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Zuckerberg Loves That The FTC Wants You To “Like” Them On Facebook | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 11 | 29 | Facebook and the FTC , after the government agency complained that the social network violated user privacy. The two reached a settlement which will fundamentally change the way Facebook deals with privacy moving forward — including measures like bulking up its privacy division and submitting to new privacy audits every two years. Facebook CEO emphasized that he did not take the issue of consumer privacy lightly , ”Not one day goes by when I don’t think about what it means for us to be the stewards of this community and their trust.” You know what Zuck (and around 400 Facebook employees including PR rep Caryn Marooney) do take lightly, according to this comment thread on a Facebook internal network? The fact that the FTC ironically asks readers to “Like” them on Facebook at the bottom of outlining today’s Facebook settlement. My favorite part of this? “This would make a great public post.” Be careful what you wish for. |
Keen On… How Your Cell Phone Might Be Killing You (TCTV) | Andrew Keen | 2,011 | 11 | 29 | Yes, we’ve heard it before: cell phones, they say, give us cancer. But this time, the message is from a noted medical researcher and this time it’s a message that is supported by a number of governments including Finland, Israel, France and even Canada. is the author of a new book which suggests that there is indeed an all-too-intimate connection between our cell phones and our bodies. “Practice safe phone,” Dr. Davis told me when she came into the San Francisco TechCrunchTV studio to talk about . The truth about cell phone radiation, she explained, is that the closer we keep the phone to our bodies, the more dangerous they become. Thus keeping our phone in our trouser pocket or, god forbid, sleeping with it, is a recipe for disaster, Dr. Davis says – particularly for children who, she warns, are much more vulnerable to the long-term consequences of cell phone radiation than grown-ups. So is Dr. Davis crazy? If she is, then so are the governments of Finland, Israel, France and Canada who are all now trying to protect their citizens from cell phone radiation. And even the Americans are beginning to wake up to the threat, with enlightened city governments in Berkeley and San Francisco now encouraging their residents to practice safe phone. |
BeachMint’s Celeb-Filled Cyber Monday Draws Over 50,000 Viewers (With Help From RtoZ) | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 11 | 29 | There were a lot of sales going on this past Cyber Monday, as many sites across the web slashed prices in a celebration of consumerism. But few sites had the star power that BeachMint did. Yesterday, the company launched a unique Facebook application including a live video stream featuring the likes of Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, Kate Bosworth, and Rachel Bilson. The celebrities are, of course, all affiliated with BeachMint’s sites — the Olsens are attached with , Bosworth with , and Bilson with . During the two-hour stream, each of the celebrities (as well as several other guests), introduced a series of products that were available in limited quantities — users could purchase these products, watching the inventory counting down in real-time. In effect, it was an online, social version of Home Shopping Network. The traffic is still being tabulated, but BeachMint reports that there were at least 50,000 people who tuned in during the course of the event (and that number may be as high as 100,000). Cyber Monday was also BeachMint’s biggest sales day ever, and it was responsible for one of the biggest climbs in the company’s userbase since it first launched. In other words, it worked. BeachMint didn’t come up with the concept alone — they got a lot of help from Randi Zuckerberg and her new firm . Zuckerberg says that RtoZ hasn’t actually launched yet, but that after speaking with BeachMint cofounder Diego Berdakin two weeks ago, she decided to take the project on. Zuckerberg coordinated numerous live events during her time at Facebook (she created the company’s ‘Facebook Live’ channel), so she’s had experience with similar projects. And she says that BeachMint’s event generated “some of the most exciting engagement in the community” that she’s seen before, noting that many of the viewers were using the app’s live chat to discuss the items being sold. Unsurprisingly, BeachMint says that it intends to hold similar events again in the future. If you’re interested in watching a replay of the live stream, you can find one at |
Restored Polaroid SX70s, With Designer Accents – For A Price | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 11 | 29 | An original Polaroid camera would be a dream for many an analog photography lover. But not only are they difficult to find in good condidion, they’re also maddeningly expensive when they show up. Today is no exception, but they’re rare enough that to find 50 restored cameras ready for sale is an event worth shouting from the rooftops. These SX70s have been restored by , which if you have been following along for the last few years, has taken it upon themselves to manufacture Polaroid film cartridges and fix up some of the old cameras. They show up in small batches on Impossible’s site and others, but quickly sell out. And starting on December 5th there will be 50 available for purchase (caution: autoplaying music). They have a funky skin on them, which isn’t bad but at the same time isn’t as cool as the original, and they come with a dotty matching cartridge of film. The price? A mere €540 including VAT. Okay, so that’s basically extortion. But eventually all collector’s items become subject to that kind of questionable pricing. If you’re not in a hurry you can wait until the next batch appears and try to get it for a couple bills less (Photojojo had some for $350 a while back and they turn up now and then). Don’t forget that you’re also buying into a camera system where you’ll be paying $20-30 for 8 exposures. As much as I’d like to get back into Polaroid, it’s just too rich for my blood right now (and the are fun too). [via ] |
A New Google Bar: Black Is Out, Google Search Across Products Is In | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 11 | 29 | Over the last six months, Google has been doing a full house clean — or maybe it’s been shedding an old skin. On the one hand, that’s meant sunsetting products that just aren’t cutting it anymore, like in September when it announced plans to shutter etc. and then . Then, on the other hand, Google has been updating its look, well, its design. That meant a bit of a makeover for the Google search page, as the company added a black nav bar at the top of the page (kind of similar to to Drupal’s top bar, no?), a smaller logo, with links moving both to the top and bottom edges of the browser window. Google was after a cleaner, more simplified look — for all of its products. The changes were seen across Search, Maps, Translate, and later Reader (boo, hiss), and even Gmail (meh). Really, Google has been trying to make its home, Search page feel a bit like your desktop, giving you a presumably quicker way (in one place) to access all of their products (and your stuff), with top priority being given to rolling out Google+ integration across each and all of those products. that it’s “ready for the next stage” of its redesign, which apparently includes a new Google bar that will enable users to presumably even more quickly switch between each of its products, and share easily with Google+ users. That means arrivederci to the black bar. The black toolbar will be replaced by a new gray “drop-down Google menu nested under the Google logo”. This will include a list of links, along with Google’s services, which can be accessed by hovering over the “More” link at the bottom of the list. Black nav bar, we hardly knew ye. I was just starting to get used to it, but it was also kind of annoying, and I like the subtraction of that glaring black bar, the idea of more space, and the fact that I will now be able to search the contents of the Google products I’m using. Even if this is part of the Google mantra of “more blank space for no reason”, as one of my colleagues quipped. I may have to click a few more times, but it keeps the design and feel consistent, especially considering the recent redesign of the Chrome Web Store. As long as consistency isn’t sought after at the sake of ease of use, Google’s design tweaks are welcome. |
Snap Interactive Says Facebook’s New Mobile Channels Are Boosting Its Traffic And Revenue | Eric Eldon | 2,011 | 11 | 29 | Facebook a new set of social channels for apps to reach mobile users last month, that includes notifications, search, news feed stories and bookmarks in its mobile web and iPhone apps. We haven’t heard too much about the results from developers so far. But here’s a little bit of interesting new data from Snap Interactive, a company that has a popular cross-platform app called Are You Interested. After Facebook rolled out the new features in mid-October, the company said its mobile traffic to that app got a significant boost (although it’s not providing specific numbers). The number of average daily logins on its AreYouInterested iPhone app ( ) increased by 70 percent between the 30 days before the October 10th Facebook integration and the 30 days after. That resulted in the app rising from the #10 to #5 position in the iTunes App Store top grossing social networking apps chart. Yes, the category is not particularly large, but dating apps like Snap’s can monetize quite well by charging users for things like sending flirty messages to objects of their affections. Take a look at the directionally interesting graph, below, provided by the company: Beyond iOS, Snap tells me that its traffic on its mobile web app have gone up 50%. Mobile now makes up 10% of its total revenues. Overall, Are You Interested has 7.3 million monthly active users and 610,000 daily active users on Facebook, according to Inside Network’s app tracking service. These numbers include any mobile traffic that’s based on users’ Facebook accounts, but not traffic from outside of Facebook. Also, note that the app’s MAU has been going up lately, while DAU appears to have seen a bit of a decline — apparently in spite of the mobile integration. You can find more details on Snap’s company blog, . |
Aviary’s Tools Are Powering One Million Edited Photos Per Week On Mobile Alone | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 11 | 29 | If apps like Instagram have proven one thing, it’s that photos and mobile phones are an extremely popular (and powerful) combination. And photos on the web are obviously immensely popular as well. A year ago NYC-based startup decided to capitalize on these trends by launching developer-facing APIs, which allow third-party apps to bake in image editing with a minimal amount of work required. Today, the company is announcing some stats that indicate that its strategy is working: it’s now powering image editing in some 300+ websites and mobile applications, and over one million photos are being edited per week on mobile alone. For most of its history Aviary has offered a suite of web-based image editing tools — if you want to edit an image but don’t have Photoshop handy, for example, it’s a great free alternative. Then last year, it opened the doors to third-party developers with a new HTML5-based web API, and it followed that up with its iOS and Android SDKs this past September. Aviary says that on average, it takes a mobile developer only fifteen minutes to bake this functionality into their apps. The company is also reporting some strong engagement stats. Users are working with the editor for an average of 90 seconds, and 80% of users that launch the editor wind up editing and saving a photo (in other words, they aren’t accidentally entering it and immediately leaving). Among the applications that have recently integrated Aviary are for Facebook (a third-party Facebook app for iOS and Android), stock photography site , , social browser , and .
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null | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 11 | 11 | null |
Judge Applies SOPA-Esque Solution To Hundreds Of Counterfeit Goods Sites | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 11 | 29 | The is facing a lot of heat as much of the tech industry sets its weight against it. But while the legislation is being discussed, its extreme solutions to criminal online sites are already being adopted. A judge in Nevada has ordered that 228 websites be seized, their domain names transferred, and their listings removed from search engines. There are several serious problems with this ruling, . Essentially it is unclear how and why this Nevada judge purports to exert powers over hundreds of separate defendants internationally and order relief from parties only tangentially related to the case, such as search engines. The jurisdiction, evidence, and punitive actions all seem to be have had their scope exaggerated. In brief, Chanel investigated 228 sites it suspected of counterfeiting goods, ordered from 3 of them, internally confirmed the counterfeit, and then extrapolated from that. The judge ordered all 228 domains to be seized. Immediately the reasonable thing to wonder is what did the 228 sites have to say in their defense? Apparently nothing, since it wasn’t 228 separate suits. Yet for 228 different sites, presumably with a number of different owners, hosts, registrars, countries of origin, and so on, it seems there might be some individual defenses, pleas for time or clemency, or what have you. Torrent lawsuits have failed because it was ruled that a suit could not be leveled against so many individuals as a generalized entity when clearly the actions of those individuals were not acting in concert or even aware of each other. Apparently this judge feels otherwise. The peremptory and broad nature of the actions required by the ruling are troubling as well. Can a Nevada judge really order Google and Facebook to delist these sites? Can he compel a plethora of registrars to give up control of the domains? It’s a bit like ordering a criminal to be imprisoned on the Moon. True, it would be time-consuming and troublesome for Chanel to go around suing every fake goods site. But surely there is a way more in line with existing laws, US and international, than fleecing a naive judge into ordering instant and out-of-place punishments with global implications. Although it’s just one of many similar seizures, as <a href="http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/11/us-judge-orders-hundreds-of-sites-de-indexed-from-google-twitter-bing-facebook.ars"Ars Technica points out. Challenges to this ruling will likely come from the companies involved at the fringe, not at the questionably legal operations selling fake handbags, which can easily set up again at a different domain and count up this seizure as the cost of doing business. But Google and the registars are likely to resent being treated as Chanel’s playthings. Google has already stated its intention to not comply with SOPA requirements. Will they comply with requirements that are in all but name SOPA requirements? I sincerely doubt they’ll allow a precedent to be set by such a ridiculous case. As Balasubramani points out, plaintiffs don’t need SOPA to ask for SOPA-like remedies, and many judges, sad to say, are ignorant enough to grant them. But without the visibility of SOPA, individual cases will have to be policed for unreasonable actions like this one. Luckily the parties that must take action for these remedies to have any effect are aware of the threat, whether it’s federal or otherwise. |
Market For Mobile Health Apps Projected To Quadruple To $400 Million By 2016 | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 11 | 29 | The latest healthtech research shows that the forecast is looking good for mobile health solutions, especially for those companies buying into mobile apps. ABI Research recently which predicts that the sports and health mobile app market is on pace to hit $400 million in revenues by 2016. That’s up from $120 million in 2010, meaning the market could quadruple over the next four years. ABI’s report projects that the majority of that $400 million will come from sports, fitness, and wellness apps, which have begun to see heavy adoption over the least year. The increase of available health data and the growing adoption of health-related apps is owed largely to the development of increasingly wearable, portable, and non-invasive devices and their sensors that can effectively measure and transmit biometric data. As smartphones add new ways to access and support healthcare apps and connect with these complementary diagnostic and health-measure devices, the mobile health market — and its customers — only stand to benefit. There are many great examples of this new generation of smart health tracking devices, like that you can wear on your wrist, — to name a few. These wearable devices are hooked into apps and web dashboards that let users track and improve their health. These bundled solutions are becoming increasingly user-friendly and intelligent, with many beginning to take advantage of gamification to keep users interested and coming back. Naturally, everyone wants to build a graph, interest, social, etc., and the health graph seems to be poised to be next in line. , an app that helps users track their exercise, is just one among many going after the health graph — that is to say, they’re looking to aggregate all of your fitness and health data, culled from an ecosystem of apps and smart-sensored devices that collect and transmit this data (and speak to each other through APIs), then serving it to users across platforms and mobile devices, all through a simple dashboard. And RunKeeper isn’t alone. This is where the healthtech industry is going — well, there and of course digitizing health records as well as making everything about health insurance less of a pain in the ass. In conjunction with ABI’s report on the mobile health market’s growth, Juniper Research today , forecasting that “mHealth” apps will reach 142 million downloads globally by 2016. Which is slightly puzzling, especially when contrasted with the projection made by Jonathan Collins, the principal analyst at ABI Research. Collins said that he expects downloads to grow at almost twice the rate of revenues, with more than a billion downloads occurring annually by 2016. Collins appears to be more optimistic than Juniper, which is likely using slightly different criteria to define mobile health apps. But the point is clear, mobile health is on the rise. Excerpt image from |
The Kindle Fire Bests The iPad At BestBuy.com, Becomes The Retailer’s Best Selling Tablet Online | Matt Burns | 2,011 | 11 | 29 | Be careful, the is hot. Burning up you might say. Get it? Because it’s the Fire? Never mind… Amazon’s first foray into the tablet world seems to be a runaway success. The Fire has occupied the top spot on Amazon’s best sellers list even prior to the device shipping. Now, at Best Buy, the $199 Fire as the top selling tablet on the retailer’s website. Yep, it’s safe to say that Amazon is well on its way the Android tablet wars. Amazon’s first color tablet had a banner Black Friday weekend. The retail that it moved four times more Kindles this year than last (although hard numbers were not given). Consumers are seemingly eating up the Fire. The device received a fair amount of criticism . Most wrote off flaws and bugs to early software bugs, but also the $199 price. Compromises had to be made to keep the price down, they said. However, reviewers and consumer alike are singing the good graces of Amazon’s content-first scheme. Like the Fire’s main competitor, the Nook Tablet, the tablet is marketed without much talk of computing specs. Instead, Amazon and B&N talk about the device’s media consumption capabilities, a strategy ignored by most Android tab makers but successfully employed by Apple. . It’s hard to predict if the Fire will retain its lead over the iPad at major retailers like Amazon and Best Buy. The $199 price will certainly carry it through the upcoming holiday but interest might wane after the holiday spending season. Then again, the growing ranks of Fire owners will likely take to the social media networks and publicly praise the device. The only thing that might suffocate the Fire is the iPad 3 — but that’s not likely to hit until February or March. Update: The post now reflects that this applies only to BestBuy.com. |
Carrier IQ Video Shows Alarming Capabilities Of Mobile Tracking Software | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 11 | 29 | You may be aware of the growing controversy surrounding Carrier IQ, a piece of software found pre-installed on Sprint phones that, according to developers who have investigated, is capable of detecting, recording, and transmitting various user actions and inputs. Among the data CIQ potentially has access to are location, SMS, apps, and key presses. News of the software has been percolating for months on development forums, but when Trevor Eckhart recently summarized his findings, he found himself while Sprint vigorously denied the charges, saying “We do not and cannot look at the contents of messages, photos, videos, etc., using this tool.” The C&D was , but Eckhart has now released a video that seems to give the lie to both Sprint and Carrier IQ’s assurances. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T17XQI_AYNo w=640] A couple grains of salt are suggested. First, while Eckhart has no reason to falsify this information, it’s possible that this debug log is not entirely accurate for technical reasons, or that the conclusions are only applicable to this handset or software version. Second, this log does not prove that any of this information is actually being transmitted to any third party. However, the fact that CIQ is in fact seeing all this information means that it has access to it and could very easily record it and transmit it. Whether it has or hasn’t isn’t material, because Sprint and CIQ have both said that they . In fact, CIQ claims their software: -Does not record your keystrokes.
-Does not provide tracking tools.
-Does not inspect or report on the content of your communications, such as the content of emails and SMSs.
-Does not provide real-time data reporting to any customer.
-Finally, we do not sell Carrier IQ data to third parties. Note the careful use of the words “record,” “provide,” “inspect,” and “report.” It’s obvious from this video that the application has to the information in question, and whether it records, provides, inspects, or reports it is simply a setting they can choose. The purposes for which CIQ says their software is installed — identifying trending problems in the fleet, for instance — don’t seem to me to require the level of access the software has granted itself. Add this to the fact that users are not informed at any step of the fact that their information is passing through “quality assurance” layer (sometimes before the user layer itself is aware of it), and their indignant denial begins to ring hollow. Furthermore, as many developers have pointed out, the mere presence of the software is detrimental. Removing the software has reportedly improved performance and battery life. Furthermore, secure handshake information over wifi is passed through the software unencrypted, something that has little to do with carrier quality assurance. And if that information is cached even temporarily, that’s a security risk. The presence and capabilities of this software, if it is indeed necessary, should be explained fully to users and the option given to safely opt out. As it is, Carrier IQ’s software appears to be overly invasive and potentially insecure. Hopefully Sprint will provide an adequate explanation soon; in the meantime, CIQ cannot be removed except by installing a custom ROM, so unless you’re prepared to do that, you’re out of luck. |
Review: The Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 Is Just Right | John Biggs | 2,011 | 11 | 29 |
The Galaxy Tab 8.9 is a nearly perfect size and weight and, thanks to a few user experience updates, it is an excellent vehicle for Android Honeycomb 3.2. In many cases the dreaded Android lag is gone and 8.9 screen size is, like the Baby Bear’s porridge, just right. The Galaxy Tab 8.9, announced earlier this month, is now available on AT&T’s LTE network. This model is part of a package that comes with a Galaxy S II – probably one of the best Android phones I’ve used yet – and requires a service plan. These are the first things to consider before looking deeper into this particular device. Purchasing considerations aside, how does this 1.5Ghz Qualcomm MSM8660 dual-core device perform? I’m happy to report that it runs quite admirably, hitting 9 hours of battery life on a single charge and acceptable performance on AT&T’s LTE and 4G networks.
The device has, as the name implies, an 8.9-inch screen and is amazingly thin and light. At 15.8 ounces it is one ounce heavier than the Kindle Fire and much lighter than the 22 oz iPad 2. The screen, a 1,280×800 pixel 16:9 PLS TFT LCD, is bright and the touchscreen responsive and this is probably the first Android tablet that felt “fluid” in terms of user experience and app speed. There is no removable storage and you get about 12GB available for your own media. It has a front 2-megapixel camera and a rear 3-megapixel camera with auto-focus. The shots, as expected, are not Ansel Adams quality but, in their own way, acceptable. There is a power button on the top left, audio controls next to that button, and a headphone jack. There is a small SIM card slot on the right top edge and two speakers on the bottom that offer slightly muffled audio, especially when the device is laid along its bottom edge (the part where the Samsung logo is embossed).
The device does everything acceptably well. Video playback is smooth and it supports 3GP, MP4, AVI, WMV, FLV, and MKV playback as well as your standard audio files. I gave it a quick Netflix playback test and got about 5 hours of straight streaming – two movies worth – before the battery was catastrophically low. On board playback sees about 8 hours although your milage may vary. As for the screen size, I quite like it. It’s thin, light, and the screen is bright and readable. It was fine outdoors, but it’s obviously not for outdoor use. It makes an excellent e-reader, as well, especially since it is lighter than many similarly-priced tablets. The TouchWiz UI adds little in the way of improvement to the standard Honeycomb experience but it does add a few simple tools that make the tablet easier to use. For example, there is a small arrow along the bottom edge that brings up a set of widgets like Calendar, Task Manager, and Calculator. These open as modal windows over the actual apps running in the background and allow for easier multi-tasking. In the end the 8.9 reminds me, in a good way, of the old single-purpose PMPs of yore. It does quite a bit right and not much wrong and is an interesting and useful bedside, travel, and couch-surfing companion.
First, this device is completely self-contained and does not support battery swapping or the addition of storage. Although you get a healthy 9 hours out of it. Another software problem I experienced was the failure for many Youtube video to load in the standalone app. The player would load a few seconds and then repeat. Other than that, there was little to disuade me from recommending this device, let alone reviewing it. You’re obviously going to be stuck with AT&T if you pick this up and you’re best served by living in a location with LTE access, but that’s the price you pay for progress. If this were the Wi-Fi only model I’d find even more to love. The 16GB, non-AT&T version costs and the .
I believe that there is such a thing as tablet fatigue and that it set in once the run up to the Motorola Xoom left everyone panting at CES last year. We don’t review a lot of Android tablets simply because we find many of them derivative at best. However, I believe that this device does its best to avoid the pitfall of fatigue. It is uniquely-sized, surprisingly responsive, and well-made. Purists will complain about the lack of removable storage and the overall pricing scheme because, if you’ll remember, this model comes bundled with a phone, the highly capable Galaxy S II. You’re obviously going to have to compare this device with the Gal Tab 10 (and any smaller member of the Gal Tab family) as well as the cavalcade of Android devices out there. However, in looking at many devices over the past few months – including tablets of various stripes, both Android and Win7, and some lesser devices in the low $100s – I find this one to be superior to most. I feel that this is a strong, capable device that, if you’re looking to upgrade on AT&T, obviously, can make for a usable and exciting tablet. [slideshow] |
Facebook Updates Events, Makes “Not Attending” Less Insulting | Josh Constine | 2,011 | 11 | 16 | Rather than have no-shows convince others that your party will suck, Facebook has modified its Event pages to hide people who explicitly decline invitations. You can still find out who couldn’t just be cordial and leave the invitation pending by drilling into the renamed “Going”, “Maybe” and “Invited” categories. Facebook’s goal is likely to get more people accurately responding to invitations by making them feel less rude for declining. Facebook also rolled out a few other refinements to Event pages tonight. If you do decline an invitation, you’ll be prompted to post why on the Event’s wall. This encourages the token invites people send to friends thousands of miles away. These token invites are viewed as needless distractions by some, though others think they are cute ways to remind people you’re thinking of them. If someone won’t stop spamming you with invites, you can now block them from sending you them straight from the decline step rather than having to visit your privacy settings. [ : Thanks to Facebook engineer for Events , who shared with us an official schematic outlining the changes. Seen below, the schematic notes that news feed stories about people attending or planning events are also now more concise.] If you tag a Place as the location of an Event, Facebook will display a Bing map with a quick link to directions. By rewarding organizers with a map for tagging Events to Places, Facebook can build its location database with where people gather. It will also provide exposure to its maps partner Bing, which Facebook presumably wants to help steal market share from Google Maps. Unfortunately, Facebook managed to mess up the most basic piece of Event functionality through the update. It’s now hard to tell whether you’re already set as attending or need to respond to an invite because the unclicked “Join” button (needlessly changed from “Attend”) is highlighted blue next to the gray Maybe and Decline buttons. This is absurd. Facebook may be trying to make it easy to find the most commonly pressed button on the page, but if all three buttons are unclicked, they should all be the same color. Facebook Events are basic, and that works well. They’ve become popular through simplicity, and are on the product is on its way to becoming a backbone of planning offline gatherings. The intentions behind the changes seem sound, but Facebook needs to make it obvious whether I’ve already said I’m attending your sad last minute birthday party. |
GE Opens New Software Center In The Bay Area | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 11 | 16 | GE is announcing the establishment of a new Global Software Center to be headquartered San Francisco. The new center will employ approximately 400 software developers. The company’s current software portfolio includes technologies that help businesses improve productivity and increase cost savings, specifically in terms of operating power plants, jet engines, electric vehicle charging stations, locomotives or medical systems. Design work on the new center is under way with construction of the space beginning
later this year. Employees will begin moving into the new center in mid-2012. In
addition to the San Ramon facility, GE has opened two other software operations over
the past two years, in Detroit and Richmond, VA. GE recently , a France-based provider of electrification and automation equipment and systems, for approximately $3.2 billion. |
Android Global: South Korea Second Only To U.S. In App Downloads | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 11 | 16 | Research firm in conjunction with Android expert and developer network this morning published a report that offers key findings from an analysis of mobile app trends in the Android Market. The first point is perhaps not so surprising: Although we think of Android as having significant global reach as a mobile operating system, the U.S. remains (by far) the largest market for Android apps. According to the study, with over 3.49 billion total downloads as of September 2011 and with 50 percent of Android app downloads (to date) originating at home, the U.S. is dominating the Android app market. However, the research firm is quick to point out that, although the U.S. leads, there is some saturation happening here, while other markets abroad have come to represent significant potential growth areas — and hotbeds of activity. In fact, (though this may not be news, it doesn’t seem to be widely covered in the U.S.), South Korea has the second largest market in terms of app downloads — even though it lags behind the U.S. with a small-ish 9 percent market share. In fact, to date, South Korea had the highest number of total app downloads after the U.S., at 603 million. South Korea has relatively high Android smartphone penetration and a high number of app downloads (per user). According to research2guidance Co-founder Markus Pohl, South Korea’s growing share is supported by the country’s extensive IT infrastructure, which not only is known for its high speed and extensive coverage, but also for being fairly inexpensive, around $0.45 per Mbs compared to $11 in the U.K., for example. (South Korea is also home to major OEMs, like Samsung.) South Korea is followed by the U.K., Germany, France, and Japan — all of which are currently tallying over 20 million downloads per month. And, what’s more, the study shows that users based in the largest Android markets are not always the most active app downloaders. User download behavior varies widely between markets, but it seems that potential “cash cow” markets are to be found in, perhaps, unexpected places. Sweden, for example, has a relatively low market share (and low smartphone penetration) compared to the rest of the world, but it has the highest average monthly app downloads per user — at a rate of over 5 apps per user per month. This is compared to the average user in major Android markets, which downloads 2 to 3 applications per month. Obviously, higher average downloads per user show the market’s rate of absorption and growth potential, as higher numbers can indicate the society’s openness towards new apps and the fact that total app downloads in these countries could increase with less marketing efforts compared to countries with less active users, Pohl said. On the other hand, Russia and China have very low Android smartphone penetration rates and very low app downloads per user. Granted, while a much lower rate of downloads per user might show that these markets aren’t yet ready for Android apps to really take off, the relatively young target market and their population size could have significant impact on app market development in these countries, and Pohl sees them becoming huge Android adopters in the near future. As to apps in the Android market seen as a whole, over the past few months, the report finds, the number of apps has grown “faster than ever”. Every week publishers are releasing 11,000 new apps to the market, compared to an average of 7,500 during the summer. At the end of October, for example, the number of total apps was 365,404 — a growth of over 40K total apps since . Of the total apps, the share of paid apps dropped to 32.4 percent, as “publishers are increasingly aware that Android users are unwilling to pay for downloads”, which is, in turn, catalyzing the adoption of in-app billing and advertising. Furthermore, in
October
,
developers
charged
an average of $3.06
for
paid
apps, and prices ranged from $0.99 to $14.87.
For more, check out . |
Now a Soap Opera, Heavily-Backed SOPA Copyright Bill Gets New Bipartisan and Popular Opposition | Eric Eldon | 2,011 | 11 | 16 | The “ ” (SOPA) had looked set for a quick and quiet passing through the House after it was introduced late last month. A string of Democrats and Republicans, and various big-media affiliated interest groups had lined up behind it, while the internet had mostly stayed on the sidelines. But a major outcry this week — and especially — could change that. The bill, which has been presented by its supporters as a bipartisan effort to punish “rogue” infringing sites, is now being questioned by members of both parties for the potential damage it could also do to innovation. That’s on top of a concerted effort by to communicate their opposition, via their own sites and an open letter to Congress yesterday (that’s as a full-page ad in The New York Times). Popular opposition has continued to mount, led by web services and various advocacy groups under the banner of . Among other efforts, to show what users might not be able to publish under SOPA, and and a range of publications put “stop censorship” banners across their logos. Among numerous other issues, SOPA and its Senate counterpart, the PROTECT IP Act, would allow copyright holders to easily obtain court orders to stop US payment and ad providers from doing business with foreign sites, force search engines to block links to allegedly infringing sites, and require domain service providers to block domains of allegedly infringing sites from being accessible. Be sure to check out and PROTECT IP for more details on why we and many (but ) other internet users are opposed. Six witnesses, mostly of the bill, spoke before the House Judiciary Committee today in a 3.5 hour session that ended up revealing confusion and disagreement among the committee members and their peers. Google, the lone witness fully opposing the bill, was characterized by chairman and bill sponsor Lamar Smith (R-Texas) and others as . But a top colleague, Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), responded to the hearing by shooting down the bipartisan consensus theme. “What [lawmakers are] realizing is there are so many unintended consequences that they can’t just use Google as a piñata and bash on it here,” he told . “I don’t believe this bill has any chance on the House floor. I think it’s way too extreme, it infringes on too many areas that our leadership will know is simply too dangerous to do in its current form.” Later in the day, he tweeted that he’s working on a separate plan designed to combat copyright infringement: https://twitter.com/#!/DarrellIssa/status/136943571407343616 That solution, as he had in a press conference Tuesday together with Representative Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), would be to create a complaint process for copyright infringement similar to the International Trade Commission’s patent infringement investigation system. More cracks also started to appear among the bill’s proponents. Rep. Dan Lungren, who heads the Homeland Security subcommittee on cybersecurity, that SOPA and PROTECT IP “undercut the real effort that would practically help us secure the Internet” through . DNSSEC provide a set of authentication extensions to the internet’s domain name system, so web sites can certify that they are who they say they are. According to security experts, the technology would be broken if SOPA required domain service providers to block domains. Smith’s to the issue was that “I’m not a technical expert on this,” followed by “I’m trying to ferret this out.” None of his panelists understood the issue either. It’s concerning that he hadn’t done this research before sponsoring the bill. |
Another Member Of The Twitter Comms Team Leaves. So What’s Going On At Twitter? | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 11 | 16 | Twitter Communication exec s departure from the company last week to many in the press who had the pleasure of dealing with him and the Twitter Communications Team. Garrett loved and presumably still loves Twitter, as anyone who follows him on there knows. That’s why I was doubly shocked when I heard the news this afternoon that new Twitter Communications Director had left the company. Fox, who I also follow on Twitter, had only been at Twitter for four months! So what’s going on? Well according to multiple sources, the of Marketing head Pam Kramer six weeks ago has resulted in Twitter’s basically replacing her as head of Marketing and amping up his influence within the company. (Yes he really does work at Twitter, now all I’ve got to do is confirm the 8 hours with Square). Dorsey stepping it up, coupled with heavy Operations hand has led to a conflict in many staff members eyes, “Which master do we follow?” And confusion. According to one source, this “Do I do what Dick says or do I do what Jack says?” dilemma has put extra special strain on the Twitter Communications team, which seemingly doesn’t know whose message they should be communicating. Others say that its Jack’s management approach that has led to the frustration among staff in all departments. Whether they’re on Team Dick or on Team Jack (or Team Biz and Ev), the fact remains that everyone is still rooting for Twitter to get past the growing pains of its adolescence and flourish in adulthood. Just think about it, how much has the thing improved life.? Google pro was brought on to the Communications team and is now interim head as they search for a replacement for Garrett and now Fox. In my humble opinion, the group of now eight is the best in-house tech PR team in the business — not a surprise when you consider the product they represent. |
Which Daily Deal Site Are You? This Flow Chart May Have The Answer. | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 11 | 16 | The daily deals space continues to morph with each passing month, and we all have our fingers crossed that it is indeed maturing. (Even though .) With few barriers to entry, everyone and their mother is launching a daily deals site these days. For example: Yipit releases a sometimes-monthly report on the movement and flux in the space, and this report collects data from more than 650 deals sites. Yep, over 650. Of course, the total number of deal sites fluctuates each month, as in July, for example, . (You can .) There’s also consolidation happening in the space, as the troubled BuyWithMe (which has been vying for the rank of third largest deals site with Gilt City, Travelzoo and Bloomspot) — and the company itself acquired its sixth company in September. Groupon continues to lead the space, with its recent IPO and current $15 billion market cap. Earlier this month, and deal map entering the space called “deel.io”, which was founded by former Google engineers and one of the early engineers at HarvardConnection (later known as ConnectU), which was founded by the Winklevosses and Divya Narendra in 2002. The young startup has since changed its name to , but its mission remains the same: Recognizing that the deals space has become chaotic, “almost to a point of annoyance”, they said, The Dealmix is trying to bring a bit of organization and simplicity to the wild and woolly deal market. In spite of the chaos, the founders think that daily deals still have significant inherent value, and they want everyone to get the most out of deals, so the team put together this infographic which seeks to answer the question, “what daily deals site are you?” They’ve included some of the space’s most recognizable players with an easy flow chart to help you discover the right site for you. Because we know that you NEED to know. Check it out below, and chime in with your suggestions. Excerpt image |
Swag Of The Month Raises $100K to Subscribe Men to Indie Fashion | Josh Constine | 2,011 | 11 | 16 | Swag. Short for “Swagger”, is what rappers and the youth of today call style. And now you can get it delivered to your door. is a new $9 subscription service that lets men receive t-shirts and other clothing items that match their preferences from independent fashion designers. Today it raised a $100,000 Angel round from Quattro Development to legitimize the previously bootstrapped business. Dressing cool is about to get easier. The subscription fashion model has taken off amongst women. has raised a baller $60 million from investors including Andressen Horowitz, Polaris, and Lightspeed. is rumored to have been valued at $150 million when it raised $23.5 million in June, and its site BeautyMint got 500,000 visitors its first day. The concept of disconnecting fashion from actually shopping is also gaining steam with men. in September for its high-end service where men pay retail prices for fancy $48 polo shirts picked out by Skyped-in fashion consultants. If low-end, long-tail men’s subscription fashion can become anywhere near as popular as these services, Swag Of The Month’s angels are going to feel pretty damn smart. The ShoeDazzle and BeachMint model doesn’t seem broken, so Swag Of The Month’s founders Erik Huberman and Austin Smith didn’t fix it. Subscribers fill out a style preference survey, pay the fee, and are guaranteed a cool piece of clothing in the mail each month. Shirt not as swag as you hoped? Return it for a different one. The service launched last month on pocket change and now has 300 paying customers. Retailers give Swag Of The Month their clothes for free as an alternative form of marketing. Huberman explains that getting your clothes worn is a much better strategy for a fledgling designer to gain exposure than buying ads for a label no one’s heard of. The supply of designers is plentiful around Swag Of The Month’s Santa Monica, LA office, and subscriber fees go towards shipping costs. I frequently talk to men who want to dress better but dread visiting stores, trying things on, and spending a lot. Swag Of The Month makes men look cool with none of the work and at a fraction of the price. I mean, seriously, you can’t get a cool t-shirt for $9 anywhere, and sometimes the service mails out jeans or winter wear at no extra cost. T-shirts are light, but Swag Of The Month will still have to streamline fulfillment eventually to boost margins. For now, the $100K will go towards day-to-day operations, marketing, web development, and designer partnerships. I’m a big believer that successful women’s lifestyle startups can be dumbed down and repurposed for men. For example, whittles Pinterest down to just a home page, and I think Swag Of The Month has much bigger potential. If it can keep the preference survey breezy, men won’t think twice about paying $9 a month to say, “This right here is my .” |
Genbook, The eScheduling Solution For SMBs, Passes 10 Million Appointments Scheduled | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 11 | 16 | It always annoys me when I want to make an appointment, whether it be for a haircut or a doctor’s visit, and I go online to make said appointment only to find that the company or provider doesn’t offer eBookings. You would think that, if airlines have managed to do it, most businesses might have followed suit by now. Online scheduling software enables customers to book appointments from their browser, reducing friction for them, and streamlining workflow for SMBs. And, hey, even Siri can schedule appointments. Of course, for SMBs, adding a scheduling option to their website can be a pain in the ass. Or, at least the prospect of building a calendar app/module can feel like a pain in the ass. Which is why there are companies like , which offer local merchants the ability to automate their appointment scheduling through cloud-based software that can integrate with SMBs’ existing software — or allow them to introduce that capability. Genbook’s solution adds a “BookNow” button to merchants’ websites and Facebook Pages, so that customers can scroll through available times, schedule and confirm their appointments with a few clicks. The online appointment and CRM platform is accessible from any computer, iPad or iPhone or Android smartphone, and for merchants, Genbook automatically collects and publishes customer reviews to help promote local merchants within their communities. And they’re genuine reviews, not just canned comments. While Genbook has competitors like , , and , each of which offers a similar service with varying limitations on how much functionality you’ll get for free (Genbook is free for 30 days, and then it’s $20 a month after that), the startup seems to be having some success. (Even though a lot of startups have opted for freemium plans to monetize, and I’d like to see Genbook do the same.) Today, Genbook is announcing that it has scheduled over 10 million appointments for SMBs in the U.S., and has scheduled more appointments in 2011 than in any of the four years it’s been around. Just in October, local businesses scheduled 500,000 appointments. The cloud scheduling platform has attracted 5,000 customers, which it says consists of businesses like massage therapists, spas, photographers, chiropractors, etc. — obviously any small company that requires appointments to do business. And for those SMBs, as one can imagine, this can have a positive effect on their bottom lines, as scheduling software that lets customers book in realtime, at any time of day, can prevent no-shows and reduce friction. What’s more, plugging that capability into a social network via Facebook Pages, for example, extends the reach and can presumably provide a boost to customer acquisition. And at less than $250 a year for solo operators and less than $500/year for SMBs, it’s not a bad deal. For more on Genbook, check out the video below: http://youtu.be/i9M4R1697Fo |
Don’t Be Too Disappointed By Google Music’s Lackluster Debut | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 11 | 16 | The web is less than enthused by Google Music, which made its today with the usual fanfare. The criticism is withering in its somewhat entitled way: “Where’s the Spotify killer?” “Rdio already does this!” “So it’s basically iTunes match?” There are two things the critics decline to acknowledge: that Google is providing a simple, free service, and that all Google products start out underwhelming and gradually expand. Android was a mess when it showed up. And it’s still a mess — a mess blowing up to the tune of half a million devices a day. We all know Google doesn’t ship complete products. So why do we waste our breath in day-one aspersion or praise when it’s going to be a new Google Music down the line? Exceptions abound, of course, but it’s flashy stuff like Wave that can’t really advance past its initial form and ends up getting rolled up. Music looks like it was put together in a month or two, and then Google spent the next year or so in meetings with music execs to get access to their content. Google Music is more like GMail: it’s what you’ve already got, except it’s on their servers and you can access it anywhere. Webmail already existed at the time they came out with it, and GMail was competitive but hardly a quantum leap. And here’s Music: a locker for the MP3s you have, a simple interface, and a store with more or less the same selection and pricing as everyone else. The thing is that iTunes, which grabbed the industry by the short hairs nearly a decade ago and has never let go, hasn’t really changed in all that time. I mean really, what’s different? The biggest change and perhaps the most important thing about it now is that it’s the go-between for iPhones and iPads. But it’s not like Genius and Ping have entered the zeitgeist, and as I wrote a long while back, the bloat of the program, when many simply want to play music, is out of hand. iCloud is nice, but as long as we’re talking about not doing new things, iCloud is Apple playing catch-up to Google and others. The real competition is the next generation of music players, namely Spotify, Rdio, and the various minor players. Do you really think Google doesn’t have a plan for this — Google, which helped popularize cloud-based media in the first place from the beginning? I’m guessing it was in the negotiations but the labels didn’t like Google’s ideas for monetization. Google likes to give things away for free and let you pay by other means, usually ads. Does EMI really need another Pandora hanging around their neck? And last but not least, there’s the Google “hang around” strategy, which is being implemented on practically every Google platform. Like Google+, which, whether you like it or not, you’re pretty much already on. Same with Music: you might not find it compelling today, but it’s there, it’s free, and you’re going to keep seeing it. And it’s going to keep getting better. The quotation comes to mind: “If you sit by the river long enough, the bodies of your enemies will float by.” Of course, in tech, there are always enemies waiting downstream for body to float by. Two things, though, could kill it in the future. I’m worried that the increasing self-integration of pay services may attract the attention of antitrust-type investigation, something Google is always in the middle of. If they can’t use Search to point users towards their music service, that’s a major loss. The lack of a subscription-based or free streaming plan could also sink the ship. Google is trying to think of a way to give it all away for free. Unfortunately, they’re not giving away user-submitted content like on YouTube, so it’s not just a matter of logistics (Google loves logistics). Like Google TV, they may find themselves isolated from the content people want, and a simple music locker, while useful to some, isn’t going to pull in a lot of money or users. Essentially all I’m saying is that Google views everything as a “slow and steady wins the race” type situation. When it tries to sprint ahead, it finds itself without peers, and lacking inspiration and things to improve on, these ambitious projects expire. But Google Music is far from ambitious. It’s a simple, familiar service with a nice little bit of bait to draw in the crowds. Who doesn’t want to back up their music on a free service, in case they decide they don’t like Apple or Spotify any more? Judging Google products on day one is a bad move whether you praise or criticize. We all know how bad Google is at providing complete products. I don’t know why they even have these events. Your best move, if the backup thing isn’t up your alley, is to revisit the service in six months and compare how far it’s moved with how far the competition has moved. And hey, it’s . That’s something, right? |
Verizon Welcomes Users To The Opt-Out, Ad-Targeting Party | Josh Constine | 2,011 | 11 | 16 | Verizon Wireless finally got around to sending a to customers informing them that everything they do on their phones is now used to target them with ads. Policy changes implemented last month allow it to employ browsing history, search terms, location, app and feature usage, and demographic information it buys from other companies to power targeting. At least Verizon didn’t title its privacy demolition notice “Greater Choice” like Google did this week. Users can opt out by phone or Verizon’s website. Still, I see an alarming trend developing. Major digital service providers are implementing opt out data grabs, and their peers figure, “Why can’t we be evil too? Worst case is the government stops us all.” In just the last two days was discovered, Facebook revealed it tracks 90 days of users web browsing with cookies, and with its complicated “nomap” location cataloguing opt out. Mobile device makers and web services giant are taking an “EFAP (easier to ask for forgiveness than permission) approach. If regulation eventually comes down, they’re going to make sure they get as much data as they can first. This provides little incentive for other companies not to follow suit. Verizon definitely scores points for titling the email “Important notice about how Verizon Wireless uses information”. Also, for laying out a clear grid of what data it’s using and how, shown below. were added to its privacy policy a month ago, so even users who follow the email’s opt out instructions may have already given up data. Most people only get automated billing notice emails from their wireless provider, so this will probably be ignored or overlooked by the majority of Verizon’s users. The privacy fun doesn’t stop with ad targeting, either. Verizon can use all the data to generate business and marketing reports of anonymized data for itself as well as other companies. |
Has Credo Ventures lost its focus? $3 million of Czech money goes to UK-based Intellitix | cloudbrows | 2,011 | 11 | 16 | When I caught up with , the partner of Prague-based early stage fund at Startup Week Vienna last month, he told me that they have just closed an exciting deal (which details he was not prepared to disclose until today). So today, Credo’s press release hit my mailbox and I read in astonishment, that they have spent $3 million on , which looks like a late stage RFID-based event management solutions company from the UK. Having googled “RFID event management” I have got over 1.7 million results. “Has Credo Ventures lost its focus?” I wondered, dialing Bartos’ mobile. He assured me from somewhere in London, that, no, absolutely not. So here is what the new investment is about. Innovation comes in different shapes or forms. RFID technology has been commercially deployed for over a decade. In Swiss Alps RFID-enabled ski passes are used to let the skiers through the check points quicker. Yet, in major outdoor events such as music festivals, paper tickets are still routinely issued and then exchanged to colorful wrist bands. Queues ensue. So Intellitix solutions resolve the festival problems by installing RFID readers, close loop wireless networks and payment terminals, as well as providing order fulfillment services to deliver wrist bands to the attendees prior to the event. But the wrist bands are used not only to get through the gates. Here comes the really nice part. Concert goers can also purchase beverages with a swipe of a wrist(band). If paying is so easy, perhaps they spend more than they should. Cunningly, Intellitix business model includes profit sharing. Profit from selling booze without a liquor license: now, that’s what I call an innovative business model (and “freemium” seems so yesterday). I wanted to speak to the industry people before going ahead with this post, but unfortunately the organizers of were not available for a comment at a short notice, and their PR people did not have insights into the festival’s operations. If I get news, I will update the post later. Intellitix’ founder Serge Grimaux is actually based in Czech Republic, so this is where the link to Central and Eastern Europe comes from. French by birth, Grimaux has established computerized ticketing company Ticketpro in CEE and then took it to four different continents. Now he is innovating the industry with RFID. Miss the festival atmosphere already? Remember the queues? Here is how Intellitix deals with them. I still feel that Credo Ventures made an investment which is outside of its self-imposed early stage focus. According to Bartos, Intellitix was profitable in the year one (the company was founded in 2010) but will now start spending more than it earns to enter new markets. This is what I would call “expansion capital”. But hey, business is business, and this is Credo’s first fund so it must perform. And finally, what about all those mobile phone ticketing apps? Take Croatian , for example, which is simplifying the logistics of delivering the tickets by making them available on a mobile phone? Bartos does not believe that such apps solve the flow problem yet, but when the smart phones with NFC chips become more widespread, it would only be logical to replace the wrist bands with it. Perhaps the founder of angel-funded Entrio , whom Bartos and I met during the Credo Week stop in Zagreb this year, should have a chat with Grimaux. Prague is not that far away. |
null | Chris Velazco | 2,011 | 11 | 29 | null |
Keen On… Microsoft: The Supreme Decathlete (TCTV) | Andrew Keen | 2,011 | 11 | 16 | Roger McNamee might that we are in the midst of the revolution, but according to Microsoft Chief Strategy and Research Officer the race to become the dominant technology company of the digital age hasn’t really even begun yet. Mundie, whom I interviewed yesterday in Tucson, Arizona at , believes that the last ten years have actually been a prelude to a technological contest that is still in its warm-up stage. And, of course, Mundie believes that Microsoft is the odds-on favorite to win this race once it actually gets going. “It’s a decathlon”, Mundie described today’s grand contest to make computers into sensory machines that mirror our speech and our sight. And given Microsoft’s undoubted strength right across the technological board – from PC’s to tablets to cloud servers to software services to cars – Mundie says, his company is the only one positioned to be able to compete in every sphere of what he calls this “profound revolution.” The winner of the Olympic decathlon is often called “the world’s greatest athlete”. Whatever else one might say about Mundie and Microsoft, you can’t fault their ambition. But is Mundie – who, after Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates, is as influential as anyone at Microsoft – correct? Could the old war horse from Redmond still surprise the world by retaining/regaining its title as the world’s greatest technology company? |
In Time For The Holidays, Etsy On Your iPhone | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 11 | 16 | Hipster shoppers, rejoice. You can do all your holiday shopping for those one-of-a-kind crafts on your iPhone, or any phone with a proper browser for that matter. Etsy just launched its , along with a new mobile website. You can browse everything from arty crochet, knitting, and quilts to handmade children’s clothes and jewlery. Just like on the regular handcrafted marketplace. Both the iPhone app and the mobile site feature large photos of the items to make visual browsing easy. You can search by tags, or regular keyword, or browse by category. The app has some well-thought out social sharing features also. Any item can be shared via Twitter, Facebook, email, or SMS. The app encourages you to sign in with your Etsy ID so that you can favorite items and add them to your cart. And of course, you can shop straight from your phone. The search is actually really deep for a mobile app. If you search for “hats” for instance, you just keep getting an infinite scroll of new hats (mostly knit hats, for some reason). Then you can filter the search by location (buy local!), price, relevance, or recency. Etsy sellers can also use the app to manage their shops, see what items are selling, get alerts, and even make minor updates. Yup, mobile commerce is going to be . |
As Google Music’s First Carrier Partner, T-Mobile Lets You Charge Tunes To Your Monthly Bill | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 11 | 16 | We’d been wondering why T-Mobile was lurking about at , and we’ve finally cleared things up: T-Mobile will be Google Music’s first carrier partner, allowing their subscribers to charge their track purchases directly to their monthly bill. This isn’t the first time T-Mobile has been quick to have Google’s back; the world’s first Android phone, the G1, launched exclusively on T-Mobile’s shelves months before anyone else had an Android handset of their own. They were also the first US carrier to support carrier billing for purchases made through the Android Market — an integration which today’s move obviously builds upon. T-Mobile also claims that they’ll have a fair amount of Google Music content available exclusively for their subscribers — but outside of some free tracks from Drake and Maroon 5, they didn’t make many suggestions on what that might be. Don’t worry, though, non-T-Mo folks: you probably won’t be missing out on anything too crucial. |
Chevy Volt To Get Low Emissions Perks In California | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 11 | 16 | Many in motoring are looking forward to an all-electric future, but as long as we’re burning fuel we’ll need to keep incentivizing low emissions. In California, a limited number of low-emissions vehicles are given stickers that let them travel in the HOV lanes, which residents know is a hell of a perk. Now Volt owners can get in on that action. Chevrolet is for the 2012 model (which we’ll be testing soon), making owners eligible to apply for one of the stickers. The new Volt has a modified catalytic converter that helps reduce the tailpipe emissions, and of course it goes for around 35 miles without producing any emissions at all. So it’s a fairly clean little car. This also makes the Volt eligible for a $1500 California clean vehicles tax credit. On top of the $7500 federal credit that takes a lot of the bite out of its sticker price, though that could certainly be lower as well. |
Google Music Opens For Everyone In The US, Features Full-Song Sharing To Google+ | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 11 | 16 | Today at its ‘ ‘ special event, Google just announced that Google Music — which launched over the summer in a private, invite-only beta — is open to everyone. The service allows you to upload your music library and stream it to all of your other devices. And while Google had initially stated this would be a premium service after the Beta ended, it has some good news: it’s going to continue free of charge. You can upload and store up to 20,000 of your songs without having to pay anything. Google is also fixing Music’s biggest issue: you’ll now be able to purchase music via Android Market, which will let you purchase ‘millions’ of songs. Users can listen to 90 second previews before they buy. There’s also some deep (and siginficant) Google+ integration: buy a song, and you’ll have the option to share that song to Google+ — and your friends will be able to listen to the entire song without having to leave their Google+ stream. They won’t have to buy anything and they won’t need to sign into a different account. This is big. : I just shared my first song to Google+ using this feature, and there’s one catch Google didn’t mention: only people who are in your Circles can listen to the full track — if someone has Circled you (i.e., they’re following you), but you haven’t Circled them back, then they’ll only get a sample of the song. Google Music’s new features are available immediately via , and updated Android apps will be released in the next few days. The labels who are on board: Universal, EMI, Sony Music (the holdout from the ‘big 4’ is Warner). Also includes numerous indy labels, ioda, The Orchard, and others. To help get people to check out Google Music, Google has secured exclusive music from major artists, including some free tracks. Among the bands offering exclusives: The Rolling Stones, Coldplay, Busta Rhymes, Shakira, Pearl Jam, Dave Matthews Band. The Stones will be releasing 6 live concert albums, which haven’t been released before.They’re launching one concert album initially, and will release the five others over 2012. Busta Rhymes will be debuting his new album exclusively on Google Music. |
Live From Google’s Special “These Go To 11” Music Event | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 11 | 16 | [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/v/DLPFI5YsIks] We’re here at Mr.Brainwash’s Studios in Los Angeles, waiting for a Google to start at 2pm PST, where the company is most likely going to announce the Google Music store, because that’s what is saying. We’ll be live blogging the announcement here at 2pm but you can also watch it on the UStream above. The event is definitely music-related. We’ve been given notebooks that say “Google Music” on them and the music in here is really really LOUD. Also the walls are covered with painting of artists like Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix. We’ve been told to take our seats. It doesn’t look like that many people are here. And the event still hasn’t started. I’m a huge fan of Danny Sullivan’s joke about how it was delayed due to SOPA. Okay it’s started, and they played a video of a turntable switching disks to introduce Google’s Jamie Rosenberg. Rosenberg begins talking about the Google Music beta, and the experience of its million users. Google distributed more than 100 million songs with the beta. — Rosenberg says that Google has activated 200 million Android devices and that Google Music is now open to everyone in the US. Google Music is now officially available at music.google.com. It will be free and allow you to stream over 20,00o songs. The tagline is “Turns music lovers into music promotors.” Once a song is available on Google Music, it’s available across the web and on all your mobile devices. The app is integrated with the Android Market, like we reported, and you can buy songs directly from the new Music section. The Music homepage will feature “Staff Pics” and “Promotions.” Every artist’s page will feature recommendations and the app has social integration with Google+. Shares to Google+ will include one free play for a user’s friends. Every day Google will feature a free song of the day in the Android Market. We’re being shown a Coldplay video as an example of exclusive content available on the Android Market. The music store is sorted by artist, song, and album, with artist bios and images on each page. So Google has just announced aGoogle music store, a new version of the music market, an updated version of the web players and new Android and iOS apps. Google is announcing exclusive partnerships with The Rolling Stones, who will put six concerts online as well as Coldplay and Busta Rhymes, who is actually at the event. Universal, Sony EMI, Merlin Records and independent record labels have been announced; Over a thousand labels participating and eight million tracks live today. Execs from Universal, Sony EMI and Merlin are on the stage, “We are very excited about the global roll out of the platform via Android devices.” Google Music will also be launching with exclusive content from artists, The Rolling Stones, Busta Rhymes and Coldplay. Google is now describing Artists pages (called Hubs) at music.google.com/artists, which artists can set up for $25. Artists will be able to sell songs on YouTube against their music videos. Google talks about how artists like DJ Tiesto are already using the Artist Hubs. T-Mobile is here because T-Mobile customers will be able to pay for Google Music directly through their phone bill. T-Mobile guy is talking about their 4G network, saying that mobile audio makes up 15% of the data on their network. T-Mobile guy is talking about exclusive content deals with again Busta Rhymes and Maroon Five. “Exclusive” keeps getting brought up over and over again. “Music you won’t find anywhere else” is seems to be Google’s competitive advantage here. The talk ends with “Google Music is open for business.” |
Thar’s Money In That Long-Form Non-Fiction: Longreads Founder Headed To Read It Later | John Biggs | 2,011 | 11 | 16 | Mark Armstrong founded his site, , in 2009. Using , the site simply aggregated user’s picks for the best long-form non-fiction on the web, offering a poor man’s content curation engine. Now, two years and thousands of stories later, Armstrong will be joining Nate Weiner’s as editorial director, where he will collect and curate content for that app’s users. “Over the past two years with Longreads, I’ve learned so much about the importance of ‘time-shifting’ in helping make long-form content more accessible to more readers on the web. Read It Later now has nearly 4 million registered users, and I think there’s an incredible opportunity for publishers, curators and creators to use the platform in new and valuable ways. That will be my focus,” he said. “We’re in a golden age of storytelling right now on the web, and I think Read It Later is in a perfect position to support that work, across all major platforms. We’re excited about what’s next.” Mark (pictured) was the former director of content at . He noted that while this is a paid position with the company, he will continue running Longreads, supporting it through reader donations and subscriptions. funding round in July, including investments from Foundation Capital, Baseline Ventures, Google Ventures, and Founder Collective. The service has just under 4 million registered users and over for offline reading. The Android and iOS apps see about 10,000 downloads per day. Mark and I started talking shortly after he launched Longreads. We would routinely have conversations about the space and our views on where it was headed. We never had an agenda or were working together at the time, but just enjoyed the thoughtful discussion. He just got it,” said Weiner. “So this year, after I raised and grew from , Mark and I talked again and realized it was the perfect time to bring him on board. Mark is now helping forge new paths with publishers, writers, and developers who are interested in changing the way people consume articles, videos, and content online and off.” Luckily, even with all his responsibilities, Armstrong will still have a moment to peruse some long-form non-fiction. “Longreads is continuing as it always has: It’s an independent four-person company, and my role with Read It Later will allow Longreads to expand and improve our service to the community. Read It Later has been a huge supporter of Longreads since the very beginning, and what we do is very complementary. Also, in case anyone’s wondering, I’ve always operated Longreads alongside other content strategy work — so, yes, I’ll still have plenty of time to read,” he said. |
WeedMaps Acquires Marijuana.com For A Kushy $4.20 Million | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 11 | 28 | Yes, really. General Cannabis Inc. has just announced that it’s acquired . The company didn’t disclose the details of the deal, but we’ve confirmed that the acquisition price was $4.20 million. Naturally. The executives involved obviously have a sense of humor, but General Cannabis is a serious business: it’s traded on the OTCQX market, and a year ago , a popular ‘ ‘ site with a large following. WeedMaps was a month in revenues at the time of the acquisition and it’s growing nicely — the site did over $1 million in gross revenues in July, and now sees 10 million page views a month. The acquisition includes both the valuable Marijuana.com domain name and the existing site/content, which currently consists of a bulletin forum that centers on cannabis discussion and generates 3.5 million page views per month. WeedMaps Media, which is a subsidiary of General Cannabis, will be ‘bridging’ its membership database with the forum’s, allowing WeedMaps users to log into Marijuana.com with their existing accounts. The company says that it will also be expanding the amount of content and functionality available. The domain and site will be transfered early in 2012. It’s obviously a pricey acquisition, but one that will likely pay dividends. Marijuana.com is much easier to remember than General Cannabis or WeedMaps.com, and the company is positioning itself as the go-to place for information that’s relevant to cannabis users. |
I. Me. You. | Eric Eldon | 2,011 | 11 | 16 | Six years ago, me and my cofounder were sleeping on mildewy mattresses in a cold Mountain View garage, trying to start a company on a shoestring budget. Five years ago, , our online group writing service, made it into Y Combinator’s . Four years ago, we failed and I stumbled into at . Two years ago, I became of . Six months ago, we . I’m starting at TechCrunch today not just as a blogger-journalist, but as someone who’s been an entrepreneur. I can relate to your failures and successes because I’ve had my own. I’m here now to help continue the traditions that have made this site a destination for me since 2005: offering a forum for frank conversations about tech, and a platform for startups. Why? Because I believe that innovation is what’s going to help this world become a better place, I believe that Silicon Valley is (at its best) in the middle of making this happen, and I believe that meaningful coverage can help everyone get better. Okay, enough with the “I, me, Hello World” stuff, it’s time to write about you. Get in touch: eldon (at) techcrunch (dot) com. |
Flavors.me Heads Into Tumblr Territory With “Follow” Buttons & Plans To Support Content Creation | Sarah Perez | 2,011 | 11 | 28 | , the dead-simple service for building your own personal profile page, is launching a major redesign on Tuesday, with features that position it to take on the blogging juggernaut that is . Among a number of improvements to the service’s tools, user interface and design, the most notable new addition is that of a “follow” button which will now appear on every Flavors.me profile page. This button lets you follow the posts from other Flavors.me users, which includes their aggregated updates from around the social Web, such Twitter posts, Facebook status updates, blog posts, Instagram photos and Foursquare check-ins. But more importantly, the “follow” button is laying the groundwork for Flavors.me’s next move: support for content creation. According to Flavors.me CEO Jonathan Marcus, content creation is “a big next step” for the company. Currently, the service acts as a tool that helps users aggregate their postings from around the Web, by generating a personal profile page that lets them introduce themselves via a brief bio and a set of links. When you click on the links, the content – a post, a photo, a check-in, a song, etc. – displays directly on the Flavors.me page. The service does not, however, lend itself to original content creation as of yet. Instead, Flavors.me is generally regarded only as the smaller competitor to the About.me already has a of sorts and “star” button that lets you save your favorite user profiles. These are similar to the features that Flavors.me is now adding. But where AOL is working on deeper About.me integration into AOL properties like , Flavors.me wants to expand into more of a personal publishing platform. “We started out with the Flavors.me profile, then added the streams,” explains Marcus, referring to the new social features, “so the next step is to create content on Flavors.me itself.” That content wouldn’t necessarily have to be a blog post, he says. It could also be static content, like your resume, for example. Users will also be able to favorite and reblog others’ posts further down the road. While these additions haven’t yet gone live, Marcus notes that heading down this path isn’t a strategic shift for the company. “Social has always been the bigger vision,” he says. With these upgrades, the first of which are rolling out now, “people will have a reason to come back and engage with Flavors.me on a daily basis.” In terms of what’s coming with Tuesday’s upgrade, Flavors.me is rolling out a number of improvements, including a fullscreen lightbox option for viewing photos and videos, slideshow support, several new visualization options for content (e.g., column options that range from 1 to 6), the ability to pull in your photos, not just the latest, an expanded selection of fonts (now over 200), new layout options and more. In total, the company has added 25 or so of the top feature requests from its users in this upgrade, including much-needed mobile support. Given that 10% of Flavors.me users arrive via mobile, that alone was an important addition. As far as the “follow” option goes, the support has been thoughtfully designed. It’s not an all-or-nothing toggle switch delivering a firehose of updates or nothing at all. Instead, you can choose to follow select services from select users through a variety of easy-to-access filtering options that let you turn off updates from certain noisy individuals or services. That way, you can turn off someone’s Twitter updates, for example, while still enjoying their Instagram shares. And you don’t need to be a member of any service to view the posts. There aren’t too many new services available in the upgrade, just Songkick and sister property , but Marcus says Google+ support is only a few weeks out. For the Pinterest, however, they’re still waiting on the API. Altogether, Flavors.me now supports more than 30 services. Flavors.me has 750,000 users, 6% to 7% of which have upgraded to the premium (paid) version which offers an unlimited number of services, analytics and the ability to completely remove the Flavors.me branding. The company is owned and operated by , which closed $3 Million+ in funding in September led by Alex Zubillaga of Len Blavatnik’s Access Industries. Additional angel investors include Dave Morin of Path, David Tisch of TechStars, Vimeo founder Jake Lodwick, Joey Levin of Mindspark, and John Foley of Barnes & Noble. Current Flavors.me users won’t need to do anything to upgrade to the new version, the update will roll out automatically. |
Shortmail Gets An iPhone App | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 11 | 16 | Hate long e-mails? Love Shortmail, the Twitter-esque e-mail service that caps all messages at 500 characters? Good news: they’ve just launched an iPhone App. For those just now hearing about the service for the first time, Shortmail is an effort to make e-mail “concise, readable and conversational.” You sign into Shortmail with your Twitter account, and get an @shortmail.com address with a matching handle. If I signed in with my , for example, I would be grg@shortmail.com (Note: I’ve never signed in with that handle, so that address won’t work. Don’t e-mail me there.) You can then correspond with any other e-mail address in the world, with one twist: anything coming in or going out must be less than 500 characters. Shortmail’s iOS app looks much more like an instant messaging client than an e-mail reader — which makes sense, given their focus on conversations. It’s light, it’s easy, and it be enough to make me hate e-mail less. With that said, I’m still not entirely convinced that Shortmail is the answer to all my woes. In the 20 minutes it’s taken me to write this post, I’ve received 8 new messages. None of them are “spam” in the classic sense (that is, they’re not trying to sell me pills and/or accessories for my man bits), but of the 8 there’s just 1 that I actually need and will read past the subject line. My problem with e-mail isn’t length — it’s quantity. (Plus, I’ve got to mention: their page explaining why the 500 character limit is so great comes in at just under 7,000 characters) You can find the free Shortmail app in the |
Freelance Writing Marketplace Scripted Signs For $700K | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 11 | 28 | Writer marketplace is announcing $700K in seed funding today, from , Shopzilla CIO Jody Mulkey and Douglas Feirstein. Starting out as an offshoot of y Scripped, Scripted pays writers a flat rate to create blog posts, articles, copywriting and tweets for various small business clients. The company, which says it vets writers according to wants and needs of its clients, provides a thousand posts a month for customers like Mailchimp and Levi’s. Having amassed a grand community of writers from its days as primarily a screenwriting resource, the startup now boasts a writing userbase of 80K and claims that 80% of those writers are US based. It adds a new writer to its userbase every 25 minutes, it says. Scripped plans on using the cash to focus on customer growth, both on the writing and client side. |
The Promise Of The 15-Inch MacBook Air | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 11 | 28 | In my home office sits a 27-inch iMac with a secondary 24-inch LED Cinema Display attached to it. It’s a glorious vision of screen real estate. And yet, I dread using it. First world problem? It’s perhaps the definition of the term. But it’s true. I’m sitting here on a couch adjacent to my desk because I’d rather type this post on my MacBook Air. To be completely honest, . But I must admit, it doesn’t come anywhere close to cutting it when it comes to typing more than a few dozen words. So for now, the MacBook Air exists as in my eyes. And it appears that those eyes are about to widen a bit. The rumors which started as a trickle have now become . Apple appears to be gearing up to release a new 15-inch model in their thin laptop line. As of right now, the current MacBook Air models end at 13 inches. For many people, that doesn’t seem to be enough. Earlier today, I posted about a possible 15-inch MacBook Air. Most of the responses were along the lines of “WANT!!!”. But why? It’s not like the difference between 13 and 15 inches will be that dramatic. Instead, I believe it’s related to . Whereas a decade ago, big, bulky desktops (towers, even) were the norm, today’s computing world is increasingly mobile. And it’s more than that. Computing is quickly moving in the direction of the machines themselves disappearing into the background, as on GigaOM. It was a little over a year ago that I realized I would be ready to buy something like a MacBook Air. I noticed that I had in my MacBook Pro, it was just a giant waste of space and unwelcome bulk. My sense was right. I immediately and haven’t looked back since. But others have been hesitant to do so. Some worry about having less storage. Others worry about less potential RAM upgrades. Even more seem to worry about using a smaller screen. Of course, that argument is already more complicated than it may seem because the 13-inch MacBook Air and the 15-inch MacBook Pro actually offer the exact same screen resolutions (1440 x 900). Still, we’re in this weird transition moment where the previous era of expanding screen sizes is running headfirst into the era of shrinking computers. Many likely view a 15-inch MacBook Air as a perfect compromise between the two worlds. It represents as many as 1920 x 1200 pixels (guesstimate based on the resolution of the 17-inch MacBook Pro — but might it be even more?) floating in your lap. Sure, there’s a computer attached to it, but it’s so light that you’ll barely notice it. Remember when laptops were humongous? I recall having a 15.4-inch Dell that weighed just shy of 10 pounds and doubled as a thigh cooker. The battery lasted 2 hours if I turned the brightness down all the way and prayed. A 15-inch MacBook Air would probably be no more than 3.5 pounds — or a full two pounds lighter than a 15-inch MacBook Pro. The battery may last 9 hours. Such a machine represents the opposite of being chained to a desk. You can take it anywhere for an extended period of time and still feel like you have a fully operation personal computer at your disposal. You don’t even think about it being a computer at that point, it’s just a big screen with a keyboard that gives you all the same abilities as that big, bulky machine on your desk. It will lack multi-touch, but that’s clearly next. The iPad 3’s 2048 × 1536 resolution display should only drive that point home. While the Apple may have kicked this transition into high gear, they’re hardly alone. When netbooks were surging in popularity, everyone focused on the price. But just as important was the portability factor. But the reality was the netbooks did not turn out to be worthy traditional computer replacements — MacBook Airs are. That’s why this year at CES, the PC industry is poised for a do-over with the “ ” — a name that sounds as if it was dreamt up by a completely unimaginative 12 year old. The vast majority of those will probably fail, but the idea is the right one. Push forward into computing’s future by removing the computer as much as possible. That’s also the promise of the 15-inch MacBook Air. |
Why Greedy Stockholders and A $100 Billion IPO Could Hurt Facebook | Josh Constine | 2,011 | 11 | 28 | Facebook will IPO in April or June 2012, with our prediction and when it would need to start filing public financial reports, according the the . The outlet’s sources say Facebook could raise $10 billion at a $100 billon valuation, and hasn’t chosen which banks to go with yet. But is this the right move? To date, Facebook has been conservative with monetization and progressive with product development. It minimizes ad real-estate in favor of maintaining a healthy user experience for the long term, and pushes products people might not warm up to for years. But outside stockholders could detract from Facebook’s vision and momentum. They could push for faster returns, and pressure the company to display more ads, turn mobile into a direct revenue stream, and play it safe with product. This might produce short-term gains, but could hamper what CEO Mark Zuckerberg has built into a core communications utility for the world. Most people don’t get just how long-term Facebook is thinking. Many of its product decisions cause public unrest because Facebook is planning for 3, 5 or 10 years from now, even if that means making people uncomfortable today. Users weren’t ready for the news feed when it launched, now it’s beloved. Frictionless sharing and Sponsored Stories could be seen as scary re-appropriations of user actions, but social ads and publishing our offline and off-site activity are where the future is headed. Facebook may be going public not to comply with the 500-shareholder rule. It could move to file public financial reports instead. The IPO may actually be designed to . But that stock could fall into the hands of those who don’t have the service’s long-term success in mind. Even just 10% outside control could add a lens of “what will this do to the stock price?” to every decision. Stockholders could hinder Facebook’s forward-thinking, fail-fast culture. They’re not locked in. They can push for immediate monetization, then cash out. They could ask for banner ads, larger sidebar ads, or worse, ads within the news feed. They won’t be keen on Facebook’s ad-less mobile site or apps, because they don’t care about 5 years from now when Facebook is primarily accessed on the go. In addition to aggressively advancing monetization, stockholders could rail against the product’s evolution. Changes that disrupt user behavior and ask people to be more open might cause temporary stock price dips they don’t want. Instead, they could turn Facebook into Microsoft, slowing innovation and making it vulnerable to more agile competitors. Zuckerberg has been careful to retain power by keeping control of an . He’ll need to do the same to safeguard the company’s steering wheel from stockholders. That could be as simple as a company-wide edict to ignore the stockprice and stockholders, or making sure more stock doesn’t drain from the company. But while Facebook still internally debates the exact IPO date, it should be conscious of the threat of stockholders and plan how to minimize their impact. If Facebook continues to innovate, buy up great talent, focus on the user experience, and leverage its network effect, it has the potential to become much more valuable than $100 billion down the road. Great leadership from people who truly believe in the company’s mission to make the world more open and connected first and profit second have made Facebook the backbone of online identity. But the biggest challenge may not come from Twitter, Google+, or government intervention. It could come from those with greed but without vision. |
Fashioning Change Launches Netflix-Style Recommendation Engine For Green Shopping | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 11 | 28 | Here’s one for all you do-gooder Cyber Monday shoppers out there. “Doing good” and online shopping have traditionally been at odds. You know what your favorite brands are, where to find them online, and maybe you occasionally find yourself wanting to patronize the green, “ethical” equivalent of your favorite brands. Problem is, you have no idea where to find them, and you probably don’t care much. Plus, search results don’t give you the price points or styles you want. Well, is developing a solution to this very problem. The San Diego-based startup is building a recommendation engine that takes information based on the big, well-known brands you love and introduces you to the “do-gooder” or “green” alternative. Today, that recommendation takes the form of a public marketplace (in beta) and a private beta browser add-on, which will be launching in early 2012. (But we have 100 free invites to test the add-on below.) As to how it works? Fashioning Change lets shoppers select name brands, or filter based on certain products, at which point the recommendation engine serves eco-friendly and ethical alternatives, based on price point and style. The site also features a product called “Wear This, Not That”, which juxtaposes a name brand with a “green” brand, so that users can directly compare the look and price of the product, as well as compare the practices used by each company to manufacture the product. Each of these comparisons are interactive, as customers are able to view pictures of the products and make purchases directly from the pages, as well as embed the looks on their own site. For “eco-friendly” brands, Fashioning Change wants to be a platform that creates brand awareness by way of association and comparison, as well as providing details behind what makes their practices more eco-friendly and ethical than a comparable product or name brand. And, as the startup grows, it hopes to provide these brands with a global market through which they can acquire new customers and reach shoppers that are looking for an alternative to name brands. The startup has built its recommendation engine using machine learning algorithms, so that as the platform grows, it takes activity and user preferences to fine-tune product-to-product recommendations, making for more accurate suggestions for individual shoppers. The startup was founded by Adriana Herrera and Kevin Ball. Herrera is a graduate of the San Diego Founders Institute, and Ball was one of the first five engineers at Causes.com. As to the company’s Firefox add-on, the browser tool allows shoppers to receive realtime recommendations as they shop directly from 30 of the top name brand sites. And, like its web counterpart, the add-on provides access to the ethical practices used by the name brands whose sites users are surfing to compare with more eco-friendly products. For readers looking to test out Fashioning Change’s Mozilla add-on, navigate over to the . The first 100 readers can use the “TechCrunch” access code to receive a free test run. Then report back and let us know what you think. |
True Or False? Automatic Fact-Checking Coming To The Web – Complications Follow | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 11 | 28 | The social layer has settled on the web like a dusting of multicolored snowflakes, gracing every story with a little menagerie of sharing counts and buttons. Once basic standards of content publishing were established, basic standards of sharing had to be as well, the internet being as it is a medium of information transmission. First you get the content, then you move it around. We’re still working on the moving around part. Another layering we’ve seen is the layering of the internet onto the real world. Location-based networking, maps, deals, all that. As soon as we had the ability to tell the world where we were, that information was naturally integrated into our services. Yet another combination is emerging: the layering of reference and context onto the information you read. What this even comprises is difficult to say exactly, but MIT Media Lab grad student ( ) has one idea: a browser script that automatically checks what you’re reading against reliable, substantiated facts. It’s a simple idea with innumerable approaches, problems, and implications — which means we’ll probably be dealing with it for a long time. Some things like this already exist. For instance, many websites have add-ons that let you, say, double click on a word to have it defined for you. Simple enough: send the word as a query to a database, and display the result. Not so easy when you want to evaluate a statement like “Senator Durbin has consistently argued that the US should have a stronger economic presence in the Balkans.” It’s a minefield of potential stumbling blocks, open to interpretation and argument. Yet who will deny that a plug-in or service that takes that statement and tells you the degree to which it can be considered true would be immensely useful and hugely popular? For this reason it’s worth it to someone to do the legwork. But the challenges and implications are serious. Schultz’s script, which he calls “Truth Goggles,” (not , as I originally wrote) is still in a very early state. At the moment he is using Politifact and NewsTrust APIs as his sources, and has a system of breaking down articles into snippets, which are essentially chunks containing a verifiable claim and some context. He acknowledges right away ( ) that language is a problem. He advocates a “hybrid” approach in which the claim is interpreted and checked if necessary with the user, who will be able to work out any grammatical quirks, triple negatives, or other linguistic hobgoblins that could obscure the meaning of a statement. So then you have an intelligible claim that can be compared to the data. Or do you? Part of political speech is the slipperiness of words. What is “consistently” or “stronger” to the reader? To the senator? To Politifact? Unfortunately this may be a fundamental shortcoming of the system. But facts are facts and fiction is fiction, so the tools will be welcome however limited they are. What I wonder, however, is whether such a system will in fact lead to a better-informed reader. A major problem today is how people limit their news sources to those that confirm their existing biases. We’re all guilty of it to some degree, and while we may not all listen to Fox News Radio six hours a day, our constellations of information sources are very rarely broad enough to dispel our own pleasant prejudices and established ideas. Will an automatic fact-checker change this? At first I thought that competing services will arise for different constituencies. One drawing on Wikipedia and one on Conservapedia, for instance (an extreme and unlikely example). But the point of Schultz’s work, and of the others that will surely follow it (indeed those that have preceded it), is to completely eschew political fiction (the mythology and rhetoric surrounding people and issues) and apply itself only to political fact. Surely, although there is political capital involved, the number of Occupy Wall Street protestors at a given march can be accurately estimated. Hopefully both the low and the high estimates would be flagged as inaccurate, with a citation. Will readers accept this affront to their dogmatic sovereignty? It’s going to be kind of a change in the way we perceive information, that’s all we can say right now. The habits of users, much less their thoughts and ideas, aren’t the easiest things to predict. My best guess is that this will be a growing part of the behind the scenes internet services industry. Google would be a natural contender, indexing as it does much of the data one would need to reach a reasonable judgment. But Google isn’t really in the judgment business. Sure, you’ve got their “best guess for Patrick Swayze age” if you search for it (59!), but evaluating natural-language claims, political or what have you, doesn’t seem like their business. They store and index data and surface what you’re looking for. I think it will be a startup, or someone in academia like Schultz, who provides the first germ of this and starts a movement, though his own contributions may in the end be minimal. The competition will, hopefully, be based on the accuracy of their evaluations, just as the search engines competed on speed and simplicity, or device makers on build and design. Ultimately it will just be one of many custom layers we put on the web. On top of a story, this one for instance, you already have a navigational layer, an advertising layer, a social layer, and perhaps another layer on top that you’ve added yourself, changing the typeface, altering or removing one of the layers. That you will have a fact-checking layer in the fulness of time is a certainty, but the its creation and tooling will take as much time and effort as have the others. Will it be user-driven? A site? A service? Browser-based? Site-based? Private? Open? Probably all of the above. Schultz hopes his work will be in usable form before the next presidential election, and while his thesis focuses on applying this fact-checking work to the written word only, but he mentions to that the acceleration of web services means that the interpretation of spoken statements, say in a political debate or TV ad, could also be on the horizon. |
Social alarm clock Wakie won Runet Prize. Have a stranger wake you up! | cloudbrows | 2,011 | 11 | 28 | which has launched its US service this month under the brand of , has won the , a prestigious Russian Internet award. Instead of listening to a typical alarm tune, Wakie user receives a call on a mobile phone from a stranger, has a pleasant chat, while his or her brain is slowly switching on. I have not tried the tool myself (I have a very effective alarm composed of two small children) but can imagine that the excitement or anxiousness of talking to a complete stranger can wake one up rather quickly. The service is safe, since the user’s mobile phone number is not disclosed. The fun idea which may just go viral was thought of by two brothers Grachik and Tatul Adzhamyan. Previously Grachik Adzhamyan was managing one of the Russia’s leading social networks MoiKrug, which was bought by . The company was founded in April 2011 and has collected over 100 000 Likes. Wakie claims to be the first one to invent the social alarm service but anticipates clones. I have identified another company in the same space called , which collected only 873 Facebook Likes to date (since its blog is in Russian I assume this is where the company origins are). is a service that allows your friends choose the tunes for your alarm. Wakie plans to monetize its business by offering brands access their (sleepy) morning audience. It will also add premium functionality to the existing free social alarm clock service. As for the marketing strategy, may I suggest linking up with the dating websites. |
Facebook Acquires The Tech Behind WhoGlue, A Company That Sued It In 2009 | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 11 | 28 | Facebook has confirmed to us this morning that it did indeed the Baltmore-based software firm earlier this month. WhoGlue builds social networking software for membership organizations (like college alumni networks, for example) and apparently had the fortuity to file a patent on something called in 2001, three years before Facebook existed. The two over the patent in 2009 and the case ended ” for WhoGlue in March 2010. According to WhoGlue founder Jason D. Hardebeck, the ongoing between the two companies were what eventually led to the sale. A Facebook representative gave us the following statement, “We can confirm that we acquired some technology developed by WhoGlue. The WhoGlue team isn’t joining Facebook and instead will continue working on its own social networking software for organizations.” According to Facebook also acquired the stakes of WhoGlue’s shareholders, including , but Facebook would not give any further details on the veracity of those reports. In a move uncharacteristic of the talent-hungry Facebook, the WhoGlue team was not part of the acquisition, and in fact Hardeback plans on forming , that will basically continue in the same space. The WhoGlue technology allows a group to privately network within a larger network, and can be applied to subnetwork functions like integrating Facebook Groups content more widely throughout Facebook without violating user privacy. Our resident Facebook expert Josh Constine also had this quite interesting theory, “If it were ever to launch in China, the technology could also help Facebook operate a cordoned-off sub-network for the country that wouldn’t violate the Great Firewall.” Pretty cool, right? |
Be careful what you say – CallTrunk launches Skype recording integration | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 11 | 28 | is one of those services where you place a call via the platform, then call someone else and record the conversation. There are one or two other similar services out there, but CallTrunk is attempting to go for broke on several platforms. Today it launches a simple-to-use that stores all Skype conversations in the cloud, together with a user’s landline and mobile conversations. Not exactly something that will make privacy campaigners woot with delight – but could prove useful in business transactions and interviews. But then then the UK is a “one party consent country” so you can record your own calls as long as you don’t publish them. The calls can also be transcribed. The only issue is that this is already available as a cheap ad-on to Skype, Call Recorder. So CallTrunk may have to think again. All CallTrunk recordings can be accessed online via a browser or via Call Trunk’s iPhone app. The recordings can also be shared on social networks or sent to Evernote, box or SugarCRM. What about recording people secretly? Richard Newton from Call Trunk tell me: “The system provides automatic beeping to signal recording is in progress. There is also an automatic announcement that a user can switch off if they prefer to tell the counter party themselves. These are customisable which reflects that requirements change from country to country and state to state.” Of course, this is more obvious than using a simple recording device with a Mic. The service is initially launching in the UK on a beta trial from 28th November. It is free to use until January 1st 2012. From then on, it will be £5 per month for unlimited recording and storing of Skype calls. Anyone signing up to additional Call Trunk monthly plans will also receive additional Skype credit. Call Trunk is head quartered in London with offices in Dallas, Texas and Montreal, Canada. The team consists of Michael Dillhyon (President and CEO), Paul Murphy (Founder & CTO), Angela Clarke (Founder & COO) and Darcy Brockbank, (Founder & Chief Scientist). |
SlideShare Details Its Own Exponential Growth In … An Infographic | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 11 | 28 | , the content sharing platform for business documents, videos, and presentations, has grown into a sizable platform. In 2008, SlideShare was but a simple app launched on LinkedIn to allow professionals to share slides and documents with their network. As SlideShare is designed as a sharing platform for the professional community, its collaboration with LinkedIn has made perfect sense from a strategy standpoint — and has helped it grow into the juggernaut it is today. The startup has continued to work with LinkedIn to add deeper integration into its platform, which Leena . Today, SlideShare is apparently a force to be reckoned with, as the startup has created its first-ever infographic with the help of , which details its exponential growth. In fact, the graphic goes so far as to call SlideShare “The Quiet Giant Of Content Marketing”. What’s more, according to none other than SlideShare, SlideShare is now the largest professional content sharing community in the world. At 60 million unique visitors a month and 3 billion slides viewed per month, it has certainly attracted some traffic, and the hockeystick growth to be found in its visitors chart is impressive. LinkedIn, what say you? But we think the most important take-away here is that 78 percent of SlideShare’s slideshows (PowerPoint presentations, slideshows, etc.) are under 30 slides, and the average number of slides is 19. So, when you’re building your next presentation that you want to go viral and to be shared with the world via SlideShare, make sure you keep it short. Otherwise, it’s a snooze fest, and we’ll all be throwing rotten vegetables at your slides. Content marketing is growing, and SlideShare is certainly aiming to be a significant player in that growth. But is it worthy of being called “The Quiet Giant Of Content Marketing”? You tell us. Infographic below: [slideshare id=10357489&w=640&h=510&sc=no] |
Show Off Your iPhone’s Guts With iFixit’s Cyber Monday Deal | Chris Velazco | 2,011 | 11 | 28 | When rolls around, everyone’s eyes dart to the big boys like Amazon and Newegg for cheap goods, but niche retailers have their own deals too. Case in point: the DIY repair nuts at iFixit have whipped together a nifty bundle for aspiring iPhone modders who would like to see the fruits of Apple’s design savvy instead of an opaque black panel. For $29, you get one of iFixit’s transparent rear plates for either the or , along with the necessary tools to do the job. iFixit has also thrown in a screen protector and one of their liquid-absorbing Thirsty Bags (which I sincerely hope you’ll never need to use). Those of you on the fence may be comforted by the six month warranty iFixit has on these things, but there really doesn’t seem to be much cause for concern. In any case, if the thought of playing with pentalobe screws and peeling the glass plate off of an iPhone has you feeling a bit squeamish, this probably isn’t the deal for you. Considering that the rear panel itself normally costs just north of $50, anyone hoping for a quick, easy, and (I think) handsome mod should give this one some thought. I suppose it goes without saying that the mod will probably void your warranty, but the way I look at it, that’s a small price to pay for an iPhone that isn’t another carbon copy Cupertino obelisk. And hey, if anything should ever go wrong with that modded iPhone, you’ll know exactly where to start hunting for replacement parts. |
New Google+ Ad Shows Off The Social Network’s Biggest Problem | Sarah Perez | 2,011 | 11 | 28 | [youtube=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVf3UaZePC8′] Google has released yet another TV commercial to help demonstrate the features of its new social network, Google+. Like , the ad is slick, polished and even sort of funny. Unfortunately, it also demonstrates everything that’s wrong with Google+ in a just minute’s time. In fact, if the video hadn’t been posted to Google’s own , you may have almost wondered if it was a parody put out by Facebook PR. The ad, published the day prior to Thanksgiving in the U.S., tells the tale of two Google+ users, Kyle and Lisa. In it, Kyle places Lisa into his “Love of My Life” Circle while Lisa puts Kyle in her own unfortunately named “Creepers” Circle. Oh, poor Kyle! Over time, though, it becomes clear that Lisa and Kyle’s relationship changes, as the ad shows Lisa moving Kyle into a variety of other Circles, including “Book Club,” “Guys With Cars” (shallow much, Lisa?), “Ski House,” “Maybes” and finally, “Keepers.” Cue the , right? Wrong. What the ad has so effectively demonstrated is the incredible amount of work it involves to constantly qualify our interpersonal relationships. To be fair, neither Facebook nor Google+ have gotten this 100% right. Friendships aren’t binary (friend or not) as they are by default Facebook, but they’re also not meant to be obsessively organized into groups like they are on Google+. Relationships change. They’re dynamic. And herein lies the problem with this aspect of the Google+ value proposition: Circles don’t work. When Google+ launched, Circles were introduced as a means to give you back the privacy and control that Facebook once stole from its users. (Well, prior to the launch of Facebook’s , that is – take that, Google+!). When you share with a Circle of “Friends” on Google+, you know your boss, mom, and various frenemies won’t see the update. Guaranteed. But not only do the “normals” , even the geekier among us will eventually encounter something I once “Circle Management Overhead.” Drag-and-drop, however cute the user interface, is a poor substitue for automation assisted by intelligent algorithms. Heck, even Google knows this, which is why , noting how impressed it was by Katango’s “innovative approach to making your social circles smarter.” While Circles themselves may be a selling point for Google+ (at least in Google’s mind, if not yours), the Circle Management demonstrated so aptly by “Lisa” in this video is actually a drawback to the whole labor-intensive system. Which is why this Google+ ad is so weird. Why show this off? At any given moment in time, Lisa knew who Kyle was to her, but her social network did not. That’s not a feature to brag about, that’s a problem that needs to be fixed. Google, to be sure, is working on smarter Circles now. In the meantime, it might be better if Google+ marketing focuses on something that Facebook doing a better job with, like comparing Google+’s 10-person video chat “Hangouts” with Facebook’s Skype chat, for example, or the Google+/YouTube integration, or the….umm….the, uh….umm….a little help here? |
Ad Targeting — Both Facebook And The European Commission Have Explaining Left To Do | Eric Eldon | 2,011 | 11 | 28 | The European Commission is going after web companies over their failures to explain how their ad targeting systems work. But it’s not hitting the bulls-eye, because it’s confusing targeting with data protection, which are not quite the same issue. The commission, for all of its , has some clarifying to do. So does its big target, Facebook. In a sensationalistic article today that claims “ ,” The Telegraph reveals that it and the European Commission only sort of understand how Facebook works. Commission vice president Viviane Reding proclaims that “I call on service providers – especially social media sites – to be more transparent about how they operate,” in a quote provided to the paper. “Users must know what data is collected and further processed (and) for what purposes.” That’s a real issue, and something that Facebook could solve on its own. Two examples. A recent data information request by a dissatisfied Austrian user revealed hundreds of pages of data that Facebook had collected, that basically no one had known it was gathering. Another issue, which the The Telegraph alludes to, is that new users who sign up on Facebook don’t get any indication of how the company is going to be using the data they provide. Facebook instead leaves it up to them to figure out what’s going (presumably to avoid scaring anyone off before they get started). But then Reding goes on to suggest that Facebook is not adequately protecting user data, which is off-base: “Consumers in Europe should see their data strongly protected, regardless of the EU country they live in and regardless of the country in which companies which process their personal data are established.” The commission, the European Union’s executive body, is planning to issue a directive in January, instructing member states to implement laws requiring companies like Facebook not to show targeted ads unless users explicitly allow them to. That type of feature could undermine Facebook’s ad business model. And beyond any impact on Facebook, it could make the ads on the site a lot less valuable to users. Meanwhile, the commission’s data protection working group is meeting in December to examine Facebook and consider a closer privacy audit. So let’s look at Facebook ads as they work today. First of all, the company has to be paranoid about what it does with user data in order to maintain users’ trust in its service. Despite some missteps over the years, its ongoing popularity suggests a large amount of that trust is still there. If the company were to sell user data to third parties — which is how much of the online ad industry actually works — then people would get scared off from using the service. Just imagine if you started seeing ads related to your status updates and relationship situation in random banner ads around the web, without any indication of why you were seeing them. It would be disturbing. And, it’s not what’s happening now. Instead, what Facebook does is let advertisers ask to target certain things about users via its , then it serves those ads to individuals on behalf of the advertisers. It is the middle man, anonymizing user data in order to protect individuals while still allowing advertisers to run ads that are relevant to users. Facebook’s goal is to make the ads so relevant to people that they get a lot more value out of them than, say, a generic banner ad for an awful big-brand soft drink that most of us would never touch, anyway. If Facebook doesn’t target ads, then users won’t get value out of them, and advertisers won’t want to pay. Ultimately, it won’t just lose potential revenue, it might not be able to afford the costs of running and improving its service. And when you think about Facebook’s style of targeted ads, look at what the company actually provides. The ads are basically an improved version of how traditional media advertising has worked for decades. Television companies survey users and sample some of their TV sets to figure out which type of people watch which type of programs. Then they sell ad space in those programs to advertisers who want to reach that demographic. Football fans don’t complain about targeting when an ad for beer comes on during a game, and most of them find it preferable to ads for the latest children’s toys. Facebook’s ads are a way for you to find out about a new type of beer from your favorite brewery, without ever having to see ads for toys. The European Commission needs to explain how Facebook’s anonymized ad targeting system is not protecting user data. But, the commission is also right to push Facebook to better explain what’s going inside its ad-targeting black box. The recent European user’s data request that Facebook had been storing far more data than most anyone had expected, including a list of all of a given user’s log-ins with timestamps and IP addresses, deleted content, rejected friend requests, removed friends, and several unfilled data fields that could be for unreleased products. Facebook was also recently nailed for a what users did around the web, a practice it has said it doesn’t do. The bug happened to at the same time as a patent filing describing a method for tracking users around the web. Combined with the lack of communication from Facebook to new users about how ads work, it’s understandable why there’s ongoing confusion about what how Facebook is collecting and using data. It needs to update its data and ad policies (like ) to explain everything it’s doing. And it needs to get more transparent with all of its users. For example, it could add a line to the sign-up flow mentioning that it will use data to power ad targeting, and linking to helpful docs that it has already created, like . Just a disclaimer could help its case with the European Commission. And taking these steps wouldn’t just help it appease governments and media outlets — concerned users would be appreciate the moves, and reward the company with more of the trust it needs to succeed. |
Flockified’s Group Invite / Planning App Helps Ticket Sites Boost Sales | Josh Constine | 2,011 | 11 | 28 | When 90% of people discover an event they might want to buy tickets for, they leave the purchase funnel as they try to convince friends to join them. This group decision process is clumsy, and poor retention reduces sales for promoters. Helsinki startup GigsWiz addresses these problems today with the beta launch of , a Facebook app that makes it easy to poll friends about buying event tickets. Promoters add a Flockified button to their ticket page which potential customers click to invite friends and track confirmations that they want tickets. Flockified could help sites like Eventbrite, Ticketfly, or even Ticketmaster sell more tickets in exchange for fees. The first 100 TechCrunch readers to with the code TechCrunchFlockified will get early access. GigsWiz was originally trying to get into online ticket sales when it determined that 90% of ticket buyers leave the purchase funnel. So it took its €200,000 in seed funding and pivoted to solve that problem instead. The 5-person Helsinki, Finland team found that ticket sites were only offering general sharing of ticket links through email and social sites. They weren’t actively assisting in the group decision process that was leaking conversions. Flockified gives that process structure. Rather than openly broadcasting interest in an event, the Facebook app lets users send questions to specific friends, such as will they come, who should buy the tickets, and who will drive. They can add a response deadline, monitor answers, and then determine how many tickets to buy. Eventually, GigsWiz wants to release an admin dashboard that will let promoters more easily track conversions through Flockafied and offer discounts to large or influential groups to persuade them to buy tickets. It may also look to expand to other verticals such as restaurant reservations. Getting users to switch to Flockified for group decision making and stop using email, text, phone, and standard social channels will be difficult. Flockified will fail if it can’t convince users it’s more convenient. The startup will also either need a strong sales team or to strike some big early deals with promoters to get its buttons out there. Its existing seed funding might not be sufficient to take on these challenges. At least it’s doing something new. Online ticketing is getting crowded with , , , and more trying to disrupt Ticketmaster. While it might not have as much profit potential, Flockified has a better chance of succeeding by trying to augment existing ticketing systems than compete with them.
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PayPal Cyber Monday Mobile Payment Volume Up Over 500 Percent | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 11 | 28 | Black Friday and Thanksgiving Day for PayPal, with 511 percent and a 538 percent increase in global mobile payment volume when compared to Thanksgiving and Black Friday 2010, respectively. It looks like Cyber Monday is also bringing record sales for the payments giant. The company is that as of 11 a.m. PST, PayPal is already seeing a six-fold increase (514 percent) more mobile payment volume on Cyber Monday 2011 compared to the same time period on Cyber Monday 2010. Some of that mobile payment volume could come from sales from eBay. The e-commerce giant that this morning people picked up four iPad 2 tablets per minute, at a discounted price. Already, we’re that Cyber Monday online sales are up 18 percent for this same time period over Cyber Monday 2010. The number of consumers using a mobile device to visit a retailer’s site is 11.7 percent and the number of consumers using their mobile device to make a purchase is 6.4 percent. General mobile sales and traffic to retailers are also up, and in terms of devices, the iPhone continues to lead all mobile device traffic at 4.66 percent, followed by Android at 3.7 percent and iPad at 3.12 percent. |
LocalVox Launches Full-Service Marketing Solution To Help Local Merchants Target Their Customers | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 11 | 28 | Hyperlocal is all the rage these days, and content companies, deal sites, and everyone in between are trying to find better ways to access (and advertise to) local markets. Over the last decade, the majority of media companies have attempted to launch internal or on-site outlets that cover local news, but most have met with middling success. , a New York City-based startup that launched six months ago, began by asking a simple question: “Where do we get our neighborhood news?” NearSay’s founders, Trevor Sumner and David Pachter, were startled by the lackluster and confusing responses to that question and, in turn, the dearth of valuable neighborhood outlets for local news. So, for their answer, they started a platform that began as a realtime business newswire to allow local businesses in New York City to publish announcements (on events, deals, etc.) to the NearSay platform. Now an aggressive publisher of neighborhood lifestyle news, the startup has partnered with small, local publications (where they exist) to allow local businesses to target their content to the people who can actually benefit from — and want to hear about — local news. To add to their platform, the startup launched , which is (among other things) a white label advertorial publishing tool that allows niche publishers to syndicate their clients’ content across the startup’s network and blast that content out to social media outlets. The idea was to create a Yellow Pages 3.0, which not only serves as a tool to help readers or searchers find telephone numbers or addresses of local merchants, but to actually help those merchants optimize their placement in search results and get found by the people who need them. Today, the company is now calling itself LocalVox Media, and NearSay, its contextual newswire service, has become a feature of the platform. As a part of this rebranding, the startup is launching LocalVox 2.0, with which it is hoping to become a full, multichannel marketing tool for local businesses and publishers. The white label tool it launched initially was aimed at larger publishers which already had sales and customer service teams, but Version 2.0 makes the company a full-service solution for all publishers and local businesses. To date, the platform has attracted 270 clients which are using the service to publish company events, promotions, and community programs through NearSay’s network; so, with LocalVox 2.0, the startup is looking to become a full-service tool for its clients by integrating Google Local optimization and social media management services. Leveraging Google Places and Google Plus, social media, email marketing and more to create a simple way for their clients to generate news and target new and existing customers, LocalVox wants to enable community businesses to attain optimized Google placements — all through an all-in-one marketing solution characterized by a user-friendly interface. This last bit has become increasingly important, as local marketing solutions are realizing that products that sound technical or rely too heavily on self-service models are failing to see the adoption among small merchants that many hoped they would have. Thus, LocalVox sees itself as a long-term marketing partner for its clients, not a quick fix. So, in contrast with Groupon’s model, which creates episodic bursts of activity and exposure for small businesses, LocalVox provides a searchable history of news content that lives on each business’ web page that is optimized for search engine placement and social media integration — all of which is intended to create additional exposure over time. Or looking at LocalVox in juxtaposition with Aol’s hyperlocal news outlet Patch, for example, LocalVox sees its value not as a destination site, but in leveraging programs that engage consumers across multiple channels and take the pain of managing search engine placement, social media, and multichannel marketing strategies out of the hands of the merchants themselves. What’s more, local businesses often find difficulties in updating and maintaining their websites with relevant content, and making their sites into workable, valuable communication platforms. So LocalVox wants to help them, say, upload customer lists and avoid going to a third-party source to upload a newsletter. According to LocalVox Co-founder Trevor Sumner, it’s this approach that has led the startup to a 95 percent retention rate among participating businesses — compared to Groupon’s retention rate at 18 percent. To date, the startup has raised a small angel round, but it is in the process of raising a series A round, Sumner says. Currently, LocalVox is only available in New York City, but the startup plans to expand into new markets beginning in early 2012. And, for TechCrunch readers interested in testing LocalVox 2.0, the company is offering five local NYC businesses a free month of social media strategy and implementation as well as a free month of Google Places optimization. The startup will select the businesses from those who send emails to LocalSales@LocalVox.com with “TechCrunch” in the subject line. For more, . |
Time To Tweet The Art: Museum-Analytics.org Keeps Tabs On Curatorial Social Media | John Biggs | 2,011 | 11 | 28 | To paraphrase Cracker, I suspect what the world needs now is another method to assess the social metrics of various museums around the world like I need a hole in the head, but presumably this information is important to out there, so here goes. is a site with a simple mission: to calculate the social reach of various museums. The service uses various and sundry sources as well as Twitter and Facebook to find news and information about almost 3000 museums around the world.
For example, you can see trends at (Motto: “It doesn’t cost an ear and a leg to get in!”) including new Facebook likes, Tweets, comments mentioning the museum, and engaging content created for and about the museum. I could see this as a boon to curators and directors alike and valuable to who are trying to push these staid organizations into, at the very least, the 20th century. It is up and running in beta right now. From the about page: Museum Analytics has been initiated by . INTK researches and develops online strategies primarily for cultural organizations and creates critical interventions that reflect on art, technology and society. It could be a great source to learn about upcoming events and interesting exhibits, which makes it great for tourists. I could definitely see a mash-up between this site and a city tourism site ( ), bringing the high and the low together at last. |
Thanks To The 7 Deadly Websites, We’re All Sinners | Josh Constine | 2,011 | 11 | 17 | Sins used to require effort. In biblical times, even sloth meant having to sit around using your imagination. Now, a 1-inch hand gesture is all that separates human kind from the bookmarked sin of choice. The faintest desire for a fix of narcissism sees us pawing through Facebook and Twitter for Likes and retweets. If the task at hand seems daunting, we can hastily retreat to Netflix where we’re only asked to stare. A stray carnal thought can be indulged at any moment thanks to 4Chan and YouPorn. is most fascinating not because it’s clever and accurate, but because the internet has removed the taboo from sin. Go ahead, live vicariously through friends as they post about their hot new spouses and high priced vacations, we’re all on Facebook doing the same thing. It’s openly acknowledged that people use Twitter to experience the pride of celebrity, and why put on pants to go to a restaurant when there’s Seamless and Grub Hub. These services have many redeeming qualities, but they are ripe for misuse. There are angels trying to save us from ourselves. Asana, Khan Academy, Fitbit, Up. But those take at least some determination. Sean Parker at his wickedly extravagant Spotify party said that “Solving the piracy problem can’t happen if you don’t build a service that’s more convenient than piracy.” The same goes for sin. Until technology makes it easier to stay humble, content, active, and pious than to devolve into corruption, righteousness will be reserved for the strongest of will. |
Personal Is A Secure Vault For All Of Your Private, Digital Data | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 11 | 17 | We wrote about stealthy startup earlier this year when the company announced in funding from Steve Case’s , , and others. This week, Personal finally launched its service, which aims to give consumers control over their digital data, to the public. Personal is a free web and mobile service that helps you take control of all the digital information about yourself and your life, decide who gets access to it, and use it for your benefit. This information ranges from your passwords, your kids allergies, emergency contacts, credit card info, and more. Basically, any information you may not want to store in email but want to be able to share with your loved ones or friends. With Personal you can store various information in ‘data vaults’ where you can selectively share certain vaults with people. Of course, all accounts on Personal include a legal guarantee that you own your data in the system. For example, one way to use Personal is via its Form Killer app. You simply enter personal data once (that you would typically enter into forms such as address, social security numbers, birth data and more and then you can gill out forms with a single click using the startup’s Form Killer app At the very heart of Personal, are what the startup calls ‘gems.’ Gems are nuggets of reusable information that represent the details of your life – your family, pets, car, home, office, food and travel preferences, and more. You can decide which gems to add to your vault and which to share with others using our grant and request features. And you can download existing data from LinkedIn and Facebook. Personal also has a Gem Gallery, which is where you browse for the gems you need to use. Your Personal data vault is a secure and convenient place for your gems. All sensitive data that you put in gems must be locked and unlocked with an owner-chosen password that Personal does not store and therefore, cannot access. Personal uses a 256-bit SSL encryption and HTTPS to ensure that there is no eavesdropping whenever data is transferred back-and-forth from your computer to Personal. Personal is available on the mobile web and will be launching native Android and iPhone apps will be released soon. There are number of services similar to Personal (such as ) but one thing the service has in its favor is its relatively clean and easy to use UI. It makes understanding which data is being shared very easy. Considering some of the hesitations we have sharing certain types of confidential information over email, or even Facebook; there is a need for a private (and highly secure) data organization service. For background, Personal was founded by the same management team that built business mapping application (which was acquired by NAVTEQ in 2006). |
Google Ventures And First Round Drop $2.1 Million Into Custom Marketplace CustomMade | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 11 | 17 | Peer to peer marketplace has raised $2.1 million in Series A funding today, led by and with additional investment from , , , and . Like Etsy’s Alchemy feature (now ), CustomMade allows customers who want to make custom products like jewelry and furniture post project proposals, and it retains a community of makers that can browse through projects and assign themselves to ones they are suited to. Makers can sign up for and build profiles on the site, which allows customers to browse through their portfolios. The site has over 3,000 makers and has overseen over $2 million in project requests, averaging around $1,500 a job. “A lot of people think that custom is expensive and out of reach, and that’s really not true any more,” says co-founder Mike Salguero, “There’s a lot of trade winds right now about buying local and buying green and supporting your local economy.” “We see a large opportunity in technology platforms that can seamlessly connect consumers with the goods they want specifically designed for them,” said Google Ventures partner Rich Miner in a release, “By combining local artisans – from the custom furniture maker in New Mexico to the jewelry designer in Austin – to millions of shoppers around the country, CustomMade serves the need of a growing marketplace.” CustomMade plans on using the funding to expand both its staff and site features, with the eventual goal of disrupting big box retail with its suite of personalized products. |
Ifttt, Buffer Partner To Help You Syndicate And Schedule Information-Sharing Across The Web | Eric Eldon | 2,011 | 11 | 17 | (Ifttt) has been quietly building a tool to help you automatically share information from one web service into another web service. , meanwhile, has been quietly building a tool to help you schedule sharing from any web service, so people who read what you share get a pleasantly staggered stream of information rather than one big blast. Today, the two relatively under-the-radar startups are partnering to make it easy to first automatically share and schedule your shared information from one service to others. It’s clever (although a little tricky to set up at first) and something that more and more people are going to want to use to share information the right way for their friends and followers. Here’s a personal example, in case this all sounds too abstract. Let’s say I want to automatically share all TechCrunch posts about Facebook to my Facebook-fascinated fans on my Facebook page over the course of the day. First, I create a new task in Ifttt, add the RSS URL for the to Ifttt (“This,” also known as the within the interface). Then, I choose Buffer as the service to share to (“That,” or the that the trigger will cause), and I add my as the sharing destination within Buffer. Note: Ifttt is especially useful already in this csae because Facebook recently got rid of its in favor of leaving that to third parties. Then, suppose TechCrunch runs five posts about Facebook in a row tomorrow morning but nothing for the rest of the day. With Buffer, I can schedule the flow of posts out over the next day or two for a more pleasant reading experience for fans. Buffer also comes with an analytics feature so I can see how effective my scheduling is. Now take this idea and expand it to the many popular web services already available on Ifttt. You can see how it wouldn’t just be good for a tech blogger whose trying to promote himself, but a small business owner who wants to remind Facebook fans about a blog post on a new deal, or a marketer who wants to share the latest set of news about their company across Facebook and Twitter. And the list goes on — here are some other ideas for how you might want to use these two services, from Buffer cofounder Leonhard Widrich: As users and businesses get more sophisticated with how to communicate online, more services like these are going to rise up to make sharing simpler and smarter. Of course these companies are still small, but they are making some interesting progress. Ifttt has been, from what we’ve heard, gaining a lot of attention within tech circles because it so easily solves cross-service syndication — a growing problem as diverse web services have gained traction in recent years. And, Widrich says that Buffer has already hit a $150,000 run-rate off of a total userbase of 70,000 people, via premium services that offer multiple users and more times for scheduling. That means that while his company has raised some seed funding, they’re also able to support their ongoing growth. |
Western Digital’s WD TV Gets Vimeo, Playjam Support | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 11 | 17 | The may not have the clout of Roku or Boxee, but these little streaming boxes are a good choice for streamers and home media enthusiasts. They added Spotify to the lineup last month, which makes the box a solid replacement for your laptop or iPod when you just need a few tunes, and now they’ve announced Vimeo and Playjam access as well. That’s really all there is to it. You know Vimeo, no doubt, and is a games channel full of time-wasters to play while you’re waiting for your movie load up or transfer. They’ll both be installed via a firmware update for the WD TV. I really can’t make the news last any longer than that. I’m going to use this space to say that hopping around Vimeo randomly really produces some excellent results. A ton of people I know in the creative industry have cool side projects and things there, and you can find all sorts of , , and there, and the community is very supportive. It’s better than YouTube for just leaning back and browsing for interesting stuff. Okay, that’s probably enough words that this post doesn’t look weird. |
Kindle Fire Having WiFi Issues? | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 11 | 17 | Amazon’s Kindle Fire is arriving at many a home this week, and as expected with a launch of this magnitude, there are a few bugs yet to be squashed. Some users are reporting issues with wifi reception, and others say that the device shuts off its wireless when you turn the display off. We’ve had some connection issues with our own unit, and many commenters on are reporting spotty connectivity, disconnections, or an inability to connect in the first place. Some users report that the issue can be fixed by tweaking settings on the router: changing to static IPs instead of DHCP-assigned addresses worked for one, and a full restart of the router worked for another. A customer service rep has recommended the latter, while resetting the Fire as well, but this is a pretty standard remedy (turn it off and on again). There’s currently no official word from Amazon on this matter, and it’s not clear how many devices are actually affected. It’s unfortunate that one of the Fire’s big features is that a PC is totally unnecessary, yet for many it seems the first thing they’ll have to do is side-load an update that fixes the wifi. Another user reports that the wireless connection shuts off when you turn off the display. If you’re listening to internet radio or the like, this is obviously a big problem. I suppose it’s a comfort that there are plenty of users who have not had the chance to experience this problem, because their wifi doesn’t work in the first place. I have no doubt Amazon will make this right, but it’s still a pain to have these troubles at launch. Readers, are you having the same problems? |
Yahoo’s Iconic SF Billboard Comes Down After Outlasting 4 CEOs | Jon Orlin | 2,011 | 11 | 17 | Yahoo’s famous, long-standing billboard on the San Francisco skyline is coming down. In two weeks, the space will be available for some other company, according to a report in the . The billboard outlasted 4 Yahoo CEO’s. It was put up under in 1999, and survived through , , , and now . The retro billboard was put up in a dot-com era before Facebook and Twitter. There’s some speculation now on whether a new dot-com might take over the space. The agency that created the iconic billboard, Black Rocket, wanted to create something very different from all the other dot-com-boom startups that were putting billboards up on 101 in Silicon Valley. The Yahoo billboard is on Interstate 80, on the approach to the Bay Bridge. The billboard, which featured the tagline, “A nice place to stay on the Internet”, had room for two lines of ever-changing text. Sometimes those lines would promote a Yahoo product, but it also featured favorites like “You look cute today.” It also had a hotel-like “No Vacancy” light. But, the “No” was not lit up, implying Yahoo had room for some more guests. A sister billboard in LA was used on the cover of this Yahoo’s 2002 Annual Report:
There were other sister ones put up in Soho and Times Square in New York. One of the ads creator’s told the Egotist, “San Francisco is losing what has turned into an icon.” On Facebook and Twitter, many Yahoo employees, former Yahoo’s and Yahoo visitors are calling it a sad day. For more on the backstory of how the sign came to life, read the . Update: A “Save the Yahoo! Billboard” has been created with 66 likes so far. If anyone thinks this page might really save it, there’s a bridge in Brooklyn I have to sell you. |
PayPal’s Send Money App, and Why Facebook Never Built P2P Credits Payments | Josh Constine | 2,011 | 11 | 17 | PayPal relaunched a that some news outlets are misinterpreting as a partnership between the two companies. I’ve confirmed with Facebook that it’s not. It’s just a standard application on the platform, and Facebook couldn’t really do anything to stop PayPal. But why hasn’t Facebook built its own way for friends to send money to each other using its virtual currency Credits? Because of significant fraud risks and its focus on making Credits work better for virtual goods purchases where it earns 30%. The first incarnation of Send Money was . It lets you pay friends through a credit card or your PayPal account. What’s new is that you can now also opt to include a digital greeting card, good for sending money on birthdays and other holidays. The only Facebook data the app needs is your friend list, and even then you still have to hunt down a payment recipient’s email address before you can transfer funds. Send Money doesn’t integrate with Facebook’s own payment system, it doesn’t require any secret data or APIs, and I’ve heard it wasn’t even built inside PayPal. Facebook has its own payment system that lets users receive its virtual currency Credits in exchange for money paid through credit cards, PayPal, and other means. Users spend the Credits in social games for power-ups or extended game time, and the developers redeem these Credits for 70% of their worth while Facebook keeps its 30% tax. The primary reason Credits can only be spent in games and apps, not sent to other users, is fraud. There are several ways for users to earn Credits instead of paying for them, such as completing on-site offers, or making off-site purchases that are incentivized with Credits rewards through companies like . If users could transfer Credits to someone else, the occupation of “Credits Miner” would emerge. These people would earn Credits any way they could and sell them to others for more than they cost to earn but less than Facebook sells them for. This would essentially create a secondary market for Credits and undermine Facebook’s ability to make money on them. P2P Credits transfers would also make users a more lucrative target for hackers. Someone could steal your account info and dump your existing balance of Credits into their own account, or even buy more Credits in your name and send them to themselves. When Facebook originally developed Credits, it correctly determined that it could significantly reduce its risk of fraud by disallowing P2P transfers. The other main reason there’s no Credits P2P payments is because it not Facebook’s focus, due to a mix of developer ecosystem politics, long-term monetization, and Facebook’s lean startup style. Facebook and PayPal are close. They’re strategic partners, with PayPal helping the social network process Credits purchases, and PayPal’s founder Peter Thiel is an early investor and advisor to Facebook. Moving into P2P payments could upset this partnership, and lead PayPal to remove itself as a Credits purchasing method. To be competitive, Facebook would only be able to take a few percent on transactions, and still it wouldn’t have the base of merchants PayPal cultivated through eBay. Instead, Facebook is focusing on Credits as its platform’s mandatory virtual goods payment processor for developers, where it earns its juicy 30% cut. That business is growing thanks to gaming giants like Zynga, so there’s no need to move into a risky sector such as P2P payments that’s outside its core competencies and dominated by incumbents. Facebook is still a relatively small company. It needs its Credits team optimizing payment flows and fostering partnerships to milk the virtual goods market. It also needs to make Credits as a better payments processor for apps, through which more content companies are selling digital media like film rentals. Right now, Facebook simply doesn’t have the resources to divert attention to P2P payments, and there’s no indication that such a need isn’t already being met off-site by PayPal, even if the Send Money app didn’t exist. One day that could change, especially if social ecommerce takes off and it allows Credits to be used to purchase physical goods from approved merchants. For now, Facebook is making the same smart choice about P2P payments as it made about virtual gifts, social games, music, and brand management — leave it to third-parties and concentrate on improving its core infrastructure. |
Keen On… The Big Lesson America Can Learn From China (TCTV) | Andrew Keen | 2,011 | 11 | 17 | Sometimes, it’s the soft spoken guys who throw the biggest bombs. At this week’s conference, Intuit co-founder was pretty radical in his economic and political analysis. Arguing that all companies need to turn themselves upside down, he told me that it’s the young technology entrepreneur – the Zuckerberg or the Shawn Fanning – who is most skilled at navigating today’s ever-turbulent economic waters. “The most brilliant things are done when we are young”, he reminded me, in his message to older executives unwilling to hand over power to their younger colleagues. But it’s in his political analysis that Cook really went nuclear. Arguing that “if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys”, he made the case for the Singapore or China model of economic growth, where great (and old) leaders have been able to reinvent their countries. In China, for example, Cook uses the example of Deng Xiaoping’s establishment of “Special Economic Zones” such as in Shenzhen that, he says, resulted in 300 million Chinese people being liberated from “grinding poverty”. Not everyone, of course, would agree with Cook. The anti-Apple monologist whom I will interview early next week, might also point to the terrible human costs of the Shenzhen “experiment” in China. And I have to confess my own ambivalence about Cook’s embrace of the Chinese or Singaporean model for America. After all, do we really want a Deng Xiaoping or a Lee Kuan Yew to determine technological policy in America? |
Google Overhauls Android.com With A Focus On Consumer Friendliness | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 11 | 17 | Android is growing up. The platform that began its life as something built for the anti-iPhone crowd is quickly evolving into something built for . Today, Google has overhauled Android’s website to match. For as long as I can recall, has been, for lack of a better word, . Primarily built as a landing pad for press, partners, and developers, it didn’t really do much of anything to Android. Even the one generic “Learn More!” link lead to a page full of totally not-consumer-friendly terms and phrases like “Adding SDK Components” and “API Difference Reports”. It also didn’t help that the old layout looked like something left lingering from the late 90’s. While it still has a link or two for the stray developer, the new Android.com distills the experience down to what matters: Android. Want an overview of whats new in Android 4.0? Bam! It’s . Want a deeper look into some of Android’s finer features? It’s The new look is dramatically improved — or, if we’re going for objectivity here, dramatically more . There’s an obvious emphasis on big icons and plenty of white space, making the whole thing feel like a proper product page for one of the main products released by a major technology company. It’s super flashy, without the Flash™ — as far as I can tell, all of the snazzy animations and transitions are done in HTML5 and Javascript. Be sure to mouse over the handset/tablet there on the homescreen for a subtle demonstration of Google’s rock-friggin’-solid scripting talent. Google has also built a “Get Apps” page, which highlights a handful of applications in a series of themed “bundles”, from “Getting Started With Tablet” to “Calling All Gamers”. Google can’t say Android has the most apps, so they’ve got this page pitching their market’s diversity. Overall, it’s a huge step up. |
Review: The Nook Tablet Is A Real Android Slate In Ereader’s Clothing | John Biggs | 2,011 | 11 | 17 |
In the mad rush to push out more and more Android slate products, Amazon and Barnes & Noble are like a calm port in the storm. Their devices are touted as but, after a bit of digging, you find that they are now considerably more interesting – and compelling – as tablet products for an entry level market. They are not threatening nor are they particularly difficult to grasp. In short, they are the perfect neophyte’s tablet, a cross between the simplicity of an e-ink ereader and a fully-featured mobile device. It’s good enough at both that people buying it for one purpose will be pleased with the device’s other strengths; depending on what you want, it’s either an Android slate in ereader’s clothing or vice versa. Amazon’s new Fire, which we’ll review shortly, takes a certain tack – low-priced, cloud oriented content consumption – while the Nook Tablet takes a decidedly different one. Priced at $249 – still cheaper than even the least-outfitted Android tablet – and aimed at a slightly more techie audience, the Nook Tablet is an ereader first and a tablet second. As it stands, the Nook Tablet is an impressive bit of machinery. It is a solid slab of electronics designed to do a few things exceedingly well and – sadly – a few things quite poorly. As a color, touchscreen ereader it is one of the best and, for those with an adventurous bent, I can imagine this becoming a useful media and app device. The Nook Tablet is a tablet for everyone. It is solid, easy to use, and most of Android’s rough edges have been burred off. Although there are some odd UI choices and frustrations, everything is in its right place. It is, in short, a perfectly slimmed down Android tablet masquerading as an ereader – something many will prefer over Kindle Fire’s obviously service-oriented approach.
The device has a 7-inch touchscreen that is surprisingly bright and readable. The front panel is grey plastic and the edge of the device is made of silver plastic. There is a small notch taken out of the lower left corner, something that I assume is useful of you wish to attach a lanyard to this thing. The back is the most pleasant aspect of the device. The soft touch plastic feels quite a bit like soft leather or suede. There are exactly four buttons – a central home button, shaped like the Nook N, a power button on the upper left and two volume or control buttons on the right. There is a microUSB port at the bottom and a small flap that pops up near the notch where you can fit a microSD card. There is a speaker grille at the bottom and a small hole for a microphone at the top. Finally, there is a headphone jack at the top. To power it on you simply hold down the power button. It boots in about a minute and starts back up in about 2 seconds. There are small audio cues for the various functions, including plugging into the USB cable and unlocking and locking the device. These can be turned off. There is no camera. The Nook Tablet is a direct descendent of Barnes & Noble’s Nook Color. As the name states, it’s a tablet, but not in the PC sense. The branding and UI points to the more primordial view of “tablet,” which suggests that this device is more like a cuneiform tablet to an early scribe than anything Bill Gates held up as the future of computing in 2001. However, the use of the word “tablet” is important in marketing this device. At $249, it can be perceived as being far more expensive than the Kindle Fire (although it’s not) and by naming the “Tablet” rather than the “Slate” or the “Runik Booke,” B&N is ostensibly saying “This is a computing device that we made for readers.” When you connect the device to a Mac or PC, the onboard storage appears. If you add a microSD card, this card also appears as a separate drive, something that could be confusing to new users. The device automatically sets up a certain number of folders for B&N use as well as your private use and it scans those folders each time you unplug the device. The device comes with 13GB of space available but there is, as they say, a rub. As you see here, the “MyNOOK” disk appears to only have 1GB available. The rest of that space is taken up by the Nook software and content. Quoth the website: 1GB = 1 billion bytes. Actual formatted capacity may be less. Approximately 13GB available to store content, of which up to 12GB may be reserved for content purchased from the Barnes & Noble NOOK Store.7microSD™ or microSDHC™ memory cards sold separately. microSD and microSDHC are trademarks of SD-3C This means you simply must install a MicroSD card, a prospect that many might find onerous. However, if you’re not planning on dragging MP4 movies onto this thing, you might be able to scrape by. If there is any major flaw in this device it is this odd problem of disk usage. B&N will offer digital video rental and downloads “early next year” which is why this space has been roped off. The magazines and other rich content are apparently also large files, said a B&N spokesperson, so that space has been dedicated to “official” content rather than side-loaded ad hoc content.
The Nook Tablet UI is fairly straightforward. After sliding to unlock the main screen, you’re presented with a carousel of books and items you’ve recently used. You can drag these to the main screen much like apps in any Android phone and they remain persistent there. Along the bottom is a row of small icons – Books, Newsstand, Movies, Music, Apps – and there are small icons signifying the microSD card and the book you’ve just read. Up in the top corner of the home screen is the “More” menu that supplies possibly interesting items for your consumption. The music player is nearly stock Android and the media player lumps photos and video into one app, a frustrating experience. However, everything else is fairly custom, from the epub/PDF reader to the app store. Searching for apps is slightly frustrating. Because the Nook App Store is limited by B&N, looking for common apps like “Rockplayer” is almost impossible, returning instead a list of books with those words in the titles. Browsing through the device is quick and clean. There is some of the old “Android lag” – pages move a bit too slowly, apps take a bit to spin up, but generally all of the reading experiences are more than adequate and the various apps available run as they would on any modern tablet. The browser is just that – an Android browser with Flash Player 10.3.186.6 installed. I was able to browse TechCrunch in its full, Flash-enhanced glory while some sites exhibited some quirks associated with mobile browsers including failing to load backgrounds and defaulting to mobile versions of the site. The browser has a bookmarks feature as well as most visited and history tabs. The device allows you to link your Facebook, Twitter, and Google accounts via the social settings tab. Facebook and Twitter allow for text sharing with the world at large while Google connectivity allows you to add your contacts as Nook friends. You can get recommendations from your friends using a feature called Nook friends, although this feature is somewhat muted in this version of the Nook software. As I said before, this OS takes the edge off of Android but folks familiar with the OS will see most of the similarities. It is, to be clear, eminently usable and anyone – from an Android hacker to my mom – would be able to easily buy, read, and share books and some media.
First and foremost, this is an ereader. The screen is bright and crisp and when reading epub documents the formatting is unimpeachable. It is a backlit screen so outdoor reading is possible but not encouraged. As a reader, the Nook Tablet works quite well. Books are as you’d expect and you can control the font size and orientation. Magazines really shine on this device. Issues of National Geographic and Food + Wine looked amazing on the bright, clear screen and the magazine reader was really quite nice – it could replace iOS’ newsstand for me if enough titles become available. Comics appear just like magazines, with big, bright, and bold colors. If anything, the Nook excels at this sort of content. Another fun feature is the built-in “read along” features for children’s books. I read a page of The Elephant Child into the device’s microphone and my kids can then pick my recording from an onscreen menu. The audio is actually recorded right onto the device and is available in M4A format for later download, which makes it useful for folks who might want to record junior reading a book. When it comes to reading on this device the central question is whether you want the bright, bold colors of the Tablet or the muted – but more readable – e-ink display on the Nook or Kindle Touch devices. If you’re only reading on this thing, I wonder if you wouldn’t be better served by an e-ink device. However, the color screen adds considerable depth to the standard reading experience and has much to recommend it.
Now for the secondary functions. Barnes & Noble want this device to exist as an “HD media” player, which is a noble goal though, at 1024×600, B&N’s interpretation of “HD” differs considerably from the rest of the humanity’s. If by HD media they mean the ability to view videos on a fairly large, fairly bright screen, then why don’t they just say it? Aside from this obviously malarkey, viewing videos on this is a dream and, coupled with an SD card and plenty of MPEG4 rendered content, you have something akin to what the iPod Touch was a few years ago – a capable device that you can take with you on the plane to watch a few movies. Amazon’s Fire is all about the cloud. I’m pleased that this device is less about the cloud and more about content that is right on your device. Streaming movies is usually impossible on flights and in certain situations, sans Wi-Fi, so unless you plan on doing all of your watching at home there’s little to be said about files in the ether. Granted, both the Kindle and Nook have plenty of storage for downloaded content, but Amazon’s is a bit more tied into their own store than I particularly like. If you must use the cloud, the Nook Tablet supports Netflix, Hulu Plus, and Showtime and should support other apps down the line. For music you have Pandora, Rhapsody, and Grooveshark although I was wildly sad to find Rdio and Spotify missing (although I did find a book called , which shows you the problem with a unified book/app search). It’s too soon to assess battery life but in my time with the device I didn’t notice much of a drain while watching video vs. simple reading. The onboard speaker is more than sufficient in a small, quiet room but you wouldn’t want to be stuck listening to it for long.
So who wants this thing? Well, anyone who has used a Nook before, prefers Barnes & Noble over Amazon, and is looking for a device to partake in simple content consumption. The Nook Tablet isn’t for everyone, however. If you are, for example, a big reader and are simply looking for something to stuff into a briefcase for a long plane ride, I think you will be better served by a device like the Nook Simple Touch or Kindle Touch. iPad owners will probably find much of the functionality duplicated here although the size and screen are a bit more manageable than the iPad’s. If you’re looking for a less expensive but carefully curated media experience – with the backing of Barnes & Noble – this is probably the device for you. With the arrival of video rentals and downloads as well as the music apps, you’ve got an ereader with extras. As a bonus, the Nook Color – and, eventually, the Nook Tablet – has a very rich modding community around it. Many of the limitations I mentioned above are and it’s only a matter of time before this device begins running modded firmware. Like all Android devices, there is more than meets the eye.
As I said before, the Nook Tablet is an ereader with extras. You’re looking at a nice media device that also displays books. It has a few near-fatal flaws, but those can be remedied by the tech-savvy and ignored by everyone else. As it stands it is a strong and impressive improvement to the underpowered Nook Color and it is probably one of the better Android tablets I’ve used. Whether you go Nook or Kindle is actually a matter of preference for the parent companies as the hardware is nearly identical and most ways and if you already have a great deal invested in B&N content, this is a worthy and exciting upgrade to anything you’ve used in that family thus far.
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Flirty Turkish Users Propel Social Network Interconnections | Josh Constine | 2,011 | 11 | 17 | Turkey has been named the most social and most flirtatious country in the world by a new . Turks, and specifically Turkish men, sent the most friend requests as well as the most “winks” — a flirty communication method on Tagged similar to the Facebook Poke. The most flirty women on the service were from the U.K. and U.S. Turkish users strengthen the density of Tagged’s social graph, and drive up engagement by increasing the average number of friends the gaming and meeting network’s users have. However, questions remain regarding whether such extroverted users are degrading the experience for women who may not want to field their romantic advances. Tagged tells me it found “nothing showing Turkish accounts to be out of the norm in complaints or abuse”, but I’m skeptical. Active Turkish users apparently send an average of 173 friend requests and 25 winks. Unless all of these are going to people that truly know and reciprocate the feelings of the senders, the higher volume seems likely to translate into abuse complaints or at least the need for Tagged to throttle their communication channel usage. In the past, I’ve heard from user experience and enforcement teams at other social services that Turkish men trigger more complaints than other demographics. This is a natural side effect of globalized social networks, and in no way am I trying to paint the Turks as villains. Tagged’s own researchers say the flirtatiousness of users from Turkey, as well as Egypt, France, and Italy that also scored high on those axes, could be due to “Europe’s long-standing, open attitude towards love and romance.” Communication, friendship, and courtship norms are inherently different in each country. Most social networks probably thank the Turks for their high engagement and for populating the content feeds and notifications of their fellow users. Still, maintaining a safe and friendly online environment free of harassment is important. Too much unwanted flirtation from men can lead women to abandon a service or lock down their privacy controls. Tagged may be currently touting the flirtaciousness and extroversion of its Turkish population. In reality, it may be walking a fine line between behavior that helps keep users on the site, and behavior that could drive them away. |
Samsung Denies Apple’s Request For Records Of Service Calls Confusing Their Products | Josh Constine | 2,011 | 11 | 17 | “You’re a copycat!” “No, you’re the copycat!” Apple and Samsung have entered the pre-trial discovery period in their dispute over whose smartphones and tablets . In hopes of securing evidence that even Samsung’s customers mistake its products for iPhones and iPads, Apple has requested that Samsung turn over records of customer service calls where one company’s products were confused with the other’s. That evidence could help Apple ban sales of Samsung’s Galaxy 10.1 tablet in major markets, so the South Korean electronics company is trying to frame the request as unfeasible. Samsung has now formally denied the request, citing that the request’s broad scope would include calls where customers criticize Apple’s products, which are supposedly so numerous that collecting them from calls where their products were confused would be take too much time and effort. Yep, Samsung’s defense is that it is flooded with hate calls about another company’s products — products that are consistently rated as having . The denial proudly claims customers frequently call Samsung to rave about their products and rage against Apple’s. This seems unlikely, as most people hate calling customer service as much the problems they call about. It may be difficult for Samsung to convince the court to uphold the denial on the grounds that enough users go to such the trouble just to complement them. Here’s the full-text of Samsung’s flimsy excuse, courtesy of : If Apple can attain these records, it might find logs of customers asking where to find iPhone or iPad features on Samsung devices, or referring to Samsung features by their Apple titles, such as saying “FaceTime” instead of “video chat”. The holy grail would be Samsung customers calling up and actually thinking they own a device manufactured or associated with Apple because their designs are so similar. The thin excuse seems to indicate Samsung has something to hide. Even if it did receive a lot of these Apple-bashing calls, it’s unclear whether that would actually make it significantly more difficult to comb through the records. Samsung’s going to need a better excuse. Otherwise, Apple may be able to leverage its popularity and visibility to reference mentions of its buzzwords, ingrained in Americans through marketing, as evidence of intellectual property infringement. |
Bag Week Review: Ogio Squadron RSS | Chris Velazco | 2,011 | 11 | 17 | I consider myself a pretty understated guy when it comes to attire, so when Ogio offered to send me the Squadron RSS in Celebrity White, I surprised myself my taking a chance on it. A white bag? This was strange new territory for me, but hey — what better time to be adventurous than during Bag Week?
Backpack
19.5″h x 13.5″w x 7″d
Laptop compartment (up to 15″ with RSS, up to 17″ without), main cargo compartment, 7 zippered pockets
RSS laptop cradle, pockets for nearly all your gadgets
$134.99
I’m just going to come out and say it: I’m not a fan of the color scheme. The Squadron RSS’s Celebrity variant mixes a whole lot of white and black with a few hints of brownish-gold, and the whole thing just seems a bit strange to me. That’s not to say I think it’s an ugly bag; color notwithstanding, it’s actually quite a looker. The front of the bag is where most of the character is: the frontmost pocket sports some nifty diamond-shaped stitching, and two metallic snap buckles sit above and below it. I can’t quite figure out what the buckles are meant for, although looking at them, they’d probably hold a skateboard pretty well. Ogio’s sense of character carries over into the cargo compartments and pockets themselves. Looking closely at the lining reveals a PCB-esque pattern woven into it, and Ogio went with some large metal zippers to round out the package. All things considered the Squadron RSS is a handsome bag, if just a bit ostentatious. I’m not a fan of the color scheme, but Ogio offers a more traditional black body that more subdued folk like me may take a shine to. I was pleasantly surprised by the how much bigger the Squadron felt than my , even though it’s actually about an inch thinner. The bag is only split into two major cargo compartments, with one for the laptop and one for everything else. The laptop compartment is actually sort of a hoot because it features what Ogio calls RSS — the reactive suspension system. Essentially, it’s a laptop cradle with two parts: a stretchy foam inner pocket nestled inside a harder plastic frame. The idea is that no matter how often you drop the bag, that hard frame will take the beating instead of your computer.The only downside is that it makes for a tight squeeze in the laptop compartment. Getting my 15-inch MacBook Pro in there was a a bit of a challenge, but the added protection seemed worth the hassle. The main cargo compartment fit my full load of daily gear: my iPad, micro four-thirds camera, a few lenses, and some notebooks. There was plenty of room left over for en extra shirt or pair of jeans, so it would make a respectable weekend backpack too. Ogio also went to great lengths to cram as many pockets as possible into this thing, each with a helpful icon suggesting what to put in it. By my count, there are seven zippered pockets peppered around the bag, including a tiny one on the left strap. Speaking of straps, they’re solid but a little thin. A foamy mesh lines the top and bottom of the bag’s rear, and the everything together makes for a very comfortable schlep session. The Squadron RSS is versatile enough to fit in a bunch of different situations, but it would make a great companion for students on the run. Oh, and weekend warriors who would like to take a laptop and a change of clothes somewhere overnight. It’s not the cheapest bag in the world at $135 and it’s got a few quirks, but it’s a pleasant surprise in terms of space and comfort and I can think of far worse bags to spend the money on.
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House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi Also Comes Out Against SOPA | Eric Eldon | 2,011 | 11 | 17 | While SOPA supporters have tried to present the copyright bill as a bipartisan effort to stop the “theft” of copyrighted material, the bipartisan has been building fast this week. Today, House minority speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has come out against it, too, saying on Twitter that “[we] need to find a better solution.” https://twitter.com/#!/NancyPelosi/status/137234283667537920 Yes, she represents San Francisco, where one assumes very few people support the bill, but she’s also one of the most influential left-leaning members of Congress. Political opposition had already begun to mount, with Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) — who is very much a conservative — declaring yesterday that ”I don’t believe this bill has any chance on the House floor. I think it’s way too extreme, it infringes on too many areas that our leadership will know is simply too dangerous to do in its current form.” Today, he retweets Pelosi, saying that “If even we agree….” https://twitter.com/#!/DarrellIssa/status/137241347907268609 To learn more about the bill, check out our teardown from a few weeks ago, and our roundup of the latest events from yesterday and this week: |
3D Printing Startup Shapeways Raises $5.1 Million, Plans NYC Production Facility | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 11 | 17 | Of all the cool things going on in technology, one of my favorites is 3D printing. It’s got such a futuristic quality to it: input a digital schematic, and you get a physical product custom cut to your exact specifications. . How amazing is that? Sorry, still wrapping my head around it. In any case, I’m not the only one who’s excited: — a company looking to bring 3D printing to the masses — just raised an additional $5.1 million from existing investors Union Square Ventures and Index Ventures, and it’s also gotten a loan commitment of $1.2 million from NYC Investment Fund. The company previously raised $5 million last fall. And there’s also some great news for Shapeways customers: the firm is planning to launch printing facilities in New York City in 2012. Historically goods ordered (and then printed) through Shapeways have been manufactured either through contracted third-parties, or through the company’s own facility in Eindhoven, Netherlands. Now that it will be able to print stateside, the net result will be faster turnout times for customers, and lower prices. The company hasn’t specified exactly what kind of savings to expect just yet, but I’m told they will be substantial. For those that haven’t used it, Shapeways is both a service for printing out your 3D designs, and a marketplace for designers to sell their custom-printed wares to customers. The service also has a set of wizards that allow users without any 3D design experience to customize certain objects, like this new . Products can be made from a range of materials including a everything from white, strong plastic to stainless steel (you can find a listing of the 25+ materials ). The company says that its marketplace now has over 300,000 products and 100,000 users. Their New York office now has 19 people. |
null | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 11 | 28 | null |
Bag Week Review: Incase Andy Warhol Shoulder Bag (Color: Banana) | Jordan Crook | 2,011 | 11 | 17 |
Whether your apartment walls are covered in pop art or not, this Shoulder Bag from Incase’s Andy Warhol collection brings an entirely new sense of style to the laptop bag. Granted, it’s not as durable as some of the other bags we’ve seen this week, nor does it protect your gadgetry as well, but it does have one thing that the other bags don’t: a banana. All jokes aside, this bag actually got the job done rather well and with more than a few pairs of eyes on me. Whether onlookers were making fun of me for carrying an Andy Warhol bag (not likely in ) or they were digging my style is yet to be determined. Either way, the bag suited my needs just fine, though it is a tad heavier than some of the other bags I’ve toyed with this week.
Let’s face it, the Andy Warhol Banana bag is much more about style than it is utility. The quilted interior feels way more high-end than Incase’s standard faux fur lining, but I’m not convinced it offers the same level of protection. When I put my bag down on the floor, I could really feel the laptop hitting the ground, whereas in a bag like the that wasn’t the case. The bag is a tad heavier than I’d have liked, but still comfortable nonetheless. Still, I found myself missing that breathable mesh that Incase seems to be so fond of, and feeling bothered by the rigid, leather-like shoulder pad on this bag. It’s removable, which is the good news, but the bad news is that the seat belt-style nylon strap underneath cuts pretty bad if you’re packing a MacBook Pro or anything semi-heavy. Plus, it’s fitted with custom metal hardware that can hurt if the strap gets twisted (as bag straps often do). But unlike the , this bag’s dedicated iPhone/iPod pocket is 100 percent accessible. I really couldn’t be more pleased with it, either. The zipper slides back and forth just fine, but the brilliant part is that the pocket itself is tilted with the opening higher than the pocket, so you can theoretically leave it unzipped and not risk your falling to its demise. The best thing about the bag is the space. I was able to tote around my MBP, a tablet, a notebook, my camera, and plenty of other little day-to-day junk. But again, the bag is a bit heavy which discouraged filling the bag to its potential, as did the rigid shoulder strap.
Tough one, but I’m gonna go with Andy Warhol fans, the potassium-deficient, and anyone who looks good in cream-colored accessories. But seriously, this bag can actually hold quite a bit of your stuff, so anyone who’s looking for something where utility and style compromise should give this some thought.
Eh. It’s a fine bag and all but I don’t care enough about Andy Warhol or bananas to sacrifice comfort. Shoulder bags are already a bit more uncomfortable than your standard backpack because the weight isn’t being evenly distributed at all, so that shoulder strap really needs to be a pleasure and the bag, in my opinion, should be relatively small so as to not get too heavy when full. Not everyone may agree with that, but it’s just my two cents. I do, on the other hand, give storage space, accessibility, and style five stars each so just because it’s not the bag for me doesn’t mean it’s wrong for you. If you are used to carrying around a heavy shoulder bag and don’t mind a somewhat uncomfortable strap because of it, well then by all means start saving. It does, after all, cost a pretty penny. [slideshow] |
Yelp Files For IPO To Raise $100 Million | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 11 | 17 | Local recommendation site Yelp has finally filed an , wanting to raise $100 million. While there is no price per share or valuation designated on the form, reports have held the desired valuation at $1 billion to $2 billion. The site generated $58.4 million net revenue in the first nine months of 2011, 80% growth over the same period in 2010. It operated at a net loss however, of $7.6 million. Revenues have grown pretty fast, from $12.1 million in 2008 to $47.7 million in 2010 but as you’ll probably get sick of hearing over the next couple of weeks, it is still not profitable. The Yelp S-1 boasts 22 million Yelp reviews, up 66% from the prior year, and 529,000 locations represented on the site — up 114% from 2010. Founded in 2004, Yelp has $56 million in funding from , , , and . The IPO, which will be underwritten by Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and Jefferies, has been long in co-founder Jeremy Stoppelman’s sights — at least since Yelp from a $550 million Google deal in 2009. |
Postcard On The Run Raises $750k, Makes An Investor Out Of Selena Gomez | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 11 | 17 | Oh, you didn’t hear? Tech investments are in celebrity circles these days. Purse-sized puppies? Meh. Crazy outfits at awards shows? Over it! Participation in an early stage funding round? SO IN! Ashton Kutcher (and Likealittle, HipMunk, Grubwithus, etc.). Gaga . Leo . The latest A-lister to go A-ngel: actress/singer/Bieber’s belle Selena Gomez, with an investment in Postcard On The Run. For those who may have missed , Postcard On The Run lets you take photos off your smartphone and convert them into real-world postcards for about a buck a pop. They handle all the dirty work like printing and mailing — you just tell them what you want, and where to send it. It’s fast, fun, and clever enough that Apple started doing something . The round closed at $750k, led primarily by CrossCut Ventures. Their list of individual investors is pretty formidable, though, if only in size: Mike Jones, Kamran Pourzanjani, Yves Sisteron, Aber Whitcomb, Brian Fitzgerald, Ryan Steelberg, Colin Digiaro, Brian Lee, Chris DeWolfe, Jarl Mohn, and, of course, Selena Gomez. Selena Gomez as a tech investor. Seem strange? Sure. But the company has even stranger news today: Smell Mail. For an additional 50¢, senders can go all Scratch-n-sniff with scents like Baby Powder, Holiday Spice, Pine, Flowers, Chocolate, Popcorn, Suntan Lotion, or Teen Spirit. Wait — that last one: does it smell like the deodorant, or like an early 90’s Kurt Cobain? |
Modern Warfare 3 Sets New Sales Record: $775 Million In Five Days | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 11 | 17 | If anyone has been thinking that we’ve deliberately avoided the Modern Warfare launch in favor of stuff, well, I wouldn’t blame them, but it really wasn’t on purpose. Let us demonstrate our impartiality by passing on this rather astonishing statistic: That’s definitely a record. Comparisons to big movie launches are warranted, of course, and MW3 has the biggest beat by a factor of three or four. Note that MW3’s sales number include pre-orders, however, while most box office receipts are sold on the spot. The game is sure to hit the billion-dollar mark soon, and will likely have done so faster than any game before it. If there’s anyone left who doubts the power of the mainstream games market, numbers like these should humble them. At the same time, it must be acknowledged that the mega-franchises are really very few when compared with the number of titles released at large, but the same could be said for standout TV shows and movies. And after all, there’s plenty of pie to go around. It’s not like the people who buy MW3 can’t also buy Minecraft or Sword & Sworcery. I’m not a Modern Warfare guy myself, but then again, I’m not a guy either, and I paid to see that and I enjoyed myself. MW3 may not elevate the genre, but every game like it elevates the market away from niche (where to be honest it hasn’t been for years and years) and further into everyday life. |
The Real Pirates Of Silicon Valley? | Cyan Banister | 2,011 | 11 | 10 | recently broke the news about an ambitious seasteading endeavor called started by Silicon Valley founders Max Marty and Dario Mutabdzija. The post came shortly after Max pitched the idea (embedded below) at on October 17th, in which he received a huge round of applause. isn’t a new idea. Other than pirates, one of the first well known attempts at seasteading was the data haven called that was located on a sea platform off the coast of England. The sea platform was its own country called , with its own passports, currency, etc. The project was a direct result of restrictive laws around online gambling. Similar concepts have been developed around floating hospitals called , where medical treatments are performed on large ocean vessels. While these ships currently serve developing countries, one can imagine how similar ships could provide low cost healthcare all around the world by operating out in the open waters free from the various laws that restrict the ability for inexpensive medical treatments through competitive pricing. Back when I was a sysadmin, I became friends with one of the residents of Sealand and officers of HavenCo, and later a few of the founders of Havenco, . I was such a huge fan of this endeavor, that I begged Ryan to let me come join him. At the time, I was pondering either working at HavenCo or on a project in Antarctica. I was very young, and this was some phase in my life where I wanted to push myself to extremes. I also loved the idea that there could be ways to make change in the world by applying pressure from outside of a system through creating market choices. This is what Blueseed is attempting to do, but instead of gambling, they are taking the issues around not being able to get H1B immigration visas head on: Blueseed aims to provide an alternative solution to the US work visa problem for Silicon Valley and allow professionals lacking a visa to legally work in close proximity to companies and investors from the Valley. Blueseed plans to do this by providing living and office accommodations on a vessel anchored 12 nautical miles offshore from California (half an hour by ferry), in outside the jurisdiction of the United States. Target customers include startup entrepreneurs for whom a satisfactory U.S. work visa solution doesn’t exist, staffing companies impacted by the preventing 3rd party employee placement, and other high-tech professionals interested in the advantages provided by Blueseed’s location. Its no secret that I’m a libertarian and a lot of people disagree with my stances on limited government, but I do believe people from all political sides in Silicon Valley are with me when I say our country’s immigration policies are pretty fucked up. I agree with Greg Anderson from ArticStartup, who wrote, “As an American citizen, I don’t know if I should feel really impressed or disappointed about plans.” I got a chance to interview Max about Blueseed and here’s a summary of our interview: Max became interested in seasteading and creating what he calls the “Googleplex of the sea” after he heard an online talk by . Max sees seasteading as a response to the reality of the world in which he currently lives in and as a way to change the system from the outside, by simply offering people a better alternative. “If you are comfortable with what you’ve got, that’s fine, but if not, we may have something for you…”. Through complete chance, he eventually met Patri in person at a conference in San Jose and through that luck and serendipity, he ended up joining them at the Seasteading Institute. While director of the institute, Max met his partner Dario. Max had been searching for ways to apply something practical to the concept of seasteading and after looking at things like medical tourism, etc., he decided to become focused on solving a problem near and dear to him. Max is a first generation immigrant and his partner is an immigrant. While Max was in college in Florida, he made friends with amazing and talented people from around the world and after they graduated, they found it incredibly difficult to stay in the US. Most returned home where they started their professional careers, even though that wasn’t what they wanted. They wanted to stay and become part of what once made the US great by helping to create economic growth and prosperity. If you think about many of our entrepreneurial stars in Silicon Valley, you’ll come up with many names of amazing people who came to our country as immigrants. I can name a few off the top of my head such as , and , but just for fun and to add gravity to why immigration is so important, you should list as many as you can think of in the comments. Max Marty’s own family didn’t have to go through the pains of sponsorship and visas, because being from Cuba, they were considered political refugees, but he saw this problem all around him and considered it ridiculous that our country treated professionals and entrepreneurs in such a terrible way. Max stated, “Our political reality is that coming to work here is not actually possible.” “The idea came to me while I was on a When you are on one of these ships, it feels like you are in a small city and part of a community.” Max and I discussed how his ship would need to be an extension of the Silicon Valley community in order to connect with the right talent and investors. Being so close, people would be able to come to shore on visitor visas and take meetings and have a social life. One of the reasons I didn’t go to Sealand was due to gender ratio. Even though I’m well accustomed at this point being surrounded by men, I can always go home and have my girly hideout, but on a platform and in an intimate setting like that, it just didn’t seem like a good idea. I brought this up with Max and he said that the organization will be actively looking for startups led by female entrepreneurs from around the world. The logistics of doing anything on the ocean are mind boggling. His team is currently raising a round of funding to help get to the next stage of making this dream a reality. With a few investors committed, they are one step closer to getting some of the logistical planning out of the way such as food provisioning, establishing relations with customs and border protection, dealing with Internet access, etc. Because this is such a huge endeavor, I asked Max what he most needed help with if I could get the word out there and he said, “Recently we were thinking about the environmental angle to it. Maybe people would be interested in showcasing or demoing their sustainability products on the ship. Come help us create a sustainable environment on the vessel, so that we’re not a blight on the ocean. It would be great to connect with individuals in this space.” I don’t know about you, but it seems to me that we can talk about being pirates all we want, but to truly be a pirate, you have to have a ship. This is a crazy idea, but one I would love to see succeed. Hats off to Max and Dario for dreaming big and trying to make a difference in the world. Update: The founders wanted this link put up if you have any questions. Many of the questions in the comments are addressed here: [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ll5TGrmWII&w=560&h=315] |
Clawbacks and Startups Don’t Mix | Semil Shah | 2,011 | 11 | 10 | The emanating from the is a wake-up call for startups. Reports allege the company threatened to reclaim stock options originally granted to employees who, in the eyes of the company, were to levels on par with their equity holdings. I don’t know what’s true and what’s not about the Zynga . Therefore, I’m not going to comment on the particulars of those specific allegations in this post. That said, however, something is clearly going on and spreading around the developer community, and if the Hacker News community is any indicator, this earthquake could have powerful, plate-shifting aftershocks. Last year, one of our family friends was let go from a job at a small but successful hedge fund in New York City. His path to the fund was not rosy. He struggled to get into and out of college. He scraped by to get his accounting license. He worked at a big accounting company for a decade and, it turns out, happened to be so good at his craft that he randomly caught the eye of one of New York’s most powerful financiers. He was recruited, offered a plum gig (with grueling hours), jumped ship, let go of his consistent paychecks, and took on considerable risk with a small team to help build a new hedge fund in the middle of the 2008 collapse. Then, a few weeks before his carry in the fund was to be paid out, he was approached by Mr. Number Two, plainly told he’d be fired with a year’s severance, and told to grab his belongings. “It’s just business.” He was crushed. The dollar amount aside, he couldn’t understand why this would happen. He sought the advice of all of his mentors, most of whom shook their head in disbelief, dismay, and disgust, all saying some variation of, “it’s just business.” The in depicts a bank robbery pulled off by a group of men, each of whom kill each other, one-by-one during the heist, until the only person standing is the Joker, the mastermind of the scheme. As one of the robbers says, “One less share.” Startups are supposed to be different, right? Startups are when people get together to build something new, to form new cultures, to help define a new type of workplace while collectively trying to solve a problem. In the riskiest part of these ventures — company formation and the early stage — startups and their shareholders recruit extremely talented people, mostly technical and some non-technical, on the promise of a potential deferred payoff through realized equity in exchange for a lower monthly salary and oftentimes insane work hours and demands. Yet, so many extremely qualified, passionate people are willing to forgo the safety of a consistent paycheck and defined-contribution retirement program to get into the game. When you step back and think about the dynamics, it’s pretty damn inspiring and what makes entrepreneurial ecosystems so exceptional. The reality, however, is that startups are not immune to the Joker’s “one less share.” In the world of non-unionized, at-will employment, shareholders and managers can terminate employment when they see fit, even at times when a significant payout looms. Sure, once a cliff is reached with respect to vesting of shares, an employee will accrue equity that is rightfully theirs. In some cases, there could be sensitive company intelligence that only the founders, executive management, and board members are aware of, such as a potential acquisition, merger, or details around a public offering. With that information, management could, hypothetically, have an incentive to look over the ledger and ponder a re-splitting the pie. If the from Zynga is true, and if equity “clawbacks” and attempts to reclaim shares (against threats of termination) are used as tactics to manage option pools and optimize for a policy of “one less share,” the repercussions from this could spread. It could be the line in the sand. Should any early-stage employee truly put their trust in an equity agreement or option grant issued by their new employer? Who will back them up when legal fees may be too daunting? Will management seek to retain talent with promises of equity instead of just hiring and firing the right people, in the best interest of the company? These ideas Hacker News and one posted today had, on its own, close to 300 comments. In my four separate interactions with engineers today, the topic came up, and their reactions were not muted. They are paying attention to every potential actor in this story and what it could mean for their future gigs or when they start their own companies. While clawbacks seem to be known dangers in the world of finance, I’d like to believe that this ethos won’t creep into the startup world, an ecosystem that is certainly not perfect but is decidedly far too passionate to say “it’s just business.” |
Arrived Has Arrived | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 11 | 10 | Want to tell your friends that you’ve arrived somewhere, but you’re too lazy to check into Foursquare, Twitter, Instagram, Batch, iMessage or text them? WELL YOU’RE IN LUCK, EXTREMELY PRIVILEGED PEOPLE, BECAUSE TECHCRUNCH DISRUPT FINALIST IS NOW OUT OF PRIVATE BETA. In case you didn’t get Arrived is an iPhone app that notifies people when you get to a certain place, with, get this, no immediate effort from your lonesome. Yeah, I know. Crazy ass modern world right? Arrived co-founder Matthias Broecheler stands by the fact that a good number of people actually want to do this, “People love to set up arrivals around places like ‘San Francisco’ or ‘Manhattan’ or ‘Central Park’, so that they can be notified when friends arrive there. We spend a lot of time working on a geo-fencing solution that would allow people to arrive in geographic areas of various sizes automatically without draining a user’s battery. We are the first iPhone app we know that does this efficiently. Most apps only do geofencing around places, that is, a geographic point with a small radius around it.” To use Arrived, download the app and pick a place you want to notify people about. Then pick the people you want to notify about your arrival and it just works! I picked a random place ( , a bar down the street) and then a bunch of random people so my old co-workers are totally going to get a random message one of these days when I’ve forgotten all about this article and I’m walking by there on the way to work. HAH. TAKE THAT OLD COWORKERS. You can download this thing |
IBM Debuts Mobile Security Service For Smartphone And Tablet Use In The Enterprise | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 11 | 10 | As the usage of smartphones increases in business operations, IBM is debuting a new service to help businesses secure mobile devices with access to corporate data. Called the Hosted Mobile Device Security Management service, the new product includes a security application for smartphones and tablets, along with managed services including policy management and user compliance monitoring. IBM says the Device Security Management hosted service helps organizations protect against and monitor data loss and other risks caused by device theft, unauthorized access, malware, spyware, and inappropriate apps. The service allows businesses to configure and monitor employee smartphones and tablets to comply with security policies, secure data in the event that a device is lost or stolen, help to find a lost or stolen device, protect against spyware and viruses, detect and remove malicious and unapproved applications, track user activity, and maintain secure web connections. IBM says it is working with Juniper Networks to provide the protection and device management technology for the service, which will be available for Apple iOS, Google Android, BlackBerry, Symbian and Microsoft Windows Mobile. As more and more businesses adopt smartphones and tablets for employee use, the need to secure these mobile devices both when it comes to business data and everyday security issues like malware. The product sounds very similar to the , and Of course, it’s a little surprising that IBM didn’t just acquire one of these companies considering its acquisitive nature. |
Dropbox Is Working On Ways To Move Beyond File Folders | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 11 | 10 | Dropbox CEO talked to Gigaom’s this evening at the GigaOm RoadMap conference and let slip some key insights about his company’s product roadmap, namely that he wants to get past the metaphor of a file folder as Dropbox’s sole organizing principle. Houston described the idea of a file folder that syncs as “Chapter 1” for the company, “We think it’s just the first step …[In the beginning of Dropbox] we didn’t want to call Dropbox ‘back up’ or even use word like ‘sync’ … [Because] it’s not storage as much as it is an experience.” He revealed that the company was looking ways of going beyond files and folders, “‘What’s the point of Dropbox if it’s just a folder? …,'” he said, “We’re really building a lot of new ways to manage and view your important stuff.” Malik then asked if these new management and organizing principles revolved around time and space, “When you think about your [files[ you can break it down into those categories, and then not only can you have the photo itself but an index of all the data associated with photo e.g. not only where this picture was taken but what were all the other pictures taken within a ten mile radius.” Or which Facebook friends are tagged in the photo. And music is a whole new set of constructs. Etc, etc. While it’s not clear exactly what this new management system will look like once/if it sees the light of day, Houston certainly has the leeway to experiment. And one day the file folder icon will be as much an anachronism as |
Street Prices For Hard Drives Spike As Supply Contracts | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 11 | 10 | By now you must have heard of the ongoing havoc being caused by flooding in Thailand. It’s claimed a few product launches already; Nikon and Sony have both had to delay shipment of new cameras, among others. But the single tech industry that seems to be hit the hardest is hard drive manufacturers. Many factories have been flooded and the production of drives has been seriously impeded. Due to large inventories being kept by most retailers, the effect of the floods on a commodity like HDDs was bound to be delayed. And now we’re starting to see major rises in the prices of common drives like a Seagate 2TB. Street prices in Japan have risen by some measurements by 200% or more just in the last couple weeks. The chart above, , shows that the cheapest options for 2TB drives have gone up as much as 400% since late October. And indeed, at American retailers many cheap drives are sold out or selling far above the prices from a few months back. The prices could come back down as quickly as they went up (some, you can see, are already bouncing back down, having overshot their optimum price), but it has to be a terrifying time to be in the business. A company that produces custom servers, for instance, is put in the uncomfortable position of taking a loss on sales or passing the cost on to their customers. In essence, it’s the same kind of crunch you see when the stock of any commodity is significantly reduced: LCD panels or printer ink or bananas would have similar ripple effects. Still, storage is an essential part of the PC and consumer electronics world, and everyone involved is hoping for a speedy recovery effort in Thailand. With the waters only just beginning to recede and damage widespread and serious, some are estimating a year or more before the factories can return to pre-flood productivity levels. . |
A year later the Prime Minister returns to East London's 'Tech City' | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 11 | 10 | Well, it’s exactly a year on from the UK Prime Minister’s speech in Shoreditch which fired the starting gun on what the government decided to call “ “, a cluster of tech companies it had recognised were growing organically in East London. This is an area local tech people had already dubbed Silicon Roundabout way back in 2008. That’s not to say London, and the UK doesn’t have plenty of tech companies all over – but clearly the government had decided to fan the flames by giving it some attention in the form of an appearance by the PM in Brick Lane. Since then they’ve done more – created an arm of the UKTI, called the which has been running around beating the PR drum amongst VCs in Silicon Valley, in the media and anyone who will listen. Today the Prime Minister came to the area, and visited two hubs of tech companies, , run by the Passion Capital VC, and , a co-working and events space. It’s fair to say most tech entrepreneurs in the area have welcomed what amounts to millions of pounds of free PR for their companies and the cluster. Companies outside East London might smart at this, but plenty have got in on the slip-stream of the branding game, and these days you can’t move for the amount of press coverage about tech startups in London, wherever they are from. And the access to government is directly benefitting entrepreneurs, as startups like and attest to . The regular meetings, both at Number 10 Downing Street and in East London itself have kept up the momentum. However, Berlin, Paris and, lately Dublin, have been wooing entrepreneurs. Paris with EG8, Dublin with F.ounders, and Berlin by… just being far cheaper than London. And while the “Tech City” project is designed to stretch to the Olympic Park, none of the large tech firms committed to the project so far – Google, Intel and Cisco – have decided to become “anchor tenant” after the Olympics. A £1bn proposal by the Wellcome Trust to make the park a life sciences hub was rejected as not offering sufficient value for money and talks for the BBC to move there have foundered. Though to be fair Number 10 officials working on Tech City say it is too early to expect much happening with the Olympic Park, with the OPLC only launching a tender for the broadcast centres last month. But so far that’s not bothering the startups in the Shoreditch cluster, although Hackney Wick – packed full of artists studios – is the area closest to what one startup described to me as “probably our next location.” Meanwhile seems most companies are doubling down on Shoreditch as their version of Tech City. And that trend is born out by the new . The Prime Minister David Cameron launched the map today, specifically created to analyse the interactions between digital companies in East London. It was created by local developers at and designed by . The map itself identifies over 600 broadly “digital” companies. In November 2010, there were around 200. However, looking at the map this does lump digital consultancies, digital agencies and tech startups into a broad category. You also can’t add your company if it is not in an East London postcode – which admittedly might skew the results of tech trends across London. The other partners were Thomson Reuters, Mother London, Cisco, Atos and LinkedIn. The map includes analytics to highlight the community in East London, pulling in streams of social network data, initially Twitter but soon LinkedIn data. The PM also announced plans to cut red tape for innovative startups by asking them for a contribution to a “radical deregulation process” for companies with “disruptive” business models. The vehicle for this is the website, and is overseen by Beth Noveck, a former US chief technology officer under Barack Obama and now adviser to Downing Street on digital governance. In related news , the Government-launched scheme created to help UK graduates start their own businesses, launched in East London. This is a not-for-profit scheme with corporate sponsors including McKinsey & Company and Microsoft. It is a two-year programme providing a new route into entrepreneurship for graduates, backed by leading UK entrepreneurs, student groups and major employers including Cisco, Shell, Qualcomm, BNP Paribas, Silicon Valley Bank, BT and Tesco. It was launched by Ed Vaizey, Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries and local startup founder David Langer, co-founder and CEO of , and spoke as an Entrepreneur First mentor. The Government today also announced the expansion of the so that entrepreneurs and investors can tell the Government where rules and regulations get in the way of innovation. Here’s a round up of other Tech City initiatives: • Long time tech journalist, commentator and consultant has been appointed as the Prime Minister’s Ambassador to #TechCity, responsible for linking government, business and civil society. • Cisco announced an agreement to partner with University College London and Imperial College London to create a “Future Cities Centre” in Shoreditch. Alongside this, Cisco announced its National Virtual Incubator (NVI) as part of its British Innovation Gateway (BIG) initiative. The Future Cities Centre is designed to conduct and commercialise research in the high potential area of smart infrastructure inside cities. They said amounts to a five-year investment of cash, technology and human resources. • Qualcomm announced the first Wireless Electric Vehicle Charging (WEVC) trial for London. The pre-commercial trial will start in early 2012, involving up to 50 wirelessly charged electric vehicles (EV). Based partially in ‘Tech City’, Qualcomm wants to release data about the cars and the charging operations for third party apps developers to work on. • Co-working and education space General Assembly, which started in New York, announced plans to set up in East London. General Assembly recently secured significant funding from Russian investor Yuri Milner of DST. • Intel says it is will create a “High Performance Computing cluster” that can be used by companies located in Tech City, giving startups access to advanced technology. • Research came out of co-working space TechHub and company data startup Duedil that ‘hard core’ / real tech startups in London. Tech startups were defined as companies less than 10 years old that
are “product focused” or data / development driven. The data excludes companies that are digital advertising or creative agencies. |
1% Of Nothing Launches To Get Startups Donating Equity | Josh Constine | 2,011 | 11 | 10 | Shervin Pishevar and Matt Galligan have just formally announced the beta . It’s aimed at inspiring early-stage companies to donate 1% of their equity to a cause of their choice. The idea is that startups pledge 1% when that equity may be worth nothing, but if they’re acquired, that 1% becomes a significant donation. Starting today, whole companies and individual employees alike can of their equity. Serial entrepreneur, VC, and TechCrunch contributor Pishevar met Galligan, cofounder and , after Galligan accidentally attended a philanthropy panel during Summit at Sea. They saw initiatives pushing individual micro-donations and corporate philanthropy, but wanted to encourage giving from the startups in between. When asked what’s broken with startup philanthropy at present, Galligan told me, “It’s mostly nonexistent. There’s no way of knowing whether they’re doing it unless they post about their donation on a website.” The hope is that by shining a light on who’s contributing, it will become the norm and more entrepreneurs will join the movement. He doesn’t see his organization as a competitor but more as a complement to Entrepreneur’s Foundation and others with similar goals. Galligan had already seen the potential of the 1% model. He pledged 1% of the equity of his first company SocialThing. When it got , that pledge became the year’s biggest single donation to the Community Foundation of Boulder, helping it to successfully push a proposition to fund local at-risk schools. Now Galligan and Pishevar are hoping more companies and employees will follow suit. In addition to equity, they can pledge to donate 1% of their time or profits. Along with the warm, fuzzy feeling of making the world a better place, the site explains that “the entrepreneur that donates their 1% actually gets a tax write-off benefit, sweetening the deal even more.” If entrepreneurs aren’t sure what to donate to, the organization will help them identify efficient causes making a big impact. The 1% of Nothing team is now dedicated to driving awareness and understanding of early-stage corporate philanthropy and showing off who’s participating. The first startups are already jumping on board:
http://twitter.com/#!/bubs/status/134739722080763905 |
Gilt Gets A Makeover | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 11 | 10 | Flash-sale site is rolling out a slightly new look over the next few days. It features bigger pictures, better navigation to sister sites such as Gilt City, Gilt Taste, and Jetsetter, and new semi-permanent “Shops” where high-end brands can park their sales for longer than the typical 36-hour window. Most of the changes are subtle. The most noticeable one is a navigation bar across the top which makes it easy to switch between sales for Women, Men, Baby & Kids, , , , , and Park & Bond. In general, the number of clicks it takes to buy something is now less than it was before. You can “favorite” a brand or label to get more offers from that brand. And you can add upcoming sales to your calendar (so that you don’t forget to spend even more money at Gilt!). The shops are also somewhat of a departure from Gilt’s tradition of offering one item for a limited time. Brands such as Levi’s and Thomas Pink are offering a few select items on an ongoing basis. The inventory in each shop can change and “sell out,” but there is always a rotating collection of clothes and other goods. As the number of regular Gilt shoppers increases, the shops provide brands with better access to them beyond sporadic sales. |
Crowdsourced website translator Easyling wins How to Web startup competition in Romania | cloudbrows | 2,011 | 11 | 10 | At today I got to be invited to judge its startup competition. One of the judges was nowhere to be found and I was considered a suitable replacement. My rookie level of judging experience has not skewed the results dramatically, as the judges were in sync about the winner. And the winner is , the crowdsourced website translation service. Easyling helps website owners get websites translated by the professional agencies, minimizing the situations where the translation is put out of context. It achieves that by displaying translation word by word as it would actually appear on the website, eliminating the need to take text off the website and subsequently upload the translation back into the content management system. Submitting website for translation is achieved by a click of a button. Website owners can also bring their own translators to use the platform, whilst the translating agencies can simplify their work process with it. Depending on the size of the translating crowd, it can be done within a record time. Crowd-building is a work in process for Hungarian Easyling founders Peter Farago and Balázs Benedek who have already gathered a crowd of 18 000 transcription and telemarketing agents for their other company Skawa which has become the largest call center in Hungary. Farago and Benedek get tickets and a startup booth at conference in April 2012 as well as service. One of the three finalists will also get a place at one of the next mini events. The runners up included Bulgarian and Romanian , as well as mobile markup language and platform developer ( the latter did not make it into the top three). Fonii analyzes mobile phone bills online and offers its customers cheaper tariffs focusing on cost of international calls, roaming and mobile data. I am not sure if I would personally analyze my mobile bill “to death”, but apparently such service is very popular in the US and has analog in Ireland. Romanian Socialook helps sales people to reach prospective customers, and entrepreneurs get to potential investors. It leverages social media feed, as well as databases such as and UK Company House. A similar tool is used a lot to synchronize connections via various social networks, but also offers insight based on social interaction and introductions to the relevant people. Last night I have found myself at a party surrounded by the accelerator people (representatives from , , , , , have all made their appearance). Not surprisingly, the conference is closing with a debate whether or not there are too many incubators. Fair question. I wonder if any of the panel participants will agree. With that, goodbye Bucharest, which I will remember for the eclectic architectural style and insane driving manners and hello , December 7th to 9th in Paris. Imagre credit: |
Shuffler.fm Launches Its Nifty ‘Flipboard For Music’ iPad App (With Angel Funding To Boot) | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 11 | 10 | Last year, Tim Heineke of Twones and Tone.fm, Marcel Corso and Diedrik Martens launched a new Amsterdam-based music startup, called , to let users listen to the tunes and artists being covered by music blogs while they read. The startup thus began its career as a cool web app for music discovery, with the goal of aggregating music from blogs across the Internets — based on genre. Over the last year, Shuffler.fm has evolved into a service that now allows users to play continuous mixes of their favorite music blogs, browse through popular songs and artists through a nifty search function, as well as create personalized channels based on “favorite-ing” tracks and blogs. Music blogs can also create their own pages, including a “Play this blog” button that launches the blog’s own channel. ( ) With its initial functionality, Shuffler.fm was really a hybrid of Pandora and ex.fm for music blogs-curated tunes. Yet, on Tuesday, the startup expanded that influence to include Flipboard, that transforms music blogs and websites into radio stations, curating them in a Flipboard-style layout of words, pictures, and streaming audio. The Shuffler.fm iPad essentially app creates an aggregated music magazine that serves content from a diverse set of music bloggers and experts in realtime (content is updated by the minute), providing a ready-to-consume filtered stream of music optimized for discoverability and at the same time presenting a curated experience so that users don’t have to deal with parsing the ridiculous amount of noise being dished out by music content producers. In other words, it’s music listening with an editorial filter. Of course, rather than basing the content it serves on your existing tastes, like so many other music services out there (Last.fm, Pandora), Shuffler’s audio is brought to you in genre-based channels that are populated by (only the coolest) blogs, like Pitchfork, TheMusic.FM, and Stereogum to name a few. Users can create playlists of songs from these visual RSS blog feeds at the bottom of the app, where they can then listen via the app’s player, all while reading about the songs they’re listening to. The app also supports AirPlay so that users aren’t just confined to listening to music from their iPad’s speakers. For those who’ve already been using Shuffler’s web app, the experience of using the iPad app will be familiar. The two experiences are comparable, with perhaps even a bit more simplicity in terms of design and UX in the new iPad app. The experience is also, of course, very reminiscent of that of Flipboard, in that content is displayed in a visually attractive, tile-based layout that does a great job of balancing visual candy without distracting from the music and discoverability features. Listening to a blog-powered radio stream while being able to view relevant video content or swipe through to the band or blog’s homepage is at once a familiar experience that may not sound particularly earth-shaking, but it’s done in such a way that it still feels new. It’s a great human curated alternative to the slew of machine algorithms that are today powering many of our favorite music apps. And it also helps that the app has built-in bookmarking and sharing features that let you come back to your favorite tracks or blog posts while sharing the music you discover with friends. To help it in its mission to become the new Pandora/Flipboard of the iPad, Founder Tim Heineke told us that the startup has just closed a $700K round of angel funding. While Heineke was not yet able to share the names of the investors, he did say that Shuffler.fm has gained nearly 500K users to date. Will update as we learn more. . |
Sony Hopes To Debut “A New Form Of Television” | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 11 | 10 | Sony CEO Howard Stringer isn’t in an enviable position. The company has had a rough few years, and expects to lose a cool billion dollars in the fiscal year ending in March 2012. The TV business, in particular, has been a millstone around his neck; the price of TV, very much a commodity, has gone down steadily for years, and the poor economy has driven people towards budget brands and smaller sets if they buy anything at all. Despite this, Stringer is philosophical about the hard times. You have bad years,” . “The trick is to weather them, learn from them, act graciously through them, and learn why and when you have to change.” And the TV market is ripe for real change, but whether they can make a better change than their new adversary in there, Apple, is up in the air. Jobs was to have been working on just this problem, the reinvention of TV, before he died. Inventor, manager, or tweaker, whatever the man was, he was certainly someone you didn’t want working on a product that competed with yours. Stringer, aware of this, began preemptively working against Apple: “I spent the last five years building a platform so I can compete against Steve Jobs. It’s finished, and it’s launching now,” he said. This was in reference, however, to a multi-screen strategy that unifies experiences across mobile phones, tablets, laptops, and TVs. If Apple is building something, it’s going to be a single “breakthrough device,” as they are sure to call it, not an ecosystem or a meta-platform optional to a hundred different devices. Is Sony ready for that? It’s been a long time since Sony had to invent anything on its own in this sector. For years it has sold the same products in increasingly powerful variations or with lowered price points. Despite real advantages in some areas and a global network of consumer electronics companies that rely on its OEM portion (the iPhone 4S’s new camera is a Sony, for instance), it has had precious few original ideas. Is it even possible for this company to rise to the challenge and beat Apple to the punch by disrupting its own industry? Sony is many things, but surprising isn’t one of them. Their forces are too widely distributed, and are vulnerable to a blitzkrieg by someone like Apple who, having no commodity business to look after, can afford to go all out on a single device, price, interface, and platform. Sony’s CEO is at least treating the issue with the respect it deserves, but that probably won’t be enough. |
Dispatch Raises $965K To Manage All Of Your Cloud Files From One Place | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 11 | 10 | NYC-based startup , which just from the latest batch of TechStars NYC, has raised a $965,000 seed funding round. The round was led by Thrive Capital, with participation from SV Angel, Lerer Ventures, and a number of angel investors including Jared Hecht and Steve Martocci (who founded GroupMe together), TechStars founder David Cohen, TechStars NYC Managing Director David Tisch, Kal Vepuri, Bob Pasker, Matt Turck, and Zelkova Ventures. Also notable: Dispatch at the TechCrunch Disrupt NYC hackathon earlier this year where it was the runner-up for best hack (you’ll find a backstage interview with them ). They’re in good company — GroupMe, whose founders are participating in the funding round, got its start at a Disrupt hackathon a year earlier and was recently by Skype. Dispatch is setting out to become a sort of Finder (or Windows Explorer) for the cloud. You enter your credentials for the various services you use online — Dropbox, Facebook, Gmail, Google Docs and so on — and it lets you browse through the files stored on each service from a single dashboard. You can view these files in a preview window, download them, or move them around between services by dragging and dropping files from one service’s folder into another. Dispatch won’t be available until next month and the company isn’t keen on doing a full public walkthrough just yet, but they say we’ll be seeing more from them soon. From what has been released so far, though, it looks solid — they’re clearly paying a lot of attention to making sure the UI looks polished. In the longer term, I’d like to see Dispatch abstract the cloud file system enough that you don’t have to remember whether you’re dealing with Dropbox or Gmail or Facebook — you should be able to just have your ‘stuff’. Dragging and dropping between each of these will certainly be handy, but I think the mass appeal will lie in making the cloud generally easier to use. |
PSA: Steam Hacked, User Info May Be Stolen, But Personal Data Safe | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 11 | 10 | Valve CEO Gabe Newell has contacted all users of the Steam game distribution platform to let them know that the company has suffered a security breach. The hack was originally thought to be limited to the official Steam forums, but further investigation has revealed that the hackers had access to a database containing “user names, hashed and salted passwords, game purchases, email addresses, billing addresses and encrypted credit card information.” That said, they says that they have no evidence that any personally identifiable information was actually taken, and have detected no fraudulent credit card information. Users of the service are advised to change their passwords and be on the watch for suspicious account activity. Here’s the notice in its entirety: Dear Steam Users and Steam Forum Users, Our Steam forums were defaced on the evening of Sunday, November 6. We began investigating and found that the intrusion goes beyond the Steam forums. We learned that intruders obtained access to a Steam database in addition to the forums. This database contained information including user names, hashed and salted passwords, game purchases, email addresses, billing addresses and encrypted credit card information. We do not have evidence that encrypted credit card numbers or personally identifying information were taken by the intruders, or that the protection on credit card numbers or passwords was cracked. We are still investigating. We don’t have evidence of credit card misuse at this time. Nonetheless you should watch your credit card activity and statements closely. While we only know of a few forum accounts that have been compromised, all forum users will be required to change their passwords the next time they login. If you have used your Steam forum password on other accounts you should change those passwords as well. We do not know of any compromised Steam accounts, so we are not planning to force a change of Steam account passwords (which are separate from forum passwords). However, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to change that as well, especially if it is the same as your Steam forum account password. We will reopen the forums as soon as we can. I am truly sorry this happened, and I apologize for the inconvenience. Gabe. |
Jack Dorsey: “The Hardest Thing For Any Entrepreneur Is To Start” | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 11 | 10 | Twitter and Square co-founder took the stage at the conference to talk about his experience being well, basically a jack of all trades (rimshot). Dorsey revealed that both his own and his family’s experiences with entrepreneurship were inspiration for his two current startups — both of which remove friction from human communication and industry, a process Dorsey described as “getting rid of the ‘conceptual debris’.” Dorsey has long identified with the struggles of entrepreneurs; He brought up the example of his mother, who ran a small coffee shop in St. Louis, “Starbucks came and it didn’t go so well,” he said. Then he brought up his dad, who co-founded a pizza restaurant also in St. Louis. When Dorsey’s dad and his co-founder began to hire people, Dorsey said, they promised each other they wouldn’t date any of the wait staff. “First person to get hired is my mom,” Dorsey went on, “And so my dad had to leave the business and I was born.” Before quickly relating these stories, Dorsey said that companies need to start quicker and iterate more; “The hardest thing for any entrepreneur to do is to start.” One of his favorite things about Square, he emphasized, is that it helps companies start, “It is amazing, you are in business right away, in terms of anyone being a retailer. The line between consumer and retailer, the counter blurs. You see this at Apple, people don’t wait in line, don’t wait behind a point of sale system, there is no counter. It takes the friction out.” Dorsey said that Silicon Valley’s culture of mentorship also appealed to him because of its frictionless quality, “Any entrepreneur can come up to me and discuss and idea. As people who are also just getting started, we need to make sure that we’re always accessible to people who want to start something new.” |
Nest To Ship 1st Batch Of Sold-Out Smart Thermostats Tomorrow | Josh Constine | 2,011 | 11 | 10 | The initial run of of will be shipped out to pre-orderers tomorrow, said Nest founder and CEO Tony Fadell at GigaOm’s today. Previously the company had said the devices wouldn’t ship until the end of November. Users are so desperate for the home heating revolution that the devices have sold out and are back ordered. Those who’ve since reserved their units may not receive them until February 2012. Fadell says Nest has ceased taking orders until it can catch up. At the conference, Fadell spoke of several of the innovations in the company’s device. It will analyze the thermal decay of a house to determine how long it takes for heat to dissipate. This helps prevent it from continuing to expend energy if the warmth of daylight will return before the house cools down. An “Auto-Away” feature uses far-field motion detection to assess whether no one is in the house for a few days, perhaps because you’ve gone on vacation. If so, the unit goes into low-energy mode. The Nest thermostat also tracks your manual heating adjustments. For example, it can learn that you turn off the heat when you leave for work in the morning and turn it back on when you return in the evening, and then start to automatically make these changes for you. Fadell explained that “Absolutely I’d call it AI”, and these he’s proud to count a world expert on machine learning from Carnegie Mellon as a team member. When asked what about the Nest development process made him cry, Fadell lamented that they spent so much time designing their unit but that the problems start with”the thing this attaches to. There’s 40 to 50 years of heating ‘technology'” with a with a wild variety of different wire and voltage standards that Nest has to try to be compatible with. Tomorrow, Nest can expect the start of an influx of customer service inquiries from buyers trying to connect their next generation thermostats. |
Keen On… Peter Bell: Yes, Silicon Valley is a Natural Meritocracy (TCTV) | Andrew Keen | 2,011 | 11 | 10 | I couldn’t resist it. When I bumped into General Partner at Fast Company’s event last week, I had to slip in a question about the equality of opportunity in Silicon Valley. Bell, who is based in Menlo Park, didn’t shy away from this issue. “Totally,” he replied, Silicon Valley is a “natural meritocracy.” Unlike many more buttoned-down VCs, Bell was refreshingly frank in all his opinions. Describing Facebook as a “juggernaut,” he believes it is “unstoppable in the short-term”. He sees Google as being “behind” on social media and argued that it needs to “innovate” to become a real player in the social space. And while acknowledging that he sees a “lot of crap” in the social space, he is optimistic about social applications in the enterprise, arguing that we are still in spring training when it comes to opportunities here. This is the fourth interview in this week’s series from Innovation Uncensored. Check out yesterday’s with Virgin America CEO David Cush. And check back tomorrow for my colorful exchange with Startup America Partnership CEO Scott Case. |
null | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 11 | 17 | null |
Brandstack Heads For The Deadpool, Blames Credit Card Fraud | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 11 | 10 | Brandstack. Pitched as some sort of haven for designers, it was a marketplace in which creative types could sell off their logo concepts as they came to mind, rather than on “spec work” conjured up by a client. The goal? Less unpaid work (and fewer “amateur submissions”) than contest-based crowdsourcing sites like 99designs. Alas, Brandstack is now officially destined for the deadpool — and, according to the founder, it’s all because of credit card fraud. In the founder’s own words: Recently, we were hit with significant fraud. If you’re not familiar with this kind of situation, here a simplified summary of what happens: 1. Criminal uses stolen credit cards to purchase legitimate goods (designs); 2. retailer (Brandstack) pays out vendors (designers) for their work; 3. bank sees the fraudulent transactions and takes the money from the retailer; 4. retailer loses the funds paid to vendors, any profits associated with the purchase, and resources used to fight and process the transactions; 5. If the fraud is significant enough, the retailer loses access to accept credit cards. Even shorter summary: the retailer takes all of the liability… I did not have the flexibility or capital to withstand it. Curiously, it sounds like some designers will inevitably be left out in the cold for deals that were mid-transaction: As many of you know, there is some unfinished business that won’t be taken care of. Many designers put their faith in Brandstack and were left short. Anyone with designs stored on Brandstack will need to pull them off by December 1st, at which point the servers will be shuttered. Domains handled through Brandstack (designers could sell domains along with their logo work) have been transferred to ResellerClub, with designers expected to contact them directly to work out the process from here. What a mess. On the upside, there seems to be no shortage of alternatives. Whether or not the idea is sound, sites like , , , and countless others continue to work at it. |
A New Gesture Appears In Apple Patent: Hold-And-Swipe | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 11 | 10 | Coming up with new gestures that can be performed with one, two, or three fingers is a surprisingly difficult job. Many are proposed; few actually make it into daily use. Here’s one from Apple entitled “hold and swipe,” in a recent-ish patent application. But is it really new? I’m leaving out the part where patenting a gesture is , because that’s an entirely separate issue. The gesture has to do with navigating visual information on a small screen (like the new Nano). Zooming in on a face or object within a picture, or selecting an aspect of it, can be difficult both for the user, who can’t see where they’re touching, and the touchscreen, which can’t accurately determine where the user intends to touch. The hold and swipe method would rely heavily on image metadata like facial recognition, and allow users to go between points of interest without repeating a single inexact gesture multiple times. The idea is that you’d touch down on the display, on or off an object of interest, and after a short delay, move your finger in whatever direction. Contextual actions are done based on a few things: if you put your finger on someone’s face, then move off to the right, it could either go to other people’s faces in the picture, or switch to other pictures with the same face. The rate could be modified by the distance your finger is from the original point, or by tilting the device itself. Unfortunately, as I said, coming up with new gestures is quite difficult, and this one is likely to end up totally unused. For one thing, it doesn’t solve the problem it sets out to solve: not only is the user’s finger still obscuring much of the display, but they can’t remove it while navigating the content. It’s also overcomplicated: tilting the display while holding your finger down at a certain distance from the original point? It’s all most people can do to master two-finger scrolling. And the UI elements are also nontrivial additions. How do you tell the user it’s time to move their finger? How do you indicate, on this small screen of theirs, which face or element of the picture they’ve landed on? It’s also not original. The idea of placing an “anchor” by holding a finger or stylus down, and then scrolling in the direction indicated by the next movement is quite old. Apple’s addition of moving between points of interest or photos with the same face or tag is just a veneer on a gesture that’s been around in games and apps for years. If this patent were legitimate you could also patent using this gesture to move between cells in a spreadsheet, or brush sizes in photoshop, or tabs in a browser. It just goes to show the amount of chaff that’s produced while you’re trying to get some wheat. Most of these ideas die early on in focus groups (we produced and killed a dozen in a couple hours ), but this one, perhaps, they felt was on the border line. I wouldn’t expect Apple to include something this inelegant in devices like the Nano. Limiting the user’s UI vocabulary has been a big part of Apple’s success, and part of that has been binning ideas like this one as quick as possible. , but for some reason I couldn’t bring up the patent itself. I’ll update with a link as soon as I get it. |
From The Myojo-Waraku 2011 Festival In Fukuoka, Japan: Demos From 8 Asian Startups | Serkan Toto | 2,011 | 11 | 19 | Last weekend, I attended [JP] in Fukuoka/Southern Japan, a three-day tech and creative festival highly inspired by . Much like the event in the US, the idea for the counterpart in Japan (the first ever) is to bring together people from different fields, namely movies, music, games and interactive. More information about Myojo-Waraku 2011 can be found . In the interactive part, a few hours of the program were reserved for the so-called Startup Showcase, which gave a total of eight startups from Japan, Hong Kong, and Singapore the chance to demo their services on-stage. Here are thumbnail sketches of all the startups that presented at Myojo-Waraku 2011: [JP]
is a simple video communication tool that lets users video chat through the browser (no download or registration required). The idea is to make it as hassle-free as possible to communicate with friends via video for a limited amount of time, for example during a sports match that’s shown on TV or a livestream on the web. Users can create “one-time chat rooms” and invite others to join via Facebook in seconds. [JP]
is a yet to be released smartphone application that was voted best product at the in Japan a few weeks ago. With the app, a group of friends can share items like locations, pictures, or text and voice messages in a specific time window. Users form a group with and can then start sharing information with other members as long as required, for example during a short trip or an event.
is an iPhone app that’s available in 17 languages (including English). Users can exchange “items and services” with others in their network in three ways: by offering something to trade with another item or service, by requesting something, or by suggesting a trade between two items or services.
:
This translation management platform from Hong Kong promises “painless translation” for site and app owners. customers can choose between different sources after feeding their text or string files into the system, for example simple machine translation, professional agencies and/or crowd-sourced translation (files can be uploaded to OneSky or handled by the ). OneSky “dynamically” detects new or modified strings for translation and updates the site or app in question automatically. The startup currently counts Skype alternative Viber (12 languages, crowd-based network of 1,000 translators) and Chinese game developer Lakoo among its customers.
Singaporean startup wants to give smartphone users a way to monetize the 45 minutes or so every person spends per day waiting for something (according to the presenter). The idea is to let users complete mobile surveys to redeem rewards while they are being idle in a queue or driving in a cab, for example. Clients like merchants or market research companies can use Sageby to collect data directly from end customers: all that users need to do is to scan a QR code, fill out the survey on their phone, send the results to Sageby, and redeem the reward instantly (a discount in the cab they are currently driving in, for example). Sageby is run by a team of students at Singapore Management University and eyes a soft release next month.
Rick Tan, currently a student at Singapore Management University, presented a mobile anti-loss solution specifically geared towards travelers. When two items, for example a bag and a passport, are sufficiently separated from one another, the owner’s smartphone will emit a warning sound so they can take action. Tan says his company’s Bluetooth-based solution is scheduled to launch in December or January and will support Android and Blackberry devices first (iOS is to follow a few months later). The app will be offered for free, while the hardware will cost money (Tan is currently looking for distributors outside Singapore).
is a powerful Twitter-based social news reader that’s available in English and Japanese. The service ranks content based on the number of corresponding links on Twitter and can be personalized in a number of ways. For example, it’s possible to let Crowsnest only crawl tweets from friends (instead of Twitter as a whole) for interesting URLs or add tabs to the menu (on the screenshot below, you can see the TechCrunch tab I added to my reader). Maker Kaisei Hamamoto says his service can generate personalized news feeds (in real-time) by indexing and analyzing over 10 million tweeted URLs per day. [JP]
is a social event platform that lets users register via Twitter, Facebook or . The service makes it possible to create, search, sign up for, and pay for events in minutes. Users can also request specific events or suggest new event ideas. Myojo-Waraku 2011 counted a total of 1,250 attendees for its first event. You can view videos from the event and pictures . |
Jim Breyer: “We See 10,000 Media Business Plans A Year, And Invest In About Ten” | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 11 | 19 | , the star venture partner at Accel, is a very busy man. He sits on the boards of Facebook, Walmart, News Corp, and Dell, among others. I caught up with him last week at the Techonomy conference, where he talked about what areas Accel is investing in. In Part I of my video interview above, he explains his interest in the “intersection of media, technology and consumer commerce.” Accel’s focus these days is very much social, mobile, and global. “We have more partners in China than Palo Alto,” he tells me. Brazil is huge also. He is also intrigued by “next-generation social TV” and how mobile and social will change entertainment consumption. “What gets us excited as venture capitalists is how the video experience is intersecting with social and changing consumption,” he says. But most media startups don’t quite yet fit the bill. “We see 10,000 media business plans a year, and we invest in about ten,” he notes. One of those is Angry Birds, which he considers a media company and (through partner Rich Wong). He hints that Accel invested in Angry Birds because of what they saw in its pipeline, as much as for what it’s already built. I came away from this interview feeling more strongly than before that the future of media is very much mobile and social, like all good things on the internet. |
Airbnb’s Brian Chesky On Expansion Efforts: We Use Our Community To Figure Out What’s Next | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 11 | 10 | We spoke to Airbnb CEO after his talk onstage at the GigaOM Roadmap conference — during the talk Chesky spoke about many possible avenues for the company’s expansion but didn’t commit himself to any one path. Instead Chesky held that what users want is one of the most important factors in deciding where the company focused their efforts. For example, two months ago a critical mass people wanted to stay in Airbnbs for longer than a week, according to Chesky, so the company launched ‘ Right now the company has about 300 boats, and Chesky says he’s looking into that as a space. “We look to our community and try to figure out what’s already popular there for cues as to where to go next,” he said. Chesky also revealed that a majority of the company’s business is outside the United States, and that Hong Kong is currently one of the highest demand, highest occupancy cities — Thus Chesky plans on using Hong Kong as a base for the company’s Asian expansion. “The office is the laboratory and meeting your users is like going into the field. You can’t just stay in the lab. And it’s not just asking users what they want, it’s about seeing what they’re doing,” Chesky said, “When you bought an iPod, Steve Jobs didn’t come over and sleep on your couch. But I did,” presumably meaning that he actually uses Airbnb not that he literally came over when you bought an iPod. |
Facebook and the Age of Curation Through Unsharing | Josh Constine | 2,011 | 11 | 19 | Facebook’s Open Graph is ushering in a monumental shift in how we curate what we share. Curation used to mean opting in to sharing. You found or did something you thought your audience would care about, and you went to the trouble of sharing it. This worked when we didn’t have so much content at our finger tips, but as more news and media consumption moves online, the friction of constantly opting in exhausts us and we don’t bother to distribute what others might enjoy. That’s why I believe we are entering the age of curation through unsharing, and it will force us to change. Some believe “frictionless sharing” via Open Graphs will be the death of curation. That signal will be drowned out by noise as the content we consume but that’s not worth the attention of others is automatically published to our friends and followers. This is a big problem for curation, but it is temporary. It stems from a lack of understanding of curation through unsharing by both the users and developers of Open Graph apps. Users still expect to have to actively share something in order for it to reach their audience. That’s no longer true. Instead we’ll need to learn to filter out the noise in reverse, opting out when we don’t want to share instead of opting in when we do. That’s a huge behavioral realignment that will take time and won’t come easy. If learned, though, we’ll be able to dance across the web from one piece of great content to the next, sharing it all effortlessly, and only having to stop when something deserves to be struck from the record. And as algorithms improve to show us what’s most relevant, we won’t have to unshare as often. I love listening to music and reading news, and I love helping my friends discover songs and articles. But before Open Graph apps, I had to actively share each piece of content to the news feed. To my audience, there was no distinction between what I really wanted to highlight, and what was enjoyable but not necessarily crucial. This is why Ticker is brilliant. It creates a channel for casual opt out sharing of high volumes of content, a distinct complement to the channels for explicit opt in sharing we’ve always known. This granularity allows for more curation, not less. I can still take a song that touches me and opt in to posting it directly to the news feed, where Facebook intelligently gives it more visibility. But through the I can also share hundreds of songs, all that I enjoy to a lesser extent, and give people who respect my taste a way to discover vetted content. To make this work, though, we’ll need the app developers to cooperate by making it easy for us to mark an article as unread, remove the last song we heard from the Ticker, etc. I reviewed the sharing controls of all the major news reader apps, and some like The Washington Post and The Guardian are doing their part by providing simple unsharing options. Unfortunately, some developer like Newscorp with The Daily app are trying to maximize virality by not offering unshare options. They are overemphasizing the short-term, and not thinking enough about being apps that facilitate the new model of curation — apps people will want to return to. We need to pressure them to provide unsharing options by telling them so and not using them if they don’t. Until we have both learned to unshare and have the capability to do so, this will indeed be the dark age of curation. But we have the power to set the norms. Go read a ton of articles using a responsible app, unshare from the Ticker each one you wouldn’t recommend, and explicitly post links to the news feed to those you think are must-reads. If you see low-quality content shared to the Ticker, tell your friends to utilize the unshare button. This isn’t natural. Often the best product design is translating existing behavior patterns to new mediums. But the proliferation of content, in both volume and access, requires a brand new conception of sharing and curation. Together we can bring about a golden age. |
Sorry Kids, Here’s Why I Don’t Have 5000 Free #FacebookCredits For You | Eric Eldon | 2,011 | 11 | 19 | Hi children of the world, I actually don’t have 5000 Facebook Credits to give to each of you. I’m sorry about that, I wish I did. But before you get upset, let me explain. A few years ago, back when I was at VentureBeat, I wrote a post about an that Facebook had been testing out. It wasn’t the virtual currency payment system that you use in FarmVille today, it was an experimental social reputation currency. You could do things like give people Credits for status update that you thought were smart or useful. Accumulating lots of Credits indicated you had a good reputation with your Facebook friends. Fast forward to this past August. My long-forgotten Facebook author page started getting dozens of Wall posts from Facebook users — mostly children — from around the world. Every one of them was pleading with me to provide the 5000 free Facebook Credits that they claimed I’d promised them. Annoyed, I turned off Wall posts. They resorted to commenting on my profile picture. I couldn’t figure it out. I have definitely never promised anyone free Credits. I mean, I’m a tech blogger. I give people free coverage if I think they deserve it, and that’s it. After continuing to delete comments day after day, I started asking other writer friends to see if they were experiencing anything similar, and I posted on my page Wall asking what exactly was going on. The answer came in two parts. MG reminded me about the post, and some of the Credit-seekers directed me to the following Blogger site: http://free5000-game-credits.blogspot.com/ There, I discovered a page with a doctored screenshot from my old post. Instead of the original image showing me giving MG “+10” Credits “at 4:41pm April 3rd,” the image had been Photoshopped to say “+5000 #FacebookCredits,” with instructions to “Please confirm you would like 5000 free Facebook credits by typing #FacebookCredits in the comments box below. (Your browser will automatically redirect you after [to my author page].” As of when I took the screenshot below, the web page had accumulated nearly 55,000 Likes and more than 18,000 comments. What are the key takeaways from this major tech news story? – Children of the world, don’t believe every free giveaway on the internet, especially if it’s in the form of a horribly designed web site with flashing animations that asks you to provide your Facebook information in exchange for an absurdly large gift. I’m not quite sure what the site owner is doing with all your likes, but possibilities include selling the data they gather through the button, or using the publishing feature to push other scams to your news feed. Seriously, Facebook Credits scams are a . – This is my first weekend at TechCrunch, and if MG posted about the right after joining (which is an environmentally sound idea, in my opinion), then it’s only proper that I post something this silly – Whoever made the free Credits page sucks – If you publish to the internet, watch out for how your content might get abused by unscrupulous parties – Whoever is running the scam appears to have recently moved on from misusing me to tricking users into sharing an awful video; hopefully Blogger will shut this account down soon – AND YOU TOO CAN RECEIVE FREE 5000 #FacebookCredits!!!!! |
Dog Bites Man; Pope Condemns Violence; Publishing Still Doesn’t Get It | Jon Evans | 2,011 | 11 | 19 | I’m , but thankfully I’m not a member of the Authors Guild, that “not-for-profit American organization of and for authors”, who a few days ago issued a that first lauded publishers for not signing on to Amazon’s new for Amazon Prime members, and then condemned those few publishers who agree, citing a that authors aren’t protected by such an agreement. That argument concludes: “[Publishers should] not decide for themselves how to step into this brave new world of subscription models without solving all this before they receive their first dollar. My guess is that most publishers, when faced with the complexity of the problem and the unlikelihood of finding a solution that makes everyone happy, will decide it’s just not worth the trouble. And that, perhaps, would be the best outcome of all.” Oh my. The stupid, it burns. Memo to the publishing industry: recent history strongly indicates that subscription models are what your customers–you know, the –want. They want Hulu for television, Netflix for movies, Spotify for music. Do you really think they don’t want a similar model for books? (When in fact, it’s what they’ve wanted?) if libraries didn't exist already, would book publishers ever allow them to be created? I doubt it — Mathew Ingram (@mathewi) Here’s a very simple proposition. Treat your customers well, and they’ll treat you well. Treat them like thieves, and they’ll steal from you. If you fear the future, if you fear change, then your fear becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Do you really think “refusing to give your customers what they want” is anything other than a stunningly self-destructive business model? Have you learned nothing from the RIAA? I suppose not. “Learning” isn’t something the publishing industry appears to be good at. Take the e-book market, which according to the Authors Guild is “the lone bright spot for the industry.” Are big publishers like HarperCollins fanning the flames of that spark, by making their e-books as good as possible? Well, let’s take a quick look at the evidence. In September the new Neal Stephenson novel, REAMDE, came out. ! The perennial worldwide bestseller beloved by techies everywhere! Anticipation was high. Neal Stephenson's new novel, Reamde: A Novel, just automagically appeared on my Kindle. There goes my next few nights. — Shawn Yeager (@shawnyeager) If there was ever a surefire e-book success, REAMDE was . So of course HarperCollins went out of their way to make it the best, classiest, most beguiling e-book edition of all time, right? Stephenson's REAMDE (in kindle) has missing words, letters, and inconsistent capitalization. Embarrassing, — Shana Cohen (@AgentShana) Reamde has vanished from the Kindle store. I assume that means has realized it's an eBook disaster of epic proportions. — Kirk Biglione (@kirkbiglione) Speaking as someone who’s had two novels published by HarperCollins: how . Well, that was just a freak one-off, right? Weird mistakes happen. It’s not like they make a habit of butchering beloved books… oh, . Again?!?! MT “ : Terry Pratchett’s “Snuff”: an ebook full of typos from HarperCollins ” — Pablo Defendini (@pablod) Dude, look it up in the iBooks store. Even the DESCRIPTION is riddled with weird spacing errors. — Ardaniel Collier (@ardaniel) It’s just depressing. How can we expect the publishing industry to adapt, evolve, and thrive in the digital world when, four years after the Kindle was introduced, they still haven’t even figured out how to format e-books correctly? It gets even worse at the bookseller level. After Amazon negotiated a deal with DC Comics for the exclusive digital rights to some graphic novels, Barnes & Noble and Books-a-Million . (Full disclosure: I’m also the author of , though I don’t think it’s part of this deal.) Ah, the old “angrily depriving our customers of the ability to buy stuff they might want” business model. Strange how that never seems to work. Readers are unhappy. They complain about , which publishers set; indeed, a alleging ebook price-fixing by publishers was filed a few months ago. No wonder Amazon is increasingly . They seem to have decided that if they can’t find any smart, competent publishers to deal with, then they’ll have to become one themselves. The existing publishers have responded by, um, to their authors, for the first time. Wow, that sure changes everything, eh? What would a smart and reasonable publisher have done? They would have realized that sticking their fingers in their ears and hoping the future doesn’t come is not an intelligent strategy. They would have noted that, as the Authors Guild said, Amazon is especially eager to make their lending library aka subscription service a success right now, in the face of increasing competition from Kobo, the Nook, and iBooks. And they would have used this leverage to negotiate a short-term, test-the-waters subscription licensing deal with both Amazon and their authors. (Hopefully one that treats the latter group better than .) Time is not on their side. As authors — — jump ship to Amazon and Kobo, and as subscription services increasingly become treated as inevitable rather than revolutionary, the negotiating leverage held by traditional publishers (and the Authors Guild) will steadily decline. Now was the time to take a bold leap into the future. Instead they sat down, closed their eyes, and hoped it wasn’t coming. Good luck with that. |
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