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CrunchGear Interview: "Gadget-Talk" With Cody Votolato From The Band TELEKINESIS | Jay Donovan | 2,011 | 3 | 20 | While the concluded days ago and is likely only a faint, buzzed memory in the minds of its tech-savvy attendees, the just closed shop today. I made it almost all the way through the epic music showcase, leaving within a few hours of the brutal, bitter end but not before speaking with several musicians about the ways that mobile devices have affected them. I spoke first with , the guitarist for the indie rockband . A super nice guy, Cody lent some insight into passing the time in a tour bus playing Angry Birds and staying connected to contacts, family and friends. Video below. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVBGWzVo_uI&w=480&h=390] |
Fast Break: As Of Last Week, Many At Sprint Thought They Were Merging With T-Mobile | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 3 | 20 | This morning’s bombshell news that has left a lot of questions. T-Mobile customers want to know what it means for them? AT&T customers want to know what it means for them? Would-be iPhone buyers want to know what it means for them? T-Mobile and AT&T have started those already. One thing not addressed yet: what does this mean for Sprint, the nation’s third-largest carrier? And it’s an especially poignant question for Sprint because as of last week, many at that company believed they would be merging with T-Mobile, we’ve heard. |
PapayaMobile Relaunches FarmVille-Like Game For iOS | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 3 | 20 | Platforms like are becoming popular for game developers to easily implement a plug and play technology to incorporate social gaming elements into iOS and Android games. also offers a similar platform, as well as dedicated social games. Tonight, PapayaMobile is launching its FarmVille-like game, aptly called Papaya Farm, on the iPhone and iPad. While Papaya Farm was on iPhone shortly after the company launched in September 2009, the app was shortly removed and has been available on Android only. Papaya Farm allows players to manage a virtual farm by plowing land and planting and harvesting virtual crops, trees and bushes (sound familiar?) A player begins with an empty farm and a fixed starting amount of “Papayas,” the virtual currency used in the game. Papayas can also be used in PapayaMobile’s other social games, including PapayaFish. As we mentioned, the game was developed using PapayaMobile’s Game Engine SDK. Until now the game was only available via an Android app and the web, and has actually seen decent success considering the competition in the mobile social gaming space. Papaya Farm has more than 2.5 million monthly average users, around 20 percent of which are on iOS devices. Hopefully that number will increase with the launch of a native app. |
Rebecca Black Means The (Internet) Fame Game Has Changed | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 3 | 20 | [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CD2LRROpph0&w=630] The video for Rebecca Black’s “Friday” now has more YouTube views than Lady Gaga’s at around 26 million versus 22 million for Gaga. For those of you that haven’t been playing along with the meme, Rebecca Black is a 13-year-old aspiring singer whose parents paid $2,000 to have a “professional” music video made by a YouTube popstar factory called, appropriately enough, ARK Factory. The video then after gaining traction for all the wrong reasons on music blogs, (yeah we’ll cover anything these days), Reddit and 4Chan, turning its star into both a meme and into fodder for mainstream media outlets like ABC. So why all the media attention? In part because Justin Bieber and Rebecca Black are two sides of the same Internet fame coin: Black is like the anti-Justin Bieber, her “Friday” video has all the trappings of pop star gloss, with none of the talent. Bieber on the other hand, had the talent, and enthralled fans with that despite the (nice poster Justin), which he posted before putting out a more polished album and becoming the online and mainstream fame tornado that he is today. Bieber and Black, like the Artic Monkeys and Lilly Allen before them, are a sign of the power of alternative distribution channels in our time. But Black is a tipping point, as her video was engineered to go viral (And it did! If not exactly in the way she intended …). To give you a micro-example of how much becoming a YouTube celebrity is now considered a viable, respectable way of gaining traction in the music industry, even for those beyond their teen years; Earlier today I had lunch with a musician friend who was lamenting the trouble her band was having booking shows in San Francisco. When I asked her how she planned on getting the word out she said, Then she mentioned something about Twitter followers. Gawker’s , who has the Rebecca Black story and is pretty much an expert on how people become Internet-famous, explained to me over Skype. Indeed the focus of Rebecca Black’s ABC/ was the extreme negativity of the comments ( ). In an age of readily available tools for discussion, the value of our pop-stars is now in the extent to which we can use them as topics for social media blathering (Rebecca Black is trending on Twitter, of course) whether or not that blathering is positive. The most fascinating part of the Black story is that she’s actually famous now, which was exactly the reason her parents gave $2,000 to ARK Music Factory in the first place. From Black herself on her unlikely fame, Exactly. Get used to this kind of stuff. As society advances technologically, culture becomes a parody of itself, and we enjoy the parody, intentional or not, more than anything sincere. But what becomes of the Antoine Dobsons and the Rebecca Blacks, our Internet culture folk heroes? Says Chen, The pop culture ringer hasn’t got sick of Bieber quite yet, and we’ll just have to wait for Black to put out her next song to gage her expiration date. Best case scenario: It’s a duet, with Bieber himself. Thanks: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQOFRZ1wNLw&w=630] |
Hacker Gets Kinect Working On – Wait For It – The Playstation 3 | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 3 | 20 | [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QnWDRF9w7k&w=640&h=390]
This is really more of a “just ‘cuz” hack than one of those we see occasionally. Yes, hacker Shantanu Goel has rigged up his Kinect to work with its greatest enemy, the PS3. Where is your now?! It’s kind of a Rube Goldberg machine of hack tools: The Kinect is connected to his laptop, which is running drivers for the Kinect, which are then converted into raw tracking data and reconverted into PS3-compliant data via DIYPS3Controller, used (naturally) to control your PS3 via your PC. This is sent to the PS3 in the form of normal controller movements (analog stick pressure, buttons and all that), resulting in… a slightly janky Kinect-for-PS3 experience! As you can see in the video above, it’s still in a really early state. But this just goes to show that anything’s possible when you take control of your own hardware. We’ll post again when there’s better video. I wonder if any games on the PS3 will really even be playable with the Kinect? For more details, tools, and so on, |
Fast Break: As Of Last Week, Many At Sprint Thought They Were Merging With T-Mobile | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 3 | 20 | This morning’s bombshell news that has left a lot of questions. T-Mobile customers want to know what it means for them? AT&T customers want to know what it means for them? Would-be iPhone buyers want to know what it means for them? T-Mobile and AT&T have started already. One thing not addressed yet: what does this mean for Sprint, the nation’s third-largest carrier? And it’s an especially poignant question for Sprint because as of last week, many at that company believed they would be merging with T-Mobile, we’ve heard. Specifically, we’re hearing from a source with direct knowledge of such a deal that Sprint believed they were in the driver’s seat to land T-Mobile. It’s not clear if anything had been formalized or if discussions were still ongoing, but a “desperate” Sprint was said to be putting it all out there to get a deal done. This news echoes that stated Sprint and Deutsche Telekom were discussing such a deal. And a few second-hand accounts state that those at T-Mobile USA were also thinking that Sprint was the likely acquirer. T-Mobile USA CEO Philipp Humm’s about the AT&T deal this afternoon may point to that. “ ,” he wrote. That wording suggests that the deal with AT&T went down very quickly. And again, it may also speak to a change from the Sprint endgame that many had assumed. Of course, from a technology perspective, the T-Mobile/AT&T deal would seem to make more sense. Both run a GSM-based network, whereas Sprint has a CDMA network, like Verizon. That said, as both T-Mobile and AT&T have made clear, the main impetus behind this deal is the 4G LTE networks going forward — GSM and CDMA go out the window when those hit. And while AT&T is already saying they don’t believe government regulators will hold up the T-Mobile deal (what else are they going to say?), they acknowledge that it should take a year for it to complete. The T-Mobile acquisition would give AT&T a combined customer base of about 130 million — surging it into the number one position in the U.S., far ahead of Verizon’s slightly more than 100 million customers. And that means both AT&T and Verizon will now have more than double the number three carrier, Sprint. A Sprint/T-Mobile merger would have given them around 85 million customers. That would have put them only 10 million or so behind AT&T. Obviously, regulators would have looked more favorably at that maneuver, since it would mean a more level playing field. But it was not to be. It’s not known why exactly at this point, but Bloomberg’s original report stated that the price may have been the hold up. They cited an analyst saying that a $25 billion offer may be too high a price for suitors. And yet, AT&T’s offer was some $14 billion more — and includes an 8 percent stake in AT&T, and a Board seat. Perhaps that’s how and why AT&T swooped in so fast for the win. Money talks. |
Fly or Die: The Nintendo 3DS, Rockmelt, And Mobile Wallets | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 3 | 20 | s the new Nintendo 3DS all that? Does have a chance? Will mobile wallets ever be adopted by real people in real stores? CrunchGear editor John Biggs and I tackle these questions in this week’s edition of . Watch the video to find out who our surprise guest is this time after we give our verdicts on his company’s product. The Nintendo 3DS uses simple stereoscopic 3D graphics that really pop out and combined with a gyroscope effect creates an incredibly immersive experience. You might look like an idiot playing it because you move your whole body around unnecessarily, but it is very addictive. Biggs wrote up his initial impressions . Remember Rockmelt, the Chromium-based browser startup backed by Marc Andreessen? |
Push notification | Steve Gillmor | 2,011 | 3 | 20 | With all the real trouble in the world these days, it seems small-minded to ponder the impact of the latest wave of technologies on our lives. After all, TechCrunch is a blog about startups and the Valley, with only a tangential relationship to the struggles in Japan and the Middle East. But the larger theme of the role and limits of technology in solving our problems still resonates across this divide. The reactor crisis in Japan may have its roots in a cascading series of events, but the most intractable parts stem from decisions, or lack of them, about what to do with the spent fuel rods. Not a technology problem but a failure of leadership, a buck-stops-not-here that if we’re not incredibly lucky will have an impact on generations to come. We won’t soon forget the images of tsunami, smoke, and explosions, but the video of helicopters and fire trucks trying to save us from a catastrophic meltdown will last even longer. They look like tinker toys arrayed against the terror of the real adult world. The way the media consumes these crises adds to the feeling of helplessness. Armchair experts line up with snap analysis in hopes of locking down the three or four slots needed to keep the cable networks happy. In the age of social, credentials are less important than fitting easily into the ping pong nature of point counterpoint orchestrated by weekend anchors barely out of the Weather Channel. It’s the Battle of the Colonels, with retired military commentators second guessing the Joint Chiefs of Staff as Qaddafi jousts with kings and presidents. We keep switching back and forth between the networks as they recycle the lack of news across a day’s worth of timezones. For all the hype about realtime, the newspapers shine through with the context and investment in years of sources and back-room deal-making that ultimately drive the way forward. It’s ironic that the New York Times, so reviled in the techsphere for its paywall, is providing the very value it needs to sell whatever morphing model is in the cards. Mad Men shows us history may repeat itself, but on television it goes into an endless loop, battering our emotions into a dull numbness that calls out for soothing. Here the social services are beginning to surface. Facebook provides day-to-day glue from family and friends, Twitter the drumbeat of alerts, a realtime pointer into the cable streams aggregated by a follower network of cloud reporters. And then there’s FaceTime, which with the iPad 2 is now turning the iPhone 4 and iPod Touches into a deeper more emotional network. As television brings a world of danger and uncertainty, FaceTime brings connection. I’ve spent the weekend battening down the hatches for this new, more turbulent phase. Hours of time on the phone and net comparing prices and contracts, early upgrades or terminations, automatic porting from one carrier to another. My daughter had her iPhone stolen right out of her backpack on a bus field trip, triggering a reassessment in light of the competition opened up by Verizon’s entry into the iPhone/iPad market. It may seem over the top, but maintaining a FaceTime connection with my children seems ever more important. When technology and media intersect with the emotional underpinnings of our lives, the result is the kind of tsunami we’re experiencing with the iPad. It may seem petty to many to cheerlead a company and a technology so geared toward the pursuit of the next shiny object, the next Tweet, or whatever. But learning the language of this next generation of empowerment certainly is on our minds for reasons other than immediate gratification. The messages of social media and mobility are not lost on the people of the world, as they try and forge freedoms they can see beaming around the world over the lingua Franca of WiFi. The tools of this new trade are AirPlay, Personal Hotspot, direct messages, @mentions, automated number porting, GarageBand, iMovie, push notification. These tools give us the context of history, the connection of family, the aspiration of mobility, of seeing the change and fighting for it. It’s not about technology, it’s with it. The revolution is in our understanding that we are the experts and the agents of change we’re looking for. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIjjt7bmZNc&w=560&h=349] |
In The Race For More Spectrum, AT&T Is Acquiring T-Mobile For $39 Billion | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 3 | 20 | As anyone who has read a tech blog in the past few years will know, AT&T has been under attack for not being able to match the network capacity of larger rival Verizon. And when they for the open spectrum in 2008, Verizon also had a clear path to the future. Now AT&T is taking another path: buying T-Mobile. Here’s with the details of the deal. AT&T will pay roughly $39 billion to Deutsche Telekom for T-Mobile USA. Deutsche Telekom will also get a roughly 8 percent ownership stake in AT&T as a result of the deal. And a Deutsche Telekom executive will join AT&T’s Board. With the deal, AT&T will get access to T-Mobile’s roughly 35 million customers. If the two fully merge, this will push AT&T far past Verizon in terms of subscriber numbers. Currently, Verizon has about 100 million subscribers in the U.S., while AT&T has about 95 million. This deal will also leave Sprint as the lone large outsider, with about 50 million subscribers. The agreement has already been approved by both Boards, but obviously will have to pass government scrutiny. Here are AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson’s key quotes from the release: “This transaction represents a major commitment to strengthen and expand critical infrastructure for our nation’s future. It will improve network quality, and it will bring advanced LTE capabilities to more than 294 million people. Mobile broadband networks drive economic opportunity everywhere, and they enable the expanding high-tech ecosystem that includes device makers, cloud and content providers, app developers, customers, and more. During the past few years, America’s high-tech industry has delivered innovation at unprecedented speed, and this combination will accelerate its continued growth.” And: “This transaction delivers significant customer, shareowner and public benefits that are available at this level only from the combination of these two companies with complementary network technologies, spectrum positions and operations. We are confident in our ability to execute a seamless integration, and with additional spectrum and network capabilities, we can better meet our customers’ current demands, build for the future and help achieve the President’s goals for a high-speed, wirelessly connected America.” And here’s Deutsche Telekom CEO René Obermann: “After evaluating strategic options for T-Mobile USA, I am confident that AT&T is the best partner for our customers, shareholders and the mobile broadband ecosystem. Our common network technology makes this a logical combination and provides an efficient path to gaining the spectrum and network assets needed to provide T-Mobile customers with 4G LTE and the best devices. Also, the transaction returns significant value to Deutsche Telekom shareholders and allows us to retain exposure to the U.S. market.” Stephenson’s wording, and other wording in the release referencing President Obama seems to be a clear message that AT&T thinks this deal should get government approval. Here’s the key blurb in that regard: With this transaction, AT&T commits to a significant expansion of robust 4G LTE (Long Term Evolution) deployment to 95 percent of the U.S. population to reach an additional 46.5 million Americans beyond current plans – including rural communities and small towns. This helps achieve the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and President Obama’s goals to connect “every part of America to the digital age.” T-Mobile USA does not have a clear path to delivering LTE. The “rural communities” and “small towns” wording is a big part of both the net neutrality and spectrum debate. AT&T wants to make it clear that they’re doing this for the little guys. It’s a smart play, but whether or not it will work is another matter. Certainly, Verizon will have some things to say about this deal. It also looks like T-Mobile customers may end up getting access to the iPhone after all… is certainly much more interesting now. : [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KmfXupi9cg?rel=0&w=620&h=410] |
In The Race For More Spectrum, AT&T Is Acquiring T-Mobile For $39 Billion | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 3 | 20 | As anyone who has read a tech blog in the past few years will know, AT&T has been under attack for not being able to match the network capacity of larger rival Verizon. And when they for the open spectrum in 2008, Verizon also had a clear path to the future. Now AT&T is taking another path: buying T-Mobile. Here’s with the details of the deal. AT&T will pay roughly $39 billion to Deutsche Telekom for T-Mobile USA. Deutsche Telekom will also get a roughly 8 percent ownership stake in AT&T as a result of the deal. And a Deutsche Telekom executive will join AT&T’s Board. |
Big Data Needs To Think Bigger | Semil Shah | 2,011 | 3 | 20 | Spend enough time in Silicon Valley, and of all the buzz words you’ll hear neatly tucked in with “graph,” “serendipity,” and “personalization” is one often uttered though, on the whole, not yet fully understood: “Big Data.” On the surface, everyone realizes the opportunity. Data is being generated at lightning speed, the cost of storing is tiny, and new technologies are available to help manage, organize, and secure the data. Earlier this month, LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock partner delivered a on this topic at SxSW, and starting next week, GigaOM’s annual big data conference “ ” kicks off in NYC. At the consumer level, while we are wowed by pretty visualizations, the real advancements in big data technologies cover (1) how data is structured and stored, (2) how it is organized and retrieved, and, most interesting to me, (3) how underlying mathematics can be written into algorithms to leverage the data and help discover entirely new things. I’ll paraphrase from one data scientist, LinkedIn’s , who notes on that cheap data storage allows users to leverage asymmetric information, larger data sets increase the likelihood that new insights can be found, and machine learning advancements can be used in entirely new, game-changing ways. This being Silicon Valley, the obvious targets in sight concern the massive bits of data generated online through social networks, e-commerce, mobile location, and advertising technology. There are no surprises here, and some of the best data scientists happen to reside within these social networks, such as from , from (formerly of ) from , and Skomoroch and from . Not only is the amount of data generated within social networks staggering, but the pace at which its generated and its complexity are both accelerating. Beyond the data visualizations captured by social network , the opportunities that lie hidden within those relationships is phenomenal and will feed into social commerce, context-awareness, and location-based ads. These are the current “hot spots” for big data. There are many companies working on some angle within “big data,” and some which have a long history. Earlier this week, was by TeraData, and there are plenty of firms focused on some aspect of data. focuses on “masking” sensitive data that is either regulated by law or corporate policy, protecting information from external and internal breaches. uses algorithms to provide its clients with predictive analytics and learning. develops and distributes Hadoop, which powers data processing for websites. And companies like and provide platforms where anyone can share and manipulate data on any subject. (While there are many companies focused on big data, I’ll highlight a few and ask the crowd to help input more into the system, , and follow up on Quora.) One of the big data companies to break out into the mainstream tech press is located in downtown Palo Alto: . As TechCrunch’s Leena Rao in June 2010, after the company raised Series D funding, big data companies, and especially Palantir, don’t capture much social media attention. They are instead busy selling their flagship products, , to government and financial institutions worldwide. Big data investors know the writing is on the wall: Palantir’s Chairman, Peter Thiel, has been on the record about big data and believes the company will not only cross the billion-dollar threshold, but shoot past it. Will it help securities regulators find the next crisis or Bernie Madoff? Will it help governments monitor potential terrorist activity and provide actionable information before it’s too late? These are big problems that affect our society and for which we don’t have the best solutions. We needed solutions yesterday, and when Palantir and other companies help us identify and head off these threats, they will be rewarded a billion times over. Now, let’s take big data one step further. Whether we’re all data scientists or not, we understand the scale of the opportunity. We know there’s smart money to invest in data storage, masking, security, retrieval, analysis, and visualizations. But, what about leveraging data for true discovery? Can new techniques in mathematics and physics help computer scientists create a new breed of programs to analyze datasets that traditional approaches cannot? How could our world change if we better understood the underlying mathematics behind the data? If finding insights within data is like finding a needle in a haystack, will the right math-based approaches help us build better magnets to draw out those needles? The conventional wisdom to date has been to apply these new techniques to the online world, where data is generated and stored in robust and zero-cost ways, but there is much, much more to explore. While these are certainly big problems to tackle and will generate valuable insights for web properties to exploit, I’m most intrigued by the mathematicians and physicists who are innovating within their disciplines and applying them to tackle big problems around big data, particularly concerning the speed and shape of data. There are two aspects of data that capture my interest as a consumer. First, what are the speed and motion characteristics around the data generated, especially for networks that move in realtime, such as social networks and financial markets? Second, what is the shape of the data, and what can we learn from analyzing new dimensions within the data that perhaps weren’t accessible even just a year ago? It’s within those fast-moving data and subsequent nooks and crannies that our next big discoveries may be hidden, waiting for new equations to unearth them. There are many public datasets (such as ) available to scientists, some of which are listed and . There’s no shortage of opportunities to mine these resources, such as old public health studies, and to find new trends to inform the future. Perhaps just as interesting, if not more, is old data collected by large private companies and/or governments that are either too sensitive or competitive to release into the wild. Today, big pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies are sitting on mountains of internal data related to trials they’ve run, energy firms have data related to mineral and resource deposits, and finance speculators use the most sophisticated programs to run hedge funds and the like, looking for the smallest holes to exploit and extract gains. Let’s assume this data was released, or at least made available to the best mathematicians out there today—could they help us sift through life science data and harvest information that could itself lead to the formation of entirely new products and services? Could they help us find new deposits of minerals, oil, or gas buried deep in the ground or remote parts of the ocean bed? Could the data help us target geoengineering tactics high up in the clouds to combat global warming? Could the data be used in financial markets, not only to notify us of fraudulent behavior, but also to prevent market movers from profiting during bubbles while the masses get doused after the bubbles pop? And, could we analyze seismic activity to predict earthquake likelihoods and tsunami arrival times? The folks and institutions that currently sit on this data have reasonable, short-term incentives to protect it given how competitive their industries are. Yet in the long-term, we’ll need to access these and other data, and hopefully allow entrepreneurs to probe them with all these new tools so, as Hammerbacher , we can “use the past to impact the future.” Yes, there is still much more value to extract from social commerce and interpersonal networks—but while these are worthwhile pursuits, the real game-changing innovation and advancement in big data will only come when we’re able to apply the most cutting-edge mathematics and physical sciences to the biggest problems we collectively face. |
Beetailer Helps Online Retailers Set Up Shop On Facebook | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 3 | 20 | With Facebook’s massive userbase of over 600 million consumers across the globe, retailers are actively flocking to the network. Especially considering the rise of the social e-commerce, the idea of a virtual shopping mall on Facebook makes sense. Today, -backed is launching its software application that allows online retailers to import their web store onto Facebook. Not only does Beetailer import products onto a designated Facebook page, but the startup also allows retailers to promote their store and access detailed analytics about how well the social storefront is performing. Beetailer’s software connects with existing e-commerce platform, such as Magento and Shopify, and will import and sync online catalogs including, prices, images, sizes, colors and even whether products are in stock. The online storefront will populate on the retailer’s Facebook page and will essentially allow Facebook users to browse and add products to a shopping cart within the social network. When a user clicks to checkout and actually purchase the products, Beetailer will lead the user to the e-retailer’s website so the shopper will checkout via the retailer’s preferred payment process. But in addition to accessing the social network’s vast userbase, retailers can also leverage Facebook’s social graph to engage consumers. Beetailer allows retailers to launch time-limited, Facebook-specific promotions, including prizes and discounts for fans who like, comment, and bring other friends to the store. Additionally, Beetailer provides retailers with analytics to measure the results of each
promotion. Beetailer’s data will include traffic, demographic data, most visited products, most visited categories, number of checkout and more. Currently, Beetailer, which was co-founded by Spanish engineers Laura Valverde, Miguel A. Martinez and Juan Gallego, has helped 900 online retailers (here’s an ) set up shop on Facebook for more than 434,000 products. There are a number of other players in the same space, including which also helps retailers set up online storefront on Facebook. But as shopping on the social network there is a need for a variety of offerings to help retailers leverage the power of Facebook. |
null | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 3 | 2 | null |
Is Late Stage the New Early? Behind the Staggering Return of the $1B Venture Fund | Sarah Lacy | 2,011 | 3 | 20 | In Silicon Valley it’s not just who you invest in that matters– it’s also you invest in them The earlier the investment, the riskier the bet. But the more jawdropping the returns if the company hits it big. It’s so lopsided, that typically just 5% of those unsure, early bets create some 95% of the entire venture industry’s returns. Miss one of them, and it haunts you for years. Snag it, and you can brag for even longer. This simple reality is precisely what makes the venture business hard, and the justification for why partners make such huge fees. So what’s up with the surge of the strongest early stage firms jumping so heavily into late stage mega-deal fray? Have the Valley’s superstars lost sight of these rules or are the rules changing? Earlier this year, we wrote a lot about the shift in power at the early stages with the rise of super angels, but you could argue there are far greater ripple effects to this new late stage frenzy. That’s not only true for the Valley, it’s true for Wall Street. And you could argue, those ripple effects are less well-understood. Super angels move small chunks of money, hedged across thousands of startups. Worst case, they all go belly up. More likely, the bulk of them barely return capital and a few do really well. Either way, plenty of angels will make bad bets and stop being angels, but the financial damage is otherwise pretty limited. There are plenty of jobs awaiting even the most outrageously failed entrepreneurs. But the billions of dollars in late stage deals being invested by the top firms in Silicon Valley are another matter. First of all, we’re talking about far bigger chunks of cash, mostly from pension funds and endowments. And these firms are making investments in the handful of sure $1 billion-plus winners that Wall Street and the Valley have spent more than a decade of sub-market returns waiting on to mature. Each deal represents dozens or even hundreds of people cashing out, while others take on a greater risk. And each deal represents another delay in companies like Facebook or Zynga going public. And quietly there’s plenty of grousing going on about the trend. Some of it is pure player-hating, and some of it raises good points. For example, the vast majority of VC firms who can’t raise a $1 billion expansion fund cry that these new mega-funds aren’t real venture capital investing, they are firms acting like hedge funds. Some allege they are even abusing their positions as the current darlings of the venture world to make huge trades in well-baked companies without any board obligations, but still get paid like VCs with huge management fees on these mega funds. Within the elite Sand Hill Road club, VCs snipe about who is still adding value and draw distinctions between a negotiated late-stage deal and a pure secondary stock purchase. And, those who were smart enough to get in early on a giant like Zynga, Twitter or Facebook, chafe when a VC that’s thrown money at a rich secondary valuation now proudly lists those companies as core companies in their portfolios. And then there are early stage companies hoping to disrupt giants like Zynga and Groupon and wonder if they should take money from a firm who is placing a much bigger bet on the well-funded giant. You could argue a firm staying out of the late-stage fray entirely may have a marketing advantage with them. And, as always, in the press there’s the page-view grabbing panic over whether the multi-billion dollar valuations are a sign of another bubble. There’s even plenty of moaning about the deals on the east coast: At the Securities & Exchange Commission alarm bells are going off about whether these massive trades are just clever routes to skirt disclosure of a public stock. New York investment banks are furious that these deals allow anticipated IPOs in companies like Facebook to be put off as long as the company wants– robbing them of those lucrative banking fees. If they want a piece of the pie, they’re relegated to selling limited shares under huge restrictions, ala Goldman Sachs, or cozying up to an industry insider like JP Morgan . It seems the only ones who unabashedly love the trend are the handful of companies who now have free money whenever they want it at seemingly any price, without any of the downsides of going public. Over the next few weeks, we’re going to do a couple articles digging deeper into this trend, the most important players and what it represents for the startup world and the tech markets at large. First, we wanted to pierce the marketing spin and shine a light on who has done what– and when they did it. What’s unique about this trend is how huge the amounts of cash and valuations are, yet how small the number of players are. Only a small portion of firms can raise this kind of money and have the right connections to get into the best deals. Likewise as the Valley has become more polarized between huge winners– who raise hundreds of millions of dollars and employ thousands of people– and the small lean startups– who are built to flip– there are only so many deals that can justify these sums of cash and these valuations. But that doesn’t mean companies that probably shouldn’t get funded at these prices won’t. The several-billion-dollar-question worrying many limited partners is how speculative this trend will get. Below is a graph of arguably the top Valley VCs, which of the big Internet companies they invested in, at what price they invested and whether or not they took a board seat in that round (a sign they’re investing time in the company, not just money). Green boxes denote an investment that’s all but certain to return capital; red boxes show investments that are at or near the last professional negotiated valuations and could still prove too heady. Current company valuations are based on negotiated deals with accredited investors or potential acquisitors, not secondary market speculation. Most of the numbers were from published reports or inside sources. (Click to enlarge.) While most of these deals and prices had been reported before, a few things jumped out at me once I collected the data in one place. It’s clear the quality of deals is slipping. When DST pioneered this category, the firm was adroitly responding to a gaping market need. These companies needed huge amounts of cash to scale to the unprecedented 1 billion person online market potential, but the IPO market was closed. That’s no longer the case. “ some poor banker is no-doubt lamenting, reading this post. Today, the best companies of the last ten years have all raised late stage money, and the prices are no longer a bargain. There’s only so fast that pipeline can fill back up. While I could argue $50 billion is a fair market price for Facebook, I find it hard to argue that Twitter is worthy the same or more than cash-generating Groupon or Zynga, given Twitter has gone through three CEOs in its young life, has no clear product visionary, and still isn’t making much revenue. Far more egregious: The idea that Spotify, which hasn’t been able to launch in the US despite more than a year of trying, is valued at the same price as soon-to-be-public Pandora. We’re seeing a clear move away from no-brainer bets towards more late-stage speculation. History has never shown that strategy to produce venture-style returns, said several top limited partners on the condition of anonymity. But more remarkable is what this chart tells us about the fortunes of Silicon Valley’s top venture firms. For all the headlines that late stage is simply something “everyone is doing,” this chart shows a dramatically different story. Behind these red and green boxes lurks the same kind entrepreneurial drama that usually goes on in the companies VCs back. While dozens of venture firms are quietly going out of business for the first time in more than a decade, this chart represents the haves. And yet, there’s still plenty of drama as they grapple for position in this new venture reality. This chart shows dramatic comebacks. In the wake of the dot com crash, limited partners privately told me that Accel Partners was one of two major firms that would never raise a fund again. When I mentioned this to Jim Breyer in 2006, he didn’t deny it. But he almost single handedly pulled the firm back from the brink. Accel missed Twitter and Zynga and others, but who cares? If you do the math, Accel is all but certain to have the best returns of the lot based on that $100 million bet on Facebook alone that seemed crazy at the time. The price the firm payed for Groupon is the icing on a massive Web 2.0 cake. Similarly, Greylock had virtually no presence on the West Coast and no brand in consumer Internet. An early investment in LinkedIn and comparatively early investment in Facebook catapulted the firm into being . And aside from Groupon, Greylock’s late stage bets haven’t been as valuation-aggressive as those done by other firms. If Pandora’s IPO prices where analysts expect, that $150 million valuation will look like a bargain. On the other side of the chart– literally and figuratively– are Kleiner Perkins and Andreessen Horowitz, the two most aggressive at the late stage game, but utterly different stories are behind the common strategy. Andreessen Horowitz was formed after most of these companies, so getting in early stage rounds was impossible. But that doesn’t mean the firm’s partners were late to the Web 2.0 movement. The graph doesn’t include Marc Andreessen’s personal angel investments in Twitter and LinkedIn, nor does it include his position as one of Facebook’s few board members, because it happened well before he invested. For Andreessen Horowitz, the emphasis on late stage deals doesn’t represent any sort of shift. The firm was founded explicitly to invest in the best companies whenever the partners could get in. This was clearly telegraphed by the firm’s first deal: A beyond-late-stage investment in the already-acquired Skype. Kleiner Perkins has been a different story. This is a firm that largely missed the early days of the Web 2.0 movement and has jumped back into it aggressively in the last year. The centerpiece of the strategy was a relatively early investment in Zynga. To be fair, this chart doesn’t show the early stage bets they’ve also been making in companies like Shopkick, Path and Klout. The success Kleiner has had reclaiming Web relevancy has been a testament to the lasting power of brand in the startup world. Few firms could have pulled it off. But plenty of people have questioned the prices they’ve paid to get back in the game– especially at the later stages. In both the cases of Andreessen Horowitz and Kleiner Perkins there’s plenty of industry eye-rolling when the firms rattle off investments in these very late stage deals as sample portfolio deals. Give them credit for getting shares in these scorchingly hot companies even at these prices, but its important for entrepreneurs and the press to realize they invested. That leads us to Sequoia and Benchmark– the two firms that are the most absent when it comes to these companies. Not reflected in this chart are Benchmark general partner Matt Cohler’s personal stakes as one of the earliest employees of LinkedIn and Facebook. Indeed, while Benchmark has resisted buying Facebook shares, Cohler has funded some of the most exciting companies to spin out of the Facebook mafia including Asana and Quora. The real surprise is Sequoia — a firm that was known in the 1990s for flawlessly picking nearly every consumer Web giant. While this chart doesn’t count the stellar return from YouTube or promising recent investments like Square, LinkedIn is the only sure-winner it has a large stake in. I wanted to keep this graphic focused on the top traditional Valley firms, but there are two obvious omissions. One is DST, which started this trend with its aggressive investments in Facebook that now seem boringly reasonable by comparison to recent deals. We’ll have more on DST’s impact in a future post. In nearly 15 years reporting in Silicon Valley, I can’t think of another outsider who has so dramatically beat the Sand Hill Road establishment at its own game– not to mention redefining that game for them. No easy feat in a Valley awash in too much cash to begin with. The other omission is a Valley outsider too: Union Square Ventures, the earliest investor in Zynga and Twitter. There are no signs of Union Square getting into the $1 billion fund game although it has raised a later stage fund called The Opportunity Fund. But at just $165 million, it’s not nearly as large or aggressive. It’s mandate is selectively investing in companies with a valuation north of $100 million– that’s still pretty early compared to what’s going on in the Valley these days. And Opportunity Fund usually invests in companies already in Union Square’s portfolio, says general partner Fred Wilson. In terms of returns, we hear that Union Square has sold enough of its Zynga and Twitter stakes to repay both funds and still leave it with plenty of upside. In terms of bragging rights, Union Square has bested these Valley insiders at the early stage game with at least two of our billion-dollar winners. |
Use A Body Cap And Some Foil To Make Your DSLR A Pinhole Camera | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 3 | 18 | [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ueyQtu0ouk&w=640&h=390]
Pinhole cameras look like a lot of fun to mess around with, but unless you’re willing to really dedicate some time and materials to them, you’re kind of out of luck. And film is expensive! So this little project is a fun way to experiment with the format, even if it’s not the same thing. All you need is take a spare body cap (used to cover up the lens mount when there’s no lens), some aluminum foil, and a pin. Drill (or gouge) a hole in center of the body cap, then tape the foil down and put a tiny pinprick exactly in the center. Put on the body cap, and presto, digital pinhole camera! The pictures shown in the video are pretty blurry (yeah, that’ll happen), but if you mess around with it and try a few different pinholes and exposure settings, I bet you’ll get some interesting shots. Anyway, it’s something to try for the weekend. |
Songkick poaches big hitter CTO out of Google | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 3 | 18 | Live bands site has achieved something fairly rare for a European startup. Rare enough to be worth a mention, at least. In common with what appears to be a trend of Google people escaping to new startups in the Valley, it’s hired a big gun out of Google’s London office. , a former Tech Lead/Manager at Google for search and mobile, has an impressive CV. He’s a PhD in Machine Learning, worked at Apple and is a former a co-founder of three start-ups in the Valley including the wildly successful . He then did six years at Google in NYC and London. Crow has worked on Google Mobile Apps, developing Google’s search applications for Android, iOS, Blackberry and Windows Phone 7, as well as Google Ads Professionals and Rich Media Dynamic Ads. In New York he founded and launched the project He’s also been lead engineer on three other startups: Guru, Verb and Unicru. Dan tells me: “I moved back to London a couple of years ago and was excited to see that the tech scene here has totally changed. There are a surprising number of very exciting startups in London. They are driven by people who understand the value of technology and, most importantly, the value of building great products that users love.” He says he spoke to several companies when considering leaving Google and “Songkick immediately stood out”. He gives the usual reasons I guess: passionate people, great engineers. More interestingly he says the company is at point where it is getting a lot of growth and “I’ve been through this growth phase at other companies and I’ve seen many of the pitfalls and how to avoid them.” Recently it emerged that Songkick was is of raising $2 million, according to an SEC filing. Songkick indexes a host of ticket vendors, venue websites as well as local newspapers to create a database of concerts happening around the world. Songkick was founded in 2007 by three friends – Ian Hogarth, Pete Smith, and Michelle You – and has raised $6.52 million to date. Its investor roster includes Y Combinator, SoftTech VC, The Accelerator Group and Index Ventures. Separately, Songkick has been hard at work pumping out some interesting data lately. It’s worked out of 2010. And it’s announced a new integration with SoundCloud, allowing artists to publish their upcoming gigs on Soundcloud via Songkick. |
Good For Them: Halifax Library Refuses To Carry DRM-Limited HarperCollins E-Books | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 3 | 18 | You might have heard by now of the senseless idea of HarperCollins’s that their e-books should only be able to be lent 26 times by libraries before “expiring.” Not the PR move I’ve seen. But I’d just like to congratulate Halifax’s public library system for for their collection. Many other librarians are leaning this way, too, but few have taken concrete steps. Tell your local library what you think of this nonsense, and hopefully we can nip this idiotic scheme in the bud. [via ] |
Reddit, Social News Frontrunner, Is Down To One Developer | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 3 | 18 | Two out of the three remaining programmers quietly the social news community last week, going to Google and David King going to Hipmunk where he joins Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian. This means that the over one billion page view a month site is currently running with only one developer (Neil Williams, hired in November) and two sysadmins until it can hire new engineering staff. Reddit, which experiences about 75 million monthly visits and is one of the top 100 most visited sites on the Internet, had six hours worth of downtime yesterday which up to an Amazon Web Services failure. This fact that this all rests on poor Neil Williams’ shoulders right now might seem shocking, as Reddit is doing better than ever traffic-wise a month according to Google Analytics. To put this into perspective, competitor Digg (which has 42 employees and has raised over $40M in funding) now has around 9 million unique visitors down from about 16 million in August, according to Quantcast. In a sense Reddit is the unlikely winner of a the voting-on-news race, a competition that has been somewhat forgotten in the wake of Twitter. But the company is absolutely not shutting down, despite it currently operating on a skeleton staff of six people, in addition to a part time designer and a part time customer service person. Sysadmin holds that company is doing extremely well despite recent departures in a : Community manager Erik Martin also tells me that the company plans on hiring four more engineers as fast as it can, but doesn’t know where it is in the hiring process. He wants to get the new staff on board as soon as possible, obviously, And then, “ Btw. Reddit . |
Video Hands-On With The Nintendo 3DS | John Biggs | 2,011 | 3 | 18 | As part of our continuing coverage of the I recorded a quick video overview of the device prior to our full review. Here is our initial . |
G.Skill's Sniper Series RAM Has Sweet Gun-Shaped Heat Spreaders | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 3 | 18 |
I’m looking into putting together a new system right now, and although I don’t really care about how it looks on the inside (though a matte black P67 PCB would be nice), it would make me feel pretty cool to know that . G.Skill, you’re my hero. |
$700,000 Donated To Japan Relief Efforts Via Causes, Salesforce Pledges $25K Matching Grant | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 3 | 18 | As Japan works to recover from the horrendous earthquake and tsunami that struck last week, many companies and citizens are donating what they can to help. One of the easiest ways to help is to send a text message to the Red Cross (text REDCROSS to 90999 to make a $10 donation), but there are plenty of other options, particularly if you’re looking to support a certain charity or organization. Today, founder Joe Green told me that tens of thousands of donors have given some $700,000 to Japan relief efforts thus far via the online platform. As for the photo above — right now Green is appearing on a local Bay Area NBC special, where a phone bank sits ready to receive calls for donations to the Japanese Cultural & Community Center of Northern California. Salesforce has just agreed to match up to $25,000 in donations to the effort — which comes in addition to the $100,000 they already matched for donations to the Red Cross. You can find the JCCCNC’s Cause . Green says that over 20 organizations have been using Causes to help raise funds for Japan (which probably makes it the largest multi-charity donation platform). These charities benefit from relatively easy transaction processing (which is conducted by ), and users who donate will be guided through the viral steps that are Causes’s bread and butter. One small nit, though: the credit card companies have yet to waive their processing fees for Network For Good (which they did following the Haiti earthquake) so Causes is still having to charge a small fee for each donation. Green is hopeful that the credit cards will waive these fees once again. Other notable fundraising efforts include LivingSocial’s pledge to match over $1 million in donations (it’s matching all $5 donations through , which is still live). |
Samsung Dinged For $32 Million In Price-Fixing Case | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 3 | 18 |
This has resulted in nearly a billion dollars in penalties dealt out to Samsung and other LCD component makers over the last few years. We’ve of these cases, and it’s all crazy high-level business stuff, but we thought we should update you with the news that yes, it’s still going on, and yes, some fools are being charged cash money. Samsung SDI was . |
NES Classic River City Ransom Finally Getting A Real Sequel | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 3 | 18 |
While the original and beloved NES version of had a number of spin-offs in Japan, it’s only the first that actually came to the US and charmed a generation. There was a remake in 2004 for the Game Boy Advance, but we haven’t had a real follow-up… until now. Yes, , developed by Miracle Kids and will be designed with online play in mind. It should be released in 2012 in Japan as (Downtown hot-blooded story 2) — and although there are no plans at the moment to release it in the US, I think it’s a no-brainer. Interestingly, it’s coming out for consoles PC. Didn’t see that coming. Man, the original was just great all the way through. If you have a Wii, grab it on the virtual console and give it a playthrough with a friend. Still one of the best beat-em-ups out there. [via ] |
Google Ventures Launches $10,000 Startup Referral Program For Employees | Michael Arrington | 2,011 | 3 | 18 | If you’re a Google employee and you know about a stealth startup that wants funding, you can pocket a cool $10,000. The team announced the new program at Google’s weekly all-hands “TGIF” meeting, earlier this afternoon. It’s pretty straightforward. If a Google employee knows about a startup that Google Ventures might be interested in, they fill out a form on an internal website. They state why they like the startup, and they need to be prepared to give a “warm introduction” to a key employee at the startup. If Google Ventures invests, the employee that referred the startup gets the $10,000 in cash. It’s modeled on Google’s in house employee referral program, Google Ventures partners and tell me, although the payout is much higher for startup referrals. Within a few minutes after the meeting they’d received ten referrals, and most of the company is still unaware of the program. By Monday, all 25,000 Google employees will have the details, and be on the lookout for promising startups. There are more programs coming to help Google Ventures get deal flow, says Maris. In the near future they’ll announce more “unique, haven’t-been-tried-before, outside of the box type ideas that will apply to people who aren’t Google employees, too. In the meantime, if you know of a startup that would be right for Google Ventures, I highly recommend looking up ex-TechCruncher, . I’m sure you can cut some kind of deal with her where she gets the referral money and then splits it with you. Kidding, kidding. Everyone calm down. |
Wow, Google Has Ported My Ten Thousand Button Nightmare To The iPhone! | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 3 | 18 | Back in October of last year, I got my first glance at the Sony Google TV remote. I immediately broke out into a cold sweat and hives. . Our collective living rooms are already a nightmare of boxes and cords — Sony and Google managed to translate that nightmare into remote control form as well. And now that nightmare is going virtual. Earlier today, Google the Google TV Remote app for the iPhone. , it’s great that they’re willing to release this on a rival platform. On the other, ahhhhhhhhh! To me, the big benefit of an app-based, touchscreen remote is that you can do away with the conventions that have constrained remote controls for decades. Google does that somewhat with things like the cool voice search. But they also manage to fill the app with a nightmare jumble of buttons. I mean, you’re going to need a manual to figure out what all of those buttons do. The layout of the buttons when all of them are exposed seems to make very little sense — they clearly have just crammed as many buttons as they can on to a single screen. In the screenshot on the right, I count 33 buttons. 33! In their post, they tout how you’re can easily see the buttons at night thanks to the backlit screen. And that’s good because you’re going to need to be constantly looking at this thing to make sure you don’t hit the wrong button — or several of them. Compare this app to the that Apple makes for the Apple TV. That app has almost no buttons. Instead, they focus on a large touchscreen area so you can use the remote without looking at it. This has long been the only good thing about button-based remote controls. Google managed to kill the only good thing while porting the bad, Apple did the opposite. To be fair, Google TV is a different beast than Apple TV. With Google TV, you need a remote that can control traditional television channel navigation. But there are different ways you can do this other than virtual “+” and “-” buttons. Swiping, would work, for example. And why are there dedicated play and pause buttons? This is a virtual environment, shouldn’t one just transform into the other when pushed? The also does a nice job with their app controls. Again, it’s not a nightmare of buttons, but a re-thinking of how remotes should work as digital applications. Of course, if you do have a Google TV and an iPhone, this app does beat the hell out of using . |
Every Super Nintendo Game Ever – Yours For $9999! | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 3 | 18 |
Have you ever wanted to own every SNES game ever (or at least the NTSC ones)? Well you’re in luck, if you’re also rich. is on the block at eBay, a refreshing change from the many NES lots of the same type. It’s the ten thousand dollar price tag that gives me pause. That’s an average of $14 a game. Now I know $14 is a huge bargain for Final Fantasy III or Super Mario RPG, but remember there are probably 600 games there you don’t remember and love. Remember and ? Neither do I. But for the completist, which really, these collections are aimed at, this could be a big break. I don’t see these SNES lots nearly as much as I’d like. Probably because the owners are busy playing through for like the tenth time. |
CrunchBoard Jobs: We're Hiring | Elin Blesener | 2,011 | 3 | 18 | TechCrunch is hiring. Come work with us! The positions we have available right now are:
– San Francisco, CA
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– San Francisco, CA You can also use to search for other companies that may be hiring. Some other positions open right now include:
– just.me inc. – Palo Alto, CA
– Tixdaq – London, UK
– Amazon – Seattle, WA Click the job titles to apply. |
For Your Friday: Skiing With A Jetpack On | John Biggs | 2,011 | 3 | 18 | [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7H5oYHs7EJw&rel=0&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&version=3] has bit of whimsy for your Friday afternoon: a man using a massive jetpack to shoot himself through space on skis.
The skier, Troy Hartman, initially wanted to drop out of an airplane and fly around with the jetpack on but instead of doing he strapped it to his back and took a few moguls, burning his jacket in the process. Just goes to show that maybe we’re all sitting around in our offices too much. |
With Third-Party Access Axed, Sirius XM Points People Toward Official Web Player & Mobile Apps | Nicholas Deleon | 2,011 | 3 | 18 | There’s a fair bit of controversy surrounding today. The company has recently made some changes to its online feed, changes that, for the moment, have locked out third-party application access. That means users can’t listen to the service with applications like for Mac OS X. The company (you’ll have to scroll down to find it) a few hours ago. I’ll past it here to save you the trouble of opening up a new browser tab:
@All- thanks for your feedback. Radium and other 3rd party apps were never really supported by Sirius XM. We have recently made some technology changes with our player that made it incompatible with these 3rd party apps. These changes will allow us to add more enhancements and features in the future to our player and enhance your listening experience. We offer a solution that works on both Mac and PC. Radium was valuable for Mac when our web player didn’t work on Macs, but this has been resolved. Hope this helps. I am passing along your valuable feedback regarding our new player to our product and engineering team so they can continually improve the quality of the player. Thanks!
This is all well and good, and Sirius XM is well within its rights to decide whether or not to allow third-parties to tap into its online stream, but the problem right now is that its new Web player isn’t particularly good. I know the player is new and you’d probably expect at least a few glitches in the early going, but today was particularly egregious. The Web stream was all but unlistenable, cutting in and out quite frequently. If you’re going to limit access to the stream to official Sirius XM applications, that’s fine, but make sure they work as well as the applications they’re replacing. Another strange one: still has that pesky inactivity timeout that stops playback every 90 minutes. I can see that being beneficial if you’re connected to the stream via 3G, particularly as wireless providers are phasing out unlimited data plans, but surely if you’re connected via Wi-Fi then data consumption really shouldn’t be a concern. (The app also seems to be far less battery efficient.) I can only speak to what I’ve experienced, but I never had a problem accessing the Sirius XM online stream prior to the switch-over using Radium. Launch the app, listen to my shows, close the app when finished. (Pad data even popped up if you had installed). Done and done. Users have flooded the company’s Facebook page with complaints about the poor Web player performance, the iOS app’s irregularities, and the fact that, at least for the time being, applications like Radium can’t be used to listen. I also genuinely don’t see what’s to by locking out guys like Radium, but here we are. |
An App By Any Other Name … | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 3 | 27 | — Apple exec Jean Louis Gassée on the — Bill Nguyen, Color founder Reading Semil Shah’s post on this morning, I was struck by the sheer numbers and diversity of the startup names scattered throughout: Yobongo, Disco, SocialCam, SoundCloud, Beluga, GroupMe, Fast Society, Rabbly, Whatsapp, Kik, textPlus, Convore, SMSGupShup, MessageParty, TextSlide, Bump Technologies, Color Labs and so on, all contenders in the saturated mobile social space. Some like MessageParty or textPlus had names that were actually related to their product, but many like Yobongo, Beluga and Disco had only a tenuous connection. It’s now pretty clear the app ecosystem has gone mainstream: People talk about apps the way they used to talk about music or drugs ( ). And naming your startup has become like naming your band — An intricate dance between a multitude of contributing metaphoric and literal factors. So which approach, picking something random or actually related to what you do, makes more sense? https://twitter.com/#!/chrysb/status/52163873314324480 Two notable app launches this week highlighted how exactly an app’s name plays into public perception. The most visible instance of this was the launch of , an ubiquitous noun/verb name picked by Bill Nguyen and Peter Pham for their photosharing app with a hefty $41 million in funding. While initial complaints held that the app was unsearchable in both the Android and iPhone App Store and on Google because of its common name, that problem now seems to have been solved on Google. Perhaps all the inbound links from news and other sites are responsible for the fact that the service is now the eighth result for the word “color”? Color also somehow went from being invisible to being the first app to appear in the Apple App Store under the “color” search term (I’m hearing Android is still having ). Color’s name, while initially striking some people as if only for all its other connotations, is valid in that it accurately describes a core function of the Color Labs product, namely the fact that people are sharing images (a collection of colored pixels) through the app. The Color guys tell me (and Quora above) that they first came up with the name Color in a tribute to Apple’s original reverse-color logo and then bought the domain name for . In order to appeal to English speakers in other regions, they also bought the domain name Colour.com and redirected it to Color.com. And yes, this did not stave off complaints. https://twitter.com/#!/alisontan/statuses/52148473738436608 Contrast Color’s name with that of the other hot five-letter app of the moment, . Currently it’s unclear whether Google made the purchase of the domain Disco.com for a Slide-related purpose, or just to have on hand (Google has not given me a straight answer in any of my emails). If the latter is the case then it wouldn’t be the first time Google stockpiled domains ( anyone?) for future use. Whether purposefully acquired or not, the name Disco seems to have a less of a direct relation to its core product than Color. While a disco (nightclub) does bring people together in a sense, the noun has absolutely nothing to do with group messaging, and I think users have already picked up on this distinction. All in all the choice to use Disco as a name for a group messaging app is incongruous, especially when you consider that Google Hello.com. tweeted Berrehili Réda. http://twitter.com/#!/mm/status/52215987562479616 While it’s possible that the name Disco was already on the drawing board at Slide pre-Google acquisition, if Disco’s makers first chose a vague name and then built out a product for release, then they wouldn’t be alone. Private photo-sharing service Path (at Path.io) back when it was a list-making tool. Guess they thought the Path designation still held after they made the decision to focus on photo-sharing. In a seminal on the subject, VC Rich Barton holds in that making up a new word (like Kleenex or Yobongo) is much more powerful than trying to appropriate a already existing literal word like Color or Disco. But if you’d have to go with an existing word, I’d go with the one that has a strong tie-in to the actual product. Then again there’s always exceptions. No matter which apocryphal you believe, the word Apple has nothing to do with computers. said VC Dani Nofal. Yes, and if someone had told me in 1990 that someone would name their company Color in homage to that top computer company Apple, I too would have chuckled. Color probably hopes it’ll be laughing all the way to an extended featured position in the App Store. https://twitter.com/#!/alexia/status/52185316798382080 [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKg50oEdiOk&w=630] |
OMG/JK: The Color Of Controversy | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 3 | 27 | We’re back with a new episode of OMG/JK, and it’s a good one. This last week has been full of controversy — from the launch of Color, the photo-swapping app that raised $41 million pre-launch, to reports that Google is not planning to open-source the tablet version of Android any time soon. And, as you’d expect, MG and I have some differing opinions about what that means for Android’s status as “Open”. This week also brings the launch Amazon’s Appstore, which will face off with Google’s official Android Market. Here are some posts relevant to this episode’s discussion:
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Glam Media Furthers International Presence With South Korean Vertical | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 3 | 27 | , one of the largest publishing and advertising networks on the Web, is continuing to expand its international presence with the launch of The women-focused vertical will represent the sixth international country subsidiary for Glam, adding to platforms in Canada, Germany, Japan, France and the UK. Similar to Glam’s womens entertainment, style and fashion channel Glam.com, Glam.kr will feature original stories, photos and videos, as well as curated content across a range of lifestyle categories including beauty, entertainment, fashion, health and wellness, and more. Ellie Park, formerly the editor-in-chief of Elle Magazine’s online site in South Korea, will serve as editor in chief of Glam.kr. Glam Media South Korea is launching with 15 leading content providers such as Marie Claire, Luxury, WomanSense, iBestBaby, and more. Heesun Chin will serve as country manager for South Korea, and will lead advertising and sales operations for the platform. Glam is also incorporating its brand-targeted ad serving platform, in South Korea. Glam’s CEO Samir Arora tells us that the combination of the high number of internet users in South Korea as well as the opportunity for women’s focused content was the deciding factor in opeining up a designated South Korea site. According to comScore, South Koreans ranked number one for most page views per person and number four for number of hours spent online per person. As we’ve heard, Glam is in the next year. Successful properties outside the U.S. should help solidify Glam’s presence as a global content provider. The company just bought Canadian advertising media firm this past week and will launch a Canadian site. Arora says that Glam is seriously considering China, Russia, India, Brazil, Italy and Spain as the next possible points of entries outside of the U.S. Currently, Glam’s networks currently have a total reach of 90 million people a month in the U.S and just under 200 million monthly visitors globally. And further expansion should help the media company increase this traffic significantly. |
Strangers in Paradise | Steve Gillmor | 2,011 | 3 | 27 | My weekends are getting stranger. Part of it has to do with postponing stuff throughout the work week, a concept that is under serious pressure these days. The iPad has obliterated the boundaries between work and otherwise with its constant siren call. Its co-conspirator the iPhone appears to be a separate platform, but for many (me) it’s just a way of being more polite in my disinterest about the “reality” around me. The new reality is the small stream of bits pushed through the push notification gateway, @mentions, direct messages, and clues to the time it takes to absorb attendant text, video, and live streaming services. As Robert Scoble understood, you can publish your phone number in the clear if you’re willing to project a certain transparency which encourages a broad audience to function more like friends than consumers. That is, project a persona that establishes an emotional connection based on rules of respect. In Robert’s case, he is deluged by marketers in this app-streamed crazy universe we’re tethered to. It would seem counter-intuitive to be so wide open, and in fact I’ve been surprised how few times I can’t get through in the course of an average week. I’ve been switching phones around recently and sometimes call with a different number, but Robert still answers more often than not. Something else must be going on here. That something is actually more about me, or us, than it is about @scobleizer. We forget sometimes that how we initiate the connection is derived from a complex and extremely social way we move through our day. For me, push notification creates a dynamic context, a social map, of clues to what and where things are forming, ebbing, and flowing. So, with Robert, where and what is going on with him is in an easily accessible stream emitting from Twitter mostly, decorated by Foursquare and whatever app du jour that feeds back into Twitter. This uber stream trains me to intuit what are the good times to connect, where are the higher value opportunities to learn something in sync with my own travels and time constraints, and so on. It’s the map of our joint interests, of a special cloud of interactive influence we all garden in. Our phones manage this garden, vibrating and notifying as we go, breaking down only when the drumbeat of meetings chirps proves too irritating to others in the room. Then we turn off the noise more globally, creating pockets of silence that register as fingerprints, a form of social DNA that over time registers as part of our intuitive profile. Oh, it’s going to voicemail on 2 rings. Intuitive message: he’s pushing the call to voicemail after 2 rings because he hasn’t yet turned the sound off (but will now.) Now the shoe is on the caller’s foot: do I call again and annoy him, or wait an appropriate interval. What is that interval? I’ll look at his Twitter stream and see what’s going on, or remember that I saw a Foursquare checkin a few hours ago, or …. We’re carrying around a sense of how our friends, partners, collaborators, competitors, etc. are doing, how they and we navigate. We’re already doing what Colors is going to do with its 41 million, collating, comparing, and matching our intersecting clouds based on social signals in realtime. The best information we have is the stuff we’ve accumulated without having to download it, bring it up, overtly view it. It’s the intuitions, the oh yeah she’s got something at 4 she mentioned, the GTalk icon going green as someone signs on to the net once the plane reaches 10 thousand feet, the lack of signal which suggests either AT&T trouble or running silent off the grid. Here Scoble provides yet another service, as an abstraction of how far we can take this public persona before it breaks down. The surprising answer is that it really doesn’t break down because the responsibility for maintaining a respectful relationship becomes shared across the networks we live in. You could violate the premise a few times, but eventually not only will you become persona non grata with the target, but you’ll damage your relationships with others who notice the bad example as it’s broadcast more visibly with celebrity-ish nodes. It’s schoolyard politics, and nothing is more Darwinian. The phone number is certainly a prime node, tethered via a service contract to your identity in a way that prevents most spoofing. FaceTIme, with its carrier-spanning WiFi identity space, is more Wild West in appearance, yet much more closely tied to push notifications, the @mention cloud, and the stream map. FaceTime on the iPad 2 may seem like a small tweak alongside thinner and faster, but the resultant connection is so high value that it is establishing a level of investment in software and hardware that will change business as we know it. Much has been made of the iPad’s role as a laptop replacement, but for me that war is over. The phone is increasingly a remote controller for the larger screen — I use its Personal Hotspot tethering to broker FaceTime calls on the move, and push notification as pointers into Twitter and the Web document store. Chatter provides a corporate firewalled collaboration space, and I spend the rest of my time discovering workarounds for current limitations that require my Mac Book Pro. They are as vanishingly few as times I can’t get through to Scoble or weekends where I can get my column in on time. I’m writing this on said Mac, mostly just to send a signal to my family that I’m “working.” They’re too busy themselves fleshing out the social cloud with metadata, letting their world know when the most opportune time is to connect. It takes some getting used to, but as long as Robert keeps answering his phone, we’ll know the circuit will be unbroken. |
Crysis 2: The Crisis Is Where Do We Go From Here | Nicholas Deleon | 2,011 | 3 | 27 | After playing , one of my concerns was how I would view subsequent Total War games. As far as I’m concerned, The Creative Assembly has now perfected the Total War formula, so to play another might result in feelings of, “Oh, this again. Hm.” The same fear now applies to the first-person shooter genre post- , but not because the game is perfect (although it’s pretty decent). It’s just that we’re done here*. Someone needs to stand up and say, “Folks! We get it: you know how to create point-and-click shooty games with big explosions. Can we please move on?” Crysis 2 has a proud lineage. , released for the PC in 2007, still stands as one of the best-looking games ever created. (For better or worse, the first thing anyone is going to discuss when it comes to a Crytek game is how it looks.) The engine powering the game has since been made to do some pretty incredible things, from from the movie Blade Runner to making look better than the real thing. The gameplay itself was solid but not spectacular: the first, say, two-thirds was engrossing—the jungle was a perfect setting, and the KPA was a perfect enemy—, but it fell off a cliff once appeared. Its predecessor, 2004’s , generated similar interest, maybe even more so since at the time even came close to matching its visuals. That’s one of the problems with Crysis 2, that you can’t say it blows away everything else that’s available. You don’t have to look hard to find people who are convinced that looks better the sequel. (There’s a 3D mode, and while I played it at an EA event several weeks ago and thought it looked quite spiffy indeed, I don’t have a 3D monitor as part of my regular gaming setup so I can’t really address it here. But if you can, you really ought to trying playing in 3D. Not that it’s the only 3D shooter available—I can think of Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and Metro 2033 off the top of my head—but you get the idea that Crytek is particularly proud of its work here.) This time around you’re a man in a suit, sorta like last time around. Who you actually in that suit is largely irrelevant since it’s the suit that does the talking, literally: tap the E key and you’ll hear it shout “stealth engaged” as you momentarily become invisible. Tap the Q key and your already sturdy armor becomes (“maximum armor”). The game consists of you shooting your way up and down the island of Manhattan (anyone familiar with New York City will certainly appreciate running about Battery Park, Grand Central, and Times Square) fighting a mixture of human and alien baddies (which look a lot like from Killer Instinct). I don’t want to spoil the specifics of the story, but let’s just say it’s standard-to-good sci-fi fare. I don’t remember if the first Crysis even a story, so the fact that I can say that Crysis 2 does, in fact, have a reasonably OK (if typical—one part in particular had me going, “Really? Didn’t I see this same gimmick in Fallout: New Vegas a few months ago?”) sci-fi arc represents a tremendous improvement over the first game. Pretty decent soundtrack, too. I never found myself having to play my own music in the background just to have something to listen to. It’s a solid shooter, but that’s part of the problem: the graphics don’t blow you away like Crysis or FarCry did (at least on the PC they don’t), so all you’re left with is the 900th shooter you’ve played in the past few years. It’s not too long, but it’s not . It took me a little more than to finish, just shy of what I’d consider the perfect length for a shooter. (I’d say around 10 hours is the sweet spot.) Any longer and you’re like, “Alright already.” Our man in Europe, Ivan, played the Xbox 360 version, so here’s a quick word about that:
The console version of Crysis 2 brings satisfying visuals. If you think of the hardware found in today’s consoles it’s a miracle this game even has a console version. There are drawbacks though: occasional hiccups occur when the environment is loaded with high-res textures. And then there is the weird sensation when a complete block jumps into existence in front of your eyes. Some textures get blurred pretty soon if you move away from them. Of course these things will not compromise gameplay. Crysis 2 is not a great game because how nice it looks but because of the refined mechanics of a semi-tactical FPS. You will not spend hours figuring out tactics for sure. But without thinking you will perish quickly both online and offline. Crysis 2 is a pleasant surprise in not being a dumb engine demo. It’s easy to recommend the console version.
I’ll also commend Crytek for giving you a number of different ways to play. You can play like you’d play any Call of Duty, shooting everything that moves until the credits roll. I, however, decided to stealth my way through much of the game. Outside of a few forced events, you can get reasonably close to beating the game without firing a single bullet. There are parts where firing and shooting about may be more , but I liked the inherent tension of managing my energy meter, trying to find cover so I can re-charge my suit so I can then sneak past the bad guys without firing a shot in anger. More than a few things annoyed me—shock. As I mentioned the other day, textures are an uneven hodgepodge of perfectly acceptable to head-scratchingly bad. Some of the vending machines look like they’re straight out of 2001. The floating head companion convention is straight out of BioShock (and even that wasn’t the first to do it), and the lip syncing is fairly poor at points, like you’re watching an anime cheaply dubbed into English. Subtitles often don’t match spoken dialogue. People say the word “man” (as in, “Watch out, man!”) every five seconds. Why is there no car damage after you super-kick it? The PC version launched with a number of glitches, too, including one that made it all but impossible to play with a dual-GPU setup unless the main .exe file was renamed. Then there’s the tactical options. Parts of the game let you know—more like bang it over your head—that there’s more than one way to get around a particular obstacle, with numbered icons representing actions you might take: grab a ledge up and over, shoot your way through with that turret over there, etc. But wouldn’t you rather discover these things on your own rather than have the game tell you “You can win by going that way!”? It’s particularly egregious in the beginning sections of the game when it refuses to return control to you unless you use your binoculars to inspect the numbered icons. Hand-holding gone too far. All in all, Crysis 2 is a fine game, but if you’re not a fan of the genre you there’s nothing here you haven’t seen before. I genuinely don’t know if I’ll have the patience or interest to play another for quite a while (unless I have to!), but that’s partially because Crysis 2 does enough things right to make me feel like the entire genre is approaching a wall. Die-hard PC gamers may feel let down by some of Crytek’s decision (Why can’t you change the graphical settings without using ? Why is there no Direct X 11 support ( )? Why is the default FOV clearly a leftover from the console version and patently unsuitable sitting-close-to-a-monitor consumption, and why can’t you change it in-game? Why is the multi-player mode so small? Why can’t I quick-save? And on & on…), but it’s pretty clear we’re a dying breed and our opinions increasingly mean absolutely nothing. You know things have gotten bad when I go out of my way to thank Crytek for not the .ini files~! *Until Half-Life 2: Episode 3 comes out, of course. |
A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Points: Topguest Hooks Up With Instagram | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 3 | 27 | Everyone loves loyalty points. But it’s often a pain to get them because different companies all have their own programs that require you to remember numbers. goal is to unify that experience by letting you earn points simply on social networks like Foursquare and Facebook. And now they’re adding a new layer to the mix: photos. Yes, beginning today when the integration goes fully live, you’ll be able to earn reward points at venues around the world simply by taking a picture and sharing it on Instagram. This may mean hotel points, air miles, or other benefits at the over 10,000 places Topguest currently works with. All you have to do is link up Topguest to your Instagram account (via ) and make sure your picture is geotagged at the venue. To celebrate the launch, Virgin America is launching a special competition. The most-liked Instagram photos taken at various Virgin America-related venues (like airport terminals) will win 1,000 bonus Elevate points (their frequent flyer program). They’ll be giving this reward away on a weekly basis. For context, regular Instagrams at Virgin America spots will earn 25 points. From Topguest’s perspective, the Instagram partnership is an expansion of a good idea and interesting model. “ ,” co-founder says. For Instagram, this is an interesting step for the photo service. They’ve often said that they aim to connect users to the real world through their pictures, and this is certainly a unique way to do that. Some may worry that this will lead to pictures that get taken simply to earn points, but the fact of the matter is that people are taking pictures at these venues anyway. What’s the last thing I do before I’m about to take off on a flight? Send an Instagram out. Now I’ll just earn points for it. |
(Founder Stories) Lauren Leto: Texts From Last Night Was A Million Dollar Idea, Bnter Is Next | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 3 | 27 | As a law student, and her friends started , a site where they could anonymously posts real text messages about their exploits going out at night. It turns out a lot of people could relate, and when they opened up the site to anyone to contribute, it became a Web sensation. Today, the site attracts 4 million people a month, 5,000 to 15,000 submissions a day, and the 99-cent iPhone app has been downloaded a million times. It also spurred a book deal for Leto. Not bad for a bootstrapped startup site that only took $20,000 in capital to get off the ground. In the video above, Leto tells host how Texts From Last Night got started and how she quit law school to move to New York City from Detroit. She ended up in Brooklyn at the , a co-working space with other startups, which she talks about as well. In the second video below, Leto gets into her latest startup, , which is a way to capture text messages and publish them publicly. In that sense, it is the opposite of Texts From Last Night. Or, as Leto puts it, Bnter is “Texts From Last Night pulled inside out. Texts From Last Night by its very nature needs to be anonymous, otherwise it will ruin your career.” Bnter, which has its own and which from Dixon’s Founder Collective among others (disclosure: he is an investor), is more about capturing interesting moments. Leto compares it to a social photo app, except its textual. It will also work with Twitter conversations. “Anywhere you are having a conversation we want to capture it,” she says. |
Goodnight, Swoopo: The Pay-Per-Bid Auction Site Is Dead | John Biggs | 2,011 | 3 | 27 | When I first wrote about back in 2008 I found it abhorrent. It was, in short, a form of gambling masquerading as an auction site. You paid for bids – the more bids you bought the better the chance that you’d be able to pay a reduced price for a certain item. The real money came from the suckers who ran up the price. All those previous bids, at $1, were junked in the process. They called it entertainment shopping. Now, however, I call it dead. The company filed for bankruptcy in Germany on the 23rd and although the site appears to be down due to “technical difficulties,” I think the difficulties are more financial. has found that the company is finding a liquidator to divest its assets and all bidders with current balances with the company are SOLwoopo. Some of Swoopo’s competitors are still around (I feel I must refrain from linking to them except in excoriation and so I’ll avoid that here) but hopefully they will suffer the same fate. Fools and their money, as they say, are soon parted. It becomes immoral when the ones doing the parting have stacked the deck in their absolute favor. |
Mobile Messaging March Madness | Semil Shah | 2,011 | 3 | 27 | On Thursday, I used all day, which helped me find a new lunch spot, run into an old friend, and meet a Yobongo co-founder. That afternoon, I thought it would be a good time to write about the new group and mobile messaging wars for TechCrunch. A few hours later, launched, to put it mildly. And, as I was editing this post on Friday night, the new group messaging client from Google. Along with SxSW and the NCAA basketball tournament, this is surely March Madness. What does this explosion in mobile social apps mean. We’re witnessing an entirely new class of companies that are being built primarily for the mobile phone and tablet experience, not PCs or laptops. These companies are using basic social activities and leveraging smartphone capabilities to provide consumers with cooler features in exchange for the chance to construct more intimate networks. Just within the last year, larger forces like Facebook and Foursquare have released new mobile features to allow users to combine check-ins with location-based picture-sharing. Perhaps messaging, broadly defined, is converging toward more context-specific communications that leverage and combine bits of information our mobile devices already are aware of. Only within the last year have things started to really gather steam. The first wave of these apps leveraged the mobile device’s , which produced apps like Instagram, PicPlz, and Path, services that combined the basic social activity of snapping and sharing pictures to build a different kind of pyramid and, perhaps, a different kind of network. Location services have done the same with GPS sensors. Videosharing has proved tougher, though companies like and show promise. enables users to capture and share sounds from their daily lives, and recognizes audio waves from television shows and movies (and maybe commercials?), like Shazam, to connect users around favorites shows. The accelerometer has been leveraged by ’ sharing service, and Apple, which has already entered living rooms with Apple TV and designs for convergence, may turn the phone into a . Simultaneously, others began building mobile messaging applications, some with social ambitions in mind. These new tools enable more intimate communication platforms, as users continue to fight for Inbox Zero and doggy-paddle within the huge Facebook ocean. As Dave McClure , Facebook doesn’t “get intimacy.” Today’s dominant social networks are established enough to provide authentication, but are too big to offer granularity. In the mobile messaging world, these are the short text messages we send to our companions, buddies, classmates, kids, and our parents that never reach the level of a status update or tweet. No company better captured the mood around this intimacy tension than , whose users were anthropomorphically transformed into “pods” of whales, dancing across oceans in search of new waters. Of course, Beluga was then by Facebook. It’s early days for this new class of mobile messaging upstarts. Currently, the space is organized around four types of activity: group chat, SMS replacements, randomized/localized discovery, and relays. In the “group chat” category, there’s (SMS group messaging with push), (geared to young, ephemeral groups), (anchored through Facebook connect), (free SMS with multimedia), among others. Those designed to supplant SMS with group functionality are , , and the aforementioned Beluga. A new company recently launched a new take on real-time Internet relay chatting around interests. There are also international successes, most notably from India. These companies acquire network effects through people that users already know. On the other side, there are services built around the notion of acquiring new networks through more random connections. Perhaps the most controversial applications are those that enable discovery and chat with new people, or strangers (the “Chatroullete Derivatives”) such as (YC alum), company (featured in the ), Yobongo, and of course, Color Labs. Most of us have already either connected or reconnected with all the folks we know online, and the next evolution is for services to help us discover new connections. This element of discovery drives these services to help us build smaller networks around our core groups of friends and family, or to build newer networks with folks we don’t know yet but who have similar interests or location patterns. While using Yobongo for an entire day during slack time between meetings, there was something primal and immediate about the experience, filling the niche for hyper-local communication that Twitter is too big to cater to. This isn’t to say Yobongo or others will succeed, but they are pushing the boundaries in this arena, and I suspect we’ll see more incarnations of this concept for some time to come. Mobile and group messaging is attractive to investors, entrepreneurs, and users alike. If designed well, they could leverage network effects to amplify participation and enable the application of proven revenue models. This is a new class of social company, built entirely with mobility in mind from Day One. They are designed within a post-PC/laptop mindset. These companies will begin by drafting behind the lead cars in the social networking race. The most recent entrant into this red ocean — Color Labs — may have just made the waters a bit . We oftentimes take for granted that all of the established social networks will persist over time and satisfy most of our needs. Some realize building seamless, easy-to-use systems will create significant value for larger players because they weren’t originally built with mobility in mind. And some will perhaps break through and create their own lasting social experience. |
Why Startups Need to Blog (and what to talk about …) | Mark Suster | 2,011 | 3 | 27 | Blogs. We all read them to get a sense of what is going on in the world, peeling back layers of the old world in which media was too scripted. By definition, if you are reading this you read blogs. But should you actually one if you’re a startup, an industry figure (lawyer, banker) or VC? Absolutely. This is a post to help you figure out why you should write and what you should talk about.
If you care about accessing customers, reaching an audience, communicating your vision, influencing people in your industry, marketing your services or just plain engaging in a dialog with others in your industry a blog is a great way to achieve this. People often ask me why I started blogging. It really started simply enough. I was meeting regularly with entrepreneurs and offering (for better or for worse) advice on how to run a startup and how to raise venture capital from my experience in doing so at two companies. I was having the same conversations over-and-over again ( , etc) and I figured I might as well just write them up and make them available for future people who might be interested. I never really expected a big audience or ever thought about it. I had been reading & for a couple of years and found them very helpful to my thinking so I honestly just thought I was giving back to the community. The results have been both unexpected and astounding. Within 2 years I was getting 400,000 views / month and . I know that I have not yet earned these kudos based on investment returns (although my partners have. GRP Partners last fund is the single best performing VC fund in the US (prequin data) for its vintage year). But it speaks volumes to what people want from our industry: Not only would it be less authentic but if you’re a startup it’s not immediately clear that other startup CEOs are your target market. They’re mine because I’m a VC. I care about having a steady stream of talented startup people who want to raise money thinking that they should talk to me in addition to the top others whom they’re targeting. You need a blog. Duh. If you’re a company and if hanging it off of your company website makes sense for the link traffic – go for it. If you’re head of marketing at a company and keeping a more generalized blog (in addition to your company blog) so that you can influence brands & agencies – it can be separate. I chose for my blog to be independent of my firm, GRP Partners. The reason is that I wanted to be free to say what I was thinking independently of my partners. My views don’t always represent theirs and vice-versa even though we’re pretty like-minded (we’ve worked together for 10+ years). I chose a title that represented a brand that I wanted to emphasize – Both Sides of the Table. I chose it because I thought it would represent who I am – mostly an entrepreneur but somebody with investment chops. I wanted to differentiate. So. People keep asking me, “why would you write on TechCrunch?” I guess I would have thought it was obvious. Apparently not. People say, “aren’t you driving traffic away from your own blog?” Facts: So once you have a blog, a voice and a small following – don’t be shy about writing some guest posts for target blogs. Remember – for you that’s likely not TC – it’s the place your community hangs out. Don’t try to sound too smart or too funny. Just be yourself. People will see who you are in your words. If you try to make everything too perfect you’ll never hit publish. If you try to sound too intelligent you’ll likely be boring as shit. Most blogs are. I hate reading blow hards who try to sound like they’re smarter than the rest of us. Be open and transparent. Get inside your reader’s minds. Try to think about what they would want to know from you. In fact, ask them! Don’t be offensive – it’s never worth it to offend great masses of people. But that doesn’t mean sitting on the fence. I have a point of view and I’m sure sometimes it rankles. But I try to be respectful about it. Sitting on the fence on all issues is also pretty boring. And don’t blog drunk. Or at least don’t hit publish ;-) Mostly, have fun. If you can’t do that you won’t last very long. First, you’ll need a platform. I use . Some people swear by . There are the new tools like and . I’ve played with both and they’re pretty cool. They’re more light weight and easier to use. Importantly, they’re more social. It’s much easier to build an audience in social blogging platforms the way you do in Twitter or Facebook. T hen you need to decide whether to use the “hosted” version or the “installed” version. At least that’s true in WordPress. The advantage of the hosted version is that it’s easier to get started. The disadvantage is that you can’t install a lot of additional tools that use Javascript. I started with the hosted version and then migrated to an installed version so I could use Google Analytics and some other products. You then need a URL. It’s true you can be something like msuster.typepad.com but that’s kind of lame so I wouldn’t recommend it. Just get a real URL. I think it’s important to think about what image you want to portray when you pick your URL name. It doesn’t need to be short. You’re not trying to build a consumer website. My website is a pretty long URL but people manage to find it. Much of my traffic is through referring websites and/or social media. Some search. What are YOU trying to convey? What will be your unique positioning? Don’t just write a carbon copy of what somebody else is doing. That’s boring. Don’t blow your load on your first post. Slice it up enough to do many posts. I think most blogs are between 600-1000 words / post. Once you’re written a few posts don’t try to make the flood gates open at once. Slowly build your audience. Make it organic. If you write good content and consistently you’ll build an audience over time. The number one thing that kills 95% of blogs is that they do 5 or 6 posts in rapid succession and then peter out. It’s lame to go to a blog where this happens. And then 8 months later they do the obligatory post saying, “OK, I’m going to be more committed to blogging now!” and then another 4 months go by. If you’re really not going to write that often at least don’t put dates on your posts. But if you write good stuff, but in an effort and keep going – it’s a marathon – you will see results over time. If you build it, will they come? No. A blog post is just like a product. First it needs to be good. And then you need to market it. It doesn’t just happen. You should be subtle about how you market it, but market it nonetheless. If you’re too squeamish to ask for help in promoting it or to do so yourself then you’ll never build an audience (you’ll also likely not make it as an entrepreneur. Sorry. But that’s true.) The obvious starting point is to email a few friends and let them know you have a new blog. Don’t be overbearing – just an email saying, “wanted to let you know about my new blog.” I also recommend you put a link to it under your email signature (in a color other than black). You also should have it be what your Twitter bio links to. Every time I write a post I send it out on Twitter. I try to send out the Twitter link when more people are online. Over time I’ve found out that I get better clicks at 8.30-9.30am Mon-Fri so that’s when I Tweet a lot of my stuff. I’ll frequently send two Tweets – East Coast & West Coast. If you want to know why . Not everybody sees the first one. Social media is ephemeral. Because I’ve built my Twitter following slowly but steadily and authentically over time I get very high click-through rates (and thus a high score – currently 74). I get about 4% CTR (click-through rate) on every Tweet in the AM) and it’s actually higher because if I assume only 33% of my followers on online the CTR is closer to 12%. Interestingly if I had sent one Tweet at 5.30am (to get East Coast time) and another at 8.30am I get 4% CTR both times. So it’s hard to argue you shouldn’t Tweet twice if you have a geographically distributed following. How do I know my stats? I use (disclosure, I’m an investor) which is the best tool I know of for tracking: each individual share behavior (it creates unique URLs for each Tweet) plus it also separates out Tweets from Facebook shares, from “Retweets” that come from somebody clicking on my blog, etc. It also tracks who Tweeted the link so you will know who your most influential social followers are. Make sure your blog has or similar to make it easier for readers to Retweet. Also, make sure to sign up with . That way people who want to get your blog by RSS and/or email can do so. Make sure your blog also has a Follow Me on Twitter button so people who find you can easily follow you. People often ask how I blog so much and don’t think they can do it themselves. If you write about something for which you’re both knowledgeable and passionate I’ll bet you can pump out more than you think. I usually blog at 10pm or on airplane flights. I never blog at work. Like you, I don’t have the time. I have board meetings, company pitches, internal partner meetings, etc. Hell, I often can’t even get to email during the day. So it comes out of TV time, which means I’m not missing anything. Occasionally if I really want to blog and I have a date or too much work I just set my alarm for 5.30am. Yup. It’s not that hard if you make a commitment to it. What would it mean to you and your business if you could: increase your inbound traffic, enhance your company & personal brand, meet new influential people who suddenly know who you are. If you want these things they are available to you for the cost of some time & effort. If you plan out what you want to write about in advance (create topics then to headings to structure your article. You’ll notice on this one I started with mine … Why, What, Where, How and then I later added When & What Next) then it’s really about writing. Structure helps enormously. If you need some help with the read this. I write for about 45 minutes to an hour in the first pass. I usually then re-read, edit, spell check and add links. This usually takes another 20-30 minutes. I then always add an image. I think this is a nice touch. Just staring at text is a bit boring and I find that the image can add humor and/or drive people in. Then there’s comments. You HAVE TO respond to comments. Do yourself a favor and install . It makes a huge difference in driving a comment community. If you want the details on why . First, it’s the most fun part of blogging. It’s addicting like Twitter. It’s where you exchange ideas with other people. It’s where your community gets to know you. It’s where you build loyalty and relationships. I have met many people in person who were first commenters on my blog. I find it frustrating if I leave comments on somebody’s blog and they never respond. If somebody found your blog and took the time to comment then they’re like a customer who should be cherished. Responses to them are like customer retention. It’s also where you’ll learn. People will tell you when you’re full of shit. |
null | Matt Burns | 2,011 | 3 | 18 | null |
Yellow Tinge In iPad 2 Displays: Probably Not A Big Deal | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 3 | 11 |
Some owners are noting in the MacRumors forums that there some units have a in a corner or two. Oh no! Oh wait. Didn’t this happen last year? Yes, when the iPhone 4 came out, the devices were so hot and fresh that the glue holding the screen together had not fully dried ( ). Apple’s pushing out iPad 2s as fast as they can, so it’s no surprise that it should have similar issues. Some users are saying it’s not glue, but as the showed, there is indeed adhesive holding together parts of the display here, though it’s not the same as the iPhone 4’s construction. I suspect the color will go away after a day or two; just use the device normally and if it doesn’t disappear, well, we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. Chances are it’s a temporary issue like the last one. : the image is of a iPhone 4, not an iPad 2. It’s just for illustration. : writes in with a video of the phenomenon, which appears to be different than how I expected it: it’s more of a light-leakage with a yellow color to it. So it’s not the same problem as the iPhone 4, but I get the feeling the yellow is not a coincidence. Perhaps the glue under the bezel has not completely hardened, leaving a gap for light to escape? [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0s0mTGY9c8&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&version=3] |
Off-Topic: Egyptian Photographer's Photos Censored On Flickr | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 3 | 11 |
Hossam el-Hamalawy, otherwise known as 3arabawy on Flickr, was the source for the image in . His Flickr stream is full of great photos from the streets, but just recently, after posting some pictures of Egyptian secret police accused of brutality, he’s been . Out of gratitude for his excellent coverage of the revolution and allowing me to use his photo for my post, I wanted to give a little attention to this nonsense. There isn’t much we can do, but you can share your disappointment with Yahoo’s copyright division by , or tweet telling them to get with the program. |
DIY Music Management Platform Nimbit Raises $1.25 million | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 3 | 11 | , a direct-to-fan marketing, sales and distribution platform for musicians, announced today that it has closed a $1.25 million series A investment round. The round was led by and and, according to VP of Marketing Carl Jacobson, will be used to ramp up the company’s hiring efforts. Nimbit adds to the cumulative $3.5 million of seed funding it raised during three prior seed rounds beginning in May of 2006. The seed rounds were also led by Common Angels and Hub Angels, with LaunchCapital and Rose Tech Ventures contributing. Founded in 2002, the Massachusetts-based Nimbit is a one-stop shop for musicians looking to manage their own direct-to-fan marketing and commercial music efforts. And though Jacobson said that Nimbit may have been “a little early to the party”, there has been quite a bit of buzz in the last few years concerning shifts in music marketing and distribution — like of Radiohead’s releasing “In Rainbows” direct to fans via their website, for example — and it now seems that to adopt the direct-to-fan model. Certainly, the Web has changed the complexion of the music industry, having made it easier for bands and musicians to distribute their music and gain an audience. Yet, while YouTube and MySpace provide channels for free digital music distribution, and Facebook fan pages and Twitter accounts offer platforms for marketing efforts, these networks are broad in terms of scope and limited in terms of the tools and solutions they provide to small business and musical entrepreneurs. Starting a band is as intrinsically entrepreneurial as it is creative, yet most bands tend to hire managers and marketers to handle the business-side of operations, because they can’t or won’t deal with that side of the game. Nimbit removes the time-consuming (and ) commercial aspects of musical enterprise by providing musicians with the tools to market their music directly to fans by email, SMS, Twitter, and Facebook, as well as browse marketing analytics and receive realtime sales reports. Musicians can add a custom store to their site to sell MP3s, CDs, and merchandise, or create a customized dashboard to manage catalogs and fan lists. Quite a few musicians that I know dislike the business side of music and, as seems true of many creative-types, they end up either refusing to participate or do so grudgingly, which makes me think that Nimbit’s services could be very useful to the troubadours and crooners among us — whether they deal in death metal, dub step, or heady acoustic stylings. Plus, the Web is killing (or has killed) traditional music labels, so why not just automate and digitally outsource the process? I know I will. Jacobson told me that Nimbit understands that, above all, musicians should be focusing on making music, so Nimbit will be putting its Series A funding towards building additional customer support and optimizing fan engagement tools. To do so, they will be aggressively expanding their team and are currently looking for a web apps developer, so you web apps experts out there, check ’em out. |
Meet The Guy Who Bought The First iPad 2 At The SXSW Apple Pop-Up Store | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 3 | 11 | Because the iPad 2 launch had the fortitude to coincide with SXSW, Apple did well by the thousands of fanboys and fanladies that have descended upon the city and at 6th and Congress. We braved the line today and got the chance to speak to the lucky man who bought the very first iPad 2 sold in Austin, Texas. Austin native and conference attendee “Sweet” (an event planner at Revolving Events) got to the store at 5:30 am and endured a 10 1/2 wait to get his hands on the sweet sweet tablet. While the line was wrapped around the block when we got there, Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan that there was still a plentiful supply of iPad 2s this evening, with an estimated wait time of 15 minutes. Watch Muehlbauer walk us through his new purchase, above. Highlights: and The store will be open for the next two weeks. |
Zynga Enables Donations To Tsunami Relief Through In-Game Purchases | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 3 | 11 | Social gaming giant has joined the Internet’s efforts at donating to Japanese Tsunami relief tonight, by enabling in-game donations through virtual good buying in Zynga games like FrontierVille, FarmVille and CityVille as of 7pm PST. 100% of the virtual goods purchase prices will be donated to Tsunami relief. Zynga will be specifically with Save the Children to raise money for its Altruistic players can contribute by buying designated virtual goods like a sweet potato crop in CityVille, a Kobe cow in FrontierVille, radishes in FarmVille and a royal flush for Zynga Poker. Zynga representative Dani Dudeck informs me that the campaign was created in under 24 hours and is the largest charitable campaign in company history. It is also the first CityVille campaign. Players who want to donate in the non-Ville game Words With Friends can use the Save the Children button inside the game. Players in all games within Facebook can also send funds using the Zbar, or the bar that sits on top of the game. Facebook will also be donating its traditional 30% cut on the Facebook Credits used to contribute to the relief. Judging by a rare tweet by Zynga CEO Mark Pincus, Zynga ambitiously wants to raise 2 million through the efforts. Those interested but not currently playing can also donate outside of the http://twitter.com/#!/markpinc/status/46432174794219520 |
Flickr Confirms Taking Down Egyptian Blogger's Photos, Cites Community Guidelines Violation | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 3 | 11 | Last weekend Egyptian protestors Amn al Dowla, the Cairo headquarters for the Egyptian security agency, and removed a “treasure trove” of video disks, hard disks and CDs with government documents from the Mubarak era. Egyptian blogger came into possession of a CD from the raid and has been uploading a set of Secret Service officer pics to Flickr for the past week. Arabawy on his on blog that Flickr removed the photos yesterday, citing copyright infringement. Arabawy’s post led to NPR’s Andy Carvin asking Flickr for a response to the accusations of censorship. Flickr responded both to Carvin and to me, citing user complaints as impetus for the takedowns: When asked whether the user complaints were specifically about the Community Guidelines, a Flickr representative responded, Indeed, the photos in question were not taken by Arabawy. We could go on all night like this but the main point is Flickr has (a valid) excuse. Prominent member of the Flickr community Thomas Hawke that disingenuously chalking it up to Guidelines issues is a “giant cop out” on Flickr’s part as, Read his take |
Kinect Continues To Outsell The Move By Huge Margins | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 3 | 11 |
If I had to pick between the and the , I personally would choose the Move, but there’s no denying that the Kinect is just plain interesting — and novel. While the Move is essentially a really excellent , the Kinect is a genuinely new experience, and that’s translated to sales big enough to . I guess it comes as no surprise, then, that according to rock star analyst Michael Pachter, the Move is by the Kinect by quite a bit. This month saw healthy sales of both the PS3 and 360 (454K and 535K), but two thirds of the 360 bundles sold included Kinect while only a fifth of the PS3 sales were Move bundles. No data on individual peripheral sales, but I see no reason why they should be wildly different from the bundle demand. [via ] |
Yes. These Pallet Coasters Are Industrial-Strength Awesome | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 3 | 11 |
I was never really drawn to coasters until I saw these. They’re 1:10 replicas of your average big wooden pallet, down to the markings on the side. Get some for your house, your bar, or to use as firewood like regular pallets. They’re a bit expensive at $36 for 5 ( ), since they’re hand-made by designer house Labyrinth in Spain, but hey, you can’t put a price on good design. Wait, you totally can, and they did. [via ] |
LinkedIn Posts $243M In 2010 Revenue, $15.4 Million In Net Income | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 3 | 11 | Professional social network LinkedIn, which originally submitted its with the SEC in January, has just posted an to its filing that includes 2010 revenue numbers (previously the filing only included 2010 revenue until September). As we wrote earlier, the maximum proposed total offering price is $175 million but this is just a placeholder amount. From 2009 to 2010, net revenue increased $123.0 million, or 102%, to $243 million. Net income increased $19.4 million, or 487%, to $15.4 million. The company took a $3.9 million loss in 2009 terms of net income, with 2010 as the first profitable year for the network. According to the filing, 42 percent of 2010 revenue came hiring solutions ($101.8 million), 33 percent came from marketing ($79.3 million); and 25 percent came from premium subscriptions ($61.9 million). It’s a positive sign that revenue sources continue to increase and the company is now making a profit. It should be interesting to see how much the offering will be when LinkedIn goes public later this year. |
iFixit Tears Down The iPad 2: No Surprises, But 512MB Of RAM | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 3 | 11 |
There isn’t much in the way of significant changes except the inclusion of the cameras, the spec bump to A5 and (as rumored) 512MB of RAM, and of course the generally thinner profile. One thing: the speakers are laughably small, though probably no smaller than the competition. One of these days a tablet will come along that doesn’t make your music sound like it’s at the bottom of a well, but until then, headphones are your friend. |
Tribes: Ascend To Continue Everyone's Favorite Flying FPS Franchise | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 3 | 11 | [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8mXJI_oJMg&w=640&h=390]
Our readers will remember the unbelievably good times that were had ( ) in the original . I was a god in that game with the laser rifle at 50x zoom. The sequels haven’t been as good (some better than others), but that isn’t stopping Hi-Rez Studios from attempting another one, which I desperately hope is good. It’s called , and you can watch the announcement trailer here, though there’s no gameplay footage (argh!). It’s being developed for a 2011 release on PC and 360, hopefully with the PC as primary. I don’t want them giving up this aspect of the game: Those midair long-distance takedowns were key, and you really needed some mouse skills to do them. You can keep up with the latest developments at the or on the . |
CrunchBoard Jobs: TechCrunch Is Hiring! | Elin Blesener | 2,011 | 3 | 11 | Would you like to come work with us at TechCrunch? We have positions open and are currently looking for qualified applicants. Maybe you could be our next Executive Assistant, our new CrunchBase Manager, or our new Conference Program Chair who would help us out with our events. The positions we have available right now are:
– San Francisco, CA
– San Francisco, CA
– San Francisco, CA
– San Francisco, CA
– San Francisco, CA
– San Francisco, CA You can also use to search for other companies that may be hiring. Some other jobs available right now include:
– Sony Music Entertainment – New York City, NY
– LinkedIn – Mountain View, CA
– Facebook – Palo Alto, CA |
Hela Disc: The Aerobie, Evolved | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 3 | 11 |
When it comes to flying discs (“frisbees” to the vulgar), there are many to choose from. I personally like the Koosh Woosh, but as they don’t sell particular relic any more, I’m forced to recommend other options for summer fun. The looks promising: it’s like an Aerobie donut-style disc but unlike that worthy item, won’t slice your head off if you miss the catch.
The story is that the creators noticed some strange properties of a piece of cardboard they were about to throw away, which led them to design the slightly funky shape of the Hela. It’s not just a flat ring, but has a curve to it and some other micro-features that make it easier to, say, throw straight in gusty weather. Sounds good to me. , so why not pick one up for your next trip to the out of doors? I’ve already got my Woosh, so I’m set, but if you want to impress your friends with throwing skillz, give this thing a try. |
Want To Look Cool And Donate To Quake Relief? Buy This Shirt | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 3 | 11 |
If you’d like to give a little aid to Japan want to represent, , who are donating 100% of the proceeds to the American Red Cross. HuffPo has , if you’d prefer a different charity or organization. [via ] |
Are You Seeing Any Lines For The iPad 2? UPDATE | John Biggs | 2,011 | 3 | 11 |
Hey, people near stores (or in line at Apple stores), are you spotting any long where you are? I’d like to see how popular this launch is for Apple, given SXSW and, you know, world events? Check in the comments below and email photos to Kevin P submits these two shots from the Polaris Mall in Columbus:
Flint, MI Best Buy:
Mall at Millenia in Orlando, FL:
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Fly Or Die: How Will Color Solve The Loneliness Problem? (Plus, Amazon Cloud) | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 3 | 29 | In this week’s episode of , we cover two big launches— e and —and a Quirky DIY pocketKnife called the . Just yesterday, its Cloud Drive, which is a general storage service in the cloud which is being pushed as a media locker, starting with music. Amazon beat both Apple and Google to the punch with an online music locker. Anytime you buy an MP3 or album from Amazon, you can back it up in your Cloud Drive, from where it can be played no matter what computer you are on ( ). When you buy a digital song, there should always be a backup available to you. That’s just obvious, and Amazon just took an important first step in that direction. Is it the best online music service? No, there’s no radio, no sharing, only playlists you make yourself. It’s kind of boring, to be honest. But it is useful. Color is the nobody can . Is it the future or is it a dud on arrival? Color actually works impressively as a social camera when more than one person is using it simultaneously in the same place. It taps into all the iPhone’s sensors to gather data about places and people in proximity to one another—conjuring images of that scene in where he tracks signals from all the cell phones in the city to find the Joker. The app creates more of an experience network than a social network of people experiencing the same things, and then creating visual connections between those people that must be reinforced over time. But the big problem is nobody knows what to do with it when they launch the app by themselves. CEO Bill Nguyen joins us as our special guest and explains how his team is going to “solve the loneliness problem.” We also talk about the funding, the , whether Steve Jobs is an investor, and his thoughts on Amazon’s online music ambitions (his previous company was Lala, which he ). Finally, we take apart the Quirky Switch—literally. This DIY pocketknife, which my co-host John Biggs shows off in this , lets you assemble your own Swiss Army Knife, picking which tools you want. It sounds better than it actually is. Trust me. |
Galaxy Tab Wi-Fi To Cumber Shelves On April 4th? | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 3 | 11 |
These days, if you want a (the little one that isn’t selling well, not the that’s not for sale), you need to go to your local cellular provider and get one on contract. Why can’t you just get one with wi-fi? I don’t know. But I guess Samsung started asking that question too, and decided hey, why not sell a wi-fi version at Best Buy? Yes, it looks like , and by most estimates it will stay there. Chances are that even a price-reduced $400 GalTab won’t sell well when you can get an iPad 2 for a bill more, or a refurb iPad for 50 bucks less. Look, I love Android. And I think the looks great. But with Xoom sales low, iPad love high, and this thing running 2.2, I just don’t see these things selling even in the triple digit range. |
Want To Bet On The Cricket Match, But Avoid Losing Money? Check Out KheloCricket | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 3 | 29 | This one’s for you, cricket fans. For those not familiar with “the gentleman’s game”, we are currently in the grips of the ICC World Cup — or The World Cup of Cricket, if you prefer. “Who cares?” or “what’s a cricket?” you may be asking. Well, considering there are only five proclaimed cricket pitches in the U.S., you may have a fair point. But for countries (and cricket powerhouses) like India, Pakistan, Australia, and South Africa (to name a few), cricket is serious business. In fact, that the international gambling industry collectively has more than $1.5 billion riding on tonight’s match between India and Pakistan in the World Cup semifinals. Considering the combustible relationship between the new nations, the rivalry is a fierce one, and the matches tend to take on a significance greater than game itself. This is the first time the two teams have met since the , and Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani will be accepting the personal invitation of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, in a miraculous show of “cricket diplomacy”. As a further example of how rabid cricket fans are, last week 1,000 tickets were made available for the World Cup final, and more than 10 million people flocked to the ICC’s site in less than 20 minutes, causing it to crash and burn. Seeing as cricket matches can take up to 8 hours to play, certain countries may see a bit of a dip in GDP during tomorrow’s work day. My guess is that half of the Indian population will be using one of its “sick days” Wednesday. For those in the U.S. interested in catching the match, it begins at 2am PST and can be found on Dish Network and DirecTV. For those without satellite TV, check out . Cricket fans who also enjoy placing a bet or 600 while watching a match are advised to check out , a social game that allows fans to place bets and interact with friends in realtime during a match. The startup was founded by a group of cricket fans and alumni from Stanford University and . The game works like this: At any point during a match, you can predict what will happen in the next play, based on your mad cricket skills and ill intuition. If your prediction proves to be correct, you win points. The person with the highest number of points at the end of the match wins. It’s as simple as that. The service is free, and unfortunately, it’s completely legal because there’s no money at stake. It’s basically the same as playing free online poker, with the added social element. So, to all those cricket fans out there, enjoy the remainder of the tournament. And please keep rioting to a minimum. Please feel free to chime in with your favorite cricket and tech-related applications, utilities, and services. |
With Square In Its Sights, Intuit Readies A Tablet App For GoPayment | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 3 | 29 | Mobile payments are finally taking off right now. But it is for consumers with NFC-chipped mobile phones leading the way. It is payment apps for small merchants like those made by and Intuit’s . Tonight at an Intuit showcase in New York City, I got a sneak peak at several new Intuit products still in development, including an upcoming GoPayment tablet app that aims to replace the cash register for small businesses, Intuit 401k, and an iPad Check-in app for doctor’s offices. The GoPayment app will work on both the iPad and Android tablets In addition to taking credit card payments with a swiper that plugs into the headphone jack, it also lets merchants set up a cash register with their own products and prices. They can even take pictures of the products with their iPad 2 and the picture is placed on a virtual button to make it easy for any employee to ring up the items. It will also have the ability to take pictures of checks and deposit them from the image. Square, of course, has its own which has been available for almost a year. Add a cash drawer, and these systems can readily replace a register that can cost thousands of dollars. All a merchant needs is an iPad and the software. Intuit and Square still make a tiny fraction off each transaction, but they get rid of much of the equipment, and all the maintenance, costs associated with typical credit card readers you find in most stores. GoPayment has been around for two years, but only started to target the lower end of the market where Square is gaining traction—small businesses without merchant accounts at banks who don’t already take credit cards. Another competitor, VeriFone, is in an attempt to enter this market as well, but Square should be more concerned about Intuit. The company already has relationships with 4.5 million businesses through QuickBooks and has a few advantages in payments processing. The trick to making money in payments processing is to keep the fraud rate down. Intuit already handles payments for many small businesses through and has built up an expertise in fraud detection to the point where it transfer money to its payments customers in a matter of two or three days. Square reduces its risk for larger accounts by holding the money for 30 days. Intuit’s credit card swiper might be uglier than Square’s, but don’t underestimate how important it is for small businesses to get getting paid faster. Both services seem to be neck and neck in terms of the volume of payments that go through each. GoPayment processes about $9 million a week, whereas Square is processing about (but GoPayment’s numbers include payments from the Web and QuickBooks, not just mobile). GoPayment has processed $113 million since it launched in 2009. Intuit’s director of mobile strategies, Omar Green, who happens to live in the same building in San Francisco as Square founder Jack Dorsey, acknowledges that Square led the way in opening up this new market. But it’s a wide open field and Intuit is going after the opportunity just as aggressively. : Intuit says it is now up to $12 million a week in payment volume and $120 million cumulative GoPayments. While I was at the showcase, I also saw some other new Intuit products for businesses. One is called , and is part of Intuit’s Payroll business. Any small business that uses Intuit Payroll can now also set up a 401(k) account for their employees for significantly cheaper than other 401 (k) management services. It costs $495 to set up and starts at $75 a month for up to ten employees. The contributions are withdrawn automatically from payroll and managed by Morningstar, with a few simple options based on risk tolerance. Intuit also removes the financial risks of any liability associated with managing the plans off the shoulders of the small businesses The other iPad app I saw is being developed by , which already offers health portals for doctor’s offices to help manage appointments and billing. Now it is working on an iPad Check-In app which will replace the paper forms on the clipboard you have to fill out every time you visit the doctor. Instead, you just sign in with your name and password, and fill out any necessary details on the iPad app. It also ties into payments and will allow patients to charge their co-pays electronically. |
Lose Your 3DS AR Cards? Just Make Your Own With A Marker | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 3 | 29 |
Nice. It looks like the ability to recognize real-life objects like the cards that come with. I get the feeling there will be shenanigans when these cards start being used in-game. Card gives you an item? Where my crayons at! |
Crossbow That Shoots Machetes Is Just About Maximum Dangerous | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 3 | 29 | [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSU1jQoGIqo&w=640&h=390]
Up here in Seattle there’s a band called . That’s a good idea, but until we get the technology for that ultimate weapon worked out, we’re going to have to use . Yes, yes, it’s really more like a slingshot with a little extra structure to it, but Slingshot That Shoots Machetes doesn’t have the same ring to it. Interestingly, this subverts the common wisdom that “machetes don’t run out of ammo.” Take that, Max Brooks! [via and ] |
Watch-Controlled Gripper Bot Is All Kinds Of DIY Cute | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 3 | 29 | [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhE8F9rWmAg&w=640&h=390]
I love that there are tons of tinkerers out there just putting together for no other reason than “hey, this might work.” Home hacker Lars Kristian Roland made this one, a simple rover bot with a gripping claw (it runs on modular hardware and an Arduino, naturally) — but the twist in this case is that it’s controlled by a Chronos watch that has a built-in accelerometer and antenna. Not the most precise controls I’ve ever seen, but that’s all adjustable in the software ( points out that nonlinear interpretation is the way to go) and I love the idea of controlling it with wrist movements (you could rotate the axes so you could wear the watch). to see it get the thing and do a little dance. |
Tap Tap Revenge Now Available For Android | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 3 | 29 | Whoa! It’s a huge day for the big-name mobile games. Just a little while ago, the universally known Doodle Jump . Hours later, another massively popular title is gettin’ a big new feature: Tap Tap Revenge, a title so popular that it , is now available on Android.
Like its iOS counterpart, Tap Tap Revenge for Android is a music game (think Dance Dance Revolution, or Guitar Hero) wherein you tap a quickly scrolling series of icons to the beat of any of the game’s bazillionty pop tracks. The better your timing, the better your score. Also like the original iOS build, Tap Tap Revenge for Android is a free download and comes with a handful of songs — but once you’re bored of what’s built in, you’ll have to shell out some dough for new tracks. You can find Tap Tap Revenge on the Android Market . [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ov-aNNv6ogE&w=640&h=390] |
Doodle Jump Goes Multiplayer | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 3 | 29 | Doodle Jump. Ever heard of it? If you’re an iPhone owner — or at least, someone who’s ever gone the iOS App Store — you probably have. While it’s hovering somewhere around the 10th place slot these days, Doodle Jump’s addictive gameplay and near-constant updates had it locked into the #1 spot for months. Today, the folks behind Doodle Jump are pushin’ out an update with a feature that might just help it win back the throne: multiplayer.
Like the original, forever-alone version of Doodle Jump, the goal of the multiplayer game is to get your lil’ ever-jumping dude (Doodle the Doodler) up a series of randomly placed platforms while avoiding a bevy of things that want you dead. Unlike the single player game, however, this one’s not about climbing as high as you can — it’s about climbing as as you can. Once you’ve connected to your buddy through Game Center, the goal is to get from point A to point B before they do, collecting power-ups along the way. When it comes to livin’ the Indie Developer’s dream, Lima Sky (the two brother team behind Doodle Jump) is pretty much the perfect example. They’ve kept operations small, kept users happy with a seemingly endless series of updates, and have played the App Store game . Their best trick: properly pacing their releases to maximize the download spikes that come with. (Hell, I’d be willing to bet this multiplayer update has been done for some time, and they’re just releasing it now to counter a dip in downloads.) In the off chance that Doodle Jump hasn’t already found its way onto your device, you can find it in the App Store . Doodle Jump is also available for Android, though there’s no word yet when (or if) that port will be gettin’ the multiplayer treatment. |
Building A New PC? Intel's Motherboard Woes Have Been Resolved | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 3 | 29 |
I’m in the middle of building a new desktop computer, and for the last couple weeks have been frustrated by the of Intel’s new P67 ( -supporting) motherboards, since those are exactly what value-conscious buyers like myself would be going for. Well, the wait is over — the replacements have arrived. It’s safe to build! The old boards had a bug causing some of the SATA ports to malfunction and potentially lose data. The new boards have an additional designation, B3 stepping, usually denoted as “B3” or “Rev 3” in the title of the board. So if you were looking at a MSI P67A-GD65, it’ll be the P67A-GD65-B3 now. Yeah, it’s not like all these parts needed any more numbers and letters on the end, but at least you know what to look out for. I was actually going to pull the trigger on my system last night (GD65, 6950, 2500K) but I’ve decided to wait and see about the new Intel 320 series of SSDs for a fast system disk. I’m pumped, got a whole back library of PC games to play. |
The Second Cluster Of Startups Ascend From AngelPad | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 3 | 29 | Last August, that a new startup incubator was about to launch that was run by seven ex-Googlers, . By November, the of eight startups were ready to launch. Today, barely four months later, class number two is ready to be unveiled. And this time there are thirteen of them. At this rate, to quote the best line in , they’re “gonna need a bigger boat”. The fact that the class was whittled down to even thirteen is impressive, as the AngelPad team had several hundred applications to go through this time, co-founder tells us. And while many in the initial class also featured fellow ex-Googlers, this group is more diversified (though the Google blood still runs deep with a number of them). Below, find a brief description of the 13: Shopobot is all about leveraging your social graph to make better purchasing decisions. Say you want to buy a camera, but want advice you know will be unbiased, the best way is to ask your friends. Shopobot allows you to easily find that information on their site, alongside a timeline of a product’s price on Amazon (these are much more volatile than you may think). They’re also focusing on creating useful widgets for other sites that get around the “banner blindness” issue which most shopping widgets lead to. Astrid makes mobile applications that allow you to easily share and collaborate on tasks. This is ideal for groups because everyone in the group can be assigned something to do, and make it known once it’s done. And unlike some other collaboration software, the interface is super simple. From a broader perspective, the idea is to inspire others to join you in doing certain things — ideas you get from reading a book or a blog post. They have a button to make this all easily shareable. The team already has 1.7 million downloads on Android and now they’re coming to iOS. Hopscotch is a service built around the idea of extending the current abilities of QR codes. Right now, you scan a code and you’re often just taken to a website about a product. These guys want to create a web browser for the real world, meaning that all physical objects can have elements that show up when scanned. If you scan a QR code on a concert poster, your social graph should know that you’re into that band, and maybe one of your friends would like to go to that show with you. While the core idea is based around QR codes right now (both existing ones and new ones that they’ll help others create), eventually the plan is to get into NFC or image recognition as those technologies mature. Cloudbot calls themselves the “cloud command line”. What that means is that their aim is to be one app (both mobile and web) that allows you to easily interact with many other apps and services. You might enter in “call XXXXX” and you’ll it will call the friend’s name you entered. Or you might enter “gram XXXXX” and it will show you the Instagram photos from that person. And it uses real world data. If you type “eat with XXXXX”, the app will look at your location and the location of the friend you entered and find a good place near both of you. Currently, they have 24 integration points with various apps/services and more are coming. Kismet is a mobile dating site focused on real identity and real photos. The founders note that most dating sites are a sea of faces, but most are false advertising. And many mobile dating experiences right now skew towards the sleazy side of things. Kismet aims to be a more natural dating app with women in particular in mind. They look at locations you actually go to and pictures you actually take on other social networks to provide a real profile for yourself (naturally tide into your real Facebook identity as well). The idea is that where you spend a lot of your time and what you do already says a lot about you, Kismet just surfaces it for potential dates to see. Splash is a new social plug-in for mobile games (first for the iPhone, then for Android). It’s essentially a social platform that developers can have include in their gaming apps as an always one-touch-away overlay. When touched, it shows you your friends also playing games online and allows you to interact with them. You can also send gifts (virtual goods) this way, get notifications, and make announcements. On the developer side of things, there is a dashboard to help you keep track of all of the data flowing in. Unlike Apple’s Game Center and OpenFeint which focus on leaderboards, they focus on the social layer in realtime. Crittercism provides a way for developers to monitor bugs and crashes in their mobile apps. If you read over reviews in the App Store, you’ll see that many are actually bug reports — Crittercism has a way to hopefully stop that from happening as they monitor issues in realtime and provide a simple way for a user to provide feedback through their own channel. The service gets baked into the app by the developer before launch and resides in a place that a user can access and share issues (either anonymously or with a Crittercism profile). And problems are automatically tracked and emailed back to developers. The platform is already up and running on five hit apps and while it seems like something that Apple or Google could eventually offer, Crittercism’s view is a cross-platform one that very easy for developers to work with. Stickery makes learning-based games for kids. But while that’s already a crowded market, their twist is that there games are actually data-driven. As in, after kids play the games, reports are sent back to parents to let them know what areas the children need help with and what they excel in. “We are focused on the post-game highlights,” is how they put it. And while this seems like it could be a platform play, the team is also committed to making their own fun games. Right now they have one with seven more planned. LocBox looked at the crowded daily deal space and saw a big problem: customer retention rates. Because there are so many different deal services that people are trying out, everyone seems to be only partially committed to it. LocBox aims to simplify the experience by giving everyone an important cool to keep customers: an iPad. That is, they give merchants an iPad loaded with their CRM software to reduce the friction for trying out and sticking with their system — and also for customers using it. The easiest way to think of CompanyLine is as a sort of Facebook Groups for business. But a key part of it is the nice integration they have with other services like WebEx and Dropbox. It works so well that AngelPad themselves apparently use it now internally over the old way of doing things: Google Groups (again, these are ex-Googlers we’re talking about). The name is drawn from the idea that the way companies collaborate today is sort of like phone line switchboards in the 1950s. They want to change that. Feedgen is a sales lead platform that utilizes social elements. They note the disconnect between marketing and sales — the amount of leads brought in by marketing don’t end up meaning much. But leads can come from elsewhere: enter social networks. Another key is the UI. They use the familiar inbox style to manage leads. You can think of it as a “priority inbox” for leads, they note (referencing Google’s newish system for ranking email in Gmail). Coverhound is simply online insurance shopping that works. “It’s a complete scam right now,” the founders say pointing to how much of what you see online is little more than bait. And that shows on the other end as something like 300 leads are needed to sign just one new person up for a policy. Coverhound changes the dynamic by being a filter for both sides. They take customers basic information (name, address, email) and pull up information about them from third parties that is then used to serve up accurate estimates from the insurance companies. It’s sort of like Kayak for car insurance. SecondLeap is a search engine for people who want to change careers. It’s not about career advancement, it’s about people looking to make a true total change. The service show those people what the potential impact is in terms of years needed for a new career and what the financial impact will be. If it’s determined that the career change will be a good one, SecondLeap helps the user find the right school and loan to make the change happen. |
Android Market's In-App Billing Now Live | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 3 | 29 |
One of the biggest gripes Android developers have about the ecosystem has been Android Market — it was slow to add support for paid apps internationally, and it’s taken for it to support in-app payments. Today, it’s finally fixing the latter issue: Android Market in-app billing. The news doesn’t come as a big surprise, as Google the feature’s impending launch last week so that developers could prepare for it. But it’s still a big deal. In-app purchases have proven to be very lucrative for developers on Apple’s iOS (which launched in-app payments back in 2009). They’re particularly important for free applications, which often entice new users with a price-tag of ‘free’ and then upsell new levels, upgrades, and customizations. As with application purchases, Android Market charges a fee of 30% for anything sold via in-app billing, which is the industry standard. Hopefully this will help developers more effectively monetize their applications on Android Market — historically users have been less willing to pay for apps on Android than they have on Apple’s App Store. |
null | Michael Arrington | 2,011 | 3 | 11 | null |
Google's Value To US Users And Advertisers Is Over $119B Per Year, According To Google | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 3 | 29 | Google’s Chief Economist took the stage today at to break down the totality of Google’s yearly economic value in the US. He spoke about two elements of value: The value of Google to users and the value of Google to advertisers. In order to estimate the value of Google to advertisers, Varian used the model (where = value per click, = number of clicks and = cost of clicks) and then did some “back-of-the-napkin” math. The bottom line? Google’s value to publishers and advertisers is $54 billion. In order to calculate the value of Google to users, Varian cited the study, which plotted the time spent by students searching for the answers to questions in a library against that spent by those who used Google to get their information. Students who searched in the library ended up averaging 22 minutes to find what they needed whereas students using Google took an average of 7 minutes, saving 15 minutes. Because of a question “demand curve” (which holds that the cheaper question asking is in terms of time, the more questions we ask), Varian did some more “back-of-the-napkin” math and tried to glean how much time Google saves the average US user daily. Varian came to the conclusion that Google saves us 3.75 minutes per day, and then used the average US hourly earnings numbers ($22) to calculate that Google saves users $1.37 a day. That number multiplied by 365 days in a year equals $500. Varian then multiplied that $500 number by 130 million, the number of people employed in the US, to get to $65 billion value in savings for users. Adding those two bottom line numbers $65 billion + $54 billion together results in the rough ballpark of the total value of Google to US users ($119 billion), Varian holds. For comparison Google’s global market cap is $187.04 billion. But that $119 billion number doesn’t take into account extraneous factors like the value to non-employed, etc. Says Varian, |
Ev Williams States The Obvious: He's No Longer Fully Committed To Twitter; Thinking About What's Next | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 3 | 29 | As we yesterday, is taking a step back from his day to day duties at Twitter. Williams just titled ‘An Obvious Next Step’ on his personal blog explaining the reasoning behind his decision. From his post: Williams will continue to serve on Twitter’s board of directors and will advise the company and employees when needed. While he says he’s ‘not ready’ to talk about his next venture, the yesterday that Williams is mulling a new start-up idea. As for Twitter, co-founder Jack Dorsey is at the company, helping lead product strategy. And as Twitter turns five, the changing of the guard (or the return) will debut tonight as Biz Stone and Dorsey make a on CNN’s Piers Tonight. Williams did ‘venture a prediction about what’s next for Twitter: ‘ |
The 6 Verbs For The Next 20 Years Of The Connected World | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 3 | 29 | Today at the in San Francisco, Wired co-founder gave the first keynote of the day. His topic? The six trends he believes are most important for the connected world we live in going forward. Specifically, he broke these down into six verbs. “ ,” Kelly says. So what are they? Kelly notes that not all of these things may hit in a major way, but this is how he sees things going right now. |
Despite Secretive Mission, Air Force's X-37B Spotted | Nicholas Deleon | 2,011 | 3 | 29 | No, we still have no idea what the Air Force is doing up there with the , but at least now we can track its movement. Amateur skywatchers—a delightful phrase&mdashl have the whereabouts of the spacecraft. There’s even video of it in orbit. I’d understand if a point of light in the nighttime sky doesn’t exactly sound very Hollywood, but the fact that people were able to track it down deserves praise. There’s a few Web sites that give step-by-step instructions on when and where to look for the spacecraft, but keep in mind that you’ll need to be between 42.8 degrees of the Earth’s equator to see it. The assumption is that the Air Force is up there testing super-secret reconnaissance equipment, but you won’t find anything in the way or confirmation or denial from Washington. (The spacecraft itself is nothing special, being essentially an offshoot of Nasa’s space shuttle.) |
Like Us On Facebook, Win Awesome Stuff | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 3 | 29 | If you’re a MobileCrunch reader, it’s probably because you’re an early adopter. Or you’re just awesome. Well, we’ve got something new for you to be an early adopter of (or that’ll just make you awesome): Yeah, I know: we should have built a Facebook Page ages ago. To be honest, it’s been sitting on our to-do list since back around the time man discovered fire — we’ve just been busy. As an apology of sorts for our tardiness (but primarily because we like to give stuff away), we’re going to start things off with a giveaway tomorrow, exclusive to our Facebook fans. What’ll we be giving away? It’s a secret, for now — but unless you want to forget about the giveaway, you better . Oh, and don’t think that tomorrow’s giveaway is going to be the only one. If I have my way, we’ll be hookin’ our readers up on a regular basis. |
Google Brings Back The ChatBot: Google Talk Guru | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 3 | 29 | Remember back in the early days on instant messaging when people figured out that they could set up chatbots that users would interact with? Yeah, they were fun for like 20 minutes. But don’t tell Google that — they’re bringing one back today! is an “experimental” Google Labs service that allows you to chat with a bot to get information you’re looking for. What kind of information? Sports results, weather, definitions, translations, etc. Again, this is nothing new, but Google does tend to have more information at their disposal than just about anyone else on the planet. So perhaps this chatbot will be more useful than the ones I used in 1997. To try it out, here are the rules: 1. Sign into a chat client that supports Google Talk 2. Send a chat invitation to guru@googlelabs.com or click the “Invite myself to chat with Guru” link below. 3. Find guru in your contact list and send chat queries to guru Remember too that just about a year ago, , a startup that also used chat to answer questions. I assume this is more like doing a traditional Google Search query, but still, something to think about. Related: what the hell is Google doing with Aardvark? Anything? |
GroupMe Won The SXSW Group Messaging Wars, Says Infographic | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 3 | 16 | Group messaging was not as useful as we thought it would be this year at SXSW. Whether you were using Beluga, GroupMe, Kik, Yobongo or Fast Society or others, everyone had high hopes for a breakout group messaging app, simply because we spoiled tech brats are already bored with the ones we . I know it’s old school, but towards the tail end of the conference simple SMS won out (for me at least). SXSW isn’t about hanging out with the same groups of people all the time, but rather about having variety of exclusive options. In practice group messaging is kind of weak on the exclusivity thing, because you’re almost always roped into groups with at least one person you don’t like, which prevents you from sharing potentially useful information regarding your whereabouts. While my co-worker MG to think there is any clear SXSW winner, if you had to pick a frontrunner among the group messaging apps, in my opinion, it would be good ole’ , if only because it seemed like the app most people used (unless you count as a group messaging app). The data above (provided above by the folks at ) agrees with me, in infographic form — tracking how much each app was mentioned on Twitter and sentiment analysis from March 11th through March 15th. The graphic provides a helpful features checklist for the contenders along with proclaiming the SXSW group messaging Winner, Second Place and Best In Show. And yes, this graphic does beg the question, “If we’re judging the winners by Twitter mentions, doesn’t that mean Twitter actually won?” Well, welcome to tech. |
Fez: Check Out The Indie Game Everyone Will Be Talking About This Year | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 3 | 16 | [vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/21082507 w=620&h=349]
Guys, if you liked Braid and Cave Story and World of Goo and all the other great indie games that have made it through to XBLA, Wiiware, and so on, you owe it to yourself to check out this gameplay trailer (the teaser is ) for , a space-bending platformer that might make you feel a bit of that old Portal disorientation. I’ve been looking forward to this since it was announced ages ago, and the recent acquisition of for the music is just icing on the cake. It’ll be out on XBLA later this year. |
Beautiful Little Short Film Showing An 8mm To Canon 5D Transfer Setup | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 3 | 16 | [vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/20950590 w=620&h=349]
You wouldn’t think that a how-to for rigging up a 5D mk II to an old 8mm projector would stand much of an artistic treatment, but James Miller’s little piece has charm to spare. By switching out the projection lens for an element of a Canon 35mm photographic lens (as well as some other stuff, obviously), he’s made a real-time capture tool for 8mm film using common photographer’s tools and a little elbow grease. And of course it’s a joy to watch. You can see some of the conversions he’s done with this setup over at . The music is Ennio Morricone’s theme to “Cinema Paradiso,” if you’re wondering. [via and ] |
Rumor: Asus To Launch $200 Chrome Netbook | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 3 | 16 | The market has more or less dried up; the little things might still be useful for light computing, but they’ve been clobbered by as the go-to device for quick email and web browsing. Could it be that they’re just not cheap enough? Asus might be looking to fix that. Existing netbooks generally cost somewhere north of $300, though of course they can be found cheaper. that Asus/Asustek is looking to aim lower, with a $200-$250 price point and a lightweight OS, possibly Android or Chrome. The laptop itself would be likely be 10″ or 11″. That could easily be subsidized down to zero dollars with a six-month 3G contract, though that particular “$0 laptop” ship may have sailed in 2009. A $200 Chromebook? Hey, I might be down for that. It’s something I might actually be able to work from, unlike my iPad, and at $200 it’s such a small investment that I could have one sitting around the house for emergencies and not feel like I ripped myself off. We’ll soon see whether these reports have any salt to them. We haven’t heard anything about Chrome OS since the , really, but I still have hopes. |
Danny Sullivan On How Viable It Is To Build Your Business On Google, Among Other Things | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 3 | 16 | The search engine wars have been heightened since January, when TechCrunch contributor Vivek Wadhwa wrote about , because his college students could no longer find the information they were looking for due to spammy results. Since then, both JC Penney and DecorMyEyes have been called out for questionable search-related business practices, as have content farms like eHow and content aggregators like the Huffington Post. Google has accused Bing of scraping its results, and both Google and newcomer Blekko have taken very public steps to block sites that attempt to game the system. Before he hosted a search Q&A panel at SXSW, I sat down with founder to talk about the viability of building a business on Google, his opinion on the Google vs. Bing vs. Blekko “smackdown,” what search engines are doing to try to filter out lower quality content, and what he thought about the difference between a quality driven company like Stack Exchange versus the volume driven Demand Media. “I don’t think it’s a spam problem as much as it is that you have a lot more low quality content, that’s not necessarily spam and that’s kind of purporting to answer a question and that kind of gives you the answer. It’s fast-foodish when you’d rather have a dinner.” “The content farms are somehow seen as leeching on Google, not necessarily contributing quality content back.” “I was on MSN yesterday and one of the headline articles on MSN was ‘Search: Some Topic’ inspiring people there to go off and do searches. I don’t know if that’s a great story, but it’s certainly going to generate some searches for Bing.” |
Review: Klipsch Image One Headphones | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 3 | 16 |
Klipsch’s first on-ear headphones aren’t much to look at, but they’re surprisingly powerful, almost too much so. If you like booming bass and don’t care for surround sound and all that jazz, these could be good for you.
http://www.klipsch.com/na-en/products/image-one-overview/
Klipsch was originally known for their speakers, and then for their excellent in-ear headphones (we’ve pronounced the , , and all good), but at CES they were introducing their new One series on-ear headphones, their first “traditional” style cans. So how are they? In a word, powerful. I review headphones now and then, and I’ve come to expect certain sounds from certain sizes, you know? It’s just a matter of the size of the ear cup, the driver, and so on. The Image Ones sound significantly bigger than they look. Not necessarily better or clearer, mind you, but certainly . That’s not to say they aren’t good or clear, but the first thing that struck me about their sound was that it felt big and booming, unlike other perfectly good headphones of this size. The sound is great for movies and games, though with music they tended to show the low end past the point where it should have been — not clipping or anything, but just as if the EQ was on a bottom-heavy setting. For some music, of course, it worked — but in complicated music with lots of smaller melodies packed into the mid range, the sound seemed a little overpowering. That kind of balance is great in games, however, and they really shook my head when rockets went off or guns fired nearby. Same for movies: big bass rarely gets in the way of dialogue, and often just enhances the best and biggest scenes without effecting the rest. The headphones themselves aren’t particularly inspiring — perhaps that contributed to my expectations. They’re tasteful, I guess, but rather plain-looking, and the design seems a bit clunky. That the cords go to both earpieces doesn’t help; you feel a little dated wearing them. They fold for travel, but it really only saves you like a half an inch of vertical space. Wearing them is comfortable enough; they’re pretty light and the earcups are soft, though I personally prefer a more breathable material. They produce a decent seal, though, and outside noise is reduced significantly, while little escapes. There’s a little control stick and microphone at the Y juncture of the headphones that’s compatible with Apple devices, and it appeared to work just fine, although I wasn’t able to test the microphone. The cord could also be longer: it’s about four feet from earpiece to tip, enough for walking around with your mp3 player but kind of a stretch at the desk when you’re leaning back. I’d say these headphones are a good deal for people with roommates who want to watch movies and play games on their computer with lots of bass, but don’t really want to go the USB/surround route or don’t want to have a separate pair for their iPhone or iPad. The sound really is nice and big, and you probably know if that kind of thing is for you. $150 isn’t too bad of a price if you ask me, though personally I’ll be looking forward to whatever they follow this up with.
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null | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 3 | 29 | null |
HeyZap Goes After Social Discovery, Launches Check-in For Mobile Games | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 3 | 16 | , a monetization and distribution platform for online casual games, announced today that it’s going mobile. Launching a social discovery application for mobile games on Android, the startup will be bringing the 1.6 million users it has already accumulated on its social gaming platform over to mobile. The company aims to build on its foray into social gaming last year, a partnership with fifteen social game developers, like Aeria Games, Game Duell, and TheBroth, to name a few. Using Facebook connect, the partnership made the developers’ games available on the 450,000 sites across the Web that had already integrated HeyZap’s platform. Social networking sites and tools and are among the sites that host Heyzap games. Yet, in spite of the success of its partnerships with social game makers, Heyzap Co-founder and President Jude Gomila told me that significant deficiencies still exist in today’s online and mobile gaming communities. Chief among them is the lack of an easy and trustworthy method by which to discover new games that target the individual’s specific interests. Gomila also sees an absence of viral channels and secure communities for mobile games. The startup’s new Android app attempts to fill these gaps through its check-in feature, which allows users to connect with friends and view check-ins that occur in a news-feed format on the app’s principal interface. This enables gamers to discover and play new free and paid games as well as discover which games their friends are playing. Essentially, Heyzap is trying to do for gaming communities what Foursquare and Instagram did for check-ins and photos. And maybe it can: Over the last month, despite being in alpha, the company tallied over 250,000 check-ins across 3000 Android games in one month. But Heyzap wants to retain these early adopters, so to address the lack of community functionality in mobile games Gomila referenced, the Heyzap app offers a tab for users to share tips and comments within games, hoping to create a community around each individual game. Users can win badges by exploring games and performing social actions in the Heyzap app. Heyzap is also announcing the release of a developer SDK, which has been integrated into 20 of the most popular games on Android, including Bubble Buster, X Construction, Wheelz, Slot Machine and Plumber. This is significant because it is designed to quickly increase the virality of a game by allowing users to check-in (and broadcast) to Facebook, Twitter, and the Heyzap graph by way of a simple button. The SDK also enables users to more easily find the games played most recently on the Heyzap app and to check-in both at the end of a game’s level and when gamers unlock achievements. For more info and to download the SDK, click . While Gomila told me that Heyzap is working on adding an iPhone app in the near future, he says that, at this point, Android offers developer features that make it much more appealing than iOS. The instant release cycle on Android, for example, allows developers and distributors to iterate quickly and take advantage of the weekly release cycles — far more frequent than that which is enabled by Apple. What’s more, Android special features offer the ability to install or launch a game from directly within the Heyzap app, which is pretty cool. I’m not aware of any apps currently out there that tell gamers what their friends are playing, but just because the idea hasn’t been done before doesn’t mean Heyzap has too much time before potential competitors like and jump in. |
Sony To Subpoena Two Years Of PS3 Hacker's PayPal Records | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 3 | 16 | Query: If I donated $10 to Geohot’s legal defense fund, does that make me liable for his actions, and do I have no right to keeping that donation private? It was, after all (if I made it), a perfectly legal transaction between two private citizens. Well, according to Sony and Federal Magistrate Spero (who just a short time ago ), I’m going to be on the record whether you like it or not. A new request from Sony has been granted that is, well, not quite as heinous as the last one, but is still troubling and overreaching. They want his PayPal records for all of 2009, 2010, and January of 2011. Because that whole period is relevant to a hack he worked out less than three months ago, right? Yes, apparently — and remember, all this is to determine whether George Hotz should be tried in his home state, where the alleged crimes occurred, or in San Francisco, near Sony’s US headquarters. Again, the inability of this judge to form any kind of criticism of these ridiculous requests by Sony is alarming in the extreme. Here is a man who, on the flimsy pretext of a trumpery jurisdictional dispute, is handing over years’ worth of data that personally identifies thousands of people who have nothing to do with this case. It’s as if Sony lost a dollar at the beach, and has now asked the judge to authorize dredging the harbor. The EFF objected to the last order, and will surely object to this one, but the damage is essentially done unless PayPal and friends decline to provide this information, in solidarity with Hotz, and countersue Sony. —I wouldn’t hold my breath. Sony is completely out of touch here and can only damage its image further. The judge, a few years will show, has shown himself incapable of discharging his duty, and furthermore is failing the citizens he serves by not even attempting to mitigate a major corporation’s efforts to crush a 21-year-old kid who, let us remember, is . I apologize for editorializing here, but this really appears to me to be a serious breach of justice. More info can of course be found at , (frequently updated), or here on CrunchGear, where we take a serious interest in this kind of chicanery. |
Kinect Hack: Head-Mounted Kinect Makes For Rudimentary Artificial Vision | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 3 | 16 | [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6QY-eb6NoQ&w=640&h=390]
Many of the hacks we’ve seen for the , interesting as they are, are aimed at entertainment or just plain coolness. There are plenty of exceptions, though, like the we heard about yesterday, or the we’ve seen that have a multitude of uses. This hack definitely belongs in the latter category; helping blind people see? I don’t think Microsoft imagined their family-friendly controller would end up like this. But they better be proud.
It’s a project by grad students Michael Zollner and Stephan Huber at the Universität Konstanz in Germany; they used everything from duct tape to Sugru to Arduino and put together this human-mountable system that looks where you look and looks for relevant data. That could be anything from upcoming obstacles to optically-accessible information like QR codes. . It’s really amazing what can be done with off-the-shelf components these days. I don’t think I’d believe it if I was told five years ago what we’d have available. [via ] |
Linkedin opens office in France – 2 open positions | roxannevarza | 2,011 | 3 | 16 | The French press has been going crazy announcing the opening of new Paris office. Finally, it looks like Linkedin in stepping-up its game to take on French rival, . In France, Viadeo counts 4 million users, which is double that of Linkedin’s French userbase. Then again, Viadeo is trailing behind Linkedin internationally with 35 million users to Linkedin’s 90 million. Ouch. Linkedin, which has European offices in London, the Netherlands and Ireland is obviously launching this office in France for strategic reasons. Laurence Bret, Linkedin’s new EMEA Marketing Director, seems to be running the Paris office for now. She joined the team in Janaury after spending 2 years with French startup . Prior to Linkedin and Silentale, Laurence was at AOL and France Télécom…at least, according to her . Linkedin hasn’t currenly released much info about their plans in France but they are recuiting ! Check out the two open positions and . |
Gamestaq's Peer-To-Peer Game Sales Are The Love Child Of GameStop And Craigslist | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 3 | 16 |
The biggest business in the world right now is cutting out the middle man. One way or another, that’s what many of the most promising start-ups and services are providing. It’s not so good for the middle man, of course, but some are more secure in their jobs than others. Taking advantage of the long tail and stocking or listing every item on earth is something Amazon will likely be doing for some time. But what about, say, a predatory business like GameStop, which is essentially a clearing-house for other people’s used property? It is, as we might say at one of our conferences, a prime target for disruption. is a service that allows gamers to sell their used games directly to other gamers, for an automatically-generated standard price based on eBay and Amazon listings — so you know you’re not getting ripped off, though of course it’s also impossible to find a bargain. It’s intended to combine the best DNA from Craigslist and GameStop, and operate as transparently as possible. The trouble with GameStop is that it’s taking advantage of its pole position in the $2 billion used-games market to push insane margins: buy a brand-new game from some kid for $20, and as soon as they leave the store, put it on the shelf with a $45 price tag. Kind of an arbitrary and malicious valuation, don’t you think? Yet it’s the standard, since GameStops are everywhere and the average gamer doesn’t really want to bother with the fraud risk and hassle of selling online via Craigslist or Amazon. Gamestaq’s service lets the game be transferred between the two end parties for a fair market value (no more, no less), and they stick a smallish fee in there ($1-2). So it’s still a middle man, but more of a matchmaker for buyer and seller. The prices end up being competitive for both parties, though of course since the buying and selling price are the same, it’s a delicate balance to maintain. As for Amazon and Craigslist, they’re legitimate competitors but have their weaknesses. Amazon isn’t set up for someone who just wants to turn Bioshock 2 and Black Ops into cash, it’s made for people who want to be a small, very specific online store with low overhead. And Craigslist, well, we all know the risks there. I could buy today for $35 (it’s $60 new, $45-50 used, so that’s a bargain) but there’s no guarantee when I log on there that I’ll find what I want, and of course unless I do my research, there’s a good risk of -paying — just saw $200 for a “practically brand new Wii” when brand new is well below that, for instance. Gamestaq hasn’t moved into selling consoles yet, but it should. There are two interesting aspects to the system that make it viable. It didn’t occur to me until I looked at their FAQ, but if you don’t “buy” from a specific seller, how does a specific seller actually sell the game? Well, there’s a queue: first offered, first bought. It’s really the only solution, but it’s not ideal: no one wants to wait. So the second little innovation, which I think is very clever, is simply that when you submit a game for sale, you get a unique URL that you can spread on your own, which is linked to your specific copy of the game. So you can do legwork if you want, or just let it ride (you have to confirm it’s still available each week). It adds a competitive aspect (not to say gameification) so you don’t feel like you’re just submitting to the whim of some game-selling machine (again, an issue many have with GameStop). And of course there’s nothing stopping you from offering it on Craigslist for the same price (or more), and removing the Gamestaq listing if it sells, or vice versa. It’s just another path for you to take, one that’s a little more regulated but still mainly a peer-to-peer sale. The games market is unique in this “recycling” aspect. Gadgets, laptops, and other electronics tend to molder in closets since they depreciate so much, and movies and TV are so easy to rent or stream now that the second-hand market isn’t really practical. Digital downloads (of both media and games) are a threat to physical game reselling, but console games haven’t hit the tipping point yet for that, and I expect disc-based games will stick around for at least four or five more years as a standard method of protecting content. And money from selling games tends to go back into games — which is why GameStop has long offered a slight advantage to selling for in-store credit. They know it’s a good bet, and so does Gamestaq. It’s long past time that GameStop’s stranglehold on the used game business was disrupted, and Gamestaq offers a way to sell which, for your average gamer, is simpler than Amazon and more reliable than Craigslist. It’s a no-lose situation for game sellers, and it can’t hurt to check for buyers, so with luck the service will take a bite out of the current market leaders and strike yet another blow against the middle man. |
At SXSW, Advertising Was This Year's Twitter, iPad 2 Was This Year's Foursquare | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 3 | 16 | Now that the interactive portion of the SXSW conference in Austin, Texas is over, the key question is already rolling in: who won? What this really means, of course, is: what service was the breakout hit of the conference? After all, in past years, the conference has helped launch both Twitter and Foursquare into widespread usage. So the question really is: who was this year’s Twitter? Or what was this year’s Foursquare? The answer this year is a bit different, a little disappointing, and perhaps not all that surprising. While all the hype leading up to the conference focused on the red-hot mobile group messaging space, the real “winners” of SXSW 2011 were advertising, marketing, and branding — oh yes, . Bleh, I know. But absolutely true. Everywhere you turned at the conference, an insane amount of advertising is what you saw. And that’s what people were talking about. Well, when they weren’t talking about the iPad 2. Or waiting in line at the brilliant pop-up Apple store to buy one. Don’t get me wrong, a number of the group messaging apps like GroupMe, Beluga, Fast Society, Yobongo and others undoubtedly saw record numbers that I’m sure we’ll be hearing about shortly. But in talking with other attendees throughout the show, the consensus was clear: there was no consensus winner among those apps. Some people preferred one, some preferred another. And some preferred none at all — they simply networked the old fashioned ways: those being yes, Twitter and Foursquare. But everyone agreed that the amount of corporate and startup advertising and branding going on this year was amazing — not necessarily in a good way, just in a way that you had to talk about. Just look at some of the images above and below. There was a nifty foursquare court (as in, the actual game run by the company) area that was one giant Pepsi Max ad. We had a GroupMe taking over a big grill house. CNN took over an entire Austin bar and completely rebranded it — complete with a big glowing, rotating sign. Uber took over a hundred or so pedicabs. Even our parent, AOL, took over a huge portion of the conference center for a TV studio that we used. The list goes on and on. Obviously, marketing and branding has always been a big part of SXSW. But this year was exponentially beyond anything seen in years past. Some conference-goers compared it to Disneyland. But it was actually much worse than Disneyland. It was Disneyland if they had rides with names like: It’s A Small Red Bull World. That’s not necessarily to say that any of this had an adverse affect on the conference itself. In fact, all the sponsorships meant more parties than ever before, more free food and drinks than ever before, and enough free shit — er, schwag — to clothe a small nation. And when the discussion wasn’t about the crazy advertising at the conference, it was about the iPad 2. People who had them were constantly showing them off everywhere you looked. Meanwhile, everyone was either talking about the pop-up store that Apple set up on sixth street just to sell the product (and its magnetic cover), or they were standing in line to get in the store. I walked by the store each day. There was home to a constant, often massive group of people waiting to get inside to buy one. with the one they wanted, others walked away with any one they could get. At one point, I stopped by the store just in time to hear an employee telling those in line that unfortunately, they only had one model left in stock: the white, 64 GB, WiFi version. Almost no one got out of line. I think employee could have said that all remaining models had broken screens and the reaction would have been the same. People wanted the thing, no matter what. When we look back, I think we’ll recognize SXSW 2008 as the year of Twitter, SXSW 2009 as the real year of Twitter (and the launch of Foursquare), SXSW 2010 as the year of Foursquare, and SXSW 2011 as the year of branding, advertising, and the iPad 2. A little unconventional, yes, but that’s the way it was. |
San Francisco Pledges Support For Life-Saving 'Fire Department' Mobile App | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 3 | 16 | Back in January I an ambitious new mobile application that has a very good chance of saving lives (perhaps even lives). And it’s just gotten support from the City of San Francisco, which is the first major city to pledge support for this very important service. The application itself is called Fire Department. Download it, and you’ll be asked if you’re trained in CPR. Click ‘Yes’, and the application will then passively monitor your location (without draining your phone’s battery). Here’s where the life-saving comes in: if someone calls 911 to report a possible heart attack victim, 911 dispatchers can send an alert to anyone in the vicinity with CPR training who has this app on their phone. They’ll immediately receive a push notification with the location of the victim, as well as the locations of any nearby automatic external defibrillators (AEDs). The whole process only takes a matter of seconds. Minutes are absolutely critical in these situations, and the immediate initiation of CPR before an ambulance arrives can be life saving. But there’s still a lot of work to be done. At this point the service is only available in the San Ramon Valley Fire Protection District where the initiative got its start (Lucas Hirst, who has helped spearhead the effort, is a friend of mine from high school). San Francisco is now on board, and is asking volunteers to help build a map of AEDs (which frequently go unused in emergencies because people simply don’t know they’re there). San Francisco hopes to have the technology working by the end of the year. The city’s website for the initiative is . The news was announced at an event today by SF Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White and City Attorney Dennis Herrera, along with Fire Fighters Union Local 798. Now if only they’d fix the startup . [vimeo 19139695] |
Get You Some New Tiny Camera Bags From Acme Made | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 3 | 16 |
It’s easy to confuse a camera bag with a man-purse. Not that murses are a bad thing — but not all of us can pull them off, so we must be wary in our camera bag choices. I’m sorry to say I wouldn’t be able to rock these Acme Made bags, though they do look very nice. I can’t really do the euro look. The Union Kit Messenger (top) is like a tiny messenger bag made just for your DSLR, with a sexy, soft red interior. Its “Bombshell Technical Fabric” is “water, stain, and abrasion resistant.” Sounds complicated! Costs $30, very reasonable. And here (above) we have the Union Ultra-Zoom. It’s meant for a slightly smaller camera: an ultra-zoom, obviously, or maybe a micro four-thirds device. It looks like this too includes the Bombshell fabric, though perhaps not as much? It’s got more room for accessories, it looks like to me, but it’s hard to tell. It costs $45, which indicates largeness. The Messenger will be available on April 1st, and the Ultra-Zoom is available now, |
Wii 2 Announcement At E3 Hinted At Within Industry | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 3 | 16 |
Nintendo hasn’t announced anything, nor have there been any leaks or even indications that Nintendo is doing anything but stay the course. That said, Wii sales have since last year, and the has replaced it as the must-have family-friendly gaming device. Some would have said that Nintendo should have preempted this decline by announcing a successor last year, but others seem to think that this year will be the one, and rightly so. Analysts and industry people alike (most recently EA’s label head Frank Gibeau) are suggesting that . The Sony is more or less vanquished (as a major competitor; it’s still a viable platform), and if Nintendo announces a new and improved console, it might check the momentum of the Kinect, rather than (if they’d done so last year) competing with it on equal terms in a cutthroat battle for holiday consumers. What do we think? Honestly, I’ve stopped trying to predict the big N. They’ve got so much money and such a totally different sense of business and gaming that I wouldn’t want to go out on a limb in any direction. But an announcement at E3 really is a distinct possibility, whereas last year it was really only a distant hope. At any rate, we’ll be there whether they announce or not, so we’ll have the news as it breaks. |
Is This The Greatest VC Pitch Prank Ever Pulled? | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 3 | 28 | [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyrFWbGiGOc&w=630] Just like that fake , this probably fake VC pitch video has been making the rounds across Silicon Valley lately, portraying the saga of a probably fake Rachel Sequoia (heh) and her probably fake startup “Share The Air.” As I just finished doing an talk, the whole “bullshit for five minutes” thing really hit home with me, but especially the part where the actress playing Sequoia asks an audience presumably filled with VCs for 500K to support her location-based air service, which includes an ancillary app where you can use Google Maps to check into places where you’ve breathed. Yes, breathed. For what it’s worth, I think this whole thing is BS, from the over- ed Sequoia to the and audience to the landing page. After all, if any part of this were real, you would probably have heard about it here, first. |
Passion Capital emerges from White Bear Yard with $60 million fund to seed startups | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 3 | 28 | A new early stage investment firm is de-cloaking in London today. Three prominent Angel investors on the tech scene in London – Stefan Glaenzer, Eileen Burbidge and Robert Dighero – have been operating out of their base in Clerkenwell for just under a year. Rumours circulated that they were looking to raise a real fund to continue their work, and now the news is about to break (ok, now it’s broken). ( ) is a brand new fund aimed squarely at early stage tech startups and has closed its first investment at £37.5 million ($60 million). They anticipate making about 50 investments, where the average investment size is likely to be £150k-£200k at a time. But they say they will go as small as £15k-£50k and also “most certainly higher” than £200k depending on the situation. They are being pretty open. Here’s their and they’ve even their term sheet. Prior to establishing the fund the three partners have been intimately and directly involved as either founder or earliest executive in four of the most significant European technology success stories (measured by market cap on exit) over the last 10 years (Ricardo.de, Skype, Last.fm and QXL/Tradus). This is a crack team, in other words. This first fund for Passion comprises significant funding from the private sector, family funds and high net-worth individuals. In addition the UK Government has also invested £25 million via the the tenth Enterprise Capital Fund (ECF). This is a great example of where private investors can use the government-backed ECF scheme to de-risk their funds. Participating is Capital for Enterprise, an ECF programme intended to address a long-term structural weakness in the provision of risk capital for SMEs in the UK – it is wholly owned by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. Stefan Glaenzer said “We’re passionate about innovation and disruption and building world-leading companies – not just about “models”. And our success in raising this fund shows the confidence from private investors and the UK Government in our track record and vision.” Glaenzer and Burbidge first setup White Bear Yard in July 2009, a space with 7,500 sq ft in London in which to house their startups. But this was no incubator – merely a convenient way to house some of their investments close by. In early 2010 they were joined by Robert Dighero and the previously invidividual Angels started operating a 3-person informal partnership. Between them they’ve invested in more than 50 startup teams across Europe, Asia and in the United States, but in London they have most recently been most known for investments in , , and . As part of the UK Government structure, the fund will focus primarily on business for the benefit of the UK economy (so it’s easiest to meet this requirement if the startup is a UK limited company), but otherwise if there’s service from the startup to the UK market and/or business development/sales/dev in the UK that will probably satisfy the requirements as well. Glaenzer was last year named the best angel investor in Europe by readers and judges on and was also the first investor and executive chairman of Last.fm, seeing that company through to its sale to CBS (2007 USD $270 million). Prior to that Stefan was co-founder of Ricardo.de, one of the first European online auction and classified sites, sold to QXL. Burbidge was investment director for private early stage VC firm Ambient Sound Investments, founded by the Skype founding engineers. Prior to that, she was products director for both Yahoo! Answers and Skype. She was also ranked #11 in The 100 most influential technology investors in Europe according to a PeerIndex ranking. Robert Dighero was the former CFO of QXL/Tradus plc, sold to Naspers (2008 £1 billion) having guided the company from its founding to listing on four public exchanges. Robert was previously, at one point, CFO and founding executive of AOL Europe. |
Amazon Cloud Player Doesn't Work On iOS — But It's Not A Flash Issue | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 3 | 28 | As you may have read by now, earlier tonight, Amazon dropped a bomb on their rivals in the online music space: . And it’s not just working on desktop web browsers, it works on Android devices too. One important place it doesn’t work though: iPhones, iPads, iPod touches — no iOS devices. At first, you might think this is a Flash issue (Apple’s devices famously do not support Flash). But it’s not. I don’t have Flash installed on my MacBook Air and the Cloud Player works fine (as it does when you disable Flash in Chrome). Flash is needed to upload files to Cloud Drive, but not for playback. So that’s not the issue. Instead, it appears that Amazon may simply be blocking the mobile version of Safari from playing back songs through Cloud Player. When you attempt to load the player, you get a warning that the browser isn’t supported. But you can continue anyway and everything seems like it may be fine. But when you click “Play” nothing happens. On Android devices, Cloud Player works by way of the Amazon MP3 app. This app does not exist on the iOS platform because it would compete with Apple’s iTunes Store. Presumably, Amazon could make another stand-alone app for Cloud Player or include it in one of their other Amazon iOS apps, but Apple new platform rules on subscriptions make this a bit murky (Amazon’s Cloud Drive is free for 5 GB but costs a yearly fee for more storage). Of course, even if Amazon wanted to bring Cloud Player to iOS devices, Apple may not want it there. The company is gearing up to launch their own music locker system, though perhaps not until the fall. Google is also working on a similar service. : As Gian points out in the comments below, there is a way to play songs on an iOS device from Amazon’s service: you hit the option to download them. This essentially downloads the MP3 file from Amazon’s server and uses Safari’s built-in player to play it. Not exactly ideal, but it does work — with AirPlay too! |
Left-Handed DSLR Hack – Take That, Righty! | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 3 | 28 | Matt over at Gizmodo a nice bit of DIY work done by Andrew Scrivani, a left-handed photographer for the NY Times. His right arm is out of commission for a while, and left-handed SLR bodies are expensive as hell, so he went to his gear closet and put together this little hack. Basically it’s just a rigid bracket for him to hold while he fires the remote with his incapacitated hand; he can’t do everything, but he can at least hand-hold the camera and get the shot. |
Amazon Beats Apple And Google To Cloud-Based Music Storage/Streaming | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 3 | 28 | Well, the rumors were true. Not only is Amazon entering the “music locker” space, they’re doing it before both Google and Apple — as their “Cloud Drive” and “Cloud Player” have just gone on their site tonight. is the name Amazon is giving to its media storage space on their servers. They give you 5 GB of storage for free and allow you to access the media from any computer. Cloud Player is the name of yes, the actual player. And it comes in two flavors: a player for the , and one for devices. You’ll note an absence of an iOS player… A bit more: So there you go, Amazon has won the race of the big three to deliver a fully cloud-supported music option. Current whispers have Google launching something very similar at their I/O conference in May. And Apple is working on a similar concept as well — but it may not launch until this fall. At least that was the original plan, Amazon’s move may alter things, obviously. : |
London's tech startup investors start taking offices in Silicon Roundabout | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 3 | 28 | The areas around Old Street tube station, Shoreditch and Hoxton, just North of London’s Square Mile and on the border of East London, have come to be known, lightheartedly, as Silicon Roundabout, given that there is now a recognisable cluster of startups there. I’ve been tracking the trend . But what’s missing is the VCs. While, in Silicon Valley the VCs on Sand Hill Road are but a short drive from Palo Alto and Menlo Park, the VCs in London have preferred to stay in Mayfair, often close to the offices of the Limited Partners who back their funds. It’s not far away from Old Street – 3.2 miles – but it’s different in culture and scene. But to stay close to what’s happening in tech today it makes a lot of sense for investors to co-locate with the startups. Leading the advance guard almost a year ago was , a large space backed by three prominent Angel investors. Not strictly in ‘Silicon Roundabout’, but their Clerkenwell base is but a 5 minute cab or cycle ride away. But soon the area will be welcoming well-known startup accelerator programme , dubbed the Y Combinator of Europe by some. We’ve they they are poised to move from their West End location to hang out with one of their invested companies, . And today news that leading tech VC is to take some desks in the area (we hear three), co-locating in Scrutton Street with new landlord , also home to Groupspaces, Lightbox, Soundcloud, Tech PR SparkPR and Tweetdeck. Index was an early investor in Last.fm and Moo in 2006, both scions of the ‘Roundabout scene’, which also encompasses Songkick in Hoxton and Moshi Monsters in Shoreditch. Index will also now be a five minute walk from being able to conduct Open Office Hours at startup-coworking centre on City Road (underneath Editd), which contains startups including PeerIndex (Klout competitor), Squadify, Pora Ora, Twileshare, Teamly, and OpenSignalsMaps, among others, including Tech PR, Ballou PR. [Interest declared, I’m an advisor to TechHub]. Index they want to “do something that gets us even closer to the teams we work with, hold open office hours to meet some of the new companies we don’t, and generally embed ourselves in what is one of the hottest startup zones in Europe.” We’re told all of the Index team in the ‘West’ will be spending time at the new ‘East’ office at some point or other – but to be fair VCs are normally on planes if they are not in the office. They’ll now have to get the regulation . |
This OCD Chef Cutting Board Aligns Perfectly With My Neuroses | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 3 | 28 |
I won’t deny it — I get pretty neurotic when I’m chopping stuff in my kitchen. I was just fretting over some barbecued pork earlier that I simply couldn’t slice into pieces of equal width. Cheese is like that too, and of course celery. Maybe I’m crazy (I’m crazy), but I think we can all agree that this measurement-covered cutting board is a pretty good idea. I mean, look at it. It’s got a protractor on there! And all the little grids? Magical. Unfortunately it doesn’t have any method of chopping things exactly down the line, like those big paper choppers we used to use at school. That would be handy, and you could measure out your carrot sticks extra-precisely. I guess I’ll have to keep on guesstimating and hope nobody notices that the cheddar cubes are, strictly speaking, rectangular solids. [via ] |
TC Cribs: From Frenchmen To Randy Raccoons, An Inside Look At Seesmic | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 3 | 28 | Tune in for our full walkthrough of the office, led by Seesmic CEO . Oh, and if you want to watch Loic’s full description of Seesmic (which ran a bit long), you can watch it . As usual, credit to Ashley Pagán and John Murillo for the camera work, and to Mr. Murillo for the great editing. Here are the past episodes of TC Cribs: |
PrepMe's Coursification Offers A Personalized Online Learning Platform | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 3 | 28 |
Online test prep company is taking on the likes of online course platform Blackboard with the launch of Coursification, a web-based application for personalized online learning courses. What differentiates Coursification from other course management and online learning platforms is that it helps teachers offer a tailored, personalized curriculum to each student based on their performance and learning schedule. Each online course begins with a diagnostic assessment that identifies student learning gaps (specialized to the subject). After the diagnostic test, each student receives a personalized study schedule, which the teacher can simply import into the platform. The schedule is customized based on student proficiencies and the duration of the course. As students complete their assignments online, their comprehension is evaluated in short quizzes and longer tests online. PrepMe will store and analyze every interaction between the student and the curriculum and adjust the study plan based on progress the student has made. The platform also offers the ability to message and chat with teachers within Coursification and the ability to send files as well. Similar to Blackboard and other online learning SaaS offerings, PrepMe allows teachers to upload source materials, tests, quizzes and more. Because much of the learning and testing is based online, Coursification is ideal for professors and teachers who are comfortable with placing all of their content on a web platform. PrepMe’s offering could also be useful for remote teaching. In addition to Blackboard, PrepMe faces competition from and Moodle. |
null | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 3 | 16 | null |
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