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References To iPhone 6, iOS 7 Reportedly Seen in Developer Log | Catherine Shu | 2,013 | 1 | 1 | The iPhone 5 , but it looks like leaks about the iPhone 6 are already starting to surface. An iOS developer saw a device named “iPhone 6.1” running iOS 7 making requests from an IP address within Apple’s Cupertino campus, . The iPhone 6 is expected to be released by the middle of next year. TNW says that “although OS and device data can be faked, the unique IP footprint leading back to Apple’s Cupertino campus leads us to believe that this is not one of those attempts.” So does this show anything significant, aside from the fact that Apple will continue to regularly push out new iPhone models and iOS versions? Probably not. Over the last two years, since police ‘s home after he obtained an iPhone prototype, Apple’s attitude toward secrecy has become despite Tim Cook’s insistence otherwise. And, as TNW notes, references to the new iOS 6 software before its official launch, giving this latest round of leaks a precedent. |
Study: 75 Percent Of The World’s Heads Of State Are Now On Twitter | Colleen Taylor | 2,013 | 1 | 1 | You know how some naysayers still like to dismiss Twitter as nothing more than a time wasting website where people talk about the sandwich they’re eating? Here’s another rebuttal for them. A new survey from the Digital Policy Council (DPC) shows that 75 percent of the world’s heads of state have a presence on Twitter. The DPC’s evaluates a total of 164 countries, and found this year that 123 of them have a head of state that is on Twitter, either with a personal handle or an official government one. That’s up significantly from 2011, when 69 out of the 164 countries had a Twitter presence. (It bears mention that there are recognized by the United Nations, so we’ve reached out to the DPC for more details on which 164 countries they choose to monitor and why — we’ll update this when we hear back.) In terms of followers, the study found that US President Barack Obama is by far the most watched world leader on Twitter, with . Coming in at number two? Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, with . Twitter is perpetually setting new records in terms of users and activity at an , and it is said to be increasingly turning all that usage . So, while Twitter still has a bit of a reputation for being frivolous — and it is still a great place for — it makes sense that some of the people with the most serious of occupations are finally starting to come around to the value of the platform. |
Obama Promised Public Policy Negotiations. Secrecy Has Failed. So, Why Not Try YouTube | Gregory Ferenstein | 2,013 | 1 | 1 | One universal silver lining to any abject failure is that it presents the opportunity to test out radically different ideas. President Obama his campaign promise to hold policy negotiations in public. But after yesterday’s , it seems like a reasonable time to revisit that campaign promise and livestream talks over YouTube– because the federal government can’t do any worse than failing to perform . To hear it from the man himself, as a candidate, a more optimistic Barack Obama said this about healthcare: I’m going to have all the negotiations around a big table. We’ll have doctors and nurses and hospital administrators. Insurance companies, drug companies — they’ll get a seat at the table, they just won’t be able to buy every chair. But what we will do is we’ll have the negotiations televised on C-SPAN, so that people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents, and who are making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies. And so that approach, I think, is what is going to allow people to stay involved in this process. In fairness to Obama, he did live stream a giant roundtable of policymakers — the so-called “ .” To describe the live-streamed discussion as “shallow” would be a gross understatement. The GOP smartly stuck to talking points at nearly every turn, and after several hours of conversation no one would have learned more about healthcare if they watched more than 15 minutes of the talks. It wasn’t a genuine test of transparency, however. Real negotiations are two, maybe three or four people. It’s not possible to have a meaningful discussion with 40 people. So after the summit, healthcare politicking continued behind closed doors. There are a number of very compelling reasons for secret negotiations: It permits candor; it allows politicians to maintain a partisan public façade; and it shields any particular negotiator from being the target of blame. So here are some benefits, however theoretically, for piloting the next round of budget negotiations on YouTube. Republicans especially have been haunted by a relatively extreme end of the libertarian wing, as many congressmen have reluctantly stuck to Grover Norquist’s . If the public could view, in real time, how impractical such an uncompromising position was in negotiations, it might make extremists look utopian. Despite access to the world’s experts, we don’t know if all the best facts make it to the negotiating table. Certainly last year’s presidential debates demonstrated that policymakers mentally operate on an . Crowdsourcing expertise during the negotiations might aid policymakers in dispelling myths and unearthing novel solutions. During the eleventh-hour scramble, members turned to Twitter to talk smack and counter accusations. [tweet https://twitter.com/marcorubio/status/285494610380333056 align=’center’] Negotiators may see it as politically advantageous to be obstinate during talks and then publicly blame the other side for failing to compromise. Such a tactic wouldn’t be possible if everything were live-streamed. Open government advocacy groups, such as the Sunlight Foundation, called on transparent discussions prior to the U.S. government going over the fiscal cliff [ ]. Now, YouTube negotiations may not work. But, since Congress can’t do any worse, why not try transparency? |
FounderDating Launches #NoRegrets2013, A New Year’s Initiative For Budding Entrepreneurs | Anthony Ha | 2,013 | 1 | 1 | Does one of your New Year’s resolutions involve finally committing to that wacky startup idea that you’ve been thinking about for months or years? If so, is launching a new program called #NoRegrets2013 to help you go beyond idle dreaming. In some ways, that’s what the organization does already — it connects founders in 18 cities through an online network that’s balanced to include 50 percent engineering-focused members and 50 percent non-engineering. You could probably look at this new effort as a big membership drive. But this time, FounderDating is making it particularly easy to get involved. You just go to and enter your idea, then, according to founder Jessica Alter, “We help them get going.” “Most people have a passion that they’re probably not doing right now,” Alter said. “It becomes a list that gets tucked away somewhere, and that’s not super helpful. We wanted to be action-oriented about it and give them something they can do right now — telling someone about their idea for the first time.” And this isn’t just for people who need co-founders. Alter said the FounderDating community can provide helpful tips, as well as support and encouragement, and the ideas will be showcased in . She also noted that the idea doesn’t have to be a traditional tech startup — you might want to start your own food truck, for example — and you don’t need to commit to jumping in full-time, as long as you’re ready to turn it into a serious side project. There’s no specific deadline, Alter said, though she added, “I don’t foresee that in March this is going to be something we’re focused on.” By the way, recent startups to emerge from FounderDating include , , , and . If you’re interested in joining their ranks, you can . |
The Mobile Apps I Used The Most In 2012 | Sarah Perez | 2,013 | 1 | 1 | In the early days of TechCrunch, Mike Arrington used to share a list of his favorite products – those he couldn’t live without – which he had used over the course of the year. Want to flashback? Check out , , , and . But given that one of the biggest themes in 2012 was mobile, I thought it would be nice to take a moment here at the end of the year to talk about some of my favorite apps of the year, as well as how I use them. . The apps we use and adopt and love are very personal. That being said, while my phone is bogged down with hundreds of apps I’ve used, tested, and keep track of, there are only a handful that are in what I would refer to as “extremely regular rotation.” Let’s compare notes, shall we? First, we need to get the obvious out of the way: . I happen to use an iPhone, but even while I was on Android, it goes without saying that Google’s suite of apps are among the most-used on any device I own. This year, Google its , and it’s . That being said, I still often find myself returning to Apple’s default Mail.app, because it’s native and I’ve grown comfortable with the experience over the years. It’s almost like a bad habit that I have to break, and so far, I’m failing to fully make the switch (even with new apps like ). But having Gmail’s notifications via the iOS app is incredibly useful, and I’d install it just for that. Google Maps is another no-brainer, of course. Google’s Maps are the best in the business, and I love the care that has gone into the new Maps app, especially the use of gestures. But I have to admit that in the time between the launch of iOS 6 and , excellent maps app inched its way back to my homescreen, where I was of its active, engaged community of drivers looking out for traffic jams, accidents and speed traps. The Apple Maps debacle gave me a chance to re-engage with Waze, but I don’t know how long that will last in 2013, now that Google has returned. Other Google musts for me are pretty obvious, and I don’t think we need to spend a lot of time discussing why: Search, YouTube, Reader, Voice, Local, Latitude (yes, I use it, but only with family as a free family locator service), Drive and Chrome. , but I still do most of my socializing on Facebook, which is… , of course, including Facebook Camera and Messenger. Also, Instagram, if you’re counting it. I’m not sure what will come of . Let’s move on to something more interesting. This personal data search engine app lets me quickly search through emails, contacts, files and updates from other online services faster and easier than any default app does. I use it daily to track down contact info and emails for the most part. When you have a bogged-down inbox, it’s actually easier to query for the email you need like this, rather than scroll through a message list. That’s not all the app does, but it’s one of my top use cases for it, which is why it’s one of the few apps from a startup that’s actually on my homescreen. Despite the company’s (We’ll sell your photos! ), I still enjoy using this app. But for me it’s not only about sharing my photos – which aren’t really interesting – it’s also about browsing through those shared by others, and seeing slices of other cities and other lives. It’s a transporting experience. There are , but it’s hard for me to abandon something which is a touchstone of today’s Internet culture. We’re just now starting to see the shift in photo-sharing that comes from an audience of newly-turned adults who grew up with smartphone in hand. This space isn’t dead. , either, with proving that tech reporters and bloggers , but that doesn’t mean photo-sharing innovation is over. (In fact, .) Which leads me to another photo-sharing favorite in 2012… I’ve been sufficiently intrigued enough by to go around installing it on family members’ phones and evangelizing it to others. The app, which lets users share photos in private groups, automatically organized by time and location, is not perfect – there’s still too much manual labor involved in sharing. But it’s the closest one to really nail the overall experience in terms of design, user interface, flow, and feature set. (Well, at least on iOS – I’m less impressed with the Android version.) The app actually keeps things fairly simple and straightforward, which is why I’ve even managed to get my in-laws on it. (Yes, grandparents!). But it needs a “trusted friends” feature, which would allow the option of automatic photo sharing with select friends. That way I wouldn’t have to continue to tap people on the shoulder and remind them to please share their photos. Because really, if I have to do that, I may as well ask for photos via email or text. Tumblr’s iOS app has also been over the course of 2012, and its updated layout and user interface has made the app a great tool for mobile , but also exploring online communities, tags, photos ( !), and other surprising, funny, and shareable content. I’m not bored a lot, but when I am, Tumblr is often a better place to waste time than Facebook is because it’s not about your friends, , it’s about Twitter , but Twitter these days is more about tracking the news for me (I follow news sources and techie folks, not celebs and bffs, so that doesn’t help). That being said, Twitter’s experience lends itself to “this just happened,” not the more personal sharing and creativity found on Tumblr. Twitter can claim my interest graph all it likes, but it falls short. In all fairness, I’m sure I actually launch Twitter on mobile more than I launch Tumblr, but if you added up the time spent in each app afterwards, I think Tumblr had the edge. I might not visit daily, but each trip is fairly long. I know Pinterest made a strong showing this year, but in terms of mobile, doesn’t do it for me. I prefer Pinterest’s online experience – big, browseable, clickable imagery. On mobile, it tries to reproduce that pinboard feel with two columns, but this makes images hard to see. For shared infographics, comics, and quotes, it’s nearly impossible to read them without tapping through. I don’t like the disappearing navigation, either, or the fact that it puts a camera button front-and-center. Look around Pinterest and you’ll see that people aren’t sharing their personal photos there – they’re re-sharing from the web. The camera option just doesn’t make sense as being the key feature for Pinterest mobile. This category is tough for me. A lot of people would say Spotify is the hands-down winner of the year. In terms of , it’s there , I suppose, when compared with its closest competition. But I’ve switched from music app to music app throughout the year, including MOG, Spotify, Rdio, Pandora, SoundCloud, and others. I don’t feel a particular affinity for any of them, if I’m being honest. Spotify has successfully leveraged social, which put it ahead. When you’re young and/or in the newest, hottest bands, the social angle matters, which is why Spotify getting it right on Facebook means it can win. But like I said, this is a personal list. I don’t do the Open Graph on Spotify – our family shares a music account (as we do on iTunes… ). Maybe that’s naughty, but it also means that the husband’s classic rock and dubstep preferences (ugh, I know, right?) as well as the toddler’s Sesame Street jams would be attributed to me. On Facebook. Where I have an image to maintain. The horror! That being said, I want to take more advantage of Spotify’s social features in terms of music discovery, which means I need to make a decision this year: continue to bounce around services, or go all in on one? (See also: ). I have to add one more thing here: I think 2013 might have a surprise in store, too. Do you know where the kids are still sharing their music these days? . I think it’s going to be very interesting to watch what Dropbox is up to this year, considering its acquisitions of and startups in 2012. Also, – it might show up late, but it could easily win streaming users back if it doesn’t screw up . The truth is, I really do love on , but buying from Fab is more of a luxury for me, which means Fab is not a most-used app, it’s just a favorite. Today, the majority of my online shopping is the day-to-day stuff, and there, is still the one to beat. Huge inventory, fast shipping, one-click impulse buys, wish lists, and Kindle books, and . Like tampons. Seriously. This is handy. But Amazon is a no-brainer choice, so… For me, 2012 has been the year of really starting to use online consignment. There are a few companies operating in this space, but and were those I used the most, , and the latter for both . ThredUP will be moving into other verticals (teens, adults, etc.) in the months ahead, so it’s possible that it could one day become even a more go-to service for me. (If it makes it.) ? Well, of course, . But this list isn’t about self-promotion. Anyway, Reddit in 2012 , especially when the news outlets, in a rush to be first, . One of the more remarkable things, though, about reading news on Reddit is the community. No matter the topic, someone there eventually chimes in with their personal experience – . It’s the citizen journalism that the news orgs wish was happening on . Reddit played a major role in the election cycle as well, as even President Obama (or rather, his social team) acknowledged by . There are a few Reddit apps out there on iTunes, but I prefer , which I happily upgraded to Pro. I know, another obvious choice, but it’s accurate. , in attempting to split its DVD business and its streaming business, but that didn’t impact our usage patterns at home. We didn’t get angry and cancel our service, though some others did. Nothing changed for us between the Qwikster PR disaster of 2011 and . Netflix is still used nearly daily here, if you count the kid’s usage in our family’s totals, which you may as well. The streaming library still isn’t on par with the DVD selection, which is one of the reasons why it was premature to try to separate the two businesses. But Netflix’s move into original content is promising. One day, hopefully, you won’t need to have access to the DVD library in order to have something of quality to watch in your downtime. Is the quality there today? No, far from it. , but not HBO-level great. But it’s only a matter of time before the content selection improves. , the world awaits. . , now Microsoft-owned, is a utility. I couldn’t give up Skype any more than I could not have a cell phone or an Internet connection. But again, this is another obvious choice. The more interesting selection in this work-related category is . And it’s not even that I personally turn to Dropbox for my own work, so much that Dropbox is thrust upon me. Since I’m more often the recipient of files than I am their creator, it’s interesting to see the transition from .zip files and email attachments to Dropbox at the companies I communicate with. Towards the beginning of the year, it was business as usual – emails with files attached. But by the end of 2012, it seemed like every other email included a Dropbox link pointing instead to an online collection of files. (Anecdotal evidence of Dropbox’s growing influence? Sure, but this whole list is anecdotal, folks.) Meanwhile, remains my preferred note-taking and clipping solution over Office/iWork/Notepad/OneNote, etc. Since I’m usually online, I just use the web app. I don’t think I’ve launched the desktop version but a handful of times, if I’m being honest. Because I use all three of the services so much for work purposes on the web, they have, by extension, become must-have downloads on mobile, too. That’s interesting when you stop and think about it. In these cases, it’s not about being mobile-first or mobile-only, it’s about wrapping in mobile as an important part of an overall, cross-platform strategy. I’m skipping games here, as well as the travel category, the latter of which doesn’t include most-used apps, but rather apps that are heavily used in spurts, then abandoned until the next trip. The one exception to that may be , since it’s also the app people use when sharing their travel plans with me. There are plenty of other apps that should be on a year-end list, and are likely on many others’ lists. I can’t say that these were most-used apps, but these are either: a) too important to skip, b) borderline most-used, or c) saw increased usage in 2012. These include: Maybe my most-used list is a little boring? A number of the companies I use the most on mobile are those I’ve used the most on the web for many years. Shouldn’t mobile open up the door to a whole new breed of innovators to come in with their mobile-first experiences? Yes, it should. But becoming on mobile is clearly easier said than done. (See also: , .) Now, I could have gone out of my way to find an early-stage startup to feature in each category, but I’m trying to be honest here. Many of the apps I use the most aren’t the unknowns, but rather the big-name web brands that have managed to become a part of my daily life. are all about the big co’s – the news is simply mirroring real-world adoption trends. Still, looking back at the list, I’m a little disappointed that there weren’t more surprises in there. I hope that changes in 2013. |
Keen On… 2013: Why Old Platforms Will Persist This Year [TCTV] | Andrew Keen | 2,013 | 1 | 1 | One of technology’s most persistently prescient crystal ball gazers is Betaworks CEO , a guy who – from Summize to Tweetdeck to bitly to Digg to his latest baby – always thinks ahead of the crowd. So, as a follow-up to Borthwick’s of 2012, I sat down with the Betaworks CEO in his New York City office to get his take on what will happen in 2013. As always with Borthwick, the conversation was free-ranging and bold – particularly his prediction of how bad ideas will die sooner in 2013 and why that will be a good thing for startup entrepreneurs. And I was particularly struck by Borthwick’s vision of the “persistence of old platforms” in 2013 – a theme that TechCrunch’s Keith Teare also touched upon this weekend in his provocative piece. So rather than a “web of things,” perhaps 2013 will really be a year in which we all go back to the future – back to a “re-portalization” craze and platform wars in which reinvented giants like Yahoo! and Microsoft realize new relevance. , as the French – a nation that knows a thing or two about persisting with old platforms – might say. |
Per These Leaked CES Pics, Sony Is Actually Capable Of Making A Memorable Android Phone | Matt Burns | 2,013 | 1 | 1 | Quick! What’s Sony’s current high-end Android phone? Anyone? Yeah, Sony has a problem with brand recognition, one it likely hopes will be resolved with a big CES debut next week. While that could still happen, Sony’s Japanese press site just prematurely posted pics of the Xperia Z “Yuga” and the Xperia ZL “Odin”. And, surprisingly, the phones actually look worth remembering. Sony, and before that, Sony Ericsson, has long floundered about in the mobile waters. Besides , none have been particularly interesting. Somehow Sony manages to make forgettable phones even though past models looked great and packed top-notch specs. Hopefully, and I mean that, these upcoming phones will hit the market with a bit more pizzazz. , the large Xperia Z and slightly more svelte Xperia ZL will likely 5-inch 1080p LCDs, quad-core 1.5GHz Snapdragon S4 Pro processors with 2 gigs of RAM and Adreno 320 graphics. They’re said to have a 13-megapixel Exmor RS sensor on the rear. But those specs are to be expected and really don’t matter if consumers cannot buy the phones. Currently in the US, Sony smartphones are only available on ATT. International the distribution is a bit better, but Sony smartphones are a pretty rare breed to see in the wild. These phones, and likely several others, should be revealed next Monday at Sony’s 2013 CES press conference. We’ll be there liveblogging all the action memorable or not. |
Le Parcel, Because Tampons And Monthly Subscription Services Go Hand In Hand | Jordan Crook | 2,013 | 1 | 1 | If ever there was a consumer product suited for monthly subscriptions, it would be tampons. It only takes one midnight trip to the pharmacy for you to agree with me. That’s where comes in. It’s a new startup that lets you choose which brand of feminine hygiene products you’d like to have shipped to you monthly, along with some chocolate of course. After hitting up , users can choose up to 30 different products, including tampons, pads, and panty liners. Le Parcel offers brands like Playtex, Tampax, Kotex, and Always. You can choose up to thirty different products, which means that you can choose 10 Regular Tampax tampons, 10 Super Tampax Tampons, and 10 Always panty liners, or whatever it is that your cycle requires. [slideshow] The service costs $15 per month, and should take all the hassle out of your period preparation. Users can even indicate when in the month they need their shipments to arrive, ensuring that Le Parcel arrives before Aunt Flo. Surfing the crimson wave is pain enough, but Le Parcel looks to make it a bit less excruciating. [vimeo 55141186] |
New Year’s Resolutions, Internet-Style | Sarah Perez | 2,013 | 1 | 1 | It’s that time of the year again: it’s time to promise to go on diets we won’t stick to, miles we won’t run, and projects we won’t complete. Maybe, this year, it’s time for a change? For 2013, I’m making a list of New Year’s resolutions that I actually might be able to keep. This time around, my resolutions will be internet and technology-focused – things I actually care about and enjoy – which betters the chance that I’ll be able to stick to my goals…well, at least until March. Throughout the year, our lives become so busy that a lot things fall through the cracks. For me, it’s been about taking action following big (tech) decisions: to adopt or abandon a service, to transfer data, to upload files, to fix a problem using an online tool, to engage more, to read more, to clean up and clean out. I doubt I’m alone in some of these things I plan to do this year, so I’m sharing my New Year’s resolutions with you – and the tools I’ll use in 2013 to get these things done. Those are my resolutions, but here are a few other suggestions of things that might help you with yours: Good luck and Happy New Year! |
Facing Regulatory Heat, GREE Apologizes, Pledges Refunds After Over-Charging Minors | Kim-Mai Cutler | 2,013 | 1 | 6 | , GREE . The Japanese gaming company, , said it charged several hundred minors more than the legal limit of 5,000 yen per month for players under 15 years of age and 10,000 yen per month for players between 16 and 19. The amount is pretty negligible — about 733 people were affected and the total amount was 28 million yen or about $322,000. Still, the incident shows how sensitive the company is as it battles a public image problem in its home market of Japan. GREE’s shares have suffered over the past year as tighter government scrutiny of free-to-play game mechanics has hurt the company’s profitability. The company’s shares , as the government cracked down on a slot-machine like mechanic that awards players items in a mobile game. If they collect them all, they get a grand prize. The crackdown affected GREE more dramatically than its rival DeNA. After posting several quarters of uninterrupted growth, the company’s profits . This was because it could no longer rely on lucrative kompu gacha mechanics and because of the costs of the company’s expansion overseas, which has involved the $210 million acquisition of Funzio and the $104 million deal to buy OpenFeint. GREE said the error was discovered through a routine customer service check and that they’re fixing the software to prevent this from happening in the future. |
With Over 300 Pro Athletes On Board, Egraphs Wants To Reinvent And Personalize The Autograph For The Digital Era | Rip Empson | 2,013 | 1 | 6 | For sports fans, and fans in general, nothing beats meeting your favorite athlete, celebrity or musician and getting to capture that experience — a signed photo, shirt, etc. — take it home with you and proudly display it to your friends. There are many that would happily stand in long lines to get their favorite author to sign their new book with a personalized autograph, but for many others, acquiring an autograph is too pricey, time-consuming and static. Six-month-old Seattle-based startup, , is on a mission to create a next-gen experience around the autograph, turning this kind of memorabilia into something that’s multi-dimensional, personalized, sharable and mobile. Writ large, co-founders Andrew Smith, William Chan and Erem Boto hope that the venture can be a part of building a new, digital channel for fans to connect with their favorite stars – in this case, athletes. In fact, the company decided to start with baseball. Egraphs CEO and former Microsoftie David Auld’s brother, Brian, happens to be Senior VP of business operations for the Tampa Bay Rays, and through this connection, the co-founders were able to enlist Gabe Kapler, a long-time pro ballplayer who played for the Rays and has been able to leverage his relationship with other players to get Egraphs off its feet. And it’s been working well. Since launching last summer, Egraphs has gone from eight MLB players representing two teams to over 250 covering every team in the league. On top of that, to make sure that the core idea behind Egraphs remains defensible, the startup has been able to obtain exclusive licenses with MLB and its web division, MLB Advanced Media. In the six months since launch, Egraphs has been hard at work at securing deals with professional basketball players and teams. This past weekend, Egraphs officially expanded beyond baseball to the NBA, doubling its footprint in pro sports, thanks to its new agreements with more than 70 NBA athletes, which are now live on its website. That’s over 300 pro athletes on board. So, in addition to a laundry list of current and former baseball stars — like Don Mattingly, Pedro Martinez, Josh Hamilton, David Ortiz, CC Sabathia and Prince Fielder, to name a few — Atlanta Hawks’ Josh Smith, the Golden State Warriors’ Stephen Curry and Rockets’ legend Hakeem Olajuwon have all joined the mission. and are ready to send you or a loved one a personalized “Egraph.” But how does it all work? The best part is that the process is fairly straightforward. Fans go to Egraphs’ homepage and look for their favorite athlete. If the athlete is working with the startup, they’ll be able to find their name on the site’s roster, where they can choose from a number of different high-res photographs (or templates) they want personalized. Depending on the player and the template, prices range from $25 to $115 for the whole package. Fans choose the photo they want the player to sign, pay for it, and then send the athlete the individualized message that they want included. Once the player receives the message, they can open it and sign the photo on a custom iPad they’ve received from Egraphs, which they use to sign the photo along with the written personalized message. But the best part — and what really differentiates this from your average digital autograph experience — is that Egraphs all include personalized audio messages, along with the photo and signature. That means fans get to hear, for example, Pedro Martinez congratulate them on the birth of their child, or for getting married. (See below.) That’s an interaction that one generally doesn’t enjoy when waiting in long lines for an MLB star to sign an autograph — or from traditional digital autograph vendors. Plus, the signature and audio message are all verified, as Egraphs meets with athletes once they agree to become a part of their program and take handwriting and voice prints. When the athletes sign and record their personalized messages, the startup confirms their authenticity, and only then is the Egraph actually sent to the fan. Athletes love it, because the company makes the process easy to understand and to fulfill fan requests — while they’re at home or on the road, thanks to the custom iPad. “Egraphs is an awesome way for me to connect with fans around the country,” says New York Knicks’ forward Steve Novak. “My favorite part is being able to record a fun voice message that is unique and personable.” The LA Clippers’ Matt Barnes agrees, saying, “I can put my personal stamp on an Egraph in a way that I can’t with traditional autographs or fan mail.” For athletes that care about giving back to the fan bases that have helped make them into global stars, Egraphs is proving to be an effective way to do that. After fans check out their personalized Egraph, they can share it via their social network of choice, and even tweet it back to the athlete to say thank you or try to engage them in conversation. Athletes end up loving this opportunity to directly engage fans just as much as fans get a kick out of being able to share these messages with their friends and Twitter followers. After the Oakland Athletics finished the 2012 season, for example, outfielder Josh Reddick for their support of the team, which the co-founders report was retweeted over 300 times, received 300 favorites and was viewed by thousands of people. While some might not see Egraphs as being true collectibles, seeing as they reproduce facsimile autographs, and thus that they don’t have quite the same re-sale value, the co-founders believe that the process has value not only in terms of merchandizing and security for athletes (through the biometric verification of their written and audio messages) but in it the technology’s variety of potential use cases. Kapler sees Egraphs as not just being a vehicle for athletes, but for all celebrities — as an intimate, personalized way to connect with fans. Going forward, that’s just what the company plans to do, eventually moving past sports to offer messages from musicians, actors, and beyond. While Egraphs declined to give any specific stats or to share its current revenue, it does divvy up the price of each egraph with its athletes, allowing both sides to benefit, and many athletes choose to donate that money to charity. The company also said that, so far, “a large portion of users are returning customers,” and purchase multiple egraphs. Some, they told us this weekend, are even in the double digits. In short, only six months in, the company is finding favor with both fans and athletes and it plans to expand quickly in the coming quarter — into all parts of the entertainment world. Whether it will disrupt traditional autograph-seeking remains to be seen (probably not), but it certainly brings a lot of new exciting possibilities into play. What do you think? . |
LEGO Mindstorms EV3: The Better, Faster, Stronger Generation Of Robotic Programming | Jordan Crook | 2,013 | 1 | 6 | Lego is back with another generation of MindStorms, the company’s consumer robotics line aimed at introducing application programming to a younger generation. Kids these days grow up with so much focus on the virtual self, but MindStorms works as a bridge to connect software programming with real-world, physical actions. The new kit includes directions for up to 17 different robots, most of which look like scary-style animals, such as snakes and scorpions. Mindstorms has been around for almost 14 years now, but Mindstorms EV3 marks the first time that users can program directly onto the brand-new EV3 Intelligent Brick. In past iterations, users were only allowed to program their robots from the computer and then run the application through the robot. The Intelligent Brick allows users to add or change commands and actions directly from the brick. This not only appeals to younger MindStorms users but also programming and robotics enthusiasts. Kids have a super simple, block-by-block interface with which to learn the basics of programming, while hobbyists can debug programs without going all the way back to the computer. The Mindstorms EV3 kit also adds an infrared sensor to the mix, giving robots the ability to see and detect various objects. The system runs on Linux-based firmware and sports USB and SD ports. Of course, as Lego gets more and more comfortable in the software space, integration with iOS and Android is to be expected straight out of the box, along with a 3D virtual instructional guide available on the iPad. The new kit will be available starting in the second half of 2013 for an MSRP of $349.99. |
null | Drew Olanoff | 2,013 | 1 | 8 | null |
Sensus Case Adds Back And Side Touch Controls To The iPhone | Darrell Etherington | 2,013 | 1 | 6 | The Sensus Case is at CES 2013, and it brings touch controls to the iPhone that go way beyond the screen. Touch-sensitive panels on the back (which can detect 10 points of input at once) and sides of the case give it additional capabilities for gaming and apps, akin to what Sony has down with the back panel of the PlayStation Vita mobile console. The Sensus is made by Minnesota based hardware company Canopy, which wanted to bring something genuinely new to the world of iPhone apps. In hands-on testing, the prototype was amazingly responsive and accurate – and immediately, you get the sense of how the thing can work with not only games, but also with any apps that require menus. The side sliders can act as scrolling mechanisms for quickly paging through options and menus, making it much easier to navigate a number of settings on the fly. [slideshow] For gaming, the Sensus’ back panel takes away the pain of having your fingers block a big section of the screen. Plus, it can be used to do different things than the front panel. Of course, to use either, you need an app or game that has it integrated via an API. But Canopy reps said that it’s easy for developers to get on board, and in fact it takes only minutes to get it up and running in the most basic way possible. The Sensus Case is planned for release summer 2013, and should retail for under $100. The Canopy rep said that the idea is to make sure it’s available for less than a premium case without the touch sensitive features. Another thing the company is really excited about is the potential for what it can do to enable better app controls for users with visual impairments. There’s no question the Sensus is impressive, but what developers ultimately do with it will be what proves its long-term worth. |
No, We Were Not Trying To Trademark Rumor Sunday! ® | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,013 | 1 | 6 | You know, I love Aol. I seriously do. The company has some stellar health and dental benefits, and , and there are definitely some individuals who work there that go above and beyond what’s necessary in being thoughtful, generous, and helpful (hello , you saint you!). It is also pretty great to have someone – anyone – pay you to write about technology when you are obsessed with technology, and for that I am forever grateful. Don’t tell , but I would probably do this job for free if I could make sure I’d have a roof over my head and ample feta cheese on my plate while doing so. Okay, not really. BUT (come on, you knew there was a ‘but’ coming …) other times, Aol reminds you that it is still a big-ass bumbling company, like when the HR person in charge of the Aol TechCrunch acquisition “transition” asked if I was MG, and then scurried off (disappointed?) to find him when I said “No.” Also when all the TechCrunch team has to complete a mandatory 45-slide “Aol Standards of Business Conduct” training annually, even though TechCrunch has way different standards of business conduct, or when, God bless them, the Aol legal department sends us the below email in response to a joke we made in this about how we tended to on Sundays. “Rumor Sunday!®” har har. Hi Ned, A colleague in Legal spotted the use of the trademark in the first paragraph of a recent . I can’t quite tell if Rumor Sunday is a mark that TechCrunch intends to use or a third party mark. There are no registrations for “Rumor Sunday!” in the USPTO records (thus the ® symbol should not be used with the term.) The term hyperlinks to a page which doesn’t appear to contain any reference to Rumor Sunday or Snapguide (the subject of the first paragraph). If you intend to use Rumor Sunday as a mark, please provide information re the services and whether it will be used primarily in the US or elsewhere so that we can conduct a trademark search. Thanks! [Redacted] Sigh. This, of course, caused A HUMOROUS, MOCKING THREAD amongst writers (sample below). For those of you out of the loop, co-editor is the funniest person at TechCrunch, which is saying a lot considering TechCrunch is a pretty ridiculous place. And I don’t know what specifically makes big companies as unfunny as Jay Leno, but I do know that we’re going to add some © and ™ s in future posts to see if Aol continues to not get it ®. And keep you guys in on the joke. |
Hands-On With The Apex HD+ Goggles: Simple Video Streaming For Snowbunnies | Chris Velazco | 2,013 | 1 | 6 | Now I’m hardly what you’d call an athlete, but I’ve often been sucked into a sport because of some of the gadgets involved (don’t ask me how many fitness trackers I’ve bought since I started running). The recently released Apex HD+ goggles, which California-based was keen to show off here at CES Unveiled, is one of those gadgets — skiers and snowboarders can use them to record video on the fly as they zip down the slopes. But let’s back up a minute first — the Apex sports a 12MP sensor and is capable of recording 720p video at 60fps or 1080p video at 30fps, and users fond of photographs can easily toggle the camera into its continuous-shot mode. Really though, the big draw here is that one of the Apex models is capable of pumping out its own Wi-Fi signal, which lets users stream their first-person exploits directly to an iPhone or Android device (provided they’ve got the related app already installed). Naturally, you won’t always be streaming videos, so users can connect the Apex HD+ to a computer and pull files off of microSD cards as large as 32GB. As a nearly lifelong wearer of glasses, I had to try on the Apex HD+ for myself. First impressions? It’s remarkably comfortable considering just how big the thing is, though the control block can be hard to access since it’s normally stored inside a handsome fabric sleeve. A small LED is nestled just inside the top edge of the goggles to reassure users that the thing is actually recording (a blinking blue light means it’s recording in 720p, while red signals 1080p recording, etc.) And what of the video streaming? Quality was generally quite good — company reps had their demo pairs linked up to a Nexus 10, and the whole affair was crisp and largely stutter free. Granted, the camera goggles were within fairly close range so actual use in the field may not be quite as sterling, but it seems more than up to the task of sharing videos with buddies nearby. [gallery link="post" columns="4" ids="730861,730862,730863,730860"] |
Belkin WeMo Light Switch Looks And Feels Like A Light Switch, But With Wi-Fi Control For $50 | Darrell Etherington | 2,013 | 1 | 6 | The Belkin is designed to bring Wi-Fi-connected, remote home automation to the masses without expensive, whole home system upgrades. The existing WeMo outlet is a little bulky, but it makes it possible to remotely power on and off any device with a two or three-prong cord. Now, the company is debuting an in-wall switch to make controlling your lighting from an app or the web (via IFTTT) easier. The WeMo Ligtht Switch is here at CES, and we got a chance to go hands on (well, really, single-finger on). The switch looks like a switch, and should work with essentially any existing light switch in most modern homes. It can be managed from the existing WeMo iOS app that’s available for iPhone and iPad devices, which means you’ll be able to easily add them to your existing WeMo setup. In practice, the WeMo was a step up and a step forward for Belkin’s line of home automation product, beating out the WeMo outlet and motion detector products in terms of their ability to mesh into your existing home decor. And the switch also works as a physical switch, so that you can still turn it on and off manually. But while it looks at first glance like a rocker-type switch, meaning my first inclination was to tap the top, only hitting the bottom will actually activate the line or turn it off. The WeMo Light Switch still has a while to go before it hits the market, however; a Belkin representative told me it will hit store shelves this summer and retail for $49.95. Theoretically, it could undergo a slight design tweak between now and then to address that minor user experience issue, and even if the design doesn’t change, it’s an attractive, inexpensive way to add a little remote control to a house with otherwise legacy lighting. Belkin also says they’re finally addressing customer requests for an Android control app for WeMo systems, with a beta launching soon for devices like the Galaxy S III, and a wide launch planned for sometime around summer as well. |
Reddit Rumored To Be Raising Money, At A $400 Million Valuation | Leena Rao | 2,013 | 1 | 6 | Welcome to yet another . In 2011, Reddit as a standalone company, but the publishing giant kept full ownership. At the time, Peter Kafka of AllthingsD that Conde Nast had considered the option of selling off parts of the company to investors at a $200 million valuation. That idea was scrapped at the time because they didn’t think Reddit needed the money. But we’re hearing now from a source that, a little over a year later, Reddit is raising money. And the company’s valuation has jumped to $400 million. Earlier this year, Reddit , Yishan Wong, to take control. A former director of engineering at Facebook, Wong reiterated at the time that Reddit has established a new board (which includes co-founder Alexis Ohanian) and was revamping its capital structure to allow the company “to manage its own finances and operations, including the ability to provide competitive equity compensation to its employees, which [it hasn’t] been able to do in the past.” At the time, Wong said the company wanted to gain further flexibility and get full control over its resources. A raise now could be an interesting move for Reddit. And outside investors may be to get a piece of the company. Last year, the 37 billion page views, 400 million unique visitors, and 30 million posts. In October alone, Reddit saw over and more than 46 million unique visitors, which is double the number of page views from last year. Press from events like as well as scandals like the have upped awareness of Reddit, as Josh Constine a few weeks ago. Sales have been mainly coming from advertising, and perhaps more recently, subscriptions. Outside investors and an influx of money could also help Reddit continue to grow and to pay for servers and others costs. We’ll update this post if we hear more about the rumors. |
Join Us Live From CES Unveiled, The First Official Event Of CES 2013 #CEScrunch | Matt Burns | 2,013 | 1 | 6 | CES 2013 is here! Join us live with the live video stream above and send us questions and comments with the hashtag #CEScrunch. Tonight, on a cool Sunday evening, CES 2013 officially kicks off in the bowels of the massive Mandalay Bay complex. It’s CES Unveiled, a mini-Consumer Electronic Show upon itself. Unveiled is coined the official press event of CES. Within CES Unveiled are small booths from the standard companies in consumer electronics — Lenovo, iHome, Belkin, and dozens more established players and upstarts. CES Unveiled, and its similar counterparts later this week, Pepcom and Showstoppers, are tiny slices of CES housed in a more manageable venue with an open bar. We come for the free drinks. |
Meet Mike Rothenberg, The 28-Year-Old Whose Seed Fund Could Be The Best Bang For Your Cap Table Buck | Josh Constine | 2,013 | 1 | 6 | When you’re a rookie, you’ve got to hustle, and is ready to bring some sweat to venture. Today he unveils his seed fund . With up to $5 million to invest, it’s already backed eight startups just led Chat Sports’ $1 million seed round. Rothenberg’s lean firm hopes to offer big value through intros and advice for a chance to make small investments. The 28-year-old Rothenberg explains that the goal of his one-man firm “is to open up my network to the founders and be available as a sounding board for them while taking a fraction of the cap table space that larger investors take. My network is often complementary to the other investors on the cap table, as they are often older than the founders while I typically invest in founders around my age.” Rothenberg’s young, scrappy, go-getter attitude led him on a trip across the country to start the fund. And unlike most VCs, he was crashing on couches. Rothenberg was a top 30 US math olympian in high school before going to Stanford. There he ran the famed Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders seminar for two years and helped bring in people like Mark Zuckerberg, Marissa Mayer, Jim Breyer, and Reid Hoffman to speak to packed auditoriums of students and local tech folk. After their presentations, Rothenberg would get to talk to the speakers, and his favorite question to ask was “Before you made it, how did you figure out what you wanted to work on?” The answer he kept getting was “You might fail at whatever you do, so you might as well dream big, because then if you succeed, you succeed big.” That would eventually lead him to start a venture fund, rather than work at one. While still at Stanford he built a tutoring company with 25 employees and later a real estate investment fund. After graduating he went into tech consulting at Bain, and will get his degree from Harvard Business School in May. But this summer he set off on a quest to explore whether he could make Rothenberg Ventures a reality. “I rented out my apartment, wasn’t paying a lease anywhere, and travelled to six different cities to meet 50 investors, 50 potential LPs, and 50 entrepreneurs. I slept on couches so I didn’t have to get a hotel room the entire summer.” That’s a stark contrast to the easy living most people imagine when they think of venture capitalists. Rothenberg was treating his fund like the founder of a lean startup because he hasn’t had some big exit payday yet. Rothenberg Ventures is his shot at success, not a way to leverage his past accomplishments. During his journey, Rothenberg tells me “I’d have three to four meetings a day, and the consensus was ‘you’re thinking about this the right way. You’re new to this, but you seem to have the right network, and are wiling to learn quickly.'” Fourteen limited partners agreed to opt-in to backing Rothenberg’s seed fund. They include Draper Fisher Jurvetson’s Brandon Farwell, and other professional investors, high-net worth individuals, founders, and executives. They hail from Silicon Valley, LA, Cambridge, Texas, and beyond. Rothenberg Ventures plans to make around 25 investments in the $10-100K investment range, plus lead a few rounds, devoting time to each startup in his portfolio. The LPs believe in Rothenberg’s value proposition, which partly relates to his age. “Almost all my deal flow comes from entrepreneurs, people at Stanford with me, people at Harvard with me. I know a lot of people our age. The average age of my LPs is significantly older than me, and they don’t necessarily have access to these deals.” For startups, Mike’s connections and proximity to cutting-edge ideas could make him a valuable addition to their cap tables. “I can give them an intro to someone they can hire, find investors to fill out a round, and help them figure out their business problems.” More than taken on Rothenberg Ventures. Mike says “Everyone I’ve invested in has founders that are the right match for the market.” The portfolio now includes: As Mike said, a lot of these companies have young founders he went to school and are deals that older VCs might not have gotten a shot at. The startups were convinced by his willingness to get deeply involved, not just cut a check. Chat Sports’ CEO James Yoder tells me “We consider him smart money vs. dumb money from the first VCs to make an offer. He created an account and saw the value of a personalized sports page for the web before he even met me. He can give product feedback, and his connections can help Chat Sports grow faster than if we took money from elsewhere. He wants to get his hands dirty and open up his rolodex to us, and that differentiated him from any other investor we spoke to.” Turning Rothenberg Ventures into a success is not going to be easy. Mike is quick to admit that founders and especially LPs are taking a chance with him. He’s never even worked in venture, and is still looking for a serious mentor. But he says “ultimately, they think of me as a startup. I feel a very strong fiduciary duty to my LPs even though they know they’re taking a lot of risks. If I return zero, I think my investors would be forgiving, but that would be a big disappointment. If it’s an utter failure it’s hard to imagine anyone will give me any more money.” On the other hand, “If it’s a big success I can keep doing it. If it’s a modest success, I can keep doing it.” Why not get some experience at a firm first? Rothenberg tells me “I think it’s wrong to think you’re necessarily going to learn the most by paying your dues. People who work at a big company aren’t engaged. That’s a slower trajectory. But if you’re young and jump in, sure you’re going to make a bunch of mistakes but you’re going to learn quickly.” Going fresh from Harvard Business School to starting a venture firm is ambitious bordering on audacious. But there’s more and more proof that . Sure, Mike isn’t in 10th grade, but at 28 he can strike a balance between being young enough to be immersed in the next big thing and old enough to understand the world it’s disrupting. And for founders considering whether to bring a small investment onto their cap table or go with more established firms, Mike asks, “Would you rather have five me’s or one of them?” |
After Disappearing For More Than 3 Years, Why The Lucky Stiff Returns To The Internet | Frederic Lardinois | 2,013 | 1 | 6 | With few exceptions, the world of developers (and startups in general), is really known for its scandals. But when Ruby icon (also known simply as _why) suddenly took all of his projects offline – including the famous – offline in August 2009, there was quite a bit of uproar and in the programming community. _why had always guarded his anonymity closely, but nobody expected him to just abandon his projects and disappear into the night. The story of _why, his , and his disappearance were the subject of one of the best longform posts of 2012 and Annie Lawrey’s “ ” remains the definitive text on the subject. If you haven’t read it, now would be an excellent time to do so. A couple of anonymous posts on a after _why’s disappearance identified Jonathan Gillette as the real person behind _why’s persona and Lawrey’s research confirmed this, but the real story behind why he suddenly disappeared at the height of his success remains a mystery. Maybe this won’t remain a mystery for long, though. While _why’s website went dark after he left, it’s . All the site currently features is this cryptic message: Public Print Queue SPOOL/DESOLEE 2012-01-06T08:21Z The folks over have already started to figure out the basics of this puzzle (while the have now broken into the chorus of the Pointer Sister’s “ “). There were a couple of other messages available on the site earlier on that pointed to a filled with the kind of absurd writing that was always _why’s hallmark. For now, however, that’s it, but it would be fun to see _why back in action. His Ruby programming guide taught thousands the basics of programming and we could definitely use some of his skill today as we’re trying to get more people to learn to code. |
Polar Demonstrates Exactly What To Do If Your App’s User Base Is Becoming Too “Teen-Centric” | Drew Olanoff | 2,013 | 1 | 6 | It happens to the best of entrepreneurs: That service, app, or site that you set up finds an audience that totally blows your mind. You thought that a certain set of people would flock to your app like crazy, and you’re surprised by those who actually use it. If you have this “problem,” it’s important to recognize that it’s not a problem at all. One of the is Polar for iOS, and it has done some interesting things to best serve all of its users and not freak out about it being “overrun by kids,” much like Instagram has been. If you’re not sold on Instagram being an app for the younger set, just take a look at the most popular pictures section, and you’ll get the gist quickly. , which is a social voting app of sorts, acts much like hot-or-not does, slurping up the things that you are interested in based on your quick-fire voting. It’s a gorgeous and easy-to-use app and is kind of fun once you get into the groove of using it. Polar’s co-founder Luke Wroblewski, a self-professed data nerd, told me about how his company is making Polar a place to be for everyone, no matter what their interests are or what their age is. Needless to say, Polar saw its highest usage ever during the holidays, since a lot of people were getting their new iOS devices. It’s a good sign that there’s word of mouth going on for Polar, which is hard to get away from once your friends are tweeting and Facebooking polls. Wroblewski told me that New Year’s Eve had the highest number of polls created in one day, mostly centered on “best of 2012” themes. The app has registered more than 2 million votes thus far. Teens like to use Polar; it’s obvious as you poke around. You’ll see questions like “Who is your favorite Twilight character?” I usually just skip over those. Wroblewski feels like that’s a bad user experience for older crowds, so the company is doing something about it. Polar has created two versions of its popular and news feed sections, and there’s one with polls that don’t mention things like Justin Bieber, “who is cuter?” and other questions of that nature. By creating a simple corpus of keywords, it’s quite easy to filter that stuff out. The really neat part about all of this is that you don’t have to switch a toggle or set something in settings to make this happen. All you have to do is use the app. Polar throws at you to pick your bucket: Instead of settling for having one type of audience or the other, Polar can have its cake and eat it, too. Wroblewski tells me that more is coming for Polar at the end of the month, but if you haven’t given the app a spin, . The UI and UX, designed by Polar’s team of two, allow you to speed through at least 10 polls in 30 seconds – that’s their core requirement for their users. I’ve witnessed larger companies that completely give up on an app or service because they don’t like the audience that it has attracted, which is a horrible way to treat the folks who really enjoy what you’ve made. There are ways to make things customized and personalized, without completely reinventing the wheel. Clearly, Polar has done it. Teens are users, too, and it’s an audience that . Creative thinking can open up new possibilites. As far as making money or looking for outside investment, Wroblewski isn’t too concerned. The team is focused on making a great and fun product. Why should you care about them? Well, Polar is building an amazing interest graph for you based on things that you like and can one day match you with people who like or dislike the same things as you. Facebook should take notice. |
CrunchWeek: Google Makes A Deal With The FTC, The Hot/Cold Apple And Waze Deal, 2013’s M&A Surge | Colleen Taylor | 2,013 | 1 | 6 | In this edition, Ms. , Mr. , and I dig into the FTC’s settlement of its , the -and- on Apple’s reported in buying geolocation startup Waze, and the big M&A stories that kicked off the new year — and . |
Hands On With Redbox Instant By Verizon: Not Really A Netflix Killer. But Then, What Is? | Ryan Lawler | 2,013 | 1 | 6 | Redbox’s long-awaited streaming video service is almost here, thanks to a that was announced in July. I lucked out and got an invite to the service, which was , and have played around with it a bit. Here’s what you need to know about Redbox Instant and how it stacks up against the competition. The first thing most users will evaluate the service on is its pricing, and how it compares to offerings from Netflix and Amazon Prime Instant Video. Redbox Instant has three pricing tiers, at $6, $8, and $9 a month. For $6, you get access to streaming only, from a fairly limited library of content — more on that later. The $8 plan gives you unlimited streaming plus four kiosk rentals a month. That works out to a pretty good value for frequent Redbox renters, as each kiosk credit is good for a rental that usually costs $1.20 per day. For those who want to be able to rent Blu-ray discs, there’s a $9 per-month plan that is a somewhat better value, as you get four credits for Blu-ray rentals, which usually cost $1.50 per day. In addition to the monthly subscription plan, there’s also an option to purchase or rent video-on-demand titles, with prices similar to those offered by Amazon, Vudu, Google Play, and iTunes. New release purchases typically cost $16.99 or $21.99, depending on whether they’re available in SD or HD. (Not all purchases are available in HD, and it’s not clear why or why not.) New release rentals typically cost $4.99 in SD or $5.99 in HD. The first thing you should know is that the number of options under the streaming subscription is pretty limited, especially when compared to companies like Netflix or Amazon, which have been doing this for much longer. But that’s probably to be expected: After all, when Amazon announced the availability of video as part of its Prime subscription, the company came to market with just 3,000 titles. Over the past two years, it’s dramatically increased the number of options available, and I have no doubt that Redbox Instant will do just the same. The other noticeable thing about the service’s content library is that there’s not much there that I can’t find through Netflix or Amazon. Key new-ish releases — such as Thor, for instance, or The Lincoln Lawyer — are available on both Netflix and Amazon. The reason for this is that their studios have output deals with Epix, and . Not surprisingly, Epix is also a . Outside of that, though, there’s not a whole lot of content there today to compel a Netflix user to switch. That is, unless said user is also a big DVD kiosk user. If that’s the case, Redbox has hundreds of newer DVDs and Blu-rays that it can offer at convenient locations nearby. As of now, it appears that Redbox Instant only supports mobile devices and tablets, like the iPad, iPhone, and various Android devices. I’ve tested it out on my laptop, on my iPad, and on my iPhone, and it worked well on all of them. There’s even the ability to start watching on one device and pick up on another. On PCs, Redbox Instant relies on Silverlight — the same plugin that Netflix uses — presumably due to DRM concerns. On the iOS devices I tested the service out on, playback was done through a video player within the app. Playback works on both Wi-Fi and wireless (even 3G!) networks. While the company says it will support devices such as Samsung Blu-ray Players and TVs, LG Smart TV and Blu-ray Players, and Google TV, the Redbox Instant website currently only shows availability on the mobile devices and tablets above. Likely its device footprint will expand as time goes on. At this point, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to roll out a streaming subscription service that will truly compete with Netflix. Amazon has tried, and so has Blockbuster. Each has different advantages: For Amazon, there’s a slightly lower price due to its $79 annual fee and bundling with Amazon Prime subscription. For Blockbuster, the service is packaged with its existing pay TV service, meaning no need to pay more than one video provider. For Redbox, the Instant service is a way to get more money out of existing heavy users and to convert them from analog to digital streamers. Note that this was a novel idea back in 2008 or so, when Netflix first started doing it. But we’ve come a long way since then. The question is whether Redbox Instant can convert video streaming customers to DVD kiosk users; on this front, I think they’ll have a difficult go of it. For the most part, if users are already streaming video, they’re probably unlikely to switch to Redbox. But if they aren’t, the value of streaming-plus-DVD probably isn’t that bad of a deal. It’s already a crowded space, and while Redbox Instant will continue to improve, the early lead Netflix has, combined with the existence of at least two other serious competitors, means that the Verizon/Redbox joint venture is probably too little, too late. [gallery ids="730842,730840,730841,730843,730845,730844"] |
Craigslist Slowly Expands Its Maps To Items For Sale, Starting First With Yard Sales And Flea Markets | Ingrid Lunden | 2,013 | 1 | 6 | has started to add maps to its sales listings, letting people view not just what items are being sold, but where those items are located on a map. Craigslist appears to be starting off with group selling events — garage sales, yard sales and flea markets — in a move that extends a feature Craigslist first introduced in for apartment rentals. The feature was noticed by a TechCrunch reader, “SG”, who passed along the info. “Craigslist is as old school as it gets [yet] somehow it still is surviving in the HTML5 world,” he wrote, pointing to how it is also optimising its site for mobiles and tablets. “One step in the right direction.” As with the apartments move — made just as Craigslist was tightening the for repurposing its data in their own housing listings — the maps on sale items raises Craigslist’s competitive edge. In this case, it puts Craigslist into closer feature proximity (pun intended) with startups like and , which focus on location-based e-commerce from small merchants and sole traders, but also bigger fish like eBay, which also lets buyers view listings based on distance from a specified location. It also comes at a time when there is already so much focus on maps and offerings users the most complete location data — a battle that has been played out between Google, Apple, Microsoft and Nokia specifically around maps on mobile devices. Back at Craigslist, focusing first on yard sales makes sense since people seek these out often based on their location. As with so much else on Craigslist, yard sales have been appropriated by developers who have spotted windows of opportunity to technically innovate in ways that Craigslist has not, or has been very slow to do. , for example, pulls data from Craigslist and offers it in a map view. It’s been running its service since February 2009. It’s not clear whether and when Craigslist will be extending the mapping feature to other categories like car sales or other, single items listed by individuals, but that seems like an obvious and necessary move: As with the apartment listings, adding maps to any of Craigslist’s listings makes the site more useful and keeps people transacting there rather than going elsewhere to pick up their data. Craigslist has, in many markets in the U.S. and often elsewhere, become synonymous with certain kinds of sales/rental listings, such as those for apartments, car and, yes, flea markets/yard sales. So any third-party moves to shift eyeballs away from Craigslist to seek out that kind of information elsewhere could, in the long term, impact Craigslist’s pole position. And nor is it clear whether extending the feature into a new category will signal a fresh wave of cease-and-desist orders from CL against sites that pull its data for their own services. Also similar to the maps for housing listings: these new maps appear only to be getting rolled out in cities in the U.S. and Canada for the time being, not international sites in countries like the UK and France. The maps on Craigslist are created using data along with customization from for features like the peace-sign location markers and informational pop-ups. We have reached out to Craigslist for comment on this article through multiple channels and will update with any responses we receive. |
Startups: Keep It Simple, Stupid | Natasha Lomas | 2,013 | 1 | 6 | Why some startups soar to great heights while others stumble and fall is almost impossible to answer without digging into the detail of each, on a case-by-case basis. So many factors affect success — from funding and timing, to experience, execution, competitive landscape and even luck. There is also the strength of the idea itself, and whether the competition is better, faster, stronger than you are. But strip back some of the complexity and there are some basic overriding principles that make it more or less likely a startup will succeed. And the simplest of all these rules is simplicity itself. Like any good pitch, if your idea can’t be conveyed in a sentence its survival is already in doubt. Above all else: keep it simple, stupid. This may sound really obvious but judging by many of the pitches that pass through TechCrunch’s inbox there are still far too many startups that haven’t learnt this lesson yet. Take a look at some of the startups that have succeeded and consider how easily what they offer can be conveyed. YouTube: upload your videos. Facebook: an online yearbook. Snapchat: self-destructing picture messaging. Twitter: real-time text updates. Instagram: fancy photo-sharing. Pinterest: an online pinboard… and so on. Or, moving away from startups to products — this, from 2007, when as: “an iPod, a phone, an internet communicator”. On the flip side, consider ideas that aren’t exactly flying, Microsoft has clearly had trouble getting people to buy into its Windows Phone platform and I would argue that part of its problem comes down to trying to sell a complicated message and explain the usefulness of concepts that aren’t immediately obvious — such as Live Tiles, or the OS’s panoramic view. These features might make sense after you’ve used them for a while but most people won’t get that far. So it’s not just startups that need to keep things simple. However it is far more important for startups because they don’t have the advantage of being an established brand – or millions of dollars to burn on marketing. Your idea might make perfect sense (to you) after you’ve explained how each of the various components work together to form a ‘unique marketplace offering’. Or explained how your service fills a very specific niche between two other established services, thereby ‘surpassing its rivals’. But the longer you carry on talking, the less likely it is your startup will succeed. The strength of the idea is not enough. It’s about whether it resonates and clicks into place in the mind of your user . No matter how great you think your idea is, if it takes more than a few seconds to explain you are on the wrong side of today’s chronically fatigued attention spans. This is especially important in the consumer space where your users are the mainstream public, not specialists or business buyers with some kind of vested interest in gaining access to your product. Never lose sight of the fact there are thousands and thousands of others – apps, services, startups — clamouring for a few seconds of people’s face time. There’s absolutely no reason why anyone should bother taking time to learn about your startup. A cursory, disinterested glance is the very best you can hope for. (As an aside, keeping things simple also applies when pitching to journalists. Above all: keep your pitch concise. This article was sparked by a tortuous series of email exchanges with a startup CEO who answered every question with elaborate bullet-pointed screeds that delved into infinitesimal detail about granular eventualities and possibilities he apparently thought it useful to bring to my attention. The result: I have zero desire to communicate with that startup ever again.) Starting from scratch means you’re undoubtedly sweating blood to build your startup but don’t expect other people to do any kind of perspiring on your behalf. The harsh truth is that no one cares about your startup (yet). You have no audience. The only thing you can take for granted is people’s disinterest. And that in turn should keep you focused. Concentrate your sweating toil on removing barriers to entry by making whatever it is you do effortless to understand and easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy to try out — and get out of if need be. Trying to box people in to something that has no value to them yet is another sure-fire way to put them off. If your big idea is actually a series of interconnected features/services don’t be fooled into thinking that’s a selling point. Less is more, so once again: keep it simple. An established app or service needs to grow by adding new features in order to stay fresh, relevant and competitive but piling on scores of features from the start in a bid to grab attention just gives people scores more reasons to ignore you. Every new feature you shout about puts additional weight on the side of the scales marked ‘I just can’t be arsed’. Don’t bore people. Don’t make people do homework. Don’t expect them to do any legwork. Don’t make them feel like they have to raise a finger on your behalf. Expect nothing, and offer just one useful thing: your main idea, presented in a form that’s both easy to understand and effortless to tap into. It’s no good having a simple idea if your interface is convoluted and frustrating. Frustration is an ogre that eats good ideas for breakfast. Sure it’s fine (and probably advisable) to have a roadmap of how, in the future, your startup can branch into a series of services that augment and reinforce each other — and hopefully blossom into bountiful revenue streams. But shut up about all that until you have built a community that cares. Until then, your mission is simple: focus, simplify, condense. Do one thing. Do it exceptionally well. At this point presentation is also extremely important – it’s a vital part of ‘doing it well’ – but even stupendously great presentation won’t save a concept that’s drowning in its own complexity. So before you start polishing, make sure you’ve pared everything back to the uncut diamond of your idea, the essence of what makes it great. Now the beauty of keeping things simple means it will be even easier to polish that gem up, to make it look and feel as awesome as you know it is. To make it so easy for someone to drop into their life they’d be crazy not to. And then maybe — just maybe — your startup is in with a chance. [Image: by via ] |
HBO Inks Exclusive, 10-Year Deal With Universal To Keep Content Out Of Netflix’s Hands | Ingrid Lunden | 2,013 | 1 | 6 | today has won a battle in the over-the-top content wars. The pay-TV giant has inked a deal with that extends Universal Pictures’ and Focus Features’ films appearing on HBO’s TV, online and mobile platforms in the U.S. for the next decade. What’s key is that the deal is exclusive to HBO and will mean that Netflix (and other OTT players) will not get that content: “Yes, it is exclusive. Netflix can’t touch it,” a spokesperson told TechCrunch. HBO also has exclusive deals with Fox, Warner Bros, and Summit, in addition to Universal. The deal, which will give HBO rights to films like (pictured), is a riposte to the . That deal, which propelled Netflix into the content big leagues, will cover Disney classics as well as new Disney live-action and animated features, covering Disney, Walt Disney Animation Studios, Pixar Animation Studios, Marvel Studios, and Disneynature. New releases fall into the pay-TV window six to nine months after the theatrical release of films, and like the HBO/Universal deal, will cover all platforms, including online, on mobile, and tablet devices, as well as connected TVs, Blu-ray players, game consoles, and other streaming boxes. Netflix is also expected to bid on Sony Pictures content, too, the LA Times notes. Combined with the Disney content, that will mean that Netflix has effectively picked up the same content it lost when its contract with . As AllThingsD notes, the deal had been , and while HBO did not give the financial terms of the agreement, the puts it on par with HBO’s 20th Century Fox deal, which is over $200 million per year — or at least $2 billion over 10 years. In output deals, it explains, pay-TV providers like HBO pay between 10 percent and 12 percent of the U.S. box office of up to $200 million. The deal shows just how closely HBO is competing with Netflix these days, in particular with a multi-screen strategy. “With HBO’s far-reaching network of premium services, ranging from the traditional in-home experience to its mobile applications, we are pleased to continue this relationship and bring Universal and Focus Features’ films to HBO subscribers for many years to come,” said Rick Finkelstein, vice chairman and COO, Universal Pictures, in a statement. “With our upcoming slate of films, HBO will continue to offer outstanding film content to their already vast library of movies, specials and award-winning original programming.” In addition to the HBO and Cinemax pay-TV channels, which cover 100 million subscribers worldwide, HBO also operates HBO On Demand and Cinemax On Demand, as well as HBO GO and MAX GO online channels and apps. |
Google’s New Director Of Engineering, Ray Kurzweil, Is Building Your ‘Cybernetic Friend’ | Gregory Ferenstein | 2,013 | 1 | 6 | World-renowned artificial intelligence expert and , Ray Kurzweil, wants to build a search engine so sophisticated that it could act like a ‘cybernetic friend,’ who knows users better than they know themselves. “I envision in some years that the majority of search queries will be answered without you actually asking,” he said at an intimate gathering at Singularity University’s NASA campus. Kurzweil, a noted futurist and engineer, tells me in a rare follow-up interview that CEO Larry Page offered him the job after learning of his intention to start a company to build his long-held dream of an artificially intelligent computer. “Why don’t you do that here?” Page asked him. “Google is quite unique,” explains Kurzweil, on his decision to head to the search giant, rather than venture out on his own. “It fundamentally deals with language.” Language, Kurzweil argues, is the window to creating a genuine artificial brain, that can understand the meaning of ideas and concepts. “If you write a blog post, you’re not just creating a bag of words, you’re creating some meaningful sentences.” For now, search engines have brute-force algorithms that pick out key words in popular pages and hope that the results, on average, will yield the best information. So-called “semantic” search parses the meaning and intentions behind words. Semantic search aims to solve the ‘hotdog’ problem, as by Google’s Chairman, Eric Schmidt, “Is it a ‘hot dog’ or a ‘hotdog.’ And, if you knew something about whether the person had dogs, or whether the person was a vegetarian, you’d have a very different potential answer to that question.” Eventually Google will understand why users are searching for information and provide them with answers they didn’t even know they needed. The education of such an omnipotent new mind will take the vast stores of Google’s database. Perhaps more than any other company, explains Kurzweil, Google has access to the “things you read, what you write, in your emails or blog posts, and so on, even your conversations, what you hear, what you say.” Google can combine the personalized recommendations of a friend (who often know us better than we know ourselves) with the sum of all human knowledge, creating a sort of super best friend. This friend of yours, this cybernetic friend, that knows that you that have certain questions about certain health issues or business strategies. And, It can then be canvassing all the new information that comes out in the world every minute and then bring things to your attention without you asking about them Kurzweil was quick to dispel he was given “unlimited” funds, but humbly suggests that Google is giving him “sufficient resources for a very important project.” [Image ] H/T [ and ] |
Iterations: Traction Capital | Semil Shah | 2,013 | 1 | 6 | TechCrunch There are many misconceptions about technology-focused venture capital out there. One timeless misconception is that venture capital is monolithic. By now, given the attention driving the tech scene and the age of celebrity investors, we all have a better understanding of how an investor’s can range between sectors and stages. And, when it comes to consumer-facing products and services seeking institutional investment, there’s one dimension that nearly every funding decision seems to hinge on these days: “traction.” I place the word “traction” in quotes because it’s often cited yet not commonly understood. The origin of “traction,” in this context, reverts back to the engineering discipline to describe the tension or adhesive friction created by a pulling force, which perhaps gave birth to the phrase “gaining traction” as the tech community refers to it today. When I think of something gaining traction, I think of physics, where an object has reached enough speed or captured enough energy whereby it sustain movement and momentum on its own. Semantics aside, let’s focus on traction as a , but only for consumer-facing web and mobile products or services under consideration for larger, early-stage institutional investment — not angel or seed funding. Today in 2013, multiple, interrelated forces are at play: While the cost of building and maintaining web and mobile products has fallen, the amount of angel and seed capital in the market has increased, coinciding with a stagnant economy and depressing labor market, all against the celebrity-driven and tech-obsessed social media platforms, which come together to generate, basically, a boatload of new products and companies. Put another way: There are too many consumer startups that fit into this class, so rather than try to pick potential winners among an ocean of droplets, institutional venture capital firms (especially the larger funds) have employed a strategy of monitoring, waiting, and gathering as much information as possible before putting their money to work. This appeals to a larger investor’s craving for optionality, as well as protecting them from the fickleness of consumer sentiment for new sites and apps. Furthermore, larger VC funds are looking for evidence that a particular consumer product has a good chance of experiencing hyper-growth and maturing into its own durable, standalone company. (Note that “traction” can mean entirely different things at different stages or in different sectors.) As a result, startups seeking funding often shoulder the burden of proof to explain to potential investors what “traction” specifically means for their product, as well as why the key foundational metrics were chosen in making their case. The startup has the responsibility to show there is not only consumer adoption of their product, but one that is or will be moving at a non-incremental rate. For some products, the metrics could be around a financial data pointing to a high willingness to pay, and for other products it could be a week-by-week cohort analysis which reveals signals leading one to believe an inflection point in adoption could be on its way. The problem, of course, is there’s no agreed-upon method for agreeing on what defines traction — depending on the startup or the investor, it may be different, or it may be one of those cases of “you know it when you see it.” Some investors elect to focus first on the of registered users, some want to know more about monthly active users, while others want to know a between daily active users and monthlies, as well as metrics around retention and virality. Some investors will go so far as to model out disparate signals from web and app analytic services to predict the fidelity of these metrics, while others will care a bit less about absolute numbers or ratios but rather focus on how passionate and addicted the initial user base is. Metrics, however, can also be to have a distortionary effect and, ironically, lead teams or investors to weigh factors incorrectly and result in mistakes, such as . Additionally, focusing on traction permits investors to stay close to entrepreneurs while providing a reason to “pass” on a deal until a higher level of traction is achieved. Perhaps having “traction” is a way to open the door to investment, but not sufficient enough to close the deal. Again, the burden of proof here lies largely with the startup, as it always does. This is why investors want to make sure they see many deals but remain happy to pass and say they’re willing to be proven wrong. Institutional investors with smaller funds, relatively, compete by making these bets early with less traction than bigger funds would need to see. I’m sure there are many investors out there who do make Series A bets without focusing entirely on traction. This isn’t to imply larger investors today won’t take risks — of course, for the right products or people, they most certainly will. But, for the most part, for consumer products today, institutional investing is more like “Traction Capital” today — in order to have a chance to cash the bigger checks, startups most likely have to demonstrate traction first before anything else. [A note of thanks to , , and for reading drafts of this post.] / |
Keith Rabois Leaves Top Operating Role At Square | Eric Eldon | 2,013 | 1 | 24 | Long-time investor and Valley executive is leaving his chief operating officer position at payment company Square, according to a surprise announcement by the company tonight. Chief financial officer Sarah Friar will be acting COO while it looks for a replacement. Rabois joined Square in August 2010 and developed most non-product parts of the company, including marketing, communications, business development, distribution, human resources and risk management, according to . There’s more than one way to decipher the reason based on the statements from Rabois and founder Jack Dorsey, below: Dorsey: Today I accepted Keith’s resignation from Square. When he joined, we had fewer than 30 employees and under 1000 active merchants. Today, over 3 million individuals and businesses are able to accept credit cards with Square, processing over $10 billion annually. We couldn’t have done it without him and we wish him well in his next opportunity. Rabois: It is amazing what Square has accomplished since August of 2010. When I joined, there were 17 engineers all reporting flatly to Jack. The local coffee shop served as our interview room. Leading our amazing crew has been the most rewarding professional journey of my life. I am forever grateful to Jack, for his confidence in me and to each and every member of the team for allowing me to learn from them. But every day matters. And it is better at this point for me to be doing something different every day. As a result, I’ve decided to resign from Square. I am very excited about what lies ahead for the company. Square could not be better poised for greatness. I will have more to share about my next opportunity soon. They both mention a next opportunity, which suggests that part was planned out. Having Friar come in as an acting COO suggests that part was not — although Friar is widely respected, and her move into the position doesn’t necessarily mean his departure was a huge surprise internally. An often outspoken figure in Silicon Valley, Rabois also serves on the boards of Yelp and Xoom, is an occasional angel investor, and was an early executive at PayPal, LinkedIn and Slide. He didn’t comment when I reached him tonight, except to say that he’ll share more soon. Square, meanwhile, is having an all-hands meeting tomorrow to discuss his departure, according to sources. |
Huawei Was Top Third Smartphone Vendor In Q4 After Samsung & Apple, Says IDC | Catherine Shu | 2,013 | 1 | 24 | on the global mobile phone market reveals that Huawei sprang up into the top-three smartphone vendors in the world, a first for the company. In Q4, Huawei held a 4.9 percent marketshare based on unit shipments. This is much less than the 29 percent chunk held by Samsung and Apple’s 21.8 percent slice, but still placed Huawei ahead of Sony and ZTE. In the 2012 calendar year, Huawei was number four among the top five smartphone vendors by market share, after Samsung, Apple and Nokia, but ahead of Research In Motion. Ramon Llamas, a research manager with IDC’s Mobile Phone team said: “The fact that Huawei and ZTE now find themselves among the top 5 smartphone vendors marks a significant shift for the global market. Both companies have grown volumes by focusing on the mass market, but in recent quarters they have turned their attention toward higher-end devices. In addition, both companies have pushed the envelope in terms of industrial design with larger displays and smaller form factors, as well as innovative applications and experiences.” Huawei’s mix of inexpensive smartphones for the mass market and its high-end Ascend-branded product line helped it gain market share, as well its unique hardware design and software, said IDC: “Along the way, the company has demonstrated its innovative skills, having released the world’s thinnest (6.68 mm) smartphone last year, the Ascend P1, and this year it announced the upcoming Ascend Mate, the first smartphone with a 6.1-inch display. At the same time, Huawei has brought its own software innovations, including Magic Touch, Guiding Wizard, Smart Reading, and Floating Windows.” Samsung, meanwhile, set a new record for smartphones shipped in a single quarter and in a single year. In Q4 alone, it shipped 63.7 million smartphones, up from 36.3 million shipped in Q4 2011. IDC believes that 2013 will be “a pivotal year” for Samsung as it prepares to , the Linux-based operating system it is developing in conjunction with Intel. Apple’s record iPhone shipments of 47.8 million in Q4, up from 37 million a year ago, were “driven by successes in Greater China, where shipments more than doubled, as well as the U.S., where 6.2 million iPhones were activated on Verizon alone,” the report said. Interestingly, sales of older models, in particular, the iPhone 4, drove Apple’s smartphone shipments. IDC says that the worldwide mobile phone market grew 1.9 percent year over year in Q4 2012, as holiday shopping pushed smartphone sales to almost the same level as feature phones. In the last quarter, vendors shipped a total of 482.5 million mobile phones compared to 473.4 million units in Q4 2011. For the full year, however, the global market for mobile phones was flat, declining 0.2% on shipments of more than 1.7 billion units. |
Skype Must Be More Transparent, Says Activists And Advocacy Groups | Catherine Shu | 2,013 | 1 | 24 | A roster of privacy advocates, Internet activists, journalists and other organizations have issued , calling on it to issue regular transparency reports about the release of Skype user information to third parties. The letter was addressed to Skype division president Tony Bates, Microsoft chief privacy officer Brendon Lynch and Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith and signed by groups including the , and . In the letter they said: Skype is a voice, video and chat communications platform with over 600 million users worldwide, effectively making it one of the world’s largest telecommunications companies. Many of its users rely on Skype for secure communications—whether they are activists operating in countries governed by authoritarian regimes, journalists communicating with sensitive sources, or users who wish to talk privately in confidence with business associates, family, or friends. It is unfortunate that these users, and those who advise them on best security practices, work in the face of persistently unclear and confusing statements about the confidentiality of Skype conversations, and in particular the access that governments and other third parties have to Skype user data and communications. We understand that the transition of ownership to Microsoft, and the corresponding shifts in jurisdiction and management, may have made some questions of lawful access, user data collection, and the degree of security of Skype communications temporarily difficult to authoritatively answer. However, we believe that from the time of the original announcement of a merger in October 2011, and on the eve of Microsoft’s integration of Skype into many of its key software and services, the time has come for Microsoft to publicly document Skype’s security and privacy practices. Concerns that Skype can and has been wiretapped have ramped up since Microsoft bought the VoIP provider in May 2011. Before that, that it would not be able to comply with wiretapping requests because of its peer-to-peer architecture and encryption techniques. It also said it is not subject to the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act. But the Microsoft acquisition fueled concerns that Skype can be used as a spying tool by different governments. Last July, Microsoft refused to diclose whether or not Skype had started taking part in online surveillance after that changes in Microsoft had made to Skype’s architecture made it easier for users to be spied on. The letter calls on Skype to release a regularly updated transparency reports detailing requests for user data by third parties, similar to the (link via Google Translate), Twitter and Sonic.net twice a year. Here are what co-signers would like to see: Quantitative data regarding the release of Skype user information to third parties, disaggregated by the country of origin of the request, including the number of requests made by governments, the type of data requested, the proportion of requests with which it complied — and the basis for rejecting those requests it does not comply with.
Specific details of all user data Microsoft and Skype currently collects, and retention policies. Skype’s best understanding of what user data third-parties, including network providers or potential malicious attackers, may be able to intercept or retain. Documentation regarding the current operational relationship between Skype with TOM Online in China and other third-party licensed users of Skype technology, including Skype’s understanding of the surveillance and censorship capabilities that users may be subject to as a result of using these alternatives. Skype’s interpretation of its responsibilities under the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), its policies related to the disclosure of call metadata in response to subpoenas and National Security Letters (NSLs), and more generally, the policies and guidelines for employees followed when Skype receives and responds to requests for user data from law enforcement and intelligence agencies in the United States and elsewhere. Skype has been contacted for comment. |
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Facebook Is Done Giving Its Precious Social Graph To Competitors | Josh Constine | 2,013 | 1 | 24 | Of all Facebook’s data sets, it’s the social graph that’s truly unique. It’s spent nine years getting you to confirm who you know, and apparently it’s sick of handing over your friend list to competitors. This week it both Twitter’s new photo app Vine and messaging app Voxer from Find Friends, Facebook’s API that lets you connect with Facebook friends on other apps. But this could backfire. Facebook knows who you are, what you’re interested in, where you go on the web, what apps you use, and more. However, other companies have bits and pieces of these data sets. LinkedIn knows your resume, Google knows your web searches, Twitter knows who you follow, Apple and Amazon have your credit card number, and your phone’s OS maker knows what apps you’ve downloaded. Who your real-life friends are, though, is Facebook’s domain. Reconfirming your social graph manually on other apps is awkward at worst and annoying at best. Think about it. If your Facebook account were reset and you had to send friend requests to all your old friends, how many do you think would confirm? Even your best friends might be too lazy to, and people who were glad to friend you when you met years ago probably wouldn’t bother if they remember you. There’s plenty of noise in Facebook’s social graph. Some people blindly accept most requests they get, others send them to anyone they meet once, and all the connections grow stale over the years. Still, if you want to jumpstart a social app, Facebook’s Find Friends feature is very valuable. It can be the difference between an empty feed and low retention, and a vibrant, addictive feed teeming with content from people you care about. Facebook has offered Find Friends for years. But those were years when it was a web-based social network. It’s more now, or at least it wants to be. Facebook hopes to host all the ways you communicate. That has pitted it against Apple, Google, and other companies in war for messaging that’s only just heating up. Data portability first became a big issue in 2010 when from using its Find Friends feature. Later that year it got into a about exporting contact lists. Google was pissed Facebook was sucking in Gmail contacts but not exporting friend lists. Facebook eventually began offering Download Your Data, which included your Friend List, but only in plain text. More recently though, Twitter may have awoken the dragon when it to Twitter’s own version of “Find Friends.” It was an understandable retaliation since Facebook had cut it off, and Twitter had wanted to buy Instagram, too. Now Facebook is coming out swinging, citing its that states “Competing social networks: (a) You may not use Facebook Platform to export user data into a competing social network without our permission.” Last week it blocked voice-messaging app Voxer’s access to the social graph. At the time, Facebook told me this was because Voxer qualified as a competing messaging platform, but also because Voxer wasn’t contributing much back to Facebook. Voxer only had a buried, and largely unnecessary, “share to Facebook” option. It got an email stating its Find Friends access would be revoked 48 hours later. Then today Facebook shut off Find Friends for Twitter’s Vine, as spotted by and reported by . That makes both more and less sense. More because Twitter is a real competitor. It has decent scale and mindshare and competes for the same advertisers as Facebook. Twitter would love to know your Facebook social graph, which could help it refine its version, the “interest graph,” which powers its ad targeting. It makes less sense because Vine had a prominent “share to Facebook” option. What happened to Facebook only going after apps that don’t contribute much back? Apparently that got overruled because Twitter is a more legitimate threat. So much so that Facebook employed its policy that “we reserve the right to take action against your app even before the end of this 48 hour period.” It didn’t want Twitter getting any social graph data. Enforcement of these policies could create a moat around Facebook. It creates a barrier to engagement, retention, and growth for competing companies. It will force social apps to rely on other data sets, such as your phone’s contacts which may not have as complete of a social graph, though likely does include your closest friends whose numbers you have. That advantage may not be worth it, though. The enforcement means Facebook is not an “open platform.” If companies are worried that Find Friends or other Facebook data access could be ripped away from them with little notice, it could cause a chilling effect on development on the Facebook platform. No one wants to build an app that relies on Facebook data if it could disappear. Facebook reaffirmed this fear this morning when it enforced its ban on exporting data for use in social networks. Russian search engine mobile app Wonder just three hours after launch. That’s a lot of programming and product work down the drain. Facebook is playing with fire. It could use policy enforcement to cook competitors and shine a light on its dominance of social networking. But if this enforcement scares off developers whose apps might otherwise provide content that could be shown next to ads in the news feed and piped into Graph Search, Facebook could get burned badly. — |
Another Potential Suitor For RIM As Lenovo Ponders An Acquisition | Catherine Shu | 2,013 | 1 | 24 | Research In Motion is once again the target of a rumored acquisition. Lenovo’s CFO Wang Wai Ming said in an at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos that the Beijing company is eying the BlackBerry maker as a potential acquisition target or strategic alliance partner. The news comes less than a week after that RIM is still undergoing a strategic review, with the possibility of licensing BB 10 to other manufacturers and selling its hardware production unit. And last August, that IBM “made an informal approach” to acquire RIM’s enterprise-services unit–the heart of BlackBerry’s business–amid intensifying rumors of an acquisition. “We are looking at all opportunities–RIM and many others,” Wong told Bloomberg. “We’ll have no hesitation if the right opportunity comes along that could benefit us and shareholders.” Wong added that Lenovo has already spoken to RIM and its bankers about various combinations and strategic ventures, though it is unclear when exactly Lenovo would put in a bid. RIM has been looking at its options since last year, when its market share from the iPhone and Samsung Galaxy. On Lenovo’s side, a shrinking PC market has kept it from growing after it bought IBM’s PC unit in 2005. RIM’s stock price fell to a low of $6.22 in September, but has since nearly tripled due to speculation over the results of a strategic review and buzz over RIM’s long-anticipated BB 10 phones, which will finally debut in less than a week. If the BB 10 takes off as RIM hopes, one option is to focus on licensing the OS to rivals like Samsung. Other rumored suitors for RIM over the past two years have included , and Samsung, which . A takeover of RIM by a Chinese company would certainly raise security questions–especially for the company once described as a Canadian “crown jewel” by Prime Minister Stephen Harper. And back in July, that the company has pulled back from expanding its China operations because of concerns over protecting its sensitive networks. The deal could also face regulatory hurdles in the U.S., where government investigations into spyware have already created massive hurdles for two other Chinese telecommunications manufacturers, and . But a deal focused on just hardware instead of key IP and software might have an easier time making it past regulators. Lenovo has been on an acquisitions kick lately as it seeks to pump new life into its business as PC sales wane. This month it completed of Brazilian computers, mobile and tablets maker CCE. Its other five acquisitions in 2011 have included the purchases of Essen, Germany-based maker , and the . RIM has been emailed for comment. |
Today Is The Last Day To Vote For The Crunchies. Buy Your Tickets Now | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,013 | 1 | 24 | are next week and we’ve already sold out the beautiful in San Francisco…. Well, we had sold out, but then we found a little more space in the balcony. We opened up that space, so you can still buy a few more tickets if you’re fast, right . And one other thing before the show starts — voting ends tonight. Please help us decide the hottest new thing, the greatest founder, the most inspiring overall startup, and the rest of the awards by casting your opinions . Aside from that, and on behalf of our cohosts GigaOm and VentureBeat, and the TechCrunch staff, we think you’ll love what we have planned entertainment-wise: Our host is John Oliver. A writer and correspondent on Comedy Central’s with Jon Stewart since 2006, he’s also had his own Comedy Central series, , since 2009. He’s won multiple Writers Guild and Emmy nominations for his writing on The Daily Show, including the Emmy Award for Best Comedy Writing In A Comedy or Variety Series in both 2009 and 2011. Legendary musician GZA/The Genius, the first signed member of seminal hip-hop group the Wu-Tang Clan and one of its most distinguished lyricists, is also joining us onstage. In addition to his work with the Wu-Tang Clan, GZA’s 1995 solo effort, the RZA-produced Liquid Swords, met with critical and commercial acclaim, and is largely considered one of the best albums to come out of the Wu-Tang camp. Finally, will wind up the musical experience for the evening. Shortly after Mark befriended Derrick Carter in 1988 at a record store in Chicago, his passion for House music, and sharing it with the world, exploded. Since then, Mark has been traveling the globe performing hundreds of shows, to more than 1 million club goers, every year. His House sets take fans on journeys to the jazzy side of Chicago House mixed San Francisco style. Some of these sets have been known to last up to 8 hours. And sometimes you’ll find Mark playing in two different rooms at the same party, showcasing his range of big room sound to the uber-chill. And, for those who know the Crunchies statue over the years, look out for the new gorilla. Let’s just say he’s evolved. We’ll leave it at that. Again, If you’d like to purchase tickets, you’ll find what you’re looking for . And don’t forget to vote for your favorite tech company . If you still need press credentials, please fill out this . Confirmations will be sent separately via email. |
RebelMouse Hires Former CNNMoney And VaynerMedia Talent To Build Out Its Content And Partnerships | Drew Olanoff | 2,013 | 1 | 24 | , a content aggregation and curation site that lets users set up a profile and pull in content from their social networking accounts, as well as other sources, has hired some key former employees from CNNMoney and VaynerMedia. Since , RebelMouse has had 240K sites created and is hitting 1.5 million unique monthly visitors to its landing pages. The company tells us that it has seen a big demand from publishers, and has partnered with TIME magazine for its person-of-the year campaign. Additionally, it worked with C-Span for the presidential inauguration, will power an ESPN Magazine and continues to bring in movie and television properties to create their own “portals.” To help RebelMouse build out these partnerships and plans for the future, it has hired former CNNMoney social product lead Niketa Patel as Director of Content and Stephanie Bagley from VaynerMedia as Director of Partnerships. This is an interesting hire since Gary Vaynerchuk, founder of VaynerMedia, is an investor and advisor in RebelMouse. Both will report to Sam Epstein, RebelMouse’s VIP of Platform, who previously worked at Google and HuffingtonPost. Yes, this is the beginning of a power team in content curation and distribution. In addition to these roles, the RebelMouse development team is now at 24, and has added both iOS and Android specialists to build out its mobile offerings. I spoke with RebelMouse CEO, Paul Berry, about where the company is now and what we can expect from it in the future. RebelMouse is solving a core problem with publishing on the realtime and social web. Everyone’s efforts are fragmented working on each network, and everyone needs to bring it all together to show who they are and highlight their efforts and the best of their community. We believe enterprise and individuals are increasingly using the same tools and this is a perfect example for that. Big publishers and brands will use RebelMouse to power more and more sections of their websites. RebelMouse will stick with a freemium model where rebelmouse.com/You is always going to be free, but you can pay as you use RebelMouse to power your domain and engage with more sophisticated features. RebelMouse should be the solution everyone uses, from companies with massive revenue or traffic to small companies. We believe we can apply a network effect to the open web. This year we are focusing deeply on building more and more network dynamics and engagement into the product while helping gain significant scale with partners and directly with consumers. I don’t see RebelMouse as a simple aggregator. Its the combination of curation plus content creation that is so interesting. Everyone’s struggling with their blogs because of what realtime and social have done to us. Five years ago if your last blog post was three weeks ago you were totally fine with that. Today it starts to get embarrassing. So when you can have your site constantly fresh with the work you’re doing on these vital social networks then you begin to also publish more original content. Our mission is to prove that a Twitter user who joins RebelMouse finds Twitter more vital and essential to them than ever before. Now instead of just reaching the people who are following them at the time they tweet, they know that these interactions are populating their website, not as a widget but as a core part of the content that shows who they are and who loves them and what articles support their thesis of the world. We work very very hard to make sure we are adding value to these networks. We push follows back to the networks they came from instead of asking them to follow only on RebelMouse. We believe that as astounding as the scale and growth of these networks has been, they are still nascent and we can be a strong partner to them, helping give more ROI on efforts to engage. We were one of the first companies to move onto the new Twitter API and to officially match new display requirements. We’ll always iterate and work quickly with them as they grow. We are working with each to help users get into latest best practices on engagement and display. For example because Facebook is a mix of private and public, we look carefully at the permissions of each post and only publish what is marked clearly as public and send stuff that is just for your friends to draft so you can decide to make that public or not. One of the fundamental features of RebelMouse is the ability to freeze stories into a spot, so something that is particularly meaningful to you as an individual or as a company isn’t just lost in the stream. We’re tremendously excited about the updates we have coming. We’ve reached a critical point where instead of having aspirational hopes about how what we were building could be used, it’s being used by some of the smartest people in the world and in high-traffic, high-impact situations. So we’re iterating with them, taking their feedback and looping it back to make RebelMouse sophisticated but simple. In particular we’re really excited about adding contributions to Rebel Nav because essentially people are able to create topic-based front pages on the fly and invite guest editors and meet new people as they organize and create content. We’re working on sponsored content solutions, turning on revenue where it makes the product durable and focusing on creating network dynamics at every level of the software.
——— We all share a lot of things, and it’s hard to put all of our favorite content into one place, displayed in a way that’s consumable by anyone who isn’t completely obsessed with the inner-workings of the Internet. At its very core, RebelMouse lets you curate your own magazine, full of photos, stories and videos that you choose to share, in the order that you’d like them shared. It’s a nice breakaway from the current model of reading a constant stream of information on Twitter or Facebook. Think of RebelMouse as your Internet mixtape. While it’s not a completely new concept, it is very relevant in the age of people collecting items on Pinterest so it’s the right time for this product. Plus, it’s kind of fun to play with. |
Vine Just Made Twitter A Stronger Social Network | Jordan Crook | 2,013 | 1 | 24 | , in case you missed it, is a standalone iOS app from Twitter that lets users create short, 6-second videos that run on a loop. Users record by holding their thumb against the screen, and stop by releasing. The short clips can then be threaded together and shared on Vine itself, Twitter or even Facebook. Here’s how a silly video-sharing app (which has been done before, by the way) makes Twitter a stronger social network. Since Twitter launched, it’s never had a non-text platform for media creation. Sure, you can take photos within the app, and Twitter tapped Aviary to add Instagram-like filters to that process, but this is Twitter’s first standalone product that lets users share in some way other than a tweet. Twitter is a network based around media. Despite its brevity by nature, of content passes through Twitter’s network, including, but not limited to, pictures, videos, websites, etc. The vast majority of that content is not Twitter’s, though it’s that same content that places such a high value on Twitter’s ad revenue stream through Promoted Tweets, trends, etc. Rather than let push all the juicy content through Twitter’s real-time network, the company has decided to build its own, new Instagram. Vine is Instagram for video. This has been done before by companies like and , but the numerous companies who’ve dipped their toes in the cinematic pool have found the water a bit chilly. Twitter, a trusted and massive brand, is sure to pick up more of an instant user base, thus making Vine more attractive to even more new users. No one likes an empty room, and every video-sharing app until now has been just that. Twitter’s ads are valuable because of the number of eyes on its network at any given time. Eyes come for the content. Sometimes that ends up being tweets (usually about real-time, live events). Sometimes it’s pictures from Instagram or videos from YouTube. And then, of course, there are the links to wonderful articles (sometimes about technology). When Instagram , essentially eliminating Twitter’s ability to embed Instagram photos directly into the stream, a huge chunk of Twitter’s visual appeal went out the window. Sure, Twitter has its Photos feature, with Instagram-esque filters powered by Aviary, but does that compete with Instagram’s level of engagement? No. By adding Vine content to Twitter directly, I’ve actually found that Twitter’s a slightly nicer place to be. Yes, it’s been just one day and most of the Vines are , but it’s something I’ve never seen before on Twitter. It’s a video — a cute, quick-cutting, clearly amateur video of my friend, or my friend’s dog, or my friend’s hand. I can’t explain why I’m drawn to it, just like I can’t explain why I spend an astounding amount of time looking at pictures of food on Instagram. All I know is that . What I don’t like, however, is browsing through Vines in the Vine app. It’s ! (Users have the ability to include sound or mute sound in their Vines.) It’s also old. Vine uses an almost identical UI/UX to Instagram, complete with the stream, likes, and comments, and I already have one of those. In fact, I’m already on plenty of social networks and am somewhat offended each time a company asks me to join a new one. But this actually works in Twitter’s favor. People only need to use Vine for sharing, not necessarily for browsing. They have Twitter for that. Want to share a video instead of Instagram a photo? Just hit up the Vine app and share via Twitter. You don’t have to go back to Vine until you want to share something else (or you want to check your likes, you narcissistic bastard!). And perhaps more importantly to Twitter’s revenue stream, Vine works like Instagram in that it actually coaxes a bit more information out of its users than Twitter. People are much more likely to share their location alongside a photo (like on Instagram) or a video (like on Vine) than they are with a simple text tweet. In essence, Vine makes people more comfortable sharing location, which is just another (very powerful) metric Twitter can use to target ads. There is no such thing as a social network without photos, and if there is, it shouldn’t exist (It’s like – nobody wins in the end!). The human fascination with photos is . Even a non-revenue-generating Instagram is worth $1 billion. But Twitter was late for this very important date with photo destiny. After failing to acquire Instagram for $500 million, the company turned to Photobucket for serving up pictures and video. But the content was never owned by Twitter. Meanwhile, Facebook upped the ante and , thus owning this generation’s library of photography. So Twitter was like, “Let’s just build our own Instagram!” They launched Photos, which let users take and share photos from right within the app. They even let Aviary power filters for Photos, so it felt a little more like Instagram. To this day, I’ve never used an Aviary filter in Twitter. The short version of the story is that Twitter was late to the photo-sharing game, and quite possibly missed the boat. So instead of spend a lot of time and energy and money on either building or buying yet another photo-sharing venture, Twitter up and decided to skip that fight entirely. It’s been thought for a while now that the would eventually make the logical step to video. It was all a matter of when. Instead of fighting a battle they’re already losing, Twitter is starting a brand-new war over video, and they’ve already set up camp near the battleground and polished their weapons. Are you ready for a fight, Facebook? Vine isn’t expected to replace Instagram’s presence on Twitter, nor is it meant to replace YouTube or Flickr or anything else. That’s why it’s a relatively new form of media — a self-made video rather than another filtered photo. As it stands, it doesn’t generate any revenue either. Rather, Twitter is giving its users yet another way to push cool stuff through the network. Any user-generated content, including Vine videos, Instagram pics, etc. is very valuable in terms of advertising. If a social network has a high volume of user-generated content, it’s generally believed by advertisers that said social network has an engaged, attentive audience. In turn, any ads on said social network increase in value as more UGC is shared. It’s beautiful Silicon Valley math at its finest. Twitter already has tons of UGC flowing through its network, which is why it’s supposed to bring in . The only problem is that almost none of that UGC is Twitter’s, as I mentioned before. Vine simply acts as an aid to Twitter’s greatest weakness: being a true social network as opposed to being everyone’s favorite platform. |
Samsung’s Big Q4 2012: $52.4 Billion In Revenue Is Nice, But Operating Profit Surged 89% Year-Over-Year To $8.27 Billion | Chris Velazco | 2,013 | 1 | 24 | Samsung already gave us a hint of what to expect to see in its latest quarterly financials, but now the Korean consumer electronics titan has released its earnings for all to see. Here’s the gist of the company’s fiscal Q4 2012 figures: Samsung reported a whopping 56.06 trillion won (which works out to $52.4 billion) in revenue, along with 8.84 trillion won (roughly $8.27 billion) in operating profit. In case you were curious, those are some awfully hefty year-over-year gains for Samsung. The company’s Q4 2012 revenue figure is 18.52 percent larger than it was in Q4 2011, and Samsung’s profit this quarter surged to an impressive 89.3 percent from what it reported last year. The company also released its fiscal 2012 figures — this past year, Samsung scored a net profit of 23.8 trillion won ($22.25 billion) on revenue of 201 trillion won ($187.9 billion). Mobile has always been a key market for Samsung, but the release is terribly vague when it comes to breaking down exactly how the company did with regard to units sold. Even so, revenue from Samsung’s Mobile Communications division grew 4 percent from the prior quarter, and Samsung specifically calls out the Galaxy S III and Galaxy Note II as key performers — the inclusion of the latter isn’t much of a shock considering it sold around 5 million units in , and is reportedly nearing . Taking a step back, Samsung’s IT and Mobile Communications unit as a whole reported 5.44 trillion won ($5.09 billion), slightly down from Q3 but more than double the 2.56 trillion won ($2.39 billion) Samsung recorded in the year-ago quarter. The rest of Samsung’s business units fared rather nicely, as well, with the company’s consumer electronics and semiconductor divisions generating quarterly profits of 740 billion won ($691.6 million) and 1.42 trillion won ($1.33 billion), respectively. Not quite as shocking as the mobile side of things, but both units handily shot past the figures they posted last quarter by a large margin. |
No Fitbit Or Fuelband Necessary. The Moves App Tracks Your Steps From The iPhone. | Kim-Mai Cutler | 2,013 | 1 | 24 | For those of you who don’t have the disposable income or the obsessiveness of a Quantified Self devotee to try every single smart pedometer out there like the Fuelband, Fitbit or Jawbone Up, there’s an app for you. . Using just your iPhone, it can track the number of steps you’ve taken per day, and where and when you’ve driven or cycled. I’ve used it for the past few weeks, and for me, it’s probably going to be a keeper. (I say this rarely, too.) I can scroll back day-by-day or week-by-week to see where I’ve been or how far I’ve walked. It runs in the background and hasn’t eroded my battery life. One time, even though I was off cell phone reception for nearly a whole day down in Big Basin Redwoods State Park, it managed to pick up about 6 hours worth of strenuous hiking. There have been one or two times in the past two weeks where it missed several hours of activity. (I’m not sure why.) But other than that, I’d say it’s been spot on. It doesn’t pick up other activities. So even though I dance and do martial arts many times a week, it won’t pick that up. , which is co-founded by gaming veteran Sampo Karjalainen, who co-founded Habbo Hotel-maker Sulake. He’s a designer by trade that partnered with mathematician and scientist Juho Pennanen to create the company. Another co-founder is Nokia veteran Jukka Partanen. Karjalainen says he’s aiming for a much wider demographic than the one that goes out and spends about $150 on the Nike FuelBand.
“The fact that you have to charge and carry one more device is quite a big behavior change for people in the first place,” he said. “We think this very casual, mainstream approach to physical activity tracking could work better.” He added, “There are a lot of people who don’t get enough exercise. It’s not that they don’t want to live in a more healthy way,” he said. “Many of them have grown up in a way where they don’t feel like exercise is part of their identity.” He said the technical challenge of using the accelerometer to recognize the activity automatically without draining the batteries was quite hard. (I personally didn’t see any noticeable change in my battery life while using it for a couple weeks.) With the design, Karjalainen said he wanted the app to resemble a daily journal. It’s elegant looking, with spheres at the top representing how much you’ve walked, cycled or driven. Then there’s a vertical timeline below that shows all the stops you’ve made. “If you just make something visible, people react to it and become mindful of it,” he said. Later on, he expects to add other motivational loops on top of the timeline and tools for setting daily or weekly goals. The company has raised $1.6 million from ProFounders and early-stage Finnish venture firm Lifeline Ventures. He didn’t add specifics on how they’ll eventually monetize the app. It’s a proof of concept first, and if people are interested in it, they’ll figure out how to bring an app with similar capabilities to the myriad kinds of Android phones. |
Hey Android Gamers, OUYA Has Heard Your Anguished Cries And Modified Its Controller | Chris Velazco | 2,013 | 1 | 24 | The team behind the OUYA Android game console clearly paid a lot of attention to its looks — they nabbed Yves Behar to design the thing, after all — but not every component has passed muster with the masses. Thankfully, after hearing some discontent from early backers and developers, OUYA has taken some crucial feedback about the console’s controller seriously and has decided to make some changes. According to recent post on the , the console’s controller will no longer sport those flat, disc-like d-pads — they’ve been replaced by a more standard cross-shaped affair that should look familiar to anyone to who’s done so much as glance a console controller in the last 20 years. The controller’s dual analog sticks have undergone a bit of a makeover too, as they now feature a grippier finish for increased precision, and the small touchpad nestled in the center of the controller has had its sensitivity bumped up to boot. Throw in some slightly-shifted left and right triggers and a battery door that isn’t as much of a hassle to open, and you’ve got yourself the makings of a half-decent controller. Sure, some of these may seem like minor tweaks, but any avid gamer could tell you about the importance of fit, finish, and feel when it comes to a device they’re going to be clutching for hours. And hey, by reacting to feedback early enough in the development process, OUYA (with any luck) doesn’t have to deal with the wide-scale blowback from an underwhelming controller the way Microsoft did with its original, roasted ham-sized Xbox controller. It’s heartening to see that OUYA’s community-first approach to this whole undertaking wasn’t just limited to its means of raising money — hopefully the final product will be just as thoughtful when it starts shipping to the rest of us later this year. |
Order Mapper Raises $550K Led By Vegas Tech Fund, So You Can Order Pizza (And Eventually More) From Anywhere | Anthony Ha | 2,013 | 1 | 24 | , which makes apps for ordering a variety of goods (starting with pizza) from any business, just announced that it has raised a $550,000 round led by . The company’s flagship product is , an app that allows users to order pizza from any pizzeria that you choose. The app submits orders automatically, via phone call, email, fax, or website (depending on what the restaurant accepts). Co-founder and CEO Jim Bricker told me via email that humans only step in when an order doesn’t go through. For example, if someone tries to order from a pizzeria that doesn’t deliver to them, Order Mapper will text the customer to ask if it’s okay to order from Pizza Hut or Domino’s. Order Pizza has already delivered orders to 30 percent of the pizzerias in the U.S. It doesn’t need to have any kind of preexisting relationship to place an order, but Bricker said the company is working with the top 50 chains to add full menus. Apparently the biggest challenge is handling “rush times like Friday nights and during the Super Bowl,” but Bricker added that the app actually helps pizzerias take more orders, since they don’t have to devote as much employee time to “sitting on the phone.” The company also offers an Order Beer app in Dallas (it’s a graduate of the Dallas-based incubator). Bricker said he plans to expand the platform to include flowers, massage, and other types of food, and he wants to launch internationally. Order Mapper was founded in 2009, and it was part of back in 2010. When I asked why the company hasn’t raised a significant seed round before this, Bricker said: We started when people still didn’t know what apps were and had difficulty raising money from traditional investors. We survived the most challenging phase of launching a startup and investors are now eager to help bring the vision of Order Mapper to the masses. In addition to Vegas Tech Fund (whose partners include Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh), Bricker said a number of angels invested in the round. |
Verizon Said To Be Getting A Flagship Nokia Windows Phone (Codenamed “Laser”) Of Its Own | Chris Velazco | 2,013 | 1 | 24 | Don’t get me wrong, HTC’s Windows Phone 8X is great and all, but the rest of Verizon Wireless’ Windows Phone lineup (think the Nokia Lumia 822 and Samsung’s ATIV Odyssey) is a bit lacking in the oomph department. If a new report from holds true though, that may not be the case for too much longer. According to sources within Verizon, the carrier is gearing up to release a flagship Nokia Windows Phone with a spec sheet similar to the Lumia 920. There’s precious little other information about this device aside from the fact that it’s apparently codenamed “Laser,” and that Verizon reportedly plans to throw its considerable weight behind the device (unlike the case with the ATIV Odyssey, the poor thing). What exactly that means for Verizon is still unclear, but I can hazard a guess or two. I chatted with a high-level Nokia representative at Microsoft’s San Francisco Windows Phone 8 event who told me that strong retail partnerships with the country’s carriers was a priority for the Finnish company. That said, it wouldn’t be a shock to see Verizon retail workers getting some extended hands-on time with a forthcoming Windows Phone; after all, an informed retail sales force is key to Nokia moving units to those who don’t spend their days feverishly scouring tech blogs. AT&T also spends a considerable chunk of change on advertising the Lumia 900 when that was the hot new Windows Phone, and Verizon may well be doing the same (the fact that Microsoft is said to be chipping in some funds for advertising certainly doesn’t hurt). Oh, and just in case you were hoping against hope that the Laser name actually sticks, you can probably stop now. The moniker was used for a not too long ago, which means the chances of strolling into your local Verizon store and picking up a hot new Laser are pretty slim. |
Coaster Launches A Self-Serve iPad App For Bars To Accept Mobile Payments For Free | Ryan Lawler | 2,013 | 1 | 24 | San Francisco-based launched a few months ago with a , allowing consumers to place orders and pay for their drinks at select bars without having to wait in line. Since launch, the startup has been slowly adding local venues to the app. But it couldn’t reach them all, so it just released a self-serve iPad app that bars can install on their own. While getting users to download and try out the app is difficult, the bigger problem that Coaster faced was getting the system in more bars. The local small business market is a tough nut to crack, after all, and it’s nearly impossible to go through the process of going door-to-door to sign on new partners in the bar scene of just one city — San Francisco — let alone wherever bars happen to be, which is pretty much anywhere. The new enables bars to roll out the system themselves. They can quickly create their own menus, specifying various drink prices and drink specials. Since Coaster already has a number of different drinks and beers already in the app, most bars will merely need to choose which they’d like to add to the menu, and at what price point. Or, they can fill out their menus with specialty drinks that they price themselves. Once they’re finished, they just save out and their venue will appear on the app. I’ve , but mainly I was writing about the value prop for users. That’s mostly the ability to skip waiting in line for drinks and to make payments via in-app purchases, rather than having to open up and close out a tab. Even better, they can pay using credit cards through the app at bars that usually only accept cash. But for bars, there are numerous advantages as well. Bartenders don’t need to worry about keeping track of tabs and credit cards that users leave behind. Since Coaster users are paying (and tipping) in app, there’s no exchange of money back and forth, even in those bars which are cash-only. Coaster founder Inderpal Singh says one other advantage is that bars will be able to sell more drinks. First, by decreasing the wait time between orders, and also by making payment quick and easy. But the big reason bars might want to adopt the Coaster iPad app for their orders is that Coaster charges no payment-processing fees — the system is completely free to implement. The Coaster team hopes that by making the app free, it will be able to get bars to at least test it out. And once it’s done that, it’ll be able to show that it can move the needle by increasing sales and decreasing credit card costs. We’ll see how that plan works out, and how many bars actually try it out, and report back soon. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCqmwwChqU4&w=560&h=315] |
Facebook Blocks Yandex’s New Social Search App From Accessing Its Data Just Three Hours After Launch | Josh Constine | 2,013 | 1 | 24 | Yandex begged Facebook not to shut down its that launched this morning. But the explanation Yandex’s lawyers sent us for why it’s compliant with Facebook’s policies didn’t stop Facebook from blocking all API calls from Wonder, Yandex confirms. Facebook tells me it’s now discussing policy with Yandex. The move follows a trend of Facebook aggressively protecting its data. Wonder has, or should I say had, big potential. When I broke the news that earlier this month, I detailed how the voice-activated social search app for iOS let people see what local businesses friends had visited or taken photos at, what music they’d been listening to, and what news they had been reading. It essentially reorganized Facebook’s data into a much more mobile, discoverable format. Unfortunately, Facebook’s says “You must not include data obtained from us in any search engine or directory without our written permission.” Facebook would not confirm that it has blocked Wonder, though Yandex tells me it received an email from Facebook that its data access had been revoked. Wonder is still able to access Twitter, Foursquare, and interestingly, Instagram data. However, any Wonder user who tries to log in through Facebook is getting this error: Though Facebook did confirm its policy against competing search engines still stands. The two companies are currently discussing the future of Wonder. For now, though, the Google of Russia’s larger integrations with Facebook will still have access to the social network’s data. The policy enforcement confirms rumored fears from Yandex that Facebook would shut down Wonder. Yandex tried to preempt this and disuade Facebook by sending us this statement which we printed alongside the launch this morning: We note that Yandex is not in violation of Facebook Platform Policies providing for restriction to use data obtained from Facebook in a search engine or directory for the reason that Wonder is not a search engine or a directory. Our application is a personal assistant that helps browse and organize information that is exclusively available to and associated with relevant account of the relevant user in various social networks and services. On the contrary, [a] search engine is conventionally understood as an information location tool which automatically indexes tens of thousands of publicly available websites, fetches information with unrestricted access and is freely accessible to any Internet user. In addition, we would like to note that Wonder requests [a] user for specific permission to access each portion of information available to the user through a social network or services and never accesses information or data which is beyond the consent, availability for or extent of permission expressly granted by the application user. It is further to be noted, that the application does not perform any automated operations, unless these are specifically permitted by the user. But last week, access to its Find Friends feature that lets people recreate their Facebook social graph on other apps. Facebook told me this was because it didn’t want competing messaging apps taking advantage of its data if they weren’t contributing much back to Facebook. Voxer only offered a very buried “share to Facebook” option, and since the app was designed for private messaging, few people probably used that option. It seems that Facebook has matured to the point that it’s willing to trade its status as an “open platform” in exchange for preventing competing apps from stealing its value and users. If Facebook doesn’t handle these situations delicately, it could cause a chilling effect that disuades other developers from building on top of it. |
Joe Biden Wins The Internet Again: The Best Quotes Of His Google+ Hangout | Gregory Ferenstein | 2,013 | 1 | 24 | America’s “Happy Warrior”, Vice-President Joe Biden, was as entertaining as ever in his Google+ hangout on gun reform today. “If you want to keep people away during an earthquake, buy some shotgun shells,” he said, in response to a question about assault weapons bans. We’ve compiled the best of Biden’s Hangout, with special attention to his video game comments. “A shot gun will keep you a lot safer–a double-barrell shotgun–than an assault rifle in somebody’s hands who doesn’t know how to use it…It’s harder to use an assault weapon to hit someone than it is a shotgun,” said the Veep in response to a question about why its important to have assault weapons in the hypothetical case of a natural disaster that plunges America into a chaotic dystopia. “If you want to keep people away during an earthquake, buy some shotgun shells.” “My interpretation of the Second Amendment,” he explained, “it is an individual right, not a corporate right, no related to a militia, you have an individual right to own a weapon both for recreation–for hunting– and also for your self-protection.” Continuing, “But, just as you don’t have an individual right to by an F-15, if you’re a billionaire, with ordinance on it, just like you don’t have the right to buy an M1 tank, just like you don’t have the right to buy an automatic weapon, those judgements have been made that there are no reasonable societal justifications or constitutional justifications for owning them” “There is no sporting need that I’m aware of to have a magazine that holds 50 rounds, none that I’m aware, and I’m a sportsman”. Before YouTube celebrity Phil DeFranco asked a question, he joked that the VP was probably not aware of him or his show. “Actually i have seen it, I wish I had your hair”. “There’s no hard data on whether these excessively violent video games, in fact, cause people to engage in behavior that is antisocial, including using guns,” he said, referencing a noted American Academy of Pediatrics review of research that violent video games are strongly associated with aggressive behavior. “They didn’t make the next connection saying that leads to violent behavior, but there’s no studies done,” Biden concludes. I do agree with the fact that the does show a convincing link between actual physical aggression and violent video games. It’s also true that there’s no good causal evidence showing a link between violence and video games (just physical aggression, like yelling and kicking), but that’s mainly because the relatively smaller population of gun offenders makes it difficult to do experimental and large-scale research. Also, even if a link were found, there’s no clear way that legislation could stop games getting into the hands of kids anyways. Still, I agree with Biden that it couldn’t hurt to do more research. “Part of the Interest group population out there is afraid of facts”, he said, “let the research be done.” “You’ll hear the NRA say, well, that might not be so bad, but its a slippery slope…if you allow that to happen then next thing you know, you’ll call for firearms registration, gun registration, and you’re going to be able to confiscate my weapon, etc.” “There is a legitimate, respected, and I think as old as the country, culture of gun ownership in America. My dad was a hunter. My dad had a gun case full of some fairly valuable weapons. He had some hard times, he had to sell them when I was a kid. I own two shotguns, my son owns shotguns.” Then, in rare form, he regaled the audience with a story of an old woman who showed him her guns, ” ‘Come on, let me show you mine’. And, she’s out there, and she’s firing a shotgun at a barn. And she’s 78-years-[old]. She said, ‘My daddy gave me this gun’. It’s a legitimate and respected tradition.” While not very quote worthy, the Vice President did make some compelling arguments on school safety and magazine limits. Rather than give teachers guns, we should have professional guards that develop a relationship with students and the community. Additionally, teachers will be trained to spot disturbed individuals, through “Project Aware”. Additionally, he says that limits on the amount of ammunition a gun can hold could save lives. Speaking about the shooting that left Representative Gabby Giffords with permanent brain damage, the shooter was tackled when the gun clip. Other mass shootings have had similar incidences. Biden argued that if magazine limits could save one life, it would be enough to justify a new law. Joe Biden is on a digital hotstreak. Earlier this month, one of his tweets went viral when he referenced The Onion’s TransAm driving parody (below) of him. , Joe Biden won the Internet. [tweet https://twitter.com/VP/status/292361945170989056] |
Microsoft Posts Mixed Q2 Earnings: $21.46B Revenue Misses Expectations, $0.76 EPS Exceeds Estimates | Colleen Taylor | 2,013 | 1 | 24 | announced today its financial results for the second fiscal quarter of 2013, and it was an overall strong showing for the company. The Redmond, Washington-based software giant posted revenue of $21.46 billion and net income of $6.38 billion, with earnings per share of 77 cents. That’s largely in line with what Wall Street had been expecting, though a bit lower on the revenue side and higher on the earnings side — ahead of today’s financial report, the was that Microsoft would post earnings of 75 cents a share on $21.53 billion in revenue. Today’s results show a nice gain from Microsoft’s results for , in which the company posted revenues of $16.01 billion and earnings per share of $0.53. Here are the results in handy graph form, thanks to TechCrunch graphic designer and illustrator :
In a statement accompanying the release, Microsoft said that the past holiday season turned out to be the strongest in the company’s history. Additionally, CEO Steve Ballmer was characteristically bullish about the company’s recent performance and future prospects, especially in regards to Windows Phone 8 and the Surface tablet:
“Our big, bold ambition to reimagine Windows as well as launch Surface and Windows Phone 8 has sparked growing enthusiasm with our customers and unprecedented opportunity and creativity with our partners and developers. With new Windows devices, including Surface Pro, and the new Office on the horizon, we’ll continue to drive excitement for the Windows ecosystem and deliver our software through devices and services people love and businesses need.” Microsoft’s stock price has been climbing over the past two days, apparently in anticipation of strong Q2 results. However, the stock has started to lag a bit in the aftermath of the earnings report: Microsoft’s share price was down 1.5 percent in after-hours trading within the first minutes of the report. Breaking out the results in terms of company divisions, the Windows Division posted revenue of $5.88 billion, a 24 percent increase year-over-year; the Server & Tools business reported $5.19 billion of revenue, up nine percent year-over-year; the Microsoft Business Division posted $5.69 billion of revenue, a ten percent decrease year-over-year; the Online Services Division reported revenue of $869 million, up eleven percent year-over-year; and the Entertainment and Devices Division posted revenue of $3.77 billion, down eleven percent year-over-year. |
AT&T’s Q4 2012 Beats Street With $32.6B In Revenue, Misses With EPS Of $0.44, Smartphone Subscriber Base Jumps To 47.1M | Darrell Etherington | 2,013 | 1 | 24 | AT&T shared its Q4 2012 earnings results today, reporting overall quarterly revenues of $32.6 billion (an increase of 0.2% year over year), and earnings per share of $0.44, The highlight of AT&T’s quarter is likely its record smartphone sales, however, as the carrier sold 10.2 million smartphone devices and activated 8.6 million Apple iPhones. AT&T’s performance was mixed when it came to consensus estimates from Wall Street, which had predicted earnings per share of $0.46, with revenue of $32.2 billion in revenue for the quarter. The telecom’s postpaid subscriber base now covers 107 million customers, a net increase of 1.1 million subscribers from the previous quarter. EPS was up 10% from $0.40 in the year ago quarter, and revenue also grew (if only a little) from the $32.5 billion reported in Q4 2011. The real standout metric here is AT&T’s smartphone sales, which were the highest the company has ever recorded for a quarter. It pre-announced that it had crossed the 10 million threshold for device sales this quarter, in fact, so we knew that it was a big quarter in this regard, but now we get a clearer picture of exactly how big. Those smartphone sales included record highs for both iPhone and Android-powered smartphones, AT&T said. Still, that Superstorm Sandy, and higher than expected smartphone costs, likely related to its initial outlay for the iPhone 5, would put a damper on results, It also gave a heads up about the $10 billion charge it noted pertaining to its pension plan. As I’ve noted, AT&T activated 8.6 million iPhones, but as usual didn’t break out actual sales numbers. That move stands in stark contrast to Verizon, which announced earlier this week that it sold a total of . AT&T is still Apple’s number one driver of device sales, despite the fact that its monopoly on the iPhone ended years ago. Turning briefly to AT&T’s wireless business, the Dallas-based telecommunications giant didn’t fare quite as well. Overall wireline revenues were $14.9 billion, down very slightly year-over-year, though operating income did lift a bit to $1.8 billion. AT&T also had a strong quarter when it came to roping in new home services customers — 192,000 subscribers signed up for AT&T’s U-verse TV service, while the company’s U-verse High Speed Internet picked up 609,000 new subscribers, making for a total of 7.7 million. Most importantly though is that revenue from these residential customers was up 3% from the year-ago quarter, a level of growth that AT&T notes is the strongest they’ve seen in four years. |
New Google Image Search Is Faster, Gets Rid Of Obnoxious Landing Page For Metadata | Catherine Shu | 2,013 | 1 | 23 | Google that it has revamped its image search to be faster and more effective. The changes, which will be rolled out over the next few days, include image results displayed in an inline panel, allowing users to flip through a set of images by using their keyboard and view metadata without being redirected to a separate landing page. Here is more information from Google’s announcement on what the upgraded image search means for webmasters: • We now display detailed information about the image (the metadata) right underneath the image in the search results, instead of redirecting users to a separate landing page.
• We’re featuring some key information much more prominently next to the image: the title of the page hosting the image, the domain name it comes from, and the image size.
• The domain name is now clickable, and we also added a new button to visit the page the image is hosted on. This means that there are now four clickable targets to the source page instead of just two. In our tests, we’ve seen a net increase in the average click-through rate to the hosting website.
• The source page will no longer load up in an iframe in the background of the image detail view. This speeds up the experience for users, reduces the load on the source website’s servers, and improves the accuracy of webmaster metrics such as pageviews. As usual, image search query data is available in Top Search Queries in Webmaster Tools. |
SV Angel Bought $30M In Pinterest Secondary Sale | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,013 | 1 | 23 | Last week we reported on an of a for , for a fund called SV Angel-III Growth P. We’ve since heard from multiple sources that this $30 million is a Special Purpose Vehicle for SV Angel, specifically reserved to buy secondary shares in Pinterest for existing LPs. We’ve also confirmed with SV Angel co-founder that this is indeed the case. The $30 million secondary investment, which closed last year, was at the same $1.5 billion valuation that Rakuten in Pinterest’s last, primary, raise, according to our sources. Most of the $30 million will go towards liquidity of early outside investors, and amounts to roughly 2% of the startup at current valuation. This SPV is similar to the fund from and others to scoop up Twitter shares from early shareholders in January 2011. SV Angel, which was co-founded by angel investors and , has already invested in Pinterest in addition to Zynga, Twitter, Square, Fab, Path, Airbnb and countless others. This SPV fund is independent of its most recent $40 million raise, , back in August. When a startup participates in a secondary sale like this, it decouples shareholder liquidity from exit. In general this is good for company and investor morale, especially in preparation for a possible IPO (you don’t want a whole bunch of people dumping your stock on the day you go public). Money goes back to the individual shareholders and the company gains a strategic investor who might perhaps be interested in later stage investments. From what we’re hearing, Pinterest helped coordinate this sale for outside investors. , Groupon and have held their own secondary offerings for similar effect and SV Angel is also rumored to have done this for Foursquare in addition to Twitter and Pinterest, which back in March. |
Extole Raises $7.5M To Build Brands’ Word-Of-Mouth On Social Media | Anthony Ha | 2,013 | 1 | 23 | , a startup offering tools for brands to manage their “social advocacy” programs, has raised $7.5 million in new funding. The round is a follow-on to that Extole raised about a year ago, and it comes from existing investors, including Shasta Ventures, Norwest Venture Partners, Redpoint Ventures, and Trident Capital. The company has now raised a total of $29.9 million. Extole allows businesses to find the best advocates in their customer base and offer them rewards to promote the company to their friends on social networks — in other words, it gives companies a way to build word-of-mouth. I asked a spokesperson how Extole compares to the competition, specifically , and they responded: Zuberance uses the concept of the Net Promoter Score to identify brand advocates to get them to post reviews on social sites. Extole helps brand identify customer advocates across all owned assets: website, ecommerce site, social channels and email and offers incentivized programs to get them to spread Word of Mouth recommendations directly with their friends. We get a significantly larger % of customers spreading the word and driving traffic and conversions. Back in June, Extole from Facebook’s Open Graph — so for example, thanks to Extole, visitors to TastingRoom.com can post updates on Facebook about different types of wine for sale, saying they “want it,” “tried it,” or “recommend” it. The company also plans to launch a new product in the first half of 2013. Extole says that its new customers include eHarmony, Spotify, Cache, Seventh Generation and HSN Improvements. “Social media marketing is going through a fundamental transition,” said Jim Barnett, a partner at Shasta and chairman of Extole’s board of directors, in the press release. “Marketers are shifting their focus from simply measuring social activity to driving measurable marketing ROI. The power of word of mouth is critical to this shift, and we believe that Extole’s approach to social advocacy uniquely positions the company to drive the next wave of innovation in social marketing.” |
California M&A Activity Reaches Highest Level Since 2009, With Tech Deals Leading The Way | Kim-Mai Cutler | 2,013 | 1 | 23 | California saw about $91.1 billion worth of , the strongest level seen since 2009, according to Mergermarket. The fourth quarter saw a 10.4 percent increase over the third quarter and about a 25 percent increase over the same time a year earlier. The fourth quarter alone was the best one for mergers and acquisitions since 2007. Naturally, the technology sector led the way with 30.5 percent of deals or about $27.8 billion worth of deals. But it wasn’t consumer tech or enterprise that was at the very top of the leaderboard for the biggest deals of the year. It was the attempted hostile takeover of genetic analysis company Illumina by Roche Holding Ltd. for $6.8 billion. The deal ultimately fell through when Roche let its tender offer expire. The biggest tech deal Slightly below that, . The Facebook-Instagram deal, which had an initial price of $1 billion before Facebook’s stock declined, didn’t figure into the rankings because it wasn’t big enough to be one of the top 10 deals of the year. But it was also too big to be included in mid-market deals. Unsurprisingly, Goldman Sachs held the top spot on the league table, by advising on 46 deals valued at $54 billion. They claimed the top spot from Morgan Stanley, which did 46 deals worth $44.3 billion last year. Other banks that saw the value of their deal flow rise include Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank and GCA Savvian. Jeffries & Company took the top spot for advising on mid-market deals, which Mergermarket defines as being worth between $10 million and $500 million. Skadden Arps was the top legal advisor, and worked on $59.3 billion worth of deals. Latham & Watkins was high on both the overall legal advisory league tables and on mid-market deals, with $40.4 billion worth of overall deals and $7.2 billion worth of mid-market deals. |
With Apple, What A Difference A Week Makes | MG Siegler | 2,013 | 1 | 23 | You know the drill, Apple a record $54.5 billion in revenue… …and the stock 10 percent in after-hours trading. I mean. . I went ahead and did the math: that’s an annual run-rate of $218 billion dollars (yes, I know Q1 is the holiday quarter, so it tends to be much larger than the others — but don’t underestimate the possibility of a new iPhone earlier in the year pushing Apple towards the $200 billion mark). Apple generated more revenue in one quarter than Google did in . Hell, Apple is getting close to generating as much revenue in one quarter as Microsoft does in an entire year. Perhaps even more incredible is that Apple made over a billion dollars in profit a week for the first time ever. Profit is the money you get to keep. You know, the kind . Or, to look at it another way, Apple generated as much profit in as Google did in their entire last quarter. And yet, ? Tough crowd, to say the least. But why? The reality is that there are many reasons for Wall Street to do what Wall Street does, even in the face of Apple’s fiscal reality. As the most valuable publicly traded company in the world, everyone wants a piece of the action: both buying and shorting. Many analysts aren’t giving guidance on what they actually think as much as what they want their clients to think they think. It’s all a big convoluted game. But there is a pretty simple way to explain one level of “disappointment” today — just as there was of last year. While that was all about (which led to the perfect storm that was Q1 2012 — which is directly related to this year — more below), this year was all about one week. One. Little. Week. What Apple tried to alert everyone to multiple times over the past quarter, but few seemed to remember, is that Q1 2012 was an anomaly. It was 14 weeks long, versus the standard 13 weeks Apple uses to calculate a quarter. This year, things were back to normal: 13 weeks. It may not seem like a lot, but it’s actually a pretty big deal when it comes to breaking down Apple’s quarterly fiscal performance. Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer addressed this directly today during the call today (I wasn’t on the call as I’m currently on a plane): if you simply break it down by weekly revenue, Apple made $4.2 billion in Q1 2013 versus $3.3 billion in Q1 2012. That is significant. So let’s do the math. If Apple’s Q1 2013 had been 14 weeks long, Apple’s $54.5 billion in revenue would have been $58.8 billion. Again, that may not look like a big difference, but it is $4.3 billion dollars! Of course, it’s hard to know if the averages would have held in the hypothetical extra week of Q1 2013. But it doesn’t matter, go the other way. Apple’s $46.3 billion Q1 2012 would have been more like $42.9 billion if only 13 weeks were counted. But hey, what’s $3.4 billion amongst friends? The real point is that everyone was spoiled by Apple’s Q1 2012. It really was the perfect fiscal storm. As I alluded to above, the iPhone launched that quarter for the first time that year. And the quarter was a week longer — which really matters since the iPhone is by far the largest part of Apple’s overall revenue (over 50 percent). So when we looked back to , we expected similar massive gains this year. But it didn’t happen. Quite frankly, I’m surprised Apple saw the gains it did given the “week off”. Clearly, this is a very healthy company. But what about growth? That’s the that investors and would-be investors want to talk about. And I think that’s fair. A stock price has a lot to do with future potential, after all. But again, the growth rate is skewed by the extra week. If you equalize Q1 2012 and Q1 2013 (either to be 13 weeks 14 weeks — they’re very close), revenue growth goes from 18 percent to 27 percent. 27 percent is key because it’s the Apple saw last quarter. Again, not huge (as it has been for the past couple of years), but not dropping as 18 percent would suggest. If you equalize Q1 2012 and Q1 2013 and look at profit, growth goes from 0 percent to 8 percent. Again, that’s not massive growth, but consider who we’re talking about here. Apple is the biggest public company in the world. Their numbers have been insane for a few years now, and the fact that they’re still growing is equally insane. , and only slightly in jest, but the only way Apple is going to keep growing at those rates is if they get into the oil and gas business. I doubt even a new product, like a TV or watch, would get them there. You can only fly so close to the sun. Long story short, a lot of people are either playing the market today or being pretty stupid. as , but stupid nonetheless. As a result, I’m making good and buying Apple stock since it’s below $500 a share. It would be silly not to. Just look at the numbers. And look at the . People see the stock tanking and think it’s a company on the downslope, but the numbers simply suggest they’re near the summit of financial nirvana. I haven’t owned Apple stock since I became a blogger way back when. But since that’s no longer and I’m in so many other ways, why not? As always, transparency will simply be the way forward. Plus, let’s be honest, every single mutual fund and 401k owns AAPL anyway. I’m not buying a lot of Apple stock simply because the return cannot be huge (again, see: flying too close to the sun — Apple is not going to go to $5,000 a share). But I’m putting my money where my mouth is, finally. Longest. Disclosure. Ever. |
Guavus Buys Mobile Analytics And Data Intelligence Company Neuralitic Systems | Leena Rao | 2,013 | 1 | 23 | Fresh off n in new funding, enterprise data-analytics company is making a key acquisition today– Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Neuralitic has raised a total of $20 million in venture capital from BlackBerry Partners Fund, BDC Venture Capital, Vertex Venture Capital and GO Capital LP. Neuralitic helps mobile network operators understand their users’ mobile data usage. With this analysis and intelligence from all mobile data subscribers on a wireless network, the company provides a 360-degree view of subscribers’ and roamers’ mobile usage. Operators can uncover new trends and habits to be used for future development. How does this fit in with Guavus? Guavus’ data analysis offering is specifically used by telecommunications providers and mobile operators to give these companies insights on network performance, device and application usage, content and subscriber behavior. With this information, carriers can optimize network capacity and increase revenues. Neralitic’s technology will allow Guavus to drill even deeper when it comes to data usage on networks. As last year, Guavus’ customers are three of the four largest mobile operators in the U.S., including Sprint. The company also serves four of the top five Internet operators. Deals are for multiple millions of dollars and one customer actually contributes $10 million in sales for Guavus. |
Report: 22-Year-Old Gets Job At San Francisco Website | Jack McKenna | 2,013 | 1 | 23 | . What’s crazy is I think I saw this near our office recently, riding his skateboard. Small world. |
Dear Tim Cook, The Retina Display Is Great But It’s Not The Best | Chris Velazco | 2,013 | 1 | 23 | “iPhone 5 offers a new 4 inch retina display, which is the most advanced display in the industry,” said Tim Cook. “No one comes close to matching the quality of the Retina Display.” He is, of course, obligated to both say and believe this despite the fact there are plenty of displays already available and forthcoming that surpass the iPhone 5’s Retina display. Now, when we’re talking about size, there are various schools of thought on what works best. But Apple has stayed strong with the 4-inch iPhone 5’s one-handed usability, after years of refusing to budge from the 3.5-inch screen size. “We put a lot of thinking into screen size and think we’ve picked the right one,” said the CEO. Cook explained that the iPhone 5 managed to offer a larger Apple-flavored display “without sacrificing the one-handed ease of use that our customers love.” It’s true enough, to him at least, for Apple to put out a . It’s called Thumb. It’s cute. But with all due respect: To think that the iPhone 5 (like the iPhone 4 of yester-year) has the best display on the market is a little naive. Since size is based entirely on opinion, there’s no need to delve into that. But when it comes to pixel density and display technology, a 326ppi LCD screen doesn’t really compete with the brand new stuff coming out of the Android pen. Consider the 5-inch 1080p SLCD3 display on the Droid DNA, with 440ppi. It’s already available, and getting rave reviews. Then there’s the Xperia Z, from Sony. It hasn’t been released yet, so we haven’t played with it extensively, but some hands-on time at CES proves that Sony, too, is capable of a stunning 1080p 5-inch display, topping out at 440ppi. The LG Optimus G Pro, not yet announced, is also said to have a 5-inch 1080p display. But HTC, LG, and Sony aren’t primary concerns for Apple. Samsung, on the other hand, is one to watch, and the the Korean firm’s flagship Galaxy S IV will have a 5-inch 440 ppi display, too. And that one will feature Samsung’s premium Super AMOLED screen. Regardless of competition, though, the question is whether or not Apple will push along with everyone else and bump up size and/or pixel density in the coming generations of the iPhone. Jobs explained with the iPhone 4 that the Retina display’s 326ppi was dense enough to eliminate pixel differentiation to the human eye. This statement has been , and the fact that manufacturers are racing to pack in the pixels only validates the fact that Jobs’ fact was more of a marketing fact than a science fact. |
Apple’s Tim Cook Sees “Huge Opportunity” For iPad In Mac Cannibalization | Darrell Etherington | 2,013 | 1 | 23 | Apple CEO Tim Cook responded to questions about the issue of potential cannibalization of Mac sales by iPad devices on today’s earnings call, a question made more timely by the fact that . He reiterated that supply constraints are leading to fewer sales, but also tackled cannibalization as a broad topic, noting that there is opportunity there for the iPad in a couple of important ways. Cook reiterated that Apple “never fear[s] cannibalization,” since it’s always better to cannibalize your own products rather than have someone else do it to you. But then he went on to address the larger picture, talking about the PC market in general. “On iPad in particular we have the mother of all opportunities here, because the Windows market is much larger than the Mac market,” he said. “I’ve said in the past that I believe the tablet market would be larger than the PC market at some point and I still believe that.” Another point he made sure to bring up was the so-called “halo effect” that the iPhone has been shown to have, whereby first-time buyers of Apple devices who pick one up tend to then purchase other products. The iPad, too, has plenty of potential to trigger that phenomenon. “If someone buys an iPad mini or an iPad and it’s their first Apple product, we have great experience over the years knowing that there’s a great percentage they’ll buy another iPad product,” he said. “We’re very confident that that will happen and we’re seeing some evidence of that on the iPad as well, so I see cannibalization as a huge opportunity.” Cannibalization is something Apple has always embraced, but that’s because the products that replace it always tend to rack up way more sales than the ones they’re pushing to the periphery. The Mac may be on the decline, but as long as the iPad continues to shine, it’s true that that’s likely of limited concern to Apple and its top brass. |
Tim Cook On iPhone Market Share And Apple’s ‘Track Record’ Of Devices At Different Price Points | Ingrid Lunden | 2,013 | 1 | 23 | Today during , CEO Tim Cook was asked about whether Apple was concerned about Apple’s overall market share in smartphones. No one mentioned the A-word (Android, that is) but over the last several years, Google’s platform, led by Samsung, has in the smartphone market and, as of last quarter, accounted for over 72 percent of smartphone sales (up 20 percentage points on a year before), to Apple’s 14 percent (down by 1.1 percent). As Apple’s share price during the conference call, Cook avoided the question directly, but did offer a clue as to how Apple might gain some points off Android in the future: “The most important thing to Apple is to make the best products in the world to enrich customers’ lives,” said Cook, echoing comments made by . “We’re not interested in revenue for revenue’s sake. That’s not what we’re here for. We want only to make the best products.” Part of why Android has been running away from Apple has to do with the sheer number of handset models that are on the market, but it is also because a lot of those handset makers are making very inexpensive devices. Deloitte that half a billion smartphones will be sold this year for less than $100 each, many of them Android. Cook did not state outright that trying to compete with cheaper, or lower-end devices would be a part of Apple’s strategy, but he did note this: “We have had a great track record on [selling] iPods at different price points,” he noted. And he also mentioned how offering different models of the iPad has been a success. “We could not build enough iPad minis,” he said. This quarter international revenues made up . It’s emerging markets like Asia and the Americas and parts of Europe that represent the biggest growth opportunity in smartphones, and so that could end up being the engine that drives Apple to applying that iPod strategy to its iPhone line eventually, too. |
Apple Sold 2M Apple TVs In The Holiday Quarter, Up 60% From A Year Ago | Ryan Lawler | 2,013 | 1 | 23 | Apple announced on its earnings call today that the company sold more than 2 million Apple TV devices in its fiscal first quarter. That’s up from , and up from 1.4 million during the previous holiday period. Altogether, that means Apple has sold more than 10 million Apple TV units over the years, making it one of the most popular streaming devices out there. The growth in Apple TV sales shows continued demand for an understated device that is now five years old. It also comes as users and analysts alike continue to wait for Apple to produce an actual TV. For years, . But with no real timeline for building its software into a streaming display, its streaming box continues to sell well. In many ways, its strategy seems smart now: Connected TV adoption hasn’t been as great as some may have expected, but the market set-top boxes continues to grow. Take a look at Google TV, for example: While it launched with Sony producing actual TVs a few years ago, nowadays most of the takeup for devices running the OS seems to be coming in the form of boxes produced by the likes of Vizio, Netgear, HiSense, and others. And, at least for now, Apple seems to be the market leader. But that doesn’t mean Apple can’t do more. On the earnings call, Apple CEO Tim Cook said the company was exploring new ways to distribute video content in the living room. “I tend to believe that there’s a lot that we can contribute in this space and so we continue to pull the string and see where it leads us,” Cook said. “But I don’t want to be more specific.” Rather than build more smarts into the device, the company continues to connect it to other devices that leverage AirPlay and can stream or navigate content that can be displayed on the box. Last summer Apple added AirPlay mirroring to . It’s also added better support for developers who wish to build dual-screen apps that leverage their iPhones or iPads for control of the Apple TV. |
Apple’s Tim Cook Says iPhone And iPad Supply Component Order Cut Rumors Don’t Tell The Whole Story | Darrell Etherington | 2,013 | 1 | 23 | Apple CEO Tim Cook took time on the company’s call today to comment on a specific rumor, which is an extreme oddity for Apple’s top-tier executives. He prefaced it by saying he doesn’t want to make a habit of addressing rumors, but went on to comment on recent r owing to weak demand. “I know there’s been lots of rumors about order cuts and so forth,” he said. “I would suggest it’s good to question the accuracy of any kind of rumor about build plans, and even if a particular data point were factual, it would be impossible to interpret that data point for what it means for our overall business.” Cook ended his discussion of the issue by summarizing that a “single data point is not a great proxy for what’s going on.” The intent was clearly to defuse the ability of supply chain reports to affect analyst outlooks on the company and subsequently stock price, since the recent outburst of these kinds of stories coming from suppliers are likely a key component of recent stock price volatility. |
Tim Cook On Growth Of Apple Maps: “Usage Is Higher Prior To iOS 6 Release”, Promises “Continued Improvements” | Drew Olanoff | 2,013 | 1 | 23 | One of the most embarrassing happenings in recent Apple history was the launch of its own Maps offering with iOS 6. People were why Apple decided to cut Google out of the OS at all. of its apps product, and so far the feedback has been impressive. During , Cook discussed where Apple is with the product, saying “We’re going to keep working on this until it lives up to our incredible high standards.” Before completely apologizing for the launch, Apple said time and again that it was very early days for its own version of Maps, and that it was “ ” In September, , saying: To our customers, At Apple, we strive to make world-class products that deliver the best experience possible to our customers. With the launch of our new Maps last week, we fell short on this commitment. We are extremely sorry for the frustration this has caused our customers and we are doing everything we can to make Maps better. We launched Maps initially with the first version of iOS. As time progressed, we wanted to provide our customers with even better Maps including features such as turn-by-turn directions, voice integration, Flyover and vector-based maps. In order to do this, we had to create a new version of Maps from the ground up. There are already more than 100 million iOS devices using the new Apple Maps, with more and more joining us every day. In just over a week, iOS users with the new Maps have already searched for nearly half a billion locations. The more our customers use our Maps the better it will get and we greatly appreciate all of the feedback we have received from you. While we’re improving Maps, you can try alternatives by downloading map apps from the App Store like Bing, MapQuest and Waze, or use Google or Nokia maps by going to their websites and creating an icon on your home screen to their web app. Everything we do at Apple is aimed at making our products the best in the world. We know that you expect that from us, and we will keep working non-stop until Maps lives up to the same incredibly high standard. Tim Cook
Apple’s CEO Today was a bit of a repeat of this statement. Cook addressed the situation after an analyst’s question, and promised “continued improvements.” We’ve made a number of improvements to Maps, and will roll out even more improvements throughout the rest of the year. We will continue making improvements until it lives up to our incredibly high expectations. One can only hope, because some of us still like to be on time for appointments. |
Apple Changes The Way It Breaks Out China, App Store, Accessory Revenue | Kim-Mai Cutler | 2,013 | 1 | 23 | If you look at , you’ll notice a few changes this quarter. The company adjusted how it reports revenue for different geographic regions and product categories as China and app store revenue have become significant in their own right over the last few years. (You can compare how this past quarter’s reporting looks compared to the one before with the images at the top and bottom of this post.) The company started breaking out China as a standalone region, after including it for years in a group called “Asia-Pacific,” which excluded Japan. Because Apple’s business has blown up there over the past few years, and China contributed $6.8 billion last quarter, the company is showing it as its own category. That’s more than the $4.4 billion in revenue Japan produced last quarter. “We have established a new operating segment for China, given the contribution of that region to our business,” said chief financial officer Peter Oppenheimer on the earnings call. With the new category, you can see how revenue from China has ballooned. They also broke out app store and iTunes sales in a different way. Before every product category got grouped with accessory revenue, and then app store sales got bundled into a category called “Other Music Related Products and Services. Today app store and iTunes revenue gets bundled with AppleCare revenue in a category called, “iTunes/Software/Services.” That category brought in nearly $3.7 billion last quarter, up 22 percent from a year earlier. Accessories also get their own category and they contributed $1.8 billion in revenue last quarter, up 25 percent from the same time a year before. Oppenheimer said, “We believe this presentation is a logical grouping of revenue sources and provides greater transparency into our results.” He added, “These changes have no impact on overall reported income.” |
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Apple Now Has $137.1 Billion In Cash, More Than HP’s Annual Revenue And Vietnam’s GDP | Romain Dillet | 2,013 | 1 | 23 | Let’s put Apple’s amazing cash on hand numbers into perspective . The company now has $137.1 billion in cash — a 12.9 percent increase from the last reported number, $121.3 billion. With such a big figure, it’s hard to realize how big it actually is. In 2012, HP had $120.4 billion of annual revenue. Apple slightly edges HP’s revenue . Even more impressive, Apple has slightly more cash than of $123.6 billion. Samsung Electronics’ annual revenue is a bit higher than that, as it is expected to reach around $180 billion for the fiscal year of 2012. But Apple is still dominating its competitor when it comes to cash. Apple is still the profit generating machine that it has been over the past few years. As long as the trend continues, there is no end in sight and Apple will still have an impressive pile of cash (short-term investments) on hand. Yet, Apple is showing signs of weakness. Growth seems to be slowing down, Samsung is becoming of technology With a market capitalization of $480 billion, Apple’s cash is part of the reason why Apple shares have been trading very high over the past twelve months. Even though there is a lot of around Apple shares, its cash demonstrates that the company can innovate, acquire and move into other markets very easily — not that the company is actually spending a lot of unused money for those tasks. Part of Apple’s profit will be used to give dividends to existing investors in order to increase commitment. If Apple wants to invest years of research and development to create a new product line, the company only has to tap into its deep pockets of cash. But so far, the company has been very shy about big investments and acquisitions. It remains to be seen whether 2013 will bring a new course for the company. |
Apple Retail Stores Averaged $1.25M In Revenue Per Week For Q1 2013 | Drew Olanoff | 2,013 | 1 | 23 | As we learn more about , we’ve found out some interesting facts about . The company says that it has opened 401 stores total, with four new ones in China alone. The average revenue per store is $1.25 million per week, compared to $1.22 million last year. It’s no secret that Apple has unlocked something very special in its retail stores. They’re all arranged basically the same way, and the experience is something similar to walking into a Starbucks. No matter where you are in the world, you’ll be able to find people wearing similar clothing, knowledgable in the same way and very happy to take your money. I’ve never been pressured to buy something, and I’ve found that every single time I ask a question, it’s answered quickly and in a way that I can understand. It doesn’t matter how old you are, how much money you have or how many Apple products you currently own, its retail employees treat everyone the same way. I’d love to see numbers on how many repeat customers its retail stores have, because it wouldn’t surprise me if people were to have an affinity for specific stores and staff members due to this comfortable environment that Apple fosters. [Photo credit: ] |
Apple’s Record First Quarter Of 2013, In Charts | Chris Velazco | 2,013 | 1 | 23 | There are plenty of nifty tidbits to sort through in Apple’s most recent , so here’s a little aid if you’re more of a visual learner than a text skimmer. We (by which I mean our graphics guy Bryce) have crafted a handful of charts to help you more easily sift through Apple’s quarterly accomplishments, and hey — if you feel like learning a little more, clicking each of the charts will take you to a full post on the matter. More to come! |
Apple’s iCloud Has Grown To 250M Users | Anthony Ha | 2,013 | 1 | 23 | Apple announced today that there are now 250 million users on its iCloud service. That’s a big increase from the 190 million users that , which itself was up from 150 million in July. The numbers were revealed during this afternoon’s conference call discussing . iCloud, which replaced Apple’s MobileMe service in 2011, allows users to sync documents, photos, email, and other content and data across multiple devices. In the past quarter, Apple released iTunes 11, which . |
Apple’s Mac Problem | John Biggs | 2,013 | 1 | 23 | News came today that Apple’s Mac sales are down 21% year-over-year and 16% for the quarter. While 4.1 million Macs sold in Q1 2013 is nothing to sneeze at, it’s still nearly a quarter year-over-year loss, which makes investors nervous. The primary problem in the Mac line right now is the dichotomy between Retina devices – primarily the MacBook Pro – and the rest of the line. Die-hards won’t buy desktop Macs because the new Mac Pros haven’t been announced and fans of Retina screens look to in askance. Mobile users have a few choices thanks to the display but the Airs still have lower resolution screens. The machines are damn good, but are they damn good enough? In short, the current Mac line-up is bifurcated. On one hand you can lay out a few thousand for a laptop with a beautiful screen and on the other hand you lay out a few thousand for monitor with lower resolution. There is no clear escape here, and so customers aren’t buying. I also don’t believe Windows 8 has much to do with this drop. Win8, while fascinating, hasn’t caught on with IT or consumers and the first time many of us will see Win8 is when we buy a new computer this year as prices stabilize. One real potential culprit, however, is Apple’s tablet line-up. When a casual user sees a tablet to be as good as a laptop, there’s a problem. Perhaps we are in a post desktop world, but that’s not enough to account for a drop in sales. Buy building solid mobile devices, Apple could be cannibalizing their own Mac sales. Fluctuations in the market can be attributed to almost anything. However, it’s clear that Apple’s Mac line is at a tipping point. Because many of the devices aren’t quite “state-of-the-art,” at least by Apple standards, sales are suffering. What needs to change, in short, is Apple’s current Mac line. |
United Airlines Begins Offering Satellite Wi-Fi On Overseas Flights | Catherine Shu | 2,013 | 1 | 15 | United Airlines has that inflight Wi-Fi is now available on the first of its international wide-body aircraft, which makes it the only U.S. carrier to currently offer an Internet connection on long-haul overseas routes. The company said that it expects to install Wi-Fi on 300 mainline aircraft (including Airbus 319 and 320 aircraft, and Boeing 737, 747, 757, 767, 777 and 787 aircraft) by the end of this year. Here are the specs: The Wi-Fi-equipped aircraft is a Boeing 747-400 that serves trans-Atlantic and trans-Pacific routes. It’s outfitted with Panasonic Avionics Corporation’s Ku-band satellite technology, offering customers faster inflight Internet service than air-to-ground technology (ATG). We’ve also outfitted two Airbus 319 aircraft serving domestic routes with Ku-band satellite Wi-Fi. Passengers who want to connect their laptops or mobile devices to the in-flight hotspot while onboard can choose from two speeds: standard, priced initially between $3.99 and $14.99 depending on the duration of the flight, and Accelerated, which offers faster download speeds and is priced initially below $5.99 and $19.99. This is not the first time a U.S. carrier has experimented with Wi-Fi service on long-haul flights. Boeing , its high-speed broadband service, in 2004, but it was only widely available in Europe and Asia before being discontinued in December 2006 due to lack of customer interest (fees were high, usually starting at ). German airline Lufthansa sought to in 2007, and has offered Ku-band satellite Internet, the same technology now being offered by United Airlines. |
Indian Streaming Music Platform Gaana’s App Rolls Out Across Four Mobile Platforms | Catherine Shu | 2,013 | 1 | 15 | , one of India’s top music streaming services, just launched its app, which is now available on four platforms (iOS, Android, BlackBerry and J2ME for Samsung and Nokia feature phones) to take advantage of India’s vast but fragmented mobile market. The service, operated by Times Internet, allows listeners to browse through thousands of playlists, save their favorites, and launch radio stations from individual songs to discover similar tunes, based on its proprietary recommendation algorithm. Offerings range from top 20 Hindi songs to Ghazal music, based on an ancient poetic form. Gaana’s opened 18 months ago. The app was released across four platforms at once in order to grab as many listeners in India as possible. “The multi-platform build is a testament to the device fragmentation prominent in India. Unlike the U.S. where iPhone and Android are dominating the landscape, they still make up a small minority of devices deployed in India,” said Times Internet CEO Satyan Gajwani in an email. BlackBerry devices are still doing well in that country, as are feature phones that use 2G data and J2ME applications (Gajwani expects about 30% of all downloads of the app to be on J2ME devices). Native applications were built for each platform, with a focus on consistent UI, design and experience across all four. “It’s a big thing for us to reach so many devices at once in India, where smartphones don’t rule the day. We built this to be relevant to three audiences: Indians living abroad with higher end smartphones, an upcoming middle class in India with lower end Android phones, and a rural Indian who has intermittent power at home, and so uses feature phones as a central hub for entertainment content,” said Gajwani, who expects a significant influx of listeners who don’t use computers. The app is currently monetizing through advertisements and offering all music for free. “It remains to be seen whether an ad-only model is sufficient to make a successful business, and whether this market will ever evolve towards a pay model when there are multiple players offering free mobile music,” said Gajwani. According to the company, Gaana had more than 100 million minutes of consumption in 2012, 500% more than in 2011, and over 500,000 playlists were created in 2012. The Web site hit 1M registered users two weeks ago, about 85% of whom are connected through Facebook. Fifty-two percent of music listened to is Hindi, while 28% is non-Hindi Indian and 20% is international music. “International skews higher than most people expect, which is why Gaana has partnerships with over 300 labels, including Sony and Universal, the two biggest labels,” said Gajwani. You can use Gaana to explore Indian music even if you aren’t a Hindi speaker by using the platform’s curated playlists. Here are a few that Gajwani recommends for newcomers to Indian music, ranging from current hits to the aforementioned Ghazals: |
Report: $28.3B Was Invested In 3,267 VC Deals In 2012; Seed Funding Hits Record Levels | Leena Rao | 2,013 | 1 | 15 | Venture capital database is releasing a today on the state of the VC industry and investments in 2012. For the year, $28.3 billion was invested by venture capital firms in 3,267 deals. However, it’s interesting to note that while seed VC funding hit highs during the year, overall investment fell from 2011’s $30+ billion level. And VC funding actually dipped for the second consecutive quarter in Q4 2012. After Q3 2012’s deal activity levels (these were the highest since the dot-com days), Q4 stayed strong on a number of deals, which dipped slightly from 835 financings to 834 in the quarter. Funding in Q4 fell for the second straight quarter coming in at $6.8 billion. Funding slipped 7.5 percent from 2011 but still remained up 36 percent versus 2009. Seed funding, which , still saw a strong quarter in Q4 2012, posting the second highest quarter for seed deals. It looks like the Series A crunch may not have taken full effect yet, as Series A deals saw the highest percentage of VC funding in the last five quarters. New Enterprise Associates leads all VCs as the most active investor in 2012. Based on activity, Kleiner Perkins, Google Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz and First Round Capital all followed NEA, respectively. California, Massachusetts, New York, Washington and Texas were the top five states for VC in Q4, but overall, 38 states saw VC investments. Deal activity and funding hit five-quarter highs for both New York and Massachusetts while funding to California companies dipped to a five-quarter low and New York saw over 100 deals in the quarter with mobile and Internet-focused companies seeing almost 80 percent of both deals and funding. In terms of sector, mobile saw a five-quarter high in deal activity in Q4. Mobile CRM was the biggest area for deal activity, with wireless technologies the winner on the funding front. The Internet sector actually fell and hit a five-quarter low on funding. While there wasn’t data that supported the Series A crunch for Q4 and 2012 overall in the report, CBinsights says that Q1 and Q2 2013 will be the quarters that could reflect a strong pullback from investors. |
After 17 Years, Education Platform Lynda.com Raises Its First Round Of Funding, $103M From Accel & Spectrum | Rip Empson | 2,013 | 1 | 15 | Back in May, , the veteran, video-based education platform, and how it was able to generate $70 million in revenue in 2011 without taking a penny from outside investors. Since then, it’s continued chugging along, growing revenue to $100 million in 2012. Founded in 1995 by husband-and-wife team Bruce Heavin and Lynda Weinman, is not your typical tech startup. Compared to its competition, the company is ancient. Not only that, but it’s avoided venture capital, is still led by its happily married co-founders, is subscription based, has been profitable since 1997 and is headquartered in a small town in Southern California — not in Silicon Valley, New York or Los Angeles. Part of the reason for this is the advantage of being a first mover, as the company started building its library of educational, how-to videos long before YouTube, Khan Academy or the Courseras of the world entered the picture. Today, its library counts over 83,000 videos. By creating professional-quality video courses taught by bona fide industry experts, working professionals and veteran teachers — and by offering full access for $25/month — Lynda.com has been able to attract over two million paying users along with corporate customers, like Sony, Pixar, Disney, Time Warner and HBO, which use it to supplement their corporate learning programs. Thanks to its simple, yet effective model and the increasing popularity of online education, the company has seen its growth accelerate exponentially over the last two years. Looking to capitalize on the opportunity, in December to help develop its mobile strategy and lead its expansion into international markets. Last week, it followed with the addition of former Saba Software CFO and Gaia Online COO, Elaine Kitagawa, . With its senior leadership in place, the company has finally decided to give in to long-standing interest from investors, announcing today that it has raised $103 million in growth equity from Accel Partners and Spectrum Equity, with contributions from Meritech Capital Partners. The financing, which is the company’s first outside investment in its 17-year history, sees Andrew Braccia of Accel and Vic Parker of Spectrum joining the company’s board of directors. To put this in perspective, Pinterest raised $100 million in May. “We’ve been very fortunate,” Co-founder Lynda Weisman tells us. “Our growth and profitability over the years has allowed us to re-invest in the growth of the company and focus on product and on collaborating with the best teachers in the industry to provide flexible learning paths for our users.” But now, she continued, “we’re ready for the next level.” For the leadership team, that starts with expanding its course catalog. From the beginning, the company has focused on technical content, providing instructional videos on how to use Adobe, Microsoft and Apple’s most popular products — on subjects that ranged from Web Design to Introduction to Excel. In May, for example, the platform published its 500th course on Adobe. But lately, the company has been expanding into more business content, offering courses on how to negotiate or optimize time management and has moved more aggressively into mobile design and programming, with a strong footing in iOS development. Yet, with its sizable new chunk of funding, the company’s biggest growth potential lies in international markets. As of now, Lynda.com’s content is English-only, so going forward, it will be investing heavily in diversifying and localizing its existing content and potentially adding a handful of international studios to the 20-odd video studios it operates in the U.S. Operating its own production and studios is more capital intensive, but it also assures a higher quality presentation of its content, which in turn appeals to the teachers and experts who help create that content. In turn, when many online video platforms don’t compensate educators or rely on set-your-own-price marketplaces, Lynda has found success in an old model. Once teachers and experts are vetted, they get an advance for their work, meaning that they have a guaranteed paycheck. They can then supplement that base pay with a share of the revenue generated by their content based on the video’s popularity. Ultimately, it’s proven to be an attractive model to teachers, as nearly 20 percent of its 250 educators earn their entire annual income from Lynda.com. While Lynda.com is now reaping the rewards of these models, it’s taken a long time to get to where it is today. And therein lies an important lesson for this new generation of education-focused entrepreneurs: Building a billion dollar education business doesn’t happen overnight, it happens over decades. As technology changes — and education along with it — whoever helps people navigate these new territories most effectively holds the keys to a huge educational market. |
Twitter Now Lets You Know When You’ve Typed Something Clickable Or Went Over The Character Limit | Drew Olanoff | 2,013 | 1 | 15 | Here’s a nifty little addition to Twitter’s website. When you start composing your tweet, the text will change colors when you’ve added something clickable, like a username or URL. The text changes to blue, and this is to let you know that you’ve done something “different.” It’s nice onboarding for new users, or when you’re quickly typing out your latest amazing thought. Similarly, the text will change color if you’ve gone over 140 characters, in red, showing you exactly which ones have to go: Right now, this feature is only available on . Features like this make Twitter’s site more accessible for everyone, giving you a bit of a tangible feedback as you type. Nobody likes to type out a bunch of characters only to find out that you’ve run out of room. Until now, you’ve only been shown how many characters you’ve typed over 140. With the addition of the red highlighting, you can start shaving off those extra letters and numbers right away. This will also help people who want to tweet using the “@” sign for other purposes, letting them know that they’re about to mention someone unknowingly. If you think about all of the things that Twitter could add in real-time as you type, it’s pretty infinite. As you link a picture, it could show up in the payload as a preview. Same thing with a video. Come to think of it, I wouldn’t mind seeing a preview of the web page I’m about to tweet. Just in case you were wondering what was happening as you tweeted your heart out, this is why things look a bit different. And hey, it’s a time saver. [Photo credit: ] |
Congresswoman Proposes “Aaron’s Law” In Honor Of Late Internet Activist | Gregory Ferenstein | 2,013 | 1 | 15 | In the wake of before his impending court case, Silicon Valley Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren ( : A) has a bill that may have prevented the government from overzealous prosecution. Swartz reportedly an astounding 50+ years in prison and a $4 million fine after releasing millions of pay-walled academic articles from the popular JSTOR database. “Aaron’s Law” would amend the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) in the hopes of limiting the prosecutorial power against citizens who merely release information from certain types of databases. “We should prevent what happened to Aaron from happening to other Internet users,” the Congresswoman wrote on popular content aggregator Reddit.com–a fitting tribute, considering Swartz was an early builder of the site. She continued: The government was able to bring such disproportionate charges against Aaron because of the broad scope of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) and the wire fraud statute. It looks like the government used the vague wording of those laws to claim that violating an online service’s user agreement or terms of service is a violation of the CFAA and the wire fraud statute. Prosecution against Swartz was apparently so aggressive that an investigation into the handling of the case. You can read the full bill here [ ]. Lofgren writes that she will be seeking co-sponsors and support in the coming days. We will have more analysis of the bill soon. |
Hipster’s Doug Ludlow Joins AOL Ventures As Its First ‘Innovation Partner’ | Anthony Ha | 2,013 | 1 | 15 | Doug Ludlow, formerly the CEO of , is leaving the company’s mobile team (where he was a senior director) to become the first innovation partner at . Since this is a new role, it sounds like a lot of the details are going to be figured out on the job. Ludlow said the position arose from discussions he had with AOL CEO Tim Armstrong and AOL Ventures President Jon Brod about “how do you really get some early-stage startup innovation and energy into new, big company products?” (In case you’ve forgotten: AOL is the big company that owns TechCrunch.) In an email statement, Brod described Ludlow as “a proven entrepreneur who will be a valuable asset to our portfolio companies as well as to our incubation and innovation initiatives.” Even though he’s now part of AOL Ventures — which invests in startups, as a venture firm does — Ludlow said he’s less focused on working with outside startups (at least for now) and more on finding new ideas within AOL itself, then either incorporating them into existing AOL properties or, when it makes sense, spinning them out into new companies. “I think what we’re trying to do is not just, how do you throw ideas up on the wall and see what sticks?” he said. “Instead, we want to figure out, how do you build a framework for handling innovation? How do we work to align the incentives of an early-stage entrepreneur and a big company?” Even though it’s easy to roll your eyes about the idea of AOL as a home for innovation, Ludlow argued that the company has advantages that are worth capitalizing on, like the enormous traffic to its homepage: “A lot of startups I’ve been at during that part of my career would die for the resources that a company like AOL has, the traffic that AOL has.” Ludlow will continue to be based out of AOL’s Palo Alto office, though he’ll probably be spending more time in New York. He also said he doesn’t have any qualms about leaving the mobile team (where he’s been working on Hipster and a number of other products), because he’s confident that AOL now understands that mobile is important for virtually every product. |
What Can You Search For On Facebook Graph Search? | Josh Constine | 2,013 | 1 | 15 | Great, Facebook launched something called . But how does it actually help you? From content discovery to finding a restaurant, from recruiting to dating to a trip down memory lane, here’s what you can do with Graph Search. First, check out this quick hands-on video intro above. Then let’s look at some questions Google, Yelp, and LinkedIn couldn’t answer but Graph Search can. First things first, go to and click the button at the bottom to sign up for beta (or begin using it if you already have access). Starting today, Facebook is rolling Graph Search out slowly, but more people should get it in the coming weeks and months. Signing up means you’ll get it sooner. When you do gain access, you’ll see a notice at the top of your Facebook homepage to activate Graph Search and take a quick tour. Then you’re free to start searching for things like: If you’re desperate: Single men in San Francisco
If you want a nerd: Single women nearby who Like Star Wars
If you need someone your parents will like: Single men in San Francisco Who Went To Harvard Or Stanford
If you’re Korean, and your parents say your wife needs to be, too: Single women in San Francisco from Korea
Hunting for cougars: Women in San Francisco older than 38
If you want someone kinky: Single women in San Francisco who Like 50 Shades Of Gray
If you want to get beat up: My friends’ moms If you’re hungry right now: restaurants nearby that my friends have Liked
If you’re a foodie: Restaurants in San Francisco Liked by Culinary Institute Of America graduates
If you want to play it safe: Restaurants nearby that I have been to
If you want something spicy: Restaurants in New York Liked by people from India
If you want to dine like the locals: Restaurants in Paris, France Liked by people from Paris, France Baby photos: Photos of me and my siblings taken before 1990
When your parents were cool: Photos of my parents from 1970 to 1979
A photo collage for your best friend: Photos of me and Drew Olanoff
Where you grew up: Photos taken by my friends in my hometown
A very good year: Photos from 2012 I Liked A concert going buddy: My friends who live in New York City and who Like Vampire Weekend
A night in: My friends nearby who Like Netflix and Arrested Development
Hit the club: My friends nearby who Like dancing
Who wants to sing some karaoke!?!: My friends nearby who’ve visited karaoke places How to pop the question?: My friends who are married
Getting that cavity fixed?: Dentists Liked by my friends
Who should I vote for?: Friends who are Democrats and who Like The New York Times
What game should I play in the off-season?: Sports games my friends play
How can I find my passion?: What Groups are my friends in?
What should I watch tonight?: Videos by TV shows Liked by my friends Where am I?: Places I’ve checked in
What do I think?: Photos I’ve commented on
Who do I probably know but aren’t friends with?: My non-friends who went to my college and live nearby
Who should I know?: People who are friends of my friends Just search anything than click “Discover something new” to get a random recommended search from Facebook. — Some of these searches are silly, but a lot are actually useful. With time, Facebook plans to index posts and links we share, as well as events and activity from apps like Instagram into Graph Search to make it even better. There’s still a lot it can’t do, and plenty of phrases it doesn’t understand, but for version 1 of an attempt at a natural language search engine, Facebook didn’t do too badly. What’s the craziest or most useful Graph Search you can think of? Post it in the comments and we’ll add the best ones. |
Google Announces First Project Glass Hackathons In NYC And SF, Will Detail ‘Mirror API’ | Rip Empson | 2,013 | 1 | 15 | Over the last year, Google has slowly been unveiling its plans around Project Glass, the company’s R&D program responsible for attempting to bring wearable computing to the mainstream. Complete with augmented reality and an integrated display, Google’s smart glasses have had many geeks on pins and needles, especially as “Explorer” editions of the glasses have been expected to begin showing up early this year. Today, Google sent out its first invitations to the developers who signed up for the $1,500 special edition glasses, inviting them to an “early look at Glass” and “two full days of hacking on the upcoming Google Mirror API” in San Francisco and NYC. The invite also includes the first mention of the project’s APIs, which have gone unmentioned to this point. These hackathons, which Google has dubbed the “Glass Foundry,” are exclusive to developers in the company’s Explorer Program, offering those select engineers the opportunity to get an early shot at building for Project Glass. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=047lMUJMo8Y&w=640&h=360] According to invitation, the hackathons will introduce developers to Glass (they’ll be given a device on-site) as well as its Mirror API, which “gives you the ability to exchange data and interact with the user over REST.” The developers will then be given free rein to hack away, with Project Glass engineers on hand to help them along the way. On the second day, the hackathons will culminate with the standard round of demos to be overseen by a handful of “guest judges.” Google doesn’t make it clear what kind of rewards — if any — await the winners. It’s also interesting to see that Google is being so brisk about the invitations, which don’t offer much time for turnaround. The deadline to respond to the invitations is Friday, and the events are scheduled to take place on January 28th and 29th in San Francisco and February 1st and 2nd in NYC. Here is the full text of the email Google just sent out: Join us for an early look at Glass and two full days of hacking on the upcoming Google Mirror API in San Francisco or New York. These hackathons are just for developers in the Explorer program and we’re calling them the Glass Foundry. It’s the first opportunity for a group of developers to get together and develop for Glass. We’ll begin the first day with an introduction to Glass. You’l have a device to use while on-site. Next we’ll take a look at the Mirror API, which gives you the ability to exchange data and interact with the user over REST. We’ll then dive into development with Google engineers on site to help you at any point. At the end of the second day we’ll have a lively round of demos with some special guest judges. If you’d like to attend this first Glass Foundry, please choose and register by Friday, January 18th at 4pm PT. There is limited space. If you are accepted, you will receive a confirmation letter with additional details and required terms after registration closes. Please don’t make any travel arrangements until your attendance is confirmed. |
Tred Gets $1.7M To Be An Uber For Car Test Drives | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,013 | 1 | 15 | a startup that allows you to order auto test drives to your home, is announcing a $1.7 million raise of seed funding today, from former Chairman and CEO of General Motors , Chris Sacca’s , , and TechStar’s David Cohen. The startup aims to compete with showrooms and car manufacturers that already allow shoppers to test drive autos outside of the showroom at “ride and drive” events and likens itself to an Uber for test drives, “with a twist of Zappos.” While car manufacturers and dealerships are ultimately biased by brand and sales goals, Tred co-founders Grant Feek and John Wehr argue that Tred is impartial — allowing you to pick from a variety of makes, models and types of cars using its selection and scheduling interface. Tred employs a group of full time and part time delivery people/concierges who will then deliver the car, or multiple cars, of your choosing to your doorstep. “The car industry hasn’t always jived with third-party innovators,” Feek says. “Fortunately, our investor base is ensuring that Tred works as well for dealers and manufacturers as it does for shoppers. In fact, our automotive partners in the Pacific Northwest inform every aspect of our process.” Feek actually has a lot of familiarity with the car dealership and test drive space, having worked in one over summers during high school and college. “Many shoppers (particularly families with kids, car seats and strollers) dread the logistical strains of visiting dealerships, which are often located on the outskirts of metro areas,” he says. “Some of our early shoppers had been ‘in the market’ for months, but had yet to visit a single dealer – until they heard about us.” Other fun facts about Grant Feek: He has a Harvard MBA, we actually went to school together at USC before this, and he was actually buying a car himself at the time of this interview — and yes, used Tred to do so. The startup, which is experiencing an 83% sale conversion rate on existing customers, will be using the money to experiment with customer acquisition and demand in addition to developing its mobile app. “We have some indication that the unique nature of our offline+online experience is sticky, and that the test drive presents an exciting content opportunity, but we still have a lot to test (around customer acquisition). The company, which monetizes by taking a cut of a car’s price if there’s a sale, plans on launching in Seattle in the spring. “We’re laser-focused on delighting families shopping for new cars in Seattle,” says Feek. “We had been planning to mass-produce electric vehicles and commercialize space flight, but someone beat us to it.” |
Twitter’s Social Impact Can’t Be Measured, But It’s The Pulse Of The Planet | Drew Olanoff | 2,013 | 1 | 15 | When you sit back and think about how far Twitter has come since it launched in 2006, its rise to glory is impressive. It’s difficult to make your way through a day without seeing a tweet referenced on television, the radio, or on a news website. It doesn’t mean that Twitter is the biggest or most popular company or service in the world, but it does prove that its social impact has reached a level that not many technology companies have reached. When you want to search for something online, you “Google It.” When you want to connect with friends, or someone that you just met, you “friend them on Facebook.” When you want to share your random thoughts with the world, you “tweet it.” When Twitter’s co-founder, Jack Dorsey, accepted the award for , he started off his acceptance speech by saying: This award is all about our users. It always has been. Very rarely does a service become a utility that connects us and pops up in our day-to-day lives quite like Twitter has. Whether you’re taking pictures of your cat or sharing a quick story about what you saw on the Golden Globes, Twitter is there. And it always will be. Take a look back at that Crunchies moment here: Revisiting that moment excites us, as we look forward to this year’s Crunchies, which also has Biggest Social Impact as a category. It will reward the startup or service that did its best job to change the world in one way or another in 2012. Twitter could win that award every year, but it’s nice to see new names pop up. . I spoke with Twitter’s VP of Product, , about how Twitter continues to evolve and infuse itself into our daily lives: I bet that if you asked 100 people around the company what they’re most proud of in terms of the difference Twitter has made in the world, you’d get 100 distinct answers. But I think the common theme you’d hear is that people are proud of building a platform for communication that, because of its constraints, is used in so many unique and powerful ways around the world. You know, it’s interesting. As a team, we spend a lot of time looking at data: analyzing how people around the world are using Twitter, where our growth is coming from, etc. Having access to that data and using it to inform product changes and new features is an important part of how we work. So, there’s a constant awareness of the sheer scale of what we’re doing. But there are these great moments when we hear stories from Twitter users about what the product means to them and how it’s impacted their lives. It’s very easy to get lost in the data. But it’s inspiring — and humbling — to hear someone like what Twitter means to him. I’ve been at Twitter about a year now, and it feels like I’ve had one of those every week! A couple of those moments stand out, though. First, this past summer during the Olympics, I was following a bunch of athletes. Olympic athletes, to me, have always had this superhuman quality about them. They’re Olympians, after all! But following them on Twitter, every day for two weeks there were these recurring moments of seeing that all these Olympians are really just high school and college kids in London, having the time of their lives. Sure, they’re incredibly gifted athletes who had trained most of their lives to be there. But there they were, making goofy faces at their cell phones and tweeting at celebs, like the rest of us. Seeing the human side of these super star athletes was the best part of the games for me. Second, and this has been talked about a bunch so I won’t belabor it, but election night for me was mind-blowing. Watching news organizations call results on Twitter, sometimes quite a while before television stations had the results, and then seeing the conversation spike on Twitter — it really did feel like a seminal moment. And then the president’s tweet: “Four more years.” Amazing. [tweet https://twitter.com/BarackObama/statuses/266031293945503744] We’re constantly amazed by the creative and inspiring ways people use the product — to find out what’s going on, to share what’s happening in their part of the world, to connect with each other. Our job is to make Twitter faster, simpler and easier to use, so that more and more people can do that every day. One of the things I’m most excited about is making it easier for people to find more great content on Twitter — Tweets, photos, trends, conversations, people to follow — and doing it in a way that’s fast and easy, especially on your phone. And we have a lot more coming that I can’t tell you about. Definitely. Making a positive difference in the world is one the reasons people come to work at Twitter. As a result, many employees are active members of the community, volunteering regularly at places in our neighborhood like Glide Memorial Church. We also have initiatives like , during which we encourage employees to spend at least a couple hours doing volunteer work on a particular Friday. #FridayForGood and community work in general are not limited to our San Francisco office either; employees in other offices share the same values and place equal importance on volunteer work. Twitter is the pulse of the planet, and my lifeline to the things I care about. Especially Taylor Swift. ——— In , it was plain to see how important Twitter has become to many of us. The most popular tweet of 2012 was from President Obama (above) showing him in an embrace with his wife after he won his re-election. As of today, that tweet has been retweeted 818,559 times. Assuming that each retweet came from an actual person, it’s impressive to think that one simple message, with a photo attached, was re-shared by almost a million people. That’s social impact. Who will take the Crunchie this year? Thursday, January 31, 2013
201 Van Ness Ave.
San Francisco, CA 7:30pm – midnight – Awards Ceremony and After Party
A night of celebration with festive attire. are available now. closes: Thursday, January 24th at 11:59pm PST
Winners will be announced on stage at the . Our sponsors help make the Crunchies happen. If you are interested in learning more about sponsorship opportunities during the ceremony or after-party, please contact . For press credentials, please fill out this , and confirmations will be sent separately via email. |
The Best And Worst Of CES 2013 NSFW Blooper Reel | Matt Burns | 2,013 | 1 | 15 | You’ve seen the . Here’s the blooper reel. Don’t watch it around your boss or small children. The video is not safe for work – just like and Vegas in general. |
getTalent Launches iOS App For Scanning Paper Résumés | Anthony Ha | 2,013 | 1 | 15 | , a service that helps companies build a relationship with potential hires before they apply for a job, is about to get more useful at real-world recruiting events, thanks to , which includes the ability to scan and upload paper résumés directly into the getTalent system. Like business cards, , yet they refuse to disappear — LinkedIn profiles are great, but if you’re meeting a recruiter in-person, say at a job fair, you still want to hand over something physical. Still, for large companies, dealing with résumés can be a pain. getTalent founder and CEO Abraham Shafi said that many of his customers just refuse to accept physical résumés, while others hire third-party services to transcribe them. The getTalent app combines existing and parsing technology. It uses OCR to translate the physical document into digital text, then parses the unstructured document to actually translate it into something that the getTalent system can understand. Shafi demonstrated the app for me last week — it took only a few seconds to go from scanning to a structured, digital document. The résumé-scanning feature will be available as part of the larger getTalent service at no additional charge, Shafi said, and it has already been tested by some of the company’s customers, specifically JetBlue, Viacom, and Kaiser. The app feeds directly into getTalent’s recruiting “CRM” system, so for example, a recruiter could send an automatic email confirming that the résumé has been received, then continue to track the company’s relationship with that person. I first when it came out of stealth mode in October. Since then, Shafi said the company has grown to more than 20 customers, including Walmart. |
null | Josh Constine | 2,013 | 1 | 23 | null |
Photo Sharing/Social Commerce Network Lockerz Closes Down Its San Diego Office, Lays Off ‘Around 30%’ Of Seattle HQ Staff | Ingrid Lunden | 2,013 | 1 | 15 | TechCrunch has learned that , the social commerce and photo sharing service, is downsizing. It has shut down its San Diego office, laying off all but two of the staff who will now work remotely. The company has also laid off “around 30%” of its head office in Seattle, with its chief product officer Michael Walton among those going. A source tells us that the other people laid off in Seattle include those working in merchandizing and marketing. To date, Lockerz has raised some , with backers including Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, DAG Ventures, Live Nation and Liberty Media. Most recently that in October 2012, revealed not long after the founder of the company, Kathy Savitt, left her position as CEO and became . She was replaced by , who remains CEO. Savitt is now Lockerz’s chairwoman. We have reached out to Lockerz for an official comment and will update this story as we learn more. : We now have a response from Lockerz’s chief marketing officer, Leilani Augustine confirming the layoffs: “Today we went through the process of realigning our organizational structure to best fit the needs of our product and business as we move forward. That means that some positions were eliminated and we will be increasing our investment in other areas we see as opportunity. I will not comment on how many individuals were effected or any specific individual… We remain bullish on the opportunities surrounding social commerce. We believe we are in the early stages of a transformational change in the way consumers discover and consume products and content. Our vision remains the same and and today’s changes will allow us to be much more nimble, which is an important component of success in this space.” The reason for the change is not completely clear, but with the teams relatively small — San Diego had around 10 people working there, and Seattle around 40, TechCrunch understands — it may have been partly the case that the company decided it was better to consolidate them into one place and operate in a leaner way. The San Diego office became part of Lockerz when it acquired Plixi in , for a price believed to be between $10 million and $15 million. That deal gave a big traffic boost to Lockerz at the time — reportedly boosting the site from 1 million uniques per month to up to 40 million. But as Twitter has moved further into its own photo service, and many other players have also moved into the game, that traffic has “died,” in the words of one source. So Lockerz has increasingly been transforming its business into one based on social commerce, where people share things they want to buy, collect points for posting and sharing, and buy via the site with discounts based on those points. The site was “Pinterest-ified” in with an infinite scroll of images arranged in a grid pattern linking through to social actions and more content. Today, traffic is in the range of 15-20 million uniques per month, TechCrunch understands, and is growing at a fast clip, but it’s not clear how well these two sides of the business merge together — with one decidedly social and non-commercial and the other social but very commercial. We have heard that among those that are staying on in San Diego is , who had been CTO of Plixi and is now Lockerz’ head of mobile. We are still waiting for confirmation on this; for now, his remains tied to Lockerz. |
With News Feed Unable To Handle All Of Our Content, Graph Search Will Lift Facebook Engagement | Drew Olanoff | 2,013 | 1 | 15 | Many of you are probably presented with the same problem when logging into Facebook. The first thing that you see is your News Feed, with tons of content from your friends and pages that you like. Unless you sort your News Feed by recent, which isn’t always accurate, you have no idea what to look at first. This is a problem for Facebook, because you will probably interact with less content if you’re not shown something that interests you right away. Sure, Facebook has an algorithm based on what you like and who you’re friends with, and with that, they try to show you “relevant” things. It’s not the best, or only possible, solution. With , Facebook ensures that users will have the chance to interact with all of the content that they missed in their News Feeds. If you think about it, if you’re friends with 100 people, it’s unlikely that you’ll even catch 25 percent of the content that they ever post. The same goes for Twitter, and any other service that displays content in a “stream.” After performing a simple natural language search with Facebook, I found photos taken by people who live in my home city of Philadelphia: Of the photos above, I’ve only ever seen one of them, and that’s because I was tagged in it. Yes, we know that Facebook has a wealth of data and some of our most personal moments from the past few years, but the question has always been “What will Facebook do with it all?” Graph Search is the answer, essentially. Sure, whenever the word “search” gets used, we immediately draw comparisons to Google, which is clearly the leader in the space. When you look at Graph Search, though, you have to look at it through the lens of what it means for Facebook. Even its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, said he doesn’t expect people to use Facebook as a search engine replacement, but what he probably hopes is that all of those photos, places we’ve been, people we’re friends with and things that we like will become “new” again. One reason why is because it built up a community of people that love to do nothing other than take photos, like and comment on them. That engagement is what keeps fresh content coming up in the News Feed. That’s also why , by the way. The massive redesign of your Facebook profile was done to bring all of your status updates back to life, hoping that people would surf it longer, looking at everything in a pretty design, in chronological order. We’re not sure that it’s worked out all that well, because it’s not something that Facebook discusses specifically. While Google helps you search through the world’s information, Facebook’s Graph Search will help you search through the world you have within your groups of friends. That picture of the moon taken by your cousin on the other side of the country? That’s what Facebook wants to help you unearth, because you probably missed it the first time due to differences in time zones. Once you find it, you’ll probably like it or comment on it, which will bring it back to life within the News Feed. If someone posts a really important announcement, like a new job or life event, once it falls off of the News Feed, you may never see it again. That’s bad for users, and it’s bad for Facebook. When Graph Search resurfaces Facebook’s old content, everyone wins. Real-time isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be, and luckily Facebook has some ideas on how to fix the problems that still keep us disconnected in a connected digital age. |
Disney’s John Blackburn Says ‘Infinity’ Game Mash-Up Could ‘Change The Way That People Look At Disney’ | Anthony Ha | 2,013 | 1 | 15 | Disney isn’t mincing words when it comes to describing the importance of that it announced this morning. The company’s fact sheet describes it as “Disney’s most ambitious game initiative ever,” while Disney Interactive Co-President John Pleasants compared it onstage to the first time he watched TV’s , which introduced him to Disney’s many characters and titles: “Now it’s our time, it’s Disney Interactive’s time to meet and even push the bar of innovation, creativity, and technology.” When I met with John Blackburn, who leads Avalanche Software (the Disney-owned studio that developed Infinity), I asked him whether he was on-board with Pleasants’ grand vision. “Absolutely,” Blackburn said. “We aspire to that. We could change the way that people think about Disney.” Infinity will bring together characters from multiple Disney franchises, allowing players to customize their own game environments and stories. The goal, he said, is to build something easy enough and simple enough for young children to use, but deep enough that their parents will want to play, too. To that end, Blackburn quoted Pixar team members who don’t set out to make movies for kids, but rather “make movies for themselves.” The game will include both “play sets” (which are focused on specific Disney properties, without any crossover) and a “toy box” mode (where you can mash-up all the different characters). Some gamers probably just want the complete freedom of the toy box, but Blackburn said Disney “really respects” the fact that different movies take place in different worlds, so it wanted to give players a way to experience those settings individually. Infinity will be available for console, mobile, and web. Blackburn said he expects most people to begin with one of the starter packs for consoles (which will come with a set of physical figurines, and which are currently priced at $74.99). He didn’t want to go into too many details about how mobile fits into those plans, but he said there will be a free version, and that for obvious reasons, the toy component will be less important. (Disney describes the mobile side as “an accompanying mobile experience.”) When Infinity launches in June, the company says there will be play sets available for , , , and for other properties that haven’t been announced yet. Blackburn said the team chose the initial characters carefully, based on questions like how lovable they are and how “game-able” — translates more naturally into a gaming experience than , for example. After the launch, Blackburn said Disney will continue releasing expansion sets, and it will also be developing (he made it sound like that’s just a handy way to describe the next big release, so it might not be the official title). He also noted that the platform is built to accommodate content tied to future Disney movies. That doesn’t mean every new Disney property will end up on Infinity, he said, but the platform’s expandability is “part of its strength.” |
Canon Debuts “Experience Centre” Physical Showroom In Canada, Includes 500px Partnership | Darrell Etherington | 2,013 | 1 | 15 | Canon today officially launched a new initiative including a pilot location in Calgary, Alberta, Canada that follows the experience of physical retail projects like Apple Stores and Microsoft’s recent brick-and-mortar locations, giving consumers opportunities for hands-on experiences in a space not shared with other brands. Canon’s new isn’t a store per se, but it is a showroom and learning center that sounds like it borrows a lot from the Apple model. Canon first piloted the Image Square idea in India last year, and it appears to have been successful enough to merit further expansion. The store that isn’t a store will be located in downtown Calgary, and offers hands-on experiences with Canon products including sculptural exhibits for testing point-and-shoots, DSLRs, lenses and accessories all on interesting visual subjects. The idea is to give a try-before-you-buy experience, but one that actually involves flexing those photographic muscles on something other than other cameras or boring electronics displays, as you might find in your average camera shop or Best Buy. Staff on hand can provide advice and give demos, and there’s a fully functional photo studio on site with access to pro photo software. All purchases are still made through Canon’s retail partners, however; this is just about show, not sell. One of the more interesting elements involved in the Image Square is a photo gallery curated by the Toronto-based photo sharing website that’s popular among professional and enthusiast photographers. In the Calgary location, it’ll display works from Alberta-based photographers using Canon kit to show what’s possible using their gear. The partnership is significant for 500px, since it gives it a place of prominence with an established player in the photography world, right alongside big players like Adobe and others. Canon also seems to be keen on rolling more of these out over time, which means this could become a good way to get the photo sharing network in front of even more active and practicing photographers all around the world. And for Canon, it means a possible answer to the question of how to keep consumers buying cameras in a world where the smartphone is taking over much of that market. |
How Facebook’s Graph Search Just Replaced A Major Chunk Of Google | Gregory Ferenstein | 2,013 | 1 | 15 | Facebook just took a big bite out of Google. Today, the social network announced , a new feature that lets , location, and preferences of your friends. For anyone who uses the Internet to search restaurant recommendations, travel advice, books to read on vacation, or which political candidates to vote for, Facebook may have replaced Google as the best search engine. Birds of a feather flock together, and only Facebook can let you know about all the cool things your friends experience that’d you’d also like to know about. “If you know a person’s music preference you can tell what kind of person they are,” said Psychology Professor Adrian North, who found between music genre and personality. No shocker, North confirmed that the droves of eyeliner-wearing emo fans packed into indie concerts do, indeed, have “low self-esteem.” Indeed, after music discovery service, Pandora, into their recommendation algorithm, I noticed that many of my favorite new songs were first liked by my friends. More importantly, music, books, art, and food, are expressions of the human condition; this is precisely the reason why music concerts also sell art and books. The most intelligent source of information about desired experiences are people’s friends. In other words, Facebook’s graph search is now the best search engine for the things that make people happy. Until now, Facebook had a pretty poor search experience. Before a vacation, I’d often throw up a question to my Facebook friends like “Going on a trip, any book recommendations?” After a modest response rate (because updates only reach a fraction of friends), I’d get disappointed and turn to Google. Now, I don’t have to pray that my friends will respond to inquires about books, travel, or restaurants, I can just search the things they’ve read, places they’ve visited, and restaurants they’ve eaten at. And, with the flip of a feature switch, Facebook just become far more valuable to me than Google. |
Bohemian Guitars Lets You Twang Out On A Real Oil-Can Gitfiddle | John Biggs | 2,013 | 1 | 15 | As the site’s resident guitar shredder, I have a soft spot for musical instruments on . While these Bohemian Guitars don’t have the same features as a or a , it’s still a pretty cool little instrument. The bodies are made of repurposed oil cans and they include a single coil pickup and come in three styles: honey, motor oil, and moonshine. The guitars are handmade in Georgia. The creators, Josh Kirsch, Adam Lee, Shaun Lee, and Mark Friedman, found inspiration in their creations through a childhood spent in South Africa. You can get a guitar for a pledge of $270 for early birds or $285 for folks who are lolly-gagging. They are looking for funding of $32,000. While it doesn’t connect to an iPhone or use cloud computing to calculate Black Keys tablature, it’s a cool little crowdsourced project for fans of artisinal hardware.
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Hiring Great Engineers: Kleiner Perkins’ Mike Abbott Explains How | Derek Andersen | 2,013 | 1 | 12 | I spoke with a robotics engineer and PHD from Stanford this week about looking for a job. He’s not the type of guy that easily joins your startup but he described two recent attempts. One was an email from a recruiter that as he described used “plenty of buzz words”, while another email came from an engineering team lead on the special projects group. Can you guess who he went to meet with and who he didn’t? When interviewing Kleiner Perkins Partner Mike Abbott at event in Mountain View, this is one of the critical elements that Mike points out when it comes to hiring the best engineers. Engineers close engineers. Mike has plenty of experience, having taken Twitter’s engineering team from 80 to 350 in 18 months and building the team that engineered WebOS at Palm. Hard to find many people who have been directly responsible for hiring as many software engineers in the last five years. Here are a few of the top strategies and insights pulled from Mike on how to get great engineers to join your startup. Some insights are edited for length. “For that first reach out the goal, the win, is just getting that coffee. I think you should always pay, I mean they’re doing you a favor and if you give me your time I really appreciate that. The other recommendation is to not do that meeting at your office. There’s something about making it more informal that people are more willing to go with and this is particularly important for various senior hires. Now I say this but at the same time I’m saying it’s not that you don’t need recruiters. Recruiters are very helpful to fill the top part of that pipeline to help manage that process so it’s a good experience for the candidate and it gives the candidate another person for he or she to talk to. Especially when you’re negotiating or competing with other companies, which is often times the case.” “This is something that we really tried to focus on, are you going to recruit? You make a competition. How many names can you get on a board from LinkedIn? How many names can you get on from GitHub? Especially if they’re on a certain open source project, how do we think through who is the right person to go reach out to that engineer?” “There are a lot of considerations when you’re under 10 people. You always want to get the best engineer. As a percentage when you’re two people every person has such a large percentage and I would argue that most cultures in companies are set after the tenth employee and then you can very slightly change those, but for the most part you’re pretty set in terms of, is this an engineering centric or design centric company or where you sit in that area of gravity. So you have to be thoughtful about that so it’s not a common saying you lowered your bar, but think about who you’re hiring for. For example you know you can find great self-taught computer scientists that maybe are not far along in their career, but are so ambitious they are willing to sacrifice so much to get your company going. That’s awesome and you know maybe they didn’t do the best on the mobile sort problem or whatever, but you’re willing to take that bet and I think you have to have a balance and be pragmatic about it too.” [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDBZsDM50M0] “If it’s easy or perceived as easy by an engineer he or she will not want to join your company because they’ll say, ‘Wait a second if this is the interview, I don’t know if anyone here is the caliber of engineer that I actually want to work with.'” “Not everyone has as much experience interviewing as other people. If you hire 300 engineers and on average you talk to 30 people for every person you hire, that’s 900 people that’s a lot of interviews and you know we had a lot of folks (at Twitter) that had never done that many interviews. So how do you train people to interview? Do we do pair interviews and at least having a common list of questions you ensure that there is a degree of consistency. ‘A’ that the same question wasn’t asked every candidate, and ‘B’ how do you actually train up people to go hire? That was something that we still could probably still do a better job at but it was something that we thought about.” “An engineer pulls another engineer out of a company. I mean look, in this day any great engineer is very gainfully employed it’s unlikely they’re looking (for a job). So let’s look at two different email scenarios. You get an email from Joey recruiter — hey maybe they spelled your name wrong or right, best job ever. Or you get an email from the woman engineer saying, “Hey I’m working on some really great projects let’s go grab some coffee.” I think in those two scenarios most people say, “I’ll listen, this sounds interesting.” Step back and think what does an engineer really want? It’s I want to work on tough problems, I want to work around great engineers, and I want them to have an impact around me. You get those three things, everything else kind of falls in place.”
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZUqMXhZuzI] “One of the questions I had asked is, “What do you want to do after Twitter?” People go, “Huh?” “What do you want to do after Twitter?” “Oh I want to go start a company.” “Okay, let me walk through with you different things or experiences that you might be able to do here at Twitter to learn to go increase your probability of succeeding when you go do that.” I always found that a really helpful exercise and I think it helped the candidate too because then it’s like oh — and it’s not that I want that person to go join Twitter and then leave immediately, but let’s face it, everyone is going to leave. And like I’ve told every team I’ve ever lead, the strength of this Valley is the people in this room, it’s the network and it’s not any particular company.” |
The Boy Who Cried Facebook Phone | MG Siegler | 2,013 | 1 | 12 | In , when Sauron’s forces capture Gollum, they torture him in Mordor but are only able to get two things out of him: “Shire” and “Baggins”. Over the past few days, we’ve had similar frustrations in trying to track down the content of the Facebook event taking place this coming Tuesday. Despite hounding a number of people who might be in the know, the only discernible things we were able to come up with was: “big deal” and “mobile”. Interesting, but way too vague. But we endured. And now we have a bit more information. And that information points to a Facebook Phone …of some sort. I know, I know. The Facebook Phone is so often rumored that it’s reaching “Apple Tablet” or “Apple Phone” levels at this point. And while those devices did eventually manifest themselves, the Facebook Phone not only has not, but it has been directly denied by everyone at Facebook — including Mark Zuckerberg himself — several times. And yet, all kinds of things in tech have of only being false until they’re true. (See iPad mini or the “ “, for example.) And so, with that in mind, multiple sources have told us that they expect some sort of Facebook Phone to be on display on Tuesday. Now for the caveats (and they’re important). It’s not entirely clear if this will be an actual piece of Facebook branded hardware or if they will simply use hardware from a phone maker to show off some sort of new Facebook OS for mobile. That is to say, it could very well be that the “Facebook Phone” is more about a Facebook OS on a phone (or a few phones). This has always been a point of contention in the Facebook Phone saga. When Facebook has denied working on a phone in the past, they’ve typically been careful to say that they weren’t building a phone — as in, hardware. It’s just the type of that allows politicians to weasel their way out of sticky situations. No, Facebook employees in some secret factory in Asia building mobile hardware (though I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve been tinkering quite a bit back here in the U.S.). Instead, if there is any hardware, they undoubtedly partnered with an OEM to actually make it. Or again, maybe they focused on the software and added it to some existing phone in the last mile. Given how prevalent OEM leaks are and that there hasn’t been any word in months (since ), this may be the most likely scenario. Also complicating matters is all the chatter that Facebook has both publicly and privately told partners such as Google and Apple that they had no intention to build their own phones. Again, maybe it’s semantics. Or maybe Facebook simply changed their minds. Or maybe this phone/OS isn’t meant to compete head-on with the iPhone and the Android phones that Google focuses on. Perhaps this is meant solely for emerging markets. This is all total speculation, but given Facebook’s charge to reach developing countries (where expensive smartphones capable of running Facebook’s apps are far less prevalent), perhaps they decided to help create their own low-end and low-cost smartphone — something one step up from a feature phone, but nothing like the quality/caliber of the iPhone or something like the Nexus devices. Facebook has always said they want to enable the entire world to share. And that’s why projects like Facebook Zero were created. But a low-end smartphone with Facebook baked into everything could truly be a game-changing device in the third world. But again, that’s all speculation. What about the OS itself? How would Facebook do it? Details are slim here as well, but the obvious answer would be a fork of Android. This would allow the OS to run hundreds of thousands of apps already out there. With Amazon seeing some success doing this with their Kindle Fire tablets (and soon their own phone as well), this could have emboldened Facebook to make the move now. Another possibility is webOS. That OS won rave reviews as an elegant counter to iOS and Android when Palm released it several years ago. Then HP acquired the company, promising that they would “ ” on webOS. Then HP started playing a deadly game of musical chairs with their leadership and webOS was basically taken out back behind the shed. But HP did go out of their way to open-source the OS recently. So… I suppose it’s possible. But probably far less likely than Android simply because the ecosystem is already there and that OS is much more mature. Probably even less likely is Facebook building their own OS from scratch. It’s simply a lot of work to do so. And again, without an ecosystem to support it, adoption could be rough (though maybe Facebook cares less about that if they’re targeting the emerging markets). We do know that Facebook has previously had projects underway to see what they could do with Android. When we initially reported on the Facebook Phone project , this was a big part of it. From our understanding, that team ultimately moved on and the project was stopped. But . A new project surfaced later under the name “Project Buffy”, as in 2011. That project was said to be under the direction of CTO Bret Taylor — but he left the company in June of last year. That report also singled out HTC as the partner Facebook was working with. Given while trying to play in the regular Android ecosystem, this could make sense even now. But who knows. right before Taylor left, suggested the scope of the Facebook Phone project had been expanded. That report claimed Facebook was ramping up the hiring of engineers (particularly ex-Apple ones) including those who had worked on hardware. We do know is that as recently as this past September at our TechCrunch Disrupt conference, my CrunchFund partner Michael Arrington that a Facebook Phone has “always been the wrong strategy for us.” “It’s a juicy thing to say we’re building a phone, which is why people want to write about it. But it’s so clearly the wrong strategy for us,” he went on to say. And just to drive the point home: “Let’s say we built a phone… hypothetically — we’re not, by the way.” All pretty damning for a Facebook Phone project, right? Maybe. But again, all of that could technically be weaseled into a denial of a hardware project. Which is essentially what in 2010 as well. (You’ll note that he specifically denied making an operating system at the time there as well, but there’s still wiggle room with forking Android, and that was over two years ago.) We later heard that news of the leak of the project made Zuckerberg as angry as some employees had ever seen him, so… One could imagine Zuckerberg getting up on stage on Tuesday, laughing, and saying something like “well we didn’t actually the phone!” Facebook is fairly good at keeping things close to the vest these days. And the truth is that there are a number of things the company could announce on Tuesday. But speculation that is something smaller, like a new app, doesn’t jibe with the multiple sources telling us this is going to be “a big deal”. Also the fact that Facebook has called in the press from all over the world for this event is telling. Facebook isn’t just holding an event at their headquarters in Silicon Valley, they’re simultaneously holding an event in London as well. So yes, this is us getting you all excited about a Facebook Phone project yet again. And given our record of success with these stories, you’ll be forgiven if you chalk this up to us once again “crying wolf”. But that doesn’t mean we’ve been wrong in the past. And that doesn’t mean we’re wrong here. Eventually, we’re going to be right on this. Promise*. Now, as to whether or not anyone actually wants a Facebook Phone, … |
One Million Raspberry Pi Boards Have Been Sold Since Launch | John Biggs | 2,013 | 1 | 12 | With all the hoopla around , we sadly missed this amazing milestone for one of the greatest little projects I’ve seen in a long time, . have been sold so far, an amazing feat for a tiny $35 circuit board that can boot directly into a streamlined version of Linux. To celebrate the company released this cute info graphic, informing us that, if stacked end to end, a million Pis would be higher than 111 Empire State Buildings. We detailed the associate with the Pi with 4,000 Raspberry Pis leaving a U.K. factory every day – or one every 7.5 seconds. Raspberry Pis have ended up as the brains for a and a DIY . It also runs and, more important, is a great way for kids to learn how to use computers without spending a fortune on hardware. |
In Defense Of The HAPIfork | Ryan Lawler | 2,013 | 1 | 12 | My favorite product at CES isn’t an 8K Ultra High Definition Connected Smart TV with Glasses-Free 3D. It’s not a Smart Oven with Dual-Meal Cooking Technology and an Integrated App Ecosystem that includes Spotify and Twitter. It isn’t a Chest-Hugging Digital Activity Band designed to quantify your self, with sensors to monitor your Heart Rate, Sweat Level, Air Cleanliness Level, Blood Alcohol Level, and Average Flatulence while navigating through your day. Instead, it is something you put in your mouth. Something that will help you lose weight. Something that will improve your digestion, will make you feel good about yourself. It’s a fork. By now you’ve probably heard about the HAPIfork. It’s been covered in the media, and even caught the attention of Stephen Colbert, who in his “Wag of the Finger” segment. If you somehow haven’t heard about it, is a “high-tech” fork designed to monitor how quickly you’re eating. And if you are eating too quickly, it will vibrate in your mouth to tell you to slow your roll. It also records all this data and allows you to connect it to your computer and upload it to the cloud, so you can track your progress over time. There’s been no shortage of jokes lobbed at the HAPIfork, as you’ve seen from the Colbert video above. The overwhelming consensus seems to be that the technology in the fork is , and that, people who really want to lose weight by eating more slowly should just, uh, eat more slowly. The HAPIfork also has landed right square in the middle of an explosion of devices meant to measure, monitor, track, and quantify your life. At CES we’ve seen any number of wristbands, dongles, heart monitors, motion sensors, and other various wearable quantified self gear. When you can measure your heart rate, the number of steps you’ve taken, and general activity level, something as small as how many seconds you’re waiting in-between bites seems a little less important. But that’s why I love it. The HAPIfork focuses on a singular problem, rather than trying to do too much by providing a view into your health as a whole. And by doing so, it makes that problem actually approachable. Not just that, but it’s actually actionable. It’s great that the Nike Fuelband, Fitbit, Fitbug, or any of the other activity-monitoring devices can track how much I’m moving around during the day and provide me detailed analytics over time. But they’re not going to put my running shoes on for me. They’re not going to get me out of the door, except maybe by shaming me over weeks of staring at my inactivity. Not so with the HAPIfork. Every bite is a potential teaching experience. The importance of the fork is even more significant when you consider the broader context of CES. The world probably doesn’t need a 120″ Ultra HD Touchscreen Display with convertible stand so that you can swivel it down and play digital air hockey. While technology for the sake of it is cool and all, that’s ultimately not going to change the world for the better. With an obesity epidemic underway, more residents in the U.S. could probably use a device that literally tells them to put down the goddamn fork. Still, there are a lot of things that HAPIlabs could do to improve the fork over time. Like, for instance, adding wireless connectivity, rather than connecting via USB. It could get thinner, so that it doesn’t look so much like a kid’s training tool. But I personally can’t wait for the fork to actually become available and test it out myself. |
What Games Are: The Fun Boson Does Not Exist | Tadhg Kelly | 2,013 | 1 | 12 | Back when the social game scene looked like it might be generationally, rather than merely technologically, disruptive, we game makers discovered . Ries (along with Steve Blank) is the key figure behind the movement, and at the time his message of fast iteration and customer validation rang true for us for two reasons. First, we were very frustrated working on multi-year-long projects with no clear goal that seemed to be more about some designer’s ego. Second, we saw it as a new way to look at the games business and found that the investment community was inclined to agree. Game companies are notoriously difficult investment propositions after all, so anything we could do or say that promised to manage the creation process better was music to their ears. During those days you could immediately tell who got it and who didn’t with the use of the terms “minimum viable product” (MVP) and “free-to-play” (F2P). You’d explain this ideal process whereby a tiny team would iterate on ideas quickly. It would measure everything, too. It would offer this kind of game where the initial experience was free, and that would pull in a lot of users, some of whom would become customers. The eyes of those who knew what you meant would suddenly spark in recognition. MVP and F2P eventually passed into regular industry jargon along with a boat load of other terms. Most every company involved in the space now talks about , , , ARPPU, ARPDAU and even ARPPDAU. They talk about performing cohort analyses. Some of them ask whether they are working on an MVP or an ? Most don’t really bother discussing viral K-factors any more, and instead obsess about the of players. These are significant changes for an industry that used to worry more about ratings. However they are also often misused. In much the same way that every studio claims to be “agile,” but few actually are, most of them miss the point of all these numbers. They get badly stuck when considering their MVP because they realise that they have no idea what “viable” is supposed to mean in the context of games. So they do what they’ve always done, which is to copy the other guy and invent very little. It all starts with the delusion of numbers. One of the axioms of the , derived straight from lean thinking, is that . In other words, if you add or subtract something and it does not cause a key metric to go up in some significant way, then that change was meaningless. This axiom is seductive because it promises to expose the game and stop it being treated like a mysterious black box. In theory it’s supposed to unlock a whole wealth of innovation, because we could then know a great deal about how players behave and think, and then use that. Measuring to find an outcome that might scale is, after all, what the entire lean method is about. When Facebook developer garages were interesting places to be, the sector got very excited by stories that seemed to prove this assertion. There was the story of the Christmas tree put into the game which sold a million units in a week. There was also the story of the object suggested by the community and then put into the game not three days later. All of these emotive images seemed to validate the validation, but the energy around them didn’t last. Now every game conducts regular sales, every game has its and none have really taken those ideas to a next level (if there is one). In practise what the validation-led method actually turned out to be was a sanitised version of age-old processes from the gambling industry. Personally I have no problem with the gambling industry (as long as it behaves responsibly around addiction), but its tendency toward validation of everything means it tends to only focus on a couple of key game formulae that are proven to work. That’s why every casino is identical. That’s also why every social game maker is identical. Rather than continuing to innovate through measurement, the social sector as a whole rationalised itself into a corner. It knew of a couple of formats of game that seemed to work with measurements (but not really they worked), knew how to build those, and then continued to repeat the same format again and again. So, just like the gambling industry, social gaming became about who had the best commercial processes in place to push their identikit product around as fast as possible. Farmville really wasn’t about Zynga’s genius at replicating Harvest Moon. It was about their genius at getting that game in front of everyone on Facebook faster than anyone else. But, again just like the casino business, that kind of thinking can only get you so far. The tragedy of social games is that the companies involved discovered the greatest distribution tool in the history of the industry, and yet proved inept at providing great games to go with it. The best things that they’ve come up with so far is Poker, some socialised versions of simple casual games, some super-simple sims and about 100,000 variations of Dungeons and Dragons. In part that’s because of market conditions. Facebook proved pretty tricky to understand, as some developers devoted almost their entire energies to overcoming visibility issues. All those notifications and cross-promotion obsessions happened because users didn’t really remember the names of the games they were playing, nor how to find them. It’s also because of technology. PHP games like Mob Wars could do little more than be static click-object games, and while Flash could handle sims well, it was (and still is) very weak for making action-oriented games. Arguably the sector needed a better technology to work with, which in time it got through iOS. The weird thing, however, is that social developers are still making the same limited games. What’s happening on iOS with Supercell of what happened on Facebook three years ago. Mostly it’s about development culture. The thinking behind social games is not unlike the thinking behind television. The bean counters in TV land tend to think that there is a number, perhaps not yet discovered, that will one day explain television viewing to them. They believe that attaining viewers is a process, entertaining them is a process, and that if only the right measurement and formula can be found, television would become a predictable industry. In the absence of that number they look at ratings, demographic data and viewing patterns and try to infer what it might be. They build products based on that inference, to make shows which satisfy those numbers. And when that doesn’t work they fall back to copying other successful show formats and trying to put a spin on them, just like casinos do. And that culture becomes circular and inward-looking over time, so eventually that’s all they know how to do. The ultimate fallacy of sticking with “you can only improve what you can measure” is that measurements eventually determine all of your creative decisions. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard a designer complain that they need to enact a deep change in their game, but are not allowed to do so by a manager who demands it be proved with numbers first. Both understand that something is not right, but the axiom mandates that the problem must be expressed in numeric terms, or else it does not exist. The resulting cognitive dissonance leads to frustration and formulaic decisions, and so the game becomes like every other game. That’s called being trapped in a . Obsessed with measuring everything and therefore defining all of their problems in numerical terms, social game makers have come to believe that those numbers are all there is, and this is why they cannot permit themselves to invent. Like TV people, they are effectively in search of that one number that will explain fun to them. There must, they reason, be some combination of LTV and ARPU and DAU and so on that captures fun, like hunting for the Higgs boson. It must be out there somewhere. Watch any sport or exciting board game, some gamers playing Call of Duty or Angry Birds, and you start to notice how there’s a certain yin and yang of play. There are many small decisions of little consequence, but they tend to bounce off one another and lead up to bigger moments. In great games this seems to have a pattern, and we often try to describe this in terms of “mechanics.” Once you sidestep some of the more feverish interpretations of what a game mechanic is, they’re actually pretty easy to understand. A mechanic is an action on the part of, or a rule that affects, a player. When not looking at large meta-metrics like DAU, studios typically measure instances of mechanics. They look at how many players buy an object, level-up within a certain time frame or use an item in-game. Then they try to improve along those vectors, yet for some reason the overall fun of the game seems lacking. Now to be clear, there are many arguments to be made for soul, culture and the importance of building an identity in a game that tells , but this argument is not about those qualities. By “fun” I have a (“ “). Trying to measure and improve a game through only studying mechanics is like trying to improve tennis solely by measuring how many aces occur, or how many foot faults happen. Those numbers are very useful in many ways, but they are not the game. If, for example, you wanted to increase the number of aces in the game, then perhaps you might lower the net, lengthen the racket or change the type of ball used. That change would have massive knock-on effects through the game, however. And it’s quite likely that you would get more aces but make a worse game. It is in the interplay of various mechanics that the dynamic of tennis emerges, and that dynamic is surprisingly sensitive to small changes. The dynamic nature of fun is always like that, and is why good game developers often talk about the importance of “finding the fun” in games through prototyping. Games are essentially chaotic systems. In a chaotic system you can look at the initial starting conditions and the topology of a simulation and try to predict the interactions of strange attractors as much as you like, but you generally don’t really get what the hell the simulation is doing until you observe it in motion. The system is too sensitive, the patterns too hard to interpret and the situation too emergent. Fun games are a little bit like those chaotic systems that produce beautiful fractals. In some games the balance between all the mechanics produces an inherently exciting set of outcomes, but are hard to predict just from looking at their rules. They have to be played to see what does and doesn’t work, to be genuinely iterated upon in the true sense of the lean startup (not just built) and allowed to be validated in their dynamics. Everything else is just nonsense. Until you prototype it and try it, you really just don’t know whether a dynamic is fun or whether it produces beautiful outcomes that compel you to play again. Measuring mechanical instances may help you do that, but you still need to accept that there’s an x-factor involved. Unlike every other major game revolution (arcade, console, PC, casual, MMO, etc.), social game developers have proved consistently unable to understand that fun is dynamic in this way. This is why there is, as yet, no social game that has achieved the genuine love and admiration of a World of Warcraft, an Angry Birds, a Plants vs Zombies or a Super Mario Galaxy. They are hunting for the fun boson, but it does not exist. This is the hardest lesson that they need to learn if they are to get to . |
Forget Calories, New Gadgets Redefine How To Lose Weight And Be Athletic | Gregory Ferenstein | 2,013 | 1 | 12 | A treasure trove of new health devices unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show promise to make us healthier by more accurately measuring what makes people thin and athletic. Calorie counting, for instance, can be a terribly misleading way to lose weight, what and how we eat can affect our love handles more so than the total calories consumed. But such brute-force measures persist because, prior to the consumer health sensor industry, we had very few ways of monitoring our internal wellness. In other words, what we can measure will become the new means of self improvement. Below is a roundup of the new gadgets launched at CES and how they’ll redefine what we watch. – Many of us meticulously avoid Snickers, yet slam down our salads during the busy workday. Unfortunately, healthy foods can as can eating sugary foods. Speed eating also leads to overeating, since satiety doesn’t register till long after the body no longer thinks it needs to feed. The HAPIfork aims to end the cultural habit of shoveling food into our mouths with a fork that vibrates when users eat too quickly. Check out Stephen Colbert giving a “wag of my finger” to the HAPIfork below:
Get More: , , : polluted air might not only be killing you quickly, but sending you to an extra-wide coffin, as . The new Withings scale, which measures weight and fat percentage, added a new feature to measure carbon dioxide, an important proxy for airborne poisons, and can affect sleep, breathing difficulty, and heart rate. Check out our own Darrell Etherington’s review below: It’s difficult to describe just how misleading calorie counting can be. Last year, I to transform an extra 1,500 calories a day of ice cream and cheesecake to fat and gain muscle. While it may not have been the healthiest way to disprove the calorie-fat link, it’s clear, at least for me, that the types of food I eat and how I measure my wellness are much more effective ways of controlling my body composition. – Olympic athletes train in the mountains because transforms our bodies to more efficiently utilize oxygen when athletes return to lower altitudes. Some readers may have experienced this effect in reverse, feeling lethargic after flying from a sea-level state to one of elevated altitude. The Masimo iSpO2 is a consumer-friendly pulse oximeter that measures the blood oxygen saturation of blood through a fingertip clamp. Athletes could utilize the iSpO2 to measure how their oxygen saturation is influencing their training and make corrective steps, such as high-altitude training, or more experimental steps, non-mouth breathing or oxygen masks (masks were found in one trial). : Warming up your muscles is an important part of working out, but how do you know you’ve actually reached the right temperature? Or, if you’re running on a hot summer day, how do you know if you’re about to overheat? The Spree headband measures internal temperature for safe and efficient exercising. : Runners are fond of measuring their heart rates for peak performance, but some of the most popular devices, such as the Garmin Polar, require a chest strap. is a heart-rate monitor without the cumbersome strap. So, go forth my number-crunching uber readers. Measure your way to a thinner, more athletic body. |
Gillmor Gang: Hello Goodbye | Steve Gillmor | 2,013 | 1 | 12 | The Gillmor Gang — John Borthwick, Kevin Marks, John Taschek, and Steve Gillmor — go beyond the usual scenarios in examining the symbiotic relationships between Apple’s more proprietary model and Android’s open heritage. Those looking for a more scholarly version of this dialogue should look to Doc Searls’ recent piece for sustenance. But those who enjoy the emergent presence of a shared perspective might find it in the last half or so of this episode. CES may have been presiding over the collapse of the PC, as the mobile device wave overwhelmed Wintel. But the speed with which the two silent partners have captured our attention and spawned a new generation of muscle memory continues to startle. What Steve Jobs decried as copying and theft as Android took the handoff from the iPhone and ran with it may someday be seen as the opening of a spirited competition that drove a generation of transformation. In other words, two heads are better than one. @stevegillmor, @borthwick, @jtaschek, @kevinmarks Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor |
10 Reasons Why 2013 Will Be The Year You Quit Your Job | James Altucher | 2,013 | 1 | 12 | People read TechCrunch because they want to create something, they don’t want to follow orders all of their lives, and they want financial freedom. I’m being blunt. The above three items feel good. God bless you. Hopefully once you get the three things above, you get to keep them. Most people (i.e. ME) have to ride a roller coaster for awhile because we are stupid. But some people are smart. Getting the things you want is hard but for reasons I explain below, The myth of corporate safety, of rising up through the ranks, of getting the gold watch, of getting applauded by your peers is over. Not because the economy is bad. But because innovation and the global economy are better than ever. But don’t wait for shortcuts. You can’t make money without selling something real. You can’t make something real without first imagination manifesting itself in your head. You can’t have imagination without surrendering yourself to an idea that you want to create something of value to other human beings. And now it’s too late. Now the course of history has finally written its next chapter. There’s no more bullshit. I’m going to tell you why you have to quit your job. Why you need to get the ideas moving. Why you need to build a foundation for your life or soon you will have no roof. A few weeks ago I visited a friend of mine who manages a trillion dollars. No joke. A trillion. If I told you the name of the family he worked for you would say, “they have a trillion? Really?” But that’s what happens when $10 million compounds at 2 percent over 200 years. He said, “look out the windows.” We looked out at all the office buildings around us. “What do you see?” he said. “I don’t know.” “They’re empty! All the cubicles are empty. The middle class is being hollowed out.” And I took a closer look. Entire floors were dark. Or there were floors with one or two cubicles but the rest empty. “It’s all outsourced, or technology has taken over for the paper shufflers,” he said. “Not all the news is bad,” he said. “More people entered the upper class than ever last year.” But, he said, more people are temp staffers than ever. And that’s the new paradigm. The middle class has died. The American Dream never really existed. It was a marketing scam. And it was. The biggest provider of mortgages for the past 50 years, Fannie Mae, had as their slogan, “We make the American Dream come true.” It was just a marketing slogan all along. How many times have I cried because of a marketing slogan. And then they ruined it. Technology, outsourcing, a growing temp staffing industry, productivity efficiencies, have all replaced the middle class. The working class. Most jobs that existed 20 years ago aren’t needed now. Maybe they never were needed. The entire first decade of this century was spent with CEOs in their Park Avenue clubs crying through their cigars, “how are we going to fire all this dead weight?” 2008 finally gave them the chance. “It was the economy!” they said. The country has been out of a recession since 2009. Four years now. But the jobs have not come back. I asked many of these CEOs: did you just use that as an excuse to fire people, and they would wink and say, “let’s just leave it at that.” I’m on the board of directors of a temp staffing company with $600 million in revenues. I can see it happening across every sector of the economy. Everyone is getting fired. Everyone is toilet paper now. Flush. The executive editor of a major news publication took me out to lunch to get advice on how to expand their website traffic. But before I could talk he started complaining to me: “Our top writers keep putting their twitter names in their posts and then when they get more followers they start asking for raises.” “What’s the problem?” I said. “Don’t you want writers that are popular and well-respected?” When I say a “major news publication” I am talking MAJOR. He said, “no, we want to be about the news. We don’t want anyone to be an individual star.” In other words, his main job was to destroy the career aspirations of his most talented people, the people who swore their loyalty to him, the people who worked 90 hours a week for him. If they only worked 30 hours a week and were slightly more mediocre he would’ve been happy. But he doesn’t like you. He wants you to stay in the hole and he will throw you a meal every once in awhile in exchange for your excrement. If anyone is a reporter out there and wants to message me privately I will tell you who it was. But basically, it’s all of your bosses. Every single one of them. A common question during my Twitter Q&A, asked at least once a week, is “should I take the job I like or should I take the job that pays more money.” Leaving aside the question of “should I take a job at all,” let’s talk about money for a second. First, the science: studies show that an increase in salary only offers marginal to zero increase in “happiness” above a certain level. Why is this? Because of this basic fact: people spend what they make. If your salary increases $5,000 you spend an extra $2000, you have an affair, you buy a new computer, expensive a better couch, a bigger TV, and then you ask, “where did all the money go?” Even though you needed none of the above now you need one more thing: another increase in your salary, so back to the corporate casino for one more try at the salary roulette wheel. I have never once seen anyone save the increase in their salary. In other words, don’t stay at the job for safe salary increases over time. That will never get you where you want – freedom from financial worry. Only free time, imagination, creativity, and an ability to disappear will help you deliver value that nobody ever delivered before in the history of mankind. I don’t like it when one person can make or break me. A boss. A publisher. A TV producer. A buyer of my company. At any one point I’ve had to kiss ass to all of the above. I hate it. I will never do it again. The way to avoid this is to diversify the things you are working on so no one person or customer or boss or client can make a decision that could make you rich or destroy you or fulfill your life’s dreams or crush them. I understand it can’t happen in a day. Start planning now how to create your own destiny instead of allowing people who don’t like you to control your destiny. When you do this count, make sure the number comes to over 20. Then when you spin the wheel the odds are on your side that a winning number comes up. I will define “needs” the way I always do, via the four legs of what I call “the daily practice.” Are your physical needs, your emotional needs, your mental needs, and your spiritual needs being satisfied? The only time I’ve had a job that did was when I had to do little work so that I had time on the side to either write, or start a business, or have fun, or spend time with friends. The times when I haven’t is when I was working too hard, dealing with people I didn’t like, getting my creativity crushed over and over, and so on. When you are in those situations you need to plot out your exit strategy. Your hands are not made to type out memos. Or put paper through fax machines. Or hold a phone up while you talk to people you dislike. A hundred years from now your hands will rot like dust in your grave. You have to make wonderful use of those hands now. Kiss your hands so they can make magic. One can argue, “not everyone is entitled to have all of those needs satisfied at a job.” That’s true. But since we already know that the salary of a job won’t make you happy, you can easily modify lifestyle and work to at least satisfy more of your needs. And the more these needs are satisfied the more you will create the conditions for true abundance to come into your life. Your life is a house. Abundance is the roof. But the foundation and the plumbing need to be in there first or the roof will fall down, the house will be unlivable. You create the foundation by following the Daily Practice. I say this not because I am selling anything but because it worked for me every time my roof caved in. My house has been bombed, my home has been cold and blistering winds gave me frost bite, but I managed to rebuild. This is how I did it. I don’t care how much you set aside for your 401k. It’s over. The whole myth of savings is gone. Inflation will carve out the bulk of your 401k. And in order to cash in on that retirement plan you have to live for a really long time doing stuff you don’t like to do. And then suddenly you’re 80 and you’re living a reduced lifestyle in a cave and can barely keep warm at night. The only retirement plan is to Choose Yourself. To start a business or a platform or a lifestyle where you can put big chunks of money away. Some people can say, “well, I’m just not an entrepreneur.” This is not true. Everyone is an entrepreneur. The only skills you need to be an entrepreneur: an ability to fail, an ability to have ideas, to sell those ideas, to execute on those ideas, and to be persistent so even as you fail you learn and move onto the next adventure. Or be an entrepreneur at work. An “entre-ployee.” Take control of who you report to, what you do, what you create. Or start a business on the side. Deliver some value, any value, to anybody, to somebody, and watch that value compound into a career. What is your other choice? To stay at a job where the boss is trying to keep you down, will eventually replace you, will pay you only enough for you to survive, will rotate between compliments and insults so you stay like a fish caught on the bait as he reels you in. Is that your best other choice? You and I have the same 24 hours each day. Is that how you will spend yours? “I’m too old.” “I’m not creative.” “I need the insurance.” “I have to raise my kids.” I was at a party once. A stunningly beautiful woman came up to me and said, “James, how are you!?” WHAT? Who are you? I said, “Hey! I’m doing well.” But I had no idea who I was talking to. Why would this woman be talking to me? I was too ugly. It took me a few minutes of fake conversation to figure out who she was. It turns out she was the frumpish-looking woman who had been fired six months earlier from the job we were at. She had cried as she packed up her cubicle when she was fired. She was out of shape, she looked about 30 years older than she was, and now her life was going to go from better to worse. Until…she realized that she was out of the zoo. In the George Lucas movie, THX-1138 (the name of the main character was “THX-1138”) everyone’s choices are removed and they all live underground because above ground is “radioactive.” Finally THX decides better to die above ground than suffer forever underground where he wasn’t allowed to love. He wasn’t free. He makes his way above ground, evading all the guards and police. And when he gets there, it’s sunny. Everyone above ground is beautiful, and they are waiting for him with open arms and kisses. The excuse “but it’s radioactive out there!” was just there to keep him down. “This is easy for you to say,” people say to me. “Some of us HAVE to do this!” The now-beautiful woman had to do it also. “What are you doing now?” I asked her. “Oh, you know,” she said. “Consulting.” But some people say, “I can’t just go out there and consult. What does that even mean?” And to that I answer, “Ok, I agree with you.” Who am I to argue? If someone insists they need to be in prison even though the door is unlocked then I am not going to argue. They are free to stay in prison. “I can’t just QUIT!” people say. “I have bills to pay.” I get it. Nobody is saying quit today. Before a human being runs a marathon they learn to crawl, then take baby steps, then walk, then run. Then exercise every day and stay healthy. Then run a marathon. Heck, what am I even talking about? I can’t run more than two miles without collapsing in agony. I am a wimp. Make the list right now. Every dream. I want to be a bestselling author. I want to reduce my material needs. I want to have freedom from many of the worries that I have succumbed to all my life. I want to be healthy. I want to help all of the people around me or the people who come into my life. I want everything I do to be a source of help to people. I want to only be around people I love, people who love me. I want to have time for myself. THESE ARE NOT GOALS. These are themes. Every day, what do I need to do to practice those themes? It starts the moment I wake up: “Who can I help today?” I ask the darkness when I open my eyes. “Who would you have me help today?” I’m a secret agent and I’m waiting for my mission. Ready to receive. This is how you take baby steps. This is how eventually you run towards freedom. . Only stepping out of the prison imposed on you from your factory will allow you to achieve abundance. You can’t see it now. It’s hard to see the gardens when you are locked in jail. Abundance only comes when you are moving along your themes. When you are truly enhancing the lives of the people around you. When every day you wake up with that motive of enhancement. Enhance your family, your friends, your colleagues, your clients, potential customers, readers, people who you don’t even know yet but you would like to know. Become a beacon of enhancement and then, when the night is gray, all of the boats will move towards you, bringing their bountiful riches. — Don’t believe me. Stay with a boss that hates you. A job that is keeping you locked on a chain around your neck, tantalizing you with incremental increases in pay and job title. Stay in a culture that is quietly replacing the entire middle class. This is not anyone’s fault. These are the tectonic plates of economics destroying an entire suburban culture that has lasted for almost 100 years. Until you choose yourself for success, and all that choice entails, you will be locked into the prison. You will stare into your lover’s eyes looking for a sign that he or she loves you back. But slowly the lights will fade, the warmth of another body will grow cold, and you will go to sleep dreamless in the dark once again. |
Digital Activist Aaron Swartz Dead At 26 | John Biggs | 2,013 | 1 | 12 | Digital activist and early employee at Reddit, Aaron Swartz, committed suicide in New York on January 11. He was 26. Swartz was a fiery proponent of Internet freedom and the founder of . He was a co-creator of the RSS 1.0 standard and was a co-founder at . . Cory Doctorow at wrote a beautiful eulogy to the young man who, at the age of 14, surprised his computing peers by organizing the RSS 1.0 working group. Wrote Doctorow: Schwartz was in the news in 2011 for taking 4 million documents from , an online aggregator of scientific journals. The U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts charged him with computer fraud to which he plead not guilty. He also “completed a fellowship at Harvard’s Ethics Center Lab on Institutional Corruption,” according to the . It is always tragic when one of our own dies and it is made even more tragic when they choose suicide rather than help. The life of the mind is a glorious place but, as Doctorow writes, now “if he was lonely, he will never again be embraced by his friends.” We are all in this together and help can cope in many forms ( , , and those close to you). But rather than dwell on what went wrong, it is right to celebrate this young man’s accomplishments and mourn his passing. He was a friend to many of us and will be missed. . His parents and partner . [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fgh2dFngFsg&feature=player_embedded] [ ] |
Nadia Heninger Is Watching You | Jon Evans | 2,013 | 1 | 12 | It’s been a bad week for online security. An “ ” Ruby on Rails ; a Yahoo! Mail XSS ; and yet another . I know, I know, security is hard: still, it’s difficult not to be left with a frustrated throw-up-your-hands “can’t do right?” feeling. So I paid close remote attention to the workshop at Stanford this week. (OK, fine, I followed it on Twitter.) And I was struck, in particular, by this proposal from Ron Rivest–yes, — awesome. Ron Rivest suggests patents on crypto algs that are royalty free until algs become weak, to encourage upgrades. — Ben Adida (@benadida) Rivest: it might've helped if there had been a patent on MD5—royalty free as long as no collisions had ever been detected. — zooko (@zooko) Finally, something that the software-patent system would actually be good for! Here, you can have your security technology for free…as long as you’re using it in a responsible manner. But if you misuse it, or fail to patch, or fail to upgrade once vulnerabilities become apparent, you have to start to pay. I think that’s kind of brilliant. Enterprises take security seriously to exactly the extent that they have an economic incentive to do so. And let’s face it, that’s not particularly strong evolutionary pressure. Lose a few million credit card numbers, and what happens? You get a few days of press attention, and maybe a creeping class-action suit; otherwise, pretty soon, most everyone forgets. But if you have to for not having your security act together, then you’ll soon start paying attention to it, too. Oh, don’t get me wrong: I’m not demanding that every app and every site become a heavily-encrypted Fort Knox. But there’s no excuse any more for flagrant idiocies like storing passwords in plaintext, or failing to transmit personal information via HTTPS rather than HTTP. (Which Yahoo just started doing . IE in 2013. Sigh. But thanks, Marissa!) Obviously pay-for-negligence patents wouldn’t address all of these problems. But maybe they’d change the all-too-common attitude wherein basic security and privacy measures are an afterthought. Meanwhile, Princeton/Microsoft researcher presented a wherein We perform the largest ever network survey of TLS and SSH servers and present evidence that vulnerable keys are surprisingly widespread. (This is bad.) And — https://twitter.com/radian/status/289437422121541632 promptly became the of the crypto world– https://twitter.com/kaepora/status/289486378507571200
https://twitter.com/kaepora/status/289488435855630336 When Nadia Heninger is near a computer, its memory freezes in fear and the RSA keys fall out — Paul Wouters ☕️ (@letoams) I know, I know, very funny. But all this highlights a larger point: There are security holes online, some of them quite gargantuan. Don’t even get me started on the colossal debacle of , or the with . It would be nice to think that enterprises will fix these problems out of the goodness of their corporate hearts, or their desire to do the right thing, or their fear of potential litigation. But the only incentive that’s all but guaranteed to work is a financial one; and Rivest’s elegant proposal just might create just that. Here’s hoping it catches on. |
Chamath Palihapitiya On Growth Hacking And How To Create A Sustainable User Acquisition Engine | Rip Empson | 2,013 | 1 | 13 | Last fall, Udemy co-founder and Wildfire’s held the first , in which executives, entrepreneurs and investors from LinkedIn, Spark Capital, Bump, Airbnb and Dropbox gathered to growth hacking and what it means for early-stage startups. One of the keynote speakers was well known investor and entrepreneur, , who, for those unfamiliar, started his career working for music pioneers Spinner.com and Winamp before going on to work at AOL, where he was the VP and General Manager of AIM and ICQ, as well as Silicon Valley venture capital firm, The Mayfield Fund. From there, Palihapitiya went to work at Facebook, where he was the VP of Growth, Mobile and International, responsible for overseeing the Facebook Platform and played a role in launching Facebook’s online advertising channel, before founding his own venture fund in 2011, . He also happens to be the owner of the Golden State Warriors. At the Growth Hackers Conference, the investor and Silicon Valley tech veteran spoke to the crowd about, among other things, how his team helped put Facebook on the path to one billion users and what’s important for entrepreneurs to focus on in today’s startup economy. The founders of the conference have yet to share the video publicly, but Biyani was kind enough to give us a peek and allow readers to check out the content for the first time. Therein, Palihapitiya talks about the emergence of the growth hacker and how this new role and how growth teams — which combines quantitative marketing techniques, testing, data modeling and the leveraging of existing networks for distribution — are taking off in Silicon Valley. He talks about how his experience at Winamp and AOL informed his leadership at Facebook, the power of communication networks and how they can create usage and scale and help accelerate adoption. He talks candidly about the philosophy in the Valley, the lack of “dog fooding” that happens among startups today and about what’s really important: A granular understanding of product value and consumer behavior. Perhaps the core take-away, an important mantra for all entrepreneurs to hear in the era of noise, hype and “want-repreneurs” is that startups shouldn’t believe “the hype and the BS” that is swirling around the the Bay Area today. He talks about shying away from the idea of “virality” and about delivering product value as often as possible without scamming your users and without relying on that “gut” feeling. The talk is part of a course that includes 10 hours of content from the Conference’s speakers in video form, including one-one-one interviews. The first 50 readers will be able to get access to the course for free, and we’ll provide more info on how to access the content soon. It’s a great talk and well worth checking out. The first 50 readers can find a , and you can find a link to the slides that . |
null | Frederic Lardinois | 2,013 | 1 | 15 | null |
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