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Gillmor Gang Live 11.4.11 (TCTV) | Steve Gillmor | 2,011 | 11 | 4 | The Gillmor Gang live recording has concluded. |
Angry Birds’ Peter Vesterbacka: If Disney Were Alive Today, He Would Be Making Games For The iPhone | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 11 | 5 | In a little over two years of existence, the smartphone game Angry Birds is now a household name. A lesson in horizontal brand extension, Rovio “Mighty Eagle” wore an Angry Birds sweater and carried around a bouquet of Angry Birds mylar ballons, on not just one, but all days of the conference. He is in China because the sprawling country is Rovio’s second biggest and fastest growing market, and Vesterbacka is attacking it full force; opening an office in Shanghai and Angry Birds retail stores in the country shortly. The game itself has had over 50 million downloads in China, and Vesterbacka hopes to hit 100 million by the end of the year. “We want to be the leading Chinese entertainment brand,” he says. Vesterbacka describes Angry Birds as the “most copied” brand in China and plans on dealing with the piracy by making better copies than the pirates; “It would be even worse if nobody copied us, because it would me that nobody cares about the brand.” Vesterbacka has extended that brand to stuffed animals, cookbooks and even a movie! “If you have a popular loved brand it will take physical form, ” he explains, “In our case books are happening as well. We’re doing animation … we’re making movies.” Not surprisingly, Vesterbacka views Walt Disney as a role model, ” If Walt Disney was alive today, he would be making games for the iPhone … We’re just using the tools of the trade [available] today to build a brand. Back in the day you had animation and you had black and white cartoons.” Nowadays you have iOS. So is Vesterbacka too ambitious? “Mickey Mouse is a tiny little mouse but a huge pop culture icon.” Enough said. |
Niklas Zennstrom: “Peer-To-Peer Is Not Disruptive Today” | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 11 | 5 | Last week at Disrupt Beijing, Sarah Lacy interviewed Skype co-founder and Atomico investor . (You can watch the full fireside chat in the video above.) Zennstrom was a pioneer in building a series of startups on peer-to-peer technology (Skype, Kazaaa, Joost), but towards the end of the interview he says, “Peer to peer is not disruptive today.” Sometimes it makes sense to use it, sometimes it doesn’t. Many networks are hybrid. But what was originally a competitive advantage and a way to get around bandwidth bottlenecks is no longer so crucial. Zennstrom learned that with Joost when broadband costs plummeted and made it more economical to just stream videos directly to users. The other reason Joost failed was because “the incumbents did a fantastic job” of competing with Hulu. Joost never could get the best content for its third-party network. Skype was always big in China, and he explains how Skype cracked the market. He also talks about how the venture business needs to change on a global basis. “The market has changed from an investor’s market to an entrepreneur’s market,” he says, recalling back when he was pitching Skype to VCs and nobody really getting it, especially in Europe. “What needs to change is that traditional venture capital investors are very local,” he says, “but the tech industry is a global industry today. You tend to see companies become global leaders or regional losers.” It is very binary. |
Weekly Wrist Watch Round Up | John Biggs | 2,011 | 11 | 5 | The “Virgin” king Sir Richard . 46mm wide and done in titanium, the watch features a GMT hand and world time function. May the high-end watch world’s fascination with digital mechanical watches never end. The newest drool-worthy mechanical creation is a . It features a highly complex mechanical movement with a vertical tourbillon, and the time told in 24 hour format on a series of revolving drums. Created with the help of a watchmaker/mathematician the new offers a slew of useful features at a glance. It also has a smooth classic look that offers a timeless feel – appropriate for most any man. We are excited about this . The AM1 40 is inspired by the look and feel of classic American muscle cars and has a modern, yet totally retro feel. Orient has offered well-priced mechanical watches made in Japan for a long while. Japan in general is probably the best source for good mechanical watches that won’t break the bank. Reviewed here is . [slideshow] |
Facebook Tests Home Page Redesign That Moves Ads To The Top | Josh Constine | 2,011 | 11 | 5 | If you check Facebook today for real-time updates in its Ticker feed, you may find yourself staring at ads instead. Some Facebook users are now seeing a redesigned version of the home page that places ad units at the top of the right sidebar. Ticker, Events, and birthdays have been moved down beneath these ads. Similarly, some now see ads relocated above the Timeline profile’s navigation column in the right sidebar. Those in the test with windows wide enough for Ticker to be snapped to the far right see ads above everything else in the sidebar. By making ads more prominent on some of the most frequently browsed parts of the sites, users may be more likely to click through or at least see them. If Facebook rolls out this redesign to the entire user base it could significantly increase the value of the site’s premium home page and profile ad inventory. Alternatively, by dynamically rearranging the home page and profile sidebar, Facebook could consistently trick users into looking at ads where they were expecting to see the Ticker or navigation column. Either way, the changes could allow it to charge advertisers more and increase revenues. Facebook rarely places its bottom line above the interest of the user experience but here it has done so quite literally. The whole point of the without having to switch to a separate “Most Recent” tab of the news feed. By burying Ticker below ads, users are less likely to notice a friend asking for someone to go to dinner with or a conversation developing around a posted link. They’re also less likely to notice they have Events or friends with birthdays that day. On Timeline, the redesign makes more sense. By lowering the Timeline navigation column, it sits closer to the feed of updates that actually moves when users click to view content from last month or last year. Cleverly, if users do scroll down the Timeline such that the ads would be obscured, the ads suddenly reappear beneath the navigator and begin to float so they stay visible. Only a limited set of users are currently seeing these redesigns, so they could disappear as quickly as they showed up. However, the fact that Facebook is even testing them indicates it may be loosening up in terms of the real estate it’s willing to give advertisers. Classically, Facebook has taken a long term approach to monetization, making ads as unobtrusive as possible to keep users addicted to the site. With the company expecting to IPO in 2012 though, it might be interested in juicing its ad revenues to court investors even if it slightly degrades usability. |
Siri And The iPhone’s Physical Keyboard | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 11 | 5 | The backlash was inevitable. Siri has had a bit of an image problem this past week. Just like all technology propelled by the tailwinds of hype, it hit the inevitable wall of tech punditry. This magically turned the stream of largely positive stories into a river of negative stories under the guise of things like: “the voice of reason” or the “wake up call”. It’s the oldest trick in the book and it never fails to generate massive pageview energy. It happens 100 percent of the time. But it’s important not to lose sight of the bigger picture. First of all, the downtime issue is a total red herring. Yes, Siri has been for the past few days. God forbid that a service explicitly labeled as “beta” behave like a service still in beta. I understand that this is a bit of a tough concept to understand since companies like Google leave software in beta for the better part of a decade, thus castrating the term. But look no further than how rarely Apple actually labels something as “beta”. They basically never do it. They only do it when they expect a service to be less than spectacular 100 percent of the time. That’s why stories are comical. Siri is behaving exactly as Apple has said that it would. Perhaps their only mistake was using the “beta” tag, which again, apparently means nothing anymore. And running a commercial touting the beta feature may not have been the best play right now either. The more interesting angle of the backlash goes after what Siri is and what Siri is not. A few days ago, Jordan wrote a post entitled “ ” In it, she brings up a few key points that I think are reflective of some frustrations many are having in this post-hype phase. While the broader notion is a bit silly: No, Siri cannot be a full replacement for a human assistant — nor do you have to pay Siri tens of thousands of dollars a year, provide it with health insurance, etc. Some of the smaller points definitely ring true. Siri can’t add contacts. Siri can’t open apps. Siri can’t play TV shows. Etc. But there’s a keyword missing in each of these: Yet. Again, see: beta. All of that is coming, I have no doubt. The key is when Jordan also complains that she can often type faster than Siri can think. That’s undoubtedly true. But the thinking here has to extend beyond the present and your own self. It reminds me a bit of the people who used to say that they needed a physical keyboard on their phone. And that Apple would eventually to add one to the iPhone. It was a certainty. BlackBerry FTW. Now all of those people seem to happily be using iPhones (or Android phones) without physical keyboards without problems. BlackBerry? What Siri represents is by utilizing something that (most) everyone has: voice. It’s the same thing with the touchscreens on the iPhone and iPad. They also utilize something that (most) everyone has: fingers. “If you see a stylus, they blew it,” Steve Jobs once famously said. And he was right. Why create something to distance yourself from the machine? In the past, these crutches were needed. We’re getting to the point where they aren’t anymore. and keyboards, it’s touch and voice. Everyone is amazed now when they see children interact with the iPad in such a natural way. And they’re even more amazed when they see and it’s extremely foreign to them. The same thing will one day be true with Siri (or any comparable voice technology). What’s easier, teaching a child to type on a keyboard or letting them speak to a computer? There’s a reason why basically every science fiction author in the last century envisioned a future in which we speak to our computers. And there’s a reason why every major technology company has been working on speech technology for the past few decades. It’s a natural thing to do. And it makes sense that eventually it becomes a computing norm. Again, . But we’re not there yet. And that’s why we’re seeing some of this backlash. Is Siri perfect? Of course not. It’s probably 1 percent of where it should be if we’re to use it as a regular computing input. But I’m always amazed when people seem to completely discount the fact that the technology will get better over time — and quickly. But maybe it’s hard to blame them. Again, these are the people who wanted iPhones with physical keyboards. We want what we know. We don’t know voice as a primary method of computing. It’s awkward. It’s foreign. But it won’t be forever. And it especially won’t be for children who grow up learning to speak to computers. Our hesitance to speak to our machines will seem awkward to them. Does that mean speech replaces text input entirely? Of course not. There are some times where typing is better — when you’re in a noisy room, for example. Or in a place you need to be quiet. Or if you’re saying something private. But there’s also a reason why humans don’t stand with one another and quietly pass notes back and forth. My point is simply that you should take the Siri backlash with a grain of salt. We’ve seen such backlashes before, we’ll see it again. Everything is “stupid” and “useless” until it’s everywhere. |
Keen On… Justin Dillon: Is The Internet to Blame for Contemporary Slavery? (TCTV) | Andrew Keen | 2,011 | 11 | 5 | Of course not. And yet, as a key cause and effect of globalization, the Internet does play an important role in enabling the conditions that produce today’s 27 million slaves around the world. But it’s also the vehicle with which we can fight this slavery. That’s the opinion, at least, of the CEO of a State Department funded organization launched at the 2011 which is focused on exposing and fighting contemporary slavery. The Internet, indeed, is now becoming an essential tool for not only fighting slavery but also raising our awareness about how prevalent it is in many of the products that we consume. As Dillon explained when he came into our TechCrunchTV studio, Slavery Footprint has released an Android and iPhone mobile which will enable us to find out how much slavery is contained in products that we buy. Dillon reminded me, for example, that it takes an average of 3.2 forced laborers to produce the average smartphone. Doesn’t that seem like an awfully high price to pay for being connected? |
Gillmor Gang 11.5.11 (TCTV) | Steve Gillmor | 2,011 | 11 | 5 | The Gillmor Gang — Robert Scoble, John Taschek, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor — returned to the Social Wars with renewed vigor courtesy of two weeks of material. These issues included the Klout algorithm crisis, more fun with iOS 5 push notifications, the incredible shrinking Google+ numbers, and @scobleizer’s fabulous Verb Wall aka Spotify Motel where data goes into Facebook and never comes out. Personally, I’m not too worried about Facebook leaving money on the table, or how Netflix suddenly validated a ton of value with their supposed social mistake. Instead I see an ever-expanding set of social services creating new opportunities for sharing realtime hints about what we will find interesting and valuable just in time. Oh, and Twitter just keeps on rocking. Now back to my movie, @Mention Matinee with nobody you have heard of yet. @stevegillmor, @scobleizer, @jtaschek, @kevinmarks |
52 Pick-Up, or, Where I Went Wrong | Jon Evans | 2,011 | 11 | 5 | Happy anniversary to me: I’ve now been writing this here weekly column for exactly one year. In that time I have opined, prescribed, and predicted many things. And now, as part of my one-man crusade for greater opinion-journalism accountability, I’m going to take a moment to go back and look at what I got right … and where I went horribly, hilariously wrong. With luck this will be an annual event. I mean, assuming Erick doesn’t take a look at this track record and decide to can me on the spot. (cracks knuckles) OK, then: without any further ado, and leaving out posts too recent to be judged or those that didn’t contain forward-looking statements, let’s see what , and why… Hmm. All things considered, I seem to have mostly done rather well this year. Put down that axe, Erick! Looks like I might just stick around. |
In Defense of Reed Hastings | Andrew Keen | 2,011 | 11 | 5 | Writing in 2002, Peter Drucker, the great management consultant, foresaw the future. “In the next 30 years,” he wrote, “power will shift to the customer – for the simple reason that the customer now has full access to information worldwide.” And the stage for Drucker’s great power shift – from the corporation to the consumer – is, of course, the radically transparent Internet, where nobody, it seems, can hide anything from anyone. But is this power shift to the customer good for today’s digital economy? One supporter of today’s radically transparent marketplace is , the CEO of the consultancy firm . As Seidman told me when he appeared on my TechcrunchTV last weekend, this transparency will force companies to behave more ethically thereby creating both a fairer and more efficient economy. But what Seidman and many of the other apologists for radical transparency miss is the destructive economic cost of all this openness. Today’s customer-centric Internet may be radically transparent, but it isn’t either radically fair or radically efficient. The problem is that power has shifted so dramatically from the producer to the consumer that it is becoming harder and harder to build viable, long-term companies in today’s fast moving and increasingly unforgiving digital economy. Take, for example, Reed Hasting’s Netflix, which, in 90 nightmarish days, has been transformed from one of Silicon Valley’s most impressive paragons of innovation into a company on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Just last March, MG Siegler was rightly that Neflix was about to “shift” the entire cable television industry with its strategy of streaming originally produced content. But six months later, having its price by 60% for some customers earlier this summer, followed by a poorly communicated attempt to split the company into an analog and digital operation, has lost 800,000 customers and $12 billion in market value in 90 days – including a stunning $2.3 billion in one black earlier last week. Some people are thrilled by this hyper-democratic run on Netflix, arguing that it reflects the general will of a consumer that will no longer put up with any kind of corporate ineptitude or doublespeak. One so-called “customer service guru”, , even came on my TechcrunchTV show to that the arrogant Reed Hastings has got everything he deserved in this all-too-public humiliation. I’m not going to defend the undefendable and make excuses for Netflix’s poorly executed strategic shifts this summer. But the problem with consumer and market reaction to corporate screw-ups in our age of radical transparency is that they lack any kind of scale. Up until this summer, Netflix ranked highly on customer service and was the poster child of innovation, offering an alternative business model to both iTunes and the cable providers. But today, with the company’s market valuation tanking and with its continued hemorrhaging of customers, Netflix’s focus is on its own survival rather than innovating an increasingly archaic industry. In the old days, before Drucker’s great shift in power from the corporation to the consumer, a young promising company like Netflix would have had shelter from the intolerant storm of public opinion. And while I’m not arguing that we should (or could) go back to a pre-digital economy in which corporations are infinitely more powerful than consumers, we do need to discover a better balance between the almost instant destruction of today’s digital marketplace and a consumer culture which is more forgiving of corporate screw-ups. So here’s the solution. My message to all those dissatisfied Netflix customers who care about the future of the culture business: stop whining, show some generosity of spirit and foresight, and forgive Reed Hastings for his mistake. Uncancel your Netflix subscription and pay that extra couple of bucks a month for a service that is still unrivalled in its efficiency and still offers the most effective vehicle for building a 21 century customer-friendly subscription model. That way, Netflix can continue to innovate – which, in the long run, will be of incomparable value to consumers everywhere who want to enjoy high quality video entertainment on their digital devices. |
With 4S Now Tops Among Big 3, Apple Grabs 52% Of Industry Profits; Doles Out Huge Bonuses | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 11 | 5 | As you’ve likely heard, when it comes to Android’s mobile OS. , we know that, yet again, Android is leader among mobile OSes, now accounting for 43 percent of U.S. smartphone marketshare, up from 39 percent in July; while Apple’s iOS remained at 28 percent over the same period, placing it in distant second. Of course, Apple has a little bit of vertical integration going on, and in spite of their lagging well behind Google in mobile software market share, iPhones are used by a full 28 percent of smartphone customers, making them top manufacturer for yet another quarter. Hardware leans significantly in Apple’s favor. So, while the iPhone made up a relatively small 4.2 percent of the mobile handsets shipped in Q3 2011, it seems that Apple is now accounting for over half of the industry’s profits. Yep. , of the top eight cell phone vendors across the globe, Apple owns over 52 percent of the total operating income. And while that may seem impressive, that number is down from 57 percent in the second quarter. In comparison, Samsung owns 29 percent of profits among the top vendors, up from 18 percent last quarter, while HTC accounts for 9 percent, RIM comes in at 7 percent, with Nokia at 4 percent. Though Apple’s 52 percent share of the operating profits of the top eight vendors is impressive in spite of the relatively small percentage of iPhones shipped, Samsung’s meteoric rise is certainly worthy of note. According to Walkley, Samsung gained 11 points of value share thanks largely in part to the Android Galaxy S II, while RIM and Nokia continued to slip. Of course, while most groan over RIM’s future, at least Nokia is making a play at Windows Phone, . That being said, the analyst (and firm) found that Apple’s new iPhone 4S was the top selling phone for AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon (the three largest carriers in the U.S.), with the iPhone 4 — in spite of its next-in-line now being sold — remaining a top selling model for each of those carriers. , the phones get older, the margins seem to get better. And with the popularity of these phones increasing, Walkley projects that Apple may ship as many as 29 million iPhone handsets in Q4 2011. And that’s not all, , Apple’s executives are now reaping the rewards of a strong fiscal year (in which the company passed the $100 billion mark in revenue). The company awarded 1 million shares of stock to seven top execs, which will see bloated wallets for those of that remain with the company through 2016. The recently promoted SVP of Internet Software and Services Eddy Cue received 100,000 shares of stock in the form of a restricted stock units. 25 percent of Cue’s shares turn into freely tradable stock in September 2014, with the remainder vesting in September 2016. Each of the remaining six executives received 150,000 shares of restricted stock, with 50 percent vesting in June of 2013 and the remainder vesting in March of 2016. Based on the current price of Apple stock, that works out to a payday of approximately $60 million each for the execs who received the 150,000 shares. (Which includes: Scott Forstall, Senior Vice President, iOS Software, Bob Mansfield, Senior Vice President, Hardware Engineering, Peter Oppenheimer, Senior Vice President and CFO, Phil Schiller, Senior Vice President, Worldwide Product Marketing, Bruce Sewell, Senior Vice President and General Counsel, and Jeff Williams, Senior Vice President, Operations.) While Apple’s new CEO Tim Cook wasn’t mentioned in these new filings, as CEO, with 50 percent vesting in August 2016 and the remainder vesting in August 2021 (should Cook remain an employee of Apple). So, while Google continues to rise in mobile software, it seems that thanks to Apple’s hardware and its dominance around the world thanks to the iPhone 4 (and now the 4S), both Apple and its executives are cashing in. Thanks |
Daily Crunch: Drop In | Bryce Durbin | 2,011 | 11 | 5 | Here are some of yesterday’s Gadgets stories:
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Index And Khosla Lead $11M Round In Kaggle, A Platform For Data Modeling Competitions | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 11 | 2 | a platform for predictive data modeling competitions, has raised $11 million in Series A financing led by Index Ventures and Khosla Ventures. SV Angel, Yuri Milner’s Start Fund, Stanford Management Company, which invests and manages Stanford University’s endowment and other financial assets, PayPal Founder Max Levchin; Google Chief Economist Hal Varian; and Applied Semantics’ Co-Founder and Factual Chief Executive Officer Gil Elbaz, all participated in the round as well. Neil Rimer, partner at Index Ventures, will join Kaggle’s board of directors, and Levchin has been named chairman of the company. Kaggle’s platform for predictive modeling competitions helps companies, governments, and researchers identify solutions to some of the world’s hardest data problems by posting them as competitions to a community of more than 17,000 PhD-level data scientists located around the world. The Kaggle community of data scientists comprises thousands of PhDs from quantitative fields such as computer science, statistics, econometrics, maths and physics. They come from over 100 countries and 200 universities. In addition to the prize money and data, they use Kaggle to meet, network and collaborate with experts from related fields. As Kaggle founder Anthony Goldbloom tells me, “we’re making big data science into a sport.” Here’s how it works. Companies, and organizations can post large data sets to the platform, and ask scientists to solve a problem or question from the data. The thousands of data scientists who participate in Kaggle competitions then develop algorithms to solve these large-scale problems and submit iterations of their algorithms throughout each competition. Kaggle actually maintains a real-time leaderboard of each competition’s standings, so competitors are motivated to exceed the current benchmark until the competition closes. Once a competition ends, the sponsoring organization has a solution, and the field’s top entrants take home the competition prize. Thus far, data scientists from all over the world have submitted nearly 47,000 entries to various Kaggle competitions. Kaggle says the results have actually led to new data discoveries and breakthroughs across many industries. For example, a competition for NASA, the Royal Astronomical Society, and the European Space Agency identified new ways to map dark matter in the universe, while another competition helped better determine the likelihood that the health of a HIV patient would improve or deteriorate. Another example was showcased by insurance company Allstate, which ran a Claim Prediction Challenge and wanted to determine which motor vehicles were more likely to end up in a car accident from their subset of users. Allstate provided two years of data on the cars insured by the company for scientists to run. Kaggle is currently hosting the $3 million Heritage Health Prize, the largest medical prize ever, designed to help reduce billions of dollars in unnecessary hospitalizations. Google’s Varian says this of Kaggle: “Kaggle is a way to organize the brainpower of the world’s most talented data scientists and make it accessible to organizations of every size. By structuring incentives to create a competitive environment, Kaggle drives data scientists to produce better results than they would if they were working alone.” Of course, many companies and firms may not want to upload classified and sensitive data to a public platform. Kaggle offers private competitions for organizations working with sensitive data or intellectual property. In private competitions, data is shared with a carefully selected group of Kaggle scientists who are held to a non-disclosure agreement, have been subject to a background check, and who have performed extremely well in previous Kaggle competitions. And every competitor who participates in the competition is awarded prize money based on his or her performance. “Kaggle is working on one of the most exciting opportunities in big data analytics that I’ve seen in the last twenty years,” said Vinod Khosla, founder and partner, Khosla Ventures. “Kaggle’s platform has the potential to change the way we tackle data analysis problems.” Kaggle says the new funding will be used towards hiring (the company has just one developer currently) and for sales and marketing efforts. |
More Growth Equity, Please: Average Number Of Rounds Raised By Startups Up 27% Since 2008 | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 11 | 2 | In today’s VC market, it’s age before beauty. This is according by (SRS), the company that represents shareholder interests during the post-closing process in mergers and acquisitions deals. In other words, SRS is an independent advocate for shareholders that offers communications, accounting, and dispute resolution services to an impressive , which includes the likes of Accel, Benchmark, Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia, Khosla, and more. (Basically, the list is a who’s who of venture firms.) The study, which looks at the 196 transactions SRS was involved in between July 2010 and September 2011, identifies trends in these M&A deal terms: One of which is that startups are today raising significantly more outside financing before exit than they were three years ago. The study found that companies are, on average, raising 3.57 rounds of preferred stock financing — the type of investment that’s the staple of venture capital and private equity firms. This represents a 27+ percent increase from 2008, when startups were averaging 2.8 rounds of financing. Essentially, buyers are favoring companies that have raised more money and are profitable. In a sluggish economy, companies are more risk averse to dumping a lot of money into M&A, so buyers are looking for safe bets. Furthermore, thanks to market volatility and poor financial conditions, global M&A activity fell by 19 percent in the third quarter, . Thus, with deals drying up and few companies looking to buy, startups have instead opted to go after further rounds of financing. This is likely the reason that we’ve been seeing “series F” pop up more and more, and may also be another result of how late-stage funding is undergoing a seachange. , companies are now waiting for longer periods of time to IPO, secondary markets are on the rise, there’s a rise in late-stage private equity, and investing in maturing private companies is becoming ever-more efficient thanks to the Internet and the plethora of financing options, be they crowdfunding, accelerators, etc. SRS also identified another trend on the rise this year: Cash transactions. According to the study, 86 percent of deals it participated in were all-cash transactions, thanks to low interest rates and brimming cash reserves. As Mark Vogel, Managing Director at SRS, , buyers today “have lots of offshore cash and don’t want to pay the repatriation taxes to the U.S. They’d rather use it”. And this cash seems to be flowing into big deals, as 25 percent of transactions were for over $200 million — with the software and IT services industries representing over 40 percent of the businesses being sold over the last 14 months. Thus, with more cash exchanging hands as part of this elevated rate of follow-on and late-stage financing, management teams have become more diluted and are requiring further incentives to get in-line with the milestones set by buyers during acquisitions. The study found that this has led to an increase in management carve-out plans, which were part of 33 percent of deals in 2010 and have been part of 25 percent of deals in 2011. For startups and mid-level companies, it seems that the prevailing trend is to raise more money, hold-off on IPO, and wait for the right buyer — with cash. |
CrowdSourcing Platform For Creative Projects DesignCrowd Raises $3 Million | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 11 | 2 | Australian-based crowdsourcing website for creative projects has received a $3 million investment Starfish Ventures. DesignCrowd allows anyone to upload a design project, set a deadline, set a budget and invite the platform’s group designers. The startup says that on average 25 to 100-plus custom designs are submitted from designers around the world, and the project manager can then decide which one suits his needs. Users can also give feedback to the designers and request changes. Once the design is set, payments are transfered and the design can be used for the submitter’s use. How DesignCrowd aims to differ from other crowdsourced design platforms is that the site gives participation payments to designers that don’t win but participate in a bid. And DesignCrowd only
allows designers to see each other’s work once a project is completed, preventing group think
and copying issues. For example, Harvard Business School used the site to crowdsource a new logo for the Harvard Forum for Innovation and received 267 logo designs from 57 designers. The company plans to use the funding towards additional hiring, product development and expansion to the U.S. |
Quora As A Marketplace: Evisors Raises Seed Round To Let Startups Find And Connect With Experts | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 11 | 2 | Let’s say you’re a first-time entrepreneur. You’ve got a great idea for a product or business, but you don’t know where to start. You don’t know any VCs or angels, maybe your company isn’t right for an incubator, but you want firsthand advice from experts on how to proceed. While there are tons of amazing online resources for entrepreneurs and there’s some terrific expert advice on Quora on an array of entrepreneurial subjects, little of this information is personalized. This is one example of the value proposition of , a startup that is building a marketplace of expert advice. Founded in May 2010 by Harvard Business School grads Fredrik Marø, Marc Weiner, Dan Levy, and Wharton grad Christine Apold, Evisors offers on-demand advice, allowing consumers to go beyond their own personal and professional networks to search its database of experienced experts to directly schedule consultations. The startup soft launched its marketplace in September 2010 behind the idea that cold calls and emails are often ineffective ways to build one’s expert network, and getting answers to your tough questions is far more difficult than it should be. In its early stages, as one can imagine, career and graduate school advice was Evisor’s first big seller, and the startup worked to bring former professors and admissions officers into its fold to give young people their industry expertise as well as advice on job hunting strategies, interview practice, resume and cover letter help, business consulting and career management, etc. The Evisors network has since expanded to include three main categories: Admissions, business, and career experts, which now counts CEOs, entrepreneurs, investors, experienced professionals and business consultants as members of its marketplace. Earlier this month, Evisors further expanded its offerings to officially include an entrepreneurship network in an effort to give startups seeking expert guidance access to hundreds of entrepreneurs and business advisors. To find an expert, customers use the marketplace’s simple search interface to identify relevant experts, view their profiles and evaluate them based on their qualifications, user reviews, ratings, availability, and, of course, their hourly rates. Once a user has selected an expert, they can schedule a phone consultation or submit an email inquiry. Experts set their own rates, which range from $30 to more than $500 per consultation depending on things like length of the session, the expert’s education level, career background and experience, and so on. The startup’s entrepreneurship network features startup experts like investor and author Dave Berkus (best known for his “Berkus Method” of evaluating early-stage investments) who has participated in more than 80 tech investments over the last decade — as well as David Ronick, co-founder of the online startup incubator, Upstart Bootcamp. Most of these experts, Evisors CEO Fredrik Maro told us, have full-time jobs, so the marketplace is not a primary money-making tool for first time business consultants. Really, it gives industry veterans an opportunity to give back to the community, interact with likeminded people, and share their hard-earned knowledge. That being said, the marketplace provides a nice complement to their salaries, with a few experts having earned over $10,000 over the course of the year. For those looking for expert advice, there is also the opportunity to take advantage of free consultations, which are primarily a result of new experts joining the community who have been vetted by the Evisors staff but have not yet received a significant feedback rating. Maro said that he sees Evisors as the next link in the chain after Quora, providing those in need of advice with a middle ground between the opinionators and, say, the mentorship (and equity-taking) of startup incubators. Maro also pointed out that Evisors eats its own dogfood, too — the startup has been using the advice of its experts to help grow its own business. And so far, this method of attack seems to be working, as the startup has seen the number of consultations sold in its marketplace grow nearly tenfold over the same period last year. Up until recently, Evisors has been bootstrapped, but today the company is officially announcing that it has raised $600,000 from Nebula Ventures (the VC arm of Universum Global, which owns sites like wetfeet.com and doostang.com), as well as angel investors like New York Angels. Besides taking a small percentage of consultation sales, the startup is also monetizing through affiliate partnerships in which third parties host Evisors widgets to showcase experts relevant to their audiences. These sites earn a referral fee for each consultation sold that emanates from their platforms. Through its strategic partnership with Nebula Ventures qua Universum, Evisors has partnered with job sites Wetfeet.com and Doostang, as well as company review site Glassdoor.com, among others. With partnerships and new funding in its pocket, Evisors is setting its sights on becoming the online destination to get subject matter expertise. It still has a long way to go, but it’s off to a good start. For more, . |
Facebook Co-Founder Eduardo Saverin Leads $7M Round In Scanning And Product Search App ShopSavvy | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 11 | 2 | Barcode scanning and product search app has raised $7 million in new funding led by Facebook co-founder with Brad Martin (Former CEO of retailer Saks Fifth Avenue), James Bailey, and participating. This brings the company’s total funding to $9 million. ShopSavvy is a mobile app that to scan in a barcode, do a product lookup and find comprable deals on products nearby or online. Here’s how it works. Using the phone’s camera and the app, you point your phone’s camera at any barcode and it will read it, do a product look up, and give you information about the product, as well as where you can find it online or at nearby stores and for how much. Since launching in 2008, ShopSavvy has over 10 million current unique users and counts over 40,000 partnerships with retailers, including Walmart, Target, Best Buy, Sears, Nordstrom and Barnes & Noble. The company’s technology brings real-time pricing and product information directly into a consumer’s hands. The app, which available for iOS, Android, Windows Phone 7 and Nokia phones, has seen 20 million downloads to date, says the company’s co-founder Alexander Muse. By way of history, ShopSavvy was one of the best early Android applications. It launched in October of 2008 after winning one of the initial Google Android Developer Challenge top prizes (back then, it was still known as GoCart). ShopSavvy boasts 50 million product scans a month and also includes function takes into account a shopper’s location, shopping history, and preferences when serving up most offers. Last year, the company . “Much like the nascent days of social media, I believe the mobile shopping services market is in the very early stages of change,” said Saverin. “In my opinion, ShopSavvy has the right connections, the right partners and the right technology to be a game-changer.” The company has also built an impressive business of licensing scanning technology data to over 200 companies including Pricegrabber, The New York Times, Cnet, Consumer Reports, and Walmart. Of course, product search and barcode scanning is a huge market and ShopSavvy faces competition from the likes of eBay (via RedLaser) and Amazon. But Muse isn’t afraid to take these e-commerce giants on and believes that the company’s technology has been able to gain a loyal (and quite large) group of user. There’s no doubt that ShopSavvy is playing in a space that is expected to only grow by leaps and bounds According to Forrester Research, mobile commerce is expected to reach $31 billion by 2016, up from $3 billion in 2010. Clearly, a large part of m-commerce will be product scanning and purchasing on the fly. And ShopSavvy wants to be the go-to app for this. |
Whoa! Coull closes a $2m equity round from a single Angel investor | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 11 | 2 | , the video advertising network, has closed of a $2m equity round led by Peter Hargreaves (co-founder of Hargreaves Lansdown). That is a sizeable chuck of cash for one guy, but Hargreaves is as an investor who does not follow the pack, instead going with businesses with proven traction. Coull has avoided VC route because, as CEO and founder Irfon Watkins says, “it’s too long winded and you get conservative valuations within UK. I chose angel investment as opposed to VC because they had cash and experience with friendly legal terms.” Alas, it’s a view often espoused by UK startups, although the VCs argue back that they are often restricted by their funds from taking on risk. The debate continues… Meanwhile, in contrast to Flash overlay ads, Coull’s technology lets publishers and advertisers tag individual products within videos, making it possible to click through and buy products right from the video. Here’s an example of the It’s interesting that Coull has been doing this for a while, even as new startups like bite at their heels. Recently Coull started to charge charge for user engagement with the video, which is unusual in this sector, which is known for charging for anything done with the video. That means budgets get spent on objectives and not just impressions. The company counts Steve Brown, co-founder of on its board. Buy.at did a successfull exit to AOL a while back. Advertisers such as Nike, Renault, Unilever and Agent Provocateur are already users in Europe. |
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Google, Why Don’t You Hang On To That Gmail App For A While? | Chris Velazco | 2,011 | 11 | 2 | By now you’re probably well aware that Google released their long-awaited Gmail iOS app today, only to unceremoniously yank it from the App Store when people pointed out that . offered a by stating that they have removed the app while they correct the problem, and that they’re working on a new version to be released soon. Here’s a thought: just keep it. At least for a little while. I’m sure this must sound a bit petty, but people have seriously been waiting years for a native Gmail app, and they must have been awfully disappointed today. Even if we set the broken push notifications aside for a moment, the app itself was still… shall we say, lackluster? Several people pointed out on Twitter that the app was just a slightly-tweaked version of the Gmail mobile web view that Sure, it had some welcome additions, like improved search functionality and the ability to star emails, but it’s still essentially the same old thing. What gives, Google? I can almost forgive the notifications issue — we all make mistakes after all — but what’s with releasing an app that offers little (if any) improvement over what was already available? Now, I’m sure that Google will fix the problem and issue an fixed version in due time, but what they should really do is put it back in the oven, and leave it in there until it’s better than done. I realize that in the grand scheme of things I’m a nobody, but here are a few things I think Google should fix since they’ve pulled the app anyway: Or not. Like I said, I’m nobody and Google is, well… Google. Here’s hoping that the next version of the Gmail app (whenever it happens to go live) manages to erase the bitter taste that this release has left in my mouth. |
BeachMint’s BeautyMint Gets 500,000 Visitors In First 24 Hours (Thanks To Jessica Simpson) | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 11 | 2 | In October 2010, a Los Angeles-based startup called launched — a service that sends you a new piece of jewelry every month, at a price that’s much less than you’d typically pay for a similar item in a department store. They followed the celebrity-endorsement model popularized by ShoeDazzle, teaming with Kate Bosworth and her stylist Cher Coulter to choose the jewelry — and they soon found they had a hit on their hands. Things went so well, in fact, that the company raised at a rumored $150 million valuation this past June. They followed that up by launching with their second vertical, , in July — this time backed by the Olsen Twins. And now they’re ready for round three. Their latest vertical: Skincare. On Monday the company launched , a service that’ll ship you a fresh supply of cleansers, toners, moisturizer, and creams every month. Rather than sending a random smattering, though, each user receives a personalized kit, depending on factors including their skin type, where they live, and the time of year. So far, the site is off to a very good start, with over 500,000 visitors in its first 24 hours. And that huge first day traffic was no doubt spurred by the fact that Jessica Simpson is onboard as the face of BeautyMint. That’s a big deal: Simpson was one of biggest reasons you’re familiar with the Proactiv acne treatment, which she began endorsing in 2005. Now, say BeachMint founders Josh Berman and Diego Berdakin, she’s moving her focus to beauty and aging products. Which is what BeautyMint is specializing in. The service will charge $39.99 or $49.99 per month, depending on if you want to receive four or five items with each shipment. They’ve also brought on Nerida Joy, an aesthetician who works with celebrities (including Simpson). Joy will be largely responsible for choosing which products BeautyMint will be shipping to each user — she helped design a test that users are prompted to go through when they first sign up for the site (which asks them things like if they’re concerned with wrinkles or want firmer skin). Over time, users will receive additional recommendations from Joy based on their experiences with the products they’ve previously received (in other words, your monthly shipment might change over time if the service comes up with products it thinks will work better). All of BeautyMint’s products are being exclusively sold under its brand, and the company does its own product development (these aren’t just rebranded products). Berdakin says that because of the product development process, BeautyMint took longer to launch than its previous verticals (a total of nine months of planning). BeachMint has more verticals coming soon, too. Later this month, the company will launch ShoeMint, which will ship users shoes each month that have been designed by Rachel Bilson, Nichole Chavez, and Steve Madden. The founders add that they have more celebrities lined up for future verticals that they aren’t ready to announce just yet. |
Social Game Developer RockYou Succumbs To Layoffs To Achieve Profitability | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 11 | 2 | a social game developer, will be laying off a number of employees, we’ve confirmed with the company. The total number of employees being cut, explains CEO , is 100, but there are two parts to the cuts. First, around forty employees from a social game development studio that RockYou acquired in January, will be rejoining Playdemic as a spinoff as the studio has been sold back to the original founders. The social game Gourmet Ranch will become part of Playdemic. Marino says that around 56 employees will be let go from RockYou’s headquarters in Redwood city, including some staff from the game organization, media, and general and administrative services. After the Playdemic spinoff and the layoffs, RockYou will be left with half of its staff, with 90-ish employees, says Marino. She’s careful to explain that this year’s round of layoffs is different from , which took place as the company shifted its focus to social games. “Last year was about finding a business model. This year, it’s about making the company healthy and profitable,” she says. With the layoffs, RockYou is now profitable. RockYou’s four main business channels are the Zoo World game franchise (which Marino says has doubled revenue per user), the Hooked game franchise, the Galactic Allies title and the media business. Marino says that RockYou will not be launching the . It’s been a year of highs and lows for the social game developer. In October of 2010, the company was forced to layoff a ‘substantial’ number of its staff. Last November, RockYou’s then CEO Lance Tokuda , and RockYou has made a number of acquisitions in the social gaming space, including and of course, In September, RockYou debuted one of its newest games, “We went too far down the creative path and lost our way in terms of being a profitable organization,” Marino says. “While today is a tough day, I am incredibly bullish on the business going forward.” She added that entire executive team is staying on at RockYou. The company has raised to date. |
Negroponte On OLPC Future: Air Drops And Hands-Off Education | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 11 | 2 | Nicholas Negroponte, speaking at the summit today, detailed a new plan for distributing the OLPC project’s next device, the XO-3 tablet computer: they’re going to airdrop it on remote villages and then come back a year later to see how it worked. Now, that may sound like crazy talk to you, but the famously ambitious Negroponte thinks that it will work as they expect. Precedent exists for this kind of thing, and not just in . He cited showing promising results from hands-off methods of education, essentially giving tools to kids and letting them work out the rest. Never underestimate the intellect of curious kids with a lot of free time. The tablets (the latest design concept for which is pictured above) will come pre-loaded with 100 books, presumably localized into the region’s language, and are aimed at teaching kids basic computer literacy and advancing their reading skills. The devices would be able to connect to the internet wirelessly, though on what protocol or through which providers, it isn’t clear. While the project has had mixed success by the standards of its original goals, where it has been implemented it has shown a serious impact. Hundreds of thousands of kids in Peru are using them now, apparently to teach their to read. And the devices have proven durable and long-lasting, with few breaking in the field. But getting them to the people in the first place has proven a challenge. So Negroponte is suggesting : “We will literally take tablets and drop them out of helicopters.” The tablets are apparently easy enough to use that they expect kids will pick it up with no instruction at all, though he on the plan, saying they would return a year later to check in. The worst case scenario is pictured thusly: “maybe an older brother will get a hold of it, use it for pornography – that’s life.” The tablet is planned for late 2012; it will be based on a reference , will include a solar panel for charging, and the screen will be a new type. It will be roughly 10″ in diagonal and around a 4:3 aspect ratio. |
Apple Promises iOS 5 Update In A Few Weeks To Suck Less Battery Life | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 11 | 2 | For the past couple of weeks, I’ve heard the same thing over and over again. “The iPhone 4S is awesome, but…” And it’s a big “but”. The battery life. . Well, to be clear, it sucks for users, but not all. For example, anything out of the ordinary on my device. It’s essentially the same battery life I got with the iPhone 4 running iOS 4, as far as I can tell. But today Apple has acknowledged that some bugs are causing some issues with the battery life. But they say it’s not an iPhone 4S issue, but rather an iOS 5 issue. In other words, it’s software, not hardware. More importantly, a fix is coming. “A small number of customers have reported lower than expected battery life on iOS 5 devices. We have found a few bugs that are affecting battery life and we will release a software update to address those in a few weeks,” an Apple spokesperson told us today over the phone. “In a few weeks” sounds a bit vague, but it may actually be a bit sooner than that. This afternoon, to developers. Guess what’s included? Yep — “Fixes bugs affecting battery life “. They’ll need to test this build with developers for a bit to ensure there are no other bugs, but assuming that goes well, this should be out soon. In the meantime, to help with battery issues if you’re having them. Again, the good news here is that this is a software issue in iOS 5, nothing fundamentally wrong with the iPhone 4S. |
Remember NetZero? Now They Want To Sell You Mobile Broadband | Chris Velazco | 2,011 | 11 | 2 | Back in the heady days of the late 1990s, it seemed like everyone and their cousin was trying to break into the ISP business. NetZero once made a name for themselves thanks to their claims of free internet access, and now the company has to start selling mobile broadband service under the NetZero name. NetZero’s old gimmick was that you could poke around on the internet for as long as you wanted so long as you were okay with being bombarded by ads. The idea didn’t last terribly long — people managed to find ways to dodge the advertising — but the brand exists to this day as a purveyor of $9.99/month dial-up. Sadly, I don’t think NetZero will be able to match that price for their mobile broadband offerings. There’s no word on pricing, but NetZero expects to have a complement of 4G USB modems and hotspots ready for next year. It’s sort of puzzling to see Clearwire partner up with someone like NetZero, but all it takes is a quick look at what Clearwire has recently been through to understand why. To wit: Clearwire was lambasted by Sprint’s upper brass at a recent meeting, and they’re hurting for capital to . Sure, Sprint made up for the gaffe by hinting at a long-term network sharing deal, but Clearwire is still in pretty dire straits. Though the deal is sure to net Clearwire some much needed revenue, they’ll need to entice much bigger fish than NetZero if they want to survive. Still, at this point they may need to take whatever they can get: according to Bloomberg, Clearwire just posted a quarterly loss of $84.79 million. |
Infographic: The Mobile World In 60 Seconds | Chris Velazco | 2,011 | 11 | 2 | To say that things move quickly in the mobile space is putting it rather mildly, but an infographic from mobile ad exchange aims to highlight what goes down every 60 seconds. In case you were curious, in the time it took me to write out that first sentence, over 23,000 iOS apps were downloaded from Apple’s App Store. Mobclix used data directly from app publishers, industry sources, and a little old-fashioned arithmetic to get the 60 second stats you see below. Of course, considering Mobclix’s background, there had to be some ad-related factoids in the mix too. Mobile advertisers will be glad to know (if they didn’t already) that some 4,111 ads are tapped each minute, though it almost makes you wonder how many ads were ignored in the same 60 second timeframe. Now I don’t know about you guys, but I for one will sleep better knowing that between the time I fall asleep and the time I wake up, people will have collected 64.8 billion coins in Tiny Zoo Friends. |
Amazon’s Flow iPhone App Brings Augmented Reality To Barcode Scanning And Product Search | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 11 | 2 | Amazon subsidiary has just launched a new augmented reality iPhone app— . Flow uses augmented reality to help users explore and discover tens of millions of products in a real world setting, including books, DVDs, packaged electronics and toys, to give shoppers interactive product information about these items in the real world. Here’s how it works. Once downloaded, you can point the app toward a book, video game, CD, DVD or other product with a UPC barcode. When the app recognized the product, it will display the Amazon.com product information, including the option to play multimedia content and read customer reviews. For some products, you’ll be able to see trailers and other media previews in the app. Flow will also save all of the history of the items scanned. “This is our first step towards integrating product search technology with augmented reality,” said Bill Stasior, president of A9.com. “The integration of a live camera display, graphical overlays, and visual recognition technology creates a seamless experience for a customer looking to discover information about objects in their physical surroundings.” Of course, Amazon is timing the release of this app right as the holiday shopping season kicks off. Clearly, anyone can use this app to scan and see the availability and price of an item at a brick and mortar store, and then potentially go by the item online. eBay offers a similar app (though without Augmented Reality) via its RedLaser technology. |
Twitter Tests “Top News” And “Top People” At Top Of Search Results | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 11 | 2 | In what appears to be a test among some users, Twitter is adding “Top News” and “Top People” results at the top of its realtime search results. When you search for a hot story like “ ” (which came out with a today) or even “ ” (a new startup I just ), you will see a highlighted boxed result with a link to a top news story along with a thumbnail image from that article or blog post. Similarly, a search for anyone who is Twitter-famous will turn up a “Top People” result with their Twitter profile picture and a link to their stream. : a search for “ ” turns up this post right now. Again this is an experiment only a small percentage of users can see. I first noticed this earlier today, and I thought it was a paid search ad. But it is actually a way to help users discover the most popular content and people. Presumably, the Top News items are based on retweets and some sort of whitelist Twitter keeps for news sources. Although it seems like the Top News story sometimes rotates to another source if you repeat your search. Either way, this is a smart move because publishers are going to see a lot more traffic from Twitter if they manage to get their stories in that top slot on Twitter search. The fact that Twitter is testing this with news results shows how focussed it is on becoming the messaging bus for all media. Beyond news, there’s a business model right there: charge for those top slots just like Google does for paid search. I hope we never see Top News as a paid product (that would result in the worst stories from the most desperate news sites and blogs paying their way to get to the top of search results), but it is not too hard to imagine paid results for searches with commercial intent like “shoes” or “cameras.” |
Venuelabs Is Launching VenueRank, A “Klout For Storefronts” | Sarah Perez | 2,011 | 11 | 2 | , a company which got its start as before a pivot in early 2011, is launching a new service called this week at the Geo-Loco conference in San Francisco. VenueRank, simply put, operates somewhat like a “Klout for storefronts,” as it allows brands with multiple stores to compare those against each other or against their competitors using a single, at-a-glance score. Although comparing VenueRank to helps to wrap your mind around the product’s offering, it’s doing it a disserve. Klout is still in its early stages of development, and there’s too much emphasis on its instead of its more practical use cases. Unlike Klout, VenueRank’s potential end users, in this case brands, don’t need any convincing of the service’s worth. The company has been working with approximately 500 brands during beta tests, and is now running VenueRank on 68,000 storefronts across 7 countries. Current customers include Ruby Tuesday, Jaguar, Aspen Dental, Little Caesar’s, Red Robin, Precision Tune Auto Care, Roto-Rooter, Interim Healthcare and many others. To determine a store’s ranking (its “VenueRank”), the service looks at a number of factors, such as local community engagement, size, growth, reach and sentiment. These are determined through social media analysis, which includes things like Facebook and Foursquare check-ins, Facebook “likes,” online comments and tips, plus user reviews from sites like CitySearch, Yahoo Local, Bing Places and more. The rankings are displayed on an online dashboard which also supports custom views and email alerts. Brands can compare different stores individually, groups of stores, or even their own stores against the competition. And when examining the analytics provided, brands can drill down into the data to see the exact details of who checked in and when, who liked it, who commented, what the reviews say, etc. Venuelabs is partnered with , , and has just added , consolidated media investment management operation, which will integrate VenueRank’s local storefront analytics into its own offerings. It also has a number of agency partnerships in the works for next year. At launch, VenueRank will be available on a subscription basis, where pricing is determined by the number of locations. Since its pivot, Venuelabs has seen 30% month-over-month growth, it’s now reporting. The company is now a team of 10 (6 full-time), including CEO Neil Crist and CTO Pete Mannix. It’s currently lightly funded, with $450,000 raised from local angels. |
With Backing From Google Ventures, Humanoid Brings Robot Supervision To Crowdsourced Tasks | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 11 | 2 | Workers of the world, get ready to meet your robot supervisors. A new service called wants to turn you into a “robot-supervised army” that it will rent out for $5 an hour. It already has 20,000 workers lined up for today’s launch. Humanoid comes out of a startup called Speakertext, which uses a mixture of automated techniques and crowdsourced labor to (we use Speakertext for TCTV). Speakertext will continue as a product of Humanoid, which is shifting focus to helping companies with their software development. Google Ventures is putting in a few hundred thousand dollars in another seed round (the company in February from Mitch Kapor and others). The founders tried to build Speakertext on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, but for every $1 it was spending on the crowdsourced marketplace, it was spending $2 to fix the errors. It tried everything, including hiring interns, temps, TaskRabitters and ODeskers. Finally, they wrote their own workforce management technology to oversee its army of transcribers, and that became the foundation of Humanoid. Humanoid starts with getting workers to review each other’s work and then augmenting that with bots that assign each worker a reputation. It also looks at statistics such as accuracy of completed tasks and indicators of developer fatigue. The bots even throw in errors to test workers. If someone is not up to snuff, they route the task to someone else. Some of these workers come from Mechanical turk, some come from other crowdsourced marketplaces. What Humanoid does is it puts an automated workforce management layer on top of these tasks and allows software developers to add human intelligence into their apps (supervised, of course). Give it a try, and welcome our software robot overlords. |
Siri, Why Are You So Underwhelming? | Jordan Crook | 2,011 | 11 | 2 | When Apple , there was one feature that left every jaw in the room on the floor. Her name is . Scott Forstall demoed the personal assistant at Apple’s media event, and the entire presentation went off without a hitch. Then, as expected, Apple released , which were equally impressive. In short, everyone and their brother was amped for Siri. Then the iPhone 4S was released. Save for and my own , there really weren’t many complaints. Now, however, I find myself more bothered by my own expectations than anything else. Why? Because Siri isn’t perfect, and perfect is what I expected. Let me pause right here to say a few things: First, I realize that my complaining about Siri’s limitations is a strictly “first world” problem. Secondly, this post shouldn’t be taken as a poor review of Siri. Sure, she has shortcomings, and like just about any app or software feature, she makes mistakes. But I love her, and I can safely say that won’t change. In fact, I use Siri as much as possible, which is kind of the problem. The disappointment can all be traced back to the hype, which began with Apple’s demo. I don’t blame Apple for this — I guess it’s just a product of success — but with each new capability introduced, hope grew. If she can create reminders, she can edit them, right? Wrong. If she has access to the weather app, calendar app, clock, text, music, and the list goes on, she should have no trouble adding a contact to my phone, right? Wrong. If she can tell me the weather, she should be able to add a new location to my weather app, right? Wrong. What about playing TV shows? She’s already hooked up to iTunes, so she’ll surely play an episode of for me, right? Nope, still wrong. OK fine, but Yelp… Yelp is baked right into Siri, so she has to at least be able to launch the app on my phone… right? Wrong, wrong, wrong. But Apple never said she’d be able to do that. Siri is still in beta, technically, so there’s a good chance that she’ll be able to do much more in the coming months. But that doesn’t change my disappointment. Siri gave me hope — a feeling that we were truly jumping into the future, where a voice on a mobile computer could help me in almost any way. Not that it’s Siri’s fault, but this just isn’t the case. Then, the commercials aired. Seeing send and receive texts while he jogs and plays his music hands-free… Sold. I mean if he’s outside (near the waterfront, no less), on a jog, on his headphones, and Siri can understand everything he’s saying, then the voice recognition must be top-notch, right? Well, not wrong, but not right either. Siri misunderstands me all the time. Maybe I mumble, or maybe it’s because I’m talking to her like I would talk to any human personal assistant. (That is, if I were ever powerful enough to have one.) But that’s what Apple promised right? Forstall said in the demo that it’s not about the words, it’s about the meaning. I should be able to ask about the weather in whatever way I’d like, but the more creative I get, the less intuitive Siri becomes. When asked, “Should an umbrella be a part of my outfit today?” Siri responded by saying, “Call Amanda Algiere paramountcy today.” In a way, this is still an intuitive response. She couldn’t understand me, so she took to problem solving. I have a Brittany Algiere and an Amanda Boyd in my phone, so Siri pulled from that in her answer. Then again, she thought she heard me say “paramountcy,” too. In any case, I didn’t get the answer I was looking for. Whatever happened to “it just works?” Then, there’s the issue of efficiency. One of the big capabilities of Siri is her ability to read and transcribe texts and emails. It sounds basic, but messaging is one of the primary uses of any phone, so getting these things done hands-free is a huge deal. But I noticed two things about her text transcription. The first is that I can type faster than Siri transcribes in almost any case. I can also read faster than I can be read to — by Siri or a human makes no difference. Maybe I’m just totally awesome and text-obsessed, but I’m thinking this holds true for most people. The second thing I noticed loops back to miscommunication and misunderstanding. The whole point of using Siri to send a text is because either my hands are full, or I’m in a rush and need to get that text on its way now. If Siri misunderstands me the first time around — even if she gets it right on the second try — it’s slower than if I had typed the message myself. More than once, I’ve stood outside a train station while I was late waiting for Siri to get it right. It’s a total bummer to say the least. Past that, we then have to account for Siri’s use of the network. Siri doesn’t work without a connection, plain and simple. But when do I need her most? When I’m out and about, on the move, and need my hands for what I’m doing. It’s on the move that your network connection, in general, is roughest. In other words, Siri fails most when you need her the most. Which sucks. These are Siri’s shortcomings, but I can accept them. In fact, I welcome them, as long as Siri keeps setting reminders for me. As I’ve tried to state numerous times throughout the post, I love Siri, and she’s only going to get better and better. If you really think about it, the possibilities with Siri are endless. GigaOm’s John Wilson wrote , outlining the advancements that could be made to the 911 system and health care in general courtesy of Siri. No doubt Apple will push Siri as far as she can possibly go, tapping into a ton of popular apps, and eventually being able to do just about anything. But our current Siri is just a piece of that — incomplete. That’s the thing about the disappointment Siri brings with her — in the end it’s my fault. She’s a direct step into the future, and any one step into the future leads to a thousand more. Just look at Joseph Marie Jacquard’s punched-card power loom. In 1801, way before any form of a computer existed, his system of reading punched cards to perform certain actions laid part of the ground work for binary code, the foundation of computing as we know it today. But no one expected the loom to transcribe texts for them. Siri is a massive step into the future, and so our hopes and dreams for her are equally larger than life. That said, disappointment is sure to follow. She’s like a birthday party — not quite what you’d hoped for. Feel free to cry if you want to. |
Flurry: China’s App Usage Has Gone Through The Roof | Chris Velazco | 2,011 | 11 | 2 | China has the most cell phone users in the world, and according to mobile app analytics firm , they’re using apps more than they ever have before. For their latest report, Flurry tracked mobile app sessions (essentially, instances of use) across 120,000 apps from January to October 2011. Among other things, they were able to single out the ten countries where apps sessions have increased the most. While most of the counties on the list hovered between a 300% and 500% jump in app usage, China pulled ahead with a staggering 870% jump in usage sessions. That leap makes China second only to the United States in terms of app sessions initiated. Of course, Flurry’s analytics can only illustrate part of the picture, but the question still stands — what could have caused such a dramatic jump in app usage? Among other things, Flurry thinks it has to with dropping hardware prices. Older model iOS devices have become more accessible thanks to their depreciating value, and Android continues to appear on a wide array of device with a wide array of price tags. Android’s growth in the low-end market is a sentiment that was shared by some of the guests at our . Wang Hua of Innovation Works said in an interview that “Nokia is dying much faster” then expected. Feature phones as a whole are becoming less prominent in China, and inexpensive Android devices are beginning to fill in that niche. China’s voraciousness for apps can’t just be explained by hardware availability — it’s a software issue too. The country’s huge increase in app-etite (sorry) was almost certainly helped by the existence of multiple independent app stores. Among the myriad options available to users, big names like Motorola, Baidu, and Tencent all operate their own Android-friendly markets. Getting into China can be a bit of a rocky road for developers looking to tap a lucrative market, but it certainly seems to be well worth the effort. |
Yahoo Brings Intelligent Social TV App IntoNow To The iPad; Adds Content Feeds And More | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 11 | 2 | Social TV app which Yahoo for $20 to $30 million, is heading to the iPad today with the launch of a native app. In case you aren’t familiar with IntoNow, the service , a new service that what television shows and movies you’re watching in realtime. But unlike other media “check-in” services, you do this simply by hitting a button and letting your phone listen to what you’re watching. It’s that audio tracing technology that made it an appealing purchase for Yahoo, compared to the plethora of other social check-in apps. Only launched in January, the startup’s iPhone and Android apps have already seen 1.6 million downloads and are seeing as well. Because the iPad is an ideal companion for watching TVs and movies, bringing IntoNow to the device has huge potential. In fact, IntoNow founder Adam Cahan tells us that studies have shown the most popular time to use tablet devices if while consumers are watching TV. According to Nielsen, over 70% of tablet owners and 68% of Smartphone owners say they use their devices while watching TV – much of the time to look up content about a show, piece of news, that they are watching. And IntoNow’s new iPad app is probably its most feature rich offering yet. If a user ‘checks-in’ to a program like ABC News and the subject being talked about is politics, the IntoNow feed will begin to populate with the latest news in politics from many different sources to give the user contextual information. Additionally, when the subject switches to something completely different i.e. celebrity gossip, the app is ‘listening’ for the change and will begin to automatically fill the app with news about that celebrity, Tweets about the person/people, provide videos, etc. The app is also ideal for watching sports. If you check-in to a particular football game, you won’t just see news and Tweets about the game, but Yahoo’s stat tracker will be pulled-up so you can immediately see the score, how many yards that QB has thrown for, who has scored the touchdowns, and more. Clearly this is a big move in the Social TV space. The user doesn’t really have to do much beyond check-in to a show, and the app does all the work, pushes the curation of content. |
A Personal Appeal TO Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 11 | 20 | Dearest , So we meet again Wales … Yes I know, another holiday season, to poke fun at your silly, scopophobia-inducing banner ads belying the very noble cause of raising $29.5 million for an unlimited supply of constantly updated knowledge — FOR WHICH WE ARE ALL VERY THANKFUL JIMMY, I PROMISE. But, for whatever reason Jimmy, this year you’ve chosen to left align your traditional banner ad portrait asking for , which means that your mug ends up being the accompanying image for whatever I end up looking up on Wikipedia. And thus hilarity ensues (See above, and below and below and below and well you get the picture). My — granted unsolicited — advice is that next year you take some of the donation money, especially the 20 bucks I’m about to throw at you out of guilt for writing this post, and hire a professional graphic designer so you’re not creeping people out or (worse) making them laugh unintentionally. Best (and Happy Holidays!), Alexia Tsotsis https://twitter.com/#!/gaberivera/status/135152567469621248 https://twitter.com/#!/gretchenrubin/status/137497528781381632 https://twitter.com/#!/geneweingarten/status/138235086767259650 https://twitter.com/#!/ajkeen/status/138409018375946242 https://twitter.com/#!/kashhill/status/137292038705123329 |
McAfee: Nearly All New Mobile Malware In Q3 Targeted At Android Phones | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 11 | 20 | has released its third quarter security report, which shows that malware targeted towards phones running on the Android operating system continues to be on the rise. According to the report, Android OS solidified its lead as the primary target for new mobile malware. The amount of malware targeted at Android devices jumped nearly 37 percent since last quarter, and puts 2011 on track to be the busiest in mobile and general malware history. Nearly all new mobile malware in Q3 was targeted at Android. This follows a in Android malware in Q2 of 2011. At the end of 2010, McAfee predicted that malware would reach the 70 million unique samples by the but has increased this prediction to 75 million unique malware samples reached by year’s end, which is the busiest in malware history, says McAfee. As mentioned above, McAfee says that malware authors are capitalizing on the popularity of Android devices (and perhaps the security flaws as well) this quarter. The Android platform was the only mobile operating system for all new mobile malware in Q3. One of the most popular forms of trickery in Q3 was SMS-sending Trojans that collect personal information and steal money. Another new method of stealing user information is malware that records phone conversations and forwards them to the attacker. Other types of security attacks are also on the rise. Fake Anti-Virus (AV), AutoRun and password-stealing Trojans have bounced back strongly from previous quarters, while AutoRun and passwords stealers remain at relatively constant levels. Mac malware also continues to grow, though not as quickly of an increase in Q2. Web threats are also a common way for attackers to prey on unsuspecting victims. Websites have bad or malicious reputations for a variety of reasons, and are often influenced by the hosting of malware of phishing sites. The number of “bad sites” dropped a bit, from an average of 7,300 new bad sites in Q2 to 6,500 new bad sites in Q3. While spam still remains at its lowest levels since 2007, spearphishing, or targeted spam, is becoming highly sophisticated and effective, resulting in an elevated threat level. While overall botnet infections dropped slightly in Q3, they seemed to have shown a significant increase in Argentina, Indonesia, Russia and Venezuela. As for the botnets that were the most damaging, Cutwail, Festi and Lethic lead the pack, while previous frontrunners Grum, Bobax and Maazben declined. Social engineering is also a lure used in targeted attacks that depend greatly on geography and language. Attackers show insight into what works in different cultures and regions – not just globally but also seasonally, and can vary by month, season or holiday. In the United States, “Delivery Service Notifications” (or fake error messages) are the most popular, while in the United Kingdom “419 scams” reign supreme. In France, phishing scams dominate, while drug spam is the most popular lure in Russia. Of course, we all know that Hacktivist attacks have been increasing and were primarily launched by the Anonymous group in Q3. One clear differentiator from past quarters is that the goals were not as abundantly transparent as in previous quarters. The report highlights hacktivist activity from Q3, with at least 10 high-profile attacks at the hands of Anonymous, including attacks against the Arizona Fraternal Order of Police, Booz Allen Hamilton, Bay Area Rapid Transit, Austrian Police and Goldman Sachs. It should be interesting to see what 2012 has in store for security attacks. |
Review: Skyrim | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 11 | 20 | While Skyrim does almost nothing to address the weaknesses of its predecessors, it expands on the strengths to such an extent that even its most substantial flaws seem microscopic. You may not lose yourself in the unimaginative combat and story, but the world Bethesda has created is so huge and so beautifully realized that you won’t care. Let me just say right off the bat that I have not finished the main campaign. However, having put around 40 hours into the game so far, I felt I had enough to go on for a review. There will necessarily be some spoilers here, but I’ll try to refrain from specifics. Also: be sure to open screenshots in a new window or tab to see them in their original resolution. They are also slightly more dark and compressed than they looked in-game because of the original bitmap compression. Skyrim is, as I’m sure you know, a beautiful game. But like many of us playing it, it has good angles and bad angles. Fortunately, 90% of the game is good angles: the wide-open terrain of the overworld, the majestic towers and walls of the cities, and dank and decaying tombs and barrows, the wonderfully-modeled monsters and objects, all of these things are difficult to fault. The landscapes of the mountains can often be truly breathtaking, and many times I stopped for a moment to appreciate the view the way you might if you were hiking. And not simply because it looks good “for a game,” but because it was beautiful enough to warrant a moment of appreciation. Similarly, many of the tombs and dungeons you explore have excellent looks to them and great attention to detail. So what I have to criticize is certainly a small minority of the game, and while you’ll notice the same thing in your playthroughs, it rarely detracts from the game. Humans are probably Skyrim’s weakest link graphically; while people certainly look better than they did in the previous games, and look natural enough when they’re doing certain normal things, there was little attention given to many of their animations, and they walk with a strange combination of woodiness and gliding. It’s 2011, the world is rendered with astonishing richness, yet its denizens slide up steps like ghosts. It’s a little sad that the opening scene of the game is a demonstration of its least-appealing visual aspects. And the faces are still, alas, not so hot. Quest characters and many shopkeepers and such look all right (and to Bethesda’s credit, are extremely varied), but many simply don’t, and people all seem to be the same medium height and build. The Nords seem to have eliminated the short, the tall, and the overweight from their population entirely. Low-resolution textures and low-poly models are plenty, though they can usually be overlooked and at any rate are among dozens if not hundreds of other, more well-done items. Decals are particularly disappointing; while I appreciate that blood, scorching, and frost marks should be created, there has to be a better way to do it than the simple models and repeating textures we are given. The sound and music are excellent. Weapons and materials produce a variety of noises when struck, there are a number of different footstep sounds, and creatures all emit distinctive noises when you’re in their vicinity. The atmospheric noises are good, too, with deep rumbles accompanying visual effects in caves, satisfying swishes and thwocks from arrows, and lots of great-sounding nature noises, from wind and rain to wildlife. The soundtrack is, for once, not only worth keeping on (I usually mute game music) but worth listening to closely. The eerie pieces accompanying your spelunking and graverobbing expeditions is clearly meant to evoke the quieter moments of Indiana Jones, while different themes fade in and out naturally for various different settings, from windblown cliffs to forests to city markets. It’s all beautifully done but for the most part low-key. Bravo to the music team. The combat music could do with a little tweaking, though: it’s the same intense piece whether you’re fighting an ancient reanimated warlord and his zombie thralls or if your’e wandering in a marsh and accidentally alert a mudcrab. In the first case it raises the tension – in the second, it feels absurd. The weakest part of the sound is almost certainly the humans, both in scripting and delivery. Naturally putting together a game like Skyrim entails the use of many voice actors, and quality varies. But some of the lines are done so poorly that I wonder whether the designers listened to them at all. And the repetition of some lines is really disappointing. It’s a little shameful that every crypt and castle is unique, yet blacksmiths throughout the land all use the same stock phrases. The game runs well on my computer, which is fairly high-end, but a few tweaks to the config file are warranted, to eliminate mouse acceleration (deceleration, rather) and make a few things go a bit more smoothly. Watch the mod scene for improvements. Some changes have been made to the way you fight, and magic is much more practical than it was before. The left/right hand system is great in most situations, allowing you to, for example, have a shield ready while firing lightning at an enemy. Alternately, you could hack away at a mage while keeping a warding spell ready for when they try to magic you. It feels a little weird having your right hand be the left mouse button and vice versa. A handedness option would be appreciated by many, I’m sure, but that’s a minor detail compared to the larger issues with combat. The fact is that combat in games is all about a relationship between you and your antagonist, and your relationship with almost every single enemy in Skyrim is the same. Every wolf, skeleton, mage, fighter, and so on uses the same strategy: run directly at you by the shortest path possible and attack as soon as you’re within range. Then, once their health gets low, they run away to the next room or cower on the ground until you administer the coup de grace. A few trifling differences can be found in novelty mini-bosses and so on, but by and large every enemy acts the same. Fighting isn’t bad, exactly, but it’s exactly as floaty as it has been for years in the series and you have no sense of the weight or reach of your weapon. You can tell if you hit or were blocked, but it’s really not very physical. Bows and magic are more satisfying, though the “stream” style spells you get have very little feedback. Many will be disappointed to learn that the autoleveling system is still in place, though there are merciful exceptions. I’ve always though it rather stupid in Elder Scrolls games that you can pretty much enter any location at any level and have a good chance of beating it. Enemies level up with you, so that a bandit when you’re level five takes three arrows or five sword swipes, and a bandit when your’e level 30 takes the same. It really acts as a buzzkill when you level up, get a new perk, find a sweet new bow or axe, and feel like a badass — but the game just gives everyone slightly better armor and more hit points to compensate for your badassery. Setting the difficulty is no help, it just tweaks the variables. Bethesda really, really needs to adjust this system. There’s a feeling of awe in other open games when you enter an area and find yourself being killed in a single hit. “I’ve got to come back here when I’m more awesome,” you think. And when you go back to a previous area and can smush enemies with a single hit, you really feel that you’ve moved up in the world. That feeling is more or less absent in Skyrim. Naturally this system enables all the game’s locations to be accessible throughout the game, and you’re never going to skip something because the dudes are too easy and the loot is probably weak. But there has to be a better way. That’s not to say that I didn’t occasionally find myself in serious danger, but when I did, it often felt arbitrary. One time I found a bandit’s den with a few guys in it, nothing special, and then the head bandit rushed out and killed me in two hits. I had unwisely saved after alerting him so I needed to finish it, and it took me perhaps 30 tries, no exaggeration. I honestly don’t know how it was possible that he kept killing me; when I finally took him down, I found he had a fairly powerful magic axe, but nowhere near the level it would take to destroy me that way. And later, a mage killed me a number of times by casting spells faster than he should have been able to. I rarely felt I won or lost in a fair fight. Except with this guy, who didn’t stand a chance: Magic weapons, by the way, are a bit unbalanced. A bow that does 20 fire damage, great. A bow that does 20 stamina damage? The guy will gain that back in like five seconds. Why even bother? There seemed to be a lack of unique enchantments, the kind of thing you’d find in Diablo games. Almost everything is just a regular item with extra damage of one type. I rarely found myself excited about finding one, since they were so generic. The few unique weapons I found (Red Eagle’s Bane, Dawnbreaker) were weaker than the gear I had when I found them. The local blacksmith carried better weapons. There are a number of other problems: sneaking and bows are overpowered, two handed weapons are underpowered, dragons are too easy, multiple opponents often interfere with each other awkwardly, and so on. But you get the idea. Skyrim’s menu systems are terrible, all of them. But instead of going through the details, I’ll just point you to at Gamasutra and , which describe the many shortcomings in illustrated detail. Suffice it to say that the menus are counter-intuitive, inefficient, buggy, and obviously geared towards controller navigation. I look forward to the user-created replacements. I’ve saved the best for last. The world of Skyrim is the whole reason for playing. The dungeons and caves in Oblivion were disappointingly samey, reusing assets and often entire rooms or buildings. Skyrim… well, first of all, let’s talk about the overworld. It’s . Huge in area, but many games tout square mileage greater than Skyrim’s. The difference is that nothing in Skyrim is wasted space or cut-and-paste scenery. Every meadow, every cliff, every log, every glacier, every mountain, every town, every ruin, every lake, every everything is hand-crafted, natural, beautiful, and purposeful. I can’t overstate how very real the land of Skyrim looks and feels. And yet it is enormously varied, as well. The swamps around Markath are a whole different territory from the woodsy hills near Riverdale, which are different from the snow-swept peaks of Winterhold. And you can go everywhere. Like, pretty much everywhere. Only the highest peaks and ornamental features are unable to be clambered up (buggily or otherwise). There are trails and roads to follow, but if you choose to beat your own path, nature is wide-open to you, if you’re game to take on a few bears (which, despite a tame early encounter, are probably more dangerous than dragons). And whether your’e on or off the path, the scene is lavishly sculpted just the same. The attention to detail and go-anywhere aspect make the world seem even bigger than is — not that it’s necessary to do so, because the world is already gigantic. Once you do a little traveling and get a sense of the scale, the map starts to make sense. Originally I thought “okay, there’s a big mountain in the middle, a few towns around it, and some wildlife around them. But not only did I underestimate the size, number, and richness of the landscape, but I neglected to account for the size and depth of the many barrows, holds, tombs, caves, and so on. I was complaining to a friend that generally (so far in the game at the time, and under the influence of my previous experience with Oblivion) the caves and dungeons were generally of a medium size, sometimes with a boss, and usually with treasure at the end, and you can get through them in 20 or 30 minutes. At the time that was what I had found in Skyrim, but I’m happy to say that those impressions have been almost totally reversed. Sure, there are the bandit cubbyholes and medium-sized mines that you can pop into and clear out in 15 minutes or half an hour. But literally the next place I entered after discussing the lack of depth with my friend was probably four times deeper than anything I had found since. It probably took me an hour and a half to clear. And it was really my first foray into the Indiana Jones-style delvings that really make you feel, more than any game I’ve ever played, that you’re truly in an ancient tomb, going places no one has been for centuries, and opening doors that probably should have stayed closed. The one complaint I have is that most of these dungeons are very linear and all you can really do is , not . They also use the slight cop-out of conveniently returning you to the entrance via a back stairway or passage. Really, no one thought to force this door open, which leads directly to the throne-room of the undead king, who laid sleeping behind ten locked doors and innumerable traps for a thousand years? This linearity was beginning to bother me (as much as it can, since the dungeons are all different and all very fun) when I found Blackreach. Oh, Blackreach. Spoiler warning. Do yourself a favor if you haven’t done this yet. Go to Winterhold and travel north until nearly the end of the map, where there will be a “cave” icon indicating a door in an iceberg. Inside is a guy who will send you on the most insanely huge side quest I’ve ever seen in a game. Picture this: At the top of a mountain, buried by snow, are the tops of some towers. Entering the towers, you must decent through a dungeon (in the generic sense) of machinery and ice. At the bottom of this dungeon is another dungeon, the actual ruins of the Dwemer buildings, which are better-maintained and more full of mechanical monsters. At the bottom of this dungeon, you will find the entrance (only accessible via the quest, as I found out) to Blackreach:
Blackreach is one of the most astonishing pieces of world design I’ve ever seen. And within this massive and incredibly beautiful underground world larger than any of the game’s cities by far, there are further sub-dungeons, and dungeons within those! I remind you that to my knowledge this quest is not only optional, but hidden in an obscure location at the very edge of the map! (Update: Oops, it actually is a main story quest, though I came across it randomly. That’s what I get for not finishing the game first.) This review is already too long, so I’ll stop, but I wanted to highlight Blackreach as an example of everything this game does right. Despite the serious faults in many of the game mechanics, Skyrim is a triumph because what it succeeds in outweighs those flaws (which may be fixed by patches and mods) by an enormous amount. The world is the richest and most lovingly created that I’ve ever seen in a game, and you are completely free to explore it at your own rate, in your own way, and for a long, long time. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to playing. Despite 35 hours of exploration, and rather efficient exploration at that if I may say so, I have yet to even lay eyes on half of the world, much less explore their hidden depths. I expect to be occupied with Skyrim for days and weeks to come, and look back to revisiting it years from now. A genuine modern classic.
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Eyeing Deal Flow, Bain Capital Ventures Heads West; Opens Silicon Valley Office | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 11 | 20 | , the Boston-based venture capital arm of private equity firm of Bain Capital, has recently opened a Palo Alto office, the firm’s first presence on the West Coast. The new office is being led by Bain partner (and former alum) Ajay Agarwal. “We needed to be part of the ecosystem out here, and we want to build a business out here for the long term,” he explains. Agarwal says that the Palo Alto office will focus on sourcing Series A opportunities and growth capital for startups, in the range of $3 to $5 million. The fund will be investing out of Bain’s $525 million fund. The firm will invest in mobile, commerce, social, software and infrastructure. Past investments include Color, Skyhook, and Inrix. Agarwal says that because of Bain’s connection with the private equity world, the firm has a lot of relationships with financial institutions and is looking to help startups leverage these connections and broker these relationships. “While many venture firms have a great network up and down the 101 and 280 highways, we have relationships with large companies outside of Silicon Valley. For now, the Palo Alto office has 6 employees but will be building out the team to a staff of 10 to 12 professionals. |
The Death Of The Impulse Shopper | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 11 | 20 | It’s no secret that technology has changed in-store shopping behavior. Whether it be through mobile phones, barcode scanning, or price comparison shopping sites; consumers are more prepared than ever in the store aisle. According to a new study released from Deloitte, nine in 10 shoppers know what they’re buying before they arrive at a store, and more than eight in 10 (83 percent) have a set of brands in mind that they will consider. Of course, when considering the holiday shopping season ahead of us, we know in-store shoppers are more mindful of finding online deals or coupons. According to the study, 80 percent of surveyed shoppers say they do their own research online and have a pre-determined price point and a potential savings amount in mind before they step into a store. Furthermore, two-thirds of consumers shop when they know products will be on sale. Three-quarters (75 percent) of survey respondents assert that they are smarter shoppers than they were a year ago, and nearly nine in 10 (86 percent) believe they are getting more precise in what they buy. All of this means that retail stores need to consider the use of online campaigns to educate shoppers via mobile and online platforms. Clearly companies like Google, eBay, and even startups like ShopKick are for how to influence shoppers’ in-store purchases as well as online and mobile shopping. |
TouchPad Microwave Hack Finds Videos That End Right When The Popcorn Is Ready | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 11 | 20 | Your better half is off doing things more important than making you food. Looks like it’s leftovers night! You stick the grub in the microwave, punch in the time, hit start… and you’re bored. A minute and thirty seconds?! To heat !? WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO WITH ALL OF THIS TIME. Meet the μWave, the most clever mish-mash of a hack I’ve seen in ages. Part microwave, part TouchPad, and part Arduino, the μWave automatically fishes around YouTube and plays back a video that’ll come to an end right as your food is finished. This lovely little hodgepodge was built by a group of students for the University of Pennsylvania PennApps hackathon, where they went home with the gold (plus $2500 and a chance to pitch their project to Google NYC). It uses an Arduino to tap into the microwave’s countdown, pings a server for a well-performing video of the appropriate length, and then pushes that content to a TouchPad. Check out the Demo video below (and remember: they only had 2 days to build this): [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aDyDCBK828?feature=player_embedded&w=640&h=360] Microwaves, HP. WebOS Microwaves. Problem solved. |
Breyer: “It Is The Best Time Over The Past Decade To Be An Entrepreneur” | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 11 | 20 | In Part III of my interview with Accel partner Jim Breyer, we get into the disruptions occurring in the venture capital industry itself with the abundance of angel money and the impact that is having on traditional VC firms. In the video interview above, I ask him whether he thinks there is a . “I don’t think there is,” he states, echoing what . Breyer counters that venture capital is not “uniformly distributed” and there are some markets, such as Brazil, where even seed stage capital is not plentiful enough. “It is the best time over the last decade that I can think of to be an entrepreneur,” says Breyer. “The collision of mobile and social platforms and the need to build these companies from the ground up—whether it’s a game, a healthcare application, an education application—building these from the ground up is what allows entrepreneurial activity to be unleashed. And it’s as good an opportunity from a time standpoint as I’ve ever seen.” That said, he does concede that the competition tio win deals is “as difficult as it’s ever been” for venture capitalists. But “it’s always been intense,” he says, recalling how fast he had to jump on Facebook in 2005: “I met Mark Zuckerberg on a Monday, April 4, 2005. After a dinner the next night, Mark and I shook hands on the Facebook deal on Wednesday April 6.” Time was of the essence because “a large media company was very close to making a significant investment.” (That media company, as we , was the Washington Post). Be sure to catch Parts I and II of this interview in which Breyer discusses investing in and why we |
The Tick-Tock: When Big Names Leave, Who Wins? | John Biggs | 2,011 | 11 | 20 | This story dropped a few days ago but it seemed like a good choice to share on a lazy Sunday and the topic is something that’s been kicking around in the old sub-conscious for a while. Jim Romenseko has long been the go-to media critic at Poynter.org where he spent twelve years poking at – and changing – the online/print media landscape. On November 10 by weeks before retirement and he recently wrote about how the whole thing went down, in typical online style. The He-Said-She-Said, it seems, has been replaced by the He-Emailed-She-Emailed. First, why is this important? As odd as this sounds, the rules are still changing in the world of blogging. When I started at Gizmodo in , the job consisted of summarizing 28+ stories a day with plenty of links to the source. Hence the formulation at the end of most posts, “JoesBlog via JoesMomsBlog via TheJoeAggregator,” ad absurdum. It wasn’t pretty, but it worked. That has changed but essentially you want to link to your source. So for anyone to is probably sour grapes or, more likely, simply . Romenesko knows how to do this stuff but, that said, he’s out at Poynter and now he’s blogging at . He notes that move was pretty hard to make: My discussions with Julie continued after our July 6 email exchange. I knew she was frustrated, trying hard to figure out exactly what I wanted and how she could keep me at Poynter, which sold ad space and attracted traffic (although declining) with my name. Meanwhile, I was asking myself: Do I really want to give up a job that paid six figures, let me work in coffee houses around the country, and put $100 on my Starbucks card every month? The answer, I decided, was yes. With the misattribution story, however, he feared his reputation would be sunk as he left. The latter is true and if the site is any guide, he’s still got a loyal following. All’s well, as they say, that ends well. If I hadn’t have brought it up you probably wouldn’t have known about the whole ordeal. In the grand scheme of things, it’s unimportant. Other big departures – , , and the from this perch high over the battle-scarred fields of Silicon Valley – point to a lesson that media folks and entrepreneurs can both take to heart: it’s so easy to make something new and, with enough effort, a little audience, and some intelligence, there can always be a second act. Sure TC and BI and PCWorld and Engadget have been reduced by the loss of their big names but bold moves in one industry are often seen as earth-shattering and life-changing while, on the aggregate, nothing has changed. Arrington still posts great stuff, Romenesko will still do what he did, and BI and Poynter (and TC) will muddle along, somehow, producing content much as it had in the past. So to answer my headline question, I don’t think it’s a question of winning or losing. It’s a question of change. Is the organization strong enough to survive a big name departure? Will the loss of the lead programmer to an Ashram in West Virginia really change that much at an organization? Will the move of Top-Notch CEO #1 to Hot Start-Up #2 effect Top-Notch CEO #2 at Hot Start-Up #1? With the right people in place around him or her, the organization is self-healing. If it doesn’t heal, there are larger structural problems at play than whether Jim is blogging at a different URL. [Image: / ] |
The Nook Tablet vs. Kindle Fire Drop Test | John Biggs | 2,011 | 11 | 20 | [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Cww68r8-1A] I hate these kind of videos. There’s enough waste in electronics that we don’t need to destroy stuff that is in already perfect condition (hence our refusal to post those ridiculous Will It Blend videos). However, this is for science! A did a Mythbusters on the and the . The winner, as you’ll find out, was the Nook Tablet. The Fire’s screen shattered fairly effusively while the Nook took some long cracks in the corner. Does this prove anything? Probably not, but clearly the Nook’s fairly clunky-looking plastic edging was good for something. |
Jim Breyer Doesn’t Think More IPOs Are The Answer | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 11 | 20 | Jim Breyer is one of the few venture capitalists in Silicon Valley who loves investing in media companies. (He , and now is an investor and board member of , producer of such hits as , , and —he sits on the board of News Corp as well). In the video interview above, which took place at the Techonomy conference last week, we continue our discussion of media investments (watch ). “One of my first investments was Tetris,” Breyer tells me. But media companies have to rethink the way they connect with consumers. In regards to the current media incumbents, he acknowledged onstage at Techonomy, “It is so rapidly deteriorating in terms of the economics.” They need to think about how they will deliver their products online through social media, and create lasting relationships with their audience. Towards the middle of the clip, I ask Breyer what he thinks about the current IPO market and whether he agrees with Steve Case, to create more jobs—“90% of job growth is a company goes public.” Breyer disagrees with Case that IPOs are the answer. At About the 2:35 mark, he says that the IPO process could be made a little bit easier, but ushering in a flood of IPOs could cause more problems than it solves. ” What I would never want to see is a repeat of when public companies were created twice a day and investors lost 80% of their money,” he cautions. Breyer thinks it’s better to keep access to IPOs more selective and “make it a high bar.” He adds, “There really is no rush. At the same time I am a big believer that the greatest challenge for an entrepreneur is to build a sustainable company that matters.” And that usually means going public instead of selling to another company. |
Review: The Samsung Captivate Glide For AT&T | Chris Velazco | 2,011 | 11 | 20 | Keyboard-loving Android fans historically haven’t had much luck with AT&T’s lineup — a quick look at their wares reveals only a handful of options, none of which are terribly impressive. The Captivate Glide is AT&T’s most recent attempt at marrying a full QWERTY keyboard and a competitive spec sheet, but will it find an audience outside of hardcore messagers? Read on to find out. : One of the first things you notice when you pick up the Captivate Glide is how light it is. It’s not the thinnest phone you’ll ever see, but even with a four-row QWERTY keyboard in tow, the Glide feels comparable in weight to an iPhone 4S. It’s lack of heft is due in large part to its plastic body, and while it definitely helps keep the ounces off, it doesn’t do much to give the device a sturdy feel. Take the Glide’s rear, for example. Much like on the Focus S, Samsung has fitted the battery cover with a nice grippy textured finish. Pop that bad boy off though (be careful!), and you’ll be looking at an incredibly flimsy piece of plastic. My jaw would clench whenever I had to remove or install the thing, as I was afraid I would accidentally damage it. When the Glide is closed it feels solid enough, but that soon changes when you slide the keyboard open. The slide mechanism leaps into action with little provocation, and there’s a little bit of play between the screen and keyboard halves. It’s a fairly minor gripe, but a more solid slide could have gone a long way in making the hardware feel more robust. Sadly, while that same keyboard is one of the Glide’s big selling points, it’s far from perfect. The four-row layout is reasonably spacious, but it isn’t helped by the fact that the keys are almost completely flat. It’s especially rough for people who are accustomed to using the tips of their fingers or their nails on a keyboard, because there’s a tendency to graze the metal grid that separates the keys instead. There were also more than a few occasions where my nail would dig into the plastic of the key but miss the actual button underneath. What’s more, the four standard Android buttons make appear on either side of the keyboard. It seems like a thoughtful addition for a while, until your thumb inevitably glances off of the Home button instead of the Alt or Shift keys. After using it for a few days though, I slowly found myself using the flats of my thumbs with more success. Keyboard fans considering the Glide really need to go to a store and play with one, because it’s going to be a “love-it-or-hate-it” experience. Like with the original Captivate, Samsung and AT&T have bucked the trend of including a microSD card in the box, but this time users only have 8GB of internal storage to play with. Some customers won’t mind, but those of you looking to load up your media library may want to get those memory cards ready. In spite of all the Glide’s physical quirks, Samsung’s now-classic Super AMOLED display still looks great. I won’t go into too much detail here since nearly everyone has seen one of them in action by now, but new smartphone owners can expect crisp, vibrant colors on the Glide’s 4-inch display. Users of Samsung’s Galaxy S II line will find themselves with at home with the Glide, as they both run the same version of Samsung’s custom TouchWiz UI. I’m generally not a fan of the custom UIs some companies feel obligated to throw on their Android devices, but I think TouchWiz is far and away the least offensive of the bunch. It’s brightly colored, it’s user-friendly, and adds quite a bit of novel functionality to the mix without completely obscuring its Android underpinnings. As is usually the case, AT&T has seen fit to load up the Glide with a bit of their standard bloatware. This time around, the culprits include AT&T Family Map, AT&T Code Scanner, Live TV, myAT&T, Qik Lite, YP, and Asphalt 6. Fortunately a few of them can be uninstalled outright, while the rest of them can be thrown into a folder in the app drawer and forgotten. Samsung’s own apps and services make an appearance on the Glide, with most of them performing as well as could be expected. AllShare did an admirable job of accessing every episode of This American Life on my desktop, though unfortunately the app isn’t able to stream content in the background. Samsung’s Social Hub seeks to aggregate your social media and email accounts into one location for easy access. While I’m sure it would be a great solution for some, Social Hub doesn’t play nice with Google Voice accounts so much of its appeal is lost on me. Strangely, Samsung’s preloaded Media Hub app refuses to start up without a microSD card installed. Since the Glide doesn’t come with one, people who are truly itching to use it will have to drop a few bucks for one. The Glide’s physical feel may be lackluster, but that’s certainly not the case when it comes to performance. There was virtually zero lag while scrolling through apps and navigating menus, and the Glide was always very responsive. Sure, it’s not the same kind of powerhouse as the Droid RAZR or the HTC Rezound, but there’s more than enough under the Glide’s hood to deliver a smooth ride. Even my usual test videos (a few episodes of and ) ran like butter on the device. After being disappointed by some other Tegra 2-powered devices, the Glide’s battery life was a pleasant surprise. After a normal day of texting, answering emails, web browsing, and streaming music from Rdio, the Glide managed to hang in there for around 11 hours. Your mileage may vary from mine, but I don’t foresee too many problems for people who spend the better part of their day away from power outlets. Control freaks can also keep an eye on Samsung’s preloaded task manager widget to kill apps as soon as possible, if they happen to be really hard up for juice. As far as taking photos are concerned, the Glide is no slouch. Given the small sensor fitted inside, the Glide faces the same problem that plagues nearly all phone cameras: solid results can be had when there’s light out, but iffy shots are abound when it gets dim. Still, the Glide is capable of capturing some solid shots while keeping shutter lag to a minimum, even if the colors seemed a bit muted at times. Video recording on the other hand left a little to be desired: there’s no way to force the Glide to focus on a subject, so you’re left waiting for the autofocus to catch up to you. Sadly, audio was a bit of a toss-up. Phone call quality was usually very good, although there was a tendency to for the audio to become slightly muffled at times. The rear-facing speaker leaves much to be desired though — the volume could be cranked up to a respectable level, but music and calls routed through it sounded hollow and distant. In fact, the speaker actually seemed incapable of playing parts of certain songs, which was puzzling to say the least. The Captivate Glide is a textbook example of a mixed bag: the body skews a bit toward the chintzy side of things, but the power of its internals make for an almost consistently smooth Android experience. Avid keyboard fans who don’t mind the Glide’s flat layout would be hard-pressed to find anything better in AT&T’s portfolio, but again that isn’t saying much considering the competition. If you’re not a physical QWERTY devotee though, you’re probably better off spending the extra $50 for the flagship Galaxy S II with its better screen, faster processor, and slimmer frame.
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Backed By Former Google Exec & More, Twigmore Brings Travel Networking To Facebook | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 11 | 18 | There are a lot of sites popping up these days trying to make travel recommendations better and more precise. Some, , are making travel apps based on algorithms, while , “friendsourced” recommendations via Facebook, or rapidly growing sites , which provides a gamified, Yelp-like platform where you can leave reviews of destinations you visit and get recommendations from your friends. These are all great options, but sites like , , and more are off-Facebook platforms that connect to the social network through Facebook Login. A new travel site launching today, called is cutting out the middle man and launching a travel network directly on Facebook. Twigmore Co-founder and CEO Stephen Smyth tells us that many feel that travel network is a natural extension of the Facebook platform but they don’t want to sign up through an off-site application to get their recommendations. Smyth says that, with Twigmore, he wants to put people, not places, at the heart of a travel platform; while most travel websites focus on places, offering pictures of hotels, restaurants, etc., Smyth says that it’s not only friends and people we inherently trust that give us the best travel recommendations — the best insight and tips come from people who actually live at these destinations. The problem is, however, that it’s hard for travelers to find trusted locals who can answer questions, show them around, or just help when things come up. Twigmore wants to tackle this obstacle by connecting travelers with locals through friends. That’s where the co-founder thinks they can gain a leg-up on other travel sites: By helping travelers find real people on the ground wherever they travel. On Twigmore, when a user is planning a trip to Berlin, for example, they may discover that a friend knows someone who’s currently living in the city. If the traveler likes live music, with a couple of clicks through their Facebook profile, they can discover what kind of music the person likes, get introduced to the local contact for a scoop on concerts, and perhaps even go see a concert with the person when they get to Berlin — and make a friend in the process. What’s more, Twigmore users can get notified if other friends are going to be in the city at the same time. Smyth says that the idea for Twigmore was inspired by the Facebook-focused professional networking approach of , which is basically like LinkedIn for Facebook. In the same way, Twigmore wants to become Lonely Planet for Facebook. Twigmore also wants to offer its own recommendations for things to do when people arrive at their destination, a starter kit, if you will. They’ve just begun adding features there, and have started with Groupon Deals for some discounted activities for people to during their stay in 100+ U.S. destinations. Smyth also said that he wants the product to be 100 percent personalized, and thus far users can only interact with friends or friends-of-friends in Twigmore — no strangers to be found. He also said that he sees an opportunity (a la Airbnb) for the platform to become a place where people can find homestays with trusted friends (and friends-of-friends) while they’re traveling so they can save money on hotels and lodging. Twigmore was founded in October 2009 in New York City by media executives Stephen Smyth and Peter Baer, formerly of Thomson Reuters and Warner Brothers, respectively, and in just a few months of beta testing, Twigmore users have already built a database of over 1.7 million local contacts in over 38,000 cities around the world. The startup has raised $275,000 to date from angel investors including Shaun Abrahamson (investor in Zocdoc, Trialpay), ex-Googler Ien Cheng, and Glenn Asano. For more, . Let us know what you think. |
When Social Ads Backfire | Josh Constine | 2,011 | 11 | 18 | The goal of social advertising is to amplify positive word-of-mouth. Ads show that your friend mentioned a company, checked in to a business, or that thousands have +1’d an ad, and you’re more likely to believe the brand’s message and become a customer. But when brands pay to distribute user-generated content, there’s a chance for an epic fail of promoting negative word-of-mouth. Unlike fire-and-forget traditional ads, social ads must be monitored. [ : This poll is a limited audience research poll conducted by Facebook in partnership with Nielsen, and it was not an ad buy from Warner Bros. I’ve made significant edits to this article to reflect this, but the principle holds true that while social ads can be a powerful tool for brands, they need to be monitored or filtered through sentiment analysis engines to ensure they’re promoting positive mentions.] Facebook used this home page Research Poll to ask users if they planned to go see Happy Feet 2. This information could help it determine what demographics might be receptive to family film ads. However, 41% of respondents said they “Definitely won’t” go see Happy Feet 2, and though the poll only reached a limited audience, it was giving off a poor impression of the film. With the results skewing so negative, it may have been best for Facebook to pull the poll. Facebook offers premium social polls and Sponsored Stories that allow brands to pay to ask users questions or convert user-authored news feed stories into side bar ads. Similar issues could arise with these ad units, where poll results are negative or insults to a brand are amplified. If Advertising channels like Facebook want these units to catch on with advertisers, they have to ensure them that automated systems will detect social ad fails, and pause the campaigns for review automatically. Advertisers should also keep a close eye on their social campaigns and intervene when necessary. Third-parties ads tech providers are stepping up to prevent fiascos. Wildfire Interactive’s Storyteller app for Facebook Pages asks users questions and turns their answers into Sponsored Stories ads, but responses are run through sentiment analysis and negative responses get filtered out. Social context has the potential to make advertising a lot more relevant, producing more qualified clicks at a lower cost. But brands can also fall on this double-edged sword if not protected by sentiment analysis or human monitors. |
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Netflix Makes Up For All Its Past Mistakes By Resurrecting | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 11 | 18 | Remember when Netflix piled upon and something like a million subscribers? ? And the CEO was forced to admit he’d ? Yeah, none of that matters now. Because they’re bringing back . . We had heard that the show would be coming back in film form, and that there would possibly be a pre-film limited series, but this confirmation means a lot. And coming from Netflix, it’s like flowers and a box of chocolates from someone who you put in the doghouse. Will we take them back? Well damn it, we’re going to have to! Production will be starting soon, and episodes will begin showing in 2013. We haven’t heard much about Netflix’s , , but it could be that Netflix is planning a content blitz with full seasons of both these shows and whatever else they’ve secretly licensed. The show will be produced by Fox and presumably the original cast and writers will be reunited. |
Potential Dell Ultrabooks Hit The FCC | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 11 | 18 | A couple of what appear to be ultrabooks from Dell have for a bit of quiet emissions testing. The devices, , are pictured only partially, and in schematic form no less, so it’s hard to draw too many conclusions. One thing you can tell for sure, though, is that these are thin buggers. That’s an ethernet port on the corner there, which puts the total height of the laptop at around 20mm. That doesn’t include the display, of course, but it’s still very much ultrabook material. The design is interesting: the HDMI and ethernet ports are diagonal to the body on the edges, there — personally, I think this would have made more sense for the power cord, but far be it from me to pass judgment. There is also a wealth of other ports, including what looks like some Mini DisplayPorts. And as you can see in the picture, there is a compartment conspicuously labeled “SATA Flash,” though whether the devices will be all-flash or only partially is anyone’s guess. The two models, which from what I can tell are mostly identical, are called the Dalmore 14 and 15. Dalmore, curiously, is the name of a single-malt Scotch whiskey. Maybe it’s what they were drinking when they decided to put HDMI ports on the corners. I kid, I kid. But really, it’s a little mystifying. We’ll be on the lookout for more info on these. Hopefully Dell is including the best of the Adamo DNA, but the aesthetic does appear to be much different. |
The Jerk | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 11 | 18 | Like everyone else in the tech world, I’ve been reading Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs biography. Simultaneously, I’ve been reading the reactions to it. The one that seems to stand out above all others amounts to: “wow, Steve Jobs was a jerk”. Those who have followed Apple closely throughout the years have heard dozens if not hundreds of stories of Jobs berating employees. Isaacson’s book brings a handful of these stories to the masses, and it’s rubbing some people the wrong way. Here’s the thing: the tech world could probably use more jerks. I’ve been thinking about this since reading Robert Scoble’s post a couple days ago entitled “ “. Depending on who you ask, Scoble is a lot of things. But I don’t think anyone would call Scoble a jerk. In fact, most would probably say he has the opposite problem. He tends to puff up startups into thinking they’re the best thing in the world. (A social network for your Roomba to take pictures of food? Brilliant! Game-changing!” — Okay, I exaggerate. Slightly.) That’s great. For five minutes. After that, reality often sets in. That’s why Scoble’s post was important. Even he’s starting to realize that being a “yes” man really isn’t all that helpful. What startups and tech companies need are doses of reality. The truth is that it’s a hell of a lot easier to be a “yes” man than to be a jerk. You’re the nice guy, you’re everybody’s friend, you say winning things, you make everyone feel great. Meanwhile, the jerk makes every situation awkward. Both sides feel bad. It sucks. But I’d argue that the latter is actually much more helpful. It sounds like Scoble would argue that now as well. And I think Steve Jobs would argue that as well. Obviously, Jobs is an extreme. Some contend that he would say extremely harsh things to people just because he could, or because it was therapeutic against his own personal demons in some way. Other descriptions seem to border on the definition of a sociopath. But I also think his abrasiveness, whether a conscious on his part or not, provided something of value, at least in the workplace. By saying something is “shit”, no matter how good it actually is, you force people to reexamine their work. The end result is usually better. There are also stories of Jobs telling people that an idea is “shit” — and then coming back a few days later with the same idea. It seems that his default was to call something “shit”, maybe without even really thinking about it. Is that helpful? Not on the surface, but the truth is that nothing is perfect. Something can always be made better. And people wrapped up in their own idea or product often lose perspective. They may believe what they’ve done is perfect — or at the very least, the best they can do. But it’s often not. They can do better. It’s all about motivation. A “yes” man provides zero motivation. “What do you think?” “That’s awesome.” Great, done. Meanwhile, the jerk tackles the same question. “What do you think?” “It’s shit.” Really? Oh. Hm. What can I do better? Oddly enough, this reminds me of my early days at TechCrunch. I’d publish something and would come over and tell me how badly I screwed up the story. The truth, as I only later found out, was that he probably didn’t even read it. Maybe he didn’t see it on . Or maybe someone tweeted something negative about it. Or maybe the problem was that no one said anything at all. It didn’t matter. It was all about motivating people to do better. It certainly made me better at my job. As a writer covering the tech space, you’re often surrounded by sycophants. What you need is often the opposite motivation. The same is true for startups. Especially now in this age of plentiful funding, there are a ton of “yes” men out there. The space would benefit from a few more jerks. Ideally, honest jerks, but any type of jerk should do. Let the public be the “yes” men after . The same is also true in the broader tech space. Apple is an outlier in that they’ve benefitted the past several years despite gathering little or no outside perspective before a product launch. But they didn’t need to. They had Jobs. “It’s shit” — until it’s ready to launch. It will be interesting to see . Hopefully not like Google, a company famous for “dogfooding” their own products before launch. It’s “yes” men re-enforcing “yes” men. Google Wave was an awesome product according to internal tests. Same with Google Buzz — hell, I think they use it internally. What would those products have evolved into if someone was there telling them they were “shit” every step of the way? Something better, I imagine. Google+ has been largely positive for the company. Part of it may be because they brought in outside tech luminaries to consult on the product and give honest feedback as they built it. No, I don’t believe Steve Jobs was one of those, but I was told some time ago that an initial version of Google+ was more or less called “shit” by someone who saw it. That feedback was taken into account and the product that launched was something completely different. Thinking about all of this, I also (again, oddly) found myself think of Manny Pacquiao’s fight against Juan Manuel Marquez this past weekend. By most accounts, Marquez was winning the fight going into the final round. Apparently, his corner even told him as much. He went on to play it safe and lost the last round. As a result, he lost fight itself in a split decision (which was still ). Imagine if Marquez’s corner hadn’t told him he was winning? What if they told him he was fighting like “shit”? They would have been lying, but that’s not the important thing. Motivation is the important thing. Again, you can always do better. In this case, “better” may have well resulted in him winning the WBO welterweight title. Marquez needed a jerk in his corner. |
Keen On… David Kirkpatrick: The Two Competing Futures Of Facebook | Andrew Keen | 2,011 | 11 | 18 | “As Mark decides, so will Facebook go,” David Kirkpatrick told me about the future of Facebook at his conference earlier this week. Kirkpatrick, the author of the excellent and the world’s leading authority on the history of Facebook, believes that Mark Zuckerberg now has to make a clear choice about his company’s future. The young multi-billionaire has to choose, Kirkpatrick says, between making money and making the world a more open and connected place. And this choice, Kirkpatrick believes, will have a significant impact not only on Facebook, but also on the Internet economy and perhaps even the future of global democracy. Reflecting the generally anti Wall Street sentiment at Techonomy ( , for example, Elevation Partners’ Roger McNamee embrace of Occupy Wall St), Kirkpatrick believes that a focus on the short-term financial goals of the public markets will not ultimately be in Facebook’s interest. So, Kirkpatrick suggested, if Facebook is going to become the social operating system of the Internet and have a grand social and political purpose, it has to escape Wall St’s myopically short-termed revenue obsession. This is my concluding interview from Techonomy. It has established itself on the calender as a major event about the economic and political impact of technology and I very much look forward to attending many more Techonomies in the future. Below is a list of my interviews from the event. |
Apple Rumors: The MacBook Pro Shrinks, iPad And iPhone Grow | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 11 | 18 | I suspect we’ll have to start picking and choosing our Apple rumor posts carefully in the coming months as the speculations begin flying fast and free, but until then a bit of gossip portending the next year’s changes won’t hurt anybody. is hawking some intel from their “most reliable source,” who claims to have the inside scoop on Apple’s upcoming revisions. It’s nothing mind-blowing, but it might be enough to make you unconsciously start saving money. The MacBook Pro redesign . Other sources have it rolling out , but supply line data is unreliable unless bulk orders are indicated. The flatter, more Air-like redesign is practically a certainty at this point. The question is a few of the system details: storage (I’m guessing hybrid), processor (Ivy Bridge and a discrete GPU), ports (two Thunderbolts, one USB, one Ethernet, one SD), and optical drive (none). Most interesting to me personally is the report that the iPad will be a little thicker, in order to allow for the extra lighting necessitated by the I’ve been crowing about at every opportunity for almost a year now. Any indications of this mythical high-definition screen are welcome, as I think it will make the device for all kinds of tasks, consumption and creation. The increase in thickness is said to be only 0.7mm, so still thinner than the original iPad by several millimeters. Whether this change is too much for iPad 2 accessories is probably a case-by-case thing. More suspicious is the report that the iPhone will be getting a size bump to a 4″ screen, making the device as a whole 8mm longer. Not only that, but it’s supposed to hit in the Summer. Now, Apple has worked very hard for years to make the iPhone an iconic device, and part of that is its size, now petite compared to many Android phones. But in a case like the iPhone, Apple doesn’t feel pressure from outside. Or at least it would never admit it. Jobs (probably channeling Ive) was always very vehement about the design choices they’d made with the iPhone and iPad: lots of testing went into it, and 3.5″ and 9.7″ were the perfect sizes. But four years on, it could be that they must acknowledge changes in the market (towards streaming media consumption, for instance, and photos) and the benefits of a larger screen. Still, 4″ is rather a big jump, and the resolution question is also a factor. One thing I am optimistic about is the metal case, reportedly aluminum. The original iPhone was a wonderful piece of human-centered design and the backs developed a beautiful patina. We need to bring that back. And Apple has probably had enough shattered iPhones to last them for a while. No doubt these rumors will be corroborated or contradicted in the coming months, and we’ll sound our own sources as well. None of these items are set to break cover for a couple months, at any rate, so there’s plenty of time for evidence to appear. |
Oh, You Don’t Have A Galaxy Nexus Yet? Because Woz Does. | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 11 | 18 | Woz Spotting. It’s something of a tradition amongst tech circles — or, at least, amongst my particularly geeky tech circle. Any time someone spots Woz wozzin’ his way around the Valley, it feels weird to . It’s like spotting Kanye West, except instead of Kanye West it’s someone that people actually like. While Woz spottings rarely bubble up to the pages of TechCrunch, today’s sighting is particularly neat: he was on the Google campus. Better yet, he apparently left with a phone that pretty much no one else in the US has yet: the Galaxy Nexus. The photos, posted by Android UI Engineer , show Wozniak holdin’ his Galaxy Nexus and what is said to be an Ice Cream Sandwich-themed shirt. So, how’d Woz pull it off? All it took (besides, you know, helping to invent the modern personal computer) was a tweet. From yesterday: Wozniak’s shiny new Nexus isn’t exactly a world exclusive — they started shipping in the UK about 24 hours ago. In the US, however, the Nexus is still limited to Googlers/Samsungers and a handful of lucky press folk (yes, ). There’s still no concrete word of a local release date. Now, if someone could tell me where to get one of those ICS shirts… |
Start Nominating Now For The 5th Annual Crunchies Awards | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 11 | 18 | It’s that time of year again when we start taking nominations for the fifth annual , the annual celebration of startups and technology. Once again we are co-hosting the awards with and . We are moving to a new, bigger location—the in San Francisco, which can seat over 2,000 people. The event will take place on January 31, 2012. But who will be there? Well, that’s where you come in. the most deserving startups, founders, and investors across 20 categories from Best New Startup to Best Mobile App. We are taking nominations until midnight PT on December 13, 2011. You can nominate one company or person per category per day, but otherwise can nominate as much as you want. (You can read all the ). Who do you think will make it this year? Square, Spotify, Dropbox, Airbnb, Pinterest? Who is the best angel investor? Who is the best CEO? What is the most impressive technology achievement of the year (Siri or something else)? You tell us.Put your own nominations in now. Details and full list of categories (with last year’s winners) are below: Tuesday, January 31, 2012
201 Van Ness Ave.
San Francisco, CA 7:30pm – midnight – Awards Ceremony and After Party
A night of celebration with festive attire. Tickets will be released in batches starting early December. Davies Symphony Hall can seat over 2,000 attendees, double the size of previous Crunchies Awards. open: Friday, November 18th
Nominations close: Tuesday, December 13th at 11:59pm PST
Finalists announced: early January Our sponsors help make the Crunchies happen, if you are interested in learning more about sponsorship opportunities during the ceremony or after-party, please contact Jeanne Logozzo at jeanne@beta.techcrunch.com. For press credentials, please fill out this and confirmations will be sent separately via email. : Best Technology Achievement (2010: Google Self Driving Cars) Best Social Application (2010: DailyBooth) Best Shopping Application (2010: Groupon) Best Mobile Application (2010: Google Mobile Maps for Android) Best Local Application (new 2011) Best Tablet Application (2010: flipboard) Best Design (2010: gogobot) Best Bootstrapped Startup (2010: addmired) Best Cloud Service (new 2011) Best International Startup (2010: Viki) Best Clean Tech Startup (2010: SolarCity) Best New Device (2010: ipad) Best Time Sink (2010: Cityville) Biggest Social Impact (new 2011) Angel of the Year (2010: Paul Graham) VC of the Year (2010: Yuri Milner) Founder of the Year (2010: Mark Pincus) CEO of the Year (2010: Andrew Mason) Best New Startup of 2010 (2010: Quora) Best Overall Startup of 2010 (2010: Twitter) Check out additional event coverage from our partners: and . |
TC Cribs: Eventbrite Gives Us A Backstage Pass To Their House Of Orange | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 11 | 18 | We’re back for a new episode of TC Cribs, and it’s one of our most colorful yet: . The company, which offers a variety of ways to coordinate events and sell tickets, has a penchant for orange — and it shows. Their office is nestled in San Francisco’s SOMA district and has an office loaded with goodies that include everything from train sets to nap rooms… and random people walking around in costume (huh?) Hey look, that’s me in a tiara. Tune in! Credit to Ashley Pagán and John Murillo for the camera work, and to Mr. Murillo for the great editing. Here are the previous episodes of TC Cribs, check ’em out: |
Battery And Accel Put $9M In App For Last-Minute Hotel Deals, HotelTonight | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 11 | 18 | , a mobile app that offers deep discounts on same-day hotel deals, has raised in new funding led by Battery Ventures with Accel Partners and First Round Capital participating. Accel Partners will take a seat on the startup’s board and Path founder Dave Morin will join as an advisor. This brings the company’s total funding to $13 million. For background, HotelTonight offers and iOS apps that allow you to access steep discounts on hotel rooms. The service is focused around last-minute bookings, and is currently available in 28 cities. Launched in January of this year, HotelTonight has been growing fast and has already seen 1 million downloads of its app. The startup plans to be in 35 markets by the end of the year, including Orange County, Portland, Salt Lake City and Santa Barbara. The startup will used to funding to expand to new mobile platforms, accelerate customer acquisition and expand into new international markets. You can check out our test drive of HotelTonight It seems like other players are recognizing the opportunity in the last-minute travel deal space. LivingSocial actually , called Instant Escapes. And we can expect more to join soon. |
TCTV: The TechCrunch Gadgets Webcast | John Biggs | 2,011 | 11 | 18 | Welcome to another exciting episode of the TechCrunch Gadgets Webcast. This week we talk about the Fire, the Tablet, the Nexus, and SOPA. Plus, we have a special surprise for all those who prefer sound to moving pictures. This is the first week I’ve extracted the audio from the video webcast and saved it to a that you can or . Hopefully you enjoy this version as well. |
Motorola’s Droid XYBoard 8.2 Spotted Wearing Verizon’s Logo | Chris Velazco | 2,011 | 11 | 18 | While I think Motorola’s marketing team really dropped the ball with the name, the 8.2-inch has just become a little more official today. The team at were able to get their hands on an image of the smaller XYBoard clad in Verizon’s heraldry, along with what could be the device’s new logo. I know, I know, the name “XYBoard” makes me irrationally angry too. Don’t let that color your perception of the tablet too much though, as the Xoom 2 is still a pretty respectable piece of kit. To wit, it sports a 1.2GHZ processor, 1GB of RAM, a 5-megapixel rear camera, and 16GB of internal storage. Oh, and unlike its international cousin, it comes packing support for Verizon’s 4G LTE network. But (and this is the big question) will all that be enough to draw an audience? That I don’t know. As pointed out, specs for these things are becoming less and less relevant (or they could already be dead, ). It’s all coming down to the sort of experience tablets can deliver, and hopefully Motorola’s got a winning formula ready. Still, that’s not all it takes to create a success. Strong branding can help drive purchasing decisions, but there’s such a thing as a bad kind of strong, and that’s what I think Motorola has going with the XYBoard moniker. That coupled with the historically lame performance of the Xoom means Motorola (and Verizon) may still be facing an uphill battle with their new tablets. |
Microsoft And TechStars Launch Kinect Accelerator For New Kinect-Based Startups | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 11 | 18 | The has proved fertile ground for hackers and innovators all over the world, from to to . But as yet there haven’t been many commercial applications. Microsoft and TechStars are hoping to turn the creativity and momentum associated with the Kinect into some functioning startups. Applications are being taken through January 25th; ten will be chosen and given the opportunity to participate in a three-month incubation program at Microsoft — and get $20,000 in seed funding. Got an idea for a new device, service, or method of using the Kinect’s low-cost real-time depth sensor? This could be a good opportunity — if you can afford to move to Seattle for a while this Spring. Don’t worry: the program is in the downtown area, not Redmond. There are minor catches. TechStars, in exchange for funding and leading the program, will be getting a 6% stake in your new company (in common stock). And it’s not just a way to put the finishing touches on a game you’ve been working on. The goal is “to create businesses that leverage the Kinect for Xbox or Windows.” And since the Accelerator is based in South Lake Union, there will likely be daily rumbles with Amazon employees, who consider the area their exclusive territory. Clearly, the idea is to package and monetize some of the creative energy going into the platform. It seems like a good fit for the student engineering teams we’ve seen that likely put their devices together with university tools. Travel to the Emerald City, get some expert help and learn your way around the SDK, and get a shot a creating a business. Microsoft doesn’t get to keep any of your IP or anything, but it’s no secret that you’re essentially working for them. What’s good for the Kinect is good for Microsoft. , and TechStars has a as well. |
TechCrunch Giveaway: iPad 2 Loaded With Jimi Hendrix: The Complete Experience | Elin Blesener | 2,011 | 11 | 18 | We have an Apple iPad 2 to give away today. Do you want it? Would you say you’re a big Jimi Hendrix fan? Then you’re in luck. Not only are we giving away an iPad 2, but we are giving one away that has a pretty awesome already installed on it. Sony Music, The Hendrix Estate and Universal Mind have joined forces to create this super immersive experience — an amazing discovery tool that doesn’t just stream music, but unveils Jimi’s life story complete with interactive audio, video, pics, landmarks and more that you can curate yourself. If you’re a Hendrix fan, it’s pretty cool to say the least. If you want a shot at winning this brand new iPad 2 with the new Jimi Hendrix Experience app, just follow the steps below. – Retweet this post (making sure to include the #TechCrunch hashtag)
– Or leave us a comment below telling us why you want the iPad 2 The contest starts and ends Sunday, November 20th at 7:30pm PT. Please only tweet the message once or you will be disqualified. We will choose at random and contact the winner this Sunday. Anyone in the world is eligible. Here’s a little video on Jimi Hendrix: The Complete Experience [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWglIddO6vU&feature=youtu.be] |
The Rumors Are True. I Am Leaving TechCrunch. | Sarah Lacy | 2,011 | 11 | 18 | This won’t come as a surprise to a lot of people, but I am leaving TechCrunch. My departure is something people have speculated about since Michael Arrington’s ouster two months ago, but it wasn’t an easy decision for me. This isn’t a knee-jerk reaction out of loyalty for my friend, nor is it about making a big “F-you, AOL!” statement. I’ve spent the bulk of my maternity leave agonizing about whether to stay or go– the first half of it trying to find a way to stay and feel good about it, and the second half standing firm in my decision to leave, despite a lot of persuasive arguments to stay. Even with the high-profile departures of Mike, Paul Carr, MG Siegler– and potentially Heather Harde if you believe the unconfirmed reports– there’s still a team here that I love working with. It’s a team that can band together with scant resources and pull off phenomenal things. That was made obvious to the world with our amazing first international Disrupt conference held earlier this month in Beijing. If you were up at 3 am watching the live stream and saw the talk I gave before handing out the Disrupt Cup, you know every reason I joined TechCrunch and every reason leaving has been hard. This was a blog that wasn’t just a snarky observer of the tech scene– it was an inexorable part of it. Has that made it a messy, convoluted and conflicted ride? Yes. But that’s also what has made TechCrunch something a world of startups and entrepreneurs can’t live without. I’ve bounced between a lot of jobs in the last few years– writing for BusinessWeek, hosting a show for Yahoo Finance, writing two books, and traveling the world to find great entrepreneurs– but TechCrunch was the first place in my career where I felt like I totally fit. It was a place I felt I could stay for a long time. And then Mike sold the company. Things went better than I expected for the first year. And then this fall, all hell broke loose. You could produce a Lifetime movie of the week about the behind the scenes drama of the last few months. Publicly, I’ve stayed silent during much of it, but it has been every bit as gut wrenching for me as it’s been for my colleagues. The CrunchFund was announced on the due date for my first baby. That weekend as my contractions started, the TechCrunch drama unfolded too. Mike would text me things like, “Are you in sitting on the couch drinking tea kind of labor or screaming, blood all over the walls kind of labor? Because I need to talk to you.” The following week, as I waddled around San Francisco trying to induce more active labor, I was also awaiting word on whether we’d be able to buy TechCrunch back. I’d committed to come back as the editor if we were able to pull it off– a commitment Mike and Heather were always respectful enough not to ask me to make until after I’d given birth. As has already been widely reported, we weren’t able to pull it off, and when I came out of the labor and delivery room the next day, I discovered a job Mike and I had talked for years about me doing had been given to someone else. Even still, I wanted to stay, and I had many conversations with Arianna Huffington, Heather and others trying to figure out something that made sense. They made many generous offers, and I don’t leave feeling unappreciated. But I can’t help feeling angry and sad over a lot of internal morale devastation and external brand destruction that simply didn’t have to happen. I don’t think this is the time or the place to talk about what I’m doing next, but the plan isn’t to be a stay-at-home-mom. Ultimately this decision wasn’t about what went down with AOL and with Mike, it’s about me moving onto something I’m really excited to do next. And something that I hope will carry on the spirit of what Mike and Heather built at TechCrunch. I wish the TechCrunch team the best of luck in the future. I hope the editorial expansion into China that I championed over the last year continues in my absence. The staff, the readers and the entrepreneurs we were lucky enough to champion every day will always have a special place in my heart. Goodbye everyone. |
Financial Times Hits 1M Users On HTML5 Site That Dodges Apple’s Tax | Josh Constine | 2,011 | 11 | 18 | The newspaper industry is struggling to make ends meet. Mobile could be the solution, but the Apple App Store comes with a 30% tax on the subscriptions that established news outlets depend on. To buck Apple’s tax, London paper Financial Times decided to launch as a rather than a native app. Now it has proven the HTML5 model can work for news. Today Financial Times announced it has hit who account for 20% of the outlet’s online page views, and 15% of new digital consumer subscriptions. HTML5 works great for news publishers because they predominantly transmit text and don’t require the processing power and deep hardware integrations afforded by native mobile apps. Instead, since HTML5 is accessible across device types and it doesn’t roadblock new users with a download, it helps publishers gain readers and sell more subscriptions without paying a platform fee. Despite grim projections about the future of paid news, FT found that users who register on mobile devices are 2.5 more likely to subscribe. Thanks to an aggressive set of in-app prompts, 45% of the 1 million registered users add the web app to their home screen, which can vastly increase return visits. Mobile is also changing when people consume the Financial Times. While the desktop site is most popular during mid-day, the mobile site sees a huge spike between 7 and 8am, presumably from people reading when they first wake up or on their commute. Other news outlets should see these figures and think critically about whether HTML5 might serve them better than a native app. Getting users to subscribe is tough enough without paying 30% for unnecessary functionality and a barrier to new readers. |
Yelp’s Biggest Shareholders: Who Owns What And Who Sold What | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 11 | 18 | In February 2010, Yelp CEO and chairman each pocketed $15 million each in a private sale of stock to Elevation Partners, which previously had bought $25 million worth of shares from the company in Yelp’s series E financing. The private purchases was part of another $36.8 million Elevation paid individual shareholders, including Stoppelman and Levchin. It is increasingly common for growth investors like Elevation or DST to provide founders and early shareholders with some liquidity before an IPO. Now that Yelp has , these details are coming out in its . Stoppelman and Levchin are still the two largest individual shareholders in Yelp. Stoppelman owns 11.1 percent of the company, while Levchin actually owns a little bit more, with 13.8 percent. Depending on what Yelp’s valuation will be at its IPO, those stakes could be worth more than $100 million each (assuming a $1 billion market cap). At the time of the Elevation transaction, Stoppelman sold 7.4 million shares, which would have been nearly a quarter of his shares at the time, based on the information available in the S-1. Meanwhile, Elevation became Yelp’s second largest shareholder, with almost the same number of shares as Bessemer (22.4 perecent versus 22.5 percent). Benchmark is No.3 with 16.2 percent. The biggest shareholders are listed in the table below: |
PeerIndex Takes The Honours As The Europas Awards Drifts Eastwards | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 11 | 18 | , the annual European Tech Startup Awards, ended last night with a triumphant win by the social ranking service, which clinched the Grand Prix award. The result was based on both public online voting and expert judges, recognising the startup’s significant market traction against a much larger competitor, with less resources and a clear path towards both a big consumer and business market. VC DFJ Esprit offered a £50,000 convertible loan note to the Grand Prix winner on the night. After picked their favourites from 400 entries, and those results where combined with approximately 40,000 public votes from the tech startup industry, clear trends started to emerge from those marked out as Winners and those Highly Commended in the awards. While London once again held it’s own as a crucible of tech startup innovation in Europe, with , , and among those taking honours, there was a marked drift Eastward and North in Europe, as startups from Berlin ( , , ) and Belgrade ( ) won their category or were Highly Commended, while companies from Copenhagen ( ), Stockholm ( ) and Helsinki ( ) showed that European innovation remains strong even in smaller countries. Bucking that trend to the North was from Madrid which won the Education category, showing that tech entrepreneurship is alive and well across the breadth of Europe. A packed crowd of almost 500 people started their evening with a short welcome video recorded by the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, who encouraged startups to set up operations in the city. Speaking personally, I think it’s now beyond doubt that European tech startups can punch out to a global market directly from a European base. While Silicon Valley remains the leviathan of the industry, tech startups from Belfast to Belgrade, London to Ljubijana, are grabbing the opportunity to reach global markets with world beating products and services. Below is a full listing of the awards winners. (hell, you gotta do it once, right?) Here is Reuters on the Grand Prix Winner, Peer Index: And here is the . Sponsor presenting award:
Scott Sage, DFJ Esprit
Martin Varsavsky, FON Grand Prix 2011: PeerIndex Highly Commended:
33 Seconds PR
Brown Rudnick Lawyers
Spark PR
2Pears – the events and PR agency Sponsor: LoveClients Winner: Orrick Highly Commended:
Duedil
23 Video
Shutl
iZettle Sponsor: Viadeo Winner: Podio Highly Commended:
Struq
YieldKit
Brainient Sponsor: Unruly Media Winner: Conversocial Highly Commended:
HackFWD
Springboard
H-Farm
Startupbootcamp
GammaRebels Sponsor: TechHub Winner: Seedcamp Highly Commended:
GoSquared
RailsOnFire
BusyFlow
Mopapp
Blossom.io Sponsor: Tropo Winner: Pusher Highly Commended:
EyeEm
Wunderlist
SwiftKey
Shhmooze
vox.io Winner: Amen Highly Commended:
Mixlr
Wirewax
musicplayr
MXP4
Songkick Winner: Mixcloud
(New category) Highly Commended:
Shadow Cities
PickLive
Playmob
Oust.me Winner: Nordeus for Top 11 Highly Commended:
Amen
Readmill
CircleMe (Cascaad)
Datasift Winner: PeerIndex Highly Commended:
iVersity
BraveNewTalent
English Attack
Blottr
Workinstartups.com Winner: Busuu.com Sponsored by: Twilio Highly Commended:
Zalando
Flattr
paybymobile Winner: iZettle Highly Commended:
GroupSpaces
Sportlyzer
Mysugr
PickLive Sponsor: Betfair Winner: Endomondo New category (incredibly close) Highly Commended: Artfinder
EDITD
Dressipi
Lyyst
WIWT.com Winner: Lookk Highly Commended:
MyTaxi
Crashpadder
Tripbirds
Masabi
ParkatmyHouse Winner: OneFineStay Highly Commended:
Balderton
Index Ventures
DFJ Esprit
hardGAMMA Ventures
EarlyBird Venture Capital Sponsor: TechCity UK Winner: Accel Partners Highly Commended:
Tweetdeck (to Twitter for est. $40m)
Dailydeal sale to Google $114 million
Autonomy to HP for $11.7bn
Zong acquired by ebay for $240m Winner: Lovefilm sold to Amazon for $328m in Jan 2011 Highly Commended:
Jeremie Berrebi, Kima Ventures
Robin Klein / TAG
Eileen Burbidge, Passion Capital Winner: Christophe Maire, Angel investor
(non investors) Highly Commended:
Tine Thgesen, Everplaces
Chris Grew, Orrick
Tina Baker, Brown Rudnick
Ivo Spigel, Perpetuum Mobile Sponsor: Coadec Winner: David Noel, Soundcloud
(New category) Highly Commended:
Adam Valkin, Accel Partners
Chris Kowalczyk, hardGAMMA Ventures
Paul Jozefak, Neuhaus Partners
Saul Klein, Index Ventures
Davor Hebel, Fidelity Growth Partners Winner: Nic Brisbourne, DFJ Espirit Highly Commended:
Michael Acton Smith, MoshiMonsters / Mind Candy
Ian Hogarth, Pete Smith, Michelle You, Songkick
Felix Petersen, Florian Weber, Caitlin Winner, Ricki Vester Gregersen – Amen
Azeem Azhar, Peer Index Sponsor: Eden Ventures Winner: Alexander Ljung, Eric Wahlforss, SoundCloud
(New category) Highly Commended:
Soundcloud
Mendeley
Moshi Monsters
Tradeshift
Badoo
Criteo
Songkick
BigPoint Sponsor: Microsoft BizSpark Winner: Rovio for Angry Birds Christian Thaler-Wolski, Wellington Partners
Ciarán O’Leary, Earlybird Venture Capital
Dharmash Mistry, Balderton Capital
Edward Shenderovich, Kite Ventures
Eileen Burbidge, Passion Capital
Ivan Farneti, Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures
Fred Destin, Atlas Venture
Lea Bajc, Northzone Ventures
Martin Bryant, The Next Web
Martin Weigert, Netzwertig.com
Michael Jackson, Mangrove Capital Partners
Nic Brisbourne, DFJ Esprit
Nikolaj Nyholm, Sunstone Capital
Paul Jozefak, Neuhaus Partners
Robin Klein, The Accelerator Group
Robin Wauters, TechCrunch
Roxanne Varza, RudeBagette.com
Sean Seton-Rogers, PROfounders Capital
Sonali De Rycker, Accel Partners
Tine Thygesen, Everplaces
Tom Hulme, ideo.com
Mike Butcher: Chair TCIO was set up by UK Trade & Investment (UKTI) and is designed to help the existing cluster of tech-digital and creative companies flourish. Tech City stretches out from the financial heart of the City of London to Stratford and the Olympic Park in East London, and is the fastest growing technology cluster in Europe. The TCIO team is a unique combination of experienced entrepreneurs and UKTI business specialists. Their role is to help existing companies succeed, as well as attract global business, entrepreneurs and high-value investment to the digital capital of Europe. For more information, visit or or follow us . UK Trade & Investment (UKTI) is the Government Department that helps UK-based companies succeed in the global economy. We also help overseas companies bring their high quality investment to the UK’s economy – acknowledged as Europe’s best place from which to succeed in global business. UKTI offers expertise and contacts through its extensive network of specialists in the UK, and in British embassies and other diplomatic offices around the world. We provide companies with the tools they require to be competitive on the world stage. For more information on UKTI, visit or telephone +44 (0)20 7215 8000. For latest press releases, visit the online newsroom at . Founded in 2006 and headquartered in London, Unruly is the global platform for social video advertising. With offices in New York, Paris, Sydney, San Francisco, Amsterdam and Stockholm, Unruly has delivered, tracked & audited 1.34 billion video views and executed 1,200+ successful social video campaigns for global brands and agencies including T-Mobile’s acclaimed Life’s for Sharing series, Evian’s global Roller Babies hit and Heineken’s Legends campaign. Reaching an audience of 725 million monthly unique users, Unruly distributes video and rich media formats across platforms including YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, premium publisher sites, influential blogs and mobile applications. Unruly’s mission is simple: to deliver the most awesome social video campaigns on the planet. Unruly uses its proprietary ad tech platform RAMP (Real-time Amplification and Measurement Platform) to identify the brand & content advocates that start conversations & fully trackable social metrics (measuring awareness, attention, advocacy & action) to deliver the desired brand engagement. Our outreach programme ensures we can reach a client’s target audience, however mass or niche. At DFJ Esprit we believe that good venture capital begins with good judgement and good relationships. Our partners have a track record of helping entrepreneurs to make their companies successful. In today’s world the best businesses have global ambitions from day one and the best venture funds have the networks to support those ambitions. DFJ Esprit is a member of the Draper Fisher Jurvetson Global Network, the largest venture capital network in the world with 140 investment professionals and over 600 portfolio companies. DFJ Esprit is a single team of partners all of whom benefit from and contribute to the success of our investments. We are entrepreneurs ourselves and we are proud to have built our firm to its current size and are passionate about continually moving forward, which means backing winning companies and doing everything we can to help them achieve and exceed their ambitions. enables you to make and receive phone calls, text messages and IMs from any web or mobile application. Using a simple API and pay-as-you-go pricing, Tropo’s cloud communications infrastructure allows your application to grow and scale, with reliability trusted by over 250,000 enterprise and web developers world-wide. In addition to being open-souce and based on industry standards, Tropo understands and speaks 24 different languages and dialects and offers local telephone numbers in over 40 countries. is a global program designed to help accelerate the success of early stage startups by providing key resources when they need it the most: Receive fast and easy access to current full-featured Microsoft development tools, platform technologies, and production licenses of server products for immediate use in developing and bringing to market innovative and interoperable solutions. There is no upfront cost to enroll. Get connected to Network Partners around the world — incubators, investors, advisors, government agencies and hosters — that are equally involved and vested in software-fueled innovation and entrepreneurship who will provide a wide range of support resources. Achieve global visibility to an audience of potential investors, clients and partners As a Microsoft BizSpark member, you’ll be tapping into a rich, vibrant ecosystem of peers, partners and support resources around the globe, helping you grow and succeed. Microsoft BizSpark is the quickest way to get your Startup fired up. Check to see if you qualify – most privately held software development startups in business for less than 3 years that are generating annual revenue under USD $1 million can join. You can join BizSpark through a valid BizSpark Network Partner or a Microsoft BizSpark Champ to get your BizSpark enrollment code. Enrollment is free, just pay a USD $100 program offering fee at program exit. For more details about BizSpark, see: The Startup Program Guide , which describes the program benefits and more. If you want to join BizSpark, click on the link below or send an email to BizSpark@microsoft.com if you are eligible, we will send you a code. Eden Ventures is one of Europe’s most active early stage technology investors. Our background is that of successful entrepreneurs who became seed investors and then venture capital investors. We typically invest at the seed or A round, are ‘hands-on’ in investment style and, crucially, can support our best companies right through to exit. We typically look for great teams who have a vision of disrupting a big market. Eden has invested in over 30 European startups – some of our latest investments include: Lookk, Green Man Gaming, New Voice Media, Brightpearl and Level Business. We are keen supporters of the early stage community in London and proud to sponsor the TechCrunch 2011 Europas. Please find us at , offers developers a powerful API for phone services to make and receive phone calls, and send and receive text messages. Their product allows programmers to more easily integrate various communication methods into their software and programs. Twilio allows developers to use their existing web development skills, existing code, existing servers, existing databases and existing karma to solve these communication problems quickly and reliably. Betfair was founded in 2000 and is now the world’s biggest betting community, having pioneered the betting exchange. Driven by cutting-edge technology, Betfair’s exchange enables customers to bet at odds sought by themselves or offered by other customers. The company now processes over seven million transactions a day from its four million registered customers around the world. In addition to sports betting, Betfair offers a portfolio of innovative products including casino, exchange games and poker. Betfair has twice been named the UK’s ‘Company of the Year’ by the Confederation of British Industry and has won two prestigious Queen’s Awards for Enterprise, being recognised for Innovation in 2003 and most recently for International Trade in 2008. Betfair currently employs over 2,000 people worldwide, with technology teams in London being supported by technology development offices in Romania and San Francisco. The company holds betting licences in Gibraltar, the US, Tasmania, Italy and Malta. Viadeo is a professional social network with over 35 million members including business owners, entrepreneurs and senior managers from a diverse range of organisations – both start-up and well-established – across 226 countries. Professionals use Viadeo to enhance their career prospects, discover business opportunities and build relationships with new contacts as well as to create an effective online identity. Viadeo recently launched its Graph API which is open to developers at http://api.viadeo.com with opportunities to tap in to our large member base and offer our members enhanced services based on their professional social graph. Viadeo is proud to be supporting the TechCrunch Europas and we wish everyone the best of luck. If you want to meet us at the event please ping us a message on Twitter to or – see you there! The Search Marketing industry is plagued with big promises, and very little return so when describing an , you don’t often think ‘Reliable’, ‘Transparent’ and ‘Affordable’. Not unless you’re referring to LoveClients that is. With 24×7-365 live client service (we literally never close) – LoveClients offers transparently-priced and re-brandable for designers, agencies and their clients. Notice all the links in this description leading to LoveClients.com? That’s what we do. All campaigns are managed through a custom built central communication tool – where you can log in to view all the ongoing tasks, and communicate directly with the team. Keeping everyone accountable, and the campaign on track. Structuring our client sites to be deemed contextually relevant, and building authority in their niche – LoveClients works to deliver more targeted visitors, more often. There is no ‘magic’ to SEO, just well planned strategy & solid execution. With offices in London, Vancouver & Riga we take advantage of the differences in timezone, to offer a true 24×7-365 service offering. Visit & initiate a Live Chat for a Free site evaluation, a team of experts is available to answer your queries in real time. TechHub ( on Twitter) is a community of entrepreneurs, startups, and developers. Just 10 seconds walk from Old Street tube station, TechHub offers easy access to London’s main technology cluster and is in close proximity to its financial heart. In addition to the affordable permanent desk space, fast wireless connection, large member-based co-working area, meeting rooms for hire and conference/event space for up to 200 people, TechHub offers a great community of like-minded individuals that believe in the power of their businesses to change the world. Members come from all over the world and use TechHub as a base when they’re in London. Great perks are also available to members in the form of discounts at bars, restaurants, cafes and hotels in the area. The facilities at TechHub include over 60 permanent desk spaces for monthly hire and loads of co-working space for over 50 people. Meeting rooms for hire are discounted to members and include A/V, wi-fi, whiteboards, kitchen facilities and printing. Permanent desk spaces come with wi-fi/wired data, locker space, personal keys, power and a mailing address. Email Miguel@techhub.comto join our mailing list detailing all our amazing events. Contact us here: TechHub London
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UK Exit 5 from Old Street tube station. A short walk from Moorgate tube station, Liverpool Street mainlines station, and close to taxis and buses. The (“Coadec”) is a non-profit organisation which works to support policies and legislation that foster a vibrant, innovative and sustainable digital economy for Britain. We represent a wide range of entrepreneurs, investors, artists, and consumers, and we speak in particular for tech-driven startups and SMEs, both in Silicon Roundabout and throughout the country. We are also closely involved in a number of government and private initiatives for promoting technological entrepreneurship. To get involved with Coadec, please join our . You can find more information about our work on our blog, and we are also on Twitter ( ). Recall the last time you traveled to a foreign destination: were you able to make phone calls and use internet services from the moment you arrived? Was it convenient? Was it cheap? The answer to at least one of those questions is always no. The 45 billion-dollar roaming industry is a testament to the demand for staying connected while traveling – and yet roaming is exceptionally expensive, and disturbingly uncompromising. Tep is a company turning the roaming paradigm on its head. Through tep pocket wifi hotspots and local smartphones services, travelers can go abroad connected while leaving all roaming fears behind.The service is currently available for travellers visiting 32 European destinations. By year end the service will be rolled out across 41 countries and we will launch our membership program, we also currently have a pilot program running with Europcar.
tep = travel. everwhere. powered.
Park Lane Champagne: bringing the ability to source single bottles of champagne, personalised as you like, through their new online site at www.parklanechampagne.co.uk . Check it out and if you like what you see, do blog about it and tell the World. |
Sony Ericsson’s Vscreens Moves Your Mobile Content To The Big Screen | Chris Velazco | 2,011 | 11 | 18 | Getting content from your Android device onto a bigger screen has never been terribly hard, but Sony Ericsson’s Vscreens service makes it an absolute cakewalk. There’s no fiddling with DLNA settings or fumbling with cables here — . Once you’ve downloaded the from the Android Market (which works on any Android device running 2.1 later, not just SE handsets), point your browser at and scan that QR code. Your device and the website will forge a connection, and allow you to quickly throw photos up onto a bigger screen. Scrolling back and forth between photos was fairly smooth, and to my surprise, pinch-to-zoom worked nicely as well. I tested it on my work-issued laptop with great success, and Sony Ericsson says the service should work on any screen with an internet connection and a browser (and yes, that includes iPads). The truly daring can even share videos, though it requires both devices to be on the same WiFi network. Sadly, it had a rough time working with the episode of Doctor Who I always have on my phone, but shorter videos worked just fine. Oh, and did I mention that the Vscreens is free? Sony Ericsson’s got it labelled as a beta product, and it occasionally shows: some pictures came up pixelated (though it’s probably more the camera’s fault), and buffering some videos took longer than I was willing to wait. Still, it’s an impressive little service to play around with, and with any luck it won’t die when . |
Apple Sucks At Social | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 11 | 27 | Displayed in the is a hand-held Braun television. Yes, an old-fashioned television with a handle on it that never saw the light of day because the Braun marketing team determined there wasn’t a market for hand-held televisions. IN THE SIXTIES. Inspired by the work of Rams and Braun, Apple’s Steve Jobs went on to build hardware that incorporated many of the elements of Rams’ philosophy. In fact, today’s iPad seems like a streamlined descendant of that handheld television. But, unlike what happened at Braun, it doesn’t seem like many Apple products are held back from production by the Apple marketing team, at least if you look at how many Apple products are total failures initially. https://twitter.com/#!/AntDeRosa/status/140978055245070337 https://twitter.com/#!/Mike_FTW/status/140982396479741952 The easiest example of this, and the one that everyone uses as the “Apple sucks at social” whipping boy is the iTunes-powered Ping. It seems like out of the 25 people I follow, only MC Hammer is actually engaging with the product. Hard core Apple fanboys defend Ping’s failure (and it is an ) on its lack of Facebook integration, which Facebook pulled because of negotiation issues. Because Apple’s best attempts at social have been integrations with other services, Facebook in iPhoto, and Twitter in iOS 5, let’s leave Ping alone for now. Who knows, maybe it would have worked out if Facebook had been involved? Instead, let’s talk about “ ,” an app that came out of iOS 5 in October. Quite honestly this should be called “Find My Kids,” as most of the people reviewing it in the App Store are people describing this use case. In almost two months since its launch, I’ve only had one friend ask to follow me on it, and I think that was a joke – I’m too embarrassed to ask any of my friends to follow them on it, and I can’t even think any reason to, actually. I’m even hearing that people at Apple have been making fun of it internally. — Turns out no one really wants to Find Their Friends. Kids maybe, but you can just text your friends to find out where they are if they and you are an adult. Reminds me of another useless social product from another company that doesn’t get it, Google Latitude. Pro tip: If your friends are lying to you about where they are, then they’re not your friends. It strikes me that everyone picks on Google’s social awkwardness, but not Apple’s. Sure you can argue that Apple makes social hardware not software, but iOS 5 features like iMessage (which has some ) imply the grand possibilities of what happens if Apple somehow gets this kind of stuff right – namely no more $30 monthly SMS fees or endless launches of social photo sharing apps. The reason this is important now more than ever, is that Apple’s social stumbles are giving companies like Facebook the confidence and chutzpah to , efforts that will inevitably chip away at Apple market share if executed correctly. |
Now You’re Just Messing With Us Wikipedia | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 11 | 27 | The good news is that Wikipedia has finally switched up that on its homepage. The bad news is that they’ve replaced it with another unfortunately left-aligned image of some random guy (Wikipedia programmer to be precise) who, according to my email inbox, looks like everything from Jesus, to lead singer Chad Kroeger to a member of the Hell’s Angels. And because Harris’ image is left aligned, the thing still stands; The last straw was when I was Wikipedia-ing last night and up he came, inadvertently wearing the same outfit and in the same pose as the star. Here is a particularly hilarious conversation I had about it with somebody on IM. damn some idiot biker is screaming at me to give me money today
refresh the page
he should ride in on a harley
and then jack me with a switchblade
Snort
cut my face if i don’t drop some funds on wikipedia
Should I do
I’ve heard Jesus
seems necessary
Is wikipedia run by a biker gang?
Will they slit your tires if you don’t donate?
i like how he has two different pics
there’s the soft outside guy silently judging you and the intimidating dude who will jack your ass “I donated to get Brandon Harris’ picture off the top. I didn’t mind Jimmy Wales’ piercing gaze but Brandon was just disturbing,” notes interaction designer Xianhang Zhang . Until Wikipedia finally figures it out, Jimmy Wales himself alternative to donating (and complaining) for those of you still creeped out,”You can also just click the little ‘x’.” To donate money to Wikipedia, WHICH YOU TOTALLY SHOULD IN CASE IT’S NOT CLEAR, |
Return Visit-Aware: The Future Of Content Streams That Know What You’ve Consumed | Josh Constine | 2,011 | 11 | 27 | When someone you haven’t seen in a while asks you “What’s up?” or “How are you?”, you probably give them a high-level summary of the major life events from the months since you last spoke. When you speak to someone you see frequently, you probably respond to the same questions with close-up, specific descriptions of your activities over past few days. Humans are aware of when and what we last communicated with someone, and we dynamically alter what information we provide to avoid repetition. While most of the discussion about has centered around the , the switch to a news feed that displays different content depending on when you last visited will also profoundly change how we use the social network. Eventually, I think the “return visit-aware” concept will also change how we consume content across the web. Before the switch, Facebook was struggling with repetitive content and a user base that engages with the site in very different ways. Frequent visitors — those returning multiple times a day — would often see the same stories first on the default Top News feed. Some wouldn’t go to the trouble, while others didn’t even realize they could switch to the Most Recent tab to see what had just been published. This led them to feel that Facebook was stale and caused them to quickly navigate away. Meanwhile, those who visited once or twice a week would only see the the most Liked, commented on, and clicked stories of the last few hours or day, leading them to miss highly relevant stories that happened a few days ago. This made it seem like nothing really interesting was happening on Facebook and that there was no reason to stop by more frequently. These interactions didn’t mimic the tradition of human communication. With the single-tabbed return visit-aware news feed, Facebook has solved all these problems by aligning its interface with natural human habits. The Top News and Most Recent tabs have been combined into a single one, shifting the initial burden of choice from the user to Facebook. This works because a human typically doesn’t ask someone “Tell me what’s happened to you in the last [78 hours or 35 minutes]?” The respondent simply knows when they last spoke and tailors their transmission appropriately. When you vist, the news feed surfaces the most relevant stories from between then and your last visit. If it’s been a week since your last visit, it shows only the biggest stories from that timespan, making sure you don’t miss anything important. This mimics how friends who’ve been out of touch for months communicate when reunited. If you visited a few hours ago, it will show you the most relevant stories from those hours, but also a “25 more recent stories” link at the top. Similarly, if you’ve spent a day apart from someone, you might tell them the most significant news of the day, but also about your current mood. If you’ve visited the Facebook home page multiple times that day, it shows you the latest updates so there’s something fresh to see. Similarly, after working together all day and discussing bigger news, but then taking a lunch break apart, two coworkers might discuss in person who they had lunch with. Otherwise, this information might seem inconsequential like the minutiae the news feed shows if you constantly check it. But since all other information has already been discussed, the very recent becomes relevant. By marking and unmarking stories as “highlighted” using the blue corners in the interface, you can teach Facebook’s EdgeRank news feed ordering algorithm your preferences. This mirrors how you can interrupt a friend’s boring story and ask about something else, or ask follow up questions about a topic such that they bring up that topic more in the future. The end result is a news feed that usually shows interesting content. This inspires longer session times; more return visits; and more Likes, comments, and shares on news feed stories that trigger notifications or create content that pulls in other users. Sites and services around the web are seeking these same benefits, and therefore I believe they’ll look to develop their own versions of consumption-sensitive content streams. Right now, most news sites try to approximate this by featuring the most important content of the last day or so, and rearranging and demoting top stories as they grow older. is probably the best example of this, but still they all essentially operate on the premise that you visit every 12 to 18 hours. Vist less frequently than that, and a must-read piece of news may have slipped down and off the home page. Last week I reviewed an iOS app called the . It tackles the problem by letting users toggle between viewing the latest news, top news of the day, or the biggest stories of the week. This is probably the easiest solution and it doesn’t depend on tracking a user’s previous actions. It also works for streams which don’t require click-throughs to expand individual pieces of content. However, it does place the burden of choice on the user. Twitter or some Twitter app could try this, surfacing the stories with the most retweets from a given time period. An approach for when users must take an action such as clicking through to consume content is to remove, demote, or set aside content a user has already viewed. Imagine if the CNN home page replaced tiles or headlines of any story you’ve already read with something you haven’t. This could possibly be done through cookies or another tracking scheme, but it would presumably be more accurate if a user was logged in. Sites services, and apps with login functionality or another way to tie actions to identity should be considering how they can make their content displays truly sensitive to when a user last visited without explicit input. Using its login and other social plugins, Facebook may even seek to power this shift of other sites. In either case, the content relevancy arms race is on. The same way newspapers look hopelessly static next to Techmeme will be the way the sites of today will look next to the personalized, return visit-aware sites of tomorrow. |
Black Friday E-Commerce Spending Up 26 Percent To A Record $816M; Amazon Most Visited Retailer | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 11 | 27 | As we heard on Saturday, IBM reported a in online sales for Black Friday this year. ComScore is even stronger results for e-commerce, with Black Friday seeing $816 million in online sales, making it the heaviest online spending day to date in 2011 and representing a 26 percent increase versus Black Friday 2010 ($648 million spent). That’s an impressive jump considering the 2009 to 2010 increase in Black Friday spending was only 9 percent. Thanksgiving Day saw an 18 percent increase in online spending to $479 million. U.S. consumers have spent $12.7 billion already in the first 25 days of the November to December 2011 holiday season, up 15 percent from the corresponding days last year. comScore says fifty million Americans visited online retail sites on Black Friday, which is an increase of 35 percent versus year ago. Each of the top five retail sites achieved double-digit gains in visitors vs. last year, led by Amazon. Walmart ranked second, followed by Best Buy, Target and Apple. Experian Hitwise also reported similar traffic results, revealing that US total visits to the top 500 retail sites increased 2% on Black Friday 2011 compared to 2010. Amazon was the top retail site receiving traffic on Black Friday for the 7th year in a row, followed by Wal-mart and Best Buy, respectively. Consumers were also increasingly looking online for information about offline and web-based Black Friday deals. For example, Black Friday deals site bfads.net saw 3.9 million unique visitors, up 51 percent versus last year. TheBlackFriday.com followed with 3.2 million visitors, up 137 percent from last year. Of course, Cyber Monday is tomorrow and it could be the peak day for the entire holiday shopping season. Last year, Cyber Monday was the heaviest day of online spending ever, with sales exceeding . Considering with online spending this season, tomorrow could bring record sales for e-retailers. |
Going shopping | Steve Gillmor | 2,011 | 11 | 27 | With all these amazing tools we have, it’s not a little surprising how much we take the traditional forms of media as the way things are and should be done. The iPad exposes the mediocrity of our expectations, with its Reader button in the address field stripping the comments and jingle jangle out and letting us focus on the simple post as form. Get in, state the premise, survive the middle, get out. I remember the days of Hunter S. Thompson, the free range lunatic who stepped up where Kurt Vonnegut and Tom Wolfe had not feared to tread. It was always a mystery he uncorked, starting with the possibility that he wouldn’t even file a story at all. The rhythm was in the gasps between paragraphs, those stolen breaths taken that functioned as cymbals compressed in high hat swirls. How grateful we were for the next issue of Rolling Stone, with the crazy drawings, the ridiculous dashes on the open road, the fearless unmasking of the hypocrisy of the time. Exhilarating doesn’t even come close to the feeling he commandeered in a string of features that defined the turbulence of the times as something funnier, darker, elastic, and even perhaps ultimately pointless. Even that last was part of the rush. I don’t pretend to understand how he got there or how brave and foolish he was to try. The shimmer of that arc has never been something you could package or survive, it seems. But what is sure is that we live surrounded and enveloped in the existence of those gasps of fresh air, and that it is a choice we make to ignore them. Thinking ahead to what I look forward to, I remind myself that even in the language of the times, the poetry of the words always meant more than the ideals. Freedom was a rallying cry, but the actual cry took freedom for granted and went further. Freedom to do what? It wasn’t about the right to do something, it was about what the something was to do. Escaping gravity to do what? There’s a moment in East-West, the seminal Paul Butterfield Blues Band record, where an early crescendo releases into a stunning guitar exploration by Mike Bloomfield. It’s like you’re suddenly propelled floating into space, on a journey you thought you might be in for but had no way of being sure of. And as it again builds into a frenzy and pulls that same trigger yet again, you realize how this place exists right there in front of you, waiting for that moment to reappear ever so slightly different. The next song, can you believe there even is a next song? “I got a mind to give up living/ Yes and go shopping instead.” The blues with a steely glint of comedy, you say? What kind of alchemy is possible that springs from the celebration of loss, destruction, death — and that’s just before the opening credits. And remember: it’s sitting right there next to you with that insane grin on its face. Something about the juxtaposition of things reminds me of the politics of disruption, the emotional spring of the social generation. By themselves, interesting, intellectual perhaps, but not of the parallel land of hope and acceptance. I read an interview with Noel Gallagher, the supposedly sane one of the Oasis brothers. Something about Oasis being in the Top 10 of bands. He ducked the statement briefly, attributing it to alcohol and passing it off as Top 20 straight. But then he owned it anyway and listed the groups: “(T)he Beatles, the Sex Pistols, the Rolling Stones, the Who. I can never remember 5. Maybe the Kinks. I can’t remember 6, then Oasis.” Well, allright. It’s a stretch for me, but I can’t remember 5 or 6 either. The strange part is, I can see where the guy is coming from. And it doesn’t matter whether he’s right or not, just that he sees something just over there. I don’t care how noisy the stream is. The more the better, actually. Until it gets so useless someone comes along and hops alongside it and surfs it, like a wave building as it nears the shore. It’s not that there’s necessarily some huge revelation just around the next tweet. It’s that there are wonderful souls and achingly precious children and silly love songs and the best breakfast place around and a roar of ideas and jockeying for position and routine power grabs and whatnot. So here are my Top Ten predictions. the iPad, push notification, Chatter external groups, the Cloud, AirPlay Mirroring, Spotify, @mentions, and I can’t remember 5 or 6 either. Gillmor Gang is 7. |
Kindle DX Gets Temporary Price Cut – But How Long Can This Jumbo E-Reader Last? | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 11 | 27 | Amazon’s extra-large Kindle DX is available this weekend (which is to say for the next few hours) , down from its normal $379. It’s telling that even the lowered price still seems ridiculously high, considering that smaller but more advanced models are selling for under $100. How long can this outlier live in a world dominated by cheap, pocketable, touchscreen ? In its current form, the fact is it’s likely on its way out. The Kindle Keyboard and indeed the graphite look in general are on their way out, to be replaced by the lighter, thinner, more touchable new generation. But there’s a problem: the DX is one of the very few e-readers that doesn’t use the same 6″ E-Ink screen as everyone else. Amazon probably knows there’s demand there, but perhaps the time is not yet right to strike. As you no doubt remember, the Fire was rumored even before its release to be the first of two or more tablets; the next one is supposed to have a larger screen. Makes sense. Amazon wanted to test the waters, and the 7″ tablet was a much easier way to do that. The popularity of the tablet (despite a lukewarm critical reception) doesn’t guarantee a larger version, but I think Amazon would be fools not to do it. What does this have to do with the DX? As long as they’re unveiling one big e-reader, why not two? Okay, that’s not very convincing. But the DX is a fish out of water right now, and it needs to be either replaced or put out to pasture. I think Amazon is going to keep the large e-reader as a premium option, but it needs more time to engineer it. Who knows, maybe they’re waiting on the next set of screens from E-Ink. If I had to prophesy, I’d expect a late-summer event with a bigger Fire (the “Flame” maybe?) and a bigger, improved DX, and depending on E-Ink, perhaps an improved screen. By that time, remember, the high-res iPad 3 will supposedly be out, as will a few other high-res tablets that will offer a superior reading experience owing to their superior displays, LCD as they may be. Personally, I can’t wait for a decent large-screen e-reader. These little ones are frustrating and it saddens me to see the leaders of the e-reader industry putting out products that are scarcely distinguishable from one another. [via ] |
“Promising Unlock” For The iPhone 4S Discovered | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 11 | 27 | Most folks spent their Thanksgiving weekend ensuring that every inch of their intestinal track was thoroughly covered in gravy. Others spent it trying to get drunk enough that their relative’s worst habits were bearable. A select few, however, spent the weekend doing something pretty much only they can do: hacking the heck out of the iPhone. As a result, everyone waitin’ and wishin’ for an iPhone 4S carrier unlock has something to be thankful for. It’s not quite a done deal just yet, but iPhone Dev-Team star tweeted out that a “promising 4S unlock” had been discovered after a bit of Turkey-fueled hacking. Oddly, his tweet goes on to confirm that this unlock works with the 4S (and not the iPhone 4), suggesting that it relies on a hardware-level exploit that went overlooked during the 4S’ creation. While such exploits are increasingly rare, they’re also considerably more challenging for Apple to patch post-manufacturing. |
Zynga Builds Its CastleVille Walls, As Its Facebook Traffic Flattens And Falls | Eric Eldon | 2,011 | 11 | 27 | New Facebook game is one of Zynga’s fastest-growing titles ever, as it a few days ago. That’s good news for the company, but maybe not good enough when you consider the trajectory of most of its other games on Facebook — and its plans for an initial public offering as soon as this coming week. After launching in the middle of November, the medieval role-playing simulation title has grown to today, currently the third-highest out of any Zynga game on Facebook. Overall, the developer has a total of daily actives on Facebook, according to Inside Network’s application tracking service. It’s still by far the largest of any Facebook developer, but it has been falling from its peaks in previous months and years. Up until CastleVille launched, its games had been drifting down over the last 30 days from 48.2 million DAU. And bigger picture, the company’s Facebook DAU had been 59 million in the second quarter, and had already fallen to 54 million in the third. In previous amendments to its filing, these changes were due “to a decline in players of our more mature games and a limited number of new game launches in the first nine months of 2011.” DAU is crucial because it indicates how addicted players are. This daily addiction is what leads some fraction of the players to buy virtual goods — the model that drives the social gaming business. So, CastleVille has a lot of growing left to do if it’s going to bring back or replace all these former users. It’s certainly off to a good start. But by picking through the other 30-day AppData sets for Zynga’s other largest Facebook titles, you can see that most of its other games are declining. Zynga has had exceptional success at keeping its games popular with users over the months and years, but it is not immune from natural churn, nor from unsuccessful launches. CityVille, its year-old city builder title and biggest game by DAU, has gone from 12.1 million in the past four weeks. Its farming sim from 2009, FarmVille, is down by half a million, . Texas Hold’Em, Zynga’s first hit (and an amazingly perennial one at that), has fallen below CastleVille, to . Empires & Allies, launched in June, has also . Other new titles are also not looking too healthy. Adventure World, which launched in September, is . And Mafia Wars 2, the big new version of its long-standing RPG hit launched just last month, is now . CastleVille isn’t Zynga’s only success story now. The developer has been making big gains on mobile in the past year, culminating with an increase of more than a million DAU in October for an average total of 11.1 million DAU across iOS, Android and mobile web apps, as spotted in the filings. That success has been led by Words With Friends, which has this month. CastleVille appears to be getting at least some resources that had been supporting other recent launches. Zynga has traditionally grown traffic through clever combinations of tactics including many smaller iterations within games, large-scale advertising on Facebook, aggressive use of Facebook’s social channels, and launches of new games and expansions that it can direct players to when they get tired of older games. Regarding Mafia Wars and Adventure World’s especially distinct falls, Zynga has cut off recent launches before — like , which you’ve probably never heard of. There’s also a more specific issue that Zynga faces with cross-promotion, that has mattered more and more as its players — mostly people who don’t consider themselves “gamers” — get more sophisticated. As my former colleague AJ Glasser observes in a great analysis piece over on , when people playing one game eventually get bored, they might not find a suitable replacement in Zynga’s stable. The company’s stakes are higher than ever, with ongoing rumors of its initial public offering pegging the date for as early as this coming week. Investors want a growth story. Zynga does have that in terms of revenue, as its recent filings show. It has been figuring out how to steadily make more money per user over the years. But it also needs to show that it can keep gaining new users without losing too many old ones. CastleVille will need to show a strong growth streak over the next few months if it’s going to head into CityVille territory, and address its larger traffic concerns. |
Curisma Offers DIY Coolhunting | John Biggs | 2,011 | 11 | 27 | [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72NaUsx8INY] Like putting a , it seems like every new website needs to have a daily deal. Take , for example. On the surface it’s sort of an Oink-like website dedicated to the curation of cool products. Underneath, like a the cowbell in , is a . Luckily, the curation of Curisma is far more interesting than the deal, which just might save this start-up. Founded by MIT students and Eugene Gorelik, the site allows you to post stuff with a link to said stuff. Like watches? Post up a watch. Like a fancy lamp? Put that sucker up there. Presumably, over time, the database will burst at the seams, creating a Katamari-like wunderkammer. Right now it’s kind of barren.
The money is to come from sales through the site – hence the deals – and through affiliate sales with associated objects therein curated. There is also a rating system for folks to rise to the top of the curating ladder, allowing for the cream to rise to the top. Does the world need another (or , for that matter?)? I’m going to withhold my judgement, but the design here is clean and clever and I could see the potential value to folks looking for a clever gift for the man or woman who has everything. |
Stop Making Apps | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 11 | 11 | There are a bunch of iPhone apps I own though I have no clue what they do. These apps include but aren’t limited to; FLUD, Apptitude, Cartoonatic, Can’t Wait!, Punch, Pah, Prize Claw, Traveler, Concur, Jajah, Fast Customer, Pimple Popper and many more whose names I can’t even remember. Occupying my valuable homescreen real estate are also a bunch of apps whose purpose I remember only because they were built by people I know or am friends with, but that I sadly never use. And in some cases I really wish I did, because it would make my friends happy and the world a better place. The few apps that I actually open daily ( , , , , S , Reminders, Safari, Messenger, and sadly enough) are securely fastened to my homescreen. For those relegated to the “app ghetto” I usually either substitute Google or SMS because I’ve forgotten that I’ve downloaded them and am too lazy to swipe past my first screen. Dispersed throughout my app ghetto, or the neighborhood ten or so swipe screens past the iPhone homescreen, are things I’ve downloaded for work, apps that people joke about not using ( , ), new apps that people are still trying to figure out ( , ) and perfectly legitimate apps that lend themselves to more casual usage , , ). And all the apps that fit into one or more of those categories. Oh, and I just bought (not to be confused with Camera Plus) — it’s not homescreen worthy just yet though it might just be the best 99 cents I’ve ever spent. If I ever want to use an app ghetto app I just use iPhone search (a swipe right) because there are just too many! There should be some sort of app that makes your app ghetto apps disappear if you haven’t used them in a while. Sure we’ve written before about , but it seemingly hasn’t discouraged app makers from continuing to churn out countless useless apps or SocialMobileLocal offerings that would be better suited as sub-features of . And it doesn’t look like they’re going to stop anytime soon; Android growth is insane, iOS influence is crazy. Coupled with minimal development costs, you get the fact that the app has . Yes, Bump, that thing that lets you “bump” contact info over your phone and nobody I know uses. If Bump’s existence proves anything, it’s that many SoMoLo apps are basically competing with SMS. Why go through another tiresome two-second increment of human communication and exchange your contact info WHEN YOU CAN “BUMP”? YES THERE IS INDEED AN APP FOR THAT. I realize that asking y’all to stop making apps is a quixotic endeavor (so go ahead and have at me in the comments); think that the world needs more mobile apps even though we’ve already got over 500K of them with 18 billion plus downloads– on iOS alone. The app economy is/will be huge and is inexorable, and I don’t want to deprive anyone of the jobs it will eventually create, even though a lot them will be building things that will eventually fail. Oh well. The truth is that if you imagine the homescreen of your phone ten years from now, your favorite apps will be ones that don’t even exist yet. And that’s pretty amazing. So if you can’t beat them join them. But if you join them I’m going to ask you to consider one thing; rethink the notion of an versus a Stop making , or gimmicks, things that don’t solve problems. Don’t build something silly and ill-thought out just because you have a celebrity co-founder and/or lots of investor money that will help you scale initially no matter what. The truth is that the hardest part is hanging onto that first spike of users, and there is no number of TechCrunch posts about your every-single-decimal point update that will get you there, you actually need to solve a problem – even if that problem is “How the hell do I entertain myself for the next fifteen minutes?” Focus on building a not just an app; a service may have an app component — like , for example — but that app component must only exist to make life easier for the user of your service, exist to add value not just to be cool. Listen to ; It’s pretty simple, solve a problem and focus on solving that problem across as many platforms as you can, even if one of those platforms is an app store. This whole “solving a problem thing” is why , even if they’re skeptical at first, because it solves the real problem of, “What do I do with all these random photos on my phone?” Maybe that’s not enough to be a long-term business? Well, at least it’s a start. |
What Should You Drink While Listening To Your Favorite Music? Ask Drinkify. | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 11 | 11 | When it comes to music and drinking, these activities are best enjoyed in the company of others — hopefully friends. But, when combining music and libations, it’s not always easy to know just what kind of drink should be sipped while listening to your favorite Barry White tunes. Courvoisier? Personally, I prefer a Fresca for music of every single stripe, but people want choice, and they want to match the best of both music and spirits. Last weekend, , the music intelligence company that connects app developers to music and music data, organized a for developers, coders, and hacking supastars looking to bring their skills to bear upon the current array of problems besetting the music industry to start creating apps, products, and more to solve those problems. The weekend produced a number of cool hacks, but I thought one in particular was worth sharing to get this weekend (or any weekend for that matter) off on the right foot. is a new website that, simply put, tells you what to drink while you’re listening to certain types of music. Enter “Justin Bieber”, and Drinkify tells you what kind of libation is best enjoyed while listening to the Biebs’s greatest hit. In this case, it’s 8 ounces of Red Bull. I would have said a “Shirley Temple”, but what do I know? It’s fairly straightforward. According to the developers, , , and , the best hacks should be about something one loves — they should scratch an itch and solve one of our myriad personal problems. Maybe it was a result of a hangover, maybe not, but drinks were on their minds. They wanted some hair-of-the-dog style recommendations, and so Drinkify (formerly “Boozi.ly”) was born. , the Drinkify creators used the Echo Nest’s API for lists of terms and genres that describe artists and audio summaries of top tracks (whether the songs are slow or fast, etc.), the Last.fm API for artist and album images, name spelling, most-played tracks for individual artists, and, of course, the proprietary Drinkify database, because, as the Drinkifiers say, “booze still doesn’t have an API”. And it’s a damn shame. Obviously, this was a hack created over a very short period of time, so it’s far from perfect. Many of the drinks paired with artists are seriously lacking in creativity, and some just flat out don’t make sense. But there are some that do, like , , and . Black Sabbath is pretty hilarious, too. I like the “garnish with olive” — that really topped it off nicely. In terms of the recommendations, “stirring speed” is tied to the average beats per minute (i.e. tempo) of the artist’s top song. This is a somewhat clever quick-fix, but obviously for many artists, their top song may not always be indicative of their entire catalog. The Drinkify founders said that they’ve had bands and artists reaching out to them on Twitter to tell them what their favorite drinks are, and in some cases, they’ve been changing them to reflect that where it made sense to associate them with their tipples of choice. Hey, maybe Drinkify could even charge these artists to do just that. Or simply paste the entire site in booze-related display ads, though I hope to God that’s not the case. Even in spite of some imperfections, Drinkify racked up over 5 million page views in only three days. Clearly, it has a few addictive ingredients — and if it refines itself from Carlo Rossi into a fine California merlot, maybe it’s got a shot at the big time. Let us know what you think, and try not to throw all your rotten vegetables at once. |
Peter Thiel Says He Looks For Platforms Big Amongst Small Businesses, Not Consumers | Josh Constine | 2,011 | 11 | 11 | While plenty of platforms can go viral with consumers, VC idol Peter Thiel said today that he’s impressed by platforms adding legions of small businesses. Speaking at the hosted by electronic medical record platform Practice Fusion, Thiel explained “High paid sales people can get big companies, mass marketing can get consumers, but it’s difficult to get small businesses”. If you see a platform managing to sign lots of small businesses, it could be a winner. Investors take note. Thiel continued that in addition to being hard to reach, small businesses have historically been resistant to change. To convince them, a product must be “a quantum step better” than their existing solution. He cited Intuit’s QuickBooks and PayPal for eBay sellers as examples of companies able to provide that drastic upgrade, and that subsequently succeeded. In terms of areas where there’s potential to make those quantum steps, Thiel said “there are tremendous problems to solve in the developed world” specifically in healthtech. He followed that “the single lowest hanging fruit in the US” is in process automation.”The first step in automation is getting everything on a single platform. Practice Fusion has the potential to be platform company in the electronic record space, and that’s going to be an unbelievably important place to be.” Thiel is a top investor in , more than any other company in the U.S. It followed his model, growing from 70,000 health care providers in April, to 100,000 in September, to 130,000 now. Part of his due diligence on Practice Fusion? “I talked to my doctor. He said ‘this represents a key improvement.'” |
WhereIsTheCool.com: A Lazier Pinterest for Men | Josh Constine | 2,011 | 11 | 11 | With its pink and white color scheme and emphasis on self expression, has found a rapidly growing audience of women, and investors are lining up. But guys might not find content for them on Pinterest’s home page. Hell, even its Cars & Motorcycles channel is filled with hot pink Hummer limos. Enter , a black and red site of photos showing off the lifestyle men aspire to — speed boats, surfboards, and slick tuxedos. It’s designed for laid-back browsing like a men’s style magazine, rather than something you have invest time in like a girlfriend. Originally, founder Jack Archer (even his name is stylish) tried to translate GQ into a iPad magazine with monthly editions. Turns out the market wasn’t ready for an all digital mag in 2010, so he redesigned it as a photostream website that constantly updates. This feeds the content addiction of the modern man, and now the site has over a million page views a month and 27,000+ Tumblr subscribers. Where Is The Cool’s home page displays roughly 20 penthouse apartments, rugged actors, and the women those come with. Another page of what’s crave-worthy is a click away. An infinite scroll option would be faster, but so much vivid content could get overwhelming. Visitors can click through the photos to view them full size, share them through social media, and check out where they were first posted. That’s it, no flashy tech, just good taste and good design. Archer has it tough. His job is to scour the internet for what’s cool, and sift it out of user submissions. The “Contribute” page features an ugly, old-school web form that should really just let you enter URLs of photos, as most entries on the site don’t include any text. While he’s got a team providing support, its essentially a one-man, bootstrapped operation. To monetize, Archer sprinkles in the occasional sponsored photo from men’s fashion retailers like Mr. Porter whose products could just as easily hit the site organically. Where Is The Cool has also signed big buys for banner ads with brands like Land Rover and Banana Republic. Even if its visitors can’t afford the fighter jets or vacation home it shows, just activating desire for such objects can be a satisfying, masculine experience. In a culture of men lusting for distraction, wins with simplicity. |
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Giftly Now Lets You Give The Gift Of Discovery (And Some Money, Too) | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 11 | 11 | San Francisco-based startup is looking to help you kill two birds with one stone: quickly give your friends and family gift cards via the web, and introduce them to interesting new restaurants and venues that they (or you) have never heard of. The company is also announcing that it’s raised an additional $600K, which comes on top of a $1.8 million round last March. Since launching, Giftly has made it easy to send virtual gift cards to friends. But it doesn’t focus on just sending the money — you’re supposed to tell your friends where they should spend it. Which can be an issue, if you, say live in another city. So this week the site launched a ‘Gift Ideas’ section: Giftly is now employing curators who bundle together various activities and restaurants your friends may enjoy in their city. For those who haven’t tried Giftly, here’s how the process works: Say you wanted to give your friend $20 for their birthday. First, you’d head to Giftly.com and choose how much you wanted to give. Next, you’d specify up to three places where your friend could redeem that gift — be it a restaurant, a retail outlet, or whatever else you’d like. Finally, you send the Giftly via Facebook or email. You also can attach an image and a message to help spruce things up a bit. Giftlys are redeemed via a smartphone app — you just tap a button and your credit card gets credited with the amount of the gift. The service doesn’t use any merchant API or interface with your credit card company, so you don’t have to figure out which card to use or show anything to the merchant. This also means you could actually just redeem your Giftly immediately and have the amount added to your credit card, without using it at one of the venues your friend originally suggested. Which seems a little counterintuitive. So why is Giftly using this setup? CEO Timothy Bentley says that this system has a couple of benefits. The first is that because Giftly isn’t actually dealing with any of the merchants, it doesn’t need a sales force, and it’ll work anywhere — you can specify any venue, activity, or restaurant you’d like. And second, he says that restricting the use of gift cards to a given merchant is a practice that has value for the merchant, but doesn’t provide any value to the consumer. The service originally used to check your phone’s location data to verify your purchase was at the venue your friend had previously chosen, but it decided that if people want to spend the money elsewhere, they can. And while you can use a Giftly anywhere, he says that most people still wind up using it at one of the venues their friends originally suggested (I suspect this is because the site implies that they to do that). Giftly has several competitors that are also trying to innovate around gifting and gift cards, including (which lets friends band together to give one large gift) and (which focuses on restaurants). |
Practice Fusion, #1 in EMR With 25M Electronic Medical Records, Debuts iPad App | Josh Constine | 2,011 | 11 | 11 | With great power comes great responsibility, and in few places is that more true than the healthtech industry. is the leading provider of electronic medical records, now helping 130,000 doctors to track records for 25 million patients, CEO Ryan Howard told me today. That’s over 3x the EMRs hosted by Kaiser Permanente or the VA. Practice Fusion is free for doctors and patients. It monetizes through a marketplace for labs, pharmacies, and drug companies who pay for preferred placement in front of doctors who direct a staggering $40 billion in spend a year through the platform. Its new iPad app, debuted today at Practice Fusion’s annual conference, will let these doctors access records while out of the office. In addition to saving lives, the average doctor in California directs about $2.3 million a year in spend. Just imagine how much decision and recommendation power doctors have: “take this pill not that one”, “pick it up from this pharmacy”, “your test is being analyzed by this lab”. By next year, Howard tells me that figure will have grown well past the $60 billion a year spent through eBay. These medical service providers buy expensive banner ads in the Practice Fusion platform to ensure doctors choose them, and it’s making the company a lot of money. Practice Fusion’s doctor and record uptake rate is growing exponentially. It counted 70,000 clients in April when it , and by September when it took in funding it had 100,000 health care providers on board. Now Practice Fusion is at 130,000, and with each new doctor comes roughly 2,000 new patients who can access their own medical records from anywhere. Doctors can begin using the product in minutes, and can pay to have all their existing paper records scanned in over a few days. Practice Fusion’s competitors can take 6 months or longer to get doctors set up. Howard tells me “We’re effectively the Salesforce for doctors, and the Facebook for health.” He explains that through its APIs, Practice Fusion will become the hub for personal medical data from consumer devices and services such as FitBit and wireless weight scales. This includes , the personalized health prediction platform Howard co-founded with funding from Peter Thiel and Founders Fund to let people see how healthy decisions can expand their lifespan. That hub could become another lucrative medical advertising magnet. More altruistically, Practice Fusion is working with Palantir and the CDC to power disease outbreak detection with its data. At its core, though, Practice Fusion’s goal is to make medical record access instant and efficient. That’s why it debuted an iPad app for doctors on the go, designed by Cooper, the firm headed by Alan Cooper, the father of Visual Basic. It securely provides access to records so if a doctor gets an after-hours call about a patient, they have all their necessary medical data at hand so they can make informed decisions. Prioritizing usability, doctors can see their day’s appointments and instantly dive into each patient’s chief complaint, allergies, problems, medications, family history, hospitalizations, and more. Doctors can record patient dictations of their symptoms, and combine their own assessment and treatment plan with pre-defined treatment plans for common ailments to minimize typing. They can also view lists of tasks, and receive push notifications of updates from their office. Practice Fusion’s team is changing healthcare, and Howard says doctors love them for it. With strong growth, client loyalty, expanding revenue streams, and an ambitious vision, Practice Fusion is on its way to making us all healthier, and its investors richer. |
In Defense Of The Stylus | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 11 | 11 | A little while back, I got an email from Atmel, one of the leading touchscreen makers, asking if I wanted to check out their latest creation: that works with an improved touchscreen, for stylus actions alongside normal finger-touches and technologies like palm rejection. I passed, because to be honest, it didn’t sound very exciting. It has shown up at a few other websites, though, and I thought (slightly apologetically) that I should at least watch the video. I did. And — . Yet despite being a third-class citizen in our world of capacitive touchscreens, being publicly ridiculed by Steve Jobs, and generally being considered a nuisance, the stylus isn’t something we should relegate to the company of floppy disks and CRT monitors just yet. Here’s why we can’t write it off. The first styli, strictly speaking, were used by the Romans, since they invented the word. But cuneiform writing was performed with a primitive stylus as well, and certainly it was used before then, though they were probably used more for scraping marrow from mammoth bones or the like. The point is they’ve been around for a long time because they have always offered certain advantages. They still offer them now. First, a stylus amplifies your input. With a stylus you can make quick and precise movements of a number of sizes. Ever wonder why nobody writes longhand with their finger? By amplifying small but precise movements that can be done rapidly, handwriting was made possible in the first place, as well as things like detailed drawings and paintings. Even if you’re drawing in the dirt, you do it with a stick. Second, it dampens your input. This seeming contradiction is at the heart of why a stylus, pen, brush, or what have you is so powerful. While it allows you to amplify the movements you make by extending their effective range, it also allows for more precise control by utilizing the gamma motoneuron system. This is (if I remember correctly) a sort of global tension control in your motor system that allows you to ratchet up the tension in lots of muscles in order to have more precise control over them. Have you ever noticed that you were unconsciously clenching your jaw or tightening your neck muscles while performing an action that required great precision and concentration? That’s the gamma system’s effects spilling over onto adjacent systems while it ups the quality of your hand’s movements. We use this system while we write and draw; haven’t you ever noticed how tightly some people grip their pen or pencil? By overshooting the tension required, the gamma system allows for tiny adjustments and quick but exact actions. The fine controls of our hands and fingers, however, are designed more around gripping and applying various amounts of pressure, not making tiny movements. Third, you can see what’s under the stylus. This is essential to artists, of course, but it also completes a simple visual feedback loop in which you can tell what you’re touching. With a fingertip, past a certain point it’s guesswork. You see the button, you move your finger, and then you hope. But with a stylus, pen, or cursor, you see the button, you see where your control point is, you move it closer, you see it’s closer, you move it on, you see it on, and you click, or write a check mark, or tap. You can see that these advantages aren’t just, say, 20th-century advantages, for generations that needed pen and paper to record things. A surgeon uses a sharp stylus to perform surgery. A painter uses a soft stylus to make strokes. We all use stylii with special tips to screw in screws, flip eggs, eat chinese food. The stylus isn’t a holdover from an earlier age; it’s a fundamental add-on to human physiology. So why did Jobs mock it and leave it behind? For some time before the iPhone came out, the stylus was used because it was the only option. Capacitive screens were too expensive, or not precise enough. Resistive screens offered a compelling alternative to d-pad-based navigation, and the best way to interact with resistive screens is a stylus, not your fingertip. Jobs wasn’t ragging on the stylus, he was ragging on an old solution to a problem, a solution people hadn’t bothered updating. The uses and form factors of mobile phones are such that a stylus isn’t the best solution when it isn’t the only solution; a fingertip serves much better in most cases. But there are just as many cases, , where the opposite is true. Think about the and the , both of which generated a froth of enthusiasm despite not being real. The idea was a sort of next-generation paper notebook, stylus and all. You wrote things, you circled things, you touched them with your finger if that worked, you used the stylus if that worked. Some might say it was more of a throwback than a look forward, a product that clung to outdated notions of how we interact with information. Outdated as opposed to when – now? Does this imaginary interlocutor think that in 20 years, we’ll all still be using 10-inch glass screens, running our fingers across them, doing pinch-to-zoom? on interaction design points out just how shortsighted today’s devices are: entirely abstract, using next to no natural inputs or gestures, and totally inflexible. Seeing the things suggest a fusion of the virtual and the real that makes a tablet’s flat, static window look positively primitive. But clearly, to return to the topic at hand, Atmel’s state of the art touch solution isn’t what we’ve been waiting for. An improvement to be sure, but it’s a far cry from the level of detail possible with a Bic and a sheet of paper, and until the stylus and screen pass that level of usefulness, the applications are limited (though it will likely work nicely with Windows 8). What needs to happen before the stylus becomes truly relevant again? One thing I saw earlier this year at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona was by Atmel’s arch-enemy Synaptics that fairly blew me away. A capacitive screen that could detect both conductive and non-conductive items (say, a gloved hand or stylus), but passively, unlike Atmel and others’ active solutions (this has its own substantial shortcomings). Latency was also reduced by integrating the touch sensor with the display sensor. You have probably noticed that when you write something with a pen, the line appears immediately. The fact that it doesn’t do so when you use a stylus on a touchscreen is probably more disorienting than you think; you can’t error-check your own small movements at your own rate, you must wait for the machine to catch up. Low latency is a step in the right direction, and it’s one place where high-Hz display rates could be truly useful. Resolution is also important, as in to do with exactness and design. When I draw a short line and the aliasing makes it look like a tiny lightning bolt, I feel like giving up. The rumors of an iPad with a vastly higher resolution are nice, but they don’t help the stylus, since Apple has inoculated itself, rightly or wrongly, against stylus support for the rest of time. But Apple doesn’t make the displays, and these mega-resolution screens could help make the stylus worth using again. The touch ecosystem and the people within it need to realize their limitations, as well. Right now finger-based interaction is still novel, still being fleshed out (so to speak), optimized, still being applied to different models. But we’re already bumping into the borders beyond which this kind of touch, the iPhone kind of touch, will be useless. For typing, it has already proven a painful technology to use — so we have an accessory, not unlike the stylus we have mocked, for this basic act of computing. For any kind of actions that require precision, such as illustration, the capacitive screen is also useless, failing as it does to provide that feedback loop. Our interactions with tablets and phones are for the most part coarse and inexact, and entire UIs (witness iOS, which some would argue falls more on the side of simplicity than elegance) have been designed around this fact. We’ve gotten around some of these problems with , and we’re constantly trying to to expand the capabilities of what must be recognized as a very limited interaction method. Sooner or later someone will stand on a stage, as Jobs did, and ask “why are we still pointing and jabbing at our icons and applications like kindergarteners doing finger-painting?” And maybe he’ll show us, as Jobs did, how long we’d been rationalizing our poor choice in interface. Will it be Atmel on stage? Synaptics? E-Ink? Microsoft? Whoever it is, it won’t be for a while. The stylus today, let us admit, is impractical for a number of reasons, both design and technical, as Atmel’s video and every device available shows. But as touch goes from novel to normal to mundane, the angst of users stymied by its limitations will grow, and with that angst, demand for something new. The mouse rode a wave in the 80s. The iPhone rode the wave a few years ago, leaving the mouse behind. The next one will leave the iPhone behind, an artifact of the late aughts. What of the stylus? If we have truly exhausted its applications, it won’t return, but I think it’s manifest that we have not. That was a long and winding rationalization for a perhaps irrational love of the stylus. But I firmly believe that its days are not done. Its weaknesses became a problem before its strengths were given a chance to shine. The stylus is as ageless as the wedge, the wheel, the projectile. We’ve reinvented all these multiple times. When technology catches up yet again to the pen, the pen will be ready. |
Why Mobile Flash Died: An Adobe Employee Speaks Out | Chris Velazco | 2,011 | 11 | 11 | Adobe’s mobile Flash efforts have recently gone the way of the western black rhino, and Principal Product Manager Mike Chambers isn’t too pleased with how the Adobe chose to break the news. In fact, he feels so strongly about it that he’s offered up . “Our goal was to be very clear about WHAT we were doing, but in doing so, we didn’t pay enough attention to explaining WHY we were doing it,” he said on his blog today. Fair enough — the pretty abrupt. So, now that everyone’s settled down a bit, why did Adobe really pull the plug? Well, for one thing, Adobe realized that Flash would never reach the same kind of ubiquity in the smartphone space that its enjoys on PCs. Adobe’s own statistics indicate that the company’s Flash Player is installed on . Meanwhile, their smartphone penetration numbers were . To absolutely no one’s surprise, the iPhone played a crucial role here. With Steve Jobs and company having fully turned their backs on Flash, further attempts by Adobe to push Flash onto other smartphones would mean that developers would have to craft online experiences for two opposing tribes. That’s where Adobe’s focus on HTML5 comes in. Mobile browsers have grown to be incredibly savvy in recent years, a far cry from the dumbed-down WAP views we previously had to deal with. Considering that most major mobile browsers pack support for HTML5, trying to shoehorn Flash into the mobile content mix is fighting an uphill battle. According to Chambers, “on mobile devices HTML5 provides a similar level of ubiquity that the Flash Player provides on the desktop. It is the best technology for creating and deploying rich content to the browser across mobile platforms.” There’s also the issue of how users consume content on their devices. Smartphone users have the concept of “apps” drilled into their heads before they can even take their phones home, so it’s no surprise that they’ll turn to their respective app stores if they want to play a game. I sincerely doubt that average customers knew (or cared) that their devices played well with Flash, save for a few highly specialized circumstances. Lastly, it was a simple matter of manpower. Adobe has been a fan of HTML5 , and it’s stronger position in the mobile space has become more and more apparent. Rather than devote time and energy to working on a platform that 1) needed to be tweaked for different OSs and hardware configurations and 2) would never be as widely-used as they would like, Adobe decided that those resources would be better spent furthering HTML5 development. So, there we have it. Mobile Flash died a quiet death, which is perhaps fitting because it never made much of a splash while it was alive. Here’s to Adobe moving on to bigger and better things. |
Yes, Android’s New Face Unlock Feature Can Be Fooled With A Photo | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 11 | 11 | Within of our , one question barraged my inbox: could the new facial recognition-based unlocking feature be tricked with a photo? Google’s response on this was anything but solid. They kind of tip-toed around it when I asked, saying just that the feature “will only get better”. Meanwhile, Google’s Tim Bray implied that At long last, someone has managed to answer the question with video proof. Turns out: Yep, photos work. Check out the video below, courtesy of Malaysia’s : [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwfYSR7HttA&w=640&h=360] As a few folks have doubted the tester’s methods, they went on to add: While some of you think that it is a trick and I had set the Galaxy Nexus up to recognise the picture, I assure you that the device was set up to recognise my face. Of course, this still Beta software we’re talking about. The Galaxy Nexus won’t ship until later this month — so if this portrait trickery work consistently (and this wasn’t just a fluke), there’s no saying it’ll still work in the final software. Third party facial unlocking systems have done things like requiring certain facial expressions or waiting for the user to blink — which, while not infallible, at least makes sneaking in more complicated. In the mean time: if you’re carrying anything sensitive on your phone (and really, with all of the accounts we sync to our smartphones these days, who isn’t?) it’s probably a good idea to avoid using face unlock as anything but a neat party trick. |
Rovio Opens The World’s First Angry Birds Store In Finland | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 11 | 11 | Look out, Sanrio. After dominating the mobile world for just shy of two years (haters be damned), Angry Birds is movin’ on up into its own retail space. While Rovio plans on opening up shop in China (where the brand is huge, but next to all of the available merchandise is fake) sometime next year, this first store is on their home turf in Helsinki, Finland. It’s got a massive slingshot! Sadly, sad slingshot doesn’t appear to actually… you know, sling. Presumably because they’d rather not have an 8 year old fire his shoes through the storefront window, the slingshot instead acts as a swinging bench for those lookin’ for a new Facebook profile shot. Of course, it’s probably worth noting that the variety of Angry Birds wares available on Day 1 isn’t exactly.. diverse. They’ve got the Angry Birds cookbook (yep), and the Angry Birds pencil/eraser school kit… but for the most part, the shelves are stacked edge to edge with the line of plush toys they launched last year. Come on, Peter: Best of luck to all of the employees on not going after hearing the Angry Birds theme for the 37,000th time.
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London's 'hard-core' startups are booming says research | vaughn597 | 2,011 | 11 | 11 | Tech City, East London’s go-to-region for digital and creative companies, is one of the fastest growing tech and digital clusters in the world, according to UK government figures. Today the area hosts more than 600 tech startups. In 2008 number was around 16. So today , the co-working space for tech entrepreneurs on Old Street, teamed up with company information startup to release deeper research into London’s startup scene and identified what they call “hard-core tech startups”. These are defined as companies less than 10 years old that are “product focused” or data/development driven. With this definition they boiled down the number to 200 hard-core startups in London. It’s likely that the true figure is somewhere between the government figure and this one – at any rare it’s clear London’s East End is once more an engine of creativity, as it has been for some time. The data derived from the research – see infographic below – shows that the scene has proven impressively recession-proof. The boom began in 2007 and continued straight through 2009 and 2010 without a sign of uncertainty from new founders. The majority of new companies was founded in the ”Silicon Roundabout” area of Clearkenwell to Shoreditch and East across London. The same area is responsible for 76% of all growth across Central London in the past year. East London postcode EC1 is definitely still the epicentre of startups in London. Interesting are also the demographics. Of the 920 associated real tech startup directors only 1 in 10 are female. 3 out of 10 are running their first company. The most influential venture capital firms in London were identified as Index Ventures, Passion Capital, and The Accelerator Group. This is the first review of the startup scene TechHub and Duedil have released and they claim that some startups were not included for a lack of information. In this sense the survey should give us a decent overview of the current startup situation in London, but it’s not something definite. Duedil are calling for companies to and make the startup map complete. (In the interests of disclosure TechCrunch Europe editor Mike Butcher is a co-founder of TechHub, which commissioned the research from Duedil). |
iFixit Tears Apart The Droid RAZR, Reveals Incredible Innards | Chris Velazco | 2,011 | 11 | 11 | The Droid RAZR was only just released today, but silly things like release dates don’t mean anything to . In a strange departure from their usual process, they’ve taken a giant knife to Motorola’s latest and greatest to show us all exactly what’s lurking under the hood. Photos like this have limited appeal, I’m sure, but it’s a perfect opportunity to feast your eyes on a Qualcomm MDM6600 baseband chip or a Skyworks 77449 power amplifier module if you haven’t already. But seriously, if you thought the RAZR looked good on the outside, check out what Motorola had to do to cram all that good stuff inside. Regardless of how you may feel about the RAZR, iFixit’s teardown manages to illustrate how smart Motorola had to be with engineering and component placement. Also revealed in the teardown is the RAZR’s massive 1750 mAh battery. As expected, it’s incredibly thin, and it’s nearly as big the RAZR’s entire backplate. Strangely, that didn’t keep our from being a little fussy when it came to power consumption. Now that I’ve met my daily quota for circuit board lust, you’ll have to excuse me: now I need to decide if I want to .
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Google Employee Nigel Tufnel Sends Invites For Mysterious Android Event November 16 | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 11 | 11 | As you’ve likely heard by now, today is Nigel Tufnel day. Tufnel, who revolutionized the music world in the early-80s with the introduction of volume knobs that go to 11 (rather than a mere 10), is being honored worldwide because of today’s date: 11/11/11. It’s a nice gesture, but Tufnel’s current employer, Google, apparently isn’t giving him the day off: he just sent me an email invite to a special event that’s being held next week in Los Angeles. Thankfully Google’s at least let him inject some personality into the invite: the top of the invite fittingly says “These Go To Eleven” at the top, though it gives little indication as to what to expect. The event will be held November 16,and will be livestreamed at YouTube.com/Android — which, presumably, means that it’s going to be Android related. My hunch? I think we’re going to see some of the fruits of Google’s @Home project, which was announced at Google I/O this year. @Home is the Android platform for connecting ‘real-world’ devices, like speakers, lights, and all sorts of other things up with Android — sort of like Apple’s AirPlay, but for all kinds of applications beyond audio and video. Or, as the comments point out, it probably would make more sense for this to be related to Google Music, which is rumored to be getting new features over the current version, including the ability to actually buy songs. I still want my Android speakers, though. Here’s a video embed of a documentary covering Tufnel and his band, Spinal Tap, in which he explains the origins of his 11-digit knobs:
[youtube=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7IZZXQ89Oc’] |
Keen On… The Three Cardinal Rules for Startup Entrepreneurs (Learn These and You’ll Become a Billionaire) | Andrew Keen | 2,011 | 11 | 11 | As the co-founder of Priceline, serial entrepreneur is a natural startup guy. Indeed, his fever for startups is so intense that he is now CEO of a “movement of entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs” designed to inspire young companies with expertise, capital and talent. Case gave an inspirational keynote at last week’s Fast Company’s Innovation Uncensored in San Francisco, where he revealed his three rules for startup entrepreneurs. And after his talk, he was generous enough to list these rules to me on camera, as well as show off his colorful footwear and explain how America can once again become a startup nation. This interview is part of a week-long series from Innovation Uncensored. Check out earlier interviews such as my with Virgin America CEO David Cush. Still to come in the series is a particularly lively conversation with Seth Priebatsch, Chief Ninja of SCVNGR, who explains to me why his $50 billion market is so cool. |
Atari’s Classic Asteroids Franchise Finds New Life On iOS | Chris Velazco | 2,011 | 11 | 11 | Instead of actually doing something productive this weekend (like getting a long overdue haircut), I may just lay around playing Atari’s new iOS-friendly take on the Asteroids franchise. It’s not easy to take a beloved classic and update it for modern audiences, but Atari managed to take Asteroids’ retro DNA and make it shine on the small screen with Asteroids Gunner. The main game is divided into 50 levels (or “waves,” as they’re referred to), with each becoming more frenetic and difficult than the last. There are two additional campaigns consisting of 50 levels each, and two extra ships to fly, but those require you to purchase some aptly-named “Space Bucks.” I’m personally not a fan of having to buy content that’s already in the game, but thankfully the basic Dart ship works just fine. Even with the most basic ship, the game manages to strike a fine balance between “challenging” and “madness-inducing,” thanks in large part to the simple controls. Asteroids has always been one of those games that plays better with a joystick (or even a keyboard), so the transition onto a touchscreen was a little jarring at first. Thankfully, Gunner uses the same simple dual-stick layout as seen in games like Geometry Wars — one thumb controls your ship’s movement, while the other controls where your ship fires. One big change comes to mind immediately, and it’s one that Asteroids purists may not take kindly to: the absence of inertia. Once your navigation finger leaves the screen, your movement stops completely. It makes the game easier to play, sure, but it feels sort of unnatural considering it’s a pretty major tweak to a decades-old formula. Gunner introduces some new tweaks to the Asteroids formula, like the ability to upgrade your ship. Blowing up certain asteroids reveal crystals that allow you to upgrade your weapons and armor, which is downright required for some of the later waves. In-game achievements also make an appearance, with over 200 waiting to be unlocked by unflinching perfectionists. All things considered, Atari did a commendable job with Asteroids Gunner. It’s a far cry from the Atari classic of yore, but the mix of old and new is balanced enough to make it a terribly efficient timewaster. Asteroids Gunner is in the iOS App Store now. |
Google Joins Kleiner Perkins’ Social sFund As A Strategic Partner | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 11 | 11 | has just announced that search giant Google has joined the venture firm’s as a strategic partner. Kleiner last year $250 million fund dedicated to what partner calls the . The fund is organized around investing social startups in all industries – consumer, enterprise, health and mobile. Back in October of 2010, Zynga, Comcast, Allen & Co., Liberty Media, Amazon and Facebook all as investors and strategic partners. The $250 million fund makes investments ranging from $100,000 to $100 million, and is led by Kleiner partner . Considering the list of initial partners, it was that Google didn’t participate at launch considering the company’s own social ambitions. It’s unclear how much Google invested in the sFund to become a strategic partner. As part of the partnership, Facebook, Amazon, Google and the other partners help provide sFund companies with “special support and networking opportunities.” Previous sFund companies include Lockerz, Erly, Klout, Path, Flipboad, Rent The Runway, Spotify, Square and Cafebots. So far, 16 companies have been funded by the sFund. We’re told that Katango, which yesterday, is actually the first exit of the sFund. |
Logitech Falls Prey To Google’s Beta Mentality, To The Tune Of $100 Million | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 11 | 11 | Since its very first moments in the public eye, Google TV has been something of a disappointment. Attendees of Google I/O 2010 will recall the product’s flubbed launch demo, when a series of connectivity problems prevented Google TV’s product leads from actually controlling the device, leading to some remarkably awkward pauses. They finally got it working — sort of — but the promise of an easy-to-use internet/TV hybrid was tarnished by the fact that it clearly wasn’t so easy to use. As it turned out, the demo was only a taste of things to come. It’s long been known that Google TV hasn’t been a hit, and during an Analyst and Investor event on Wednesday Logitech announced some concrete numbers outlining just how badly its Google TV-powered device, the Logitech Revue, wound up hurting it in the end. The final tally? Over $100 million. As reported by , according to Guerrino De Luca, Logitech’s Chairman of the Board and Acting President and CEO, “Operational miscues in EMEA and Logitech Revue cost us well over $100M in operating profit” in the last fifteen months. He explained that Google TV had launched with software that “was not complete and not tuned to what the consumers want at the living room let alone all the issues with content delivery that the threat of the proceeds threat that Google posed us to other content providers generated.” In other words, it simply wasn’t ready for prime-time. Logitech’s misstep in the process was to commit to building a huge number of devices, as it expected many consumers to line up during the Christmas 2010 season to snap up the Revue at its then-$300 price point. Which obviously didn’t happen. As a result of the ordeal, De Luca said that Logitech doesn’t have any Revue followups in the works. Now, Logitech was obviously overambitious when it came to launching the still-unproven product, but they aren’t the only manufacturer that was burned by Google’s overeager desire to ship software before it was ready. Motorola’s Xoom, which was released early this year as an iPad competitor, was one of the worst devices I’ve ever used at launch. That was partially because it was a little too bulky compared to the iPad, but it was primarily because Honeycomb — the tablet version of Android — was a buggy mess. Google wanted to get Google TV out the door for the same reason it wanted to ship Honeycomb as soon as possible: we’re in a as Apple, Google, and Microsoft race to get consumers to buy into their app and content ecosystems. From Google’s perspective, it’ll be easier to acquire new users now than it will be to get them to ‘turn sides’ several years from now, once they’ve already built up their libraries in iOS or on their Xboxes. But in both cases — the Google TV and Honeycomb — that strategy hasn’t worked at all. Beta labels are acceptable on free software, but when consumers are shelling out money for a device, it’s another story. And Google doesn’t just hurt its own image when it ships software prematurely on these hardware devices — oftentimes consumers will actually blame the device manufacturer for releasing a bad product. Which means that Google is running out of strikes. It has enough cachet to be able to announce the likes of Sony, Logitech, Samsung, HTC, and Motorola as launch partners (and many of them want early access to Android). But if Google makes a habit of helping them launch bad products, those manufacturers are going to walk. And Logitech already has. Here’s a relevant portion of the Analyst Day transcript, per . The second mistake we made is Logitech Revue and it’s not a mistake of intention, it’s not a mistake of strategy, it’s a mistake of implementation of a gigantic nature. You are all familiar with Logitech Revue with the set top box that enables Google TV and every HDMI television. Google TV is a great concept, Google TV has the potential to completely disrupt living room, except that was not the case when we launched Logitech Revue. Logitech Revue was launched with some, I wouldn’t call it beta properly but a software that was not complete and not tuned to what the consumers want at the living room let alone all the issues with content delivery that the threat of the proceeds threat that Google posed us to other content providers generated. To make the long story short, we thought we had invented slice bread and we just made them. We’ve made commitment we just build a lot because we expected everybody to line up for Christmas and buy these boxes $300 that was a big mistake. I would do it again, I would definitely want to have Google establish Google TV, but with a significantly smaller and more prudent approach. It’s always the case people will tend to overestimate the short-term and underestimate the long-term. Google TV or a child of Google TV or the grandchild of Google TV will happen. The integration of television in Internet is inevitable. But the idea that it would happen overnight in Christmas 2010 was very misguided and that also caused us dearly. As you know, we dramatically reduced the price of the box to what we thought the consumers valued it and actually doing fine. |
Fly Or Die: Can Batch Find Its Own Path Among The Photo Apps? | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 11 | 11 | Does the world need another photo-sharing app? That is the question John Biggs and I debate in this episode of (watch the video above). We take a look at one of the latest photo apps to hit iTunes, , which launched ten days ago and is currently one of the Top 50 photo apps for the iPhone (currently at No. 48). The mobile app is a new product from , whose CEO joins us after we each give our verdicts on the app. Batch does one thing really well: it lets you group photos together from your iPhone into albums and share them with friends via the app itself, Facebook, Twitter, or email. (Here is a I took during the taping of the show). The nice thing about it is that you don’t have to keep on sending links to individual photos. With one link, you can share 10, 20, or 100 photos, and as you keep adding photos to a batch, the album updates automatically. Biggs thinks the batching feature will become part of Instagram at some point and, thus, you will no longer need Batch. But I disagree. If an app is well-made and fills a need, it can gain its own following no matter how crowded the field. Instagram could add albums, and it should, but that will never be Instagram’s core feature. Instagram is about sharing one great picture at a time. Batch is about capturing events and organizing the photos on your phone into discrete albums. The sharing model is also key to what makes Batch useful. When you sign on, it automatically matches you with all your Facebook friends already using the app so you can see their photo batches in your stream from the get-go. You can add a comment or thumbs up to any photo, and tag people in the batches you upload. Batches can be private, shared only to your friends in the app, or distributed more broadly to Facebook and Twitter. But you decide what to share on a batch-by-batch basis and who to share it with. In my mind, Batch is less like Instagram and more like a cross between Path and what Color was supposed to be. It isn’t quite as private as and has a simpler way to group photos than . Batch strikes a balance in between. Although I do have one feature request. Right now, only the person who creates a Batch can add photos. Other people should be able to add photos to a Batch with the permission of the person who created it—that would make it even more social. |
Teach Your Lego Robot How To Tweet With A Dexter Industries WiFi Sensor | Chris Velazco | 2,011 | 11 | 11 | When I was a wee lad, Lego were dead simple: nearly every piece was a square or a rectangle, and if you were lucky, you could split two pieces off of each other without breaking a finger. Consider my surprise then when the tinkerers over at Dexter Industries for Lego’s Mindstorms NXT line of smart blocks. The Mindstorm NXT line, to be brief, is the Lego set you buy for the person in your life who’s just a little too obsessed with robots. Essentially, you construct a machine out of the included plastic bits, and use the NXT Intelligent Brick to feed your creation commands and programs. Now, with the inclusion of the WiFi sensor, Dexter Industries has opened up those piles of bricks to the power of the internet. To celebrate the sensor’s release, Dexter Industries has also outlined some basic projects for the fledgeling networking buff in all of us. Behold in amazement as your little robot ! Or set it up that can figure out what the weather is like! The possibilities are endless! Alright, I’m being glib, but these seemingly dull applications are just the tip of the iceberg. Once the Mindstorms community starts playing with these things, we’re sure to see some creative new usage scenarios. The WiFi sensor’s $99 price tag is far in excess of you can strap onto a Mindstorms robot, but it’s a neat way to teach youngsters and adults alike the basics of networking. And really, what better way to inspire the next generation of geeks than to let them figure out something complex and useful? |
‘Olive’ Aims To Be The First Feature-Length Smartphone-Shot Film In Theaters | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 11 | 29 |
What’s former Facebook CPO doing post-Democratic Attorney General run? Why backing a feature length film shot on a smartphone of course! The film, called , and was shot entirely using a phone and a specially crafted 35mm lense. Director Hooman Khalili tells me that what differentiates from other films that have tried the whole “movie shot on a smartphone” gimmick — like — is that he intends to show the film in theatres. Khalili even wants to submit it for Oscar consideration — which would be a first for a smartphone-shot film . narrative centers around a mysterious little girl that doesn’t speak, and three strangers whose lives she positively affects. Indie actress Gena Rowlands and (another former Facebooker) Randi Zuckerberg also star. The film itself is actually finished, having been financed by Kelly and Bill O’Keefe. The 300K it raises on Kickstarter will go towards distribution, and Khalili 100% guarantees that the film will make at least some big screens after its premiere in December. |
Even After Withdrawing Its Application, AT&T Hits Another Huge Hurdle In T-Mo Deal | Jordan Crook | 2,011 | 11 | 29 | In the wake of , AT&T has hit yet another obstacle otherwise known as the FCC. See, before AT&T pulled its application, the FCC had big plans to put the deal before an administrative law judge, effectively prolonging the process and magnifying the details of the merger. As part of those big plans, the FCC had compiled an 109-page report with their findings during the review process. AT&T had expected this massive report to stay under the rug since it had withdrawn its application, but the FCC feels it “furthers transparency.” And what, might you ask, is in this ? Really, bad news for AT&T. From the : The draft hearing designation order concluded, based on the staff’s analysis, that the record overall does not support a finding that the proposed AT&T/T-Mobile merger would serve the public interest, convenience, and necessity and that the record presents a number of substantial and material questions of fact. But wait, there’s more: In the report, the staff finds that the transaction, which would result in the top two wireless providers having a market share of approximately 75 percent, would substantially lessen competition and its accompanying innovation, investment, and consumer price and service benefits, thus undermining key goals of the Communications Act. Indeed, the staff notes that the unprecedented increase in market concentration that would result from this merger triggers the Commission’s screening tests for possible anti-competitive effects in a large number of local wireless markets. In other words, the report stands behind the claim that this deal will cause a very real duopoly, or at the very least, force the FCC to investigate. But the blue carrier still has a few tricks up its sleeve, right? Two of AT&T’s biggest talking points during this persuasion have been and the . The FCC staff report had this to say on the matter: The staff also explains that the economic and engineering models on which the Applicants (AT&T/DT AG/T-Mobile) rely to show consumer benefits are, in the staff’s assessment, unreliable and, at a minimum, raise substantial and material questions of fact. The staff additionally identifies internal AT&T documents and consistent historical practices that contradict AT&T’s claim that merging with T-Mobile is essential for AT&T to build out its LTE network to 97 percent of Americans. The staff finds the Applicants’ assertions that the transaction would create jobs in the United States to be inconsistent with AT&T’s internal analyses and record statements concerning cost reductions from the merger. The staff also finds that there are serious questions whether the merger of AT&T and T-Mobile would cause other public harms that are not offset by the claimed benefits. Sentence by sentence, the FCC has whittled AT&T’s argument down to a tooth pick. And it seems like releasing this report falls into a bit of a grey area (now that AT&T’s withdrawn its application), which is even more unfortunate for AT&T. The FCC gives some justification for releasing the report, stating that it would be “unfair to the parties and participants” who’ve been working on this deal, and noting that AT&T is still planning on moving forward with this merger, according to . AT&T had no idea that the FCC would release this report, and has said the following: The FCC has recognized that it is required by its own rules to dismiss our merger application. This makes all the more troubling their decision to nonetheless release a preliminary staff report on the merger. This report is not an order of the FCC and has never been voted on. It is simply a staff draft that raises questions of fact that were to be addressed in an administrative hearing, a hearing which will not now take place. It has no force or effect under law, which raises questions as to why the FCC would choose to release it. The draft report has also not been made available to AT&T prior to today, so we have had no opportunity to address or rebut its claims, which makes its release all the more improper. |
Path’s Second Iteration Is Less Photosharing And More Everything Sharing | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 11 | 29 | In the mobile startup tradition of quick product iteration, has hit the app store this evening — expanding beyond photosharing to people, place, music, chat and sleep mode sharing. Path founder Dave Morin says that the second phase of Path is about giving people a place to “capture all the experiences” on their path through life. The existing Path UI on iOS and Android has been completely revamped (beautifully) and is basically a multimedia timeline. You can right swipe for settings, left swipe to add friends, and swipe down to view your own or your friends’ Paths. To initiate a Path post, click on the + button in the left corner and out pop six option icons. Path Two lets users complete six different types of posts, competing for your sharing predilections with already existing sharing apps like Foursquare, Soundtracking, Evernote and Instagram as well as lifestyle products like Wakemate. [vimeo 32856179 w=640&h=510] Morin tells me that these varied types of posts — photos, videos, messaging, songs, geolocation and sleep — were what users wanted the most when giving feedback on the original Path. Oftentimes users would add screenshots of apps like the iPod and Wakemate to their Paths, in order to expose the people following them on Path to a wider variety of content. Users seeking (a bit more) attention can share their Paths with 150 people now, instead of the famous 50 — a change the company enacted six months ago but never really publicized. You can also sync your Path posts with Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and inevitably Tumblr. Sticking with the whole “life journal” theme, users can also chose not to share at all by clicking the lock button at the bottom of the screen when they post. “It wouldn’t be a very good journal if you couldn’t keep things to yourself,” Morin tells me. In a novel feature for the life-sharing apps, the new Path will also automatically post your location (“Arrived”) every time you travel a distance far enough to be reached by plane. You can turn the Automatic feature off by going to Settings > Neighborhoods. This setting fits into Morin’s conception of Path as a “journal that writes itself.” The concept of Visit, or when someone you follow sees something on your Path, is also amped up by Path’s signature emotions and iOS 5 notifications in the new version. In addition the paid photo and video filters already existant in Path One, this new Path opens up the possibilities for future revenue streams, including referral fees from iTunes, which streams the 30-90 second songs available for posting. The one million or so people who have downloaded Path will be onboarded to the new version as soon as they update the app in the Apple store. In its latest incarnation, the company now competes with startups like Memolane and Memento and even Facebook’s Timeline, “We’ve always been a Path, we just think this is a more authentic representation of that,” Morin says. You can find Path in the App Store or by searching for Path in the Android marketplace. [vimeo 32885259 w=640&h=510] [slideshow] |
How Neustar Plans To Make UltraViolet DRM Work, With or Without Apple (TCTV) | Josh Constine | 2,011 | 11 | 29 | There’s a lot of skepticism about the success potential of UltraViolet, a new cloud based digital distribution format designed to make digital rights management work across devices. That’s because people hate DRM, but also because the standard currently lacks support from Amazon and iTunes, the two biggest digital video sellers and renters. I wanted the real story on where UltraViolet is going, so I sat down with the Tim Dodd, VP and GM of Neustar Media, developers of the technology that powers UltraViolet. Watch here on TCTV as he defends UltraViolet, explains how it works on iOS devices without support from iTunes, and claims that there’s still a future in physical media. Last year, as the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem coalitions choice to power DRM. Hollywood hoped that users would be more likely to continue buying DVDs and Blu-Rays if they could also stream the same content across console, web, and mobile devices. Last month, the first UltraViolet films went on sale from Warner Bros, and they were supposed to play on iOS devices via the . But the UltraViolet launch was . Customers complained that they had bought DVDs that came with a “digital copy” only to find they didn’t actually get to download a copy. Instead they had use buggy UltraViolet through the crash-prone Flixster app, and couldn’t play the films in iTunes. Things got so bad that Warner Bros started distributing free iTunes download codes to customers. Still, Dodd is optimistic. He thinks it’s only a matter of time before more content producers and retailers adopt UltraViolet. I agree that retailers are in need of a way to keep digital from cannibalizing their sales, and that cross-device content rights are what users want. However, I think users are only going to buy an UltraViolet DVD instead of buying it on iTunes if they can easily play it on all the most popular devices. Right now, they can’t. Apple has little incentive to cooperate. It has its own DRM system FairPlay, and accounts for such a big percentage of digital sales and rentals that Hollywood can’t afford to pull their content from iTunes to pressure Apple into adopting UltraViolet. Apple makes its money on hardware, so it’s in its interest to prevent the content it sells through iTunes from being played on other devices. Apple could even flex its muscle and ban a dedicated UltraViolet player app for mimicking native functionality. The only way I can foresee UltraViolet succeeding in any capacity is for it to be expressly anti-Apple. Neustar would need to get Amazon to adopt UltraViolet, concentrate on offering a great Android experience, and publicly hammer Apple and its FairPlay DRM for not permitting interoperability. As nice as a future sounds where you buy content and can play it on any device, a fractured ecosystem seems more plausible right now. |
Ultrabook Prices May Fall 5-10% In The First Part Of 2012, Says Report | Matt Burns | 2,011 | 11 | 29 | The first ultrabooks are just now hitting the market but despite Intel’s stated wishes, prices are generally north of $1000. But that might change early next year, who cites several supply chain makers. Reportedly, Acer, Asustek and Toshiba are looking to lower prices in 1Q12 to below $1000. Plus, a $100 marketing subsidy from Intel cause a overal dip of 5-10% next year. But even without the potential price drop, it’s best to wait for the next round of ultrabooks anyway. As the developer of the ultrabook platform, Intel previously stated that the target retail price is below $1000. However, only a fraction of the first crop of ultrabooks hit that target with most costing more. Digitimes’ sources stated that the current cost of components makes the target difficult with a 13-inch’s bill-of-materials generally around $690. Add in the cost of the OEM or ODM and the marketing/distribution and the costs quickly rises, leaving little room for margin when priced under $1000. But as with most things electronics, prices are constantly in flux and often organically drop over time. Lower prices aren’t the only reason to wait to buy a ultrabook. The current ultrabooks are built on the Sandy Bridge platform where ultrabooks released late this year and early next will employ Ivy Bridge chips that bring native support for USB 3.0 and PCI Express 3.0. Plus, the next-gen processors will be more energy-efficient, resulting in a better battery life. But hats off to the early adopters. Without these kind souls who disregard logic for the sense of owning the latest and greatest, most products including ultrabooks probably wouldn’t make it to the second generation that’s finally suited for general consumption. |
Atari Looks To Reinvent Itself As A Mobile Games Company; Hires Former iWON/Marvel Exec As EVP | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 11 | 29 | Founded in 1972 by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney, played a central role in the early history of video games, going on to create what are still some of the most recognizable arcade games on the planet, like Centipede, Breakout and Pong, to name a few. Not to mention the fact that its joystick-controlled Atari 2600 console was pretty much synonymous with “video games” in the 1980s. Although Atari remains a recognizable brand around the globe, the company struggled through the video games crash of 1983, financial issues, and various assets have fallen under a number of different ownership and leadership regimes, including Warner Communications and Hasbro — among many others. Today, Atari is a 65-person company, with headquarters in New York and France. The company looks a lot different than it did two decades ago, but the current leadership team is focused on leveraging Atari’s assets, its strong brand recognition and global distribution, to reinvent it as a mobile and social games company. But doing so is no easy task. EA, one of the largest and most recognizable video games companies, also has the benefit of strong brand recognition and a number of successful and popular titles, like Battlefield, Need for Speed, Mass Effect, FIFA and Madden, to name a few. EA has recognized that it can’t hope to compete with the likes of Zynga simply by remaining a console company and pumping out sequels to popular titles. Over the last few years, EA has gotten busy porting its flagship games into social and mobile channels. Of course, even that’s not enough. ( .) As Atari CEO Jim Wilson said, the key to success for any company is creating quality, original products. “There’s no other way to maintain long-term viability”, he said. “Atari can’t rest on its laurels, we have to stay relevant”. In refocusing on mobile and social as the two-headed future of gaming, Atari released “Greatest Hits” for iOS back in April, which is an 18-title sample course of Atari’s classic games. Earlier this month, Atari launched Greatest Hits on Android. And two weeks ago, the company , tailoring the retro game for a new medium. Asteroids: Gunner became a top ten bestseller on the App Store for its first two weeks, and Greatest Hits has racked up over 3.5 million downloads across platforms since its release in April. So, the veteran games company has found some success in moving its classic games to mobile, just as EA and others had found before it. On December 8th, Atari will continue its release of its classic games on mobile, as it will launch “Breakout: Boost”, an amped-up version of the 1976 arcade classic, on iOS. The game will include the traditional five levels, along with 200 additional levels of brick-breaking that can be unlocked through in-app purchases. Breakout will also see new control features that allow gamers to change ball speed to ramp up the difficulty, as well as power-ups, “Grenade Balls” (and ball upgrades), brick varieties, the ability to save progress, and OpenFeint and Game Center integration. To back up the retooling of its games for mobile devices, Atari has also made some additions to its executive leadership, including the recent hiring of Gui Karyo, a gaming and entertainment industry veteran, as EVP of Development & Operations. Karyo has previously held senior executive positions at Mindspark, Majesco, and Marvel and has taken over day-to-day oversight of the company’s product development, operations, and Atari.com in an effort to accelerate the development of its mobile and online strategies. Leadership with prior experience in social and mobile game development and restructuring business processes and products around these growing channels is key as Atari goes after a new freemium, microtransaction-driven rebranding. Atari has miles to go before it can ever compete with the bigs in social gaming, but as a relatively lean company, it may have an easier time transitioning into the mobile and casual game space than some other heavier companies that have come before it. Of course, leadership is only the start. To build a successful modern mobile gaming company, Atari has to internally become a company comprised of developers, engineers, and designers that specialize in mobile. They’re on their way, and the Atari CEO says that the company is constructing initiatives that will increase outreach to the developer community to drum up interest around modernizing Atari’s games. Atari is happily the owner and/or manager of an extensive library of more than 200 games and franchises that include brands like Centipede, Missile Command, Pong, Test Drive, Backyard Sports, and Deer Hunter. Moving forward, Wilson says that the company is looking to evolve these games for a new generation of gamers — updating their look — while maintaining gameplay identity. But more important will be launching, new original titles. Atari can coast on its brand and classic arcade games and probably continue to cash in on brand recognition, retooling its games for any and all new channels that manifest over the years. But without creating new, relevant products, Atari’s reinvention as a mobile company will really only be skin deep. And looking at Atari’s current financials, it seems that this reinvention as a mobile and digital operation is now a must. The company’s digital revenue (for the first half of the year) comprised 63.6 percent of its total net revenue — compared to 20.1 percent in the first half of last year. Digital revenues were $10.5 million in the first half of the year, an increase of $6.3 million over the prior year. This has led the company to cut its operating loss to about $2.6 million, a 61.2 percent improvement over the same period last year. Revenues are still low, but focusing on fewer and more profitable games has helped the company see improvement in its gross margin; and while ramping up its spend on R&D and marketing for its new digital games has contributed to lower numbers, Wilson and team are hoping that these kind of investments can help push its mobile transition forward. To that end, the CEO also said the company is currently hiring, and is now going after “the best and brightest” to help steer its new mobile/social trajectory. If the company can learn from Zynga’s metrics-driven approach to customer retention, while baking freemium, location, and social elements into their new titles, Atari could be poised to lift itself out of replay mode. What do you think? |
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