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Burn Notice Prequel Goes All Dual Screen With Realtime Comments | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 4 | 17 | TV is just not the same without Twitter and Facebook chatter. Tonight’s prequel movie comes with social chatter about the show on your laptop courtesy of , the realtime commenting system. The USA Network launched this , which pulls in comments, Tweets, Facebook status updates and Fan Page comments, as well as YouTube video and Twitpic photos about the show. Echo gathers it all into alive chat feed, which is then curated, and the best comments appear on TV. Prior to the show, actor Bruce Campbell answered questions online about the show. In the first two hours, 18,000 fans were commenting in the stream, hoping their comment would be plucked into the curated channel which was shown on TV. Yes, all of this harkens back to AOL chatrooms filled with minor celebrities, but this is , dude. And the feedback loop is now plugged into the broadcasting system. Your Tweets will now be televised. |
Wall Street Gives Larry Page A Big -1 | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 4 | 17 | Google’s with Larry Page back at the helm as CEO of Google didn’t go so well last Thursday. Revenues did rise an impressive 27 percent, but expenses grew an even larger 34 percent, partly due to across-the-board salary raises and ballooning . The next day, Google’s stock took a nosedive, closing on Friday at $530, almost $50 below its close on Thursday before the earnings call. More than $15 billion of Google’s market value, or about 8 percent, was wiped out, the biggest single-day drop since 2008. This reaction was not solely because Google missed Wall Street consensus earnings estimates by a three cents. It was also . Wall Street investors fear Larry Page and the unknown changes he may bring to the company, which up until now has been one of the stock market’s most consistent earners. Page’s performance on the earnings call, or rather lack thereof, compounded these fears. He literally phoned it in, stating a few scripted words at the beginning of the call via telephone before handing it over to his CFO and other executives. Page didn’t even hang around to answer any questions, during a less than stellar quarter when the company is undergoing many changes internally. He would have been better off not even appearing at all. http://investor.google.com/webcast.html Page spoke for a few minutes at the beginning of the call, which interestingly is not yet available for replay on . In an unconvincing monotone, he said (from my notes): We’ve had a tremendous quarter, with 27% revenue growth. Tremendous. [In terms of the recent management changes], everything worked as expected. I am excited about these exchanges. Eric [Schmidt] is working on governmental and external affairs. I am very excited about Google and our momentum, and also excited about our future. Jonathan Rosenberg is transitioning out. I wanted to thank him for all of his insights. We will clearly miss him, and thank him from the bottom of our hearts. Schmidt and Rosenberg, the senior V of product management who is , used to run the earnings calls. The analysts loved Rosenberg. And throughout the call his praises were sung by other executives as well. Page said nothing substantive about the management changes or the new direction of the company. The biggest question mark over Google right now is about its social strategy, . But the senior VP in charge of social, , was not even on the call. Instead, the call was led on the product sides by , now head of Local, and , head of Ads. It’s not that surprising that investors responded by giving Larry Page and Google a big -1. They voted by selling their stock. And maybe Page is fine with that. He wants to manage Google for the long term, not to please short-term investors. They’ll figure it out eventually. The problem is that doesn’t work unless earnings keep outpacing expectations and the stock keeps going up. If the stock keeps going down instead, then all of a sudden it does matter how Page treats Wall Street. Talent is attracted to rising stocks, and Google needs as much talent as it can lay its hands on to go after social, local, mobile, and other new markets. |
Dropbox Hits 25 Millions Users, 200 Million Files Per Day | Michael Arrington | 2,011 | 4 | 17 | will announce a number of milestones on Monday morning, we’ve learned. The file backup and sharing service was by and . It was in one of the early Y Combinator classes, now has 25 million users and 200 million files are “saved” daily, and more than 1 million every five minutes. That’s impressive growth from the the company had a year ago (they had in late 2009). Dropbox enables people to sync files and media across platforms and devices, in order to have them available from any location. The service also allows people to easily and quickly share files with others. Dropbox provides users with 2 GB of space for free, and they can for more. People use dropbox for personal storage, file syncing between machines, and group collaboration on projects. They have desktop software for the usual OSs, and mobile access, that makes things run smoothly. They are much more tight lipped on revenue and profitability, though. Guesses range all over the place, but the company is certainly efficient with bandwidth and storage. They likely only upload unique files. Common files, like songs and movies, aren’t re-uploaded repeatedly. Whatever their revenue, the company is on a roll and will likely be getting a lot more attention in the near future. Perhaps even a large “DST-style” secondary round with liquidity for founders and perhaps investors. And this could be an IPO not too long down the road, too. Personally I’ve found the service to be increasingly useful as I use multiple machines. Efficient and easy cloud storage, along with the usual web services like email, make that fairly easy. Just a few years ago, not so much. Our first coverage of Dropbox, at a YCombinator demo day, . They’ve raised just in funding from Sequoia Capital, Accel Partners and others. We did a particularly entertaining of their office a couple of months ago. My favorite Dropbox story though, and you can ask Drew this if you see him in person, is the time I found his unlocked iPhone sitting alone at a dinner table in Hawaii while he was off socializing a few feet away. So I did what anyone would have done. I set a password on the phone and put it back where I found it. |
OMG/JK: Flipping Through The PlayBook, Now In Stunning HD | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 4 | 17 | It’s time for a new episode of OMG/JK. And yes, the title above refers to what may be the greatest technical advance for TechCrunch TV since its inception last year: we’re now shooting the show in HD. Now you can see the drool coming out of MG’s mouth every time we mention the word “Apple”. It’s very exciting. This week we discuss the sudden death of Cisco’s Flip camera line and the launch of RIM’s new BlackBerry tablet. We also debate the new, ad-supported Kindle and whether or not Amazon will be launching a tablet of its own in the near future. Tune in! Here are some posts relevant to this episode:
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Nissan's Nismo Racing Leaf Looks Great, Performs Adequately | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 4 | 17 |
Created for “a series of special demonstration appearances,” this Nismo RC is a racing-based rethinking of the Leaf design and powertrain. They’ve shaved off about 40% of the weight, bringing it down to just over 2000 lbs, lowered it to have only 2.4″ of clearance, and of course switched it over to rear wheel drive. The performance is… well, we can’t expect much, since it’s more or less an optimized Leaf, not a sports car from the ground up. So 0-60 in 6.85 seconds is actually quite impressive. The top speed of 93, not so much, and the running time of 20 minutes won’t have it winning any endurance races. They did it mainly to combat the idea that electric cars aren’t sporty. I guess they haven’t heard of Tesla. Here’s the full press release, with a few more specs for racing enthusiasts: The name on the back panel, just under the massive adjustable rear wing, says Nissan LEAF™. The powertrain is an 100% zero emission advanced Lithium-ion battery design, just like that found on the world’s first affordable mass market electric vehicle. And despite its lack of rear doors, rear seat, trunk, audio system, navigation, carpeting and other amenities, there is a discernable family resemblance. But that is where the similarities between the production Nissan LEAF and the Nissan LEAF NISMO RC end. As indicted by the “RC” – for Racing Competition – this new electric vehicle, which makes its world debut at the 2011 New York International Auto Show on April 20th, is purpose-built to bring new meaning to the term “Racing Green.” Already a world leader in zero emission production vehicles with the late 2010 launch of the Nissan LEAF passenger vehicle in the United States, Europe and Japan, Nissan is now looking at the racing world as a way to draw attention to the seemingly untapped potential of electric vehicles. “Combining the talents of NISMO, Nissan’s world renowned motorsports group, and engineers behind some of the company’s Super GT and FIA GT1 race teams, the Nissan LEAF NISMO RC will serve as a rolling laboratory for the accelerated development of EV and aerodynamic systems, as well as a platform for the development of new green motorsports series,” said Carlos Tavares, chairman, Nissan Americas, speaking at the New York International Auto Show. The new electric race vehicle will likely make a series of special demonstration appearances at various motorsports venues in 2011, with the company exploring pioneer zero emission competition spec series in future years. A Serious Racing Machine
The Nissan LEAF NISMO RC is designed and constructed as a real racing machine, starting with its full carbon fiber monocoque bodywork. The three-piece bodywork includes removable front and rear sections, fixed windows, LED headlights and taillights and driver-adjustable rear wing. Building on the unique exterior styling of the production Nissan LEAF, the 2-door race version was created by Nissan Global Design Center in Japan. Special 4-coat Pearl White paint with blue NISMO/Zero Emission graphics completes the exterior. Dimensionally, the race car features a 3.9-inch shorter wheelbase, is 0.8 inches longer and 6.7 inches wider. The most dramatic difference is height, with the NISMO RC sitting more than a foot (13.8 inches) lower than the production Nissan LEAF. Ground clearance is limited to 2.4 inches, compared to 6.3 inches for the road going car. And, at 2,068 pounds, the race car weighs in at about 40 percent less than the production vehicle. The layout of the NISMO RC is also markedly different from the production sedan, offering a mid-ship location for the battery pack, electric motor and inverter – with drive to the rear wheels versus the production Nissan LEAF’s front-wheel drive. The NISMO RC also utilizes a double-wishbone suspension design front and rear and driver-adjustable brake balance. It rides on 18-inch 6-spoke wheels and P225/40R18 Bridgestone racing tires. Like the production Nissan LEAF, the NISMO RC is powered by a lithium-ion battery composed of 48 compact modules and a high-response 80kW AC synchronous motor that generates 107 horsepower and 207 lb-ft of torque. It can be charged up to 80 percent of its full capacity in 30 minutes using the quick charging port located inside the rear cowl. And unlike other competition vehicles, the NISMO RC has no tailpipe, no emission of CO2 or other greenhouse gases while being driven, and no exhaust sound. In preliminary testing the NISMO RC produces 0 to 62 mph acceleration in 6.85 seconds and a top speed of 93 miles per hour. It is projected to have a running time of around 20 minutes under racing conditions. “There’s a perception among some people that electric vehicles fall on the dull side of the automotive enthusiasm scale – which is certainly not the case with either the production Nissan LEAF or this electrifying Nissan LEAF NISMO RC,” added Tavares. “Nissan LEAF owners are fully embracing this new world of zero emission technology. We believe the same potential exists in the motorsports world as well, with Nissan proud to be first on the starting grid.” |
Hey Kids, What Time Is It? | Steve Gillmor | 2,011 | 4 | 17 | Suddenly there’s a lot of noise about Twitter hitting an execution wall. The musical chairs at the top with Dick coming, Ev backing away, Jack returning, and Ev really leaving are responsible for much of the discussion. Underlying the shifts is the current meme that Twitter now has to justify its valuation with some clear business model. The only problem with all this: so what if Twitter has no clear revenue to justify the $3 or 4 billion the company is supposedly now worth. Part of the problem is the comparison to Facebook, which is said to be enjoying over a billion in revenue as compared to 2 digit millions for the Twitter cloud. One is leveraging a carefully curated cloud of friends and family; the other is a realtime news service on the front lines of the media transformation. As such, Twitter is more analogous to Netflix than it is to Facebook. If Twitter counted users as subscribers, they are 10 times the 20 million of the streaming service. But of those engaged enough to be analogous to paying subscribers, the numbers are likely more equal. All that’s left is to identify what those frequent flyers do and how that might represent addressable engagement. Engagement, by the way, means show me the money. And Twitter doesn’t have to explain how to make money in order to justify the value of the service. What it does have to do is clarify what it does and why that IP is uniquely and defensibly held by its executives and investors. It makes sense (at a surface level) to identify presumed success by examining the talents and track record of its executives. Keep in mind that Ev Williams sold his previous company to Google and is known to have been unhappy with what followed. As with a list of acquired CEOs including most recently Dodgeball’s Dennis Crowley and Jaiku’s Jyri Engestrom, Google’s track record has been spotty. No more so than what happened with Yahoo and another string of acquisitions, but not the success Twitter is threatening. Twitter’s IP is that it controls the worldwide realtime news information bus. Although the news business and other entertainment networks have been challenged by the move to the Web, and now the tablet, the social media that emerges will have huge economies of scale and formidable barriers to others’ entry. Take a look at what Apple has done with its iPad lead, and how it appears ready to add cloud services. Who are the competitors in the social news space? Facebook? No real iPad app, though the iPhone one plays in the push notification alert business. The realtime nature is blunted by the lack of speed required to gain traction (your friends are still going to be there 5 minutes later) and the way Likes are implemented as a vote rather than a cascading viral retweet. No @mentions either, which not only provide a head’s up to the mentioned but a social map to the group (implicit or explicit.) Google? So focused on killing Facebook by cloning that there’s not even 20% time left over for Twitter. Microsoft? Oracle? Who? None of them care about news, or heterogeneous direct messages that span silos. But we care. Twitter DMs are simple, push notification compliant, and built on a namespace we’ve decorated with streams that define our interests, opinions, values, and relationships. Who else has this? Nobody. Meanwhile, the garbage about Twitter continues, to what end. Are competitors trying to eat away at the inevitability of a user-managed system of record? What competitors? Chatter? The only similarity there is how far ahead Chatter is in the enterprise, with its combination of viral incentive for creating and routing the status updates of the enterprise software and device grid, and a revenue cloud that ensures continued growth. I don’t mind ringing our own bell, because to not do so is misleading. Mostly, the noise is a reflection of the lazy media. Faced with the choice of reporting what is a secret even to the direct participants or making it up out of whole cloth, reporters hide behind a lack of conjecture while pundits try to thread a needle of conservative guesses that are more likely to be vaguely true than not. The latter produces tons of predictions about decisions not being debated; the former reflects the conflicting recollections of eyewitnesses to the most forgettable of events. Here’s my guess: the combination of Dick Costolo and Jack Dorsey together with the benign pressure not to sell of Evan Williams adds up to massive success when the iPad platform reaches its first stage of maturity. By maturity I mean an application ecosystem that thrives on the routing of addressable metadata-wrapped objects based on @mention-weighted push notifications. We are at an early stage where users are learning how to process poorly-hinted incoming pointers into the information stream, and in the process providing signatures of behavior that will inform the filtering substructure when they are broadcast in parallel to the objects they decorate. The good news is that these iterations are software-based not hardware-constrained. The relative stability of iPad 2 over, or next to, iPad 1, suggests the new computing platform is close to lift off. The signature of laptop-based information triage is multiple open windows or tabs, email and social alerts, and digest hints of the value of serial video streams. It’s an effective interface, one that we can’t yet replace with the tablet/notification paradigm. Or can we? The iPad presents a new set of primitives that taken together orchestrate an uber queue of social imperative. Namely, a dynamic list that emulates at a tunable process layer the kind of mental triage we perform routinely: is this actionable, is there an advantage to being timely, what value will this provide to someone monitoring my feed, the group’s feed, related feeds, and so on. More: is this valuable regardless of the spread of the content, can it make access to the content more valuable as a result, does this value provide incentive not just for subscription but for creation of the original content and tuning of the contributors? On this week’s Gillmor Gang, Foursquare boss Dennis Crowley bats away similar noise about The Death of Check Ins. He concludes the show with a pitch to the shrinking pool of developers, saying that contrary to fading, the company is focused on capitalizing on the opportunity in front of it. I never check in to Foursquare, preferring to lurk at the push notification level where the rhythm of check ins blends with @mentions and news alerts. But what Crowley and friends are building out is a fascinating version of that uber queue within Foursquare. In one view, you can surf nearby specials as vendors compete for attention with discounts. In another, you can explore different categories of venues in a given area. Two slices, two dices — new incentives for metadata creation that grow exponentially as they take off in popularity. As Mark Twain, or Yogi Berra, famously said, reports of Twitter’s or Foursquare’s death are exaggerated. There’s way too much left from picking over RSS’s carcass. No, seriously, I really mean that. There’s way too much value lurking in Jack Dorsey’s original pivot from a bike messenger dispatch service to be mined, and who better than Dorsey to lead the charge as the iPad drives the push notification queue into the new media vortex. It’s two minutes past the Big Bang, and not enough time to grab the low hanging fruit. As Professor Irwin Corey, or Wavy Gravy, said Adam said to Eve: Stand back, I don’t know how big this is going to get. |
Fly or Die: The HP Touchsmart All-In-One PC And The Businessweek iPad App | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 4 | 17 | It’s big screen week on . This week, John Biggs and I take a look at the , a 14-inch T , and the new . As usual, a surprise guest joins us to defend his company’s product decisions. HP has been trying to bring touch computing to desktop PCs with its Touchsmart line. The problem has always been that raising your hands to manipulate a touchscreen in front of you from a sitting position is unnatural, uncomfortable, and tiring. To address this issue, the new all-in-one Touchsmart reclines so that you can go from regular keyboard mode to surface computing mode. It is an improvement from past efforts, but to me it’s a mistake to have a device with dual modes. You are going to pick one—keyboard/mouse or touch—and ignore the other. Does everything really need to be a touchscreen? The Toshiba portable monitor also seems clunky. For a standalone monitor that you plug into your computer via USB, it is lighter than any standard monitor. But in the age of tablets, it is really competing against fully functioning computers wit touchscreens that are slightly smaller. It’s a niche product at best. Finally, we have the Businessweek iPad app, which I earlier in the week. It brings the print magazine to the ipad with a $2.99 a month iTunes subscription. I think it could have been so much more. Even Biggs agrees. |
iPhone 4 About To Be Flickr's Top Camera. Point & Shoots? Pretty Much The Opposite. | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 4 | 17 | What’s the most popular camera used in terms of pictures taken that are uploaded to Flickr? Right , it’s the Nikon D90. But in about a month or so, it will be Apple’s iPhone 4. What’s amazing is that D90 is nearly three years old. The iPhone 4 is not even a year old. Just look at a the chart above. The rise has been spectacular. But it’s hardly the first time an iPhone has risen this quickly. Back in 2009, as the most popular camera on Flickr. The difference is that at the time, Flickr was counting all the iPhone models together. That meant the original iPhone, the iPhone 3G, and the iPhone 3GS were all clumped together to overtake the Canon model. Now they’re split up, and the iPhone 4 alone is still going to be the most popular camera on Flickr in under a year. It’s pretty remarkable, really. It also speaks to just how badly Flickr has dropped the ball with regard to mobile. We’ve previously delved into this topic when recounting a former Yahoo employee talking about how Flickr should have built a service like Instagram, but simply . Flickr has long had the data to show that smartphone cameras were starting to dominate the market, but they really didn’t do anything about it. The chart below is even more interesting. The “popular” point & shoot camera are all tanking, quickly. You’d think there would be one that is still doing well, but when compared to the high end (SLR) market and the smartphone market, they’re in a total nosedive. This will only get worse. As we’ve also previously written, the point & shoots have also totally dropped the ball with regard to the social photo revolution — . Six months ago, the data looked bad for point & shoots. Now it looks downright frightening. If the trend continues (and it’s actually speeding up), the point & shoot is finished. Flickr’s data obviously isn’t absolute. But they do have a wide range of users who are interested in photography uploading to their site. And the main disclaimers they give about their data is that smartphone data may actually be . So yes, it’s not looking good for point & shoots. And if you were to lump all the iPhone models together, they would be so far ahead of every other camera that the graph would look absurd. This is the state of photography right now. And it’s going to continue in this direction. While Android has overtaken the iPhone in terms of market share, none of their individual phone models are doing particularly well from a photo-taking perspective. It’s hard to say why this is — lack of a good Flickr Android app, or just because there are so many different model? But with the iPhone 5 , the iPhone 4 will have plenty of time to sit on the crown and expand upon it. Flickr, meanwhile, will have plenty of time to contemplate what they missed out on in the mobile photo revolution happening on their own charts. And the point & shoots will have plenty of time to bleed. (As an interesting sidenote: note how Apple is actually the of the . Is it because they only have four models? Or is Flickr’s data just wrong? Also worth noting: the iPad 2 is not doing well as a camera in terms of Flickr pictures. — it’s simply not good for still image capture.) |
Kiip Is An Entirely New Mobile Ad Model: Real Life Rewards For In-Game Achievements | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 4 | 10 | , the seven month-old mobile ads startup, is finally coming out of stealth today and revealing an entirely new model for in-game advertising, one that offers users value instead of fighting an uphill battle for their attention. Going beyond the banner and text ads used by industry leaders iAd and AdMob, the team behind Kiip has thought long and hard about the way people actually play games and has come to conclusion that the moments when players experience in-game achievements like upping a level, completing a challenge or accumulating a certain number of points are the most valuable in terms of providing the most user engagement. Unlike , Kiip doesn’t just show an ad when those moments are achieved. What it does instead is pretty interesting: Kiip has partnered up with big brands like Sephora, popchips, Homerun.com, Sony Dash, Vitamin Water, 1-800-Flowers, Dr Pepper, GNC, Carl’s Jr and Hardee’s to offer players actual in-game rewards like a voucher for six bags of popchips, a lipstick sample or a complimentary smoothie when they complete gaming milestones. 19-year-old Kiip co-founder tells me, explaining what he calls the “Achievement Moment.” Wong emphasizes that Kiip (pronounced Keep) isn’t a conventional ads network but a “Rewards Network”. Hmmm … It depends on what you consider an ad. Offering players custom-tailored rewards is basically lead generation. It’s an easy away for advertisers to associate their brand with a positive moment, almost diabolical in its simplicity; .” As of midnight tonight the Kiip Rewards Network will be rolling out rewards in over 15 games, reaching 12 million monthly active users (Wong wouldn’t tell me which games they were involved with so if anyone sees a Kiip ad please let me know). Brands will pay up when a user signs up for a reward, from 25 cents to $3 per cost per engagement. The rewards themselves are actually targeted algorithmically based on the game demographics, for example if no girls play a game there will be no offers for lipstick. If someone ends up with something they don’t want they can always gift it. Kiip is also complimentary to other mobile ad networks as it only provides rewards for achievements and doesn’t get into banner ads or the real estate business. Says Wong, Co-founded by former Digg employees Wong, and Sequence’s , Kiip pocketed $4 million in Series A funding from Hummer Winblad and True Ventures Wong tells me the team has got a lot more up its sleeve, and as always, you’ll read about it first here. [vimeo 22222677 w=620] [vimeo 22201693 w=620]
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Dave McClure On 500 Startups: "If Sequoia Is The Yankees, We're The Oakland A's" | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 4 | 10 |
After Demo Day on Thursday, I sat down to talk to investor about the strategy and vision behind the early stage seed fund and accelerator program, which he hopes will eventually encompass 500 actual startups (currently the portfolio is at around 110). In the interview McClure talks about the perfect formula for a startup (hacker + hustler + designer) and why the three Ds — Design, Data and Distribution — are important for young companies. He says that the fund basically makes its $25K to $250K bets on companies with simple revenue models, He compares the 500 Startups to Ichiro, a smaller Japanese baseball player who has built a career around smaller hits. He then extends the baseball metaphor further, referring to Michael Lewis’ a book that chronicles the unexpected success of underdog Oakland A’s because of their strategic building of a winning team. While 500 Startups may not have the pedigree of venture capital biggies like Sequoia or Kleiner Perkins, it can still eek out some wins simply by being scrappier and more unconventional. McClure said, driving the point home.
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Peter Thiel: We're in a Bubble and It's Not the Internet. It's Higher Education. | Sarah Lacy | 2,011 | 4 | 10 | Fair warning: This article will piss off a lot of you. I can say that with confidence because it’s about Peter Thiel. And Thiel – the PayPal co-founder, hedge fund manager and venture capitalist – not only has a special talent for making money, he has a special talent for making people furious. Some people are contrarian for the sake of getting headlines or outsmarting the markets. For Thiel, it’s simply how he views the world. Of course a side benefit for the natural contrarian is it frequently leads to things like headlines and money. Consider the 2000 Nasdaq crash. Thiel was one of the few who saw in coming. There’s a famous story about PayPal’s March 2000 venture capital round. The offer was “only” at a $500 million-or-so valuation. Nearly everyone on the board and the management team balked, except Thiel who calmly told the room that this was a bubble at its peak, and the company needed to take every dime it could right now. That’s how close PayPal came to being dot com roadkill a la WebVan or Pets.com. And after the crash, Thiel insisted there hadn’t really been a crash: He argued the equity bubble had simply shifted onto the housing market. Thiel was so convinced of this thesis that until recently, he refused to buy property, despite his soaring personal net worth. And, again, he was right. So Friday, as I sat with Thiel in his San Francisco home that he finally owns, I was curious what he thinks of the current Web frenzy. Not surprisingly, another Internet bubble seemed the farthest thing from his mind. But, he argued, America is under the spell of a bubble of a very different kind. Is it an emerging markets bubble? You could argue that, Thiel says, but he also notes that with half of the world’s population surging to modernity, it’s hard to argue the emerging world is overvalued. Instead, for Thiel, the bubble that has taken the place of housing is the higher education bubble. “A true bubble is when something is overvalued and intensely believed,” he says. “Education may be the only thing people still believe in in the United States. To question education is really dangerous. It is the absolute taboo. It’s like telling the world there’s no Santa Claus.” Like the housing bubble, the education bubble is about security and insurance against the future. Both whisper a seductive promise into the ears of worried Americans: The excesses of both were always excused by a core national belief that no matter what happens in the world, these were the best investments you could make. Housing prices would always go up, and you will always make more money if you are college educated. Like any good bubble, this belief– while rooted in truth– gets pushed to unhealthy levels. Thiel talks about consumption masquerading as investment during the housing bubble, as people would take out speculative interest-only loans to get a bigger house with a pool and tell themselves they were being frugal and saving for retirement. Similarly, the idea that attending Harvard is all about learning? Yeah. No one pays a quarter of a million dollars just to read Chaucer. The implicit promise is that you work hard to get there, and then you are set for life. It can lead to an unhealthy sense of entitlement. “It’s what you’ve been told all your life, and it’s how schools rationalize a quarter of a million dollars in debt,” Thiel says. Thiel isn’t totally alone in the first part of his education bubble assertion. It used to be a given that a college education was always worth the investment– even if you had to take out student loans to get one. But over the last year, as unemployment hovers around double digits, the cost of universities soars and kids graduate and move back home with their parents, the once-heretical question of whether education is worth the exorbitant price has started to be re-examined even by the most . Making matters worse was a 2005 President George W. Bush decree that student loan debt is the one thing you can’t wriggle away from by declaring personal bankruptcy, says Thiel. “It’s actually worse than a bad mortgage,” he says. “You have to get rid of the future you wanted to pay off all the debt from the fancy school that was supposed to give you that future.” But Thiel’s issues with education run even deeper. He thinks it’s fundamentally wrong for a society to pin people’s best hope for a better life on something that is by definition exclusionary. “If Harvard were really the best education, if it makes that much of a difference, why not franchise it so more people can attend? Why not create 100 Harvard affiliates?” he says. “It’s something about the scarcity and the status. In education your value depends on other people failing. Whenever Darwinism is invoked it’s usually a justification for doing something mean. It’s a way to ignore that people are falling through the cracks, because you pretend that if they could just go to Harvard, they’d be fine. Maybe that’s not true.” And that ripples down to other private colleges and universities. At an event two weeks ago, I met Geoffrey Canada, one of the stars of the documentary “ .” He talked about a college he advises that argued they couldn’t possible cut their fees for the simple reason that people would deem them to be less-prestigious. Thiel is the first to admit some of this promised security is true. He himself grew up in a comfortable upper-middle-class household and went to Stanford and Stanford Law School. He certainly reaped advantages, like friendships with frequent collaborators and co-investors Keith Rabois and Reid Hoffman. Today he ranks on Forbes billionaire list and has a huge house in San Francisco with a butler. How much of that was him and how much of that was Stanford? He doesn’t know. No one does. But, he argues, that doesn’t mean it’s not an uncomfortable elitist dynamic that we should try to change. He compares it to a world in which everyone was buying guns to stay safe. Maybe they do need them. But maybe they should also examine some of the reasons life is so dangerous and try to solve those too. Thiel’s solution to opening the minds of those who can’t easily go to Harvard? Poke a small but solid hole in this Ivy League bubble by convincing some of the most talented kids to stop out of school and try another path. The idea of the successful drop out has been well documented in technology entrepreneurship circles. But Thiel and Founders Fund managing partner wanted to fund something less one-off, so they came up with the idea of the “20 Under 20” program last September, at San Francisco Disrupt. The idea was simple: Pick the best twenty kids he could find under 20 years of age and pay them $100,000 over two years to leave school and start a company instead. Two weeks ago, Thiel quietly invited 45 finalists to San Francisco for interviews. Everyone who was invited attended– no hysterical parents in sight. Thiel and crew have started to winnow the finalists down to the final 20. They’ll be announced in the next few weeks. While a controversial program for many in the press, plenty of students, their parents and people in tech have been wildly supportive. Thiel received more than 400 applications and most were from very high-end schools, including about seventeen applicants from Stanford. And more than 100 people in his network have signed up to be mentors to them. Thiel thinks there’s been a sea-change in the last three years, as debt has mounted and the economy has faltered. “This wouldn’t have been feasible in 2007,” he says. “Parents see kids moving back home after college and they’re thinking, ‘Something is not working. This was not part of the deal.’ We got surprisingly little pushback from parents.” Thiel notes a handful of students told him that whether they were selected or not, they were leaving school to start a company. Many more built tight relationships with competing applicants during the brief Silicon Valley retreat– a sort of support group of like-minded restless students. Of course, if the problem Thiel sees with the higher education bubble is elitism, why were so many of the invitees Ivy League kids? Where were the smart inner-city kids let down by economic blight and a failing education system of a city like Detroit; the kids who need to be lifted up the most? Thiel notes it wasn’t all elites. Many of the applicants came from other countries, some from remote villages in emerging markets. But the program has a clear bias towards talent, and like it or not, talent tends to be found in private universities. Besides, he’s not advocating that stopping out of school is for everyone any more than he’s arguing everyone should be an entrepreneur. But to start a new aspirational example– an alternative path– it makes sense to start with the people who have all the options. “Everyone thinks kids in inner-city Detroit should do something else,” Thiel says. “We’re saying maybe people at Harvard need to be doing something else. We have to reset what the bar is at the top.” That hints at another interesting distinction between the housing bubble and the education bubble: Class. The housing bubble was mostly a middle-class phenomenon. Even as much of the nation was wrapped up in it, there was a counter narrative on programs like CNBC and in papers like the Wall Street Journal pooh-poohing the dumb people buying all those condos in Florida. But with education, there’s barely any counter-narrative at all, because it is rooted in the most elite echelons of the upper class. Thiel assumes this is why his relatively modest plan to get 20 kids to stop out of school for a few years is so threatening to a lot of the people who have the biggest megaphones to scream about it. “The people who are the most critical of this program are the ones who are most complacent with where the country is right now,” he says.
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Adobe And Zend Launch Flash Builder 4.5 For PHP Development | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 4 | 10 | Adobe and , the PHP distribution company, are announcing Flash Builder 4.5 for PHP software, a new integrated product aimed at helping PHP developers create rich Internet applications for mobile, Web and desktop leveraging the Flash Platform. Zend, which has been offers its own distribution of PHP, the popular open-source scripting language for Web applications, and sells software and support services around the language. The Flash Builder 4.5 for PHP gives developers a single code base for applications for Android, Blackberry Tablet OS and iOS while sharing code from Web applications. Adobe Flash Builder 4.5 for PHP includes an integrated copy of Zend Studio 8, which allows developers to develop Flash based applications within a single environment. Specifically, the integrated software offers a single UI framework to create Flex and PHP projects for desktop and mobile and the ability to connect to PHP services and generate ActionScript value objects. The combination of the two frameworks in one suite is powerful, says Zend CEO Andi Gutmans. Adobe says that more than 131 million smartphones are expected to have Flash Player installed by the end of the year. And PHP is the leading language for public facing web applications, says Gutmans. It’s good to see Zend back on the mend, after a a few years ago. |
null | John Biggs | 2,011 | 4 | 28 | null |
Can't Build A Real Startup? Play The 'Startup Fever' Boardgame | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 4 | 10 | There’s actually quite a few options for wannabe-founders looking to live vicariously through this current : A) You can read TechCrunch and hash out whether or not a product will succeed in the comments section. B) You can hang out on lauding people who have of school to build a startup and voting up articles that basically amount to entrepreneurship porn. C) You can engage in the intense debates surrounding about startups on Quora, despite having no startup experience yourself. D) And if you’re really committed, you can go sit at The Creamery in San Francisco or and pretend to be working on a stealth project, when all you’re really doing is surfing Twitter. Or E) you could play A Kickstarter project by Louis Perrochon, Startup Fever is, yes, a board game about running a startup (#bubblealert). Like a Silicon Valley version of Settlers of Catan, Startup Fever allows players to build imaginary product, hire and poach imaginary employees, gain imaginary users and generate imaginary revenue. Perrochon is currently looking for $10,111 to improve the artwork and look and feel of the game, which truthfully leaves much to be desired. Thus far he’s raised $2,390. Backers who pledge beyond $50 will receive an actual copy of the game and backers beyond $60 will receive the Venture Capital Edition complete with six lawyers, 30 company shares, and a limited edition rules addendum. If you pledge $500 and over (and live within 50 miles of Palo Alto) you’ll also get the personal attendance of Perrochon at your game evening where Perrochon will ” In addition, Perrochon will randomly bring a 4.5kg Toblerone over to your house (bizarre, I know). Those that have the cash might want to splurge on the CEO-Level and have Perrochon explain things, as playing the game, which sure includes a lot of multi-colored playing pieces, actually seems just as complicated as running an actual startup. So maybe you should just do that, instead. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIGkCMIOYTA&w=630] |
Larry's Turn | Steve Gillmor | 2,011 | 4 | 10 | John Lennon would have loved Twitter, Yoko is said to have revealed. Certainly she would have the inside track on this, especially if she had insisted on it. But what I want to know is whether Hendrix would have loved GarageBand, or would Miles have preferred Android over iPhone. It’s open, man… We’ll never know what the Gettysburg Address would have looked like after surviving auto-correct. Or what Hitler might have done with GPS. By the looks of Techmeme this weekend, we don’t even have a shot at what is happening right now. Instead, we have Larry Page’s first day at his second take as Google CEO. Stuck inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues again. I know it’s just business. Fear of Facebook has sent Eric Schmidt packing or at least down the hall in some newly refurbished executive building. Larry is being handed something similar to the creaking load of stupid situations that Russell Brand wrestled to the ground in the newly refurbished Arthur. Brand did a good job, and so will Page, but to what end? It is increasingly difficult to remember how amazing Google was just a few story lines ago. Back then, the throw it against the wall and see what sticks approach seemed engaging and faintly revolutionary. Gmail was the real disruption, heralding the Cloud and daring Microsoft to ignore it at what continues to be its peril. Wave seemed like Animal House, live from Australia it’s Saturday Night, now with added realtime. Buzz was like the Apple leaks that came surprisingly true, a capitulation to copying the remaining good ideas out there. Sadly, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, and magic isn’t what it used to be. But there is light at the end of the tunnel. Gmail succeeded because it was given time to breathe. Today’s Gmail is streaming, the magic fountain of youth for Netflix and iPad 2 and AirPlay. YouTube made some noises about turning on streaming this week, and if the Gmail strategy of letting beta dynamics build just barely in time scalability is repeated it will be a really big deal. Google has shown no skill at doing what Jobs does best, wrangling the studios. But wrangled they are, leaving a gaping hole for streaming live news and events to break through. Ustream and the other streaming startups are not moving quickly enough to take advantage of the opportunity, which is summarized in one word: iPad. If Google can do to streaming what iTunes did to podcasting, namely produce ubiquitous iPad consumable live streams of any and all comers, the market will do the rest just like it is doing with Netflix. This will require some heavy duty gumption on Larry’s part. He’ll have to abandon the Schmidt antipathy for all things Apple and support (or continue to support) H264 and the direct channel to the iPad and AirPlay. You can see noises already about doing Google TV right, but that’s a sucker play that people like Sony’s Howard Stringer are already signaling they won’t go for again. It’s hard to remember apparently that Google’s early alliance with Apple on the iPhone was equally good for both parties.
If rumors of an Apple/Twitter deal are right, it’s all the more reason for Larry to align with iPad on streaming. He doesn’t need anyone’s approval, except perhaps for Adobe’s (and who needs that.) Seriously, Larry has the opportunity to realign with Apple and head off a streaming war that is too early and irrelevant to either company’s assets. It also would limit Amazon’s upside and further damage Microsoft’s chances of doing the much harder job of swallowing the Apple platform. Today’s movie analogy is The Fighter, where Marky Mark is forced to jettison his mother and crack addict brother to get another shot at a title fight, and then realizes he must bring his new and old teams together to win. Google still thinks it can invent its way forward, but it’s a bit of a bluff given its Facebook paranoia. The swing vote these days is with the users, who know what they want and will flock to the first group that delivers. We know a tell when we see it, and Larry’s 25% social tax is a loser. He’s saying social is the enemy, and we’re saying no it’s not. Social is not something gained, it’s something we give. Facebook may overreach but we flock to Twitter to reduce the chance of being overpowered. We root for Netflix as much because it is not Comcast as we did for Google for not being Microsoft. We intuitively know that if the majors hold Netflix up for ransom we’ll pay 20 bucks a month instead of 8. And intuitively we know that once we get there it will be a lot easier to cut the cable cord knowing the economics are more in line. In other words, it’s a counter-intuitive world where the cartel’s smartest move would be to keep prices low to keep Netflix from crossing over. A world where the way forward is to hold your friends close and your enemies closer. We pay Netflix $8 a month not for what they deliver but for what they could. We may not be sure who our friends are, but we know who aren’t. Now it’s Larry’s turn. |
InPulse Adds A Smartphone-Like Experience To Your Wrist Watch | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 4 | 10 | Mobile phones have evolved into smartphones because these devices have basically become computers in the form of a cell phone. Besides browsing, one of the key components that make smartphones as interactive as a computer are the apps that can be used within the device. And it’s interesting to consider how we can add this element of computing and interactivity to other gadgets we use in everyday life. Today, -backed startup is launching its wrist watch, which to a watch. Founder Eric Migicovsky says that he is a avid cyclist and wanted a way to check his email, SMS messages and calls in a hands free devices. Using a smartphone on his trips didn’t make sense because he wasn’t able to actually use his hands while cycling. So he started thinking about how he could add smartphone capabilities to a watch, which he always wore when exercising. Thus, InPulse was born. The device connects via Bluetooth to your phone and will deliver email alerts, SMS messages and calls directly to the watch. The watch can connect wirelessly to all kinds of host devices: computers, laptops, and smartphones and works best with Android, Blackberry, Mac, Windows and Linux (adding iPhone support is in the works, but Apple requires special chips to be built into the watch.) It’s a two way connection, so inPulse can send packets back to the host based on user interaction. As for the specs, the device’s screen features a 1.3″ 96×128 pix full color display. The watch also includes a
ARM7 microcontroller running at 52MHz; 32kB total program space, 8kB RAM; CSR BC4-ROM Blue (L2CAP); aver-the-air programming; a vibrating motor; and a 150mAh lithium-ion polymer battery. The device charges via microUSB and the battery apparently lasts up to 4 days depending on display/wireless use. The device comes in two colors: the silver version is $149 and the black anodized version if $199. Of course, a bluetooth enabled watch is not new. For example, Fossil with Sony Ericsson a while back for a similar device. Another competitor is What is innovative about InPulse is the ability to create apps for the device, which then adds some pretty impressive functionalities to a watch. For example, one app allows you to get notifications on the watch, and lets you see your messages coming in without taking out your phone. There are many use cases for that feature, but namely, it can be rude to check your phone for emails in the middle of a serious meeting or event. Another beta user (the device was soft launched earlier this year) is a paramedic who needed both hands free for work. InPulse has opened up it platform to developers and so far over 30 apps have been created for the watch. These range from making your watch into an iTunes music controller to becoming a PowerPoint presentation remote control (Migicovsky used his InPulse watch to present and pitch during a few weeks ago). You can also from the watch. The beauty of the device is that you can program it to display anything via apps. Another popular use case is to programmers is display real time server stats for programmers on the go. There’s even a devoted to featuring the watch’s apps. While there was recently a Yale hackathon dedicated to developing for InPulse, the startup is sponsoring a hackathon at the Hacker Dojo on April 17. You can find details So far, InPulse has sold 600 devices to beta users. As we increasingly become more reliant on constant connectivity, devices like InPulse will certainly make consumer’s lives easier. For example, my phone accompanies me to the gym and I constantly check it while on the treadmill. And I wake up in the middle of the night to check emails, etc. But during my pilates lesson, I’m unable to check my email and keep my phone by my side. A watch that showed me my missed calls, emails and latest news headlines would be ideal for me. Clearly, InPulse’s users are those who want and need to be connected at all times (like me). But it’s important to note that some consumers may be willing to abandon their apps, emails, and phone calls for a few hours while their hands are tired. Of course, in the tech world, those people are few and far between. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BudP-dw9SEo&w=640&h=390] |
Gillmor Gang 4.10.11 (TCTV) | Steve Gillmor | 2,011 | 4 | 10 | The Gillmor Gang — Robert Scoble, Doc Searls, Kevin Marks, Andrew Keen, and Steve Gillmor — dive deep into the reasons why Google has its work cut out for it in the fight for social credibility. @scobleizer thinks it’s because the engineers of the search startup don’t understand the value of wasting time. Doc Searls, who arrived late in the show due to a failure to understand how clocks waste time, thinks there’s room for failing at social. In a week where Netflix paid a million dollars per episode for the full Monty of seven seasons of Mad Men, the new challenger to HBO and Showtime puts a price tag on the value of the model formerly known as the rerun. British philosopher and TCTV interviewer Andrew Keen agrees with In The Plex author Steven Levy that Google’s future lies with mastering Artificial Intelligence. Watch for a secret revealed about new CEO Larry Page. Hint: he doesn’t need a microwave. |
ACLU Looking Into Mobile Phone Scanner Being Used By Michigan Police | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 4 | 19 |
Now, although there is likely to be a little flare-up of concern regarding this issue over the next couple days, it’s not so much the potential privacy breach I’m worried about as not knowing what tools the police have at their disposal. In this case, although this device might potentially be used for less-than-ethical purposes, the important part is simply raising awareness of the availability of such a device and how it pertains to your rights. concerns a device, apparently , billed as a “mobile forensics” tool. It basically does everything it can to get by security measures on phones to access call records, pictures, and so on. Very useful, as you can imagine, in an investigation where, say, a kidnapping victim’s phone might reveal their last location. But the ACLU is concerned the devices could be used (though I see no suggestion that they are) on routine traffic stops after coercing drivers or passengers into surrendering their phones. Certainly a potential risk, but not one that appears to have occurred much, if at all. They’re useful devices that could easily be misused &mdsah; kind of like guns, which of course we don’t allow police to have, right? The more troubling part is that the police are asking for half a million dollars to share information on the program. Now ridiculous. We should all know our rights well enough to refuse an unreasonable search, but it’s important to know what the police may ask of us as well. The police are public servants and should serve this information up publicly as soon as they are asked. Taxpayers need to know how their money is being used, and as citizens, we should know how our laws are being enforced, how the information acquired is kept private, and so on. It’s as simple as that, and with luck the courts will bear it out. [via and ] |
"Buttonless iPod" Faker Writes In About Fakery | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 4 | 19 |
A little while back, we got a in the tips line of a 128GB iPod touch with a capacitive home screen button. Shortly afterwards, , much clearer, which we quickly determined was fake — retroactively showing the earlier one to be a fake as well (we suspected, but it was too blurry to really prove one way or the other). All in good fun: the debunking of a fake Apple device. I suspected it was the same person behind both photos, and indeed, in our tip line today comes an email from the faker himself (or herself) talking about how easy it was to make a fake and get it on all the biggest gadget sites of the net. It’s really not too surprising – with tools like GIMP available for free on the internet, it’s just a matter of spending a little time making it look good. I’ve done a few in my time. For instance, I made this one for April Fools, but we never used it: You should try it, too — really. It’s fun! And if we can’t tell the difference between a fake and a real device, well, that’s on us, right? At any rate, here’s his email to us, which I’m printing in its entirety here because it’s kind of a fun story. Dear TechCrunch,
This has been fun. Not so long ago, I saw some leaked pictures of a 64GB iPhone. Naturally, I was intrigued by the idea of this. In fact, I was intrigued so much that I decided to try my hand at leaked photos. Why not make a 128GB iPod touch sporting a capacitive home button? It was a fun challenge. So I greased up my iPod touch, pulled out my old camera, and snapped some shaky shots. Even though I was almost entirely new to GIMP, the whole process only took an hour or two. At this point, I decided to turn my endeavor into an experiment. I figured that after all my work, I might as well submit the pictures to some news sites. As a reader of the rumor sites, it was an obvious choice. I had no doubt that the pictures would get published. Sure enough, within hours of submitting them, they were popping up everywhere. While some sites were skeptical, nobody could resist the concept on a home button free iPod touch. The story even managed to hit most commented for the day on Engadget. After seeing the initial response, I couldn’t help but create another photo, which I proceeded to submit. Since many were more skeptical of this one, it didn’t manage to attract as much attention as the first batch. Within hours of my new photo going up, apparently somebody else decided it would be fun to make some photos as well. Soon, these photos were showing up as well. I noticed that people were becoming increasingly skeptical though, so I decided that I had done enough work. I made some interesting conclusions though, which I would like to share.
1. Rumor sites will post anything: While I wasn’t surprised that my pictures were posted, I was shocked at how willingly they were posted, without much questioning. I realize that it is the job of these sites to publish things like this, but at the same time, it seemed as if many were too willing. Make no mistake, I have a lot of respect for bloggers and what they do, but I feel as if more time should be put into verifying the authenticity of pictures.
2. Commenters can be brutal: I read every one of the nearly 700 comments on the Engadget article. While some were enthused about the idea of a capacitive iPod, others absolutely bashed it to no end. Some even went out of their way to confirm that the pictures were fake. I saw various color corrected versions of the photos floating around with annotations and arrows pointing to alleged “dishing” around the home button and funny pixels that made the photos fake. While these people had spotted the flaws, they obviously had way too much time on their hands. Others were delusional and saw things that really weren’t there. Some said that the screen looked defective and that something looked funny where the bezel met the display. Some sites reported that the iPod looked like it had a low build quality. While it may have looked like this from the blurry photos, I can assure that there is nothing wrong with my iPod.
3. People will believe anything: I was astounded at the amount of people that had no doubt that the pictures were real, even after it was officially noted that the second photo I sent in was a fake, even pointing out GIMP in the metadata. I guess if you want to believe that something is real, you can force yourself to do so, even if all the evidence points away from it.
4. Opinions are easily swayed: When the first batch of photos were released, commenters were disgusted at the thought of a capacitive home button. Everyone was condemning it as impractical and stupid. When the new clearer photo was released, people’s opinions started to change. Even though it was decidedly fake, many started to think differently about the concept, and I read many comments that stated how nice the iPod looked with a capacitive button, and that maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea after all. Was the iPod that much better looking without all the grease?
5. It’s way too easy to fake a photo: Even though I am a beginner to photo editing, I was able to successfully trick many people into believing the photos I threw together in a few hours late at night. Also, did anybody even notice the joined volume buttons? I can’t say if I even saw one blog that mentioned that detail. From what I learned, I would like to see two things change. First, it would be nice if more time was put into confirming the authenticity of all these leaks, rather than being the first to publish it. I mean, look at TUAW. They never said anything about it. At times, it gets sickening listening to all these rumors floating around. More time needs to be spent separating fact from fiction. Secondly, I would like to send a message to all the readers and commenters of tech blogs. Please don’t believe everything you see. Just because it’s published, that doesn’t mean it’s real. Remember, it’s called a rumor for a reason. I hate when people say things like “That’s it, I’m switching to Android,” or “Just when I thought that Apple couldn’t get any stupider,” just because they see these rumors and believe them instantly. It can get rather annoying, and when I read things like this, I’m continually surprised that we are able to maintain a stable society with people like this out there.
I would like to thank you for participating in my experiment, and I hope that we can all learn from this. |
G-Slate Officially Hitting Tomorrow For $530 On Contract | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 4 | 19 |
We’ve heard it a few times before, but now it’s official: the T-Mobile G-Slate, also known as the , will be hitting the US . If you want one contract, free, it’ll set you back $750 — more than the equivalent iPad, but remember, has 3D! Although the usual pricing bickering will follow, the main problem isn’t getting your money’s worth ($750 is competitive, if not enticing) but that there’s no lower-spec option with less space, no 3D, no 3G, or what have you. I mean, , but these initial Honeycomb tablets seem to be shooting a little high. We’ll have our review up really soon, though, so keep an eye on the front page and we’ll let you know whether it’s worth your hard-earned dollars. Oh, and T-Mo that if you before tomorrow, you can get a little discount. |
Posts mean prizes – ViewsHound to launch crowd-sourced news site with daily prize fund | Steve O'Hear | 2,011 | 4 | 19 | Posts mean prizes. That’s how , a new soon to launch crowd-sourced news site from the team behind digital publishing platform , is pitching its wares. It hopes that volunteers will be enticed to contribute by the chance to win cash for the best articles, photos and cartoons posted to the site. Once ViewsHound launches on the 2nd of May, a prize pot of $120 will be up for grabs every day, split into $50, $30 and $20 prizes for the best posts, along with $10 for the photo of the day. In addition, there’s a “pre-launch prize fund” of $1,000 for material contributed before the actual launch. As for what type of content they’re looking for, ViewsHound says that the focus will be on opinion and comment pieces, with Editor-in-Chief Ian Howlett hopeful that “many journalistic careers can be launched and sustained” by the site. That said, it all sounds a little gimmicky to me as the motivation to write for free is often more about reaching an audience and the creative process itself. “Everyone who contributes can link their articles back to their blog and benefit from Viewshound’s traffic”, notes Howlett, although the site doesn’t have any traffic , of course. And should ViewsHound begin to generate traffic and with it revenue or, eventually, exit, those volunteer writers who haven’t won cash prizes might well come to resent the lack of monetary reward or stop contributing to the site. After all, . Perhaps a better model would be simply to share revenue from the start, . |
iFixit Tears Apart The PlayBook | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 4 | 19 |
It’s the newest tradition in gadget journalism: get the latest device and break it to pieces on camera neatly and systematically, then arrange all the pieces in a little display, noting the most interesting bits. The . What’s been learned? Well, the usual components are there — radio, cameras, and so on. There’s a gyro and accelerometer, the battery is a bit smaller than larger tablets’ (naturally), and there are two microphones, probably allowing for noise reduction. And no, they didn’t find a native email client in there. No surprises, and the disassembly is rated as fairly easy. The LCD isn’t fused to the glass, so if you crack the front, you won’t be buying a whole new display. Good to know. |
Social Jukebox exfm Raises $750,000 For Its Music Discovery And Sharing Extension | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 4 | 19 | , a extension that allows you to discover new music while browsing, today announced that it has raised $750K in seed funding. The round was led by , , , and . exfm adds to the $500K it raised back in May of last year, bringing total investment to $1.25 million. The startup will be using its proceeds to grow its team, launch mobile apps for iOS and Android, and expand its offerings beyond the Chrome extension. Formerly ExtensionFM, in December of last year, the startup rebranded its product exfm and added a bunch of new features, including Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr integration. Although and may be your go-to services for streaming radio and recommendations for similar artist, exfm is a fantastic complement to these services. Once you’ve installed exfm’s , you just continue to surf the Web as you normally would, and exfm alerts you when a website you visit has an embedded or linked mp3 file. You can then either listen to the song on exfm’s player, or you can create a playlist and add it to your queue. The extension remembers where it found the songs, and can stream from the host site at any point, even if you don’t revisit the page. Thankfully, exfm doesn’t just autoplay every song on a site while you’re there. Instead, when you arrive at a site, exfm scrapes the content and identifies each mp3. At the top of your browser, the extension indicates how many songs its found, allowing you to “play all”, or hear individual songs and add them to your queue. exfm also provides some great ways to share. The extension’s equivalent of the “like” or “favorite” button is “note”, so that when you note a new song you’ve just heard, it tags those songs on your exfm profile so that your friends can see what you’re listening to. And, in addition to being able to link to and share songs with your Last.fm account, the extension will (if you’re a Tumblr user) scrape through the songs that your Tumblr friends have on their profiles and will hoover them into your exfm playlist. This also holds true for Facebook and Twitter — in that exfm adds songs your friends have posted to their social streams to your playlist, and can show you a realtime feed of your friends’ music fare. This social component is absolutely huge, and it takes exfm from “just another extension” to the next level. I can’t tell you how many times I will hear a song over the course of my Internet wanderings that I really enjoy, play it a few times, but then later forget where I heard it, and don’t want to take the time to scour the Web to rediscover it. exfm makes that difficulty a thing of the past. For those music enthusiasts out there, exfm is a bit like for Chrome. Unfortunately, exfm doesn’t yet offer a Firefox plug-in, but COO Charles Smith tells me that one should be coming down the pipeline in the next month. (Along with iOS and Android apps.) For more, check out the video below: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lA2pSgdlP2Q] |
Music Gaming Startup JamLegend Acqhired By Zynga | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 4 | 19 | Earlier today we about music games startup joining the deadpool. JamLegend aimed to compete against biggies Rock Band and Guitar Hero and was shut down today after three years so the team could We’ve just confirmed that the team will actually be moving to gaming giant Zynga in a talent acquisition. From the JamLegend : At the time of acquisition JamLegend had $2 million in funding led by cofounder of Tellme and iLike Hadi Partovi. The startup was founded by Ryan Wilson, Arjun Lall and Andrew Lee and managed to accumulated a registered userbase was around 2 million. No word yet on the price of the acquisition. A Zynga representative would not comment. |
Sony Stops The PSP Go | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 4 | 19 |
I think we all knew this day was coming. A few retailers are reporting that their current stock of will not be replenished, and it seems that Sony has stopped producing the much-maligned handheld. points out that it’s not to be found on Sony’s Japanese website, and says stores have received notice not to expect any new shipments. That the Go was never popular is on the record: it was criticized for its abandonment of the UMD format, and launching without a clear plan for converting existing games or getting new ones via PSN. Sony later suggested the PSP Go was , but I don’t think anyone bought that. Nobody bought the console, either: some indications had it selling less than 20,000 units in all of Japan during 2010. The end of the PSP Go hasn’t been denied by Sony, though they haven’t announced it either. Our guess? Fire sale, and then . [via ] |
TechCrunch France kicks off the first edition of Recipes Conference | roxannevarza | 2,011 | 4 | 19 | It’s been over a year since TechCrunch France has been . We announced the relaunch at last year in March and went on to launch a killer event called Remix in Paris in November. The event made it to the in France with over 2K livestreamers watching our 300+ participants from behind their screens. Now, we’re getting reading to launch yet another fabulous event: . And this time, all will be in . Oui, oh oui ! for TechCrunch Remix went on sale not too long ago and we are already completely sold out of early bird tickets. We are expecting a 500-person turnout on May 5th on the ESCP campus in Paris for a halfday with some of Europe’s hottest companies and entrepreneurs, including: …and many more A-list entrepreneurs, investors and startups as well. The full program will be available shortly. Of course, we’d like to extend a huge thank you to our sponsors and , along with our partners , and . Wondering if French startups are really all about food, fashion and dating ? Or whether the country has managed to properly implement ? Curious about what exactly is going on in the local exit market, now that and ? If you need a good reason to head to Paris or if you just so happen to be around, definitely consider attending this event – which will be without a doubt one of France’s larger startup events this year. |
Review: Antec Rockus 2.1 Speakers | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 4 | 19 | Not bad, but the “3D” effect isn’t very compelling, and the lack of extra features makes the $200 price unpalatable.
These funky-looking speakers a while back with a big promise: a powerful new virtual surround system that analyzes the stereo signal and places the sounds in a “3D sound field.” The look is certainly unique, though I can’t say it’s particularly functional. The satellites are fitted with little cones around the speaker elements that I’m pretty sure don’t help distribute the sound properly and only serve to make the speakers look bigger. The honeycomb grill is cool, though. The subwoofer is an unassuming front-firing unit. For normal usage, which is to say the daily consumption of music, YouTube videos, and so on, the Rockus 2.1s work just fine. I’d say that they have a definite dip in the midrange, or rather a natural emphasis on the low and high end. The high end is definitely clear, but sibilants are hissy and stab through the sound. The low end is powerful and fairly punchy, but also tends to rumble a bit, suggesting the sub is carrying the low end of the mids. Mids like neutral voices seem softened compared to the high end, and are often overpowered by things like accompanying snares and high hats. In games it’s the same story; machinegun rattle and things like footsteps in gravel or water tend to obscure the mid sounds of atmospheric noise. It’s not an unpleasant listening experience, in fact some of my songs sounded better with this EQing, but it’s not really “true”; speakers should be objective and neutral, rather than imparting their own sound. The “sweet spot” isn’t tiny, but it ain’t big, either. These are definitely made for sending sound to one person, though of course with a twist of the dial they can get plenty loud — loud enough to bother your neighbors without distorting, I think. The 3D sound is hit-or-miss, and besides that a matter of taste and situation. I’ve been playing a lot of Battlefield: Bad Company 2, and I legitimately can’t decide which setting is better. The 3D mode definitely widens the soundstage and stereo cues seem further towards their sides, but there’s also a huge loss of clarity and shift to the low end. It makes driving a tank or jeep a very visceral experience, but out and about it made the world sound like my character had water in his ears. You know that feeling, where everything is a bit indistinct? It’s like that. Don’t even think of turning it on for music; I’ve known virtual-surround systems that have enhanced music, and this one definitely doesn’t. There’s also a lack of the useful stuff we like to have on speakers. The volume/input puck is nice, but why isn’t there a headphone port on there, or mic? And there’s no way to tell how high the volume is set, since the volume dial just spins forever. Unfortunately, with great speakers like the or classics like Klipsch’s Promedia 2.1s going for $50 less, I just can’t recommend these Antecs. Looks like the longtime hardware maker still has a lot to learn about making a compelling speaker set.
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Byliner Launches With A Splash, Aims To Disrupt Long-Form Journalism | Sarah Lacy | 2,011 | 4 | 19 | The media is buzzing with allegations that Nobel Peace Prize nominee Greg Mortenson his bestselling books and misused millions of dollars in donations. Amazingly, within days of 60 Minutes breaking the story, a new book was already released about it. Only don’t call it a “book.” Byliner, the company that published it, is touchy about this, because this format is really something new. After all, we didn’t call blog posts articles, because blogging was a new kind of news. But there’s not another good word for what this is. This isn’t some longer, rushed blog post released on a Kindle. Called “ ,” it’s written by award-winning author Jon Krakauer, painstakingly edited and even available to download for free for the first 72 hours of its launch. Welcome to the stunning, new rapid-fire world of long-form publishing. Singles– as Amazon calls them– are like books, but meant to be read in a two-hour sitting, delivered quickly and electronically without the usual publishing house lags. The company releasing the burst on the scene yesterday too. I first met with co-founder and CEO John Tayman a few weeks ago, at the request of a friend who was thinking about investing and wanted an author’s take. Let’s be clear: I took this meeting purely as a favor to a friend. I went into the meeting expecting another ill-thought-out nouveau vanity publishing platform. I came out of the meeting wanting to write a Byliner single. (A few weeks later, and we’re actually in talks to do one during my third trimester when I can no longer travel. Call me a workaholic, but it sounds more fun than over-planning a nursery.) Byliner has raised just under $1 million in funding from Freestyle Capital, SoftTechVC and other individuals including Andrew Anker, Karl Jacob and Russ Siegelman. The company officially launches in May. So know reading this that I’ve become fully-biased since I met the company and am now betting on Byliner with my own time and my own name. I don’t know if it can get big enough to score a venture-style return, but it’s one of the first things that’s truly excited me about the future of high-quality, long-form journalism in more than a decade. Or, at least, half of Byliner’s business excites me. The other half I fear is a distraction from the more exciting side of the business. Let’s talk about that one first. Byliner.com is a discovery engine for readers to find great long form content. Say you like the style of Michael Lewis; Byliner will recommend other less-well-known, long-form journalists you might enjoy. It’s a rich database filled with back-catalogs of magazines, newspapers and the Web and a great way to find forgotten long-form pieces on a variety of subjects. My issue isn’t with the UI or the mission of Byliner.com. I just don’t think people are sitting around waiting for more long-form pieces to read. If you’re like me you already have a stack of books you are trying to find time to get through and stacks back issues of the New Yorker, the Economist and Vanity Fair are taking over your house. My problem has never been finding more great long-form stuff to read– my problem is finding time to read it. I think there’s a niche group who will love this site. But largely, I think it’s designed for a mass audience that reporters like me wish existed. It’s one of those sites designed for the way we wish we were and the time we wish we had– never a great starting point when it comes to the consumer Web. And, I’m not sure it allows you to find the best content, because even magazines and newspapers have been moving towards shorter and shorter articles. I doubt most up and coming reporters get much of an opportunity to write pieces that are more than 3,000 words long. I’ve probably written ten in 15 years. But that erosion of the art of long form is exactly why I was so excited by the other half to Byliner’s business: A new publishing house designed from the ground up to take advantage of the immediacy of digital publishing, and yet, keep the best aspects of a traditional publishing house at the same time. Authors will spend a few months– not years– writing, and Byliner will invest in real editing of the piece. That’s something traditional publishers no longer do, and most writers I know yearn for. Great writers can always benefit from great editors, and great editors are disappearing from journalism and publishing. The singles are turned around in a matter of days and weeks, not months or years. In the case of “Three Cups of Deceit”, new reporting was added just hours before publication. I assumed to get all of these benefits, and to sign with an upstart publishing brand, authors would have to sacrifice economics. But Byliner is even competitive on that one, largely because it’s stripping so many unnecessary bloated costs out of the publishing model. The authors assume none of the back-end costs – unlike a vanity self-publishing label – and are instead simply paid for their work. And they’re paid pretty well. Byliner doesn’t disclose what it pays for advances, and it will probably change over time depending on the imprint’s success, but right now we’re not talking about anything close to jaw-dropping 6-figure deals. Yet the advances are comparable with what many lesser-known authors and journeyman journalists I know have been paid to write a book; and remember– these aren’t the length of full-books. Byliner splits revenues with authors 50/50. Tayman hopes that Byliner.com will be key to marketing the singles, and that the label’s curatorial eye will lend cache to being a “Byliner original.” That cache is important. In the old media world, there’s a big difference between having a publishing house and self-publishing. It not only effects distribution and press, but it effects how seriously people take you as an author. There are about a dozen authors with contracts so far, and Byliner will be actively signing more (the company’s first few singles have been announced ). Its goal is to release a new single every 10-to-14 days, and it’s not afraid to be current. The label just sent National Book Award winner William Vollmann to Japan for two weeks to write a first-hand account of life in the nuclear evacuation zone. Byliner may wind up disrupting the likes of Vanity Fair and the New Yorker more than it disrupts publishing houses. If blogs deconstructed the breaking news element of newspapers and magazines, Byliner is trying to disrupt the investigative cover story. |
Apple Clamps Down On Incentivized App Downloads | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 4 | 19 | Bad news for Tapjoy, Flurry, and numerous other mobile advertising platforms that cater to iOS developers: Apple is clamping down on incentivized downloads. In other words, it’s now much harder to buy yourself popularity on the App Store. Developers who submit applications with these offer walls are having their applications rejected, on the grounds that they are violating section 3.10 of the developer guidelines (printed below). If you’ve used many iPhone apps, there’s a good chance you’ve come across an incentivized download offer. These usually say something like “Install one of these apps, and you’ll get ten free gold coins!”, giving you a chance to acquire whatever virtual goods or currency you’re after without having to shell over real cash. And the process is as easy as they come: tap on one of the promoted applications, download and install it, then open it once, and you’re ten gold coins richer. It’s a win-win situation for developers. The application that’s being promoted pays a fee to Tapjoy or one of its competitors, and the application that features the offer gets a cut. But these offers have apparently caused headaches for Apple. Incentivized app installs are used on such a large scale that they are likely impacting the coveted Top Apps listings — pay a lot of money for a bunch of promotions, and you may be able to get your app in the top 10 on launch day. Hitting those lists leads to a huge surge in downloads that can make the initial promotional investment well worth it. In other words, they give well-funded developers a way to nearly guarantee traction (at a cost). Apple also probably doesn’t like these systems because it doesn’t get a cut. Unlike in-app purchases, for which Apple gets 30% of every transaction, all of the money in these systems changes hands behind the scenes, between the developers and offer distributors. Apple’s clampdown is a big deal because incentivized downloads have become a big business, and plenty of big-name iOS developers have integrated incentivized downloads into their applications, including Tapulous (maker of Tap Tap Revenge), Groupon, Playdom, and Pinger (which has a massively successful free texting/voice app). Tapjoy just $21 million, and there’s little doubt the success of their system played a big part in that. It’s no coincidence that the news comes just a day after that Apple is now using different algorithms to decide how applications are ranked (and is presumably placing a higher emphasis on metrics other than downloads). It isn’t particularly surprising that Apple is shutting this down, but the fact that it’s happening , as opposed to months ago when these offers first took off, must be infuriating to developers and advertising platforms alike. Apple has to approve every application on the App Store, so it’s been aware of these offers from day one. And it’s not like Tapjoy and its ilk have been keeping them a secret, either. Tapjoy says it was given no advance notice about the apparent shutdown. Here’s Tapjoy’s statement on the news: As you may have heard, a number of applications submitted for update have very recently been rejected from the Apple App Store based on the fact that they were running incentivized app installs within their apps. This is something new from Apple and we, along with every partner we’ve talked to, were unaware of this prior to these notices of rejection. Like many application developers, we have reached out directly to Apple and look forward to clarification. To be clear, there is no new Apple policy that we are aware of. It seems there may be a new interpretation of the existing 3.10 clause, which is a bit surprising, as Tapjoy, AdMob, iAd, Flurry, W3i and others all power various forms of app install advertising. Many of the brands that promote their apps via Tapjoy also do the same on other major ad networks across the mobile advertiser ecosystem, and all of the apps we promote on iOS are Apple-approved. 3.10 reads: 3.10: Developers who attempt to manipulate or cheat the user reviews or chart ranking in the App Store with fake or paid reviews, or any other inappropriate methods will be removed from the iOS Developer Program Unfortunately, we believe much of this is caused by misconceptions around pay-per-install, the free-to-play model, cross-app promotion and their collective value to the ecosystem. We believe there are significant benefits to the advertiser (only pay for what you get), the publisher (monetize users who otherwise wouldn’t pay), and perhaps most importantly to the users, who not only get to discover new, exciting applications, but receive what is essentially a coupon for ad-funded virtual currency inside one of their favorite apps. All of this, of course, adds up to value for Apple as well, by creating a viable and thriving ecosystem. Tapjoy has been and continues to be very supportive of the Apple app ecosystem, and we were not surprised about the Top Free & Paid rankings algorithm changes – we’re all for incremental changes that add to the user experience and keep the environment dynamic. But banning the largest and most effective channel for application distribution, engagement and monetization has a significant and long-term negative impact on the user experience, developer innovation and advertiser utility. As the market leader in application distribution and monetization of free-to-play games, Tapjoy is currently coordinating with a number of our developer partners, as well as others in the market, to get a clear understanding of the issues and to continue to partner with Apple to meet their needs, along with those of app advertisers, developers and users. |
IBM Beats The Street, Posts Revenue of $24.6B; Net Income Up 10 Percent To $2.9B | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 4 | 19 | Following , IBM first quarter earnings today, reporting $24.6 billion in revenue for the quarter which is up 8 percent (or up 5 percent adjusting for currency). Diluted earnings came in at $2.31 per share, compared with diluted earnings of $1.97 per share in the first quarter of 2010, an increase of 17 percent. Analysts a share on revenue of $24.04 billion. First-quarter net income was $2.9 billion compared with $2.6 billion in the first quarter of 2010, an increase of 10 percent. Operating (non-GAAP) net income was $3.0 billion compared with $2.6 billion in the first quarter of 2010, an increase of 13 percent. Samuel J. Palmisano, IBM chairman, president and CEO said in a statement: “We delivered a strong first quarter with revenue growth across hardware, software and services and with more than 40 countries growing in double digits. We continued to see excellent momentum in our growth initiatives – smarter planet, cloud, business analytics, and growth markets – which bring together the full value of the IBM portfolio…We achieved broad-based margin improvement, while our cash flow and strong financial position enabled us to continue to return value to our shareholders. The company is raising its full-year 2011 outlook, expecting operating earnings per share to come in at least $13.15 from $13.00 previously expected. The company’s total gross profit margin was 44.1 percent in the 2011 first quarter compared with 43.6 percent in the 2010 first-quarter period. In terms of The Americas’ first-quarter revenues were $10.3 billion, an increase of 9 percent (8 percent, adjusting for currency) from the 2010 period. Revenues from Europe/Middle East/Africa were $7.8 billion, up 3 percent (2 percent, adjusting for currency). Asia-Pacific revenues increased 12 percent (4 percent, adjusting for currency) to $5.9 billion. OEM revenues were $600 million, up 13 percent compared with the 2010 first quarter. Revenues from the Software segment were $5.3 billion, an increase of 6 percent (4 percent, adjusting for currency), or 10 percent (8 percent, adjusting for currency). Revenues from IBM’s key middleware products, which include WebSphere, Information Management, Tivoli, Lotus and Rational products, were $3.3 billion, an increase of 16 percent (14 percent, adjusting for currency) versus the first quarter of 2010. Operating systems revenues of $542 million increased 9 percent (7 percent, adjusting for currency) compared with the prior-year quarter. Revenues from the WebSphere family of software products increased 51 percent year over year. Information Management software revenues increased 13 percent. Revenues from Tivoli software increased 8 percent. Revenues from Lotus software increased 1 percent, and Rational software increased 5 percent. And revenues from the company’s business analytics operations across services and software segments increased 20 percent. Revenues from the Systems and Technology segment totaled $4.0 billion for the quarter, up 19 percent (16 percent, adjusting for currency) from the first quarter of 2010. IBM ended the quarter with $13.2 billion of cash on hand, which is significantly higher than the $11.7 billion left in cash in the fourth quarter of 2010. IBM hasn’t really been on much of an acquisition spree this year, buying this year. Big Blue has known to be bullish on acquisitions so perhaps we’ll see more M&A coming from the company in the second quarter of 2011. |
Yahoo's Q1: Revenue down 6% To $1.06B, Net Earnings Decrease 28% | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 4 | 19 | Search portal Yahoo has released its 1st quarter 2011 earnings. Yahoo’s non-GAAP revenue for the first quarter of 2011 was $1.064 billion versus $1.13 billion reported for the first quarter of 2010. This represents a 6% year over year decrease. Yahoo’s GAAP diluted revenue for the first quarter was $1.214 billion, a 24% decrease from last year. Operations income also increased 1% to $190 million in the first quarter of 2011. Yahoo’s net earnings per diluted share for the first quarter of 2011 were $0.17 compared to $0.22 reported in the first quarter of 2010, also representing a drop of 23%. Yahoo’s total net earnings for Q1 2011 were $223 million, versus $310 million in Q1 2010 — A 28% drop. Display revenue increased 10% but overall search revenue dipped about 19%. Yahoo blamed its revenue dips on the reconfiguration of revenue due to a search agreement with Microsoft. It also held that revenue was flat YOY once you deducted the revenue from the sales of Zimbra and Hot Jobs as well as certain fee rate reductions. Yahoo has had a tumultuous quarter, experiencing layoffs twice and losing search income. Yahoo shares are after hours today as the company barely beat Wall Street market analysts’ modest of earnings at $0.16 cents a share and net revenue of $1.05 billion. [scribd id=53377872 key=key-y1hffmtp4xcsvyj05gk mode=list] |
Retrofit An AA-Powered Mouse To Lithium Ion | Matt Burns | 2,011 | 4 | 19 | I cannot be alone in my amazement of this mod. The creator essentially gutted his old Logitech mouse to hold a Nokia Li-ion instead of two AA batteries. That required some Dremel persuasion along with creating new battery contacts on both the battery and the mouse. The only thing missing now is a convenient way to recharge the battery besides popping it out of the mouse. The whole tutural is up on but you’re probably better off going about this on your own unless you have the same hardware and equipment. [via ] |
comScore: Including iPads, iPods And Tablets, Apple's iOS Outreaches Android By 59 Percent | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 4 | 19 | comScore has just released comparing the reach of Apple’s iOS platform to Google’s Android operating system in the U.S. The analytics and data company is reported that Apple’s device with the iOS operating system, including iPhones, iPads and iPod Touches, have a combined platform reach of 37.9 million, outreaching the Android platform by 59 percent. comScore says that the installed base of iPhones slightly exceeded that of iPod Touches, both of which were approximately twice as high as the number of iPads. Among the 37.9 million consumers with access to the Apple iOS, only 4 million (10.5 percent) accessed the platform via more than one device. And the combined 37.9 million iOS users is 59 percent greater than the 23.8 million combined Android OS installed base, which includes users of both Android phones and Android tablets. Of total mobile subscribers, Apple iOS has a 16.2 percent share compared to a 10.2 percent share held by Android. |
E la Carte: Table-Top Computers Bring Restaurants To The Future (With Bonus Trivia!) | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 4 | 19 | When you stop and think about it, the restaurant song-and-dance routine we’ve all memorized is a bit strange: we take our seats, , order some drinks, , order some food (and some smalltalk with the waiter), , eat til we’re full, , become frustrated that our waiter has apparently gone on their break and look around until we catch the busboy’s eye and make the “Check, please?” hand gesture, furrow our brows as we attempt to do mental math (made all the more difficult by that lunchtime margarita), hand over a stack of credit cards adorned with post-its to indicate how much to charge on each, sign our receipts (how much is 20%?), and, finally, get up to leave. Whew. , a Y Combinator-funded startup that’s making its big public debut today, is looking to mix things up a bit. The company is also announcing that it’s raised more than $1 million from investors including SV Angel, Dave McClure, Joshua Schachter, and Roy Rodenstein. |
Acer Gets New Head Of Smartphones And Tablets | John Biggs | 2,011 | 4 | 19 | After ousting previous tablet lead Gianfranco Lanci, has named Jim Wong as head of their Touch Business Group (Touch BG) and PC Global Operations (PCGO). After a series of wildly unsuccessful tablet launches, including the inscrutable Iconia, Lanci resigned. Wong, who led Acer’s IT initiatives, has been with the company for a little over a decade.
Acer Chairman and CEO, J.T. Wang, states, “For the past ten years Jim has led Acer’s global IT operations, including product development and logistics. In that time he has shown outstanding leadership and made important contribution to the company. He has also worked closely with our regional operations to thoroughly understand the needs of our marketing and channels at the front end operations. Therefore, we regard Jim as a well-qualified candidate to step into the role of Acer corporate president.” Wang continues, “The presidential candidacy must fulfill company’s needs for future development, and show capability to lead the company forward. As the ICT industry shifts from single to multiple operating system platforms, it opens up new challenges as well as new opportunities. Acer needs a leader who is familiar with technology, as well as understands the market. We reviewed Jim’s potential and agreed he would fit well in the role.” |
There is no escape – YouTube to live-stream Royal Wedding, while Twitter hashtag spammed | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 4 | 19 | As if you thought you could get away with switching off the TV, Google has announced that it will live stream the upcoming UK Royal Wedding between Prince William and Catherine Middleton via the Royal Household’s . From 9am GMT on Friday, April 29, the stream will follow the whole wedding proceedings. There will also be a live commentary (it doesn;t say who will be doing the honours). The whole thing will be made available to watch on-demand. Although Google says a video guestbook has been opened, . Comments disabled, guys. I wonder why? Google says search trends show that among the top ten countries searching for “royal wedding” include Singapore and the Philippines. There will even be Google Earth 3D imagery to offer a “Royals’-eye” view of the entire wedding procession “complete with 3D images of iconic landmarks and five species of digital trees that can be seen along the route”. They really are going to town. Meanwhile the “official” Twitter hashtag is now currently the subject of a massive bun fight between royalists and republicans (we used to call then Cavaliers and Roundheads) and is also being used by Twitter spammers. Er, congrats to Kate and William! |
15 Years Of Photo Sharing Exits Vs. YouTube | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 4 | 26 | The recent proliferation of early stage financing for photo-sharing startups like ($11.2 million), ($5 million), ($7.5M) and ($41 million) is leading some to speculate that we are in a bubble. But are photo sharing investments just another sign of irrational exuberance? Curious about how photo sharing exits stacked up, we looked into some of the most notable ones over the past 15 years and put them into the above infographic. Photo sharing startups that pivoted to something else pre-acquisition like Slide were not included. The total valuation of startup Webshots, which over an eight year period, was averaged out to be around $50 million. Startups whose primary business is photo printing and not sharing, like Snapfish (acquired by HP and now handling printing for 10,000+ retail stores) were also left off of the list. —————————————- — Excite acquires Webshots for $82.5 million — Webshots founders buy it back fro $2.5 million — CNET buys Webshots for $71 million — Google acquires Picasa for at least $4.7 million — United Online acquires PhotoSite for $10 million — Yahoo acquires Flickr for $30 million — Fotolog acquired by Hi Media for $90 million — American Greetings buys Webshots from CNET for $45 million — News Corp acquires Photobucket for $300 million — Kaboose acquires BubbleShare for $2 million — Shutterfly acquires for Tiny Pictures aka Radar for $2m* — Facebook buys Divvyshot for Undisclosed —————————————- Despite the current intense investor interest, the largest exit for a photosharing startup thus far was Newscorp’s acquisition of Photobucket for $300 million in 2007, nowhere near YouTube’s $1.65 billion acquisition by Google in October 2006 (Google itself is valued at $175 billion). Granted video is a more engaging medium than photo, but that still doesn’t explain why, in light of meager exits, the amount of money pouring into the space within the past 15 years has not dropped off? Perhaps investors are hoping that the new generation of photo sharing apps will monetize better or be less fragmented? Perhaps they’re making a bet that the more ambitious apps (Path, Instagram) will have to create the next social graph? The largest difference between the photo sharing space nowadays and the era of the Flickr acquisition is the emphasis on mobile and social. People have linked their Twitter and Facebook accounts to their iPhone through apps like Path and Color, and the value may be in the data and not the photos. Investors might be also be hoping for a replication of Facebook’s photo sharing victory– A lot of Facebook’s early (and prolonged) success can be attributed to the success of Photos, which launched in 2005 and probably played an important part in helping the company from a 10 million valuation in 2005 to 750 million in 2006. A photo sharing exit is easier said than done. But one must also keep in mind that if we had made this graphic before YouTube was acquired, the right side would be $0. * As Kevin Marks , Shutterfly itself IPO’d in 2006, with an opening market cap of $350 million and a current market cap of $1,610 million. It originally focused on photo prints (which is why it was left out of the graph) but eventually pivoted into an online photo-sharing service. |
Amazing Video Of Google All-Hands Meeting Circa 1999: There's Silly String Everywhere | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 4 | 26 | [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u68QWfHOYhY&fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0] What an amazing blast to the past. Google is a massive company today — burdened by corporate politics, layers of management, and countless legal battles — and it’s sometimes easy to forget its more humble beginnings just over a decade ago, when it wasn’t all that different from the startups we write about every day on TechCrunch. But in the video above we get to jump back to December 1999 to witness a Google all-hands meeting led by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, when the startup had fewer than 60 employees. After some new employee introductions the meeting shifts to a birthday celebration — there’s silly string, singing, and an overwhelming sense that everyone there is just (or will be as soon as they get their cake). The video was recorded (and posted over a decade later) by Douglas Edwards, Google’s director of marketing and brand management from 1999 and 2005 who blogs about his time at the search giant at his site . If you’re familiar with Google’s history you’ll spot plenty of familiar faces, including Craig Silverstein (Google’s first employee), current YouTube head Salar Kamangar, and a young Paul Buchheit (I think). |
This Egg Is A Single-Use Pinhole Camera | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 4 | 26 |
Have a lot of eggs, and want to start a project? looks like a fun one, though by no means an easy one. You’ll need a drill, a pinhole plate, photo chemicals, and . “During each stage of this process the egg could break. Usually it does.” Not reassuring! Fortunately eggs are just eggs, and the worst possible result of this project is an omelette. [via and ] |
These Are The Star Wars Moleskine Notebooks You're Looking For | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 4 | 26 | Picture this: you’re on a road trip with a pal, and both of you are keeping a journal in your little Moleskine notebooks, filling them with your secrets, sketches, and occasional collages. One day you throw them in the back seat, and later on, accidentally pick up each other’s Moleskines. You open it up and… This would never happen if you had . But be careful where you keep it. Someone might mistake it for a book of Star Wars trivia, and… No pricing or availability, which means I couldn’t use my “coming to a galaxy near you” line. |
Apple's Consolidated.db: Patented iPhone Feature | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 4 | 26 | I’ll keep this brief, since the lack of response on this issue from Apple tends to result in taking sides before the facts are out (as evidenced by ). It seems that Apple’s little , consolidated.db, is likely part of a future patented feature having to do with keeping a persistent, low-power-draw, low-precision location record for stuff like geotagging, “journal” apps, etc. So someone might have reasonably guessed given the applications of such a database; the issue is of course whether it constituted some sort of crime or misrepresentation on Apple’s part to create this file regardless of the user’s preference. [via ] |
Chris Dixon, The Pirate In The Arena | Michael Arrington | 2,011 | 4 | 26 | I’ve written many times before about the difference between a true startup founder and, well, everyone else. Israeli investor often quotes Theodore Roosevelt in a 1910 speech about “ “: It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. I used a lot more words to more poorly describe the same thing in my post last year. I don’t care if you’re a billionaire. If you haven’t started a company, really gambled your resume and your money and maybe even your marriage to just go crazy and try something on your own, you’re no pirate and you aren’t in the club. That thrill of your first hire, when you’ve convinced some other crazy soul to join you in your almost certainly doomed project. The high from raising venture capital and starting to see your name mentioned in the press. The excitement of launch and…gulp…customers! and the feeling of truly learning something useful, you’re just not sure what it is, when the company almost inevitably crashes and burns. Investor and entrepreneur did a better job describing this in two paragraphs than I did in 21 paragraphs. titled There Are Two Kinds Of People In The World he doesn’t quite match the eloquence of Roosevelt, but the raw power of his writing makes up for it: You’ve either started a company or you haven’t. ”Started” doesn’t mean joining as an early employee, or investing or advising or helping out. It means starting with no money, no help, no one who believes in you (except perhaps your closest friends and family), and building an organization from a borrowed cubicle with credit card debt and nowhere to sleep except the office. It almost invariably means being dismissed by arrogant investors who show up a half hour late, totally unprepared and then instead of saying “no” give you non-committal rejections like “we invest at later stage companies.” It means looking prospective employees in the eyes and convincing them to leave safe jobs, quit everything and throw their lot in with you. It means having pundits in the press and blogs who’ve never built anything criticize you and armchair quarterback your every mistake. It means lying awake at night worrying about running out of cash and having a constant knot in your stomach during the day fearing you’ll disappoint the few people who believed in you and validate your smug doubters. I don’t care if you succeed or fail, if you are Bill Gates or an unknown entrepreneur who gave everything to make it work but didn’t manage to pull through. The important distinction is whether you risked everything, put your life on the line, made commitments to investors, employees, customers and friends, and tried – against all the forces in the world that try to keep new ideas down – to make something new. Entrepreneurs take note, and bookmark his post. You’ll want to read it and take heart in the dark hours of your startup’s life. |
Behind The Scenes: Constructing An F/0.95 Voigtlander Nokton Lens | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 4 | 26 | [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-41VOEVqbTM&w=640&h=390]
If you’re interested in lenses at all, this video is worth a watch. While the high-volume output of the Canons and Zeisses out there is amazing, (sold under the Voigtlander brand) is a bit more old-school. Every piece is assembled by hand, manually cleaned and oiled, and tested individually for flaws. The result is one fantastic lens. If I were buying a prime for a micro 4/3s camera, I’d seriously consider one of these. I mean really, owning a sub-F/1 lens has been a dream for years, and at around $1000 this is probably the most affordable out there (more affordable than a Leica Noctilux, at any rate). It’s fully manual, too. And a 10-blade aperture! You better believe the blur is smooth. You can skip the first part of the video, which explains depth of field, since you probably know what that is. The interesting part is the actual assembly. [via and ] |
"Slow Photography" Is Like Hipstamatic In Real Life | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 4 | 26 | Yes, the is modeled after old medium-format cameras, with its top-down orientation and milled metal parts. The idea is to provide “a natural stepping-stone between using a mobile phone as a camera before taking the plunge into professional grade digital photography,” which sounds a little silly at first, but really, it’s not. Part of (some) photography is the time and care you take in setting up, composing, and actually capturing a shot. The quick-draw, easy-snap cameras in phones and such provide little opportunity to get a feel for your subject, location, etc, and a more deliberate process to taking a picture is something that’s good to experience. The Slow Photography camera has a mount for your mobile phone – then you select a lens (fixed-focus, fisheye, or macro), check your framing through the top-down viewfinder, and hit the shutter release plunger. Will your pictures be any better? I don’t know about that. But will you feel cool, and will you have a sweet metal object/conversation piece lying around the living room? [via ] |
Where I'll Be Spending Next CES: Insert Coin(s) | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 4 | 26 |
The glamorous decor and $10 beers of the Las Vegas strip aren’t really my style, so during the few free hours I have next January at CES, I think I might head down to , a new bar that combines hard drinking with hard gaming. Apparently it’s nowhere near as bad as it could be, , and the presence of a wall of old arcade games as well as the latest next-gen hits seals the deal. It’s over by Beauty Bar and that crazy outdoor mall. |
Exclusive: The Pioneer AppRadio Will Put The Look Of iOS On Your Dash | Matt Burns | 2,011 | 4 | 26 |
Pioneer is about ready to launch a car audio head unit that features an GUI remarkable similar to iOS, complete with apps, iTunes, and iPhone connectivity. Meet the Pioneer AppRadio, model number SPH-DA01. This unannounced head unit hit the FCC database yesterday and a tipster wrote in to answer many of our questions. Obviously, given the name, this is a radio designed around iPhone and iPod. The UI features homescreens, each with two rows of three app icons each. (like the mock-up shows) We hear it feels “exactly like the iOS experience” but since it doesn’t actually run iOS we’re mighty curious how the AppRadio will sit with Apple corporate. iOS 4.1 devices (read: no Android or WinMo devices) connect to the AppRadio through a traditional USB Dock Connector cable and feeds the deck the phone’s contacts and music. Streaming apps are part of the system as our tipster saw live demos of Pandora and iHeartRadio and also mentions that social media apps are going to be part of the system. Although not specifically mentioned by our tipster, the iPhone must also provide the internet data stream as the FCC docs doesn’t mention any wireless radios.
The hardware looks a lot like an Apple device with a home button mounted under a glossy multitouch, capacitive 6.1-inch screen with a volume rocker mounted on the driver’s side. The Dock Connector cable plugs into a USB port on a rear-connecting cable adapter that also features an S-Video and RCA jack. There’s even an optional steering wheel-mounted control unit for controlling media playback. The Pioneer head unit seems to feature most standard radio functions besides an optical drive. There is, however, a microsSD card slot, Bluetooth connectivity, AM/FM, GPS, and the ability to hook up a rear view camera. Satellite and HD radio were not mentioned but it seems unlikely given their standard nature this unit will launch without at least one — unless keeping the price low is paramount. We hear that users will be able to add different apps on the radio, but not the exact process involved. It will likely be done through a microSD card, although a Pioneer iOS app could also serve up the apps as long as Apple approves. Pioneer demoed PAIS, Platform for the Aggregation of Internet Services, at CES 2011. That system is designed to allow consumers to share data and internet connection across multiple devices, regardless of manufacturer. It’s a novel platform, but doesn’t seem to be in use here. The AppRadio lacks any sort of 802.11x radio and uses a 500Mhz NetLogic Microsystem Au1210 CPU, where PAIS is designed around the Intel Atom. Besides, the AppRadio doesn’t fit the description of different platforms talking together. This is all about iOS here. Pioneer is clearly trying something new here with the fresh interface and lack of optical drive. If priced right, the AppRadio might be the savior of the dying aftermarket audio market. Companies like Pioneer, Kenwood, and Alpine all know how to make killer hardware, but the software is often horrible. Taking iOS’ styling cues and navigation paths sounds like lawsuit bait, but at least the deck will be pretty. [special thanks to Bryce, our graphical ninja for the mockup] |
null | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 4 | 19 | null |
Google Chrome Can Now Clean Up Flash's Cookie Mess | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 4 | 26 | I still don’t particularly like the fact that Google decided to Adobe Flash with their Chrome web browser about a year ago. Apple preference aside, is the buggy, often insecure, and performance killing plug-in . More importantly, I think it’s a maneuver that will only serve to slow the transition to HTML5. But Google has their reasons. And today, we see one of the good ones. Google has maintained since they started bundling Flash that it was mainly to ensure they could make it more secure for their Chrome users. They do this by both sandboxing it and auto-updating it when the security patches regularly appear. But has just hit the Chrome dev builds which also now allows users to easily clear Flash cookies from within the browser. Normally, when Flash is run as a standalone plug-in (as it is with all other browsers), users have to visit an Adobe website to clear Flash Local Shared Objects (LSOs). In other words, almost no one ever did that. Worse, the vast majority of users probably didn’t realize you even could do this — or that you perhaps . The newest builds of Chrome now bring this Flash cookie clearing right within the browser settings. In the “Clear Browsing Data” menu area (found at Wrench > Tools > Clear browsing data) you’ll now see the option to “Delete cookies and other site and plug-in data”. Selecting this will include Flash cookies. Better, you can also set up Chrome to clear all plug-in cookie data every time you close Chrome. Other plug-ins will be able to work with this browser feature too if they use the NPAPI ClearSiteData API baked into Chrome (Adobe is now using it with Flash 10.3). So, credit where credit is due — this is a solid move by Google (and Adobe) to further clean up the Flash experience. If they’re going to bolster the plug-in to the detriment of HTML5 ( ), at least they’re improving it as well. |
iBuyPower Custom Gaming Rigs Are Now Available At Walmart.com | Matt Burns | 2,011 | 4 | 26 |
iBuyPower has long been a player in the custom gaming scene. Now they’re available from Walmart, the US’ largest retail. Both AMD and Intel systems can be configured with Nvidia and AMD GPUs along with various RAM and hard drive options. It’s really your standard computer configurator system. at $578 and do not seem much different than if ordered from iBuyPower themselves. Sadly, any jokes about the iBuyPower systems being located in Walmart between between the dog food and the Swiffers are disingenuous. These rigs are only available on the retailer’s website. [image credit: ] |
Milk Completes $1.5 Million Angel Round, Packed with Valley Names | Sarah Lacy | 2,011 | 4 | 26 | has completed a hefty $1.5 million angel round for his new mobile development lab, which we in March, . Rose went for the more-is-more approach, pulling in a wide-syndicate of Valley elites, including TechCrunch’s . Other angels include Ron Conway, Tim Ferriss, Dave Morin, Philip Rosedale, Evan Williams, Shervin Pishevar, Joshua Schachter, Anthony Casalena, Ashton Kutcher, Philip Kaplan, Chris Sacca, Gary Vanyerchuk, Tony Hsieh, Chamath Palihapitiya, Matt Mullenweg, Don Dodge, Matt Williams, Tony Conrad via True Ventures, and Rob Hayes. As we predicted, the list is rounded out by Floodgate’s Mike Maples and Greylock’s David Sze, two of Digg’s biggest investors who are betting on Rose again. Missing from the list are a few other Digg angels like Reid Hoffman and Marc Andreessen, but it’s an impressive mix of VCs, angels and Web personalities. Milk has also hired four new people, bringing its team to seven. Jeff Hodsdon, a former engineer at Digg, is joining Rose and Daniel Burka as a co-founder. David Peck and Amber Reyngoudt, co-founders of mobile app shop Skull Ninja, have also joined the company, along with Chris Hutchins, formerly in business development at SimpleGeo. That last one is interesting, as he was seemingly poached from SimpleGeo, where former Digg co-founder Jay Adelson is now the CEO and where Rose is also an angel investor. Last month, Rose he wanted Milk to stay a skeleton team, and he says he’s likely done hiring. With a mission, office space, cash, and a team, all that’s left are those ambitious mobile products Rose promised when he launched the company last month. We’ll be watching closely. |
Gideon Yu: "The Drama Of Being A Venture Capitalist Isn’t Really For Me" | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 4 | 26 | Gideon Yu, the who left two years ago to become a partner at Khosla Ventures, is leaving venture capital to become the chief strategy officer of the San Francisco 49ers. “The drama of being a venture capitalist isn’t really for me,” he tells me. But he insists, “I am absolutely not leaving tech.” Yu will remain on the boards of Square and Meebo, and says he works one day a week at Square. He wants to remain active investing and helping startups, but not as a full-time venture capitalist. One option was to become an affiliate partner, but that didn’t work out. Instead, he plans to keep investing his own money as an angel investor. The rumor in Silicon Valley is that he left Facebook with stock worth $500 million. He won’t comment on his net worth other than to say that he made more than he ever thought he would. Gideon is not universally loved. All it took was a few phone calls to hear rumbles that he was actually pushed out of Facebook and that perhaps the same thing is happening again. Certainly, he can’t seem to hold onto the same job for more than two years, and I’ve heard there was a campaign to actively block him from because of his reputation. “I am not pretending that I am a saint or everubody likes me,” he says of all the backbiting. “But there are definitely haters. I just try to add value where I can.” The truth is that it is just not that much fun to be a VC at a firm with a $1 billion fund who needs to put large amounts of capital to work when web startups simply don’t need that much capital. And there are plenty of angel investors and seed funds willing to give them less money. In some ways, Yu is a casualty of the changing structure of the venture capital industry. |
Lacking Funding, SETI Puts $50 Million Radio Array On Hiatus | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 4 | 26 |
Searching for extraterrestrial intelligence has always been a slightly controversial topic, not because we don’t want it to happen, but because it requires sophisticated and expensive equipment. Can millions really be spent on scanning the heavens when here on earth, there’s a very real shortage of funding for things like education and social services? It’s a loaded question, of course, and a complex one, but the undeniable truth of it is that programs like SETI are considered non-critical, and in times like these, they’re on the short list for gutting. SETI’s Allen Telescope Array has as of last week, with officials citing a lack of cash to keep the $50 million facility manned and powered. They’re looking at a shortfall of about $5 million over two years. Senior astronomer Seth Shostak said: “We have the radio antennae up, but we can’t run them without operating funds. Honestly, if everybody contributed just 3 extra cents on their 1040 tax forms, we could find out if we have cosmic company.” Sure, and if GE had written off 1% less of its taxes, or if the troop count was reduced here or there by a few thousand, or… you see, it’s easy to come up with solutions on paper. But SETI is viewed as recreational, and those millions could be keeping a few school districts afloat. The whole program isn’t shutting down, of course, and services like and are still operational. If you want to help crunch data, you can. Personally, I’m not too worried about it, though of course I’d rather we were listening. My feeling is that if something out there wants to contact us, we’re going to hear it whether our primitive radio arrays are on or off. And then, of course, there’s also Calvin’s view: [via ; image source: Gary Reyes/Mercury News] |
Review: SumoBags Titan Beanbag Couch | John Biggs | 2,011 | 4 | 26 | When SumoBags approached me about writing about one of their beanbag chairs, I figured that since we write about games and gamers like beanbag chairs that it might be a good match. Little did I know that the Sumo Titan is one of the biggest freaking beanbag chairs I’ve ever seen. It is, in fact, so massive that I’d consider it a couch. It also gets bigger over time, thereby proving theories about the danger of nanotechnology and the so-called
We reviewed a smaller last year, finding it to be comfortable and handsome. This chair, barring its absolute enormity, is also comfortable and I was able to sleep on, slightly curled into a fetal position but in relative ease for at least an hour one lazy weekend afternoon – and I’m not a small guy. The chair is a full 70” x 49” x 36” and ships in a box about half the size of that. In fact, when you remove the chair from the box it grows enormously. I opened it on the first floor and by the time I tried to drag it upstairs it was too big to fit through most of our doors. Obviously a giant bean bag couch isn’t for everyone. You can probably fit two people on here on a good day and three people on here with a bit of snuggling. As I said before, you can also potentially sleep on it but I’m not sure how it would handle an overnight stay. However, there is also another caveat: the price. At $379.99 this thing is far more expensive than you think it would be and, what’s more, it may scare off potential buyers. But, to be clear, this thing is ginormous even if you base your couch buying decisions on value per cubic foot, this is probably a winner. So barring the size and the price, if you’re looking for furniture with no sharp edges, this is pretty much the couch for you. Otherwise, you might want to stick with something smaller and or less massive.
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Amazon Will Add At Least Nine Fulfillment Centers In 2011 To Meet Demand | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 4 | 26 | Amazon , posting strong sales results but missing on net income. Sales came in at $9.86 billion in the first quarter, which is up 38 percent from the same quarter in 2010. On the earnings call CFO said that Amazon is planning to open at least nine fulfillment centers to meet growing demand in sales across the globe. Amazon’s fulfillment centers enables the company and third-party merchants to store inventory and fulfill orders. He says that at least one of the nine fulfillment centers is currently operational, and another one should be up and running imminently. He expects seven more to open this year, and Amazon may add more if demand grows. Amazon currently has over across the globe. As a basis of comparison, Amazon added 13 fulfillment centers last year. Szkutak seemed optimistic about that with the current growth rate, he expects that Amazon will add more than nine fulfillment centers this year. He says there is more demand for capacity both from Amazon’s core retail business and its fulfillment business for third-party merchants. |
With Bridg.me The Conference Calls You | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 4 | 21 | Yes the headline here is actually this startup’s trademarked tagline, but I couldn’t resist the opportunity to feature a reference on TechCrunch (yes, I know, I’m old). In the same conference calling space as and , the idea for was pitched at last week’s by Justin Isaf and created by Justin Heilman and Jagdish Repaswal that day. Basically the gist is that current conference call platforms, with their dial in systems and unwieldy PIN access codes, are way too complicated to be productive. Being able to arrange such a call should be as simple as posting an event in your Google calendar. Users who want to initiate a call with Bridg can visit Bridg.me to schedule a call, enter phone numbers and book a time. Aside from its web booking capabilities, Bridg does indeed sync up with Google Calendar if you enter the hashtag #bridg in your Event description, along with the participants’ phone numbers in the 1+ # format. Bridg will then call all people involved during the time you’ve indicated on the event, using your Google calendar’s time zone. Woot. Right now Bridgs are 5 cents a minute per person after the trial period, but eventually the -powered company plans to offer its basic services for free and then unlimited plans with unlimited numbers of participants at a premium. “We want to make it an even more seemless experience,” Isaf tells me, Are you listening large corporations? |
YC_Y_U_NO Give Twitter Link Readers Auto-Entry Into YC? | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 4 | 21 |
A couple weeks back, I noticed an amusing Twitter account called that poked fun at Y Combinator and Silicon Valley in general, sometimes with pretty hilarious results. The account is a riff on the popular Twitter presence, which is itself based on the popular Y U NO meme featuring the . Right. Anyway. As it turns out, YC_Y_U_NO was created by a trio of YC hopefuls — Wesley Zhao, Dan Shipper, and Ajay Mehta — who will be interviewing this weekend for a spot with the selective startup incubator. The startup recently launched a project called , and, while it’s still very early, it’s not bad for a few day’s work. The app in its current form is very simple: authenticate with your Twitter account, and Readstream will present an excerpt of the most recent link to appear in your Twitter stream (e.g. if someone tweeted a link to a TechCrunch article, you’ll see an excerpt). Click the arrow button, and you’ll see the excerpt of the next most recent link (you can also jump between other recently-tweeted links using the right sidebar). As you read each excerpt, the site fetches and caches more stories, so you can jump smoothly between the links. It’s nice, but it isn’t especially novel: there are some much more polished services, like Flipboard, Trove, and the recently-launched News.me that also present stories based on your social network feeds. The twist, says Wesley Zhao, is that Readstream will eventually allow you to manually tweak the algorithm. For example, in the future he says you’ll be able to flip switches that let you toggle stories that are popular within a) just your social stream or b) the entire Twitter ecosystem. Zhao says that none of the other services give users granular control over their recommendation algorithms, and he thinks they’ll want it (he compares the controls they plan to those featured on Hipmunk). Of course, this is all still a long ways off. They’re still prepping for their YC interview. As for the YC Y U NO account, here’s the background story: Oh, and in regards to YC_Y_U_NO…we created that at 6AM after Ajay came down to Philly to discuss our plans for the YC interview. We were a little dazed after staying up all night and in our stupor thought it would be funny to create a parody account based off the Y U NO meme. Also amusing: Zhao and Mehta met the team’s technical lead, Dan Shipper, after Shipper hacked their site PennMatch. The team has since launched (an animated map of your Facebook friends) and , a simple game inviting you to unfollow people on Twitter. |
GigaPan "Time Machine" Lets You Zoom In And Out In Space, Time | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 4 | 21 |
Here’s a cool little distraction that, while it really just amounts to a window onto a high-resolution video, is at least fun to play with. You’re probably familiar with — but by combining this with a timelapse feature, they’re able to make . I like the one — the plants are interesting but don’t show a lot of detail. GigaPan just updated its firmware, by the way – . |
Rumor: Windows 8 To Use Kinect-Like Facial Recognition | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 4 | 21 |
Hackers poring through the have found suggesting that Microsoft’s next OS may automatically recognize its users, . An API relating to “Detect[ing] human presence” was combined with some earlier Microsoft suggestions that ubiquitous webcams by 2012 would make easy login as simple as checking the user’s face when they sit down. And of course the Kinect does this already — with a lower-resolution camera than many webcams. Voila: rumor! My only issue is that it suggests the webcam or bezel cam will, in a way, be always on. Not the most reassuring notion to those of us concerned about privacy. [via ] |
Kiva Expands Micro-Loans To Green Businesses | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 4 | 21 | one of the in micro-lending to international entrepreneurs, has expanded into a new vertical today— Kiva Green Loans. Green Loans, which can be accessed from a new module on the lend tab, is a new vertical that allows the Kiva community to make loans towards green businesses and individuals who are helping make the transition to cleaner and more efficient sources of energy. Kiva Green Loans include both business and personal loans that contribute towards reducing energy expenditures, minimizing waste and pollution, recycling, or re-purposing used materials. For example, Blanca Rosa of Santa Cruz, Bolivia has applied for a from Kiva to help her expand her business of converting taxi engines to run on natural gas, which ends up being a more affordable business model. With the loan she received from Kiva, she was able to purchase an emulator, timing devices, iron, bolts, and other supplies for her gas conversion workshop. Other examples of Green Loans include loans to create or purchase organic fertilizer; loans to purchase renewable energy-generating devices, such as solar panels, wind power and biofuels; loans for transportation, including hybrid cars, converting cars to natural gas or purchasing a bicycle; loans for “green” home improvements, including more efficient heating methods or high-efficiency cookers/low propane gas stoves; and recycling-related loans, such as re- purposing or transforming used or recycled materials. This is actually the second vertical that Kiva has expanded to. The non-profit just to the mix last Fall. Kiva has been since its launch in 2008. Currently, over 570,000 people have loaned more than $200 million to entrepreneurs in 59 countries via Kiva. Kiva’s repayment rate thus far (for entrepreneurs) is 98 percent and the startup is raising $1 million every 5 days for small businesses. And Kiva CEO Premal Shah predicts that the organization will raise $1 billion in microloans by 2015. Expanding the power of this service to green businesses is no doubt a worthy cause. |
Apple Is Tracking You To Build Something Very Valuable: Its Location Database | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 4 | 21 | Your everywhere you go, and so do these days. You knew that already. The reason this is a big story now is because it turns out that for the past 10 months Apple has been keeping your location data on a file in your iPhone itself where someone who knows how to get it, and has possession of your phone, could find it and figure out where you’ve been. For most people this is never going to be an issue, but for anyone involved in a lawsuit or nasty divorce, it is one more thing lawyers will be getting a subpoena for. It’s bad data retention policy and Apple could and should change it with the next update to iOS. But what is Apple doing with your location data anyway? It needs your data to for use with geo-location apps and for diagnostics (it helps analyze where dropped calls happen the most, for instance). Apple already explained all of this back in July, 2010 when general counsel Bruce Sewell responded to questions from Congress about its location-tracking policies (letter embedded below). In that letter, Apple revealed that it had it was using previously from Google and SkyHook Wireless with its own. Apple noted in the letter: These databases must be updated continuously to account for, among other things, the ever-changing physical landscape, more innovative uses of mobile technology, and the increasing number of Apple’s customers. Apple has always taken great care to protect the privacy of its customers. And in fact, Apple doesn’t track a person’s location if they turn Location Services off in settings, and it takes care to remove personally identifying information and encrypts the data before transmitting it from your phone to its servers. All that is fine. But the letter doesn’t say anything about the data staying on your phone. Certainly, you should have access to that data if you want it. A growing number of people actually consider having an archive of all their movements to be a feature not a flaw (see Foursquare, Google Latitude, etc.). They should be able to choose to keep the location data on their phone (after all, it is their data), but it should not be stored there by default. Once it becomes opt-in, consumers can choose to track themselves as long as they accept the risks of doing so. Have no doubt that Apple will keep tracking your movements as well. You do get some benefit from this in the form of wondrous geo-aware apps that open up the world around you. But you are also helping Apple build up its location database, which is an increasingly valuable asset. You are contributing to that database every time you walk out of your house with your iPhone. [scribd id=53583222 key=key-1veitv06wi25y73qzog1 mode=slideshow] |
Military Advances Android Field Capabilities With JBC-P Program | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 4 | 21 |
The future of on-the-ground military connectivity is a hot item these days; the systems used to keep track of soldiers, send secure communications, and so on, are showing their age… and weight. A unified platform for mapping, orders, requests, and so on is being sought with a fair amount of urgency, and Android has popped up as a fully-fledged system under consideration. The (JBC-P) handheld was developed by the Army as their effort to create an Android-based tool for evaluation as a technological asset. The framework (including things like ground reporting graphics, medevac, mission details, support for a number of radio protocols) was put together by and the development kit will be released in July. By October, the system should be solid enough the 2nd Brigade, 1st Armored Division can complete its scheduled tests at White Sands Missile Base. They’ve already shown the basic layout and tech to soldiers, who apparently found it familiar enough to use after only a five-minute briefing. Will Android power our next-generation soldiers? It’s too early to tell, but using the free and open OS as a base to build on seems to be attractive to the Army boffins evaluating existing options. We’ll hear more about this over the next few months, I’m sure. [via ] |
Japanese Company GREE Buys Mobile Social Gaming Platform OpenFeint For $104 Million In Cash | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 4 | 21 | Mobile gaming startup has been acquired by Japanese mobile gaming company for $104 million in cash plus additional capital for growth of the OpenFeint platform. OpenFeint and its team will remain with long-term incentives, including CEO and founder Jason Citron, says the company. OpenFeint provides a mobile for the iPhone and Android platforms. OpenFeint’s plug and play mobile social platform and application for smartphones includes a set of online game services such as leaderboards, virtual currencies and achievements running in a cloud-based Web environment. The platform first launched on the iPhone and iPad and more recently game developers to In fact, the company has been growing like gangbusters on the Android platform, adding in the past six months. OpenFeint raised in funding from Intel Capital, Chinese gaming company The9, and Gree rival DeNa. GREE, which has a market cap of $3 billion, as an acquirer makes sense as the company is Japan’s largest mobile gaming social network. The company’s games have over 25 million users. In fact, GREE just partnered with DCM, Tencent and KDDI to to support early-stage Android entrepreneurs. GREE also recently announced a partnership with and Tencent. And GREE has launched an American entity, GREE International, as an effort to enter the American gaming market. In fact, GREE International was the acquirer of OpenFeint in this transaction. Combined, the GREE and OpenFeint gaming ecosystem will reach 100 million users worldwide and Gree will uses its own resources to accelerate OpenFeint’s growth. The joint company will soon opening offices in Beijing, Singapore and London and plans to double OpenFeint in size in 2011. This isn’t the first gaming company to be acquired by a Japanese gaming giant. DeNa bought social gaming last year.
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There will be no Tech City in London if BT is not brought to heel | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 4 | 21 | Sometimes being a TechCrunch editor can actually be vaguely useful. Honest. Because we cover European startups from London, I’ve ended up being invited to join the London Mayor’s Digital Advisory Board as well as attending roundtable sessions at Number 10 Downing Street. But it’s not just to chat over coffee and biscuits. Both the local London government and the national one is serious about trying to enliven and nurture the growing tech scene here. I wouldn’t say they ‘get it’ all of the time – but they are trying, and I’ve seen the enthusiasm. While there are sceptics about the whole ‘ ‘ project, I do know that there is a big appetite to nurture this industry. Nothing happens over night, but at least we’ve started. However, one thing I have been banging the table about – increasingly angrily as the weeks and months have past – is the provision for broadband to startups in London. Time and time again startups are telling me that while they can deal with hiring people, deal with finding lawyers and partners and VCs, what they can’t deal with is the achingly slow response times of broadband service providers. It cannot be underestimated how important super-fast broadband in the shape of fibre actually is to the development of the startup ecosystem. It sounds basic, but you can’t have a city without roads, and you damn well can’t have a Tech City without fibre into the buildings. So at one Digital Advisory Board meeting at the GLA I recently pointed out that the first ISP to start offering Gigbabit broadband in Shoreditch (dubbed the ‘ ’) would get . Hint, hint. A few ISPs present busily started scribiling. Funnily enough, a few weeks later Virgin Media has announced it is to begin trialling fibre lines with download speeds of up to 1.5Gbit/sec, although the upload speed is limited to just 150Mb/sec. Unfortunately this is just a trial. And Virgin is really known most for residential, not business broadband. I hope we see more providers step up to the plate. The next ISP to offer this as a permanent, affordable solution in the area will get the equivalent of a hand job from TechCrunch. But the latest in the litany of startups coming to me with broadband nightmares is . This startup – which has nearly $7m in venture funding and a crack team of founders and engineers, and deals in place with the likes of Yahoo – has had huge problems with BT Openreach, the business broadband arm of the telco giant. Put simply, they have tried to get fibre into their building in Hoxton Square – slap bang inside London’s Silicon Roundabout – but the process has become a bureaucratic nightmare. Songkick started the process of getting dedicated fibre into their Hoxton Street office in February 2009 and needed to rely on BT for the last 100 yds or so into the building. According to them, after months of delays, they were told in May 2009 (via their chosen supplier, Zen Internet) that BT had discovered that “one of the ducts which would be used to supply them with a dedicated fibre service, was damaged and a repair would cost BT £86,000 – half of which Songkick ( a ) would have to cover. In addition, it would take at least 6-8 months to arrange planning permission and carry out works, which involved digging up “300m of Old Street and 300m of City Road.” Songkick made other arrangements that avoided all contact with BT and used a WiMax connection. But they outgrew this and in early 2011 they re-commenced the effort to get a dedicated fibre connection. They placed an order with their chosen supplier, Exponential-E, on Feb 4th. Again, BT needed to provide the final 100 yards into the building. It’s now near the end of April and the project is still at the planning stage. BT have taken to issue a permission-letter to the company’s landlord for some basic internal works required to get the cable up to the company’s floor – it’s a 4 storey building. Every week they have been told that this “Wayleave” document would be issued “this week”, or “early next”, or “today/tomorrow”. Today BT said that they didn’t actually post the document on Monday. Songkick claims “they explicitly assured us they did”. BT now says they emailed it. As of today the email is yet to be received by the office of Songkick’s landlord. We have reached out to BT Openreach for comment on the above. They have not yet responded. We’ll let you know when they have. [ They sent the following statement: “”We appreciate that the time taken to commence this work has caused frustration; Openreach take any customer complaints of this nature extremely seriously and are investigating as a matter of urgency, with a view to resolving the issue as rapidly as possible.”] But the whole broadband problem is an ongoing one, especially where BT is concerned. For political reasons and through political pressure they’re wiring up residential districts first for the super fast broadband products such as BT Infinity. Since small businesses, especially startups are not in largely residential districts this means they’re excluded from these products. As Chris Thorpe of – another London startup which has had terrible problems – put it to me. “When’s the last time you heard a startup saying we’re in Hampstead?” So, since there aren’t options in broadband products available to businesses then people go for Business Broadband. But it’s like what they have at home. The Central London exchanges are very contended, it’s hard to get lines installed and they work badly. Funnily enough, when it all goes bad BT tells you it’s not really what you want for your business and you really need the fibre to the building options or the Ethernet in the ‘First Mile’ products. This is like BT saying (in a sort of gangster voice) “That’s a nice internet startup you have there… be a shame if you couldn’t get the bandwidth to make it happen now wouldn’t it… why don’t you try this expensive leased line instead…?” Leased lines are really expensive and have a long, long lead time – 40-70 working days, an eternity to a small business. BT’s Infinity product would be a great option for many small startup businesses, but it’s unavailable in many parts of central London. Until these problems are sorted out, ‘East London Tech City’ is going nowhere fast. You can’t have a Tech City without broadband. And it seems we can’t have superfast broadband in London without going through a process of self immolation when dealing with BT. Here’s the full timeline of Songick’s battle with BT Open Reach, as provided by them: • Feb 4: Order placed with our chosen supplier, Exponential-E: our order is “accepted by BT and is … in the early stages of Planning”.
• Estimated timescales:
• Planning – 15 – 25 working days (->latest 1st Mar)
• External Works – 25 – 40 working days (->latest 9th Apr)
• Internal works / Fibre testing – 10 – 20 working days (->latest 29th Apr)
• Provisioning – 5 – 10 working days (->latest 8th May)
• Feb 8: Site Survey by a BT Site Engineer.
• Feb 11 – Feb 18: BT inform Exponential-E, that the site survey was successful, but “the Planner is unable to sign off his work … [as a] Wayleave and Method Statement is required” for which our Landlords’ contact details are required. We re-supply these contact details immediately, including various email addresses. [A Wayleave is a legal document requiring mutual agreement between the landlord and BT to grant access to the premises and carry out the required work. It should be a simple formality.]
• Feb 18: Exponential-E receive an estimate from BT that the landlord “should be in possession of the [Wayleave] documentation sometime [w/c 21 Feb]”.
• Feb 18-Mar 11: Songkick in close contact with landlord: document not received.
• Mar 16: Songkick and Exponential-E confirm a willingness to cover BT’s £4,130 costs for their part of the work
• Mar 25: After 3 weeks of being chased by Songkick, and chasing BT in turn, Exponential-E confirm by phone with the BT Planner involved that the Wayleave document has not been issued yet (he “he is still currently working though the planning stages on site”). The Wayleave will be issued “early [w/c 28 Mar]”
• Mar 30: Exponential-E speak to the BT Planner again by phone; the Wayleave “will be issued today or tomorrow”.
• Apr 1: Exponential-E speak to the BT Planner again by phone: the Wayleave will be issued “next week” [w/c Apr 4].
• Apr 7: Exponential-E speak to the BT Planner again by phone: the BT Planner “is currently finishing one of the drawing plans for the wayleave…[and] the wayleave will be issued/sent out today.”
• w/c Apr 11: Regular phone chases from Exponential-E: confirmation from the BT Planner by phone that the Wayleave will be issued “next week” [w/c Apr 18].
• Apr 19: BT tell Exponential-E that the Wayleave has been issued and the documents sent by post — however, as of today, documents still not received by Songkick’s landlord.
• Here’s the latest update on this: the word from BT today is that they didn’t actually post the document on Monday, which they explicitly assured us they did. They now say they actually emailed it. The email is yet to be received by our landlords office. |
Verizon's First Droid Charge Commercial Is… Uh… Mysterious? | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 4 | 21 | Back when the original Droid came out, the marketing campaign had a two-part approach. Half of the commercials were “DROID DOES” commercials, which played up the Droid as the anti-iPhone and highlighted all of the things that Android did that iOS could not. The other half were over-the-top (though admittedly quite cool), . Given that Verizon sells the iPhone now, the whole “LOL iPHONE SUX!!!” campaign is probably a no go these days. So now they’re going back to ambiguity, lasers, and explosions. Or, in the case of this DROID Charge teaser here: ambiguity, magnets, and Cloverfield-esque camera work. |
Kindle Gets Honeycomb'd In New Update | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 4 | 21 |
One of the main complaints about is the lack of apps that are legitimately tailored to its ecosystem. Amazon’s app, available on a number of platforms, is only just now with an improved layout and so on. Good news for people who already have a few books bought through Kindle, but want to read them on their new Honeycomb tablet. I doubt there are many of you out there, but hey. |
It’s Not Just Apple That Is Tracking Our Every Movement (TCTV) | Andrew Keen | 2,011 | 4 | 21 | This of how the and are tracking the every movement of their users keeps growing. Now DC Policymakers Ed Markey and Al Franken have gotten into the act, on Steve Jobs for an answer to this potentially massively embarrassing story. While I haven’t had the opportunity to chat today with Steve about the situation, I did talk earlier to , a cybersleuth at and the author of the excellent new book . And what Vamosi told me was pretty scary. According to him, it’s not just Apple gadgets that are betraying us. So guess who else is watching you as you watch this TechcrunchTV clip? We’ll have more from Vamosi’s interview next week. |
Miyamoto: New Console Definitely In The Works, Tanooki Suit As Well | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 4 | 21 |
Miyamoto let the cat out of the bag today at a London event, confirming both Café, the new console to be announced at E3, and a Tanooki suit in Super Mario 3DS. I don’t know which is the bigger news. I confess there isn’t smoke without fire. We always build consoles. You’ll never see some of them. But you don’t have to trust all the stuff you read. Would it be announced at E3? He wouldn’t confirm, but I’m guessing they’ll at least give a teaser. He also talked about perhaps the most anticipated game for the 3DS — behind Ocarina of Time, of course. It’s not much, but it’s promising: It’s a combination of Super Mario Galaxy and Super Mario on N64. It won’t convey the message if I talk to you today, but if you play it at E3 that will give you more understanding of what I’m talking about. The 3DS allows for better control, he says. For example, the floors you’d see in SM64 that were floating above the ground or moving in space were often hard to jump directly onto, but on the 3DS, “it’s really easy,” he said. And regarding the tail in the logo? “It’s what you think it is.” Well, that does it. I’m going to have to buy a now — if only to relive the glory that was the Tanooki suit. I wonder if it’ll have Kuribo’s Shoe as well? Man, that thing was badass. Lastly, and most importantly, Super Mario 3DS is “completely original, and coming this year.” We’ll be sure to play it at E3 and give you a full report. [via and ] |
Razer's Hydra Motion Controller Gets Priced And Dated | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 4 | 21 |
We first saw the Hydra, then called the Sixense (after the company that originally developed it) almost a year and a half ago. I was impressed with it then, as it felt more natural and responsive than a Wiimote (what doesn’t now?), and used a genuinely different and powerful technology. It’s based on magnetic detection of the controller, instead of optical, and it felt great then, though they had some work to do on latency. It seems like they’ve finished polishing it off, because it’s headed our way in June. It’ll detect position and rotation quite accurately, and each Wii Nunchuk-like controller has an analog stick and four buttons. The Hydra controller will be open for pre-orders in May, and it comes in a special Portal 2 bundle; they actually worked with Valve to make this thing work extra well with Portal 2, and have done so (they told me back in the day) with a number of other big games and developers. It says 125 games are compatible out of the box, and they’re listed . The Portal 2 Bundle includes the game, the Hydra (base and two controllers), and some special DLC levels, and will set you back $140; no word on the non-bundle version, but I’d guess it’ll cost around $90 or $100. . |
null | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 4 | 26 | null |
More Reports Suggest Touchscreen And More On New Nintendo Console Controller | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 4 | 21 |
The rumors continue. After and some shortly after, that the rumors of an enormous new controller with a 6.2″ touchscreen are real. I’m trying to make allowances for Nintendo weirdness, but I just have to get a few reservations off my chest. A 6.2″ touchscreen is too big, too heavy, and too expensive. This is really my main issue with the thing. A six-inch touchscreen is nearly the size of a Galaxy Tab &mdsah; bigger than both screens in the 3DS put together. Add in the molding, button and stick mechanisms, and this is also looking rather heavy for any kind of extended play, don’t you think? And a six-inch touchscreen (likely capacitive) is an expensive component. Wiimotes were never exactly cheap, and with this new design a 3rd-party controller seems unlikely. If the console is itself more expensive by itself (analyst estimates put it at $300-$350), bundling a controller puts it in console range, somewhere Nintendo hasn’t been in a long time. That said, it makes sense with the current top/bottom screen idea they’ve been running with with the DS series. The “main” screen has the action, the “sub” screen has minigames, inventory, commands, all that stuff. It’s not that I think it wouldn’t be cool. I just don’t think they can do it for less than $100 per bulky, heavy controller. I might be wrong (and they have a year to refine the design, according to the rumored release schedule), but I just had to say that despite the insider information Kotaku seems to have gotten, I just don’t fully buy everything that’s being said. |
Google Issues Roku A Takedown Notice For Unlicensed YouTube Channel | Matt Burns | 2,011 | 4 | 21 | There are well over a hundred channels on , but YouTube is officially not one of them. There was, however, a homebrewed YouTube channel until a takedown notice was nailed to Roku’s front door. This station was posted by a developer later hired by Roku, which might have lead partially to the legal notice. Roku now says that they’re in talks with Google, which will hopefully result in an official YouTube Roku channel. Until then services like PlayOn can serve up YouTube content. [ via ] |
Not So Fast, PSP Go Still In Production For North America | Matt Burns | 2,011 | 4 | 21 |
So the Sony PSP Go might not be dead after all. This comes after that Sony recently stopped production of the PSP Go. Well, that’s not the case.
We are continuing production of PSP Go for North America.” That’s pretty cut and dry although how long will it stay in production? Sony is likely focusing mainly on the radically different , so the current PSP offering is likely on its way out anyway. But as it stands right now, the PSP Go is still shipping to the US. |
Lego Factory Separates Blocks, Will Soon Separate Humans | John Biggs | 2,011 | 4 | 21 | [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VxCl6w3HS0&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&version=3] This insane demonstration shows a Lego factory separating out blocks based on color. It moves 48 items a minute down a conveyor belt and the arms catch and move the blocks using sensors in the system. The entire belt took months to build and develop and essentially simulates a real pick/place system used in factories.
Each robot operates independently. The robots receive a signal from the master, which in this case is the NXT that controls the light sensors. The signal contains information about the color, lane, and position of each object. When the signal is received, the data is stored in a chronological array. When the object gets close enough, the robot goes through a preprogrammed series of movements based on the information in the array. You can read much more about it but all I can say is that I’m in awe of the power of this little Lego robot factory. Clearly the sentient robots will soon be able to build their own helpmates out of Lego and program them to separate our heads from our bodies. |
Rumor: Select Developers Receiving "iPhone 4S" With A5 Chip | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 4 | 21 | We all know the next iPhone is going to sport some new silicon, almost certainly a variant of the found in the . And it appears that some very special developers have been given iPhone 4 units with A5s inside, presumably in order to have some A5-powered games at launch. This from an anonymous report to , in which the units are also described as essentially stock iPhone 4s otherwise. Interestingly, despite having the new hardware, the units are reportedly still running a version of iOS 4. I would have expected launch features to incorporate iOS 5 features, but hey. |
HTC Sensation To Launch On June 8th? | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 4 | 21 | When HTC officially announced that their shiny new dual-core 1.2 GHZ Android phone, the Sensation, was heading for T-Mobile, they left out two crucial details: the price, and the launch date. While the price is still a mystery, the launch date might have just been revealed thanks to a lil’ advertising slip up. You see, up until just a few minutes ago (at which point HTC presumably went “OH CRAP” and fixed their mistake), typing “HTC Sensation” into Google would show a page of results with the ad shown above on top. Note that bit right in the middle there: “On 6/8”. Alas, this date is about as concrete as a house made of Jello, so don’t go lining up outside of a T-Mo store on June 7th. As suggests, 6/8 may very well be the European launch date, or just a tentative date subject to change. As for the guy who slipped up and let this ad run with the date: Don’t worry. This ad went up on 4/19. We were distracted playing Portal 2 too. |
Monotribe Korg Drum Machine Ready To Offer Block Rockin' Beats | John Biggs | 2,011 | 4 | 7 | [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2F6DfomqLVo&w=640&h=390]
This little synthesizer and drum kit is made by Korg and features a tiny keyboard, full sequencer, and analog sound circuitry. Sadly, it doesn’t support MIDI but instead uses something called pulse sync to connect multiple boxes in sequence. The Monotribe should cost about $150 when it is released later this year. |
Asus Launches The Eee Pad Transformer's Product Page, Releases Source Code | Matt Burns | 2,011 | 4 | 7 | The is nearing a US release — at least that’s what Fandroids hope. The Transformer hit Taiwanese retailers and it’s been showing up randomly in retailer’s websites. Asus just launched that details the convertible tablet down to each spec. The only thing missing at this point is the US release date and pricing even though page pegs the 16GB flavor at $400, the 32GB at $500 and the optional dock for $150. Asus also the source code for Transformer’s Linux kernel. While it’s not the entire Android 3.0 system it should be enough for app developers to code not only for the Transformer but other Honeycomb devices as well. The Android scene is still patiently waiting for Google to release the entire code for their “ ” platform. : Check out the unboxing . |
Rumor [Smashed]: iPad 2 Mishandling Gets Best Buy Blacklisted By Apple | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 4 | 7 | A reader who works at just told us that there’s been a bit of a misunderstanding between the electronics retailer and Apple. Apparently, Best Buy was holding off on selling the it had in stock, telling customers there weren’t any when in fact they had just reached their quota of sales for the day. Yeah, doesn’t seem like a smart strategy to me either, but this is Best Buy we’re talking about. Apple didn’t like it either, and has declined to sell any more iPads at the store for the time being. The tipster continues, saying that no less than Tim Cook is involved in this little snafu, and will be helping with the negotiations. He says the Apple Rep at his branch of Best Buy confirmed the story, though until we get proof in the form of a lack of iPads in-store, we’ll consider it a rumor. A very likely rumor, but still. I just don’t get why you would mess with Apple. Their retail roll-outs are very carefully planned for maximum splash effect, and selling them by the million on day one is a big part of that. Did Best Buy really think it was wise to tell customers to come back later? UPDATE – The original tipster just got this from Tim Cook: SL, My understanding is most of their stores sold all of their initial supply on the first night of the launch and the balance were out by the following day. I am not aware of any units being held. Tim Rumor (potentially) smashed. |
500 Startups Demo Day: Like Pulse For Facebook, Ninua Launches Its News Sharing App For Android | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 4 | 7 | It was another fast-paced day at open house in Mountain View today, as and company officially introduced the world to its first batch of killer startups. One of the many stellar demos came from , a startup that is building social apps around news, blogs, and social media. Its recently launched is a news-sharing application for Android that recommends articles and blog posts that people in your network are writing or sharing. It allows for the automatic curation of what appears in your stream, based on your interests as well as your friends’ interests. , you may be muttering. Well, yes, but it has a slight twist. It’s Facebook enabled — and built on a blog platform. The Facebook app is something Ninua has had success with in the past. The Ninua News Reader is built on top of the startup’s first app, , an application that allows you to syndicate your blog to Facebook and to embed social widgets on your blog. It’s designed to help bloggers build a presence on social networks like Facebook and Twitter who might not be able to otherwise. After all, the bottom 98 percent of blogs get 3 pageviews a day, so social network reach changes the game. Part MyBlogLog and part RSS feed, NetworkedBlogs has gained some serious traction and currently has just under 1.7 million active monthly users. For the first release of its reader (which you can see in the image above), Ninua will be purely serving recommendations from the 700K feeds on NetworkedBlogs. While that leaves out a few services, it’s perfect for blog enthusiasts. And considering Networked is the largest news community on Facebook, it has sizable reach and a dearth of content from which to serve you your daily news soup. As an interesting aside, in a turn away from the Web 2.0 naming standard, Founder and CEO Waleed Abdulla told me that startup derives its moniker from an ancient Assyrian city of the same name. Ninua was home to one of the largest libraries of the ancient world, with some 30K clay tablets in store. Using its namesake as inspiration, the startup is aiming to serve you with news and information that is topical and informative to you, specifically. While it leverages Facebook’s social graph, it does so only with the intent of suggesting relevant social connections — your friends and people with similar reading habits. Both NetworkedBlogs and the Ninua Reader are free, but NetworkedWorld offers premium upgrades for $20. And at some point in the near future, Abdulla said, the reader will offer premium upgrades as well, like in-app purchases. These premiums have allowed the startup to become cash flow positive in recent months. Ninua has raised $150K from both the fbFund and 500 Startups. |
Solus Spinal Fusion Device Looks Evil | John Biggs | 2,011 | 4 | 7 | It’s rare to see medical implants that are so important yet so wildly frightening. What you see here is a new implant designed for , a process designed to reduce lower back pain due to disk degeneration. Utility aside, all I can keep looking at is the teeth on this thing. Gar. |
Giganews Creating Online Cloud Storage Service | John Biggs | 2,011 | 4 | 7 | Everyone’s favorite Usenet service is building a Usenet-based cloud storage system called Giganews Personal Storage. The service will use distributed Usenet nodes to store large files in the cloud and allow for quick downloads of multi-gigabyte files. No further information is available but they seem to be fairly far along with the service which will compete with cloud drives like Dropbox and Sugarsync. |
More Hints That Chrome OS Is Coming To Tablets | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 4 | 7 | The last thing the world needs right now is yet another platform, but that appears to be where Google is heading — or at the very least, they’re bracing for the inevitable by making a bit more touch-friendly. Some hints, in the form of layout adjustments, virtual keyboard graphics, and so on, have been , but the import of these items isn’t really clear just yet. After all, Honeycomb is just at the very beginning of its life — but that doesn’t mean it’s Google’s only answer to the tablet question. For one thing, Chrome OS is than Android, especially Honeycomb, which has strict hardware requirements. On the other hand, Chrome OS is designed to boot in seconds and run on anything that can handle a browser. What web apps and video decoding might require in a year or two is another question entirely. For now it’s just vague inklings of a future product. I’ll keep an eye out for more news like this; I like the idea of Chrome OS on tablets, though it doesn’t make a lot of sense commercially right now. |
Porn Detection USB Stick – You Know, For Detecting Porn | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 4 | 7 |
Now before you get all fired up, let me explain. First, yes, this is a USB stick with a program on it that deep-scans a computer for porn. It looks in archives, checks headers for image and video data in case they’ve been renamed “.secret” files or something. Could this be used by over-inquisitive parents and the generally porn-intolerant? Sure. But it’s actually intended for professional use: in the workplace and in cases like sex offender probation where possession of porn is a crime. A tool like this would be really handy for a non-computer-savvy probation officer who needs to check 20 or 30 guys’ computers for porn. , so head over there if you’re interested. |
Apple To Go Forward With Next Suit Against 3rd-Party Accessorizer | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 4 | 7 |
It looks like Apple has gotten the go-ahead to continue a suit against eForCity, a company that was manufacturing cheap connectors for Apple devices. This is a topic ripe for discussion, but try as I might to argue against Apple’s position in this particular case, I don’t really see a problem with it except for my fundamental objection to lock-in technologies, and that’s a much bigger issue. There’s a good discussion in the comments ; the gist is that while it is of course restrictive and wrong for a company to say “you can’t make things without our permission,” the fact is that the 30-pin connector was designed and patented by Apple, and reverse-engineering for commercial purposes is illegal, plain and simple. Now, if you couldn’t make without Apple’s permission a USB cable that connected, say, an external hard drive to an Apple laptop, that’d be something worth making noise about. But in this case I think Apple is okay — if you want to do business within their proprietary ecosystem (and make a lot of money by sharing the Apple tax), you have to pay the price and sign up. Of course, that time may be coming, as Apple is now designing custom ports that . I doubt they’ll lock out normal USB cables, but they are making things more their own every day. |
Nikon D3 Powers Through Mud, Still Works Flawlessly | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 4 | 7 |
I’m consistently amazed at how durable modern cameras are. I mean, old cameras sure — I’ve got an old Canon FTb that would serve just fine as a hammer, or a brick — but my Rebel XSi? I love it, but it feels like a little rough treatment would crack it like an egg. Yet the , , and today have all shown that they can take a licking and keep on… exposing. This one was taken on a duck shoot (of the nonviolent kind, where you shoot them with cameras) where it needed to be dragged through mud and water all day long. The photographer, , says he was pouring water onto the LCD to keep it clear. And true to its promises, the D3 and its (very expensive Nikkor 500 f/4 VR) lens survived just fine, and he reports there isn’t a speck of dirt on the internals, nor evidence of water leakage. I’m definitely getting a weather-sealed model for my next camera. Maybe when I see a 7D for under a grand… [via ] |
Ask a VC: Izhar Armony Answers Your Questions | Sarah Lacy | 2,011 | 4 | 7 | Ask a VC has been sporadic with my travel schedule, but we’re back this week. My guest is Izhar Armony of Charles River Ventures. He brings a different perspective to the show for a few reasons. For one thing, he’s from the East Coast. And as a former member of the Israeli army– aka the country’s entrepreneurial finishing school– and a former exec for Tel Aviv-based Onyx Interactive, he’s well versed in what has worked so well in one of the world’s most surprising entrepreneurial hot spots. Armony is also on the board of , an invention factory set up by Nathan Myhrvold. Intellectual Ventures has been lauded by some, but is incredibly controversial in Silicon Valley where insiders lob one of the biggest possible insults at Myhrvold: A patent troll. Lastly, a good deal of Armony’s experience is in enterprise software. So questions about the new developments in enterprise are fair game too. We tape mid-morning tomorrow, so send your questions now to askavc(at)TechCrunch(dot)com. |
500 Startups Demo Day: Motion Math Looks To Make Learning Fun Again | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 4 | 7 | seed fund, accelerator, and incubator, , held an open house in Mountain View today to officially introduce the world to its first batch of companies. The group of mostly consumer-focused startups (not much advertising to be found) at Demo Day put forth quite a few interesting ideas and business models. We’ll be posting a roundup of the best startups (with interviews) later tonight. Among those nifty ideas presenting today is , a startup creating a suite of educational apps intended to give kids a more interactive (and fun) way to learn challenging topics. The startup (which just raised an undisclosed seed round from 500 Startups and a flock of angels) wants to leverage the engaging physical aspects of the mobile experience, like the touch interface and accelerometer, to create that interactive quality which will help kids internalize what they’re learning. The iOS app’s gameplay (and at this point the only one in the suite that is currently live) has the gamer follow a bouncing star, prompting answers to mathematical questions and equivalencies, while following the number line. The game focuses primarily on fractions, as the startup is of the mind that fractions are a critical foundation in early math. Thus, the game teaches kids how to turn fractions into percentages, then into decimals, and so on; the idea being that, the more young people are able to solidify these important, fundamental mathematical concepts in their heads, the likelier they will be to do well in future mathematical and academic pursuits. Not to mention, fractions are a pain in the ass, and many kids struggle to learn how to add and subtract them, etc. The startup’s founders, Jacob Klein and Gabriel Adauto, are both graduates of the learning, design, and technology graduate program at the Stanford School of Education (as well as Stanford’s incubator program). At Stanford, they studied a theory called “embodied cognition”, which is essentially the belief that the mind and body interact on the fly as a single entity, and movement is based not on internal reactions, but the immediate interaction with physical environment. What does that mean? Well, it’s essentially academic research that gave birth to one of the startup’s principle ideas, which is that physical experience of intellectual data — like fractions — leads to increased understanding and digestion. As such, the gameplay experience is important to Motion Math, and the founders said that they want there to be no separation between that gameplay and the learning. (To me, this sounds like an excellent way to persuade kids to enjoy math games.) After all, kids love tablets, and they love phones — almost as much as they love stealing them from their parents. So, trying a tablet app — that involves physical interaction — and makes learning fun? I think kids might be into that idea. And parents might be into the fact that the app is supported by scientific educational research. There’s a bit more thought behind Motion Math than, say, The Count from Sesame Street. (As much as we love him.) The second half of Motion Math’s business will be the aggregation of the data it collects from users playing the game. The startup plans to track scores, trends, or, say, fractions that are problematic, and parents will be able to follow their child’s progress in a dashboard. Klein told me. Klein also told me that they had been experimenting with price points for the iPhone, between $1 and $2, and between $3 and $4 for the iPad. Android apps will be coming later this year. And for you Android, iOS platform engineers out there, the startup will be using its seed funding, among other things, to step up . Motion Math is based on a very interesting concept, and I look forward to the startup’s future game releases. I hope grammar is next. After all, it’s about time someone started thinking of the children. |
null | Matt Burns | 2,011 | 4 | 21 | null |
Let's back The Startup Kids – A documentary that needs to be seen | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 4 | 7 | Oh, how I wish I’d done this myself. is a to-be-released documentary about young web entrepreneurs in the U.S…. and Europe. That’s actually what’s nice about it – for the first time we have (outside of our work here on ) some media which finds a common thread of entrepreneurs running between the two continents. There’s a nice underlying theme here too. The recession has created many new startups often out of sheer necessity, and that’s exactly what these two Icelandic girls, and did – they went out and got started. But although they got an EU grant to do the filming, they still need additional funding to finish post-production as well as funds for promoting and premiering the film. So in order to help them we’re releasing the trailer exclusively on Techcrunch, watch it below. You can pledge your support by so they can finish the film – and we can get to see 70 interviews with leading entrepreneurs. Just some of the interviews are with the founders of Vimeo, Soundcloud, PlayFish, WordPress, Posterous and many others who talk about how they started their company and their lives as an entrepreneur. On the way they’ve had some advertures, such as getting questioned by security for trying to sneak into the Google cafeteria and some interesting scenes shot at a Berlin start-up brunch. Among the rewards for pledging for them on Kickstarter will be: 30 minutes Skype advisory calls with Zach Klein, founder of Vimeo and Jens Begemann, founder of Wooga. Also people can pledge for getting an executive producer title etc. When done, TechCrunch Europe will hold a special premier for the film in London. from on . |
Toys R Us Soon To Be iPads R Us | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 4 | 7 |
While at first glance, it may seem a little strange that Toys R Us is apparently planning on selling the , it really makes a lot of sense. Apple is pursuing different market angles, and one of them is the e-reader one, and kids love the big full-color interactive titles in iBooks. To be honest, I’d expect a whole section of Toys R Us to be dedicated to color e-readers soon. : training documents explaining the specs and selling points of the iPad 2. I’m more surprised they aren’t being trained to play up the kid-oriented titles in the book store, and the many games aimed at young’uns. No dates are mentioned, but I imagine we’ll have an official announcement from Toys R Us in our inboxes soon. [via and ] |
A Colorful Weekend | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 4 | 7 | This past weekend, I headed down to Mexico with a group of friends for a bachelor party. It was a lot like — if you replace tigers, Mike Tyson, and Zac Galifianakis with Macs, iPhones, and iPads. Clearly, we’re all in the tech scene. I bring this up because sometimes it can be telling to see what applications people actually use when they’re away from the normal routine. And surprisingly, our most-used app was probably . I know what you’re thinking: Color?! Yes, the app was a major companion of ours in Mexico. And we weren’t just using it in an ironic or novelty way, we were actually using it sincerely (well, as sincerely as one can use something in drunken party mode). And it made sense. After the initial launch of Color, everyone was quick to jump on the “$41 million for this?!” bandwagon. It was both and at the same time. This started a mere five minutes after the initial posts came out — the app wasn’t even live yet — and people were bashing it. This continued for a few days. But a funny thing happens when you actually use the app in the way that it’s intended: it works really well. Over the weekend, there were five of us that were using the app to quickly take pictures of what we were doing and sharing them with others within the app and via Twitter and Facebook. A bunch of us got messages from other friends and family noting how cool it was that they could follow along in real time. You might think: who wants to follow along in real time? Well, friends and family, obviously. But it goes beyond that as well. It’s the same reason why people want to see your tweets or Facebook status updates and pictures or Instagram photos — it’s social voyeurism. And Color is perhaps the pinnacle of it so far. It’s an extension of the reason that apps like quickly rose to fame a few years ago. But the problem was that the mobile networks weren’t powerful enough yet for realtime video streaming to fully make sense. And to be honest, they still really aren’t. You’ll notice that the newer guys doing video in this space, like Color and Path, stick to short, 10 second long videos. But pictures remain the real opportunity. The key to Color is the right combination of behind-the-scenes set-up and quickness. over the weekend with a navigation that actually made sense, a major obstruction was lifted and the actual usefulness became much more apparent. Whereas apps like Instagram, Picplz, and Path are great for sharing one-off photos, that’s not what Color is doing. Their specialty is the ability to rapidly document an event with multiple pictures (and short videos) from multiple perspectives. The result is actually quite fascinating when it all comes together. You get a sorta living, breathing photo album for an event. Some of the photos are good, but many of them are mediocre to bad. But it doesn’t matter. It’s about the album as a whole, not a single picture. I’ve always believed that one of the key things Instagram got right (and has spurred their quick growth) is speed. Unlike other photo-sharing apps that focus on things like picture quality and tagging, Instagram lets you get it out there as quickly as possible (with filters effectively negating the quality aspect). That’s the most important element of mobile photo-sharing, speed. And Color nails it as well. You hit the button, take a picture, see the preview, and then the picture goes live. The entire process only takes a few seconds. Other photo apps can take upwards of 60 seconds once all is said and done — or more. With Color, there’s no need to tag your location (that’s done for you), tag your friends (that’s sort of implied by who else is Coloring with you — though it should get better as more people use the app), no need to create albums (done for you), there are no filters, and captions are optional (and not emphasized). Speed, speed, speed, speed. With a side of automation and ease. Don’t get me wrong, the app is still far from perfect — and I think their team would be the first to say that. But when used as intended in an appropriate setting, it does work really well. I’m looking back at the Colors we took last weekend, and they’re great. It’s like a photo scrapbook that was really easy to make. I wish I had Color at parties when I was growing up, or in college, that I could look back on now. Maybe Color owns this space, maybe they don’t. But it has given me the strongest indication yet that there is a space here worth owning. |
Psyko Expands Surround Sound Headphone Line With Carbon, Krypton | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 4 | 7 |
I’ve seen Psyko at the last two CESes, both times with their , a headset that uses a totally unique system to provide real surround sound. But they’ve finally put out two new headsets, both refinements to the original design. The and don’t seem to advance the science so much as just refreshing the look and feel. The important part of their product is the actual surround sound, of course, and both sets have that — so improving fit, weight, ergonomics, and so on are the next things to do. The Krypton will be the direct replacement for the old 5.1 set, and includes “market-based improvements,” which probably means things customers complained about. The Carbon, though, is the luxury version, with gold-plated connectors, a braided cord, more high-performance speakers, and better construction. They both come with a little amp/puck that lets you adjust the sound and even includes a helpful directional indicator. The Krypton is $150, the Carbon is $200, and both are available now. Yeah, kind of expensive, but those of use who’ve tried it here at CG think that the real surround sound thing is actually quite cool. |
SohoOS launches lead generation widgets for micro businesses (TCTV) | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 4 | 7 | is a cloud platform for small businesses where they can manage everything from invoicing to billing (without the need to open a merchant account), CRM, email and SMS broadcast, a sales flow manager, as well as document and project management. Since debuting on TechCrunch nearly a year ago, over 20,000 businesses have become active accounts on SohoOS’s platform. In Tel Aviv for , I caught up with SohoOS’s Ron Daniel, founder and CEO, and Orit Mossinson, CMO. They just launched a new ‘leads widget’ which is effectively giving small businesses the ability to distribute a lead generation widget about their business across the web, and embed it in any page, such as a blog or Facebook. After in April last year, SohoOS recently announced led by Mangrove, About.me . |
Study: Nearly A Quarter Of U.S. Students Say They're Addicted To The Internet | Nicholas Deleon | 2,011 | 4 | 7 | Are the kids alright? Probably not, if you follow from the University of Maryland that says students today all but admit to being addicted to the Internet and media consumption. One student in the study likened prolonged separation from the Internet drug addiction, saying she was “itching like a crackhead” after not using the Internet for a bit. Not healthy, . The study looked at 1,000 students from 10 countries, including the US, UK, and China, to see how they’d react to 24 hours without Internet access. Here’s a few choice quotes from some of the students: “I am an addict. How could I survive 24 hours without it?” “I felt sad, lonely and depressed” “Sometimes I felt ‘dead’.” Incidentally, I did a quick and wildly informal poll in the CrunchGear chatroom, and while we’re all pretty much connected to the Internet for every waking hour, none of us felt addicted to it, but perhaps for that very reason: if you’re online , then you become numb to it. The countries with the highest percentage of “addicted” students were the U.S. (23 percent) and China (22 percent). The study didn’t only look at Internet addiction. Student also reported great difficulty with coping without access to mobile phones or media players like the iPod. (Though I guess since the portable media player and mobile phone have all but converged it won’t be long before the two devices are indistinguishable from one another.) Another interesting bit was examining how students consume news nowadays. They don’t really search for news per se anymore, but rather let it come to them via Twitter and Facebook. If you’re into baseball odds are you follow on Twitter players and writers who cover the game, right? (A pretty high percentage of people on Twitter are soccer writers and players. How else would I have learned about if Johnathan Wilson didn’t tweet about it?) It’s a topic that broached in Michio Kaku’s latest book, . The gist is that in the next 100 years we’ll be “connected” all day long to the point where being “connected” 24 hours a day will be the new normal; not being “connected” will be the odd state of being. Whether that’s with implants or high-tech contact lenses, for better or worse you’ll always be plugged in. |
Acer Reveals 10.1-inch Honeycomb Packard Bell Liberty Tab | Matt Burns | 2,011 | 4 | 7 |
Say hello to the Packard Bell Liberty Tab. This 10.1-inch Nvidia Tegra 2 tablet packs Honeycomb and all the rest of goodies pretty much standard on next-gen Android tablets: dual cams, multi-touch screen, HDMI output, MicoSD card slot, and GPS. This model is Wi-Fi only and will be available in European retailers for an unannounced price this coming June. Ironicly the Liberty Tab won’t be sold in the States. Yeah, the US will likely get the same tablet just with Acer branding and styling. [via ] |
The d.Fund Founder Enrique Allen: Innovation Will Take A Different Breed Of Designer | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 4 | 9 | Earlier this week announced the creation of , a designer-centric fund with the aim of increasing the number of startups co-founded by people who have design experience. As quite a few startups like Tumblr, YouTube, Android and Flickr have achieved success because of their designer founders, d.fund founder and 500 Startups designer Enrique Allen wants to foster a community that replicates their success. Design is valued more right now than it ever has been, hence the Quora question Indeed, Allen tells me that the new fund has one goal, Well The d.fund’s solution is to ask 50 or so rockstar mentors in the field, like YouTube’s Christina Brodbeck, Facebook’s Ben Blumenfeld and Google’s Chris Messina to become mentors and/or contribute a minimum of 50K to the pool. When the fund hits 50 investors, it can then fund 50 design centered startups in return. When asked whether the fund was looking specifically for a UX, UI, or just plain graphic designer founders, Allen told me he was looking for “T-shaped people” a.k.a people with in-depth experience in one area but a broad outlook and a wide range of experiences. ” Allen said. Word. More in the interview, above. |
"Folded Leaf" Phone Is Minimalist, But Not Necessarily Practical | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 4 | 7 |
I appreciate good design, but design isn’t always good. This “Folded Leaf,” for instance, is a very good-looking device, and the bent design is unique and cool. But isn’t this thing supposed to go in your pocket?
While I share their frustration with kitchen-sink phones when many people still just want a basic , that doesn’t necessarily mean going back to a Nokia-style candybar and adding a quirk, in this case a permanently bent chassis, which isn’t really a step forward. Although to be fair, this thing would be nice to talk on. The design was done for Huawei by Claesson Koivisto Rune. No information on availability or anything like that, |
Goodypass signs twelve UK celebs to tweet about offers | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 4 | 9 |
Niche Groupon-like site has secured the services of 12 UK celebrities (someone please name them, it’s a mystery to me). Each are are now tweeting out offers to their numerous Twitter followers. The site, headed up by TV presenter Kate Garraway, is understood to be in final discussions for a round of significant funding, but has seed money from investor , The new ‘flash offers’ startup offers members goods at cut down prices by working with celebrities to promote the offers. A pre-existing audience for those celebs is almost certain to push the offers out through social media. For instance, Garraway herself joined Twitter on 15 June last year but already has over 38,000 followers. New’y signed @angela_griffin, TV actress, has 43,422. The site will also win brownie points with the public by donating 5% of all profits to the for kids. The 12 celebrities are Alison Hammond (This Morning), Actress and Loose Women star Lynda Bellingham, Celebrity Chef Aldo Zilli, England Rugby player James Haskell, Capital Radio DJ Dave Berry, author and kids’ food expert Annabel Karmel, Actresses Gemma Atkinson and Lisa Faulkner, TV presenter Clare Nasir and Dancing on Ice finalist Laura Hamilton. Kate Garraway said, “I’ve always felt I was lucky to be offered discounts just because I’m on the TV. With goodypass.com celebrities can use their power and influence to secure great deals for everyone.” Of course, the offers are not quite the usual one celebs get. Som 70% off your local hairdressers is great but not the celeb treatment one might hanker after. Then again, using celebs to promote offers to a mainstream audience is still a smart move. |
(Founder Stories) Right Media's Mike Walrath: "I Was Never Qualified For Any Job I Got In My Life" | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 4 | 9 | “was supposed to write novels.” Instead, he got into digital ad sales, started Right Media, which became an online ad exchange that he for $850 million. In this video, he answers some rapid fire questions from host Chris Dixon about startup advice, hiring, and investing. “Don’t try to solve a problem that you don’t fully understand,” he warns would-be entrepreneurs. He speaks from experience, having dabbled in the broken independent film industry after he left Yahoo. Now, the startup world is pulling him back in. He recently became the , and is involved with some smaller projects as well. Walrath admits, “I was never qualified for any job I got in my life.” But the most important thing is to keep on learning. His No. 1 piece of hiring advice for startup CEOs is to figure put how fast a candidate can learn new things. We’ll post the other parts of this interview throughout the week (here’s ). Check out of or subscribe in . |
Ad.ly Versus Facebook: Something Doesn't Add Up | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 4 | 9 | Earlier this week we heard whispers that Facebook was clamping down on and — two services that let users post sponsored updates to their Facebook Pages. This is important, because the companies are monetizing Facebook Page feeds, which is something that Facebook presumably would prefer to do itself. Inquiries to speak to both companies went unanswered. Then, this morning, Ad.ly posted an update to its blog stating that it has “complied with Facebook’s request to no longer offer celebrity endorsements on Facebook.” A on MediaMemo expanded on the news, and we’ve spoken to both Facebook and Ad.ly founder Sean Rad to get to the bottom of what’s going on. The only problem: both sides are directly contradicting each other. In a statement, Facebook says that Ad.ly has repeatedly violated its Terms of Service, and that the company has been “told many times” to stop: We feel that it is important to take action when we see repeated violations of our Terms and activity that is misleading to our users and partners. Adl.ly was told many times that their activity with personal profiles was not allowed. They nevertheless attempted to circumvent the rules and were caught. We’ve officially told them to stop, they say they have, and we consider the matter resolved. But what exactly were Ad.ly’s “repeated violations”? Ad.ly founder Sean Rad admits that the company created a single fake user profile — which is against Facebook’s Terms of Service. But the reason they created it sounds benign. Rad says that the service regularly posts updates to its celebrity clients’ Facebook Pages, but that because of the way its system works, it sometimes runs into trouble with Facebook’s API, and they’re forced to ask their celebrity clients to re-authenticate with the application. Rad says they’ve spoken with Facebook’s engineering team about getting a fix implemented. In the mean time, Ad.ly came up with a solution. Instead of dealing with the app, celebrities can opt to bless Ad.ly’s ‘fake’ user profile as one of their Facebook Page’s administrators, which means the celebrity doesn’t have to worry about it any more. Rad says that the company created this fake account because he didn’t want to have personal accounts of employees associated with these celebrity Pages. This fake account isn’t actually posting updates to users, it’s just managing the client Pages. In theory, Ad.ly could just avoid this violation entirely by simply doing the same thing with a ‘real’ user’s profile. And, Rad says, “The fact that [Facebook] say they told us repeatedly about this is completely untrue. The only time they said anything about our personal profile was when they sent us the Cease and Desist. Every comment they’ve had before the C&D was positive… all of our interactions were positive and often supportive.” I asked Facebook repeatedly if they could specify any of Ad.ly’s other infringements, but they declined to comment further. Either Ad.ly is being misleading and actually has committed further offenses, or Facebook has honed in on a minor policy violation and is using it as grounds to boot a service that could compete directly with its own monetization efforts. Unless Facebook comes back with something else I’m inclined to believe it’s the latter — especially since we’ve confirmed that Crowdrally, which offered a similar service as Ad.ly, was also issued a Cease and Desist. At this point it looks like Facebook is fine with celebrities using their Facebook Pages to post promoted updates. Just don’t make a service that helps them do it. That’s apparently Facebook’s turf. |
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