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Waiting For Prometheus | Devin Coldewey | 2,013 | 6 | 9 | What is the real issue brought up by this whole PRISM debacle? It’s not that the government is willing to overstep its role using national security as an excuse. That’s been going on for thousands of years. It’s not that companies in a position of power are willing to throw those that rely on them under the bus in order to get ahead. Again, that’s nothing new. And it’s not that the institution of journalism has crumbled into a dismal wreckage of its former glory. Possibly true, but beside the point. The issue central to all of these is that the fundamental balance of power when it comes to control of information has been allowed to shift unthinkably far away from the individual and towards a set of institutions with motives that are at best mercenary. It’s about time we fixed that, don’t you think? To address the PRISM scandal itself briefly, I think we will be less surprised at the existence of such a program than, as I think will inevitably transpire, the incompetence and inefficiency that almost certainly define its methods and usage. Allegations of a massive conspiracy that goes so deep that the most powerful tech companies in the world are muzzling themselves and spitting lies out of fear and legal obligation assume, as other theories often do, that this shadow government pulling the strings is both massively effective and operates totally in secret, two things that are highly incongruous with the likely reality of incompetent civil servants, out-of-date methods, and bureaucracy choking everything in sight like the inextinguishable weed it is. But whether they are siphoning our private data or is beside the point. The important thing is that they (whether “they” is defined as the NSA, Google’s marketing department, or malicious hackers and organizations) have access to your data in bulk and on demand. Why do we allow this? And I don’t mean “why does the law permit it?”. It also doesn’t matter much whether the government is doing it legally or illegally, because “abuse” is difficult to define and easy to justify in retrospect. What matters is that they are even of viewing and collecting our personal, private data in this way. Why is it even possible that Verizon has this level of data to disclose? Why is it even possible that Apple can infer and cache our locations based on metadata? Why is it even possible that our emails can be skimmed for advertising opportunities? If we did not explicitly permit these things, then we have implicitly done so by choosing to go ahead and use the Internet this way either because the pros outweighed the cons. But now the cons are starting to add up. Think about this. When we decided we wanted to keep our personal matters separate in the real world, we built walls. Walls we bought or built ourselves, with means to peer out, grant ingress and egress, and so on at our own discretion. What’s more, walls work whether they are legal or not, whether the government wants them to or not, and no matter who you bought them from or what brand of mortar you used. They’re really quite effective. Fast forward a few thousand years. The Internet brings a massive decline in the importance of physical objects and presence. A huge proportion of human interaction is now non-physical, and consequently physical walls can no longer effectively cordon off the private from the public. So naturally, we built walls, right? Not quite. The Internet (and later, the web) was not built with the isolation of data in mind — quite the opposite, of course. Practically everything that makes the Internet worthwhile is based on the idea of transmitting information between two or more points. Of course, if you’re not in control of those points, you essentially surrender control of that information. A bit like how in walking outside your home, you surrender a degree of your privacy. So far, so expected. First we reached out and took things that were stored elsewhere. But the advances in storage, bandwidth, and processing power over the last 10 years or so have made it so that we use the Internet as a sort of phantom extension of our own computers, putting things where they are accessible to us but we are not responsible for them. This was the so-called web 2.0: every personal computer and device, vastly more powerful and connected than ever before, yet acting as a thin client. Clearly, this is where we began to lose touch with reality. How did we decide we were in control of the data we sent Google or Facebook? Why would we submit to such an obvious delusion? Does anyone really believe that these companies have our best interests in mind to any greater a degree than a dairy farmer and his cows? We submitted because they were the only option. Like turkish delight, the future they proffered was too tempting not to try, and once we had a taste, we would take nothing else. A familiar story that rarely has a happy ending. And so it progressed, and the people running their own servers and encrypting their hard drives and eschewing cloud services were mocked as paranoiacs, nostalgia junkies. Get with the program, we said! Look how well Gmail works! Look how easily we can share plans on Azure! How fun it is to track each other on Foursquare! Stop living in the past, when you had to look after your own data. Someone does that for you, now, and you don’t have to pay a dime. And now, after we voluntarily put all our data in someone else’s keeping, alternately trusting and ignoring them when they told us how they can read it but wouldn’t dare, could sell it but don’t need to, might disclose it to the government but only if they have to, we’re finding out they’ve been doing all this and more the whole time. We’ve been pouring our data into the river for years and just pretending there was no one downstream. We never built walls to keep ourselves safe and separate online because we bought a line years ago that it wasn’t possible. Funny how the ones who told us it stood to benefit immensely if we thought it was true. So now we’ve come miles and miles down a path that minimizes every individual’s control over his or her private data. Just try to look at it objectively: in a day and age where we have gigabit connections, insanely cheap and spacious digital storage, and processing power that puts supercomputers of the recent past to shame, we decide not to store, process, and serve that data ourselves, but to hand it over to companies to index and sell ads on, with a few trivial benefits almost certain to be replicable by more trustworthy platforms. Here, then, is the real question: where is the breakthrough device or software that decouples our data from the oppressive web 2.0 superstructure with no loss to functionality? One might ask: where is the Napster for privacy? And no, I’m not talking about HTTPS everywhere, or good data security practices, or even something like TOR. I mean where is the total upset in basic popular understanding of privacy and how files and data are transferred and stored online? Not that Napster was some avenging angel, raining down digital retribution on the abusive media companies. Broadband and decent compression were the tinder and Napster was one spark among many — but it’s true that Warner Brothers, EMI, and all the others have been trying to put out the fire ever since. Once digital distribution was out of the box, there was no putting it back in. (At the bottom of the box in the legend of Pandora, there was the pale specter of Hope; for the studios, the last thing left in the box was “modest profits,” and they have yet to truly accept this.) Interestingly, now, the roles are reversed. In the early 2000s, technology allowed people to get a jump on “The Man” and force an industry into accepting the modern era. Now it’s the other way around: the technology we’ve trusted has gotten a jump on us and is forcing us to rethink the choices that led us into this undesirable position. And until we take control, we’re just going to keep getting abused — again, and again, and again. In a way, we want the opposite of Pandora’s box. Something that, once shut, no one can open but us: Pandora’s lockbox. So here we are, cursing the gods and waiting for Prometheus to deliver us from our servile dependence. Where’s the big idea, the big change that obsoletes the idea of trading privacy for convenience, and moots every standard cyber-eavesdropping technique in the NSA’s playbook? The thing that gives people the same confidence in the security of their data as walls give them in the security of their homes? What will be the combination of new (or forgotten) technologies or ideas that produces something totally unexpected? Will it be personal encryption keys and mesh networks? Will it be self-hosted data havens? Quantum transistors? Smoke signals? I wish I had a better idea. But over a huge proportion of the web-oriented sites, startups, and new technologies I’ve encountered during the last decade has been aimed at microscopic conveniences, further abstraction of possession and control, and iteration of existing services — fundamental problems intact. Their primary improvement has been platitudes on the landing page. I realize this is a bit “We can put a man on the moon, but we can’t do this?” but the direction of development in the tech sector really does seem geared towards trivialities. I don’t have answers, but I can at least speculate. I believe we are going to decentralize and cellularize once we realize how needlessly dependent on distant and dubiously beneficial third parties. Why are the equivalent your Facebook timeline, your Google Docs items, your Instagram account being stored and served by anyone other than yourself? One breakthrough will be in making a self-hosted and totally secure email address, Dropbox clone, or what have you as easy as signing up for an email address, and as simple to operate. The other breakthrough I expect will be a tool that renders of data transmitted to and held by third parties totally unintelligible to them, like files stored on Mega. Mega did it to avoid self-incrimination. will do it to prevent the likes of Facebook and Apple from even seeing the information they once held hostage. If that means the collapse of countless companies that rely on such methods — good. Their service was a bad service and I hope they break when they hit the bottom. The networks that we have come to rely on were once only possible through powerful intermediaries. But what was once symbiotic has become parasitic, and those intermediaries have now outlasted their usefulness and squandered whatever trust they conned out of us when we were given the choice between tainted privilege and safe obsolescence. We did it their way. It’s time to take the highway. |
To The Victors Go The Spoiler Alerts | MG Siegler | 2,013 | 6 | 9 | : Last week, I did something I don’t normally do — I watched the latest episode of right around the time that it was actually airing on HBO. You see, I don’t have cable, so . But each week, these episodes tend to find their way to me anyway, as they spread around the internet like wildfire around Blackwater Bay. But I digress… I managed to watch an episode of in real time. And thank god I did. With my mouth still ajar after the episode, I opened up my laptop. What I found was nearly as shocking as the ending of the “The Rains of Castamere”: every single social network had erupted with reactions to this episode in a way I had not seen before. While this is commonplace for pretty much every television show on Twitter — yes, actual , not just empty rooms filled with Nielsen boxes — you rarely see this spill over to the other social networks. There will be a post here and there for big episodes of or , but it’s pretty easy to avoid friends talking about entertainment on anything other than Twitter. But again, last week was different. Not only did all the social networks feature reactions to , it was pretty much each of those networks featured. And the result of that was amazing to behold. I saw the episode spoiled over and over and over again on each one of these networks. People couldn’t help themselves. They just had to talk about it. And they couldn’t pussyfoot around the spoiler. I repeat: thank god I had already watched the episode. But many people had not. (Or, of course, read the books on which the show is based.) Even the next day, when I figured anyone alive had already had the episode spoiled for them a hundred times over, I posted to my blog and got a few nasty messages as a result. When I responded to one asking how on Earth they had avoided the ruination for that long, they responded that they had completely avoided all the social networks — but figured my blog was safe. Whoops. Plenty of us know of the unspoken rule of avoiding Twitter at certain times if there’s a show or sporting event you don’t want spoiled. But again, the epidemic is now spreading far beyond Twitter. You have to basically avoid the internet entirely, lest you destroy your chances of delayed enjoyment. And your smartphone with its push notifications can turn into a not-so-silent assassin of your evening. This reality coincides with two trends unfolding in Hollywood. On one side, content providers like Netflix are putting up whole seasons of content all at once. On the other side, networks are trying to keep alive the notion of real time, coordinated viewing. The Netflix experiment made watching strange. It was great being able to binge-watch. But it was weird not being able to tweet knowing that others were watching the same episode (or even the show itself) at the same time. The result was less spoilers overall, but also decidedly less of the “watercooler” effect, for a show tailor-made for such chatter. At the very least, the chatter was severely disjointed. On the more traditional distribution side of things, networks are starting to employ smart tactics to get people watching the show when it actually airs (something they still care about greatly to ensure the commercial revenue keeps flowing in). This includes talent live-tweeting alongside episodes. And the use of hashtags to create the real time watercooler about a show is something both the networks and Twitter are undoubtedly going to dive deeper into. But I almost wonder if the networks shouldn’t simply resort to scare tactics to get people watching shows as they air. “Watch it now, or don’t bother using the internet for the next few days.” That kind of thing. Ultimately, I think it’s inevitable that the delayed viewing and Netflix models push the prime-time schedules towards extinction. But until that happens, those of us without cable have to be increasingly careful. Spoilers are becoming so prevalent that the old “spoiler alert” etiquette is becoming passé, almost redundant. If you happen to be on the internet tonight after 9 PM, consider your browser window (or that app you’re using) to be one giant spoiler alert for the finale. And in our Netflix future, it could actually be worse. Using the internet at could be navigating a minefield of spoilers, depending on when someone you follow happens to be watching a show. TweetDeck and Tweetbot filtering capabilities are helpful, but the situation is untenable. Tumblr was almost a Red Wedding flip book last week. Same with Flipboard — complete with the flips! I’m posting this now because I plan to stay off the internet starting at 6 PM PT (when will be airing on the east coast). Lest one of my friends stabs me in the back like ******** does to ******** during the Red Wedding. |
After Selling Its Display Network To Ziff Davis, InPowered Expands ‘Earned Advertising’ Beyond Tech | Anthony Ha | 2,013 | 6 | 9 | A few weeks ago, that would be to publisher Ziff Davis. Now the company is ready to talk about what comes next. Peyman and Pirouz Nilforoush, the brothers who co-founded InPowered and serve as CEO and president respectively, said they’re using the money from the deal (an undisclosed amount) to double down on InPowered’s concept of “earned advertising.” Peyman said InPowered is taking a very different approach from the social and native advertising companies that are getting a lot of attention right now. You could almost think of it as the opposite of native ads, where advertisers take their own content and package it in a way that matches the content on a publisher’s site — to put it simply, they’re taking ads and packing them as content. With , advertisers are going in the other direction, taking content and packing it as advertising — they can track the articles that are posted about their products, and then they use ads to promote the ones that they like. Social ads, meanwhile, are about promoting the influence of friends and family, which Peyman acknowledged is important, but mostly for “impulse decisions.” “There’s this whole other side that consumers go through every single day,” he said. “If they’re trying to figure out where to go for vacation, it’s an informed decision and you truly require experts.” That’s been the idea behind InPowered all along, but until now the company has focused on technology. Now, however, Peyman and Pirouz said they’re starting to work with advertisers outside the area. They didn’t give me a full list of every category that they’re planning to expand into — in part, it seems, because they’re still deciding themselves. “We’re actually letting the data guide us,” Pirouz said. The first non-tech advertiser is Chevy, and the brothers said they expect to work with similar companies — brands whose products are purchased through considered decisions rather than impulse buys. Peyman and Pirouz said likely categories include auto (not surprising, given Chevy’s participation), fashion, travel, and gaming. They also noted that since they work with ad exchanges to distribute their ads, they don’t need to recruit an entirely new network of publishers for each category. As part of the sale, InPowered that on the tech side alone, it has worked with 20 brands to promote content that has been opened and read by 2 million consumers. As the company expands into other areas, Nilforoush said it’s staying true to its initial goal: “We’re trying to make people better informed and more influential.” |
It’s Time For Apple To Treat Us Like Adults | Frederic Lardinois | 2,013 | 6 | 9 | It’s time for Apple to treat us like adults. The company revolutionized the smartphone with iOS, no doubt. But as iOS gets older, its users are, too, and fewer and fewer of them are first-time smartphone owners. It made sense to hold everybody’s hands when this whole idea of a computer in your pocket was new. But just as Apple will probably move from skeuomorphic design to a more abstract , it should also trust its users a bit more and give them more control over how they want to use the operating system. Sure, Apple will never allow something like on its phones (that’s an abomination anyway), but isn’t it time for Apple to allow users to switch at least some defaults away from Apple’s own apps and to allow third-party services to come in and take over? The prime example here is obviously Safari. , Opera and others make pretty competitive mobile browsers now and many of them are superior to Safari in a number of ways. With its proxy services, for example, both Google and Opera can save users bandwidth costs (in Chrome, that’s just available in the Android beta, right now). I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple soon also offered this feature, but why not let the user choose a default browser. Google already redirects iOS users to Chrome from its own apps like when possible, but most apps don’t do this, so there is really no point in switching browsers. The same thing goes for Apple Maps, too. It’s the prime example of a default iOS app that’s inferior to its competitors, but it’s still the app that Yelp and every other popular app will always open. It’s a bit easier to switch to long-term, because you’ll probably want to use it as a standalone app, too, but it’s still an unnecessary hassle. Outside of apps, it would also be nice if Apple finally allowed third-party keyboards. Let’s face it – the standard iOS keyboard is getting a bit old. Sure, sooner or later, Apple will likely copy Swype (just like Google did) and offer a swipe-driven keyboard, too, but there is something to be said for choice. I can hear the murmuring: Why don’t you just switch to Android? The truth is, I probably will. For a long time, the trade-off was great user experience (iOS) vs. a more open system (Google). Now that Google’s user experience is virtually on par with Apple’s and its services are so much better, Apple’s choice is now to keep the system on lockdown and try to own the experience or to open up at least a little bit and give us users |
What Games Are: Have We Hit “Peak Mobile”? | Tadhg Kelly | 2,013 | 6 | 9 | I was not particularly surprised. I’m talking about this week’s , OMGPOP and news, but not in a haughty-told-you-so sort of way. I’m wondering whether they are canaries in the coal-mine, symptomatic of a larger shift in mobile gaming. I’m wondering whether the mobile market has hit a peak, and whether that means its tone is about to shift. I’m wondering whether mobile gaming has passed a point where it is no longer cost-effective to create lowest-common-denominator games, and whether we need smarter approaches. Before a peak is reached, games always seem like a business in which the most important skill to possess is the ability to rush. Usually it starts with an unexpected novelty, such as when Facebook turned on its API, Apple surprised everyone by releasing an App Store or Nintendo invented the Wii (or more up to date, the microconsole idea, which I think is the next one). The novelty often seems unproven, leading to a wait-and-see attitude from most astute observers. Developers tend to not like making games for platforms that don’t seem validated yet for fear of wasting money, but there are always some early movers. They are the people who realize that there may be an opportunity in the new market that others don’t see, and they leap before they look. In so doing, they prove the novelty’s validity for others. The novelty phase then leads to a low-hanging fruit phase as reports of early success surface. A couple of key games show that there is a new kind of interaction or other game mechanic that seems to work in that space, and they nail its possibilities (your or moment) in a way that opens a lot of eyes. Where last year the skeptical games executive may have scoffed at the idea that Facebook would ever go anywhere, this year he’s suddenly leading the charge to get on there as fast as possible. During the low-hanging fruit phase a lot of obvious game concepts are explored, often little more than re-skins or clones of other successful games. The size and scope of the market start to be wildly exaggerated, but also the sense of optimism. A gold rush mentality takes over and developers start inventing genres on the fly, such as “endless runner”. These are usually good times for those who execute at speed and do it well, and they lead to some outsized successes (your or moment) that achieve cultural critical mass. Folks start talking up their game science, their playbooks and their , and more and more people pile on. However then the problem becomes one of discovery and – like any gold rush – that leads to a third phase where it’s better to sell shovels rather than do the mining yourself. Marketing tools, sharing plugins, advertising solutions, customer acquisition, monetization tools, game engines and many more services explode. In the old days we might have called that publishing, but these days we call it APIs. Regardless, there seems to be more reliable money to be made in servicing developers than the market directly, and many companies strive to fill those niches. This is where success stories like Applifier come from, as well as the thinking about . Nonetheless it still seems relatively straightforward. The next phase, the peak, is when the business stops being simple. Up until the peak there may be many roads to take and many avenues to success, but the product itself is usually pretty obvious. Whether we mean farming games, casual games or casino stuff like bingo, these are all the kinds of game that are broad. Some may be very smart, others as dumb as a post, but none of them represent a complex conversation with customers. Like selling brands of soap, what the game is and how it plays are questions of mass appeal, and the most repeatable road to success is about maximizing commercial advantage. But when customers’ starts to wears off, everything starts to change. This is the peak. Customers start to notice that they’re being offered the same product over and over. They start to become sensitive to the vagaries of the platform and then less inclined to just jump into a game willy-nilly. They start to develop deep loyalties to certain games, and certain game makers. They start to get slightly bored of watching the same endlessly recycled and want to be delighted all over again. They start to find the non-mechanical aspects of a game, such as its fiction or aesthetic, more appealing. In short they start to become somewhat like any media audience, which is to say complex and hard to read as one whole bloc. Whether searching for complex games like , retro games like , elegant games like or arty games like , they start to drift away from the center. Bit by bit, day by day, the cost of being in the center seems to get that little bit tougher and cracks start to show. Even selling shovels to help others get to the center starts to get icky and . Developers start asking whether there really can be a meaningful return ever generated for any company paying $4 per quality customer install. Take Zynga for example. Zynga was a great company in the days when social games were all about being fast movers and fast followers, but those times are past. Now it’s facing the much harder task of operating in mature markets where growth is not as explosive, and unless it can figure out a third way such as the real-money gaming or trying to develop some wacky hits it’s probably got a long road and many more layoff rounds to come. These are non-simple choices, in a no-longer-simple landscape. I also think similar forces are at work at Tapjoy and other plugin providers. Aside from the fear of another AppGratis situation, there are a lot of competitors selling very similar products with a limited range of tactics at their disposal. And, not unlike the days when Facebook was full of wild west plugin solutions, it seems to me that a great shakeout of these services is looming. They all essentially say they can find you quality users through cross promotion and pay-per-something advertising, but actual accounts of success or failure in those networks produces wildly differing impressions. The frustrating aspect of peak oil is that we’ll likely only know that we hit the peak after the fact. All the indicators tend to trail where the market actually is, and this is why crashes happen. The same is true of any gold rush or any stock market bubble. We can only sense what might be going on from watching canaries and reading runes, and by the time the real information comes in the fight-or-flight decision point is usually long past. In games, as in many areas of life, if you wait too long to know what you should do, your hesitation kills you. That’s why it’s entirely possible that – even though and may be making dump trucks of money – peak mobile has actually been reached. If I’m right then the next sign to look for is just how dependent success becomes on relationships. It starts to feel as though that succeeding on a platform is about who has the strong partnership with the platform holder, who has the inside track, who has the deals in place to guarantee prominent placement on the front page, the top shelf, or the prime location, then that’s a big indicator. Similarly if the platforms start to talk up their exclusives in order to get prominent placement, it says a lot. Like I said, this is when the games business stops being simple. Influencers start to matter as much as outlets or process because customers want delight, but don’t want the cognitive load of dealing with overwhelming choice. Trust assets become more important, whether in the official guise (like the old official Nintendo magazines, or the Editor’s Choice on the iOS App Store) or among communities. Getting on the radar of a hot blog, getting in tune with a motivated tribe of customers, or even building that tribe to begin with, are the factors that start to determine your success, but to do so you have to learn to speak their story and language. One example is the importance of art. Most games look like other games, but some manage a wow factor. In console gaming that factor is usually wrapped up with over-the-top graphics (which we’ll no doubt see a ton of tomorrow when the E3 press conferences begin), but in mobile it’s often associated with a certain style. The App Store editors, for example, seem to love cute paper-cut-out graphics and style apps like Musyc or Paper. Therefore to get noticed by them your probably have to speak to those values. Factors like this start to matter and, depending on the platform, the customer either starts to become more sophisticated and driven by marketing stories, or grows jaded. For mobile developers the question of which way the market will go is particularly pertinent. The peak came at various speeds to console gaming, PC gaming, indie gaming, flash portals and social gaming. Each market had its own traits and its own kind of customer, so each peak looked different. PC gamers, for example, became a highly engaged audience with and dense cultural conversation. Nintendo gamers developed lifelong brand loyalties that few companies could ever hope to match. Facebook gamers, on the other hand, just don’t care. Facebook games may have accelerated in user adoption faster than any other platform to date but they also hit their peak very early. Rampant cloning and platform changes that up-ended free virality channels were largely to blame, but efforts to make that market more sophisticated have not exactly taken off. The so-called “midcore” social game customer (a half way point between the traditional casual and hardcore archetypes) sort-of exists, but not at the same scale as a Zynga. Meanwhile Zynga competitors like King seem to be doing really well from going back to basics with simple casual games. For mobile, it really could go either way. Somewhat like the PC world, there is a vested interest from app store like Apple, Google and Amazon to ensure that they keep pushing great content. Great content drives platform adoption, which in turn drives a whole host of other benefits. It works to Steam’s advantage to have games like , and likewise it works to Apple’s advantage to have great games like . Yet at the same time we’re talking about gaming on mobile phones. Those little screens may always be perceived as only for frivolous gaming (such as Warner’s game) or playing Sudoku on the bus, but it’s hard to see that they will ever become venues for more immersive games. Can we pragmatically expect the audience of mobile games to develop strong cultural identities and communities? Or will phones always seem just that little bit lightweight for those kinds of game? (And will tablets prove different in this respect?) And if they do, does that mean mobile’s peak will be more like Facebook’s, stalling and settling into fixed patterns and jadedness? Nobody can say for sure. But it does feel to me that mobile seems to have crested, and mobile game makers are heading toward non-simple times. |
First Cut Pro Just Made Post-Production Collaborative Video Editing Much Less Painful | Jordan Crook | 2,013 | 6 | 9 | Editing video is tedious enough on its own, but it becomes a whole new world of pain when producers, editors, audio guys, and others are trying to collaborate on a single project. That’s where (not to be confused with Final Cut Pro) comes in. The software comes out of Austin, where the company , meaning that the First Cut Pro guys will be ready to roll at TC Disrupt SF in September. But what is First Cut Pro? Well, in short, it’s a collaborative dashboard that lets multiple people work and give feedback on a single project. The most important feature is the ability to autopause video. As an editor is watching a rough cut of a project, each keystroke he makes (as commentary to the video) is recorded alongside a timestamp. While he’s typing, the video pauses, and once he presses enter, the video resumes. Users can also create custom buttons to insert at whatever time they’d like, which are timestamped just like comments are. Comments are threaded, just like they are in most professional collaboration software like Convo and Yammer. [gallery ids="829710,829711,829712"] Once commentary has been added, users have control over who can access the project, sharing to others via email with a special pin. Finally, First Cut Pro closes the loop, letting managers prioritize comment threads and then assign particular cuts or jobs to various editors. When the project is exported, the same timestamped comments show up on each editor’s dashboard in their editing software of choice. Currently, the platform supports AVID, Adobe and Final Cut. First Cut Pro is available now . It has a tiered pricing structure, starting with a free account for personal use and going all the way up to $119/month for power users. |
Google’s Inroads For Waze Could Roadblock Facebook And Apple | Jordan Crook | 2,013 | 6 | 9 | In the ever-raging Map War, Google seems to be not only a first mover, but the boldest mover. According to , an Israel-based publication, Google is reportedly set to acquire the Israeli transit and navigation company Waze for $1.3 billion, making it one of the larger Google acquisitions in recent memory. This latest development comes amid swirling rumors that Waze would be bought up by one of the big guys, by Facebook for $1 billion, Apple for $500 million and now Google. Waze provides information on traffic congestion, police presence, speed-sensing cameras, and other transportation-related information thanks to the crowdsourced information flowing in from its almost 50 million users. According to a number of , the deal will be in all cash. Noam Bardin will reportedly remain as CEO and Waze will also continue as its own brand. Waze’s R&D facility, as well as their offices in Israel, will remain in place for at least three years. We had heard originally that Apple was interested in Waze, which made perfect sense at the time considering Apple was building and releasing a buggy, inadequate Maps app. Waze probably could have helped out quite a bit. However, those to make room for new ones, namely that Facebook was considering buying the social satellite-navigation company. In fact, Globes reports that Facebook executives went into negotiations with Waze right in Israel, but neither company could come to a comfortable resolution. But perhaps more interesting, Google moved in to have chats with Waze , showing just how eager Google is to block out potential competitors in the mapping space. Neither Google nor Waze is commenting on the acquisition at this moment, but this isn’t the first time that the search giant has been paired with Waze. , Bloomberg reported that the companies were in talks, and that Waze was seeking more than $1 billion. The report says the deal has just entered due diligence, and details are subject to change. Google’s long-term goal with Waze is somewhat unclear. It obviously increases its footprint in Israel, where it currently operates two offices, and there is a thriving startup scene, from which Google has already plucked Labpixies and Quicksee. But looking further, this is also a good way to keep competitors like Apple and Facebook away from such reliable and popular mapping software. Remember, Google’s Maps application is already a world-class product, with nothing even remotely close following behind in terms of competition. But that’s not to say that folks aren’t trying. Apple booted Google Maps as the default mapping app on its iDevices with the launch of iOS 6 and the iPhone 5. Unfortunately for Apple, Apple Maps is abysmal. By buying Waze, Google keeps competitors like Apple and others away from the easy out, which would be an acquisition of a company with already-working and reliable technology. With this deal, Google effectively blocks Apple and Facebook from even having a chance. See, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft and any other big tech player will be focusing on location technology as a way to bolster other services. Maps is the spinal cord of the mobile ecosystem. It affects advertising, other social tools and apps, and e-commerce. Apple, Facebook and friends won’t give up on owning our location data anytime soon, but Google is doing a good job of blocking out the potential to buy technology instead of build it. was founded back in 2007, and has since raised a total of $67 million from investors like KPCB, Horizon Ventures, Blue Run Ventures, Magma Venture Partners, and Vertex Venture Capital. |
How Google Sets Goals | Leena Rao | 2,013 | 6 | 9 | [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJB83EZtAjc] Goal setting within a startup or company is essential to success. But there are a number of different approaches to attaining these goals both within teams and individually. And what better framework to follow than Google’s strategy around establishing goals. This gem is part of the ‘s body of content, explained by current Googlers, and other technology execs; aimed at helping startups navigate things like A/B testing, holding productive meetings and more. While most of these talks are private, Google Ventures is gradually posting a number of these discussions online for all entrepreneurs to access. In the above, Google Ventures partner Rick Klau, who runs the Startup Lab with Ken Norton, covers the value of setting objectives and key results (OKRs) and how this has been done at Google since 1999. Klau, a former Google company employee himself, recalls the story of Kleiner Perkins’ partner and early Google investor John Doerr visiting the company early on to explain a method of setting goals he has witnessed at Intel (as told in author Steven Levy’s book, ). What’s super interesting about Klau’s presentation is that he found the actual deck that Doerr used when presenting to the Larry, Sergey, and the rest of the Google team in 1999 (around 7 minutes in). |
Spy Whistleblower Comes Forward, Says “NSA Routinely Lies” | Gregory Ferenstein | 2,013 | 6 | 9 | The NSA whistleblower who exposed has come out and taken an interview with the leak reporter, ‘s Glenn Greenwald. “The NSA has built an infrastructure that allows it to intercept almost everything. With this capability, the vast majority of human communications are automatically ingested without targeting. If I wanted to see your emails or your wife’s phone, all I have to do is use intercepts. I can get your emails, passwords, phone records, credit cards,” he , in an interview taped in Hong Kong. Edward Snowden, 29, who has claimed he has worked with the National Security Agency, admits he never expects to see home again, but said, “I don’t want to live in a society that does these sorts of things.” In response to officials downplaying the NSA’s targeting capability, “the NSA routinely lies in response to congressional inquiries about the scope of surveillance in America.” Snowden argues that the institutional culture of the NSA has a sort of self-righteous attitude on national security: “Whenever we had a debate in the office on how to handle crimes, they do not defend due process – they defend decisive action.” As for Snowden himself, “The only thing I can do is sit here and hope the Hong Kong government does not deport me,” noting that he might jet off to Iceland in the hopes of finding a place that will protect him. The full, fascinating interview is on . |
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Skeuomorphism Isn’t iOS’s Biggest Problem | Sarah Perez | 2,013 | 6 | 9 | that the new release of Apple’s operating system, iOS 7, is in for a major overhaul, most notably bringing an end to so-called “skeuomorphic” design (visual metaphors reflecting the physical objects a digital version aims to replace – e.g. the faux leather in “Find My Friends,” bookshelves in iBooks, fake glass, notepad paper in Notes, green felt in Game Center, and so on.) It’s a welcome change to say the least, but more concerning is the fact that outside of the visual tweaks, the overall look of the operating system is . That’s too bad, because iOS – perfectly simple as she may be – has gotten a little boring. It’s easy to see the dilemma. Apple has found success by making technology accessible to a wide audience through careful design, quality craftsmanship and in-store technical assistance from blue shirt-wearing “geniuses.” A truly radical overhaul of its operating system could alienate a mainstream user base who’s grown comfortable with the general look-and-feel of iOS and its incrementally improving feature set. But for another segment of the population – those no longer new to the concept of smartphones (or rather, ) – iOS is starting to feel dated. Rows of app icons. Hooray. After years of back and forth between iPhones and Nexus devices, god knows I’ve tried to make Android stick, lured away by things like customizations, launchers, live updating widgets, as well as improved app switching, voice search, navigation, notification drop-downs, lock screens, and more – all of which I’d call “better,” but people will argue, so let’s just say “better for me.” Yet as someone who writes about technology and startups, you can’t just abandon yourself to one platform. requiring continued use of an iPhone, though my SIM currently resides in a Nexus 4 for the above reasons. Most people are locked into contracts or can only afford one phone at a time, so I’m fortunate to usually have a few Androids, Windows Phones and iPhones at my disposal. (Sorry BlackBerry). Moving between the three, and it’s clear to see that the OS now coming up short in terms of pushing the bar forward is iOS. Hopefully, the new version of the operating system will address that problem. I’d love to be surprised again. With iOS 7, additions: new toggle switches for accessing quick settings in the notifications bar; into the core OS; panoramic, scrollable background wallpapers; notifications you can manipulate with gestures; and a new gesture , like Notification Center. (This is why there are fanboy wars. Who had these things first? Not Apple. And when you realize that, it’s hard not to scoff. I get it.) The big shift from skeuomorphism to flat design has not been without controversy – . But if this and a few other tweaks is all we’re getting, there will be some letdown. To the untrained user’s eye, they’ll probably only notice that the interface and apps look different or more modern, and then either feel warmly or turned off by those changes, without having the correct language to explain what precisely has been edited or why. But the end of the day, gradients, colors, textures, styles – it all starts feeling like the OS got a new coat of paint. Necessary because rust was starting to show – – but a coat of paint, nonetheless. What does iOS really need? , with some snark of course. (The point being, there’s no way Apple can announce enough things at WWDC to please everyone. This is true.) But let’s dig in anyway. For starters, there’s the problem of . From mail to calendaring to documents, Google is winning in the cloud. Apple needs to build a more functional iCloud – one that people understand, , one that isn’t broken, buggy and overpriced. Google’s predictive add-on Google Now, also currently outsmarts Siri’s more limited virtual assistant, though Apple could change that quickly . Apple also needs to be at least more open. There’s a way of doing this where it could still maintain some level of control. For instance, it would be useful if apps could better to talk to each other and share data between them. With an ever-increasing number of iOS applications available, it’s a winner takes all market. But because apps are treated largely as isolated silos, app engagement and usage rapidly declines after install. A shocking percentage of apps are never even opened. Apps are tucked away in obscure backscreen folders and forgotten. That means, developers, in turn, have to use increasingly spammy push notifications to encourage re-opens. Frustrated, users simply delete the apps constantly bothering them. It’s a vicious cycle. It’s hard also to see the harm in a bit more customizable operating system. One which loads the perfectly good vanilla experience for the masses, but which advanced users can personalize via the settings, allowing for new behaviors, gestures, homescreen setups, widgets, automations, different keyboards (I mean, really!), visualizations, layouts, and more. Why, for example, is it Apple’s call how many apps are stuffed in a folder, how many screens I have, or how many apps sit in my dock? Why can’t browser, contacts app, notepad, weather app, mail client, and more? Why can’t I share to app I want from Safari, not just Facebook, Twitter, iMessage and Mail? And so on. There are those who will say that these sorts of changes are just not Apple’s M.O. They think for you, make the tough design decisions, and it usually works. It’s hard to point to their numbers and prove any differently. Still, a large number of Apple’s iOS users are perfectly comfortable with their iPhones and iPads now – they’re no longer as welcoming the heavy hand as they are feeling crushed by it. And they switching to Android, or just going Android-first when they finally ditch their feature phone. So here’s hoping Apple can still surprise us with a new iOS 7 operating system whose newly upgraded beauty is more than skin deep, but is rather something which, once again, “just works”…for everyone. |
Hacker Faces More Jail Time Than The Convicted Steubenville Rapists He Exposed | Gregory Ferenstein | 2,013 | 6 | 9 | A 26-year-old farm dweller who helped expose the rape of a teenage girl is up to 5x more jail time than the high school football members who publicly assaulted the girl. The Steubenville rape case became a after it was revealed that dozens of people had witnessed the assault at a party and then shared pictures and social media updates of the event mocking the girl. Angered that a small town was turning their back on justice, several hacktivist groups got involved, including Deric Lostutter, who helped post a video on the football team’s website outing the assailants and bringing national attention to their crimes. “If convicted of hacking-related crimes, Lostutter could face up to 10 years behind bars—far more than the one- and two-year sentences doled out to the Steubenville rapists,” , in an exclusive interview with Lostutter. The first-time digital activist claims he never hacked the page, but was the masked man in the video. His relatively light touch reportedly didn’t stop the FBI from treating him like a world-class terrorist. “As I open the door to greet the driver, approximately 12 FBI SWAT team agents jumped out of the truck, screaming for me to ‘Get the fuck down!’ with M-16 assault rifles and full riot gear, armed, safety off, pointed directly at my head,” Lostutter on his own blog. The excessive force and even worse penalty highlights why many are calling for a reform of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFA), which treats principled hacking on par with the worst federal crimes. The CFA came to national attention last year after respected Internet prodigy, Aaron Swartz, committed suicide after harsh prosecutors threatened him with 50+ years in prison for freeing academic articles from a paywalled database. “We should prevent what happened to Aaron from happening to other Internet users,” Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren ( : A) about her (failed) “Aaron’s Law” bill. While the hacker did violate the law, they are the newest evolution in the beloved American tradition of civil disobedience. “It was everything that I’d ever preached, and now there’s this group of people getting off the couch and doing something about it. I wanted to be part of the movement,” recalls Lostutter, of the Hacktivist mission-statement videos that inspired him to get involved. Like many first-time activists before him, he seems like a typical American, not a thrill-seeking vigilante. “A 26-year-old corporate cybersecurity consultant, Lostutter lives on a farm with his pit bull, Thor, and hunts turkeys, goes fishing, and rides motorcycles in his free time. He considers himself to be a patriotic American; he flies an American flag and enjoys Bud Light,” writes Josh Harkinson of Mother Jones. U.S. law needs to be to be updated to reflect the values of the free flow of information. Even though the acts were illegal, it’s hard to see what Lostutter did was wrong. It’s a shame the courts could sentence him with a punishment that treats his activism as worse than sexual assault. For more stories like this (and a bit of wry humor) follow and on Twitter. |
Facebook’s New Colocation And Image Recognition Patents Tease The Future Of Sharing | Josh Constine | 2,013 | 6 | 9 | Facebook’s empire was built on photo tags and sharing, but it’s a grueling process many neglect. Luckily, new Facebook patents give it tech to continuously capture video whenever your camera is open, rank and surface the best images, and auto-tag them with people, places, and businesses. They tease a future where pattern, facial, and audio recognition identify what you’re seeing for easy sharing. The patents are for Based on Social Components and Identity Recognition (’80), from captured video sequence (’00), and sequence based on social components (’65). The were filed for in October 2011 and granted over the last two months to Facebook and its employees , , and (who at Dropbox). The patents cover some colocation technologies similar to that of , who came out of stealth in March 2011 a few months before Facebook filed for the patents. That may be no coincidence, and Color’s ideas for using every available sensor on a phone to tell who someone is with may have inspired Facebook to brainstorm in the space. Soon after Color emerged from stealth, to develop its own colocation technology to help it forge an “implicit social graph” of who you spend time with. What it came up with could redefine the way we share. As we look at what the patents include, I’ll be referencing the last two digits of the patents number and their PDF page numbers so you can follow along. The foundation of the patents is the idea that Facebook can capture video of everything you see in the viewfinder while you use the camera in its main smartphone apps or its standalone Camera app. It’s like an infinite that some Android cameras take surrounding a photo: “Although the camera function operates in a photo-capturing mode, the camera function may continuously capture video…Instead of the user capturing a photo by pressing a hardware (or software) button, [it] can automatically capture…one or more images relevant to the user from the real-time video being captured by the camera function {’80 p4}.” “[the] user may capture a photo…Meanwhile, the camera function can continue to capture the real-time video {’65 p11}.” Basically, Facebook could let you take traditional photos while dicing up continuously recorded video into still images. As camera lenses, storage capacity, and wireless connections improve, these images will increase in quality. What’s special is what Facebook could do with these videos and images. The patents describe the ability to scan the frames for important things like public figures via facial recognition, brands or products via image matching, and landmarks or businesses via pattern and text character recognition plus location: “For example…a place (e.g., Eiffel Tower, Golden Gate Bridge, Yosemite National Park, Hollywood), a business or an organization (e.g., a coffee shop, San Francisco Giants), or a brand or product (e.g., Coca-Cola, Louis Vuitton)…The image selection process may tag one or more social networking objects identified in the selected frames to the stored video segment {’80 p5}.” “An object recognition algorithm may use optical character recognition techniques to identify one or more characters (e.g., “HOLLYWOOD”, “San Francisco Giants”) in one or more frames and match against image data (or identity data such as names, logos)…[and] may use computer vision techniques to extract a set of features (e.g., edges, corners, ridges, blobs, curvatures, etc.) from an image. The object recognition algorithm may determine a match between two images by comparing respective sets of features {’00 p11}.” You might not want to formally tag these things, but the tags would be pre-filled for easy sharing. Whether or not you display the tags, recognition of he presence of these objects and locations can tell Facebook what the most important frames of your video are, exactly where you are, and what types of businesses might want to reach you. Facebook’s patents also give it exciting ways to figure out who you’re with. Instead of manually tagging friends, or even using facial recognition through the , Facebook could put to work all the sensors in the phones of you and those around you: “The image selection process can access a GPS sensor…[detect] a user who has GPS coordinates within 100 feet from the first user’s current location…a user who is attending the same event, a user who has just checked in to the same location…data reports from mobile devices of other users that have interacted with the first user’s mobile phone via Bluetooth or Near-Field Communication…The audio recognition algorithm may determine a match between two audio files by comparing fingerprints of the two audio files {’80 p5}.” That last capability, matching the audio recorded by the microphones of two users to identify that they’re right next to each other, was one of . So Facebook knows who and what’s around around you. Then it wants to rank which frames of your video are the most interesting to you. To do that, it looks at your affinity to these objects (which friends, locations or brands you interact with most), and how popular they are to the public. It combines this data with extra audio and image cues of importance: “The image selection process may analyze content of the voice segments (e.g., by using a speech recognition algorithm) for indication of importance (e.g., “Say cheese!”, “Cheese!”, “This is beautiful!”, “Amazing!”), and adjust a score of a frame…[and] may analyze picture quality of a frame (e.g., blurriness) by accessing a motion sensor (e.g., an accelerometer), and adjust a score of a frame less favorably if the frame corresponds to a time period of significant vibration or movement of the mobile device {’80 p6}.” Honestly, the idea that an app could hear you say “This is beautiful” and know the photos and video you take at that time are important is sci-fi brilliant. At this point, Facebook can make well-educated guesses about what you want to share. It imagines splaying them out in what it calls a “media wheel” and showing the best frames as thumbnails when you share to the news feed: “The image capturing process can cause the camera function to display in its graphical user interface (201) selectable thumbnails corresponding to the one or more selected frames in a scrollable media wheel panel (220) adjacent to the view finder (230) {’80 p6}.” “the preferred image selection process can cause news feed engine (110) to construct a news feed entry comprising thumbnails corresponding to the selected frames {‘oo p12}.” Essentially, Facebook would rank all the frames of your video, show you the best ones, and you could select your favorites to represent your video when you share it. When people want to watch the video, they can click on one of the thumbnails, and instantly view the video starting 10 seconds before that frame. As quality of the still images ripped from video improve, Facebook could likely even allow you to share the frames as photos. These patents could redefine how we share. You wouldn’t need to search for people, locations, or things to tag. They’ll just be there waiting for your approval. That’s a big win on mobile where you want to share and get back to your life. Your content will contain so much structured data that Facebook could better route it to the people who’ll find it most interesting. And when we consume video, an opaque medium that’s classically tougher to skim than photos, there’ll be anchors and highlights pointing us to the most important moments. These could all encourage sharing and expose us to more enjoyable content. Facebook could even use colocation to create collaborative photo albums and carry on Color’s mission to let you “Take photos together”. There’s also huge implications for Facebook’s business. Likes are a terribly inaccurate graph of what businesses and places you care about. Today, recommendations of what to Like are scattershot, and it’s a chore to key them in. By recognizing businesses and brands in photos and videos, it can add them to its treasure trove of information about your preferences. That will help it fill out Graph Search, and target you with increasingly accurate ads and ecommerce opportunities. Imagine if Coca-Cola could target ads to people frequently seen with cans of Pepsi in their photos — high potential customers who specifically don’t like them yet. A restaurant could show push real-time ads to people shooting videos of a landmark next door. Facebook could open up ads APIs to surface characteristics like “currently with three or more friends” that a bar could take advantage of to advertise to nearby groups. The war for ad dollars will be won with data. Facebook already sees over 300 million photos uploaded each day. These patents could be a diamond drill, allowing Facebook to mine much more business information out of every piece of user generated content it imports. The world’s premier social network is 9 years old now. In some ways, that’s . People have forged connections with too many people and things they don’t actually care about. Facebook doesn’t know much about your offline life, or whether someone is a close friend or a distant acquaintance in that realm. That leads to a boring news feed — a huge danger to Facebook’s engagement-based business model. Facebook has spent years trying to get people to put in work to explicitly prune and classify their relationships with Friend Lists and news feed filters, but most still don’t. Implicit colocation and business identification could bring new richness and detail to its social graph, so your meatspace experience enhances your world of ones and zeros. |
Dekko Debuts An Augmented Reality Racing Game Playable From The iPad | Kim-Mai Cutler | 2,013 | 6 | 9 | , a San Francisco-based startup that just closed , just brought its first title to market with a racing game that has players drive virtual cars across tabletops. OK, so augmented reality, which overlays virtual items or information over the real world through a phone or tablet’s viewfinder, hasn’t really come into its own yet. There have been plenty of companies like Layar, which built one of the very early augmented reality browsers for the iPhone, which have been around for a few years. That’s partially because the user experience is still a bit unwieldy with people having to take their phones or iPads out and pan their built-in cameras around. But it’s possible that Google Glass could change all of this. Dekko, which recently took , is betting that augmented reality’s moment could be around the corner. Other startups are making this bet as well; another company for augmented reality as well. “We wanted to solve many of the basic user problems with augmented reality. We had a compulsion to at least show something that’s real and fun,” said co-founder and CEO Matt Miesnieks. “We wanted to build an experience that is kind of magical.” The game, which you can demo below, has players hold up their iPads over a table. On the screen, you can see cars racing across a virtual track. It can turn any kind of flat surface into racetrack that’s visible on the iPad. The app is also multiplayer, allowing between one and four people to race each other, do stunts and crash into each other’s cars. The multiplayer mode can show a single, real-time shared view. [vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/67737843 w=500&h=281] from on . To me, it sounds like a proof of concept that demonstrates Dekko’s platform, which was built by the startup’s in-house team of computer vision experts. Eventually, they’ll bring their platform to wearables like Google Glass. “One thing we know about Glass is that our tech will work on it,” Miesnieks said. Dekko’s backers include Echo Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, Venture 51, Blumberg Capital, Launch Capital, Thomvest, Eniac Ventures, and Zig Capital, as well as angels like Howard Lindzon, Erik Moore, Dan Conway, and Raymond Tonsing. |
Build A Company That Attracts The Next Steve Jobs | Derek Andersen | 2,013 | 6 | 30 | [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKrjEg03z0w&w=560&h=315] On Steve Jobs’ first day at Atari in 1973, he walked into the founder/CEO Nolan Bushnell’s office unannounced. “I think you have a really awesome company. I think that everything is pretty good, but I’ve seen your soldering connections and they’re really crappy.” Nolan Bushnell replied, “Well, let’s fix them.” Jobs replied, “I will.” So what did Atari do as a company and culture to become so attractive that Steve Jobs’ literally walked in off the street and demanded a job? Recently Bushnell wrote a book called, . In it he outlines how the culture that he helped create at Atari was critical to hiring and keeping creative talent like Steve Jobs. While Steve Jobs eventually started his own companies, it wasn’t before he made significant contributions to Atari’s success which included building the circuit boards for Breakout (with the help of Steve Wozniak). Let’s also not forget that people like Jack Dorsey and Kevin Systrom also started out as employees. After moving to the Valley for his first job following college, Bushnell quickly realized that working for someone else wasn’t in his DNA. “One of the reasons that Silicon Valley exists is that we have all worked next to somebody who has gone off and been successful,” Bushnell recently told me . “We know firsthand that the guy next to us, that went off and was very successful, was an idiot.” Bushnell went on to pioneer the video game industry with Atari, and after leaving Atari he founded a dozen companies, among other things the popular family restaurant chain Chuck E. Cheese’s. Atari was critical in changing Valley company culture and startups themselves. “Every engineer in the valley in 1970 wore a white shirt and tie to work – that was professional. But we decided we wanted to create a new kind of company that was a total meritocracy. Don’t care about process. Treat everybody like an adult. Let them wear what they want, come to work when they want, work hard or work easy. Where you minimize process, you maximize outcomes.” In this book he outlines dozens of ways that startups can create the type of culture to attract the next great creators. I had a chance to ask him about a couple of these and an except of that conversation is included below. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6udgj5YlW8&w=560&h=315] Bushnell: It’s a marketing ploy. Secrets amplify the press at the time you want it. That is, advertising a product before you can buy it is a waste of money. People are very in the present. So what you really want to do is really push on things when there’s stuff on the shelf, when people can actually act and buy and what have you. So secrets amplify that a great deal. Bushnell: You don’t seek crazies and you don’t seek obnoxious, but you put up with it if they’ve got certain aspects. There are certain people in the world that are the smartest people in the room. It’s obnoxious for them to keep telling you that. Yet, when the chips are down, you kind of want them on your team. So when you have an obnoxious, capable person, figure out how to deal with it. Every company should have an ecosystem that can keep really talented people around. Even if they’re obnoxious, even if they smell bad. Bushnell: When you’re hiring people, there are a lot of people who are able to fake being capable. Certain businesses are more prone to that than others. For example, in the early days of chip design, it took almost a year to get the first prototype of a custom chip. There were some engineer around who posed as one of the great chip designers. Never ever got a chip going. They would be employed until the company had given up on getting a custom chip, then go somewhere else and say, “I was working on custom chips for this company.” Ultimate posers. So you really want to make sure the person has the capability stated and the ability to execute. Bushnell: I love skunkworks. The nice thing about skunkworks is you can try things cheaply. Bureaucracies creep into companies because you have different rules if you have a thousand employees than if you have three. And you can – when you have 1000 employees, the paperwork to buy a pencil will often exceed the pencil, and going down to Radio Shack to buy a part rather than going through purchasing can be the difference between a week’s delay and no delay at all. Those are the sort of things you can open up in a skunkworks that really accelerate projects, get rid of the impediments and go straight through. There are also certain people that just work really well in skunkworks environment that, when in the main body, don’t do as well. Some people like to hide in plain sight, you can’t hide in a skunkworks. Bushnell: Every innovation that has ever happened started out with the rich, because the rich, in some ways pay for the tooling to get it down to consumer prices. Airplanes, automobiles, these were all toys for the rich – telephone. So it clears your mind. If you say, “I want to build this for everyone,” you’re talking about a price that’s probably unrealistic at that point in time. But with experience and with mass production techniques and that, you’ll get there. But maybe not for a couple years. Bushnell: It turns out that our brains are either stuck and ossified, or they’re flexible. And change is what really drives that. What I’m focusing on a lot right now – I’ve got anti-aging games in – is how do we keep our brains flexible? Change is really a key. Creativity is going to be the next big wave. My son right now has a Kickstarter. It’s called the , and it’s about, how do you turn on people – or kids, primarily, that technology is a big giggle? You don’t have to build pacemakers and the next tank. You can build games and carnival rides, all kinds of things. What that does is it opens up new kinds of horizons. I’ve found the more I change, the more happy I am. Bushnell: I went to a flea market, and there was a tin turkey that was about this tall, and it was ungodly ugly. I mean, it was just really bad. And I thought, “Hm.” What I wanted to do was to let people know it was okay to try something and fail at it. So we had a management dinner every quarter, where we would talk about what was happening at the company. One of the core values was, if you try something for all the right reasons, but it still fails, that’s okay. I didn’t want my employees to start feeling guilty about something. We all wanted to be on the same time, and all wanted a good confession. You want to get it cathartically removed. |
Iterations: Getting To Series A Is Not Sexy, It’s Really Hard Work | Semil Shah | 2,013 | 6 | 9 | TechCrunch . If you keep up with all the tech startup news, it’s easy to develop the impression that money is just sloshing around the Valley and even the worst products and ideas curry investors’ interests. Thankfully, this is far from the truth. As many of you know, raising institutional funding is quite hard and the process takes a long time, sometimes years. Years ago, Pandora suffered through fundraising meetings before eventually securing venture capital — the rest is now history. And, just a few years ago, it was Pinterest who had to slog through many financing rejections before turning the tables on everyone. To that end, I wanted to highlight a company that I’ve been personally involved with as an advisor, where I’ve known one co-founder ( ) for seven years through graduate school and have come to know his CEO ( ) over the last five years. In fact, I remember Ryan telling me about his company while we were in graduate school (around 2008), and now, five years after starting their company — — the team finally reached, secured, and their Series A. Below is a brief Q&A with Sunil about their journey to date, which goes into candid detail about fundraising, marketplace businesses, and the emotional ups and downs of the process: We have a long and complicated history. We launched under a different company name in January 2008 as a – our first idea was to give away “Google Docs” for screenwriters to amateur screenwriters. We planned on convincing producers they should crowdsource screenplays from us instead of sourcing screenplays from traditional routes (not too dissimilar from ). Our screenwriting software program became popular, but (surprise, surprise) producers did not want to buy screenplays from us. My co-founder and I were working at separate full-time jobs as we tried to keep the company alive through 2009-2010. We managed to keep the ship afloat long enough to realize our real customers were businesses. Companies started reaching out to us at the start of 2011 effectively saying: “Hey, we don’t have the time or the resources to, hire, vet, and ramp up a freelance writer workforce…you’re that company with a lot of writers – do you think you can help?” officially launched during the summer of 2011 and we raised our first round in (took about 6 months in all). Without disclosing actual numbers, I’ll say that for a seed company we were generating Series A-like revenue by Q3 of 2012. As a result, we drew initial interest and figured it would be relatively easy to get a round done. The main reason we didn’t get over the finish line is that we are smack dab in the middle of two types of businesses: recurring vs. transactional. VCs weren’t sure how to evaluate us because we had some transactional business, and some recurring business. All that really changed between the Fall ‘12 and Spring ‘13 was we shifted focus to more recurring business. We also got of Ooga Labs involved as advisors and investors – those guys have a TON of experience growing marketplace-like businesses. As soon as we got them involved, a lot of VCs got very interested very quickly. Rick Marini, Michael Birch, Chris Michel and Paige Craig joined our investment contingent as well, and were helpful as we evaluated prospective investors, and decided on the best option for the company. We went out to a few investors we really thought made sense for Scripted, and the story was a lot easier to share with a full year of data. Numbers don’t lie, people do. It sucks to try for an A and not get over the finish line. I’m not going to lie, I really suffered last fall and had to get myself back together. A few things really helped: One, we have a great team. Our team stayed positive because they knew what was going on at every moment. We have a transparent culture and this is where it helps. Everyone continued to work hard, and no one gave a second thought to what happened in the Fall. Two, Belgian beer helps. A lot. Three, at the end of the day you have to find what motivates you – for me that’s obviously) my fundamental belief that Scripted is going to be a massive business. Through a combination of two things: growing revenue (nothing beats growing a business the old-fashioned way), and a venture debt round we put together with . Venture debt is a great tool for entrepreneurs to have in their back pockets, and very few folks actually take advantage of it. The cost of debt capital is far cheaper than equity capital (which is why we raised debt rather than an insider round) with one major caveat: you have to be able to make the interest payments. Venture debt firms recognize this, and only make investments in companies that look like they are fundable (eventually), and won’t default on the debt. Entrepreneurs benefit by not taking unnecessary dilution if all they need is a few extra months of cash to hit their funding (or revenue) milestones. My confidence-level was much higher this time. I’d reiterate nothing beats revenue and growth – if you have both, raising money becomes much easier. We ultimately ended up with many options, and had the good fortune (for the first time in the company’s history) of picking between investors. Eric Chin from and Chris Moore from ventures. Note that I list the partner first, and the firm second – when you receive investment from a VC firm, you’re really working with the partner that invests in you, but it’s easy to caught up in the brand names of firms. The process of picking the right investors is not all that straightforward, and my biggest advice here is to do your homework. We had a working relationship with Eric and Omar from Crosslink for a year and change, so we knew what it would be like to work with them, and vice versa. When the time came for us to raise our A, both sides already had a bunch of data, and we knew we wanted to work together. We still went through a traditional, thorough diligence process but all of the questions about whether Eric could be a great board member were already answered. Chris also conducted a thorough diligence process on Scripted, but we did not have the luxury of knowing him for 16 months like we did with Crosslink (and vice versa). Over the period of a few weeks, we spent a lot of time together (including a long Easter Sunday meeting) to understand how we both work. What it ultimately came down to was the references – we asked for numerous references from Chris, and conducted several of our own (outside of his list). The feedback was consistent and positive. Don’t give up. I can’t believe how many entrepreneurs who I personally know, or who are friends of friends who just give up. It’s saddening, but it’s typically the best filter to figure out who is cut out for this stuff. You’re going to suffer and you’re going to look at the bank account and figure out you only have a week or two of payroll left – that’s when you really figure out what you’re made of. . Stay healthy. I wish I’d done a better job of this – I ate like crap, stopped working out and wish I’d taken better care of my health in general. Don’t make that mistake – this process is stressful and you’ll be better off for it if you manage your own health first. It’s all about the story- When a VC bets on you, they aren’t just betting on you as a person, but what you’ve been through. Don’t be afraid to share your story – you don’t need to get too personal or anything, but show that you actually have a human side. It’s the little things that you don’t think matter that can sometimes make the difference. Lots, but here is an abbreviated list: Don’t waste time with funds that aren’t actively investing. blogs about this a bit (her list is not entirely accurate), but you should know that firms you meet with are actually making investments. You have to get to the heart of the reason why VCs passed on you. Often times it’s not the stated reason, but a combination of things. You should reach out through advisors and other investors to find out the real scoop as to why folks pass on you so you can adjust accordingly. I’m not suggesting you make adjustments to your business strategy based on VC feedback, but if you want to raise outside capital you really need to understand why VCs decided to pass on you. The reality is that some VCs won’t get back to you. That’s ok – VCs are super busy and get a ton of inbound interest. Most of the time, it means they’re not interested, though sometimes they just get sidetracked. Focus on the guys that are most responsive – they’re telling you they’re interested. For the less responsive guys, send an email with positive company news/update to tease out whether it’s lack of interest, or they just got sidetracked. That being said, there are a ton of VCs out there who will commit partner time, allude that they are interested, and not get back to you at all after like they are. These are folks you ultimately wouldn’t want to work with anyway. |
Mark Zuckerberg ‘Likes’ SF LGBT Pride As Tech Companies Publicly Celebrate Equal Rights | Billy Gallagher | 2,013 | 6 | 30 | Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook employees celebrated the San Francisco LGBT pride parade from a decorated trolley today, as tech companies across the country very visibly supported equal rights. According to , Facebook had over 700 employees at pride, and Google had over 1,400, around 40% more than last year. This year’s Pride was particularly joyous, as it came just days after the Supreme Court ruled that the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is unconstitutional; the act denied federal benefits to gay couples who were legally married in states that allowed it. This support is a big deal, but what’s most encouraging to me is that most of the posts I saw today, especially from college friends, didn’t talk about these companies’ support as a big deal at all; it seemed more like the fulfillment of an expectation. Now, just having fair employment practices isn’t enough. Tech companies, and others, are showing their public support at celebrations like Pride with big team outings that build team cohesiveness and celebrate the company. Those who don’t could be seen as not supporting LGBT employees and could be hurt in recruiting talent. , tech companies celebrated across the country: We just had a great time walking in the San Francisco Parade! — Electronic Arts (@EA) Happy SF weekend! Come by the booth at Grove/Larkin to snag an Uber beach ball or tank! — Uber San Francisco (@Uber_SF) Accept people everywhere. — Jack Dorsey (@jack) Well done Facebook — Bailey Richardson (@baileyelaine) The Xbox team marched with a neat float in Seattle: And some Uber folks rolled in style, also at Seattle Pride: |
Looking For A Show? Preamp.fm Builds A Music Video Playlist Of Bands Playing Nearby | Greg Kumparak | 2,013 | 6 | 30 | Oh, my. I think someone has actually done it. Someone has built a system that promises to help me find fun things to do near me that… actually makes me want to do fun things near me. Like many a concept before it, is so simple, yet so clever, that it drives me crazy that I didn’t think of it first. Preamp.fm finds a bunch of artists playing shows in venues near you, then builds an old-school MTV-esque video playlist with one video for each band in hopes that you’ll like one enough to go see the show. Simple, right? But it works . Maybe I’m lame. Maybe I’m just not very good at this whole concert-going thing. Whatever the case, I tend to not go see shows unless I hear that a band I already love is coming to town. Of the half dozen-or-so concerts I go to each year, almost all of them are bands I’ve already been listening to for the better part of a decade. Most of them are bands I’ve seen a bunch of times already. If variety is the spice of life, my concert hopping life is… pretty friggin’ bland.
In the first thirty minutes or so of playing with Preamp.fm, I’ve already found 3 new bands I want to go see. Here’s how Preamp.fm works: You pick your city, and it starts playing videos from bands playing soon. That’s it. You can skip to the next band, bring up a big list of all the shows they’ve found happening over the next two weeks, or just sit back and let’em roll. In the bottom left of each video is a “Get Tickets” button that pushes you to the venue’s purchasing system. And therein lies their business model: they’ll collect a commission on tickets, whenever a venue allows it. If they can get you to buy a ticket, they might make a few bucks off the sale. Meanwhile, all of the videos — the heaviest part of the site, traffic wise — are being piped in from Youtube, so Preamp.fm’s hosting costs are presumably pretty dang low. The users finds new bands, the bands get more fans and exposure, the venues make more sales, and Preamp makes money for bringing them all together. Everyone wins! Hurray! Alas, Preamp.fm isn’t a nationwide thing yet. In fact, it only works in four major cities right now: Los Angeles, New York City, Washington D.C., and San Francisco. Every city has different venues, and every venue shares their upcoming shows differently, so building its coverage out quickly might prove to be something of a challenge. Preamp.fm is hoping to find a “global crew of local music experts” to help them curate things. Is it perfect? Nah — of course not — but remember, it just launched, built by a small, bootstrapped team. It’s not going to have every venue right off the bat, even in the cities that it supports. It also doesn’t seem to tell you when a show is already sold out — something which might get a bit annoying, if you’re consistently finding bands you like only to be unable to get tickets. But this concept is excellent, and the execution so far is quite solid; if they can figure out how to scale it up, I see myself using it regularly. Preamp.fm was built by , a freelance developer/product designer out of Washington, DC. You can . |
The Plasticky BlackBerry Q5 Is Not The Mid-Tier Hero Handset BB10 Needs To Save It | Natasha Lomas | 2,013 | 6 | 30 | In some ways the Qwerty-packing Q5, with its throwback BlackBerry looks, is a far more important device for BlackBerry than its current flagship, the all-touch . Or the premium-priced Qwerty-clad . The mid-tier Q5 should be priced to shift — because that’s what BlackBerry needs to happen to start regaining the ground it lost when it was forced to pause and reboot its OS to play catch-up with rivals. That’s what the Q5 should do, but will it? The problem for BlackBerry is it may already be too late to turn things around. BlackBerry’s latest results, , made grim reading as the company missed analyst expectations, and its share price took a battering. It shipped just . But it has only had two BB10 devices to sell, one of which (the Q10) only made it to market in the U.S. earlier this month. Which makes the Q5 even more important: BlackBerry needs more handsets in its portfolio attacking different price points to have a chance of ramping up sales. The problem is the Q5 doesn’t feel like a saviour. It feels closer to a kludge. Likely it isn’t going to be cheap enough to really hit Android where it hurts (it’s mid-tier, not budget after all). Nor does it feel like enough of a leap forward to convert a new generation of users to BlackBerry. BB10 is still Blackberry playing catch-up with competitors, rather than streaking ahead in the innovation stakes. Of course many Blackberry loyalists and long-time users aren’t going to be unhappy with the Q5’s old school Qwerty form factor. But that staid staple means it necessarily offers a crimped OS experience versus the full-touch Z10. On the Q5 — as with the Q10 — the touchscreen has had to be squashed into a square to accommodate yesteryear’s physical Qwerty keys. Which is a problem because BlackBerry’s new platform needs room for the user to manoeuvre. BB10 is built around gestures and layering content — and that whole “peek and flow” dynamic comes into its own on a full touchscreen. But on the Q5’s small square it’s inevitably constrained. Yet, despite this squeezed screen, the Q5 is surprisingly big for a Qwerty BlackBerry. Certainly compared to past generations of RIM hardware — those ever-so-popular Curves and Bolds it apparently succeeds. As well as being constrained by having to make room for the keyboard, space has to be found to accommodate the bevels where BB10’s gestures have to start. This makes the overall front footprint a bit, well, hefty. It looks like an oversized, top-heavy BlackBerry, which will feel like a step backwards to those accustomed to BlackBerry’s traditionally highly pocketable handsets. And who else is this Qwerty-packer really trying to woo? Android users have so much choice when it comes to keyboard software that even if they don’t get on with the stock Android virtual keyboard they can switch to Swype, or Swiftkey or any one of the growing number of . The Q5’s immutable plastic keys feel terribly dumb phone in comparison. Even the BlackBerry exec demoing the Q5 at the press event I attended to pick up a review device described the physical keyboard as “infamous” (Freudian slip?). And said he found typing on it “a bit strange” because “I’m used to typing on the [full touchscreen] Z10.” That says it all really. The Q5 is a deeply conservative device. It continues to look backwards to BlackBerry’s legacy keyboard-chained past — a compromise between old technology and new software. And like most compromises, it’s unlikely to entirely please anybody. It’s not that it’s terrible, it just doesn’t feel good enough to make an impact — and that means it’s not good enough because BlackBerry needs something remarkable to stand out in this crowded mid-tier segment. Yet you can see exactly how and why BlackBerry has arrived here. In its current shrunken state, as its user base and revenues have diminished, the company has had to retrench. It can’t afford to lose any more users, yet it can’t afford to ramp up the number of devices in its portfolio quickly enough — making it super important that it retains its one remaining heartland: corporate users. Those are the last really sticky BlackBerry users, even as fickle consumers have wandered off elsewhere. So BlackBerry can’t cut its ties with the past as it’s now even more dependent on its most conservative demographic. Its focus has to be on servicing that existing corporate user-base — because their loyalty is locked up far more than the average consumer. Some 90 percent of the Fortune 500 are BlackBerry customers, according to the company. And some 60 percent are apparently trialling BB10. BlackBerry needs those bulk-buyers to migrate to BB10 and continue pumping money into its coffers. If they abandon ship BlackBerry really will be an adrift ghost ship. Selling mobile email to corporates is how BlackBerry built its original mobile empire. And selling to corporates is where BlackBerry has had to retrench to now. An army of cheap Androids is sweeping away its other former stronghold: teens. While free, over-the-top messaging apps like WhatsApp have eroded the appeal of BBM (BlackBerry’s also feels like too little, too late). Now, with the mid-tier-priced Q5, BlackBerry is apparently hoping to woo those kids back. But the Q5 compromises on target demographic, too. On the one hand BlackBerry says it’s aiming the Q5 at younger users. But it also cites SMEs and corporates as targets — flagging up the Balance feature that allows segmentation of work and personal content on the device. Little wonder then that, design-wise, the Q5 looks like it’s trying not to be too much of anything, so no one feels like disowning it. If I had to use one word to describe it, it would be generic. Or plasticky. It’s as if it’s been deliberately left as blank as possible to be as inoffensive as possible — to try to appeal to as wide a group as possible. In other words: another compromise. The other problem BlackBerry has is that corporates are famously conservative about technology upgrades, which explains why it has no plans to sunset BB 7 any time soon. Corporate investments in BES 7 “have to be protected,” as one BlackBerry spokesman put it. Which means the company has to keep supporting BB 7 and producing devices running that last-gen OS for the foreseeable future. Which stymies change, and hampers BB10’s progress as a portion of resources have to go on the old platform. Plus, if BB 7 devices are still on offer, why should corporates risk the upheaval of upgrading to a device like the Q5? They’ll stick with what they know, and leave this compromise on the shelf. So while BlackBerry youth users are going — or have already gone — elsewhere to check out shinier hardware, its business users are foot-dragging and in no hurry to move on. Talk about being stuck between a rock and a hard place. No wonder turning this tanker is so hard. Pricing will of course play a key role in whether the Q5 sits on shelves or not. The mid-tier is where the largest Android army roams. But carrier tariffs for the Q5 are going to need to be a lot lower than the early EE pricing of £26 a month to be competitive enough to win over consumers. That price is pitting the Q5 against iPhone 4S or Galaxy S3 tariff prices. Which makes BlackBerry’s mid-tier offering a tough sell, whichever tech camp you prefer to sit in. Regardless of whether this middling handset ends up selling well or not, it may make little material difference to BlackBerry’s prospects. The perception that the mobile maker is now locked in a death spiral will only increase shareholder pressure on the management team, and make acquisition a more likely end. BlackBerry would need to sell an awful lot of Q5s to calm that spin. |
What Games Are: The Ludophile Mindset | Tadhg Kelly | 2,013 | 6 | 30 | There are regular people who like music on their phones and maybe listen to the radio or Spotify. For them, music is just a back track of daily life. Then there are interested people, who like good headphones, pay for a Spotify subscription or attend the occasional concert. Beyond these two groups lie the passionate 5%, the audiophiles. They follow bands, hunt down vinyl records, read blogs or magazines about music and spend serious coin on their habit. In the games market the picture is surprisingly similar. You have the mildly interested who play free games on their phones and social networks and the moderately interested who buy one gaming machine and a couple of games over a few years. Then you have the self-described gamers, the ludophiles (ludo- as a general term means play). They follow franchises, hunt down retro cartridges, read blogs or magazines about games and spend serious coin on their habit. What sets them apart is just as interesting. Music fans have no issue with the status of their medium. Music is art, music is cool, music is culture. Gaming fans, on the other hand, . A key dynamic that recycles is the idea of the game that proves that games are as good as movies. Last year that was , so far this year it’s . Another difference is the relationship with technology itself. Audiophiles are very much into both the sound and experience with their music. Formats like vinyl endure because audiophiles believe they sound better (whether they actually do is a question for the ages, but the point is that they believe it). Album art, memorabilia and visibility of collection are also important. History matters. So does the ability to pull out a greatest hit from 40 years and play it. Interoperability is key. Gaming fans, on the other hand, tend to spend their money on the latest technology and forget interoperability. Backwards compatibility is generally not a strong motivator, with the most-dedicated preferring instead to own dozens of gaming machines and play the games of a certain year on the machines for which they were intended. A bit like if Universal Music Group didn’t just develop talent and publish music, but also made devices that could only play UMG music. Ludophiles are relatively comfortable doing this. The really interesting thing about the ludophile mindset is the ways in which it doesn’t want games to change. Ludophiles do not like mobile games. They feel pretty ambivalent about tablet games. They regard that kind of future somewhat askance and prefer to cheer for stasis than progress. This is because they buy into the story of the medium itself. Games as a hobby are as much about participating in the story of the medium itself as having fun and playing games. To the true believer games are on an evolutionary path toward somewhere, a final destination of infinite perfection, and this is to be promoted and defended at all costs. One of my favorite teaser trailers is the one for . It shows the Master Chief emerging onto a desert scene. He looks to his left and the shot pans out to reveal huge starships moving over to a basin. There is an ominous rumble, cracks appear in the landscape and megalithic doors rise up to reveal a bright light. The light reaches upwards in an awe-inspiring sight before the scene blanks out and we hear the line “This is the way the world ends.” If you wanted to find a metaphor for how the ludophile views the threat against games, it’s a bit like this. It’s high dudgeon and drama and when changes are averted. The ludophile wants the amazing, the epic and the awesome. The Citizen Kane of gaming. But he also wants a , a device with a type of controller that feels like it’s heading toward perfection. He’s not enamored of divergences from the path. While the world loved the Nintendo Wii, plenty of console gamers always got hung up on its lack of HD. The news that , that is actually rather good, that Google may be and that GamePop has released tend to fall on deaf ears. Where many observers like myself think that this interoperable Android-driven approach will yield big returns for the game console in the long run, today’s console gamer is a bit nonplussed. He gets hung up on the fact that Android is for phones, and phone games are “weak” for some reason. The microconsole doesn’t fit the ideal of aiming for perfection. or the tablet, it seems like a big step backward. And that would all be fine if it seemed that the console sector was a viable market. But I don’t believe it is in the long term. I think it’s merely in a new-hardware exuberant phase, but its overall prognosis is starting to look awfully like the market for record players. There will always be loyalists, but the question becomes whether there are enough of them to really shift the needle. Ludophiles are a fixed audience with fixed ideas of what the future should be. The perfection they aspire toward feels just out of reach, but it always seems to get closer. The Last of Us, for example, really is breathtaking. But that kind of game is also enormously expensive to develop, and is now at the point where it needs to sell 4 or 5 million copies to prove its viability. The technology required to power these advances is also incredibly expensive, so much so that neither or make any money from being in the games business. Nintendo does (well, bar lately) but Nintendo makes all its own content too, so there’s greater scope for margin there. With the next generation bringing yet more increases on the development spending side (historically, this is what tends to happen), the risks inevitably go up. So do closures, high profile failures and a reduction in diversity. There are not enough ludophiles out there to satisfy that kind of price tag indefinitely, and so decline is inevitable. However decline will not happen dramatically, all at once. “This is the way the world ends” is taken from TS Eliot’s . The line that follows it is “Not with a bang, but with a whimper.” Not with the big supernova-esque explosion of ultimate victory and defeat, but with a slow decay. The death by a thousand cuts from phones, tablets, microconsoles, PCs, social networks and wearables. And what’s fuelling that is an end to the power advantage and a large leap forward in convenience. The other 95%, the regular and the interested, always tend to gravitate toward good-enough rather than perfection, convenience over fidelity. They bought into DVD because it seemed much better than video, but not Blu-ray. They plumbed for digital streaming instead. They bought into HDTV, but not 3DTV, and likely have very little interest in 4KTV. They bought into iPads because they’re much simpler to use than PCs, and don’t care about some of the lost potential that they’ve given up. They prefer to subscribe to Spotify because who has the room to devote acres of wall space to albums. Or books. And the same is true for games. Tablet gaming may not adhere to the lofty goals of the quest for perfection, but it’s cheap and super convenient. Microconsoles may be powered by relatively underpowered processors but this is only really their first year. 2-3 years down the road they’ll pack enough punch and get their messaging right that they’ll start to sound irresistible to everyone bar ludophiles. What happens when the world realizes that it can play good quality games, complete with game controllers, on its tablets? What happens when we can play games, either casual, deep or anything in between, from our phones and simply stream them to our TVs? Not with a bang… |
Paul Graham’s Prescription For VCs: Move Fast, Take Less Equity | Ryan Lawler | 2,013 | 6 | 30 | At the 500 Startups’ last week, Y Combinator’s Paul Graham gave a presentation in which he suggested a new way for Series A investments to get done. Graham provided a few suggestions for innovative early stage investors to differentiate themselves. It basically comes down to: move fast, and don’t over-invest in startups just to get a certain percentage of equity. “One of the biggest things investors do not get about the fund raising process is what an immense cost talking to them imposes on the startups that are raising money, especially when a startup consists just of the founders. Everything completely grinds to a halt during fundraising,” Graham said at the conference. Graham suggested that as a result, there’s room for an investor to undercut the competition by moving more quickly with early stage investments. If there existed a reputable investor who would invest $100,000 on market terms within 24 hours, they would be able to corner the market on the best startups, he said. That firm would be approached by all the worst startups as well, Graham said, but at least they’d see everything. In contrast, firms which have a reputation for taking a long time to make their investments would be approached last. Another way that venture firms could differentiate themselves is by breaking from the typical 20 percent in equity that they ask for during Series A investments. VCs are investing too much and startups are raising too much during that fund raising period, but that could change if someone were willing to break ranks and actually invest less, but for less equity. “I think the biggest danger for VCs, and also the biggest opportunity is in the Series A stage,” Graham said. “Right now, VCs knowingly invest too much in the Series A stage.” When there’s a lot of competition for deals, the number that moves isn’t the amount of equity that VCs take, but the amount that they invest and thus the valuation of the company, Graham said. In the case of the most promising startups, Series A investors force companies to take more money than they want to raise. “Some VCs lie and say that the company needs that much,” he said. “Others are more candid and admit that their business models require them to own a certain percentage of the company, but we all know that the amounts being invested are not determined by the amount that the companies need.” It used to be that startups needed to give up that much of their company to raise money, but those days are over. With that in mind, Graham thinks that the first VC who breaks ranks and starts doing Series A investments for the amount of equity that the founder is willing to sell stands to reap huge benefits. “If there were a reputable top tier firm that was willing to do a Series A round for as much stock as the founders wanted to sell, they would instantly get almost all the best startups,” Graham said. “And the best startups are where the money is.” I talked to him about that theory and about how Y Combinator has scaled in the video above. (Skip ahead to about 5:30 to hear his thoughts on changing equity structures.) |
Why Facebook Needs Trending Links | Josh Constine | 2,013 | 6 | 30 | Facebook is not working on an RSS product, we hear, but it
still has a huge and truly social opportunity in news discovery.
Facebook could turn what links we share with friends into an
automatic Digg for the world. Over a billion people are on
Facebook, and many share links to news stories and offsite content
along with their commentary. Yet rather than post publicly like on
Twitter, most posts are shared semi-privately with friends and
acquaintances. Right now there’s no way for people to glean the
collective opinion of Facebook users on what’s important. Only
Facebook’s algorithms see what the most popular links and words
are across the entire social network. If Facebook took data on what
people shared and used it in a privacy-safe, anonymous, aggregate
form, it could create a list of the world’s most popular web pages
at any given moment. Conveniently linked to from the Facebook home
page and mobile app, the list could become an informative and
addictive window it our collective consciousness. There are places to
get a peek into what the world is sharing or interested in today,
but none with Facebook’s data set or mainstream user base. Reddit
is amazing. It’s a wildly diverse community of people picking the
day’s most important content across a near-limitless array of
categories. Their votes surface what’s most interesting, and their
voices are arranged into intelligible threads and conversations.
Its threaded design is so good, in fact, that I think we’ll see
other less-formatted comment systems move towards Reddit’s style
with time. You could argue whether it’s an advantage or
disadvantage, but Reddit is based on active submissions. For
something to appear on Reddit, someone must have the initiative and
take the time to purposefully post it. Once there, it’s only the
Redditors who vote and comment that determine a post’s rank. That
makes what tops Reddit’s homepage more of a reflection of the
Reddit community than the web as a whole. Sure, there are R/’s for
everyone, but as a whole, Reddit carries a bit of a proudly nerdy
attitude mixed with doses of skepticism and humor. Facebook’s
opportunity comes from the potential to scan everything shared on
it and use a wider, more mainstream definition of popularity to
rank a list of what’s interesting. No one would have to actively
vet the list. It would simply evolve organically based on how
frequently things were shared on Facebook, and maybe how many
clicks, likes, and comments they received. Offering lists by
country or international region could make sure the content is
somewhat localized. The Facebook news discovery experience I’m imagining shares some
similarities with Twitter’s Trending Topics. It too doesn’t have to
be actively vetted by users. People just go about their days
tweeting, and popular words and hashtags bubble to the top of the
list. But do you find yourself addicted to checking Twitter’s
trending topics? No. At least I sure don’t. They can be briefly
shocking or amusing but they rarely teach me much or spur me to
click. Twitter Trends don’t even have their own web page. They’re
just stuck on the left rail of Twitter’s home page. On mobile
they’re lumped into the Discover tab. In what I see as their
critical shortcoming, they have no context. No way to understand
why they’re being shared. Clicking them simply opens a search for
that word or hashtag, which can produce results that are a mess,
tough to decipher, and don’t provide any definitive answer to what
the trend is about. For obvious things like sporting events and
huge international news, these streams can offer a fascinating
insight into what the world is thinking. But even a Google search
couldn’t quickly tell me that #FOTunis referred to the Freedom
Online conference in Tunis, the capital of Tunisia. Organizing news
discovery around individual words or short phrases doesn’t seem
very efficient or easy…at least not with this design or without
context. If Facebook centered a news discovery product around
links, it could make it much clearer what people are discussing.
Links typically come with some combination of a headline, a photo,
and some text that can be used as a blurb. All Facebook would need
to do is show a list of links with this info, just like it does
when you post websites to the news feed, and people could get the pulse
of the planet in a quick skim. While we’re on the topic of Facebook
hashtags, signs indicate the company will eventually create a list
of trending hashtags. Facebook launched hashtags, similar to
Twitter’s, earlier this month, and on Thursday launched Related
Hashtags, which displays other tags frequently added to the same
post as a hashtag you’ve searched for or clicked on. I believe
Facebook is rolling the hashtags product out slowly so it can learn
to slice and dice the data in order to create a trending hashtags
product. Let’s be clear. A Facebook news
reading product wouldn’t replace Reddit or Twitter, or necessarily
even compete with them directly. But it could take the theme of
surfacing what people care about, make it less subjective, and
house it in an easy to use and accessible design. I personally
think I would visit this “Facebook Trends” page frequently.
Whenever I read through my news feed and started getting bored, I
could click to it for inspiration. I’d skim through it, clicking
through to different links and then going back to the Trends page for
more. If it had lists based on geography, or a personalized list
that tuned itself to my behavior, interests, and what people
similar to me enjoy, I might visit even more. From Digg to Reddit
to 9Gag to Techmeme, great lists of trending content have proven
addictive. If Facebook nailed
this, it could generate a ton of traffic. I think some people would
click to refresh it and see what’s happening in the world often —
almost as often as they read the news feed for content from their
friends. The two could be seen as parallel pillars of information —
that which is interesting specifically to you, and that which is
interesting to everyone. Private and public. Subjective and
objective. A Facebook trending links section could also spark high-quality conversations within Facebook. If it shows me something
that resonates with me, I might not just click, but share and talk
about it with my friends. Ideally, if friends had already shared
it, I’d see that and the conversations that followed in-line on the
trends list. Facebook already has a nifty way of doing this in the
most recent design of the news feed. It shows a stack of profile
pictures next to a shared link, and you can hover over each to see
how that friend described the content and what their friends
replied. Using that design for Trending Links my friends had
already shared could be a great alternative to one long, messy
comment thread of strangers. If you’re thinking “I don’t need this.
My friends already share great links and clue me in to what’s
happening in the world”, you’re lucky, and you’re probably in the
minority. Remember that the average user had around 180 to 250
friends last I heard. I worry that great swaths of Facebook’s user
base, especially in emerging markets and countries where the
service bloomed later, are missing out on one of the great joys of
the social web — the instant, collective conversation surrounding
the day’s news, tragedies, and triumphs. It would just take one
person perusing Facebook Trends to enlighten an entire social
cluster. Since there aren’t real character limits on posts, and
comment threads are clearly displayed, people would have plenty of
room to voice dissenting opinions about the world’s most popular
links. In that way, Facebook’s format and the way it diverges from
Twitter could keep it from becoming an echo chamber. In fact, the
aggregated “5 friends shared this link” design makes it quick to
view a variety of perspectives on a piece of content. With any
discovery medium comes opportunities to monetize through sponsored
placement. Brands could pay to have their links inserted within the
list of trending links. This could become a premier channel for
content marketing. Traditional ads might not work there, but links
to branded content or apps, fun marketing stunts, or contests could
do well when not jammed into the news feed where they don’t quite
fit with organic content from friends. Top-tier advertisers have
been pushing Facebook for ways to reach large audiences all at
once, and this could be the ticket. If Facebook wants to house our
digital lives, it can’t just be about who we are and what we’ve
done. It must also encompass what we think, and to get us to
volunteer our thoughts, it should strive to inform us, inspire us,
and seed our discussions with friends by surfacing what’s popular
around the globe. [Image Credit: Brian Shaler] |
Why Obama Was Never Going To Be A Civil Liberties Champion | Gregory Ferenstein | 2,013 | 6 | 30 | President Barack Obama was never going to be a champion of civil liberties; he leads a growing sect of the Democratic party that prioritizes the collective good and mass innovation over individualism. This coercively inclusive political philosophy feels that every citizen, business, country, and institution has an obligation to contribute to the common good. Obama will mandate universal health coverage but let private insurers run the programs. He’ll maintain Middle Eastern wars but work with Russia on global nuclear disarmament. Expand the education budget but give more resources to union-less charter schools, and build online tools to monitor stimulus spending while collecting phone records of every American. The philosophy is a mix of fierce anti-individualism and anti-authoritarianism–what political scientists call “communitarianism.” “In the my wildest dreams, during eighteen years of championing communitarianism, I did not expect a presidential candidate to be as strongly identified with this political philosophy as Obama is,” George Washington Professor of philosophy, Amatai Etzioni. Established liberal institutions have always worried that communitarian optimism was blind to the damage government agencies and big business could exact on society’s most vulnerable. Since 9/11, the most prominent communitarians have generally defended mass NSA and FBI spying against the fears of their liberal cousins. “The key issue is not if certain powers-for example, the ability to decrypt e-mail-should or should not be available to public authorities, but whether or not these powers are used legitimately and whether mechanisms are in place to ensure such usage,” Etzioni, in regard to a series of high-profile debates with former ACLU president, Nadeen Strossen, during the post-9/11 ramp-up to the Patriot Act. Communitarians are generally okay with privacy invasion, so long as there is sufficient public oversight to make sure the government is doing its job. “For communitarians, public safety generally comes first,” University of Southern California Professor Brian Rathbun writes to me in an email. “A key element of Obama’s personal philosophy is on the merits of cooperation, that collective enterprises yield greater gains than individual action.” The obsession with mass collaboration largely explains much of Obama’s failing civil liberties record, across the board, as he’s also of experimental charters, which reject the job stability of traditional schools. Obama is not the only rabid communitarian. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has distinguished himself as a collaboration and drone-happy public servant: blanketing the city with law-enforcement drones and reportedly threatened to “F***cking destroy” the taxi industry . Bloomberg, first and foremost, wants innovation over protectionist policies. During a press conference, Bloomberg told me that taxi unions were part of “the old entrenched industries that try to use the shield of regulation…to protect them from the kind of competition that benefits society.” Closing the door on civil liberties, however, has opened up some exciting . For instance, ObamaCare included a “waiver for state innovation” that exempts any state from the new healthcare law, so long as states can cover everyone without increasing costs. In essence, it’s like Google’s 20 percent time. Everyone has to innovate and hopes that someone will come up with the best solution to healthcare. It’s radically optimistic about the power of individual creativity, but refuses to allow citizens or states to be spectators (hence, the core of the name “community”). Notably, it’s quite easy to spot communitarians based on who Silicon Valley’s deep-pocketed donors are supporting. While the Bay Area gave more to Obama than either Wall Street or Hollywood (Los Angeles), they only give to a few candidates. Newark Mayor and Senate candidate Cory Booker is a Silicon Valley favorite and has focused the $100 million education donation he got from Mark Zuckerberg on controversial charter schools. It should be no surprise that the , privacy-skittish social network is itself a communitarian totem. Facebook has aggressively fought FTC regulations to enroll users in new products (“opt-in”). Facebook has argued that if users had been required to opt-in to the newsfeed, the initial privacy hysteria would have blunted adoption of a tool that is now a stable of social networking. Just like in a community, participation and sharing are the default assumptions; privacy and isolation is left as an inconvenient anti-social option. Together with their friends in Silicon Valley, communitarians are becoming a dominate force in society. To the extent that readers optimistically believe that cooperation between foreign governments, big business, and everyday citizens can yield collective prosperity, the growing power of the communitarian Democratic is a welcome change. For those who fear that we live in a zero-sum world between the powerful and weak, communitarians are blindly leading us into an , rights-free society. If you’d like to learn more, read my full OpEd on . |
The Rise Of The Ephemeralnet | Sarah Perez | 2,013 | 6 | 30 | In the aftermath of the dot-com crash, a new era for the web began to take hold – a turning point whose seismic shift was hyped under the moniker “Web 2.0.” The concept referred to the web becoming a platform, a home for services whose popularity grew through network effects, user-generated content and collaboration. Blogging, social media sites, wikis, mashups, and more reflected a changing consciousness among the Internet’s denizens – one which Tim O’Reilly, whose Web 2.0 conferences helped solidify the term as a part of our everyday lexicon, as a “collective intelligence, turning the web into a kind of global brain.” Since that time, because of humans’ intrinsic need to apply a structure to amorphous things to give them a semblance of order – things like the web, for example – there have been many attempts to define what “Web 3.0” might be. At one point, the assumption was that Web 3.0 woud be the “semantic web.” A place where machine-readable metadata is applied, allowing the web and the services that live upon it to understand the content and the links between the people, places, and things that fill its servers. To some extent, the semantic web did arrive in things like , an upgrade to Google Search whose underpinnings include a database filled with millions of objects and billions of connections between them. But semantic technology never became so widespread so as to define a new era of the web itself. Meanwhile, others claimed Web 3.0 would be the shift to mobile devices, the rise of the “Internet of Things,” or would emerge from web services growing more personalized to their users – Google’s predictive search service “Google Now” could be seen as one example of this, perhaps. But none of these got to win the Web 3.0 branding, either. So what will come next? Will another notable turning point for the web as we know it ever evolve? Yes, of course, and it’s happening now. It’s harder to spot because this time around because it’s not growing out of the ashes of a largely desiccated web as with Web 2.0, which blossomed following the dot-com era’s end. Instead, the new web is growing up alongside the web of today. It could, one day, take over, but that remains to be seen. And we don’t have to call it Web 3.0. That’s a bit simplistic. But it does deserve recognition. In retrospect, what Web 2.0 meant to the vast lot of the web’s users was a large number of lightweight services – software perpetually in beta that ran online not out of a box. It harnessed the wisdom of the crowds and the willing contributions of user data, which, in the end, became the services’ value. Facebook’s social graph and profile data, for instance, is now the product it sells to advertisers who target anonymized demographic groups based on things like age, education, location, and more. Wikipedia grew from the efforts of thousands who aggregated their time and knowledge to building an online encyclopedia. Even the “blogosphere” is a Web 2.0 product, one where a network of writers and publishers linked and commented, reblogged and shared. But the web is not a static thing. It grows and shifts to reflect the society it serves. For those who saw the web emerge in their lifetimes, the ability to publish and connect with a vast audience around the world is a marvel. To rediscover long-lost friends on social networks, or chat with someone on the other side of the globe, or share photos with your friends and family so easily, still amazes. But today, a new group of web users is coming of age. They aren’t in awe of the connectivity and openness the web provides, that’s just the way it’s always been. And sometimes, they even kind of resent it. Barely able to remember a time when the web didn’t exist, this group has been forced to grow up online, living in public in an art project-slash-eerie . “In the not-so-distant future of life online, we will willingly trade our privacy for the connection and recognition we all deeply desire,” said , who documented this and other controversial human experiments in her 2009 film “We Live in Public.”
She also warned us of the dangers of living our lives exposed, with what now sounds like common sense: “the Internet, as wonderful as it is, is not an intimate medium. It’s just not,” she said. “If you want to keep something intimate and if you want to keep something sacred, you probably shouldn’t post it.” But we did it anyway. We posted it. We liked it. We shared it. We hashtagged it. And when we ran out of things to document about ourselves, we turned towards our children. Now of age, those young digital natives whose lives we cataloged without their consent are rebelling. They’re discarding the values of the previous generation – those of their parents, the authoritarians – and defining new ones. They don’t want open social networks, they want intimacy. They don’t believe every action has to be meaningful and permanent. The imagine . , the “ephemeral” messaging service where pictures and videos are taken, shared, then discarded – allowed to become memories – as this new era, but that’s just wrong. It’s only one example. Among its active users, Snapchat is engaging and addictive, and representative of an increased desire for privacy. However, it’s not the only service out there defining a different kind of experience. as a whole has given way to each with millions of users of their own. While these may not have the parlor trick of “disappearing” messages, they also represent a rebellion against the “one network to rule them all” concept. These messaging apps are often used with a close set of friends or family members, where data shared remains fairly isolated and private, as opposed to publicized and findable on the larger web. It’s not about anonymity. It’s about a different type of community. One not cluttered by bosses or parents. One less searchable. Even Twitter is returning to its SMS roots who revel in its semi-private nature. Twitter users can adopt pseudonyms, and you through Twitter search, which makes it feel like less of a permanent record, and a freedom to be “real” without consequence.
Meanwhile, on the youth-dominated social service , users also don’t have to sign up with their “real” identities. This allows them to explore and experiment with new identities and sub-cultures, the way young adults naturally do in the offline world. And on a growing mobile social network for sharing secrets, , which this month saw over 2.1 billion pageviews, users can express their innermost feelings – even those they’re ashamed or scared of – and become connected with a community for support, or, . And all this before they identify themselves by name. While some confuse the “Ephemeralnet” with the so-called “SnapchatNet,” in reality, it’s not only a new way to socialize online, it’s a new way to think about everything. You can see the trend also in the rise of the (somewhat) anonymous and untraceable . Unlike traditional transactions, Bitcoin is decentralized and doesn’t require banks or governmental oversight or involvement. And though it’s not entirely anonymous, there are already efforts, like , working to change that. There are also efforts at making other forms of communication more ephemeral, too. Phone calls become more private through SMS secure or , and internal business communications unarchivable .
As we head into the post-PRISM era, there’s even a chance that this trend towards privacy will become further entrenched. Take for instance, a little-known service like saw by 50 percent in just over a week after the PRISM reveal. If it can now find traction for its online service and accompanying based not just on PRISM fears, but on connecting with this larger trend of impermanence, then it could even have a shot at siphoning away a big enough handful of users to sustain its business. But at the end of the day, the may never get to become as defining a trend as Web 2.0 once was. Though it may find adoption beyond the demographics of its youngest participants, it will continue to share the web with the services that preceded it – services too big, too habitual, and too lucrative, to die off entirely. But in the meantime, a new social norm could still be established. One where those who play for the cameras are outed and ostracized; where we value human connections enabled by technology over meaningless “social” ; and where we care more about our relationships, and less about the number of likes and shares we have. you only use hashtags if you want to be found. I think there’s a certain stigma around people who try too hard on the Internet. — ninakix (@ninakix) |
PandaWhale’s Slow And Steady March To Relevance | Semil Shah | 2,013 | 6 | 30 | TechCrunch There is an interesting shift occurring in consumer websites and apps where users perform microwork that reshapes experiences. Classic examples of this are how Pinterest users are grabbing images from the web, personally reorganizing them, and, in the process, image search engine, much like Google Images. And some would argue even better and more relevant. Or consider Instapaper and Pocket users who grab content to read later, stripped free of bloated ads and other unnecessary information. There are more and more services fitting into this trend, which I’ve called a “ ,” and one emergent property that’s doing this in a novel way is one you may not have heard of: . Go to PandaWhale and you won’t be visually impressed. The site isn’t winning design Webby’s any time soon. Users who come to create “stashes” of images and/or links to share publicly with others, and each stash represents an entirely open web page entirely crawlable by search engines. On each page, like a Quora thread, Tumblr post, etc., users can log in via various sites to PandaWhale and do their own patched-together version of a RapGenius annotation or commentary on the stashed item. The product tends to appeal to web users who want to save and organize links, as well as allow others to comment and co-create with them. Based on that description, PandaWhale doesn’t sound too different from many other sites that do these sorts of things, but lurking under the hood is a wily strategy that is being rewarded by one of the biggest dogs on the street: Google. The name PandaWhale partly derives from the theory that there are whales and pandas on the web, where a few whales who have big ideas and big audiences create and organize content, and where many pandas sit peacefully and consume that content, much like a panda would graze on bamboo. In startup-speak, the pandas are the unique visitors who somehow end up on a site like PandaWhale, and the whales are the rabid collectors who stash content and interact with others through a variety of online personas, some real and some through pseudonyms. While it’s important to have many whales stashing, it’s really about the quality of each new page, as well as how much each whale creates. The juice behind PandaWhale’s recent is that this small group of whales subtly conducts important work for Google by bringing content (including images) from regions of the web where Google’s crawlers cannot easily explore. These whales stash images from Bing or GIFs from Tumblr and other types of media appended with social data that Google can’t quite rank, and then, as each stash is an open web page, it becomes visible to the search giant. In the same way Pinterest toiled for years before their growth spurt of 2011, PandaWhale could be on a similar path. There are many places to share and communicate around images and links, such as Reddit, and many of those sites have dense networks around them. Perhaps that’s why PandaWhale isn’t over-designed visually, but carefully designed and architected in such a way such that it’s searchable, organized by topic, and encourages new images and links in every stash. So far, Google’s algorithms like it. Finally, while the architecture and user behavior may be the juice, PandaWhale’s secret weapon is that it was built as the digital reflection of a real, offline community of startup geeks and technology veterans who meet in-person and help each other out without, in my opinion, want of fame or fortune. That’s how I found out about the site when it popped up, why it may sustain the ephemerality of today’s launches and mindless growth-hacking tactics, and why I’ve been using it to essentially find random facts and opinions on technology and get the pulse of what the whales think. For what I do, I can’t look around the same places everyone else does for information — this is one of my secret places to test theories and form ideas from others. I don’t know what will happen to PandaWhale in the sense that it doesn’t look like a business (yet), and it doesn’t do any marketing or PR. Nor does it have (I love the daily digest email), and the site is all fugly, to be honest, but perhaps that’s its charm. Well, let’s see what happens. People all over Twitter and in the tech world often bemoan finding new, great, uncontaminated sources of information. VC firms are now directly hiring journalists and investing in content. Years ago, Marc Andreessen a great answer on Quora about what he would like to see in tech journalism, with a focus on discovering people and companies that “don’t have heat on them.” Traditional tech media for early-stage startups is saturated, but that’s not to say they’re covering everything and moving in a good direction. We’re in the middle of a media shift — a shift where powerful entities are taking on more editorial control, but also where individuals in networks are creating new types of information and surfacing things even the best editorial couldn’t. PandaWhale may be part of that shift. Or, at least, it certainly has been for . |
EU ‘Deeply Worried’ Over Report That NSA Bugged Its Offices, Wants Clarification | Mike Butcher | 2,013 | 6 | 30 | The NSA/Prism controversy rumbles on. Today the European Parliament President Martin Schulz there could be a severe impact on EU-US relations if the claims that the US had bugged EU offices in America and accessed computer networks turned out to be true. He’s said he’s ‘deeply worried’ about the issue and called for clarification from the US over the stories that have appeared. Respected German magazine Der Spiegel made the claims today in the the latest in a series about alleged NSA spying. Spiegel claims a “top secret” US National Security Agency (NSA) document from September 2010 has been taken by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. It says its journalists have seen the document and claims that it goes into detail about how the NSA spied on EU offices and internal computer and phone networks in Washington and at the UN. The magazine reports that over five years ago security officers at the EU noticed missed calls and traced them to NSA offices within the Nato compound in Brussels. It also that the NSA had looked at half a billion phone calls, emails and text messages in Germany in a typical month and had put Germany in the same class as China. Earlier this month the European Commission (not the Parliament) the Prism matter with US authorities at a meeting Dublin. |
PlayJam Sticks It To The Video Game Giants | Ross Rubin | 2,013 | 6 | 8 | It’s been six months since ’s GameStick started its off-again, on-again Kickstarter campaign that netted it nearly $650,000 — well beyond its $100,000 goal. While it attracted less than a tenth of the funds that its predecessor OUYA nabbed for its Android-based home game console, things have moved apace with the two-piece, controller-hosted console that plugs directly into the HDMI connector of a TV that should be shipping to backers next month. “Thirty days felt like thirty months. We were so unprepared for it,” said PlayJam CMO Anthony Johnson, who notes that stretch goals such as a charging dock were conceived out of thin air in a matter of hours before they even knew if they were feasible. The GameStick straddles worlds with different rules. Traditional consoles fix a platform essentially in stone typically for five or more years. The stability of the platform itself is a response to PC gaming where configurations are all over the map. This has been the inspiration for NVIDIA’s GeForce Experience addressing the issue from the PC side and Valve’s Steam Box(es) on the console side. On the other hand, its ARM processor and Android operating system hail from the world of smartphones where updates are an annual occurrence in a state of constant leapfrogging. PlayJam plans to take advantage of the rapid progress in chip architectures. The company wryly notes that one of the few advantages of being based in the UK helps enable it to have a close working relationship with ARM. In this respect, the GameStick is kind of a no-frills vanilla equivalent to NVIDIA’s pricey Shield handheld, which costs $349 and which PlayJam characterizes as “a reference platform for Tegra 4,” a laudable but niche attempt by a chip company to get into the consumer device business. GameStick, on the other hand, will be profitable at $79 while yielding a palatable retailer margin. And since the primary electronics are in the stick and not the controller, the former can be updated independently, and the company plans to keep offering new sticks to enable richer game experiences. Which, in some cases, it could use. PlayJam’s 12-year history is in super-casual TV-based games distributed through cable operators and moving into smart TVs. That understanding of the power of distribution has helped lead to an agreement with GameStop, although GameStick, of course, lacks any way for physical distribution. The scaling up of smartphone-quality games to the bigger-than-tablet screen results in games that may be fun to play but don’t necessarily impress graphically. And like so many Android apps, the quality varies widely. That said, GameStick, OUYA and another similarly inexpensive entrant from BlueStacks have some opportunity to capitalize on the pick-up-and-play home gaming market that the Wii resurrected only to stray from with the more complex and disorienting Wii U. In fact, the company is hoping to stand on OUYA’s shoulders; unsurprisingly, developers have found it a relatively easy port from that Android-based game console to PlayJam’s CMO Anthony Johnson. “It’s a new category. You need to validate the market.” Compared to the platform variation in designing for smart TVs and pay TV operators, Android’s level of fragmentation is pure bliss to PlayJam. GameStick may be cheap. But its success will depend on if they are willing to come back to the TV for gaming experiences that may not be significantly more engrossing than what they can already get on their mobile phones or tablets. This will be particularly true if TV manufacturers and handset companies can better communicate the ability to project phone displays onto televisions via standards such as Miracast (which GameStick supports) in order to play the games that they’ve already downloaded or purchased. In that case, PlayJam will be happy to move its store to other platforms. GameStick will launch with 100 titles and the company promises it will ramp quickly from there. For consumers who value the tactile controls or may not want to drain down their phone battery as they play on the big screen as well as for the company’s equally embryonic competitors, it’s game on. |
Dejamor’s “Sexy Tales” Let You Have “Choose Your Own Adventure” Phone Sex | Jordan Crook | 2,013 | 6 | 30 | Observe, ladies and gentlemen, the lyrics of true seduction. Dejamor, a Dreamit-backed startup that creates subscription romance-filled boxes to help couples spice up sexy time, has now launched a new product called — yes, Sexy Tales — which lets you leave a sexy play-by-play recording for your partner. The service lets you call a specific number, enter the number of your partner, and walk them through all your dirty fantasies. It’s a lot like a “Choose your own adventure” book, but with lots more dicks and snatches. And audio. Now, the folks at Dejamor have a solid product in the , which packages instructions, ingredients, and all the detailed flourishes you’d need for a more fantastical evening with your partner. At first, it may feel a bit canned, but the point is to — not to carry your fumbling, lazy, or downright selfish ass from seduction to completion. Sexy Tales has the same intent behind it, and the team admits that it could be far more hilarious than it is sexy. Especially when you consider the sample scripts Dejamor has provided for those of us without enough of an imagination to create our own “wetness.” A few nuggets of awesome from the script: “This is the best. I’m circling kisses around your deliciously wet cave.” “Oh, honey, I want to taste a mouthful of your gooey sweetness, and you are heating me up.” “…mixing your juices with my precum into a miraculous lubricant.” Unless you’re dating a slutty Emily Dickinson, I’d stay away from language like this, gentlemen. Apparently ladies need to offer their men two levels of saucy, mildly spicy and very spicy. Unfortunately, even though women tend to be the brains behind most phone sex (so says Dejamor), the scripts aren’t much better than the male: “Wow, is it just me that’s hot? I’m unbuttoning my blouse and guess what I have underneath? That’s right baby, a black lace, see-through bra. I can feel your eyes on me and it’s making my nipples so hard they’re poking right out.” “Yummy! Not only are you a big, smooth steel rod, but your creamy wetness is helping me glide my hand up and down your rm shaft.” “Ooh! You are so tasty. Like eating a popsicle only hot. (slurping noises)” Don’t forget the slurping noises, ladies. Luckily, Dejamor provides a template for anyone who wants to test the Sexy Tales waters and not sound like they’ve never, had sex before. |
Can Google Really Crack The Game Console Market? | Chris Velazco | 2,013 | 6 | 30 | Look, we’ve all heard the rumors that Google is toiling away on a smartwatch, and the company has said the Nexus Q isn’t completely dead, so part of that recent report from the doesn’t completely out of the blue. That said, Google is reportedly also working on an Android-powered game console in response to murmurs of a similar Apple gaming push in the works. Pretty ballsy, if you ask me. We can’t know for sure how good Google’s intuition is when it comes to Apple’s gaming ambitions, but the folks in Cupertino are clearly looking at gaming with some level of interest — iOS 7 includes improved support for game controllers, and was at one point rumored to be working on . As the past few weeks have illustrated nicely though, there’s plenty of jostling among established gaming companies as they attempt to lay claim to our living rooms, and yet Google apparently wants to throw itself headlong into the fray. In light of this potential hardware push, Google Play game services doesn’t just look like a shot across Apple Game Center’s bow — it’s a way for developers to create Android games with that incorporate some of the features that console gamers have all but taken for granted at this point. If this information pans out and Google does release an Android-powered console at some point in the near future, the company’s problem isn’t just the pressure it faces from entrenched players like Sony, Microsoft, and even Apple. The past year has seen plenty of upstart hardware companies attempting to shoehorn Android into tiny little packages with tiny price tags, and with varying levels of success. One of those ambitious little doodads garnered more attention than the rest — it’s damned near impossible to think the words “Android game console” and not follow up with “Ouya.” Hell, Amir Efrati’s WSJ report points out that Google has been paying particularly close attention to the Kickstarted startup, which guided its namesake device to a retail launch earlier this week after spending the past few months shipping pre-release versions to backers and developers. The Ouya temporarily sold out on Amazon, and it’s still backordered on Best Buy’s website — not too shabby, considering its unabashedly geeky pedigree. At this point it’s tough to say whether that’s a result of extreme demand for the $99 console or just limited supplies, but either way it seem as though a decent chunk of people have been waiting for this. That said, the company is awfully cagey on what it specifically hopes to get out of this retail push. During a recent chat CEO Julie Uhrmann wouldn’t disclose how many units would need to be sold at retail for her to consider the Ouya successful — she instead responded with platitudes about how she wanted Ouya to be available to everyone to wanted one. Uhrmann also said that she didn’t want anyone on the team even thinking of Ouya 2.0 until this current model has established a foothold in the market. It’s a curious thing to hear from the head of company that will probably live and die based on the strength of its . The incentive is there to keep iterating and iterating and iterating until the Ouya succeeds — is Google (or whatever hardware partners it may tap) prepared to do the same? And all that said, early reactions of the Ouya have been . I’ve been fiddling with an Ouya myself for the past few days, and though a full review is forthcoming, my first impressions can essentially be summed up with a single syllable: meh. And the Ouya is just one example — now there are and and , to say nothing of a whole host of . Sony and Microsoft have the top-end well accounted for, and the race to the bottom for Android gaming in the living room has already begun. So, when it comes down to it, can Google really crack the game console market? It’s possible, sure. Google may just be able to use its resources and developer clout to carve out a niche in a stupendously crowded gaming environment. It’s also worth noting that video game history is littered with the carcasses of dead, ill-conceived consoles, consoles that had great controllers, great games, and even net connectivity ahead of their time. The lesson to be learned from those dusty heaps of plastic is that (sadly) innovation is no guarantee of success, so Google is going to have to be terribly, terribly clever if it wants to have any lasting impact in our living rooms. |
Benchmark’s Eisenberg And Face.com’s Shochat Raise $140M For Aleph, An Early-Stage Fund For Israeli Startups | Rip Empson | 2,013 | 6 | 30 | Two veteran investors who have been integral in the development of a new generation of Israeli startups are on a mission to reverse a trend in a country that has traditionally favored later-stage and enterprise-skewed venture capital. Benchmark’s Michael Eisenberg and Genesis Partners’ Eden Shochat are teaming up to create Aleph — a new fund that aims to bring some much-needed local, early-stage support to Israeli startups. TechCrunch hears that the VC’s first fund is nearly closed and is in the region of $120 million. Given that the venture capital (and startup) landscape in Israel is at a potentially significant juncture — the most recent exit — the founders want to strike while the iron is hot. And they’re setting the bar high: They want Aleph to become the go-to early-stage venture capital firm in Israel, our sources tell us. Israel has a long, prolific history when it comes to supporting innovation in science and technology. Today, the percentage of its population working in science and tech — and the amount it spends on R&D (relative to its GDP) — . One can begin to see why Israel has become home to the R&D centers of over 250 multinationals, including Google, Oracle, Microsoft and IBM. It also helps explain why Israeli tech has, traditionally, been known for its focus on hardcore technologies (like software and semiconductors, for example) and enterprise. Yet, in spite of the fact that local venture capital has favored deep-tech and later-stage investments, over the last few years, a new generation of consumer startups has begun to emerge. (And produce some big companies and exits — like addictive traffic app, Waze, and website creation platform, Wix, .) So far, Aleph has been very tight-lipped on the actual existence of the fund, and what its aims are going to be. Initial reports, which , pegged the new fund at $100 million. Though the founders have declined to share details at this point, and Israeli publications have floated several different figures, we’ve now confirmed that the total is $140 million and that it is expected to close in the next few weeks. [ We heard differing reports on the total amount raised, from $100 to $150 million, reporting that the consensus from our sources was $120 million. We’ve since updated with the correct amount, which is $140 million. The headline, this paragraph and appearance of original figure in following paragraphs have been corrected.] But why should you care about some Israeli venture capital fund — or the size of the fund, for that matter? Great question, reader. I like you. For starters, this is a sign of how startup tides are beginning to change in Israel. The success of companies like Waze and Wix could be a signal to the country’s entrepreneurs that there’s opportunity in not just “consumerizing,” but in making “tech-focused” consumer plays — like, say, in applying intelligent, “Big Data” technologies to consumer-facing services. For example, Waze, while it is known for it’s fun, animated, cartoony interface, considers itself a Big Data company and is obsessed with building infrastructure that can allow it to crunch enormous amounts of realtime traffic and navigational data points, which it can then use to personalize its maps and optimize the turn-by-turn navigational experience. Plus, the fact that Aleph is raising a $140 million-plus early-stage fund shows that it’s serious and gives it enough capital to begin making a difference in a relatively small tech ecosystem. It’s not clear yet how much Aleph will invest in its chosen startups, but if we can assume it will be investing somewhere between $5 million and $8 million in each deal, that means it will be making anywhere between 15 to 25 investments. There’s room in that part of the market in Israel, and at those amounts, Aleph can provide enough early-stage capital to potentially change the fate of Israeli startups that have been struggling to find access. In comparison, Pitango Venture Capital, , has reportedly raised $150 million of a $250 million fund, which will be its sixth. Furthermore, Magma Venture Partners, which was one of two Israeli firms to invest in Waze, recently raised $100 million. Qumra Capital is also in the process of raising $100 million for its first fund, according to Haaretz. But all in all, we hear that local funds are, by and large, having difficulty raising in the current climate, while, in comparison, Aleph has will already be in the same league with some of the country’s biggest funds. And, while the founders declined to share details or confirm any of the above (or below), we’ve also heard that the founders initially set out to raise $100 million, but extended the target to $140 million after finding plenty of interest. With its model, in combination with the current landscape and maturing startup economy, the founders think the timing is right for a new, dominant venture firm to emerge in the Israeli market. It’s way too early to say either way, but the other important factor at play here for Israeli startups is how much experience both Eisenberg and Shochat bring to the table as investors (and entrepreneurs). Eisenberg has been a general partner at Benchmark Capital in Israel for over eight years and has served on the Board of Directors for companies like Answer.com and Shopping.com and currently sits on the board of directors at Gigya, Seeking Alpha, Clarizen, Conduit (whose last raise valued the company at $1.4 billion) and Wix. Shochat, on the other hand, has been a General Partner at Genesis for almost three years, but also has significant experience as an operator. In that capacity, he is probably best known as the co-founder and chairman of Face.com, a facial recognition technology company that sold to Facebook . He is also the co-founder of Aternity, has led investments in successful startups like Any.do, JoyTunes and Commerce Sciences and helped manage and lead “TheJunction,” a program created by Genesis to support early-stage entrepreneurs by offering co-working space and acting as a startup accelerator and alumni organization, a la 500 Startups. Shochat left Genesis in April, and Eisenberg will be leaving his role at Benchmark. With their prior experience, sources tell us that Aleph’s goal is to dominate early-stage IT, cloud, Big Data and mobile investments in Israel, leveraging what they perceive to be a maturation of next-gen local entrepreneurs looking to build big, global (and even consumer-facing) companies. For them, standing out from the crowd will be about focusing on Series A investments, rapid decision-making, local support and being decidedly entrepreneur-friendly, Not only that, but our sources indicate that, in spite of the fact that Eisenberg is leaving Benchmark to start Aleph, Benchmark is one of the new firm’s first investors. Not to overstate it, but if these reports are in fact true, it’s a notable vote of confidence from Benchmark and shows what they think of his track record. Regardless, the emergence of Aleph is an auspicious sign for the Israeli startup ecosystem, giving entrepreneurs another critical lifeline during the early stages, and another indication of how much Israeli tech stands to benefit from the global attention following a string of high-profile exits, chief of which is, of course, the newly minted “GoogleWaze”. (Or Wazoogle, if you prefer.) We’ve reached out to the founders and will update with their comments if and when they respond. |
3D Printer Manufacturer Stratasys In Acquisition Talks With Makerbot | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,013 | 6 | 8 | , the Brooklyn-based 3D printing company, is in talks with Minneapolis/Israel-based Stratasys regarding a possible acquisition by the latter, according to a source close to the matter. While Makerbot founder and CEO Bre Pettis refused to comment on speculation, and in fact told reporters “We’re not going anywhere” at a factory opening on Friday, persistent rumors of a sale or new funding have the company this year. Stratasys makes high-end, professional-grade 3D printers for industrial applications. For example, the 3D-printed pistol was built on a Stratasys machine. Stratasys does not yet have an entry-level model for average users, a niche in which Makerbot has generated $50 million in revenue this year. The company also appears to be chatting with investors on a $300 million valuation, according to a report. We had also gotten the information that the company had been raising, but at a valuation quite beyond that. With 3D printing technology , and considerably less-hyped startup Shapeways recently raising a , why wouldn’t Makerbot want to maximize its own momentum? |
We Asked For This | John Biggs | 2,013 | 6 | 8 | There is a certain jollity in the reactions of the webby class to news that the NSA has been, first, spying on Verizon communications for years, and second has approached multiple information-gathering startups, hat in hand, asking for access to their data stores. It is indeed funny: faceless bureaucrats who, we are certain, can barely click the Start menu, are horking down data from America’s Can You Hear Me Now Network while browsing our Facebook profiles over lunch. Now that the truth has come to light, we’re positively giddy. All of our worst fears have come to call and it’s hilarious. I had heard the refrain for years from the conspiracy-minded: “Google/Facebook/Twitter/Apple will sell you out in a second.” Well, they have. Every word written by RMS (“I refuse to have a cell phone because they are tracking and surveillance devices”) was true and every time Doctorow incited us to run Ubuntu with an encrypted root partition we should have listened. But who cares? We’re not building bombs in our kitchens, we’re playing Farmville. Their jeremiads only reminded us of what sticks-in-the-mud the privacymongers are and how clever we are when it comes to routing around damage. Maybe we should have listened. We asked for this. We asked for this when we traded password protection for single sign-in. We asked for this when we chased social network after social network, creating a deer trail that could lead a hunter to our crushed-grass bed, still warm. We asked for this when, almost a decade ago, we traded some privacy for some security and got neither in the bargain. I’m as guilty as you (unless you’re Cory Doctorow.) I dumped my photos into someone else’s hard drive. We use a publishing platform that will roll over to thanks to the DMCA. We have no expectation of privacy (nor do we particularly need it, I’d imagine) and so we upload our work to the “cloud” where it sits, potentially unmolested, in DropSugarGoogleBox’s servers. We give Amazon a list of things we like and do not like and are amazed when it offers up a slew of products that will strike the perfect chord of our fancy. We are like a drunk blundering through a crowd of pickpockets. That we are not poor and naked already is a testament to either the goodness of humanity or the ineptitude of the criminal class. In short, we didn’t trade privacy for security. We traded privacy for convenience. And the government, seeing a hole, took advantage of this. This era of absolute trust is fading, at least in certain circles. Facebook is boring and Twitter is a firehose so people late to the game probably won’t even bother with those services. It will take a few good Google crashes to wean us off of cloud services but as the price of storage falls precipitously and the ability to connect to a home network becomes increasingly easy I could see a time when Yahoo’s promise of a free terabyte is vaguely seedy. This breach itself will probably encourage millions of programmers to use harder encryption. And so it goes. A bad sysadmin can get away with typing “chmod a+rwx .” for years. Then some hacker discovers that little peccadillo and hides a rootkit in his server. Then that sysadmin learns his lesson and moves on. I’d like to think we’re going to be the same way, but I doubt it. We love our ease-of-use, our single sign-ins, our constant pings and instant access. We will not trade that because someone, somewhere, may be reading our private correspondence. And so we’ll ask for it again and again. The crypto-lovers will cry wolf, then the real wolf will come and we’ll laugh it off, confident in our abilities behind the keyboard to outsmart a bureaucratic apparatus so outdated that they still require us to file our taxes on paper. Slowly, steadily we will watch this crisis erode and the next one will build itself in the old one’s stead. By that time we’ll be lifecasting what we see and hear 24/7 using wearables, perhaps, but we web savvy users will laugh that off as well. We’ll smirk at some lumpen NSA agent hunched behind a computer watching us spoon sugar into endless coffees and talk about movies and TV shows. It serves them right, we’ll say, for wanting this data in the first place. As : “Welcome to an Internet without privacy, and we’ve ended up here with hardly a fight.” When apathy is our defense we deserve what we get. But apathy breeds another kind of insecurity and makes us bigger targets still. We forget this at our peril. |
EFF’s Peter Eckersley On ‘Clever’ PRISM Denials, Fighting FISA, And Why Privacy Matters [TCTV] | Colleen Taylor | 2,013 | 6 | 8 | Now those issues have come to the forefront of the mainstream’s consciousness, with a series of revelations this week that the NSA has reportedly been secretly working together with major tech companies to give the government access huge amounts of private user data through a . So it was a massive pleasure to have , the EFF’s Technology Projects Director, in TechCrunch TV’s San Francisco studio yesterday afternoon to speak about all that’s going on. It was a relatively long conversation, but I think it could have gone on much longer and continued to be fascinating — Eckersley is an expert on this subject and clearly passionate about the cause, and there were lots of bases to cover. What’s interesting is that I spoke to Eckersley just one hour before the Claire Cain Miller that the technology companies named in the leaked PRISM slides with the NSA’s data mining, contrary to their public . As you’ll see above, he expected that was exactly the case — that the tech companies involved in PRISM have been issuing clever “deniable denials” about what is going on, rather than telling the full truth. The reason they’re doing so, Eckersley said (and the NYT reported), is FISA. We discussed the history of FISA, how the EFF is fighting for more transparency (and why it matters), why this news of companies like Facebook and Google working with the NSA is a surprising disappointment even to the folks at the EFF, what people who care about their privacy should do now, and much more. |
Zazzle Pulls Fake NSA PRISM Program T-Shirt For Intellectual Property Infringement | John Biggs | 2,013 | 6 | 8 | Turn on your radio-activated tooth fillings and cover your windows in aluminum foil because someone – no one knows who, for sure – has asked that homemade T-shirts be removed from the Internet. Read created the t-shirts as a joke, selling a grand total of three items before Zazzle shut down his store after citing “infringement claims.” The T-shirt uses the NSA PRISM logo which itself was stolen without attribution from a photo made by . The logo originally appeared in the Powerpoint made by NSA spooks to explain their exciting new project to potential software partners. It is technically against the law to make merchandise bearing federal logos ( ) so Read is technically in the wrong. But really? What shadowy cabal of intellectual property holders contacted Zazzle to have the t-shirt pulled? What’s to stop a mild-mannered reporter from creating ? Does our nation’s security apparatus really have so little else to do than pull rank on Zazzle? I’ve contacted Zazzle directly but I suspect their press office is currently being muzzled by threats on their lives and the lives of their families (or is enjoying a nice Saturday afternoon). Either way, “you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.” UPDATE – Zazzle wrote: |
Snapchat Hiring Massive Sales Team, Said To Be Raising $100M At A Near $1B Valuation To Pay Them | Billy Gallagher | 2,013 | 6 | 8 | Snapchat is aggressively recruiting sales people from Stanford as well as USC for its impending debut of a monetization scheme, we’ve discovered. Meanwhile it’s raising $100 million at a valuation as high as $1 billion to pay them, as well as buy more servers and hire other talent to power its rapidly growing self-destructing messaging app, sources say. Earlier this week reported Snapchat was raising $100 million but at a valuation “in excess of a half a billion dollars”, that one source pegged at $700 million post-money. Many of us at TechCrunch had heard rumors of the round, particularly tied to a push in the company’s hiring and monetization. Malik reports that the “founders have settled on an unnamed non-tradition investors (read: hedge-fund)” for this round. However, we’ve heard that’s not totally accurate. Several sources have told us Snapchat co-founders Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy are shooting for an even more ambitious valuation near $1 billion. That matches speculation of a higher valuation from . We’ve also heard the company may be in talks with its leader Benchmark Capital about joining the Series B. We’ve also heard that this round has already closed, but can’t confirm that yet. Some might call the valuation too high, but it’s fueled by Snapchat’s surging popularity and intense engagement, especially amongst young people. Kleiner Perkins partner Mary Meeker’s latest said that Snapchat has eclipsed Instagram in volume of photos shared. While Facebook’s acquired photos app sees people share the occasional photo publicly and browse its feed, Snapchat hosts incredible time-in-app as users privately send photo after photo while carrying on multiple conversations with friends. These photos (and videos) delete themselves less than 10-seconds after being viewed, encouraging users to create and send more “Snaps”. The push notifications these ephemeral messages generate lead to frequent return visits. Curiosity about what funny face, current surroundings, or racy imagery their friends have just sent them creates goads people to check Snapchat as soon as their pinged, keeping conversations moving along briskly. All that engagement creates an enormous opportunity for monetization. Snapchat sees this, which is why the Stanford-schooled co-founders of the Los Angeles-based startup have been recruiting at their alma mater, and to a lesser extent their LA neighbor the University Of Southern California. And we’re not talking about just a few salespeople. Perhaps the most interesting tidbit we’ve heard is that the company has been hiring a veritable army of ad sellers. Snapchat is currently at a lean headcount of 12, but has outgrown its Venice beachfront office and will move to a larger office, still in the Los Angeles area. Spiegel told us in that the company had plans for monetization, and told us in December that the company . And at the , Spiegel said “There will eventually be several revenue streams. He didn’t go into more detail but noted that he thinks ads can “work very well on mobile” and Snapchat’s been playing around with early prototypes. Now, with new funding and new hires, revenue can’t be far behind for the young company. Snapchat has had a strong, loyal user base among high school and college students. I (Billy) remember watching friends at Stanford beta test the app and thinking what a novelty it was that it spread beyond snapping pictures of Palm Drive and Cardinal football tailgates. Now, I look at the “Find Friends” feature of the site and its filled with older family friends, friends’ moms (thankfully not my mom…yet), and more. The explosion in growth the app has seen–users now send 150 million images per day–cannot simply be high school and college students. Snapchat has tipped and is seeing adoption in other age brackets. Josh confirms a recent spike in older, late twenty-something users getting into the irreverent spirit of the app. Meanwhile, after a short honeymoon for , usage of the Snapchat-clone has dried up to mostly just the Facebook employees in his network. Spiegel and co-founder Murphy have carefully selected their media outreach, from exclusives in to appearing on , to reach beyond the classroom types. They want their app to become a household name. While many wrote off Snapchat as just a novelty, it’s becoming more and more clear that it’s actually an important new medium for communication. Posting to Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter can seem like stale pandering for Likes and favorites, or a vain declaration of accomplishment. “I was there then.” But Snapchat feels like a shared moment in time, an urgent window from one person’s life into another. Snapchat means “Be With Me Now.” |
Windows Phone 8 Reportedly Gained A Notification Center Before Losing It Again | Chris Velazco | 2,013 | 6 | 8 | When I buy gadgets off of eBay, I’m lucky if half of them haven’t previously been gnawed on by dogs. Meanwhile, who picked up a second-hand Nokia Lumia 920 from the auction site seems to have gotten much more than he bargained for — he’s been posting screenshots from the device for the better part of a day, because the thing appears to run a previously unreleased build of Windows Phone 8. The big tip off? Well, there’s a handful of UI changes (including the newfound abilities to kill apps from the multitasking screen and sort them based on frequency of use), to say nothing of a slew of curious pre-installed test apps that seem tailor-made for internal development use. Really though, the most notable addition to the device is a notification center, one of the features that’s notably missing from current versions of Windows Phone.
As the story goes, the notification center for inclusion in the initial Windows Phone 8 release but there just wasn’t enough to time to complete it, prompting the company to play up its ever-updating Live Tiles as a sort of replacement. Those sorts of sentiments certainly jibe with other accounts of WP8’s last frenzied days of development — one senior Microsoft official told me last year that the whole Windows Phone team was just prior to the OS’ official reveal in October 2012. Sadly, a centralized spot for app notifications may not be in the cards for Windows Phone after all. According to a follow-up from , Microsoft’s WP team was indeed working on that notification center until it was removed in later builds for reasons that haven’t been made clear yet. Meanwhile, leaned on some unnamed sources to determine that these screenshots are actually from an early build of the Windows Phone Blue update (released on May 9 or thereabouts), so if the notification center really did get the axe, that decision should have been made very recently. |
Director Of National Intelligence Tries To Downplay PRISM Paranoia, Says The System Doesn’t Mine Data | Chris Velazco | 2,013 | 6 | 8 | There have been plenty of making the rounds these past few days, and unsurprisingly the Office of the Director of National Intelligence doesn’t think the NSA’s surveillance practices have been cast in the most accurate light. In an effort to help do away with some pervasive misconceptions, the ODNI has issued a statement explaining why it thinks people are blowing this out of proportion. “The surveillance activities published in and are lawful and conducted under authorities widely known and discussed, and fully debated and authorized by Congress,” Director James R. Clapper pointed out in a widely emailed missive. “Their purpose is to obtain foreign intelligence information, including information necessary to thwart terrorist and cyber attacks against the United States and its allies.” Some of the arguments that ODNI throws out there will sound pretty familiar. It states that PRISM can’t be used to “intentionally target any U.S. citizen, or any other U.S. person” (which President Obama ), and that the U.S. government can’t just collect information all willy-nilly — it needs judicial approval and oversight from Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court. Perhaps most importantly, the ODNI says that PRISM isn’t “a data mining program,” which dovetails nicely with reports from a slew of publicly outed tech companies, including Google, Apple, Yahoo, PalTalk and (TechCrunch owner) AOL, that say they don’t . Still, the prevailing sentiment in certain privacy-sensitive corners of the web is that these companies are basically arguing over semantics: They may not be giving the NSA direct access, but it’s become clear that the information is winding up in the hands of those intelligence agencies anyway, and that has raised more than a few people’s hackles. Of course, the timing of the statement isn’t exactly ideal. While the ODNI carefully laid out its arguments regarding the need for and efficacy of the PRISM system, The Guardian’s Glen Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill just recently published new information on yet another surreptitious snooping tool: the NSA’s so-called . If PRISM is the system that harvests all of that ballyhooed metadata about your calls and communiques, Boundless Informant is the system that lets the NSA ascribe that metadata to different countries and drill down accordingly. Don’t expect this rigmarole to end any time soon, folks. You can read the entire ODNI fact sheet below: [scribd id=146556159 key=key-1wp07y8ustb7hnp61kg4 mode=scroll] |
Senate Candidate @CoryBooker: What We Know And What We Need To Know | Gregory Ferenstein | 2,013 | 6 | 8 | [tweet https://twitter.com/CoryBooker/status/343376246631190528] Democratic celebrity Newark Mayor Cory Booker just announced his candidacy for Senate, to be decided in a special election on October 16 to replace the late Senator Frank Lautenberg. We named him one of our because there’s a lot to like: he has pioneered constituent responsiveness through Twitter, he’s a startup founder, he rescues people from burning buildings, and he’s one of the most gifted political orators of our time. His penchant for digital innovation and speaking skills has led to a non-stop comparison to President Barack Obama. Now for Booker, an obvious future presidential candidate, this comparison is both a blessing and a curse. Like then-Senator Barack Obama, we don’t know a lot about his positions (detailed below). Additionally, Obama promised to reform the culture of Washington, but has been as partisan as every other president in recent memory. We’ll need more than soaring rhetoric to be confident he can accomplish this monumental task. There are high hopes that Booker, like his mentor, will break new ground on the campaign trail. The president’s first Chief Technology Officer, Aneesh Chopra, and current candidate for Lt. Governor of Virginia, his campaign contributions on the software developer social network, , adding a new level of real-time, trackable information. We await whether Booker will do anything different. Booker has also promised to “hack the Senate,” but we really have no idea what that means. Does he support more participatory technologies, like Congressman Darrell Issa’s , Project Madison? (Note: We’ve integrated Project Madison into our website. If you’re an expert on Immigration or Tax reform, contribute your ideas .) Republican Majority Leader, and fellow Most Innovative Person in Democracy, Eric Cantor, released a Facebook app, , that allows citizens to show support and track legislation online. Congress and the Executive branch’s budget is still mostly opaque. There’s no way to track all federal spending online. Last year, the House unanimously passed Darrell Issa’s Data Act, but it . Would Booker champion the Data Act, or some version of it to make spending transparent? What about legislative reform? Senator Ron Wyden ( : A) supports a new strategy for legislation, wherein states are exempted from complying with new laws if they can find more innovative ways to accomplish the same goals. I’ll update this post as we learn more; if I’ve left something out, please . |
Girl Loses Friends Because Her Phone Is Too Big To Carry | Josh Constine | 2,013 | 6 | 8 | Somewhere on the dance floor, she vanished. It would have a been no problem, except her smartphone was so large she left it at coat check. In the pursuit of a big, beautiful screen, she’d sacrificed why people carry phones in the first place. We had no way to find her in the massive nightclub, and we never saw her again. This was my eye-opening experience in Singapore this week. Smartphone innovation has focused on power and pizazz rather than efficiency, and that has its downsides. With today’s technology, we could surely have small, lightweight, long-battery, nearly indestructible phones capable of calling, SMS, and perhaps that even run Android so they could use messaging apps. They wouldn’t need a big screen or heavy processing power. They’d be portable and reliable above all else. Our lost little friend certainly could have benefited from such a device. She spent the night at the club alone, and we spent it distracted and frustrated looking for her. A little phone could have fit in the waistband of her skirt or her bra, and we could have rendezvoused and resumed our evening under the disco lights. Sales of Mophie juicepacks and the common refrain of “my phone was dead” show demand for some solution to our battery woes. If you knew you didn’t need to save that last 20% of life for essential communication later in the evening, you wouldn’t have to ration your electrons so diligently. With the current trend of tighter men’s jeans, guys could make use of smaller phones too. A basic, hosted music app could make them a nice alternative to working out with a weighty chunk of glass in hand. These devices could also serve as great emergency devices. At a low-cost you could throw one in your glove compartment or earthquake kit along with a solar or hand-crank charger. The idea might not be popular with carriers who subsidize handsets to rake in data plan revenue, but perhaps an independent manufacturer could step in to the fill the void. Many laughed at the idea of Path founder , one for day and one for night because he blows through battery so quickly. But maybe what some of us really need is one large, full-featured media consumption mobile computer, and one tiny, basic communication tool. There are plenty of feature phones out there, but they’re bare bones out of concern for price. A purposefully limited but high-tech handset could find a market. Not smart, but not dumb either, the world could use a Simple Phone. |
Gillmor Gang: Back in the USSR | Steve Gillmor | 2,013 | 6 | 8 | The Gillmor Gang — Robert Scoble, Kevin Marks, Keith Teare, and Steve Gillmor — view the world through PRISM glasses. We, or me, couldn’t help wondering what part of surpised we are at the idea we’re being monitored and scraped within an inch of our metadata. It’s hard to tell whether we’re worried about losing our individual freedoms, or having to do the hard work of balancing the tradeoffs in a dangerous world of drones and the streams that feed them. Still, the stakes couldn’t be higher as we sell our digital identities for the price of free access to the flow of information. And what about the cost of our freedom to share the music that defined the creative revolution of the 60’s and the video revolution of Mad Men and Netflix? From Richie Havens on the stage at Woodstock to Obama’s politics of the personal, we can’t afford to sit back and ignore the costs, and the value, of swimming in the social waters. Ben Franklin may not have anticipated Twitter, but Paul Revere did. Honey, disconnect the phone. @stevegillmor, @scobleizer, @kevinmarks, @kteare Produced and directed by Tina CHase Gillmor @tinagillmor |
CrunchWeek: Zynga’s Big Layoffs, OMGPOP Gets The Axe, NSA Spying Emerges With Verizon | Colleen Taylor | 2,013 | 6 | 8 | I’d be amiss if I didn’t acknowledge that this episode is missing a big, huge, massive story. We taped this late Thursday afternoon, one day earlier than normal, so that and I could say our proper CrunchWeek goodbyes to , who is departing TechCrunch . The that the National Security Agency has been some of the web’s most significant Internet companies to mine personal user data — almost certainly the of the week — broke as we were in the studio. We did, however, talk about the NSA all the call data from the Verizon network, which was clearly just the tip of the iceberg of these revelations. We also talked about Zynga of its workforce and its shuttering , just a year after it was acquired . |
Blanket Surveillance. Total Secrecy. What Could Possibly Go Wrong? | Jon Evans | 2,013 | 6 | 8 | Imagine that one day you came home to find a shiny little bubble of one-way glass in an upper corner of every single room, and a notice left on your kitchen table: “ ” Would that give you warm fuzzy feelings of safety and security? I ask because that’s a pretty good metaphor for what happened this week. I refer of course to PRISM. You may have noticed the followed by regarding the “top-secret National Security Administration data-mining program that taps directly into the Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Apple servers among others.” Meanwhile, with (surprisingly) much less furore, the took the previous that the NSA “is secretly collecting record for all U.S. calls on the Verizon network,” and : The National Security Agency’s monitoring of Americans includes customer records from the three major phone networks as well as emails and Web searches, and the agency also has cataloged credit-card transactions, said people familiar with the agency’s activities.
At first . Both Larry Page and Mark Zuckerberg and denied the initial allegations, and the from its initial claim that the tech companies “participate knowingly.” So who could say what was going on, given the that the NSA uses when discussing surveillance, and the weird way that Page, Zuck, and every other accused tech company (except, oddly, Microsoft) all kept chanting the strange mantra “no direct access” in their denials? , apparently. Hats off to them, and to Twitter; and all the PRISM companies. The NYT’s — which you should all click through to and read — says that: Twitter declined to make it easier for the government. But other companies were more compliant… The companies were legally required to share the data under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act… they are prohibited by law from discussing the content of FISA requests or even acknowledging their existence… FISA orders can range from inquiries about specific people to a broad sweep for intelligence, like logs of certain search terms… employees whose job it is to comply with FISA requests are not allowed to discuss the details even with others at the company… Which is appalling enough right there: but let’s not lose sight of the even bigger and uglier picture, one which includes the WSJ’s claims. Going back to my cameras-in-the-home metaphor, until this week we all knew that the government break in and install cameras in every home if they wanted to … but now we know they’ve actually it. Oh, the ones in your home probably haven’t been turned on yet, but they’re there. They’ve been there for years. https://twitter.com/umairh/status/342795369362632704 In digital era, privacy must be a priority. Is it just me, or is secret blanket surveillance obscenely outrageous? — Al Gore (@algore) "We have never disclosed our private keys to any government agency", said no one at all today. — Pinboard (@Pinboard) And how has the government responded to these revelations? Mostly with frothing fury. Senator Dianne Feinstein immediately ….into the leak. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper this “unauthorized disclosure of information” “reprehensible.” That’s what really gets my blood boiling. There is no reasonable justification for keeping even the of FISA requests and programs like PRISM secret. Does the NSA really think that its targets currently believe that all their online activity is perfectly safe and secure? Well, in the extremely unlikely and idiotic case that that the reason for total secrecy, then hey, that barn has sure burned down now, hasn’t it? If the programs needed secrecy to succeed, will NSA shut them down now? If not, did they ever need be secret? Or did I just blow your mind? — Matt Apuzzo (@mattapuzzo) The powers that be can shout “national security!” and “terrorism!” as stridently as they like, but it seems patently obvious to me that they’re just afraid that the American public might not like it if they find out how much they’re being spied on — and that their blanket surveillance programs not be . As Bruce Schneier points out, what we don’t know is than what we do. And to : The specifics remain shrouded in secrecy, but Senators Ron Wyden, Mark Udall, Rand Paul, and Jeff Merkley, among others, have indicated repeatedly that Americans would be “stunned” to find out how the government is interpreting and using these provisions. Furthermore, You just can't *be* ethical under conditions of complete secrecy. Ethics involves constantly checking in with those your ethics effects. — Danny O'Brien🤖 (@mala) The sad thing is, this is of the Obama administration, which has already prosecuted as all previous presidential administrations combined. “I welcome this debate. And I think it’s healthy for our democracy… I think that’s good that we’re having this discussion,” . Hours later, Reuters : “President Barack Obama’s administration is likely to open a criminal investigation into the leaking of highly classified documents that revealed the secret surveillance of Americans’ telephone and email traffic.” Page and Zuckerberg “There needs to be a more transparent approach … the level of secrecy around the current legal procedures undermines the freedoms we all cherish” “We strongly encourage all governments to be much more transparent about all programs aimed at keeping the public safe,” respectively. Too right. But the current administration has shown no real interest in greater openness, much less – . So the only other solution is for the tech world to do what it can to normalize of all online activity. Right now can (probably) protect your data while it’s in transit between your apps and the Apple/Google/Microsoft/Yahoo servers; but if your government insists on surveillance, then that’s no longer enough. Instead we’ll need to start encrypting our communications all the way from sender to recipient. Security is hard, and there aren’t many for this, yet. What’s more, this would be . But if governments continue to pass and then stretch the bounds of outrageous and draconian laws like FISA, then it’s only a matter of time before angry techies make end-to-end encryption easier to use, and its use becomes widespread. If there’s any thin silver lining to this debacle, it’s that by insisting on secrecy, and clandestine so-called “accountability,” governments are actually hastening how fast and how thoroughly the online data they so badly want will become unreadable. Given the contempt with which they’re currently treating the populace, I for one can’t wait. |
Tech Giants Built Segregated Systems For NSA Instead Of Firehoses To Protect Innocent Users From PRISM | Josh Constine | 2,013 | 6 | 8 | The NSA may have wanted full firehoses of data from Google, Facebook and other tech giants, but the companies attempted to protect innocent users from monitoring via compliance systems that created segregated data before securely handing it over as required by law, according to individuals familiar with the systems used by the tech companies targeted by PRISM. The corroboration with the NSA therefore may have benefited citizens rather than being to their detriment. My sources confirm that the NSA did not have direct access or any special instant access to data or servers at the PRISM targets, but instead had to send requests to the companies for the data. These requests must be complied with by law, but only if the government narrowly defines what it’s looking for. The government may have initially requested a firehose of data, and was happy to take this full data dump from the tech companies and sort it itself. Had the tech giants simply accepted these requests at the minimum level required by law, many innocent citizens’ data could have been monitored. By working to create “a locked mailbox and give the government the key” which the , rather than allowing widespread monitoring, the firehose is restricted to a trickle of specific requests. When the NSA has specific people they want to data about, they make a specific, legal request for that data that the tech companies are required to comply with. Google or Facebook then puts the specific requested data into the locked mailbox where the government can access it. This keeps requested data about suspected terrorists or other people who are threats to national security segregated from that of innocent users. By cooperating, companies can better ensure that each request is valid, and narrow enough in its scope. If the request is too broad, the tech companies can send it back and ask for a narrower pull. The method also ensure the data is securely transferred from the companies to the government, opposed to being more forcibly pulled by the NSA in ways that could have left it open for exploit by third-parties. [Update 1am PST 6/8/2013: This information matches the issued by Google’s Chief Legal Officer David Drummond,: We cannot say this more clearly—the government does not have access to Google servers—not directly, or via a back door, or a so-called drop box…Our legal team reviews each and every request, and frequently pushes back when requests are overly broad or don’t follow the correct process.] Over the last day, tech executives including and outlined that they did not give bulk or blanket access to user data. However, they may not have been able to discuss the exact volume of the legal demands for data they’ve received. That left the exact scope of how many people had data pulled by NSA open for wide interpretation, and many including myself, in some cases assumed the worst — that while not at the volume of the massive request for data on all Verizon users that’s been reported, huge numbers of people may have been spied on. However, in the last year, there were only 1,865 FISA requests for data. Some believe those requests could include data pulls as broad as anyone who searched a specific term. Legal experts I’ve consulted, though, believe the requests must be more narrow than that for the tech companies to have not pushed back. That means the the number of people monitored by PRISM may have been in the thousands or tens of thousands, rather than in the tens or even hundreds of millions. Page, Zuckerberg, and other tech executives and companies of trying to hide the scope of their cooperation with the NSA. Their carefully worded denials of offering direct access or back doors to their data seemed to minimize how they were involved with the NSA. I still think they should be more specific on how requests are handled, and could have been despite FISA restrictions on what they could say. However, after speaking with sources, I’ve come to believe the blame rests more on the government for muzzling these companies in the way they explain to their users the complex privacy issues associated with compliance with government requests for personal information on their users. Both the secure, segregated responses to demands for data, and the limited scope of the monitoring could help ease the fears of the public. It still may be an assault on liberty, but possibly smaller than suspected. And with any luck, the whole PRISM issue will push the government towards greater transparency. |
The New “Handmade” (Part Three) | Sarah Perez | 2,013 | 6 | 1 | Consumer interest in 3D printing is booming, thanks to , crazy stories about , human and , all of which are impressive technological leaps. But 3D printing is fueling artists’ creativity, too, whether those artists are or , finding their way around by watching YouTube tutorials. Although the results of 3D printing are gaining mainstream awareness and praise, consumers are still somewhat removed from the creation process. They’re browsing through galleries on Etsy and Shapeways, shopping on e-commerce sites filled with 3D-printed goods, or even coming across the work offline in stores and museums. One company called Mixee Labs is trying to change that by bringing the consumer into the design process, starting with fun and whimsical “mini me” creations — little 3D-printed characters that are as easy to build as a Wii Mii using Mixee’s own simple online software. When co-founder was little, she dreamed of making herself into an action figure. “I had this notion that if you could become an action figure or become a toy, you’ve made it in the world,” she explains. Years later, her ongoing interest in technology and design led her to a job as the materials lead at , a company that could help her make those childhood fantasies come true. The startup, founded in 2007 as a spin-off of Royal Philips Electronics, today offers 3D-printing resources, an online shop, and a way for anyone to use to print out their own 3D creations. Liang had heard about Shapeways around the time of and thought it would be a great place for “normals” like herself to participate in design, even if lacking a professional background. Angling for a position there, she hung around the Shapeways booth at Maker Faire until the CEO showed up, then handed him her resume and talked her way into a job. She ended up as the first hire in the company’s New York location. But when later trying her own hand at 3D object creation, Liang ran into a hurdle. “I started to learn how to 3D model and — lo and behold! — it’s not as easy as you think it is,” she says with a laugh. “I spent five hours at my computer trying to make this action figure that looked nothing like me,” she says. “That was my first foray into 3D printing, and also the inspiration behind Mixee Me.” Not a designer herself — or even very crafty, for that matter (“I tried to design a shirt once — you know, sewing — but learned that I’m better with the computer,” she says), Liang still believes in the potential that 3D printing brings to the hobby crafting market. But she also saw that there was a hole that needed to be filled to make that happen. The gap lies between the accessible printing technology and the software needed to translate ideas into computer-understandable designs, which pushed Liang along with technical founder into starting Mixee Labs late last year. The company’s goal is to make it easier for everyone to make something and then have it printed in 3D format. Its first products are the cute little figurines Mixee’s customers create online using the company’s software. “We wanted something that people could relate to — everyone has friends and family they could make miniatures of — and we wanted something that was easy to use. Rather than worrying about angles and inverted normals and polygons, you have to select from ‘angry eyes,’ ‘happy eyes,’ ‘blonde hair’ – it’s very intuitive,” Liang explains. Within its first month, the Mixee Me store was one of the top five shops at Shapeways. However, the company declined to provide exact sales figures. ~~~ In some weeks’ time, the company is launching a platform that will allow customers to design even more things beyond the figurines, which today people tend to buy as wedding-cake toppers or silly gifts for co-workers. Using customizable design templates sourced from professionals, online shoppers will be able to use intuitive web software to quickly adjust a base template to their liking then have it printed via Shapeways. The bigger question, however, is whether or not people will actually want to participate in the creation process of things like jewelry or housewares, or whether they’re only drawn to the idea now while the idea of 3D printing is newly buzzy. Liang, of course, thinks 3D printing will live beyond the hype cycle. “I think this is going to change the way people think about products. People are going to be able to participate in the way their stuff is designed,” she says. “I think what is going to take it from early adopter to mass adoption — and this is a big problem, but an interesting one — is to make it more about things that average people care about…there are a lot of products that show off the technology very well, but aren’t as relatable to everyday people,” Liang adds. “One of the things we wanted to do [with Mixee Me] was create something that was relatable, something that was customizable and something that was customizable. I think you really need all three to cross that gap between early adopters and mass consumers.” |
Crowdstar Picks Up An Extra $12M To Fuel Its Move Onto Tablets, Mobile | Kim-Mai Cutler | 2,013 | 6 | 1 | Crowdstar, the social and mobile gaming company that has built several fashion-focused titles, just picked up another $12 million from existing investors to bring two products to market later this year. As you might expect, both are mobile and Crowdstar CEO Jeffrey Tseng says the company now has a renewed focus on tablets. Competing companies like Finland’s Supercell have made tablet gaming their bread and butter, with higher engagement and player spending fueling revenue growth. We picked up the new funding , but Tseng later confirmed it. “So it’s the same internal investors, but I can’t talk much about the products,” Tseng said. He said that one will be fashion-focused like Top Girl and Social Girl while the other one will be different. An early player on the Facebook platform, Crowdstar had to migrate onto iOS and Android like the rest of the industry. Zynga is making a similar transition, but as the legacy leader on Facebook, it’s had a tougher time involving job cuts and studio closures. While it was never anywhere near the size of Zynga, Crowdstar has stayed small through the transition with 70 people overall. Back in 2011, when it was crossing over to iOS, the company’s previous CEO Peter Relan said Crowdstar would have a mobile platforms, Facebook and international reach. But since then, they’ve shifted their entire focus to mobile. “We’ve completely switched to mobile and the focus will be on tablets,” Tseng said. The new round brings Crowdstar’s to more than $46.5 million. It comes as marketing spending has risen on mobile platforms, bringing the cost of launching a new game into the millions of dollars. “Platform are getting to the point where the fidelity and expectations have to be higher,” Tseng said. |
Mozilla Readies Major Firefox Redesign As It Ponders What The Browser Of The Future Should Look Like | Frederic Lardinois | 2,013 | 6 | 1 | “Maybe we shouldn’t even call it a browser anymore,” Mozilla’s VP of Firefox engineering Jonathan Nightingale told me a few days ago. “‘Browser’ is really an antiquated word. People don’t really browse all that much anymore.” Instead, he argues, we now mostly use our browsers to access sophisticated web apps, web-based productivity tools and social networks. For browser developers, this means they have to start to rethink what their browsers should look like now that usage patterns have changed and that the majority of users have become pretty experienced Internet (and browser) users. The project that has been guiding Mozilla’s exploration of what a modern browser should look like is (because Mozilla apparently likes to name projects after star systems) and the fruits of this project will soon find their way into the Firefox release channels, starting with Nightly once it hits version 25 soon. After that, it will make its way through the usual release channels, though Nightingale told me that the team may hold it back from the stable channel a bit longer to ensure that everything works smoothly. If you feel really adventurous, you can already install a version of Firefox from Mozilla’s relatively obscure and test it in its current state (but don’t blame us if it crashes a lot or shreds your hard drive). So what’s Australis all about? At first glance, it looks a bit more like Chrome than the Firefox we know today. In its current iteration, the Australis theme features rounded corners for tabs and the same three-bar icon to the right of the URL and search boxes to bring up a drop-down customization and settings menu. As Nightingale told me, the idea behind Australis was to design a browser that was just as capable as today, but simpler to use. The team was also tasked to look closely at how people actually use their browsers and then design the user experience around this. The new design, he believes, is cleaner and more intuitive. One example he cited is that in the current iteration of the design, unselected tabs basically blend into the background and don’t even have the usual tab borders around them. Instead of just shrinking tabs as you open more of them, even though you can’t even see the individual tabs’ icons anymore (the way Chrome does), the Firefox team has also decided to set a minimum width for tabs and then move to a scrolling tab bar once the maximum number of tabs has been reached. While the main Australis theme won’t land in the stable channel before October, Nightingale did stress that even today’s version of Firefox was already influenced by the results of the project. The combined stop/load/reload button in Firefox, for example, came out of this group. So did the new download manager and the fact that Firefox now doesn’t show the forward button anymore when there is no page to go forward to. The customization and tools menu now also uses icons in a three-by-three arrangement and dedicated buttons for copy, select and paste, as well as for increasing font sizes instead of just using a regular drop-down text menu. Quite a bit of this, of course, is already visible in the Firefox for Android app, too, which in Nightingale’s words had a bit of a “rebirth over the last year.” It’s getting close to 40 million downloads now, however, and this success means a larger user base and the need to slow down radical changes that could confuse users on Android. (And just in case you are wondering, Mozilla still regularly looks at iOS and its opportunities there, but Apple’s current rules still don’t work for Mozilla. The team is, however, looking at “other things” Mozilla could do on iOS.) Australis is not just about the design, though. One area that’s also changing with Australis is how you customize the look and feel of your browser. Mozilla currently offers quite a few tools for this, but the team believes they are hard to find and not “fun” enough to use. As Mozilla’s Gavin Sharp told me, the idea here was to get users to enjoy customizing their browsers for the way they use it. Unless users can find these features, though, they could just as well be left out, so the team is working on ways to make it a bit more obvious that users can rearrange and remove virtually all the parts of the Firefox interface to suit their needs. Now that Firefox is on a rapid-release schedule, the team obviously can’t change the user interface with every update, so the current thinking is to roll some things out together once they are ready and, where it makes sense, roll others out individually. This means that while we’ll see Australis and its curvy tabs in the nightlies of Firefox 25 very soon, it may not actually land in the stable version of Firefox 25. Building the browser of the future, of course, is not just about design. Mozilla is also trying to adjust to how its users now use their browser through tools like its , as well as more perfomance-oriented initiatives like . Still, the first thing users will notice once Australis rolls out is the new design. It’ll be hard not to look at it and think that it looks a bit like Chrome – and that will surely stir up a bit of controversy. |
As Anti-Government Protests Erupt In Istanbul, Facebook And Twitter Appear Suddenly Throttled | Mike Butcher | 2,013 | 6 | 1 | A massive anti-government protest in Istanbul, prompted after days of unrest were sparked by plans to redevelop one of the last remaining central public parks, appears to have led to a throttling of social media both in the city and across Turkey. TechCrunch has independently verified via a number of sources that both Facebook and Twitter have been almost impossible to access from inside Istanbul, and other parts of Turkey. There are also anecdotal reports of authorities switching off access in a localised manner around Taksim Square where thousands of people are demonstrating. There have been violent scenes in Istanbul, with police firing tear gas and water cannons at people demonstrating against the erection of a shopping centre in a space widely considered to be a protected civic area. The demonstration has escalated into an anti-government and anti-corruption protest against an administration that has been in power since 2002. Our sources – drawn from the tech community – say that around 99 percent of Facebook “doesn’t load” when accessed from Istanbul. “They throttled the bandwith to the bare minimum so that officially it’s not blocked, but it’s not loading any more… it looks like the government is reducing the speed using TTNET which is the ISP they control,” said one, who declined to be named for fear of reprisal. Another source told us: “3G is blocked.” Another well-placed source at a tech accelerator told us: “We had problems in connecting internet today – mostly due to people trying to access through 3G network. However around 4pm local time access to Twitter and Facebook has been blocked on local ISP (two major ones TTNet and Superonline which among two have over 90% of the land line internet access). I connected through Acevpn and saw that the problem is not my home line but TTNet blocking the access to Twitter and Facebook.” This source said this happened at a time where the tension was at its peak when protesters were trying to get into the target “Gezi Park” area. “After 30 minutes (approximately) the police withdrew from the area and Twitter Facebook access came back,” he told us. A spokesperson from Facebook said the company declined to specifically comment on events in Turkey; however they issued the following statement: “The Internet provides people around the world with the power to connect, to learn, and to share. It is essential to communication and to commerce, and limiting Internet access for millions of people is a matter of concern for the global community.” Turks are around the protests. |
CrunchWeek: Elon Musk Dominates Tech, Waze Sale Talks Falter (Again), Jury’s Out On Arrested Development | Colleen Taylor | 2,013 | 6 | 1 | This time around, , and I discuss continuing to with his moonshot business moves (and whether he’s the next Steve Jobs or even Thomas Edison), Waze’s reportedly — and how it’s not the first time that M&A talks have in recent months, and whether Netflix’s debut was (and Lawler’s kind of amazing from a few months back). |
How Samsung Got Big | Chris Velazco | 2,013 | 6 | 1 | stacked up high in the Gumi factory yard and more were coming out every minute. Phones, TVs, fax machines, and other gear shattered as it hit the concrete and Samsung CEO Kun-hee Lee and his board cracked the screens and cases with heavy hammers. Then they lit a bonfire and threw everything in. The 2,000 workers began to cry. And still the hardware kept coming. The CEO was disgusted by the low quality product coming out of his factories in the early 1990s and, in a blaze of anger, ordered it all destroyed. In all, something like $50 million worth of hardware burned on one day in 1995 when Samsung hoisted its “Quality First” banner and began its slow march towards world domination in earnest. Samsung Electronics emerged from those ashes a very different company, but the road leading to that cleansing fire was a long one. To most of the western world the name “Samsung” is inextricably linked with smartphones and televisions and refrigerators and microwaves — with the consumer electronics that have turned Samsung into a global force. Go back far enough though and it becomes very clear that Samsung Electronics was only ever part of the equation. A massively successful part, yes, but still just a part. Before Samsung Electronics there was merely Samsung Sanghoe: a small trading company founded by Lee Byung-Chull in 1938 that dealt mostly in dried seafood, produce, and its own noodles. Its bread and butter, so to speak, was shipping those comestibles all around the region. Business was good, and Lee went on to open Samsung Mulsan (now known as Samsung Corporation) in 1948, but that prosperity was ultimately short-lived. After diligently growing Samsung Mulsan, Lee was forced to abandon his holdings in Seoul when the city was invaded and occupied by the republic’s communist neighbors to the north. He nearly lost everything. Samsung’s story almost ended there, but Lee made his way south to Busan to recoup from his losses and bring Samsung Mulsan back from the brink of death. The war economy treated the fledgling trading corporation well, and within a few years Lee was able to parlay the proceeds into a handful of prominent subsidiaries. And thus, Samsung’s chaebol era began. Korea’s chaebols are curious things — they’re very large, very diverse commercial conglomerates, not entirely unlike a GE or a Dupont, save for one little difference. Rather than divvying up the leadership of the chaebol’s subsidiaries and interests among a slew of external candidates, all that power is saved and meted out to members of the family. If you think of them as Asian analogues to family-driven empires like the Rockefellers you wouldn’t be completely off-base, but even that would be underestimating the amazing amount of political clout and influence these corporate bodies exhibit. In later years, the sort of influence chaebols had on national matters was even a little scary. Lee Byung-Chull sat in the throne, and over the years to come, most of his six daughters and four sons would occupy positions of great power with the carefully-cultivated chaebol. But none would be as prominent as Lee’s youngest son Kun-hee, who officially joined the chaebol in 1968 after studying economics at Japan’s prestigious Waseda University and getting his MBA from George Washington University. 1969 saw the founding of Samsung Electronics, the subsidiary that would ultimately go on to become perhaps the world’s most powerful electronics brand. But that’s a long way off — its first products were mostly modest home appliances. Samsung’s inaugural black-and-white television set rolled off assembly lines in 1969 by way of a joint venture with Sanyo since the Korean subsidiary had no experience putting TVs together, and refrigerators, air conditioners, and electric fans soon followed. It didn’t take long for Lee to figure out that the growing demand for consumer electronics of all stripes could mean very big things for Samsung down the road, but there was a problem — many of the components that went into Samsung’s products came from overseas, and Japan in particular. Considering that Japanese companies like Sony had been churning out well-received gizmos for years at that point, nascent Korean electronics companies had grown dependent on imports of foreign components and technological know-how. Samsung decided to do something about that. In 1974 it nabbed a majority stake in Korea Semiconductor in a bid to help wean itself off of foreign tech. Not everyone within Samsung’s brass agreed with the decision — granted, going from piecing together consumer electronics to building components seems slightly backwards — so Byung-Chull decided to settle matters with his own checkbook with some prodding from his son Kun-hee. Korea Semiconductor was renamed Samsung Semiconductor in 1978 and Samsung would soon begin to sling its own silicon, a move that would pay off handsomely in the decades to come. The rest of the 1970s would see Samsung Electronics making strides abroad with its inexpensive wares. One of its earliest international hits was a cheap color television — it first made a splash in Panama of all places before making its debut in the United States. It was a slow start, but a start all the same. Black and white sets hadn’t gone completely out of style yet though, and Samsung Electronics had manufactured almost 10 million of its cost-conscious sets by the end of the decade.** By the time 1980 rolled around, the Samsung Group had grown to become one of the most prominent chaebols in South Korea, with a construction company, a petrochemicals division, and a ship-building arm supplementing the conglomerate’s sugar, paper, and newspaper businesses. While the Samsung Group broadened its scope and grew into an economic powerhouse, Samsung Electronics slowly became more proficient at churning out consumer gadgetry. Even so, pure production power just wasn’t enough — even though Samsung had become a notable electronics exporter, foreign customers still passed over their products because of poor marketing and positioning. Who would buy a off-brand Samsung television when a proven Sony set sat right next to it on store shelves? Even worse, foreign and domestic consumers who did take a chance on Samsung products often found that they just didn’t work the way they were supposed to. The quality just wasn’t always there. Somewhere along the line balls were being dropped, but the senior Lee didn’t have enough time to address the matter.
The skies over Seoul were peppered with clouds when Lee Byung-Chull died of lung cancer on November 20, 1987. Just two weeks later, Byung Chull’s youngest son, Kun-hee, took his place on the family throne to become the Samsung Group’s second chairman. Kun-hee’s installment as chairman was agreed upon by Byung-Chull’s survivors and Samsung Group’s board, but it seemed like a peculiar move to some who peered in from the outside. The late Lee was no fool though, and didn’t suffer them lightly either. When his two elder sons proved ill-suited for duty he dismissed them outright. “They were unfit for executive positions,” Lee remarked to Time Magazine in 1976. “The life of a man is short, but that of a corporation must never be.” The Confucian patriarchy that was a hallmark of the chaebol power structure meant that Kun-hee Lee would be the one to ultimately succeed Byung-Chull, though the patriarch may have wished otherwise. He was very fond of his eldest daughter Lee In-hee, and reportedly mentioned to his confidants that she would be a shoe-in as his successor if only she was male. Kun-hee’s first few years as chairman were marked by relative prosperity for the Samsung Group, and Samsung Electronics in particular. Samsung Semiconductors, the purchase which you’ll recall both senior and junior Lees coordinated, had already begun to pay off thanks to the popularity of its DRAM memory chips and became the market leader in 1992, and Samsung Electronics had begun to focus more on research and development in addition to production prowess. That said, there were some problems. To say that Kun-hee Lee is a character is putting it awfully mildly — his tenure as chairman of the Samsung Group was peppered with overzealous but defining moments that changed the course of the chaebol’s growth. The first took place in 1993, when Lee the junior found himself facing an electronics division that simply wasn’t doing its best work. Lee’s vision was of a Samsung that sat on top of the world’s industries, a vision that didn’t jibe with the slipshod products and careless practices that he saw day in and day out. So what did he do? He talked, and talked, and talked. It was a lengthy, impassioned demand for change. His initial, hour-long phone outburst took place on a flight to Frankfurt, and he had his rant recorded so others who weren’t present would be able to heed his words. Upon his arrival in Germany, Lee gathered up some 200 Samsung executives in a hotel and laid out his vision over the course of three days. “Change everything but your wife and kids,” Lee famously proclaimed. Lee would later prove to be full of such soundbites, but the message was clear — Samsung Electronics was in trouble and the people in that room needed to fix things fast. His message may have seemed like a powerful one, and some execs surely took it to heart, but it didn’t seem to stick for very long. As the story goes, Lee sent out some of Samsung’s newest mobile phones as New Year’s gifts in 1995 only to be embarrassed when he was informed that they didn’t work the way they were supposed to. Quality had began to slip once more, and Lee was intent on making his earlier edict crystal clear. With the help of a few of his generals, Kun-hee Lee took it upon himself to play the perfectionist pyrophile. Invoking the flaws that paved the way for the bonfire likening product defects to “cancer,” a grim but fitting metaphor for a subsidiary whose fate could be sealed if its employees and brass didn’t enact some dramatic changes. After the flames were put out and the debris cleared, Samsung Electronics redoubled its investments in research and development. The installation of a new Electronics CEO, Yun Jong-Yong in December 1996 was meant to put the errant subsidiary on a more ambitious, profitable path. The shrewd Mr. Yun, a graduate of Seoul National University who also studied at MIT’s Sloan School of Business, also helped navigate Samsung Electronics through one of its most desperate periods. 1997 saw South Korea’s massive chaebols take considerable losses thanks to the Asian financial crisis. In retrospect Samsung weathered the storm better than most despite carrying loads of debt, but Yun was faced with a hell of a task — and was forced to streamline the subsidiary’s operations by selling off nearly $2 billion in corporate assets and temporarily shutting down factories to help Samsung Electronics move through its inventory. To many of its employees, working for Samsung is a mark of pride. In an effort to further trim costs, Yun laid off 24,000 of them. It was a trying time for Samsung Electronics. Yun’s efforts helped to solidify the subsidiary’s transition from being a producer of cheap, me-too products to a herald of the bleeding edge. One of the keys, according to Yun, was sheer speed. Without it Samsung Electronics could fall prey to any number of major rivals set on out-innovating and out-producing them. Between that focus on aggressive turn-around times and the thoughtful reinvestment of fund in products and divisions that were seen as potential long-term winners, Samsung Electronics had set the stage for the next decade. Samsung’s early interest in the nascent semiconductor business allowed it compete in ways that other consumer electronics firms — like Sony — weren’t prepared to. The subsidiary didn’t focus just on finished products, it concerned itself with the electronic building blocks that went into them. That M.O. speaks to another trait of Samsung Electronics: it doesn’t do much pioneering in unproven spaces. Rather, it picks out markets that have clear traction and try to consistently outperform the players that are already there. Consider the humble TFT-LCD display. Samsung Electronics’ first was produced in the mid-90s, and in the years to come the subsidiary would dump considerable amounts of money into improving production quality, clarity, size, as demand for flat-screen displays grew from the late 90s onward. And of course, mobile was another one of the those big opportunities. If a strategy based on weighty investments and rapid development helped Samsung stay ahead of its Japanese display rivals, then it helped Samsung take on the world with its mobile devices. The approach would best be described as “scattershot.” Be they feature phones or Android smartphones, Samsung Electronics has always seen to fit to churn them out at an astonishing rate to see what clicks with consumers. That’s led to a considerable number of one-off devices meant to stand on their own and then disappear after mere months on the market, but hits are inevitable and so are their sequels. Consider the company’s flagship Galaxy S series, for instance. First introduced in 2010, the Galaxy S was one of the first Android devices to become a runaway success, despite companies like HTC and Motorola having a considerable head start. From there, the typical Samsung drive to iterate kicked in and now, after less than three years, Samsung is already preparing to push its Galaxy S4 out the door and into the world marketplace. One could argue (and some already have) that Samsung’s Galaxy S4 is little more than a software-centric rehash of the model that preceded it, but that’s not really the point. It’s better than the model that came before it, and it’s being released less than a year since the Galaxy S III came out. Samsung is fighting to maintain its position at the head of the curve through production and development speed — don’t expect that to change any time soon.
The story of Samsung’s humble birth, growth, and dominance of multiple industries reads something like a creation myth, a rags-to-riches story for the ages. Samsung Electronics in particular hit its stride in the years that followed that famous fire, but there’s one more factor that helped propel the subsidiary into the stratosphere and keep it there: the Samsung chaebol’s tremendous stature. If defects are “a cancer” just as Lee famously proclaimed, then what about the flagrant, repeated violations of the law that seem to punctuate Samsung Electronics’ history? Product defects are one thing, but what of defects of character and ethics? After all, Samsung has flouted its share of Korean and international regulations over the years, often with the help of some prominent chaebol buddies. Consider this small selection of legal imbroglios that Samsung has been engaged in over the years: And those are just the some of the cases that directly involve Samsung Electronics — the other subsidiaries and the Samsung Group as a whole was responsible for much more. It’s easy enough to ascribe some of these incidents as the work of unscrupulous loners, and that may be the case at least some of the time, but Lee Kun-hee was no paragon of virtue himself. The world would soon discover that the revered chairman had pinned his name to a hefty list of transgressions while helping Samsung become one of the world’s most prolific conglomerates. Kim Yong Chul, who served as Samsung in-house counsel before leaving the company to write a tell-all tale of corruption, leveled some of the weightiest accusations at his former employer. In late 2007, he participated in televised press conference in which he claimed that Samsung and Chairman Lee had secretly cultivated a 200 billion won slush fund meant primarily to bribe government officials. An investigation ensued and while the bribery claim didn’t stick, in 2008 Lee stepped down from his inherited post as chairman after being indicted for dodging roughly $120 million in tax payments. At the time he was required to pay a small (for him) fine of $100 million, and was sentenced to three years in prison, a punishment that was quickly suspended. He was ultimately pardoned by President Lee Myung-bak in 2009 so that the Samsung Group chairman could remain a part of International Olympic Committee, and Kun-hee eventually reclaimed his place atop the chaebol in 2010. The kicker? That’s the second time Lee Kun-hee has received a presidential pardon. The first was back in 1997 for yet another slush fund scandal, this time involving plans to pay off presidential hopefuls. Despite all that, Kun-hee Lee, Samsung Electronics, and the whole of the Samsung Group walked away with minimal (if any) lasting damage. Its size now is one of Samsung’s greatest assets — it employs hundreds of thousands around the world, and the sheer amount of money it brings in (the Samsung Group accounts for around one-fifth of South Korea’s GDP) it has more than enough financial and political resources to handily deal with whatever comes its way.
In spite of all that Samsung Electronics (and by proxy, the Samsung Group) has grown to truly massive proportions. Though it needed some swift kicks in the proverbial pants along the way, Samsung Electronics’ rise to the top of the consumer electronics industry is one based on nearly as many questionable practices as good ones. Tremendous production power, a devotion to speed and efficiency, a modicum of measured craziness in its leaders, and the willingness to throw around its amazing weight have all contributed to Samsung’s domination of nearly every industry it’s involved with. For Samsung, it’s all about thoughtfully applying its brawn, which becomes all the more important when you reach the heights Samsung has. Once you reach the top, you become a target. There’s a very fine line between being ruthless and being effective, and Samsung seems to have mastered its balancing act. |
Austin Turns Out For A Hot Night Of Fun, Drinking And Pitching | Matt Burns | 2,013 | 6 | 1 | Last Thursday, on a balmy night in Central Texas, over 900 people attended TechCrunch’s first event in the Lone Star State. Just like every other TechCrunch meetup, the crowd was an eclectic mix of tech nerds, entrepreneurs, business types, and venture capitalists. It was an epic night that ended with a pitch-off for the ages. Halfway through the night 30 companies took the stage and pitched to three Austin-area VCs and TC East Coast Editor John Biggs and myself. Never before have we featured such raw talent in a pitch-off. Austin, and Texas in general, has some amazing young companies. But in the end a robust video production management startup, , won the top prize of a Startup Alley table for TC Disrupt SF. , a startup that’s essentially Expedia for dog boarding, won two tickets to Disrupt SF as the runner-up. And , a well-developed platform for shopping and booking kids summer camps (they’re looking for funding, btw), impressed the live audience enough to win the Audience Choice award. I would also like to thank the sponsors that made this event happen. Austin-based , an ecommerce solution provider, and Austin-based , made much of this event possible. Our other sponsors like ATI, Silvercar, Texas for Economic Progress and 5 Gum, also played a big part, too. After spending a few days talking to Austin startups and VCs, it’s very clear that Austin is a special place for young companies. The area is full of talent and helpful venture capitalists which combine into a vibrant community. Thank you, Austin. We had a great. Take care now, y’hear. TC is next for another meetup + pitch-off. The general admission tickets will be on sale soon and we’ll open up registration for the pitch-off competition in the coming weeks. Startup Demo tables and Exhibitor packages area available now.
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Policing Hate Speech Is Harder Than Nipples | Josh Constine | 2,013 | 6 | 1 | No automated system can identify what will offend people. What some humans find disgusting, others find controversial, and others still find funny. Computers just don’t understand. That when activism groups got advertisers to boycott after the social network failed to suspend accounts accused of and encouraging violence against women via image memes — photos of injured women with overlaid text laughing about it. Some of the images Women Action Media denounced truly did call for violence against women, and could understandably be pulled. Other less direct references to violence could be interpreted as obscene jokes. Facebook had reviewed some of the accused offenders and allowed some to persist. However, the loss of ad dollars seems to have spurred it to action as it’s now responding to complaints. Now let’s be clear, violence against women or anyone is wrong. Encouraging it is in some cases is illegal. Joking about it is insensitive. But just because this kind of content appears on Facebook doesn’t mean it promotes violence. There is no misogynist conspiracy. There is a technological deficiency, a human deficiency. Facebook first line of defense is a set of objectionable content detection algorithms. They can pick out the shape of a nipple or penis, and automatically pull down the image. But they’re not perfect. They miss things and flag innocent images accidentally. Most critically in the current situation, they can’t decipher that a string of words and an image combine to mean something horrible. That’s why the second line of defense is Facebook’s users. Content flagged by too many people too quickly can be taken down automatically and reviewed later. This system has its flaws too, as a group of trolls working in concert can bring down innocent content, as has happened to Pages promoting women’s rights and other just causes. When content is flagged, it’s sent to Facebook’s Site Integrity team. I’ve had friends who worked on this team. It’s a tough, draining job. They are the ones who have to look at the threats of violence, the revenge porn, the racism, bigotry, and hatred. In the early days when Facebook’s own employees reviewed this content manually, I heard the company had to frequently rotate people through the team because the nightmarish content would drive staffer to depression if they did it too long. In one case, I heard about a man who each weekend would create multiple fake accounts bearing his ex-girlfriends name and post naked photos he had of her. Each week the Site Integrity team would work with her to take them down. It sounded like an awful job. Now Facebook much of this work overseas, but the edge cases bubble up to its in-house staff. They have to make tough calls about where to draw the line. A blurry, jagged, subjective line that some will say is repressive and others will say promotes hatred. Humanity has had to draw this line since we learned to express ourselves. And there will never be an exactly right answer to where it belongs. That doesn’t mean Facebook handled this situation properly. Each of us can judge if it drew the line wrong, but what appeared to move the line that I found so unsettling. Though Facebook didn’t mention advertisers, and was already working on many of the reforms mentioned in its apology, it seems like the advertisers boycott made it spring into action. Facebook needs a firm stance on hate speech independent of its finances. That won’t be easy, and exceptions will have to be made from time to time. This is an issue of freedom of speech. We’re right to demand sensitivity and ever improving systems for delivering it. We must also remember, though, that the Internet’s ability to connect a diversity of opinions is one reason it is so powerful. Moving to block someone else’s should be used with great discretion, not just when we disagree. |
Gillmor Gang: Wake Up Call | Steve Gillmor | 2,013 | 6 | 1 | The Gillmor Gang — Robert Scoble, Keith Teare, John Taschek, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor — recorded early on a Thursday morning, flush with Apple CEO Tim Cook’s read-between-the-lines performance at D11. Cook took some 80 minutes to say very little, or so say the pundits and Wall Street spinners. But the Gang found plenty to decrypt, including thoughts on Apple TV, wearable computing, value versus volume, and just about everything Steve Jobs used to do minus the famous reality distortion field. But as the lack of smoke cleared, what was left over suggested a robust fall and a steady drumbeat of evolution from Apple to match Google’s flashier but Webier approach. Lost in the shuffle was Microsoft’s X-Box announcements, leaving the strong impression of the two leaders pulling away from the pack. But it was fun to watch @scobleizer wake up over the course of the show, as we realized, like Cook, how much we love the art of surprise. @stevegillmor, @scobleizer, @jtaschek, @kevinmarks, @kteare Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor |
The Quantitative VC | Leena Rao | 2,013 | 6 | 1 | It’s no longer sufficient in venture capital for firms to wait for companies, people and trends to come to Sand Hill Road. Seeing a startup on Demo Day at Y Combinator used to be the pipeline for scouting an early deal. But these days, YC companies are raising from angels before demo days. This is a sign of the times in the venture world. To start competing for deals, VCs have to be prospecting people, companies and trends well before events like Demo Day. And how are VCs trying to do this? Through complex data mining and pattern recognition. In the past two years, Sand Hill Road has seen a number of changes, including the explosion of angel and seed-stage investors, the agency model that , and . The latest trend is the role of the data scientist within a firm, and how a firm’s data is being used to help VCs scout better deals and entrepreneurs and eventually create better returns for their LPs. “The venture capital industry had previously been a closed network, where a handful of funds had access to the Googles and Facebooks of the world,” says Chris Farmer, a VC who has held investment roles at General Catalyst and Bessemer Venture Partners, who is building a new fund fundamentally based on data. He’s building the platform and plans to start raising a fund early next year that will intelligently take the massive amount of data available to investors, such as information from CrunchBase, social media, web metrics and a number of proprietary data sources to identify the best opportunities and be able to add value to companies in a scalable way. As Farmer explains, it used to happen that deals came to VC firms based on their past deals (i.e. Google or Yahoo) and through an investor’s previous network (i.e the PayPal mafia). But entrepreneurs are no longer forced to flock to VCs for the first check, because they can now also raise the modest capital they need from angels, seed funds and accelerators. In the web and mobile world, the bar (and price tag) is also lower to build a company. There are more startups launching in the current climate than there ever have been before. Sites like AngelList are connecting founders to investors (and now coordinating financing, as well). “VCs are no longer the gatekeepers, and the entrepreneur has more leverage,” he says. With this fundamental shift taking place in the industry, many VCs are turning to data as a way to keep a competitive advantage. If they can do deep data mines on potential entrepreneurs to look out for or what unknown and bootstrapped apps are performing well on the App Store, investors can reach founders at an earlier stage, foster a relationship and, fingers crossed, be the firm that nabs the Series A round. What are the kinds of data that VCs are parsing through? There’s the basic signals like Compete and Alexa data, as well as App Store and Play Store data and rankings. VCs are also combing through sites like LinkedIn to scout talent on who could be starting a company and paying for data streams of SEC filings, and other forms of public financial data from sources like CB Insights, Venture Source and others. And VCs have been flocking to our own CrunchBase, which now has 1.6 million data points on companies, entrepreneurs, fundings, exits and more. CrunchBase President Matt Kaufman the CrunchBase Venture Network, which gives VC firms access to the CrunchBase API and team in exchange for information on their portfolio companies, including funding updates, staffing changes, product launches and acquisitions. Eleven firms signed up for the data partnership at launch a few weeks ago, including Greylock, DFJ, Softtech VC, SV Angel, Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, CrunchFund, 500 Startups, Betaworks, Foundry Group and TechStars. In two weeks, Kaufman says over a hundred firms, including Google Ventures, have joined the network to access CrunchBase data. There’s no doubt that every well-known VC firm is trying to figure out how to use data intelligently. Some want to talk about it and some don’t, obviously for competitive reasons. Google Ventures was one of the first VC firms that started to take a quantitative approach to investing. The firm’s Managing Director, Bill Maris, tells TechCrunch, “I don’t know of any VC fund that was looking at data before we started investing in 2009. Venture was traditionally a qualitative business and ignored the quantitative possibilities. Google is a data company, and many of us worked at Google previously, so naturally the way we look at investing and tackling problems is from a quantitative perspective.” As Maris explains, the firm was founded on the belief that more data and information will help make better investment decisions. And it was only natural to build a data team in-house at the firm to study information and trends around entrepreneurship. Google Ventures brought on Excite co-founder and Google-acquired JotSpot co-founder Graham Spencer as its engineering director to help lead a team of engineers and data specialists that collect, analyze and draw insights from large data sets. Maris adds that it helps that the firm has the full statistical resources of Google when it comes to tackling these big data sets. “There aren’t too many problems that someone at Google hasn’t seen when it comes to data analysis,” he says. “There is always a qualitative element to decision-making in venture capital,” says Spencer. “We’re trying to give investors a toolbox to use when making a specific decision about a company.” He says there are a number of signals you can mine and draw patterns from, including where successful entrepreneurs went to school, the companies they worked for and more. Other areas where data can be helpful is how Google Ventures should allocate its money, whether that be at the seed stage or at the late stage of financing. He says one example of some of the data mining is building a network map of VCs themselves, analyzing syndicates of VC money going into specific companies, seeing which VCs are more successful, and which combinations and collaborations produce better outcomes. Maris believes that, while relationships also matter in making sound investments, part of better decision-making when it comes to investing is collecting data and information. “We think what we are doing is the right thing and is leading to better outcomes, but it’s not the only way to do it…we came up with a new way to use data and apply this to the VC business. And most of the startups we fund are data startups, so we drink our own Kool-Aid. We would be foolish to ignore big data and the potential behind analyzing large data sets.” Greylock partner and former CEO of Mozilla John Lilly is a firm believer in using data to spot trends, traction and even startups. “We are using quantitative insights to make qualitative decisions,” he says. “VCs are more quantitative now than they have ever been…Data helps in two places. On the front end, it helps you figure out where to look for the next big thing or entrepreneur. On the back end, it can help us understand and validate potential hypotheses.” Similar to Google Ventures, Greylock has built a data team that currently includes Brendan Baker, one of the early employees of AngelList. Greylock COO Tom Frangione tells us the firm is starting to build data analysis tools internally. Lilly says that when it comes to analyzing traction, the firm looks to signals like App Store rankings by country, Twitter mentions and data, the deltas between the Google App Store and the Apple App Store, engagement (i.e. how many members used a given app five days out of the week) and more. Lilly brings up the interesting point that not all signals point to investment opportunities. For example, over a year ago, the growth curves in terms of engagement and traction of social and mobile video sharing apps were looking the same as Instagram’s growth curves (Lilly was an investor in Instagram before it was sold to Facebook). He adds that intuition comes into play here as well. Clearly mobile video sharing has not seen an Instagram-like exit, and several startups in the space, , have gone through turbulent times. He says that while the qualitative data pointed toward mobile video sharing becoming an Instagram-like hit, the qualitative decision would kick in not to invest in any of these startups. “It’s really about matching data with insight. You start and end with a qualitative thesis and decision but data can support or invalidate this thesis,” he says. Mike Maples, longtime investor and founder of Floodgate and Maples Investments, is a strong believer in looking at data in the investment world but believes that the discussion around VC and data is framed the wrong way. He explains that if you take a look at the data behind which technology companies are successful, the Power Law comes into place. In a given year somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 companies raise angel funding, on average 5-10 companies generate the vast majority of investor returns in a given business, and 80 companies are created yearly that are worth more than $50 million, he says. He’s examining and takes a deep data dive on what causes some companies to be in the top 10 of those investor returns, and find some sort of pattern recognition. Floodgate currently employs its own in-house data scientist who is referred to as the chief hacker. “In the early days of technology it was about finding who are the smartest people in a given space and identifying a few signals” he says. But over time that has changed, and now VCs have become more systematic on finding the right signals on what will be the next Facebook or Google in an algorithmic way. But Floodgate’s differentiation when it comes to data, Maples maintains, is that the firm’s primary focus is not on running an algorithm against the App Store, LinkedIn, or CrunchBase but on mining patterns from the most exceptional companies from the past. Long before there emerged data-focused companies like Google, there was Kleiner Perkins, which was founded in 1972. But while the firm is an institution on Sand Hill Road, Kleiner is also attempting to participate in the new quantitative movement in the VC world. Kleiner partner Chi-Hua Chien tells us that partners and associates use a proprietary data-mining software called Dragnet. The application was built initially in mid to late 2010 to ingest tweets and the mentions of the top 1,000 Klout influencers in startups and technology. Dragnet was basically just charting which startups and companies were getting mentioned by influential people. The firm then added App Store data, Google Play Store data, Facebook platform information, AngelList startups and much more, he explains. “Dragnet has been extremely good at predicting which companies are going to become interesting,” he says. Especially when it comes to consumer startups, Chien says that the app serves as an early warning system. However, because it is tracking more consumer-focused data (i.e App Store traffic), this doesn’t apply to enterprise or life science startups. Similar to how Lilly feels, Chien thinks that there is still a qualitative aspect to the venture world that will never diminish. “To be a great VC, you need a deep understanding around markets, people and products, and that understanding will drive the final investment decision,” he says. Data can be the signal that helps identify the trend or the company, he adds. DFJ weighed in as well, explaining that the firm analyzes its financial and investment data to determine what has brought the most return, helping partners figure out which companies perform best. DFJ has also mined data to support specific sectors, round of funding, investment size, and a team headcount that has performed best and then targets startups based on this profile Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters have made multi-billion dollar businesses from charging to data-hungry public investors. With an increasing appetite for data on Sand Hill road, will the same happen in the VC world? For now, most VCs will continue to rely on what’s publicly available, perhaps until a clever startup packages something better. |
After Your Job Is Gone | Jon Evans | 2,013 | 6 | 1 | Do you have a job? Do you like having a job? Then I have some bad news for you. “today’s technologies are going to remove people from economic activity completely.” Techonomy “America’s real worker crisis is not immigration, it is jobs.” Om Malik : “People talk about robot-helpers and an army of drones, but…what is going to happen to millions of people who will be replaced by those drones and robots?” Wrong tense: the right question is what happening. Henry Blodget “Fewer Americans are working than at any time in the past three decades.” The “The jobless rate remains far higher than it typically would be this far into a recovery,” : “Because it is automated, we won’t have to add a lot of employees with the upturn in the construction industry.” It’s the same around the world. Western manufacturing jobs used to go to Chinese workers; now they’re increasingly going to Chinese , such as the that Foxconn is deploying. Think you’re safe because you don’t work in a factory? Guess again. “In a move that could put millions of teenagers around the world out of their first job, Momentum Machines is creating a hamburger-making machine that churns out made-to-order burgers,” Gizmag. A Cornell robot can learn . Well, never mind food service, how about social services? …Oh. Other robots have “wiping the mouth of a disabled man and adjusting a blanket.” Retail? Forget about it. Derek Thompson in : Retail now employs fewer people than it did in 1999. And those people work significantly fewer hours, too … Walmart, of course, isn’t the biggest threat facing retail workers anymore. That would be the inexorable growth of e‑commerce … There is a worse scenario, in which the squeeze in retail work intensifies competition for other low-skill jobs, pushing down wages at the bottom and pushing some people out of the labor force entirely. This possibility should not be dismissed too readily.
Even lawyers, financiers, and surgeons aren’t safe. “Intelligent machines have reached a new social frontier: knowledge workers are now in the eye of the storm … teachers, researchers and writers are next.” And , arguably the world’s primary nexus of finance, “analysts expect [banking] job losses to keep on coming, as technology replaces jobs that people once did.” Oh, you work in Oh, well, that’s . For now. But never forget that you’re part of a : “Not so much anti-union as post-union, the tech elite has avoided issues with labor by having so few laborers who could be organized.” Meanwhile, Paul Krugman that “We are indeed creating a permanent class of jobless Americans.” It’s like the global economy has forked into two tracks: tech, which boomed right through the Great Recession, and just keeps booming on, and nobody can hire enough engineers…and everyone else. It’s happening right in the heart of Silicon Valley. Colleen Taylor wrote entitled “The Other Silicon Valley,” which highlights homelessness and wealth disparity in the Valley. It in turn links to an AP piece which : “Simply put, while the ultra-rich are getting richer, record numbers of Silicon Valley residents are slipping into poverty.” In related news, : “Increasingly, there seem to be two kinds of stores—those in a race to the price bottom, and those closely guarding the patina of a shopping experience.” It’s always hard to say whether economic changes are cyclical or structural, but I think it’s fair to say that there’s a slowly accumulating consensus that , and that the resulting two-track economy is here to stay…and growing steadily more disparate. Which is great for those of us in tech, right? Maybe we’re “creating a country of a few million overlords and 300+ million serfs,” to , but hey, that doesn’t sound so bad to those of us who expect to be among the overlords. I mean, as long as you don’t think too hard about the ethics of it…and you don’t mind the growing resentment. is the tech elite “a cossetted caste which lords it over everyone else”. Even the “Tech has brought very young, very rich people to the Bay Area like never before. And the changes to our cultural and economic landscape aren’t necessarily for the better.” I want to stress again that — that as software eats the world, as Marc Andreessen , this two-track economy will grow ever more divergent around the planet. The relatively few people fortunate enough to work in technology (or have the capital to invest in it) will grow steadily wealthier, even as more and more jobs around the world are replaced by software and drones and robots. At least I hope so. Not because I want a tiny fraction of the world to become rich beyond Croesus while everyone else is desperately broke. On the contrary: because in the long run, this is good for everyone. People who think everyone should have a job aren’t thinking big enough. As Gregory Ferenstein points out, technology may be destroying jobs, but it’s also ; and as I’ve , the endgame of all this wealth creation, some generations hence, isn’t a world of full employment. Instead it’s a world of employment, as we understand the word. Fewer and fewer jobs coexisting with more and more wealth is exactly what you would expect on the road to that outcome. Trouble is, our societies and economies are built around the assumption of mass employment, and we’ll need some pretty wrenching adjustments to that paradigm to deal with the changes to come. Some are already stealthily underway. As NPR earlier this year: In the past three decades, the number of Americans who are on disability has skyrocketed. The rise has come even as medical advances have allowed many more people to remain on the job, and new laws have banned workplace discrimination against the disabled. Every month, 14 million people now get a disability check from the government … The vast majority of people on federal disability do not work. Yet because they are not technically part of the labor force, they are not counted among the unemployed.
In other words, the US government is already quietly paying a significant fraction of the American population not to work. If jobs keep disappearing, while the overall wealth of America and the world keeps increasing, then we can expect initiatives like that to keep expanding. George Monbiot is the latest to a , which “gives everyone, rich and poor, without means-testing or conditions, a guaranteed sum every week.” It’s been suggested that, along with “peak jobs”, America has also hit “ .” (Go read that piece; it’s quite interesting.) And it’s true that a basic income would probably be an indicator of that. But before conservatives get apoplectic, let me point out that a close relative of a basic income, the , was championed by none other than free-market hero Milton Friedman. (Also, right-wingers, which would you rather have; tens of millions of unemployed people being paid subsistence-level amounts by the government, or those same tens of millions, desperate and starving, marching on San Francisco and Manhattan demanding blood? Remember the French Revolution? That didn’t work out so well for the aristocrats, did it? Let them eat cake, smoke pot, and play video games, is my advice.) So the good news is, if you lose your job some years from now, with any luck the same technological advances that devour it will also have generated enough wealth that the government will pay you and your family a basic income while you’re unemployed. The bad news is that you’re not likely to get another long-term job–ever–and that basic income will probably be only just enough to scrape by on. Do you believe education will save you, and/or your children? Sorry. Not all of the well-educated will find good jobs; increasingly, some won’t find jobs at . Meanwhile, the cost of higher education keeps climbing higher and higher. Peter Thiel is already arguing that “ .” It’s possible that universities will start to seem almost like casinos: great for the winners, but you’d actually be better off not going at all than paying to go and failing to win. Obviously an engineering or CS degree will improve your chances much more than, say, English Lit…but not can be a tech worker, and what’s more, it’s only a matter of time before technology starts eating tech jobs, too. If this scenario plays out, the world will divide into a dwindling minority of the very rich — tech workers, finance barons, and those who inherited their wealth, mostly — living in a handful of idyllic cities dripping with wealth, and/or their summer homes on nearby beaches, lakes, and mountains … and the majority who barely get by, doing occasional contract work or odd jobs for a little extra money, too poor to even the places where the rich live, work, and play. Aside from those few with government jobs, there’ll be hardly any middle class at all between those two groups. Does that sound implausible or unstable? No: it’s how works . That’s a reasonable description (albeit to varying degrees, and in varying forms) of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa today. Until recently the expectation has always been that they would evolve and grow to become more like North America, Western Europe, and Japan. But it seems likely to me that the converse is true–that for the next few decades, at least, the rich world, even as it grows wealthier, will begin to look a lot more like the BRICS. It’s a sobering thought. |
Coub’s Gif-Like Looping Musical Videos Start To Pick Up Real Traction | Kim-Mai Cutler | 2,013 | 6 | 1 |
While other file formats have faded, the lowly Gif has stubbornly stayed alive for more than 25 years through sites like Tumblr. Other apps like Vine and Cinemagram have also popped up to support the short-looping video. is doing the same and it’s starting to pick up some real traction. Over the last few months, the site, which lets people take YouTube or Vimeo videos, clip them to 10 seconds and loop them with music, has started from virtually nothing at the beginning of the year. Almost all of this traffic is from Russia, where the company has its Moscow headquarters. The name is a play on Cobb, Leonardo DiCaprio’s character in the Christopher Nolan’s movie Inception. (They had to add the ‘U’ because Cobb was already taken as a domain name.) The two brothers behind the site, Anton and Igor Gladkoborodov, have a long history of building and selling media projects in Moscow. One of their last projects, , became more hipster hub for Russia, while another project catalogued public lectures in the city. After selling Lookatme.ru, they started to brainstorm about other possible projects. They bootstrapped and launched it last year, although it only started to pick up momentum in January. Now they’re seeing 5.5 million uniques per month. Unlike Vine or Cinemagram, Coub is web-first and it’s mainly designed for people to manipulate existing videos, not create new ones from their phones. The Gladkoborodovs say many of the existing Gif-making sites aren’t that intuitive to use and the file formats can take longer to load and have poorer image resolution than their looping videos, or Coubs. Russians are using Coub to mock celebrities and politicians, like the one below making fun of famed director Nikita Mikhalkov or the one below that of Vladimir Putin. There are signs that Russia is heading in a more politically oppressive direction after Putin’s re-election last year. Earlier this year, two of the founders of Russia’s top social network VKontakte, Vyacheslav Mirilashvili and Lev Leviev, , an investment fund run by a financier with close ties to Putin. Some are worried this will mean more limits for online political criticism. But looping videos and Gifs meanwhile are pretty harmless, and funny, at the least. The two brothers, who moved to Moscow years ago from a city near St. Petersburg and the White Sea, say that their product is more comparable to YouTube than to other meme sites like 9gag or Reddit. The site is starting to see pick-up abroad, with pockets of usage in places like Portland, Oregon. The Gladkoborodovs are hoping that they can find a way to help Coub take off in the U.S. and other sites outside of Russia.
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LightInTheBox’s Shares Surge 22% To $11.61 As E-tailer Launches 2013’s First Chinese IPO In U.S. | Catherine Shu | 2,013 | 6 | 6 | Online e-commerce site became the first Chinese company to hold its IPO in the U.S. this year. Trading under the ticker LITB, shares rose 22.2% to $11.61 during the stock’s first day of trading on the New York Stock Exchange, raising a total of $79 million. LightInTheBox’s strong debut also boosted shares of other Chinese tech stocks, including fellow online retailer , which rose almost 3% to $29.46. Shares of search giant climbed 3.9% to $4.15, while travel agency jumped 6.3% to $32.91. Based in Beijing and founded in 2007 by a team including former Google China CSO Alan Guo, LightInTheBox is a global sourcing platform that sells goods from Chinese suppliers to retailers. The company says it has 2.5 million users and made $200 million in net revenues in 2012. Its site is available in 17 languages and covers more than 80% of global Internet users. In 2012, LightInTheBox ranked number one in terms of revenue generated from customers outside of China among all China-based retails sites that source products from third-party manufacturers. Its investors have included , , and . LightInTheBox’s IPO came 15 months after Vipshop’s listing in March 2012. Vipshop has done well since its IPO, with its stock price almost quadrupling from its debut of $6.50. LightInTheBox aimed to raise up to $100 million in its IPO and set its opening price at $9.50 per share. Credit Suisse and Stifel acted as joint bookrunners and Pacific Crest Securities, Oppenheimer & Co. and China Renaissance Securities were co-managers of the offering. Investors and analysts are keeping an eye on LightInTheBox’s performance on the stock market after a tough year for Chinese IPOs due to concerns over accounting and governance practices, stymied economic growth in China and concerns that Chinese companies are overvalued. Only two Chinese tech companies had IPOs last year: Vipshop and social gaming platform . |
Oculus VR Co-Founder Andrew Scott Reisse Killed At 33, The Victim Of A Hit-And-Run | Greg Kumparak | 2,013 | 6 | 1 | Our community has lost a brilliant mind. Andrew Scott Reisse, a founding member and lead engineer on the Oculus Rift VR headset project, was struck and killed by a vehicle in Santa Ana, California as its driver fled from the police. According to an , Reisse was crossing the street when the driver, said to have been running from the scene of a shooting, ran a red light. The suspects are in custody. For a life to end is always despairing. For it to be one of our own, crushing. For that life to end just as years of work on an incredible project began to bear its fruit is nothing short of a tragedy. Our hearts and minds are with the family of Andrew Reisse and the entire Oculus VR team tonight. Andrew was a brilliant computer graphics engineer, an avid photographer and hiker who loved nature, a true loyal friend, and a founding member of our close-knit Oculus family. Some of us have known Andrew since college, and have worked with him at multiple companies beginning with Scaleform in Maryland which he helped start at age 19, then at Gaikai in Aliso Viejo which brought him out to California, and finally at Oculus where he was a co-founder and lead engineer. Andrew’s contributions span far and wide in the video game industry. His code is embedded in thousands of games played by millions of people around the world. Words can not express how sorely he will be missed or how deeply our sympathy runs for his family Andrew will always be in our thoughts and will never be forgotten. We love you Reisse. |
VivaKi Partners With Nativo For Native Ad Campaigns | Anthony Ha | 2,013 | 6 | 6 | Native advertising startup and , a tech-focused agency within ad giant , announced today that they’ve formed a strategic partnership. Basically, VivaKi will be using Nativo technology to run campaigns for Publicis clients. The partnership is another sign that the ad industry is becoming interested in native advertising (a loose term that basically covers sponsored posts and other ads that match the format of the surrounding content) generally and Nativo particularly. Rishad Tobaccowala, VivaKi’s chief strategy and innovation officer, told me that this is part of the agency’s interest in “next-generation storytelling.” He suggested it’s a counterbalance to the digital advertisers’ focus on technology and automation: “A lot of the industry is working on how to get the plumbing right, but you can get the plumbing right and find that you don’t have the poetry.” The “poetry” side is where ad agencies come in, and it’s also why native advertising is important — “native is a way to tell stories.” As for why VivaKi is partnering with Nativo in particular, Tobaccowala said that the big challenge with native has been achieving scale. Nativo solves that problem by allowing advertisers to run campaigns with multiple publishers, and the ad is automatically formatted to match the layout of each site. (Nativo CEO Justin Choi demonstrated the technology for me last week, showing me how Nativo can identify the different elements of a piece of content, then use that knowledge to reassemble an advertiser’s content in the same format.) Nativo can also run automatic A/B tests so that the most effective headline is used on each site. The two companies have a relationship that started before the formal partnership, even before earlier this year, Tobaccowala said. They’re also connected through Greycroft Partners, which invested in Nativo and where Tobaccowala is an advisor. Nativo says it has already run campaigns adding up to hundreds of millions of impressions, with click-through rates that are 5 to 20 times higher than standard display ads. |
U.S. Government: Reports About PRISM Contain “Numerous Inaccuracies” | Frederic Lardinois | 2,013 | 6 | 6 | After the flurry of about the NSA’s alleged earlier today, the U.S.’s Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper just released an official statement. According to Clapper, “ and articles refer to collection of communications pursuant to Section 702 of the . They contain numerous inaccuracies.” Clapper argues that Section 702 is meant to “facilitate the acquisition of foreign intelligence information concerning non-U.S. persons located outside the United States.” It is not meant to be used to “intentionally” target any U.S. citizens (though the statement leaves a door open for an admittance of “unintentional” spying). Given the of all the tech firms accused of participating in this program, including Google, Facebook and Apple, it remains unclear if the accusation that these companies knew about the program is one of the “inaccuracies.” Here is the full statement from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence: and articles refer to collection of communications pursuant to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. They contain numerous inaccuracies. Section 702 is a provision of FISA that is designed to facilitate the acquisition of foreign intelligence information concerning non-U.S. persons located outside the United States. It cannot be used to intentionally target any U.S. citizen, any other U.S. person, or anyone located within the United States. Activities authorized by Section 702 are subject to oversight by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the Executive Branch, and Congress. They involve extensive procedures, specifically approved by the court, to ensure that only non-U.S. persons outside the U.S. are targeted, and that minimize the acquisition, retention and dissemination of incidentally acquired information about U.S. persons. Section 702 was recently reauthorized by Congress after extensive hearings and debate. Information collected under this program is among the most important and valuable foreign intelligence information we collect, and is used to protect our nation from a wide variety of threats. The unauthorized disclosure of information about this important and entirely legal program is reprehensible and risks important protections for the security of Americans. : ODNI also just sent us the following statement in addition to the previous one: The highest priority of the Intelligence Community is to work within the constraints of law to collect, analyze and understand information related to potential threats to our national security. The unauthorized disclosure of a top secret U.S. court document threatens potentially long-lasting and irreversible harm to our ability to identify and respond to the many threats facing our nation. The article omits key information regarding how a classified intelligence collection program is used to prevent terrorist attacks and the numerous safeguards that protect privacy and civil liberties. I believe it is important for the American people to understand the limits of this targeted counterterrorism program and the principles that govern its use. In order to provide a more thorough understanding of the program, I have directed that certain information related to the “business records” provision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act be declassified and immediately released to the public. The following important facts explain the purpose and limitations of the program: Discussing programs like this publicly will have an impact on the behavior of our adversaries and make it more difficult for us to understand their intentions. Surveillance programs like this one are consistently subject to safeguards that are designed to strike the appropriate balance between national security interests and civil liberties and privacy concerns. I believe it is important to address the misleading impression left by the article and to reassure the American people that the Intelligence Community is committed to respecting the civil liberties and privacy of all American citizens.
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Who The NSA Follows, On Twitter | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,013 | 6 | 6 | It’s not a surprise that by the U.S. government. It’s not a surprise that our Facebook and Google and What is a surprise is that the NSA Twitter account I can find ( is poetically a squatter) only follows seven accounts.
Betrayed by all its , perhaps the NSA in its because the NSA does not know how to use Twitter? : TechCrunch parent company Aol has been accused of being part of PRISM and allowing the NSA to directly access and collect data from its servers. If this is the case (only Aol and PalTalk have being a part of the program in some way), can someone from the NSA please complete ? Thanks. |
President Obama Visiting Silicon Valley Tonight, As Reports Of NSA’s Tech Spying Come To Light | Colleen Taylor | 2,013 | 6 | 6 | President Obama’s that he is currently aboard Air Force One and en route to the San Francisco Bay Area for private events being held tonight with some of Silicon Valley’s most elite players. The president’s visit comes within hours of massive new revelations about the United States National Security Agency’s reported collection of personal user data as well as including , , , and others (a number of those companies any involvement in providing data.) The trip to the Bay Area, which will last less than 24 hours and was apparently scheduled long before the NSA news broke, is primarily a fundraising junket (on Friday, President Obama to meet with the President of China.) Local ABC affiliate KGO that the president’s first stop after his plane touches down at approximately 6:00 PM Pacific Time will be the home of CEO and his wife Marci:
“The McCues are hosting a $5,000 per person cocktail reception. VIP seating runs up to $15,000 a couple. The guest list has not been released, although it’s expected to include people from the tech and venture capital world.” After that, the president will go to home in Portola Valley, where a $32,400 per person dinner will be held. Topics there will reportedly include “things like immigration, climate change and gun violence prevention,” according to the plans laid out in . But given the latest news and how it’s the discussions in the tech world right now, it seems inevitable that tonight’s conversations will go a bit off-topic from those planned talking points. |
Google, Facebook, Dropbox, Yahoo, Microsoft, Paltalk, AOL And Apple Deny Participation In NSA PRISM Surveillance Program | Frederic Lardinois | 2,013 | 6 | 6 | The Washington Post today that Google, Apple, Facebook, Dropbox, Microsoft, Paltalk, AOL (TechCrunch’s parent company) and Yahoo participated in the which provided the with what looks like virtually direct access to their servers and their users’ data. We have now reached out to all of these companies and all of them have categorically denied that they are participating. These denials are especially odd given that a number of publications, including , are now citing source that confirm the existence of this program. According to these reports, PRISM is at U.S. citizens or any person in the United States. Here is what we got so far: “We do not provide any government organization with direct access to Facebook servers. When Facebook is asked for data or information about specific individuals, we carefully scrutinize any such request for compliance with all applicable laws, and provide information only to the extent required by law.” “Google cares deeply about the security of our users’ data. We disclose user data to government in accordance with the law, and we review all such requests carefully. From time to time, people allege that we have created a government ‘back door’ into our systems, but Google does not have a backdoor for the government to access private user data.” Apple gave this the statement to : “We have never heard of PRISM. We do not provide any government agency with direct access to our servers, and any government agency requesting customer data must get a court order.” “We provide customer data only when we receive a legally binding order or subpoena to do so, and never on a voluntary basis. In addition we only ever comply with orders for requests about specific accounts or identifiers. If the government has a broader voluntary national security program to gather customer data we don’t participate in it.” “Yahoo! takes users’ privacy very seriously. We do not provide the government with direct access to our servers, systems, or network.” “We’ve seen reports that Dropbox might be asked to participate in a government program called PRISM. We are not part of any such program and remain committed to protecting our users’ privacy.” “We have not heard of PRISM. Paltalk exercises extreme care to protect and secure users’ data, only responding to court orders as required to by law. Paltalk does not provide any government agency with direct access to its servers.” “We do not have any knowledge of the Prism program. We do not disclose user information to government agencies without a court order, subpoena or formal legal process, nor do we provide any government agency with access to our servers.” |
Kamcord Now Makes Mobile Game Recordings More Interesting With Audio Commentary Tools | Chris Velazco | 2,013 | 6 | 6 | It’s been just under a year since officially launched, and the young team has spent its time and quietly fleshing out its SDK for iOS games. The team had seen its in-game screen recording tech implemented in over 100 games, and gamers have recorded 500 million videos since those very early days, but now the team has been working on a pair of new features they hope will get even more mobile gamers sharing videos of their exploits. Starting today, Kamcord has provided tools to let players trim down their videos on the fly and add their own vocal tracks into the mix… if game developers enable them, anyway. The ability to edit game recordings is straightforward enough — the meaty bits of your video may come out to a total of 30 or 40 seconds, so why share the whole multi-minute clip? It’s the voice overlay feature that seems the more compelling of the two, since it demonstrates a pretty solid understanding of the kinds of game videos that get spread around most often. Here’s the idea: once the feature has been enabled, your device fires up its microphone when the gaming session begins and records your fevered mutterings as you furiously paw at your touchscreen. It seems like a problematic way to go at first — I would’ve though the game’s sounds would drown out any input from microphone — but Kamcord CEO Matt Zitzmann noted that there’s a distinct lack of echoing or audio issues (though he still thinks users should use a separate microphone anyway). But why even go this route in the first place? A quick look at the gameplay videos that populate YouTube and Twitch reveal that many of them lean on narration — after all, there’s only so much entertainment to be had while watching straight, untampered game recordings. There’s something very compelling about listening to someone as they submit themselves to the experience of a game, which perhaps explains the phenomenal popularity of the video genre. “They’re just a lot more watchable,” Zitzmann noted in a phone conversation. The sort of human quality that adding voice tracks to a game recording is exactly what Kamcord needs if it wants developers to take the SDK seriously as a potential marketing tool. What better way is there for a would-be player to make up their mind about a game they haven’t taken the plunge on than by watching (and hearing) someone have a blast with it. In the end it’s up to developers to decide whether or not they want either of features enabled, but the team has already been in talks with a handful of interested parties and is slowly staffing up to tackle more challenges. |
Report: NSA Collects Data Directly From Servers Of Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook And More | Gregory Ferenstein | 2,013 | 6 | 6 | The Washington Post is a top-secret National Security Administration data-mining program that taps directly into the Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Apple servers among others. “The National Security Agency and the FBI are tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio, video, photographs, e-mails, documents and connection logs that enable analysts to track a person’s movements and contacts over time,” reports the Post. Details about the highly classified program, Project PRISM, are somewhat vague, but it appears that the NSA allows the Attorney General and Director of National of National Intelligence “to open their servers to the FBI’s Data Intercept Technology Unit, which handles liaison to U.S. companies from the NSA.” “With a few clicks and an affirmation that the subject is believed to be engaged in terrorism, espionage or nuclear proliferation, an analyst obtains full access to Facebook’s ‘extensive search and surveillance capabilities against the variety of online social networking services,'” . From there, the NSA mines the data for suspects, then “hops” to their potential contacts, exponentially increasing the number of Americans that the NSA can spy on (by mandate, the NSA is supposed to monitor foreigners). Most of these companies have . We reached out to Facebook for comment and they replied: “We do not provide any government organization with direct access to Facebook servers. When Facebook is asked for data or information about specific individuals, we carefully scrutinize any such request for compliance with all applicable laws, and provide information only to the extent required by law.” In a statement to TechCrunch, Microsoft said: “We provide customer data only when we receive a legally binding order or subpoena to do so, and never on a voluntary basis. In addition we only ever comply with orders for requests about specific accounts or identifiers. If the government has a broader voluntary national security program to gather customer data we don’t participate in it.” Yahoo told TechCrunch: “Yahoo! takes users’ privacy very seriously. We do not provide the government with direct access to our servers, systems, or network.” In a statement, Google said: “Google cares deeply about the security of our users’ data. We disclose user data to government in accordance with the law, and we review all such requests carefully. From time to time, people allege that we have created a government ‘back door’ into our systems, but Google does not have a backdoor for the government to access private user data.” And Apple gave a statement to CNBC: [tweet https://twitter.com/CNBC/status/342778613264945152] According to the Post’s slides (below), the number of PRISM partners has steadily grown over the years. Microsoft, the first partner, began in 2007, Yahoo in 2008; Google, Facebook and PalTalk in 2009; YouTube in 2010; Skype and Aol in 2011; and finally Apple, which joined the program in 2012,” the Guardian. This revelation follows yesterday’s by the Guardian on the NSA’s program to monitor phone data of every single U.S. call on the Verizon network. The Post notes that resistance seems possible, given Twitter’s conspicuous absence from the list of companies. This is an unfolding story and we will post significant updates as we learn more. * for realtime updates (and occasional wry commentary). |
The RK-1 Is An Arduino-Based Mobile Robot You Control With Smartphone Swipes | Darrell Etherington | 2,013 | 6 | 6 |
London-based roboticist Evangelos Georgiou wants to offer an open-source platform for helping Arduino hobbyists take their projects mobile, thanks to a that combines a programmable Arduino microcontroller with apps for iPhone or Android, tank tracks, DC motors and Wi-Fi connectivity. It’s a project that could really help out with home hobbyists, or with education workshops and classes to get people young and old more interested in robotics. The apps for the RK-1 will be free to download from the App Store and Google Play, according to Georgiou, and they use swipe touch gestures to manage changes in direction and forward/backward movement. It’s simple, and intuitive, but does look like it could be a very cool way for people to add an extra dimension to their product. And since Georgiou is following the example of other open source , there’s ample opportunity for cross-pollination with other similar projects, with built-in support in the ultimate companion app for sensors and breakout boards favored by the Arduino community. Georgiou is a PhD student at King’s College London, and is also working full-time as a software developer at the school. His area of expertise is the impressive sounding “autonomous non-holonomic mobile robots implementing computer vision and advanced machine learning methods,” which basically translates to him really knowing what he’s talking about when it comes to building bots. His co-founder in the project Reetu Kansal is an experience assurance manager, and has been helping with project design and operation management as the RK-1 has developed. Georgiou is seeking just £5,000 (7,800 U.S.), but already has stretch goals in place for £15,000 on up to £50,000, in a fit of optimism. Pre-orders of RK-1 kits start at £150 ($234 U.S.). It’s an ambitious product, but its founder has both the software and hardware know-how to make it happen, and this could be a very welcome component for robotics home hobbyists and educators. |
FWD.us’ First Big Call To Action Automatically Phones Your Senator | Josh Constine | 2,013 | 6 | 6 | Mark Zuckerberg and Joe Green’s controversial FWD.us started getting the public involved today with its that calls you and connects you to your senator to show your support for immigration reform. Until now, the only way people could participate in FWD.us was by signing up to volunteer later or sharing the group’s messages. Backed by an A-List cast of liberal-leaning tech CEOs and investors, FWD.us has . Its purchase of ads advocating for the Keystone XL pipeline and drilling in the Alaskan Wildlife Refuge seemed incongruous to the group’s intentions. The scandal has soured public opinion and driven away some early supporters, including Elon Musk and David Sachs. The group still YouTube co-founder Steve Chen and media mogul Barry Diller as funders this week, though. Getting citizens to push for immigration and education reform, whether or not they believe in FWD.us’ grease-the-wheels political strategy, will be crucial to its success. Money goes a long way, but the group needs grassroots support, too. The Speak Up campaign intends to harness that support with as little friction as possible. Today FWD.us sent emails to those who’d previously signed up on its site asking them to call their senators and state their preference for immigration reform. Signed by Joe Green, the president of FWD.us, the email explains “Recently the Senate Judiciary Committee took a major step forward when it voted for comprehensive immigration reform. The next step is for the full Senate to vote on the proposal, which is likely to occur later this month. Between now and then, we have to show our representatives that a majority of Americans supports reform.” But instead of making people search for their senators’ phone numbers or even dial them themselves, the group is going a little more high-tech. Those who click through the email are prompted to enter their ZIP codes and phone numbers. FWD.us then automatically calls their phone, gives them instructions, and patches them in to Washington. I just tried it, and was greeted with a woman’s voice telling me once I’m connected to “just provide your name and address and then say why you support comprehensive immigration reform.” A robot voice then stated “we’re connecting you to Senator Dianne Feinstein.” If the Senate approves the proposal, it could be seen as FWD.us’ first win, even if its campaigns only make a small difference. It could still go a long way towards people giving its pragmatic approach more credit. Sure, most people don’t want to see techies or their money funding the political favor economy. But if it gets immigration reform passed, allowing more skilled immigrants into the country to create jobs, citizens might cut FWD.us some slack. |
EasyPost, A “Stripe For Shipping,” Raises $850K Seed Round, Sees Transactions Doubling Every Month | Sarah Perez | 2,013 | 6 | 6 | With more commerce moving online every day, the shipping industry is in need of innovation. And one of the bigger pain points developers face when trying to integrate postage and shipping into their applications involves the antiquated technology major carriers like FedEx, UPS and USPS provide – complex SOAP or XML APIs that most developers would say are a nightmare to work with. San Francisco-based is trying to solve that problem by offering a simpler, RESTful JSON API instead. Today, the company is announcing $850,000 in seed funding to help with those efforts. Investors in the new round, which just now closed, include Y Combinator, SV Angel, Start Fund, CrunchFund*, Mesa+, Andreas Resch, Kevin Barenblat, Lars Kamp, Ullas Naik, Shawn Bercuson, and Rahul Vohra. ( .) co-founder Jarrett Streebin says he came up with the idea for the service based on his own experiences with having to integrate shipping into some of the websites he had worked on in the past. These were generally just weekend projects he played with on the side while analyzing venture deals for a private investment fund at his day job. But he also spoke to other startup founders through his work, and found that they, too, had the same struggles with shipping. He would ask them about it, and routinely, the answer would be one of frustration. “Oh my god, it’s a nightmare,” they would tell him. Explains Streebin, “if you go to Twilio, you can get an API key immediately. But if you go to or some of their competitors, you have to email them and they send you 400-page documentation, and then you have to sign a legal doc…It’s really a big mess,” he says. “We need a Stripe for this,” Streebin realized. Founded alongside ex-Googler Jon Calhoun, EasyPost first launched into beta this September and immediately saw around 500 sign-ups, indicating the need for the service it provides. Today, the company has double that in terms of users, and after its public debut in January, it has been seeing numbers double every single month in terms of revenue and number of packages, Streebin says. To use the service, developers come to the site, enter in their account information for UPS, FedEx, or USPS, and then get an API key they can use to access all the functions provided. [Update, 6/11/13: The company previously told us that this is how the system works, but have today clarified that it’s still in the process of getting FedEx and UPS approval. Given the belated request, it’s unclear when that will occur.] E-commerce sites can then call the API to verify addresses during checkout, let customers choose from all the different possible shipping options, and even purchase that shipping label as part of the fulfillment process. Because of the complexity of the carriers’ own APIs, most e-commerce sites don’t allow for this kind of thing today – instead, they often pick a flat rate that seems reasonable. This is not only a problem for them, as sometimes shipping charges are higher than that flat rate, but it can also be a problem for the consumer who misses out on savings when rates should be lower. This same problem has led to a number of new developments in the shipping and logistics industry, including the launch of EasyPost’s direct competitor ( ), as well as consumer-facing , and more broadly, moves from big-name brands like Amazon, eBay, Walmart and Google, all of whom who are now trying to figure out how to make same-day shipping sustainable. Where EasyPost wants to differentiate itself from other developer-facing tools is with its level of support. “My belief from the start is that if you’re selling SaaS, PaaS, infrastructure-as-a-service – any of those – the support is the product. Our support times are 10 minutes or less,” Streebin claims. Currently EasyPost charges 5 cents per shipment, but offers discounted rates for larger shippers. It plans to add more long tail U.S. carriers as well as Canada Post within the next few months, then work on Europe afterwards. Interested developers can . |
Shopgate Raises $7M To Help Retailers Maximize Mobile Storefronts And Sales | Darrell Etherington | 2,013 | 6 | 6 | Mobile e-commerce startup announced its Series B funding round today, which it revealed to TechCrunch totals $7 million in an interview. The Germany and Palo Alto-based company offers retailers custom native app and mobile web development for their online stores, which Shopgate co-founder Andrea Anderheggen says can help retailers increase their sell-through rates on mobile by between 5 and 15 percent on average, depending on whether they’re starting with responsive design-based websites or just traditional web commerce pages. Where Shopgate differs from other solutions is that it integrates with popular web-based e-commerce platform provider APIs, like Magento, which means that they’re pretty much plug-and-play with most of the online store backends that retailers are already using. And unlike some other solutions, Shopgate isn’t taking sides in the debate of mobile web vs. mobile apps; it offers both native apps for iOS and Android, as well as mobile-optimized websites, which Anderheggen says is crucial because while mobile browsing is leading to higher mobile conversion rates for online stores, shoppers are still pretty choosy about how they prefer to shop. “What we’ve seen is that mobile commerce will become a huge reality,” he said. “The simple fact that people are visiting the Internet on a mobile device leads to the fact that they’ll also be buying on a mobile device, like they buy online. That wasn’t so clear when we founded Shopgate three years ago, but it has become very clear now. There’s no doubt about that anymore.” “What we saw is that consumers have different preferences,” Anderheggen explained further. “A large percent of users prefer to browse the web using Safari or other mobile browsers, then there’s another group, a large group, that prefers using native apps… and what we saw is that the merchants, apart from a few huge players like eBay or Amazon that can afford to pay an agency or in-house developer to program iOS apps or Android apps, largely cannot afford to invest $500,000 to over $1 million in a mobile store, in native apps.” To further capitalize on the growth of mobile commerce, which a , Shopgate is planning to hire more staff with this round, as well as invest in continued expansion, specifically in the U.S. market. Anderheggen also shed some light on some of the company’s upcoming product plans, which include building a worldwide affiliate network that would allow any app int the App Store can sell the product with an in-app store provided by Shopgate and earn a commission, as well as plans to help brick-and-mortar retailers leverage their e-commerce presence to bring more shoppers in-store. Shopgate’s funding round was led by Danish firm Northcap and Creathor Ventures out of Germany. Creathor has been an investor from the start, and Anderheggen said that Shopgate chose Creathor to come on board because of the company’s extensive expertise m- and e-commerce services, as well as its experience helping European startups expand aggressively on a global scale. |
Taxi E-Hail Apps Get The Green Light In New York City Officially, Finally, Once Again | Ryan Lawler | 2,013 | 6 | 6 | Good news for New Yorkers who don’t want to walk outside and raise their hands in an effort to attract the attention of a yellow cab passing by: The New York State Supreme Court has , which had put into question the legality of taxi e-hail providers like Uber and Hailo operating in New York City. The ruling is yet another victory for technology and innovation over the evil forces of inertia and bureaucracy in New York City. More literally, it’s a defeat for the black car and limo lobby, which had threatened the city’s proposed e-hail program with a temporary restraining order issued earlier this year. Actually, this is just the latest in a string of launches, and re-launches, victories, and defeats for the likes of Uber and Hailo since the e-hail program was first . It was supposed to begin in February, but got held up due to a lawsuit filed just before launch. That lawsuit was , and it seemed like all things were a go… Until an appellate judge resurrected the case and against the program. Ok, now that that’s all over, what can we look forward to? The most recent ruling has blocked the temporary restraining order, but the case lives on. So! There’s the possibility that this whole mess could be started all over again and that New Yorkers might have to hail a cab the old-fashioned way. But for now, New Yorkers, e-hail away. Oh, also a lot of people had stuff to say about it. In a statement, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said: In New York City in 2013, common sense and the free market say that you should be able to use your smart phone to get a cab, and that’s why we created a pilot program to allow users to do just that. This decision will allow our e-hail program to move forward, and give New Yorkers another way to hail a cab. Some in the industry want to protect their business interests by blocking the use of new technology – but innovation is good for customers, and we will continue to encourage it. In a statement, New York TLC Commissioner David Yassky said: Lifting the TRO was a good decision for all New Yorkers. The positive feedback we’ve had from the short time our pilot program was up says loudly and clearly that riders want the e-hail option, and I am even more confident today that it will ultimately be available to them. In a statement, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick said: It’s pretty rare that the transportation sector sees so much progress and justice on the same day. UberTAXI is fully up and running for yellow cabs and we look forward to helping New Yorkers hail green cabs too. In a statement, Taxi Magic president Sanders Partee said: As of today, New Yorkers can finally do what so many people around the country have done for years — use a smartphone app like Taxi Magic to request a taxi. At Taxi Magic, we are partnering with New York City’s best drivers to provide an enhanced taxi experience for our customers, and we’ve worked closely with the TLC to gain the proper approvals and ensure a safe and reliable ride for New Yorkers. With today’s landmark decision, Taxi Magic has officially launched in New York City, and getting a ride will be faster and easier than ever – for riders and taxi drivers alike. Taxi Magic is thrilled to be pioneering this service within New York City, and to deliver game-changing mobile taxi payment in the coming weeks. New Yorkers, get your smartphones ready! In a statement, Hailo CEO Jay Bregman said a whole lot of stuff: We won, hands down! Hailo and the TLC banded together, standing shoulder to shoulder in court, to ensure that the future stays on the streets and New York’s riding public and Yellow Taxi drivers will continue to enjoy the latest taxi technology. During our 12-month partnership with the City of New York, Hailo and NYC consistently maintained e-hailing and e-payment were inevitable and went to court together to make sure that New Yorkers didn’t have to wait any longer. Hailo was the only app provider to intervene in the case to support the City and the largest association of medallion owners to protect the future of the cab industry and the mantle of NYC as the home of innovation and the new economy. Hailo’s Founding Passengers started using e-hailing after the Supreme Court threw out the case and made it very clear that the Pilot was legal and legitimate, and there are no restrictions or laws preventing e-hailing. We are not looking back. After a few weeks of Beta operation, we are seeing triple-digit growth in passenger demand and drivers signing up in droves. In addition, New Yorkers living in the outer boroughs are five times more likely to get a cab with Hailo than before – more than 14% of Hailo trips originated in the outer boroughs (and not at the airports!) The magic of e–hailing is here and open to all New Yorkers and Yellow Cab drivers. We want to thank our partners Mayor Bloomberg, Commissioner Yassky and the TLC for the opportunity to realize their vision of a new andinnovative taxi experience in our iconic yellow cabs and bring this proven technology to New York.” |
Facebook Home Gets A Much Needed Dock To Keep Your Favorite Apps Close | Greg Kumparak | 2,013 | 6 | 6 | While Facebook Home hasn’t proven to be a smash success so far, it picked up a handful of features today that might just coax a few more users to hop on board. Amongst other things, the new Home allows you to pin your favorite apps to a dock — a basic feature, certainly, but something that’s been sorely missed since launch. Before, opening any of your apps (even those that you use all day, every day) required a bunch of extra taps. While Facebook had previously suggested that such a dock might be able to automatically import the favorites from your previous homescreen of choice, that feature doesn’t seem to be in place here. The Home tweaks come by way of an update to the core Facebook app, and it brings a few new tricks to that app, as well: you can now tweak the privacy settings for shared posts after the fact (in the not-so-rare occurrence that you’ve shared something with more people than you actually intended), and can now send multiple photos in one message. You can find this latest build of the . Here’s the full change log:
• Easily change who can see something you’ve shared
• Send multiple photos in a single message—just tap the +
• Stability and memory improvements
• Customize your app launcher by dragging the apps you use most to a new favorites tray
• Bug fixes
Learn more about getting Facebook Home updates in our Help Center: http://bit.ly/ZofWN4
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Facebook To Simplify Ad-Buying Process By Eliminating Half Of Its 27 Ad Units | Anthony Ha | 2,013 | 6 | 6 | Facebook is wrapping up a press session at its Menlo Park headquarters where it talked about the progress that it’s making with advertisers and announced it will be eliminating and consolidating a number of ad units. The big vision, according to Product Manager Fidji Simo, is to simplify the general process of running ads on Facebook. She said that when Facebook looked at its 27 different ad products, it found that “every single product is really good on its own,” but “the whole is less than the sum of its parts.” The process is too complicated right now, she said (which could potentially scare businesses away or mean that they run less effective campaigns). Ultimately, advertisers should just tell Facebook “who you are, what your message is, and what your objective is,” then they should be able to run the kind of campaign that works for them without any “guesswork.” Somewhat confusingly, given that vision, it sounds like Facebook actually isn’t announcing changes to the ad-buying workflow. When one of the reporters asked about this, Facebook’s Andrew Bosworth said that the bidding process isn’t changing at all. Simo said the announced changes fall into three different categories — streamlining the number of ad formats, “really bringing the best of Sponsored Stories to all ads,” and increasing the consistency in how ads are displayed. Basically, it sounds like Facebook is eliminating and consolidating of a number of different ad products. Simo argued that this gets Facebook closer to its vision “by reducing the possibility of choosing the wrong thing.” For example, Facebook is eliminating the Questions product and instead adding the ability to ask Questions within a regular Page Post. It’s also eliminating the product for online offers, because advertisers are just promote a link that points users to an offers on their website. (It’s keeping the product to promote in-store offers.) And it’s also eliminating Sponsored Story units and instead integrating Sponsored Story into a number of other ad units — instead of allowing advertisers to buy a Sponsored Story, Facebook will automatically add “social context” to an ad whenever such context exists. (You can see an example of an ad with social context below.) Most of these changes won’t happen until the third or fourth quarter of this year, Simo said, although some of them may come sooner. There are more details in . The company says, “In the next six months, we plan to streamline the number of ad units from 27 to fewer than half of that while mapping all of our ads to the business objectives marketers care about — be it in-store sales, online conversions, app installs, etc.” |
With $2.5M Injection From Nexus, Indian Housing Marketplace Launches In Bangalore | Victoria Ho | 2,013 | 6 | 6 | Indian housing marketplace, has expanded out of its home base of Mumbai into another major Indian city, Bangalore—its fifth city in the country. The company, which operates similarly to and , provides a real estate search site which displays a visual map of available housing for rent or sale. The search results are filtered by how many rooms are available per property, and there are photos for each listing as well. Housing.co.in just received $2.5 million from Nexus Venture Partners from the latter’s newly-raised, India-focused . Co-founder Advitiya Sharma said the team plans to use its new funding to expand its data science teams. The eventual goal is for its teams to use the housing data collected to display new metrics like area-based pricing, listing decay rates and ratings on neighborhoods, to name some. This round of financing is its fourth in the past year since its birth. The company has never canvassed for funding since it was started in June 2012, Sharma said. Besides Bangalore and Mumbai, the site also serves Gurgaon, Pune and Hyderabad. In spite of its age, Housing.co.in has already crossed 200 employees. The tech team is just 13 people-strong, however, but it will add 21 more engineers from the prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) within the month. These will add to about 30 IIT-educated engineers already employed, said Sharma. |
Apple Reportedly Planning Trade-In Program For iPhones, Similar To Existing Third-Party Buy-Back Plans | Darrell Etherington | 2,013 | 6 | 6 | Apple is said to be looking into an iPhone trade-in program on used devices in order to “add sales,” according to a . Bloomberg says that this would be the “first time” Apple has attempted something like this on its homepage, but that’s not entirely true – the company started a program to accept iPhone trade-ins back in August of 2012, and leading up to the iPhone 5 launch in September. Apple partnered with a company called PowerOn to run that program, which was dubbed the “Apple Recycling Program.” This time around, Bloomberg says that according to its sources, these trade-ins would be handled by Brightstar Corp., a “mobile-phone” distributor, to offer the program. Buy-backs would allow users to defray the cost of brand new hardware, which means more new device sales for Apple, and would also supply Apple with a healthy stock of devices to refurbish, should it decide to go that route and offer reconditioned models at a lower cost of entry. That could also help it achieve broader reach in developing markets, the report suggests. The difference in this case from existing plans would be that this trade-in program would be available only at Apple retail locations, allowing for in-person trade-ins of devices that would happen on the spot, allowing them to walk right out with a new device after “receiving payments” for their older devices. The report doesn’t specify whether buyers would receive store credit that can be used generally, or a rebate specifically applicable to a new iPhone device. The current going rate for a used iPhone 5 on popular gadget trade-in sites like Gazelle and uSell range from around $100 to about $350. With its partner PowerOn, Apple’s own prices for used iPhones fell somewhere in the middle-top of buy back estimates, though Amazon’s own trade-in program beat its prices in every case, according to ZDNet. We’ve reached out to Apple for more information, and will update this story with any additional details. Developing… |
Uber Continues Asia Expansion With Seoul Test Runs | Catherine Shu | 2,013 | 6 | 24 | Uber has , the startup’s second stop in Asia. Uber has been promoting its app and premium car service in South Korea since the beginning of May, right after it . The San Francisco-based company . Uber launched its testing phase in trendy Gangnam district with its first celebrity passenger, footballer and Olympic medalist Koo Ja-cheol. The company will spend the next few weeks testing out its operations in South Korea’s capital with a limited fleet of cars. Uber’s site says that customers can expect to seat up to four people in either a high-end sedan or SUV. As expected for a premium car service, the company’s fares are pricey, with base fare starting at 6,000 KRW, more than twice the 2,400 KRW taxis in Seoul usually charge. The per kilometer rate is 1,700 KRW, compared to 1,100 KRW for most Seoul taxis. Despite the company’s legal troubles in the U.S., where it’s been issued cease-and-desist letters in California and Boston, sued in Chicago and faced disputes with the D.C. taxi commission, Uber has had a relatively controversy-free start in Singapore, where taxis are often hard to book during rush hour. It faces a highly competitive marketplace in Seoul, however, where many taxi drivers are struggling to make a living wage due to the rising cost of fuel. Last year, more than to ask the central government to change its policy and allow drivers to receive benefits. While Singapore cab fares are set by operators, Seoul’s are set by the government and the starting fare of 2,400 KRW has not changed since 2009. |
YouTube Founders Hurley And Chen Have Released An Asian Clone Of Vine | Jordan Crook | 2,013 | 6 | 6 | , the company YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, has just launched that appears to be a Chinese version of . I hate to use the word clone, but… clone. The app is called Wan-Pai, (or Wanpai, we’re not really sure due to complexities in the translation from Mandarin) which seems to mean “Beat” based on the various translations Google is giving me. (It could also mean Play Racket, Play Shoot, or “to play Mahjong”.) The app lets you record video in the same manner as Vine, by holding a finger to the screen to record, and letting go to pause. Here’s the official wording from the site (as translated by Google): Press and hold anywhere on the screen to start shooting, let go pause, then press and hold to continue shooting, it’s that simple. Shooting clips simultaneously, easy magic effect! It gets even more intense with the ability to add filters, choose to include or mute audio, and decide the direction the video will play in (forward only, backward only, or in a forward and backward loop). [gallery columns="4" ids="828602,828603,828601,828600"] The camera itself is very similar to Vine, boxing off the camera window against a grey background, and showing your progress bar (on the top instead of the bottom, but still). And the most offensive rip-off would be the six second limit, which is present on both apps (even if a ). [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlGNNxIYfc4&w=480&h=360] The content stream is also very Vine-like, except for the salmon theme color instead of Vine green. It shows an Instagram-style vertical feed of one clip after the other. Unlike Vine, users must tap each clip to get it to play, but things like comments and likes are all in the same place. In fact, the animations (such as the clip floating under the user name and avatar bar) are even similar. Wan-pai, which is available for both and Android, also lets you share to various social networks, Sina microblogging, or email clips from the feed to your friends. You can check out the . This one is just for fun: [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlOXnTjPnIY&w=640&h=480] |
Appfuel Is A Simple Way For App Developers To Balance Monetization And Growth | Anthony Ha | 2,013 | 6 | 24 | is aiming to make it easy for mobile app developers to manage the tradeoff between user growth and monetization. Cross-promotion between apps is a big part of the ecosystem, but CEO Andrew Boos said Appfuel is unique because of its simplicity. Developers add a “suggested apps” unit to their own apps, and they can either grow their user base by getting a reciprocal recommendation in another app, or they can earn money by running sponsored suggestions — or rather, with Appfuel, they do a mix of both. To adjust the program, they just move a slider determining how much of their inventory goes towards recommendation swapping versus sponsored links, and Appfuel handles the rest of the optimization process. “The only real decision a developer must make is what percentage goes to each,” Boos said. “We make the ‘grow vs dough’ decision easy.” Appfuel also offers real-time analytics and a dashboard that allows developers to monitor all their apps in one place. And there’s a “focus” feature for launching a new app, so that all of the suggestions in all of a developer’s apps can promote the new product. The startup said it’s already working with mobile game accelerator and mobile games startup . Starting today, it’s looking for sign-ups for its Founders’ Package, where developers can use Appfuel and keep 100 percent of the revenue (rather than giving a cut to the network) over the next 12 months. The goal, Boos said, is to work with about 20 to 30 apps initially, though Appfuel will be accepting more on an ongoing basis. The startup has raised a “six-figure” amount of funding from advisors (who include Max Teitelbaum of WhatRunsWhere.com and Jivan Manhas MediaTrust and Internet Media Labs), grants, and accelerators (Chinaccelerator, Boost.vc). |
“Facebook Reader” Is Real, But It’s Not RSS Or A Google Reader Wannabe | Ingrid Lunden | 2,013 | 6 | 24 | Facebook is working on a fresh way to read news, a source tells TechCrunch. It’s not based on RSS, and Facebook isn’t rushing the launch of a product that could compete with Flipboard. That’s because news reading is a high-stakes, long-term project that could get us to invest even more time in the social network. Since our source brought us that info last week, the ran a story saying that Facebook is working on a product, code-named Reader, but had few details about how the product worked. It compared Reader to Flipboard because it supposedly aggregates news and presents it in a tablet- and smartphone-friendly format. The report matches up with a , when we predicted that Facebook would soon be launching a . We were wrong about the launch date, but can now confirm Facebook has indeed been working on a news-reading interface. Facebook refused to comment on any of this, but we have been digging around and here’s what we’ve found so far. Our source tells us Facebook’s product will not be based on RSS and follow in the footsteps of , , , and most recently among the many trying to fill the hole that will be left with Google Reader’s imminent demise. In fact, RSS is “too niche” an area for Facebook to bother with, the source says. The ? It was just a prototype and not related to any specific product apparently. It has now been pulled. While a vocal minority of hardcore Internet users will mourn the , much of Facebook’s user base has probably never used RSS. It’s not a particularly convenient standard to jump into, and most Facebook users would have to put in significant work finding and subscribing to RSS feeds before they get any value out of it. That’s too high of a barrier for Facebook’s mainstream user base. The social network has said it aims to apply its resources towards products that can benefit large swaths of its user base. That is by itself. It leaves building for niche audiences up to its platform partners. We have confirmed that “Reader” is being led by Mike Matas, as WSJ reported. Matas is known as a user interface design visionary, as well as a great photographer. This lends weight to the idea that Facebook Reader is big on visuals and images, rather than text and RSS. You may recall that Matas joined Facebook in , when Facebook acquired Push Pop Press, a startup he co-founded. Push Pop Press helped authors and publishers convert physical books into iPad- and iPhone-friendly formats. That expertise and focus on other forms of text beyond news could come in handy for this new product. And as the WSJ hints, long-form content could be part of this “Reader,” too — sitting alongside more immediate and classic “news” and news shared by friends. Specifically, our source says Reader has been in development for a long time and is “not a competitive response” to those different Google Reader-style offerings, nor to Flipboard. This backs up our theory that Reader may be what we saw — a standalone iOS app or interface within Facebook for iOS that lets users browse news via full-screen or near-full screen photos. There’s a chance this whole “Facebook Reader” thing is actually just Facebook’s next evolution of the mobile news feed, as Josh reported in December. If Facebook were to completely overhaul the look of the mobile news feed in its main Facebook for iOS and Android apps, that would be a product worthy of years of work and design revisions. Right now if you look at the feed on mobile, you see a ton of dead space. Empty white screen and product chrome. While Facebook Home hasn’t gotten much adoption because its app launcher is sub-par, Cover Feed does a great job of making the news feed more immersive by replacing the dead space with full-screen photos. Cover feed is a very stripped-down version of the feed, though. A more fleshed out mobile news feed with Cover Feed’s full-screen images could work well. As Facebook matures, and services like Tumblr and Twitter continue to grow, it needs to find ways to get users to continue visiting the site. Launching new features is just a normal part of the life of any service, but as an advertising-supported platform, it’s even more imperative for Facebook to continue to look for ways to make sure users spend more and more time with it. On mobile, the need is in some ways even greater: that is where most of their user growth is happening today, but it’s also a format that lends itself to less browsing in general. Adding is also another move to make Facebook properties more engaging. We wouldn’t be surprised if whatever the codeanmed “Reader” is doing is also a “Viewer” and “Listener.” Whatever it is, we were told that it’s still too early to say exactly what this product will contain in the end. If Facebook launches a better way to read news and it’s a success, it could turn the social network from a collection of stories about your friends into a streamlined way to consume the entire web. |
Datameer Smart Analytics Is Designed For The Person Who Is Not A Data Scientist | Alex Williams | 2,013 | 6 | 24 | , like a lot of companies, is trying to make its data-analytics platform accessible to people who are not data scientists. It’s part of a growing trend to ease the complexity of data analytics so the practice is accessible to the far larger group of people who are more versed in using spreadsheets to do their work. Datameer 3.0 features what the company calls “Smart Analytics,” which simplifies Hadoop by building in the work that data scientists calculate themselves. It’s time for this shift. Hadoop has achieved deep enough adoption that it should be more accessible. A challenge is data integration — finding ways to collect all the data and clean it up so it can be analyzed. Then there is the task of actually setting up the server clusters. The user interface has to be something a non-technical person can understand. Lastly comes the analytics itself so people can make something that is relevant and useful. Datameer 3.0 Smart Analytics attempts so simplify the data analytics in four ways: CEO Stefan Groschupf put it well in a about the state of the market. Hadoop has evolved much like other technologies have, and it is no longer necessary to build something from scratch. It’s possible to buy services that are not custom-made and, as a result, difficult to maintain over time. Instead, it’s time for more services that make the promise of Hadoop a reality. |
Dropbox’s Drew Houston And Sequoia’s Bryan Schreier On How To Recruit (And Retain) Top Talent | Leena Rao | 2,013 | 6 | 24 | Dropbox founder and CEO and partner joined us in the TechCrunch TV studio for a special three-part series on how Houston and Schreier work together on recruiting, growing as a CEO, and building the company. The first part of this series is focused on recruiting and retaining talent. For background, Houston founded file-hosting giant Dropbox with Arash Ferdowsi at Y Combinator in 2007. Sequoia was one of the company’s first investors, and Schreier serves on the board of Dropbox. At last count, Dropbox was valued at $4 billion and now has 100 million users. It’s no secret in Silicon Valley that Dropbox has been able to attract some of the best engineering, sales and product talent in the technology world, through both and In the video above, Houston also explained how he and Schreier work together on recruiting a candidiate and what happens when they disagree on a hiring decision. When it comes to retaining talent, Houston elaborated on how the company makes employee 256 feel like employee No. 5. Check out the video above for more, and stay tuned for the second video in this series, which will focus on how Houston has evolved from a Hacker from MIT to the CEO of a multi-billion-dollar company. |
Medical E-Booking Platform ZocDoc Opens Up $55 Million In New Convertible Debt | Colleen Taylor | 2,013 | 6 | 24 | , the company that makes a web-centric platform for booking health appointments, has drawn on $2 million of a new . In a phone call this afternoon, ZocDoc CEO said that the debt note is being provided by a “handful of folks.” He declined to provide further details on the entities involved. However, Massoumi is keen to stress that the debt is not being taken on out of necessity. “We don’t need the money, we don’t plan to use it, it’s basically sitting in the bank collecting dust,” he said. So why did ZocDoc secure it at all?
“It is on incredibly company-favorable terms,” he said. “I don’t believe that companies should ever raise money when they ‘need it’.” Indeed, it doesn’t seem like ZocDoc should be desperate for new funds at the moment. Since it was founded five years ago, ZocDoc has taken on from investors including such heavyweights as Khosla Ventures, Goldman Sachs, DST Global, and others. The new debt note comes at a solid point in ZocDoc’s growth, Massoumi said: ZocDoc has now passed 1,000 procedure types on the service. This is a nice bit of news for the company, which when it launched at the TechCrunch 40 conference (the earliest iteration of what is now known as ) was criticized for being something that people would book minor appointments on, but not major things like heart surgeries. “Now, we have people booking appointments for heart surgeries and butt rashes,” Massoumi joked. The new infusion of funding will be a nice thing to have set away as ZocDoc continues to angle for more growth. Massoumi says that ZocDoc recently expanded its New York headquarters, and now has more than 400 employees on its payroll. Its platform is live in more than 1800 cities, and the “vast majority” of the regions in which it operates are profitable for the company, he said. This past fall I had the pleasure of sitting down with Massoumi at our TechCrunch TV studio to talk a bit more about the app’s growth over the years and his overall outlook on capital raises. Check that out below:
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Enterprise Leaders Marc Benioff, Jeff Weiner And Doug Leone At Disrupt SF | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,013 | 6 | 24 | San Francisco, here comes . Our annual conference is once again at the historic San Francisco Design Concourse this September 7 through 12. The tech leaders of today will be onstage, and kicking off our slate this year we have enterprise heavy hitters, including Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner and Sequoia Capital general partner Doug Leone. Business-focused software helped build Silicon Valley — that thing about making products people would actually pay for — and the boom times have returned as this sector has gone online and mobile to solve work problems. Benioff’s Salesforce has brought sales and productivity tools to the web and is busy acquiring companies across the business management suite. It picked up email marketing company earlier this month, among many other purchases, for a total of in the last couple years. At Disrupt SF 2012, Facebook has the opportunity to be the next Google…. these days everyone is busy watching for his next move. Jeff Weiner led LinkedIn to an incredibly successful IPO in 2011, proving to the markets that some tech companies are worth the money. With the stock up 50 percent already for the year, the beloved LinkedIn CEO ( ) will be returning to Disrupt SF this year to talk about maintaining the startup ambition while running a public company. Sequoia’s Doug Leone, meanwhile, hit No. 4 on the Forbes Midas List this year, on the strength of IPOs from enterprise IT company and online T-shirt maker CafePress, as well as Cisco’s . With a work background steeped in Silicon Valley and tech — Sun, HP and Prime Computing — and a long run across enterprise and consumer sectors, he’s seen industries come and go, and will be sharing what he thinks is next. More speakers will be announced as the show nears. Remember, Startup Battlefield applications are . Battlefield is the heart and soul of Disrupt and a fantastic launch platform for a startup. We know you can be the next Mint, Dropbox or Yammer but you have to . And for those of you who are already Mint, Dropbox and/or Yammer, you can sign on to sponsor the event by mailing .
Founder, Chairman & CEO Marc Benioff is chairman and CEO of salesforce.com. He founded the company in 1999 with a vision to create an on-demand information management service that would replace traditional enterprise software technology. Benioff is now regarded as one of the pioneers of cloud computing and has been instrumental in driving businesses to transform by embracing social and mobile cloud technologies to connect with customers, partners and employees in new ways. Under Benioff’s direction, salesforce.com has grown from a groundbreaking idea into a publicly traded company that is the leader in enterprise cloud computing. For its revolutionary approach, salesforce.com has been recognized by Fortune as one of the Fastest Growing Companies and one of the Best Places to Work and was selected by Forbes as the World’s Most Innovative Company for two years in a row. Benioff has been widely recognized for his visionary leadership and for pioneering innovation. In 2012 he was named a Businessperson of the Year by Fortune, one of the Best CEOs in the World by Barron’s, one of the Best CEOs in America by Forbes, and he also received an Innovation Award from The Economist. In 2010 he was awarded the David Packard Medal of Achievement and was named by Fortune one of the Top 50 People in Business as well as one of the Smartest People in Tech. Throughout his career, Benioff has been committed to using information technology to produce positive social change. In 2000, he launched the Salesforce.com Foundation—now a multimillion-dollar global organization—which established the “1-1-1 model,” whereby the company contributes one percent of product, one percent of equity, and one percent of employee hours back to the communities it serves. Acknowledging his commitment to building partnerships between business and society to improve the state of the world, the members of the World Economic Forum named Benioff as one of its Young Global Leaders and the Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy presented Benioff with the coveted Excellence in Corporate Philanthropy Award. Benioff is a member of the board of directors of the Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy, serves on the Board of Trustees at the University of Southern California and is on the board of directors at Cisco. Benioff is also the author of three books, including the national best seller Behind the Cloud. Prior to launching salesforce.com, Benioff, a 30-year veteran of the software industry, spent 13 years at Oracle Corporation from 1986-1999. In 1984, he worked as an assembly language programmer in Apple’s Macintosh Division. He founded entertainment software company Liberty Software in 1979 when he was 15 years old. Benioff received a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from the University of Southern California in 1986.
Partner Douglas Leone is a venture capitalist at Sequoia Capital focusing on mobile, internet, software and communication companies. Doug currently sits on the boards of Birst, CafePress, Hayneedle, Medallia, MedExpress, RingCentral, Service-Now and Zirmed. Doug’s represented Sequoia in its investments in Aster Data, Aruba Networks, Meraki, Netezza, Rackspace, and Service Now. Prior to joining Sequoia Capital in 1988, he held sales and sales management positions at Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard and Prime Computer.
CEO Jeff Weiner is the CEO of LinkedIn, where he started in December of 2008 as Interim President. He came to LinkedIn from positions as an Executive-in-Residence for leading Venture Capital firms Accel Partners and Greylock Partners. Prior to joining Accel and Greylock, Weiner served in various leadership roles at Yahoo for over seven years, most recently as the Executive Vice President of Yahoo’s Network Division. In this position he led a team of over 3,000 employees, managing products reaching over 500 million consumers, and overseeing a P&L responsible for roughly $3 billion in annual revenue. During his tenure, Weiner helped drive the Networkʼs Open and Social strategy as well as expansion of the companyʼs category-leading consumer web products, including Yahoo’s Front Doors, Communications and Community products, Search, and Media properties. Prior to his Network role, Weiner was part of the Search leadership team that directed the acquisition and integration of Inktomi, AltaVista, and FAST as well as the development of Yahoo Search Technology. From 2001 to 2002, Weiner oversaw Corporate Development at Yahoo, where he was responsible for the development and modification of overall corporate and individual business unit strategy and M&A. Weiner is also actively involved in the non-profit sector, with specific focus on leveraging digital capabilities to broaden the reach and scale of high impact causes. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of DonorsChoose.org and Malaria No More. |
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Snapchat’s First Monetization Move Will Be In-App Purchases | Jordan Crook | 2,013 | 6 | 24 | Fresh on the heels of the announcement that Snapchat received , co-founder and CEO Evan Spiegel has told TechCrunch that the first phase of the monetization strategy will involve in-app transactions. According to Spiegel, the company is already playing with hidden features and doing experiments to see what works best. “In-app transactions will come first,” said Spiegel. “We think we can build really cool stuff people want to pay for. The app is now a part of everyone’s day-to-day lives. That means that they will — I at least would — pay for a more unique experience.” He didn’t go into much detail, but he did clarify that the team “has not considered” letting users pay to save snaps. In other words, the in-app purchases may have to do with some sort of personalization. My best guess would be that users could perhaps pay for more customization tools within the app. This could include filters, like Instagram, stickers to place on snaps, or the ability to choose your font and font size within the app. It could even mean paying for the ability to send longer snaps, beyond the usual 10-second limit. While Speigel says this would be Phase 1 of Snapchat’s monetization strategy, he’s also said that Snapchat is very interested in . Snapchat already “advertises” (if you could call it that), to its own users. On Christmas, Thanksgiving, or other fun holidays, Snapchat sends users a mass Snap of an animated video. It usually features the Snapchat ghost. Brands could do something similar, and actually can already as long as they’re adding users the same way as all of us do — by knowing their Snapchat handle or sending them a friend request. That’s not effective for mass advertising, though, so Snapchat might need to let brands send unsolicited snaps to users in specific demographics. The brilliance here is that users aren’t required to open them, but in a way this format could run the risk of upsetting a very happy and engaged user base. So instead, it’s taking a more conservative, opt-in approach to monetization. In-app purchases that offer further functionality, personalization, or whatever “experimental” ideas Snapchat has in mind would be much more friendly to users as Snapchat heads into money-making territory. |
Honest Buildings Gets $5.5 Million To Scale Out Its Online Network For Real Estate Pros | Colleen Taylor | 2,013 | 6 | 24 | , a New York City-based startup that’s created a web platform to connect professionals in the real estate construction and design space, is announcing today that it’s raised $5.5 million in Series A funding. The round was led by the and , and brings the total invested in Honest Buildings to date to $7.5 million. This past fall, Honest Buildings raised from RockPort and . Honest Buildings, which has been described as a , was originally conceived as a platform to let commercial real estate owners assess the environmental impact of their new office building projects and choose the building construction and design firms accordingly. Today it is a more general marketplace for building solution providers to and connect with people looking to build new buildings or upgrade existing ones. The funding comes on the heels of some solid growth for the company, which has a full-time staff of 12: Over the past five months, some $25 million in building contracts were originated through the Honest Buildings platform, and the company counts industry giants such as Cushman & Wakefield as users. Also, Honest Buildings says it recently launched an office in London to expand into the UK market. The enterprise software space is heating up, and the commercial real estate sector has notably lagged behind residential when it comes to web-based tools, so it will be interesting to see how services such as Honest Buildings grow in the months ahead. |
Microsoft and Oracle Team Up To Bring Java, Oracle Database, Linux and WebLogic Server To Azure And Windows Server | Frederic Lardinois | 2,013 | 6 | 24 | Ahead of their joint press conference later today, Microsoft and Oracle a new partnership that will bring a number of Oracle products to Windows Server and the company’s Azure cloud computing platform. These Oracle products include , and Oracle . , Oracle customers can run supported Oracle software on Windows Server Hyper-V and in Windows Azure. Oracle also now provides for customers who want to run its software on Azure and bring Oracle Linux to Azure. Microsoft, on the other hand, will offer Java in Windows Azure and will soon add Infrastructure Services instances with configurations for Oracle Java, Oracle Database and WebLogic Server to the Windows Azure image gallery. As Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s president of its server and tools business notes in the company’s , he believes that “this partnership will help customers embrace cloud computing by improving flexibility and choice while also preserving the first-class support that these workloads demand.” Oracle president Mark Hurd echoes this statement and also notes that Oracle is “committed to providing greater choice and flexibility to customers by providing multiple deployment options for our software, including on-premises, as well as public, private, and hybrid clouds. This collaboration with Microsoft extends our partnership and is important for the benefit of our customers.” It’s worth noting that Amazon Web Services also offers a for its customers. The partnership with Microsoft, however, seems to go a bit beyond this and, for the most part, covers a different set of services. |
Snowden Took Booz Allen Job With Intent To Expose NSA | Gregory Ferenstein | 2,013 | 6 | 24 | Surveillance whistleblower and current Edward Snowden was a man on a mission: according to his latest interview, he took a private contractor position with the intent of exposing the National Security Agency. “My position with Booz Allen Hamilton granted me access to lists of machines all over the world the NSA hacked,” he told . “That is why I accepted that position about three months ago.” Snowden is often portrayed as a kind of accidental hero who felt compelled to take on the NSA after becoming fed up with its intelligence-gathering practices. It appears, at some point, he became far more calculating. In January, four months before arriving in Hong Kong, he had contacted documentarian Laura Poitras “claiming to have information about the intelligence community.” The NSA has come under fire for letting someone without a college degree or much business experience gain access to top-secret spying technology. The hire has embarrassed Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel all private analyst contractor practices, which comprise 22 percent of the Defense Department’s workforce (and 50 percent of its costs). Snowden also tells that he’s been judicious with his leaks. There are still 37 undisclosed slides on the top-secret Internet-snooping program, PRISM. “I did not release them earlier because I don’t want to simply dump huge amounts of documents without regard to their content,” he said. This statement could be taken as an indirect swipe at document dumper Wikileaks, which is currently helping Snowden secure asylum from U.S. extradition. Maybe the Booz Allen interviewer should have asked Snowden if he was intent on implicating them in a massive top-secret spying operation; then they could have just avoided the whole mess. |
Hacker Scrapes Thousands Of Public Phone Numbers Using Facebook Graph Search | Billy Gallagher | 2,013 | 6 | 24 | A hacker has exploited Facebook’s Graph Search to collect a database of thousands of phone numbers and Facebook users. Both parties agree that all the information was left public by users (even if the users themselves may still not realize it). But Facebook issued him a cease and desist after the hacker continued to scrape data and argued with Facebook that the availability of the information invades users’ privacy. , a mobile developer in Dallas, Texas, searched and downloaded 2.5 million entries of phone numbers from the social network. He says many of these entries are empty, as they either aren’t active numbers or aren’t connected to a Facebook user with public settings; however, he notes that thousands of entries do match a phone number with the name of a Facebook user. A Facebook representative tells me that this is a feature of graph search and that these users have their contact information set to “public.” “Your privacy settings govern who can find you with search using the contact info you have provided, such as your email address and phone number,” the Facebook representative says. “You can modify these settings at any time from the Privacy Settings page.” Copley confirms that these users have their contact information set to public, but argues that this is still a security issue. Facebook admitted to a on Friday afternoon that displayed the email and phone numbers of 6 million users; while similar in nature, Facebook says that flaw is unrelated to Copley’s hack, which they say is not a security flaw. On March 5, Copley reported a tip to Facebook security, writing, “There is a security invulnerability that allows someone to essentially create a database of phone numbers and Facebook users.” “Personally, I used this to catch a criminal–someone was selling stolen goods on Craigslist, and I had their number, and used this to find who that person was on Facebook and from there reported them to the police,” he continued in the March 5 email. A member of Facebook’s security team wrote back, in an email Copley shared with us, “I agree with you personally. We do have antiscraping protections (ratelimiting, bad ip blocks, etc) but it comes down to people controlling their privacy, we can make the privacy tools available and we can encourage them to use them but we could never just switch their privacy settings for them. So there is not much more we can do” Copley says Facebook told him the supposed security flaw was a feature of Graph Search. “I then went on to gather the <2.5 million entry database at this point to show them how a ‘feature’ like this is a security flaw,” he tells me. Copley says he used his access tokens from his developer account and the Facebook Search API to perform thousands of searches per day for phone numbers; when he began hitting up against the rate limit of his developer account, he found a way to use the API token of an app that isn’t rate-limited and performed millions of searches. In March and early April, Copley’s Facebook account was banned several times. “I have no idea why you are getting banned or what is going on. I don’t think there is any reason it would be happening because of the research you were doing here though,” the same member of Facebook’s security team wrote to Copley in early April. On April 26, Facebook’s lawyers sent Copley a cease-and-desist letter, stating, “you are unlawfully acquiring Facebook user data. It appears that you are accessing Facebook through automated means and stealing Facebook access tokens in order to scrape data from Facebook’s site without permission.” Facebook’s lawyers demanded that Copley send them: “1. Copies of all scripts or methods that you use or have used to scrape Facebook user data, along with a brief description of how each method works; 2. All information regarding the individuals that you shared or discussed Facebook token jacking scripts with, including any identifying information such as name, email address, forum screen names; 3. A complete description of what you shared with the individuals listed in No. 2; 4. Access to all Facebook user data that you scraped from the Facebook site; and 5. The names of individuals that you disclosed any portion of the scraped Facebook data to.” Copley says that Facebook lawyers mentioned Andrew Auernheimer’s case in conversations with him. In 2010, Auernheimer in AT&T’s iPad user database, which let him reveal contact information for 114,000 iPad 3G users. Auernheimer showed this to a writer at Gawker Media; he is now . The obvious difference between these two instances is that Auernheimer revealed that information that was supposed to be private but was publicly accessible; the information that Copley scraped is all set to public. Copley also says he has also been looking at other ways to search Facebook for phone numbers and now believes he has found an even faster way to connect Facebook users and phone numbers than through the search API. Facebook wants to have it both ways. It creates interfaces that often encourage users to share more data publicly, which lets them do things like search for each other using only a phone number. But it also wants to retain a sense of privacy — and control over users — so it fights anyone else who tries to access the data it helps make public. At this point, it is unclear if Facebook will pursue litigation against Copley. He appears to be determined to press Facebook on this privacy issue and show the world how widely accessible users’ public contact information is. |
Apple Releases iOS 7 Beta For iPad And iPad Mini With New Update, Brings Voice Memos Back | Darrell Etherington | 2,013 | 6 | 24 | Apple has released a new beta of its iOS 7 software for developers today, and the big news is that the iPad version has arrived. Back when Apple announced iOS 7, it said the tablet version would follow the iPhone version a few weeks later, and they’ve stayed good to that promise. The iPad version support is available from the developer channel for those registered as iOS devs. The other change that we’re seeing reported by users of the new beta is the return of Voice Memos to iOS. This was left out of the first beta, but reports said Apple just didn’t have it ready for inclusion in that version, so it’s no surprise to see it return here. The interface and icon are completely redesigned, as one might expect, getting rid of the skeumorphic rendition of a mic that dominated the previous version, and flattening out controls and interfaces. that Siri is now packing new voices, and that some visual tweaks have been made to things like Control Center. has an image of the new Voice Notes interface: The iOS 7 beta for the iPad contains interface differences vs. the version of iOS that’s been on offer for the iPhone. Apple generally tailors various elements of the OS for the larger screen of its tablet devices, and it’s not different this time around. Here are a selection of screens , showing some of the main changes. You can check out their full post for even looks at the changes in store.
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Win A Case For The Unreleased Redesigned iPad | Matt Burns | 2,013 | 6 | 24 | So I just got an iPad case in the mail. It’s for the iPad 5. That model is not out yet. But you can have this case anyway. Of course I have no way of knowing if this will, for an absolute fact, fit the next iPad, but the chances are good. At best, you’ll win a case for the next iPad. Or, likewise, you could win a fun conversation piece. As shown by this case and the , Alibaba, the next iPad will feature a different factor. Reminiscent of the iPad mini, the next iPad will have a thinner side bezel and dual speakers flanking the center-mounted Lightning connector. This particular case doesn’t have a space for a back-mounted camera flash. It’s also a quarter inch narrower than my iPad 2 — a rather telling fact about the size of the bezel considering this is a rugged case with large rubber pads. Rumors state that the next iPad will come out later this year with fall the most likely timeframe. However, months before a device’s launch, Apple distributes the specs to several key accessory makers to ensure that the device launches with a large assortment of accessories. This has happened for years. But this is the first time a mainstream accessory maker (who will remain nameless unless they email me) has sent one to us. Please note, you’re winning the case I have in my possession. I ripped the box when opening it. Sorry. The contest will end on July 1st. [gallery ids="837584,837583,837585"] 1) 2) – Retweet this post (including the #TechCrunch hashtag) – Or leave us a comment below telling us why you deserve this case. |
There Is No Google Reader Replacement, Only Alternatives | Sarah Perez | 2,013 | 6 | 24 | Google Reader is slowing down. Over the past few days, buttons have broken, marking feeds as read seemed to take a bit longer than usual, and the Android mobile website on some devices shifted over to the desktop view with no way to change things back. As users up until the bitter end, we can no longer complain about these events because Google doesn’t care – and we all have to leave. It’s the digital equivalent of bringing up the house lights when the rock concert is over. You don’t have to go home, folks, but you can’t stay here. No one cares about RSS feeds, except for maybe 50 million of the Internet’s most voracious news readers*. Journalists, bloggers, programmers, technically savvy IT workers, researchers, students, startup founders, and anyone else who has grown accustomed to a simple product that lets – not algorithms or tweets – be in control of which news sources to track and which stories to read. In the wake of the impending shutdown, a number of alternatives have sprung up to offer a “replacement” for Google Reader. Though some come close, none have completely nailed the experience yet. has been building its RSS product for years, which gives it a huge head start in this space. Last week, as it officially launched “Feedly Cloud,” a backend infrastructure to power the ecosystem of RSS reader client applications like , , , , , and more, left abandoned by Google’s exit from RSS. These apps had only offered a front-end RSS browsing experience, which means they needed someone else’s API to function. Feedly is one of the few to step in and serve that need. : Google Reader users will love Feedly because it comes closest to mirroring the Google Reader experience, and it offers a number of settings that can be tweaked to your liking. The service’s “Titles Only” view (which can be set globally in Preferences) offers the same sort of compact view, perfect for headline-scanning action, that Google Reader once provided. It also supports a number of Google Reader’s features, including support for many of the same keyboard shortcuts, tagging, favorites (“Saved for Later”), and “Mark as Read” functionality to quickly plow through categories. : Feedly currently pulled out its “search” functionality, which lets you pull up content by keyword or topic — something that’s one of the top user requests today. That’s still in the works, the company says, but it’s a big undertaking to deliver upon. In addition, though the company offers clients for web and mobile, the mobile apps are still somewhat over-designed with big, colorful category headers instead of the basic list of folders like Google Reader. That being said, it’s hard to find a lot of fault with Feedly, and the company is quickly working to add the few missing pieces. There will be little things here and there that you’ll need to get used to, of course (like the “t” shortcut no longer lets you tag items, but rather tweets them). However, in some cases, they’re changes for the better (like the option to set the default view by category). Betaworks’ quickly built take on Google Reader is the new kid on the block, and has a lot of potential to be a viable Feedly competitor. Though initially, the team has been working to launch something that offers the core RSS reading experience, the plan is to bring the RSS reader into the modern age by alerting users to what’s most popular among their network and better connect users with Digg.com. In Digg Reader’s “popular” section, the service scans your feeds and then ranks them with one, two or three dots to help you discover trending articles. In practice these recommendations were hit or miss at times, but the beta build we’ve been testing is unfinished. : Like Feedly, the app lets you organize content into folders, view unread counts, move around with Google Reader shortcuts, save posts for later, and share to social networks. With the above-described “Popular” section, it also offers something similar to Feedly’s “Today” for an at-a-glance list of what’s trending. Ex-Google Reader users will also appreciate Digg Reader’s minimalistic look-and-feel, which is almost entirely black, white and shades of gray (outside of the RSS content itself). Most of what’s wrong with Digg Reader is a function of time: The team had a limited number of weeks to build this service, having only started after Google’s shutdown announcement went live. That being said, there are still a number of features that ex-Google reader users likely relied on that aren’t ready in the new reader’s product at launch (planned for this Tuesday). Search is also missing here, for example, as is the ability to tag content or share to other social services beyond Facebook, Twitter or Digg. (“Read later” services like Pocket, Readability and Instapaper are supported, however.) Digg Reader offers just two views, “list” and “expanded.” While the former is meant to give users a headline-scanning option, Feedly’s “Title Only” view is even more compact, which means its more like Google Reader’s “compact” view. At launch, Digg Reader will have an iOS app, but the Android version will not be ready for another few weeks. Offering a full Google Reader replacement is no simple task, so it’s notable that some startups have tried to take on this job without the resources of a larger company like Facebook or Betaworks behind them. That being said, for power users of Google Reader, none of these smaller companies will be able to replace what is about to be lost. : This cross-platform news reader offers Reader import, compact views, saving stories, and even an interesting “training” feature that’s meant to help teach the reader what sorts of stories you like best. But NewsBlur’s interface is too busy and cluttered, it lacks search, and can be slow when you have a lot of feeds to load. : Feedbin’s paid web app is another good alternative for tracking feeds, viewing unread counts, subscribing and tags, and it uses Reader-like navigation via keyboard shortcuts. However, while it supports Reader data import, it lacks a number of key features like search or Feedly’s wide variety of layouts. But most importantly, it’s not a fully cross-platform product on its own. If you use Feedbin on the web, then to keep data in sync across mobile, you’ll need to use an app powered by its API like Reeder, Press, Favs, Tafiti, or others, or beta test the newer Feedbin Reader for Android. : These two startups sounded promising in theory as both are focusing on simply rebuilding the original Reader – the former working to bring the social aspects back, as well. Unfortunately, neither of these have made it yet, and won’t be solid replacements by the time Google Reader shuts down. Both apps have issues with speed at times (The Old Reader is far better on this front than Hive, though). Though The Old Reader does have search, it’s title-only, not full keyword search. Hive meanwhile has no search, and struggled to import Reader subscriptions. Sometimes Hive’s buttons are so slow to register clicks that you’re unsure if the app has gone down. Sharing to outside services is either limited or non-existent. Neither service offers a mobile app. : Until recently, was not a Google Reader replacement, it was only the front-end interface for viewing feeds hosted by Google. Since the Reader shutdown announcement, the company said it’s now , but this involves major changes on its part. Today, Reeder uses Feedbin and Feedly’s APIs on mobile, and is also working to support standalone RSS (introduced in , but not yet the iPad or Mac apps). Because Reeder was built on top of others’ infrastructure, it’s not ready to replace Google Reader at this time. That said, it is one to watch given it has an engaged Apple user base and some traction. : Released just , a beta build of NetNewsWire (ver. 4, beta) became available, and it sports a number of Google Reader-like features, including keyboard shortcuts, limited sharing options, favoriting, mark as read functionality, and more. However, it defaults to an inbox-like view, and its mobile client apps are only for iOS, and not yet updated to the new iOS 7 style. Ever since the Google Reader shutdown announcement, our inboxes have been filled with pitches for “replacements” nearly every day. It would almost be a disservice to TechCrunch readers to list these here, because real replacements are huge investments in infrastructure and APIs and show an attempt to honor the needs of Google Reader refugees with features like compact views, keyboard navigation, tagging and search. Simply offering an RSS-based product DOES NOT make a service an alternative to Google Reader, and attempting to position it like that is band-wagon jumping at best and dishonest at worst. Many of these pitches look cobbled together overnight as weekend projects. None are any good. (And yes, I got your email.) Also, several of these “me too” products tend to look more like watered-down versions of Flipboard, Google Reader. Really, if you just want a news magazine, use Flipboard then, or wait to see what with its forthcoming “newspaper for mobile” product. Even Aol (disclosure: TechCrunch parent) bungled its debut, and launched a product that the lot of us here at TechCrunch . Aol’s RSS reader claims to offer Google Reader import, but refuses to upload Google Reader’s XML file in a multitude of browsers, according to several of us here who gamely tested the service anyway. Aol’s Reader had intermittent issues in Chrome especially this morning, refusing to ever add the TechCrunch feed, for example (thanks Aol), and taking a good 30 seconds or so to do the same in Safari. This slowness may have been a launch bug, but it wasn’t promising. The reader is also missing search, but does offer tagging, limited sharing, favoriting, four different viewing options (which are suspiciously identical to Feedly though), and oh, giant Aol On Originals video ads in the sidebar… Well, at least they have a monetization plan. In each of the products listed above, and the dozens of those we haven’t linked to which are still promoting themselves as a home to Reader refugees, there are huge gaps in functionality – like Search, for example, which no one has fully fleshed out just yet. Because of this, users will also lose their ability to search and uncover content from older websites which have long since shutdown, taking their RSS archive with them. Google Reader let you time travel into the web’s past, a personal of sorts. Unless you’ve diligently been tagging or starring this older content over the years, it will essentially disappear into the ether without a search feature like Google’s, which once dug into seemingly infinite RSS archives. Reader was also more than a web service. It was a mobile website, a mobile app and an API that allowed an ecosystem of RSS clients to flourish. It was a quantified-self tracker, whose “Trends” section told you about your news reading habits, including which sites you read, clicked, shared and emailed the most and when, and one that kept track of the feeds that stayed fresh or had become inactive. It was also a discovery service that connected you with friends, let you package bundles of subscriptions and share them, search for content by keyword, and browse through posts that others found interesting. And it was an alerting tool that could track whenever a person, topic or keyword was mentioned on Google News, Blog Search, Twitter or eBay. For anyone looking for a Google Reader replacement, the saddest news of all is that there really isn’t one yet. There are only alternatives. |
Leap Motion Opens Up Beta Access To Developers In Preparation For Its July 22 Launch | Ryan Lawler | 2,013 | 6 | 24 | is about a month away from shipping its 3-D gesture controller to consumers, and it wants to make sure that there are plenty of apps for users to play with once it does. With that in mind, the company is opening up access to its Airspace app store for any developers who are already testing out the device, and it will further open its developer portal to those who don’t already have access to it. In preparation for its launch, Leap Motion had more than 65,000 people apply to be part of its developer program. It gave early access to about 10,000 developers, shipping out units and letting them sign up for its developer portal. Now those lucky 10,000 will be able to try out the first apps that will be available through its Airspace app store. Later this week, developers will get access to Airspace and the first apps that have been developed and approved for use with the Leap Motion gesture controller. To do so, they’ll need the Airspace Home desktop launcher, which will house all the apps that users download that are compatible with the controller. In addition to providing early access to its first generation of apps, Leap Motion is also opening up its developer portal to interested parties who weren’t part of the early access program. That will allow those who haven’t yet played with the device to at least familiarize themselves with the company’s developer tools and maybe start building apps ahead of the public launch next month. Leap Motion has clearly been putting a lot of effort into getting developers — and apps — ready on the platform ahead of its consumer release. There are currently about 50 apps available on Airspace, and Leap Motion CEO Michael Buckwald says he expects that number to double by the time consumers get their hands on the device. In addition to the company’s own internal developer program, Leap Motion investor Highland Capital Partners is looking to court developers for the device as well. The venture firm has established a , which it will use to invest in entrepreneurs and startups building interesting applications that take advantage of the 3-D motion controller. Pre-order units of Leap Motion are , and the device will also be available in Best Buy stores for $79 about a week after that. While he wouldn’t go into specifics about the number of units that have been pre-ordered, Buckwald said the company expects to have “hundreds of thousands” of users from around the world at launch. Indeed, initial interest has been truly global, with more than 100 countries represented in its pre-orders. |
Snowden Still Seeking Asylum, Wikileaks May Publish Rest Of His Docs | Gregory Ferenstein | 2,013 | 6 | 24 | NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden is in political limbo as he seeks asylum with any country that will help him escape from U.S. extradition. On a press call today, Wikileaks Editor Julian Assange that he is “healthy and safe,” meaning that they still have no idea where he’ll eventually end up. “I cannot give further information as to the whereabouts or present circumstance except to say that the matter is in hand,” added Wikileaks spokeswoman, Sarah Harrison. Yesterday, , the very same country protecting Assange in their London Embassy. But, as the U.S. seeks to get him into custody, it’s unclear what obstacles he’s facing to secure safe passage. Assange teased the idea that Wikileaks might publish the rest of Snowden’s documents. “Of course, Wikileaks is in the business of publishing documents suppressed by governments.” As of yet, Snowden has been pretty loyal to The Guardian, about disclosing the other 37 top-secret slides. |
Google Launches Cloud Playground, A Browser-Based Environment For Trying Its Cloud Platform | Frederic Lardinois | 2,013 | 6 | 24 | Google’s is slowly becoming ay fully featured environment for running complex web apps, but it’s not easy to just give it a quick try. To get started with Cloud Platform, after all, you have to first install the right and other tools on your local machine. Today, however, Google is launching its browser-based , which is meant to give developers a chance to try some sample code and see how actual production APIs will behave, or to just share some code with colleagues without them having to install your whole development environment. Cloud Playground, Google says, is meant to be a place “for developers to experiment and play with some of the services offered by the , such as , and .” For now, Cloud Playground only supports Python 2.7 App Engine apps, and Google considers it to be an experimental service (so it could shut it down anytime). To get started, you simply head for the or, if you just want to see it at work, head for Google’s , which now features green Run/Modify buttons that allow you to run any of the sample code on these sites. The Cloud Playground itself features numerous sample apps and also gives you the option to clone other open source App Engine template projects written in Python 2.7 from GitHub. The project itself is and consists of a basic browser-based code editor and , a Python App Engine app that serves as the development server. |
Africa-Focused Savannah Fund Graduates Its First Batch of Startups | Kim-Mai Cutler | 2,013 | 6 | 24 | Even though its startup scene is still nascent, Sub-Saharan Africa continues to grow pools of capital and entrepreneurial know-how in hubs like Nairobi, Kenya. Today, the Nairobi-based Savannah Fund, which is raising up to $10 million for startups in the region, just graduated its first batch of companies at . They include a Ghanaian e-commerce startup called that sells electronics, a Ugandan mobile game developer called that’s popularized a local card game and , a site that helps travelers find off-the-beat experiences and places for luxury camping. Mbwana Alliy, who returned to East Africa after business school at Stanford University, said he picked these companies out of about 170 applicants across the continent. He then puts them through a three-month accelerator in Nairobi, where he’s arranged sessions with mentors like Aardvark’s Max Ventilla or other Silicon Valley-based or foreign entrepreneurs who come through the region. They take about a 15 percent equity stake for about $25,000, which does sound steep. But Alliy says he’s seen a fair amount of deals where other angels might have taken 40 percent of a company for as little as $10,000. The reality is, with a much lower per-capita GDP, the economics of founding a company in Kenya or Nigeria are very different than they are in the Valley. Alliy says the whole process of setting up the fund, for which he’s still raising funding, has been a big learning experience. When he announced the fund last year, he set it up with i/o Ventures managing director Paul Bragiel and Erik Hersman, who co-founded Ushahidi, a mobile platform that’s been used to crowdsource information during disasters and elections. “When I started, people asked me, ‘Mbwana, are you going to copy and paste i/o onto Africa?’ And I was well aware that it couldn’t be like that.” Certain things have gone well. “The biggest thing I was surprised by was that we put together quite a few solid mentor sessions over the past three to four months,” he said, noting that big names in tech like Eric Schmidt have passed through Nairobi on visits to the local iHub. “A lot of global talent shows up here.” Schmidt’s Tomorrow Ventures in , a platform that optimizes app use on basic feature phones. He’s also taken initial funding from angels like Yelp’s Russ Simmons and venture capitalist Tim Draper, over going for institutional investors like other, more established venture firms. But investing in the region is also naturally more risky and takes more gut-checking. Two-thirds of Savannah’s companies originally weren’t even incorporated at all and Alliy had to get the proper paperwork established. “To be honest, we take risks. I kind of laugh when I think about what Valley VCs are doing,” he said. “All entrepreneurs there are so educated. They can read about what to do on VentureHacks. Everyone is so knowledgeable about everything. It feels so easy compared to Africa,” he said. “So I guess the thing is, we take more risks and we’re much more comfortable taking a bet.” When they flew in the Ghana-based team from Ahonya, they went through Skype interviews and pure online vetting. The company has so far sold about 600 products online in about nine months, with an average transaction size of $350 (which is pretty big for Sub-Saharan Africa). “We got a good feeling from them,” Alliy said. “We liked their traits. They were doing growth hacking in Ghana without even knowing what the term means.” |
Advice From The Game Maker That Made GungHo Worth $14B: “Listen To Your Wife.” | Kim-Mai Cutler | 2,013 | 6 | 23 | One of the most absurd stories this year has been the rapid rise of Gung-Ho, the Japanese gaming company that saw its stock surge by in a single year because of one hit mobile game called Puzzle & Dragons. The company is on public markets. That’s more than twice is worth and . For a brief moment, GungHo even surpassed Nintendo’s valuation earlier this month. GungHo’s rise came through Puzzle & Dragons, a title that earned it an — solely in Japan. It also recently hit , primarily in Japan. The game itself is a puzzle matching title. The player has to line up several matching tiles in a row and they collect cute animal characters as they level up and battle other monsters and bosses. The company’s success underscores a big shift in power between mobile gaming platform providers like DeNA and GREE, which ruled in a predominantly feature phone era, and first-party game developers, which don’t need to rely on an extra distributor on top of Apple’s iOS or Google’s Android platforms. For the company itself, which is 300 employees strong, Puzzle & Dragons’ massive success has begged the question from rival developers — “What’s your secret? How’d you do it?” But producer Daisuke Yamamoto could only say, actually half-seriously, “Listen to your wife.” After being originally inspired by another Match-3 game he created a concept with more Dragonball-like art and a wizard-like theme. Then he just listened to a lot of the improvements his wife wanted in the game. Initially, it was just a team of four with him as the producer and other programmers and designers. It took a few days to develop the game, and then six and a half months until the company felt it was strong enough to go live. Among the many changes his wife wanted: the ability to move a stone around the entire game board, instead of only one slot over at a time. She also wanted larger stones on the screen. He said that womens’ longer fingernails often get in the way of playing the game, so they need to be bigger to make the UI more player-friendly. As the game grew into a cultural phenomenon, it kept taking GungHo’s servers down. The company started giving away virtual stones as an apology, giving rise to the word, which is a combination of the Japanese words for ‘stone’ and ‘apology.’ He also said the company doesn’t internally focus on quantitative metrics that much, and instead relies on qualitative feedback from Twitter. That’s a pretty big difference from other freemium gaming companies, which focus on user funnels and retention rates over several days to a week to a month. “Japanese people are really conservative. They don’t disclose their actual names,” said in an interview at Supercell’s Free Your Play event in Helsinki last week. “Because you can use a nickname on Twitter, it’s a much more effective way to listen than Facebook.” As revenues ballooned, GungHo’s stock has gone on a rampage, growing from a valuation of just over $200 million a year ago to $14.4 billion today. But Yamamoto says internally they try not to pay attention to the company’s soaring valuation. “We’re try not to focus on the stock prices. We just focus on creating games and that’s all we do,” he said. He also said that even though GungHo is now worth more than longtime mobile gaming giants DeNA and GREE, they don’t intend to go for any kind of platform play. “We’re pretty much not in favor of platforms like [DeNA’s] Mobage and GREE. DeNA and GREE are IT companies. They are not gaming companies. All they focus on is how much revenue they will have,” he said. “But for us, we’re a gaming company. We emphasize game creatives. If all Japanese gaming companies started to focus on the creative side, it would be a really good move for the entire industry.” He says to celebrate the game’s success so far, his team “just drank beer and ate pizza.” He said his life hasn’t changed that much since the game became a massive hit. But he’s hoping that he can build out stronger branding for Puzzle & Dragons. “I’ve always wanted to do a game with good characters and IP [intellectual property],” he said. So it wouldn’t be that surprising to see GungHo come out with merchandising and licensing deals akin to what we’ve seen with Angry Birds-maker Rovio or Cut The Rope-maker Zeptolab. The company is also focused on improving localization for Western markets. Currently, the game seems to have done some basic translation work but the tutorials and art could probably be localized more. The company just announced a partnership with Finland’s Supercell to build in a bunch of exclusive in-game features that will appear in both Puzzle & Dragons and Clash of Clans. “We’re not really satisfied,” Yamamoto said. “We’ve just been quiet so far, but we’ll be aggressive from now on.” |
Reminder: Let’s Rock Out In The Balkans | John Biggs | 2,013 | 6 | 23 | Are you in Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia, or Slovenia? Have I got a treat for you. In an effort to spread the good word about TC in the rest of Europe, I will be rolling through Sofia, Belgrade, Zagreb, and Ljubljana at the beginning of July for a series of informal meet-ups. If you’re in those cities, I want you to attend! Assisting in the planning is / , the “TechCrunch of Southeast Europe.” They will provide us with locations and more specific timing but as it stands we expect to have some free beer, lots of sunshine, and a great chance to talk about your startup in an informal setting. We’ll also be scouting for entrants for If you have a startup to pitch, and we’ll talk about your presentation and application when I’m in town. and applications to This is a great opportunity to get in front of a TechCrunch staffer before the event. These will be informal meetups where I’ll talk a little bit about TechCrunch and getting the attention of media outside your own country and we can talk startups, entrepreneurship, and funding all night long.
Want to pitch at the event? We’ll be holding a mini pitch-off at each event and would love you to present. Please fill out the form below. Interested in sponsoring the event? Please contact organizer , head of , directly. We’ll have much more information soon, but until then RSVP and get your product ready for our Southeast Euro Trip! Special thanks to our general sponsors and – a leading telecom startup accelerator for Central and Eastern Europe. Special thanks to our main sponsor, the . |
FAA Says It Will Be Months Before In-Flight Electronics Ban Is Lifted | Catherine Shu | 2,013 | 6 | 23 | Just , it seemed that the Federal Aviation Administration was finally going to relax the rules that require passengers to stow away electronic devices during take-off and landing. Now it appears, however, that travelers will have to wait months before the new regulations go into effect. Even though the FAA has prepared a draft report that says that nixing the ban on electronics usage under 10,000 feet is long overdue, it also cautions that there were will be months of testing to determine which aircraft models are most vulnerable to potential electromagnetic interference from electronic devices used by passengers. The FAA doesn’t have a specific timeline for lifting the regulations, a potentially lengthy process that will include safety assessments, crew training, PR campaigns and coordination with foreign regulators. Futhermore, the that the report’s conclusions could be changed before it is due in September, which means that the passengers may have to wait even longer. Despite the that it will eventually get rid of the ban on electronic devices during take-off and landing, plenty of passengers are already taking matters into their own hands. A study cited by the agency shows that less than 60% of passengers say they always turn their devices off completely when asked to do so by flight staff. In fact, many don’t even know that it’s unacceptable to use their smartphones, tablets and e-readers below 10,000 feet. Adding to the confusion is that tablets and other electronic devices are used increasingly by pilots and flight attendants during takeoff, which the FAA’s report admits sends mixed messages to passengers. Though changes to the current rules might take a while longer, the air travel industry has made dramatic strides in how it views passengers’ electronic devices. Just two years ago, the International Air Transport Association (IATA), a trade group that represents over 240 airlines, , with the two most dangerous devices being the iPad and iPhone. Though it will be a while before passengers enjoy the benefits of the FAA’s change of heart, it still represents a dramatic shift in how a very cautious industry views personal electronics. |
State Machinery For State Machines | Contributor | 2,013 | 6 | 23 | My name is Andrew Auernheimer. I used to believe problems could be solved with criticism and discourse in our marketplace of ideas. Three years ago I incremented an integer on a . It was then demanded I apologize for abusive arithmetic. I disagreed that addition could be abhorrent, so now I write this from the Special Housing Unit of a federal prison. A lifetime ago another Auernheimer named Raoul wrote things that angered powerful people. Those people called Raoul a bad person, too. “Mischling” was their word for him. They also sent him to a prison. It was called Dachau. Raoul’s bail and passage to America was paid by one . Herzl said only fools stay where they are hated, paying the taxes for the thugs and pogroms to destroy them. Herzl said to every Jew: Grab all your goods and crew, let us move some place new. He founded the Zionist movement. Beyond the Biblical exodus there are success stories ancient and recent. Herodotus wrote of Teos, whose citizens mass-emigrated to found Abdera when the Persian came to enslave them. The Mormons prospered by going West until nobody was around to hate them. Unlike these examples, little besides naivete and sloth chain hackers to soil. We can work anywhere with Internet, and most can afford a yacht or jet. “The innovator makes enemies of all who prospered under the old order,” wrote Machiavelli. Hatred will grow as Google replaces truck drivers with software, Khosla replaces ranching and slaughterhouses with printed protein, and ubiquitous 3D printing replaces the manufacture of everything plastic or metal. In the post-labor economy, Marxists and Keynesians are thieves and arsonists. Think anti-engineering legal sentiment is just a temporary storm? When my supervision is done in 2019, millions of dollars and a third of my life I’ll have been spent weathering it. Raoul thought the Third Reich was a passing political trend. Hackers need statehood. For self-preservation against ethnocidal states, for control of our destinies and for the liberties of billions. No nation now protects Internet speech, privacy, and commerce rights. If but a single well-armed nation did, those rights would be a VPN or SSH session away for the whole planet. General computation and the free Internet are as important advents in human rights as the abolition of slavery. Let our electronic freedoms not sway in the shifting whims of dying governments. |
New iOS App Lets You Record What You Heard Five Minutes Ago | Greg Kumparak | 2,013 | 6 | 23 | Have you ever wished that you could record something that already happened? Your kid’s first words. That perfectly timed comeback. The email address your boss told you to have those important documents sent to within the next 10 minutes. If only there was a way to record the important bits of your life, without having to record of it. That’s the idea behind Heard, a new app for iOS. Heard constantly records the audio around you into an ephemeral, self-destructing buffer, saving only those fleeting moments that you deem worthy. Once you open Heard, it immediately begins recording everything within earshot of the iPhone’s microphone. Rather than dumping all of that audio into one incredibly boring and incredibly long file, though, Heard records into a constantly rotating buffer. If something happens that you just to save, you pop into the app and tap a single button — boom, it’s saved. Do nothing, and the buffer is erased, that audio instantly disappearing into the digital ether. Heard will continue to record audio even when running in the background, albeit with a big ol’ red “RECORDING” banner placed up at the top of your screen. Once recorded, clips can be named, tagged, emailed, or shared on Facebook. Heard just launched late last week, and they’re testing a freemium model to begin with. Out of the box, the free app records up to 12 seconds of the past — not a whole lot, but enough to help you wrap your head around the concept. Pay $1.99 for the “Bigger Audio Buffer” in-app purchase, and you can bump the recording buffer up to 30 seconds, 1 minute, or 5 minutes. Now, before you shout “OH MY GOD, SPY APP, NSA PRISM AGH!”, think about it: if someone is actively trying to record you saying something incriminating, this wouldn’t be a very good app for it. It would offer no advantage in that case over iOS’ built-in Voice Memo recorder — which, like this app, can record while running in the background — or even a cheapo tape recorder, but multiple disadvantages (the five minute limit, the need to tap the ‘save’ button without anyone noticing). Still, anyone using the app should always make sure everyone being recorded is fully aware; in some states, not doing so could get you into You can find Heard in the app store, for free, |
Instagram, Give Me A Photos-Only Stream Or Give Me Death | Jordan Crook | 2,013 | 6 | 23 | You hear that? It’s the sound of people closing the Instagram app. is More than any other social network, Instagram is a consumptive experience first and foremost, even though it might have tricked you into thinking it’s all about taking pictures. Instagram has never shared concrete stats on creation vs. consumption habits of its users, but the do shed some light on the behavior of the Instagram nation. There are a total of on the service. This is a huge number, given the fact that Instagram has only been around for a little over 3 years. there are on the network. Clearly, some of these users share hundreds and thousands of pictures while others share dozens. For the sake of this riddle we’re solving, let’s pretend they create an equal amount. That’s an average of 46 photos per user. However, Instagram announced that there are over on the service . Per user, that comes out to around 230 likes per month. Obviously, each user is different. Some post thousands of photos, while others have a measly 12. Some joined two years ago, and some just hopped on the Instagram band wagon. Some users like every photo they see, and others are stingy with their likes. But on the whole, it’s clear that users like/consume photos more than they post them. This goes to show that consumption — the act of flipping through that photo stream, liking at your leisure — is a crucial part of the Instagram experience. It is precious. It works like a charm in those spare moments of the day. And it’s just been fucked with. In the past three years, Instagram never figured out video, and the feature remained unlaunched about it at the company. When Instagram launched, the idea was to take the shitty photos your shitty mobile camera had captured and share them in a beautiful way. It was a huge success. Now, we’re much better at taking photos with our phones, and our cameras are way better than they used to be. But video is the new frontier. Instagram wants to get in on the market while it’s hot, with the same formula it used for photos — capture something of low-quality, make it pretty and stabilized, and share it easily. Yay! But Instagram isn’t dominant because of its creative properties. There are dozens of photo-sharing apps with filters and cool stamps, but none of them have 130 million users. None of them are filled with all of your friends’ photos. You can create in Camera+ or Line, but can you consume within those apps with the same pleasure as Instagram? Probably not. Unfortunately, the addition of video to the Instagram stream takes from that pleasure for a number of reasons. A few of them are solvable problems — bugs, really. When you have poor service and you hover over an Instagram video (I’d like to call them Vinstagrams, if everyone’s ok with that), chances are you move on down the stream if that video takes too long to load. However, once that Vinstagram does load, it starts playing audio and all no matter where you are in the stream (though you can disable auto-play in the setting). But even if that doesn’t happen, there’s still a bandwidth issue. Yes, plenty of us are enjoying LTE speeds on our Android and iOS-powered devices, but some of us are not. Even still, some of us may find ourselves on a dragging Wifi network. There’s no guarantee of strong service at any given time. Instagram never had much trouble with this when it was just doing photos. Unless you had zero bars, or no Wifi, you could enjoy a stream of your friends’ photos. Maybe you couldn’t quite upload your own post, but you could still get the small satisfaction that comes with handing out likes. Instagram Video slows down the consumption. There have been a number of times already, even with my LTE iPhone 5, that I couldn’t load videos fast enough in Instagram. I didn’t move to another area to get service, or switch to Wifi. I closed the app. Instagram was made to be easy. Easy creation and easy consumption. Vinstagrams make things difficult. But it stretches far beyond poor connectivity into the land of content. Not every Instagram pic is beautiful, or interesting, or a profound work of art. But most of them are pretty easy on the eyes, thanks to filters and other editing tools baked into the app. Luckily for all of us, it’s relatively easy to take a good picture. It’s a single frame, a solitary moment in time that you have to capture. If the first one’s not so hot, you take a few more. You just need a single, beautiful frame. With video, users have , if they so choose. But it’s not as easy as it seems. Even with Instagram’s “Cinema” technology, which is meant to stabilize the video, and 13 beautiful filters, it’s really easy to take a bad video. Then let’s factor in the fact that Instagrammers are . Instagram is filled with pictures your dinner, your coffee, your beer, your pet, the view our of your airplane window, and/or your feet, among other things. When it’s a single image of a pigeon on the street, it’s easy for me to scroll by. But, as a consumer, the little video icon makes me want to wait, and see what this Vinstagram has to offer. It’s almost never worth it. People are jacked up about Instavids right now (I’m still deciding on which name should stick), so it makes sense that they’d be uninteresting right now. I’m guilty too. In testing out the new feature, I took Instagram videos that . I apologize. Perhaps people will get more stingy, or learn how to shoot a compelling video. Perhaps Instagram will be the same app it has always been, a place to look at people’s food. But even if it gets better, there are more issues that make me think twice every time I go to click on that Instagram app: the very simple issue of time. Instagram is a time sink. It’s the app I go to every time I have a few spare minutes of boredom in my world — waiting for a table at a restaurant, sitting on the toilet, chilling on a smoke break. But when you combine slow loading videos and downright videos — it may not seem like it, but 15 seconds is a really long time compared to the half second it takes to glance at a photo — Instagram consumption is no longer feeling like a “break time” app. It’s now an of my time. That’s not to say that there isn’t a place for Instagram video. Twitter’s Vine is taking off like a rocket, and Facebook seems to feel a need to dominate every corner of the social space. That now includes video, so I absolutely understand why this feature was launched, whether it follows Vine or was conceived of long before. However, there’s a reason that Instagram has 130 million active users. If it ain’t broke, right? Changing the experience is risky, but there are ways to fix it. I, personally, am calling for filtered photo streams. Let me choose whether or not I want to look at pictures, Vinstagrams, or both. There are plenty of that let you toggle between certain streams or feeds, and there’s no reason why the same tactic can’t be used within Instagram. Until then, I’ll be spending less time browsing through Instagram, so don’t feel offended if you’re getting fewer likes from me. |
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