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New Orleans-Based Federated Sample Raises $2.8 Million To Improve Online Sampling | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 11 | 8 | , a New Orleans-based market research technology firm, announced today that it has raised a $2.8 million series A round of financing. The investment was led by and early-stage New Orleans VC firm, . As part of the round, Sopris Capital Founder and Partner Jon Kaiden will be joining the startup’s board of directors. So what is it that Federated Sample does? Put simply, the company focuses on bringing efficiency and automation to online sampling. Its flagship product, , is an enterprise-level sample management platform and white-label routing solution that aims to improve the survey-taking experience and reduce costs for businesses. Thanks to the growing use of routing, Federated Sample offers its optimization engine to customers that want to use a proprietary panel to decrease dependence on third-party sample providers. Every complete generated by the panel eliminates the need for these businesses to buy outside samples, increasing the user’s margins and improving deliverability. Fulcrum uses a set of proprietary APIs to connect to panel companies and data collection software to automate the sample delivery process. Of course, when a company is buying market research surveys, they want to know that respondents are who they say they are — one of the biggest challenges facing the industry as a whole. So, Federated Sample is developing realtime validation from public records without having to collect “Personally Identifiable Information”. Voodoo Ventures Founder Chris Schultz says that he is excited by Federated Sample’s mission because, in creating an efficient market for the buying and selling of surveys, the startup is doing the same thing for market research that the big ad networks did for online advertising 10 years ago — bringing broad distribution and efficiency to the market. What’s more, Federated Sample counts three of the top five market research firms as clients already, and is seeing strong adoption, with 3.5 million respondents available per month and revenue growing 200 percent year-over-year for this quarter. It’s also a great example of the type of disruptive technology companies that are popping up in New Orleans. For more on Federated Sample, . Federated Sample will use its new infusion of capital to roll out new features for its flagship product and ramp up hiring across all divisions. |
Head Of Communications Sean Garrett Leaves Twitter | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 11 | 8 | Twitter Head of Communications (@SG) has just announced that he’s leaving Twitter in a series of tweets — of course. When asked to confirm his departure, Twitter Communications representative Carolyn Penner said, “I think his tweets speak for themselves…” Garrett also cryptically to his personal blog in conjunction with the “I’m leaving” tweets. Before in February of 2010, Garrett was a partner at tech PR agency 463 Communications, an agency he cofounded. Before 463 Communications, Garrett spent time in PR roles at Applied Communications and Bite Communications, agencies owned by comm-focused holding company Next Fifteen. Garrett built up the Twitter PR team to a whopping eight people during his two-year stint (you can follow them all in curated by ). While Twitter recently hired Googler for a media/communications role (her bio reads “Word wrangler.”) it’s still unclear who will be replacing Garrett. https://twitter.com/#!/SG/status/134031208643440640 https://twitter.com/#!/SG/status/134031314356678656 https://twitter.com/#!/SG/status/134031442429743105 https://twitter.com/#!/SG/status/134032234092052480 https://twitter.com/#!/SG/status/134031614039687168 |
SocialCheck.me Lets Recruiters Survey Colleagues of Job Candidates | Josh Constine | 2,011 | 11 | 8 | Finding great talent is a tough process. Recruiters and HR try to find out as much as they can about job candidates who purposefully seek to hide their own flaws. Resumes, interviews, and listed references help, but what employers really need to know is how a candidate actually performs at work. is a brand new service that lets employers distribute opt-in, anonymous, private, customizable surveys to the colleagues and past co-workers of job candidates. Employers get data, charts, and calculations about a candidate’s quality which they can use to hire competent, hard working candidates that will fit their company’s culture. SocialCheck.me is launching its beta today and our readers can get free access by going entering their email address, and then entering TECHCRUNCH as the signup code. There’s currently a shortage of top talent, especially engineers, and many think teams make or break a business. The wasted time and momentum from employing a crappy worker and having to re-hire can be devastating. Unfortunately, many past employers refuse to give qualitative assessments of past employees, and references listed on a resume can be biased in the candidate’s favor. The bootstrapped SocialCheck.me started working on this problem 10 months ago and now has a solution. Employers create a custom survey for a job opening, and ask candidates to send it on to their colleagues. Respondents anonymously pass their reviews to the employer, but have their identity and connection to the candidate verified through LinkedIn. Others in the space such as Honestly, Duedil, and Mixtent create public profiles that aren’t customized to assess a candidate’s fit for a particular job. They also aren’t focused on empowering hiring managers to solicit reviews of a particular candidate. Ways to game SocialCheck.me are limited. Candidates could refuse to forward the surveys, but this could indicate they have something to hide and other candidates with positive responses could get the job instead. Candidates could ask friends for glowing reviews, but respondents could say they will and still give an objective assessment, or note the sleazy request in their response since candidates never see the answers. If a candidate can’t get responses because they have a sparse network, employers might wonder why they’re behind the times or why no one wants to connect with them. In the future, SocialCheck.me plans to add other respondent verification methods, and might expand into an end-to-end hiring suite or add other features. Lately I’ve seen a proliferation of social recruiting solutions that let hiring managers distribute openings or search for candidates on Facebook and other social networks. This tool lets recruiters make the best decision of who to pick from their enlarged candidate pool. People who make great employees should have nothing to hide. SocialCheck.me is a powerful way to confirm new hires will perform just as well as they say. |
Adobe ‘Restructures,’ Eliminates 750 Jobs In North America And Europe | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 11 | 8 | We’ve been hearing rumors of Adobe layoffs all day, and the company just announcing that it is ‘restructuring’ its business, which will result in the elimination of 750 jobs in North America and Europe. From the release: As mentioned above, the company will be focusing around what it calls the ‘explosive growth categories’ of its Digital Media and Digital Marketing products. It wasn’t all bad news for Adobe, as the company says it expects to report record revenue in the fourth quarter, with the range expected to be between $1.075 billion to $1.125 billion (which was revealed in its third quarter earnings report). Adobe last implemented a major round of layoffs a few years ago with a of its workforce in 2009. This restructuring appears to affect around 8 to 9 percent of the company’s workforce. Adobe a hosted service for online ad testing, called Project Adthenticate. The company also HTML5 mobile app framework developer Nitobi and TypeKit. In a , Adobe emphasized the continued development of its Creative Suite software, a greater investment in HTML5, enhancing digital publishing solutions, investing in media monetization (the company ) and increasing focus on electronic contracts and signatures through the recent acquisition of EchoSign. This will be combined with offering marketers better solutions as well. “Our mission is to produce the world’s content and maximize the impact of that content,” said Adobe president and CEO Shantanu Narayen in a statement. “Adobe is doubling down in the Digital Media and Digital Marketing categories, markets rich with opportunities for innovation and growth.” In terms of revenue, in Digital Media, the company says it expects to attract new customers and increase recurring revenue through its new subscription offering. In order to drive increased Digital Marketing bookings, the company will reduce its investment, and expected license revenue, in certain enterprise solution product lines. |
LaunchRock Gets $800K In Funding, Launches | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 11 | 8 | Viral startup launching platform is announcing a get of $800K in seed funding today, from investors , , , Lady Gaga’s manager , David Tisch, Diego Berdakin, Paul Bricault, Dharmesh Shah, Ryan Holmes, Paige Craig, Scott Becker, Eric Cantor, Mike Edwards, David Famolari, Stephen Gill, James Levine, Daniel Wolfson, Philip Reicherz, Adrian Stone and Lance White (What a mouthful!). In addition to announcing financing, LaunchRock is also, um, launching to the public, so that anyone who wants can create their own startup launch page as of today can. Coming out of private beta, the startup has introduced a design revamp which includes new launch-page themes, additional social options like Tumblr and LinkedIn and a more streamlined email invite flow. LaunchRock founder tells me that he plans on using the funding to bolster the marketing and analytics part of the LaunchRock launch packages, “The thing that our customers are telling us (and the thing we see them struggle with) is what to do with the [email] list after they’ve built it,” Detweiler says. The service for the most part is still free and Detweiler is testing a variety of pricing models, leaning towards a performance-based approach, “We believe that we’re only at the beginning of data driven, social marketing. 99% of people who log into Google Analytics have no idea what they’re looking at or, more importantly, what to do with the data. We’re using the capital to build tools that aren’t just marketing, aren’t just analytics, but a combination of the two. Tools that just work. [So] don’t pay us for the tools, pay us for how well they work.” Aside from themselves (enter your email into LaunchRock’s to get started), LaunchRock has seen some well known startups and celebrities use it as part of their product launch strategy, including The Olsen Twins, Jessica Simpson, TaskRabbit, Birchbox and hilariously, TechCrunch Disrupt startups and . |
Japanese E-Commerce Company Rakuten Buys E-Reading Platform Kobo For $315M In Cash | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 11 | 8 | Japanese e-commerce company Rakuten has e-Reading platform Kobo for $315 million in cash. Founded in 2009, Kobo is the developer of eReaders, eReading apps and more with a number of retail partners around the world. For Rakuten, this is a way for the company to get in on the eBooks market. Kobo recently its Vox e-Reader tablet, touting it as the world’s first social e-reader. Kobo says that the company will maintain its headquarters, management team and employees based in Toronto, Ontario. The company’s CEO Michael Serbinis says that the acquisition will allow Kobo to “diversify quickly into other countries and e-commerce categories.” Rajuten has been on a bit of an acquition spree. The company acquired French e-commerce company – – back in 2010 and , a German online shopping mall, in July 2011. Rakuten also recently Brazilian e-commerce company in addition to (also for ) and “From a business and cultural perspective this is a perfect match”
Kobo was founded by and spun out of Indigo, the largest book, gift and specialty toy retailer in Canada, in December, 2009. Since that time, Kobo has become a fierce competitor in the eBook marketplace, with a family of innovative eReaders, a wide range of eReading apps, one of the largest eBook catalogues, an innovative social platform and retail partners around the globe. The acquisition marks a major step forward for Rakuten, one of the world’s top 3 e-commerce companies by revenue, as it continues to expand its unique B2B2C borderless e-commerce business globally, by adding an ecosystem to provide downloadable media products to consumers, starting with eBooks. Hiroshi Mikitani, Chairman and CEO of Rakuten, commented on the acquisition, “We are very excited about this next step. Kobo provides one of the world’s most communal eBook reading experiences with its innovative integration of social media, such as Facebook and Twitter; while Rakuten offers Kobo unparalleled opportunities to extend its reach through some of the world’s largest regional e-commerce companies, including Buy.com in the US, Tradoria in Germany, Rakuten Brazil, Rakuten Taiwan, Lekutian in China, TARAD in Thailand, and Rakuten Belanja Online in Indonesia, and of course, Rakuten Ichiba in Japan.” “From a business and cultural perspective this is a perfect match,” commented Kobo CEO Michael Serbinis. “We share a common vision of creating a content experience that is both global and social. Rakuten is already one of the world’s largest e-commerce platforms, while Kobo is the most social eBook service on the market and one of the world’s largest eBook stores with over 2.5 million titles. This transaction will greatly strengthen our position in our current markets and allow us to diversify quickly into other countries and e-commerce categories.” Upon closing the acquisition, Kobo will continue to maintain its headquarters, management team and employees based in Toronto, Ontario. The global eBook market is one of the fastest growing segments of the consumer technology industry, with a compound annual growth rate of 36% through 2015*. The global content market size is also expected to grow dramatically to reach approximately US$10.6 billion per year by 2015 (estimates exclude China). |
Nothing like a Buzzing Bicycle to get you through the traffic | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 11 | 8 | It’s counterintuitive to the electric-obsessed world we live in today. But dammit, it just might work. On my recent trip to Dublin Web Simmit and Founders, I was struck by the amazing entrepreneurship behind , a Dublin startup created by student of Trinity College Dublin, Colm Moore. He’s been working with small engines and bicycle engines for the last 10 years and now he’s started selling and installing bicycle engine kits over the last few months and is hoping to expand across Ireland and beyond. This Limerick-born business student lad and partner Daniel Burke have big plans to motorise bikes and it reminded me of the kind of amazing entrepreneurship you see in China, where people will literally attach an engine to anything with wheels. It’s this kind of attitude that is going to help our economies out of the doldrums, whatever the engine is. The pair are selling the bicycle engine kits and the motorized bicycles and have been getting a warm reception from the Irish government. With a little more help on the legal requirements (tax/insurance/licence) they should be on to a winner. The 55cc Motorized (Petrol powered) Bicycles cost EUR 299.00 for the engine or EUR 595.00 for the whole bike and engine. You can get about 90 miles per gallon and it costs 2.50 euro to fill the tank. Perhaps they should sell them in Greece? |
null | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 11 | 30 | null |
Don’t Believe Facebook, Spotify’s The Only Open Graph Music App Winning | Josh Constine | 2,011 | 11 | 8 | Facebook today trying to show the success of several of the Open Graph music applications launched at f8. Most of the stats were in percentages, though, which can give a rosy impression of what is actually fairly little growth. For example, it cites that Rdio has seen a “30x increase in new user registrations from Facebook” In reality, the app itself now has grown by just 200 users to reach a tiny 4,000 daily Facebook-logged in users. While Facebook may want it to appear that all its music partners are succeeding, it’s actually a winner-takes-all scenario with Spotify far in the lead with 2.4 million daily active users. Here we’ll look at ‘s stats on the absolute growth of these music apps in terms of daily and monthly Facebook-logged in users. They show that Earbits, MOG, and Rdio all have a DAU of 10,000 or less. To give you some context, the top 100 Facebook apps and games have over 500,000 DAU and over 3 million MAU. Spotify is the 21st largest app by DAU, while MOG is tied for #1356th. Facebook’s right about one thing. Several music apps that provide services other than personal listening are doing quite well. RootMusic’s BandPage has 1.4 million DAU, ReverbNation’s Band Profile has 690,000 DAU, and Vevo for Artists has 250,000 DAU. – Daily active users are up 1.33 million to 2.4 million, and monthly active users are up 3.98 million to 7.4 million. Facebook listed Spotify as growing by 4 million new Facebook users. The app is becoming a habit for many, with 32% of monthly users engaging with it each day. Spotify’s overwhelming presence in the Ticker is drowning out the rest of the apps and making it seem like you’re on it with the cool kids, or you’re listening alone in the corner. – Starting from zero, now has 1,000 DAU and 10,000 MAU. Considering the potential audience and how much Spotify has grown, these numbers are not impressive. Stickyness, or the DAU divided by MAU that indicates whether or not users are consistently coming back , is 10% which is at least better than most of the other music apps. – As of f8, had 3,000 DAU and 32,000 MAU. It has clawed its way up 7,000 DAU to 10,000 and 137,000 MAU to 170,0000. Stickyness is the lowest of any the apps we sample, at 5.8%. MOG could have become a serious contender, but was slow to gets its Facebook integration humming immediately allowing Spotify to surge ahead. Facebook’s quote of it 246 percent growth is misleading. – Strong out the gates, was the only app other than Spotify that I saw in my Ticker right after f8. It spiked from 3,848 DAU to 8,000 in the first two days after f8. However, it has since fallen all the way back to 4,000 DAU, an increase of less than 200 users, and only spiking as high as 6,000 DAU on weekends. MAU is up from 23,800 to 60,000, but just 6.6% of users return each day. This is a much more grim assessment than Facebook saying Rdio has had a “30x increase in new user registrations from Facebook”. Unless it has significant growth of non-Facebook users, Rdio could be out of the race. Even if it does, Rdio is missing out on the Facebook virality bonanza aiding Spotify. The massive growth of Spotify and the meager increases of the other apps reflect a peer pressure effect. Before the Facebook integration, users might have explored the different apps and found the one with the content library and features that best suited them. Now it’s hard to rationalize using MOG or Rdio while constantly bombarded with Ticker stories showing that your friends are all on Spotify. While social services can provide an outlet for self-expression, they can also lead users to be implicitly bullied into conformity by the actions of their friends. |
Schmidt: Motorola Mobility Won’t Get Preferential Treatment (Not That It Needs It) | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 11 | 8 | Eric Schmidt is continuing his Asian tour, speaking today in South Korea. Two sensitive topics came up: first, the question of whether Motorola Mobility would be getting special treatment if and when the deal closes. His response, : “we will run it sufficiently and independently, that it will not violate the openness of Android…we’re not going to change in any material way the way we operate.” I believe him. Because really, they don’t have to. Who is it that needs to be whipped into line when it comes to Android handsets? Not HTC and Samsung. The handset makers are all happy as clams, selling lots of units and competing on easily-inflatable numbers like screen size, resolution, and CPU clock speed. They’re making lots of money and lots of handsets. Google wouldn’t want to spook their cash cow by making Motorola the Android poster boy. No, it’s the who are the bane of Google’s existence. Android’s biggest problem is arguably fragmentation. Carriers are the largest holdup in producing the updates that unify the Android ecosystem, and they hold too many cards. Apple foresaw and preemptively solved this problem by tying the phones’ updates exclusively to iTunes, and now it may be time for Google to make its displeasure felt. I sense a development in the Android world, an acknowledgment of the fragmentation problem and a solution along the lines of asking manufacturers to test a safe vanilla install for all handsets, up to date with the latest version of Android the phone will run. Users should be able to update to this at any time. It shakes things up, sure, but I’m afraid Google and the others can only weather this bad publicity for so long before it starts degrading the platform among people who normally don’t care about version numbers. The other thing Schmidt was asked about in South Korea was the bit from Steve Jobs’ biography calling Android a “stolen product.” Schmidt demurred on the topic, calling Steve a “fantastic human being” but couldn’t resist addressing the topic: “I would also point out that the Android effort started before the iPhone effort.” Sure it did, Eric, but it looked like this: Just saying. |
Nintendo May Enable Two Wii U Controllers At Once After All | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 11 | 8 | One of the big disappointments at E3 was the news that Nintendo’s weird new console, , would only support one of their tablet controllers at once. But recent losses have made them reconsider their situation and the opportunities presented by allowing a second controller to be used in the home — and sold at stores. We were initially skeptical of the new system, as after piled up and eventually were mostly proven to be true. A six-inch touchscreen with built-in motion and traditional controls — a big gamble, but not as big as only allowing one to be used at a time. The Wii was all about being in the same room as people and flailing about like crazy. Taking that away removes the keystone from the arch and it all comes tumbling down, revealing the last-last-generation graphics and laggy controls. The reason for having only one controller available was technical. They didn’t elaborate at E3, but given what we know, it seems that the Wii U central console only had enough bandwidth to send a video signal to one controller at a time. As the CPU and amount of RAM in the console haven’t been specified yet, there’s still room to give it a bump. : Nintendo now know they absolutely need to support two tablets… Even if that affects framerate, as a developer and player, I don’t care. It needs to work. Developers will design appropriate games for this. If you’re building a quiz game you’re not going to give a shit about the framerate. True. It’s about the unique experience, the fun factor. The rest will get figured out in time. Has Nintendo forgotten that they released an accessory for the Wiimote after a year that made it act the way it should have at launch? Not to mention the fact that two tablet controllers equals accessory sales. Satoru Iwata has said having to buy another controller is a “cost barrier.” Earth to Iwata: If you wanted to play four-player Mario Party or any of the other major sellers, you had to shell out for four controllers. And if you want to play whatever the killer app is for two tablet controllers, you’ll need to shell out again. That’s how it works. Nintendo desperately needs that money. And if it expects to sell 100 million Wii Us the way they’re looking right now, they’re going to have a rather ugly awakening. Nintendo led a tectonic shift in gaming habits. Now they’re scrambling to make ends meet. The right decision now could make the Wii U a truly interesting development in the gaming world, but the wrong one could make it an albatross they have to support half-heartedly for three years. |
Shazam, Delivery Agent Partner To Let You Buy Your Favorite TV Characters’ Stuff | Jordan Crook | 2,011 | 11 | 8 | Well, I’m not sure whether to be worried about our impending laziness or thrilled that I can now shop while I watch TV ( the help of the Home Shopping Network). , potentially one of the most magical apps ever, has partnered with to let you discover consumer products in TV shows and ultimately purchase them. First to jump on board with the service is NBCUniversal, more specifically the program , with other programming to follow. Just like you Shazam music you love, the service will let you tag episodes, which will then serve up different products that are relevant. So let’s say that main character Annie is getting dressed on the show, and you notice that her outfit is exactly what you’ve been looking for. Simply tag the episode and voila! Delivery Agent pulls any items available for purchase right into the Shazam app. Along with apparel and accessories the programming, this new service will also let users buy program-branded goodies, like a Covert Affairs mug or t-shirt. In all honesty, the shopping selection probably won’t be that great at first, and obviously not everyone is a die-hard. But if this thing blows up the same way did, you’ll want to be able to tell your friends you were doing it before it was cool. |
Griffin’s Beacon Lets You Channel Surf From Your Android Device | Chris Velazco | 2,011 | 11 | 8 | A of new Android tablets can take control of your television thanks to their built-in IR blasters, but Griffin has just come through with a solution for those of you stuck with less versatile hardware. Enter the Beacon, a standalone IR transmitter that helps turn your Android device . Setting up the Beacon itself is pretty straightforward — just pop in four AA batteries (ugh), pair it with your phone via Bluetooth, and you’re off to the races. As we’ve seen with , having the necessary hardware is only half of the equation. Users also need to download the from the Android Market in order to actually make the Beacon work, but thankfully the initial setup process is simple. The app contains a pretty extensive list of supported TVs and components, so getting the whole home theater up and running shouldn’t take more than a few minutes. An iOS-friendly version of the Beacon has been making the rounds for a while now, but the Android model has just begun to trickle out into the wild. Considering its $69.99 price tag, the Beacon isn’t much less expensive than some fancy dedicated universal remotes, but that’s not really the point. I’ve often made mention of how I’d like to be to control everything around me with a single device, and devices like the Beacon and the help make that (admittedly naive) vision more real. Quick word of warning: the Beacon only works with devices that run Android 2.3.3 or later, so those of you looking to make the leap better have all your updates in order first. |
Facing Down Facebook’s Timeline, Memolane Adds Social Features And An Investment From Digital Garage | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 11 | 1 | In this time of , it is easy to forget that Facebook didn’t come up with the concept of a social timeline recording your life. But what do you do now if you are a startup like built that bring in people’s Tweets, Instagram photos, Last.fm songs, and many other social media from around the Web? Well, you get more social. Memolane pushed out a significant update to its service today which adds a follow model. “When we created Memolane, people said it t was great, but it was like a museum,” says founder Eric Lagier. “Instead of a museum, we want it to be an amusement park.” Now instead of just seeing your solitary lane, you can also add friends, see their lanes, and even contribute to them. You can make multiple lanes based on themes, hashtags, or events (With beginning and end dates). The website is also now optimized for touchscreen tablets (both iPad and Android) The company added a new investor, Japan’s , which joins existing investors August Capital and Atomico (who put in last year). The investment was relatively small and considered an extension of last year’s A round. Japan is Memolane’s second-largest market after the U.S., with 17 percent of its users. |
Former Facebook VP Chamath Palihapitiya Invests $15 Million In SecondMarket, Joins Board | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 11 | 1 | , SecondMarket, the marketplace for alternative investments, has been seeing quite a bit of activity of late. In fact, private stock transactions in the first three quarters of 2011 totaled $435 million, a 73 percent increase over the same period last year. SecondMarket lays out all these stats and more , including the breakdown over who exactly is purchasing these shares. Interestingly, VCs made up less than 1 percent of transactions (and only 0.2 percent by dollar amount) last quarter. But, today, SecondMarket is announcing that it has received some serious outside investment of its own. The marketplace today closes a $15 million series C round, led by , the new venture fund established by former Facebook VP Chamath Palihapitiya. The former Facebook and Aol VP will also be joining SecondMarket’s board of directors. The Social+Capital Partnership, which is focused on backing healthcare, education, financial services, and mobile companies, in enterprise social network, Yammer. “SecondMarket has become the preeminent platform for private company shares enabling companies to meet their liquidity needs, help retain and reward talent, and provide start-ups with an opportunity to monetize and grow their businesses”, Palihapitiya said in a statement. For companies that are not yet ready to go public, SecondMarket has become one of the top alternatives, and has itself raised over $19 million to date from big-name investors like Li Ka-shing and Temasek. The series C investment not only brings the company’s total to $34 million, but raises its valuation to $200 million, The company will use the funding to ramp up hiring, expand beyond technology companies into new asset classes, and look for potential acquisitions. SecondMarket is also facing competition from Wall Street, as two firms, Cantor Fitzgerald & Co. and Liquidnet, have in the last few months both expanded their portfolios to include pre-IPO trading of shares. |
Founders brings the crazy and the foolish ones to Dublin | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 11 | 1 | Last year I attended a brand new event in Dublin called Founders (or if you prefer the branding). I duly as an “overnight must-attend” and a welcome addition to the European tech events scene. As one of the few writers to attend the first one, it was indeed a pretty damn good event, and an amazing achievement for 27 year old entrepreneur Paddy Cosgrave. And I see coming out with a bunch of to describe the events, which was run alongside the . First I’ll say what happened, then I’ll have something to say about what I think is going on here. The events for delegates included a (quite moving as it turned out) visit to the outgoing President Mary McAleese in her last official engagement, a gig by the Trinity College orchestra , an appearance by Bono, lead singer of U2 and speeches by the Irish Prime minister Enda Kenny and his Deputy. Quite a list. Perhaps more pertinently, this was gathering of 150 startup founders from diverse backgrounds, but all hand-picked to represent a very global tech scene. The conference brought together the founders of Skype, Netflix, Huddle, Rovio, GroupSpaces, Moonfruit, GroupMe, StumbleUpon, 4chan, Disqus and others. There were literally no ‘slouches’ in the room. Only the top VC partners attended such as Atlas Venture Partner Fred Destin and Michael Jackson of Mangrove Capital. I counted zero VC Associates. The four-day event ran alongside the Dublin Web Summit – as it turns out an inspired move which means about 1,000 of Irelands tech people got to see on stage some of the worlds best tech founders, including Skype co-founder Niklas Zennström, as interviewed by MG Siegler. Some real news came out of Dublin Web Summit, such as Dublin startup Redeem&Get winning the Spark of Genius competition, garnering 40,000 EUR ($56,000) in cash and a 100,000 EUR ($141,000) termsheet from ACT Venture Capital. The startup is targeting the redemption of vouchers to make the process easier for customers and merchants. In addition, enterprise relationship management startup Datahug in a seed funding round led by Ireland-based Oyster Technology Investments, with Silicon Valley super angel investor Ron Conway also investing. Back at Founders, the founders were rocking. Bebo co-founder Michael Birch and Angry Birds co-founder Mikael Hed gave a panel on the opening night. We had the obligatory pub crawl around Dublin (which Bono joined, incredibly, see below), and a few memorably late nights in the hotel bar but also high brow events like the dinner at Dublin Castle, hosted by – this time – the Deputy Prime Minister, Eamon Gilmore. A reception in Trinity College’s famous library (said to be the model for the one in Star Wars). The after dinner entertainment on one night was Riverdance, set in the former Guinness factory. Incredible. If anything this year’s Founders was even more baddass than last year’s. Although the Guinness Storehouse and the Halloween party also featured, along with the obligatory drinking in the hotel bar, it was also accompanied by 8am finishes and the trashing of a certain person’s hotel room. Who said Tech wasn’t the new Rock’n Roll? However, possibly the most amazing thing came in the former of a signed copy of the famous Che Guevara pop-art image, created by Irish artist Jim Fitzpatrick, who also attended dinner. The image was made from tiny images for Steve Jobs. The symbolism was no lost on the crowd of revolutionary technology entrepreneurs who were told by Fitzpatrick that they could only ever sell the print to other “revolutionaries”. But, in the final analysis the panels and fireside chats paled against the bonding that occurred between the attendees. For what Founders / Dublin Web Summit has turned into is no so much a Le Web or Web 2.0 Summit, but more like The Lobby Conference in the US . As Mike Arrington remarked at the time, “astonishingly candid conversations” broke out at that event. And frankly, that is what Founders was really good at. Everyone at the event was a conference veteran, which meant that the sheer lack of bullshit became utterly noticeable. Literally everyone was up for a great debate. And that’s clearly the point. Similarly, other events are aiming at the same atmosphere, such as the upcoming event in London and Cambridge, which will attract quite a few more of the long-time leviathans of the scene such as Reid Hoffman, Joi Ito, Kim Polese, and of course the awesome Sherry Coutu. SVUK’s guests will also get the Prime Minister treatment at Number 10 Downing Street. in the UK – which started 6 years ago runs over two nights, hosts 330 hand-picked people, mixing new entrepreneurs and more established ones, not unlike The Lobby conference. But Founders seemed to somewhat more represent the ‘young turks’ of tech. Clearly there was also a political and economic message to the event: do business in Ireland and base your European operations here. No doubt the organisers had noticed startups being wooed by the UK Royal household recently..? Was this a pitch to take on London and Berlin in the tech stakes? In some sense yes. But Founders takes its place among those events mentioned above. It also stands on it’s own as a great “off-site” event for European, US and Global entrepreneurs to let their hair down and chew the fat. Or at least, sip the Jameson’s… |
Researchers Flood Facebook With Bots, Collect 250GB Of User Data | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 11 | 1 | In that reveals as much about the people on Facebook as it does about Facebook itself, researchers from the Unversity of British Columbia Vancouver infiltrated the social network with bots and made off with information from thousands of users. Around 250GB of data was stolen during the study, including personal and marketable information, and around three thousand users were targeted. Only one in five of the profiles were flagged by the Facebook Immune System, which clearly needs a boost. The fake UBC accounts, which they call “socialbots,” were created from a few simple scripts, which submitted a the requisite account information: names, pictures, and status updates were trawled from the open web, eventually producing 102 fairly believable accounts. The intelligence organizing this effort is referred to evocatively as the “botherder” or “adversary.” Next, they sent friend requests to random people. Unsurprisingly, they found earlier that more attractive people get better responses to unsolicited friend requests, so they pulled their profile pictures from the high end of Hot Or Not. Only 20% of this initial random sampling took the bait, but later, when friending one of their network’s 2nd-degree friends, the success rate jumped to 60%. That’s called the “triadic closure principle,” if you were wondering. Each bot made around 20 friends on average, but some nabbed as many as 80 or 90. Facebook’s fraud detection was avoided by rate-limiting the posts and friend requests to avoid CAPTCHAs. Only 20 profiles were detected by Facebook, all of them, interestingly, the female bot variant. Considering how easy it was to automate the process of account creation and propagation, one has to question the effectiveness of Facebook as an authentication system. Naturally it can be used to determine identity to a certain point, but it’s certainly no Turing Test. Our own comment section shows that bots and generated accounts are plentiful. Hopefully this experiment will spur Facebook to improve this aspect of their security, as it was intended to. Maybe it will also convince some people to be a bit more selective in their friending process. And in case you’re wondering whether you might have inadvertently contributed to the experiment and, thus, the sum of human knowledge, rest easy: We carefully designed our experiment in order to reduce any potential risk at the user side by following known practices, and got the approval of our university’s behavioral research ethics board. We strongly encrypted and properly anonymized all collected data, which we have completely deleted after we finished our planned data analysis. . It makes for interesting reading, though for hackers and botnet enthusiasts, it probably contains little in the way of new information. |
Unthink’s “Anti-Facebook” Social Network Reaches 100,000 Users | Sarah Perez | 2,011 | 11 | 1 | , the social networking platform whose marketing campaign , has reached 100,000 registered users, the company is now reporting. As you may recall, the site quickly crashed after TechCrunch sent its usual heavy stream of traffic to the network, and it took Unthink over a day to recover. Now the number of visitors to the site is doubling daily, including both active users and casual visitors. According to Rachael Vicari, Unthink COO, the company was unprepared for the amount of traffic it saw. The first two days sent the amount of visitors it expected to see over the first 90 days, she said, and they had to triple the number of servers to keep up. She also cites Alexia’s statistics, which report a 14,800% increase in traffic over the past 7 days alone. Tomorrow will be a week from launch, and since its public debut, 100,000 users have set up their own “Suites” on the network. (For background, Unthink user profiles, which involve a public, private and professional aspect, are called “Suites.”) Growth like this is impressive for an outsider to the typical startup scene (case in point: they didn’t know how much traffic TechCrunch sends!), and especially one that has the chutzpah to take on Facebook itself. Still, one has to wonder how many visitors are driven to the site out of sheer curiosity and disbelief, e.g.: Instead of touting week-old numbers, Unthink should check back in a month, a quarter, 6 months, then a year, and see whether or not the current growth trajectory holds up. User engagement is another important (and unanswered) question. Who’s actually participating on Unthink? How many of the 100,000 are friending users, posting updates, uploading content, etc.? Vicari says the reason for the growth is because “the time is right” for a network like this, but it’s far too soon to make that claim. For comparison’s sake, Facebook took a year to reach a million users, and Google+ reached 25 million in around a month’s time – something it took Facebook three years to achieve and which took Twitter over 30 months. Tampa-based Unthink has $2.5 million in funding from DouglasBay, which publicly to have a 21% share in the site. |
Sheryl Sandberg And Gina Bianchini Invest In Levo League, A Site To Help Gen Y Women Rise Professionally | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 11 | 1 | We don’t hear about Facebook COO making many angel investments but we’ve learned that the executive has backed new startup called along with co-founder and former CEO of Ning . The site’s main aim is to create a medium to help young female professionals break through the glass ceiling. Only launched in July, Levo League produces “smart content for smart women.” The Levo League offers career advice from how to negotiate a raise or conduct a meeting, to how to dress for an interview. It ultimately aims to host generation-defining discussions of critical issues relevant to women in the workplace. Sample content includes to on women leaders, to The site is part informative content and part community and support network. And the startup just launched a more personalized professional platform, where users can find mentorship, career opportunities and more. The site was co-founded by Caroline Ghosn (Ghosn is the daughter of Nissan and Renault CEO Carlos Ghosn) and Amanda Pouchot, who met while consulting at McKinsey & Company. Both felt that there was a lack of personal and professional support available to young women. Thus the idea for Levo League was born. Their mission is to create a trusted brand and community to help young professionals break through the glass ceiling without compromising their identities as women. Pouchot explains, “We believe there is a tremendous opportunity to awaken the fullest potential of Generation Y’s women. There exists a need for tactical advice, communal support, and access to job opportunities that align with our values, and, for the first time in history, we have resources and technology that can make it happen on a generational scale.” As you may know, Sandberg, who was also a consultant at McKinsey previously, is the COO of Facebook, and was previously Vice President of Global Online Sales and Operations at Google and served as Chief of Staff for the United States Treasury Department under President Bill Clinton. She is indisputably an amazing role model for young women. And as Kara Swisher , Sandberg has been “vocal” on issues of women in the workplace. If you haven’t watched at TED, you should. Ghosn says of Sandberg’s involvement: “Sheryl is charismatic, sharp as a tack, and approachable – she’s the kind of person who brings an energy to the room that makes every person in it feel heard and comfortable. We at Levo understand the tremendous importance of younger women having referential examples that they can aspire to, and we can’t think of anyone better suited to set an example than Sheryl. We are so thankful for her support, and intend to live up to the expectations associated with it.” As we mentioned above, Bianchini is also a major investor for the startup. Bianchini, who , was also the co-founder and former CEO of Ning, and a former EIR at Andreessen Horowitz. Like Sandberg, Bianchini hasn’t made many public angel investments, so it’s interesting to see her backing the startup. It’s unclear if Sandberg will continue to make angel investments but we look forward to seeing what both she and Bianchini put their weight behind in the future. As with many startups, there was a rift between the original founding team of the predecessor to the Levo League, a similar concept called Pretty Young Professionals, Kathryn Minshew and Alex Cavoulacos. You can read their version of events |
Trustpilot raises €3.3m to scale up trust ratings for shopping | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 11 | 1 | , a site which rates the trustworthiness of shopping sites via a toolbar, has raised €3.3 million from two Nordic venture funds, SEED Capital and Northzone Ventures. The money will be used to scale internationally. Right now it’s available in 10 European countries but plans further rollouts. Peter Holten Mühlmann, CEO at Trustpilot says they want to be the “most powerful global player in the market for online user reviews of online shopping.” Quite a claim, and the problem of course is that there are already a number of reviews players, and not to mention the social reviews proliferating across the web over the last couple of years. Trustpilot also feels like a Minimum Viable PRoduct right now – although clearly, with over five million user ratings, it has traction. There is also the question of whether a plugin company is the right way to go about it. Still, you don’t get €3.3 million for nothing. SEED Capital is Denmark’s largest venture capital fund. Northzone is the largest Nordic venture capital investor, managing more than €500 million in six funds. |
Yandex joins Google, Yahoo! and Bing to collaborate on Schema.org | cloudbrows | 2,011 | 11 | 1 | , Russia’s leading search engine, has joined and ! to collaborate on . The initiative was set up in June 2011 to help web developers tag their websites to improve the display of the search results, which should make it easier for people to find the right web pages. Schema.org aims to achieve that by adding specific HTML code into the webpage, which helps differentiate between things, persons, events, places, businesses and creative works amongst others. The full list of tags can be found . This is a good news for the webmasters looking for search engine optimization across different search platforms. Now the pages tagged with Schema.org tags will be picked up not only by Yandex search engine, but also its other services, such as Yandex’s Business Directory, Yandex.Dictionaries, Yandex.Images and Yandex.Video. Yandex shows the data from these services also in its search results. Last week, Yandex released its financial results for the third quarter of 2011, quoting 62% increase in revenue for the first nine months of the year compared to 2010. The total revenue for the year 2011 to date is $423 million, with 28% of net profit margin. |
More Mind-Blowing Real-World Kinect Interaction From Microsoft Research | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 11 | 1 | Have you had your share of augmented reality this month? Between CMU’s , Microsoft’s , and Metaio’s , you could be forgiven. But trust me, you’ll want to watch this video of Microsoft Research prototypes using pico projectors and cameras. The ability to quickly build and track a 3D model of the environment (as and both found amazing) is combined with the ability to display synthetic information onto the real environment. The result? The digital simulation of the world is overlaid on the world, in real time, and it’s utterly insane. Look, just watch. It’s six minutes you’ll be glad you wasted: [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=frGEzlrhve0 w=640] The clincher is right there at the end. Virtual particles pouring off the desk and . The pico projector could be a little more wide-angle, but they’re getting there. Perhaps a 3D VR display a la Vuzix (I never thought I’d be recommending one) is the trick. Can you imagine playing a game where your body, hands, and fingers are all accurately tracked, and the line between digital and real items is blurred? It’s one more step towards a holodeck, but right now it’s still just collaborative research between Microsoft Research and Lancaster and Newcastle Universities (created for the conference at Newcastle). Like so many things at Microsoft Research and Labs, it would require millions in development to make into a product, but it’s too cool not to share. [via ] |
Leaked Timeline Points To Post-Black Friday Galaxy Nexus Launch | Chris Velazco | 2,011 | 11 | 1 | Few devices have inspired a following quite as devoted as the , and those fans will be glad to know that a recently leaked Verizon document pegs Samsung and Google’s latest collaboration with a post-Black Friday launch window. According to a handful of , the Galaxy Nexus is slated to launch the week after Black Friday (which I’m sure is rough news for people who work in wireless retail), a notion which is supposedly corroborated by an image of a Verizon timeline (below). It’s tough to tell exactly what we’re looking at here, but it appears to be a promotions schedule that lays out when each of Verizon’s handsets will get their holiday marketing push. It looks like the Droid RAZR will be part of Verizon’s holiday spotlight through Christmas, while the poor Rezound has to make do with a mere two weeks in the limelight. Meanwhile, marketing efforts for Samsung’s entire portfolio (Galaxy Nexus included) seem to kick off right after Thanksgiving, and could run straight through the holidays alongside the RAZR. Given that Verizon probably paid a pretty penny to nab the Galaxy Nexus before anyone else in the U.S., it comes as no surprise that it too may be getting a pronounced promotional push to drive sales. The timeline doesn’t offer concrete confirmation (Verizon could easily start their marketing efforts in advance of the launch to build hype), but the timing certainly seems to make sense. A post-Black Friday launch means people are already geared up to make some purchases, and it gives Verizon enough time to promote the Galaxy Nexus in the run up to your gift-giving holiday of choice. |
Will The Next Wave Of E-Paper Devices Have Glowing Screens? | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 11 | 1 | Depending on who you talk to, the fact that you need a light to read e-paper-based like the Kindle is either a strength or a weakness. It’s become part of the , after all: “just like real paper!” But with increasing competition from , it might be that E-Ink and its many clients will need to level the playing field. How about a softly-glowing screen? points out a newish technology being pitched as the next step in passive displays. makes an extremely thin layer (0.05mm thick) that allows light from hidden LEDs to be distributed evenly over its whole surface. The light is directed towards the screen itself, it seems, which is certainly necessary for a reflective-type display. It only needs one or two LEDs, so battery draw is minimal, and the extreme thinness and flexibility make it work in practically any display stack. The technology has existed for ages, but they claim their new method is both thinner and superior to existing implementations. I’ll believe it when I see it, personally: this sounds pretty sweet, but how it performs in real life is all that matters. Will it be too dim? Too bright? Will people even want it? Is it expensive? Hopefully these guys will have a booth at CES and we can drop by and check out their technology in person. |
Mobile Startup Incubator Tandem Opens New “MobileHome” In Silicon Valley; Now Accepting Applicants | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 11 | 1 | You may not have heard of , the incubator and capital fund that officially launched in July, but for entrepreneurs focused on the mobile space, they’re worth checking out. What’s different about Tandem, , is that founders Doug Renert and Sunil Bhargava don’t consider themselves VCs. Instead, they’ve brought together a host of entrepreneurs with decades of startup experience among them to provide resources in an incubator that specifically targets early-stage mobile startups. The incubator works hand-in-hand with its founders on everything from strategy and product design to user acquisition and employee recruiting, seeding each company with $200,000 in a convertible note in exchange for 10 percent common equity. Put simply, Tandem wants to become Silicon Valley’s mobile industry incubator and, as part of that mission, it’s today opening the doors of its collaborative workspace, called “The MobileHome”. The new digs in Burlingame will serve as a starter home to Tandem-backed companies, including the newest class of mobile startups that will be admitted in January 2012. Those interested in applying for the incubator’s winter class . The deadline is December 1st. Unlike other well-known incubators like Y Combinator and TechStars, Tandem hand selects and supports just a handful of entrepreneurial teams at a time. Out of over 1,000 applications received for its summer class, Tandem chose just three teams, all of which are working at the new site and will be attending the launch event in stealth mode. For its winter class, Tandem will be accepting 8 entrepreneurial teams; the small size of its classes, the incubator believes, help it deliver . Current startups participating in the incubator include and . Tandem will be hosting a launch party for its new offices, and the first 20 TechCrunch readers can gain entry to the event by emailing info@tandemcap.com. For more on Tandem, . |
RealNetworks Names Former Adobe Exec Thomas Nielsen As CEO | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 11 | 1 | After the company’s former in March of this year, RealNetworks has that its board of directors has named Thomas Nielsen as its new president and chief executive officer. Nielsen, who will also become a member of its Board of Directors, starts at RealNetworks on November 9th. Nielsen most recently served as vice president of the Digital Imaging Group at Adobe, leading the business unit for the company’s largest product line which includes Photoshop, Elements and Lightroom, in addition to mobile, web and tablet solutions. While at the helm of Adobe’s Digital Imaging Group, Nielsen was responsible for over $500 million in revenue. Prior to Adobe, Nielsen spent five years at Microsoft in the digital media space. Nielsen will be taking over from Mike Lunsford, who has served as interim CEO since March 2011. RealNetworks company founder and board chairman Rob Glaser said in a statement: “After an extensive and thorough search, we’re delighted to have selected Thomas as our new CEO…Thomas is a terrific product executive who has also demonstrated exceptional business and leadership skills. He’s a perfect fit to take RealNetworks into the future. We will leverage Thomas’ extensive background in customer-driven product strategy and delivery to ensure RealNetworks’ strategic plan is focused and optimized for growth.” RealNetworks has gone and of late. Kimball left suddenly, and the company’s stock has been on a decline. Hopefully Nielsen can help steady the company back into direction. |
null | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 11 | 8 | null |
Kill Switch | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 11 | 1 | The so-called , sequel to the much-criticized , is under fire again as it enters the process of becoming law. We’ve talked about it on this blog before and no doubt the discussion will continue after it passes or is rejected, but it’s important at this critical moment that everyone concerned weigh in and make an unambiguous statement regarding the quality of this bill. So then: PROTECT IP is a lunatic proposal, penned by a dinosauric industry concerned solely with the preservation of its own profits. It will do nothing to curb piracy while at the same time eroding fundamental freedoms of the internet. The only people who can possibly be in favor of this bill are either ignorant of its implications or stand to gain by its passage. This desperate power grab by a diminishing elite fails to even comprehend the problems it aims to solve, and its blunt force methods are wide open for abuse, and very possibly unconstitutional. Make no mistake about it: this is a kill switch, and if it’s passed, it will revisit us for years to come in ways we never suspected possible. If you think that’s an overstatement, think about it again next time you’re posing naked for the TSA, and ask yourself how came about. The full text of the Senate and House versions of the bill can be read and , respectively. Can it be fixed? No. The problems it attempts to address are simply not going to be solved by approach suggested in this bill. , , , , and many more have already spoken out.Contact your and and urge them to reject S.968. No one opposes this bill (which I will refer to as S.968 because its other names leave a bad taste in the mouth) because they are in favor of piracy or copyright infringement. The problem is real — but that doesn’t mean that the fictions regarding its effects on sales and so on are as well. Trying to make sense of the various studies, separating the propaganda from the facts, and the fluff from the insight, is a big job. The consensus is that there is no consensus, and that’s probably consensus enough. After all, if piracy were having the kind of devastating effect on music sales or theater-going that the record and movie industries say it is, that would be very clearly reflected in the numbers. Instead, we see healthy growth in some areas, cannibalized sales elsewhere, and yes, huge illegal download numbers. But to put these pieces together properly apparently requires more than all the RIAA’s horses and all the MPAA’s men have got. Instead, they choose the data that fits their hypothesis. But this is all known; it’s enough to say that the entertainment industries have poisoned the well with their antics, and nobody should take anything they say or propose seriously. Again, their dishonesty and absurd lawsuits do not mean the problem doesn’t exist. Music, movies, TV shows, and games are available online in a dozen places the day they are released, and thousands upon thousands of people download them. If that’s not a problem, I don’t know what is. Of course, some would say that thousands of people consuming your product, at no cost to you or them, is one of those problems. And then there’s the whole continuum of lost sales, outright theft, distribution, fair use, and so on to consider. It’s a complex issue to say the least. Sometimes complex issues require simple solutions, as Alexander . Simple, but not simplistic, which is what many would call S.968. A straw-man problem requires a straw-man solution. And that’s exactly what S.968 proposes. The approach of the bill to combating piracy is laughably inappropriate, yet at the same time so vague in critical portions that it’s hard to believe it wasn’t done that way on purpose. Briefly stated, the bill allows for the law to target services connected or tangential to infringing sites, which not only means any financial support in the form of advertisers or payment processors, but also the search engines that index the sites and the DNS registries that direct queries to the correct IP. They would all be required, within five days, to remove the site in question from their services, listings, and registries, or be in violation of the law. First, this notion of creating a special United States DNS listing with blacklisted sites excised. The folly of this design can’t be overstated. I feel I can say with confidence that many a security expert and network technician must have laughed aloud at this proposal. The real world equivalent, if a shop was alleged to be selling stolen goods, would be to make them take their sign down. Workarounds for a DNS blockade would be plentiful and effective and need not be described here. This measure has been described by its proponents as akin to door locks on cars — not foolproof, but we should still use them. There’s some sense to this, but of course the fundamental difference between material theft and “content theft,” i.e. making a copy, is ignored. The situation changes somewhat when it’s impossible to steal what’s in your “car.” If people were going around making perfect copies of the CDs, radios, and umbrellas in our cars, door locks wouldn’t really be necessary, would they? Admittedly, it’s a little disingenuous to mischaracterize their metaphor in this way (half the meaning is that we should take simple precautions if they are available), but it’s also disingenuous of them to mischaracterize the problem they say they are working against. In addition to the fact that this alternate DNS registry would be completely inadequate for its stated purpose, it’s fundamentally a bad idea to fiddle with international standards. Domain name universality is one of the underpinnings of the web. When I type Facebook.com into my browser, it goes to Facebook because of a principle set down and agreed upon by the internet infrastructure worldwide. But not everyone is on the same system: there are, of course, some countries that already have a blocking or filtering system in place. Places like China and Iran. A blacklist for sites, whatever the intention, is simply an idea that has no place in a free society. This is inarguable. It is censorship, plain and simple, and it is exactly as audacious as banned book lists and other more recent forms of moral, political, and ideological bootheeling. It sounds inflammatory, but this bill is a wedge to be driven over time. Permitting this blacklist would be surrendering an important guarantee of the internet, and opening the door to worse. The slippery slope argument doesn’t always hold up, but with the parties involved, there is precedent in abundance for excess and abuse. And the law is not structured to prevent such abuse. The first red flag is the casual contravention of internationally agreed-upon standards. Any site can be blocked, regardless of where it is registered or hosted, or where the content is stored. It falls short of imposing US copyright law on the rest of the world, but it demonstrates a troubling lack of respect for the international structure of the web. The world looks down on China and Saudi Arabia for their filtering of internet content to make it comply with their local laws and beliefs. Now they will look down on us. Next, S.968 appears to ignore due process and the presumption of innocence. These are, you will agree, somewhat elementary civil rights. Yet under S.968, sites would be eligible for takedown without any involvement on their part, and their supporting services, like advertisers, hosts, and payment processors, would be required to take action as well or share liability. All it takes is for a copyright holder to fill out the paperwork, and they’ve had that process automated for years. It’s worth noting that DOJ-issued orders required for search engines and domain registries to take action. Copyright holders may “only” affect payment processors and advertisers without a court order — so they’re limited to only crippling the site . But let’s be honest. The same people who will be researching and filing complaints pretty much wrote this law. Getting the DOJ to rubber-stamp an order is trivial. And on the topic of liability, the burden has been shifted, or rather multiplied, to include service providers. Google, for example, has long existed within a “safe harbor” provision of the DMCA, providing as it does only an information-locating and caching service. But the new bill calls for service providers specifically to immediately comply with the blacklist — in five days or less. Considering it might be quite a while before a small site can even get on a court calendar or have their request reviewed, this puts service providers in an awkward situation: take the site down, or be in violation of the law until it works its way through the courts? Very few will choose the latter. Even then, we can’t trust the courts to make the right decision. We’ve seen numerous examples of credulous judges being taken in by industry lawyers. Sony, for example, showed no compunction at all while it took one incompetent for a ride, years of irrelevant and private payment and IP records for a website during a protracted jurisdictional hearing. There are bright spots here and there, but for the most part the entertainment industry has been pillaging with impunity. The consequences of a takedown are also totally out of proportion with the cause. One infringing file or “portion” (e.g. a forum thread) could be used as the basis to take down an entire website (or at least have them take down their sign). This has happened plenty already: Google several large and legitimate music blogs after complaints about a microscopic portion of the content. That’s a hell of a lever to have at your disposal, and the process for review is slow enough that it could easily be used as a perfectly legal kill switch for any site on the internet. Despite the claims that the bill is narrowly focused on piracy-centric sites, the definition, viz. “engaging in, enabling, or facilitating the reproduction, distribution, or public performance of copyrighted works, in complete or substantially complete form” is hopelessly open to interpretation. You could find a thousand videos on YouTube in an hour that facilitate the public performance of copyrighted works, and browbeat a judge with them tomorrow. And again, while it’s trivial to get past the DNS blacklist, the compulsory compliance of associated services could be harmful. There is little or no allowance for a site to defend itself against accusations before action is taken, which means fraudulent or predatory takedowns and embargoes will be easy to make and very effective. And as many have pointed out, the most popular sites in the world today would probably be considered “notorious” if they were introduced today, but are exempt because they have had time to establish themselves as legitimate services. For small sites and startups, however, which have neither the immunity of established services nor the money or time to fend off a damaging takedown attempt, it could be fatal. There are penalties for anyone who “knowingly materially misrepresents,” but that seems a pretty high bar, and lawyers likely already have themselves a “safe harbor” of their own — reasonable suspicion, that sort of thing. And it is not limited to any particular of site; after all, infringing content could be hiding anywhere. Or information that shows that a site is “facilitating” infringement, or “enabling” it. On evidence that could be easily cherry-picked or modified and in which many judges would be unable (or too busy, as they will be) to detect the flaws, any website could be hobbled. With a little organization and legwork, one could compel the owners, advertisers, hosts, and DNS registries to stop acknowledging any website, almost instantaneously. As internet services are disproportionately US-based, S.968 is a loaded gun pointed at the rest of the world. There is a built-in provision for a yearly review. One would expect that after a year or two, the report would conclude that the act had done nothing to inhibit copyright infringement. That much would be given. But the response to this would be far more likely to spawn further, more draconian measures (such as more complete blockage at the IP level) than produce an admission of failure. S.968 will be completely ineffective at preventing copyright infringement or any other kind of undesired activity. Every measure it takes is trivial to circumvent, and will not deter the people doing the vast majority of illegal content distribution. It does, however, provide a set of tools that are not only easy to leverage for private or nefarious purposes, but also align the US with the human rights abuses of oppressive regimes. The bill is transparently the work of an entertainment industry which, failing to raise itself to the standards of demand, wants to drag the law down to its level with more avenues for litigation and greater weapons at its disposal. That we are even entertaining the idea of government-ordered blacklists of certain websites is repugnant and un-American. Everyone who cares about the freedoms provided by the internet is opposing S.968. And then there’s everyone else. |
Motorola’s Xoom 2 Spied In Catalog, Should Launch Before Christmas | Chris Velazco | 2,011 | 11 | 1 | We were half-expecting to see the Xoom 2 officially break cover at Motorola’s Droid RAZR launch event (especially since some leaked just prior to it), but according to the latest Carphone Warehouse buyer’s guide, the Xoom 2 should make its debut in time for the holidays. I managed to scrounge up a high resolution shot of the page in question (below), and it points out a few interesting particulars. The 16GB WiFi-only model is slated to run tablet-hungry customers €399 (roughly $545) when it hits Ireland later this year. It also runs Android 3.2/Gingerbread, much to the consternation of Ice Cream Sandwich fans the world over. Sadly, Carphone Warehouse’s copywriters didn’t feel like waxing technical, so there’s still no confirmation regarding what the Xoom 2 has lurking under its hood. The ad’s spec sheet also lists the Xoom 2 as having a 8.2-inch touchscreen, which brings up a few questions — is this the rumored media-friendly model with a built-in IR blaster? Where’s the 10.1-inch model that we’ve seen so much of? Questions still outnumber answers at this point, but it shouldn’t be too long before things start coming into focus. For what it’s worth, I get the impression that the unit we see here is the most basic version of the smaller Xoom 2, codenamed “Fleming”. It lacks many of the frills that previous leaks have alluded to, like an LTE radio and higher-capacity flash memory chips. If nothing else, it gives me hope that a wallet-friendly Xoom 2 may soon see the light of day around these parts. Considering that Motorola is selling a for $379, a $450 entry-level Xoom 2 wouldn’t be impossible, especially if Motorola just wants to move hardware over the holidays. |
Twitter Debuts User Testimonials, Er, Stories: For When 140 Characters Are Not Enough | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 11 | 1 | Last year, Twitter , called , that showcased ways in which users interact with the microblogging platform. Today, the company is a similar campaign, called which seems to show interesting Tweets and ways the site’s users are communicating via the platform. For example, Maureen Evans to share recipes with users. Aaron Durand was able to using Twitter. Well-known film critic Roger Ebert as voice after he lost his voice. Some stories are even accompanied by videos (embedded below). Users can send their Twitter stories via the hashtag #TwitterStory or by mentioning @twitterstories and Twitter will choose to showcase certain ones. User stories are always a good marketing tool. Facebook a similar marketing campaign around their 500 million users milestone last year, called . Google also launched Google Stories, which collects stories from users sharing tales about how Google effected their lives. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dB6_mmXiH50&w=560&h=315] |
Qwerly sells out to Fliptop, its main US competitor | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 11 | 1 | originally pitched itself as a ‘DNS for people’, not dissimilar to About.me. But in May it , shutting profiles in favour of doubling down on its growing API business which integrated its social data into CRM suites, customer support systems, email clients and address books. Other companies then used the data to personalize communications. Now Qwerly has pivoted again – in the form of a sale to social intelligence provider Fliptop, Inc, based out of the US. The latter was Qwerly’s its largest competitor in Europe. Financials details of the transaction were not disclosed. Qwerly was founded about 18 months ago by Max Niederhofer to help companies mine the social web. He says over 2,500 companies are using its API-based product (see chart), making requests for over 20 million profiles per month. At $50 per 1,000 profiles, the business was cash-flow positive and growing. The reasons for selling, says Niederhofer, that because 90% of Qwerly’s customers in the US and wanted web-based interface to their data, not an API service. Fliptop has that, in addition to US-based sales, support and venture funding. However, Niederhofer and CTO Phil Jackson are not staying with Fliptop and both plan to stay in in London: “There’s just way too much opportunity in Europe right now,” Niederhofer told me. It’s interesting he should say this. As a serial Angel investor and entrepreneur Niederhofer knows better than most the opportunities in Europe right now. And the US market is pretty saturated. |
Founders Brings The Crazy And The Foolish Ones To Dublin | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 11 | 1 | Last year I attended a brand new event in Dublin called Founders (or if you prefer the branding). I duly as an “overnight must-attend” and a welcome addition to the European tech events scene. As one of the few writers to attend the first one, it was indeed a pretty damn good event, and an amazing achievement for 27 year old entrepreneur Paddy Cosgrave. And I see coming out with a bunch of to describe the events, which was run alongside the . First I’ll say what happened, then I’ll have something to say about what I think is going on here. |
Personalized News Reader News360 2.0 Arrives On iPhone | Sarah Perez | 2,011 | 11 | 1 | , the cross-platform news reader, is arriving on the iPhone today in version 2.0, after having been previously available on virtually all other platforms, including Android, the iPad, Windows Phone, the Web and even the BlackBerry PlayBook. With today’s launch, News360 is also adding support for logins, allowing you to sync your reading trends and behavior, (aka your “interest graph”) across devices. Support for Google+ has been added as well. For those unfamiliar, is a news reading application with semantic underpinnings that uses smart algorithms to personalize your news reading experience. Upon installation, you connect your Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Google Reader and now, Google+, accounts to the service, which helps it determine what sort of things you would find interesting. For casual news consumers, this is an easier way to personalize news as it doesn’t require you painstakingly fill out a list of “categories” you want to follow. Instead, the app makes suggestions, which you can add with a tap. The app faces fierce competition these days, especially from the likes of Flipboard, Pulse, Evri, News.me, AOL Editions, Zite and dozens of others. While the underlying technology may be powerful, the app’s design, on the larger screen at least, was not as impressive. On the iPhone, however, the look is more utilitarian in parts, which may actually be a good thing. The company says that the app will also be included with Google TV in the updates that are rolling out this week. To date, News360 has seen 800,000 downloads across all devices.
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Evernote CEO Phil Libin’s Top Three Tips For Building A Hundred Year Old Company | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 11 | 6 | We caught up with after his talk at TechCrunch Disrupt Beijing and delved deeper into a theme that he’s touched upon many times when describing his vision of Evernote’s future — the idea of building a hundred year old company in the age of the acqui-hire and the quick flip. “We wouldn’t sell it for a billion, or for 2 billion,” Libin told me. “There’s basically no price that we would sell it. There isn’t a price at which I would prefer to sell the whole company rather than, you know like 10% of it at the same evaluation. So, if somebody came to me tomorrow and said, ‘Yeah. I’ll give you $10 billion. I’d go to investors and say ‘You guys give me a $10 billion evaluation and 10% of that amount.’ I would be much happier to sell 10% than to sell the whole thing. So, as long as the secondary markets or the public markets allow us to have the right kind of valuation then there’s really no reason to sell.” Libin went on to drop his top three tips for building a hundred year old company: “If you’re not completely infatuated with the idea with the company, why would you want to spend a hundred years doing it? So If you’re going to attempt something like this, it’s got to be in the field that you feel you can devote the rest of your life too, which is just a good idea anyway whether you want to do it for a hundred years or not.” “If your goal is to get the craziest possible person to pay you the most amount of money for your company, you can do that and you can maximize some short-term gain, but then you’ll have a crazy person on your board. And that’s not going to be consistent for being around for a hundred years. You’ve got to make sure you have fully aligned interest with the investors — That they’re along for the ride. And you should be up front while raising, ‘Hey, we want this to stick around.'” “It’s all about getting the team. So the whole secret of Evernote is we have this fantastic team. Many of the people I’ve been with for 10, 15, 20 years. Others are new. The first two companies we made, we sold. We sort of felt like we build them for somebody else. Then we said, ‘Okay, the third one is the one for us.'” Evernote just this summer raised another to stick it out through the next century. Good luck Phil! |
Disrupt Beijing Take-Aways: How China Moves Beyond the Clones | Sarah Lacy | 2,011 | 11 | 6 | The biggest barrier to starting a company isn’t ideas, funding or experience. It’s excuses. And you can understand why: Starting a company is scary even in Silicon Valley, a place where decades of ecosystem formation have provided entrepreneurs with soft-feathered nest of funding, mentoring and support. Outside the Valley it’s downright terrifying. It’s little wonder that even the best entrepreneurs go through a period of doubt and excuses not to take the plunge. So when I hear complaints from entrepreneurs in other areas of the US or in other countries about how they can’t start companies because there is no angel money, no mentors, no employees that will work for a startup, I always wonder how much of these gripes are truly insurmountable odds to new company formation and how much are the grousing of someone looking for someone else to blame. Perhaps someone who likes the idea of starting a company, but doesn’t really want to put in the hours. In China, the complaint du jour is that the entrepreneurs are trying to push beyond just founding companies that are clones of Western Web brands, and it’s the VCs that won’t take the risk on truly new ideas. Over two days of backstage deliberation at Disrupt Beijing, I got to see first-hand how the mind of the Chinese VC works. And I have to say, Chinese entrepreneurs have a valid point. Pushed to make a decision on which startups should move forward and which should not, Chinese VCs frequently picked the company with the clearer market over the company with the cool new technology and the gorgeous UI. This is not entirely a bad thing. In part, the emphasis on solving an existing problem and building a business was refreshing to hear. I’ve long argued we don’t ask these questions backstage at US Disrupts enough, and when I’ve disagreed with the winners in the past, that’s usually been the reason why. In fact, given the arguments over Qwiki v. CloudFlare or Sonar v. BillGuard or Shaker v. anyone else, I might lobby to have a Chinese VC on our judging panels from now on. So it was surreal for me to be the one arguing against an obsession with the market, saying to judges last week, There were a handful of companies shot down by Chinese VCs that would have been received far differently at a US Disrupt. I have a hunch 8 Securities with its slick UI and social engineering would have been a crowd favorite in the US. (It certainly got Jason Kincaid and Erick Schonfeld and .) Likewise, several members of the TechCrunch staff were surprised at how little support there was for — a user-generated fashion design site built by people with deep industry domain expertise and with a well-thought through user experience. The delightful make-your-own animated ebook company was another one that seemed to captivate Valley judges in attendance, but was brushed aside by Chinese VCs as clever technology and little else. In each of these cases– and several others– Chinese VCs had the same complaint: Not a clear enough market for the product. In fact, one thing that set apart from the pack was how well the founders knew their target market and how clearly they could articulate that market’s need for easier-to-source Chinese products. (They deserved the win no matter what continent we were on and were the clear judges, staff and crowd favorite. See our post-win interview with the winners .) The bias towards market size makes sense. Size is after all what China’s Web scene has historically had going for it. How much of Tencent’s domination is management and product and how much is its whopping 600 million person audience? It’s impossible to know, but it’s clearly a mix of the two. After all, plenty of companies fail in huge China. But no Tencent, Alibaba or Baidu has come out of India or Brazil to date. A massive domestic market not easily tapped by the West has clearly given Chinese startups more room for error than counterparts in other countries. Most Westerners have written off Chinese entrepreneurs as unoriginal, and maybe that’s how it started. But it’s clear that at least half of the problem comes from investors. When I asked VCs about their over-reliance on funding clones over new ideas, no one really denied it: The Chinese Web has been characterized by speed and land grab, like the US in 1999 but on steroids. Culturally, the Chinese excel at efficiency and the surest, quickest, easiest way to grab large tracts of Web land was to copy what had worked in the US. The innovation has come in delivery and monetization– many of the so-called copy cats of China are totally different from US companies in practice. But they get their start as the “fill-in-the-blank” of China, and that’s the marketing when they go public too. At the beginning and the end, it’s the game they have to play to get money. Many investors have become addicted to this sure-thing copy-cat model, although a few investors pointed to increasing investments in areas like the mobile Web that are still developing everywhere. Our runner up– which got the majority of the votes among the Chinese VCs– was , arguably a clone of CloudFlare. (Fittingly, the original was a Disrupt runner up too.) Anquanbao was the only clone in the finals, and some of the judges seemed to gravitate to it for that reason. Matthew Prince, ‘s founder, was a judge of an earlier session and I asked his thoughts on the company. Although he humbly thought CloudFlare’s technology was better, he admitted Anquanbao was the surest bet of all of the Battlefield contestants to build a big company. As he explained it, the market need in China for a security product like this is just so huge. And while CloudFlare is doing plenty of business in China, Prince expects a local company will be the one to win big. That makes Anquanbao perfectly positioned for success. As an investor, how can you ignore a near-certainty like that? Looking at Disrupt finalists as our own venture portfolio, it was powerful logic for us too and a big reason Anquanbao made it into the finals and won the title of runner-up. But for Chinese entrepreneurs to get to the next level of Web innovation, investors are going to have to stop making the easy bet. As I reminded VCs on our , they’re supposed to be taking risk. (The normally reverent crowd of Chinese entrepreneurs applauded.) There’s a groundswell of entrepreneurs who want them to. We not only saw it with the imperfect-but-original company pitches we saw from the Hackathon and the Battlefield, but we heard it from entrepreneurs in the hallways. Pony Ma, founder of Tencent, by arguing it was the crucial next step for Chinese Web companies, and said that fears of whether Tencent will keep up with this new generation are what keeps him up at night. There are hints of a new generation of angels in China who may push the envelope further, even if VCs won’t. Chinese entrepreneur and angel spoke at Disrupt about how he invests differently, despite his most notable win being an Amazon clone. Today, he says he doesn’t merely back a pre-existing idea, he partners with entrepreneurs to create new companies that evolves overtime along with what the market wants. If TechCrunch didn’t believe in Chinese innovation, we wouldn’t have held our first international conference there. And if the current crop of investors aren’t going to champion it, the market is big enough and there’s enough talent there now that others will. It’s up to the entrepreneurs to push the market forward, not just give the investors what they want. |
The Foundations Of A Startup Community | Brenden Mulligan | 2,011 | 11 | 6 | For the past few months, my wife and I have been traveling and meeting startups around the world. We’ve met entrepreneurs in Tokyo, Thailand, India, Israel, and Istanbul. In the next week we’ll be meeting with a community leader in South Africa. It’s been fascinating. In addition to meeting with the teams, we have been leading Q&A sessions with larger groups. The discussion always includes the group asking “how do we make our startup community as strong as Silicon Valley?” It’s an important question, as a lot of the startups’ success in Silicon Valley can be attributed to the strong community. However, that community has been growing and maturing for over 40 years. So when people ask about how to replicate it, I try to direct the conversation back to the foundation of the community. These are the elements I think are important to seed a startup community: There are a lot of places where starting a company isn’t seen as an exciting and inspiring pursuit. In fact, in places like Japan, is seen as an unwise and ill-informed decision. This kind of environment makes launching a startup, which is already an incredibly difficult task, near impossible. The founders needs to find a way to feel supported. If they don’t feel support, they won’t make it through endless 18 hour days. In places where support isn’t the norm, founders need to find ways to support each other until the rest of the community comes around. One of the best things about having co-founders is it gives an entrepreneur other people to bounce ideas off of and work through problems with. But in good startup communities, this kind of collaboration isn’t limited to internal conversations. Founders of different companies should constantly get together to share their experiences and help each other. Especially in newer entrepreneurial communities, it’s incredibly important to pool knowledge, instead of everyone figuring out everything on their own. This can happen in any form, whether it’s late night hack sessions or weekly breakfasts. Figure out what works for your community and then get together and talk. When collaborating, transparency is a must. In many places, people are afraid to talk freely about their ideas, figuring that someone might steal what they’re working on. In more mature startup environments, we’ve learned that this shouldn’t be a concern. The risk of someone stealing your idea (which I’ve never seen happen) is almost always offset by the huge amount of value you get from sharing what you’re working on and asking for feedback. So when you get together to talk, really talk. It’s human nature to talk about your successes and hide your failures. After all, why tell people what you’re not good at? Why admit you didn’t do something well? In startup communities, it’s one of the most valuable things you can do. Most entrepreneurs (and people in general) will tell you they’ve learned more from their failures than their successes. By keeping these failures to yourself, no one else can learn from them. In startups, people don’t see failure as a reflection of your talent, they see it as an opportunity to learn and improve. Most startups fail. So if you’re going to get into startups, embrace failure, and learn from it. Then share what you learned. Getting a group of entrepreneurs talking is a great step, but finding some common places to do that makes it a lot more powerful. This be a permanent location (co-working space, incubators, technology organizations, cafes) or a scheduled event (meetups, happy hours), but it’s important to establish places where entrepreneurs can co-exist. There are probably a lot more entrepreneurs around you than you think, and getting everyone together is one way to understand the size of your community. This is one of the reasons that is such a powerful organization. It brings the community together. People from more established entrepreneurial cities love helping smaller communities grow. Use this to your advantage. Invite people who have been successful in established hubs to come speak at a local conference, come speak at the local hub, or just come and meet teams when they’re in town. Pay attention to people’s travel schedules (which people always post to Twitter) and if they’re in your area, invite them. Entrepreneurs love sharing knowledge with someone else, and it’s rewarding to do this with a new community. has formed a whole organization around this concept with , which takes entrepreneurs to all corners of the world to teach and learn from the local startup community. has done it for years with the enormously successful e. You community can’t expect everyone to come to you or to figure it all out on its own. It’s important to see how people are doing it elsewhere, and there’s no better way to do that than to get knee deep in it. I don’t think I’ve ever spoken with an entrepreneur who took a trip to the bay area who left without learning something new or meeting at least one valuable connection. So use whatever connections you have and visit places with mature communities like San Francisco, New York, etc. If you can’t make it, send ambassadors for you to go learn and then come share back with the community. A lot of people worry that since top tier investors aren’t interested in their community right away, their efforts aren’t paying off. But they need to be patient. Building a startup community takes a long time. spoke about this at last year’s Tahoe Tech Talk, saying it’s taken 15 years to build the community in Boulder, Colorado, even though many people think it’s happened just over the past few years. Overall, just understand that the most amazing thing about Silicon Valley isn’t the huge amount of venture capital, or number potential acquirers. It’s not all the incubators or co-working spaces. Instead, it’s the collaborative, helpful, and inspiring community that’s developed around it all. It’s the 10 other entrepreneurs sitting next to you at the coffee shop willing to help you through a problem or make an introduction to someone who might be helpful. It’s the support that the entire community consistently gives each other. A strong community won’t appear overnight, but if you start with the right foundation, the rest will come in time. Please add anything I missed in the comments. [ ] |
Discovery by design | Steve Gillmor | 2,011 | 11 | 6 | We hear a lot about gamification these days, which appears to be about providing incentives for us to contribute to social networks. The idea is that we need some additional rationale beyond the blogger’s call of being mad as hell and not going to take it anymore. This is also expressed as making a difference, or paying forward, or the myriad themes of a number of self help/business books. Certainly a pinch of game mechanics can help, as FourSquare makes clear. Being mayor of the DMV may not make your day, but the more data FourSquare consumes, the more it has to come up with reslices of those signals to keep people engaged. That same feedback loop is what made Twitter what it is still becoming today — a living, breathing central nervous system for the mobility set aka most of us. But as much as I hear the logic of game mechanics, there are other larger drivers of the social mobile wave. And nothing stands out more than what could be called the Appification of the computer, web, and media. You can trace this surge in reverse, starting with the predictions of the impact of iPhone/iPad’s failure to support Flash and continuing right up to today with the clock-ticking about Apple in the wake of its leader’s death. At its simplest, the reason Flash is road kill is that Steve Jobs asked us which was more important — the coolest possible set of toys ever or a few months of consternation by the studios who had already milked as much as they could from a hemorrhaging DVD market. Even though it appeared a fair fight at the time, the reality was that the creative industries were at a low point in their history while the technology business was entering the most creative part of its cycle. In interesting ways, this role reversal played to the power unleashed by the crescendo of realtime social technologies and the miniaturization wave triggered by the space program. The last big creative surge in movies and music was led by similar technology developments in production — small, hand held cameras and motion control devices that decoupled producers and directors from the studio system, and multitrack recording and digital sequencing that lowered the cost and brought record-making to the living room. The ease with which blockbusters could be made and marketed also had the effect of encouraging sequels and mainstream bets, slowing the opportunity for growing new talent at the very moment the tools allowed a democratization of access to the industry. Technology became the byword of monetization, from 3D to HD and the scourge of reality gamification. By contrast, the technology business turned creative as realtime and mobile proved an opening for Jobs and Page/Brin to do insanely great things with digital magic. Gmail proved the experts dead wrong when it offered unlimited storage, a Golden Goose that did something no one thought possible. The Cloud meant you could have your cake and eat it too; it was always true that you were defined by the data you threw off,, but now you could summon it with a magical cursor that rewound through search to the moment you recalled in your history. The economies of scale Microsoft had achieved for itself and customers were suddenly turned on their head and delivered to the users as transformative tools. In effect, we were incentivized to create data and the traces of how we consumed such data as payment for the cloud services that resulted. This was the social contract that Twitter and Facebook parlayed into the leverage needed to first, make realtime work and second, attract the services needed to replace the atrophying media that preceded. The iPad delivered the coup de grace — all media, games, communications, social emitter, and business disruptor — and in the process sidestepped the carriers the iPhone unhinged with the AT&T deal. Instead of a service contract, the media displayed on the device became the subsidy. The Kindle Fire is the companion instantiation of that strategy, with Amazon Prime morphing beyond free shipping to a Netflix/Spotify competitor. All very creative, while Hollywood contorts in the search for revenue replacement. Let’s take on the notion that Apple is now reduced to playing out the clock post-Steve. As I type (iPad of course) push notification is in its middle school phase as @mentions stream in from the network next to email and news bulletins. Siri is shipping while still in Beta, a first for Apple by the way, but it’s stream-enabled to the point where it stops working when an outage occurs. The history of the cloud is benchmarked by such outages, as massive adoption pushes out the scalability and security model beyond the false cloud one it’s replacing. In effect, Apple has done the one thing it must do to stand up to Google and the loss of Jobs: go to the Cloud. Take the Beta designation — all Google products were beta until Google Apps went after enterprise sales. With Google+ now reworking the front end of all of the products, it seems beta is back in business. For Apple, it means something different: “We’re looking for your help in creating the future.” After all, it’s not like the iPad happened in a vacuum just last year or whatever. According to a PBS documentary on Steve Jobs, he sketched out the outlines of the device for at least one person some 30 years ago. Then there’s the way Jobs didn’t wait for the users to tell them what they wanted, but went ahead and created it for them. Well, that’s right. I didn’t want Siri for the longest time, and didn’t really even when I got the new 4S. But now my wife says I’m having an affair with the damn thing. Here’s why. It’s because it’s Beta, not in spite of it. Because it’s hard wired to the network, I literally can’t wait to turn it on to see if it’s getting better. Same with the OS, which for the first time in iOS 5 is upgraded over the air. Take Pages, which uses the system spell correction. One of my favorite bête noires is how it handles “its”. In the previous generation it auto-corrects to “it’s” which means “it is” 100 percent of the time and which gets it wrong about 90% of the time. IOS 5 gets it wrong about 50% of the time. Beta wins 100% of the time. The reason I think Appification wins is that other big deals like gamification and crowd sourcing and HTML 5 are rolled into the A Theme. Take push notification, please. It’s the most creative adjunct to the iPad ever, so far. As I type, the Gillmor Gang retweets roll in at the top, then a work-related email, then a time sensitive one on the management offsite next week in Vegas, and so on. I look at what I need to look at, and stage the ones I don’t want to interrupt my writing flow. When I’m ready to take a break, I already know where to go and swipe the history down from the top of the screen and go. It’s a creative tool, like the part of the movie where I rush to get the popcorn refill. It’s not an App versus Web argument either. It’s about the creative edge where many of us like to recharge our batteries from office politics and family quibbles, that place where the frontier meets the ocean and we care more about the silence where good ideas sometimes go to be born. Don’t worry, without the Steve Jobs of the world to mix and match the right ingredients at the right time, we wouldn’t have the success that breeds the blockbusters and sequels and tips the balance away from Northern and back to Southern California. Apps and the Web thrive off of each other. Touch + wrapper. When app gets the network it becomes the sum of all its parts, aware of its possibilities, able to provide the contours and context of what feels like a coherent entity. My mind feels comforted by the notion of the app, like hot chocolate after a day on the ski slope. Some place to go, beginning middle end. Yet I want the potential for disruption, the harnessing of those great minds out there signaling on the social stream, the drumbeat of serendipity orchestrated while I savor a good book. Discovery by design. |
The Rise Of Pinterest And The Shift From Search To Discovery | Semil Shah | 2,011 | 11 | 6 | The current toast of the web is , the visual pinboard for collecting and sharing content online. The “pinning” phenomena is from its modest beginnings to in national media outlets. There are over monthly active Pinterest users on Facebook. A co-founder of the site has 500,000 followers on Pinterest. Ron Conway (an investor in the site) that Pinterest’s user growth rate is what Facebook’s was five years ago. Earlier in 2011, it was valued through venture financing at and, most recently, just a few months later, at around . What is going on here? Pinterest is growing for a of reasons. It enables users to clip things they like. It emphasize pictures over text, which are more visually appealing and easier to digest. Signing up is easy. Pinterest has crafted a fun, whimsical, artistic image. In particular, it has struck a chord with female users, an attractive demographic. Pinterest has added to the lexicon of “like” or “retweeting” or “reblogging” or “upvoting” with the ability to “pin” content and then “repin” it across the site and other networks. A leading expert on marketing to moms, Kat Gordon of , remarked that using Pinterest is a “soothing” experience for her. Despite the hockey-stick growth, doubts exist. It’s likely they won’t make this a focus until the product and backend systems are complete, but note that they already affiliate links to online shops and are believed to drive incredible to Etsy. It was a very competitive round, and the team needs much technical talent, and in this environment, they’ll need to be aggressive about finding that talent. It’s a site about discovery and data. On the front-end, users can discover things that they like and organize things they like. On the back-end, it’s a data company, where the company can capture rich metadata around each image. I’ve been tracking Pinterest for a while now and, to me, the single most important aspect of the site is that it has deeply into an important shift in consumer and purchasing behavior. As we make a decision to search for or buy something online, we are trained to go to Google (or Amazon), search by keyword, and sort through results to eventually make a transaction. In return for that sorting, Google charges for advertising, but in order for it to work, we users have to signal our intent: “Red Nike running sneakers.” But, how did I decide to want these red running shoes in the first place? While Google makes money at the bottom of this decision funnel, the top of the funnel is where “discovery” happens. It’s much wider at the top of the funnel, and harder to pin down where the thoughts originate (pun intended). A site like Pinterest could help bring some of that discovery online. For the red running sneakers, instead of researching them myself, I may instead elect to browse the pinboards of Pinterest users who are dedicated runners. I could find sneakers on a friend’s board and may have reasonable confidence that this pair could suit me, too. In this manner, I may elect to buy the shoes right after seeing my friend’s board on Pinterest and get to a transaction faster. If Pinterest can (1) get its users to take pictures of things in the real world with its and post them online with data and (2) leverage image-tagging tools such as and help bypass intent-based search on just a small fraction of online transactions, it could be a huge cultural and financial success. This is the promise of Pinterest. Of course, there’s a long way to go and there will be other opportunities to create discovery engines for different types of users, whether broad or niche. There is too much information online, too many pages filled with stock images and no context. Search engines provide significant utility, but we still have to exert energy to find what we need after results are algorithmically surfaced. The new crop of social media companies help discovery come online and threaten traditional search. With these new tools, users are able to clip and collect the bits of the web that they are most interested in and, in the process, disregard the rest as noise. Sites like Pinterest, Twitter, Tumblr, Instapaper, , , and , among others, all allow their users to decide what aspects of the web (text, media, etc.) are worth saving and sharing, instead of browsing the web from Google, or even Facebook for that matter. Because many of these networks have asymmetric follow/follower models, and because users can “tune” whom they are following, users’ feeds could increase in relevance as items are retweeted or repinned. These networks allow for self-expression, and in doing so, re-sort and re-shape the web we see, and that is a very big shift away from traditional search toward social discovery. |
Keen On… Francis Cholle: Why Entrepreneurs Should Trust Their Guts (TCTV) | Andrew Keen | 2,011 | 11 | 6 | It’s an old dilemma. Should entrepreneurs rely on their reason or their instinct? Should they trust their gut or should they trust their mind? The good news, at least according to the author of is that the best entrepreneurial decisions are actually a balance of reason and instinct. As Cholle told me when he came into our San Francisco studio, entrepreneurs need to embrace a “healthy disregard for the impossible” if they are to develop their own intuitive compass. Don’t trust my gut (or my mind) on this one, though. You can Intuitive Compass, of course. Better still, however, Cholle is developing a free Intuitive Compass that will allow you to balance your reason and your instinct wherever you are and whenever you want. |
Instagram’s Kevin Systrom On International Expansion, Instagram Video, Funding Rumors And More | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 11 | 6 | With over just from China, co-founder had a lot to say during his talk, tackling head-on the issue of how to approach social in China’s unique market as well as what exactly to do about the multitudes of clones. We chatted with Systrom after his talk backstage, and found out a little bit more about where the company sees themselves in the future. Instagram is currently focused on Asia, with its second biggest market being Japan. And Systrom isn’t afraid of the clones, “There might be 10 clones here, [but] there are also 20 clones from the United States right? You know, being copied is something that I think that every successful company will go through. Our biggest defensible asset really is our community, and I think that’s the thing that you’re not going to find on any of these replicas.” The hardest part about adjusting to China for most Internet companies is that social networks like Facebook and Twitter are censored, leaving apps like the social-heavy Instagram to reckon with Chinese equivalents Weibo and Renren. “It’s a matter of resources and time,” Systrom said, “And I think that we’re really excited, actually, in the near future to add support for a bunch of Japanese social networks, Chinese social networks, Korean social networks. Because it’s really clear that the top five social networks that we list today in the app aren’t necessarily the top five in other countries.” When asked if accumulating these resources involved Instagram raising another round of funding (as currently rumored across the Valley), Systrom said that the six-person company was focused on “staying as lean as possible.” “It’s not really a priority right now to raise more money,” he told me, “When I think the company starts scaling both on the people front and even more the network front then I think there will be an opportunity to raise more money for the company, but it really doesn’t make sense right now.” Systrom also hinted that Instagram Video was (somewhere) on the horizon, “Video makes sense to do. I will say it’s a very interesting area. We really want to go after something bigger than filtered photos. Our job and our vision is to allow you to tell the story of your life, and whatever tools that may be for video, we’ll end up making them. I’m not sure if that includes filters for video or not, but we’ll definitely consider it.” |
Nobody Wants To Feel Like They’re Obsolete | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 11 | 24 | Dad, what browser do you use? One that browses well. Okay, what’s it called? A browser. I don’t know about you, but I try to avoid technological discussions with my parents. Even though they are relatively tech aware, they tend to be Team Windows and I am Team Mac. Also: While the “My cool ” trope is totally ubiquitous and real, older people tend to be over-sensitive about their level of tech acumen. It’s a fear of mortality thing, I’m thinking. That’s why when Alexis Madrigal into “Update Your Parents’ Browser Day,” I winced, despite holding universal modern web browsing standards as something to aspire to. As part of what might be the last generation to remember what life was like before the World Wide Web, the idea of having to explain something as simple as a browser update to the people who bought me my first computer — and, you know, gave me life — strikes me as sort of sad. If technology makes us more human, as Twitter’s Jack Dorsey , then the absence of technology turns those at the short end of the USB stick into a different species. You hate thinking of your parents as weaker than you in any way, let alone using Internet Explorer 6. This morning I was almost too scared to ask my parents what browser they use, for fear that I might actually have to celebrate tomorrow’s holiday. After (he is after all related to me), my Dad answered Google Chrome (whew!). For the record I use Chrome Canary — and it’s way buggy in OS X Lion. To the insular group of tech early adopters that read (not to mention write for) a site it scary to think that the decade-old IE6. The advantages of updating to a recent browser version go way beyond improved speed and lack of self-installing ‘BonziBuddy’-esque toolbars … One Hacker News commenter of his Dad inadvertently playing into the hands of spyware, “He fired up the ol’ IE7, went to the HSBC page, completed the first step of logging in, and there it was, clear as day. A mysterious third box prompting the user to enter their full PIN.” Shudder. He goes on, “We, as the more technically-minded people in our families, have an obligation to do this for the people we care about, in a way that extends far beyond those clever CSS animations or native video support. I’m lucky enough that my folks know to keep their eyes open to anything fishy online, but I had no idea he was still using IE7. The idea of him (or indeed anyone) inadvertently giving their complete bank details to some cyber-criminals out of completely innocent ignorance terrifies me.” But not all parents are that amenable to technological change; evidence another Hacker News , “Once I came to my parents’ house to find the family laptop having gained a wonderful feature where every search result would redirect to spyware. Did my best to clean the mess and get everything somewhat reasonable, and then got a call a few weeks later saying my “porn watching” ruined their computer and deleted their bookmarks.” To avoid this sort of “You broke my Internet” issue, even savvier techies like Google’s Matt Cutts have resorted to https://twitter.com/#!/mattcutts/status/139557025259601920 Whether you’re the tech snob or the tech n00b at your family gathering, one thing is clear — the technological gulf between my parent’s generation and mine will be completely dwarfed by whatever our children come up with to feel superior. So here’s a message to my future offspring while they’re helping me on ” or whatever: Re-read the title of this post. |
How HowToWeb ignited Bucharest and Central Europe | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 11 | 24 | I recently hit Bucharest in Romania to experience the rising star event of the Central and Eastern European scene, . This annual conference is doing an amazing job of bringing CEE entrepreneurs together, and Bucharest is gradually emerging as one of the key tech hubs in the region. The reason? It’s pretty simple – there is great engineering talent, plenty of it (there are 22 million Romanians) and it’s affordable. I could of course name any other number of cities that fit this profile – Kiev, Ljubljana, Sofia, Warsaw and more – but at the moment HowToWeb is bringing many startups and entrepreneurs in from the region to network and party, and mashing them up with international speakers such as Mark Randall of Adobe, Michael Breidenbruecker, founder of Last.fm and RjDj and Pablos Holman of Intellectual Ventures Lab. While the CEE ecosystem remains young, and its entrepreneurs are still finding their feet, the key advantage is that in order to get anywhere they most thing global, since local markets are still developing. So while you will see many German startups still only focusing on Germany (why, not when there is a sophisticated and connected audience of over 90 million people) CEE startups have to think out of the European box, literally. And that’s why HowToWeb, founder by the ever enthusiastic
, is in English, to give that ecosystem exposure. At the event I met and interviews (see video) with , an initiative to maximize investors’ and entrepreneurs interaction and kick-start the scene there. They put on one-day events consisting of two sessions, with the first involving pre-selected entrepreneurs pitching before the attending investors, and the second creating one-on-one discussions. At HowToWeb we saw pitches from the following companies as part of their Startup Challenge, pitched in front of 750 internet professionals. Worth checking out: – (Romania) – (Greece) – (Hungary) – (Austria) – (Bulgaria) – (Hungary) – (Romania) – (Croatia) – (Romania) – (Czech Republic) |
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FlyScreen Launches An iOS 5-Like Lockscreen API For Android | Sarah Perez | 2,011 | 11 | 24 | I know, I know. Apple stole its new Notifications Center for iOS 5 from Android. But let’s be honest, they did a pretty good job with it. (Except for those impossibly small “X” buttons, that is.) As someone who switches between both platforms, one thing I really like about iOS 5’s Notification Center is that it’s available from the phone’s lockscreen, too. On Android, you typically have to unlock your phone in order to view your notifications. Well, until now. Thanks to app maker and its brand-new “ ,” Android users may soon get their own lockscreen notifications, too. The is just launching today, with messaging app Kik as the first API partner. The company is also taking sign-ups from other interested app developers via a form on the SuperFly homepage. Further down the road, the API will be publicly released so all Android apps can integrate with the service through what CEO Itamar Weisbrod says is just 5 lines of code. At first, these SuperFly notifications will be just an icon and text, as they are by default on iOS 5 and Android, but the company is working towards making them richer and more interactive in the future. When it goes live, the notifications lockscreen will be a part of the redesigned app for Android. FlyScreen updates, missed calls, SMS messages and email previews will be supported, too. While the I love the idea of a better, customizable lockscreen for Android users, the challenge will be getting Android app makers to sign up. FlyScreen will need to do more than just offer a public API – it will need to actively court partnerships to make this thing a success. However, it sounds like the company is doing just that. Weisbrod says there are “more big apps to come soon” and they already have some “big ones” in testing now. The new notifications section is already live in FlyScreen’s app in the Android Market, but Kik’s integration won’t arrive for a week or two. And as new developers sign up to use the SuperFly API, they’ll be added right away, making the app gradually more useful. If you’re interested in testing the new FlyScreen, you can grab it from the Android Market. |
Google+ Gets A Thanksgiving Day TV Ad: “Sharing, But Like Real Life” | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 11 | 24 | [youtube=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRmDGvdkg8E’] It wasn’t that long ago that the idea of flipping on a television and seeing a commercial for anything Google-related seemed totally implausible. For many years, the company seemed to take a certain pride in not having to resort to traditional marketing channels, and it eschewed TV ads entirely for well over a decade of its existence. Then, in February 2010, the web giant made its TV commercial debut: with a , no less (and a fantastic one at that). Since then it’s become a bit more common to see Google ads running on TV — the company has started promoting its Chrome browser with ads, for example. And earlier today it ran what appears to be its first TV spot for its social network, Google+. The ad, which appeared during the Thanksgiving Day Lions/Packers game, focuses heavily on Google+’s Circles feature and Hangouts, telling viewers that it’s “Sharing, but like real life”. The move isn’t terribly surprising — Google has been putting a of muscle behind driving users toward Google+, including featuring an on Google.com when the service first opened its doors to the public, and of the latest version of Android to create a Google+ if they haven’t already. |
Cracking the Krakow Code – Poland's newest high tech cluster emerges [TCTV] | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 11 | 24 | I recently had the pleasure of visiting a European city which is to a great extent a true example of how technology is changing society and business across Europe today. Once, Krakow was a city infamous for its nearness to Auschwitz and a terrifying example of how the Nazis could destroy a previously peaceful society where people of many creeds had lived together in peace. Under the Soviet occupation, it was just another grey Polish city. But since liberation in the later 1980s and the emergence of a strong Polish market economy in the 1990s/2000s, Krakow is taking its place in the technology world, along with the major hub of Warsaw, as a crucible of technology innovation. I flew to Krakow to join the burgeoning startup group there which showcased pitches from local startups aiming to go global. While there I shot the ‘mini documentary’ below which gives you a flavour of some of the early startup companies in Poland. But the powering force behind this emerging scene is . No other business exemplifies both Poland and Central and Eestern Europe’s emergence as a tech powerhouse to me than this young company. I first met the founders three years ago when they were already a couple of years into the journey. Ela, Bart, Pawel and Agata are four young founders who literally taught themselves to code, got an office in an old factory and decided to start an outsourcing business. They developed web apps and sites for playing clients, often from Western Europe. But they aren’t just any kind of company. Soon they realised that to generate the talent they needed they would have to actively participate in lifting their whole tech scene. They started meet-ups, Ela Madej, the CEO (whose parents were both early computer scientists), started travelling to Western tech conferences, they got to know VCs. It sounds simple, but they also made a conscious decision to blog and tweet in English – it’s for that reason I started hearing about them. And most importantly of all, they started developing their own products which has led them towards the startup world. Today Applicake continues to work for some of the hottest product startups out there, but it’s team has divided in two to create , a new series of apps aimed directly at SMEs. While in Krakow I also had the good fortune to meet up with Rafał Han of , the largest polish website with edutainment games for preschoolers. Pronounced “ChoofChaa”, this game based around a kids steam train is aiming to roll out in English and follow the Angry Bords model of toy merchandising. Please check out the video and get a flavour of the Krakow tech scene. |
Chrome Getting Native Gamepad, Webcam, And WebRTC Support In Early 2012 | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 11 | 24 | It’s not always easy to tell when Chrome has been updated, and at any rate the changes aren’t always significant enough to even wonder about it. But a pair of features worth caring about are user-bound come early 2012, , who spoke recently at the in Liverpool. The conference is focused on game development, so it’s no surprise that the features are also game-centric. First, there will be plug-and-play gamepad, webcam, and microphone support in Chrome, and second, the nascent real time communication protocol will begin to be implemented as well. This opens the door for seamless video chat and conceivably -like gaming services. It’s not as if there are already tons of games and applications waiting to take advantage of gamepads and WebRTC. And while it would extend the capabilities of Chromebooks, for instance, so it would extend the capabilities of any netbook or desktop running Chrome. Still, making the browser platform natively support peripherals is an important step towards making it less of an application layer and more of a primary OS layer. Replacing the driver layer always introduces all sorts of complications, so it’s no surprise that this hasn’t been properly implemented yet. A passthrough from the OS drivers and device managers has been the standard, and this may take a while to supplant. But if it works, it works, and no one will care whether it’s Microsoft, Apple, Logitech, Adobe, Google, or making their webcam work. All they want to do is video chat with their kids. Kinlan also said that an OnLive-type streaming video/game service is in the works at Google, which should come as no surprise. Google + integration is almost a certainty as well: “Blank is playing Modern Warfare 3! Click here to watch. Click here to rent.” Naturally the hardest part of this service would be the licensing agreements, in which OnLive and others have a long head start. Servers Google has. It’s content they need. “First quarter” is as specific as Kinlan got, and it’s fairly early to make those determinations anyway, so no doubt we’ll be hearing more when we are nearer the release date. |
2011 Holiday Gift Guide: Laptops Are A Geek’s Best Friend | Jordan Crook | 2,011 | 11 | 24 | When it comes to gift-giving, there are a few presents that siimply go above and beyond. Getting a first car on your sixteenth birthday (if you’re so lucky) is one of those moments, and some young couples are even lucky enough to get a house as a wedding present. But after a house and a car, a brand new laptop is probably the best gift you can get. We’ve compiled a list of notebooks ranging in price from $839 to of $1,999, so there should be something here for everyone. Without any further ado, here are some of our recommendations if you’re looking to get your loved one a new notebook. I’m actually typing this post on an S3 as we speak, and I must say it’s a pleasant, comfortable little notebook. The first thing you should know is that this is one of, if not first computers to fall in line with each of Intel’s ultrabook requirements (like being under .83 inches thick, having at least a 5-hour battery life, employment of Intel’s rapid start technology, and a sub-$1000 price tag), meaning you’d be getting your loved one the first in an entirely new category of Windows-powered laptops. is powered by a Core i5 processor, packs 4BG of on-board memory, and combines a spinning hard drive with an SSD for speed performance and greater memory. It’s super thin, at just .51-inches thick and weighs just 2.94 pounds, which you’ll surely notice the first time you pick this little guy up. The 13.3-inch screen isn’t amazing by any account, but with a 1366×768 resolution at 450-nits it gets the job done. You can pick up the Acer S3 Ultrabook for the low price of $839.99. If the S3 ever had a competitor, it would be . In fact, the MacBook Air is seemingly the inspiration for the entire sub-category, so if you’re in a Mac state of mind (or are ready to convert), look no further. With its unibody aluminum construction, waist line of .11 inches at its thinnest point (.68 inches at its thickest), and new LED backlit island-style keyboard, the MacBook Air simply can’t be beat in terms of design. Plus, you’ll have between 64GB and 256GB of flash storage (2GB and 4GB internal) depending on the model with either a 1.6GHz or 1.7GHz dual-core Core i5 processor. The Air comes in both 11.6- and 13.3-inch models, with the 11-inch model forfeiting an SD card slot and both models sporting USB 2.0 and Thunderbolt ports. Configurations start at $999 and go all the way up to $1599. This 13-inch laptop looks and feels about as corporate as you can get. It’s basically a wedge-shaped black box measuring just .65 inches thick at its thinnest point, with sharp corners and a soft-touch finish. It also happens to be the most rugged of the laptops we’re recommending, so if your loved one is prone to spills or clumsiness in any form, this may be your winner. With a water-shedding LED backlit keyboard and Corning Gorilla glass on the display, it’d be a task to destroy this thing. As far as the guts are concerned, can be configured with Intel’s Core i3, i5, and i7 processors, and has the same 1366×768 resolution as the S3’s display. Again, like the S3, Lenovo traded out a matte display for a highly reflective, and thus less viewable, one. Still, Dolby speakers produce more than enough volume for even the hardiest of partiers, while Intel’s integrated 3000 HD graphics helped keep things crisp in the entertainment department. All in all, this is a great option for the laptop gifter starting at $1,349. It is here that we venture into pricey territory, but not without extra luxury and performance. combines a super slim design with powerful graphics and processing in the form of a 2.7GHz Core i7 processor, Intel HD 3000 Graphics, and an AMD Radeon 6630M GPU built in to the included docking station. Oh right, there’s a non-optional Kindle-sized docking station (as in, included in that high price) which features that AMD Radeon GPU and a Blu-ray drive, as well as some extra ports. The 13-inch Vaio Z has way more processing power, but looks and feels like a competitor to the MacBook Air measuring just .7 inches thick. Of course, you get a little extra heft when you add the optional battery slice, which nearly doubles its five and a half hour battery life. It has an impressive 1920×1080 pixel resolution, along with a 1,600×900 resolution option. Unfortunately, these high-end specs come at a high-end price, with models starting at $1999. Whenever I look at this beast, which is taking up the majority of my desk space at the moment, I can’t help but feel like some sort of all-powerful, futuristic planet conquerer. is huge, for one thing, but just sexy as hell with a highly customizable back-lit keyboard, back-lit front grills and a Space Black matte anondized aluminum chassis. The display is a solid 18.4-inch 1920×1080 WLED display that I’ve simply replaced my TV with for the time being. Yep, it’s that good. On the inside things get no less impressive, with Intel Core i7 quad-core processors ranging between 2.2GHz and an overclocked 4.0GHz, between 4GB and 32GB of on-board memory, and the choice between a 1.5GB Nvidia GeForce 560M GPU, dual 1.5GB NVidia GeForce SLI-enabled 560M GPUs, and dual 2GB Nvidia GeForce SLI-enabled 580M GPUs. There are also dual AMD Radeon graphics card options. That said, things can get expensive with the lowest configuration going for $1999 up to a dual AMD Radeon HD 6990M graphics card, 4GHz Core i7 dual-core processor-powered model for $4,560. A truly generous gift to say the least, but one that will surely go over well in the brownie points department. |
Dream Come True: Ice Cream Sandwich Comes To The HTC G1, Unofficially | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 11 | 24 | HTC’s G1, the first Android phone, had a long and interesting life , and although I loved the phone, I’ll be the first to admit that being limited to Android 1.6 was kind of a disappointment. Naturally modders had their way with it, but development slowed down long ago in favor of newer and more popular phones. But today, in a feat of nostalgia and hacking skills, XDA-Dev poster Jcarrz1 has made a working AOSP port of the latest version of Android, Ice Cream Sandwich, . It may not extend the life of many phones out there (most have been long since abandoned, though not mine), but definitely demonstrates the flexibility of the platform. Of course, with a lot of work, you could probably get Ubuntu to run on the G1, or Windows 95. But Really, this is a very pleasant development. It’s amazing to think that the G1’s paltry 528MHz processor and 256MB of RAM (paltry compared to modern phones, anyhow) can run a mobile OS designed to debut on one of the most powerful mobile devices out there right now, the . Naturally not all is well in G1 town. This is just an AOSP port, not a fully customized ROM, and is labeled as “Alpha 1,” which should give you an idea of the state of the thing. Wifi and Bluetooth don’t work, no doubt owing to incompatibility with the wireless chipset used, and a number of hardware features are unsupported, like some buttons and lighting controls. And of course it runs like a dog. On the other hand, the browser is apparently snappy, calling and SMS work, and interestingly, using the trackball produces a little cursor like a mouse’s. This last detail, if it’s not just a holdover from debugging, indicates ICS will have support for external pointing devices, since few if any phones include a trackball or trackpad any more (though the pointer does feature in Google TV and the Asus Transformer and is in the ICS settings, as commenters note). What’s next? Now that basic compatibility has been shown, a custom ROM with unnecessary stuff snipped and better support for the G1 hardware will probably appear in the next couple weeks. Thanks to Jcarrz1 for his hard work. |
How HowToWeb Ignited Bucharest And Central Europe | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 11 | 24 | I recently hit Bucharest in Romania to experience the rising star event of the Central and Eastern European scene, . This annual conference is doing an amazing job of bringing CEE entrepreneurs together, and Bucharest is gradually emerging as one of the key tech hubs in the region. The reason? It’s pretty simple – there is great engineering talent, plenty of it (there are 22 million Romanians) and it’s affordable. I could of course name any other number of cities that fit this profile – Kiev, Ljubljana, Sofia, Warsaw and more – but at the moment HowToWeb is bringing many startups and entrepreneurs in from the region to network and party, and mashing them up with international speakers such as Mark Randall of Adobe, Michael Breidenbruecker, founder of Last.fm and RjDj and Pablos Holman of Intellectual Ventures Lab. |
The Social Network 2 – If Zuckerberg Deleted Facebook Parody Trailer | Josh Constine | 2,011 | 11 | 24 | Would our society come crumbling down if Facebook suddenly disappeared? A hilarious new explores a ghastly future where “Zuckerberg deleted Facebook. And then he killed himself. Forever.” Watch and see the panic ensue: I know Aaron Sorkin, writer of the , is only considering making a movie about Steve Jobs. Still, I’d love to see , the team behind this trailer, take on “Steve Jobs 2”. I’m imagining the beloved inventor being brought out of cryogenic sleep to fight off an alien invasion with his own line of sleek, stylish ray guns. And if you want more Social Network fun, here’s where Julian Assange and Facebook team up to fight off Google+. |
AT&T Takes Two Steps Back With Hopes To Inch Closer To T-Mo Deal | Jordan Crook | 2,011 | 11 | 24 | Well, this isn’t the strategy I was expecting, but it seems the FCC’s request to investigate the under the lens of an administrative law judge last week just doesnt sit well with AT&T. Rather than be scrutinized, the company has instead withdrawn its application for the merger. But don’t let that confuse you. Buying Deutsche Telekom AG’s T-Mobile is still the big blue carrier’s end goal — the FCC just happens to be blocking the road at the moment. What may be more interesting is that AT&T’s confidence seems to be dwindling. According to , the company agreed to pay a $4 billion pre-tax charge on its fourth quarter balance sheet, which is the exact amount it would owe to affected parties should the deal fall through. $3 billion in cash would go to Deutsche Telekom as a default payment, while another $1 billion would go to the book value of spectrum that big blue would be forced to relinquish. In other words, AT&T is preparing for the worst in a very real way. Well, the worst for them, not necessarily the worst case scenario . What I find most interesting is that AT&T decided to release this information on Thanksgiving. Maybe they assumed we media types would be stuffing our faces with stuffing (ha!). Either way, AT&T is still putting on a brave face, officially stating the following: AT&T Inc. and Deutsche Telekom AG are continuing to pursue the sale of Deutsche Telekom’s U.S. wireless assets to AT&T and are taking this step to facilitate the consideration of all options at the FCC and to focus their continuing efforts on obtaining antitrust clearance for the transaction from the Department of Justice either through the litigation pending before the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, Case No. 1:11-cv-01560 (ESH) or alternate means. As soon as practical, AT&T Inc. and Deutsche Telekom AG intend to seek the necessary FCC approval. The question now is, will a deal between AT&T and T-Mobile ever really be “practical”? |
The Future Of Foxconn: Ten Thousand Horses Galloping | John Biggs | 2,011 | 11 | 24 | Shenzhen is a town of migrants. The estimated median ages is between 15 and 25 and the old and battered sits in wild contrast with the brand new. Even in the few years between my and this one, the city has changed so drastically that I barely recognized it. The last time I was here I imagined the place as a cross between a favela and , high and low tech mashed together, the sharp tails of known carcinogens mixing with the soft end of Suntory in a highball glass and the scent of a young executive assistant’s Chanel No 5. Now it’s mostly Suntory and Chanel, the carcinogens banished to the outskirts of town. There’s a boom in China, and Foxconn’s executives see a way out of many of the messes, real or imagined, that plagued the company. Foxconn is pinning their future success on their employees’ future success. While this may seem like uncessary largesse, it is an interesting bet on the future of a working class that has been transformed into a middle class. And those workers, once forced by circumstance to stand for ten hours a day, are workers that no longer need or want what seemingly meager financial benefits Foxconn has to offer. The future of Foxconn, if Louis Woo has anything to do about it, is in retail. While the retail – or channel – business is less than 1% of Foxconn’s revenues, the goal is simple: to empower Foxconn employees through education and entrepreneurship. “We call this ‘integrated services,'” said Woo. His mission is to create a system wherein a Mom and Pop shop in the hinterlands can sell white goods – appliances, fridges, and the like – as well as electronics. Foxconn would take the orders and ship out immediately (if the item isn’t in stock) and the local representatives, who were trained on the line in Shenzhen, would be able to handle installation, troubleshooting, and minor repair issues. Think of it as a million Best Buys blooming. “The stores are called 10,000 Horses Galloping and we’re opening them primarily in the third-tier cities,” said Woo. “So these are the small format stores which means they’re about a 1000 to 2000 square feet.” The company has opened 304 so far, with many more planned. How do they work? Foxconn employees, including line workers and engineers, can apply to the program after five years at a major factory. Employees receive various benefits including a large line of credit, direct support from Foxconn’s customer service representatives, a two-month investment in advertising and real estate. In 2010, the company announced it would invest $45 million in the effort, giving each store owner about $13,500 in credit (90,000 yuan). Most of the after sales support will be handled in the shops. “The managers will be able to troubleshoot the items sold at these stores nless it’s a major malfunction with the chips,” said Woo. “After all, many of them worked on the line where they were made.” This move reflects China’s burgeoning middle class where, as one importer put it: “The Chinese once only sold noodles to other Chinese. Now they’re selling everything.” “I think a lot of Chinese consumers today are wary about what they bought or what they are buying. There are lots of counterfeits,” said Woo. “So we put our reputation behind the product.” Normally, many of these smaller cities and towns would have no access to white goods and technology of any kind. Many of the shops will end up like general stores. “Demands for PC products other than mobile phones are not that at that big at this point in time. So we want to make sure that our store would be able to service the consumers in those cities first,” said Woo. In many cases just having access to a washing machine or air conditioner is a big deal, let alone the latest tablet. Woo gets applicants every day who want to expand the brand and bring the stores back to their home towns. The company is also planning to open more of a mail-order presence in the mainland as well as partnering with MediaMarkt, a European chain, to bring big box retailing to major Chinese cities. They’re also launching something they call the IT Malls, which currently work in 34 centers in 20 cities in China. These shops will bigger than the 10,000 Horses Galloping model but smaller than the big box stores. It is, then, a comprehensive retail plan that will be isolated in China, at least for the time being. “The American market is already mature,” he said when asked if the shops would come to the U.S. Foxconn is also changing how it treats trained workers. The company now offers advanced training to experienced managers including classes in engineering taught by professors from Tsing Hua University, one of the major technical and engineering schools in the country. These same employees can work towards their PhDs while working at Foxconn. I asked if anyone can make the rags to riches move – from assembly line to PhD – but no one has thus far. However, line employees can take reduced-price classes in order to work on their degree while working in the factory. Foxconn is reacting to the idea that there is little promise – and in fact, there is more than a little threat – in continuing to manufacture in many of China’s urban areas. While we are still decades away from any meaningful change in the manufacturing equation, the company is looking ahead to a time when Chinese are not workers but consumers. The company is also seeing the importance in openness – at least as practiced by a $100 billion company in the heart of the Chinese mainland. “In the 37 years of our history we never talked to the press,” said Woo. “Most of the time our customers don’t even want us to write about anything.” “So, you know in a sense, for the last 30-something years we were living quite comfortably kind of under the radar,” he said. Woo said the company is trying to change as quickly and efficiently as possible, turning itself into more than a black box – product in, product out. Through the rise of education, automation, and efforts like entrepreneurship, Foxconn is working to build a company for a new century. How far they can run from the past is still not certain. “The Chinese mentality was such that when when you are small you hope the things would just go away,” Woo said of the Foxconn suicides and the future of the company. “But given our size, we have no guarantees that nothing like that anything like that will happen again. There is a certain Chinese philosophy that believes that if you are person of integrity, a company of integrity, then your name will be cleared eventually.” Woo looked pained as he look at me across the conference room where we met, in a seemingly unused office building near the main circle. He picked at some of the fish from lunch, fish that was cleaned, cooked, and served by Foxconn. Outside, the birds in the trees continued to trill and the young people, perhaps night shift workers unable to sleep, wandered the grounds, stopping in the Foxconn cybercafe, grabbing a library book from the high-tech machine near the dorms. It was a closed system, one of those biospheres made to test how humans would survive on Mars. But how long does this biodome last? How long before it becomes to expensive to make a cheap product here? How long before other countries fix their infrastructure enough to rival China’s best efforts? It won’t be long, to be sure, until others grab for Foxconn’s crown. But, for a while, while the rest of China roiled outside, this city that manufacturing wrought was a relative oasis. “We don’t want these issues in China, any more than you want them in the US,” he said, finally. [slideshow] |
Superfly Takes On Google And Kayak With Personalized Flight Search | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 11 | 24 | Israeli startup , which debuted at , as a service to organize travel rewards (i.e. frequent flier miles or hotel rewards) and educate users on how to maximize their value when using rewards points or miles. Today, Superfly is taking this a step further by allowing users to book air travel through the website and receive personalized recommendations based on status, miles and more. Once you sign in with your accounts, Superfly will display miles earned over time, spending patterns, and more. While on many travel sites you can search flight inventory by cost, time, or airline; Superfly’s engine adds an individual’s data, including frequent flyer miles, elite statuses, rewards programs and individual preferences into the decision-making process of choosing a flight. So if you search for a flight from Chicago to San Francisco, and have miles on American Airlines and United, you can sort your flight search by value. Superfly will show you which flights make sense for miles usage and which don’t. In the future, founder Jonathan Meiri says that Superfly will expand to hotel search and bookings as well. And the site plans to aggregate and parse the data from its users to make recommendations. For example, Superfly will show you which hotels American Airlines Gold members tend to stay at when on a business trip to London. Of course, Superfly will be going head to head with Kayak, Google and others with flight search. But Meiri says that the personalized nature of Superfly’s flight search, as well as some of the future data insights, will help differentiate the portal from some of these travel and search giants. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2vbM24BGiI] |
With IPO On Hold, Kayak Reports Q3 Revenue Up 28 Percent To $61M; Net Income Up 44 Percent | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 11 | 23 | As , travel search engine Kayak has put its IPO on hold until market conditions improve. Kayak for a public offering nearly a year ago. Today, the company just filed with its revenue numbers from the third quarter ended September 30, 2011. During the most recent quarter, Kayak posted $61.16 million in revenue, up 28 percent from the same quarter in 2010. The company also increased revenue slightly from the second quarter 2011, which came in at $56.7 million. Net income for the third quarter 2011 was $12.7 million, up 44 percent from the same quarter in 2010, in which net income was $8.7 million. Profits were up from $5.7 million in the second quarter of 2011. In the nine months ended September 30, 2011, Kayak processed 679 million user queries for travel information, which is up 45% over the nine months ended September 30, 2010. It’s a good sign for Kayak that revenues and profits are increasing both yearly and quarter over quarter considering the intense competition the site faces in the online travel space. Google its flight bookings and search portal, which is powered by the recent acquisition of ITA Software. Of course, it’s important to note that in the filing itself Kayak says that the most ‘significant portion’ of its revenues is earned in the second and third quarters, with revenue declining in the fourth quarter. These positive numbers could bode well for Kayak’s pending IPO. With , , and perhaps , the IPO market for tech companies hasn’t dried up. |
“Leaked” Facebook Law Enforcement Guides Already Available, Still Bad For PR | Josh Constine | 2,011 | 11 | 23 | Several news outlets today wrongly reported that Anonymous Antisec hackers had leaked “newly available” Facebook law enforcement guidelines that explain how and what data can be obtained by officials with a subpoena, warrant, or court order. In fact, many versions of the outdated guides were already widely available thanks to an Electronic Frontier Foundation Freedom of Information Act request, as well as from other sources. Though previously available and out of date, the new coverage about how Facebook provides user information when obliged by law could stoke fears about data privacy and Big Brother. By being more public with its law enforcement, guidelines Facebook could have avoided seemingly like it had something worth “leaking”. [ : Facebook has just published “ ” to its Safety Center. Most of the information was already available in the guides, but it includes details about data requests from international agencies, cost reimbursement for Facebook attaining and delivering data, and that Facebook does not provide expert testimony. By making this information publicly available, Facebook is less likely to be perceived as having something to hide.] Talking Points Memo, which incorrectly wrote the guides were new, also reports that Facebook of its law enforcement guide next week. As of press time, Facebook’s Public Policy team couldn’t be reached to comment on the forthcoming guide. If published, it could fuel or quell discontent depending on details of how much data Facebook releases and what hoops officials must jump through to get it. https://twitter.com/#!/EFF/status/139502678756691968 The “ ” explain how Facebook has in the past provided data sets with scary names such as “Neoprint” (all profile information and public communication), “Photoprint” (all uploaded and tagged photos), as well as IP logs of up to 90 days and user contact information. The latest versions of the guides from 2010 show that Facebook will release data “Upon receipt of a valid subpoena or a legal document with equivalent”. The guides are a good read if you want to know exactly how Facebook and law enforcement cooperate. One move of Facebook’s that privacy advocates might like is that the company will suspend all fake accounts, even if belonging to law enforcement, as well as disable accounts wrongly accessed by law enforcement. There’s also some fun edits if you compare versions over the years. For example, Facebook has stripped out the line “Privacy and Integrity are cornerstones of the Facebook application and company philosophy.” Facebook still stands to take damage from the trumped up release of these “leaked” guides. Facebook is in the business of building trust. The more secure and private people think their data is, the more they’ll be willing to give to add. Getting users to share biographical, location, online activity, and other data types is core to Facebook goals of showing users the most relevant content from their networks and powering its ads products. If it publicly releases a current version the law enforcement guide, the company’s best bet is to be as transparent as possible. Critics could attack if additional unreleased information comes to light. Facebook will also need to message very clearly that it is legally obligated to provide data when ordered by the court. Then it can try to show that law enforcement agencies cannot carelessly request huge swaths of data. For most people, it’s potential for invasion of privacy without just cause that rattles trust in Facebook. |
Quora Gains A Twitter/Facebook Growth Expert, Loses Top Engineer to Pinterest | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 11 | 23 | Good news people who are ! You might one day be reading an article like about Quora … Because Quora has hired a former Twitter and Facebook guy, to focus on user growth and engagement. Johns, who tweets under the apropos username , spent a year and four months at Twitter, two years at Facebook and is now taking his speciality to the fancy Q&A startup. Quora has additionally hired Zynga’s to also focus on this mysterious growth thing, if you go by (left) Instagram of his signature on some Quora hiring papers. Which you totally should. You know who hiring a growth team, or at least doesn’t to as far as we know? Budding Pinterest, who is apparently signing up a new user every second according to the rumor mill. Pinterest did however recently hire early Quora employee and Pinterest power user according to like her bio on every social network and Twitter, Facebook, Quora, Pinterest. Just add Spotify and Instagram and you’ve got just about every major startup I’m interested in. So there you go. |
Presentify.me Turns Unused Groupons Into Gifts | Sarah Perez | 2,011 | 11 | 24 | Looking for a last-minute holiday gift? How about that Groupon you never used? Daily deal vouchers wouldn’t actually make bad presents if there was a way to gift them that didn’t involve an email printout tucked into a card. That’s where , which turns deal vouchers into attractive gift certificates, can help. The new startup was created by the London-based team behind the deal aggregation service , Alex Vander Hoeven, Bob Pluss and Chan Yin. During a 24-hour hackathon earlier this month, the group came up with the idea after having a discussion about whether or not daily deals were acceptable gifts. Says Vander Hoeven, “there are so many good deals out there that I’m sure people would love to give as gifts, but no one wants to get a standard voucher as a present.” aims to the solve the aesthetics problem by turning vouchers into pretty gift certificates. It currently works with vouchers from , , or , with more on the way. To use the site, you’re walked through a quick wizard where you input the pertinent info (the link to the deal, voucher number and your name) and choose a design. For now, there are only three holiday-themed designs to choose from, but Vander Hoeven says they’re preparing themes for other occasions, like birthdays, Valentine’s Day and Easter. Further down the road, user-generated designs will also be featured. It’s a simple idea and a handy tool…at least until the big guys figure out that this is the kind of thing they should be offering deal-buying customers themselves. Presentify.me has $400,000 in angel funding from , Tim Skyes, and Jamie and David Dingman. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLNJvyMtwxY] |
The App Store Game Subscription Plan That Wasn’t | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 11 | 23 | Yesterday, Bloomberg published a stating that Apple had made a major (and, frankly, somewhat surprising) change to its App Store policies: it was going to begin allowing game publishers to sell bundles of games as monthly subscriptions, as opposed to a la carte. Historically all games on the App Store have been sold as one-off purchases (or for free), and they can generate further revenue by offering in-app goods and services. But last week, game developer introduced an app with a different model. Gamers would purchase the app, and, for $6.99 a month, they’d have access to “dozens” of games within that application (in other words, each game would not require a separate download). Such a model could potentially be a big deal for other gaming companies like Zynga, which could establish ‘hub’ apps rather than having to launch a new app for each game. As it turns out, that doesn’t seem to be happening any time soon. Apple didn’t comment for yesterday’s Bloomberg report, but the article treated the fact that Big Fish’s app was accepted as indicative of a broader policy change — especially because the two companies had apparently been in negotiations over the launch. According to the original article, Big Fish founder Paul Thelen said, “It took longer than usual to be approved… They needed to be convinced there’s a reason to charge customers every month.” And it wouldn’t have been the first time for Apple to enact an App Store policy change without officially announcing it. Still, the fact that Big Fish was the only app to launch with the feature was a bit strange — you’d think Apple would have wanted other partners onboard as well. So what was going on? Today, we have our answer: Bloomberg has written a followup story stating that Apple has the subscription plan option. Or, more specifically, Big Fish Games’s app has been removed from the App Store, and Apple isn’t commenting. Big Fish is predictably (and understandably) upset: “We were notified that the app was removed,” said Paul Thelen, founder of Big Fish, a game publisher in Seattle. The app had been available since Nov. 18, he said. “We’re trying to follow up with Apple to try to figure out what happened.” Thelen said he was surprised by the move because Big Fish had worked with Apple for several weeks to ensure that it met the requirements for recurring monthly charges made through the App Store, a method most commonly used by magazines and newspaper publishers. “It was officially approved,” Thelen said. Apple had even seen the app’s press release before it went out earlier today, he said. So what happened? My hunch (and I’m not alone) is that one or more of the reviewers at Apple mistakenly accepted the application, and that there was no intentional policy change. Applications that were in violation of Apple’s terms have slipped through the cracks before. And while Big Fish did obviously interact with someone at Apple during the process, the reviewer may not have realized that accepting the app would have broader repercussions. |
null | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 11 | 24 | null |
Walkie Talkie App Voxer Is Going Viral On iPhones And Androids, Trending On Twitter | Eric Eldon | 2,011 | 11 | 23 | Most of the communications apps that have gotten big on smartphones have been built by well-established companies that have existing user bases they can promote to, with Facebook, Twitter and Skype being the top examples. The other successes have most often had venture money to help them cover advertising costs. But a smaller startup has been climbing up the iTunes App Store and Android Market charges over the last few days. Called , it provides a walkie talkie push-to-talk voice service reminiscent of . Or, in modern parlance, it’s sort of like text messages but with voice instead of text. It’s basically a direct competitor to another startup, HeyTell, , as well as TalkBox… and getting to be more of a competitor every day, judging by its recent trajectory. The app has gone from #40 to #6 within the past week in the social networking category of the United States App Store, following its rise earlier this year in random other countries like Brazil and Saudi Arabia. It’s now a , too. (Yeah, the social networking category isn’t especially big once you get past the leading web services, but this much growth for this type of app is unusual.) To use Voxer, you simply download it from either store (iTunes , Android ), create a new identity or log in with Facebook, sync it with your phone’s address book and/or Facebook, then start chatting with other individual friends, or groups that you join or create. The interface shows a text message style interface. You hold a talk button to record a quick message for the other party, although there’s also an option to listen live to an incoming message that a friend is recording. You can also send text messages within the flow of correspondence. We talked to Voxer’s vice president of growth, Gustaf Alstromer, for more details. He’s a veteran mobile entrepreneur, from his days growing up in Sweden to his past startup to his current job. Distribution, as he explains with an acute understanding, has always been the biggest problem. “It’s a really good time now versus any other time in history” to be building a mobile app, he says, because “distribution has been solved by the App Store and Android Market, and now it’s about the tactics you use within that.” Alstromer says the city of Cleveland started getting big first in the US, which has been followed by growth in a number of other cities around the country. While it’s not entirely clear what set the app off, the company has a variety of best practices going for tracking clickthroughs, conversions, and overall usage, using third parties like Mixpanel as well as its in-house systems. Services like this rely on network effects, and its launch on Android earlier this month could have played a big part — iPhone users are no longer stuck just using the app with other iPhone users. Alstromer says that its Android downloads have exploded (although he’s not providing any specific numbers), adding that total usage on Android could pass iPhone within the next few months. The phonebooks are far more essential than Facebook overall, although the latter is crucial for some demographics. The company also has an unusual backstory. It’s founded by veteran entrepreneur Tom Katis, a decorated soldier who previously cofounded a major security contractor, (here’s a good profile on the company from 2005). The idea for Voxer originated during an ambush in Afghanistan, he tells me, when he was trying to coordinate reinforcements and the medical team in the middle of a firefight — he needed a way to talk to everyone all at once, and the government-issue walkie talkies weren’t doing the trick. I’ll have more on his story later. |
Carrier IQ Retracts Their C&D, Apologizes To The Android Researcher They Hassled | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 11 | 23 | Yesterday afternoon, we who’d received a cease-and-desist letter from Carrier IQ, a company whose Android software he’d been investigating. This morning, under the light of Carrier IQ has retracted their C&D and publicly apologized to the developer. In the months prior to receiving the C&D, developer Trevor Eckhart had published his findings that a number of Android phones (primarily Sprint’s) came out of the box with a nearly unnoticeable bit of software (built by Carrier IQ). This software, claimed Eckhart, could monitor everything from which apps were installed to which keys were pressed. While Carrier IQ uses the press release to ensure that their software does nothing nefarious of the sort, they’ve apologized for taking the course of actions that they took. As, of today, we are withdrawing our cease and desist letter to Mr. Trevor Eckhart. We have reached out to Mr. Eckhart and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) to apologize. Our action was misguided and we are deeply sorry for any concern or trouble that our letter may have caused Mr. Eckhart. We sincerely appreciate and respect EFF’s work on his behalf, and share their commitment to protecting free speech in a rapidly changing technological world. You can find the full text of the release below. [scribd id=73619043 key=key-1x4xpcb86vnr1fd5klqf mode=list] |
Bonfire comes back from grave, so get IM-ing on Twitter | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 11 | 23 | When went live we had high hopes for this tiny startup which planned to bring instant messaging to the Twitter web site, Facebook-chat style. With this IM presence, now you would know if your Twitter friends were online or not. The horror… Except, it didn’t work. Bonfire crashed under the weight of TechCrunch’s readership and we didn’t hear from them again for some time. Well, it happens. But, boys and girls, Bonfire is back and appears to be working just fine. Unless of course this post kills it again in 3…2..1… Meanwhile, assuming it works, Bonfire may end up something Twitter would take an interest in – it makes the site itself much stickier, and that means ad dollars for Twitter. Their plug-in for Chrome and Safari lets you invite friends, but a Twitter user has to follow and be followed by the same person in order to IM them over Bonfire. Direct Messaging remains unaffected. Check it out and leave your impressions in the comments. |
Google Goes After YouTube Domain Typo Squatter | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 11 | 23 | If your new business plan entails buying a bunch of domains that are clearly just one letter off from that of a major brand, you’re doing it wrong. Such is the case for one gent from Illinois, who snatched up not one, not two, but domains meant to look nearly identical to YouTube.com, filling them dubious surveys. As you’d expect, Google has now moved to seize the domains. First noted by the super domain-sleuths at , Google has officially filed a complaint with the (you can find it with case number 1416796). If successful (and it almost certainly will be), Google will be given full control of the domains. Given that the three primary criterion are “identical or confusingly similar to a trademark” (check), “owner has no rights or legitimate interests in respect of the domain name” (check), and “domain name has been registered and is being used in bad faith” (check! I mean, just at that screenshot below), this one probably won’t take too long to clear up. |
Decide.com & Consumer Reports Partner On New Deals Site | Sarah Perez | 2,011 | 11 | 23 | The consumer electronics search service is teaming up with Consumer Reports on which aims to help shoppers know what and when to buy new electronics. Although the companies are referring to the project as a “daily deals” outlet, they don’t mean “deals” in the sense of Groupon, Living Social or flash sale sites like Gilt or One Kings Lane. Instead, the is more like a blog/reviews site which features Consumer Reports’ product recommendations alongside Decide’s own data telling you to buy the item in question. Although Consumer Reports is these days, the integration of Decide’s technology with a products reviews service of any kind is intriguing. Today’s gadget reviews sites simply give you the straight news and/or product reviews, but don’t always answer one of consumers’ most burning questions: That’s where Decide comes in. For those of you who missed the news of this summer, Decide.com is the creation of several former Farecast engineers, including Decide CEO , formerly the Vice President of Marketing & Product Development at Farecast, and Farecast Co-founder, now Decide CTO, . , later , used proprietary technology to determine the best time to purchase a plane ticket. Decide.com and use similar techniques, but the focus now is on consumer electronics, not airfare. To perform its analysis, Decide doesn’t just compare current prices and availability for gadgets – it can also recommend the right time to buy based on product release cycles, historical trends, company announcements, news and rumors published by the media, and more. Using news reports may seem like a questionable way to determine the “when,” as some blogs tend to publish poorly sourced rumors and hearsay, but is smart enough to weed out those weaker signals. Not only can it eliminate the echoes created by blogs that simply republish a rumor started elsewhere, over time, it will also begin to build up a track record and a history of an individual site’s accuracy. These news analysis algorithms (which, frankly, would be awesome to see as a standalone product) will then be used in conjunction with all the other signals to make the recommendations as to when it’s the best time to buy a new device. The Consumer Reports integration is the first editorial partnership for the company, but Decide says it’s working on APIs and blog widgets which will bring its recommendation technology to other outlets. These things are “very high” on the company’s priority list, we’re told, but aren’t available today. That’s too bad because it would be great to see Decide’s algorithms paired up with the gadget reviews I . Oh well. |
mydeco designs itself a new direction as a retailer | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 11 | 23 | It’s been an interesting journey for , the home design and furnishings startup founded by the management team behind lastminute.com, one of Europe’s most successful ever online businesses. Back in 2008 the site was ground-breaking in its use of 3D imaging to allow for interactive planning and visualisation tools. It even had a social network. But although doing well enough, the game has changed. Consumers are now assaulted by choice – and the 3D design tools were always slightly more functional than the average person needed or wanted. Instead of designing an infinite number of rooms, and purchase the items therein, mydeco now wants to woo its users by becoming a retailer specialising in curation. As CEO Nicole Vanderbilt told me “We’re a bit like ASOS. We started with an aggregator, we’re now becoming more of a retailer. Retailers own the customer and there are higher margins in that. But we eventually want to be the Google Maps of Interiors – anywhere you want to create beautiful rooms we will be there.” To that end mydeco is now pivoting its model by splitting its business in two. The original site now become a affiliate-driven marketplace for home furnishings under a new name, . The new direction has meant zydeco has received £2million from EVC Partners / BV Capital, taking the total raised to more than £10 million. The new site will reside under the existing name and doubles-down on what the startup realised really works: curation. This new site features 40 hand-picked boutique retailers and ‘designer-makers’. Among them are small-scale specialists picked out by the site as being exceptional, but this time they will have the full weight of mydeco.com’s centralised customer service behind them. The point here is that every item featured is rendered as a photo-realistic 3D model. Why 3D? I’m told it tends to increase order value because shoppers can rotate items in 360 degrees, view products to scale and test them out by dragging and dropping them into a 3D room. Because Mydeco’s front end is built in javascript it also works on iPads, a key differentiator. This new site has a smaller number of hand-picked items – around 500 high quality furniture and lighting products modelled in 3D and 5,000 more items being created in 3D right now. The social aspect allows users to create and share wish lists. This new partner approach means partners receive more visibility on the zydeco platform, mydeco branded packaging materials, better large-scale shipping rates. mydeco takes a commission on their sales. It would appear mydeco is well on its way to surviving the stormy waters of the recession, and carrying a number of smaller retailers along with it. |
The 5.39%. Occupy Movement Sites Most Visited By “Jet Set Urbanites” | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 11 | 23 | Guess who seems to be most interested in the plight of ? “Jetset urbanites” according to Experian Hitwise, which used its audience profiling system to track traffic to Occupy movement sites from various consumer lifestyles, because hey, why not? According to Experian Mosaic, which separates people into Starbucks-esque categories like “Gotham Blend,” “Dare to Dream,” “Aging of Aquarius” and “Bohemian Grove” (a little vomit just came up into my mouth), sites like and others in the Occupy category were most visited in the past three months by “Jetset Urbanites,” a segment of the population that was “highly affluent, progressive and tends to live in major metropolitan areas” with a group of people known as “Colleges and Cafes” coming in second with regards to visits. Also not surprising when you think about is the fact that “Small Town Shallow Pockets” — one of the least affluent psychographic segments — is contributing a sizable share of the visits relative to their online population, you know because they actually the 99% and thus might you know Experian also reminds us that interest in the OWS movement ebbs and flows with newsworthy events, peaking during the movement’s first two weeks, then again during the clearing of Zuccotti Park and then again during the movement’s two month anniversary. There’s a Greek saying that goes, “The person with an empty refrigerator doesn’t philosophize.” I don’t know exactly how it’s applicable in this case, I just thought it was kind of cool. |
Saul Klein’s List Of Europe’s Next Billion-Dollar Tech Companies | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 11 | 23 | Where will the next billion-dollar startups come from? The tech world and most VCs tend to be parochial, looking at Silicon Valley, maybe New York, and a few other hot markets like . But what about the Old Country? Yesterday, I was having coffee with , a partner at and co-founder of . He believes that in every major city across Europe, Russia, and Israel, there are “a legion of companies that are capable of achieving billion dollar valuations and in some cases are likely to be able to do close to a billion dollars in revenues over the next 3 to 5 years.” I asked him to name five while I pointed my iPhone video camera at him, and he was able to give me a much longer laundry list , which I’ve added below (along with some others he sent me afterwards). I’ve indicated which ones are Index investments and where each one was originally founded. Which of these will get into the (Note that some of these already are billion-dollar companies. You can click through to their Crunchbase profiles to learn more about each one). (London, Index)
(London, Index)
(London)
(London, Index)
(London Index)
(London, Index)
(London, Index)
(Stockholm)
(Stockholm)
(Tel Aviv)
(Tel Aviv)
(Madrid, Index)
(Barcelona, Index)
(Paris, Index)
(Paris)
(Berlin, Index)
(Budapest)
(Prague)
(Moscow)
(Russia, Index)
(Moscow)
(Moscow) |
Gadgets To Look For On Black Friday | Jordan Crook | 2,011 | 11 | 23 | Alright folks. If you’re still young enough, immature enough, or enough to own a piggy bank, it’s time to crack that thing open. Black Friday is (count ’em) away, and if you don’t have a plan by now then let’s get to it. In no particular order, here are some of the Black Friday gadget deals that stand out to us (some are still leaks and thus unverified, but we’ll make it clear which sales are official and which are still a bit mysterious). ( ): Apple’s stuff tends to wear some of the highest price tags on the market, and the same will be true on Black Friday. However, rarely will you get the chance to buy an Apple product from an Apple store (with all the warranties and support) at a discount, so we suggest acting now if you’re in the market for an iThing. Deals include an $101 discount on the MacBook Air, MacBook Pro and iMac, a $41 discount for low-end iPad 2s, a $61 discount on high-end iPad 2s, and $11 off the iPod Nano. Apple’s Black Friday sale only lasts for the one day, and even with the measly discounts I expect their inventory to go fast. That’s not to say the Apple store should be your first stop of the day, but don’t save it for last, that’s for sure. (confirmed): From November 20 to November 28, Samsung is slashing prices on home entertainment, digital imaging and storage products. There are quite a few products going on sale, and I haven’t nearly the time to list them all, but I’ll hook you up with some of the best along with a link to the list in full. As far as TVs go, Samsung is offering its 46–inch D6003 Series 1080p LED Smart TV for just $799.99, while the D490 Series 720p Plasma 3D TV (which includes four pairs of 3D glasses) will be on sale for $499.99 (43-inch model) and $599.99 (51-inch model). Then we have a couple cameras/camcorders that are certainly worth a close look. The MV800 point-and-shoot camera, which , is usually priced around $279 but will go for $199 during the sale. Meanwhile, Samsung’s W200 1080p Rugged Pocket Camcorder, which can be submerged in water up to 3 meters for as long as 30 minutes and dropped from as high as 2 meters, will be available this week for $99.99. Here’s a of Samsung deals to watch out for. ( ): Obviously, Walmart has a lot going on this Black Friday, which extends way past gadgetry. But when you can get a brand new tablet for half-off who gives a damn about coffeemakers? That said, Walmart (like most of these retailers) has too many deals to list them all, but here are a few that stuck out to me. You’ll be able to get a 4GB Xbox 360 with Kinect bundle including a free $50 gift card for just $199.99. There are also two Emerson models, a 32-inch 720p LCD HDTV and a 40-inch 1080p LCD HDTV going for pretty low prices: just $188 and $248 respectively. As far as computing goes, you’ll also be able to find three AMD-powered computers from HP, a 15.6-inch laptop for $248, a 17.3-inch laptop for $388, and a desktop with a 19-inch LCD monitor for just $298. (confirmed): Sony has put of its goodies on sale this Black Friday, from computers to TV sets to gaming consoles. You can scope out the full range of savings at , but here are some of the deals we thought worthy of a closer look. You’ll have until Cyber Monday to make your decisions, but be aware, this stuff literally flies off of online shelves. First up we have a couple amazing bundles, including home theater bundles for Sony’s 46 and 55-inch NX720 Internet HDTV, a 3D Home Theater system, and a copy of movies. You’ll have to pay $1399.99 for the 46-inch bundle and $1699.99 for the 55-incher, compared to original pricing of $2599.99 and $3399.99 respectively. Sony is also hooking up customers with a 320GB Sony PS3 Move bundle at the low price of just $349. The bundle includes a 320GB PS3 (obviously) a DUALSHOCK 3 wireless controller, a PlayStation Move controller, the PlayStation Eye camera, and . Then again, if all you need is a small upgrade to your home theater experience and are looking to save some change, Sony’s discounted Internet-ready Blu-ray player is an awesome steal at just $79.99. Sony is also discounting members of its Vaio laptop family, as well as a couple other tablets, TVs and digital imaging products. (confirmed): Amazon is going big this Black Friday, with deals on gadgets and gizmos ‘aplenty. However, Amazon is doing an incremental roll-out of its Black Friday deals, with some only lasting for a day on the retailer’s web site. I’d suggest checking in on Amazon’s Black Friday Deals store site as often as possible, or at least once a day, to keep up with what’s available on the cheap. Some of the best deals we’re seeing include a couple cameras, the Fujifilm FinePix F505 Digital Camera for $179, the Canon PowerShot SX230HS Digial Camera for $199, and Nikon’s Coolpix P7000 Digital Camera for just $249. If you’re on the market for a smartphone, AmazonWireless is hooking up customers with all phones from AT&T, Sprint and Verizon for just a penny (along with a two-year agreement, of course). Amazon is also offering up a PS3 bundle in the 160GB flavor that includes two games, and for $199. You’ll also be able to snag a 5-inch TomTom XXL GPS system for just $79.99, compared to its $169.95 list price. If all you can afford on Black Friday is a couple new apps, Amazon has you covered there, too. Amazon’s Appstore for Android is offering 50 percent off on the following games between Black Friday and Cyber Monday: , , , , , , , and . ( ): Well, after flipping through the 38 pages of Best Buy’s Black Friday deals, it’s apparent that Best Buy should probably be the first place you stop Friday morning. The big box retailer is discounting everything, from computers to tablets to smartphones to TVs to teleportation devices. OK, I lied. The teleportation devices are going at full price, but the rest is a steal. Here are some of my favorite deals from Best Buy: First up they have about seven different HDTV’s going for below $600 from makers like LG, Panasonic, Insignia, Samsung, and Toshiba. They’re also pricing the 10-inch Asus Transformer tablet at $249, while the Toshiba Thrive has been marked down to $279 and the Acer Iconia tab will go for $189. You’ll also be able to snag a 23-inch HD monitor from HP for just $119.99. Stores open at 12:00am on Friday, but we’d suggest a careful look through this before making any decisions. ( ): Sears’ Black Friday offerings aren’t quite as amazing as I’d expected, but they’re still rockin’ it in the TV department. You can get yourself a 47-inch LED 1080p HDTV from LG for $679.99, a 42-inch LED 1080p Smart HDTV from Panasonic for $599.99, or a 26-inch LCD HDTV with built-in DVD player for a $50 discount at $249. In the gaming department, Sears is offering the same $199 160GB PS3 bundle as Amazon along with a $199 Nintendo 3DS with the Super Mario 3D Land game included. And while they don’t necessarily beat the price of that 5-inch TomTom at Amazon, a 7-inch Magellan RoadMate 1700 GPS and a 4.3-inch Garmin 40LM GPS will be available at Sears for $129.99 and $99.99 respectively. While Sears’ sale will continue throughout Friday and Saturday, the Black Friday proper sale will only last between 4am and 1pm. ( ): Target wins on some fronts and loses on others come Black Friday. Its $157 Acer 10.1-inch Netbook should be a steal, as should Philips 9-inch dual-screen headrest DVD players. You’ll also find the same Nintendo 3DS bundle as we saw at Sears but for $20 cheaper. On the whole, however, Target shouldn’t be your one-stop shop for gadgetry. It is going to be a great place to shop for content like movies and TV on DVD, with some DVDs going for as low as $1.99. Doors open at midnight and the sale lasts for four days. Be sure to check out our for some extra inspiration, and try not to get trampled in the madness. Happy shopping, everyone! |
Spooked Momentum Investors Punish Pandora | Josh Constine | 2,011 | 11 | 23 | Despite yesterday’s indicating that Pandora beat Wall Street projections and that it has abundant long-term growth opportunities, Pandora’s stock price fell 11.3% since yesterday to $10.51. This is likely because Pandora lowered its FQ4 guidance to a loss ($0.03) in earnings per share, worse than its $0.02 EPS for last quarter and Wall Street’s ($0.02) guidance for next quarter. Investors see Pandora as a momentum story, betting on it gradually but steadily growing towards significant profitability. The slightly grim guidance, due to increased investments which will go towards hiring more sales people, may have spooked some investors with a distaste for any signs of slowing momentum. Overall, FQ3 earnings looked good with $75 million in revenue compared to analyst estimates of $71M. Pandora managed a Non-GAAP EPS of $0.02, above the ($0.01) street consensus. It also registered 2.1 billion total listening hours, up 104% year over year. 70% of listening hours were on mobile and its monthly active user count grew 67% Y/Y to 40M. Installments in cars represent a large opportunity to grow its share of total US radio listening from the 4%+ it currently has. The company said competition from Spotify and other streaming on demand services has not been an issue. For FQ4, Pandora’s guidance of $82M in revenues matches the street’s. The stock price dropped because EPS guidance was worse than last quarter or the street’s estimates. The lowered EPS is in part due to Pandora investing in building local sales teams. It has 4+% of US radio listening hours but only 2% of radio advertising, and that gap represents an opportunity. It sees big growth potential in absorbing local advertising dollars as it gains critical mass in more markets. To capitalize, though, it has to spend now on salespeople to attract local advertisers. Pandora will need to recruit sales talent that can perform but doesn’t cost too much if it wants to shore up momentum and make itself look like a safer bet to investors. It will also need to convince company insiders not to take their first chance to exit when its stock lockup expires in a couple of weeks. |
AppBoy Raises A Cool Million To Let App Developers Better Engage And Understand Their User Base | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 11 | 23 | The primary focus for app developers, aside from making kick ass apps, is finding truly effective ways to monetize those apps, whether it be through targeted, location-enabled ad solutions, in-game purchases, or incentivized downloads. As freemium models proliferate, this stuff becomes increasingly important. The other piece of the puzzle is helping app creators manage and understand their user base, because with a more granular picture of who is using the app, where they are, how they’re using the app, and so on, developers can design better user experiences, and in turn, open up new monetization opportunities. , a startup offering a free mobile software development toolkit (SDK) for developers, is trying to do just that. AppBoy, simply put, wants to enable app developers to expand, engage, and better understand their user base. And to help with that mission, the startup is today announcing that it has raised $1 million in seed funding. The investment was led by , with participation from , , and . Up until recently, the AppBoy team consisted of founder and CEO Mark Ghermezian, but with this new round of funding in tow, the team has expanded to seven, including two new technical co-founders, Bill Magnuson and Jon Hyman, who joined AppBoy shortly after , a browser bookmarklet that lets users create auctions around Gilt sales. With funding secured, the startup is now taking its solution into beta. Right now, it’s purely iOS, but Ghermezian said that Android integration is on its way. Of course, that’s all well and good, but how exactly is AppBoy looking to improve the discovery of apps, up intelligence on users, and encourage engagement? In practice, AppBoy is overlaid on developers’ apps so that they don’t have to leave their app to access its features. From there, the solution lets developers create profiles for their individual apps, cross-promote their apps, and update users through news and alerts, and enable game mechanics to enable status levels and badges that boost engagement and reward usage. AppBoy then allows app users to create profiles themselves, along with the ability to get badges and checkin to the app, all of which developers can easily track from the app or from AppBoy’s developer dashboard. From there, developers can control news and recommended apps, and at some point in the near future, will be able to use the web-based backend to view analytics and communicate with their users, receiving feedback and more through CRM tools. For app discovery, there are plenty of ways for consumers to finds new apps, from Chomp to newcomers like Stamped, but most current solution focused on providing users with recommendations based on their download history. AppBoy is looking to provide developers with a solution that bases recommendations on actual usage — by making it easy for users to build rich profiles within apps. And AppBoy wants to partner with developers first, create a strong ecosystem among the app makers first, before targeting the end user and simply becoming another app search engine. The idea is to be able to segment users down to specific niches, to see that a 21-year-old male from Alberta is using the app and is spending 20 minutes a day on the app and has 5 badges. With AppBoy those badges become URLs and can then be tracked, so through a simple overlay and checkin system, the startup is trying to build a solution that makes tracking usage a breeze. If users are sharing apps over social networks, AppBoy has a unique URL for those shares, too, again aimed at making tracking easier. For readers looking to get early access to AppBoy to test it out and provide feedback, the startup is providing 50 free invites. To take advantage, simply head over to and use “techcrunch” in the “invite code” box. Then chime in here and let us know what you think. |
Want to be disruptive in business? Get a thick skin. | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 11 | 23 | Everybody is looking to shake up a particular market these days, leave old business models in the dust and entice potential customers with something they’ve never seen before. It’s a great way to attract early-adopters and generate fantastic publicity, but disruption is never smooth and can sometimes be plain nasty. One unfortunate and often unforeseen side-effect of rocking up to a stagnant market and releasing a disruptive service is that your existing competitors are not going to be happy about it and will do their best to see you off in one way or another. In a market where there are several large players you may receive acquisition offers or see your service copied. Although it is difficult to see at the time, this is a good situation, as these players are unlikely to take you on; they’re more interested in removing you from the market and keeping you close to them. If you manage to resist their acquisition charms (and you should) it is highly likely that you will be able to out-innovate any of these lumbering competitors. As for copycats, any attempts to ape your service will ultimately be recognised as just that; companies like that are never a threat and are easy to outrun. The more tricky problems appear in niche-based business that are deep markets of similarly sized competitors as none will have the capital to buy you out or the expertise to copy your service (assuming you’re playing to your strengths). Any experienced entrepreneur will tell you that to be disruptive in this situation you have to be extraordinarily innovative to prosper. Saying that, if you’re confident in your product, quality will always prevail. I was lucky (and strategic) enough to sell my start-up and second time around decided to venture into the could-be-sexier field of accountancy. The idea was to disrupt what I thought was a staid and stodgy business with cloud bookkeeping and online services that streamlined accountancy for customers. There had been cloud bookkeeping services around for a number of years before my company was born, but these were still in the hands of traditional accountants who bundled their traditional business with software. It was business as usual, but it was business that was ripe for disruption. After a long development schedule and gathering some key investors, we finally launched to the public and that’s where the opposition began. Although you don’t have to be accredited by an Accountancy body to practise in the UK, we wanted to seek accreditation to give ourselves legitimacy. We approached the ICAEW (Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales), but were denied as they simply couldn’t understand our business model. To be accredited, 51% of your business had to be owned by an Accountant. As the shares were split between me, our head accountant and another co-founder, this wasn’t possible. We were effectively denied accreditation on the basis of their business model, not our business innovation. Looking back now, this is hardly surprising. The basics of accountancy haven’t changed much in 500 years. This was our first run-in with the world of traditional accountancy, and unfortunately it wouldn’t be our last. Several months after we launched one of our competitors managed to obtain our client list and sent letters to each and every one of them, trying to lure them away. Fortunately, no one did, but we now knew we would have to face up to an enraged community. There was more to come. Shortly afterwards a freelancer we had employed (not in an accountancy role) gave a piece of incorrect advice about self-assessment tax returns in the comments of a blog post on an industry website. A prominent blogger picked up that the freelancer was working with us and phoned our office to ask him about it. The blogger published the phone conversation in detail under the headline ‘Crunch giving wrong advice’. Baffled as to why this supposedly independent blogger would go after us so vehemently, we checked him out on Companies House, which revealed that he was in fact a 10% shareholder in another of our competitors. As I said in the introduction, plain nasty. So the gloves were off and will probably stay that way for the lifetime of our business.
Needless to say we still attract attention from traditional accountants on a surprisingly regular basis. Recently a competitor employed an underhand SEO technique to ensure an article where they criticise our service appeared just under our site on Google. There are many other examples of innovative business models being attacked by the very industry they are attempting to improve. Google News, for example, has faced several lawsuits from traditional media outlets such as AFP and a number of newspapers for indexing and linking to their content – I’d see that as doing them a favour. Other companies such as Netflix are lucky enough to have their competition roll over and die rather than compete, but few are so lucky. If you’re thinking about shaking up an industry you should be ready for a backlash from the old guard. They may seize on a mistake you’ve made to tar and feather you in public, or they may try more cloak-and-dagger methods. The real test of a start-up is how they deal with these problems. Although our battles are relatively low-profile, we made sure we handled them with transparency… and just as importantly with confidence. Ultimately the market decides who wins and loses, and the best response to a nervous competitor’s sabre-rattling is to out-perform, out-innovate and out-match them at every turn. If you’re good enough, adept enough and strong enough you will. If you’re not then perhaps being truly entrepreneurial is not for you. |
Kobo Touch With Offers Drops E-Reader’s Price To $99, Nook Going For $79 On Black Friday | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 11 | 23 | If you were thinking of laying out the cash for one of the new touch-based e-readers, now would be a good time. Kobo is of its Touch e-reader device, , to $99 if you’re willing to see ads when the device is sleeping. That puts it at the same price as the Kindle Touch and the , which really was an essential step considering the aggressive price war between Amazon and Barnes & Noble right now. But let us not forget that . That’s a solid deal. At the normal price, it really is kind of a difficult choice. I haven’t used the newest Kindles, but between the Nook and the Kobo I preferred the latter; I just prefer Kobo’s design, and the format support is a little better, too. But would I recommend it over a $79 Nook? I can’t say I would, because the Nook is a solid device too (John prefers it) and it’s hard to say no at that price. But if you can’t get one on Black Friday or Cyber Monday (there are no guarantees, of course), take a good look at all three options before taking your pick. You can’t go wrong, but one of them might be a little righter than the others. |
€1000 Virtual Item For Game Raises €2 Million In 4 Days For Bigpoint | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 11 | 23 | The free-to-play model, while disparaged by some developers as exploitative of players, has certainly proved itself over and over to be financially sustainable if done right. And although I myself have paid a buck or two for extra in-game content myself, I have always found it hard to believe that there are people out there who will sink scores, hundreds, or thousands of dollars into their online personae. No better proof of this than : German gaming company Bigpoint, which operates a few free-to-play games, has sold 2000 (and counting) items just in the last few days – for the whopping price of €1000 each. Where is your now? In Bigpoint’s free-to-play game , you can find little drones that help your ship in combat. Up to ten of them, in fact, but the last one is extremely hard to find. Lots of searching around, collecting blueprints, end-game busywork. So, perhaps seeing that people were frustrated with the mechanics they’d put in place, and perhaps smelling a business opportunity (or likely both), they decided to offer the last drone for sale in the in-game marketplace. For the (one would think) absurd price of €1000. It’s one of those things that you hear about and you’re not surprised later when it turns out that a dozen people went in for it. But to Bigpoint’s delight, more than players have shelled out for this little drone as of a few days ago, producing a total of at least €2,000,000 after less than a week on the market (that’s about 2.6 million of your American dollars). This isn’t the first time extravagant items have been offered in games or app stores, and certainly not the most money that has ever changed hands in a virtual market (that honor probably belongs to WoW), but it’s a surprising event nonetheless. Who would have expected such widespread and lavish spending in a game like this? Apparently Bigpoint did, and they’re reaping the rewards. Underestimate the “casual” games space, in which hundreds of millions of people play every day, at your peril. With so many involved, there are bound to be, as others have put it, some . I look forward to the next ludicrous milestone. |
The Grand Central Apple Store Is “Arriving Soon” | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 11 | 23 | Apple’s largest retail store is under construction in Grand Central Terminal in New York City. It takes up an entire mezzanine level at one end of the grand hall where there used to be a restaurant. Currently, the construction site is boxed up and draped in black, but today they added a large digital sign with lettering that flips just like the signs showing the latest trains and tracks above the ticket booths. I took the picture above this morning, which says simply: “Apple Store, Grand Central. Arriving Soon.” It flipped through other messages as well, including one advertising the Store’s future personal pickup service. The store was supposed to open in , but now it looks like it won’t be . When it does open, it will be the largest Apple store in the world, with 23,000 square feet and 300 employees. |
Jared Cohen: “It Will Be Easier To Start Revolutions, But They Will Be Just As Hard To Finish” | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 11 | 15 | If you want to understand what is going on at the nexus of technology and youth protest movements around the world, watch this video. , who is a director at Google Ideas writing a book with Eric Schmidt and previously was an advisor to the State Department, gave the presentation above at . Cohen studied firsthand the Green Revolution in Iran, and then the Arab Spring. He noticed that young people in Iran were using Bluetooth, but not for wireless headsets, but rather as a technology to communicate peer-to-peer. People over 30 in Iran didn’t even know what Bluetooth was, so when the government tried to shut down SMS and cell networks during the protests in 2009, the protesters communicated with each other via Bluetooth (That’s how the famously after she was shot made its way from the streets to the Internet). The Iranian protestors would be the inspiration for the Arab Spring two years later. “It put an idea out there that a bunch of young people armed with nothing other than a mobile device can make a difference,” says Cohen. “Technology doesn’t create new leaders,” he says, “it just makes it easier to organize and mobilize without a plan.” He sees a future in which “citizens and states will keep each other in check.” Knowing what to do with these revolutions will be the hard part. “It will be easier to start revolutions,: predicts Cohen, “but they will be just as hard to finish” |
Daily Deal Aggregator Yipit Comes To iPhone | Sarah Perez | 2,011 | 11 | 15 | The daily deal aggregation service is launching today, allowing users to track deals from over 800 sources, including Groupon, LivingSocial, Gilt City and others. In this new mobile format, the service becomes a lot more useful, and not just because it saves you the hassle of dealing what increasingly feels like deal spam email. Beyond Yipit’s aggregation capabilities, the app’s standout feature is its ability to personalize offers. Never want to hear about mani-pedi’s or yoga classes ever again? Love to golf but hate bowling? Then you just might like this app. The Yipit app offers a location-based deal map and list view in its “Near Me” section while the “My Deals” section features those deals you would be interested in buying. The app walks you through the personalization process upon first launch, letting you select your city (or cities) from a list, then letting you check or uncheck the deals categories you would like to see. Optionally, Yipit can also alert you to new and trending deals via push notifications. It’s easy to turn this feature off and on via the toggle switch in the app’s settings. Although Yipit won’t bug you with the deal categories you opted out of, you can still browse all your area’s deals from the “All Deals” section, if you choose. This relative newcomer to the deals space company in Series B funding this summer, and at the time it was only aggregating 335 deal sources. Now its up to over 800. Also, in less than two years, Yipit has aggregated over 1 million offers. The company says that 90.3% of deal shoppers will buy from deal sites this year, leading to a potential height of $80-100 million in purchases over the holidays. Now that Yipit’s on the iPhone, it’s definitely poised to get in on that action. |
With Funding Secured, VidCaster Now Lets You Make One-Click, Custom Video Websites (For Free) | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 11 | 15 | YouTube has become the go-to source for video distribution and hosting, and, to date, the video giant has seen tens of millions of channels created, where users are uploading their video content in droves — by the second. Professional videographers, amateur smartphone camera operators, and everyone in between is taking advantage of the YouTube limelight, many of them through their channels. Of course, while these channels are a great place to store one’s cache of video, maybe you want to create your own independent video site to host your own videos — to take advantage of all those video optimization assets you can’t get from YouTube. A startup called , which aims to make online video publishing painless and profitable for individual users, small businesses and enterprise clients alike, recently launched a new feature that allows YouTubers to do just that — for free. The online video platform has released a free plan that brings its site-making and video SEO tools to the YouTube ecosystem to let users quickly create their own branded destination sites. And the best part? VidCaster’s free plan automatically syncs with your YouTube channel, so beyond the initial setup, no maintenance is required. Videos automatically pop up on your YouTube channel once you’ve uploaded them there, and vice versa. The startup’s first incarnation was a custom content workflow solution that was built for a local San Francisco video media property. VidCaster Co-founder and CEO Kieran Farr said that, after some time, it realized that the video workflow management tool they had created could be turned into a sort of white label service that could be used by all video producers. Farr said that by providing SMBs and small video producers with the technology to manage their video work flow, hosting, and SEO, they want to let video producers get back to focusing on their content and the creative aspects rather than dealing with technical and workflow logistics. VidCaster joined 500 Startups’ summer batch, where the CEO said that Dave McClure and company encouraged them to focus on their metrics and to consider launching a freemium model to monetize the business. VidCaster had initially launched with paid plans, like VidCaster Silver (at $39 a month) and Gold (at $99 a month), which offer elevated levels of storage, bandwidth, and number of users. After building out their suite of features, the startup has now elected to go freemium with its YouTube plan — in what is seemingly a reverse trajectory for most startups, which tend to start with freemium business models. Farr said that he thinks that Heroku’s approach to monetization, making the platform open and accessible with most features available for free, is the way to go. Then, if users want deeper functionality or customization, only then does it make sense for them to pay. And so far, it’s been working for clients like Zendesk, Twilio, and Airbnb. Today, VidCaster’s free plan allows users to choose a professionally-designed site theme, upload their logo, and select custom backgrounds and colors to create a tailored look for their videos. And like their paid plans, the new free plan includes automatic video SEO to direct search results on Google and other search engines back to a user’s domain. Users of the startup’s free plan can set up their site on their own domain name for $20 a year, though for those users that want to put their logo in their player, run their own advertisements, customize CSS and HTML, etc., VidCaster is pushing those users to sign up for their paid plans. VidCaster’s one-click video site maker and hosting and management platform has also found appeal among investors, as the startup is announcing today that it has raised $350,000 in seed funding led by . The funding is part of a larger round that the company is currently raising, which looks to include contributions from several other angel and venture investors. Farr said that the company will use the new capital to hire additional developers and push forward to the point where they can release a full-fledged API so that third-parties can start hacking. For SMBs, corporate marketers and content producers, VidCaster is a cool alternative to the hassle of having to combine separate content management services, like YouTube and WordPress or Brightcove and Custom CMS, for example. With automatic video SEO optimization, YouTube syncing, one-click distribution to a host of video sites, and analytics, VidCaster could be a great resource for SMBs looking for a quick way to host their videos in a way that’s consistent with their brand. For more on VidCaster, . |
Speak Out Against SOPA: Send Congress A Physical Letter In Just A Few Clicks | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 11 | 15 | The web community is currently in an apprehensive over the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which threatens to create an Internet blacklist that operates at the DNS level in a misguided attempt to curb piracy. It’s — many of Silicon Valley’s largest tech companies are speaking out against it, and Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt just went on the record calling it . Now the folks over at , a startup that makes it easy to quickly send people physical letters (no stamp-licking required), is offering to extend its services to anyone who would like to send their Congressperson a real, physical letter denouncing SOPA. Free of charge. The service is easy to use: go to , select your congressperson from the drop-down menu, and fill in a personal message (it gives you a rough outline on what you should consider including, as well as some additional tips). Enter your return address (you should provide a real one, or the Congressperson may not pay attention to it), and you’re set — SendWrite will print it out and send it. You’ll even see a preview of what your words will look like once they’re printed out on a card. SendWrite is offsetting the costs of the campaign by prompting users to make donations. : SendWrite has cut this off at 3,000 letters (which they’re in the process of sending).
We’ve received over 3000 thoughtful and personal letters telling congress to stop SOPA. We’ve also received thousands of dollars in donations. We are suprised by the response and support you’ve shown. We’ve decided apply the brakes so we can ensure a high level of service for the cards we’ve already received. It’s going to take us a little time to process and mail all these letters, so please be patient. If you supplied us with your email address you will receive a notification when your card is mailed out. If you haven’t had a chance to write congress, please head over to to take action. Respectfully and sincerely,
Cole Krumbholz
Founder, SendWrite.com |
Meebo Now Reaches 250 Million People Across The Web | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 11 | 15 | been around a long time in Web years. The company was as a universal IM service. But two years ago, it introduced the , a social toolbar that sites could put along the bottom of their web pages that allows visitors to chat with each other, check into websites, and get all sorts of notifications. Well, that was a good move. Co-founders Seth Sternberg and Sandy Jen tell me in the video interview above that Meebo now reaches 250 million uniques a month, according to . That is up from 200 million just 4 or 5 months ago. The growth has been astonishing. The Meebo network is now delivering 5.4 billion pageviews a month, up from about 2.8 billion a year ago. Meebo serves ads against its bar (which get a 0.7 percent clickthrough rate, and people who click spend on average 60 seconds with the ad), and shares those revenues with publisher sites. The company employs almost 200 people. Sternberg and Jen talk about Meebo’s growth, evolution, and what’s coming next. (Hint: think recommendations based on your interests). |
Clothing Brand Bonobos Snags Netflix Director Of Engineering | John Biggs | 2,011 | 11 | 15 | , a web-only premium clothing brand for men, just announced the hiring of Michael Hart, Netflix’s former Director of Engineering for social systems, as CTO. Hart says he wanted to “lead an earlier stage company” and was excited to apply what he learned at Netflix in terms of personalization and social networking. Hart received a BS in Business Administration from Bowling Green State University and worked as a Product Unit Manager at Microsoft. He launched Netflix’s social integration and Netflix API during his time at that company. “Right now I’m doing the standard CTO stuff like keeping the servers running,” he said. “We’re making sure we keep the store running well through Cyber Monday.” Hart said the real opportunity, however, is using the social graphs of Bonobos’ customer base to assess their needs and plan around upcoming fashion trends. “You can learn a lot about a customer based on their profile,” he said. “Their age, their relationship status, are they going to their first job? Are they east coast, west coast, midwest?” The goal, then, would be to sell more personalized items to Bonobos customers. The company also launched a “pre-order microsite” for their new , selling Cone Denim ( ) jeans for considerably less than almost any other premium denim supplier. The pre-order system has already seen 3,400 sign-ups. Folks who enter their email will receive early access to the jeans.
Andy Dunn, CEO and co-founder of Bonobos, said Hart would help the brand leverage social media. “Our belief is that shopping will become more social over time. We’re calling this ‘social commerce.'” Dunn said the Bonobos was opening a Palo Alto office in January and that the company is hiring on the West Coast. Hart said working at a clothing start-up wasn’t much different than working at Netflix. “In a lot of ways Netflix prides itself in running like a big startup. The transition won’t be as jarring,” he said. At least he’ll be able to dress well. |
Eric Schmidt Doubles Down On SOPA Bill, Describing It As “Censorship,” “Draconian” | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 11 | 15 | We’ve already on the PROTECT IP, SOPA, E-PARASITE, or whatever you want to call it bill, which creates a dangerous precedent of blacklisting domains and concentrates power on rights-holders, and remains vague enough to be easily abused. Eric Schmidt has already spoken out against it, saying that Google would not comply with its restrictions. Today he while speaking at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. “The solutions are draconian. There’s a bill that would require ISPs to remove URLs from the Web, which is also known as censorship last time I checked.” By dropping the C-bomb, Schmidt may have committed to becoming one of, if not the, most high-profile opponents of the bill in the tech industry, a position that may cause some inconvenience later. Luckily, he’s got the clout to back up his harsh words. As already noted, it doesn’t really indicate a change in position on Google’s part. But Schmidt is taking up the mantle of vox populi, calling a spade a spade and calling censorship censorship. This is essentially a personal commitment to this cause, and his stature in the industry means that he’ll be spending a fair amount of time in Senate hearings regarding this bill. Good for him, though it helps to be at the helm of most important piece in the entire drama. The fact is that if Google doesn’t comply, this bill will be nothing more than a Maginot Line across the internet. Even if Bing, Yahoo, Facebook, and all the rest were to comply, Google’s dominance would moot their compliance and reap the benefits of not only appearing to be a white knight, but by siphoning off the users who can’t find RapidShare using their Yahoo homescreen’s search. So Schmidt has carte blanche, oratorically speaking, since nothing the proponents of the bill can do will have the least effect on their position or the inefficacy of the bill. In all likelihood most tech leaders can safely claim solidarity and speak as frankly as Schmidt and some others have, and we urge them to do so. |
Is Technology Destroying Jobs? | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 11 | 15 | For all the benefits of living in a connected world, there is one huge disconnect: the economy seems to be growing, but it is not creating jobs. This disconnect is not a temporary blip that will disappear with a full economic recovery. It is part of a longer-term structural change in the economy. Yesterday at the , I moderated a debate (which you can watch above) between two economists, of MIT’s Sloan business school and of George Mason University, about whether or not technology is the engine of the economy or whether, in fact, it is destroying jobs. Many of us take for granted that technology is the brightest spot in the economy, where most of the innovation and job creation occurs. But if you look more broadly at the impact of technology across every industry, it doesn’t look so great. Technology makes businesses more efficient, often by eliminating the need for repetitive tasks and the workers who do them. We are not replacing those jobs with enough new, higher-skilled ones to make up for the loss. So what we are seeing in the U.S. over the past decade is productivity growth without the job growth that usually comes with it. Traditionally, productivity growth and job growth went hand in hand, but that is no longer the case. Annual productivity growth in the U.S. between 2000 and 2009 was 2.5%, a faster rate than at any time since the 1960s. Yet the last decade saw the total number of jobs decline by 1.1 percent. The official unemployment rate in the U.S. is 9.1 percent, with 13.9 million million out of work. Median wages in the U.S. have gone almost nowhere since the 1970s, which was the impetus for Cowen’s book, . Meanwhile, income disparity between the richest 1 percent and everyone else keeps growing. The other 99 percent is not too happy about that, as the #OccupyWallStreet movement illustrates. Is the U.S. worker in the same position today as the workhorse was 100 years ago when it was replaced by another technology: the engine (first steam, and then internal combustion). Peak employment for horses was in 1901, there were 3.25 million working horses in the England. Those jobs went away with the introduction of machinery, tractors, cars, and trucks. Today, workers in factories are being replaced by robots and software, more broadly, is automating many jobs that people used to do. Companies benefit because they can operate leaner and make more profits, but what about the people? For the first time ever, the Luddite fear that machines will replace people seems to be coming true. But wait a second, says Brynjollffson. His central argument, which he puts forth in , a book he co-authored with Andrew McAfee, is that it is not people versus machines. It is people with machines. Technology is just a tool that lets us be even more productive. The problem is that not enough people know how to use the new tools of the Internet, mobile, and cloud computing. The workforce as a whole does not have the right mix of skills. Hence tech companies can’t hire enough engineers while the rest of the economy suffers from perpetual unemployment. When you look at the actual economic data, things seem grim. But I am an optimist. I think technology can help lead the way by creating new jobs and redefining employment. The cost to create new companies has never been lower, and new forms of work that use the Internet as its organizing principle (instead of the firm) are beginning to become more commonplace. But will it all be enough to restart job growth across the economy as a whole? I’m not sure anyone can answer that question just yet. (For more on this topic, check out Andrew Keen’s interview with , as well as this lively one-on-one with ). |
Hands On With The Nook Tablet: Can It Put Out The Fire? | John Biggs | 2,011 | 11 | 15 | The , announced last week to much fanfare, is a follow-up to the company’s popular Nook Color and a direct competitor to Amazon’s $199 I’ve only just got this device into my hot little hands so expect a full review this week but initial impressions are good. The device is about as big as the Nook Color and the Fire, although the Tablet is considerably more streamlined than Amazon’s offering. The OS is clean and clear with a small ribbon of icons along the bottom of the home screen for video and music as well as newsstand and book apps. There is also an apps menu consisting of a number of preloaded apps including a mail app, Doodle Jump, a crossword app, Hulu Plus, and something called “Angry Birds” that appears to be a bird-spotting companion. Performance-wise everything on the device is adequate if not superior to many tablets I’ve tried. It’s an e-reader so you probably won’t be running SETI@Home on this thing, but the data rich Netflix app ran through lists of movies with the barest hint of a stutter while the reader is smooth and quick on most books – although there was some lag while rendering large PDF files. The device has a nice, small speaker that can be used in a pinch to listen to music and movies. The browser is what it is – a mobile browser with some limited multimedia support and Flash Player 10.3 on board (not that that matters anymore). It has about 16GB of storage on board for B&N downloads with an SD card slot for expansion. I’ll have more detail on this thing this week, but until then leave questions on the Nook Tablet in comments and I’ll try to answer them in the review. [slideshow] |
Rethink Books Closes $2M Series A To Fund eBook Discovery Apps | Josh Constine | 2,011 | 11 | 15 | has just shared with us news that it has closed a $2 million Series A round led by Ambassador Technologies. The Dallas-based Rethink Books will use the funding for product development of apps including FirstChapters, its eBook discovery and purchase platform, and to cultivate relationships with publishing partners. We first covered Rethink Books last year when it showed us an that let users add notes, view notes of friends, and share excerpts. Similar features have since been integrated into the popular eReader apps and devices, prompting Rethink Books to move in the direction of discovery. Its recently released , which lets users scan a physical book or browse popular book lists from the New York Times, Oprah, and more. Users can then read the first few chapters of a selected book, and if they like it, purchase a digital copy through Apple, Amazon, and other online retailers. With the eReader devices such as the Kindle Fire proliferating, the potential user base for Rethink Books’ products is rapidly expanding. The opportunity to earn a share of the purchases that will fill these devices seems to have attracted Ambassador Technologies. Rethink Books’ CEO Jason Illian says “along with the applications that make digital reading more accessible and social, we’ll be focusing on the Christian and evangelical book market.” This sector isn’t typically a focus for Silicon Valley companies, and the company’s Dallas location could give it an advantage in signing partnerships with Christian and evangelical publishers.
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Urban Airship And 4tiitoo First Startups To Capitalize On Intel’s New $100M AppUp Fund | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 11 | 15 | Well, it looks like Intel is really putting its money where its mouth is when it comes to mobile. Intel’s global investment and M&A branch, , today the creation of its new Fund — a $100 million fund that will be used to invest in startups and enterprises developing apps and software tools for mobile devices and PCs. At the Intel Capital Global Summit in Huntington Beach today, Intel also revealed that and were the first two companies to receive investment from the AppUpp fund. , Urban Airship recently closed a $15.1 million series C round of financing, , which was once referred to as the “Amazon Web Services” for location-based products. According to Urban Airship, Intel invested in the company’s Series C raise out of its new AppUp Fund; however, it seems that the investor wanted more, as Urban Airship today announced that it has entered into a business collaboration agreement with Intel Software and Services Group as well. Essentially, this means that Intel’s software and services group will be licensing Urban Airship’s software to embed into Intel offerings, allowing developers to create smart, context-rich apps that take advantage of the startup’s core services, namely: Push notifications, in-app purchasing, subscriptions — and now, thanks to SimpleGeo — geo-location. For Urban Airship, this is yet another interesting strategic move, as its collaboration with Intel will give it access to the Ultrabook, netbook, and tablet markets through enabling app developers to integrate their services. Of course, not to be forgotten is the second recipient of Intel’s new mobile fund, , a German OSV and tablet developer. 4tiitoo’s own “WeTab OS” is an operating system that is optimized for tablets and mobile devices and supports apps from multiple platforms and technologies, including Linux, Java, HTML5, Adobe AIR, Flash, and Android. As one might guess, Intel said today that its new AppUp Fund is designed to advance innovation (read: mobile technologies) based on Intel architecture, specifically in digital media consumption, context-aware computing, and infrastructure apps. The end goal here is to ramp up development and build out the ecosystems surrounding Intel’s push into Ultrabooks and netbooks. And to that point, the new AppUp Fund is a complement to Intel’s recently announced $300 million , by which the company showed that it is making a big bet that Ultrabooks, the hybrid between laptops and tablets, will be the future of mobile computing. |
Microsoft Research’s Socl Social Network Gets A Little More Real | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 11 | 15 | Back in July, Microsoft “accidentally” for a social network being worked on by Microsoft Research. Socl.com appeared to be focused on search and sharing, but what little they showed was quickly pulled down and we didn’t hear anything more — until today, when The Verge after apparently being given early access by the Socl team. To duplicate their description in detail would be tedious and unnecessary(likewise reposting their screenshots), but the short version appears to be that it has a familiar layout (and color scheme) with a central feed, tags and feeds on the left, and invites and video chat on the right. Interestingly, it’s not designed as a “full” social network, and communication between users is not emphasized; instead, collaborative consumption is the focus. There’s a video-sharing ability, by which you can watch videos “with” other people, though your interactions are limited to a chatroom beside the video. Ideal for comparing your favorite cat videos, but without support for something like Hulu or Netflix, I fear a feature like this would be rarely used. Naturally as an early-stage project it would not have deep integration or licensing agreements, but it seems a relevant criticism when you consider the use cases of a “video party” feature. The other collaborative piece is the big search bar at the top: “What are you searching for?” Presumably you would put “tea downtown Seattle” and it brings up both rich search results and propagates the question, suitably altered for human consumption, to your network of friends. “Devin is looking for near . What would you recommend?” That sort of thing. Crowdsourcing questions works like this sometimes — in fact, I had a situation where it would have been handy not 10 minutes ago — but there are already tools to accomplish this, and it’s not clear what Socl adds to the equation. Note that this is not meant to be a replacement for Facebook; in fact, it hooks into the lists API so you can send shares and queries to and from Facebook friends. It’s more of a loose network for sharing whatever you’re doing or looking for. Naturally this role is already filled for most people in one of a dozen ways. The project is supposed to be launching in private beta fairly soon (no time table was given), but it seems like it its work cut out for it in convincing people to add yet another network to their collection. As it is there isn’t much functionality that isn’t partially or fully present in other networks, or couldn’t be added easily. The “Tulalip” branding seems to have disappeared, and the Socl logo looks final-ish, but reports that Microsoft in fact purchased social.com would indicate that was the actual final branding. No doubt this will be cleared up soon. |
Launch Of Google+ Photo & Video APIs Imminent (But They’ll Be Read-Only, For Now) | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 11 | 15 | Based on official blog posts that were apparently posted early (and then pulled), developers will soon be able to access some key features of Google+ via the service’s API: photos and videos. Google announced the news on both the Google+ platform blog and its Photos blog, only to take the posts down shortly thereafter — but not before they were copied by Google’s cache, syndicated to Twitter, and spotted by TC reporter Robin Wauters. You can find a cached version of the blog post , and I’ve included an image below. According to the pulled blog post, this initial API will only give developers read-access to users’ content — third-party apps will not be able to upload new photos and videos yet. But it’s still an important step — photos and video are crucial to any social network (Facebook is the world’s largest photo site by a huge margin, for example). From the pulled blog post: Google+ gives users full control of their information, and we’re starting with read-only access to public albums, photos, and videos. Google also supports Creative Commons licensing, which we expose so developers can easily respect copyrights. Using the new API, developers can get a list of public albums from a Google+ user, and list the photos and videos within each album. Combined with our existing public data and search APIs, I’m hoping to see new services such as a family-focused ‘screen saver’, a new way to crowdsource great images, or a live photo wall for a party. |
Founders Of Email Sorting Startup MailRank Head To Facebook | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 11 | 15 | Facebook has just acq-hired the two founders of , Bryan O’Sullivan and Bethanye Blount, as they’ve on their blog. Prior to Facebook, Sullivan and Blount worked at Linden Labs, the company behind Second Life. They will be joining Facebook’s engineering and infrastructure teams. From their blog: “We started MailRank to focus on the email that matters, combining powerful technology with a simple interface. It’s been rewarding to build a solution to problems people face every day. At Facebook, we’ll be working with a first-class team on our favorite types of technology problems while supporting a great product people use every day.” “We’re happy to confirm that we’ve hired Bryan O’Sullivan and Bethanye Blount, the co-founders of MailRank,” Facebook said in a statement, “Both have stellar track records as engineers and entrepreneurs, and we’re looking forward to welcoming them to Facebook in December,” Facebook is in its talent acquisitions, most recently acquiring Pushpop Press and Sofa. As with many Facebook talent acquisitions; None of the assets or technology behind MailRank were acquired. The MailRank product itself, which never publicly launched, will be discontinued. |
null | Nate Eagle | 2,011 | 11 | 23 | null |
Keen On… How The Internet Is Making Us Both Richer and More Unequal (TCTV) | Andrew Keen | 2,011 | 11 | 15 | The good news about information technology, according to and the authors of is that it’s making America more innovative, productive and richer. But the bad news, the two MIT professors add, is that this new wealth, innovation and productivity is being spread unequally, so that only a minority of Americans are benefitting from it. I interviewed Brynjolfsson and McAfee today at David Kirkpatrick’s Techonomy where they explained to me their economic dilemma of the new economy. Yes, they both agreed, we should be optimistic about the long-term future of technological innovation and productivity; but, they confessed, the inegalitarian consequences of today’s digital revolution is deeply worrying, particularly its inability to produce more jobs for the less well educated workforce. This is the second interview in a series conducted at Techonomy this week. Earlier today, I posted my with the economist Tyler Cowen whom Erik Brynjolfsson debated at the event. Future interviewees include Microsoft Chief Strategy Officer Craig Mundie, Intuit co-founder Scott Cook, Elevation Partners co-founder Roger McNamee and the high flying angel investor Esther Dyson. |
Kindle Fire Gets Torn Down – No Surprises Here | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 11 | 15 | iFixit, bless their hearts, , though as it turns out, there aren’t too many pieces to begin with. The battery is one huge unit, and all the processing and I/O occurs on a single PCB at the bottom of the device. Those expecting a carbon copy of the both outside and in will be disappointed: the layout, batteries, PCB, and all the components are different, making the form factor more or less the only real similarity between the two devices. That said, it is possible they share a processor unit; reports had TI as the supplier, and 1GHz sounds about right. Curiously, it’s not visible on the surface of the PCB, or is integrated in such a way that it can’t be identified without a more invasive teardown. But TI provided the transceivers, power manager, and so on, so it’s a safe bet. : yes, it was hiding under the RAM module, and it is a TI OMAP 4430, the same type used in the Playbook. One thing they mention that I hadn’t noted before is that the battery’s charge time assumes an outlet connection for the 1.8 amps it supports; most USB ports and cables don’t provide that, so expect a longer charge time on USB (as you probably should with most devices). Total charge is stated as 4400mAh, less than the iPad 2’s 6600, but of course this has a significantly smaller screen and less intense CPU/GPU. There don’t appear to be any hidden or unannounced features — personally, I was hoping for a microphone inside the speaker assembly, for use with Amazon’s latest acquisition. But it seems that the Fire is exactly what they say it is, no more, no less. They’re just finishing up the teardown as I write this, and may include some extra information from Chipworks, as they have done before, so I’ll update this post if pertinent data is uncovered. |
Bang & Olufsen’s New Beolit 12 Speaker Dock Preps For The Holidays | Jordan Crook | 2,011 | 11 | 15 | Christmas is right around the corner, and what could be a better complement your gingerbread and eggnog than a full month of Christmas music. Nothing, right? Which is why you may need this new minimalistic speaker dock from Bang & Olufsen. Based on the , it looks like the Beolit 12 will be configured for AirPlay, and also supports USB and Ethernet connectivity, along with a 3.5mm jack for those of you who prefer cords. The dock sports a picnic basket-esque strap for easy portability, along with a dual-toned speaker grill that reminds me an awful lot of honeycomb. Up top you’ll find a little spot to rest your media player of choice, along with your standard music controls for pause/play, volume, etc. All-in-all it looks like a sweet little speaker dock, and AirPlay functionality makes it all the more attractive. Unfortunately, no word yet on pricing or availability, but we’d guess it’ll show up in your neck of the woods before Santa does. [via ] |
Foursquare Outgrows Mobile, Wants To Be Your City Guide | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 11 | 15 | How many times have you checked in to Foursquare via the web? If you’re like me and I’m willing to bet most people, the answer to that question is “None.” Foursquare, who is likely well aware of this, has of , in an effort to improve (and not solely to garner data from) the lives of its web users. One million daily unique visitors is a terrible thing to waste. The Foursquare.com site redesign is the third major product development that aspires to move Foursquare beyond the check in; The company recently launched from all the checkin data it has accumulated over the past three years, then of that data with minimum effort. Users visiting Foursquare.com from a computer or a tablet (through the magic of HTML5) will now see a Google map of emblazoned with Icons for all the places of note around them, populated by explore data. Hover over the icons and you get even more data. On your right you can view ever-changing list of Suggested places, which is contingent on time of day. Foursquare is also taking its one step further, allowing you to search, view and follow recommended Lists via web, which will in turn buzz on Radar when you turn it on on your phone. Other changes include the fact that you can now can now comment and view comments directly from the web interface, view photos in a larger, more crisp format, see other people’s Foursquare points on their profiles. There’s also a “Brands on Foursquare” section in the bottom right, just because. Foursquare is making a concerted effort be more than just an app for checkins, as we and every other person who covers this stuff has noted before. The difference here is the mobile-first startup is expanding its horizons way beyond its iOS roots in order to become a location-based city guide and recommendation service, sort of moving towards Yelp while Yelp ironically moves towards Foursquare. And it just might succeed too, with the wealth of more than from which to draw conclusions about the destination predilections of its ten million users, “[We want to do whatever] we can do with this data to make people more aware of the world around them in real-time and geographically relevant way,” Foursquare Head of Product Alex Rainert said as he gave me a tour of the site earlier. Already I’ve learned about two different places in my neighborhood that I never even knew existed. |
Arthur Levinson Now Chairman Of Apple’s Board, Disney’s Bob Iger Is Also Joining | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 11 | 15 | Current Apple board member and Genentech CEO has been named non-executive Chairman of Apple’s board, the company . Levinson, a PhD, has served on the board since 2000 and as co-lead director since 2005. Disney CEO Bob Iger will also be joining and serving on the board’s audit committee. These are the first board changes since the death of Apple Co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs. “Bob and I have gotten to know one another very well over the past few years and on behalf of the entire board, we think he is going to make an extraordinary addition to our already very strong board,” said current Apple CEO Tim Cook in a release, “His strategic vision for Disney is based on three fundamentals: generating the best creative content possible, fostering innovation and utilizing the latest technology, and expanding into new markets around the world which makes him a great fit for Apple.” Iger and Jobs have had a relationship since 2006, when Disney bought Pixar at a valuation of $7.4 billion, making Jobs the largest Disney shareholder. In accepting a seat on the board, Iger will be joining Cook, Intuit’s William Campbell, J.Crew’s Millard S. Drexler, Albert Gore, Jr., Avon’s Andrew Jung, and Northop’s Ronald Sugar. |
Five Years Later, Apple Recalls The First Generation iPod Nano | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 11 | 12 | In a move that demonstrates an incredible amount of either customer care or procrastination, Apple has issued a recall for the first generation iPod Nano. Not the one you use as a watch, not the fat one, and not the round one. The original (and in my opinion, the best). Turns out it has a rare overheating problem, by which these warnings usually mean problem. Only a single battery supplier has actually been implicated, and the few hot devices were only available between September 2005 and January 2006. So if you gave or received a Nano during the 2005 holiday season, better find it before it burns your house down. Find your serial number using this step by step guide: Put that sequence into Apple’s handy checker , and if it’s one of the bad batch yet somehow miraculously has not melted in the last five years (the chance of overheating/catastrophic explosion “increases as the battery ages”), . After six weeks. In other news, Apple still has original iPod Nanos to issue as replacements. Very clever — or have they known about this the whole time? [via ] |
Now I Know: Entrepreneurs Discuss Success, Failure, And Lessons Learned In New Video Series | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 11 | 12 | Startups and entrepreneurs are far from lacking when it comes to resources that help guide them through the pain-staking yet always rewarding process of building a business. For example, they can check out the , check out cool , or even these efforts by the Founder Institute . Obviously, these are only a few of many — when it comes to connecting with funding, there are incubators, Angel List, Kickstarter — the list goes on. And then there’s entrepreneurial education by way of video series: Back in August, TechStars, the multi-city startup incubator, designed to give the world a peek at what it’s like to start a business in the fast-paced atmosphere of a tech incubator. Riffing off video series like this one, , a startup that makes commercial videos for tech companies, launched a series last week that aims to speak to anyone and everyone interested in the world of entrepreneurship. The series, called , will be releasing a new episode every Monday and Wednesday for the next six weeks that contains a lesson learned, a memorable experience, or personal philosophy from different notable figures in the tech space. It’s slightly reminiscent of , but instead of focusing on young entrepreneurs, it shares musings on the big issues the tech industry faces today, dished out by experts — of every age. The series premiered with six episodes featuring author of “The Lean Startup” , Craigslist Founder , serial entrepreneur, lecturer, and author , Rock Health Founder , Causes.com Co-founder and VP of Product and TechCrunch columnist and newly-minted CrunchFund VC . Now I Know’s most recent video, for example, features former TechCruncher and current Accel investment guru talking about the concept of failure and how it might actually be the best way to learn. Sprinkle Lab Co-founder Cameron Woodward told us that he and his team founded Sprinkle Lab in March of this year, because they believed that there simply wasn’t enough good video coming out of the tech space. While there is Revision3 and other great video specialists like it, Woodward said that he wanted his startup to focus on making shows that are formatted for television, not just vlog-caliber. “We’re millennials, so we don’t have that kind of patience”, he said. “We wanted to see something short and sweet and dripping with nerdy goodness”, so having founded a video firm built with (a startup focused ) — Sprinkle Lab launched Now I Know based on their desire to see this kind of educational content find a home. There will be more videos launching next week, and while these videos are great, they leave you wanting more. Hopefully Sprinkle Lab will release the full interviews in the future; I have a feeling they would find an audience. Below is an example of Now I Know’s content, featuring Steve Blank talking about the fundamental differences between small businesses and startups. Check it out: |
Fly Or Die: Giving Oink A Try | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 11 | 12 | I’ve been writing a lot about , the new mobile app from , Kevin Rose’s current startup. Oink about ten days ago (you still need an invite to unlock all of its features), and Kevin Rose the day it launched. In this episode of , we give Oink a try. Oink is a way to rate things in the physical world on an extremely granular layer. You can rate a #burger or a #steak in a restaurant, a #rollercoaster in an amusement park, or a #shirt in a clothing store. You identify things with hashtags and get cred topic-by-topic based on the how other people vote for the things that you’ve said are good. The hashtags are also useful for a specific hashatag that’s been rated in your vicinity. The app could end up collecting a wealth of data about what people like in the real world. There is something very satisfying about seeing the best 25 #burgers in rank order within a 5-mile vicinity drop down on a map. And the ability to level up for any particular tag is going to be a big motivator for some users. But like any app, there will be the power taggers and everyone else (who simply consume), and the trick for Oink to be successful when it launches more broadly will be to make it appealing and easy to use for anyone straight out of the gate. It might need more structure and suggestions than the current open-ended tag the world approach. |
What If Technology Is Destroying Jobs Faster Than It Creates Them? | Jon Evans | 2,011 | 11 | 12 | The New Luddites are back, and they’re packing heat. The mighty of “the disturbing thought” that “America’s current employment woes stem from a precipitous and permanent change caused by not too little technological progress, but too much … A tipping point seems to have been reached, at which AI-based automation threatens to supplant the brain-power of large swathes of middle-income employees.” The : “technology is quickly taking over service jobs, following the waves of automation of farm and factory work.” At which those of us lucky enough to be software engineers burst into derisive laughter, of course. We’ve heard all this before, more than a decade ago, when ‘outsourcing to India’ rather than ‘automation’ was the threat that would destroy our jobs. Obviously this is more of the same kind of nonsense. Right? …Although, now that you mention it, there something odd going on. America, Europe, and Japan all seem to be lurching from crisis to crisis without respite; most of the developed world is struggling with debilitating levels of unemployment; but at the same time, the tech world is booming like it’s 1999. Doesn’t that seem kind of weird? Third unsolicited software recruitment email in the last 7 days, this time from Google. Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble… — Jon Evans (@rezendi) Maybe I should respond: a analyzes, and ultimately (mostly) validates, a claim that a good 30-year-old Google software engineer now takes home close to $250,000/year in total compensation. Another that newly minted Stanford CS/EE graduates are offered an average of $88,000 for their first post-university jobs. Well, hey, let the good times roll! Luddites of all stripes are morons! We just happen to be in the midst of a thrilling boom/bubble while the entire rest of the rich world happens to be in a crippling recession/stagnation. Pure coincidence. Right? Unless. Unless and/or are right. Ford essentially that we have hit an inflection point at which technology destroys jobs faster than it creates them. Kling (at length, but it’s worth reading): “The new jobs that emerge may not produce a middle class … gains in well-being that come from productivity improvements [may] accrue to an economic elite … we could be headed into an era of highly unequal economic classes. People at the bottom will have access to food, healthcare, and electronic entertainment, but the rich will live in an exclusive world of exotic homes and extravagant personal services.” Which sounds eerily like what we would get if we extrapolated from today, no? While millions of long-term unemployed fight desperately to tread water, technology’s handmaidens — software engineers — are minting money like bailed-out bankers. That Stanford survey mentioned above seems to undercut Peter Thiel’s take that “ ” — but : It’s beginning to look like we might have entered a two-track economy, in which a small minority reaps most of the benefits of technology that destroys more jobs than it creates. As my friend Simon Law , “First we automated menial jobs, now we’re automating middle-class jobs. Unfortunately, we still demand that people soon after becoming adults. This trend is going to be a big problem…” It’s even been suggested that . Don’t bet on it. True, inequality has provoked the Occupy movement, and to a lesser extent the Tea Party; but I’ve been a few times, and take it from me, the world is full of nations with a tiny minority of the very rich, a slightly larger well-off elite, a small middle class, and a great majority who are various degrees of poor and struggling. Brazil, China, India and Russia, for instance, to name a . There’s nothing unusual or inherently unstable about that kind of inequality. In fact, in most of the world, it’s the norm. I still believe technology will be the great equalizer that brings comparable economic opportunities to all regions of the world. But I’m beginning to wonder if that same technology will also ultimately make the rich world as fragmented and unequal as the poor, and turn the majority middle class into a thing of the past. “born1945”, |
TC Gadgets Weekend Giveaway: An iPhone 4S | John Biggs | 2,011 | 11 | 12 | I gave my love a red, red rose but she actually wanted an iPhone 4S and now you, too, can hand over one of these exciting products to your loved one thanks to Rebtel. This weekend’s TC Gadgets giveaway is a fresh-in-box iPhone 4S (your carrier choice) and $100 worth of calling through . Got your attention? Good. The contest will run until noon Eastern on Monday, November 14. I will contact the winner then and update the post next week. To enter, comment below describing, in poem form, why you deserve an iPhone 4S. Limericks will be accepted but they must involve the man from Nantucket. Free or concrete verse is encouraged. Enter only once. I’ll pick one winner at random and laugh at your entries on my own time. I reserve the right to sell your poems in a chapbook on the subway, calling them my collection of “urban folk poetry” and “prayers to the muse of poesy.” Special thanks to Rebtel for the great prize. UPDATE – Congrats to Steve Markert and his poem: I feel I deserve that 4S,
how much I do I can’t stress.
All I can say now to thee,
is that the phone I have is Blackberry,
And I’d really like out of this mess. |
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