone tablets because, well, they don’t exist). The SDKs provide, critically, both read and write access to Yammer’s APIs, meaning that Yammer can be functionally integrated into third-party applications on both iOS and Windows Phone. Microsoft is working to integrate Yammer, for which it spent $1.2 billion, into its own products and services, such as Office 365. However, and it is hardly the only company to do this sort of thing, Microsoft also understands that for its service to find maximum integration, it has to be functionally open. Box, Dropbox and others also understand this and have made similar steps to allow for deep hooks for their services inside other applications. Yammer competes with other companies, such as Convo, that provide internal micro-communication to teams both large and small. I don’t have a clear picture in mind of what sort of applications will want to bake Yammer into their services, but given that Yammer is a scaled enterprise, I expect there to be demand. If you are the developing sort, you can dig into the SDKs . |
Millennial Media To Acquire Mobile Ad Company Jumptap For $200M+ In Millennial Stock | Anthony Ha | 2,013 | 8 | 13 | Millennial Media just announced that it has reached an agreement to acquire Jumptap, a deal that brings together two well-known mobile ad companies. The describes the deal as “a predominantly stock transaction,” with Jumptap shareholders to receive 24.6 million shares in publicly traded Millennial, giving them ownership of about 22.5 percent of the company. (At , those shares would be worth about $209 million.) “Millennial Media already runs one of the largest third-party digital media businesses, despite mobile being in its early stages,” said Millennial President and CEO Paul Palmieri in the release. “Jumptap’s expertise in performance, cross-screen, real-time bidding and third-party data fit well with, and provide incremental scale to Millennial Media’s existing platform.” Founded in 2004, Jumptap had raised $122 million in funding from investors including General Catalyst Partners, Summerhill Venture Partners, Redpoint Ventures, Valhalla Partners, and AllianceBernstein, as well as ad giant WPP. As of last year, it was , but it seems like those plans were called off. (We’d recently heard a rumor, which we were unable to confirm, that Jumptap was going to be purchased by AppNexus — either way, it seems likely that Jumptap was talking to multiple potential buyers.) According to a , Millennial saw $177.7 million in adjusted revenue in 2012, while Jumptap saw $63.6 million ($53 million if you exclude portal revenue). Their respective net losses for 2012 were $5.4 million and $13.0 million. (Adjusting for taxes and other expenses, Millennial had EBITDA of $4.5 million and Jumptap had an EBITDA loss of $10.7 million.) The presentation projects that the combined companies will have revenue between $340 million and $350 million, with adjusted EBITDA somewhere between $1 million and a loss of $1 million. Jumptap CEO George Bell is joining the Millennial board of directors as vice chairman. Millennial also , with revenue of $57 million and a net loss of $3.1 million. On the earnings conference call, Palmieri emphasized that the two companies are complementary, particularly given Millennial’s focus on brand advertising and Jumptap’s focus on performance advertising and real-time bidding. He also cited Millennial’s focus on first-party data and Jumptap’s focus on third-party data. Palmieri described the combined entity as “rivaling Google in mobile display” — a point that was also made in the slide below. Millennial also says that the combined stock and cash components of the transaction value Jumptap at $232 million. |
Carrot Is A Productivity And Social Motivation App With A Sense Of Humor | Catherine Shu | 2,013 | 8 | 14 | There are plenty of productivity and self-motivation apps on the market, but Hong Kong-based company wanted to create one that lets users indulge their whimsical side. iOS app ‘s interface only allows you to fill-in a simple template and people have used the Mad Libs-like format to set goal and reward sets (called “carrots”) that are silly (“I am going to wake up at 6:30AM and reward myself with going back to sleep at 6:45AM”) and serious (“If I run 4.5km tonight then I will treat myself to a big breakfast tomorrow”). Encouragement is crowdsourced from Carrot’s other users and your Facebook friends. “Carrot” is a reference to “stick and carrot”–the phrase that distills the two ways that people can be motivated, either by force or by will–and Innopage is not the only one to have jumped on the idea that it might make for a catchy name for a motivational to-do app. There is another already in existence in the U.S. that barks reminders at users. Innopage CEO Keith Li told me that he wasn’t aware of the other Carrot app when his team named their app, but developer Brian Mueller says he’s considering alternatives for how to get Innopage to refrain from using the same name for a similar service. In the meantime, his app has seen over 500,000 downloads and he’s gearing up — coincidentally, today — to launch with a gamification system. Instead of setting reminders for unfinished tasks, Innopage’s Carrot focuses on creating “positive feelings” for users by encouraging them to set specific, short-term goals. “I never use a to-do list because I find it so stressful when I look at the whole list,” says Li. “I want to focus on rewards, which are not usually included in to-do lists. We don’t want to keep looking at things we haven’t done yet.” One of Carrot’s niftiest features is its aggregated, anonymous lists of other people’s objectives and rewards. When I logged on recently, goals ranged from “get a nose job” to “benchpress 100kg,” while rewards included “buy a $25 iTunes card” and “browse 9GAG.” As Carrot gains more users, its lists of the most popular goals and rewards can potentially provide useful data for brands and marketing agencies. Li says that updates to the app will allow groups of users to create private entries and contribute money to purchase gift certificates or deals from sponsors. “We want to implement a system where you can set goals for friends or children and give them an award or have your family chip in for a reward,” says Li. “You can also have a group of friends share the same goal and see who accomplishes it first.” Since launching earlier this month, Carrot has seen the most traction in China, where 39% of its current registered users are from. The app’s latest update added integration with Sina Weibo accounts and plans are also in the works to include WeChat sign-ins. Carrot is the first app from Innopage, which develops e-publishing projects for clients including the Hong Kong government, Samsung Mobile and the City University Press. Li says Innopage’s team recently launched Innolab, acompany intitiative similar to Google’s , to start developing its own products when they realized the e-publishing industry had plateaued. Innolab’s projects, including Carrot, are currently self-funded. |
Ad-Free Social Platform App.net Raises Another $2.5M From Andreessen Horowitz | Anthony Ha | 2,013 | 8 | 14 | the social platform created in response to the ad-driven consumer social networks ( ), just announced that it has raised $2.5 million in new funding. The announcement came as part of celebrating the project’s one-year anniversary. The post implies that Andreessen Horowitz was the sole investor in the new funding, and when I emailed founder and CEO Dalton Caldwell to check, he confirmed that’s the case. The firm backed App.net’s previous iteration, photo-sharing app PicPlz. (You may remember all the discussion last year around the fact that Andreessen Horowitz placed its bet on PicPlz rather than its Instagram, where it was also an early investor. Or you may remember .) The App.net project through crowdfunding. Caldwell said this is the first time Andreessen Horowotiz has “written a check” for the company since then, but he added, “They have been incredibly supportive during every phase of the company.” In the blog post, Caldwell writes: Why did we choose to raise this money? We are just starting to realize the potential of what App.net can be, and we want our developer and member community to be confident that App.net is on strong financial ground and here to stay. This financing gives us an additional cushion and resources to manage and support the infrastructure and staff that run App.net. Our team, including our investors, are 100% committed to App.net’s services-based business model where our customers are our users, not advertisers. The post also offers an update on the company’s progress. Again, the vision is to create something that users will actually pay for — not a social network, per se, but a real-time social platform that other apps can build on top of. And indeed, have been built on the platform, including private messaging app and messaging/microblogging app . There have been other additions and changes to the platform over the past year, including . “In year two, as our focus expands from simply trying to deliver basic ‘1.0’ versions of our API, our overall mission remains the same: building a social platform with better aligned incentives with both users and developers,” Caldwell writes. |
Fashion GPS, The Platform For Organizing Fashion Week, Looks To Serve Event Planning Industry More Broadly | Eliza Brooke | 2,013 | 8 | 14 | , the creator of a number of iOS apps and web services for coordinating the logistics of fashion week, has released a new app targeting the broader world of special-events planning called . Although the company will continue to develop its fashion apps, it is also looking to expand to ticketing management by the first quarter of 2014 as it moves to become a more comprehensive event resource. Events GPS, which the Museum of Modern Art in New York has already used for an event, can be used for managing the guest list, sending out e-vites, tracking RSVPs, assigning table seating, and checking people in on the night of the event to see who showed up and who didn’t. Essentially, the app is a spin-off of existing Fashion GPS technology. “We have a solid technology that manages events all the way from the CRM, the invite, checking in,” Fashion GPS CEO and founder Eddie Mullon said. “The way we saw it, a fashion show is an event. [The technology] doesn’t have to be used for a fashion runway show. It can be any event.” Rates vary, a rep from Fashion GPS told us, but the standard fee for Events GPS is $350 per user per month. Fashion GPS was first used as the tech platform for runway shows in 2010 and, in being adopted by Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week and most of New York’s PR firms, was used by 90 percent to 95 percent of all designers showing in the city last season. London saw about 60 percent adoption, and Paris and Milan, both more tech-averse fashion capitals, stood at 40 percent. Outside of event management, Fashion GPS’s GPS Radar app for fashion editors can also be retooled to service other industries, Mullon said. The app currently enables editors to RSVP to shows, organize their schedules, download images of complete collections, and request samples. This could prove useful in the art world at gallery events, for instance. Across its event platforms, Fashion GPS is planning to make more use of radio frequency identification (RFID) tagged invitations along with the scannable invites it already uses. RFID invitations automatically check the guest in when they’ve entered the venue and track how many times the same invitation has gone the door, in case anyone was planning to hand it off to a friend. But more importantly, Mullon said, it helps high-profile guests get through the door and to their seats more quickly. Relative to other event systems, Fashion GPS is marketing itself on its simplicity and efficiency. Mullon said he sees , the online event organization tool, as a competitor. As Fashion GPS moves into the ticketing space at the start of next year, they will also have to take on well-known companies like Eventbrite, along with smaller ones like Eventfarm. Catering to cultural and luxury event organizers outside of fashion week seems like a natural extension of Fashion GPS’s capabilities, as a number of its non-fashion clients came to it through word of mouth before the release of Events GPS. How far it will successfully broaden its reach remains to be seen. |
Twilio Snags Skype’s Former Head Of Engineering As Their Own | Greg Kumparak | 2,013 | 8 | 14 | Twilio, a company that helps developers build voice calling and SMS functionality into their apps, just hired up one of the people who helped make Skype huge. Tomorrow morning, Twilio will announce that Skype’s former Head Of Engineering, Ott Kaukver, is their new VP of Engineering. I usually tend to stay away from all of this “X hired Y” stuff because… well, I dont care — but strategically, this one is pretty interesting. According to Skype’s old exec bio page for Ott (which has been taken down, but is ), he joined Skype when it was still a lil’ 30-man team out of Estonia. He began as their Director of Operations in 2004, then got bumped up to Head Of Engineering in 2005, first focusing on their core technology then shifting over to lead the consumer products team in 2008. On the business side, he helped grow Skype’s engineering team from a few dozen people up to a few hundred. On the engineering side, he helped build and scale Skype’s technology into.. well, into Skype, as we know it. Ott stayed with Skype after it was acquired by eBay in 2005 — but after finding himself with about a hundred thousand new colleagues after Skype was in turn acquired by Microsoft in 2011, he decided to move onto something new. He parted ways with the company at the end of 2012. If nothing else, it’s an interesting move from a competitive standpoint. While Twilio isn’t a competitor with Skype (Skype builds a consumer facing communications product, Twilio builds APIs that let build communications products) they’re certainly not ever going to be best friends. Twilio’s APIs let developers build telephony/VoIP stuff into their own products — and when people spend time talking on those products, it means less time spent talking on Skype. In some sense, Ott is taking on the very product he spent much of the last decade building. With that said: Twilio has done a good job evangelizing with developers, is hiring like mad, and to keep things moving smoothly. At that point, the challenge becomes one of scaling — and if there’s anyone who can help scale a cloud telephony company, it’s probably the dude who already did it for Skype. |
How ZEFR Brings Content ID To Content Creators, Media Companies… And Now Brands | Ryan Lawler | 2,013 | 8 | 14 | Over the past several years, Los Angeles-based startup has made a name for itself by working with content creators to make money off their videos on YouTube. Founded as Movieclips.com, the startup began by licensing short movie clips, distributing them, and monetizing them on its own site. It wasn’t until it was able to put them on YouTube, though, that it started to really hit it big. The team also had an epiphany when it found a clip from Dirty Dancing uploaded by a fan on the video site. Usually, those videos would have been taken down by the content owner, but the guys at Movieclips had a better idea — what if it could claim fan-uploaded videos for its movie studio partners and help to monetize them? The shift to identifying content helped open up whole new doors for the company, as it began partnering with content creators outside of the Hollywood studio realm — for instance, music labels and sports programmers. It was then able to help them find videos that fans have uploaded from their content. With that change in focus, the company also decided to rebrand as ZEFR. In the last couple of years, it’s expanded from about 30 employees to 230, which meant leasing space in a huge former art studio next to its Venice, Calif. office. And now it is expanding its services to also include tools to help brands and advertisers identify videos being uploaded by their fans, and to connect with them. For every brand-produced video that is uploaded to YouTube, there are hundreds put up by regular users. Using the same technology that it developed for content owners, ZEFR is also able to find user-generated videos and analyze how different brands stack up. Check out the video above to get a better idea of ZEFR’s technology and how it helps content owners and brands. And come back on Monday and Wednesday next week for the final two parts of our series on new digital media companies in L.A. Be sure also to check out the whole series of videos below: |
This Week On The TechCrunch Droidcast: Weird Samsung Phones, Weirder HTC Ads, And Lengthy Android Love Letters | Chris Velazco | 2,013 | 8 | 14 | It’s late afternoon on a Wednesday, and you know what that means (bonus points if you didn’t cheat by looking at the headline)! That’s right: It’s time for another edition of the TechCrunch Droidcast featuring myself and hirsute wunderkind Darrell Etherington. But this time we’ve roped in a special guest to join the fun. Dan Bader (of and fame) stops by to help us unpack a pretty hefty docket: the nuances of HTC’s and Samsung’s curious Android-powered, dual-screen flip phone. And we couldn’t resist the temptation to dig into Twitter designer Paul Stamatiou’s to Android since people have been spreading it around like crazy lately … along with some of it’s already elicited. Strap in, folks, and let’s get nerdy. Intro music by .
|
How Much Cory Booker Trounced His Opponents, In 3 Graphs | Gregory Ferenstein | 2,013 | 8 | 14 | Newark Mayor and Silicon Valley white knight Cory Booker trounced his competitors in last night’s primary election. He raked in as many votes as his closest Democratic competitor, Congressman Rush Holt, and more than 100,000 people turned out to vote just for him, compared to the last non-presidential race in 2006. , he made friends fast with the Silicon Valley elite, ultimately leading to millions of dollars in investments in his video startup, #waywire. But with and — which was launched by veterans of President Obama’s campaign — Booker has come under the watchful eye of a political press suspicious of anyone who rubs shoulders with the social elite. This did matter in the primary, as he sailed to victory. (98% of precincts reporting) For the last 20 years of non-presidential elections, New Jersey primary turnout has hovered around 250,000 votes for the Democrat of choice. Booker snagged 353,000 votes. The total votes for Steve Lonegan, who won the Republican primary and will face Booker in a special election on October 10, did not experience a similar bump in turnout over 2006. (seriously, New Jersey, lose the PDFs and offer XML format) to transparency watchdog group The Sunlight Foundation, Booker raised 60 percent more than all of his competitors combined ($8.6 million vs. $5.1 million). Of course, $8.6 million might not even be close to enough, since Booker is a likely presidential contender, and Republicans would be wise to spend a lot of money to try to beat him before he gains momentum. As is standard for a federal official, Booker has agreed to put his stake in #waywire if he becomes a U.S. Senator. worth of investment Booker has in #waywire wouldn’t be as troubling as the financial relationship with the investors. Google and its Chairman, Eric Schmidt, for instance, are under constant scrutiny from the federal government for anti-trust and other issues. It would make it more difficult for Booker to have oversight over Schmidt and his other tech investors if he were financially tied to them (one could argue, it will be difficult whether or not he divests from #waywire). If I were a betting man, I would say Booker is going to win the Senate race handily. |
A16Z’s Scott Weiss, Box, Zendesk And Nebula To Talk About Winning In The Enterprise At Disrupt SF | Leena Rao | 2,013 | 8 | 14 | Enterprise is . As Andreessen Horowitz partner Scott Weiss aptly predicted in his brilliant guest post titled there is an unprecedented opportunity to create new multi-billion-dollar enterprise franchises despite incumbents throwing massive amounts of money to acquire these franchises. Weiss’ post created such an engaging conversation around the future of enterprise software that we decided to build a panel at Disrupt SF around the thesis, featuring Weiss himself, Box CEO and founder Aaron Levie, Zendesk CEO and founder Mikkel Svane, and Chris Kemp, the CEO of Nebula. Weiss believes that the next franchises will be built around three areas: mobile, SaaS and cloud infrastructure. Cloud storage giant Box has been doubling down on mobile, in its efforts to allow businesses to store and manage documents anywhere. As Levie has , Box is trying to invent what real-time collaboration looks like in the mobile era, and could be eying a public offering as early as next year. Zendesk’s SaaS help desk/support ticketing application has seen tremendous success as the key to service efficiency for any customer-facing company. As of , monthly recurring revenue has grown five-fold since 2010 for the company. While Zendesk’s bread and butter has been catering to small to medium-sized businesses, of late, Svane and the company has been pulling major enterprise deals, including L’Oreal, Groupon and many others. In terms of cloud infrastructure, there may be no better person to disrupt this sector than Nebula’s Kemp, who was the former CTO of NASA and the co-founder of OpenStack. With Nebula, Kemp and his team are an infrastructure that allows businesses to deploy large private cloud computing infrastructures. Together, Weiss, Levie, Svane and Kemp are going to talk about how they are building their own franchises and attempting to build lasting institutions in the enterprise world. The conference starts September 7 and runs until the 11th at our favorite location, the San Francisco Design Concourse. Stay tuned for more speaker announcements and a few surprises to be announced soon. General-admission tickets and exhibitor packages are currently available. Buy tickets . |
Flipboard Updates iOS App With GIF Support | Jordan Crook | 2,013 | 8 | 14 | Nary a soul on the Internet can resist a good GIF, but Flipboard browsers on iOS devices have been deprived until now. Today Flipboard has with GIF support, a feature Android users have long enjoyed. The update includes support for GIFs within the news feed, as well as some new GIF-centric magazines such as (a beautiful collection of artsy GIFs). The update also brings with it a number of new features, most notably Top Stories, which automatically surfaces new and popular content to the top of each Category, such as News, Sports, Tech, and Business. Other update additions include an auto-prompt to share a magazine after flipping through more than 10 pages, as well as an auto-profile page for anyone who creates three or more magazines. The additions are more subtle than GIF support, but certainly bring a nice (albeit slightly pushy) touch. The popularity of GIFs right now is undeniable. It’s not just big guys like Tumblr, , and (questionably) getting in on the looping, animated fun — a whole slew of startups have recently launched GIF-flavored (the file type, not the peanut butter) ventures. For example, that launched in May. Tumblr began in July, the same month that for its GIF-like music video making service. Plus, Viber and WhatsApp competitor just a few days ago. Obviously, Flipboard is right on time in terms of delivering the types of content users are looking for in this called the Internet. You can check out the update . |
Valve’s Former Steam Guru Jason Holtman Lands At Microsoft To Spearhead Its PC Gaming Efforts | Alex Wilhelm | 2,013 | 8 | 14 | Microsoft confirmed today that it has hired Jason Holtman to help lead its PC gaming efforts. Holtman left Valve in February for unknown reasons. As , he was known in that role for his work on Steam, the exceedingly popular PC game sale and delivery platform. Microsoft has a similar effort, Games for Windows, that is generally regarded as lesser than Steam by gamers. By hiring Holtman Microsoft could be signaling that it isn’t willing to allow Steam and its corporate parent Valve hegemony over the PC gaming market. That would make sense, as the PC gaming market is heavily concentrated on the Windows platform, which is Microsoft territory. Holtman about his move: “Yes, I have joined Microsoft where I will be focusing on making Windows a great platform for gaming and interactive entertainment. I think there is a lot of opportunity for Microsoft to deliver the games and entertainment customers want and to work with developers to make that happen, so I’m excited to be here.” That’s boilerplate, but his role at Microsoft could be interesting, given that Microsoft now has two discrete game-delivery systems: Games for Windows and the Windows 8 Store. This is both a boon — higher surface area to vend gaming titles — and confusing for consumers who may want a more unified system. That said, Holtman’s own note on his role at Microsoft, PC Gaming and Entertainment Strategy according to his LinkedIn profile, could have wide latitude inside the company. The key takeaway to this is that even though the Xbox One is a driving gravity force in the gaming space, the PC remains a key and large market for Microsoft and other software publishers. Physical distribution of gaming content, like all forms of software, is present and future. Boxes are over. And Holtman is famous for his vigor in that exact space. Microsoft, which is currently racing to refract its business to reflect that reality, appears to have made a timely hire. |
Online Textbook Rental Firm Chegg Files For $150 Million IPO | Alex Wilhelm | 2,013 | 8 | 14 | Online textbook rental company today . Its proposed ticker symbol is CHGG. The company had revenue of $149 million in 2010, $172 million in 2011 and $213 million in 2012. In the first half of 2013, Chegg had revenue of $117 million. That compares favorably to its first half 2012 revenue of $92 million. So, Chegg is growing its topline at a material, if modest pace. If we take its first-half 2013 revenue, double it, and contrast that to its full-year 2012 revenue, Chegg will have grown its net revenue by just under 10 percent. However, in comparing first-year halves, Chegg is experiencing faster revenue growth. It’s business, relating heavily to the education market, is seasonal. The company notes this fact directly: The fourth quarter is typically our highest performing quarter as we are recognizing a full quarter of revenue from peak volumes in August and September and partial revenue from peak volumes in December, while the second quarter typically is our lowest performing quarter as students start their summer vacations and the volume of textbook rentals and sales and purchases of supplemental materials and Homework Help decreases. That said, Chegg is not experiencing any sort of hyper-growth. Turning to its profitability, Chegg doesn’t have any of that. However, after a long period of increasing losses, it does appear to be hemorrhaging less money than before, which is evidenced by its growing revenue and flat expenses — this helps margins. The company had a net loss of $26 million in 2010, $38 million in 2011, and $49 million in 2012. For the first half of 2013, Chegg lost $21 million. This compares favorably with its first half-year loss in 2012 of $32 million. How much cash does the company have? Some, but not much compared to how much it wants to raise. The $150 million maximum that the company wants to raise through its initial public offering is a massive multiple on its current $22 million in cash and equivalents. So Chegg is looking to dramatically bolster its war chest through its offering. The company has lost a total of $170 million to date. Chegg has raised a total of $195 million to date, not including $55 million in raised debt. A final caveat of Chegg’s filing: The company is taking advantage of the JOBS Act, allowing it to avoid disclosing as much as other companies might, as it is classified as an “emerging growth company.” As it notes, the rules allow it to “ What Chegg must prove to investors is that its growing revenue can be converted to profits. However, given the scale of its raise compared to its current cash position, it doesn’t appear to be in a hurry to reach the black. |
Founder Stories: Serial Entrepreneur Steven Kirsch On Building A Remote Engineering Team | Contributor | 2,013 | 8 | 14 | We spend a lot of time on Founder Stories talking about hiring and culture largely because there is no secret sauce or fail-proof way that guarantees success. My guest this week is a serial entrepreneur who attributes the success of his current company, , to creating a culture that attracts the best hires. , whose past startup successes include Mouse Systems, FrameMaker and Infoseek, says that “people are very hard to change” and admits that he has made many of the same mistakes at all of the companies he has led over the years. This is why, according to Kirsch, hiring the right people who have complementary skills is important. In our discussion, Kirsch also talks about how he learned that recruiting top talent who look at the world in new and interesting ways is crucial. He explains how early in his career he tended to under hire, opting instead to bring people up with the company. But in recent years he has looked to companies like Tesla and Google to learn that the best employees build the best products. This is why for OneID, Kirsch hired an engineering team in Austin. Watch to hear his advice on creating culture at a company that is growing in two separate locations. |
Amazon’s Silk Web Browser Gets A Whole New Look | Sarah Perez | 2,013 | 8 | 14 | which comes built into Kindle Fire devices, has received its first major upgrade since , the company today. Though there have been steady under-the-hood improvements over time, this is the first release since last fall to introduce consumer-facing changes to the way the browser looks and behaves, including a new tutorial, redesigned tabs, better browser controls, simpler navigation options, and easier access to Silk’s Reading View feature. One of the new features rolling out today has to do with how Silk appears to first-time users. Like many apps do today, the browser now launches with a brief tutorial to explain its features. Instead of screens you have to swipe through, Silk adopts the “overlay” interface which darkens the background to point out various navigational buttons like the Action Menu, Reading View, and Left Panel slider, for example, which is where users can view their Most Visited pages, Bookmarks, and History. But one of the bigger changes, especially for current users, is Silk’s new Start page – something Amazon revamped based on user studies and feedback. Previously, this page featured links to users’ bookmarks and browsing history as well as a “Starter” section, which showed the most visited pages, trending pages across all Kindle Fire devices, and a list of “selected sites.” Some users didn’t care for the way what other people were surfing and reading on their Kindle Fires took up so much of their own new tab interface, and Amazon didn’t let users customize this screen, which was an annoyance, too. Not surprisingly, Amazon found that the “Most Visited” links and direct URL entry were the two most commonly used navigational options, so it has now made them more prominent in the new tab view. The other links, like Trending section, Bookmarks, and History section are now tucked away off to the left side of the screen, which is also where you can access Settings. These pages received updates, too, with Bookmarks now offering two view modes: a single column of entries with thumbnails, or a grid view with larger thumbnails. Other more subtle tweaks include performance improvements, a rounding of the tabs on the tab bar to make it easier for users to see where tabs stop and start, and updated browser controls. This includes making the Reading View (the view that strips out the related links, and ads to leave only the text) easier to find than before, as well as an improved full screen view. Combined, the refreshed feature set makes for a notable overhaul of Silk’s browser, which has never really been one of the stronger mobile browsers out there – at least in terms of its user interface – despite its long touted “ ” underpinnings. That’s been frustrating since a good browser is a key component to any tablet experience, but even if you only use your Fire for reading, the browser is still needed in order to browse and checkout books from your local library’s website, in many cases. The refreshed Silk browser is rolling out now, and Amazon has also published a along with today’s release. |
Yes, Gmail Users Have Some Privacy. Here’s What You Can Expect | Gregory Ferenstein | 2,013 | 8 | 14 | Google is in hot water after its that Gmail users have “no reasonable” expectations of privacy. The short answer is that yes, Gmail users do have some expectation of privacy and there have been no major privacy policy changes in the past year. But, since the press is freaking out, let us review what kind of privacy users can–and cannot–expect. In a class-action lawsuit, Google is seeking to dismiss charges that it illegally mines users data. The search giant cites an antiquated 1979 Supreme Court decision, Smith v. Maryland, to cover its digital behind in a technical catch-all strategy to avoid any legal culpability. The language of the decision may freak you out: “Just as a sender of a letter to a business colleague cannot be surprised that the recipient’s assistant opens the letter, people who use web-based email today cannot be surprised if their emails are processed by the recipient’s [e-mail provider] in the course of delivery. Indeed, ‘a person has no legitimate expectation of privacy in information he voluntarily turns over to third parties.’ But, in practice, Google has a vested interest in respecting at least some privacy. Here’s what you can expect. If you’ve been sending out a lot of wedding invitations, there’s a good chance you’ve been seeing advertisements for event planners, dress makers, and couples therapy and–for the truly prepared–divorce lawyers. Google automatically scans the content of email to optimize its ad targeting. According to Google, no human can actually read the content of your messages. Google’s new Director Of Engineering, futurist Ray Kurzweil, told me that he wants to build a search engine that . In order to give you up-to-date traffic directions on your commute, shopping recommendations, and tailored search answers, it’s helpful to know where you live, where you visit, and what you’ve searched for in the past. Unless you’re an avid Kanye West fan, the term “north west” probably refers to an actual region of the world. So, last year, Google adopted a major change to its privacy policy that allowed cross-reference data across all of the services, from Maps to Docs. This is the subject of the class-action lawsuit. Plaintiffs claim that this gives Google too much information and violates your privacy rights. While Plaintiffs have not established any harm, if it freaks you out for Google to combine your Maps and Gmail searches, you should probably jump ship. Personally, I can’t figure out how this hurts me, so I’m staying with Gmail. We know for a fact that Google is legally required to hand over the content of emails if they receive a court order. For instance, the Feds snagged the emails of famed WikiLeaks informant, Herbert Snorrason. If you are a threat to the U.S. government and they know it, you might want to rethink your email habits. Thanks to Edward Snowden, we now know spy agencies around the world allegedly the records and content of most major email providers. We do not know whether they can read any of this information without a court order or which agencies they can share it with. It’s all up to paranoid speculation at the moment. If you’re freaked out about government spying, there really aren’t any alternative email providers. Last year, two of the most popular secure email services preemptively their web apps, after admitting they could not keep users’ information safe from the government. There are some more sophisticated (read: ) ways of encrypting email on your own, but you’ll need to coordinate with your respondents and they can’t use any major email service provider. |
Facebook’s Star Manager Peter Deng Becomes Instagram Director Of Product To “Do Fewer Things Better” | Josh Constine | 2,013 | 8 | 14 | Peter Deng built Facebook Chat, Groups and Messenger as its product management director for the last six years. Now he’s going to execute the vision of Instagram’s founders as its . “I’m not trying to come in and make changes,” Deng tells me. “Kevin and Mike have a great thing going. How can we move faster and build more beautiful products? That’s what I’m coming here to do.” Deng doesn’t get up on stage as much as Zuck, Sheryl, and Chris Cox do, but he’s responsible for much of what we know as Facebook today. He previously interned at Microsoft and later worked on product at Google before joining Facebook in 2007. Here’s a quick run-down of what Peter’s worked on since then: After all that, he still wasn’t sick of the Facebook ecosystem, telling me he never planned to leave the company. Instead, Deng wants to bring the insights from building these products to Instagram as he reports to its CEO Kevin Systrom. That’s great news for Facebook, which has seen a lot of talented veterans move on to launch their own startups after doing their “duty” to the social network. Naomi Gleit, Facebook’s longest-running employee other than Mark Zuckerberg, will now be leading the messaging team Peter previously managed. Moving to Instagram will give Deng a fresh set of puzzles to solve while still going to work at 1 Hacker Way. He explains: “I see a lot of the same challenges that Facebook faced in getting to where it is today. How do you build a product organization, how do you understand how people use the product? how do you make the product relevant internationally. Fo me it was an exciting time to come to a team that’s probably going to face a lot of these challenges, and make it less painful to go through some of these things.” said about Deng: “Peter joins in good company too, as we’ve built out our Instagram leadership team to take on the challenges of building a world-class product and company. Through our many discussions, it’s clear his unique skills in building out product management teams, creating scalable structures for building new products, and his experience building out Facebook News Feed and Messenger make him the perfect fit for our company. Ever since we worked at Google together many years ago, I’ve been able to call Peter a good friend – and now years later, I’m thrilled we get to work together again on the Instagram that we all know and love.” Instagram’s potential to transport us and offer new perspectives endeared it to Deng. “There are these guys in Russia and Indiana that I follow. I don’t know them, they’re not my friends, but that I get to see the world through their lens is truly amazing,” he tells me. And Instagram’s ability to preserve our memories took on new meaning for Deng this morning, as he had his phone stolen. He recounts, “At first I was kind of pissed for 30 seconds. But then I thought ‘Hey, it’s just a tool to make my life better. I can get another tool and my life stays the same. All my moments are already on Instagram and Facebook. We have photo sync. Nothing is actually on the phone. It’s just the window.” While Deng has great product vision himself, he tells me his job isn’t to meddle with Instagram’s focus on simplicity, embodied in its design philosophy “Do Fewer Things Better.” The team is 50 people now, up from 13 when it was bought by Facebook in April 2012. It’s not a startup scrambling to define itself. It’s a tool used by hundreds of millions of people, where a little more efficiency makes a huge difference.
|
null | John Biggs | 2,013 | 8 | 13 | null |
Apple Shares Hit $500 Again, Representing A Massive $100 Billion Market Cap Gain In 48 Days | Romain Dillet | 2,013 | 8 | 14 | Apple shares ( ) are currently up 2.79 percent to $503.25 a share in the wake of Carl Icahn’s on Twitter. Yet, the stock performance of the past two days shouldn’t diminish the overall performance over the past two months. In less than two months, Apple has indeed gained $100 billion in market capitalization. On June 27 of this year, shares closed at $393.78, roughly back to their December 2011 level. Today’s price represents a 27.8 percent increase in just 48 days. The last time shares were trading above $500 was on January 23. It proves once again that AAPL still suffers from a lot of . Even though net profit is still declining, Apple reported good numbers for its fiscal quarter. After multiple mixed quarters, the company managed to beat the analysts’ expectations. Retrospectively, the market reaction to Q1 and Q2 numbers was certainly too harsh when you compare it to the actual numbers. Apple still has more than $145 billion in cash and a comfortable market position. iPhone sales are still growing 20 percent year over year. Moreover, Apple started a huge $100 billion share buyback program last year, and investors are starting to see the effects. As a result, earnings per share has mechanically increased over time. Investor Carl Icahn revealed that he was lobbying to accelerate the share buyback program. It drove the stock up 4 percent in just minutes, proving that investors are confident that Apple shares are a good component in their portfolios. When it comes to products, back in April, Apple’s growth prospects were — the magical period of double-digit growth for both sales and profit was over. Yet, the analysts’ expectations led to distortion. For years, they were setting the bar too high for units and market share, and too low for profit and sales. Now that analysts are more accurate, the perception of Apple is changing at the same time. While the company didn’t release any new product after WWDC (aside from the updated MacBook Air), the keynote was received very well by commentators. The star of the show was iOS 7. It proved that Apple was still ready to make radical changes to its core products without fearing backlash. In other words, Apple is still innovating. But customers are now more likely than ever to buy old iPhone models — Apple needs to contract the production costs of old models, or to find an alternative. In addition to releasing a new flagship iPhone, it will probably release a new low cost iPhone (probably the iPhone 5C). As the company is now switching to another product strategy with the iPhone 5C right , it will become easier to understand Apple numbers in the coming months. Similarly to the iPad mini, Apple now wants to capture another segment of the smartphone market with a low cost iPhone and to stay dominant when it comes to profit. As a consequence, the company could fight back in the with Android. It would give a great perception boost to Apple. More importantly, investors are already taking into account the iPhone event. On September 19 of 2012, shares peaked at 702.10 following a very strong summer. This year, the stock is experiencing the exact same scenario and it will be interesting to see the trend following the new iPhone releases. |
Made In Space, Makers Of The Only 3D Printer In Orbit, Answer Some Pressing Questions About Manufacturing And Yoda | John Biggs | 2,013 | 8 | 14 | This week we learned that into space to support the astronauts on the International Space Station. But NASA didn’t build the printer. Instead they farmed it out to a company called , a startup focused on making a solid, space-ready 3D printer that can survive the vast darkness of the cosmos. That company has a great sense of humor and wanted to talk a little bit more about their product and the printer. In fact, they explained that they are currently working on a closed loop system that would allow the astronauts to reuse plastic over and over again in the printer. I spoke with the founders of Made In Space, Aaron Kemmer, Jason Dunn, and Mike Chen, about their new product and what it feels like to be the first additive manufacturing company to send their product into orbit. Made In Space: I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t answer that. MIS: Our printer will be the first device to ever manufacture anything off of the Earth. This milestone is significant because up until now, everything that is needed in space must be made on Earth and then launched to space, which is an incredibly expensive and time-consuming process. This is a tremendous impediment to progress in the space industry, and is also one of the primary factors that makes space missions so risky. You really need to plan for every contingency ahead of time. In 2014, When our 3D printer starts manufacturing parts on-demand in space, NASA and other space entities will have the capability to repair their space missions on the fly if something goes wrong. Astronauts will be able to create new parts as-needed on the station in a matter of minutes or hours, instead of waiting months to years for the needed parts to arrive on station. This will speed up development time, accelerate the innovation cycle, and increase the safety of space missions. MIS: When we started to bring additive manufacturing to space, we originally looked at adapting commercial off-the-shelf 3D printers. In 2011, we conducted in-depth testing of off-the-shelf 3D printers in microgravity. The results of our testing clearly indicated that no 3D printers designed for terrestrial use were fit for the space environment. There are quite a number of significant differences between a 3D printer designed for use on Earth and one that is fit for use in space. We have had the good fortune of working with and employing quite a few highly experienced aerospace engineers with extensive experience creating space-ready hardware. Not only does the printer need to work in extended microgravity, but it needs to be capable of surviving the extreme forces imposed on it during launch, and meet a very long list of NASA imposed requirements to fly hardware to the International Space Station. These are just some of the developments we’ve needed to make. It’s taken us thousands of pages of internal documentation just to describe the engineering work we’ve done to get our printer ready for space. MIS: NASA is one of our customers. It is common for NASA to contract private companies to provide products and services for space exploration. A good example is Boeing. One of the most featured in the media these days is SpaceX, who is now delivering goods for NASA to the Space Station on their rockets. The “new space” industry is getting more exciting with every passing year, where startups in Silicon Valley like Made in Space are working with NASA and other groups to push the envelope of what is possible with space missions. MIS: The process starts with an extensive suite of modeling and simulation tools that we use to run analyses on every detail of our design. The primary way that we test our hardware for space travel, though, is by repeatedly testing our systems in an actual microgravity environment, on parabolic aircraft flights through the NASA Flight Opportunities Program. To date we’ve accumulated over 500 parabolas of zero-gravity manufacturing time. We also put our printer through rigorous environmental testing with NASA at Marshall Space Flight Center, where we test everything from electromagnetic interference and radiated emissions, the ability to survive launch vibrations, crew safety, and just about everything in-between. We now have over a dozen full-time employees and a team of 20+ people. MIS: We asked our team, and they told us that they would try. We told them “do or do not, there is no try.” |
Google Search Gets More Personal, Now Lets You Find Your Flight Info, Reservations, Photos And More | Frederic Lardinois | 2,013 | 8 | 14 | Google today a number of search features that make it easier for you to find your own personal information through Google Search. The search engine can now find information about your upcoming flights (“Is my flight on time?”), hotel or OpenTable reservations, package delivery information (“When will my package arrive?”), your purchases and what’s on your calendar. Just like on Google+, you can also now use the regular Google search to find your own photos through queries like “Show me my photos of beaches.” All of these features are opt-out and will roll out to all users in the U.S. in English over the next few days. It’ll be available on all platforms, with the exception of Google Glass, and you can, of course, also use Google’s voice recognition to ask your questions. If you are familiar with the and, of course, , you’ll have seen some of these cards pop up in your searches over the last few months. As a Google spokesperson told me, though, today’s launch only graduates a subset of the Gmail Search Field Trial and for now, the trial will continue as a test bed for new features for those who want to remain on the cutting edge. Over time, Google expects to bring more of the Field Trial feature to the rest of Google Search. Except for the photos (a feature that was previously and which analyzes your uploads to Google+ Photos), Google extracts most of this information from your Gmail inbox. Given the privacy implications and sensitive nature of some of this information, it’s interesting that Google has decided to make this feature opt-out. As Google notes, all your information is sent over encrypted connections and only visible to you when you are signed in to Google. You can always turn it off completely (look for the new “Private results” section in your ) or on a per-session basis by clicking on the globe icon at the top of the search results page. You can find a list of some of the queries that Google can now answer . Below are a few examples: As Google tells me, the system is quite flexible in recognizing questions, and even though these queries are guaranteed to bring up the new search results, similarly phrased questions may also work. |
Microsoft Acknowledges Outlook.com, Messenger, SkyDrive Outages | Alex Wilhelm | 2,013 | 8 | 14 | Having a hard time accessing your SkyDrive files or your email on Outlook.com? You are not alone, and Microsoft says that it is working on the issue. The latest from Microsoft’s (remember Live.com?) is simple: Outlook.com, SkyDrive, and the ‘People’ services are all on the rocks at the moment. Some, such as ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley, by the issue. My account, for whatever it is worth, is also working. However, Microsoft has officially noted the issues, stating that users “might not be able to see all [their] email messages.” And under the SkyDrive tab, it plainly notes that “services such as Hotmail, Messenger and SkyDrive are experiencing technical difficulties.” Microsoft promises an update by 11 this morning, so we should know more soon. This sort of issue is somewhat pedestrian and normal, provided that it doesn’t bang on for too long. So if Microsoft manages to right its server ship quickly, no worries. But if the outage continues for more than a few hours or so, it undermines Microsoft’s cloud premise that users should turn to hosted services over on-premise or on-desktop solutions. Microsoft has put SkyDrive into an increasingly important position in the Windows environment, boosting its integration points in Windows 8.1 over an already intertwined Windows 8 experience. To have it go down is subpar. For live updates on the status, . In the meantime, . |
Obama Keeps Promise By Appointing A Privacy Hawk To NSA Review Panel | Gregory Ferenstein | 2,013 | 8 | 22 | So far, Obama is keeping his promise to create a truly independent review board over national surveillance policy. Today, ABC that and Center for American Progress fellow, Peter Swire, will join a small group of government insiders to draft a public report on the National Security Agency’s civil liberties record. The review panel was announced along with several proposed reforms aimed at making the NSA surveillance program more transparent. Swire, currently a professor of Georgia Institute of Technology, endorsed two court briefs claiming that the NSA’s program to collect call records (meta-data) of every Verizon phone call was illegal. “I also think the collection about Americans doing domestic calls is highly questionable under the Fourth Amendment,” he said in a recent Interview. The other three picks, Cass Sunstein, , and Michael Morell, are all White House and intelligence insiders. Sunstein was an intellectual inspiration for Obama at the University of Chicago and helped engineer a regulatory philosophy that permitted the government to “nudge” citizens to be more pro-social. Morell was former acting head of the CIA. Clarke is veteran security insider, who was critical of the Iraq war and is now an author on cyber warfare. [tweet https://twitter.com/repjustinamash/status/370730475083399169] Civil liberty groups that there’s only one privacy advocate on the group, and all are Washington insiders. But, if public opinion polls are any indication, the 3-1 ratio is roughly equivalent to the 38% of Americans who think . The group’s report should be out 60 days after the panel official begins. So, we don’t have to wait too long before we’ll know if the President follows through on his announcement. It’s still early days, but so far, a promise has been kept |
Salesforce + Zillow? RealScout Lands $1.1M From DCM, Formation 8 For More Personal, Collaborative Real Estate Search | Rip Empson | 2,013 | 8 | 22 | , a new real estate technology company based in Sunnyvale, announced today that it has raised $1.1 million in seed financing from DCM’s mobile‐focused A‐Fund, as well as Formation 8 and angel investors like long-time realtor, Ken DeLeon. With its new funding, RealScout wants to continue expanding its listings search engine, which the team designed to stand out from the crowd in real estate search by focusing on granularity and serving more refined (and detailed) results. RealScout is the latest in a growing list of startups operating on the premise that the tools we use to search for local real estate are outdated and broken. As such, companies like Redfin, Zillow and Trulia, for example, have found success by focusing on improving consumer experience, bringing simpler, user-friendly tools to the opaque and confusing world of real estate search. However, while this shift in focus to the end-user has been a boon for the space, improving the consumer experience by leaps and bounds (and ), RealScout CEO Andrew Flachner believes the change has come at cost, which few are talking about. Flachner tells us that he sees real estate agents getting the short end of the stick and are being left behind. Generally speaking, agents are still using outdated search and client management tools — ones that tend to confound their clients, who turn to national portals as a result, where quickly get disconnected from agents and lured away by competitors. The co-founders launched RealScout last year to address this imbalance and put realtors back in the driver’s seat — both by making the search process itself more collaborative and by offering them better tools to engage clients and find new business. With most real estate search tools today, the priority is on casting the widest net possible — on quantity and not necessarily on quality or refining the criteria they use to serve more interesting matches. Today, RealScout offers potential buyers the ability to use specific parameters to refine their search for local listings, allowing them to search by floor plans, type of floors, the amount of natural light and some 500 other specific home features. Naturally, Flachner and company believe that by expanding their data set to include 500 unique characteristics and data points on active home listings, they can make it easier for clients and realtors to discover potentially deal-breaking (or making) features like a giant backyard or proximity to public transportation. Of course, while improving indexing and metadata is important, that isn’t something that’s totally out of the technical capacity of some of the bigger names in this space. RealScout realizes that if it’s going to steal you away from Trulia (and others), which offer advanced search tools (even if not 500 unique data points), it can ramp up the value of its tools by going after realtors. In other words, RealScout essentially wants to marry Zillow’s feel to the more powerful B2B, CRM and engagement tools of a company like Salesforce. Both through its web and mobile platforms, the startup allows realtors to collaborate with their clients during the search, while tapping into natural language-based email marketing software and lightweight CRM tools. Agents can set up automated natural language email alerts and highlight new listings for clients that are actually customized to fit their preferences. And, on the CRM front, the platform aims to offer better visibility into what their clients are searching for, while keeping tabs on engagement, their interactions with customers and identifying leads. A lot of product development in the tech industry today, especially in software, seems bent on automation in some way or another. While much of this will help reduce costs and improve margins, the RealScout co-founders are eager to build software that helps people do their jobs better and get a more robust understanding their clients, not just offer shortcuts or take them out of the equation completely. And to that end, it’s not about disintermediation either, but creating more value by improving the dynamic between agents and their clients — and not just in a creepy way. The startup is now servicing real estate agents in the Bay Area and plans to use its new financing to expand further both within California and throughout the U.S. For more, find |
iPad Animation App Loop Captures The Fun Of Making Doodled Flipbooks | Catherine Shu | 2,013 | 8 | 22 | Remember turning the corners of your class notes into flipbooks with a sequence of tiny drawings? iPad app recreates the glee of watching your doodles come to life by making it easy to create frame-by-frame animations. Loop, which costs a dollar , is the creation of , a studio known for its large-scale digital installations, and is based on the sketches used by head artist and collaborators to plan visual concepts. The beauty of Loop, however, is that it is about as unintimidating as an art app can get. Its user interface features a very limited set of tools, including an onion skin tool, a button that lets you duplicate your last frame and an eraser, but no undo feature. Loop’s fanciest feature is the ability to import a guide movie to trace over, but with only three ink colors (black, red and blue) and 45 frames available, it’s not like you’ll be recreating Studio Ghibli masterpieces on your iPad. Loop’s limitations, however, are liberating. I love drawing apps like and , but as a non-artist, I always feel as if I’m wasting their feature sets. On the other hand, I felt free to indulge my penchant for hastily-drawn stick figures and crude five-petal flowers on Loop. Anticipating seeing them come to life added to my giddiness. One of the first gifs I made with Loop is below: Once you are done with your animation, you can export it as a gif and email it, save it to your camera roll, submit it to or post it to Tumblr. My main quibble with Loop is that the gifs it creates are tiny (about 183KB), which means if you decide to spend time on a more complex animation, most details will be hard to see in your final product. The “import guide movie” feature distorted the aspect ratios of the video clips I tried to use, a quirk I hope Universal Everything will fix in future updates. I’d also like the ability to upload a guide image instead. These minor complaints aside, Loop is the most fun I’ve ever had with an art app on my iPad. In fact, it’s the most fun I’ve had with drawing since I was a kid doodling away in my class notebooks. |
Google Ventures Puts $258M Into Uber, Its Largest Deal Ever | Alex Wilhelm | 2,013 | 8 | 22 | A unearthed today shows that Uber $361.2 million in its latest round. It’s unknown why TPG, which picked up 775,092 shares, paid a lower per-share price than the other participants. The late-stage investor plunked down a total of $88.4 million in Uber. Existing investor Benchmark put in another $15 million in this round. The total Uber raise can be calculated by combining the shared value of Uber’s new Series C-1 and Series C-2 stock. The 1,913,782 C-1 shares are worth $142.54 each, and the 775,092 C-2 shares are worth $114.032 each. Multiply the per-share value of each C class by the number of shares, and you come to a total value of $361.2 million. C-2 investor TPG got an Uber board seat, according to the term sheet. What is most interesting about this raise, however, isn’t evident in this filing. According to the document, the black-car on-demand service has raised $103.4 million from TPG, Benchmark and someone who picked up another 1.8 million shares. We have both confirmed that Google Ventures is the largest investor in the round, pumping $257.79 million into the car service. The round values Uber at around $3.4 billion pre-money and $3.76 billion post. The investment was led by Google Ventures General Partner . Despite it being a later-stage investment, it was not a deal, mainly because of the heavy Google Ventures involvement in sourcing and negotiating, we hear. The $258 million is an 86 percent chunk of Google Ventures’ , and it’s unclear whether the firm will continue to make such sizable investments. As both Google Ventures and Google Capital come out of Google’s balance sheet, this is purely a matter of semantics, and logo. We’ve also confirmed, like Swisher reported, that a meeting with Google CEO Larry Page sealed the deal — wherein Page outlined how Google’s resources could bolster Uber co-founder ‘s grand plan to offer via iPhone. On-demand car services have been stockpiling moola this year. Lyft, a company that competes with Uber, from Andreessen Horowitz and others. Hailo a total of $50 million from Richard Branson even. Uber itself has expanded outside of its original black-car service to both taxi and ride-sharing options, growing its footprint by becoming more accessible to users from all walks of life. Interestingly enough, Google Ventures is an early-stage investor in Uber competitor SideCar, but because Uber is focusing on being everybody’s private space elevator and self-driving cab*, we guess this isn’t a conflict. As many have pointed out, this raise is massive — Google Ventures’ largest deal ever — giving Uber much latitude to grow and prepare itself for an IPO. Given the scale of the cash injection, the company might not have to raise another series round before going public, though a bridge round isn’t inconceivable. In the race to get you around cities with only a smartphone and a saved credit-card number, the major players now have all the fuel they need — with one having the most. While we originally reported that Kevin Rose brought the deal in, another source has tipped us to say that Rose had no involvement. And both Google and Uber have since confirmed the investment and with the information that GP David Krane, not co-founder David Drummond led the round. Drummond has joined the Uber board, as Dan Primack , along with TPG Capital co-founder David Bonderman. For context, Google Ventures apparently is investing 2.5x into Uber what originally committed to Google Ventures. — Dan Primack (@danprimack) |
Google Search Gets Improved Dictionary Definitions With Sample Sentences, Synonyms, Translations And Usage Stats | Frederic Lardinois | 2,013 | 8 | 22 | Here is a : Google’s dictionary definitions — which you can invoke by using a query like “define crunch ” — now feature significantly more information about virtually every word in its catalog. The update, Google says, is meant to “give you more information about these words beyond just their definition.” The dictionary box recently began showing sentences that contain the words, as well as their synonyms, for example. In addition, it’ll show a word’s etymology (sometimes as a flow chart and sometimes as regular text), as well as how often a word was used over time. Google gets the usage data from its . The dictionary box now also features a built-in translation section that supports over 60 languages. Sadly, the translations don’t feature any sample sentences yet. While most people will still likely type their queries into the search bar, you can also use voice queries like “What’s the definition of fortuitous?” and “What are synonyms for fortuitous?” to have Google speak its answers back to you. Just like before, you can still tap the microphone button to hear how to pronounce a word. These new definitions are now available on desktop and mobile. As is so often the case, all of these new features will first launch in the U.S. and in English. It’s not clear when Google plans to bring it to other countries and languages. |
Video Site Chill Offers New Tools For Giving ‘Insider Access’ To Fans | Anthony Ha | 2,013 | 8 | 22 | , the site where independent filmmakers and other content creators can , has some new features for engaging those fans even before the movie (or other project) has been completed. You can see these features in action in the page for , an . In exchange for providing their contact information, fans get access to behind-the-scenes videos, photos, and blog posts before anyone else. “Behind-the-scenes content is not a new concept,” acknowledged Chill co-founder Brian Norgard. What Chill can do, however, is use that content for “community activation.” With this content, creators are offering a lot more incentive to provide your contact info than just a generic message of “sign up for my email list!” Then, once the movie is done, they can reach out to those fans to preorder the film, and promote it. One point of comparison is Kickstarter, where project backers usually get access to exclusive, behind-the-scenes content, but in this case the request for financial support comes after you’ve been following the project, not before. Not that Chill expects the content to be exclusive forever, Norgard added. He predicted that a lot of this behind-the-scenes stuff could get used elsewhere, for example posted to YouTube, but the Insider Access page will serve as a “centralized” repository where members should get access first: “You want to reward the super fans.” There are currently three Insider Access projects on the Chill site — in addition to Camp Takota, there’s crowdfunding documentary and “film noir comedy” . Those projects have seen a total of more than 70,000 sign-ups, the vast majority (53,000) for Camp Takota. There should be more Insider Access projects going up soon, Norgard said, and they won’t be limited to movies — Chill is also working with a few musicians. And eventually he wants to make it a self-serve feature for anyone selling content on the site. |
Why Obama’s Radical Education Plan Could Finally Disrupt College | Gregory Ferenstein | 2,013 | 8 | 22 | For the first time in American history, colleges could be judged on how their graduates perform in the real world and give the private sector a way to compete on a common metric. Later today, President Obama will unveil a new plan to overhaul college ratings, funding requirements and loan repayment, as well as promote innovations in online learning. If the still-vague plan is implemented with teeth, it could lead to a radical overhaul in the educational establishment, since few universities are currently structured to impart job-relevant skills. Ostensibly about “college affordability,” Obama’s plan will have four major components (there’s over at WonkBlog and there’s a copy of the official talking points ): The president’s plan seems particularly at Carnegie Mellon and Arizona State University, where students spent less time in class, improved overall test scores, and lowered costs. There’s a reason why MOOCs are so cheap: schools need less space and fewer teachers. Coursera has enrolled more than 4.4 million students in 431 courses, at around 40,000 students per course (according to Daphne Koller of Coursera). Video lectures only need to be recorded once and there only needs to be a handful of the world’s best instructors to teach any particular field. Much of the slack from face-to-face professor time is taken up by advanced students who volunteer to tutor their peers, in exchange for prestige and warm fuzzy feelings. In other cases, paid . Currently, I’m trying out a math class over at Coursera, and pay tutors over at the website Chegg $15/month to help me solve proofs. I’m not finished yet, but the experience so far has been moderately positive. Many students will again. A significant chunk of professors and lecturers will be out of a job, since colleges will only be able to justify faculty who can pay for their position with research funds. Graduates from the fanciest Ivy Leagues don’t always have the best life post-college. For instance, when Forbes ranked colleges on student satisfaction and post-graduate pay, Pomona College ranked No. 2. Berkeley tanked to No. 22 and ($57,000) didn’t even make the top 10 (it was No. 12). While creating a solid ranking on new outcomes will be difficult, at least it will be based on real-world outcomes. Most importantly, colleges aren’t designed to prepare students. Most teachers are career academics; they have little desire or ability to teach real-world skills. A professor at the University Of California, Irvine, once told me that most faculty regard teaching as a way to “subsidize” their research. The lack of focus on teaching prompted Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to vocational learning, “the neglected stepchild of education reform.” But until now, colleges have not been punished for ignoring their students’ post-graduate lives. Depending on how steeply federal aid is tied to job placement and loan repayment, colleges may have no choice but to restructure for real-life learning According to the talking points of Obama’s plan, the White House plans to promote schools that “award credits based on learning, not on seat-time.” Instead of giving credit hours, Southern New Hampshire opened up the to give a degree based entirely on tests of competency. Under the old model, we can only correlate degree and job outcomes. We know that students attended a particular college, but we don’t know what they learned. As a result, we have to go largely on name recognition alone. In a competency-based education world, we’ll have data on exactly what students know when they graduate. Schools will have an incentive to adopt standard measures of competency related to communication skills or computer programming ability. Every student can be judged based on how they score on common tests, rather than if they spent buckets of money attending a household name university. Now, all of this depends on Congress’s willingness to enact tough requirements on federal aid. from higher education political lobbies, especially for-profit colleges, to restrict the government’s ability to release data on college and career performance. But, with some political gumption, college could finally be on its way to being as useful as it should be. |
Pandora Plans To Lift Its 40-Hour Free Mobile Listening Cap On Sept. 1 | Anthony Ha | 2,013 | 8 | 22 | During this afternoon’s earnings call, Pandora executives said that they would lift for that was announced back in February. This is actually the second time Pandora has instituted a free cap and then lifted it again — it last lifted the cap in September 2011. CFO Mike Herring said the decision was based on two factors. First, he described the cap as a “blunt tool” for limiting usage and costs, and in the time since, the company has developed more “surgical techniques” (such as skip limits), that control costs without affecting the listener experience as obviously. He also said that due to improvements the business, particularly in the advertising business, Pandora can now “monetize those hours from 41 onward at a much higher rate.” Herring also noted that when the mobile cap was reinstituted, usage dropped 10 percent. He said lifting the cap won’t lead to a corresponding jump, due to the measures he hinted at earlier that are limiting usage: “We don’t expect a big spike in hours. We do expect the hours to go up.” And Herring suggested that without the cap, subscriptions won’t grow dramatically, and he predicted that they’ll make up 20 percent of the company’s revenue for the year. One thing that Herring didn’t directly connect with the news was increased competition — an issue that’s looming large with , where there hasn’t been any cap reported. However, he did touch on competition in another portion of the call, saying, “We are no strangers to intense competition.” Those earnings, by the way, , with revenue up 58 percent year-over-year. The company predicts that it will be profitable for the full year. Here’s the script for Herring’s initial remarks during the call: Our investment in advertising infrastructure and implementing smart levers such as reducing song skipping and limiting mobile listening have helped us drive monetization and manage content costs, as reflected by the increase in RPM and a decrease in content costs as a percentage of revenue. When we introduced the 40 hour mobile listening limit, we were confident that our scale – over 7% of total radio listening and Pandora’s number one ranking in most major markets – would allow us to take this action without impacting our key monetization initiatives in driving the disruption of the radio advertising market and driving our mobile advertising leadership. As our results have shown, the continued strong growth in our advertising revenue allowed us to cover the increased royalty costs with dollars left over to invest back into the business. With these tools in hand, and insight into how they work, we are resetting our levers in September. Notably, Pandora plans to eliminate the blanket 40-hour-per-month limit on free mobile listening effective September 1st. In the 6 months since we first implemented the free mobile listening limitation, we have gained critical insights into our user population that has given us greater control of our business. Because of these insights Pandora has implemented both other surgical levers to control content cost and new features that will allow for greater product usage. With these tools in place we are well positioned to continue to both optimize the cost structure of the business and further monetization progress. |
The Form 1 3D Printer Gets An OS X Update | John Biggs | 2,013 | 8 | 22 | The software package that comes with the Form 1 3D printer, , has gotten a much-needed update. First, the new software, called is now compatible with OS X, which means more users can use the system natively on their machines. The new software also supports automatic mesh repair using software from . Writes Sam Jacoby of Formlabs: “PreForm’s mesh repair tool integrates software from Netfabb to examine the triangle meshes that make up your digital design. It will automatically clean up artifacts, close triangles, and join vertices, so that your models will print reliably on the Form 1.” This means prints will be far smoother than they were in earlier versions of the software. I’ve used the OS X version of PreForm and found it to work flawlessly on Macs. PreForm creates a lattice structure that allows you to print objects using the Form 1’s unique technology and then slices the object up for proper printing. While it’s not a formal editor, it does allow you to scale and modify some models before printing. On August 6 Form Labs released an update that allowed users to . |
Pandora Revenue Beats The Street, Grows 58% To $162M For Its Last Quarter Before iTunes Radio | Romain Dillet | 2,013 | 8 | 22 | Streaming radio platform just released its second-quarter earnings, and it largely beat the street’s expectations. Total revenue increased 58 percent year-over-year to $162 million. The company reported non-GAAP EPS of -$0.04, a $7.8 million net loss. Analysts expected revenue of $156 million and non-GAAP earnings of $0.02 per share. Pandora managed to beat on revenue but was disappointing on earnings. Now 71.2 million users strong, the company reported 3.88 billion listening hours over the quarter, representing an 18 percent year-over-year increase. Yet, Pandora reported 4.18 billion listening hours . Even though revenue is increasing, people are listening less to Pandora. Moreover, it is still losing money. Pandora is careful with its Q3 estimates, as it expects between $174 million and $179 million in revenue with non-GAAP earnings per share between $0.03 and $0.06 after three quarters in the red. Yet, the big elephant in the room is . Over the past seven days, most analysts expected Pandora to report stronger revenue and profit than anticipated. It was indeed the case, but this second quarter is the last one before the introduction of iTunes Radio and Pandora’s future looks gloomy. As the company notes, $116 million out of its $162 million reported revenue, or 71.6 percent, comes from its mobile apps. iOS is one of the two major platforms for Pandora, and it will now have to compete with a very similar product offering in the ‘Music’ apps. Even more worrying, advertisers could move from Pandora to iTunes Radio ads, effectively menacing Pandora’s bottom line. Apple’s streaming service is supposed to stream an audio ad for every 15 minutes of music, whereas Pandora streams an ad for every 30 minutes. Apple will release iTunes Radio in iOS 7, which should be released shortly after the rumored press event. It will be available in iTunes for Mac and Windows, as well. The company is still focused on mobile revenue as it increased 92 percent year over year. It remains to be seen whether the company will be able to hold the same trend in the coming quarters as more players are providing a customized radio experience. Over the past three months, Pandora got involved in heated debates over royalties. Many artists accused the streaming company of not paying enough royalties to music companies. The company had to defend its stance. Once again, most of the profit of this second quarter was spent on music royalties. A royalty increase would be very damaging to the company. Shortly after the earnings release, shares were 10 percent in after-hours trading. They are now trading down 3.5 percent. Chairman and CEO Joe Kennedy provided the following statement in the earnings release: “Our second fiscal quarter was an important inflection point in Pandora’s history. Strong momentum in our mobile business, with non-GAAP total mobile revenue growing 92% year-over-year to $116 million, clearly demonstrates the leverage in Pandora’s business model. To drive future growth, we are accelerating investment in new technologies, channels and capabilities that maximize the value Pandora delivers.” |
The Disrupt SF Hackathon Is Almost Here! More Tickets Available Now | Greg Kumparak | 2,013 | 8 | 22 | Two. more. weeks. In just a little over two weeks, our annual Disrupt SF conference is rolling back into town, and with it, one of our legendary Hackathons. We’ve released most of the Hackathon tickets already, and each batch has gone faster than the last. Here — have another batch. Never been to one of our Hackathons? Wondering what to expect? Take a few hundred of San Francisco’s finest engineers. Cram them in a big ol’ room for 24 hours. Give’em a mountain of pizza, challenge them to build the craziest thing they can think of, and close the doors. Each year, the results get better and better. We’ve seen people build everything from to cell phone controlled, We’ve had founders meet each other here and go on to form companies together. We’ve had hackathon projects spin out into full-fledged companies and That side project you’ve been thinking about for weeks? There’s really no better place in the world to build it than here. The Disrupt SF 2013 Hackathon runs from September 7th to the 8th, and we’ve just released . Don’t delay, though — these things go
|
Apple Acquires Embark, Another Mapping App With Transit Information | Darrell Etherington | 2,013 | 8 | 22 | Apple has acquired yet another transit mapping application , this time it’s Embark, a Silicon Valley-based startup that builds apps for different cities to provide information about routes and stops. This acquisition follows the , another app that offers transit directions to users. HopStop and Embark had different takes on the transit problem; HopStop orvides walking, taxi and bike directions in addition to mass transit routes and maps. Embark’s strategy was to spread out its transit apps, delivering one for each market it serves, which included major cities in the U.S. including New York, and other spots around the world to total around a dozen markets. Embark had gained significant traction from Apple’s decision to get rid of transit directions built in to iOS with the launch of iOS 6; it , representing massive growth, and lots more trips planned. Apple’s Maps app itself directed much of that newfound traffic to Embark, since it came up as a top suggested app when users tried to search for transit directions in Apple’s Maps. The success of Embark following Apple’s decision to ditch Google made it a strong target for acquisition now that the company appears to be interested in bringing back transit directions to the native Maps app itself, based on its HopStop acquisition. For its part, Apple says it simply acquires smaller companies from time to time and isn’t going to offer any further explanation, in a confirmation provided to Lessin. In an interview I conducted back in September of last year, David Hodge of Embark said that getting really good transit results depended on focusing on one location at a time. “What we’ve found is to get really good transit results, what you need is you need to be able to focus on a particular city and really make sure you get down into the details of ‘How fast do New Yorkers walk,’ for example,” he said. “You need to do a lot of work on data, you need to clean the results, you need to listen to your users, and there’s a lot of UX and design challenges that go into it.” Hodge maintained that what Apple had before with Google transit directions worked “pretty well,” but that it was not particularly good in any place in particular, and offered instead that approaches taken by Embark would end up providing better directions despite Google’s absence from the platform. “So for example, when Apple originally announced Google transit on the iPhone, what initially happened was that our downloads doubled,” Hodge said, maintaining that while Google transit brought the concept to the fore of people’s minds, Embark’s careful, tuned approach complete with things like offline route planning ended up being more appealing to actual commuters. Developing… |
Circle Gives You Distributed Control Of Your Family’s Internet So You Can Be Human To Each Other | Darrell Etherington | 2,013 | 8 | 22 |
Let’s not kid ourselves: We don’t control the Internet, the Internet controls us. Any notions to the contrary are foolish at best, but a wants to help families fight back against the Internet’s omnipresence with hardware and software that allows individual control of devices connected to a local network. Circle isn’t a router, like the Skydog, which was created by the Xerox PARC company PowerCloud Systems and is based on a similar concept. Instead, it’s a network device that can communicate with your router, and with all of your connected devices, offering up a filter between your existing gear and the unfiltered Internet, allowing you to set limitations for kids’ devices based on age, time, ad content and more. You can receive notifications about different types of Internet activity to your own device, too, and get reports about both “negative” and “positive” browsing, Circle claims. In other words, Circle makes you the NSA PRISM program for your own household, but with a little bit of China’s Great Firewall thrown in the mix. You can schedule timed access to different categories of site, so that Facebook or YouTube time doesn’t get crazy, cut off access temporarily via Pause mode, turn off access once it’s time for bed, and even block ads entirely on devices that your kids use. All of this is managed via an app for iPhone. Circle says their solution is better because it doesn’t require setting up user profiles or installing nanny software on every individual device, and because it works with your existing router, you don’t need to get an expensive replacement or change any network settings. The team behind Circle includes Tiebing Zhang, a former network security engineer for the Department of Defense, and Honeywell Wi-Fi control systems engineer, as well as Jelani Memory, an entrepreneur with experience in design, sports, business development and much more besides. Circle definitely manages to look the part, thanks possibly to founder and Product Designer Sean Kelly, but whether it can back up those good looks with performance remains to be seen. Circle is $150 to pre-order via Kickstarter pledge, with an anticipated delivery date of August, 2014. Nice to see a hardware startup give itself a reasonable amount of time to deliver. The startup is also looking for roughly $250,000 in total funds to make the project work, which will take the working prototype that currently exists and make it production-ready. |
null | Sarah Perez | 2,013 | 8 | 14 | null |
Keen On… Brewster Kahle: How The Internet Archive Is Fighting Our Orwellian Government | Andrew Keen | 2,013 | 8 | 22 | Even if he hadn’t founded the , – the co-founder of and – would still be a first-round inductee in the . But with the Internet Archive, Kahle has established himself in the pantheon of the true greats of the Internet. The Internet Archive stands as the web’s largest library, with 3 million users every day. It houses two million books and has collected two petabytes of data just in the last couple of months. But Kahle still isn’t satisfied. He wants to collect everything – every book, every movie, every song, every webpage, every newspaper – in his digital library. That’s because, he told me, we need a counter to what he calls the “Orwellian world” of big government. And Kahle has a long track record of distrust in what he calls “downright creepy” government. Five years ago, he stood up to the FBI in their request for information about somebody who had visited the Archive. But Kahle actually lived to tell his tale – winning a court case against the government which allows him now to talk publicly about the case. The best thing about the web, Kahle told me, is that it proves that people don’t only do things for money. And with his non-profit Internet Archive, Brewster Kahle epitomizes the spirit of the web’s true founders – guys like Tim Berners-Lee and Vint Cerf – who were interested in making the world a better place rather than just making a fast buck. |
HP Is Back In The Acquisition Game For Targets Between $100M And $1.5B After Cutting Net Debt | Alex Wilhelm | 2,013 | 8 | 22 | Yesterday HP reported , and after an earnings call that was more a than a rallying call, investors sent the company’s shares down heavily. HP is trading more than 12 percent down today. However, despite repeating a declared internal zeal for cost cutting, a balanced plan between revenue growth and margin pressure, and the goal of zero net debt, HP’s Meg Whitman today stated that the company is in the acquisition game, and for big targets to boot. The interview, as , stated that “acquisitions will become part of [HP’s] future.” The goal of the purchases would be to “shore up some of [the company’s] product holes.” The dollar figure that Whitman is willing to spend is flexible and large: $100 million to $1.5 billion. Whitman flatly stated that HP does not need “a five or six billion dollar acquisition.” She continued that purchases between $100 million and $300 million are interesting. HP, despite a perhaps unusually heavy debt load, has , providing massive flexibility for the company to pick up targets large and small. HP doesn’t want to spend too heavily, given its focus on improving its balance sheet to a position of zero net debt. Still, $13.2 billion is 132 $100 million purchases, meaning that HP can cause big waves across technology without disrupting its larger goals. The company wants to invest more in big data and the cloud — like everyone else, frankly — meaning that companies in that space could be in play. Storage was a sector, for example, that came up several times during the earnings call. The above means that over the next 12 months or so, a few nine-figure deals could be reached. This indicates that the M&A market in technology will have at least one major happy to ink deals. Yahoo has also been , but in the low-dollar range, buying for talent and not product, which is essentially the opposite of what HP has in mind. That split is somewhat encouraging, given that many recent high-profile acquisitions have essentially been the hiring of product teams from failed companies with failed or failing products. That will continue. But to see product-strong firms also find exit points will be fun to watch. All this gently refutes the that tech is in a slump. HP is in a slump, but that doesn’t mean the larger technology market is. |
Nudge Is Like Reddit For Social Activities | Jordan Crook | 2,013 | 8 | 22 | Social planning continues to be a hot topic for developers, and the latest new service out of San Francisco is taking a different approach to the whole thing. , a mobile and desktop web app, crowdsources activities from people in the area and surfaces the best ones to the top of the list. The app is centered around inspirational and motivational activities, like bike rides, hiking trips, sunset watching, etc., as opposed to other social-planning apps that focus on restaurants and bars. Nudge has a similar format to Reddit, allowing anyone to post an entry with a picture and a few hashtags that can then be upvoted by other members of the community. Users can search by nearby, “out there,” and “Serendipity.” Nearby includes things that are close to the user (right now it’s only available in San Francisco), while out there focuses on travel-type activities, like climbing Mount Kilimanjaro. Serendipity, on the other hand, returns activities that are accessible to anyone, like meditation, go-karting and laser tag. Users can save events on a list to visit later, or share them on social networks or through email, not only helping to coordinate events among friends but also to spread the app virally. Nudge competes with a number of apps, most notably Yelp and Foursquare, but founder Al-Hassan Hleileh believes that those apps focus so much on geo-location and food that there is a huge gap for inspirational-type activities. Obviously, is also growing in the space with a highly curated experience as opposed to Nudge’s crowd-sourced strategy. Nudge is currently only available as a web app on both desktop and mobile, with a native app launching in October. |
TechCrunch Meetup. Tonight. San Diego. | Matt Burns | 2,013 | 8 | 22 | We’re here, San Diego. And it is sunny. And hot. We love it. Tonight, at 6:00, TechCrunch is taking over the Block 16 on 7th Ave. for an evening of good times and startup pitches. After sorting through over a hundred applications, to take part in a rapid-fire pitch-off competition to be judged by TechCrunch editors and local VCs. There are still a few tickets left for the event. We will also sell a handful at the door, but by cash only. They’re $5 and include a couple of drinks. 21 and older only, please. These meetups are part pitch-off competition and part meet-your-neighbors shindig. They are very casual. Tonight, nearly a thousand entrepreneurs, tech fans and venture capitalists will be gathered under one roof. Come with your pitch deck locked and loaded, and a pocket full of business cards. Tonight’s going to be epic. There ain’t no party like a TechCrunch party. |
New Update For Find My iPhone Locks Out Non-Developers Without iOS 7 Beta [Update: Working Again] | Darrell Etherington | 2,013 | 8 | 22 | Reports say that the update is now working again, so go ahead and find those iPhones. A new update for Apple’s Find My iPhone app seems to have been pushed out a little early: It changes the icon to a flatter design, which is more in keeping with iOS 7’s aesthetics. Unfortunately, it also locks out users on iOS 6 who don’t have a registered developer account or iOS 7 installed and configured on one of their devices with their iCloud account. In other words, the vast majority of users update Find My iPhone just yet, unless you don’t want to be able to actually … find your iPhones, MacBooks, iPads or whatever else you’ve registered with Apple’s MobileMe service. If you’re a registered developer with iOS 7 installed on at least one device, you should be fine, even if you’re updating on iOS 6, but otherwise wait to avoid that update and Apple will likely issue a fix soon. We’ll keep an eye on this and let you know when it is safe to update the app, since that’s kind of a big part of Apple’s cloud services on its mobile devices. |
Windows Phone Takes Second Place In Latin America, Validating The Nokia-Microsoft Relationship | Alex Wilhelm | 2,013 | 8 | 22 | new data from IDC indicating that Windows Phone is the second-most-used mobile platform in Latin America. It would be simple to dismiss it as a minor victory in a secondary market, but the news is in fact a validation of Windows Phone’s strategy to grow its install base and accelerate its unit shipment growth. Microsoft, obviously proud of the silver medal, reported the data, saying that “in one year, the operating system went from fourth to second place,” and that “there was 12 percent growth compared to the previous quarter.” The context for this is twofold: Microsoft is gunning for volume while its low-cost handsets resonate in emerging markets, and while Windows Phone’s global aggregate market share is low, the platform is able to find traction in at least one hemisphere. The news that Windows Phone is second place in Latin America is not a surprise, given the recent and . The cheap device has quickly become the most popular Windows Phone handset, spanking earlier title holders, and not slowing down in its ascent. The quick shift in Windows Phone market share in Latin America mirrors closely the rise of the Lumia 520 in the past few months, during which time — according to data from AdDuplex — its sales accelerated. Without too much mental stress, it isn’t hard to lash the trends together and deduce that Lumia 520 sales are helping to drive Latin American market share. Microsoft implies as much: “In Latin America, there are more than 20 countries where the Windows Phone range of devices is available, from low-end smartphones, such as the Nokia Lumia 520 […].” Does this matter? Yes, and more than merely implying that Microsoft’s long, expensive, and somewhat lumpen mobile efforts are finally paying off, but also that the strategy behind its bets is sound. Nokia, as chief OEM partner, gave Microsoft avenues to secondary markets that it could not have hoped to build or foster itself. And those secondary markets appear to be driving unit volume for Windows Phone. So Microsoft wants to reach all markets, with devices from the Lumia 520 to the almost comically ostentatious Lumia 1020, but it appears that its cheaper phones in developing economies are for now providing it with the sort of growth it has long sought. |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.