title stringlengths 2 283 ⌀ | author stringlengths 4 41 ⌀ | year int64 2.01k 2.02k | month int64 1 12 | day int64 1 31 | content stringlengths 1 111k ⌀ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
People Now Watch Videos Nearly 30 Percent Longer On Tablets Than Desktops | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 11 | 12 | It may come as no surprise, but Americans are watching more and more online video. In fact, they’re practically jonesin’ for it. , 182 million Americans watched online video content in September (for an average of 19.5 hours per viewer), while the U.S. video audience tallied a total of 39.8 billion video views. But what may be a bit more surprising is the extent to which people are now watching their video on tablets. , the provider of online video technology and services just released its first quarterly review, . While the data is skewed slightly as it only takes into account those who actually watch online video, as comScore’s numbers show, at least in the U.S., there are more than a few watching online video. And Ooyala’s data set, too, is considerable, as the platform handles more than 1 billion analytics pings per day — revealing the global viewing behavior of 100 million monthly unique users. From Ooyala’s study comes a number of interesting interesting conclusions. First and foremost, tablets are seeing a significantly higher level of engagement in online video viewing, as tablet viewers watch longer than viewers of desktops or mobile devices. For each minute watched on a desktop, tablets recorded “1:17 in played content”, which works out to 28 percent longer than the desktop average. What’s more, tablet viewers are more than twice as likely to finish a video than desktoppers, as the completion rate for tablet viewers was double what it was for desktop viewing in the third quarter of this year — and is 30 percent higher than that of mobile devices. Of course, the high level of video engagement compared to desktops isn’t just limited to tablets, it seems it’s true of all mobile devices, too: In Ooyala’s words, “viewer engagement was generally higher on mobile devices than on desktops — even for long term videos”. Yup, mobile viewers completed three-quarters of a long-form video at a rate of 20 percent, compared to 18 percent for desktops. In terms of long-form videos, the study found that desktops and laptops are more likely to be used for short video clips, whereas videos that are 10 minutes or longer make up 30 percent of the hours watched on mobile devices, 42 percent on tablets, and nearly 75 percent on connected TV devices and game consoles. While desktops still make up the bulk of total video displays, plays, and number of hours watched, mobile devices, tablets, and connected TV devices are increasingly shaping (and changing) viewer behavior. For non-desktop video media, mobile devices owned the biggest share of total hours played, with 48 percent, while plays on tablets accounted for 45 percent. While connected TV devices lagged behind in most categories, as the industry is still in its nascency, Ooyala believes that these devices are closing in on the tipping point, as video plays on connected TVs tripled in Q3 alone. Of course, when it comes to video being watched on mobile devices and tablets, it’s all iOS and Android. Combined, Android and iOS devices make up 90 percent of the video hours for tablets and mobile devices. For tablets, unsurprisingly, iPad is king. iPads were responsible for 99.4 percent of displays, 97.7 percent of total plays, and 95.7 percent of total hours streamed. However, thanks to its growing lead in marketshare among mobile devices, Android is seeing an average conversion rate of 45 percent — one that’s considerably higher than that of iPhones at 22 percent. For tablets, Android devices were also higher at 47 percent compared to iPads at 13 percent. In terms of viewer engagement for tablet viewers, the percentages were close, but iPads grabbed the higher percentage of completion rates (at 38 percent compared to Android’s 36 percent). Also of note: As Erick reported back in August, Facebook had jumped into third place among the biggest video platforms, with an estimated 51.6 million people watching videos on Facebook in July. Facebook’s numbers have since dropped slightly, but the point remains: When it comes to display advertising and now video, Facebook is growing at a scary rate. To this point, Ooyala found that Facebook is across the board a more popular means of sharing video than its social media rival, Twitter. In the U.S., for every one video shared on Twitter, over eight are shared on Facebook. As to how much more popular Facebook was than Twitter as a video sharing platform — that varies widely depending on the region. In Japan, there’s a 1:1 ratio, whereas in Italy Facebook is 17 times more popular. In the end, Ooyala’s study seems to prove how it is becoming of increasing importance for content publishers to develop strategies for tablets. With viewers watching 28 percent longer per play on tablets compared to desktops, the publishers are now beginning to be guaranteed to have access their viewers’ eyeballs for a longer period of time. No doubt advertisers will be taking note of this. For a full dive into Ooyala’s study, . Excerpt |
MasterCard And Intel Partner To Secure And Simplify Online And NFC Payments | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 11 | 13 | Intel and credit card giant MasterCard are announcing a multi-year strategic partnership this evening, which aims to provide a more secure and simple way for consumers to pay for products online. The two companies will be working to combine MasterCard’s expertise in payment processing and commerce with Intel’s strengths in chip-based security. So how are these two companies joining forces? Details are still being disclosed, but MasterCard and Intel are working on providing a safer and simpler checkout process for online merchants and consumers using Intel’s Ultrabook devices and future generations of Intel-based PCs. Another area where Intel and MasterCard will be working together is in the area of emerging payments technologies, including MasterCard’s PayPass and Intel’s Identity Protection Technology. PayPass is a payment method that lets you make purchases without having to swipe the magnetic strip on your card or provide your signature. The technology uses NFC to to transmit information. Intel’s Identity Protection Technology can allow consumers to use two-factor authentication and hardware-based display protection, which provides increased online security against malware. Additionally, when used with an Intel IPT-enabled reader, consumers will be able to pay for online purchases with a simple tap of their PayPass-enabled card, tag, or smart phone on an Ultrabook device. “MasterCard is constantly working to improve the shopping experience for consumers and merchants,” said Ed McLaughlin, chief emerging payments officer, MasterCard. “The collaboration with Intel will deliver enhanced security and faster checkout – with the convenience of a simple click or tap.” McLaughlin adds that this is a starting point for the two companies and there are future collaborations to come. “This partnership is about how to make the payments process more secure without having to change the experience of consumer,” he explains. |
Want The Chance To Work At Instagram? Solve This Photo Shredder Puzzle | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 11 | 12 | Coding puzzles have been part of the Silicon Valley hiring process and lore since the days when Fizzbuzz was just a gleam in some HR recruiter’s eye. Blue chip companies , Google and Amazon all use questions like, “Write a function that takes a string consisting of numeral characters and returns all possible alpha character strings of same length as input that correspond to the keypad of a typical telephone,” in order to separate the skilled coders from the chaff. Come to think of it, that function would really come in handy if you want to create customized phone numbers like 247-PIZZA really quickly (but I digress …). Photo-sharing startup isn’t , but it is adding to its staff of six, setting up this as an engineering challenge. The objective? Write an algorithm that would “un-shred” the photo — i.e. producing a whole image when given the sliced image as input. “If you think about it, there’s a pretty simple approach that would allow you to find matches in a different domain,” Instagram CEO in a blog post announcing the challenge, “That is, imagine you’re sitting there trying to find a match between two pieces. What are you looking for to decide whether they’re a fit or not?” Ooh! Ooh! I know. While the idea of an image-based puzzle is novel, some of the folks at HackerNews this particular puzzle was too easy (of course they were), to which the solution of course is “make it harder.” Systrom has provided a couple of ways to do this on the blog, and I feel like someone whose coding skills were better than mine could really get creative with this. Apparently at it’s not even that important if the candidate correctly solves the puzzle, just that they were the type of person who would attempt it. At those startups I’d be a shoo-in! When asked why he followed in the and his former employer Google in using a puzzle as part of company’s hiring process,” explained, “It’s less of a hiring process and more of a marketing tool. I think it starts a discussion that may lead somewhere – but not necessarily with hiring. We just like meeting really smart folks — [and] want to attract people who have the same intellectual curiosity as the rest of our team. We love the challenges we face every day with imaging and building scalable technology, and this challenge is simply a way for us to speak to the people who feel the same way.” Anyone who completes the challenge correctly will get an Instagram T-shirt and everyone who tries will get a response from the team. When asked how many people they were planning on hiring, Systrom told me, “Anyone that’s great we’ll take,” saying that he had no specific numbers in mind. |
Quick Review: Kogeto Dot Panoramic iPhone 4/4S Add-On | Jordan Crook | 2,011 | 11 | 12 | The Kogeto Dot isn’t necessarily new. We New York and found it to be quite the fun little iPhone accessory, but back then it was merely a prototype. Today, we’ve gotten our hands on the real deal and I have to say, I’ve had a pretty good time playing around with this little guy. Along with the accessory itself, you’ll also need the to shoot, de-warp and upload your videos. You see, since Dot shoots in panoramic mode, the video looks kind of like a swirling black hole until you de-warp it. Processing the video into something watchable only takes a couple minutes tops. Let me start out by saying that I’m usually not a huge fan of phone accessories. Past a case (which is necessary), I’ve always felt that the cost and trouble of hooking up an accessory outweighs the final product. Dot proved me wrong. Snapping Dot in place couldn’t have been easier, and getting started shooting video took literally less than a minute. That included downloading the Looker app, which uploads to Facebook, Twitter, and Kogeto.com. As you can see from the pictures, Dot is to be used as an iPhone case. Anyone who does so will sorely regret it. That said, it fits snugly and securely without being a B-word to pop on and off. The clips on the side snap on super easily, and removal is just as simple. But even after such a breezy setup, my skepticism wasn’t gone. My complaining then turned to the quality of the video itself. “It can’t be that great,” I thought. “And watching the video will probably make me nauseous with all that spinning.” Wrong again. In all honesty, I actually shot way more videos than I needed to to complete testing and get you kind folks a sample video. I was having fun, and each video I shot was even more fun than the last to view later. As I mentioned in my video, this could actually be used for more than fun. Personally, I’d have loved to use it as a way to record interviews, letting me look at myself and the interviewee while still hearing audio. The only issue is that Dot has a 3-minute maximum for videos, so it’d have to be a quickie interview to get it done. Luckily, the Looker app is due for a pretty significant update, which will include nixing that 3-minute max. I see anyone who travels a lot falling in love with this product, as you really won’t miss a thing shooting with Dot. In fact, anyone who enjoys mobile video or has an ounce of creativity can probably get a lot out of Dot, and it’s one phone accessory I’d actually recommend. There are a few drawbacks to Kogeto’s Dot, though many should be squashed with the forthcoming update (which I’ll go into more detail on later). For one, it’s a bit awkward to hold while shooting. Since Dot shoots in 360 degrees, you have to hold the phone face down to record. You also have to remove your case to snap on Dot, meaning your holding your phone uncomfortably, away from your body, unprotected. To me, that’s a recipe for disaster so no drunk videos with Dot, OK? Past that, you need to make sure your hand is flat while shooting, rather than curving your fingers up over the sides of the phone. Again, this leaves your phone even more unprotected, but the trade-off is keeping your fingertips out of the video. As you can see in my sample, I didn’t follow my own rules. As far as video quality is concerned, I was pleasantly surprised. Obviously, DotSpots (videos shot with Dot) won’t be as high quality as the 1080p video your 4S shoots on its own. There’s a slab of plastic in the way for goodness sakes. But, all in all it’s just fine. Audio, however, is kind of a mess. In every video I shot there was a pretty serious audio lag, which is just annoying. If you’re doing something more serious with Dot, rather than just shooting a fun little video to share with friends, the Looker app offers different video quality settings, including a smoother and fps settings. Video may take longer to process and upload with better settings, but you win some and you lose some. When all’s said and done, yes, the Kogeto Dot has been found wanting in a couple areas. But I got the chance to speak with Kogeto CEO Jeff Glasse who told me that the upcoming update will help fill in those missing pieces. Depending on how quickly Apple approves the update, this is what you’ll be seeing in the next couple weeks: real-time de-warping of video, location services integration, trimming controls, no more 3-minute limit, and the ability to use the volume buttons as stop/start record buttons. I say possibly because Apple is throwing a bit of a fit over that last one. Apparently, Apple’s developer terms state that only iOS’s official camera control can employ the volume buttons, but Dot uses its own custom control. The argument is that if game developers start implementing that functionality, it will confuse users who want to simply turn up the volume. It seems a bit unfair, to be honest, especially since Looker is a camera app and not a game. Perhaps there should be an amendment to that particular clause allowing camera-based applications to join in on the volume button fun, whether they use iOS 5’s camera control or not. My favorite thing about the Kogeto Dot is that it changed my mind about phone accessories. I see this actually being something people use regularly, rather than a fun-for-a-few-minutes type of deal. It’s lightweight, portable, and adds a whole new layer of creativity to what once was a basic camera on your phone. The Kogeto Dot retails for $79.99 and is available on November 15 at select Apple stores, Apple.com, or at . The Looker app is free to download from the .
|
Jotly Creator Swears He’s Not Making Fun Of Oink | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 11 | 13 | [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=QIWpbfZHHzc&w=630] So founder came up with and shot a promo video of this parody app that allows you to review anything in the world, “launching” it on October 3rd. This is doubly hilarious because a week after the world met superfounder launched , which is also an app that allows you to review anything in the world EXCEPT IT’S REAL. And really noisy. When I a link to this Jotly video earlier, SimpleGeo co-founder n tweeted back to me,”uh. @Oink much?” whereas Foursquare hiring director responded with the more tempered, “There’s a legit white space between yelp, twitter & 4sq; voila the mobile social short-form review-anything app onslaught.” True. Which begs the question, why haven’t any of those three companies tried to fill that hole? Especially Foursquare. While the is like a thing, Campbell insists that any similarities between Jotly and Oink are purely coincidental, “I was directly making fun of the proliferation of absolute ridiculousness when it comes to apps and startups these days. I tried to think of every cliché and trend I could, roll it into one, and create one app to rule them all,” he said, “The goal being: a fun parody … What just made the whole thing even crazier, was yes, seeing Oink launch one week after Jotly ‘launched’ with the exact same (seemingly absurd) feature set. What we came up with, as a joke one weekend (Jotly), was all of a sudden a real app in Oink.” Still, the apps are so similar that watching these two videos in succession continues to set me into convulsive fits of laughter. Namely because seriously says stuff like, “I’m oinking a lot,””mainstream version FOR YOUR MOM”?, “invite ON-ly,” and “granular” without any irony while manages to slide the phrase “best head” in without notice. See what I did just there? (That’s what she said.) I honestly don’t know which video is funnier, even after watching them each like 15 times. Enjoy. |
NOAH 2011 brings a pan-European networking space to London | vaughn597 | 2,011 | 11 | 12 |
What I like about is that it feels a bit like a big cocktail party. Yes, there are the panels and presentations, hidden elegantly behind the black curtains that separate the exhibition area from the conference hall, where the big guys onstage share success stories with the audience. But the real action is outside where the bar invites to mingle. Networking is just more fun at Noah. In the past two years the annual conference organised by NOAH Advisors founder Marco Rodzynek has gained a reputation for being a genuinely pan-European top event bursting with investment opportunities. It lived up to its name. NOAH 2011 was vibrant and it was big, with over 1700 attendants and 100 speakers. What’s really awesome though is that it felt so international. Only few attendants at the Old Billingsgate venue were from the UK. Instead it sounded like the entire German startup scene had met in London, with a dominant presence of businesses from the big three German tech hubs: Berlin, Munich and Hamburg. Entrepreneurs from Hamburg, like taxi booking application or super-simple website editor , convinced me that the seaport has become a serious competitor for Berlin’s title of Germany’s top tech hub. Berlin is bristling with creativity, but Hamburg can pride itself with people who have an excellent intuition for business opportunities. Remember Hamburg based investment venture ? Founder Lars Hinrichs explained onstage why the fund only invests in software developers. It’s because they are the “artists of the 21st century”. Hear Hear. Hamburg has brilliant developers, too, and in combination with an attitude like Lars’ we have a a new hotspot to watch as it’s currently growing rapidly. So Germany wins the prize for most dominant this week, but the second phenomenal startup hotspot that stood out was Israel. CEOs of publisher network and their recent acquisition were amongst the panel speakers and feedback management platform ‘s CEO Ariel Finkelstein had a chat with me about Israel’s growing network of keen entrepreneurs. The enthusiasm and sedulity of Israel’s startup crowd has reached a new peak and NOAH 2011 proved it. As its reputation promises, NOAH is still the place to go if you want to meet some great entrepreneurs from all over Europe without leaving London. I hope it will stay that way next year at NOAH 2012. The date is already set for 6th and 7th November 2012. The stage itself at this week’s conference was a platform where mostly well established startups presented themselves. The presentations felt self-promotional at times, which is a shame. The potential for some great onstage discussion was huge with so many important international startups involved and the results didn’t quite justify that crowd. That’s not to say there weren’t some good panels. You can see for yourself on the soon. I was told that all videos of the panels will be online by the end of next week. All in all well done NOAH and see you in 2012. And tell you what, if you add some fire to the presentations next year my rating might even go from “great” to “absolutely kick-ass”. |
For great ideas facing great barriers: Introducing the startup doctors | vaughn597 | 2,011 | 11 | 13 | This post is for those of you who are just getting started. Those of you who already have established businesses and are enjoying post-startup success should probably read the other stuff on TechCrunch or play Skyrim or go make a cup of tea instead. Okay? Okay. Now it’s just us, you the smart guys with the great ideas they are trying to turn into a tangible startup success and me, the nerd who is lucky enough to spend her days writing about the great ideas of others. It’s no secret that an idea alone doesn’t make a business. It’s a stony path from that first eureka moment to the time when a look at your bank account will finally not result in a slight feeling of panic anymore. For a lack of time, money, management or simply luck, many entrepreneurs with great ideas never make it to success. I think that’s too bad. I love great ideas. That’s why I’m super-excited about what the team at is doing. This is a brand new movement trying to give a quick injection of business support to young startups in need of help. Entrepreneurs who find themselves stuck somewhere in the process of developing their idea are invited to come along to Startup Crowd camps, where 6 hours of coaching will hopefully help them iron out their issues and leave them all fired up with a new can-do attitude. I came along to the Crowd’s first Ideation Camp this Saturday, November 12th. The only non-entrepreneur in the 50 people strong group of attendants, I was probably a bit difficult to coach – mainly because I don’t have any problems to solve – but even I came out with a bunch of new ideas in mind. The three mentors , and do a terrific job in making the room buzz with enthusiasm and challenge their campers to keep an open mind in finding the cure for their startup pains. You can trust co-founder Jonathan MacDonald to bring his years of experience in senior management to the campers. Effortlessly drawing connections between the smallest startups and the biggest corporations, he manages to make the absolutely essential, road-to-success business values relatable to his very diverse bunch of listeners. I’ve never heard Aristotle’s Art of Rhetoric related to running a business, but in Jonathan’s hands it turned into a guide to startup marketing. Miriam, James and Jonathan have clearly put plenty of enthusiasm into this project. Their ability to quickly catch on to the attendants’ business problems helped to make Ideation Camp a pretty successful pilot project. It’s the rather unconventional, refreshing way of coaching that encourages attendants to gather new ideas and turn them into inspiration for their own projects. Don’t expect to hear expert presentations about successful business ventures. You won’t sit down and be coached through your particular problem step by step. This is a different approach. It’s more of, as one attendant said to me, “a real kick in the ass to go out and finally make this happen”. It’s fun, it’s inspiring and it’ll make you face your challenges and give you some material to deal with them. If you have a great idea, you’re working on it, but something’s holding you back and you don’t quite know what to do, or if you simply feel discouraged, then give the next Ideation Camp a shot. There were some people with great ideas around on Saturday and darnit I hate to see ideas go to waste.
Photo credit: |
null | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 11 | 15 | null |
Following Founder’s Passing, Diaspora Opens Redesigned Alpha To Invitees | Josh Constine | 2,011 | 11 | 13 | Diaspora sent out a new round of invites to a redesigned alpha version of its open source social network today. The invites came just before the saddening news broke that 22 year old . Since it first administered invites a year ago, the service has launched hashtag following, direct messages, status update Like buttons, a notifications channel, and more. Diaspora has also added support for its first application, Cubbi.es, which lets users instantly post photos they find on the internet to the service via browser extensions. Though it has lost one of its forward thinking founders, the invites indicate that Diaspora will continue to pursue Zhitomirskiy’s goal to create a decentralized social network that “lets you be yourself and share however you want, with or without your real name.” Because is decentralized, those with invites join one of the distinct pods of fellow users set up on independently hosted servers rather than a single hub that connects everyone. Users can opt to build an identity from scratch, or choose to connect their Facebook account to import their real name, profile pic, and allow cross-posting from Diaspora. Facebook’s presence in the onboarding process may surprise some who saw Diaspora as an attempt to depose Mark Zuckerberg’s highly centralized network. Instead, the optional Facebook integration shows the Diaspora team’s dedication to openness and a low-friction user experience. Once you’ve chosen some hashtags to follow, you’re brought to your new home screen which displays a stream of content from friends and those hashtags. A familiar publisher allows updates to be shared publicly, or with specific friend circles Diaspora calls “aspects” built on an asymmetrical follow system. Published updates can also be syndicated to connected Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr accounts. In line with the site’s principles, its easy to download your photos or an .xml of your profile, as well as close your account. The site’s loading times are longer than on Facebook or Google+, but that’s to be expected of a startup social network. To really take off, Diaspora will need a better way for users to find and connect with Facebook friends and those they follow on Twitter. It does provide a suggested user list called “Community Spotlight”, though, which displays the profile pictures and followed hashtags of selected members to help new signups fill out their stream with relevant content. To demonstrate the potential of its application platform, Diaspora is promoting in its sidebar. Once users authenticate with their Diaspora account and download a Chrome or Firefox extension, they can simply hold shift and click on any photo they come across on the web to share it publicly. Diaspora has now covered the bases to become a satisfactory solution for those uncomfortable with the compromises of control required for joining the leading social networks. Even if it doesn’t grow to hundreds of millions of users, Diaspora’s working alternative could influence the conversation about what a social network should be. This could inspire Facebook and Google+ to adopt some of Diaspora’s flexibility and expand the impact of Ilya’s ideals. |
Hands On With The MB&F LM1: The Coolest Watch You’ll See Today | John Biggs | 2,011 | 11 | 13 | I got to sit down with , the North American president of and driving force behind the Swiss watch brand’s western expansion. The watch he brought for us is the LM1 aka the Legacy Machine #1, a new piece and that is just now shipping to oligarchs and captains of industry around the world. First, a bit about the piece: In fidelity to high-quality 19th century pocket watches, LM1 features a sedately oscillating (2.5 Hz), large diameter balance with traditional Breguet overcoil suspended from majestic twin arches; its enigmatic regulating mechanism in full view, but without apparent connection to the movement. Both the hours AND the minutes on each of the two sub dials can be set completely independently of each other – dual time zone complications usually do not allow independent adjustment of the minutes – their domed dials further reinforcing visual references to the golden age of watchmaking (1780-1850). Looking like a miniature sextant, a world-first vertical power reserve indicator keeps track of available power while providing a visual three-dimensional counterpoint to the graceful arches supporting the balance. The LM1 is striking in real life. The dual dials are hand-enameled and the beautiful balance wheel hanging in the middle of the face creates a sort of clever, steampunkish beating heart that brings the whole piece together. How much is this thing? About $90,000, on a good day, although I’m sure Steve can get us all discounts. |
How Google, eBay, And PayPal Are Gearing Up For A Very Mobile Holiday Shopping Season | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 11 | 13 | Online holiday shopping in 2010. And e-commerce is up this year. All signs point to consumers spending even more online this holiday season. I sat down with executives from Google, eBay, PayPal and ShopKick to discuss the trends that are expected to emerge in the e-commerce space over the next few months. They center around mobile, tablets, and deals. PayPal has more than doubled its mobile payments volume since the 2010 holiday shopping season, and we haven’t even hit the thick of this year’s rush. eBay is projecting $5 billion in mobile payments volume in 2010 and this number could increase in the next few months. And Google projects that 15 percent of total search on Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving and one of the biggest shopping days of the year) will come from mobile devices. Tablet devices are now a part of the online shopping experience and retailers are taking note. Clearly, all signs point to the fact that this could be the breakout year for mobile shopping. All of the companies I spoke to unanimously agreed that this would be the year of mobile for the holiday shopping season. Steve Yankovich, head of eBay’s mobile business operations and development, says he expects this to be the biggest year for mobile sales for eBay yet. eBay has said that the company expects to see in gross merchandise volume in 2011, and this will be partly buoyed by a strong mobile presence in November and December. PayPal’s Senior Director for Mobile, Laura Chambers, echoes Yankovich’s forecasts and says that merchants are even preparing for the onslaught of traffic to their mobile sites. A number of big retailers, such as Armani Exchange, Guess and The Limited have recently put PayPal’s mobile express checkout as an option for payments on their mobile sites as a way to help the conversion process. “We are seeing strong investments by online retailers for mobile shopping this year,” she says. Chambers says that last year, the for PayPal was December 12, with $4.7 million in mobile payments volume. Now PayPal is seeing $10 million in mobile payments per day, and we haven’t even officially hit the holiday shopping period. Clearly, the mobile payments numbers could even triple from last year to this year. While many consumers may shop on mobile for their holiday purchases, the usage of product search, barcode scanning, and other informative apps will also play a big part in this year’s mobile shopping. eBay’s RedLaser barcode scanning apps have seen scans go up 50 percent over the past year. If you aren’t familiar with how it works, RedLaser will scan the barcode of a physical product and show you where you can buy it on eBay’s properties and where it is available in local store locations around you (via Milo) and for how much. The app has been updated with PayPal functionality so that users can actually buy the product directly from the app. Another shopping app developer who has high hopes for mobile this holiday season is ShopKick. Co-founder Cyriac Roeding says that this year will be the year of mobile for physical shopping. For background, Shopkick automatically recognizes when someone with the free Android or iPhone app on their phone walks into a store. Once a Shopkick Signal is detected, the app delivers reward points called “kickbucks” to the user for walking into a retail store, trying on clothes, scanning a barcode and other actions. Kickbucks can then be redeemed across all partner stores for gift card rewards or for Facebook Credits. User can also receive special discounts on specific products at partners stores like Macy’s, Best Buy or Target. Roeding explains that the cell phone is the only interactive platform you carry with you in a physical store, and retailers are looking to use the platform to help drive transactions. Clearly, a mobile rewards app that offers in-store discounts can help do this. “The internet has caused brick and mortar retailers more trouble than benefit over the past fifteen years. Now retailers are catching on to how the internet can help retailers—that’s where mobile comes in.” Sameer Samat, VP of Product Management for Google Commerce, tells me that the search giant is seeing a growing number of users are making buying decisions using their mobile phone. “We are definitely seeing m-commerce conversions growing and becoming bigger over time,” he says. “But users are also using their mobile phone to search for products and find local availability.” Samat says that Google has seen a 200 percent growth in mobile product search usage and Google Shopper app downloads over the past year. Shopper, which is available for iOS and Android, allows you to find product prices, reviews, specs, local inventory of products at nearby stores, and more. As we mentioned above, Google is forecasting that 15 percent of total search on Black Friday. will come from mobile. “There’s no doubt that users are now making buying decisions using their mobile phone,” says Samat. “And we are seeing m-commerce conversions growing and becoming bigger over time.” As tablets have grown to be the go-to browsing device, the iPad, and other devices are also becoming a way to shop. And retailers are catching on to this trend. According to a study, 20 percent of retailers have invested in tablet device apps this holiday season. With this in mind, Google in August, an app for tablet devices that includes 200 catalogs from major brands including Anthropologie, Bare Escentuals, Bergdorf Goodman, Crate and Barrel, L.L. Bean, Lands’ End, Macy’s, Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom, Pottery Barn, Saks Fifth Avenue, Sephora, Sundance, Tea Collection, Urban Outfitters and Williams-Sonoma. The app is more than just a browsing experience. When consumers find an item they’d like to purchase, they can tap to find it in a store nearby or tap “Buy on Website” to visit the merchant online. Google’s Samat says that “the tablet is the ultimate leanback experience and we see that playing a big role in holiday shopping as a replacement for the mail order catalogs you used to browse through.” PayPal calls it ‘couch commerce’ and believes that tablet commerce will have a record year. PayPal that consumers who own both a tablet and a smartphone are significantly more likely (63%) to indicate increased overall spending on mobile purchases, versus owners of smartphones only (29%). Owners of both a tablet and a smartphone buy nearly twice as often as those who only have smartphones and more than 40% of dual owners made more than 20 mobile purchases over the past year, compared to only 12% of smartphone-only owners. Forrester just predicting a 15 percent increase in online shopping sales this year to nearly $60 billion, partly due to the increase in consumer-use of tablet computers for shopping. Black Friday and Cyber Monday are historically the top-high-grossing online shopping days during the holiday season. But execs expect to see high volumes of online shopping on other days thanks to an increase in mobile shopping and deals. Yankovitch tells me that eBay expects revenue numbers to be well over numbers that eBay saw last year for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but expects to see more activity at times when people aren’t traditionally shopping. The is one of those days, says Chambers. Because people will have their phone everywhere (including at the table), consumers are expected to make purchases on the fly, especially on Thanksgiving evening. In fact, PayPal is predicting that after dinner on Thanksgiving Day will be the first mobile shopping spike this holiday season. Another popular day has been the second Sunday in December, which is one of the last days where people feel confident that items will be shipped in times for the holiday. And Chambers says across the board, Sunday is the biggest day for mobile shopping generally. There’s no doubt that deals, coupons and discounts will be a large part of the online holiday shopping experience, especially with the current state of the economy. According to the recent Forrester report, 58 percent of Americans say they are more price-conscious today than they were a year ago and nearly half believe they find better values online. “I really expect consumers to be deal hunting this season,” explains Chambers. She says that PayPal, which has historically offered for the holiday shopping season, will be bulking up on more consumer deals this holiday season. Samat says that Google has always seen a spike for queries like deals, coupons, and sales during the holiday time and fully expects to see an increase this year. “The consumer desire for a better deal will help give certain product decision tools a big bump,” he explains. “People may take more time this year to find the best possible price.” Deals could also include lucrative holiday shipping offers. In 2010, 45 of the top 50 online retailers offered some sort of promotional deal between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday, most of which were a type of shipping promotion. And in 2011, Shop.org anticipates that a record 92.5% of online retailers will offer free shipping and not just as a Cyber Monday promotion. Clearly, there’s plenty of optimism from retailers, and tech companies regarding online spending and shopping this holiday season. And this holiday season is somewhat unique considering the big bet that retailers are making on newer technologies, such as mobile, geo-location, tablets, local product search and more. The big question is how consumers will react to and engage with these technologies over the next several weeks. It could be a very mobile Christmas. |
Processing $11 Million A Day, Jack Dorsey Says: “We Don’t Want To Make Square All About Taxi Cabs” | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 11 | 13 | Jack Dorsey’s mobile payments startup is now processing $11 million in mobile payments, it was revealed today at the conference in Tucson, Arizona. Host David Kirkpatrick threw the number out there as something Dorsey had told him backstage—the last official number was $10 million a day and Square may not be consistently above $11 million yet. Either way, this is up from just last July. The key to Square’s rapid growth in Dorsey’s mind is the same thing that propels Twitter: “We haven’t defined a lot of how people are going to use them.” He sees both as utilities which can be adopted to different purposes by their users, and that is what makes them so powerful. “We don’t want to make Square all about taxi cabs,”” he says. “And we don’t want to make Twitter all about celebrities and politicians.” The other thing that Square and Twitter have in common is that they are both essentially communications technologies. Dorsey thinks of the receipt as a publishing medium (kind of like Twitter). “It is a communication medium between the business and the consumer,” he says. But normally it is something we throw away. That communication between merchant and payer is where the “exchange of value” lies. Payments is just something “we need to do” to create that communication. Taking a swipe at NFC payments, he notes that they lack that communication layer. “NFC only gives the merchant the identity [of the consumer] after the transaction.” By identifying the customer when they walk in the door, as Square is trying to do with its new , there is better chance to build loyalty by doing something for the customer before they even pay. Asked about Twitter’s business model, Dorsey notes that Twitter’s ad products ( , , and ) are getting engagement rates “between 1 and 5 percent.” He doesn’t call these ads. “We wanted to build a business model that felt like it was part of the network,” he says. “I don’t think of it as advertisement in the traditional sense.” Rather, he wants to “introduce you to something new.” Of course, if those Promoted Tweets were really as delightful as he makes them out to be, they would be clicked more than 5 percent of the time. |
Diaspora Co-Founder Ilya Zhitomirskiy Passes Away At 22 | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 11 | 13 | Late last night, word began to spread around the tech community that one of ‘s four co-founders, , had passed away. With much sadness, we’ve now confirmed this terrible news with the Diaspora team. The news is incredibly jarring, to the point that much else I could say escapes me. Ilya was just 22. To see any member of our community pass is sad, but for one so young to go is absolutely crushing. The cause of death is currently unconfirmed. Our sincerest condolences to Ilya’s family, friends, and the entire Diaspora team. |
Looking To Hire Top Talent For Your Startup? Here Are Five Things You Should Know. | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 11 | 14 | You may know as the CEO of the free multiplayer gaming and chat platform, , which specializes in making social games, , for example. What you may not know is that, for the last year, Porter has been managing and curating a free, weekly newsletter called . The mission of Inside Startups, Porter says, was to move people from larger companies and corporations into up-and-coming startups in an effort to galvanize the New York City startup scene. The conceit, too, is simple. If you’re looking for a job at a startup or know someone who does, simply sign up (for free) and Inside Startups will email you five great startup jobs available in New York City every Saturday. (Although cities like Philadelphia, Washington D.C., Boston, San Francisco, New York, and Atlanta are now included on Inside Startups’ website.) Even for those not actively looking for jobs, the founder says, it’s a great way to stay on top of the startup scene in your city — and around the country. As Porter says on Inside Startups: I was having trouble finding great people to hire. Job boards were static and consisted of people looking for jobs, and recruiters were expensive. I wanted to find the best people, the people who already had jobs, and get in front of them in a low impact way. So the team set out to build a comprehensive mailing list of every person in New York City who worked or wanted to work for a startup. Then we signed up over 200 startups and began sending out our weekly email. So, after sending out hundreds of jobs over the course of the last year and seeing its community grow to now include 5,000 subscribers, 250 hiring companies, and a 50/50 developer-to-business split in NYC, Inside Startups decided to launch a comprehensive analysis of the click-throughs in the postings it sent out in its newsletter in an effort to answer one of the biggest questions facing founders and startup teams looking to hire: “What are the attributes of a killer job posting?” Last week, Porter and company produced a report based on its data that offers five tips to help startups be more effective in their hiring (and avoid common misconceptions and fallacies), because, after all, finding the right people can be the difference between life and death for a fledgling company. For starters, Inside Startups found that the top three skill sets available that received the most click-throughs (in proportion to other types of jobs) were business/finance, communications/social media, and software/web development — in that order. The company’s short-list of recommendations for startups when creating their job postings and going after new talent? Focus on press and traction over investors, keep it short, remember the interesting perks, sell the job more than the company, and stay away from using “ninjas” or “rockstars” to reduce the lame-ness factor. For a longer look, check out the top five below: |
Components Spied For 15-Inch Air-Style MacBook Pro | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 11 | 14 | Habitual component-stream eavesdropper says that “a small volume of components” that fit the spec for a 15-inch ultra-thin notebook have shipped, and March of 2012 is their estimate for full-scale device shipping. We’ve talked about , and this is just more evidence of that. The to the notebook line was minor and the design is getting a little long in the tooth. The new notebooks would likely eliminate the optical drive and may have some kind of hybrid storage solution that combines a super-thin 2.5″ HDD with an SSD or flash storage. This is an untenable feature proposition for the Air, which is subject to both space and price restrictions, but the Pro line would be more spacious and less cash-conscious. Shipping in March would fall in line with existing Apple scheduling, putting the notebooks just about a year after the last significant MacBook Pro update. It’s impossible to say, however, how long Apple has been developing and testing the new notebooks, so to call the dates optimistic or otherwise would be fruitless. This first break of the supply line seal, however, might start a trickle of new information about the new gear, so we’ll keep our ears to the ground. |
Fab Hits A Million Users, Is Raising Many Millions of Dollars | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 11 | 14 | Design-focused flash sale site announced an important user milestone today, the site hitting a million members; The company celebrated by giving each of their users $10 to spend and another $10 more to each friend they signed on. The invite-only site has seen massive success since it pivoted from a gay social network in June, bringing in another 275K users in the past 30 days — with around 150K people visiting the site through its daily email alone. The company is operating profitable, expected to bring in $20 million in revenue in 2011. Fab is taking advantage of this boom to raise some cash, we’ve heard from multiple sources. The company is raising a “huge” Series B round, which one source pegs as between $40 – $50 million at a ~$250 million post-money valuation. Another source said that the valuation was in the “hundreds of millions.” Existing investors and will be following on, and the round has a new top-tier investor who I haven’t quite yet sussed out. From what I’m hearing term sheets have been signed and the deal is set to close early December. “Our buyers’ job is to find stuff that will make people smile,” Fab CEO , who wouldn’t give comment on the funding rumors, told me earlier today, “If they can do that the product will sell, and if we keep doing that the next million will come faster than the first million.” Goldberg says that flash sales are just the start, and the company is presently working on supporting overnight shipping and in addition to adding advanced social features. |
7 Seats? In A Sedan? Tesla’s “Flat-Pack Battery” Model S (TCTV) | Josh Constine | 2,011 | 11 | 14 | Rear-facing car seats used to come at the expense of the trunk. That’s because a giant combustion engine had to go somewhere. But that was before Tesla invented the “Flat-Pack battery”. Laid along the bottom of the car, the Flat-Pack lets keep the trunk while seating 7 and travelling up to 300 miles on a single charge. Oh, and it has a 3G 17-inch touchscreen computer for navigation, media, internet, and apps. The Model S won’t be on the market until July 2012, but at last week’s conference I got to play around in an Alpha version shown off in this TCTV video. Most EVs are actually just combustion models with an electric battery crammed in. That means less cabin or trunk space. Even Tesla’s Roadster was built off of a 2-seater Lotus body. But for the Model S, Tesla built a brand new frame with the battery laid along the bottom, taking up 2/3s ofthe length and the entire width of the car. The rear-facing seats that fold out of the trunk were said to come at Tesla founder Elon Musk’s behest, as he has 5 sons under the age of 10. The Flat-Pack even doubles as a structural element that lends strength and rigidity to the car. The exceptional roominess afforded by the Flat-Pack comes in handy when rocking out to the Model S’s home brewed sound system. I swore it was a Bose at first, but Tesla built it in-house, and it’s got some serious thud. The entertainment system, along with car controls, navigation, and a new application platform are all housed in the 17-inch touchscreen in the center of the dashboard. The computer runs an intuitive custom OS built by Tesla, and will come with a 3G or 4G connection for speedy map downloads, media syncing, and web browsing. It’s even a wi-fi hotspot. The dash also includes support for Tesla’s new app platform that will let the company and potentially any developer create apps for locating grocery stores, predicting traffic, or offering tour guide tidbits. Cars could become the next big app platform, and Tesla has a big head start. The technology inside the Flat-Pack gives the Model S exceptional range. The baseline $57,600 version can travel as respectable 160 miles per charge, and there;’s a mid-level 230 mile option. For closer to $100,000, though drivers can get a 300 mile version that can travel over 3x farther than cars from Tesla’s major competitors. Tesla communications manager Camille Ricketts tells me “We think Flat-Pack is the future of our brand, we’re going to adapt it for our future models”. At this point, Tesla biggest problem is that the EV consumer base isn’t growing as fast as it or environmental advocates want. Just 10,000 Nissan Leafs have been sold to date. Tesla’s got a plan for that too. Ricketts tells me Tesla’s now planning a $30,000 electric vehicle to appeal to the mass market.. |
Mobile Games May Be Taking Off, But How Are Their Creators Going To Make Money? [Infographic] | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 11 | 14 | Mobile gaming is big and getting bigger. You’ve heard it once, you’ve heard it one thousand times. ; Android and iOS games ; and games are the in the U.S. What’s more, according to the , game-related spending is on pace to reach $112 billion by 2015 (it’s expected exceed $74 billion this year, up from $67 billion in 2010), and mobile gaming is expected to increase to a 20 percent share of gaming platforms by 2015. Mobile is expected to hold the largest growth of all platforms over that time. Hooray!? That’s all well and good, but the question remains: If people are increasingly opting for free apps over paid apps (and Distimo’s numbers show that the average selling price of games declined 28 percent over this year), how are mobile game developers going to make money? Over the next 5 years, where is mobile gaming revenue going to come from, and how are game creators going to monetize? Thanks to a nifty infographic from , the realtime analytics service, most of the future revenue from mobile gaming will come on the back of mobile ads and in-app payments. According to Distimo, in-game virtual currency is currently one of the foremost drivers of in-app monetization, with 35 percent of the 300 most popular free games using some form of virtual currency to monetize on the App Store. Then there’s mobile advertising, which will no doubt continue to sky rocket as game developers and ad networks capitalize on the $20 bilion opportunity identified by . Americans spend 8 percent of their time using media on their phones, but only 0.5 percent of advertisers’ total ad spend is directed to mobile. As this tectonic shift continues, and as technology grows around ad personalization, game developers will be able to increasingly rely on advertising as a form of monetization. Freemium monetization models are becoming increasingly popular, as you’ll see in the data below, but while mobile advertising gets busy maturing, there’s also the monetization model of incentivized installs. This approach, which rewards users for downloading a mobile application in exchange for a secondary reward, usually free in-game virtual currency or goods, definitely has some potential. Incentivized traffic can be a meaningful alternative when things get slow organically building traffic, and the ROI can be there. But there is still some skepticism over the efficacy of incentivized installs, . The upside is that there is a huge market for mobile games, and if you’re a game developer, there are increasingly more ways to make money from their games. Some will prove to be more valuable than others, but below is Mixpanel’s snapshot of where we stand in the evolution: |
Keen On… Why $50 Billion Is Small Change For SCVNGR (TCTV) | Andrew Keen | 2,011 | 11 | 14 | Proud Princeton drop-out and imminent mega billionaire, is the self-styled Chief Ninja of the gaming/payments platform . Having raised $20 million and now employing 120 people, Priebatsch believes that the SCVNGR market could easily exceed $50 billion, a number he regards as “small”. I’m not sure what to make of Priebatsch. The cynic in me (not hard to find) sees him and his company as a symbol of the hubris that has taken over the Valley. After all, how seriously can we take a 22 year-old kid in orange sunglasses who believes that he can “flip” the entire credit card industry by establishing what he calls an “interchange zero” business model for financial transactions? And yet wise old VCs like Highland General Partner have invested in Priebatsch and SCVNGR, so there is clearly something real about him and his idea for revolutionizing the credit card industry. “Insanely effective,” is how Priebatsch describes the SCVNGR business model to me. Perhaps. I worry, however, that he might, in fact, be a victim of an insanely exuberant economy which invests silly amounts of money in semi-adolescent entrepreneurs with $50+ billion ideas. |
Links Posted By Big Facebook Pages Have A 0.14% CTR, 1 Click Per 1000 Fans | Josh Constine | 2,011 | 11 | 14 | The click through rate for links posted to the news feed by Facebook Pages with over 100,000 fans is 0.14%, or 1 click per 715 impressions according to a new study shared with us by analytics provider . Pages receive 0.00093 clicks per fan, or roughly 1 click per 1000 fans. These figures should give marketers an idea of how many Facebook fans they’ll need to accumulate to drive significant traffic to external websites, a core way of deriving return on investment from the social network. Facebook only started providing link click metrics to Page admins at the beginning of October. Until then, marketers had to use links with tracking tags or URL shorteners that can reduce CTR in order to determine the referral traffic their Page posts were driving. For comparison, links posted by Pages have nearly 3x the CTR of Facebook ads which average 0.05% CTR, and they top online display ads which average a 0.1% CTR according to Webtrends. Facebook Pages can be a useful marketing channel for brands, especially those that organically accrue Likes from passionate customers such as entertainment, consumer packaged goods, fashion, and automotive companies. To drive significant referral traffic, though, most brands have to invest in advertising in order to beef up the fan counts of their Pages. Most major brands have at least 100,000 fans, and Posts by Pages with few fans have a much higher CTR as you can see in the graph below. Therefore, I excluded them to avoid skewing the data. For all Pages with over 1,000 fans, including those with few fans, link posts still only have a 0.35% CTR, 1 click per 280 impressions, 0.00236 clicks per per fan, and 1 click per 424 fans. EdgeRank Checker’s data is based on 84,000 link posts by over 5,500 Pages in October. The study also looked at which days of the week were the best for Pages to post on. It found that posts on Wednesday receive the most clicks and shares, while posts on Friday receive the fewest. If they spend the time and money, brands like Porche, Netflix, and Old Navy can drive around 2,000 qualified clicks a day for free. Facebook Pages can’t completely replace the need for paid advertising, but they can become an important component of a savvy online marketing strategy. |
The Rise Of The Health Startup? A Peek At The 13 Companies In Rock Health’s Inaugural Batch | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 11 | 14 | There’s been a bit of a debate going on of late among venture capitalists and investors over whether or not web startups are currently experiencing a cash crunch when it comes to early-stage and series A financing. ( .) As per usual, the answer depends on whom you ask. This recent debate contrasts with the data seen in , which showed venture funding and investment levels picking back up in the first half of 2011, poised to storm back to pre-2008-collapse levels. Of course, the data showed that not all tech sectors were experiencing the boom times: Health and medical-related investment, for example, was on the low end, receiving only 3 percent of venture funding over the last year. Yet, there may be some evidence that investment in the digital health space may in fact be heating up. Looking at , we see a list of 41 healthtech startups have been funded in 2011. CrunchBase’s data, which uses slightly more generous paramaters for defining “health tech”, puts that number over 120 or so. Of those startups that were founded this year, Aza Raskin’s raised $2.25 million in seed funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Charles River Ventures, and more. (Well, Massive Health was actually founded in December 2010, but close enough.) And , which was founded this year, raised $2.5 million in seed funding from Founders Fund and Accel in July. What’s more, earlier this week. The personalized health prediction startup was not mentioned in Rock Health’s list, I assume because it is still in private beta. But the point is, as , the healthcare industry is ripe for disruption. Sure, the industry has a long way to go, but we’re seeing some great progress from startups like in the industry. There’s also plenty of room for help in the way of incubators. On Friday, Rock Health, the startup accelerator for health-focused startups, hosted its Demo Day at UCSF Mission Bay, where the 13 startups in its latest class introduced their businesses to 250 attendees, among them investors from Accel, NEA, Khosla Ventures, True Ventures, Benchmark, Kapor Capital, SV Angel, The Social+Capital Partnership, Founders Fund and more. For those unfamiliar, provides seed funding ($20K grants, without taking equity), office space, and mentorship to entrepreneurs that want to break into healthcare. . The thirteen startups that demo-ed range from , which makes motion-sensitive iOS video games for working out; to IDEO-spinoff , an online support group to reverse diabetes; to , a smartphone plugin designed to remotely diagnose ear infections. It was also great to see that these teams included entrepreneurs that have previously worked in other areas of tech and media and are now bringing their talents to health: For example, Gabe Vanrenen, the former Founder and CTO of , Jackson Wilkinson, the former head of UX for Posterous and LinkedIn, to Jeff Lieberman, the host of Discovery Channel’s Time Warp. Again, we covered the initial eight Rock Health startups that were ready to introduce their wares back in June, and . However, five of the startups were not yet ready for the limelight, so we’re providing brief introductions to those below: provides clinicians focused access to the universe of medical evidence at the point of care and within electronic health records, improving quality of care, while reducing costs and risks. thinks you should be using video games to exercise. Their patent pending technology uses an iPad to turn any cardiovascular machine into an interactive
gaming experience. is the best free way to manage your healthcare expenses online. The startup was a finalist at TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco in September. You can read . is a social health network for people with chronic medical conditions to share and learn what treatments work, meet others near them, and track and share their health. is a salesforce.com-like enterprise solution for wellness professionals that aims to empower people to be successful doing what they love. Applications for Rock Health’s next class beginning in January 2012 are open until Wednesday, November 16th. |
Generation Make | Justin Kan | 2,011 | 11 | 14 | In his yesterday, William Deresiewicz calls the Millennial generation, those born roughly between the end of the 70s and the mid-90s, a generation of salesmen. Emotionless, aspiring to be liked by all, because that is what will attract the most customers. “No anger, no edge, no ego.” He got some things right. We have a distrust of large organizations. We don’t look down on people creating small businesses. But we’re not emotionless, that couldn’t be further from the truth. We have anger, which flares up to become the Arab Spring and OccupyWallStreet movements. We have ego, which I see in every entrepreneur who thinks their tech startup is the best thing since sliced bread. We have passion, and an intense drive to follow our passions through, immediately. Our generation is autonomous. It is impatient. We refuse to pay our dues; if we start an entry level job then 6 months later we want to be running the department. We hop from job to job; the average tenure at any job for an American 25 to 34-years-old is just 3 years. We think we can do anything we can imagine, whether it is rise to fame like for our music or launch a new product on , and hate the idea that we should ever be beholden to someone else. We do this because we have been abandoned by the institutions that should have embraced us. The past decade has shown us a massively inefficient government that has spent millions in foreign wars, incapacitated by partisan dogma. Politics are controlled by the old, people who don’t understand technology, a situation which seems immutable. Corporations have turned their backs on us: many of us came to age in the 2008 financial crisis, and even though we were promised that a college education was the key to a blessed life we couldn’t find a job post graduation. So we’re making our own way and making our own jobs. We create our own tech startups, we’re making a living producing videos on Youtube. We’re starting our own non-profits instead of joining stagnant, bureaucratic NGOs. We’re growing and selling our own organic food. We don’t need your jobs, your advice, your instruction. Pretty soon we won’t need your music labels or publishing houses; we’ll be doing it ourselves on iTunes and Amazon. We don’t need you at all, except perhaps as a customer. We’re not salesmen, as Deresiewicz states. Selling is just one part of running a functional enterprise, and not the most important part at that. Our hero Steve Jobs knew that without a great product, selling is useless, and that’s why he cared about the products above all else. His showmanship around them was just a reflection of his passion. Before we’re ever selling anything, we have an idea for it, and that is where our love and emotion is revealed. Unlike previous generations, if we’re on the web or at a store and something we want doesn’t exist, our first thought is not “why?” but simply that maybe we should create it ourselves. This isn’t the first time the Millennial generation has been criticized for what is perceived as shallowness, a lack of connection with others, or just a materialistic nature. David Fincher spent an entire 121 minutes trying to pillory Mark Zuckerberg with a , and all he did was inspire another generation of would-be entrepreneurs. We are a generation of makers. A generation of creators. Maybe we don’t have the global idealism of the hippies. Our idealism is more individual: that every person should be able to live their own life, working on what they choose, creating what they choose. If you want to build a company to change the world, go for it. If you want to be an independent knife maker, what is stopping you? We follow our passions. If we do it as a business, then we can create the ability to support ourselves doing what we love, and with some measure of security and autonomy that no institution is going to grant us. The Millenial path to self-actualization is the individual path, each man to create it for himself. Is that selling out? We’re just doing what you regret not having the balls to do. |
AllTrails Pockets $400K From 500 Startups And More | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 11 | 13 | Part of the , “Yelp for the outdoors” is today announcing a $400K round of seed funding by and . In the same trail review space as Trails.com, AllTrails allows you to review and browse hiking trails based on location, popularity, recency, length and more granular (which is my ) criteria like “dog friendliness.” The company has catalogued 45K outdoor trails in North America and has just come out with an Android app to supplement its iPhone app. “We’re focused on building the largest digital network focused on the outdoors,” founder Russell Cook tells me, “The future means covering the outdoors even more broadly.” Cook is going to use the cash to bolster product development, trying out various interaction and discovery solutions for even more trails. The six person team is run out of the old Squarespace offices in SOMA. |
“Xoom” To Give Way To “XYBoard”? | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 11 | 14 | The Xoom hasn’t been the big hit everyone was hoping for. After an inauspicious debut marked by bugs, a lack of Honeycomb apps, and a non-functioning SD card slot, the big debut tablet from Motorola was quickly superseded by other devices, in some cases cheaper or better Honeycomb tablets, and in others more use-specific devices like the Nook Color. It’s no surprise, then, that the Xoom brand might be getting a revamp. But what happens when the cure is worse than the disease? happens. Yes, it seems that Verizon their Droid-related line of tablets with this moniker, a mishmash of “cyborg” and “board,” with the already questionable X/Z switcheroo of the Xoom. It’s a case of being too clever by half, and I don’t think customers are going to like it. look stylish and powerful, not that those things guarantee sales, and were announced a couple weeks ago as the Xoom 2 and Xoom 2 Media Edition, but it wouldn’t be the first time a device was completely rebranded for certain markets. It’s actually a fairly common practice for some reason. This is all speculation, of course, but hopefully it’s not true. The Xoom may not have been a blockbuster device, but people at least know the name and associate it with tablets and Android. XYBoard is a groaner — let’s hope this report is mistaken. |
Virtual Goods Gaming Marketplace Live Gamer Raises $8.5M | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 11 | 14 | an for players to trade and buy video game virtual goods, has raised in new funding from Charles River Ventures and Kodiak Venture Partners. This brings Live Gamer’s total funding to nearly . Live Gamer’s e-commerce platform powers virtual goods merchandising, analytics, virtual item gifting, support for earned in-game currencies, item storefronts, catalog management, payments gateways, cash-in flows, and more for publishers. Live Gamer has scored a number of other notable partnerships to power micropayments for gaming companies, including a Sony, and Real Networks. The company video game ad network and engagement advertising platform to add advertising capabilities for game publishers. In 2009, the company acquired microtransaction platform and Korean startup N-Cash, a global microtransaction company. |
Quora Gamifies: Credits And “Ask To Answer” Suggestions Live For Everyone | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 11 | 14 | After five months of beta testing, Quora has Quora Credits and “Ask to Answer” User Suggestions live for everyone today. All users can now earn credits for a variety of positive and user engagement-magnifying Quora behaviors like answering questions they’ve been asked to answer, getting votes on answers to questions they’ve solicited through “Ask to Answer” and getting votes on their answers to other questions. Users can also give each other credits, which is awesome and can be managed through the Credit . This is all fine and good, but what exactly does Quora expect you to spend credits on? Especially since you can’t cash them in? Well Quora expects you to “pay” important people to answer your questions obviously. For example, I can earn 45 Credits if I answer the question, An answer from Quora CEO , who is an order of magnitude more important than me, to my question costs a pricey 960 credits. To reinforce this user hierarchy, Quora will now suggest topic experts after you ask questions — For example I was given a host of User Interface expert options like 37Signals Product Manager after I tagged my question “UI.” Users can also now send reasons when they decline a question they’ve been asked to answer and use more credits to ask a question when they feel like upping the ante, two features that have been added since the beta. So is Quora just trying to tack on gamification to see if it’ll stick? Well after using credits for a bit I can definitely say it’s sticky enough. My got 17 solid answers in a period of less than 24 hours, with the Credits and “Ask to Answer” elements definitely creating a positive feedback loop; It seemed like more people wanted to answer because they saw that “influencers” like Quora designer were answering. Says resident Quora power user , “Personally, I love Quora credits. Not because I count them or try to accumulate a bunch…but mainly because when I have a question I’d like a range of opinions on, instead of just hoping someone answers or asking people directly, I can request an answer of a certain finite number of users (who have already written answers in those categories) from my experience, the response rate has been really amazing.” And as we have Quora is still working out the kinks on the whole value proposition thing (not to mention monetizing). I mean what’s more valuable, getting answers or answering? It’s not so cut and dry. Credits is a thorough attempt to quantify the Quora value exchange, so users know (more) exactly where they stand. Sure it’s complicated, but it just might work, especially if it’s an intermediary step in some -esque plan to eventually pay people — with actual money — for their efforts. “We are going to monetize but this launch is focused on getting more good answers for people’s questions,” Quora co-founder tells me, “The results from our credits beta were really promising, so I expect so I expect this will do well and we’ll keep extending and evolving Quora Credits.” |
Why The Collaborative Consumption Revolution Might Be As Significant As The Industrial Revolution (TCTV) | Andrew Keen | 2,011 | 11 | 14 | Everything, it seems, is becoming collaborative. From to to , we are swapping our cars, our homes, even our clothes with each other. According to from , this change might be as profound as the industrial revolution. It will result, she told me when we met at Fast Company’s , in a world driven by “reputational capital” in which the “We” of the our collaborative age will replace the “Me” of the industrial age. While Anderson might be right, I’m not sure it’s such a great thing for people like myself who aren’t naturally participatory. Indeed, I find the whole idea of an always-on reputational economy a little creepy – especially since this may not be a world that is able to either forgot or forgive. But Anderson isn’t bothered by oddities like myself, insisting that “everybody benefits” in this networked, sharing economy. So is Anderson right – is this shift from the Me to the We as significant as the industrial revolution? And should we welcome this revolution with, so to speak, open arms? |
Google Open Sources Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 11 | 14 | The code for the latest version of Android — 4.0, also known as Ice Cream Sandwich — is now in the wild. According to from Jean-Baptiste M. “JBQ” Queru, a software engineer on the Android Open Source Project, the code is still in the process of being uploaded, and developers are advised to wait til it’s fully complete before they start downloading it themselves. But it’ll be available very soon. This is a huge deal for a few reasons. For one, Android 4.0 includes some major improvements over both Gingerbread and Honeycomb, which are the versions of Android that are shipping on current Android devices. These include new API calls, performance improvements, and more. But more important: it’s the first time Google has open-sourced a version of Android that’s optimized for tablets as well as phones. Now, obviously devices running Android 3.x Honeycomb have been around since early this year. But Google opted not to release the source code for Honeycomb. The reason? It had been thrown together quickly, and Google had to take some shortcuts to get it out the door (they were also concerned that third parties would try to port Honeycomb back to phones, which it isn’t suited for). The open sourcing of ICS will allow manufacturers who aren’t working directly with Google to pump out tablets of their own (there are some low-cost tablet devices out there shipping with Gingerbread, simply because they couldn’t use Honeycomb). And it also means that custom ROM developers like CyanogenMod can tweak the code, port it to older devices, and more. A couple of other interesting notes: the version of ICS that’s being open sourced is 4.0.1, and developers can download an image of the Galaxy Nexus, which has the build target full_maguro. Oh, and if you want to look at the Honeycomb source, it’s in there too (since it is an ancestor to Ice Cream Sandwich). But Google is discouraging anyone from actually using it. |
Bag Week Review: The Incase Alloy Series Compact Backpack | Jordan Crook | 2,011 | 11 | 14 |
Happy Bag Week everyone, and please kindly meet the Incase Alloy Series Compact Backpack. I’ve been reviewing this bag for a while now, and I have to say I much prefer it to anything I actually own. I’ll be sad to see it go. However, it happens to look like some sort of space pack you’d see in Battlestar Galactica with its metallic finish, so it’s definitely a love-it-or-hate-it design. Aside from the silver metallic finish (that you can’t help but notice), the backpack itself is pretty plain with no extra bells or whistles. Size-wise it was everything I could ask for. Compact enough to be comfortable and look like it actually fits my body, but big enough to fit most everything I’d need for a day on the job or at play. It fits up to a 15″ MacBook Pro, and still leaves plenty of extra space for an iPad, camera, change of clothes, or whatever else it is you tote around day to day. Made of nylon, the Compact Backpack (it doesn’t have a cool name like the ) is super light, which made it that much easier to pack it full of gadgets. Thanks to breathable mesh padding along the shoulder straps, back, and top-loading handle, this Alloy series pack was super comfortable for all-day use.
Accessibility, on the other hand, wasn’t such a breeze. To start, the Compact Backpack has more than enough pockets, one of which is severely misplaced. Incase included a dedicated iPhone/iPod pocket square in the middle of the top of the backpack. The problem is that an iPod or iPhone is something you get out and use frequently in your travels, but you literally have to take the backpack off and hold it in front of you to effectively get anything out of that pocket. Another case of the bright idea gone awry. A bevy of other pockets await you with the Alloy Compact Backpack, including a faux fur-lined laptop sleeve, a secondary iPad/journal sleeve, that dedicated (poorly placed) iPod pocket, a wallet-sized pocket on the lower portion of the left strap, a small pocket on the front, and an internal pouch for pens and such. In fact, only one pocket is missing, though it may not be missed by everyone. I tend to walk or take the train everywhere (which means no cup holders), which means I really appreciate a water bottle pocket. Granted, adding one would probably invalidate the whole “Compact” bit, but it was still dearly missed.
Anyone who wishes they were in any syfy series set in space. Anyone looking for a light, spacious primary bag that doesn’t necessarily go with everything (but you can’t see it when you’re wearing it so who cares, right?). Anyone who puts comfort and durability before style, or conversely anyone who has very, um, style.
The tell-tale question, no doubt, and one which I don’t have a very clear answer to. The truth is I use this bag , and get compliments on it all the time. It does what I need it to (save for store my bottled water), and is pretty comfortable, too. But that one pocket up top (for your never-to-be-accessed iPod) really irks me. I’d say 85 percent of me wants it, and the other 15 percent thinks I can do better. [slideshow] |
Watch An iPad Survive A 1300 Foot Drop | Matt Burns | 2,011 | 11 | 14 | Here’s your daily dose of viral marketing courteous of . These guys make device cases that can seemingly survive anything — including in a drop and taking . The company took two iPads skydiving, started playing back a movie and then when at 1300 feet, let them go, protected only by their and cases. Both survived as if they landed into a pool of silicon implants. Awesome. |
Battery Breakthrough Could Improve Capacity And Reduce Charge Time By A Factor Of Ten Each | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 11 | 14 | It’s no secret that batteries are holding back mobile technology. It’s nothing against the battery companies, which are surely dedicating quite a lot of R&D to improving their technology, hoping to be the first out of the gate with a vastly improved AA or rechargeable device battery. But battery density has been improving very slowly over the last few years, and advances have had to be in processor and display efficiency, in order to better use that limited store of power. claim to have created an improved lithium ion battery that not only would hold ten times as much energy, but would charge ten times as quickly. It’s probably safe to call it a breakthrough. Inside Li-ion batteries, there are innumerable layers of graphene, a one-atom-thick sheet of carbon atoms. Lithium ions fill the spaces between these layers, and when the battery is being charged, these atoms must creep their way physically to the edge of the sheet in order to get down to the next layer and make room for more ions. The rate of recharge is limited by how fast these ions can go from layer to layer. One solution tried before was replacing the carbon sheets with silicon, which for some chemical reason can hold many times the lithium ions — but the silicon would expand and contract with the charge cycles, quickly breaking. Professor Harold Kung, researcher at NU and lead author of the paper (published this month in the journal ), has discovered not just one, but two techniques for improving this charge process. His lab decided to combine the strengths of both materials, carbon and silicon, by populating the area between the graphene sheets with silicon nanoclusters. These little clusters greatly increase the amount of ions that can be kept in the battery, and because they are small and the graphene is flexible, their size changes are manageable. Thus, the charge capacity of the battery was improved by, Kung says, a factor of ten. But that’s not all. Kung’s lab also thought of perforating the graphene sheets, allowing ions to take a “shortcut” to the next layer. They call these 10-20nm holes “in-plane defects,” and they essentially rust them out. The result? Charging is ten times faster. A possible downside is a faster degradation process; after 150 charges and discharges, the batteries showed only a 5x improvement to capacity and charge speed. Of course, those 150 charges would be the energy equivalent of 1500 charges of today’s batteries. Naturally this huge leap in battery power and efficiency won’t be in your phones next week; they estimate they could be on the market in three to five years — cold comfort to iPhone 4S owners who are only getting seven or eight hours of on time. But the process is changed enough that existing manufacturing techniques are likely insufficient. The full paper, , . |
Salesforce Acquires Social And Mobile Cloud Computing Consultancy Model Metrics | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 11 | 14 | Salesforce.com has the acquisition of cloud computing services startup Financial terms of the deal, which is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2011, have not been disclosed. Model Metrics consulting firm that helps enterprise organizations accelerate the adoption of cloud computing. Specifically, Model Metrics focuses on helping companies adopt mobile and call center technologies, social enterprise solutions, business processes and more. In fact, Model Metrics has completed 1,000+ Salesforce deployments for mid-sized and Fortune 1000 companies. The company also helps businesses create custom mobile solutions for iPad and Android. Founded in 2003 and based in Chicago, Model Metrics, which has raised $6.5 million in funding, has partnered with Salesforce, Amazon Web Services, Adobe, Apple, and Google. Clients include Abbott, Boeing, Chicago Mercantile Exchange, L’Oreal, Morgan Stanley, and NBC Universal. Salesforce says that the addition of Model Metrics will “empower partners to develop their social enterprise practice.” The CRM giant’s strategic services team will have more mobile and social capabilities with Model Metrics. Recent Salesforce acquisitions include , and |
The Death Of The Spec | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 11 | 14 | Earlier today, my colleague Matt Burns noting that most tablet makers may be largely failing because they’ve sold their soul to Android and are now just in the middle of a spec war, which no one can win. I’m gonna go one step further in that line of thinking: the spec is dead. There have been a few key stories from the past couple of weeks that highlight this new reality. Barnes & Noble unveiled . Consumer Reports . And came in about the Kindle Fire. On paper, the Nook Tablet is the Android-based reading tablet to buy. It has twice the RAM of the Kindle Fire, twice the built-in storage space, a better battery, and it’s lighter to boot. Yes, it’s $50 more expensive, but come on, the RAM difference alone is worth well more than that. Clearly, this is the better value for your money. And yet, the Nook Tablet will not outsell the Kindle Fire. That’s the thing: “on paper” doesn’t matter anymore. What matters is that the Kindle Fire comes with Amazon’s content ecosystem attached to it. Perhaps more importantly, it will be peddled like no other on the all-important Amazon.com homepage. The specs are secondary in this race at best. The reality is that they will be an afterthought. Or again, the Nook would win. Next up, Consumer Reports’ take on the iPhone 4S. Hey, this time, they actually like it! , because as everyone saw the last time around, their damning report really hurt iPhone 4 sales — to the tune of all-time record sales of the device, leading Apple to their most profitable year ever. More on that in a second. First, it’s important to note that while Consumer Reports liked the device, they didn’t like it as much as a few other Android devices. Why? Specs. last week already, but the thing reads like a bad joke. For example, they love the LG Thrill’s ability to capture stills and videos in 3D. This is one step short of knocking the iPhone 4S because it doesn’t have frickin’ laser beams mounted on the top of the device. And such comparisons show just how clueless Consumer Reports has become. Last year, they “Antennagate” for the pageviews, not realizing that it could actually undermine their own credibility if the device still sold well. “Sold well” ended up being a major understatement. So in effect, they themselves highlighted that no one cares about Consumer Reports anymore. And why not? Because they Consumer Reports largely cares about specs. And consumers do not anymore. The NPD Group just released . The number one selling smartphone last quarter was the iPhone 4. The over-a-year-old phone which Consumer Reports refused to endorse over a year ago, remember. Meanwhile, the number two phone for the quarter? The two-year-old iPhone 3GS. Does anyone really think that the LG Thrill is going to outsell the iPhone 4S this quarter? What about the Motorola Droid Bionic? Maybe the Samsung Galaxy S II? Consumer Reports now matters just as much as specs do. Which is to say, not at all. Finally, we have the Kindle Fire. This is likely to be the final nail in the coffin for the spec. By pretty much all accounts, this is a cheaply-built device. Spec-wise, it’s pretty ho-hum. But it’s a cheaply-built device that comes at a cheap price. That matters more — especially when paired with Amazon.com, as I previously mentioned. The Kindle Fire outselling the Nook Tablet, even though the latter wins the spec argument, will be one thing. But if sales compete with the gold standard of tablets, the iPad, that will really be something. So far, no other tablet device has come close to remotely competing with the iPad. The Kindle Fire should. They’re clearly different devices — the iPad is a much larger form factor and a price that is more than double the Kindle Fire — but I have no doubt that for many people, the Kindle Fire will be a good enough tablet that they’ll at least wait on an iPad 3 (or iPad 2 HD, or whatever it will be called). That’s a key thought: “good enough”. None of the initial reviews say that the Kindle Fire is better than the iPad — because it isn’t. It can’t match Apple’s product in either specs or polish. But it is $199 versus $499. That matters far more than any spec. You’re paying for something that’s perhaps half as good as the iPad, but it’s less than half of the cost. There’s at least perceived value there. And “good enough” also speaks to where we’re at in the broader computing world. I used to get excited for Sunday inserts in the local paper so I could see what new machines were available at Best Buy, Circuit City, or CompUSA. The only thing I cared about were the specs. Which Intel chip did it have? What was the clock speed? How much RAM? How big was the hard drive? How fast was the CD burner? How much cache? Those things mattered. Then three things happened. First, computers kept going more mainstream — the above listed specs look like gibberish to most people. Second, the web took over and most computers quickly became more than fast enough for the majority of users. Specs became a thing that PC gamers cared about. This contributed to the rebirth of the Mac, because it was never much of a gaming machine throughout the years — especially in the PowerPC years when it was getting smoked by Intel chips (which Apple, of course, eventually adopted). And third, buoyed by the first two things, new platforms arose. During the PC years, specs also mattered because there was one common dominant force in computing: Microsoft. Because Windows was everywhere, you could fairly reliably gauge the performance of one machine against another. But with the rise of the Mac and more importantly, smartphones and tablets, you can’t as easily stack machines up against one another performance-wise. My MacBook Air doesn’t have the specs of a brand new HP PC laptop — but it still faster. Maybe it’s OS X, or maybe it’s the solid state drive. Point is, consumers don’t and shouldn’t care. They care about which machine will boot faster and which will be easier to navigate. Time to web matters. And now connected ecosystems matter more than specs. This again helps Apple and Amazon. Does the machine seamlessly integrate with the iTunes ecosystem? Does it have access to the App Store? Can it access the Kindle Bookstore or Amazon’s streaming video service? We’re starting to see backlash against reviews of products that just do spec-by-spec rundown. Because really, who cares how the device on paper? It’s how it that matters. Is the Kindle Fire smooth? Is the Nook Tablet fast? Is the iPad a joy to use? Drew Breunig spoke to these things last week in a post entitled “ “. Dustin Curtis put this more succinctly in two tweets last night: https://twitter.com/#!/dcurtis/status/135990954099343360 https://twitter.com/#!/dcurtis/status/135991249416093696 I agree. Why base reviews around specs when specs don’t matter? You could certainly argue that Apple is the company which has ushered in this post-spec era. They’ve flourished in recent years despite (and maybe because of) being cagey with most spec information on their newer devices. Does the iPhone 4S have 512 MB or RAM or 1 GB? Apple refuses to say. But who cares? It’s the iPhone yet. (It’s 512 MB, for the record.) Apple is more traditional with the Mac when it comes to specs (undoubtedly due to legacy), but they still mostly bury that information. Whereas PC sites often trumpet the processor and other specs on the main landing page for their products ( ), Apple instead on natural language descriptions: “The new, faster Macbook Air”. But the post-spec era works both ways. If the iPad specs don’t matter when going up against the Motorola Xoom, they also don’t matter when going up against the Kindle Fire. What matters is how the device performs, the ecosystem, and the price. In other words, the way you compete in computing now is to do so by focusing on things that human beings understand. On things that matter. |
Even Your Mom Knows What A Meme Is Thanks To “Casually Pepper Spraying Cop” | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 11 | 22 | A testament to how fast we are consuming culture these days, it only took ~72 hours for the UC Davis Photoshop meme to go from Reddit thread to CNN, with officer John Pike is in all his pepper spraying glory spraying “everyone from Santa to Jesus” on a segment for the international news channel. Reports CNN’s Jeanne Moos, “He’s become what’s called a meme, an idea reproducing across the web, even spraying another Internet meme (!), The Keyboard Cat.”
[gigya src=”http://www.sbs.com.au/vod/theplatform/core/4_4_3/swf/flvPlayer.swf” width=”640″ height=”396″ type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” allowFullScreen=”true” bgcolor=”#131313″ flashvars=”id=player&skinurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sbs.com.au%2Fvod%2Ftheplatform%2Fcore%2F4_4_3%2Fswf%2FskinGlass.swf&usebootloader=true&autoplay=false&backgroundcolor=0x131313&controlbackgroundcolor=0x131313&controlcolor=0xBEBEBE&controlframecolor=0x545759&controlhovercolor=0xBEBEBE&controlselectedcolor=0xFDDA00&framecolor=0x545759&loadprogresscolor=0xD6D6D4&pagebackgroundcolor=0x131313&playprogresscolor=0xFDDA00&scrubtrackcolor=0xBEBEBE&scrubbercolor=0xFDDA00&scrubberframecolor=0x00CCFF&textbackgroundcolor=0x383838&textcolor=0xBEBEBE&allowfullscreen=true&supportedmedia=mpeg4%2Cf4m%2Cflv%2Cm3u%2Cogg%2Cwebm%2Cmpeg%2Cqt%2C3gpp%2Cism%2Cwm%2C3gpp2%2Caac%2Casx%2Cavi%2Cmove%2Cmp3&loglevel=none&plugin0=type%3Dadcomponent%7CURL%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.sbs.com.au%2Fvod%2Ftheplatform%2Fcore%2F4_4_3%2Fswf%2Fvast.swf%7Cpriority%3D2%7Chosts%3Dad.au.doubleclick.net%7CmimeTypes%3Dvideo%2Fx-mp4%2Cvideo%2Fx-flv&plugin1=type%3Dadcomponent%7CURL%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.sbs.com.au%2Fvod%2Ftheplatform%2Fcore%2F4_4_3%2Fswf%2FinStream.swf%7Cpriority%3D1%7Chost%3Dad.au.doubleclick.net&plugin2=type%3Dtracking%7CURL%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fsecure-au.imrworldwide.com%2Fnovms%2Ftp%2F3%2Fggtp380.swf%7Cclientid%3Dau-202705%7Cvcid%3Db01%7Cprod%3Dsc%7Csfcode%3Dau&playerurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sbs.com.au%2Fnews%2Fvideo%2F2170012653%2F%7Btitle%7D&previewimageblurthreshold=0&emailserviceurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sbs.com.au%2Fvod%2Ftheplatform%2Fmail.php&embeddedplayerhtml=%3Ciframe+src%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sbs.com.au%2Fnews%2Fvideo%2Fsingle%2F2170012653%2F%7Btitle%7D%22+width%3D%22640%22+height%3D%22396%22+type%3D%22application%2Fx-shockwave-flash%22+allowFullScreen%3D%22true%22+bgcolor%3D%22%23131313%22+%2F%3E&layouturl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sbs.com.au%2Fvod%2Ftheplatform%2Fdata%2Fsbs%2FdefaultLayout.xml&videoscalingmethod=stretch&endcard=tpShareCard&sharingsiteids=facebook%2Ctwitter%2Creddit%2Cdigg&releaseurl=http%3A%2F%2Flink.theplatform.com%2Fs%2FdYtmxB%2FugFDd_pbRaXS7ptLzLE3Z9_jtRRhkO9X%3Ffeed%3DVideo%2520-%2520Single%26mbr%3Dtrue%26policy%3D5768%26dfptag%3Dvideo.naca.sbs.com.au%252F%253Btype%253Dpreroll%253Bsz%253D530x298%253B%26ord%3D5859768&width=640&height=396″] While you’ve probably seen Pike wield his spray at everything from Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” to a baby seal all over the Facebooks and the Twitters, the meme actually started as out another meme, “ ,” super-imposed on an Occupy protest photo. It was then brilliantly extrapolated to incorporating Pike’s image in the Trumbull painting . And so on and so forth. Like most memes before him, Pike’s got a and spin-off memes, namely of Fox newscaster Megyn Kelly calling pepper spray “Essentially a food product.” (Moos’ take, “Kelly would probably like to eat her words, a long as they aren’t seasoned with pepper spray!”). The meme has spiraled out into hundreds of joke reviews of the Pike used on Amazon, a robust filled with all the images and image macros and a Hitler where Hitler is angry about how little time it took Pike to become a meme. It even made CNN which, in a world where I just saw , isn’t that surprising (Note: I sat there dumbfounded while my stepmom didn’t seem to notice anything was amiss, probably because she was lucky enough to have never seen the original ). But that soon may change. In a soliloquy in the timbre of , Moos gives it her all in the above video, “Pepper spray is being aimed at old people and The Village People, it’s even being aimed up Marilyn Monroe’s dress. Anyone care to give thanks to pepper spray on ‘Turkey Day’?” Odds are good that at least some of you will be talking about Pike’s spray antics at your family dinner table.
|
Think Klout Is For Suckers? Flout.me Wants You To Set Your Own Social Influence Score. | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 11 | 22 | Some people love , while others are in doubt. But, the fact of the matter is that, in the end, all this talking about Klout is … good for Klout. Apparently, . At the very least, when it comes to social media influence and reputation, Klout is hard to ignore. Even if, like Alexia, one believes that . Well, thanks to legwork and research, we bring you another solution. Enter the snark-ily named , founded by Pat Nakajima and Anoop Ranganath. In the duo’s own words: Yes. If you find yourself less than desperate to share just how influential you are on social networks and you’re sick of all the social media grandstanding that’s become a byproduct of Web 2.0, look no further. Flout.me allows you to give yourself your true score, whether that’s 9000+, 6, or -31. Right now I, personally, am feeling about -34. But tomorrow’s a new day. As Josh said (and I find myself in agreement), Klout is currently working in overdrive to become the method by which we measure influence on the Web. Some might say that we don’t really need a decimal-style ranking system to intuit influence. Robert Scoble really just needs Google+, for example. Of course, one day in the future, Klout may just become that thoroughly useful tool with accurate and deep diagnostics, but until then, Flout.me may just provide that viable alternative we’ve been waiting for. In the meantime, I’m going to get busy designing a way to convert Klout scores into virtual currency so that we can trade those scores on an open, free Klout market. (In an update, it looks like a startup named is taking a touch of my advice, with a focus on startups. Check it out. Kinda cool.) But, for now, go ahead. Set your social influence score with Flout.me and flaunt it. Because, after all, rules are made to be flouted. For more on Klout-related news, here’s and Sarah’s post on . https://twitter.com/#!/jkcallas/status/139168229506547712 |
Tired Of Facebook? Try Facedrink Energy Shot Before Zuck Sues | Josh Constine | 2,011 | 11 | 22 | “It gives you social energy. It gives you taste of friendship.” It’s ! And you better go buy some because it will be sued out of existence any minute now. Following in the footsteps of the unofficial Mark Zuckerberg action figure, some dude named Barry Moustapha (ROFLCOPTER) has created a lawyer-magnet energy drink. It’s themed with Facebook colors and proudly displays an “Add as Friend” button on the label. I’d be suspicious this was a hoax, but there’s a photo of a real bottle and reviewers confirm it leave a worse taste in your mouth than getting Poked by your dad. The gloriously named Barry Moustapha trumpets “Facedrink achieves the goal that I set out for by providing you with the extra energy needed to be social or to deal with your boss.” seem to disagree, though: “All my friends drank it up, and it starting to feel odd being the only person in line (besides my friend Tom) who was buying MyDrink anymore…Over time, I think I got too comfortable with it. I started drinking it with my parents, my boss, people I hadn’t seen since high school. Being too casual with FaceDrink eventually lead me to make some comments regarding my cousin possibly being gay, and my boss being a dick and since then I’ve cut back on who I drink it with. I should just quit it all together, but I might have a mild addiction at this point.” Facedrink will make a great holiday gift, and an even better collectors item as there’s no way Moustapha’s getting away with this. Facebook successfully specifically to prevent this kind of exploitation of its name. But I think there might be an amicable way to settle this. Facebook, acquire Facedrink, and promptly move their operations into the cafeteria of your swanky new Menlo Park headquarters. After all, “ |
How to pick up the best deals on the App Store (Friday's download day) | vaughn597 | 2,011 | 11 | 22 | If you’ve ever wondered when to pick up the best deals on the App Store, here are some clues for you. and teamed up and released new research into the UK mobile market, finding out what types of iOS apps are the most popular in the UK and how their prices fluctuate within one week. In their ongoing collaboration with “bargain guide” AppZap mobile ad network madvertise now published their so-called “ ”, examining developments in the day-to-day use of mobile apps. It’s worth reading if you’re an advertiser or app developer looking for an update on the market you’re dealing with, but also bears some useful information for the avid app downloader. For instance, don’t shop on Thursdays. A 17.90% rise in price for iPad apps and a similar 17.36% increase for iPhone apps is the rule. It’s also the day where most new apps are added to the store. On Fridays however prices are lowered by a total of 19.58% for the iPad and 18.00% for the iPhone – definitely the best day to go app hunting. The Games category is the most popular for iOS in the UK, although only just under two fifths of the whopping 57,215 gaming apps are free. Here are the Top 5 app categories as identified by madvertise and App Zap: For the iPhone:
• Games (15.9%)
• Books (11.81%)
• Entertainment (11.12%)
• Education (8.48%)
• Lifestyle (7.56%) For the iPad it’s a similar story:
• Games (18.21%)
• Books (15.9%)
• Education (12.71%)
• Entertainment (8.31%)
• Lifestyle (7.19%) The cheapest app category in the UK is Lifestyle, averaging at 50 pence for essentials on our phones like cookbook or setup wizard. If you want to sell your app for more the Health category is the way to go, where the average cost is about three pounds in the case of the iPhone and more than seven pounds for the iPad. Berlin-headquartered startup madvertise was founded in 2008 by Carsten Frien, Pan Katsukis, Thomas Hille, Martin Karlsch and Team Europe. It currently employs a team of 50 with offices in Berlin, Hamburg, London, Barcelona, Madrid and Milan. |
AAXA’s P4 Pico Projector Puts 80 Lumens In Your Palm | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 11 | 22 | I’ve gotten to review a few pico projectors, but haven’t had the opportunity to test one from AAXA. , looks like it could stand up to my favorite so far, the . As 3M did with that device, AAXA sacrifices smallness for brightness, and ends up beating the competition by some margin. At 80 lumens, the P4 is more than twice as bright as the MP160. That’s still nothing compared to normal stationary projectors, which can produce thousands of lumens, but 80 is more than enough for a nice big screen in a reasonably dim room. Battery life is a reasonable 75 minutes, which is enough for a presentation or a TV show or two, but no good if you want to watch a movie with your sweetheart out in the woods (or something, I don’t know). The resolution is 1280×800, though, which is better than any other pico projector I know of, and the 750MHz processor should chew through most SD video files, though I doubt it can handle highly compressed 720p; you should probably use an external source for that. Interestingly, it runs Windows CE apps, not that those are especially common, but it may make a laptop unnecessary if you’re just showing a few graphs or slides. Hopefully we’ll get our hands on one of these to review. At $399 (on sale for $339 at the moment) it’s not quite an impulse buy, but it is probably the best one of these devices, spec-wise, on the market right now. [via ] |
Siri Cracked Open, Theoretically Opening It Up To Other Devices (Or Even Android!) | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 11 | 14 | Serving as a stark reminder that there are people on the Internet who are way, too damned clever, the guys over at the iPhone design/development house claim to have cracked open Siri to take an unsanctioned look at its ( ) inner workings. In a rare (but quite welcome. I mean, by us. Probably not by Apple) move, they’ve gone on to do a rather detailed debriefing of how they got through. So, what does this mean to you? , it means that support for Apple’s voice-powered portable assistant could be hacked not only onto devices like the iPhone 4, but to anything from laptops to Android phones as well. As the italics on “theoretically” imply, though, there’s a bit of a catch. The catch: in the end, attempting to communicate with Siri’s backend needs to have a valid iPhone 4S identification string, unique to each 4S. In one-off experiments like this one, spoofing that string with one pulled from an actual 4S is somewhat simple — Apple wouldn’t (/couldn’t) ever really notice. If someone were to hack together an Android app and distribute it, though, the massive influx of requests all originating from the same unique ID would almost certainly trigger a blacklisting. Unless the app had a massive pool of authentic unique IDs to rotate through, the fishy activity would be pretty easy to discern. I’d highly recommend reading of the process, but here’s the tl;dr breakdown: With that process done, Applidium attempted to talk to Siri without any iPhone 4S in the equation. Their first challenge? Speech-to-text from a laptop running a custom script. Sure enough: it worked. Siri chewed through the sound file (a recording of them saying “autonomous demo of Siri”), didn’t bat an eye (as their tool was using their iPhone 4S’ actual unique ID), and returned a mountain of data detailing what Siri heard and how sure it was about each word. Incredible. The Applidium guys have provided a few tools for others to recreate their steps — but, as it currently stands, there’s not much that can be done to take this beyond a rather cool proof-of-concept. |
50% Of Ecommerce Site Visitors Are Logged In To Facebook | Josh Constine | 2,011 | 11 | 22 | Ecommerce sites should consider how they can personalize their sites using Facebook data, as a new study shows 50% of visitors to ecommerce sites are currently logged in to Facebook. Using Facebook social plugins and Connect integrations, sites can leverage Facebook data to show visitors what friends bought or shared, what products relate to their Likes, and which friends they might want to invite. The study was conducted by , which helps websites implement social functionality, and looked at 456 million visits to over a dozen ecommerce sites catering to different demographics. A Facebook spokesperson confirmed that ecommerce sites are increasingly adding social features. She shared with us a new statistic: 88% of Internet Retailer Top 200 retail sites are integrated with Facebook. Sociable Labs’ founder and CEO Nisan Gabbay explained that the target age market for an ecommerce site has surprisingly little influence on the percentage of visitors that were logged in to Facebook. Those aimed at college students were closer to 60%, but even those with middle aged saw at least 40% of visitors logged in. The data was collected using the FB.getLoginStatus() API call from sites of customers. Gabbay tells me that while some of the studied sites attract early adopters, he has discussed the data with Facebook and the company validated it. Also, despite the fact that his company could benefit from more sites adopting social, the sample size is large enough to decrease the likelihood of bias. “People look at Facebook’s active user count but don’t quite get how pervasive the service is in people’s lives. It’s there all the time in any activity they do online”, Gabbay says. The stats indicate that there may be less risk of sites offending non-Facebook users by adding social functionality than one might expect, because there just aren’t that many hold-outs any more. There’s also technical ways to detect if a user is logged in, and hide those big blue social plugins if they’re not. As we enter the holiday season, there will be a critical mass of shoppers taking actions on ecommerce sites. Those willing to develop or license Facebook integrations can use social data to point visitors to the products most relevant to them. This can produce a lot more sales than leaving visitors them to browse aimlessly. |
The DADapp private social network re-launches on Mac – But does it have legs? | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 11 | 22 | With people becoming ever more confused about exactly how private their interactions are on social networks – especially Facebook – it seems there is a wider market opening up for private social networks where sharing is more explicitly hidden between groups you consciously choose. Take Path for instance. To that end the slightly oddly named , a new private social network re-launches today. We . Is the re-launch any better? Some 18 months in development, the new DADapp is based on desktop software you download which then networks with devices (so long as they have an email address attached to them) and connects with other DADapp users you approve of. DADapp can be downloaded free onto your PC or Mac and it then gets started listing photos, videos, music and documents into a navigable and searchable catalog, without moving them from their original location. This catalog can be shared with other DADapp users (multi-user packs are available), but no actual media will be shared until you say so. Some 3rd party add-ons already in the pipeline, they say. After downloading the software you sign up for a free trial, get a licence code on email (how quaint!) and then the DADapp requests you scan files in your user folder you might want to share – although you can skip this process. It’s at this point I wasn’t keen on some software I wasn’t familiar with scanning my folders. You can set up the software on other computers in your household on the network and they will also appear on the DADapp software. You then can access all documents, images, music and video. The software syncs between anyone on your network. So far so good. Now, from my perspective, as someone who views really good looking looking web and mobile apps all the time, this isn’t very exciting. It feels a little like software from another era. However, there may well be people – especially families – out there who would appreciate this approach. Would this replace something like Dropbox? Maybe – it’s more visual in representation and probably more accessible to a mainstream audience. Has it got the same traction? No, in a word. It’s also take a year to re-launch itself. However, Julian Ranger, founder of DADapp, insists: “Many bloggers and commentators have voiced concern only recently that privacy continues to be compromised. We’re offering a genuine alternative for times when you need to be more careful about what you’re sharing, such as sensitive work documents, or family photos. It’s your stuff after all, so why not keep it that way?” has been an angel investor since 2007 and an entrepreneur since he formed his first business – STASYS – which was sold to selling it to Lockheed Martin in 2005. You can grab the software before 16th January 2012 and you’ll get 5 year licence to friends and family that you invite between now and the end of this year. After January, the trial will last for one month, and then DADapp will cost £4.99 or less per computer for a year. A free ‘lite’ version is also available, offering core functionality. My main general concern is that DADapp feels more like it should be a tablet app if it’s really going to go mainstream here. With so many of hour photos already on Facebook etc, there surely we need a way for our existing close-based content to be made private? Unfortunately, after a year in operation and still no user figures released, I’m not sure how long DADapp will be around in this form. Especially with that name. |
Streaming Music Companies: If The Artists Are Starving, Look To The Labels | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 11 | 22 | The distributive potential of the internet has done its part in disrupting the music industry, most visibly via iTunes. But iTunes was always a sort of simulacrum of a record store. Its icon was even a CD. They were providing, like Amazon, a digital abstraction of a physical store. Where would we be if computers were just digital abstractions of desks full of paper? They were, of course, for a short time, but since then the potential of the home PC has pushed it further and further from the simple desk analogy. Why shouldn’t it be the same in music? Many readers of this site are already happily signing up for the new music-streaming services of the net, but much of the world, including the music industry, is lagging far behind and blaming the new services when monetization doesn’t work how they expect. The streamers have responded: Hey, don’t look at us. There are two simple misunderstandings, it seems. One is why the labels are getting any sympathy at all. They agreed to a licensing agreement, after all. And a proportionate amount of income is diverted to each label. That seems like a reasonable proposition, and it must have seemed so to the labels, which not only own part of the streaming companies but must have negotiated the terms. Why is it they get to cry about it now? Did they not understand the concept of streaming music? It’s possible, actually, that the streaming music services are simply priced too low. $10, $15, $20 per month for unlimited music is a great deal. Should a service like this be a great deal, or should it be “fair”? After all, $0.99 per song wasn’t that revolutionary. Albums cost $12-18 and pricing ended up comparable. The fact that you could buy things song by song changed a lot, but as far as pricing went, it wasn’t actually a bargain. The improvement was in convenience. But the streamers can’t just start jacking up prices. They’ve set a precedent with this $10 level, and the market likes it. Why wouldn’t they? But it doesn’t strike me as price-equivalent to what we’ve been paying, more or less, for years and years. Sure, prices change. But why they change is a complicated question with many moving parts, and I’m not entirely convinced that $10 for unlimited streaming is a price point that can be maintained. Relevant to this is the second misunderstanding, which is . Comparisons between income from album sales and income from streaming just don’t make sense. In a way, people are paying for nothing, because at the end of the month, if their subscription lapses, they have nothing to show for it. The labels and Spotify have something to show for it, though, and haven’t in fact given anything away. And people pay again and again for the same content. If I listen to a song this month and then again next month, I’ve paid twice, haven’t I? Or have I? The economics and philosophy of providing streams needs to be settled at an open table so everybody knows what they’re talking about, and things like Lady Gaga’s ridiculous allegations of microscopic payouts can be avoided. But at the same time, it’s hard to deny that smaller bands, whose sales came largely from iTunes and low-overhead small-scale record sales, are going to be left out in the cold. Should they just tour more? Or should they be pushing for a different, more lucrative licensing agreement? Good luck without major-label clout. The entire cost of producing music, in fact, needs to be reassessed honestly and openly. The basic price of goods has to do with the cost of producing those goods, and we’re using old numbers. How much would bananas cost if you didn’t have to pay for transport? A lot less, I’m guessing. How much less should music cost now that the costs involved in production have gone down enormously, and the costs of manufacturing and distribution have been, theoretically, almost totally eliminated? Again, probably a lot less. Getting an honest assessment isn’t going to be easy. The RIAA isn’t exactly forthright on these matters, and naturally has an interest in keeping the perceived value of their product high. In the end, progress always ends up being a net opportunity, which is a nice way of saying that losses in ability or value may occur. The improvement caused by the internet has put thousands of retail and factory employees in the music industry out of work. The RIAA isn’t immune to the same action, the contraction of part of its market, and the sooner it acknowledges this and plans for the future, the better. |
Under-funded but plucky Keynoir sold to Time Out after CEO departs | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 11 | 22 | Groupon clone launched only last year, describing itself as a “private buying club meets “, although in time it simply looked like much of the other Groupon clones, even as its offers centred on a well-off audience. It secured a significant £1.3m of investment from PROFounders Capital and Index Ventures (including Dominique Vidal). Serial entrepreneurs Paul Birch and Andrej Henkler participated. It even had a stellar launch team in Philip Wilkinson (founder of the UK’s first price comparison engine which later became Kelkoo), Glen Drury (ex-MD Kelkoo Europe and VP Yahoo), and Jan Riem. It launched in London and had plans to expand across the rest of the UK and Europe by the end of 2010. None of that happened. Just over a year later, it’s now been sold off to city media empire Time Out Magazine. Terms were not disclosed but it seems likely the sale was 2-3 times it’s initial funding round – not a stellar exit, but one that has to be taken in the context of larger, better funded competitors. Although it built a differentiated position (high-end, handcrafted, with higher than average basket size), a loyal customer base and relationships with many top end-merchants, it never raised as much capital as Living Social, Groupon and therefore has been a “slower grower”. With Keynoir, users were supposed to will buy lifestyle experiences (such as hotels, restaurant bookings and spa days) and more “unusual and secret things”. One offer a day with a limited time window and limited quantity of offers was supposed to drive adoption. Not everyone who arrived at the site was supposed to become a member, keeping it exclusive. At launch, backer Brent Hoberman called it the start of a “a new generation of social buying which will effectively connect the offline and online worlds.” But we heard a few weeks ago that a sale might be on the cards. My sources tells me Keynoir it wash’t quite the smash hit the owners had hoped it would be. Sean Seton Rogers, of PRO Founders Capital told me: “Well yes, it never got to that level (rest of Europe)! But the company did build a very loyal base of customers in London. Time Out is looking to invest far more capital into the market, both Keynoir and their Time Out Deals product, and also expand Keynoir into other cities.” Time Out Group publishes the popular city guides and ticketing services which are under threat from the likes of offers-based site like Keynoir. Time Out also recently bought the LikeCube software recommendations business. Keynoir will now run alongside Time Out daily deals, launched in May. The sale price is being kept confidential, with CEO Graeme Walker, the former CFO, staying on. It seemed like a good idea at the time. But Wilkinson is an entrepreneur known to have itchy feet after starting something and he left this year to found a . |
CrunchBase Reveals: Figuring Out Pricing Formulas For Talent Acquisitions With Opani | Eric Eldon | 2,011 | 11 | 22 | Following my post last night about in more ways on TechCrunch, some readers have shared how they’re already using it. One was from “social supercomputer” startup , which provides tools to help people more easily analyze large data sets. He’s used data to try to for pricing talent in startup acquisitions. His analysis, below, is in response to a at law firm Orrick, where a number of acquisition heads at major tech companies had noted that there was “no general formula” for doing so. He identified 71 early-stage acquisitions and 84 late-stage acquisitions in CrunchBase, then further defined the early stage group as startups purchased for below $66 million, with fewer than 50 employees, and investments of less than $5 million. Later-stage companies were defined as having acquisition prices above $66 million and between 50 and 500 employees. The findings are a bit rough, but here they are: An early-stage startup costs $8.5 million plus $0.5 million per employee. But, you can see that the graph above shows all sorts of outliers, like Grand Central’s giant deal, that confuse the picture. The variation isn’t too surprising when you consider that many early-stage acquisitions are done based on the acquirer having very high hopes for the team and the product being bought. He also found that the average late-stage startup costs $135 million plus $0.5 million per employee. The graph is far more normal looking. And the big payout beyond employees makes sense when you consider the additional capital and product value that the acquirer believes they’re getting. Do you have more CrunchBase analysis to share? Let me know: eldon (at) techrunch (dot) com. |
Pinterest Is Now Pulling In More Pageviews Than Etsy; Grew 2,000% Since June | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 11 | 22 | Online pinboard is the new . VCs are because it is growing like crazy. How crazy? According to comScore, Pinterest generated 421 million pageviews in the U.S. in October, up since June when it was at an estimated 20 million. Pinterest, which is still in an invite-only beta, has already surpassed the U.S. pageviews of much more established sites such as (which grew a healthy 47 percent since June to 348 million pageviews in October). I am comparing Pinterest to Etsy because, while one is an ecommerce marketplace and the other is more of a crowdsourced catalog, they both seem to appeal to the same types of people—mostly women interested in design, fashion, and quality products that are not mainstream. Also, from what I can tell anecdotally, Etsy items are very popular on Pinterest. All of those pageviews are coming from a relatively small number of users. In October, Pinterest had an estimated 3.3 million unique visitors in the U.S., up more than fourfold since June when it was at 608,000. On average, each person on Pinterest generates 128 pageviews a month (a number which will no doubt come down). It doesn’t yet have many users, but they are addicted to the service, which encourages you to “repin” other people’s image-heavy Web clippings (which is like reblogging on Tumblr and similarly generates a ton of internal pageviews as people jump from pinned image to pinned image). Since so much of what people organize and pin on Pinterest are products, the site is essentially collecting a lot of commercial intent and is in a position to know what types of products to recommend users or what types of ads/deals to show them in the future. But people don’t search on Pinterest. It is a place to new products. My wife is one of those addicts. She is on Pinterest every day, which tells me something. The early adopters are not your typical tech-obsessed early adopters. Investors see the same trends, which is why they think Pinterest is only at the early stages of its growth. : These numbers are just estimates from comScore,and as such are not perfect. But at least they are apples-to-apples. Etsy says its internal metrics show in October. Pinterest does not disclose its internal numbers. |
Rate Beautiful Images For Bursts Of Inspiration with DailyModi | Josh Constine | 2,011 | 11 | 22 | We crave inspiration. When energy is low or there’s a pause in our day, we turn to Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. But there, stimulation is drowned in exhausting, endless streams of content. is a brand new free iPhone app committed to structuring inspiration into bursts of discovery. With addictive finger swipes, you rate your way through 3 daily slideshows of paintings, shoes, typography, and more. Compare preferences with friends, and buy or learn about what you like. Leave feeling satisfied, and return tomorrow for more. DailyModi’s co-creator Gregor Hochmuth believes “It’s about creating a daily ritual. You know there’s content waiting for you. And it’s very quick and simple, you can play in two minutes.” Hochmuth explained that sites like Pinterest and FFFOUND are beautiful and different each time you visit, but there’s no prescriptive way to use them. By giving DailyModi more direction — there’s just 3 sets of 20 images to rate each day — the app pairs inspiration discovery with a sense of accomplishment when you complete the available sets. Modi, Inc was founded after Hochmuth, a product manager on Chrome, and the eponymous Shaun Modi, an interaction designer who created the G+ circle editor, both left Google. They first released last month, a website that lets you create your own image or text sets, and browse those of others. AirBnB now uses a PlayModi Facebook Page app to let fans rate its top 40 destinations with their arrow keys. However, Hochmuth says “People really like the swipe gesture for rating things” and with the backend in place set out to built their mobile app. With DailyModi, you login through Facebook so it knows your gender and can tailor the fashion sets accordingly. You’re then shown the day’s 3 sets. They’re like slideshows, but you have to swipe up to like or down to dislike in order to proceed. When you complete a set you can share it as well as see the percentage, count, and Facebook friends who liked each image. If enabled, Push notifications improve retention by informing users when new sets have been added. You can then click through to buy the fashion products on sites like Zappos, learn about art and culture images through Pinterest, or just save any of the images to your photo library. This last feature makes DailyModi a killer way to find cool phone wallpapers, especially since all your liked images are collected in a shoebox on the app’s home screen. There’s still some rough edges. Set results take a few seconds to load, and there’s currently no way to share individual images, but these seem easily remedied. Its biggest challenge will be getting users actually make it a ritual, because since it lacks direct communication channels there’s less urgency to open it than a social network. In addition to monetizing through affiliate fees on products bought through the app, Modi has had a lot of interest from brands. They want to use it as a distribution and feedback channel for product promotion and market research. They could pay to offer a branded set, and then use the like and dislike data collected to refine their marketing or design strategies. I can foresee brands being eager to create sets and replace their slideshows with Modi embeds that can collect this valuable data. DailyModi is a breath of fresh air in so many ways. The finite set size keep you from feeling overwhelmed, and the daily turnover prevents guilt. There’s no overt prompts to share or produce content, so there’s no shame in spectating. What’s most innovative is that with DailyModi, inspiration isn’t a side effect of content consumption, it’s the explicit purpose. |
Google Announces Plans To Shutter Knol, Friend Connect, Wave, And More | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 11 | 22 | Since Google CEO Larry Page took the helm this past spring, one of the company’s most visible initiatives has been to trim and shut down its products that haven’t taken off. These have included Aardvark, Google Desktop, Fast Flip, Code Search, Buzz, Jaiku, and even Google Labs — and today, it’s announcing a new batch of products that will be shut down in the coming months. Among the casualties (some of which had previously been announced): Google’s Wikipedia challenger, Google Knol, Google Friend Connect (which is being supplanted by Google+), and Google Wave — which Google ended development on a year ago and will soon close down entirely. Knol, in particular, comes as something of a surprise to me — because I figured Google had already shut it down. The site first back in 2008 to much fanfare, as Google introduced a potential Wikipedia challenger that would allow article contributors to monetize their content (the idea being that if you wrote content worth reading, you could make some money off of it). But the product languished, and back in July 2010 some extended downtime made us wonder if Google had . Google didn’t seem to allocate many resources to the project, and it certainly didn’t put much emphasis behind it from a press standpoint — I can’t remember the last time I was pitched on a new Knol feature or milestone. Knol will live on at , which is powered by WordPress and was built in collaboration with Solvitor and Crowd Favorite. Here’s the full list of products being shuttered, from Google’s : |
2011 Holiday Gift Guide: Five Phones To Take Into 2012 | Jordan Crook | 2,011 | 11 | 22 | The holiday season is upon us, and no gift keeps on giving quite like a smartphone. Think about it — there’s probably nothing in your dear friend or family member’s life that he or she will use on a regular basis more than their trusty new smartphone. And if you happen to be a super controlling boyfriend or girlfriend, just think of this spent cash as the best possible way to keep dibs on your sweetie pie. Prices range from $50 to a whopping $300 so there should be something here for everyone. If not, check out the BlackBerry lineup at your nearest retailer because you surely won’t see it anywhere here. The Droid RAZR currently takes the cake as the thinnest smartphone in the world. If appearances matter to your loved one, this is the phone you should be looking at. It’s super thin at just 7.1mm thick, with heavy-duty Kevlar fiber back casing and a unique shape with squared off corners. I have yet to see any Android-powered hardware differentiate itself as much as the RAZR, but under the hood things get even more impressive. The phone is powered by a dual-core 1.2GHz processor, runs Android 2.3 Gingerbread and packs support for Verizon’s 4G LTE network. On the back you’ll find an 8-megapixel shooter capable of video capture in 1080p along with a 1.3-megapixel front-facing cam for video chat. Up front you can’t help but notice that 4.3-inch 540×960 Super AMOLED display and you’ll also find a number of pretty sweet pre-loaded apps out of the box too, such as Netflix HD and Motorola’s MOTOCast app. The Droid RAZR will go for $299 on-contract from Verizon. The Galaxy S II isn’t quite as new as some of the others you’ll find here (launched in late September), but it’s probably one of the most solid Android handsets I’ve used to date. Much like the RAZR, the GS II is pretty thin itself, with a 8.89mm waist line and rounded corners not unlike the iPhone 4. It sports a Super AMOLED Plus screen (4.3-inch at AT&T, 4.52-inch at Sprint/T-Mobile), runs Android 2.3 Gingerbread and features a 1.2GHz dual-core processor under the hood. The GS II also has its photography bases covered, with an 8-megapixel flash-equipped rear camera (capable of video capture in 1080p) and a 2-megapixel front-facing shooter for video chat. You’ll also find support for HDMI out in case you want to relive the Holiday memories on a big screen. The beauty of the GS II as a gift is that it’s available on three of the four major networks, including Sprint, AT&T and T-Mobile. If for whatever reason you’re able to start your loved one on a fresh contract with a new carrier, I’d suggest nabbing AT&T’s version of the Galaxy S II. T-Mobile’s model doesn’t keep the same killer design dress as the others, and at 4.3-inches the AT&T model’s screen has a greater pixel density than Sprint’s. You’ll be able to nab the Samsung Galaxy S II for $199 on-contract from both Sprint and AT&T, though T-Mobile’s Qualcomm processor-packin’ version will go for a tad more at $229.99. The Samsung Stratosphere is stuck in the middle . Not only does it have the median price point of all of our gift guide options, but it also seems stuck somewhere in between the future and the past. By that I mean, it has all the specs of any solid mid-to-high-end handset, but throws it back a bit in the keyboard department with a physical sliding five-row QWERTY. In fact, this is the only phone running on Verizon’s 4G LTE network to have a real-life keyboard so if your puddin’ pop simply using your touchscreen keyboard, this may be what you’re looking for. Past the whole keyboard thing, you’ll also find a 4-inch 480×800 Super AMOLED display, a 5-megapixel rear-facing camera with flash, a 1.3-megapixel front-facing shooter for video chat, and a 1GHz processor under the hood. Unfortunately, there’s no 1080p video capture on this bad boy, but the trade-off for keyboard-packing LTE speeds is worthwhile for anyone who’s still hooked on real buttons. You can find the Samsung Stratosphere at Verizon for $149.99 on-contract. This year, if you’d prefer to get a stunned gleeful expression instead of the usual “you shouldn’t have,” I’d suggest the affordably priced iPhone 4. I don’t want to sound like some Apple evangelist or anything, but there are plenty of closeted fanbois out there just waiting for the right excuse to go buy an iPhone. It’s only a matter of time. So why not just nudge the process along with one of the most popular smartphones of all time. Specs wise we’re looking at a 3.5-inch 960×640 Retina display, a 1GHz A4 processor, a 5-megapixel rear-facing camera capable of 720p video capture, and a VGA front-facing camera for video chat. But we all know it’s about much more than that. Along with some of the most expensive and high-quality hardware on the market, the iPhone 4 will ship with iOS 5 which comes with all kinds of awesome features like iMessage, a super slick Notfications Center, and iTunes Wi-Fi Sync. Plus, no one will be able to tell whether it’s the brand new 4S or the 4, which is a bit shallow but aren’t we all? The iPhone 4 would be a great gift at its original price, but for $99 you’re pretty much out of excuses. Android and iOS are wonderful, sure, but if you’re anything like me you’re ready for a change. Luckily, there’s a new kid in town and he’s actually much cooler than you’d think. Windows Phone 7.5 is a welcome disruption in the mobile OS landscape, with threaded conversations across almost all messaging platforms, Xbox Live integration, and a tempting live-tile UI. But the Samsung Focus Flash is more than a mere vessel. Even though it’s made of mostly plastic, a few hints of metal and a brushed dark grey finish give it a much more expensive feel, especially given the fact that the phone is a bit heftier than you’d expect. It sports a 3.7-inch Super AMOLED display, a 1.4GHz single-core processor, a 5-megapixel rear camera with LED flash and a front-facing camera for video chat. Plus, the IE9 browser in Mango is super snappy, and beat out my iPhone 4S just about every time in testing. It sure doesn’t feel like it, but the Samsung Focus Flash costs $49.99 on-contract at AT&T. |
RIM Shows Off PlayBook Email And Calendar Apps | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 11 | 22 | One of the primary criticisms of the , and rightly so, was the omission of native email, contacts, and calendar applications. It was troubling then that they hadn’t considered these primary activities as important to address natively, and it’s troubling that it has taken then so very long deliver these elementary functions. RIM originally said these reviews but regardless of the quality of the OS and the device itself (both of which seem perfectly fine), it’s criminal to subject your loyal users to such a long wait for an email client competitive with Apple and Google. But at least the apps are being finalized, and were just showed off at the BlackBerry Innovation Forum. has posted some quick shots of the apps. They look clean and more or less as you’d expect, and much better in my opinion than the early versions they showed at BlackBerry World. I have no trouble believing they’re as polished as the rest of the OS, and I look forward to seeing how they have integrated off-screen gestures and the like. Ideally, the PlayBook should be as much of an email and messaging powerhouse as its handset brethren. Unfortunately the apps won’t be arriving until February 17th, and there won’t be a native BBM client by then either. But there’s a good chance they’ll be included as part of a major update that makes the Playbook, which is in some ways ahead of its time, a more realistic competitor. The PlayBook’s keyboard accessory should be hitting around the same time as well, which should aid in productivity. [via ] |
null | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 11 | 14 | null |
New Kinect For Windows Adds Motion Control To The Common PC | John Biggs | 2,011 | 11 | 22 | [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=diy7rkWkDtU] Folks who want to connect their to their PCs can now use specially-designed hardware to add real-time, 3D tracking to programs, games, and research projects. Using the hackers can add the Kinect to nearly any hardware. Improvements include a new “Near Mode” that allows for objects at about 50 centimeters away from the sensor to register in 3D space, the first step to adding Kinect functionality to a desktop computer. Microsoft also announced the , a software startup incubator that will give 10 companies $20,000 each and the chance to pitch their idea to investors. No pricing or availability yet, but I’m definitely intrigued. You can read more . |
Researchers See Retina Display, Raise Them A Cornea Display | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 11 | 22 | The idea of information being presented directly to your eyes, be it by glasses, contacts, distant lasers, or brain implants, has existed for decades. But like so many sci-fi concepts, the engineering is slightly more difficult than the idea work. While we’ve seen lots of work in , , and , the on-eye display has remained elusive. Progress is being made, though. at the University of Washington and Aalto University in Finland have a simple wireless contact lens display and tested it on a live eye — a proof of concept that may presage more sophisticated devices. People wonder what kind of display comes after the touchscreen; it may be something like this. The display is, as far as cornea-mounted wireless displays go, pretty basic: there’s an antenna for harvesting wireless power, a circuit to manage this power, and a single transparent LED. Obviously you’re not going to display much information with one LED, but this device was created for evaluating health risks. It was tested on a rabbit’s eye and found to be safe, by their account. What’s next? Obviously more resolution is necessary, but more resolution requires more power, and as it is, the wireless solution they implemented could only reliably power the device from 2cm away when it was installed on the rabbit. The next generation of displays isn’t really something we can easily speculate on, but, cynical as it may sound, those with military applications are often the ones that get the green light. A contact lens display would definitely be useful in that situation, so you’d better believe that the guys at DARPA are paying attention to this particular line of research. But I wouldn’t count on this trickling down to consumer tech for many years, if it does at all. [via ] |
Drive A Bus Through The Desert On Your Phone (For Charity!) | Chris Velazco | 2,011 | 11 | 22 | I hope you like the landscape you see here because if you buy new Desert Bus app, you’ll be looking at it for the next eight hours. Seriously. The $.99 Desert Bus app is a pixel-perfect remake of the original trek as seen in “Penn & Teller’s Smoke and Mirrors,” the duo’s first (and only) video game from 1995. In it, you play an intrepid bus driver named Jocko who’s tasked with driving his rig 360 miles from Tucson to Las Vegas. Ah, but there’s a twist: you’ve got to do it in real time. Don’t think you can let your phone sit there as the bus chugs along, either: the bus’s steering pulls ever-so-slightly to the right so you’ll have to make sure it doesn’t go off-road. If it does, the bus is getting towed back to Tucson in — you guessed it — real time. Here’s hoping you didn’t nod off at the wheel, because that’s one chunk of your life you’re never going to get back. Desert Bus has become something of a cult classic recently, and has even spawned its own yearly charity event. It’s only fitting then that all the proceeds from the app’s sales go to this year’s Desert Bus For Hope event, which raises money for the day-brighteners at . Versions are available for and , but you may want to keep some No-Doz handy just in case. |
Wishbox Lets Your Visitors Complain About Your New Layout With Screenshot Annotations | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 11 | 22 | You’ve changed something on your website, and everyone hates it. At least, that’s how it seems. Once you’ve grown past, say… 10 users, change will almost always be resisted. You get used to it. More often than not, unsolicited user feedback isn’t super helpful (if only because it usually boils down to “You suck! Screw your new logo! I’m removing you from my RSS reader!”). , though, the userbase really know what it wants — but even then, it can be hard for them to express it properly. That’s where Wishbox comes in. By combining on-the-fly screenshots with an in-browser annotations tool, allows even your most technically inept users to send visual feedback straight to your inbox. Wishbox places a small pop-out “Send Feedback” tab in a pre-determined place near the edge of the screen. When clicked, Wishbox snaps a screenshot of your current browser window, throws it into an embedded annotations tool, and lets users get their mark on before shippin’ things your way. You can here. The tool is a bit slow to load (I’ll forgive them; they just roll out of a rather small Beta), but it’s all pretty buttery once it’s up and running. Wishbox is free at first (it looks like they plan to charge after a monthly cap of 100 feedback submissions, but pricing details aren’t immediately available. We’ve reached out for clarification. : It’s based on Jotform, so is the same), and installation is a matter of punching in your e-mail and plugging a Javascript blurp into your page. As an example, see a mid-action screenshot of my feedback creation session for Wishbox’s website below: |
What if opening a store was as easy as embedding a youtube video? | vaughn597 | 2,011 | 11 | 25 | The idea that social commerce is the next big thing in marketing has been floating around for a while. -backed startup think that it’s inevitably the “next big thing”. The Stuttgart headquartered company allows its clients to create social selling widgets that can be embedded essentially anywhere across the social web, making them a portable mini-shop. The key to this widget idea is that the purchasing process is incredibly simple. Since Sellaround partnered with earlier this year, buyers in essence pick and pay with a few clicks directly in the widget. It’s as quick and easy as online shopping has to be to get the attention of browsing users. From a seller aspect simplicity strikes a chord as well. To build a widget sellers use an uncomplicated widget wizard. After picking whether you are using it for B2B or C2C product, you can edit the product details, shipping information and pricing, add a few pictures and you are ready to go. I made this in less than two minutes: I would post the actual widget and not just a picture, but I’d be in trouble if someone actually tried to order. The widget wizard does not allow for much creativity from the user’s side, seeing as the style is static. That makes standing out with your product difficult, unless you have an especially eye-catching picture to add. The widgets look quite basic, but they’re pretty and not over-the-top flashy, thus not disturbing the browsing experience. What’s very smart about this is that the Java/Flash built widget can be embedded just like a youtube video. This makes it usable across multiple platforms from your personal website over Facebook to Google+. Almost like having a portable little shop you can take anywhere you want. But where does the social aspect come in? First of all, the widgets are easy to share by users on social networks. That’s not exactly a new idea. What adds a little something is that the seller can choose to offer rewards to customers who share the product. By unlocking a special deal, coupon or discount, for example, with a certain amount of shares. Or by using Sellaround’s “crowdsaving” widget type, which activates a deal for everyone as soon as the widget was shared by enough people. That’s a pretty good idea. We all love rewards and there’s nothing easier than doing a few clicks on the Facebook share button. The seller in return gets the valuable friend to friend recommendation advantage, which is as a rule more effective than impersonal advertising. When Sellaround’s CEOs and (who recently joined the company after leaving eBay) spoke to TechCrunch, they were convinced that exactly this sharing aspect makes social commerce the “next evolutionary step” in online marketing. “It has to be successful. The reach of social networks increases day by day,” said Adrian. Felix added, “[Social commerce] uses the additional dimension of relationships to friends, influencing your purchase behaviour very strongly. If you think back to the evolution of e-commerce, I believe that social commerce is the next evolutionary step and will be done in a much shorter timeframe.” When asked about whether the big brands understand this concept yet, Adrian and Felix answered with a conjoint “no”. However, they added, big brands are “just about to realise that something is happening”. That might be why Sellaround also offers a guidance service on building social commerce campaigns. For now the widget idea works nicely to push single products, especially because it is simple enough to allow essentially everyone to be a seller. All you need is a PayPal account and something to sell. Private sellers automatically have instant reach to the online community they are connected to and are able to turn that into a platform full off potential customers, which is constantly widened by their acquaintances sharing the widget. If people get used to the new way of shopping right inside their social networks, which means becoming reliant on fast, on the spot purchasing based on recommendations by friends, then this may have a huge impact on the way we shop online.
|
TechCrunch Cribs: Iovox is rocking the voice world, literally [TCTV] | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 11 | 25 | is a startup specialising in something known as VaaS (Voice as a Service). Their telephony platform allows companies to build services on the telephone network that do real-world, heavy-lifting style jobs which normally require call centres. Companies which have taken on the service include News International and many others. I went over to their West London offices (yes, not startups in London are in the East, incredibly), to check out the legendary guitar playing skills of CEO in our TechCrunch Europe version of TC Cribs. Maybe next time we should do a duet. Iovox’s latest product is an identity verification product . This is quite current, given the recent controversy with AirBnB being among those companies that very throughly. CallSign contacts an account holder via an automated call and records the confirmation of any transaction or request. During the call, the user is identified by a set of security questions and can accept or reject the transaction, either with a simple 1 to confirm or even entering a full passport number. It’s ended up being used by the likes of Ebay, Livebookings and others. Iovox is in Notting Hill, thusly henceforth this shall be known as “Silicon Hill”. Here endeth the lesson. |
‘Twine’ Foreshadows A Future Where All Objects Talk To The Internet | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 11 | 25 | Want to be notified to turn on the AC when a room reaches a certain temperature? Or when your laundry’s done? Well MIT Media Lab alumni have built , a sleek 2.5″ rubber square which connects to Wifi and allows objects to “communicate” under certain conditions. The Twine, which reminds me of a from a design simplicity perspective, comes with a web app, ‘Spool’ which allows you to program its sensors with natural language rules like “When: accelerometer is at rest, Then: Tweet” in the case of the laundry done thing, for example. You can hook up the battery operated Twine to communicate through SMS, Twitter, Email and even HTTP requests if you’re into that sort of thing. The basic Twine comes with an internal temperature sensor and an internal accelerometer, and the Twine guys are making optional external sensors including a magnetic switch for doors, a moisture sensor and a breakout board for those of you that want to create your own DIY sensor action. Supermechanical says that it will develop additional sensors for every $10K over its goal. Possible options include an RFID reader, a pressure sensor and/or current sensor. After a stint on Hacker News, the project has received over $60K in funding, and with a donation of $90 you can order your own Twine through Kickstarter — A perfect gift for the person who has everything but a refrigerator door with its own Twitter account. When asked if the thing would actually work, Supermechanical’s David Carr told me, “Of course, we still have plenty of rough edges and features to fill out, but we are well along the path at this point. If you’re concerned about our ability to deliver, you might check out some of Okay! |
Microsoft: “Microsoft Has Had [Voice Control] In Windows Phones For A Year” | John Biggs | 2,011 | 11 | 25 | [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8akOCfqe-v0] In a charming interview with , Microsoft’s Craig Mundie discussed future products at Microsot, including the success and plans for the as well as their , the . Most important to certain folks who like computers by Apple were his comments on Siri. Basically, he said Windows Phone has had voice control – namely simple commands like “text Mom” and Bing searches – for a year now. Duh! He said: People are infatuated with Apple announcing it. It’s good marketing, but at least as the technological capability you could argue that Microsoft has had a similar capability in Windows Phones for more than a year, since Windows Phone 7 was introduced. Now does that say that Microsoft can’t market product? Sure. Does it also say that people don’t care about Windows Phone? Why not. Does it say that Microsoft has a huge gap to close? Absolutely. Will they close it? Eventually, but it won’t be easy. |
ScottEVest Introduces The Puffer Jacket | John Biggs | 2,011 | 11 | 25 | [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CY8tJnzXL4] makes clothes for use geeks. They have lots of pocketses, plenty of acceptable style, and you can amaze people by stuffing a water bottle and laptop out of one of their coats with room to spare. The are available now for $190 but you might want to wait until Sunday/Monday to grab something a bit cheaper during their cyber Monday sale. I’ve been wearing one of the Puffers for a while and even on my husky frame it’s fairly cool – a little short around the waist but I can stick an iPad into it like a Small Arms Protection Insert and feel pretty badass. |
The Kindle Fire, What Is It Good For? | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 11 | 25 | When the Kindle Fire first shipped a couple weeks ago, the were mixed. Uncle Walt calls it . David Pogue at the NYT thinks it is “sluggish,” lacking “polish or speed.” But the Kindle Fire is still . Some reviewers are disappointed that it is not an iPad, but that is the wrong way to look at it. The Fire is a standout that does a few things very well and I am going to tell you what they are. I’ve been using a Kindle Fire for the past two weeks (that is, when my kids or wife haven’t absconded to another room with it). The device passes my first test: my family fights over it. The Fire is kid-tested, and mother-approved. Fruit Ninja is the new obsession with my young children. Even my two-year-old, who , is increasingly eyeing the Kindle Fire and scheming ways to get her Mom out of the room so she can play with it. My wife will have none of that, she’s reading Joan Didion’s latest book on the Fire. I sneak it away from the bedside table when everyone is asleep at night to watch old episodes of . The Kindle Fire is purpose-built to find and consume digital media: books, movies and TV shows, music, magazines, apps, and the web. It is more limited in its capabilities than an iPad, but in these areas it holds its own. Let me address each of these areas individually: A better comparison than the iPad is to other Kindles. I’ve been playing with a Kindle Touch as well, and the responsiveness of the screen is so temperamental that it is frustrating for me to use. The flicker of the E Ink screen in between every page turn also gives me a headache. No, if you are going to buy a Kindle buy the Kindle Fire. It is much better, even for reading digital books and magazines. The magazine looks great on it. Yes, I know backlit screens are not as good for your eyes as E Ink, but who are we kidding? Many of us are staring at screens for 8 to 12 hours a day. I, for one, am used to it and find backlit screens more readable than E Ink. It also is much easier to highlight passages or look something up on the web straight from the text. The Kindle Fire also blows away the iPad as a digital book reader (as you would hope it would, coming from Amazon). Mostly, that is because of its smaller form factor. It is about the size of a large paperback. You can hold it in one hand and flick through the pages with your thumb. It is a much more pleasurable reading experience than the larger iPad, which is a little unwieldy by comparison for extended reading periods. Although, the Kindle app on the iPad is otherwise perfectly fine. Despite its smaller screen size, the Fire is an excellent video viewing device. It ties in directly to Amazon’s Instant Video store, where you can either buy or rent video downloads. The selection is pretty decent, with a mix of old and more recent movies and TV shows. You can either stream the movies directly or download them for later viewing. I’ve had no issues with streaming. The pictures are sharp and I’ve watched entire episodes without any hiccups over a strong WiFi connection. You can also watch movies through Netflix or Hulu Plus, which both have apps available on the Fire. But if you are an Amazon Prime member (all-you-can-eat shipping for $79 a year), you get Instant Video thrown in. That’s a good deal, considering that the Netflix streaming-only plan costs $96 a year, and you don’t get free shipping of any Christmas gifts with that. The one drawback of watching video on the Fire is that it is a solitary experience. The small screen size does not detract from the viewing experience when you are holding it in your lap and watching alone, but it’s not great for watching a show or movie with someone else. It is the video equivalent of reading over someone’s shoulder. And there is no easy way that I can tell of projecting the video on a bigger screen like you can with Airplay on the iPad. Quite frankly, I barely notice the music store on the Kindle Fire. There is nothing wrong with the selection, and I applaud the way it distributes MP3 tunes that are compatible with any player. But when it comes to digital music that I purchase, I am just too locked into iTunes (or streaming music services) to want to bother with the Amazon Music Store. It is too much of a hassle to figure out how to get the music into iTunes, where I can listen to it on my iPhone or through my stereo. Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t want to walk around listening to an album on the Fire with my headphones plugged in. It’s not like you can go on a run with it. And listening through the Fire’s external speakers, while perfectly fine for a movie, is not the ideal listening experience. The one use-case where music does make sense is if you want to listen to something while you are reading or browsing the web on the Fire. The Fire’s is supposed to accelerate browsing on the device by pre-caching pages in the cloud and delivering them more intelligently. The browser is fast and functional, but from what I can tell it is no faster than the browser on an iPad. I tested about half a dozen web pages. If there is a difference in page-loading speeds, it is not noticeable. In the Web browsing department, the iPad bigger screen size gives it the advantage. You are not squinting as much as you do on a mobile phone’s browser, but you squint nonetheless. I find myself pinching and zooming a lot to read webpages. The tabbed browsing on the Fire, however, is a plus. Finally, there are the apps. The Fire only ships with a available for download, compared to more than 200,000 for the iPad. But Amazon has done an excellent job to make sure that many of these first apps are excellent. Games like Fruit Ninja and Angry Birds, while not unique to the Fire, are addictive and show off its graphics capabilities. Media apps like Netflix, Hulu Plus, and Pandora expand its entertainment capabilities. Some “apps” like Facebook and Twitter merely redirect to their HTML5 mobile websites through the browser, but I suspect they will get full-fledged apps in time. More importantly, the store, is much better organized and easier to browse than the official . If the Kindle Fire becomes the most popular Android tablet, as I suspect it will, then it could also become the . Amazon’s app store finally brings a shopping and discovery experience to Android in much the same way that iTunes did for iOS apps. The best apps are still on the iPad and will continue to appear there first, but you are not giving up apps by going with a Kindle Fire. And they are just going to keep getting better the more people flock to the Fire, a device where buying media, including apps, is encouraged. People are not going to buy the Kindle Fire because of any of its specs. They are going to buy it because it eases them into the still-strange realm of digital books, movies, magazines, and apps. These are all media. The Fire makes it easy to find them and, more importantly, easy to pay for them. You hardly think twice about it. The ability to pack all your media into one little 7-inch device is still an incredible thing. But it is not just your media that makes it compelling. It is the access to Amazon’s vast and growing digital library of millions of books, movies, apps, and songs, all at your fingertips and one click away from your consuming eyes. If you do end up buying a Kindle Fire, I guarantee that you will end up spending a lot more than the subsidized $200 price of the device on media. And once you start buying digital media for the Fire, you won’t be going anywhere. Amazon will have you as a customer for life, if it doesn’t already. Watch the I did with John Biggs below for a look at the Kindle Fire in action. |
eBay: PayPal Mobile Payment Volume Up Over 500 Percent On Thanksgiving Day And Black Friday | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 11 | 25 | As we heard earlier today, Thanksgiving proved to be a lucrative day for online retailers. IBM were up 39 percent over Thanksgiving 2010, with mobile shopping on the rise. eBay and PayPal are seeing similar trends. PayPal Mobile just a 511 percent increase in global mobile payment volume when compared to Thanksgiving 2010. On Thanksgiving in the U.S., consumers shopped on mobile via PayPal most frequently between 6:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. PST. Around the world, consumers shopped on mobile most frequently between 1:00 p.m. and 2:00 p.m. PST. There was a more than three-fold (350 percent) increase in the number of global customers shopping through PayPal mobile on Thanksgiving 2011 compared to last year. These shoppers were mainly located in New York, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami and Chicago. eBay says that the amount shoppers in the U.S. that bought and spent via eBay Mobile more than doubled this Thanksgiving over last year. GSI Commerce saw a more than three-fold (345 percent) increase in U.S. mobile sales this Thanksgiving compared to 2010. And Searches through the local product listings platform Milo increased 557 percent percent over Thanksgiving Day 2010. For eBay, the busiest eBay Mobile shopping hour on Thanksgiving was between 6 and 7 p.m. PST. The five most popular categories shopped via eBay Mobile, excluding vehicles (by number of sold items) were Clothing, Shoes & Accessories; Cell Phones & PDAs; Jewelry & Watches; Collectibles and Toys & Hobbies. In electronics, the top purchases items yesterday were iPhone Accessories, the black Apple iPhone 4 (16GB), and the Apple iPod Touch 4th Generation (8GB). The dramatic rise in payment volume via mobile phones isn’t particularly surprising considering all the this holiday season. But a 500 percent increase in payment volume for PayPal is still impressive for mobile shopping and we haven’t even seen the full numbers for Black Friday or Cyber Monday yet. So far, things look positive for Black Friday, eBay that as of 11 a.m. PST, PayPal is already seeing a more than six-fold increase (538 percent) in global mobile payment volume on Black Friday 2011 compared to the same time period on Black Friday 2010. According to IBM, the number of consumers using a mobile device on Black Friday to visit a retailer’s site is holding firm at 17.37 percent and the number of consumers using their mobile device to make a purchase remains is at 9.73 percent. The iPhone currently leads all mobile device traffic at 6.77 percent, followed by Android at 5.37 percent and iPad at 4.6 percent. Already IBM says that afternoon results show that Black Friday 2011 online sales are 20 percent higher for the same time period over Black Friday 2010. Black Friday 2011 online sales eclipsed Thanksgiving sales at 2:20pm PST this afternoon, says IBM. Amanda Pires of PayPal tell us that the holiday is proving to be the largest mobile holiday shopping season PayPal and eBay has ever seen. “The retailers that are taking advantage of mobile shopping are going to win. We expect mobile shopping to continue to be strong throughout the holiday season.” |
The Roundabout Tapes – RjDj now plans to game reality with sound [TCTV] | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 11 | 25 | , also a Founder , has certainly opened up the avenues for sound apps on mobile platforms. The startup’s apps have become platforms for musicians, but are gradually evolving into augmented reality mobile apps. Most recently the company partnered with screenwriter Christopher Nolan on , which reached 4 million downloads. The amount of “dreamtime” (time spent listening to the app ) was over 94 years. The average listening time per session is over 30 minutes. This was not your average app! Now, RjDj is beta testing a new mobile game project called . This uses augmented sound to warp the sound around you and lead you into a game of ‘enhanced reality.’ Dimensions is currently slated to release early in December, so look out for our coverage of its release. Indeed Will Wright, creator of the hugely successful SimCity and The Sims, is on something similar, called HiveMind, a sort of “personal gaming” platform. Meantime, we caught up with Michael’s team, based in London’s ‘Silicon Roundabout’ area as part of our series of interviews we’re calling , interviewing the largest cluster of tech startups in London which happen to have gravitated towards East London. |
Walmart’s Black Friday Disaster: Website Crippled, Violence In Stores | Josh Constine | 2,011 | 11 | 25 | Fire sales turned into a firestorm for Walmart this morning as the company’s web servers buckled under Black Friday traffic. Shoppers from around the country waited until the middle of the night for sales only to experience broken checkout pages, emptied shopping carts, and login errors. This caused their desired items to go out of stock before they could buy them, leading to mass frustration and ill will towards the discount store chain. Meanwhile , 20 people were pepper sprayed by a fellow customer, and 2 people were shot outside separate locations. Walmart will need to sort out its servers in preparation for the upcoming Cybermonday blitz or it risks losing customers to Amazon. We’ll let traditional news outlets cover the offline violence and focus here on Walmart’s web fiasco. Disgruntled online shoppers flocked to the to voice complaints about Walmart’s website problems. It’s unclear exactly how widespread the issues were, but the forums had complaints coming in every minute at one point last night from customers in Florida, Mississippi, New York and many other places. Many expected deals to go live at Midnight local time only to have to wait up until 3am EST. Visitors then feverishly filled shopping carts but suddenly found them empty when they went to checkout. Others were confronted with the error message “We’re having temporary difficulties arriving at the destination you requested”. Login problems also arose, with users being asked to enter their credentials when already signed in. One customer reported that they complained about the checkout disruption on Walmart’s Facebook Page but later found their post deleted. The entire Walmart site does not appear to have crashed. By keeping the site up despite the issues, Walmart may have sought to conceal the errors and avoid press coverage of the discontent. Loyal customers said they hadn’t had such problems since 2006 when Walmart experienced a of its site. The company pulled in during the 2011 fiscal year, so today’s disruption could have cost it a lot of money. While it might be too late to save Black Friday, Walmart better be scrambling to fix its website for Cybermonday, the biggest online shopping day of the year, just 36 hours away. The corporation acquired two startups and this year and formed its Silicon Valley-based @WalmartLabs in an effort to improve its ecommerce offering. However, it’s competing with powerhouse Amazon, whose cloud hosting division may protect it from the outages that plagued Walmart today. If the errors persist on Cybermonday, shoppers may seek out a more reliable ecommerce solution. When customers post “I’m so frustrated I’m going to cry” and “an hour and a half of nonsense. shame on you Walmart!”, something has to change. : We’ve learned that Amazon online ordering also experienced an outage this morning as well. Both Amazon and Walmart should expect record traffic this weekend through Cybermonday. : We’ve received word that this summer, Walmart laid-off its VP of Engineering/Ops Gene Wojciechowski. He was apparently well respected by engineering staff, and his absence may have caused Walmart to be less prepared to meet the Black Friday traffic surge. |
They’re Rioting Over BlackBerrys In Indonesia (And Other Black Friday Insanity That’ll Make You Fear For The Future) | Jordan Crook | 2,011 | 11 | 25 | often makes people act absolutely crazy. This is . Still, you don’t expect to see consumer-driven insanity go down in countries that don’t celebrate Turkey day and its accompanying shopfest. And that’s not where the surprises ended this morning in Indonesia. A crowd of 3,000 people waited in line today in Jakarta, Indonesia for a new smartphone. In fact, the group got so out of control that riot police had to be brought in to calm the masses. They weren’t waiting on the new iPhone 4S. Nope, not a random early Indonesian release of the Galaxy Nexus (which would be a surprise in itself), either. These people were waiting on none other than the BlackBerry Bold 9790, RIM’s latest attempt at being competitive in the smartphone arena. Actually, since RIM’s been sucking some fierce wind over here in the States we often forget that BlackBerrys are still one of the most popular brands in other countries. In any case, RIM may have bitten off more than it could chew this morning promising a 50 percent discount on the handset for the first 1,000 buyers. Turns out, about 3,000 people wanted to be one of those lucky thousand, and when the announcement came that the phone had sold out… Well, things got ugly. According to the , the masses were “rattling the gates” and later “went crazy” after hearing they would not only miss out on the discount, but the phone entirely. Here in the said-to-be civilized U.S. of A., things got even more ridiculous. Perhaps taking a cue from the police forces dealing with OccupyWallStreet (or ), a woman in a Walmart took Black Friday shopping to an entirely different level last night in Los Angeles. At 10:20pm, the massive line was let inside the store at which point madness ensued. “People started screaming, pulling and pushing each other, and then the whole area filled up with pepper spray,” Alejandra Seminario told the . Yep, pepper spray. Some lady, who we shall henceforth refer to as “casually pepper spraying consumer,” whipped out a pepper spray can and let it rip to keep other (probably crazy) consumers away from the half-off electronics she’d been eyeing. Seriously. I really don’t even know what to say other than I’m scared, and I’m not having children. |
In Look’s iOS Geo-Tagging App, You Can Put A Bird (Or Pepper Spray Cop) On Something And Just Call It Art | Eric Eldon | 2,011 | 11 | 25 | fans, this one’s for you. Imagine an iOS photo app that swaps out Instagram filters for stencils from your favorite meme or art piece, then add a little augmented reality, and you’ll get . Built by a couple of the developers behind as a side project earlier this month, it’s the latest mobile app to use simple photo-editing and social features to make the world around you more interesting. After downloading Look for the first time, you log in with Facebook, then see a camera view with the “Look” stencil overlayed on it. You can then switch to new stencils, available in the first folder at the bottom of the screen, that include the Pepper Spraying Cop, Charlie Sheen’s “Winning!” and a moustache for enhancing photos of your friends. If you want to unlock more stencils (at the price of $0.99 a pop), you can choose from sets of categories like birds based on Portlandia’s “ ” sketch, various wildlife, movie stars, vehicles, etc…. Or you can make your own: take a photo in its stencil creation view, touch it up, then set it as your stencil and shoot away. Once you take a photo, you can adjust the color of the stencil and decide if you want to share it on Facebook or with friends or nearby users on the service. Shared photos appear in a reverse-chronological stream like in Instagram, and include location and time information, as well as the option to vote up the ones you like most. Although Look has begun as a fun side project to leverage existing code, it could have a lot of features in store: a gallery for the images that get the top votes, other sign-on and sharing services besides Facebook, and ways to share and sell your stencils to other users. They’re also planning an augmented reality view, moving beyond the current photo stream to show you other user’s stencils as you walk around. The stencil marketplace, combined with augmented reality, could be an especially powerful way for people to discover great new photos and make some money. And yes, Android users, a version is coming for you, too. Here are a few images from when I got carried away testing it: Don’t Think Different. Black Helicopter Spotted Over DC. Hi Honey, I Painted A Stencil Of Me Taking A Phone Photo Of Myself For You. Do You Like It? |
Why Quad-Core? | Jordan Crook | 2,011 | 11 | 25 | We are entering into a new era, ladies and gentlemen. Well, “era” may not be the right word considering how quickly things change in these here mobile parts, but the fact remains the same: Quad-core mobile processors are here. And the ones that aren’t quite here yet are coming. While many of our brilliantly geeky readers need no tutorial on the advantages of four processing cores, some of you may be thinking “Uh… OK, why do I care?” So I took it upon myself to place a few calls and get some of the big guns — Qualcomm, Nvidia, and TI — to explain why exactly you should care (or shouldn’t), and what kind of differences technology like this can make in the average user’s daily phone usage. Right off the bat, there are a few myths we need to squash, the most prominent being the misguided belief that doubling cores automatically doubles processing performance. That’s not so true. According to Qualcomm vice president of product management Alex Katouzian, upgrading from a single-core CPU to a dual-core processor yields 50 percent better performance, while upgrading from dual-core to quad-core increases performance by just 25 percent. The second commonly held but utterly untrue belief is that all mobile processors are created equally. These companies actually work extra hard to differentiate themselves, which is difficult when the end-user has little say over which processors get stuck in which devices. Generally speaking (as in, with no particular brand or model in mind), a quad-core CPU should most noticeably do two things. The first is to improve performance during multi-tasking or use of multi-threaded applications. Web browsing, for example, is a multi-threaded process, as are many advanced gaming applications. Android is also natively multi-threaded. The second noticeable improvement quad-core should yield is an increase in battery life. Now, your average CPU usually only consumes about 15 percent of your battery life during regularly daily usage, so the improvements won’t usually be that staggering. Still, battery life is a big problem right now in mobile and any improvement is a worthwhile one. Nvidia has been the first to bring quad-core processing to mobile, in the form of its . Aside from the general benefits afforded by four cores, Nvidia specifically differentiates itself with what it calls a Companion core. The Companion core is a patented fifth core that maxes out at speeds of 500MHz. It uses patented technology known as variable symmetry multiprocessing (vSMP), which allows the processor to power cores on and off based on the device’s workload. The Companion core handles just about everything during low performance tasks and in stand-by mode, like email and monitoring the network for incoming calls. When you start on something more performance-intensive, like web browsing, facial recognition or photo stitching, other cores are powered on to handle the task. This is Nvidia’s way of improving performance while saving battery life, while others have found different ways to make quad-core stand out. Qualcomm, for example, is about to release its , which has a special trick. Most multicore processors clock up and down at the same time. Qualcomm’s processor, on the other hand, is able to clock one core at the max while clocking the second needed core only to the speed it needs to complete the task. In other words, since Qualcomm’s processor cores can be clocked individually, a task that overflows on the first core may only need the second core spinning at 60 percent of its max speed. So just like Nvidia’s Companion core hooks you up on the battery life front, so will Qualcomm’s individual clocking technology. Texas Instruments, however, has yet to outline plans for their quad-core offerings and seems to be sticking with dual-core OMAP SoCs for the time being. That said, TI maintains that its equipped with a dual-core Cortex A15 processor (and two Cortex M4 cores) is a mature system that is more efficient at handling instructions. Some even refer to it as a quad-core system, though TI itself still calls this a dual-core SoC. And they believe it’ll compete. The company went so far as to say that its smart multi-core architecture actually takes 50 percent more instructions than the Cortex-A9 MPCore’s four processing cores as seen in Nvidia’s Tegra 3. The truth is this is just the beginning when it comes to the migration toward four cores, and there’ll be plenty more to learn in the coming months. |
TechCrunch Cribs: Iovox Is Rocking The Voice World, Literally [TCTV] | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 11 | 25 | is a startup specialising in something known as VaaS (Voice as a Service). Their telephony platform allows companies to build services on the telephone network that do real-world, heavy-lifting style jobs which normally require call centres. Companies which have taken on the service include News International and many others. I went over to their West London offices (yes, not startups in London are in the East, incredibly), to check out the legendary guitar playing skills of CEO in our TechCrunch Europe version of TC Cribs. Maybe next time we should do a duet. Iovox’s latest product is an identity verification product . This is quite current, given the recent controversy with AirBnB being among those companies that very throughly. CallSign contacts an account holder via an automated call and records the confirmation of any transaction or request. During the call, the user is identified by a set of security questions and can accept or reject the transaction, either with a simple 1 to confirm or even entering a full passport number. It’s ended up being used by the likes of Ebay, Livebookings and others. Iovox is in Notting Hill, thusly henceforth this shall be known as “Silicon Hill”. Here endeth the lesson.
|
AT&T To Press: We Withdrew Our Merger Application First | Sarah Perez | 2,011 | 11 | 25 | This morning, AT&T issued a formal statement on the from the FCC regarding its merger with T-Mobile. The company had previously agreed to pay a $4 billion pre-tax charge in the case that its $39 billion takeover of T-Mobile failed to go through, $3 billion of which would go to Deutsche Telekom’s T-Mobile and another $1 billion going to the book value of spectrum access. Yesterday, on Thanksgiving Day here in the U.S., AT&T released a statement announcing its intention to withdraw its request from the FCC. Today’s statement is meant to clear up misconceptions around its withdrawal request, namely that the FCC must approve it. , AT&T Senior Executive VP and General Counsel: “Yesterday AT&T withdrew its application with the FCC for approval of our merger with T-Mobile. We took the required actions, announced this publicly, and filed securities disclosures accordingly. We believe the record will show that we withdrew our merger application before the FCC voted on the chairman’s proposed hearing designation order. It has since been reported that the FCC must approve this withdrawal. This is not accurate. The FCC’s own rules give us this right and provide that the FCC ‘will’ grant any such withdrawal. Further, this has been the FCC’s own consistent interpretation of its rules. We have every right to withdraw our merger from the FCC, and the FCC has no right to stop us. Any suggestion the agency might do otherwise would be an abuse of procedure which we would immediately challenge in court.” In , AT&T said that it still intends to seek the necessary FCC approval, so today’s clarification on whether or not the FCC needs to approve this request seems to be a message directly to the media. The press had reported that when the FCC said it would begin further investigation of the merger application, . Now, AT&T is making it clear that it withdrew its request the FCC made the ruling that would have sent it over to an administrative law judge for review. It seems that AT&T doesn’t want to see its request reviewed by the administrative law judge, so it was better for them to pull the request, regroup and resubmit the request instead of getting this one denied. |
Thanksgiving Day Online Holiday Sales Up 39 Percent; Mobile Shopping On The Rise | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 11 | 25 | As we , retailers were expecting Thanksgiving Day to be a major online shopping day as more and more consumers are hitting their laptops, tablets and more to get a head start on sales in between Turkey time. It looks like early results point to the day being a profitable one for retailers. According to IBM’s Coremetrics retail data, online Thanksgiving 2011 sales were up 39 percent over Thanksgiving 2010. Mobile shopping also had a break out day on Turkey Day. The number of consumers using a mobile device to visit a retailer’s site reached a high of 15.2 percent, up from 6.45 percent in 2010. The number of consumers using their mobile device to make a purchase increased to 11.09 percent, up from 4.25 percent in 2010. The success of online and mobile sales on Thanksgiving is a good signs for Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales as well. As , ‘couch commerce,’ will be huge this year. Basically, consumers will be using their tablets and mobile phones from the comfort of their couches to shop this holiday shopping season. It looks like eBay may have been on to an important trend this season. comScore is expecting a 15 percent increase in overall online spending during the November-December season; and already |
null | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 11 | 22 | null |
Verizon Teases The Internet With $199 Galaxy Nexus | Chris Velazco | 2,011 | 11 | 25 | No, this isn’t a turkey-induced hallucination: ads for Verizon’s LTE-capable Galaxy Nexus have begun to pop up on a number of Android fan sites, and they clearly state that Samsung and Google’s latest joint effort will retail for $199. notes that the ads are being run by a company called , an ad network who coordinates these sorts of marketing efforts directly with carriers and manufacturers. The ad certainly looks legitimate, but it may not have been ready for prime time: clicking the Learn More button takes users to Verizon’s holiday landing page where the Galaxy Nexus is conspicuously absent. Also absent is any solid information on a release date: part of the ad’s URL hints at a November 29 launch, but a points to a December 8 release alongside the Droid 4. Nearly all of Verizon’s recent 4G-friendly heavyweights have hit store shelves at $299 (barring a ), so seeing the Galaxy Nexus undercut the competition by $100 is a bit of a shock. That price tag could be part of a holiday promotion meant to drive units into people’s hands, but I certainly hope not. Discounting a long-awaited device after it launches is one thing, but potentially launching a device with a lower price tag only to raise it later may not sit well with people. Even so, my wallet just let out a sigh of relief. If that price tag holds true (and my fingers are crossed as I write this), then Apple’s line of iPhones may see some strong competition in the next few weeks. |
YouTube Reportedly Forking Out $100M For TV-Esque Content | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 10 | 3 | The world’s foremost video-sharing playground may be more or less enough for its users, who want nothing more than to put their freestyles and kitten videos online, but it’s still on its way to becoming the money-making machine Google wants it to be. And while hamsters eating popcorn garner millions of views, they’re not the easiest to sell targeted ads for, and that’s where the money is. So and its mysterious “people familiar with the matter,” YouTube is finalizing a big content push with studios and networks, laying out $100 million to get some exclusive and high-quality content. Also, something probably related to . The WSJ mentions some potential partners, which I am putting in a list here for clarity purposes: The Wall Street Journal also reports that “The Wall Street Journal may also produce news content for a YouTube channel, another person familiar with the matter said.” I almost expected a “Disclosure: The Wall Street Journal is the Wall Street Journal.” (they disclose their News Corp connection) The shows associated with these companies ( ) are fairly traditional cable fare, and likely they will be producing similar things for YouTube. “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” seems to be the strategy here, and the next two years will probably see quite a few medium-budget reality series, some traditional comedy, and probably some gameshow/performance things with handy built-in voting and other rich tools. The issue is that right now ad rates for YouTube are bargain bin prices. A few recurring shows with a million solid views each (or whatever number is cool these days) could be a wedge to lure some advertising cash away from the lucrative cable-TV market. And the producers involved aren’t going to turn down a little extra money to fire off a few more pilots. |
Eastern Europe creates waves at HackFwd event | cloudbrows | 2,011 | 10 | 3 | Eastern Europe was featured prominently at the latest event Build 0.7 in Berlin. During our conversation at an outdoor gathering of “pirates” during the European Pirate Summit in Cologne, Germany, , the executive geek at HackFwd, a pre-seed investment company could not have been more positive about the region. Even he was surprised to realise that out of 14 current “Hackboxes”, or investee companies, three of them come from the region. One is from Poland, which has seen a lot of positive feedback on their progress during the Build 07 demo. The company has an innovative approach to recommending and discussing movies and just released a new version of the website. Another one is Outlanders Studio, a Lithuanian game developer that created Equilibrium, a 3D real-time strategy game for the Android platform.
The third likely addition is a , a Croatian startup providing bulk domain verification and analytics services founded by and . Hinrichs admits, “They did a great presentation, showed a great product, and we hope that they will join HackFwd.” WhoAPI is the technology behind a white label service that allows bulk domain availability checking and domain analysis. The users of such a service are the marketing and SEO agencies and domain brokers, as well as hosting companies, which now can offer their clients a tool to check domain availability and their relevant information, such as search engine results position, spam list checks and ownership data. The information is useful not only for the domain registration process, but also for link-building, as it is important to check whether or not the site is blacklisted. The founders Duškić and Budimilic have worked together throughout their professional life. “Our beginnings are in game development. When we were kids, we enjoyed the creative process of making games,” says Duškić as we chat with him over a Skype call. Unfortunately, software piracy in Croatia was widespread at the time, and they had to compete on price with the top titles sold at four US dollars on the black market. Their games were also copied. “So we diverted to web development, hosting, and online marketing, and this is where the new idea came from,” he adds. “We developed solutions from scratch every time we wanted to have information about domains, but then we found out how to automate the process,” explains Duškić. “Your competitors are the ones you understand the most. So when our own competitors became our clients, it was very easy to make a product for them.” To get to HackFwd, the founders jumped through a few hoops. At first, , the founder of , Croatian Angels Network, and one of the referrers in the HackFwd network, suggested that the WhoAPI founders look into getting an investment from the pre-seed fund. Soon Duškić and his partner were meeting David Bizer, the HackFwd’s talent geek, during his visit to Zagreb. After a successful presentation, the founders were applying to Build 0.7 in Berlin. And the rest is history. The selection process developed by HackFwd is thorough. Hinrichs explains, “Right now we have 30 referrers in the country, and we plan to grow this number, so we have at least two referrers in each country: someone from a startup scene, and an academic.” After a successful presentation at the HackFwd Build event, all developers are then put through a series of tough coding tests before the investment is made. Incidentally, the tests also come from an Eastern European company called , from Poland. As the local venture capital market in Croatia is closed to non-existent, let us hope that the founders will successfully complete the negotiation process and become a new Hackbox. For those inspired by their stories, beware Hinrichs’ restrictions: HackFwd will invest only in geeks based in the broader EU region. |
YouTube’s Rick Klau Joins Google Ventures To Head Startup University | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 10 | 3 | Everybody seems to be bulking up (!); is also adding to its roster, bringing YouTube Product Manager to the team as Partner, Startup University. Startup University is Google Ventures’ efforts to transfer as much knowledge and as much background information as possible to its portfolio companies. It will do this by providing educational opportunities like office hours, classes and everything in between with the ultimate objective of helping startups avoid stupid mistakes, “None of this is to say that we have all the answers,” explains Google Ventures Partner “We’re just saying ‘This is how we’ve done it. And if you’re going to make a mistake, make a new one.'” Word. Startup University aims to provide its 70+ startups with mentorship resources including the “ability to tap into a network of 30,000 Googlers who are all good at what they do.” In addition to office hours and its network, it offers unparalleled opportunities like the ability to attend hands-on courses in completing user research studies from UX star or sessions in recruiting tricks from Google Ventures recruiter . Klau tells me that he hopes that Startup University will provide classes on a regular cycle — every couple of days — for the 150 portfolio companies that the fund hopes to support by this time next year. Thus far over a hundred people from Google Ventures portfolio companies have attended Startup University office hours or classes, in the nine months the program has existed. “There was a tremendous appetite from the portfolio to get whatever we would give them,” says Klau, who was at Feedburner before it was acquired by Google. “I’m a startup up guy by heart, and the opportunity to take not just what I learned at Google but my experience from my startup days to help this growing portfolio was too good to pass up.” “[Startup University] has already saved the Astrid team dozens of hours and tens of thousands of dollars in consulting and recruiting fees and given us deeper confidence as we prepare to share what we’ve been working on with the world,” says co-founder Jon Paris. “This isn’t just about a Powerpoint slide detailing best practices,” says CTO Matt Koidin “The mentors are getting their hands dirty and helping us make Read It Later better.” Google Ventures’ Startup University plans on expanding and taking up formal residence in a building off of the Google Campus with dedicated conference rooms, an auditorium, break rooms and a user research facility. “We’re really fortunate to be able to have someone of Rick’s caliber to own this project that we started out doing in our 20 percent time,” Maris confirms. |
Joypad Turns Your iPhone Into A Remote Control; Launches New SDK To Bring iOS Gaming To Apple TV | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 10 | 3 | Touch devices have revolutionized mobile gaming, just like they’ve revolutionized the mobile space as a whole. For mobile games, they’ve introduced some amazing interfaces and controllers that make those that have had the fortune of playing Atari on console take a step back and pinch themselves. Of course, technology is now taking us toward a confluence of consoles and touch devices. Today, companies like Joypad Inc. are turning our iPhones into game controllers. syncs directly with iPad, Mac, and PC games over bluetooth or WiFi to let gamers use their smartphone as a controller to play their favorite games on various NES-style control pads. Game developers can also use Joypad’s free SDKs, which take about 30 minutes to integrate, to add Joypad support to their games. With these SDKs, gamers can interact with their favorite games in ways that were before impossible. For example, as a gamer reaches a new level, or unlocks new features, developers can push a new button out to the player in realtime. This kind of functionality gives developers a new way to create custom layouts for controllers and forge a deeper integration with the playing experience. Joypad started as a way to control a Mac NES emulator from your iPhone. Since launching in March, the product evolved per customer feedback — with support for additional emulators, multiplayer, and Windows. Despite positive feedback from early customers, setup was too confusing for a mainstream product, Joypad Co-founder Lou Zell tells me, and so the team released its first developer SDK in July as a way to eliminate all end-user setup. Now it “just works”, he says. Another reason to love Joypad is that the team consists solely of its two founders: Todd Hamilton and Lou Zell. Joypad is the co-founders’ third startup, all of which have been self-funded between stints of contract work to pay off credit card debt. And the release of their SDK, along with the elimination of all end-user setup has worked. The founders have seen early traction with Joypad that far outpaces their previous startups, with 50,000 downloads of their iOS app, and 15 companies using their SDK to date. It seems that the third time just may be the charm. As a result of this early success, the team is raising a small seed round while they continue to build out their products. Today, the Joypad team is also bringing their Unity SDK out of alpha, which means more high quality Mac and iOS games can now offer Joypad support — in addition to the 12 games already live. Another cool part of this is that, now that Joypad has SDKs available for Mac, iOS, and Unity iOS, their new capabilities will allow gamers to play iOS games on their Apple TV via their iPhones and iPads. If you’re an Apple device freak, this will put you in heaven, especially ahead of the expected launch of iOS 5 tomorrow. Thanks to Airplay, Joypad will allow you to wirelessly move the games you’re playing on your iPad to Apple TV, enabling you to take over the world from your bean bag chair. Joypad’s SDKs can be integrated into any iOS games available on the App Store, and with a little bit of tinkering, developers can make their games Joypad and Apple TV compatible. While Joypad offers a great array of controller options and makes it easy for developers to give their games wireless iPhone controls, the startup isn’t the only one in the space. , which brought together Brass Monkey’s fully developed controller-building SDK, with support for Flash, Unity3D, and desktop games and apps, with Emotely’s ability to build controllers using HTML5 for both the interface and communication layer (with HTTP and WebSockets) — a match made in heaven. Together Brass Monkey and Joypad offer some great options for gamers looking to add that extra level to their home gaming experience. As developers clue into these solutions and adoption grows, Joypad’s catalog of games for the iPad will expand, and we may just have a game changer on our hands. For more on Joypad, or find . Below you’ll find an example of the types of games Joypad is now targeting with the Unity SDK: And for the Apple TV hack, . |
HP’s Autonomy Buyout Finalized And Official | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 10 | 3 | HP just announced that it has under the terms specified last month. To wit: £25.50 each for 213,421,299 shares, totaling just over 87% of the company. That’s around $8.5 billion spent of the ~$10 billion offer that would have constituted a total buyout (Reuters $12 billion). The purchase price is seen by many as rather an overpayment, but the purchase was one of the keystones in Leo Apotheker’s plan to restructure the company. Apotheker, of course, not long ago just a few weeks ago to make way for the new CEO, Meg Whitman, taking with him some . Autonomy will operate as a “separate business unit,” though HP will be using their new asset to “accelerate our strategic vision” and “reinvent how both unstructured and structured data is processed, analyzed, optimized, automated and protected” according to Apotheker, and “manage and extract meaning from that data to drive insight, foresight and better decision making” according to Whitman. The news came at the end of the day and HP’s shares dipped in late trading, closing at $22.20, down $0.25 or 1.11%. |
Fresh from Google fight, Huddle turns on Microsoft with a marching band | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 10 | 3 |
Here’s a new one on turning against your former wet-nurse. was once a Microsoft BizSpark One company. But it’s business collaboration platform now competes with Microsoft’s Sharepoint. Indeed, there are rumours that UK-based Huddle (which now has a large SF office) was once yanked off stage at Mix ‘O6 at the last minute because someone realised the potential controversy. No stranger to controversy, Huddle also recently managed to convince Google to change it’s Google+ feature called Huddle. Now Huddle is back to harass its alma mater. Microsoft is having its Sharepoint conference in Anaheim/LA, so Huddle turned up with a marching band and cheerleaders, branded Huddle of course. We gather Police tried to shut down the demo. Maybe they needed a break from OccupyWallStreet? Huddle seems to be taking a few tips from the Salesforce playbook in its annoyance of Microsoft. Today’s it’s hired Simon O’Kane, former Managing Director, UK and Ireland, at Salesforce.com, as VP Enterprise. See where this is going? Clients to date include Disney, HTC, Kia Motors and a 10 year deal with the UK government and says its sales have tripled in Q1 2011. |
Fitocracy’s Web App Wants You To Get Up And Go Mobile | Chris Velazco | 2,011 | 10 | 3 | The guys at , the social fitness tracker, have been very busy . Though I’m a fan of the service, sometimes using it can be hit or miss. Don’t get me wrong — it’s absolutely great on a computer, but the site never really scaled well for mobile devices. Thankfully, that’s no longer the case, as the company has announced that the . For the uninitiated, Fitocracy combines fitness tracking with social elements and an RPG-esque levelling system that appeals to the inner EXP grinder in me. It’s an eclectic mix, sure, but it’s helped Fitocracy to develop quite the loyal fanbase. Fitocracy’s works by cutting nearly all of the social cruft that the service is known for. Goodbye forums, groups, and status updates — you only have access to your activity tracker. From there, you can look up individual exercises, or select frequently performed activities or routines to add to your list for the day. Each of your exercises nets you a certain number of points, enough of which allow you to level up. Levelling up on Fitocracy doesn’t actually do anything, other than imbue you with a nice sense of physical accomplishment. The mobile web app also supports Fitocracy’s achievements, so you’ll get a shiny little (digital) badge when you do things like run your first 5K in one outing. All things considered, it’s functional, if a little spartan. Fitocracy has made it clear on their blog that the mobile web app is still being fine-tuned, so the occasional bug may pop up, but it’s still a welcome addition for the service’s workout junkies who don’t mind holding off on the chit-chat. |
null | Sarah Perez | 2,011 | 11 | 25 | null |
Why Twitter is crap for conversations – but great for comedians | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 10 | 3 |
Robert Scoble has been riffing on a theme of late, namely where on earth – heavens to murgatroyd – are we supposed to have social conversations now they are split up between Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and (ok admittedly that last one is a Twitter clone in Poland – but you get my drift. Hey, the Poles like it…). Robert that Google+ is better for conversations than Twitter or Facebook because of one word: “SEARCH!” Here’s the skinny: “See, I can search for all associated items here. I can’t over on Facebook… For one, photos look better here…. Why does Twitter suck for conversations? Because you can’t easily bundle tweets together … Facebook has more people, so conversations with your real-life family and friends will probably happen over there unless you get them to visit [Google+].”
And of course you can also have Google Hangout conversations. (Hmmn… whatever happened to Robert’s obsession with Quora?). However, he points back and forth between Google and Facebook because “I won’t have my conversations held hostage by any one company.” (Personally I thought that was what owning your own domain / blog and comments were for). But, there is one place where conversations are simply unnecessary, and that is when they are in the hands of comedic writers like . Who needs to have a conversation when you prefer the feudal nature of Twitter, where huge nodes like Brooker can pick and choose who they pick upon and who they ignore? Thus we reprint here how, masterfully, there really is no point in ‘having a conversation’ on Twitter when you are this funny. (Read from the bottom)
|
The 'Google Store' is two benches in a PC World. An Apple store this is not. | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 10 | 3 | Google’s so-called first “Google Store” has caused something of a kerfuffle in the media, since the store broke Friday. However, everyone needs to calm down and take a chill pill. The store is in fact just a 285 square foot space within a PC World outlet on Tottenham Court Road, famed for its tech shops in London. An Apple store this is not. Plus, it will only run for a few months until Christmas. Do we think this “low-key experiment” in real-world retailing has legs? Google UK’s head of consumer marketing Arvind Desikan was as saying: “It is our first foray into physical retail. This is a new channel for us and it’s still very, very early days. It’s something Google is going to play with and see where it leads… People will be able to go in and have a play with the devices. We want to see whether people understand what this device is all about and monitor their reaction when they try it out.” It’s fair that about 80 percent of laptops are sold through real world shops, this looks more like an exaggerated customer sampling exercise and a nice opportunity for some PR (not that Google needs PR – but it would like to see what people make of Chromebooks so it has to get the word out). The ‘Chrome Zone’ section of PC World has just two benches of laptops that run Google’s Chrome OS. And there’s another Chrome Zone in the Lakeside Currys PC World shop. However I can’t see this becoming a widespread policy. That said, I would expect to see something similar in the way of retail experiments happen in the US when the UK trial has garnered some useful feedback. Picture: |
MG Siegler Will Become Our Apple Columnist, And Join CrunchFund As A VC | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 10 | 3 | When I first reached out to MG Siegler to join TechCrunch two and a half years ago, I knew he was an amazing talent who could help cement our place as the premier technology blog on the Internet. Ever since Michael and I hired him, he has not disappointed. As his has grown, others have noticed his talents as well. Everyone from the New York Times to every one of our competitors has tried to recruit him away, but he’s always stuck with TechCrunch. Over the past few months, a lot of venture capital firms have been trying to hire him as well. This time, the lure was too great. He decided to change careers and will become a VC, just like Michael Arrington. In fact, Michael is the one who is hiring him as a general partner at the CrunchFund (beating out offers from several other top-tier VC firms MG was considering). But MG will be the first to tell you that his decision to become a VC predates all the recent drama around (and I will let him tell you so himself in his ). While MG will only be working full time as a writer at TechCrunch for another month, I am pleased to announce that he will continue to write for us after that on a regular basis as an outside columnist. The scope of what he will write about will be very narrow: Apple. He won’t write about startups or venture capital. And just like he has always done, he will continue to follow our editorial standards, which require strict disclosures for any kind of conflict whatsoever—financial, business, or personal. Apple is a big enough company and a big enough story to keep him busy as a columnist. MG is one of the top journalists in the world writing about Apple already. (Check back tomorrow when he will be covering Apple’s iPhone event). As our first official columnist, MG’s new role will also mark another change at TechCrunch. We are going to have a lot more columnists. In fact, you already know many of them because they are currently regular contributors—people like Chris Dixon, Mark Suster, Andrew Keen, Steve Gillmor, Cyan Bannister, and Jon Evans. (You can ). Some are also investors, others are journalists, we’ll even have a few founders and CEOs. Stay tuned for more announcements. And, yes, I am also hiring more full-time writers, but more on that in a future post. |
Upcoming Nikon D800 Said To Be 36-Megapixel, $4000 Monster | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 10 | 3 | Some specs for Nikon’s next semi-pro camera have surfaced on Japanese camera site , and seems to think they’re creditable. It’s an interesting move by Nikon but not one that will be appreciated by the bulk of DSLR buyers. The new D800, they say, will pack 36 megapixels on a full frame FX sensor, and essentially forgo advances in low-light performance in order to produce a medium-cost studio camera instead of a lower-cost prosumer one. The rumored $4000 price puts it out of most enthusiasts’ reach, and the high megapixel count makes it less practical for sports and field photography. Video will be 1080p/30, though they may add additional framerates. The LCD will be larger and brighter (likely with an improvement in resolution as well), and there will be two CF cards slots and one SD. The four frame per second burst speed won’t wow anyone, but I’m guessing that is a deliberate decision given the reassigned priorities. The release date is rumored to be November 24th, with an announcement on October 26th. We’ll see how the rumors pan out, but it’s certainly about time for the Dx00 range to get an update. The problem is that this D800 doesn’t seem to replace the D700 so much as add a new entire type to the lineup, below the D3s in size and low light performance and above the D3x in megapixels. What of the D700? Will there be a new model at the $2500-$3000 price, perhaps a D700s with a focus on low light? Very little information on that front, unfortunately. It’s all speculation, of course, until the information is truly out there. And until the cameras are actually reviewed, the capabilities are merely theoretical. Patience is the word today for Nikon fans. |
StumbleUpon Brings Its Tablet Experience To Android, Optimizes UI Across All Its Mobile Apps | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 10 | 3 | Content discovery platform , which just launched a , now brings that same user experience to Android with the very first StumbleUpon app designed specifically for Android tablets (the app was previously only available for the Android phone). The app is ready for download in the Android Market The new StumbleUpon Android tablet has basically the same functionality as the new iPad app (even though at first run-through some of the swipe features seem faster on the iPad). In addition to releasing an Android tablet version, StumbleUpon is unifying its features across all mobile apps. The most notable change is that the company is bringing the Explore box, which was previously only available through its web interface, to all its mobile platforms. Users can now explore through over a half million interests options via mobile, StumbleUpon founder Garrett Camp tells me, by hitting the home button on whatever app they’re using and entering their preferred Interest keyword in the Explore box. I chose to stumble through the interest category “Fashion,” for example (of course). Swipe-to-stumble, a feature previously available only on the iPad app, is also now a standard feature across all mobile StumbleUpon apps. The feature lets users employ a -esque “swipe” gesture in order to move on to the next piece of content. The iPad app’s content pre-loading is also to be found on all StumbleUpon mobile apps as of today, improving page load time in order to make the stumbling experience faster. StumbleUpon mobile is still growing 35% month over month Camp tells me, and he thinks it’s because people use their mobile devices and specifically tablets for entertainment, “If you’re talking about the vacation you’re going to take next month it’s a lot easier to swipe through the term ‘Costa Rica’ than complete a hunt and peck search,” he says. “The tablets are much more about wanting to be entertained, the experience of browsing on a tablet is so fun,” he continues. “StumbleUpon is like having your own personal channel … your own personalized tour of the Internet.” Camp’s future plans for the StumbleUpon mobile apps include perfecting the current UI changes in addition to adding social notification features and . Today marks the first time the company has made all of their mobile functionality consistent. |
Apple To Battle iOS Piracy With App Rentals? | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 10 | 3 | Be it wariness of compatibility or quality, a lack of disposable income, or some unnoticeable form of protest, people will always find a justification to pirate things. Of course, many of these justifications tend to be secondary to the realization that Not Paying For Stuff > Paying For Stuff — but hey, I’m in no position to pretend to be on any sort of moral pedestal here. Within the iOS piracy scene, the most commonly cited justification seems to be something along the lines of “There’s too much crap on the App Store! How will I know if an app is any good before I shell out a whole for it? I’m not pirating, I’m testing!” Well, Installous fans, it looks like you might soon have to find a new bit of logic to absolve your conscience. Based on a couple of strings tucked within the latest iTunes Beta, it looks like Apple might be crackin’ away at a way for users to give iOS apps a spin before they pay full price, no-jailbreak-required. Unearthed by Twitter-goer and self-dubbed iOS Hacker , the new strings seem to refer to apps that have a “rental period” and that will be automatically deleted after said period runs dry: Of course, it’s worth noting that these strings seem to be directly copied/pasted from those regarding iTunes Movie Rentals, but with the word “App” being swapped in place of the word “movie”. It’s a bit strange to ask the user if they wish to begin “ ” the app (outside of games), no? If Apple roll out a rental/trial system, it’ll be interesting to see how they handle pricing. Many, if not most, of the premium offerings on the App Store are 99 cents. How does one reasonably rent that out? 10 cents a week? Absurd. The system would need to support both free rentals (trials) for the nearly-free apps, as well as premium rentals to allow the more expensive offerings to experiment with marked down, time-limited installations. |
Russian software house secures $200m from Baring Vostok Capital | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 10 | 3 | You may not have heard of , but this leading Russian software company publishes 1C:Enterprise, the most popular ERP software for small and medium-sized businesses in Russia. With such a lock on a large market, that means 1C reported sales turnover of more than $600 million in 2010. And the sales are expected to increase by 20% in 2011. So it’s not entirely unsurprising that the company has now received $200 million in return for a 9% stake from private equity firm Baring Vostok Capital Partners (BVCP) reports newspaper . 1C develops, distributes and publishes mass-market software and was founded in 1991. BVCP has previously invested in broadband telecom operator ER-Telecom but is better known for its stake in Yandex and OZON.ru. The move should be seen as a wider move by VCs to invest in Russian software powerhouses. This January saw General Atlantic invest $200 million in security software vendor Kaspersky Lab. |
HouseFix, The Carfax For Home Improvement, Wants To Find You The Best Local Contractors (Video) | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 10 | 3 | Launching at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco last month was a startup called . As you might be able to guess by its name, HouseFix is a startup and service that aims to help you find the right people to fix up your house. Started by homeowners and contractors, the startup is trying to make the process of finding skilled labor for home repairs better for both parties. To do this, HouseFix wants to give homeowners a CARFAX report for their house — a complete history of facts about their house that includes a list of improvement projects or anything that future homeowners would find relevant. To differentiate itself from other providers like Angie’s List or ServiceMagic, HouseFix is bringing social and local contexts to homeowners in a simple and intuitive way, so that they can quickly identify local contractors that fit their personal criteria for what kind of labor they’re looking for, pricing, etc. The startup wants you to be able to find contractors you can trust in a matter of minutes, not days or weeks. HouseFix is thus hoping to become a comprehensive directory of contractors, complete with reviews and profiles of each, that can be easily searched by homeowners. Users will be able to see which of their neighbors are using the site, which contractors they’ve recently used, and beyond social recommendations, to help homeowners wade through the noise, HouseFix takes a range of different factors, including performance, reliability, etc. to generate. a score for each contractor — like a credit score — so that owners know who they can trust. ( .) And on the flip side, HouseFix wants to be a resource for these contractors as well, providing them with platform on which they can keep track of their own projects and bring their offline business online. With HouseFix, contractors can manage their jobs, viewing which jobs are on time and within the quoted budget, store notes and before and after photos, and finally allowing them to build an online profile that they can use to create and manage their own web presence. In comparison to ServiceMagic, which charges contractors for the list of contractors homeowners receive, HouseFix is currently free in beta, and doesn’t charge. ServiceMagic serves homeowners with suggestions — three phone numbers — but there’s very little information on the contractors provided. HouseFix President and CEO Adrian Talapan says that, as a homeowner, one wants to find a contractor that has worked on a house similar to theirs, in their neighborhood, and has worked on projects similar to what they’re looking for and has done great work. For contractors, generally speaking, they end up being the ninth or tenth service provider to contact a homeowner about their job request, and by that point, the homeowner isn’t taking calls or has already found the person they want to use. This makes it a waste of time for contractors, and few services give them the opportunity to effectively sell themselves and share the kind of work they do best to find the right jobs. On stage at Disrupt, HouseFix was the victim of some technical difficulties, and the startup did not have the opportunity to share their entire presentation. So, without further ado, here is video of that explains in depth what HouseFix is all about, and its value proposition for homeowners and contractors alike: |
With Shooting Caught On Officer’s “Chest-Cam,” Tech Precedent To Be Set | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 10 | 3 | The rising number of cameras recording activity on the street and on the job makes for an interesting new set of problems. I examined a few in my post, and that could set a serious precedent for the application of tech in criminal cases. On September 25, an Oakland police officer pulled over a car and the suspect got out and fled. The officer chased him, and during a struggle the suspect was shot and killed. The charges, suspect’s and officer’s names, are undisclosed but it was stated that the suspect was armed with a gun. It would be another sadly typical escalation with a lethal end, except that the officer in question had at some point flipped on his “chest-cam,” a relatively recent development in policing where a Flip-type pocket cam (in this case a model) is attached to the uniform and turned on under certain circumstances. The presence of this camera is leading to a few potentially major legal questions given the stakes of the case. While some are more legal than tech-related, it’s worth taking a minute to see how technological advances are shaping criminal law. There are rules in the department that govern when you should, should not, or must turn on your camera, but failure to do so (innocent or deliberate) can easily be explained, and events not categorized as “stops and arrests” could need recording. In Surveillant Society, I note that the inevitable end of cameras in situations like this is to be recording all the time, recycling their footage as they go, and indeed dash and security cameras (not as limited by size) already do this. In that situation, the footage would be recorded regardless of the officer’s actions, and collected later. Unfortunately battery and storage constraints prohibit this simple solution for now. In the meantime, the regulations regarding recording should be public information (I’m sure they are already) and anyone in any encounter with an officer should be able to request that the camera be turned on. That is to say, who has access to the footage and how is it kept safe from tampering? The answer is probably to say that it must be treated as any other material evidence would be: bagged, logged, and kept centrally and securely; there are already plenty of regulations to this effect, . And unlike physical evidence, the footage on the camera has the potential to be duplicated, which means it could be given to someone without affecting the original. SFGate asks whether the video should be provided to the press, but I don’t see any reason why it should be (or rather, why it should be treated differently than a weapon or suspect ID) during an ongoing investigation. The prevailing opinion seems to be that no, this would be unacceptable, and I agree. The statement of a witness or participant in a crime must be from memory. It is up to the judge and jury to determine the level of truthfulness; if a suspect (or officer) is aware that their actions are on video, it’s very possible their statement will change to reflect that. Furthermore, if they actually see the video, it will change further. The documentation of a police encounter is as much for the department as it is for the accused. Certainly the video would be brought in as evidence and those involved would be given a chance to explain their actions during cross examination or when otherwise prompted. The officer’s attorney notes that some departments have actually answered the above question in the affirmative, with unions pushing for the ability to review footage before making a statement. But, she says, “it’s hard to have a hard-and-fast rule in terms of these videos. Every situation and every officer is very different.” Unfortunately, a hard-and-fast rule is , and the nuances of enforcement and compliance must be worked out in court. The inevitable civil rights violation might go all the way up to the Supreme Court a la Miranda, but differing resources, constituencies, and policing strategies may make such high-level restrictions impractical. I would say that some Supreme Court decisions regarding the application of civil rights to new tech will be necessary, but that regulations will have to be enacted at the state level, and then more specifically at the department level, where they will need to be made as simple and transparent as possible and probably added to the standard statements made by cops during bookings and arrests. “Video of this encounter can and will be used against you, and me, in a court of law.” We all see how tech affects us in everyday life, but the institution of law is a much slower-moving creature, and even when something major occurs (like the purchase of hundreds of cameras for installation on the persons of officers), the consequences likely won’t be fully felt for years, and even then they will likely be felt as part of a tragedy or injustice. As a theoretical source of accountability, these cameras are invaluable, but as usual we are more likely to learn that through the publication of criminal acts rather than the confirmation of virtuous ones. [via ] |
Did Sprint Go All-In For The iPhone 5? | Chris Velazco | 2,011 | 10 | 3 | Sprint is taking a huge risk by carrying the iPhone, if reports from are to be believed. Details about Sprint and Apple’s quiet dealings have begun to emerge, and if true, the country’s third largest wireless carrier is stuck in a precarious position. Sprint CEO Dan Hesse has reportedly told the company’s board of directors that in order to nab the iPhone, they would have to commit to purchasing at least 30.5 million iPhones over the next four years. It’s a huge investment by any stretch — WSJ pegs it at around $20 billion at current rates — but it’s made worse by the fact that Sprint will be locked into the purchasing agreement regardless of whether or not the iPhones actually sell. The board was said to have accepted Apple’s terms. It’s a lot of units to move, certainly, but it’s not entirely impossible. A particular subset of Sprint customers have been clamoring for a taste of the Cupertino limelight for years, not to mention that Sprint’s commitment to their make it an attractive alternative for current iPhone users looking get more bang for their buck. Here’s the kicker though: even if iPhone sales are strong, it’ll still be years before Sprint turns a profit. At $20 billion for 30.5 million units, the cost per device comes out to roughly $656. Sprint has long positioned themselves as more of a value carrier than their big rivals Verizon and AT&T, which will only make it harder to recoup the losses from subsidizing iPhone prices. Unfortunately, no mention was made of what iPhone Sprint would potentially be carrying. Rumors that Sprint would carry have been making the rounds, and could help explain Sprint’s willingness to jump on the device even at such a high price. claims that Sprint will be the exclusive carrier of the iPhone 5 (at least for a while), which is pretty out-there, but could be a huge coup for Sprint if true. Though customers may rejoice at Sprint landing the iPhone, it may not be all sunshine and roses. In order to move that many iPhones, it’s completely possible that Sprint will begin to focus less on their Android lineup. It’s a shame, considering how strongly they’ve backed the Google OS, but them’s the theoretical breaks. The possibility of the iPhone 5 being a Sprint exclusive is also a bit odd to say the least, but that may not be all. Sprint’s exclusivity on the Palm Pre is often cited as one of many reasons for that device’s underwhelming life — but the iPhone is obviously an entirely different monster. According to an unnamed source close to the situation, Sprint’s iPhone deal was a “bet-the-company kind of thing.” No kidding — a successful launch could be a new wind in Sprint’s sails, and could give the company some much needed momentum in comparison to the Big Two carriers. Likewise, an underwhelming launch that never picks up steam means that Sprint committed to a huge liability for almost nothing. Sprint is said to be waiting until later this week to make their official iPhone announcement, but with less than 24 hours until Apple’s big event, we may hear more sooner rather than later. |
Sean Parker Is Now On Twitter: “Sorry Zuck” | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 10 | 3 | is getting a lot louder. You’ve been hearing him for a decade now — cofounder of Napster and Plaxo, founding President of Facebook, and most recently as an investor (and advocate) of Spotify. And he hasn’t pulled any punches during his appearances or interviews, either. But now it looks like we’re going to be hearing directly from him on a much more regular basis: Parker just launched a . His first tweet, which you can see above, doesn’t need much in the way of an explanation ( is a talent manager, who’s actually previously spoken at TechCrunch Disrupt NYC). Zuckerberg probably won’t be getting too upset. Parker has recently posted some lengthy on his , for one (he’s up to 30,651 subscribers as of this writing). And Parker was responsible for giving Zuckerberg long-term control over Facebook using a novel equity structure. Something tells me they’re still on okay terms. Obviously Parker’s tweet is part of a larger strategy (he’s also working on a blog). My hunch is that he’s eager to share his thoughts through channels that aren’t filtered by the press (as they are with media interviews). Or maybe his agent just told him to. |
PayPal To Open A Pop-Up Store In New York To Showcase New Payments Technologies | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 10 | 3 | -PayPal is going to be setting up a pop-up store in downtown Manhattan, New York to showcase some of the new tools and technologies the payments giant will debut in the next few months. The space will be located at 174 Hudson, which is located in the Tribeca neighborhood of Manhattan. Over the next 3 and a half months, PayPal will be inviting merchants to come visit the space where they will have the opportunity to get real-time demos of the technologies in realistic point of sale scenarios. The store, which will launch on November 1, will also feature a QR code for people passing by to scan and see more details on the PayPal’s new technologies. So what new technologies will PayPal be showing off? As the company revealed in September, PayPal is investing in a to integrate PayPal into the checkout and mobile payments experience. Later this year, PayPal will be rolling out a one-stop shop for merchants, both online and local businesses, to manage payments from customers. Features of this new offering will include location-based offers, making payments accessible from any device and offering more payments flexibility to customers after they’ve checked out. Users will have the ability to access realtime store inventory, receive in-store offers, and real-time location-based advertising from stores. PayPal tells us that it will be debuting its technology that integrated with physical payments gateways in stores (the company is expected to announce a number of partnerships with major retailers soon). A pop-up store and physical presence for merchants and consumers is actually a wise move for PayPal. The technology hasn’t really had a physical presence in a retail environment, and this can be a contributor towards adoption. For example, mobile payments company Square has in-store retail deals with both and Best Buy. At the moment, PayPal doesn’t have a device to sell (like Square) so a pop-up store can be a centralized place for merchants to see the new technology, and for consumers for experiment with the payments platform. Google just opened a |
Adobe Pushes Into Tablet Space With 6 New Apps And “Creative Cloud” | Jordan Crook | 2,011 | 10 | 3 | Adobe’s had a busy day. Along with the and TypeKit, the company has also made a clear push into the tablet space, looking to bolster content creation. At the Adobe MAX 2011 conference in Los Angeles, Adobe officially announced the Creative Cloud — its very own cloud storage offering — along with with six new Adobe Touch apps for Android tablets and the iPad. Creative Cloud lets users sync, share and view files from both the Adobe Creative Suite (desktop) and the Adobe Touch apps. It offers 20GB of free storage, though pricing and availability won’t be announced until November. However, the Creative Cloud (once it’s in action) will certainly boost the value of the six new Touch apps, most notable of which is Adobe Photoshop Touch. Here’s a quick run-down of each of the new apps: Just like the Creative Cloud, these new apps won’t roll out until November. Worse, iOS availability seems to be a bit behind, with Adobe expecting to announce iPad availability in early 2012. Each app will cost $9.99 from both the Android Market and the Apple App Store. |
Kickstarter Hit With Patent Claim Over Crowd-Funding | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 10 | 4 | , which just recently the 10,000th successfully funded project in its 2.5-year history, is under siege by that most ubiquitous of foes, presently at least: patent litigation. Yes, the site that works so diligently to advance interesting and original ideas among the community is being shaken down by a company seemingly formed for patent-licensing purposes. But whether we like them or not isn’t material if the patent is valid and granted, right? Here’s the patent: . The inventor is Brian Camelio, former studio musician for Journey (surely an albatross around his neck these days) and founder of , a perfectly legitimate and forward-thinking website which allows fans to “show appreciation for their favorite artists by funding their recording projects in exchange for access to the creative process, LTD Edition recordings, VIP access to recording sessions and even credit listing on the CD.” It’s been around for years and has Grammy-award winning artists on its rolls. It’s an obvious application of the patent, which was filed for in 2003. And reading over the claims, it’s conceivable that it could apply to certain projects on Kickstarter. But like many other “method for” patents, it’s really just an existing business strategy in internet form. People have been collaborating on artistic projects in exchange for creative input for centuries. They use whatever tools they’ve got. The patent amounts to a website that accomplishes this, with almost no specificity as to why this invention is in need of patent protection. Most of the claims and requirements are required either for collaborative system like this or for website where media has to be served. Nevertheless, Fan Funded LLC has endeavored to license its new patent to Kickstarter under threat of litigation for infringement, . Seems a bit like patenting “a car, with wheels” and then suing everyone who uses wheels — though to their credit they did act quickly following the issuance of the patent. Naturally, Kickstarter has that the patent be invalidated, and failing that, that they be found not infringing. As usual, an over-permissive patent office is to blame. Anyone “skilled in the art” would have dismissed this patent as failing to be non-obvious — or at least I would. We’ll update when more information is available. : Kickstarter, it seems, has its own patents on this front. and , a matching pair for patenting the Kickstarter system of “conditional investment.” The patents seem just about as ridiculous, but it’s one thing to have them, another to go around suing people. Thanks to for pointing these out. : I neglected to check the current status of Kickstarter’s patents due to their (relative) youth; they are in fact abandoned after being rejected. Thanks to for the update. I realize the original post appears a bit incomplete in retrospect, I’m going to do a little more due diligence next time! |
Larry Ellison Cancels Marc Benioff’s Keynote at Oracle’s OpenWorld | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 10 | 4 | Well, well, well. The is in full swing, and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff was scheduled to be one of the keynote speakers tomorrow (Wednesday). “Was” being the operative word here. Thanks to a recent update from Benioff’s Twitter account, it seems that Oracle CEO Larry Ellison has cancelled Mr. Benioff’s keynote tomorrow. Hmmm. Instead, Larry will be king of the stage, with a one hour and forty-five minute keynote, kicking off at 2:45 p.m. PST. No word as of yet on why Ellison cancelled the Salesforce CEO’s keynote. Not : “Sorry #oow11 I don’t know why….Larry just cancelled my keynote tomorrow! Join me@St.Regis AME Restaurant at 10:30AM! I’m disappointed too!” https://twitter.com/#!/Benioff/status/121391199809581057 As you might have garnered from his tweet, Benioff will likely instead be answering questions and interacting with the media at the Ame Restaurant in the St. Regis Hotel on Wednesday at 10:30 a.m PST. We’ll be there to cover, and will be sure to share any helpful words of advice Benioff has for the man who just gave him the early hook, as they say in showbiz. Now, we’re not in the business of speculating here, but ( ) Benioff upstaged Ellison last year at OpenWorld, poking holes in Oracle’s strategy, in relation to cloud computing specifically, and so there’s very definitely the possibility that Ellison doesn’t want that kind of mockery on stage before he presents a potentially expansive talk on the state of the cloud. Then again, why invite the Salesforce CEO to the conference if you’re just going to un-invite him? Especially considering that ( ) a keynote speech at a top conference like OpenWorld can cost the speaker up to 1 million big ones. Earlier this week, Benioff published a series of blog posts deriding Ellison’s opening remarks at OpenWorld (and has, in the past, been incited by Ellison who posted slides of Benioff’s book “Behind The Cloud, altering it to “Way Behind The Cloud”), told the NYT that he got an email from Oracle this afternoon about the cancellation — and also offering Benioff his million dollars back. Wouldn’t be surprised if the email included “and don’t let the door hit you on the way out”. The cloud, it seems, is setting the stage for a rumble — as there are clearly at least two prominent executives out there who can’t agree on its future, and who has the keys to that future. (Or who has the keys to the “false cloud”.) Whether strategic gamesmanship, or a “just because I can” move from Ellison, or perhaps just a scheduling mixup (yea, right), we’ll be tuning in tomorrow to see what unfolds. It should be interesting. We’ve reached out to Oracle for comment, and will update when we learn more. Oracle Senior Director of Communications Deborah Hellinger told me that the cancellation of Benioff’s keynote was “due to the overwhelming attendance at Oracle OpenWorld”, which led to Oracle making several session changes. According to the Communications Director, the “Salesforce.com Executive Solution Session” will now take place on Thursday at 8:00 a.m. Benioff apparently has a prior commitment, so will be holding the Q&A session on Wednesday morning instead. Excerpt image |
Is It Really True The iPad Makes Flying More Fuel Efficient? | Jon Orlin | 2,011 | 10 | 4 | Apple’s new CEO made a lot of about how well products are doing at . But one of those claims sounded like quite a stretch. Cook talked about how the iPad is being used in many different places, such as schools and airplanes. Cook said “in the cockpit, pilots are using it. They are replacing 40 pound flight bags full of paper manuals and logbooks and navigational charts and checklists, making the pilot more efficient and making the plane more fuel efficient.” And for emphasis or perhaps the skeptics, he added “Yes, It’s True.” It is true pilots are using iPads. In August, TechCrunch wrote about how . We’ve also covered some of the . These tools clearly make a pilot more efficient. But, can this really make planes more fuel efficient? Instead of carrying a 40 pound flight bag, assume a pilot has a . Let’s be generous and say she doesn’t have one of those smart covers and has even decided to keep her flight bag at home. The iPad weight savings is 38.7 pounds or 77 pounds with a two-person, two-iPad cockpit. A heavier plane takes more fuel to fly and less weight does create better fuel efficiency. But, the numbers per flight are tiny. What’s 77 pounds when the Boeing 757 maximum takeoff weight is . The FAA says the average weight of a passenger with no carry on bags is about 186 pounds. [ ] The average child weight is 78 pounds, about the same as the iPad savings. Jet A fuel weighs 6.8 pounds per gallon. So the iPad weight savings is worth 11.3 gallons of fuel. A 757 burns 900 gallons of fuel an hour [ ], so the weight savings would last just 45 seconds. But there are a lot of flights. And those numbers quickly add up. in August that it would deploy 11,000 iPads to all United and Continental pilots. United and its new partner Continental operate more than 21,200 daily flights. The company estimates it will save 326,000 gallons of jet fuel a year. That’s in addition to 16 million sheets of paper in those flight bags. According to the airlines, the iPad is making flying more efficient. Yes, It’s True. |
FCC To Strengthen Location Accuracy Requirements For All Carriers Using E911 By 2019 | Jordan Crook | 2,011 | 10 | 4 | After years of having a GPS-equipped phone, the idea of not having GPS is a little crazy. Even with smartphone adoption rates dramatically increasing, there are still plenty of folks out there with maps and awesome memories. With all of this great mobile technology out there, it’s only fair that those in need of help during times of crisis should be able to count on emergency services to have accurate location-finding technology and be able to find them quickly. The FCC has thus ruled that all telephone service providers, including VOiP services, must meet increased location accuracy rules by a date to be determined in 2019 — in order to better aid in pin-pointing the location of 911 calls. According to , 911 calls from phones without GPS require the carrier to triangulate the caller’s location from cell towers, which is less efficient than the phone’s GPS simply relaying location data back to emergency services. Either way, the FCC estimates that with or without the new rules, 85 percent of cell phone owners will have GPS-equipped devices by 2018. Hopefully the leftover 15 percent gets with the program before anything that requires a call to 911 goes down. You can find the . |
Leaked Sales Data Puts Kindle Fire Sales At 250,000 Over Five Days | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 10 | 4 | Here’s an interesting tidbit that was unfortunately lost in the iPhone flurry this morning: , revealing that the new tablet has some extremely impressive numbers. We saw some numbers a day or two ago but the source didn’t seem reliable — these seem a little more trustworthy. So what are we looking at? Well, in the five days after its launch (which is to say, from its launch on Wednesday until Sunday or possibly Monday), the modestly-specced, inexpensive tablet has accumulated over a quarter of a million pre-orders. Now, comparing the Fire to the iPad in features and specs is a bad idea, but comparing sales numbers at the very least gives you an idea of scale. The iPad 2 sold 2.5 million or so in its first month, which works out to something like 80,000 per day on average. The Fire is a bit below that at ~50,000 per day, but compare that with other non-iPad tablets and I think you’ll find the Fire is putting on an impressive show. More impressive than its , perhaps: the new e-readers don’t seem to be flying off the shelves just yet. It’s possible that Amazon swung too late, what with and already having snatched up a lot of the “advanced e-reader” crowd. According to the same source at Amazon, the Kindle Touch sold ~32,000 units (Wifi and 3G) during those same five days. I’m certainly not saying that’s a showing, but it is a pokey. If you’re on the fence about whether to try out Amazon’s small wonder or buy large with the iPad 2, just hang on for a few: we’ll have our full review up as soon as we’ve spent some time with the device, and hopefully we can make your holiday shopping a little simpler. . |
Shutl rolls out one hour online delivery service to 6 more UK cities | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 10 | 4 | , the home delivery startup that offers speedier options for Internet shoppers, has now launched its service for Aberdeen, Belfast, Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff and Liverpool. This adds up to 40% of the UK’s online shoppers, says Tom Allason, founder and CEO of Shutl. Retailers include Argos, Karen Millen, Oasis, Coast and Warehouse with other major high street names expected to follow suit shortly. It already operates in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, London and Manchester. The service allows shoppers to receive online purchases from high street retailers in as little as 90 minutes or to choose a one-hour delivery window, same day or any day. Shutl does this by fulfilling web orders from local stores rather than a centralised warehouse. Once a customer selects Shutl as their delivery option, including agreeing to the delivery quote, they can track their order in ‘real-time’ via a GPS-powered online map. Independent courier companies upload pricing to Shutl’s service to automatically bid on deliveries from retail partners. Shuttle looks at past performance and consumer feedback to select the appropriate carrier for each delivery. A Shutl delivery begins from £4.95. Amazon’s Evening Delivery service in London and Birmingham costs £14.99 and only offers a three-hour window providing orders are received before 12.30pm. Shutl was founded by Tom Allason, who is a founder and former CEO of eCourier.co.uk. It announced in October 09 from Simon Murdoch and in Belgium, along with the likes of Bebo co-founder Paul Birch, Robert Dighero (formerly of QXL) and Mark Zaleski (former DailyMotion CEO). |
Siri: My “Humble” Female Personal Secretary | Jordan Crook | 2,011 | 10 | 4 | Today, Apple . It’s hard not to feel let down after the iPhone 5 rumor mill was spinning at full force just yesterday ( ), but a couple 4S features were enough to perk up my spirit. One feature in particular, , pretty much blew my mind. It is, far and away, the coolest voice control system I’ve ever heard of, and seems to do just about everything. Ask Siri for nearby Greek restaurants? Bam! 20 Yelp listings are instantly sorted by rating. Ask Siri to read you your texts? No problem, she’s on it. Ask Siri what Siri is? “I am your humble personal assistant.” Okay, this just got a little weird. Before I go on let me just say that I haven’t been able to confirm whether or not Siri comes with customizable (female/male) voices, like a TomTom GPS. If so, this post can just be about what I think if Siri was a female-only voice. Anyways… While checking out the Siri demo during Apple’s presentation I couldn’t help but be amazed. Siri feels like a real person, and what it does is… well, amazing. But hidden under all that awesomeness is one very subtle tidbit that no one (as far as I can see) has inquired about: Why is the personal assistant voice control feature on the new iPhone a lady? Is it because we generally perceive receptionists and assistants to be female? Here’s your answer: Probably, but who cares? Yes, a feature like this may advance the stereotype that women, like yours truly, are the docile, resourceful assistants of big, strapping men like your average iPhone user. But freaking out over it only advances other stereotypes (like the notion that ). “But… But…” they cry, “Won’t this affect perceived gender norms of future generations?” Um, no. Things like income inequality, reproductive rights, and domestic violence might affect the children… but a phone that, like most electronics, defaults to a woman’s voice? It’s not all that significant in the grand scheme of things, is it? Though the debasement in her self-identification is a little fishy. I personally think Siri’s voice sounds wonderful but in all honesty, Siri could be spoken in the voice of Gilbert Goddfried or Fran Drescher and I wouldn’t care. As long as she does all cool things Apple says she’ll do, it doesn’t really matter. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Fd8_gojNXc&w=640&h=480] |
Reevoo spreads its crowd-sourced reviews across Kelkoo | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 10 | 4 | , a long-time customer reviews startup which raised a Series B round of funding from existing investors Eden Ventures, Banexi Ventures and angels, keeps on keeping on. Today’s it’s added ten European websites as distribution partners for its Reevoo Broadcast product. What’s that? Well, this literally ‘broadcasts’ social reviews of products belonging to Reevoo’s roster of participating retailers and manufacturers across its network of partners. This includes product reviews, service reviews, and brand opinions. Reevoo has seven million unique visitors per month. There are plenty of sites that let you review products, like and Amazon, but only Reevoo confirms you actually bought the product before you review it. The reason Kelkoo has done this deal is that it want to move from price comparison engine to adding more value through the purchase – becoming more like a decision making engine. Well, that’s noble thought but one gets the feeling that these days it “starts” with social then moves towards commerce, rather than the other way round… It no coincidence that Banexi is also the French venture capital firm that originally backed Kelkoo. Reevoo was co-founded by Ben Griffiths, Guy Logan and Richard Anson in 2004, but only Anson, CEO, now remains. It supports over 180 retailers, manufacturers and publishers across Europe. |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.