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Google Apps Users Can Now Hangout (And More) On Google+ | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 10 | 27 | Last June, Google first a beta of its long-anticipated social network, Google+. And it raised plenty of eyebrows: despite Google’s history of flubbing ‘social’, Google+ actually shows a lot of promise. Google says the service has grown to 40 million users (I’m more interested in engagement numbers, but that’s another story) and it’s doing everything it can to get it in front of more users. But there’s been one very large group of people that’s been left out in the cold: Google Apps users. Google Apps is the suite of products that Google sells to businesses and schools, and allows for custom domains, administrator controls, boosted security, and other key features (for a price). Some apps users understandably took offense to the lack of support, as they’re actually paying Google money. Google was quick to say it was working on Google Apps support, and today, that promise has come to fruition: Google has just that Google Apps users can now sign up for Google+. Apps users will be able to share posts directly to other users within their workgroups and/or universities. And, in a nice move, Google is building a migration tool allowing existing Google+ users to port their personal accounts over to their Apps accounts (you’ll keep both your existing Circles and followers). It isn’t done just yet, but Google says it will be in a few weeks. |
Sprint CEO: iPhone Data Efficiency Is The Key To Continued Unlimited Data | Jordan Crook | 2,011 | 10 | 27 | No one is more excited about the than CEO Dan Hesse. And it’s no surprise either, seeing that the carrier is investing just to offer the device to customers. That said, Hesse has been tooting the iPhone horn as much as possible, taking special note of its efficient use of data. He even went so far as to say that the iPhone’s data handling may quite possibly keep Sprint’s unlimited data plans alive longer than expected. According to Hesse, the iPhone is better at picking up WiFi signals than Android devices, making it easier for users to jump off their 3G connection onto a network. This is, of course, great news to any network as it unloads a good deal of traffic. In the same vein, Hesse said that Apple’s iPhone app requirements result in less data traffic from apps, as they tend to employ the network less than other platforms’ apps. “One of the beauties of carrying the iPhone is it extends the period of time and increases the likelihood of us maintaining unlimited data longer because it uses our network so efficiently,” said Hesse in an interview with . However, if smartphone adoption continues to grow (especially at the rate it’s growing now), for any carrier. |
With 99,999 Contests Launched, 99designs Creates Its Own Fund To Support Design Students | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 10 | 11 | Back in April, raised a sizable, from Accel and angel investors like Michael Dearing, Stewart Butterfield, Dave Goldberg and Anthony Casalena. Today, in celebration of the launch of its 99,999th design contest, the startup is announcing its own fund to give back to design students. The $99,999 fund will award 1,010 $99 bonus payments to students on top of every contest prize won beginning today — until the pool runs dry. For those unfamiliar, 99designs launched in 2008 to bring a crowdsourced design marketplace to designers and small businesses looking to find and showcase quality graphic design work, network, and build lasting professional relationships that benefit both sides of the table. According to 99designs Co-founder Mark Harbottle, over $1.2 million is paid out to designers every month as a result of work commissioned by the community of SMBs in the startup’s eMarketplace. Since launching, the startup has grown into a hub of over 125,000 designers (from more than 192 countries), paid a total of $25 million to those designers, and is now uploading a new design to the site every six seconds. And, of course, it’s also launched 99,999 design contests to date. It’s a great resource for designers to be sure, who can expose their work to upwards of 1,200 new client opportunities at any given time. And 99,999 contests launched ain’t bad for a couple of years of work. No wonder Accel was so eager to invest in this fast-growing Aussie startup. “What better way to celebrate [99,999 contests] than by offering additional support to design students across the globe as they acquire the skills they need to build their careers”, Harbottle said. For more on the new design fund for students, . |
Check Out Zynga’s Amazing New Campus | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 10 | 11 | So Facebook’s new Menlo Park office space , sure. But check out what Zynga’s done with its newly leased 270,000 square feet at San Francisco’s Townsend and Eighth, because sheesh… (We were there because were going down earlier today.) The space was decorated by Zynga’s “Minister of Cool” Eric McDougal, who led internal Zynga teams focused on integrating unique lighting, interior design and functionality. “We did a lot of things to make it feel like home,” Zynga’s Dani Dudeck told me. Click through for a laser light tube doorway, retro art displays, both a cartoon and real , random dog bowls and more. There’s also a YouTube video of all the Zynga employees who were at work today giving Pincus a standing ovation during his talk, below.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_profilepage&v=Eua5YxV8bx8 |
AOL Wants To Be The AP For Online Video; Offers “Editors Room” For Video Embeds | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 10 | 11 | The problem with online video is that producing the high-quality stuff at scale is expensive and difficult. But what if there was a place online that licensed decent videos and made it available to other sites? That is the idea behind (sic), a new service from AOL’s (which, like TechCrunch, was a year ago). “We want to be the AP for video,” says Ran Harnevo, Senior Vice President of AOL Video. The Editors Room showcases more than 250,000 online videos in 5Min’s library, including videos from BBC News, Hearst, Meredith, GigaOM, blip.tv, Scripps, Revision3, Next New Networks, IGN, and Reuters. They vary in quality from broadcast news clips to low-cost Web production. The Editors Room is a central destination where web publishers can peruse videos on any topic, and embed them for free on their sites. If they want a cut of video ad revenues, they can apply to sign up as a publishing partner with 5Min. Today, this is a manual biz-dev process, but it will become self-serve soon. “If you don’t have a deal with us,” explains Harnevo, “we wouldn’t stream ads until someone goes and vets your site. It is the opposite of Google AdSense.” AOL wants to pair quality video with quality sites, and charge a premium for the advertising. As much as a quarter of all videos viewed on the web are watched through embeds, and AOL thinks it can become a big source of premium videos for other sies. The Editors Room is designed for editors of news sites and blogs who don’t have the budget to do a lot of video but want to augment their site with topical videos. The homepage is programmed with news videos, as are each of the category pages such as tech, entertainment, fashion, and food. All of the videos come from in-house production and licensees. You cannot upload your own. It is supposed to be “brand-safe” in that no ads will play next to unpredictable user-generated videos, and the publisher sites are checked out as well. AOL will split the ad revenues with the publishing sites (who might typically get about one third), and then 50/50 of the remainder with the video producer. |
NeuStar To Acquire On-Demand Customer Insight Provider TARGUSinfo For $650 Million | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 10 | 11 | , the company that specializes in providing data insights and intelligence for web, telecommunications, entertainment, advertising and marketing companies, today announced that it has acquired TARGUSinfo (otherwise known as Targus Information Corp.) for $650 million in cash to beef up its realtime analytics and customer intelligence offerings. NeuStar also released its , in which the company said that it expects the acquisition to add more than 20 cents a share to its earnings next year and boost annual revenue to approximately $750 million. The market also took the acquisition as a good sign of things to come for the data insights company, as shares have gone up 3 percent in extended trading today. explaining the acquisition to its shareholders, the company said that it had been founded based on a mission to ensure customers that, when they move or change telephone carriers, “they could still be reached at the same number”. The company also said that, since its launch in the mid-90s it has overseen trillions of transactions and has built the “largest database of phone numbers in the world”. Over the past two decades, NeuStar began to apply its expertise at managing large data sets to the Web, providing Web, telecom, and other industries with insight and intelligence based on both their telephone and web data. In acquiring Targus, the company can now set its sights on becoming a leading provider of decision support to its clients based on its now-compounded realtime information and analytics. Leveraging both companies’ secure information pools gives NeuStar further scale in what is becoming a fragmented and growing market. In application, as Targus is one of the largest providers of caller ID services, NeuStar will now be able to ensure that not only will a customer retain the same number when he or she switches carriers, but that the customer will be able to verify just who in the sam heck is calling them. And so everyone wins. The companies have a great deal of similar offerings and target comparable markets, so the acquisition seems like a win-win for both, allowing each to more quickly achieve a scale they may not have otherwise. For more, . |
HP’s Layoffs Taking Effect, ~500 Gone From San Diego Group | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 10 | 11 | The “reduction in workforce” telegraphed by HP a few weeks ago appears to finally be taking place, according to a source inside the company. Apparently the formal emails have gone out and the entire San Diego Software unit is being rolled up. The number laid off is around 500, which tallies with previous estimates of up to 525. It’s not much of a surprise, since following the untimely death of the and , it was really only a matter of time before the software groups directly responsible for maintaining those products would be eliminated. The jobs are reportedly moving to Shanghai and Yehud, Israel, where HP already has R&D centers. The news comes as is said to be reconsidering the idea of spinning off the PC-making portion of HP. The loss of the webOS unit was inevitable after Apotheker had second thoughts about the billion-dollar acquisition, but the remainder of his bold but perhaps misguided strategy for the company isn’t as binding. Note: however likely it may be, this news is not confirmed, as we do not have the internal email, but if our source is kind enough to forward a redacted copy, we’ll reprint it here. : , it seems. Also, as some commenters have noted, the San Diego unit was not necessarily the webOS unit. Lacking any internal information on this it is hard to say for sure whether it is related, but the numbers and timing cleave too closely to comments made by HP less than a month ago, which is why I attributed the layoffs to the webOS and related units. |
iPhone 4 Prototype Sellers Sentenced: Probation And $250 Fine | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 10 | 11 | We don’t want to turn into TCMZ or anything here, but since this was such an inflammatory story to begin with and we followed up on the criminal charges , it seemed worthwhile to put a cap on the whole “stolen iPhone 4” saga. If you’ll remember, Jason Chen (editor at Gizmodo at the time) was sheltered from prosecution by journalism protection laws. But the pair of guys who sold the phone to them, Brian Hogan and Sage Wallower, weren’t so lucky. They were charged with misappropriation of lost property and possession of stolen property. They were spared anything more than media overexposure and a slap on the wrist, though, after they entered a no contest plea in court. : We asked for some jail time. The judge considered that Wallower had served in the armed forces and Hogan was enrolled in San Jose State, and neither had any criminal record, and decided that jail time wasn’t required. Someone from my office called Apple’s general counsel. This is a fairly routine theft case. This was a couple of youthful people who should have known better. The two will pay $250 each in restitution to Apple, do 40 hours of community service, and will have a year of probation. Having escaped the grasp of the law myself for a similar reason (i.e. general harmlessness and lack of a record), I can empathize. That pretty much exhausts the iPhone 4 story, and I have to say I’m glad to see it go. Nothing good came of it, but at least now we can say that nothing too bad did either. Now let us never speak of it again. |
Eye Slack Haruka: You Know, For Eye Slack | John Biggs | 2,011 | 10 | 11 | Fresh from Japan we have the Eye Slack Haruka, a $131 skin toner designed to reduce unsightly bags under your apparently pre-teen eyes. The kit is powered by two CR2032 cells and runs in two modes – “hard” and “soft.” “Hard” mode sends tiny jolts of electricity into your eyes, ensuring your eyes will get a sufficient amount of energy while soft vibrates your eyes gently, which sounds like a real treat. I personally just love the image of the lady getting her eyes zapped. Incidentally, once you’ve fixed up your eyes, why not try nose lengthening solution. It’s shaped like a butterfly, friends, a butterfly that lengthens your nose. |
Video: Meet ecoATM, The Reverse Vending Machine That Takes Your Phone & Spits Out Cash | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 10 | 11 | I’m down in sunny San Diego for the CTIA wireless conference — which, thanks to some , is about as exciting as listening to Ben Stein narrate grass growing. On the upside, the absence of back-to-back press conferences (or really, press conferences) has allowed me some time to actually roam the show floor for the first time in a long while. Turns out, there’s some pretty cool stuff hiding in there. Take this one, for example: Called the ecoATM, it’s essentially a reverse vending machine for phone sales — or, put another way, it’s the concept of Gazelle (or any other online cell phone/gadget buyback service) made into a kiosk. Insert old phone, get money back. We originally spotted the ecoATM , but this is the first time we’ve actually seen one in action and been able to get it on video. They’ve since rolled around to 23 test locations in the Souther California area, with Northern California locations planned for the near future (Valley Fair in San Jose was named as one upcoming location.) Fittingly, ecoATM tells me that their primary investor is Coinstar — which, if you’re unfamiliar, is a company that takes all that change rattling around in your pockets and converts it into gift cards for major retailers by way of a similar kiosk setup. Oh, and they own Redbox, the rather popular DVD kiosk service. Yeah, these guys dig kiosks. Check out the demo video below. Pardon the audible roar of the conference center in the background — it was a bit of an impromptu shoot. (Notice that the prototype shown in the video is different than the one pictured above; the one in the video is the more recent build) |
Asus Zenbooks Enter The Ultrabook Fray, Starting At $999 | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 10 | 11 | The promise of the ultra-cheap ultrabook hasn’t quite been fulfilled yet, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have a few sexy machines before the new ones hit. Acer’s dropped yesterday, and we’ll have a review up soon, but the new Asus Zenbooks, but only actually announced today, are the ones I’ve been waiting for. You’ve got two basic models: the 11.6-inch UX21 and the 13-inch UX31. But there’s more, much more. Both laptops have 4GB of RAM, a Bang and Olufsun audio system, USB 2 and 3, micro HDMI and mini VGA out. The UX21, at $999, comes with a Core i5-2467M mobile processor that can be upgraded to an i7 for $200. Its 11.6″ screen is the usual 1366×768. You’re stuck with 128GB of space, alas. The UX31 looks like the one to get, though: for just one more benjamin (that is to say, for $1099 total) you get a a much better 1600×900 13.1″ screen, a superior i5 processor (2557M), an SD card reader, and a more capacious battery. It too can be upgraded: you can snag a 256GB drive for $250 extra, and then get an i7 for another $100 on top of that. As we heard, it’s thin and light: it’s 0.11″ at the front and 0.67″ at the rear. The case is aluminum, and there’s a nice brushed design on the lid. The UX21 weighs 2.43lb, and the UX31 is slightly heavier at 2.86lb. How the build quality stacks up against its biggest rivals (the S3 and of course the MacBook Air) will have to be decided after some hands-on time. : Their battery life comparison page is pretty funny: |
The iPhone 4S: Faster, More Capable, And You Can Talk To It | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 10 | 11 | What does the “S” stand for? When I ask Apple this, they’re vague in their response. They note that some people say it stands for “Special” or “Super”. Others say it’s for “Speed” — much like the iPhone 3GS, the successor to the iPhone 3G. Or maybe it’s “Storage” (this is the first iPhone with 64 GB option — and with iCloud storage). Or “Sprint” (this is the first iPhone to run on that network in the U.S.) Or perhaps it’s for “Speech” or “Siri”. Either of these last two would get my vote. The point is, the “S” can stand for any number of things depending on who is using the device. Here’s all I know for certain: this is the best iPhone yet. Unsurprisingly, there was a lot of talk in the blogosphere following the unveiling of the iPhone 4S last week. Some pundits seemed underwhelmed by what was unveiled on stage. “Where’s the iPhone 5?,” many wondered. Arguing over names is silly — Apple could have easily called this device the “iPhone 5”. But I assume they chose not to for the same reason that some actually felt underwhelmed: the iPhone 4S exactly like the iPhone 4. Fair or not, if a device looks the same, many will assume it is largely the same. But that would be selling the iPhone 4S well short. While it does look the same as the iPhone 4, the 4S contains innards that are a significant upgrade over the previous model. The two biggest changes are the faster chip — the A5 over the A4 — and the much-improved camera. Combine those with the new iOS 5 software, and you have what will definitely be a worthwhile upgrade for many users. And when you throw in the amazing new voice-driven “intelligent assistant” Siri, it becomes a no-brainer, in my mind. These are the aspects I’m going to focus on. First of all, the iPhone 4S blows away the iPhone 4 when it comes to speed. For the past week, I’ve been testing all of my most-used apps and the differences range from solid to awesome. At first glance, the speed difference may seem subtle. But over time, it adds up and becomes apparent. I would switch back to my iPhone 4 and get frustrated by the lag. Apps that used to take a longer time to perform a task — applying a filter in Camera+, for example — now work much faster. More generally, every app seems to load quite a bit faster. The best way to see this is to load the Settings app that is built into iOS. On the iPhone 4, it can take up to 3 seconds to load. On the iPhone 4S, it loads in less than a second. And the 4S is faster at switching between apps when multi-tasking. Better still is the performance boost that games get. Apple showcased Infinity Blade 2 during their demo last week, but the improvements to even less graphic-intensive games is impressive. Apple says that graphics can render up to seven times quicker thanks to the A5. The camera is an even bigger deal to me. As I’ve been for , and Apple noted last week, the iPhone has become the most popular camera in the world if you go by the images uploaded to Flickr. . This new camera in the iPhone 4S goes above and beyond. And it’s going to push that lead even further. If the point-and-shoot market wasn’t in trouble before, it will be now. Much will be made about the upgrade from 5 megapixels to 8 megapixels with the iPhone 4S. But the bigger difference is the engineering behind the new camera. Apple notes with pride that their engineers were able to completely re-architect this tiny camera to produce images that are on par with the nicest point-and-shoots available. They credit five “precision elements” to record incoming light (versus four in the already excellent iPhone 4 camera) and the inclusion of a larger f/2.4 aperture to bring in more light. I was actually in London last week when I got the 4S. For the trip, I brought my Canon S95, a $400 point-and-shoot which is generally considered to be one of the best. I barely used it. While it still bests the iPhone 4S in low-light settings, for all most other environments, it’s hard to tell the difference. Yes, the S95 is still better, but it’s no longer so much better than it can trump a device that I always have in my pocket with me anyway. Yep, point-and-shoots are screwed. (In case that wasn’t already abundantly clear.) Also great is that the iPhone 4S camera can shoot 1080p video for the first time. The iPhone 4 is limited to 720p. The 4S also features video stabilization, to ensure your home videos won’t make viewers want to vomit. Testing this out, it seems to work pretty well. Below, a video taken with the 4S (be sure to switch the embed to 1080p): [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g80DAzGtCBI?hd=1&w=640&h=360] Below, an image taken with the 4S (more at the bottom of the post): Considering that Apple has been talking about iOS 5 for several months now, and developers have been testing it out and showing it off for almost that long, I’m not going to focus on it too much. I too have been using a developer build of iOS 5 for months, and it is without question a worthwhile upgrade. If you have an iPhone 3GS or iPhone 4, you absolutely need to download it immediately (starting when it’s available tomorrow). With the iPhone 4S, all the new features simply run faster and a little bit more smoothly. The best addition to iOS 5 is the revamped Notifications system. Yes, it’s a bit like the system that Android and webOS have had for a while, but once again, Apple took their time to make sure they did this right. Gone are the annoying blue pop-ups that would get lost when another notification came in. Now you have a full-on notification center to keep track of everything you miss when you’re away from your phone or simply not in the mood to check it. Again, having used it for a few months now, I’m spoiled. There is no way I could go back to the old system. Other key new features of iOS 5 including Twitter integration ( ), the new iMessage ( ), Reminders (an Apple-built to-do list), and a faster version of the Safari web browser. But the biggest change of iOS 5 may be that you can now setup and manage your iOS device without having to use a PC or a Mac at all. When you boot up a new device, a short tutorial walks you through how to enable the services you wish to use, and activate your phone. It’s quick and painless. You can also now use iCloud to back up your phone and for the don’t-call-it-syncing of your data. iTunes in the Cloud and Photo Stream are great additions for people who simply do not want to manage content through the iTunes desktop software. Apple comes closer to an “ ” system than anything I’ve seen previously. Regular people will be able to use this. All of that sounds great. And these things would be enough to get millions of people to buy an iPhone 4S without any questions asked. But the true killer feature of the device is Siri. Yes, others have done voice controls before — even Apple has had them baked into iOS for a few years. But most, including Apple’s previous attempt, have been awful. Others, like Google’s voice services built into Android, are decent. Siri is great. In the coming weeks and months, we’re going to hear: “both fill-in-the-blank-Android-phone and the iPhone 4S have voice control functionality”. But that’s like saying both and are films. True on paper. Decidedly less true when you have to actually experience them. You really have to use it yourself to see just how great Siri actually is. Using it for the past week, I’ve done everything from getting directions, to sending emails, to sending text messages, to looking up information on WolframAlpha, to getting restaurant recommendations on Yelp, to taking notes, to setting reminders, to setting calendar appointments, to setting alarms, to searching the web. The amount of times Siri hasn’t been able to understand and execute my request is astonishingly low. I’ll say something that I’m sure Siri won’t be able to understand, and it gets it. Also awesome: when I first tried out the service in London, Siri was set to UK English. It didn’t understand a word I was saying. The Apple reps couldn’t figure out what was going on. But a quick change of the settings had it working perfectly. Siri understands accents as well. A number of folks have written that while Siri looks good, it seems like a feature that gives good demo but won’t actually get used. I disagree. I think this is a feature that will sell the device. And I think all of Apple’s rivals will have to act quickly to counter it. We’ve all seen the science fiction television shows and films where people talk to their computers like human beings and the computer understands them. That future is now. Further, I do believe Siri has a real shot at disrupting the stranglehold Google has on mobile search. No one is going to beat Google at their own game, but with Siri, Apple has a way to change the game. Right now, just Yelp and Wolfram Alpha are partners. But this is just a first release of Siri — it’s actually in “beta”. Just imagine what will happen when Apple partners with other services to expand Siri further. And imagine when they have an API that any developer can use. This really could alter the mobile landscape. To activate Siri, you simply hold down the home button for a couple seconds (similar to the old voice controls). Or there’s a setting you can turn on so that when you bring your iPhone 4S up to your ear, it will activate Siri. Obviously, if you’re on a call, it knows not to do this. The one downside of Siri: because it uses server-side software to decipher what you’re saying ( ), you have to be connected to the Internet in order for Siri to work. But that shouldn’t be an issue in most circumstances. Before you ask: no, Siri will not be available as part of the iOS 5 upgrade for other devices. It will be an iPhone 4S-only feature. Apple is vague as to why this is, but they do say that part of it has to do with processing power. I also asked about the possibility of Siri coming to the iPad 2 (which has the same A5 chip) — I was told that for now, Siri will be iPhone 4S only. Those are the key elements on the iPhone 4S, in my mind. Each of them makes the iPhone 4S a worthy purchase in their own right. But it’s Siri that really puts it over the top. As for upgrades, it’s a tougher call. If you already have an iPhone 4 and still have time left on your two-year contract, it will be a pricey decision to upgrade to an iPhone 4S — especially since you’ll get the iOS 5 features (again, minus Siri) as an upgrade for free. If either speed or the camera are of the utmost importance to you, you should upgrade. If not, go to an Apple Store and see for yourself just how cool Siri is and then decide. If you’ve had an iPhone 3GS and have been waiting a couple years for the next iPhone to come out, now’s the time to upgrade. If you’re worried just because this is not called the “iPhone 5” , you’re being foolish. If you’ve never owned an iPhone before and the 4S will be your first one, you’ll love it. I suspect that millions of Verizon and Sprint customers in the U.S. are going to be in this bucket. As a bonus: the one issue I’ve had with my Verizon iPhone 4 is that it’s basically useless in much of the rest of the world (which uses GSM, not CDMA). But the iPhone 4S is both GSM and CDMA compatible. Even if you’re a Verizon (or Sprint) customer, you can take it overseas and use it there (for an undoubtedly large carrier fee). As for battery life, the 4S seems solid. That’s impressive given the faster processor. I would get about 7 hours in heavy usage over mainly 3G on any given day. If I was only on WiFi, more. Apple’s own specs do note that standby battery time has decreased a bit, but it’s not something I noticed enough to make note of. Leading up to last week’s event, like everyone else, I kept reading the rumors about a new iPhone with a larger screen and completely different form factor. Quite frankly, I was hoping they were wrong. (For the record, .) The iPhone 4’s design is the pinnacle of smartphone design in my opinion. I simply could not imagine how they could alter it to make it better. Even making it thinner would mean that it wouldn’t fit as nicely in your hands for taking pictures. Android fanboys are going to love that statement. I’m happy that Apple decided not to change the form factor even though they had to know there would be some backlash from a certain segment of the population (read: ). Instead, Apple focused on the other thing they do best: refining already great products to make them better. The iPhone 4 was a great product. The best smartphone ever made. Now it cedes that title to the iPhone 4S. |
91% Of Kids Aged 2-17 Playing Video Games, Says Report | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 10 | 11 | It’s a little-known fact that the phrase “the children are our future” was actually originally uttered by a gaming company executive. A very forward-thinking person, indeed, seeing past both the gaming world’s early for-kids branding and the hardcore face it would wear during the early 2000s. He saw all the way to the point where gaming was so unavoidable as a cultural force that even toddlers would be unable to avoid its draw. has determined that around 91% of kids aged 2-17 play games (and not just tag and such), comprising a group some 64 million children strong. If that isn’t a market, I don’t know what is. The biggest growth was seen in mobile devices, not surprisingly, but the jump is remarkable: in 2009 only 8% of kids in this range were doing mobile gaming. Now, that number is 38%. Furthermore, the biggest growth has been seen in the 2-5 age range. More kids are playing more games, some before they can speak properly. Again, the growth isn’t necessarily a surprise, but it’s always a little bit of a shock when you see the numbers. There’s no argument any more that games do not make up a significant and growing part of popular culture. As these gamer kids grow up, that part is only going to become larger. This trend has a lot to do with smartphones, I would wager. Not only do many parents have apps for their kids to play with on their iPads and phones, but more and more kids in elementary and middle school have phones capable of doing more than making calls and sending texts. Essentially it’s been a huge stealth distribution of low-cost gaming consoles. The upsurge in young people gaming, especially in mobile, will probably be followed by a software rush. Zynga is probably in the best position to take advantage, being for many kids a more relevant gaming platform than Nintendo or Sony. The full report is available for purchase if you’re interested in more than the highlights. |
Greplin Users Have Uploaded 6 Billion Files — And Now They Have In-File Search | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 10 | 11 | Between your Google account(s), Facebook, LinkedIn, Salesforce, and whatever other services you’re hooked up to, there’s a good chance that a lot of the information you need on a daily basis isn’t stored in one place. Maybe it’s the address of a friend’s party (was that on Facebook or an email invite?), maybe it’s a key document you need for work (Google Docs or Dropbox?) — whatever the case, there’s a lot of potential for headaches. is the service that’s tying all of that data together in one unified search engine. And today’s it’s getting a new feature that makes it significantly more powerful: in-file search. The feature does exactly what it sounds like: it’ll now let you search your entire index of files for both keywords in the file names within the file itself. Which means if you’re not so diligent about giving your files helpful names (*cough*, like me) then you won’t be out of luck — just run a search for a term you’re sure is included somewhere within the file. This is a big deal, because in many cases the existing services Greplin is indexing don’t offer in-file search to begin with. Greplin cofounder Daniel Gross says that the service does this by combing through each of the files you’ve uploaded and extracting just the text, while ignoring data-intensive content like images. It can then compress this text, further reducing the size of the index file. The only catch? The feature will be rolling out gradually to existing users, because Greplin has to go back and reindex their file attachments. Greplin is also announcing that it’s reached a new milestone, with some six billion documents currently stored in its index (it had 1.5 billion back in April). Gross also expanded on some of the trends Greplin has seen. First, he notes that while many people have established habits for how they search for things on the desktop, those habits are not nearly as ingrained on mobile, where search is still nascent— so Greplin is putting a lot of work into its mobile efforts. And when I asked if people are generally uploading more content to the service (in other words, if people are indeed moving toward the cloud), he says yes, but there’s another factor at work that’s bringing the average document-per-user count down. Namely, the fact that a lot more ‘regular’ people are starting to use Greplin. He explains that previously, many of its users were technophilic early adopters with a ton of files, and these newer, more mainstream users tend to have fewer docs. In other words, watching that average drop a bit is actually good news for the company. |
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Bangladesh Announces National Laptop Line Starting At $130 | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 10 | 11 | Nationalized technology efforts are becoming more common as countries begin to question their reliance on foreign powers for the means to participate in modernity. China is starting to , India is , and now Bangladesh (working with fewer resources, but similar intentions) has taken the wraps off . The computers are branded Doel, after the country’s national bird (the magpie), and the cheapest comes to around $130, and runs Android. You scoff, but it’s a free and popular OS with plenty of room for extensibility and customization. Sure, it won’t run and the media player sucks, but it’s more than sufficient for basic computing: browsing, word processing, and document management. They’re manufactured by contractors managed by ISS, the state-owned telecom over there. At the moment only 10% of the parts are made in Bangladesh, but ISS managing director Mohammad Ismail was confident that within six months they would be able to produce 60%. Naturally the processor and RAM and such are imported. The project was announced several months ago, but today marks the official launch of the devices. The 10,000 Taka ($130) Model 2102 has an 800MHz VIA 8650 processor, 512MB of RAM, and a 10″ 1024×600 display. There’s no internal storage, but there’s an SD card slot. Not the hottest piece of hardware on the market, no. I would actually advise people to upgrade to the 12,000 Taka ($160) Model 0703, which brings in a better screen, Atom N456 with twice the clock speed, double the RAM, a 250GB HDD, and a better webcam. It runs a “Linux Based OS” but that can be adjusted. So basically, they’ve got their own locally-designed set of netbooks. Sure, the richest countries in the world are entering the “post-PC era,” but when generations need to be introduced to the rudiments of computing, netbooks are still a good idea. Hopefully this program gets a little traction and Bangladesh succeeds in its push for a more digital nation. |
Near-Final Motorola Spyder And Xoom 2 Photos Leaked | Chris Velazco | 2,011 | 10 | 11 | Motorola was being mighty cryptic with their yesterday, but some newly leaked photos may shine a light on what they’ve got in store for us come next week. managed to get their hands on some more shots of the new Motorola Spyder and Xoom tablet, and they almost look ready to ship. The Spyder (also known as the Droid RAZR and ) now sports some Verizon branding and a funky carbon fiber-esque finish around the back. Engadget’s tipsters mentioned that the pictured device was running at 1.5GHz, but that the finished product would indeed have a 1.2GHz processor. Also on deck is the smaller, reportedly IR-friendly version of the Xoom 2. The body still keeps those slightly curved edges, but Motorola seems to have gone for a different backplate than the more robust metal one seen in earlier photos. If prior reports hold true, then the new line of Xoom tabs come in at around 9mm thick, which would definitely fit the “thinner” criteria that Motorola played up in their teaser video. They may not be the most tantalizing photos in the world, but they show off products that look very close to release. With Motorola’s event one week away, I wouldn’t be surprised to see either (or both!) of these things take the stage.
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X.Commerce: eBay To Debut New Payments Identity Technology PayPal Access; Milo Opens Up API | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 10 | 11 | eBay, Inc. is set to debut its brand new developer business tomorrow, and we have many of the details that the e-commerce giant will be announcing at its annual developer conference. As we’ve , eBay, PayPal, Magento and GSI will be the pillars of the X.commerce platform, which will feature a “fabric” that stitches the platform together with other partners to create new experiences for retailers and their customers. PayPal’s director of communications Anuj Nayar tells me that this is the first time eBay has created a business focused on developers as the customers. Previously developers were part of each business, with separate developer experiences for eBay’s marketplace, PayPal and other businesses. Now, developers will get access to all of these technologies in one place, and according to Nayar, will be able to create new shopping and e-commerce experiences based on these interconnected suite of tools. X.commerce will also be an open ecosystem, with outside partners also integrating their technologies for the developer community. Adobe, and Kenshoo have all created experiences and APIs for developers to integrate into their applications relating to online shopping, mobile, and local components. Local product inventory and shopping site Milo, which eBay acquired last year is going to be launching an API for developers to integrate local inventory into their own applications. This will be part of the X.commerce platform as well. barcode scanning app RedLaser will soon be launching a 3.0 version of its applications which have been integrated with both Milo and PayPal. So you can scan a barcode, and the app will tell you if its available in a local store or on eBay, and let you pay for it (either in the store or on eBay) in the app via PayPal. eBay also earlier this year for over $180 million. Magento’s open source software basically enables merchants and brands to create online storefronts and have a decent amount of control over the look, content, SEO, digital marketing and functionality of their online storefronts. Tomorrow, eBay will announce that Magento, via the X.commerce platform, will be launching an app store for Magento extensions. Developers can create applications on top of Magento, and retailers can use this functionality in their online storefronts via the app store. It’s similar in theory to the Salesforce App Exchange, but for online retailers. In my opinion, one of the biggest products that will be debuted tomorrow is a new collaboration between PayPal and X.commerce called PayPal Access. Basically, PayPal Access is a payments identity technology that would allow you to carry your payments identity to various retailers on the web. So instead of signing up with a specific retailer’s credential’s on a site, you would sign up with your PayPal account which would include all of your financial, shipping and billing information, as well as your purchase history. It’s sort of a cross between Amazon’s payments platform and Facebook Connect. We’re told PayPal is partnering with Gigya and Janrain for PayPal Access. As Nayar explains, identity is just another piece of the puzzle for PayPal and X.commerce. For now, PayPal has yet to announce any major retailers using Access but I’m sure we can expect a few to jump on board soon. There’s still much more PayPal, eBay and X.commerce will announce tomorrow, I am told. For example, we don’t know the exact details of the Facebook Platform Marketing Chief eBay’s board. And considering how bullish both PayPal and eBay , we can probably expect more in that area as well. PayPal is also expected to as well as . Stay tuned. |
LinkedIn Buys Real-Time, Hosted Search Startup IndexTank | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 10 | 11 | Professional social network LinkedIn is on a bit of an acquisition spree. In its second purchase in two weeks, LinkedIn has hosted search startup Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. IndexTank is a real-time, hosted search engine service that allows developers to quickly build search-based applications without having to worry about hosting their own search software. IndexTank’s features include: real-time feed indexing, instantaneous availability of search data, geo search, automatic faceting, range search and instant insights about indexed data from search. The startup, which has raises $1.6 million in funding, counts Reddit as a customer. Details are still unclear, but it appears that IndexTank’s search technology will be integrated into LinkedIn’s search. IndexTank says that LinkedIn has agreed to maintain the IndexTank service running for the next six months, and will open source key components of the technology. Last week LinkedIn personal relationship manager |
Startup Sauna Puts #estonianmafia to Test | cloudbrows | 2,011 | 10 | 11 | has nothing to do with a health spa. This is a non-profit accelerator from Finland, sponsored by . Its goal is to kick-start tech entrepreneurship in Northern Europe and Russia. To select startup teams for its 6-week intense training programme, the accelerator conducts a series of Startup Sauna Warmups at various locations. Today and from Startup Sauna are putting the Estonian Mafia to the test. Estonian Mafia is a code word for an Estonian startup community (twitter hashtag #estonianmafia), which is gaining visibility on a global scale. According to , a well-known figure on the Estonian startup scene, the term was coined by when he was trying to make sense of and Zerply, two Estonian startups. Erply is taking on with mobile payments and an inventory management system for small businesses. is about professional networking done right. Estonia produces a disproportionate number of startups per capita, which can be seen on this slide shared by during , where four Estonian startups presented and two became finalists. , the winner, is a mechanical engineering community and a marketplace, while is an online training advisor. The main reason why Estonia has so many startups is , which proved that a revolutionary technology can originate in a small country. Besides, Skype made its founders and key employees wealthy, and hungry for more success. According to Kaljundi, , a venture fund created by ex-Skype founders and engineers, is relatively slow to fund local startups at the moment, but the individual partners invest on their own account. Kaljundi’s company , a visual bookmarking and content discovery tool, has as an investor. Meanwhile More Estonian companies are pushing their way into the international markets. produces robots that act as made-to-measure mannequins to try on clothes, reducing costs of returns and exchanges for online retailers such as Otto and Barbour. is a deal management tool developed by sales people for sales people. , voted the Estonian innovator of 2011, makes developing on Java more productive by allowing users to compile code immediately. is an online website building tool, which works best for multi-lingual websites, and has (Skype co-founder) and Märt Kelder (ex-employee of Skype) on its advisory board. , founded in 2007, provides mobile payment solutions in 60 countries. It won the Estonian entrepreneurship award in 2011. Startup Sauna has just announced the winner of today’s competition, which will join Russian, Finnish, Lithuanian and Polish teams at this month. The winner of the Demo Day will then proceed to a tour of Silicon Valley to raise investment capital, find partners and further promote its business. Today’s winner is , which provides a queue management system on smartphones. The startup came out of , aiming to save waiting time for example, at the bank or post office. Hopefully we will soon see them joining the ranks of the Estonian Mafia conquering the world. For now they are off to Helsinki. |
QDQ Media and 11870.com get married…sort of | marinando | 2,011 | 10 | 11 | , the Spanish subsidiary of , who offers a line of web design and online marketing services especially geared at local SMBs and , a local Spanish champion for business listings and recommendations just announced an collaboration agreement, with a hefty integration, to muscle up in joint effort. The agreement makes sense for both, wherein each compliments a missing piece and allows for further growth. QDQ brings in 200,000 opinions for 1.500.000 business from 11870. Another words, they will integrate a slew of user generated content. QDQ will also soon add 11870’s quote request service for businesses. For 11870, it means growing their reach and revenues substantially; QDQ boasts 45,000 clients. Yet it’s still a space that can grow exponentially, as more and more Spanish SMBs start getting the hang of promotional online opportunities. And both companies are clearly looking to bank on it together. The integration is substantial. Services offered on 11870 can now be accessed and fully managed directly from QDQ’s user control panel. This means a business can manage its 11870 presence, including listings, photos, videos, as well as have a fully consolidated view of statistics and reviews from both sites. Together, they claim that both companies will give their clients exposure to 4.4 million monthly visitors. Users can also access 11870 from QDQ with their login. Strategically, this is quite simple and obvious, get more of the market together, by making it easier for SMBs to manage listings, online reputation and marketing services all from one place, put more services on the menu for both the sales forces to pitch and reinforce each brand’s credibility by backing each other. |
In Honor Of Steve Jobs, Salesforce Foundation Will Match $500K In Donations To College Track | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 10 | 11 | As people around world mourn the loss of Steve Jobs, many are looking for ways to express how he impacted and enriched their lives, be it through Apple’s intuitive gadgets, Pixar’s stellar films, or Jobs’ inspiring words. One great way to do this is to — as Google’s Hunter Walk put it — is to in your daily life. Another way is to support the things he and his family care about. Starting today, is honoring Jobs’ memory by making a dollar-for-dollar donor match toward , the foundation cofounded by Steve Jobs’ wife, Laurene Powell Jobs. For every dollar that’s donated on this , Salesforce will contribute another, up to a maximum of $500,000 (so the total gift would be $1 million, including the contributions from everyone else). College Track works to help disadvantaged youths reach (and succeed at) college, both through college-prep testing and helping to foster a culture where academic success and higher education are valued and attainable. You can learn more about how the organization works . Here’s the note the Salesforce Foundation includes on their Causes page: Steve Jobs was the greatest leader our industry has ever known. Not only was he the father of modern computing; he forever altered music, movies, and ignited the mobile revolution. We are deeply grateful for all he has done and saddened by his passing. To honor Steve’s life and his contributions, the Salesforce.com Foundation will match donations to College Track up to a total of $500,000. College Track, co-founded by Steve Jobs’ wife, Laurene Powell Jobs, is a program dedicated to ensuring under-resourced high school students achieve their dreams of a college education. Please give what you can, to honor Steve Jobs, and to help those students who need it most. [youtube=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2CfoY4hjtk’] |
Watch TechCrunch Disrupt Beijing Hackathon Live | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 10 | 29 | Ni hao! It’s now morning and all of us here at the are somehow awake. We’ve got 46 survivors of a spent coding about to take the stage and present the fruits of their labors, the excitement is palpable. For the many of you not in China, you can (miraculously) watch the very first ever international Disrupt hackathon on the livestream above. Good times. |
Siri Ported To iPhone 4 and iPod Touch 4G | John Biggs | 2,011 | 10 | 29 | [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8GLwG4_qBY] In a moment as historic as Alexander Bell’s call to his assistant, an hacker wrote on that he had successfully ported Siri to the iPhone 4 and Touch. The hack requires a jailbroken device. By copying the app onto the device, the iPhone 4 can call up Siri and, more important, connect to the Siri servers. You can to install the app yourself and it seems to currently also work with the iPod Touch 4G although those instructions are forthcoming. interviewed , another iPod Touch/iPhone 4 hacker, answering a few questions about the feat: Mark: Do you ever see Siri showing up in Cydia (or another jailbreak store) for non natively supported devices? Steven: No, I could not be a part of that. I have no doubts that others will package this up and distribute it quasi-illegally, or try and sell it to people. I am only interested in the technology and making it work; proving that it works and works well on the iPhone 4 and other devices Mark: So, you also got Siri working on the fourth-generation iPod touch, how is that working out? Steven: We got chpwn’s iPod touch up and running with Siri after proving it works on my iPhone 4. Unfortunately the microphone on the iPod is nowhere near as good as the iPhone – you will notice that the Siri level meter hardly moves when you talk to it. While it does work, you have to speak loudly and clearly to the iPod We’ll give it a try this weekend and report back. |
Classy: Google Is Running Zagat Ads Against Mobile Searches For “Yelp” | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 10 | 29 | If you search for “Yelp” on Google from your mobile phone the top paid result, even above the organic result to , takes you to Zagat. I am only seeing this on mobile searches. While it is a common practice for companies to advertise against their competitors’ names in search advertising, in this case it is Google itself which is bidding for that search term and taking the top spot. A classy move. Google last September to shore up its local reviews for Google Places, which is its answer to Yelp. Google Places and Yelp have a history, with Google from yelp to help build up its local directory. Now with Zagat, Google finally has a large corpus if its own review, in addition to the ones people are slowly adding to Google Places. By redirecting some of the people who are looking for Yelp to Zagat, Google is keeping up its pattern of punching Yelp in the face every chance it gets. Remember, at one point Google back in 2009. But that didn’t work out, and the gloves have been off ever since. (Sound , Groupon?) Google is really hitting Yelp where it hurts. During an antitrust hearing last September, Yelp revealed that of its traffic comes from Google in one way or another. A big chunk of that is from organic search. If Yelp is not the top spot when someone searches for “Yelp” that could have some impact on Yelp’s traffic. Yelp might have to respond by bidding on its own name on AdWords. One way or another, Google’s aggressiveness in pushing Zagat is going to cost Yelp. |
Introducing The First TechCrunch Disrupt Beijing Hackathon Winners | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 10 | 29 | Between bridging the translation gap, the lack of and then abundance of morning coffee, collective Internet struggles and the many many hacks using (“the LinkedIn of China”) API, the just happened, and it was nothing short of amazing. Around 300 hackers signed on to spend 24 hours together, and 100 actually braved a night full of spotty connectivity and vegetable noodles in order to present their hacks at 11:00 am Beijing time. Each team was given a minute to show their stuff in front of the multi-lingual audience and judges. The judges included TechCrunch Mobile’s Greg Kumparak, ICanHazCheeseburger’s , Zynga’s Andy Tain, TenCent’s , Sonos’ Carter Agar, Google’s Ming Yang and DigiCha’s , who parsed the 46 hacks to the best of their ability, and culled six of the best. In addition to everlasting fame and glory, winners will have the opportunity to present onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt proper. Meet first TechCrunch Disrupt Beijing Hackathon winners, below (links to come when the hacks go live). A chronological visual diary for your blog. A mobile game that simulates playing with firecrackers. A slick looking smartphone app that functions as a theramin. A game that teaches people how to code Javascript, with a love story. Shareware realizes you’re browsing from China, and loads Chinese share buttons instead of Facebook and Twitter, solving a huge problem. Mobile-based app that tracks your working time — graphs what time is productive versus not productive.
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Apple Revealed As Purchaser Of Mapping Tech Company C3 | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 10 | 29 | Back in March, we a demo of C3 Technology’s extremely cool 3D maps. The reconstructions of landmarks and buildings are created by a technique (as I understand it) similar to the we posted that uses compiled depth and parallax data to continually build and refine a 3D model of whatever it’s looking at. C3’s version obviously works on a larger scale and thus has different strengths and requirements, but it’s almost completely automated as long as you can afford to send a plane or copter up with the equipment. They were bought earlier this year, but the purchaser was not known at the time. that the buyer was none other than Apple. It makes sense: Apple has bought two other mapping companies, Placebase in 2009 and Poly9 in 2010. It seems beyond a doubt that they are deep into a skunk works operation to revamp their maps. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=gSmunh6NIQI w=640] The use of Google maps has always struck me as a bit incongruous with the rest of iOS — not that it doesn’t work well and look good, otherwise Apple would never have used it. But with the rivalry between Apple and Google growing more intense every year, having such a primary function of the iPhone essentially outsourced must have started to really rankle Apple. Google actually fired the first shot: the latest version of Google Maps and Google Navigation, the ones with 3D buildings and so on, was unapologetically offered . I speculated at the time that this was Google beginning to turn the screws on Apple and differentiate by discriminating with their essential services. Apple, of course, was already planning for this, knowing they couldn’t have as good of a product at launch but also knowing that a few years of work might produce something even better. The addition of C3’s technology puts a powerful tool in Apple’s hands, and of course takes that tool out of others’. Photorealistic 3D maps, likely with local business and deal overlays and traffic data (all areas where Apple has been buying companies, patenting ideas, or developing products), may be the major feature of the next release of iOS. “Sputnik” is the name of the new team, and is based in Sweden, as C3 was originally. The reference to the early lead the commies (as we might have said at the time) had on the US during the space race is pretty clear. The purchase amount was not revealed. The original report put the value of the company at a billion dollars, but based on Saab’s 57.8% stake being valued at $150 million, the total value of the company looks to be more like a quarter of a billion. |
It’s Time For Google To Let Google Voice Live Up To Its Promise | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 10 | 29 | Last week TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington wrote highlighting the fact that iPhone users can get a surprisingly good experience using Google Voice if they’re willing to switch to Sprint. Google Voice on the iPhone typically has some hurdles, mostly because Apple won’t let the native Google Voice app ‘take over’ the dialer the way it can on Android (not to mention the fact that the iOS GV app is notoriously buggy). But Sprint has done some unique, deep integration at the carrier level that minimizes these issues. His post got me thinking about my experience with Google Voice since I began using it exclusively in November 2009. My conclusion: there are a lot of areas for improvement. The latency and occasional cutouts range from mildly annoying to infuriating. Text messages sometimes seem to arrive much later than they should. And MMS simply isn’t offered for most people (Sprint just launched support, but none of the other carriers do). But a few hours later, as I dealt with my carrier T-Mobile dropping two calls in succession, I realized there’s one simple feature that Google Voice could easily offer that would do a lot to make up for all of its quirks: VoIP support. Between my home network, work, and coffee shops, my phone is connected to Wifi for the majority of each day. Wifi, as it happens, is really good at transmitting VoIP calls. Oh, and Android has supported native VoIP calling since Gingerbread was released last winter. So why am I still at the mercy of my carrier’s cell towers again? It isn’t a matter of getting the feature working with Google Voice. Google Voice’s , which lets you make and receive calls from your computer, is done over VoIP, so the infrastructure is obviously there. In fact, Google actually had a functional Google Voice VoIP app for Android that was being tested internally by Google employees a year ago. But for reason it never saw the light of day. That reason is pretty easy to guess: the carriers would throw a fit. Ever since Android started to take off with the Droid launch, Google has been in a balancing act between appeasing the carriers and giving users what they actually want. Case in point: Android devices support native hotspot functionality, but the carriers can (unless you pay them more money). Or, a more recent example: up until now it’s been impossible to delete carriers’ pre-installed apps (also known as crapware) from your phone, which is utterly ridiculous. Beginning with Android 4.0, you’ll be able to disable them. Not them, mind you — they’ll still be taking up space on your phone — but the phone won’t ever let them launch. Hooray…? A commenter that these apps are baked into the firmware (i.e. Google delete them entirely, though the prevalence of these apps seems like a big compromise in the first place). Anyway, the point is that Google is treading lightly when it comes to improving Android in ways that could impact their relationship with the carriers. Google cares a lot more about into users’ hands over the next few years than it does about giving them WiFi hotspots. And to boost that market share, they need the carriers on board. Which brings us back to Google Voice. If Google were to enable Google Voice calling over 3G/4G connections, users would have very little reason to purchase their ‘voice minutes’ any more. This would obviously agitate the carriers, and isn’t going to happen any time soon. But Google could make another feature compromise: let us make and receive calls over our Wifi networks with Google Voice, and still use our ‘minutes’ whenever we’re on the go. Some people may downgrade the number of minutes they buy, but they’ll still need a voice package. And the carriers will wind up with fewer infuriated customers, who’ll actually be able to make phone calls from their offices and homes without having their signal drop. |
Keen On … It’s Official: Privacy Is Dead (TCTV) | Andrew Keen | 2,011 | 10 | 29 | Yes, it’s really true. Nobody can hide anything anymore in our digital age of transparency. And thus, , author of the re-released and CEO of , says we have entered an “era of behavior” in which we can no longer separate our private and public lives. As Seidman told me when we caught up earlier this week on Skype, the era of behavior means that our reputations now always “precede us”. And this “unprecedented transparency” compounds the possibility of doing both good and evil. For Seidman, this is all excellent news. Our new transparency makes going good much more effective, he told me, citing the example of doctors in Michigan whose public apology built a new trust with their patients. But is Seidman really correct? Do we really want to live in an era in which our behavior can be scrutinized by anyone and one can ruin our reputations forever? |
EA Wants To Take On Zynga, But Does This Just Mean ‘More Madden’? | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 10 | 29 | After churning out a parade of sequels to all of their flagship games, has EA finally learned its lesson? his company is taking dead aim at Zynga, implying that perhaps the company understands what’s at stake, and is determined to be just as much of a player in digital games as it has been on consoles. , the makers of Plants Vs Zombies and Bejeweled, was a great way to convince investors (and fans) that it’s serious about making a play into online and social games. Granted, EA paid upwards of $1.3 billion for PopCap (with a market cap of right around $8 billion!), but it succeeded in snatching the casual game maker from the eager claws of Zynga, which for the game developer. , Riccitiello reiterated that EA’s competitive advantage over Zynga and the other big game developers is the strength of its some dozen globally recognized brands, like Battlefield, Need for Speed, Mass Effect, FIFA and Madden, to name a few. The company has set a $3 billion target for online revenue, and is pushing its well-known titles into social and online verticals. “This is a strategy only EA can deliver on”, the CEO said yesterday. “Our competitors either have too few brands or have not demonstrated the ability to project their games on multiple platforms”. backed up the CEO’s statement, revealing that sales of EA’s major sports titles like FIFA and Madden are up 20 percent year over year and digital sales are up 30 percent year over year. This boost was also a result of the company launching Sims Social on Facebook, which has risen to be the second most popular game on Facebook behind Zynga’s CityVille, with over 8 million daily active users and 40 million monthly users. What’s more, EA shared yesterday that it has exceeded guidance expectations of $925 to $975 million in net revenue for the second quarter, with net revenue coming in at $1.03 billion. The company also saw its digital revenue grow to $907 million on a trailing twelve months non-GAAP basis, with strong growth in smartphone games leading to a non-GAAP revenue jump of 87 percent from the same time last year. EA is still be viewed as one of the last remaining Big Kahunas of video game development and design in the U.S., and luckily for them, its console games don’t really show any signs of slowing down. The company said yesterday that it has sold nearly 8 million copies of FIFA 2012 and over 3 million copies of Madden NFL 2012 over the last quarter. What’s more, it’s already shipped more than 10 million units of Battlefield 3 and is already receiving reorders from retailers. With the holiday season approaching, the outlook for EA’s console games looks good. On the digital side, thanks to EA’s big acquisitions over the last two years of PopCap and Playfish, PopCap’s Plants Vs. Zombies is now available on EA’s Pogo game site, and the company will continue to see increases in the number of users and sales as PopCap titles are released across EA’s platforms. Furthermore, to that point, the company said yesterday that Playfish increased Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) for the sixth consecutive quarter. Yet, while EA now has a 25 percent share of the Western games market due to the strength of its sports and social games (Sims) and its pricey acquisitions, it also saw $657 million in operating expenses and a $340 million net loss for the quarter. Becoming a is not such an easy (or cheap) proposition. Of course, EA also slipped another interesting piece of info in its earnings report, saying that Origin, its digital distribution and DRM system that lets users purchase games online for PCs and mobile, has been downloaded by over six million consumers and has already signed big publishers like Warner Brothers Interactive, Capcom, and THQ. And today the company announced that it will be opening up Origin to third-party publishers in November, which will likely bring an array of titles from smaller publishers to the platform. For EA, this is advantageous because it allows them to avoid the expensive task of development and marketing while still managing to distribute great content from large and small publishers and make money by taking a distributor’s percentage of sales. With these further sources of revenue, the outlook for EA is becoming bright. It made some very bold moves in purchasing Playfish and PopCap for big bucks, but with those companies came top personnel talent and popular social titles. Of course, simply porting old console games onto new gaming medium and buying casual game developers doesn’t necessarily seem like an innovative $3 billion plan. Or maybe it’s that it seems too easy. The real key is to balance old titles with new titles and develop a seamless distribution medium for its online titles — this is what will keep customers happy. Hopefully in trying to ramp up Origin to become a competitor with Steam and a source of significant revenue, EA can use that future cash to direct toward developing original, new concepts and titles that are optimized for mobile. That’s where the future lies. Because, : “Repackaging The Sims for a social setting was a cakewalk. Successfully repackaging Battlefield and their sports franchises is another task altogether”. EA is on its way, but it has still yet to prove hands-down that social, mobile, and digital games can become a significant part of its “new” DNA. And, to Zynga as it prepares for its potential $15 to $20 billion-valuation IPO, the company has to retain its top talent if it’s really going to give Zynga a run for the big digital money. |
Late-night Scenes From The Beijing Hackathon | Vineet Thanedar | 2,011 | 10 | 29 | The has entered the dark hours of the night. Fueled by some midnight Spaghetti, (real) coke with sugar, refreshing Yanjing beer, and Lays of the Italian Red Meat flavor variety (which strangely tastes like Barbecue), our are cranking code at breakneck speed. It’s quiet in here but there is a palpable buzz at the tables. In spite of the occasional hacker bailing out in favor of creaturely comforts such as a full night’s sleep, many have stayed back and concentration and consciousness levels seem largely high. It hasn’t been a smooth ride today. We have had Internet and Wi-Fi connectivity issues but in true hacker fashion, the staff and support personnel have rigged together something that.just.works. You’ll see in the pictures below. Here then are a few scenes from my 3am photo run around the room.
We’ve got the hackers who are ready with a smile at this hour…
And the ones who could perhaps use one at this hour… A crew of French hackers was engaged in a delightfully sounding technical conversation while one of them, Hermes (per his name tag), was belting awesome rap music..
Of course, no hackathon photo set would be complete without the obligatory sleepy hacker photos. This reminds me of my grad school days. The comfort of lining up three chairs in the lab and dozzzing off…
Just outside the room though, we find two hackers who seem to have just given in and gone all out! Now for proof of the epic battle we had with the Wi-Fi/Internet gods. Internet connection was at best spotty all day and Wi-Fi in this large room went kaput fairly early on. At the end of a few hours, this is what we ended up with. Good enough? Sure. Fun? Not sure. A heavily wired up switch with cables running to every table… The mess of cables running all over the room… But the overall winner was this lone, sad router with two blinking lights and one antenna. He fought hard. He’s a trooper.
And last, but not the least, part of the TechCrunch team, tired but all smiles.
Hackathon submissions start at 8am Beijing time and demos will start at 11am. Stay tuned for we will be live streaming the event! |
TechCrunch Disrupt Beijing Hackathon: The Night Shift | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 10 | 29 | It’s 12:49 am at the TechCrunch ; Unlike any other hackathon I’ve attended, the late night hacker snacks here take the prize for unique brain fuel. They include Tea Eggs, Italian Red Meat Flavor potato chips, Yanjing beer, Apples, and Pokki sticks. Other differences? Well I’m writing this through a VPN because WordPress is blocked, and I’m probably going to have to go back to the hotel room to finish because the Internet keeps crapping out half way in the middle of my post. Despite it being a hard day’s night basically, there are about 100 intrepid programmers still here at the CNCC conference center in the Olympic Village, working all through the night with the fervor of well, programmers. Despite the lack of Red Bull. And Internet. So why are they still here? I asked Alex Duncan, “To beat those mother*ckers,” he said, gesturing to the competition all around him. Duncan’s hack, Cityfight, allowed cities like Beijing and Shanghai to “fight” against each other with the amount of support messages they receive from constituents. “We’re here for the food,” said the team behind iTrust, an online reputation management system . “Cause it’s fun,” said startup founder — and former Palantir employee — Tian Li, “I can do this kind of stuff all night.” When asked what had changed in China’s startup scene since he left Palantir and Silicon Valley, he explained that increased media coverage and Chinese success stories had increased the amount of support in China, including but not limited to startup incubators and events: “Two years ago doing a startup wasn’t cool, it was below getting a job at Tencent.” Success stories like Zuckerberg and Ma can sometimes get one through a patch of rough Internet, or a lack of a good night’s sleep. “Whether we win or not we’re going to just go on and try to make it happen,” said founder Nicky Szmala. Okay, if you’ll excuse me I’m going to take a cue from that dude up there and go to bed. [slideshow] |
In The Halls Of The Hedge Fund Hackers | Jon Evans | 2,011 | 10 | 29 | I today, to get my fair share of bemusement. Occupy Wall Street seemed drizzly, dejected, and oddly disconnected from the world around it. I approve of their goals, and I think their message is , but I’m not so sure their methods are effective. We’ll see. But they did spur me to go back and reread, of all things, some Mark Cuban. I don’t usually have much time for Cuban, but in a he made a really interesting point: “ ” Matt Taibbi, in a recent Rolling Stone piece, is far more adversarial — “ ” — but he makes essentially the same point. Most of the “cheats” he cites are examples of hacking the system, rather than breaking the law. (The big exception being the now-infamous Abacus case, but intelligent people have .) It’s worth noting that the tech world’s attitude towards hacking the system, any system, generally ranges from “grudging respect” to “outright approval.” was a . MIT its finest hacks. Mark Zuckerberg’s was the precursor to Facebook. I suspect a similar sensibility is behind the anti-Occupy “ ” movement; But what Occupy is actually saying is that the has been to benefit the hackers, in such a way that there is no longer any way for the non-hackers to effect meaningful change. That’s why they’re camping in the rain in Zuccotti Park rather than writing letters to Congress and getting out the vote for the candidate of their choice. https://twitter.com/#!/rezendi/status/123450071554592770 Steve Jobs, phone phreak — that’s pretty cool. ; also kinda cool, despite its . Steve Jobs corrupting Ma Bell’s management so that he and his cronies keep siphoning a percentage of everyone else’s skyrocketing bills, with no oversight or recourse: that, I think you will agree, would decidedly have been cool. It’s that kind of perceived corruption that Occupy is protesting. Extending the hacker analogy, the problem they see is worse than black-hats Amazon, Google, and Microsoft’s server farms; it’s more like black-hats taking over Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, full stop. Will Occupy really make a difference? Do Wall Street’s system-hackers care about shame or public outcry? I have my doubts. But I do believe the damp campers in Zuccotti Park have good reason to be angry. “Eye and nose of the Wall Street Bull”, by Alex E. Proimos, . |
Nokia Vs. The Industry: A Look At The Global Battle Over Mobile Advertising [Infographic] | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 10 | 29 | Mobile advertising as you’ve likely heard, is hott right now. (With two “t’s”, yes.) , mobile advertising spend is projected to hit $2.5 billion by 2014, with $2.7 billion projected in mobile ad revenues for this year and $6.6 billion by 2016. What’s more, in August, , and that number continues to grow. In the U.S., the bigs in mobile OSes, Android, iOS, RIM, Symbian, and Windows, are duking it out for market share, with Android presently leading the pack. . In Europe, the numbers for smartphone usage are very similar to the U.S.: As of July 2011, , 88.4 million mobile subscribers (in the EU5) were using smartphones. Of the top smartphone platforms in Europe, Symbian led the way with 37.8 percent market share, with Android grabbing the second spot at 22.3 percent over iOS at 20.3 percent. But what about the other players? Until Apple overtook it back in June of this year, Nokia was the largest manufacturer of smartphone devices by volume in the world. Earlier this year, Nokia loudly announced plans to replace Symbian and MeeGo with Windows Phone on most of its high end devices. The Finnish manufacturer has always had a wide array of products, but it’s struggled to find a foothold in the U.S. And, what’s more, it’s taken its fair share of heat in the press over the last 6 months. The company’s won’t be hitting U.S. stores for at least a few more months, but as Chris pointed out earlier today, “these Windows Phones will be the first high-profile Nokia launches in years”, and no one is more aware of this than Nokia, which is struggling to maintain its relevance. As U.S. President of Nokia Operations Chris Weber said earlier this year about the company’s renewed focus on the U.S. market: But, there is some hope. , with Windows Phone, Nokia just may be poised to make a big comeback. Taking Apple’s table scraps and pushing RIM down may prove to be a good strategy for Nokia going forward, especially (as John points out) two familiar brands — Microsoft and Nokia — are better than one — RIM. Nokia has been successful in Europe because its phones, stores, and service were local, useable, and cheap. If they can capitalize on brand recognition and first-time smartphone buyers, it just may work. What’s more, thanks to a nifty infographic from , the mobile ad mediation platform, we have evidence of more good news for Nokia, and it comes in the form of mobile advertising. As you’ll see below, Nokia’s absolute ad requests (which are what makes mobile advertising tick) continue to grow month-to-month, and when it comes to click-through-rates (CTR), Nokia has been consistently outperforming the rest of the industry (abroad), which includes the likes Android, iOS, and RIM. As the infographic astutely reveals, with high ad requests and CTRs, this makes for a lot of happy Nokia developers and advertisers. Whether this trend can continue has Nokia moves its Windows Phone-powered devices into the U.S. remains to be seen, but, at the very least, it’s certainly a silver lining. Without further ado, a look at global Nokia ad requests, CTR, distribution, and top countries: (We’ll be updating with comparable fill rates and eCPM on Android and iOS for top European companies soon.) |
Daily Crunch: Glass | Bryce Durbin | 2,011 | 10 | 29 | Here are some of yesterday’s stories on TechCrunch Gadgets:
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null | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 10 | 11 | null |
Meet The Disrupt BJ Hackathon Hackers | John Biggs | 2,011 | 10 | 29 | And we’re off! These are some of our Hackathon Hackers, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and ready to hack here at TC Disrupt BJ. We tried our hardest to grab some great folks and it’s a pleasure working with these hardcore coders. I wish we could interview everyone but here are eight random hackers working on changing the world (or their corner of it). Justin is CTO of and he loves – loves! – his team. “These guys are my hacker heroes,” he told us. He and his merry band will build something called iTrust or iTrusting or something. “It’s about trust,” he said, and we believe him.
Kevin is a developer/traveller who is working on an API for a social game. His hacker hero is Kevin Rose and he’s working with a great team from Beijing to build out gaming APIs into a working project. is an accomplished hacker in his own right but he admires Mark Pincus and loves social gaming. He’s working in mobile game payment systems and he’s planning on building an API for a social game during the hackathon.
Taciturn Guo Ying’s hacker hero is her friend, Yichun Zhang, and she’s still undecided as to what she and her team are building. However, the’s an engineer so it shouldn’t be too difficult for them to turn around the next Linux in 24 hours.
Knowing that Guo Ying dug Yichun’s work, I had to talk to him. His heroes are Larry Wall and Linus Torvalds. He, like Guo, has no idea what he wants to build but he’s well on his way to coding greatness.
Chet is a programmer for Wenquxing and is building a social game for the hackathon. Tom works for Nezsoft.com consulting and is working on an API integration with Tianji. His project? A headhunter portal using Tianji’s database as well as some translation APIs to make it international. His tech hero is Anonymous. Aaron Farr is doing something secretive with his start-up Vdio and he’s still trying to get Internet to work at the venue before he even starts working on his project. Until things speed up, he’s relaxing calmly in the back of the room. |
(Sort Of) Live From The Beijing Hackathon: We Talk To The Hackers | John Biggs | 2,011 | 10 | 29 | Our own Greg Kumparak walked through the Hackathon Hall this evening, talking to all and sundry about their projects. Some notable hacks included an app for the ladies. How does it work? In Asia, guys buy girls gifts before they ask them out. With this app, the ladies can take a picture of an item and then broadcast her desire for it to the men nearby. The fellow who is quickest to his wallet will, it is assumed, receive a date. For those still working on projects, may I suggest a related app that would involve a system for giving me beer and Peking duck on demand, no dates promised or expected? Take a look at our long walk through TCDBJ and watch tomorrow as the finalists compete for including cash, iPads 2, and more cash. |
HALL.com Raises $580K From Founder’s Collective And Others To Transform Realtime Collaboration | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 10 | 16 | Real-time collaborative platform is announcing $580K in seed funding today, from , and others. Founder quit his job at Inuit and joined both and in order to build what he holds conceptually to be an online assembly hall, a place whether people can get together and share real-time intelligence. “ is about collecting knowledge from a group of people to solve real problems,” says Hellman, which is why HALL.com is divided into various topics. For example a quick visit to the shows realtime rankers around ancillary subjects like, “Rank the Top CEOs in Technology” and polls like “What’s the best app for photo sharing?” Hellman says he is focused on creating a space where people can assemble and easily participate in discussion, which is why he considers his closest competitor Google+ and NOT something like GoPollGo. While right now the platform is doing that through its two apps, Ranker and Polls, Hellman eventually hopes to release additional apps like To-Do, “In the near future you’ll see us disrupting products including Skype, Survey Monkey, Salesforce Chatter, Yammer and many more.” Hellman tells me that the fact that you can enter HALL.com frictionlessly, through Facebook Connect, without having to register or create a group is what differentiates it from other services that offer similar products, “The problem we solve is collecting group intelligence … You don’t have to create a group or project, add people, signup. We’ve eliminated all the pains to make it effortless to engage in the hall.” A week after receiving the funding, Hellman hired,”two of the smartest engineers [he’s] ever worked with.” Many more apps that effortlessly collect intelligence are in the platform’s future. |
New Site Wants To Crowdsource Stories And Photos From The Peace Corps | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 10 | 29 | To celebrate the fifty years of the Peace Corps’s work in 139 countries, journalist and former Peace Corps volunteer Maureen Orth has created an online platform, called , for former volunteers to contribute their own stories, pictures and “Video postcards.” In case you aren’t familiar, The Peace Corps is a volunteer program run by the United States Government. Post-college grads work abroad for two years; volunteering in building schools, infrastructure development, government, agriculture and more. Orth has been traveling to Morocco, Colombia, Mongolia, Costa Rica and Mexico to film volunteers in action to add content to the new site. Stories are captured in digital ‘postcards’ on the site. For example, a young woman named Stephanie is featured helping an orphanage in Mongolia to become more self-sustaining by building a greenhouse and growing produce to sell for profit. A volunteer herself in the sixties, Orth helped build a school in a mountain village in Colombia. The project, which is funded by American Express and Bank of America, is looking for additional volunteers from the past 50 years to contribute their own stories, pictures and videos. |
Chinese Social Gaming Giant Happy Elements Raises $30 Million | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 10 | 16 | Chinese social gaming company has raised $30 million in Series B funding led by Legend Capital with participation from existing investor DCM. This brings Happy Elements’ total funding to $35 million. Beijing-based Happy Elements is one of the top Asian social gaming developers on Facebook and has launched a number of popular gaming titles in Japan, China and South Korea. In August 2009, Happy Elements launched its first social game, My Fishbowl, on Facebook. Currently, the game has 1.5 million daily active users. Currently, Happy Elements’ games are available on Facebook, Tencent, Renren, Kaixin, Mixi, Hangames, Cyworld, Daum, Netlog, Hyves, StudiVZ and Orkut. The company has also launched a number of mobile game titles, including three mobile phone games in Japan. The new funding will be used to expand to Western markets and to ;aunch of several new smartphone games in 2012. The capital will also be used to hire new talent. In the two years since its founding in 2009, Happy Elements has grown from an eight person team to a staff of 300. By the end of 2012, Happy Elements is planning to launch over eight new games. . |
YouTube Now Allows Music Partners To Sell Merchandise, Digital Downloads And Event Tickets | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 10 | 16 | We already know that YouTube is per day day, but now the online video giant is now seeing a whopping 800 million people per month visiting the site, Google revealed in its third-quarter earnings report last week. And today, YouTube is also the ability to sell merchandise, tickets and more via the site. Through a feature called the Merch Store, YouTube partners will be able to sell artist merchandise, digital downloads, concert tickets and other experiences to fans and visitors. YouTube has partnered with a number of companies to launch these stores. Topspin is helping power merchandise sales, concert tickets and experiences; SongKick will help sell tickets for concerts; and iTunes and Amazon will power transactions for music downloads. YouTube says be rolling out the Merch Store to music partners globally over the coming weeks. YouTube declined to reveal the specific nature of the financial split for these sales, but did say that the site takes a small percentage of sales just to cover costs. However, the artist gets the same revenue no matter if they go through the Merch Store or through the affiliate on other channels. The ability to add merchandise sales, ticket sales, digital downloads and more to an artists YouTube site definitely gives these sites more of an engaging presence for artists with their fans. These destinations will now become more than just a way to discover music videos, but also a way to transact business and actually see the artist and buy their works. |
Why So Siri-ous? | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 10 | 16 | Looking over the web and especially the over the past couple of days, it seems there is only one thing everyone wants to talk about: Siri. With the iPhone 4S now in millions of peoples’ hands, , it’s clearly the stand-out feature of the device. But wait. Voice technology has been around for a long time. Or, as one TechCrunch succinctly put it on : “4 year old software, 8 year old technology.” This recalls one of my favorite aspects of tech blogging. You write about something, then everyone and their mother rushes out to yell something along the lines of “OLD!”. Or, even better, to yell “FIRST!”. So if the stuff Siri is doing is old, and if others did do it FIRST, then why is everyone so damn excited about the feature? There are a few reasons. But the simplest answer is one that has played out time and time again over the past several years: Apple did it right. No, Apple is not the first to implement voice technology. Nor are they the first to do it on a phone. In fact, Siri isn’t even Apple’s first foray into voice controls. But their first attempt on the iPhone, quite frankly, sucked. It’s no surprise that no one used it. As for Siri, it’s a company that — they were actually doing some of the same things as a stand-alone third-party app previously. Credit Apple for having the vision and foresight to realize that their previous voice control offering wasn’t competitive, and that system-level integration of Siri into iOS could be magical. What about Google? It’s true that they’ve been far ahead of Apple in the voice control space for years now. I recall being at an event that Google held in August 2010 in which they showed off some new voice functionality for Android. As I wrote at the time, “ “. And that was true. At the time. But Google failed on a few fronts with this functionality. First of all, while on paper and in staged demos Google’s technology looks great, they failed to make it compelling enough to entice everyday users to use it. They had a pre-defined set of instructions as to what you could say to get the system to work, and they were pretty rigid. By comparison, Apple placed an emphasis on natural language usage with Siri. There are a number of ways to say something to trigger a certain action. You don’t have to remember a set of commands. Put another way, Google’s voice search and Siri may look comparable on paper. But in reality, one is something best used by a robot, the other is something best used by a human. And robots don’t buy phones — at least not yet. In the bigger picture, this is something that Apple seems to understand that their rivals do not. Technology is an ever-important part of everyones’ lives, but the only way to make it truly accessible to the vast majority of users is to humanize it. That’s Siri. Google, Microsoft, etc — they all fail miserably at doing this. I’m sure in a few weeks, we’re going to see Google come out and say, “wait, but look, we can do all of the stuff Siri can do too!” They’ll tweak their voice recognition to pick up more human phrases, etc. But it won’t matter. They already lost the mindshare battle. Yes, Android had better voice controls first, but if you ask anyone on the street right now which is the phone with the awesome voice controls, they’ll tell you it’s the iPhone. The funny thing is that while Apple are normally brilliant marketers in this regard, they’re actually holding back on Siri right now. Why? Because they consider the product to still be in “beta”. And while every Google product starts in beta, it’s not a tag Apple takes lightly. Talking with them leading up to the launch, they clearly feel that Siri as it stands right now, while a great first step, is nowhere near where they want it to be. It may take six months to get there. It may take a year. But when Apple does get it to where they feel it’s ready, I bet we’ll see a massive marketing push. And we may even see it come to other devices at that point. Earlier today, Search Engine Land did of Siri versus Google voice actions. Again, on paper, they’re similar, but in reality, they’re far apart right now. But the more interesting aspect of the piece to me was when author Greg Sterling goes against the this-will-kill-Google early reactions and notes that Siri should lead to even more Google searches. I totally agree. For now. But again, this is a beta product. Does anyone really think Apple isn’t going to work quickly to integrate it with other data partners? Imagine it . Imagine it tied to Twitter (and how is it not already?!). Imagine it tied to Foursquare. Imagine it tied to… Facebook. If and when that happens, Google will have a very legitimate reason to be concerned. Right now, Google is a middle man between us and information. And we love Google for it. There’s simply too much information out there for anyone to find by themselves. There needs to be a middle man. We need Google. Apple has been hinting for a while that mobile applications could change this game. But apps are just a new, perhaps more accesible wrapper of information. There still needs to be a search mechanism powering the discovery of information — that’s why everyone keeps that Apple will eventually get into the search engine business. Well they have. But not in the way that everyone was thinking. Siri is their entry point. Again, it’s a small step right now, but it has the potential to be massive. (Perhaps the more pressing question: is Apple okay relying heavily on , for what may become a core component of their stack?) And that’s another fundamental reason why people are so excited by Siri where they aren’t by Google voice search. Google voice search, like basically every Google product, is ultimately a way to drive more Google searches. It’s just a new layer. Even if people don’t fully understand that, they sense that it doesn’t point to something totally new. Siri does point to something totally new. With it, Apple wants to change the information search and creation paradigm. It’s an evolution powered by mobile and a new, more powerful input: voice. This is a vision that has been 24 years in the making at Apple. The video below first re-surfaced around the launch of the iPad. “Apple envisioned their tablet 20+ years ago!,” everyone yelled. But at the time, everyone overlooked the arguably more powerful aspect: natural language voice interaction. Apple was quietly working on that too. And now it’s here. Heralding the future. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WdS4TscWH8&w=640&h=480] |
Reduce Friction, Increase Happiness | Brenden Mulligan | 2,011 | 10 | 16 | There has been a reoccurring theme on my mind recently as I’ve advised startups on areas of focus. It revolves around the goal of reducing friction. Reduced friction in a product leads to less user frustration, high conversion, and overall user happiness. I’d like to use a few examples to illustrate what I mean. Let’s start with , the startup that lets you order a black car from your mobile phone in San Francisco, New York, Seattle, Chicago, and a growing list of cities. Because I know the team, I’ve been following this startup since they launched. I actually took an Uber car to celebrate during one of their first weeks in beta. When I first heard about the service, I focused on the luxury aspect of traveling in a black town car with a private driver. Who wouldn’t? It’s in their tagline (“Everyone’s Private Driver”) and it sounds awesome. But after my first Uber experience, I found out that while nice, the luxury component is strangely unimportant compared to their much bigger function of reducing the friction of getting a ride somewhere. Let me elaborate. Friction points are italicized. Here is generally what you need to do to get a cab: Here is the Uber experience: Uber has reduced all the friction. What was a tedious process before is a seamless, pleasurable interaction. The most important thing Uber provides its users is that frictionless experience. The fact that it’s a black car means it’s generally an aesthetically nicer experience (and with SF Taxis, that can make a big difference), but that’s a small detail compared to the other benefits of using the service. A lot of people are familiar with . It’s pretty simple. There are a bunch of Zipcar-owned cars around the city that members can rent on an hourly basis. All reservations are done through their website. is a new startup taking on Zipcar by altering the model. Instead of Getaround purchasing a lot of inventory (cars), they built a marketplace for car-owners to list their own vehicles for other people to rent. I love the idea, and from their unused cars. The company and since then . I have used the service frequently. I love what they’re doing and think they’re going to build a great company. However, they face a serious challenge. Zipcar owns its inventory, so they have more control of the friction in the experience: There isn’t really a lot of friction there. Now let’s look at that experience with Getaround: Wow. That’s a lot more friction. Again, I love Getaround, and their team is more aware of these issues than anyone. I’m 100% confident that as they go, they’ll iron this stuff out, just as Zipcar ironed out all the challenges they faced at the beginning. The friction issues Getaround faces are a result of the fact that Zipcar bought cars, while Getaround buys bandwidth. This initial disadvantage will make the company much more nimble and scalable long term. I think the key to reducing friction quickly is to incentivizing the car owners to reduce the friction points. Give owners the option to guarantee their schedule, so cars can be booked immediately. Push them to install the CarKit, (the device that lets the renter locate and unlock the car from their smartphone). Then, when owners do these things, Getaround should give them a bigger percentage of the rental fee or prioritize those cars in search results. These owner will get more rentals and make more money. Over time, as users choose these cars, other owners will need to add these options to compete in the marketplace, and friction starts to disappear. Even successful startups still work every day on reducing friction. Let’s quickly compare and . Kayak: Airbnb: A lot of times, finding an Airbnb accommodation is a bigger hassle than a booking hotel. But they’ve managed , and continually works to make the process seamless and frictionless. And it’s getting better and better. Friction is important to consider when creating a product. If your users feel friction using or signing up for your service, you have a problem. Sometimes it’s unavoidable, but you should do everything in your power to remove as much friction as possible. And you should pay attention to this constantly as your product and service grow. When you examine your product, where are the friction points? Are you letting users sign up with Twitter/Facebook, or do they need to register separately? Are you opening popups to get their attention instead of letting them continue on the site? Are you requiring information you don’t need? . Excerpt image |
California Finally Approves Online Voter Registration (Sadly, It’s Just 1 Of 11 States To Have Done So) | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 10 | 28 | So, this piece of news managed to sneak under the radar, but it’s worth recognizing as a victory for the Internet and for the state of California. Digital technology has been slow to come to some offline institutions, a glaring (and sad) example being the very democratic process of registering to vote (and then actually voting) in local, state, and federal elections. A few weeks ago, California Governor Jerry Brown that (once again) legalizes online voter registration in the state of California. , while California does in fact have a voter registration database, until the passage of 3B 397, residents could not fully register to vote online. Instead, voters could go through the process of filling out registration forms, but instead of hitting “approve” or “send” and closing the loop, Californians had to then print out the completed form and send it to their local county election office for approval. Considering California is responsible for the development of a wide array of mind-blowing technology, including , it’s kind of embarrassing that our state can’t even offer a workable way to register people to vote online. Until now, that is. Lawmakers had been waiting for the state’s “federally compliant statewide voter registration database to come online”, TheVotingNews said, but apparently San Francisco Senator Leland Yee was tired of twiddling his thumbs and authored the new online voter registration bill, which was then signed into law by Jerry Brown. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, more than 39 percent of the Californians that were eligible in 2010 did not register to vote. That’s nearly 9 million people. What’s more, only eleven states in the U.S. (Arizona, California, Colorado, Delaware, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, and Washington) currently (or will soon) offer online voter registration — oh, and North Carolina is considering implementing online registration, according to the . Though 34 states do offer residents the opportunity to access voter registration online, it is appalling how few states have implemented statewide voter registration databases, let alone allow people to take advantage of online registration or voting. In a statement about the new legislation, State Senator Lee seemed to agree: Nearly 9 million people, in fact. Under the new law, California residents will now register to vote online, at which point the county elections office will use the voter’s signature from the DMV to verify authenticity. Then, when residents actually go to vote, their signatures will be matched against those records at the polls. As to the timeline for the implementation, well, Yee and other representatives said that they hope to have the new system live in time for the 2012 presidential elections. If they don’t, I encourage all Californians (and Americans, for that matter) to write strongly-worded letters to their local politicians. Now, of course, the question becomes: When do we actually get to vote online? 2020? Excerpt image |
Marc Benioff Wants To #OccupyTheEnterprise | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 10 | 28 | Salesforce founder and CEO Marc Benioff has a knack for taking what is happening on the consumer web and applying it to business. He even spins as a something businesses should learn from and emulate. He makes his case in the video above, which I shot yesterday in New York with my iPhone (sorry for the bad lighting). His point is that if protesters can use Twitter and Facebook to #OccupyOakland, why can’t companies use the same social tools to organize themselves and motivate their customers? “Facebook is really eating the Web,” he says, echoing Marc Andreessen’s notion of . Benioff points to the fact that people are spending 4 hours a day on the social network. He mentions as an example of a brand using Facebook to engage effectively with people after their visit. But it’s not just Facebook, it’s Twitter too. Airlines like are using Twitter to manage angry customers and reward loyal ones. Check out the video below to see how far KLM went in one marketing experiment to find passengers checking in on Foursquare or Tweeting about their flight and surprising them with a gift. (Notice also the ancient airplanes in the background. Are those DC-10s?). But at least they are up to date with their social marketing. Benioff is talking his own game a bit, since he is trying to sell enterprises his own social tools with . But he does truly believe that if companies are ignoring social they are ignoring their customers. “We see it transforming our society,” he says, “we can use it to make our companies stronger. … This is a social revolution in regards to business.” |
The TechCrunch Hackathon Beijing Is About To Begin #disruptbj | John Biggs | 2,011 | 10 | 28 | We’re about fifteen minutes away from the start of Disrupt Hackathon Beijing and it looks like we have about 350 people on the floor and teams are forming now. It will be interesting to see what folks come up with at this our first Disrupt in China – let alone our first Disrupt event outside of the US. Our intrepid photographer Duncan Leung of and the TCTV crew will be shooting stills and video from the event and we should be able to get out some live streams as the event progresses. Watch this space. [slideshow] |
YouTube Confirms Plans To Take On Cable With ‘Channels’, Names Dozens Of Partners | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 10 | 28 | YouTube’s ambitions to challenge cable television head-on are getting a big boost tonight: the world’s largest video site is that it’s lined up a slew of new content partners who will be developing shows for the site, covering everything from sports to comedy to music. The news had been rumored for some time, including a last week in the WSJ. In a blog post announcing the news, YouTube says its goal with these channels is to “[give] you more reasons to keep coming back again and again”. The post references the so-called “defining channels” born out of cable, like MTV, ESPN, and CNN, and says that the next generation of these will emerge on YouTube. These channels will start coming online next month (“continuing over the next year”, so some will take a while), and will be available anywhere YouTube is. There are some big names on the list. But there are still a lot of questions: Will this content really rival the premium production values seen on cable? Will the shows be exclusive to YouTube? And how exactly is YouTube going to tweak the site’s user experience as it looks to shift users from funny cat videos toward these shows (which advertisers will be able to more effectively monetize)? Here’s a list of content partners that are part of this announcement: Electus Channel – Pop Culture (name TBD)
PMC PMC Entertainment News
WWE WWE
Young Hollywood Young Hollywood Network
DanceOn DanceOn (Madonna)
Fine Brothers Films MyMusic
Everyday Health, Inc. Everyday Health TV
TakePart™ TakePart™ TV
Digital Broadcasting Group (DBG) Spaces
Uncommon Content Partners The Conversation Channel
Demand Media eHow Home
SB Nation SB Nation
Magical Elves and InStyle magazine Little Black Dress
Hearst Magazines Channel – Fashion & Beauty Channel (name TBD)
Emil Rensing International Channel – Auto (name TBD)
My Damn Channel My Damn Channel: Live
Uncommon Content Partners Taste & Access
Red Bull Media House North America Red Bull
Machinima Machinima
Katalyst Thrash Lab (Ashton Kutcher)
Steve Spangler Science The Spangler Effect
New Nation Networks New Nation Networks
Smart Girls at the Party Smart Girls at the Party (Amy Poehler)
Bedrocket Media Ventures and Full Picture Productions Look TV
BermanBraun theLOGE
The Young Turks Town Square
BermanBraun & Rodale Inc. Vigor
Electus NuevOn – Latin Channel (Sofia Vergara)
Clevver Media ClevverStyle
ModernMom.com ModernMom Channel
Brady Haran DeepSkyVideos
IconicTV 123UnoDosTres
The Wall Street Journal The Wall Street Journal
Pharrell Williams i am OTHER
SoulPancake Productions SoulPancake (Rainn Wilson)
Chopra Media/Generate The Chopra Well (Deepak Chopra)
Clevver Media ClevverNews
The Bowery Presents The Bowery Presents
Clevver Media ClevverTeVe
Seedwell American Hipster
Hearst Magazines Car and Driver Television
Alchemy Networks Alchemy Networks
CafeMom CafeMom Studios
Bedrocket Media Ventures Channel – Comedy (name TBD)
Demand Media LIVESTRONG
Bedrocket Media Ventures Channel – Action Sports (name TBD)
FremantleMedia Channel – Pets & Animal (name TBD)
Big Frame BAM
IconicTV myISH
Electus Channel – Food (name TBD)
Soccer United Marketing & Bedrocket KickTV
Lionsgate Lionsgate Fitness Channel
East of Center Productions LLC YOMYOMF
EQAL u look haute!
Philip Defranco Sourcefed
Meredith Corporation and Meredith Video Studios Digs
Vlogbrothers CrashCourse
Walter Latham Digital Walter Latham’s “Kings of Comedy”
Tony Hawk’s production company, 900 Films, Inc. RIDE Channel
JON M. CHU Channel – Dance (name TBD)
Vuguru & POW! Entertainment Stan Lee’s World of Heroes
FAWN by Michelle Phan Fawn
DECA KinCommunity
Source Interlink Media Motor Trend
The Nerdist Channel The Nerdist Channel
Comedy Shaq Network The Comedy Shaq Network (Shaquille O’Neal)
Demand Media eHow Pets & Animals
Brady Haran numberphile
Cooking Up a Story Food Farmer Earth
Bleacher Report Bleacher Report
TED Conferences TEDEducation
Intelligent Television Intelligent Channel
Pitchfork Pitchfork TV
Vlogbrothers SciShow
EYEBOOGIE POP SPOT
Roadside Entertainment/BAC The NOC
Alli Sports Alli Sports
The Onion Onion Broadcasting Company
VICE VICE
Smosh/Alloy Digital Smosh Animation (name TBD)
VICE Noisey
Knights of Good Productions Geek & Sundry
Mondo Media New Animators
BermanBraun & Rodale Inc. Taste
Varsity Pictures Awesomeness
Black Box TV Black Box TV (Anthony Zuicker, founder of CSI)
IGN Entertainment / Shine Group START
@radical.media Channel – Education (name TBD)
Frederator Networks Channel Frederator’s Cartoon Hangover
monotransistor werevertumorro
Thomson Reuters Reuters.com
Slate Slate News Channel
Maker Studios The Maker Music Network
Maker Studios The Moms’ View
Maker Studios Tutele
Noisey VICE
Iconic Life and Times (Jay-Z) |
LiveMinutes Launches Simple, Free Document-Based Web Conferencing Service | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 10 | 28 | There are still a number of pain points with existing web conferencing platforms, including having to install software, complicated pricing plans, poor usability, and cluttered interfaces. is hoping to disrupt this space with its free, simple document-based web conferencing service. LiveMinutes free web-conferencing service sits between file sharing and web conferencing. You can upload documents (i.e. PowerPoint presentations etc.), and LiveMinutes will give you a link to share with other participants. Participants can join without downloading any software or signing up. Meeting leaders can start discussing and annotating around documents, and the service also integrates with Skype. And users can get a downloadable report after every meeting. LiveMinutes launched in alpha a few weeks ago and has already conducted 10,000 sessions for 2,000 users. For anyone who is frustrated with their current web conferencing service, LiveMinutes is worth a try. |
Best Buy Has 32GB TouchPads For $149, But There’s A Catch | Chris Velazco | 2,011 | 10 | 28 | Here’s one to file under “completely unexpected” — remember HP’s long-dead TouchPad? Well, apparently it’s got some life it in yet, as Best Buy will be allowing their customers to purchase a 32GB model for $149 so long as they The deal starts on November 1, and I suspect Best Buy and HP will be hyping it like crazy next week. This whole thing begs a far bigger question though: where the hell are these things coming from? It’s been a few months since the TouchPad Fire Sale of 2011, so shouldn’t supply channels have dried up already? Even HP’s own employees had to , and now they’re back in circulation? As it turns out, these leftover TouchPads may be the result of a last minute production run meant to clear supply channels out of end-of-life components. Estimates put the number of TouchPads ready to sell at between , but it’s unknown whether or not Best Buy will be getting all of them. I get that it’s probably part of some pre-holiday promotion to drive computer sales, but the whole thing just leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. I can’t really blame HP and Best Buy for trying to make a few bucks off of a loss leader like the TouchPad, but it seems unfair considering some early bargain-hunters had their orders . For those of you thinking of jumping on the deal and returning the computer later, be warned that your mileage may vary. While I’m sure some stores won’t have any problem tweaking your transaction, others are likely to shut you down as soon as you walk up to customer service. |
Glareless Glass, Flexible Solar-Powered E-Paper, And More From FPDI | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 10 | 28 | You wouldn’t expect an event like , the Flat Panel Display International Exhibition, to be much more than a dry little gathering of circuit benders and substrate wranglers. And that’s kind of what it is. But you would do well to remember that these pixel jockeys are putting together the screens that make things like the iPhone 4 possible. And this year’s expo looks like a bumper crop of technology we’ll be seeing in devices soon. , as usual, is covering the event with gusto, if you want to get this straight from the source. But I’ve highlighted the items most worth paying attention to below. If you like pixels, inquire within. Yes, you say, glass is already transparent. But if any of our readers are on Apple laptops, they know the sorrow of a highly-reflective display. Ever since laptop makers have gone over to glass (with its superior transmissive qualities), we’ve been plagued by the reflections of lights, windows, and our own hideous faces. Nippon Electric Glass Co (great band name) has produced a solution. The glass on the left is normal LCD substrate glass, which they say allows 92% of light to pass through, while reflecting around 8%. The glass on the right, which is enhanced with a special anti-reflection film (30 coats of a nanometer-scale thickness on each side), allows 99.5% of light to go through, reflecting only 0.5%. As Tech-On puts it from their first-hand experience, “When I stood in front of the glass substrate, it was difficult to recognize the existence of the substrate. Many other visitors were gazing at the invisible glass with surprised looks on their faces.” If the increase in thickness isn’t too much and there are no hidden optical effects, this could be a huge improvement for our portable displays. One of the big draws of e-paper-based e-readers is their long battery life. With moderate use, you might only have to plug in your Kindle once every few weeks. But what if all you had to do was turn it over when you were done and let the sun charge it? AU Optronics has a prototype that’s different from existing devices in several ways. First of all, it’s flexible — and while we’ve seen , few are this thin or simple. Basically it’s just a screen controller, display, and a bunch of photovoltaic cells, and it’s just over a tenth of a millimeter thick. Next, it works without an external power source. That is, like one of those solar-powered calculators we all had, it can function by sunlight alone, which provides the few hundred mW necessary to drive the screen. You’d have to hold it up to the sun to turn the page, though, which might be a little awkward. At the show, it sat on a rechargeable battery because artificial light isn’t enough to power it. So it’s not like this device is going straight into stores. But it’s a great concept nonetheless. I keep going on about the iPad 3, which I think will have a — 2048×1536 to be exact. There are naysayers, but I continue to trumpet this idea because I desperately want it to be true. And Samsung is one of the display manufacturers making it happen. But until recently, we’ve mainly seen only non-standard displays approaching that resolution. Small, high-res displays for medical electronics, or displays that won’t have the same brightness or image quality as a traditional 3- or 4-subpixel LCD. But this year at FPDI they’re showing off the real thing. This 10.1″ display has a resolution of 2560×1600, which is exactly four times as many pixels as today’s “HD” screens, which are for the most part at 1280×800. Unfortunately, they couldn’t even get a perfect panel put together for the exhibition, and you can see the flaws in the display (vertical lines). This means it’s not ready for manufacture, though they’re confident enough to show it in public. They do show off another display with the same nominal resolution but a lower sub-pixel count – a Pentile display that they say produces a higher effective resolution at the same power cost as lower-power displays. Good for them, but I’m holding out for the tried-and-true method. Yesterday I about a new display technology being researched in Taiwan that used micro-electricomechanical systems (MEMS), re-orienting silver-coated zircon crystals to control the wavelength of light reflected. That one wasn’t ready for prime time, though it’s fundamentally different from existing displays — even this new MEMS-based one from Pixtronix. It’s reminiscent of Pixel Qi’s displays, but I’m actually not sure what the method is that company uses. In this case, MEMS control both luminance and color, and when ambient light is high enough, the backlight can be shut off completely and the screen will work like an e-paper one. , which has done all the reporting and images found in this post. I’m only here to point you in their direction. |
GameStop Starts Selling Android Tablets Bundled With Games | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 10 | 28 | Perhaps realizing that re-selling other people’s boxed games wasn’t exactly a sustainable business model, GameStop decided a few months back that it was going to try selling devices as well. , and your games can be traded in credit for them as well. But what have they been missing, and what have their customers undoubtedly been clamoring for? Android tablets! Shortly after they announced they’d be inviting Apple into their stores, they announced that they were working with a device maker to . Hardcore gamers trembled with delight. And now their day has come! All right, I kid. People aren’t actually very excited about this kind of thing. In fact, as one commenter succinctly put it in September, “there’s 2 things that gamers hate the most: tablet games, and gamestop.” And it’s true. The gaming chain has a history of enraging gamers with poor customer service, shady business practices, and generally just not being as good as Steam. Back in September, GameStop said “We definitely have selected [a tablet manufacturer].” As it turns out, they’ve selected three, . The “specialized” tablets will be by Asus, Acer, and Samsung. How specialized can they really be if three competing companies are making them? They’ll sell at full price in-store with a set of seven free games, the quality of which I question (Android games haven’t impressed me thus far). Though they do have out of the box support GameStop’s new controller for tablets… which you have to buy separately. The people who buy Android tablets aren’t gaming fans, they’re Android fans. And the people who go into GameStop aren’t Android fans, they’re gaming fans. And furthermore, they’re not going to buy a tablet at GameStop because they know they can buy it for $100 less on Amazon or Best Buy. And they’re not going to buy it at GameStop because they don’t go to GameStop to spend $500 on a tablet. For that money they could buy a 360, a PS3, a Wii (check!), with money left for a game or two. Luckily they’re only rolling this new feature out to a few of their thousands of stores. Unless one of those pilot stores is by you, I don’t think you’ll get the chance to pick up that Galaxy Tab gaming rig you’ve been panting over. |
Supplanted By Facebook Messenger, Beluga Will Stop Swimming On November 11 | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 10 | 28 | , the slick group messaging app that Facebook back in March, is shutting down. In a post on Beluga’s blog, the company’s original team of three that, beginning November 11, you’ll no longer be able to send messages (though you’ll still be able to access old messages until December 15, at which point they’ll all be deleted). If you’d like to download all of your pods before they get harpooned, you can grab an archive of your account using . The news doesn’t come as much of a surprise. Facebook a standalone Messenger app in August that included much of the functionality of Beluga (in fact, it was built by the same team), and at the time it said it wasn’t clear what Beglua’s future was. Which didn’t exactly bode well for the service. Beluga first in December 2010, created by ex-Googlers Lucy Zhang, Ben Davenport, and Jon Perlow. From the company blog post: We’re excited to announce that we just launched the Facebook Messenger app worldwide in 22 languages! If you haven’t used it yet, we hope you’ll give Messenger a try — it has all the great features of Beluga, and it’s available on iOS, Android and BlackBerry. … We’d like to thank you all for being such enthusiastic and loyal users. We’ll continue to use your feedback to improve Messenger and make messaging your friends easier, faster and more fun. |
6Waves Lolapps Acquires Chinese Social Gaming Company Smartron5 | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 10 | 28 | Social and mobile game developer has acquired Beijing-based social gaming company . Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Smartron5, which is backed by Origo Partners, has been developing social games with deeper game play experiences for Asian and international social networks. Smartron5’s CEO, Gage Galinger will become 6waves Lolapps’ Vice President of Content Development and will head up operations for the company in China. Galinger previously held gaming positions at Electronic Arts, Enorbus, Microsoft and Blizzard. The Smartron5 team will focused on product development for the local social and mobile market. Around fifty percent of Smartron5’s focus will be on mobile development The acquisition expands 6waves Lolapps’ presence in the Asian market, adding to its existing Hong Kong and Tokyo offices. The gaming company now has more than 75 employees in Asia, with more than 170 employees worldwide. As Lolapps CEO Arjun Sethi explained, “Having a presence in China is important to us, especially in developing high-quality, localized games.” “The Asian market is complex and the Smartron5 team brings western-production values with a deep understanding of how to be successful in China,” said Rex NG, CEO of 6waves Lolapps. “This addition to our team is key to our globalization strategy and will benefit our own game development efforts as well as those of our publishing partners.” Lolapps and 6Waves this year to create a larger network of social gaming applications on Facebook and the web. Lolapps also recently from Sean Cooper Games and hired its creator. And 6Waves Lolapps a new $10 million fund to invest in mobile and social game developers. |
Hulu Signs Five-Year, In-Season Content Streaming Deal With The CW | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 10 | 28 | After Netflix with The CW Television Network, Hulu is the next online movie platform to announce an agreement with the network. Hulu has just announced a five-year licensing agreement with the CW Network, which is owned by CBS and Warner Brothers, for the rights to stream in-season episodes of The CW’s programming on Hulu Plus’ subscription service and the platform’s free, ad-supported service. Here’s announcing the deal. The content will be available later this year. Programming includes nine series on The CW’s Fall 2011 schedule, including new series “Ringer,” “Hart of Dixie” and “The Secret Circle,” as well as “The Vampire Diaries,” “Gossip Girl,” “Supernatural,” “Nikita,” “90210” and “America’s Next Top Model.” Hulu says this deal makes it the only online subscription service to carry in-season episodes of The CW’s drama and reality series. “The CW programming is a great example of the kind of in-season content we want to make available on our service – high-quality, engaging, serialized shows that fans passionately love,” said Andy Forssell, SVP of Content for Hulu. “Making these shows available on Hulu and Hulu Plus will allow new and existing fans to get their fix of The CW’s great shows anytime and anywhere.” The five most recent episodes of each show will be available to Hulu Plus subscribers the next day after broadcast. Users of the freeservice will be able to watch five episodes of current season programming eight days after airing on The CW. “Our new arrangement with Hulu only affirms the incredible value of The CW’s series, as well as amplifying the immense power of the broadcast network model,” said Mark Pedowitz, President, The CW. “As we increase the amount of year round original programming on The CW, this deal provides our shows with greater exposure on a new platform, helping build even more awareness that will drive viewers back to the network and its affiliates. We see this as a win for everyone involved, the network, the stations, Hulu and ultimately, the viewers.” Two weeks ago, that Netflix, Warner Brothers and CBS announced a $1 billion deal that gave the streaming media company the rights to stream CW shows for the next eight years. Hulu adds that with this deal, the platform will offer current season episodes from 5 of the 6 broadcast networks (ABC, The CW, FOX, NBC, and Univision) before the end of the year. Hulu a few weeks ago. Other content providers include A&E, Bravo, Comedy Central, E Entertainment, FX, History, MTV, Spike and USA network. Hulu was itself around for an acquisition, and got offers from Google, Dish Networks, and Amazon. |
(Keen On) … Customer Service Guru: Reed Hastings Deserves Everything That He Gets (TCTV) | Andrew Keen | 2,011 | 10 | 28 | Netflix is not only in the movie business, it is also turning into this year’s biggest corporate horror story. Having its price by 60% earlier this summer, has lost 800,000 customers and $12 billion in 90 days – including $2.3 billion in one earlier this week. So should we feel sorry for founder and CEO Reed Hastings, whose has gone from Silicon Valley to corporate in just a nightmarish three months? No, we shouldn’t. According to , the so-called “guru of customer service”, Hastings deserves all the ridicule and criticism that he is now getting. As Tschohl told me when I caught up with him on Skype, Hastings has behaved with supreme arrogance and disregard for the customer. Indeed, Tschohl is so horrified with Hastings’ continued failure to forget the voice of the customer, that he is predicting Netflix will lose another million subscribers and their stock will plummet from its current $83 down to $50. So what should Netflix have done in response to its big mistake earlier this summer? Tschohl offers four words for responding to crisis in today’s real-time customer-centric economy: Speed, Responsibility, Empowerment, Compensation. He may well be right. Anyone who runs a company needs to learn from the Netflix horror movie. After all, its sequel could easily star you and your company. |
Socialcam: Further Proof That You Folks Really Like Your Filters | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 10 | 28 | Since last spring we’ve been tracking the progress of , the ‘Instagram for Video’ that spun off from Justin.tv. The app, which is available for iOS and Android, hit the download milestone at the beginning of the month, and to mark the occasion it launched a new feature that made the ‘Instagram’ comparison even more apt: filters. Yes, you can now overlay your videos with an array of effects (the top two are 70’s and Electronica). As it turns out, people really like filters on their videos. Socialcam CEO Michael Seibel tells me that in the two weeks since launching filters, Socialcam had 350,000 downloads, an 84% increase in daily app opens, 69% increase in daily video viewers, and 50% boost in video creation (that’s huge). And there’s little question that filters were a huge driver of this: 45% of videos currently being shared on Socialcam are using them. Seibel says that filters have been a huge success for Socialcam because it makes it easier for users to feel like they’ve filmed something worth sharing. Photo filters (e.g. on Instagram) accomplish the same thing, where filters turn the mundane into something vaguely artsy, or even cool. And Seibel thinks this trend is magnified with video. Oh, and he also noted the biggest new use case for Socialcam: the folks at Occupy Wall Street. |
W3i Suggests iOS Developers Use MAC Address As UDID Replacement | Sarah Perez | 2,011 | 10 | 28 | Mobile app monetization and distribution network is announcing the results of its tests to determine whether or not an iPhone’s MAC address can serve as a replacement to the UDID (the unique device identifier), which as a way for developers to track an app’s users. According to W3i, developers can and should begin tracking the iPhone’s MAC address as a UDID alternative, as it has successfully seen Apple approve its own application where this is the case. Unfortunately, this advice is arguably premature. Apple may let slip a single app, but if a large number of iOS developers began doing the same (tracking the MAC addresses, that is), Apple may certainly change its position on the matter. For background, in August, Erick reported how into iOS5: it was deprecating developer access to the UDID. The UDID, an alphanumeric string unique to each Apple device, has been used by mobile ad networks, game networks, analytics providers, developers and app testing systems like . In some cases, developers used the UDID to verify whether users were accessing their app from a new device or as a way to track users across apps. Since that change was revealed, companies have been scrambling to come up with workarounds. . . And now W3i is suggesting developers use the iPhone’s MAC address – specifically the MAC address of the device’s Wi-Fi network interface. The MAC address, also a unique identifier, is used for communications on a physical network segment. What W3i wanted to determine was whether or not that address could be reliably captured across multiple device types and with different configurations (e.g., airplane mode, Wi-Fi off or on, not in range, etc.) Using its proprietary app, AppAllStar, which was submitted and approved on October 5th, W3i collected 78,662 MAC addresses from 10/5 to 10/22, representing 100% of the installs across iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad devices. The app was also resubmitted during that time (on Oct. 1oth) to correct some non-test related errors. In both cases, the company says it placed the code at a very high level while also naming the classes appropriately. W3i, however, did find that 33 devices had a duplicated MAC address, which W3i thinks may indicate either jailbroken or knock-off devices. A subset of those had spoofed UDIDs as well. The data on where the duplicates were located is interesting. China and the Netherlands each had 9 duplicates, Italy had 5, Spain 3, Saudi Arabia 2, and Singapore, the U.S., Australia, Czech Republic and India each had 1. Based on these findings, W3i is now recommending that developers begin collecting and storing Wi-Fi MAC addresses with the associated UDID and modify the application logic to use both UDID and the Wi-Fi MAC address. Of course, all this advice may be worthless in the long run. A test involving a single application is by no means definitive proof that this is something Apple would allow on a larger scale. After all, considering that the removal of developer access to the UDID was intended to better respect user privacy, simply allowing developers to switch to a second unique ID would violate the spirit of Apple’s decision, if not the actual terms. |
Your New Weekend Plans: Disrupt Beijing Livestream Starts Tomorrow | Sarah Lacy | 2,011 | 10 | 28 | Maybe you couldn’t join us in Beijing for our , but all is not lost! Step one: Order your favorite Chinese takeout. Step two: Tune into the livestream from Beijing, brought to you through the Great Firewall courtesy of Ustream and Tudou. Step three: Tweet what you love and hate the same way you would sitting in the conference hall in the US. . (Seriously, stop giggling, twelve-year-olds and Michael Arrington.) It’ll be the same as being here for thousands less. And you don’t even have to pull an all-nighter to get the highlights. All the Hackathon action starts at 8pm PST Saturday night and the conference begins at 6pm PST Sunday afternoon. You definitely won’t want to miss the Monday morning Beijing time/Sunday afternoon Valley time programming. The conference kicks off with a frank fireside chat with , CEO and co-founder of Chinese giant Tencent. Tencent is the fourth largest Internet company in the world and the largest in China. It employs more people than Zynga and Facebook combined and is a pioneer in the worlds of micropayments, virtual goods and online gaming. If you work in social media or online gaming, missing this keynote would be an occupational hazard. Ma is pretty reclusive– particularly when it comes to Western media. I tried for years to get a meeting with him and failed no matter how many favors I tried to call in. But now that Tencent is eyeing International expansion and starting to acquire Valley startups, the company is opening the kimono a bit– to mix international metaphors. Ma will be followed by a fireside chat with YouTube co-founder , who we haven’t heard much from since his blockbuster sale of the company in 2006. He’s investing some of those proceeds in China, via Innovation Works. The day continues with Rovio Mighty Eagle , Innovation Works Co-founder , a panel of Android experts, Jawbone’s co-founder and CEO , Skype co-founder and investor and the first three rounds of the Startup Battlefield. I’m biased, but I think it’s one of our strongest Disrupt lineups yet. |
Nokia Devises U.S. Strategy, But Can They Pull It Off? | Chris Velazco | 2,011 | 10 | 28 | won’t hit our shores for at least a few more months, but Nokia’s top brass is already hard at work devising their strategy for cracking the U.S. market. According to , Weber and Nokia are looking to attract first-time smartphone users who feel overwhelmed by other options on the market, and don’t want to pay a princely sum for a new device. It’s a logical strategy, but one that’s very easy to botch. Without the proper focus, these new Nokia devices may succumb to the fate as old ones. To get an idea of how rough Nokia has it right now, let’s take a quick look at their spot in the U.S. landscape. Nokia has always been a company with a wide array of product lines, but they’ve tried that approach in the U.S. and it hasn’t worked in years. Seriously, go to your nearest phone store or big-box retailer and look for the Nokia phones. You’ll probably find a handful, but nothing that’s more robust than a QWERTY-packing text machine or a sluggish touchscreener. That’s the space that Nokia occupies here and now: low-end phones that wouldn’t make a potential customer blink twice. Simply put, these Windows Phones will be the first high-profile Nokia launches in years, and Nokia needs to nail it. Here are a few thoughts that may help them win the day.
Nokia and Microsoft’s partnership will certainly play off of people’s name recognition skills, but there’s more to the situation than just leveraging brand names. According to Nokia U.S. boss Chris Weber, a spate of Windows Phones will be hitting multiple carriers come next year. I think Nokia could stand to pare down their portfolio, and focus on pushing out a few killer devices. If anything, Microsoft’s OS helps out here — unlike Android which pops up on what seems like 50 phones a month, Windows Phone only ever goes to a select few. Should Nokia concentrate on pushing out a few great phones at great prices, they’ve got a better chance at making their mark than if they go with the shotgun approach. Not to mention that by focusing on fewer handsets, each device gets a bigger slice of the advertising budget. Awareness is key here, and it’s been quite a while since Nokia has enjoyed any in the States.
Mananging product lines are only half of the equation — Nokia isn’t going to get anywhere without carrier support. Those relationships are probably pretty dicey at this point too, considering that the only carriers that sell Nokia devices on contract are AT&T and T-Mobile, and even then it’s all low-end stuff. If Nokia knocks the first few launches out of the park, Nokia stands to gain back much of the carrier support they’ve lost over the years. How can Nokia prepare for a strong launch? By making nice with retailers and their staff — if they don’t care, then a fair number of potential customers won’t either. The more aware salespeople are of Nokia’s Windows Phones and what they have to offer, the more likely they are to come up in the middle of a sale. HP, for example, gave rooms of salespeople free Veer 4Gs to get people comfortable with them. Sure, the device didn’t last long in general, but I daresay Veers made it to more customers because of that stunt since salespeople had a better understanding of the Veer’s capabilities and intended niche. I’m not saying Nokia has to give away their hardware, but training events and outreach efforts can only help retail execution. A big retail push is also critical because Nokia’s biggest competition in the smartphone space probably comes from the iPhone. Both companies position themselves as offering elegant smartphone solutions, so the more salespeople are aware of iPhone alternatives (especially aggressively priced ones), the more likely it is to get a nod in front of a customer. Forgive me if I sound extra-bullish here, but Nokia’s new handsets (specifically the Lumia 800) are the first that have made me for a Windows Phone. I’m certainly not a run-of-the-mill user, but I don’t think that appeal ends with me. It may well be the right software in the right package at the right time. But unless Nokia makes these next few months count, it may not matter. |
Judge: No Stickers Or Posters About Health Risks In San Fran Cell Phone Shops | Jordan Crook | 2,011 | 10 | 28 | While the debate is still ablaze over whether cell phones actually cause damage to the brain and/or body, San Francisco recently lost patience and requiring cell phone shops to display posters that warn customers of the potential risks their beloved cell phones may impose. Along with the posters, retailers would also be required to put warning stickers on window displays, as well as hand out fact sheets to customers. But, in predictable fashion, the CTIA has filed a lawsuit opposing the ordinance (just like it so successfully did the last time San Fran tried to pass the bill). This time around, the judge seems to side more with the CTIA than the city, giving a firm “No” to the sticker and poster ideas, while revising the fact sheet with his own edits. According to Judge William Alsup, “the overall impression left [by the fact sheet] is that cell phones are dangerous and that they have somehow escaped the regulatory process. That impression is untrue,” he wrote. Though all the facts are true, Judge Alsup still feels it’s necessary to make a couple changes, including the addition of a note about the FCC: “Although all cell phones sold in the United States must comply with RF safety limits set by the FCC, no safety study has ever ruled out the possibility of human harm from RF exposure.” The amended fact sheet must be given to each customer who purchases a phone. As far as those posters and stickers go, Alsup definitely isn’t on board. With regards to the posters, he said they are “not reasonably necessary and would unduly intrude on the retailers’ wall space,” while the stickers would “unduly intrude upon the retailers’ own message,” reports . |
Linux Foundation, Canonical and Red Hat Weigh In On Secure Boot | Scott Merrill | 2,011 | 10 | 28 | There’s been some hubbub lately about , a hardware-verified, malware-free operating system bootstrap process that aims to improve the overall security of computers. Part of the which is slated to replace the aging BIOS with which many of us are familiar, Secure Boot can forbid the loading and execution of unsigned operating systems. Microsoft is requiring that Secure Boot be activated and enforced for any OEM systems that want to use the “Designed for Windows 8” logo. The nature of the technology, and Microsoft’s recommended implementation of it, could remove control of the overall system from the end user, and in this configuration Secure Boot may prevent Free Software operating systems from loading. After some initial hysteria on (where else?), calmer minds have prevailed, and have reviewed the UEFI Secure Boot specification in some detail. It’s a pretty marked change from the old BIOS: the use of public key cryptography makes the whole thing considerably more complex. But there’s nothing about Secure Boot, prima facie, that specifically locks out Free Software operating systems. The Linux Foundation has released a paper titled “ ” written by Technical Advisory Board members James Bottomley, CTO, Server Virtualization at Parallels and Jonathan Corbet, Editor at LWN.net. Concurrently, Bottomley has collaborated with Canonical’s Technical Architect, Jeremy Kerr, and Red Hat’s Senior Software Engineer, Matthew Garret, to develop another paper titled “ “. The former document is a pretty high level analysis of the situation (only four pages), with some overall recommendations on how OEMs can ship hardware that will work with both proprietary and Free Software operating systems. The latter document is a little more technical (eight pages!), with some slightly more specific recommendations for OEMs. The whole thing can be a little confusing if you’re not already familiar with some of the basics of public key cryptography. Platform Keys, Key Exchange Keys, signature databases. Is this all more trouble than it’s worth? I fired off a few questions to the Linux Foundation for clarification, and James Bottomley responded. : First and foremost, what’s the real-world effect to end users? If SecureBoot is as complicated at the document makes me feel it is, won’t many people just decide to leave their systems in “Setup” mode and avoid the whole thing? : Leaving the system in setup mode is equivalent to the current state (no secure boot). However, we know from the microsoft blog that Users who accept the Windows 8 preinstallation won’t be given the option and their systems will be locked down. The idea for users who wish to install open source is that they will be given the option of moving to the more secure user mode or remaining where they are. The point of shipping in setup mode is that handling the complexity of this choice becomes the job of the operating system install or ignition system, which we believe to be the best place for this. We anticipate that the problems potentially caused by first ship of secure boot will be resolved over time and the benefits of booting securely will outweigh the initial teething troubles. : Propping up a full public key infrastructure is a great idea, but well beyond the technical prowess of many hardware manufacturers. It’s not their core competency, so who is to say they’ll do it right? : It wouldn’t be done by the Hardware Manufacturers, and indeed given the security implications, it should be outsourced to an entity for whom it is a core competency. The current effect of the Microsoft Windows 8 logo proposals is that the OEMs are required to manage a list of key exchange keys, which is also not their core competency, so offloading key management to an entity whose core business it is should make the whole process less error prone. : We know that Certificate Authorities are not beyond compromise, as the DigitNotar business has recently pointed out. If a security-lax hardware manufacturer gets compromised, what’s the result to end users? : So this is a problem. The UEFI system contains a mechanism for revoking certificates (which is the same mechanism used in the internet to remedy the DigiNotar intrusion). However, a system which relied on a revoked key in the path of trust would refuse to boot and would either have to be switched out of secure mode or have its UFI updated to remedy the situation. However, such a compromise isn’t really any more likely (and is possibly less likely since it would be a core business interest of the CA) than an OEM key being compromised, so the problem is the same or less troublesome than the situation where there’s no CA. The promise of “initial teething troubles” doesn’t sound particularly fun, but as with any new technology adoption it’s largely unavoidable. I do look forward to seeing Secure Boot prove successful. |
The Latest From Betaworks: Findings. A New Way To Share Book Passages And Web Marginalia | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 10 | 28 | Reading, which began as a solitary activity, is increasingly becoming a social experience. We share links constantly on Twitter and Facebook to the latest blog posts and articles we are reading, and electronic books such as Amazon’s Kindle allow you to share your highlights and notes with the world. A few days ago, betaworks a new product called , which is aimed at sharing passages from digital books and the web. Findings is a pet project of Betaworks CEO John Borthwick and author . The service lets you share your highlights from Kindle books as well as articles on the web via a bookmarklet. But it is not intended to be a web clipping service. It is really more about reading in the digital age, sharing quotations from books and other writings that resonate with you and making them your own by collecting them into a feed. In many ways it harkens back to an earlier form of reading hundreds of years ago when Englishmen would hand-assemble their own collections of quotations into a “commonplace book.” The notions of reading and writing were intertwined, borrowing passages from others and making them your own was part of the process, as Robert Danton notes in Unlike modern readers, who follow the flow of a narrative from beginning to end, early modern Englishmen read in fits and starts and jumped from book to book. They broke texts into fragments and assembled them into new patterns by transcribing them in different sections of their notebooks. Then they reread the copies and rearranged the patterns while adding more excerpts. Reading and writing were therefore inseparable activities. They belonged to a continuous effort to make sense of things, for the world was full of signs: you could read your way through it; and by keeping an account of your readings, you made a book of your own, one stamped with your personality. Findings allows you to share your readings and quotations in longer than 140 characters. Each quotation links back to the book on Amazon (affiliate link!) or the original webpage. You can discover what other people are reading by following them, and their highlights appear in your stream. (You can follow or or ). And Findings shows you trending books and a public stream of the latest passages as well. It’s social discovery for books. And the search is excellent too. Type in “ ” and you get clips from books about startups as well as passages which include that keyword. For example, you might find all the collected quotes from or from the . These function as “best of” collections of quotes from the books, although the findings are listed chronologically. The obvious next step is to let people vote up passages, or automatically rank them based on how many times they have been shared. You can share other people’s passages or your own both in your own stream—kind of like reblogging— and on Twitter or Tumblr. Many of these features, of course, are built into the (sharing highlights and notes, following other readers, searching through highlights). But it is an afterthought for Amazon. Findings is a much cleaner experience. The Kindle integration could be cleaner. You have to periodically visit your Kindle highlights page and sync with Findings via the bookmarklet, but that is a limitation of the Kindle API. And of course, Findings will include much more than just Kindle books. Support for Instapper and other reading apps would broaden the appeal. Ultimately, though, this is betaworks, so you know it is all about the data. Expect really interesting ways to search, sort, and recombine quotations in an endless loop of rewriting and rereading. For Findings to succeed, it will have to bring the marginalia to the center of you reading experience. [youtube=”http://youtu.be/cRklCSSx_eA”] |
Canon’s New Professional 1D X Goes Full Frame, Improves Video | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 10 | 17 | Canon has just announced the next version of their flagship 1D series of professional DSLRs, the EOS-1D X. It’s faster and better in just about every way, and few of you will be lucky enough to use one, since it goes for just under seven grand. But for the people who have used the 1D Mk III and Mk IV for the last few years, it’s looking like a worthy upgrade. Pretty much every aspect of the camera has been improved. Perhaps the most modest upgrade is the megapixel count. At 18 megapixels in a full frame sensor, it’s got a bit more than the Mk IV but fewer than Canon’s other full-frame cameras. Canon says the new sensor that is says produces less noise than ever, and uses larger pixel wells than the Mk IV or 5D Mk II. These go through a set of three DIGIC 5+ image processors, which I assume is a small upgrade to the existing 5 series. It can fire 14 frames per second in JPEG mode or 12 when you’re writing RAWs. ISO goes from 100 to 51200, and can be expanded to 204,800. That’s monstrous, though you probably wouldn’t want to frame the results. It also has a new 61-point AF system, and AF configuration tools like those on the 7D. One of the image processors is dedicated to determine exposure, tracking a ton of different zones and hopefully producing faster and more accurate exposure. There is also a multiple exposure mode for doing what people think of as HDR, or just for capturing a photo in tricky light conditions. You can expose up to nine times for a single image, assuming, I suppose, the subject stays still. Video has been improved quite a bit. The formats are the usual HD ones at the usual framerates, but they’ve made concessions to the filmmaking crowd, with whom the 5D Mk II has been such a hit. Canon has revamped the encoding method so you can choose between all i-frames and normal compression. Timecodes are also better, and audio levels can be adjusted on the fly. And now you can do longer continuous takes, up to half an hour of video, though it will still split it up into 4GB chunks due to file system restrictions. Lastly, there are a few ergonomic improvements and a redesigned shutter and mirror mechanism. It has built in LAN connector instead of wireless, which is a little weird. There’s a wireless accessory you can buy, naturally, and a GPS thing, too. The whole thing will set you back $6800. Yes, it’s a lot of money — these are mainly going to sports and nature photographers, people who need every possible advantage to get the shot. Taking snaps of the kids? This thing probably isn’t necessary. But I think low budget filmmakers might find it a compelling alternative to the 5D Mk II, assuming the claims of superior low light performance and reduced moire are substantiated. Unfortunately, I don’t think I’ll be reviewing this thing. I’d be too afraid I’d drop it. |
Greylock, Andreessen Horowitz Back Cloud Enterprise Performance Analytics Startup Tidemark | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 10 | 17 | formerly , has closed a $4 million Series B round from existing investors Greylock Partners, Andreessen Horowitz and Dave Duffield, co-founder and co-CEO of Workday and founder of PeopleSoft, bringing the total amount raised to more than $11 million. Tidemark formerly as stealth startup Proferi, but has rebranded today under a new name. The company is also releasing its enterprise performance management (EPM) applications built for the cloud. Founded by Romanian entrepreneur Christian Gheorghe, the Tidemark Enterprise Performance Management Platform delivers real-time, risk-adjusted metrics management; strategic, financial, operational planning and forecasting; and profitability modeling applications. Bsically Tidemark monitors and analyzes business data, including key performance indicators, key risk indicators and other data for enterprise business planning functions. The software can produce full profit and loss reports by product, customer, supplier and channel to understand the detailed drivers of cost and improve margins. The web applications are built with a HTML5 user interface and includes application components such as processes, goals, dimensions, KPIs, calculations, risks and controls. Tidemark also features integrations with a number of cloud and on-premise systems for sourcing structured and unstructured data including PDFs, MS Office documents and blogs. |
Twitter CEO On When Users Will Be Able To “Liberate” Old Tweets: We’re Working On Working On It | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 10 | 17 | As the final question of the speaker dinner, O’Reilly writer asked about when Twitter users will be able to access their Twitter histories, “I’ve got tweets and 1/4 as many DMs, if Google has a Data Liberation Front, and 30% of your team is former Googlers, shouldn’t you guys be working on something similar?” While services like Backupify do provide a similar function, Howard is right. In fact I was just whining about my Twitter history and specifically DM history being unavailable at this very conference. “You had to allow one more question,” Costolo joked. Jokes asides, Costolo eventually took the question seriously, “We want to be able to access old Tweets and old DMs, we just have to prioritize the work,” he said. ” It’s just a matter of priorities, [but] we need to get to the point when we’ll be able to do this.” Twitter now has 700 employees and $1.6 billion in funding. “You’d think you could apply some of [those resources] to what is a long standing user request,” Howard told me after the dinner was over. |
Twitter Is At 250 Million Tweets Per Day, iOS 5 Integration Made Signups Increase 3x | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 10 | 17 | Twitter CEO Dick Costolo has just dropped some numbers at a speaker dinner here at Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. Costolo revealed that the company has gone from in September of 2010 to 100 million at the beginning of this year to 1/4 billion tweets per day as of today, a 177% percent change. Twitter is now serving up a billion tweets every 4-5 days, Costolo said. The company has gone from having 30% of its 100 million users active every day in January 2011 to over 50% active daily users today. The recent iOS 5 Twitter integration has notably increased signups 3x. Costolo said that those 250 million tweets mean that there’s enough content on the site that a new user should be able to find something relevant to them, “We’ve got to figure out how to capture the volume at the same time as separating the signal from the noise.” Costolo has ambitious plans for scale, “We think that we can be on 2 billion devices around the world, and reach every person on the planet, and the way to do that is through simplifying.” |
About.me CEO On How To Hit A Million Users In 300 Days: “Figure Out Who Your Entourage Is.” | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 10 | 17 |
founder and partner gave a presentation at today on something called “Echo Chamber Marketing.” Conrad said that his strategy to scale his About.me online identity platform, which has now reached a million members after 300 days, was to figure out “who [his] entourage [was].” Counter to the popular notion that you shouldn’t market your startup only to techies, Conrad picked 26 influential members of the technology community — like , and — to become About.me advisors, which meant 6.5 advisors for every employee at About.me at the time. Turns out Conrad’s plan was ingenious, because in an era where tech influencers have now becomes mainstream influencers, those 26 members pitching the site to their followings played a huge role in the site’s massive scale. The site later (but not too much later) . |
Kodak: It’s Time To Go Invisible | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 10 | 17 | , let us admit, is doomed. Founded over a century ago, it has dominated film for as long as film has existed, but now that film is on the verge of ceasing to exist, they have very little to dominate. They’re short on cash and while they deny plans to file for bankruptcy, many question whether they will have the luxury of choice a few years from now. My first preference for the preservation of this company would be for them to sell off their patents and focus on film until they’re buried by progress. That’d be Kodak going out with its boots on, so to speak. But I doubt that’s going to happen. What needs to happen instead is Kodak needs to abandon any pretense of being a household word. They’ve had a good run — for an entire century their name has been synonymous with film. But it will never be as recognizable again. So why throw money away on an entire division creating low-margin, unoriginal devices that are going to be obsolete in a few months and duplicated by pirate OEMs anyway? No, Kodak needs to go invisible. For a long time Kodak was the leader in photographic innovation. They even invented their own destroyer, a la Oedipus Rex: they were among the first producing digital cameras. Why aren’t they now? Why is the sensor inside the iPhone 4S a Sony instead of a Kodak? Listen, Kodak. I like a couple of your cameras. That’s not the issue. The issue is that you’re selling a product that everyone gets for free when they buy a smartphone, digital picture frames are a joke, and printing is becoming more and more something that happens in a ShutterFly facility, not at home — if it happens at all. Producing products is for companies like Apple and Canon. You don’t want to compete with them. And you don’t have to. You’ve got top-notch research facilities churning out patents and inventions all over the place. Pick a few niches and become indispensible. I’m not quite saying be a patent troll. I’m saying you should be the ones HTC goes to when they want to get an edge over the rest in the camera department. What will you make? Low-noise sensors? Image compression algorithms? Lens coatings? High-speed imaging interfaces? I don’t know. Just pick something a heap of consumer products in the process of being eliminated by the march of progress. You don’t see IBM trying to compete with Dell. One thing: in order to keep the Kodak brand alive, you should always be in the business of making real things. But make the printer head, not the printer. Make the sensor, not the camera. Make it clear that if it’s not powered by Kodak, it’s a piece of junk. You’ve already been half-forced to this position, so just go all the way. You don’t need the trappings of a consumer tech company weighing you down. You’re , for god’s sake. Act like it. If all goes well, you’ll emerge from these hard times a leaner, more focused company, with a sack full of amazing patents and a stable of clients who wouldn’t be able to compete without your technology. Is it a fantasy? Sure. But it’s better than the dreary, prosaic reality you’re living in now. At least strike out swinging. |
Iris Is (Sort Of) Siri For Android | John Biggs | 2,011 | 10 | 17 | While voice control has been part of since the dawn of time, came along and ruined the fun with its superior search and understanding capabilities. However, an industrious team of folks from , led by Narayan Babu, built a Siri-alike in just 8 hours during a hackathon. Iris allows you to search on various subjects including conversions, art, literature, history, and biology. You can ask it “What is a fish?” and it will reply with a paragraph from Wikipedia focusing on our finned friends. The app will soon be available soon from the Android Marketplace but I tried it recently and found it a bit sparse but quite cool. It uses Android’s speech-to-text functions to understand basic questions and Narayan and his buddies are improving the app all the time.
The coolest thing? The finished the app in eight hours. When we started seeing results, everyone got excited and started a high speed coding race. In no time, we added Voice input, Text-to-speech, also a lot of hueristic humor into Iris. Not until late evening we decided on the name “iris.”, which would be Siri in reverse. And we also reverse engineered a crazy expansion – Intelligent Rival Imitator of Siri. We were still in the fun mode, but when we started using it the results were actually good, really good. You can grab the early, early beta APK but I recommend waiting for the official version to arrive this week. It just goes to show you that amazing things can pop up everywhere. |
Salesforce CEO: Facebook Is Leading The Direction For Where ‘We’re Going As An Industry’ | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 10 | 17 | Today, at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, Salesforce CEO took the stage to talk about the current landscape of the cloud for the first time since the public back-and-forth between himself and Oracle CEO . For those unfamiliar, talk at The Oracle OpenWorld Conference. Benioff wasn’t particularly psyched about the move, instead. Benioff took a few shots at Oracle during his talk, telling listeners to “beware of the false cloud. It is not efficient, it is not democratic, it is not open”. Obviously, you can guess who was the proponent of this “false cloud”. It rhymes with Boracle. Naturally, Ellison wasn’t going to take that sitting down, and fired back at Benioff, calling Salesforce . Ouch. Interestingly, when Tim O’Reilly (who interviewed Benioff onstage today) played a little word association with Benioff and mentioned the name “Oracle”, the Salesforce CEO had nothing negative to say; instead, he said that Oracle was a great company and had a “great strategy”. While Benioff’s tone has definitely tempered somewhat since OpenWorld in relation to Ellison and Oracle, it has not changed in terms of what the CEO sees as the future of his company and the future of the enterprise industry as a whole. Enterprise has to be, to be: Social. What do I mean by that? Well, unsurprising for anyone who is familiar with Salesforce, Benioff has a big old man crush on Facebook. “I really think that Facebook is becoming a vision of what the consumer operating system is”, he said. “Everything I want, I’m beginning to see on Facebook”. The CEO was speaking largely in relation to Spotify, which he says has become his favorite music service, a quicker transition than he’s made to any other platform in the recent future. Having the Facebook UI built into Spotify is incredible, he said, allowing friends and colleagues to what he’s listening to in realtime — was inspiring to him. “I’d like to be doing as many amazing things as Facebook is”, Benioff said, continuing on to say that Facebook is essentially driving the direction in which the entire industry is going, especially that of enterprise, which Benioff has been selling for some time now. Case in point: , in which Benioff argued that enterprise software should be more like … you guessed it … Facebook. Benioff is quick to say that the social revolution is coming to enterprise software, that it is inevitable, and that those who don’t get on board are going to fall by the wayside. It is of utmost importance for enterprises (and let’s be honest, every company out there) to listen to their customers. And, as Benioff perceptively surmised, their customers — across the board — are on social networks, which is exactly where they should be interacting with them. Again, the Salesforce CEO referenced the Arab Spring movement in the Middle East, in which Facebook and Twitter played such an integral role in allowing protestors (and one in all) to communicate with the outside world — and each other. After these social networks enabled this kind of imperative and essential communication, signs like “Thank you, Facebook” were to be seen across the Middle East. As Benioff sarcastically pointed out today, “We didn’t see signs that said, ‘Thank you, Microsoft,'” Benioff said. Benioff and O’Reilly both agreed that the cloud, mobility, and the shift to social have been fundamentally changing the Web, and that the same can be said for enterprise as well. In terms of social, Benioff said that the affects of the social media revolution have allowed people to interact and converse with brands and companies in realtime — at a pace unprecedented when looking back as little as five years ago. Thus, it is imperative for enterprise companies to be aware of brand impression, brand share, what people are saying about their company in realtime — because it can have a profound affect on your bottom line. The most recent example? Netflix. Benioff said that the on-demand video network had a “pristine brand”, but when they made the loud price change to their customers’ accounts, splitting DVD and streaming, 27,000 negative comments popped up on their blog post, and Netflix’s market cap declined precipitously. “There’s a pretty big connection there”, Benioff said. Enterprise needs to be more aware of what their customers are saying, and the key is tapping into social networks, because that’s where they are. Thanks to Reuters for the Excerpt image |
TCTV: TechCrunch Gadgets Webcast | John Biggs | 2,011 | 10 | 17 | In this episode of the TechCrunch Gadgets Webcast we assess the value of camera film, decide that Devin is the 6th Decemberist, and express how much we love Asus’ new ultrabook. We promise every week that we’ll do these more often and we love doing them. Our questions: is it too short? Too long? What would you like to hear about? Would you like guests? Is the format alright? Would you prefer an audio podcast or should we strip the video for audio consumption? We, as you well know, are at your service. |
Sean Parker On Facebook Privacy: “There Is Good Creepy, And There is Bad Creepy” | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 10 | 17 | Sean Parker doesn’t think that Facebook has a privacy problem. Kicking off the Web 2.0 Summit today, when pressed on how Facebook is increasingly becoming creepy in terms of how much of our lives it is tracking, he notes, “There is good creepy, and there is bad creepy.” But from his perspective, the privacy issues are manageable as long as users are able to control what and how they share what they do online. “I don’t think privacy is Facebook’s biggest problem,” says Parker, who was the company’s founding president. “Facebook’s biggest problem is the glut of information from power users.” With the recent changes announced last month at F8, especially the which automates sharing from apps, the stream of status updates is now a deluge. Of course, this brings up new privacy concerns when people are not aware how much they are sharing or how to turn it off, but that is a temporary issue. People will learn how to control their streams. The bigger issue, Parker suggests, is people who want to share everything and overwhelm their friends on purpose. What do you do with these over-sharers? Facebook can encourage them to move on to Twitter or Google+ (hello, Robert Scoble). But that won’t work in the long term because the power users are the ones who create most of the content on Facebook (or anywhere on the Web, for that matter). The answer, he thinks, is to give the power users more tools like to help them direct their broadcasts to distinct groups. (Sounds a lot like Google+ Circles). One of the services which is currently inundating people’s Facebook tickers is Spotify, which Parker is involved in as a very active chairman. He acknowledges that there needs to be a better balance between passive and active sharing. But his thoughts on how Facebook is helping to accelerate Spotify’s adoption were more on point Asked, what the recent integration with Facebook does for Spotify, he replies: “The obvious thing is it gives access to Facebook’s roughly 800 million users and it allows music to go massively viral. The social graph has always been a great promulgator of information. We didn’t see it as a network of profiles, we always saw it as a way to promulgate media. You saw this with videos from Youtube. But because of licensing issues there was no way to enable that same virality with music.” Although Spotify got stage time at Facebook’s F8 conference, it launched with many other music services on the Facebook platform, including MOG and Rdio. “It would have been better if we had launched solo,” quips Parker, before pointing out that the terms of the partnership is no different for Spotify than for anyone else. A recent recently reported that Parker and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg were seen arguing outside a Hollywood nightclub about Spotify’s lack of exclusivity. “That story is amazing.” says Parker. “I love this story. It shows the potential for one little irrelevant, largely incorrect rumor to spark this large explosion of media. Mark and I were discussing this, but we weren’t having a yelling match on Hollywood Boulevard.” Reflecting on the difference between Napster (where Parker also was a co-founder more than a decade ago) and Spotify, Parker says, “The potential to dis-intermediate the gatekeepers was there, but first you needed to create the right product” and get the music industry to play ball. “Unfortunately, it took the outright collapse of the music industry to compel them to do deals.” He notes that the size of the music industry dropped from $48 billion at its peak to $12 billion, and it is still going down. And now they are finally talking. So is it all Spotify’s game to lose now? “The world is changing so quickly that it is very hard to get anything right for long,” cautions Parker. “I never gave up on this dream of a frictionless service that would enable music sharing. The greatest music being made wasn’t being heard by the greatest number of people.” Now, with everyone on Facebook inundating their streams and Tickers with every random tune they happen to hit play on, you can’t say that remains a problem. Parker didn’t say much about his , but apparently Marc Benioff, who was onstage after him, just invested in it. |
iOS 5 Already Installed On 1 In 3 Eligible Devices | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 10 | 17 | We could all argue until we were blue in the face on the merits of each platform’s update system, but there’s one place where iOS just has them all beat hands down: timing. If your device is going to support a big new update, you’ll pretty much always know as soon as said update is announced — and in most cases, the instant one compatible device gets the update, compatible devices get the update. Just 5 days after its official launch, iOS 5 is already up and running on 1 out of every 3 compatible devices. While it’d be easy to throw these numbers up against those of Android (40% of Android devices used in the last 2 weeks are running either Gingerbread or Honeycomb, the latest builds for mobile phones/tablets respectively), the comparison would be Apples and Oranges: these numbers include iOS 5 compatible devices (iPad 1/2, iPhone 3GS/4, iPod Touch 3rd/4th gen), where as potentially cover handsets reaching all the way back to the original T-Mobile G1. These numbers come from the guys at , whose mobile analytics SDK is integrated into many thousands of iOS apps with a sample size they say is in the range of “tens of millions of devices.” These numbers do not include the iPhone 4S, as that device ships with iOS 5 out of the box. Having a wildcard sitting at 100% would skew the average a bit. I see at least two take-aways here, at first glance: A) iPod Touch owners need to plug in their damned handsets more often, and B) While iOS handset owners seem to update absurdly fast, the requirement for backwards compatibility/legacy support isn’t going anywhere. |
Watch The 2011 Web 2.0 Summit Live | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 10 | 17 | We’re at the Palace Hotel for the 2011 where the lineup for the next three days consists of almost everyone on the entire Internet. In case you didn’t get to be a part of the in-person action, you folks at home can follow along from the Livestream above, starting at 2pm PST. Today’s speaker highlights include Supyo’s Salesforce’s and About.me’s
Room: Grand Ballroom
Opening Welcome John Battelle (Federated Media Publishing Inc.), Tim O’Reilly (O’Reilly Media, Inc.)
Room: Grand Ballroom
Sean Parker, Co-founder, Supyo Sean Parker (Founders Fund), John Battelle (Federated Media Publishing Inc.)
Room: Grand Ballroom
John Donahoe, President & CEO, eBay John Donahoe (eBay Inc.), John Battelle (Federated Media Publishing Inc.)
Room: Grand Ballroom
Marc Benioff, CEO, salesforce.com Marc Benioff (salesforce.com), Tim O’Reilly (O’Reilly Media, Inc.)
Room: Grand Ballroom
Paul Otellini, CEO, Intel Corporation Paul Otellini (Intel Corporation), John Battelle (Federated Media Publishing Inc.)
Room: Grand Ballroom
Pivot Tony Conrad (about.me, True Ventures & Sphere)
Room: Grand Ballroom
Ross Levinsohn, EVP of Americas, Yahoo! Ross Levinsohn (Yahoo!), John Battelle (Federated Media Publishing Inc.)
Room: Grand Ballroom
High Order Bit Christopher Poole (4chan & Canvas)
Room: Grand Ballroom
High Order Bit Deb Roy (Bluefin Labs)
Room: Grand Ballroom
High Order Bit Genevieve Bell (Intel Corporation)
Room: Grand Ballroom
High Order Bit Brad Rencher (Adobe Systems Incorporated)
Room: Grand Ballroom
U.S. Senator Ron Wyden, Oregon Ron Wyden (U. S. Senate), John Heilemann (New York Magazine)
Room: Grand Ballroom
Closing Remarks
Room: Grand Ballroom
Web 2.0 Summit Dinner with Special Guest: Dick Costolo Dick Costolo (Twitter), John Battelle (Federated Media Publishing Inc.) |
Predator-Inspired Ammo Backpack Cobbled Together By Soldiers In Afghanistan | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 10 | 17 | A group of Iowa National Guardsmen, fresh from a harrowing two-and-a-half-hour firefight in Afghanistan earlier this year, found itself questioning the effectiveness of some of their new equipment. They had been issued M240B light machine guns for support fire, but they found themselves constantly reloading with new 50-round belts, which necessitated a ammo bearer with a bunch of belts at the ready. “The ammunition sacks that came with it made it too cumbersome and heavy to carry over long, dismounted patrols and especially when climbing mountains. Initially, we came up with using 50-round belts and just reloading constantly, which led to lulls of fire and inefficiency,” said Staff Sgt Vincent Winkoski. While discussing the shortcomings of their setup (as you might do if your lives depended on it), someone mentioned the movie Predator, in which Jesse Ventura’s character had an ammo box for his minigun strapped to his back. They laughed about it, but Winkowski got to thinking, and with a can-do attitude that becomes of a soldier, . He took some modular gear they had lying around (a carrying frame, all-purpose pouch), combined it with some parts from a remote weapons station, and with a little tinkering and glue, he had himself a working ammo backpack. They tested it on the range, and it worked. And when their squad was ambushed in a valley by a group of enemy fighters, it proved it was more than just an experiment. Winkowski sent pictures and a description to science advisers in the Army’s research division. They loved it. Within 48 days, they had redeployed a new, lighter, stronger prototype into the theater. “We were able to put everything together very quickly and were able to prove that with a combat load — that’s 43 pounds with 500 rounds, inclusive of the weight of the kit itself — that still gives the Soldier 17 pounds worth of cargo weight to attach to the frame and still be within the design specifications for the MOLLE medium,” said Dave Roy, who received the design and oversaw the prototyping. I don’t post this just in the “cool new guns” spirit, though it’s certainly a neat gadget from that perspective. I just thought it was fantastic how the spirit of innovation pops up when you least expect it, and it seems that even within the tightly-regulated world of the Army, a good idea occasionally can take root and be on the ground fast enough to save a few lives. The freedom to create and hack is important and powerful, and providing the tools for people to do it (in this case, forward-thinking modular systems and a willingness to experiment) is an advantage in industry as well as battle. Thanks to the 1st Battalion, 133rd Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 34th Infantry Division, Iowa National Guard for their hard work overseas. [via ; images courtesy of the 133rd] |
null | Sarah Perez | 2,011 | 10 | 28 | null |
Wahanda secures £3.5 million from Fidelity Growth Partners Europe | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 10 | 17 | , an online health and beauty marketplace, has secured a £3.5m Series B investment round led by Fidelity Growth Partners Europe (FGPE), a pan-European venture and growth equity investor. As part of the deal Davor Hebel, a partner at FGPE, joins the board of Wahanda. This investment makes Wahanda the 800 pound gorilla of this space, with the opportunity to now build out what is in effect the Open Table for the health and beauty sector. Wahanda a Series A back in 2008 with £1.5m from Ambient Sound Investment. The funding wil be used to accelerate the company’s growth in the UK and potentially overseas. Since starting there years ago, the site has become the largest health and beauty marketplace in the UK. About 10 million visitors a year, 250,000 businesses listed and 5,000 exclusive health and on the Grouponesque offers model. The Wahanda marketplace lets people search for and book treatments, get offers offers and review outlets. It’s a vertical marketplace akin to TripAdvisor or OpenTable. Lopo Champalimaud, CEO of Wahanda, says the vision is to “to do for health, beauty and wellness what Amazon did for books.” Wahanda was founded in 2008 by Lopo Champalimaud and Salim Mitha, veterans of lastminute.com and Yahoo! respectively. Backers include Brent Hoberman, founder of lastminute.com; Stefan Glaenzer, former executive chairman of last.fm and founder of Passion Capital; Ambient Sound Investment (ASI), founding engineers at Skype; and Wolf Hengst, a leading figure in the hotel hospitality and spa industry and the former COO & President of Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts. Perhaps to celebrate they are offering a deal for TC reader: You can email Judy [ @ ] wahanda.com for a free £25 Wahanda voucher. |
IBM Posts Q3 Revenue Of $26.2B With Net Income Up 7 Percent To $3.8B; Ups Outlook | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 10 | 17 | IBM has its third quarter results today, with non-GAAP diluted earnings coming in at $3.28 per share, compared with operating diluted earnings of $2.85 per share in the third quarter of 2010, an increase of 15 percent. Analysts were with revenue of $26 billion. The company posted diluted earnings of $3.19 per share, compared with diluted earnings of $2.82 per share in the third quarter of 2010, an increase of 13 percent. Big Blue’s third-quarter net income was $3.8 billion compared with $3.6 billion in the same quarter in 2010, an increase of 7 percent. Operating (non-GAAP) net income was $4 billion compared with $3.6 billion in the third quarter of 2010, an increase of 9 percent. Total revenue for the third quarter of 2011 of $26.2 billion increased 8 percent from the third quarter of 2010. IBM chairman and CEO Samuel J. Palmisano said this in a statement: “In the third quarter, we drove revenue growth, margin expansion and increased earnings as a result of our innovation-based strategy and continued investment in growth initiatives…Growth markets delivered outstanding revenue performance across software, hardware, and services and contributed to the company’s expanded margins. We also achieved strong results in Smarter Planet, business analytics and cloud.” Some of the growth markets he’s referring to are from the BRIC countries — Brazil, Russia, India and China. Revenues in the BRIC countries increased 17 percent, with total revenues from the company’s growth markets increased 19 percent. Growth markets revenue represents 23 percent of IBM’s total geographic revenue for the third quarter. Revenues from the Software segment were $5.8 billion, an increase of 13 percent. Hardware revenues totaled $4.5 billion for the quarter, up 4 percent. IBM ended the third-quarter 2011 with $11.3 billion of cash on hand and generated free cash flow of $3.5 billion, up approximately $300 million year over year. Because of this quarter’s strong earnings, IBM is raising its 2011 full-year operating earnings per share expectations to to at least $12.95 from at least $12.87, and for non-GAAP earnings to at least $13.35, from $13.25 per share. You can listen and comment on IBM’s third-quarter earnings call, which starts at 4:30 pm ET, below.
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Google Wallet Now Lets You SingleTap That App | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 10 | 17 | Google Wallet continues on its slow (but exciting) march toward letting you pay for things simply by tapping your phone against a special, NFC-enabled credit card reader. Today, in a post on Google’s Official Blog, the wallet team that it’s rolling out support for SingleTap — a new feature that lets you both pay and redeem coupons at a given retailer, without having to clip (or print out) and paper coupons. Instead, the phone ‘remembers’ the Offers you’ve saved or purchased, and redeems them automatically. The feature was first demoed back when Wallet was in May, but when the service in beta last month you could only use it for payments, not offers. Of course, Google Wallet is still only available to consumers that have the Sprint Nexus S 4G (not even the T-Mobile or AT&T variants of the Nexus S work). But that will hopefully change soon — I won’t be surprised if we see some announcements around this at the Android event in Hong Kong this week. Google’s post also notes that the interface for the Google pre-paid credit card — which lets you preload a virtual card with money, in case your credit card isn’t natively supported by Wallet — will now feature more details about each of your transactions. And finally, Google Wallet has landed some new retailers that will be integrating the service soon, including: Chevron, D’Agostino, Faber News Now, Gristedes Supermarkets and Pinkberry, who join American Eagle, Macy’s, Jamba Juice, and more (you can see a full listing of the partners ). From the post: The Offers tab in Google Wallet has been updated to include a new “Featured Offers” section with discounts that are exclusive to Google Wallet. Today, these include 15% off at American Eagle Outfitters, 10% off at The Container Store, 15% off at Macy’s and an all-fruit smoothie for $2 at Jamba Juice. There are many more Google Wallet exclusive discounts to come, and you can save your favorites in Google Wallet so they’ll be automatically applied to your bill when you check out. Organizing loyalty cards in your wallet is getting easier too. Today, Foot Locker, Guess, OfficeMax and American Eagle Outfitters are providing loyalty cards for Google Wallet so you can rack up reward points automatically as you shop. More of these are on the way. [youtube=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKuUzNnb8aQ’] |
Y Combinator Alum Curebit Wants To Optimize Your Referral System, Turn Your Customers Into Marketers | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 10 | 17 | Word-of-mouth is the tried and true way to spread the word about your business, news, or product updates. For businesses, allowing your customers to tell their friends about how awesome your product or service is can be a great way to increase your brand recognition and attract new customers to come in and check out what you’re doing. As Basecamp wrote back in September, the web-based project management system has grown increasingly in popularity because customers have been able to tell their friends and colleagues about it and bring them over to the service. , an alum of the Y Combinator winter class of 2011, launched at demo day back in March as a way for online stores to increase revenue through referrals by turning existing customers into marketers. Curebit wants to optimize referral systems for eCommerce platforms, and today they’re launching a new product to help do that more effectively. It’s called the “Social Referral Optimizer” and Curebit Co-founder and CEO Allan Grant tells us that his product is essentially like Google Web Optimizer for referral systems: It solves the hard problem of getting high conversion rates from referral systems. Curebit supports the type of split referral incentivization that has worked so well for companies like Dropbox. For those unfamiliar, this split referral system is when you recommend Dropbox to a friend, and when they sign up, both you and your friend get some kind of reward, be it 5GB of storage for free or a shiny nickel. According to Grant, Dropbox worked at optimizing their referral system for months before it began to have any real sort of effect on customer acquisition and conversion, so Curebit wants to take this optimization (i.e. pain in the butt) out of the process for any site — even yours. What the Curebit team came to understand as they tested different form of referral optimization is that conversion depends a great deal on the details of the offer (the language the offer is presented in, the type of incentive, etc.), so their Social Referral Optimizer allows sites to automatically break an offer into its various permutations and test them across Curebit’s partner sites to see which has the highest conversion rate. The startup’s optimizer enables sites to vary the amount of the discount, the offer text, the message one uses to share it with friends (whether that be via Facebook or Twitter), the landing page, as well as the graphic design of each page. But really the coolest part is the cross-site optimization: For sites that don’t have enough volume to get those statistically significant results, users are able to take advantage of Curebit’s software, which learns as it tests from other sites across the Web (about 700 of these are already available for testing). Interestingly, from the data the startup has collected so far, they’ve learned that the conversion rate depends not so much on the amount of the discount that one offers friends for their referrals, but more on the text one uses — how the entire offer is expressed. And so far, the results have been encouraging. With Curebit’s optimizations, users are able to get 30 to 60 percent of of the customers that buy to share exclusive offers with their friends, resulting in a direct, measurable life in sales of up to 15 percent. The startup is also launching an additional two new features today, including “Facebook Sponsored Stories” integration, which is designed to optimized shared messages, turning them into high-conversion social ads, as well as “Social Influencer Tracking”, in which Curebit identifies customers that have shared an offer (and are super influencers) so that merchants can personally thank them. For example, when Gina Bianchini, co-founder of Ning, shared one of Curebit’s offers, the DODOcase founders got an email about it right away and were able to reach out to say thanks immediately thereafter. Next time the Ning co-founder buys something that uses a Curebit referral, the DODOcase guys will know right away, even if she doesn’t share. Pretty cool. For more on Curebit, check out the video below: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIsUcFZIDpY |
Worldwide Enterprise IT Spending To Total $2.7 Trillion In 2012 But Growth Is Slowing | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 10 | 17 | Gartner just its worldwide enterprise IT spending estimates, which are projected to total $2.7 trillion in 2012. That’s a 3.9 percent increase from 2011 expected spending of $2.6 trillion, but down from a 5.9 percent expected increase in 2011. Gartner says this year alone, 350 companies will each invest more than $1 billion in IT. And at the forefront of IT spending are applications in the cloud, social, data warehousing and mobility areas. Gartner says that $74 billion was spent on public cloud services in 2010, which only represented 3 percent of enterprise spending. But, the firm says that public cloud services will grow five times faster than overall IT enterprise spending (19 percent annually through 2015). By 2014, Gartner says that private app stores will be deployed by 60 percent of IT organizations. And in August, that social customer relationship management (CRM) market is forecast to reach over $1 billion in revenue by year-end 2012, up from approximately $625 million in 2010. The firm also said that despite the global economic challenges, enterprises will continue to invest in IT, although the rate of spending may slow. |
Nokia Launches New NFC-Enabled Games | Sarah Perez | 2,011 | 10 | 17 | Over the weekend, Nokia a developed at Nokia Research Center which are meant to demonstrate how NFC can enable new forms of mobile gaming. The three new games include Nokia World Flags, Nokia Shakespeare Shuffle and Nokia Nursery Rhyme Shuffle. All can be played now on any Nokia Symbian NFC-enabled phone including the Nokia C7 Astound, C7-00, 600, 603, 700 and 701. Nokia calls the games “tangible” mobile games because of the way they interact with physical objects in the real world using . The games don’t have to read or write to the tags in order to work – they only need to detect the tags’ presence. That means they will work with blank NFC tags or even “contactless” credit cards, transit cards or ID cards, the company explains. Frankly, the user interfaces for the games are only so-so, but to be fair, these are more akin to demo apps than “real” games meant to attract thousands of users. Instead, it’s the behind these games that’s meant to be the focus of this news. For example, one game involves NFC-tagged playing cards which are used to play a digitized version of a child’s simple matching game. Traditionally, you would play this game by flipping over cards to find the matched pairs. With the NFC game, however, you tap the card with your phone. While I’m not sure if a game like this is screaming out for NFC, the concept of combining playing cards with NFC in new ways has some appeal. Imagine playing a NFC-enabled version of one of those “Magic: The Gathering” type games where with a tap you could actually the battles between wizards animated on your phone’s screen, while the mobile app also kept score for you. That might be cool (well, for nerds, ). The two other Nokia games now available involve tapping cards to mix up either nursery rhymes or Shakespeare quotes. They look pretty boring. In a video, Nokia shows off a fourth concept (not available) where you tap different parts of a stuffed animal with an NFC phone to play games. That could provide toy makers a new avenue for upselling that was previously limited to ads that appear on their toys’ boxes and in their instruction manuals. Still, as much as I personally love technology, the idea that my child’s teddy would simply serve as an avenue to toddler’s first gaming addiction kind of makes me sad. Whatever happened to actually playing your toys? (Maybe I’m just getting old.) Nokia, it should be noted, is not the first to have ideas about NFC-enabled gaming. One high-profile example comes from Rovio, which, called Angry Birds Magic earlier this year. That game also works on Symbian. Widespread NFC adoption is several years out, and is still waiting on Apple’s participation. That means opportunities for NFC-enabled gaming are few and far between today. Nokia is often early to the smartphone space with , but it’s not until Apple executives upon them do they really reach the mainstream. Something tells me that NFC mobile gaming will be just another example of this ongoing trend. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgLkF46tN64] |
It’s Facebook, What Else Did You Expect? | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 10 | 10 | Landscape-mode screenshot from Facebook’s iOS update. : Landscape-mode screenshot from I swear to God Facebook, we should start holding a contest for people who can spot this of design “flattery” — like have them win tickets or something. Here’s what their respective iPad apps look like, guess which one’s Facebook’s and which one’s MyPad’s … |
BuddyTV Partners With AT&T To Let You Turn Your U-verse Into A Smart TV | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 10 | 17 | Back in July, Erick took a trip to a hotel suite in Manhattan to get a demo of BuddyTV’s new iPhone app. . For those unfamiliar, BuddyTV’s iPhone and Android apps turn your smartphones into a smart viewing guide and a remote control with enhanced social features like chat and the ability to broadcast what you’re watching to Facebook and Twitter. At the time, the app was working exclusively with Google TVs, but today is announcing that it has landed another big fish: AT&T. Beginning today, all AT&T U-verse users can directly control their receivers with the BuddyTV Guide. Using their iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad, subscribers can use the smart channel guide to display only the channels that they want to watch. As you “heart and rate shows and channels, the app gives you recommendations based on your personal preferences and what the app thinks users want to watch. And, just like Netflix, the recommendations get smarter the more you “favorite” and the more you watch. (Speaking of Netflix, the app also integrates with Netflix Instant for users who subscribe to the streaming video service.) Thus, users can create favorite channels to create a personalized TV listings view that displays only those channels that users watch most often (including HD channels), as well as allowing users to set up reminders and receive push notifications so that they’ll never miss another episode of America’s Funniest Home Videos. For AT&T U-verse users and avid smartphone users, this is an awesome bonus, as it is essentially turning your iPhone into a master TV remote that learns the more you use it. The BuddyTV Guide app is free to download and . Native Android and Google TV versions are coming soon. For more, check out the video below: |
One App To Rule Them All | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 10 | 10 | Well if it isn’t my old friend the … Yes that Facebook mobile developer page from a couple of weeks ago is officially live with an explanation of how the synchronized Facebook mobile platform will work across its iPhone, iPad, web and eventually Android apps (sometimes these things are so anticlimactic). And, unlike the simplistic three-step tutorial (below) I was given when I downloaded the new Facebook iPhone app, this has a bit more information about the motivation behind the changes. From the looks of it the new mobile Facebook experience is centered around keeping app developers content and complacent on the Facebook platform. In an update released today, both the web apps and iOS apps now feature prominent icons for Friends, Messages and Notifications. In a nod towards developer symbiosis, Facebook is highlighting that Notifications will allow users to follow links to iOS or web apps if they are invited by their friends — In the same vein, users will be able to access apps by clicking on links in their News Feed. The documentation also suggests that Timeline, another sign that Facebook wants to be the aggregator of all apps, will be coming to mobile soon. Perhaps the biggest step towards making their developers feel all warm and cozy (and comfortable) in Facebook’s cross-platform mobile integration is Bookmarks, which allow you to navigate to an app from inside Facebook mobile. Bookmarks is a boon for developers seeking to increase virality; I’ve already downloaded one iOS app simply because it was bookmarked on Facebook (“Words With Friends”) and I’m figuring Facebook will drive enough app downloads that it will be able to charge affiliate fees. Facebook that their policy was not “to discuss such details.” Perhaps the only thing about the new features that wasn’t entirely a developer plus was , but even that too is mitigated by the fact that both Facebook and Apple take the same 30% cut — so devs are fleeced either way. While you think they’d eventually link up the two, my Facebook Web app is currently only giving me the option to visit apps that have corresponding HTML5 apps and my Facebook iOS app is only showing me apps that have corresponding iOS apps. I’ve asked Facebook if they’ll ever include both HTML5 and iOS apps across all platforms and they have yet to get back to me. Perhaps it’s because they’re still bulking up on apps? Their HTML5 “Apps Showcase” is currently |
Velocity Micro Gets Competitive, Drops The Price Of The 8-inch T408 Android Tablet To $199 | Matt Burns | 2,011 | 10 | 10 | Velocity Micro launched the $240 8-inch T408 Android 2.3 tablet . Amazon announced two weeks later. But Velocity Micro isn’t going down without a fight. The company just sent over a note indicating that the T408 now costs just $199. It’s no doubt a smart move, but that’s where it should have been priced initially. Velocity Micro sent over both of their new models and I rather like the small Android 2.2 tab. But they were a tough sell at their initial MSRP price of $240 for the 8-inch and $299 for the 10-inch. These aren’t iPad killers, but rather enthusiast tablets for the Android crowd. They’re cheap and lack the native Google apps. But they’re quick, thin and completely unlocked for all sorts of modding tomfoolery. A quick Google search shows that retailers including Velocity Micro’s own website apparently didn’t get the memo yet. But the price cut is real. Look for it in the coming days. An average consumer will still likely opt for the Fire or next-gen Nook Color. That’s fine. This tablet isn’t really for your mom. But if you have a folder of ROMs, XDA-dev set as your homepage, or flame every MG Siegler post, you should take a serious look at the T408. Look for our full review in the coming days. |
Alfred, The iOS Butler, Serves Up Serendipity On A Silver Platter | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 10 | 10 | Back in July about a nifty iPhone app called . It’s a sort of Yelp meets Pandora: you tell it what kind of restaurants you like, and then it tries to make some solid recommendations. Today , the company behind Alfred, is sharing some early stats — and they’re looking good. Thus far the application has given 7 million recommendations to users in less than three months. And users have ‘Liked’ two million venues within the application (you can use a Pandora-esque thumbs up or down to further train the app’s suggestions). Apparently those recommendations ring true, too: the app has 550 ratings and a 4-star average on iTunes. The most important stat, though, concerns the way people are actually using the application. Namely, the fact that some 94% of the requests that go through Alfred are based on ‘Serendipity’ versus only 6% that are explicit searches. So what does that mean? One of the key features that distinguishes Alfred from competitors (like Yelp) is that there’s a focus on requiring little-to-no input from the user. After you’ve gone through an initial training session where you tell the app what you like, it does its best to recommend places to grab coffee, lunch, drinks, or whatever else it believes you’re looking for when you open the app (it pays attention to things like the current time to make this initial guess). Oftentimes it only takes one or two taps to get a quick recommendation — and because the app is building a taste profile for each user, those recommendations should be getting better over time. These few-tap queries are what Alfred means by Serendipity, and their popularity show that people really don’t want to have to deal with typing things in manually when they can avoid it (it’s also a good sign for Siri, which similarly lets people avoid typing). To commemorate their progress, Clever Sense has put together an infographic showcasing several stats, as well as the density of usage in San Francisco and NYC. To see the whole infographic, click on the image below. |
The man with 450 geeks powering the Olympics – and maybe tomorrow's startups? | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 10 | 10 |
In many respects the gargantuan project that is the tech behind the Olympics and ‘tech bubble’ startups don’t have a lot in common. One is a massive systems integration exercise involving large corporate players like ATOS, ACER, BT, Samsung, Panasonic, Cisco and multiple others. The other is a wave of fast moving companies filled with sneaker-wearing CEOs who prefer bean bags and foozebal to the air-conditioned corporate offices of (that’s London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games, to you). But, speaking to Gerry Pennell, CIO of London 2012 and the man charged with delivering the technology around the Olympics, it looks like there is more to this than meets the eye that might pique the interest of the entrepreneur. For starters there is the infrastructure of the project, which involves huge amounts of fibre to carry data around the Olympic park partners. Much of this will be left in the ground after the Olympics end in August next year, including in the Broadcast centre and the athletes’ village (something as being a potential Geek Village, if someone has the vision to make it happen). Another aspect is the massive WiFi project that will cover the Park. This is designed to take the heat off the mobile phone networks during peak times, as the Mayor of London . But the opportunity for startups being able to push their smartphone apps during the Games is obvious. Although to Pennell people live tweeting a race is less of an issue to him than making sure the media gets all the results of the events in realtime. A lot of new software architecture has been created for this for the Olympics and there’s going to be a new Olympic Data Feed, an XML feed for the media and rights holders, which subsequent events will make use of. A new Commentator Information System (CIS) means realtime results rather than TV cameras picking up crowds cheering before the results appear on screen. “We’ll also be developing some iOS, Android, RIM and Windows 7 applications do deliver various things” he says, adding that more will be revealed about this apps in due course. But unfortunately Pennell skirted around the issue of Open Data at the Olypmics. The former technology director for the 2002 Manchester Commonwealth Games and most CIO of Co-operative Financial Services, says: “The main stream of data people will want to tap into is the results feeds, and because that involves sponsors and partners who have all paid for that, it’s not something we can provide on an Open Data bases. There is a lot of other information that can be provided.” Clearly, with the planning starting years ago, it’s to be hoped other events might take advantage of the ability of startups to deliver great apps on top of this kind of data. For now, it looks like the usual corporate data rules apply. The sheer scale of the tech aspects of the Olympics have to be read to be believed. The 16 days of the Olympics games and 12 days of the Paralympics will see 450 technologists keep 180 servers and 1160 PCs and laptops running 24/7. There are 92 buildings to be connected and BT is investing 640,000 man hours in the project. A volunteer portal created by Atos Origin will manage volunteer staff of up to 70,000 during the games. A radio trunked network from British company Airwave will will be used by stewards and the emergency services, and will act as a backup mobile network if anything goes wrong. The budget for technology at the games is a small £2.1m, but a lot of the budget is value in kind in the form of sponsorship deals with the likes of Panasonic and Cisco. Perhaps most interesting to startups is the legacy aspect of the games, and not just the fibre in the ground. Pennel says LOCOG is plugged into the UK government’s initiative to enliven the existing cluster of startups in East London known colloquially as Silicon Roundabout. And with 450 highly technically qualified people coming onto the jobs market after the games this could prove a rich source of hiring for startups once the games are over. It’s something Pennel is keen to point out: “Many of the people in my team would actually be a good match for startups because they are used to working in a very fast-paced, quickly changing environment.” Does he think they’d adapt to life living amongst beanbags and T-shirted CEOs? “In some ways the lifecycle of this organisation is very like a startup. We’ve moved from being very small to very large in a small amount of time,” he says. Pressing the button on tech for the Olympic is a big job. Perhaps there will be rich pickings for startups in a year’s time after all. |
And The Lion Shall Lie Down With The Lamb: Nintendo Issues Blue Sega-Themed Wii | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 10 | 10 | I remember the time when you were either a kid or a Sega kid — assuming you were lucky enough to have one of the consoles at all. You’d ask your friend if they had played warpless, and they would respond that no, they were still trying to beat their Casino Zone times in . Things would be a little tense after that. And this was a prejudice that I felt would never be mended. But when Sega went all-software after the Dreamcast (R.I.P.), things changed. Sure, we’ve had Sonic games on Nintendo systems — have for years. According to my inner child, they’ve finally crossed the line. The reason is normal enough: it’s a bundle. The Wii itself is of the new, slightly crippled variety (doesn’t have wi-fi or play Gamecube games) but it’s a perfect little collaboration for the upcoming Olympics — if you lack the soul of a gamer. To anyone who grew up in the 80s, this is a gross dereliction of fanboy duty by the obsessively self-centered Nintendo. It also comes with a sticker sheet. I have to assume that someone at Nintendo threatened to disembowel themselves if Sonic were permanently placed on a Wii. This abomination will be available in Europe starting November 18th. Or as they might say, 18 November. |
Y Combinator Is Now Getting Over One Application Every Minute | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 10 | 10 | Wow. Silicon Valley-based startup incubator is getting just over one application per minute, according to a from co-founder and partner Paul Graham. Today is the for the next Y Combinator class, and clearly founders are in a rush to get their applications in. Back in August, Graham to Y Combinator is just 3%. But because of an increase in applications, Y Combinator has increased its class sizes of late. In June, Graham that total value of YC companies is around $3 billion. In total, YCombinator has funded 316 startups including the summer round that just debuted in August. Checkout Graham and fellow Y Combinator partner Harj Taggar’s most recent office hours with startup founders at TechCrunch Disrupt |
The $4 Retro Computer | John Biggs | 2,011 | 10 | 10 | The apparently predates the Altair and is the earliest “personal” microcomputer in existence. To use it you flipped a bunch of switches and watched the lights. A PS3 this definitely wasn’t. A tinkerer named recently rebuilt a mini version of the Kenbak using an Arduino board, timing chip, and some memory, allowing him to add realtime clock functions and storage to what amounts to a very smart Lite-Brite. Not long after discovering the Arduino it seemed to me it could be a fun project to re-create an early computer, one with just LEDs and switches. I looked at things like the Altair 8800 (1975) but it has 30+ LEDs and 20+ switches and seemed like too much work. Then I stumbled on the KENBAK-1 (1971). Perfect! Only a dozen LEDs and 17 switches. The wee computer looks almost like the original but is considerably smaller and costs much less than the 1970 price – $4 for parts as compared to about $750 in disco dollars. The handsome case and front panel probably cost a bit more to manufacture but look accurate. However the Arduino guts are most definitely more complex than the original machine and have essentially been dumbed-down to emulate the old Kenbak. |
A Ten-Minute Charger For The Nissan Leaf – In Time | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 10 | 10 | One of the drawbacks of current (if you will) electric cars is the rather long time it takes to charge their batteries. that as long as you adapt your lifestyle to it a bit, it’s not a problem, but the unexpected happens and it would suck to be at low charge when you suddenly need to get to the hospital, or what have you. Quick-charge solutions are out there, but few are really practical and many still take hours to reach full charge. Nissan says they’ve created one, however, that could charge a car in only ten minutes. , and the technology breakthrough has to do with the electrode material used, though it’s not clear where in the process the new vanadium oxide and tungsten oxide electrodes are being implemented. The ten-minute charge uses a new compact charge station that costs less than half what the previous quick charger did, and could also be used on other automakers’ vehicles. Still, at around a million yen (~$13,000), it’s more suited to institutional use. Gas stations, parking lots, that sort of thing. It’s bad enough already that you have to get a 220V adapter in order to get your Leaf back on the road in good time. The advanced processes and materials used mean that this isn’t likely to be found at your local shop any time soon, though. And of course there aren’t really enough electric vehicles out there to make this a priority just yet. But by doing the theoretical work now, Nissan can be ready with a product when the time is right. [via ; image: AFP/Yoshikazu Tsuno] |
Can Afterfall: InSanity Disrupt The Gaming Ecosystem With This $1 Pre-Order Experiment? | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 10 | 10 | The game industry is in the middle of an interesting shift right now. We’re at a point analogous to where the music industry was in the early 2000s: the product is only just becoming convenient enough for the mainstream to purchase and download online. Sure, people have done it for years, but the sales of online services, and the services themselves, are multiplying. As the pricing model for music changed with mp3s and iTunes, so the pricing model for games is in flux now. We’ve seen how and the have seized the opportunity presented by this unstable situation, and now we can add another potentially disruptive model to the list. Polish developer NEG is offering its upcoming sci-fi/horror game for only one dollar — but only if it gets ten million pre-orders. If they fall short of that goal, they’re donating all the money to charity. Even if they hit their goal, ten percent is still going to charity. But there’s no way to get that dollar back once you pledge it. Here’s a video explaining the whole thing, with that flopping text effect I can’t stand: [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrwCd4oeuXc w=640] It’s an interesting model, though certainly one with a little room for refinement. Ten million, for instance, is a pretty large figure to aim for right out the door. Even indie phenomenon Minecraft is only at around a third of that number, though admittedly the price is higher. A million pre-orders at a dollar each is still a lot of money for an indie developer. , a Dead Space style 3rd-person survival horror thing with mutants and failing batteries and a fear system, all that stuff. Sure, it’s not going to dethrone the majors or cause as much of a splash as the incomparable Amnesia, but I think sight unseen I can tell you it’s worth a dollar. Either way, I think it’s a good thing. If these guys hit their goal, it’s a proof of concept. If not, the game still gets made, and maybe they try again once they’ve shown they’ve got the game-dev chops to back up their pricing gumption. I’m going to. It’ll be available until November 25th, so if you aren’t sure about whether you have a dollar to spare, you’ve got some time to think about it. |
Too Soon | Steve Gillmor | 2,011 | 10 | 10 | Steve Jobs didn’t invent Twitter. In a week of relentless tributes, somehow that gives me some relief. Not that I buy the anti-Steve story, that we are imprisoned as artists in the closed architecture of the Apple walled garden. How soul-crushing it is to enjoy things for their beingness. Bah. I keep waiting for the wave to roll on through. Inevitably, the sting will fade, as we turn our attention to what’s next to do. No more looking to Steve for the answers, or even the diligence involved in factoring the future. There may be some surprises still in the pipeline, but don’t count on it. Don’t worry; no one else will come up with any good ideas for quite some time, leaving Apple plenty of time to amortize the loss. Fine. Can’t be funny about this in any way. What if Steve’s real talent was in drafting off the incompetence of his competitors? A sort of mega-galactic Peter Principle where Apple could afford to wait long enough for processor speed and the decline of the entertainment industries to accelerate enough to open an economic hole in the line big enough to run through. Right. Too soon to lighten up? Lighten up we must do, and soon. Losing Steve Jobs is bad enough without giving up on the rest of humanity to boot. Certainly there was room enough for only one Jobs at a time, only one astronaut taking the first steps on the moon of the carriers and the record cartel. Arid, lifeless, with barely enough gravity to keep those lightweights from floating off into irrelevance. Of course that’s unfair; some of the early record company executives actually loved the music as much or more than the money. Of course we supported iTunes and the AppStore. We knew Napster was a kid’s science project and not sustainable, even as we stole back our record collections just because we could. We knew that all-you-can-eat comes at a price, and were willing to pay it once Steve pinned the “Big” Four down. And we knew that once the game was begun, that our actions would begin to have value. Shares, retweets, Spotify. Times like these bring music once again front and center in our lives. This time, the first in a long time, there’s an imperfect but tangible world to touch again. Unfaithful Servant, all remastered and restored, jumps out in realtime as I sit in a traffic jam heading downtown. A miracle of science and magic, a chain of technologies, fits and starts, serendipity meets 101 meets 280 meets 3G and ten seconds ago I wanted to hear it. And one small part of the thrill is that some part of my subscription dollars will flow through to the artists (well, Robbie) who made it. Getting across that great divide is what we support Apple for, whether we rationalize it as all about design or pay for it with social gestures or complain about poor battery life. Of course it’s got poor battery life. Of course it’s outrageous to pay another 4 or 8 hundred bucks to replace the battery every year. Of course it’s because we’re constantly using the damn thing, the stupid Bluetooth magic that gets Spotify onto the car radio, the stupid phone call that interrupts the song or the push notification that dims the track for a second. Drat, drat, fumble, break the law, endanger the citizens around me as I complain that the traffic is moving just as I want to find that Dr. John track: Been in the right place, but it must’ve been the wrong time. And then on Wednesday iOS 5 and iCloud ships. And with it some peace of mind as our pictures and history sync up with the cloud. Will no one else pay attention to these sacred moments of time like Steve Jobs did? Of course they will. His passing on some level is about the other connotation of the word — passing his torch on to the next. Rewind a little and remember what those launches we cherish were about: the joy of honoring those we love, their idiosyncrasies, our goofy expressions, smiling for the camera, for our shared history. Been on the right trip, must’ve used the wrong car. It gets easier now, the finesse out of the way. With the money flowing, geniuses will figure out more ways of making things right. With the ideas flowing, we’ll hear the voices of complaint and outrage, the messages of love and justice, the rise of the human spirit. You could tell Steve Jobs believed that to be true, that there’s more from where he came from. Maybe even in spite of him. But more. It’s too soon to wrestle this bear to the ground. But somewhere, perhaps in some basement, there’s a new Dylan singing too much of nothing makes a man feel ill at ease. And somewhere else, two kids in a garage just getting started. If I’m wrong, so what. |
BlackBerry Internet Outage Hits Europe, Middle East, Africa | Chris Velazco | 2,011 | 10 | 10 | RIM seems to be learning very quickly that when it rains, it pours. Word of a BIS (BlackBerry Internet Service) outage quickly began making the rounds this morning, leaving (once) loyal customers in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East without email and web access. This is the second outage RIM has dealt with in as many months: their this past September, shortly after the company released their disappointing quarterly financials. For what it’s worth, it’s business as usual for corporate users as BlackBerry Enterprise services don’t seem to have suffered the same fate. In usual RIM fashion, they’ve acknowledged the issue through their official Twitter account, but they’re keeping quiet when it comes to what caused the outage or how people are currently being affected. A little legwork by points to a server at Slough as being the likely culprit as all three regions affected by the outage are all served by the Slough data center. There’s still no ETA for a fix, but some users are reporting so the wait may soon be over. https://twitter.com/#!/BlackBerryHelp/status/123437227324870658 BlackBerry users the world over are understandably miffed at RIM, and who knows how events like this will shape the Canadian company’s future. Their stock price recently , and these outages aren’t likely to instill customers with much confidence. It’s up to RIM to fix things, dust themselves off, and keeping working, but company morale has to be taking a beating right now. |
A Hands-On With The Metawatch | John Biggs | 2,011 | 10 | 10 | We’ve been “watching” the for a while now, wondering if it will ever take off. While I feel that the phone-watch connection is tenuous at best, it’s cute to watch people try to get it to work over and over again. took a closer look at a beta version of the product and found it interesting. From the ground up, the Metawatch has been built to serve as a tool to make using your phone simpler. What exists now, the watch that I placed on my wrist, is a device with seemingly unlimited potential. The creators of the Metawatch were kind enough to provide me with an in-depth look at the device and the plan behind making it a success. The Metawatch Manager app allows you to choose which notifications get sent to your watch, and what kind of notification the watch will give you. If you choose to just have the display change to show that you have a new email, or if you want the watch itself to vibrate to notify you of a new notification, it’s all controlled via smartphone. The settings app is pretty basic, perfect for most users who want to just pair to the watch and enjoy. For developers, however, the Metawatch team has given you an unprecedented level of control for how your notifications show up on the watch. The watch currently connects with your phone via Bluetooth and supports contact lookups, phone calls, and simple messaging. You can buy an analog or digital beta version and the API allows you to send almost anything to the watch, including images. They expect to start shipping real product this month, although, again, I doubt it will get any traction. That said, it’s interesting to see this thing in the wild and I look forward to the improvements to come. |
Facebook’s iPad App Is Finally Here. Yes, For Real This Time. | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 10 | 10 | No, it’s not a rumor. It’s not a leak. And it’s not going to be pulled at the last minute because of backroom negotiations that may or may not actually be taking place. Facebook’s iPad app is ready for everyone. Yes, after months of , rumors, and even a that made its way into the hands of TechCrunch readers everywhere, Facebook is officially unveiling its iPad app, which has long been glaringly absent (so glaringly, in fact, that several third party developers have gotten millions of downloads for their own ‘Facebook for iPad’ apps). I haven’t gotten to try the official app out myself just yet, but Facebook did give me a verbal walkthrough of its highlights, as well as the following screenshots. It looks good. It looks like Facebook. And it’s going to be the iPad’s most downloaded app of all time in, oh, about two days. You can download it . : Facebook’s site showcasing the app is live, but it looks like it’s still propagating through Apple’s servers. The app features a slick navigation menu on the left side of the screen, which lets you quickly jump to features like News Feed, Messages, your Groups, and the other places you commonly access on Facebook. The remainder of the app ties together the features you’d expect from Facebook’s mobile experience (like Check-ins) with the features you find on the desktop, like a Chat bar that’s presented alongside the News Feed. Facebook’s iPhone app isn’t being left out in the cold, either — it’s also receiving a UI refresh, including the slick navigation menu. And there’s another new feature that’s very important: Facebook is bringing app discovery to mobile devices. Here’s how it works. Right now if you browse your News Feed from the desktop, you’ll notice that you occasionally see updates posted by friends using various apps and games. Click on one of the links that appear in these updates, and you’ll be directed to the app in question — this is one way that applications can spread virally across Facebook (another way is through the ‘requests’ channel, which lets users explicitly invite their friends to a certain app or game). Before now these features have been omitted from the mobile version of Facebook, but beginning with today’s launch, they’re receiving deep integration. Say, for example, you were browsing Facebook from its new iPad app, and you saw a friend post a Words With Friends story in your News Feed. If you tapped that link and already had the native iPad version of installed, then Facebook would fast-app-switch you over to the game. If you didn’t already have the app installed, it would deep link you to the App Store, where you could download it. And if there wasn’t a native app available at all, then you’d get directed to the HTML5 version. This app integration works with the Facebook’s mobile web version as well. In short, Facebook is doing its best to direct you to the version of the app that will work best on whatever device you’re accessing it from — so if you’re browsing to Facebook from m.facebook.com, you’ll get directed to mobile web version of apps; if you’re browsing from iOS, you’ll get App Store versions; and when Facebook finishes the revamped version of the Android app (it’s in the works), you’ll get directed to the Android Market version of apps whenever possible. This is a big deal for app developers, because it means that mobile application can more easily tap into Facebook’s viral channels. And it also means that invitations and requests will work seamlessly across all platforms, provided that app developers have built multiple versions of the apps (and/or an HTML5 version). This also brings up another question: is this ? My colleague MG Siegler has reported extensively on an internal mission at Facebook to urge third party app developers toward HTML5, thereby bringing their applications to far more devices and loosening the stranglehold that Apple has over iOS through the App Store (and that Google has over Android through Market). I talked to Facebook CTO Bret Taylor about the features launching today, and how they relate. He says that the rumors may have been mischaracterizing Facebook’s approach to social app discovery, and that while Facebook is a supporter of HTML5, these features are platform agnostic. He explains (this was transcribed live, so it’s slightly paraphrased): “There is a lot of platform diversity, and if you want your app to be social you do want your app developed for multiple platforms — and I think HTML5 is a big part of that, as it’s the one platform that works across all these devices. But I don’t think it will succeed at the expense of these platforms. We’re big supporters of HTML5, we believe it’s a necessary component… but it would be crazy for a lot of app developers to not have an iOS app today. Most social app developers will probably make one…” In the longer term, though, it sounds like Facebook will be doing more with HTML5. It’s already written some developer blog posts on crafting 2D games using HTML5, and Taylor says that Facebook will likely be open-sourcing additional tools to help developers tip their toes into the web development environment. I also asked Taylor about the history of the iPad application, which has reportedly been used as a hefty bargaining chip in Facebook’s negotiations with Apple. Taylor dodged the question, saying something along the lines of, “We work on a lot of things, and we release them when they’re ready to go.” This didn’t entirely make sense, as the Facebook developer who was building the app says it was in May, and he quit because the social network was taking so long to release it. |
null | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 10 | 17 | null |
Spree Raises $1.5 Million From True Ventures, Aol For Open Source eCommerce Platform | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 10 | 10 | , the open source, Ruby on Rails-based eCommerce solution, announced today that it has raised $1.5 million in seed funding led by True Ventures. Also participating in the round were Aol Ventures, and angels like Sean Glass. Spree has also brought on some notable advisors, including Dries Buytaert (Creator of Drupal), Luke Kanies (Creator of Puppet), Tom Preston-Werner (Co-founder of Github), and James Lindenbaum (Co-founder of Heroku). Some readers may be familiar with Spree from Github, where the startup received hundreds of contributions and was translated into over 30 languages, making it one of the more popular open source projects on the social coding platform. As Spree grew in popularity, Founder Sean Schofield also created Rails Dog, a services company that focuses on building highly customized sites based on Spree’s platform to enable those without engineering experience implement the solution. Going forward, Schofield said, Rails Dog will continue to offer consulting services, but beginning today Spree has been officially incorporated as Spree Commerce Inc. and will focus primarily on refining its eCommerce platform to make it more flexible and customizable. Schofield also said that, while the team plans to offer additional support and services to its community, the platform will continue to be open source, and the licensing and terms of use will remain the same, intended for both personal and commercial application. For those who may still be a little bit confused as to what exactly Spree does, the platform provides both hosting and support, as well as an easy customization process. Specifically, Spree gives businesses full access to its code so that businesses can create a customized checkout flow, with a single page or multi-page checkout with the amount of steps tailored to the business’ needs. Spree also uses semantic HTML, which allows users to begin with a minimalist style that can be customized and added to depending on the user’s requirements. The platform also offers a flexible product management system, inventory tracking, and the ability to add extensions to create a product assembly based on existing products, order processing, and more. And, in terms of the latter, finding the right gateway and merchant account can be a huge pain in the ass for eCommerce companies, so Spree enables integration with over 50 different payment gateways and services, including Authorize.net and Paypal. |
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