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TechCrunch Giveaway: Tickets to Sarah Lacy's SF Book Launch Party, PLUS A Free Signed Copy Of Her New Book | Elin Blesener | 2,011 | 2 | 18 | Want to come celebrate Sarah Lacy’s new book with us in San Francisco? Here’s your chance. We are giving away a total of 10 free tickets to her launch party, all of which include a free signed copy of her critically acclaimed new book, . We will give 5 free tickets away for this giveaway, then another 5 away next week. As Paul Carr , Sarah’s new book has been called “a fascinating new gem of a book” by USA Today, and “an outstanding piece of journalism” by Fortune. The party will start at 6:00pm PST on Wednesday, March 9th at the amazing in San Fransisco. If you are one of our winners, your ticket will include an open bar, free food, and a signed copy of her book. If you’d like to come to this awesome party, all you have to do is the following. – Retweet this post (making sure to include the #TechCrunch hashtag)
– Or leave a comment below telling us why you want to come. The contest will end tomorrow, February 19th at 5pm PST. Please only tweet the message once or you will be disqualified. We will go through the comments and tweets, make sure you added us on Facebook, and contact you this weekend with details if you are chosen. Anyone can enter, but please note this is a giveaway for tickets only, and does not include airfare. You can also still find tickets on sale . Hurry though because they will sell out fast. Good luck everyone and we hope to see you at the party! Update: The giveaway is over. We will update this post once we have our five winners. Thank you to everyone who entered! Keep your eye out for another giveaway next week. |
The Nissan ESFLOW Fully Exposed | Matt Burns | 2,011 | 2 | 18 |
This is embarrassing. The Nissan ESFLOW was supposed to be one of the big reveals at the Geneva Motor Show, but the whole thing leaked well ahead of its official unveiling. A popped up yesterday but here’s a whole gallery shot at what appears to be its official photo shoot. How ironic. [ via ] |
Voyurl Is Climbing In Your Browser Window, Snatching Your Surfing History Up | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 2 | 18 | It was back in July of last year that we first wrote about a service called with the headline: . You see, at the time, the still-in-stealth startup was targeting angel investors via Google ads get their attention to hopefully talk about their product. That’s actually pretty smart. So we had to give the edge to the product itself being creepier. You see, its aim was to be a service that made your entire browsing history public. At the time, we said the best way to think of this was as a sort of “Blippy but with more potential porn”. Of course, has since been tweaking its service to be less about public sharing of your purchases and more about the social dynamics of purchases and recommendations. But fear not, Voyurl is gladly picking up the creepy mantle! After all that time in stealth, the service finally launched in private beta recently. I’ve had a chance to test it out for a bit and it really is pretty amazing. By using a Chrome extension, they not only keep track of everything you browse on the web and publish it in a realtime updating list, but they can also publish your back-history of surfing as well. So who the hell would want to possibly use this? Well, first of all, it is kind of fun. If you only browse sites you don’t mind sharing, or just don’t care in general, this is a fun way to share those sites with others. And it’s a fun way to easily keep track of these sites. And to get/give recommendations. More importantly, with the extension, you can easily pause the tracking — or you can set it to be anonymous with the click of a button. And you can stream just individual URLs (either with your name attached or anonymously). And if you do choose to share, you’ll be adding your data to a growing database of interesting data from Voyurl users. You can easily see the system-wide , for example. Here you’ll find that, unsurprisingly, Facebook dominates followed by Twitter, Tumblr, Google, Engadget, and even TechCrunch (though the amount of time spent on Facebook compared to other sites really is pretty amazing). You can also break those charts down by categories or domains. And you can see the top users of the service based on both total site visits and total time spent browsing overall. In other words, this gives you great insight into the true Internet addicts. So far, those in the beta seem to be the nerdy, early-adopter type who actually browse Reddit more than porn. But when this baby opens up to the regular public, I cannot wait to see what we find. Obviously, this is very use-at-your-own risk. And things are still a bit buggy. But if you want to try out Voyurl, made for TechCrunch readers. It should get about 500 of you into the beta. Really, just be careful what you browse with it on. I’ll be watching. No really, I be watching. |
Libya Follows Egypt's Lead, Starts Shutting Off Internet Services | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 2 | 18 | BREAKING: Col Muammar Gaddafi's government in Libya has taken a series of measures, including blocking internet … http://bbc.in/gUVJNN — BBC Global News (@bbc_global) Both the BBC and the AFP that Muammar Gaddafi’s government in Libya has begun to block user access to Facebook in the country’s capital of Tripoli and is sporadically shutting down electricity access and access to Internet connections in the rest of the country as a response to anti-govermental protests. CEO Scott Julian has confirmed to TechCrunch that Internet access in Libya is indeed restricted, but not totally cut off. Effective Measure measures analytics tags on pages like arabia.msn.com within the MENA region. Says Julian: Twitter user says that sources in Libya have cited the Facebook blocks, but that Twitter.com is still not blocked and Internet access is not yet down. I have contacted both companies for information and will update this post as soon as they respond. You can follow the events in Libya on Twitter at and . http://twitter.com/#!/RamyRaoof/status/38728894483927040 Al Jazeera is access to its Aljazeera.net site being cut off as well as access to select Facebook opposition groups. This is reminiscent of the steps former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak took to cut off Internet access in Egypt before popular uprisings lead to his resignation. View the BBC’s video As with Egypt, Telecomix is offering a free dialup number to Libyans who are having trouble connecting. RT : RT : PLS RT!…+494923197844321 User: Telecomix Password: Telecomix 12 lines for Libyans only — Marwa (@marwame) |
Good Thing Shadows Don't Normally Fight Back | Matt Burns | 2,011 | 2 | 18 | [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmlkmVoPuQA&w=640&h=390] You’re going to wanna pause your life for two and half minutes. I’m not entirely sure what’s going on here, but it doesn’t matter. The one dude is fighting the other dude who turns out to be a shapshifting shadow? Oh man, it’s like a Nyquil-induced dream. [ |
Have Work, Will Travel: LiquidSpace Aims To Test Their 'AirBnb For Workspaces' At SXSW | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 2 | 18 | I don’t know how many times I’ve been visiting a city, looking for a place to work, and have just ended up in a Starbucks. I hate working in Starbucks. But I know they have WiFi, so I go there anyway. Time and time again. But what if a service existed that showed you other options for getting work done when you’re on the go? That’s exactly what is going to be. The service, which hasn’t launched yet, can most easily be thought of an for workplaces. Their aim is to find the best spots around a city to work from and show them to you via a location-based mobile application. But these aren’t Starbucks locations, instead they’ll be offices, business centers, lounges, and all sorts of other places that people have set up with things like WiFi, but are under-utilized at various times. LiquidSpace will help these places maximize their potential. This idea is potentially huge for workers on the go. Certainly an aspect of it will be co-working spaces, but there will also be places more tailored for private work and/or meetings as well. It’s something that I’d probably use every day while on the road. And LiquidSpace is going to see if there are others like me when they do their first major test of the service at the upcoming SXSW conference in Austin, Texas. The team is setting up a bunch of pop-up workspaces around the city that users will be able to reserve. These will be places like Art House, Copa, a few hotels, and even some local startup spaces. They’ll also have a “badass” bus that will roam around the city allowing people to come inside and work. Their partner, , is helping them out with all of this. Polaris Ventures’ Dogpatch Labs will during SXSW, and the LiquidSpace guys thinks that’s great and hope they can work together to fill out that space. But the key is the wide variety of spaces they’ll be opening. At the same time, the plan is still to keep the app in limited beta testing throughout the conference so they don’t get bombarded and have nothing to offer most people. We’ll work on getting some invites before the event begins to dish out here. All of this is possible thanks to a nice seed round LiquidSpace has landed from Reid Hoffman (Greylock Discovery) and Mike Maples (Floodgate). The $1.3 million round will put Maples on the Board alongside LiquidSpace co-founders Mark Gilbreath and Doug Marinaro. |
Fly Or Die: Apple's New Subscription Rules (With Rhapsody President Jon Irwin) | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 2 | 18 | The media world is in a over for iPad and iPhone apps. Basically, Apple will now take a 30 percent cut of all in-app subscription revenues and own all the customer data. As written, the rules apply to everything from to subscription and even subscription movie services like Netflix. We’ve debated these rules and . In this special episode of , Rhapsody president Jon Irwin joins us to explain how online subscription media businesses work from his perspective. Irwin is one of the few executives brave enough to speak out against the new rules. Rhapsody’s position, in a nutshell, is : Our philosophy is simple too – an Apple-imposed arrangement that requires us to pay 30 percent of our revenue to Apple, in addition to content fees that we pay to the music labels, publishers and artists, is economically untenable. The bottom line is we would not be able to offer our service through the iTunes store if subjected to Apple’s 30 percent monthly fee vs. a typical 2.5 percent credit card fee. Rhapsody’s is used by a substantial portion of its 750,000 subscribers, but they also listen across other devices. Rhapsody’d service is not limited to the iOS platform. Similarly, many media companies want the ability to bundle print subscriptions with iPad subscriptions to publications. Apple’s new rules complicate such bundling. So will the rules fly or die? I am reminded of a similar move Apple did previously when it changed its rules for how it would handle other mobile ad networks. They issued new rules, which effectively turned out to be a trial balloon. When the market and were threatened, Apple . The same could happen here, or Apple could choose to selectively enforce the rules against digital publishers but not against music or movie services. |
Radiohead's Day Early Release Of 'The King Of Limbs' Goes Viral | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 2 | 18 | It’s as if Radiohead got the lion’s share of Internet awareness, leaving the rest of the music industry completely clueless. Pretty much all anyone can talk about right now is Radiohead’s , for a number of reasons (not least of which is because it’s amazing) but primarily because Radiohead mirrored the patterns of digital album leaks, generating major buzz. On the Internet everyone expects everything a day early. |
Apple Job Posting Asks For TV Power Supply Engineer, Apple HDTV In The Works? | Matt Burns | 2,011 | 2 | 18 | The fabled might actually be coming. Of course if it will save humanity from the chains of the big cable fat cats is a whole other discussion. But a recent Apple job posting requests someone qualified to work on power supplies of a wide range of equipment including computer and TV. Seriously, it says TV. via , The position primarily involves high-density offline power supply’s development for Apple’s next generation Macintosh platforms spanning from notebook computers, desktop computers, servers, standalone displays and TV. I still that Apple’s getting in the cut-throat HDTV business, but that job posting is pretty clear. It’s also widely known that Apple has unparalleled access to the best LCDs available, which might help keep the price of the TVs competitive against traditional HDTV brands who also manufacturer panels themselves like Panasonic, Samsung, Sony, and Sharp. But for Apple, it’s always been about generating revenue from a vertical ecosystem and a proper, if you will, Apple TV would further their reach into livingrooms. |
Obaku Releases The Thinnest Sports Watch In The Whole World | John Biggs | 2,011 | 2 | 18 | This watch, designed by Christian Mikkelsen and Lau Liengaard Ruge, is an ultrathin, fairly handsome sports watch with a thin quartz movement and PVD-coated case and band. I, personally, am not a fan but it does look better than the thin stuff Skagen has been selling for years now and it could make someone with a fetish for ultrathin watches quite happy. No pricing, but expect it at the big watch show, Basel, in a few weeks.
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How Chris Sacca And J.P. Morgan Acquired 10% Of Twitter Via Huge Secret Secondary Fund | Michael Arrington | 2,011 | 2 | 27 | and of today in all the major newspapers about how J.P. Morgan is trying to buy 10% or so of Twitter for $450 million. As far as I can tell, all of the stories are wrong. In particular, say my sources, Twitter isn’t negotiating with anyone – J.P. Morgan or otherwise – about a new funding round. The seems to have more than satisfied their near term capital appetite. Also, J.P. Morgan isn’t currently trying to buy Twitter shares through the secondary market, either, say my sources. That’s because they already indirectly own 10% of Twitter. Here’s what’s really going on, as far as I can tell from sources: J.P. Morgan owns no Twitter shares directly. They have, however, committed the bulk of capital in a secretive new $1+ billion fund by angel investor . Over the last several months, that fund has acquired around $400 million in Twitter stock from current shareholders, at prices ranging from $16 – $21/share. At $21/share, that implies a Twitter valuation of $4.5 billion. That fund is now the second largest shareholder of Twitter, say our sources. Cofounder is the largest shareholder. Who’s sold all that stock to Sacca? They bought $100 million from Williams, sources say, beating out in a bidding war for the shares. Early investors Union Square Ventures and Spark Capital make up most of the remaining $300 million, as well as some other employees. Of note, the recent by was actually done through a rival fund controlled by angel investor . The fund still has some $700 million in fresh capital to spend, and it’s clearly aiming at investing in other companies, too. They’ve expressed interest in buying shares in Facebook, Zynga and other companies, we’ve heard. That makes them a very real competitive fund to , which has purchased primary and secondary shares in Facebook, Zynga, and Groupon to date. |
AT&T Taps Placecast For Location-Based Shopping Alerts | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 2 | 27 |
AT&T is betting big on location-based shopping alerts through a partnership with AT&T is debuting a branded service, which will deliver special offers and discounts to consumers via their mobile phones when they are near a participating store or brand (initial brands include HP, KMart, and JetBlue). The program is currently available to AT&T customers in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and San Francisco who have opted-in to receive Shop Alerts, but AT&T plans to roll the program out nationally by summertime and increase the number of participating brands. All of this is powered by Placecast’s which are location-triggered mobile text messages sent from brands to consumers. Consumers can opt-in to receiving text messages in a variety of ways—at the store, online, via text-message, mobile websites or on Facebook. Once the technology has been activated, consumers will be alerted when they are near a location that they are interested in or when the brand is offering sales and specials. ShopAlerts’ technology uses “geo-fences,” which are virtual boundaries that can be targeted via location-based marketing. Retailers can customize alerts to fit their brand and strategy. This isn’t the first large-scale deal for Placecast. The company with European carrier to enable geo-fence marketing campaigns for a number of brands for the carrier’s users. And Placecast has licensed ShopAlerts to a number of retail partners, including American Eagle Outfitters and the |
What 'The Social Network' Won (Three Awards, But Not Best Picture) #Oscars | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 2 | 27 | Despite losing Best Picture to , Aaron Sorkin and David Fincher’s epic Facebook creation myth did pick up three Oscars tonight, more than any film about nerds has ever garnered, unless you count won Best Film Editing (Angus Wall and Kirk Baxter), Best Original Score (Trent Reznor) and Best Adapted Screenplay (Aaron Sorkin) at tonight’s 83rd Academy Awards Ceremony. The film, which including Best Picture at the Golden Globes and was nominated for eight Oscars, was definitely the and tech crowd favorite but apparently not the Academy’s. We did indeed have something to to root for despite David Fincher losing to Tom Hooper for Best Director, Jesse Eisenberg (who played Mark Zuckerberg) also losing to the very-deserving Colin Firth in the Best Actor category, and the film itself losing to The King’s Speech in the most important category of the night, Best Picture. The King’s Speech, with twelve nominees and four wins, was perhaps the ” to borrow a term from the film. Traditionally the Best Editing award is usually of what film will win Best Picture (only nine films have taken the coveted Best Picture award without winning Best Editing) but that rule didn’t hold in this case. Both and beat at sheer amount of awards won, at four to three. Here’s the full list of what The Social Network won, what it was nominated for and who it was up against, via ( = Winner).
Black Swan
The Fighter
Inception
The Kids Are All Right
127 Hours
Toy Story 3
True Grit
Winter’s Bone
Darren Aronofsky, Black Swan
David O. Russell, The Fighter
Joel and Ethan Coen, True Grit
Javier Bardem, Biutiful
Jeff Bridges, True Grit
James Franco, 127 Hours
127 Hours (Fox Searchlight), Screenplay by Danny Boyle & Simon Beaufoy
Toy Story 3 (Walt Disney), Screenplay by Michael Arndt. Story by John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton and Lee Unkrich
(Paramount), Written for the screen by Joel Coen & Ethan Coen
Winter’s Bone (Roadside Attractions), Adapted for the screen by Debra Granik & Anne Rosellini
Black Swan (Fox Searchlight) Matthew Libatique
The King’s Speech (The Weinstein Company) Danny Cohen
True Grit (Paramount) Roger Deakins
Black Swan (Fox Searchlight) Andrew Weisblum
The Fighter Paramount Pamela Martin
The King’s Speech (The Weinstein Company) Tariq Anwar
127 Hours (Fox Searchlight) Jon Harris
How to Train Your Dragon (Paramount) John Powell
Inception (Warner Bros.) Hans Zimmer
The King’s Speech (The Weinstein Company) Alexandre Desplat
127 Hours (Fox Searchlight) A.R. Rahman
The King’s Speech, Paul Hamblin, Martin Jensen and John Midgley
Salt, Jeffrey J. Haboush, Greg P. Russell, Scott Millan and William Sarokin
True Grit, Skip Lievsay, Craig Berkey, Greg Orloff and Peter F. Kurland [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lB95KLmpLR4&w=630] http://twitter.com/#!/keisertroll/statuses/42052736048562177 http://twitter.com/#!/dtrinh/status/42077517061955584 http://twitter.com/#!/alexia/status/42081203691593728 http://twitter.com/#!/parislemon/status/42085486516240384 http://twitter.com/#!/brandchannelhub/statuses/42065847543398400 |
Comprehend Systems Wants To Make Data Analysis Less Of A Pain | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 2 | 27 | Founded by Rich Morrison and Jud Gardner, Y-Combinator backed is launching the first iteration of its comprehensible data analysis platform today, . Comprehend Clinical’s browser friendly interface allows its clients to analyze the results of clinical drug trials across multiple data sources, combining those stored in diverse data structures and databases. In the same space as Sas Institute and Pitco, Comprehend Clinical attempts to empower people bringing drugs to market to When you’re dealing with lengthly drug studies you need to know whether the drug is safe and effective, and whether people are dying as a soon as possible. says founder Rich Morrison. Comprehend’s customizable dashboards provide easily downloadable data visualizations and reports. The service also allows you to view data analysis in realtime and perform drill down data queries. Comprehend plans on monetizing through direct enterprise sales, charging companies per Comprehend user. Morrison and Gardner decided to go into pharma because of their familiarity with the space (Rich was at Integrated Clinical Systems and Jud was a pharmaceutical consultant before they built Comprehend). The industry also seemed ideal for what they were attempting to accomplish because of its overreliance on multiple data sets and different storage formats. The founders plan on expanding to other verticals like inventory management and utility automation sometime in the near future. |
LeWeb tickets are half price through February 28th (yes, tomorrow) | roxannevarza | 2,011 | 2 | 27 | It kind of feels like it was only yesterday that we were all watching Loïc Le Meur parade across the stage at dressed up in Angry Bird gear. Yet, Géraldine and Loïc Le Meur have already announced the dates for year’s edition of the infamous Paris-based tech conference. While in previous years LeWeb has always been a 2-day event, looks like the team has decided add another day to the menu for 2011. So mark your calendars for judging from the previous events, you definitely won’t want to miss this. Even better than a full 3 days of the best tech, innovations and startups from around the world is the fact that tickets are half price through February 28th. Therefore, don’t hesitate to buy your tickets if you already know you’ll be attending. And check out of people who have already confirmed their attendance ! Photo credit: |
null | Nicholas Deleon | 2,011 | 2 | 18 | null |
Infographics (Attempt To) Predict The Oscars | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 2 | 27 | The folks over at online analysis service who Wired’s hilariously called out for not doing so hot at predicting the have once again tried to use or whatever the hell that means to predict who will win the 83rd Annual Academy Awards tonight. Their call? , followed by for Best Picture, James Franco followed by Colin Firth for Best Actor and Natalie Portman by a landslide for Best Actress, trailed by Nicole Kidman. Meanwhile over at we’ve got another infographic bet on winning for Best Picture, followed by James Franco as Best Actor, followed by Colin Firth, Natalie Portman (our only consensus) as leading actress followed by Nicole Kidman, Christian Bale as Supporting Actor, followed by Geoffry Rush, Helena Bonham Carter as Supporting Actress and David Fincher as Best Director for , followed by Tom Hooper from And while there are countless others, where would a discussion about infographics be without a check-in with the ambitious have made an based on critics pics (which surely should be worth more than social media reach). Critics favored , followed by for Best Picture, David Fincher followed by Tom Hooper for Best Director, Colin Firth for Best Actor and Natalie Portman for Best Actress and so on and so forth In my opinion anything on a infographic should be taken with a grain of salt, but especially an infographic about Facebook and Twitter shares predicting winners. This kind of analysis will always fail to take things into account like how James Franco might have gotten more social media mentions because aside from being a nominee, he is also the show’s host (I’m rooting for you Colin Firth!). Anyways, I’m pretty sure a majority of the Academy’s 5,755 voting members are not on Twitter and aren’t using a “social buzz” as a deciding factor. You really want a heads up as to who the real Oscar winner will be? Check out this about the price of Oscars media buys. |
SwipeGood Gives Its Start Fund Cash To Charity | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 2 | 27 | Y Combinator-incubated a startup that allows you to donate to charity each time you buy, is using its money to benefit others. In case you didn’t catch this bit of news, DST’s and have to launch the Start Fund, which gives all Y Combinator startups a $150,000 investment in the form of a convertible note with no cap and no discount. SwipeGood is giving the $150,000 to charity. Here’s how SwipeGood works. Once you enroll your credit/debit card with SwipeGood, every purchase you make gets rounded up to the nearest dollar. So for a $50.50 purchase of groceries, $0.50 will be given to charity. At the end of the month, SwipeGood will send your total donation amount to the charity or cause of your choice. To participate in SwipeGood, consumers have to enroll their credit card and the service will track your purchases, similar to the way Blippy works. Now SwipeGood is giving every user who enrolls on the service $1000 that they can give away to charity. They do so by inviting their friends to SwipeGood and every time someone signs up through the invitation, SwipeGood gives them $10 for their charity. Users can invite up to 100 people and choose from hundreds of charities to donate to, including Charity Water, Room to Read and Invisible Children. SwipeGood’s move to give away the $150,000 is a little unorthodox but I guess the campaign could be considered as a marketing initiative. As SV Angel managing partner “These aren’t gifts, we’re not a charity. It’s an investment that gives these startups that first critical $150k that gets them to product. We intend to make money on these investments.” What do you think? Is SwipeGood’s campaign a wise use of $150,000? |
In Two Years, Most Of You Will Be Reading TechCrunch From An Apple Device | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 2 | 27 | In February of 2007, 83.24 percent of users visiting TechCrunch did so from a Windows machine. One year later, in February 2008, the stranglehold remained firm at 80.44 percent. In February 2009, the number was at 74.04 percent. Last year, it was 61.59 percent. And this year? The number of people visiting our site from Windows machines dipped to 53.84 percent. The writing is on the wall. Look at those numbers again for a second. In four years, Windows share among TechCrunch readers has fallen 30 percentage points. That’s incredible. The knee-jerk reaction in the comment section will likely be something like “it’s because you guys cover Apple so much”. But the fact of the matter is that Macintosh share, after rising for three of those four years, fell last year as well. It’s the mobile devices — specifically the iPhone, iPad, and Android devices — that are eating away at Windows. In fact, if the trend over the past four years continues at about the same pace, in two years, devices made by Apple (Macs, iPhones, iPod touches, and iPads) will surpass devices that run Windows as the top visitors to TechCrunch. And depending on how popular the iPad 2, iPhone 5, and OS X Lion are, it could easily happen next year. Here are the broken down numbers: While even the last batch of stats shows that Windows still has a nice cushion over number two, Mac, if you add the Apple products put together, it’s a different story. In the four year span, Apple has added 25 percentage points to their share among TechCrunch readers. That nearly of the 30 percentage points that Windows lost in that same span (Android’s growth pretty much fills in the rest). So it currently stands at Microsoft’s 53.84 percent versus Apple’s 38.42 percent. Again, a big year for iPad, iPhone, and Mac could mean a changing of the guard as soon as next year. But unless something drastic changes, you can be sure that Apple will be dominant among TechCrunch readers in two years. The latest rumors have sometime in mid/late 2012. But the fact of the matter is that Windows 7, much more widely praised than the disaster that was Vista, hasn’t helped Microsoft buck this trend among our readers. Perhaps they’re only hope of gaining back share at this point is Windows Phone. So far, that hasn’t been going too well. Nokia should help that, but will it be enough to offset the Windows losses? Humorously, Microsoft’s best hope for not falling to Apple may well be Android. If Google’s platform continues to make gains, it could prolong Apple passing Microsoft. But again, Apple has iPhone 5, iPad 2, and OS X Lion on the immediate horizon — all within the next few months. And then there’s the very real possibility of . The iPad 2 and iPhone 5 are likely to push the Apple share forward immediately. But don’t sleep on OS X Lion either. are that Apple has indeed made it much more iOS-like. That means millions of iPad/iPhone/iPod touch owners who have traditionally been PC users, are going to feel a lot more comfortable on a Mac than ever before. And a new built in to Lion will only help that. OS X Lion is going to feed off of iOS users, and vice versa. And the Mac ecosystem is going to continue to expand. Just as happened in the browser world with , a transition is happening among TechCrunch readers in the ecosystem space. The numbers don’t lie. And Microsoft better pray that our readers aren’t leading indicators of overall trends in the space — which is exactly what you have been in the past. |
What is Your Real Name? | Steve Gillmor | 2,011 | 2 | 27 | What is your real name? That’s my new favorite comment on TechCrunch, where many of its readers hide behind phony names and email addresses. Apparently it’s not considered appropriate to challenge such geniuses about their real identity. Could be similar to talking about “open” and “Web” as though they have magical properties of goodness and well-being. Or not.
Nasty comments and identity baiting are in and of themselves minor irritations, best left to swift deletes or just plain not caring. Facebook and even Twitter mostly get around this problem by requiring a registration to play along, but the earlier generation of blog posts and even RSS encourage anonymity in reading mode. No reason why we should be forced to identify ourselves in order to consume a page; the problem comes if we want to respond on a level playing field in comments.
But take “what is your real name?” and apply it to other things besides blog posts. Say you’re in a meeting and the guy to your right has been verbose but unintelligible for over an hour. You ask: “What is your real name?” This will be viewed as a hostile interruption if taken literally, so it’s important to smile broadly and giggle in an “I’m laughing with you, not at you” posture. If the question is treated as a non sequitur, you need to drop the smile and look earnest with a hint of stupidity. After all, adopting comment dynamics to the real world is a complicated strategy.
Let’s play it out from here. If the response is, “What do you mean?” you could explain yourself by saying, “Well of course Bob I know what your real name is. I guess I’m trying to understand what you’re talking about or whether in fact you have all the time in the world to waste and don’t mind including me as your personal on-standby stooge intern.” Or you could punt by saying, “Just wanted to see what you’d say. Did you know that more than 70% of people answer with a different name than the one they’d given previously?” Of course, that’s not true, at least right now. If more people engaged with each other as though they were in a social media context, we might come up with social names with more frequency.
My key social name is @stevegillmor, my Twitter @mention handle. As Twitter’s iPad, iPhone, and even Web apps handle @mentions and direct messages in a more uniform way, a social pattern of realtime communications develops. Beyond the obvious shout out function, @mentions provide a kind of Bat Signal to groups aligned around projects, breaking news, trend spotting, and customer service. Not only do you get the message when @mentioned, but a group’s characteristics are built out based on the public nature of the alert. Email silos authority; @mentions broadcasts it.
You could say that @mentions make your social name more real than your actual real name. Certainly @Scobleizer is more real than Scoble. You can say the most outrageous things about Robert in a crowded room without fear of reprisal, but @mention him and he’ll reply in seconds no matter what time zone or Quora fight he’s in. The social imperative is to be responsive in real time to @mentions, or risk being redefined by your comment cloud. And we know how painful that is, if by we we mean me.
At work the other day, a fellow salesforcian pinged me with “What’s your real name?” as I walked by. He was smiling as he said it, but before I could say anything more, he advised me to not “feed the trolls.” Normally I would have agreed with him, as it only gives them the attention they’re looking for. Yet there’s an implied consent to not answering, a whiff of a suggestion that because I have occasionally replied to others more willing to identify themselves, I must have read the other comments and been so overwhelmed by their analysis and superior intellect that I am afraid to respond. I choose another path, Douchebag.
Frankly, Douchebag stumps me. I get that he’s using his fake login name to insult me, as in “you’re the douchebag,” but in a sea of such names Douchebag stands out and becomes a brand name, like Kleenex. Comment sub-trolls form beneath him, fleshing out an army of the douchebagerati. Elections are held; uniforms are distributed. Douchebag becomes a victim of his (her?) own success, too famous to move on, a figurehead in the late fat-Elvis period.
Thats the biggest problem with social mediocrity. The ease with which you achieve stardom — create a new gmail account, you’re in — cheapens the platform upon which you construct your scenario. Whole worlds bloom, comment cities with fireman, courts, daily newspapers, garbage collection…. well, no. And then some guy comes along in your thread and shifts it to trying to convince Mike Arrington to fire me. Believe me, Mike’s got his own problems writing his performance review for AriannaPo. Douchebag’s candle burns out long before the next guy’s ever will. However ephemeral comment stardom might be, we only have to look to the Middle East to see how far a tweet or two million can travel. It’s not just people but countries that yearn to know their real name. Perhaps the most perplexing reaction of all in the comment cloud is the fear of new ideas, new forms, new experiments in this thing most of us should never call journalism. It’s more like learnalism, the probing of the vast opportunity unleashed in our fingertips by the SocialPad revolution. With FaceTime coming to our iPads this week, anonymity becomes a second class citizen. |
Sorry Entrepreneurs: You're Probably the Rule, Not the Exception | Sarah Lacy | 2,011 | 2 | 27 | I was in the air an average of 30 hours a month for the last two years, so I watched a lot of movies — typically semi-delirious on Ambien– that I wouldn’t ordinarily. One of those was the star-studded rom-com “He’s Just Not That Into You.” Note: You won’t see this movie at the Oscars tonight, or any night, and that’s not because it was cruelly overlooked. But as a plane movie, it sufficed. I’m assuming most TechCrunch readers are far to Y-chromosomey to have seen it or even admit they’ve seen it, so I’ll fill you in on the thrust of the film. Like most things in life, the simplest explanation is usually the right one: If a guy doesn’t call, he didn’t lose your number, he isn’t away on business in Yemin, he wasn’t kidnapped and held at gunpoint– he just didn’t want to call you. All these fairy-tale stories that lonely girls thrive on about how the jerky guy one day woke up and realized how great you are may have happened to somebody, sometime, but that person was the exception, not the rule. The somewhat cold message of the film is that you shouldn’t live your life assuming you are the exception. (Of course as rom-coms go, the main character does end up being the exception, undercutting the wisdom of the point. But for the purposes of real life, let’s pretend she didn’t and moved on to someone else.) Believe it or not, this movie came up in conversation at a dinner party in Silicon Valley the other night. The conversation was about the impact of the over-the-top valuations of Facebook, Groupon, Zynga and Twitter. While there’s a lot of hand-wringing about how crazy these prices are– they’re not reminiscent of the bubble for several obvious reasons. In the late 1990s hundreds of companies were going public at multi-billion dollar valuations in less than a year of operation without revenues. In contrast, we’re talking about four companies, who are still private, mostly raising private funds at these crazy prices, and who — other than Twitter– have very substantial revenues and sharp growth rates. We can argue whether Facebook should be worth $10 billion or $30 billion instead of the recent $70 billion, but no one is arguing that a shift in the stock market would force the company to file bankruptcy and go out of business. That is what happened in 2000. Indeed, Facebook’s valuation grew during the largest economic downturn since the Great Depression. But the venture capitalist sitting next to me argued that there one legitimate gripe with these four companies’ prices: Every startup wrongly assumes these four companies are the new rule, and not the exception. Similarly, every company that says they have no idea how they’ll make money – but that’s ok because Google didn’t either – is confusing the exception with the rule. And likewise, Fred Wilson’s that great companies with great products– like Zynga– don’t need marketing is confusing the exception with the rule. Wilson is right, if he’s talking about the exception. The uproar over the post was because most startups are the rule. In fact, most of the debates you see amid VCs and Super Angels boil down to this distinction: One group is trying to fund only exceptions, the other accepts it’ll probably mostly fund the rule. Recently, a startup came to pitch me that refused to give me any details about its market traction, users or growth– even off the record. When I asked why we should consider the company newsworthy without any information to show the product was well-received, the founder answered, “Well, Quora doesn’t have to give user numbers and TechCrunch writes about them all the time.” Yes, I said, but you aren’t Quora. Unfortunately the inverse of these exceptions aren’t true: Just because you don’t spend money on marketing doesn’t mean you are a great startup, just because you’re planning on spending two years building a product before you generate revenue doesn’t mean you’ll be the next Google and just because you’re a consumer Web company at this moment in time, doesn’t mean you deserve an outrageous valuation just because Facebook, Groupon, Zynga and Twitter got them. The economics of venture capital are based on finding the exceptions, but there are typically only a handful in every cycle. The cold truth is it’s binary: You are huge or you are the rest, and there are typically at least four zeros between a number one player, and a number two player. And in the consumer Web, you typically know early on which camp you’re in. Facebook’s valuations have been considered ridiculously outsized since Accel gave it a $100 million valuation. This isn’t to say there aren’t great successes, millions made and worthy products that come out of companies that are the rule. I’d put TechCrunch in that camp. We weren’t worth a billion dollars, and we probably have made far more money for other people than we ever made ourselves. I’m insanely proud to have been a small part of it. But while great entrepreneurs are dreamers, they’ve always got a foot firmly planted in reality. It’s important to know what camp you’re in, before you burn bridges, pick the wrong partners simply for a higher valuation or get seduced to start a company for the wrong reasons. |
Custora Helps Online Businesses Improve Customer Retention | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 2 | 27 | For any retailer that is selling goods online, it is incredibly important to be able to retain customers and identify when purchasers are about to leave a site. While many online retailers and companies develop these analytics in house, there is a need for a simple application that smaller shops can use to determine behavior of visitors. Today, -backed is launching a SaaS that tells online retailers and web apps which of their customers are most valuable, and suggests actions to keep them. The startup is best described by its tagline: “Google brings you customers. We keep them around.” For retailers, the software can analyze order logs and distinguish between customers that simply haven’t ordered anything for a while, and customers who have left the site. The application also manages and optimizes email campaigns to keep customers engaged. For example, Custora will automate the process of sending emails to customers who are in danger of leaving a retailer’s site, or will send emails to customers who are repeat purchasers. Custora determines where the repeat customers are coming from and will also recommend specific incentives the retailer can use to reclaim lost customers. In addition to retailers, Custora is being used for SaaS providers with freemium offerings as well. These clients are using the software to determine which users are most likely to convert to paid options and what kind of incentive would make them convert to a premium level. For example, Salesforce.com, Foodzie and GetSatisfaction are using Custora in-house. For now, Custora’s platform optimizes customer retention with email campaigns but the company plans to add new technologies in the future. It seems like for any retailer or SaaS company, using Custora to prevent customer churn is a no-brainer. |
The Haves and Have-Nots: The True Story of a Reader Suddenly De-Invited from TED | Sarah Lacy | 2,011 | 2 | 27 | I was determined never to write another negative post about TED. Really. I feel like my views on the conference’s smug-tendencies have been . And, as I said in in Fast Company, I think the TED Fellows program and the TEDx program have gone a long way towards fulfilling the stated mission of TED, doing actual outreach into places the conference long professed to care about. Beyond that, I’m just hearing of a lot of Valley people who after the move to Long Beach, making the conference less of an annual to-do for the tech community. But then I got this email below, and all the reasons I wrote the original BusinessWeek column came flooding back. If TED would just own up to being about making the wealthy, famous and powerful feel comfortable–like other high level affairs like Sun Valley or the World Economic Forum– I wouldn’t have an issue with it. Business conferences have good reasons to be elitist; deals are getting done and high-level conversations need to be private sometimes. But when credentials are revoked at the last minute based purely on the whim of a more important member of the TED community, the inner workings are just too much like a country club for an organization whose stellar content is all about pluralism and uplift. It’s the all over again. Private events should absolutely have the right to de-invite people, and there are right ways to handle it. I get de-invited from things all the time and don’t get upset. For instance, Polaris Ventures holds an annual, clubby retreat in Jackson Hole that I went to last year. Partner Mike Hirshland told me I wasn’t going to be invited back, after I questioned the wisdom of a portfolio company, whose avatars for 13-year-old girls were beyond anorexic, dressed like hookers and sashaying back-and-forth on a virtual world’s street corner. I’ll admit, I went a little rabid when the middle-aged, male CEO told me the problem was I just didn’t understand what it was like to be a teenage girl, like, presumably, he did. But at least something caused the de-invite, Hirshland told me about it upfront and we even laughed at the time. No hard feelings. The story below is another matter. I plan on sending this link to , so he knows why one of his biggest fans won’t be there for his TED talk. (Details are redacted.)
Unlike many people who are rightfully fed up with TED, I will confess to having attended a TED conference. A few years ago, I worked with one of TED’s major donors. You know how TED has a ‘patron’ level, where people can pay $100K for five years’ worth of conference registrations in advance (with lots of nice perks?) Well, this person is paid up with TED until sometime late in the decade, has contributed to many of TED’s special programs – I could go on and on, but you get the picture. TED is very important to this person, and this person is even more important to TED.
One of the privileges of supporting TED at the level described above is that you are allowed to ‘designate’ an attendee, and this, incidentally, is how I think most ‘normal’ people get into TED the first time around. Unless you’re a celebrity, a tycoon, a speaker, or a TED-fellow, someone of this ilk has to ‘recommend’ that you be ‘allowed’ to attend TED. Well, in 2008, the major donor I’ve mentioned above ‘recommended’ that I be invited to TED 2009, and I promptly received my invitation. I paid my (gulp!) $6,000.00 registration fee, and I went to TED’s first conference in Long Beach, dubbed ‘The Great Unveiling.’.
Now, I’m no Steve Jobs – not by a longshot. But I’ve done pretty well in my career by most standards, so you’d think that at some level, I’d have found a niche at TED. Nothing could’ve been further from the truth, and I just can’t tell you what an uncomfortable experience TED was for me.. Long story short, from the opening night gala, TED rapidly segregates itself into two distinct groups: Group A, (the people everyone would love to meet), and Group B (the people who want to meet those people.) The people in Group B spend the entire TED conference running around with business cards, hoping for, you know, five seconds of face time with Sergey Brin, Bill Gates, Steve Wozniack, Cameron Diaz, or the like. The people in Group A, on the other hand, spend most of TED trying to avoid the people in Group B. Put the people in Group A and Group B together in a room (the ‘opening night’ gala is the only time this really happens), and the tension is sometimes palpable.. I wish I could tell you more about my own initial TED experience (which isn’t even the subject of this letter, believe it or not), but I became violently ill after the TED 2009 opening gala (maybe something I ate?) and spent the first two days of TED in my bed, literally so sick I was barely able to move. I did ultimately attend as many of the TED talks as I could, and they were great, but there was that same sense of segregation even at the talks that I’ve described above. Seating is run like the Oscars; the ‘celebrities’ are all down front, and people like me -we’re in the final rows, in the balconies, literally at the ‘back of the bus.’. I didn’t particularly love my TED experience because I was ill for most of the time, but I did want to see what TED was like when, you know, I wasn’t spending most of my free time throwing up. So, I saved up for a year – a year – and, in 2010, applied to attend TED 2011. I was accepted. I paid my registration fee (gulp!) again. And for the better part of a year, I’ve been looking forward to the conference, which begins next week. I was looking forward to going, incidentally, not because I relished feeling uncomfortable yet again, but because Roger Ebert will be speaking at TED this year, and he’s one of my personal heros.. And then, the unthinkable happened: On February 17th – about ten days before TED 2011 was scheduled to begin -I received a terse email from TED’s leadership telling me that I was being ‘uninvited’ from this year’s TED conference. My registration had been revoked, my pass had been destroyed, and I could expect a refund of my conference registration free shortly.. I was stunned, shocked, confused, and wrote to ask why, since nothing about me had changed over the past year, TED would suddenly make the decision to un-invite me. The initial response I received to this query was equally terse and went something along these lines: “According to our terms of use, we don’t have to tell you why we’re uninviting you.”. I wasn’t content with this response, so I went straight to the top. I sent a personal email to Chris Anderson, TED’s ‘curator,’ asking for an explanation. I got it. Here it is: I was uninvited to this year’s TED conference because the major TED donor I’ve referenced above and with whom, for reasons unknown, I have now not spoken to for more than two years (TED’s leadership tells me that this is because this person and I have had a ‘falling out’ of some kind) had seen my picture in the TED 2011 ‘Facebook.’ This person had called the conference organizers to express that my presence at the conference might result in this person feeling some ‘stress’ and – perhaps – not enjoying the conference as much as this person otherwise might.. Now, we all know it’s very unlikely that, in a conference of 1,800 people, every attendee is going to get along perfectly with every other attendee. Indeed, I rather suspect that some of the best ‘ideas’ that come out of TED start out as disagreements. And it’s equally unlikely that I’d even have run into this person (in 2009, I *tried* to run into this person and couldn’t do it.) But none of that really seemed to matter.. The point is that TED’s leadership was unwilling to run the risk of one of their biggest donors feeling ‘stressed’ at TED, so they determined that, suddenly, nothing about me rendered me ‘worthy’ to attend this year’s TED, and I was no longer welcome to attend. Not just this year. Ever. For as long as this person is around or until we ‘complete our unfinished business’ (whatever that means.) No debate. No discussion. End of story. And I was reminded of virtually every gangster film I’ve ever seen by something Anderson said to me in his reply. He actually told me – and I’m not kidding – that I shouldn’t take this decision to uninvite me ‘personally.’ This decision, it would seem, was just ‘business.’. Upon reflection, I’ve decided that I’m not upset that I apparently won’t ever be attending TED again (though I’m sorry I won’t get to tell Roger Ebert how much his work has meant to me over the years). I’m more of a ‘power to the people’ kind of guy, and even though I was happy to have been able to attend a TED conference and was eager to do so again, I’ve never been particularly comfortable with TED’s underlying ethos. Speaking personally, I’m a stickler for ‘authenticity,’ and I’m not sure I like the idea of a conference whose mantra is ‘Ideas Worth Spreading’ but that, in practice, operates so as to suggest that the only persons with ‘ideas worth spreading’ are those with the ability to make very substantial contributions, not necessarily to the world-at-large, but to the Sapling Foundation, the non-profit organization that own and operates TED.. But I have to say, I was really shocked to learn just how much power TED’s major donors apparently exercise over every aspect of the conference, including the attendees. I think it’s perfectly reasonable to allow major donors to designate an attendee (that seems like a positive), but I absolutely cannot believe that TED allows its major donors to do just the opposite when it suits them – to bar people from attending TED altogether.. Can you imagine a similar scenario occurring at, say, the Red Cross? Imagine I were to make a $100,000.00 contribution to disaster relief in a stricken area, but with the condition that, as a result of my gift, the Red Cross absolutely refuse to use any of its funding to help Jane Smith, a particular person I know who lives within the disaster area and who otherwise qualifies for help, but who I just don’t happen to like very much for reasons that have nothing to do with the disaster itself?. Despite its many missteps, the Red Cross would not EVER accept a contribution under those conditions. TED, on the other hand, not only appears to accept such conditions attached to the contributions made to the Sapling Foundation; it encourages them. But that’s another story. In the end, what I really found myself wondering was how many other otherwise qualified TED attendees have been ‘uninvited’ to TED at the eleventh hour (or declined an invitation in the first place), simply because a major donor to TED said, ‘I don’t particularly want to share the (million square foot) TED conference space with this person?”. We’ll never know the answer to this question, but there is one thing I now know for certain: if this is how TED ‘thinks,’ then as far as I’m concerned, in not going to TED, I’m not missing out on anything at all. I hope reading what I’ve written here serves to reaffirm for you everything you said about TED three years ago. Again, I really enjoyed your piece and look forward to hearing from you soon.. Best Regards, [Redacted] |
Burning Chrome | Jon Evans | 2,011 | 2 | 27 | Google made a few interesting announcements this week. First, Google Docs Viewer support for a s, including Excel, Powerpoint, Photoshop and PostScript. Second, Chrome’s new ability to run that run seamlessly and invisibly behind the browser. Third, they released , which lets Windows users sync Office documents to Google Docs. They also announced the Android 3.0 SDK – but despite the ongoing tablet hysteria, in the long run, the first three are more important. Little by little, iteration by iteration, the Chrome browser is quietly morphing into a full-fledged multitasking in its . Oh, sure, technically it’s actually running on another OS, but you increasingly never need to launch anything else. View and edit documents in Google Docs, watch and listen to HTML5 video and audio, communicate via Gmail and its Google Voice plugin, use Google Docs as a file system – and the line between “Chrome OS” and “Chrome on any other OS” suddenly grows very fine. Google’s long-term strategy seems to be to supplant Microsoft by first building the best browser, then making it easy to move your files to Google Docs … and finally, slowly but inexorably, making Windows and Office irrelevant. Obviously no one will abandon Microsoft products wholesale anytime soon; but as cloud computing grows more ubiquitous, Google steadily iterates feature after feature, and people grow accustomed to working in the browser, then one day, maybe only a couple of years from now, a whole lot of people – and businesses – will begin to think to themselves “Hey, we haven’t actually needed Windows or Office in . Why do we even have them at all?” The “ ” dumb-terminal approach has failed many times before … but so did Six Degrees, Tribe.net, Friendster, and (eventually) MySpace, before Facebook came along. The original iMac was roundly criticized because it didn’t have a floppy drive, criticism that now sounds hilariously stupid. We might look back at the first Chrome OS notebook in much the same way. Of course, Chrome can’t actually compete with Windows until always-on broadband Internet access reaches the same level of reliability and ubiquity as electricity itself; but that’s only a matter of time. In the early days of electricity, every factory had its own power plant, and its managers would have been appalled by the notion of outsourcing that vital engine – but soon enough those inefficient installations were replaced by today’s electrical grid. Computing power is the new electricity, and cloud computing is the new grid. Unlike most companies, when Google says “cloud”, they mean it. Compare Amazon’s cloud-computing service to Google’s. With the former, you essentially call up and configure one or more servers with the OS and specifications of your choice; but with Google’s App Engine, you don’t know anything about its hardware or operating system, because that . It just runs the code you give it, and you don’t much care how. Similarly, Chrome is being built for a future where the ambient, omnipresent wireless Internet connects everything from clothes to computers to cars (which explains how their fits into their strategy) and it doesn’t much matter what OS any given device is running. I’ve criticized Google of late, but credit where it’s due: they still think bigger and further than anyone else. The problem is that all these brilliant strategies are predicated on their continued dominance of the search space, whose users are forever just a whim away from jumping ship to an alternative, and they’ve taken their eye off that ball of late. But at least they’ve finally started . It’s a start. Maybe they haven’t grown too bureaucratic and sclerotic to make the Chrome future happen after all. |
Audi Carbon Skis Get Their Close-Up | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 2 | 11 |
I posted a slick pair of a couple weeks ago, but unfortunately the pictures weren’t very big — a tragedy when the whole point of the post was how incredibly beautiful these things are. Luckily, , and I thought I’d just point you snow and design fans in their general direction. It’s just the first in a series, too. |
Sony: "Publishers Are Being Held To Ransom By Apple" | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 2 | 11 |
There’s much to be said in favor of a successor to iTunes. Not just the application itself, though I’d to see disappear, but the whole service. Things move fast, and although Apple moved faster than the music industry, it now finds itself in a distressingly similar, and vulnerable, position. Sony seems to think the iron is hot, and consequently is preparing to strike; SCE CEO Michael Ephraim is as saying, “Publishers are being held to ransom by Apple and they are looking for other delivery systems, and we are waiting to see what the next three to five years will hold.” Strong words, but can Sony back them up? The future, they believe, is in streaming, and strong competition is already present in the form of established services like , , and . Will Sony’s Music Unlimited service, in the middle of a stepped roll-out in Europe, actually form a credible alternative, or will it languish with low subscriber numbers until Sony kills it off in a couple years? My guess is the latter. Apart from the ability to stream directly to certain Sony devices, it’s not really clear what the service has going for it. I’m reminded of the baked-in web services offered on TVs from a couple years back, which were almost instantly obsoleted by various set-top boxes and streamers. And then there’s Sony’s disconnect from the world of users: one exec said “Free doesn’t make any money,” explaining why the service will have no free or ad-supported component. Unfortunately, free is what a lot of people expect right now, though of course a business model for “giving everybody everything all the time for no money” still eludes us. They’re right in considering it a long game, though. Apple is on top for a reason, and the old music industry is still wherever it can. Apple has been the big guy for a while, and they’re entitled to a few years on top. They’ve earned it. But committing to that position makes it difficult to maneuver, and they may get blindsided by a new service or device that makes them look like the status quo they’ll have become by then. It’s the circle of life in tech, and the revolutions are getting shorter — the RPMs are increasing, if you will. Sony may not produce the service that beats iTunes, but the labels and media companies will only champ at the bit for so long before they start to buck, and bottom-up innovation is already starting to weaken the position of the big, central repository for music. I can’t say what’s going to happen next, but I look forward to it. |
People, Not Things, Are The Tools Of Revolution | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 2 | 11 | Warmest congratulations to the Egyptian people, whose truly grassroots revolution has reminded the world what political action is supposed to look like. Although the work is far from done, and reconstituting a government by the people and for the people is perhaps the more difficult phase, it is right that they, and the world, should take a moment to reflect on a job well done. Some are using that moment to praise the social media tools used by some of the protesters, and the role the internet played in fueling the revolution. While it’s plain that these things were part of the process, I think the mindset of the online world creates a risk of overstating their importance, and elevating something useful, even powerful, to the status of . The people of Egypt made use of what means they had available, just as every oppressed people has in history. Twitter and Facebook are indeed useful tools, but they are not tools of revolution — at least, no more than Paul Revere’s horse was. are the tools of revolution, whether their dissent is spread by whisper, by letter, by Facebook, or by some means we haven’t yet imagined. What we, and the Egyptians, should justly be proud of, is not just those qualities which set Egypt’s revolution apart from the last hundred, but those which are fundamental to all of them. |
HP TouchPad: $699 In June? | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 2 | 11 |
that the will be launching in June for $699. Sounds about right to me — any later, and their goose is cooked. I’m not sure $699 is going to pull a lot of people, though, since what HP is selling is a little more subtle than Android, and the average consumer might not be able to pull themselves away from the default , especially if the update hits and pushes down prices on the original. We’ll see, though. It’s all speculation right now. |
UberMedia, Indeed. Bill Gross' Twitter Ecosystem Empire Just Acquired TweetDeck | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 2 | 11 | The number of companies in the Twitter ecosystem keeps contracting. But not for a necessarily bad reason, but because they keep getting purchased. And what’s crazy is that it’s largely one person who has been buying them up: . We’ve just learned that his company, now called , has just acquired . We’re hearing that the deal, which happened recently, was in the $25 – $30 million range. And this is clearly the largest deal they’ve done yet as TweetDeck is the largest Twitter client outside of Twitter’s own properties. This deal follows Gross’ company last month — a popular Twitter client for both BlackBerry and iPhone devices. And prior to that, earlier in January, , another popular Twitter client. But again, TweetDeck instantly becomes the crown jewel of the empire. And it means that UberMedia now owns a significant part of the overall ecosystem. UberMedia has actually changed its name a few times now, partially due to these acquisitions. In April 2010, they then they became PostUp, and then, following the UberTwitter deal, they became UberMedia. The company also own the popular Android Twitter client Twidroyd and Popurls (both of which they in July of last year), as well as the ad product, FollowMe. Overall, they fall under Gross’ . The UK-based TweetDeck had a little $5 million in funding. |
Telogis Raises $2.9 Million More To Help Companies Manage Fleets, Reduce Emissions | Lora Kolodny | 2,011 | 2 | 11 | Telogis, a location-based technology firm in Aliso Viejo, Calif. has raised another $2.9 million, according to a , to help businesses track and manage their fleets of vehicles, and workforce using GPS, mobile and web technology. The company touts its “mobile resource management” software and services as environmentally beneficial, and fuel-saving. According to the website, its mapping and fleet-management systems help companies: cut [drivers’] idling by more than 25 percent, reduce miles driven out-of-route by 30 percent, and can reduce speeding for better fuel economy. Telogis systems also “provide baseline data, ongoing collection and record-keeping on [a fleet’s] greenhouse gas output,” to help companies stay compliant with rapidly evolving, environmental and transportation legislation. The via Fueleconomy.gov reports that:
“Aggressive driving (speeding, rapid acceleration and braking) wastes gas. It can lower gas mileage by 33 percent at highway speeds and by 5 percent around town…While each vehicle reaches its optimal fuel economy at a different speed (or range of speeds), gas mileage usually decreases rapidly at speeds above 60 mph… Each 5 mph driven over 60 mph is like paying an additional $0.24 per gallon for gas.” Founded in 2001, the company previously raised a $3.5 million round in 2009, and a $2 million round in 2010. The filings did not disclose which funds were involved in these deals.
Company representatives said Telogis’ funding rounds, including this latest for $2.9 million, have all been led by angel investors who did not wish to be named at this time. Each round corresponds to an acquisition by Telogis. The company has a sales footprint spanning 60 countries, and at the end of 2009 had attained annual revenue of $17.1 million, according to the index of America’s fastest-growing, privately owned companies. On Tuesday this week, Telogis announced that it , another location-based tech company that specialized in “routing, mobile resource and fleet management software and services for small to mid-sized businesses,” according to a press statement. |
Nokia Microsoft is like Yahoo Bing – Nokia's days as innovator are over | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 2 | 11 | As I was plugging in to power my iPhone to , I overheard someone lean over and say “This is the most important day of your life”. It was whispered into the ear of Nokia’s PR spokesman as he took the stage today to introduce Nokia CEO Steven Elop. It certainly was important – but not in a great way. Today his boss effectively ended Nokia’s history as an ecosystem of its own, laid down its guns, and gave in to a Windows Phone future. To me the direct comparison is Microsoft taking over as the search engine behind Yahoo. Under Carol Bartz, Yahoo surrendered in the search war to Google and decided to let someone else try: Bing. From that day on Yahoo gave up it’s long tradition of innovation. Exactly the same thing has happened today. Everything about this event screamed that. Elop is Nokia’s Bartz. He’s looks at this entirely as a business transaction. Sure, he recognised the problems. But he took the decision not to fight. Although Symbian will be around for a while longer as a legacy product, eventually Nokia will allow Windows to insert its phone OS into every Nokia product line, and even right down to the simplest, cheapest phones for the emerging markets. Everything about this is fantastic for Microsoft. And in that regard I would even postulate that Nokia will now willingly sell itself to Microsoft, at a reduced price, within the next 18 months. The thing is, Nokia simply could not transform from a hardware-centric company to software and services one. Steve Jobs always said: to do good software you have to know hardware. But in the new world of mobile ecosystems and apps, the reverse also applies. It’s hard to say if this is a good or a bad day for the European startup eco-system, though I would argue that it is probably more good than bad. One the one hand we may have lost the kind of company that would normally have acquired startups to give it an edge on it’s competitors. However, Nokia was not known as a great acquirer. It , but despite having a Foursquare/Facebook places check-in model years and years before those companies even appeared, Nokia did with it. Nokia acquired . Again, did Nokia do anything with it? No, it was merely an “acqhire” for the CEO. In addition, much was made of the Nokia ‘ecosystem’ of companies around the mobile giant in Helsinki and Espoo in the 1990s. Again, not much came of that in the scheme of things. Lots of jobs will go from Nokia. That may lead to more startups, who knows. I doubt it. Nokia employees were generally corporate drones, with a few exceptions. It also means that the innovation centre in Berlin has the Sword of Damocoles hanging over it. Sure, Nokia is retaining the right to work on it’s own tablets and work with other operating systems. Perhaps Meego will come to the fore here. But frankly what is the point? Without an ecosystem of apps developers who can actually benefit from access to a lot of users, a separate Nokia platform is deader than a dead duck on a dead still pond. The good aspect is that – dare I say it – there is now going to be a big Windows Phone champion, and that means apps and startups can now have a viable option that, at least in the next 18 months, will mean lots of new Windows Phone apps. That’s good for apps people and startups. But in the end Nokia as a company has been relegated to an OEM. |
Duke Nukem Forever "Balls Of Steel Edition" Is Swag-Excessive | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 2 | 11 |
If you’re one of the rabid fanboys who has truly been looking forward to these last 10 years, this may be the special edition for you. It may not include functional night-vision goggles, , but it have a bust of Duke. comes with an avalanche of tchotchkes: a comic, art book, certificate of authenticity, some dice and a deck of cards, and more. And of course a copy of the game. No word on where you can get this just yet. The May 3 release date is still a ways off, though, so I expect we’ll get a separate announcement of this edition in the next couple months. And I don’t even want to think about how much it will cost. |
In A Step Back Towards V3, Digg Ending RSS Submissions For Publishers | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 2 | 11 |
In a step back towards the old , Digg Product manager Mike Cieri just sent out an email to partner publishers stating the intent to remove the RSS submitted stories feature. For those of you that remember, the RSS submission feature was how stories from the Reddit publisher account on Digg to the Digg front page in an act of rebellion against the V4 redesign of the site last August. The painful V4 redesign led to a user revolt and a drastic drop in traffic, with a corresponding increase in traffic over at competitor . Cieri’s email says the RSS-submitted content is not performing well, which we can attest to judging by the single digit Diggs on stories and decline of Digg referral traffic on our site, and that the tool is being abused by spammers. The company will be reverting to manual submissions next week. This is not the first time Digg has brought back V3 features as an attempt to bring back users after the initial V4 vision fell through. It the controversial “Bury” button back in October as well as user profiles on submission pages and popular story statistics . The RSS submission tool was originally conceived to cater to publishers and expand possibilities for revenue. As this did not work out as planned Digg had no choice but to revert to the way things were says longtime user , The consensus among former Digg users is that removing RSS submissions is a good move, and that V4 essentially turned the site into a As the objective of a content aggregator is to filter the news and separate the signal from the noise, the “treating all publisher feeds as equal” model simply did not work. Full email below: Publishers, We hope this message finds you well. After a bumpy second half of 2010 at Digg, we are starting to see positive signs of improvement and are optimistic about the direction Digg is headed. In January 2011, we saw double digit growth of diggs and comments, as well as an increase in unique visitors and exit clicks out to publisher sites. We’ve taken a number of concrete steps to stay better connected with the Digg community, and we are taking action to improve Digg based on our community’s feedback. One important point of feedback we’ve heard is that RSS submitted stories are hurting Digg in a number of ways, and in the next week we are going to discontinue the ability to submit content via RSS. We’d like to share the reasoning behind the decision, and let you know what you can do to improve your performance on Digg. Put very simply, most RSS submitted content is not performing well on Digg. For many of our users, RSS submissions take the fun out of finding and submitting great content. When users try to submit a story to Digg and find that the story has already been auto-submitted via RSS, they lose interest in helping spread the story on Digg by commenting and sharing with friends. Removing a user’s desire to champion a story results in less diggs, comments, exit clicks, and ultimately a much smaller chance of making the Top News section. Our analytics reflect this point – only 4.5% of all Top News content comes from RSS submitted content (95.5% is manually submitted). At its core, Digg is a community of passionate users who take pride in the content they submit and engage with one another in discussion and promotion of viral content. There is a perception that some publishers don’t participate in the community, use RSS submit as an “auto-pilot” tool to submit content without discretion, and do little to promote submitted content or start discussions. This is one reason why many popular publishers, despite having tens of thousands of followers, are not seeing strong referral numbers for their submissions. Some publishers have cultivated a tight following on Digg by digging and commenting on content other than their own, adding Digg buttons prominently to articles on their site and limiting the content they submit to just their best content. These publishers are seeing much more value from Digg. Finally, the RSS submission tool has been heavily abused by spammers and has been a constant drain on our technical resources to identify and fight off spam content. The simple act of forcing a manual submission helps to combat spam and ensures that quality content appears on Digg. So in the next week, the feature will be disabled. We wanted to give advance notice of this change and encourage you to start submitting your best content manually to Digg. You can also enable your audience to help submit and spread your content on Digg by placing Digg buttons on each story item on your site. We are confident that removing RSS submissions will help increase exit clicks to your sites, and ultimately help you receive more value from Digg. Please feel free to contact me with any questions or thoughts. Thanks,
Mike |
People, Not Things, Are The Tools Of Revolution | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 2 | 11 |
Warmest congratulations to the Egyptian people, whose truly grassroots revolution has reminded the world what political action is supposed to look like. Although the work is far from done, and reconstituting a government by the people and for the people is perhaps the more difficult phase, it is right that they, and the world, should take a moment to reflect on a job well done. Some are using that moment to praise the social media tools used by some of the protesters, and the role the internet played in fueling the revolution. While it’s plain that these things were part of the process, I think the mindset of the online world creates a risk of overstating their importance, and elevating something useful, even powerful, to the status of . The people of Egypt made use of what means they had available, just as every oppressed people has in history. Twitter and Facebook are indeed useful tools, but they are not tools of revolution — at least, no more than Paul Revere’s horse was. are the tools of revolution, whether their dissent is spread by whisper, by letter, by Facebook, or by some means we haven’t yet imagined. What we, and the Egyptians, should justly be proud of, is not just those qualities which set Egypt’s revolution apart from the last hundred, but those which are fundamental to all of them. Malcom Gladwell has become the whipping boy of the internet for having suggested however long ago it was that the social web is something that breeds weak connections and requires only a minimum of participation. He was right then, and he’s right now; he wrote the other day defying the gloating masses (sensibly, but haughtily), and concluded with something commentators of the Egyptian revolution should take to heart: “People with a grievance will always find ways to communicate with each other. How they choose to do it is less interesting, in the end, than why they were driven to do it in the first place.” It’s one thing to give credit where credit is due and admire the rapidity and resilience of internet-based communication. The new uses to which the younger generation is putting the internet are very interesting and point to shifts in the way people are choosing to share information. It’s another thing to ascribe to these things powers they don’t have, powers that rest in the people who use them. It sounds like quibbling, but it’s an important distinction. Facebook greased the gears, but it isn’t the gears, and never will be. The revolution has been brewing for decades, and these same protesters have been in the streets countless times, after organizing by phone, by word of mouth, or simply as a shared reaction to some fresh enormity. It came to pass that 2011 was when the Egyptian people could take no more — one might say it reached its tipping point — and the long-running movement became a revolution. It’s no surprise that people used the internet to organize — that’s how people communicate right now. It is easy to imagine this happening five years ago, or five years from now. Five years ago we would likely be championing the mobile phone as the savior of Egypt, as without it, how would people have communicated where the police barricades were, or found each other in the crowds? Never mind that the phone would have had little to do with the reason there were crowds to begin with. Five years from now, who knows what we might be crediting when (let us hope) other regimes are bent to the will of the people? El Shaheeed has worn other faces in other times, from Joan of Arc to Rosa Parks, and will wear many more in years to come. It emerges that the mode in which people speak is not as important as that they can and do speak to begin with. The triumph in Egypt was not one of technology, but of a new, younger point of view that naturally incorporated technology in its methods. The role of the social web must be acknowledged, but stacks up unfavorably to the significance of traditional media like Al Jazeera (which documented and distributed information extremely efficiently), older enabling technology that has achieved saturation (i.e. mobile phones and digital cameras), and more important than any of these things, the dedication and on-the-streets action of people young and old who have been demonstrating and protesting for years. I don’t want to restate Gladwell’s position on the strengths and weaknesses of social media. He stated them well enough to begin with, and I sincerely believe that the backlash to his attack (if you can call it that) on the internet’s holy cow is based in willful misunderstanding and wishful thinking. It’s a variation of the mindset of the man with the hammer, in which every problem appears to be a nail. Today’s hammer is the social web. I doubt we’ll all ever see eye to eye, but we can at least voice our opinions, which vary wildly even among us here at TechCrunch, as evidenced by the other editorials with which this piece shares the front page (and to which I am trying to resist addressing directly). The democratization of information is a very good thing, and the internet is a powerful tool. I’m glad the people of Egypt could use Facebook and Twitter as part of their revolution, but I’m confident that even if they hadn’t, or if the government had made it impossible, they would have achieved this by other means. In the end, the only point I really want to make is simply this: the internet is neither necessary nor sufficient for a revolution. An outraged and unified population is both. [image: on Flickr] |
Nokia's Windows Phone 7 Concept Revealed? | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 2 | 11 | Engadget has what they say are some of the first shots of . Right now this is just a conceptual device to show just what the marriage of Microsoft and Nokia will look like. It looks like they spent a lot of time on this because the phones look great. We’ll keep you updated as the story develops. |
Adobe Photoshop Was Almost Nikon Photoshop | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 2 | 11 |
There’s an interesting history of electronic division over at NikonWeb.com, and among other things, it mentions a fact I didn’t know about Photoshop: before it was bought by Adobe, and a few other camera companies. They turned it down, and perhaps not unwisely: they weren’t software companies, after all. It’s strange to think about what might have happened. Personally, I’m guessing Photoshop wouldn’t be what it is today; Adobe was a different kind of incubator and, uninhibited by a completely different primary business, as Nikon was, they could dedicate much more time and energy to the program. There’s also an account of the interesting QV1000C, a very early electronic camera from 1988 that stored NTSC analog images. and check out the rest of the story. [via and ] |
TechCrunch's Laura Boychenko Infiltrates Google Ventures | Michael Arrington | 2,011 | 2 | 11 | We’re never happy when a TechCruncher leaves, but it’s always nice when they end up somewhere awesome and can feed us lots of confidential information. and , for example, send us weekly confidential updates from their companies. , who has been with us since 2008, is working her last day at TechCrunch. On Monday she starts a new job at . And what Google doesn’t know is that we’re keeping Laura on our payroll, too, and we expect lots of inside information to be coming our way. It’s the TechCrunch way. Oh, just kidding. Everybody chill out. But seriously, we’re all going to miss Laura. She’s the one we sent out to do irresponsible things like tear the wrapping off a Google Android statue to get first pictures, and Google security . Luckily we to do that sort of thing, but still, she’ll be sorely missed. Good luck at Google Ventures, Laura. They’re lucky to have you. |
The Internet Scores Its Second Victory Of The Day, Borders Nears Bankruptcy | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 2 | 11 | A while back a Seeing Interactive post entitled ” went on Hacker News. In the movie, which is a bit of a joke around TC HQ because of its ties to Aol, a small bookstore run by Meg Ryan goes out of business because , a huge Borders-type book store run by Tom Hanks, opens up around the corner. The “Is Ripe For A Sequel” post pointed out how differently that scenario would have played out now. Twelve years later, Borders, affected by online book sales and sales of competing e-readers, is heading into a tailspin. In the short time since the post went up, Borders is now trading at 25 cents a share, with a market cap of 18.16 million (vs. let’s say rival Amazon’s 85.35 billion). The is that Borders is preparing for bankruptcy and might file for Chapter 11 at the beginning of next week — According to our old friends the people familiar with the matter. Apparently its plans to refinance and convert its unpaid debt into $125 million in loans were not convincing enough for publishers. The report also says that it will close 200 of its 674 stores. Earlier today my colleague MG Siegler about the Internet’s first victory of the day (something ): To borrow MG’s setup: On a more positive note (because I think this is sort of sad and am by no means celebrating), bookseller Barnes and Noble, which came out with the Nook e-reader to compete with Amazon’s Kindle and Borders’ The Kobo (yeah, I know), at $18.50 a share, with a market cap of $1.1 billion. Image: |
Vitrue Raises $17 Million For To Help Brands Manage Social Media | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 2 | 16 | , a social media marketing company, has raised $17 million in Series C financing led by and with existing investors , Comcast Interactive, and participating in the round. This brings Vitrue’s total funding to $32 million. In conjunction with the announcement, former Facebook Vice President of Global Sales has joined Vitrue as Special Advisor to the CEO. As we’ve , Vitrue’s SaaS platform allows brands and marketing agencies to
communicate with fans and consumers across Facebook and Twitter accounts, location based services, and via mobile applications. The company’s SRM (social relationship management) platform is being used by a number of high profile brands including Harley Davidson, Mentos, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Crocs, Eddie Bauer, Maybelline, Purina, McDonald’s, YouTube, Ford, AT&T, Disney and Best Buy. And Vitrue is growing in terms of revenue and is cash-flow positive. From Q2 2010 to Q3 2010, Vitrue’s revenue grew nearly 100 percent as the company tripled accounts using their SRM platform and expanded its API. Currently, the service manages over 2,500 Facebook Pages and Twitter accounts for various clients, which adds up to 450 million fans/followers in 47 countries. That’s up from 680 Twitter and Facebook accounts managed in October of 2010. With the new financing, Vitrue will be opening offices in seven U.S. markets including New York, San Francisco, Dallas, Chicago, Detroit, Cincinnati and Los Angeles. The company is also expanding globally, creating presences in London, Toronto and Singapore. And to support all these new outposts, Vitrue will be hiiring between 100 and 150 new employees in 2011. |
Wonga raises £73m in Series C funding to double-down on massive UK growth | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 2 | 16 | , the short-loans company which uses a realtime platform to assess users applications instead of people, has raised a significant £73 million ($117 million) funding round – actually a Series C – as expansion capital. Wonga plans to use the cash to expand further in the UK, it’s home market. The funding round was led by Oak Investment Partners. Meritech Capital partners, another US VC, and Wellcome Trust, the UK’s largest charity and health-funding organisation, also invested, as did some existing investors. Wonga has also had previous investment from Accel Partners, Greylock Partners, Balderton Capital, Dawn Capital and London based Seed fund TAG. However, we understand from sources that Balderton didn’t invest in this round, making Dawn Capital the only investor to have invested three times in the business, and the only European VC to have invested in this round. Wonga has attracted criticism and controversy because it makes short-term cash advances at rates of interest equivalent to about 3,000 per cent a year based on an application form and an algorithm. However, critics rarely mention that Wonga’s typical customers are young professionals earning national-average wages and are usually applying for less than £200. Most have never used short-term loans services, so it’s tapping a new market which is able to afford the loan. Wonga was launched in October 2007 and has processed more that 1.8 million applications via the web and mobile and recently made it’s one millionth loan. Speaking to TechCrunch, founder and CEO Errol Damelin said “Because we make cash advances we need resources to do that so this is expansion capital to fund consumer demand. The vast majority of our customers are using us as an alternative to a bank overdrafts, which come with charges and fees, or credit card debt.” “We use our own balance sheet to do the lending, using debt and equity. So the round was not raised specifically to lend with, but to give us a strong balance sheet.” He said this was simiar to other financial services businesses. “We never wanted to be more leveraged. We chose to have have a strong balance sheet.” It’s also to make sure Wonga “has the same engineering talent as Twitter or Facebook.” “Want to keep driving the benefits to customers, so this is about increasing speed and convenience,” said Damelin. “Before Wonga short terms loans were done on the doorstep, or pay day loans or via call centres. We’ve built the world’s fully automated lending platform and that’s unique.” Wonga is certainly scaling – it launched with same day money, then we moved to same hour, then within 15 minutes. Damelin said Wonga would eventually come to a point where an international strategy was required but this wasn’t it. They are effectively doubling-down on the UK, one of the largest markets in the world for unsecured debt. While the FT seems to there are US expansions, Damelin told us that is categorically not the case. Wonga clearly has plenty of revenues. It recently sponsorsed free public transport in London during last New Year’s eve. Damelin added that the fact the The Welcome Trust – the UK’s bigggest charity – had invested was a reflection that “from their point of view that we think about things in a coherent way, and care about the customer and being a responsible corporate citizen.” He admitted that Wonga attracts criticism. “It has been controversial, people have issues. It happens to be a space that attracts controversy but we think about it a lot and engage with the arguments. We’ve really met consumer need by being the good guys in the space. We explain what the service levels will be and we over-deliver and under promise. If someone pays off a loan early we’re fine with that – this never happens in financial services.” Recent (Jan 11) online research, via Populus, with more than 15,000 customers indicated that overall satisfaction was up to 95%, from a previous level of 85% and Wonga is their preferred option for credit, over credit cards, bank loans, overdrafts and payday loans. |
K'Nex Never Looked Scarier: The K’nexabeast | John Biggs | 2,011 | 2 | 16 | [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiawU2dZjhc&w=640&h=510] This clever robot is made entirely of K’Nex blocks and a micro-controller. It can move “autonomously” and solve simple problems when it hits walls and gets under tables. While it’s not as magically dangerous as it’s still a cool little robot.
I’m using two GWS S35 continuous rotation servos set up as a differential drive – K’nexabeast can go forwards, backwards, left and right. I had started using K’nex motors that I hacked and wired through an H-bridge, but that approach was a complete failure as the motors didn’t have anywhere near the torque I needed. I’ve been pretty happy with the servos so far, but I’d like to try some other options and have been looking at different servos and geared motors. |
Worried What Your SEO Guys Are Up To? BrightEdge Will Tell You | Michael Arrington | 2,011 | 2 | 16 | JC Penney gets at Google for link farming. AT&T, Siemens and others are buying SEO links and get busted. Employees of these brands may or may not have known exactly what was going on. But I’m guessing more than a few execs were unpleasantly surprised by the news. Wondering who exactly is doing what to your brand out there in SEOland, and how bad of a hit you might take? Then you may want to use a tool that will show you the warning signs of link farming. SEO firm is giving people a free tool to do this. The timing of it couldn’t be better. The new tool, called BrandSafe Link Audit, is It tells you about the quality of backlinks to your sites and whether or not you may be at risk from paid links and link farms. It’s also, of course, a lead generation tool for BrandSafe’s other SEO products. But at this point brand managers may not care, they just want to know exactly what their SEO consultants are up to. If you want to use the product, . |
DOTKLOK: A Clock Made Of Dots | John Biggs | 2,011 | 2 | 16 | [vimeo 19947676 w=640 h=480] from on . Like the Pong Clock, the DOTKLOK uses an LED array to display the time – and more. Available at for $150 ($200 assembled), the kit uses and board to display the time and includes a sexy case.
The inspiration for DOTKLOK was to combine in one clock a variety of ways to show time — such as with words, graphics, or retro game displays — while providing a platform on which others can further develop unique timepieces. DOTKLOK is Arduino compatible, making it easily customized and updated by owners*. A dedicated real-time clock (RTC) chip tracks the time and date even in the absence of power thanks to a small back-up battery. Also, because of the open source nature of the project, DOTKLOK can be re-purposed for other uses altogether, such as a low-fi video game platform. The kit includes multiple clock faces and it can cycle through faces once a day. It has a 24×16 screen and is fully hackable. |
Fon raises $13.5 million in funding round led by Atomico to put the US in its sights | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 2 | 16 | has secured €10 million ($13.5 million) in a new funding round led by Atomico, the VC firm founded by Niklas Zennström, co-founder of Skype. The company markets wifi routers which turn domestic connections into a network of publicly accessible hotspots. Coral Group and other existing Fon investors also contributed to the round which is designed to meet the surge in demand for WiFi from smartphone and tablet users, and to expand in the US and other markets. Previous rounds for the company, which was founded in 2006 by serial entrepreneur Martin Varsavsky (who also founded Jazztel and Viatel), raised over €40m. In Japan Fon has an agreement with SoftBank, the Japanese mobile operator, where Fon’s WiFi routers work with the iPhone to allow more access to broadband but crucially to reduce the load on its mobile network. It’s this model which is expected to be rolled out in other markets.Varsavsky said the company “could have done an outside round” but decided to keep it’s high profile investors on board. Fon’s ‘Fonera’ routers let users connect to WiFi at Fon hotspots for free in exchange for sharing their Fon-powered WiFi at home. The company’s 802.11n WiFi routers broadcast two dedicated WiFi signals, one encrypted and private for the home user and one publicly accessible via password to registered members of the Fon community. It now has 3.35 million hotspots, a growth of 200% year-on-year, making it the biggest WiFi network in the world. Fon sold about 1.6 million routers in 2010 contributing, generating revenues of €28 million, up from €5 million in 2009. Fon also builds technology directly into its telco partners’ CPEs, such as BT in the UK, MTS-Comstar Russia, SFR France and ZON Cable Portugal. |
Not Content With Insulting Kids, Women, Users; Orabrush Tongue Goes After VCs | Sarah Lacy | 2,011 | 2 | 16 | Earlier this week we wrote about True Venture’s in — a seemingly ho-hum company that makes tongue scrapers, but has found all sorts of creative ways to sell them using YouTube and social media. One of those ways is weekly podcasts from a gross tongue named Morgan who insults everyone and occasionally beats up kids. This week he decided to insult True Ventures: “Some sucker in California invested like $2 million in Orabrush.” Oh, Morgan. He’s just saying what so many entrepreneurs have thought. Video below. [youtube url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M92RA7lPTZo] |
Is Yahoo Getting Close to Selling Its Lucrative Yahoo Japan Shares? | Sarah Lacy | 2,011 | 2 | 16 | Yahoo’s CFO Tim Morse spoke at a Goldman Sachs Investing conference today and was peppered with questions about Yahoo’s Asian assets, which make up a good chunk of the value of its stock price right now. On the subject of Alibaba, Morse was very conciliatory, repeatedly praising the job that the Alibaba management team is doing building the business, emphasizing that Yahoo was just a financial stake-holder. He said that Yahoo was in to name its contractually obligated second board member. On the subject of Yahoo Japan, there has definitely been a shift in tone when it comes to whether or not Yahoo might divest its incredibly valuable stake. Earlier this month an analyst from Pacific Crest, in a research report, raising its rating on Yahoo based on the potential for a boost from selling the Japan shares and its price target to a $21 a share. Here’s what Morse had to say today: “Yeah so we spent an awful lot of time last year, the last 9 months of 2010, doing our homework on all the various possibilities for maximization of this stake. It’s in a terrific position in a market that’s very tough to crack for non-locals, they’re great in everything yahoo does, plus commerce. So it’s a terrific and valuable business and I’m in complete sympathy when investors say, well it’s a public company and we can decide whether or not to invest – I get that and I’m in sympathy, Carol’s in sympathy with that. “But fact is we do own it and what we need to do is figure out the best way to be sure, whether we keep it or some other transaction was possible, that it would be in the best interest of our shareholders and the other Y!J shareholders. … So what we said on our last earnings call is we’re now working with our partners – Y!J’s management team, Softbank – to collaborate and find a way to best unlock the value of this asset. … So we went with a list of things that we’re talking to them about, they’ve added to the list, we’re in good discussion.” To couch things, he emphasized that Yahoo wouldn’t do anything if they couldn’t figure out a deal with their partners, because the tax liability would make it “very difficult to justify.” Morse’s exact words: “The one thing I’d emphasize is that I said publicly at our investor event in May of last year, is – selling the stake, some sales require consent and some don’t. A lot of the riskier sales we could do in an open market would come at a substantial discount, on top of tax we’d pay on that, very difficult to justify, and then – what do you do with the proceeds, what’s the use for them, is there something really accretive you can do. So without – the risks of selling and liquidity discount, not having great use of proceeds – I said at the time I don’t see that an outright sale of the asset serves our investors’ needs very well. And I still believe that. We don’t have a good way to offset tax, we don’t have a good way to justify the proceeds. So we’re looking at tax efficient options and working with our partners so it works out well.” Looks like things could finally be budging in this US-Asian stalemate between Yahoo, Yahoo’s investors, Softbank and — who knows?–maybe eventually Alibaba. |
This Phineas And Ferb CD Boombox Is For Kids And/Or Dads | Matt Burns | 2,011 | 2 | 16 |
There are 365 days each crappy year
And work never seems to end in ’em
So the annual problem for our generation
Is finding a good way to spend ’em Like maybe…
Building
Or fighting in a blog war
Or Discovering something that doesn’t exist (Hey! )
Or making John take a shower So yeah, it’s a Phineas and Ferb CD boombox. But with an FX sound effects button, LED siren, and an awesome design, it should more than qualify for a gadget and therefore worthy of a post here on CrunchGear. After all, these two little characters embody the spirit of having fun with technology and doing things yourself. So yeah, we won’t tell anyone if this boombox actually ends up in your workshop instead of your kids room. |
null | John Biggs | 2,011 | 2 | 11 | null |
Groupon Spars with Tencent; Joint Venture Isn't Inspiring Local Confidence | Sarah Lacy | 2,011 | 2 | 16 | There’s trouble in Tencent and Groupon’s China group buying joint venture, , according to press reports from China. Apparently the site went up for a day, Tencent balked and pulled it back down. Beyond that, people tell us the operation is pure chaos: Rapid hiring, little due diligence and money being thrown around. The biggest gripe: It’s almost entirely run by foreigners. It sounds like exactly what you’d expect based on , we printed a few weeks ago. It boasts of near-infinite funds, goals to hire 1,000 people by March and an emphasis on consultants and MBAs– not people versed in the local market. Chinese language skills aren’t even mentioned in the ad. It’s easy to say this is just another botched joint venture and another arrogant US Internet company swaggering into China, thinking its brand name and wads of cash will bridge cultural gaps. Given the track record of US companies entering China, it’s actually hard to say . I hope Groupon realizes that it needs Tencent to navigate China a lot more than Tencent needs Groupon to build a big group buying site. Tencent is with a QQ group buying product and an investment in a Yelp clone called Aibang.com. If the German Groupon unit running the show doesn’t get the realities of how much it needs the cooperation of Tencent and buy in of locals– the Chicago office needs to step in ASAFP. The market moves quickly in China and you don’t get a second chance once you’ve blown it. These are problems that near-endless cash don’t solve. |
ISP-Funded GOP Congressmen Speak Out Against Net Neutrality, Question FCC's Legal Authority | Nicholas Deleon | 2,011 | 2 | 16 | The Republican Party has a bone to pick with the Federal Communications Commission, and you’ll never guess why. Oh, wait, yes you will. Predictably, several Republican congressmen the evils of , despite the fact that it passed several months ago, and despite the fact that it could charitably only be called Net Neutrality Lite. What gives? The latest complaint, by way of Rep. Fred Upton, of Michigan, and Rep. Greg Walden, of Oregon, centers on two things. One, that the FCC may have overstepped its bounds when it comes to “regulating” the Internet, something the NYU School of Law . Not that the FCC overstepped its bounds per se, but that it went about implementing Net Neutrality (Lite) using the wrong legal avenues. Oops. The other part of the congressmen’s assertion is a little less inspired, and that’s that the FCC didn’t show any market-based reason for implementing Net Neutrality in the first place. I suppose these congressmen never had the please of, to mention one concrete example, Comcast shaping their traffic without so much as their knowledge, let alone their approval. How about, “You want to shape my traffic? OK, I’d like the cancel my service with no penalties, please.” The idea that the almighty market will ensure that the Internet remains free and open is laughable. Have we forgotten that Google and Verizon capriciously decided that the “mobile” Internet is separate from the “regular” Internet, and that data there should be treated differently than data elsewhere? And by the way, what market? Hoe many high-speed Internet providers are available in the average American town? You’re lucky if you have one crummy cable operator offering “high speed broadband.” Seems to me if your ISP is treating your data unfairly then you really don’t have anywhere to turn. There’s your market at work. And how about this: Comcast back in 2008, and AT&T during the previous election cycle. I guess we’re supposed to believe that random congressmen, backed by the very companies that stand to lose if Net Neutrality were to stick around, just so happen to have an interest in seeing the FCC knocked off its perch. How convenient. Or maybe that’s what they mean when they say they want the market to dictate policy? Whatever company comes around with a cheque-signing pen gets its agenda pushed. Neat. |
The Final Night Of IBM's Jeopardy Challenge: How Did Watson Do? | Nicholas Deleon | 2,011 | 2 | 16 | There we have it. The has concluded, so what follows is a brief review of what happened tonight. Once again, West Coasties (and anyone else who didn’t get to see the final episode live) should probably click away for now—there will be spoilers. You have been warned. One last warning: that way spoilers lie!
In a victory for science, Watson, the IBM-developed artificial intelligence, has indeed won. The final scores were $77,147 for Watson, $24,000 for Ken Jennings, and $21,600 for Brad Rutter. At the beginning of the show the previous night’s total were totally wiped, only to be added to tonight’s score after Final Jeopardy. Watson started the game on a tear, like always. Ironically enough, Watson had trouble with the “also on your keyboard” category. In fact, Watson struggled for much of the first round, tripping over the seemingly more “pun-y” or idiomatic categories. The second round was an epic battle between Watson and Ken Jennings. It was incredibly tense. All three contestants answered the Final Jeopardy question correctly, but by then Ken Jennings admitted what we’ve all been thinking: it’s time to welcome our new artificial intelligence overlords. |
The Media Industry's Biggest Fear: How Do We Know Next Year Apple Won't Be Taking 50%? | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 2 | 16 | At the risk of going and about Apple’s controversial new , let me just add one more thing. Yes, these new rules may affect and movie streaming apps, but first and foremost they are aimed at who were hoping to port their existing subscription business models over to the iPad. The big publishers and other media companies with substantial subscription businesses don’t like the prospect of handing over 30 percent of their revenues in perpetuity to Apple. What they like even less is losing the direct relationship with their customers, and all the data that comes along with that. (Whoever owns the billing relationship owns the customer, after all). But the one thing they fear most of all is Apple’s pricing power. The refrain I’ve heard from a couple of publishing industry insiders is: “How do we know next year Apple won’t be taking 50%?” In other words, they are scared that they and their readers will get hooked on the iPad, which in three short quarters has already propelled Apple to become the in the world. Right now they can still stand firm, and threaten to stick with Google and Its new, , One Pass subscription billing or Amazon’s Kindle. But if they give in without a fight, and Appel brings millions of new subscribers to their digital publications, then Apple can take an even bigger bite of the revenues down the line. Apple could allay these fears by pledging not to change the economics for a set number of years. Locking in the 30 percent fee for three years, for instance, would take some of the uncertainty out of the process. |
This iPhone 4 Exploded | John Biggs | 2,011 | 2 | 16 | How would you feel if your iPhone 4 burst into flames on your wooden table, fire licking the laquer and the noise scaring your wife and child half to death? That’s what reader Omar had to deal with this week when his iPhone completely exploded. He writes: The phone got hot then started smoking then blew up. My wife and kid were in the room and it set off my fire alarm. It slighty burned my hand when I tried to pick it up. Basically the battery caught on fire.
Helpfully, Omar also posted a video about his experience, using Bruce Springsteen as the background music for the burnination. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAmURtauN-o&w=640&h=510] He’s contacting Apple now to see if he can, perhaps, get a new iPhone. Ideally one that doesn’t swell up and explode on his coffee table.
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Zero Punctuation: DC Universe Online | Matt Burns | 2,011 | 2 | 16 | I like tits and bums. Just saying. |
A Slightly Suggestive Ceramics Printing Rig | John Biggs | 2,011 | 2 | 16 | [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_c0C8w_LdYM&w=640&h=510] The odd rig uses a rapid prototyping unit to squeeze wet ceramic into different shapes, creating oddly-shaped bowls that look like alien eggs. The creator, , uses just enough material to build one pot per run and he uses a compressor to squeeze the wet clay into a smooth, flat ribbon. |
Wonga Raises £73m In Series C Funding To Double-Down On Massive UK Growth | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 2 | 16 | , the short-loans company which uses a realtime platform to assess users’ applications instead of people, has raised a significant £73 million ($117 million) funding round – actually a Series C – as expansion capital. Wonga plans to use the cash to expand further in the UK, it’s home market. The funding round was led by Oak Investment Partners. Meritech Capital partners, another US VC, and the Wellcome Trust, the UK’s largest charity and health-funding organisation, also invested, as did some existing investors. Wonga has also had previous investment from Accel Partners, Greylock Partners, Balderton Capital, Dawn Capital and London based Seed fund TAG. However, we understand from sources that Balderton didn’t invest in this round, making Dawn Capital the only investor to have invested three times in the business, and the only European VC to have invested in this round. |
+1 Incoming? Google's New Toolbar Is Rolling Out | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 2 | 16 | For months, we’ve been getting tips about a new toolbar that Google has been testing on google.com. In fact, we first posted about it and the tips have been steadily coming in since then. But today something happened: we’ve started getting a wave of tips about the toolbar. And all of us are now seeing it too. Yes, it looks like Google is rolling out their new toolbar. You might ask: so what? Well, judging from we got of Google’s social product, +1 (at least, a few months ago), it would seem the two might be directly related. So far, the drop down that shows your name only holds the Gmail address for your account and the ability to sign out. The settings menu next to it has the usual basic search settings and account settings. In other words, nothing special to see just yet. More to come, I’m sure. : Here’s Google’s statement on the new bar: Last week we tested a new top navigation bar, which increases consistency across most of Google’s properties and is a visual update over the previous top navigation bar. We are now rolling this new bar out widely. So they’re clearly calling this just a visual upgrades — but there’s no denying that it looks a lot like the element of +1 that we saw. In other words, this may be step one in a gradual process. |
For 40,000 Gmail Users, Google Has To Leave The Cloud To Review The Tapes | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 2 | 28 | Yesterday, the tips started flowing in. “Google has deleted all my email.” “Check Twitter, massive Gmail failure.” “Gmail just melted down.” Users were freaking out. And that’s understandable. Many were apparently opening up Gmail to find that all of their emails had vanished. Had it happened to me, I would have been on Twitter swearing at the top of my digital lungs and promising to do something crazy — like switch to Hotmail. Of course, the reality of the situation wasn’t quite so dramatic. While the initial had around .29 percent of Gmail users affected by the bug (about 600,000 users), those estimates were quickly revised to .08 percent (about 150,000 users). And today, those numbers were further to .02 percent. This means that only around 40,000 of Gmail’s 200 million (or so) users were affected. Now, 40,000 pissed off people is still 40,000 pissed off people. But there was even better news out of Google today: . But it isn’t safe and sound in some remote server attached to the cloud. Instead, it’s safe on back-up data tapes somewhere in an undisclosed location. Yes, despite all the ‘cloud this’ and ‘cloud that’ talk, when it comes down to it, Google still backs up everything on tape. And thank god they do. Just imagine if this bug had affected a significant percentage of users? All of those affected plus millions more would have likely never trusted Google with their data again. Worse, it may have slowed the flow of such data to the cloud across the entire industry. That may have made Microsoft smile, but we’d all have been worse off for it. But again, luckily, that didn’t happen. Still, it’s fairly alarming that all of those policies that Google has in place fell because of what seems to be a fairly standard “storage software update”. Google notes that it’s going to take a little bit more time to get all of the data off the tapes and back into the cloud. But at least it will get there, instead of being gone forever. |
T-Mobile To Pull The Plug On Sidekicks May 31st | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 2 | 28 | The Sidekick is dead. Long live the Sidekick.
The phone that pulled oh-so-many a geek into the mobile world by showing them that phones could do (while still looking cool!) has died. T-Mobile released a statement tonight announcing that all Sidekick data services will be terminated as of May 31st, promising anyone still on a ‘Kick “an easy transition… to a new device.” What that entails, exactly, is anyone’s bet for the moment. This wasn’t exactly unforeseeable. In a world where everyone seems to either want a swiss army phone that does everything and anything or an ultra basic handset that serves as little more than a portable rotary phone, there’s not much room for the Sidekick anymore. Doesn’t mean it’s not a bummer. |
Breakdown Reveals Xoom Cost To Build: $278 | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 2 | 28 |
Motorola’s , the first Android 3.0 to get into consumer hands (if you don’t count hacked Nook Colors), has a total build cost of about $278, according to UBM TechInsights and iSuppli, . That’s $33 more than the cost-to-build estimate. On the consumer pricing front, an iPad with 3G and 32GB of storage costs $729, while the Xoom is $799. Motorola is, of course, going to have to defend the insensible comparisons between the Xoom and the iPad’s costs and pricing. As far as I’m concerned, as far as hardware goes, the Xoom has the iPad beat by a pretty large margin, and let’s not forget that the iPad costs the same as it did a year ago. The difference, say the analysts, is mainly in the cameras and higher-resolution display. Of course, the chipset is superior as well, with the Tegra 2 providing better graphical capabilities and the 4G upgrade included in the Xoom’s price. That said, it’s hard to provide an apples-to-apples comparison, especially since the iPad actually has a higher-quality screen by some standards, and also the Xoom doesn’t offer a cheaper version, like the $500 base iPad. Android 3.0 itself isn’t exactly proven yet, either, and the iPad has already gotten some value-add in the form of the 4.3 update, which added multitasking and other enhancements. The take-away here is that it’s a complicated situation and people will want to oversimplify. If I had to summarize, I’d say that by hardware standards, the Xoom is very competitive with the iPad, but without a ~$500 option, they’re going to have trouble mobilizing consumers who are on the fence. At any rate, things might change in a couple days , so let’s all just take a chill pill until then, yeah? |
WITN: New York State of the Tech Industry [TCTV] | Sarah Lacy | 2,011 | 2 | 28 | This week, Sarah is in New York doing various book-related things – but WITN is all about life outside the valley so she dialed in via Skype to give us an update in what’s happening on the East coast. Spoiler alert: NY is still no Silicon Valley, but it’s increasingly proving that it doesn’t have to be. We also discussed whether New York’s status as a multi-industry town is a pro or a con when it comes to technology startups. Video below. (Next week Paul will be in LA, a trip which he vehemently denies is about finding a new American girlfriend/wife. Instead, he he’ll be on the look out for interesting start-ups to rival . If you know of a company that fits the bill, .) |
Bump Founder Talks Rapid Growth, Push Notifications | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 2 | 28 | The two-year trajectory of , the designers of the app that makes it easy to swap contact information, music, and other data between mobile devices,is a somewhat interesting case study in the evolution of early-stage app startups. Speaking from the DEMO Conference today in Palm Springs, Founder Jake Mintz told the audience that Bump started as a “nights and weekends project” among close friends. Co-founders Mintz, David Lieb, and Andy Huibers launched Bump in March of 2009, and a month-and-a-half later, their nights and weekend project had already pulled in 1 million users. The founders then decided to move their operations to San Francisco, where they began couch hopping in earnest. Mintz said that between May 2009 and February 2010, even though Bump raised nearly $3.5 million in Series A in November 2009 from Sequoia, they slept on couches, devoting all waking hours to their project. Originally, Mintz said, Bump was conceived as a “replacement for business cards” and had more “serious” contexts in mind, but when they began to see that Bump was being used to share more than just CV data, they began adapting. Contact sharing remains at the core of Bump’s business, but Mintz said that, in the last year, many users have come to Bump as a way to share photos, and maximizing the value of both aspects of their mobile business has been “a delicate balance”. Somewhat serendipitously, Bump went to Marc Andreesen, Ben Horowitz, and John O’Farrell for advice on how to grow the business, although they were not looking for investment at the time. Mintz said that the partners later came to them saying they would like to invest in spite of Bump’s reluctancy to raise additional funding. So, in January, Andreessen Horrowitz invested a sizable $16.5 million in Bump, with Andreessen joining Bump’s board. When asked what they wanted to do with so much money, Mintz said that it would be used primarily to hire designers and developers, indicating that, as Andreessen had said to him, there will be multiple social networks in the future — beyond Facebook — and the team wants to build a social technology that “interfaces with the real world.” It remains to be seen, he said, whether Facebook would eventually become a competitor for Bump, but today they continue to collaborate and make strides in areas that Facebook does not yet control. Part of this growth, Mintz said, is from recognizing the important element of user experience. Bump remains determined not fall victim to spamming its users with notifications: “We all know apps can also be used as a tool for evil — an app that will send you a push notification every 15 minutes,” he said. “Some apps have used that mechanic and grown very quickly, and you have this really powerful opportunity to be a part of someone’s life — but in the long-term you have to focus on the user experience.” Early Bump incarnations essentially allowed customers to download and begin using immediately without having to register or specify user settings. And while this approach worked initially and avoided breakage, a few core features went unused, because the app didn’t guide its users through a setup process, Mintz said. The Bump team is now looking to add a short registration process and tutorial that will offer detailed instructions and walk users through how to optimize the niche features that will be arriving later this year. As to what to expect from Bump’s future additions, Mintz added, “if your vision involves finding the best and easiest ways to use a smartphone in the real world, we know that our users might walk into store and want to interact with a brand, or interact with a product, and we want to ask ‘how do we facilitate our growth around that?'” Keeping an eye on customer experience has worked so far for Bump, as Mintz said that the application has become the eighth-most downloaded app on the Apple App store, attracting 8 million active monthly users, and 27 million downloads. Not too shabby. |
Child Of Eden Almost Had A Vibro-Belt Accessory | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 2 | 28 |
You might remember quite a few years back when the Sega “Trance Vibrator” for made a stir by essentially being… a vibrator. Yeah. So they’re doing that again with , spiritual successor for , though a separate vibrating accessory probably isn’t going to happen. The game is shaping up nicely, though. Kotaku where a newer build of the game was shown off, and one of the options available was to use additional 360 controllers as purely vibrational devices. This is actually an option in the XBLA game , and the creator strongly encourages playing this way. In fact, during the preview, it was revealed that they’d even created a special belt that held three controllers on it so you could get really buzzed, as it were. Alas, it almost certainly won’t be coming with the game, or as an accessory. Probably just a little too weird. |
What Makes @ACarvin Tweet? (TCTV) | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 2 | 28 | The recent compounded protests and revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa have had the unintended side effect of information nodes/elites like and , people who electively become of related information on Twitter, Facebook and other social networks. NPR’s Senior Strategist has been one of the most prominent Western information routers, spending 15-17 hours a day tweeting out news about the region, getting rate limited and subsequently whitelisted by Twitter, and at one point becoming so synonymous with that someone anonymously sent him , I sat down on Sunday morning to talk to Carvin about why he’s decided to devote his tweet stream to this new form of curation, what his process was for the filtering and repackaging of information, and what digital tools exist or could exist to make it easier for people like Carvin to continue to refine the closest we’ve come to the ideal form of Twitter journalism. You can watch the entire interview (please get past my beginning awkwardness) above. |
Check Into Foursquare, Facebook Places With Your Watch | John Biggs | 2,011 | 2 | 28 | [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wv5u6dONx3o&w=640&h=390] If you’ve ever thought “I’d get so much more geo-location done in my day if it could all just be done from my watch,” the folks at have an app for you. This hack allows inPulse smart watch users to check into Facebook Places and Foursquare with a tap of their watch button. It’s pretty kludgey right now because it requires a Bluetooth connection to an Android smartphone to work but, as an extension to the standard check-in APIs used on phones, it could prove useful. The watch polls the smartphone for nearby places to use for check in and then connects to the check-in service to complete the process. The and it requires you to register a new app with Facebook, but I think we all can agree that adding this feature to your watch is a great leap forward in human-computer interaction. Or something. You can get an right here and start getting notifications right on your wrist. |
In-Browser OnLive-Esque Remote Gaming From GaiKai – Play Mass Effect 2 Right Now | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 2 | 28 |
Intrigued by , but don’t really want to invest in a glorified set-top box and weirdo controller? You’re in luck. GaiKai, a firm specializing in video game advertising, has launched a streaming game service that lets you play new games right in your browser. Nothing to download, even. Like literally, , wait for the popup (takes about 10 seconds if you have the bandwidth) and you’re playing .
I played through the intro and it worked like a charm with only a few stutters and artifacts, pulling about 5-6Mb/s of data on average for a 720p stream, but on a second go (to get a better screenshot, which I failed to do), it froze up and gave me a “recalibrating” error: Not that this is necessarily GaiKai’s fault, but I would be mad if I’d paid for this. As it is, I can’t really get worked up about an ad not functioning correctly. The strategy is basically a form of mega-advertising. Instead of putting a banner on a website that says “Hey come download the demo,” you literally embed the entire demo, and all the user has to do is click on it. Or, say, fill out a short survey, as by GaiKai CEO Dave Perry points out, and which you’ll have to do if you want to play . After all, that bandwidth ain’t free. But it’s getting close. It makes lots of sense, of course, though OnLive did a lot of work in proving they can scale it. Why shouldn’t you go to a website and have the demo “play”? For full games, I’d say a local install is still very worthwhile, but for demos, which take up a ton of space, take forever to download, and you only play for a half an hour or so? Bring on the streaming. |
Your Pilot May Soon Be Navigating By iPad | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 2 | 28 | You’d think that by now, pilots and airlines would have figured out a really sophisticated browser for flight paths, charts, regulations, and stuff like that, but as it turns out, a lot of that information is still on paper. After all, when the lives of hundreds of thousands depend on such things, you can’t risk a system crash or low battery. But it looks like the stable, long-lived has overcome some of these limitations, and Executive Jet Management is a charter plane company that recently went through an extensive approval process for relying solely (if the pilot chooses) on iPads for browsing all the charts that used to be paper-only. They used an app called Mobile TC, developed by Jeppesen, a company that has made aviation charts for years. After showing that the app was safe, comprehensive, and wouldn’t croak due to battery, pressure, or other causes, they got FAA approval to use it instead of paper charts. Now, that’s just for that charter flight company, but Alaska Airlines too is in the process of evaluating iPads for use, and 100 pilots are currently testing them out. I wonder, though, will the new generation of high-tech planes rely on external devices like the iPad? Or will they include interfaces that can be loaded with something, perhaps, more proprietary, or even… Google-flavored? [image: , obviously) |
null | Michael Arrington | 2,011 | 2 | 16 | null |
Ron Conway, Chris Sacca And Others Invest 800K In PaaS Dotcloud | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 2 | 28 | Hosted application platform is announcing 800K in angel funding today, from notable angel investors Ron Conway, Chris Sacca, Jerry Yang, Raymond Tonsing, Roger Dickey, Ash Patel, Eric Urhane, Kenny Van Zant, Trinity Ventures and others. In the same space as Heroku (before it got bought by Salesforce for $212 million) and a slew of 1st generation platform-as-a-service Heroku clones, what the 2nd generation DotCloud is that it gives developers flexibility. To make it easier to make server administration changes downstream, DotCloud lets companies “mix and match” components and use multiple languages and tools instead of focusing on one language and development stack. Says founder Solomon Hykes, When asked on why he went in on the round, investor Chris Sacca said, Well, if Heroku has taught us anything … Hykes plans on using the financing to further focus on building what he considers to be a with an emphasis on flexibility and user experience in addition to world class support. |
Ning Launches Slick New Mobile Social Tool Called Mogwee | Michael Arrington | 2,011 | 2 | 28 | launches this evening, an ambitious new product from unrelated to its core social networking service. It’s a new social/communications tool that’s built from the ground up for mobile platforms, beginning with iOS for iPhones, iPod Touches and iPads. For now, Mogwee’s main feature is to let you have on the fly public and private instant message-like conversations with people via the app. It updates in real time allowing for synchronous conversations, or you can wait for notifications to come in to have a more asynchronous experience. Unlike most new services we see, there’s no friending or following with Mogwee. If you invite someone to the service, or interact with them in a group “hangout,” you can then have one on one conversations with them. It ends up being very similar to services that have mutual friending, but it worked effortlessly in my testing without al the hassle of adding and removing friends. For one one on communications it works a lot like text messaging, albeit with a synchronous flow that makes it more fun to use. In group hangouts, though, it really shines. If you want to have a quick group chat with some friends or coworkers from your mobile, this is something you’ll enjoy using. You can also post pictures and videos, give gifts, and do fun stuff like throw zombie sheep at each other. I’ve tested Mogwee on iOS and have been using it over the weekend via an unlaunched Android version that works quite well (you’ll have to wait a while for the Android version to be released publicly). , though. And you can also use the browser version at Mogwee.com. You have to actually create your account via your phone, though, before you can use the browser version. Try it out. At first it just seems like another fun chat application. But it’s actually quite a useful chat and productivity tool that is almost certainly finding a permanent home on my phone. |
LG Optimus 2X Launching In Europe In March | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 2 | 28 | LG just sent over a press release titled “LG Optimus 2X to Launch in Key European Markets This Month”. While “this month” is technically still February where we’re sitting, we’re going to go ahead and guess that the person sending these out is on the other side of the world where March is already under way. Friggin’ timezones. As the aforementioned title indicates, LG’s Optimus 2X will finally be ending its exclusive Korean run sometime soon, hitting Europe’s “key markets” (though what markets they consider “key” is still a bit of a mystery) in the next few weeks. Like its Korean counterpart, the European Optimus 2x will launch with Android 2.2, though they promise that the update to 2.3 is on the way. Still no official word when (or if) this thing will hit the ol’ Yankee shores. Need a refresher on the specs? Check’em out after the jump.
NVIDIA Tegra 2 Processor with 1GHz Dual-core Processor
1080p MPEG-4/H.264 Recording and Playback
HDMI mirroring
4-inch WVGA screen
8-megapixel rear camera / 1.3-megapixel front camera
7.1 multi-channel virtual surround sound
8GB memory
microSD memory expandability (up to 32GB)
Micro-USB connectivity
1,500 mAh battery
Supports Adobe Flash Player 10.1 |
Galaxy Tab 8.9" To Hit Next Week At CTIA? | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 2 | 28 |
If the is a little too small for your taste, but the is a bit too big, maybe I can interest the reader in the 8.9″ version? Rumors have been swirling that a version right between those guys might be coming soon, and this teaser on seems to confirm it. An 8.9″ version would be a significant size difference, as you can see here: It would likely have most of the same specs as the 10.1 but probably not quite as well-built, perhaps opting for the (still solid) style of construction found on the 7″ version. Here’s hoping they lose that big silver disc off the back. Also, why not call it the Galaxy Tab 9″, since it’s so close? Well, 9 sounds awfully close to 10, doesn’t it? 8.9 gets both 8 and 9 in there, which is nice when the next step down is a 7. Potentially very savvy, Samsung. |
Nexus EnergyHomes Raises $1.5 Million To Build Luxury, Net Zero Energy Houses | Lora Kolodny | 2,011 | 2 | 28 | Annapolis-based Nexus EnergyHomes raised the first $200,000 of a $1.5 million dollar series A round, a new The company designs, sells and builds pre-fab homes that are “net zero,” or zero energy homes (ZEHs). According to the ZEHs are “connected to the utility grid but can be designed and constructed to produce as much energy as they consume [or more] annually.” also makes and sells green building materials, and offers software to optimize the installation of, and manage the use of equipment in a net zero energy home — like air conditioners, filters, lights, meters, geothermal wells and solar power generating systems. The company’s software, under the brand name Energyze, also helps home builders attain rebates and incentives to build a ZEH. Representatives were not available immediately after the filing was made public to answer questions about the company’s investors, or how the firm plans to use its new-found capital. Because Nexus Energy Homes focuses on building in and around Maryland, they are guarded, at least for the time being, against competition from established zero net energy home designers, like in Colorado or in Ottawa. A regional specialization will not, however, protect the business from competition on software and systems that it sells. Giant technology providers to venture-backed startups are angling for a piece of the green homes market, including and Fuji Electric, and and which both specialize in home-based, energy management technology. |
Best Buy's Buyback Program? Yeah, Not So Hot | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 2 | 28 |
There are a few buyback programs out there, and at CES we even saw a meta-buyback program, , that lets you get the best price from among those. But retail electronics juggernaut Best Buy had to have a piece of the pie — and why not? They have a captive audience of people who like to shop “in real life” and who would probably be excited to get for an old TV. And that’s really the only type of person that the Best Buy program will work for. and found that most products you’d want to sell back (an iPhone 3GS, a two-year-old TV, that sort of thing) fetch less of a price at Best Buy than they would on Craigslist or many other sites, and in addition to that there’s a fee to join the service! It’s plainly predatory and I hope it disappears without a trace. Honestly. If you have something you want to sell, put it up on Craigslist with a fair offer and a product photo (since pictures on CL always look bad). If you don’t get a favorable response, check online services like Gazelle to see what buyback sites are paying. It works |
Regional Provider Says Libya Blocking Voice, Data Services | Nicholas Deleon | 2,011 | 2 | 28 | You’re with a penchant for “voluptuous” . What do you do when your people rebel against your 42-year rule, demanding such things as basic human rights? Why you shut down communication with the outside world, of course. Thuraya, a regional satellite communication provider, that its service is being actively jammed inside Libya. The jamming has affected both voice and data services, but voice services are said to be coming back online in recent hours. Thuraya says it’s considering legal recourse, but what are you going to do, ask the Gaddafi regime to kindly stop jamming? Something tells me they’re not exactly open to such suggestions right now. This, on the day that international community has stepped up efforts against the Gadaffi regime, with the US freezing some $30 billion (!) in assets. |
Google Courts Yahoo Users With New Delicious Bookmarks Importer Tool | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 2 | 17 | The Delicious continues … In reaction to what many have thought to be Yahoo’s mismanagement of the popular bookmarking service in the past couple of months, many people have tried to Delicious importers in hopes of taking advantage of . Google too has today rolled out a for Google Bookmarks, to give people who were scared of the demise of Delicious a safe haven for their meticulously curated links. On background: Yahoo gave many people a scare a couple of months ago when an internal Yahoo slide , revealing that Yahoo would be sunsetting Delicious, a social bookmarking site with a vehement cult following. It turns out that by “sunsetting” Yahoo actually meant selling (heh, that’s not actually what sunsetting means!). But while Yahoo has people about unloading the property, it still has not found a buyer after three months. Google would have been an excellent choice. Just like the homegrown migrating services, you can login to the Bookmarks importer with either your Yahoo ID or your Delicious ID to import all your bookmarks and tags. And whatever you’ve bookmarked on Delicious integrates seamlessly with your already existing Google Bookmarks links. Google launched Google Bookmarks in 2005 as a rival to Delicious and we pretty much forgot about it right until it launched a feature in May. Lists let you copy your bookmarks into lists in order to share publicly and with friends and is completely under-utilized in my opinion. Under the right auspices, I could see Lists becoming a fulcrum for the element of Google News. Right now to bookmark a site on Google Bookmarks you need to either click a star next to what you want bookmarked in your search results history, import your browser bookmarks or add favorite sites manually, which isn’t the most intuitive process. But Google Bookmarks is in the Google Toolbar and apparently sees , so let’s hope this is the first in a series of forward-thinking revamps. Interesting side note: Delicious founder used at Google before founding http://twitter.com/#!/google/statuses/38389631502401537 |
A Bird’s-Eye View Of iOS And Android As Seen By One Premium Ad Platform | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 2 | 17 | Comparing the iOS and Android platforms is often tricky because the perspective is usually one-sided. But mobile ad platforms tend to have a pretty well-rounded look at the state of things because they’re agnostic in the religious war that is iOS versus Android. And of those, has one of the best views since their data comes from only big-time app makers which tend to be on both platforms. Apps like Pandora, New York Times, Fandango, CNN, The Weather Channel, and a wide range of others. In other words, the “premium apps”. So what are they seeing? First and foremost, to state the obvious, mobile is exploding across the board. Medialets says their premium inventory rose almost 300 percent in the fourth quarter of 2010. Pretty much every report you will have read in the past few years will say the same thing. But while Medialets acknowledges that Android has surpassed iOS in U.S. market share, iOS is still dominating among the premium brands that they serve. These premium apps are simply moving faster still on iOS and so Medialets is serving up more inventory for them there. Android had surged ahead for a few months in terms of growth, but iOS dominated in the holidays. In terms of Android fragmentation, Medialets also acknowledges that it is very real, but it appears to be less of an issue for these premium apps. From a device perspective, the top 3 Android devices running these apps make up some 35 percent of the share of premium inventory that Medialets serves up on Android. The top 10 devices make up 63 percent. What are these top Android devices? Medialets’ data points to the Droid, the EVO4G, the Droid X, the Incredible, and the Droid 2. Given that list, it should be no surprise that Verzon dominates in terms of Android carrier spread Medialets see. The nation’s largest carrier has some 48.5 percent of the market. Sprint comes in second at 24 percent. Then T-Mobile at 17 percent. And AT&T? All the way down at just 3 percent. The most interesting thing to see there, of course, is what happens now that the iPhone is available on both AT&T and Verizon?AT&T clearly has started pushing Android more than the previously were. But does the data suggest that when both the iPhone and Android phones are available on a carrier, the majority go with iPhone? It certainly seems that way among those that Medialets sees, at least. In terms of Android manufacturers, HTC leads the way at 38 percent. Motorola is second at 34 percent. Samsung has just under 20 percent. Then there are a group of others that are much smaller. In the iPad and iPhone arena, both saw huge surges in the holiday times, as has indicated. And yes, the iPhone sill has a clear lead over its bigger brother in terms of inventory that Medialets is serving. Breaking down iOS, 68 percent of users are on iOS 4.x. And basically all of the remaining 32 percent are on iOS 3.x. These numbers aren’t as striking talked about recently, but they still point to fragmentation not being nearly the issue that it is on Android. In terms of who is buying up Medialets premium ad spots, it’s largely automotive companies right now at just about 35 percent. Behind that is restaurants and then entertainment. |
New Tech Helps Paralyzed Patients Move Their Limbs | John Biggs | 2,011 | 2 | 17 | It appears that folks with catastrophic spinal cord injuries might be able to move their limbs again thanks to a new system that “trains” the nerves to move using a “pocket-sized electric stimulator.” The stimulator is connected to the affected limbs and fired in order to jolt the muscles into action. After eight weeks, patients given the stimulation tended to have more motor control and a significantly reduced disability over those getting physical therapy alone. “This study proves that by stimulating peripheral nerves and muscles, you can actually ‘retrain’ the brain,” says the study’s lead author, Dr. Milos R. Popovic, a Senior Scientist at Toronto Rehab and head of the hospital’s Neural Engineering and Therapeutics Team. “A few years ago, we did not believe this was possible.” Six months later, a number of the respondents still had improved motor control after the stimulation therapy. |
Gawker's Gulp Moment: Big Redesign Is Driving People Away | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 2 | 17 | About ten days ago, gossip blog and its sister sites , and others switched over to a which was met with plenty of . People always complain about design changes, but this time it looks like several of Gawker’s sites actually took a major hit to traffic. According to , which directly measures the sites, Gawker’s U.S. daily unique visitors were cut in half from a high of 561,000 to 257,000 (see chart above). dropped from 746,000 to 420,000 in the U.S. shows an even more harrowing freefall for Gizmodo (see chart at right). Jezebel and Deadspin also took hits. Only Lifehacker seems to be holding steady. The new design (bottom screenshot) features one top story in the main column, with a few other featured stories below, and more headlines in a thinner column along the side. But it is a bit disorienting because when you scroll down, the righthand headline column doesn’t move, only only the main column does. And sometimes there is only one big full featured post on the homepage, as is the case right now with Gizmodo and a story about Steve Jobs demolished mansion in Woodside, CA. You can revert to a traditional blog view, but the default is the “top story” view. Most people will probably never figure out how to toggle back to the comforts of the classic reverse-chron design, so they leave instead in frustration. Tweets about the redesign are than positive. Some typical ones: http://twitter.com/#!/pjfry/status/38424054876737536 http://twitter.com/#!/liberationnyc/status/38333512151089152 http://twitter.com/#!/pseudohistorian/status/37540219318177793 Ah well, maybe they’ll come around. There is one silver lining, however. For those people who do stick around, pageviews seem to be bouncing back to the pre-redesign levels. As long as Gawker doesn’t drive way of its readers, it should be fine. |
Look Out Quora, InboxQ Takes Q&A Off-Site And On To Twitter | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 2 | 17 | As it becomes more difficult to find the answers you want on Google, using hashtags like to ask questions on Twitter has become some people’s recourse. Realizing this, company is announcing a product revamp today, going from a run of the mill Q&A site to something much more interesting. Their new product, is a free browser plugin (right now only on Chrome) that performs searches for questions on Twitter by keyword and other factors. The fact that InboxQ, like , has realized that Twitter has become the platform for a lot of Q&A activity is pretty genius. And its plan is to leverage this for businesses and brands looking to connect with customers, a hyper targeted form of lead gen. How valuable would it be for the Twitter account to be able to offer immediate tech support when someone asks a question about product installation? Or the Twitter account to offer spot advice to someone wondering about the perfect “little black dress”? Currently all brands have to go on are search terms, and out of the thousands of tweets only a small percentage are questions. By downloading the plugin and logging in with their Twitter accounts, everyday users and big brands can set up Campaigns (by keyword, volume and/or tweet quality), answer or share Questions, track their Answers, and set up questions to be answered under To Do. I tried it out with the keyword “Apple”and realized that questions yielded are relatively high quality. InboxQ uses natural language processing software to detect real questions (only 1% of tweets with question marks are real apparently). The startup’s previous incarnation Answerly used the same software on Google searches but then the founders realized that Twitter was more valuable in terms of user engagement. Says founder Joe Fahrner, In terms of a possible business models, InboxQ plans on offering brands premium access to analytics and data. Farnher tells me that InboxQ is planning on more browser support and that a Firefox version is due out next week. He also is planning to expand the service to more than just Twitter, and plans to crawl both Quora and Yahoo Answers as well as develop more API partnerships and further keyword relevancy. There is huge huge untapped potential in Twitter as a Q&A service and InboxQ is fortunate to be a first mover. Farnher tells me about one of its beta users who had had a Twitter account for a year and didn’t utilize it. Then, after downloading InboxQ in January, their usage picked up exponentially,
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TAG Heuer Carrera Mikrograph: Measure 1/100th Of A Second Like A Boss | John Biggs | 2,011 | 2 | 17 | [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REUaWzkt7No&w=640&h=510] I’m not a huge fan of the stlying in this TAG Mikrograph chrono, but this video is pretty neat. It basically shows the watch measuring a few hundredths of a second in slow motion, a feat that is quite impressive for a mechanical chrono.
You can read more about the watch . |
'Year Of The Rabbit' Begins As Chrome 10 Hops Into Beta With 'Crankshaft' JavaScript | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 2 | 17 | As they have made abundantly clear over the past several months, about the version numbers of Chrome. Well, except when they have something to talk about. Which is actually . Today brings highlighting some new features in Chrome 10, which has just hit the beta channel of the browser. “ ” Google writes. You can find a whole list of new features and improvements for Chrome 10 beta , including password sync, GPU-accelerated video, and the new settings tab. But the key to Chrome 10, once again, is speed. Specifically, JavaScript speed. Chrome 10 uses the latest version of their V8 engine, which they’re calling “Crankshaft”. Google this on stage at the Chrome OS/Web Store event back in December and it was being tested in both Chromium (the open source browser on which Chrome is based) and the developer builds of Chrome. But now it’s apparently ready to primetime as Google is touting it in not one, but two posts. Writes Google: Chrome’s JavaScript engine V8 runs compute-intensive JavaScript applications even more quickly than before. In fact, this beta release sports a whopping 66% improvement on the V8 benchmark suite over our current stable release. The benchmark chart below comparing this version of the JavaScript engine to the previous versions is pretty staggering. You can find the beta version of Chrome . Obviously, Google doesn’t consider it tested enough to be fully stable yet. But I’m typing this post on it. It seems pretty solid — and yes, fast. |
The Nissan ESFLOW Concept Breaks Cover A Bit Early | Matt Burns | 2,011 | 2 | 17 |
Nissan’s unveiling the at the Geneva Auto Show next month. Well, here it is. Click through for the interior shot. God I wish the CE industry had the guts to show-off their forward-thinking concepts — just comes to mind. Anyway, the European auto show is actually expected to feature a fair amount of new production and concept vehicles with this Nissan as one of the stars. No doubt more flattering photos will surface showing off the graceful curves Nissan designers love to use. |
Google Opens Developer Preview Of Chrome Web Store In 15 More Countries | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 2 | 17 | After months of anticipation, Google finally the Chrome Web Store this past December. But a lot of users were disappointed with the launch for one very big reason: it was U.S.-only. Starting today, Google is finally to change that, as they’ve opened a developer preview of the Web Store for 15 more countries. Note that this doesn’t mean the store is ready quite yet for international users. Google says that a full launch will happen “later this year”. “ ,” Google notes. This is the same thing back in August of last year. If that timetable holds, international users should get access in about four months. So which countries are getting access to this developer preview? Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, and the United Kingdom. And, significantly, there will be localized payment options in place for each of those countries. Notes Google: If you are using Chrome Web Store Payments to charge for your app, you will also be able to set the app price for each country although if you’re not based in the United States you will not be able to complete your merchant account sign up just yet (this will be enabled soon). The early talk about the store has been that web apps . But others have said their apps are doing fine. Regardless, opening up beyond the U.S. can only help. |
Massive Solar Flare Causing Communications Problems In China | Nicholas Deleon | 2,011 | 2 | 17 | A recent solar flare, the strongest in four years, is apparently giving China . Astronomers there have reported a disruption in radio communications in the country’s southern regions. The Sun giveth, and the Sun taketh away. Nasa says the flare was of the X-class, which is the most powerful class of flare. The sudden jet of solar… stuff flew off the star at a cool 560 miles per second. Per second! The airplane you use to visit Mom & Dad for the holidays has a max speed of 560 miles per hour. If the flare were to travel around the circumference of the earth it would do so in about 44 seconds. My PC takes longer than that to cold boot. |
Anoma.ly Gets 500K From A Bunch Of Rockstar Investors, Rebrands As Dapt | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 2 | 17 | a startup that is working on optimizing the personalization of realtime information streams, is announcing its first funding round today with 500K in seed money from rockstar investors like Yelp’s Russel Simmons, PayPal’s Max Levchin, YouTube’s Steve Chen, LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman, Klout’s Thomas McInerney, James Hong, ex-Googler Harry Cheung and Microsoft Kinnect creative director Steph Tryphonas. i/o Ventures partner Jim Young called it The startup will be using the funding to launch a major update to its Cadmus firehose product, rebranding it as . In the same vien as My6Sense and Storify, Dapt will be focused on aggregating conversations on Twitter and from other places around the web. Says founder Jay Velayudhan, Velayudhan also tells me that they will be using the funding for new hires and recently added another engineer to the team, former TellMe engineer and University of Waterloo classmate Tim Kuo. The company is currently in stealth as it’s focused on building its product, but plans to be opening up publicly in the coming months, Anoma.ly went through the accelerator program, which is still accepting applications for its Spring cohort until February 21st. you can apply |
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The Scosche goBAT II Can Charge Two USB Devices | Matt Burns | 2,011 | 2 | 17 |
Portable battery packs are starting to become commonplace. You can buy them at major grocery stores now. But how about one that can charge USB devices? Oh yeah, that gets the juices flowing to the ol’ tech boner, doesn’t it? Inside the goBAT II is a 5000mAh rechargeable lithium ion battery that outputs to two USB ports: one for 10 Watt port for power-hungry devices like the iPad and another 5 Watt port for most other gadgets. It even works with Scosche’s free reVIVE charging app that indicates how long charging takes and notifies the owner via email when the charging is complete. The $90 battery pack just went up for sale on . |
GoodGuide Ranks Mobile Phone Sustainability: RIM Worst, Nokia Best | Lora Kolodny | 2,011 | 2 | 17 | Today, GoodGuide (a alumni company) added mobile phone rankings to their comprehensive database that ranks the environmental and social performance of products, and the companies that make them. In its new mobile phone category, the San Francisco startup ranked 576 different handsets and chargers from 16 top mobile phone makers in the U.S. market. assessed everything from the “ingredients” that go into the phones, to each device’s energy efficiency, recyclable qualities, and manufacturers’ willingness to disclose details about its supply chain, materials and more. For environmental performance and impact of the companies overall: came in dead last, topped the GoodGuide environmental chart, and stood at third place. No cracked the top fifteen GoodGuide list of the most environmentally friendly devices, despite the company’s strong overall showing. The Nokia C6 Cell Phone took top honors, followed closely by Samsung’s Blue EarthMobile Phone. RIM’s Blackberry Bold 9000 Smartphone was the worst-rated handset. [Ed’s note: See screenshot above, for further ratings.] GoodGuide founder Dara O’Rourke explained why Apple was viewed favorably as a company, but its phones were not rated as environmentally friendly:
“Apple released a new supplier responsibility report this week, which won the company points. Until this year, though, Apple could not even tell you what metals or minerals were in their phones, or where they came from…Along with other mobile manufacturers, their stance had been: we can’t tell you whether conflict minerals are in our phones, and we can’t tell you who manufactured a sub-component of what’s in there — it’s proprietary, competitive, or not something we know. Now, it’s 2011. The industry is playing catch up on all of this. Consumers are demanding to know more. There are still a lot of details that Apple hasn’t disclosed about their iPhones though. A lack of transparency on each product keeps the iPhone — and the Blackberry — lower in the product rankings.” The may soon require phone manufacturers to disclose such details. The scientist who led the mobile phone research for GoodGuide, , said that to derive its product-scores, the company licenses and compiles studies from government, academic, business and independent research organizations, adding some of their own proprietary data to the mix. The company assigns a weight to each study so that a company-provided claim about its own product will be worth less than an independent, scientific lab’s research into the same item. Unlike other sustainability reports on mobile phones — like the in the U.K. market, or — GoodGuide reported environmental and social impact as separate scores, offered company and product-level scores, and provided information about phones’ radiation levels (not counted in their scores) for consumers who believe this could pose a health risk. O’Rourke noted that ultimately, his company aims to help people find brands and products that align with their own social, health and environmental concerns, but doesn’t want to advocate what those values should be, or which brands they should choose. He doesn’t believe that GoodGuide scores would convince even the most tree-hugging, granola-eating Apple fan to switch to a Nokia. He hopes that such ratings will, however, give consumers motivation to pressure companies they buy from to be as transparent as possible, though, and to improve the sustainability of their products and operations. 1.
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Is Bleacher Report the New New Media Hope? (TCTV) | Sarah Lacy | 2,011 | 2 | 17 | TechCrunch is off the market. Huffington Post won’t be the first $1 billion independent new media company. So who else is left to give us hope that blogging can be the savior of declining old media? It might be . The sports site is coming off a huge 2010 and a banner January: Unique users grew to nearly 20 million per month, and it’s now the fourth largest sports destination according to comScore, not including roll-up fan sites. In December, the company raised a of funding, and named a new CEO, , former general manager of Yahoo Sports and former general manager of Fox Sports Interactive– two of the only sports properties that still dwarf Bleacher Report. Because this is such a sleeper success story we invited Grey into the studio to talk about how the business has continued to grow while so many blogs have stagnated, why sports has been such a neglected vertical and as a Raiders fan what he thinks of Donald Rumsfeld’s that the team was “evil.” Video below.
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To Celebrate Washington's Birthday, Direct2Drive Gives 20 Percent Off | Nicholas Deleon | 2,011 | 2 | 17 | Washington’s Birthday, commonly known as Presidents Day, falls this Monday, and , the IGN-owned direct download store, . All the games in its catalogue will be 20 percent off this weekend, and this weekend only. What’s the tie-in? To be honest there’s barely any connection, but Direct2Drive has highlighted some of the games that feature some of this country’s finest presidents. Honest Abe leads the American civilization in Civilization V; John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon are slumming around Call of Duty: Black Ops; and Martin Sheen, America’s president in The West Wing, provided the voice of the Illusive Man in Mass Effect 2. What to get, what to get… |
Apple Patent Describes Power And Data Over A MagSafe Adapter | Matt Burns | 2,011 | 2 | 17 |
As the headline states, a recent Apple patent shows a system where data and power share a MagSafe adapter. It would look and magnetically connect just like the current MagSafe, but two cables would exit the adapter with a a fiber optic line for data and the standard power cord. Internally there would be an additional “pin” for the fiber line. Apple notes that currently there’s a need for multiple connections when docking a computer. You have the power cable as most notebook batteries cannot make it an entire work day and then either a USB connection to a hub or an Ethernet cable. This patent talks of a future where this one cable handles it all.
The filing also states that it could be used for mobile devices as well as notebooks. A MagSafe power adapter on a cell phone would certinally be Steve’s greatest gift to mankind. But no matter the application, the MagSafe female receptacle is nearly flush mounted on the device, which great contributes to Apple’s clean lines. Of course it’s just a patent and Apple, along with most other CE companies, routinely file patents without ever implemented the described technology. It’s just part of the game. |
Somehow Interesting: Fingerprint Patterns After Using iPad Apps | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 2 | 10 |
There are certainly more sophisticated ways of doing UI heat mapping and click tracking, but is easier to relate to, and what’s more, you can do it at home! All George Kokkinidis at Design Language News did was clean the screen carefully, use an app for a little while, and then photograph the screen in such a way that the fingerprints caught the light. Voila, instant heat map. It’d be interesting to try this backwards: look at a fingerprint pattern and try to reconstruct the usage scenario from there. [via ] |
The iPhone Nano Rumor Reborn: 1/3rd Smaller, Older Components, $200 With No Contract | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 2 | 10 | null |
Antec's New Rockus 2.1 Desktop Speaker Set Promises 3D Sound | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 2 | 10 |
Antec is mostly known for their PC cases and components, but a lot of those manufacturers have been getting into other games over the last few years, and some, like Corsair, have actually come up with some really well-reviewed gear. (yes, they have it in all lower-case, because they’re emo) was just announced, and hopes to put itself onto desktops around the world by promising in-speaker 3D virtualization of stereo sound. Bunk? Maybe. But we’ll find out when we review ’em. Each of the satellites is 25W, plus 100W in the subwoofer, which they claim provides a lot of oomph for its size. The 3D effect can be switched on and off via the little control pod, which also lets you switch between the optical and analog inputs. I don’t see a headphone port on there, though, which isn’t a good sign. Gamers love headphones, and they love climbing around behind their desk to plug them in. The new speakers are . Hopefully we’ll get our hands on a pair soon and let you know if they’re worth it over, say, the capable, (and penguinish) , which cost $150. |
Movie And TV Recommendation Startup Inveni Closes $483K Funding Round | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 2 | 10 | Minnesota-based startup announced today that it has closed a $483,333 seed funding round led by a group of Silicon Valley investors, who asked to have their identities remain confidential. Be that as it may, the latest round of funding brings Inveni’s total to $1.7 million. Inveni is a free web service that serves up movie and TV recommendations based on a user’s unique tastes. How does it work? Think of it as technology akin to that which drives Netflix’s personalization and recommendation features. Inveni’s software assists you in creating a customized “Taste Profile” by enabling you to share the preferences you’ve already established on sites like Amazon or Hulu. Speaking of Amazon, Inveni founder Aaron Weber told me that the startup is being advised by former NetPerceptions executives, the makers of the collaborative filtering software that drives Amazon’s recommendation engine. Though Inveni’s technology draws obvious parallels with Netflix and Amazon, Weber said that the two services essentially rely on an algorithm to aggregate taste preferences and serve recommendations, and Inveni differs from this — sort of. The service has used a bot to crawl other sites on the web that offer user-generated content recommendations (i.e. sites that let users recommend movies and TV shows to each other) and it’s incorporated this data into its own database. Which doesn’t really sound Kosher, but we’ll let it slide. Just this once. And unlike the fully automated algorithms, Inveni users can publish the TV shows and movies they’ve watched, which leads the site to ask their friends and other Inveni members what they should check out next. Update: Weber says that this crawling is one component of the recommendations and explains that staff, contractors, and the site’s users establish the majority of connections. The crawling is intended to help Inveni staff make recommendations faster. The startup will initially remain focused on movies and TV, but says plans are in the works to expand beyond Hollywood — potentially to books and music. Founded in 2008, Inveni debuted its service at TechCrunch Disrupt SF in September 2010. Since then, it has remained in beta, but Weber told me that he hopes to launch officially this spring. |
X-Men: First Class Trailer Actually Looks Pretty Great | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 2 | 10 | [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrbHykKUfTM&w=640&h=390]
If they don’t try to please everyone and focus on the core X-Men group, I think this new X-Men movie might actually be good. I don’t really have any hope for , but that one was doomed from the beginning. The movie’s hitting on June 3rd, so mark your calendars. That’s just before E3, too… I smell a tie-in announcement! |
Shock Survey Reveals: People Don't Like Crashing Gadgets | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 2 | 10 | done by Accenture has revealed that people in the world today are “increasingly frustrated with devices that frequently crash or don’t work as well as expected.” Well blow me down! It’s no surprise, of course, and the survey could probably have dug a little deeper, but it does reveal a few issues with the way gadgets are going these days. Smartphones and tablets are attempting to do way more than the average user needs them for. Unfortunately, you can’t just say “give me an iPhone, hold the Bluetooth.” The configuration thing is more for PCs, and people want their phone to just work. So it ends up being extra-frustrating when something they just want to do one or two things fails because it was trying to do ten. This is why I still love my . Everyone who uses it finds it pleasant and simple, and although it too tries to do too much (and fails), it’s never failed at its primary purpose: playing music. Unfortunately, single-purpose devices means you own more things, maintain them, lose them, and so on. The instability and “kitchen sink mentality” is the other side of the convergence and convenience coin. |
The Funny Coincidence between Bing's Rise And Conduit's Declining Traffic | Michael Arrington | 2,011 | 2 | 10 | Last December toolbar startup announced they were bailing on Google search of Bing. In January Bing in search market share, up over 2 points to 12.8%. You wouldn’t think Conduit was the main force behind the rise. But the data suggests it is. Conduit didn’t just bail on Google in favor of Bing. They also changed the way they do search. They previously put Google results onto their own domain. Now when someone searches from the Conduit toolbar the user is results are shown on Bing.com directly. So Conduit is losing all those page views and sending them to Bing. Look at this comparison of Bing and Conduit from Alexa: Comscore shows much the same mirror effect. Bing added 138 million more page views worldwide in January than December, and Conduit lost 165 million in the same period. Coincidence, or cause and effect? That Conduit search deal may have been a lot more important than anyone realized at the time it was announced. |
You Can Now Punch People On The iPhone, Congratulations Humanity | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 2 | 10 | Oh Western culture, when will you cease to amaze me! First the fact that you can buy a shirt in the WikiLeaks “mall” and now this … is an iPhone app created on a lark by co-founder , while he was on vacation in Hawaii. When I asked him for more information about the app he responded, But, mainly because of I’m writing about it anyways. “Punch Your Friends” lets you take/upload pictures of your friends, enemies or boss and then touch punch them, giving the illusion of bruising. The more you touch punch the more the pictures bruise and yes Kaplan is right, after the initial novelty of getting to see what your friends look like all beat up, the app is kind of crappy. And while the smacking noises are indeed awesome I find the bruises pretty unrealistic (see above). Said Kaplan, Inexplicably, the app is currently clocking in 1,200 installs per day and is at #307 in downloads for free apps in the US. It is also featured in the App Store in France. I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions. You can download the app
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